Episodes

  • JL 224 - Cycles of Life and Work - PPP111

    JL 224 - Cycles of Life and Work - PPP111
    Oct 21 2024
    Today I started over a cycle of reading the Bible in a year. https://hoshanarabbah.org/pdfs/read-bible-in-a-year-2024-2025.pdf Wikipedia on Rosh Hashanah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah In the first reading of the yearly Bible reading in Genesis it’s shows how God seems to have built this concept of cycles into the fabric of His creation. Day Week Month Year - disputes around the proper calendar - 12 months Shmita - 7 years - let land rest Jubilee - 50 years From Revival Ministries International Publish date: 03/30/2003 The Lord began dealing with me recently about the Year of Jubilee. I believe that this is our Year of Jubilee! In Nazareth, at His local Synagogue, Jesus was handed the book of Isaiah and He read from chapter 61: The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon Me, because He has anointed Me [the Anointed one, the Messiah] to preach the good news (the Gospel) to the poor; He has sent Me to announce release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to send forth as delivered those who are oppressed [who are downtrodden, bruised, crushed, and broken down by calamity], 19 To proclaim the accepted and acceptable year of the Lord [the day when salvation and the free favors of God profusely abound.] Luke 4:18-19 AMP Jesus preached that the acceptable year of the Lord was here—the Year of Jubilee, which took place every 50th year—the day when salvation and the free favors of God profusely abound (Leviticus 25). What Jesus was really saying was, "I am your Year of Jubilee!" THE LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, 2 Say to the Israelites, When you come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath to the Lord. 3 For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits. 4 But in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord; you shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap and the grapes on your uncultivated vine you shall not gather, for it is a year of rest to the land. 6 And the sabbath rest of the [untilled] land shall [in its increase] furnish food for you, for your male and female slaves, your hired servant, and the temporary resident who lives with you, 7 For your domestic animals also and for the [wild] beasts in your land; all its yield shall be for food.8 And you shall number seven sabbaths or weeks of years for you, seven times seven years, so the total time of the seven weeks of years shall be forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall sound abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month [almost October]; on the Day of Atonement blow the trumpet in all your land. 10 And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his ancestral possession [which through poverty he was compelled to sell], and each of you shall return to his family [from whom he was separated in bond service]. 11 That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall not sow, or reap and store what grows of itself, or gather the grapes of the uncultivated vines. 12 For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat the [sufficient] increase of it out of the field. 13 In this Year of Jubilee each of you shall return to his ancestral property. 14 And if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. Leviticus 25:1-14 AMP Under the Old Covenant every seventh year was a time to let the ground rest so that it could recover and come back stronger, producing a stronger, healthier, more abundant harvest. But the fiftieth year—Jubilee—was an extra special year. It was a Holy year. In the last year, before the year of rest, God caused the ground to produce three times as much fruit so that His people could eat and be satisfied whilst the ground rested and whilst they rested in His goodness. Jubilee is a year of faith—where you rest from your own labors and your own efforts—allowing God's goodness to lead you and feed you. God wants us to remember that it is He Who watches over us, feeding us, guiding us, and providing for us. If we forget this, we will wear ourselves out with our own efforts, but if we remember that He is the source of our life and every good thing in our life, then we can relax in Him and focus on worshipping Him and yielding to Him. Jubilee is a time to let slaves go free, to redeem what has been lost and to reach out and help both family and neighbors and those who cannot help themselves. In the year of Jubilee, even though you do not plow or prune or sow, you are still able to eat of the fruit that the ground produces. You cannot reap from a field that you have never sown, but when you have faithfully sown and sown and sown and then God calls a Jubilee year for you, then you know that ...
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    31 mins
  • Apologia for the Law Pt 2 with Roger Hadad - JL 223

    Apologia for the Law Pt 2 with Roger Hadad - JL 223
    Oct 14 2024
    There is another New Testament writer of just one book, who sometimes seems to counter Paul’s arguments relating to the law. I’m talking, of course, about the book of James, written by the brother of the Master, though I understand his real name was Jacob or in Hebrew Ja’akov. You make the point that many of James arguments mirror those of the Master, and that James did not have a pharasaical background as Paul did. Why is this important and what can we learn from James about our understanding of the law? Your chapter titled “The Sacred Law” begins perhaps ironically with a quote from Paul, Romans 7:12 “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good”. You then devote about 11 pages to just a portion of the many scriptures that describe the law as good, holy and something we should try to keep. Not to bore our listeners who don’t get excited about arguments based on the original Greek and Hebrew meanings, but you make a fascinating point about the use of the Greek words nomos and entole referring to the law and the commandments. Walk us through this observation and it’s implications for our understanding. You are intellectually honest, as they say, in your book, and note that modern Christianity’s understanding of the law is not without reason. You list several verses commonly used to support a certain viewpoint. I’d like to read these verses and then ask you to respond. The first verse is 2 Cor 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” The next verse is Hebrews 8:13 “In that He says a New Covenant, he has the made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” And third is John 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another”. What is your response to these verses? When asked for the greatest commandment, Christ said basically to love God and love others. Why is it a mistake to think of this love as an emotional love? No debate on this topic is complete without a reference to Acts 15. Talk to us about what happened in Acts 15 and what we should learn from it as it relates to our relationship with the law? Another phrase used in this debate is the New Covenant. Now, I realize we could devote multiple podcast episodes just talking about the concept of a covenant and all its uses in the Bible, but to cut to the chase what is your understanding of what the New Covenant is and how it should impact our faith and our understanding of the law? You use an interesting analogy of a Rubik’s cube to describe the puzzle of understanding what Christ described as weightier matters of the law, those of justice, faith and mercy. What is the relationship of these three concepts to each other?
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    40 mins
  • Apologia for the Law Pt 1 with Roger Hadad - JL222

    Apologia for the Law Pt 1 with Roger Hadad - JL222
    Oct 7 2024
    Q&A: Before we start, I want to say that full disclosure is that I consider you a friend and we attend the same congregation. I also wanted to say up front that we’re going to talk about a book You wrote called “Apologia for thee Law and the Sabbath”. And in that book you often refer to Christ as the Master. One advantage of this is that we avoid turning off one group or another by referring to Him as either Jesus or Yeshua, so if it’s alright I’ll try to refer to Him during our interview in a similar way, either as the Master or as simply Christ. You begin that book by stating that the book is not for someone who has already made up their mind that the law has been done away with. I guess we could say the same thing to our listeners, that if they’ve already up their mind on this topic this interview is not for them. Why do you say that and how would you describe the mindset of the listener who is well suited to hear our discussion today? You use an analogy of 3 TV sets for sale to describe the acceptable doctrine of Christianity today. Share that analog with us to help set the table, so to speak, for our talk today. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on your testimony in this discussion in order to save time for all the arguments from your book, but you talk about how your faith journey included a time spent with what you call other’s centered legalism. Since legalism is often a knee-jerk reaction or description to what we’re going to talk about today, define for us others-centered legalism as you experienced it and how it differs from the inner cultivation of the spirit. You start out by asking a question, can we sin without the law, and to make your point you enlist a stop sign analogy. So what is the answer to this question and explain it to us using that stop sign analogy. There are many scriptures that challenge us “not to sin” or to be righteous, and yet as Christians we believe Christ’s sacrifice was needed. How do we rectify these two seemingly incongruous ideas? Your chapter titled “dead to the law” starts out with a quote from Peter where he states that Paul’s writings are hard to understand, to which I think we can all say “Amen”. This a big deal since 2/3 of the NT was written by Paul, and many Christian doctrines are based wholly or at least in part on his writings. So let’s address this concept of being dead to the law and what seem to be contradictions in Paul’s writings. You make the point that when there are apparent contradictions with Paul or anywhere in scripture we need to look beyond the superficial meaning. So let me ask you the question, did Christ cancel or nullify the law, and how does the Sermon on the Mount help answer this question? You state that the law is not an obstacle for salvation but its indispensable platform. What do you mean by that? Another twist on this same argument is that Christ gave us a new law and it’s called love. Is this true? Let’s talk about he concept of a bond servant as described in both the OT and in the NT most notably in an often ignored short book called Philemon. What can this tell us about our relationship to the law? So the concept of a bond servant can help us better understand our relationship to the law, but you say that the concept of a school master can help us understand the reverse, the relationship of the law to us. Talk to us about this. Now with the concepts of bondservant and schoolmaster as a background, how can we better understand what Paul means when he talks about the law of liberty?
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    46 mins
  • JL221 - Welcome Part 2 - Welcome to the Jacobs Ladder Podcast

    JL221 - Welcome Part 2 - Welcome to the Jacobs Ladder Podcast
    Sep 27 2024
    This is the second Welcome Episode for this podcast and along with it I'm officially changing the name of this podcast from Christian Men at Work to Jacobs Ladder and along with the name change I'm changing the focus and purpose of the podcast. The purpose of the Christian Men at Work podcast, since it first started in October of 2016, has been to inspire you to have joy and purpose in your work. I've attempted to do that in two ways. First, I've interviewed men from all walks of life, with varying job titles, who have had one thing in common, they've all chosen daily to live out their Christian faith through their work, and because of that they've been leading, prospering, glorifying God, and finding joy and purpose in their work. The second way I've tried to achieve this goal is through short messages called Selah episodes where I've shared my thoughts, usually pretty closely related to the topic of faith at work. The last episode, which was #220, was Feb 5, 2024, where I interviewed Jason Pierce talking about a Vision for Life. Up to that point, I had conducted 110 interview style episodes with the other half being Selah episodes. If you've been a listener over the years, you may have noticed a trend in recent years toward more Selah episodes as well as a departure at times from the faith at work focus. I've never gone this long, about 8 months, without producing an episode. Before I resumed the podcast again, I wanted to be sure I was both mentally and emotionally ready to do so, and I wanted to clarify the focus and purpose for the podcast before moving forward. I felt I needed to do that first so that I could be passionate about it again, so that I would be motivated to pour myself into it, and so that I could be consistent with it. During the last few years I've had two primary changes in my life. One has been a gut-wrenching, life changing personal challenge which has driven me closer to my Creator and closer to other men in friendship, particularly men that are going through similar personal challenges. The other big change in my life has been that I've changed some of my beliefs and practices which are best described as more Messianic than Christian. To quickly address that issue, I share the belief with Christians that Jesus is the Son of God, that He is the long promised Messiah, and that my salvation comes from faith in Him and His righteousness alone and not my work or good deeds. Where I defer from most Christians is that I believe it's God's will for us to follow His law, including the Torah or first 5 books of the Bible, as well as the Prophets and Writings (i.e. Old Testament) out of love towards Him and not out of obligation or to earn salvation. In practical terms that means I observe the 7 Feasts rather than Christmas and Easter, I follow the dietary laws, I observe Sabbath on day 7 and not day 1 and other things that are usually practiced by observant Jews. You could say that I differ from Christians by following the the Law and I differ from Jews by following Jesus and I believe we should do both. If you've been listening in recent years you've probably noted those two changes in my life through the messages I've been sharing. When I started this Podcast I had just gone through a major challenge in my life where I had gone bankrupt from chasing get-rich-quick schemes and not having a biblical approach towards work and finances. I had, at the same time, gone through some other personal challenges but I felt led to write a book called Jesus is at Work dealing with the faith at work issue, and write a blog on the same topic. Soon after that, I switched from blogging to podcasting. I still feel passionate about incorporating my faith into my work. I love my job more than ever, and I am very thankful for it. I believe my work at my job is part of my purpose here on earth. I want to continue to weave into this podcast the faith at work theme and I want to continue to focus primarily on men. However, moving forward I will be broadening the focus. What is the new focus? Well, you could summarize it by a Beatles song "All you need is love", but seriously, love is the simplest way for me to summarize where I want the focus to be. Specifically, I want to talk about loving God, loving others and loving ourselves, at work and at home. Without love, having faith at work or in our personal lives doesn't mean anything, in my opinion. It's no coincidence that this is basically what Jesus, who I normally call Yeshua, said summarizes the two greatest commandments, upon which hang all the law and the prophets. It's also a paraphrase of the Sh'ma, which Jewish people in their synagogues and Messianics in their congregations recite every Shabbat. I chose as the new title for this podcast Jacobs Ladder, which was recommended by a dear friend. The intent of that title is to provide an image of an intimate connection between God and man, without which we have no hope of ...
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    10 mins
  • Vision for Life with Jason Pierce-CMAW220

    Vision for Life with Jason Pierce-CMAW220
    Feb 5 2024

    Contact Jason at j316173@hotmail.com

    Videos:

    The Why of It All

    Alan Watts What do you desire?
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    38 mins
  • Real Estate Investing with Brett Snodgrass-CMAW219

    Real Estate Investing with Brett Snodgrass-CMAW219
    Dec 26 2023
    52 mins
  • AI with Luke Richey-CMAW218

    AI with Luke Richey-CMAW218
    Nov 26 2023
    For more info contact luke@gravityjack.com Luke Richey began coding software at the age of 14, a foundation upon which he has built a life dedicated to businesses that bring society and technology into the future. His broad understanding of the industry, paired with a passion for both integrity and optimization within the business domain, led him to create many successful startups. In 2009, after selling his business to a gaming company, he co-founded Gravity Jack with a vision to advance mobile-based augmented reality. With a strong patent portfolio, dedicated research team and a top-tier client roster, Gravity Jack was quickly established as a leader in the industry. On March 16, 2019, following multiple supernatural encounters with the Lord, Luke surrendered his heart to Jesus Christ. Transformed and fully submitted to his Savior, Luke saw God work many miracles in his life, including the restoration of his health, his marriage, his family and his finances. The impact of his spiritual transformation and new reliance on Christ was so evident to those around him that revival broke out throughout his extended family. The founders of Gravity Jack, Luke and Jen Richey, are passionate followers of Jesus who are on a mission to help spread the gospel to the 50% of the population that does not have the Bible translated in their heart language by using AI and an AR game. Automatic translation engines like Google Translate only support the top 100 languages (ChatGPT supports 95) and the likelihood of these tech giants supporting any more languages is close to none. This is due to smaller linguistic communities lacking the critical mass of users needed to justify a profitable investment, and they often lack the necessary large datasets for effective AI training. Consequently, corporations claiming to be global connectors are disregarding the economic, intellectual and social potential of half the world's population. Gravity Jack is aiming to leverage the appeal of the gaming industry and the dedication of its market to bring the other 50% of the world onto the international economic stage that otherwise would never see, hear or read much of anything in their native language. Gravity Jack has a unique opportunity to do something that has not been done before. The company is currently developing an original augmented reality video game, WarTribe of Binyamin, which creates a multi-world war game with active and passive multiplayer role-playing, featuring revolutionary and patented augmented reality elements and geo ownership while simultaneously economically uplifting people in poverty. The video game bundles AR, AI and play-to-earn into one dynamic mobile app – all while generating what is poised to be the most robust translation service available on the marketplace. Ken Barun, Senior Vice President of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was recently announced as one of the newest members to the Board of Directors at Gravity Jack. Ken is a distinguished leader with extensive corporate and philanthropic experience, including his role as President/CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities Worldwide and Director of Projects and Policy on the White House staff to First Lady, Nancy Reagan. His commitment to making a positive impact is evident in his founding of the charity, and his dedication to charitable work and corporate social responsibility reflects his passion for making a difference in the world.
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    45 mins
  • Get and Give Feedback-Selah113-CMAW217

    Get and Give Feedback-Selah113-CMAW217
    Nov 13 2023
    Get and Give Feedback Surveys from Lowe’s to just about everywhere online Why? Because it’s so important to not just work efficiently but to make sure you’re pursuing the right objective and in the right manner I manage projects and critical aspect of my job is defining early and accurately what my customer or stakeholder needs and wants as project deliverables Making assumptions or rushing to the execution phase are two big errors which lead to poor results and damaged business relationships On this topic I recommend recent episode of the Emotionally Healthy Podcast called The Life Changing Skill of Clarifying expectations” This is what emotionally mature individuals do, and one of the axioms on that podcast is that you can’t be spiritually mature unless you’re emotionally mature Asking for feedback Talking too loud Too harsh in a meeting Give feedback (solicited and unsolicited) I've worked where we receive emails from managers asking me to give feedback to their direct reports soon after working with them. I try to always give that feedback and to make it meaningful not just vanilla and predictable How is very important " Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up." - James 4:10 "Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, But he who hates correction is stupid." - Proverbs 12:1 So provide feedback through surveys when you can as a gift to others, but also seek feedback about yourself and never be afraid to face the music of truth when it comes to our behavior and how our behavior is received by others.
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    8 mins