Podcasts + Posts

Peter tells us that we’re redeemed by the blood of Jesus (1 Peter 1:18-19). Most of us that grew up in the church know that- and believe it. However, we often have a limited view of what Jesus came to do. 

You see, most of us believe that Jesus achieved our redemption on the Cross. However, if we’re redeemed by the blood, it makes MORE sense that we would find redemption, somehow, in each place that Jesus bled….

In the Garden, when He sweat great drops of blood.

And when the soldiers beat Him, causing Him to bruise and bleed even more.

When they scourged His back. 

When they placed a crown of thorns on His head.

When they nailed His hands to the Cross… and then nailed His feet.

And, even after He died, when they pierced His heart… and He bled water, mixed with blood.

In other words, Jesus didn’t just bleed at the Cross. He bled before it, on it, and even after He died. In each place, He bought more freedom, more...

My cousin Jonathan is one of the smartest guys I know. Especially to be so young. Over a decade-and-a-half my junior, my first memory of him comes from my now-deceased grandmother’s house in Tarrant City, a small bedroom community just outside of downtown Birmingham.

One Christmas I walked to through the neighbor’s yard, tossing a football or build-and-toss styrofoam airplane or some other Christmas gift contraption… 

I noticed that the neighbor had HUGE leaves attached to a random plant on the front left corner of their home’s flower bed. They were the kind of leaves you see adorning Adam and Eve in kids’ picture Bibles. 

Like any well-meaning college freshman that’s more impressed with himself than reality, I snapped a leaf off the plant, tucked the stem in my belt, and walked around the corner of the house, wearing my leaf just like Adam might have done after The Fall.

Four or five minutes later, Jonathan emerged from the same...

Paul encouraged us to not stray from the simplicity that is found in Christ. His thought was, well… we tend to make things infinitely more complex. We tend to move towards complex religious systems. 

Jesus, on the other hand, came to make things easy. 

Follow me here… 

Moses received the Law- ten commandments which, in Hebrew, were expressed using only ten words (they have a far more economical language than we do). 

613 more laws were then added to explain what those ten words meant. They had moral laws, civil laws, and religious laws.

You’d think that would be enough, but no… well intended leaders created the Mishnah, the oral tradition built around the laws, to explain what each one meant…

That wasn’t enough, either. Enter, the Talmud. 

Then the legal comments added by scribes and lawyers (and their “fences” and “hedges” around the law).

And, then along come the rabbis… 

Jesus...

Confession: I’m a busy body… sometimes. No, make that a lot of the time. 

When my spirit is quiet and my soul is at rest and I’m really tapped into to who I am, I’m not. But, most of the time, it’s easy to confuse being busy with being productive. It’s easy to confuse a “full schedule” with a full and meaningful life. 

A lot of us are like that, I think... 

I bump into people all the time at the coffee shop, the park, the restaurant. The exchange goes something like this:

“How are you?”

“Busy. I'm really busy…”

Others say it; I say it. Sometimes we don’t even think about it. It just rolls of our tongues. It's become cliché. We wear the "busy" label as if it’s a badge of honor, as if being busy is to personal importance what net worth is to finance. 

Somehow, we think MORE tasks, more action, more ___________ (fill in the blank) is always better...

In the previous episode we nailed down two fundamentals. In this episode we take the discussion further. 

First, we look at what church leaders from a variety of backgrounds have said. Oddly enough, they all use different language (some say “filled,” some say “baptized”) but they all agree. We need a deeper, fuller encounter with Holy Spirit. 

Second, we look at what the Bible says. We jaunt through all 5 examples in the Book of Acts where we see the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 

Did they lay hands on each other? Did they speak in tongues? Was there some sort of belief or formula or something else that happened? 

The answer is… (insert drum roll here)… no. There are no formulas. God is relational, not robotic. 

(Verses referenced… Go to Acts 2:1f., Acts 8:4f., Acts 9:5f., Acts 10, Acts 19:1f.)

Listening + subscribing options

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In a sitcom that played in the last decade, Bernie Mac's wife, Wanda, wanted a renovation job performed on their house. And she wanted it done “good, fast, and cheap.” That is... 

• She wanted it done with excellence,
• She wanted it done yesterday, and...
• She didn't want to pay a lot for it to be done

Bernie told her that you can choose 2 of the 3- no more. He proceeded to sketch a triangle, telling her that each of these three options (good, fast, cheap) were at opposite corners. Unfortunately, she could only have 2 of them...

"You'll have to make a choice," he said. "Because what you're wanting is impossible."

Side note: I know, no lady reading this has ever heard her husband say that; no husband has ever thought it :-)

Here’s how he described it to her (and how I apply it to virtually anything you do):

First, you've got to be invested in the project

Bernie Mac first said something like this: You can build fast and cheap, but it...

Lots of people in church circles disagree over the Holy Spirit- who or what He is / does, and whether or not we have Him / it from the time of conversion or not. 

Some say you have the Holy Spirit, others say you don’t- that there’s more. We have create “classes” and “levels” of Christianity based on where you stand on this issue :-)

Others say you must speak in tongues…

Who’s right? 

Well… 

On the first issue, the Holy Spirit moves IN you at conversion AND there is another encounter that the Scripture refers to as “being baptized in the Holy Spirit). 

On the second issue, speaking in tongues is not the evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Though it’s a gift- and a great one- the text people generally point to prove that it is refers to speaking foreign human languages not conversing in a  “prayer language” (though we do see the prayer language in other passages). In...

You can feel better right here, right now. Yes, you've got far more control over how things go than you might suspect. 

Many of us have- at some point or another- fallen victim to the "victim mentality." We say things like- 

* "I got the bad side of the gene pool."

* "My genetics are wrong."

* "I have a predisposition for ______________________."

I get it. Sometimes, those things are true. Sometimes. 

And, yes, they're true just enough times that we believe them to be true all of the time. However, doctors are now telling us that most illness and disease is merely 5% genetic and a whopping 95% environmental. 

By "genetic" they mean exactly what we attribute most everything to- our DNA. Our heredity. What we got from our parents. 

By environmental, they mean... well... things like...

* What we eat

* What we do when we're active (lifestyle choices)

* How often we choose not to be active- i.e., we don't need to be sedentary but we do need rest (a major...

This may sound strange- even in Heaven we'll choose health + healing. 

Think about it. Health + healing was available in the Garden of Eden AND we see the "leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" in Heaven (see Genesis 1:29, Ezekiel 47:12, Revelation 22:2).

When Jesus walked the earth, He healed people in two ways. First, He performed miracles (iaomai). Second, He taught people how to be well (therapeuo) (see Matthew 8:15f., Acts 28:8-9). 

In other words, health is how things began AND it's how things "end” AND it’s how Jesus + the apostles outlined things to work. It IS your destiny, in other words, a destiny you can choose now.

More info?

You may also like the free healing eBook + 7 videos. Go to www.WeOverflow.com/Healing to access. 

Also, in this episode I talked about my weight loss journey + natural health and healing that happened on a personal level. You can read more about that here:

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I'm not much on over-promising. Just the opposite. I like it when others under-promise and then over-deliver, so I try to do the same thing.

That said, there's one "tool" I've learned (I didn't make it up, in other words- someone taught it to me) that works for healing 99.99999999% of the time. 

Dare I say it works 100% of the time? Yes, it's that good...

First, why- and then what

Let me tell you why it works, first...

Basically (and this is the way simplified version of it, OK?), your limbic brain manages your memories and handles your emotions. The two are often connected.

Sometimes, there's a positive aspect to it. You remember something exciting- and there's emotion attached to it. Feeling. Heart.

Many times, though, there's a negative association. You remember a painful person, place, or thing... and there are emotions attached to it, too. Your heart might start beating faster, your speech may become more intense and...