The Water from Rock Podcast

ANY ROOM FOR JESUS | Luke 2:7

I was five, maybe six years old at the time, and I was in our little church's Christmas pageant. I had wanted to be a wise man, but I got the role of the in-keeper instead, you know the in-keeper guy, and a little girl and boy playing Mary and Joseph and when they came knocking at my door, I spoke to them, those five infamous words, no room in the inn. And I was very young at a time, but I felt the sadness of those words, no room in the end, words that were based on the Christmas story that Luke tells us in his gospel, chapter two. "And Mary brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him and swapping clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn."

I wonder. How do those words sound to you today? How do they affect you? No room in the inn. Strangely, those words from the gospel have they've haunted me through the years, no room in the inn because I sometimes have difficulty making room for Jesus in my life, I mean filled up as it is, well, with a lot of good stuff. My plans, my agenda, my ambition, such that it is sometimes difficult to find room for Jesus. But I have discovered that when we do not have room for Jesus in our lives, it's not Jesus who's a loser. It's us. We're the ones losing out. But thankfully, Jesus is patient, and Jesus waits for us.

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Download a transcript for the December 18, 2021, Selah episode

**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.

WHY JESUS CAME | Matthew 11:27

Last Christmas, I was able to get together with some cousins to celebrate, and when a cousin who lives in a different state, when she told me that she was sorry that she had not gotten to know my father... You know, I was sad. I was sad because I really love my father, my father was a wonderful man. I was proud to be his son, I was always proud to tell people about my father, and so that night as I'm driving home, I had this new understanding of Christmas.

I saw that Christmas is about Jesus longing for you and me to know his father. And so Jesus comes at that Christmas because Jesus wants us to know his father. Jesus loves his father. And you notice how Jesus was always telling people about his father as he wants us to know his father. And I think that is really the essence of Christmas, that Jesus wants us to know his father, and he wants to take us to be with his father.

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Download a transcript for the December 16, 2021, Selah episode

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WHAT DO YOU HEAR GOD SAYING TO YOU? | Luke 1:38

Question. What do you sense God might be saying to you?

The reason I asked that is that God is, after all, a God who speaks, a God who reveals Himself to us. Scripture calls Jesus the word of God because it is God's very nature to speak... To reveal Himself to us. And so I ask, What do you sense God might be saying to you?

Perhaps saying to you through scripture you've been reading, saying to you the world events, same to you through a sermon that you've heard, the wise words of a friend. What do you sense God's saying to you? Because after all, God is speaking to you and me, and that's why Jesus repeatedly says, Whoever has ears to hear... Listen.

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Download a transcript for the December 14, 2021, Selah episode

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Waiting for Jesus’ Coming | Ephesians 1: 13-14

I just love Advent and Christmas. I mean, I feel like a little boy this time to hear, it's such a wonderful season as we look back and as we look ahead, we look back to Christ's first advent as a tiny, vulnerable, helpless newborn lying in a feeding trough for cattle. And we also are looking ahead, eagerly looking ahead to Christ, second Advent, when he will put right this weary broken world. Many times in our Christmas carols, we squeeze Jesus' two Advents into one song, you might have in just one Verse. We're singing of Jesus as a little baby in a manger. In Jesus as King of Kings, Lord of the Lords. Who was ruler overall. So that you and I today, we are living in that time between... That time between Christ to advents. So that we are right now, we are in a time of disease, of war, of injustice, of suffering, and for this time, God has given to us a very special gift as we eagerly wait for the day when Christ makes everything right.

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Download a transcript for the December 11, 2021, Selah episode

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CHRISTMAS GOOD NEWS | Titus 3:4-7

You know I think I began to see through Santa Claus when I was a boy, and one day just before Christmas, I was with my mom in a department store, and there I see Santa Claus, and then I go with my mom to another store... Well, where I see Santa Claus again in that store. But you know, Santa Claus did not look anything like what he looked like in the other store... I mean, in the other store, Santa look kind of obese, and in this store, it looks like you could use a few pounds, so I'm wondering... And that's the day that I just knew that something was not adding up for me in Santa Claus. That was a day I began to wonder about this transcendent being who lives way up at the North Pole, and he's supposed to be able to see you when you're sleeping. And he knows when we've been good or bad, and what's more, he's keeping this list on every one of us, and he's checking it twice, and if you and I have not been good, we're getting coal and our stocking this Christmas... Well, it just wasn't making sense for me anymore.

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Download a transcript for the December 9, 2021, Selah episode

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GOD‘S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE TO YOU |1 John Chapter 4: 9-10

It was during the Great Depression that John Niles was searching the back countries and hills of Appalachia. He was looking for original folk music, and one day he comes to this little white spot on the road, known as Murphy, North Carolina, and happens on a band of a rather ragged itinerant evangelist, and just before a preacher Morgan is to get up on the backside of his car and preach, his little daughter, Annie starts to sing these words, "I wonder as I wander out under the sky, how Jesus the Savior did come forward to die for poor, awnry people like you, and like I." And from that little Annie Morgan through John Niles, one of the great songs of Christmas has passed down from Appalachia to us.

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Download a transcript for the December 7, 2021, Selah episode

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THE LIGHT OF GOD’S PRESENCE | Psalm 23:3–4

Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? Or maybe a favorite Christmas Story. I can't help but think of how many of the Christmas movies we love and the Christmas stories that they're about dark times and... About light breaking through the darkness. For instance, there's the beloved movie, It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart playing poor old George Bailey who... Well, he's at the end of his rope, thinking about ending his life. There's Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol about the underpaid under-appreciated clerk, Bob Cratchet, and his dying son, Tiny Tim. And there the citizens of Whoville waking about Christmas morning to discover that the Grinch has stolen all of their presents. Even a secular culture likes the story of a poor peasant baby born in a manger with a star and angels looking down. We love stories of redemption, stories of the light breaking through, and this past year has had plenty of darkness, hasn't it. The darkness of pandemic, the darkness of all the uncertainty about variants Delta and Omicron, and there's been a darkness of isolation, of violence, of unrest, of higher prices. Today, I wanna light a candle sort, a candle for us with a passage of scripture that... Well, it's not just about darkness, it's about the darkest of times, and about God's presence with us.

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Download a transcript for the December 4, 2021, Selah episode

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I WONDER AS I WANDER | Philippians 2:6–8

Now, when it comes to measuring love, and I love that never ends. I wanna talk with you today about God's love for you and His love for you that goes on and on and on forever. God's love is something that I'm thinking a lot about these days of Advent, these days leading up to Christmas, that God so loved the world that He gave His Son, that the Son of God became the son of man to make us sons and daughters of God. Today, I'm looking at the little New Testament Book of Philippians, chapter 2, verses 6 through 8...

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Download a transcript for the December 2, 2021 Selah episode

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YOUR WORTH TO GOD | John 3:16–17

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in the Christmas spirit. I mean, after such a strange and difficult year, I am more than ready to celebrate Christmas, and so the other night, I sat down to listen to Christmas carols, I stopped everything else I was doing just to take in the joy and beauty of Christmas music. And you know, there was one song that just reached out and grabbed me, one song that really moved me, and it was a phrase in the song O Holy Night, it is a phrase that says, long lay the world in sin and ere repining till he appeared. And the soul felt its worth. And that night as I thought about Christmas, as I thought about all the Christmas means, I was gripped by that phrase, till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. There was in this song and understanding of Christmas, an understanding of Christ coming that I don't think I find in any other carols. Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. And I wonder, are you feeling your worth to God this Christmas. With God so loving the world that he gave his son for you and me, we feel, we know, we acknowledge, we accept, we validate our worth to God.

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Download a transcript for the November 30, 2021, Selah episode

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CHRISTMAS IS COMING | John 1

Some people say that the most important question in life is, Does God exist, but there is an even more important question that I wanna take up today, and that is the question, do you know the god that exists as it is the clear, the undeniable unmistakable message of the Bible, that through Jesus Christ, you and I can know, we can enter into a personal, intimate relationship with God. I'm gonna read to the opening words of the Gospel of John...

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Download a transcript for the November 27, 2021, Selah episode

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