The Teaching Series With Brad Gray

There’s a marked distinction between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy stands at a distance and says, “I’m sorry you’re going through this.” Empathy stands in the other person’s shoes and says, “I want to understand your situation so that I can respond in a way that’s truly loving and helpful to you.” Too many of us choose the former. The Good Samaritan chose the latter. And that’s precisely what Jesus was after when challenging his followers to respond in love to those in need. Love must be manifested in action. And in this episode, we learn how to do just that. 

So often, we allow fear or inconvenience drive our response to someone who is in need. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we meet a priest and Levite who fail to help a man who is in great need. But a Samaritan does what they were unable or unwilling to do. The priest and Levite were more focused on the implications for themselves than they were for the implications of this man. In this episode, we unpack the stunning details of this remarkable story, and why we must shift the focus from ourselves to others in order to be the kind of neighbor Jesus is challenging us to become. 

When someone wants to encourage others to ask questions, they will often say, “There are no stupid questions.” But those who’ve been asked too many stupid questions will invariably reply, “Sure, there are no stupid questions – just stupid people who ask them.” It’s their way of humorously (or not so humorously) stating that there are clearly good questions and there are bad questions. In Luke 10, Jesus is asked by an expert, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a bad question, but not for the reasons you may think. The underlying factors betray his question, and he’s seeking a bare minimum approach to obedience to God. The problem is, many of us do the same thing, but unlike the expert, we may have no clue we’re doing it. If we don’t address it, we’re going to miss the way of Jesus and fail to live the life Jesus is calling us to live right now.  

Did Jesus tell parables to confuse his audience? A literal reading of the Parable of the Soils seems to indicate that. But what most people don’t realize is that Jesus does something with this parable that he doesn’t do with any of his other parables – he bookends it with the words “to hear.” Whoa! Until this phrase is set within the unfolding narrative of the Bible, it’s impossible to understand what Jesus is doing to help and challenge his audience to understand his words, and why he shockingly quotes Isaiah to prove it. He wants his audience to be like a bumper crop. But in order to do so, they must be willing to not only listen to the word of God, but obediently and courageously walk it out. As disciples of Christ, we must do the same, and this parable instructs on how to do so!

The Parable of the Soils (traditionally: Sower) is only one of three parables that shows up in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Of the three parables, it shows up the earliest, and in each one, it kicks off a series of parables. Why do we need to know that? Because it’s a parable about parables. To understand what Jesus is doing in his other parables, it’s imperative to understand what he’s doing in this one, which is why we’re starting here. Jesus portrays his listeners as one of four soils, but only one soil is desired. The question is, “Are we that soil?” And if not, what do we need to do? This episode will help you figure that out. 

Nearly one-third of Jesus’s teachings are in the form of parables. They are stories he tells to wake up his audience, to challenge their assumptions, to push them to think differently, and ultimately to communicate the message of his movement. But if we don’t understand the nature of parables or how Jesus leveraged them, we will miss their intended purpose – and by association, we’ll miss what Jesus was doing. And we don’t want that to happen. Hence, this episode. 

We’re kicking off a brand-new series on Jesus and His Parables. Nearly one-third of Jesus’s teachings are in the form of parables. Jesus knew how to tell a good story. And he leveraged the power of story because he knew it was the most effective strategy for spreading a message. When we understand the power of story, and how Jesus utilized it, we’ll not only better understand his parables, but we’ll also be convinced that we must tell more stories if we want our most significant messages to spread. 

How do you get people to change? It’s a simple, yet profound question. What if I told you that the way we typically think people change isn’t the way they change at all – that we’ve got it all backwards? The good news is that Jesus didn’t. He knew exactly howpeople change, and employed an approach that maximized this. And when you understand what he did and why he did it, the way you approach change in your life and in the lives of others will definitely change. Enjoy! 

Most people have heard the axiom, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” According to the apostle Paul (in Acts 20), it was Jesus who coined this. He knew this truth more than anyone else, because his entire life was devoted to loving and serving people well. Asfollowers of Jesus, we’re called to do the same. But how can we grow in our ability to do so? I recently had a monumental conversation that gave me a new angle on how to serve people well, and I can’t wait to share it with you. As you implement this strategy into your life, I believe you will experience anew the reality that it is more blessed to give than to receive. 

According to Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” Perhaps you’ve heard this before, and maybe, like me, you’ve wondered, “Are we supposed to be scared of God?” Is this what this verse means? Or as some of us have no doubt learned, the“fear” here is really a “reverent fear.” But is that true? In this episode we unpack this passage to understand what “fearing the LORD” entails and how a proper understanding enables us to trust God more in our lives.

Over and over again in the Bible, we hear the command, “Do not fear.” But what is this command really getting at? Is it simply that we’re never to experience fear, and if we do, we’re disobeying God in some way? Or is there more to it? Fear can be a paralyzing reality in our lives. But it can also bea gift. It all depends on how we engage it. That’s why in this episode, we explore the nature of fear, how it negatively impacts us, and how we can leverage courage to move through it to do what we know we need to do but have struggled to do so. 

Most of us have heard the proverb, “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they won’t depart from it.” It’s a great proverb about teaching kids how to walk out God’s path in life. But there’sanother level to understanding this proverb that I believe sheds light on one of the most significant principles for not only parenting our kids extremely well, but in how we love and lead our co-workers, teams, and others we’re called to serve. 

We often carry our burdens alone. Maybe we don’t want others to know what we’re going through. Maybe we don’t want to burden anyone with our burdens. Whatever the reasons may be, we don’t distribute them verywell. And when we do this, the weight of carrying our burdens alone becomes an endeavor that leaves us weary and discouraged, with very little hope that anything will change. We cannot carry them alone. Indeed, we weren’t designed to. 

Throughout this series, we’ve looked at all of the various aspects of the Lord’s Prayer. In this final episode of the series, we look at several methods in which we can pray and utilize the Lord’s Prayer ona regular basis to take what we’ve learned and put into a practice. And in doing so, really owning this prayer in our lives so that it governs the way the way we think and live, and ultimately how we follow Jesus in the world today. 

The part of the Lord’s Prayer that asks God not to “lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil” has created a lot of confusion. Even Pope Francis has sought to modify this language. Is God in the habit of leading us into testing and temptation? Is there a difference between the two? And how are we to understand the moments when Jesus was tempted? In this episode, we answer these questions, as well as addressing the reality that when we focus on Jesus’s divinity at the expense of his humanity, we fail to understand how brutally difficult his own trials and temptations were. But when we understand this, and what he did to overcome, we learn how to do the same in our own lives. 

Jesus told us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus’s assumption is that we would be forgiving others in the manner in which God has forgiven us. But what happens when we’ve been wronged by someone and we’re strugglingto forgive them? What do we do when the pain is so real that we can’t stomach the thought of forgiveness? That’s what we tackle in this episode as we seek to understand the nature of forgiveness. And in doing so, we learn how to forgive others well so that we can not only experience the power and freedom of forgiveness, but faithfully live out this command of Jesus from the Lord’s Prayer. 

“Give us today our daily bread.” Sounds pretty straightforward, right? But what does it mean to ask for daily bread? How do we bring our requests before God? And what should we be asking for in the first place? These questions and more are the subject of this episode as we seek to understand what Jesus meant by the phrase, “our daily bread,” and what it means to faithfully live out this aspect of the Lord’s Prayer. 

Many people believe that the point of Jesus was to rescue us from our sins so that we can leave earth and go to heaven. But the problem is that Jesus doesn’t spend his time teaching about how we from here (earth) to go there (heaven), but about getting there (heaven) to come here (earth). Hold on tight because without question, the content of this episode is the most paradigm shifting aspect of the Lord’s Prayer. And my hope is that we may finally understand what we’ve been praying all along when we’ve said, “your kingdom come, your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven!” 

Hallowed be your name. What in the world does it mean to “hallow” someone’s name? And what is the significance of God’s name? Furthermore, why does Jesus tell us it needs to be hallowed in the first place? As with every aspect ofthe Lord’s Prayer, this one is loaded with meaning and rooted in Old Testament stories in order to help us understand the absolute necessity of God’s name being recognized in the world, and how our lives bear witness to the holiness of His great name. 

When Jesus told us to pray, “Our Father who is in heaven,” it is literally recorded in Greek as, “in the heavens.” Why would Jesus be talking about God being “in the heavens?” What did this mean to the people first hearing Jesus say this? And whatdoes this mean for us in our relationship with God and in our understanding of “Heaven?”  All of this and more is addressed in this teaching as we explore not only the God who rules and reigns over all, but the God who is ever present to us in the midst of our circumstances and our lives.