See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven, whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more”, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.
Restoring Hope: Pastor Rick McNeely on Building a Spirit-Filled Community
About this episode
Pastor Rick McNeely of Christ Community Church in Murphysboro, Illinois joins Philip Cameron for a timely conversation about holding onto unshakeable faith when the world around us is in turmoil. Drawing from Hebrews 12:25-27, Rick unpacks why God allows seasons of shaking — not to harm us, but to strip away everything that cannot last so that only what is eternal remains. "We serve a God that is an anchor of our soul," Rick declares, "and he will bring you to him and hold you in the midst of turmoil and tumult." The conversation moves from Rick's bold decision to keep his church open during COVID — setting up a drive-in worship service in the parking lot when the state shut down churches while keeping taverns open — to the deeper spiritual principle that the church must never compromise its message. Rick is direct: "We're not going to Atlanta. We're talking about heaven, and there's only one way to get there, and that's through Christ." Pastor Rick also explores why fear is the enemy's primary weapon, why authentic love requires speaking truth, and how God's grip on our lives — like a grandfather holding a child's hand on a treacherous path — is always an act of love, never control. Viewers wrestling with uncertainty will find both biblical grounding and practical courage in this episode.
Part of our Faith collection of conversations.
Quotes worth sharing
“We live in a world that wants God to change to embrace their lifestyle, rather than allowing God to change their lifestyle to be able to embrace him.”
“She finally stopped. She said, 'Papa, you are dragging me.' And I looked at her and I said, 'Honey, I may be dragging you, but I'm not gonna lose you.' And I think what people have to understand is that God gets a tight grip on us because he doesn't want to lose us.”
“Do you ever stop and consider that for countries that are atheist or that outlaw God — did you ever stop and consider why they fight so hard to keep someone quiet about someone they say doesn't exist? If somebody was trying to tell me that Peter Pan was gonna show up and take us to Neverland, I wouldn't spend billions of dollars trying to shut them down. But they know — they know deep down in their heart — that the gospel will set people free.”
What's Discussed
Pastor Rick McNeely of Christ Community Church in Murphysboro, Illinois discusses the biblical framework for navigating cultural and spiritual upheaval. Anchoring the conversation in Hebrews 12:25-27, Rick argues that God is deliberately shaking everything that can be shaken so that only the eternal remains. He recounts keeping his church open during COVID by hosting drive-in worship services, citing Hebrews 10:25 on not forsaking the assembling of believers. Rick contends that fear is the enemy's chief weapon, that perfect love casts out fear, and that authentic Christian love demands speaking truth rather than affirming destructive paths. He closes with a vivid illustration of God's grip as an act of protective love.
- Rick McNeely Welcomed to the Show
- Refusing to Quit During COVID Lockdowns
- Drive-In Church and Assembling Together
- Hebrews 12 and the Divine Shaking
- Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
- Truth, Love, and the Gospel's Exclusive Claims
- God's Grip — the Granddaughter on the Snowy Path
- Paul's Serpent and Standing on the Solid Rock
Scripture in this episode
See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,
not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as you see the Day approaching.
Episode Transcript
Auto-generated · click any timestamp to jump the video
Intro
Philip:Hey, welcome to Daily Faith. My name is Philip Cameron, and I am so pleased to have you with us. We've got a great show today, and we do a warm-up kind of thing here now, but we've got a dear friend of our ministry, a dear friend of me personally, Rick McNeely, who is gonna be with me. And I believe that God is going to speak through him into your world.
Philip:We are living in incredible days right this minute. I mean, you are watching America on fire because of these terrible riots that are taking place in Los Angeles and now spreading across the country. Let me tell you, that's not just a spontaneous action. That is a planned, funded, financed situation that is being done by people who want to destroy this country. This coming Saturday they're planning to have a great big demonstration across the nation, and they are planning for this thing, and we need to pray against it. There's a website called noKings.com or .org, I forget which one it is, and you can go there and you can read where they want you to show up.
Philip:So I'm asking the church, if you would, today to pray over America. Because let me tell you, my dad used to say this all the time to me. He says, it's not noise they don't like, it's our kind of noise they don't like. And whenever you see something standing up for righteousness and standing up for the rule of law in our country, they don't want that. They want this country to be destroyed. And so I'm just asking you to pray with us and believe God with us that their efforts will come to nothing this weekend.
Philip:This could be a troublesome weekend. So please pray with us and believe God for that with us. If you could help us, and also you can share the program if you're watching this on social media. How we work our programs is we record it and we show that on social media, and then we also replay it on different stations and networks across America. And if you're watching us on social media, you can get us on YouTube — just youtube.com/dailyfaith. You can also get us on, of course, Facebook and all these other ones. But please like the program, share the program. And there's a little notification bell on your screen — if you tap that, whenever we come on there it'll alert you to tune into Daily Faith.
Philip:We are here today to affirm your daily faith walk with Jesus every day. Every day you're either going forwards or backwards. There's no standing still in the kingdom of God. You're either moving towards what God wants you to be or you're moving away from it. And what we want to do with Daily Faith is to love you and minister to you. And we bring some of the greatest men and women of God in the country. Today's example — this man, when all the churches that I knew had closed down, Rick McNeely was out there preaching, doing the King's business, because he refused to quit. And I love a man like that. He's been on the mission field. You're gonna love this man today, I promise you.
Philip:And so if you could tell your friends about Daily Faith and DailyFaith.tv — it's real simple, DailyFaith.tv. You can go on there. There's a shop for all kinds of merchandise for our mission outreach. We have a mission outreach called Orphan's Hands, and we care for — we have a village of homes in Moldova. We have a home in Ukraine. We're able to open some new homes and we care for kids that are at threat of being trafficked.
Philip:And it's a tremendous ministry. I mean, a real God thing that God's doing. The kids that are part of the ministry — now some have been with us for 15, 17 years, who are now married themselves and they're the house parents in the homes that they first came to all those years ago. It's a crazy thing that God's doing. And all the information you can get there from DailyFaith.tv, and all our programs are archived on Daily Faith as well. So listen, we are just delighted to have you with us. I'm glad you're here. Welcome to Daily Faith.
Philip:Hey, welcome to Daily Faith today. My name is Philip Cameron and I am absolutely thrilled to have you join with us today. We've got a great show, we've got a great program. I've got a friend with me that is a pastor, but before he pastored and while he was pastoring, he had a tremendous burden for the mission field. And he has literally traveled in the countries that we work in. He's been there and he's doing some tremendous things. He pastors a church called Christ Community Church in Murphysboro, Illinois. And you're gonna hear from Rick McNeely today, and I believe that God's going to use him to speak into your life.
Philip:I've learned something in my world as I've walked with the Lord Jesus, is that when I have a need, he gets people to intercept me at the point of my need. You know how the new defense over Israel — and they're now working on having one in America — when they send up a missile to destroy, they would destroy you if it landed, they can now intercept it. I mean, going thousands of miles an hour, these things guided by computers can literally intercept the track of the missile and blow it up in space before it gets a chance to harm anyone.
Philip:And I would have news for you: God's been in the intercepting missile business a whole lot longer than the American or the Israeli defense program has. And he intercepts the things that the devil wants to destroy and harm you through. God is going to intercept. And the Bible says, no weapon formed against me will prosper. And I've used that for you — that there are divine interceptions coming into your life in the name of Jesus.
Philip:So we are just so excited to have Pastor Rick with us today. Now listen, you may or may not know we have a mission work in Moldova that is growing. In fact, we're just at this process today. My son Andrew's over there just now — he's normally here helping me run this program. So if I make a mistake, it's his fault, because he abandoned me to go to Moldova. We've got a great place called Vara Village. It is the most amazing place on the largest lake in the whole country. And they built this village for rich folks to have a home beside the lake, and they poisoned that lake with chlorine to kill algae. And of course it killed everything, and these homes were left abandoned for nine years.
Philip:And we bought them and we fixed them up. And we take young girls that are at risk of being trafficked. Every girl you see right now on this video — if a trafficker could get a hold of them, it'd be worth $300,000 a year per girl. So we have about 50 kids altogether. So you imagine how much money the traffickers would get. And we take them into our place, we put them back in school, we tell them if you're born, God has a plan. And we are seeing the most amazing things happen in these kids' lives.
Philip:They're turning from orphans to sons and daughters. And now they are missionaries. And every summer, starting in the summertime, they go out and have camps in villages that have no other gospel witness. All through the rest of the year, our homes at Vara Village — each home sponsors a village and they get to know every widow in the village. They dig their gardens and put vegetables in. They go and have camps. They go and spend weekends there and they literally reach a village all the way down through its fiber and share the gospel.
Philip:And so starting — in fact, my two granddaughters, Allie and Kara, are there right now. And they're staying in Vara Village with the girls in these homes. And they're gonna spend the whole summer doing youth camps with these kids. So I'm a very proud granddad. And I'm gonna show you — they sent me a video just the other day of one of the camps in one of the villages that they sponsor. And then they sent this to me. Now understand this: these kids make these videos, put the music on it, do the whole thing and send them to me. And you see them as I see them at the same time. So this is really quite amazing. Watch this video.
Philip:I love it. I love the fact that our kids who were once orphans themselves, or they came from a horrendously impoverished background — God is using them to go back into the mission field and care for other kids. And when these kids come to our camps, they get more food than they've ever seen before. Bananas and apples and oranges and all kinds of stuff. They get backpacks to go back to school with all the school supplies. And in a week we change and transform and reach all of the families of that village through their kids and grandkids.
Philip:And we need you to help us. This is all done — all of this stuff is done by someone like you giving a dollar a day. You can change a life for a dollar a day. Isn't that amazing? You can reach into these kids' lives with the gospel being shared by an orphan, and tell these kids that God loves them and cares for them. They come from the poorest country in Europe. Most of these kids have never seen a paved road, never seen indoor plumbing, never. They spend their life in these villages in dire poverty. Through the wintertime when the weather can be minus 30 degrees, it's unbearable the lives they live. And these kids that God has allowed us to rescue become the rescuer.
Philip:And right now we are in a challenge — so exciting. We've just bought two new homes on about a 20-acre lot of ground. And these two homes — one of the terrible things that happened recently, a 14-year-old girl was brought to us and we could only take them in when they're 16. And they made us put her back in the village she came from. And she was gang-raped, and her name is Maria. Pray for her. And it so hurt us that we decided to try and do something to rescue little kids.
Philip:And these two homes — each house will hold 25. Now you're about to see the inside of this house. Excuse the color of the walls, we're gonna change that. And these fancy beds will be taken out and bunk beds will be put in there. But each of these houses will hold 25 kids between the age of four and 16. And my son Andrew was there meeting with the government officials, et cetera. And let me tell you the need — let me tell you how big this need is. Around where that village is, there are 75 unreached villages. 75. And they're saying, come in, you'll have more kids than you can handle.
Philip:And we just did a miracle of finance. We have a deadline coming up at the end of July for $150,000, and we are believing God to meet that need. And if you could help us today with a one-time gift, it'll be a tremendous help to us. I can't emphasize enough — maybe you're a businessman or a businesswoman and you can say, I can sponsor a whole home. Please get in contact with us. We need this done. We need a miracle. We wanna get this open by the fall.
Philip:And also, every house that we open takes 300 people sponsoring it by giving $1 a day. You can be part of an army of 300 that would open one of these houses and allow us to rescue 50 little boys and 50 little girls. Can you imagine the power, the lives saved and rescued? A lot of times when they go to the orphanages, they're abused in the orphanage — little girls five, six years of age with boys that are 16. It's not a good mix.
Philip:And we are hoping to have this place open, and we're just depending on the Lord, and we're looking to the Lord Jesus. And we're asking you to pray. Please pray — nothing else, pray — and ask God to meet this need for these kids, to allow us to finish the payment of the property. There's a barn on this property. It used to be a farm and there's a barn there, and also there's an orchard. And we're gonna turn the barn into accommodation for youth camps. So as well as our kids going into a village, we'll be able to take kids to this place.
Philip:We're calling it Promised Land. And we're gonna take kids to Promised Land and have camps. And I'm looking for a great big — you know, those outdoor play park kind of things with swings and slides and all kinds — I'm looking for one of them. So if you know of one, please get in contact with us, because we want to ship it over there. And I'm gonna make this camp the best camp in the country, so that we can take the gospel of Jesus to these kids that have never heard. You can make a miracle happen. Our address is real clear, it's on the screen right now. It's PO Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. Please get in contact with us. I really appreciate it.
Philip:I am delighted to have my friend with me today. Rick McNeely is a great man of God. I've known him for years, and his church, Christ Community Church in Murfreesboro, Illinois, is one of those places we go there and speak regularly. And every time I go there I get blessed by the kindness and the generosity of this church. And Rick is joining us today from Murphysboro. Rick, how are you doing, my brother?
Rick McNeely:God bless you. I'm doing great, Philip. It's great to see you.
Philip:Oh, thank you for coming. And congratulations on your 70th birthday.
Rick McNeely:Don't remind me. That's passed. The Bible says, forget the things which are behind, press on towards the mark. So yes, I'm 70. It's just a number.
Philip:It's just a number. Misery loves company, that's all I'm gonna say. So yeah, when it's your turn, I'm gonna be getting back to you. I can promise you that.
Rick McNeely:Well, it'll be a while.
Philip:Don't rub it in. God has allowed you to do some unique things in the church. And one of the things I want you to talk to people about today is how you refused to quit when COVID paralyzed the church and paralyzed this country. You just would not quit, would you?
Rick McNeely Welcomed to the Show
Rick McNeely:Well, you know, when it happened, I thought, this isn't — this is more than just about a sickness that's happening.
Philip:Yes.
Rick McNeely:And I really felt like there was something that was shifting in the atmosphere. And I preached to the church a message. I said, this changes everything. Everything. Because we were given an ultimatum. Every state wasn't the same, but our state — the governor had shut down churches and kept open taverns. And I thought, nuts, this isn't right. And so what I did was I called the sheriff's department and let them know. I said, I'm just letting you know that I'm going to be having church in our parking lot.
Refusing to Quit During COVID Lockdowns
Rick McNeely:We set it up like a movie theater, like a drive-in. And then we had a trailer in the front for a praise and worship team. But I was standing on that trailer looking out when we were getting ready to practice, and I thought, I can't see people from here. So I ended up going up on the roof. And I wasn't thinking about the attention it would get, and all of a sudden we had people coming down from St. Louis, you know, bringing offerings, thanking us for being open.
Drive-In Church and Assembling Together
Philip:Wow.
Rick McNeely:But I understood the fundamental fact that we need each other. The scripture said not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together, and much more as you see the day approaching. And so just even with people being in cars and being able to wave at each other and smile at one another, it was tremendous. And so that's why it was so important to us to be able to do that.
Philip:I apologize — my screen. Are you still with me there?
Rick McNeely:Yeah, I'm here.
Philip:Okay, good.
Rick McNeely:So we ended up having this — our parking lot was filled with cars, and we even had people from other churches that were coming because their churches were closed.
Philip:Sure.
Rick McNeely:So it was a place that they could come together and worship and just continue to praise God in the midst of circumstances.
Philip:And what I saw during that season — and looking back on it, we were all crazy to allow the government to do what they did to us. And I don't think that would ever happen again. But what I loved about what you did was the fact that you refused — you did not compromise the message. And we're living in a world, in a day and age when compromise is what's being asked of us. Give up. Don't be so stringent. The Christian faith is the only faith. We've gotta allow all faiths. We've gotta stand for what we believe today more than ever before.
Rick McNeely:Well, the scripture talks about Jesus — he's the one that made the statement and said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. You know, people say, well, you can get to Atlanta several different ways. You can take a bus, you can take a plane, you can take a car.
Philip:Yeah.
Rick McNeely:And my response is, we're not going to Atlanta. We're talking about heaven. And there's only one way to get there, and that's through Christ. And he said, whosoever will, let them come. This isn't about pushing people away. This is about opening up arms and welcoming people in. But what's happened — we live in a world that wants God to change to embrace their lifestyle, rather than allowing God to change their lifestyle to be able to embrace him.
Rick McNeely:And when you opened the program up, you were talking about the riots. And we had talked a little bit prior to the program, but we didn't mention anything about what I was gonna talk about. And literally when you said that, I just had to smile, because that had been on my heart. I've looked at what's happening in the world and I thought, this is by design. Absolutely. And if you look in Hebrews the 12th chapter, let me read just a couple of verses here.
Hebrews 12 and the Divine Shaking
Rick McNeely:It said, see that you do not refuse him. This is Hebrews 12:25. See that you do not refuse him who speaks, for if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he has promised, saying, yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven. Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Rick McNeely:So in plain English, what's happening — I believe sincerely — is that we're seeing this scripture being fulfilled, that there's a shaking that's going on to this earth. And you have to understand that the devil always operates in fear. But the scripture said that perfect love casts out fear. So you see people whose worlds are being shaken, their faith is being shaken, their lives are being shaken. And God was forewarning us through the writer of Hebrews: look, you have to hold onto those things that can't be shaken.
Philip:Absolutely. And we live and serve a God that cannot be shaken. He's not intimidated. You've never had a problem that caused God to wring his hands and pace the floor and go, I don't know what I'm gonna do about that. No, no, no. He knows exactly what's going on and he's able to do it. I believe that we're getting ready to — we're seeing it here — people coming. And we've been praying for some time, God send us the lost, and they're coming in. But what's happening now is people's worlds are being shaken up to get them to turn.
Rick McNeely:I always tell people this. I say, you know, Jesus loves you just the way you are. If you're an alcoholic, if you're a prostitute, however you are, he loves you that way. But he loves you too much to leave you the way he finds you. So he changes you. But the world pushes away a God that can change them. They don't want to be changed. And all the riots that are happening is an effort to try and get people to capitulate out of fear. Hunker down. Don't stand up.
Rick McNeely:You know, I'm thinking — if somebody was drowning, how could I say that I love them and care about them if I'm not willing to throw them a life jacket? And what's happening is the world is throwing people an anchor and it's taking them down, rather than lifting them up. And so God just wants us to be lifted up. That passage said that all these things are gonna be shaken so that the only thing that remains are those things that can't be shaken.
Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
Rick McNeely:And I just wanna tell the viewers today that we serve a God that is an anchor of our soul. And he will bring you to him and hold you in the midst of turmoil and tumult. He'll just hold you and say, you don't need to be afraid. I've got you right here. I'm not gonna let anything get to you until it comes through me first. And when we do that, then we can face the day with hope.
Philip:That's amazing. Let me tell you something — we didn't talk about this, but you think we're reading from the same page. Because God's been telling me that this is not about immigration. All of this rioting and stuff, it's got nothing to do with immigration. These guys that are rioting and setting cars on fire and throwing concrete blocks off of bridges — I mean, they're not there because they care about immigration. They are paid thugs, paid thugs that are there to destroy the fabric of America. If they can use a cause, whatever cause it is — you name the cause, they don't care. What they're there for is they want to shake America. They want to make fear grow up in this country and destroy this country through fear. And we will not let that happen, because perfect love casts out fear every time.
Rick McNeely:Exactly. And the truth is, Philip, the people in the streets — 99% of them don't even know why they're there. They've just been told to show up. So they're not there trying to destroy the fabric of America. They're just there because they're getting paid to show up. But it's the people that are financing it that are trying to destroy the fabric of America, because they want power and they can't get it.
Rick McNeely:Do you ever stop and consider that for countries that are atheist or that outlaw God — did you ever stop and consider why they fight so hard to keep someone quiet about someone they say doesn't exist? I mean, if somebody was trying to tell me that Peter Pan was gonna show up and take us to Neverland, I wouldn't spend billions of dollars or millions of dollars trying to shut them down. I'm thinking that's so ludicrous that nobody's gonna believe them anyway. But they know — they know deep down in their heart — that the gospel will set people free.
Truth, Love, and the Gospel's Exclusive Claims
Rick McNeely:Jesus said, you know the truth and the truth will make you free. And it bothers me when I hear people say, well, you don't love or you don't care. Well, the truth is, I do love and I do care, or I wouldn't say anything. I mean, when you won't help someone that's going down and you know that they're going down, and you just stand and watch — that's not love.
Rick McNeely:I always tell people, I said, God loves us so much that he'd rather die for us than live without us. And so Christ came and gave himself so we could live. I've got grandkids, and in the wintertime when we have a fire in the fireplace, if they go close to the fire, I don't say, well, I just love you so much I'll let you — I'm not going to upset you, I'm gonna just let you go where you are. No. I'm out of my chair and I grab a kid and say, don't you dare go near that. That's not because I don't love them. That's because I do love them.
Rick McNeely:And the gospel of love is one that says, listen guys, that ends up in destruction, and we are gonna try and turn you away from destruction. You know, years ago when my granddaughter Shaylee — she was five years old, she turned five on that trip — we were in Wyoming and we were out by Jackson Hole. And they had a real late winter that winter. It stretched way into the spring. We're there at the end of May and there's still snow on the ground, there's avalanche warnings in Yellowstone.
God's Grip — the Granddaughter on the Snowy Path
Rick McNeely:And so we are walking this path and it's treacherous. I mean, it's snow-covered, there's a raging river beside us, and we're walking up through there. And my daughter said, dad, make sure you hold onto her, because Shaylee was Miss Independent — she was gonna go on her own. So I've got her by the hand holding her, and we're going through that snow. And she finally stopped. She said, Papa, you are dragging me. And I looked at her and I said, honey, I may be dragging you, but I'm not gonna lose you.
Rick McNeely:And I think what people have to understand is that God gets a tight grip on us because he doesn't want to lose us. And you may feel like at times, well, I'm being dragged, or this isn't fair. But if you could see the whole picture — you know, when you're in a room, all you can see is what's in that room. But if you lift up that roof and rise above it, you can see everything going on all around it. And God's above time. He sees everything. He sees what's going on. And he's trying to bring us to himself. And I believe that's what's happening right now in the midst of all this shaking. God is standing as an anchor saying, come to me, and I'll hold you. You don't have to be shaken in this.
Philip:I believe that someone is watching today, Rick, that maybe has never seen this program before, and you're going through that shaking time. Let me tell you something: God isn't shaking you. He's shaking all this stuff that would hurt you to get it away from you. He's separating you from the darkness that would overwhelm you. You know, in the Book of Acts, Paul had just suffered a shipwreck and he's getting ready to build a fire. And a serpent latched hold of him. And he started shaking that hand — he wasn't trying to shake his hand off, he was shaking the snake off. And it fell back where it came from into that fire.
Paul's Serpent and Standing on the Solid Rock
Philip:And it didn't have any hurt on him. For those that are watching today and you feel like, man, I've been bit, my situation's poison right now and I don't know what to do — you hold on to God, you shake that off, and stand on the solid rock and you'll see him hold you. The Bible said that he suffered no hurt. Everybody was waiting for him to fall over, but Paul just stood there because he knew who he was standing with.
Philip:Every time you come on this program, every time I meet you, you bring something and add something to my life. Thank you so much today for being with us on Daily Faith, Rick. And we're looking forward to coming back to be with you in Murfreesboro. We love your church.
Rick McNeely:Amen. Thank you.
Philip:Listen, thank you for watching Daily Faith. Will you please pray with us about helping us with these two new homes, or if you like, be one of the sponsors of these homes. I'd love to hear from you today. Thank you for watching Daily Faith. We'll see you again. Bye-bye.
For over 25 years, the Cameron family has been changing the lives of orphans in Romania and Moldova — from providing running water, flushing toilets, and clean wells, to coal for heat, new windows, as well as food and clothing. They champion the physical needs of the orphans in these broken and desolate countries. Many of Moldova's orphans are saved from the horrors of trafficking through homes founded by the Camerons. And in the process, orphans become daughters and sons. They come to know their heavenly Father and are forever changed by the love of Jesus.
God helped the Camerons lift these amazing young men and women out of darkness. Now no longer orphans, they want to return and invade that very same darkness with the light of Jesus Christ. The Orphan's Hands equips these daughters and sons to become missionaries. Your monthly gift of $31 will allow us to rescue and take in more girls and boys, saving them from the hell of human trafficking. Your monthly partnership will allow us to care for those in the Orphan's Hands homes in Moldova and Ukraine. If you want to join Philip and Chrissy in taking care of these precious young people, please contact us today by calling 833-Daily Faith. You can also give by going online to www.dailyfaith.tv, or by writing to Post Office Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. So many lives depend on what we do. Thank you for loving the lost.
Common questions
Why did Pastor Rick McNeely keep his church open during COVID when other churches shut down?
Rick felt the COVID shutdowns were about more than just a health crisis — he sensed a spiritual shift in the atmosphere. When his state's governor closed churches while keeping taverns open, he called the sheriff's department to give notice and set up a drive-in church service in the parking lot, with a praise and worship team on a trailer and himself preaching from the rooftop. He grounded the decision in Hebrews' instruction not to forsake assembling together, especially as the day of the Lord approaches.
What does Rick McNeely say about the idea that there are many paths to God?
Rick pushes back on the 'many roads to heaven' argument with a pointed distinction: people say you can get to Atlanta by bus, plane, or car — but, as he puts it, 'we're not going to Atlanta.' He holds that Jesus himself said 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,' making Christ the only path to heaven. He frames this not as exclusion but as an open invitation — 'whosoever will, let them come.'
How does Rick explain what's spiritually behind all the current unrest and riots?
Rick connects the social upheaval to Hebrews 12, which describes God shaking everything that can be shaken so that only the unshakeable remains. He believes the chaos is by design — driven by people who want power and use fear as their tool — but he argues that 'perfect love casts out fear,' and that God is using the shaking to draw people to himself rather than to destroy them.
What story does Rick tell to illustrate how God holds onto us even when it feels uncomfortable?
Rick shares a memory of walking a snow-covered, treacherous path in Wyoming with his then-five-year-old granddaughter Shaylee. He held her hand tightly the whole way, and she finally protested, 'Papa, you are dragging me.' His reply was, 'Honey, I may be dragging you, but I'm not gonna lose you.' He uses that moment to illustrate how God keeps a firm grip on us — not to hurt us, but because he refuses to lose us, even when we can't see the full picture.
How does Rick respond to the charge that Christians who speak hard truths don't really love people?
Rick argues the opposite — that staying silent when someone is heading toward destruction is the real failure of love. He uses the analogy of a drowning person: 'How could I say that I love them and care about them if I'm not willing to throw them a life jacket?' He also points to how he handles his grandkids near a fireplace — he doesn't let them get close to the fire because he loves them, not in spite of it.
Topics
rick mcneelyunshakeable faithhebrews 12covid churchfear vs faithchrist community churchcultural chaos