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Written on the Heart

Jeremiah promised a new covenant, and Hebrews says the first one is obsolete. But what exactly is new? Not a different God and not a cancelled moral will. A new place for the law, a new Spirit, and sins remembered no more. Part three of Written on the Heart. Continue reading
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The Guardian on the Road to School

What purpose then does the law serve? Paul’s answer is a household slave walking a boy to school, and an end date nobody in Israel expected. Galatians 3, Romans 7, and the holy law sin used against us. Part two of Written on the Heart. Continue reading
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Reading It the Way It Happened. Reviewing the NIV Timeline Bible

The whole Bible laid out in the order it happened, with parallel accounts side by side. A review of the NIV Timeline Bible. Continue reading
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A Classic That Fits in Your Bag. Reviewing the NIV Study Bible, Fully Revised Edition, Personal Size

The study Bible that started it all, fully revised and pressed into a paperback you can carry. A review of the NIV Study Bible, Fully Revised Edition, Personal Size. Continue reading
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Reading Over Their Shoulder. Reviewing the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us. A review of the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the study Bible built to put you in the room with the first readers. Continue reading
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Every Thread Leads Somewhere. Reviewing the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible

Most study Bibles tell you what a verse means. This one shows you where the verse sits in the whole story. A review of the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible. Continue reading
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Not to Destroy but to Fulfill

Jesus said not one jot or tittle would pass from the law. So why don’t Christians offer sacrifices or keep kosher? Matthew 5:17-20 and the word that holds the whole question together. Part one of Written on the Heart. Continue reading
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Handling the Real Thing

Nobody learns to spot a counterfeit by studying counterfeits. Post 1 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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Discernment vs. Suspicion

Real discernment grows out of love. Suspicion grows out of fear and calls itself wisdom. Post 2 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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Counterfeit Grace

Grace that excuses versus grace that trains. The last counterfeit is the one that wears the best word in the Bible. Post 8 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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God Told Me vs. Thus Says Jehovah

The Spirit still speaks. So does everything else. How to test a word before you build on it. Post 7 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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To The End Of The Earth

I made this video to show the spread of Christianity from Pentecost to present day. Continue reading
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Another Jesus

Every counterfeit eventually reshapes Christ. Ask what a movement does with Jesus and you can test anything. Post 6 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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John Session 1: The Word Became Flesh (John 1:1–18)

Friday Night Bible Study notes. John begins his Gospel before time itself, and shows us the God of Genesis 1 and Exodus 34 walking among us in a body. Continue reading
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Ascending vs. Abiding

You are already seated with Christ. You do not climb. Post 5 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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John Introduction: The Man Behind the Gospel

Friday Night Bible Study notes. Before we go verse by verse through John, we spend one evening on the fisherman, the Son of Thunder, and the old man in Ephesus who wrote it. Continue reading
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It Is Written vs. It Is Written Again

The devil quoted Scripture. Jesus answered with more Scripture. That is the whole method for testing a proof text. Post 4 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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Conviction vs. Condemnation

Same ache, opposite direction. One drives you toward Him. One drives you under the bed. Post 3 of the Counterfeits series. Continue reading
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One Letter, Every Tool

Twenty-five verses, one runaway slave, and every tool in the box. A complete study of Philemon, start to finish, and your sending off. Part ten of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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Why Your Translations Disagree, and Why That’s a Gift

Propitiation. Sacrifice of atonement. Mercy seat. Three translations, three phrases, one Greek word too rich for any of them. The poor man’s commentary. Part nine of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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You Don’t Read a Psalm Like a Contract

The devil quoted Psalm 91 to Jesus accurately. His error was reading poetry like a promissory note. Learning the rules each kind of Scripture plays by. Part eight of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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One Word Can Carry a Hundred Years

Biblical meditation is not emptying the mind. The Hebrew word means to mutter, even to growl. How to do an honest word study with a concordance. Part seven of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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The Margins Are a Map

There is a study tool printed in the middle of your Bible that people pay subscriptions to get worse versions of. Following the cross references. Part six of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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Written to Them, Preserved for You

If every book of the Bible was someone else’s mail, what is left for us? The three-step bridge from what a passage meant to what it demands. Part five of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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What Everybody in the Room Already Knew

Why would Jesus prefer cold to lukewarm? The Laodiceans knew. Recovering the cultural background the first readers took for granted. Part four of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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This Letter Has Someone Else’s Name on It

Jeremiah 29:11 is on graduation cards everywhere. It was written to exiles who would die in Babylon. Learning to ask who a book was written to. Part three of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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Verses Are Not Fortune Cookies

The Bible is the only book we read one sentence at a time. The cheapest, fastest fix in all of Bible study takes ninety seconds to prove. Part two of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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Stop Eating From Someone Else’s Plate

When was the last time you learned something from the Bible that nobody handed you? A new series on studying Scripture with your own two hands. Part one of Feed Yourself. Continue reading
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When Heaven Is Quiet

Not a refusal. Not an answer. Nothing at all. The Bible does not pretend the silence away, and it does not leave you without anything to do in it. The final post of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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The Prayers God Said No To

Paul asked three times and was refused. Moses was told to stop bringing it up. And in a garden, the Son asked His Father for one thing and did not get it. Part seven of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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Introducing Passage Lens: A Bible Study Companion Designed to Bring You Back to the Text

You can try Passage Lens at lens.hanksbiblestudy.com. There is something meaningful about sitting down with your own Bible—turning the pages, underlining a verse, writing a question in the margin, and slowing down long enough to listen. Technology can help us study Scripture, but it should never distract us from Scripture or try to take its… Continue reading
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The Prayers That Got Angry

Jeremiah accused God of seducing him. Psalm 88 ends in the dark with no resolution. God kept every one of these in the book, and we quietly stopped reading them out loud. Part six of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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Fifteen Minutes a Day. Reviewing the NLT One Year Bible for Men

Ask a room full of church men how many of them have read the whole Bible, cover to cover, and watch the hands. Most of them will not go up. Not because these men do not love God, and not because they cannot read. They have started a dozen times. Genesis goes fine. Exodus is… Continue reading
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Courage Is Not What You Think It Is. Reviewing the NLT Courage For Life Study Bible for Men

Every few years somebody publishes a Bible for men, and I open it with my guard up. Too many of them are the same Bible with a rugged cover and a few articles about hunting and leadership stapled to the front. The word “courage” on a cover makes me even more wary, because most of… Continue reading
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A Bible That Wants to Be Read. Reviewing the NLT Life Application Study Bible, Third Edition

I have been carrying study Bibles around for more than thirty years. Some of them fell apart. Some of them I gave away. A few of them shaped the way I read Scripture. So when I sat down with the Third Edition of the Life Application Study Bible, I did not open it the way… Continue reading
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Ask, and Keep Asking

Jesus told two stories that make God sound like an obstacle. A neighbor who will not get up and a judge who does not care. Read them right and they are the strongest case for persistence in Scripture. Part five of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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Standing in the Gap

Abraham argued God down from fifty to ten. Moses offered to be blotted out instead of the nation. Intercession in Scripture is nothing like the list we read on Wednesday night. Part four of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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Abba, and Why You Are Allowed to Speak

Most prayer lives die over a question nobody says out loud. Am I actually welcome here? One Aramaic word settles it, and it is not the word you were told it was. Part three of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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In This Manner, Therefore, Pray

Jesus tore down two models of prayer before He built one. And when He gave the model, He did not say pray these words. He said pray this way. Part two of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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They Only Asked Him for One Thing

They watched Him feed five thousand, still a storm, and raise the dead, and never once asked how. They asked one thing. Teach us to pray. Part one of Teach Us to Pray. Continue reading
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The Reversal, or Why the New Testament Assumes All of This

Jesus walked to the most haunted ground in Israel and declared war at the front gate. The New Testament does not retire the supernatural worldview. It finishes the story. The final post of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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The Prince of Persia Kept an Angel Waiting

Daniel prayed for three weeks with no sign of an answer. Then a heavenly messenger arrived and explained the delay. Something fought him the whole way. Part seven of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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Wheels, Eyes, and Burning Ones

Ezekiel’s wheels were never a puzzle to decode or a spacecraft to identify. They are a throne on the move, and they arrived in Babylon on purpose. Part six of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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The Throne Room and the Lying Spirit

Micaiah saw the throne, the host on the right and the left, and a spirit who volunteered to deceive a king. Heaven has a working court, and Scripture shows us the minutes. Part five of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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Babel and the Disinherited Nations

Babel was never just a story about a tall building and confused languages. It was a judgment with a structure, and the call of Abram is its answer. Part three of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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The Sons of God, the Nephilim, and the Angels in Chains

Genesis 6 is the passage readers skip hardest, and the New Testament will not let us skip it. Jude and Peter read it at face value. So should we. Part four of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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The Gods Are Real, and Psalm 82 Means What It Says

Psalm 82 opens with God standing in a divine assembly, passing sentence on gods. Every comfortable explanation of that verse falls apart on contact with the text. Part two of The Strange Parts. Continue reading
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The Bible You Were Taught to Skip

Sons of God marrying daughters of men. A lying spirit sent from the throne. A prince of Persia who kept an angel waiting. The strange parts of your Bible are not embarrassments. They are the spine of the story. Continue reading
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This Church Needs a Scandal: The Full Series

An eight-part series on the unorthodox things Jesus did and the religious ruts the church still falls into. Start reading here. Continue reading
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The Scandal That Saved the World

Every offense in this series was building toward the biggest one. The cross as stumbling block, the empty tomb, and the specific scandal the church is called to carry. Continue reading
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The Believer’s Creed
I believe in the eternal God—
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—
One in essence, infinite in glory,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
whose wisdom shaped all things seen and unseen.
I believe in Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
holy and humble, yet Lord of all.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
He descended into the depths of hell,
and on the third day He rose victorious.
He ascended into heaven,
and now reigns at the right hand of the Father,
from where He will come again
to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the breath and power of God within us,
who gives life, convicts hearts, and sustains faith.
Through the Spirit, the Church is made holy,
a communion of saints across all generations.
I believe in the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting in the presence of God.
I believe in the sacred mystery of the Trinity—
not three gods, but one holy unity:
Father, Son, and Spirit—eternal, unchanging, divine.
I believe in the sacred story revealed in Scripture:
that from the beginning, light has warred against darkness,
and though the enemy rose in pride,
God’s promise prevailed through the Seed—
Christ Jesus, born of a woman,
who triumphed through His cross and empty tomb.
I believe salvation is a gift of grace—
received by faith, sealed by repentance,
and made real through the transforming love of God.
I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God,
a lamp for our path and truth for every soul.
I believe in the call of baptism—
a burial of the old, a rising to new life in Christ.
I believe the Holy Spirit empowers believers
with gifts of healing, wisdom, and tongues,
that we may glorify God and serve the world in love.
I believe in divine healing,
for the power that raised Christ from the grave
still moves with mercy among His people.
The Believer’s Charge
We believe that we are called and anointed—
not as spectators, but as servants of the living God.
We are His witnesses in all the earth,
ambassadors of reconciliation and bearers of His light.
We believe that Christ has commissioned us
to go into the world and proclaim His gospel,
to speak truth to the lost and hope to the broken,
to open blind eyes and set captives free.
In His name we move without fear,
for the Spirit goes before us with power and signs.
We believe the promise of our Lord:
that these signs will follow those who believe—
we shall cast out demons in His name,
speak with new tongues of heavenly fire,
lay hands upon the sick and see them restored,
tread upon the works of the enemy,
and walk in the authority of the risen Christ.
We believe that the Spirit within us
confirms the Word with power and grace—
that we are vessels of His love,
agents of His mercy,
and temples of His presence.
We choose to live as those sent by God,
our hearts aflame with His gospel,
our hands ready to serve,
our voices lifted in praise,
our lives poured out for His glory.
The Blessed Hope
I believe in the glorious return of Jesus Christ,
who will restore all things
and reign in righteousness and peace.
And I believe in eternal life—
the home prepared for the redeemed,
and the solemn truth of judgment for the unrepentant.
This is our faith, our confession, our calling, and our hope.
To God be the glory—forever and ever.
Amen.


