Citizen of Heaven

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is a repeat of one of my most enduring episodes -- episode 95. New episodes begin in April -- the beginning of Season 7. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The "Plague" episode originally aired November 8, 2022. Season 7 begins with new episodes in April. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven podcast. You are...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The "Staycation" episode originally aired August 16, 2022. Season 7 begins with new episodes in April. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven podcast. You...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The "Depression" episode originally aired the week of December 6, 2022. Season 7 begins with new episodes in April. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The "Depression" episode originally aired the week of December 6, 2022. Season 7 begins with new episodes in April. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! The "Depression" episode originally aired the week of December 6, 2022. Season 7 begins with new episodes in April. Check out Hal on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@halhammons9705 Hal Hammons serves as preacher and shepherd for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I will be taking a month off from the podcast starting next week. I thought the timing was good to discuss the blessings and dangers of taking a step back. This week we’ll discuss God’s approach to rest and how it can benefit us; the insights of various presidents regarding the work they did and how they responded when it ended; the ways y...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! For years, semaphore flags have been used to communicate over long distances. This week I’m using flags myself; here’s hoping the message gets through. We’ll discuss the flag Jesus waves and how we benefit from it; the flag some Americans wave, not caring whose eye it irritates; my own system of flags and how I use it to manage the problem...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I love boats. If it weren’t for the time investment, the enormous financial investment, and the fear of drowning, I’d be on the water all the time. This week we’ll cover Jesus’s expertise at the captain’s wheel and how we get too distracted to appreciate it; a boat full of youngsters that found a way to defeat Adolf Hitler; a genre of musi...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! This is the last part of my conversation with Jacob Hudgins and Scott Beyer.  Links to their good work are in the show notes. Here we discuss whether making yourself happy, with no consideration of others, is ever a good objective. As we will discover, my guests find their happiness in a place where, well, let’s just say I have trouble rel...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I’m a sarcastic person. Sarcasm makes me happy. So what should my response be when it makes other people unhappy? Can I get them to change, or do I have to? Here to help me with the answers are Jacob Hudgins and Scott Beyer. Jacob preaches for the Twin City church in College Station, Texas; Scott preaches for the Eastland church in Louisvi...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! In my search for guests this month, I finally settled on a couple of preachers who strike me as having a generally happy outlook on life, thinking maybe I could learn something. And I absolutely did. Jacob Hudgins preaches for the Twin City church in College Station; check out his excellent books at Amazon and other retailers; Scott Beyer...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Yes, Luckenbach, Texas, is a real place. Barely. Its presence in the Texas consciousness, however, is as big as Texas itself. Today we’ll cover how its insignificance makes it so great; the glory days of Luckenbach and what remains in their place; the song that made Luckenbach and killed it at the same time; and a game of dominoes to which...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We went to my hometown last week; this week it’s my adopted hometown. The contrast could not be more stark, and both towns like it that way. We’ll discuss how concepts as opposite as normal and weird can become basically interchangeable; how willing you are to actually join the effort instead of standing by idly; the rude awakening a new s...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We’re talking about my hometown today, for better and for worse. Longhorns, fear not: I have kept my biases to a minimum. Aggies, rest assured: we go to College Station next week. This week it’s all about the lights that are shining and what they are shining on; the late great Armadillo World Headquarters and its legacy of inclusiveness; A...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Jerry King, Jeremy Dehut and I wrap up our conversation about the city of Dallas by discussing its most famous fictitious citizens and the lifestyle they represent. You, too, can live on the Southfork Ranch with J.R., Bobby, and the rest of the Ewing clan — all from the comfort of your family game table. But would you want to  do that? Is...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! When you think Dallas, you think silver football helmets with big blue stars — at least, I do. Sometimes your heroes live up to their calling, sometimes not so much. In the second part of my discussion with Jerry King and Jeremy Dehut, we discuss what makes a hero, what if anything disqualifies a hero, how much patience we should have for...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We’re starting the year off right with Texas month. I’ll be giving all the unfortunate uninitiated out there the grand tour, high points and low points alike. We’ll start in the D/FW metroplex (whether that’s a high point or a low point is up to you) with my friends Jerry King and Jeremy Dehut, who work with the Twin Creeks church of Chris...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! We’ve been talking about gifts this month. I’m going to complete the journey today by commenting on your gift to me – 300 weeks of letting me talk about the things I care about. I thought I’d use this landmark occasion to give you four examples of things I preach, read, hear and play, and tell you a bit about why, after five and a half sea...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! In lieu of my regular monthly report, I am here today to finish my list of the best books I’ve read this year. My final total for 2024 is going to come in at between 204 and 210 books — well off my ridiculous pace of 2023, but still, a lot. Obviously I have no hope of retaining everything or even anything from the vast majority of them. Bu...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I have another gift for you this week. You’ve figured out by now I’m leaning toward the conceptual, deeper end of the gifts spectrum. Hopefully you’ll still get a smile out of it. We’ll discuss my 5-minute version of the meaning of life; one author’s gargantuan version of the meaning of the English language; the meaning of a book and who g...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! More than anything else, I read to make myself think. Maybe I’m thinking about a point of view I have not explored much, maybe I’m thinking about a struggle that I am facing or I’m helping someone else face, maybe I’m thinking about how lessons from the past can be helpful in the present, maybe I’m just thinking about one of my favorite to...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! I hope I both give and receive the gift of laughter this holiday season. It really is the best medicine in a sick, sick world. But not all laughs are created equal. This week we’ll cover the pros and cons of the most famous laughing fit in the Bible; the jokes preachers tell and why they tell them; the balance we strike between flexibility...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! My Surprising Books list for the first half of the year appeared on June 14 of this year. Please go back and check that out if you have not done so already. My second-half list includes:  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum Just Faith, by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons The Names of God, by Ken Harrison The Christmas Sweater, by Glenn...

Register your feedback here. Always good to hear from you! Security may not be the first blessing that comes to mind. But really, what good would any of the other blessings be without it? This week we’ll discuss our salvation and exactly how and why we should feel secure in it; a hero of the Christian community and why I am slow getting on the bandwagon; the standard of truth in our world today an...