atticfables podcast: Recent Episodes
Steve Lorenz
At Attic Fables I tell interesting stories to help motivate and inspire you to live a more successful life.
Some Christians believe that our souls are immortal and therefore cannot be destroyed in hell. What does the Bible say?
Many people enjoy Thanksgiving as a time to eat turkey and pumpkin pie and watch football on television, but Thanksgiving is primarily a Christian holiday and a time to give thanks to God for his provisions.
When we face trials, worry does not help. Instead of worrying, God wants us to pray with thanksgiving. As a result of prayer, God changes our perspective about the situation and helps us overcome anxiety.
The book of Acts disagrees with the Jewish historian Josephus' Book of Antiquities. Who is right, the Bible or Josephus?
Matthew's genealogy of Jesus is a good example of how the authors of the Bible took liberties in writing their histories. Matthew purposefully excludes some of the kings in Jesus' genealogy for his own creative design.
If you are a Bible-believing Christian, you probably accept the tradition that Jesus was nailed to a cross, but did you know that people with different religious backgrounds have different beliefs about the cross?
This episode explores what it means to fear the Lord according to the Bible. We will examine what the fear of the Lord means, why we should fear the Lord, and who should fear the Lord.
My challenge to you for the New Year 2025 is to read the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
God tells us to care for widows and orphans, but many preachers neglect to teach this important truth.
The bravery of the men and women in Ukraine reminds me of Jesus' bravery when he went to the cross to die for our sins.
Always working without taking time off is counter-production. How do you know when it's time to take a vacation?
How to deal with disappointment. What do you do when life doesn't turn out the way you were hoping? How do you deal with disappointment?
Why don't you go to church on Sunday morning? Let me give you some encouragement to get back to church.
The winter of 2021 has been harsh and unkind. What can we do when these kinds of trials hit?
You can achieve your full potential if your heart is open and receptive to the word of God.
Do you have a hero? More than anyone else, God should have the greatest influence on your life.
Just as ants prepare for the future by storing away food for the future, we should prepare for our retirement years by working hard today.
When the bottom drops out and it feels like we've been hit by a ton of bricks, we need to trust that God is watching over us.
You can avoiding having an emotional explosion by keeping your spiritual battery clean and filled.
The COVID-19 virus is serious, but we don't need to panic. The right thing to do is to wash our hands frequently, avoid crowded places, and seek God in prayer.
Life is complex and sometimes complicated. We can better live our lives when we take time to allow God to speak to us from his word.
Mick Jagger's song Can't Get No Satisfaction is not true if you have faith in Jesus. Jesus gives us happiness and fulfillment in this life and the next.
The holidays can be a stressful time. You want to make everything picture-perfect, but time is limited. Just when you need to go faster, holiday traffic and long lines at the checkout slows you down. Fortunately, the happy holiday music helps to keep you in a good mood, but it’s the Christmas carols you enjoy the most because they help you remember the true ‘reason for the season’. So, when you’re stuck in traffic or at the end of a long line at the department store or in a rush to decorate the house or cook Christmas dinner, slow down, take a deep breath, and remind yourself what the fuss is really all about. As the Christmas carol says, “God rest ye merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day.” You may feel like you don’t have enough time to get everything done, but you have all the time you need for the most important things about Christmas. This Christmas let me suggest that you take time to reflect on the awesome reality of God coming to our world in the form of a little baby—Jesus our Lord and Savior.
Christmas just isn’t what it used to be. I was in a department store recently and was disappointed to see how cheap the Christmas ornaments looked. Everything is made of plastic. Artificial trees come out of the box with lights already attached. Ornaments look like plastic toys. Even the store Santas look as if they’re purposefully trying to look as fake as possible. Now don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to enjoy about the holiday. We can enjoy the festive atmosphere (unless your name is Ebenezer Scrooge). We can appreciate the beautiful decorations as expressions of our God-given creativity. We can appreciate secular Christmas music as expressions of our human need for friends and family. So not all the tinsel and glitter are necessarily bad. I just don’t like all the plastic. Fortunately, we don’t have to settle for a fake Christmas. We have the Bible that tells us the true meaning of Christmas—the story of Jesus’ birth. Sometimes, however, even Christians add things to the Christmas story that turns the true story into a fake story. We glamorize the Christmas story by singing about three kings who come to visit Jesus when in fact, they weren’t kings. They were magi who were probably pagan astrologers. We sanitize the story by romanticizing the place where Mary gave birth. The so-called “inn” that didn't have any room could have been a simple guest room in someone’s house, or it could have been a rock shelter where travelers could sleep. Since it was too crowded, Mary and Joseph had to stay with the donkeys and camels that were tied up close by. It was not a cozy animal stall with loads of soft hay. More than likely, it was a hard, rock enclosure or cave. There wouldn’t have been any cows or sheep. Cows and sheep were usually kept in pens outside of town. We idealize the story by promoting the primitive conditions in which Jesus was born as an indication of his poverty (as if poverty somehow makes Jesus more dignified). Yet just because there weren’t any accommodations doesn’t mean Joseph was poor. Any traveler, rich or poor, could have found himself in the same predicament as Joseph and Mary. There simply weren’t any accommodations, so they had to make do with what was available. We must be careful not to glamorize, romanticize, or idealize the story of Jesus’ birth. We don’t want a fake Jesus, any more than we want a fake Christmas. I encourage you to take time to read about the birth of Jesus as found in the New Testament. The true story is in Matthew 1:18-2:18 and Luke 2:1-38. The birth of Jesus is glorious and marvelous on its own. We don’t need to add to it nor make it something other than what it is—the arrival of the Savior, Emmanuel, God in the person of Jesus who came to live among us. And although Joseph and Mary couldn't find a place to stay in Bethlehem, I hope this Christmas you can find room in your heart for Jesus.
Christmas is fundamentally a Christian holiday and the Advent season is a time to remember the reason Jesus was born and came into the world as Lord and Savior.