Spend a Year with Jesus
Jesus Asks Us to Follow Him
Welcome to our podcast series, “Spend A Year With Jesus.” Each Sunday we will broadcast a short message to help you with your relationship with Jesus.
We suggest you create a journal and write down your thoughts about Jesus and how Jesus influences your life. Each week, we will read a verse, a short reflection and ask you three questions.
After listening to the broadcast, we invite you to spend the following week studying your thoughts and how it affected you. Journaling is important, as it will help you see how Jesus is affecting you.
After one year, in fact, every week, we pray that you grow closer to Jesus!
Welcome to our podcast series, “Spend A Year With Jesus.” Each Sunday we will broadcast a short message to help you with your relationship with Jesus.
We suggest you create a journal and write down your thoughts about Jesus and how Jesus influences your life. Each week, we will read a verse, a short reflection and ask you three questions.
After listening to the broadcast, we invite you to spend the following week studying your thoughts and how it affected you. Journaling is important, as it will help you see how Jesus is working within you.
After one year, in fact, every week, we pray that you grow closer to Jesus!
How many times in our lives do we stand at a place where all things seem lost? These times of distress are inevitable and will visit all, both the weak and the mighty.
Jesus asks us to be calm and have faith. Jesus asks us to stand calmly when the swirling seas of life pound the rocks of our lives. Jesus asks us to stand firmly faithful and turn our eyes toward God. Our life answers are found when we stand calmly and face our foes with an unwavering trust in Jesus. Our trust in Jesus replaces the turbulence of life with a calmed spirit.
Jesus feeds us both spiritually and through the provisions of our lives. When we look to the world for spiritual renewal and our bounty, we are always left looking for more.
Welcome to our podcast series, “Spend A Year With Jesus.” Each Sunday we will broadcast a short message to help you with your relationship with Jesus.
We suggest you create a journal and write down your thoughts about Jesus and how Jesus influences your life. Each week, we will read a verse, a short reflection and ask you three questions.
After listening to the broadcast, we invite you to spend the following week studying your thoughts and how it affected you. Journaling is important, as it will help you see how Jesus is working within you.
After one year, in fact, every week, we pray that you grow closer to Jesus!
Words of Life
One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Matthew 4:4
These words of advice were spoken by Jesus after his first test by the evil one, while in the wilderness for forty days. Our Lenten period is symbolic of this test faced by Jesus. Jesus tells us and the dark forces of the world to not rely on those things of the world, but on God. When we are famished and thirsty, God will provide. When we are spiritually drained, God will again provide. When we are tempted, our eyes and hearts should be pointed to the ways of God to receive all that we need. Jesus wants us to live simply, listen constantly, and know the words of God. It is a simple message that is tempted daily, if not hourly, but, as they did for Jesus, the words of God will sustain us.
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Matthew 4:7
After Jesus’s second test in the wilderness, He declared to the evil one: “I will trust only God and not be unsure in my faith.” Likewise, for us, we are tempted repeatedly to question the presence of God in our lives. Is God real and is God with us? These questions are not the result of God’s absence in our lives, but of the temptation to question God’s presence. When our faith wanes, we search and question if God exists. By questioning if God will help and if God cares, we become tempted to test God. Instead, Jesus wants us to be fully aware that God is a loving and caring God whom we have no need to doubt or test. Having this faith strengthens us to meet those tests that show up in our lives, including our Lenten goals.
Choosing Your Path in Life
Choosing Our Path in Life
Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”
Matthew [4:10]
After Jesus’s third and final test in the desert, he sends the evil one away, declaring with a faithful certainty that he is choosing the path of life that walks with God. He unequivocally renounces a life dependent on materialism, want, and self-interest. His only desire is to serve humankind and live in the ways of God. It is a rejection of a way of life that would only serve the world and leave Jesus constantly wanting more. A rejection of the kind of life that is never quenched and filled with goals that can never be achieved. In Jesus’s final day in the wilderness, he declares these words as a repudiation of temptation for us to model.