Plays On Word Radio
An in-depth look at the Word of God, the Plays On Word community, and the Plays - with original music - we perform, that are based on the Word of God. New episodes drop Fridays at 7AM EST! To find out how Plays On Word Theater can perform 'LIVE on YOUR STAGE' and to support this missionary & podcast visit: https://playsonword.org/
Plays On Word Radio
Ep 91: Discovering God's Presence in Everyday Life
"How does prayer enable us to experience God’s presence in our daily lives? In this episode, we explore the practice of enduring prayer, recognizing God’s presence, sharing faith stories, and looking forward to upcoming events—all while embracing His guidance."
Imagine navigating the early days of the internet, waiting patiently for the dial-up connection to finally grant you access. That's the kind of endurance Paul speaks of in 1 Thessalonians about prayer, which we explore on our spiritual journey with Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenney, Jr. As we reminisce about the nostalgia of dial-up, we prepare to celebrate our 100th episode milestone and invite you to engage with us. There's much anticipation for our upcoming Genesis 'JOE' performance in North Carolina, and we emphasize the urgency of spreading faith to those yet to discover the Lord.
The divine connection we discuss is not just about prayer, but about practicing the presence of God in our daily lives. By consciously acknowledging His presence, we find guidance and strength, aligning our actions with our faith. Pastor Teddy shares heartfelt stories of life's challenges, like the simple act of finding misplaced items, to illustrate how trusting God can offer unexpected solutions. We reflect on the profound opportunity to communicate with the Creator, marveling at the gravity of this connection. As we wrap up, there's gratitude for our listeners and a promise of more meaningful content to come. Join us as we explore these themes and more, nurturing our faith and strengthening our bond with the divine.
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Lord you know. Hey guys, you are now listening to Plays on Word.
Speaker 2:Radio. It's the best. We'll be right back. You're the only thing, you're the only thing, you're the only thing.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Plays on Word Radio, where we discuss, analyze, work and play on the Word of God. Thank you for joining us on this excursion. Today let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr, the founder of Plays on Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. Thank you very much, amen, amen. Thank you very much, katie Kenney and Mr Josh Taylor, the one and only we need to have Josh on the program. Welcome to all of you listening to Plays on Word Radio Hallelujah, amen, we are back.
Speaker 2:It is another Friday morning, or whenever you are listening to this. That is the beauty of this Back in the day, the old radio programs, man, if you missed it, you missed it. That was it. At least those of you that I send this to can stream it at your leisure. So it might not be Friday morning while you are listening to this, maybe it's Friday evening, saturday afternoon, sunday. It's all good. Amen. Well, welcome to you.
Speaker 2:All of you listening to Plays no Word. You know this is episode 91. We are coming up. We're coming up on episode 100, man, who would have thought I mean let me adjust this mic real quick? Yeah, who would have thought episode 100 we are coming up on? We're going to do something special for that one. Right now. What we are doing is well, first of all, have you guys been enjoying the podcast lately? Let me know, shoot a brother, a text, shoot an email, something. There are those of you that know who you are, and I'm so grateful that you guys give feedback and let us know what you like and what you don't like. Grateful for that, grateful that you are listening. This is commercial free radio.
Speaker 2:We are currently in our Genesis Joe season and we have a Genesis Joe coming up in North Carolina and we will be doing it at the St James Community I almost said community theater, but it's the building for the St James Community and we will be there. We've done Genesis Joe there, I want to say two years ago we also did our Pete play there and had a terrific response. There were churches that came out from all over the place or people that came out from churches. I should say not whole churches, people came out from churches. We met some great brothers and sisters, and so keep that in prayer for us. That's coming up. We're going to be bringing Genesis Joe and we are going to continue with our study that we're doing on the radio program here of Genesis Joe. We're working right through it. We're working right through Genesis, from Genesis 37 all the way out to the end. But before we do that, before we get back into our study, one of the plays that we are hoping to incorporate in 2025, if the Lord tarries.
Speaker 2:I just heard somebody say amen. Who here is waiting for the Lord to come back? Like my ears to the door man? I'm waiting for that trumpet man. Oh man, like any day now, there's so many that need to be saved though.
Speaker 2:That's why we got to pray. It is it is game time, man, and it is not the time for games. This is the real deal here. I mean the the Lord is. I mean there's nothing left to do but grab the church, so we need to pray for those that don't know him. I mean, like Paul said, man, it's far better for us to just get out of Dodge and be with the Lord. Of course, that is from the dollar store translation of the Bible. But yeah, paul doesn't say get out of dodge, but it's a paraphrase. It's much better to be with the Lord, but, hey, it's better for those that don't know him if we remain and pray them up.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, mark my words. I'm telling you this whole run through life that we are engaged in right now, life that we are engaged in right now, is so short in comparison to eternity, and we don't want to regret not maximizing the time. What do you mean? What do you mean, teddy? What do you mean? What do you mean, teddy? What do you mean? We don't want to regret not taking advantage of the time that we have. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians pray without ceasing right, pray without ceasing the idea meaning continuous prayer.
Speaker 2:And I've recently preached on this, on Thessalonians, and I used an example of the internet back in the day. Okay, back in the day, those of you that are, I don't even say old heads, but coming up on being old heads, but coming up on being old heads, you remember, back in the day, circa 96, 97, 98, 99, AOL used to send out these CDs. Before the DVDs, they would send out CDs. You'd get like three CDs for one thing and you'd put it in your computer, and that's if you had a CD-ROM. And then you'd the modem would kick in. It was dial up. Yeah, I was one of the first that had a high speed cable, because I was a cable guy, but yeah, it was, it was dial.
Speaker 2:You had to wait, you had to go through this whole operation in order to connect to the internet or connect with AOL, which was connected to the internet. The internet was a lot larger than AOL, but for all intents and purposes. You guys know what I mean. Bottom line is you would have to sit there and, god forbid if you had one phone in the house, one phone line. Hey Mom, I gotta use the internet. The phone line's all tied up. Man waiting for you to download one page. One page, although I did have a pretty sweet for no, I didn't 28 8 first, it was a 14 4 modem fax board. 28 8 board. Yeah, I was Mr Technology. It still was slow. It was terrible man compared to today. But the bottom line is I had to go through this whole operation just to get online Today.
Speaker 2:You can just say Alexa, what's the weather today? And those of you that have Alexa and listening within range, she probably just answered. Or you can say hey, siri, what's the temperature today? You know, listen to this, the high today will be 63 degrees Fahrenheit and the low will be 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, okay, thank you, siri, you're welcome. Okay, I'm going to drop my microphone right now for those of you listening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me, there it was.
Speaker 2:That was a microphone, a different mic than the one I'm on. Bottom line is there is continuous connectivity. There is continuous connectivity. Sad thing is it's working any other way, but that's a whole other topic. I won't get into that today. But the bottom line is we are connected and Paul is telling us to pray without ceasing, meaning be in prayer all day long.
Speaker 2:I gave another example when I was teaching through 2 Thessalonians about my niece who lives in California, when she was five years, five going into six, something like that yeah, five, six, seven, somewhere around there and this was during the time of COVID and when I was actually working for a utility at the time and so most of the people were working from home. And my niece, she discovered this thing called FaceTime on her iPad. I think her mom was using it with her family members and so she started. You know, we connected through FaceTime and I was working and every day she would call. She would call every day and I had these dolls this Mr Bear, dexter and Stephanie. I called them and they're old. I've had them for 30, 40 years or whatever. Since I was a kid I've had these bears and I started pretending that the bears could speak to her. So I would like step off the screen and Mr Bear would talk, talk to her hey, how was your day today? And he would talk to her and Dexter had a voice like this and he was always aggravated and agitated and so I would almost do a puppet show every day and talk to her and she just loved it. It was fantastic, something funny.
Speaker 2:I was working and I was like, hey, I got to get back to work. I got to get back to work now and I'm trying to get off the phone, off the line here I'm like I had to get back to work. I was way I had all I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had. Yeah, let's just say I wasn't doing my job to the best of my ability. And so I said I got to get back to work. And she said, okay, that's okay, put Mr Bear and Dexter on. It hit me so hard, it made me laugh so hard internally. I just I was like, okay, okay, all right, I just did my best to multitask, but that was actually funny. I just did my best to multitask, but that was actually funny. But the point is she was so she started playing with her dolls and I said Dexter had to go to the bathroom or something. I don't know what happened. I may have some excuse, but we were sitting there. So she went and she started playing with her dolls in her bedroom there and she's building a castle or something like that. And I was over, I was on my, I'm on my computer and every once in a while I'd say, hey, you okay, you all right. She said yeah, I'm good, I'm okay, I'm fine, just doing this, blah, blah, blah. But it was almost as if we were in the same room. We were a continent apart. It was as if we were in the same room, but the connection was never lost.
Speaker 2:So why do you go through that long story, pastor? Because I'm trying to illustrate to you how your day can operate with the Lord. Pray continuously. The connection is on. I tell you what when you do that, I guarantee, I guarantee you will walk more in righteousness.
Speaker 2:When you practice the presence of God Almighty and you're aware that he is on the, that's because that's the problem. We forget he's on, we forget he's on the line with us, and that's how the flesh can rise up and be like I'm taking over here and bad things happen. Then we end up apologizing to him. But we, when we practice his presence, huh, being aware that he is Connected with us, we are in the same room From a biblical perspective. He's within us and we are within him. When we take that approach, that produces a righteousness that has been revealed from heaven, the righteousness that is not of us, but it produces in us righteousness, a right walk, because we're aware of his presence. There's certain things we're not going to do, certain things we're not going to say, certain things we're not going to look at. Hey, if you have any kind of problem with looking at certain things I'm talking to most of you guys out there, but it's probably some girls if your eyes look at certain things that you shouldn't be looking at, hey, you practice the presence of God and watch what happens, because the Lord ain't having that, and when you're in His presence, you're not going to have it, and then it will become a perpetual practice for you.
Speaker 2:Practicing the presence of God is an activity that every single believer can engage in and it benefits every single believer, because God is, he is the power. So if you're struggling with something, it's not about just asking him. Oh Lord, please help me with this. Help me with this, help me with this. You need to visualize the connection, visualize he's right there with you. Not only that, he's not there waiting to judge you. He is a power source. He is the source of your strength and your power. I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength, and it is so important. I just wanted to share that with you.
Speaker 2:I don't know how I got on that rant, but somebody needed to hear that. Can I get an amen digitally something? Yeah, amen. So, getting back to the plays we have, we're hoping to launch the Dan play and get that going, and those of you that are shaking your head saying, yeah, I know I've been hearing that for a long time. Listen, I'm not trying to rush it and I've had a pretty busy schedule the last year, especially man oh, moving, um, I'm, hey, I'm still opening boxes. What kind of ripoff is that? I'm still opening boxes. I mean, when you move a entire household, it's not like moving stuff from one room to another.
Speaker 2:I moved an entire household in August of 23 and put most of the stuff into a storage unit and then moved to a location temporarily just a temporary location until we moved down to North Carolina location, until we moved down to North Carolina. And man, this has been. It's been great, but at the same time it's been very challenging. I marked most of the boxes and I thought I knew where I was putting everything. There's a general idea of where things went, but there was one box that had really important papers in it and it was not where I thought it was going to be. But praise the Lord, after doing my best to find it in my own strength, I ripped apart the storage unit, reorganized everything. It's a good thing.
Speaker 2:I've been hitting the gym because I'm telling you, I mean, I must have moved a hundred boxes and I'm not exaggerating, I must have moved a hundred boxes, heavy ones All over. I don't even know what's in there. I need to have like a garage sale. Don't tell Katie, yeah, one of these days I'm just going to go down to the load of the truck and go down to goodwill Like, yeah, just take it. I don't even know what's in it, just take it. Maybe I shouldn't do that. This is where practicing the presence of the Lord comes in. Lord, I feel like the Lord saying no, you don't want to do that, teddy. Okay, all right, okay. See, he gives us, he gives us conscience and and then when we don't know which way we should go, he he directs our steps. So he just saved me from a world of hurt just now and you guys witnessed it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we found that box it had, and I found it when I wasn't looking for it. I had. I don't want to say I gave up on looking for it, but I had looked in the locations where I expected it to be and it was nowhere. And I'm all over the place and I just, you know, I think a couple of days went by and I decided to move some boxes in the garage at the house not the storage unit in the garage and as I'm moving the boxes, I guess I uncovered the box with the stuff in it, but I still didn't notice what it was. This box I put it kind of fell onto the floor of the garage and I went and I think I went and had lunch or something. When I came back I looked down and there was this blue envelope that we had been looking for that had my important documents and all kinds of stuff in it. Katie ripped her office apart looking for this. I looked everywhere in my office and in the storage unit moved billions of Okay, now it's billions. I moved a hundred boxes in the storage unit. That's more like it.
Speaker 2:See, practicing the presence of the Lord, you learn to not exaggerate and when you do, he calls you on it. See. See, it just benefits the Christian to practice his presence and to remember that we are connected at all times to the creator of the universe, who is righteous, holy and perfect. And he's for us and it's not I know I'm going all over the place, but I just got to come back to this for a second. And he's for us and it's not a. I know I'm going all over the place, but I just got to come back to this for a second. It's not that we are connected to him and he's ready to judge us. Okay, it's not that he judged our sin on the cross of Christ Jesus, the things that keep us out of his presence. He judged that on the cross, judgment was poured out on Christ Jesus for our sake. And Jesus says it is finished, the payment. So now, when we're in his presence, it is what you would call sanctification, right, the process of making us into the image of his son perfectly holy and righteous son, and it is more of an exhortation. It's not a judgment that he's ready to crack the whip on us, although sometimes we need that. Sometimes, yeah, you know what parent is just going to let their child just do whatever they want. No, it's not that you know, god being the ultimate, perfect parent, he's going to discipline us, but it's not for judgment. It is to make us into the image of Christ and to reflect His righteousness. So and that's important A lot of people think God is out to judge them and to condemn them.
Speaker 2:What does Romans 8, 1 say? If you're in Christ, jesus, man, there is no condemnation. If you are in Christ, drop the mic. There is no argument against that. If you are in Christ, there is. Therefore, now, there's no condemnation. He's not condemning, but absolutely 100%. The Holy Spirit of God will convict, and there's a big difference. He will convict you, amen. That ain't right with you. He doesn't speak like that. He will speak to your heart in the most effective way and he will say that's not right what you're about to say. That's not right what you're about to do, that's not right what you're doing. He will convict In the hopes or not the hopes, but in the in the hopes or not the hopes, but in the reason for it is to bring you into a righteous walk with God.
Speaker 2:He paid such a high price for us to be with Him so that we do have that connection with Him, that the connection is on. We don't have to go through all this ritual stuff of getting a DVD, putting it in the CD-ROM drive, getting the modem online, telling everybody else, well, we got to use the phone line ding ding, ding, ding, ding ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding ding, and all that. No, uh-uh, we are connected and that is not something. It was not like that. He made that possible. That didn't just happen, he made that possible and the cross of Christ is the only way that that was possible. The connection, because Adam straight up broke the connection. He used a shovel and cut that cable and since Adam, modems were not connecting. The modems of mankind could not connect.
Speaker 2:And then God prescribed a way through the nation of Israel. He prescribed a way that they were to come to him and they had to go through all this ritual stuff and at all of that pointed to Christ. The entire Old Testament. You cut it anywhere and it points to Christ in one way or another. His work, his personhood, who he is, it all points to Christ, and I think sometimes we take it for granted, literally, that we can just pray to God and know that the creator of the universe hears us. He isn't hearing it. If you're not Listen. There's a big problem.
Speaker 2:If sin is in the way that needs to be dealt with and people talk about I don't have the peace of God. I don't have the peace of God. That's because you don't have peace with God. There's hostility if you are an unbeliever. There's hostility between you and God. There's something that is not an elephant in the room. It's much larger than that, something that needs to be dealt with, and that is the problem of sin.
Speaker 2:You come to Christ. You ask him to forgive you of your sin, ask him to fill you with his Holy Spirit, live through you, recognizing that you are indeed separated from God. Now you're restoring that connection. Once you do that, you can approach the Ancient of Days and you have that connection that is always on. This is this is remarkable, absolutely remarkable stuff that we can be connected.
Speaker 2:Can I just pause for a second? We need to just think about the gravity of that for a second. You look outside, look outside your window. Everything that you see, everything, every atom In everything you see, every molecule, came from him, speaking it into existence. And you're telling me you can get him on the line, you can have an audience with him. Are you kidding me? If that's not something that blows your mind, then you haven't thought about it. The access that we have and, believe me, I'm not trying to do that today Amen. Well, I enjoyed talking with you guys today. Looks like we're out of time, though, and I don't even know what I talked about. Please forgive me. Until we meet again, until we meet again, until we meet again next Friday and we're going to have something good for you next Friday. May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Speaker 1:This program was made possible by the Plays on Word family of supporters. To find out more, check out our website at playsonwordorg. Thank you, thank you.
