Podcasts about New Testament

Spirit of God E10 — After Jesus' resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit becomes the primary way Jesus' presence and power remains with his followers. The book of Acts demonstrates how the Spirit's coming fulfills the Hebrew Bible's hope for God to dwell with his people in a new kind of temple. In this episode, Jon and Tim explore how Pentecost marks the beginning of a new Spirit-filled temple community, uniting God's people and continuing Jesus' mission.CHAPTERSRecap of Luke and Setup for Acts (0:00-16:19)A New Temple at Pentecost (16:19-34:04)The Spirit Uniting a Scattered Diaspora (34:04-46:21)Jesus' Followers as a New Temple in 1 Peter (46:21-1:00:05)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode's official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESThe Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus: Luke's Account of God's Unfolding Plan by Alan J. ThompsonCheck out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“Pleasant Places” by Lofi Sunday feat. Yoni Charis“Redeemables” by Lofi Sunday feat. Yoni Charis“Snowflake” by Lofi Sunday feat. Asaph's ArrowsBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today's episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Isaiah 37:1-38:22, Gal 6:1-18, Ps 65:1-13, Pr 23:24

In this week's episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with James about how the Gospels were written, how Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John relate to one another, and what ancient writing practices can teach us about the formation of the New Testament. They explore why the Gospel writers may have intentionally adapted and reshaped earlier accounts, how John builds on the Synoptic Gospels, and how Paul's theology may have influenced the Gospel writers in surprising ways. Together, they invite listeners to let each Gospel speak in its own distinct voice, reconsider assumptions about how the Bible was written, and appreciate the deeply human process through which these texts took shape. Show Notes → ⁠thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episodes/episode-337-james-barker-writing-and-rewriting-the-gospels⁠ Watch this episode on YouTube → ⁠https://youtu.be/zyw59hapKHA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zechariah 1-7

Following Jesus Feels Too Hard? Don't Quit Yet | Before You Quit #8 What if one of the reasons you're thinking about quitting Christianity is something you rarely say out loud? "It's just too hard." In Day 8 of Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done, Rob Skinner begins Week Two of the book: Why People Quit and Don't Say It Out Loud. People rarely walk away from their faith in one sudden moment. A disappointment here. A conflict there. An unanswered prayer. A broken relationship. Little by little, discouragement accumulates until someone quietly begins drifting away. And sometimes underneath all of it is a simple feeling: Following Jesus has become too hard. Here's something Christians don't always like to admit: Christianity is hard. Yes, following Jesus is better. It's blessed. It's worth it. But Jesus never promised it would always be easy. In Luke 9:23, Jesus said: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Jesus didn't hide the cost of discipleship. He actually told people to count the cost before deciding to follow him. So if following Jesus feels difficult right now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing something wrong. You may actually be experiencing exactly what Jesus told us to expect. A Christianity of Convenience It's possible to customize Christianity until most of the difficult parts disappear. No sacrifice. Little prayer. No emotional engagement. Minimal commitment. But that's a Christianity of convenience—not the life of discipleship Jesus described. If you're struggling, you're also not the first Christian to feel this way. An entire New Testament letter—Hebrews—was written to Christians who needed encouragement to keep going. Hebrews 10:36 says: "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised." If Scripture tells us to persevere, it's because there will be times when we desperately want to stop. Don't Just White-Knuckle It But Rob doesn't recommend simply gritting your teeth and trying harder for the next 40 years. Sometimes following Jesus becomes especially difficult when our focus shifts away from Jesus and onto the people and problems around us. Rob shares a line from Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ: "Whoever loves much does much." Looking back, Rob realized that some of the times he complained most about how difficult Christianity felt were also times when his love and interest in Jesus had diminished. He had lost some of the wonder and appreciation that originally drew him to Christ. So he returned to Jesus' words to Christians who had lost their first love: "Repent and do the things you did at first." — Revelation 2:5 Do the Things You Did at First Rob realized he had stopped doing many of the things that had originally helped his love for Jesus grow: Reading the Bible. Avoiding temptation. Spending time with other Christians. Living transparently. Praying. When he started doing those things again, something changed. His circumstances didn't suddenly become easier. The hard things didn't disappear. But God's love began to trickle back into his life, and those hard things didn't feel quite as overwhelming anymore. If you're in a hard place right now, you're not the first Christian who's been there. Don't quit before you receive the reward God has for you. Persevere. But don't merely white-knuckle your way through your faith. Rekindle your love for Jesus. Go back. Do the things you did at first. Because as your love grows, the hard things may begin to feel just a little smaller. This is Day 8 of Rob Skinner's Before You Quit series, based on his new book, Before You Quit: Hope for the Christian Who Feels Done. Rob's goal is to inspire you to live a no-regrets life, make this life count, and multiply disciples, leaders, and churches.

And Also With You is a podcast about reclaiming an ancient Christian faith for modern Christian life, helmed by two millennial women Episcopal priests and moms (Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail and Rev. Laura Di Panfilo). For our fourth season we are diving deep into SIN, EVIL, and DEATH, and we're starting out with a bang: what is the sin of Christian Nationalism?  The theology of MAGA Christian nationalism has nuances, but the connective tissue is this: the world is not safe, and God must be defended from many, many enemies — and when God is defended on earth, God will reign over His chosen children with love, while exacting vengeance on everyone else. It is explicitly patriarchal even as it can empower women in positions of prestige and leadership, provided they are still “under” a man in some way. MAGA Christian nationalism creates communal identity based not so much on what Christian nationalists have in common, but on what they are against and, therefore, whom they must defeat. But while MAGA Christian nationalism offered a tempting promise, its popularity is actually the self-consuming dragon ... and this is the nature of sin, evil, and death. So buckle up cutie pies, we're tearing this idol apart brick by brick.  This podcast is entirely possible because of listeners like YOU, so please support our work here  via PAYPAL, VENMO, OR APPLE PAY: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/AQ74PDBMBXYVA Lizzie's piece for The Preamble: https://thepreamble.com/cp/211884325 +++ Like what you hear? We are an entirely crowd-sourced, you-funded project.  SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/AndAlsoWithYouPodcast There's all kinds of perks including un-aired live episodes, Zoom retreats, and mailbag episodes for our Patreons! +++ Our Website: https://andalsowithyoupod.com Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andalsowithyoupodcast/ ++++ MERCH: https://www.bonfire.com/store/and-also-with-you-the-podcast/ ++++ More about Father Lizzie: BOOK: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762683/god-didnt-make-us-to-hate-us-by-rev-lizzie-mcmanus-dail/ RevLizzie.com https://www.instagram.com/rev.lizzie/ https://www.tiktok.com/@rev.lizzie Jubilee Episcopal Church in Austin, TX - JubileeATX.org  ++++ More about Mother Laura: https://www.instagram.com/laura.peaches/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mother_peaches St. Brendan's Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, PA - https://www.stbrendans.org ++++ Theme music: "On Our Own Again" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue). New episodes drop Mondays at 7am EST/6am CST! 

Where did Joseph Smith get the idea of temples? It sounds like a simple question, but historian John Hamer’s answer stretches from the Bible to a domed assembly hall in Independence, Missouri, and includes a temple that was called for by revelation, designed by an architect, and never built. In this first conversation of his return to Gospel Tangents, John, a Community of Christ Seventy and co-editor of Scattering of the Saints: Schism Within Mormonism, walks me through the building blocks. https://youtu.be/1r98tnUC5Q4 Don't miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/ Copyright © 2026 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved   John starts with the Bible. Solomon’s temple is only one model, he explains. The New Testament offers another: the idea that the new covenant fulfilled the old, along with the gatherings of the early Christians in the Book of Acts. That second vision, he says, shaped the Kirtland Temple, a building of stacked assembly halls, and it became the model for Community of Christ’s understanding of temples ever after. When Community of Christ members regathered in Jackson County, Missouri, they wanted a temple on that Kirtland model. What they built, John argues, was Frederick Madison Smith’s Auditorium, a massive assembly hall that he sees as a 20th-century version of the Kirtland Temple in everything but name. He points to a published drawing of Joseph Smith III’s temple vision, which looks like the Auditorium with steeples added, and notes that the Auditorium was built without them. Then the story turns. Smith’s assertion of church authority sparked a schism, and a couple thousand members moved to the Temple Lot church, the Hedrickites. Their own temple plans carried the same Kirtland DNA. Otto Fetting’s revelations called for a temple, and an architect gave it a front like a Greek temple, or a bank, and a long, thin plan with one assembly hall stacked atop another. It was never built. The Depression hit, Fetting was pushed out of the church, and the diggers had to fill in the hole they had started. Restoration Groups Idea of Temples Splinter groups from Community of Christ have echoed the pattern since. John describes the Remnant Church’s headquarters in an old high school across from the Temple Lot, with an inner room of Kirtland-style pulpits and a planned community center with a Kirtland-like exterior that was never built. When he asked its president whether that was a temple, the answer was no. Then the conversation moves to Nauvoo, where something new enters. The Nauvoo temple began with Kirtland-style assembly halls but added a basin in the basement resting on oxen, drawn from Solomon’s temple. John connects that shift to the Old Testament practices Joseph Smith was restoring, including plural marriage, and to Freemasonry, whose traditions claim a lineage back to Solomon’s temple. That Nauvoo model, he says, went on to shape the other branches. Together, these threads show two rival visions of what a temple is: the Kirtland idea of a place of assembly, and the Nauvoo idea of an Old Testament-style house of ordinances. This first conversation of the six-part series lays out that fork in the road. Next, in part 2, John turns to the Endowment House and fundamentalist temples, including a pyramid-shaped temple in Utah and a temple whose dome ceiling turns into the night sky. Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts. Chapters 0:00 Welcome John Hamer 4:04 Where Did Joseph Smith Get the Idea of Temples? 7:22 Zion, Jackson County & Plans for 24 Temples 13:14 Kirtland as the Model for Community of Christ 14:00 The Auditorium: A Temple in Disguise? 16:44 Frederick M. Smith, the Schism & the Temple Lot Church 17:57 Otto Fetting’s Unbuilt Temple: The Hedrickite Plan 21:04 The Remnant Church Headquarters: Kirtland-Style Pulpits 22:20 Nauvoo: Solomon’s Temple, the Oxen & Freemasonry 24:32 What’s Next? Don't miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/ Copyright © 2026 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved

Isaiah 33:10-36:22, Gal 5:13-26, Ps 64:1-10, Pr 23:23

Morning Prayer for today with a reading from the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Gospel, with meditation music from ”Inner Voices” and ”In Beauty We Return,” by R. Carlos Nakai. Courtesy Canyon Records, Phoenix, AZ (800)-268-1141. All rights reserved.

Haggai 1-2

Full Text of Readings Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist Lectionary: 643 The Saint of the day is Saint Matthew Saint Matthew's Story Saint Matthew was a Jew who worked for the occupying Roman forces, collecting taxes from other Jews. The Romans were not scrupulous about what the “tax farmers” got for themselves. Hence the latter, known as “publicans,” were generally hated as traitors by their fellow Jews. The Pharisees lumped them with “sinners” (see Matthew 9:11-13). So it was shocking to them to hear Jesus call such a man to be one of his intimate followers. Matthew got Jesus in further trouble by having a sort of going-away party at his house. The Gospel tells us that many tax collectors and “those known as sinners” came to the dinner. The Pharisees were still more badly shocked. What business did the supposedly great teacher have associating with such immoral people? Jesus' answer was, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12b-13). Jesus is not setting aside ritual and worship; he is saying that loving others is even more important. No other particular incidents about Saint Matthew are found in the New Testament. Reflection From such an unlikely situation, Jesus chose one of the foundations of the Church, a man others, judging from his job, thought was not holy enough for the position. But Matthew was honest enough to admit that he was one of the sinners Jesus came to call. He was open enough to recognize truth when he saw him. “And he got up and followed him” (Matthew 9:9b).Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right LivingAirdate: 9/16-9/17/26Programs: 2358 and 2359Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you.So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later.Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor.Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application.And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long.They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel.They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far.We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live.And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct.So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus.And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace.Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope?Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it?Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five.He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it?To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right?When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God.How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace.Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth.How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever.Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things.Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve.All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away.Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality.Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come.That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter.Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action.Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it.And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind.And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins?Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do.They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business.Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt.And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay?Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here.Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.”I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why.Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life.Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded.Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life.But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be.But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing.Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking.It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage.I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking.It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities?This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity?Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts.We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it?Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so.I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common.We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start.All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with?What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy.He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity.We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts.Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable.But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance.Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years.I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly.But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life.This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way.I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this.What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things.Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool.But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions.K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.”Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body.I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that.K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on.First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.”So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family.We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life.God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being.He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one.“In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy.And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like.Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories.Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners.And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners.K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God.But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God.If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God.K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law.It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father.Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter.Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right?I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you.And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it.Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities?Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture.He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life.And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start.I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago.I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon.I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come.And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined?Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives.Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

In Partnership, By Community – We continue our walk through the New Testament and, currently, through the writings of the apostle Paul, with today's reading from Philemon, a letter in which Paul addresses a younger colleague. Also, this is College Sunday, and the liturgists and preacher in both services are college students, most of whom are in the Vandy Wesley group that is hosted by our church. Preaching today is Amber Lewis, a sophomore at Vanderbilt. She begins by citing the Hebrew word, “shalom,” which can mean peace and wholeness. She describes life as a college student as demanding, and thus at times an experience of scarcity rather than shalom. Most people experience scarcity: some experience scarcity of time, focus, or even of food, jobs, housing. But scarcity can be overcome by partnership. We can be agents of Jesus by partnering with others who experience scarcity. Paul's description of partnership includes love at the core.

Grab your Bible and join us. We are listening to the first sermon preached in the New Testament church from Acts 2:14–36. Today we will hear Peter explains that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost fulfills God's promise to His people. The last days have begun. Jesus of Nazareth was attested by God with miracles, wonders, and signs. He was delivered up according to God's plan, crucified by wicked hands, raised from the dead, and exalted as Lord and Christ. Therefore—repent. Call on the name of the Lord and be saved.

The church keeps a calendar. We mark time from a grave that would not stay shut, and we mark time toward a day that has a name. Scripture does not leave that day unnamed; it calls it the Day of the Lord—sometimes simply "the day" or "that day,". This lesson is not about calculating a date (Paul says we have no need of that kind of writing). It is about knowing what kind of day is coming and what kind of people we are supposed to be while we wait. Get the day wrong and we will get the waiting wrong—growing either frantic or dull. The New Testament will allow us neither. Come and listen to this study in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 as we learn how to wait for that day with clarity, hope, and holy urgency.

Isaiah 30:12-33:9, Gal 5:1-12, Ps 63:1-11, Pr 23:22

Before Paul became a towering figure in the Christian faith, he was a terrifying persecutor of the church. Today, Guy Waters looks at Paul's life before his conversion to Christ. Request Guy Waters' video teaching series The Life and Theology of Paul with your donation. You'll also receive the digital teaching series, digital study guide, and companion ebook: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/   Live outside the U.S. and Canada? Request the digital teaching series, digital study guide, and ebook with your donation: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global   Meet Today's Teacher:   Guy Waters is James M. Baird Jr. Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

(Philemon 18-22) Who do you owe? Continue the study of the tiny but powerful New Testament book of Philemon in this Weekend Pulpit broadcast. Discover the two kinds of debt identified in Philemon, and how those debts are paid, and learn about genuine forgiveness. (10225260919) Join Scott Pauley's study through Scripture this year. Find resources for every book of the Bible by Dr. Pauley and Enjoying the Journey at enjoyingthejourney.org/journey-through-scripture/. Whether you're a new believer or have walked with the Lord for years, you'll find thousands of free devotionals, Bible studies, audio series, and Scripture tools designed to strengthen your faith, deepen your understanding of the Bible, and help you stay rooted in the Word of God. Explore now at EnjoyingTheJourney.org. Extend the Work Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

This Saturday, Open Line with Dr. Michael Rydelnik is on the road in Plant City, Florida! He'll take questions from our live audience on a variety of Bible topics, from Old Testament to New Testament, End Times and the importance of the Fall Feasts and their relationship is to Messiah Jesus. Grab your Bible and tune in for this weekend's special broadcast of Open Line. Mentioned resources:Open Line LiveDocumentary: Shadows of October: Israel Under SeigeLife in MessiahSummit on Antisemitism, November 7, 2026Moody Radio Alaska Cruise, June 5-12, 2027 Chosen People Ministries free giftFEBC podcastMoody Bible Commentary September/October thank you gift:The Bible: A Book like No Other by Mike Fabarez Open Line is listener-supported. To support the program, click here.Become a Kitchen Table Partner: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/openline/partnersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ezra 4-6, Psalm 137

The Christian internet recently lost his mind when a short video went viral in which Dr. William Lane Craig points out that the New Testament does not teach that the Father “eternally generates” the Son. He also professes skepticism about that traditional, catholic doctrine. Does this make him a heretic? In this episode I react to his follow-up video in which Craig assures those concerned about heresy that he’s merely asking questions and repeats that he’s agnostic about eternal generation. But as I explain, he is and long has been clearly committed to the falsity of that doctrine. This incident helpfully highlights the questions of what we should do when later traditions clash with Scripture and whether a Protestant should view the “ecumenical” councils as authoritative. Along the way, we also look at early Christian theologies, Craig’s idiosyncratic and easily refuted Trinity theories, and silliness about the immanent Trinity vs. the economic Trinity. Here’s the video version of this podcast, of course, without the customary Thinking Music (TM). https://youtu.be/bIsJyycA8eI?si=LG_uXYxnoravUH6X Here are some Old Testament passages in which “the Word of the LORD” is personified. Unaccountably, at one point in this video, Dr. Craig denies that there are any such passages. “He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly.” Psalm 147:15 “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” Isaiah 55:11 Links for this episode: Dr. Craig Responds to Heresy Accusations Over the Nicene Creed podcast 291 – From one God to two gods to three “Gods” – John 1 and early Christian theologies How John 1 was intelligible in the first century Dale Tuggy – What John 1 Meant (UCA Conference 2021) Rauser, “Rahner's Rule: An Emperor without Clothes?” R.T. Mullins, The Reluctant Theologian Ep. 201 Eternal Generation for Dummies R.T. Mullins, The Reluctant Theologian Ep. 164 The Trinity with William Lane Craig One God, Three Persons, Four Views: A Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Dialogue on the Doctrine of the Trinity Tuggy, Monotheism, Heresy, and the Bible: Essays on Biblical Unitarianism Craig, “Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?“ This week’s thinking music is “Two Atomic Heroes (Instrumental)” by Lemon Knife. https://youtu.be/l_ZeKzAvaYg?si=W4FhhzPS_IZrH9Is

presented by Lauren Stibgen The seasons are changing again, and it is hard to believe that kids have returned to school. I have seen so many social media posts about preparing kids for school from elementary to college. Moms lamenting about lists, waking their kids up on a schedule, and trying to balance this with work and other commitments. Trying to get into a new season of balance.    The reality is our lives are full of these changes no matter the season and no matter the reason. When it comes to seeking balance in work and life, part of our problem is separating the two things to begin with. The fact is all of life is some type of work, whether we are on the job receiving a paycheck, at home with family, or even volunteering.    Change and disruption happen by the moment in our lives. Change can be good and change can be difficult. Change can be expected and unexpected. Sometimes we make choices to change and sometimes we don't.     I think this is why the Bible refers to life as a sojourn, a temporary stay or visit in a place that is not our permanent home. The turmoil this life causes is well characterized in 1 Peter 2:11, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul (ESV).    Repeatedly, the Word reminds us this world is not our home. Ephesians 2:19 states, So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (RSV). We are fellow citizens and saints as members of God's household. But what does this look like, and how can we use this citizenship and membership to bring our lives into a better balance today?   First, let's consider what brings us out of balance with this citizenship we have as believers. What did Paul mean in 1 Peter 2 when he mentions the passions of the flesh waging war against us?   These passions of the flesh can show up in any of our work, at home or on the job, and we need to be aware of how these things are creating the lack of balance we perceive. I would sum up these passions of the flesh with one short word—sin. God's Word has many verses that summarize these sins both in the Old and New Testaments, but the verses in Galatians 5:19-21 specifically mention the flesh.   The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.    All this wages war on our citizenship and is often a root cause for feelings of imbalance in our life whether we are in control or not. There are words from this list that are very present today. I want you to ask:   What rivalries am I a part of? At work, in my family, or in my community?  Where am I causing dissent or division? Am I causing strife at work?  Am I jealous of someone or what they have?  Am I striving for significance in my life?  Have I been angry in the last week to the point of yelling?  What am I thinking about so much that it has become an idol to me?    Again, you may not be the cause of some of these things that wage war on your flesh. For example, maybe someone has caused division at work, and you are an unfortunate recipient of the backlash. Perhaps you have some rivalry in your family that you are not choosing but someone else is. Maybe someone is jealous of your achievements and is acting out because of this.    You see, this is why chasing balance here in this world can never happen, but we can shift our focus on our citizenship and as fellow members of the household of God. This shift can help us feel more in balance when the world seems to work wildly against us—you know, the part about waging war. While the word war seems dramatic, I want you to remember that even Jesus told us that in the world we will have tribulation. (John 16:33)    I love the other side of the promise Jesus has in John 16:33. He promises that in him we will have peace because he has overcome the world! He tells us to rejoice and be glad because our reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:12)    Nehemiah 8:10 tells us to not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is our strength! Psalm 16:11 states that God makes known to us the path of life and that in him is the fullness of joy!    Jesus is peace. We can have joy in the presence of the Lord, and with him is the fullness of joy! Personally, when I am worn out from all that life is handing me, I tell my husband or close friends, “I just want peace.” It feels like a beautiful stillness and a place where all the things in this world cannot reach me. It is full of light and joy! The truth is I already have these things because I believe in Jesus Christ and through him, I have a home in heaven with God the Father. This good feeling of joy that is my strength needs my focus and attention. That's why we are commanded repeatedly in Scripture to rejoice in the Lord! (Philippians 3:1 and 4:4, Psalm 118:24).    When I really want this peace and joy, I start by acknowledging where it comes from because I cannot produce it on my own. True joy is found in the filling of the Holy Spirit. In fact, joy is a fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. So, to find Jesus and experience his peace, hope, joy, and the rest of the Spirit's fruit, I need to be giving the blessed Trinity my time.    When was the last time you took 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 to heart?    Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. A verse from Philippians 1:12 has been rolling over in my mind for a few months now. Paul writes, Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. It really got me to think about my circumstances; both the highs and the lows, the good and the bad. God uses all of this to advance the gospel, but do I allow this?    It is easy to rejoice when things are easy—when we celebrate, receive a promotion or a raise at work, or welcome a new child into our family. But what about a posture of rejoicing even when we are experiencing the opposite?  In James 1:2-3 we are told to Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. This is echoed in Romans 5:2-5:   …through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  Can I take this posture of rejoicing in my suffering, knowing these times will produce endurance, that endurance will produce character, and this character will produce hope?   Like many of you, I work in a high-pressure job. The demands change and, with many personalities, priorities shift. The team can feel the demands of the moment. There are more times than I can count in the last few years when I have heard, “You always stay so hopeful” or, “I don't know how you work through all of this”.    Now, this does not mean I am not real about the trials I face, but what I have found is some of the suffering has produced an endurance that has truly changed my character. I am able to stay consistent, hopeful, and caring for my colleagues. Seeing people how God would see them.    My favorite conversations are the unexpected ones. During a difficult moment one day, I chose to walk away for a few minutes. I needed a refocus on my mindset and take some space to tell the Lord how I needed him to help me with my words and patience. Honestly, I was frustrated and on the verge of tears. After a few minutes, a colleague followed and asked how I deal with things. My reply was that honestly without my faith in God, I truly wouldn't be able to some days. What followed was a beautiful conversation about faith and Jesus that was so unexpected, but I can truly say that what has happened to me has served to advance the gospel.   In this moment, I was not rejoicing, but I was thinking about my flesh—more specifically, how I didn't want my flesh to create a situation of “waging war” through hasty words. And I chose to seek the Lord in prayer. What followed was joy.   Keeping any balance in life as a follower of Jesus Christ is dependent on how focused you are on remembering that your time here on earth is a sojourn. You are on a journey, and you really don't know how long this journey will last. Think about your heavenly home as a member of God's family.   Your ability to find this joy, peace, and hope starts with your practice of abiding. How are you staying firm and steadfast in your relationship with Jesus? Is Jesus the center of your life or just someone you think about on a Sunday during church?   As you evaluate all the aspects of your life, where does Jesus fit into your job, your relationships, your health and wellness, your goals? Do you have a lens of biblical wisdom on all these matters, or does the Word of God sit on a shelf in your house? Do you own a Bible?   How often are you reading God's Word or deeply meditating on it? After all:   For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope (Romans 15:4). Are you in a Bible study or small group? Do you have faith-filled friends who love Jesus like you do?    What about prayer? How much are you talking to God? Do you have other people praying for you on a regular basis?  Abiding. Jesus asks us to abide in him, and he will abide in us. He tells us he is the vine, and we are the branches. In this abiding, we will bear much fruit. (John 5:4-5) Jesus also tells us that apart from him we can do nothing.   If in abiding we can bear much fruit, this means we can bear true joy! Remember, joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit.    How have you assessed your abiding? Be encouraged! If you are reading this message, this means you long for Christian encouragement. While this is not a substitute for any of the other forms of abiding, may it be a reminder to pick up your Bible, find community, and pray!   It is in this place that you learn about your true identity and citizenship. As we all sojourn here, may we encourage one another as we look toward what our hope is ultimately in—the eternal life which God has promised before the beginning of time (Titus 1:2) and the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.   I pray today you are filled with a peace that surpasses all understanding, joy that fills you from head to toe, and a hope for things to come! May you be able to say, “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel!” 

Isaiah 28:14-30:11, Gal 3:23-4:31, Ps 62:1-12, Pr 23:19-21

Brian and Cargill gather the flock to sing the praises of the dearly departed Tim Curry! In this main-feed installment of SepTIMber, your favorite hefty heathens pass the basket for a little hostage comedy filled with New Testament gags and old familiar faces. Get ready to praise the lord and Pass the Ammo!SepTIMber is in full swing over on Patreon, with commentaries and mini-sodes covering all manner of Curry chaos! 

Share a commentPeter is near the end of his life, and his words have the weight of someone who knows what failure feels like and what grace can rebuild. We open 2 Peter by watching him do something unexpected: he signs his name in a way that admits both his old story and his new identity, then he plants his flag on a single claim that confronts every counterfeit gospel, every spiritual brand, and every would-be authority figure. He belongs to Jesus Christ, and that belonging reshapes everything. We talk through Peter's journey from the Sea of Galilee to a Scripture-quoting shepherd who refuses to boast. “Simeon Peter” becomes a lived theology of sanctification: Christians grow, but we don't pretend we've arrived. Then we slow down over two loaded words in his opening line, “servant” and “apostle.” We unpack doulos, the purchased slave, and why true Christian maturity looks less like collecting status and more like surrender. We also clarify the New Testament meaning of apostolic authority and why modern claims to that office so often become a power play over the church. From there, the purpose of 2 Peter comes into sharp focus: remember biblical truth, recognize false teaching, and take God's judgment seriously, both past and future. We even connect Peter's warnings to a modern problem he never named but we all face: AI deepfakes and believable spiritual misinformation. If you want sharper biblical discernment and a steadier view of Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah, come with us. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the series.Learn more about twenty-five years of global impact, and reserve tickets to our gala. https://www.wisdomonline.org/mp/25 Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Ezra 1-3

In this solo episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal opens with a personal update on Jesse's wife Jen, who is recovering from a major surgery and facing ongoing complications. Rather than a typical episode, Tony turns this moment of real pastoral weight into an opportunity to explore James 5:10–18 — a passage about suffering, patience, and the mysterious power of intercessory prayer. Drawing on the examples of the Old Testament prophets, Job, and Elijah, Tony argues that suffering and God's mercy are not in tension but are deeply intertwined throughout Scripture. He also addresses the cessationist convictions he and Jesse hold while affirming the continuing call to bring the sick before the elders of the church in prayer. This episode is brief, earnest, and pastorally rich. Key Takeaways Suffering and divine mercy are not opposed — James holds them together deliberately, using Job as the paradigm case of patience that ultimately reveals God's compassion. The Old Testament prophets model faithful patience — Most prophets never saw visible fruit from their ministry, yet they continued to preach and trust, making them exemplars for suffering believers today. Intercessory prayer is a command, not merely a comfort — When suffering, James does not point believers to self-help or circumstantial remedies first; the primary command is to pray. The prayer of a righteous person has real efficacy — Without attributing change or passibility to God, Tony affirms that prayer moves God to act in a manner consistent with classical theism and biblical revelation. Elijah's humanity is the point, not his exceptionalism — James deliberately identifies Elijah as a man "with a nature like ours," anchoring the power of prayer in God rather than in the pray-er's personal greatness. Cessationism and the call to elder-led prayer coexist — The sign gifts have ceased, but the practice of calling elders to pray over the sick remains a living, binding ordinance for the church. Caregiver suffering is real and deserves intercession — Tony broadens the application beyond physical illness to recognize the spiritual and emotional weight borne by those who care for the sick. Explanatory Paragraphs Suffering and Divine Mercy Are Not in Tension One of the most counterintuitive moves in James 5 is the juxtaposition of Job's suffering with the declaration that "the Lord is compassionate and merciful." For most readers, Job's story feels like the last place you would look for evidence of divine mercy — it is a story of devastating, layered loss. But James insists that the very narrative of Job, with all of its pain, is where the mercy and purpose of God are most clearly displayed. Tony highlights this as "counterintuitive but really quite beautiful." The suffering does not negate the mercy; it is, in some mysterious sense, the vessel through which mercy is revealed. This is not stoic resignation — it is a theologically grounded confidence that God's purposes are always working toward the good of His people, even when circumstances seem to contradict that. The Efficacy of Prayer and Classical Theism Perhaps the most theologically careful section of the episode is Tony's treatment of what it means for prayer to "move" God without compromising classical theistic commitments to divine immutability and impassibility. Tony is careful here: he affirms that God does not change, does not undergo emotional mutation, and is not subject to creaturely pressure. And yet, he insists — with the Bible — that prayer does something. He describes this as God acting in "accommodated, creaturely language," a concession to our finite understanding of an infinite God who, in His sovereign wisdom, has ordained prayer as a genuine means through which He accomplishes His will. This is not open theism or Arminian concession; it is a mature Reformed affirmation that God's decrees include the prayers of His people as real instruments of His providential governance. Elijah as Everyman The closing appeal to Elijah is rhetorically powerful precisely because James refuses to let Elijah remain on a pedestal. The instinct of the reader is to think, of course Elijah's prayers worked — he was Elijah. But James dismantles that escape route immediately: "a man with a nature like ours." The miracles associated with Elijah — the drought, the rain, Mount Carmel — were not the product of Elijah's superhuman spiritual constitution. They were the product of a God who moves when His people pray. This democratizes intercessory prayer in the most profound way. The ordinary believer who kneels beside a sick friend's hospital bed is operating in the same spiritual economy as Elijah on Mount Carmel. The power belongs to God; the call to pray belongs to all of us. Memorable Quotes There's something about the prayer of God's people that in an accommodated, analogous way, an anthropomorphic way — there's something about the prayers of God's people that moves Him to act on their behalf. We hold those to be true, but we also see that the Bible reveals a God who moves when His people pray. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. But that power is not coming from the righteous person — because even Elijah, even as amazing as Elijah was, he was a man with a nature like ours. Full Transcript [00:00:47] Welcome to this special episode of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Tony, and tonight this is the podcast that's just me. Hey, brothers and sisters. It's just Tony tonight. [00:01:00] Um, you'll hear in a little bit why that is, but, uh, just wanted to come this week and do a real quick episode. We're gonna dive into, uh, James chapter five. [00:01:10] We're gonna talk a little bit about some suffering, some patience, and what the prayer of faith does. And rather than do an affirmation or denial tonight, uh, as you know, Jesse is not on the show tonight, uh, but I wanted to give you a quick update.  [00:01:25] Update on Jen [00:01:25] Tony Arsenal: Uh, several episodes ago, maybe, I don't know, 10 episodes ago, Jesse's wife Jen, uh, must have been longer than that actually. [00:01:32] Jesse's wife Jen, uh, joined the podcast, uh, to share a little bit about what's going on in her life and some medical challenges she's been having. And as you all know, uh, Jen had a, a rather extensive surgery, it was about 11 hours, back in May, and her recovery has been, uh, challenging to say the least. Um, so the reason Jesse's not with us tonight is Jen has had a s- a little bit of a setback. [00:01:58] Um, she's okay. [00:02:00] Jesse and, uh, Jen gave me permission to give this little update. Uh, I won't go into too many details, but, uh, Jesse's, um, Jen has had some ongoing, uh, complications with some infection and just some other general challenges that have made recovery a lot slower than we'd hoped. So I know that Jesse, uh, appreciates your prayers. [00:02:21] Jen appreciates your prayers.  [00:02:22] Pause and Pray [00:02:22] Tony Arsenal: So before we, um, before we go on to the podcast tonight, if you would take a few minutes, pause this, say a quick prayer for, uh, Jen, that her recovery would be governed and supervised by God, that the doctors would have wisdom. Uh, and say a quick prayer for Jesse. Uh, caregiver stress is a real thing, and Jesse is, uh, doing a lot to try to support Jen and make sure that she has what she needs. [00:02:47] Uh, and even in the midst of that, he has typically got more than enough energy to, uh, even compensate for me when I'm too tired to do a podcast. That's why you guys get solo episodes with him. Uh, but tonight he just needed an extra little bit of a dose of [00:03:00] rest, and I thought that we would take this opportunity to, to pray for him. [00:03:03] So go ahead and hit pause, say a quick prayer, and then join me back up here in a second.  [00:03:08] Reading James 5 [00:03:08] Tony Arsenal: So as I said, we're gonna jump into James chapter 5. Uh, this is a, a passage that I know is near and dear to Jesse's heart. Uh, he's shared a little bit about this passage on the show before, and kind of that it's been a, sort of a boon to his soul. [00:03:23] So I'm gonna start reading... Uh, I'm gonna make a connection here that I don't know is always made with this passage. So I'm gonna start reading here in verse 10. Uh, normally we would wanna start a little bit before that, and, and of course, the whole letter is an ongoing sustained argument, so it's not like you can just chunk one part out. [00:03:41] But because of the way our English translations are sometimes, uh, divided up, we tend to separate verses 10 through 12 from what follows, and I hope as we chat for just a little while tonight, it'll be a short episode, I hope we'll understand why these two are actually, uh, quite connected. So James chapter 5, [00:04:00] starting in verse 10. [00:04:01] "As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. And above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, or let... [00:04:24] but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall into condemnation. Is any one of you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. [00:04:44] And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power in [00:05:00] its working. Elijah was a man like us, with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. [00:05:07] And for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." [00:05:28] So we're gonna zero in here right on verse 10, and kinda how it connects with, uh, what follows here.  [00:05:36] Prophets and Patience [00:05:36] Tony Arsenal: So this passage as a whole, starting in the beginning of verse, uh, verse five, sorta brings... Or chapter five, brings us into sort of an eschatological framework. James is talking about the sort of final judgment against the proud rich who are persecuting the church and who are, uh, sort of offending the Lord by, um, persecuting His people. [00:05:58] And so in verse seven [00:06:00] now James turns to encourage the, um, the believer not to, um, not to despair because the coming of the Lord seems slow. It's very similar to what Peter does when he, he talks about how, um, God does not will that any of His people perish, but He's seemingly delaying His coming so that all may come to repentance. [00:06:23] James is doing something very similar here, and so it's in that context that we get to verse 10. He's... In verse seven he's commanding them, or he's encouraging them to be patient, and in verse 10, he gives this example of patience and suffering. And the, the example is, uh, broadly speaking, is the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. [00:06:46] If you think about most of the prophets in the Old Testament, their message was not widely received. Probably the most outwardly successful prophet in the Old Testament was Jonah, uh, and he didn't even wanna be [00:07:00]successful. Um, but most of the prophets, uh, thinking particularly of, like, Jeremiah, uh, who, you know, throughout, even in his own recorded books, uh, was, uh, persecuted and ostracized. [00:07:13] People tried to kill him. Uh, we think of Isaiah who, you know, church history tells us he was sawn in two. Um, and most of the prophets did not see, uh, uh, any sort of real revival during their ministry. But they patiently continued to preach and come to the Lord and trust that what they were prophesying was, was worth it, that it was going to have its effect. [00:07:37] Job and Mercy [00:07:37] Tony Arsenal: So he, uh, he then turns kinda to the ultimate, uh, example of patience. Uh, and, and we would think... We don't necessarily always think of Job as a prophet, but there's definitely prophetic elements there- And it says, "You've heard of the steadfastness of Job." And of course, we know that Job, uh, had everything taken away from him. [00:07:58] So he, he lived this life where he [00:08:00] was immensely successful. He had a, a large family. He had lots of wealth. He had servants. Uh, religiously, he seemed to be on track. He seemed to have the Lord's favor. He certainly had the Lord's attention. Um, and it was all taken away from him. This is the part that I think is really, uh, counterintuitive but really quite beautiful, is he says, "You've heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you've seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful." [00:08:29] And we've commented many times on the show that this sort of juxtaposition between, uh, sort of temporal woes or temporal trials and the Lord's mercy and compassion, how they're interrelated in scripture in a way that doesn't really feel intuitive to us. And so we're gonna skip down a little bit here. [00:08:51] He talks about, um, not swearing oaths, talks about letting your yes be yes, you know, we know. That's obviously connected to this, but we're, we're gonna just pass by that a little [00:09:00] bit.  [00:09:00] Suffering and Prayer [00:09:00] Tony Arsenal: 'Cause back in verse 13 now, he returns to this subject of suffering. He says, "Is any among you suffering? Let him pray." So there's this call for those of us who are suffering, and if we're being honest, most of us are suffering in one form or another. [00:09:17] Uh, we either have some sort of illness, or we're struggling with finances, or maybe we have some kind of depression or some other life circumstance that is making things challenging. And it says... Doesn't say, "Let him seek out the newest self-help trend." Doesn't say, "Let him, uh, let him fixate on the, the most current, up-to-date medical things." [00:09:40] It doesn't say, "Let him, uh, pursue Financial Peace University." Now, that's not to say those things are not good and important, but the command here is to let him pray. So when we face suffering, we should recognize that that suffering and the patience that comes with it is connected [00:10:00] to the mercy and the compassion of the Lord. [00:10:02] This is probably the main point and theme of James' whole letter. So you go back to verse-- or chapter one, I think it's verse 24, right? It says, um- Let it be counted all joy when you face trials of many different kinds, right? So James' whole purpose in this letter is to speak to those suffering, uh, persecuted Jewish Christians that have been scattered out into the, uh, Judean wilderness and the, the countryside, who had been scattered out into the, you know, into the country and were being preyed upon probably by wealthy Jewish landowners. [00:10:39] And the whole point of this letter is to encourage them and for them to recognize that the suffering that they're undergoing, whether there's a natural suffering, a natural evil, which obviously would be something like sickness or some sort of natural tragedy, what, what the old insurance language calls like an act of God, which is literally an act of God, something like a, like a storm that [00:11:00] ruins your crop or an earthquake that destroys your home, or m- or moral evil, which is what the, the, um, those Christians in James' audience were, were suffering under, was moral evil. [00:11:12] Says, "If any of you are suffering, let him pray." Well, how could we ever think about praying in the midst of suffering if we did not recognize, as James says, that this suffering is related to the mercy and the compassion of the Lord? That, uh, when we think of the steadfastness of Job, we see the mercy and the compassion of the Lord. [00:11:40] And then it goes on to say, "Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises." Well, what did, what did James command in the beginning of his book or what did he, he say? "Count it all joy when you face suffering of any kind." And so now we have, "Are you suffering?" Well, then you, you count it joy. "Well, are you [00:12:00] cheerful? [00:12:00] Elders and Healing [00:12:00] Tony Arsenal: Let you sing praise." And that brings us now to verse fourteen: "Is any among you sick?" Well, what do we do or what should we do when we're sick, when we're suffering, when we recognize that that suffering is to... unto our salvation, it's unto our sanctification? Well, we're cheerful and we praise, and we come and we join the church. [00:12:20] We come and call for the elders. We have them pray over us. They anoint us in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith, verse fifteen, the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Now, we know that, um, God moves in all sorts of ways Uh, Jesse and I are both committed cessationists, convicted cessationists. [00:12:43] We don't believe that the sign gifts, that, that the miracles that marked the, the Revelation period of the New Testament and the Old Testament, we don't believe that those sign gifts continue. But what we do know is that the Lord, through his servant [00:13:00] James, commands his people to seek out the elders of the church when they're sick and for them to pray over them. [00:13:06] And I know that Jen, uh, and Jesse have really, really great elders. They've got great support at their church. I know that there are people praying for both of them. Um, and, and this podcast is not a church, and our listeners are not the elders of the church, although some of our listeners are elders, but they're not elders... [00:13:22] I don't think there's any of them at Jesse's church.  [00:13:24] Powerful Prayer Explained [00:13:24] Tony Arsenal: Um, but there is a principle here in this passage that I think is important for us as we, as we lift Jesse and Jen up in prayer, as we think about others in our life who need prayer, who need support, who are sick, who are suffering, is that the prayer, and this is where it comes in, uh, at towards the end here, the prayer of a righteous person, verse 16, "The prayer of a righteous person has great power in its working." [00:13:49] There's something about prayer, and I don't fully understand it, this is something w- I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand. There's something about the prayer of God's [00:14:00] people that in a, an accommodated, analogous way, an anthropomorphic way, there's something about the prayers of God's people that moves him to act on their behalf. [00:14:12] And of course, you know, you go back, you listen to all of our episodes on divine simplicity and aseity and divine immutability. We're, we're classical theists. We don't think that God changes. But the, what the Bible teaches us, what it reveals to us in accommodated, creaturely language is that when the elders of the church specifically, and then God's people generally, when we pray, God moves. [00:14:39] And so that's what I'll leave you with tonight. Um, again, this, this may seem melodramatic or severe. Um, Jen's doing okay. She's, she's sick, and she's recovering. Um, m- but, but it's important for us to pray. So whether it's for Jesse and Jen, and I hope that it is, I hope that you take some more time after this episode to pray [00:15:00] for them and to pray for her specifically. [00:15:02] But I think we all have people in our lives that we know who are suffering, who are sick, who need the prayers, the powerful prayers of righteous persons to move the heart of God to orient himself to their restoration and to their glory, whether that's restoration from a physical illness in the context here of this passage, and in some senses, it's restoration from spiritual sickness. [00:15:26] Elijah Like Us [00:15:26] Tony Arsenal: Um, and he closes, and this is the most encouraging part. We think of Elijah as sort of the supreme prophet of the Old Testament Uh, that title might be arguable, uh, to go to, uh, Moses, um, although Moses tends to fall in a different category. But we think of Elijah as this man, this miracle worker, right? We think of Mount Carmel, we think of the other miracles that are associated with Elijah. [00:15:53] Uh, a- and the Bible here makes the point, James makes the point that Elijah was a man with a nature [00:16:00] like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain for three years and six months, and it did not rain. And so what we see here, and this is what I'll close with, James is reminding us that the power, right, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. [00:16:18] But that power is not coming from the righteous person, 'cause even Elijah, even as amazing as Elijah was, he was a man with a nature like ours. So when we look to God, we see that, that He is the one that moves in prayer, but somehow mysteriously, somehow in His special, uh, special wisdom and special guide- counsel, somehow when we prayer- pray, that does something. [00:16:46] And again, we have to, we have to hold everything else that we understand to be true about God's immutability, His impassibility, His simplicity, all of those things. We hold those to be true, but we also see that the Bible reveals a God who [00:17:00] moves when His people pray.  [00:17:01] Final Prayer and Sendoff [00:17:01] Tony Arsenal: So we can trust that if we seek God and we pray agreeably to His will, that He will comfort and encourage and heal His people, and He will bring them back and restore them. [00:17:13] So that is my prayer and my hope for you tonight, that you would spend some time thinking about the people in your life that could benefit from you taking time to pray for them. Definitely pray for Jesse and for Jen as they're r- as she's recovering and as Jesse is supporting and caring for her. Um, it's a big burden, and he's, he's bearing it her- heroically, but, uh, he, he could use your prayer just as much, uh, as the rest of us. [00:17:39] So I will leave you with that, brothers and sisters, and until next time, honor everyone, love the brotherhood. [00:18:00]

Share a commentPeter is near the end of his life, and his words have the weight of someone who knows what failure feels like and what grace can rebuild. We open 2 Peter by watching him do something unexpected: he signs his name in a way that admits both his old story and his new identity, then he plants his flag on a single claim that confronts every counterfeit gospel, every spiritual brand, and every would-be authority figure. He belongs to Jesus Christ, and that belonging reshapes everything. We talk through Peter's journey from the Sea of Galilee to a Scripture-quoting shepherd who refuses to boast. “Simeon Peter” becomes a lived theology of sanctification: Christians grow, but we don't pretend we've arrived. Then we slow down over two loaded words in his opening line, “servant” and “apostle.” We unpack doulos, the purchased slave, and why true Christian maturity looks less like collecting status and more like surrender. We also clarify the New Testament meaning of apostolic authority and why modern claims to that office so often become a power play over the church. From there, the purpose of 2 Peter comes into sharp focus: remember biblical truth, recognize false teaching, and take God's judgment seriously, both past and future. We even connect Peter's warnings to a modern problem he never named but we all face: AI deepfakes and believable spiritual misinformation. If you want sharper biblical discernment and a steadier view of Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah, come with us. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the series.Learn more about twenty-five years of global impact, and reserve tickets to our gala. https://www.wisdomonline.org/mp/25 Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

ON THIS EPISODE:(TIME STAMPS BELOW) A review of the new Resident Evil movie, reactions to the first five hours playing Runescape: Dragonwilds, and some thoughts from 1 Timothy about three character traits God wants us to pursue instead of pursuing possessions.AND MUCH MORE!00:00:30 Intro00:05:07 Resident Evil (2026) Review00:19:38 Game Save ‘26 Event Info00:22:25 CGC & Christian Geek News(20th Anniversary Hangout September 25th!, Tempest by Kathy Tyers)00:32:03 Runescape: Dragonwilds First Impressions Review00:54:53 Traits To Pursue Instead Of Pursuing Entertainment (1 Timothy Geek Bible Study)01:06:59 Listener/Viewer Questions & Feedback(What would Paeter recommend for someone wanting to start a devotional habit?)GEEK WEEK01:21:42 MOVIES/TV: Lanterns Episode 5,01:48:26 VIDEO GAMES: PS Store Sale Picks(& Paeter's Exercise Goals??), No man's Sky Cosmos & Expedition,02:12:11 On The Next Episode02:15:58 Essential Issues Weekly (Surprised how I feel about multiple books this week! Some I should like more than I do and some that I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying them! Supergirl 16 & Action Comics 1101, Green Lantern Corps 19, Batman & Robin Year One: Dynamic Duos 1, Clayface: Celebrity Dirt 2, Emperor Aquaman 20, The Fury Of Firestorm 5!)FREE STUFF BELOW!Play Spirit Blade Productions' unofficial questline in No Man's Sky! “A Father's Journey” features a story with personal stakes, in-engine cutscenes, rewarding exploration and a mystery to solve! To get started, visit https://www.spiritblade.com/a-fathers-journeyVisit Our In-Game “No Man's Sky” Base With TONS Of Free Resources! At any Euclid Galaxy Glyph Portal, enter the glyphs corresponding to this sequence: 4,2,15,6,16,8,7,9,4,5,6,13 (Top row of glyphs is 1-8, bottom row is 9-16)Support this podcast and enjoy exclusive rewards at https://www.patreon.com/spiritbladeproductionsJoin Our Free Public Discord Channels! Invite HERE: https://discord.gg/5CRfFy2GG5SUBSCRIBE TO PAETER'S SUBSTACK, @PAETERFRANDSEN: https://paeterfrandsen.substack.com/Subscribe in a readerOpen In i-tunes- itms://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-christian-geek-central-podcast/id258963175?mt=2i-tunes Page Link- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-christian-geek-central-podcast/id258963175?mt=2Get fun, exclusive rewards for your support! Visit: https://www.patreon.com/spiritbladeproductionsOrBecome a Patron!All episodes are archived and available for download at www.spiritblade.com , Resources used to prepare CGC Bible study/devotional content include:"Expositor's Bible Commentary", Frank E. Gaebelein General Editor (Zondervan Publishing House)"The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament", by Dr. John H. Walton, Dr. Victor H. Matthews & Dr. Mark W. Chavalas (InterVarsity Press),"The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament", by Dr. Craig S. Keener (InterVarsity Press),The Grace New Testament Commentary Revised Edition, Robert N. Wilkin (Grace Evangelical Society)Thayer's Greek LexiconStrong's Exhaustive ConcordanceA Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition(BDAG)Blueletterbible.orgLexicon To The Old And New Testaments, By Spiros Zodhiates, TH.D.The Christian Geek Central Statement Of Faith can be found at:http://christiangeekcentral.blogspot.com/p/about.htmlThe Christian Geek Central Podcast is written, recorded and produced by Paeter Frandsen. Additional segments produced by their credited authors. Logo created by Matthew Silber. Copyright 2007-2026, Spirit Blade Productions. Music by Wesley Devine, Bjorn A. Lynne, Pierre Langer, Jon Adamich, audionautix.com and Sound Ideas. Spazzmatica Polka by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Freesound.org effects provided by: FreqMan

Isaiah 25:1-28:13, Gal 3:10-22, Ps 61:1-8, Pr 23:17-18

Suffering can do one of two things: break us or break us open.Beginning with Frederick Buechner's unforgettable image, John Ortberg explores Psalm 110 and one of the deepest ways Christians have read the Psalms: seeing the story of Jesus in their suffering, longing, and hope.Drawing from C.S. Lewis, Plato, and the mysterious biblical figure Melchizedek, John looks at how Jesus brings together two ancient hopes: the victorious king and the suffering servant.Jesus doesn't overcome suffering by avoiding it.He enters it.And because the story ends in resurrection, suffering doesn't have to get the final word.The difference between being broken and broken open is hope.In this episode: Psalm 110 • suffering • hope • Jesus • C.S. Lewis • Melchizedek • resurrection#Psalm110 #JohnOrtberg #Suffering #Hope #Jesus #CSLewis #Psalms

Daniel 10-12

What happened after Jesus died on the cross—and before the resurrection?In Episode 52 of Ancient Roots of Life and Wellness, JT and Josh continue their study of the Gospel of Nicodemus and finally enter one of its most fascinating sections: the Descent into Hades.The ancient account describes the patriarchs and prophets waiting in darkness as a brilliant light suddenly appears, John the Baptist announces the coming of Christ, and even Hades begins to fear what will happen when Jesus enters his realm.We compare these traditions with some of the New Testament's most mysterious passages—including Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, the saints who came out of their tombs in Matthew 27, and the strange biblical account of Michael disputing with the devil over the body of Moses.We also discuss the Shroud of Turin, the Ascension of Moses, Lazarus being raised from the dead, the moral law written on the hearts of the Gentiles, and why the death of Christ may have been the greatest strategic mistake Satan ever made.Was the death and resurrection of Jesus about something far greater than simply defeating Rome?Was He coming to set captives free from death itself?Join us as we continue exploring the ancient roots of the Christian faith.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jt-s-mix-tape--6579902/support.Please support our sponsor Modern Roots Life: https://modernrootslife.com/?bg_ref=rVWsBoOfcFPatreon: https://patreon.com/JT_Follows_JC?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkJESUS SAID THERE WOULD BE HATERS: https://jtfollowsjc.com/product-category/mens-shirts/JT's Hats: https://jtfollowsjc.com/product-category/hats/Coaching Program: https://www.echoesoftruthnetwork.com/joinTelegram Group: https://t.me/jtsmixtapeNew Trucker Hat: https://www.shopmmca.com/shop/p/jt-follows-jc-hat

This gospel written by the apostle John is one of the most beloved gospels. John takes you from (quite literally) the very beginning of all things, through the prophetic fulfillment of Jesus' arrival and ministry, the life and teachings of Jesus, to the commissions he gave to His followers after the resurrection. It's through this gospel you will see Jesus, the Son of God, in a light that is unique, with profound implications for your life.   Grab your Bible and get ready to join Jerry Dirmann as he walks through this gospel, and gives helpful teaching and insights along the way, helping you to understand, and to apply it in your every day life.   You can also take your daily Bible reading to another level with The New Testament Daily with Jerry Dirmann—including all of the books of the New Testament.   -------  Thank you for joining us today! For more resources like this, or to support the ministry of Solid Lives, visit one of the links below:  FREE MEDIA LIBRARY https://app.jesusdisciple.com/jesus-way/media-library SOLID LIVES https://www.solidlives.com/ SUPPORT https://pushpay.com/g/jdglobal Thank you for joining us today! For more resources like this, or to support the ministry of Solid Lives, visit one of the links below:FREE MEDIA LIBRARY » Download or listen at https://SolidLivesMedia.com/ ABOUT SOLID LIVES » Find out more at https://www.solidlives.com/SUPPORT » Help us get the word out at https://solidlives.com/give/

2 Peter. Originally published as a part of Letters to Young Churches, with an introduction by C.S. Lewis, which sold over 4,000,000 copies.   Read by Peter Croft, youngest grandson of the late J.B. Phillips.

What does it mean to love your neighbor? In this crossover series with the Friends for Life podcast, we're exploring "loving your neighbor" from a variety of perspectives! In Episode 1, Rev. Dr. James Fickenscher (Assistant Professor of Exegetical Theology and Director of Certification, Concordia Seminary St. Louis) joins Sarah and guest co-host Steph Neugebauer (host, Friends for Life podcast) to talk about "love" in Scripture. Dr. Fickenscher explores where "loving your neighbor" is recorded in Scripture, various Old and New Testament examples of love, gives an exegetical study of the words "love" and "neighbor," and shares what these words mean for us today as we live out our God-given vocations in our contexts. Find the Friends for Life podcast at kfuo.org/friendsforlife. As you grab your morning coffee (and pastry, let's be honest), join hosts Andy Bates and Sarah Gulseth as they bring you stories of the intersection of Lutheran life and a secular world. Catch real-life stories of mercy work of the LCMS and partners, updates from missionaries across the ocean, and practical talk about how to live boldly Lutheran. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on The Coffee Hour? Contact us at: listener@kfuo.org.

Steve DeWitt Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right Living - Part B Study Guide for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 1:13-16 Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter Donate to Support The Journey Sermon Transcript for Spiritual Exiles, 1 Peter 1:13-16 Sermon Series: Spiritual ExilesMessage: Our Calling: Right Thinking and Right LivingAirdate: 9/16-9/17/26Programs: 2358 and 2359Well, good morning, and good morning to our Cedar Lake campus, our Hobart Portage gang that's gathered, and, here at Crown Point as well. Good morning. I'm gonna begin my, message with a little personal touch. Many of you know that Jennifer and I are pregnant expecting our second child, and we found out what this week, what the gender is. Thought we'd share it with you.So put up on the screen if you would. Now this is our this is our child. If you look really carefully, look really carefully. So Some of you still don't know what that means. Ask somebody later.Yes. We're having a little girl, we found out this week. So that's two girls. It's lost lots of estrogen in the house, isn't it? So it'll just be one more reason to pray for your pastor.Right? We're excited. June, sometime in June is the arrival date, and, we're we're, pretty pretty fired up about that. So let's get into our time in God's word together. And I remember some some years ago, somebody coming up to me and saying, you know, pastor Steve, you spent all that time in your messages on exposition, And then you get to the application.And, honestly, we really prefer the application. Could you just, like, skip forward to the to the application and do less of the of the exposition? And the answer to that is no. I will not. And the reason for that is that, like a a family that says, you know what? The meat, the vegetables, the fruit, it's also unnecessary. Let's skip forward to the dessert and just do dessert all the time. Would be a very unhealthy family. Similarly, when it comes to studying God's word, it's we always wanna move towards application, but it is the the doctrinal, exegetical, the truth, the words of Scripture that form the grounds for the application. And if you just do application and without any doctrine, your applications aren't gonna last very long.They won't be very deep for sure. And we see this happening in the in the letters of the New Testament. Most, if not all of them, begin doctrinally. They begin with truth about God. They begin with truth about the gospel.They begin with truth about, you know, the the nature of salvation, and then they move towards us. So what? This is what it means. This is how we sort of live this out on the street level of life. And Peter is doing that and has done that here in our little study so far.We saw in verses of chapter one in verses one through 12, a wonderfully, like, amazing, rich, fantastic explanation of the gospel, the nature of salvation, what God has done to save us, how Jesus has been key in that in his resurrection, and it's been it's been filled with hope. It's been filled with joy and gladness. And then you get to verse 13, and there is that word therefore. And that word is code for time for some application. Whenever you see that in the Bible, it's probably the the writer drawing now some conclusions for the way that we ought to live.And so we're gonna talk about that kind of application today. And, let's get into the text. I'm I'm studying with you today verses, 13 through 16 of First Peter one. Please listen as I read God's word. “Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as you who as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” Now if you look at that section of Scripture, you'll see that there really are two kind of, like, commands here, two big things that he's saying, this is what we ought to do. And he says, first of all, set your hope fully on the grace to come. And secondly, that we are to be holy in all of our conduct.So hope fully, be holy. And before you think that doesn't sound very practical to me, there's a lot more here than meets the eye. And I want you to see just first of all that these verses are part of a larger section here beginning in chapter in verse 13 and following that is all about what the gospel ought to do in the lives on the practical level as it's lived out by the Christian. Not just what we have here before us, but the fact that God is holy. We're gonna see in verses 17 following that God is our judge, And then finally, that we were redeemed from this way of, this sinful life by the precious blood of Jesus.And all of those, the holiness of God, the judgment of God, and the blood of Christ are to call the Christian out of a life of sin and living according to the old ways and to call us into the new life. This new life lived to the glory of God, lived free from the bondage of sin. And so there's lots more of this to come. We're just looking at one section here today. Notice, first of all, that he says that we are to focus on future grace.Look look again at verse 13. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” K? Set your hope your hope fully. Now what is hope?Hope is, by definition, future oriented. I don't hope, you know, I I I don't hope about something that has already happened. I don't hope the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. Why? Because it's done already, isn't it?Hope doesn't orient backwards. Hope always orients forwards or towards the future. And we've seen Peter saying this throughout this letter. It's the it's actually the third reference to the return of Christ. He did it in verse five.He did it in verse eight. Now he does it in verse 13. Are you surprised that a letter about suffering would have a lot about the future in it? I'm not. I mean, this is it makes sense, doesn't it?To cast our eyes towards what is yet to come in the midst of our trials, in the midst of our sufferings, to think about the future. And here, he says the grace that is yet to be revealed. Now what is that talking about? Because I think we could look at salvation and say, wait a second, I already got the grace of God. Right?When I when I put my faith in in Jesus, I received from God grace. I was saved by grace. I go to a church that sings amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I've already got the grace of God.How can I put my hope on some future grace? What might this be talking about? One of my favorite commentators, Wayne Grudem, says the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ means the further store of undeserved blessings, which God will pour out on them when Christ returns. Whenever we talk about grace or the grace of God, it is always highlighting that God is giving us something that we don't deserve. That's why it's grace.Salvation is by grace through faith. To think about the future and to realize that there is a storehouse of grace, there are blessings that are yet to come to us that we have not realized, that we have not yet fully received. The future is even better than it is right now. Might that be encouraging if you're in a trial of some kind? That maybe the best is yet to come, and that what I have, while wonderful, is not yet the fullness of what God has in store for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.You say, well, that sounds nice. Preach as well. But, like, what are you talking about? Well, here's just a short list I just kind of compiled of future grace yet to come. The ongoing conscious life upon our physical death, the physical presence with God, our resurrected and glorified bodies, seeing and worshiping and savoring the presence of Jesus Christ himself, eternal rewards that God will give to us based on the quality of our service to him while here on earth.How about eternal life, enjoyment, and pleasure that we will have forever in real time on a new earth that has no curse upon it? We're gonna live on that new earth, and it's gonna be a much better version than this one. Eternal fellowship with fellow Christians and loved ones. If you've if you've had a loved one that's died in the faith, I guarantee there's a future grace coming to you. You're gonna meet him or her again and fellowship with them forever.Eternal status and relationship as children of God, which right now we don't totally get and realize what a big deal that is. But to step into eternity and the God of heaven, the God of eternity, we are part of his family. We're not just servants in the house. We are sons and daughters of God. Many other things.Someday you're gonna come to me and say that list was terrible. It was so small. We you could have added so many more things. Indeed. None of them we deserve.All of these things are God's gift to us. We deserve hell. We deserve punishment, and yet God is giving us what we don't deserve. And much of what we're going to receive, we haven't even tasted yet. And so Peter writing to exiles, suffering trials says, put your hope not here and not in the trial or maybe the trial going away.Set your hope fully on grace yet to be received from God. The inverse of this is true. Don't put your hope on anything less than this. Don't put your hope, Scripture says, in your riches. Don't put your hope in your life and in your physical vitality.Don't put your hope in any fellow man or pastor or anybody else. Don't put your hope in who you are and your achievements and your big stuff or whatever it might be. Don't put your hope in things in this world. All of it is passing away. The Bible calls God's people with the same faith that trusts in Jesus in the past dying on our on the cross for our sins, to look to the future with the same kind of expectant hope and to believe the best is yet to come.That helps you endure in them trials, doesn't it? Now that sounds wonderful, but how do we do that? Peter, get practical for us. K? We're tired of these long expositions, Peter.Could we just skip to the dessert? Can we get to the application? And Peter provides two specific means by which our hope is set fully on the future. You might have missed them as I read it. But notice, first of all, he says that we are to prepare our minds for action.Somehow, there's a connection between setting my hope fully and the grace to come and a mind that is prepared for action. What does this mean? Well, it's an intriguing illustration. In fact, if you have a King James Bible possibly with you, you might look at that and say, my Bible says it a little bit different. Indeed, here's how the King James translates it.And if you grew up in the church in the seventies with a good Scofield Bible like I did, this is more what you're familiar with. Right? It says this, gird up the loins of your mind. Ain't that a blessing? Gird up the loins of your mind.And, technically, that is what the text is saying here. The problem is that for most of us, a loin is something to put barbecue on. Right? And so we don't feel like we can apply that very well. What do you mean loins?Well, this is a historical cultural thing. Let's talk about this a little bit. A loin was a robe or the bottom section of a robe. And if you've watched, you know, the Jesus film or some things like this, you've seen the kind of robes and garments that the men would wear as just that was the fashion of the day. And so what would happen is is that these men would wear these long longer kind of flowing gowns, but they had to do what men today have to do.They had to work. They had to go to war. They had different things. And so if you were going to do that, you had to gird up your loins. You had to take those flowing gowns, and you had to get them out of the way if you were to do serious business.Now I happened upon an illustration on a website that I kind of like called the art of manliness. I go there just to see if they're manly enough, in my opinion. But I came across this illustration of how they actually girded up their loins. Now this is gonna be a blessing to each of you. Notice that the the the the gown that the guy has, he would pull it up, bring it cinch it together, pull it through between his legs, and then stick it into his belt.And when he'd done that, now he's ready to go to war. The art of manliness. Okay? I actually thought about demonstrating this myself, but maybe this will suffice for that. Okay?Now here's the point. You girded up the loins of your mind or your your your actual loins, it meant that you're about to get serious about something. You are about to take care of business. And that could be working in the field, or it could be defending your home or defending your honor. I mean, if you saw a guy if if you're, you know, if you're at the local pub and a guy starts girding up his loins, you're like, hey. What's going on around here? Right? Why? Fight's about to break out. This guy's getting serious right here.Calm down, man. Stop the girding. Peter says, with our minds, we are to gird up our loins. What is he referring to there? What Peter is saying is the same thing that Paul says in Ephesians six when he writes, “stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.”I believe it's the same word, gird on the belt of truth. So for Paul, he's saying, get that belt of truth solidly in your mind. Peter is saying, get serious about truth with your mind and with your thinking. Why are our minds so important? Here's why.Right thinking leads to right living. When I am thinking rightly, my life is going to be consistent with that right thinking. When I am thinking poorly, when I am not thinking, when I am thinking with distraction, when I am thinking about lesser things, my life is going to reflect that also. Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If you wanna know who you really are, look at your thought life.Think about the things that you think about. Examine the way that you use your mind, and it will determine largely the shape of our lives, how important our thinking is. He doubles down on this. Peter does. And he says, secondly, be sober minded.Be sober minded. This word here is most commonly used in reference to alcohol and intoxication. He uses it Peter or Paul uses it in First Timothy three describing the qualifications of an elder. He is to be sober, and a godly woman is described as being sober. And it certainly includes not allowing alcohol or any other kind of substance like that to be a controlling influence in your life.But it's used here more broadly, not just alcohol, but a kind of soberness in thinking, not dour, not sad, not like I'm sober. We're Christians. We're very sober. Not like that. We can be we can be joyous, and we can be glad hearted, and we ought to be.But in our thinking, we are serious and sober. We are directing the thoughts of our minds, and it's shaping our whole approach to life. Another commentator. For Peter, the cares of this life and the pressure of persecution can intoxicate the Christian and distract his or her focus just as easily as wine might. The need of the hour is clear judgment and a mind and will prepared to resist anything that would distract them from a hope set on Jesus' appearing.Sober thinking is thinking with focus. It is clarity. It is the refusal to allow anything to distract. Again, it's not sober in personality. It is sober in thinking.It is a mind that says, I am. I refuse to think about life and my trials and my troubles in any other manner than this right here. I will look at life through the gospel. I will look at life through the grid of God's word, which is God's wisdom. I wanna look at my marriage.I wanna look at my parenting. I wanna look at my singleness. I wanna look at my schooling and my job and my hobbies and the dreams and hopes and my money and everything else. I wanna look at it through the wisdom of God's word, and I refuse to allow my mind to think anything else else than that. That is sober thinking.It is the Christian mind whose best and highest thoughts are reserved for kingdom and spiritual matters. So let me ask you. Think about what you think about when you don't have anything that you have to think about. What do you spend your time thinking about? How often in the course of the day do your thoughts turn towards spiritual realities?This is where I think some of the disciplines, Christian disciplines of prayer and Bible study and Scripture memory. These are all things that aid in this. It helps us to tune our hearts to sing his praise as the hymn writer says. It's in the day where my I am vertically oriented, and I'm looking at my life from the perspective that heaven vertically allows for me. How often do you think about God in the day or ministry or the needs spiritual needs of the people around you or Scripture or eternity?Do you intentionally direct your mind to think about what you want it to think about? And you say, I can't do that. My mind has a mind of its own. And now this is psychologically confusing, isn't it? But what I wanna say is we can direct our thoughts.We can, as Paul writes, take captive every or take captive every thought and and subject it to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is a discipline. It is a way of using and thinking about life intentionally, but it takes habit. I've been thinking about this lately because I feel like in my life right now, I'm struggling in this regard. And I think why is it?Like, I I feel like I I I used to be able to think better than I do right now. And I think one of the reasons this is just one of them. One's just the aging process. But secondly, probably, I I think is that I find myself today often the the the gaps where I used to have time to think are now being filled with checking my email, social media, or passively watching something on a screen. Now maybe it's just me, but I don't think so.I think we are currently and unknowingly awash in a kind of mind muddling cultural habit of perpetual distraction. And I will never be able to say that sentence again. So I hope somebody wrote that down. Don't you think? I mean, now it's just common.We don't we think nothing of it to go to a restaurant and to look in the booth next to us and to see a family of five. They're not talking to each other. They're engrossed in their smartphone. Right? I have come to church and and walked through here before the service starts, and I've seen an entire family all sitting here minutes before the service is about to start.All of them are engrossed in their phone. And I don't think they're preparing for worship by reading the Westminster Catechism. What are they looking at? What are they reading? What are they filling their minds with?What are they directing their thoughts towards? And I say this to myself because I feel like my mind is I'm getting mushy. I don't like that. Distracted. You know, Satan doesn't have to convince us of a heresy.He just has to distract us from thinking about the truth. The one, if I got up and say Jesus isn't God, I hope you'd all rush the stage and beat me to a pulp in love. K? That's the obvious danger. How about the more subtle one where we just don't think about it at all and we're constantly distracted from the higher and holy things of life and eternity.We're awash, I think, in trivial things. Can I just sit on this a little longer? If you want I say, hey. Think about what you think about. If you if you view social media as any indication of the thoughts that people are having, I mean, if they're having the thoughts sufficiently that they think I need to post this, I need to communicate this with everybody that knows me, then this must be, one of their best thoughts.Right? And if you look at a at a news feed on Facebook or some other social media site and to see the kinds of thoughts that people in society and maybe even people in the church, what they're thinking about, what they are viewing, what they are finding humorous. Not all of it. There's lots of cute pictures of babies and gender announcements. And that's totally acceptable.But a lot of it is superficial, silly, banal. And it seems normal to us now. Right? Because it's just all the time going on. It troubles me to see on Facebook people, even in our church, posting, tweeting about, you know, the dresses at the Grammys or Katy Perry's Super Bowl performance.Really? Like, this is this what we're filling our thoughts and minds with? And then here comes the trial and life is devastating. I wonder why. I haven't set my hope fully on the grace to come in years.I've been filling my mind with all of these lesser things. I'm thinking poorly. Now this is not a rant against media or movies or Twitter. Not at all. I think Peter would have had a Twitter account, honestly.But I don't think he would talk about silly things. In fact, can we not look at First Peter as a kind of long Twitter account? What was Peter thinking about? He writes about what he was thinking about. And here we have before us the kinds of thoughts that the apostle Peter had about life.This is the kind of thing that he was dwelling on and thinking about. Does that not tell us something about what it means to be a spiritually mature Christian man or woman and the kinds of thoughts that we think about? And this is a struggle because our culture is so immoral and so materialistic and all the rest. But he was living in the Greco Roman culture, which would give ours a run for its money. And yet, he was thinking this way.I would encourage you to follow the example of the apostle Peter. Now one more thing, and I gotta move on here, because I wanna get particularly practical. How do we engage our mind in sober thinking? How do we make it intentionally oriented towards spiritual truth? Well, I thought I'd just have some fun with this.What's the gender of our baby? Girl. So how about maybe on the week that I announce this, here's my little acronym. K? Four ways to help think more seriously about higher things.Girl, g, get rid of distractions. If your whole life is beeping, humming, buzzing, smartphone, constantly calling your attention to something that somebody has said about this or that, you have no time to think high and holy thoughts. There's no time for prayer. You're distracted all the time. Now I sound like an old fuddy duddy with that, and the young people are going, he is so uncool.But let's see what happens to this generation in thirty years. Time will tell whether wisdom lies in the beeping and the humming and the buzzing or in the older folks who are saying, it didn't used to be like that. We used to talk. I thought maybe some of those old people would amen that point. But get rid of distractions.K? And I don't mean to focus on that one. There's a thousand distractions out there. Secondly, increase truth input. Get rid of the banal and the inane and the silly and the superficial and fill your mind. This is the garbage in garbage out principle. Fill your mind increasingly with truth. Philippians four eight. You know, “what sort of things are pure and lovely, of good report, excellent, and worthy of praise, think on these things.”Spend your time on the beautiful and the truthful and the glorious and the eternally significant. Third, r, recall the grace of God for all the times you don't do that and to seek his forgiveness and ask God to give you daily grace. And finally, love God with your mind. That's a whole another point we could make, but how critical it is that we're we are thinking Christians. And even from the beginning, we're called to love him with our body.I mean, we preach against, you know, sexual sin or, you know, abusing your body with drugs or something like that. But so we we're we're all about loving God with our bodies. But what about loving God with our minds? And to intentionally seek to think deeper and higher thoughts about God and to learn and to grow and to become a mature thinking Christian. Let's do that.K? Let's do that. Now I gotta move on. We got communion coming. Second thing that he is focusing on.First one is setting your, your hope fully on the grace that is to come. The second category is that we are to be holy or what I'm calling, we're to be like our daddy. Again, the text, verse 14. “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.”So we see Peter here moving from right thinking to right living. What does holy thoughts in my brain look like in a holy expression in my life? And I want you to see, first of all, that this has a relational tone to this. He he began doesn't just say, be holy. He says, hey. As obedient children. And what is that referring to? It is referring to the relationship that we have with God. Right? The Bible says that when we become Christians, that God actually adopts us into his family.We are members of the family of God. We're brothers and sisters in this family. We're sons and daughters of the most high God. And because God is my Father, that relationship matters. It means something in regards to the way that I look at myself, the way that I want to live my life.God's my Heavenly Father. How should I live now? Well, he says here that we should live morally disciplined lives. And to proof text this, Peter reaches into the Old Testament, goes back to Leviticus, and he quotes from there's five passages in Leviticus that use the same statement. “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? You shall be holy, not me. I'm I'm saying it like I'm I'm God. Okay? “You shall be holy for I am holy.”K? And so we see in that statement the ethical measure and the eth and the ethical motivation as well. God's character is the measure, and God's character is the motive. Because I am holy, you shall you shall be holy. God's holiness is the absolute moral unity of his entire being.He is completely good. He is morally without fail. He is not the author of evil. He has no inclination towards anything that is less than absolutely morally pure and upright. John writes this in First John one.“In him, God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.” There's no shadow. There's no little something hidden. He is absolutely, morally, purely bright and light. Everything he does always is holy.And so Peter says, this is our God. This is our Heavenly Father. This is the way that we are to strive to live our life in a morally disciplined manner where the ethics of life matter to us. We want to please our Heavenly Father. We wanna live consistent with what he is like.Notice in all your conduct. Okay? So it's not just, you know, be holy as I am holy. When you're at church on Sunday, when you are out with the pastor, when somebody is watching that maybe could look down on you, It is not in any sort of category. It is in all categories.Holiness of life impacts, shapes, directs every aspect of my life. Why? Because it shapes and directs every aspect of the very life and character of God himself. Now lest there be any confusion here, I wanna emphasize that we are not naturally holy. We are naturally sinners.And this is why Jesus came, and this is why Jesus died. He didn't die for holy people so that they could go, not go to hell. He died for I said that wrong. He let me just say it this way. He died for sinners.K? He died for sinners, and that's us. K? So without his righteousness, we have no standing with God. We have no adoption with God.But sometimes people confuse our position before God as righteous because of what Jesus has done and the calling that God has upon the practice of our life. You overemphasize the position and say, hey, I'm righteous before God, so who gives a rip? Right? I'm going to heaven anyway. That is an abuse of the grace of God.If I focus on the practice solely, then now I am all the time wondering if I'm good enough, wondering if I'm gonna earn my way to heaven. And that is a misuse of the gospel. The gospel is is that we are declared righteous by God. We are positionally righteous before God. We enter into a relationship with God through the gospel by faith that now shapes my desires where now I want to live like I'm a child of God.K? It is relational. It is not legalism. It's not antinomianism. No law.It is relationship. Grudem says to be holy as God is holy includes a full and pervading holiness that reaches to every aspect of our personalities. It involves not only avoiding outward sin, but also maintaining an instinctive delight in God and his holiness as an undercurrent of heart and mind throughout the day. God is our Father. He's always our Father.Everywhere we go, he's our Father. We're his children. And this is where I think the metaphor is helpful because children, not always, but naturally want to to please their or to be like their dad. I'm enjoying this almost every day. I have a 20 year old daughter.Okay? So here's here's what happens in my day. I find myself you know, I'll I'll be sitting at the couch or something and I'll stretch like this and I look over and there she is. She's looking for my affirmation. Right?I'm I'm I'm doing what you're doing, daddy. Right? I kinda like that. That's kinda fun. I'll say to her, I love you.And she'll say, I love you. Is that manipulation? I don't know. But I love it. I love it.Or the other day I was eating and I wasn't watching my manners very well. And so I'm kind of chomping away on something sort of loudly and all a sudden I look over and she's going, daddy needs to slow down and close his mouth while he chews apparently. Why does she raise her arms and mimic me? Why does she repeat the words that I say? Why does she mimic even some of my less wonderful qualities?Because at this point, at least in her life, she wants to be like me. That's a goal for her even though she couldn't articulate it. And here's where I think verse 13 and verse 15 come together. The goal of what God is doing in each of us is holiness and Christ likeness. That's the big picture.He is forming us into the likeness of Christ. As I muster my spiritual and my mental thoughts and energies towards loving God with my mind, my Heavenly Father, my will increasingly is shaped by that priority And the true thoughts that my now girded up mind, the loins of my mind, are thinking about and focusing on shape the desires that I have in my heart, which right thinking leads to right living. So I fill my thought, my heart, my mind with God's truth. And the more I think about the grace of God to me, both now and in the future, and the love of God to me both now and in the future, the more my life then is shaped around his will and his purposes. So that right thinking about God shapes my desires and produces a more righteous living, a more holiness in my life.And all of it is anticipating a future grace and goodness of God that he will shower upon me and is yet to be experienced. And the anticipation, the more I realize what God has already done for me, it elevates my anticipation of what God has yet to do for me. K? And anticipation is a very powerful motive in our life. I remember when, football season was about to start.I would run, and I would train. I would get ready for it. And when basketball season was gonna start, I would run and train and play and shoot. I would get I would get ready for it. I remember when we had, the Bethel five k here a couple years ago.I'm the pastor of the church. I don't wanna embarrass myself. I ran, and I got ready for it. And I remember, perhaps the best example for me is after forty-four years, I got married. And before my wedding, I'm here to tell you, after forty-four years I was thinking about my wedding, and I was thinking about my honeymoon.I wanted to get ready for it. So I swam, and I ran, and I got a tan, and I was thinking about anticipating being with my girl. And it shaped the way that I lived my life. And when we, as Christians, set our minds on things that matter, things that are spiritually true, the promises of God, gospel, the word of God, when my thoughts are high and holy as God would have them to be, I anticipate increasingly, this is good. The best is yet to come.And that anticipation of what is to come means I'm getting ready for it now. And it changes and it shapes the way that I think and the way that I live and the directions of my life, which increases my likeness to Christ and gets me ready for that day when Jesus returns and when his full grace will be revealed. So friends, set your mind on the grace to come. Be holy as God is holy. Is your mind disciplined?Is your life morally diligent? And is your hope oriented towards the amazing grace of God yet to come? To help us with that today, we are going to be partaking in the Lord's supper. And I'd like to pray, and you could begin to prepare your hearts as I do. Heavenly Father God, I do pray and ask that this very practical message would, lead to very practical results in our lives.Lord, help us to be a church that is disciplined in our thinking, that strives to know and understand the gospel, the God of the gospel, the Jesus of the gospel, that we would be serious about this. And that this might, Lord, grant to us an elevated sense of anticipation of what is yet to come. And as we take this communion now, I pray that the partaking in it, the reminder of the death of Jesus would serve to also prepare us with, holiness and anticipation of no more symbols but actual presence to see him and to be with him forever. All praise be to Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.

Send us Fan MailTo continue receiving this podcast, please subscribe to: https://thebiblejourneydailypodcast.buzzsprout.comThis Podcast is part of season 23 of a project to complete an in-depth study of the entire Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.Episode Notes:Today's episode is titled “The Reality of Idolatry.” Idolatry is not only sinful, but it is also stupid. When we hear the word idolatry, we tend to picture an uncivilized person bowing down before a carved image. And yes, that is one form of idolatry. But it is definitely not the only form. According to the New Testament, believers can be guilty of idolatry. Paul says in Colossians 3:5 that greed is a form of idolatry. John warns believers in 1 John 5:21, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”   And Paul tells the Corinthians to flee from idolatry — and remember, he is not writing to unbelievers or pagans, but to a Christian church. So, he obviously believed that Christians are always at risk of falling into idolatry. Idolatry is not just something that happens in primitive cultures. It is something that happens in the human heart. The message- that idolatry is foolish, irrational, and destructive comes from the Lord Himself. And He delivered that message to a king in ancient Judah.Support the showThis podcast is entirely the work of Jeremy R McCandless...Follow and support me on Patreon.Jeremy McCandless | Creating Podcasts and Bible Study Resources | PatreonTo receive my weekly newsletter and keep up to date with all five of my podcasts, subscribe at:Jeremy McCandless | SubstackCheck out my other Podcasts.My History of the Christian Church: https://thehistoryofthechristianchurch.buzzsprout.comThe L.I.F.E. Podcast: Philosophy and current trends in the Arts and Entertainment.https://the-living-in-faith-everyday-podcast.buzzsprout.comThe Renewed Mind Podcast. My Psychology and Mental Health Podcast:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568891The Classic Literature Podcast:https://www.buzzsprout.com/2568906To visit my Author page on Amazon and view my entire back catalogue of books on both Amazon and Kindle, and now also on Audible, Visit:Amazon.com: Jeremy R Mccandless: books, biography, latest update

Isaiah 22:1-24:23, Gal 2:17-3:9, Ps 60:1-12, Pr 23:15-16

Typology is a key to understanding God's saving plan for mankind. But most people wrongly assume that typology merely means finding Old Testament “types” in New Testament “antitypes.” In this episode of The Road to Emmaus, Dr. Scott Hahn is joined again by Rob Corzine, the Vice President of Academic Programs at the St. Paul Center. Together they discuss the real definition and use of typology.  In their conversation, discover the relationship between typology and the four senses of Scripture discussed in the Catechism, how Old Testament authors made deliberate use of typology, and how the early Christians employed it to understand not just Scripture, but the Christian life. Typology is at the heart of the St. Paul Center's approach to understanding Scripture. This episode will reveal to you how this approach is rooted both in the Old and New Testaments.  

How can you teach yourself anything, even when it challenges the way you see the world? And how can you organise what you learn so it turns into books your readers will find? J. Daniel Sawyer shares his self-education toolkit after decades as a largely self-taught author. In the intro, Spotify for Authors has expanded AI-assisted creation of audiobooks [Spotify]; Who is Narrating the Future? [Publishing Perspectives; 9 ways AI will disrupt authors and publishing from 2019]; Author Voice, Creativity, and Building a Career as an Intuitive Author-Entrepreneur [How Women Write]; A fallow season [Systems and Soul]; How to Write, Publish, and Market Short Stories – Joanna Penn. Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is an autodidact, and why school doesn't teach you how to learn How to triage information in a world of way too much How to recognise fear in your body and turn it into excitement for learning Sandboxing dangerous ideas so you can learn without threatening your worldview How to organise research and check quotes when writing nonfiction Why you should never publish a book dead You can find Dan at JDSawyer.net, and The Autodidact's Bible is out now on Kickstarter. Transcript of the interview with J. Daniel Sawyer Jo: J. Daniel Sawyer is the author of over 30 books across science fiction, fantasy, crime, short stories, and nonfiction, as well as being a podcaster and filmmaker. His latest book is Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible. So welcome back to the show, Dan. Dan: Hello, Joanna. It's great to be back. Jo: Yes, indeed. You were only on the show a few months ago, which is rare I have somebody twice in the same year, so that is quite exciting. We talked about voice mastery last time, very different to the topic of today. But because we did talk a bit more about your background last time, we're going to jump straight into the book. So what is an autodidact, and why write a book on it? Dan: Well, an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves things rather than taking a course. It's not incompatible with being taught by others, of course, but there's a set of skills for being able to pick up new information, new disciplines, new hobbies, whatnot, that's really useful to have. I wrote the book because I was mentoring a friend's kid through high school. They weren't teaching her anything, and she was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get an education in a school that was just not interested in providing one. The process of the conversations over the course of a year forced me to surface all of the tools that I had developed, starting as a child, that allow me to pick up all of those disciplines you were talking about before, plus blacksmithing and academics and other stuff like that. While I have had access to a lot of amazing teachers in my life, I'm largely self-taught, and have become the world expert on a couple of topics as a result. I realised that the tools that you need to teach yourself and the tools that you get in school no longer overlap very much, at least in the US. The old style of classical education, and then the middling style of early school education, both gave you those tools so that when you left school, you were able to continue through the world growing. Nobody does that anymore, so I realised I needed to write a book about all this stuff while it was fresh in my mind, so I did. Jo: I love that. I don't know if it always was like that for some people, too. We all know now more about neurodivergence. Back in the day, when you and I went to school, that wasn't really talked about. It was like if you couldn't learn stuff in the way that it was thrust at you, then you were just dumb, maybe. Dan: Well, what you and I got in school was the very late end of the German model. The German model of education is what arose in the industrial era, and its job is to create good, obedient workers, not necessarily to create independent citizens who can think for themselves and who can move through a world that's changing and learn things. That kind of education came from an older tradition, but it wasn't well suited to pulling people out of the hinterlands and putting them in the factories in a way that they could understand what they were supposed to be doing. So the Germans developed a regimented system that was built around memorisation exclusively, rather than processing. Memorisation and repetition. Whereas a more classical approach would have you do memorisation as part of repetition, processing, evaluation, and creativity. So when you go to school, you get some of the toolkit you need, but not all of it. Jo: Yes, and then I think some people were just so bashed over the head with stuff that they didn't enjoy the process of learning, and maybe just moved away from it now. I want to come back on something you said there, that it didn't enable the independence, the thinking for yourself. We're living in this really weird time now where we're almost in a splintered world where you can find information on anything you want, but a lot of people are finding information, say, on TikTok or in AI-generated books with no rigorous fact-checking. So how can you think for yourself in a world where there's almost way too much now? Dan: Well, one of the most foundational skills of thinking is information triage. The world has always been full of unreliable information, if for no other reason than the state of the art in any given field at any given time is guaranteed to be about 80% wrong. So even if you're being very careful about only hewing to the most accepted body of facts, facts change over time, partly as we learn more and partly as the world changes underneath us. Thinking is different than knowing. Thinking is the ability to evaluate the information you're coming into contact with and figure out what's likely to be useful, and then to check yourself based on what you are more inclined to believe because of the way that you're made up emotionally. It's being able to curb your impulses with an error-checking layer so that you don't get sucked down into a very nasty rabbit hole, which everybody's prone to on one front or another. So that explains the how and why, but the what is things like knowing your basic logic, knowing the informal logical fallacies that everybody's prone to, things like the bandwagon fallacy. We're partly herd animals. We tend to want to join a group for protection and identity. So if we're in a group that believes a certain thing, we're likely to believe it out of fashion, which is great for group solidarity. It's not so great for actually knowing if what you think you know is correct. I've got a whole section of the book devoted to the top 30 or 40 most common informal reasoning fallacies. Knowing how to do basic critical reasoning is one of the things you have to do if you're going to be learning in a way that's useful to you. Then of course, there's another reasoning kit, which is the non-rational reasoning kit, which I also talk about. That's something that you and I as fiction authors use all the time. Jo: Explain more about that [non-rational reasoning kit] then, because people might not know what that is. Dan: All right. So rational reasoning involves logic. If X is true and Y is true, then Z must also be true. That's basic deduction. It basically lets you figure out what's implicit in the body of knowledge you already know. Then subsidiary to that is induction, which is, if X is true and Y is true, what might also be true that could explain X and Y? That's the scientific method. It's less reliable than deduction, but it actually grows your knowledge rather than just revealing it. Non-rational reasoning is things like reasoning through analogy, reasoning through metaphor, reasoning through intuition. These are all reasoning modes that allow you to bring something foreign into your understanding, or to deepen your understanding of something you're already familiar with, in a way that incorporates not just logical propositions, but also emotional truth and relational truth and things like that. Frequently it can generate things you can then subject to logical evaluation and pull new information about the world out of. A really good example of where this happens in science is in visionary experiences. The periodic table, for example, came out of someone's dream. Now, the fact he dreamed it doesn't mean it's true, but what happened while he was dreaming is he had a non-rational reasoning chain that brought him this vision, which he then brought out into the real world and started doing experiments on to see if it would work, and it did. Jo: In that case, yes, I can picture the periodic table, and I often see images of things that help me organise information. So that to me makes sense in terms of somebody who had certain amounts of knowledge, who had some kind of picture in their brain and then was able to prove that. I wanted to circle back. You were talking about critical things, rational things. You mentioned logic, and you did briefly mention emotion and intuition. Coming back to where we are at this point in history, so much emotion is being triggered through the media, whether that's social media or traditional media or whatever, that all of those logical, reasoned things can be almost triaged immediately by a big emotional response to something. So how can we understand that that emotional response perhaps has to be part of the triage? Dan: Well, simply by stating it outright. What you just said is exactly correct. I've got a model in the book where I talk about the difference between feelings and emotions. Feelings, in this model, are your interpretive layer. That's, I feel angry or sad or excited or depressed or whatnot. Those are your feelings. The emotions are the base physiological states that those feelings are laying over. So elevated heart rate, increased skin conductance, things like that are associated with any excitable state, like anger, sexual arousal, anticipation, fear, that kind of thing. Then depressed heart rate and whatnot, those are associated with depression, relaxation, and a whole bunch of other things. Learning to recognise the base physiological layer within yourself that's being stimulated allows you a certain amount of freedom about interpreting that base physiological state. That can help you separate your reaction to your own physiological state from your rational evaluation of what's going on around you. One of the things that our world runs on right now is fear, and there's reasons for this. If you read Edward Bernays' Propaganda, he lays it all out. Fear shifts your mind into a survival mode. You're less likely to take time to think through things. You're more likely to be easily steered because, as far as your physiology knows, there's an active threat to you, and you've got to take care of that. You've got to get away from it. If you stimulate fear in somebody, you can direct who they hate, who they love, who they trust. Very, very useful for anyone who wants to build a cult or sell a product or get elected. If you learn to recognise in yourself that the physiological state associated with fear is the same one associated with excitement over something new, then you can train yourself, to a certain extent, and it's a learned skill, to do an end run around the fear part and concentrate on the excitement. Then you can deal with whatever it is that's stimulating you in the way that you would a new piece of information, a new bit of learning, a new adventure. Instead of fear, which closes you down, adventure opens you up, and that's a much better state to engage in learning and exploration than fear is. Jo: When you said, “That opens you up,” this is exactly what I look for, what is expansive for me. I often reflect on this. When do I feel expansive, and when do I feel like I'm being reduced? When do I feel like I'm hunkered down? When I'm working with AI tools, I feel expansive, I feel more creative, I feel excited. I feel all these things where I just see so many possibilities, and the horizon is off out there in the distance. Yet I know other people, some people listening, will feel that that crushes them, that even mentioning it just makes them reduce into themselves and shrink because of fear, I guess. I also think that a lot of people are feeling those things because they haven't learnt enough perhaps. They are just responding to emotions. So how can we change those things so we're more open to learning? Dan: Well, one of the things you run into with creative types is we've all got something weird in our background that makes us do this. We're not just inclined to be creative, because you can meet welders and electricians who are very creative people. They just apply their creativity in a limited domain. People who go into the arts tend to be either people who grew up in incredibly open conditions, or people who grew up in incredibly closed conditions and had to fight against them. People who grow up in closed conditions and fight against them tend to be a little better at sticking around for the long haul of an arts career, which can be punishing financially and emotionally. One of the reasons they can stick around is that they had a lot of practice in sticking around through horrible situations when they were younger. So they're going to have a negative bias when they come up against things that they don't understand. If you have a negative bias with something you don't understand and it turns out to be wrong, you're not going to lose very much. But if you have a negative bias when you come up against something you understand and it turns out to be right, you're going to survive that thing. Whereas a more open person might just walk into the jaws of the shark, right? To change that and make your experience better, and give you access to all the advantages that the person who's got a more open temperament has, you've got to find a way to make it safe to experiment with the dangerous thing. For every dangerous thing, and probably for everyone who's encountering it, it's going to be a little bit different. With AI, people are worried about the market eroding to the point where nobody cares about human creativity anymore. In fact, my first publishable short story, which is called We Create Worlds, was actually about a novelist trying to outwrite the AI novels. It's become weird. Jo: What year did you write that in? Dan: That was in 1999. Jo: Awesome. Dan: It's still a great short story. I did do it in podcast form, which you can find on my website at jdsawyer.net, and it's also in ebook on Amazon, and it's part of the Sculpting God short story collection. But the fear is that humanity gets crowded out of the market in the face of the relentless onslaught of the machines. It's not a ridiculous fear, especially if you look at the history of artisanship. Everybody and their brother used to have an artisanal business, and now we've got machines that weave socks and make just about everything in our world. So people like me, who spend half my day every day in a blacksmith's forge making hooks that you could just make by machines way cheaper, are kinda crazy. But there's a market for that. Humans like things that were touched by other humans, as long as they can afford them or justify making a luxury. On the other hand, the people that adopt tools early and figure out how to make them work for them, those are usually the people that win at scale over the long haul. So, AI is coming for our jobs, guys, but you know what? You can keep it out of your creativity and build agents that help you deal with your scheduling and your bookkeeping and your marketing, all the other stuff that takes up your time as an author. Then instead of threatening your creativity, it gives you more space to be creative. Jo: So it's reframing things a lot of the time. Dan: A lot of the time, yes. Jo: I think that's true of everything. Reframing can help you learn. Reframing things can give you a reason to learn, I guess, when in the past, maybe at school, you hated learning… Dan: Yes. Jo: Now by reframing it into a reason why. Dan: That really helps, and it also helps the second big problem with learning, which is worldview threat. I think I open the book with an entire section on how worldviews work and how that limits us, and how we can't get away from them even though they limit us. Your worldview is the matrix through which you experience everything around you, and it's not a window, it's like a lens. It distorts everything, it filters everything, because it's the reflexive layer that helps you make sense of the world, and it's built out of your experience and inflected by your personality and other things like that. There are things you can learn, and for everyone it's going to be a little bit different, that threaten everything about your worldview. That's a problem, because your mind experiences your worldview not as an interpretive matrix, but as a survival tool. As far as your deep mind goes, your worldview is perfectly okay because you're still alive. Its job is to keep you alive. So if you learn something, or come close to learning something or thinking something that could unspool a big part of your worldview, you'll just emotionally go blank. You'll shut down. The information you're encountering will not register, or it will make you angry and you'll steer away from it. This isn't very good if you're wanting to learn things or grow. So there's a set of metacognitive tools you can use to help you push past that and navigate the existential crises that can sometimes ensue without crushing you entirely. I spend a section of the book talking about that as well, and detailing what some of those tools are. Jo: Better give us a tool. Give us one useful tool. Dan: All right, so one of the basic tools is one that anyone who's a developer in the audience will be familiar with, and it's basically sandboxing. You create a little playpen where it's okay to play with this dangerous idea, and you make yourself the promise that until you're really familiar with the dangerous idea, you're not going to connect it to anything else in your worldview. Then you've got the option later on to decide whether to integrate it or not. But you've got to play with this scary tool. For someone who comes out of a fundamentalist religious background like I do, one of the big ones here was textual criticism, where you learn about all the manuscript traditions that make up the New Testament especially, and the development of Christian scripture. I had to know about this stuff because I had a paid writing gig that required me to know about it. But I was a biblical literalist and believed that it all came straight out of God's mouth, and I couldn't even go near it without going, “Ah,” because intuitively some part of me recognised this could be a threat to what you believe. So I made myself a sandbox. I said, “This is a literary project. If I actually believe in the doctrines of my religion, then this can't be a threat, because even if the words themselves were changed all over the place, the Holy Spirit would have ensured that the important parts of the theology got through unscathed.” So I had a sandbox. I didn't really have to think about it. I could just learn the topic, and I got through. It was a two-year project, I had a fabulous time, and I came out knowing more about textual criticism than anyone ever should need to. I actually got to know someone, a friend of my father's, who actually makes the Greek New Testament from the surviving original sources. I learned all sorts of things about biblical translation and about classical literature. It was great stuff. I sandboxed it until I understood it, and then I decided whether or not to integrate it, and I did integrate it. It didn't actually have anything to do with me ending up being an atheist now. That was because of my research into mythopoetics several years later. When you sandbox something like that, you give yourself an imaginary play space. This is something you do any time that you go to a movie and you cheer for characters who are doing horrible things that you would never do or condone in real life. It's a fantasy play space that allows you to explore other aspects of life that you can't touch in real life. When you're learning, you can use that same set of skills of fantasy play and fantasy role play for trying out and exploring topics that might threaten the way you see the world. Jo: Well, that actually brings up a good reason to do this, and one of the reasons I love to learn new things is to turn them into books. You mentioned earlier your short story about AI, for example. That's a great way of sandboxing and playing with a dangerous idea. I'm actually writing a lot of, I guess we would call them science fiction, in the science fiction genre. I've never written science fiction before, and suddenly… Dan: Welcome to the party. Jo: Yes, exactly. I'm now writing science fiction. I haven't published any of it yet, but it's possible that I'm moving into science fiction because I am weighing up a whole load of these things as I'm learning about it, and I'm like, “Okay, how would I play with that idea?” So that is one way to use what we learn, or even, like we said, reframing it. One good reason to drive the learning in the first place, I guess. But in that way, I wanted to ask you, because your books are very detailed. How are you structuring knowledge as you learn it, in a way that is useful for turning it into something else later? Dan: Okay. Associatively. The way that the brain stores knowledge, it looks a bit like a spiderweb, or like a map of galaxies in the universe. That's probably too geeky. Let's stick with a spiderweb. Everyone's seen a spiderweb. You don't record discrete tabulated facts like a spreadsheet or a database. You actually record associative memories, and everything you know is associated not just with other things that fact might be associated with in a library catalogue. It's associated with the smell that you were smelling when you learned that thing, and the emotional state you were in when you learned that thing. The more associative connections you can make to any bit of knowledge, the easier it is to record. When I sat down and wrote The Autodidact's Bible, I literally wrote it front to back without an outline. There have been some books I've done this with where I had to rearrange afterwards. With this one, I didn't have to, because this is one of the places I live, so I've just got a good structure for the information in my head. I knew that if I wanted to convey this toolkit and all the things associated with it, I needed to start with what is knowledge and memory, and how does understanding work? Then move into worldview and the way that emotions affect the way that we learn, and developmental psychology, which has to do with the way the human being is designed to learn from the get-go. We start off with raw input. I call this in the book type zero learning. We get a fire hose of information we don't know how to make sense of, and our brain adapts itself to the inputs. Then there's type one learning, where we play around with things and we experiment and we see what they do. It's the “what's this button do?” approach to learning. Then there's type two learning, which is someone else who knows something already tells us things or shows us things, and we pick that up. All three of these systems are involved at every stage of the learning process. Actually, it's hierarchical. So you can do type zero learning without doing type one or type two. If you're doing type two, which is what you're doing in school, or when you're learning from a mentor, or when you're listening to a podcast, then if the information is going to stick, you are also involved in type zero learning, which is just taking in a bunch of stuff, and type one learning, which is practising and doing trial and error. Even if, as you're listening to this podcast, you're just reacting with things like, “Oh, now that's an interesting idea,” and you're having a little fantasy about, “What if I did this?”, that's a version of experiment and repeat, and that solidifies the learning in your knowledge web in your head. Then the trick is figuring out how to go back and find those things. Jo: Well, this is what I wanted to talk about. In the book, you do have stuff on memory and that kind of thing. I have definitely found, and this has got worse with menopause, and this is a completely normal thing with menopause for women, the brain fog that means things don't seem to stick so well, and then the recall is also almost harder. I'm often reaching for things, and I can't get them back. I've always been somebody who writes everything down anyway, but I now do it even more. As you know, I sent written questions for this. I now rely on written stuff so much more. So when I'm writing a book, or like I've just been doing with this master's and a lot of research, I have to write everything down. So I guess my question was more about, for people listening who want to learn things in order to write books from that— What recommendations do you have for organising your research so that when you write the book, you can reference it in a good way? Dan: Well, writing things down is great, because that is part of the repetition that helps it stick in your head, and then you've got an external place where, as long as you can remember where you put it, you know where to get it. The more connections you can make to any piece of information, the easier it is to find. I do take notes, and I have a strictly hierarchical file tree where I know where to find manuscripts and files full of notes and whatnot. What often happens with me is I will make notes on something, and then I'll forget I did it, and then a few years later I'll write the book and then discover the notes again afterwards, and the book basically matches the notes. I think the reason that happens is that when I get an idea in my head and write it down, I just start subconsciously playing with the idea, and I play with it and play with it until it's well developed. Every time you take an idea out, or a memory, and play with it, everything that you're thinking or feeling at that point in time gets reconnected to it. So you actually alter a bit of what you're remembering, but you're also multiplying the mental paths you can use to get to it. So you've got a very strict external system to help you beat the brain fog. The analogy to do it without the external system is you create that kind of system in your head. You practise actually walking the system like it's a library or a museum. If you're a very visual person, and this doesn't work if you have aphantasia, you can close your eyes and you can walk through the museum in your head, and you can turn to the left and see a room that's associated with everything you know about biology, and then you can start picking things up in that room. I'm actually being semi-literal here. I sometimes actually do this like I'm working in virtual reality. Most of the time it's not that concrete, but if I'm trying to find something and I get stuck, I will actually close my eyes and go into the museum and find the room. The other trick is you don't chase a particular bit of information too hard. All you're looking for is something that's in the neighbourhood. Because once you start working mentally in the neighbourhood, all of that knowledge map comes back to you as a side effect of being in that area. Let's say you're in England, and you knew neighbourhoods in Nottingham really well, and you wanted to go visit a friend in Nottingham. When you get on the road to go, and you're not using a map, you don't have the whole map loaded into your head. All you know is, I'm going to go that way on this road, and then you see the exit off the M1, or whatever it is, that you recognise. “Oh, this is the exit I take,” so you take that exit. All the other information in between, you kinda know it, but you drop it. You don't really actively search for it. Then when you get into the general area of your friend's house, you start to recognise landmarks and you go there. Memory of non-physical spaces works the same way, and you can actually develop the ability to engage it as if it's a physical space. The technique is called the mind palace. It was discovered in Ancient Greece, and it still works. Jo: Yes, and I agree with that, and I still have that kind of experience in a way. When we're writing nonfiction, and you have selected footnotes in this book, for example, although not to the extent of academic text, which is what I've been doing with my master's dissertation this week. As an example, I knew that Stephen King had said something like, “Writing is a form of telepathy,” but could I remember where it was? No. hTen I was like, okay, well, it's very likely it's in either one of his introductions or it's in On Writing, his memoir of the craft, because that is an iconic book. But in order to actually get the right quote, because if you're quoting people, obviously it has to be an exact quote as opposed to a made-up thought. Then if you're doing a proper footnote, for example, it does need what book it is and what edition and what page number and all of that kind of thing. So when you're writing the nonfiction books, are you doing the memory palace thing, writing the stuff, and then going back and finding where you got it from? Dan: Yes, and anything that's vague, I just put hard brackets around it. I don't remember all the people I quoted, but let's say I quoted Schopenhauer. If I was going to be quoting Schopenhauer and I could remember what he said, but I couldn't remember the words, I'd just put brackets around it and say, “Find the place where Schopenhauer said this,” and then put the quote here. I don't use hard brackets anywhere else in my writing, so I can then just Control + F, find the hard bracket, and retroactively do the research. Jo: Yes, exactly. I think that is the point I was trying to get to, which is it's all very well having the memory palace, but I can bet you that some of these quotes are not correct. Dan: Yes, always check quotes. Now with AI, there's search engine techniques where you can actually start from a paraphrase and then refine the search stepwise until you can get the exact quote with a reference, and then you can check it against the manuscript online. I use a lot of those when I don't have the book that I'm thinking of in my hands. Now of course with AI, I'm like, “Where did this author say this thing…” Jo: Roughly? Dan: Yes, roughly. The AI will come back with, “Well, he said this in these words in that book, and these words in that book.” And I'm like, “Oh, boy, I get to pick which one works better for what I'm writing.” Jo: It's very good. Coming back to what you were writing, I think you have balanced footnotes and source material, but you haven't gone as far as the academic footnoting of every single sentence, which is where I am at the moment. So for general nonfiction that is trying to reach a broader audience, where would you say the balance lies? Because I just feel now that we don't do enough of this in the indie community. I read a lot of nonfiction books which need a heck of a lot more attributions. Dan: First of all, I subscribe to the Terry Pratchett school of footnotes, which is that footnotes are places for long asides that need to be there, but that interrupt the flow of the text. I'm sure you noticed. Also, for me, it's really important, wherever I can remember where I got an idea, to point it out so that the reader can follow that rabbit trail if they want to. As a nonfiction writer, I feel like I'm in the business of providing value to the curious person. So anywhere I can point them where they might have fun exploring further is a value add. That's something I try to do, but I don't always remember, because in the heat of composition, you don't really realise where the ideas are coming from all the time. The second thing is, if I'm directly quoting or paraphrasing someone, there's always at least an attribution to the author, if not in the footnotes, then in the body text. You know, as Harlan Ellison used to say about being paid as a writer, or whatever. The great glory, and this is at least partly an aesthetic thing in my head, the great glory of nonfiction is that it taps you into an entire universe of conversations that have been going on as long as there's been a written word. To pretend that you're not participating in that conversation, okay, it might make you look cool to the novice reader, but you're really depriving your reader of even just the bare awareness that he's dipping his toe in a rich stream that he could follow forever. Especially in our world where we live in a TikTok world, but before that, we lived in a soundbite world, and before that, we lived in the newspaper world. These are all formats that try to pretend that they exist outside of time and culture, even though they're the most temporally dependent and culturally fickle sorts of entertainment there are. We've gotten used to the experience of encountering something that feels like it could just be from anywhere, and that's not the way it really works. Every TikTok video comes out of someone's experience, which is embedded in a culture, which is embedded in a tradition that's full of controversies that goes back to the beginning. It's not just full of controversies, but it's accompanied by stories, fictional stories, mythic stories, where those controversies get fought out and explored. I think as a nonfiction author, if you want to be really selfish about it, it makes you look better if you're also pointing at the tradition that you're standing in than if you're pretending that it's all coming from you. Jo: Yes. It makes you look better if you are citing things. I feel like that's such a good reframe. I was reading a book the other day, and I was like, all these ideas are coming from all these other people that I know about. This person would look a lot better if they actually accredited those ideas to the people they came from. My opinion of that person went down because they were not attributing. So, yes, I think it's so important, and that's the fun bit. Let's circle back to the fun bit of learning. Dan: Before you get onto that, I should point out that in my writing, I don't do this with academic rigour. I do it as it occurs to me. I write a weekly nonfiction article dealing with philosophy and history and arts and everything, and I don't always think, “Oh, the readers might not know where this comes from,” and stick it in there. But over the course of reading those articles, you get all the citations. They're just not always in every article. Jo: Oh, no, I've read your stuff, Dan. You do a good job. Obviously not to the academic attribution detail, but I do think this book in particular, Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible, has a lot of references so people can learn more. So I do briefly, before we finish, because you and I could talk about this forever, but I do want to ask about Kickstarter. So you're using Kickstarter to launch this book. You've done a couple of campaigns, but not for a while. So why use Kickstarter for this, and what are the pros and cons? Dan: Well, as far as I've been able to work out, doing a Kickstarter is the one way you can make sure that you don't publish a book dead. Are you familiar with this term from old publishing? Jo: You can expand on it. Dan: Okay. So in traditional publishing, there's a term called publishing dead, which is where the publishing house buys a book, they go to the trouble of laying it out and printing it, and then they just kinda drop it on the market with an entry in the bookseller's catalogue. There's no publicity, no fanfare, no attempt to get advance buzz going, and it just kinda sits there. Occasionally someone who buys for a bookstore will get a couple of copies, and they'll sit on the shelves, and a customer will walk by and buy one. Books that are published dead tend to sell 500 copies over a 30-year lifetime. It's not much. Jo: That's probably a lot of indie books as well. Dan: That's how most indie books are done. The first 10 years of my career, I was doing fiction podcasting, so everything I was publishing got published live, and they did really well. Then fiction podcasting kinda died at the same time that my life got really complicated, and so I decided just to let my podcast die with the wave. At just the same time, my personal fiction productivity went through the roof. I went from writing one, maybe two books a year to writing four or five. I was dropping these four or five books on the world and nothing happened, and all the sales were drying up anyway from the older stuff that had been supported by the podcast. So I decided I wanted to find a way to stop publishing things dead. I had done a Kickstarter for an audiobook years ago that I produced for Gail Carriger, and so when I was writing Secrets of the Heinlein Juvenile, I decided there's a lot of Heinlein fans out there, so even if I don't personally have the name recognition, this is something that I could launch pretty well on Kickstarter. It did great, and I decided at that point that I was never going to publish another book dead. I was always going to have some kind of occasion to launch with, even if I had to manufacture it. In the years since, I've published very little, because I've been trying to figure out how to do that. I've got a big stack of books that are coming out now that I've figured it out. I realised that things like debuting in a book bundle, doing a Kickstarter, or finding a way to time a release with a news cycle, which is appropriate for some science fiction particularly, these are ways to publish a book without publishing it dead and then having to try to figure out why nobody's noticing it. So that's why I'm doing the Kickstarter. Jo: I also agree. What I like is doing the two-week campaign. I normally do two-week campaigns, because then I can just focus my energy before the campaign and then during those two weeks, and then I'm basically done, and then I put it up on all the platforms and everything. I focus most of my energy into that couple of weeks beforehand and then the two weeks of the campaign. Like you, I mean— We don't want to be spending all our time marketing, but to try and make it an occasion just helps us put a bit more effort into it, doesn't it? Dan: It really does. And the other thing it does, and this took me a while to figure out, but I've come to understand that most people's relationship with their favourite writers isn't like my relationship with my favourite writers. I've got about 70 writers I like, but I've got about 10 where I don't care what happens, I will buy and immediately read what they've done. I realised that for most people, their relationship with most of the writers they like is more at arm's distance. They stumble across, “Oh, I didn't know this guy had something new. I'll pick it up,” rather than being like, “I love the way this person's mind works, and I want to see what it goes at next.” So the bread and butter as an author has got to be in making sure that those people find you. It's not in serving the core base, the core 1,000 fans. They're really important, and you want to do that, but if you want the career to sustain and build, you've got to find ways to help people in that second group, the arm's-length fans, stumble over what you're doing. Because everybody's got more important things in life than your books. But if you've got excuses to be stumbled upon that don't involve standing right up and waving a sign saying, “Buy my book, buy my book,” then you're more likely to build momentum, because people talk about the book they just read and that they love. If they don't talk to someone in the first few days after they read that book, then unless it was one of the books that changes their life, they're never going to talk about it again. So you want to get as many people talking about the cool book they read last week at the same time as possible, to build momentum. Jo: Indeed. Right. So where can people find your cool book, as well as all your other books, online? Dan: Reclaiming Your Mind: An Autodidact's Bible is currently Kickstarting. You can find a link on the top post at my website at JDSawyer.net. You can find all my books at JDSawyer.net/book-list, and you can find my weekly articles on maker stuff, philosophy, creativity, and history at jdanielsawyer.substack.com. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great. Dan: It was a pleasure, as always. The post Reclaiming Your Mind: How To Teach Yourself Anything With J. Daniel Sawyer first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Patrick Madrid opens this episode with heartfelt listener questions, candid conversations, and a focus on faith struggles and spiritual renewal. Through thoughtful responses about issues like toxic masculinity, fasting, the relationship between the Old and New Covenants, and the perpetual virginity of Mary, Patrick blends theological insight with personal encouragement. Listeners hear honest testimonies and find guidance for reconnecting with prayer, confession, and the Church, all rooted in wisdom and warmth. LeAnne (email) - What do you think are true examples of toxic masculinity and not just the "academic claptrap" examples? (00:51) and keep going back and forth between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Can you give me a clear case for Catholicism over Orthodoxy, plus any good apologetic sources? Also, why do Catholics often seem fine with the Orthodox while many Orthodox seem to have a problem with Catholics? Kevin - If Jesus is the fulfillment of the New Covenant, what happened to the New Covenant? (21:02) Robert (email) - Are pregnant women exempt from the one-hour Eucharistic fast, or does my wife still need to observe it even if she has to snack beforehand to manage nausea? Adam - Why is the Old Testament still connected to the New Testament if Christ fulfilled the Old Testament? (28:06) Karen (email) - Without living in fear, what practical steps can ordinary Americans take to stay awake to cultural and security changes around us and be prepared if an attempt is ever made to take over the country? (36:54) Ed - What is the difference between fasting for one hour vs fasting for an entire day? (44:33)

Gary begins to discuss the book of Revelation and points out important details that most modern Christians dismiss. Although the Bible is written FOR us, it wasn't written TO us. The vast majority of the New Testament is recording historical events and their significance. These past events still have great importance and meaning, especially for vindicating Jesus' authoritative claims about His identity.

On today's Bible Answer Man broadcast (09/16/26), Hank answers the following questions:Doesn't the New Testament give a higher standard of financial stewardship than the Old Testament? God doesn't want Christians to seek material gain. Katherine - Edmonton, AB (0:43)Should Christians tithe according to Malachi 3:10? Ron - Springfield, MO (6:04)Does the phrase “heart of the Earth” have another meaning in Matthew 12:40 besides being in the tomb or ground? Brian - Nashville, TN (9:16)Which of these Bible translations should I be using: the King James Version, the New Century Version, or the English Standard Version? Melissa - Decatur, IN (15:14)Why did God harden people's hearts in the Bible? Elaine - St. Louis, MO (18:13)Is the Holman Old Testament Bible Commentary a good resource? Pamela - Bradford, PA (22:38)

In this episode of Marked, Mary Wiley joins us to talk about why both our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with others—loving God and loving others—matter deeply in the Christian life. She shares practical wisdom on how relationships shape theology, ministry, parenting, and spiritual growth, and explains how the church helps us remember the truth when our faith feels shaky. Mary also introduces her new resource, Every Day in the Bible, a yearlong Bible study and companion podcast designed to help readers see the full story of Scripture and the connections between the Old and New Testaments. LINKSEvery Day in the Bible Bible StudyEvery Day in the Bible Podcast — launching January 1 Free sample of Every Day in the BiblePre-order the print resource and subscribe to the podcast so you're ready to start reading through the Bible with fresh eyes in the new year. Hosted by Angie Elkins and Andrea Lennon with guest Mary Wiley. CONNECT WITH US!Marked is a podcast from Lifeway Women.   Learn more at lifeway.com/allwhodrawnear. 

Daniel 7-9

Isaiah 19:1-21:17, Gal 2:1-16, Ps 59:1-17, Pr 23:13-14

Spirit of God E9 — Our conversation on the Spirit of God is turning  the corner from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament. The word for “spirit” in the Greek New Testament is pneuma, and like ruakh, it also means “wind,” “breath,” and personal energy related to a person or deity. While all the gospels mention the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, Luke is the leader by far with 78 references in his two-part collection of Luke-Acts. In this episode, Jon and Tim explore how deeply the Holy Spirit is integrated into the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.CHAPTERSThe Spirit Filling John and Conceiving Jesus (0:00-17:50)The Spirit Anointing Jesus for Ministry (17:50-32:16)The Spirit Spreads to the Many (32:16-45:02)Jesus Gives Up His Spirit and Receives a New Spiritual Body (45:02-1:02:20)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode's official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESTim quotes from New Testament scholar Andrew Remington Rillera's book The Lamb of the Free: “The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed to the image of his death.”The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. WrightCheck out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“Radiance” by Lofi Sunday feat. solae“Dissonance” by Lofi Sunday feat. Just Derrick“date night” by Lofi Sunday feat. Cassidy GodwinBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today's episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Isaiah 15:1-18:7, Gal 1:1-24, Ps 58:1-11, Pr 23:12