The term “supernatural” simply means, higher than what is natural, above what is natural, beyond the natural. The supernatural is the work of God, fueled by the Presence and the character of God. Today, we will look at Acts chapter 2 and invite the Holy Spirit of God to awaken us to the supernatural in our lives...…

When Dianna and I were chaplains onboard the Mercy Ship, I had a discipling relationship with a crew member onboard. He was a great guy – brilliant mind, fun personality, loved his wife and kids – loved and served the Lord faithfully! He had smoked his entire life, and he wanted to stop. And one day, he asked my advice...…

In Mark chapter 12, the opponents of Jesus set a trap before Him. And, honestly, it’s a brilliant trap. It should’ve worked. Here’s how it went – it says, “Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, 'Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others,…

A dear loved one has just received terrible news, experienced a sudden loss, a diagnosis, a betrayal – and they turn to you for help. How do you comfort a person in those first critical moments of a crisis? In the previous two episodes, we talked about leaning on your Experience and practicing Empathy to support and comfort your loved one in crisis…

What is this person feeling right now, and how can I comfort them in this difficult moment in their lives? Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

How do we help the people closest to us when a sudden crisis arises in their lives? What do you say? What do you do? How can you help a loved one during their first painful moments of a crisis in their lives? Your three main resources for supporting your loved ones in their moment of crisis are going to be your Experience, Empathy, and Equipment. T…

I want you and me to understand that our status in eternity fundamentally changed when God adopted us into His family! Your identity changed, your name changed, your inheritance & future & rights all changed! Somehow, in some heavenly way, your spiritual birth certificate was updated to show Almighty God as your adopted Father! And in that moment, …

I want you to think about prayer with me in a different kind of way today: Prayer is disruptive. Prayer is how we bring Jesus into our world. In a way, it is an arrival of the Spirit of Christ into the moment in which the prayer is taking place. Prayer is disruptive, in the best kinds of ways!By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Every mighty movement of God started with a call for His people to pray. Prayer revives the hearts of God’s people as it prepares our communities for God’s love, grace, and Word to be spread. Prayer-walking involves us personally taking our prayers to the very places where we desire to see God’s Presence manifested and our prayers answered.…

More than 75 percent of individuals who come to know Christ have experienced salvation as a result of a direct relationship. Oikos is a Greek word that is found many times in the New Testament that can provide tremendous insight and revelation to our prayers and evangelism. Oikos defines an individual’s primary base of relationships and their relat…

Resurrection is God’s specialty – He brings dead things to life. It's who He is. It's what He does! The Resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It represents THE pivot point of history – everything swivels – everything swings into a new direction when the Living Jesus stands up and walks out of the grave, victorious over death...…

We often talk about Jesus in the past tense – maybe because we read about His mortal life on earth in the history of the Bible. But because of the Resurrection, Jesus lives today. Have you ever considered what that really, logistically means? Jesus is a current, living person. Jesus is a present reality – in the world, and in our lives. Jesus was –…

Do you remember the use of the word "non-essential" from covid times? Many people in 2020 were informed – by email, or phone, or in-person – that they were considered “non-essential.” Friends, you and I are not what we do. Our worth is not rooted in our jobs. Our value lies in Something far deeper and more eternal than our occupations...…

If God has called you to something in the past – whether it was to faith in Him, or to a particular task, or to a person, or a place, or a direction – and you responded with a "no" to Him... If God was leading you to forgive someone, or to trust again, or to let go of something, or to pick up something else – but you said "no"... If God was telling…

A friend recently asked me a piercing question that I want to share with you. He asked me right after I had shared about a multi-year journey of breaking free from an addiction earlier in my life. As we talked, I shared with him that the tide-turners that God used in my life to set me free were: #1-telling others, and #2-Scripture memory...…

“Listening prayer” is pursuing the purposes of God by meditating on the Word of God & words of God. Praying to God is great! He wants us to share all our thoughts and feelings with Him – all our needs and desires with Him. But we should also allow Him the opportunity to speak to us. It’s important to create space in our lives to listen to God – tim…

The hope of the resurrection changes everything! Lisa Williams joins us today to share on the topic of the resurrection, and how it can impact our everyday lives as followers of Jesus.By Lisa Williams

We’ve all felt it. A dilemma with no good solution. A situation that has you perplexed, stumped. You’ve tried everything you can think of, and you’re stuck... What if you could separate yourself from the thick of the issue for a moment and evaluate it objectively, in the third person? What if I told you... you can! Here's how:…

Today we discuss the second of three questions we can ask our Father God, which can help us discern His will and pursue continued growth in Him as His children. If you want to grow in some life-role or virtue in your life, ask God in prayer and listen for His answer: "What would someone who is better at this life-role or virtue than me be doing?"…

I'd like to offer you three questions to take to God in your prayers, which if you will ask them of God regularly, and allow Him time to respond, they will produce spiritual growth in your life. The first question is this: “Father, what do You think/feel about…"By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Last time, we introduced the term "lament" as a Biblical expression of our grief directed to God. Today, our guest speaker Lisa Williams will show us the four elements of a lament: Turn, Lament, Ask, and Trust. Psalm 13 will be our example to help us understand how to lament according to the Bible.By Lisa Williams

Our guest on today's episode of The Practical Faith Podcast is Lisa Williams! Today, Lisa shares with us on the Biblical language of lament, what it means, and why it matters.By Lisa Williams

As people of faith, we can sometimes feel like we have to check this bias at the door. As if faith and reason were incompatible, mutually-exclusive worldviews. But they are not! Today, I’d like to appeal directly to this bias of logic, reason, and science, particularly as it pertains to the historical reliability of the Bible.…

Let’s consider something for a moment: why did God choose to relate to us as Father? His creativity is unlimited. e literally could have chosen any kind of relationship that He could think of to relate to those rescued & redeemed by Christ, and He chose that of Father & children. This is not a metaphor or a figure-of-speech. This is literal – this …

Christ shares His own eternal inheritance with those He has saved – and the inheritance He shares with us is so much more than physical properties and possessions. It is amazing to realize all that we inherit from God through Christ Jesus...By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today, I want to invite you into the lawyer’s office. But don’t worry! You’re not in trouble – in fact, quite the opposite! This is the office of a lawyer who determines the rightful heirs to an estate. This lawyer’s job is to follow the mandates of a written will, and to distribute the rightful inheritance of the estate to the legal heirs named in…

Most of the Bible was written to be understood literally, describing historical events that actually happened. There are some parts of the Bible, though, that were written in figurative language; they are poetic or didactic in nature, describing an indescribable God using the limited words we have, and using allegory to teach us about ultimate real…

Did you know that the truest things about you are the things God’s Spirit says about you? And if I could condense those things down into one, single word, it would be this one: BELOVED.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

The following is a prayer I wrote in a moment of unique clarity with the Holy Spirit. I had just realized that it takes so much - so much! - for God to really have all of my full attention. It’s a hundred little things that I’m embarrassed to even say right now... All these layers upon layers of external and internal distraction... In this moment o…

We see pain, and experience suffering... We see tragedy, despair, death... We don’t have to pretend like these realities are not difficult. The circumstances of unpredictable life take their toll on us over time. So what’s the answer? What are do we do? Today, I want to talk about telling somebody.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today, we finish up a multi-episode series looking at the Jesus Way of Discipleship. This was the theme of a spiritual life retreat my family attended a few years ago with a pastor, counselor, and speaker named Barry Brown.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

The second phase of the Jesus Way of Discipleship is “FORMATION.” The wilderness is a sacred space of formation in the Scriptures. The wilderness is where God sends His best. It’s where God takes His people to FORM in them the new identity that He gave them at their baptism. The wilderness is where Christian character is formed...…

I am excited to get to bring you a guest on today’s episode of “Practical Faith.” Lisa Williams is a gifted young minister, worship leader, and writer, and she has a unique calling to grief ministry. Lisa loves serve and support and journey with people who have experienced a loss in their lives. And today, Lisa will share with us about the importan…

Welcome back to “Practical Faith!” Over several consecutive episodes, I am sharing with you some of the notes and insights I took away from a wonderful spiritual life retreat I attended a few years ago. Our retreat speaker was a man named Barry Brown, and the retreat theme was “Following Jesus and Becoming Like Him.”…

Thomas à Kempis, in his book The Imitation of Christ, said, “Choose one thing to learn from Christ each year, and soon you will be like Him.” So, what is the next step for you? What’s your next 'one thing’ that God is calling you to focus on this year to become more like Christ? If you do this, then in a few years you will “soon be like Him”!…

Let’s reset our view on this together: there is a big difference between a bribe and a reward...By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

YOU are all strategically positioned – by the Lord Jesus – in homes, in schools, in businesses – for Kingdom impact in a way that pastors and missionaries like me long for! We wish we could have the impact in people’s homes, schools, and businesses that you all have!By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Callings from God are not ranked. Some are not better or more impressive or more important than others. What is most important is humble obedience. Faithfully serving God right where you are is the very highest calling.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Jesus wants to meet you in your place of pain, your place of failure, of disappointment. He wants to meet you there so that He can deal with it and heal you there.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today's episode is in response to a listener's question: What do you do if you've prayed about something for a long time and just can't sense any clear answer or direction from the Lord?By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today I'll share with you a statement that was sent to me from a moral relativist – this is a person who opposes the idea moral absolutes – and the response I sent back.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Following the prayer model provided by Jesus in Matthew 6:10, I decided to let that sentence be a template for my prayers, replacing the words “on earth” with other personalized places and locations that I wanted to specifically ask for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done:By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Given my life circumstances, it is likely that I will die someday as a result of consumption or entertainment... This prospect is beginning to eclipse my fear of persecution and martyrdom.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today I want to address four common questions to help you in leading your family’s daily devotional times. The goal is not perfection, but progress – and practice makes progress.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

When our kids were 9, 8, and 5, Dianna and I decided to make our family vacation into a family spiritual retreat by adding a special devotional experience into each day. Here's what we did:By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

In today’s episode, I will provide a sample one-week plan that you can use to guide your family’s daily devotional time on vacation. Each day will include simple instructions for training your kids how to spend meaningful time alone with God, followed by age-appropriate questions for debriefing your experiences together afterwards.…

With just a little extra planning and intentionality, you can also make your family vacation into a family spiritual retreat.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

There are as many different routines for one’s devotional life as there are followers of Jesus! My hope here is to provide one example that might help spark you to develop your own personalized routine.By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

If you don’t have any idea where you are on this journey of redemption & salvation – and you just kind-of checking Jesus out – and you are just exploring to see if this faith-in-Jesus thing is for you – that’s okay! That’s great, actually – just keep on exploring. Jesus Himself invites you to!By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash

Today, let’s look at the alternative to sanctification: what if we are “only justified”? What of those who “get saved,” but then don’t really do anything else? Aren’t they still saved?By Rev. Dr. Nicholas A. Cash