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Three Ways You Can Know That You Are Believing God

Encore Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Twelve

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Three Ways You Can Know That You Are Believing God

How can you know that you are believing God? What does it mean to have faith or to believe? How do you know if you really are believing God for healing or any other Bible promise? Jesus ministered healing to twenty-three individual cases. In the vast majority of these individual cases, you can see evidence of the person’s faith in connection with their healing.  You may have had those times where you thought you believed God, and nothing happened. You were believing God for some healing in your body, and you got no better fast. How do you know if you’ve connected? Everything is by faith. You know and expect by faith. If you want to connect with God, you have to speak in His domain. You have to speak His language. Otherwise, you won’t be heard. Heaven is a faith place. The domain of unbelief is not understood there. You will not connect with heaven’s power if you’re speaking in the wrong realm. So, how do you know if you really are trusting God? One way you can find out? Take the test. There are seven tests which you can apply, which we are going to go over. These are not all the tests there are. These are seven that I know about. In this podcast, we will talk about three of them. How do you know that you are trusting God? That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Why It’s Important to Flow in Faith’s Domain

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More of The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels in Heavenly Host University

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Eleven

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More of The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels in Heavenly Host University

In this week’s podcast, we will talk about Heavenly Host University and what angels know. If you remember, we recently completed an episode on what angels are learning as they observe the Church. Angels are a fascination to all, especially when you hear stories like the following. Elizabeth Elliot told about her father’s experiences with angelic helpers: “My father, when he was a small boy, was climbing on an upper story of a house that was being built. He walked to the end of a board that was not nailed at the other end, and it slowly began to tip. He knew that he was doomed, but inexplicably the board began to tip the other way as though a hand had pushed it down again. He always wondered if it was an angel’s hand. Then there was a story about a train carrying Queen Victoria. It was a British express train. And as it raced through the night, its powerful headlamp speared the black darkness ahead. Suddenly the engineer saw a startling sight. Revealed in the engine’s headlights beam was a mysterious figure in a black cloak standing in the middle of the tracks and waving its arms. The engineer grabbed the brakes and brought the train to a grinding halt. He and his fellow train crew members climbed out to see what had stopped them. But they could find no trace of the strange figure. On a hunch, he walked a few yards further up the tracks. Suddenly he stopped and stared into the fog in horror. The bridge had been washed out in the middle and had toppled into a swollen stream. The train would have plunged into the stream if he had not heeded the ghostly figure. While the bridge and the tracks were being repaired, the crew searched more for the strange flagman. But not until they got to London did they solve the mystery. At the engine’s headlamp base, the engineer discovered a huge dead moth. He looked at it a moment, then on impulse wet its wings and pasted it to the glass of the lamp. Climbing back into his cab, he switched on the lamp and saw the “flagman” in the beam. He knew the answer now: the moth had flown into the beam, seconds before the train was due to reach the washed-out bridge. It appeared to be a phantom figure waving its arms in the fog. When Queen Victoria was told of the strange happening, she said, “I’m sure it was no accident. It was God’s way of protecting us.” 1 Once again, angels are our focus. The Real Scoop on What Angels Know about You that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Three Things God’s Peace Provides

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The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels and Heavenly Host University

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Ten

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The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels and Heavenly Host University

We are talking about angels today, specifically teaching angels. Here’s a story on angels from the turn of the 20th century. Charles Herbert Lightoller was tall, sun-bronzed, and handsome, possessing a deep, pleasant speaking voice. His mother died during his infancy, his father abandoned him, and he ran off to sea at thirteen. By 1912, he was a respected seaman for the White Star Line and was assigned to the maiden voyage of the grandest ocean liner ever built, the Titanic. He was just drifting off to sleep on April 14th when he felt a bump in the ship’s forward motion. Hopping from his bunk, he soon learned that the Titanic had struck an iceberg.

As the horrors of that night unfolded, Lightoller finally found himself standing on the roof of the officer’s quarters, the water lapping at his feet, as he helped any around him into lifeboats. Finally, there was nothing left for Lightoller to do but jump from the roof into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. The shock of the 28-degree water against his sweating body stunned him. As he struggled to regain his bearing and swim away from the ship, he was suddenly sucked back and pinned against a ventilation grate at the base of a funnel that went all the way down to Boiler Room 6. He was stuck, drowning, and going down with the ship. Suddenly Psalm 91:11 came clearly to his mind: For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. At that very moment, a blast of hot air exploded from the belly of the ship, shooting Lightoller like a missile to the surface of the ocean. At length, he managed to grab a piece of rope attached to the side of an overturned lifeboat and float along with it until he pulled himself on top of the upside-down boat. He turned and watched the last moments of the Titanic. Her stern swung up in the air until the ship was in “a perpendicular position.” Then she slowly sank into the water, with only a tiny gulp as her stern disappeared beneath the waves. There were about thirty men atop the lifeboat, and together they recited the Lord’s Prayer, then Lightoller took command of the boat and guided them to safety. Pieced together from several books and internet articles about the Titanic. His story also appeared in the Congressional Record of the investigation of the sinking of the Titanic.1 Angels – that’s what we are talking about in this podcast — the real deal on angels – The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels in Heavenly Host University, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Choosing to Serve God with Joy

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Why Jesus Breaking Down the Walls Between Men and Races Matters

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Nine

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Why Jesus Breaking Down the Walls Between Men and Races Matters

You know we often hear the term ‘breaking down walls.’ But in reality, Jesus is the ultimate wall breaker. By his death, burial and resurrection, Jesus broke down the wall of hostility that existed between men and races. The wall has already been torn down. Men just need to know and understand that it’s so. When we come to Jesus when men give their hearts to God when they experience the new birth, the love of God comes on the inside of them and transforms and changes them into the image of Jesus. So, union between the races comes because of union with Him. On the idea of union, have you ever thought about coffee? Many people drink coffee with cream. When cream is added to coffee, a union occurs. The blackness of the coffee and the whiteness of the cream are now integrated and made one. The coffee becomes brown because of the union. The coffee is not considered black-and-white coffee; it’s just a cup of coffee! When you drink it, you now must drink the black coffee with the white cream because they have become one. If someone were to try to separate the cream from the coffee, there would be chaos in the cup. Once the union of cream with coffee has occurred, no separation is possible. The Bible says that when we came to Jesus Christ for salvation, we entered into an indissolvable union with Him so that what happened to Jesus happened to us. Jesus died. We died. Jesus arose. We arose with Him. Jesus ascended. We ascended with Him. Jesus brought us all into union – guess what? What God has joined together, you cannot separate.1 Why Jesus Breaking Down the Wall Between Men and Races Matter, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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The Flow of the Miraculous

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Connectedness: How We Are Powerfully Joined to Jesus and to One Another

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Eight

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Connectedness: How We Are Powerfully Joined to Jesus and to One Another

On being joined to Jesus, Paul mentions in his Epistle to the Ephesians that Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone. The Jews had a legend based on a statement of the psalmist. According to that legend, when the Temple of Solomon was being built, the masons sent up from the quarry below a stone different in size and shape from all the rest they had sent up. Looking at it, the builders said: “There is no place for this stone. There must be some mistake.” So, they rolled it down the cliff’s edge into the valley of Kidron below the Temple area. As time went on (for the Temple was seven years in building), they were ready for the chief cornerstone. When they asked for it, they were told, “We sent it up to you long ago.” One of the workmen said: “I recall it now. There was a stone altogether different from the rest, and we thought there was no place for it and rolled it down to the valley below.” Men were sent down to the valley to find the stone. They succeeded in doing so; when the stone was brought up, it fitted perfectly into its place—the headstone of the corner.1 We are powerfully joined to Jesus and one another. Jesus is the cornerstone, but what does that mean? That’s what we are going to focus on this week’s podcast: Connectedness: How We Are Powerfully Joined to Jesus and One Another.

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#S4-049: What the Bible Says about the End of the World [Podcast]

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Why Unity Is Essential in All Things God

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Seven

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Why Unity Is Essential in All Things God

On the subject of unity, Tony Evans makes the following insightful comments about the purpose of the United States of America. He says, ‘One of the great experiments regarding nationality is the American Experiment. The American Experiment is unique because of its intentionality to bring people from all walks of life, from every nation, under the banner of a single flag and to intentionally seek to bring across to these shores people from all kinds of other nations who would make up a union called the United States of America. This experiment brought people together who would pledge allegiance to a single flag even though their backgrounds were different, unique, and dissimilar. We acknowledge our differences by annotating our original heritages to our current nationality with terms like Irish American, Swedish American, Polish American, African American, or Hispanic American. The introductory phrase cites the uniqueness. The last word cites the unity. I am under the American Banner because I am uniquely based on culture, history, background, or previous location. In this experiment, there was an attempt to have a United States even though the people seeking to be unified were totally different. What the American Experiment represents from a cultural, historical, and geographical perspective to this nation, the church of Jesus Christ was meant to be for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—people from different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, all pledging allegiance to the cross.’ 1 This idea of being one people in Christ, whether male or female, Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, is what the Spirit of God via the Apostle Paul tried to get over to the church of Ephesus. And in this week’s Light on Life podcast, that’s precisely what we are focusing on as we discuss ‘Why Unity Is Essential in All Things God.’

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What Is Your Testimony of Jesus?

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Why Your Miracle Testimony of God’s Healing Power Is Vital

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Six

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Why Your Miracle Testimony of God's Healing Power Is Vital

Miracle testimonies of God’s power at work in our lives are something we ought to share. If you have a God story, you should not sit down on it unless the Lord instructed you not to tell it. The scripture says that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. At the 1997 Brickyard 400 auto race, NASCAR driver Lake Speed learned firsthand the amazing effect of prayer. His car had been having mechanical problems. Sitting on the track in preparation for a qualifying run, he waited in frustration because his car wouldn’t start. Meanwhile, he prayed. Finally, his crew chief Jeff Buice took out a wrench and hand-cranked the engine Model-A style. The car started, and Lake Speed roared onto the track to post the second-fastest qualifying time of the day. Victor Lee writes in Sports Spectrum: Later, when Speed returned to the pits to get ready for a final practice session, he found his crew tearing out the engine. Shocked, he asked what was going on. “Lake, that engine was blown before you qualified,” Buice said, noting that it had blown during NASCAR pre-race inspection. Lake looked more closely. Oil was everywhere. Buice continued, “I wasn’t going to tell you anything because time had run out. But I was already trying to figure out how I would spend Saturday. Even if it started, I surely didn’t expect it to make a lap and surely not to run good enough to make the race.” Lake’s assessment: “God did a major mechanical miracle. I always pray right before the race. Sitting on that track, when it didn’t start, I prayed, ‘Lord, I don’t know what’s going on here, but if there’s any way, I’d like this thing to start.’ ” Driver Lake Speed went on to finish twelfth in the race, his second-best finish in 1997. You may say this has a perfectly natural explanation, or you may call it a miracle. Still, without question, according to the automobile experts on the scene, this was a remarkable event that followed prayer. Funny but remarkable events and coincidences often follow prayer. Craig Brian Larson, 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers & Writers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 351–352. I had the same miracle along this line occur, and it resulted in a person giving their heart to Jesus. Why Your Miracle Testimony of God’s Healing Power is Vital, that’s our focus on this week’s Light On Life.

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#S3-018: How God Reacquired Adam’s Stolen Authority [Podcast]

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Do People Need Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real

Encore Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Five

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Do People Nedd Miracles to Believe Jesus Is Real?

Here’s the question that we will look at in today’s Light on Life podcast. Do people need miracles to believe Jesus is real? The fact that people believe that Jesus does miracles is decidedly true. The percentage of adults who mostly agree or completely agree with the statement, “Even today, miracles are performed by the power of God,” sits at 82%, according to a Princeton Religion Research Center’s PRRC Emerging Trends survey.1

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Jesus Heals A Blind Man: Why You Can Have Hope

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What Is Your Part Versus God’s Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Four

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What Is Your Part Versus God's Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven

Today, we are taking a look at miracles from heaven. With that in mind, consider the following miracle story. ‘In the U.S. Navy, the Seabees have a saying: “The difficult, we do immediately. The impossible takes a little time.” Author Jamie Buckingham shares this story from the missionary adventures of JAARS (Jungle Aviation and Radio Service—the flying arm for Wycliffe Bible Translators). We pick up his story about a pilot who was fighting to keep his plane from a fatal crash:

Never for an instant did Ralph believe they could live through the pending crash … He could feel his wife’s warm hand on the back of his clammy knuckles where he gripped the stick. “We do our best; God does the rest.” It was the motto of JAARS Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. During all the time of the emergency, he had not called upon God. Why had he waited? Why had he not cried out at ten thousand feet? Now, with death only seconds away, he gulped the words. “Father, if You still have work for my passengers and me, please bring on the engine.” It was a sensible prayer. He could have prayed for a giant hand to rise out of the jungle and cushion his fall. He could have asked for ten thousand angels to bear him up on down wings. But like Moses at the Red Sea, he was content for God to work in natural ways—not by sending a strong east wind to blowback the sea—but by bringing the engine back to life. He had a thought – the carburetor heat! It was used primarily to prevent ice from forming in the carburetor. But, there were no known instances of icing at this altitude. The carburetor heat! Again he tried to dismiss the thought, to spit it out of his mind. But it pounded against the inside of his temples. It rang in his head. And his hand was obedient. He reached down and jerked the carburetor heat handle and, at the same time, pulled back on the stick. The jungle had arrived. The only thing to do was flatten his glide just at the treetops, lose as much speed as possible, and settle into the foliage. Certainly forever. Suddenly there was a mighty roar upfront. The big prop, which had been slowly windmilling in the streaming air, roared to life as if they had never quit. The thousand horses were up and running again, straining at the traces and trying to pull the sinking old Duck out of the jaws of death with all of their might. Ralph’s Canadian dignity, shaken to the soles of his soggy socks, finally broke. It came forth like the sound of a shipwrecked sailor thrown at last upon a sandy beach.

From the very inner part of his soul, an utterance of thanksgiving came forth. “Praise the Lord!” he said with deep reverence and, then, repeated it. “Praise the Lord!” Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Practical Illustrations: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 2001), 96–97. Miracles happen all of the time. We have a part to play, and God has a part. Can you identify the parts of this eventful story? That’s what we will do in this week’s podcast – identify and assess the parts. What Is Your Part Versus God’s Part in Getting Miracles from Heaven? That’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Powerful Can’t Miss Lessons on the Rod of God

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Why God Has Called You to Cultivate a Character that Counts

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Three

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Why God Has Called You to Cultivate a Character that Counts

Character that counts is a trait that everyone wants — when I say character, I mean the good variety. A Wall Street broker had fallen in love with a young lady and began dating her. He was very wealthy, and he had to be careful whom he related to. He didn’t want to relate to somebody who would damage him or only come after him for his money. So he had one of his associates hire a private detective to find out everything there was to find out about this lady. He didn’t want to make a mistake. He also didn’t want the private eye to know whom he was doing the investigation for, lest the girl finds out later and think that her love didn’t trust her. The broker got his associate to hire a private eye to check up on this lady without telling the detective who was making the assignment and paying the bill. After several weeks, the report came back on the young lady whom the broker was considering. The report said, “I have investigated this young lady, and she has a squeaky clean life. Perfect in every detail, no flaws, no known mistakes. She is on the up and up in every possible way. However, there is one little possible blip on the screen of her life. She is often seen around town in the company of a young broker whose dubious business practices and principles are well known.” You see, the problem may just be you.1 The Bible talks about character, so we will focus on why God Has Called You to Cultivate a Character that Counts — all in this week’s Light on Life.

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How to Make It Through a Bad Day

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Why It’s Vital to See Yourself as God’s High Powered Creative Workmanship

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Two

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Why It's Vital to See Yourself as God's High Powered Creative Workmanship

What does the word ‘workmanship’ conjure up in your thinking? Ephesians 2:10 in the King James states that followers of Jesus are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus. That statement comes on the heels of the tremendous cost of man’s redemption displayed via the grace of God. Have you ever heard of the Sydney Opera House on this theme of extraordinary grace? What was once termed Australia’s most significant “mistakes” was later hailed as its greatest—although costly—masterpiece of workmanship. This is the Sydney Opera House. The original cost estimate announced in 1957 was $7.2 million. The final cost in 1973 reached $110 million. Concerning this unique structure, the state premier of New South Wales said: “The cost has become a secondary consideration to the perfection of the achievement.” 1 The point? The creation of a masterpiece is never a cheap affair. They are costly, precious, and treasured. Why It’s Vital to See Yourself as God’s High-Powered Creative Workmanship, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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The Jesus Guide to Forgiveness

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How to Locate the Essential Will of God for Your Everyday Life

Encore Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode One

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How to Locate the Essential Will of God for Your Everyday Life

Josh McDowell told this great story about finding the essential will of God for your life. An executive hirer, a “headhunter” who goes out and hires corporation executives for other firms, once told me, “When I get an executive that I’m trying to hire for someone else, I like to disarm him. I offer him a drink, take my coat off, then my vest, undo my tie, throw up my feet and talk about baseball, football, family, whatever until he’s all relaxed. Then, when I think I’ve got him relaxed, I lean over, look him square in the eye, and say, “What’s your purpose in life?” It’s amazing how top executives fall apart at that question. “Well, I was interviewing this fellow the other day, had him all disarmed, with my feet up on his desk, talking about football. Then I leaned up and said, ‘What’s your purpose in life, Bob?’ And he said, without blinking an eye, ‘To go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can.’ For the first time in my career, I was speechless.” What about you? Do you know what God’s will is for your life? Do you know how to find it? How to Locate the Essential Will of God for Your Everyday Life, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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