Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

10 - Freedom and Dignity

What Paul is doing in this passage in Ephesians is giving instruction on the attitude of the heart. His ultimate goal for us is to stay free. A person who is in bondage inside cannot be free. People often look to have a change of circumstances. Paul starts by saying, "No, let God change you in the circumstance, and that will transform the situation." He starts inside us; we want the externals changed.

To purchase Pastor Steve's new book Understanding Acts: Life-Changing Lessons from the Early Church, visit Amazon. 

Also check out our website at lifelessonspublishing.com for additional resources for pastors and leaders. We have free recorded classes and other materials offered at no charge. 

And check us out on Instagram as well!

9 - Honoring Parents

In these verses Paul continues on the theme of Christian's expressing the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives by submitting to one another. We have just finished seeing how Paul applies this to husbands and wives in marriage (5:22-33), and now, in the verses before us, he focuses on the attitude which parents and children have toward each other. Because he only uses four verses to make his point, it would be easy for us to skim by this passage and not really see its impact on our lives. But, if we'll stop and look more closely, we 11 find principles that make a great difference in all of our lives. After all, it says if we will honor our father and mother that "things will go well with us and that we may live long on the earth." That's a promise worth reaching for.

 

To purchase Pastor Steve's new book Understanding Acts: Life-Changing Lessons from the Early Church, visit Amazon. 

Also check out our website at lifelessonspublishing.com for additional resources for pastors and leaders. We have free recorded classes and other materials offered at no charge. 

And check us out on Instagram as well!

 

 

8 - Freeing the Heart - Soul Ties

Something real happens in marriage in which a husband and wife are joined together. There is a deep psychological and emotional tie that forms. Something connects that is deep and normally permanent between husband and wife. It is a tie of the soul, a tie that is intended to form between these two people. But this same tie can form where it is inappropriate, when a tie forms for someone with whom we should not have it. 

To purchase Pastor Steve's new book Understanding Acts: Life-Changing Lessons from the Early Church, visit Amazon. 

Also check out our website at lifelessonspublishing.com for additional resources for pastors and leaders. We have free recorded classes and other materials offered at no charge. 

And check us out on Instagram as well!

 

 

7 - Transforming Marriage

Our roles for husbands and wives today are in turmoil. Our society has thrown off what it considers to be Biblical roles in favor of an ideal in which two people pursue their own fulfillment while living together. It hasn't worked well and the number of people who ended up suffering and lonely is enormous. But on the other hand, what has been presented to us as the historical Christians model of a family, seems to authorize the harsh subordination of women and children. So even Christians today who wish to be obedient to the Bible are hesitant to turn wholeheartedly to the model of relationship. We find these fearing it will produce an oppressive atmosphere.

As we look at this important passage in Ephesians, we need to see the deep transforming principles which Paul explains. Instead of providing an environment for oppression, we will discover a revolutionary view of marriage which, if obeyed, will release both partners to fulfill the ministry calling on their lives.

To purchase Pastor Steve's new book Understanding Acts: Life-Changing Lessons from the Early Church, visit Amazon. 

Also check out our website at lifelessonspublishing.com for additional resources for pastors and leaders. We have free recorded classes and other materials offered at no charge. 

And check us out on Instagram as well!

6 - Six Attitudes About Money

I believe that the Lord does financially provide for His people, but I also believe there are some attitudes which must be part of our lives before we can live peacefully in His care. We will look at six such attitudes today. When these are present in us, I believe the issue of our provision becomes a joyful matter. On the other hand, if any one of these attitudes is missing, the process will breakdown. It isn't enough to pick one of them and focus on it. All must be part of our heart.

 

Listeners, if you would like to order Pastor Steve's new book Understanding Acts, you can find it on Amazon.

 

Also check out our website for other resources, including free classes and materials for pastors and leaders as well as the other books Pastor Steve has written. 

 

 

5 - Laying Aside Falsehood

Just about everybody tells the truth when it does them no harm, and this can lead people to think of themselves as basically honest when, in fact, they really aren't. Our true character doesn't show until it's put under stress. The moment that determines whether I am honest or not is what comes out of my mouth at a time when telling the truth will:

- Expose unacceptable behavior and thereby lower other's opinion, or subject me to punishment

- Give the other person enough information to decide against what I want them to do 

- Cause me to lose some benefit

- Reveal my negative feelings about the other person which makes me have to face their displeasure

- Results in me having to do something I don't want to

4 - The Gifts of Christ

When Christ rose from the dead, He gave gifts to His people. Here are five of them: the gift of forgiveness, the gift of redemption, the gift of propitiation, the gift of reconciliation, and the gift of justification. 

3 - The Body of Christ

No Christian is intended to live out their spiritual life in isolation. No Christian is intended to grow in maturity in isolation. No Christian is intended to carry out the ministry God has given them in isolation. Becoming a Christian is not just a private decision between each person and God, it involves being joined into a community of God's people.

In these verses we read today, Paul gives us a deep look into what it really means to be part of the Body of Christ. He originally wrote to a diverse church composed of Jews and Gentiles and he told them they had now been formed by God into one new family with God as their Father. God wanted them to love each other and work harmoniously with each other. Most of us today struggle with the busyness of our schedules; with fear of involvement based on past experiences; and with the almost universal, rugged individualism that pervades America. So, this passage holds a special call to Christians like us today. We need to understand why we need each other, and few places in the Bible answer this more clearly than this passage.

2 - Seeing the New Creation

The way we see ourselves and the way we see others must change. Even Christians often don't realize how much has changed when they receive Christ. We're not the same anymore. The way we think about things and the way we respond in situations become very different. And the way we see other people changes at least as much as the way we see ourselves. Paul goes so far as to say we are a new creation of God. Our old lives have passed away, and we now live new lives. Jesus didn't come just to help us try harder or patch us up. His Cross has actually destroyed the old things that controlled us, filled us with an enormous  new power, and lifted us to whole new relationships with God, with each other and with those who don't know Jesus yet. Not only is each of us new inside, but we are joined into a new corporate entity, His Church. Old human distinctions have fallen away and we have been made part of a new unified people, with a new mission, a new Leader, a new power at work among us and a new goal.

1 - In Him

While under house arrest in Rome, Paul writes to churches he had pastored in and around Ephesus (a city on the coast of Western Asia Minor). He wants to be sure that with the passing of time this group, made up largely of converted Gentiles, does not lose sight of the wonderful things God has done for them. He wanted them to keep focused on the fact that they were "in Christ." It's easy for Christians to grow discouraged with themselves and to lose the boldness of faith that makes them spiritually effective. The devil tends to chip away atour sense of being acceptable to God, and as that foundation crumbles, we lose confidence that there is any power in our prayers. By the time he is finished with us, any assurance that we are strong soldiers well-equipped to enter the battle has disappeared. Another of his tactics is to divide and scatter us from one another so that we no longer pull together as a fighting unit. So Paul, knowing how the devil will attack, writes this wonderful letter to keep these soldiers sure of who they are and pulling together against their true enemy, the devil.