Citizen of Heaven

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I hope everyone else has enjoyed this week at the coffee shop as much as I have; let’s have one last cup before we leave. To conclude the discussion, Mark Roberts and BJ Sipe discuss the willpower you have to find sometimes to walk away from something that may not be dangerous or sinful in and of itself. Links to their respective work are...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We’re back for a second cup with Mark Roberts of the West Side church of Christ in Irving, Texas, and BJ Sipe of the church in Danville, Kentucky. Links are included in the show notes. We’re talking here about mornings – how a cup of coffee can get you going physically, and what it might take to get you going on a daily basis spiritually....

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Mark Roberts’s Coffee and the Bible series was a big prompt for this episode. I was excited to sit down with him and BJ Sipe, another avid coffee drinker, to discuss a variety of coffee-adjacent topics. We start with the idea of combining coffee and Bible study. No one says you can’t study the Bible without a cup of coffee. But Mark and BJ...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! These are the best books I've read in 2026 so far. See also my list of "most surprising" books." Lord willing, the lists for the entire year will be posted in December. (Honorable mention): Doubts About Darwin, by Thomas Woodward 10. Mr. Roberts, by Thomas Heggin 9. Under God, by Toby Mac and Michael Tait 8. Conquerors,...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! These are the most surprising books I've read in the first half of 2026.  10. Where God Was Born, by Bruce Feiler 9. The Death of Evolution: Restoring Faith and Wonder in a World of Doubt, by Jim Nelson Black 8. The Grave of John Wesley Hardin: Three Essays on Grassroots History, by C.L. Sonnichsen 7. The Authentic Life of Billy the K...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Jesus wanted to be about His Father’s business as soon as possible. Here’s hoping His attitude will rub off on us. This week we’ll cover the difference between a successful businessperson and a crooked one; the help the business world has offered over the years in the cause of Christ and why we’re better off without it; an expression from...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! It’s my eternal struggle: balancing keeping things proper and keeping things interesting. This week we’ll cover whether efforts to sneak the gospel in the back door are ethical or even effective; the most interesting and perhaps least profitable sort of books I read; the inherently deceptive nature of modern news and what our response shou...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This topic is near and dear to my heart; it’s worth acquiring and protecting, especially if you wear the name of Jesus. We’ll discuss apostles and how they were able to do their job so well and continue to do so; a storyteller who may or may not be insane and how you can tell which; a flashback to the mistakes I made in my career as a jour...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I’m actually on the road this week; apologies in advance for any sound issues I may have being away from my normal microphone. We’ll be talking about one road God has prepared for us and the challenges we find walking in it; two roads that converge in the woods and why Robert Frost doesn’t care which one you take; another road the devil wa...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! “All the blessings in the heavenly places” sounds like the greatest gift of all – and it is. But what exactly are the “heavenly places” to which Paul refers in Ephesians 1:3? And why does the devil seem to be there too? Thankfully we have the Bible Geeks, Ryan Joy and Bryan Schiele, here to answer the tough questions in the last part of ou...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! My conversation with Ryan Joy and Bryan Schiele, the Bible Geeks, turns to Psalm 127 and the blessing of children. As each of us is a father, we each have a perspective on the subject. Hopefully we didn’t brag on our own children very much. However full or not full your own quiver may be at the moment, or may become in the future, I think...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This month we welcome in, for the first time as a pair on the podcast, Ryan Joy and Bryan Schiele, the Bible Geeks, a couple of the best podcasters I know. Links to the show and to Ryan’s work with the North church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, are included in the show notes. We start the blessed ball rolling by talking about the nature of daily...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We finish our world tour in a land considered a fertile field for the gospel until godless Communists took over. We’ll discuss the apostle who may have first brought Jesus to China and why; a radical new theory about world exploration (embrace or discard at your pleasure); the super-fancy products China used to be famous for making in earl...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is one of the last two stops in our trip around the world; I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. This week we’ll talk about one of the best men Germany ever gave the world; one of the worst, and how his biggest opponent was more like him than he realized; a city determined to make Germany well known for unity instead of starting...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Egypt is the nation mentioned most in the Bible other than Israel and Judah. So naturally our trip around the world had to make a stop here. We’ll discuss the irresistible urge in God’s people to embrace the life God’s trying to get us out of; an alleged murder mystery and the dangers of presuppositions; a cultural phenomenon and what it d...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The greatest wrestling match in history is described in Genesis 32. It speaks to the struggles Jacob faced throughout his life in his walk with God, but also to the struggles of the nation that descended from him. Even more so, though, it prefigures the “wrestlings” of all servants of God, trying to find the blessing He has for us and some...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Jacob Hudgins and Mark Russell are back to continue our discussion about Israel. But what do we really mean when we use the term “Israel” today? Is the nation on modern maps equivalent to the chosen people of God? Do we have an obligation as Christians to support the nation of Israel? And is Israel still God’s chosen people? As always, we’...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I had so much fun going around the world with you last month that we’re going to do another lap this month, starting with a long-overdue look at the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Here to help are Jacob Hudgins from the Twin City church of Christ in College Station, Texas, and Mark Russell of the Vale church of Christ in Valparaiso, Ind...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! If you say you knew we’d be traveling to Mongolia in our trip around the world this month, I will straight-out call you a liar. And yet here we are. We’ll cover the so-called heretics who brought Jesus to this distant corner of the world and whether their efforts count at all; the greatest Mongolian of all time and whether he was really “g...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Our trip around the world brings us to a nation not mentioned in the Bible yet fraught with Biblical history – or at least Bible-adjacent history. We’ll cover the French’s obsession with Mary Magdalene (and ours); the most obsessive and rebellious teenager you’ve ever seen and why the French love her; the one-size-fits-all approach to war...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The first month in Season 8 will take you around the globe, looking at the lessons we can learn from our neighbors. This week we’ll discuss whose way of doing things is the right way, and what that “right way” is; the reason Vladamir Putin is in the news so much and why you shouldn’t be surprised; the advantages of getting drunk and why I...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! OK, we’ve saved it for last, but we finally get to what you came to hear. Colton McDaniel and Paul Casebolt, links provided in the show notes, finish off our citizenship discussion by weighing in on the issues of borders, immigration, and policing them both with regard to the kingdom of heaven. I’m making a point of leaving carnal politics...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We pick up where we left off with Colton McDaniel and Paul Casebolt discussing our role as citizens. In this part of the conversation we discuss the nature of our simultaneous roles as kingdom citizens and residents of planet earth. Can we balance our obligations? If not, which one comes first? And most importantly of all – what does this...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! What better way to start Season 8 than a long-overdue discussion of what it means to be a resident of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. A couple of newcomers join me for the discussion. Colton McDaniel preaches for the Stone Canyon church of Christ in Owasso, Oklahoma. Paul Casebolt is new to online ministry. Follow his podcast and blog at Clea...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is an encore episode. The original "Good Future" episode appeared as one of a series of four "future" episodes on May 30, 2023. I am an optimist by nature. When I talk about the future, sometimes I forget that. This episode helped remind me, for which I am grateful. This week we will cover the glorious future of th...