Academy of the Bible with Colby F. Maier

Colby Maier
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The Academy of the Bible Podcast exists to help you understand, apply, and live out Scripture in every area of life. Hosted by Colby Maier, this podcast brings together biblical teaching, cultural analysis, and conversations with leading Christian voices to form a deeper, more resilient faith. In a world shaped by distraction, confusion, and shallow spirituality, the goal is not simply more information, but transformation. Each episode explores theology, discipleship, identity, purpose, and the challenges of following Jesus in the modern world, equipping you to think clearly, live faithfully, and engage culture with conviction and wisdom. Whether you are new to the Bible or have been walking with Christ for years, this podcast will help you move beyond surface-level faith into a deeper understanding of God’s Word and its implications for everyday life.

Episodes

  1. 6d ago

    Why Hurry Is the Enemy of Your Walk With Jesus

    If the enemy can't destroy you, he will rush you. In this episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier works through why hurry is a spiritual problem and not just a scheduling one, and why God forms you before he sends you. It starts in Mark 3. Jesus goes up a mountain, calls the twelve he wanted, and appoints them, but notice the order. He appointed them that they might be with him, and then that he might send them out to preach and heal. The first appointment was not production. It was presence. Their authority came from having been with him. A.W. Tozer named the danger: we become so engrossed with the work of the Lord that we neglect the Lord of the work. Many of us are chasing the assignment we believe God gave us while skipping the relationship that was supposed to supply it. Then Luke 2, where Jesus is twelve years old in the temple, listening to the teachers and asking questions. When his parents find him he says he had to be about his Father's business. He wasn't preaching. He wasn't healing. He was learning. That was the business. Jesus spent thirty years in obscurity before three in public, and the silence of those years is the argument. Colby also shares what it cost him to ignore this. At twenty-two, fresh out of university and saying yes to everything, he hit a wall — two and a half years of anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Waking at 3am for weeks. His words: it was survival, not thriving. He talks openly about it because he'd rather you learn from it than repeat it. The logic of the kingdom is foundation before elevation. Depth before display. The Chinese bamboo tree shows nothing above the soil for four years, then grows up to eighty feet in six weeks, because of what happened underground while nobody was watching. "If you step into your purpose first without being formed, you will allow the assignment to crush you." The pace of God is three miles per hour. Slow enough to stop. Slow enough to listen. Slow enough to notice the person in front of you. Topics: Christian burnout, hurry sickness, spiritual formation, rest and renewal, abiding in Christ, discipleship, calling and purpose, Mark 3, Luke 2 Scripture in this episode: Mark 3:13-15, Luke 2:41-52, Ecclesiastes, John 15 Try The Good Word app — a faithful AI companion and live Bible study tools from trusted Christian voices: getthegoodword.com Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible — courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: academyofthebible.org If this episode helped you, leaving a rating or review genuinely helps other people find the show. Follow so you don't miss an episode. New teachings and conversations every week. Colby F. Maier is a pastor and speaker based in Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Academy of the Bible.

  2. Sep 29

    Your AI Companion May Be Hurting Your Relationships

    Your AI companion always agrees with you. In this episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier asks what AI companionship is doing to Christian community, identity, and the friendships that actually form us. A 2025 Common Sense Media survey found that 72% of American teenagers had used an AI companion, and about half used one regularly. One in three said they had talked through something serious with an AI instead of a real person. In 2026, a Stanford team published a study finding that AI models affirm people's actions about 49% more often than other humans do — even when those people described doing something wrong. After a single conversation with an agreeable AI about a real conflict, people felt more certain they were right. They were less willing to apologize and less willing to repair the relationship. And they preferred that AI. They trusted it more and wanted to come back. This is not an argument against artificial intelligence. Colby is clear that technology is agnostic — not malevolent, not benevolent — and that AI has a real place in Christian discipleship. The concern is what happens when personalization removes every trace of friction. The thesis: we do not discover who we are alone or on our own terms. Christian identity is given by God and formed among God's people, people we did not choose, cannot control, cannot prompt, and are not free to replace. Along the way: Jean-Paul Sartre's claim that without God there is no given human nature, Ludwig Feuerbach's argument that God is a projection of human desire, Karl Barth on the otherness of God and why we know him only through his own self-disclosed revelation, Plutarch on how to tell a flatterer from a friend, Dietrich Bonhoeffer on how loving your dream of community destroys the community itself, and why a multigenerational church will form you in ways a curated one never can. "The goodness of God is that he meets us on our level. But the grace of God is that he does not allow us to stay there." Topics: AI and Christianity, artificial intelligence and faith, AI companions, Christian community, biblical identity, spiritual formation, church community, discipleship Scripture in this episode: Colossians 3:3-4, Colossians 3:10, Isaiah 44:16, Isaiah 55:8, Psalm 50:21, 2 Timothy 4:3, Ephesians 4:15, Proverbs 27:6 Try The Good Word app — a faithful AI companion and live Bible study tools from trusted Christian voices: getthegoodword.com Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible — courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: academyofthebible.org If this episode helped you, leaving a rating or review genuinely helps other people find the show. Follow so you don't miss an episode. New teachings and conversations every week. Colby F. Maier is a pastor and speaker based in Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Academy of the Bible.

  3. Sep 22

    Why a Christian Rapper Left Music to Become a Pastor

    Christian hip-hop artist Braille spent his first ten years as a believer without anyone teaching him the Bible. Once someone finally did, it set him on a path out of full-time music and into pastoring a local church. He read Scripture like a fortune cookie, flipping around for something that seemed relevant. He didn't know what an Ephesus was. When someone started teaching him the Bible in context, it changed what he wanted to do with his life. In this conversation, the hip-hop artist from Beautiful Eulogy and Humble Beast Records shares why he stepped away from music to pastor Saving Grace Church in Milwaukie, Oregon. Not because music was wrong, and not because every Christian artist should do the same. Because he knew what it was like to wander without discipleship, and he wanted to give what he'd received. We talk about inspiration versus formation, why most growth in Christ happens in ordinary faithfulness nobody applauds, why he spent up to fourteen hours writing a verse you hear in forty seconds, what Paul's suffering teaches about ministry, and what he'd say to anyone chasing a platform in the name of God. "Most of the things that are so extraordinary about the Christian life are not very photogenic." If this conversation resonated, go back to Episode 1: Why Knowing the Bible Isn't Changing You. Scriptures in this episode: Matthew 5:14–16, 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, 2 Corinthians 6:10, 1 Corinthians 12–13, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 5:25, Philippians 2:5–8 Connect with Braille on Instagram: @bryanbraille Saving Grace Church, Milwaukie, Oregon: https://www.savinggracechurch.com Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible — expert led courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: https://academyofthebible.org Follow the show so you don't miss an episode. New teachings and conversations every week. Colby F. Maier is a pastor, speaker, and founder of the Academy of the Bible, based in Portland, Oregon.

  4. Sep 15

    New Testament Expert: What the Bible Really Says About Women Pastors | Dr. Preston Sprinkle

    Preston Sprinkle spent three years studying what the Bible says about women in leadership before he would say what he thought. He was raised in circles where women could not teach, preach, or pastor, and it made sense to him. Then he kept meeting people he deeply respected — people who loved Scripture and loved Jesus — who read the same verses and came to a different conclusion. So he admitted he didn't know what he believed, and started over. "I never want to give a thin answer to a thick question. I want the strength of my passion to match the depth of my study." In this conversation we cover the two camps and the variations inside them, what leadership actually looked like in the first-century house church, the Greco-Roman background on women's status and agency, Romans 16 and the ten women Paul names in his ministry, a deep dive into Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia, and the three hardest passages — 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, and 1 Timothy 2. Preston also shares his own story: an athlete who hated reading until he became a Christian at 19 and developed an overnight hunger for Scripture, and the moment studying in Israel in 1999 that set him on the path to scholarship. The episode does not tell you what to believe. What Preston asks for is curiosity about positions you disagree with, and convictions rooted in the text rather than inherited. Preston's new book: From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership https://www.prestonsprinkle.com/from-genesis-to-junia Dr. Preston Sprinkle (PhD, Aberdeen) is a biblical scholar, speaker, podcaster, and New York Times bestselling author. He serves as president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender. Go deeper: https://academyofthebible.org Colby F. Maier is a pastor, speaker and the founder of Academy of the Bible, based in Portland, Oregon.

  5. Sep 15

    The Devil Knows More Bible Than You

    You can know the Bible and still miss Jesus. The demons prove it. In this episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier picks up where Episode 1 left off. If the problem was never a lack of information, then what actually turns knowledge into transformation? His answer starts in history. Two cultural movements taught the modern world, and the church with it, how to think about change. The Enlightenment said information would change us. Romanticism said experience would change us. The church inherited both, and neither one has produced transformed lives. Jesus offered a different way. He never said "know about me." He said "follow me." In the first century, following a rabbi meant apprenticeship: ordering your whole life around a master until you became like him. Through John 5:39 and James 2:19, Colby shows that even the demons have more knowledge than any of us, and it has saved none of it. The devil has information. Information does not save. This episode traces the path from information to embodiment to transformation, and lands on the gospel itself: not advice about the afterlife, but the announcement that Jesus lived the life you could not live and died the death you deserved to die. The goal was never to be a fan who knows the statistics. It is to become a follower who walks as He walked. Scripture in this episode: John 5:39, James 2:19, Matthew 4:19 Chapters: 0:00 Christianity is not just about believing the right things 8:23 Becoming the kind of person who can live in God's kingdom 13:48 If demons know who Jesus is, why do we think knowledge saves us? 14:45 "Follow me" means more than believing what He said 16:11 Information leads to embodiment leads to transformation 16:29 The Enlightenment and Romanticism: how we got here 24:30 People know doctrine but aren't transformed 27:51 The deeper work of the Holy Spirit 30:24 The whole point of truth is to point to Jesus 31:34 Does your life reflect what you proclaim? 34:30 The gap between knowing and living 39:40 Dallas Willard: will Christians become disciples? 42:54 Truth was never meant to be merely believed 45:45 Jesus never separates truth from practice 49:15 The gospel is an announcement about reality 52:30 Where this journey goes next Go deeper with the Academy of the Bible - courses, lectures, and weekly community around the Word of God: www.academyofthebible.org Follow the show so you don't miss an episode - new teachings and conversations every week.

  6. Sep 15

    Why Knowing the Bible Isn't Changing You

    You can know the Bible and still not be changed by it. In this first episode of the Academy of the Bible Podcast, Colby F. Maier makes the case that the modern church doesn't suffer from a lack of information — it suffers from a lack of spiritual formation. There are people with PhDs in theology who know Scripture inside and out, and whose lives remain untransformed. Knowledge alone cannot make us new. Colby works through James 1:22 and the warning against being hearers of the word only, then the parable of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7 — where both men heard the same teaching, both built, and both faced the same storm. The only difference was that one applied what he heard. Along the way: what Dallas Willard meant by the renovation of the heart, why Timothy Keller called the gospel the A to Z rather than the ABCs of the Christian life, and a question worth sitting with: you are already being discipled, so by whom, and by what? The episode closes on union with Christ, and why the gap between hearing truth and living it is closed by the Holy Spirit rather than by more content. This podcast is for Christians tired of a faith that feels abstract, shallow, and disconnected from everyday life, and for anyone who wants to apply Scripture to their marriage, parenting, work, money, anxiety, and calling. Transformation, not information. Go deeper: https://academyofthebible.org Colby Maier is a pastor and speaker based in Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Academy of the Bible.

  7. Aug 24

    Welcome to Academy of the Bible

    What if you could learn from some of the world’s leading Bible scholars, theologians, pastors, and Christian thinkers without going to seminary? Welcome to Academy of the Bible with Colby Maier, a podcast created to help everyday Christians understand the Bible, think deeply about their faith, and follow Jesus more faithfully in the modern world. Each episode brings you biblical teaching and conversations exploring Scripture, theology, apologetics, church history, spiritual formation, culture, and some of the biggest questions facing Christians today. Because following Jesus involves more than knowing what Christians believe. It means learning why we believe it, how the story of Scripture fits together, and what it looks like to faithfully live within that story. Whether you’ve studied the Bible for decades or you’re just beginning to ask deeper questions, you’re invited to pull up a chair. Follow Academy of the Bible now so you don’t miss the first episode. Learn more at academyofthebible.org.

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The Academy of the Bible Podcast exists to help you understand, apply, and live out Scripture in every area of life. Hosted by Colby Maier, this podcast brings together biblical teaching, cultural analysis, and conversations with leading Christian voices to form a deeper, more resilient faith. In a world shaped by distraction, confusion, and shallow spirituality, the goal is not simply more information, but transformation. Each episode explores theology, discipleship, identity, purpose, and the challenges of following Jesus in the modern world, equipping you to think clearly, live faithfully, and engage culture with conviction and wisdom. Whether you are new to the Bible or have been walking with Christ for years, this podcast will help you move beyond surface-level faith into a deeper understanding of God’s Word and its implications for everyday life.

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