Cayce Fletcher is the host of A More Beautiful Life Collective, a blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast. She releases a new show each week on making theology practical and developing a more beautiful life. As a wife, mother, and homemaker she appeals more to women than men, but I personally–as a man–have found much of her contact about lifestyle really helpful and I recommend it to you. In this interview, she shares about her journey of faith, why she made the show, systematic theology, and...

It’s easy for complacency to set in our walk with God. It’s easy to settle into apathy with respect to spiritual growth. It’s easy to stop dreaming about what God can do in our lives. Today we’ll hear another message from Revive earlier this year–this one from yours truly. We’ll consider three examples of people who pursued blessing from God: Jabez, Rahab, and Jacob. This episode should nicely round out our four-part series on walking with God. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple...

Over our last two episodes we’ve been hearing from Pastor Bob Carden on the topic of healing and walking by the spirit. Today I’d like to play out a sermon by Carden’s successor, Garrett Bova who is the lead pastor now at Align Ministries. Now I realize his message will challenge some of you to consider speaking prophetically in a way that may be foreign to you. All I ask is that you hear him out. He talks about the power of words of encouragement and speaking blessings over people. Listen to...

Comparing the Hebrew of Isaiah 9.6 to most popular English translations results in some serious questions. Why have our translations changed the tense of the verbs from past to future? Why is this child called “Mighty God” and “Eternal Father”? In this presentation I work through Isaiah 9.6 line by line to help you understand the Hebrew. Next I look at interpretive options for the child as well as his complicated name. Not only will this presentation strengthen your understanding of Isaiah...

This is part two of my conversation with Bob Carden who served as the lead pastor of Grace Christian Fellowship for decades before retiring. (The church is now called Align Ministries, led by Garrett Bova.) Continuing on the topic of healing and deliverance from last week, we begin by talking about evil spirits and pornography addiction. Next we spend a good deal of time discussing how Align Ministries enables holy spirit activity during their weekly services. Carden ends with a challenge,...

People need the touch of God in their lives. People are broken, wounded, and sick. Jesus Christ has already come and made available deliverance from sin and its consequences. He did this throughout his ministry and continues to bring healing through his church today. Bob Carden shares about his own journey of faith from Catholicism to the Way Ministry to pastoring a non-denominational church in Naperville, IL. Now retired, he relates his decades-long pursuit of the miraculous, especially...

Seneca Harbin became a Christian later in life through reading the Bible. However, when he was attending a megachurch in Indianapolis, he starting hearing the pastor preach about Christ in a way that seemed bizarre and unbiblical. To his surprise Seneca discovered that the vast majority of Christians held to these extra-biblical speculations about multiple persons in the godhead and dual natures of Christ. This set him on a quest to find others who, like him, preferred to stop where scripture...

Last week Dustin Smith and Sam Tideman discussed the intermediate state--what happens after death but before resurrection on the last day. Although most Christians affirm the folk idea of going immediately to heaven or hell at death, Smith and Tideman argue that the Bible teaches the dead are in Sheol or Hades. However they disagree on what's happening there. Smith holds to soul-sleep while Tideman believes the dead are conscious. We went through many scriptures last time, but today we'll...

Dustin Smith and Sam Tideman discuss whether people are conscious in the intermediate state (between death and resurrection). Interestingly, neither of them think the deceased are currently in heaven or hell. Smith affirms the sleep of the dead, seeing all the dead, whether good or bad, as unconscious and unaware of the passage of time. Tideman puts forward the idea that the souls of the dead are in a semi-conscious dreamlike state in a chamber called Sheol or Hades. Today is part one of...

This is part 5 of the Kingdom Seminar, based on the book Kingdom Journey. This episode begins by delving into the history of how the theologians of the third and fourth centuries rejected the kingdom since they thought it was too crude, too hedonic, and too Jewish. Next I briefly cover three rediscovery movements, including the Anabaptists of the 16th century, the Adventists of the 19th century, and the New Testament scholars of the 20th century. Still, the majority of Christendom lies in the...

This is part 4 of the Kingdom Seminar, based on the book Kingdom Journey. Jesus didn't just believe in a future kingdom that didn't affect the present. His entire ministry was saturated with kingdom symbology and activity. Wherever he went, he brought a bubble of the kingdom with him. As Christ-followers, we too, are called to prophesy the kingdom in how we live. This should include adopting the kingdom's culture, as well as pledging allegiance to the...

This is part 3 of the Kingdom Seminar, based on the book Kingdom Journey. The kingdom of God is the golden thread running throughout the whole Bible from beginning to end. In this presentation, we'll consider some of the key texts from the Old and New Testaments that define what the kingdom is. In contrast to many who think the goal of Christian salvation is to go home to be with the Lord in heaven, the Bible offers a consistent vision of God's children living forever on a restored world....

This is part 2 of the Kingdom Seminar, based on the book Kingdom Journey. What is heaven? Although it is not the place where the dead go when they die, it is, still, a real place. Today we'll survey different ways in which the Bible talks about heaven, including the sky, God's throne, the storehouse, and the heaven of heavens. Next we'll consider what other religions teach about the afterlife. Finally, we'll conclude by seeing how the Biblical authors courageously took a radically unpopular...

Last December, my first ever published book came out, called Kingdom Journey. Recently I recorded a seminar on the kingdom at a church in South Carolina based on the book that I will be playing out over the next 5 weeks. In this seminar I highlight some of the key points in my book and also add in some new content. Today we're going to start by asking the question, "Why should I care about the kingdom of God?" In what follows I make the case that we should care because Jesus said to...

Last month the Unitarian Christian Alliance put on the first conference in Europe. A mixture of British and American speakers presented on various aspects of unitarian Christianity. In today's episode I speak with Daisy Jones, one of the main coordinators of the event as well as Mark Cain who assisted in planning and in recording the presentations. They share some highlights from this year's conference as well as what they are planning for next year. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple...

Pentecost, as described in Acts 2, was a strange event. We read about unusual miraculous signs such as the sound of a great wind and tongues of fire. Still, the most interesting moment is when the apostles of our Lord began speaking in foreign languages that they didn't know. Such divine utterance is called speaking in tongues and everyone, it seems, has an opinion about it. But, have you ever asked yourself why? God is launching the church to go into Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the...

Last week Joshua Michael Smith began sharing his testimony from childhood to his college years when he changed his mind about Jesus's identity. In part two he talks about cage stage unitarianism--where one seeks to confront everyone about this important truth regardless of their interested or antagonism. Smith shares how he matured while continuing to work within Assemblies of God and Baptist churches in Tennessee. Then we broach the topic of youth ministry. Smith explains why it is so...

Joshua Michael Smith grew up in northern Florida in a Baptist church. In this interview he shares his journey of faith, including how came to Christ as well as how he ended up in ministry training at Word of Life before earning a bachelors at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga. While there, he began questioning his received doctrinal package based on the Bible. As a result, he came to discover the human Messiah of scripture and courageously embraced this new understanding despite the...

Many believe there is 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testament. My guest today is Professor George Athas, director of research and senior lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament, and Early Church History at Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. He's the author of Bridging the Testaments, which covers four major periods, including Persian, Hellenistic, Hasmonean, and Roman. By studying the four centuries before Christ you can gain key insights to help you understand both the...

Christians have approached the first chapter of Genesis differently over the centuries. There are those who hold to young earth creationism, day-age theory, gap theory, and progressive creationism, just to name a few. Oftentimes defenders of a particular view will provide biblical, scientific, and historical evidence for their position. Our focus today is on the use of church history to find witnesses for this or that view.  Rather than cherry picking a quote here and quote there, it's better...

Scholars and pastors regularly point to specialized "technical" language in Paul's epistles to make the case that Paul was intentionally subverting Roman power by applying to Jesus terms that the ancients commonly applied to the Caesars. My guest today has done the hard work of analyzing the inscriptions, coins, and material remains of several key ancient cities to see how they talked about the Roman emperors in the New Testament period. In our conversation he shares his own journey to become...

Something is going on in New Zealand...and I'm excited to tell you about it. In today's interview I speak with Zach Mayo who along with his wife, Kayla, were serving as youth pastors at an evangelical church when they came to change their minds on the doctrine of the Trinity. Now they're organizing a conference to unite one-God believers in New Zealand and invite folks from Australia and beyond to come. Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts https://youtu.be/U27POf3dKnI —— Links...

Kermit Zarley was a professional golfer who had an interest in studying the Bible about the end times when he came across a disturbing verse. Reading Jesus's words in the Olivet Discourse, he noticed that only the Father knew the day and hour of the end. Neither the angels nor the son of God were privy to it. As a good trinitarian evangelical, Zarley was familiar with the dual natures idea, but just couldn't square that with the scripture. If Jesus was God in his being, he knew everything....

From her childhood in a Jewish family to a 7-year stint with the Jehovah's Witnesses to attending evangelical churches, Susanne Lakin never felt comfortable with the doctrine of the Trinity. She signed up to attend Phoenix Seminary, a conservative evangelical school, thinking they would help her finally get to the bottom of it. She was willing to agree to the idea, thinking, surely, studying with scholars like Wayne Grudem, the prince of evangelical systematic theology, would answer her...