Exploring My Strange Bible

This first teaching is actually from the middle of chapter 1. It’s a prayer that Paul prays for the followers of Jesus in Ephesus. It’s an amazing prayer where he prays for power. The kind of power that Paul thinks that followers of Jesus have access to is a very different conception of power. It’s a power that was expressed when Jesus gave up his life and was resurrected by the power of love and...

In this teaching we are going to explore Psalm 73, which is a prayer where the poet is expressing a crisis of faith. When he looks at the world, he doesn’t see a world that his faith can always make sense of. In fact, it is the opposite. It seems like many of the things that this poet believes about God are contradicted by what he sees going on around him. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company....

This teaching was exploring what it means to talk to God when we have seriously screwed up: hurt others, hurt ourselves, dishonored others and God, etc. How can we even talk to God in moments where we’re feeling so ashamed? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pslams teach us that protesting to God about horrors that take place in our world is a crucially important habit that we need to adopt. In this episode, We explore Pslam 22. We’re reflecting on the poets experience of extreme suffering and pain. We address what it means to hold on to the conviction that ‘God is good’ and has redemptive purposes when the world seems like it is falling apart. This p...

As a new follower of Jesus, I loved the Book of Psalms. I remember realizing for the first time that multiple points in Jesus’s life teaching, he used the language of the psalm to express his own thoughts. Jesus models for us what it means to use the psalms as language for our own prayers. This first teaching is based on Psalm 3, it is about learning how to pray in the midst of great fear and anxi...

In this teaching we are exploring the word “covenant” and how it is crucially important for understanding the storyline architecture of the whole story of the bible. It really only gets used in a small number of ways in modern English. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we’re exploring a biblical word that is commonly used, but mostly not understood: glory. This is actually a crucially important concept for understanding the Old Testament and the New Testament. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this first teaching, I explore the biblical word and concept of holiness: God’s holiness, people’s holiness, the story underneath it all, and more. This is an extremely important idea for understanding what followers of Jesus believe about God and themselves. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertisi...

In this episode, we explore the final pages of the bible (Revelation chs. 21-22) and how they describe the resurrection and the new creation. In this poetic visions, John shows how the new creation is both similar and dissimilar to the world as we currently experience. What does that mean? Why is that important? We address these questions in this episode… take a listen! Hosted by Simplecast, an Ad...

In this teaching we are going to explore the apostle Paul’s most in-depth conversation about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians It one the most important discussions of resurrection hope in the whole New Testament. Here he ponders the nature of the kind of physical body that Jesus after his resurrection, and what that means for his followers. He's very concerned to show how the new creation will be...

This episode dives into one of the most beautiful chapters of Paul’s writings- Romans Ch. 8. We watch him retell the story from Genesis to Revelation with the images drawn from the Old Testament book of the Exodus. It’s a story about slavery and God’s liberation and moving into freedom and the promised land. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus opens up a whole new future and hope for humanity, and...

In this episode we'll explore the nature of Christian hope from 1 Peter ch.1. We'll learn the story of a Holocaust survivor named Victor Frankel and what he learned about human psychology and hope. This story gives us a profound insight into the important role that hope based on the resurrection of Jesus can play in our lives. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for infor...

This episode explores a story about the appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the Gospel of Luke Ch. 24. Two disciples who spent a lot of time with Jesus are suddenly blind to his true identity; they can't recognize him! What's up with that? This beautifully told story shows how Jesus' own followers can become blind to who he really is, because of the pre-loaded assumptions about him. Truly seein...

In this teaching, we'll continue exploring the portrait of the first "church" community in Acts ch.2, specifically how they committed to sharing their resources with each other. This shows us a core habit of the church from the beginning, crossing over the boundary lines between ourselves and other people, and releasing our time and resources into their lives. Why is it so hard to share...

In this teaching we'll explore the first depiction of "the church" in Acts ch. 2. What we discover may surprise you! We see a group of people committing to each other and to Jesus so they can learn new ideas and form new habits of living and thinking together, all centered around Jesus. Being open to new ideas is not the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of Christi...

This episode draws together all the ideas of the previous three lectures. We explore the images of eternal death and what these images mean, and the images used by Jesus in his teachings about God’s final justice. In the second half, we talk about the images of new creation, resurrection, and eternal life. We explore what Jesus and the Apostles have to say about this. Then, we focus on the last tw...

The definitions of human life and death on pages 1-3 of the bible are based on the idea that humans can live in a state of death. The goal of God’s rescue mission is to take people out of “living death” and transfer them into a mode of “eternal life” here in the present. According to the biblical story, these are the two ways to be human being - to be among the living dead or to be among the truly...

In this message, I explore the concept of work and labor in the book of Ecclesiastes. The teacher wants to show us that it's impossible to create meaning in your life from one's vocation or career. But, this doesn’t mean that we should quit working. Rather, we must learn how to see our life's work in a larger context, helping us navigate through both success and failure. The teacher offers practic...

In the final episode we see Jonah's response when God forgives his enemies. He's hot with anger and chews God out for being to gracious. This part of the story challenges us to reconsider Jesus' teaching to love and forgive our enemies, those people in our lives who are the most difficult. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of...

Jonah goes very much against his own desires to the ancient city of Nineveh. He utters a very strange five word sermon and the people of Nineveh have a very interesting response. Also, we discuss the meaning of the biblical word “repentance” and what it does and doesn’t mean. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data...

In this episode we ponder the very strange and beautifully intricate poem that Jonah utters in the belly of the fish. This is a powerful and heavily ironic moment in the story. This poem represents a moment when one of God’s people is in crisis. Jonah discovers that his crisis is actually God’s work to bring him to the end of himself. Jonah’s experience in this story forces us to think about simil...

Jonah is ironically portrayed as God’s own prophet, but he is the only person who really refuses to listen to God. This episode explores how Jonah is “asleep at the wheel” and deaf to God and everything that God uses to communicate to him. This story invites us in to think about our own lack of perception and awareness of the ways that God might be trying to get through to us. Hosted by Simplecast...