Element Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:25 — 33.3MB)

145: Priest – Great Commissioning

10-9-2011

Scriptures:

1 Peter 2:9-12
Mark 6:7-13
2 Corinthians 6:11-13
Matthew 28:18-20
Romans 12

Quotes:

“Let temporal things serve your use, but the eternal be the object of your desire.”
- Thomas a Kempis

“When the church becomes an institution, people are nothing more than volunteers to be recruited. When the church is a movement, our stewardship becomes the unleashing of our God-given gifts, talents, and passions.”
- Erwin McManus

“Instead of bringing people to church so that we can then bring them to Christ, let’s bring Christ to people where they live.  We may find that a new church will grow out of such an enterprise, a church that is more centered in life and the workplace, where the Gospel is supposed to make a difference.  What will happen if we plant the seed of the Kingdom of God in the paces where life happens and where society is formed?  Is this not what Jesus intended for His Church?”
- Neil Cole

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
- Frederick Buechner

Podcast: Download (Duration: 35:40 — 32.7MB)

144: Priest – Discipleship and Baptism

10-2-2011

Scriptures:

1 Peter 2:9-12
Matthew 28:18-20
Matthew 5
Proverbs 4:18-22
John 15:11-17

Quotes:

“If your Gospel isn’t touching others, it hasn’t touched  you!
”
- Curry R. Blake

“Discipling men and women is the priority around which our lives should be oriented. The Great Commission is not a special calling or a gift of the Spirit; it is a command-an obligation incumbent upon the whole community of faith. There are no exceptions. Bank presidents and automobile mechanics, physicians and schoolteachers, theologians and homemakers-everyone who believes on Christ has a part in His work (John 14:12). The Great Commission is a lifestyle encompassing the total resources of every child of God. Here the ministry of Christ comes alive in the day-by-day activity of discipling. Whether we have a ‘secular’ job or an ecclesiastical position, a Christ-like commitment to bring the nations into the eternal Kingdom should be a part of it. If making disciples of all nations is not the heartbeat of our life, something is wrong, either with our understanding of Christ’s church or our willingness to walk in His way.”
- Robert Coleman

“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.”
- C. S. Lewis

“Has your relationship with God changed the way you live your life?”
- Francis Chan

Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:09 — 53.2MB)

143: Priest – A Full Bodied Hope

9-25-2011

Scriptures:

1 Peter 2:9-12
1 Corinthians 13:12-13
Philippians 4:4-9
1 Samuel 2:6-10
Hebrews 6
Romans 15:12-13

Quotes:

“TRUTH never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe. We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others. What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.”
- Thomas Merton

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
- Thomas Merton

“The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.”
- Thomas Merton

Podcast: Download (Duration: 31:17 — 28.6MB)

141: Priest – Confession

9-11-2011

Scriptures:

1 Peter 2:9-12
Mark 7:6-8, 14-15, 18-23
Matthew 26:31-35, 69-75
1 John 1:8-9
John 21:12-19
James 5:13-16
Acts 26:17-18

Quotes:

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
- C.S. Lewis

“Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
- C.S. Lewis

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
- Thomas Merton

“How shall i approach, thee, o my God? Come clean, my Child. Scrub yourself with Honesty. Wash your inconsistencies with Confession. Then our togetherness will bless me and I will call you my child, and our union will grant you access to my throne.
I shall be clean for I have confessed. I shall be clean till I sin… then I shall confess and be clean again. Confession is the window of grace. We confess and the sunlight of wholeness streams in through the streaked glass of our compromises, cleaning as it comes.”
- Calvin Miller

Podcast: Download (Duration: 30:24 — 27.8MB)

139: Priest – Why a Priesthood?

8-28-2011

Scriptures:

2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Proverbs 21:2
1 Peter 2
Matthew 5:13-16
Hebrews 4:14-16
Galatians 5:22-26
Hebrews 10:11-25

Quotes:

“God rewards those who seek Him. Not those who seek doctrine of religion or systems or creeds. Many settle for these lesser passions, but the reward goes to those who settle for nothing less than Jesus himself. And what is the reward? What awaits those who seek Jesus? Nothing short of the heart of Jesus.”
- Max Lucado

“If you love the quiet retreat that you create in order to meet God, you may not love God at all but only the pointless discipline of quietness. If you love the literature of the saints more than you desire to emulate their holiness, you are too much the captive of your reading and not the servant of your Lord. If you seem to talk a lot about prayer but pray very little, you are seeking only a godly mystique and not God himself. God is never honored by our sterile fascination with him.”
- Miller

“If in preaching the gospel you substitute your knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the gospel, you hinder people from getting to reality. ”
- Oswald Chambers

“The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God.”
- Eugene H. Peterson

“Teach me the wilderness simplicity. Help me to point to you, honestly and joyously, as the threshold of all that really matters.”
-Calvin Miller