The Shield ONLINE
Teachings, messages, vital life learning, irrelevances, and other musings about the Bible from The Salvation Army's Captain Roger McCort. Life has few guarantees, but here's one: You will find something new or interesting in every message or you can reach out to me and I will provide you with additional new and interesting facts, free of charge. Guaranteed.
Episodes
320 episodes
UNWELCOME GUESTS (Advent Week Two)
We've grown a whole tragic mythology around the Christmas story that makes me CRAZY. This is supposed to be a CELEBRATION, people! Why do we insist on ignoring all the joy and adding false horrors into a tale that has enough difficulty of its o...
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Season 8
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Episode 3
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25:39
Unexpected Pregnancies (Advent Week One)
There is HOPE in the real story of Christmas that you'll never find under a tree. There are examples of people who have been clinging to the world's shame and condemnation accepting - if somewhat dubiously at first - that God can and does love ...
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Season 8
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Episode 2
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26:29
David Takes a Wife
A lot of stories people tell over and over take on a mythic quality. The story of the first American Thanksgiving is one of those. Happy Pilgrims and happy Indians planning out a feast of turkey and pumpkin pie is a fairy tale, not a history.
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Season 8
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Episode 1
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29:50
Jump Like Jehoshaphat
"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" has been a humorous non-swear swear for a long time. But who was Jehoshaphat and why was he so jumpy?This week I'm going to tell you a story from the Old Testament which highlights the difficulty of remaining at pe...
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26:03
Bible Horror Stories: Hush, Little Baby (rev)
We live in a world full of violence and pain. Our culture celebrates retribution and preemptive strikes - the destruction or at least submission of our enemies as payback for what they have (or might have) inflicted on us.The Bible certa...
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29:58
Bible Horror Stories: Ghost Story
This week, the Return of Horror Stories from the Bible continues with a tale of ghosts or demons responding to a call from King Saul. Why would Israel's first king turn his back on the commands of God to chase after messages from the dead? And ...
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24:08
Bible Horror Stories: Family Aflame
It's that time of year: Horror Stories of the Bible return to help lead us up to the celebration of all the saints who came before us. Today we delve into the twisted story of a man who was able to snatch bitter defeat from the jaws of victory....
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29:10
Salting the Manure
Sure, the Beatitudes make a nice little framework for a life of faith in Jesus. Maybe I'll work on them sometimes, you know, like a church-related hobby. But we wouldn't want to go all in on them, would we? What would people think? We'd seem to...
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Season 7
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Episode 10
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25:52
Please Persecute Me?
Is there any way to look at being made to suffer at the hands of others that could be considered any kind of a blessing? And yet, Jesus offers us this wild saying that says we are blessed when we are persecuted for righteousness! What the heck ...
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Season 7
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Episode 9
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23:02
Wage Peace
"In the real world, that stuff [that Jesus said] doesn't work."This was said to me by a pastor friend as we discussed the importance of following the Way of Jesus as he laid it out. Our disagreement was about how we are to respond to those ...
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Season 7
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Episode 8
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31:29
Pure
Purity and holiness sound like terribly boring religious concepts requiring us to lead dull lives enclosed in harsh boundaries, deprivation, and perfection. When we screw up, we're out, right? ZAP goes the lightning, then straight into the dept...
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Season 7
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Episode 7
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24:09
Have Mercy
Sometimes people suck, and when they do they should be held up for ridicule and contempt and mockery... Oh, wait. That's what we DO, but is that what Jesus asks of his followers? Is it the example God provides us with? Or are we supposed to fin...
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Season 7
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Episode 6
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25:16
In Sync and Hungry
Now that we've spent a few weeks talking about being blessed, let's talk about what the word BLESSED means and how it may not be exactly what we've been thinking it is. Then let's talk about the deeper meaning of righteousness and ...
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Season 7
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Episode 5
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27:35
Meekness, Not Weakness
Just because things rhyme, that doesn't mean they are the same. If you use a cat for a bat, you'll never get a hit, and if you wear it as a hat, you'll probably regret it. And yet we tend to mix up meekness by thinking it is a weakness when the...
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Season 7
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Episode 4
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27:07
Hurts
Today we start with a lesson in the obvious: Life hurts. There are wounds which we need to tend to or they will fester and drive us to self-destructive means of altering or covering the pain because we just want it to stop hurting. Or the pain ...
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Season 7
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Episode 3
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26:54
Unclench
What does it mean to be poor and why would Jesus claim that this is some kind of blessed state? Why do we allow anxiety to drive us to cling to things we could release? What makes THIS the thing Jesus wanted to tell his followers to learn ahead...
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Season 7
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Episode 2
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24:39
Heart
"Guard your heart," declares scripture, "for everything you do flows from it."But what does that mean and what should we be letting in or keeping out of our hearts? It's not like Jesus left us a checklist... did he?Welcome to the ...
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Season 7
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Episode 1
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19:35
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning of the Beginning of the Story
What happened with Paul and the others? Did they get to Rome? What happened? What do we know? Did Luke wrap up all the loose ends in his story? And what does any of this mean for us in the modern world? All these questions and more are answered...
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22:06
Living the Mission
There's a little story towards the end of the book of Acts that most people slip past quickly, noticing only the unusual story about a snakebite. But this is the beginning of Luke's conclusion to the full message of the book he has written! Why...
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Season 6
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Episode 51
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23:18
Foul Weather at Fair Haven
They were sure this was going to work, but everything fell apart in an instant and they were plunged into chaos.How often has something similar happened to each one of us? There is a secret to understanding how to remain calm during eve...
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Season 6
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Episode 50
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27:48
Being an Agent of Light
Good day. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to seek out pockets of evil scattered across the world and deal with them. You and your Mission:Possible team will be given light that will dispel the darkness and power to choose to ac...
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Season 6
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Episode 49
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27:17
Can Anything Good Come From Nazareth?
Did you know that chapters and verses weren't part of the Bible's original texts? We've added that stuff in. In some ways, that's a blessing; in others it's a curse. We may be able to find things easier, but because of that we don't KNOW things...
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22:44
Aggressive Doves
There is a passage in Acts 25 where Paul doesn't say a word - he doesn't even appear until the last sentence - but his witness has been so consistent that it drives people to want to speak with him, to hear him, and to learn more about Jesus.
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Season 6
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Episode 48
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23:38