Better News Podcast Ricky Alcantar - Cross of Grace Church

Throughout our lives, we’ll experience battles great and small but none are so vital as the one for our souls. For the unbeliever, God is fighting every moment to draw you near, for the believer that hard-fought struggle has been won. As Pastor Ricky will remind us in this study in Exodus that our bondage to sin has been broken just as the children of Israel were free from slavery in Egypt. The effects of sin still remain though but none as blinding and oppressive as those chains that bind unbelievers.

Our God is a fighter. We don't often think of Him that way but He's in a battle for us constantly. We have the greatest warrior on our side yet we still like to try and control the many universes we've created around ourselves. In today's teaching we’ll discover a better way. We can be still while God blazes forward on our behalf. When God's people were let out of Israel they sought to know what was coming next. They saw their enemies and wanted to take action to protect themselves but all the while God went before them.

When you gather to celebrate a person's birthday, it's a special time to acknowledge their place in everyone’s heart. But just because you have a party one day a year doesn't mean you forget them the other 364 days. Gathering together to worship and honor God on a regular basis is one way that we can remember God's place in our lives. Sometimes we may struggle and having fellow believers to give you a boost and remind you of all He’s done can help you to regain your focus on what matters.

The Word of the Lord should permeate our lives. The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus shouldn't be remembered once a year but be ever-present.

Out of sight, out of mind. The human attention span is shamefully short ,even when it comes to things that we should never forget. For example, keeping our minds on God and what He has done in our lives. As we’ll hear today in our study in Exodus, God’s people are struggling to keep God and His will at the forefront of their minds. People have a tendency to move on once they've had a particular experience or heard a specific message but God's grace and sacrifice for us should never get old.

No matter how good we think we are, we are all spotted with sin. We’ve burdened ourselves with it, with every wrong choice we’ve made. Sin destroys the things we love, our hearts, and our lives. Yet the God who created us wants us in spite of it. So much so that He willingly gave His most precious Son to unburden us of that sin. Today, as we hear about God's provision to His people as the firstborns of Egypt, we’ll begin to understand the magnitude of this gift and just how valuable it is.