Trey VanCamp Teachings Podcast

Stop Living Like You’re Going To Run Out On June 25, 1967, the Beatles debuted a new song during the first live international satellite broadcast in human history. Roughly 350 million people across 25 countries tuned in at once. It was the first time technology had connected the world in real time, and the most influential band on the planet had the chance to say anything they wanted to all of it. They chose “All You Need Is Love.” Credit where it’s due: they weren’t wrong about the diagnosis. We do need love. Our families need it, our communities need it, you need it. But the Summer of Love built its vision on a definition of love untethered from commitment, more about self-expression than self-sacrifice, more about discovering yourself than denying yourself for someone else. We’re still living in the wake of that definition. There’s a sad irony here too. Less than three years after that broadcast, the band that sang “all you need is love” had broken up. We shouldn’t judge them too quickly, though. We’re all prone to the same thing. Marriages fall apart. Friendships dissolve. Churches split. Left in our own power, none of us are naturally quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. A Letter Without a Fire to Put Out Paul’s letter to the Ephesians stands apart from his other letters in an important way. Most of Paul’s writing is reactive. He writes to Corinth because they keep finding creative new ways to sin. He writes to the Thessalonians because they’ve quit their jobs, convinced the end is imminent. He writes to Timothy because fear has gotten the better of him. Ephesians isn’t putting out a fire. Paul is painting a picture: a church where enemies become family, where broken people are made whole, where love isn’t just defined but actually displayed. And right at the hinge point of the letter, before he tells anyone how to live or love, Paul drops to his knees and prays. Specifically, he prays that the church would be filled with the fullness of God’s love. Why start there? Because your vision of God’s love determines the shape of your entire life. If you believe God is distant, you’ll live anxious. If you believe his love must be earned, you’ll live like a performer. If you believe he’s withholding, you’ll live fearful and controlling. But if you believe he delights in you, you’ll live secure. There’s a real difference between knowing God loves you and actually believing it. Gradual, and Multi-Sensory Paul’s prayer reveals two things about how this comprehension actually happens. First, it doesn’t happen all at once. Paul prays in a kind of staircase: being strengthened in your inner being, then Christ taking up full residence in your heart (not just visiting, but holding keys to every door, including the ones you keep locked), then becoming rooted and grounded in love as your actual operating system, and finally being filled with the fullness of God. This is the slow work of spiritual formation, becoming a person with greater and greater capacity to both receive and give love. Second, it doesn’t happen in one way. We tend to assume love is something you learn in a classroom, like memorizing facts about the ocean. But Paul prays that we’d “know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge.” That’s not something you take care of in a single lecture. It’s something closer to diving into the water itself. You experience God’s love in community, when people pull their chairs closer instead of pulling away from your honesty. You experience it in practice, in things like Sabbath rest, which you can’t learn from a textbook, only from doing it. You experience it through the Holy Spirit, who ministers directly to your deepest wounds. And you experience it in both moments and marathons: the instant where you finally feel like you don’t have to hide anymore, and the long seasons of endurance that shape you over years. The Problem Was Never Scarcity A couple adopted a five-year-old girl from Haiti named Addie, whose parents had died in an accident. Her first night in her new home, she watched her two teenage brothers devour an entire dinner and clear the table. She went quiet, convinced she’d just witnessed the last meal she’d see for a while. Her new mother didn’t just tell her there was more food. She walked her to the fridge, the pantry, the freezer, and showed her everything. “Honey, you’ll never go hungry again.” That’s what Paul is doing in this prayer. He’s opening the fridge. He’s opening the pantry. He’s saying: stop living like an orphan. Stop living like God’s love is scarce. Look around. There is more than enough. The problem was never a shortage of God’s love. The problem is our capacity to receive it. Many of us are sitting at the Father’s table still living like we’re starving.

In order to be formed by Scripture, we must learn to submit to its authority. In Psalm 119, the Psalmist describes God’s Word as a lamp, something that illuminates just enough for us to take one small step of obedience to Jesus at a time. This means that Scripture can’t simply be read, it must be obeyed. If our attitudes, actions, behaviors, and beliefs are never redirected by the Bible, then we aren’t treating it like a lamp unto our feet. But by ruthlessly assessing the darkness in the world and our own hearts, and by radically accepting the light of God’s Word, we can slowly practice submitting to Scripture and obeying it as truth.

All of us want peace, transformation, and a life that reflects Jesus. But becoming like God is not something we can accomplish on our own strength. Paul reminds us in Ephesians that transformation is only possible through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a force but a person who dwells within us. We can grieve Him through our words and relationships, even while remaining secure in our salvation, sealed by His presence. And while those who follow Jesus already have the Spirit within them, we are continually invited to be filled by Him through repentance and surrender. As we walk together in worship, gratitude, mutual submission, and love, the Spirit forms us, peace by piece, into the likeness of Christ.

This week in the Peace by Piece series, we explore Ephesians 4:1, focusing on the crucial role of teaching in Christian formation. Many of us are shaped by ideas and images that subtly pull us away from God’s truth. True transformation doesn’t happen through quick fixes or isolated frameworks, but through a holistic, patient process of engaging with the essentials: Teaching, Community, Practice, Holy Spirit, and Moments & Marathons. This process requires confronting the lies we believe, renewing our minds with Scripture, and allowing God to form us piece by piece over time. As we grow in this grace, we begin to embody the peace of Christ in a chaotic world.

In this message from 1 John 4, we look at Christmas through the eyes of the Apostle John near the end of his life. After decades of ministry, suffering, and loss, John doesn’t offer advice for fear—he offers good news: God is love. This teaching explores: Why fear doesn’t just live in our thoughts, but in our nervous system How God’s love takes the initiative long before we do What “perfect love” actually means—and how it casts out fear Why the opposite of love isn’t hate, but fear How the incarnation of Jesus is God’s answer to human anxiety Rather than calling us to be braver, Christmas invites us to receive love more fully—a love that is sacrificial, unconditional, and strong enough to heal even our deepest fears. If fear has shaped your expectations, habits, or faith, this message is an invitation to step further into the love of God—and to discover the freedom that comes with it. “There is no fear in love. Instead, perfect love drives out fear.” — 1 John 4:18

In Matthew 20 Jesus tells a parable about a master who rewards his workers based on grace, not their merit. In the parable, Jesus explains that God gives grace out of his goodness, not our productivity. Most of us struggle with this truth today. While we’re grateful for God’s mercy extended to us, we can grow bitter when God gives mercy, providence, and blessings to those we don’t think deserve it. But this comparison keeps us from experiencing joy from God’s grace towards us. To avoid becoming bitter with God’s generosity towards others, we practice contentment.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is another popular parable of Jesus that often gets overlooked. In this story, Jesus describes a Jewish man in need on the side of the road. Religious experts and the “spiritually mature” pass him by, but a Samaritan, one of the most despised people to the Jews, stops to help him. In our lives today, we can be tempted to simply pass by those whom God is calling us to love and serve. We’re either too busy, we see them as too bad, or their situations are too broken for us to reach out in love. Like the man Jesus tells this story too, we can be caught asking “who exactly is my neighbor?” rather than “who will I be a neighbor to?” But by asking this question, we can begin to allow Jesus to transform us into people who are truly spiritually mature, people fully capable of loving and serving those around us.

The first parable recorded by the three gospel writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke is a parable about seeds. Jesus explains that like a seeds planted among different types of soil by a farmer, the words and teachings from Him are shared among different types of people. Some reject His words and teachings, some don’t allow it to take root, and others give up following the way of Jesus by giving into the worries of this age. But there are a few who hear God’s word, receive it by applying it to their lives, and bear good fruit. These are the people who allow God’s word to confront and convict them, and who reorient their lives in response. In order to be these types of people, we must receive the seeds God generously wants to share with us, and learn to apply them to our daily lives.