Word of Life Church Podcast

Glen & Heather Taylor's Story of Forgiveness

If Christianity is to be a compelling and relevant voice in the 21st Century, we need a fresh message—not a new innovation or novel interpretation, but a return to our roots. And if Christianity is about anything, it's about forgiveness.

The Epiphany text begins with these words: “In the time of King Herod.” Most of history has been “in the time of King Herod.” And if not the time of Herod, then the time of Pharaoh, the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the time of Caesar, the time of Nero, all the way into modern times—the time of Hitler and Mussolini, of Franco and Salazar, of Pinochet and Putin. It’s true that most of history has been li...

In singing his prophetic song over the infant Jesus, Simeon drew upon a verse from one of Isaiah’s Servant Songs. The Servant Songs (Isaiah 49–52) were prophetic poems written in the sixth century BC that envision Israel as Yahweh’s Servant. But these poems also seem to envision Yahweh’s Servant as a person who will be the embodiment Israel. In other words, this Servant will be Israel in person, a...

This is what Christians confess about Christmas: Emmanuel (God with us) joined humanity, not by swooping down from the celestial heavens in a golden chariot, but by being born—born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Like all of us, God was pushed from the womb through contractions, labor, agony, and blood, to enter headfirst into the beautiful and horrible mess that is...

It was through a young, poor Jewish maiden named Miriam (Mary) living in the backwater Galilean village of Nazareth during the Roman occupation of the first century, that the Eternal Logos, the Word of God, the Logic of Divine Love, took on flesh, becoming incarnate and fully human. In Christian theology this is known as the Incarnation and Mary is known as the Theotokos—the God-bearer. The Incarn...

John the Baptist was a burning and shining lamp—but he wasn’t the dawn of the new day. John doesn’t belong to the new day—John belongs to the end of the long night. John is not the sun of righteousness that will give the world a new order and orbit. John is a supernova—the brief, brilliant explosion of a dying star. But it's John who prepares us for the coming of Jesus and the birth of a galaxy of...

In the birth of the baby born in Bethlehem in the days of King Herod we find the fulcrum of every human hope and every diabolical fear. What the poets and prophets hoped and prayed for, and what the principalities and powers feared and fought against, is what the birth of Jesus brought into the world.

Those who treat the unlucky souls who have fallen into the cracks of society as worthy of dignity and respect, compassion and provision, are seen by Jesus as co-conspirators in his Kingdom. The Kingdom of Jesus is heaven’s insurgency against the inhumane regimes of beastly empire. Those who treat the minimum wage worker, the undocumented refugee, the sick with a pre-existing condition, the convict...

“The first precondition of being called a spiritual leader is to perceive and feel the falsehood that is prevailing in society, and then to dedicate one’s life to a struggle against that falsehood. If one tolerates the falsehood and resigns oneself to it, one can never become a prophet. If one cannot rise above material life, one cannot even become a citizen in the Kingdom of the Spirit, far less...

“How can we live in the midst of a world marked by fear, hatred, and violence, and not be destroyed by it? To live in the world without belonging to the world summarizes the essence of the spiritual life. Our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides. Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of...

Hans Urs von Balthasar said, "Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. The first thing that must strike a non-Christian about the Christian’s faith is that it is too good to be true." And even Christians are hesitant to believe that the deepest essence of God’s being is co-suffering, self-giving, never-ending love. Yet this seemingly inconceivabl...

Here we are now, five-hundred years down the road—five-hundred years beyond the Wittenberg Door. And finding ourselves half a millennium beyond the Wittenberg Door, how should we now think about the Protestant Reformation?

If you are a follower of Jesus you are not what you do. You aren't what people say about you or what you say about you. You are not what your haunted past says about you. These all belong to your old self, your false self. If you are a follower of Jesus, you find your true self in Jesus. Through baptism we have died to our old self and now our life, our new self, is hidden away with Christ in God....

A well respected, established pharisee and religious leader comes to Jesus under the cloak of darkness. Why? What is his fear? What does he want with Jesus? Can we begin to understand the life giving work of God through the story of Nicodemus? Jesus comes to bring long awaited changes to a weary and wounded world. His work to transform the world is accomplished through transforming people. Stories...

Q&A Session from the message "What About the Book of Revelation?"

What is the book of Revelation? It's basically four things: 1. Revelation is a prophetic interpretation of the cataclysmic events of the AD 60s/70s. 2. Revelation is a prophetic critique of the Roman Empire. 3. Revelation is a prophetic exposé of the idolatry of empire and civil religion. 4. Revelation is a prophetic portrayal of the eventual triumph of Christ.

Q&A Session from the message "What About Hell?"

Jesus’ teaching on hell is basically this: If you refuse to love, you cannot enter the kingdom of God and will end up a lonely, tormented soul. But hell in its popular and pagan misconceptions has been a blight upon the beauty of the Christian gospel.

Q&A Session from the message "What About the Violence of the Cross?"

The sacrifice of Jesus was not a payment offered to an offended deity bound to an economy of appeasement. That is a pagan and ugly distortion of who God is—the God whom Jesus called Father. The ugly violence of the cross is entirely attributable to human structures of sin, while the beautiful forgiveness of the cross is entirely attributable to God’s extravagant love and mercy.

Q&A session from the message "What About Old Testament Violence?"

In responding to the the troubling question of genocidal violence in the Old Testament and its alleged divine endorsement, we really only have three options: 1. We can question the morality of God. 2. We can question the immutability of God. 3. We can question how we read Scripture.

Q&A from the message "What about the Wrath of God?"

The wrath of God is a biblical metaphor we use to describe the very real consequences we suffer from trying to go through life against the grain of love. The wrath of God is understood as divine consent to our own self-destructive defiance. When we sin against the two great commandments—to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves—we suffer the inevitable consequences of ac...