The Laymens Lounge

“If you’re [listening to this podcast] right now, I’m assuming you’re clawing your way through hell, or you have in the past, or you know someone who is. I don’t know where you are—buried under blankets in a dark room, sitting on a bus with your body stiff as steel, gripping a steering wheel like your life depended on it—but I don’t judge. I’ve been in the worst of places with my anxiety. I also don’t know how you are—whether this is a “good” day or a “bad” day, whether your anxiety seems distant like a memory or coiled around your neck like seventy-pound boa constrictor—but I promise I have something you need to hear in this book [podcast]. When it’s all boiled down, the message is plain and simple: your anxiety is not accidental. It’s doing something in you; it’s working. And once you find out how, you’ll never see it the same way again…” These words, taken from Pierce Taylor Hibbs' "Struck Down but Not Destroyed: Living Faithfully with Anxiety", are an invitation from Pierce to Christians into his own world of suffering, anxiety, pain, etc.  and to not merely do the best we can to reduce and minimize the pain and discomfort (the default assumed approach is "symptom reduction" or "deliverance" as the norm and presupposed goal), but to "Roll into your anxiety, as if it were a wave. It may roll you, but you’ll roll back stronger". Listen in and be stregnthed to look to Christ in your suffering. 

For more interviews see www.TheLaymensLounge.com

For more form Pierce Taylor Hibbs see http://PierceTaylorHibbs.com

Sunday worship and our Monday work desperately need to inform and impact each other but they often seem like worlds apart. Dr Matthew Kaemingk joins us to discuss his forthcoming book Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy and traces work/working/worship in ancient Israel, labor/liturgy in the eary Church, and how we can intentionally, and naturally, bring them together in our time. Visit www.TheLaymensLounge.com for more goodness

Visit https://www.matthewkaemingk.com/ for more on Dr. Kaemingk

Read Moms, Marchers, and Managers: Priests All Three here

Christians know we are saved by grace, but we often think we need to conjure up and produce a steady stream of good works to “stay saved” (quiet times, being nice to our baristas, “spiritual disciplines”, etc.). In this episode Pastor’s Jon Moffitt and Justin Perdue (from the www.Theocast.org podcast and ministry) sit down with us and “encourage weary pilgrims to rest in Christ” the “friend of sinners”. We are reminded that when we are united to Christ by faith (ie become Christians), that all the good works Jesus did have actually been credited to our accounts - in such a way that God now, and forever, views you as if YOU had performed those very works (in the same way that His death has become your death). Listen, look to Jesus, and rest. For this, and other interviews and articles, visit our website at www.TheLaymensLounge.com 

· JON MOFFITT Bio/sermons/contact

· JUSTIN PERDUE Bio/sermons/contact 

· THEOCAST Podcasts/articles/teaching/etc. 

· “Faith vs Faithfulness: A Primer On Rest” Free Theocast ebook 

We all know God delights in the sacred activity of prayers and songs of Christians, but does He also delight in "secular" things as well? Can He appreciate an amazing one-handed catch at a football game? How about ancient Chinese pottery? A soaring Hawk? A family trip to Disneyland? What about Haitian Voodoo art, The Game of Thrones and Zombies? And why do we talk with such joy when discussing backyard BBQs and beach trips, but we become very somber and heavy when we shift to the topic of discipleship? Listen in as we interview the great Richard Mouw as he unpacks his decades of study to equip the saints to further Glorify and enjoy God.

Listen in as we interview Pastor/Scholar Danny Hyde and discuss how Christians are weary from thinking they always need to be "doing stuff" to impress Jesus and to "stay saved" rather than resting in Christ and His finished work on our behalf. Pastor Danny takes us through the history of Western Christianity's decay into self-centered pietism, and lost sight of the historical and longstanding Christian saints who have gone before us - especially that of the Reformers and the early Church. We ask: What hath welding to do with Christianity? What about restoring old gas pumps? Was Billy Grahm a Guru? What does a Reformed Chruch worship service look like when ordered in an intetional Christocentrc fashion? All this, and a few dad jokes along the way, in this episode of The Laymens Lounge podcast! Visit www.TheLaymensLounge.com for more

Join us as we sit down with Reformed scholar/pastor/theologian, Sam Storms, who believes the Spiritual Gifts are still alive and that the church despertaley needs the power of God. We ask Sam: Are tounges just insane jibberish or are they something actually from God? Are the gifts for today or have they ceased with the Apostles? How can we actually believe the gifts when most people who "do" them are clearly charlatans? Should we seek the gifts or leave that to the charasmatics? Ive tried praying for healing, but have never seen it - why should we keep praying for them? Can we have joy, love our spouses, etc. apart from the Spirit? Are Christians commanded to pursue the gifts in their daily lives? For more interviews, articles, to equip normal Christians for noral life visit www.TheLaymensLounge.com

Join us as we talk with Dr Edwin van Driel as we ask: what is Jesus doing? Is He even doing anything at all (because it seems like this world is going to hell and the Church seems to have no influence)? Is Jesus just a mental truth from 2,000 years ago or is He up to something today? Listen in on this edifying conversation. This, and all our transcribed/audio interviews, can be found at www.TheLaymensLounge.com

Join us as we interview Dr John Walton (professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and one of the world's most prominent scholars and voices on Ancient near east background to the Bible) with crucial questions like 1. How do we read/interpret the creation account (literal 24 hours or something else)? 2. How did the original readers of Genesis read the creation account (function vs origin/house vs home). 3. What does it mean made in the image of God? 3. What was significant about "God resting on the 7th day"? And much more. This, and all our transcribed interviews, can be found at www.TheLaymensLounge.com

Join us as we interview Amos Yong (professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Seminary) who seeks to bring Biblical clarity to the person and work of the Spirit, in the academy as well as the Church. In this discussion we ask who is the Spirit? What does the Spirit do? How do we get "filled" with the Spirit and what does that even mean?... This, and all our transcribed interviews, can be found at www.TheLaymensLounge.com

Bruce Ashford is Professor of Theology & Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and seeks to cultivate a “Christianity for the common good" with his conviction that Jesus is Lord and, for that reason, we should be thoughtful and intentional about how our belief in him should shape our lives. Join us as we discuss the storyline of the Bible, what cleaning cats has to do with Jesus, how to be a Christian where your just doing normal stuff. This, and all our transcribed interviews, can be found at www.TheLaymensLounge.com