The new year begins. Some take this as a time to reflect on their lives to take stock of the past and make resolutions for the future. Brad and Wayne discuss their approach to the new year, before turning to the mailbag and ending up in a discussion of how best do we love people whose life choices don’t conform to God’s will. Being the lead dog on someone else’s journey, even if its your own children, can be destructive to them and you. Those who love learn to walk alongside those they might disagree with instead of trying to lord over them to change their behavior. Here is the Time article Wayne referred to: Smart Parents, Happy Children. If you still want to help with our Orphanage Relocation in Kenya, you can get more information at the link.
Merry Christmas to The God Journey audience, where a discussion about the Incarnation of Jesus turns into a celebration of the reality that God does not live in sacred places he invites us into, but that he has come to make all of our moments sacred by inhabiting our lives. A recent study shows that only half the people are truly living in the moment at any given time, and the more time people spend day dreaming or worrying only makes them increasingly dissatisfied with life. Only by embracing each unfolding moment, and God in it, will we find the freedom to live in this age. Here is the article Wayne referred to on A A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind. If you want to help with our Orphanage Relocation in Kenya, you can get more information at the link.
Quoting Romans 8:28 to a friend in college, almost got Wayne punched in the mouth. What does it mean that God will work great good out of the painful garbage of this world? Brad and Wayne discuss our friendship with God through painful times, especially when he isn’t arranging our circumstances to make life fair or to relieve our suffering. It is a painful discovery for many to realize God is not our fairy-godmother, waving his wand to make our lives easy. But he has promised to be in the most brutal moments this life can dish out to love us in it and transform us through it. If you want to help with our Orphanage Relocation in Kenya, you can get more information at the link.
<img src="http://www.thegodjourney.com/blogimages/email.jpg" align="left">The mailbag is filled to overflowing with wonderful stories of God’s work in people and with questions and comments from past podcasts. As Brad and Wayne sort through the email they land on a discussion about the damage self-righteousness does to people around us. In fact, they believe that self-righteousness is more damaging in our world than unrighteousness itself. At least that’s how Paul got to be the chiefest of sinners. The only righteousness that has any value in our world is not that which grows out of self-effort, but that which grows out of a growing trust in God. So where does that trust come from? That gets to the heart of this podcast. Enjoy.
If God is all about relationships, then why do his followers have so much trouble with them? Some honest questions from a listener give Wayne and Brad a chance to discuss their own painful experiences with brothers who talked about their passion for love and relationships, only to abandon them when it no longer serves their selfish interests. As wonderful as relationships can be when people work together for a common good, they become excruciatingly painful when one person decides that their own gain is more important than finding a way to honor their relationships and seek a solution inside of it. Betrayal is a common theme in Scripture and are often a part of our journey. Successful relationships don’t require anyone to be perfect, but they do require us to put the relationship above ourselves.
It’s tragic how religion demands that we settle for the status quo, even if it is distasteful and irrelevant, rather than encourage us to pursue the promise that first drew us to God. Following up on an earlier podcast, Brad and Wayne explore how you can learn to recognize God’s voice among all the competing voices that fill our head and the noise that fills our world. Through practice our senses can learn to zero in on God’s voice, but for many of us that means coming to the end of ourselves, which is something we try to avoid and something our friends will almost always help us to avoid as well. Losing our taste for the false offerings of religion and dismissing the voices of guilt and shame are an important part of reducing the noise and recognizing God’s impulses in our heart.
Wayne is back from Germany with some interesting observations about the “scatteredness” of the body of Christ in the world both in the common passions we share as well as the suspicions we have of others who celebrate body life differently than we do. He and Brad talk about the unique challenges that confront us in this time of transition from the collapse of our religious approaches to God to seeing how Jesus gathers his family in the earth. Only by laying down what we think we must do by our own efforts will we be free to live as he desires us to today and able to connect with the larger work Jesus is doing in the world around us. Special Note: If you’d like to help us build an orphanage in Kenya for over 70 children being raised in a slum near Eldoret, please click here for more information.
What do you do when you can’t seem to find God? Many people who are captivated by the message of living in the Father’s affection have a difficult time connecting with him relationally. Instead of experiencing the reality of his love, they feel isolated and abandoned. Admittedly it isn’t always easy to see how God wants to connect with our heart, especially if we’ve been blinded by the performance demands of religion or carry deep disappointments about things in our life we think God responsible for. Following up on an earlier podcast, Wayne and Brad talk about that heart connection that God that is the critical trailhead to going on this journey and also tackle some listener email about how we help others, children or new believers, become disciples on this journey.
As long as our focus is on attending (or not attending) religious services, whether we’re reacting to them or thinking they are our only hope, we will easily miss the incredible ways Jesus is knitting together his family in the world. Brad and Wayne talk about a recent LA Times article about “Walking Away From Church” as well sort through a host of listener emails to talk about why people are no longer finding religious institutions relevant to their lives. They also discuss the current conflict in our culture over sexual orientation, the recent number of suicides and bullying of children sorting through sexual issues and why evangelical Christians are the most reticent to come to a table and fight for the protection of young people, even if they do not condone their lifestyles.
<img src="http://www.thegodjourney.com/blogimages/pumpkin.jpg" align="left">Holidays like Halloween can present an interesting dilemma about how others may or may not observe the festivities associated with it. Brad and Wayne talk about the problems inherent in any group of people trying to reach agreement on matters of conscience. Their conversation then leads to a wider discussion about all the ways religion provokes fear to keep people in line. We are taught to fear being left out of the rapture, being rejected, going to hell, being judged by God or having to be accountable to so-called leadership. And all of that fear leads us away from the work God wants to do in our heart. Jesus didn’t come to exacerbate our fears, but to free us from them so we can live loved in the world.
As we begin to learn to live in the Father’s love, it is easy to feel like we’re not doing enough. Religion kept us busy and gave us validation for the meetings we attended and the activities we were involved in. What happens when that slows down and we don’t have as many commitments to fill our lives? At that point our flesh can begin to scream, “But we have to do something.” Probably more fruitless activities have begun from that timeless cry than from any other motivation and invites us to put confidence in our flesh rather than live in what God is doing around us. Brad and Wayne also end sorting through the email and blog postings about their podcast, “Will the Real God Please Stand Up” and the passionate responses that flowed from it.
A recent article in USA Today about a new book entitled America’s Four Gods, identified four distinct views of God in America: Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical, and Distant. Surprisingly America is almost equally divided among these four views. Wayne and Brad discuss how neither of these views does justice to the nature and reality of God. This article confirms how important it is that we connect with God as a reality, not formulate opinions about him as a concept. This spills into a wider discussion about how we help those who can’t seem to connect with God beyond their intellectual conclusions about him gathered from their misunderstnding of Scripture or their lives.
Wayne is back from gathering with believers in Minnesota in wonderful conversations about knowing Jesus and watching connections take place between strangers that was a joy. That and a full email bag send he and Brad on a discussion about the kinds of transitions that happens in our burgeoning freedom. We are so easily distracted from the incredible joy of living relationally with God and others by the substitutes our flesh demands. It trades illusion for substance and leaves us wondering why God is not as real as our hearts hope. If we want to experience the fullness of God’s life we will have to risk the hurt and vulnerability that draws us into seemingly safe but empty facsimiles of the depth of life that only come in him.
Wayne and Brad take some time to comb through recent email and blog comments to add the insights, questions and comments of our listeners to this expanding conversation of people who are seeking a vibrant relationship with God outside the box of religious obligation. This brings them back to recent podcast topics about the Old Testament writers and their perspective, the call by some for persistent plodders, and the opportunity for us to live wild and free in the work of God. The conversation ends up challenging the presupposition that spiritual success comes in gathering a larger following, rather than freeing an increasing number to live at God’s pleasure. Why wouldn’t we simply want to help people learn to live loved and free them to do it, rather than obligate them to be a life-long part of whatever may have touched their lives in a moment?
The journey of learning to live in the love of the Father progresses at the confluence of two streams: our unfolding circumstances and the ongoing revelation of God’s wonder. In response to a powerful email of transformation, Brad and Wayne discuss how our conversations with God at those points is what moves the journey forward and keeps us growing in his life and love. There are many advocates for what some call the grace message or the love message that make it merely another theological counterpoint. But learning to live loved is not primarily a theology it is a way of living. Those who actually live loved, instead of just trumpeting it from a soapbox, demonstrate that in they way they live their lives and treat others.
An incredible story and some emails has Wayne a bit overwhelmed by the need and pain in the world as he and Brad discuss how God is able to contain all of that and still be the most joyful presence in the universe. Then they dip into the mail bag for some fascinating emails and some reaction to their earlier podcast about love and justice. Does got choose between mercy or justice, depending on the circumstance or is he able to live in them simultaneously? Are we called to love not only the oppressed, but the oppressor too? Finally they end up in Psalm 109 where David prays for the destruction of his enemy and their children and question how we interpret his prayer in light of Jesus words to love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who persecute and despitefully use you.
Wayne is back from the National House Church Convention he spoke at in Dallas, TX and shares with Brad some of his joys and frustrations he experiences at a conference like that. While enjoying the people and the journeys they are on, it is also frustrating to be alongside a movement that thinks the next step is to focus on infrastructure and leadership. That leads to a broader discussion about those who see managing people as a way to serve hungry hearts, and the danger of crossing the line where we lead people to the irrelevance of plying a program, rather than the heart engagement of walking out a real relationship with Jesus.
Fair warning: The God Journey goes political again as Brad struggles with the proposed mosque in New York City, a few blocks from the Ground Zero in lower Manhattan and invites Wayne into a discussion about whether or not we are to be a force for cultural change in this world. How do we affect life in the world we live in, especially if some are using the conventions of society to force their will on others? Is that what Jesus asks of us? What does it mean to be salt and light in the world? Can any of us enjoy our rights without also sharing responsibilities? How do we blend the call for justice with Jesus’ invitation to love deeply even those who consider you their enemy? Only in God himself does righteousness and peace come together in one incredible whole. He alone knows how to connect judgment and mercy in a world that is so broken by human need.
Following up on last week’s podcast about the church as a family, Brad and Wayne discuss an article written by Kevin DeYoung, who is the co-author of Why We Love the Church. The article is entitled The Glory of Plodding and seeks to encourage people not to give up on institutionalized churches in hopes of finding a more resilient faith or a more authentic community. The article begs the question whether or not there are or can be churchless Christians, and whether our obedience to tradition and our learning of doctrine is more important than learning to live loved by Jesus. Of course the important issue is not whether we gather with others in an institutional way or not, but whether we’ve ended up caught in the religious treadmill, or are learning to live inside a vibrant relationship.
Is the church just an institution with shared doctrine and weekly services, or is it primarily a family that shares life together under the practical headship of Jesus? Helping Brad and Wayne probe that question this week are two brothers from Ireland who were on The God Journey back in April of 2006 in a podcast entitled, Laying it All Down in Ireland. Collin Langran (left) and David Rice (right) have been part of a thriving community of brothers and sisters in Dublin and regions south who have for more than 30 years simply learned to live as God’s people together, sharing life and caring for one another without the traditional congregational structures to manage that life. Their conversation shows how the church can experience life as a family as each believer learns to listen and follow the Head, and grow in loving and caring for each other through the twists and turns of life in this world.