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I Thought I Was Alone
Christy Vitro grew up knowing about Jesus, but addiction, loss, and years of witnessing suffering caused her faith to become complicated. At 26, she fell to her knees and prayed, “Please God, help me.” By His grace, Christy entered recovery and has now been sober for 31 years.Share Your Prayer RequestGet Baptized
• 1 Minute Read
November 5, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
I Thought I Was Alone
Christy Vitro grew up knowing about Jesus, but addiction, loss, and years of witnessing suffering caused her faith to become complicated.
At 26, she fell to her knees and prayed, “Please God, help me.” By His grace, Christy entered recovery and has now been sober for 31 years.Share Your Prayer RequestGet Baptized
October 27, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
I Want to Follow Jesus
Jaxson has grown up hearing about Jesus from his family, but over time, his faith became more personal.
Through the influence of his mom, grandparents, siblings, cousins, Pastor John, and others around him, Jaxson began to understand what it means to follow Jesus for himself.Share Your Prayer RequestGet Baptized
October 20, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
I Thought God Had Abandoned Me
Chris Mann grew up around church, but after losing his father, serving in the Army, and walking through years of pain, he gave up on Christianity. He felt abandoned by God and eventually stopped looking for answers altogether.Share Your Prayer RequestGet Baptized
October 15, 2026 • 5 Minute Read
What Titus 2 Means When Paul Says to Act Your Age
Crete has a split personality. In spring you can stand in the snow on Mount Ida, then drive down to a beach where it's 85 degrees and put on a swimsuit. A 4,000 year old palace sits a short drive from a modern city. The place is built on contrast. Richie ran into that in a commentary while he prepared his first sermon in the Titus series, and it changed how he read the letter. In chapter 1, Paul describes a broken church. In chapter 2, he describes a beautiful life. Island of contrast. Letter of contrast. Richie and Pastor David walk through Titus 2 here, plus the parts that didn't fit on Sunday. There is a Pixar dog involved. The short version Doctrine is meant to be lived. Sound doctrine isn't just head knowledge. Act your age. Spiritually. The age groups in Titus 2 are about maturity as much as birthdays. Paul says "you are to be," not "you must do." Character beats a checklist. Your life can make the gospel look good or look bad. That's what "adorn" means. Grace doesn't cover up. It changes you from the inside out. Do you have to be old to mentor someone? Not in the way you'd think. Richie came to faith at 26, and some of the men who discipled him were ten years younger. They were further along spiritually. He could still offer something back, because he had lived years without Christ and knew what his marriage would have looked like without the gospel. Older men, be reverent and steady. Younger men, Paul has one word for you: self-control. Bridle your passions. Richie's challenge to the church: find someone to mentor, and someone to be mentored by. Mentoring rarely starts with a program. It starts with a table and a few people. A Life Group is a good first one.Find Your Group Why does Paul keep saying "you are to be"? Richie noticed that Paul never hands Titus a to-do list. Over and over the phrase is "you are to be." Dignified. Self-controlled. Sound in faith, in love, in steadfastness. That changes what doctrine is for. It's not a list you work through. It's the kind of person you become when the gospel takes hold. What does it mean to "adorn the gospel"? This was the heart of David's sermon. The Greek word behind "adorn" is where we get cosmetic, but Paul isn't talking about makeup. He means order. A life arranged around the gospel, in how you speak, think, and treat people. David opened with a story from the prosperity gospel era: a ministry couple, a financial scandal, a cover up, and a wife famous for heavy makeup. His point was that the cosmetics worked as a picture of the whole thing. “Grace doesn't cover up. It changes from the inside out.” Pastor David Chauncey Paul gives two reasons this matters. We protect the reputation of the gospel, so God's name isn't reviled. And we give opponents nothing bad to say. David put it this way: the gospel is already beautiful. Our lives help it look good, or they drag it down. His three points: the purpose of a beautiful life, the portrait of one, and the power for one. Where does the power come from? Not from us. Titus 2:11-14 says grace appeared, and David pointed out that the verb is present and ongoing. Grace is training us right now to turn from ungodliness and worldly passions. Richie leaned into the tension that sits inside that. God is the one purifying us, and we still participate. Peter says to add knowledge, add righteousness, add effort (that's 2 Peter 1). Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and also a command. Both are true. Does the gospel reach how we vote? David squeezed a quick tangent into his sermon: beliefs shape behavior, and that includes showing up to vote. He wasn't telling anyone how, only that Christians have a privilege many people in the world don't, and the gospel doesn't stay private. Both hosts agreed this is Titus 1 and 2 in action. Why can self-control be hard? Because the loudest message around us says "you do you." Richie mentioned a new book he'd picked up, by Tim and Michael Keller, on the stories that define us. Happiness at any cost, defined by yourself. Self-control sounds easy in a vacuum. Do whatever makes me feel in control. But Paul's definition comes from Christ, not from us, and he was writing to a culture that wasn't so different. Quick answers What does Titus 2 teach? That sound doctrine is lived out. Paul tells older men, older women, younger men, younger women, and bondservants to live in a way that matches the gospel, and he grounds it in the grace that has appeared to train us (Titus 2:11-12). What does it mean to adorn the gospel? To live in a way that makes the gospel attractive instead of dragging its name through the mud. The Greek word carries the idea of ordering, not decorating. What does sound doctrine mean in Titus 2? Teaching that lines up with the gospel and shows up in how you live. In Titus 1, Paul protects the doctrine. In Titus 2, he shows what it looks like lived. Does grace mean we do not have to change? No. Grace is what changes us. Titus 2:11-12 says it trains us to renounce ungodliness and live self-controlled lives, which is why good works come from grace and don't earn it. Titus 2 teaches that sound doctrine is lived out, not just believed. Paul tells older and younger men and women to act their age with self-control and integrity so their lives adorn the gospel. The power to do that is grace, which trains believers to live differently (Titus 2:11-12). Scripture Referenced: Titus 2:1-15 (especially 2:1-8 and 2:11-14). Also referenced: Titus 1:12-16, John 13:34-35, Matthew 5:16, James 1:22, 2 Peter 1:5-8.
October 13, 2026 • 1 Minute Read
My Parents’ Faith Had to Become My Own
Wei grew up with Christian parents and knew about God from an early age, but she eventually realized that faith could not simply be something she inherited from her family.Share Your Prayer RequestGet Baptized
October 8, 2026 • 6 Minute Read
How to Spot a False Teacher Who Quotes The Bible
Drive around Gainesville long enough and you'll see them. Potholes circled in white paint, sometimes with a traffic cone dropped in the middle for good measure. People got tired of waiting, so they marked the problem themselves. Pastor David opened his Titus sermon with that picture, and it's the best way I know to explain why Paul is so worked up in Titus 1:10-16. Crete had theological potholes. Paul wanted them marked, and he wanted them filled. Then David and Richie sat down on Monday to talk about what didn't fit into Sunday. It gets practical fast. The short version It rarely sounds false. The worst false teaching usually starts with "turn in your Bibles." Paul has four complaints. It's empty, deceptive, divisive, and it defiles good works. "Rebuke sharply" is about correction. The goal is to restore the teacher, not remove him. You can mislead without lying. Hyper-focus on one doctrine can do the same damage. You can't spot potholes alone. Foundation, discernment, community. Why is Paul so worked up? Because bad teaching does more than get a doctrine wrong. David boiled Paul's complaint down to four things. Empty. It tastes good and doesn't fill you. A placebo. Deceptive. It convinces people of something that isn't true. Divisive. In Crete the churches met in households, so a bad idea could split a whole family. Defiling. Look at verses 15 and 16. It spoils the good works the whole series is about. That last one ties it back to Kingdom Works. You can do plenty of good and still have it undercut by what's being taught underneath. What does "rebuke them sharply" actually mean? It sounds harsh, and Paul means it to. But David's point on Sunday was that the target is the teaching, and the goal is the person. “It's not to kick people out. That's not the goal. The goal is correction, that they may be sound.” Pastor David His best example is Paul confronting Peter in Galatians 2. David's three words for it: personal, pointed, purposeful. Paul went to Peter's face and said it plainly. And he did it because Peter's behavior was contradicting what Peter himself had taught. Not to embarrass him. Richie added Alexander and Hymenaeus from 1 Timothy 1. Paul says he handed them over to Satan, which sounds brutal until you read why: so they would learn not to blaspheme. Even the hardest rebuke in the New Testament is aimed at getting someone back. Why does bad teaching start with "turn in your Bibles"? David's claim is that almost all false teachers, and the worst false teaching, open with the same line. I believe the Bible. I preach from the Bible. And then comes the plus. Richie remembered a seminary day when Jim Shaddix told the graduating class, "Get your hermeneutics right, get your exegesis right." Exegesis pulls the meaning out of the text. Eisegesis pushes your own meaning in. Satan does exactly that in Matthew 4. He quotes Scripture to Jesus and uses it wrong. Jesus answers with Scripture used right. One more thing worth sitting with. David noted that the New Testament spends far more energy defending the faith inside the church than arguing with outsiders. The false teachers Paul worries about claim the name of Christ. Can a teacher say nothing false and still lead you astray? This is the part David didn't get to on Sunday, and it's the one we'd point you to first. His idea: some false teaching isn't false in its content. It's false in its hyper-focus. Pick one doctrine, prophecy or signs and wonders say, and hammer it while neglecting the rest. You can grow a big church that way. Every sentence checks out and the whole picture is still bent. It loops back to the word Paul uses at the start of the letter, ortho. Put in order. In balance. Where does false teaching like to hide? David's observation is that almost all of it comes in the seams, the places of mystery and tension in Scripture. Richie walked through a few. Faith and works. Luther wanted James out of the Bible. He called it a book of straw. God's will and ours in salvation. Lean one way and you get license. Lean the other and you get fatalism and no evangelistic zeal. The nature of Jesus. Fully God and fully man. Try to untie that and you land in docetism or a merely human Jesus. Richie pointed to J.I. Packer's short book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and to Spurgeon's answer when asked how he reconciles two truths: he doesn't try to reconcile friends. They're already reconciled. Quick answers How do you spot a false teacher? Ask three questions. Does it add something to Jesus? Does it twist the text, or ignore most of it? Does it divide the church or undercut its good works? Then check your answers with other believers, not alone. Does Titus say to silence or remove false teachers? Titus 1:13 says to rebuke them sharply "that they may be sound in faith." David's reading is that the aim is correction and restoration, not removal. Can a teacher be wrong without saying anything false? Yes. David calls it hyper-focus: emphasizing one doctrine so heavily that the rest of Scripture goes missing. What is theological triage? A way of sorting doctrines by weight, from Albert Mohler. First level: salvation and who Christ is. Second level: things like baptism. Third level: things like end times. What does "Bible plus" mean? It's when someone affirms the Bible and then adds something to it that Scripture doesn't support. Titus calls out the circumcision party. Today the plus looks different, but the pattern is the same. To spot a false teacher, ask three questions. Does the teaching add something to Jesus? Does it twist the text or ignore most of it? Does it divide the church or undercut its good works? Titus 1:10-16 says the response is a personal, pointed, purposeful rebuke, aimed at correction, not removal. Scripture Referenced: Titus 1:10-16 (with 1:13). Also referenced: 1 Timothy 1:19-20, Galatians 2:11-14, Romans 12:1-2, Romans 14, Matthew 4:1-11, Matthew 7:21-23, Jude 3, 1 Corinthians 13:12.
