Bible in Life

How can God say love your enemies and also say wipe out all the Canaanites? God sure seems angry and mean in the Old Testament and a lot nicer in the New Testament. There just seems like there's a lot of death and destruction in the Old Testament... how do we understand all of that? Links to the books mentioned in this episode:  The God I Don't Understand, by Chris Wright Is God a Moral Monster, b...

Has anyone ever told you to read the Bible … it’ll change your life? On one hand that’s true. Studies have show that people who read the Bible 4 days a week see significant life transformation in all sorts of positive ways.  But on the other hand, if we're gonna be honest, the Bible also has some pretty strange stuff in it! Women riding on seven-headed beasts and demon-possessed people that attack...

Jesus teaches us that a life of prayer includes praying, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." - Matt 6:13 This is important because this world is a battleground not a playground … we often forget this. According to Jesus and His apostles the reason for this is because there is an archenemy of God and His people, namely the Satan who is out to destroy God's good world and God's...

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. - Matthew 6:12 We have various strategies for dealing with our failures. We rationalize. We minimize. We blame. Jesus has another way. It's a way that requires courage. It's a way that will changes your life.  Instead of using any of the strategies that are forms of hiding/avoiding our failures, Jesus invites us to confess them to ou...

Give us this day our daily bread.  This request from the Lord's Prayer begins to get at the heart of living a life of prayer. In this request, we are asking for our basic needs to be taken care of by someone else. This acknowledges that we aren't ultimately in charge of life - of our security and what becomes of us in the future. We can't control our well being.  To pray "give us this day our dail...

If you've ever prayed the Lord's prayer, you've prayed the words "Your kingdom come." What does that mean? What do you imagine happening when you ask that?  The coming of God's kingdom is one of the major themes of the Bible. It was at the heart of Jesus' ministry. Jesus taught that He was bringing God's kingdom into the world. So in a certain sense, God's kingdom is already here. Yet He taught us...

Prayer.  When Jesus teaches us to pray, He says should be our first concern should be that God's name be "hallowed." That has to do with God's name being holy. As the psalmist writes, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name." - 103:1.  But if God's name already is holy, then what does it mean to pray that it would be holy? And what does that teach us about living...

Who do you pray to? Yes, I know, God ... but what’s he like? How does he want to be addressed?  And what kind of relationship should we expect? As we're developing a life of prayer, these are all very important questions because we want to be sure we're praying to the God and Father revealed to us in Jesus. Jesus teaches us to pray to "Our Father in heaven ..." What kind of father is he? What kind...

Prayer. Prayer is one of the most beautiful and most frustrating parts of the Christian life ... at least for me. Having prayed and followed Jesus for 35 years, I still find myself with tons of questions about prayer and I find myself still asking, "Lord teach me to pray!" That's the same request the disciples had for Jesus in Luke 11:1, and it reminds us that living a life of prayer doesn't just...

Do you want your life to change for the better?  Do you want more patience and less anger? Do you want to see bitterness subside? Do you want to feel spiritual alive instead of spiritually stagnant? Do you want to grow in your faith? This episode will tell you how.  ▶️FREE GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE: https://www.johnwhittaker.net ▶️MORE FREE RESOURCES: https://www.johnwhittaker.net/resources...

How can God forgive your sins? When I first became a Christian, I wanted nothing more than to please God. When I felt like I was doing good at that, I was happy, at times even a little self-righteous. When I felt like I wasn't doing good at that, I was down on myself, beating myself up with guilt.  While I knew that Jesus died so my sins could be forgiven, I struggled to really grasp that truth an...

The book of Ecclesiastes opens with these well known words: “Meaningless! Meaningless!”     says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless!     Everything is meaningless.” And the book continually revisits this theme... which raises a very real and pressing question: Is this Bible book saying life is meaningless?  Life can be confusing. It can be frustrating. It can be hard.  But meaningless?! So many peo...

▶️Would you consider a year-end gift to the Bible in Life online teaching ministry? You can donate through World Family Mission … all gifts are tax deductible.   What do you know about the Christmas story?  There's Mary and Joseph, of course, and little baby Jesus. Probably some shepherds. Oh, wise men... don't forget the wise men. There's a stable and a manger.  Some sheep ... and cattle that are...

▶️Would you consider a year-end gift to the Bible in Life online teaching ministry? You can donate through World Family Mission … all gifts are tax deductible.   Was Jesus born in a barn? I'm guessing that according the Nativity set you have out for Christmas the answer would be yes ... He was born in a barn complete with shepherds, sheep, cattle, and wisemen too! And of course we know how the sto...

What do you know about the Christmas story?  There's Mary and Joseph, of course, and little baby Jesus. Probably some shepherds. Oh, wise men... don't forget the wise men. There's a stable and a manger.  Some sheep ... and cattle that are lowing.  Angels! What about night time and a nasty old inn keeper?  And a star! The reality is, some of those details are in the text, though they're not all in...

"Be a good little boy." "Johnny, you know the rules ..." "You know what company policy is!" Rules. Some seem better than others. Some seem arbitrary.  I think sometimes we think of sin in that context, and assume it's about breaking or keeping the rules ... and those rules might even be arbitrary religious rules or arbitrary divine laws.  But sin is more intrinsic and "organic" than that. That is,...

Redemption.  In church circles, we read that word in the Bible or we sing about it in songs on Sunday. What does it mean? In sports, we say things like "this is a redemption game" for this team (almost like revenge or getting even).  In the realm of shopping, we talk about "redeeming this coupon."  But those meanings of the word are very different than how the Bible uses it.  So what does the Bibl...

Jesus came announcing the "kingdom of God." He went about preaching "the gospel of the kingdom." And in fact, the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) are the story of God becoming king, with His coronation day being the day he received a crown of thorns and lifted up on the cross.  This is what all the poets and prophets of the Bible look forward to ... and sometimes even celebrate in advance, ant...

Grace! In church, we talk about grace. We sing about grace. We read about grace in passages like Ephesians 2:8: “By grace you have been saved…” When I first became a Christian, I heard these words and I read these verses and I knew I was saved by grace. I could affirm that ... assert that. I could tell people that - "We're saved by grace!" But I didn’t really get it. And spiritually and emotionall...

The word "gospel" is familiar to Bible readers and to Christians. But what many modern Christians mean by the word and what the earliest Christians meant by the word aren't necessarily the same.  Today, the word "gospel" is often associated with a so-called plan of salvation.  But when the apostles shared the gospel, they announced something other than a plan of salvation. So what is the gospel? S...

Psalm 37 begins, "Do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers." The picture painted in the psalm is of a person with little to no interest in God or in God's ways, and yet his life seems to be going great. And the person who's seeking God and walking in his ways is struggling to just make life work. And it doesn't feel fair.  "What's going on God? Why is his/her life going s...

Church. Interestingly, when it comes to church, the Bible says very little about the things we all too often focus on … it says virtually nothing about buildings, programs, order of services, or any such things that often first come to mind for us when we think of church And I actually think this silence should be highly instructive to us - because the things we prioritize about a church aren’t pr...

What does it take to live the life you believe God has created you to life, the life you really want to live? I think there's one key factor that underlies all the other components of living that kind of life.  In this episode, I interview college student, college quarterback, business owner, and follower of Jesus, Brock Johnson. He's got a lot going on in life, and none of it happens on accident....

On this episode I answer two listener questions: 1. What does it mean to love your enemies? Are Christians supposed to be doormats? In Luke 6:27-31, Jesus teaches us this: 27 “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away y...

In this Episode, John answers two questions from a listener.  First, was Jesus really forsaken by God? Matthew puts it this way in his gospel: About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). - Matthew 27:46. Jesus' cry actually comes from Psalm 22 ... so how does the original context in the Psalm...