To download PDF of the notes for the Podcast, click the following link: Malachi-NOTES
Zechariah and Captain America—why does God chose to speak in images?

What will make us truly happy and satisfied? —answered by the Prophet Haggai
What makes you truly happy and satisfied?
Is its financial security? A loving family or relationship? A beautiful home?
Though all of these things, financial security, loving family, beautiful home are what most of us want, we’ll see in our podcast today that these are not what creates true happiness and inner satisfaction and peace—but we won’t stop with being negative, but will talk about how we can achieve not only what we want, but what we are created for.
Our source of for this lesson is the Prophet Haggai and that’s what our podcast is about.
CLICK the following link to download a PDF of the notes: NOTES FOR HAGGAI–how to be truly Happy
The full copy follows.
Book Recommendation: How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
Even more tragic than not reading the Bible at all is to read it incorrectly and to think it says something it doesn’t say. Another tragic mistake is to think the Bible promises something that it doesn’t and then to get angry with God because He didn’t do what you thought He should do because you didn’t understand what the Bible passage was truly about.
To keep readers from making these mistakes and many others as they read their Bible and to help you understand and apply the Bible properly, I highly recommend How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Douglas Stuart and Gordon Fee. First published in 1981, it was revised and updated in 2014. I consider it an invaluable guide to understanding the Bible and use it as a key reference in my preparation of the Bible805 podcasts.
Genre makes all the difference
The approach taken in the book is genre-based and here is how the authors describe what this means:
. . .the basic concern of this book is with the understanding of the different types of literature (the genres) that make up the Bible. Although we do speak to other issues, this generic approach has controlled all that has been done. We affirm that there is a real difference between a psalm, on the one hand, and an epistle on the other. Our concern is to help the reader to read and study the Psalms as poems, and the Epistles as letters. We hope to show that these differences are vital and should affect both the way one reads them and how one is to understand their message for today.
Here is the Table of Contents that shows how they divide and discuss the various genres:Continue Reading
God keeps his promises…and how to get better at keeping ours–what we learn from Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther
When someone makes a promise to you, do they always keep it?
What about God? Does He always keep his promises?
In our podcast today we’ll see how God kept his promise to return people to their homeland after they’d been taken captive for 70 years.
But as for the people of God, we’ll see how well they kept their promises to God and then we’ll end with some applications on how we might all get better at making the changes in our lives we want to make, but have trouble following through on.
Below the podcast is a PDF of the notes and below that the notes printed out. They are longer than usual and have more content than the podcast. I wanted you to have all the verses and some of the content that I summarized.
To download the PFD of the notes, click the following link: NOTES God keeps his promises…and how to get better at keeping oursContinue Reading
Whiner, Worker, Witness, or Wonder? Lessons learned from Ezekiel & Daniel
The question is, How do we respond? Two characters in the Old Testament, Ezekiel and Daniel, whose stories started when they were teenagers give us some encouraging examples.
In the midst of unimaginable challenges, we’ll see how…..
They didn’t whine; they faithfully worked; their lives became a witness; the wonder of God was then revealed to and through them.
Click on the link following to download a PDF of the lesson and below the notes are written out: NOTES for Ezekiel and Daniel