Christian hip-hop artist Braille spent his first ten years as a believer without anyone teaching him the Bible. Once someone finally did, it set him on a path out of full-time music and into pastoring a local church.

He read Scripture like a fortune cookie, flipping around for something that seemed relevant. He didn't know what an Ephesus was. When someone started teaching him the Bible in context, it changed what he wanted to do with his life.

In this conversation, the hip-hop artist from Beautiful Eulogy and Humble Beast Records shares why he stepped away from music to pastor Saving Grace Church in Milwaukie, Oregon. Not because music was wrong, and not because every Christian artist should do the same. Because he knew what it was like to wander without discipleship, and he wanted to give what he'd received.

We talk about inspiration versus formation, why most growth in Christ happens in ordinary faithfulness nobody applauds, why he spent up to fourteen hours writing a verse you hear in forty seconds, what Paul's suffering teaches about ministry, and what he'd say to anyone chasing a platform in the name of God.

"Most of the things that are so extraordinary about the Christian life are not very photogenic."

If this conversation resonated, go back to Episode 1: Why Knowing the Bible Isn't Changing You.

Scriptures in this episode: Matthew 5:14–16, 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, 2 Corinthians 6:10, 1 Corinthians 12–13, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 5:25, Philippians 2:5–8

Connect with Braille on Instagram: @bryanbraille

Saving Grace Church, Milwaukie, Oregon: https://www.savinggracechurch.com

Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible — expert led courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: https://academyofthebible.org

Follow the show so you don't miss an episode. New teachings and conversations every week.

Colby F. Maier is a pastor, speaker, and founder of the Academy of the Bible, based in Portland, Oregon.

Preston Sprinkle spent three years studying what the Bible says about women in leadership before he would say what he thought.

He was raised in circles where women could not teach, preach, or pastor, and it made sense to him. Then he kept meeting people he deeply respected — people who loved Scripture and loved Jesus — who read the same verses and came to a different conclusion. So he admitted he didn't know what he believed, and started over.

"I never want to give a thin answer to a thick question. I want the strength of my passion to match the depth of my study."

In this conversation we cover the two camps and the variations inside them, what leadership actually looked like in the first-century house church, the Greco-Roman background on women's status and agency, Romans 16 and the ten women Paul names in his ministry, a deep dive into Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia, and the three hardest passages — 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, and 1 Timothy 2.

Preston also shares his own story: an athlete who hated reading until he became a Christian at 19 and developed an overnight hunger for Scripture, and the moment studying in Israel in 1999 that set him on the path to scholarship.

The episode does not tell you what to believe. What Preston asks for is curiosity about positions you disagree with, and convictions rooted in the text rather than inherited.

Preston's new book:

From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership

https://www.prestonsprinkle.com/from-genesis-to-junia

Dr. Preston Sprinkle (PhD, Aberdeen) is a biblical scholar, speaker, podcaster, and New York Times bestselling author. He serves as president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender.

Go deeper: https://academyofthebible.org

Colby F. Maier is a pastor, speaker and the founder of Academy of the Bible, based in Portland, Oregon.

You can know the Bible and still miss Jesus. The demons prove it.

In this episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier picks up where Episode 1 left off. If the problem was never a lack of information, then what actually turns knowledge into transformation? His answer starts in history. Two cultural movements taught the modern world, and the church with it, how to think about change. The Enlightenment said information would change us. Romanticism said experience would change us. The church inherited both, and neither one has produced transformed lives.

Jesus offered a different way. He never said "know about me." He said "follow me." In the first century, following a rabbi meant apprenticeship: ordering your whole life around a master until you became like him. Through John 5:39 and James 2:19, Colby shows that even the demons have more knowledge than any of us, and it has saved none of it. The devil has information. Information does not save.

This episode traces the path from information to embodiment to transformation, and lands on the gospel itself: not advice about the afterlife, but the announcement that Jesus lived the life you could not live and died the death you deserved to die.

The goal was never to be a fan who knows the statistics. It is to become a follower who walks as He walked.

Scripture in this episode: John 5:39, James 2:19, Matthew 4:19

Chapters:

0:00 Christianity is not just about believing the right things

8:23 Becoming the kind of person who can live in God's kingdom

13:48 If demons know who Jesus is, why do we think knowledge saves us?

14:45 "Follow me" means more than believing what He said

16:11 Information leads to embodiment leads to transformation

16:29 The Enlightenment and Romanticism: how we got here

24:30 People know doctrine but aren't transformed

27:51 The deeper work of the Holy Spirit

30:24 The whole point of truth is to point to Jesus

31:34 Does your life reflect what you proclaim?

34:30 The gap between knowing and living

39:40 Dallas Willard: will Christians become disciples?

42:54 Truth was never meant to be merely believed

45:45 Jesus never separates truth from practice

49:15 The gospel is an announcement about reality

52:30 Where this journey goes next

Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible - courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: www.academyofthebible.org

Follow the show so you don't miss an episode - new teachings and conversations every week.

You can know the Bible and still not be changed by it.

In this first episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier makes the case that the modern church doesn't suffer from a lack of information — it suffers from a lack of spiritual formation. There are people with PhDs in theology who know Scripture inside and out, and whose lives remain untransformed. Knowledge alone cannot make us new.

Colby works through James 1:22 and the warning against being hearers of the word only, then the parable of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7 — where both men heard the same teaching, both built, and both faced the same storm. The only difference was that one applied what he heard.

Along the way: what Dallas Willard meant by the renovation of the heart, why Timothy Keller called the gospel the A to Z rather than the ABCs of the Christian life, and a question worth sitting with: you are already being discipled, so by whom, and by what?

The episode closes on union with Christ, and why the gap between hearing truth and living it is closed by the Holy Spirit rather than by more content.

This podcast is for Christians tired of a faith that feels abstract, shallow, and disconnected from everyday life, and for anyone who wants to apply Scripture to their marriage, parenting, work, money, anxiety, and calling.

Transformation, not information.

Go deeper: https://academyofthebible.org

Colby Maier is a pastor and speaker based in Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Academy of the Bible.

What if you could learn from some of the world’s leading Bible scholars, theologians, pastors, and Christian thinkers without going to seminary?

Welcome to Academy of the Bible with Colby Maier, a podcast created to help everyday Christians understand the Bible, think deeply about their faith, and follow Jesus more faithfully in the modern world.

Each episode brings you biblical teaching and conversations exploring Scripture, theology, apologetics, church history, spiritual formation, culture, and some of the biggest questions facing Christians today.

Because following Jesus involves more than knowing what Christians believe. It means learning why we believe it, how the story of Scripture fits together, and what it looks like to faithfully live within that story.

Whether you’ve studied the Bible for decades or you’re just beginning to ask deeper questions, you’re invited to pull up a chair.

Follow Academy of the Bible now so you don’t miss the first episode.

Learn more at academyofthebible.org.