The Overlap Life

Did God promise me a good life?

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

No. Nowhere in Scripture does God promise you a safe, smooth, comfortable life. He never promised your kids would stay safe, your health would hold, or your faithfulness would keep the hard things away. I know how that lands, especially if you typed that question with a diagnosis or a funeral behind you. But stay with me, because the second half matters more than the first: God did make a promise about your suffering, out loud, on the record, the night before He died. And once you read the promise He actually signed next to the one you were handed, everything about your disappointment with God changes.

I want to walk you through both documents.

Where did the "good life" promise come from?

Try an experiment. Take one clause of the deal you're carrying, say, follow God and your family stays protected, and trace it back to its source. Where did you get it? For most of us it arrived through a song, a sermon illustration, or something a well-meaning person said at a funeral. So ask the song where it got it. A sermon. Ask the sermon. Another sermon. Keep pulling the thread and you keep waiting to hit a verse, chapter and book, God's own mouth. You don't. You hit culture. You hit comfort. You never hit a signature.

That matters, because most of us are prosecuting God for breach of contract. Every hard day gets filed as one more exhibit against Him. And a verdict like that will cost you your entire relationship with God, which is exactly why the paperwork deserves an audit.

Does the Bible say anything about promises God never made?

It does, and it's the very first conversation recorded between a human being and the enemy. In Genesis 2:16, God tells the man he may eat from every tree of the garden. The Hebrew word is kol (KOHL): all, every, the whole orchard. One chapter later, the serpent opens his mouth for the first time in your Bible, and he quotes God. The phrase "from any tree of the garden" in Genesis 3:1 is lifted word for word out of God's mouth in 2:16. Same words, same order. Then he makes one edit: he slides lōʾ (LOH), the Hebrew "not," in front of the verb. "All of it is yours" becomes "none of it is yours."

He makes a second edit too. Throughout these chapters God is YHWH Elohim (YAH-weh eh-loh-HEEM), the personal covenant name. In the serpent's mouth He shrinks to Elohim (eh-loh-HEEM), a generic deity, stingy and distant. The method is on the record: quote God, edit the terms, hand the forgery to someone standing in the middle of provision. The promises you're holding about safe kids and smooth roads came off that same drafting table. God's actual words, with the terms rewritten.

What did God actually promise about suffering?

John 16:33. Do the math on the timeline: this is the last sentence of the last teaching Jesus gives His disciples before the arrest party arrives two chapters later. People do not waste their final sentence. Here it is: "In the world you have trouble; but take courage, I have overcome the world."

Three things sit in the grammar of that verse, and your English Bible may be hiding two of them.

First, "trouble" is thlipsis (THLIP-sis): pressure, crushing weight. And the verb is present tense. You HAVE trouble, now, as a standing fact of living in this world. Pull two Bibles off the shelf and check: the NASB reads "you have tribulation," matching the Greek, while the NIV and ESV read "you will have," a future tense the translators supplied. Jesus did not forecast trouble on the horizon. He diagnosed it in the room. He is the only one who put the trouble inside the promise. Forgers promise exemption. He promised pressure, to your face.

Second, John uses thlipsis (THLIP-sis) exactly twice in his whole Gospel. The other time is twelve verses earlier, where a woman in labor has sorrow, and then no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a child has been born. The only other place John reaches for this word, the crushing is childbirth. Pressure with a person on the other side of it.

Third, "I have overcome" is nenikēka (neh-NEE-kay-kah), Greek perfect tense: an action completed, with the result still standing. Read the verse with the grammar showing. Your trouble is present tense. His victory is perfect tense, already banked, and He conjugated it in the first person. The pressure is yours; the winning was His.

So did God break His promise to me?

He can't have. The contract you're holding, the one with the safe kids and the smooth road, carries no divine signature anywhere on it. Somebody else drafted it, and we watched his method in Genesis 3. The promise God did sign, trouble, courage, victory, He has kept in every clause, including the one He sealed in His own blood within twenty-four hours of making it.

That doesn't mean you have to perform being okay. There is one psalm in the whole songbook that never turns toward hope. Psalm 88 ends on the Hebrew word maḥšāk (mahkh-SHAHKH): darkness. God looked at a complaint with no resolution and filed it in His own hymnal, forever. Your unresolved ache is allowed in the building. But the verdict against God is a different thing than the ache, and the verdict was built on a forged document. You're allowed to put it down.

Where do I go from here?

I made a full video walking through all of this: the forgery in the Hebrew, the audit of every clause, why people keep handing sufferers "God is in control," and the strange weapon Scripture puts in your hands for fighting back. If this post found the question you've been carrying, the video is where it gets answered all the way down.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/gSB97YX7-yw

Further up and further in.

Watch the Video! →

Hope for the Hurting, Doubting, and Broken

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Easter came and went last month. Churches were packed. Songs were loud. Families gathered. And for a lot of people, Monday morning showed up carrying the same weight it always does.

If that was you… if Easter felt more like a celebration you attended than a reality you inhabit… I want you to know something. You are reacting honestly to a version of Easter that has been made too small.

The Problem With the "Escape Plan" Version of Easter

A lot of Christians have absorbed a version of the resurrection that goes like this: Jesus rose from the dead so that one day we can leave this broken world and go somewhere else.

That sounds comforting. But if that is the whole story, what are you supposed to do with your grief today? Your doubt today? Your church hurt today?

If resurrection only means departure later, then pain becomes something you merely survive.

The Five Types of People Living in "Hell on Earth"

Over the past several months, I have noticed five specific types of people who keep finding their way into my orbit:

The Theological Pioneer • whose picture of God collapsed under the weight of real thought
The Wounded Warrior • whose pain broke their world open and their theology could not hold it
The Ragamuffin • who still loves Jesus but feels exiled from the people of Jesus
The Faithful Doubter • who is quietly scared by their own questions
The Significance Seeker • who wonders whether ordinary life carries any eternal weight

Each one is carrying a specific lie about God, themselves, or the story they are living inside.

What the Resurrection Actually Promises

The resurrection of Jesus was an invasion. The first crack in the brokenness of this world. God's declaration that creation itself is worth saving.

Romans 8 tells us that creation is groaning toward resurrection, not destruction. Revelation 21 and 22 show us where the whole story is headed: heaven coming down, God dwelling with humanity, tears wiped away, death undone, all things made new.

That means your pain is temporary. Your tears matter. Your body matters. Your ordinary Tuesday-morning life carries eternal weight.

The Future Reorganizes How We Live Now

If Jesus is risen and new creation has already begun, then you are already learning to live in alignment with the world that is coming. You forgive because forgiveness belongs to that future. You make beauty because beauty belongs to that future. You resist despair because despair does not get the final word in that future.

This is what I mean when I say Overlap Life. We are living in the overlap between the world that still is and the world God has promised to bring. You can hurt honestly without surrendering hope. You can grieve deeply without calling death normal. You can build a meaningful life in the present because the future is solid, it is coming, and it has a name: resurrection.

Your Next Step

I made a full video walking through all five types, the lies they carry, and the resurrection hope that answers each one. I would love for you to watch it.

I also built a brand-new quiz called "Which Lie About God Is Secretly Ruining Your Life?" It takes a few minutes and will help you identify the specific distortion shaping your experience of God. Take the quiz and discover your path forward.

Watch the Video! →

What the Bible Actually Says About Animal Suffering (And Why It Changes Everything)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If God is good and all-powerful, why do animals suffer?

It's a question that has haunted philosophers, tripped up apologists, and quietly unsettled pet owners who dared to ask a pastor what happens when their dog dies. The typical Sunday school answer goes something like: "Humans have souls. Animals don't. So their suffering isn't really an issue."

The problem? The Bible disagrees.

The Problem of Animal Pain

Atheist thinkers like Alex O'Connor have turned animal suffering into one of the strongest evidential arguments against God. And they're right to press the point. The usual Christian defenses for human suffering don't translate to the animal kingdom.

Free will? Animals don't make moral choices. Soul-making and character formation? A deer slowly dying from infection isn't becoming virtuous through the ordeal. "Ecosystem balance"? That reduces individual creatures to disposable parts in God's machine, and a loving God wouldn't operate that way.

Philosopher Trent Dougherty captures the weight of it: "Animals receive no compensation for their suffering. Their evil is not defeated."

So what do we do with that?

Animals Have "Souls" in the Bible

Here's where things get interesting. The Hebrew word nefesh, commonly translated "soul," first appears in Genesis 1, and it's describing fish. "Let the waters teem with living creatures [nefesh]." Whatever "soul" means in the biblical framework, the text gives it to animals before it ever gives it to humans.

This matters because the claim that "animals don't have souls" comes from Greek philosophy, not the Bible. It's been used for centuries to minimize animal suffering. But Scripture paints a very different picture: God formed Adam from dust, breathed His spirit into him, and Adam became a living soul. Body plus spirit equals living soul. And that same breath of life? God gave it to animals too.

Compensation vs. Defeat

There's a critical distinction in philosophy of religion between compensating for suffering and defeating it.

Compensation says: "Something bad happened, so here's happiness to balance the scales." But some evils can't be paid off like a debt. You can't un-betray a friend. You can't apologize away a destroyed reputation. The damage happened. It's real.

Defeat means something deeper. The suffering gets woven into a redeemed story where the sufferer's life becomes whole. The evil is overcome in meaning and reality. Jesus' resurrection body still had the scars from the nails. The wounds weren't hidden. They were transfigured.

If defeat is what divine love requires, and animals genuinely suffer, then animals need a future where that defeat can happen.

The Bible's Cosmic Redemption

Scripture comes alive on this point. In Genesis 9, God makes a covenant with "every living creature." In Psalm 104, animals receive life directly through His spirit. In Jonah 4:11, God rebukes Jonah's moral smallness by pointing to Nineveh's cattle. Animals are clearly within God's moral and covenantal concern.

Then there's Romans 8:22, where Paul declares that "all Creation groans as in the pains of childbirth, awaiting its redemption at the revealing of the sons of God." The metaphor is birth pains, not a death rattle. Creation groans toward something. It's pregnant with a future.

And in Revelation 21:5, God says "Behold, I make all things new." The Greek word is kainos (renewed in quality), not neos (brand-new-never-existed). God makes all things new. He doesn't make all new things. The existing Creation gets healed, animals and all.

Why This Matters Right Now

The biblical story starts with a good Creation (Genesis 1-2), follows the rupture of that goodness through the fall (Genesis 3), traces God's long campaign to reunite heaven and earth, and culminates in the full renewal of all things (Revelation 21-22). Those bookends speak to each other. What we were designed for in the beginning is what we're destined for in eternity.

If that's true, then asking "will animals be in the New Creation?" is like asking "will there be trees?" Of course. They were always part of the story.

Your beloved family dog who died too soon? Restored, healed, remade. That animal will recognize you. And your relationship with them will make what you had here look like a shadow compared to the real thing.

The Christian answer to animal suffering insists that the story is longer than the pain, wider than the wound, and that the God who called his Creation good will finish what he started.

If this resonates, I'd love to help you explore what eternity really looks like. Grab the free Heaven on Earth Prayer Journal and start living every second of your life in light of what's coming.

Watch the Video! →

What is “the Abundant Life”, really?

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:16:42 GMT

Jesus promises His followers abundant life.

To me, abundant life sounds like a life overflowing with goodness, “a little slice of Heaven on Earth.” And yet, if we’re honest, many of us don’t experience Jesus’s words in our everyday lives. The abundant life that Jesus promised seems to hover just outside of our reach, like a mirage of a watery oasis in the desert to someone dying of thirst.

Many of us feel like we’re dying of thirst for the good life. It seems like we all wrestle with feeling that there must be more than this.

We sense that life could be so much more full – more fulfilling, more beautiful, more lovely. We all went through the COVID crisis, the riots, the political upheaval… and that doesn’t feel like abundant life. Either Jesus was wrong when He promised abundant life, or we are. And news-flash: Jesus is never wrong.

What if eternal life, the abundant life Jesus came to bring us, is available now? What if that fullness, that beauty is something that we can enjoy now? What if we could completely transform every second of our lives — our work, our rest, our relationships — in light of what Jesus means when He says “abundant life”?

You’d have more peace. You’d have way more joy. You’d face all kinds of difficulties with a laugh. You’d be on fire for Jesus and the good news would feel so, so good again.

—

But there’s a problem here, and the problem is actually even worse than we think it is. Not only do we not experience abundant life now, we’re not all that excited about eternal life later, either.

We tell ourselves that, although we know that we’ll have trouble in this life, at least there’s heaven, right? Only… if we’re being honest, behind closed doors – that doesn’t excite us either. In fact, it sounds – boring. And the thought of being bored for all eternity is terrifying if you think about it for too long.

It certainly doesn’t help us to live our lives now. If a disembodied Heaven singing to God is your eternal fate, then what good is anything you do now? Why does your job matter? Why do your hobbies, your friendships, all the things you love… aren’t they all just going to go away? May as well just go to church on Sundays, sing the songs, drop the money in the offering plate, and tell your coworkers and children about Jesus until you die.

And then the boring, long years of eternity, singing to God and strumming a harp in Heaven stretch on and on without end…

But is that what the Bible is offering us? Is that what Jesus meant when he promised us “Abundant Life”? Happily, I’ve got a really solid Biblical case in hand that’s going to blow that whole idea to smithereens. It’s the best news you’ve ever heard; I promise.

If I’m being honest, I think the first problem is that we’re really, really confused by what people say the Bible teaches.

And the second problem is that what we have heard isn’t all that exciting, and none of us wants to admit it.

And the third problem is that since none of us wants to admit it, we go through these struggles alone, isolated and scared by having a doubt or feeling discomfort about our Christian faith in any way. So we stay stuck, bored, worried, and disconnected from God when it comes to our hope for the future.

What I want to do over the next few days is try to completely solve all 3 of those problems. It’s a tall order, I know, but I want you to stick with me for all 3 days to work through it all, together.

—

When I was younger, I met a man who seemed to have grasped a very different message from the words of Jesus. One that was so compelling, I had to go and investigate the Scriptures like the Bereans, to see if what he was saying checked out with the whole of the Scriptures. I wanted it to be true with all of my being, but I felt responsible for searching the Scriptures for what God actually said before coming to any conclusions.

He was a rebellious, criminal teenager who found Jesus and jumped into a nice, Conservative Baptist Church in his 20’s. Unfortunately, over the years he became highly religious, but it was all legalistic rule-keeping. He wore his Sunday best, carried around a Bible, and sneered pridefully at people who weren’t part of the “in-crowd”. But in private, he was an angry, frustrated man, drowning his bitterness and frustrations with God and his lot in life in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he kept secret from everyone else. And as you might imagine, it made him miserable. Maybe some of you know what this is like – maybe some of you are there now!

But now, this man’s face lit up with a youthful, even abundant exuberance even though he was nearly 60 years old. He wasn’t a pastor, a missionary, or a Bible scholar. He was just a “regular Christian” who discovered something radical in God’s Word that changed everything for him.

He showed me — through Ephesians 1, and Revelation 21 & 22, and Matthew 19, and 2 Peter 3, and several other passages — that one day, God will renew all things in the Universe — that, for the believer, nothing is lost. He showed me that the life we long for — the paradise that Adam and Eve knew — is exactly what God has in mind for us. And although that day is in the future – God wants us to live out today in light of that reality now. He really does promise abundant life – His eternal purpose for His people is truly abundant life — and it’s available now.

Want Proof? Watch this video where I break down just a few of the relevant passages.

All the sermons I’d heard since I was a child faded dead away… a page had turned. I had discovered that the next chapter of our story begins with “the renewal of all things”, according to Jesus Himself in Matthew 19. And it is the first chapter of a story with no end – all of God’s people dwelling with Him in a new world, taking it somewhere beautiful as His partners, just like Adam and Eve were supposed to.

Suddenly everything in my life became about God and God’s ultimate purpose in Christ – I had read the Bible dozens of times, but I had apparently missed the main point!

And once I grasped this, I had a LOT of work to do, and a LOT of NEW questions to get answers for. How do I live this out? What should I do differently? What should WE do differently?

—

Now, I began to run into another problem! Nobody in my church context had any idea what I was talking about! I would start conversations about the restoration of all things and people would look at me like I had 5 heads. People would smile and nod. That’s the polite Christian way of saying “Tim has finally lost his mind.”

The problem is, we can’t live out this message alone. The Christian life is lived out in community – the church itself is all of Jesus’s followers, living together as if Jesus really is the king, and changing their whole lives to follow His teaching!

So, here’s where I was – I learned that Jesus’s goal was to restore all things through Himself, to bring His life-giving power to everything in the universe, and that we are invited to participate in that abundant life today. But I was alone – stuck in a community of people who thought I had gone crazy.

And then, on Groundhog Day in the year 2018, my father passed away from a really aggressive lung cancer. At Christmas, just a month and a half earlier, he seemed fine. Now, he was gone.

God tried and tested my newfound belief, refining it in the challenges of this life. Would I still believe that His promise was true? Those were hard days. But on the day of his funeral, I was given the privilege of delivering the eulogy. And I shared my battle-hardened conviction that yes, I will see my father’s electric blue eyes again. Yes, I will go camping with him again. Yes, I will hear him play guitar, and hear him sing once more. I shared the promise of the New Heavens & the New Earth.

I expected them to look at me like a crazy person again. What happened instead is that first one person, then another person, then a family, and then the whole community began to change. Maybe it was the fact that people are usually more sensitive when they are faced with their own mortality. Maybe I really delivered a great message. Maybe it was God’s Spirit, hard at work in an entire community. Maybe it was all 3.

People who had been doing nothing but sitting in pews and singing songs for months started sharing the Good News far more boldly, and with an excitement and joy that had been missing before. Cold hearts were now on fire for Jesus and the outside world started to take notice. But it wasn’t just “church stuff”. Everything was changing.

Men and women disillusioned and frustrated with their work started to look forward to Monday morning, mind racing with ways to work better & more gratefully, and even to advance in their careers while giving the glory to God.

People started getting rest, prioritizing their health, their faces lit up and full of life every time you saw them.

And some people even made radical changes in their relationships, creating harmony and others-focused love where before there was bitterness and tension.

All because of the promise of God to restore the universe through Jesus. It turns out, that when you know how the story ends and you have some concrete ways to participate in that story today, everything changes. God wants to make All Things New through Christ – and He wants to do the same for you. And He wants to start TODAY.

Imagine a community where everyone is on fire for Jesus, transforming their work, their health, and their relationships, and living out a little slice of Heaven on Earth. Imagine a community of people no longer afraid of death, or failure, or persecution. Imagine how much a community like that could accomplish in God’s hands!

Imagine a community where everyone wants to live in light of eternity, with an eternal perspective on all things, and living with a vivid, daily, second-by-second hope that overcomes all the darkness of this world.

That’s what God did through that eulogy. That’s what God did in an entirely different church context a few months later, through the same exact message. That’s what God is doing all over the world wherever His children open the Scriptures and discover His plan to unify all things in Heaven and on Earth in Christ, and then resolve together to live like they believe that it’s true.

Everybody is praying for revival, for restoration, for a revolution in the church to come alive to God in passion and radical obedience.

I fully believe that revolution has arrived, and that it is happening through men and women, followers of Jesus all over the world who have come alive to the fact that God is restoring the universe, fixing everything, and expanding the borders of His Kingdom through the amazing promise that He will restore all things through Jesus. That is the good news.

—

That’s why I created the “All Things New” Collective. We are a growing Community of passionate Jesus followers who are exploring God’s incredible plan to remake the universe, and transforming our lives by the power of the Spirit to live out that plan today.

We get together every week, we learn, share, answer each other’s questions, encourage, worship, and grow together. We bear one another’s burdens, we study the Bible together, and we have long discussions by the fireplace, brothers and sisters exploring God’s incredible plans for eternity together.

We’re not trying to replace any church communities. But we are a global community of Jesus followers, united around living every second of our lives in light of eternity. And for most of us – our churches don’t talk about this. They talk about going to Heaven when you die, but not Heaven coming to Earth in the end! And there is a WORLD of difference between those two. One makes you want to leave your life and this world that God made and called good – the other makes you want to transform your life and this world, and gives you the tools to do it.

Every week I go live with more eternity-focused material, answering questions straight from the Bible. We go through books together, share music, and love one another radically.

I want you to imagine your life if God gave you the good news that not only are you saved – but that everything you have lost, all the pain you have suffered, all the things you love — will be redeemed, restored, and given back to you forever.

I want to see in your life the same transformation that God brought about in my life, and in the lives of those God reached with this message over the past several years.

Now, tomorrow I’m going to peel back the curtain and show you exactly what that path looks like. How, specifically do we go about living out every second of our lives in light of Eternity? What are the things we need to change, and in what order?

For now, I have a question for you.

What are your two top questions about Eternity and the Christian Life that we absolutely NEED to answer in the “All Things New” Collective?

Write a comment on this video, or send an email to tim@theoverlap.life with your response. I promise that I will read every one of them.

Until then, my prayer is that God begins to plant a desire for His eternal purpose down deep in your heart. See you tomorrow!

Further up and further in!

The Journey to the “Abundant Life”.

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:16:41 GMT

Hey again! I have to say, I’m really excited about today’s discussion, and I’ve really enjoyed all that I heard from you guys in the past couple of days. Lots of good questions, lots of God questions, that I’m looking forward to answering when my Membership Community opens in a couple of days!

Now remember, we’re discussing what the Bible really says about eternity, and I’m giving you some concrete handles for how to live your life in light of that reality. Jesus made us all an offer of abundant life, and He intends to keep His promises. The Bible shows us the way, and has been showing us the way for thousands of years, if only we have ears to hear.

We talked about several men and women who are completely transforming their lives in light of the fact that, according to the Bible, God’s eternal purpose is to restore the earth and unite everything in Heaven and on Earth in Christ. God wants Heaven and Earth to overlap completely. It’s what He created in the beginning, it’s what he intends for eternity, and it’s what he wants for our lives now. Everything should change for the better once you grasp the message.

And if you don’t know me, I’m Tim – the pastor and author of the Overlap Life who was blessed by God to be given this opportunity to teach from the Scriptures in the first place.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: what we shared yesterday and the day before is only part of the puzzle. What you received yesterday was “information” about what God intends to do for His creation that He made and called good in the beginning. You know the facts now; you have received new, startling, wonderful information. New information is amazing! I love learning new things more than almost anyone I know.

But knowing something isn’t the same as doing something about it. If knowledge were all we needed, librarians would all be billionaires with six pack abs. If knowledge were all you needed, you would never see smoking doctors or lawyers in jail.

Unfortunately, knowledge isn’t all you need. You need to implement that knowledge and put it to work. A pastor friend of mine once said “wisdom that hasn’t been acted upon is like paint left in a bucket – nothing changes until it’s applied.”

So maybe it makes sense to come up for an overall view of the journey we need to take. Let’s back up for a moment and see what it looks like when we start to put God’s Eternal Purpose to work in our lives.

We’ve talked quite a bit about Step 1 on the Journey we’re going on together – our first task as a Collective is…

Step 1 – Understanding Eternity Biblically

What are we headed for? What is God’s plan for His universe? What does the Bible have to say? What do the symbols mean? How do we go about interpreting these things? Not everything can be known – but what can be known? We’ve already covered a ton of ground here, so I won’t belabor the point – just know that there’s plenty more that we haven’t talked about, simply because we haven’t had the time. There’s lots more to discuss.

Next, we get to start applying this teaching. And before we pick up this amazing message and carry it out to the ends of the Earth, it really needs to settle into our own bones and start to change our own lives. That’s our first big task after we learn what God’s plans are.

Which brings us to the next major step:

Step 2 – Living Our Identity

What is a Human being, in God’s eyes? What are we made of? What are we made for? If we’ve misunderstood God on the subject of Eternity – are there places we may have misunderstood Him when it comes to what humans are? What sort of role do we play in this story? What does God hope for and expect from His children? How does the Biblical definition of Eternity shift around our priorities and understanding of who we are? What are we capable of, really?

These are massive questions that will take some time to unpack and figure out. But there’s plenty to do here, so many of my students spend a couple of weeks right here, doing nothing else but soaking in the truth about who they are and learning to act it out in their own lives.

But once we’ve camped out there for a bit, we move on to…

Step 3 – Living the Story

To quote Samwise Gamgee from “The Lord of the Rings”, What sort of tale have we fallen into? We know the ending because of Step 1, we know who we are, now because of Step 2. But who are the other characters in the story? What are their goals? What are they doing? What should we expect in the weeks, months, and years to come? What are the steps we should be anticipating along the journey, and how are we to contribute to the happy ending God has in mind? Are we heroes, or villains, or what?

Should we expect to be rewarded? What will rewards look like? What do we do with hardships and challenges right now? What should our main goals and priorities be as God’s coworkers?

At that point, we understand Eternity, we understand our identity, we understand the story we’re living in; the main thing from here is to focus on…

Step 4 – Living the Overlap Life

What do we do today to bring that life out into the open and make decisions in the here and now?

What are the helpful tools and re-frames we need to utilize in order to live in accordance with that story?

What sorts of actual, boots-on-the ground tactics and approaches can we take that will lead us into the fullness of life that God offers His children?

How can we find community and a family of human beings that are all committed to the same way of life in following Jesus every second of every day, on the way to the New Creation?

I hope you can see that there’s more to this than just study. We have to re-imagine entire categories of our lives to live this out. It sounds like a lot of work, I promise, but God is good, His plans are perfect, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

And the final step on this journey, the one that we are all waiting for whether we know it’s coming or not is Eternal Life & Eternal Rewards in the New Creation. This is, of course, not covered in the course of this program – our job is to grow in continued mastery of the skills of being a Jesus follower every day until we are with Him forever in Eternity. But that day is real, it is coming, and it is yours. The best thing we can do is begin to live every second of our lives in light of that reality starting today.

Now, I love creating these videos and seeing the impact it’s had on all of you… in my next video I’m going to be sharing how to go even deeper, because I’m going to be opening the doors on a program I put together.

It’s a brand new membership community called the “All Things New” Collective, a community of Jesus followers who are serious about really living their entire lives out in light of what the Bible really says about eternity, together.

It’s only going to be available for a few days, and when it goes away, I might not be bringing it back for a couple of months. I’m looking for just a few people to start with to really help me establish an incredible culture on the inside.

So there will be a limited number of seats open for only a few days. And the folks who do jump in at that point will have a full month’s access to me, the teaching, and the community for less than you probably spent the last time you took your family out for lunch.

Every week I go live with more eternity-focused material, answering questions straight from the Bible. We go through books together, share music, and love one another radically.

This community is still very new, only a few months old at the time I’m recording this. And right now I’m looking for the few, visionary believers to help me pilot this Collective community. In exchange, I’m giving them access to this community for nearly half off the normal price of enrollment. At the current price, I’m not trying to make money here – I’m trying to keep the lights on and create an incredible community for as low a price as I can afford.

If this has been interesting to you at all, please leave a comment or shoot me an email letting me know what you think! Tomorrow, we’ll be diving in to the nuts and bolts of the collective itself, and I’ll peel back the curtain on what I’ve been prayerfully cooking up over the last several months.

Until then – may God give you clear guidance and direction for everything that’s next, and may He refresh and restore your soul, to give you just a taste of His glorious plan to restore all things through Jesus.

See you tomorrow; further up, and further in.

Living out “the Abundant Life” of Jesus.

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:16:40 GMT

The journey of an eternity begins with a single step.

Yesterday, we discussed the incredible opportunity that Jesus’s promise of Abundant Life has made available to all of His followers. We learned that God’s Eternal Purpose is to renew, restore, and heal all things, and to unify everything in Heaven and on Earth in Jesus. His promise of abundant life really is a little slice of Heaven on Earth.

We learned that what the Scriptures really teach upends a lot of what we assumed eternity would look like; and even better, we saw that our entire lives & even whole communities can get turned upside down once they grasp the message.

We also learned that, as much as we love our church communities, they’re often not that well set up to produce these kinds of results in the Christian life. Unfortunately, most people haven’t heard the good news this way! I was thankful for the teaching and testimony of one particular believer in my life, who patiently opened up the Bible to me and showed me what was plainly in the Scriptures the whole time.

I know this is all likely very different from what you’ve heard until now. I can hear you saying “but Tim – this all sounds so – complicated! I don’t even know where to begin!”

That’s what we’re here to discuss today – what are the first steps someone needs to take to begin their journey into living in light of eternity? This is something we call The Overlap Life.

I’ve created some resources for you that I think will be helpful – it’s actually the first 3 chapters from my book, and their corresponding sections from the Life Change Guide I created for my book readers. This should give you some practical handles to be able to sit down and do something with this!

—

So, like most things, it’s best to start at the beginning.

Let’s open up Genesis 1 & 2, the first 2 chapters of the Bible. Let’s read a few verses, starting in verse 1. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” — let’s stop there. From the very first verse, there are two distinct spaces – heaven, and earth.

Now, let’s turn all the way to the other end of your Bible, in the last chapters. Let’s read Revelation 21:1 — “Then i saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” Let’s pause there again. It sounds an awful lot like Genesis 1:1, doesn’t it? In fact, there are only 4 chapters in the Bible where everything is exactly as it should be – the first 2 chapters, and the last 2 chapters. In both cases, you have an Overlap of Heaven & Earth, where God is dwelling in the same space as His people.

In the first 2 chapters, God dwells with humans in the garden. In the last 2 chapters, God dwells with his humans once again, this time in a garden city. Both gardens include the tree of life.

In the first 2 chapters, a bride is created out of Adam’s side, and in the last 2 chapters, a bride is ushered in for the Son of God and a wedding feast is celebrated.

In the first 2 chapters we have the beginning of Time, in the last 2 chapters we have the beginning of Eternity.

What’s the point of all this?

The message of the Bible for all believers in Jesus is that what we were created for is what we’re destined for. I’m going to say that again.

The message of the Bible for all believers in Jesus is that what we were created for is what we’re destined for.

And what that means is that we are supposed to live our lives today as though we are on the way toward that amazing eternal reality. We are on the timeline between what humans were created for and what humans were designed for.

—

Here’s the issue. Most of us read the Bible in a way that ignores almost all of this.

Even if we know otherwise, we live like we believe that humans were totally evil and broken from the very beginning, that God kind of doesn’t really like the world, and that He’s going to save some of us out of it so that he can destroy it in the end and take us all up to be with Him in heaven forever. In other words, we’re ignoring the first 2 chapters and the last 2 chapters of the Bible. Which is a little bit like ignoring the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of a movie. Nothing in the middle makes any sense.

—

One last verse. Turn with me somewhere in the second half of your Bible, to Colossians 3, verse 1. Paul’s writing a letter to some Jesus followers, helping them to live in light of the Good News of God’s Kingdom. Here’s what he says.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry..

So, here is how this works. It sounds an awful lot like Paul wants you to live with your thinking on Heaven and NOT on Earth – but he explains what he means by “earthly” stuff – and it’s all sinful! He DOESN’T mean that the Earth itself is sinful and wrong – in fact, in a bunch of other places, like Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15, he talks about how excited he is that this world will get remade!

Here’s the point – in Genesis 1 and 2, there’s an Overlap of Heaven & Earth, right?

And then in Revelation 21 & 22, there’s ANOTHER Heaven & Earth Overlap, right?

Well, Paul tells his readers that they are to imagine that they have also been made an Overlap of Heaven & Earth. He tells them to imagine that they have died, and they are with Christ. And because that is true, now we are supposed to live a certain way.

In other words, Paul wants them to live their life now in light of Eternity later, when we will be made like Jesus and made partners with Him!

What we just laid out is the exact path we need to take, that the Bible itself lays out, in order to live this truth in the contexts of our daily lives.

—

One person whose life changed drastically due to this message was my friend Richard.

Now, Richard had been raised in a Christian home, and heard over and over that Jesus was “the way to get to Heaven when you die”. Which is just true enough that I won’t argue with it, but it’s also NOT the whole story.

He struggled for most of his adult life thinking that the things he spent his time on were worthless – as if all God wanted him doing was witnessing to unbelievers all the time. His marriage was cold and perfunctory, his job was just a way to pay the bills, provide for his family, and give to the church. And he was tired. So, so tired from all the volunteer programs, church ministries, Wednesday night Bible studies, Thursday morning Prayer Group, and all the other things he had to say “yes” to if he wanted to be a “good Christian”. And he figured it would be that way until he died and went up to heaven to sing to God forever.

This thought worried him, because he actually wasn’t excited about eternity described that way, but he never told anybody about it. And that meant that he was harboring secret fears and worries for decades that he didn’t share with anybody. Richard, like many, was living a half-hearted version of the Christian life, because that’s what he had to do to cope with the belief that everything else in his life was useless because it wouldn’t go with him to Heaven.

Then, he read my book. And he came to discover that God actually loves all the beautiful things in Richard’s earthly life just as much as he did. He learned that God made the physical universe, and called it good. He learned that work, rest, and relationships were all part of humanity’s existence before the fall, and that they would all be part of humanity’s existence after the resurrection.

And he learned how to live his life in light of that fact – suddenly the good news felt good again, and he became very eager to share it. He took opportunities to rest and care for his physical body seriously, because he knew God made him that way on purpose. And his marriage drastically improved because he and his wife discovered newfound hope for their eternal future, and they spent many a date night, with the great gift of joy and life together, enjoying one another – in every sense of that phrase. Talk about a slice of heaven on Earth!

This is the kind of life transformation that is possible when you grasp God’s eternal purpose, the story God is telling, and the role you play within it — and when you have concrete tools for how to live accordingly in the here and now.

The Most Dangerous Prayer in The Bible – What Paul Prayed For in Ephesians 1

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Most Dangerous Prayer in the Bible: What Paul Actually Prayed For in Ephesians 1

Paul sat in a Roman prison cell, chained to a guard, and wrote nine verses that contain the most audacious claims about power in the entire New Testament. He asked God to open people’s eyes. Nine verses. Zero requests about circumstances.

A Prayer That Rewrites Everything

Ephesians 1:15-23 is one of the most theologically dense prayers in Scripture. Paul hears that the churches he helped start are thriving — their faith is genuine, their love is growing — and his response is to pray harder. Because for Paul, prayer was fuel for a fire already burning. He treated it as oxygen for spiritual growth.

What he asks God for is striking: “a spirit of wisdom and revelation” to know God personally. The Greek word is epignosis — relational, experiential knowing. And then he asks for the eyes of their hearts to be illuminated. An apocalypse prayer. A request for God to pull back the curtain on invisible realities.

Three Realities Paul Wants You to See

1. Hope

Biblical hope is a settled confidence in a future God has already set in motion. Paul draws on the Exodus — four hundred years of silence in Egypt, and God split the sea anyway. That’s the DNA of the hope he’s describing.

2. Identity

Most Christians read “the riches of his glorious inheritance” and assume it means our inheritance from God. Paul means the opposite. He’s echoing Deuteronomy, where God calls Israel his segullah — a king’s private treasure. The jewels kept in his own chamber. We are God’s treasured possession. That identity changes everything about how you approach God in prayer.

3. Power

Paul stacks four Greek words for power into a single sentence because one word can’t contain what he’s describing. And he says this power is aimed directly at those who believe. The same force that raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him above every ruler, authority, and dominion in the cosmos.

Why This Prayer Is Dangerous

Paul then unfolds what this power looks like. He draws on Psalm 110, Psalm 8, and Daniel 7 to show that the crucified Jesus now sits on the throne of the universe. Every title Caesar claimed — kyrios (lord), soter (savior), divi filius (son of God) — Paul hands to a crucified Jew from Nazareth. While chained to one of Caesar’s soldiers.

And the place where this cosmic lordship shows up in the real world? The ekklesia. A political word Paul fills with resurrection. A living, breathing community where the kingship of Jesus is acknowledged and lived out in real time. They met in homes, shared meals across ethnic lines, pooled their resources, and prayed for boldness when they got arrested.

What This Means For You

This prayer is dangerous because once you see what Paul wants you to see, you can’t go back.

You can’t go back to treating prayer like a crisis hotline.
You can’t go back to approaching God as if you still need to earn your place.

A prisoner already told you: you are treasured, you carry resurrection power, and the hope you’ve been called into outlasts every circumstance you’ll ever face.

Want to start praying like Paul? I created a free resource to help — the Heaven on Earth Prayer Journal. It’s designed to help you pray from the identity Paul describes, with daily, weekly, and monthly prompts. Grab it free here.

📺 Watch the full video for the complete line-by-line walk through Ephesians 1:15-23 →

Ephesians 4-6: Paul’s MASTERCLASS on Living in Heaven & Earth

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Modern Christians have often read Ephesians 4 through 6 as a grab bag of moral instructions. Be unified. Be good. Wives, submit. Put on the armor. And that reading misses almost everything Paul was doing.

Paul spent the first three chapters of Ephesians unveiling a cosmic reality: God is creating a brand new humanity in the Messiah. A Spirit-filled temple where heaven and earth overlap. A community so saturated with God’s presence that the hostile spiritual powers of the cosmos see it and realize their reign is ending.

Then Paul said: so live like it.

Chapters 4 through 6 are his answer. And the answer is a masterclass in becoming human.

The Mature Human (4:1-16)

Paul opens from a jail cell. A prisoner in the Lord. Everything he writes about power and maturity comes from a man in chains.

He stacks seven declarations of unity: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Seven — the number of completeness on page one of the Bible. Then he immediately pivots: “But to each one was given grace.” Unity requires diversity. Paul will not let us confuse the two.

He reaches for Psalm 68, a victory song about Yahweh as a divine warrior, and reads the crucified Jesus into the story. The Messiah descended to the lowest place, defeated the powers, ascended to the throne, and now pours out gifts on his people. And those gifts are people. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers. Given to the community for a purpose: building the body into a single mature human that reflects the fullness of Christ.

The Greek word for “head” in this passage, kephale, never meant “authority” in the ancient world. It meant source. Origin. The Messiah feeds the body, supplies its life, sustains its existence. Leadership in this community looks like the crucified king who descended before ascending.

Stripping Off the Old, Putting On the New (4:17-5:14)

Paul describes the old humanity as a spiral: futile thinking leads to darkened perception, which leads to distance from God, which leads to calloused hearts. It’s the Genesis story retold.

Then he says something remarkable: “You did not learn the Messiah in this way.” That phrase is unique in the entire New Testament. You learn a person, not a system. And the new human you put on has already been created. God already did it in the Messiah’s death and resurrection. Paul’s ethics flow from identity, not aspiration.

The section climaxes with a fragment of an early Christian hymn: “Awake, O sleeper! Rise from among the dead! And the Messiah will shine on you!” Paul’s ethics don’t end in morality. They end in resurrection. In a community singing its way out of the grave.

The New Humanity at Home and at War (5:15-6:20)

Paul describes four marks of Spirit-filled living: singing together, making melody, giving thanks, and submitting to one another. That last one swings the door open into the household code.

In the Greco-Roman world, household codes told patriarchs how to manage wives, children, and slaves. The subordinate parties were talked about, never talked to. Paul detonates the form from the inside. He speaks directly to wives, children, and slaves as dignified moral agents. He tells husbands to die like the Messiah died. He tells them to wash feet. He tells masters to serve their slaves the same way slaves serve them.

Then comes the armor of God. Every “you” in Ephesians 6:10-20 is plural. This armor was designed for a community, not a lone warrior. And every piece comes from Isaiah’s divine warrior. God put on his own armor when nobody else would fight. He came as Jesus. He won through the cross. And now he gives that armor to his people to protect their unity against the cosmic forces that want to tear them apart.

The Whole Picture

The letter starts with a single staggering claim in chapter 1 verse 10: God’s plan is to head up all things together in the Messiah. Things in heaven. Things on earth. Everything.

That’s the heartbeat. Everything else flows from it.

Your Monday morning matters. The way you speak to your spouse matters. The patience you show your kids, the generosity you extend to someone who wronged you. All of it is the overlap. All of it is heaven and earth meeting in the Christ-shaped space of your actual life.

Watch the full video here →

And if you want to go deeper with passages like these, I created a free prayer journal to help you slow down with Scripture and let it reshape how you pray.

Grab it here →

Further up and further in,

Tim

Misunderstanding Paul – 11 Ways We Take Paul Out of Context

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For years, I read Ephesians wrong.

I thought it was about how individuals get saved and go to heaven when they die. Predestination? That’s God’s cosmic clipboard. Spiritual warfare? Put on your armor and fight demons. The church? A place you attend on Sundays.

I was reading a sixteenth-century theological debate into a first-century Jewish letter.

Turns out, Ephesians is about something way bigger. Paul is describing how God defeats hostile spiritual powers by creating a reconciled, multi-ethnic community that proves the age to come has already started. The church is the new temple where heaven and earth overlap. Ethnic reconciliation is the evidence that resurrection is real. And every act of unity exposes the powers that thrive on division.

Once you see this pattern, you can’t unsee it.

The 11 Thorny Issues

1. Election & Predestination (Ephesians 1)

The Problem: We read Calvinist/Arminian debates into a first-century text.

The Reality: Election is corporate and vocational. God chose Abraham’s family to bless all families (Genesis 12). Paul says this plan is fulfilled in the Messiah. The Messiah is the chosen one, and if you’re united to him, you share his status.

Predestination describes God’s eternal plan to bless the world through the Messiah. It’s the plot of Scripture, not a divine sorting hat.

2. “Heavenly Places” (Ephesians 1-2)

The Problem: We think Paul is talking about the afterlife.

The Reality: In Jewish cosmology, heaven and earth are distinct but overlapping realities. The resurrection tore open the boundary. Paul says we’re seated in the heavenly places right now (2:6) because we’re united to the exalted Messiah. We participate in the age to come while still living in this present age.

Hostile powers also operate in the heavenly places (6:12), influencing earthly systems. The church, by embodying reconciliation, exposes their defeat.

3. Who Is “We” and Who Is “You”? (Ephesians 1-2)

The Problem: We assume “we” means apostles and “you” means ordinary Christians.

The Reality: Paul’s pronouns track the historical movement of the gospel. “We who first hoped in Christ” (1:12) refers to Jewish believers. “You also” (1:13) refers to Gentile believers who heard and believed afterward. In 2:11-22, Paul makes it explicit: both groups are now one new humanity.

No hierarchy. Just the story of how the gospel went from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

4. Salvation by Grace Through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9)

The Problem: Centuries of debate about which part is “the gift.”

The Reality: Paul emphasizes source. The entire salvation-by-grace-through-faith reality is God’s work, not yours. Why? Because he’s about to tell them God has torn down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. Nobody gets to boast. The source is God. That levels the playing field completely.

Stop weaponizing this verse in theological debates. Paul is talking about source, not flowcharts.

5. The One New Humanity (Ephesians 2)

The Problem: We read chapter 2 as individual conversion stories.

The Reality: Verses 11-22 are the point. Paul describes how the Messiah destroyed the barrier between Jews and Gentiles, creating one new humanity out of two hostile groups. This is the proof that resurrection is real. Ethnic reconciliation. Jews and Gentiles worshiping as equals. That was unthinkable.

Salvation is corporate. The goal is a reconciled humanity that proves God’s plan is unfolding.

6. The Church as Temple (Ephesians 2-3)

The Problem: We think of church as a voluntary organization you join if you’re serious.

The Reality: Paul uses temple language. The church is where heaven and earth overlap. Where God’s presence dwells. But it’s not a building—it’s a living community. Jews and Gentiles together, becoming the place where God lives.

Through the church, God’s wisdom is made known to spiritual powers (3:10). The church reveals that God’s plan to reconcile hostile peoples is working. The dividing wall is down. The powers are exposed as defeated.

Church is not optional. It’s a cosmic project.

7. The Powers (Ephesians 1, 2, 3, 6)

The Problem: We pick either “only demons” or “only human institutions.”

The Reality: Paul holds both together. The powers are spiritual beings whose influence shows up in earthly systems. They animate structures that divide humanity: ethnic hostility, social hierarchies, ideologies of dominance, systems that dehumanize.

The church defeats them by embodying the opposite. When the temple of God is made of formerly hostile peoples, that makes known the wisdom of God.

Spiritual warfare is the communal embodiment of reconciliation. Every time the church lives out unity, it’s engaging in warfare. Every time it fractures along ethnic lines, it’s feeding the powers.

8. Unity vs. Uniformity (Ephesians 4)

The Problem: We think unity means sameness.

The Reality: Paul says to maintain unity, not create it (4:3). The Spirit has already created it. Your job is to protect it. And immediately after establishing unity exists, Paul talks about diversity. Different gifts. Different roles. The church grows up by having all these voices work together, not by silencing disagreement.

Conflict is not the enemy of unity. Uniformity is.

9. Leadership Gifts (Ephesians 4:11)

The Problem: We read this as church hierarchy.

The Reality: Christ gave these people to the church, not over it (4:11-12). They’re gifts. Their purpose? To equip everyone else for ministry. They train the whole body to do the work. The goal is communal maturity, not a few leaders getting spiritually mature while everyone else stays dependent.

Leadership exists to activate the entire community.

10. Ethical Commands (Ephesians 4-5)

The Problem: We read chapters 4-6 as moral self-improvement.

The Reality: Paul says “walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (4:1). Not “try to become worthy.” You already have a new identity. Now live like it. Every command is grounded in identity. You are a new humanity. Stop living like you belong to the old creation.

This is identity-driven ethics, not moralism.

11. Spiritual Warfare (Ephesians 6)

The Problem: We picture an individual believer fighting demons alone.

The Reality: Paul has spent five chapters describing the church as a unified body. Then he says, “Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand” (6:11). Stand. Not attack. The church is holding ground against deception and division—the things that fracture unity.

The armor? Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation. These protect a unified community from forces that want to tear it apart.

Paul gets this imagery from Isaiah 59, where God wears the armor. Now the church wears it. Spiritual warfare is communal standing firm against powers that thrive on division.

So What Now?

When you let Paul be Paul, Ephesians becomes breathtaking.

It’s not about escaping earth. It’s about heaven and earth merging. It’s not about individual salvation. It’s about a reconciled humanity proving the resurrection is real. It’s not about going to church. It’s about being the temple where God dwells.

Every time you choose reconciliation over division, you’re engaging in spiritual warfare. Every time you build someone up instead of tearing them down, you’re embodying the new humanity. Every time the church gathers as a multi-ethnic, unified community, it’s revealing God’s wisdom to the powers.

You are part of a cosmic project.

Want to go deeper? Watch the full video teaching here.

And I created a free prayer journal to help you process what you’re learning and turn it into actual conversation with God. Because knowledge is great, but transformation happens when you bring it into your relationship with the one who called you.

Grab it here.

Further up and further in,
Tim

I’m Tired of Watching Christians Tear Each Other Apart – the Kirk Cameron Controversy

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Kirk Cameron recently came out as an annihilationist, the evangelical response was swift and uncharitable. Demands for repentance. Blocking dissenters. Silencing debate. But the controversy has exposed something troubling about how we handle theological disagreement in the church today.

The Problem: Gatekeeping Instead of Engagement

The response to Kirk Cameron wasn’t about careful Biblical exegesis. It was about conformity. “The church has always believed this, so you need to repent.” But that’s not theology—that’s conformity policing.

Where was the engagement with the actual Biblical arguments for annihilationism? Where was the wrestling with passages like Matthew 10:28, where Jesus says God will “destroy both soul and body in hell”? Where was the discussion about what Greek words like apollumi (destroy) and aionios (eternal/age-lasting) actually mean in their first-century Jewish context?

It wasn’t there. And that’s the problem.

Theological Triage: Which Hills Are Worth Dying On?

Gavin Ortlund, in his book Finding the Right Hills to Die On, gives us a helpful framework called theological triage. He breaks doctrines into three categories:

First-order doctrines are essential to the gospel itself. The deity of Christ. The resurrection. Salvation by grace through faith. The Trinity. The authority of Scripture. If you deny these, you’ve left Christian orthodoxy.

Second-order doctrines are important enough to create boundaries between different church traditions, but they don’t determine whether someone is a Christian. Baptism. Church governance. These matter, but a Presbyterian and a Baptist can both love Jesus and be saved.

Third-order doctrines are issues where Christians can disagree within the same local church and still have meaningful unity. The timing of the rapture. Views on the millennium. These are real theological questions, but they’re not worth dividing over.

The nature of hell? It’s not a first-order issue. Faithful, Bible-believing Christians disagree on this. John Stott was an annihilationist. So is N.T. Wright (in a qualified way). These aren’t liberals denying Scripture—they’re evangelical scholars who have come to different conclusions about what the Bible actually teaches.

When the Majority Is Wrong

John Stackhouse makes a crucial distinction between traditional views, historical views, and Biblical views. Sometimes these three categories align. But sometimes they don’t. And when they conflict, which one wins?

For Protestants, the answer should be obvious: Scripture wins. Every time. That’s what Sola Scriptura means.

The majority has been catastrophically wrong before. For over 1,800 years, most Christians believed slavery was Biblical. They quoted Scripture to defend it. And they were utterly, horrifically wrong.

The abolitionists were the minority. They were accused of being unbiblical, of letting cultural trends influence their theology, of abandoning what “the church has always believed.” Sound familiar?

The fact that the majority has been wrong before doesn’t mean the majority is always wrong. But it does mean we need to be Bereans—examining the Scriptures daily to see if what we’ve been taught is true (Acts 17:11).

Unity Without Uniformity

Jesus prayed in John 17:21, “I pray that they may all be one.” Unity. Not uniformity.

Unity is grounded in the essentials—the first-order doctrines. We’re united because we all confess Jesus as Lord, believe in His death and resurrection, trust in Scripture as God’s Word.

But uniformity demands that everyone believe exactly the same thing on every theological question. And that’s not Biblical unity. That’s tribalism.

Paul says in Ephesians 4:2-3, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Bearing with one another. That means making space for disagreement on secondary issues. That means practicing theological triage—knowing which doctrines are essential and which ones allow for charitable disagreement.

Watch the Full Video

This controversy is a mirror showing us that we have a unity problem. We’ve made conformity the test of orthodoxy. We’ve confused unity with uniformity. And we’ve forgotten how to charitably disagree while staying committed to Scripture.

Watch the full video to dive deeper into theological triage, what we do when the majority is Biblically wrong, and how we can practice unity without sacrificing truth.

What George Bailey & Ebenezer Scrooge show us about Our Choices… and the Future

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

If Jesus pulled back the curtain on your life and showed you two different futures, what would you see?

One where your love never touched anyone.

Another where your current choices kept growing, year after year, into the world around you.

That’s the question that has been sitting with me as I’ve revisited two of the most famous Christmas stories we have: It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. On the surface, they’re cozy, nostalgic, maybe even overplayed. But if you sit with them a bit longer, they become something more like mirrors.

They start to show you the kind of future your life is already growing.

George Bailey and the World That Falls Apart Without Love

When we first meet George Bailey, he doesn’t look like a hero. He looks stuck.

He’s the guy who never left his small town, who keeps saying yes to responsibilities he never asked for, who watches his own dreams die so that other people can live theirs. He saves his brother. He protects a sick child from a terrible mistake. He keeps the little Building and Loan alive when it would be easier to walk away.

By the time he’s standing on that bridge in the snow, he’s convinced his life has amounted to nothing.

That’s why the “no-George” sequence hits so hard.

When the angel Clarence shows George a world where he never existed, the changes are not cosmetic. George sees what happens when his quiet, costly love is removed from the ecosystem of his town.

The cozy main street turns loud, predatory, and hollow.

Families who once had a shot at owning a modest home are crammed into unstable rentals.

People who had dignity and belonging now orbit around money, vice, and fear.

George always assumed “real impact” required leaving town, doing something obviously great, building something big and impressive. The alternate world shows him the truth: his small, inconvenient choices were already carving a path through the darkness. When you pull that presence out of the story, the whole environment changes.

That has discipled my imagination more than I realized.

Because if Jesus is telling the truth about the kingdom of God—that hidden faithfulness matters, that the last are first, that even a cup of cold water in His name is remembered—then George Bailey’s life looks far closer to greatness than most of what we usually call success.

Sometimes the only way to see the weight of a faithful life is to imagine the world where that faithfulness never existed.

For many of us, the “Bedford Falls” we’re called to cultivate is not glamorous. It looks like a kitchen table, a workplace, a small church, a handful of friends, a couple of neighbors whose names we actually know. When we choose to show up in love, to absorb cost so that others can breathe, we’re already partnering with Jesus to keep our little corners of the world from sliding toward Pottersfield.

Scrooge and the Future Grown From Our Current Choices

If George’s vision shows us what the world loses when love is removed, Scrooge’s vision shows us something even more uncomfortable: what the world becomes when love never gets the chance to grow in the first place.

When we meet Ebenezer Scrooge, he knows exactly who he is.

He’s hard, efficient, and proud of it. Christmas is foolishness. Generosity is weakness. People are numbers on a ledger. His life revolves around safety, accumulation, and control.

When the spirits visit him, they don’t show him a random horror story. They show him a harvest.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come walks him through the fruit of his own choices. People talk about his death, but no one weeps. They pawn his belongings. They speak of him with fear, disgust, or indifference. There is no legacy of love, only the echo of a closed hand.

That part feels much closer to home than I’d like to admit.

I don’t wake up in the morning eager to hurt people. But I do wake up tempted to be safe. To pull back. To protect my time, my money, my energy, my reputation. To live as if the only story that really matters is whether I feel secure and in control.

If those instincts keep making the decisions long enough, they grow into a Scrooge-shaped future—even if I never set out to become that kind of person.

Scripture uses the language of sowing and reaping for a reason. Our choices are seeds. Our habits are seeds. The way we relate to God and others, day after day, quietly shapes the kind of future that can grow around us.

Scrooge’s story becomes a mercy at this point. The vision interrupts the process. It lets him see where his trajectory is taking him before he runs out of road. Not to crush him in shame, but to wake him up while there is still time to plant something different.

Jesus, Matthew 19, and the New Creation

So what does Jesus have to do with all of this?

In Matthew 19, Peter asks a question that lives under the surface of both George and Scrooge’s worlds: “We’ve left everything to follow you. What then will we have?” In other words, Is any of this actually worth it? Does any of this count?

Jesus does not answer with a vague, “Trust Me, it will all work out.”

He promises that those who have left houses, family, or fields for His sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. He talks about harvest and reward—real outcomes in a real future. Jesus is not indifferent to what our choices grow.

That matters for both men.

George Bailey’s life looks, on the surface, like a long string of losses. He loses travel. He loses certain career paths. He loses the version of his story he assumed was “meant to be.” But if Jesus is telling the truth, those losses are not wasted. They are seed.

Every late night at the Building and Loan, every costly decision to protect people instead of profit, every quiet act of love becomes something Jesus intends to remember and bring into full bloom in the New Heavens and New Earth.

Scrooge, on the other hand, shows us what happens when we plant something else. His future is not God being petty. It is the honest result of a life that never trusted Jesus enough to plant anything beyond self-protection and control.

And yet, even there, grace breaks in.

Scrooge wakes up. He can repent. He can re-plant. He can open his hands and let love finally grow. That’s not just sentimental storytelling. It points toward how Jesus meets us: He exposes where our choices are taking us and then invites us into a different tomorrow.

So What Do We Do With This?

If you feel more like George lately—faithful but unseen—hear this: your hidden choices in love are not invisible. They carry real weight in God’s kingdom, even when you feel stuck in a small town life.

If you feel more like Scrooge—tired, closed off, or scared to love—hear this: you are not stuck with the future your habits have been growing. The invitation to repent, to re-plant, to walk with Jesus into a different story is still open.

Here’s the question I keep bringing back to Him:

In light of the New Creation You’re bringing, what kind of future are we actually growing together with my choices today?

If you want help turning that question into an actual conversation with God (and not just an idea in your head), I’d love to give you my Heaven On Earth Prayer Journal as a free resource. It’s a guided journal built around the Lord’s Prayer, designed to help you name your “George” moments, face your “Scrooge” places, and walk with Jesus into the future He’s inviting you into.

You can download it here: https://theoverlap.life/prayer-journal

Healing After Church Hurt – What Josh Learned When He Lost Everything in 2 Weeks

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When the Church Becomes the Source of Pain

What happens when the very place meant to be a refuge becomes a source of deep wounds? It’s a question too many believers face—and one my friend Josh Ham knows intimately.

In our latest conversation, Josh shares his journey through one of the most devastating seasons of his life. In just two weeks, he lost his pastoral position, his home in the church parsonage, and his entire church community—all over doctrinal disagreements on secondary issues.

The Brutal Reality of Institutional Problems

Here’s what most people miss about “church hurt”: it’s not hurt from the Church—the body of Christ, God’s people. It’s hurt that happens within institutional church settings when organizations, buildings, events, or movements get prioritized over people.

Josh and I dive deep into this crucial distinction. When institutional priorities eclipse care for actual human beings—image-bearers whom Jesus died to rescue—that’s when damage occurs.

We experienced similar patterns in our own stories: doctrinal disagreements handled without grace, people misrepresented behind closed doors, relationships severed without conversation, and character assassinations that happened after we’d already left.

Biblical Terms Matter: Heresy vs. False Teaching

One of the most important parts of our conversation explores what Scripture actually means by terms like “heretic” and “false teacher.”

The Greek word hairesis (heresy) isn’t primarily about wrong belief—it’s about divisive behavior. You can hold correct doctrine in a heretical way if you’re using it to fragment the body of Christ over non-essential issues.

False teaching is different. It’s not just any teaching that’s incorrect (we all get things wrong). A false teacher in the biblical sense is someone who teaches falsehood with false motives—seeking self-aggrandizement, leading people away from Christ, denying core truths about Jesus.

This matters because many of us have been called heretics or false teachers simply for disagreeing on eschatology, Calvinism, or other secondary doctrines. That’s not what Scripture means by these terms.

How God’s People Showed Up

The most beautiful part of Josh’s story—and mine—is how the actual Church responded.

When Josh lost everything, believers he barely knew opened their homes. A retired pastor and his wife gave Josh’s family a place to live rent-free for months. Friends from other churches wrapped their arms around them. People showed up with meals, encouragement, and tangible support.

This is the ekklesia—God’s covenant people—functioning as they should. Not an institution protecting its brand, but a body caring for its injured members.

Finding Healthy Church Community Again

Both Josh and I eventually found new church communities characterized by:

Plurality of leadership – Multiple elders who actually disagree with each other on secondary issues but still co-labor for the gospel. No one-man show. No consolidation of power that creates opportunities for abuse.

Genuine community focus – Where spiritual formation and authentic relationships matter more than attendance metrics or giving reports. Where people know each other’s names and show up when someone loses a job or gets sick.

Freedom to ask questions – Where honest wrestling with Scripture is welcomed, not feared. Where you can think differently without being labeled dangerous.

Love that transcends doctrine – Where believers understand that what unites us in Christ is far greater than where we differ on Revelation’s timeline or Reformed theology.

The Eternal Hope That Changes Everything

Here’s what brings me the most joy when I think about those broken relationships from our old church communities:

If those people are genuinely under the blood of Christ—if they’ve accepted the rescue that comes from trusting Jesus—then I will see them again in the age to come. Every broken relationship will be restored. Every misunderstanding will be cleared up. Every false accusation will be set right.

The Day of the Lord isn’t just about judgment—it’s about God putting all things to rights. That includes relationships torn apart by institutional failures, gossip, and misplaced priorities.

Whether I dream about those dear friends three times a week for the rest of my life and never see them again on this side, I can celebrate now—in advance—their restoration and healing. Because I believe I’ll have eternity with them.

What We Can Learn

If you’ve experienced church hurt, here’s what Josh and I want you to know:

Distinguish between institutional problems and the actual Church. God’s people are still beautiful, even when organizations fail.
Healing requires both rest and exercise. Like a strained muscle, you need time away from heavy loads, but also gentle movement to regain full strength. Find safe people to be honest with about where you are doctrinally and emotionally.
Look for healthy conflict. Good church communities have disagreements handled with love, where questions are welcome and grace abounds even in differences.
Hold onto eternal perspective. This isn’t minimizing present pain—it’s recognizing that millions of years into the age to come, this season will be a distant memory, and all relationships in Christ will be whole.
Don’t stay isolated. You need to be grafted into a healthy part of the body. The Church isn’t optional for the Christian life—but finding the right local expression may take time and wisdom.

Watch the Full Conversation

This written summary only scratches the surface of our hour-and-a-half conversation. Josh and I go much deeper into:

Navigating doctrinal differences without creating division
What makes a “church called tov” (using Scot McKnight’s framework)
How to identify red flags versus green flags in church communities
Specific biblical passages that brought hope in dark seasons
Why teaching people how to think matters more than telling them what to think

Watch the full video to hear Josh’s complete story and discover hope for your own journey through or beyond church hurt.

Sam Shamoun ADMITS the Bible Teaches Open Theism (But STILL Won’t Believe It)

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Confession That Changes Everything

Catholic apologist Sam Shamoun recently made one of the most refreshingly honest admissions I’ve heard from a traditional theist in years. During what appeared to be a casual conversation, Shamoun stated flatly that “if you follow sola scriptura, tota scriptura, you cannot refute open theism.”

This wasn’t a momentary slip or taken out of context. Shamoun doubled down, explaining that open theists “will appeal to grammar” and “syntax” and “look at context, historical context, cultural context” while traditional theologians resort to “explaining passages away as simply anthropomorphic.”

But here’s where it gets really interesting: despite acknowledging that Scripture clearly teaches open theism, Shamoun maintains that Catholics shouldn’t believe it. Why? Because the Catholic Church has erected what he calls “fences” and “walls” – institutional boundaries that prevent believers from following biblical interpretation wherever it might lead.

What Open Theism Actually Teaches

Before diving deeper into Shamoun’s admission, let’s clarify what open theism actually proposes:

Core Tenets of Open Theism

God experiences genuine relationship with creation, not predetermined outcomes
The future remains genuinely open until choices are made
Prayer and intercession can genuinely change God’s mind and course of action
God’s knowledge is perfect but includes knowledge of possibilities rather than fixed certainties
Scripture should be interpreted naturally without explaining away relational language

Biblical Evidence Open Theists Cite

Open theists point to numerous passages where:

God changes His mind (Exodus 32:14, Genesis 6:6-7, 1 Samuel 15:11)
God tests people to learn outcomes (Deuteronomy 8:2, Genesis 22:12)
Prophecies are conditional (Jeremiah 18:7-10, Jonah 3:4-10)
God expresses genuine emotions in response to human actions
Intercession actually influences divine decisions (Abraham pleading for Sodom, Moses interceding for Israel)

The Devastating Honesty of Shamoun’s Admission

What He Actually Said

Shamoun’s comments reveal several stunning acknowledgments:

“You cannot refute open theism scripturally” when using proper grammatical-historical interpretation
Open theists have “powerful arguments” because they engage the text directly
Traditional theists must “explain away” clear biblical passages as mere anthropomorphisms
Catholics must stay within institutional “fences” that prevent following Scripture wherever it leads

The Implications Are Staggering

Think about what Shamoun is actually saying:

The Bible clearly teaches open theism when interpreted properly
Church tradition trumps biblical teaching in Catholic methodology
Institutional boundaries matter more than scriptural clarity
Honest exegesis leads to conclusions the church rejects

Why This Matters for Every Bible-Believing Christian

The Authority Question

Shamoun’s admission forces us to confront a fundamental question: When clear biblical interpretation conflicts with traditional doctrine, which authority wins?

For those committed to sola scriptura, the answer should be obvious. If Scripture clearly teaches something through proper grammatical, historical, and contextual interpretation, shouldn’t that settle the matter?

The Anthropomorphism Problem

Traditional theists often dismiss challenging passages as “anthropomorphic” – God merely speaking as if He were human. But consider the problems with this approach:

When Everything Becomes Anthropomorphic

God’s emotions become mere appearances
Divine-human dialogue loses genuine meaning
Prayer and intercession become elaborate charades
Conditional prophecies make no real sense
Biblical narrative loses relational authenticity

The Consistency Challenge

If we can explain away any uncomfortable passage as anthropomorphic, what prevents us from doing the same with:

God’s love and mercy?
Divine justice and wrath?
The incarnation itself?
Resurrection accounts?

The Exegetical Evidence

Let’s examine some of the “knockout” passages Shamoun referenced:

Genesis 6:6-7 – Divine Regret

“The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created.'”

Traditional interpretation: God doesn’t actually regret anything; this is just anthropomorphic language.

Open theist response: The Hebrew word nacham genuinely indicates emotional change and regret. Why would Scripture use such specific emotional language if it means nothing?

Hezekiah’s Healing – A Changed Divine Decision

When God told Hezekiah to prepare for death, then granted him fifteen additional years after his prayer, we see:

Clear divine pronouncement of impending death
Human intercession and petition
Explicit divine mind-change in response
Concrete evidence through miraculous sign

How do we explain this away as mere anthropomorphism when the historical consequences were so real?

The Judas Problem

Jesus promised the twelve disciples they would sit on twelve thrones judging Israel. Yet Judas betrayed Christ and never occupied such a throne. This suggests:

Divine predictions can be conditional on human response
Future outcomes aren’t always fixed in advance
Even divine foreknowledge may involve possibilities rather than certainties

The Catholic Dilemma: Fences vs. Scripture

Institutional Boundaries

Shamoun describes Catholic theology as having “fences” and “walls” – institutional boundaries that keep believers from pursuing biblical interpretation too far. He argues this allows for vigorous debate within prescribed limits while preventing “heretical” conclusions.

But this raises profound questions:

The Authority Hierarchy

Scripture (God’s revealed word)
Church tradition (human interpretation over time)
Institutional authority (current church leadership)

Question: Should human tradition and institutional authority override clear scriptural teaching?

The Development Problem

If church tradition can legitimately restrict biblical interpretation, how do we account for:

Doctrinal developments over time that contradict earlier tradition?
Disagreements between Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions?
Internal Catholic debates on numerous theological issues?
Historical errors in church teaching later corrected?

The Protestant Response

For Protestant Christians committed to sola scriptura, Shamoun’s admission actually strengthens the case for biblical authority:

If Scripture clearly teaches something through proper interpretation
And church tradition contradicts that teaching
Then Scripture must take precedence over tradition

This doesn’t mean tradition has no value, but it cannot override clear biblical teaching.

Practical Implications for Faith and Practice

For Biblical Interpretation

Shamoun’s honesty suggests we should:

Take Scripture seriously in its natural sense
Avoid explaining away difficult passages too quickly
Consider grammatical and contextual evidence carefully
Allow Scripture to shape our theology rather than forcing theology onto Scripture

For Understanding God

If open theism accurately reflects biblical teaching, it suggests:

God genuinely desires relationship rather than predetermined control
Prayer and intercession matter because they can influence outcomes
Human choices carry real weight in God’s unfolding purposes
Divine love involves genuine risk and vulnerability

For Christian Living

An open theistic understanding might encourage:

More earnest prayer knowing it can genuinely influence God
Greater sense of responsibility for our choices and their consequences
Deeper appreciation for God’s relational nature
Less fatalism about predetermined outcomes

The Broader Theological Landscape

Where Open Theism Fits

Open theism occupies unique theological space:

Compared to Calvinism

Rejects divine determinism while maintaining divine sovereignty
Affirms genuine human freedom within God’s purposes
Sees prayer as influential rather than merely submissive

Compared to Arminianism

Questions exhaustive foreknowledge while maintaining divine wisdom
Emphasizes genuine openness in divine-human relationship
Focuses more on relational than transactional dynamics

Compared to Process Theology

Maintains classical divine attributes like omnipotence and omniscience
Affirms creation ex nihilo and divine transcendence
Preserves biblical authority rather than subordinating it to philosophy

The Growing Movement

Open theism continues gaining attention because it addresses real biblical and theological concerns:

Scriptural fidelity in interpretation
Coherent explanation of prayer and intercession
Meaningful understanding of divine-human relationship
Honest engagement with difficult passages

Responding to Common Objections

“Open Theism Limits God”

Objection: Open theism makes God less than omniscient.

Response: Open theists maintain God knows all that can be known, including every possibility and probability. Perfect knowledge of an open future is different from perfect knowledge of a closed future.

“It Undermines Biblical Prophecy”

Objection: If the future is open, how can prophecy be reliable?

Response: Biblical prophecy often contains conditional elements. God can fulfill prophecies through His sovereign ability to work within and through human choices, not despite them.

“It Creates Uncertainty”

Objection: Open theism makes the future uncertain and threatens assurance.

Response: Our security rests in God’s character and commitment, not His control of every detail. A God who chooses to love and remain faithful despite uncertainty demonstrates greater love than one who controls everything.

What This Means Moving Forward

For Individual Believers

Shamoun’s admission challenges every Christian to consider:

How seriously do we take Scripture when it conflicts with tradition?
What does honest biblical interpretation require of us?
Are we willing to follow where careful exegesis leads?
How do we balance respect for tradition with biblical fidelity?

For Church Communities

This conversation raises important questions about:

Teaching and preaching that honestly engages difficult texts
Creating space for theological dialogue and disagreement
Balancing tradition with ongoing biblical study
Preparing people to think carefully about Scripture

For Theological Education

Seminaries and Bible colleges might need to:

Present open theism as a legitimate biblical option
Teach students to engage rather than dismiss challenging interpretations
Develop skills in careful grammatical-historical exegesis
Foster environments where difficult questions receive honest attention

Conclusion: The Call to Biblical Honesty

Sam Shamoun’s remarkable admission deserves serious consideration from all Christians committed to biblical authority. His honesty about Scripture’s clarity regarding open theism, combined with his appeal to institutional boundaries, perfectly illustrates the tension many believers face.

The question becomes: Will we have the courage to follow biblical interpretation wherever it leads, even when it challenges our theological comfort zones?

This conversation goes to the heart of biblical authority and honest interpretation. Whether you ultimately embrace open theism or not, Shamoun’s admission demands we wrestle seriously with what Scripture actually teaches about God’s relationship with time, prayer, and human choices.

The stakes are high. Our understanding of prayer, divine sovereignty, human responsibility, and the nature of God Himself all hang in the balance.

Watch the full response video to see how this plays out and what it means for anyone committed to biblical authority!

Ephesians 1-3 is WAY More Intricate Than You Imagined…

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Hidden Architecture of Ephesians That Changes Everything

Discovering the Breathtaking Blueprint Paul Designed to Reveal God’s Eternal Purpose

When most Christians sit down to read Ephesians 1-3, they see what appears to be random theology – a blessing here, a prayer there, some talk about Jews and Gentiles, and Paul mentioning his imprisonment. But what if I told you that these first three chapters are actually designed like a beautiful cathedral blueprint?

The Symphony Structure Most People Miss

Paul begins Ephesians not with a theological treatise, but with a worship song. Verses 3-14 of chapter one form one breathtaking sentence in the original Greek – an avalanche of praise that echoes the ancient Psalms but rewrites them around Jesus. This isn’t accidental; Paul knows that you can’t think your way into the apocalypse (the unveiling of God’s plan). You have to sing your way in.

The structure Paul creates is called a chiasm – a symmetrical pattern that unfolds like this:

A – Song of Praise (1:3-14)
B – Prayer for Sight (1:15-23)
C – New Exodus: Death to Life (2:1-10)
D – New Temple: Division to Unity (2:11-22)
C’ – Paul’s Story: Living the Mystery (3:1-13)
B’ – Prayer for Strength (3:14-19)
A’ – Song of Praise (3:20-21)

The Center Panel That Changes Everything

At the heart of this structure lies one of the most revolutionary truths in Scripture: God is creating a new temple. Not a building made of stone, but a people – a community where heaven and earth overlap. The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile has been destroyed, creating “one new humanity” that serves as God’s dwelling place on earth.

This isn’t just about personal salvation or church growth metrics. Paul is unveiling the cosmic scope of God’s plan: to unite everything in heaven and on earth in Christ. And we – the Church – are the visible demonstration of this eternal purpose.

Why This Matters for Your Identity

Understanding this structure transforms how you see yourself. You’re not just an individual Christian hoping to go to heaven someday. You are part of a new humanity, a spirit-filled temple, the living fullness of God on earth. The same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead is now aimed at you and your faith community.

Paul front-loads this section with prayer because he knows you don’t reason your way into this reality – you kneel your way in. The architect of this cosmic plan wants our hearts and minds renewed to see what’s already true of us in Christ.

The Blueprint for Living

Once you see this design, everything changes. Paul’s prayers become your prayers. His songs of praise become your worship. The story he’s telling becomes your story. This is why the second half of Ephesians (chapters 4-6) focuses on practical living – because if this is who we are (a new humanity, God’s temple, His fullness on earth), then here’s how we live it out.

The beauty of Ephesians isn’t found in grabbing isolated inspirational verses. It’s discovered when we let Paul’s symmetrical masterpiece rewire our imagination and transform our identity.

Watch the full breakdown of this incredible structure in my latest video and prepare to never read Ephesians the same way again.

Subject Line Option 1: The Ephesians blueprint that changed how I read the Bible Subject Line Option 2: Why Paul started with a SONG (not theology) Subject Line Option 3: This hidden structure will blow your mind

Headline: The Hidden Architecture That Reveals Your True Identity

Sub-Head: How Paul’s Blueprint in Ephesians 1-3 Shows You’re Part of God’s Cosmic Temple

Friend,

I’ve been studying Ephesians for years, but I recently discovered something that completely transformed how I understand both Scripture and my identity as a believer.

Hidden within the first three chapters of Ephesians is a breathtaking architectural blueprint. What looks like random theology is actually a carefully crafted symphony – complete with worship songs, prayers, and a stunning revelation about who we really are.

Paul doesn’t begin with systematic theology. He starts with a song – one explosive sentence of praise in the original Greek that echoes ancient worship but centers everything on Jesus. Why? Because you can’t think your way into God’s cosmic plan. You have to sing your way in.

The structure unfolds like a cathedral blueprint: Song of praise leads to prayer, which reveals a new exodus from death to life, climaxing in the construction of a new temple where heaven and earth overlap. Then it mirrors back – Paul’s own story, another prayer, and a final explosion of worship that echoes through all eternity.

At the center of it all is this revolutionary truth: We aren’t just individual Christians waiting for heaven someday. We are God’s new temple, a spirit-filled community where His presence dwells on earth. The same resurrection power that raised Jesus is now aimed at us.

This isn’t academic study – it’s discovering your place in the cosmic story of God uniting all things in Christ.

Watch my complete breakdown of this incredible structure here and prepare to never read Ephesians the same way again.

Paul’s Prison Letter That Threatens Every Power Structure

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Letter That Changes Everything: A Fresh Look at Ephesians

Most Christians treat Ephesians like a spiritual medicine cabinet – open it up when you need encouragement, find a verse that makes you feel better, and close it again. But what if I told you that approach completely misses the point of what might be the most revolutionary document ever written?

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians isn’t a collection of inspirational quotes. It’s a cosmic manifesto written from a Roman prison cell, unveiling what Paul calls an “apocalypse” – not the end of the world, but the revelation of God’s master plan for all of reality. This plan? To unite heaven and earth in Jesus Christ, starting with the most ordinary communities of believers and extending to the transformation of the entire cosmos.

The Vision That Threatens Empires

Picture the irony: a chained prisoner writing about cosmic victory. Paul sits in Roman custody, yet he’s dictating words about how Jesus has been “seated far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” The empire thinks they’ve contained the threat, but Paul knows better. What he’s describing isn’t just spiritual theory – it’s the blueprint for reality itself.

Paul calls this an “apocalypse,” using the Greek word apokalupsis which means “uncovering” or “revelation.” He’s not predicting future disasters; he’s revealing what’s already happening behind the scenes of everything we can see. God is in the process of rewiring reality, bringing heaven and earth back together through the most unlikely means: ordinary people who follow Jesus.

From Cosmic to Kitchen Table

Here’s Paul’s genius: he seamlessly connects the biggest possible vision with the smallest daily details. The same God who planned before creation to “sum up all things in heaven and earth” in Christ cares about how you handle conflict with your spouse, approach your work, and treat people different from yourself.

Ethnic reconciliation serves as Paul’s primary test case. In his world, Jews and Gentiles represented the deepest human division – people who had been taught for centuries that God loved one group and merely tolerated the other. When these enemies suddenly become family, sharing meals and worship and raising each other’s children, that’s not just nice sociology. That’s supernatural evidence that heaven and earth are overlapping.

The Identity Revolution

But Paul doesn’t just tell us how to live differently – he reveals that we literally ARE different. We’ve been “raised up with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places” right now, not someday. As “holy ones,” we share the same cosmic status as angelic beings, making our local church gatherings into classrooms where heavenly powers observe God’s wisdom in action.

This isn’t escapist spirituality but apocalyptic perspective – learning to live from our true heavenly identity while engaging earthly realities with resurrection power. Your ordinary Tuesday morning isn’t secular life punctuated by spiritual moments. It’s participation in the greatest artwork God has ever created: the demonstration that heaven and earth can be one.

Ready to read Ephesians with fresh eyes? Watch the full breakdown of Paul’s cosmic vision and discover why this letter will completely rewire how you see reality itself.

You’ve Been Reading Paul’s Letters WRONG Your Entire Life

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

How to Read Paul’s Letters the Way He Intended

Most Christians have never actually read a Paul letter the way the apostle intended. We treat his correspondence like collections of inspirational quotes, grabbing verses here and there for encouragement or life principles. But Paul’s letters are so much more than that.

Paul wrote actual mail – real correspondence to specific communities facing specific crises. When he penned his letter to the Romans, he wasn’t creating a systematic theology textbook. He was addressing ethnic divisions between Jewish and Gentile believers in house churches throughout Rome. When he wrote to the Corinthians, he was responding to reports about sexual immorality, church divisions, and theological confusion.

These letters were collaborative efforts involving Paul’s missionary team and professional scribes. They were exceptionally long (Romans contains 7,100 words compared to the typical ancient letter’s 87 words), carefully crafted, and designed to be read aloud to entire communities in one sitting.

To truly understand Paul’s letters, we need four layers of context: the biblical narrative (Paul’s role in God’s cosmic mission), the cultural context (the Roman Empire’s honor-shame society), the situational context (the specific crises requiring “mirror reading”), and the literary context (following Paul’s logical flow of thought).

I Haven’t Posted Because I’ve Been Spiritually Dry (Here’s What Changed)

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When Ministry Becomes Work and Scripture Becomes a Task: Rediscovering Ephesians in a Season of Overwhelm

I haven’t posted a YouTube video in months, and I owe you an explanation.

It’s not that I stopped loving theology or lost my passion for helping people live in light of eternity. It’s that somewhere between sales quotas and bedtime stories, between work deadlines and ministry calling, I lost the very thing that’s supposed to fuel everything else: my connection to Scripture as a source of life rather than content to produce.

The Reality of Spiritual Dryness

Let me be honest about what spiritual dryness looks like when you’re trying to balance a demanding career with family and ministry responsibilities. It’s not always about sin. Sometimes it’s about season. Sometimes it’s about the very real limitations of human energy in a world that demands everything from us all at once.

When I’m operating at maximum capacity professionally—managing calls, hitting numbers, solving problems—my brain is depleted by evening. Opening my Bible starts feeling like another task to accomplish rather than an invitation into relationship with God. Work pressure can literally drain your spiritual tank, leaving you trying to squeeze fruit from an empty root system.

Even worse, I found myself reading Scripture the way I read work emails: scanning for actionable items, looking for content I could use, missing the fact that God’s Word isn’t just information to process but an invitation into transformation.

Then came the guilt cycle. Not posting because I didn’t feel “spiritual enough.” Feeling like a fraud for teaching about things I wasn’t currently experiencing. Watching other creators produce fresh content while wondering what was wrong with me.

Why Ephesians Broke Through

Two weeks ago, sitting exhausted in my home office, I opened my Bible app—not for content creation but because I was desperate. I opened to Ephesians, and I remembered why this letter first changed my life.

Paul’s vision of Heaven-Earth unity speaks directly to the compartmentalized overwhelm we experience in modern life. When he writes about God’s plan “to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth,” he’s not talking about evacuation from earth to heaven. He’s talking about heaven coming to earth. He’s talking about integration, not separation.

This means work isn’t separate from worship. Parenting isn’t separate from discipleship. Sales calls aren’t separate from spiritual formation. Everything is part of the same integrated reality where heaven is breaking into earth.

The cosmic scope helps put daily struggles in perspective. Paul wrote this letter from prison—not from a place of having it all figured out, but from real constraint and difficulty. Yet he could see the bigger picture, and that vision transformed how he understood his circumstances.

A New Approach: Scripture-Led Community

Instead of disappearing for months and returning with a perfectly planned series, I want to try something different. We’re going to walk through Ephesians together, letting Paul’s vision of cosmic unity reshape how we see everything from marriage to Monday mornings.

I’m done manufacturing content ideas based on algorithms or controversies. Instead, we’re going to let Scripture set the agenda, working through Ephesians verse by verse and trusting that God’s Word is inherently relevant to our lives.

This isn’t going to be me teaching you about ancient texts from a distance. This is going to be us sitting together in the mess of modern life, letting Scripture speak to the overwhelm and beauty we’re all navigating.

If you’re in a season where life feels fragmented—where work is work and family is family and spiritual life is spiritual life and none of it seems connected—this series is for you. If you’re wondering how following Jesus transforms not just your eternal destiny but your daily decisions, let’s figure it out together.

Maybe You’re Not Leaving Church—Maybe You’re Finding It

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Before You Leave Church, Ask Jesus This One Question

If you’ve felt the growing tension between your love for Jesus and your experience of institutional church—you’re not alone. And you’re not crazy.

In this week’s video, I explore why so many devoted followers are quietly burning out inside traditional church structures, and how the ache we feel might not be rebellion… but revelation.

The statistics are staggering: thousands of people leave church buildings every day. But what if many of them aren’t walking away from Jesus? What if they’re walking toward a deeper understanding of what He’s building?

Drawing from Scripture and Wayne Jacobsen’s powerful book “Finding Church,” this message reveals the scandalous simplicity of what Jesus actually described as church. It’s not about buildings, budgets, or professional clergy. It’s about believers learning to follow Him together in authentic, transformative community.

The question that changes everything: “Where are You building Your church in my life, and how can I participate in what You’re doing?”

That conversation where someone prayed with you? That’s church. That dinner where Christian friends shared life together? That’s church. Those everyday moments of authentic connection with believers? You might already be experiencing the church you’ve been looking for.

Whether you stay in your current church setting or step into something new, this video will help you see with fresh eyes what Jesus has been building all along.

Our OBSESSION with Celebrity Pastors is Killing Us – The One Ring Problem

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The One Ring of Power: Why Celebrity Pastor Culture Contradicts Jesus’ Vision

Another pastor falls. Another ministry crumbles. Another community left in pieces.

The pattern has become so predictable that we’re almost numb to it. Power, recognition, authority… they corrupt. Every. Single. Time.

As I reflected on the recent scandals involving prominent Christian leaders, I kept returning to a powerful scene from The Lord of the Rings. When Frodo offers the One Ring to Gandalf, the wise wizard recoils in horror:

“Don’t tempt me, Frodo! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe. Understand, I would use this Ring from a desire to do good… but through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.”

This scene perfectly captures what’s happening in the church today. The problem isn’t just that some leaders are corrupt. The problem is that power itself corrupts even the best of us.

Jesus Explicitly Warned Against Power Structures

In Mark 10:42-45, Jesus couldn’t have been clearer about how leadership should work among his followers. When James and John sought positions of power, Jesus gathered the disciples and said:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”

“Not so with you” is about as direct as it gets. The hierarchical, top-down power structures that define worldly organizations should have no place among the followers of Jesus.

And yet, what have we built? Entire systems where individual men wield enormous influence, minimal accountability, and unquestioned authority over thousands or even millions of Christians—the exact model Jesus explicitly rejected.

The Boromir Complex

This is where what I call “the Boromir Complex” comes in. Remember Boromir from The Lord of the Rings? The noble warrior who wanted to use the Ring’s power against Sauron?

“What if the Ring should go to Gondor? Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy. Let us use it against him!”

His intentions were good. His homeland was suffering. He wanted to protect his people. Who could blame him?

But that’s precisely the trap. Power doesn’t care about your intentions. The Ring corrupts everyone—even those who want to use it for good. Maybe especially those who want to use it for good, because their righteousness blinds them to their own corruption.

We see this in church leadership constantly. The pastor who starts taking a bigger salary because “the worker deserves his wages.” The leader who surrounds himself with yes-men because he “needs a supportive team.” The celebrity who blocks criticism because “they’re just haters distracting from the mission.”

Step by step, power works its magic. The Ring slips on, and the transformation begins.

Why We Keep Creating These Systems

Human psychology contains a deep attraction toward strong, charismatic leaders. We yearn for someone to tell us what to do, simplify complex spiritual realities, and serve as the hero so we can remain comfortable spectators.

Social media has transformed our tendency toward hero-worship into an industrial-strength celebrity-making machine. The platforms reward provocative statements, polished presentations, and personality-driven approaches over depth and substance.

Perhaps most alarming: social media generates para-social relationships—one-sided connections where followers develop feelings of intimacy with leaders they’ve never actually met. These virtual relationships isolate celebrity pastors from genuine accountability while simultaneously granting them unprecedented influence.

The New Creation Alternative

Jesus never leaves us with criticism alone. His warnings against worldly power structures come paired with a revolutionary alternative—a complete reimagining of how human communities can function.

In John 13, Jesus—knowing His divine authority—removes His outer clothing, wraps a towel around His waist, and washes His disciples’ feet. This completely redefines what leadership means. Authority flows from service rather than commanding service.

The early church took Jesus’ servant leadership model and developed a radically different community structure than what we see today. Leadership existed, but authority flowed through relationships, not positions. Gifts determined function. Authority remained distributed. Mutual accountability prevailed.

Perhaps most revolutionary is the principle of mutual submission found in Ephesians 5:21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” In God’s Kingdom, authority becomes reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Every member submits to every other member according to gifting and function.

Moving Forward

What might a post-celebrity church look like practically?

It might mean gathering in homes where everyone contributes according to their gifts, rather than attending performance-centered services.

It might mean supporting teachers and leaders who deliberately avoid the trappings of celebrity—who refuse book deals, speaking tours, and personal branding opportunities that would elevate them above the community.

It might mean forming communities where leadership rotates, where multiple voices regularly teach and guide, where no single personality becomes the focal point.

Most importantly, it means taking Jesus at His word when He said, “Not so with you.” The patterns of authority in God’s Kingdom must fundamentally differ from the world’s power structures.

In Tolkien’s story, the Ring could not be wielded—even for good. The only solution was destroying it in the fires of Mount Doom. Similarly, our current model of celebrity Christian leadership cannot be reformed—it must be replaced with communities built on Jesus’ revolutionary vision.

This path demands courage. But the alternative costs too much. We’ve seen the devastation caused by fallen leaders, the disillusionment of those who trusted them, the damage to Christ’s reputation in the world.

May we have the courage of Gandalf to recognize power’s corruption, the wisdom to create communities resistant to its allure, and the faithfulness to follow Jesus’ upside-down Kingdom where the greatest leaders serve, and no one lords it over another.

Because ultimately, we await only one celebrity: Christ Himself. Until He returns to complete what He started, we gather as equals around His table—not as audiences before stages. In that humble gathering, we glimpse the New Creation community He’s forming even now.

The PERFECT Millennial View Doesn’t Exist… But Ruslan KD Just Nailed It

Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Ruslan KD Nailed It: How Your End Times View Shapes Everything Else

When it comes to eschatology (the study of end times), many Christians get lost in debates about timelines, raptures, and tribulations. But what if we’re missing the forest for the trees?

Recently, I watched a video from Christian YouTuber Ruslan KD that offered one of the clearest, most practical explanations of millennial views I’ve encountered. Using pop culture references to The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix, Ruslan brilliantly captured not just the theological distinctions, but the practical implications of how we view the end times.

The Walking Dead, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix

In Ruslan’s framework:

Premillennialism is like The Walking Dead – the world is falling apart, systems are collapsing, and Christians are essentially waiting for rescue from an increasingly hostile environment.
Postmillennialism resembles Lord of the Rings – ordinary people play their part pushing back darkness, gradually transforming the world before Christ returns.
Amillennialism parallels The Matrix – we’re engaged in an invisible war happening beneath the surface, with Christ already reigning from heaven while believers serve as his “resistance force” on earth.

These analogies aren’t just clever—they highlight how our eschatological views fundamentally shape our approach to everything from politics to personal investment decisions.

Beyond the Millennium Debate

While I might nuance some points differently (I consider myself a partial preterist amillennialist), Ruslan’s central insight is spot-on: Too many Christians obsess over end-times speculation while missing Jesus’s teachings about what we should be doing right now.

In Matthew 24-25, Jesus moves seamlessly from talking about his return to telling parables about stewardship and caring for “the least of these.” The point isn’t just to be ready for Christ’s return—it’s to be faithful with what He’s entrusted to us in the meantime.

The New Creation Hope

The ultimate Christian hope isn’t “going to heaven when you die” while God destroys the earth. Rather, Scripture points to the complete renewal of heaven and earth—a physical resurrection into a restored creation where we’ll continue to work, create, and flourish in God’s presence forever.

This vision of eternity should transform how we view our present work, relationships, and cultural engagement. We’re not polishing brass on a sinking ship—we’re practicing for our eternal vocation as co-rulers with Christ in his renewed creation.

Whether you align with premillennialism, postmillennialism, or amillennialism, the practical imperative remains: we are called to “occupy until He comes” (Luke 19:13), using our time, talents, and treasures to advance God’s kingdom in every sphere of life.

As Ruslan aptly points out, ambition isn’t the enemy—it’s the answer, when directed toward God’s glory and the flourishing of His creation.

Why I’m Not PART OF ANY Denomination (and You Shouldn’t Be Either)

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Biblical Truth About the Church That Destroys Denominational Thinking

For centuries, Christians have argued about which denomination represents the “true church.” Catholics claim apostolic succession from Peter. Orthodox claim to maintain the authentic ancient tradition. Protestants claim to have reformed corrupt practices and returned to biblical truth.

But what if all of them are missing what Scripture actually means by “church” in the first place?

The Fundamental Misunderstanding

The Greek word “ekklesia” that we translate as “church” in our English Bibles simply means “assembly” or “gathering.” In ancient Greek society, it referred to an assembly of citizens called together for a purpose. When the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) was written, it used “ekklesia” to translate the Hebrew “qahal,” which referred to the assembly of God’s covenant people.

This means Jesus wasn’t introducing a new concept when He talked about building His “ekklesia” in Matthew 16:18. He was saying He would gather His covenant people, just as God had always had a covenant people throughout biblical history.

The Church is People, Not an Institution

When we read the New Testament, we don’t see people joining “the Catholic Church” or “the Orthodox Church.” We see people putting their faith in Jesus and becoming part of the community of believers. There’s no headquarters, no central administration, no denominational structure.

Jesus explicitly rejected hierarchical authority structures when He said, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:42-43).

Jesus’s Revolutionary View of Authority

Jesus went further in Matthew 23:8-10, saying, “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.”

He rejected the very titles and positions that we still see in churches today. When He established leadership in His ekklesia, it was based on service, not position—”whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:43).

The Liberating Truth of Biblical Ekklesia

Understanding the church as God’s people rather than an institution is incredibly liberating:

God’s people can be found anywhere. Wherever believers gather in Jesus’s name, that’s church happening (Matthew 18:20).
This view promotes true unity. When we unify around Jesus and love rather than precise doctrinal statements, we experience the unity Jesus prayed for in John 17.
It frees us from peripheral concerns. Arguments about music styles, dress codes, and building aesthetics are revealed as preferences, not principles.

The biblical view of ekklesia invites us to see beyond denominational boundaries and recognize that all who belong to Christ are part of one body—His church. This doesn’t mean abandoning all structure or gathering, but it does mean holding our institutional affiliations loosely while embracing our identity as part of God’s universal family.

In the New Creation, we won’t be divided into denominations. We’ll all be together, as one people, under one Lord. Why not start practicing that reality now?

Why We Need to Return to Home Churches | with Matt Dabbs

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Why House Churches Might Be the Future of Christianity

In my recent conversation with Matt from Revolution of the Ordinaries, we explored a question that’s been stirring in my heart for years: Is our modern approach to “church” actually what we see in Scripture?

Matt’s journey from traditional ministry to house church planting reveals a profound shift happening across Christianity. After serving in institutional churches for years, he found himself increasingly drawn to the discipleship-focused, reproducible model we see Jesus establishing. When COVID hit, what started as backyard gatherings with neighbors evolved into a thriving network of home churches.

What struck me most was how house churches naturally solve problems that institutional settings often struggle with:

Children experience real discipleship. Rather than being separated and entertained, children in house churches witness adults praying for healing, sharing testimonies, and living out authentic faith. Matt shared a beautiful story of a 9-year-old boy who, after three years in this environment, demonstrated remarkable spiritual maturity by initiating prayer for his teacher’s family.

Every believer’s gifts are activated. In traditional settings, the professional clergy do 90% of the ministry while most members remain passive. House churches create space for everyone to exercise their spiritual gifts, fulfilling the Ephesians 4 vision of the whole body growing into maturity.

Accountability happens naturally. When you share teaching responsibilities in a living room, anyone can ask questions or offer perspective. The barriers between “clergy” and “congregation” dissolve, allowing for mutual discipleship.

The focus shifts from programs to people. Without buildings to maintain or Sunday services to produce, house churches can invest their energy in making disciples who make disciples – the core mission Jesus gave us.

To be clear, this isn’t about condemning traditional churches or the sincere believers who serve in them. God works through many expressions of His church. But Matt’s testimony challenges us to honestly evaluate whether our current practices are effectively making disciples who make disciples.

As Matt emphasized, the key is prayer: “Pray about everything.” When we truly listen for God’s direction and move where He’s moving, He will guide our steps, whether that’s in a traditional congregation or a living room gathering.

What are your thoughts? Have you experienced both traditional and simple church expressions? I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments below!

“Church Without Buildings, Pastors, or Worship Services? (First Century Reality)”

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The Church We Never Knew: Rediscovering the Biblical Vision for Christian Gatherings

When most of us think about “church,” we envision a building with pews, a pulpit, and perhaps a steeple. We think of worship services, sermon-centered gatherings, and a relatively passive experience where professional clergy lead while congregants observe. But what if almost everything we associate with “church” today is missing from the New Testament?

After nearly 50 years of studying this topic, Dr. Tom Wadsworth has come to a startling conclusion: our modern understanding of church bears little resemblance to what the earliest Christians practiced. This isn’t just an academic observation—it’s a discovery that could transform how we experience Christian community.

The Biblical Evidence Is Clear

The disconnect began for Dr. Wadsworth while preaching through 1 Corinthians 14—the longest chapter in the Bible about Christian gatherings. He noticed something striking: the word “worship” is conspicuously absent. Instead, a different word appears seven times: “oikodome,” meaning “edification” or “building up.”

“Paul says everything you do should be done for edification,” Dr. Wadsworth explains. “So there’s just no escaping that.”

This observation led to a comprehensive study of how the New Testament describes Christian gatherings:

They met in homes, not sacred buildings. References to “the church that meets in their house” appear repeatedly (Romans 16:5, 1 Corinthians 16:19, Colossians 4:15).
Gatherings emphasized mutual participation. The phrase “one another” (Greek: “allelon”) appears approximately 100 times in the New Testament, describing activities like encouraging one another, teaching one another, and bearing one another’s burdens.
The Lord’s Supper was an actual meal. Rather than a symbolic ritual with tiny crackers and grape juice, believers shared a genuine meal together (1 Corinthians 11).
Leadership was relational, not hierarchical. While elders provided guidance, their role was to serve and equip others, not to dominate (1 Peter 5:1-3).
The Greek words for “worship” are never used to describe Christian gatherings. The five Greek words translated as “worship” in the New Testament refer to other contexts, not the activities of Christians when they gathered.

How Did We Get Here?

If the biblical model is so different from our modern practice, how did we end up where we are today?

The shift began around the fourth century when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Pagan temple architecture and formal rituals began influencing Christian gatherings. The distinction between clergy and laity hardened. What had been a participatory, home-centered movement became an institution with sacred buildings, professional leaders, and passive congregants.

“We’ve rebuilt Judaism all over again,” Dr. Wadsworth notes. “Let’s get back to one-anothering that has to take place in a small group.”

What This Means For Us Today

This biblical understanding doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning all church buildings or formal gatherings. But it does invite us to reconsider what’s essential:

Small groups are not optional extras—they’re where the biblical model of church primarily happens. “If you really want to grow, if you really want to have some sort of serious, meaningful relationship with Jesus as well as with one another, you’ve got to get in a small group somewhere,” Dr. Wadsworth advises.
Participation matters more than performance. When we gather, everyone should have the opportunity to contribute, not just observe.
Relationships are the context for spiritual growth. The New Testament envisions believers deeply involved in one another’s lives, not just meeting for an hour on Sunday.
The purpose is edification, not just expression. While praising God is appropriate, the primary biblical purpose for gathering is to build one another up.

Moving Forward

This understanding liberates us. Christian gatherings aren’t about buildings, programs, or performances—they’re about people growing together in Christ. This can happen in traditional church settings if small, interactive groups are emphasized. It can happen in house churches. It can even happen in informal gatherings of believers who come together intentionally to build one another up.

The question isn’t “where do you go to church?” but “how are you being the church with others?” As Dr. Wadsworth says, “The point of all those things, again, is for the benefit of the body to be talking to one another. The one-anothering there is still applying to this.”

By recovering this biblical vision, we might discover the vibrant, transformative community that changed the ancient world—and still has the power to change ours.

You’ll Never See Ministry the Same Way Again | A Conversation with Steve Gregg

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“The Church Is the People”: My Life-Changing Conversation with Steve Gregg

When I first discovered Steve Gregg’s biblical teaching years ago, it was like finding water in a desert. Here was someone who approached Scripture with both intellectual rigor and humble openness – something sadly rare in Christian teaching. Last week, I was blessed to finally speak with Steve directly in what became one of the most affirming, encouraging conversations of my ministry journey. For those unfamiliar with his work, Steve Gregg has been faithfully teaching Scripture for over 50 years. He hosts The Narrow Path radio program, has taught verse-by-verse through the entire Bible multiple times, and has written several books examining different theological viewpoints.

A Different Approach to Ministry

What makes Steve’s ministry distinctive isn’t just his content but his approach.

For his entire career, he has never:

Charged for his teaching or ministry
Accepted a regular salary from any organization
Compromised his biblical understanding to fit denominational requirements
Claimed authority based on position rather than faithful biblical teaching

This approach has freed him to follow Scripture wherever it leads, even when it meant changing long-held views or challenging popular interpretations. Steve shared how he gradually moved from dispensationalism to amillennialism simply by studying Scripture more deeply – not because any institution required it.

The People Are the Church

Perhaps the most powerful part of our conversation centered on ecclesiology – what the Bible teaches about church. Steve articulated what I’ve felt for years but struggled to express: **The church is not an institution but the people themselves.**

The New Testament never portrays church as:

A building – A 501(c)3 organization
A hierarchical structure with offices
A Sunday event you attend Instead, it’s a family of believers walking together, with leadership emerging organically through service and example – not through titles or positions.

As Steve explained, “Jesus didn’t have an institutional idea of the body of Christ. He had an organic family idea.” This perspective transforms how we understand leadership. Biblical leaders don’t exercise authority over others but serve from among them. They’re recognized by their character and service, not by filling an “office” that must be staffed.

A Different Eschatology

Steve and I also discussed how our eternal future isn’t about “going to heaven” but about resurrection and New Creation. God’s plan isn’t to destroy earth and take us to heaven, but to renew the entire cosmos and unite heaven and earth once again. This understanding transforms everything about the Christian life. We’re not waiting to escape earth but preparing for its renewal. Our work, relationships, and creative endeavors have eternal significance because they’re part of cultivating the creation God will ultimately restore.

Why This Matters

Why do these perspectives matter? Because they change how we understand:

1. Our identity – We’re citizens of God’s Kingdom now, not just waiting to “go to heaven”

Our purpose – We’re called to represent God’s rule and cultivate His creation
Our relationships – We’re family members serving one another, not institutional members
Our ministry – We serve freely because we’ve freely received

I’m deeply grateful for Steve’s faithful example and teaching. If you want to explore his work, visit [TheNarrowPath.com](https://www.thenarrowpath.com) or check out Matthew713.com and OpenTheo.org where volunteers have organized his teachings by topic.

Have you experienced institutional Christianity that seems disconnected from the New Testament’s picture of church? How has your understanding of church and God’s future plans shaped your faith journey? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This Will Change How You See God…10 Biblical Proofs God CHANGES HIS MIND

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

10 Biblical Proofs That God Changes His Mind: The Revolutionary Perspective of Open Theism

For most of my Christian life, I was taught that God knows everything that will ever happen, has predetermined all events, and never changes His plans. This view, deeply influenced by Greek philosophical concepts like divine immutability and impassibility, became so ingrained in my theological thinking that I read right past clear biblical statements that suggest a different picture.

But what happens when we take the Bible at face value? What if I told you Scripture consistently portrays a God who genuinely responds to prayer, adapts His plans based on human choices, and enters into authentic relationship with us?

The Biblical Evidence Is Overwhelming

When we look at Scripture without philosophical filters, we discover a God who is far more dynamic, responsive, and relational than classical theology often admits.

Consider Exodus 32, where Moses intercedes for Israel after the golden calf incident. God declares His intention to destroy the people, but Moses pleads their case. The result? Verse 14 states plainly: “And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.” The Hebrew word here (nacham) literally means to change one’s mind or feel regret.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Throughout Scripture, we find God:

Expressing regret over creating humanity (Genesis 6:6)
Changing His declared intentions when people repent (Jonah 3:10)
Testing Abraham to “know” his heart (Genesis 22:12)
Making conditional promises dependent on human response (Jeremiah 18:7-10)
Responding to prayer by altering His course of action (Hezekiah’s healing in 2 Kings 20)

These passages aren’t anomalies or anthropomorphisms—they represent a consistent biblical pattern. The God of Scripture is genuinely responsive, emotionally engaged, and authentically relational.

What Is Open Theism?

Open Theism is a theological perspective that takes these biblical portrayals at face value. It affirms that:

God is sovereign, but His sovereignty doesn’t require exhaustive control of every detail
God knows everything that can be known, including all past and present realities and all possibilities
The future is partly open, containing genuine possibilities rather than being entirely predetermined
God is authentically relational, experiencing genuine emotions and responding to human actions
Prayer is genuinely effective, potentially influencing God’s actions rather than just changing us

Contrary to some criticisms, Open Theism doesn’t diminish God’s greatness. In fact, it magnifies it. Which displays more power and wisdom: a God who can only execute one predetermined plan, or a God so resourceful that He can accomplish His purposes through countless possible paths, adapting to human choices while still achieving His ultimate aims?

How Open Theism Transforms Our Faith

When we embrace the biblical vision of an open, responsive God, virtually every aspect of our spiritual lives is transformed:

Prayer Becomes Genuinely Meaningful

If you believe everything is predetermined, prayer becomes somewhat puzzling. Why pray if God has already decided exactly what will happen?

But if God is genuinely responsive, prayer becomes a true dialogue where we can influence God’s actions. Not because God is weak or indecisive, but because He has designed the world to incorporate our input. This aligns perfectly with biblical examples like Abraham’s intercession for Sodom, Moses’ plea for Israel, and James’ assertion that “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much.”

Suffering Becomes More Comprehensible

In deterministic theology, everything that happens—every tragedy, every injustice—must somehow be part of God’s perfect, unchangeable plan. This creates enormous theological problems.

Open Theism offers a more nuanced perspective. Not everything that happens is God’s perfect will. Some events result from human free choice, others from the operations of a world with natural laws. God permits these things as part of creating a world with genuine freedom, but He works continuously to bring good out of evil and healing out of suffering.

Our Choices Take on Cosmic Significance

If everything is predetermined, our choices don’t ultimately matter. We’re essentially acting out a script.

But if the future is partly open and shaped by our choices, then what we do truly matters. Our decisions, our obedience, our ministries—these things genuinely influence the unfolding of God’s purposes in the world.

This gives us a profound sense of purpose and responsibility. We’re not just going through the motions of a predetermined plan; we’re actively contributing to the kingdom of God.

Taking God at His Word

Perhaps most importantly, Open Theism helps us recover the dynamic, living God of the Bible—not an abstract philosophical concept, but YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who enters into covenant, who listens to our prayers, who grieves over our sin, who rejoices in our faithfulness, and who is working tirelessly to bring about the redemption and restoration of all things.

This isn’t just academically interesting—it’s life-changing. When we embrace the biblical portrait of an open, responsive God, we discover a relationship that’s far more vibrant, authentic, and transformative than we ever imagined possible.

I explore these concepts in detail in my latest video, where I break down 10 revolutionary ideas from Open Theism that are thoroughly grounded in Scripture. I address common questions and objections and explain how this understanding can transform your prayer life, your approach to suffering, and your sense of purpose as God’s partner.

Have you experienced God changing course in response to your prayers? How might this understanding of God’s nature transform your spiritual life? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

I Stopped Chasing Big Moments and Found Joy in the Small Ones | A conversation with Justin Baldwin

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Finding the Sacred in the Ordinary: Why Christians Miss God’s Daily Gifts

How much joy are we missing as Christians by simply not being grateful?

This question hit me hard during my recent conversation with worship leader Justin Baldwin about his new song “The Sacred and the Ordinary.” The more we talked, the more I realized how often we pass by God’s blessings without even noticing them.

Think about it: God bathes us in countless gifts every day – a sip of morning coffee, laughter with a friend, the comfort of a bed at night – yet we often live in a perpetual state of ingratitude. We miss the sacred moments hidden within ordinary experiences.

The Sacred/Secular Divide Robs Us of Joy

One of the most damaging mindsets in modern Christianity is what theologians call the “sacred/secular divide” – the notion that church, Bible study, and prayer are “spiritual” activities, while work, leisure, and daily routines are merely “secular.”

This division isn’t biblical. Scripture presents a unified view where God permeates all aspects of life. When we compartmentalize our existence into sacred and secular categories, we rob ourselves of experiencing God’s presence in countless everyday moments.

Justin shared how this realization transformed his perspective: “It was kind of like a paradigm shift for me… I used to think, ‘I can’t wait to get out of this earth,’ but it was such a slow realization. I’m like, that doesn’t make sense.”

New Creation Changes Everything

Understanding the biblical vision of New Creation – that God plans to restore and renew this world rather than destroy it – changes how we experience today. If my coffee cup, friendships, and daily work have continuity with the eternal kingdom, they take on profound significance now.

As N.T. Wright puts it, “Despite the tendency of some parts of the emerging church to marginalize space, time and matter… I remain convinced that the way forward is to rediscover a true eschatology.”

If we believe that God will one day unite heaven and earth, then the things we do now – creating beauty, showing kindness, cultivating relationships – are acts of resistance against chaos, previews of the kingdom to come.

Finding Gratitude in Everyday Life

Justin’s song beautifully captures this theology in lyrics like “I’m embracing tiny pleasures, like the setting of the sun, the laughter of a friend and my spouse’s tender touch.”

How might our lives change if we intentionally cultivated gratitude for the ordinary? What if we asked questions like:

What would this moment be like if I didn’t have sight?
What would this moment be like if I didn’t have a home?
What’s something in this room I’ve never noticed before?

These simple reflections can transform our experience, breaking us out of the numbness that characterizes so much of modern life.

A Challenge: Notice What You’ve Been Missing

I want to challenge you to spend one day intentionally practicing gratitude for ordinary things that you normally overlook. Write them down. Thank God specifically for them.

This isn’t just a nice spiritual exercise – it’s a radical act of resistance against the powers that would have us living distracted, ungrateful lives. It’s a declaration that the kingdom of God is breaking into our world here and now.

As Justin’s song reminds us: “The sacred and the ordinary, the life that’s in between, the eternal and the temporary, the things others don’t see.”

Don’t miss the miracles hiding in plain sight today.

On TESTS, Trials, and Trolley Problems • Steve Gregg (Part 4/4)

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Exploring God’s Knowledge, Open Theism, and Divine Tests with Steve Gregg

In my recent video, I delved into an intriguing theological discourse centered around the challenging notions of God’s foreknowledge, open theism, and divine tests. In this particular episode, I took the time to engage with Steve Gregg’s insightful perspectives, as well as some interesting points from Braxton Hunter on the Trinity Radio show. Our discussion unraveled over various biblical texts and complex theological questions.

Understanding the Nature of Divine Knowledge

We began this exploration by asking pivotal questions: Does God know every future free choice, or are there instances where even God is surprised by human actions? This inquiry paved the way for an exploration of the concepts of open and closed futures. Steve Gregg’s approach to this dialogue is both respectful and intellectually stimulating, offering a fresh outlook on age-old theological debates.

Steve’s views, particularly on prophetic visions within the Bible, provide a backdrop against which one can contemplate the possibility of open theism. His reflections on God’s interactions with human decisions brought forward some marvelously thought-provoking ideas concerning divine tests and human hearts.

Exploring the Depth of Open Theism

Steve and I tackled pertinent biblical examples, discussing passages that raise questions about God’s foreknowledge. His insights into the book of Jeremiah and the testing of Abraham offered a nuanced look at how divine knowledge and human free will might interplay. I admire how Steve handled these complex topics without definitive biases but rather through an evidentialist perspective, which allows for individual navigation through these intricate discussions.

Divine Tests: More Than Mere Trials

A significant portion of our discourse revolved around the idea of life as a divine test. Steve offered a unique perspective, suggesting that God’s tests are meant to reveal what’s in our hearts. Despite the trials we might face, the goal remains consistent: discovering and nurturing our loyalty to God. This idea aligns beautifully with the theme that reality is a test to trust not in our understanding, but in the wisdom and goodness of God.

Molinism and the Future Unknown

The conversation also steered towards Molinism and its implications. Tim’s critique of this theological perspective unraveled the complexity of divine providence and the concept of “future history.” It was enlightening to hear Steve Gregg’s reflections on this subject, and his approach served to create a space for sincere and open theological reflection.

A Call to Curiosity and Reflection

Throughout the video, I appreciated Steve Gregg’s stance on theological uncertainty. His willingness to entertain questioning and his respect for differing viewpoints encourage us not to shy away from theological exploration. We can approach our faith journey with humility and curiosity, recognizing the vastness and complexity of divine knowledge and human understanding.

In wrapping up this engaging discussion, I extend a heartfelt invitation to watch the video on YouTube. Steve Gregg’s perspectives, along with my responses and reflections, create a rich conversation that speaks to those keen on exploring theology beyond binary thinking. It’s a discussion that reminds us of the beauty found in seeking understanding and the depth found in the wisdom and power of God.

Thank you all for your continued support and engagement. I hope this conversation enriches your faith journey as much as it has mine.

SHOCK & REGRET — is God upset by what He KNEW would happen?

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Reflecting on Steve Gregg’s Theological Insights: A Journey Through Open Theism and God’s Nature

In my latest video, I dove deep into a month-old reaction to a fascinating talk by Steve Gregg, exploring the complexities of open theism and the nature of God. As I embarked on this journey, I tackled questions about God’s regret, shock, and true feelings as depicted in scripture—concepts that often spark lively debate among theologians and believers alike.

Understanding God’s Regret and Anticipation

One of the key themes I explored was the idea of God’s regret as expressed in various biblical passages. We often hear about moments when God appeared to regret actions or express sorrow over events, such as in Genesis 6:6. I delved into these scriptures, questioning whether God’s regret implies a lack of knowledge about future events or if it’s merely an anthropomorphic expression—a way to relate to us on human terms.

The story of Jonah was particularly intriguing. I suggested that Jonah’s prophecy to Nineveh was delivered with an ambiguity that left room for revolution rather than imminent destruction. This perspective on Jonah’s message opens the door to viewing the story as a satire, playing with expectations both for Jonah and for God’s message.

The Expectation versus Reality in Theology

As I scrutinized the texts, I posed challenging queries: How can an infinite, omniscient God experience unmet expectations or surprise? Analyses of passages like Isaiah 5:3-7 led me to consider how God’s expectations—expressed in hopeful anticipation—are often viewed through a human lens, leading to interpretations of disappointment or surprise.

In considering scriptures that hint at God being caught off guard, I reflected on whether these passages genuinely depict God’s surprise or have been framed for human comprehension. For instance, the narrative of Isaiah’s vineyard and Jeremiah’s relationship metaphor urged me to ponder whether they reveal deeper truths about God’s relational dynamics with humanity.

A Call for Theological Discourse

Throughout the video, I aimed to foster dialogue on these theological issues while recognizing Steve Gregg’s extensive knowledge and thoughtful discussion. Despite differences, these debates enrich our understanding of God and scripture, inviting us to consider our preconceptions and the broader implications for our faith.

I also touched on recent interactions within the Christian community, stressing the importance of love, respect, and unity among believers. Theological differences shouldn’t erode the profound love and grace we extend to each other as followers of Christ.

Join the Conversation

I invite you to watch my full reaction on YouTube, where I further dissect these intricate themes and share my perspectives. It’s a deep dive into scriptural analysis that encourages reflection on how we view God’s nature and the narratives that shape our spiritual beliefs.

Let’s continue this journey together, grappling with the complexities of faith while embracing the love and unity that define us. Your thoughts and insights are invaluable as we navigate these profound theological discussions. Watch the video, engage in the conversation, and let’s explore these themes with grace and openness. Thank you for your patience, and I look forward to seeing where our discussions will lead. God bless you.

Steve Gregg DOESN’T think God is a liar… right?

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Wrestling with Theology: Understanding God’s Foreknowledge and Human Interaction

In my ongoing series of discussions about theology, particularly in the context of open theism, I take yet another deep dive into the complex theological explorations related to Steve Gregg’s response to open theist proof texts. This blog post is a written companion to my latest video, which you can watch on YouTube for a more dynamic discussion.

Introduction: The Challenges of Theological Debates

I embarked on the second round of exploring Steve Gregg’s perspectives, particularly in relation to passages that open theists frequently discuss. Engaging intellectually with someone as renowned as Steve Gregg certainly brings its share of challenges and discomforts, yet it’s a necessary endeavor for me. I am driven to lovingly critique and debate with those I hold in high regard, like Steve Gregg, to advance my understanding and perhaps even influence their perspectives.

Re-examining Scriptural Interpretations

Throughout the video, I revisit several biblical episodes, prominently featuring the story of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20. This passage, among others, raises intriguing questions regarding God’s foreknowledge and his interactions with humanity. For example, does God truly change His intentions in response to human actions, as seen in the story of Hezekiah’s illness and extended life?

I argue that these narratives, which portray God altering the course of events based on human prayer or repentance, suggest moments of divine flexibility rather than a strict adherence to an eternally fixed plan. This viewpoint challenges the traditional understanding of God’s exhaustive foreknowledge, painting a picture of a more interactive relationship between the divine and humanity.

God’s Policy and Human Response

Exploring various scriptures, I discuss how these accounts could potentially reflect God’s standard practice or policy of dealing with humanity, emphasizing that He operates within the framework of human free will and choices. This highlights an image of a God who is responsive to sincere human appeals and who may adjust His original declarations based on new circumstances or the repentance of people.

The Anthropomorphism Argument

A significant portion of the debate centers around the concept of anthropomorphism—language that attributes human characteristics to God. Steve Gregg posits that many biblical descriptions of God are figurative, designed to make divine actions comprehensible to the human mind. I explore whether this argument inadvertently diminishes the sincerity or honesty of God’s interactions as depicted in Scripture, questioning whether these portrayals mask a deeper level of predetermined divine action.

Conclusion: Continuing the Dialogue

In the video, I admit that these discussions are far from settled. The interpretation of scriptures concerning God’s knowledge and our responsiveness remains a deeply nuanced topic. Despite the debates and differing viewpoints, my admiration for Steve Gregg’s theological work remains unshaken, and I invite you to join the conversation.

This video is more than an academic exercise; it’s a heartfelt endeavor to probe these grand mysteries further. To see the full exploration and join me as I analyze these timeless theological questions, I invite you to watch my latest video on YouTube. Together, let’s delve deeper into understanding the interaction between divine sovereignty and human agency. Thank you for engaging with this discussion, and may we all continue to grow in wisdom and understanding.

“OUCH… Rebutting BAD Open Theism arguments from a GREAT teacher.”

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Reflecting on Theological Debates: Responding to Steve Gregg, Part 1

In this post, I’ll be sharing my reflections on a recent video discussion where I engage with the teachings and interpretations of one of my theological heroes, Steve Gregg. While he and I share many fundamental views, there’s one critical theological area where we diverge significantly: open theism. As someone who is a well-known open theist, I found myself in an intriguing and necessary position of having to respond to Gregg’s assessments of this doctrine and his interpretations of relevant biblical texts.

Introduction and Context

Steve Gregg is undoubtedly among the most gifted Bible teachers today. His commitment to following evidence wherever it might lead in biblical interpretation is truly commendable, and I regard him as a genius with a high caliber of character. His itinerant teaching career, built on the generosity of supporters rather than fund solicitation, speaks volumes about his integrity and commitment. As a fellow amillennialist and advocate of the organic church model, we often find common ground.

However, our paths diverge when it comes to open theism. Gregg holds an opposing view to my stance on this matter, which I have thoroughly examined, particularly through my debate with James White. Our differing views became apparent as I engaged with Gregg’s discussion about 40 open theist proof text answers in his video.

Video Overview and Structure

The video is a lengthy exploration—an hour and 40 minutes long—yet its depth demands careful consideration. My attempt to navigate through this comprehensive analysis illustrates that it will likely require several parts to cover thoroughly. In doing so, I aim to honor the discussions around these crucial theological texts and open theism adequately.

I encourage everyone to watch the full video on YouTube, where I walk through the intricacies of these theological arguments, pausing frequently to delve into the nuances and offer responses to Gregg’s points. While the video quality may have its moments, I’ve tried my best to maintain clarity through post-production efforts.

Key Discussion Points

In the video, I jump right into examining open theism—a viewpoint proposing that not all future events are exhaustively determined or foreknown by God, especially those influenced by human free will. Gregg articulates the traditional concerns that arise with open theism, addressing the implications for God’s omniscience and the nature of prophecy. He carefully dissects these issues with reference to scriptural evidence and philosophical reasoning.

I find myself both challenged and compelled to respond. When Steve Gregg brings up prophetic texts and God’s supposed knowledge of future moral choices, I explore alternative interpretations aligned with open theism, offering insights into a more dynamic, relational understanding of God’s knowledge.

Throughout the discourse, we touch upon theological perspectives about time, prophecy, and God’s interaction with human agents. I reflect on whether certain scriptural narratives truly denote changes in God’s mind and explore the possibility of anthropomorphism in divine descriptions.

Appreciation for Steve Gregg

Despite our disagreements, I maintain the utmost respect and admiration for Steve Gregg and his contributions to theological education. While I find some areas of his reasoning unconvincing, his overall impact remains undeniable, and our shared mission to advance God’s kingdom prevails over doctrinal differences.

Conclusion and Invitation

As we continue to explore these topics, I invite you to engage with the rich content of the video, offering your perspectives and insights. I cherish these dialogues as a means to deepen our faith and understanding. You can watch the full discussion on YouTube to grasp the full breadth of these theological debates.

Thank you for your interest and engagement. We’ll reconvene in the next part to delve further into these pivotal themes. Stay tuned, and see you next time!

The LIFE-CHANGING Truth about Christmas… that you’ve probably never heard.

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Title: The Eternal Impact of Christmas: Beyond the Nostalgia

As I reflect on the magical season of Christmas, I’m reminded of its profound essence that goes beyond the nostalgia and cheerful traditions. This blog aims to uncover the deeper meaning of Christmas, exploring its past, present, and eternal future. For a more detailed exploration, I invite you to watch my video on YouTube, where I delve into the transformative truth of Christmas more extensively.

The Spirit of Christmas

Every year, as Christmas approaches, I find myself immersed in the unifying spirit of generosity, love, and celebration. It’s no wonder that even those who don’t share the Christian faith cherish this time. However, as a Christian, I understand that beneath these joyous festivities lies a far greater significance.

The True Meaning of Christmas

When I think of Christmas, I see it as the start of an eternal narrative—the advent of a divine plan set in motion by God through the birth of Jesus. While we celebrate His birth, we’re also celebrating the dawn of a renewed world. This season is about more than just reminiscing about a manger; it’s about the echoes of eternal promises stretching far beyond.

Christmas in the Old Testament

Many might assume that Christmas marks the beginning of God’s rescue mission. But the truth unfolds much earlier, within the pages of the Old Testament. The promises, prophecies, and stories that precede Bethlehem set the stage for God’s entrance into our world. It’s a culmination of His relentless love manifested across centuries.

The Fulfillment of Prophecies

Each Christmas carol, such as “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel,” resonates with the anticipation of a Savior. It reminds us of the journey from prophecy to fulfillment, as God meticulously executed His wise plan. From a humble beginning as an infant, Jesus continues to fulfill His purpose even today.

The Eternal Impact of Christmas

The essence of Christmas is not confined to a singular event—it’s a testament to the cosmic restoration that Jesus’s birth initiated. Jesus came to renew the world, to defeat sin and death, and to invite us into a divine partnership toward an eternal future. This story, which began in Eden, will ultimately conclude with a glorious eternal reunion.

Living in the Light of Christmas

Christmas is an invitation, calling us to live in the overlap of heaven and earth, embracing the eternal perspective of our lives. Every act of love, generosity, and kindness echoes this reality, manifesting God’s kingdom in our world today. We are not just bystanders but active participants in the grand narrative.

A Call to Celebrate and Reflect

Recently, I realized that my love for Christmas runs deeper than holiday traditions. It embodies God’s message of redemption and a world destined to be restored. Once entangled in nostalgic memories, I now celebrate with a newfound appreciation. This revelation has shifted my focus from temporary joys to the everlasting promise of restoration.

As we gather with loved ones this Christmas, let us praise God for the remarkable gift of Jesus. Let every light we hang, every carol we sing, reflect the eternal hope we possess. This season is not just about the past or traditions; it’s about embodying the eternal in the present.

So, from my family to yours, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Embrace the greatest gift of all—the hope bestowed upon us through Christ. May we all live to keep Christmas well, both now and forevermore.

For a more in-depth journey into this message, please be sure to watch my video on the true meaning of Christmas on YouTube. Together, let’s celebrate and reflect on the profound impact of this season.

“God as Author” Falls Apart… On Free Will, Evil, and the Story We Co-Write with God

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Reimagining God’s Role: From Author to Dungeon Master

Summary and Invitation:

In this thought-provoking video, I delve into a new analogy of understanding God’s role in our lives. By shifting from the “God as Author” perspective, which paints life as a predetermined novel, to seeing God as a “Dungeon Master” in an epic, collaborative game, we gain richer insights into free will, evil, and our co-creative role with God. For a deeper exploration of this concept, I invite you to view the full video on my YouTube channel.

Introduction: A Story of Faith and Doubt

A familiar story unfolds as a man, reassured by the idea that God authored his life, is rocked by personal tragedy.
The conflict between comfort and suffering challenges the comforting notion of God as an all-controlling author.
The philosophical dilemma: Does God’s authorship imply He writes our sins and our sufferings?
The troubling implications of a God who dictates every action, leaving us seemingly devoid of true freedom.

Questioning God’s Role as Author

The rigid “author” analogy raises unsettling questions about personal freedom and God’s moral character.
If we’re mere characters in God’s story, are we truly responsible for our actions?
Wrestling with the idea of God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil as inevitable narrative elements.

A New Analogy: God as Dungeon Master

Envisioning a new perspective where God acts as a Dungeon Master in a dynamic, epic narrative.
Our choices contribute to shaping the plot, making life an interactive story where decisions truly matter.
The “Dungeon Master” analogy promotes a collaborative partnership in the unfolding cosmic adventure.

Debate on God’s Sovereignty

Reflect on a debate between Steve Gregg and Doug Wilson, where contrasting views on God’s sovereignty are examined.
Wilson’s claim of “exhaustive sovereignty” versus the scriptural evidence of God’s dynamic responsiveness.
How Shakespeare and puppeteers complicate, rather than clarify, the freedom God provides us.

Understanding the Dungeon Master Analogy

Exploring the intricacies of the Dungeon Master role that balances rules, freedom, and narrative spontaneity.
Examples of noble, boneheaded, and morally questionable player choices in a game setting illustrate complex human agency.
God’s role as a Dungeon Master echoes biblical narratives, reinforcing His responsive interaction with creation.

Implications for Free Will and Evil

Evil and sin originate from player decisions, while the Dungeon Master redeems and recalibrates the story.
God’s ability to weave our foolishness into redemption parallels scriptural themes of dynamic human-divine interaction.
The assurance that our choices matter emphasizes freedom and divine partnership in the world’s moral framework.

Living with Purpose and Prayer

As collaborators in God’s grand narrative, our individual choices steer the direction of the story.
Our lives are imbued with purpose and meaning, stemming from active engagement with God’s vision.
Prayer transforms into a dynamic interaction with God, influencing outcomes and inviting divine guidance into our everyday decisions.

In embarking on this journey, I encourage you to reflect on what kind of story you wish to write with God. The analogy of God as Dungeon Master isn’t just a theological exercise; it’s an invitation to live purposefully, embracing free will and creativity. The choice is yours. Join me on this quest to reimagine your role in the divine narrative.

Beyond Left & Right: A Kingdom Perspective on Politics

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Reflections on Faith and Politics: Choosing the Kingdom Over Chaos

In an election season amidst the frenzy and noise, I’ve taken some time to delve into the intersection of politics and faith. I’m sharing these reflections in the hope that they resonate with you as we navigate these tumultuous times. Below, I’ve broken down some key insights and invite you to watch the full video on YouTube for a deeper exploration.

Introduction: Navigating the Politics of Our Time

An election is looming, and social media is buzzing with emphatic opinions.
The rhetoric lacks nuance and kindness, often reflecting poorly on both believers and non-believers.
As people of faith, we’re called to a higher standard of interaction and love.
Despite the divisive climate, our true allegiance lies beyond earthly political structures.
This video discusses keeping our eyes on the Kingdom of God amidst political division.

The Impact of Politics on Relationships

Politics can tear apart even deeply connected people—family and friends aren’t immune.
Disagreements over simple things like social media posts can lead to strained relationships.
As Christians, our true attachment is to a King who transcends worldly parties and divisions.
Recognizing the Kingdom of God helps us navigate political waters with love and grace.
The video aims to explore maintaining faithfulness amidst political turmoil.

Personal Story: Growing Up in a Politically Divided Family

I was raised in a household with diverse political opinions, shaping my understanding of politics.
My dad and mom held differing political views, which led to a unique upbringing.
This environment helped me realize the importance of understanding diverse perspectives.
Love and intelligence can exist on all sides of the political spectrum.
It is essential to acknowledge valid points on both sides while holding personal beliefs.

Ephesians 6: Understanding the Real Battle

I’ve found guidance in scripture, particularly Ephesians 6, in navigating political disagreements.
Our struggle is not against fellow humans but against spiritual forces that divide.
Political divisions often distract us from our true battle, which lies in the spiritual realm.
We are called to focus on the real enemy, not get lost in political skirmishes.
Understanding the spiritual dimension helps us love those with differing political views.

The Kingdom of God vs. Earthly Powers

As followers of Christ, our allegiance belongs to His eternal Kingdom.
Political systems are temporary, often swayed by forces contrary to God’s will.
Unlike political agendas, God’s Kingdom is anchored in justice and love.
We should respond with love and grace, prioritizing allegiance to His Kingdom.
This perspective urges us to see people as image-bearers of God, not enemies.

A Deeper Look at the Lion and the Lamb

Biblical imagery of the Lion and the Lamb reflects Jesus’ dual nature as a conqueror and sacrificer.
Both attributes are intertwined and pivotal in understanding Christ’s role.
Revelation reveals the complexity of this imagery and its meaning for believers.
Earthly power structures operate with force; Christ leads through sacrifice.
Recognizing this duality helps us embody Christ-like humility and power through love.

The Beasts, the Dragon, and Us

Scripturally, beasts represent human power structures—think kingdoms and governments.
These systems can become tools of division and chaos if not viewed with suspicion.
The struggle involves navigating these worldly powers without losing allegiance to God.
The Prophet Daniel’s visions echo this theme and guide us today.
We must discern our engagement with these powers and prioritize unity in Christ.

Conclusion: Our True Allegiance

Earthly political victories or losses do not define us; our faith does.
Amidst division, we aim to model Christ’s peacemaking, love, and reconciliation.
Let the upcoming election remind us where our true hope and allegiance lie.
Engage with civility and remember our responsibility to reflect God’s unchangeable Kingdom.
Our ultimate calling is to love without condition, echoing the eternal nature of His reign.

As we anticipate the election results and their aftermath, I encourage you to watch the full video on YouTube, which offers a comprehensive look at these themes and more. Let’s engage with and uplift each other, staying grounded in love and the eternal Kingdom of God.

Exploring the HEART of Atonement: Beyond Penal Substitution

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

How Did Jesus Die for Us? Exploring Atonement Theories with Sam Carter

In this enlightening conversation with my good friend Sam Carter, we delve into the complex topic of atonement, examining historical perspectives, common misconceptions, and contemporary critiques. Our goal is to explore what it truly means for Jesus to have died for us, and how this notion has been interpreted throughout Christian history. We also invite you to watch the full video on YouTube for a comprehensive understanding.

Understanding Atonement and Sacrifice

Jesus’s death on our behalf is central to the Christian faith. We need clarity on what this sacrifice means.
Sacrifice can be misunderstood, often seen through a transactional lens rather than as an offering of love.
Historical and biblical contexts shape the notion of sacrifice differently than modern interpretations.
In biblical tradition, sacrifices were gifts to God, not mere appeasements.

Early Church Perspectives

Ignatius of Antioch and other early theologians grappled with the concept of substitution.
Medicinal substitution emphasizes healing through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.
Substitution is not solely a matter of punishment; it’s about transformational reconciliation.
Early Christian models, like recapitulation, diverge significantly from later theories like Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA).

Critiquing Modern Atonement Theories

Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is a widely held view but isn’t without its issues.
PSA can be broken down into three levels: mild, moderate, and extreme, each with different implications.
Extreme views of PSA can portray God as vengeful, undermining the relational aspects of the Gospel.
Governmental theories and satisfaction models add layers of complexity and potential theological conflict.

Engaging with Criticism and Implications

A central criticism of PSA is its portrayal of God and the notion of justice it entails.
Caricatures such as endorsing violence or cosmic child abuse need careful examination.
PSA might risk a view of God requiring action for forgiveness, contrary to biblical teachings.
It’s crucial to engage in discussions, testing interpretations against scriptural truths.

Encouragement for Further Study

We aim to foster understanding and invite respectful dialogue among differing views.
The video’s purpose is to challenge assumptions and encourage a compassionate view of God’s nature.
Readers and viewers are urged to explore a spectrum of atonement theories and develop a well-rounded perspective.
Ultimately, the conversation is about finding common ground and appreciating the richness of Christian thought.

In summary, our conversation with Sam Carter underscores diverse interpretations of atonement while encouraging open-mindedness and deep engagement with scripture. Please watch the video for a more detailed discussion and feel free to join the conversation with your thoughts and questions in the comments. Let’s continue to explore these vital theological matters together.

God and His Creation: An EPIC Talk with Dr. Alan Rhoda

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of engaging in an enlightening conversation with Dr. Alan Rhoda about various theological and philosophical topics, especially focusing on Open Theism and its implications on Divine Providence. As someone deeply interested in these concepts, it was a joy to dive deep into these discussions and explore the nuances they bring to our understanding of God, free will, and the future.

Highlights from My Conversation with Dr. Alan Rhoda

Introduction and Guest Overview

I expressed my anticipation for this conversation, emphasizing Dr. Alan Rhoda’s remarkable intelligence and philosophical rigor.
Dr. Rhoda is the author of a concise yet impactful book called “Open Theism” under Cambridge Elements.

Discussion on Open Theism and Its Philosophical Foundations

We explored Dr. Rhoda’s philosophical underpinnings as articulated in his book.
Dr. Rhoda discussed the importance of free will in understanding God’s relationship with creation.
Open Theism posits that God is not a micromanager but delegates meaningful freedom to His creatures, which fundamentally changes our view of Divine Providence.
This delegation means that while God sets up the initial conditions and possibilities, He allows human beings significant freedom to shape the future.

Divine Temporality and Passibility in Open Theism

Open Theism suggests that God adopts a “wait and see” approach, reacting to human decisions in real-time, as illustrated by God bringing animals to Adam to name.
This interaction implies a sequence of before and after for God, challenging the notion of God’s timelessness.
Dr. Rhoda highlighted that scripture often depicts God with human-like emotional responses, signaling His active engagement and reactions to the unfolding of creation.
This view contrasts significantly with deterministic models where God’s will is meticulously preordained.

The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Christian Thought

Dr. Rhoda and I delved into how Greek philosophical assumptions, such as absolute immutability and simplicity, influenced early Christian theology.
Major Christological heresies arose partly from trying to reconcile these Greek philosophical views with the story of Jesus.
Over time, while the church de-Hellenized its theology regarding Christology, the doctrine of God in Western Christianity remained heavily influenced by these philosophical assumptions, primarily due to Augustine’s impact.

The Concept of Free Will in the Eschaton

We pondered whether free will exists in heaven or the eschaton, considering various theological models.
Dr. Rhoda proposed that, from an Open Theistic perspective, we could have libertarian freedom in heaven, allowing us to choose between competing goods rather than between good and evil.
This dynamic, communal interaction with God would continue in the eschaton, embodying a journey of ongoing, open-ended love and creation.
Dr. Rhoda brilliantly tied this back to C.S. Lewis’s notion of “further up and further in,” emphasizing an endless exploration of God’s glory.

Alan Rhoda’s Work and Future Projects

Dr. Rhoda shared his current and forthcoming projects, including an expanded book on Open Theism and another on fatalism’s philosophical angles.
He invites readers to explore his work on his website, alanrhoda.net. There, you’ll find his book “Open Theism”, which I highly recommend for those interested in a rigorous, philosophical exploration of these topics.

Closing Thoughts

Our conversation affirmed the richness of engaging deeply with theological and philosophical ideas, especially those that challenge and expand our understanding of God’s nature and our relationship with Him.
It was particularly encouraging to see Dr. Rhoda share similar frustrations and interests concerning the de-Hellenization of Christian thought.

Reflection and Invitation

In summary, my conversation with Dr. Alan Rhoda offered profound insights into Open Theism, Divine Providence, and free will, while also questioning the impact of Greek philosophy on Christian theology. I encourage you to watch this deeply engaging discussion to gain a fuller understanding of these crucial topics.

Please check out the full video on YouTube and join the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the comments section. Until next time!

Make Church Healthy Again • with Joshua Ham

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction: Finding Hope for the Church

There’s a ray of hope for the Church that I discovered through a recent conversation with my good friend Josh Ham. If you’ve seen some of my other videos, you’ll know that I have a complicated relationship with the institutional Church. I’ve witnessed its excesses, misbehaviors, and the mistreatment that often lead people to leave the Church altogether. Yet, conversations like the one I had with Josh Ham are rejuvenating my hope for the Church’s future.

In our discussion, Josh shared his experiences and insights that make me reconsider my hardline stance on abolishing traditional churches in favor of house churches. It’s heartening to know there are faithful individuals who navigate the institutional Church’s temptations and remain true to scriptural values. Josh is one such individual, threading the needle and making a real difference.

Summary of the Conversation

In the video, we covered various aspects of church life, pastoral roles, and ways to make the Church healthier. Our conversation is broken down into several key areas, and I invite you to watch the entire discussion on YouTube for a more in-depth exploration.

The Role of a Pastor: Historical and Modern Perspectives

The term “pastor” is often misunderstood and misapplied in modern contexts
Historical context reveals that terms like shepherd, overseer, and elder have specific, non-hierarchical meanings
Shepherds (pastors) are meant to live among the flock, not above them
Modern interpretations often add unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and hierarchy
Correcting these misunderstandings can lead to healthier church communities

Hospitality and Genuine Relationships

Hospitality plays a crucial role in fostering genuine relationships
Inviting people into your home, even if it’s messy, can be incredibly impactful
Meals and shared experiences are powerful tools for discipleship
Authenticity is more important than perfection in relationships
Hospitality allows for both the sharing of joys and the bearing of each other’s burdens

Discipleship and Community in the Church

Discipleship should be an ongoing, lifelong commitment, not just a 14-week program
Everyone in the church community has a role in discipleship
Discipleship should be relational and integrated into daily life
The church should be a community where everyone is encouraged to grow and serve
Authentic discipleship involves being open about both strengths and weaknesses

The Importance of Integrated Living

Life shouldn’t be compartmentalized into sacred and secular; it’s all sacred
Everyday activities, like meals and conversations, can be opportunities for discipleship
Integrated living means applying biblical principles in all areas of life
Being real and transparent in relationships can have a profound impact
The goal is to be a cohesive community, not just individuals following a set of rules

Navigating Modern Church Dynamics

The institutional church setup can be used strategically for kingdom goals
It’s important to clearly distinguish between biblical mandates and extra-biblical structures
Transparency and humility in leadership foster healthier church communities
Every church member has a role to play in the church’s mission
Collaboration with other churches and denominations can strengthen the body of Christ

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Power

The temptation for power and control can lead to unhealthy dynamics
Church leaders must remain humble and servant-hearted
It’s essential to create an environment where everyone’s voice is heard
Accountability and mutual submission are key to preventing abuse of power
A healthy church environment encourages participation and growth for all members

In our discussion, Josh and I delved into these themes and more, sharing both personal experiences and biblical insights. It was genuinely life-giving, and I believe it can be for you too. Please watch the full video on YouTube to get the complete experience and join the conversation about making the Church healthier.

Let’s work together to build communities that reflect Christ’s love and truth. Your thoughts and comments are welcome; let’s continue this journey towards a healthier Church.

This Chat about “God & Time” LITERALLY changed my life.

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Tackling the Philosophy of God and Time with Dr. Ryan Mullins: An In-Depth Interview

Hey everyone! I’m excited to share some recent insights from an engaging and thought-provoking interview with Dr. Ryan Mullins, an expert in the philosophy of time and theology. This session delves deep into complex subjects such as divine temporality, metaphysical frameworks, open theism, Molinism, and even some fun discussions about metal music. This is a bit of a long read, but I promise it’s worth it if you’re interested in these deep yet fascinating topics. For those who prefer video, you can also watch our full conversation on YouTube.

Introduction to the Conversation

Have I got a treat for you today. Time is tricky, and our language about time even more so. Augustine famously said that he knows exactly what time is until you ask him to define it. In my view, Dr. Ryan Mullins is a leading figure when it comes to clarifying our language, thinking, and definitions around what time is, especially from a theological perspective.

Dr. Mullins has a lot of academic work under his belt, yet he’s incredibly down-to-earth and delightful to talk to. More importantly, his views around time, out of all biblical and philosophical options, seem to honor the pages of Scripture most faithfully.

Diving into the Philosophy of Time

We kick things off with Augustine’s struggle to define time, and Dr. Mullins helps explain why our language around time is so flabby. Time’s definitions are tangled in metaphors, and attempts to explain it often fall into circular reasoning. He also dives into the difference between the reductionist theory and the absolute theory of time.

In simple terms, the reductionist theory tries to reduce time to something concrete but often ends up smuggling time back into the definition. Meanwhile, the absolute theory treats time as a substance in itself, a feature that makes change possible and unifies moments. This aligns more closely with our intuitive understanding of the world.

Presentism vs. Eternalism

We also explore critical ontological theories like presentism and eternalism. Presentism posits that only the present moment exists, while eternalism suggests that all moments, past, and future, exist equally. Our discussion leans heavily toward preferring presentism for its intuitive coherence with our everyday experiences.

One fascinating part of our discussion touches on why concepts like divine temporality are more reasonable and less fraught with philosophical issues. For instance, the idea that God is temporal, experiencing moments sequentially like us, seems more consistent with scriptural depictions of God’s interactions with the world.

God’s Relationship with Time

A hefty section of our conversation is spent discussing why divine temporality makes better sense both philosophically and scripturally. God’s freedom, rationality, and knowledge seem to fit more snugly within a temporal framework. Throughout the Bible, God interacts with time, anticipates future events, and responds to human actions. This dynamic interaction suggests temporality rather than timelessness.

Addressing the Foreknowledge Debate

One of the more heated topics is the debate around God’s foreknowledge. Dr. Mullins expertly dissects the Molinist view, which posits that God has exhaustive foreknowledge through middle knowledge, versus the Open Theist view that holds the future as open with genuine possibilities. We even touch upon the implications for human free will and divine risk management, with insights from cognitive science backing up concerns around deterministic frameworks leading to passivity.

Metal Music: A Shared Passion

In a lighter but equally passionate turn, Dr. Mullins and I delve into our love for metal music. Distortion level is our litmus test for distinguishing rock from metal. We share recommendations, with Dr. Mullins naming bands like Make Them Suffer, We Butter The Bread with Butter, and Electric Callboy. For me, it’s been a fun exploration, blending heavy, rhythmic energy with deep, melodic undertones.

Upcoming Works by Dr. Ryan Mullins

Dr. Mullins has recently published “Eternal in Love: A Little Book about a Big God,” aimed at making complex theological ideas more accessible and interactive. He’s also working on “From Divine Time Maker to Divine Watchmaker,” to be released in January 2025, further elaborating on divine temporality.

Closing Thoughts

This session was personally enriching and intellectually stimulating. If you’re grappling with the philosophical and theological nuances of time and God’s relationship to it, you’ll find this conversation valuable.

I highly recommend watching the full interview on YouTube for a deeper dive into these subjects. Thank you for reading, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Don’t forget to watch the full discussion on YouTube and check out the links in the description for more resources, including our metal band recommendations!

Stay curious, and God bless!

What do SNAPDRAGONS have to do with Jesus?

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction: Reflecting on the Gospel and Its Complexity

In my journey talking to people about Jesus, I’ve often found myself at a loss for words, especially when explaining the profound, foundational concept that He died for our sins. How do we articulate something so central to our faith, yet so complex? This question spurred me to explore it more deeply, and lucky me, I found a like-minded thinker in Sam Carter. Our recent two-part conversation delves into the various dimensions of the Atonement through an insightful acrostic, Snapdragon.

Meeting Sam Carter: A Theological Connection

I recently connected with a brilliant theologian, Sam Carter, following my debate with James White.
Sam and I share many theological pursuits, and our discussions revealed a significant overlap in our interests, especially regarding the Atonement.
We’ve recorded our conversation, which breaks down the Atonement from multiple perspectives.
This video is a deeper dive into concepts we’ve only scratched the surface of on my channel.
Here, I introduce the Snapdragon acrostic—a comprehensive guide to understanding the profound truths of Atonement.

Unlocking the Puzzle of Atonement: Snapdragon Acrostic

S-N-A-P-D-R-A-G-O-N: The Components of Christ’s Work

Scapegoat and New Covenant: Exploring how Jesus embodies the Day of Atonement ritual and establishes a fresh covenant.
Adamant Restoration: Christ retraces and perfects Adam’s path, repairing what was broken in the Garden.
Passover Lamb: Jesus as the ultimate sacrificial lamb, whose blood offers divine protection.
Descent to the Dead: Christ’s journey to the underworld, liberating righteous souls.
Ransom: The idea that Jesus’ sacrifice paid humanity’s redemption price.
Archetypal Example: Jesus’s life as the supreme moral example, inspiring believers.
Glorious Conqueror: Highlighting Christ’s victory over evil, sin, and death.
Offering to the Father: Jesus’s life and death as a perfect offering to God.
New Creation: The transformation of believers into His holy image and likeness.

A Broad View: The Importance of Different Facets

Integration of Multiple Models: Understanding the Atonement requires acknowledging different theories aren’t mutually exclusive.
Overcoming Simplistic Views: Avoid the fallacy of thinking Atonement is solely about one aspect (e.g., substitutionary atonement).
Broadening Horizons: Recognize the breadth and depth of what Christ accomplished.

Ancient Near East and Biblical Perspectives

Traditional Views vs. Modern Interpretations: How classic views from Church Fathers align with, and differ from, modern understandings.
High Priest and Scapegoat Roles: Drawing parallels between Levitical rituals and Christ’s ultimate sacrifice.
Cross-Cultural Dynamics: Eastern and Western perspectives on shame, honor, guilt, and individualism.

Modern Interpretations and Girard’s Theory

Rene Girard: Exploring his modern interpretation of the scapegoat mechanism and mimetic theory.
Understanding Mimetic Theory: How societal rivalry and conflict lead to scapegoating, exposed and subverted by Christ.
Modern Relevance: Applying ancient insights to modern societal behaviors and understanding violence and reconciliation.

Housekeeping and Considerations

Clarifying Terms and Concepts: Ensuring clear differentiation between scapegoat rituals and high priest roles.
Interconnectedness of Atonement Models: Emphasizing relationships between models like recapitulation, restored icon, and others.
Cultural Sensibilities: Recognizing how cultural contexts affect theological interpretations and understandings.

Final Thoughts and Reflections

Continuous Learning: A mention that there’s always more to explore, such as Ignatius of Antioch’s concept of medicinal substitution.
Encouragement for Personal Journey: Urging readers to delve deeper into the faith’s roots and challenge their preconceptions.

Summary and Invitation

In conclusion, our understanding of Atonement is enriched when we appreciate the multi-faceted nature of Christ’s work. The Snapdragon acrostic provides a comprehensive lens to view these complex yet foundational truths. I invite you to explore this topic further by watching our in-depth discussion on YouTube. There’s so much more to uncover about the depths of God’s love and Jesus’s mission. Let’s continue this journey together.

Thank you for joining me on this theological exploration. May we all grow more profound in our faith and understanding of the incredible sacrifice made for us.

I’m Debating James White.

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I’m thrilled and honored to announce my upcoming debate with James White on whether God knows the future exhaustively and perfectly, a topic central to Open Theism.

I reflect on the reasons for engaging in such theological debates and the potential for fostering unity within Christianity despite doctrinal differences. Through respectful dialogue and understanding differing perspectives,

I believe we can strengthen our shared faith. Join me as I delve into the significance of these discussions and share my hopes for a constructive and enlightening debate.

An Honest Conversation About the Future of “The Overlap Life”

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In my latest video, I open up about the season of change and growth I have been experiencing in my personal and spiritual life.

This journey has led me to reevaluate my beliefs and the content I wish to share on this channel. Starting with a focus on understanding eternity through the lens of the Bible, I have been on a path of unraveling and rebuilding my doctrinal stances. This process has sparked discussions on various theological topics, including Calvinism, open theism, annihilationism, and ecclesiology.

As I navigate through doctrinal shifts and face opposition from some in my community, I remain steadfast in my pursuit of understanding the deep truths hidden within the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. My desire to strip away layers of theological debates and present the raw, unfiltered message of the Scriptures has been fueled by scholars like N. T. Wright and Michael Heiser.

This has been a pretty big shift! I am at a point where I need your help to shape the future of this channel and ministry.

For those who have supported me all this time – and for those who have challenged me by disagreeing in love, I am deeply appreciative of you all. So without further ado, I invite you to watch the full video and participate in the survey to help mold the future of this ministry.

5 LIFE-CHANGING “hidden truths” about Temples in the Bible.

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been studying the Temple in the Bible in-depth; I can’t wait to share this with you.

The concept of the Temple in the Bible is far more than just a physical building; it represents the overlap of heaven and earth, the desire of God to dwell among His people, and the ultimate restoration of all creation. From the beginning in the Garden of Eden to the vision of the New Jerusalem, the Temple serves as a central theme that ties the entire narrative of the Bible together.

Exploring the Overlap of Heaven and Earth

The Temple symbolizes the connection point between heaven and earth, reflecting God’s desire to be close to humanity. The journey of the Temple’s significance evolves throughout the Biblical story, from the Garden of Eden to the Church as living Temples where God’s Spirit resides.

Unpacking the Biblical Concept of the Temple

Looking deeper into the biblical passages, we discover that the Temple is a representation of God’s intention for His presence to permeate all of creation. The imagery of the Temple in the Bible is intricately linked to the original design of Eden, where God walked with Adam and Eve, and it continues to the vision of a new creation in Revelation.

The Ultimate Temple: Jesus as the New Meeting Place

The ultimate fulfillment of the Temple concept is found in Jesus Christ. He becomes the new meeting place between heaven and earth, embodying the presence of God in a tangible way. Through Jesus, God’s presence is fully accessible, and those who believe in Him become living temples where God dwells.

The Church: Living Stones and Spiritual Houses

As believers in Christ, we are called to be living stones, forming a spiritual house where God’s Spirit resides. The Church is not just a building but a community of believers who carry the presence of God into the world. Our lives become a testimony to God’s work of reconciliation and restoration.

The New Jerusalem: A Vision of Future Glory

The vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation depicts a world where God dwells among His people, erasing the barriers between heaven and earth permanently. It is a glimpse of the ultimate restoration and union of heaven and earth, where God’s presence permeates everything.

Addressing Misconceptions About the Temple

While some interpretations suggest the rebuilding of a physical temple for future sacrifices, the New Testament emphasizes that Jesus is the true Temple, and His followers are now the dwelling place of God. The temple concept evolves to include all believers as part of God’s dwelling place, extending His reign and rule throughout the world.

Living as God’s Temples Today: Bridging Heaven and Earth

Today, as believers, we are called to live as temples of God, embodying His presence and reflecting His love to the world. There is no separation between sacred and secular; every aspect of our lives is infused with divine purpose. By living out our identity as God’s temples, we participate in His mission of renewing all things and bridging the gap between heaven and earth.

In conclusion, the Temple in the Bible represents God’s enduring desire to dwell among His people and the ultimate restoration of all creation. As living temples of God, we are called to reflect His presence and usher in His Kingdom here on earth.

“The Atonement” is MUCH more complicated (and beautiful) than you thought.

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The journey into the heart of Christian faith reveals the pivotal role of atonement – the process that bridges the gap between humanity and God. My quest for understanding led me to delve into one of the most enlightening explorations of this concept.

Unveiling the Essence of Atonement Theories

My exploration began with an overview of how atonement is fundamentally perceived. Drawing from Biblical narratives, I realized that Jesus’s mission on earth transcended the mere act of dying to bear the punishment humans deserved. It was embedded in a grander narrative of victory, liberation, and restoration that threads throughout the entirety of scripture.

I then journeyed through the seven primary atonement theories that have been discussed throughout Christian theology: Ransom, Christus Victor, Moral Influence, Penal Substitution, Governmental, Satisfaction, and Recapitulation. Each theory offered a unique lens through which to view Christ’s redemptive work, from conquering evil forces to fostering moral growth and mending the fractured relationship between humanity and God.

Beyond a Single Sacrifice: Deciphering Sacrificial Symbols

To grasp the full depth of atonement language, I turned to the sacrifices described in Leviticus, particularly focusing on the ritual involving two goats during the Day of Atonement. This ritual, I found, was profoundly symbolic, with one goat sacrificed to create a sacred space for divine-human connection, while the other bore the community’s sins, removing them from the people and symbolically handing them over to darkness.

This understanding deepened when considering Jesus’s sacrifice, often likened to a lamb. His crucifixion emerged as a victorious symbol over sin, death, and evil forces, embodying both the sacrificial goat and the scapegoat, creating a holy space for us to commune with God and removing our sins in one divine act.

Embracing Atonement in Daily Life

My discovery taught me that atonement is not just a theological concept to be debated but a reality to live by. Jesus’s sacrifice invites us into a new existence marked by God’s love, justice, and peace, even amidst a fractured world. It calls us to be agents of reconciliation, stewards of creation, and bearers of hope.

This gospel, focused on God’s kingdom, doesn’t merely prompt us to reject sin. It calls us to engage actively in God’s mission of renewal and reconciliation, embodying the Kingdom’s values in our interactions, communities, and the broader world.

My Invitation to You

To truly comprehend the multifaceted nature of atonement, I encourage diving into the Biblical stories and teachings that illuminate Jesus’s sacrificial act. This journey can transform your understanding of the gospel, inviting you to experience and share the profound love and redemption offered to us all.

“The Rapture” is a Big Nothing-Burger

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Unraveling the Rapture Myth

Have you ever wondered why the idea of the Rapture feels more like a Hollywood blockbuster than a Biblical teaching? You’re not alone. Today, we’re going to be putting this idea of the End Times spectacle under the microscope, using the Bible itself to separate fact from fiction. If you’ve ever had doubts, questions, or just a nagging curiosity about what Scripture really says about the End Times, then you’re in the right place. Let’s bust some myths together and discover the truth about the Rapture. This is one reality check you are not going to want to miss.

The Popular Misconception of the Rapture

Now depending on your church tradition and where you grew up as a Christian, the Rapture may be either extremely popular or just an interesting side show. But, isn’t it fascinating how this idea seems to have captured the imagination of so many believers? Today, we’re going to examine the foundational beliefs behind the Rapture and challenge some common misconceptions.

One reality check we need to make right from the start is that the word “Rapture” isn’t found anywhere in the scriptures. It is a term that has been derived from various translations and interpretations. The Latin Vulgate, a translation of the Greek New Testament into Latin, used the word “rapiemur” to describe the concept of being caught up or snatched away. However, it was not used as a proper name for the event.

Diving Deep into Scripture: The True Meaning of the Rapture

To truly understand the concept of the Rapture, we must dive into the Scriptures themselves. It’s interesting to note that the focus of the passage often associated with the Rapture, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, is not about believers disappearing or being taken up to heaven. In fact, the passage speaks volumes about the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of Christ. It describes a loud command, the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet call of God as precursors to believers meeting the Lord in the air.

Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians: A Closer Look

In order to fully grasp the meaning of the Rapture passage in 1 Thessalonians, we must understand the historical and cultural context in which it was written. The Thessalonians were facing confusion and anxiety about the return of Christ and the fate of those who had died. Paul’s intention was to comfort and reassure them that the dead in Christ would be resurrected and united with Him at His coming. This passage emphasizes the hope-filled anticipation of Christ’s return and the victory over death, rather than a secretive snatch-away event.

The Resurrection and the Second Coming: A Unified Event

Another misconception surrounding the Rapture is the idea of it being separate from the Second Coming of Christ. However, a careful examination of the scriptures reveals that the return of Christ is a singular, glorious event that encompasses the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of living believers. The timeline of end times events is not a series of disparate moments, but rather a unified event culminating in the triumph of Jesus over sin, death, and the devil.

Debunking Rapture Myths with Biblical Context

Though the concept of the Rapture may be popularized in certain circles, it is important to approach biblical prophecy with a balanced perspective. The Rapture theory is rife with misconceptions that cloud our understanding of Biblical eschatology. One major myth is the idea of believers disappearing in a secret event before the tribulation. This understanding detracts from the biblical theme of God’s people enduring through trials and tribulation, rather than escaping it.

Jesus’ parallel between Noah’s story and the Second Coming in Matthew 24 further challenges the assumption of being taken as a positive outcome. In both instances, those who were taken away faced judgment, while those who were left behind were saved. This passage does not align with the popular notion of the Rapture as a secret, positive event.

Conclusion: Embracing a Hope-Filled View of the End Times

In conclusion, our exploration of the Rapture myth reveals the need for a biblical and contextual understanding of the Scriptures. The Rapture is not a separate event, but a part of the grand narrative of the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. By embracing a hope-filled view of the end times, we can live in victory and anticipation, actively participating in the unfolding of God’s Kingdom here and now. Let us seek a deeper understanding of God’s word and encourage open dialogue to grow in our faith.

Quotes out of Context: Hurting Others, Twisting Scripture, and Creating Confusion. #BaalGate

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Hey there, friends! Today, I wanted to reflect on an important topic that affects us all – quotes taken out of context. In a recent video on my YouTube channel, I delved into the consequences of this practice and explored the broader issue of dishonest speech in our society, including within Christian communities.

Quotes taken out of context can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, and damaged relationships. It’s disheartening when our words are twisted to mean something entirely different from our original intentions. This tactic is often used during disagreements to win arguments, often at the expense of honest conversation and understanding.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just individuals who engage in this behavior. Sadly, it’s happening within our churches, online communities, and even in conversations with those we consider our enemies. As Christians, we are called to a higher standard when it comes to our speech. Uprightness of speech is not optional; it is a requirement for us.

During the video, I shared a specific incident involving a friend, where their offhand comment was taken out of context during a discussion. The fallout from that incident resulted in a flurry of debate, with many condemning my friend without truly addressing the substance of their claims.

To navigate these challenges, I discussed the importance of honest argumentation and avoiding logical fallacies. Ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, and the No True Scotsman Fallacy all hinder healthy discourse and prevent us from truly seeking truth together. We must focus on the strength of our arguments rather than winning at all costs.

Additionally, I provided some practical guidelines for approaching scripture. Reading verses within their complete context, understanding the imagery used, and exploring parallel passages can help us gain a more accurate understanding of the intended message. These practices can prevent misinterpretations and promote healthier discussions.

Dishonest speech and taking quotes out of context are not aligned with the teachings of Christ. As followers of Jesus, our priority should be seeking unity and understanding rather than winning arguments. Let’s treat each other with respect, address the actual points of contention, and foster healthy discourse grounded in love and integrity.

If you want to explore this topic further, I invite you to watch the full video on my YouTube channel. It contains a more in-depth exploration of the consequences of quotes taken out of context and the importance of honest communication.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and understanding. Together, let’s strive for honest and loving communication, even with those who hold different beliefs. Remember, it’s through unity and respectful dialogue that we can grow together as the body of Christ.

Stay blessed, and until next time!

The Simple Genius of “Practicing the Way”, by John Mark Comer

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Today, I want to share with you my thoughts on a groundbreaking book that has truly transformed my perspective on what it means to live like Jesus in today’s world. The book I’m talking about is “Practicing the Way: Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did” by John Mark Comer.

In “Practicing the Way,” John Mark invites us to embrace a new way of life centered around the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He challenges us to move beyond merely believing in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection and instead calls us to become His disciples, apprentices who live out His teachings as a way of life. The book is divided into three main sections: “Being with Jesus,” “Becoming Like Him,” and “Doing What He Did.”

Each section explores essential aspects of discipleship and offers practical insights on how to apply them in our daily lives. I must admit, the book gripped me from the very beginning. So much so that I finished it within hours of its release. I couldn’t help but pause every now and then, taking notes and reflecting on its profound insights.

This isn’t just another self-help book or a list of practical tips. It’s a call to embrace a way of life that leads to true abundance and peace in the midst of our chaotic world. If you’re seeking to deepen your discipleship and truly live like Jesus, I wholeheartedly recommend “Practicing the Way.”

Let’s join hands in this transformative journey as we learn to prioritize the way of Jesus in every aspect of our existence. To dive deeper into the profound ideas presented in this book, I encourage you to watch the full video on YouTube. Trust me, it’s a game-changer! Together, let’s take up the easy yoke, set aside the burdens of this world, and journey towards a life of true discipleship.

Are you ready? Let’s practice the way of Jesus and experience a life that overflows with His love, grace, and purpose.

Watch the full video on YouTube and let’s embark on this transformative adventure together.

The Olivet Discourse is NOT about the End Times

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The Olivet Discourse is a profoundly significant passage in the Bible that is often misunderstood and misinterpreted. In this blog post, I will shed light on the true meaning of the Olivet Discourse and why it is not about the end times. Join me as we delve into this fascinating scriptural passage.

As I was studying the Olivet Discourse, one particular section caught my attention. I want to emphasize the importance of “taking heed” in the technical aspects of this discourse. It suggests that there may be deeper layers of meaning beyond the surface level interpretation.

Let’s explore the true essence of the Olivet Discourse. Contrary to popular belief, it is not primarily concerned with the end times or apocalyptic events. Instead, it is a discourse given by Jesus to His disciples, providing them with insights into the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the signs preceding it.

I believe Jesus used the Olivet Discourse as an opportunity to address the concerns of His disciples regarding the future. He wanted to prepare them for the turbulent times ahead and to strengthen their faith in the midst of adversity.

To gain a better understanding of the Olivet Discourse, it is essential to consider the historical and cultural context in which it was delivered. Jesus spoke these words in the first century, a time of political and social unrest in Judea. The disciples were eager to know what the future held for them and their people.

However, it is important to note that Jesus intentionally avoided giving a detailed timeline or sequence of events. His focus was not on satisfying the curiosity of His disciples but on teaching them valuable lessons about endurance, faith, and the coming of the kingdom of God.

As we reflect on the Olivet Discourse, it becomes clear that the primary message is not to speculate about the end times but to live faithfully in the present. Jesus emphasized the importance of spiritual vigilance, urging His followers to stay watchful and ready for His return, whenever that might be.

In conclusion, the Olivet Discourse is a powerful reminder for believers today. It exhorts us to avoid getting caught up in frivolous debates about the end times and instead focus on living out our faith in the present moment. Let us approach this scripture with humility and reverence.

New Year’s Resolutions are a BAD IDEA for most Christians – Here’s Why

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever made a New Year’s Resolution only to have it completely forgotten by the time February rolls around? I think we all have at some point. But what if I told you that the secret to a truly transformative resolution isn’t about the calendar year at all, but about something much more profound and even eternal?

In my latest video, I dive deep into the concept of living as our future selves in Christ now and how it can revolutionize our daily lives starting today. Instead of waiting for some arbitrary date on our calendars, we can choose to align our daily lives with our eternal identity in Christ, bringing heaven down to earth and experiencing lasting transformation in the process.

The video unpacks why traditional New Year’s resolutions often fall short and how they rely solely on our own willpower and determination. But as followers of Jesus, we have something much more powerful at our disposal—the Holy Spirit. By depending on God’s empowering and energizing presence, we can make New Creation resolutions that are sustainable and impactful in the long term.

But how do we put this into practice? The video explores ten areas of our lives that we can assess and invite the Spirit to transform, including Spirituality, Mission, Marriage, Family, Relationships, Health, Mindset, Experiences, Finances, and Learning. Each of these areas offers an opportunity for us to make agreements with the Spirit and live more in line with our eternal identities in Christ.

I invite you to watch the full video. It’s filled with insights from Scripture, personal stories, and practical steps to help you make and keep New Creation resolutions. Together, let’s embark on a continuous journey of being shaped and molded into the likeness of Christ, both for our own benefit and for the transformation of the world around us.

So, where do you feel the Spirit leading you to partner with Him in becoming more like your Savior? Is it in your mission, relationships, health, or perhaps in your mindset? I would love to hear from you in the comments section below the video. Let’s encourage and inspire one another as we walk this path together.

As we enter a new year, let’s shift our focus from temporary gains to eternal impact. New Creation resolutions have the power to not only change our lives but also participate in the transformation of the world, anticipating the ultimate restoration of all things. Join me in embracing this mindset and living as the New Creation versions of ourselves that we are in Christ.

If you’re ready to live a life that reflects Christ’s nature and love, I encourage you to watch the video and allow the message to inspire and guide you in the coming weeks, months, and years. Together, let’s embrace the transformative power of New Creation resolutions and experience the abundant life that God has prepared for us.

To watch the video and embark on this journey of transformation, click here. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to live as though you are the New Creation version of yourself. Join me on this incredible adventure of becoming who we already are in Christ.

Wishing you a truly transformative New Year filled with the joy, peace, and purpose that comes from living in alignment with your eternal identity. Let’s step into the New Creation way of life together!

Eschatology Matters – An Exploration of Eschatology and Life After Death

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever questioned the purpose of our existence in this world, if spiritual existence continues after physical death, or about the ultimate destiny of humanity towards the end of the world? These complex questions fall under the subject of Eschatology in Christian theology.

Eschatology is intriguing; it connects our life today with the substance of our faith, influencing our actions, motivations, and behaviors. For a Christian, a follower of Jesus, understanding Eschatology profoundly influences their daily life, often more than most people realize.

Recently, I engaged in a thought-provoking conversation with Steve Hafley, a good friend and author of “Until Death Be Defeated,” which can be found on Amazon. His deep understanding and interpretation of biblical Eschatology significantly expanded my perspective on the matter.

Steve lucidly explains the themes of the intermediate state of being and eternal state, both for the righteous and the wicked. In the Christian context, the “intermediate state” refers to what transpires between an individual’s death and the resurrection of Christ. The “eternal state,” however, relates to what happens after Judgment Day.

The Bible offers limited data points and unclear details about the intermediate state of the wicked. It frequently explains that the wicked are kept under punishment, waiting for Judgment Day. From what we can establish, this phase is temporary. This seems consistent with scriptures, like Peter explaining that God keeps the unrighteous under punishment until Judgment Day, and Matthew who explains God’s ultimate triumph over devils. However, our focus should be primarily on the eternal state, being the fundamental crux of Christianity, rather than these intermediate states.

Conversely, the eternal state of the faithful, the ultimate destiny of believers, is central to the Christian belief system. The Bible places immense emphasis on the triumphant climax of Christ’s return and the consequent glorification of believers. This eternal state underscores the hope and joy in Christianity, the victorious vision of believers sharing in Christ’s glory.

I urge everyone to delve deeper into this fascinating subject by watching the video titled “Eschatology Matters – An Exploration of Life after Death.” In it, Steve masterfully unpacks the sometimes puzzling aspects of life after death, giving valuable insights into the interpretations of Eschatology.

Remember, understanding Eschatology isn’t just about decoding the ‘end times.’ It illuminates our understanding of life, death, and the eternal experience, influencing our spiritual journey and reinforcing the ultimate hope in our Christian faith.

Eschatology reminds us that our current perspective of life after death influences the way we live on earth and impacts our faith journey. It urges us to focus on the truths and promises in the Bible, allowing these divine wordings to guide the way we understand and interpret life after death. It’s a thoughtful reminder that while we might have differing views on eschatology, the unity and love amongst believers bear witness to Jesus’s teachings and exemplify what it truly means to be part of God’s kingdom.

The “Lord’s Supper” Is WAY More Important Than You Thought

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The Profound Journey of the Lord’s Supper

The Lord’s Supper, known by various names such as the Eucharist or Holy Communion, holds immense significance in the Christian faith. However, our modern perception of this sacred meal often fails to capture its true essence. Let’s explore the profound journey that the Lord’s Supper takes us on, connecting the past, present, and future in a way that transforms our understanding of this ancient tradition.

The Ancient Origins

To truly grasp the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, we must delve into its roots, which can be traced back to the Passover feast described in Exodus Chapter 12. The Passover was a commemoration of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It served as a foreshadowing of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. The symbols and rituals of the Passover meal pointed to a greater deliverance to come.

The Last Supper: A transformative moment

The night of the Last Supper marked a pivotal moment in the history of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus and his disciples gathered for what they thought would be a traditional Passover meal. However, Jesus reinterpreted this ancient feast, infusing it with new meaning. Matthew 26:26-28 recounts how Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and declared, “This is my body,” and then took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the covenant.” In these actions, Jesus redefined the Passover meal in terms of his own impending sacrifice. He became the Lamb whose blood would be shed for the salvation of many.

The Present: Unity and Fellowship

In the present, the Lord’s Supper serves as a powerful symbol of unity and fellowship among believers. In 1 Corinthians 10:17, Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” This communion meal transcends cultural backgrounds, denominational differences, and organizational structures. It is an expression of our shared faith in Christ and a tangible representation of the Church as the body of Christ. Gathering together around the table, we remember and proclaim Jesus’ death, cultivating mutual love and building one another up in our faith.

An Anticipation of the Future

Looking beyond the past and the present, the Lord’s Supper carries us into the future. In Revelation 19:9, we catch a glimpse of the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, a joyful celebration that awaits us in the new heavens and the new earth. This future banquet is the culmination of God’s promises, where the faithful will feast with Christ in His eternal kingdom. The Lord’s Supper is not just a remembrance; it is also an anticipation of the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Kingdom.

A Call to Active Hope

Understanding the depth and significance of the Lord’s Supper should motivate us to live out our faith with purpose and urgency in the present. As we eagerly await Christ’s return, we are called to spread the good news of God’s Kingdom and to embody its values in our lives. The Lord’s Supper is a powerful moment to pause amidst our hectic lives and remember the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood. It reminds us of the future hope we have in Him and the eternal unity and fellowship that awaits us.

Embracing the True Essence

In order to fully embrace the true essence of the Lord’s Supper, we must shed the layers of tradition that have accumulated over time. It is not merely a religious ritual confined to a certain setting or accompanied by specific elements. The Lord’s Supper is a communal meal, shared among believers as a reflection of their shared life in Christ. It is a moment of gratitude, love, and care for one another. It is an opportunity to experience unity, to proclaim Christ’s death, and to anticipate His return.

Conclusion

The Lord’s Supper is far more than a treasured tradition; it is a profound journey that connects us to the past, unites us in the present, and fills us with hope for the future. When we partake in this sacred meal, we are not simply remembering past events; we are participating in the unfolding story of God’s redemptive plan. May we approach the Lord’s Supper with a renewed understanding and appreciation, embracing its transformative power in our lives and in the life of the Church.

The TRUE Meaning of “Gospel” is MIND-BLOWING

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

What if I told you that Christianity is not just about going to heaven when you die? What if the core message of Jesus is actually about bringing heaven to earth? In this blog post, we are going to dive deep into the definitions of key words like Church, Gospel, and Kingdom, and uncover the true meaning behind Jesus’ message. By understanding the biblical context, we will discover the best news you’ve probably never heard.

The Misunderstood Gospel:

When we mention “gospel,” many people think of it as the good news of individual salvation, where one’s eternal destination is solely determined by their trust in Jesus. While this is not entirely wrong, it fails to capture the full picture. The gospel is more than just a slice of the story with the beginning and ending chopped off. It is the proclamation of a new kingdom and a new king.

The Gospel of the Kingdom:

Jesus, the Messiah, came to fulfill the promises God made to the Jewish people and transform the entire world. The gospel is not confined to individual salvation but is about the announcement of a kingdom. It is the good news that God’s rule and reign have come to earth, and we are invited to join this kingdom by turning away from our allegiance to the kingdoms of darkness.

Understanding the Kingdom of God:

To fully grasp the gospel of the kingdom, we need to understand the concept of the Kingdom of God. The kingdom refers to the extent of God’s ruling influence on both earth and in heaven through Christ. It is not just a future observable event but an already present reality. Jesus inaugurated the kingdom, and we are called to live as citizens, advancing its borders through our allegiance to the King.

The Church as the People of the Kingdom:

The Church is often misunderstood as a building or an institution, but it is simply the gathering of the people of the kingdom that God is establishing. The Greek word for Church, ekklesia, refers to a community of believers who have been rescued by Jesus into the kingdom. The Church is not separate from the kingdom; rather, it is the community through which God’s rule extends to the world.

Salvation and the Kingdom:

Salvation, the transition from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, involves embracing God’s comprehensive rule over every aspect of life. Placing our trust in Christ brings forth a new life, new identity, and new citizenship in God’s kingdom. Salvation is not just about spiritual life or an escape from the penalty of sin; it is about participating in God’s restoration and healing of His glorious kingdom.

Living in Light of Eternity:

Understanding the gospel of the kingdom transforms our perspective on life. It invites us to live in allegiance to the King and to embody His upside-down ethic. As citizens of the kingdom, we are called to serve and love others, bringing forth peace, righteousness, and the transformation of our world. We are invited to participate in God’s mission of making the world more like Eden, rejoicing as the poor are filled, and the rich are brought low.

Conclusion:

As Christmas approaches, let us remember that it is not just the celebration of Jesus’ birth but the humble beginning of the gospel of the kingdom. Christianity is more than a ticket to heaven; it is an invitation to join God’s ruling influence on earth. The Church is not an isolated institution but a community of kingdom citizens. Let us embrace the fullness of the gospel, partnering with God to bring forth His kingdom until the day when His reign is complete for all eternity.

Unveiling The True Meaning of John 6: Debunking the Calvinistic Narrative

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Join me as we delve into John Chapter 6, a controversial passage often used to justify Calvinistic predestination.

I challenge this interpretation, shedding light on key phrases like ‘draw’, ‘enable’, and ‘give’ used throughout the chapter and suggesting that it’s more about understanding God’s open invitation to all. Far from being an explanation of predestination, I argue that this chapter is, in fact, a profound revelation of Jesus’s identity and mission. The key, I believe, is understanding the context within which this story unfolds. It’s a direct challenge to preconceived notions of God’s relationship with people, focusing on the deep connection between God the Father and Jesus, the Son.

So, are you ready to see John Chapter 6 in a new light? Tune in to uncover the true meaning hidden within these verses in the context they were originally intended.

The secret to TRUE growth as a Christian

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

TRUE growth as a Christian starts with understanding who you really are in Christ.
Welcome to our deep-dive exploration of your Heavenly Identity. In this video, we uncover the profound truths about our identity in Christ and the transformative power it holds.

We’ve packed this session with biblical wisdom, practical insights, and life-changing truths that will redefine how you see yourself and your purpose in the world.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: Understanding Your Identity in Christ
01:26 The Overlap of Heaven and Earth: A Biblical Perspective
03:43 New Year, New You: The Illusion of Self-Improvement
05:20 The Original Purpose of Humanity: A Look at Genesis
09:55 The Fall and Its Consequences: Understanding Our Brokenness
11:30 The Role of Jesus: The New Human
13:51 Living as a New Creation: The Power of Identity in Christ
22:56 Conclusion: Embracing Your True Identity and Purpose

Whether you’re a long-time believer or just beginning to explore what it means to be a follower of Christ, this video is for you. It’s more than just information—it’s an invitation to transform your understanding of yourself and to align with the Heavenly blueprint for your life.

This video is not just a theological treatise but a practical guide for anyone looking to rediscover their God-given identity and live out the original purpose for which they were created. It’s perfect for personal reflection, group study, or as a sermon series for your congregation.

Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this video with anyone who may benefit from its message. Comment below to join the conversation and share how understanding your Heavenly identity has changed your life.

For further study, check out the linked resources, and remember, your identity is not just about who you are—it’s about whose you are.

FOUR Views on God’s Providence & the Future – Bible SHOWDOWN

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this deep dive into some of the most discussed and debated theological perspectives in Christian history: Calvinism, Arminianism, Molinism, and Dynamic Omniscience.

Calvinism, with its emphasis on predestination and God’s sovereign will, has been a significant voice in Reformed theology. This view holds that God’s will is the ultimate determiner of all events, including an individual’s salvation or damnation.

On the other hand, Arminianism asserts the significance of human free will in the process of salvation. This perspective believes that while God’s grace is essential, human beings possess the free will to accept or reject this grace.

Molinism, championed by the 16th-century theologian Luis de Molina, introduces the concept of “middle knowledge.” This view suggests that God knows all possible outcomes of human free will and thus orchestrates events to achieve His divine purposes without infringing on human freedom.

Lastly, Dynamic Omniscience, a view I resonate with deeply, posits a God who is all-knowing but whose knowledge evolves in response to human choices. This perspective emphasizes the genuine relationship between God and humanity, where the future is open and not exhaustively settled.

Throughout this video, we will:

– Explore the historical and scriptural roots of each viewpoint.
– Discuss the philosophical and practical implications of each theology.
– Delve into some common misconceptions and critiques.
– Highlight the beauty and profundity of God’s nature, as understood from these perspectives.

Whether you’re a seasoned theologian, a curious believer, or someone seeking clarity on these theological standpoints, this video aims to be a resource that enriches your understanding and deepens your faith. Remember, while our human interpretations might differ, our shared love for Christ and the pursuit of truth unites us all.

If you find this content valuable, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing for more theological explorations and discussions. Your engagement helps us reach a broader audience and foster meaningful conversations in the Christian community. Blessings to you, and may this journey bring you closer to the heart of God.

—

Resources Mentioned in the Video:

– God of the Possible, by Greg Boyd → https://www.amazon.com/God-Possible-Biblical-Introduction-Open/dp/080106290X
– Idol Killer, Warren McGrew → https://www.youtube.com/@IdolKiller/featured

3 IRONCLAD Arguments against Calvinism

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Today, we’re venturing into the baffling world of Calvinism. If you have EVER had questions about what the Bible means by Sovereignty, or ideas of man’s responsibility, I’m going to shed a lot of light from the Scriptures in this one.

Although this one will FOR SURE make some of you mad.

Is it just me, or does determinism sometimes feel like it’s giving God a questionable PR makeover? 🤷‍♂️

I’ve lined up three thought-provoking arguments that might have you rethinking some Calvinist tenets.

But hey, this isn’t about picking sides. I’m happy to affirm that Calvinists are members of Christ and citizens of God’s Kingdom. (Hopefully they would say the same about me!)

This discussion is about growing, learning, and savoring the richness of theological discourse. 📚

So, whether you’re a Calvinism enthusiast, an Arminian advocate, or something else entirely (like me), we invite you to join the conversation. And as always, if you enjoy our deep dives, hit that like button and subscribe for more! 🙌

#OverlapLife #TheologicalJourneys #CalvinismChat

“Church” or Ekklesia? What we’ve all COMPLETELY missed about the community of God.

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In today’s video, we delve deep into a fundamental question that has been on the minds of many believers: Have we misunderstood what the Bible means by “church”? The term “church” is derived from the Greek word “ekklesia”, but does our modern understanding align with the original intent of the Scriptures? Join us as we embark on a journey of discovery, exploring the historical, cultural, and theological nuances of the term and seeking clarity on its true meaning.

The word “ekklesia” was not exclusively religious in its origins. In ancient Greece, it referred to an assembly or gathering of citizens called out from their homes into a public place. So, when the New Testament authors adopted this term, what were they signifying? Was it merely a reference to a physical building, a Sunday service, or did it encapsulate something far more profound?

As we dive into the New Testament, we’ll see that Jesus Himself used the term “ekklesia” when He declared, “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18). But a closer examination reveals that Christ was not referring to a brick-and-mortar structure, nor was He pointing to a mere gathering of believers on a Sabbath. Instead, He was alluding to a spiritual assembly, a called-out group of people united by faith in Him and dedicated to His mission.

The early apostles and disciples understood this. For them, the ekklesia was a living, breathing community of believers who shared their lives, resources, and faith. They met in homes, by riversides, and in public squares, always emphasizing the importance of relationships, discipleship, and communal worship. It was less about a location and more about a shared identity in Christ and a collective purpose.

Sadly, over the centuries, institutionalization, cultural shifts, and human traditions have, at times, overshadowed this foundational understanding. The term “church” began to be more associated with a place than with a people. Structures, denominations, and rituals took center stage, often sidelining the organic, relational aspect of the ekklesia.

But there’s a resurgence, a longing in many believers to return to the roots, to understand and live out the ekklesia as the early believers did. In this video, we’ll explore practical steps and insights to help us realign our perspective and practices with the Biblical vision of the ekklesia. We’ll discuss:

The significance of communal worship and why it’s more than just singing songs.
The role of discipleship and mentorship in building a robust ekklesia.
How modern believers can foster a sense of community and shared purpose, even in an increasingly individualistic world.
In conclusion, understanding the true essence of the ekklesia challenges us to look beyond buildings and rituals. It invites us into a deeper relationship with fellow believers, united by our faith in Christ and driven by a shared mission to spread His love to the world. Join us in this enlightening exploration and be inspired to experience and build the ekklesia of God in its truest sense.

Remember to like, share, and subscribe for more content that delves into the heart of Biblical truths and offers fresh perspectives on faith and life.

“Belief in Christ” means a LOT MORE than you probably think.

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

“Belief” is a term that gets tossed around a lot, especially in the context of Christianity. But what does it really mean to believe in Jesus, God, or the Good News? Is it just a mental agreement, or is there more to it? Let’s delve into the intricacies of Christian faith, and you might be surprised by what we find.

⏬ Video Highlights ⏬

Unpacking the English words “belief” and “faith”
Debunking the notion that belief doesn’t require evidence
Hebrews 11 and the Biblical understanding of faith
Faith: The journey from mind to heart to hands
The “mustard seed” faith that saves
Living in the Kingdom of God, here and now
📖 In this video, we examine how the Bible challenges our common perceptions of faith. Starting with the English language’s limitations, we address the common misconception that belief doesn’t require evidence. However, a deeper study of Hebrews 11 shows us that Christian faith is not just a mental assent but something that must be acted upon.

🌱 It starts as a tiny ‘mustard seed’ of trust, saying “you are the King and I want to be part of your Kingdom.” This faith manifests as a commitment to live in alignment with Jesus’ teachings, which include embracing your role as a member of a royal priesthood and living a life free from sin.

🌍 Understanding that your eternal life begins NOW is crucial. You’re called to rule over your sphere of influence and bring the Kingdom of God to Earth, all while waiting for the ultimate unification of Heaven and Earth when Christ returns.

🔔 Subscribe for more thought-provoking content on Christian theology and faith! 🔔

#Christianity #Faith #Belief #Hebrews11 #KingdomofGod #NewCreation #EternalLife #Jesus #MindToHeartToHands #MustardSeedFaith #Theology #OverlapLife

Is this REALLY what the Bible says about Hell? Responding to Allen Parr

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Allen Parr recently put out a video breaking down 5 different views of Hell within Christendom. Allen’s a great guy, and usually really even-handed even with views with which he disagrees.

When he got to the view that’s closest to the one I hold, he said a few things about which I was, well… disappointed.

In today’s video, we’re diving deep into a nuanced discussion about Annihilationism / Conditional Immortality, a theological view that has often been misunderstood within the Christian community.

📖 What we’ll cover in this video:

• A brief overview of Annihilationism & Conditional Immortality: What do they really mean?
• Common misconceptions and misrepresentations surrounding these beliefs. Do we land on this view because of Philosophy, or can we arrive there from Scripture first?
• How the concept of Conditional Immortality aligns with scripture.
• Addressing common counterarguments and interpretations… including the Big 3 verses that seem to support Eternal Conscious Torment.
• The importance of understanding these doctrines in the broader context of Christian eschatology.

🙏 It’s essential for us as believers to approach theological discussions with an open heart and mind, always seeking God’s truth above all else. Join me as we explore these topics!

Further up and further in!

Eternity is Physical – on “Being God’s Image”, interview with Dr. Carmen Joy Imes

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Dr. Carmen Joy Imes is one of the world’s foremost Old Testament Scholars. She just recently released a new book “Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters”. I went through it 4 times, and came to the conclusion I just HAD to interview her for the channel. It was a super encouraging – and enlightening! – conversation. We even found out we’re from the same hometown!

I hope you enjoy it thoroughly. Grab a copy of her book here:

And check out her BibleProject Classroom series on Exodus here:

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/overview/exodus-overview/

So, the kids’ show BLUEY and ECCLESIASTES are basically the same thing. (Hear me out.)

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I was watching the kids’ show “Bluey” with my children the other day – and it hit me:

Bluey and Ecclesiastes are saying a lot of the same things.

…what?!

I mean it – I landed on something really cool that I wanted to share with you guys and I think once you hear me out you’ll understand why!

So… what on earth do Bluey, Ecclesiastes (and the writings of Blaise Pascal) have to do with each other?

Let’s dive in and talk about it!

We need to talk about the RIDICULOUS pace of life!

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I’m back! I took 2 months off of everything related to this channel and spent my time deep in God’s Word…

I recommend you do the same kind of thing!

We need to create space in our lives for God to enter in – if we jam every waking second with activity, EVEN SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY, we’re going to choke ourselves out of life.

Silence, Solitude, Sabbath, Slowing things down – we all need to take seriously the fact that we are human beings with limited capacities.

Jesus and Paul themselves show us some lessons we wouldn’t otherwise have noticed…

So, let’s talk about the pace of life. There’s lots to learn together!

Tim’s CRAZY Hidden Agenda – EXPOSED

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Crazy. Heretic. False Teacher.

I’m only 30 videos into this thing and I’ve ALREADY been getting it with both barrels from the heresy hunters.

I’m about to make it worse. I’m going to EXPOSE my own “crazy” hidden agenda for both my channel, and my book.

The fire was already burning. I’m here to pour gasoline on it. EVERYBODY’S going to be mad about this one.

I cannot hold it in. The Spirit is burning within me and I MUST speak it out.

Further up and Further In!

Should Christians Watch THE CHOSEN!?

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The Chosen is the first multi-season series about the life of Jesus and His disciples – and it is taking OVER.

Their stated goal is to reach a billion people with their show, and they are all in on pursuing that goal.

But, questions about Mormon / LDS influence abound – the creator, Dallas Jenkins, is ADAMANT that the LDS church is not having any influence on the content in the show, but is that true?

I break down my thoughts on the show, and give you my honest opinion. Should Christians watch the Chosen? Let’s talk about it!

Eschatology can UNIFY Christians – yes, really!!

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Christian Eschatology is known for being one of the most contentious, entrenched, long-standing debates among those who claim the name of Jesus, and it has proven to be TOO MUCH for some people to unify with other believers over.

Jesus took church unity EXTREMELY seriously. In John 17, he makes it clear that the world will only believe that Jesus is who He says that He is when the believers are completely unified, just like Jesus and the Father are unified.

So, how can eschatology — rather than being a common vehicle for disagreement, division, and disunity — become an extraordinarily UNIFYING experience for the body of Christ?

Let’s get into it.

How to love God with all of your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength (Probably not how you think!)

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

How do you love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength? What if you’re married, you have kids, and you’ve got a job “outside” of the church?

We live busier, crazier lives than humans EVER have – which means that we’re spending even less time on Scripture reading, Prayer, and time in the Church.

That NEEDS to change – but what about the REST of our lives? Is there anything we can do about the unavoidable times of life?

I sincerely hope that this video frees you to see how you can love God with your ENTIRE life. Let me know in the comments – was this helpful?

Should Christians watch Stranger Things? My Take

Fri, 27 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Stranger Things Season 4 premieres today, and millions of us are chomping at the bit to dive back in to the Upside Down.

Others, including lots of my Christian brothers and sisters, are firmly opposed to the “godless” TV show, and believe that no Christian should put anything in front of their eyes that isn’t specifically Bible-affirming.

What’s my take? Better yet, what do the Scriptures have to say?

Let’s talk about it.

There is no “Christianity” without the Resurrection. Period.

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

In my last video, we talked about the fact that people have this messed up view of Heaven. They believe that the Bible says that Heaven is a non-physical place. The Scriptures NEVER say that.

We mentioned that most of our ideas about Heaven come to us from Greek philosophy and not the Bible.

Today is Easter. Easter is the time of year in which we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus and the inauguration of the New Creation way of things. The New Creation has not been consummated yet, but it is inaugurated.

We’re celebrating nothing less than the central hope of Christianity – as Paul says in Ephesians 1, the unifying of all things in Christ, things in Heaven and things on Earth.

Easter is about the resurrection, and the resurrection is about renewed physicality.

Resurrection means that on the Third Day, Jesus’s Tomb was Empty.

Jesus’s body had been transformed, and the grave clothes left aside folded neatly, as if to say “I’m done with those, I won’t need them anymore.” And there was no precedent for this.

When Lazarus was raised, he came back into the same life he had before, still wrapped up in the grave clothes. And presumably he died some years later.

Put another way, resurrection is the state of TOTAL OVERLAP between Heaven & Earth. It is the name given to the state something is in when God completes His plan to unify Heaven & Earth in that thing.

My favorite passage to go to for this is 1 Corinthians 15. Let’s dive into this incredible passage in the video!

Where is Jesus now? (Reflections on Resurrection)

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Now that I’ve spent some time going over the fact that physical existence is a natural and good part of what God’s created, I also want to take a moment to examine some of the faulty assumptions that Christians make when they don’t have a Biblically-informed worldview just yet.

This is a question that people wave off and simply assume the Bible does not give an answer for. And that’s, thankfully, not the case.

Here’s the question: Is Heaven a material or non-material place?
Related to it: If we believe in the bodily resurrection, where is Jesus now?

The answer is that of course Heaven IS a physically-composed place. Jesus is in heaven right now! We believe in the resurrection AND the ascension.

Heaven & Earth are not “far away” from one another. Heaven is not a strictly non-material Realm, while Earth is a strictly material realm. That’s not the case at all.

This isn’t brand new to Jesus, either. In the Temple in Jerusalem they believed that Heaven & Earth were there together. It wasn’t treated AS IF you were in Heaven – you were in Heaven! God’s space had come to overlap with the Human’s space! This was the case only in the Tabernacle and then the Temple.

However, in Acts 1, Jesus ascends into Heaven. There is at LEAST that much physicality in Heaven already. And I’m sorry if that blows up your categories, but your categories weren’t Biblical to begin with.

There is a whole school of thought in Biblical studies that if something is physical then it can’t be Spiritual, and if it’s Spiritual then it can’t be physical.

So when you read about things like a throne in Heaven, and existing Spiritual beings with bodies filling that space, we are using the language of space-time.

If fire can come down from Heaven, or physically-visible angels, then it can’t just be a mental or spiritual place.

The Bible is inviting us to rethink our entire cosmology. Not only is God’s plan for eternity physical in nature, God’s own space is physical in nature as well as Spiritual!

In our last video we talked about the basics of the Platonic worldview that has snuck into the church. Platonism, in a nutshell, is the Greek idea that physical = bad and spiritual = good and ne’er the twain shall meet. The Greek ideas we have in our minds are fundamentally misconceived, and it’s good to be able to identify them so that we can uproot them in favor of better categories.

We don’t have to enslave ourselves to a Platonic Heaven. A body is not out of place there. It’s not poetry or figurative language to say that there is physicality in God’s realm. There is. He made it. He called it good. He’s rather fond of it. And He intends to make it all new again.

The fact of the Ascension is that now a part of Earth is in Heaven.

Then, in Pentecost, the Spirit comes from Heaven to animate and empower us.

There’s a new temple launched in the world – it is the whole of God’s people in the church.

God’s ULTIMATE Goal — what is God’s plan for eternity?

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

It is VERY easy to look out at the world and think “what on Earth is the plan here?” All of the chaos and tribulation (for example – COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine) is enough to make our head spin!

Where is it all headed? What is God’s plan for eternity? What are we all hoping for? Is it eternity singing to the Lord in white robes? Are we waiting for God to destroy this place and take us all to Heaven?

N.T. Wright and the men from Remnant Radio sat down and had a brilliant discussion about what the BIBLE has to say in response to that question.

I go over the response and offer my own commentary. Give it a watch!

How to Read the Bible for Beginners (and Everyone!) – My Top 10 Tips

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Reading the Bible is hard enough, but ESPECIALLY if you’re a beginner.

I have had a lot of believers pour into me over the years, and now it’s my turn to give back!

So, here are my top 10 tips for reading the Bible as a beginner!

1. Keep the ENTIRE story in mind.

This is my most important tip. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and they go something like this. 2 chapters to describe the Creation, when Heaven & Earth were one, 1 chapter to describe the Fall, where they separated, 1,184 chapters for the long, incredible story of how God plans to unite Heaven and Earth again, and 2 chapters describing what it looks like when God unites them fully once again.

99% of your Bible takes place in the part of the story where the job isn’t finished. But you need to know what the goal WAS in the beginning, and what the goal IS in the end, in order to understand what is happening in the meantime.
The re-unification of Heaven & Earth is what the Bible is all about. In Ephesians 1 Paul says that the plan of God for the fullness of times that He set forth from the beginning is to unify all things in Heaven and on Earth in Jesus.

2. Embrace the weird.

In the words of the great Dr. Michael Heiser, “if it’s weird, it’s probably important”. The Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God, and it is absolutely trustworthy and beautiful. It’s also REALLY, REALLY bizarre to modern sensibilities, so please go into it KNOWING that, and embracing the weird rather than running from it. There are a LOT of sex scandals, stories about slavery, vicious and brutal murder, etc.

Lots of “read the Bible in a year” plans get thrown off the rails when people get to Leviticus.

3. Context, Context, Context

“I can do all things”.

Nathaniel telling David “you are the man!”

“Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there I am among them.”

4. Don’t do it alone.

Especially if you’re new, find some humble, open-minded Christian friends to talk to them about it. You can even start a conversation by saying “Guys, what do you think is going on in Ephesians 4?” If they’re smart, they’ll pull out their phone and look it up and start reading it. You’ve just started a conversation and gotten your friends reading with you at the same time. Win win.

Bonus — Find good YouTube channels and other resources. For a good variety of perspectives, I recommend The Bible Project, Mike Winger, and Allen Parr’s YouTube channels. I’ll put the links in the description. If you want to get REALLY intense, listen to the BibleProject Podcast or join the BibleProject Classroom, and start listening to N.T. Wright and Michael Heiser. They are unimpeachably brilliant Bible scholars and they have my full endorsement, because they don’t get embroiled in these weird theological debates. Bringing me to point #5.

5. Don’t get bogged down in “systems”

It’s easy to hear these debates about “dispensationalism vs covenant theology” or “calvinism vs arminianism”, or “rapture or no rapture” – stop. Your job is NOT to figure out which of today’s pastors is closest to correct. ALL of them get some things right and some things wrong. Your job is to figure out what the chapter, letter, or passage in front of you meant to its original audience. If you pick up a system, you will be using a colored lens that causes you to MISS at least some of what the author is doing in that section of the Scriptures. If you’re looking for a proof of dispensationalism or calvinism, you’re like that person who’s not really listening in a conversation, they’re just looking for the thing they’re going to piggyback off of to make their own point.

6. Don’t treat it like a devotional grab bag.

You can’t just rip the most emotional and beautiful-sounding verse out of its context and make it your “life verse” — the Bible wasn’t designed to be read that way.

7. Don’t ignore the Old Testament.

It’s the backstory of the whole Christian faith. Jesus only means what He means because He’s fulfilling Old Testament promises.

8. Get help with the original languages.

You’re probably not going to learn Hebrew or Greek right now, and that’s fine. Get in the habit of Googling “romans 8 interlinear” when you have a question.

9. Look for design patterns & repeat words.

While you’re in those original languages, look for repeated words. Repeated words are a very common Jewish and Greek way of emphasizing the importance of a concept or topic within a chapter. Most of us pick out the verse that “makes the most sense” to us as the verse that is the “most important” – but sometimes, that’s not the ultimate point the author is trying to make.

10. Just don’t stop!

You don’t have to load yourself up with this huge charge to read the Bible every day and make it this big scary thing. You want to learn to fall in love with this thing, not chain yourself to it.

It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Don’t load yourself up with moral failure if you don’t read your Bible for a day. Just look at the Bible as the origin story of the Kingdom of God and your place in it, and stay curious about it. Read enough to get confused, then stop and check your resources. OR, check your resources first and start reading the Bible with them.

By the way, as you might be wondering… why was I eating the paper in the beginning? Psalm 1 says that “blessed is he who meditates on God’s law day and night” – that word for “meditates” is the Hebrew Word “haga”, which means, “to chew on” – so chew on God’s word if you really want to get the juice out of it. But you should use your brain to chew on it, not your mouth, like this weirdo.

The 3 BEST Books about Eternity – #3 – Heaven, by Randy Alcorn

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve read hundreds of books on theology – on heaven, on the new creation, on eternity – and someone in the comments recently asked me: “what are my top three books on eternity”.

This was hard, but I did it. This is the first!

3) Heaven, by Randy Alcorn

First off – this book is long. It’s like 560 pages. Before I dive into why I like this book, let me point out that this is the book I think best illustrates the problem.

There’s a problem in Christianity, where there is a ton of confusion about what we think the eternal state is. Is it Heaven? Is it New Heavens and New Earth? Is it just the Earth?

Is it disembodied, or do we have physical bodies? Are we going to be singing and wearing white robes or is there more to it?

The Bible really doesn’t give you a whole lot about what “Heaven” looks like, because that’s the place that you go now if you die. You’ll be in the presence of the Lord – “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”

But that’s not the end of the story.

The end of the story, you can find on the last two chapters of the Bible and sprinkled throughout in visions and prophecies. It’s described as the New Heavens and the New Earth. If you go to Revelation 21 and 22, what you do not have is “all of the saved people going up to heaven to be with God forever”. What you do have is the heavenly Jerusalem coming down like a bride prepared for her husband.

And now God’s dwelling place is with the people and He’s recreated the world the way that he promised to in, say, Romans 8, Isaiah 65, and a series of other passages.

That’s a fundamental confusion from a lot of people! If you read any of the negative reviews (this book has almost purely five star reviews), they say unhelpful things like “This book is says it’s about heaven but it’s not about heaven! This is all speculation! He’s saying ‘we’re gonna be in bodies and stuff and how do we know that?!” My answer: read the Bible.

Randy Alcorn is a really wonderful author; he put so much effort into this and you can see that the subtitle says “Clear answers to 44 real questions about the afterlife; angels, resurrection and the Kingdom of God”.

I love that he took this approach. That’s part of what makes this book so valuable – these are real questions! He’s a pastor and an author, so these are real questions people have asked him about heaven. Think about it, he does funerals and he has to answer questions from the people who come to attend the funeral. They trust him to give solid answer, and he does an excellent job.

The Fundamental Confusion.

If you follow the train of thought that was started in Genesis 1 and 2, and you’re following it all the way through to Revelation 21 and 22, you’ll see those four chapters (the first two and the last two) look
really, really similar:

It’s God dwelling with his people…
in a perfect earth…
where there is no sin or evil or brokenness anywhere…
connecting humanity again to what the original plan was…
which is to rule and reign alongside him as his chosen people…
taking the world someplace beautiful (the cultural mandate from Genesis 1 & 2)

I love that he answers questions like “what will we do every day?” “Will there be sports?” “Will there be coffee?”

Yes!

You simply take all the best things about our existence now and then you improve them beyond anything you could possibly imagine! All this in the presence of God and all of his people where there’s no sin and brokenness anywhere!

I love “Heaven” for that reason… however, I do dislike that the title is deceptively named. Because he isn’t discussing heaven per se so much as he is the New Creation the New Heavens and the New Earth.

But if you can get past that little that little quibble and you’ve got a lot of time on your hands to go through 560 pages worth of work, it is an excellent, excellent book!

What is “The Overlap Life” about?

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Where did “The Overlap Life” come from?

I spent a lot of time studying heaven and what happens to believers after they die.

I found that a lot of the conversations that I was having with people outside of the church were really confused – people were really thrown off by what they thought the Bible was teaching. So, I decided to do a deep dive!

I read a lot of the church fathers.
I went through a lot of our history as a church.
I studied from all kinds of different denominations and theological systems

And I found that this confusion spreads back quite a ways… it’s not a new thing.

So, I just decided to let the Bible speak for itself! I found that the the most interesting thing for me was that there’s a lot of dialogue between the first two chapters (that describe the Eden narrative) and the last two chapters (which describe what’s called the “New Creation”, or the “Restoration of All Things”, or the “New Heavens and the New Earth”).

Tom & Jerry, or the Bible?

My understanding growing up was that heaven was something fundamentally “disembodied”: that it was ethereal. You’re out in in the clouds somewhere.

I think that idea came more from Greek philosophy and Tom and Jerry than the Bible; because the last picture you get in the Bible is of God’s city, the heavenly Jerusalem coming down to Earth like a bride prepared for her husband!

Then, God dwells with his people on the earth that He’s remade again!

I think of, perhaps, Romans 8: where Paul says that this world, (“the creation”) groans with labor pains while it waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

That’s really what this channel (and this book) are about:

What changes if that’s the future?
What changes if that’s the eternal state? If it’s not just disembodied heaven, but it’s physical and embodied?
How does that change our priorities?
How does that change what we think we’re doing here?

That turned into a book, called “The Overlap Life”!

It turned into a YouTube Channel!

It has turned into some Challenges!

There’s a lot more in the pipeline – honestly, we are just barely scratching the surface.

But if you are at all interested in studying Christian Hope, developing an eternal mindset, having a good theology of work, and just general good Biblical theology*, then you are in the right place!*