For the full unabridged audio listen here: Believing is Seeing and Believing is Life - Unveiled Glory

The world has a pretty fixed idea of what glory looks like. Glory is wealth. Glory is crowns. Glory is military power and self-promotion. We glorify ourselves.

But when Jesus lifts his eyes to heaven in John 17, he pulls back the curtain on the true heart of God. He unveils a glory revealed not in a palace but on a cross — not in self-preservation but in self-giving love, not in worldly dominance but in a united, protected church that reflects the eternal love of the Father and the Son.

Glory, from the perspective of Jesus, is so different from how we think of glory in the world. So let me try to give you a snapshot of what it actually looks like.

For many people, deconstruction isn’t just theological — it’s relational. It involves the church, people, community, and sometimes deep wounds. This week, I talk honestly about church wounds, the pull toward isolation, and how to discern and slowly re-enter healthy community after deconstruction. Restoration, like Peter’s on the shore in John 21, happens in relationship — not apart from it.

Listen to the unabridged audio here: What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Beyond Sunday School is back, and this year we are focusing our conversations on the topic of grace. Over the coming months, we will be diving into a few authors whose work has deeply shaped and influenced how we understand God’s love. There is no better place to start than Brennan Manning’s classic book, The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Deconstruction is clear, but reconstruction requires true courage. In this episode, we explore what it looks like to rebuild a resilient, mature faith after your previous spiritual frameworks have broken down. Moving beyond the need for absolute certainty, we discuss how to embrace a scarred resurrection hope, distinguish childlike faith from childish faith, and establish a new foundation centered on grace and love.

In this episode, I explore how faith can unravel without collapsing. I walk through a practical way to tell the difference between the core of Christianity and the packaging around it, offering questions to help you sort through doubt, grief, and uncertainty with honesty. My focus is on what remains when old assumptions fall away—especially the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, grace, and love as the center of theology.

Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Abide - Crushing the Myths of Self, Comfort, and Speed

In our household, we have two family mottos that get repeated constantly:

1. God is sovereign and good. We need this reminder often because the world is messy, tricky, and difficult.
2. Reality is our friend. (Coined by my wife, Amy.) Because the world is broken, facing reality honestly—rather than living in wishful thinking—is essential.

These two principles frame Jesus’ final words to His disciples in John 15 and 16. Sitting in the Upper Room, the disciples were in a state of emotional shock. Communion was over, Judas had departed, and Jesus had just dropped the news that He was about to be executed.

Knowing their grief, Jesus offered them a foundational truth: to truly live, we must abide in His love. But to abide in Christ, we have to dismantle three common myths that poison our spiritual lives.

What happens when the faith framework you grew up with slowly stops working? In this episode of The Pastor Next Door, I sit down to explore the quiet, unglamorous moments when prayer feels flat, answers no longer satisfy, and emotional certainty fades away.