Faith in Focus

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! There was a very disturbing survey that came out of Arizona Christian University that revealed a large number of senior pastors believe that good people can earn their way to heaven! How in the world does a belief like that take hold in the Church? In this episode we take a look at how that level of confusion can happen...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! The Bible is kind of a wacky book with some stuff that is hard for people to believe. What if there were things in the Bible that were verifiable and could prove that God is who He says He is and that the Bible is God's Word? As it turns out there is such a thing in the Bible. It's called predictive prophecy and God eve...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! Communion has been incredibly misunderstood throughout Church history. From the Protestant perspective it has been the Catholics who have butchered the meaning of the ritual and twisted it in to something it was never intended. From the Catholic perspective it is the Protestants who have degraded and ignored the doctrin...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! Why does God always get blamed when bad things happen? It's a bizarre phenomenon in human nature but it seems to be fairly universal. When good things happen God doesn't get the glory; it was our own human ingenuity and success. When bad things happen, however, He seems to get all the blame and we are innocent of the ma...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! We are told that as Christians we can have a confident expectation, a hope, of spending eternity with God. But Jesus said a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. How do we inspect "good and bad fruit" and still come away being confident that we know the Lord? It would seem that an honest fruit inspector would despair ever...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In an article entitled "It's Time to End The 'Insanity' of Typical Youth Ministry," the author discusses how we keep doing youth ministry the same way in the Church and we keep losing our kids to the world system. Is it time to change how we do youth ministry? Is the way we do youth ministry just symptomatic of the way...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! This teaching on the infamous passage of the Bible, James 2:14-26, was given as a live stream on TikTok. It is important to understand this section of scripture accurately because a lot of misconceptions exist surrounding it and some of those are quite damaging to the Gospel of Grace. "Am I really saved?" "How do I know...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! Did you know that in Greek there are such things as 3rd person imperatives??? Me neither! We don't have these in English. Usually if I command you to do something (1st person) then that makes sense. "You, listen to this podcast" is a 1st person command. In Greek there can be third person commands where I command someone...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! Our world is starved for wisdom. Politicians and world leaders make decisions that seem insanely foolish and people are suckered in by them. The book of Proverbs talks about different kinds of fools but the most innocent and most common type of fool is the "Peti." This Hebrew word just means naive or simple minded. Kids...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! The Christian Post recently reported on a sermon from famous prosperity gospel preacher Creflo Dollar in which he admitted he was wrong and has changed his opinion on tithing. Dollar admits that tithing is a teaching of the Old Covenant law and is not applicable to New Covenant Christians. This episode doesn't so much f...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! We live in a globalized world and this fact has made the world much smaller. Whenever a terrible thing happens on the other side of the world we panic cause it feels like it is happening right outside our door, in our local community. But is this the way we should view tragic news stories? What about church scandals? We...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! The New Testament teaches that Jesus "is our life" and that "it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me." This is a deep truth that cuts to the core of what it means to live the Christian life. The Christian life is a living, dynamic relationship with a living Savior who dwells within us. However, all too often,...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! The holiday of Juneteenth is relatively new to many of us as it just became a federally recognized holiday in 2021. Before that many of us had never even heard of Juneteenth; now it's all over the place. The conservative impulse is to reject anything new whereas the progressive impulse is to accept anything that is new....

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! Symbols have a way of bringing us together in that they represent truths. Truth, however, has a way of dividing as well. We see this clearly with the Gay Pride symbols as well as the MAGA Hat. These symbols mean something; there's an ideology behind them that some agree with and some despise. Communion, the bread and wi...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis discusses the world system and how Christians so easily get entangled in the world system. It's something that we ought to be more concerned about seeing as how the Bible tells us that if "anyone loves the world system then the love of the Father is not in him." That seems fairly serious. The worl...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis discusses a book he recently read called "Who Are You to Judge?" by Dave Swavely and discusses the idea of Christians judging other people. When (if at all) is it appropriate and inappropriate. 1 Corinthians 4:1-7 gives us some helpful hints on not judging other Christians whereas 1 Corinthians 5...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this final lecture on biblical hermeneutics the topic of commentary and other biblical helps is discussed. These are helpful tools we can avail ourselves of but we need to recognize that these are just other human's opinions and are subject to error. There are helpful tips to keep in mind when we use them There's als...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! When studying the Bible, context is king. We often consider literary context such as genre when looking at a text but it is equally important to study the geographical context of a historical text as well. Where Israel is in relation the the rest of the world, for instance, plays a crucial role in how we interpret the e...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! When interpreting the Bible it is important to understand the differences in the genres. Different genres read differently in the Bible just like they do in any other form of literature. In this lecture Dennis walks through important hermeneutical tools that are needed when looking at poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis discusses the issues surrounding abortion and the Roe v. Wade leak. He discusses why pro-choice and pro-life people disagree and presents the idea that the disagreement arises not so much over legal rulings but because of foundational disagreements that the two sides have. Any legal rulings that c...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis continues his teachings on how to study the Bible accurately and faithfully. In this first section of a two part lecture on different genres, Dennis discusses how to interpret narrative genres in the Bible. We interpret different genres in different ways and narratives make up over 50% of the Bibl...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis continues his lectures on hermeneutics, the science of studying and interpreting the Bible. In this lecture he discusses certain tips in understanding the Bible properly. Tips such as word study tools, errors to avoid when doing word studies, as well as the differences between Bible versions and w...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! This episode is a continuation of a series of teachings Dennis gave at a local house church on the topic of Hermeneutics. In this lesson Dennis discusses helpful tips to keep in mind when studying the Bible; things to do and things not to do. He spends some time stressing the importance of recognizing our biases, presup...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis discusses the book "The Lost World of Genesis One" by John H. Walton. In the book Walton discusses a different way of looking at Genesis one and how we ought to look at it as a recounting of ancient cosmology. It is a creation story told by God to an ancient culture IN an ancient culture. The anci...

Have questions or comments about this (or a previous) episode, give us a text! In this episode Dennis discusses the idea of unity in the Body of Christ. This unity is not something that we, as Christians, need to generate; it is something God has created. It is a part of our corporate identity. Dennis discusses parallels between the unity in the Church with unity in a marriage and how both show a...