Word of Life Church Podcast

Often, we confuse God for a malevolent monster that intends us harm. Because of deep-seated shame the thought of God produces anxiety and avoidance and generates a “monster god” neurosis. This becomes the foundation for appeasement-based religion. The monster god narrative feeds into a wrong theology about Jesus— that Jesus came in order to save us from God. We are terrified of the One who is actu...

In Jewish culture, the sea is a representation of chaos and the origin of evil. The biblical Israelites were not a seafaring people. This is made evident by the way the bible uses the sea in metaphor. The book of Revelation the new earth has no more sea. Job, in praise of God, says, “God tramples the waves of the sea.” And in the book of Daniel, the author describes a vision of beasts that come up...

At your worst, most sinful, backslidden, far from God state, God’s heart towards you is still one which burst with longing for reconciliation. God is not full of vengeance or angry with you. His attitude toward you is one of unwavering love, like a mother or father has towards his children. God knows you and loves you, and knows you have a complicated story. Unlike most people, God does not put al...

The human condition suffers from a kind of emptiness. We are born with a pervasive mentality of scarcity and insufficiency. We don't perceive ourselves as blessed with abundance, but cursed with scarcity. We fear there won't be enough oil, land, water, food, money, labor to go around, so we use force to guarantee us what we believe is ours. This way of viewing the world is absolutely dominant, And...

We read in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. We accept this statement about faith, but how exactly is faith substance and evidence? Some have tried to make faith too spiritual by imagining faith to be a spiritual substance, a force under our control. However this is not how we see faith at work in Scripture. Others have attempted to d...

This is the third message in a series of the seven signs John recounts in order to form our faith in Jesus. It's the story of a man paralyzed for 38 years whom Jesus healed at the Pool of Bethesda. In this story we see that what the healing that the Pool of Bethesda promised is what Jesus does! And Jesus is not only the hope of the Jews; he is also the hope of pagan Gentiles. We are all in need of...

In order to experience natural, open conversation with Jesus, an openness is required. All conversion results from a moment of spiritual openness. But too often we restrict spiritual openness to a single moment of conversion. An over-emphasis on a single "salvation" event ruins us for future spiritual growth. Often, people have their one moment of spiritual openness, and then slam the door forever...

If we treat the Bible as a complete catalog of "do's" and "don'ts", then we can almost always find a way to justify whatever we want to justify. From slavery to genocide, you can find a scripture to "prove" just about anything you want in the Bible. But if we recognize that Jesus is the Living Word with whom we must engage, then we are engaging with the Logos of Life - God's Wisdom of how to live....

The kingdom of God is something that happens at a table. The church is not a kind of Temple, it is a kind of Table. The Temple, as understood 2000 years ago in Jewish society, was closed off, restricted to people of a particular ethnicity and nationality. Moving from Temple to Table is part of the reformation work of Jesus. It is the New Covenant. Instead of hierarchical, religion, and purity code...

At the wedding in Cana, Jesus performs his first miracle, and in doing so, reveals his glory and his beauty. Jesus' first miracle is not "crucial". He doesn't heal the sick, or cleanse the leper, or cast out a demon, or calm a storm, or even raise the dead. Jesus' first miracle is to keep a wedding party well-stocked in wine. And it is a sign. In a beautiful and artistic way Jesus is announcing th...

To first think of the "Bible" when say "Word of God" is a theological mistake. The Bible is the word of God, but only in a secondary sense. That the Bible is the word of God is true in the sense that it faithfully bears witness to the true Word of God: Jesus Christ. We're not born again by reading a book, we're born again by encountering Jesus Christ. We're not followers of a book, we're followers...

The world after Easter is fundamentally different than the world of Good Friday. In the world before Easter Caesar is Lord, because Caesar holds the power of death. But in the world after Easter Jesus is Lord, because Jesus has conquered death. And not by by means of a temporary resuscitation that ultimately again succumbs to death, but by the complete triumph of resurrection unto eternal life! Wh...

The Old Testament story of Job is one of tragedy. In three thunderclaps of horror Job loses his wealth, his health, and his children. Very quickly following this episode, Job's friends show up to comfort him, but in reality, they end up tormenting Job's already shattered soul. These three friends likely intended well, but in their obsession to explain the tragedy they became satanic agents of accu...

The Messiah of the Jews was Jesus Christ. That Christ would be worshiped as King among pagan the Gentiles is the great hope of God! God always intended to unite the whole world as one people, without any division. God had to begin with one person, with one people; the Jewish people. But all along the plan was to unite the whole world into one body: the body of Christ! But this unity of worship doe...

Calling things by their names is the way of the God and the first vocation of man. In Genesis, Adam is instructed by God to gives names to all the animals. Humans are the ones who make Creation a community of the named and known and not just an impersonal collection of unknown and disassociated things. Without humanity, the universe is a cold and impersonal collection of objects. But humanity give...

If you want to sum up the Gospel in its most succinct form, this is it: Jesus is Lord! The Apostles actually believed that with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the world was now being governed by a new emperor, a new administration. The politics of Caesar and empire had been replaced by the politics of Christ. Through faith and baptism we become citizens of the kingdom of God, and...

Pastor Brian Zahnd interviews P.G. Vargis, missionary and founder of the Indian Evangelical Team (IET), a Christian missions organization spread across India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and is the fastest growing missons organization in South East Asia. Today, IET trains hundreds of indigenous men and women to be effective, godly church planters and Christian leaders through its regional Bible schools and...

In the world after Easter the Apostle Paul is possessed by a radical new vision for the world. This is what compels him to travel unceasingly throughout the Roman Empire. Paul daringly proclaims that the true gospel of peace is not the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome), but the Pax Christi (Peace of Christ). In his deeply theological letter to the Gentile church in Ephesus, Paul describes his radical vis...

The kingdom of God is salvation in its full expression, and it's all a gift. In the midst of the human catastrophe and civilization gone wrong from the very foundation, God has acted and given to us the Kingdom of God. We cannot build it or fight for it. We can only perceive the kingdom by faith and receive it as a gift. But because human history is mostly about building and fighting and construct...

Fighting, arguments, and disagreements are a part of the human condition. Many times our disagreements are over small, insignificant things. We often need to step back and ask, "Does what we are arguing about really matter?" In his letter to the Galatians, Paul put all of our fighting in context by stating emphatically: what really matters is new creation! In Christ we have been rescued from old b...

The Bible contains some shockingly brutal stories. Some of them involve gang rape, murder, and dismemberment. These are not the stories that we tell our children at bedtime. Many of these stories involve a merciless mob of people. Sodom is primarily about group violence from a merciless mob inflicted on foreigners. They are many stories of public stonings. Even the crucifixion of Jesus was at its...

With the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death was defeated and new creation began. New creation can be perceived and participated in by the body of Christ right now! The world after Easter is not the same world as the world of Good Friday. On Good Friday, the world was under the old order of the old creation dominated by sin and death. The world after Easter is a world where new creation is already...

With the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death was defeated and new creation began. New creation can be perceived and participated in by the body of Christ right now! The world after Easter is not the same world as the world of Good Friday. On Good Friday, the world was under the old order of the old creation dominated by sin and death. The world after Easter is a world where new creation is already...

We are called to fight the good fight of faith. Last week in Part 1, Pastor Derek Vreeland described in detail the three primary enemies of our faith-secularism, individualism, and nationalism. This week, in Part 2, he continues by describing how the resurrection of Jesus delivers the final blow to these enemies. Our fight is with defeated enemies, which requires us to live a certain way, namely a...

The world did indeed change after that first Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul identifies baptism as the doorway into this new world, a world without condemnation, a world of peace, adoption, beauty, and love. In this new world we find our old selves being replaced by our new selves, new identities formed in the image of Christ. Baptism does...