Weekly teaching and devotionals from Water from Rock Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona
Episodes
Tuesday Jun 15, 2021
Tuesday Jun 15, 2021
Good ole Yogi Beira said, that If you don't know where you're going. You might not get there. Well, I wonder today, or you're going... Where you're going in life. Do you know what kind of person you want to be? That is a good question to think about. And counselors say that would be good to every day to visualize... Think about the kind of person you want to be. Well, as always, I like for scripture to be our guide, especially in thinking about such a big question as who we want to be, and so I'm looking today at Galatians Chapter 4:19, where Paul... I think he speaks to this question.
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Download a transcript for the June 15, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Saturday Jun 12, 2021
Saturday Jun 12, 2021
love how in Acts chapter 13 it says of David after David had served the purpose of God in His own generation, he died. Wouldn't we all like that to be said of us someday? That after serving the purpose of God in our generation, we died. I'm always wanting to know more about David, wanting to know what makes David tick, what makes them one of the great persons in all history, and I think that the secret to David's life, that it's really found in the God in whom David believed. The god whom David lived his life for. So, the secret is not really in David, but it's in David's God, and so this week, we're looking at Psalm 139 to learn more about the God and whom David believed, the God in whom David trusted his life, the God whom David praises in the psalm.
We've looked at Verses 1 through 6, where David praises God who knows everything about him and cares about every detail of his life. And there we were looking at God's omniscience, that God knows everything about us. Because God cares about us. Then we looked at Verses 7 through 12, where David is praising God for his omnipresence, that God is everywhere with us. Wherever we go, God is with us to care for us, to support us, to guide us. And in today's scripture, David is putting together God's omniscience and God's omnipresence, to praise God for knowing everything about us and being everywhere with us, even when we were in our mother's womb.
Read the rest of this entry »Thursday Jun 10, 2021
Thursday Jun 10, 2021
Often in these Selah reflections, you'll hear me talking about David in the Bible, talking about David's boldness, his fearlessness, his courage, but I don't do that as a call for us to be like David, but rather as a call for us to believe in David's God. That is to put our trust in God whom David put his trust in. For you see, David did not look within himself or courage, nor do we. Rather we want to look to David's God, to look to the God that David believed in. And as we do that, we can be as courageous as David if we keep our eyes on David's God. So today we're looking again at a Psalm of David in order to see the God and whom David believes, the God on whom David literally stakes his life.
Read the rest of this entry »Tuesday Jun 08, 2021
Tuesday Jun 08, 2021
As a pastor and a Chaplain, I've often been asked through the years to read two psalms to people. Two psalms that just really seem to speak to and encourage people, whether they're struggling with cancer or they're wanting to get ahead. You probably won't be surprised by the first psalm that I'm so often asked to read, it's Psalm 23, that great shepherd psalm about the Lord as our Shepherd. The next Psalm, I am often asked to read Psalm 139, it is a wonderful Psalm, a psalm that my wife and I read together almost every night before we go to sleep. I don't have time today to look at the entire psalm, but I do want to introduce it and talk more about it in the next Selah...
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Download a transcript for the June 8, 2021Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Saturday Jun 05, 2021
Saturday Jun 05, 2021
Imagine sitting with a close friend for an hour or so and looking back at your life, talking about some of the highest, the lows, some good days, some perhaps not so good, but looking back on your life, I just bet that you would have some lessons learned, some real distilled wisdom.
I count it one of my greatest privileges and pleasures in ministry to have served some time as a hospice chaplain, where I spent literally hours with people young and old looking back at life, telling their stories, lessons learned. Lessons learned is what we have in today's scripture from Psalm 37, a Psalm of David, in which David is passing down with the help of the Holy Spirit, he's passing down some hard-earned life wisdom...
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Download a transcript for the June 5, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Thursday Jun 03, 2021
Thursday Jun 03, 2021
Theologian Ray Anderson suggests that on the day after the father throws that big homecoming party for his prodigal son, that on the day after the prodigal son returns to the far country, but that he returns in order to tell everyone how He had lied about his father, to tell everyone in truth, how extravagantly loving his father is. To tell everyone how his father forgives, rejoices, and celebrates a prodigal come home.
I'm thinking about that today as I ponder some amazing words from the Old Testament prophet Zephaniah, now, I'm not sure that we usually think of celebration and joy when we think of the Old Testament prophets, but just listen to this passage from Zephaniah chapter 3, verses 14 to 18...
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Download a transcript for the June 3, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Tuesday Jun 01, 2021
Tuesday Jun 01, 2021
The other night, we were at some friend's house where the woman is a very wonderful, accomplished painter, and we were looking at a painting that she had just started, it was just the bare outlines of a painting, I couldn't see what the painting was going to be, but knowing the artist and knowing her work well, I knew that the painting would be beautiful when she was finished. Now, my thoughts about that artist and her unfinished painting takes me to a wonderful scripture verse that I want to share with you. It's one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It's Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, where Solomon portrays God as an artist...
Read the rest of this entry »Saturday May 29, 2021
Saturday May 29, 2021
Isn't it fascinating how a God made the human eye so that when we enter darkness the eye dilates the eye gets bigger to let in more light? Now, as I look at scripture, I see something similar happening that when God's people enter a dark time, the eyes of the heart, dilate, they get bigger to let in more like much of the Bible was written by someone going through a dark time, to someone going through a dark time, such as the passage that I feel compelled to turn to the day.
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Download a transcript for the May 29, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Thursday May 27, 2021
Thursday May 27, 2021
Do you ever wonder if your life is just going around in circles? Then maybe, now you hate to think it, but maybe you're just going nowhere? I mean, this thing happens to you and then there's that thing that happens to you. Things come at you from out of the blue and you wonder, you wonder if there is any sense to it, any rhyme or reason. For a few moments, I want to see how David looks at life. How we looked at where he's been, where he's going, where he sees it all leading him.
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Download a transcript for the May 27, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.
Tuesday May 25, 2021
Tuesday May 25, 2021
This morning as I was making coffee, I thought of the instant coffee theory of life that's put forward by Rabbi Harold Kushner. And with the instant coffee theory of life, you open a new jar of instant coffee and you dole out generous heaping spoon fulls because, well, you have a whole jar of it, but then by the time you start getting towards the bottom of the jar, you realize that that you don't have that much coffee left, and so you carefully go after every grain of coffee in the jar. And Rabbi Kushner says that that's a lot like we tend to treat the days of our lives that when we're young, we're usually not so mindful of our days, how much time we have left, but as we get older, we treat our days, at least we ought to treat our days a little more carefully. Making coffee this morning and the instant coffee theory of life takes me to a little prayer that I like to pray.
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Download a transcript for the May 25, 2021, Selah episode
**This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.