Ever had one of those days where everything feels like chaos? Kids making a mess, a flat tire when you are already late, fires you have to put out at work? Even when recording this podcast there was a technical error and it meant scrapping the whole conversation and starting over. Normally this is where frustration sets in, but God, true to give us an experience to solidify the truth He was teaching us—turned a redo into a rich, Spirit-led study on exactly the topic God had planned. We got to see Jesus, the Word, speak clarity into our chaos.

In this episode, Kimberly Faith and John McLarty look at Genesis 1 and John 1 and explore how Jesus, the eternal Word, is the Father's inner thoughts made visible to humanity. They talk about what it means to really know God as Father, especially when culture portrays such a warped picture of fathers. The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-37, shows the father running to meet his son before a single apology is spoken. We are those prodigals. Real peace only comes once we return to the Father through Jesus by being born again. Your life is not an accident looking for a purpose—it's a purpose waiting to be realized. Jesus, the Word, gives us purpose, day by day—right in the middle of our chaos.

Most of us have asked God the same quiet question at some point: why isn't my prayer life working the way Jesus said it would? We read the promises, we pray the prayers, and still find ourselves stuck in what feels like hit-or-miss belief. In this episode, Kim sits back down with Dr. Patrick Briney for the continuation of a testimony that started as a personal study on prayer and turned into a decade-long walk through two battles with stage-four Hodgkin's lymphoma: battles that God used to teach him exactly what he'd been praying to understand.

We are a lot like Pat standing in that kitchen, feeling for a lump he never expected to find. We want answers we can hold onto, and God is often kind enough to give them to us in the middle of the mountain we didn't choose. Kim and Pat trace his journey from a single verse in Mark 11 — "have faith in God" — into a fuller understanding of what that phrase actually means, then move into the second half of the conversation: the scientific case for a Creator. Dr. Patrick Briney, a PhD immunologist and lifelong skeptic-turned-believer, breaks down how the laws of thermodynamics and the law of biogenesis point unmistakably to a supernatural origin, and how the Bible recorded truths about the shape of the earth, the paths of the sea, the water cycle, and the expanding universe long before science caught up. This episode isn't just a science lesson: it's a reminder that life was not created by accident without a purpose. Life was created by God with a purpose he has already written, waiting for us to trust Him enough to walk into it.

Dr. Patrick Briney earned his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Arkansas. He specialized in immunology and infectious diseases doing research in vaccine development and virulence investigation for Campylobacter jejuni.

Dr. Patrick Briney is an author, speaker, and Bible teacher for practical Christianity. Dr. Briney serves as the First Associate Pastor at Mission Boulevard Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is also the Founder and President of Leadership Training Institute of America and Life Changing Scriptures. Pat and his wife, Colleen, live in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They have two married daughters and three enjoyable grandsons. You can reach Dr. Briney through his website, https://patrickbriney.com.

Almost everyone has asked the question — is God even real? Dr. Patrick Briney asked it louder and longer than most. Raised in a skeptic's home with a father who trusted only the physical realm, Dr. Patrick Briney spent his childhood and teenage years chasing the answer. He tried self-hypnosis at the kitchen table. He studied Eastern and Western religion. He decided by his first week of college that God simply didn't exist because you can't find answers about things that aren't real. And then, completely unplanned, a phone call from an old friend led him to a single conversation that changed everything.

In this episode, Kimberly Faith sits down with Dr. Patrick Briney to hear that story in full of how one conversation, grounded entirely in the Bible, took a man convinced he was an atheist to being a man wrestling with doubt for two long years before finally, exhausted, surrendering his life to Christ. Kim and Dr. Briney talk through his "Four Fundamental Questions" for reaching skeptics, the subtle danger of trying to earn salvation which can only be received by grace, and why knowing about God is never the same as knowing Him personally. It's not that life is short on evidence: it's that we're often the last ones willing to stop arguing with it.

Dr. Patrick Briney earned his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Arkansas. He specialized in immunology and infectious diseases doing research in vaccine development and virulence investigation for Campylobacter jejuni.

Dr. Patrick Briney is an author, speaker, and Bible teacher for practical Christianity. Dr. Briney serves as an Associate Pastor at Mission Boulevard Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is also the Founder and President of Leadership Training Institute of America and Life Changing Scriptures. Pat and his wife, Colleen, live in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They have two married daughters and three grandsons. You can reach Dr. Briney through his website, https://patrickbriney.com.

Have you ever stood at the edge of a dance floor, watching everyone else move together, wondering if you'd ever really belong? It's a feeling almost everyone has had — waiting to be chosen, to be favored by someone who is great or powerful. This question resurfaced in an unexpected way during a recent illness Kimberly went through. God kept bringing one truth back to her heart: She belonged to Him. Out of that season she was reminded of the picture C.S. Lewis described of the inner life with the Trinity as a great dance, dynamic and alive with love and motion. This dance that the Father, Son, and Spirit have been in since before time began.

To celebrate the 100th episode, Kimberly Faith and John McLarty talk about that dance — and about the astonishing fact that it was never meant to stay just between the three persons of the Godhead. It was always meant to include us. They show that in Genesis all three were present at creation and in John chapter 1 how each has a different role and invitation for us: the Father who runs to meet us like the father of the prodigal son, the Son who makes us joint heirs of an inheritance we can't fully wrap our minds around, and the Spirit who intercedes for us, transforms us, and guides our steps like a patient dance instructor. Whatever wound or sense of not-quite-enough someone carries into this episode, Kim and John's hope is the same one they close on: Nobody has to sit this one out. The invitation has already been given — the only question left is whether we'll step onto the floor.

In this episode Kimberly Faith and her dad answer the question through the Bible, "Do I really matter to God?" A question that almost everyone has asked themselves at moments when their job feels pointless, and their dreams are collecting dust on a shelf. A story that becomes the heartbeat of this episode was literally Spirit lead as it was not planned, is the story of the Shepherd who had 99 sheep that were safe but 1 has wandered off. The Shepherd loves his sheep so much that he goes out and finds that 1 sheep that wandered off and brings it safely back to the fold. This lost sheep didn't do anything to earn the Shepherds love or care. 

In this same instance we are like that sheep. We have done nothing to earn God's love, yet God looks for us when we are lost. He seeks to bring us back to His presence. Kim and John discuss four different places in the Bible where God makes it clear that we matter to Him. Our lives are important to Him. 

They talk about living inside his grace instead of just believing in it from a distance, the comparison trap of measuring our worth by followers or performance, and why the hardest seasons might actually be where purpose shows up clearest. Our life is not an accident looking for a purpose. It's a purpose waiting to be realized. And like that one sheep, we were worth going after.

Mark Twain once said the two most important days in your life are the day you're born and the day you find out why. In this episode, Kim and her dad John explore that "why" through God’s word. Believe it or not, it's not a career, a relationship, or a passion.

What it comes down to is we are made in the image of God, and our soul is never satisfied until our relationship with Him is reconciled through salvation. That's why no earthly pursuit, no matter how good, can ever fill the God-shaped hole in our soul. You were made on purpose, for a purpose, and it's only when you give your life to God and pursue a relationship with Him that we find real purpose and lasting fulfillment. We don’t want anyone to miss out on the second of the two most important days of each person’s life!

Were people in the Old Testament saved differently than we are today? Kimberly and John probe this question that sounds academic but really isn’t—because if salvation ever worked one way for God’s people back then and another way for us now, that says something troubling about God Himself. He doesn’t change; He doesn’t the rules on His own people. He never has.

So these questions are explored carefully: Who God is and what the law was really there to do. How were Abraham and Job saved? What of Simeon and Anna in the temple at the birth of Jesus? They all reveal: Salvation has always come by grace through faith in Christ, never by works of the law. And this is not just a nice theological footnote. Any gospel that sneaks works back in—baptism, confession, rule-keeping to stay saved—isn’t a minor error. It’s a lie that can cost those we love—everything for eternity.

What if the deepest desires you've carried your whole life — the aching need to be loved, the burning anger at injustice, the longing for something pure and true — weren't weaknesses or distractions, but actually by design? In this episode of Truth in Love, Kim and her dad John discuss one of the most profound truths in Scripture: that we are created in the image of God. And that changes everything about how we understand ourselves.

Drawing from Jeremiah 9:24, Genesis 1:26, and Micah 6:8, they explore how God's nature — his love, his justice, and his righteousness — is woven into us from the very beginning. This is a deeply personal conversation about why we feel what we feel, why we want what we want, and how knowing God more fully leads us into the life we were actually made for.

What if Jesus didn't just visit humanity — what if he permanently became one of us?

That's the question Kim and her dad John explore in this episode, and it's one that just might change the way you see Jesus forever. This is a deep look at what the Bible actually shows us about the incarnation of Christ, and why it matters for your worship and the way you live your life.

Together, Kim and John explore four sections: who Jesus was before the incarnation, what he laid down when he became flesh, 13 biblical examples pointing to a permanent union between Christ and his humanity, and finally — what all of this means for you and me. From John 1 and Genesis 1 all the way through Job, Zechariah, Revelations, and the resurrection appearances, the evidence is both surprising and deeply moving.

Like the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan — people who gave everything so one man could live a long, meaningful life — Jesus gave up something immeasurably greater. And pondering what he gave up has the power to permanently deepen your gratitude and redirect your life toward what actually counts.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Kimberly and her dad John ask a question that cuts right to the heart of this milestone: What does it actually take to keep a nation free? This isn't a political conversation — it's a biblical one. Because the kind of freedom that sustains a people doesn't come from the top down. It never has.

Kimberly and John explore the profound difference between the world's definition of freedom — doing whatever you want and answering to no one — to the freedom that Jesus actually offers. One leads to bondage. The other leads to rest.

They also get honest about the two traps that are robbing individuals and entire nations blind! From the worship songs enslaved believers sang in the cotton fields, to the Cherokee people's refusal to be defined by the Trail of Tears, to Paul writing some of Scripture's most triumphant words from a prison cell — the evidence is overwhelming.  True biblical freedom isn't defined by our circumstances. 

If you've been feeling discouraged by the state of the world, this episode is for you. You are not helpless. You are not without influence. And the freedom you carry in Christ — the real kind — is exactly what your family, your community, and your country need most.