The Kingdom Perspective

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   Several years ago, Dr. Gregg Henriques of James Madison University wrote an article in Psychology Today that caught my attention. It was called “The Justification Hypothesis”. Dr. Henriques is known for his Unified Theory of Knowledge, which is an attempt to have a more interconnected vision of h...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective! The Bible tells us that human government is established by God and therefore is accountable to God and His Word (Romans 13). This is why government power must be limited. It must not be used for the selfish gain of those in power but for the general freedom and flourishing of all. By God’s design t...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   If we were to peel back the universe to see what’s underneath it—to discover its source, the very essence of reality—we would not find a mathematical or scientific formula, nor a moral to do list, nor even a theological doctrinal statement. All these things are good, true, and necessary, but they...

Transcript:   Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   No philosophy or religion has a higher and more dignified perspective on human nature than the Bible. It tells us that God created us in His own image, fully righteous and holy. We were not created sinful, but good.   This means that sin is an interloper. It is not intrinsic to human nature, but...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   No philosophy or religion has a higher and more dignified view of human nature than what we find in the Bible. Yet, despite this, I find that many Christians, thinking that they are being faithful to Holy Scripture, have a very negative view of human nature. This negativity is wrong heade...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   One of the main critiques I hear about the biblical idea of God’s sovereignty is that it makes God into a “micromanager”. No one likes someone obsessed with controlling everything and everyone!   Well, good news! God has no need of being controlling. He is not threatened by you having power. He do...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   What is God like? What kind of being is He? Well, we must begin with this. The most fundamental distinction in being is that between the Creator and creation. God is a being unlike anything in all the created realm, precisely because He is the Creator of the created realm.   God is not a being com...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   God is a being like no other. Since the Creator is the one who gives being to everything—something no other being can do—it follows that He must be categorically unlike anything else. Thus, we should not expect to totally comprehend God.   However, just because we cannot know God fully, doesn’t me...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   What is God like? In one sense, this is a very difficult question. Why? Well, whenever we ask what something is “like”, we are trying to make a comparison to other things. But God is not like anything in creation. The most fundamental theological distinction is between the Creator and the creation...

Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   There’s a lot of things we can learn from science and other fields of study, but some things can only be learned from direct communication from God. Why is this the case? Well, it is one thing to study the works that someone creates, but it is quite another to have direct communication with the one who create...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   The Bible tells us that God is a king. But not just any king. A king who is totally sovereign!   Now, what do we mean by “sovereign”? All rulers have varying degrees of sovereignty. The greater the sovereignty the more freely that ruler can do as they please. Well, God is a sovereign rule...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   To know the purpose of anything you must know what it was designed to do. For example, a smart phone is a great device for connecting you to the world; you can make a phone call, connect to the internet, text a friend, etc. That’s what it was designed to do. However, it is a terrible device for po...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Imagine walking into a room and finding a device you’ve never seen before. Though you’ve never come across anything like it, it’s obvious it’s made by someone for some specific purpose. But for what purpose? How are you to know what it is, and what it’s for?   Well, the simplest and most...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Why do we resist humbling ourselves? Well, the Bible would suggest to us that there is a connection between our pride and our anxious worry.   Peter writes to us: 6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your anxi...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church of Hanover, NH. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   If what Jesus tells us is true, then the heart of our problem is the problem of the human heart.   Jesus warns that our basic problem is not merely external or being in this group vs. that group. Rather, in Mark 7, he gathers all the people and tells them this: 20 … “What comes out...

Transcript: Hello this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   As modern people we are good at spotting external oppression. We can see a despot coming miles away. However, we often miss the more subtle oppression of our own desires manipulating us, and, unfortunately, in a techno-consumeristic society like our own, this is a far greater threat. As the late t...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   How should we engage in a world that’s confused and sometimes even hostile to our faith? Should we make it our ambition to malign them, patting ourselves on the back about how good we are and how bad they are? No, rather, we should just be ordinary people, living ordinary lives, loving o...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   It has been my observation that the moment anyone begins to speak of sin and our deep, pervasive rebellion against God, the average American begins to tune out. Why? Well, I think, in part, it’s because it seems harsh. And, if there is anything this world needs no more of, it’s harshness...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. If we are going to thrive spiritually in troubled times, we must make it our aim to be driven by truth and not mere emotions. One of the primary commands of the Christian life is Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Romans 12:2). This mea...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Traditionally, Christians have practiced what is known as catechesis, or catechetical training. Catechesis comes from a Greek word meaning “to teach/to instruct” (Galatians 6:6). It carries with it the idea of in-person training from a knowledgeable instructor. A catechumen in the early church wa...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Since time immemorial parents have been managing the tension between a child’s desire for self-expression and their need for external structure and discipline.    Each culture has negotiated this differently—some more permissive and others more restrictive. However, what’s unique about our presen...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   One of the things that distinguished Christians in ancient Rome was their ethic on sex and marriage.   To the average Roman, sex was largely detached from marriage; it was merely a “natural” impulse to be fulfilled. Male virtue was in part judged by the strength of one’s sexual appetite and explo...

Transcript:   Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   Even as Christians, it is inevitable that we are going to have differing perspectives, differing consciences, born from our different backgrounds and experiences. The Bible clearly tells us that not everything in life is a matter of absolute truth. There are matters of “conscience” (Romans 14)....

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   There is so much controversy over sex, gender, and marriage in our day. And it seems that the greater the controversy, the louder the conversation. Our cultural debates generate a lot of heat, but very little light.   So, why so much controversy? Well, I think that part of the reason comes from n...

Transcript:   Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   In November 2020, Vogue magazine featured an interview with singer Harry Styles. What caught my attention was a statement he made: “Anytime you’re putting barriers up in your life, you’re limiting yourself.” Allow me to clarify the logic: barriers/limits/rules are all obstacles to personal fulf...