a place in his presence

So often, we judge God's faithfulness off of whether He does what we want, then way we want, when we want. We look to our circumstances to decide if God is good and if He is faithful. But what does it really meant that God is faithful? To be faithful means to follow through on the things one has promised to do, so in this lesson, we'll consider some of God's promises and the ways that He has kept and is keeping His Word.

With great confidence in God's faithfulness to keep His promises, my hope is that we will begin to view our circumstances through the lens of God's faithfulness rather than judge God's faithfulness through the lens of our circumstance.

In Hebrews 2, the author warns us that we are not to neglect our great salvation. In this lesson, we'll consider what the great salvation that Jesus offers us entails. This salvation is not simply a ticket into heaven. It's not something we put up on a shelf to pull out when we die. The good news of this great salvation is that the Son of God is the King. His kingdom is coming. And His kingdom is one in which we have a place!

Our God has been faithful. He is being faithful. And He will be faithful!

Helpful Links:

• EP 3: Lesson Two Listening Guide
• Workbook is Available on Amazon - Hebrews: Drawing Near to Jesus

In Episode 5, we will talk about the primary importance of spending time seeking Jesus. We will look into the lives of Mary and Martha and see how they prioritized the presence of their Savior. Sometimes there are reasons that we're avoiding Jesus' company, but what we see in the heart of Jesus toward His daughters is that He loves it when we come before Him. We will see how Mary sought to sit at the feet of Jesus when He was in their home. We will also consider the death of their brother Lazarus, and discuss finding God faithful when Jesus isn't what we expected, when He hasn't done what we thought He would do.

Full Show Notes.

In this final episode of Unplowed Ground, we’ll remind ourselves of the purpose of the plowing—that we might bear fruit that brings the Lord glory! Today, we’ll discuss some practical ways to do that. So often we think of fruit as something major that the Lord desires to do in our lives, and sometimes it is. But more often, we bear fruit in the small, daily decisions of our walk with the Lord.

Our Unplowed Ground—at least the way I’m defining it—are the parts of our lives that we are ignoring, that we are refusing to look at or deal with, that we are, inadvertently or intentionally, closing the Lord out of. They are parts of our hearts, our spirits, our lives that we have neglected. In many cases, what we have neglected is spending time with the Lord. But don’t you think for one second that what we’re going to do here is heap guilt and shame upon ourselves for forsaking the “quiet times” that we know we should be having.

Sometimes we’ve forsaken the field because we don’t know what to do with it.

Sometimes we’ve gotten busy and neglected these lands.

Sometimes we’ve gotten frustrated or disappointed and decided that the upkeep wasn’t worth it.

What I want to do together here is to explore some of the reasons that we’ve neglected these grounds—some of the reasons we’ve walked away (and we can walk away emotionally while continuing to go through the motions)… And then, seeking the Lord’s guidance and begging Him for the intervention of His Spirit, we will begin to look at some practical aspects of plowing—we will consider ways to spend time seeking the Lord and breaking up this ground.

Show Notes