A Radical Thought: Recent Episodes
Rick Lancaster
Short (5 minute) thoughts of inspiration out of God's Word, the Bible to challenge the way we think.
Wrestling with God is a foolish exercise practiced by the immature. God is not limited to working with His people to accomplish His will. He is sovereign and that also means King David was a great man of God, but he wasn’t a perfect man. In...
God can operate through unbelievers just as easily as He can through believers. God is not limited to working with His people to accomplish His will. He is sovereign and that also means He can exert control over unbelievers. There are some in...
Our mistakes should bother us because they are against God not because it costs us money, time, prestige, or position. Mistakes will cost something. If you drive too fast and get a ticket, it will cost you. All mistakes have some kind of cost...
It is a thing of wonder that our cries and prayers actually are heard by God. Prayer is an exercise of faith! We can’t see the Person we are praying to. We don’t get audible feedback regarding our prayers. And sometimes it seems that they are...
Opposition may change your circumstances, but it doesn’t change what God told you to do. It is naïve to believe that you will be able to do God’s work without opposition. If you attempt to do something great for God, you should expect great...
It takes great courage to resist the temptation to compromise. The story of Lot is both tragic and instructive. He is a man who is given every opportunity to succeed and appears to do just that, but then everything goes terribly wrong. We all need...
Christ is the reason for the season and love is the reason for Christ! Merry Christmas! This is a special Christmas edition of A Radical Thought. Rick shares a thought on tuning up our faith during this celebration of the birth of our Savior. ...
Good people sometimes must endure difficulties as God deals with the wicked. It is not always easy to understand why God allows hard things to come into the lives of His people. As we see in this text, it might be because of what God is trying to...
What do you do when you are frustrated or discouraged by things in your life that you are powerless to change? It is not possible to go through this life and not experience things that are annoying, painful, or troubling. Thankfully, God didn’t...
One tiny light in the darkness may help someone to find their way to the love of God. Walking in the dark without a light can be a dangerous thing to do. Much of this word is in spiritual darkness and we need a light to see our way safely through...
To truly pray we need to give God our will, our mind, and our heart. Prayer is more than just asking God to give you what you want or take away what you don’t want in your life. Prayer is an incredible privilege and ought to be a humbling...
God resists the proud and He confounds the wise. Have you ever felt like God was fighting against you? Maybe He is! God is both the source of and giver of wisdom. It bothers Him when one of His creations believes they have taken that place in...
The gospel is not complicated. Salvation is so simple that a small child can attain to it by faith. In this devotional we are reminded not to make salvation complicated or hard to attain. No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace, mercy, and...
God’s goodness is not dependent upon our circumstances. God is good always – even when the things of life seem bad. That is what the prophet Jeremiah reminds us of in today’s verse. He then encourages us to do something that might feel hard...
God rightfully expects us to obey Him. Just because you come up with what you believe is the perfect plan to prosper yourself or to be happy doesn’t mean that God is going to go along with it. It is okay to make plans, but we need to let God...
We don’t get to decide how we come to Father God. Some people have odd ideas about how they will approach God to worship Him. They imagine that they can choose how God wants to be worshipped. It doesn’t work that way. We don’t decide how to...
The choice is ours; serve God with a humble heart or endure the forced humbling of our heart by an unloving destroyer. Not everything bad that comes in our life is because God is mad at us or punishing us; sometimes it is just the fact that we...
No matter where we are God will hear us in heaven and respond. There might be times in life when it feels like God is ignoring our prayers. In our verse for the day, the Lord tells King Solomon that there are things we can do to guarantee that God...
The church and ministry ought to be an extension of only one person; Jesus Christ. The people of David’s time gave generously to build a temple for God. When we give of our time, talent, and reassures, are we doing it to build the kingdom of...
You should rejoice if God brings someone into your midst who is better than you. There is a natural tendency to protect our positions in life. But what if God is preparing someone else for a role you have in the church or in your workplace? How...
When the leader sins it is not just the leader who pays for that sin. One of the ugly thigs about sin is what is does to those who are innocent of that sin. The Bible teaches us that everyone sins. It also teaches us that there are temporal...
Joy springs forth from faith and trust. It has been said that the one constant in the universe is change. For some change is feared and causes stress. For others it is a source of excitement. In this text people are excited about a change that has...
Humble your heart before you find yourself hanging on some enemy’s wall as a trophy. Leaders have a responsibility to God to lead people in the way that the Lord would have them to go. This is especially true of Christian leaders. These verses...
We are not to build a kingdom of our own but to lead people to the kingdom of God. Whatever role God placed you in, He put you there for a reason – for His glory, for the blessing of others, and to grow faith. Whether you take your role as...
Put your whole life into the hands of God and watch and see the amazing thing that He will make of it. In the midst of one of the dark times of King David’s life he wrote some of his most powerful psalms. What might God want to do during the...
If God tells you to stay away from a certain group or type of people, it is because He has a different plan for them that does not include you. Your life is precious, and it should be invested where God can us it for His glory, the blessing of...
Too often we think that we can handle our circumstances by ourselves. Attacks and difficult circumstances will come into your life, no matter how good of a Christian you are. This account out of the life of King Hezekiah will encourage us how to...
We might miss the radical things that God wants to do because we fail to go to Him in our times of need. This world has no answers or solutions for the big things of our life. So, why do we keep going to the world for help. We might not even...
It is through an intimate knowledge of God and His will that we know how to live this life. We often want our circumstances to change because we believe that ill result in a better outcome. But, what if, God is using the circumstances to bring you...
Where the leader goes – the people are likely to follow! You may not think of yourself as a leader, but it is likely that you have some influence on someone. That influence is a precious resource God has given you to help someone move closer...
God can only use us effectively if we are following His instructions exactly. No one likes to think of God as a disciplinarian, but His holiness demands consequences for disobedience. Thankfully, as Christians the ultimate consequence was dealt...
God wants you to allow Him to take the impurities out of your life. No one is perfect, right? While that is true, it is not how God wants us to stay. If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives in your and he is working to make you holy. He...
Any activity that is not led by the Lord and meant to honor and glorify him is futile and meaningless. Solomon was the wisest man to live and yet much of his life as king of Israel is marked by actions that were contrary to God’s commands for...
Only as we study God’s Word can we truly get to know the God we serve. Bookstore are filled with success-oriented books. The problem with most of them is that they promote success without referencing the original Book on success: The Bible....
Often the consequences of our sins and mistakes will be felt by those people who are closest to us. As leaders, we often have the freedom to make whatever decisions that we feel are right. What we might fail to realize is that, as leaders, our...
To believe that God is the source of our help is a step of faith. Where does your help come from? Do you realize that you need help? The psalmist in today’s verse knows that his help comes from the Lord. He also acknowledges the Lord’s ability...
There are some things God chooses not to do but there is nothing that He can’t do. In this account, Absalom, King David’s son, is usurping David’s throne. As Absalom plans to deal with his father, God is planning to deal with Absalom. In...
A good leader has good people who are there to lovingly help them through their times of need. Every leader has blind-spots that can hinder their ability to lead effectively. One of the roles of those called to follow is to help their leader to...
Your response to the sins in your life today will determine whether or not God can use you in the future. God is not looking for leaders who do not sin – there aren’t any. God is looking for leaders who do not try to hide their sins,...
People don’t need to hear about the love of Christ; they need to see the love of Christ. Jesus said there is one evidence above all others that proves to the world that you are a disciple. Rick shares some thoughts on that and the consequences...
It should sadden us that people have chosen to reject Jesus. It can be frustrating or aggravating when people reject the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reality is that if they rejected Jesus while He walked on this earth proving His deity by His...
Your role is to submit, encourage, exhort, support, and love that leader. Most people find themselves having to follow a leader at some point in their lives. What do you do when that leader is not friendly to you? As a Christian, how should you...
I wish it weren’t so, but every time I sin, I know it was because I wanted to and because God allowed me to. The life of Sampson may be one of the strangest in the Bible. He was a man of miraculous physical strength but was morally weak. His...
The way you live proves that the Lord is God of your life or you are! This verse tells us that God made us, and therefore, we are His people. This is true whether we believe in God or not. If we want to live a good life, it will be living in...
God will win the victory if we will engage in the battle. It is almost impossible to live in this world and not be around people who are opposed to what you believe. Our enemy, the devil will try to use them to lead us away from God. Because the...
God doesn’t need you to be able; He wants you to be available. God regularly chooses people who are not able to do great tasks to do great things for Him. If they will let Him, God will equip them to do what they, in their own cannot. God...
Leaders should be living examples of the things we are teaching God’s people. - People are much more likely to follow a leader who is modeling the things he is saying or teaching. It creates insecurity in people when their leader acts in a manner...
If you won’t praise God for what He is doing, He will find someone or something else to do it. Praising God ought to be a regular and natural part of a Christian’s life. God deserves it from His creation, especially His highest creation,...
Pride is the fuel that keeps an argument burning. We live in a time when differing opinions and viewpoints cannot be discussed freely, openly, and civilly. The Bible teaches us that the reason for that is pride. When we believe or think we are the...
We don’t always get to pick the one we are to follow. In this text, the psalmist encourages to pray for leaders. Specifically, he is referring to the leaders of the nation. The logic seems simple and obvious – if the leader finds favor with...
God will allow us to follow our own blind and stubborn path! God created us to be in a love relationship with Him. And He lets us choose if we want to be in that relationship. And because we have that choice, we can choose to live outside that...
We don’t need to preach at people for them to be saved; we need to show them Jesus. Life is busy and sometimes we need to be reminded of things. The important things of our past can be an anchor for our present. This is especially true about...
What will Jesus find you doing when He returns? Jesus told His disciples that he was going away, but that he was coming back again. We live in the time of waiting for His return. What should we be doing while we wait? Go to...
God will do anything that He needs to bring us closer to Him. One of the ways we describe God is that he is faithful. God will keep His promises to us. What we sometimes overlook or forget is that many of the promises of God are conditional. God,...
Nowhere does the Bible teach Christians that God will bless them financially like He did the Israelites. Are there promises in the Bible that do not apply to Christians? The simple answer is yes. Some promises are for the nation and people of...
There is a better life waiting for you! Most Christians are only living a small portion of the life they should be living in Christ. In this devotional Rick reminds us of two keys to living the whole Christian life. Go to for the show notes...
One of the realities of God’s sovereignty is that He does what He wants to do for reasons that are found solely in Him. For each of us that means that He chooses and uses us for His purposes based solely on His will, and not based on something...
God gave us His word, the Bible, so that we could know Him. In this message, Rick speaks of the perfection of what God gave us and how we should respond to it.
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Description: God loves the whole world according to John 3:16, but then there are verses like this one that tells us that God loves some people differently than others. It is important to understand why so that we can experience the lavish love of...
Sometimes things happen in our lives that might make us wonder if God is on our side. We feel like we are doing what we should be doing, but things are not going the way we think they should. It is possible that God is working behind the scenes to do...
Jesus was the sacrifice that makes it possible for God to pass over our sins. How should we respond to that reality? What should we be doing with Jesus?
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What does it mean when things aren’t going the way you think they should? Sometimes God is moving in the background setting up something better than you can imagine.
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