Jonathon shared Anne Cetas’ “If Only We Could…” read it here.
Name a liquid in your kitchen that you hope no one ever accidentally drinks: 1- dish soap or bleach (46 votes) 2- vinegar (30) 3- cooking oil (16) 4- soy sauce (4) 5- bacon grease (2)
Congratulations to Nathan from Mount Vernon, who guessed correctly and wins the WNZR drawstring backpack and a couple of Our Daily Bread devotionals.
As we prepare for Lifeline 2022, Joe and I shared our thoughts about this year’s theme: “You Keep Hope Alive”.
Romans 15:13 (ESV) “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
The world is a fearful and unsatisfying place without the hope of eternal life with Jesus. Apart from the expectation that comes from the hope of heaven, our world can seem to be lacking in peace, celebration, or joy.
There is life in hope. There is joy in hope. There is purpose in hope.
Hope is to be at the foundation of all our decisions, emotions, and pursuits. Hope fills us with joy in the middle of trials and perseverance in the midst of failure. Hope guides us to abundant life.
Our heavenly Father longs to make us a people of hope. He longs for his followers to live a lifestyle that declares to the world, “This life is not all there is.” He longs to fill us with a heavenly perspective that we might throw off pursuits of worldly pleasure and live for eternity with him.
Sometimes we can lose hope. We can get distracted, discouraged and unfocused. Why does this happen?
We fail to embrace to fruits of the spirit – the very things we ask for that we fail to do ourselves.
Do we love well? Or get bogged down in hate?
Do we choose joy? Or choose grumpy?
Do we promote peace? Or spread and promote conflict?
Do we demonstrate patience? Or fly off the handle?
Do we offer kindness? Or are we offering indifference?
Do we seek goodness? Or seeking the negative and critical?
Do we ground ourselves in faith? Or trust our own understanding?
Do we embrace gentleness? Or are we rough around the edges?
Do we embody self-control? Or is it anything goes?
What about things like forgiveness? Think about this: if God forgave you like you forgive others, where would you be?
Is it more about Him? Or more about us?
Name something you pick.
Flowers – 28
Fruit – 25
Nose – 23
Dog/Pet – 6
Teeth – 6
Congratulations to Dallas and Charla of Utica for correctly guessing this week’s Family Feud for a Voice of the Cougars drawstring backpack!
Today on the show I shared two devotionals from Our Daily Bread. We also had our weekly family feud trivia where one lucky person has a chance to win a prize for answering the top two answers on the board.
Here are the two devotionals that I picked from Our Daily Bread:
One was titled, “Loving God”. You can find the link here.
The other was titled, “Never Say Can’t”. You can find the link here.
Name a reason you might not leave your house all day?
1- Bad Weather (40)
2- Sick (28)
3- Watch TV (7)
4- Day Off (4)
5- Wait Repairman (3)
6- Too Tired (3)
Congratulations to Karen of Mount Vernon for correctly guessing the top two answers! She wins a 50 day devotional book by Bob Weaver titled “A word from the Weaver”.
Dylan shared today’s Our Daily Bread devotional, ‘The Power of Love.’ Click here to read it.
Our second devotional comes from what Joe shared at the 2020 Valentine’s Banquet:
Late last year (2019), I had the chance to read a fantastic book called Hidden Christmas by Pastor Timothy Keller.
Chapter 2 of this book dives in to the importance of the genealogy of Jesus. Keller spends some time focused on the fact that Matthew doesn’t start his Gospel with “once upon a time.” As he writes, “that is the way of fairy tales or legendary fantasy stories.” He starts with what? The genealogy of Jesus. Keller writes that this is critical because Matthew is grounding who Jesus Christ is…and what he does…in history, with a genealogy. In Matthew 1 we learn that Jesus is not a metaphor. He is real. This all happened.
Just before Peter Jackson released the first of his Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies in 2001, there were a number of articles by literary critics and other cultural elites lamenting the popular appeal of fantasies, myths, and legends. They were saying that so many of them promoted regressive views. In other words, modern people are supposed to be more realistic. We should realize that things are not black and white but grey, and happy endings are cruel because life is not like that.
One critic in the New Yorker magazine even wrote that to give into stories like Lord of the Rings “betrays a reluctance to face the finer shades of life that verges on the cowardly.”
So why does Hollywood keep recycling fairy tales, fantasy and super heroes? You might answer, well, it’s because people hunger for them. Okay then, again, why? I mean, the great fairy tales and legendary stories like “Beauty and the Beast,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Excalibur”…none of those things really happened and they’re not factually true.
But…they seem to fulfill a set of longings in the human heart.
I would also add that some of the more realistic fiction and love stories that we watch in these days also reflect those longings in the human heart. Keller writes that deep in the human heart there are these realistic desires to experience the supernatural, go on great adventures, to escape death, to know love that we can never lose, to not age but live long enough to realize our creative dreams and maybe even to fly, and communicate with non-human beings and obviously, triumph over evil.
If the stories are well told, we find them incredibly moving and satisfying. Why is that? Keller argues it’s because even though we know that factually those stories didn’t happen, our hearts long for those things; and quite honestly, they scratch that itch.
Beauty and the Beast tells us that there’s a love that can break out of the beastliness that we have created for ourselves. Sleeping Beauty tells us we are in a kind of sleeping enchantment in there is a noble prince who can come and destroy it. We hear the stories, we see the stories, and they stir us because deep inside our hearts we believe or want to believe, that these things are true. Death should not be the end. We should not lose our loved ones. Evil should not triumph. Our heart senses that even though the stories themselves aren’t true, the underlying reality behind the stories somehow ought to be. But our minds say no and the critics say no…when you give yourself to fairy tales and you really believe in moral absolutes and the supernatural and the idea that we could live forever that’s not reality, and it’s cowardly to give yourself to it.
But then we come to the Christmas story. And at first glance The book of Matthew looks like the other legends. A story about someone from a different world who breaks into our world and has miraculous powers and can calm the storm and heal people and raise people from the dead. Then his enemies turn on him and he is put to death and it seems like all hope is over but finally he rises from the dead and saves everyone! We read that and we think: another great fairy tale. It looks like the Christmas story is just one more of those stories…
But Matthew does not start his Gospel with “Once upon a Time.” He says this is no fairytale. Jesus Christ is NOT just one more lovely story pointing to these underlying realities. Jesus IS the underlying reality to which all the stories point. Jesus has come from that eternal supernatural world that we sense is there; that our hearts know is there; even though our heads may say no. Keller writes, “at Christmas, Jesus punched a hole between the ideal and the real; the eternal and the temporal; and came into our world. That means if Matthew was right, there IS an evil sorcerer in this world and we ARE under enchantment; there IS a noble prince who has broken the enchantment, and there IS love from which we can never be parted and we WILL indeed fly someday and will defeat death; and in this world even as Psalms says, “the trees will dance and sing.”
1st John 4: 9-11puts it this way: “this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
So Keller writes, even though we know that these fairy tales aren’t factually true, the truth of Jesus means all the stories we love are not escapism at all. In a sense, they will come true in Him.
The gospel means all the best stories will be proved in the ultimate sense, true!
During an indoor game of hide and seek, name a specific place where kids hide: 1- closet (63 votes) 2- under a bed (17) 3- behind a couch (9) 4- under a table (4)
Congratulations to Ron from Mount Vernon, who guessed correctly and wins a WNZR drawstring backpack!
WNZR’s Spread the Love contest is underway – listen for chances to win some great Valentine’s prizes all week.
Our winners today included Kim from Mount Vernon, who won a $10 gift certificate to Gospel Christian Life Shop.
Her question: Valentine’s Day in the United States is symbolized with hearts, cupids and flowers, but in Germany, the most popular symbol is what barnyard animal? The answer? A pig.
Our second winner was Jenn from Danville, who won a $10 gift certificate to Happy Bean Coffee Shop.
Question: Which state produces the most red roses? The answer? California.
Today for Monday Motivation, Joe shared some musical inspiration from Matt Redman’s “Your Grace Finds Me.”
Here’s what Matt had to say about the song in a conversation with CBN in 2013:
“I wrote this song with my friend Jonas Myrin in a little chapel in England where we often song write. The song is an attempt to sing about the wide spectrum of God’s grace. The grace of God found us at the cross – and that is the centerpiece of all we believe, but that is not the end of the story of grace. For His grace keeps on finding us – the undeserved goodness of God showing up in our lives. You can find it in the newborn cry and find it in the light of every sunrise. You’ll find it in the mundane and on the mountaintop. And more to the point, it finds you.”
Jonathon shared a devotional about our perception of perfection from Monica LaRose, called “Perfect Like Christ.” Read more by clicking here!
Tell me the first TWO questions you might ask about someone’s newborn. 1- Boy or Girl? (42 votes) 2- What’s their name? (22) 3- Weighs how much? (19) 4- How old? (5) 5- Healthy? (2) 6- Where’s his dad? (2) 7- What color of eyes? (2)
Congratulations to Peter from Howard, who got the top two and wins the WNZR drawstring backpack!
Today we shared Monday Motivation from Our Daily Bread’s Katara Patton based on Jeremiah 18 – read “The Potter’s Wheel” by clicking here.
We also shared Mart DeHaan’s devotional about “Heroes, Tyrants and Jesus.,” Find out how Paul’s letters influenced how people looked at Jesus by reading here.
Name something that can be lumpy: – mashed potatoes (29 votes) – oatmeal/hot cereal (24) – mattress or bed (13) – grits (7) – soup (7) – pillow (6)
Congratulations to Lilly from Mount Vernon, who guessed the top two answers and wins the $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup!
Today we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by sharing a devotional from Pastor Victoria Curtiss, written as a tribute to him.
Matthew 5:43–48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (NRSV)
Jesus said that anyone can love those who love them in return. What distinguishes people of God is the way we treat those who oppose us—our enemies. Just as God shows love to everyone, so are we to show love to everyone. This inclusivity is the meaning of “be perfect” as God is perfect.
What a fitting scripture for the day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The key to the life of Dr. King is found in his Christian faith. He responded to violence with nonviolence, to hate with love. Dr. King was always looking toward reconciliation after the battle, because his approach was grounded in the gospel. He wrote, “It was the Sermon on the Mount, not a doctrine of passive resistance, that inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred [them] with the creative weapon of love.”
Martin Luther King recognized that the heart of the gospel proclaims that love can really change a situation of conflict and enmity: love reaching out toward the oppressor, love pushing negotiation, love offering forgiveness and newness. It wasn’t that he lacked an appreciation for the persistence and power of evil. It was rather his evangelist’s faith. He really believed that the intolerant and prejudiced sheriffs and politicians were sheep who had strayed from the fold, who had the potential to be converted. However powerful evil is, love is more powerful still. “Remember him,” said Coretta Scott King, “as a man who refused to lose faith in the ultimate redemption of [humanity].”
Prayer
Thank you, God, for the witness of Martin Luther King Jr. Guide me as Christ’s follower to love as you love—everyone without exception. I lift up my enemies to you and pray for their well-being. Amen.
Jonathon also shared the MLK-themed devotional ‘Brave Your Storm,’ from Patricia Raybon. You can read it from Our Daily Bread by clicking here.
Name something you’d find on a tropical island: – palm or other trees (58 votes) – sand or beaches (13) – fruit (12) – flowers (7) – water or the ocean (6)
Congratulations to Doug from Mount Vernon, who guessed correctly and wins the WNZR Voice of the Cougars drawstring backpack.
Driving Notes 