What does it really mean to say, “The Lord is my Shepherd”? In this message, Promise Bradley invites us to move beyond seeing Psalm 23 as familiar words and into a deeper relationship with Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Through Psalm 23 and John 10, she reminds us that God does not simply want us to know about Him. He wants us to know Him personally, trust His leadership, and faithfully follow wherever He leads.
Knowing the Good Shepherd Personally
At the heart of The Lord Is My Shepherd is the truth that David’s declaration was deeply personal. He did not describe God as a shepherd in general. He declared, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” That same invitation is available to every believer today.
Jesus calls His followers into a relationship where He knows them by name, cares for them, protects them, and leads them with perfect wisdom. Rather than relying on our own understanding, we can confidently place our lives in the hands of the One who always leads with love and faithfulness.
Trusting the Shepherd’s Leading
Following Jesus does not always mean taking the easiest path. Instead, the Good Shepherd leads His people on paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Sometimes those paths include uncertainty, sacrifice, or seasons we would never choose on our own. Yet every step has a purpose because the Shepherd always sees what His sheep cannot.
Throughout The Lord Is My Shepherd, Promise challenges believers to trust God’s direction even when His plans differ from their own. Using the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Peter, and the older brother in Jesus’ parable, she demonstrates how easily we try to control outcomes instead of trusting the Shepherd who already knows the way.
Hearing the Shepherd’s Voice
One of the encouraging truths in The Lord Is My Shepherd is that Jesus still speaks to His people. His sheep can recognize His voice as they spend time in Scripture, prayer, and relationship with Him.
Rather than believing the lie that hearing God is reserved for a select few, believers can grow in discernment by continually drawing near to the Shepherd. As we learn His character through His Word, we become more confident in recognizing His leading in everyday life.
Letting Go of Control
A central challenge of this message is learning to surrender control. Many people naturally want to manage every situation, relationship, and outcome. However, Promise reminds us that God has not called us to control others. Instead, He calls us to trust Him while allowing the Holy Spirit to produce self-control within us.
As believers release fear, pride, and the need to control every circumstance, they discover greater freedom to follow Jesus with confidence. The Shepherd faithfully leads those who willingly place their lives in His hands.
Follow the Good Shepherd
The Lord Is My Shepherd offers both comfort and challenge. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who restores, protects, and faithfully leads His sheep. He never abandons those who belong to Him, even when the journey includes valleys or difficult decisions.
This message encourages every believer to know the Good Shepherd more deeply, trust His leadership more fully, hear His voice more clearly, and follow Him wherever He leads. As you grow in your relationship with Christ, you will discover that the safest place to be is always with the Shepherd who knows the way.
Key Scriptures Psalm 23:1–6, John 10:1–30, Genesis 22:1–14, Galatians 5:22–23, Luke 15:25–32
What if your relationship with God was never meant to be built on striving, proving, or earning? Many believers know the words grace and faith, yet still live as though God’s goodness depends on their performance. In Sons and Daughters Through Faith, Chad Everett takes us through Galatians 3 to call us back to the foundation of the Christian life: God provides by grace, and we receive through faith.
Receiving What Grace Has Provided
Paul asks the Galatians a simple but confronting question: Did you receive the Spirit by works or by the hearing of faith? That same question still searches our hearts today. Are we trying to earn what God has already given? Are we working to make God willing, or are we learning to receive what He has provided through Jesus?
Sons and daughters through faith do not have to convince the Father to be good. He already is. Faith does not twist God’s arm or persuade Him to care. Instead, faith takes hold of what grace has already made available. Salvation, righteousness, the work of the Spirit, and the promises of God begin with Him, not with us.
Living From Identity, Not Performance
Because of Jesus, we do not obey to become sons and daughters. We obey because, through faith, we already are sons and daughters. That truth changes everything.
When identity rests on performance, life becomes exhausting. Every failure feels like rejection. Every weakness feels like proof that we are not enough. However, when identity rests in Christ, obedience flows from love instead of fear. Growth produces works; works do not produce sonship.
Sons and daughters through faith live from a secure place. They do not strive for a position in the family. They grow, serve, and obey from their place in the family.
From Sonship to Family
Faith does more than connect us to God individually. It places us into the family of God. Therefore, church becomes more than a service to attend or a message to consume. It becomes a family to belong to, serve, strengthen, and grow with.
This message also gives credit to a teaching by Banning Liebscher that helped frame the contrast between viewing church as a restaurant and viewing church as a family. A restaurant serves customers. A family grows when everyone contributes.
That picture challenges a consumer mindset. If church becomes a restaurant, we show up, receive what we prefer, and leave disconnected. But God designed His people for something deeper.
A Family to Grow With
When believers understand that they are sons and daughters through faith, church stops being something they simply attend and becomes a family they help strengthen. Instead of only asking what they received from a service, they begin to consider how God may want to use them to encourage, serve, and build up others.
This message calls every believer to receive what God has provided, rest in their identity in Christ, and take their place in the Family of Faith. God is not building a crowd of consumers. He is building a family of sons and daughters through faith who serve one another, encourage one another, and grow together in Jesus.
Scripture References Galatians 3:1–29, Ephesians 2:8–9, John 3:3–6, John 14:6, Philippians 1:6
Consider Your Ways: The Temple God Wants to Build is a timely sermon from Chris Pollard that calls the church to wake up, examine our priorities, and return to what God has asked us to build.
Teaching from Haggai 1, this message challenges every believer to ask a serious question: Have I focused more on building my own life than on honoring the Lord with the life He gave me? In Haggai’s day, the people said it was not time to rebuild the Lord’s house. However, they continued living in their own paneled houses while God’s house remained unfinished. Through the prophet Haggai, the Lord spoke directly to their priorities and said, “Consider your ways.”
A Call to Examine Our Priorities
The phrase Consider Your Ways is more than a sermon title. Instead, it is an invitation from the Lord to stop, look honestly, and allow Him to search our hearts. Today, God still calls His people to examine what receives their time, attention, energy, affection, and obedience.
Because of that, this sermon challenges believers to move beyond religious activity and ask honest questions. Is my life a place where God is honored? Have I delayed obedience? Have I allowed comfort or compromise to weaken my response to God? Also, have I become more concerned with outward appearance than inward surrender?
God Is Building People
Chris Pollard reminds the church that God cares about more than buildings, platforms, performance, or external success. Most importantly, God is building people. Scripture teaches that believers are the temple of the Holy Spirit, which means our lives belong to Him.
As a result, Consider Your Ways becomes a personal call. God wants to build something in us that can carry His presence, reflect His character, and bring Him glory. He wants hearts that respond quickly, minds renewed by truth, and lives led by the Holy Spirit.
Awake in the Late Hour
This message also carries urgency. Chris emphasizes that the church is not in the early hours, but in the late hour. Since Jesus is coming again, the people of God cannot afford to live spiritually asleep.
Therefore, this is not the time for comfort, compromise, distraction, deception, or delay. The hour requires surrender. It also requires obedience. More than ever, it requires believers who will stop postponing what God has already spoken.
Reject Distraction, Deception, and Delay
In addition, Consider Your Ways exposes the patterns that pull believers away from obedience. Distraction divides our focus. Deception distorts the truth. Then, delay postpones obedience until it becomes disobedience.
Culture constantly competes for our attention. Yet God calls His people to live by a different pattern. Truth enters the heart, the mind gets renewed, the Spirit leads, and the life becomes transformed.
Respond to What God Is Building
Ultimately, this sermon is a call to stop drifting and start building. It challenges every believer to Consider Your Ways before the Lord and respond with fresh surrender.
God is still building His people. He has not finished the work He started. So now is the time to wake up, obey His Word, and become the temple He is pleased to dwell in.
Key Scriptures Haggai 1:2–8, Philippians 1:6, 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, Romans 12:1–2, Galatians 5:7–8
If you’ve heard this your whole life and you know it, then why aren’t you doing it?
Jesus Is the Light of the World
Many believers know the words of Jesus in Matthew 5. They have heard them in Sunday School, youth group, church services, and Bible studies. Yet Justin Younger challenges listeners to move beyond familiarity and ask an honest question: Are we actually living what we know?
In this message, Justin teaches that Jesus is the true Light of the World. However, when believers surrender their lives to Christ, His light begins to shine through them. As a result, every follower of Jesus becomes part of God’s plan to bring light into a dark world. The light of the world is not simply a title believers carry; it is a calling they must live out every day.
Walking in the Light
Throughout this message, Justin emphasizes that there is no mixture between light and darkness. Followers of Jesus cannot claim to walk in the light while continually partnering with darkness. Instead, God calls believers to examine every area of their lives and submit it fully to Him.
This challenge requires honesty. It requires believers to stop focusing only on the areas where they are doing well and allow God to reveal the areas that still need transformation. The light of the world does not hide from truth. Rather, it welcomes God’s correction and allows His light to expose what needs to change.
A Witness Through Everyday Life
Justin also reminds believers that witnessing is not limited to preaching, public speaking, or ministry positions. Every Christian serves as a witness through the way they live. Every conversation, decision, attitude, and response communicates something about the condition of the heart.
Consequently, the light of the world shines not only through words but also through actions. Friends, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, and family members constantly observe how believers live. Therefore, every follower of Jesus must ask whether their life points people toward Christ or away from Him.
Shining the Light at Home
One of the strongest themes in this message focuses on influence within the home. Justin challenges parents, grandparents, and spiritual leaders to recognize the responsibility God has entrusted to them. Children often learn more from what they see than from what they hear.
Because of that, believers must intentionally shine the light of Christ within their families. God has called His people to model truth, demonstrate obedience, and create environments where the next generation can encounter Jesus. The light of the world begins at home before it ever reaches the wider culture.
Don’t Hide Your Light
As darkness increases in the world, many people wonder what the answer is. Justin’s message offers a simple but powerful response: turn on the light. Believers do not overcome darkness by complaining about it. They overcome darkness by allowing Jesus to shine through their lives.
This message serves as a call to spiritual examination, renewed intimacy with God, and faithful obedience. If you have heard these scriptures your whole life, now is the time to ask yourself whether you are truly living as the light of the world.
Don’t hide your light. Let Jesus shine through every part of your life and point others toward Him.
Key Scriptures Matthew 5:13–16, John 8:12, 1 John 1:5–7, Acts 1:8, 2 Timothy 3:1–5
What Does It Mean to Be Sons and Daughters of God?
In this message from the Spiritual Authority: Restored In Christ series, Chad Everett explores one of the most important truths in Scripture: understanding our identity as sons and daughters of God. Before believers can walk in spiritual authority, they must first know who they are in Christ.
Teaching from Galatians 3, Chad shows that believers do not become sons and daughters through religious performance, good works, or personal effort. Instead, God welcomes people into His family through faith in Jesus Christ. Because of Christ’s finished work, believers become heirs of God’s promises and recipients of His grace.
As a result, spiritual authority begins with identity. When believers understand who Jesus is and who they are in Him, they gain confidence to walk in faith and obedience.
Guarding Against Deception
At the same time, one of the greatest dangers facing believers today: deception.
Paul asks the Galatians a powerful question: “Who has bewitched you?” Although the Galatians started their journey by faith, they allowed false ideas to pull them away from the truth of the gospel.
Likewise, believers today face constant pressure from culture, opinions, social media, and competing worldviews. Therefore, followers of Jesus must remain rooted in God’s Word. Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples not to be deceived. Consequently, believers must learn to test every voice, teaching, and influence against biblical truth.
When believers know the truth, they can recognize deception before it takes root.
Jesus Is the Truth
Truth is not simply a concept or philosophy. Rather, truth is found in a person.
Jesus declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Because Jesus is the truth, believers must look to Him when searching for answers, direction, and wisdom.
Furthermore, God’s Word reveals His truth and protects believers from confusion. In a world filled with shifting opinions, Jesus remains the unchanging foundation.
Living as Sons and Daughters of God
The message concludes with a challenge to stop striving for God’s approval and start living from the Spirit.
Many believers begin their relationship with God through faith. However, over time they can fall into the trap of trying to earn what God has already given by grace. Chad reminds believers that spiritual growth comes through dependence on the Holy Spirit, not through self-effort.
As sons and daughters of God, believers can rest in their identity, trust God’s promises, and walk confidently in spiritual authority. Instead of living from fear, insecurity, or performance, they can live from faith and relationship.
Knowing who He is and who we are in Him is the key factor for knowing our spiritual authority.
That truth shapes how believers think, pray, and live each day. Ultimately, understanding our identity as sons and daughters of God becomes the foundation for walking in the authority Christ has restored to His people.
Scripture References Galatians 3:1-29, John 14:6, John 17:17, Romans 8:5-6, Ephesians 2:8-9