Second Stage Ministries Podcast

Over the years, two questions that I have often got are 1) Where do I start reading the Bible? and 2) How do I understand it all? These questions are good. Where to start reading the Bible is a solid question. It is hard to know where to start with such a big book. Then understanding the Bible is another great question and speaks to the point that the Bible can be hard to understand and confusing at many points. In the episode , I hope to provide a little bit of an answer to these questions.

Why read the Bible? It’s so old and out of date. The Bible is just a bunch of rules. A list of dos and don’ts. The Bible is old fashioned. The Bible was written so long ago it can’t be relevant to us now. Why read the Bible? The Bible is boring and really isn’t all that interesting. These are some of the things that have been said about the Bible. But really when it comes to reading the Bible, it really just depends on how you look at it.

I bring this up because even though we may not be a gardener in real life or have the proverbial “green thumb”, we are all a gardener. We all have a garden to tend. The garden of our minds. Our mind is a garden and just like any garden, it needs to be cared for. The garden of our minds needs to be cared for because one big reason - the enemy. The enemy wants to throw seeds out there so they take root and grow into something big and that will take us out. In a way, the seeds the enemy plants in our gardens are weeds. **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books. [1] The “seeds” listed in this post are quoted from the book above. The paragraph(s) following each seed are a mix of my thoughts and the thoughts of the auth

The reason why we miss grace sometimes is because the enemy has us focused on two other words - guilt and shame. This is what the enemy did to Adam and Eve. He tricked them into eating the fruit from the tree and then turned it into guilt and shame. Adam and Eve hid from God because they were ashamed. The enemy was running them on the hamster wheel and telling them how awful what they did was and how ashamed they should be. But that’s not the way it should be. Let’s look at the words guilt and shame. **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books.

God asked the question “who told you that?” The things they were experiencing were not coming from Him. You could go further and say that God was asking “who told you that you should be afraid? Who told you that you needed to hide? Who told you that you were guilty? Who told you that?” They were experiencing things straight from the enemy. The enemy acted like their friend and planted that seed of doubt about God’s goodness. Then the enemy just waited for it to take root. When it finally did, the enemy switched sides and then started accusing them. -------- **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books. Scriptures referenced in this post. All Scripture is taken from the YouVerison Bible app. The YouVerison Bible is av

The enemy doesn’t give up that easily. He didn’t give on attacking Jesus and he doesn’t give up on attacking us either. This is an ongoing battle we have to keep our seat at the table (Luke 4:13). **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books. [1] The Temptation of Jesus is recorded in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. For this post, I referred to both passages. [2] Deuteronomy 8:3 [3] Deuteronomy 6:13 [4] Psalm 91:11-12 [5] Deuteronomy 6:16 [6] Deuteronomy 30:20 - “by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding closely to Him; for He is your life [your good life, your abundant life, your fulfillment] and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord promised (swore) to give to

It all started with a lie. Everything we know started with a lie. The way we see the world and the way the world is all started with a lie. One lie was all it took for the enemy to get a seat at Eve’s table. The same is true for us as well. Before we look at five lies the enemy might to get a seat at the table, let’s look at the lie that started it all. **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books. PLEASE NOTE: The 5 lies listed in this episode are quoted from the book mentioned in the above paragraph. Scripture referenced in this episode Genesis 3:4-6, NLT Psalm 121:1-2 Matthew 14:22-33 Psalm 100:3 Romans 8:1 Romans 8:31 Judges 7 Judges 7:22, NLT. John 8:44, NLT

Have you ever been at a restaurant or a sporting event and a person that you know is there too? They see you from a distance, but you don’t see them until they have pulled up a seat at your table or taken the empty seat next to you in the row. It doesn’t take very long at all for someone to swipe a seat - especially when you don’t see it coming. **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thoughts and ideas in this post come from the book, but are put into my own words and are not directly quoted. All direct quotes from the book will be noted as such and identified. You can pick up a copy of the book wherever you buy your books. [1] Psalm 121:1-2 [2] Louie Giglio, Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table, page 48

In this episode, we are looking at Psalm 23 and how the Good Shepherd takes care of us..... forever. Scriptures and other referenced information in this episode.  [1] The “Elevate” series can be found at https://www.thepointoffocus.com/videos [2] 1 Samuel 17:35-36, NLT [3] Psalm 23:1, NLT [4] Louie Giglio, Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table, page 25 [5] Psalm 23:3, NLT. The NEW LIVING TRANSLATION of the Bible uses the phrase “He renews my strength.” [6] https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/psalm-23/amp/ [7] references the Google dictionary definition of the word mercy. [8] Psalm 23:6, NIV

Imagine that you are walking into a restaurant and you tell the host “yes, we’d like a table for 2 please.” The host walks you through the restaurant past all of the other dining guests to a table for 2 in the middle of the restaurant. The table is prepared for you. As you are sitting there enjoying the bread you look around and you notice some people are starting to stare at you. You begin to notice it more and more. You start to wonder if there is something in your hair, on your clothes, or makeup is smudged. You turn your attention back to your table and a second later someone pulls up a chair and takes a seat. Then another. And another. Before you know it the table has gotten crowded and you can’t even hear or barely see your dinner companion. The enemy has just pulled up and sat at your table. Scripture referenced in this episode: Psalm 23:5, 23:1, 23:4, Hebrews 12:2, Psalm 121:1-2, Matthew 14:22-33 **This series is based on the book Don’t Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table” by Louie Giglio. The thought

The final post in the AT THE MOVIES series. We are looking at a familiar movie for this post, but there is still a big lesson to be learned!

In this episode, I share what is ahead on the podcast and we are going to be looking at the movie Back To The Future. I have seen this movie probably 3,457,320 times. I’ve seen it a lot. But what I saw in this movie the most recent time I watched it was something that I had never seen before. God showed me something amazing and I want to share it with you. *Don't Give The Enemy A Seat At Your Table begins September 2, 2021

About 3 years ago, God showed me something in the movie, Forrest Gump. I have seen the movie many times and I never saw this in the movie until God revealed it to me. I hope that I share in this episode will be as encouraging for you as it was me.

I have been excited for this series of posts for quite some time. I have been wanting to do a movie series for a while because there are times when God talks to me (and us) through movies. But we have to be listening for Him to talk. In this series, we are going to look at four of my favorite movies and I am going to share what God showed me. For this first episode of the series, we aren’t going to look at just one movie, but the devolvement of a character over the course of three movies. But the idea that I want to look at comes out of Star Wars: Episode 1 which is this phrase: YOUR FOCUS DETERMINES YOUR REALITY.

As I was stacking my pile, I thought of this passage I shared about and what a stack of rocks meant to them. So I was trying to stack as many as I could and realized that wasn’t going to work. At that time was when God told me “stack 6”. I fumbled around to find just the right rocks to use. I found two large rocks and four smaller rocks. I began to try and stack them. I tried a few different ways to stack them before I figured it out. The way I stacked them is in the picture below. Once I was done, God told me what I was looking at - what the pile meant.

Why do we limit God?

This time every year we celebrate the Fourth of July. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon and the thirteen colonies were declared free, independent states, and no longer under the rule of King George III. But there is also another kind of freedom I think about as well. I am reminded of the great freedom there is in Jesus. Let’s see what Romans 8 has to say about this….  [1] Isaiah 53:3-8 (NIV) “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He w

Over the last several months, I have been pondering this idea of Jesus being fully God and fully man (human). I am sure that you have heard that said of Jesus. But as I think about it more and more, this causes a problem. As mentioned in the episode, here is the information about the medical condition:  Hematidrosis can be “caused by extreme distress or fear, such as facing death, torture…”[1] [1] https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/hematidrosis-hematohidrosis [1] https://www.gotquestions.org/sweat-blood-Jesus.html

God has always made a way for His people. God provided Noah and his family with a way to survive the flood. God made a way for Israel to cross the Red Sea. God provided a way for the people of Israel to defeat Jericho. I am sure there is a lot more, but you get the idea. But there is another way that God made for us that I want to look at in this post. (The post references Exodus 32 and Leviticus 16 in a paraphrased form.)

What is amazing here is the response of Jesus to the woman! Jesus doesn’t jump up off the well and scold her.... Jesus provided this woman with comfort. (This post references John 4)