“Bibles are ubiquitous. And Bible reading is in freefall.”

That’s the problem Bible publisher Paul Caminiti faced. Zondervan, where the former pastor worked, was the world’s leading Bible publisher. But research showed that despite the fact that most households had at least four Bibles, people weren’t engaging deeply with the Scriptures. In response to that research, he tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, he knew he had to do something—and he did. Caminiti, now senior director of mobilization for the Institute for Bible Reading, helped create Immerse (Tyndale)—a brand-new Bible-reading experience.

While still at Zondervan, Caminiti set up what his team called “the Bible bunker,” a war room of sorts. After that, he says, he and some of his colleagues took a two-year tour in which they engaged with scholars, pastors, Christian thought leaders and psychologists about people’s Bible-reading behavior.

And a conversation with author and pastor Philip Yancey put the problem in a nutshell. “The reality is, the modern church created an entire culture around Bible McNuggets and assumed they were nutritious,” Yancey told him.

The verses and chapters added through the years to make the Bible more readable, Caminiti says, are actually an artificial framework forced over the Bible that can unintentionally keep people from accessing everything God has for them there.

Caminiti’s team found multiple problems with people’s engagement with the Bible that boiled down to three main barriers, he says. “Barrier No. 1 is we read the Bible in fragments. Barrier No. 2 is we read the Bible outside of its historic context … But here’s the third barrier. … We read the Bible in isolation, and Bible reading has become something of a solo sport.”

Immerse, the product that eventually resulted from all this research, prayer and consultation, was created with the idea of producing “something that was as close to the heart of the original Bible as we could,” Caminiti says. “We’re aware that people are struggling. And what we believe is that people want to do better by the Bible. There was a survey done about five years ago; people were asked, ‘What do you need most from your church?’ And 87% of them said, help me understand the Bible in depth—like 9 out of 10 people.”

For much more about Immerse and how this new Bible experience can take you deeper into God’s Word, listen to this entire episode of Greenelines here. And be sure to subscribe to the Greenelines podcast for more inspiring, informative stories like this one. {eoa}

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When it comes to prayer, Ashley Driscoll Chase says, we have a choice to make.

Jesus laid those choices out for us right before he shared what we call the Lord’s Prayer—when he called out the hypocrites for their meaningless repetition.

“You don’t need to wear a prayer shawl and drink oolong tea and say, ‘Om,’ and face east and all these things,” Chase says, quoting her dad and co-author of Pray Like Jesus, Pastor Mark Driscoll.

“You don’t have to do all the things, and you don’t have to have the right words,” Chase tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. “You just need to come to Him like a child … and really have that childlike faith.”

Chase says that in their book, she and her father discuss categories of religion and rebellion in prayer. “Some people tend toward religion and feeling like they have to do a lot of things to earn God’s favor, to please Him. When in reality, He loves us like kids, and He’s not impressed with our works most of the time or our words, and He just wants to talk to us.

“And we also don’t want to be rebellious, where we just decide that religion is not for us or prayer’s too hard, that we just don’t want to do it, or the Bible is just old and outdated so we just don’t apply it to our lives,” she adds.

In between those two choices, Chase says, “There’s a childlike relationship with Him as Father.” And that relationship is critical to understanding the heart behind the Lord’s Prayer.

For more from Ashley Driscoll Chase on how you can apply the principles of Christ to your prayer life, listen to the entire episode of the Greenelines podcast here, and be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform. Find Pray Like Jesus wherever fine books are sold. {eoa}

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Isolation. Loneliness. Depression. Fear. Desperation. Grief. But at times, triumph and celebration.

All these emotions and more have come our way courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what has brought us through these hard times?

Famed musician and Grammy Award winner Harry Connick Jr. has a ready answer for his own pandemic survival: His faith. And now, he’s sharing that answer on a new album, Alone With My Faith (Verve/Capitol CMG), recorded in his home studio during the pandemic.

“There were times when I was upset; I was really down,” Connick tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. “My heart hurt. And I was wondering what was going on, and I wrote that into songs, and other times I felt triumphant and celebratory.”

Connick shares how this album, a departure in multiple ways from his norm, came about.

“Last March of 2020, I think we all had a similar feeling, which was one, kind of shock that this pandemic was shutting the whole world down, and two, confusion—there was a lot of information out there that was conflicting,” he says. “And it was scary, because we didn’t know what we were up against.

“And as a couple of weeks went by, and we started to slowly get a handle on it, I thought, Well, you know, I could use this time productively,” Connick says.

He adds that he’s always wanted to record a gospel album, so that’s what he decided to do. He began with hymns such as “How Great Thou Art” and “Old Time Religion,” he says, “just some songs everybody knows.”

But then God changed his heart. “I started to think about some ideas I had about what I was feeling with the pandemic, which I had an inkling that a lot of people were feeling the same thing,” he explains. “So I wrote a bunch of songs too. So the album turned from a straight-up gospel album to an album of faith, and all the emotions—the entire spectrum that I’ve saved that I was feeling over the last year.”

The lyrics of the title track, featured in this video, presents just what Connick describes:

My life has changed/ My world is uncertain/ Everything’s strange/ Everything’s new/ But I’m not concerned/ With What tomorrow will bring/ Cause I’ve got today/ And I’m gonna pull through.

Alone with my faith/ What I know is true/ What gives me assurance/ When I don’t know what to do/ I don’t have all the answers/ But I have always known/ I’m eternally faithful/ So I am never alone.

Listen to the entire interview with musician Harry Connick Jr. on this episode of the Greenelines podcast here. Be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. Find Alone With My Faith at this link. {eoa}

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The prophetic word Cindy Jacobs gave him made no sense.

But when Chuck Pierce went home after receiving it, his wife, Pam, affirmed it.

And what God did next would change his life and his ministry forever.

“I don’t see you traveling like you’ve been traveling,” Pierce says Jacobs told him in January 2020. “I see something God is going to do to regroup you, so you develop a new prototype for revival.”

“My life, you remember, was traveling to the nations,” Pierce tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. “The year before, I’d gone 578,000 travel miles. That’s a lot of going.

“And then by March, I’d already gone over 100,000 miles, he says. “But COVID happened; everything shut down. So I had to say, ‘Lord, what do I do?’ and the Lord said, ‘Start off in your backyard.”

Pierce says that before long, he was spending four hours a day before the Lord on his deck in the backyard. “I started working out my whole life for the future, which I’m still doing from my backyard. And then I had to watch the Lord reform my boundaries.

“We had a fire pit there; I would build that fire, and the Lord would say, ‘Watch the fire,'” he says. “And I would watch how that fire would come up. And the Lord said, ‘This is what I am going to do in you.’

“And then from my backyard, I started seeing how to redo this whole place, how to reach the nations,” Pierce says. “We had started doing web church 15 years prior; this was the only way we could do church now. So in the midst of it … everything started reforming that had never formed before.”

Pierce says that although his ministry has now reformed, “The important thing is that the fire in me reformed.” And that’s the lesson he believes we all must learn: to start with ourselves, to look within to see the fire that God wants to rekindle and reform on His altar.

For much more from Chuck Pierce on how to meet God at the altar and rekindle His fire, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines at this link, and be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform so you don’t miss inspiring stories like this one. Watch for Chuck’s new book, Rekindle the Altar Fire, at this link or wherever fine books are sold. {eoa}

Americans—and the rest of the world—have just passed through what, for most of us, was the longest year of our lives.

Many of us lost our jobs.

Worse, many of us lost friends and family members.

Many of us can’t pay our bills.

Many of us are losing our homes.

What lies ahead?

Economist, end-times expert and cultural commentator Michael Snyder has multiple answers to that question, and he shares them on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. One of the areas of biggest impact, he says, is also one of the most basic: the cost of food.

“The price of agricultural commodities traded on the global stage has gone up by 50% since the middle of last year,” Snyder says. “So we’re talking about wheat, and corn and soy and sugar. These are things you eat every day. Now, here in the United States, that’s starting to filter to consumers at the grocery store. But where it’s really painful is other parts of the globe where you know, you’ve got so many people just living on the edge of poverty.”

The economic and societal impact is huge, Snyder explains. In third-world countries as well as in the U.S., hunger is on the rise.

“In fact, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme has come out … and said that we’re facing ‘famines of biblical proportions’ in 2021,” Snyder says. “And that’s his phrase, not mine: biblical proportions. But that’s how dire he sees things getting. We’ve already seen food riots start in different parts of the world. And it’s going to get worse as the price continues to go up.”

But there is hope, Snyder says. To learn more about his economic projections and the road map he offers for what he says will continue to be challenging days ahead, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here. And be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more information and insights shared in the power of the Holy Spirit. {eoa}

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He scored a 370 on the English section of the SAT.

When his wife and her best friend heard him preach for the first time, they both fell sound asleep on the front row.

“I think God did that for my protection,” bestselling author and internationally known pastor and speaker John Bevere tells Dr. Steve Greene on the 1000th episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. The author of The Bait of Satan and 21 other books says in all his years of travel, he has only met two people with lower SAT scores—one of whom just guessed at the answers. He knows his entire ministry is based on the gifts and anointing of the Holy Spirit, and he wants to encourage others who feel unqualified for their calling as well.

“I think on purpose, He allowed me to see how terrible I was, how I couldn’t write,” Bevere says. “He loves me more as a son than He loves what I can do for him, and He said, ‘I want to make sure that My son is protected from pride, because he will always know how bad a writer he is.'”

And God made sure Bevere would always give Him the glory for his speaking ability as well, he says. In his first church position, he served a senior pastor by taking care of visiting guest speakers, but any speaking he did himself either put people to sleep or kept them from coming altogether.

And then something changed. “Because I was faithful to my pastor, God promoted me to youth pastor,” he says. He had no desire for youth ministry, but God spoke to both Bevere and his wife, Lisa, independently, so they made the move from their Texas church to one in Orlando, Florida. “I knew it was obedience,” he says.

On their first Sunday, the senior pastor called him up to speak for a few minutes.

“I remember there were 2,500 people in the building, and my wife is dreading what is about to happen,” Bevere says. “I get up there; I take the mic from my pastor. And within 60 seconds, every person in that building is on their feet, screaming. And I go for four more minutes … I hand the mic back to my pastor; I’m shaking like a leaf.”

To this day, his wife says he became a different man when they crossed into Florida, Bevere says. “And so that was obviously the moment that gift came on my life.”

What he loves about this story is how God blessed his obedience with the gifting he needed to carry out His calling, Bevere says. “To be honest with you, I absolutely loved being youth pastor after the fact. But in my obedience to Him, here comes the gift.”

“Peter makes a statement in Acts Chapter 4,” he continues. “He said, ‘God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him.’ So again, if the Lord tells me, ‘I want you to be an ER nurse’ … in my obedience, now, all of a sudden, a gifting comes on me to be an ER nurse.'”

But we must have faith to develop that gift, Bevere says. For much more of his teaching on the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives and how God has used Bevere’s areas of weakness to pour forth His power and gifting, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here and enjoy additional highlights as well.

Be sure to check out Bevere’s new book, X: Multiply Your God-Given Potential and visit messengerx.com for information on the brand-new app from Messengers International, and subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. {eoa}

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The violence had ended years before. But that didn’t stop the bitterness.

In fact, the after-effects of the famed feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families in the late 1800s became a generational curse that lasted for years and years.

What stopped it? The simple actions of just one man.

“My grandfather, Tennyson Hatfield … was sitting on the porch one day, and he saw an older gentleman going by. And at this time, my grandfather … was the sheriff of Logan County, West Virginia. And he asked the man next to him, ‘Who is that?’ And he said, ‘That’s old McCoy.’ And he said, ‘He’s a policeman here in Pikeville [Kentucky].’

“And so my grandfather called him over and shook hands, held out his hand. He said, ‘I’m Tennyson Hatfield. Why don’t we end this right now? ‘And they went up on the front porch … and they sat there together.”

Pastor Bill Hatfield, Tennyson’s grandson, has since recreated the photo of that event with descendants of the McCoy family. And he uses the examples from his ancestors, including the notorious family patriarch, “Devil Anse” Hatfield, to teach lessons about conflict resolution today. (Hear more of his story in this Charisma Connection podcast.)

“Everything rises and falls on leadership, and somebody has to take the initiative,” Hatfield says. To hear more wisdom from this descendant of the famed Hatfields about how to resolve the various conflicts you face at work, at home and even in church, listen to this entire episode of the Greenelines podcast at this link. And make sure to subscribe to Greenelines so you catch more stories that inspire in the power of the Holy Spirit. {eoa}

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“Lord, help me to have the mind of Christ.”

This sounds like a great prayer, especially when you face an important meeting at work. In fact, most believers would affirm its accuracy and efficacy. But marketing expert Dr. Steve Greene says on a recent episode of the At Work With God podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network that the prayer he’s often prayed may not be just the way we should pray. In fact, he says, it doesn’t reflect Scripture as well as it could or should.

The apostle Paul switches the personal pronoun used in this prayer into a collective pronoun, Greene notes, pointing to 1 Cor. 2:16b, “We have the mind of Christ” (emphasis added). This will help us at work, especially in meetings, he says. “How many meetings have you sat in where you’ve seen confusion spring up, and maybe a little spat, and maybe little pride sessions and people speaking up for their own pet project or their own pet decisions? It’s just the way of meetings; these things happen. It doesn’t mean they are bad people. But when he says that ‘we have the mind of Christ,’ we’ve got to consider that.

“As we open our meetings with prayer, we’ve got to consider that there’s a good possibility that we won’t have the mind of Christ,” Greene says. “Let’s say we’ve got 10 people in a meeting, that we have 10 people’s minds on this topic. What if we had the mind of Christ? What if we prayed, ‘God’s will be done’?”

Doing, so, Greene says, will influence another key area for believers at work. To find out what Greene calls the “second test” is, listen to the entire episode of At Work With God here, and be sure to subscribe to the At Work With God podcast for more inspiration and information on living the Spirit-filled life at work. {eoa}

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“He has it all.”

That’s what we might think, even in the Christian world, if we took a quick glance at Dr. Michael Stevens’ bio. He’s a pastor, college professor, author and podcast host as well as a husband and father.

But there was a time when, he says, all his so-called success came crashing in on him. Of his longtime pastorate (he’s the founding and senior pastor of the City Church in Huntersville, North Carolina), he says, “For the first 20-something-odd years, all the motives might have been the wrong motives. In other words, we grew. We were aggressive, progressive; we bought facilities and acreages and did everything you would want those late 1980s, early ’90s megachurches had to do.

“But unfortunately, I put the church before my family, and I paid a very dear price for that,” Stevens adds. “I had to take some time off about five years ago and literally hit the sabbatical button, hit the restoration button, go-get-some-counseling button and say, ‘You know what, when all this is said and done, it won’t be about the size of the church, or the acreage, all of the TV ads and careers and magazines and all of that wonderful stuff. What’s going to matter is my walk with the Lord, and then my walk with my wife, and then the respect with my three kids.'”

Steven says today, he and his wife believe “Someone has to come out of the pit and tell people that life can be sweet again. … Someone has to say, ‘You know what? You can build on the ashes of yesterday’s ruins and let God use you in such a profound way.'”

To hear more from Dr. Michael Stevens about how God can restore what the enemy has stolen and how you can rise from destruction to a life of blessing and restoration, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here and subscribe to the Greenelines podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

And be sure to check out Stevens’ latest book, We Too Stand, as well his own podcast, Straight Talk with Dr. Mike, on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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He didn’t know how he could stomach an entire day of it.

The sight, the stench and of course the smell all sickened him as he considered the day that lay ahead.

But the Lord had given him clear instructions on being a servant leader, one who puts his employees first. And long before Undercover Boss convinced him to record the show’s very first episode, Larry O’Donnell, then president and COO of the world’s largest waste management company, was riding garbage trucks with his team, doing his best to absorb the realities of their tasks.

But cleaning out porta-potties? “When they told me about that, I thought, Oh, now this is going to be a very long day. I just can’t imagine doing all that,” O’Donnell tells host Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network.

“And as it turned out, that was my favorite job that I had on the show,” O’Donnell says. “And how could that be? It was all about the guy I worked with. His name’s Fred; I still talk to him on the phone.”

O’Donnell says Fred brought something unique to work every day that made all the difference: A sense of joy and contentment. “He was just such a happy guy in what he did. Because he showed up at work that way every day, it infected everyone around him. And so he made my job so much fun. In fact, I was laughing the entire time I was on that job, all day.”

O’Donnell says Undercover Boss filmed their work at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a huge annual event. And before they realized it, he says, “we had this huge crowd watching us work. And they thought it was a comedy routine … they were all laughing at us. And it was just this joy and contentment that Fred had.”

But hidden behind Fred’s positive attitude lay a secret that the reality show clipped from the final footage. God revealed it when O’Donnell asked Fred to share the source of his joy.

“Fred, tell me where you get all that joy that you have that’s just coming out of you—tell me. You’ve got to be a Christian.”

O’Donnell continues, “And he said, ‘You are absolutely right brother. And I knew you are too.’ And we hugged. And then we went on about our work the rest of the day.”

That exchange may not have made the show, but it made O’Donnell’s day—and helped him continue his work in helping turn his company around. His new book, Management Waste, details some of the principles for both leaders and followers he learned along the way.

For more of Larry O’Donnell’s wisdom on how your faith can impact your work, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here, and be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite platform for more inspiring stories like this one. {eoa}

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