Truth Shots
What Pressing On Looks Like
April 2, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • 2 Corinthians 4:7
When you commit your life as a follower of Jesus Christ, you are saying yes to a life of paradox. You will win, but only after battling. You will live in the Spirit, but only as you die to the flesh. You will experience God’s glory through your own groans. The Christian is called to a life of resurrection triumph, but the Christian only experiences that by first submitting to a crucifixion death. Jesus declared amazing victory, reward, and glory for those who endure unto the end. What then is it precisely that w must endure to receive the full reward? This episode of Truth Shots reminds you that though the life of the Christian is not easy, it is absolutely breathtaking when lived out by pressing on in the pose row the Spirit.
What True Love Looks Like
March 26, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • 1 Corinthians 13:4–8
The world you live in is so incredibly confused and complicated that it cannot even produce an agreed-upon definition of what Love is. In fact, most of which is promoted as love today has little to do with what God defines love as being. When we look into Scripture, we are both confronted and blessed by how God describes love. When we adopt His definition as our own, we are liberated on the inside to love others in a way that freely gives and does not selfishly demand anything in return. This episode of Truth Shots unpacks three short passages of Scripture to help all of us understand better what true love looks like.
Accusation: Satan’s Stranglehold
March 19, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Revelation 12:9–11
Are you feeling the weight of an invisible battle? Have you checked that voice in your head/heart/spirit to make sure it is the right voice to which you should be listening? This episode of Truth Shots plunges into the heart of spiritual warfare, and offers helpful equipping for defeating a primary tool of the enemy called Accusation. Shame, guilt, regret, and fear are all byproducts of the stranglehold of demonic accusation. This podcast reveals the three primary modes of accusation that Hell uses to undercut you, and you will discover the strength found in Jesus' blood while hearing about how to silence the accuser even while in the heat of spiritual conflict.
Returning to God
March 12, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Isaiah 55
Most people who have some belief in God end up underestimating two things: His holiness & His kindness. Some are casual with the God of Heaven, believing Him to be just like us, tolerating evil, turning a blind eye to sin, and never responding to bring a hand of correction into their lives. Others are the exact opposite; they believe God to be angry, fed-up, distant, and uncaring. What is glorious is when a person can believe that God is both holy and kind at the highest possible levels. This is the God who is calling millions to return to Him in this generation. Few passages reveal this more poetically than Isaiah chapter 55. This is where we meet the God of holiness and compassion.
The God Who Fights for You
March 5, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Isaiah 41:8–13
Nowhere in the Bible are believers promised full immunity from attacks, injustice, and wrongdoing from others. Being saved is not a shield from experiencing warfare from people and demons. What is guaranteed to the believer is that, during these times of attack and trouble, we will find the God is present with us. He has committed Himself to fight for you. He will not abandon you on your battlefields. By allowing attacks to find us, He strengthens us in the Spirit and makes us to become more like Jesus. We cannot learn fully His faithfulness until we experience His power and presence in times of conflict. He becomes to us the God who fights for us.
Unrestricted Praise
February 27, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Psalm 145
Many places in Scripture call for us to stop everything, get still and intentionally consider and rejoice in the BIGNESS of God. Psalm 145 serves as a call to ensure that God's people remain engaged in a lifestyle of verbally praising God as we live out our days. Worship of God can be done in silence, but praise cannot. Praise the outward and upward expression of our inward worship. For His own reasons, God delights to hear our voices praise Him - individually and collectively. As the psalmist releases his own boast in the Lord, we are impacted freshly of the goodness, bigness and faithfulness of our Father. This Psalm reminds us how good the Father is to us, and it empowers us to personally exercise and renew our praise-muscle.
Counteracting Weariness
February 20, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Matthew 11:28–30
Stretched. Tired. Frazzled. Worn out. Beaten, Bruised. Broken. Sound familiar? This life can weigh us down with countless pains, losses and burdens. This is not a new thing. The human experience has always carried heaviness. When Jesus went to the masses in His day, He did not pretend that their lives were easy. Even His own followers would nod their heads when He mentioned the weariness of life to them. Yet, in the midst of all that might stretch us thin and wear us down, there is a beautiful invitation from Jesus. This message unpacks the simple call from the son of God to everyone who wonders if they can make it another day. Jesus is no distant King. He steps up to us in the midst of our heavy struggles and invites us with the relieving summons, “Come to Me."
Counterfeit Christianity
February 13, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Matthew 7:21–23
Many highly publicized scandals have rocked the Church in America in recent years. Men who were honored as faithful leaders proved to be hypocrites and abusers. Each time this happens, the question is raised as to whether or not these men were ever even born again. On a smaller scale, we have all known someone who professes to be a Christian but then lives in a manner that is sinful and rebellious against Jesus and His truth. What doe we make of entire denominations that celebrate “freedoms” in things that Jesus actually died to deliver us from? The best thing we can do is to leave the final judgment to Jesus, but we also must maintain a biblical understanding concerning what Jesus himself said about people like this. To do this, in this episode of Truth Shots, we visit a startling teaching from Jesus that should warn and inform us all.
Gods Brief Offer
February 6, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Ezra 9:8
Too many voices seem inclined to hijack God’s communication to declare to us, “THIS IS WHAT GOD IS SAYING RIGHT NOW!” The truth is that God is actually saying many things to His people, and there is not a singular Word that he is presently releasing that stands as the lone Word of the hour. We need a touch of wisdom from Heaven to discern the many things which the Lord is speaking to His Church in this hour. There is an ancient statement in the Book of Ezra that I believe is presently communicating something that the Church in America should consider. In this episode of Truth Shots, I share this word in a desire that each listener will consider it form himself/herself because I believe it holds what is a temporary offer to us from God. This door is presently open, but it will not remain so if we do not walk through it.
Waking Up Late
January 30, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Jeremiah 12:1–6
God once asked a discouraged prophet what he planned on doing when the real troubles began to hit his life and homeland. As heavy as Jeremiah was struggling, we would think that God would tenderly encourage his servant. God didn’t do that at all. God actually told Jeremiah that the circumstances that had him presently overwhelmed were nothing compared to what was soon to come against Israel. In our present day, we need a similar shake up from Heaven. We are not inwardly prepared for the difficulty that Scripture promises will find us as we approach the time of the Second Coming. Truthfully, by comparison, we are actually living in times of relative ease. Preparing our hearts, minds, and wills for what is just ahead may be the most important message of the hour. This episode of Truth Shots explains why.
Refiner's Fire Before Revival Fire
January 23, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Malachi 1—3
There is a large, hungry group of Christians who are convinced in the Spirit that God fully intends to release unprecedented revival across the globe before the return of Christ. These zealots are people of prayer, fasting, consecration, witness and Kingdom love. Many who have joined themselves to movements which are led by these believers are also zealous for revival fire. What many of these latecomers do not realize is that the refining fire from God must precede the revival fire from God. There must be a cleansing before there can be a combustion. There must be purifying flame before there comes a power-flame. The ancient Book of Malachi helps us understand what this process looks like so we can be prepared to steward the refiner’s fire as we contend for the revival fire.
Addressing Hypocrisy in the Church
January 16, 2024 • Jeff Lyle • Matthew 7:1–5
One of the most common reasons people cite for leaving the Church or having nothing to do with organized Christianity is the reality that there are hypocrites in the Church. While it is undeniable that there exist many people in the Church who intentionally seek to appear outwardly something better than what they are inwardly, these individuals do not actually exist in the vast numbers people seem to believe they do. Part of the problem is that people do not understand what hypocrisy truly is. They assume that, because a Christian sins or fails, then that Christian is nothing more than a hypocrite. But is this a biblical reality? What if those citing hypocrisy in the Church as a valid reason to leave the Church…are actually living as hypocrites themselves? This Truth Shot episode will offer an opportunity to learn what hypocrisy truly is, and another opportunity to learn if we ourselves are guilty of it.
Will You Trust Me?
December 26, 2023 • Jeff Lyle • Isaiah 41:10–13
God is always working to strengthen our trust-muscle. As in the physical realm, heavy weights are used to stretch and break down muscle each time we workout. When those broken down muscles repair themselves per God’s design, they are tighter, bigger and stronger. The fact of the matter is that physical muscles do not grow bigger without weight, resistance, and breaking down. This is also true in the spiritual realm. God intentionally uses heavily weighted circumstances to strengthen our trust. Resistance makes our trust-muscle larger. He breaks us down from where we were in order to build us up to where He has appointed us. The stretching and heaviness are the methods that God employs to build our ongoing trust in Him. Right now, there are plenty of heavy forces working to break us down. God wants to use those forces to build us up. This message reminds us that God is not working on us from a distance, but that He is actually as close to us in the Spirit as any personal trainer would be to us in the gym. He calls us to deeper levels of trust and empowers us to respond to Him by promising to always be by our side.
The Intersection of Your Faith
December 19, 2023 • Jeff Lyle • Philippians 3:1–11
We must be perfectly clear on this: to become a Christian is to enter into a lifelong process where everything continues to be changed by God. The idea that we can be brought from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God without there being substantial change is spiritually impossible. We move from death to life, and then from life to deeper, abundant life. Because of this, our relationships with others change dramatically. We move from living for self to living in Jesus who calls us to serve others. Ultimately, God brings us into His deepest commitments to His own Son. Like the cross, our faith interests at a vertical component and a horizontal component - we cannot truly know if we have experienced God’s design for one without the reality of the other. These verses from Philippians tell you what that will look like in your own life.
Breakthrough Grace
December 5, 2023 • Jeff Lyle • Zechariah 4:1–10
An ancient man with a funny named believed in freedom. Nearly 2500 years ago Zerubbabel left an easier life in the Persian Empire and traveled to a desolate city - the city of his fathers - to build a temple for God in Jerusalem. He left with great zeal and visions of the splendor of a restored glory to the city of God and its people. Yet when the difficult task of rebuilding the temple began, Zerubbabel encountered a massive mountain of obstacles. God then sends a word through His prophet to encourage Zerubbabel to put his hands to this great work and continue to spend himself for something greater than himself. The mountain of difficulty was immense indeed, but the grace of God was waiting to do something that had eluded Israel for nearly 100 years. It was time for God to work, and he called his man to embrace the challenge. In the face of immovable mountains, God has never flinched. Not for Zerubbabel in his day, and not for you today.