Citizen of Heaven

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Loyalty to an underachieving sports team can be noble. Loyalty to an abusive relationship can be destructive. It’s all about finding a worthy cause, group or individual. This week we will discuss whether you can be both a Jew and a Christian, and why you and I should care; the choice between patriotism and pragmatism in 17th Century Jamaic...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! At some level we all want to be the lone wolf, to prove ourselves as individuals. That’s not all bad. But it’s not all good either. This week we will discuss the relationship between musical groups and their members who go solo, and what that has to do with the church; the ethos of Jack Reacher (who does not resemble Tom Cruise in the slig...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! From T-Rexes to pterodactyls to triceratops, dinosaurs have fascinated humans since the early 1800s. When did they live? Where did they all go? And for Christians, how do they impact our faith?  This week we will discuss dinosaurs in the Bible (I would argue there are at least three); Michael Crichton’s commentary on the hubris of humankin...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is the second part of my conversation with Matt and Jenn Schmidt, the co-hosts of the Intimate Covenant podcast. Find out more about their work at intimatecovenant.com. Check out the first segment if you have not done so already. Here we will discuss lessons in marriage preparation from the Shulammite, and what might be gained from te...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is part 1 of my conversation with Matt and Jenn Schmidt.  My guests this month are Matt and Jenn Schmidt, the cohosts of the Intimate Covenant podcast. Matt and Jenn are all about having more and better sex in a covenant relationship between one man and one woman, joined by God, defined by the Bible. Find out more at intimatecovenant....

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! A legacy of children. A legacy of debt. A legacy of work. For good or ill, we all leave something behind. Christians inherit the legacy of brethren,  and ultimately of Jesus Himself. May God help us be worthy of them. This week we will discuss Elijah’s mantle and what it meant for Elisha; the worst vice president ever, and how he paid the...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I love me a good tool. Tools give us the ability to alter the world around us. But we need to actually use them. Better yet, we need to use them well, and for the right purpose. Otherwise we just make a mess out of our garage and our life. Men love tools. We admire them. We collect them. We want to have the right tool for the job. But if a...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Character is more than what you do. It is who you are on the inside—your true identity. It’s a tough concept. We struggle to judge others. We struggle to judge ourselves. In the end for Christians, it all boils down to the same thing: Adopt the character of Jesus. This week we will discuss the person Jesus is trying to turn us into, the bl...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! If you missed the first part of my conversation with Matt Bassford and Keith Stonehart, please do yourself a favor and check it out. We covered the role suffering has played in their own lives and the lessons they have drawn from it. We begin the second part by discussing the (mostly) well-intentioned doctors who killed my favorite preside...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Life in Christ is still life on earth. And that means hardship — sometimes beyond what we think ourselves capable of bearing. And in that moment, we can lean into God or run away from God. My guests this week have chosen the former, and we are all the richer for it. Matt Bassford, well-known hymnist, is the preacher for the Jackson Heights...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I don’t typically do sequels. But the Bears episode was well received, and I still have Daniel Boone on the brain, so I decided to revisit one of my favorite mammals this week.  We will discuss whether children should take on big game, how Boone’s name got on all those trees, the story of the giant maneater that wouldn’t die (either the st...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Something that is buried is assumed to be gone forever, of no more relevance. Jesus teaches us to think of it in a more nuanced way. It’s not just about what was; it’s about what will come afterward, and what we will do with what remains.  This week we will discuss Israel’s baptism in the Red Sea and the implications it carries for us; the...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The word “bridge” does not occur in the Bible — not in any translation I checked, anyway. But the idea of bringing two sides together, for better or worse, is a constant theme in the text. This week we will discuss the bridge God refuses to build in eternal realms, the bridges He has built for us now and how we can best use them, the real-...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! They say commitment is necessary to find success at the highest level — athletics, business, playing an instrument, whatever. And serving Jesus may be the best example of all. It’s all or nothing; the more we push back against that, the more we doom ourselves to failure. This week we will discuss Jesus’ remarkably candid approach to discip...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! My guests this week are brothers in Christ, brothers in labor, and brothers-in-law. Emerson Brown is the preacher for the Westfield church of Christ in Westfield, Indiana. Jeff O’Rear preaches for the Judson Road church of Christ in Longview, Texas. Together they host the Working in the Word podcast, an excellent resource for Christians wh...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! If you noticed that we discussed men and women, respectively, over the last two episodes, you may already have an incorrect idea of what the Blending episode is all about. So let me be clear. Things God made to be distinct will remain distinct, despite our best efforts. But sometimes the whole becomes more than merely the sum of its parts....

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Well, I haven’t gotten in too much trouble lately, so I thought I would spend a week talking about women. I will be using the Bible as my guide, though, so I am confident I have the truth. I pray it comes out in a respectful way.  This week we will discuss how “understanding” women is not only possible but mandatory; how “Chick Lit” feeds...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! What does it take to be a man in today’s society. It depends on who you ask. Some may say, get in touch with your feelings. Others might prefer kick-boxing classes. But when we ask God, we get a very consistent message — one that focuses on the heart more than emotions or physical strength. This week we will discuss how the proper use of a...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I wanted two true originals to be my guests this week, and I think I found them. Mark Roberts preaches for the West Side church of Christ in Irving, Texas; he is the author of numerous books, including “Understanding Apocalyptic Literature” and “Seeking God’s Way.” Terry Francis returns to the podcast this week. He preaches for the Chelsea...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We revisit Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism this week. Solomon said wisdom excels foolishness as light excels darkness. But he never intended reason to exclude God, and that is specifically what Objectivists do mean. This week we discuss the ways reason fails to properly explain the world or our part in it; the things about rationality...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism has either inspired or infuriated her readers for more than a half-century now. That’s fine. But many Christians see Objectivism as a way to rationalize rampant materialism. That’s a problem. This week we will ask whether selfishness is, in fact, a sin; whether Atlas has a right, or even an obligation,...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Idealism is a two-edged sword. We need something perfect or near-perfect to use as a target. But continually aiming for and missing an ideal mark can leave us discouraged and cause us to quit entirely. Balance is key. This week we will discuss Philippians 3 and the paradox of perfection; what war taught C.S. Lewis about Germans and about h...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Progress is forward movement. We have a tendency to think of it as inherently good and more or less inevitable. In truth, neither of those is true — especially when we are considering matters of the Spirit. This week we will discuss one of the greatest lines in our hymnals, and what it actually means; one way in which J.R.R. Tolkien and C....

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This episode represents the final section of my conversation with Josh Everett, professor of British literature at Central Texas College, and Edwin Crozier, preacher and co-host of the Text Talk podcast. If you have not checked out the first two installments, please do so. Here we discuss the literary legacy J.R.R. Tolkien has left for us,...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This week I am sharing my conversation with two Christians who know Tolkien far better than I. Josh Everett is a professor of English literature at Central Texas College in Killeen; Edwin Crozier is an evangelist with the Livingston church of Christ in Lutz, Florida, and the co-host of the popular Text Talk podcast.  Thank you for coming b...