Adventist Review Podcasts

Searching The Obvious: The Taste of Gratitude (September 2019)

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”(Psalm 139:7, NRSV) “Searching the Obvious” focuses on how the Holy Spirit is ever active in our surroundings and in our lives, urging us to serve others. Personal stories challenge the reader to be mindful of our Christian Walk, recognize our own fallibility and slow down to ‘search the obvious’, the active presence of the Holy Spirit ever always around us. www.adventistreiew.org. www.adventistreview.org 

GraceNotes: Upending Our Economy (August 23, 2019)

The most famous story Jesus ever told was all about our struggle to receive the Father’s grace and love. One son insists he isn’t worthy of such kindness. The other argues that loyalty and self-sacrifice should count for more than grace in the father’s economy.  Each wants a different status than his father is bestowing. But God’s family is founded on His gift of grace, not on our faithfulness or service. Receiving what Jesus is still offering requires we surrender all our notions of unworthiness or value. Neither “wandering in a far country” nor “staying at home” prepares us to accept a gift that isn’t bound to our behavior. You cannot earn the Father’s love:  you cannot lose the Father’s love. Allow yourself a great embrace. Receive His love.  Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

GraceNotes: Untiring Grace (August 16, 2019)

Those who fear the coming triumph of grace sadly don’t know the love of which they are afraid. They want a “gospel” that is really not “good news”—for its litany of “should,” “ought,” and “must” betrays that they don’t understand Jesus as the Author and Finisher of our faith.  They replace the long obedience of grateful love with hours of clenched teeth and self-flagellation, hoping He will notice and approve. They forget that “by His stripes we are healed.” But I’m a witness that a day will come when each will meet the Love that will not let them go. Grace always knocks at shut doors, closed hearts, and frozen lives, awaiting that glad moment when we admit our helplessness and need. If you know grace, then you’ve been warmed. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

GraceNotes: Grace Under Fire (August 9, 2019)

Even in our ungracious world, there’s persisting admiration for the man or woman who demonstrates “grace under fire”—poised and composed under disheartening provocations. “It’s just a part of her character,” we enviously say, remembering how frequently we’ve fought our fires with fire. And while there may be some gallant souls who didn’t consciously learn this grace from God, most we admire act graciously because they know the Giver of this gift. Our growing awareness of how much we’ve been broken and how well we’ve been redeemed helps us sympathize with other broken people. It makes us long—yes, ache—to see their lives restored, renewed, rehealed. We live to give away what we’ve been given. Grace had its origin in a love outside of us. It has its present—and its future—in loving well beyond ourselves. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

GraceNotes: The Number of Forgiveness (August 2, 2019)

When we ask, “How often should I forgive?” we pretend what isn’t true—that there have only been a modest number of times when we required forgiveness. The answer from the Lord—and from an honest conscience—is that we ought to forgive as many times as we have been forgiven.  That number is unknowable, and, truth be told, steadily growing. Forgiveness is a way of being, not a sin-by-sin accounting system designed to make us all good recordkeepers.  It’s in the heart of Jesus to “not hold our sins against us,” to fully, wholly, and yes, joyfully erase the record of our sins when we confess and leave them.  And we’ll do the same for others when we candidly admit how much we’ve been forgiven.  Grace knows no integers, no fractions, and no decimal points.  This is the life we live when we go walking with the Lord. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.

Sarah Kannanaikkel: Beautiful, Wonderful Words (August 2019)

Sarah Kannanaikkel is an international service employee specialist at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.

Transformation Tips: Five Levels of Personal Peace (August 2019)

Delbert Baker is the vice chancellor of Adventist University of Africa, near Nairobi, Kenya. 

Introducing The Why: Am I In The Way? (August 2019)

Jimmy Phillips is the network marketing director for Kettering Health Network. 

GraceNotes: The Choice That Heals (July 26, 2019)

Grace is always a choice—when God extends it to us, or when we extend it to each other. The decision to forgive, to not hold someone’s sins like death shrouds up against them, is always made in light of other options. No one can require God to love us unconditionally and forgive us unreservedly, for we are the broken, foolish ones who willfully transgressed His law. And when the broken, foolish people around us disappoint or damage us, grace is a choice we make in echo of God’s kindness. Only wounded hearts can offer forgiveness: only those with power to mete out penalties and vengeance can pour out grace instead. We are never more like Jesus than when we gift to those who injure us what neither they nor we deserve. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

GraceNotes: The Dawn of Trust (July 19, 2019)

Is there a greater joy than knowing for even one hour that you are in the center of God’s will—that through some miracle of grace, you are aligned with plans the Father made to win you back and win the hearts of those you love? Is there a better confidence than the one which every Sabbath reminds you that “the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”? Can there be a deeper security than when Christ’s word of certainty penetrates your fears and doubts with the assurance, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together”? The answers to those questions, friends, are “no,” “no,” and “no”—nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Your hope will rise; your joy will find its wings. Trust is the dawn from which our daylight grows. So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Note: If you are blessed by GraceNotes, we invite you to subscribe.