Known and Loved - Learn and Listen: Acts 17 and The Parable of the Sower

After the sermon bumper, Rick and RD take some time for a video teaching before they are joined live by Stacie and JC for a conversational teaching.  During the video teaching, Rick looks at Acts 17 and shows how Paul took the time to learn the culture around him so that he could point them back to Jesus. The human condition is to make our own gods, Rick says, so we have to fight against that and champion Jesus as the way, not champion ourselves.  With RD’s portion, he talks about listening to the Holy Spirit through the parable of the sower. We have to listen as sheep dependent on the voice of the shepherd, RD explains. He goes on to share that Satan’s goal is to get in between us and God so we can’t hear God, but the Bible and prayer are how we turn down Satan talking to us. RD reminds us that we have to create margin in our lives to hear from God.  During the conversational teaching, the group continue on these topics, and share how important it is to learn the experiences of the people around us, and how they react to their experiences. But, the group reminds us that this takes time and patience. We don’t have the ability to fix or save anyone, they emphasize, but we can listen and point back to Jesus.