Restitutio

What is the proper role of your emotions?  Should you trust them?  How do you know when they are helping and when they are hurting?  Today we'll take a look at another exciting advantage that Christianity provides.  In this episode, you'll learn about the problems endemic to emotional reasoning, the robust biblical teaching about your heart, and how God provides us away to exercise self-control. ...

One of the most enduring problems we have faced throughout human history is tribalism.  From the Nazis to the Rwandan genocide, we’ve repeatedly seen the devastating results of group think and dehumanizing outsiders.  Although some Christian groups have tragically fallen into this sin, we don’t have to.  Christianity provides a better way.  We can draw upon our roots in scripture to li...

Who are you and why does your life matter?  These two piercing questions get to the heart of your identity.  Our society in the West has increasingly embraced an internally discovered identity on the basis of individual passions.  Such expressive individualism is exciting to live out, especially if those around you push back, however, the resulting identity is both fragile and abrasive.  In contra...

Let's face it, suffering is a major problem for those of us who believe in a good and powerful God.  How do you answer skeptics who challenge your belief in God because of the gratuitous suffering endemic in human history?  In this episode we'll explore some answers to this question offered by several worldviews before looking at how the Christian metanarrative offers hope. Listen to this episode...

Freedom and morality are two interrelated concepts that everyone has an opinion about. From a Christian perspective, we limit our freedom based on our received moral code. We believe that the restrictions the bible provides us are for our good; They are not the result of a capricious deity's arbitrary or stifling whims. In fact, we believe that the limits God places on our freedom lead to the best...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 8 of the Why Christianity class . Last time we delved into the first two components of scripture's overarching story line: creation and fall.  These two explain where the world came from and what went wrong with it.  Today we'll consider the last two components: redemption and restoration.  These two tell us what God has done about t...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 7 of the Why Christianity class . So far in this class we have stuck to classic apologetics topics like reasons for God’s existence, the historicity of the resurrection, and the rationality of Christian epistemology.  Now we are going to shift gears and do some work on worldview.  One of the reasons Christianity appeals to some...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 6 of the Why Christianity class . The Bible is such a strange thing. On the one hand, it looks like a big book, on the other hand, it’s a library of books. It’s loaded with very different kinds of literature from poetry and wisdom to history and prophecy. Dozens of people were involved in it’s production over centur...

  Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 5 of the Why Christianity class . How would you go about convincing someone that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened?  Now, what if that person didn't recognize the scriptures as inspired by God.  How would you go about making a case for Jesus' resurrection in that kind of scenario?  In this presentation, you learn fou...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 4 of the Why Christianity class . Is Christianity irrational?  Is believing in God intellectually vacuous?  Jerry Wierwille will address the criticism of skeptics that Christian belief is arrogant, unjustified, and irrational.  Next, he'll describe the popular secular belief in scientism before exposing its deleterious effects. —— Li...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 3 of the Why Christianity class . How do you know God is real?  What sorts of evidence would you marshal to make a case for God’s existence?  It won’t do to tell skeptics you believe in God because you’ve always believed in him, because you were raised to believe in him, or because the Bible says so.  In this episod...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 2 of the Why Christianity class . It’s so easy to universalize our own local context.  For example, I (Sean) live in a secular, post-Catholic part of New York state.  It would be easy for me to think that most of the state or country or world is just like my area.  However, this ethnocentric perspective will not do justice to t...

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts This is part 1 of the Why Christianity class . In a culture where biblical Christianity is falling more and more out of fashion, it’s increasingly important to have confidence in your faith. Today we are beginning a class called Why Christianity, in which we will lay out a few of the ways that our faith makes sense and works best. In this f...

What do you do when everything is stripped away?  You find out who you really are. In this sermon you'll see what happened in ancient Judah when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, ultimately resulting in utter destruction, humiliating shame, and forcible deportation. Although our times today can't really compare to the level of suffering these people went through, their experience has much to tea...

This is part three of our Biblical Giving Series . In this third and final interview with Will Barlow, we'll spend some focused time looking at Malachi 3 to understand what this passage meant in it's original context and how it relates to us today.  Next we'll take a look at three myths about Christian giving: 1. Christians are in debt to God. 2. Christians must pay for God’s protection. 3. The gi...

This is part two of our Biblical Giving Series . Today Will Barlow continues to lay out a comprehensive biblical theology of giving. First he looks at three areas of continuity between the Old and New Testaments: regarding ourselves as stewards of God's wealth giving to the poor giving to ministers Next, Barlow explains three ways in which the New Testament diverges from the Old Testament: no more...

This is part one of our Biblical Giving Series . Having grown up with a prosperity theology, Will Barlow begins by sharing about his background regarding tithing before tackling five myths about giving: The tithe was monetary and applied to all Israelites. The tithe was the first fruits of the harvest The tithe was always 10%. The poor Israelites tithed to God. Abraham's tithing makes it applicabl...

Growing up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Timypaul Lupe came face to face with poverty, hunger, and even war. However, his relationship with God provided him with stability and strength through the hardest of times. In this interview, you'll hear about what life was like in Africa, how Timypaul came to America as a student, and how he eventually came to find his role as a passionate evan...

Have you ever attended an online bible study? Would you like to start one, but don't know how? In our episode today, John Paola Ely share about their own journey of faith and how they have come to appreciate the interactive bible study model of fellowship. Not only does this type of meeting help attendees engage with the text of scripture, but it also fosters genuine community in an age where we a...

This is part 7 and the final episode in our holy spirit series . Are you on a journey with God or have you arrived? Are you still willing to learn and grow and try new things or have you erected boundaries around your current understanding and practice? Today my guest is Kevin Guigou, a full-time minister at Christian Family Fellowship in Tipp City, Ohio. Although he came from a background that st...

This is part 6 of our holy spirit series . Today we hear a new perspective on the manifestations of the spirit from Carlos Jiménez who stakes out what he calls an "evidentialist" position. He is neither a cessationist nor a continuationist, but someone who retains a certain level of skepticism towards reports of spiritual activity. His concern is to test the spirits to make sure they are biblicall...

Today we enter into part 5 of our series on the holy spirit . We've seen a couple of perspectives, but my guest today is bringing in a third view to our exploration of this important topic. Growing up with the belief that tongues were the only evidence of salvation, Pastor Victor Gluckin eventually changed his view to accept more diversity in how the spirit shows up in believers' lives. Victor Glu...

This is part 4 of our holy spirit series . Today we continue to hear John Truitt and Greg Deuble discuss speaking in tongues. If you haven't listened to the previous three episodes in this series, it would be good to do that before listening to this one. Also, if you want to get the most out of this bible-heavy discussion, you should read 1 Corinthians 14 prior to listening--and maybe also keep it...

This is part 3 of our holy spirit series . Do you know what I don't hear enough of today? Dialogue--honest-hearted, biblically-informed, respectful dialogue. So often we silo ourselves off in echo chambers with our doctrinal comrades, occasionally lobbing malotov cocktails at the other side, never taking the time to understand them, much less ask the question, "Could I be wrong on this?" My goal h...

Last week John Truitt explained why he believes the gifts of the spirit are still available for Christians to experience. Today, Greg Deuble pulls on his own biblical research and personal experience to present an opposing case. What's fascinating about Deuble is that he believes in God's miraculous activity in the world today. However, he doesn't believe that speaking in tongues (glossalalia) is...