When the House You Built Your Faith In Stops Feeling Safe | Arsenal Stories (Week 1) | Mark Bryand

When the House You Built Your Faith In Stops Feeling Safe | Arsenal Stories (Week 1) | Mark Bryand

What happens when the house you built your whole faith inside of suddenly stops feeling safe? We're kicking off a new series — Arsenal Stories — on a simple conviction: you've been saying hi to people for years without ever knowing what they survived to walk through the door. Chad opens by tracing why the number one source of awe across cultures isn't the sky or a canyon — it's other people — and why every face is a "Thou," never an "it." Then Mark Bryand tells his story. He grew up in a beautiful, spirit-filled faith "house" that gave him love, music, and community — but also taught him that certainty was safer than curiosity and that wrestling made people uncomfortable. One day he woke up and home no longer felt safe. From the outside nothing looked different; inside, everything had changed. What followed — the songs that felt heavy, the prayers that hit the ceiling, the walking away — is what a lot of us call deconstruction. But broken walls can become open doors. Through grief, his mom's words ("everything you need is already within you"), and Psalm 139's promise that there is nowhere we can go from God's presence, Mark found his way home to love — and back to the music. In this episode: * Why the #1 source of awe across cultures is other people (Chad's intro to the Stories series) * Mark's "house" — the faith that formed him, and the rules that taught certainty over curiosity * Waking up when home no longer feels safe: the start of deconstruction * The turtle that only grows to the size of its home — and the glass walls of religion * Grief, his mom, and "everything you need is already within you" * Psalm 139 (read by Jett Belew) — nowhere you can go from God's presence * Broken walls become open doors: finding the way home to love Scripture: Psalm 139 The Arsenal — San Antonio, TX. Sundays 11am, 105 Sadie St. thearsenal.church · thearsenal.church/give · hello@thearsenal.church

Who Told You That? — The Q&R Finale

To close our "Who Told You That?" series, Chad opened the floor to your questions — submitted live via Slido — with Britney Carrasco moderating. It's an honest, unscripted conversation about everything the series stirred up. Chad lays the groundwork in Genesis 3 — the garden, and how the real story of the Fall is distrust that makes us hide, not just rule-breaking — then works through your hardest questions: Is sin a crime, or a disease? How do you reconcile a loving God with the Bible's picture of God as judge? If Jesus didn't die to pay a legal penalty, what did he die for? And what changes when you learn that, in the Hebrew imagination, a "judge" was someone who set people free? It's the heart of the whole series in one conversation: a God you can trust, sin as the distrust that makes us hide, and a Jesus who heals what's broken so we can see clearly and love our neighbor well. Scriptures touched: Genesis 3 · Romans 3:23 · Romans 6:23 · 1 John 1 · John 3:16 — The Arsenal is a Christ-centered community in Southtown, San Antonio. Sundays 11am · 105 Sadie St, San Antonio, TX. ???? thearsenal.church · ❤️ thearsenal.church/give · ???? download the Arsenal Church app Questions or need prayer? hello@thearsenal.church [hello@thearsenal.church]

"Fear of the Lord" Was Never Supposed to Be Fear | Who Told You That? (Week 8) | Chad Belew

What if "the fear of the Lord" was never meant to be terror? In the final message of our Who Told You That? series, Pastor Chad Belew traces the difference between fear and awe — from a blackout patrol base in Baghdad to a garden where God came walking in the cool of the day, asking not "gotcha," but "Where are you?" If you've spent your life bracing for a God who's disappointed in you, this one reframes the whole relationship: the voice in the garden isn't hunting you down — it's calling you home. In this episode: - Why "the fear of the Lord" in Scripture reads more like awe than dread - Genesis 3 — God walking in the cool of the day, and the real weight of "Where are you?" - How shame teaches us to hide from the One who wants to carry us home - "Perfect love casts out fear" — what changes when you stop bracing and start trusting - The last question of the series: Where have you been calling it fear when God was offering you awe?

John 3:16 Was Never the Verse You Think It Is | Who Told You That? (Week 7) | Chad Belew

The most famous verse in Christianity may be the most misread. Chad takes John 3:16 back to the late-night conversation it actually came from — Jesus and Nicodemus — and shows how a verse we memorized as a gospel-tract about heaven, hell, and a transaction at the cross was, in the original Greek, never about any of that. "Born again" is better read "born from above." "Perish" means lost, not damned. "Eternal life" is a quality of life that starts now, not a reward after you die. And the word for "gave" is the language of a Father moving toward us in love — not a payment that had to be collected before God could forgive. This is the heart of the whole series: who told you that's what it means, and have you ever gone back to check? In this episode: - A live audience quiz exposes how flattened our reading of John 3:16 has become - Why "born again" is better translated "born from above" — and how the church narrowed it for a thousand years - "Perish" as lost-and-found (the lost coin, sheep, and son), not eternal torment — with D.A. Carson, N.T. Wright, and David Bentley Hart - How Anselm (1098) and later Calvin reframed the cross from rescue into payment, and how we inherited it as if it were always there - The word "gave" vs. "handed over" — love expressing itself, not a transaction making love possible - Nicodemus's slow journey from the dark to broad daylight, and the difference between knowing about God (oida) and knowing God (ginosko) — The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX ???? thearsenal.church ???? Download the Arsenal Church app ???? Questions or need prayer? hello@thearsenal.church ???? Give: thearsenal.church/give

Fear Makes a Hostage; Only Love Makes you Family | Who Told You That? (Week 6) | Chad Belew

We trained our dogs to stay off the couch — and they’re perfect angels, right up until no one’s watching. Chad opens there because it’s how a lot of us learned to follow God: behave when you feel watched, fall apart when you don’t. This message names the fear underneath that kind of obedience — the quiet question, "if I’m not afraid of getting caught, what’s to stop me?" — and gently turns it over. Fear can change your behavior, but it can never change what you actually want. Only love can do that. And Jesus was always after the want — not effort, not white-knuckling, but a new desire: obedience sourced not from fear but from love made complete. In this episode: - The dogs-on-the-couch picture of "God-concept vs. God-image" — what you know about God versus how you feel watched by Him - Why fear-based obedience produces public performance and private collapse - "Fear can make you comply; love can make you want to" — and why Jesus pursued the want - 1 John and "perfect love casts out fear" — what it means for love to be made complete - The honest question to sit with: where are you still obeying out of fear, and what would it look like to come at that same place from love instead? — The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX ???? thearsenal.church ???? Download the Arsenal Church app ???? Questions or need prayer? hello@thearsenal.church ???? Give: thearsenal.church/give