PODCAST · religion
The Higher Christian Life
by Steve McCranie
Struggling with your spiritual life?If you are like most believers, your spiritual life has been a series of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, two steps forward followed by two steps back, and is less than what you would call consistently abundant. But it doesn't have to be that way. It's not just about what happens when you die, but what it means to live in victory with Christ today. The Higher Christian Life is a podcast by Steve McCranie that will help you experience, in real-time, the "Abundant Life" Jesus promised.So join us as we rediscover the blessings of the Higher Christian Life.
Episodes
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083 - Salvation and the Deception of Non-Saving Faith
“Faith or No Faith, That is the Question” All throughout Scripture, we see examples of people who have faith, but it’s non-saving faith. After all, every one of us has some type of faith, and we exercise faith every day. We have faith a car will stop while we cross the street, we have faith our...
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082 - The Dependent Relationship of Jesus With His Father
Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery Jesus did something that seems so out of place for us today, living in a culture that exalts pride, ambition, and independence— He voluntarily lived in a dependent relationship with His Father and deferred all glory to Him. But He didn’t have to live this...
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081 - D.L. Moody and the Higher Christian Life
“What Am I Missing?” As believers living in the Laodicean church age (Rev. 3:14-22), we often look back and marvel at the extraordinary lives of our Biblical heroes and spiritual giants who have gone before us. We see them in Scripture, read their biographies, watch movies about their lives…
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080 - How to Hear God’s Voice When He Speaks
“Follow Me, and I Will Make You… Whatever I Want” In the Gospels, we encounter a radical figure who issues a bold invitation to those He calls unto Himself: “Follow Me.” These words, spoken by Jesus, are not merely a suggestion but a summons, a mandate to leave life as we have always known it and...
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079 - Embracing the Call to Radical Christianity
Challenging the Status Quo We live in a world where the term “radical” often evokes images of extremism and division and has developed a rather nasty reputation in our culture since the ’60s. Therefore, it may come as a surprise that at the very heart of Christian discipleship lies a call to a...
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078 - How to Prepare Yourself to Meet With God
Disclaimer: Let’s Define Some Terms As we discovered in Part One of How to Experience God When You Pray— when we talk about experiencing God in prayer, we are specifically defining prayer as more than a monologue, but something even deeper. It is a true, two-way conversation with God, where you...
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077 - How to Experience God When You Pray
The Joy of Prayer What if your times of prayer could become so much more than reciting words or listing random requests? What if your prayers could transport you into a holy place to experience God’s presence in a very real and tangible way? What if you began having personal, life-changing...
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076 - The God-Ordained Way to Increase Your Faith
Just Get Out of the Boat! In almost every area of life, when we commit to a plan of self-improvement, we expect to spend time, incur costs, and suffer strain during the process. It just comes with the territory. Whether we decide to get in shape and eat healthier, or go back to school and change...
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075 - Be Encouraged by the Small Words in Scripture
Three Small Words from John 15 In John 15, Jesus lays out our position in Christ and the key or path to the Higher Christian Life in the story of a vine and its branches. I mean, it really couldn’t be more clear. This key is found in the simple word abide. We are to abide in Him— which means “to...
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074 - The Purpose of the Christian Life – Experiencing God
The Problem: Dry Ritual Without Relationship For many believers, Christianity has become a religion of rules devoid of a relationship. We know we should have a quiet time, serve in church, avoid sin, and so on. But all this outward conformity easily lacks the inward reality of actually connecting...
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073 - Experiencing True Repentance from Psalm 51
How to Experience God Through Repentance In our quest for a deeper relationship with the Lord, we have been talking about what genuine repentance looks like in real-time. And we found ourselves in the middle of Psalm 51, examining six key words in David’s prayer of repentance that show us how to...
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072 - Our Identity — Stop Striving, Start Abiding
Embracing Who We Really Are D.L. Moody, while on his European crusade in 1873, was so inspired by a conversation he had with British revivalist Henry Varley that he prayed: “The world has yet to see what God can do with, and for, and through, and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to…
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071 - “Uh, My Bad,” Doesn’t Really Cut It Anymore
Ten Aspects of True Repentance that Gets God’s Attention Giving God a flippant “my bad” when we mess up just won’t cut it, no matter how hard we try to make it work. Too often, we deal with our sin through superficial apologies, not grasping the gravity of how our choices offend our Creator and...
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070 - 1 John 1:9 – One Condition and Two Promises
The Conditional Promises of God One familiar “if / then” passage, often called the “believer’s bar of soap,” is found in the first chapter of the first letter of John. In it, we find one “if” condition and two implied “then” promises God grants to those who meet His one “if” condition. And the…
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069 - Abraham’s Journey of Faith in God’s Promises
Faith and Courage— Two Sides of the Same Coin The Biblical story of Abraham is profoundly human— a narrative full of twists and turns, triumphs and failures, poor decisions and their unintended consequences, and, of course, drama— much like a Netflix mini-series. Yet, throughout the trials of his...
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068 - Our Salvation – It’s More Than You Ever Imagined
Different Strokes for Different Folks Salvation means different things to different people. For some, it’s a “get out of hell free” card, the cosmic fire insurance policy they checked off and filed away years ago. For others, it’s trying to be a good, moral, upstanding person and attend church—…
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067 - True Signs of a False, Counterfeit Salvation
Deception: the Currency of Our Culture Deception runs rampant in our world today. Just look around. False teaching, twisted values, distorted truths, and outright sinister lies bombard us from every side. Even in the church, not all professing believers have embraced the genuine gospel— which…
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066 - Abiding – The Key to Lasting Surrender and Joy
No More Roller-Coaster Living When it comes to spiritual disciplines like surrender or yielding our life to the Lord, the hardest part is not the act of initial surrender, but the journey of remaining surrendered to Him in the days and months ahead. For most believers, this journey can be...
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065 - The Seventh Step – Don’t Leave Home Without Him
We’ve Only Just Begun We are now at the last step to surrendering our lives unreservedly to the Lord. And this seventh and final step deals with how to keep close to Him, and how to remain surrendered and submitted, even after the initial awe of the experience begins to wear off and we let our...
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064: The Sixth Step – Surrendering to the Holy Spirit
God is Three and Three in One When we decide to fully yield our lives to the Lord, one essential step is surrendering control of everything to the Holy Spirit, who is probably the most overlooked member of the Trinity. And this is because the doctrine of the Trinity, or trying to explain the…
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063 - The Fifth Step – Surrendering to God’s Sovereignty
He is God, and We Are Not By nature, we are control freaks. We pray for divine healing, but only after our physician shakes his head and says, “Well, there’s nothing left to do but pray,” and our medical insurance runs out. We claim Matthew 6:33, where Jesus promises to meet all our needs, but...
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062: The Fourth Step – Presenting Yourself as a Sacrifice
First Step Three, Then Step Four Of the seven steps to living a fully surrendered life to God, perhaps none is more vital than the fourth— offering ourselves, specifically our bodies, as a living sacrifice to Him. But this can only be accomplished after we have done the hard work of denying...
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061 - The Third Step: Dying to Self to Gain Him
“Lord” Jesus Christ also means “Owner” Jesus Christ Surrendering your life fully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ is no small or simple matter. But I’m sure you are painfully aware of that by now. It requires making the conscious choice each day to deny our natural desires and humbly submit to His...
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060: The Second Step – Confession and Repentance
Surrender Your Life? The Choice is Yours Surrendering your life to God is a profound journey that transforms your relationship with Him into something many only dreamed about but few ever expected to happen. In fact, full surrender to Him is what He requires (that is why He is called Lord and...
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059 - The First Step in Surrendering Your Life to Him
Surrender is a Lifestyle, Not a One-Time Event When you surrender your life to the Lord, you will notice it is not a one-time event. You don’t just say a prayer or make a vow and it’s done. It is a process, usually full of ups and downs, that may take some time to master. But even as a process…
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058: Embracing a Full Understanding of Salvation
The Living Hope We Have in Christ Dark times can profoundly shake our faith and assurance in God. Ongoing trials, deep hurts, and spiritual warfare can make us lose sight of the incredible hope we have in Jesus Christ. But despite the darkness, Christ’s resurrection guarantees our justification,...
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057 - Experience Freedom and Power in Your Christian Life
The Higher Christian Life Let’s talk about something that has captivated believers for generations— the Higher Christian Life. This term refers to a life of intimate fellowship with God that goes beyond the ordinary Christian experience. Popularized by 19th-century revival and devotional…
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056 - Letting Go and Letting God – Steps for Total Surrender
There is So Much More to This Life in Christ As followers of Jesus, you and I long to live the spiritually charged, victorious life He promises in Scripture— an abundant, overcoming life marked by joy, peace, purpose, and the wonder of having the mind of Christ. But let’s face it, our everyday...
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055 - The Difference Between Living or Just Being Alive
“I am the Resurrection and the Life” We have been talking about the Higher Christian Life for quite some time. And today, we will discover Jesus pointing to this manner of life, the “abundant life” as He called it in John 10:10, while He was trying to encourage Martha at the tomb of her brother,...
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054 - How to Know the Will of God When We Pray
How Can I Know the Will of God… For many believers, prayer is often confusing and frustrating. We pray earnestly, with as much faith as we can muster up, and many times the answer to our heartfelt prayer is no, or worse, silence. And if we have this experience with prayer and faith repeatedly,...
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053 - Faith, Revival, and the Example of George Muller
Will You Not Revive Us Again? When we look at the condition of our world and of the spiritual temperature of the church, the clear assessment is that we need revival. Not a revival meeting or a revival as a once-a-year event, but a revival akin to an awakening, like our nation has experienced in...
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052 - Immanuel and the Higher Christian Life
And You Shall Call His Name Immanuel… One of the unmistakable truths that leads to a fuller understanding of the Higher Christian Life is our embracing the fact of the Holy Spirit living in us. Now, I know you know that… at least cognitively, as a fact, and probably have this truth hidden for...
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051 - How to Understand the Fear of the Lord
The Fear of the Lord is … We have shared in the past how we often find a fuller understanding of the Higher Christian Life in the small words of Scripture. Simple, often overlooked as unimportant words like “know” or the various Greek definitions of our single-use English word translated “love”...
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050 - Living in the Kingdom, While Living on Earth
Living in the Kingdom of God… We, as believers, are dual citizens and live in two kingdoms. We have temporal citizenship in this world, or so it seems, maybe as a citizen of the United States or whatever country you may be from. But more importantly, we are citizens of the Kingdom of God…
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049 - Something More Powerful Than Your Faith
What Is More Powerful Than Our Faith? The trait that defined the members of the early church that seems absent in the church today is found in the simple word, power. And it is the very same power (dúnamis) that was promised through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8) and received by those in the early...
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048 - Jesus and His Dependence on the Holy Spirit
After He Through the Holy Spirit – Acts 1:2 As we continue looking at the book of Acts, especially the account of the lives of those in the early church, we are stopped cold in our tracks and amazed by a small, cryptic phrase found in Acts 1:2. And in these four small words, through the Holy...
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047 - School’s Out— Time to Do Something
You Shall Receive Power – Acts 1:8 We have two key objectives in mind. One, to grow closer to our Lord and experience the Higher Christian Life, or at least try to understand what the Higher Christian Life looks like in real-time. And two, to have our faith grow to the point we will be…
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046 - How to Experience Freedom From Your “Besetting Sins”
Forgiveness: Past, Present, and Future If we were honest with ourselves, most of us would admit it is sin that keeps us from experiencing the Higher Christian Life. And it’s not our horrible, gross, never-talk-about, sin that grieves His Spirit the most. It’s the sin we commit over and over…
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045 - To Know or Not Know, that is the Question
Key Word for the Higher Christian Life: ginṓskō When it comes to the Higher Christian Life, one of the most important words in Scripture is ginṓskō. In fact, I’m not sure we could overstate that fact. The difference between the lukewarm life with Christ, which He has much to say about in…
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044 - The Higher Christian Life is Often Found in Small Words
The Importance of Small Words Our faith, unfortunately, is often based on head-knowledge or mental assent and only becomes real to us when it is experienced, firsthand, in the midst of a tough time or by a trial by fire. And the Higher Christian Life is not a life of intellectual assurance only,...
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043 - The Lord’s Supper and the Higher Christian Life
Jesus First Became a Bondservant... There are many questions Christians have about the Lord’s Supper, and not all of them revolve around the nature of the substance of the bread and wine. There is the question about timing, how often are we to celebrate it? And then questions about meaning, is it...
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042 - To Reckon or Not Reckon, that is the Question
The Cross Not Only Paid For Your Sins... We have been looking at the three key truths that will allow you to experience the surrender that leads to the Higher Christian Life. Let’s take a moment for a quick review. Truth One – You are incapable of pleasing God or producing anything good with your...
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041 - Holy Men Spoke as They Were Moved by the Spirit
We Need Holy Men of God to be Moved by the Spirit When we begin to seek God’s wisdom through a deep study of His Word, it is good to remind ourselves of exactly what we are doing and how the Bible is unique from all other literature. It is more than the words of man, it is the very words of God.…
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040 - Bible Study is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
First, What Does it Say? Before we actually begin to look at the Proverbs to glean the wisdom of God, we first need to remind ourselves what Bible study entails and how to mine the depths of God's Word for the treasure often buried just below the surface. Note, we are committing ourselves to…
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039 - How to Discover the Wisdom of God
Christ Jesus, Who Became For Us… This past Sunday, we talked about how we as Christians and His church are to respond during the dark times we see encroaching all around. What are we to do? How are we to think and feel? What is God’s will in all of this? Just think about what we have experienced…
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038 - What Are You Lacking in Your Spiritual Life?
What Do You Need From Him the Most? Yesterday we showed how the Holy Spirit, who now lives in you, is fully capable of meeting any need you might have. After all, He is fully God in every sense of the word. So it would stand to reason that as God, the Holy Spirit is all-powerful (omnipotent),...
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037 - He is All You Will Ever Need
And You Are Complete in Him – Colossians 2:10 We have spent some time discovering the spiritual fullness of realizing that the Holy Spirit, who is fully God in every sense, lives in us. Not around us or beside us or with us, but in us. And since He is God, what more do we need? Why do we desire...
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036 - Your "Desire" for the Higher Christian Life
What Does “Desire” for God Have to do with Inflation? Usually, I send out an encouraging post regarding the Higher Christian Life and the importance of drawing close to Him in these times of trouble. But today, it’s going to be a bit different. We have often discussed the importance of desire,...
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035 - What Church Could Look Like Today
Second Verse, Uh… Should Be Same as the First In Matthew 10, we see this amazing account of Jesus sending His disciples out without Him to do what He was doing while He was with them. It was almost a picture of what life would be like after Jesus was physically removed from their presence and the...
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034 - Whatever Your Struggle, He is More Than Able
What Does it Mean to Have the Holy Spirit Live in Us? As Truth Two reveals, when the Holy Spirit, God HImself, takes up residence in you, He brings with Him all the power, love, wisdom, understanding, joy, peace, and gifts of the Godhead. Let this truth sink in, God now lives in you. Not with you...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Struggling with your spiritual life?If you are like most believers, your spiritual life has been a series of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, two steps forward followed by two steps back, and is less than what you would call consistently abundant. But it doesn't have to be that way. It's not just about what happens when you die, but what it means to live in victory with Christ today. The Higher Christian Life is a podcast by Steve McCranie that will help you experience, in real-time, the "Abundant Life" Jesus promised.So join us as we rediscover the blessings of the Higher Christian Life.
HOSTED BY
Steve McCranie
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Higher Christian Life have?
The Higher Christian Life currently has 83 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Higher Christian Life about?
Struggling with your spiritual life?If you are like most believers, your spiritual life has been a series of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, two steps forward followed by two steps back, and is less than what you would call consistently abundant. But it doesn't have to be that way. It's not just...
How often does The Higher Christian Life release new episodes?
The Higher Christian Life has 83 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Higher Christian Life?
You can listen to The Higher Christian Life on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Higher Christian Life?
The Higher Christian Life is created and hosted by Steve McCranie.
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