The Kingdom Perspective

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Fear is very powerful and controlling. Bad fear, that is fear not rooted in the fear of God, will constrain you and keep you from growing as a person. It will stunt your spiritual, emotional and relational development. Now, one of the most powerful controlling emotions is that of shame, an...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don from Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. All things begin and end with God, which means that we do not really know which end is up until we see all things is the light of His being. For instance, we do not know what goodness is until we have understood that God is good. Historic Christianity does not teach that God is good because He me...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. There is a huge societal debate right now on the very concept of goodness and morality. What is the basis of goodness? What makes something right or wrong? Is there even such a thing as an objective, moral “right” or “wrong”? A number of years ago, I heard of the president of an elite New England u...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. As modern Western people, we tend to define freedom as the ability to do what we please—what is right in our own eyes. However, I’d like to suggest that true freedom is not as easy as getting what we want. Sometimes what we want is not good for us—even destructive. Anyone who has ever dealt with a...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. The Old Testament book of Judges has some of the ugliest stories in all the Bible. Why is this the case? Well, the book of Judges chronicles the cycle of rebellion, retribution, and redemption that the children of Israel went through, repeatedly, as they first entered the Promised Land. God had pro...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   We live in a world right now where hatred and division are growing—it sure seems so at least. Well, the Bible has very clear things to say about this.   First, each of us, regardless of our background, regardless of how people identify us or how we identify ourselves, are made in the image of God...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. The idea of “fearing God” seems not only unpalatable to us as modern people, but also wrong. We object: “We shouldn’t fear anyone! We should be motivated by love, not fear, especially when it comes to God!” Well, this may sound pious and nice, but it is very shallow and misguided. There is no love...

Transcript: Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Do you really know God or are you just busy doing a lot of things for Him?    What does God want from you? Does He want your busyness or a relationship? Does He want what you can do for Him, or do you think He wants you?    Well, the more fundamental question is, not what you think, but...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. We must always be careful not to be gullible—accepting everything that comes to us in the name of “spiritual truth.” Rather, the Bible calls us to investigate whether something is truly from God. And how do we do that? Let me give you a test of three questions: First, are you merely being...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. In times of trouble, there is no greater comfort than the tenderness of Jesus towards us. The Bible presents us a Jesus that is overwhelmingly powerful and awesome. He is the creator of all things, visible and invisible (Colossians 1:16). He is the absolute ruler over all things, not only in this a...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   I’m going to let you in on a secret, though it is no secret at all. But I suppose it is a secret in the sense that our hearts do not readily see it, let alone grasp it. If you want to be a happy person, you need first to be a humble person.   The Book of James says that God opposes the proud but...

Transcript: Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   What is the most important thing in your life? What is the one thing that you possess that would bring you the most sorrow if lost? If you were forced to give up everything in your life except one thing, what would it be? Think hard. What would you say?   For the Apostle Paul there was n...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Your faith in Christ is ultimately more determinative than your fears. Just because you are terrified when you ride in an airplane, doesn’t mean that you’ll fail to get to your destination. Your fear has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on your objective safety or the certainty of your arrival. You...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   In our globalized Western world, we are increasingly becoming a dog-eat-dog world, sexually speaking. Our push towards a future where sexual desire has no limits gradually trains our minds to see one another as sexual commodities to be used for selfish ends.   As always in such societies, it is t...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. How exactly do we persevere and grow in our faith? The Bible says we do this by fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that we are vigilant to seek out spiritual teachers and church communities that drive us to our eternal hope in Jesus...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. The Framers of our constitution knew that they were proposing something quite unique in the history of the world. They were proposing a free Republic, where people would not be ruled by the whims of a king or the dictates of a pope, but by the will of the people. It was to be as Abraham Li...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Fear is a mutually exclusive principle. The degree to which you fear one thing is the degree to which you will not fear another. In other words, you may be fearful of being late for an important appointment, but you are more fearful of getting a ticket. And so, you don’t speed...or at least not too...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. We tend to be fearful of difficult circumstances and trouble. It has been my experience that underneath this fear is not merely a revulsion to hard things, but a faulty belief system that equates suffering/pain with God’s lack of care or concern. Nothing could be further from the truth! Trouble and...

Transcript: Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church of Hanover, NH. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Here’s a question for you: Is God guilty of not speaking clearly or is humanity guilty of not listening well? This may be a difficult question to answer off-the-cuff, so let’s look at some of the things God says in the Bible about our aptitude for listening to Him.   When...

Transcript: Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church of Hanover, NH. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   An atheist once said to me, if God is real, why doesn’t He reveal Himself? Why doesn’t He say something? If He really wants us to know Him, why doesn’t He just say so? Good question, right?   Well, maybe not. Maybe there is a false assumption underlying this. For true comm...

Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   It is particularly important at this cultural moment for followers of Christ to live out of the reality of the kingship of Jesus, particularly in our public engagement.   Why? Well, as society has become increasingly secular, our tendency has been to make too much of the kingdoms of this world. By “secular”,...

Transcript: Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.   Knowledge precedes action. Our beliefs drive our behavior. What we know to be true works itself out in what we do.   The Old Testament prophet Daniel tells us that in confronting forces of evil “the people who know their God will display strength and take action” (Daniel 11:23, emphasis...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Fear is a monster that must be confronted. In the Psalms King David is constantly confronting his fear by bringing it into the presence of God. Listen to his prayer in Psalm 27: Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. I think...

Transcript: Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!   Many are shocked to learn that infanticide, the killing of unwanted children, was considered perfectly acceptable in the ancient world. The most common means of carrying this out was the practice of “exposure”, leaving a child exposed to the elements, usually on the city dump, until they died. Si...

Transcript: Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective. Fear is a very interesting emotion. Unlike other emotions it actually grows larger the farther we run from it, but smaller the closer we move towards it. But how are we as believers to move towards our fear? Well, we must do so with faith in the God who is bigger than any of our fears. Listen to Da...