The message of Jesus is bigger than the forgiveness of sins. The Gospel affects all of life. Jesus desires for the Kingdom to come present, now. The goal isn’t simply to get people to Heaven; the goal is also to get Heaven to people.

Some background on that...

At the beginning of the Gospel...

As He approached the Cross, Jesus said a few important things- things completely relevant to how we often feel about how we relate to God. Whereas we tend to think God is out to “get us” or “judge us,” Jesus said- 

“Now is the time of judgment. The ruler of...

I worked in churches and nonprofits for the better part of the past 20 years. Before that, I interned, volunteered, and worked part-time with church youth groups. As a result, I’ve preached a TON of sermons and taught a LOT of lessons. 

Some were excellent- a lot of them were junk...

To understand redemption, we need to understand the first time the word is used in the Bible. You see, later authors actually build on what earlier writers teach us. In other words, to understand the redemption Jesus offers (i.e, 1 Peter 1:18-19, Acts 20:22, etc.), we must understand the concept...

Farmers know all about reaping and sowing. They know that you always eventually reap WHAT you sow (i.e., if you plant corn, you'll reap corn), they know you reap WHERE you sow (in the same field), and they know you reap AFTER you sow... 

Oh, and you always reap MORE than you sow. A few...

Peter tells us that we’re redeemed by the blood of Jesus (1 Peter 1:18-19). Most of us that grew up in the church know that- and believe it. However, we often have a limited view of what Jesus came to do. 

You see, most of us believe that Jesus achieved our redemption on the Cross....

My cousin Jonathan is one of the smartest guys I know. Especially to be so young. Over a decade-and-a-half my junior, my first memory of him comes from my now-deceased grandmother’s house in Tarrant City, a small bedroom community just outside of downtown Birmingham.

One Christmas I walked...

Paul encouraged us to not stray from the simplicity that is found in Christ. His thought was, well… we tend to make things infinitely more complex. We tend to move towards complex religious systems. 

Jesus, on the other hand, came to make things easy. 

Follow me...

Confession: I’m a busy body… sometimes. No, make that a lot of the time. 

When my spirit is quiet and my soul is at rest and I’m really tapped into to who I am, I’m not. But, most of the time, it’s easy to confuse being busy with being productive. It’s...

In the previous episode we nailed down two fundamentals. In this episode we take the discussion further. 

First, we look at what church leaders from a variety of backgrounds have said. Oddly enough, they all use different language (some say “filled,” some say...