Deeper Daily Podcast- March 7, 2026

0:00Hello, my friends and welcome to the Deeper Daily podcast. I'm your host Paul White and thanks for joining me on this Saturday edition on March the 7th Saturday's the day that we I get started on recording podcasts when I do these every week. Saturday's where I begin and I do that because I'm coming fresh off of a Sunday in which I can tell you about the Sunday sermon you can expect the next day. I'm always a week behind so that I can stay ahead of the game. Well, this particular weekend is going to feature a sermon that I preached quite some time ago and that's because I was not in the pulpit at the garden last Sunday. I had a guest speaker, Jamie Engelhart was with us and we had such a wonderful time. Jamie's been a good friend for several years and I love to hear him preach and the garden had a great time hearing him and being blessed by him and so instead of me having a sermon that's fresh to present to you, I've been holding on to a sermon for months because

1:04I knew this day was coming. I knew that I had a Sunday where I wasn't in our pulpit and so I wanted something you had not seen before. Well, this one was actually kind of hard for me to hold back and so I've trusted that the father has put it in my heart to hold it for a specific reason. This was the Sunday morning service from last October. That's October of 25, Sunday morning at the Oasis Church in Wysok's, Pennsylvania. Now I have aired for you the Saturday night message already several months ago but this I held on to for the reasons that I would need it but also because this is a sermon that got as much, and I remember saying this at the time, even to my wife who's been with me for 30 plus years of sermons and she agreed. This one got as much or more immediate verbal feedback from the people in the building than

2:07anything I had ever preached and that I'm not even exaggerating. And so I sat on it because I thought, well, I'm going to need it but I want to save it and let it be dropped at the right time and I'm believing that time is now. This message is called the healing Jesus. It is a sermon that deals with the fact that we for so long have seen Jesus as an advocate and through that lens seen Jesus as an attorney and through that lens seen Jesus defending guilty people but what we should probably do is see Jesus as a comforter who in turn is dealing with hurting people and in turn is healing our hurts. This changes sin from a guilt issue to a wound. This changes Jesus from merely declaring us innocent and then trying to convince us of it to beginning the process of healing us and then continuing that process.

3:13Not only was it a lot of feedback but some of the feedback included people who you could see visibly something had happened to them. They heard a message that morning that set them free from so many things they were carrying. I'm praying that over this message as you watch it. It's available on video. They have a very good video set up, multi camera set up. I think you're going to enjoy the visual side of this but it's the message itself that I think has been worth the wait. This is a message that I preached derivatives of this. In fact a few years ago I did a message called the Great Physician and that was a message that really set this up. This is the culmination of a couple of years of thinking on that thought and so I hope you enjoy it. I think you will be impacted and I would love to hear from you ddp at Paulwhiteministries.com.

4:20You can also of course always reach us at info at Paulwhiteministries.com but I'm excited for you to get the healing Jesus. So look for it tomorrow across all of our platforms, the healing Jesus. First Thessalonians chapter 2 we've arrived at the 14th verse and Paul says this. For you brothers and sisters became imitators of the churches of God and Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews and of course Paul is talking to this Thessalonian church imitating the churches of God and Christ that's in Judea. They don't know how to be a church. This is everything is new. So imitation as has been said is the highest form of flattery. I believe that most of what we do in how we run our church services for lack of a better

5:25term run but how we conduct ourselves is imitation. And that's not on the face that's not necessarily a bad thing because if we didn't imitate we probably wouldn't know what we were doing at all. I think where it turns toxic is when imitation is the only form of expression that we have and we aren't following the cues of the Holy Spirit for our particular church. We're just forcing everyone else's way of doing church into the way we do church. And that to me is where we've gone off the rails in the American church is we've copied things that were useful, that worked, that were culturally relevant and that kept people engaged with the father, son and Holy Spirit. But we also copied things that weren't useful for our environment, trying to stretch beyond our means, our reach exceeding our grasp, doing things that might work for one crowd but

6:31don't work for another. But we just keep imitating and keep shoving it into our own worship space or our own way of conducting ourselves. And those are the things that need to go. So I don't want to say that we shouldn't be imitating because imitation is how we learn. That's how the Thessalonican church learned how to be a church. But there comes a point, too, where we're walking into a level of discernment by which we let the Holy Spirit show us what it looks like, independent of imitation. He then, and he talks about how they've imitated but they've also suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews. And so the churches in Judea are suffering at the hands of Jews centered around Jerusalem who don't want to see their Jewish brothers converting to this new faith. And so there's persecution. And Paul says you suffered it at the hands of your compatriots.

7:32So not Jewish people persecuting the Thessalonican church, but Gentile people persecuting the Thessalonican church. Gentiles being persecuted by Gentiles. How people coming to Christ who no doubt are being persecuted by their Rome and brethren who are persecuting them for their refusal to accept Caesar as the Son of God. And this will, of course, become a true issue for Christians across the empire as we move forward. We'll move on. We're really in the middle of a sentence. But we'll move on into it a little further tomorrow. God bless.