Heart of a Friend

Highlights: How NOT to Read the Bible (Episode 50) The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover. To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” Never Read a Bible Verse By lifting verses out of context, they can easily be misunderstood. The story-line of the Bible must be understood so that we can see where the verse/passage/book fits into the larger over-arching story. We need to enter their world to hear the words as the original audience would have heard them and as the author would've meant them to be understood…If we don’t the possibilities for confusion are endless. Stranger Things The surrounding people groups who worship other gods and goddesses practiced all kinds of evil things…God did not want Israel to become like them, so he had Moses write down loving guidelines…to keep them distinct from other nations. God didn’t create the institution of slavery. Slavery was man-made and was everywhere in the ancient world. The Old Testament rules established unique protections for slaves. Slaves were treated much better in ancient Israel than in surrounding cultures. Boys’ Club Christianity When we read what Jesus did with regard to women, it should be recognized as countercultural, highly shocking, and extremely challenging to the religious leaders of his day. We see Jesus striving to change the culture he lived in through the way he treated women – with respect, dignity, and equality. The Bible verses that at first sound misogynistic and chauvinistic have explanations. Misunderstandings are due to not looking at the specific situations and unique culture of that time period. Do We Have to Choose Between Science and the Bible? The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. (Galileo) So many of the debates within Christianity, as well as the mocking criticism of the Bible, end up being irrelevant when we accept that God wasn't providing details to satisfy questions from our modern scientific worldview. God used what the people were aware of at that time to communicate the truth about himself and his work in creating all things. Does Christianity Claim All Other Religions Are Wrong? Christianity is the one world faith in which people don't have to earn their way to heaven, but it is through the work of Jesus and us putting faith in him. The Horror of God’s Old Testament Violence If you were carefully reading the entire Old Testament, you would not find a reactionary God who needs a class in anger management, someone who strikes out randomly, without cause. Instead, you find a God who is patient – again and again – with his people. Even in the parts where God is actively behind violence and death, it is not done without first pleading for change, giving warnings, waiting for change and showing great patience. Jesus Loved His Crazy Bible The Bible Project Podcast (12/06/2021) Interview with Dan Kimball The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton ReGenerationProject.org 

What’s On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper - The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 3 - Highlights Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are the ones that we are currently worried about. H5N1 (a bird flu)...if it ever gets airborne...it’s got a 60% death rate. (Dr. Larry Brilliant, Harvard Magazine) It is the advance of scientific knowledge, actualized by public policy and private behavior, that has given humans the advantage over microbial threats. Science and state-craft are the keys to the Great Escape. Science As of 1870, only a small Avant-garde of researchers believed that familiar diseases were caused by invisible living agents. But by 1900, for a scientist or medical professional to believe anything else was becoming ignorant. The Hygiene Revolution - The principles of germ theory inspired renewed efforts to disinfect the personal and household environments. The war against bugs - Insects that had once seemed a mere nuisance were now seen as vehicles with deadly payloads. Chemical Control of Pathogens - Dysentery was still a major health problem in the developed world, and typhoid remained – until chlorination. The most important reason we can drink a glass of water today and not feel even a hint of dread is because it has been treated with chlorine. Antibiotics - Starting in the 1940’s...Antibiotics delivered us from the long period of human history when the simplest wound was a mortal threat. Vaccines - Small pox was a success story. So was the measles vaccine. The vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1963, and measles infections fell instantaneously. A disease that once caused 1 million cases a year in the United States was reduced to an annual incidence of fewer than 100. Globally, In the early 1980s, 2.5 million children died annually from the measles. By 2018, mortality has been reduced to 140,000 deaths. Public Policy Improvements in life expectancy are generated not by ideas alone but by ideas that are put into action, especially by capable governments that care about the heath of their citizens...The control of infectious disease, by its very nature, requires collective and coordinate action. Investments in public water systems were among the largest, and might even have been the largest, public investments in American history and they had a larger impact on human mortality than any other public health initiative. The household toilet is a private portal into the sprawling subterranean circuitry quietly gathering our collective muck. Several times a day we sit astride a section of the largest and most expensive environmental infrastructure in the world – the vast underground systems of sewers and waste-water treatment plants that are a defining feature of the developed world. The federal government erected an infrastructure for agricultural and veterinary science early on, and precocious American agro-science is an underrated storyline in the global emergence of germ theory and the biochemical control of infectious disease. Paradoxically, we are in some ways more fragile than our ancestors, precisely because our societies depend on the level of security against infectious disease that may be unrealistic We have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. 

What’s On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 2 Highlights We still have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. The long history of disease counsels us to expect the unexpected. The worst threat may be the one we cannot see coming. Bubonic Plague (Black Death)Three stages in history - The Justinian Plague (500’s A.D.), The Black Death (1300’s A.D.) and Modern Era Plague (1890’s A.D.) Almost anywhere the evidence in Europe is rich enough to form a quantitative impression, the Black Death carried off 50-60 percent of the population...the death toll is always staggeringly high. Although many a textbook still claims that the Black Death carried off a third of the continent, in reality, the best estimates are closer to half...In Europe alone, forty million or more might have been claimed by this bacterium. The plague is a killer in a class by itself Small Pox Endemic throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Brought to the Americas by the conquistadors. Major outbreaks of small pox occurred on Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean from the earliest days of discovery but then jumped from the Caribbean to the shores of Mexico in 1520. By the time Cortez approached the capital city of the Aztecs a year later, it had been “hollowed out” by the deadly disease. The small pox devastation continued along the trade routes to the north and to central and south America, having the same impact. Measles came alongside and made its way to the mainland continuing its decimation of those small pox hadn’t claimed. In the 1700’s it accounted for 10-15% of all mortality in Europe. As the practice of vaccination extended world-wide, small pox was finally eliminated entirely in 1977. It was a global triumph. To date, small pox is the first and only human pathogen that has been driven to extinction. The Great Influenza (1918/1919) Killed approximately 50,000,000 people. One of the single most deadly events in global history. And it infected perhaps one in three persons alive, making it probably the single most coordinated rapid attack by a parasite in the history of the planet. And the threat of future novel influenza strains, replaying the events of 1918 to 1919 remains one of the most dangerous lurking threats to human health. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John Barry. 

What’s On My Bookshelf?Part 1 | A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle HarperThe Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse Highlights Up to around 1700 life on earth was short and full of sorrow. Life expectancy was below 30 years. Most people died of infectious disease...around 1900 a great threshold was crossed for the the first time in the history of our species: non-infectious causes of death accounted for a greater portion of total mortality than did infectious diseases. By mid-century dying of infectious disease had become anomalous, virtually scandalous, in the developed world. The control of infectious disease is one of the unambiguously great accomplishments of our species We do not and cannot live in a state of permanent victory over our germs. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberation from infectious disease...In short, germs evolve, and human mastery is always, therefore, incomplete. Malaria: The deadliest of the human infectious diseases...no other affliction has exerted such influence on the species. It is “the mother of fevers,” “the king of diseases.” It continues to devastate human societies unfortunate enough to remain under its spell. Tuberculosis: The burden of this disease on human health, in the past and present, is staggering. Today, there may be 2 billion humans latently infected, so more than a quarter of humanity could be carrying the pathogen. There are more than 10 million new cases annually, and TB still takes 1.5 million lives each year. TB may be in aggregate, the most lethal enemy our species has ever encountered. As farming spread human numbers soared and the result has been a virtually unceasing acceleration of parasite evolution...There is universal agreement that farming was an unmitigated disaster for human health; humans sought more calories and came away with less nutritional variety, harder work, and more germs. Which of the following did NOT contribute to the eventual improvement of life expectancy in the city? The pandemic of 1918 to 1919 was the ultimate manifestation of a disease event in the age of steam ships and railroads. It was in absolute terms one of the single most deadly events in global history, claiming the lives of maybe 50 million victims Modern growth has only made the challenge of controlling infectious disease greater. Urbanization, demographic expansion, modern transportation and intensified pressure on natural resources have made the ecology of infectious disease progressively more dangerous for humans. We do not and cannot live in a state of permanent victory over our germs. Prophets have continually forewarned us that new diseases were one of the most fundamental risks we face as a species. And now, the COVID-19 pandemic makes it all too evident that their alarms were both prescient and unheeded. We were, in short, complacent...For scholars who study the past or present of infectious disease, the pandemic was a perfectly inevitable disaster...we can never entirely escape the risk of global pandemics 

What’s On My Bookshelf |  Eight Ways to Make This Your Best Year Ever 4000 Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman We’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans yet practically no time at all to put them into action...Stop trying so hard...It’s ok to give up on what’s impossible in the first place. One: Accept the limitations of a life-span that’s way too short. The key to begin resolving this problem is to work with the facts of our finitude rather than against them. I am aware of no other time management technique that’s half as effective as just facing the way things truly are. Two: Don’t expect greater productivity/efficiency to make the problem better. Time feels like an unstoppable conveyor belt, bringing us new tasks as fast as we can dispatch the old ones; and becoming more productive just seems to cause the belt to speed up. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed. Three: Stand firm in the face of FOMO. Missing out on something, indeed on almost everything, is basically guaranteed...our every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents the sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could've spent that time but didn’t. Every choice is a renunciation. (Rolheiser)Four: Make up your mind that it’s ok to “settle.” When people finally do choose, in a relatively irreversible way, they're usually much happier as a result.The undodgeable reality of a finite human life is that you are going to have to choose. Five: Practice gratitude; it’s the antidote for discontentment. Wouldn't it make more sense to speak not of having to make such choices, but of getting to make them? Each moment of decision becomes an opportunity to select from an enticing menu of possibilities, when you might easily never have been presented with the menu to begin with. The wealthiest person is not the one who has the most. It’s the one who is satisfied with the least. ( Chinese fortune cookie) Six: Wherever you are, be there. It turns out to be perilously easy to...focus exclusively on where you're headed at the expense of focusing on where you are – with the result that you find yourself living mentally in the future, locating the real value of your life at some point that you haven't yet reached and...never will. Page 1 of 2 Enjoy every sandwich. (Warren Zevon)Seven: Get to your highest priorities first. Eight: Practice leisure and rest for their own sake. In an age of instrumentalization, the hobbyist is a subversive...A good hobby probably should feel a little embarrassing. That's a sign you're doing it for its own sake rather than for some socially sanctioned outcome. It's fine and perhaps preferable to be mediocre at them. Freedom to pursue the futile. And the freedom to suck without caring.

Highlights Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 8 (Episode 45) Six Reasons We Don’t Listen and What to Do About It Six reasons most of us don’t listen well: 1. We’ve never been taught how. We are encouraged to listen to our hearts, and listen to our gut, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. ( Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening) Listening well is not an ability we are born with. It doesn’t get magically downloaded to us as we grow up. Unless we’re intentional about learning and practicing this new skill set we’re doomed, most likely, to relationships crippled by a shortage of understanding, empathy and love. 2. We’re always in a hurry. Love takes time and time is the one thing that hurried people don’t have. (John Ortberg) 3. We’re too easily distracted. Practice the discipline of silence. Find appropriate settings for good conversation. Schedule times for private conversations. 4. We’re uncomfortable with certain emotions. The path to more meaningful conversations may require us to step out of our own emotional comfort zone and accept some risk. 5. We have an agenda. As soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you’re a marketing rep. ( The Big Kahuna, quoted by Doug Pollack, God Space) To the extent that we can, we should leave our agenda at the door of the conversation. 6. We’re overly self-focused. Our first duty in any conversation is not to talk, but to listen. This is what Christ-like humility demands. Page 1 of 2 Don’t imagine that if you ever meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him... He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) To surrender the lime-light of the conversation to the other person is not only a profound act of service to them...but, paradoxically, we receive a profoundly important benefit for ourselves too. The world is full of talkers. We don’t need more talkers, but we do need more listeners. 

HighlightsEars: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 7 (Episode 44) Miracle Grow for Relationships Marriage The decision to get married is weighted heavily toward what we see...is this person physically attractive to me? But the decision to stay married is weighted more toward what we hear...do I have satisfying communication with my spouse? Thirty-six Questions that Lead to Love, (NYT January 9, 2015) Communication Exercise - Ask: What’s the biggest thing impacting you and how are you feeling about it? (Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, Pete Scazzero) Family Relationships Too often we’re overly concerned with ourselves, too much so to take a moment to really understand what’s going on with someone else, and make sure they know that we understand. I often say, ‘You don’t understand people when you understand them. You understand them when they understand that you understand.’ That’s when you know you have trust...so just listen, listen, listen. (The Power of the Other, Henry Cloud) Friendships You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. (Dale Carnegie) Work-place Relationships Google found out that successful teams listened to one another. Members took turns, heard one another out, and paid attention to nonverbal cues to pick up on unspoken thoughts and feelings... It created an atmosphere of so-called psychological safety, where people were more likely to share information and ideas without fear of being talked over or dismissed. (You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy) (Doctors who don’t get sued) were more likely to engage in active listening, saying such things as “Go on, tell me more about that,”...the difference was entirely in how they talked to their patients. ( Blink, Malcolm Gladwell) Leadership(Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin) Listen, learn and love. (Cynt Marshall CEO - Dallas Mavericks) There’s a constant temptation in leadership to feel like you need to know all the answers.That’s never true. In fact, the best leaders are usually not defined by the answers they give but Page 1 of 2 by the questions they ask. The longer you’re in leadership, the more curious you should become. One tell-tale sign of a leader who has lost their edge is they ask almost no questions. Sometimes that’s because you think you know all the answers. Other times, it’s because you’ve lost interest. You’re just not curious. Both are deadly to leadership. So...next time you’re in a conversation or meeting, speak more sentences that end with a question mark than you do sentences that end with a period. (Carey Nieuwhoff) I will present to you parts of my self...slowly, if you are patient and tender. I will open drawers that mostly stay closed and bring out places and people and things...loves and frustrations, hopes and sadnesses...bits and pieces of decades of life...They are me. If you regard them lightly, deny that they are important, judge me or fail to listen well...I will quietly...slowly...begin to wrap them up, like worn jewelry, tuck them away in my small chest of drawers...and close.” 

HIghlights - Ears (Part 6, Episode 43) Persuasion Starts HerePeople don’t care what we know until they know that we care.”To listen well is the first step in caring. Persuasion begins with listening well.Four scenarios:1. When someone is angry2. When you are trying to make a saleI discovered early on that people don’t buy from me because they understand what I’m selling. They buy because they feel understood.’ Jon benefits from his natural tendency to ask a lot of questions and to listen closely to the answers. (Susan Cain, Quiet)3. When someone has an opposing point of viewWhen we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking. Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen. (Adam Grant, Think Again)4. When you would like to share about your religious faithWe could do a far better job of patiently listening. And we should not talk until we canrepresent the skeptic’s viewpoint with empathy so that a skeptic friend says, ‘Yes, that is my hang up; I couldn’t have put it better myself.’ Only then should we try to...recommend the Christian faith to them. (Tim Keller, “Why We Argue Best with our Mouths Shut,” Christianity Today. May 26, 2017)Evangelism is joining the Holy Spirit in a conversation he’s already having with someone. (Kevin Palau)Tension drops when people feel heard. Ask questions and care about the answers. (Kevin Palau)I’m willing to bet the farm that in our postmodern society the most important evangelistic skill is listening. (Todd Hunter, the former CEO of Alpha USA)If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids, find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you’re a marketing rep. End Quote Listening well prepares the ground for persuasion. But persuasion should not be our primary reason for listening well. We listen well because we genuinely care about the other person. We listen well because people are important whether or not they buy from us, agree with our politics or theology or continue to be mad at us. People are important for their own sake, not as a means to an end. The primary reason for listening well is because we genuinely care about others.

Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 5 (Episode 42) Help! I’m Hurting! Highlights Be kind to everyone you meet because everyone you meet is fighting a battle. When it comes to helping the hurting...this is almost always true of our words. Less is more. Job’s comforters did everything right for the first seven days, and so do we when we do the same three things they did. First, show up. (90% of success is just showing up.) Second, empathize. To the extent we can, we express our own grief at their loss. Third, shut-up! We don’t need to say anything! Our biggest mistakes happen when we open our mouths and begin to talk. Less is more. One key is to let the person suffering set the agenda for the conversation. Not you.In all my years of doing this work, I’ve never found words that are as helpful and as loving as attentive silence. Three things to do: First: Practice good listening skills When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. (Henri Nouwen) Second: Find a good setting to talk.Third: Encourage feelings to be expressed. Three things to avoid: First: Avoid giving advice preemptively Second: Avoid telling your own story Third: Avoid filling the silences with your own wordsThere is no music in a rest, but there’s the making of music in it. True listening requires a setting aside of oneself Page 1 of 2 When the people come here it's like they are going to a field hospital," father Gomez said. "They so badly need to be heard, it's like a wound; they’re in a critical state. I’ve begun to think there’s a crisis of listening in our world. There are a lot of people who want to talk but very few who want to listen, and we are seeing people suffer from it. I just let the people talk. At the very end, they say how nice it was to talk, but I didn’t talk. I think it’s just making yourself available to listen to the people; that’s what they are starved for. ( from You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy) 

Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 4 (Episode 41) Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (Continued) HIghlights Listening well means to pay careful attention to what’s being said in a way that encourages people to continue to share even more of their story The fourth habit of highly effective listeners: Don’t use your own stories to compete with others. Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they're talking about the trouble they're having at work, don’t tell them about how much you hate your job. It’s not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it is not about you. You don't need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered. (Celeste Headley - TED talk) The fifth habit of highly effective listeners: Maintain good eye contact. The sixth habit of highly effective listeners: Pay attention to your own non- verbal messages. Almost all studies agree that 70-90% of all communication is non-verbal! We say more with our eyes, our facial expressions, our hands and our posture than we ever say with our words. The seventh habit of highly effective listeners: Value periods of silence. To be a good listener is to accept pauses and silences because filling them too soon prevents the speaker from communicating what they are perhaps struggling to say. It quashes elaboration and prevents real issues from coming to the surface. Just wait. Give the other person a chance to pick up where they left off. (Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening) To how many of these can you say, “Yes?” Let’s review: I keep the focus of the conversation on the other person. I stay mentally engaged. I am cautious about giving advice. I don’t use my own story to compete with others. I maintain good eye contact. I pay attention to my own non-verbal messages. I value periods of silence. 

Highlights: Ears | Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (1-3) A checklist for listening well First, keep the focus on the other person A support response does this by asking questions and reflecting/paraphrasing what the other person is saying. While listening...One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into the conversation. The key to each door is another question. (Smart Leadership, Mark Miller) Second, stay mentally engaged.Because we can think a lot faster than someone else can talk, we have a lot of extra mental band-width/horse-power when we’re listening to someone. Don't multitask. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don't think about the argument you had with your boss. Don’t think about what you’re going to have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it. Look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place. (Celeste Headley, TED Talk - “Ten Ways to Have a Better Conversation.) Use your extra mental bandwidth by: 1. Evaluating non-verbal communication 2. Looking for the next question to be asked 3. Listening with one ear to what God might be saying to you in the conversation. Third, be cautious about giving advice. Advice-giving is a “shift response.” The focus changes from what the other person is feeling and needs to say to what you think. This shuts down their ability to process their own emotions. In my own experience most people already know what they need to do. But what they need first is to process what they are going through. For most people in most situations a more fundamental need is simply to be understood. ( It’s Not about the Nail - YouTube ) 

Highlights: Ep. 39 | Ears | Part 2 | The Soft Power of Listening - The Secret Sauce of Great ConversationsCuriosity...it’s the single most important factor in listening well. It’s the secret sauce. Great conversations are driven by curiosity. So follow your curiosity.The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder, but I suppose the real tool is curiosity. (Studs Terkel) Curiosity is not an involuntary impulse. It’s a quality that we can choose, if we want to. It’s a muscle that can be exercised and grow stronger. Curiosity is a habit that can be intentionally developed. Questions are an essential tool for fueling curiosity and generating great conversations. A good question asked at the right time is worth its conversational weight in gold. Like a pick- ax to a frontier miner, questions uncover buried treasure. Three types of questions: Practical Questions - Are necessary, but they will not take a relationship very far beyond the superficial. Open-ended Questions - Are questions that cannot be answered with one word. They are questions that don’t limit the speaker. They invite people to tell more of their story. Follow-up Questions - If questions are pick-axes to uncover buried treasure, then follow- up questions will get you to the seams of conversational silver and gold faster than anything. Unfortunately, too many of us stop at the first question. But this keeps the conversation from going deeper. It keeps the person talking from peeling back the layers of their story. It prevents more personal feelings and thoughts from coming out in the open. It doesn’t give curiosity the air to breath and the time to go deeper. When we ask, “Well, tell me more?” “What happened next?” “How did you feel?” “So, what changed for you after that experience?” These kinds of follow-up questions invite the person to get underneath their story, to peel back the layers, to dig deeper and share more. A shift response: Shifts the focus of the conversation from the other person to you. A support response: Keeps the other person talking about their own story. Follow-up questions are a good way to provide a support response. A good question responded to thoughtfully almost always opens the door to another question...While listening to a response, we re actually listening at several levels: content, emotional charge, tone, word choice, and more. One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into the conversation. The key to each door is another question. ( Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact, Mark Miller ) You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, Kate Murphy 

Highlights: Ep.38 | Ears | Part 1 | Five Reasons This May Be Our Most Important Life SkillDefinition: Listening well is more than just hearing with our ears. It’s hearing with our hearts.One: Listening well creates a unique and almost sacred bond between people.Those who listen longer than most people ever listen will hear things that most people neverhear. (Carey Nieuwhoff)Two: Listening well brings real healing to others.We hurt in isolation; we heal in community.Be kind to everyone you meet, because everyone you meet is fighting a battle.Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almostindistinguishable.Three: Listening well is essential for effective leadership.Leaders who refuse to listen will soon be surrounded by those who have nothing to say. (AndyStanley)Four: Listening well is required for continuous self-improvementAssume the the person you are talking to might know something you don’t. (Jordan Peterson)It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts. (John Wooden)Five: Listening well is required for following Jesus.True listening requires a setting aside of oneself. (M. Scott Peck)The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just aslove to God begins with listening to his Word so the beginning of love for the brethren islearning to listen to them. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)To love is to listen well and to listen well is to love.You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, Kate Murphy (2019)

Highlights - Ep. 37 | Mere Christianity | Part 16 | The Road Less TraveledI didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. (God in the Dock)Christ says, “Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy…Every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk, (but) no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son… the goal towards which he is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent him from taking you to that goal…No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded..is beyond what he is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life, but he means to get us as far as possible before death. That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house…You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions - if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before - then I think we must suspect that his “conversion” was largely imaginary…Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in “religion” mean nothing unless they make our behavior better.Life on the Road Less Traveled:1. A bias for difficulty2. A counter-cultural mindset3. Shaped by Scripture4. Spiritual life not compartmentalized from other areas of life5. The law of love is the standard for evaluating character and actions6. Spiritual companions7. Look deeper than outward behavior. It’s what we do AND who we are on the inside.8. Wary of comparisons with others - If we compare ourselves with others, we’ll always find areason to either gloat proudly in our superiority or wallow hopelessly in self-recrimination.9. See their own faults more clearly - When a man is getting better he understands more andmore clearly the evil that is still in him.10. Will not think often about themselves - He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at allIn a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest.…The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead…to remain ourselves and keep personal happiness our great aim in life…That is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. Your real, new self…will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him…look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in. If we let him, he will…make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine…a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly his own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful but that is what we are in for - and nothing less.Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to DeepTransformation, Pete Scazzero

Highlights: Ep. 37 | Mere Christianity | Part 16 | The Road Less TraveledThe secret to the abundant life is not our responsibility but our response to God’s ability. (E.Stanley Jones)First: The Imitation of Christ - “Let’s Pretend.”Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children's games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups – playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so that the pretense of being grown-ups helps them to grow up in earnest. Now, the moment you realize, “Here I am dressing up as Christ” it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which, at that very moment, the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. (Lewis) We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities by the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision. (Boyd)Second: Spiritual Practices Prayer - primarily relational - not transactional. Prayer is not a button to be pushed, it’s a relationship to be pursued.” (Nieuwhoff) Church - the Christian community. The one really adequate instrument for learning about God, is the whole Christian community, …the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons , even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. (Lewis) The man who seeks God in isolation from his fellows is likely to find, not God, but the devil, who will bear an embarrassing resemblance to himself. (Ben Patterson)Third, God-sightings - God reveals himself through, “Nature, through our own bodies, through books and through life experiences.” When our mind “runs (from the patch of light) back up the sunbeam to the sun”…we get a “tiny theophany" - a vision of God. (Lewis, Letters to Malcolm) There is never a place in our lives where God isn't rich. There is never a time in our lives when God doesn't want to share his richness with us. And we don't have to retreat into a cave…He is always with us. What God wants from us is not a dramatic withdrawal from the lives around us, but instead a dramatic awareness of his presence within the lives around us. (Dresser)Fourth, God allows troubles. We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people,” but he is determined to carry out a quite different plan…No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what he has determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life but he means to get us as far as possible before death. That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. Because God is forcing (us) on or up to a higher level, putting (us) into situations where (we) will have to be a very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than (we) ever dreamed of being before. (Lewis) Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking him what he wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances. (Mark Batterson)God loves us just the way we are but he loves us too much to leave us the way we are.Letters from a Skeptic, Gregory BoydThis Is How We Pray, Adam DresserIn a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Mark Batterson 

“Everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.” “If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years! A bit more makes no difference!” Christianity is about being a friend of God. It’s relational. It’s not about being “faced with an argument which demands your assent, but (being faced) with a Person who demands your confidence.” “There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made…if you want to get wet you must go into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get into the thing that has them…a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you. If you are not, you will remain dry.” The first step is to surrender ourselves to him. “The more we get what we now call ourselves out of the way and let him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become…Your real new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for him… look to Christ and you will find him, and with him, everything else thrown in.” Surrender means saying “yes” to God, but it also means saying “no” to 1,000 other things. “The almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ…You wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job every morning consists simply in shoving them all back…in listening to that other voice…in letting that other point of view, that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” Questions: What evidence is there in my own life that I’ve surrendered to God? In what ways do I live to please him? What are the first things I think about in the morning? Are there things I’ve said “no” to in order pursue my relationship with God? How can I continue to “surrender” to him in more and deeper ways? It’s a life-long process. Supplemental: The Trinity - One God exists eternally as three distinct Persons. “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course, we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple, if he has no facts to bother about.” We can expect when we’re talking about the transcendent God, unanswered questions will only increase exponentially! We should expect there to be aspects of God’s nature that don’t make sense to our time-bound, space-bound, tadpole brains. We should expect that our language and thought will be unable to capture the ineffable realities of the divine nature. The Father, the Son and the Spirit have set the table. The supremely glad and glorious society/ community they’ve enjoyed eternally was always meant to be shared! That’s why we’re here in the first place. We’re all invited to the party! https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/god-video/? utm_source=web_social_share&medium=shared_video Bible Project podcast episode #114 (God Series Part 19 “The Trinity and God’s Identity”) 

Highlights: Ep. 34 | Mere Christianity | Part 13 | More Than What We've BecomeWhen we draw our circle bigger we’re enriched. When we don’t we’re impoverished and diminished. Streams of Living Water, (Richard Foster) If you’ve benefited from the writings of C.S. Lewis, it’s because a few key people a generation ago decided to draw their circle bigger. They took a dip in another stream. We owe them a big debt and we’d be wise to follow in their steps. “Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have his way, come to share in the life of Christ. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God…He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life he has…Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” “What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God. A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way, man has the “shape” or likeness of God, but he has not got the kind of life God has. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man. And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are…going to come to life.” “He said in the Bible that we were ‘gods” and he is going to make good his words. If we let him…he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and life as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly his own boundless power and delight and goodness…that is what we are in for. Nothing less.” “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” (The Weight of Glory) We are destined for more than what we’ve become. The glory for which we are destined is not just a transformation of our appearance but a re-instatement of our status as God’s vassal kings and queens. We will not only regain our luster but we will regain our crown. “For too long, scholars and laymen alike have myopically viewed justification and salvation as ends in themselves…The goal of salvation is believers’ conformity to the Son of God - their participation in his rule over creation…with the purpose of extending God’s hand of mercy, love, and care…This was humanity’s job in the beginning; it will be believers’ responsibility and honor in the future.” (Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans, Haley Goranson Jacob)A “son or daughter of God in training” practices being a servant. We are future vassal kings and queens over creation. God’s servants who will one day be so dazzling, so radiant with God’s love, God’s wisdom, power and joy that if we were to see ourselves now as we will be then we would be tempted to worship. So remember… remember…who you are. 

Highlights: Ep. 33 | Mere Christianity | Part 12 | Failure - A Defining Moment “The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail… God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.” It’s a necessary and defining moment for anyone wanting to walk in new life with Christ. “So, If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you why he should let you into his heaven, what would your answer be?” (James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion) We can never be saved by our doing…only by his dying. This is the starting point, the defining moment for anyone who wants to be in a right relationship with God. “We cannot be in right relation with God until we have discovered the fact of our own bankruptcy.” Whether we are being changed from a dragon to a boy…from a sinner to a son of God…we must “let him do it. “Handing everything over to Christ does not mean that you stop trying. To trust him means, of course, trying to do all that he says…but trying in a new way…not doing these things in order to be saved, but because he has begun to save you already.” “The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things together into one amazing sentence. ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’ - which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions. But the second half goes on, ‘for it is God who works in you’ - which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised.” "Out of faith in him good actions must inevitably come…if what you call your faith in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what he says, then it is not faith at all.” It’s not faith plus works. It’s faith that works. We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Once we’ve said, “I do” to Jesus Christ we become God’s children. From then on our relationship doesn’t rest on how we’re feeling or on how we’re behaving at the moment. It rests on the fact of the promise we made and the fact of the promises that God has made in response. Faith rests on those facts not our feelings. “Christianity seems at first to be all about morality…duties and rules…guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things…Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one’s eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people’s eyes can see further than mine.” 

Ep. 32 | Mere Christianity | Part 11 | To Go The Distance  Highlights Faith as Lewis uses it here means “spiritual tenacity.”“Faith is…a necessary virtue. Unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be a sound Christian…but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”“There will come a moment when there is bad news…or he’s in trouble…or is living among a lot of other people who don’t believe…or when he wants a woman…or wants to tell a lie…some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And…his desires will carry out a blitz on his belief…I know by experience. Now that I’m a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable…This rebellion of your moods…is going to come.” "I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true…I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so.”Faith does not rise or fall on the basis of reason alone. People don’t come to faith strictly on the basis of logic and people almost never quit the faith strictly because of intellectual doubts. “What if, the true story is that people stop believing and then find they need arguments to justify their unbelief?…The intellectual arguments for atheism are, generally speaking, just rationalizations concocted after the fact. A lot of unbelief is rooted, not in reason, but in the emotions.” (Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, Alec Ryrie) What circumstances and emotions make us start thinking, “You know…it would be very convenient for me right now if Christianity were not true.” 1. Moral Compromise - Living with the sin and the faith at the same time creates an intolerable dissonance. 2. Suffering - Buried underneath the claim of atheism, there’s often a deep emotional wound. 3. “Friendly Fire” - It’s easy to blame God for the things that people do in his name. “Consequently one must train the habit of faith…make sure that some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That’s why daily prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.” Faith or spiritual tenacity must be fed by study, meditation, prayer, worship and engaging in the community of other believers. It’s not game day, it’s training day that’s crucial. What we do in training, practice, preparation will determine the outcome. We will go the distance because we trained for it. To develop our faith/spiritual tenacity two things are required. First, become part of a faith community that provides inspiration and practical instruction for Christian living. And, second, slow down. Stop booking yourself with wall-to-wall commitments. Leave space for your pursuit of God. . Jesus didn’t come all the way from heaven to earth…Jesus didn’t die on the cross…he didn’t call us to follow him, so that we could merely start the race. He calls us to finish it. Faith of the Fatherless, Dr. Paul Vitz Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Church History, John Dickson. 

Highlights: Ep. 31 | Mere Christianity | Part 10 | The Gift of TomorrowWhat happens when we die? Only a fool ignores this question. “Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But…cock-crow is coming.” Our present world is a shadow-land compared to the next…it’s a faint echo…a pale, insipid, transitory life that only hints at the glory to come. “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who were set on the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It’s since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.” Practical effects of hope: More joy…more motivation for service…more endurance in hardship…more courage…and more incentive to live in a way that pleases God. But there’s a problem in all this. How can the expectation of heaven become vivid enough for us, so that we look forward to it? “Most of us find it very difficult to want “heaven” at all.” We love this life. We love this world. We love food, sex, nature, sports, pets, vacations, work, hobbies, etc. We are taught that heaven doesn’t have many of the things we’ve grown to love in this world. Our concept of heaven is less than robust, to say the least. Our understanding of heaven needs rehabilitated. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want…acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. “Heaven” or more properly, the Age to Come will not be less than we now have but more! All that is golden in this life…All that is satisfying, valuable, beautiful, exhilarating, pleasurable, wonderful will not just be included in the Age to Come but it will be exceedingly surpassed! This world with all its pleasures, all its intensity, all its beauty, all its physical wonders…is merely a “shadowland” as Lewis called it. Quote: Never mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. End Quote The unicorn summed up what everyone was feeling. Quote: I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. “LIve for the line.” (Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle and Heaven) The Weight of Glory, Essay: “Transposition” (Lewis) The Narnia Chronicles (Vol. 7) The Last Battle