A man signs up for a wilderness survival class expecting to learn how to start a fire with two rocks, and spends the whole time learning about water. Not just water, but the difference between water that flows and water that sits still until it turns dangerous. In the fourth week of Made Here, Brad Kirby uses that picture to show why the grace that made you new also made you an ambassador. What God pours into you was never meant to stop with you.
Read MoreMost of us believe the Bible matters. Living like we need it is another thing entirely. In week three of Made Here, Brad Kirby makes the case that being equipped in God's Word isn't reserved for pastors, theologians, or unusually serious Christians. Then he hands the morning to people who started with nothing and lets them show you what changed.
Read MoreIn the earliest days of the church, believers opened their homes, shared their meals, and met one another's needs as they came up. But it is possible to sit in a room full of people every week and still be completely unknown. In Acts 2, we see in the early church the difference between simply attending a church and truly belonging to one. Because the truth is, you can't become who God made you to be all on your own.
Read MoreWe wear the cross, hang it on our walls, and sing about grace almost every week. Somewhere along the way, the most stunning news in the world can quietly start to feel ordinary. In the opening message of Made Here, Brad Kirby walks through Ephesians 2 and asks what it really means to believe in Christ. It's a look at how God takes people who were spiritually dead and makes them new, and why that one truth changes everything about how we live.
Read MoreAt 110 years old, Joshua gathers all of Israel one last time and asks a single question, using the word "serve" fifteen times in twenty verses. The people answer "yes" three times, and then Joshua tells them the hardest thing they'll hear: you're not able to. In the final chapter of Joshua, David Leventhal walks through the gap between a sincere intention and a life that actually follows through. And he points to a better Joshua who kept the covenant we keep breaking.
Read MoreGod gathers an entire nation at Shechem and starts retelling their history, and every verb points back to Him. Israel could have told the same story about their own battles, their own leaders, and their own victories, and left out the One who made it all possible. In Joshua 24, Brad Kirby shows how God traces His grace all the way back to an idol-worshiping family beyond the river. You'll walk away seeing that even in your story, you were never the main character, and that's the best news of all.
Read MoreAt 110 years old, with every battle behind him, Joshua gathers his people one last time. His concern isn't the enemies outside the camp. It's whether they'll still love God once life gets comfortable. In Joshua 23, Brad Kirby walks through three charges that keep a life anchored for the long haul: remember, remain, and resist.
Read MoreIsrael has finally won every battle and settled into the rest God promised. Then they hear that their own brothers have built a strange altar by the Jordan, and the whole nation gathers for war. In Joshua 22, Brad Kirby shows how quickly a family can turn on itself when we assume the worst before we understand the truth. Watch how a moment that looked like rebellion became a witness to what really held them together.
Read MoreWe tend to become like whatever we spend our time looking at. In Joshua 21, a chapter that reads like a list of forgotten towns, God quietly scatters His people across every region of the land. Josh Fortney unpacks why that matters and shows how God wanted to be so near His people that they couldn't help but look at Him. It's a picture of a God who doesn't just rescue us once but chooses to live close, right where we live.
Read MoreAfter the battles are over and the land is divided, Joshua pauses to do something strange: he sets apart six cities of refuge. They were quiet places where someone whose life had fallen apart could run and find safety. In Joshua 20, Brad Kirby shows how those scattered cities point to the one Savior we run to when sin, shame, and suffering crush us. The greatest legacy we leave isn't a building or a name, it's a generation that knows exactly where to run.
Read MoreA promise made in Genesis 12 finally comes true in Joshua 15-19, 600 years and a lifetime of waiting later. But the moment Israel receives the land, a new question emerges: will they actually inhabit what they have been given? Brad Kirby, Josh Fortney, and David Leventhal walk through five chapters most people skip and find a bold daughter, a recurring warning about small compromises, and a direct question from Joshua himself: how long will you put off taking possession of what God has already given you?
Read MoreAt eighty-five years old, Caleb walked up to Joshua and asked for the one piece of land nobody else wanted: the hill country still full of giants. Forty-five years earlier God had promised it to him, and Caleb never once stopped believing it would be his. In this Father's Day message from Joshua 14, Josh Fortney unpacks what it looks like to follow God with your whole heart across decades of waiting. The people who finish strong, it turns out, are usually the ones who simply kept showing up.
Read MoreBy the end of Joshua 12, the scoreboard reads 31 defeated kings. Then chapter 13 opens with no battles left to fight, just an old leader, an unfinished map, and a surprising command from God: start giving the land away now. In Joshua 13:1–14:5, David Leventhal shows why the inheritance was always meant to be received and not earned, and why the people carrying God's promise still had to be reminded not to treasure the gift more than the Giver. The land was good, but the One who gave it was better.
Read MoreThe northern kings gathered against Israel with an army "like the sand that is on the seashore," with horses, chariots, and every military advantage Israel didn't have. Joshua 11 doesn't start with a battle plan. It starts with God speaking. In this message, Brad Kirby shows what it looks like to trust God's Word when the opposition is massive, the process is long, and old fears come rising back up. If God's "I will" is greater than our "we cannot," then the thirty-one victories at the end of Joshua 12 are more than history, they're a fuel source.
Read MoreFive enemy kings are sealed inside a cave, and Joshua tells his army to keep moving. Joshua 10:16–43 shows what it looks like to live from a victory Christ has already won: not paralyzed by fear, not passive in comfort, not stopping short of full obedience. The question this passage presses on all of us is the same one it pressed on Israel: will you actually live like the victory is real?
Read MoreFive armies are on the move. A diplomatic mistake has become a military crisis. And Israel is about to walk into the biggest fight of the entire conquest, on behalf of people who deceived them. In Joshua 10:1-15, David Leventhal shows us that the central claim of the whole book of Joshua is on full display here: God is the primary actor who fights for His people. He doesn't wait for our circumstances to be tidy before He shows up. He works in the middle of chaotic, compromised, trainwreck situations, which, honestly, describes most of our everyday experience.
Read MoreThe Gibeonites showed up with moldy bread, worn-out sandals, and a convincing story about traveling from far away. Israel's leaders asked the right questions, inspected all the evidence, and still signed a covenant God never authorized. In Joshua 9, Brad Kirby shows how spiritual carelessness rarely looks like rebellion. It looks like a reasonable decision made without prayer, and even in the wreckage of that mistake, God's mercy turns out to be bigger than the worst thing it produced.
Read MoreIn the middle of a military campaign, Joshua stops everything and leads the entire nation 20 miles out of the way to a valley between two mountains. They still have a conquest to finish, but something more important is waiting. In Joshua 8:30–35, Brad Kirby shows why this unexpected pause is not a detour from the story of Joshua but the point of it. What Israel discovered between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim is what every follower of Jesus still needs: victory is sustained not by strength or strategy, but by continual dependence upon God.
Read MoreIsrael walked away from their first battle at Ai in shame, thirty-six men dead and the city still standing. God's response isn't a lecture. It's a battle plan, a fresh assignment, and the same promise He made before any of it went wrong. In Joshua 8, Josh Fortney traces what unfolds when Joshua stops presuming on his own strength and actually follows where God leads, and why every victory God provides is designed to point us somewhere far greater than the battle itself.
Read MoreOne man takes what God set apart, buries it in his tent, and says nothing. Before Joshua even knows what has happened, thirty-six men are dead and an entire nation is asking what went wrong. Brad Kirby, Josh Fortney, and David Leventhal open Joshua 7 in a candid roundtable conversation, tracing how hidden sin breaks covenant, how overconfidence silently replaces dependence on God, and why his correction is always an act of love. The valley of trouble is not the last word.
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