Grow As You Go (Episode 9) - Dr. Jeremy Sims

Let's learn about who you are.

So you work at Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida.

Yep.

What's your title professor of spiritual formation?

Yep.

Is that right?

I nailed it this time.

Crushed it.

Um you've been there a couple of years now?

I'm in my fourth year.

Fourth year?

Full time.

I adjuncted for eight years, though.

So 12, I'm in my 12th year if you count, you know, teaching one or two classes a year online.

But I'm in the classroom now.

And you and I met right after our time at Southeastern together.

We ran a youth camp together for seven years.

No, longer than that.

No, you Beach Freak.

How long did you do it at in Winston?

Great question.

It's off fantasia about it.

At least 10 years that we did it together.

Aw Fantasia?

Yeah.

And to use that word.

Fantasy.

Ah, off Fantasia.

Yeah.

Got it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, uh, I was a part of Beach Freak for 25 years.

You were, I think, half of those.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's incredible, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've we've uh we have some we have some good stories, some amazing stories about things God did, and some stories where we go, man, we are we sure we were supposed to be running a camp.

I'm not sure it was a great idea they let us run a camp.

The first camp I ever attended was the one that I ran.

I had never even been to that summer of 01 or 02.

That was summer of 01.

There you go.

Yeah.

Nobody died that we know of.

So you wrote a book called The Way of the Spirit.

Yes.

Why did you write it and what in the world is this book about?

And by the way, this isn't just a conversation about your your book.

Like I I love the topic of the book, and that's what I want to spend a few minutes talking about because I think that as I read, as I read your book, I'm three quarters of the way through right now.

It took me 43 pages to find the first bad sentence.

And being a writer, being um someone who loves to read.

I I think that's a stretch, but I've written some things.

I think getting through 43 pages to where I found like that sentence wasn't quite airtight is a freaking miracle.

It's such a good book.

Normally I'm in the first paragraph.

I'm like, that's force.

That's whatever.

You you had me a third of the way through the book to where I was like, my God, there's not a wasted word in this entire thing.

And then I found one.

I was like, well, there's one.

Yes.

Uh, but I haven't encountered another one.

What is the book?

Why'd you write it?

And then I want to dive in a little bit into it.

Yeah.

Um, I I think that one of the things that I've discovered, uh, one of my gifts, uh, and I think it comes from 25 years of pastoral ministry, and the grace that is on a pastor.

And when I say a grace on a pastor, what I mean is I think there's a supernatural ability that's given to a pastor, to all pastors.

I think one of the graces that are on pastors is God has called us to give language to the work of the Spirit.

And so I I have I have, as I've grown and matured, at least a little bit, as I've grown and matured, I think one of the things that I've discovered about myself is that I have uh a decent ability with articulating a language or a vocabulary that unlocks people's imagination um to cooperate with the work of the spirit.

And so um I've written a couple things that that that that I was noticing, oh, I'm able to do this.

My doctoral work, I don't even know if I've ever told you this, but my doctoral work is I took um Teresa of Avala's Interior Castle and did some work with it.

Um so for for for the listeners that don't know, Teresa is a nun in the 1500s and she writes a book on what does it look like to grow from salvation to full maturity in Christ across a seven-stage model.

She wouldn't have called it seven stages, she called them rooms, and it just is hey, this is what's happening in your life in this first stage of finding Christ.

This is how the enemy's coming against you, this is probably what what's going on with the spirit's trying to do, this is how your past is kind of creeping in.

But she does it across seven stages.

So she's introducing us to this language and vocabulary.

And one of the coolest parts about that is um, I think that there's a undercurrent just below the surface of all Christians, this spiritual anxiety of am I even doing this right?

Yes.

Like, how do I how do I know?

Like I want to follow Jesus and I want to follow him well, but man, I don't know.

Am I it like is it am I praying right?

Am I reading script?

Like, is this how you read scripture?

Is this is this what I'm supposed to do?

How often am I supposed to go to church?

Like, I just think that there's this undercurrent of anxiety.

And what I wanted to do was to say, this is what it looks like to follow Jesus.

And the book is about what a uh the the big idea of the book is is about spiritual granularity.

So several years ago, I think it was 2020, I read a book by Brene Brown called Atlas of the Heart.

And in the book, what she does is shout out to my friend Brene, by the way.

Not your cousin?

Oh, my bad.

I thought we were a different person.

Okay.

Um, but she says in the book that um sh the average American can only identify three emotions that he or she is currently feeling at any time.

Okay.

So not even five.

Inside out taught us five, but the average can only can only average person can only identify three.

Yeah.

But the ability to nuance your emotions at a granular level is called emotional granularity.

And the reason that's important is um if I if I only ever think that I'm happy, mad, or sad, then I can't lean into what's really going on under the surface of my life, and I can't make meaning out of some of the experiences I'm having if I can only think that they're in three different categories.

Happy, matter, sad.

Yeah.

And so um I had this idea for for language and vocabulary.

And anyway, one day I'm driving down the road and I went, most Christians have a binary of how the Spirit of God shapes us into Christ-likeness.

What does that mean?

The binary is God is close or God is far.

And that's it.

When God's close, then I feel like he's close, I feel like he's working, I feel like he's doing cool things that that open me up to this work of maturation.

When I feel like he's far, um, it's either because I'm in sin or I'm depressed or I'm burned out or I'm God is far away.

And it, you know, we we call them mountains and valleys, like we really do talk binarily about the work of the spirit.

But we all, I don't think anybody would argue this.

We know that the spirit is forming us in an infinite number of ways.

The Holy Spirit can do anything at any time to form us into Christ's likeness.

And what I wanted to do in the book was to say, what does it look like to get into a more granular level of the work of the spirit and give some language to it?

So the book is shaped around the waypoints.

That's the center of the book, but the there are seven waypoints that I give.

And think of it.

What is a waypoint?

Yeah, so think of a waypoint as a season.

Um I didn't want to use season because embedded in the idea of season is cyclical.

Um and these waypoints aren't always cyclical.

Some of them you might you might um go through, you might journey into once, some of them you might journey into multiple times.

And so waypoints are just points along the journey.

And and one of the one of the kind of the arguments of the book is to say that while the Holy Spirit can can do anything at any time, it seems as we look through Christian history that there are specific seasons or waypoints of our of our lives that uh tend to open us up to a particular work of the Spirit.

And um, and we see that with with things like suffering uh or things like um um the liminal seasons or the in-between seasons of our life.

And so um that's what it is as I introduce us to seven waypoints or seasons, um, seven waypoints.

They are not exhaustive, they're just to get you thinking about what is the what does it look like the spirit is doing in this season of my life?

Because I want to lean in on that, I want to get on that, I want to put some language around it.

Um and so some of a lot of our waypoints are painful um and they're they're difficult, they're challenging, they're lonely, they're confusing, they're disorienting.

But if I know that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and God's doing a work in me that for whatever reason, of course God can do it at any time, but it seems like God, God, God doesn't need anything, but sometimes we need to have some type of disorientation or unsettling in order to open us up to a specific work.

And so that's what the book is about, seven way points.

And I do some work on the bookends of that, but but that's the idea of the book is so I go from I go from us having a two-part language, a binary language of the spirit.

I understand.

Oh, so far.

Yeah, uh to 32 movements of the spirit.

And uh, and again, not exhaustive, but if I can start talking about 32 movements of the spirit, maybe I can talk, maybe I can start s seeing and recognizing.

And and and I this is super key.

One of the ways that we recognize, and I think it's really the only way we recognize, is we have to have exemplars in our life or saints in our lives.

And I and I mean both venerated saints, but I also mean saints, white hairs and no hairs.

Aaron Powell, so a venerated saint would come more from like the Catholic traditions.

Well, not only, but the Orthodox tradition also does too.

So we could name give me three saints.

Uh Teresa Vavala, yeah.

Um Saint John of the Cross, Saint Ignatius, Saint Mary, Saint Matthew, Saint John, I mean the gospel writers.

So the OGs, right?

But then we have the everyday people as well.

People that we look at and we're like, gosh, man, she's just a saint, or that that guy's a saint.

Okay.

And they are always.

So this is interesting, Tommy.

The uh the idea of saint has kind of had an evolution across Christian history.

So Paul, when Paul talks about saints, it's very clear he means the people of God.

Yeah.

Everybody that was at the men's group last night.

Yeah.

That's right.

And we should use saints that way.

We 100% should use saints that way.

Within about the first 100 years, the church begins to first 100 years after Christ's death, begins to use saints talking about martyrs.

Because to be a saint is to live a faithful life.

Well, the ultimate life of faithfulness is someone who's willing to give their life for Christ.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

They were the saintliest saints.

That's right.

Yeah.

And then by about the by about the 300s, the church begins to venerate saints and begin to say, this is a person whose life has such a um model, an example of faithfulness, we will recognize this person for it for forever.

And so we have saints that are, you know, 1800 years ago and we talk about it.

Often there's something about their life, not always, but often there's something about their lives that you say, I want to model my life after that.

Well, and just like any, you know, any person that you look up to, you would say, you know, there may be 50,000 things you love about them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they're like, you know, what I love most about Tommy is just how awkward he is, right?

Just things like that.

So St.

Thomas the awkward.

Um one of the things that I've appreciated about you over the years, and I I didn't maybe it wasn't there at first or I didn't recognize it at first, but for probably the last decade at least, I've found you to be somebody who can give language to things that I take a lot of words to describe.

You can say it very simply.

Even last night, uh, to the men, you said we have wounds, and then we have uh was it free message, a message about that.

Um it's the meaning that we make out of that wound.

Yes.

And then the third part.

I'm never gonna do that again.

I'm always gonna do that.

And then we live that script.

Yeah.

I thought the clarity around that, these constructs.

So whenever I heard that you were working-just so we're clear, that's not mine.

That's uh I don't care for nobody cartake, but yeah.

Who?

Monte Capo Goblin.

Yeah.

Um Yeah, I think that I think whenever I heard that you were working on giving language to um the quote unquote seasons, as you're calling them, the waypoints, I thought that's really helpful.

It's the reason I think that people really liked the Enneagram.

Right.

Um, and they like Myers Brig or the disc assessment or whatever.

Right.

I just need somebody to help me understand who I am and why I am the way I am, what I'm going through.

If I can name the thing, then I have a better chance of relating to whatever it is well.

My friend Andy Ziff, who's a songwriter, he says um, he has this beautiful line in a song.

He says, uh, I name the fear so it won't grow.

A lot of us carry around a low-grade anxiety.

And it's like, what am I, what am I even now?

If you can name the thing, it it almost disarms it in a sense.

As you drag it out, you sit in the middle of the room, you say, This is what I'm actually dealing with.

You look at the thing, and by the time you've named it and brought it into the middle of the room, it's all of a sudden like not so that's right.

You know, yeah, I mean troubling is why therapy and counseling and spiritual directioning and and and mentoring and coaching, and that's why these things have some energy.

That's why they have they they have some energy to them because that that is what they are doing.

They're putting language to whatever, whatever pathology or fear or experience, uh, or or or you know, what whatever we're we're um I'm questioning.

Yeah.

They're just putting language together.

So if I if I can name the season that I'm in, and you know, it's it's certainly not linear.

You may have one foot in here and one foot in there and whatever.

Without a doubt.

Um I can cooperate with what God is doing.

But also not in a better way.

But also not be not feel like I'm outside of the will of God because this is an uncomfortable season.

You know, you and I have grown up very similarly in the Pentecostal kind of charismatic, at least evangelical space, and there is a pressure inside of that space for whatever reason, that when I when when things are going well, I must be close with God.

When things aren't going well, what is off?

What's wrong?

Right.

And man, you I mean, we would have told Jesus going to the cross that something was wrong.

Man, did you sin?

Did you do something wrong?

Like sure.

So all difficult seasons of our lives are not because we miss God.

So give me um give me the waypoints and maybe give me a a just a line or two on what's happening there.

Um, and then I want to dive into maybe one or two of them.

Yeah.

So um like you said, they're not linear, not all of them are waypoints that we will revisit.

Some of them are kind of one point, one, one-time waypoints.

But the first one that I do is um, and I and I did want to say this, one of the reasons I brought up the idea of saint is I use either a saint or an exemplar in every one of the waypoints so that no one thinks I'm making this stuff up.

Like I'm let's look at this life of this person who is an exemplar of faith, and their life can show us what it looks like the spirit's doing in us as we walk through something similar that they did.

So let's do this.

Let's let's go the waypoints, a little description, and maybe the saint like a minute on each?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

And then let's just do a deep dive into one of them.

Got it.

Yeah.

Yep.

All right.

So the first one is um, I call it holy threshold.

Okay.

And it is basically the liminal seasons of our life, those times that I am.

So um Lyman means threshold, it's that Latin word, and it's just the in-between season.

I'm not where I used to be.

I'm not in the room I was in, but I'm not quite in the room where I'm going.

And it and it often is uh it's a it's a disorienting and lonely and frustrating, confusing space.

Um it it is that place where um the vision I had for my life doesn't seem to be playing out.

So now what?

Now I'm just now I'm walking on unsure footing.

Okay.

Um and I use Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the saint there because I in the book I call her the the the liminal woman.

She is the womb of liminality.

Um she is, she holds on the inside of her he that will change the entire universe.

But she lives most of her life between the enunciation, between this announcement, you're carrying the savior of the world on the inside of you, yeah, and just Jesus being a normal man.

And so she lives most of her life in that space.

Can I ask you a question about this really quick?

Because you said something last night.

You know, we said we're gonna do a minute on each of these, but we may get through two of them.

Okay.

Uh then they just have to read the book.

It would be great, wouldn't it?

Um last night you said that Jesus' parents forgot him at the temple, and he was sitting there having these conversations and asking questions.

And then he says, when they find him, three days later, you know, I'm at my father's house.

He knew where he was come, he had come from, and he knew where he was going.

Yeah.

He knew what he was doing.

He was learning, he was growing, he was discovering.

But it occurred to me when you said that, I've never had this thought before.

It took them three days to figure out that he wasn't with them.

Okay, we know that.

I mean, they're traveling maybe in like a large group or something like that.

You know, you fought such and such.

They thought Wilma and Ed had him back there in the back.

But if you think that you've got the savior of the world on your hands, it just tells me they weren't too precious about Jesus.

Yeah.

I think they were just living normal life.

If I, if if if the angel Gabriel came to me and announced, Gabriel wasn't like now I'm questioning myself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gabriel comes to me and says, Yeah, this is the man.

He's coming to you, girl.

I'm I've got that kid under lock and key.

He's not allowed to have a cell phone.

He's not allowed to go hang out with his friends.

He's I've got to keep him.

And they they just kind of let Jesus get lost.

They they lost him in Target.

Like, how do you do this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I uh I don't know if I've thought about it in those terms, but I think that that's I think that it just tells you about the the humanity of Jesus.

Yeah.

We you the early church has a really hard time with the divinity of Jesus, and that's where we see a lot of the heresies come into play in the early church.

We have a hard time with the humanity of Jesus, of being able to say he actually is a human who who goes through and experiences all of the same things that we go through and experience.

And that Mary and Joseph are parents that have faults and foibles, and you know, not to overly, you know, humanize them, but it just I I am so careful about like I am the eatable mother that just wants to keep the kid you know safe from everything under the sun, and Mary and Joseph lost him for 72 hours.

Yeah.

It's weird to me.

Okay, so holy threshold, the liminal season, the space between Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Give me, if there's you probably want to say more on that, do you?

I can.

Or they can just read the book.

Let's go to the second one.

Okay.

The second one is um it's called um, I think it's called desert formation.

Yeah.

But basically it's the desert.

It's the wilderness.

Um, and it's the the exemplar I use there are the desert fathers and mothers.

So somewhere around the 300s, four hundreds, um, we have men and women that begin to escape and go to the desert because they feel the noise of the world is too loud.

And so what the desert is, is it's that place, the wilderness, it's that place of um where life, uh, where it feels like God has abandoned us.

Like, where in the world are you, God?

And um faith doesn't faith like it used to.

And so God's doing a really particular work there.

Um, and we see the desert all through scripture, right?

The the children of Israel are in the in the desert or the wilderness in the desert for 40 years.

Not surprising, Jesus is in the desert for 40 days.

So we see there's a work that's happening um in the desert that's um really important.

The desert fathers and mothers give us some some great language about what's happening there.

The desert mothers and fathers are in vogue right now.

Yeah.

Um and I think you and I have been tracking with them for 10 years.

At least.

At least 10 years.

At least a decade.

Not that we were in like that's a special thing.

We had a shared mentor that I thought.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Our education kind of introduced us into it and everything.

But now the desert mothers and fathers are really like they're making a comeback.

Why do you think they're making such a comeback right now?

Probably because our culture is beginning to recognize how noisy it is.

Yeah.

Um, there's a huge pendulum swing um that's happening with the with kind of Gen Alpha, a little bit younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

I mean, they're getting away from smartphones and using dumb phones.

They're getting rid of their streaming and using record players, like there's just this we live in a yeah, this analog idea.

Um they actually are starting to care about meals and everybody will put their phone in the middle of the table and they'll look at each other in the face.

Are you seeing that at university?

Yeah, for sure.

Really?

Yeah, it's it it's surprising.

Now we see both.

We see some kids that man, I I walked past a kid the other day.

I shouldn't say a kid, I mean it's a 18, 19, 20-year-old.

That's a kid.

But I walked past, yeah, I'm 50 and six weeks.

I know, I remember.

I um I walked past a kid the other day and and and he was watching Netflix walking across campus.

And I'm like, man, how tight is your schedule that between classes, you can't make it from one class to the next without watching Netflix on the way to class.

Yeah, but let's talk about how good Love Island is for a second.

I've actually never seen it, and I'm sorry.

I don't either, but I haven't either.

Um but I would but in this moment I would I'd lie and tell you I haven't seen it regardless.

I actually haven't.

Um okay.

So Yeah, I don't feel like we're missing that much.

Yeah.

So Number three.

Uh number three is um I don't remember what it's called.

I don't I'd have to look at the chapter, but it's but it is basically about um sin and confession.

Sin, confession, sin, repentance, and confession.

Um I use Ignatius of Loyola.

Um but but one of the things that Ignatius has taught me, and I've I've spent a lot of time with Ignatius in the spiritual exercises.

Can you can you give us 10 seconds on this on this chap who is Ignatius of Loyola?

Yeah, so Ignatius is a um um he's a young man who is a soldier, and um he um all of the things that come with the youthful um uh expression, you know, he's a He's a very lusty, ambitious man.

That's right.

Gets injured, shot in the leg or something like that.

Shot in the leg by a cannon ball, as you do crazy, as you do, yeah.

Goes into a depression and Jesus meets him, and he ends up giving his life to Jesus, um, shaping his life around um following Christ, and young men begin to flock to him and say, Teach us your ways.

And so he ends up writing the spiritual exercises, which is his discipleship model um to shape young men into Christ-likeness and which forms some people have heard of the Jesuit community.

Yes, can we talk about for just a second?

I get so excited whenever you say that, Jeremy.

Just giving young men a model.

Yeah, for sure.

Right.

I think that if if if somebody, if some bodies in local congregations were to just open up their lives to men and say, guys, just do what I'm doing.

Just do just just I think it's the reason Jordan Peterson is so popular.

I think Jocko Willink is so possible popular for that.

David Goggins is so popular for that reason.

Is like guys, they're they're confronting men with their potential and giving them a plan to achieve what's possible in their lives.

Yeah.

Both genders, honestly, same thing.

Yeah, same thing.

Women saints and exemplars, male saints and exemplars.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and there are there are women leaders in the space, but I I think I think that that young men are are particularly hungry for that.

Maybe it's because I am a man, I don't know.

Maybe it's because I'm not sure.

No, for sure.

I think that's why UFC's blown up, Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, yeah, same thing.

That that that's why people that there's a there's a hunger inside of a inside of a man to discover who he is.

Yeah.

Of course for women too, but as we talk particularly about men, there's a there's this hunger to discover who he is.

Remember, we are the only we are pretty much the only culture in the world that doesn't have a male rite of passage.

We there's no they don't exist.

And so that it's we give them a cell phone and some car keys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's it.

Uh uh go sow your wild oats, whatever.

Whatever, whatever broken, jacked up way that we think is is um is a rite of passage.

And so um m young men are beginning to kind of discover their own rite of passage, and the onus on a culture is not um to help men uh find a rite of passage.

They're gonna find one.

It's to help them find the right rite of passage, the right, the right initiation practices.

Okay.

So even last night, um being in a room full of however many men, it was a great night, the the sense of responsibility that I felt out of the end of at the end of that night, it's the reason I told every man, I said, we're gonna text you this week, and we're gonna say, here are some small groups we know of.

But the thing I didn't say was, and there are probably too many of you for these small groups that we've got, we're going to need some of the rest of you to step up and to lead and to say, follow me as I'm following Jesus.

And I think that's one of the reasons that the the desert mothers and fathers and that people like Ignatius, I think that they are desirable because they give us something to aim our lives at.

And a process and language, which is what you're doing as well, that helps us understand who we are, what we can do, and who we can become.

Um, there was, and just one final thought on this, I was reading Ezra, and in Ezra uh chapter gosh, it's 710 or something like that, he says it says that the good hand of the Lord was upon him, which I love that language, number one, because he set his heart to study the law, to do it, and to teach it.

Study, do, teach.

And to me, what we need are men and women who are willing to do the hard work to discover what it means to follow Jesus today.

Yes.

And then to live that long enough to be able to speak from a place of wisdom, authenticity, vulnerability, and authority to where someone else could say, Man, I want in on that too.

Yes.

Yeah.

So good, dude.

I have four.

Sorry, my ADD is gonna keep us here forever.

Well, let me let me state let me say this one thought of uh 10 second thought about this.

So sin and confess sin, repentance, and confession.

Um Jesus isn't scared of our sin.

He hates it, but he's not scared of it.

He he bore it all.

Why does he hate it?

Because it hurts us and it hurts the people that he loves.

Yeah.

And so he um so but there is a work that Jesus can do even inside of our sin, repentance, and confession.

Even inside of it, there's a particular work that that God is able to do.

So uh the fourth one is I just call it the inner journey.

Um I think that's what I call it.

Uh basically the language gets changed sometimes throughout the process, so it's it's tough to remember.

Are you saying in the book I s I switch up some of the language?

No, I'm saying that I'm inconsistent.

I'm identifying the editor's fault.

Well, I'm identifying with you as a writer because uh full confession, like I would not have named my last two books what they're named, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, I remember do I remember uh uh workshop in Speed of Soul with you.

Like you were like, here's what they're saying, here's what I'm saying, that you remember.

Yeah, I'm gonna go on record and just say I hate the title of that book.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's good.

I I like where it landed.

I think it's fine.

I just don't know what it means.

Way of the spirit wasn't my first choice either.

Yeah.

I wanted to call it the wisdom circle, which I think is a better title.

It's not as sexy, but it is a better title.

I ended up I ended up.

I'm gonna get canceled.

They're never going to write with my favorite.

But I liked where we landed.

I liked where University Press landed with my title more than I liked what mine was, but not in the moment.

Because you know, you you just hear yourself saying it over to I'm writing it, it's in my Google Drive.

Sure.

The way of attention is what it was first called.

You've named a child and somebody comes out whenever whenever it's about to be born, they're like, no, it shall be called Richard.

You're like, nobody in my family's rumble still skin.

Yeah.

Rumpel still skin.

Yeah, and probably the the the wisdom circle is more rumple still skin, and Richard is a better title as the speed of soul.

But all right, number four, the inner journey.

Who is our exemplar in the inner journey?

Yeah, my favorite.

I love her, St.

Teresa of Avila.

Um, she is a nun in the 1500s.

She is um a counter-reformationist.

So most of us have heard of the Reformation or the Reformers.

Luther, Melanchthon, those guys, yeah.

Uh Zwingli, Calvin, rebelling against uh against the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic Church.

And the and the um excesses and indulgences and all of the, I mean, major doctrinal issues.

Well, and one of the things that's happening there is the church is really embedded down with the state as well.

You get on the wrong side of the state, and the state will have who the leader of the church cut you off from uh baptism, from uh communion, yeah, to where not only are you probably going to lose a war, you're going to hell at that point in time.

Which is one of the reasons that I think that these people who are given the bit of a finger to the system are you know desert mothers and fathers and people like that.

Yeah, so you've got the reformers that we've heard of, but you also have the counter-reformers.

Those are the men and women who weren't kicked out of the church and wanted to reform it from the inside.

From within.

So Teresa, St.

John of the Cross, and um Ignatius are all counter-reformers.

So it's an inside job.

Yep, they're doing an inside job.

Uh, Teresa, what she does is I think I I can't remember if I told you this before we started rolling or not.

I think I said before while since we've been rolling about Teresa gives us this language of the interior castle.

So the what does it look like to grow from salvation to full full maturity in Christ?

I take her fourth room or her fourth mansion, uh-huh, which is the hinge point.

Okay.

It is the it is the space between what Roar will call the first half of life and the second half of half of life.

And um it's that it's that in-between stage of the where where we go from from men and women of utilitarian productivity.

I'm working for Jesus.

Let's get some stuff done for God.

Yeah.

And and and um, and Tom Ashbrook, who kind of reinterprets Teresa Forrest in a book called Mansions of the Heart, he says that the overwhelming majority of the American church is in stage three.

This productivity, let's let's just do stuff for Jesus.

And you can do a lot of stuff for Jesus and not even be friends with Jesus.

I mean, Jesus even says in Matthew 7, there are gonna be people that are gonna come to me in the last day.

They're gonna say, We cast out demons in your name, we did miracles in your name, we healed people in your name, and he says, I I don't even know who you are.

Yeah, I don't know your name.

Yeah, and so the the inner journey is getting past productivity and into just deep relationship with Christ.

I love being with those types of people because they're over themselves.

They they can let you be you instead of making everything about them.

Yeah, they are they're maybe maybe not fully differentiated, but they know where they end and you begin.

They know who they are in Christ, uh, they are confident in this is what I do and this is what I don't do, and I'm okay with either one of them.

It's what we would call an elder in in the church.

Hopefully, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, and this is this was your message to us last night.

And Jesus, knowing where he had come from and where he was going, took off his outer garments, poured water in a basin, began to wash their feet because he knew who he was.

All right, number five.

Yeah, five's the hard one.

It's uh the dark night of the soul with Saint John of the Cross.

The problem with dark night of the soul is is we it's become so ubiquitous in in at least the Western culture, we use the language for any hard season of our life.

But that is not how Saint John of the Cross means it.

What he is talking about, first of all, there's two movements inside of the dark night.

He calls them the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit.

And those make up the dark night of the soul.

Um, I think the one we can most easily get our brain wrapped around in a short time, like a minute or two, is the dark night of the senses.

And that is um especially as American evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, you know, that space of Christianity, we have become addicted to um the feelings and experiences that we have, the experience of Christ, the experience of of having a relationship with Christ.

And the deep work of God is to get us beyond experiences and to get us actually united with Jesus Union.

Union.

Yeah, the John 17 prayer, which by the way, I'll preach on tomorrow um at the church, but just this idea of oneness where Jesus prays the most audacious prayer that he that could ever be prayed.

I pray that they will become one with us, one with the Trinity.

That's we we've read that and become numb to how audacious that prayer is.

In the same way that the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and the Spirit are in relationship.

Jesus has invited us into that relationship.

And every prayer that Jesus prays is answered with a yes.

Not every prayer that I pray is answered with a yes.

All of Jesus' prayers are.

And so that's the work that He is doing in our lives.

So so what the what the I just want to acknowledge like my my brain just started sweating.

It should.

Yeah.

It should.

We're talking Trinitarian now.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I wish we had nine hours to talk about that.

I also wish, and I feel like this podcast would not be complete.

Um this podcast is sponsored by Dr.

Chris Green.

Uh it's funny.

I was about to say we need nine hours and Chris Green.

And Chris Green.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, all right.

Where were you going?

I just think.

I need you to be a better host because I've lost track.

I just want to say this.

This is James Finley definition.

It's a it's a paraphrase of what he says, but Jim Finley says that the dark night of the senses is the spirit detaching us from our dependency on finite experiences that masquerade as infinite love.

And so we've we become addicted to experience and not to Jesus.

And the only way for God to detach us from that addiction or dependence is to remove the experiences.

And so dark night of the soul is um God removing those experiences so that he can do the deeper work.

And so while I would never say I've been through a dark night of the soul, because I think it's a little pretentious to say, um also most of our men and women are are much later on in life and maturity when they do that.

I will say this I spent a decade of my life not feeling Jesus.

A lot of that had to do with my, you know, the with Tiff and and uh my first wife, her her disease, illness, and eventual death, and then grief and all that.

But a decade of my life where I just was numb to all things God.

Yeah.

Um and Can I say, I've told you this before.

Um I didn't know what well one, I was I had moved to another state when that happened, and you and I didn't talk.

We talked a lot almost every day when we were in youth ministry, it seems like I didn't know what to do with you during that season.

Like I didn't have I didn't have the maturity and I didn't have the language.

Yeah.

Um and that's why I think having language for seasons like this, the dark night of the senses, and what you could you know call the season whatever you want to call it, um it's it's hard.

And um I think I think especially I think it's especially difficult whenever you've grown up in a tradition like we have, where if you have enough faith, it will be met by the reward of God with the compensation of getting the healing that you want, getting the result that you want.

And we have created environments as pastors in churches, largely because of the model that we were handed and the pressure that is put upon us to create more of these experiences, to get the lights and the sound and the band and the moment because God wasn't there if I didn't if I didn't feel it, you know.

Um there maybe maybe Chris had recommended this to you.

There is um an Anglican solitary Maggie Ross, uh silence and Maggie differentiates between experience and encounter.

And encounter is more of the oneing, the the unification, the union.

One is the language of Julian of Norwich.

Okay.

Uh I thought I invented it, but uh she can cite me if she wants.

That's gonna be hard.

She gone.

She gone.

But not forgotten.

She's not forgotten.

No.

No, she has a famous line that we many of us still say she shall be well.

Yeah.

Um at any rate, the the encounter is too deep for words.

The experience can be described.

Good.

Yeah, I like that.

But the encounter, and sometimes I think what we sometimes I think that we mistake we think that God's the sense of of God not being with us, the lack of senses, the lack of the experience, that's we may actually be at a place with God that is just too deep for words.

That's right.

It could be that God is weaning us off of, you know, the ex the experiential, you know, like I want to have like a bottle in my mouth type of a thing.

It's like a hit, you know.

Yeah.

It could also be that I'm encountering God in a way that's just too deep.

Yeah, I mean, if if we if if God is incomprehensible in fullness, if he if he even saying he is issues.

We're always talking in metaphors and assimiles, yeah.

Yes, so if he is incomprehensible and ununderstandable, then that means that his deepest work we will not have language for.

Yeah.

Uh and that and I think that's a lot of what silence is.

Silence is the deep work of God.

And when you look at the tradition and you look at every man or woman that you admire because of their wisdom and maturity, what you're gonna find is they use far less words.

Far less words.

Yeah.

Okay.

Speaking of far less words, let's go.

Two more fast?

Let's go two more fast.

Yep.

So the sixth way point is um divine encounter.

And I use Julian of Norwich.

So Julian, real fast.

Julian has a um Yeah, we're gonna walk in, you're gonna teach in 15 minutes in another setting.

I can hear them outside.

So she um she's on her deathbed, so much so that the that the priest has come in and administered last rites.

And then she ends up having um um over the course of about a day and a half, about thirty hours, she ends up having these sixteen visions where she meets Jesus.

She comes out of it, immediately, as soon as she can, she writes these down.

They're called the short text, and then for the next 40 years of her life, she revisits those in that encounter and writes what's now called the long text.

And so um And this is revelations of divine love.

Is that where that comes out?

So uh it depends on how it's it's divided up.

While it is in English, it's it's early English or Middle English.

So uh Mirby Star has a translation of it called The Showings, which I like a lot.

I like the idea of the showings.

That's my it's my favorite translation.

Um, and I think it's one we most get our head wrapped around.

But um, as Pentecostals, this this attracts me.

I I I just believe that every believer, and on quite honestly, every non-believer is going to have a supernatural encounter with God at some point in their life.

You might have one or two or three.

There won't be many, but there will be a couple, two or three or four, where that it changes the course of your life forever.

And and what is the spirit doing when we have these?

We don't live in that encounter moment forever, but we can revisit it and continue to just delve deeper and deeper into God, what were you showing me in that?

And God gives us new revelation even inside of an old encounter, uh, in Maggie Roth's language.

So, so I so I spend some time there just saying, what do I think that, what do I think the spirit's doing there?

And I'll just give you one movement.

One of the movements is called Transfigured Truth.

If you have a divine encounter with God, something about the way you see him is going to be changed.

You're not gonna have a divine encounter and come out of that and say everything's the same.

You will not be the same.

And you'll see the world differently, you'll see the world differently, you'll see God differently, you'll probably see the people you love, the people you don't love differently.

God's gonna transfigure this truth that you have believed and built your life around.

If I take the word and I just split it, you have the word trans and then you have the word figure.

It is going to transition the way that I figure things out.

Good.

Yeah.

And I whenever you said she had a moment and she unpacked it for 40 years, is that what you said?

40.

I don't think that we pay enough attention to the now.

This was a like a massive eruption in her life.

But um I think I think there's something good about just sucking all the marrow you can from the God moments that you have, whether they're massive or whether they're small um little things that God shows you.

Um yeah, let's not not to get the most out of them, but let's pay attention.

So seven.

All right.

Yeah, seven.

I just I think I called it Sacred Ordinary.

Something like that.

It's Sacred Ordinary.

But basically, you know, all of these other ones have been kind of seasons or waypoints that are that are temporal.

The Sacred Ordinary is the is the is the ordinary life of faithfulness that we live day in and day out.

That is not like like if I were to say to you, hey, tell me what you were doing on the first Tuesday of July.

Yeah.

Unless I'm on vacation, I have no idea what I was doing.

That's the sacred ordinary.

So we use Brother Lawrence who writes the book.

He actually doesn't write it, but it's I hadn't gotten to that one yet.

I thought for sure it was me.

So brother Brother Lawrence just talks about um you know one of his famous lines is that um I experience God the same in the washing of dishes as I do in taking the Eucharist.

Yeah.

And so it is just the daily mundane monotonous routine rhythm of following Jesus day in and day out, year over year over year over year.

And so it kind of ties it's kind of the pathway between all of these locations.

And so he uh he didn't actually write the practice of the presence of of God three different things going on but it's a collection of his letters to people a collection of some of the thoughts and the wisdom sayings that he's had yeah and then just somebody writing about him.

And he was a bit of a reject yeah like I think that he couldn't well he's never sainted yeah that's which is wild that he's never sainted like he's not saint he's not goaded he's brother no he's brother Lawrence and uh I actually should do the research and find out why he's not which is neither is Julian left-handed Julia yeah Julia well you know he's he he spends decades in the kitchen until his hands can't do that anymore he can't stand up and then he moves to becoming a cobbler and now he's working on the shoes of the of the men in the monastery.

Yeah and somehow meanwhile they're not worthy to untie his sandals.

Exactly right yeah but he would have never said that he would and he wouldn't have even known that yeah yeah he didn't know the impact of his life until you know he still doesn't know the impact I mean from the other side of eternity and that's good for us to see there's an impact of all of our lives as we live out this what Eugene Peterson calls the long obedience in the same direction.

And so what's happening year over year over year of this long obedience and that's what I wanted to identify.

I've got six movements in there and um and uh it's a lot of fun.

Uh I've heard a lot of good feedback on that chapter.

It it it resonates with people really well.

I want to go rapid fire really quick.

Okay.

Uh how long did it take you to write this book?

So six months um that I actually was sitting down daily and writing but man I would say I mean my doctoral works with Teresa in St.

John so I would say fifteen years it's it's it's new thoughts, new ideas, new framing, some teachings here and there that I'm throwing in.

So so six months that I'm at the computer 15 years.

What idea is gripping you right now from the book or just in general?

That's your question the church that's what I'll that's what I will preach on tomorrow.

I've s um so I've spent the last three and a half years of my life um leading a couple programs.

In fact I was honored to have you and the doctor of ministry with me but what I found is and I don't say this with I don't say this with dis disrespect I say this with concern what I found is is that they're all pastors pretty much every person in the programs that I that I was able to to lead are all pastors and I found that the people that we serve there at Southeastern, the pastors we serve have a very very thin theology of church which we call ecclesiology a very thin theology of church and a thin theology of pastoral of what it means to be a pastor.

So who is the church?

What is her mission who is a pastor and what does he or she do to serve that mission.

And so I've spent a ton about the last year of my life I've just spent thinking and talking about ecclesiology and pastoral theology.

It is so true.

And once again you've simplified things that just I feel up to my sermon tomorrow and no one will see this before then but my sermon tomorrow is on who is the church.

Beautiful yeah I love this because whenever we don't know what the church is supposed to be we conform it into the image of our insecurities.

Yep yeah or we borrow or we so there there's a metaphor that we're using for the church that is animating it animates our imagination and one of the things that I want to say is don't use other don't use other metaphors.

So the current metaphor that's animating the imagination of the church is the business or the industry or the corporation and that is detrimental to the church.

The church is wholly unlike anything that has ever existed or will ever exist.

Yes and we've got to we've got to allow the spirit to animate our imagination of who the church is and what our mission is.

Rather than taking our cues from the biggest whatever.

We have to be very careful.

Which is again the insecurity of the pastor being played out because if I don't perform then I am not useful which is it things just get weird we see that that I mean uh I don't know if you've read Gregory the Great's The Pastoral Rule.

It's from the 500s.

So for 1500 You prescribe that book to my daughter who is oh that's right it's in her pastoral theology she said Dad do you have a do you have Gregory the Great's The Pastoral Rule?

I said yeah why she said I need it for my class I'm like get your own copy first of all and second of all you're 20 what are you doing reading Gregory the Great I'm I'm I am having a I was reading John Maxwell no disrespect and she's rocking Gregory the Great I'm having a hard time I think she has to read it but I also am having a hard time I've gone from for three years teaching 40, 50 60 year olds I mean I had an 85 year old Doctor of Ministry graduate.

So I'm writing to I'm they're also reading Eugene Peterson working the angles and so no it's good.

Yeah no I loved it whenever I heard it you won't appreciate it.

Now it's kind of like I just reread uh The Old Man in the sea oh yeah which the the first two pages of Old Man in the sea are maybe some of the most beautiful writing in American literature in my opinion.

Hemingway it's just simple and yeah it's um it just it won't even we don't even have time.

I I I probably read the old man in the sea whenever I was in high school.

I don't think I've read it since I couldn't appreciate it.

There's no way I could understand what he was doing in high school in 30 years from now you'll read it differently than you do today.

Yeah and that's what great literature does for us.

Okay speaking of great literature let's do two more questions.

One what book have you read recently that you're like dang that was a good book um uh I've revisited the Lord of the Rings so I I man the I always want a fiction book going yeah because I think that that helps our imagination so I think that's important uh in just art so that's one um but as far as like like Jesus books or church books um I I have recently read the Apostles Creed about Ben Meyer Ben Meyers and actually got to meet him um he works at Alpha Cruis out in Australia I didn't meet him in person but uh it is it is so good and and it's easy to it's just easy to get your head wrapped around it.

So I love that.

I want to get that yeah it's absolutely I will recommend I think this could be good for your your your crew as well my friend Austin Cardi wrote a book called The Pastor's Bookshelf Why Reading Still Matters for Ministry won all kinds of awards and he helped me understand the role that fiction in particular plays in the formation of Byron Borger who is a bookstore owner at Hearts and Minds uh raved about that book over and over and over again and actually even did a review on my book that was very kind.

Yeah uh he didn't do a review of my book.

I'll tell him to uh you did I also blackmailed him and he still didn't do it.

Shout out Byron uh finally what's a song a musical artist who are you into right now man I I I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this because this guy's a little much at times I can't you introduce me to him now you've implicated me that's right I can't listen enough to John Belly he is so good and pop so he's so he's my pop guy that I I listen to him on the way up but then my favorite artist and he's got a new album coming out next month is Foy Vance.

I love Foy Vance okay well I'm gonna I'm gonna do I've heard of Foy Vance but he is my favorite I've seen him in concerts one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to yeah his brother JD sometimes makes appearances yeah no relations a little bit of a no Billy twang though I love Foy Village uh and then there's a guy that I just started listening to in the last year Dermot Kennedy he is the weight of the woods is his newest album it's can we talk about Sam Fender for a minute?

I love Sam Fender.

We just have started listening to him in the last maybe two years we pick up these artists from the margins and then I think we compare notes like you like Sam Fender too I love Sam Fender.

We have to walk into another room now I gotta go teach we are uh yeah we're gonna talk to you're gonna talk to the school of Christian formation this morning makes me very happy yeah this has been a great conversation dude I love it I have so many books coming out of this I've taken notes that I'm gonna go pick up and I'm gonna dive into you and let's do this again uh but let's not wait 25 years to make it happen.

All right friends love you buddy God bless you guys thanks for listening.

Thank you for joining us on Grow As You Go.

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