In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue to discuss the church's happy anticipation of heaven and how it shapes our life in this world.

Quotes from Fry:

• In the end, heaven is a place on earth. Earth doesn't comprehend earth, but heaven comprehends earth.
• Simply put, heaven is the dwelling place of God.
• We have so separated heaven and earth that it leads us to a view that we can trash earth before God trashes it. That is not at all an orientation that God allows us to have towards the earth. And that's very dangerous. Christians need to recover a better ecology.
• My male body will be resurrected. We will be male or female eternally. We are not going to become angels. Jesus told us that there will be a particular way that we will be like angels, but that's not one of them.
• Anticipating the loss of the things that we take pleasure in now seems more like hell than heaven. The popular visions of heaven and hell are reversed—where hell is the place where you party and have all of the best of human experiences that we can experience now, and heaven is a place where you lose all of those things. But heaven is not the loss of all these things, it is the fulfillment of them.
• Whatever we have to say about heaven—as we study God's word and how Christian thinkers have reflected on it—we cannot leave out the importance of the resurrected, physical body of Christ which is the foundation of our faith. That's our starting point for thinking about things eternal, and that's a physical reality. That's where our physical theology has to start. But so many of our thoughts about heaven are spiritualized and disconnected and have really become more like fairytales than real, physical realities.
• Prolonging life at any cost actually takes away from the sanctity of the passing of a saint. That approach is grounded in the lack of belief in a physical resurrection. We go to an extreme to preserve bodily life as if we've given up hope of a bodily resurrection.
• In our great effort to prolong life, we actually end up making death worse than it is—more despairing.
• We are pilgrims and exiles or strangers. We are passing through this age. Kings come and kings go. And that's not to say that these things have no importance. But the basic Christian confession that "Jesus is Lord" ought to run through all of our public faith. It ought to dictate everything we do—from voting to living under authorities that perhaps we didn't vote for.
• Our thinking about heaven must translate into how we live in this world—a public faith that reflects careful, holy living and a passion for being creatures who are made in the image of God, conveying godliness. That has to be our guiding passion for thinking on these things.

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In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss why the church has lost its happy anticipation of heaven and how a robust theology of new creation can help to recover this vital anticipation.

Quotes from Fry:

• An experience that led me to preach a series on heaven was sitting through a funeral service in which almost everything that was said about heaven had to do with the material descriptions that Scripture gives us—streets of gold and gates of pearl—and there was nothing said about beholding the beauty of God. I began to realize that we really lack almost any understanding of the beatific vision that calls Christians to a happy anticipation of heaven.
• People have a hard time looking forward to heaven when they have bought into—or have been sold—a fairytale idea of what heaven is like.  On a nice Fall day, I'd rather walk through the woods than walk through a massive city with streets of God.
• We need a biblically-based concept of what heaven really is in order for us to have a happy anticipation of it.
• People latch onto the biblical images and take one verse, one little element, and try to build a whole world based on that element, and make it something other than what it actually is.
• I have heard preachers say, 'We all want to go to heaven, but we don't want to go tonight,' and that's terrible. That is not the attitude of the New Testament believers, and it's certainly not the attitude of the saints throughout the ages.
• Who wants to be strapped to a rocket and thrown into outer space where there's nothing but space and spend eternity there? From a very young age, we are teaching our kids of a very nebulous idea of an ungrounded heaven, and for some reason we don't make the connection in our adult minds that there's a problem with that.
• We have been thinking unbiblically about this other-worldly heaven, and we need to think more in terms of the redemption of this earth, and what God's plan is for actually wedding heaven and earth together, which is the great image of the end of the Book of Revelation.
• One of the last stanzas of "O For a Thousand Tongues" says, "Anticipate your heaven below, and own that love is heaven."
• In Revelation 21, the dwelling of God is with us—not our dwelling goes to be with God. God is coming to us. That is the final image in the final chapters of Scripture.
• We are earthly creatures, and we were created to be earthly creatures. The creation story conveys to us a pure, holy place called the garden, in which God dwelled with Adam and Eve. That's a real, earthly place—not something beyond the blue. And so we have to ground our salvation in earthiness.
• Peter uses imagery that refers to the redemption of this earth, not God throwing something away and starting with something different. Once we have that as our framework for understanding heaven, it revolutionizes our thinking.
• If God plans to trash this earth, then don't let the meek know that. Because Jesus said that the meek will inherit the earth. If he means that, then he is talking about the earth that they know.
• There is more continuity between this earth and heaven—this age and the next—than there is discontinuity. Certainly, there is some discontinuity, but there's a hope that heaven is not a fairytale. It's real.
• To see the completion of God's vision for humanity or the world, we see that in Christ. We don't go back to the first Adam, we go to the Second Adam.

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We're pleased to announce a new Holy Joys Sermon Podcast. Click "Sermons" in the header menu at holyjoys.org or visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1762957. The HJ Sermon Podcast is available on Spotify and Google Podcasts, and it's coming soon to Apple Podcasts.

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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss legitimate reasons to leave a church, and how to go about doing it in a way that honors Christ.

1. What are acceptable reasons to leave a church?
2. What are the characteristics of someone who is mature enough to leave a church well?
3. What steps should be taken before leaving a church?
4. What should you do after you leave a church?

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Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss church manuals/disciplines, common problems and frustrations, and how approaching the discipline/manual in light of the church's disciple-making mission can help us work towards a healthier future for the church and its members.

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Johnathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry discuss the biblical office of deacon (aka the diaconate). Key topics/passages include:

• 1 Timothy 3:8–13
• Acts 6:1–6
• Philippians 1:1
• Romans 16:1
• Female deacons (deaconesses)
• Deacons in the apostolic fathers and early church tradition
• Deacons in the Reformers and early Methodism
• Ordination
• Deacons in relationship to Elders
• Tips for implementation

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Dr. Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss Bible study tools and methods. Topics include:

• Active vs. passive reading
• Pens and marking tools
• Wide-margin Bibles
• Inductive Bible Study
• Tracking themes
• Christ-centered reading
• Typological reading
• Big-picture reading and focused study
• Contemplative reading and memorization

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Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss an article by Samuel D. James, "Why is 'Re-Converting' Easier than Repenting?" and discuss ways in which the church has made it difficult for sincere but struggling believers to confess sin and find help, restoration, and accountability from the church.

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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss what they are preaching: Philemon and the devotion of the apostles to prayer and the ministry of the word in Acts 6.

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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss plagiarism and the need for preachers to show integrity in their public speaking.

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