Rebuilt Life: Recent Episodes
Robby Ballmeyer & Friends
Join Pastor Robby Ballmeyer & his friends as they help you build a life of purpose on purpose. Whether you’re religious or irreligious you’ll find that Jesus makes sense for your life. Isn’t it time to rebuild?
In this episode, we delve into the question of why do you follow Jesus. Robby breaks down the idea of what happens when God seems far away and encourages you to think about the reason they first came to Jesus. He emphasizes that we often do things because they benefit us and that relationships, jobs, and material possessions can all provide some sort of benefit. However, the Robby challenges the idea that we should follow Jesus just to get something or to avoid going to hell, as this misses the point of what eternity with God truly means. He suggests that, at the end of the day, all we should want is Jesus and a relationship with Him. Robby also shares his personal journey of struggling with sin and falling away from the faith before rediscovering the beauty of Jesus through reading Scripture. Hopefully you'll will be encouraged to think about what it means to align your life with Jesus' teachings and to continually make small adjustments to stay on track with Him.
Are You Reading the Bible Wrong? Who Determines the Meaning of the Bible? Join host Robby and co-host Stu as they welcome special guest Mike Whittymore to episode 18 of the Rebuilt Life podcast. Mike hosts the Simplify Church Podcast, where they provide practical solutions and steps for everyday pastors and church leaders. In this episode, they'll dive into the topic of where meaning comes from when reading the Bible, exploring two schools of thought. Does the author create the meaning or does the reader? Join in for a thought-provoking conversation on a timeless issue.
Many Christians believe God calls them to a particular vocation or fate—often the ministry. This episode, Robby and Stuart discuss the concept of calling, what is God calling us to do, what if I miss it? What you can expect during it, and how to respond once you have received your calling.
We are a people of a call but what if we get “God’s calling” wrong. What if God doesn’t care so much about what we do for a living, who we marry, or where we live. What if God’s far more concerned about us being obedient wherever we find ourselves. In this episode of the Rebuilt Life Podcast Robby and Stuart discuss misconceptions about God’s calling and what we are actually called to, regardless of if we can hear God or not. This beings with understanding that God is far more relational than rational.
Prayer of recollection: Episode 12
In this Episode Stuart and Robby discuss how we pray. Can you get “smoted” by God if you pray wrong? Often we try hard to be good in prayer rather than being honest. The great thing is the Psalms give us a playbook of what is in the bounds of prayer. Walter Brueggaman almost 40 years ago introduced the idea of different types of psalms; psalms of Orientation, Re-orientation, Dis-orientation.
In this episode of The Rebuilt Life Podcast, Stu and Robby discuss the Dark Night of the Soul. Where is God in times of dryness and what does that mean to you as a Christian. They discuss dry spells with God, the difference between a dark night and depression, and they address some key things you can do when it feels like your dark night will never end.
Are you struggling with God's presence? Does He feel absent? Does it feel like God is stuck on mute and the remote is lost in the couch cushions of your life? In this episode, Stuart and Robby explore 3 common myths about God's absence from your life and how God’s absence may be the sign of something great is coming just around the corner.
Books Mentioned:
The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill
Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper
Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality by David Benner
While Jesus modeled other disciplines for us, he commands us to pray. But how does prayer change us? How can prayer change our mind, our will, and our soul? In this episode Robby and Stuart wrap up their conversation on prayer by talking about how Christianity is really a holistic approach to life, what the whole self, the Soul, the Heart, and the Will have to do with prayer, and how we can bring ourselves to God in prayer. Fundamentally Prayer is about reconnecting with who we really are in Christ, not who we think we are.
Diagram of the Whole Person
Spirit or Will - is what we know to be good
Mind - Thoughts and Feelings. Close but not connected to each other
Body - Actions or interactions
Social - How I relate to others
Soul - Ties everything together
Prays like these are not words to repeat but concepts to eat. Prayer in spiritual formation is about bringing our whole self before God.
Somehow we have lost sight of the fact that prayer has to be learned, just like any other discipline. It comes from practice and it's probably not going to be good or easy but there are tips and tricks to help you along the way. In this episode we will give you a framework for becoming a great pray-er. Yeah that’s a verb!
Link:
Lectio Divina Articles
Apps:
Lectio365
Pause
Unreached of the day
Bible.com
We’re celebrating our 10th episode of the Rebuilt Life Podcast. In this episode, we are talking about prayer. Does prayer make a difference or is it just meaningless platitudes? Why pray? Can God hear us? Does prayer change God’s mind?
Rate and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Share an episode with two friends
Send us an email at hello@rebuilt.life. What has been your biggest road block to prayer or what tips and tricks have you found the most helpful in your prayer life.
I love Jesus … as long as I feel like he loves me and my life is going well. However, once I get a bad diagnosis, get fired, my bank account plunges, my health suffers, or my kids starts straying, I doubt he loves me. But God uses trials in our life to bring out the best in us.
And we're gonna dig into that in this episode. We're going to find out what trials do for us and how we grow through these things and get better instead of bitter.
Growth, growth, and more growth. Yeah…we know we are suppose to grow in our relationship with God but how does that actually happen? How does someone who wants to follow Jesus begin the process of spiritual growth?
In this episode Robby and Stuart discuss how Christian growth happens and how we’ve gotten in wrong in the past. We like to believe that spiritual growth is something that just naturally happens when a new believer finds his or her way to Christ. But his simply isn't true. Spiritual growth is intentional and involves actions that you and I can take.
Christian growth involved three things and no you don’t have everything you need locked inside of you like a Disney princess. It requires Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Self, and relationship with others.
There is going to come a time in our life when we think "I should be further along from where I am now in my walk with Jesus.” Maybe you've realized that you don't pray or read the Bible as much as you should, or that you haven't forgiven someone who hurt you or you can’t hear God’s voice. This is when the self-loathing thoughts hit: "I should know more, I should be further along on my journey with Christ than I am right now.” When we get frustrated we’re tempted to take matters into your own hands. So what do you do when you find out you're a spiritual failure?
Most of us believe that the Christian life is about trying harder, being better, and making better choices – after all, that’s what we hear from our pastors, leaders and Christian friends. But this approach falls flat. We find ourselves asking God over and over again whether we are doing it right and even though things don’t seem to be getting any better for us.
In this episode we talk about why you should stop trying to be a “better you” in order to be a better Christian. Ultimately this approach leaves us feeling like the way of Jesus is impossible. The Christian life is actually about JESUS and the power of His work on the cross and not about striving to be a “better you.”
Episode Webpage: https://rebuilt.life/podcast/2022/3/31/006-stop-being-a-better-you
Email us: Hello@rebuilt.life
Find Robby on Social Media: https://Links.Rebuilt.Life
00:00 - Intro
02:36 - Why do Senior Pastors keep falling?
05:03 - Christian Celebrity
08:10 - Why is sin such a struggle?
09:53 - How does transformation happen without the removal of sin?
16:05 - Don’t become the best version of you
17:40 - 5 Second rule and sin
21:35 - “The Christian life is what we do when we can do nothing else”
27:17 - Preach the Gospel and use words
28:08 - What is the Heart in the Bible
33:45 - Jesus doesn’t live in our heart?
35:06 - Learn to guard your heart
36:19 - External Guarding
37:48 - The algorithm and formation
38:38 - Internal Guarding
42:00 - Formation takes time
43:40 - Conclusion
Hillsong’s Statement - https://hillsong.com/newsroom/blog/2022/03/an-important-message-from-the-hillsong-global-board/
Rabbit Hole Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/6dqqC8nkBTC3ldRs7pP4qn?si=ZfxceUI2SPiBm3153OLIvw
It's not uncommon to hear that people have hit a spiritual "wall" - maybe in their relationship with Christ, maybe in their church life, or maybe even in their own personal life. But why do we hit walls? Did we do something wrong? Robby Ballmeyer and Stuart Wood discuss how God might be using walls to grow us as well as what we might learn about Christian Spiritual Formation from the newly released Disney Pixar film “Turning Red” and the outcry over its themes. Robby suggests we’ve missed the point entirely.
In this episode Robby Ballmeyer and Stuart Wood talk about the need for Baptism in the life of a Jesus follower in light of the Catholic church invalidating baptisms because a priest used the wrong pronoun.
We're not Catholic, but we still think that's pretty messed up. We've got some thoughts about what it means to be a Jesus follower when it comes to baptism, and why we get baptized to begin with.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/catholic-priest-andres-arango-baptisms-invalid-phoenix-church/
What if you aren't actually deconstructing your faith? What if something else is going on? In the 3rd episode of The Rebuilt Life Podcast, Robby, Nato, and Stu continue their discussion of deconstruction. Using an article written by Joshua Ryan Butler they discuss where he got it right and where he got it wrong. Maybe deconstruction isn’t the worst thing ever. Maybe you’re not actually deconstructing.
Joshua Ryan Butler - 4 Causes of Deconstruction
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-causes-deconstruction/
Mike Erre - Voxology Podcast
https://voxologypodcast.com/
Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
https://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Updated-Expanded-When-Control/dp/0310351804/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=healthy+boundaries+book&qid=1645156696&sprefix=Healthy+Bound%2Caps%2C173&sr=8-12
03:13 - Why is Grief and Lament not always the best answers for church hurt
05:06 - The Psalms Give us Permission
06:40 - If you’ve been hurt by the church how do you trust again to find healing?
11:50 - Robby shares his church hurt story
16:07 - How can you tell the difference between good teaching and bad teaching?
22:00 - Link to Ep. 2 - Confirmation bias will hurt us
26:40 - Stu shares a part of his story
28:45 - Am I deconstructing or de-converting
32:32 - Am I deconstructing for love and affirmation?
37:15 - Why Pastors can’t be honest
41:40 - Other reasons we deconstruct
43:00 - Sometimes we deconstruct because we’re growing up
43:20 - Desolation
44:10 - Spiritual growth doesn’t happen up and to the right
45:00 - Consolation
49:49 - How can I tell if I’m de-converting or going through desolation?
50:45 - Nato shares a part of his story
53:53 - The Spiritual life is a process and a rollercoaster
54:50 - Do this if you’re deconstructing or de-converting
56:34 - This will help your spiritual growth
59:14 - What is a Spiritual Discipline
59:52 - If you’re going through desolation do this
1:02:00 - This is about more than deconstruction
Connect with us:
Website: https://rebuilt.life/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebuiltlife
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTh7KIzVoiJhjADYAAWP_Fg
Email Us: Hello@rebuilt.life
Robby and his friends, Stuart Wood and Nato Virto, discuss why deconstructing Christianity is often necessary, but how deconstructing differs from de-conversion. They also talk about the themes of needing other's approval, expectations and reality found in HBO’s new series Peacemaker and the need for healthy boundaries in AppleTV’s The Shrink Next Door.
Peacemaker https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13146488/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Shrink Next Door
AppleTV https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11947248/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Podcast https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15066616/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3
Mike Erre’s Podcast https://voxologypodcast.com/
Matt Chandler Responds to his Deconstruction comments https://www.instagram.com/p/CXMM2PdlfUw/
Joshua Ryan Butler’s Article https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-causes-deconstruction/
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1643996870&sr=8-1
Why America’s Nones Left Religion Behindhttps://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas-nones-left-religion-behind
In our first episode Robby, Nato, and Stu discuss Monkey Assassins, Why M. Night Shyamalan's movies are so hit or miss, the war on Christmas, and what Spiritual Formation really is. We discuss Christian Meditation and an ancient practice of reading the Bible called Lectio Divina. Also Robby talks abour riding in a car with strangers from Chicago to Cincinnati he had just met on a plane.
We discuss the Spiritual Discipline or practice of Christian Meditation and Lectio Divina.
TV and Movies We Talk About:
Old -
https://imdb.to/3K9DShQ
Hit Monkey -
https://imdb.to/3A0FKov
'Twas The Fight Before Christmas -
https://imdb.to/3qr5hEo
Books
Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard -
https://amzn.to/3I3l4Pt
Spiritual Discipline Handbook by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun -
https://amzn.to/3nsy0GP
Articles We mentioned
Sleep Blog Post -
https://bit.ly/3rg07u6
Lectio Divina Blog Post -
https://bit.ly/3fppRyG
Spiritual Discipline we talked about:
Christian Meditation
Lectio Divina
Email us at Hello at rebuilt.life
