A Stranger in the House of God is the Podcast of award winning author John Koessler. Growing up the son of agnostics, John Koessler saw a Catholic church on one end of the street and a Baptist on the other. In the no-man’s land between the two, this curious outsider wondered about the God they worshiped—and began a lifelong search to comprehend the grace and mystery of God. John's podcast addresses fundamental questions and struggles faced by spiritual seekers and mature believers.
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Welcome to the Evangelistic House of God Podcast. The unscripted show on social issue from a Christian perspective. You can find out more about the Evangelistic House of God: EHOG Podcast at the following locations: Evangelistic House of God 8401 Puritan, Detroit, MI 48238 Website: ehogministries.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EHOGPodcast/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf6p3fXe3xSEB5m304bzvLg Twitter: @EHOGMinistries eMail: podcast@ehogministries.com
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Welcome to God's House of Prayer podcast where the Word of God is the final authority.
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Potters House Church Of God sunday sermons
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Entertaining the Strange: Conversation as an Act of Hospitality
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Send us a text During this past presidential election, Joe Rogan attempted to sit down with Kamala Harris for an interview. When they were unable to come to terms, he expressed disappointment. "I hope she does," Rogan said. "I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her." Whatever you may think of Rogan, he was …
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Job and the Divine Game: Faith Amidst Suffering
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Send us a text In a letter discussing the infant theory of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein famously observed that God “does not play dice.” Perhaps, but sometimes, it feels as if God does play games with us. What is the nature of what Martin Luther called "the divine game?" Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritu…
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Technological Servant or Tool of Technopoly? LOGOS Takes a Leap
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Send us a text John offers a review of Logos Bible Software's new subscription model, designed to enhance accessibility and maintain revenue. Mixed user feedback highlights concerns about costs versus value and the introduction of AI features into the software. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible…
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Playing God: The Unexpected Attribute
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Send us a text Playfulness is not typically attributed to the divine. Common descriptors include holy, sovereign, just, and merciful. Attributes such as omniscience, omnipresence, and self-sufficiency are well-acknowledged. However, playfulness seldom makes it into theological discourse. throughout the Bible, the grace note reflected in God’s deali…
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Spitting Away From the Angels: Faith, Imagination, & the Reality of the Church
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Send us a text The church is a caravan. It travels in company. In one of his sermons on the nature of Christ, Saint Augustine pictures the church as being a community of faith that stretches across the globe but across time. Or as he put it, “from Abel the just to the end of the world.” This is not what I usually see when the congregation assembles…
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When God is Silent-Faith, Hope, & Prayer
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Send us a text Faith and hope are essential in prayer. But how much faith is enough before God will answer? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is the author of 16 books…
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When God is Silent-Prayers Without Words
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Send us a text Some years ago, a friend admitted to me that she couldn’t pray. She is not alone. Some of the godliest people have found themselves at a loss for words in the presence of God. How do we pray when we have no words? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Pract…
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When God is Silent-Jesus on Prayer
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Send us a text Everyone learns to talk by imitation. Most people learn to pray the same way. They hear the prayers of others and copy them. Jesus’s disciples learned how to pray from Jesus. His model prayer, usually referred to as the Lord’s Prayer, is a prayer that we can pray for ourselves, but it is also a kind of template. Dr. John Koessler is …
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Send us a text It is not a hyperbole to describe the Christmas story as fantastic. That is to say, it has all the characteristics of a fantasy. C. S. Lewis observed, ""The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact." Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practic…
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When God is Silent-How to Stay Focused During Prayer
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Send us a text Many things can get in the way of praying. But one of the most common obstacles is boredom. Prayer can sometimes seem tedious. How do we stay focused when praying? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a m…
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When God is Silent-Praying in the Words of Another
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Send us a text Which kind of praying is better, memorized prayers, written prayers, or extemporaneous prayers that we make up in the moment? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Liv…
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When God is Silent-Managing Our Angry Prayers
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Send us a text Sometimes when we pray, we are angry with other people. On other occasions, we pray because we are angry with God. How do we manage our angry prayers? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column…
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When God is Silent-The Art of Praying for Others
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Send us a text Do a search on books about intercessory prayer on the Internet, and the overall impression you get is that our concerns in this area are primarily concerns of focus and method. Intercession isn't exactly rocket science but that doesn't mean that it is easy. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of …
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When God is Silent-Praying and Getting What You Want . . . or Not
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Send us a text Prayer is an act of communion with God. But for most of us, it’s also about getting something from God. Most prayers include an “ask” of some kind. We aren’t praying just to hear ourselves talk. We do not struggle with prayer because it is hard. Our problem is that we are not sure it is worthwhile. We suspect that God is not interest…
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When God is Silent-Awkward Conversation
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Send us a text Whatever prayer may be, it is not an ordinary conversation. Believers in every generation have understood prayer as one of the means by which God communicates to his people. Yet it is a conversation where we do the majority of the talking. In prayer, we approach God but do not see either face or form and do not hear his voice. Theref…
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Do We Really Need Another Book on Prayer?
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Send us a text Most books about prayer either assume that I don’t want to pray or that I don’t know how. Neither is really the case. My problem lies elsewhere. I don’t like the way God treats me when I pray. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column …
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Other Words: Four More Cries from the Cross
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Send us a text Jesus' last words were those of a victor, not a victim. They are the words of one who knows he is death's master. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on prayer for Mature Living. He is t…
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Send us a text Some have called Jesus' seven statements from the cross his last words. Among these seven sayings are three prayers. Jesus' three prayers from the cross help us to place the suffering of Christ in a larger context. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Prac…
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Send us a text Several years ago, at the Bible college where I taught, news reached the campus that a revival had broken out among the students of another school. It was much like the recent event at Asbury University, though on a smaller scale. The stories we heard were similar. Students knelt and wept at the front of the chapel as they asked God …
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A Season of Ghosts: Christmas, Nostalgia, & “The Weight of Glory”
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Send us a text In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the first spirit to visit Ebenezer Scrooge is the ghost of Christmas past. Scrooge notes the spirit’s small stature and asks, “Long Past?” “No. Your past,” the ghost replies. Dickens is on to something here because this spirit often visits us at this time of year. The season of Advent, by its na…
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Send us a text December is the season when tinsel-haloed angels draped in bedsheets announce the birth of Christ to bathrobe-clad shepherds on the church stage. There is a kind of charm in the way we tell the nativity story that might fool people into thinking it is merely a rustic folktale. But the Bible's account of the birth of Christ is not a c…
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Send us a text Christmas was important to me even before I called myself a Christian, though admittedly, this was mainly for non-religious reasons. I’ve long suspected that I have always loved Christmas more than any other holiday, not because of its spirituality but because it purchased my affections. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer a…
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Send us a text Heaven has fallen on hard times. In Christian thinking, looking forward to heaven is no longer fashionable. Jeffrey Burton Russell observes in his book Paradise Mislaid, "Heaven has been shut away in a closet by the dominant intellectual trends of the past few centuries."[1] There are a number of reasons for this. To some, the idea o…
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Send us a text It's getting to look a lot like Easter. Which, frankly, isn't saying that much. Between Christmas and Easter, it's plain to see which holiday is the favored child of the church calendar. If Christmas is warm, Easter is cold. As it approaches, we don't seem to know whether to be happy or sad. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writ…
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The Trouble with Meme Activism: Sometimes to Speak is Not to Speak
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Send us a text I have noticed that periods of social unrest are often accompanied by a corresponding outbreak of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am referring, of course, to the accompanying blizzard of memes on Facebook and Twitter that display a quote famously (and probably incorrectly) attributed to Bonhoeffer: "Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to …
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Send us a text In the Gospels, Jesus is called the Holy One of God on two occasions. The first time was by a demon (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34). The second was by Peter when many of the disciples were grumbling about the difficulty of Jesus' teaching. It is a reflection of the seriousness of our problem with holiness that the demons recognized who Jesus …
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Send us a text Every age seems to have its preferred image of Jesus. The Scriptures do not portray Jesus as a symbol or even an archetype but as a living person. Yet there is some variation in the portrait they offer. We might think of the Gospels as a hall of portraits, with each episode intended to highlight some facet of the person and work of J…
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Send us a text Redemption is a drama unfolding along two storylines. The story of the Magi is a reminder that the journey of redemption includes evil as well as good. God is not responsible for the evil, but He is not a hostage to it either. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John wri…
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Send us a text These days Christmas music seems to like to portray Mary as fragile and uncertain. Mary was probably young, but I do not think she was fragile. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for Today in the Word and a monthly column on pra…
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Send us a text Christ's command to point out a brother's fault in Matthew 18:15 is a hard pill to swallow in an age that regards amiability to be the chief of all Christian virtues. It doesn’t fit the image many of us have of Jesus. The contemporary church favors an uncritical and accepting Jesus. This popular Jesus doesn’t point fingers but stands…
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Bright Lights in an Age of Complaint
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Send us a text Tertullian, the second-century church father from Carthage, wrote that observers of the early Christians marveled at what they saw. "See how they love one another," they said. Those early pagans made their observations from the outside. They saw the behavior of Christians after grace and the gospel had done their work. Beyond their v…
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Church Hunting: What People Want from Church
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Send us a text When I was a pastor, it felt like the people who visited our church were looking for the congregational equivalent of a supermodel. We were a good little church but never quite good enough for them. The congregation was too small, and we didn’t have enough programs. It irritated me at the time. But when I became a civilian and starte…
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Send us a text Have you ever wondered how fast God is? It sounds like the kind of question a child might ask. But for many of us, the honest answer would probably be, "Not as fast as we would like Him to be." Although 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not slow, waiting is so much a feature of the redemption story that Revelation 6:11 tells us that even …
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Send us a text Books about prayer never seem to fit my situation. They either assume that I don’t want to pray or that I don’t know how. Neither is really the case. My problem lies elsewhere. They are relational. I don’t like the way God seems to treat me when I pray. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Mood…
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Send us a text Some aspects of our development are programmed by heredity and DNA. But not everything. There are things we can do to nurture growth, or we can hamper it. The same is true in the spiritual realm. What is the secret to spiritual growth? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute.…
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Send us a text Every generation seems to have its own idol. Each one represents the spirit of the age, a false god who shapes the ethic of the culture at large. All too often, these idols find their way into the church. These days the idol of the age is best represented by what I would call “the cult of nice.” The cult of nice is a code that shapes…
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Send us a text The difference between faith, stubborn, and stupid is not as obvious as you might think. To the unbeliever, faith looks like stupid, and to the believer, stupid sometimes looks like faith. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Practical Theology column for …
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Send us a text Since I retired, I find myself saying no to things that I once would have been eager to take on. I am not doing the things I thought I would do. Some of those things are no longer of interest to me. Others have grown more difficult, and I am either unwilling or unable to expend the energy. It is unnerving. I find that I am disappoint…
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Send us a text In the early days of my walk with Jesus, it didn’t dawn on me that church was also part of the package. Our family didn’t attend church and now that I thought of myself as a Christian, it seemed unnecessary to me. I had Jesus and the Bible. I had made friends with others who shared my faith. Why ruin it all by adding church into the …
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Send us a text When Christmas comes around, we remind ourselves of the need to observe it all year. For some reason, we never talk this way about Easter. We celebrate the Christmas spirit, but we seem to know nothing about the Spirit of Easter. We approach Christmas with excitement that builds for months. Its approach is announced with colored ligh…
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A Piece of Work: Understanding the Human Condition
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Send us a text These days it is common to treat human beings as if they were only high functioning animals. Humans are indeed creatures. But the Bible teaches that we are much more. This is third in a series on foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Ins…
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Send us a text What is God like? The Bible teaches that God has revealed Himself to us through creation and by His word. But what does that revelation tell us about the nature of God? Theologians have traditionally divided God's attributes into two main categories. Some are attributes that have no analogy in human experience. These attributes, ofte…
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Send us a text Where does one begin when speaking of God? A biography usually starts at the beginning with its subject's birth and ancestry. But the God of Scripture, unlike the gods of myth, is uncreated and eternal. He has no beginning or point of origin. He has no ancestors. For this reason, God's account of Himself in Scripture begins not with …
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Christmas Traveler: Why the Nativity is About the Cross
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Send us a text In this year of COVID-19, the governor of my state has asked everyone to stay home for Christmas. To be honest, it feels strange. For many, Christmas is a time for traveling. The same was true of the first Christmas. The Gospel narratives of Christ's birth are crowded with travelers. Zechariah, the priest, travels to Jerusalem to bur…
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Send us a text I have found that God is not much of a conversationalist. He is mostly silent when I talk to Him. Not that I am such a good conversationalist either. My prayers tend to be repetitive, made up of the same requests every time. My attention span is short. I suppose that if I were the one on the other side of the conversation, I would pr…
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Send us a text In the early days of my walk with Christ, I was taught to believe that miracles were an everyday occurrence. The Christians I knew were generous in their definition of what constituted a miracle, as likely to call a good parking spot an act of God as someone’s sudden recovery from cancer. Every situation was treated as an occasion fo…
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Send us a text Despite the language of the prayer book, us miserable sinners aren’t always unhappy in our sin. We do not pine away about it the way the monastic fathers and the Puritans did. We have come to terms with our condition, which is just another way of saying that we tend to live our lives in a state of denial. But the fact that we do not …
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A Few Serious Thoughts About God & Laughter
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Send us a text umor is not the first thing we think of when we think about God. His thundering holiness is more likely to come to mind. The handful of statements which make explicit reference to divine laughter reinforce this impression. When the nations conspire against the Lord's anointed, the One enthroned in heaven laughs at them in contempt (P…
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Uncivil Discourse: Why Our Speech Matters
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Send us a text Ken Myers has observed, “The Christian tradition has long placed great value on care about speech.” He notes that the sacred importance of language is signaled by the fact that two of the Ten Commandments are concerned with speech. One of them has to do with the way we speak about God. The other, not surprisingly, deals with the way …
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Dangerous Virtues: Justice-Life in an Age of Outrage
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Send us a text A saying attributed to St. Augustine goes, “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” No one seems to know where or even whether Augustine actually expressed such a thought. To be honest, it sounds more like something…
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