Episode 0 - Intro

This INTRO - Episode 0 must be listened to before all others! 

EmPOWERED podcast . . . Conversations on CO-OPERATING with the Holy Spirit to fulfill our Calling in Christ!

Connections Coach TP Linick (PT) and Tech Nut Todd Dylewski team up in deep biblical conversations that will not only challenge you, but literally (or is it figuratively) shake up your crazy notions you learned in false teachings at church.

QUEST:  Leading People in their Walk to make it to Heaven!

This episode is the overview of the purpose and potential for this podcast seen from the following perspectives...

• 1st Tier — Primary Issues — Bible Convictions
• 2nd Tier — Secondary Issues — Spiritual Disciplines
• 3rd Tier — Tertiary Issues — Personal Preferences
• 4th Tier — Insignificant Issues — Trivial Pursuit   

Tim Linick

Connections Coach / Master Mentor /Jewish Ninja

coffeequest444@gmail.com

Todd Dylewsky 

Jack of all Trades / Master of Some / Learning Daily

HeavenSent58@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

We are live going at it. Welcome to Empowered Podcast. Conversations on cooperating with the Holy Spirit to fulfill our calling in Christ. My name is Tim Lennock. And I'm Todd Deleuski. And we serve on staff at Lakewood Church in Lake Odessa, Michigan, and we are thrilled to share what God has laid on our heart for the last few months through this Empowered Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yeah, so we've had this discussion for the last couple months. It's really exciting to see it finally coming to life and actually sitting down with these microphones and being able to talk and share our hearts about what we want to accomplish through this with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

There's not time in every sermon that is preached to get into some of these deeper issues of discipleship and spiritual disciplines, and that's what Empowered Podcasts will give us the ability to do to take a deeper dive into some of these issues that people struggle, uh really discerning God's will, those spiritual disciplines in their life that go deeper than what they're studying in the Word of God.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And I know we've got a we've gone through and we put together quite the list of topics that we're going to cover. So our real prayer is that we want to make sure that you are empowered with the Spirit of Christ and the power of God working through you to accomplish things in your life that you may have a vision for not even know how to accomplish right now. So hopefully this touches you and gets you on a track to make a difference.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Absolutely. And you know, my prayer, and as we prayed about this, our prayer is that it would be much broader than just Lakewood Church. That this will be a blessing to literally dozens and dozens, hopefully hundreds and thousands of people that will listen to the Word of God and our heart for being powered by the Holy Spirit and letting him lead us. I was thinking about a story I heard recently, lady shared how you know Jesus had all power, he has all power, and he chose to do miracles in different ways. There was the miracle uh where uh he had control over the wind and the waves, and he said, Peace be still. He did that all by himself. He didn't he didn't require them to do anything, but then there was the miracle where they went fishing and he gave them a command to go fish on the right side and put their nuts on the other side. He could have said, Hey, fish, just jump into the boat or swim up right and they would have listened to it. They would have jumped right in that boat like he said to. But he he told them a command and they had to obey. And that's sometimes a good example of what it takes to follow Christ in some of these areas. We don't have always a scripture or command from Christ, so what do we do and how do we do it? I think that's where these spiritual disciplines come in, and hopefully we can delve into that. I come from a background that used to use a phrase, and I I no longer use this term, but they would talk about personal convictions. And they would talk about, you know, it may not be in the Bible, but the Holy Spirit has led me, and I would use those that they would call them personal convictions. And to me, that was truly an oxymoron, in my opinion. Because to me, if you're really going to talk about convictions, they but they should be Bible convictions, they should be issues or or truths that are found in the Word of God. When it's conviction, it should be something that you'd be willing to die for, and you would not compromise. But spiritual disciplines, rather than personal convictions, would be a secondary or a second-tier issue that might require more discernment and more guidance. For instance, we would never compromise as Christians that believe the Word of God on the sanctity of life or the sanctity of marriage or or any specific prohibitions in the Word of God or admonitions. We will obey the Word of God, and we know that the Holy Spirit will never lead us into something contrary to his word, right? Exactly. No, it never just won't happen. But on the other hand, sometimes there are things that are not specifically forbidden or not specifically uh pronounced as a command in the Word of God, and so we have to rely on the Holy Spirit. Yep. It's called discernment. Discernment. And that's a very delicate word because sometimes people get off track and they can get off into rabbit trails. Exactly. And and they can sometimes see success by the Holy Spirit leading them, and then they make the mistake. Well, it worked for me, then you ought to do that. And they try to push off their spiritual disciplines on other people, and they can't do that either. And so it's a very delicate issue. We have a lot of topics. Todd, share some of the topics as we brainstorm that we've come across maybe around 22, 23 topics that we hope to do every couple weeks over the next year or so on Empowered Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

We do have some fun topics coming up, but let's go back into that. You said there were two tiers of spirit biblical convictions and spiritual disciplines. What about when you were talking about the spiritual disciplines that sometimes we have our own opinions? What about like personal preferences? Like as a third tier towards that? That could be when you were talking about that being subjective decisions that how you interpret something out of the Bible or out of the word. How amazing is that thought process? You say, Well, it doesn't say it's wrong, so it must be okay, but how do you discern where that's coming from sometimes?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

You know, that it's I'm glad you brought that up because I do refer to those as those third-tier issues or tertiary issues as personal preferences. And I think about those like your own preference or opinion, like maybe what kind of music you like to listen to, or what type of preaching you prefer, whether it's more topical or textual or expository. Some people get very opinionated that expository is the only way you can preach, and that's just not true. I I probably do a combination of topical, textual, and expository all at the same time, and I have a preference to do that, but I wouldn't say that's everyone's style of preaching, would you? I mean, some people have different styles. Um maybe people have opinions about how you should dress for church. There's churches that are very dressy, you know, like Sunday best kind of thing. Other churches say, come just as you are. No shorts on the worship team. Exactly. Or whatever. And so how do we deal with that in our culture? Well, there's certain opinions people have, and so you kind of adopt or adapt to your your um your environment. But I think we would all agree that those those tertiary issues aren't issues that are going to keep you or away from heaven, or they're not gonna keep you uh on fire for God. They they could be a help or they could be a hindrance, but we'll focus less on those and try to stay out of those in this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Let's do that. Let's do that. So, yeah, some of these topics we have. I'm just looking over this list again. Wow, there's uh there's quite a few of them. I mean, we go everything from scripture and meditation into prayer, fasting, hospitality, and how hospitality ties into connection with others and how we can be an influence towards others with going back into that, with the good influence or a bad influence. You know, we always obviously want to be the good influence, but sometimes but we've got rest and Sabbath, secrecy, you know, what to say and what not to say sometimes, when to be silent, um, discernment, making those decisions of what you should say, what you shouldn't say, when to fast, when to pray, when to dive deeper into scripture. So those are just a few of the topics that we've got that have got me going.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, I remember we were talking about that, and some of those we we saw in some books that we've seen on spiritual disciplines, and others we are just brainstorming to thinking and praying about it. And really, discernment is one of those, but and providence finding God's will, but there's there's a little bit of that component in every single one of them. But I thought like when people are meditating on the word of God, some people get more out of it by journaling. I'm not I I like writing, but I've not done that very much in my you know quiet time with Christ. I don't sit down and write down uh journaling, but some people that really helps them. They have more of a vision that they're going to others um. First of all, a question here for a second.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

I'm gonna interrupt you for a second. Just to learn something about Tim. When you journal, how often do you go back and look at what you've journaled?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

So I used to do that when I was in college, and I would actually go back and study back over those from year to year. Okay. I had a whole year of them. So I have maybe two or three years of that. I have not opened that notebook in in ages. But I did actually, um, early on in my ministry, find some help for some sermons and Bible studies just from my journaling from some of my reading through the Bible. It's literally doing the Bible in a year kind of a thing. And I've done that a few times. And they were helpful in that regard, but I didn't really do anything that that would have been like earth-shattering kind of truths that I journaled about. But some people do, they they find topics that that help them later, and they're struggling eight years later and they come back to what they wrote at that time, and it how the spirit touched them at that moment. Yeah, their younger self comes back by the Holy Spirit and says, I told you this. There you go. Yeah, okay. So that's that's a good thing that we'll get into. And there's many others, um, everything from training and mentoring people, the the uh spirit of service and submission, all the way down, and there's many others compassion, ministry, and empathy. Isn't that one of your strong points you always talk about?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

You always empathy? Um, yeah, I think I missed that gene when that was handed out. Uh I know I love people, I love I have a heart for people, but sometimes it's missed. So it's we'll get into that, though. We'll get into that later. We'll talk more about that. That makes me so really bad right now.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

No, it's we'll talk about that. We joked about that. And the last one we talked about like the gratitude and appreciation that that people need to have for one another and relationship and for uh God and what he's done uh for us. So those are those are some highlights that I think would really be a blessing and and a few others. I do want to say that it will not be preachy, it will be very much of a conversation style, just like we're doing. We don't have really any script. We we just have a basic topic, and we are ourselves praying about it and relying on the Holy Spirit to lead us. And so I want to do that as as we kind of get to the the end of this intro time. I want us to just pray. And as we're praying, just ask the Holy Spirit to really guide these conversations. Todd, would you lead us in prayer as we just go out in this time together? Absolutely, be glad to.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Father, we just offer up this podcast to you, Lord, this empowered podcast, because we know that all things are possible with you. Without you, Lord, we are we're just walking around, just writing the ways of life. And Lord, we don't want to do that. We want to be empowered through your Holy Spirit for us to be difference makers, to be influencers, and Lord, just to follow your will and your guidance and empower others to follow you more closely. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity and we ask that your will be done through everything, through our words, through our minds, through our hearts. In Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Amen. Amen. Thank you for joining us for Empowered Podcasts. We're looking forward to further conversations with you on cooperating with Holy Spirit to fulfill our calling in Christ. See y'all later. God bless.