Gospel Spice | Awaken Delight in God through faith in Jesus Christ Enduring hardship with the perspective of heaven | God's glory, our delight
Stephanie invites us today to continue the conversation about depth of faith through trials and tribulation and hardship and suffering this side of heaven. She then moves to a glorious reality: Scripture is quite clear: there is a glorious inheritance that awaits us.
Warning! This episode is particularly chockfull of Bible verses! It might maybe even contain mentions of some of Stephanie's favorite books- namely, The Lord of the Rings, The Pilgrim's Progress and The Chronicles of Narnia! She explains that Christian fantasy books can be a powerful drawing to point us to the reality of the perspective of heaven!
So first, we discuss hardships. Hardships force us to decide if we’re going to trust God or self. Trusting self can take many different shapes in afflictions:
- Plowing through and trying harder
- Swallowing your emotions and pushing through
- Crumbling in despair and despondency
- Blaming everyone
- Self-loathing
- Choosing to distrust God.
Or trusting God. It’s both harder and easier. It has to do with surrender and rest, and it does lead to greater delight in God through the hardship. If you trust God through your affliction, you will find yourself delighting in Him more on the other side of your affliction—and maybe even while you are still in it.
If you have truly decided to make the glory of God your priority at any cost, then like Paul you can begin to see afflictions and thorns as blessings. Instead of recoiling, you can start embracing and maybe even welcoming afflictions. Don’t go looking for them—Scripture says they will come soon enough. But when God, in His perfect timing, allows afflictions your way, what if we had enough faith to say, “God thank you for this opportunity to learn to trust you, love you, delight in you.” That is exotic faith. It’s not your plain vanilla, slap-on faith that makes you feel good. This is exotic faith from deep inside the trenches.
Resting in Him means knowing at a deeper, new, more profound level that He is trustworthy AND omnipotent. And then we start pondering our inheritance in Christ. A smattering of deep truth:
Romans 8:17 - Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Ephesians 3:6 - through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Gal 3:29 - If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Listen to the whole episode for the whole truth!
Let's be practical...
- Reminder – there are listening guides for each episode. They allow you to follow with pen and paper, or with your phone to take notes from the app. These listening guides are part of the workbook you can download for free as a member.
- Today and each GGOD episode has a listening guide as well as questions for either group discussions or your own personal time, inviting you to ponder what you heard in the days to come.
- Today we are introducing a new feature which is a listener suggestion: about halfway through the episode, there will be a 30-second musical interlude to allow you to pause and reflect on the lesson. You are also invited to use the second music break at the end of the episode, it is newly expanded, if you feel the need to chew on the lesson some more.
- Also use our membership page to muse, ask questions, ponder, reflect, connect with us!
- Please do remember that you can go back and listen again. We aim to give you the best quality content we can teach so it is intense and deep – that is because we highly respect you and your time, and we want to honor you as you seek to deepen your faith. There are all sorts of people listening alongside you, from overseas missionaries to seminary students to brand new believers, people listening as they drive or jog or run errands or do the dishes. So you are welcome, at whatever stage of your spiritual journey you find yourself in. If it means listening twice or taking notes using the listening guide, that’s awesome! Take it slow. These epsidoes are more akin to a slow cooked French meal than a McDonalds drive-thru!
- Finally, there will be a Gospel Spice online Bible Study starting in a few weeks – go to gospelspice.com for more. It is free, live, weekly for 6 weeks, and on a private Facebook group. Small scale. In depth. More details to come. Sign-up now.
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We invite you to check out the first episode of each of our series, and decide which one you will want to start with.
Go to gospelspice.com for more, and go especially to gospelspice.com/podcast to enjoy our guests! Interested in our blog? Click here: gospelspice.com/blog
Identity in the battle | Ephesians
https://www.podcastics.com/episode/372022/link/
Malachi: Messenger to Messiah
https://www.podcastics.com/episode/356130/link/
Wisdom from the Book of Proverbs
https://www.podcastics.com/episode/324347/link/
Come to the Table | The Feasts Jesus celebrated
https://www.podcastics.com/episode/309956/link/
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MORE ABOUT PARTNERING WITH US FINANCIALLY:
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Our goal is to provide in-depth, high-quality, free Bible resources for all. They are free, but expensive to create! We need your financial support to keep producing and distributing them. Please pay Gospel Spice forward today! For example, a podcast episode takes close to 10 hours of work (and we release 2 each week). They come to you completely free, but we would truly love your support.
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Go to gospelspice.com for more, and go especially to gospelspice.com/podcast to enjoy our guests! Interested in our blog? Click here: gospelspice.com/blog
GOD'S GLORY, OUR DELIGHT | THE GOSPEL SPICE SERIES
Delighting in the glory of God. Does this concept strike you as reserved for spiritual contemplatives? What if, instead, it proved the highly practical, deeply foundational perspective you need right now?
Why does God’s glory even matter in our day and age? How can we learn from Jesus to make His glory our true North and lifelong quest? What keeps us from fully stepping into this God-ordained purpose for our life? How do we kindle delight for God on a daily basis? And, once we have embraced God’s glory as our heart’s true delight, how can we then come alongside others?
Join us to cultivate a sincere delight for God’s glory, rooted in an honest, hard look at the depth of our need, and in the much deeper Reality of His grace. Trace the glory of God through Scripture and in your own life. Behold the exact radiance of God’s glory, revealed in Jesus. Learn to see yourself as Christ does—through the lens of the Father’s love at the cross. Jesus offers to overwhelm our deadly self-centeredness with His resurrection power. He carries us every step of the way, even as He calls us to true humility on the path to glory.
Who has time to cultivate the delight that comes from pondering the glory of God? And yet, nothing could be more urgent today. Marthas and Marys, Peters and Johns—we are all invited to dare to dream of a lifestyle of God-centered delight. Nothing could be more practical.
Go to gospelspice.com for more, and go especially to gospelspice.com/podcast to enjoy our guests! Interested in our blog? Click here: gospelspice.com/blog
This month we are celebrating the anniversary of Gospel Spice! We launched our first episode in 2019, when we faithfully and haltingly followed God's pretty clear directions!
Would you please take a moment to celebrate with us? There are 4 very simple ways to do that, and it would truly mean the world to us.
1- If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you will love receiving our newsletter. It contains value-packed free gifts and rich content each month. It’s at gospelspice.com/signup. There is always something new and exciting happening around here, and I don’t want you to miss out! Sign up at Gospelspice.com/signup
2- Did you know Gospel Spice has a YouTube Channel? There’s exclusive content there too. So, join Gospel Spice on YouTube! It's at https://www.youtube.com/gospelspice
3- Also please give us a star rating and a comment on your podcast listening app. Your reviews actually really do make a difference to help others discover and experience Gospel Spice. You would be surprised how helpful these are! So please leave a star rating and a review of a sentence or two. Thank you!
4- As always, we are praying for you! You can confidentially email us your prayer requests and praise items at the email address contact@gospelspice.com. It is our privilege to pray for you!
So, would you please invest 3 to 5 minutes of your time, maybe even right now, to do 1 or more of the following suggestions:
1- signup on our website for our newsletter to receive gifts you’re going to love - at Gospelspice.com/signup
2- find us on YouTube, and see what content we’ve put together to help you grow closer to Jesus - at https://www.youtube.com/gospelspice
3- rate Gospel Spice on your listening app – it’s one of the easiest ways to share the gospel!
4- and finally, tell us how we can pray for you!
Do you enjoy Gospel Spice? Then let's deepen our relationship! There are 4 very simple ways to do that, and it would truly mean the world to us.
1- If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you will love receiving our newsletter. It contains value-packed free gifts and rich content each month. It’s at gospelspice.com/signup. There is always something new and exciting happening around here, and I don’t want you to miss out! Sign up at Gospelspice.com/signup
2- Did you know Gospel Spice has a YouTube Channel? There’s exclusive content there too. So, join Gospel Spice on YouTube! It's at https://www.youtube.com/gospelspice
3- Also please give us a star rating and a comment on your podcast listening app. Your reviews actually really do make a difference to help others discover and experience Gospel Spice. You would be surprised how helpful these are! So please leave a star rating and a review of a sentence or two. Thank you!
4- As always, we are praying for you! You can confidentially email us your prayer requests and praise items at the email address contact@gospelspice.com. It is our privilege to pray for you!
So, would you please invest 3 to 5 minutes of your time, maybe even right now, to do one (or more!) of the following suggestions:
1- signup on our website for our newsletter to receive gifts you’re going to love - at Gospelspice.com/signup
2- find us on YouTube, and see what content we’ve put together to help you grow closer to Jesus - at https://www.youtube.com/gospelspice
3- rate Gospel Spice on your listening app – it’s one of the easiest ways to share the gospel!
4- and finally, tell us how we can pray for you!
Go to gospelspice.com for more, and go especially to gospelspice.com/podcast to enjoy our guests! Interested in our blog? Click here: gospelspice.com/blog
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