448. Yesterday Is Not Prophecy: Don’t Limit What God Can Do
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Release Date: 09/11/2026
449. Before You Quit, Pray This With Me | Before You Quit #7
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Before You Quit, Pray This With Me | Before You Quit #7 What do you do when you're discouraged, overwhelmed and don't know what decision to make? Before you do anything else, turn toward God. In Day 7 of Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob Skinner pauses to do something simple: Pray with you. If you're considering walking away from church, struggling in your relationship with God or simply feeling overwhelmed by fear, anger, disappointment and uncertainty, this short episode is for you. When life doesn't turn out the way we hoped, our minds can become filled with...
info_outline
448. Yesterday Is Not Prophecy: Don’t Limit What God Can Do
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Yesterday Is Not Prophecy: Don’t Limit What God Can Do Have you ever looked at an area of your life and thought: “This is never going to change”? Maybe you've been single longer than you expected. Maybe your marriage has been difficult for years. Maybe you've prayed for one of your children to come back to God and nothing seems to be happening. Maybe your finances are stuck. Your career isn't moving. Your ministry isn't growing. You haven't helped someone become a Christian in years. And after enough disappointment, it's easy to start turning your history into a prediction: “This is...
info_outline
447. Thinking About Leaving Church? Watch for These Warning Signs | Before You Quit #6
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Thinking About Leaving Church? Watch for These Warning Signs | Before You Quit #6 Most Christians who walk away from God don't make one dramatic decision to quit. They drift. In Day 6 of Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob Skinner walks through the familiar pathway that can slowly lead a Christian out the door: Disappointment. Discouragement. Pulling back. Missing church. Avoiding conversations. Stopping time with God. Ghosting the people who love you. And eventually becoming spiritually empty. Rob points out that the warning signs often begin long before someone says,...
info_outline
446. Going to NASCON? Listen to This First | From the Archives
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
FROM THE ARCHIVES: With NASCON26 happening in Baltimore this weekend, we’re resurfacing one of Rob and Pam Skinner’s most practical episodes on how to make the most of a Christian conference. Originally recorded before the 2022 World Discipleship Summit, the principles are just as relevant for NASCON today. Going to NASCON26 in Baltimore this weekend? Listen to this before you go. We're bringing back this episode of the Rob Skinner Podcast because the advice Pam and I shared about making the most of a conference may be more relevant than ever—especially for singles heading to NASCON26:...
info_outline
445. Still Struggling With Sin? Something Isn’t Wrong With You | Before You Quit #5
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Still Struggling With Sin? Something Isn’t Wrong With You | Before You Quit #5 Have you ever looked at other Christians and wondered, “Why am I still struggling? Something must be wrong with me”? In Day 5 of Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob Skinner addresses the shame, comparison, and imposter syndrome that can make Christians feel as though they’re only pretending to have it together. Everyone else seems happy. Everyone else seems spiritual. Everyone else seems to be growing. Meanwhile, you’re still fighting a sin you thought you should have conquered...
info_outline
444. Give God One Night a Week—and Watch What Happens
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
Give God One Night a Week—and Watch What Happens What if the biggest thing keeping you from making a difference for God isn’t a lack of talent, knowledge, or spirituality? What if you’re simply too busy? In this episode of the Rob Skinner Podcast, Rob offers one simple challenge: Leave one night open. Choose one night every week and dedicate it to investing spiritually in another person. Study the Bible with someone searching for God. Mentor a younger Christian. Encourage someone who is struggling. Follow up with a new Christian. Train a future leader. It doesn’t sound dramatic—but...
info_outline
443. When Church Doesn’t Feel Safe Anymore | Before You Quit #3
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
When Church Doesn’t Feel Safe Anymore | Before You Quit #3 What happens when the place that once felt like family no longer feels safe? In Day 3 of Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob Skinner addresses one of the most painful reasons Christians consider walking away: church hurt. Church can be a place of incredible friendship, growth, healing, and spiritual transformation. But churches are also filled with imperfect people. Conflict happens. Gossip spreads. Leaders disappoint us. People become controlling. Hypocrisy gets exposed. Relationships break down. And...
info_outline
442. You Got Advice—So Why Was It Still a Bad Decision?
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
You Got Advice—So Why Was It Still a Bad Decision? Can you seek advice and still make a terrible decision? Absolutely. In 1 Kings 12, two new kings—Rehoboam and Jeroboam—face some of the biggest decisions of their lives. Both seek advice. Both listen to advisors. And both make disastrous choices that affect generations. The problem wasn’t simply whether they asked for advice. The deeper question was: What were they looking for when they asked? Wisdom—or approval? God’s direction—or validation for something they had already decided? In this episode of the Rob Skinner Podcast, Rob...
info_outline
441. When God Doesn’t Answer the Way You Prayed | Before You Quit #2
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
When God Doesn’t Answer the Way You Prayed | Before You Quit #2 When you’ve prayed, sacrificed, and trusted God for years—and the answer still doesn’t come—what happens to your faith? In Day 2 of Rob Skinner’s new book, Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob shares one of the most personal and painful stories in the book. After becoming a Christian, Rob prayed intensely for his parents to come to faith. He hoped his father would turn to God before dying of pancreatic cancer. Years later, Rob moved his wife and three children to Ashland, Oregon, gave up a paid...
info_outline
440. The Decisions That Keep You Faithful: 6 Christians Share What Changed Everything
The Rob Skinner Podcast: Helping You Make This Life Count
The Decisions That Keep You Faithful: 6 Christians Share What Changed Everything What decisions help a Christian stay faithful—not just for a few months or years, but for a lifetime? In this special live edition of the Rob Skinner Podcast, recorded during the Downtown Boston Midweek service, Rob sits down with six disciples at very different stages of their spiritual journeys. Some have followed Jesus for less than a year. Others have been faithful for more than four decades. Rob asks each person one question: What one decision changed the trajectory of your spiritual life? Their answers are...
info_outlineYesterday Is Not Prophecy: Don’t Limit What God Can Do
Have you ever looked at an area of your life and thought:
“This is never going to change”?
Maybe you've been single longer than you expected.
Maybe your marriage has been difficult for years.
Maybe you've prayed for one of your children to come back to God and nothing seems to be happening.
Maybe your finances are stuck.
Your career isn't moving.
Your ministry isn't growing.
You haven't helped someone become a Christian in years.
And after enough disappointment, it's easy to start turning your history into a prediction:
“This is just the way it's going to be.”
In this episode of the Rob Skinner Podcast, Rob looks at one of the strangest—and funniest—stories in the Old Testament: 2 Kings 7.
The city of Samaria was starving.
An enemy army had surrounded it.
Food was gone.
Prices were out of control.
There was no visible way out.
Then the prophet Elisha announced something outrageous:
Within 24 hours, everything was going to change.
One of the king's officers couldn't believe it.
Even if God opened the floodgates of heaven, he argued, how could something like that possibly happen?
From everything he could see, his conclusion made perfect sense.
But he made one critical mistake:
He left God out of his forecast.
Then four starving men with leprosy walked toward the enemy camp expecting they might die—and discovered that God had already caused the entire enemy army to flee.
Suddenly there was food.
There was silver and gold.
There were clothes and supplies.
And within 24 hours, the famine was over.
Exactly as God had said.
Yesterday Is Not Prophecy
We often do the same thing as that officer.
We take our present circumstances.
We combine them with our recent history.
Then we project both indefinitely into the future.
“I'm single now, so I'll probably always be single.”
“My marriage hasn't changed, so it probably never will.”
“My child walked away from God, and I don't think they're coming back.”
“My ministry hasn't grown, so maybe it never will.”
“I've always struggled financially. That's just who I am.”
But your past is not prophecy.
Your disappointments are real.
Your current circumstances are real.
But they do not necessarily tell you what God will do next.
Rob shares two personal reminders of this.
His son spent approximately ten years far away from God. There were times Rob couldn't imagine how that story would change.
Then it did.
His son returned to God and was baptized.
Rob also remembers being single and thinking he had practically met every eligible Christian woman around him.
Then Pam flew into town from Cairo, Egypt.
Rob never saw that coming.
They recently celebrated 36 years of marriage.
Leave Room for Black Swans
Rob also explores the idea of a “black swan”—an unexpected event that challenges everything we thought we knew.
For centuries, Europeans assumed all swans were white because every swan they had ever seen was white.
Then explorers arrived in Australia and discovered black swans.
Their conclusion wasn't foolish.
Their experience was incomplete.
And so is ours.
Just because you've never seen something happen doesn't mean it can't happen.
Just because God hasn't worked in a particular way before doesn't mean he won't.
Faith isn't pretending your problems aren't real.
Faith doesn't guarantee that you'll get married this year, every illness will disappear, every financial problem will vanish or every child will immediately return to God.
Faith says:
“I don't know what God is going to do, but I refuse to limit God to what I can currently see.”
So ask yourself:
What have I quietly decided can't change?
Your marriage?
Your singleness?
Your health?
Your finances?
Your career?
Your ministry?
Your relationship with your children?
Your fruitfulness?
Your spiritual life?
Maybe it's time to pray again.
Invite someone again.
Study the Bible with someone again.
Work on your marriage again.
Reach out to your child again.
Apply for the opportunity.
Ask for advice.
Try something new.
Dream again.
Don't confuse:
“I don't know how”
with:
“It can't happen.”
And especially don't confuse:
“I can't”
with:
“God can't.”
Take the next step and leave room for God to surprise you.
Because sometimes the difference between famine and abundance is only 24 hours.
Make this life count.
🙏 Support the Podcast
If this episode challenged or encouraged you: