Biblical counseling for everyday heart work.
Life Over Coffee is a Christian teaching show built around biblical counseling, repentance, relationships, and everyday spiritual formation. Recent episodes move through Taking Thoughts Captive, marriage under suffering, physical intimacy, and shepherding a family through digital life.
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Life Over Coffee is a Christian living and discipleship show shaped by biblical counseling categories. Its recent episodes concentrate on how thoughts, desires, emotions, and relationships are formed. The show repeatedly returns to Taking Thoughts Captive, moving through chapters on head knowledge and heart knowledge, emotional problems, mental strongholds, stinking thinking, and changed thought patterns. It is orderly teaching. Points are named, terms are defined, and applications are pushed toward reflection, writing, counsel, repentance, and repeated practice. The show’s register is direct and theological, with little interest in vague encouragement. Scripture is treated as the frame for interpreting anxiety, guilt, fear of others, contentment, pouting, conviction, and unstable emotions. Marriage receives the same diagnostic treatment. Episodes on suffering, physical intimacy, harsh words, vulnerability, silence, unforgiveness, and biblical communication present relational conflict as a heart-level and spiritual matter. The show also applies that lens to family life in a digital age. Technology is framed as something that reveals and shapes desire rather than merely creating problems from outside. Social media, accountability, cruelty, isolation, short-term attention, and community all appear inside that discussion. The teaching often moves from a broad theological claim to a practical question. That rhythm gives the show a workbook quality without turning it into a simple checklist. It can be blunt. It names sin, selfishness, fear, people pleasing, legalism, and emotional manipulation plainly, while staying within a counseling and discipleship framework. The recurring examples of Biff and Mabel give some of the thought-life episodes a case-study feel, though the show remains primarily instructional. Life Over Coffee suits a listener who wants Christian formation explained through doctrine, self-examination, and concrete relational application. Its distinct value is the way it keeps connecting private thoughts to public life: marriage, parenting, speech, community, technology use, and counsel from trusted believers.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants explicitly Christian teaching on thought life, marriage, family discipleship, and relational change. It fits someone comfortable with direct theological language and practical self-examination.
What sets it apart: Life Over Coffee stands apart by treating emotions, technology, intimacy, and marital suffering as connected expressions of thought life and worship. Its episodes often pair doctrine with mind maps, reflection questions, and concrete counseling applications.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master's University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
The phone isn't the culprit; Rick Thomas wants you to look at the heart holding it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A mind map connects Biff's rule-based faith and fear about eternal security to questions for biblical reflection.
Rick Thomas uses a mind map to examine "stinking thinking," connecting distorted thoughts to a Christian account of sin, renewal, and the need for a changed mind.
A Christian look at physical intimacy in marriage as a signal of communication, safety, and the heart.
Rick Thomas treats physical intimacy as the visible sign of a wider marital distance, then follows that distance into harsh words, self-protection, insecurity, and the need to feel safe.
A faith-centered episode on confronting self-accusation, fear, and the mental strongholds behind them.
Rick Thomas frames chapter four of Taking Thoughts Captive as a direct challenge to false arguments in the mind, especially the self-accusation that can harden into a mental stronghold.
A gospel-centered review of how suffering can expose silence and resentment in marriage before they harden.
Rick Thomas treats marriage under pressure as a place where suffering reveals what spouses trust, feel, and avoid saying. He follows that strain into withdrawal, silence, and unforgiveness, then lands on a familiar pattern: husbands and wives may share their deeper…
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Scripture, surrender and faith put into practice.
["Rick Thomas of Life Over Coffee argues that shepherding a family in a digital age starts with heart desires, not device bans.", "He frames Johann Gutenberg's 1459 printing press and Steve Jobs' 2007 smartphone as the two shifts that moved memory from heads to books and pockets.", "Thomas says technology is useful for gospel access and global discipleship, but James 1:14-15 and Luke 6:45 show that devices expose cravings already inside the heart.", "He then traces concrete family effects: divided attention at dinner tables, adolescent insecurity, false intimacy online, sleep disruption from blue light, and parental fear of man."]
Rick Thomas uses three mind maps in chapter six of Taking Thoughts Captive to connect focus, thoughts, and contentment.
Rick Thomas uses chapter five of Taking Thoughts Captive to explain “stinking thinking,” connecting distorted thought patterns to the noetic effect of sin and Romans 1:21.
Rick Thomas uses Life Over Coffee's "Redeeming Physical Intimacy" to frame sex in marriage as a spiritual issue shaped by Genesis 3:7 and the fall.
Rick Thomas uses 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 to explain how false arguments can become mental strongholds that shape a person's response to life.
In Life Over Coffee’s “Emotional Problems,” Rick Thomas argues that emotions reflect a person’s thoughts rather than malfunctioning on their own.
Rick Thomas on Life Over Coffee frames "Ep.
Rick Thomas challenges the Christian cliché “head knowledge versus heart knowledge” in Life Over Coffee.
Rick Thomas introduces chapter 6 of his book 'Dynamic Small Groups' on loving difficult people in small groups, emphasizing self-reflection before addressing others' faults.
Rick Thomas interviews Elizabeth Urbanowicz about her book 'Helping Your Kids Know God's Good Design' on sexuality and gender.