Prayer and Thanksgiving

As humans, we experience many concerns and worries. Our families, jobs, decisions, uncertainty, illness, and more weigh heavily on our hearts during the various seasons of our lives. Jesus teaches us to bring these needs to God in prayer. But if God already knows our needs, why do we pray? What happens when an answer doesn’t come? Join us as we study Jesus’ teachings on prayer and the prayers of Hezekiah and Paul to learn why we bring our needs before our Heavenly Father, how God receives our prayers, and why we can approach God with honesty, confidence, and trust even when we wrestle with the difficult question of unanswered prayer.

To make a confession means to admit guilt and wrongdoing. Most of us feel uncomfortable admitting our shame and guilt when we make mistakes, but for Christians, it’s an important and valuable part of our faith. Join us as we study the penitential prayers of David and Daniel and discuss how they can inform our own prayers. Then we’ll learn from the apostles why we need to make repentance a regular part of our prayers. We will also discover the comfort that awaits us on the other side of our honest prayers of confession.

The apostle Paul instructs us to rejoice and pray with thanksgiving, but in the realities of daily life, it often doesn’t seem that easy. Yet, the Bible teaches that thanksgiving is more than merely a response to favorable circumstances; it is rooted in who God is, what he has done, and the confidence that he holds our lives in his faithful hands. Join us as we study prayers of thanksgiving in the Bible and what they reveal about praising God. Together, we’ll discuss why our prayers of gratitude matter and how they benefit our relationship with God, enrich our prayer life, and strengthen our faith.

Many believers in all seasons of life understand what it feels like to fervently pray for the desires of their hearts. One listener wrote to us about the sorrow he endured due to childlessness despite his prayers, and the isolation and stigma he experienced in church as a result. He asked us to talk more about what it means when God says no to our prayers. This is a sensitive topic, but important to discuss, and we’re grateful to him for bringing it to our attention. Sharing our experiences and testimonies gives hope to others in similar situations. It calls for accountability in our words and actions. Together, let’s dig into Scripture for biblical insight and comfort as we discuss the pain and struggle of unanswered prayer in the lives of individual believers and in the community of faith. 

Listeners like you send us their questions about theology and faith as they study God’s Word. Was Judas saved even though he betrayed Jesus? How do I share my faith with non-believers? What if people I love are resistant to hearing about Jesus? How should I pray for people who are unsaved? Join us as we dig into Scripture to discuss what we know about Judas, learn about the Great Commission Jesus gave us, evangelism, and intercessory prayer for non-believers. 

As humans, we are uniquely aware of time. We talk about the passing of time, we think about the end of time, and we often wish for more time. Sometimes it feels like time is fleeting and sometimes feels like time drags on. Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes contains one of the book’s most well-known passages. The Teacher opens “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” He then goes on to share a well-known list of life’s seasons. He  calls time a burden, but also says God has “set eternity in the human heart.” Join us as we discuss the association between wisdom and recognizing the seasons of life, as we seek to understand what it means to have eternity in our hearts, and as we receive the Teacher’s encouragement and advice for finding hope and meaning in life.

Do you find joy and satisfaction in your work? Or do you consider work a necessary evil? Many of us spend huge portions of our life working, sometimes doing paid work, other times unpaid. You might say that work is a common theme in each of our lives. It’s also a common theme in the book of Ecclesiastes. In his writings, the Teacher repeatedly comes to the conclusion that work, labor, and toil are meaningless. But is it really that simple? If we carefully study the Teacher’s conclusions, we’ll discover some insightful wisdom about work and our identity, about why our motivation for work matters, about work/life balance, and about the secret for finding joy and satisfaction in our work.

Does life ever feel repetitive, monotonous? Like day in, day out your struggles are the same, your joys seem fleeting, and nothing ever changes. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes echoed this very sentiment. Throughout the book, we repeatedly read his refrain, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” He considers wisdom, knowledge, and pleasure and determines that all of these are meaningless pursuits in life, they will not provide any lasting value. Join us as we examine what the Teacher means by declaring everything meaningless and discover what we can learn about our life of faith and where we can find value, meaning, and hope in life in the midst of, and in spite of, the Teacher’s grim pronouncement. 

Hebrews shows us why we should remain faithful to Jesus and how to cultivate a faith that endures. Now, as Hebrews concludes, the author shows us how to live and the kind of people we should be when our confidence is in Christ alone. Learn about God’s loving discipline, the unshakable kingdom we’ve received through Christ, and the everyday faithfulness that marks God’s people on their path of discipleship.