Larger Story Messages with Dr. Larry Crabb: Recent Episodes
Dr. Larry Crabb
Dr. Larry Crabb, best-selling author & speaker guides you to improve the quality of your relationships. For more information & resources, visit: LargerStory.com
Kep, Ken, and Duncan have a candid conversation on what it means to be a Spirit-led person. Join them as they discuss the seventh and final question of the seven questions of spiritual theology: How can we cooperate with the Spirit’s work?
How is the Spirit working to implement the divine solution to our human problem? Listen to a conversation between Kep Crabb and Anthony Vartuli as they ponder this question.
Question #6 of the Seven Questions of Spiritual Theology: How is the Spirit working to implement the divine solution to our human problem? | Listen to Larry Crabb
Question #5 of the Seven Questions of Spiritual Theology: What has God done about our problems? | Listen to Kep Crabb and Sonya Reeder discuss
Don’t miss this one – what is the definition of Sin? What’s happening to our culture? Eternal life is NOT a gift from God, it’s the GIFT OF GOD!
What has gone wrong with everything? An honest discussion on how hard this life is and what the Holy Spirit really gives us.
Dr. Crabb talks about question #3 WHO ARE WE – excuse his head cold at the time – no more colds for him now – people of eternal purpose
Don’t miss this episode – a great conversation about between two brothers in Christ on who we are and what’s God doing?
Don’t miss this episode – a great conversation about between two brothers in Christ on who we are and what’s God doing?
Kep and James (two very close friends for decades) chat through their lives and discuss what is God up to as they journey together as Christian brothers.
Bio: James Shelley is a local elder and worship leader at Mountain View Church. James has been married to Brandi for 28 years and they have 5 kids.
Join 3 guys who have been journeying through a messy life as God begins to reveal what He is doing in our souls as we cling to the Cross to continue.
Bios:
Lee Hummel is a retired counselor of 24 years. He has a master’s from Philadelphia College of the Bible. He has 2 adult sons and a gorgeous granddaughter. He and his wife live in upstate New York.
Glen Urquhart has been married for 40plus years and lives with his wife in south Florida – after years in the crazy business world.
What shapes your perspective when you consider the question, “Who is God?” Karlene and Rosanne discuss how relational experiences filter our engagement with Scripture and can distort our view of God and why moving beyond mere doctrinal assent to pursuing knowing the Triune God in a personal way is propels us into the mystery of walking by faith.
Bios:
Rosanne Moore – If Jesus is Who He says He is, why doesn’t being a Christian seem to work better? More to the point, why didn’t it seem to make people better? Those were some of the questions Rosanne Moore was asking about her own life when she first encountered Dr. Larry Crabb’s book Inside Out as a teen and in its pages discovered an invitation to journey into a radically different understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, one that was focused on relationship with God rather than rule lists or behavior modification.
Drawing on her background as a writer, editor, reading instruction specialist, language arts tutor, homeschool mom, speaker, and social media marketer, Rosanne now serves as Larger Story’s Communications Director. She has run a successful small business and worked with several missions and church organizations, but her greatest delight is in listening to the unfolding story of God’s work in the lives of others and sharing her own journey of seeking God in every part of life, even (or, perhaps, especially) in our darkest nights.
Nowhere is Rosanne more passionate about seeing God’s redemption cultivated than in the lives of victims/survivors of abuse of all kinds. Her Lifeline course for women escaping domestic abuse was birthed from her personal experience, as well as out of more than two decades of advocacy work serving women and children impacted by intimate terrorism, coercive control, spiritual abuse, and sexual violence.
A single mom since 2011, Rosanne seeks to create opportunities for rich conversations with her 4 teen & college-aged kids who continually amaze, amuse, and humble her with their awesome selves and their crazy menagerie. She enjoys honest friends who are both hilarious and wise, a lapful of snuggly kitties, and a good book on a rainy day. Lily’s chocolates, Jane Austen movies, and crisp autumn days are a few of her favorite things, and music is her heart’s prayer language.
Karlene Cannon – In 2012, Karlene Cannon sat across a dinner table from Rachael and Larry Crabb and was captivated as Larry talked about his Teleios project- his dream for how his lifework and legacy of relational spiritual formation would be passed on to a new generation on a broader scale than had been possible in his lifetime. That evening eventually led to Karlene joining the staff of Larger Story as the Director of Content and Product Development, where she uses her experience in education, content development, and software business consulting to direct Larger Story’s strategy and create new products that bring to fruition the Teleios vision Larry articulated over a decade ago.
Karlene has written curriculum, developed retreats, and hosted a large Christian community group in her home in the ensuing years, but nothing has prepared her for the current task of reaching a new generation more than raising 4 children (ages 25, 21, 18, 14) in a family culture where relational formation is the norm, relational holiness is the goal, and the Holy Spirit gets all the credit. As she now launches them into a world rife with divisions on all sides, where the truth is often regarded as optional, Karlene’s vision is to reach this connected-but-lonely generation with the transforming certainty of a relational God and His Larger Story. Her passion has found an outlet in digital course development, content creation, and the kind of spiritual direction that occurs over a cup of coffee, via text, and through long conversations in the car.
Karlene loves sports (actually, just Duke basketball and whatever her sons are playing), all things vintage and historic, great books, fragrant coffee and crackling fires. She feels God’s pleasure when her home is full of courageous people sharing their hearts and lives for the glory of God and their own growth and healing.
Links:
A Different Kind of Happiness
Dr. Larry CrabbWho is God?Recording
Finding God
Walk with us as we take a deep dive into the 7 Questions of Spiritual Theology. In this session you’ll hear Kep and Kent begin to explore Question 1: Who Is God?
Bio:
Kent Denlinger served as a lead pastor of Valley Springs Fellowship in Warsaw, Indiana for 32 years. For 15 years, he also worked for NewWay Ministries as a spiritual director at the Schools of Spiritual Direction and NextStep. After retiring from the pastorate in 2018, Kent spent 5 years as a corporate chaplain in Cincinnati, Ohio where he and his wife currently reside. Kent has a Masters in Counseling degree as well as a Master of Divinity degree, both from Grace Theological Seminary. In 2010, he completed a Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Direction from Gordon-Conwell. Presently, Kent, along with his wife, Karla, are the co-founders of a nonprofit ministries called Soul Signature Ministries, which offers various kinds of spiritual direction to individuals and groups. They have two adult children and five grandchildren.
Larger Story will be going to be in Jackson Tenn., just outside the Memphis area and holding a conference called “Not Myself, By Myself” an introduction and invitation to relational discipleship on January 26 and 27, 2024.
Bio:
Duncan Sprague – Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.
Kent Denlinger – Kent Denlinger served as a lead pastor of Valley Springs Fellowship in Warsaw, Indiana for 32 years. For 15 years, he also worked for NewWay Ministries as a spiritual director at the Schools of Spiritual Direction and NextStep. After retiring from the pastorate in 2018, Kent spent 5 years as a corporate chaplain in Cincinnati, Ohio where he and his wife currently reside. Kent has a Masters in Counseling degree as well as a Master of Divinity degree, both from Grace Theological Seminary. In 2010, he completed a Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Direction from Gordon-Conwell. Presently, Kent, along with his wife, Karla, are the co-founders of a nonprofit ministries called Soul Signature Ministries, which offers various kinds of spiritual direction to individuals and groups. They have two adult children and five grandchildren.
When Dr. Larry Crabb approached Scripture, he asked the question: “What questions has God answered for us?” His study produced a framework of understanding that he called “The Seven Questions of Spiritual Theology.” This was the foundation of his Schools of Spiritual Directions training, and during 2024, Larger Story will be sharing recordings of Dr. Larry Crabb that have not previously been released. During each month this year, on our podcast, in our book club, and on our blog, we’ll be exploring the 7 questions of Spiritual Theology, why they matter, and how they can help us become people who are more like Jesus. This week’s episode provides Dr. Crabb’s introduction to the first question: “Who is God?”
An encouraging word to those who have lost loved ones or are alone during the holidays. The Best is Yet to Come.
Bios:
Ken Crabb– Ken Crabb is the youngest of Dr. Larry Crabb’s two sons. He has been married for 21 years and has three daughters. Ken and his family live in North Carolina.
Rachael Crabb – Author Rachael Crabb is a former teacher and ministry consultant who has spoken for conferences and ministry retreats worldwide. Married to Dr. Larry Crabb for over 54 yrs, she is the mother of 2, grandmother of 5, and soon-to-be a great-grandmother. She writes and co-edits for Larger Story’s blog column, “Becoming Me, Without You.”
What happens when a family decides to shift the focus of their holiday celebration from gift giving and receiving to creating memorable experiences together and sharing them with others. Join Karlene, her son Nick Cannon, and her daughter, Ivy Hill, as they talk about their journey as a family into
Christmas Different.
Bios:
Ivy Hill – In fifth grade, Ivy wrote one thing in her journal: “My goal- Get into Duke.” Seven years later, she met that goal, which tells you a lot about her enormous capacity and remarkable work ethic. But as a junior in high school, she confessed to her parents, “I have learned if I make my goal anything but loving other people, I will run right over them and do a lot of damage in the process.” And now you see a glimpse into her unusually self-aware and wisely beautiful heart.
While in high school, Ivy fell in love with two young kindergarten students who had just come to the country and spoke no English. She tutored them for 4 years and watched as the language barrier caused them to fall further behind their peers with each passing year. The pain of watching their love and excitement for learning erode as they faced overwhelming obstacles kindled a passion in Ivy to teach and help newcomers overcome the challenges of school while learning a new language.
Ivy is the oldest child of Karlene Cannon, Director of Content and Product Development for Larger Story. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 2020 with a degree in Linguistics and Neuroscience, and received her Master’s in Teaching from Union University in 2022. She married fellow Duke alumnus, Jimmy Hill, in 2020, and today they both teach high school students in Memphis Tennessee.
Nick Cannon – Growing up obliged to have conversations that matter around the dinner table, after arguments with siblings, and every Sunday with a larger community of families, Nick Cannon has reluctantly come to appreciate knowing how to deeply engage with others in any circumstance or condition of soul. Nick is the son of Karlene Cannon, Director of Content and Product Development for Larger Story. He is a senior business major at Furman University and plays football there. He is also a photographer and filmmaker and released his first documentary film in March. You can find his portfolio on Instagram @nickcann0n.
Larger Story will be going to be in Jackson Tenn., just outside the Memphis area and holding a conference called “Not Myself, By Myself” an introduction and invitation to relational discipleship on January 26 and 27, 2024.
Bio:
Duncan Sprague – Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.
Kent Denlinger – Kent Denlinger served as a lead pastor of Valley Springs Fellowship in Warsaw, Indiana for 32 years. For 15 years, he also worked for NewWay Ministries as a spiritual director at the Schools of Spiritual Direction and NextStep. After retiring from the pastorate in 2018, Kent spent 5 years as a corporate chaplain in Cincinnati, Ohio where he and his wife currently reside. Kent has a Masters in Counseling degree as well as a Master of Divinity degree, both from Grace Theological Seminary. In 2010, he completed a Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Direction from Gordon-Conwell. Presently, Kent, along with his wife, Karla, are the co-founders of a nonprofit ministries called Soul Signature Ministries, which offers various kinds of spiritual direction to individuals and groups. They have two adult children and five grandchildren.
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Welcome everyone to the Relational Spirituality podcast of Larger Story. I’m your host, Kep Crabb.
This upcoming January of 2024, on January 26th and 27th, Larger Story is going to be at Fellowship Bible Church in Jackson, Tennessee. We’ll be doing our first conference event since Dad passed away and we honored him with the Larger Story Summit in 2022, last year. We’re calling this conference, “Not Myself, By Myself: An introduction and invitation to relational discipleship.” It’s designed to encourage and invite cross generational relationships and discipleships. What does it look like? How do we pour into others in the same way that we have been poured into and continue to be poured into?
I’m joined today by two good friends and colleagues who are going to be speaking at this conference in January. Kent Denlinger and Duncan Sprague. Good to see you guys and thanks for joining me today guys.
Duncan Sprague: Thank you much.
Kent Denlinger: Glad to be here.
Kep Crabb: So I guess it’s not too it’s not too late now to say Merry Christmas. I’m allowed to say that at this point here, because we’re after Thanksgiving, actually December 1st. So Merry Christmas, you guys.
Duncan Sprague: Thank you. And to you as well.
Kep Crabb: Thank you. Let’s talk a little bit about this weekend that we’re going to be doing in January. It’s been in the works for a little bit and we’re getting excited about this. I hope that some of you people watching our podcast today can even come there in person. We’d love to see you in the Jackson, Tennessee area. It’s outside of Memphis. But let’s talk a little bit about what this weekend’s going to look like.
Both of you guys are going to be doing the majority of the talking. Kent, talk a little bit about what you’re going to be talking about this weekend and why you think it’s important.
Kent Denlinger: Let’s start with the title. Eugene Peterson said in a book talking about community, he said, “I am not myself by myself.” And that’s really true. I think most of us probably could look back across our life, whether we’ve recognized it or not, and realize how we’ve been impacted by others, maybe from a distance at times. But in my life, at least in the reason I got excited about this is because when I look back over my life, I realized that God used specifically really three, four, five individuals, probably two or three really deeply, to impact me. I wouldn’t be who I am apart from that. That’s also true with a group of friends. I realized that’s then what I do. That’s what I love to do: pour myself into younger guys. When I think about this I’ve wondered if this is part of a missing joy in the church. I wonder if older people are scared of the younger people and the new generation and younger people don’t know how to ask for help. Maybe they’re scared of the older people. And because of that, there’s a gap between the two and we’re missing something. It seems to me like what we’re missing is the opportunity to relate to people, older, younger and the same age, in ways that could be really meaningful and shape who we are and our culture just really elevates individualism in a way that I think is incredibly detrimental.
Kep Crabb: Yeah. One of the things that brings the three of us certainly in common is the fact that – I think I can speak for both of you guys and certainly myself – One of the people who has had the most impact on me has been my father. I know that’s probably true of both you guys as well. I can name a handful of other people too. There’s not many people that Dad considered his kids outside of his kids, but I think you guys were two of those. And Dunc, you spent a lot of time with Dad over the years. Talk about what you’re thinking about for this weekend in January.
Duncan Sprague: I just came across a verse in first Corinthians that really highlighted some of what I think we’ll be sharing about. It’s right in the context of Paul is writing to the Corinthian church and they’re fighting over their allegiance to Apollos or Cephas or himself. And one of the things he says in there, and this is in chapter four, the very end of it, he just says, “for though you have countless guides in Christ.” I think about that. All the countless guides I’ve had, the teachers, the lecturers, the people who I’ve come across. He says, “so you’ve had countless ones.” And I go, yeah, that’s me too. Literally over the years, the number of classes, the number of books I’ve read, I’ve had lots of guides, but then he goes on and he says, “you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me.” I love that because Paul had a certain confidence as he’s writing to these folks that he helped plant a church with. I think in terms of the different ministries Larry’s done over the last number of years, especially SSDs. Kent was significantly involved in those. We went to a handful of them. I often take credit for SSD zero because all the SSDs got numbered. But this was the one that he did on a weekly basis in a church with just a handful of us. All it did was it taught him what not to do in the end. What I love about it is that he fathered me, in not just his great successes, but also when he saw something didn’t work, he abandoned it quickly. He didn’t stick with it. There were ways that he fathered me, just like this text talks about, that only happened by spending time with him.
Kep Crabb: That’s so big. Just to clarify, the SSD stands for the School of Spiritual Direction. Dunc, if you went to school zero and Kent, you were involved in a number of schools as you and Karla were spiritual directors.
I think 78 schools is what we ended up finally doing over that 20 year period of time or so, whatever it was, something in that range. I know that dad felt just very privileged to be a part of that and to see what was happening. I was actually chatting with someone today about the SSD and how, 15 years later, they still are in touch with their triads and keep connection with that relationship, which is really cool. So Kent, talk about a little bit about that time in the SSD. We’ve talked about this a little bit before, but I actually talked about this a little bit with Trip more and having been through so many of those things. What was it like sitting in on all those SSDs in the day?
Kent Denlinger: It was a privilege. There’s nothing like repetition. The more you hear something, I don’t think there was a school that I went to that I wasn’t provoked. I don’t care how many you went to, it was a sacred space, like nothing else I’ve ever really been to. It feels like God was always doing something, meeting people.
I know a personal friend of mine went to it. He’d be an engineer type and not the type that you would think would talk about dreams. Yet it was at the school that he encountered God in a dream. I think he’d probably say, I’m not sure I’ve ever had another dream that I’ve encountered God in. So I think it was just always shaping. Larry was always rethinking. No matter how many times you hear it, the Spirit of God has new eyes for you to see something about yourself, which is one of the beauties of what God does.
You know how it is. You can read a text for 20 years and then suddenly you read it and you see something or you see it in a way you’ve never seen it before. That’s what the school did. It created such categories, such ways of thinking about the story that God is telling.
I used to get on your dad because he’d say, I’m not a theologian. And I’d say, yes, you are. You know the scriptures like nobody I’ve ever known and you bring your life to it. And because of that, you’re truly a theologian. I know what he was trying to say, but it was such a grounded model in theory and was so grounded in the scriptures. I think that’s part of what created space for the Spirit of God.
Kep Crabb: I’ve had several conversations in the last several days about what that has meant to people. It just makes me miss him all the more. I don’t want to start crying now in the middle of this podcast. I just miss that guy every day and just what he really was about.
I remember talking with Trip about this time at the SSD and he said the first time he heard the seven questions, he thought, Oh, that’s neat. And by about the 200 or whatever it was in him. It was part of him. It became who he was. One of the things that we’ve had a chat about and I’ve talked with both you guys about is how we can offer what dad was really trying to do with the SSDs to different organizations and churches today.
One of the dreams of mine, and I know of Kent’s as well, and Dunc, I think you too, is, how can we take what we have learned from the SSDs, the schools of spiritual direction and offer those back to the communities of people where they’re doing life together? That’s one of the intents of this first conference. It’s not gonna be an SSD, it’s just gonna be a two day conference on the 26th and 27th. Friday evening, the 26th, and then the morning through lunch on the 27th. So it’s not going to be like an SSD, but I think it’s going to set the groundwork for some of those kinds of relational connections and opportunities. I’m really hoping that’s what happens out of this weekend that we get a chance to go to.
What are some of the things you guys hope happens this weekend, when we go to Jackson, Tennessee to talk about relationships and discipleship?
Kent Denlinger: Let me just back up just for a minute, because I want to come back to the SSD school of spiritual directions. I would just say part because it fits what we want to be about here in Jackson, and that’s that part of the beauty of the schools for Karla and I. It was a time that we would interact with Larry outside of the classroom, outside of the structure. We’re meeting with people and we’re talking through that.
One very specific example, one time Larry and I were just chatting. It seemed like a normal conversation about the day. I was talking through a struggle of meeting with people. Larry looked at me and he said a sentence I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Kent, the difference between you and me is not giftedness. It’s not knowledge.” – Which, I would argue both of those. – But he said, “the real difference is I’m more comfortable in the mess than you are.” And that sentence just pierced me. I thought, that’s really true. An example of what we want this conference to be about is to help us realize that those kinds of conversations and those kinds of interactions come out of normal events, normal stuff going on. But then God gives me or you a moment of wisdom and we say something that the Spirit embeds in the heart of another person.
I really want that weekend to create a vision of your life. You might feel like you’re at the end of your life, but you could listen to another young person or middle aged person. You could interact with them in a way in which God could use just a sentence. There’s so much joy in that. I want to incite people’s hunger for a joy that I think we’re meant to experience in community as we connect our lives to other people and share our stories and talk about what God’s doing in our hearts and listen hard for what God’s doing to another person.
Kep Crabb: I love what you say about the mess and Dad’s whole attitude of the mess. We’ve been chatting with some people and I ran across a quote of Dad’s, you guys may remember this. The quote was, “Propositional truth unbloodied by relationship leaves you arrogant and puffed up.”
How do you dive into that mess with the attitude of, I’m in it with you? That’s just the way that dad really made me feel, I think made us feel. He was so for us, had such a vision for us. Dunc, what are some of the things you hope to see happen?
Duncan Sprague: I have a couple of thoughts to just jump out from what Kent just said.
One comes out of 1 Thessalonians 2:8, where Paul says, “I love you so much that I gave you not only the gospel, but my very life.” I’ve often wanted to say, probably in the original Greek, it said my very messy life. I wanted to give you the gospel that is only lived out in a messy life. I don’t know a Bible that is unmessy. I’ve often held my Bible up and I’ve gone, here’s where it works. Right here at the beginning and right here at the last couple chapters, everything else in the middle is just a bloody mess. It’s one where we get to live in the middle.
Your dad stole the line from your grandfather. The Bible or the gospel is a love story that begins with a divorce and it’s that middle of the animosity, the enmity that’s built between man and woman, man and himself, man and nature. That’s the real challenge of being a disciple. Oftentimes we can have good theology. This is where I think I love what Kent just said. Larry was a theologian, he was always thinking theologos, God thoughts, God thinking. He was always thinking about God.
Even the seven questions are theological questions, but rather than throwing them in the theological categories. One of those questions is, what went wrong? And we have a whole theological category of hamartiology. So we make it sound scholastic and important to confuse people, but he would just say, no, it’s relational sin. It’s the fact that I got so self absorbed with the fall that there’s been a real problem that’s been created.
That’s some of what we’re going to be moving into this weekend . We’re in a sense, we’re always asking those seven questions. Larry would often preface them with, there are a lot of questions that God didn’t answer but there are a few that He did. When He answers those, those should be the ones that we lean forward in our chair going, if God answered this, it seems like it is really important.
One of those is, What went wrong? But also, what is God doing about it right now? He’s provided His Spirit who dwells in us for the sake of others. That was some of Larry’s core thinking, that God lives in me to get into you. That what you need most, God has already put in me as part of this movement of God but I can get in the way of that. Your sin can get in the way of that, your relational sin. So part of it is taking a deeper dive to say, what’s gone wrong, but what has God done? What are the provisions that He’s made available?
This is what I loved about Larry, he would drop some of the theological terms. So rather than a systematic theology or a covenant theology or whatever, he would say, no, it’s a relational theology. He would tag the word relational in front of it. We are in good form and have done the same. We’ve called this an introduction and an invitation to relational discipleship, because so many times we get lost in discipleship as a course, as a number of disciplines and strategies that we implement, and we lose the fact that discipleship, when Jesus did it, He came to put His Father on display. The very nature of His own discipleship from the father may seem strange to say it that way, but it was to put God on display by coming and living incarnate in this world in relationship with us.
That’s really what we want to capitalize on while we’re there is talking in the ways that discipleship has gotten shut down in our own culture because we tend to move the generations away from one another. We split off the youth, we split off the adults, we split off the elderly, and we say that they have their own needs. Jesus oftentimes said, no, this is where your life on life happens. Where you share the gospel and your messy lives is when someone like Larry, a number of steps down the road from us would come and launch us as young men. And now we, as older men now, are doing the same.
Kent Denlinger: I want to piggyback on what Duncan said, which you just said so well, Duncan, you’ve just got a great gift with words.
We’re trying to enliven or re-energize the whole idea of the priesthood of believers here. Larry said this often, there are no experts in matters of the soul. I don’t care how many degrees you have, how much training you have. I used to stand up front in church year after year and tell people, you know what I feel when people come into my office, the same thing you feel, I don’t have a clue what to do. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I don’t know where this needs to go. But the Spirit of God does, and the Spirit of God is in us. He’s in me, and He’s in you, and He’s in the person, hopefully, that I’m having breakfast with. What does it mean to really believe that the Spirit can give us moments of wisdom, can give us the right question to ask? That emphasis on questions feels so important.
We want to, at this conference, remind us that part of this relational Discipleship thing is being a genuinely curious person about another person’s soul. I want to be a friend to another person’s soul. I don’t know what’s going on, but I sure can care. I can ask questions that are coming out of whatever the person’s talking about and hope that somehow the Spirit of God is here. He’s doing something that I may not be able to see, but I believe that this time really matters, spending time with another person with some intentionality really matters.
I can tell you a story from years ago when I first started counseling. I was 25 or 26 years old and I sat with a woman for a year. She came in one day and said she had to leave. I said let’s have one more meeting. She came back and I said, what’s been helpful to you about this time? I was looking for a pat on the back. I wanted her to say, Hey man, you gave me this thought and this wisdom. I’ll never forget that she sat forward in her chair and she looked at me and she said, you’re the first man who’s ever sat across from me. looked me in the eyes and listened. I was disappointed, and then it dawned on me. That’s what we can do for each other. Presence matters. God with us, Emmanuel, God always promised His presence and I can be present with another person. That requires some death to myself, but I can be present. And so can you, and the ordinary person, which we all are, can be present to another person in a way that the Spirit of God can empower, and that’s what we really want to recapture.
Kep Crabb: I love the thought of the ordinary man, because that’s just how I feel. I’ve always loved to think, and I’ve talked with both you guys about this a bit, the same Holy Spirit that dwelt in my father dwells in us. We have the same opportunity for that kind of impact because Dad would be the first to tell you. it wasn’t him. He can’t do anything. He’s just a vessel. He’s a tool, but hearing you talk, it’s getting me so excited about this weekend.
Some people are probably asking, what are these 7 questions that they keep talking about? We’re going to be diving into that in 2024 as well. I’m talking about the 7 questions of spiritual theology. We’re going through some of that in the next podcast session. So we hope that you continue to join in with us.
Before we wrap up guys, is there anything that you want to say to the people who are listening today?
Duncan Sprague: I’d just say, I’m so excited to have this opportunity. I remember the last number of Larry’s years. There was lots of talk about his legacy. He had this recurring dream that he would talk about this nightmare. Actually, he would dream about putting his hand in the water and he would see a displacement while his hand was in the water and he could see ripples going out, but there was always this fear when he pulled it out, the ripple stopped.
And it was like, as long as I’m present, there’s a, there’s an effect going on, but when I pull out, when I pull my hand out of the water, I no longer have an influence. What I love right now is that as we sit here, we’re free ripples of a man’s influence on us. And he, in like mind, goes back to other men, fathers of his own soul.
The piece that I am so excited about is people catching a vision for a relational revolution, that God really wants to transform His body. Not by more slick services. I’m all for a great service where worship is going on, but I remember just this last weekend, I spent time with a 95 year old mentor of mine who is still sharp as a tack, and one of the things that grieved him, he says, we now have a church that loves to worship, but doesn’t know much about reverence. We don’t tremble much. He was the one who years ago taught me the very beginning of Isaiah 66, where God is rebuking Israel saying, where’s the house that you can build for me? Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. I don’t esteem the one that is going to do all these great things for me, but then He gives us a hint. But the one that I esteem is the one who is humble, who is contrite, which is another word for sorrows, and who trembles at my word. I hope that this is an opportunity for us to learn what it means to tremble and trust a God in a world where the world we live in right now is more messed up than I’ve ever been aware of.
Yet in the middle of that, God has made it possible for us to trust Him, not without the absence of fear, but movement in the presence of fear. What I’m most excited about is actually being able to look at God’s provision, not just being overwhelmed by the world’s mess, but even more so being overwhelmed by a God who is incomprehensible in His goodness, in His kindness. I’m thrilled for an opportunity to see a new way of living and relating that we were actually discipled in.
Kent Denlinger: My mind goes to a phrase in Jeremiah 2 where it’s profoundly sad to me where the Lord basically says that those who pursued worthless things or worthlessness became worthless. I’m afraid that a lot of what we’re pursuing in our lives, even as Christians, is leaving us as shallow people. I think we long for more purpose. It’s the difference that your dad would say between living between our birth and our death and living between the cross and His coming with purpose.
I think this idea that we’re trying to espouse, I don’t know how well we’ll do it, but at least you’ll get a feel and a passion for what we long to see. Could we recapture a purpose to our lives that really matters? When I look back over what I experienced from people like your dad and a couple of others two words come to mind, I felt enjoyed. I felt believed in, at least as a young man. It was the first time I felt believed in by anybody. I think we can offer that to younger people who feel the same void in their lives, who feel, does anybody really like me, enjoy me, do I have anything, and is it possible that I could be part of something bigger than myself and what I’m chasing, because I don’t want to be worthless. I don’t want to have a worthless life and I want to invite people to capture a vision where they could join the purposes of the kingdom in pouring their life into another.
Dunc already said this, but man, I’ve been reading through first Thessalonians as well. As soon as you pointed out those verses, I thought that that was Paul’s joy. What’s my joy? What’s my crown? It’s you, it’s people. What will we have to show for an eternity? I think number one, it’s going to be the people that we pour our lives into. We’re taking this time to try and call all of us to say, Hey, let’s get our priorities going in the right direction. It’s about people and that whole relational thing that’s not just a word to us. It’s a way of life.
Kep Crabb: You guys have gotten me excited for this weekend in January and I just really appreciate both of you and your willingness to continue to move in the direction that Dad has taught all of us to move in. Let’s just continue to put Jesus on display. How do we relate and how are we presenting Jesus to others by who we are today? I love what you just said, what do you take when you’re gone and what do you leave are some of the things I thought about as well. I’m really excited for this weekend, guys.
I just want to thank you for joining us again, folks. It’s gonna be in Jackson, Tennessee at Fellowship Bible Church on January 26th and 27th. Be looking for promotional emails from Larger Story for that. If you like what you heard today, please click the like button, tell your friends about it. Maybe they can come join and get a chance to participate in relational spirituality. Have a great day.
Kent Denlinger: I’d add one more thing if it’s still recording. If you’re an SSD alumnus, let’s have a reunion in a two hour to eight hour driving range. Come on down and join us.
Kep Crabb: We can do something virtually too. We can plug in 20 or 30 people on a webinar. If we want to have some conversation too, that’d be fun. You guys have made me excited about the SSD again and thinking through that.
A lot of things are happening here at Larger Story and we’re super excited about this first event that we’re doing in January. We hope you can join us for that. Thanks for joining me. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you all next Tuesday.
What happens when 4 members of one family process the ups and downs of their story together? Spiritual formation occurs, and an amazing book is published! Join Rosanne Moore as she talks today with Dr. Stephanie Holmes about how learning to embrace neurodiversity within her family has drawn all of them together to become more like Jesus.
Bio: Stephanie C. Holmes is formerly a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in the state of NC. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Campbell University, her master’s in counseling from Liberty University and her doctorate in education from Abilene Christian University. She is an ordained minister, author, autism researcher, speaker, and certified autism specialist. When Sydney was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, her world and focus changed from a thriving marriage and family therapy practice to a world of Individualized Education Programs, 504 educational plans, and understanding how to help students and individuals with challenges and needs in the classroom and the church setting. Today, she pulls from personal as well as professional experience to focus on neurodiverse marriages and family systems. She is the owner and founder of Autism Spectrum Resources for Marriage & Family, LLC, and she and her husband Dan co-founded The International Association of NeuroDiverse Christian Marriage, LLC and the podcast NeuroDiverse Christian Couples.
Show Note Links:
To hear more of their family’s journey, look for their book Embracing the Autism Spectrum: Finding Hope & Joy Navigating a Neurodiverse Family Journey.
Training and Tips are found on her YouTube: Dr. Stephanie C. Holmes by Dr. Holmes and her daughter, Sydney Holmes.
Emotionally Healthy Relationshipsby Peter Scazzero
Called to Peace Ministries
Chris Moles
Transcript
Rosanne Moore: Hi, Larger Story audience. We’re so happy to have you with us again today. I’m Rosanne Moore, your host today for the Relational Spirituality podcast. I have a very special guest today. Dr. Stephanie Holmes was a schoolmate of mine in high school and we’ve touched base at various times over the years. She is Dr. Stephanie Holmes. She’s a board certified counselor, transitioning to a Christian life coach. You are an ordained minister. You are a certified autism specialist and autism researcher. Stephanie, I’m so happy that you’re here with me today. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: I’m so happy to reconnect.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, it’s great. Stephanie has actually been very helpful to me at various points over the years when I’ve had questions, because my oldest child is on the spectrum. I was wading through other things and she was looking into the neuroscience and from a counselor’s perspective and all of that. She offered some good, helpful points at various crossroads for me.
Stephanie, you wrote a book in 2015 about your experience of having a child on the spectrum and what that was like, not just between the two of you, but in the context of church and school and society in general. The challenge of how the response was to the fact that Sidney walked through the world differently. But you’ve come back and you’ve written a new book as a family embracing the autism spectrum, finding hope and joy, navigating the neuro diverse family journey. And you did it together as a family. Would you tell me some more about what brought that on? Why the family book?
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: So back in 2015 I waited to even put that one out because I wanted my oldest daughter to be out of high school, out of respect for her. She didn’t want some stuff about her childhood being written when she was still in a vulnerable space around bullies and not nice people. Really, the focus of that book was: I grew up in circles that were based on the prosperity doctrine. Back then, and it still is alive and well now, it’s not only that, if you name it and claim it. The darker side of prosperity gospel is if something is wrong, or if you are not financially blessed, or if you have a diagnosis, then you are then cursed or not in God’s favor or not under His protection. That being a foundation when my daughter was diagnosed and I had done all the good Christian things and got all my gold stars in church and school and Christian college. I did the Christian girl thing. This was not supposed to be happening. So from the infertility journey to then having a child diagnosed and not knowing what to do and just how the church received that and not having support, I was in a faith crisis for a while.
That book originally is me and that and going through infertility and going through this diagnosis and rediscovering God, not based on church or people who don’t represent Him well, but understanding who God is and really seeing that I wouldn’t have gotten through those times without His help.
I was just thinking this year, it’s time for a revamp of that book. At the same time, I was having those thoughts. My oldest daughter said, “Mom, I turned 25 this year and there’s a whole lot more of that story. You left me in middle school, high school. It’s really your version in your eyes of the story. I’d really like to talk about personal impact.” So she and I were going to make it mother-daughter. Then my husband said, “I’ve been diagnosed in the process too. And we didn’t know we were in a neurodiverse marriage. I really like to talk to dads and husbands and talk about my journey.” Then my youngest said, “What about a sibling’s perspective and my own ADHD? Because sometimes ADHD doesn’t get as much attention as autism.” So that set us on the path of writing this book together.
An unintended, but positive consequence was it really helped us see everyone’s journey from another person’s perspective and bridge some relationship. There’s been some healing there. My husband said, “Steph, I wouldn’t have thought to say these things and process things out loud unless we had a reason to write them down.” But no. One of my daughters said, “Some of the things Dad said, I really needed to hear, and now it’s there in this book.”
It was a long process when you’re taking four authors and integrating a story. We also wanted to take it beyond a story to invite the reader to have spiritual formation. So there’s devotionals and questions like: stop and pause. Is your view of God skewed? Is there someone in your life causing you pain? Where do you need support? What’s the next action step?
The girls, I love their transformational stuff, because Erica had to deal with having anger in her heart for her sister, and Sydney struggled with the verse about being fearfully and wonderfully made. Everyone’s perspective and spiritual formation from the book I think is something that’s unique. I think it would help a lot of marriages and families and people serving them to integrate faith in their neurodiverse journey.
Rosanne Moore: I was looking at some of these chapter titles and I just thought, this is so rich. “Unrealistic Life Maps: Trusting God’s Guidance on an Unforeseen Journey.” “When Hope Fades: Embracing God’s Presence in Moments of Despair and Hopelessness.” I thought, everybody who’s been a believer for very long, the terrain of their journey may be slightly different, but everybody’s been at these places.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Different trials, different seasons.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah. In this book the backdrop is autism. Those were the shaping events for you guys. But the spiritual journey that you are on was so much deeper and it’s very universal. That was part of the reason I really wanted you on here, both because as a mother. Actually, my oldest son is on the spectrum. I have a child with ADHD like you do and your younger daughter has ADHD. I have two children with dyslexia and one of them had a speech impediment as well. So we’ve had to work through all of those things. And there is a very real challenge, I think, for kids to feel defined by what they feel like is a deficit. I don’t think the church always handles it well, for reasons like you were talking about, sometimes it’s theological reasons, but sometimes it’s just things like not understanding and anticipating and therefore expecting everybody to fall in certain parameters in terms of how things work in a group or things like that. Often special needs families just end up having to back out or get lost in the shuffle because it’s too hard to stay connected or because judgments are made.
That was one big thing I did try when I was dealing with a new situation; I set it up by saying, “This is my son who’s going to be involved. He is on the autism spectrum. He’s very high functioning.” I’d start with, “He’s great at all of these things. This is the way he does need extra support and we’re really excited we’re going to be a part of this.” Most of the time, if people knew what was going on, they were willing to be supportive. Of course, if you don’t have a diagnosis, it’s really hard, but if they don’t know, then they’re far more prone to assume behavior issues instead of recognizing sensory things.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Right. And disrespect and dishonor and all of the D’s. One of my friends, who’s also a mom of someone on the spectrum, said, “You’ve got to know the D’s. What really is disrespect, disobedience and dishonor? And what’s really disorder, diagnosis and difference? Because if you confuse those 2 things, you can’t really punish a difference, a sensory issue. Can a person on the spectrum and ADHD be disrespectful and dishonoring? Of course they can, but in the moment when they’re dysregulated. That’s very confusing in church settings, especially because I’m Gen X and most of the teachers would have been boomer or older. There would have been a, “Look me in the eye. I told you to do this one time, sit down, stop asking questions.” If you have that kind of leadership with a neurodivergent child, which could be any form of learning processing, ADHD, autism. If you think about what church is supposed to be for our kids and their discipleship groups, whether it’s Awanas or Rangers or Missionettes or whatever your program is, there’s a learning aspect. There’s reading, writing, listening, and sitting still; making sure they understand the concept.
All kids are black and white thinkers, but autistic kids are super black and white thinkers. So do they really understand the concept? Asking questions is not being argumentative. It’s, I don’t understand, please tell me more. I’ll never forget this. My child was eight years old and she came home and said, “I don’t believe in Jesus and God anymore after today’s lesson at church.” I was internally, “Don’t freak out.” But I asked her questions. She said, “We read the scripture today and it was a translation that said when Jesus was in the grave, He slept.” She had said – and this is eight year old reasoning – “If Jesus didn’t die and He just slept, He didn’t rise again and He’s not really the savior. Therefore, I don’t believe in Him.” I was like, “Okay, let’s get another translation out and read the different ways. Slept sometimes meant death in ancient times.”
We had to really do that. If she had not said that, that was already starting to cement in her head. “Church is a lie. Scripture is a lie. Jesus never died, He just slept. I sleep and get up. That’s not dying and rising again.” At eight years old, we had to double back with different translations. What a Greek word meant there, and how it was translated into English, for an eight year old to understand it. Then she was like, “Oh, okay. So Jesus died and rose again. He’s the Savior again. I believe.”
We have to really make sure what’s happening at church and at home, we ask, “What did you hear? What does that mean? Let’s circle back and talk about some of these things.” Please answer my child’s question at church y’all. Please answer her questions.
Rosanne Moore: For sure. Oh my goodness. One of the things I can remember when Michael was… probably two years old because Anita Grace was a newborn. We were making cranberry orange bread and I had him put the cranberries into the food processor and as I turned to get another ingredient, he dumped them all back out. Then all of a sudden I realized, he looked very happy and smiley and he started putting them back in. He was shape sorting. He had a shape sorter, he was shape sorting. That was my first picture in my head very clearly of: this child always has a reason for what he’s doing, but how he’s looking at the world is very different from how I am.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: It could’ve looked like disobedience. It could’ve looked like wrecking the project. It could have looked like just being contrary.
Rosanne Moore: Being curious at that point and asking the question, “What are you thinking? What were you doing? What are you doing? Why don’t you believe in Jesus? What was said in Sunday school?” is really important instead of panicking.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Internally I was panicking. I was totally in freak out panic mode.
Rosanne Moore: I’m sure
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: We are too young for a faith crisis.
Rosanne Moore: That’s so good. You brought up the whole issue of relationality because your response had to be instead of authoritarian, “This is what we believe the Bible says.” You instead engaged her question and explored where the thought was coming from. And then you could trace it back.
I think that’s one of the things that Dr. Larry Crabb talked about a lot. He talks a lot in his books about relational holiness, that being curious, following where the Spirit is going, actually listening and honoring the person who’s in front of you by engaging. That it’s not a matter of teaching. It’s finding out what’s happening inside the person in front of you, trusting that the Spirit of God is at work in both of you. You want to follow that instead of just assuming or trying to pour into somebody else.
What’s that been like in your journey? I know we’ve talked a little bit and you had your journey of finding out the external things about sensory disorders and how that works, but it’s always been in a Christian context of, what does this mean as far as relating to one another and loving each other and spiritual formation?
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: I think, back in my late twenties, early thirties as a young mom and kids early diagnosed and just trying to figure out like, how do I help each child reach their potential? I always would say to my oldest, “Autism is a part of you, but it doesn’t define you.” Or sometimes I would say, “Do you have autism or does autism have you today? It’s a piece of you, don’t deny that part of your identity.” So we got to understand that.
Erica with her ADHD was more inattentive, not really hyperactive or getting in trouble. She was usually the favorite child in any school or church activity, whereas Sidney was usually like, “Does she have to come back? Can you stay with her?” They had completely different experiences at church
I think then, I was in survival mode, I would call it. I was just trying to help my kids and help them reach their potential.I neglected their relationship to each other a lot. I wish for all the therapies that we had, I wish I could go back and do it again, because their relationship fell apart over the years. And I missed that. I also missed that because Erica was more compliant, a people pleaser, I didn’t ask her as many questions. Sydney was obvious if she was melting down or dysregulated, it was obvious. Erica wouldn’t, she wasn’t a squeaky wheel. I did not do my due diligence to say, “How are you doing? How did that interaction affect you?” So that was missing.
My husband and I were just talking about this week, where did we really start emotionally healthy spirituality? Because we grew up in a holiness context. It’s, how much of your shoulders are showing and your knees are showing or are you going to church? Are you reading your Bible? Are you serving the church for so many hours? We grew up learning that holiness is being set apart by doing and looking different, instead of relational love and loving each other. There wasn’t abuse or anything in our family and our home, but we weren’t relating well. It was really during this time of trauma when we were displaced from our home, because of a tree.
When you get to a place where you have no home and all of your belongings are gone and you have no vehicles, talk about being totally reliant on God for everything. It really put us – and then COVID. We were locked in the house essentially with two kids in different spaces in two different schools. We picked up Emotionally Healthy Relationships by the Scazzero’s. We’ve started teaching that and we started practicing those tools with each other and teaching other couples how to do that.
Each of our children had a “Come to Jesus moment” with us where they wanted to tell us some things. Because of that, we didn’t go into the authoritative, “I’m the parent. How dare you speak that to me?” But, “Okay, something’s really going on. There’s pain here. We’ve missed something here. Let’s listen incarnationally as theScazzero’s would say, and ask questions, be curious.” We say that all the time, be curious and humble, not prideful and entitled.
If you’re entitled, and you think you already know everything, and that you can’t learn something from the younger generation, that’s going to be a block, because the younger generation wants authenticity. They like organic stuff. They like feeling like they can impact you as much as you’re impacting them. They want that reciprocity and mutuality and relationship. They’re not as hierarchical as some of us grew up in. They want to be part of the discussion. Changing that learning mindset and learning to relate and ask questions.
The book just finished it off with a nice bow to help us really see each other’s perspectives better. But it’s definitely been a journey that holiness and set apart is also back to what Jesus said, “By this, they will know that you are my disciples: how you love one another.” Not how you serve your church, not how you read your Bible and get your gold stars, but how you treat the people in your marriage, in your home, and the people God’s entrusted you. Start there. That was really transformative for us.
Rosanne Moore: Not whether or not you preach all the right sermon points.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: The younger generation is looking. They are watching that what you’re saying and what you’re doing match. One of the biggest things that I’m working on with kids who are deconstructing right now is: “My mom or dad was one way at church. The best volunteer, smiley, everybody loved them. But it was a completely different temperament and mood at home. If I could have lived with the person I saw at church, that’s one thing. But the person I see at home and how she speaks to us or lies on the phone or gets out of things or is harsh with each other. My parents’ marriage did not reflect anything that I was hearing about how a marriage and family should be.” I think that’s why this younger generation isn’t marrying, they’re living together. When I’m talking to them, the under-thirties, they didn’t see modeled in their parents what they were hearing at church was supposed to be a Godly marriage and family. That disconnect and cognitive dissonance is part of a lot of the deconstruction that we’re seeing right now.
Rosanne Moore: I agree. I think I’m seeing that. I’m working with a lot of women who are saying, “ I did all the things. I stayed sexually pure. I married a Christian. I did all the things and I ended up in an abusive marriage which was a disaster. And now not only am I divorced or trying to figure out what to do with this marriage that’s destroying me, but my kids don’t want to have anything to do with marriage because even though we have a 40 year marriage, it’s a nightmare and they know that.”
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: If that’s marriage, I don’t want it. No thank you.
Rosanne Moore: Exactly. When we miss the heart of the gospel – the fact that we are saved to become like Jesus in the way that we live, not in a checklist way like you’re talking about, but in the way that we treat other people and the way that we value other people – what motivates us? Because sometimes we have to say things that are hard to hear, but is the motivation for that the well being of the other person or is there entitlement involved? Things like that are really important.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: That leads me to this special niche that we find ourselves in. A lot of times when a child is diagnosed on the spectrum, a parent or a grandparent has it too, because it’s 80 percent hereditary. We are working with what we are calling neurodiverse Christian couples. A little nuance here is like when I gave that story about Sydney and what she heard at church. Adults on the spectrum are also black and white and literal concrete thinkers. Sometimes a verse like, “Your body is not your own.” In 1st Corinthians, or “Women should be silent,” in Peter or “Wives submit to your husband,” in Ephesians 5, these very literal topics are taken. That’s already in some of our church settings, there’s rules and roles, and you follow the rules and roles, but take out more standard deviation here on our graph of someone who is on the spectrum and is a black and white thinker and was brought up in that church culture. That is usually setting up the household to be under a lot of control. Especially if the dad is on the spectrum, because if the rules mean this and the Bible says this, your feelings and your desires and what you want does not matter. Then add on top of that, I truly believe if I don’t thank you or be harsh with you God is going to be mad at me.
So I’ve got a black and white thinker who’s taking the Word as a weapon instead of a tool. And then I believe if I don’t, God will be mad at me. We have a problem in our neurodiverse Christian families if they’re operating that way. Everything you just said the wife said, “He was a Christian, we are pure and modest, we’re raising our kids well, we homeschooled, we did all the things that conservative Christianity told us to do, and I’m being emotionally abused. And I talk to the guy and this is his mindset. “I’ve never cheated on her. I bring home a paycheck. I don’t go anywhere after hours. So when I come home and I don’t help her do whatever, that’s her job, because she’s the woman. It’s okay you didn’t hit her or you didn’t sleep around.” But there’s emotional neglect and relational neglect and there’s abandonment and there’s rejection and all of those internally.
Research is showing us that emotional and verbal and psychological abuse do the same damage to your brain as physical assaults. One author is calling it domestic silence instead of domestic violence. Your brain has pain. Trauma is trauma, whether it’s physical trauma or another type of trauma. That is not being talked about in our churches because a lot of the women that I worked with their pastors will say, “Then you just need to suffer. You need to take up your cross and you just need to be a better wife,” The “do more” mentality instead of calling the husband into task and saying, “You’re not loving your wife. Some men in the church need to gather around you and help form a community and group identity on how do we help you love your wife and children?” Instead we’re afraid we’re going to lose a tither or a head of households going to leave the church and we’re not doing that level of work.
That’s one of my little soap boxes I get up on: if we’re really going to teach community, pastors, lay counselors, you’re going to have to do the hard work. When someone says “I’m being abused and harmed and neglected, and my kids are being physically psychologically and emotionally abused,” we have to take that seriously and we need to teach relational spirituality and not just holiness rules. That’s this huge issue. There’s so many divorces in my neurodiverse Christian couples, because at some point she’s like, “I’m out. I tap out. I can’t. My kids are not even respecting me because of the verbal and psychological abuse I take under the guise of submission. They don’t respect me. If that’s marriage, I don’t want marriage.”
It’s creating a lot of cracks in the family. I feel like the church really should be a hub of teaching more about relationships and spirituality, love, and that generosity and charity start at home before you’re volunteering at our church and being in any ministry. How’s it going with your marriage and family?
Rosanne Moore: Absolutely. You talked about the neuroscience. It’s interesting to me that there’s so much pressure that as soon as a woman comes forward or she comes to her pastor, usually what happens is all the things you’re talking about. “What are you doing to try to get him to be better? What are you doing? How did you pray more? You love him more. You do these things to try to get him to be better.” But what’s happening neurologically, the woman who is abused emotionally, her brain scans are like those of a prisoner of war. If we have a prisoner of war, somebody who’s been highly trained to withstand enemy torture and imprisonment, we don’t expect them to escape on their own from that, we believe that we have to go in and we believe it’s our responsibility to go after them and secure them and their wellbeing. The expectation that a woman should just stay in that situation that is so damaging and should just take it and nobody’s coming around her to protect and to intervene and to hold accountable is just wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels and it’s a misrepresentation of the heart of God for the oppressed. And it does no favors for the one who is not loving. That’s the other thing. It’s not just about the victim, the woman or the children. It can be a man in some cases, but statistically, it’s far more frequently the women and children. It also does no favors for the abuser who is going to stand before God and give an account one day and in the meantime, whose prayers are being hindered for not loving his wife.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Sometimes the hard thing – I guess if you’re a man, you don’t understand this, but if you’re a male pastor, understand the risk involved for a woman to leave. Especially if she is not the breadwinner, has homeschooled, doesn’t have a career skill and then could possibly lose her church community on top of it. In the time of need and pain, a pastor or an elders board is applying pressure and she tends to be the one excommunicated, not the one who was perpetrating the abuse, harm, or neglect. That adds a double injury. Now we have faith hurt and spiritual abuse and religious abuse. That’s what the kids see, right? The kids are watching and they’re like, “Wow, mom is trying to do what’s right for us and the church or the leadership is saying otherwise.” That’s not helping that next generation and what they’re seeing on who is God the Father. A loving father versus, you didn’t follow the rules, you got a divorce and it’s not adultery.
I heard this line from a pastor one time and it made me so mad. He said, “We have to pastor both of them.” I was like, I get that. You want to minister to both of them, but that might mean one gets to be ministered to in the church body and one is ministered to one on one over coffee. The one who is being abused or perpetrated against should not be the one kicked out of church or made to feel less than. You can still minister to him one on one on the phone, through coffee, during office hours, and say, “This is part of the Matthew principle. Someone came to you, you didn’t listen. Two people came to you, now we’re going before church leadership. So now it’s time for you not to be here until you change your heart and mindset and love your wife and family well.”
That is extremely complicated with a black and white concrete thinker when they are taking scripture out of context or too black and white. Again, if you stand on thinking, “I’m right because the Bible and God tells me” and your wife keeps saying, “You’re hurting me, you’re abusing me. I feel neglected by you. This marriage is killing me.” Those are the women I work with having an autoimmune disorder or have some kind of thyroid issue, something that is stress induced. And they’re still being told, “You just have to figure it out. You’re just going to have to choose your husband or choose the marriage to the detriment of your own body to the detriment of your own psychological and spiritual maturity.”
So I challenge that and say, “At the same time, somebody’s got to be parenting these children and someone’s got to still be around to be healthy to be the parent to the kids. So what does that mean for you? How are you going to be emotionally healthy and continue to work with the kids if you can’t even get out of bed in the morning because you’re in so much pain, psychologically, physically or emotionally?” That part is just so missed. Our clergy really needs to be updated on the neuroscience of abuse in all forms. We need to get out of the mindset that adultery is the only way out of marriage. If there’s abuse and addiction and it’s unrepentant, you’ve got to walk alongside the one who was being perpetrated against and not empower the one who was doing those things.
Rosanne Moore: Exactly. Amen. Have you worked at all with Called to Peace Ministries or Chris Moles?
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: I have not
Rosanne Moore: They’ve done a lot of work. Chris Moles works with abusers a lot, and one of the things he says is, “The major mistake the pastors make is like hearing the clopping of hooves on the cobblestones and thinking it’s a horse when it’s a zebra.” They hear certain things and they project the idea of what would be true in a good marriage. They don’t understand that the dynamic is one of control rather than love. Then they put the burden on the victim and they enable the perpetrator without even realizing that they’re doing it.
Understanding that, I think that there’s a huge problem in understanding what the dynamics of abuse actually look like. I know when I was going through things, I was trying to figure out what was happening. I didn’t want a separation, but it was looking like that was going to be necessary for safety. The thing that Larry said to me was, “Rosanne, it’s never right for a believer to kill a marriage. But when the spouse has, with their selfishness and their entitlement, killed a marriage, you’re allowed to bury it.”
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Right. Because if we think about the breaking of the vow, here’s where people don’t understand. When you make your vow, it’s I, so and so, take you to love honor and cherish. That is the vow. The next part is the when. In good and bad, and all of that forsaking all others. So the vow was broken under the love, honor, and cherish piece. Forsaking on others is very important to a covenant marriage, but that’s not all of the vow that we usually vow in a Christian marriage. The opposite of love, honor, and cherish, you have apathy, dishonor, and not cherishing or not showing love. Sometimes that is abuse as well. We get all caught up in the adultery part, but wait a minute. Where’s the love, honor, cherish piece that was the vow and the promise that was made? That’s what’s broken. The vow is broken then, not just with an extramarital affair.
Rosanne Moore: In sickness and in health and all those things is when life does those. Better or worse that life does.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Not that the person is causing sickness and the person is causing financial detriment because they’re gambling or addicted or won’t get a job or won’t stay employed. That’s a whole different reason. It’s like you said, if life happens and there’s a job loss or there’s a cancer diagnosis. That’s what those things mean. It doesn’t mean when one person is causing these other things to happen and inflict them. upon you. That goes against the first part of the vow: to love, honor, and cherish.
Rosanne Moore: Absolutely. I want to go back to the book because you gave the mic to the kids. That’s the phrase my family uses whenever mom’s voice is the dominant voice and they’re not feeling heard, they will say, “Mom you need to pass the mic,” because as parents, we are the dominant voice for early childhood and really in their head for their whole life.
Being conscious of giving voice to your kids, what was most meaningful to you in what came out of working on the book together and hearing your children’s impressions of things? Were there things you learned from them that you’ve just hadn’t seen before until you worked on this project together?
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Yeah, I think going through certain things, especially some of Sydney’s mental health crisis and bullying and exclusion and all of that/ When you’re in it and you’re like, “Thank God we’re out of it and we’re on the other end.” But reading her stuff and just seeing her perspective. She had never shared with me as a child that she struggled with Psalm 139 about being fearfully and wonderfully made. Again, is that a truth in the scripture? So reading through her thoughts and her feelings, and then where it led to her spiritual formation, one of my favorite things in hers was even once she came back to faith or whatever.
She even used Philippians 4:13 incorrectly. In Christ, I can do all things. It was like, “I’m going to do all things and prove all y’all wrong.” Even with Philippians 4:13, she was taking it out of context. Then it was like, “Oh, wait, now that I’m mature, it means in all things, I need Christ’s strength to do things. I was making it about me and my strength to show you. But now Christ’s strength is how I do things.” Just seeing her formation and her thought processing. She’s in such a great church and great community. They’re all about community and formation. The senior pastor specifically has a heart for the 20 to 30 year olds to make sure they are connected and in places of leadership.
So all of that, and then just seeing there’s mixed feelings of, man, if this could have happened, at an earlier stage, maybe some of these other things wouldn’t have happened. But then, maybe some of these things are part of the reason she’s in this different formation. So for Sydney, that was my mindset there.
For Erica, it was so painful to read because I told her, “When you write your first level of your chapter, you can put it out there and don’t worry about our feelings. Put it out there. We’ll shore it up.” But, she was first writing it out of still an angry and hurt place. The first draft was pretty tough. I had to deal with some internal shame and not go into toxic shame. Like, how did I miss that? How did I not do that? Where was my counselor brain, in those moments? I had a lot of lie apologizing and we’re still working on reconciling and what do we do differently now? She’s like, “Mom, get back to being curious. Ask questions about me, don’t just wait on something to go wrong.”
And then just seeing the internal struggle, the message she was telling herself about her father and I devastated me. Because that was definitely not what we thought we were communicating, but the way her little 6, 7, 8, 9 year old brain was interpreting things based on the chaos in her home with Sydney at times, that was just so important to the reason of inclusion and intentional relationships. Also the hope of the story is that we’re still in repair and reconciliation, and the girls are in the process of repairing reconciliation and Erica’s reconciling and repairing and forgiving us. It really took the book to bring the rest of the stuff to the surface that had been under the surface and give us that lens.
I would say, “We all have to read each other’s chapters too, because maybe after you read somebody else’s lens, that might change things.” Erica’s chapter is more palatable, more readable. It still reflects pain. It still reflects her true story, but there’s been a shift in her heart of, “Wow, what mom was going through,” or “I had no idea Sydney was suicidal in middle school. That’s why mom was on her so much and keeping an eye on her and wasn’t on me because I wasn’t suicidal.” All of these things from childhood and middle school. It’s now the adult brains going, Oh
I was afraid that at some point, maybe Erica would just get married and move away and never come back. If our relationship would have stayed where it was, that might’ve been the case. Obligation and duty to your mom and dad, visit them on Christmas. But through the book and really being honest about the good, the bad, the ugly, the things we failed at, the things we’re still improving at, then how to reconcile and repair. I think that’s really the most important part of the stories. No matter what you’ve been through, if you’re willing to be humble and curious, you can reconcile and repair relationships.
Rosanne Moore: I love that. That’s the hope of the gospel, right? The hope of the gospel is not that we get saved and now we do it right forever. The hope of the gospel is that we have joined in following a Savior who is there to save us at every point where we need saving and it’s ongoing. We walk with Him, we become more like Him. So seeing failure is the doorway to grace. Not being able to own our failure is not an impediment to the presence of God, it is the doorway to receive the grace that He wants to lavish on us. So I love that. I love that you were able to do that and do that as a family and to offer that to one another. Also to not have to rush the process to let it heal as it heals instead of trying to just sweep it all under the carpet and make it all okay quickly.
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Which we like to do in the South. If there’s conflict, stick it under that rug and just move on.
Rosanne Moore: Exactly. That happens too often in the church as well. Everybody forgives and it’s all gone. The honest ownership is so important in letting people heal.
Stephanie, I don’t want to. I think I have to wrap up and let you get on with your day soon. Is there anything else that you want to share about the book before we close? I really want to encourage listeners to get this book and to check out Stephanie’s podcast too, especially if you’re in a neurodivergent marriage, or if you’re if you know someone who is, I think her podcast would be a fantastic resource. This is a great book for churches as well, whether or not you’re dealing with someone on the spectrum yourself, you’re going to be in society so it would be a great resource. But anyway, anything else you want to bring forward?
Dr. Stephanie Holmes: Part of our hope of this book is, first of all, it’s four different people’s perspectives. If you want to understand autism or ADHD or different perspectives, I think the book does that. If you are not on an autism journey, but you’re on a special needs journey or a child with differences journey, I think it still has some crossover. If you’ve been through infertility and all of that, I think that there’s connections there. If you are a husband who’s on the spectrum or you have a child on the spectrum and maybe you don’t go to the IEPs and you don’t understand all of that, this could be a quick way to catch you up on maybe what’s going on in your child’s life.
The second population we really hope purchases the books are pastors and children’s and youth workers. As Christians, what we want so much as a marriage and family is we want to be part of a faith community. We want to be included. We want our kids to be included. If you don’t include my child, I can’t come. If you don’t include that child, what are they missing in their spiritual formation and what are they taking on about how God sees them?
Sidney said to me one time, “If the Christian school and the church doesn’t want me, how do I know God really wants me?” She was kicked out of three Christian schools and asked several times to leave various church functions. So from a 6, 7, 8 year old’s perspective, Christian school and my Christian church do not want me present. How do I know God wants me and loves me? And why would He curse me? To make me this way where other Christians don’t want to be near me. That is devastating. So if you work in children’s work or youth ministry, you are so important for inclusion and belonging and acceptance. Dr. Wilder would say, “Hesed means I’m for you.” They need people for them.
We’ve created a workbook as well. That’s on another website, but we have a workbook where you could do small groups and we have these questions for you. We say if you are the person on the journey, you’re on the unforeseen journey, then you’re the family in the passenger sheet. But we also have a section that says if you are a caregiver, extended family, respite or someone who’s going to help this family along their journey, this will really help you. I’m super excited because, we did not have a blended family perspective, we’re still a nuclear family, but I partnered with Ron Deal, who is a stepfamily expert, so there is a chapter talking about blending your family if a child is on the spectrum and blending your family if a partner is on the spectrum. I think that adds one more layer to make sure stepfamilies have help. I have someone who was a single parent, John Felageller, of Joni and friends. He wrote from being a single parent’s perspective of someone on the spectrum and the kind of support he needed as a single parent dad. We didn’t get everything in there. Culture and diversity is a little bit lost, different people experience people of color, but we hope that at least you can get the book and either identify with the journey or learn how to better serve and minister to someone on the journey so that we can come back to our whole thing: Emotional and healthy spirituality transformation, belonging, attachment, Hesed, joy. That’s why we do this. We hope that will be a good resource for you.
Rosanne Moore: Wonderful. That’s great. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for being with us today. For those of you who are listening, check out the show notes, you can find the links to her book and to her podcast and some of the other resources that she mentioned. They’ll all be there in the show notes and we’ll look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks so much. Bye bye.
What is prayers role in handling conflicts or tensions? Join us as we chat about this important topic
Bio: Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Relational Spirituality. The podcast brought to you by Larger Story. I am joined today by a familiar voice. As you hear the intro to this podcast, you might recognize the voice, but now you get to see the face as well. Good friend of mine and a colleague, Mr. Duncan Sprague. Thanks for joining me today, man.
Duncan Sprague: Hey Kep, it’s great to be with you again. I love being with you and chatting through whatever important topic we’re going to talk about.
Kep Crabb: We’ve been talking about prayer and we’ve really been focusing on and looking at The Papa Prayer in respect to how that impacts our prayer lives and what is our prayer life about?
But today we’re going to go a little bit off of that. I think it still stays within the context of prayer, but it’s, how do we resolve some of the tensions or some of the conflicts that we run into? Those might be with friends, those might be with colleagues, those might be with spouses. Where do we start on some of that? I think that’s something that I think a lot of people are interested in and no one is immune from. We’ve all had tensions. We’ve all had struggles. We were just chatting through this. We’re doing this at the last minute.
Also, I apologize. I’ve got a head cold now, so if I start coughing or something, please bear with me. I’ve got some water over here, but I guess it is that cold and flu season coming up, but just a little head cold going on.
Dunc, I wanted to start off by saying you’ve been married now for how many years?
Duncan Sprague: 33 years coming up on 34.
Kep Crabb: You and Angie. I know your wife. I know both of you guys. We’ve been in a couple of different small groups together and are currently in one. You guys have never had an argument or a disagreement or anything like that?
Duncan Sprague: No. I love your dad’s famous line of, “When we get in conflict, she repents and then we’re okay.” I’ll put my lightning rod up right now.
Kep Crabb: Good thing she’s not sitting next to you. That was always Dad’s joke when he was talking about mom and some of that conflict.
Duncan Sprague: Yes. Everybody out there knows that it’s a joke and if you don’t, please don’t write letters. It is a joke.
Kep Crabb: No question. I know Duncan’s wife well, she’s one of the sweetest ladies on the planet. When you go through some of those kinds of things, we’ve talked about this whole conflict issue. And no one’s immune from it. We all are going to be subject to it at some time and some of us in some depth of ways that kind of scare me, with brothers who won’t speak to each other anymore, or people who used to be very close friends now can’t hardly be in the same room.
What do you do about that kind of stuff?
Duncan Sprague: I think one of the first things that I do is, it does drive me to prayer. I always have to ask God, “What of this is mine? Search my heart oh God, know my way. See if there’s any wicked way in me.” Because there’s plenty of it there that gets in the way of relationships. That’s the premise I always begin with. Conflict is neither right nor wrong. It’s inevitable. It’s coming whether you want it or not. It actually is the sign of a healthy relationship where two people come together and engage with one another. I know I’ve done lots of premarital counseling and I stole a line from your dad. I don’t know where he stole it from, but the common line is, getting married is like a tick on a dog relationship. The problem is that there’s two ticks and no dog. And that’s the reality. When you come into a marriage, when you come into a relationship, you have two people that are desperately needy.
What’s Pascal’s famous line? “Inside every person is a God shaped vacuum trying to suck life, a God shaped vacuum that only God can fill. And yet, we try to fill it with every person we come across, especially our spouses.” And that’s why conflicts inevitably show up, because I’m asking something of my wife that she was never intended to give. It’s at that point when the collision happens, the marital bliss turns into a marital battle. It’s at that point that you start to ask, so how do you work through conflict? And I think the important word is through.
Kep Crabb: I think the thing is, you start to talk about marital issues. I think of myself with Kimmie, we’ve been married now going on 30 years, we’ll be celebrating 30 years in a couple of months. We’ve got some experience under our belt a little bit. We’ve had our fair share of conflict for sure. It’s interesting how, when you first get married, you’re standing up there and it really is that tick on a dog kind of a mentality. You’re excited, what are you going to do for me? You make me feel in a certain way. And then as you go through it, I guess the next thing that happens is you get very disillusioned and discouraged. You just feel this is not what I signed up for. And then as you continue to move through that, because the one thing Kimmie and I know with you and Ange as well, we just said, there’s no backdoor here. We’re not ever going to shut this deal down. There’s nothing that can do that. So no matter what we go through, we’re in it till the end. Which was really interesting because she comes from…
A little bit of my wife’s background. Her mother’s been married a handful of times and and currently single. There’s a lot of that. So when she met my family, she thought, wow, this is interesting. You’ve got a mom and a dad who still love each other. It’s just a fairytale thing. I didn’t know anything different, but after 30 years, I think we look at each other now and say, we’ve been through some deep waters, but we’re really experiencing that oneness that I think scripture talks about in a way. That’s new in the last few years, even since her diagnosis. That’s just an interesting thing. We’ve moved through those conflicts and we’ll talk about how to do some of that, maybe some thoughts on it, but you really come out of that with a better understanding of what that friendship or what that relationship, what that marriage, whatever that may be, of the depth of that and how you really do start to care for someone more than yourself. That’s what I’ve seen. But as you’re going through it, the conflict can be hell and can be very painful. Yeah. What about some of that, Dunc?
Duncan Sprague: The hellish elements of it are the ones that you realize, it really isn’t hell, but it echoes it a lot because what is hell? It’s isolation away from the presence of God. And if God’s presence is not there, then that means it’s isolation from any presence. It means that you are utterly alone. So that is where I think every marriage goes through that, where you say, I feel abandoned. I feel alone. I feel like they’re not hearing, they’re not understanding. I think that’s the part that Satan really wants to get you lost in those scripts, where it will just replay in the theater of your mind, all the vengeful things and what does love do, but doesn’t keep track of wrongs done. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t remember them, but it doesn’t hold it up as part of the scorecard.
I think that’s the part that I go to in those hellish moments. It’s easy to grab the old violations and go, see doing it again. Instead, God says, no, put that card away and see how much I’ve forgiven you. I think that’s the part that always gets me, we can love because He first loved us. We can forgive because of how much He’s forgiven us. I think the difficulty, and I’ve seen this in multiple marriages that have ended, it’s when the person says, I will not look inside any longer. I will not self evaluate. I am not to blame. It’s the other person. That’s when our prayers even change at that point.
Here’s the one piece, and I love this part about the Apostle Peter. He’s the only apostle that we’re certain was married, because we know Matthew tells the story, and actually in Mark, actually it’s recorded, I think, in the synoptic gospels, the three that are the same, or that are similar. We find out that Jesus has healed the mother in law of Peter. So we know if there’s a mother in law, there must be a wife. So Peter then in his later writings gives us this anecdotal advice for living with a spouse. So I know he’s speaking from experience and this is what he says in he has a whole section in 1 Peter 3 on husbands and wives, but the verse that we really want to camp on because it gives us great advice of what it means to live with our wives. So it says, “Likewise, husband – so this is to you and me – live with your wives in an understanding way.” Now, we don’t know fully what he means by an understanding way. We have some ideas, but then we always get lost in this next phrase, “Showing honor to her – to the woman – as the weaker vessel.” We get lost, especially in today’s climate where women say, I’m not weak but we lose the whole context here and we get lost in that phrase. It’s like a speed bump now in the text and we don’t go on to see why. “Since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.” That’s what it means to honor. They’re equal heirs with you in the promise of God so that, and this is still talking to the husband, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
We missed the fact of why Peter’s saying this. He says, I don’t want your prayers to be hindered. We’re in a quarter that we’re talking about prayer. Here’s advice to husbands. You want to keep a good prayer life, live with your wife in an understanding way. I just want to unpack what that means.
I think the physical side is where most scholars land. They say, okay, they’re weaker in a physical sense. Not in labor pains and those kinds of things, but just in strength of bodies, bone structure and all that kind of biological makeup. But I think that it’s even more the fact that he calls us vessels and calls her the weaker vessel. We’re called vessels elsewhere. 2 Corinthians says that we’re all vessels. God has put His riches in vessels of clay, in earthen vessels. So it’s not that either one of us are strong vessels, neither one of us are. There’s weak and weaker. Why would God make weak vessels?
If you talk to any archaeologists, they would say when you go, if you find a pristine vase from antiquity, you found a really rare thing, because what you mostly find is shards of broken pieces, because every clay pot is intended to hold something, but at some point it breaks. It cracks. Our tendency is, let’s patch it up. But God says, no, I put the riches in you so that as you are broken, my riches will pour out. I think that part of what Peter’s after is saying they’re a weaker vessel. So when my wife prays, there is rarely a time that she doesn’t end up in tears because her prayers are so close to the feeling of what’s going on. We just said goodbye to our son, launched him officially to his first full time missionary job, and she was leaking everywhere. She set an example for me where I refuse to be broken. She is willing to be broken. So I live with my wife in an understanding way that when she is broken and the riches pour out, honor her. She’s setting an example for me so that my prayers are not hindered.
This is where I go that I think the best example is you can look at Genesis. Look at how Adam’s conversation changed with God before the fall and after the fall. Before the fall, “Oh, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Whoa, man, this is a woman. You can see that.” And then after the fall, he no longer lives in an understanding way of her, he lives mostly in an understanding way of himself. “It’s the woman you gave me, Lord.” His conversation changed. Prayer became a point for blame accusation. Don’t let me take any consequences.
I think Peter as the only married apostle gives us great advice to live in a world that will break us and then to let the riches pour out.
Kep Crabb: Yeah, I didn’t know we were going to go this direction at some level. That’s interesting. As you start to say some of this, even in respect to prayer, this has been my big thought for the last several weeks and months really. The only thing that we’re aware of that the Lord was asked by the disciples is teach us how to pray. I’m sure they asked Him other things too but the only thing that we’ve been told in scripture. There’s something really important about that. When you’re talking about understanding your spouse without having your prayers being hindered. That just brings chills to my neck.
What does it mean to have your prayers hindered where they aren’t doing what you’re asking of them? Praying in a way that allows you to have that connection with the Lord in a relational connection, that’s the whole notion of The Papa Prayer. How do we meet God? It’s so easy to come to God and say, I want this and I want this and I want this. And the whole notion of prayer from what I understand is really a legal term, it’s to petition. We’re redefining it as an opportunity to get to know the God of the universe.
How does that then impact when you’re in a conflict ? You’re having a fight with someone, whether it be Angie or someone else. How does that then impact that moment?
Duncan Sprague: One of the things that I think is, I have to know what my default mechanism is when I get in conflict. We often talk in terms of when conflict happens, we have one of two responses, fight or flight, but I actually think that there’s more. We don’t just flee conflict. We flee it. We fight it. Sometimes we do both. Both of those are when we are stuck in a battle. I think that Ephesians 5 or 4 when Paul talks about he’s given some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be these things so that we might grow up in our faith so we might mature.
Then he says, by speaking the truth in love, what maturity looks like. Truth. Not pretending to love, not pulling back. Those two things are always at play in any conflict. So in a conflict, I’m always saying, is this true? I’m going to fight you over the truth of the matter, or is there a value of relationship that’s in jeopardy?
You said at the very beginning, friends and brothers and siblings that no longer talk to each other, relationships that have gotten lost, and at some point, they’ve said the truth isn’t worth fighting for, and the relationship isn’t worth fighting for, so I flee. I run from it.
Kep Crabb: There’s other things too. I know we’ve talked about that, but I always wonder this. I talked to a friend of mine just the other day, who has a friend who just got divorced after 50 years of marriage, and I just never understood that. Of course, I don’t know the details, but I’m guessing that marriage has long been dissolved or dead or whatever we want to call it for years. They just finally decided to call it a day. But I’ve never understood how someone would put so much time into a relationship like that just to say, I’m done with it now.
That’s where I think the whole notion of the way you’re talking about when you feel the Spirit leading through you. I’ve seen this the last little bit when Kimmie and I’ve had some conflicts and some tensions. What does it mean to really put her first? It’s been interesting because the fights are different and we’ve had some in the past that I’m just not proud of in any way shape or form.
Just to be honest with you folks who are watching us today, I had initially talked with a couple of different people and said, if we talk about this subject, should we bring Kimmie? I asked Kimmie, would you like to join me? Of course she’s not into doing podcasts or anything like that. But she also said, do you really want to know how you and I fought back in the day and let all those people know? I thought, huh, maybe not, that’s a good point. I handled it very poorly and very immaturely, but I’m seeing us fight now in a different way now that allows us to get to the other side in some ways. I really do want her to know that I care about her more. That’s so important to me.
Duncan Sprague: You’re battling for something different. This is the thing that I’m realizing, even as you were just talking. Before I am a husband to my bride, I am a disciple of Jesus. Jesus says it himself. If you’re going to be my disciple, if you’re going to follow me, the first thing is to deny yourself. That’s the beginning. We oftentimes put that up as the pinnacle of real maturity. No, the mature disciples, they are the ones who deny themselves. And Jesus says, no, you can’t. That’s the doorway into being my disciple. You begin by saying, I am not the point. Deny yourself, pick up a cross. What for? I have a friend who used to preach this. He used to say, “Marriage is God’s clever way to get us all crucified.” Isn’t that true?
Kep Crabb: I saw a comedian the other night that Kimmie and I were watching and he’s a Christian comedian. He said, God says to the angels, “Hey, come on over here. Watch what I do. I’m going to put this guy together with this gal. Oh, this is going to be incredible. Let’s just see what happened.” But you said something the other day that really stuck with me. This was maybe a month or so ago, but we were talking about some things and you said you were, in the middle of doing some counseling with some people. You didn’t name any names, but you talked to Dad and said, Larry, how can I break through? How can I help these people? How can I help save this marriage? And then Dad said to you and help me if I’m wrong here, but the marriage is already dead. This marriage is dead. And that kind of caught you off balance. And then he went from there a little bit more, unpacked that a little bit.
Duncan Sprague: This actually goes back almost 30 years when I was actually studying under Larry. I was interning and I was counseling the wife. I found out he was counseling the husband. This was my first consultation with Larry and I’m thinking, we’re going in to save this marriage and we’re going to work together as a team. You can hear my assumption that the goal in counseling them is to fix this marriage. I said, so what do we do to help fix this marriage? That was the energy; we’re going to fix it. His response was, “Oh, this marriage has been gone for a long time. There is no resurrecting this one.”
I remember going, so what are we doing? What’s the purpose of counseling? And he said something really poignant. It’s stuck with me ever since. He said, do you think that God put these two people on this earth to be married to each other? Is that His number one calling on their life? The highest calling over there. I said it’s up there, isn’t it? He says, not even a close second. The number one goal for their lives is to glorify God and make them known. And I go, yeah. And he says, now your goal in counseling them is to help them become the most glorious divorced person possible, because that’s where they’re heading. Their identity isn’t being divorced. Their identity is still a child of God.
All of a sudden, my categories got blown out of the water. It just put that as the first priority: whatever circumstance you’re in, whether married or divorced, your primary calling in life is to glorify God by putting Him on display in the ways that you relate, think, and live. We’ve got some dear friends that we know well that are in the middle of that same process right now. That was the first thing I said to them. I said, I’m not going to choose sides with you guys. But I am going to come alongside and say, how do you glorify God and not continue to destroy each other in this process and not destroy the children that are part of this marriage. That’s the rippling effect; not just one marriage that is destroyed. It’s a whole community of connections.
Kep Crabb: That’s how we’re all linked. You said one time earlier, the whole notion of isolation is really where Satan wants to do his most impressive work by ourselves. We’re actually going to be doing a conference at the end of January in Tennessee. And we’ve titled it “Not Myself by Myself.” We’re meant to be in community. We’re meant to live in community. That’s where Satan doesn’t quite get quite the toehold that he wants to get as he’s coming at, as he’s coming at us.
So I guess as we’re thinking about conflict, even in the midst of prayer, how does prayer in the midst of community, as you’re going through conflict, allow you to get outside of yourself? I used to think, and this was always in retrospect until recently, in the middle of a fight, can I quit saying what I’m saying and get out of myself and say, Kep, you’re being really dumb here and you’re not thinking very well at all. You’re letting your emotions take over, take control, whatever. I always come to that conclusion a few hours after the fight’s over thinking, yeah, sure. Wish I would have handled it this way or that way. Now in the midst of that moment, I’m starting to think that way a little bit more. I think Kimmie’s responding to that in ways that are even to other people, if I have tension with them and conflict that I think feels better.
Duncan Sprague: I would guess that if we were a fly on the wall, watching you in the new ways that you’re thinking in the middle of a conflict, my guess is we get in there and listen to what’s going on in your head. There’s another conversation going on besides just the one with your wife. There’s a horizontal conversation going, “Father, if I keep in my ways, I’m going to keep messing things up. What’s really true right now? What should I camp on? Because I want to bury and this is my way of relating with my wife.”
We’ve identified our normal ways of relating when we are our typical conflict strategies when we get it in the middle of a fight. I bury her with words. I just start to reason. I get real rational and I concentrate on the truth. But here’s what I do. I debase the truth because I make the truth something other than a person. What did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth. So the truth ultimately is not propositional. It’s personal. I get in this fight with her that avoids love and wants to only fight about what’s mostly true and my truth. So she will tend to flee things. I will tend to fight them. If she stops fleeing, her tendency then is to go to the opposite pendulum. So I’ll honor the truth and I want to value honesty and she’ll value relationship.
Larry used to always talk in terms of, we oftentimes say that I’m a rationalist, I’m a reasonable person, or another person will say, I’m a romantic. I’m a feeler through life, but the reality is we must be both. We don’t get to say I’m one or the other, it’s science or faith. It really is. You have to live in both worlds, so it’s truth and love, and that’s where she lives only in that love side of things and denies truth. I’m not going to think about it. It’s too complicated. She’ll end up faking love in order to control love. If that makes sense. She’ll ignore the truth and really debase love. She’ll make it something cheaper than it is. It means I’ll just give in. And it’s the proverbial doormat who says, I’ll just let you walk all over me. But those are the extremes. So my extreme is I’ll fight it. She’ll fake it. But then at some point we start to come together. We say, okay, I’m going to stop fighting. So this is some of what may go on in your mind. I’m going to stop fighting God. And if it will help, if I force it a little bit, I’ll force a little bit of relationship, I’ll feel, I’ll try to use some sympathetic and empathetic words. I’ll force it. But she feels it every time. She goes, that’s not authentic. What she’ll do is she’ll say, if this will fix the relationship, that energy of fixing.
The flesh has its operating instructions during conflict to flee it, fight it, fake it, force it, or fix it. That’s our way of dealing with it in the flesh. What God says is no honor, a hundred percent of the truth, honor, a hundred percent of the relationship and face it. I love what your dad used to say. Your dad used to say, I refuse to pretend about anything. I don’t want to get lost in honesty and start pretending. I love what Paul says in Hebrews, or the writer of Hebrews says, he says, we are not those who shrink back. So in love, we don’t shrink back. We stay present. And in truth, we continue to refuse to pretend. This is going to be ugly. The truth has come out, but it’s my ugly truth. It’s not just her ugly truth. And here’s the big thing: the only thing that’s going to bring us together when conflict happens, the only way to connect in connecting, is confession. Me confessing my sin, not hers. That’s the blame game. When I start confessing hurt for her, one of the folks in our small group says confession is just telling on myself. I think in conflict, if you don’t begin with self denial and telling yourself confession, you’ll never move on to connection.
Kep Crabb: I love that because those are some real practical things to think about in the midst of conflict, which is the most challenging time to get practical. It’s easy to do it before the conflict happens. Maybe you can apply some that are after saying, I wish I would’ve applied some of that. But one of the things that I hear you saying too and that really has been helpful to me is, how do you allow the Spirit to lead you in those moments when you’re having this conversation, not so much this, while at the same time having this conversation. What I’ve really tried to focus on in the midst of those moments is this conversation.
That’s the one going on in here, which only I’m privy to and Him, no one else is privy to that. It also allows me to keep this closed because man, this thing gets me in trouble. So much. I’ve had too sharp of a tongue in too many ways with too many people that cut very deeply. Those are things that I’ve had to apologize for.
Duncan Sprague: I’m guessing it’s not until you’ve seen the effect of your anger. I think that’s where my wife has been the best mirror for me. I remember one time. We have four children and our second one was always the one that was testing things. He was pushing the buttons all the time. I remember one time he had just set me off and I was going after him. This is a picture of biblical submission. My wife steps in front of me as I was going after him. And she says, there are better parts of you than what you are about to give him right now. I just remember sitting there going, wait, she is not fighting for herself. She’s fighting for our son so that I don’t trounce on him. And she’s fighting for me. She’s submitting to God’s vision for who I can be so that I will give him the best parts of me rather than, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind.
When that same son was young, he was going after our youngest son. Josh and Ben. Josh was going after Ben, he’s two years older, and you know both of my boys. Josh was going after him, I said, if you touch your brother one more time, a spankin’s coming. He didn’t say anything, he looked at me and he started lowering his hand towards his brother. I’m going, don’t you touch him. He just kept lowering it and lowering it. And finally he puts it down and he gives me this little snide look and I just lost. I said, that’s it. A spank is coming. Get up to the bedroom right now. I don’t know why we sent them to the bedroom other than it gave me a moment to cool down. As we’re walking up, the waterworks begin, he starts crying and stuff. As I’m walking up, here’s my prayer. Dear Lord, if I spank him with all that’s inside of me, the anger that’s going on, Lord, I’ll kill him. Lord, help me not to kill my son. And so when we get up to the bedroom, I’m pacing back and forth trying to figure out how I’m going to handle this. This is where you were just asking, how does the Spirit, how do you invite the Spirit in? I think the Spirit will step in and just give opportunities for me not to get lost in myself. As I’m sitting there, I’m trying some of the old tried and true things. I tried the old line that every parent at least one time tries: it hurts me more than it hurts you. Son, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
We all know it’s a lie. I know that when I spank him, his bottom is going to hurt more than my hand. But it was as if the Spirit at that moment said, it should hurt you more. It just stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t an audible voice. But the phrase that came into my mind was, take the spanking for him. I’m having this internal conversation. What do you mean? Take the spanking for himself? Take the spanking. Lean over. So I said, okay, son, if I spank you with everything I’ve got, I’m going to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. So I’m taking the spanking. I lean over the bed and he says what do you do? He doesn’t get it. This is where real conflict management will not look as much like management as it will look like surrender. I’m surrendering to something more powerful. It’s what your dad used to say to you, Kep, you can hurt me, but you cannot destroy me. That’s essentially what I was saying to my son is, if I spank you, I’ll hurt you. If you spank me, oh, it might hurt a little, but not much. So he gets back and he swats me on the bum and I said, oh no. I’m more angry than that. And he backs up and he tries again. I said, Josh, if you don’t understand how angry I am, you have to put everything you have in it. And then all of a sudden he comes with all of his might pow. And he says, Oh, it hurt my hand. And I said it’s enough. You’re forgiven, Josh. We will never remember this again, except for when I tell it in a message or on a podcast,
Kep Crabb: I’d love to chat with Josh about that because I bet that was an impacting moment in his life and impact.
Duncan Sprague: He calls it his story. His story. That’s exactly what it becomes. Yeah, it’s my story of forgiveness. My story when grace was given to me because when he went downstairs, he says to Angie, leans into whispers, I just gave Daddy a spanking. My wife says, why? And his response then was, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s the piece where we always end with the grace of God. I don’t know why He loves us. So I don’t know why He died for me, but He did. He took the spanking for me. That’s when conflict isn’t managed any longer. That’s when conflict is surrendered to grace.
Kep Crabb: What a great story. I think that leads into the next thing that we’ll chat about sometime is parenting. You’ve got four kids. I’ve got two kids. They’re adults. Now my oldest is fixing to have her first child here in a couple months. So we’re excited about that. The whole notion of parenting. That story reminds me of so much of the way that Dad thought about how to raise kids because he wanted to get you to go, huh? What Josh said. I don’t know why I did that, but boy, it felt good and I feel good. That’s right. It did something to me that even now, 20 years later in this kid’s life, it’s his story.
Dunc, this has been great chatting with you, bro. It’s so fun to unpack this kind of stuff. We all have a story. Each of our stories can be part of God’s larger story. That’s what we want to be. How do we live a life that fits into God’s larger story in the way that He wants us to?
Duncan, I really appreciate you meeting this time. Folks, thanks for joining us on Relational Spirituality today. Join us every Tuesday as we roll out some different thoughts and different things. We’re going to be changing things around in the beginning of the year, but we sure do appreciate you guys joining us. If you like what you’ve seen, please subscribe and have a great evening.
How do you come to God when you’ve repeatedly prayed for a need that remains unresolved? What happens in your heart when you sense God is beckoning you to bring your desires to Him? This week Rosanne Moore picks up where we left off last week in sharing how God’s intervention in Karlene’s life became an invitation for her family to enter old pain and engage on a new journey of trust.
Rosanne Moore’s Bio:
If Jesus is Who He says He is, why doesn’t being a Christian seem to work better? More to the point, why didn’t it seem to make people better? Those were some of the questions Rosanne Moore was asking about her own life when she first encountered Dr. Larry Crabb’s book Inside Out as a teen and in its pages discovered an invitation to journey into a radically different understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, one that was focused on relationship with God rather than rule lists or behavior modification.
Drawing on her background as a writer, editor, reading instruction specialist, language arts tutor, homeschool mom, speaker, and social media marketer, Rosanne now serves as Larger Story’s Communications Director. She has run a successful small business and worked with several missions and church organizations, but her greatest delight is in listening to the unfolding story of God’s work in the lives of others and sharing her own journey of seeking God in every part of life, even (or, perhaps, especially) in our darkest nights.
Nowhere is Rosanne more passionate about seeing God’s redemption cultivated than in the lives of victims/survivors of abuse of all kinds. Her Lifeline course for women escaping domestic abuse was birthed from her personal experience, as well as out of more than two decades of advocacy work serving women and children impacted by intimate terrorism, coercive control, spiritual abuse, and sexual violence.
A single mom since 2011, Rosanne seeks to create opportunities for rich conversations with her 4 teen & college-aged kids who continually amaze, amuse, and humble her with their awesome selves and their crazy menagerie. She enjoys honest friends who are both hilarious and wise, a lapful of snuggly kitties, and a good book on a rainy day. Lily’s chocolates, Jane Austen movies, and crisp autumn days are a few of her favorite things, and music is her heart’s prayer language.
Karlene Cannon’s Bio:
In 2012, Karlene Cannon sat across a dinner table from Rachael and Larry Crabb and was captivated as Larry talked about his Teleios project- his dream for how his lifework and legacy of relational spiritual formation would be passed on to a new generation on a broader scale than had been possible in his lifetime. That evening eventually led to Karlene joining the staff of Larger Story as the Director of Content and Product Development, where she uses her experience in education, content development, and software business consulting to direct Larger Story’s strategy and create new products that bring to fruition the Teleios vision Larry articulated over a decade ago.
Karlene has written curriculum, developed retreats, and hosted a large Christian community group in her home in the ensuing years, but nothing has prepared her for the current task of reaching a new generation more than raising 4 children (ages 25, 21, 18, 14) in a family culture where relational formation is the norm, relational holiness is the goal, and the Holy Spirit gets all the credit. As she now launches them into a world rife with divisions on all sides, where the truth is often regarded as optional, Karlene’s vision is to reach this connected-but-lonely generation with the transforming certainty of a relational God and His Larger Story. Her passion has found an outlet in digital course development, content creation, and the kind of spiritual direction that occurs over a cup of coffee, via text, and through long conversations in the car.
Karlene loves sports (actually, just Duke basketball and whatever her sons are playing), all things vintage and historic, great books, fragrant coffee and crackling fires. She feels God’s pleasure when her home is full of courageous people sharing their hearts and lives for the glory of God and their own growth and healing.
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
Recordings from The Summit
The Faithfulalbum project
“The Detour” song
The story behind “A Place For You”
“A Place for You” song
Transcript
Karlene Cannon: Welcome back Larger Story family. We’re so glad that you have joined us for the rest of this story. We talked last week about some things that God had done in me through what happened back at the Larger Story Summit a couple of years ago. Little did I know at the time that it was just the beginning of what is an even bigger story; you’re going to hear about it today. We ended last week talking about this email that I sent to explain why I left the Summit. I don’t even know if I’ve shared this with you Rosanne, but part of me almost didn’t send it because it felt defensive, like I’m somehow trying to justify why I’m leaving, yet I’m going to share it. God needs to get the credit for this. I want people to know not why I’m leaving – I did honestly want to justify leaving, but I wanted more to show what God was doing at the Summit through Larry and his life that was in some ways bizarre.
I sent the email and just was like, “Whatever you want to do with this, Lord, I’m going to be vulnerable and share my story. And if it’s about me being defensive and I look immature, fine, whatever.” But something really significant happened, like I said, that was a catalyst for an even bigger story. And so Rosanne’s going to share her part of this story.
Rosanne Moore: I don’t know if it’s bigger, but it definitely is that interweaving that we were talking about. Because when I read your email, I was… on the one hand, really excited for you and really in awe of how God had worked that whole situation and how He had met you. But I was also aware of this unpleasant reality in my own heart of this envy that was there that kind of sparked and I said, “No, I don’t want to go there.” I sensed the Holy Spirit. I was like, “Lord, please forgive me.” I just sensed the Holy Spirit going, “No, wait, look at that. Look at that. What’s going on and why are you feeling envious?”
As I was bringing to the Lord what was happening in me that was not godly at all, what I realized was I felt envious that you had actually had this prayer answered and it was over something that felt… on the one hand, really core to your journey, but on the other hand, like you said, it’s a basketball game. The question I had was, “Why is it so easy for You to do something like that? The things that feel like they really matter, You say no to.” Not that this didn’t matter because it did; it was so much more than just the basketball game for you. I knew that, but the Lord just started really stirring in my heart and asking, “What is it that you really want?” I was just like, “Life is hard.” “No, Rosanne, what is it that you really want? Because you haven’t talked to me on that level for a while now.” And it was true.
I had hit a point a few years earlier when we went through the aftermath of the divorce. Of course I had prayed for years that things would improve with that and it didn’t. And then praying that God would meet us in the midst of it and things remained grindingly hard for a long time. We hit a crisis point where I was just done. I felt like I had said everything there was to say, and it didn’t make a difference. And so it was just, “Shut down, keep going. I’m not turning away from God, but I don’t have anything left to say to You that hasn’t already been said.” So I’m just going. “I don’t want you to leave, I don’t want to leave, but I don’t know what else to say.”
So when I got your email, the Lord was like, “You need to actually start bringing your heart again. What do you really want?” And what immediately rose up in me was I want a home. I want my kids to have a home.
When we moved from Georgia and sold our house in Georgia in 2009, we knew we were uprooting our lives, but we didn’t expect it to be so displaced for so long. It’s been 14 years, of displacement. We had expected to buy another home right away. That didn’t happen. Then the divorce happened and then the long grinding journey of single parenting and trying to hold things together and trying to make sure the kids were okay and to try to keep the kids safe. In the middle of it, we were living and have been living in the house that I grew up in, which is a hundred years old and is in really bad shape. I had kids who were allergic to it, so it was literally making them sick. But beyond that, it was the displacement of it all.
So when I put that out there, it was terrifying because I thought, “What is the point of asking for this if you’re not going to do it? Because You haven’t; this isn’t the first time.” I think that’s one of the hard things about prayer is, if I’ve already put my heart out there again and again, and you’ve said, no, and You’re God, and I do believe You know better, You know more about this than we do. That’s your prerogative and all of that. But what’s the point to keep talking?
I think that’s where I was stuck at that point when I got your email.
Karlene Cannon: I think that’s something that, as a body of believers, we’re not willing to talk about. We cavalierly say that God is sovereign in His yes and His no, but we don’t actually deal with the pain of the no, and the cascade of things that happen internally with that repeated no. Particularly in something big. If God said no to the basketball game, I might have been disappointed for a day, but I would have enjoyed the Summit. But when you’re talking about something that is so life critical as the place that you live and keeping your kids safe, these are things where the no is really costly. You feel that every day. It tests your faith in a way that’s just excruciating at best and maybe at worst. I’m interrupting you a little bit, but how did you keep going with that no?
Rosanne Moore: I think, I didn’t know it was going to be 14 years. So initially I still had the hope that it was going to resolve sooner rather than later. So I thought, okay, we’re just not there yet. It’ll happen in a few years. Let’s get this leveled out. Then instead of things leveling out, the next shoe would fall. For a while there, from 2009 until 2017 so eight years, it was like dominoes. It was like one thing after another, I think we’d get through one thing and the next worst thing would happen. There was no stability for all that time. Actually it was 2018, so 9 years. It was just keep holding on, keep putting one foot in front of the other. The thing that I kept saying to the kids when they’d say, “We’re never going to get out of here.” I was like, “Sooner or later, you will grow up, you will live someplace else at some point. Seasons do change. I don’t know why this one is lasting as long as it is, but seasons do change.”
I’ve been through enough really hard, long seasons. I spent nine years with an autoimmune disease that looked like it was going to take my life or be the rest of my life and it didn’t. Seasons change and I know that. But in the middle of a season that’s that long and that hard, and you don’t know how long, it’s really easy to just get into survival mode. There’s pros and cons to that. It’s easy for someone outside to say, “You’re in survival mode. You should do X, Y, Z.” If you’re surviving, survival mode is what you have the resources for. Sometimes that’s actually the best you can do. It’s a daily holding on to the manna for the day, God’s provision for the day.
I didn’t want my kids to grow up being ungrateful. I still wanted them to have perspective that in the middle of everything that we were going through, there were things that could have been worse. We did have a roof over our heads. Was the house making us sick? Yes. Did we have to worry about being evicted? No. I knew people who were. I knew women who lost their children; they lost custody of their kid. That’s a huge deal for victims of domestic violence and why women don’t leave, because if they don’t have a place to live that’s safe, they can lose custody of their children. I think that was one thing like that did help me keep perspective. I could still see God’s provision. I’ve been in a developing country. I’ve spent time in Haiti. What we were living in, as difficult as it was, I have seen worse. I’ve seen the slums of Haiti.
But it did create a real tension. Particularly in a nation that tends toward either prosperity gospel or a rejection of prosperity gospel that doesn’t find a middle ground of, wanting to support often. In a rejection against prosperity gospel, there can be a failure to support dignity and safety and good living conditions for people. There’s a lot of misperceptions. There’s the assumption that if you’re in that situation, it’s because of something you did. We felt that. There was the wrestling with that too, when in reality I was working six jobs for a number of those years, and trying to stay present with my kids, connected. It was a really grueling time. So when the Lord started saying, “I want you to put your heart out here again.” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know about that. I can trust You in suffering. I can, I’ve done it before, I can, but don’t ask me to hope for more. “
Karlene Cannon: That’s an interesting concept; that it’s in some ways easier to trust God in suffering than it is to trust Him in hope. Because you’ve got more to lose, maybe? I don’t know, but I think that’s common. It’s hard to hope.
Rosanne Moore: Uncertainty is worse. That I can remember. I can’t remember who I said it to, whether it was a counselor or some spiritual leader that I said it to at one point, but I said, “Despair is easier than uncertainty.” And she was like, “Really?” And I said, “Yeah, because you don’t have anything at risk at that point.’ So having the Lord say to me, “Go ahead and put out there, put what your desire is.” As I did, it was almost explosive. It was such a visceral, this is what I want. This is what I really want. And I sat with that before Him for a few weeks.
Then I felt like He said, “All right, you need to have other people praying with you. This is going to be something that I want to do in community.” So I shared it with a few friends and they were like, “Yes, we want you out of that situation. We will pray with you.” They also pushed me to check on some things and to look at what kind of help and options might be there. Basically – I’ve told you this – when I did, I found that I can either afford the kids or I can afford a house. So I chose the kids. But in the middle of that, I was saying, “Lord, all right, I’ve done what You asked me to do. It’s not possible. We’ve seen.” And He said, “No, I wanted you to know that. When I do this for you, it will be because I have done this for you. You can’t make this happen. This is going to be me and this is going to be me showing myself to your children as well as to you.”
That was almost scarier. It’s one thing for me to trust Him in uncertainty, but to ask them to hope and not be able to control what they would do with disappointment was even scarier. When I approached them, we had a family conversation and I put this out there. I want us to begin praying about this. They were all like, “Okay. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. We know that’s not going to happen.” It was at that point we had been through three times of having our hopes raised and it just never went anywhere. So they were resistant to that. But as we began praying – mostly, I began praying in their presence – eventually there was more of an openness to that. I said, I believe this is going to happen. So we began packing. At that point, we began packing things, getting rid of stuff. I said, “If we’re going to move, it’s a big deal. So we’re going to get rid of things we don’t need, and we are going to start packing anything that we want to keep, but necessarily don’t need hands on day to day.”
So we did start clearing out the attic and clearing out our closets and that process took place for… Let’s see. The Summit was March of 2022, so it ended up being a year and a half of going through that. It was a year. Really it was a year before we actually really started seeing visible movement. We started that quiet process of clearing out. Then My dad had a TIA. My dad had been very resistant… As my parents were getting older, my brothers and I had been very concerned about them staying in the property that they were in. I lived in the house that I grew up in. They lived in the house that my dad grew up in which was right around the corner. So he had a lot of emotional ties to that house and there’s also a familiarity where you don’t see things anymore. You have the impression of what was not what is. He wasn’t able to keep up with the maintenance. The house that he was living in was not in the same shape as the house he had grown up in. My brothers and I had been concerned and my mother was very stressed over how hard it is to keep up with two 100 year old houses. When we initially approached him, these were two separate things. His downsizing was a totally separate thing from the other when the conversation started. He was not open at all to moving, to even considering.
Then last January, he had a very minor TIA, no residual anything, but that sparked another conversation with my two brothers and mom and dad. This time we gave him all of the same arguments we had given him a year before, or a year and a half before. My kids went into it going, “Granddaddy’s never going to do this. He’s not going to do this.” And instead, the Lord just did something and Dad was like, “Okay, then we need to move.” We were all like, wow, really? So much so that my brothers were even like, “Are you agreeing that this is a good idea to think about, or are you actually agreeing to do something about?” Because anybody who knows my dad, Daddy does not ever, ever make decisions quickly. Not ever. I’ve seen people who have made life decisions faster than it takes for him to choose something on a menu at a restaurant. This is just not how he does things. So when we put out the plan that my brothers and I had talked about, what if we sold both houses and we bought a place that would be large enough for me and my kids and for you; with the expectation that I wil then be able to take care of you as you age.
Both of my brothers are local, but one has five children and then two foster children that are young that they’re now rearing. And then my other brother has seven young children. My kids are teenagers and college age. So it makes sense from that standpoint.
When he agreed to this, all of a sudden it was like, “Oh my goodness, this is actually happening. We’re going to be able to move.” And because of the way that we ended up, the finances needed to work for us to come together. They’re retired, so they don’t have income. I did have income, but they had assets. How we did everything, I’m going to end up ultimately… By purchasing the house like we are, we’re purchasing it. But then I’m purchasing their part from them, so I was going to end up actually owning a home. And that was huge for a single mom who’s poured everything into taking care of my kids for the last 14 years, that was a huge deal for the Lord to work that out. But it still didn’t come easily, even reaching this point. It didn’t come easily.
Karlene Cannon: I remember when you shared with us about that conversation with your brothers and your mom and your dad and thinking, “Wow, God has provided a solution.” That’s so amazing. And thinking that, “We’re almost there!” And we were just getting started.
Rosanne Moore: It looked like we were almost there. It looked like that within weeks. I had been watching the market for over a year, so in a matter of weeks, we found a house that literally was everything that had been on our checklist; everything, price, rate, everything. And our bid was accepted. Everything seemed to be coming together. And then we got the home inspection report back. And there were very expensive problems that were there. There was a long period of trying to negotiate that, trying to figure out, “All right, do we hold on? Is that what the Lord is saying to do? Do we just wait?” We’re kind of in the middle of all of it going, “Lord, what are You doing?” I think what happened in the process was, it went from, “What are You doing in this situation?” to, “Okay, what are You wanting to do in us? What things are You surfacing in us?”
One of the things that the waiting really did for me was made me think in a whole new way about refugees and displaced people. I was really feeling the weight of 14 years of displacement and I wasn’t in a different culture. I wasn’t in unsafe, crime ridden circumstances. It wasn’t violent circumstances. And if I was being this burdened and this torn and just the stress of living in limbo for so long, it just really gave me a heart for people who are in far worse conditions and living in that way. Of being able to see their struggle from a whole new place and to pray accordingly. But I think another thing that it did was it also made me really aware of God; the ache that must be present. God’s able to absorb everything, but for Him to be waiting for the fullness of creation to be. There’s a sense in which it’s done, but He’s also present with us in the waiting. That awareness of his longing to make a home for His children and for the redemption of all things, it became a place of invitation. Like the Lord was saying to me, “As hard as this is right now, I’m giving you a window into something that’s in my heart. I’m letting you see into my heart, my longing for this, for you, for all of your people. And when I give you your home, this longing for the fullness still remains in me.” That was another thing that was really going on in my heart during that time.
Karlene Cannon: That strikes me, as you talk about that, that God gave you this unusual way to share in His suffering. That’s what I hear you saying. I think as parents we get a glimpse of that, because nothing hurts more than watching your kids hurt. Here is God coming alongside of you and sharing in the pain of waiting for, as you said, the fullness of His creation to be realized. He’s been doing that since the fall, He’s been living in that frustration and when He shares His heart with us like that…I think that’s this relational prayer that Larry is talking about. That’s what’s possible. When we share our heart with Him, He then shares His heart back to us and it’s such an honor and a privilege to join in those realities. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that part of your wrestling and that’s just really beautiful that God would, even in the midst of that “No,” that painful “No,” or, “Wait, it’s not time yet,” that He would come and be with you in that kind of way.
Rosanne Moore: Ultimately that house did fall through and so then there was all of the question of, “All right, how do we know how we’re being led?” There was all of that that followed. So that was really difficult. That almost led into a real… it was just a really dark, wearing season. Yet we continued to go ahead and pack. The kids were really wrestling with, “We actually opened our hearts to this. And once again, it’s been devastated. We don’t even want to look at anything else as a possibility.” And we explored a variety of possibilities. We started wondering, are we supposed to build instead? All of these things.
As we were going through that, continuing to look at houses, there were two that came on the market all of a sudden at the same time. I was really drawn to one and the kids were really drawn to the other one. Even that experience was part of God’s working in our heart to uncover and draw us near because as we sat down, I realized we were talking at each other. We weren’t talking to each other. And we had to sit down and say, “Okay, why?” My daughter was actually the one who asked me, “Why are you having such a visceral desire for one and rejection of the other?” I realized that one made me feel safe, and the other had things about it that were very trauma triggering to me. And the same thing was happening with my children, but in reverse; there were elements about one house that were triggering to them and the other one felt for me the one that they liked felt.
It was going to need a lot of work like the one that we were currently living in, whereas to them, it was open. The other one had rooms that were distinct from one another, which is like the house that we had been living in, it was older from that standpoint. So they really wanted a spacious kitchen. That was very important to them. They wanted a kitchen that was open to the living space because we all like to cook. We like to be together. The house that we had been living in, as soon as you got more than two people in there, you were stepping on each other. I think for them, an open kitchen represented access to me.
I think as we look at relational prayer, there were things in this journey that kept bringing me back to, what does it mean to be embodied in my faith to not be spiritualizing or band-aiding things, but to actually be present in a physical body and to be bringing that totality of who I am as a human being to God in the way that I engage with others and engage my situation? We actually had ended up having some really good conversations that came out of that. It looked like the door was opening for one of those houses, and then again, failed an inspection report. It was just like, “Is this ever going to happen? What is this whole thing about, Lord? What is this thing going to do?” So we pulled back. I went through a really dark period at that point where it was just like “This feels like You’re playing with us at this point. Honestly, it feels like you’re playing with us, or worse yet, maybe all of this is simply a creation of my own desire. This isn’t You at all. This is me. Perfect. How do I even know You’re in this? How do I even know that You are leading this?” Every cult in the world thinks that they have a corner on God and are being led by Him. That was the kind of mind battle that I was going through at that time.
My spiritual formation group was so lovely. We met together and they just let me be an absolute angry, frightened, raging and despairing mess in their presence. They just held me there and I met with them. I was in this bad place and I felt I don’t even know whether this is God. How do we even know anything about how God leads or what He’s doing? It feels like we’re just pretending into the void or whatever. While I was in that meeting with them, I got a text from our realtor. We had an appointment for that afternoon to go see a house. She texted and said, “I actually think there’s another one that we need to go see instead. It just came on the market. I only saw it last night. It’s already got so many bids that they’re closing bids at five o’clock today. I think we need to go ahead and see it.” And I thought, okay, whatever, I was not primed for this at all. I’m feeling like a spiritual mess right now, and feeling very jaded.
We pulled up to this gorgeous brick home and I’m thinking, “Okay. There’s no way this is going to really work. Is this in the budget? Is this it?” It was the same as the houses we had been looking at. So then my question was, “What’s wrong with it? This is a lot nicer than everything else that’s been in the budget. We’ve already gone through two failed inspection reports. So what’s wrong with it?” We went through this house. I was aware it was gorgeous, but I had this weird sense that I had been there before. As I’m walking around the house at one point the realtor said, “Okay, let’s go upstairs now.” I said, “Okay, the stairs are over there.” Like, how did I know that?
We went upstairs and as we came back down, I suddenly had a flashback of 2009, the year that we moved to Rock Hill. We were attending a church on Saturday nights. A high school classmate of mine that I had not seen in 15 years and 40 pounds for both of us, so it was amazing that she recognized me. They normally went on Sunday mornings, but this time they were there on a Saturday night. She recognized me. We reconnected. They had us over for dinner, and it had been at this house. Her husband was a builder and had built this house. I realized that the flashback that I had was of the evening that we had first had dinner with them. They had been telling us about a particular devastating situation in their life where they followed what the Lord told them to do. He led them to do something and it seemed to lead right off a cliff. Their lives imploded in many ways. The story that I had that flashback over was that she had been telling me in the kitchen how in the middle of this situation, she had been crying out to the Lord, “I need You to make clear that this is You, that we’re hearing from You. How do I know that in the middle of the situation?” She was going through a drive through and the thing that Lord had been saying for months to her was, “Just keep moving forward. Just keep moving forward.” And as she’s crying out to Him as she goes through this drive through, she’s just sobbing. The guy who hands her food had tattooed on his arm, “just keep moving forward.”
So as I’m coming down these stairs and I have this flashback, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I have to get in touch with Christine because this really feels significant.” I Facebook messaged her that night. We put in a bid on the house. The other places we had been looking at would have required us to either build an apartment for Mom and Dad in the garage or in the basement. This was done. This was all done and ready. I got reached out to my former classmate that night, and I told her that we had looked at the house and said, “I had this flashback.” She was currently going through something and she said, “The Lord knew I needed that reminder today. So thank you.”
This is the interweaving. You and your tickets, and then all of this, and then the flashback for me. Having been through 2 situations that looked like they lined up and they didn’t, we’re moving forward, but I’m trying not to be too invested. The day that we got the final inspection report back on this house, and it was clear, I suddenly realized it was the 10 year anniversary of the divorce decree, where I had walked away from the hope of all home ownership. That day I had been listening all along to an album called Faithful that was done just before the pandemic. A collective of female artists had gotten together and had done all this songwriting. There had been song lyrics in there during this journey. “The detour is the road” or “You’ve been good to me. I can dare to hope I will choose to believe when the way is dark and cold.” Things that had sustained me throughout that time when I realized that this is the 10 year anniversary.
I went back to that album and a new song had dropped. I don’t know if I’ve even told you this part. It’s based on Psalm 68:5-6 about God being a defender to the fatherless – So this is for you as well, Karlene, the defender of the fatherless – and the husband of widows. One of the things that they talked about was the abandoned. Not just widows, but the abandoned. And the song is A Place For You and we’re going to link it in the show notes. But I lose it. I just lose it. Every time I hear this song it is so tender still because it talks in there about having a safe place for your children, for you, the protection. All of the things that underneath that prayer, that surface prayer for a house that worked, those were the underlying questions that God wanted to answer for me. We’re not in heaven yet. We talked about that. He hasn’t returned. All things are not made new. The night that we moved into this house, we had a flood that had to be dealt with. There’s been a lot of points of chaos in the just few weeks we’ve been here. Yet in the middle of it, I wake up every morning, just grateful for His provision and trusting that this place.
We have named all of our houses in every place we’ve lived. We’ve named this one Arukah Oasis. Arukah is the Hebrew word that means to rebuild what is destroyed and demolished; to heal what has been broken and torn down. This is a place that we’re praying will not only be that for us, but that we can actually make that for others as well.
Karlene Cannon: As someone who’s privileged to be part of the team of people who were praying and holding on to hope when it was so dark, it was a really long process from the moment you asked us to pray until now. I saw the pictures of all the different options and they all seemed good at the time. Yet this place that God has prepared for you is so much better than any of the other options. It’s absolutely beautiful. One of the things that I am so grateful for is that you get to live in a place that is beautiful. It’s just beautiful. In a different way, this gift feels extravagant because it is so much better. It’s worlds apart from the house that you were in, but it’s also head and shoulders better than anything you had looked at until this just dropped in your lap so suddenly. It just echoes all over the place of the way God.
I remember, maybe a week ago being on the phone with you, and your kids were laughing and having fun in the kitchen, being lighthearted. We were talking about work issues and all of a sudden you just stopped and said, “Just listen to that. Just listen to their laughter because they just have a carefree experience of life that is new because of this place.” There’s just so many ways that this – and of course with your parents – has been such a gift and it’s just a beginning I think.
Rosanne Moore: For sure. And throughout it, because we are blending households and all of that, there have just been really sweet things that the Lord has done, like giving me conversations with somebody else who is doing that. The way that we’ve had to work through things in our relationship. Anytime you do this, you run into all the family dynamics. Even seeing the Lord show up in the middle of that and really moving us toward health, toward greater love in the way that’s happening in ways that – it hasn’t always looked nice or neat. It’s been messy – but towards something that’s actually healthy instead of just looking nice on the surface and it really isn’t underneath. It’s been very multifaceted. I think the big thing was walking away from that and the conversation with Christine. I was like, all this stuff in my head that was clamoring, “Is this true? How can I try?” That got blown out of the water because only God could have worked all of the pieces and all of the people and all of the facets of this together.
Karlene Cannon: That random guy who got a tattoo, whatever day that was, years and years ago.
Rosanne Moore: Exactly! The thought that at the point where my life was falling apart and I didn’t know it yet. I didn’t even know how bad it was going to get. He was already preparing a place for us.
I hope for our listeners. I hope if you are still waiting, there’s still something you’re waiting for or if there is a loss – because I’ve lost a child. There are losses where there’s not going to be a happy ending coming, there has to be something else in which He meets you. I’ve been there too. I know what that is. – My prayer for you today is that you will be able to do what Larry talks about and to present whatever is truly going on, whether it’s envy or resentment or doubt or fear or longing or feeling abandoned, whatever’s actually going on that’s behind the thing that you’re asking for the questions that are there, you’ll be able to present all of that. You’ll be able to actually attend to how you’re seeing God and how you’re seeing yourself in relationship with Him and not cover that with any kind of spiritual band-aids at all, but to just bring that as it is and to let Him purge out the lies and the deception and and to reveal Himself to you in a fresh new way. Be able to bring all of that to Him and encounter Him in the goodness that He is. Not just your sustainer in suffering, but also as the giver of good gifts.
Karlene Cannon: To reiterate again, the starting place is to just be where you are, to come as you are. That’s really what God wants, all of you. It feels really risky, whether it’s something as trivial as a basketball game, or something as vital as a safe place to live. The risk is worth it, because God is weaving this incredible tapestry and He’s graciously and kindly giving us these opportunities to see what He’s doing. Until we’re able to just come and trust ourselves to Him, we miss so much in our spiritual platitudes and good doctrine and cognitive rationalization of whatever’s going on. He really wants to offer something that’s fully human and addresses all of our experience.
I think the other thing that strikes me is to do that in community. There was something about me being willing to send the email, something about you pulling us all together. Rosanne has this group message, I think there’s 13 people on it, or 14, that have been updated. We’ve been on this journey. She graciously invited us to be with her on this journey. You talked about meeting with your spiritual formation group and them holding you in what, as you described, seemed you felt was this ugly place, this looking bad in the face of love. Yet that was so powerful. Larry talks about that in all his books and it feels counterintuitive, but it really is the way God wants us to be. He meets us in so many ways when we’re finally willing to do that.
We hope that this has been a good, good story for you guys to share with us. We really wanted to make these stories available to you. For you to know that, as part of our Larger Story family, you were part of all of this that was going on, starting at the Summit and it continues.
Rosanne, you guys moved in about a month ago. Is that right?
Rosanne Moore: It was September 28th, so it’s been almost 3 weeks.
Karlene Cannon: So pretty close. This is real time, real life stuff that is happening. That’s what we’re about here at Larger Story, wanting to be part of those moments and all the moments in between. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to next week and the conversations that we’ll have next week.
Rosanne Moore: Thanks so much.
Knowing that God says He loves us is one thing, but personally encountering His delight in us often involves confronting the ways we resist His grace. Karlene Cannon shares her PAPA Prayer story of God’s subversive generosity in revealing His heart for her.
Karlene Cannon’s Bio:
In 2012, Karlene Cannon sat across a dinner table from Rachael and Larry Crabb and was captivated as Larry talked about his Teleios project- his dream for how his lifework and legacy of relational spiritual formation would be passed on to a new generation on a broader scale than had been possible in his lifetime. That evening eventually led to Karlene joining the staff of Larger Story as the Director of Content and Product Development, where she uses her experience in education, content development, and software business consulting to direct Larger Story’s strategy and create new products that bring to fruition the Teleios vision Larry articulated over a decade ago.
Karlene has written curriculum, developed retreats, and hosted a large Christian community group in her home in the ensuing years, but nothing has prepared her for the current task of reaching a new generation more than raising 4 children (ages 25, 21, 18, 14) in a family culture where relational formation is the norm, relational holiness is the goal, and the Holy Spirit gets all the credit. As she now launches them into a world rife with divisions on all sides, where the truth is often regarded as optional, Karlene’s vision is to reach this connected-but-lonely generation with the transforming certainty of a relational God and His Larger Story. Her passion has found an outlet in digital course development, content creation, and the kind of spiritual direction that occurs over a cup of coffee, via text, and through long conversations in the car.
Karlene loves sports (actually, just Duke basketball and whatever her sons are playing), all things vintage and historic, great books, fragrant coffee and crackling fires. She feels God’s pleasure when her home is full of courageous people sharing their hearts and lives for the glory of God and their own growth and healing.
Rosanne Moore’s Bio:
If Jesus is Who He says He is, why doesn’t being a Christian seem to work better? More to the point, why didn’t it seem to make people better? Those were some of the questions Rosanne Moore was asking about her own life when she first encountered Dr. Larry Crabb’s book Inside Out as a teen and in its pages discovered an invitation to journey into a radically different understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, one that was focused on relationship with God rather than rule lists or behavior modification.
Drawing on her background as a writer, editor, reading instruction specialist, language arts tutor, homeschool mom, speaker, and social media marketer, Rosanne now serves as Larger Story’s Communications Director. She has run a successful small business and worked with several missions and church organizations, but her greatest delight is in listening to the unfolding story of God’s work in the lives of others and sharing her own journey of seeking God in every part of life, even (or, perhaps, especially) in our darkest nights.
Nowhere is Rosanne more passionate about seeing God’s redemption cultivated than in the lives of victims/survivors of abuse of all kinds. Her Lifeline course for women escaping domestic abuse was birthed from her personal experience, as well as out of more than two decades of advocacy work serving women and children impacted by intimate terrorism, coercive control, spiritual abuse, and sexual violence.
A single mom since 2011, Rosanne seeks to create opportunities for rich conversations with her 4 teen & college-aged kids who continually amaze, amuse, and humble her with their awesome selves and their crazy menagerie. She enjoys honest friends who are both hilarious and wise, a lapful of snuggly kitties, and a good book on a rainy day. Lily’s chocolates, Jane Austen movies, and crisp autumn days are a few of her favorite things, and music is her heart’s prayer language.
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
“A Thousand Things”
Recordings from The Summit
Transcript
Rosanne Moore: Hello, Larger Story audience. We’re so happy to have you back with us today. I’m Rosanne Moore, your host at the Relational Spirituality podcast. I have with me my co-host today, Karlene Cannon. We are looking at The PAPA Prayer during this quarter and we have some stories to share about how God has met us in that, in a really personal way.
Karlene, I want to start with you. This actually goes back to 2022, right?
Karlene Cannon: Early 2022. Yeah.
Rosanne Moore: When we did the Summit as a memorial just celebrating Larry’s life and the way that his ministry touched so many lives. We had been working for months to get ready for the Summit.
Karlene Cannon: Over a year really, it had been a big undertaking that we had been heavily invested in as a team and personally. It was a big deal.
Rosanne Moore: And in the midst of that, something happened with you that I want you to share about. So go ahead. I’m going to let you start sharing your story.
Karlene Cannon: I think I need to give a little bit of background of my broader story just to understand the significance of this particular event. Part of my story is all wrapped up in “father.” I had a series of men in my life who had the title of father; I had a biological father who gave me up when I was born – I was adopted – Then I had an adopted father who obviously took me in as a baby and stepped into that role, but then, over the course of my life, he gradually disappeared such that by the time I got married, he was largely not part of my life. He didn’t help with college. He didn’t come to my wedding. He just gradually faded out of my life. And then I had a father-in-law who stepped in and made a lot of promises like, “You finally have a father” and that did not go well either. And God graciously gave me people like Larry Crabb. I have another Larry who’s very important in my life, who has shown me and fathered me spiritually over the years, but that place of father was always nebulous and empty, not one of the positive parts of my life. The idea that a father would give good gifts to his children was always something I cognitively believed, but didn’t actually experience.
Another part of this story that’s going to be really important was, when I was 18 years old and applying to colleges – I grew up in Texas. I wanted to go somewhere different. So I had one application that I could afford to send and I chose Duke University. I’m really not even sure why, except the cover was beautiful on the little brochure they sent out. And that’s where I ended up. God provided miraculously. Tuition was more yearly than my mother made. Lots of things had to come together for me to be even able to go. And that was one of my first experiences of God as a father providing for me. My father actually signed a paper that said he wouldn’t. And so God stepped in and all sorts of ways to make sure that happened.
Those four years were fantastic. A lot of that revolved around basketball. If anyone knows much about college sports, and Duke University – it’s all basketball, all the time. When we were there, our four years there, we went to the final four, all four years, and we won two national championships. So basketball was just a big part of our life, and we continued that with our kids. We have lots of family stories about how important basketball was, and my little six year old praying for a win, and it had just all sorts of different things. It’s where I met my husband, we got engaged at a basketball game, we got married at the cathedral on campus. My daughter went there and met her husband. So our whole lives have been part of the journey of Duke basketball and Coach K.
So when we get to the Summit, it turns out that the weekend we had planned for the Summit was going to be the weekend of coach K’s last game at Cameron indoor stadium ever. It had been hyped and it was a big deal for lots of reasons. When I realized that I wasn’t even going to be able to be home and to watch the whole day of festivities, I was really sad. It was like a loss. I experienced it as a loss because this had been such an important part of my life. It’s such a place of joy for me. I just was struggling with that reality.
We had some friends who had also graduated from Duke about, I don’t know, 15 years ahead of us. And he had season tickets.Throughout the years he had given us those when he wasn’t using them. So a lot of our story centered around getting tickets from our friend Jack and being able to go and see games.
We had been with them in early February at a game and they were telling us that they had an option on some extra tickets for the Carolina game, but nobody ever gives up their tickets for this game. This game is like the biggest, especially when it’s coach K’s last game, it’s like the biggest game of the year and the biggest ticket, even president Biden couldn’t get a ticket. They were selling for like tens of thousands of dollars. So when they said we might get tickets, I was like, Sure. And then they said, we’ll let you know. I was like, there’s lots of people in line ahead of us. They had three sons and two of their sons were Duke grads, so it was a real long shot in every way, but there was something in my heart that was like, Ooh, I would like that ticket. I would love to be in that stadium for Coach K’s last game. It was completely out of the realm of possibility, but the seed was planted in my heart.
Every time there was something mentioned about – of course, this is the biggest news, because coach K’s retiring after 40 years, this story career, so it’s on every TV commercial and so lots of opportunities for me to communicate my desire back to God and just say, I’m going to really miss not watching the game. It’d be great to be there. Just this ongoing conversation about this thing that was important to me, that seemed… Almost shallow; it seemed almost ridiculous because I was also completely focused on this Summit that we were doing and that was consuming most of my time and energy and I had deep desires for that to be honoring to Larry and significant almost this competitive set of desires. I just kept handing them back to God, and just saying, my heart and I really want to be ensured and do this thing for you and for Larry and for Larger Story. And I really want to be in Cameron Indoor Stadium, or at least be able to watch it on TV and I’m just going to leave that in your hands. It was just this relational conversation that I kept having with God over about four weeks.
We get to the Summit, it’s going really well. I guess I should give a little more background…
Rosanne Moore: I was going to say, one thing that strikes me and what you’ve shared so far is the fact that you didn’t just go, “this is not the spiritual desire,” right? Like, “I just need to focus on the spiritual desire and maybe even repent of the selfish desire.” Instead, you put it before the Lord and you were like, “I’m going to let you sort it out.” I love that. I love that you didn’t try to tell Him what He should do. You just came and presented yourself honestly to Him.
Karlene Cannon: I think that was a real struggle because it did feel very self-absorbed and worldly, especially because you’ve got this Summit going on over here that you know is of great spiritual significance and you’ve got a basketball game, the scales are pretty obviously tipping one way, and yet the desire was so strong that I just couldn’t parse it myself, and I just said, “I’m just going to let You handle it.” Which is unusual for me, honestly. “I’m just going to own this, and let You know how I feel every time I feel it and see what happens,” and I think there was something in me that recognized that God is going to do what He was going to do at the Summit with or without me. Of course, He’s going to do what He’s going to do in Cameron Indoor Stadium with or without me, but I could trust Him that I could be where He wanted me to be.
My assumption was that He wanted me to be focused over here and not even watching Coach K on ESPN, that was my assumption in that, but there was this sort of belief that I’m not that important either place. What is important is what’s happening with me and God, and that can happen in either place. I think part of what makes this story more than just a shallow wish to go to a basketball game was this journey I had been on with God for about 12 years where He was regularly and consistently and even miraculously, trying to communicate to me that He was delighted in me.
This was a really difficult message for me to internalize and own for a host of reasons that I won’t get too bogged down in. But there had just been a series of events over the course of 12 years that God kept telling me, “you are my delight. I delight in you. All of these other things you get so hung up on don’t matter because I have chosen to delight in you because I see you through the righteousness of Jesus, and I can delight in that and who I created you to be.”
I just struggled to take that from my head down into who I am in my relationship with God. So this was a journey. When we got to the Summit, the first night Kent Denlinger was thinking, and he brought up this whole topic of delight. Honestly, what happened to me was this sort of, “Oh great. Here we go again. What else are you going to do, God, on this one? Because I know I’m being stubborn and I need to repent and all of these things.” I experienced that whole journey of frustration. Listening to Kent as he talked and being glad of the reminder once again that God delighted in me, that was good.
That was the end of that whole part, and we woke up the next morning, and Rich got a phone call, and I’m listening to him on the other end, and it’s starting to dawn on me what’s really happening on this phone call. Our friend Jack had gotten two tickets to the Carolina game. That in and of itself was shocking, but then all three of his sons were involved in things that they felt they could not leave, so he was offering us the tickets and we were in North Carolina, so we were only two hours away. Rich says, “We just got these tickets. What do you want to do?” Because here I am, technically at something I really should have been prioritizing over this game. But something in my heart said, “You’ve been asking me how I was going to handle this. I want you to know that I am a Father who gives good gifts to His children. I delight in you.”
I knew that it would be wrong to refuse those tickets because this was bigger than a basketball game or what was happening at the Summit. This was about what God was doing with me. He had gone to such extravagant lengths. President Biden couldn’t get tickets the morning of the game. So we talked and I went back and forth, but I knew in my heart that I was not going to turn down those tickets and it might cause trouble. I remember coming to you and being like, I’m supposed to do this and this, is it okay if I just dump it on you? Because I’m headed North. Fortunately, our colleague Kris was actually the one who was responsible for most of the Summit, and I was really more of a peripheral player and it wasn’t a huge upheaval for me to leave. But it still felt like I was shirking my responsibilities and abandoning you guys.
But surprisingly, we drove out of the Cove, and I was all in on this experience that God had just handed me. It was a delightful day. In some ways, it was a little bit of heaven. We were there celebrating. It was just fun. There was so much reminiscing, and it was celebrating someone who had done something really significant.
Then we get to the game. Games in Cameron Indoor Stadium are fantastic in any scenario, but this one was particularly full of energy. It did not go well, however, We lost that game, and we lost that game badly. My heart was broken for these young men because most of them are about 18 years old, and they have got the entire world watching them, and the pressure of winning this last game, and there was just a lot going on. I remember a conversation in my head with God. This has been such a great day and so unexpected. I felt like I’d really lived it with God. Like He was with me throughout the day. This was about five minutes toward the end. I’m like, we could still pull this out. It’d be really great if we won, that would just cap off a virtually perfect day. There was just this little whisper in my heart of, “You’re not in heaven yet. Don’t be deceived by how good this is. This is not heaven.” I just thought, “Losing this game doesn’t in any way change the significance of the day for me.” It doesn’t take away from the time that I had with God and that He orchestrated for me. I wish it had turned out differently, and I’m not in any way saying that I had any responsibility for the outcome of the game, I absolutely did not, but it was just God’s kindness to make it clear to me that whatever I’m going through in life, there’s always a reconciliation of really good and really not good. And the really not good doesn’t change the really good. The really good can change the really not good. But the brokenness that we live in doesn’t change the reality of God’s great extravagant love for us.
I just got to the end of that day, and there was this certainty that I might still struggle to feel like I’m a delight, but I can always look back on that day and know that God wanted me to unmistakably never question that He is delighted in me and He would go to great lengths to communicate that to me.
There were lots of things that came off of that, tendrils and different things that came off of that story. But one of them, I think, is almost like my story birthed, in some ways, or at least ignited or was a catalyst for an even bigger story that we’re going to talk about in our next episode.
There was, for me at least, something in that connection to somebody else’s story that also reinforced for me what God is about. That day felt like it was me and God. The community, the body of Christ, there were just lots of other ways that God was working.So when I gave up the sense that I was important over here and needed to stay at the Summit, it was almost like it released the Spirit. I’m not communicating this well. It was almost like, in not having to stay here because I thought I was important here, it’s like God did all of these other things over here, that might not have happened if I hadn’t just followed His leading in ways that almost felt sinful to me, if that makes sense.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking, humility is accepting who we are with God, right? It’s not making ourselves too small or too big. And so by, by letting go of the role at the Summit and receiving what He was offering you, you accepted you. It’s like you embodied who you were in His presence in your relationship with Him. And that actually did release what the Spirit was going to do next, but also do in you. And that was important.
I think when you’re talking about this, father issues are a big deal. You had a lot of lived experience that had reinforced that issue of delight. And so for you to open your heart at that moment and say, “I’m not going to earn Your delight by staying at the Summit, I’m going to receive Your delight by receiving this gift You want to give me.” I think that’s a big and beautiful thing that He was doing.
Karlene Cannon: That’s a really good way of articulating what I was struggling to articulate. I think you’re absolutely right. If I had stayed at the Summit, there would have been a sense of earning something and pleasing someone else. I was very aware of what other people might think about me abandoning my post and leaving the Summit. I’ll just be honest, that was part of my challenge, what are people going to think about me? Because I also knew that the next day I had to talk to people about, here’s what we’re doing at Larger Story and be passionate and, are they going to wonder how committed I am if I just up and leave for a basketball game?
It was interesting. I actually had a conversation with Jim Cress, who was there as we were leaving, and I told him that I got tickets and I was just sharing my struggle and he was like, are you kidding me? Go, just go. It was so encouraging because he got it. He got the sort of reason for going. I didn’t even share all those details about what it was doing in me, but just the bigness of this gift, if God’s giving you that gift, go. Actually, maybe it’s that I hadn’t quite absorbed it. When you said that, Rosanne, I do think a lot of my story with God has been trying to earn something. So the miracle of being able to just let that go and receive was a really big part of what made that day so special.
Rosanne Moore: I’m curious, did you look back on that? How is that staying with you? Does that feel like a one-time “trophy” event? Or is that something that you’re still able to access and live into?
Karlene Cannon: That’s a really good question. I have tried to navigate my spiritual life largely by trying to get it right. One of the things I struggle with is the desire – to borrow from one of Tim Keller’s phrases – to be my own savior. I actually want to just do it. That just feels safer to me if I can do it. Then, my bases are covered. There’s lots of reasons why I operate that way. But, I think in addition to the sealing on my heart the delight. The idea that I have to do it right and that’s more important than following the Spirit into places that feel strange or weird or like they just couldn’t possibly be true. I think it gave me some courage to step away from the safety of trying to do it right and to just rest into the reality that I hear from the Spirit and I can follow Him, even when it doesn’t necessarily make sense. That is where the delight comes from, that God is not as happy and thrilled by my attempts to get it right as I am, and that’s actually a really good thing that He just likes me and just wants me to want Him and “the pressure’s off,” to quote another of our favorite books.
I think that was the whole part of that experience. This real, tangible, lived experience of choosing against getting it right and just how freeing and beautiful that was and that God could really meet me in a way that my attempts to earn had been keeping Him at a distance previously.
I think your question was, how does that stay with me? I had a real sense that day that this was a landmark moment, and then I needed to somehow hold on to that. I sent an email. We were in the car driving to the game, so I’m typing up this email to capture what I was feeling and what was going on. So many other things happened after that email, but I do hold on to that and look back at it just to remember when I’m struggling with the sense of delight. I think God in His kindness, He kept telling this long story that started to weave other people in that in case I forget, He’s going to keep reminding me in all of these other ways.
I think what that’s done and where this kind of comes back to what Larry’s saying in The PAPA Prayer. This is just very relational. So much of my prayer life in the past has been… I’ve done index cards, I’ve done prayer lists, I’ve had the little sheets where you check off when it was answered, all of it. It’s very systematized. And Larry’s talking in The PAPA Prayer about something that’s very relational and that’s how I experienced this. Both in praying leading up to it, because I’d have to just keep saying, this is what I want and I’m really sad and I just leave it with you, and then experiencing the whole day with God being, I can’t believe I’m here. Thank you. Just this ongoing conversational interaction with God. Even in the aftermath as it continued to unfold it’s been a very rich relational experience that I think is so much bigger than the gift of the day, which was huge.
Rosanne Moore: When you came and told me, I didn’t think, “She’s abandoning her post,” but I thought, “The Summit has all these really rich conversations, and she wants to walk away from that? That’s a little weird.”
Karlene Cannon: There was definitely a sense of loss as I was driving away because I did absolutely feel I’m actually going to miss out on what’s happening here. So that’s very true.
Rosanne Moore: And yet the Lord was actually speaking something really deeper to your heart probably than what would have happened in those conversations. It wasn’t until I got your email and understood the significance of what you were sharing that I realized there was so much more to the story than just, “Hey, we got tickets, isn’t that cool?”
What struck me about your story was that it wasn’t even just God saying, “I am delighted in you, this matters to you.” It was layers of provision, like Duke had been a place of provision. So it was like God was taking you back to layer after layer of provision for you. And then going, “I really want you to know I see your heart. I’m giving you this gift.” This is important for all of those many layers behind it.
Karlene Cannon: That’s right. Even just the whole part of the storyline about fathering. Larry had been a real voice of fatherly love and input, especially in the last 12 years. There were moments in this whole thing where it felt disloyal, because that was all about honoring him and a memorial to his life and his impact. Yet it was also some of the conversations I’d had with him and some of the things that he had said.
One time I was at SSD and he was actually talking to another young woman on stage, he’s not talking to me. She’s talking about her father and he says, “I think I’d really enjoy being your father.” And it was like he talked to me. I don’t even remember how it impacted her, but I just started sobbing. Larry had just been a really important part of that storyline in my life. And in some ways it was like God was using him again, in a kind of unexpected way. I think that was part of the reinforcement of what God was doing in being a father who gave, who gives good gifts, that just underscored that experience for me, that it was connected to Larry at the Summit. There were lots of levels that are still becoming more clear as we keep living this thing out.
I think everybody has those kinds of things in their life. God is really a God that weaves a tapestry. There’s a story arc, but it’s a lot more than one line. There are just all kinds of things that intersect that He’s pulling threads through to make a picture that might not be clear in one moment, but all of a sudden you get a glimpse of all the richness of that tapestry, and only God knows. Can you do that? We’re just not that smart.
Rosanne Moore: Christa Wells has a song: “A thousand things are happening in this one thing,” that’s one of the lines from it. That’s always going on, but we don’t always get the peek behind the curtain that you’ve got with what happened with you.
Karlene Cannon: That’s very true.
Rosanne Moore: We’re going to wrap up today, but Karlene made mention of what was the story that came out of that email that she sent. I was so glad that she didn’t just go and have a good time, but that she shared the story of what happened with us, because the Lord then sparked something in me and we’re going to talk about that in our next episode. So come back next week. Thank you for being with us today.
Karlene, thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. I think there are a lot of people in our audience who can relate to wrestling. We were talking about this in book club actually. Often when we bring our prayer requests we don’t want to do the laundry list thing, like what’s really going on is not the thing we’re asking for. It’s the underlying question. Is God a good God who is going to take care of me in a way that my father didn’t, in your case. How does He see me? Does He delight in me? Is His love something I have to earn? All of those questions, whenever we’re looking at things in the Middle East, the wrestling over what it looks like to be cared for by God in the middle of a situation that looks so hard. For the mother or parent, does God love my child as much as I do? Those are the underlying things that happen in our hearts and in our lives.
Thank you for sharing some of your journey and how God unexpectedly… – what I love about your story is how subversive it was. He used a basketball game, for Pete’s sake! It was just so subversive that He says, “I really want you to know this is how I see you.” I love that.
Thank you listeners for being with us, and we’re going to wrap up for today, but please come back next week.
Karlene Cannon: You don’t want to miss the rest of the story for sure.
Rosanne Moore: There’s more as we talk about The PAPA Prayer. Thanks so much.
Darrell is an author and teacher who reminds Kep of his late father. Join Kep as he bounces several topics off Darrell Johnson as they talk about end times, the church and a few other topics.
Bio: Darrell Johnson has been preaching Jesus Christ and His Gospel for over 50 years. He has served a number of Presbyterian congregations in California, Union Church of Manila in the Philippines, and the historic First Baptist Church in the heart of Vancouver, Canada. He has taught preaching for Fuller College in Vancouver. He has authored many books and is currently serving as Scholar-in-Residence for the Way Church and Canadian Church Leaders Network, and still serves Regent College part-time as Teaching Fellow. He and his wife Sharon have been married for more than 50 years. Together they have raised four children adopted from four different countries of the world, and now enjoy loving 11 active grandchildren!
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
“Discipleship On The Edge” by Darrell Johnson
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Welcome everyone to Relational Spirituality, a Larger Story podcast where you can belong, you can become, and you can be known in the story that’s going on right now. A story that we know how the story ends. I’m your host today, Kep Crabb.
When I was a young boy in the early 70s, I got a chance to see a couple of movies. The movies are called A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder. Some of you may remember those movies. They weren’t exactly the Hollywood productions that we’re used to today, but the simple premise of the two movies; A Thief in the Night was the rapture when Jesus comes back to get us. The second movie, A Distant Thunder, was what happens after the rapture: the tribulation. Some of you may disagree with the theology of the movies as to when Jesus is coming, but they left a lasting impact on me and they encouraged me really to dive into some of the books in the Bible that really talked about the end times; books like Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the last book of the Bible, Revelation. I was fascinated and honestly frightened a little bit by the end times.
I’m honored today to be joined by someone who my late father, Larry Crabb, greatly admired and really enjoyed his thought provoking books. He’s a husband of more than 50 years. He and his wife, Sharon, have four adopted children from different countries, and now they have 11 grandchildren. I guess we could probably sit and talk about the grandchildren, because I’m expecting my first grandchild in December, so that could be a full episode for us if we wanted to, but maybe that’s for another time. We could also talk about some of the books that he’s written, like Experiencing the Trinity, Fifty-Seven Words that Change the World, and a book on story, The Story That Makes Sense Of Our Stories. Here at Larger Story, we call that our smaller story, how that fits into His Larger Story. He also has come out with a new book on Ephesians, which I just got a copy of and cannot wait to dive into that. But that’s not what we’re going to be talking about today either.
Today we’re going to be chatting about his book, Discipleship on the Edge. This book was published in 2004. This book is about the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ to John on the island of Patmos. It’s the last book of the Bible. I am super excited today to have Darrell Johnson with us. Darrell, thank you for joining me today. How are you?
Darrell Johnson: Welcome. I’m very pleased to join you and to get to meet you. I knew your father’s books over the years and I wish that I can connect with him through you and through your ministry, so it’s a joy to be with you today.
Kep Crabb: Thank you so much. I know my brother had a chance to reach out to you a little bit ago just to tell you how much you meant to Dad, and you responded graciously to him. That’s when I started thinking, Hey, maybe if I invite this guy to do a podcast with me, it could work out. It’s exciting. Like I said to you earlier, since Dad’s been gone now, or he passed through here about two and a half years ago, I only have about four or five hours of questions for you today since I don’t have him around anymore. I hope you’re ready to strap in.
Darrell Johnson: I’ll do the best I can. Lord help me.
Kep Crabb: I appreciate it. It’s interesting because you and he have so many similarities, Darrell. Aside from the number of books that you’ve written, both of you are prolific writers. The way you talk, the way you look, the way you dress – I don’t know if that’s the quintessential professor’s uniform or not – but the biggest similarity and common thing that I think you guys really had and have is your love for the Word and your love for His church. It comes through in your writings. I’ve had a chance to see some of your videos and it’s just clear as crystal.
Just to tell you a little bit about my background, obviously you knew my dad a little bit, or maybe read some of his books. Three years ago, my wife was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. It was a blow. She was given about a 20 percent chance to live five years. Then shortly after that, Dad passed away and that has changed my life. I am an absolutely different person because of this. My focus now has really been on heaven and the second coming. And so in preparation for what we were going to talk about today, obviously I re-read your book, Discipleship on the Edge, which I would encourage those of you who have not read that to do that.
I also had a chance to go through Dad’s book just real briefly, which was 66 Love Letters. I don’t know, Darrell, if you had a chance to read this, but he wrote this book years ago. What he’s doing is he’s having a conversation with God in this book about, why did you write Genesis? Why did you write the book of Obadiah? Why did you write the book of Malachi? And then he strings together the whole story. Kierkegaard, as you might know, referred to the scriptures as 66 love letters. Each book of the Bible was a love letter to us. And so Dad titled it 66 Love Letters. I’m just going to read a quick excerpt from the final chapter of his book, which obviously is the 66th Book of the Bible, Revelation.
The title of this chapter is “Reign with the Lamb now and you will sing when the lion roars.” Dad opens up the chapter with a quote from Francis Schaeffer where Schaeffer says, People often cry out for the work of the Holy Spirit. And yet forget that when the Holy Spirit works, there’s always a tremendous cost to the people of God, weariness, tears, battles.
Then Dad says to the Father, these words encourage me, Father, after talking through the first 65 of your love letters. I still feel tired at times, more than ever in both soul and body, and I find that deep tears come more easily than deep laughter, especially when something touches me in a tender spot and the battle rages in me and around me. It doesn’t seem to be letting up. If anything, it’s getting more intense. Is this really the work of your Spirit? Is this part of maturing? Is this one stretch of the narrow road to life? Then the Father responds to Dad by saying, I love this. When my Son’s kingdom breaks into yours, expect a collision. When His ways of relating confronts the world’s ways of relating, including yours, all heaven and hell break loose. The battle is on; a battle to the death and to life. The side that appears to be losing is winning and will soon win visibly and decisively. My Son will see to that and the side that seems to now have the edge, the side whose godless agenda is growing in worldwide support loses forever.
I just love that. So encouraging to me. It reminds me of the story that you opened up your book with: a group of seminary students were using a room in a local high school where the custodian was allowing them to do that. And they gave him a Bible as a kind of a thank you for letting them do that. And one night after a study session, they came out and they saw him reading the Bible. One of the students walks up to the custodian and says, I see you’re reading the Bible. What are you reading? He said I’m reading the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. He said, Oh, that’s a challenging book. There’s been a lot of people who have studied that in depth and a lot of differing opinions. And he said, Oh, I think I get it. The seminary student stepped back and said, what are you talking about? And he says, Oh yeah, Jesus wins.
I love the fact that we know the end of the story. That to me is just so encouraging as we try to battle and make our way through this world.
But I have a question for you as we get started here.
Darrell Johnson: First of all, I need to get a copy of those 66 love letters.
Kep Crabb: You will get one. One will be in the mail to you tomorrow, sir. Guaranteed.
Darrell Johnson: Thank you. Just the way you read that to me reminds me of one of the things I always admired about your dad and it’s just almost brutal honesty. There’s no game playing on Spirituality. This is real life. This is a real God. I’m a real person. We’re facing real stuff. And he just would name it. I want to read all 66 love letters then see how he worked through them. I want to check out that book right away.
Kep Crabb: I remember I had a chance to take all of my dad’s chicken scratch notes that were his writing. He always wrote every book he ever wrote with a pen and a paper. I did all of the transcriptions from the book SoulTalk onward.
This book was birthed out of him one night where he just sat down and said, why did you write the book of Genesis? And he would just write a sentence. He did that all the way through the book. Then he said, man, this could be a fun book. Talked to Harper Collins about it, they said, great. And it took him four and a half years to write. I said, if you’re going to be speaking for God, the Father, you better have your ducks in a row Dad. So he talked to theologians all over the world and read every commentary on every book of the Bible you could think of. So you can imagine the challenging task that was, but it really is, I believe, his Magnum Opus. I think that you will enjoy it. It’s him having a conversation with God about every book of the Bible. And the last piece of the book is where he strings through the entire message and how it just leads to Jesus all the way through. It’s amazing. I think it’s one of his best.
I read your bio a little bit. You’ve pastored all over the world. I’ve traveled a little bit but most of my barometer for the church is coming from the West, which I know is incredibly limited. But where do you see the church going these days?
Darrell Johnson: My goodness.
Kep Crabb: I’m not trying to get heavy on you right off the bat here, but…
Darrell Johnson: Yeah, you went right to it, though.
Kep Crabb: I did. I did.
Darrell Johnson: Of course, now when we say the church, and we think worldwide, it’s going to be different in different places. Right off, we know that the center of gravity for the church right now worldwide is Africa where it’s just going so fast and with the emergence of African theologians. Ironically, the first great theologians, Augustine and company, were Africans. I don’t know Africa enough to say where the church is going there. I did live in Manila for four years and then I’ve been to Korea many times and been to Hong Kong. And of course now all three of those cities are facing different dynamics and who knows how the church is going to spread in those places.
I’m like you, I’m more in touch with the West. Canada is different than the United States. I’m a dual citizen so I know both sides of the border. Very different. Where do I see the church going? We’re in for a ride. We’re in for a very challenging time. The way I put it with young pastors, it’s almost a sense in which we’re returning to the beginning. The early churches, the letters that Paul writes are all to early churches, they’re all new church plants. The seven churches of Asia Minor in Revelation, they’re all young churches. They were facing a similar situation in that they had no political support. No political party – there weren’t parties, there were just dictators – didn’t support the church, didn’t name the name of Jesus, and they had no cultural support, there’s no precedent for it. So they had to learn to follow Jesus, how to be the church without the support of the government and without support from the culture. And it seems to me we’re in a similar place, especially in Canada. We have no support from the government. As such in fact, contrary in some ways, and then the culture has drifted in such a de-Christianized, almost neo-pagan direction, so we have no support there. We are at a place of great dependency. If the Spirit of God does not move, none of our technology and tricks are going to work. It just isn’t going to work. The Spirit is the one who makes Jesus real. He’s the one who convicts people. He’s the one who opens hearts. He’s the one who empowers ministry on and on. You know the drill: Not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. Nothing we can do except cooperate and participate with the Holy Spirit.
I think we’re moving into a time when we’re going to have more courage and more conviction. As I am rereading so much of the New Testament, I tell my wife regularly – I did this morning – I know I’ve read this a lot of times, that I’ve even taught on this, but it’s like I just read it for the first time in some of the warning passages. You’re not going to be liked by everybody. Not everyone is going to embrace your agenda. You’re not of the world. You’re speaking a different language. You’re talking about a different reality. So don’t be surprised if you get some pushback. And of course, that’s my language. He says, don’t be surprised if you’re actually hated on account of me. So we’re moving into a time where it’s going to demand courage and conviction, perspective and a deep relationship with Jesus so that we can hang in there and keep our balance.
Kep Crabb: Yeah. I love that whole notion of hanging in there. Because what comes to my mind is the whole notion of finishing well.
Scripture talks about it all the time. I think it’s because the hardest part of the race is at the end. I was so fortunate to see my father finish well, as towards the end of his life, the only time he would weep was when he was going to see Jesus. I love to think of Revelation 4 and 5 now, because that’s where he’s at; in a place that’s existed before time, whatever that means. It just brings. chills to my neck as I think, what does my dad look like now as he’s staring at the Lamb on the throne and worshiping always. It just, to me, is so beautiful. It just drives me. The biggest thing for me that I’ve taken away from your book in some respect is, what does it mean to have an eternal perspective? Because that’s changed my life. I used to think, if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, how would that change how I live today? Probably wouldn’t want to start a fight with my wife.
Darrell Johnson: I would recommend against that.
Kep Crabb: I probably wouldn’t watch the local sports game. Not very interested in that. I would probably want to make sure my kids and hopefully my grandson is here and I get a chance to pour into them. Because one of the things that I’ve seen and I’ve taken from your writings is your love of the Word.
There’s a story Dad used to tell, you may remember The Red Skelton Show from back in the day.
Darrell Johnson: Yes. Oh boy does that date us.
Kep Crabb: He and his father would traditionally every week, watch that show. One day, I guess the show was getting ready to come on and Dad is a young boy – six, seven, eight years old – went looking for his father and his dad was sitting in the living room with his Bible open in front of the fireplace and said Larry not today. I’m into something here that I need to continue with. Dad was like, what’s more important than us watching The Red Skelton Show? And he went and looked at my grandfather, his father, who was sitting there reading the book. Ironically, he was reading the book of Leviticus and the love of the Word that my grandfather passed on to my dad and my dad has passed that on to my brother and myself. I’m so grateful that I think I’ve passed that on to my children. I can’t wait to start passing that on to my grandchild. That sounds so fun.
Darrell Johnson: You’re in for a ride, by the way.
Kep Crabb: Tell me about it.
Darrell Johnson: Your life is on a scale of one to 10. When you get married, it changes to, I don’t know, eight, maybe. And then you have children and it changes to about a 15 out of 10. And then grandkids. Oh man, it’s off the charts.
Kep Crabb: Yeah. That’s so fun, man. I cannot wait.
Darrell Johnson: It is very fun. Back to your emphasis on your dad and grandfather, in terms of the Word.
I think that is a critical thing for Disciples generally, but those in pastoral ministry specifically right now, we don’t have enough time in the Word. I’m afraid that too many of us go to the Word to get a word for Sunday or for whatever we’re going to teach. But living in the Word. If people ask me, where do you live? I want to be able to consistently say, in the Word. Sadly, there’s some days when it’s probably in the web, and if I’m living in the web, I’m not going to be able to make it in our time, but I’ve got to be in the Word more just to be in the Word. And then if I have something to preach, all the more that all the better, but that’s not the goal, right? That’s not the goal of living in the Word. You live in the Word so you know the Word Himself, the Word made flesh.
E. Stanley Jones is a Methodist missionary to India of the last century. I’ve counted him as a mentor. I’ve never met him yet but I’ve read just about everything he’s written. He has this saying, he goes to the Gospels in particular, and he says to them, Have you seen Him whom my soul loves? And he says the words, “take me by the hand and lead me to the Word.” And I’ve hung onto that, that when we open the book, yes, we’re seeing words, but those words are taking us to the Word Himself, where we find life and hope and joy. So how then are we going to, in this time of supposed small attention spans and people bombarded by words, how are we going to really build solid disciples who live in the Word, who look at the world through the Word? That’s the challenge that I think is a fundamental challenge before us. Maybe that’s the next book, how to live in the Word.
Kep Crabb: How to live in the Word, that’s it. My dad would say to me many times, I have to spend time in the Word like I have to eat, and like I have to breathe. I’m now getting an understanding of that.
Darrell Johnson: The Word may flesh is the one who says, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. How to do that is the challenge.
Kep Crabb: Yeah, the questions that come to mind as we think about this is, I saw something that you said a while ago about six boxes that you put together on how to hear the voice of the Lord. Dad used to talk to me about them. Someone would come to him and say, Larry, I’ve got a word for you from the Spirit. How did that impact you, Dad? And he said sometimes it means something to me. Sometimes it doesn’t. I said, how do you know that you’re getting a word from the Spirit?
He said there’s three things and you actually have six in a different way, but I think they’re all still in the same category. He said, scriptures, the first spending time in the Word. The second piece is community, spending time in community. And the last piece is prayer. These are the three legs to the stool.
I thought, okay a lot of people spend time in the Word regularly and they’re disciplined well in that respect. I don’t know many people that have had a community that’s been really effective in respect to touching them. Some have. But most small groups don’t end very well. Dad said that the Trinity is the only small group that’s actually gotten along well in the history of time.
Darrell Johnson: That’s good. That’s his line. I’m good. I’m going to use that.
Kep Crabb: You use it, please. And then the one that is most challenging is prayer. Dad wrote a book years ago called The PAPA Prayer. And the Word PAPA stands for four acronyms. It’s present, attend, purge and approach.
We’re actually doing a series on that in this podcast, this last quarter, on prayer, because it seems to be so weak in so many people’s lives. I’ve seen just in my own life, in the last year or so that when I do present myself honestly to the Lord and attend to where I’m at and purge what’s going on in my soul and approach him as my deepest desire, the Spirit opens up doors that I never saw coming in my own prayer life. I don’t want to say it’s all the time because that’s not it, that’s for sure. But it’s been powerful, Darrell. And it’s been something that makes me want more. How is your prayer life?
Darrell Johnson: I would say a better way to answer that would be, how do I do the prayer life? Because the quality of a prayer life, that’s up and down, partly circumstantial, partly what’s going on in our own lives. It’s hard to register, but I can say that the last few years in particular, probably since 1989. I received a book by Eugene Peterson, Answering God, on the Psalms, and if you know that book, he says that the Psalms are prayers that tutor us in prayer. And he says the program is very simple. Just do it. Start with Psalm 1, go to 2, and keep going. So I’ve been doing that every day since my birthday in 1989. I do not know where I’d be without the Psalms. That has become the place where the Spirit of God enables me to approach the Father in the name of Jesus in very honest, full range, deep ways.
I can tell you that I can be really weary. I can be overloaded, but sitting in my chair in my study and just praying a Psalm every day has made all the difference in the world. If you read my book on Ephesians, Paul’s prayers, my goodness. Where did he learn to pray like that?
I think Paul learned to pray through the Psalms and then also through Jesus, watching Jesus pray and John 17. But Paul’s prayers have shaped my prayer life more. So the point you see what’s going there is my prayer life is shaped by the Word too. It’s not like there’s Word and prayer. There’s a word that teaches us to pray and as we pray, the Word becomes more alive and there’s a back and forthness to that so you can’t separate prayer and the Word. For the last decades that has been what sustains me in prayer.
I find more and more that if there’s a group meeting or a gathering of some sort and someone asks me to pray, I’m just going to whip out the book. I know the Psalms well enough that I know the Psalm that we’re going to pray. That’d be my response to prayer life.
Kep Crabb: And that’s what the disciples asked of Jesus. Teach us how to pray.
Darrell Johnson: They didn’t ask anything else that we have a record of. They may have said, teach us to preach like you preach, but there’s no record like that. No. Teach us to cast out demons. Nope. Teach us to pray. Because they could see that the essence of Jesus’ life and ministry was the relationship with the Father and the nature of that relationship.
He’s constantly slipping away. Sharon and I watched one of the episodes of The Chosen last night. It is so fun. You have to live with “what if,” it’s not always super accurate, but boy, I think they’re in touch with the dynamics of that. There’s a scene where Jesus has been in ministry with the disciples and they’re all having a good time and He starts to leave and they say, Where are you going? He goes, I’ll be back. I just need to go away alone. That was really powerful. Of course, they followed him out there, so he couldn’t be alone. But at any rate…
Kep Crabb: I love how that show fills in some of the gaps in some of the ways that we would have anticipated perhaps that those would have happened, but that aren’t necessarily in scripture.
Darrell Johnson: That’s right. Like the woman at the well when she presses him back. What do you mean? You don’t have a bucket. You’re going to get water. When I watched that I thought, okay, I pray, Lord, is that how that could have happened? And I had the peace of saying, it might have. It sure made it real.
Kep Crabb: Yeah, exactly right. It’s interesting because you said sometime I heard where you talk about the work of the Spirit and that’s been something that I’ve been really obsessed with lately, Darrell. How do you know the work of the Spirit’s going on? How do you know I’m getting a word from the Spirit? How do I know the Spirit’s hiding me? You made a comment that the Spirit works very slowly until He doesn’t anymore. And I think I’ve experienced some of that. Can you unpack that a little bit?
Darrell Johnson: Ordinarily – not always ordinarily, as someone said – the Spirit is a gentleman who comes at us mostly through a whisper, mostly in the quiet. If we listen. then He speaks more, and if we listen, He gets clearer, and if we listen more, there’s more direct leading. If, at the beginning, we hear, and then we back off a bit, and don’t listen, and back off a bit, and don’t listen, He doesn’t waste His breath. Just waits. Are you ready to hear or not?
Now, thankfully, there are times when He just takes charge, all right, I’ve had it with your hardened heart, Darrell, I’m going to barge in here. But ordinarily those whispers, that’s where the discipline for me comes.I’ve got to act on that right away. I said, I don’t want to miss the next thing He’s going to communicate. I think that’s what was behind that sentence.
Kep Crabb: When you mentioned earlier as we were chatting that our only real role is to cooperate and invite as the Spirit moves into our lives, Lord, there’s nothing that we can do, but as we invite the Spirit to move through us, and now the Spirit has an opportunity to connect with you, or iron sharpens iron, that people who don’t have the Spirit don’t have that opportunity. It just breaks my heart and it makes me feel like the house is on fire and there’s a baby in there that we have to go get. I don’t know.
I’ve been feeling the work of the Spirit in my own life. I told you a little bit about my story with my wife, which was a blow, but I’ve looked at it now after three years of, What a gift God has given us in respect to taking our eyes off of this world and putting our eyes on the next.
Darrell Johnson: So your wife had, did she die of cancer then?
Kep Crabb: She’s alive. She was diagnosed June, September 8th of 2020. She went in to have the left lower lobe of her lung removed. They found a tumor in there. It was stage one at the time when they opened her up, they said, it’s now gone to stage four, which meant it had metastasized to the pleura of the lung, but it had not gone to the brain. I just said, Lord, this is so unfair. This is a woman who doesn’t smoke, eats well, takes care of herself, all the stuff. This is not fair. And God just says, I’m doing this for you. I could hear it. It’s been an amazing journey since then, which has changed my perspective in every way and how I live. Cause I know that I probably won’t have her for much longer, but God’s in it. I’m ready for it.
Darrell Johnson: Bless you. Bless you, Kep.
Kep Crabb: It’s good, but it’s hard, but that’s where God said, I’m not moving slowly anymore with you. I’m moving quickly now because it’s time. That kind of brings me back to our topic today on Revelation. I know this has been true since Jesus ascended, but I feel the Lord’s coming back soon. I think this world is in a place that seems to be setting up for things that I see of Him coming back to take us. Where are your thoughts on some of that, Darrell? Because I noticed you didn’t go into any of your own positions in this book, which I thought was brilliant.
Darrell Johnson: Let me back up just a second and say something more about apocalyptic literature. Can I do that for a moment? And then we set that other question in context, anywhere you want to go. Okay. Apocalyptic literature. That’s what we’re dealing with is, the first line of the book is the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
As I say in the book and as I preach on that, when most people hear the word apocalypse, they go, Oh no, something really bad is about to happen. You can regularly hear the news media describing the war in Ukraine or other kinds of tragedies. We warn you, you’re going to see some apocalyptic images, right? That’s a wrong use of the word apocalyptic. You’re going to see some horrific images. You’re going to see some cataclysmic and catastrophic images, but those are not necessarily apocalyptic. Apocalypse simply means, breaking through from hiddenness. Apocalypse: lift the cover off of a box, the cover page of a book, pull back a curtain. In the first century when people heard “apocalypse,” they went, Oh wow, something wonderful is about to happen. Do it. Pull back the screen. So apocalyptic literature functions in that way to reveal what is ordinarily hidden. Now it does this in two ways, and has two pastoral purposes.
The first is to set the present moment. In all of its chaos and ambiguity in light of the unseen realities of the future. Because if you can see the future for just a moment, it changes the way you see the present, and it can change the way you live the present. You’ve been hinting at that all the way along here today. Set the present moment in light of the unseen realities of the future. We can’t see the future with our unaided senses. The future is, Jesus is coming with a new heaven and a new earth. I love the image right there in chapter 21 of Revelation, and He will wipe away all their tears. I’ve preached, there will be no more tears. But lately I’ve been captured by that tender image. He himself will wipe away all those tears. There’s a lot of tears to wipe away and He’s going to do it. So the future, but the other function of apocalyptic literature and actually the more primary one is to set the present moment in light of the unseen realities of the present because we don’t see all that’s going on in the present moment. There is more to reality than what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears and touch with our hands, smell with our nose, et cetera. The role of apocalyptic literature is then to open up that more.
You’ve read into the book far enough to know what I’m going to say, the greatest unseen reality of the present moment is a person. Jesus himself. And that’s the job of the last book of the Bible. Both of those, but primarily the second, because in order to operate in this present moment, we need to know the full reality of the present moment. And most of us do not. We don’t pay attention to the fact that, for instance, there are angelic forces, principalities and powers, all of which we don’t take into consideration. But primarily, we don’t take into consideration that the one who is coming is present, even now, with us. And if we can see Him it can change the present. There are two commands in the last book of the Bible. You saw me pause because the title is not Revelation, but the Revelation of Jesus Christ, a whole mouthful. You have to say it because it’s revealing Him.
There are two primary commands in the book. The first is do not be afraid. I forgot how many times it occurs. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. And the second command is behold. Behold or look, not all translations keep that behold or look anymore. It’s an imperative. It’s really critical. So you want to have a version of the Bible that keeps the word behold or look. Jesus says, do not be afraid, look, and it turns out that we obey the first command, do not be afraid by obeying the second command, look, which is a way of saying that we’re so afraid right now in 2023 because we’re not looking at Him.
We’re looking at all the economic factors. We’re looking at all the political factors that are scary. I was just in the States last week, speaking at a conference with pastors and pastors are really trembling about how they’re going to handle the next few months. The political situation we’re looking at the rise of militant terrorism and all those other kinds of things we’re looking at, but we’re not seeing Jesus. So as long as we look at those things, we’re going to be afraid. But once we see Jesus in the midst of it and begin to understand what He might be doing with all of that, then we can breathe, we can hold our own, we can keep our balance, even though it might be frightening, and it may require all kinds of courage, as I said earlier.
So I think that’s why Jesus gave the revelation to John on the prison island. If you can see me, and see who I am, I have the keys. I am ruler of the kings of the earth right now. I am stronger than the dragon and the two beasts. If we can see that, we’ll make it. If we don’t, we’ll compromise, which of course we see happening in many places.
Kep Crabb: All over the place. How do you keep your eyes focused on Jesus?
Darrell Johnson: I’d say that’s the number one question.
Kep Crabb: I think of Peter as he’s getting out of the boat to walk across the water. I’ve been through some deep waters and I know you have too. This life, I love to say, is just not set up to work. I’m in my mid fifties now, and I’m not what I was when I was 35 years old. My body hurts more and it’s just set up to fail because of the fall. And so in the midst of the broken world, in the midst of this broken world when it really does oftentimes seem that Satan is winning, how do we keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus?
Darrell Johnson: Very good question. I’m going to give an answer. We’ve probably talked, we’ve talked about before already in this podcast. For the listeners, believe me, I don’t mean this piously. I don’t mean this naively. There’s only one way to fix your eyes on Jesus, and that’s living in the Word. It’s the only way. I recently put it this way. See if you agree with me, Kep. A person can be in relationship with Jesus without spending time in scripture. That’s because Jesus has gotten a hold of us, right? He took a hold of me. He initiated that relationship. Paul says, He seized me. And now I want to seize the reason He seized me. I can be in relationship, but not know Him. Look at marriages. They’re in relationship, but they gave up getting to know each other, and the only way in a marriage you can know the other is the other has to reveal herself or himself to the other. So in this relationship with Jesus, I can’t know Him unless I listen to Him, reveal Himself to me. And we’re stuck. There’s only one place we get the living, breathing Word.
Kep Crabb: Is that most of Christians today, Darrell? Is that the majority of Christians today? That just don’t spend time in the Word and don’t know Jesus in the way that He wants?
Darrell Johnson: I don’t know about the majority, how to answer that specifically. Yes, I think that’s the crisis right now. For pastors who are listening in on us today, I would say that’s the crisis in the church. Our people who might love Jesus and have good feelings toward Him and really want to follow Him don’t have enough time in the place where He actually meets us to actually know His character. And that’s why we can get snookered by the enemy. Because we don’t know the real thing well enough.
The story about how FBI agents are trained to spot counterfeit money is that they’re never shown counterfeit money. They know the real money so well that the counterfeit comes and they go, that’s bogus. You can throw that right away. So the only way we’re going to be able to stand against the lies all around us right now is we have to know Him who is the truth and the only way to do that is in the Word.
Now, here’s the caveat or not caveat that application. Different people learn in different ways. Different people read in different ways. So the job of the leaders is to find out the different personality types and the different learning types. How do we help them get in the Word? For some, it’s going to be listening to the Word orally. Get that iPod, get that iPhone on, go for a walk and just plug that in for 40 minutes and listen to the gospel of John. If that’s how you learn. Others, it’s reading. Others, it would be through film. Now that’s where it’s a little dicey because you want to make sure the film is doing a good job. Others it’s through teaching, you or I communicating with people. There’s going to be different ways, but all but the final analysis is that it’s the Word. Remember the Richard scary pop up books? Remember those at all?
Kep Crabb: I do, vaguely.
Darrell Johnson: Yeah, so you open the book and then there’s a three dimensional picture that emerges. I think of scripture that way. You open the book and Jesus pops out and that’s where you meet Him. That’s where He tells you His character. And the more I can do that, the more I spot the counterfeit instantaneously. Again, I keep using this word, I get my balance again, get perspective and I can keep going.
I lament the… I don’t like to use the phrase biblical illiteracy. That sounds like someone intentionally didn’t want to know. But the lack of the Word. Now that’s a lifetime of discipline. I’m going to turn 76 in a few weeks, so I’ve got a few years on you. I can tell you right now that scripture has never been as alive for me as it is right now. I said earlier that I said to my wife this morning, I know I read that. I think if she were here, she’d say, you tell me that every day, because it’s getting richer and richer and richer and bigger and better and more massive. And I want everybody to have that experience. So the older you get, the more He meets you in the Word.
Kep Crabb: That is so encouraging. Yeah. I’m in a life group with two other guys that are your age and what I’ve come to realize in chatting with these guys weekly for the last year and a half now is it doesn’t get any easier. This life gets harder in respect to even relational challenges, obviously physical challenges. But I love what you said. The Word is coming alive in a new way, a different way to you now, even after having spent a half a century immersed in it because it continues to talk. I got a chance to watch one of your messages on the distinctions between Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 and 5, and I just loved it. I loved it so much because the difference is Jesus, the Lamb. That now has opened up the throne room to all of us where He’s sitting in the middle. I just continue to think that’s where my dad is. Now he’s one of those 24 thrones around the big throne who’s just worshiping the King, who’s a Lamb sitting in the middle. It just brings goosebumps to my body thinking that’s where my dad is right now. I can’t get over it. It’s just so powerful.
Darrell Johnson: No, yeah, we lost a son. That’s where our son is. And my mom and dad and my two brothers and all the dear friends, all the dear people I’ve served over the years and done funerals for. They’re there and they’re fine. More than fine.
I’d like to think – I think we have biblical justification for it, like in Revelation 7 and then in 12 – they’re praying for us. I don’t know that they can see through that thin veil between the two worlds, we’re probably going to be heretics if we try to talk about that any further, but I think there is a sense in which they are aware we’re not there. They may not experience the pain that we have, the pain of the loss of them. They may not have that same pain, but they’re aware. Your dad’s aware you’re not there and he’s praying for you and your brother and your family. And man and boy, do they know how to pray in that world because they know what it’s going to be like and more importantly, back to revelation again, they know what it’s really like, even now. I would like to think that your dad’s praying, Oh, Lord, help Kep see. Help him see the full present right now. Give him a glimpse of the future, but help him know what’s really going on in the future and the present that Jesus is really there for him and with him.
Kep Crabb: It brings tears to my eyes. I’d love to think of the fact that my father is no longer living with faith or living with hope. He’s just living in love, no more faith and hope. Because the greatest of these is love. Because at some point, faith and hope end when you’re sitting there looking at Jesus. Now he sees Jesus. I would often say to my brother, If Dad were to come back and write a book, that would be a book I would buy after what he’s had a chance to see for the last two and a half years as he’s in the presence of Jesus and just worshiping.
I love your notion on worship too. And that it’s something that’s happened before time. I used to have a chance to lead worship at various churches and I hate saying leading worship, you’re leading the music part of a worship of a church. Worship doesn’t ever start or stop. Okay. It’s time to start worshiping now, everybody. And okay, we’re done worshiping. And now if someone’s going to, I never understood that. I always think I’m just hopefully bringing you to the throne room and this is where you want to live. And it’s just so exciting to have heaven on the forefront of our minds. I love to think about that. And that’s where the book of Revelation, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, is something that changes the way I live right now, as I think about heaven.
I think that the biggest job that we’re doing with Larger Story and why I created this ministry was when my dad passed, I thought this is not going to be good. If what he talked about then, what does it mean to represent Jesus now to others relationally? If that were to die with him, I said, that would not be good. I don’t want that. I want that to continue to live. And our focus is to really, what does it mean to to cross generationally disciple people?
How do I talk to my daughter who’s 26 today and my son who’s 23, and how do I talk to them in a way that gets them hungry and thirsty for the Lord? How do I let them know that this life and the things that the world is trying to tell you is life actually, those are the things that I’m thinking about now.
Darrell Johnson: Yeah, we’re living in a time when a lot of what’s being said is death. They don’t see it now, but they’re going to see it. I’m working with a young church here, Sharon and I. I’ve always served churches that have been at least 60 years old. Wonderful opportunities, but as if you serve a church that’s been around a while, you’ll hear a lot of, we don’t do it that way, or we’ve never done it that way, or that sort of thing. Bless their hearts, as they say in the South, just bless their hearts. So it’s great to be part of a church where it’s not been around long enough for anybody to say that, so we can experiment, but I can tell you, I’m the oldest person in the building every Sunday. I’m preaching this next Sunday, but I’m the oldest person there. Hundreds of these young people, they are so hungry. I don’t remember being that hungry. When I was in university, I knew I was hungry. I knew I loved Jesus. I knew I wanted to know Him and follow Him, but my goodness, they’re really alive right now. And I asked them, where’s this hunger come from? And they’ll say, because it’s not working, nothing’s working for us right now. So this may be for a while, the first generation that at a young age is not buying into the illusion that we can make the world work. So they’re hungering for more and then they hear the story and the story pointing to Jesus. And I go, where did this come from? How come I didn’t know this before? I could tell you all kinds of stories. I even heard this morning reported from Sunday. So it’s a great generation. Your kids are in that.
One of the things I discovered, Kep, that I think is a key, is that your age and my age especially, I wonder if our posture needs to be more, a posture of listening than telling. We’ll get a chance to tell only if they feel we’ve listened and their questions are very different than the ones I had. I went to university 65 to 69, and that was a whole different world. We had questions, but not like now. And so I think that the younger generation is looking for people like you and me who will just listen. And then they finally say, so what do you think?
Kep Crabb: Dad used to call that the art of curiosity. That’s good. What does it mean to be curious? I’ve said that too, Darrell. I’ve sensed that as well, that the younger generation is hungry for something. They’re thirsty for something because they’re seeing such a distinction in respect to the direction that some of these places are going, that they’re like that’s not the direction I want to go. That goes back to our first question of the day, where’s the church going? I think there’s some real hope for what’s happening. I think there’s some real struggle and it’s going to be challenging, but boy, there’s some people out there. Younger generations, younger kids.
My son is one of them as well, who I just had a conversation with a few weeks ago for about an hour and a half of where he’s at, where’s his red dot. That’s what we call it. Where are you at? It’s when you walk into the mall and you say, here’s where I’m at, but I want to go here, so I need to go this way, and then I need to go this way. And he was just unloading on me in some ways that just made my heart sing because the Lord’s grabbing hold of his life. This is a 23 year old boy who’s making his way now and finished college and deciding whether or not he wants to get married and he’s got himself a girl and when he is going to do that thing and who knows. It just made my heart sing. I think he’s indicative of a lot of these kids nowadays that are hungry. I think you’re spot on as we have two ears and one mouth. I want to know what makes you guys click and I want to know what your struggles are.
Darrell Johnson: Yeah. Where are you afraid? What are you longing for? What are you hoping for? Where do you find any hope? Many in this generation say, I don’t, it’s hopeless. Here, let me give you a possible hope. Hope has a name.
Kep Crabb: And He’s sitting on the throne.
Darrell Johnson: And he’s going to win.
Kep Crabb: He’s going to win. Jesus wins. Oh Darrell, He already has. We know how the story ends.
Darrell Johnson: We had Good Friday. He won already. We know how He’s going to pull it all together.
Kep Crabb: Darrell, this is so encouraging to chat with you. I just really appreciate your time and just taking an hour out of your day to chat with me. It means the world. I’ve read a number of your books. I’ve been an admirer of your work for years. My father has as well, and that was largely through him. But it was just so encouraging to chat with you today. I’m hoping that the Spirit can take this and do with it what He chooses.
Darrell Johnson: I do too. It’s a joy to meet you. It’s a real joy.
Kep Crabb: I hope we can do this again sometime. Maybe if we get our glitches worked out, we can get this figured out.
I have really enjoyed chatting with you. Again, you remind me of my dad, the way you look, the way you speak and your love for the Word. I think similar to Dad, you’re not pulling any punches. This is where life is and life’s hard, but Jesus wins. And I think that’s a great place for us to wrap today.
So folks, I just appreciate you joining us today on behalf of Darrell. I’m Kep Crabb. Join us every Tuesday here on Relational Spirituality, where you can belong, you can be known, and you can become who God wants us to be. I pray that the Lord will use this in your lives today.
Darrell, thank you so much for joining me and God bless you, Sharon, your children, your 11 grandchildren.
I just really am grateful for this time.
Darrell Johnson: Bless you. This is pure joy.
Kep Crabb: Thanks.
Jesus invites us to come to Him in faith with all of our requests. So what do we do with the times He doesn’t seem to answer prayer for legitimate needs? Dr. Larry Crabb explores the mystery of relationship with a God Whose character can be trusted even when life doesn’t make sense to us.
Bio: Through his storied 40-year career as a Bible teacher, psychologist, and author, Dr. Larry Crabb shared the movement of God in his own soul and through his story. In every book, article, sermon, or seminar, Larry reminds us to see the hand of God and hear His voice in any circumstance and condition of our soul.
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Welcome to Relational Spirituality, a Larger Story podcast, where you can belong, you can become, and you can be known in the story that’s going on right now, I’m Kep Crabb. Today we’re going to be hearing from the author of the book that we’ve been looking at, Dr. Larry Crabb. He’s going to unpack his book, The PAPA Prayer. Larry wrote this book out of some confusion and sometimes frustration with his own prayer life. So as you wrestle today with your prayer life, consider presenting, attending, purging, and approaching God as your deepest desire and His spirit might open unexpected doors in your prayer lives.
And now, Dr. Larry Crabb, talking about The PAPA Prayer.
Larry Crabb: It is Mother’s Day and I was thinking as I was sitting there that I was lying in my mother’s nursing home, she on one bed, I on another as she was passing into eternity several years ago and I listened as she took her last breath. The last seven years of her life, she struggled with Alzheimer’s. The long goodbye. I recall one time I was kneeling in front of my mother, visiting her, when her mind was completely gone. Except for a moment. I was saying to her, Mom, have you bought your party dress yet? She had no response. Do you have that gorgeous gown? That’s going to reveal the beauty of your soul. I went on like that, talking like that, with tears coming down my face for several moments. And then Mother, in her last moment of lucidity, looked at me, regained complete consciousness, and said, Are you talking about heaven? I said, Yeah! And then she went back into her mindless state. But now her mind is fully restored.
I prayed for my mother. I prayed that my mother would reverse the Alzheimer’s. She didn’t. My question this morning is, what on earth is prayer all about? I want to spend some time speaking about the title I’ve given to this talk, Unpacking but Never Solving The Mystery of Prayer.
I do want to mention just as I start though that this past week being at Regent was an incredible privilege for me, and meeting Darrell for the first time was really one of the highlights of the week for me. During that week, I had several people come to me, maybe a dozen, and just kindly ask Larry, are you flying back to Denver, or flying back to your next place as soon as the conference is over on Friday?
Every time, I said to these dozen or so people, No, I’ve been invited to speak at Tenth. Every time, when I said that, people went, Oh! And I’m like, what on earth am I getting myself into? And all dozen people said some version of, Oh, that’s a place where good things are happening. You’ll enjoy your time there. My prayer is that I will not get in the way of the good things that are happening here at Tenth today, but will perhaps be able to catch the flow of God’s Spirit here and see if maybe some more good things can happen. I want to begin with a question. And after I ask one question, I want to give you one verse and then start talking about the mystery of prayer.
The question is this, and just think about it for a moment and answer it honestly. How many of you would say, as you perhaps have been following Jesus for a number of years, how many of you would say that there has been at least one time, maybe hundreds, but at least one time, when you’ve asked for something, believing God could give it? Knowing it wasn’t a selfish prayer to consume on your own illegitimate self centered desires, how many of you would say that at least one time, perhaps many times, you’ve asked for something, believing God could give it, and He didn’t? How many of you know what the word unanswered prayer means? Would you raise your hands? That’s almost everybody.
Before the younger folks were dismissed, I saw a young girl up here wearing a Superman shirt. When I was 10 years old, I was exposed to the verse that I want you to look at with me in just a moment. In Matthew 21, verse 22, Jesus said, If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. First time I heard that verse, I was 10 years old. I thought of this as I was looking at the young girl sitting up in the balcony with her big “S” on her shirt. I went home from Sunday school that morning after my Sunday school teacher had taught about that verse. I thought, that’s a pretty good deal. Let me see if I can exploit it. I didn’t know the word exploit then, but that was my mood. Let me see if I can take advantage. Let me see if I can come to this wonderful God who says, whatever, no qualifications, whatever, it’s yours, just believe, He can do it. That’s how I read the verse as a ten year old kid. So I went outside and I thought, What do I really want? It happened just this way. I want to fly like Superman. Jesus doesn’t tell lies. A child’s faith carried me outside after Sunday dinner to the driveway in front of our home, and quite literally, I prayed my prayer claiming Matthew 21:22, whatever you ask for, if you believe it’s yours, Lord, I wanna fly like Superman. Here’s the plan God. I’m gonna jump, and I don’t want to come down. I want to keep going. So I jumped and came down just like that. Four times. And that began my journey of confusion about prayer.
God, what are you talking about? You don’t tell lies. I know you don’t. I don’t understand this mystery of prayer. You tell me in your word, Jesus, that whatever I ask for, it’ll be mine if I believe. Have you all been confused about prayer to some degree? Because if you’re not, I’m going to feel very lonely up here. I have felt very confused about prayer. Forgive my candor, but prayer sometimes has seemed more like a roll of the dice than a child talking to his loving father.
Some years ago, five or six years ago, our younger son went through the hardest time of his life. He said to me and to his mother one day, Mom and Dad, I’ve been able to save up enough money to go away for 10 days, literally halfway across the world, from Cleveland, Ohio, where he was living then and is living now. I’m going to go halfway across the world for 10 days. I’m going to get away. I’ve got to get away from the horrors of my situation. I want you to know, I’m going to go because I want to find God in a way I don’t know Him now. Because if I don’t find Him in a way I don’t know Him now, I’m not sure if I’m going to make it. What’s a father’s heart do? What’s a mother’s heart do? Dear Lord.
We begin praying. I promised to my son, I said, the whole 10 days you’re gone, I’m going to pray for you, every day, minimum, 15 minutes. My commitment to you is that you will be prayed for. I will lift you before the throne of grace. Good old fashioned religious language. I’ll lift you before the Holy Trinity. Once a day, minimum, for at least 15 minutes. I honored that commitment, and as my son was gone for 10 days, I prayed every day. It was about the seventh day that he was gone. I was driving someplace. I had an hour and a half in the car and I thought, I’ll spend my time praying for Ken. I tell this story of course with his permission. I began praying for Ken in the car. When you’ve been praying for something that matters to you deeply, have you ever gotten bored? What’s the point? Does prayer work? I jumped to fly like Superman, and I came down. Will this be any different now that the stakes are almost infinitely higher for my son’s well being in the middle of a spiritual crisis? I found myself, with that lack of confidence within my soul, I found myself sing-songing a prayer.
As I’m driving along in the car, it happened just like this. Dear Lord, uh, really bless Kenny and uh, just make sure that he’s… Let me change the station there. Dear Lord um, where was I now? Yeah. Bless Kenny and make sure that um, you know, that he finds you in some um, deep ways.
I caught myself being bored with prayer and I thought, this isn’t good. So I turned the radio off. I began to ask, what is most alive in me right now as I am praying for my son in the middle of his great distress? I found myself saying what I want for him is what I want so much for myself. I want to know God in a way that I have yet to know Him and I found myself beginning to sing my prayers and I began to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” the old wonderful hymn. I was raised in a Christian home, I know all 12 verses. I sang through all the verses of “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, and my tears were coming down my face so strongly, I had to pull the car over to the side of the road, I couldn’t drive, I was crying so hard.
Then I sang this simple little chorus, “I love you Lord, and I lift my heart, I lift my voice.” Lord, I love you. May my son be able to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” May he be able to sing I love you in the middle of his life falling apart in ways that were incredibly painful, walking a path of pain I had never walked. And the last song I prayed was, “It Is Well With My Soul.” Lord, that’s the prayer that I’m praying for myself. I want to know that it’s well with my soul, whether things are good or bad in my life, in my world. I want my son to be able to sing that. I sang that hymn, again, singing all the verses. I probably prayed for about 45 minutes of singing by the side of the road before I continued my journey.
Two weeks later, Rachel and I visited Cleveland. My son was back from his trip. We had lunch on an outdoor patio in Chagrin Falls, a cute little part of town, outside of Cleveland. I said to him, Ken, I gotta tell you about a day that I prayed for you. It was a Saturday, seven days into your trip, it was Saturday noon and I was driving someplace. And here’s what happened, and I told him the story I’ve just told you. When I told him that, Ken sat up, and he said, Exactly when did you pray that? I said, it was noon on Saturday and he did his time calculations, time zones and all that. And he sat back and he said, “Dad, Mom, that’s the first day I had the courage to face the pain in my soul. I walked for three hours on the beach in the area where I was staying for those ten days. For the first time I got away from doing fun things and reading fun novels and I went out just to be with God for three hours walking the beach and for three straight hours beginning the same time you prayed for me, for three hours literally I could do nothing but sing, ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness,’ ‘I love you Lord,’ and ‘It Is Well With My Soul.’”
Maybe there is a Holy Spirit.
Why, then, when I pray for my son to be touched by the presence of God, is that prayer answered? And then 14 years ago, when I prayed the typical casual prayer, if you will, for my brother’s safety on a plane trip, why did his plane crash and he was killed? Why does prayer sometimes seem to me like a roll of the dice?
I found the courage, at least some little portion of it, to look at the mystery of prayer three or four years ago, acknowledging that prayer was the weakest part of my spiritual journey. I found the courage to look at my journey of confusion when I read an article by C. S. Lewis on his confusion with prayer, and I figured if C. S. Lewis can admit his confusion with prayer, certainly I can admit mine. He talked in this little article – that I read several years ago actually – about it for the first time. Several years ago, he identified two patterns of prayer in the gospel records. One pattern taught by Jesus, and he referred to the passage in Matthew 21:22. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer, and Lewis said, that seems to be an unconditional promise that doesn’t work. But the other pattern of prayer, Pattern B he called it, the pattern of Gethsemane, where Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane said, Take away this cup, but nevertheless not my will but yours.
Lewis said, and I wholeheartedly agreed when I first read it, That kind of prayer makes some sense to me. I can pray for the things that I want, but I don’t know what’s best. Am I willing to yield to God’s superior wisdom? Am I willing to yield to what He knows is best? And when He says no, can I trust His good heart is still good toward me? That makes sense to me. But what didn’t make sense to me, and is still a mystery to me, is what the Lord said in Matthew 21. Will you take your Bibles, if you have them with you, and turn to that passage? I want to read the context of that verse and see if we can make a little bit of sense out of this confusing mystery.
We all would agree, that when we ask, Lord, reverse my mother’s Alzheimer’s. Lord, heal the infection quickly. Lord, give me a new job. Lord, may my husband stop drinking. Lord, may my children come back to you in a powerful way. We pray all these prayers that, any other loving person would agree, are legitimate prayers. If I had the power to grant your requests when you pray like that, I would likely do that. Am I better than God, who doesn’t do it sometimes? Clearly, His response is to say, I know what’s best. Trust me, my child. And when it’s my will, it will be done. When it’s not my will, it will not be done.
Take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. That’s pattern B. But what do you do with pattern A? Is it different? If you believe, you’ll receive whatever you ask for. There’s no conditionality implied in that verse except the if you believe. Let me read you the passage and see if we can get an insight or two into this passage.
Matthew 21 and verse 18. Here’s the context for what He said. Early in the morning, as Jesus was on His way back to the city, back to Jerusalem, coming close to His crucifixion, He was hungry. And, like any other human being, early in the morning, taking a couple of mile walking trip, wanting to have some kind of breakfast, He saw a fig tree by the road and He went up to it. The parallel passage in Mark tells us that there were leaves that He saw on the fig tree. And the early leaves on the tree made Him wonder if perhaps there’s figs that are growing on this tree before they’re due to grow. It was not yet time for the fig tree to bear figs, but there were leaves on it. Jesus saw the leaves and wondered, did the leaves signify fruit? And so He walked up to the tree, and He found nothing on it except leaves. Does Jesus ever confuse you? Then He said to the tree – Now, imagine you’re a disciple watching this whole episode. – May you never bear fruit again! Immediately, the tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. And they asked a question. How did the fig tree wither so quickly? My guess is, under their breath, they were asking another question. What’s going on with you? We don’t get your angry outbursts because you didn’t get a fig. You make no sense to us, Jesus. Was Jesus being petulant?
If you know me well, if you’ve had the rather questionable opportunity of dining with me, you’d know that I like my coffee hot. Really hot. I tell the waiter or the waitress, your tip depends on blisters forming on my tongue when I drink my coffee. And people know me well, when the coffee comes, the whole table gets quiet, and I take a sip, and either I, ooh, or, oh. Now suppose you were with me and I ordered coffee and the coffee came and I took a sip and it was lukewarm. And my response was to throw it on the waiter, say, this coffee’s not hot enough. I’m never going to drink coffee in this restaurant again. Is that clear? How would you look at me? Just like Jesus.
That wouldn’t be just like Jesus. So what’s going on with Jesus? The disciples say, how did the fig tree wither so quickly? And Jesus replies – and does this answer the question? – I tell you the truth. If you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, and I’m there saying, is that what I had in mind? Do I want to go around and wither leaves on a fig tree? I don’t quite get the point of the power available to me. But also, you can say to this mountain, look over there, see that big mountain over there? You can say to this mountain, go, throw yourself into the sea, and it will be done. I wonder if any disciple kind of turned a little bashfully and went, Leave. And the mountain stayed there. Jump. Fly like Superman. And the little boy came down in the driveway. If you believe, you’ll receive whatever you ask for in prayer. What’s he talking about? I don’t know. Let’s close in prayer.
And I don’t know. But I want to suggest a few thoughts. I want to unpack, but not solve, the mystery of prayer. As I read this passage and ponder it, and have pondered it now for some time, and wonder exactly, what is my Lord doing? Why the outburst against the fig tree? Why the leaves withering so quickly? Why, when the disciples had no idea what was happening, did He say three things to them? You can wither leaves too. You can move mountains. Whatever you ask for is yours if you believe. What is Jesus saying? Why did Jesus come? Why was He incarnate? Why did the eternal Son of God come into Bethlehem’s manger and become a little tiny baby, conceived in Mary’s womb, lived 33 years on this earth, go to the cross, rise from the dead, back in heaven as our great high priest? The gospel story is familiar to most of us. Why did it all happen? What’s the point of it? To save me from sin, yes. To secure my salvation, yes, of course. That I can spend eternity knowing the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and dancing with their community forever and ever. Yes, all that’s true. But I wonder if maybe at least one element of the center of why Jesus came had to do with what the Father felt when Adam and Eve, a long time ago, said. We don’t want you.
I wonder how many mothers here have children who’ve said, we don’t want you. Mother’s Day is a hard day for some moms. Father’s Day is a hard day for some dads. It’s a hard day for God, I would suggest. Walking in the cool of the evening, providing everything that was wonderful and perfect for them, one commandment, don’t eat of this particular tree. And Adam and Eve chose to eat of that particular tree, as if to say, like the prodigal son, we’re not terribly interested in knowing you, we want the best deal for us, and we’ll take from you whatever we can get, and whatever you don’t give us, we’ll grab it anyhow, because we don’t really trust your heart.
You know what the Father felt? And when Adam and Eve sinned, when they ate of the fruit, what did they cover themselves with? Fig leaves. As if to say what? We’re going to hide. We’re going to pretend that things within us are not as bad as they seem. We’re going to cover ourselves with that which makes us look clothed and hides our shame, hides our lostness. We’re not going to acknowledge how lost we are without you. We’re going to find some way to make it without ever having to acknowledge what is happening within us. And how does the Father feel as you and I are running around through our lives wearing fig leaves? Fig leaves are a pretense.
Why so often in Christian community, do we meet each other at the level of leaves? As opposed to at the level of fruit? Why so often, in our Christian communities, when you walk up to me and say, “How you doing?” And my response, “Hey, great!” I’m not doing great. I’m broken. Hurting. Struggling. Happy about some things, burdened about some other things, rejoicing in many things. I wish I could say all things, not that mature, but struggling with some things that are hard. I want to keep the leaves in place because I don’t want you to really know me. And Jesus looks at a fig tree that has leaves all over it and no fruit beneath it and says, that’s not the plan. The plan is for the children of God to not hide behind leaves, but to acknowledge their emptiness without God so that real fruit can be born. That’s the real plan. In chapter 9 of Hosea, in verse 10, the Father is reminiscing about Israel when they were young. How many of you moms have been reminiscing a little bit today when your kids were little? What memories do you have? Some of the pleasant memories when they just snuggled with you. Wanted to be with you. I think back to the memories of our two boys that are now almost 38 and 35 and thinking about what it was like when they were just real little. And the time at a church service when our four year old son, our older son, got up in front of 500 people before Christmas and impromptu sang “Silent Night” in a beautiful little boy’s voice and the whole place was in tears.
When I think of that memory it was painful to me when years later our son rebelled badly and walked far away from God. As I saw him moving in very bad directions, and I remembered the early days when our son was young, and singing “Silent Night” in a church service, and obedient to his mom and dad, and going to bed on time, and all the things that you wanted, and looking at mom and dad and saying, “I love you Mom, I love you Dad.” And then 15, 16, 17 years later, rebelling badly. The father was reminiscing about the son, about His children Israel. And Hosea 9 verse 10. And what He says in that passage is, I remember seeing you, Israel, was like seeing early figs on the tree. I wonder if Jesus was thinking of that passage. I don’t know.
But what if Jesus is seeing the fig leaves, and rather than just being petulant about not having a breakfast, the purpose for which I came was to restore people who are hiding into openness, so when they’re open and take off their fig leaves, and realize that there is no fruit within them, they can come before a merciful God who still wants them back, and is going to forgive them, and invade their lives, and produce fruit within them out of hearts that the Spirit will give them, so that they will want their Father again.
Is the son thinking all of that? I don’t know. But it makes sense to me. Because when the disciples said, we don’t get it. How do the fig leaves wither so quickly? What did Jesus say? If you want it, if you want the same power, you can look in the mirror and say, fig leaves wither. You can look in the mirror and say, stop pretending. Be who you are, be the broken people that you are before God, and what you’ll discover when the fig leaves wither. As our sister discovered this morning, as she testified in her baptism, when the fig leaves of, I can make it without God, collapsed and withered, what did she discover? I really want Him. I was designed for Him. I really want to know Him. That’s what I really want. More than anything else, I want to know God. Yes, I want good health. Yes, I want a good job. Yes, I want a good family. Yes, I want good kids. Yes, I want many things, but in the core of my being, what I want more than anything else, once the fig leaves come off, is I really want God.
If you want to wither the fig leaves, you can do it. Jesus is saying to me, and then He says, see that mountain over there? I’ll get rid of it. I wonder if His mind went back to Isaiah 40. Every mountain, every hill will be lowered, brought low. In other words, every obstacle to your coming to God and enjoying the friendship. Every obstacle to your being a child in whom God can say, that’s my kid, look at the fruit. He loves me. She loves me. Look at her heart. Look at his life. That’s my kind of child. That’s what Jesus did. And the Spirit came into them and indwelt them. And look at that. There’s a child with fruit who’s coming to my Father. Every obstacle, every mountain to the highway of holiness to the desert into the presence of God, every mountain will be removed. When I pray to fly like Superman, I have no guarantee. But when I pray to know God, I have a guarantee. The pretense will go. The obstacles will be removed. And then Jesus summarizes it all by saying, if you believe what? The context would suggest to me that what Jesus is saying is, If you believe in my mission, if you believe in what I came to do, if you believe that your greatest good is not sleeping well, but your greatest good is knowing me whether you sleep well or not. If you believe that your greatest good is not having your kids love Jesus, but you pray like mad for that, of course. But your greatest good is when your child is breaking your heart that you can know Jesus and stop pretending that you’re not hurting. That you’re broken. That you’re struggling. If you believe, then whatever you ask for, that’s consistent with your deepest desire as a deer panting after the water books.
If you believe that your greatest desire is satisfied in knowing God. If you believe that, I’ll see to it happens. That’s Jesus talking. He doesn’t lie.
One of my favorite quotes by Lewis. Put first things first, and second things are thrown in. Put second things first, and you lose both first and second things. What’s the first thing? God. Knowing Him. Being related to Him. Being identified with Him. Being indwelt by His Spirit. Becoming like Him. Advancing His purposes in this world. Being missional in your orientation toward life. That’s the first thing. It’s all wrapped up in the glory of God. Everything else… Your health, your job, your family, your ministry. Everything else is a second thing. And when you pray a petitionary prayer, which God wants us to do as little children, to come before the Father and say, Father, here’s what I really would like. I would love for the money to come in to support this very worthwhile building project. Is it guaranteed 100 percent? I would question that. Should it be prayed for? Absolutely. Is it God’s will? You’ll find out. But in the middle of your prayers for that, in the middle of wanting to see the kingdom advanced through the work of Tenth by this building project being well funded, in the middle of your prayers for that, whatever happens, you can draw closer to God.
That’s not what I want. What I really want is… You’ve got second things first. And when you put second things first, you lose both first, knowing God intimately, and second things, God isn’t going to bless the way He wants to. But put first things first, and things are different. That led me, as I pondered this passage, that led me to the very simple thought that had escaped me for all of these years.
I’ve been a Christian since I was eight years old. First trusted Jesus when I was eight, at boys camp. Story of some others who are my age bracket, back in the old days. Sixty boys gathered around a campfire one night. Counselor gets up and says, Boys, look at the flames in that fire going twenty feet into the air. I’m an eight year old kid. Wow, that’s hot, boys, you have a choice to make. Oh, that’s a choice. Boys, you can trust Jesus, or burn in the fires of hell forever. And I remember thinking to myself, that’s a no brainer. So I trusted Jesus.
And all my life since then, as a follower of Jesus now, for these last 53 years, as a follower of Jesus for all these years, prayer has confused me, because I don’t think I had any significance attached to the phrase that I now have come to love. The phrase, the two word phrase, relational prayer as opposed to petitionary prayer.
Which comes first in your life, relating to God in prayer or asking for things from God in prayer? Both are legitimate, but which has a center place in your heart? Am I praying centrally to get more from God or am I praying centrally to get more of God? Relational prayer. What is that? A couple of years ago, pondering this passage, I thought, I think I have some idea how to relate to my wife. I have some idea how to relate to my kids, my friends, and my grandchildren. And I love relating to these people that I love. What does it mean to relate to God in prayer, as opposed to praying the way I’ve been praying for 50 some years, and my prayers perhaps are the way you’ve prayed for many years.
Dear Lord, I ask. And then we fill in the blank. I ask that. Is that a good prayer? Of course it is. But is there a deeper prayer? Dear Lord, I want to know you. And let me now have a conversation with my very best friend and my Heavenly Father. And so I came up with a little acronym that I call The PAPA Prayer.
P A P A. My Heavenly Father, The PAPA Prayer, putting relational prayer in the center of our lives. P A P A. First P. Just present yourself. Pray that the fig leaves are withered. Stand before God with no pretense, with no covering, with no hiding, no covering except the blood. Stand before God saying, God, here’s who I am. I’m in a bad mood. I’m really feeling cranky today. I’m so tired I could just want to sleep for ten hours and forget about ministry. If that’s who you are, why pretend you’re better than that? He knows. No pretense. Presenting yourself to God is the beginning of relational prayer. Folks, as I begin to learn my own understanding of the popular prayer this last year or two, I have often times spent up to an hour presenting myself to God, here’s what’s happening. Here’s who I am,
The next letter A. Attending. Who do I think I’m talking to? Who is this God? I’m talking to God, who are you? Are you a magic genie if I rub the lamp properly three times and get what I want? Or are you the sovereign God of the universe who has proven your love for me over and over again centrally in the cross? Can I come before you and say that what you want more than anything else is to draw me into your presence because you have this idea that my greatest blessing is to know you and I’ve differed with you about that. But I’m wrong. And you’re a God whose delight is to dwell with me. Who am I talking to? Attend to the God of the Bible, not the God of, I’ve come to understand through my history.
Thirdly, P, purge myself. P A P. Present, attend, purge. God, what right now claims my affection more than you? What second thing has become first in my life? What have I loved more than I love you? Oh God, I’ve been hiding that. Get rid of these fig leaves so I can face my own brokenness and woundedness in your presence because then when I’m naked, when the fig leaves come off, then I experience your mercy.
And then the last A, approach. God, what does it mean in Hebrews 4 that I can come boldly to the throne of grace? I can walk boldly right up into your presence to get what you’re most eager to give, which may be certain second thing blessings and I thank you when you give them to me and I’ll ask for them till I die but essentially what you want to give me is yourself.
The PAPA Prayer, learning to relate to God.
When The PAPA Prayer, when Relational Prayer – whatever form it takes, the PAPA is just one simple thought about it – when Relational Prayer takes center place in my life, then Petitionary Prayer falls in line with His will more often.
Let me close my thoughts by telling you two stories. See, I believe that, in the heart of every human being, because we bear the image of God, and because the Bible says that God has set eternity in our hearts, that you and I want more than this world can ever provide. The deepest desires of my heart go beyond the blessings I can articulate and enumerate. The deepest longing of my image bearing heart is to know God and to be in fellowship with the Trinity. But I don’t get in touch with that desire a lot. And because I’m not in touch with that desire, I go after lesser things with zeal, and call it petitionary prayer. Two stories to make my point. One happened fifty eight years ago.
I was three years old, raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, living until our home was built with my grandparents, my mom’s mother and dad. I’m a three year old boy and just forgive the juvenile-ity. Is that a word? Juvenile-ness of the story. I’m a three year old boy. Saturday afternoon. The memory is clear in my mind and I remember I needed to use the washroom, needed to go to the bathroom, and I was three years old. I remember thinking to myself, up until now, I’ve said, mommy. I need to go to the bathroom. But I thought, I’m a big boy. I’m gonna go into that room all by myself.
So I went in, closed the door, and I noticed what grown ups do, they locked it. So I turned a little half moon shaped silver lever and turned it so the bolt went into the door jamb and the door was locked. A few minutes later, I was ready to leave. I went to unlock the door, and it stuck. My little three year old arms couldn’t turn it, and I put both arms to work and couldn’t get it. What would happen to a three year old boy when he wants to get out of the bathroom and the door doesn’t yield to his efforts to open? I panicked. The thought that went through my mind was, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this bathroom. In my panic and in my fear, I screamed. That’s what little boys do. Mommy! Daddy! Get me out of the bathroom! Mom and Dad heard me and they both ran up the stairs and I heard Mother say, Did you fall? Did you hurt your head? No, I can’t get out of the bathroom! The door’s locked! And Dad sized the situation up immediately and unbeknownst to me, ran outside of the garage, got the old wooden ladder and put it up against the brick, ivy covered walls of my grandparents home, the outside wall.
I’m watching the door, waiting for the door to open. The superhuman power of my deliverer. And I hear a noise behind me, and I look back at the window on the second floor. There’s my dad’s face. And with superhuman strength, he pulled open the window. And he climbed in. All is well. Dad’s here. And he came over and patted me on the head and smiled. And he went over, and with Superman type strength, he unlocked the door. And I said, Thanks, Dad! We Christians call it worship. I ran outside to play. We Christians call it the abundant life. Get me out of this bathroom! We Christians call it prayer. Petitionary prayer. What’s relational prayer look like? Rather than, these second things are going bad, change it! If you love me, I know you can. Matthew 21:22, whatever I believe. Do it!
The other story, and with this I’ll close, happened five or six years ago as my father was dying. He and mother were staying at an assisted living facility not too far from our home. Mother in an Alzheimer’s unit, locked behind doors so she wouldn’t wander out in the street and be killed. Dad’s mind was still good, his health was failing. And one night about midnight, I didn’t know Dad was within three or four weeks of death. I knew that death was coming. I had no idea it was this soon coming. The phone rang at midnight, and you know what it’s like to get a midnight phone call. It’s not what you want.
Phone rang, I picked it up. Hello? Larry, this is Dad! You gotta get over here right away! Things are not good! Please get over here right away! Dad, what’s happening? It’s just bad! Just get over here! Dad, is somebody there with you? Yeah, there’s an attendant here, but he’s of no use. And this was so uncharacteristic of my very gentle, godly, trusting father. His mind was sliding, and he was moving toward a terrible time in his life, when he was going to be miserable the last three weeks, and then go home. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, and I got the attendant on the phone. The attendant said this is Larry Junior? Yeah. Your dad really is doing fine. There’s nothing wrong. He just has gotten very upset. We’re not sure what. Everything’s fine. There’s no health problems. That’s causing pain. I’ve given him a sedative and he’ll be asleep within about five or ten minutes. If you want to stop by in the morning, that’ll be fine. Okay, thank you, sir. Put Dad back on the phone.
Dad, I’ll be there in the morning. The attendant says, You’re fine and you’ll be asleep in a few minutes. You’re no help! And he hung up the phone on me. I was heartbroken. Am I failing my father? What do I do? I went downstairs. Do I drive over there now? It’s a 20 minute drive. No problem. I was very willing to. He’d be asleep by the time I got there. The attendant, who I knew was a very good person, assured me Dad was fine. Should I just wait to go over in the morning? When I go over in the morning, how will I talk to my dad? How will I solve this relational rupture between my father and me as he nears death?
I was beside myself. I went downstairs, and I wept for probably 30 minutes. My prayers during those weeping moments were, God, what do I do to restore the relationship with my dad? Nothing matters more. I’m locked in this room, if you will, and I don’t know how to get out of this room. I don’t know how to unlock the door that will get me into the fullness of my relationship with my dad. Things are bad now. What should I do to be a good son? I love my dad. I want to be there for him. Unlock the door, God. Tell me what to do. Show me what I should do to get what I want the most. I really had what came close to a vision. As I was weeping and praying that rather demanding prayer because when you put petitionary prayer ahead of relational prayer, you demand rather than petition.
As I was demanding, calling it petitionary prayer, I had this semi-vision of my heavenly father showing His face at the bathroom window and coming into the dark room that I couldn’t get out of. But rather than doing what my earthly father had done 50 years previously, patting me on the head, opening the door, letting me go out, giving me clear instructions on how to reconcile with my father, my heavenly Father enabled me to put first things first.
In my little semi-vision, my heavenly Father came into the room, and rather than walking over to unlock the door, He sat on the floor and he said, Let’s chat. Let’s spend time together. Talk to me. I want to be close to you. My question this morning, I guess, is, which do you want more, to get out of the room or to sit with your Father?
What characterizes your prayer life the most? God, here are the second things that matter. Do them. If it’s your will, but it should be. Versus, God, I really do pray for all those things, and I will till the day I die because I really want them, and you’ve encouraged your children to come to you as a loving father and make known your request, and I’m going to do it with prayer and thanksgiving, but I still want to petition you in lots and lots of ways, but there’s something more central to my prayer life and central to my heart. God, I’d like to know you. God, here’s who I am in your presence right now. I’ve been pretending things are okay and they’re not. I’ve been hurting really badly and I’d like to share that with you and let you know who your child is. You already know. But as Lewis puts it, that prayer is taking part in the process of being known.
As I present myself before my father, as I attend, Who are you, Father? You’re a Father who lets my brother die in a plane crash. You’re a Father who gives me a moment of lucidity with my mother before her death. You’re a Father who answers my prayer for my son when he’s halfway across the world, and he comes to know you better in the middle of his crisis. God, I don’t quite get you when you say yes and when you say no, but I know you love me. Calvary forever settles that question. God, I’m talking to a Father, the best Father any son or daughter could ever imagine. Amen. God bless you. I’ve not wanted you, number one. I’ve wanted some other things, number one. That’s awful. Purging. But God, I’d like to sit with you wherever I am. If it’s a locked room of darkness, let me know you. If it’s a bright, sun-shiny day in the meadows and life is going well, let me know you. Relational prayer must precede petitionary prayer because it reflects God’s purpose. The desire of my heart and the desire of your heart to know God more than I want any second thing.
Amen.
Kep Crabb: That was Larry Crabb talking about his book, The PAPA Prayer. If you don’t have a copy of The PAPA Prayer, go to largerstory.com and get your copy of The PAPA Prayer today. Please subscribe to this channel if you like what you’ve heard. Join us each Tuesday for the rest of this year on Relational Spirituality, a Larger Story podcast. Thanks for being with us.
Listen to two fathers who want to know better what your prayer life for our kids and others can be – the power of prayer!
Bio: Roosevelt Leslie, is a graduate of Colorado Christian University with degrees in Sports science and Biblical studies. Married to Elizabeth Leslie from Lima, Peru in which they met at CCU (both from families of pastors in ministry), and have been married for 20 years with two sons Micah and Jordan.
Professionally Roosevelt is a health and wellness teacher and head basketball coach at Mullen High school. Mullen’s core principles are Faith in the presence of God, Respect for all persons, Inclusive Community, Concern for the poor, and the pursuit of Quality Education.
Roosevelt also by trade is a personal trainer, life coach, motivational speaker, and mentor. He enjoys spending his time helping youth non profit organizations in the community locally, nationally, and abroad in the capacities of education, sport, mental health, faith, and economic disparities which build people to become whole rounded individuals.
Show Note Links:
The PAPA Prayer
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Welcome everybody to Relational Spirituality. I’m your host today, Kep Crabb. The podcast of Larger Story where you get to belong, be known, and become who you’re supposed to be. I’m joined today by a good friend of mine. We were having breakfast a week or two ago and after having a really good conversation and talking about a bunch of different things I said, why don’t you join me on a podcast today? So I’m going to introduce a friend of mine, Roosevelt Leslie, who is joining us today. Rose, thanks for joining me today, my man.
Roosevelt Leslie: Oh, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure for sure.
Kep Crabb: When we were chatting a week or two ago, whatever it was, we were having a conversation that I think where it was an iron sharpening iron conversation. I left that breakfast encouraged. One of the things that we were chatting about is some of the stuff you’re doing now to disciple younger kids; you’re a basketball coach, you do some things like that. You work at a local high school here in the Denver area. Tell me what that looks like on a day to day basis with you, bro.
Roosevelt Leslie: Like you said, I’m a coach, I’m a father. I always try to keep the main thing the main thing. What that looks like for me is the health and well being of that young person. How are they doing overall? Going through that checklist tells me how far I can go as far as the other things that are concerned in life, basketball or school. Just a general check in making sure they’re okay. If we can’t go past there, then that’s fine too. But just being a support system. I’m always a support and just a check in in general for our young men. That could look like a lot of different things.
Kep Crabb: You know, it’s really interesting when I hear you talk about that. I just, literally five minutes ago, got off the phone with a really good friend of mine who’s about 10 years younger than me. I was a little bit of a mentor to him when we were younger. We were talking about what it’s like to be a parent now. His kids are growing up. He’s got one in college now and one in high school. And my kids are out of college. You’re in that same stage with a kid getting out of high school and a kid in college and some of that kind of stuff, which is really fun, but we talked about, what does it mean to be a father?
We went into the whole fathering piece and the whole notion, you just said it there, which I think is really neat. You said, I’m available now. It can go a lot of different directions, but you know that with your kids and with these other kids that you’re mentoring, which is a bunch of them.
I know, because you and I talk about it all the time. I think you are just being present, being with them, being there. Talk a little bit about that, bro, because that’s something that I think you do really well, inviting people to know that, I’m here if you need me.
Roosevelt Leslie: Sure. Within all this, the structured stuff that you have as a coach, a father, like you said, being available is very important. Let my guard down from time to time. I think that’s where vulnerability starts the depth of a relationship. And for me, I tell the kids they can ask me anything.
Kep Crabb: Say that again, you said vulnerability is about the depth of the relationship?
Roosevelt Leslie: I think it creates the depth of the relationship. Kids want to tell somebody when they’re struggling. Sometimes there’s not that safe place to do so so they might hold it in and it might come out as anger or it might come out as many different emotions. I think every kid needs a safe place, a trusted adult in their lives, whether that’s a teacher, a coach, a parent.
For me it’s just trying to have pockets of time where I’m talking about stuff other than school, other than basketball, other than real life work. Giving the platform for the kids to talk about what’s on their mind. What’s on their hearts at that current moment? There might be failures that they had, there might be successes. I know my son and his friends in our school had homecoming this past weekend, so today I was just asking him, hey, you going on a date with anyone? Just being open.
Kep Crabb: It seems like too for some of these kids that you’re working with and certainly for your own two boys, you’ve got a real vision for them and what you’d love to see them be and what their potential really could be. You’ve poured into that. I think you’ve done that too with some of these other kids. Something that stands out as I think about your life a little bit, Rose, is that you’ve got guys on your right side who you’re mentoring, you’ve got guys on your left side who you’re being mentored by, so it’s really a two way deal.
I was talking with my friend just a little bit ago, how at some point you realize that you’re going to be on that mentoring side when you’re getting older, you become the old man of the group, and nothing’s wrong with that. I think I’m stepping into that a little bit now as I’m getting a little bit older here, but I still have a couple of older guys that pour into me. They’re 20 years my senior. I get a chance to ask them any question because they’re available. And then I’ve got guys younger than me, like yourself, who hopefully I get a chance to, but it’s amazing, bro, how much you pour into me as well. It’s such a two way street, even that breakfast we had, which is what inspired this podcast today.
I said, I have to have a conversation with you on the podcast. We’ve talked about some things like this. I think we did a webinar a few years ago or something like that. But, to have you talk about relational things and how you can cross generationally disciple and mentor some of these younger people that are in such need of a mentor of someone they can look up to, tell me as you think about your own kids.
One of the things we’re talking about this last quarter. We just got done talking about SoulTalk. I know you’ve read this book, SoulTalk. That kind of gives you some handles on how to have these kinds of conversations, beneath and thinking with a passion, thinking vision as you’re having a conversation and thinking curiously, what makes you tick, asking a lot of questions.
Now we’re moving into the book on prayer, PAPA Prayer. This is what you and I talked about last week at breakfast. How’s your prayer life right now?
Roosevelt Leslie: For me, to be honest, I can’t live without it. For me, that just looks like just a conversation with God when I wake up, when I go to sleep, and pretty much giving them everything that I have. I try not to wake up with any burdens and try not to go to sleep with any burdens. He gets a higher pay grade for me to give that stuff to Him. So I just say it like a conversation, I love it. I’m at a healthy place to just have conversations with God and our creator. I can’t do without it.
Kep Crabb: I sensed that the morning we were chatting and the way you were talking about prayer was very encouraging to me. Because, there’s not like a lot of young guys. It’s a confusing part of people’s lives. The prayer life is sometimes challenging.
What does it mean to have? I know that it’s not always super gratifying and satisfying. But what does it mean to have a relationship with the God of the universe who you’re talking to? I think that’s something that blows my mind that I actually have the Spirit of Jesus in me. It gives me access to the Father in a way that my prayers are actually being heard.
One of the things we talk about in the PAPA Prayer which we’re talking about this last quarter is what does it mean to present yourself in a way that says, I’m being honest where I’m at? I’m not in a good place or like you just said, you’re in a good place. I love hearing that. That’s awesome. And then to attend to where you are and then to purge what’s blocking you from knowing the Father better and then approach God, the Father, as your deepest desire and the doors that seem to open for the Holy Spirit to do His thing and maneuver is just supernatural is the only thing I can think of.
I saw that in your face the other day as we were talking because you were talking about praying for your boys as they’ve got some decisions coming up with colleges and different life decisions. And I asked, how do you pray for your boys nowadays? I can’t remember exactly what you said, but it was profound. Tell me; unpack that a little bit again.
Roosevelt Leslie: I don’t remember the specifics of that conversation. But I go about prayer with myself and my boys first, just presenting where I am with God, thanking Him for who He is, asking Him questions, basically guiding. I use prayer as a roadmap. I pray for wants and needs, but I also talk to God about the hard stuff as well. That way, when I’m not wanting to come to Him, I know that I can because the difficulties of life navigate me towards Him as well.
For my boys specifically just praying for school their relationships that they basically will have the same yearning to talk to God as I do and that God brings through their circumstances in life and daily matters, school, sports, that He will remind them of who He is.
Kep Crabb: Wow. You’re just reminding me of the importance of good fathering. That’s not to diminish the importance of good mothering because I think kids need a good mother and a good father. But you’re leaning into that and you’re actually taking that role on with other people as well because that’s what coaches do. You’ve had coaches. If you can sit now and think, who are the two or three or four guys or people that have influenced your life, that you would say, this person walked with me at a time or this person in his or her life has impacted me in a way that is what you’re trying to do now. Could you think of those kinds of people?
Roosevelt Leslie: Yeah, for me, the people that are life changing, that have been right beside me, like you said earlier, are those people that are mentors. Maybe they weren’t my coaches or teachers, but they were life people that poured into me and asked me tough questions. They held me accountable, even people like yourself, meeting with you for breakfast and talking about our relationship with Christ. People like Brian Ford. Just life mentors. As we’re doing the work, we need to be replenished. Like you said, ask questions of people that know a little bit more than us. We can do the same thing with prayer too, talking to the Lord about this world that He created Himself.
Kep Crabb: As you say that, it makes me think that, it’s all so tied together and I think your time in the scriptures, your time in prayer, are intertwined completely. Your time with community when you have conversations that matter and your time in prayer, those are just intertwined. And so when you make this part of who you are, your prayer life, as you go through life and allow the Lord to work.
The big topic that we’ve been talking about, and Rose you’ve been part of this with me, and everybody who watches this podcast of mine knows that, what does it mean to be a Spirit led individual? A person that says, the Spirit of Jesus Christ in me, I want you to guide my life, help guide my decisions, help guide my relational tensions, help guide who I am as a person who represents Jesus by how I relate to others today. And that’s been the question that’s just been on my mind so much. I know prayer is such a huge part of that. I know Dad wrote this book of PAPA Prayer because he was confused about prayer. He felt his prayer life was oftentimes really weak. You dive into that and you explore and dive into that mystery.
But as you start to disciple these kids and to pray for them and you’re praying for me, what can we pray for you about, man? What are some things that you need prayer about, Rose?
Roosevelt Leslie: I think being a mentor a lot of times, you have a lot of high energy, and sometimes you don’t. I’m always looking for that consistency. You know, open hearts, open minds, the Spirit to prompt us to where those hearts and minds are, because sometimes we can go about our day and miss assignments. That’s a huge prayer; there’s a lot of people at schools and coaches like me who want to have an impact, but when you talk about the Spirit leading us, that’s one huge prayer that the Spirit will lead us to those vulnerable hearts. Kids that want to change course but don’t know how. People like myself, we’re ready. We’re ready to work the fields.
Kep Crabb: Awesome. The work you’re doing, Rose, is just so good. I think you’re bringing a lot of pleasure to the Father as you’re doing that. It’s just fun, man. We’ve got to definitely grab another breakfast soon, my man.
Roosevelt Leslie: For sure.
Kep Crabb: I just really appreciate the time today. I just wanted to chat with you. We have these conversations and I get a chance to have a lot of them, but there’s just a few guys that I really enjoy just sitting and just hashing things out with, and you’re one of them and we’ve done that for a long time now and that’s been fun. And I hope it continues my brother.
Roosevelt Leslie: I appreciate you and the work that you’ve invested in my life and man, I love all your dad’s books. PAPA Prayer is definitely one on my shelf that I pull down from time to time, just to dial into God and seek His presence. So appreciate that.
Kep Crabb: The PAPA Prayer. If you guys don’t have it, get one today at a LargerStory.com. We’ve got plenty of them for you. We’d love to get you one.
Roosevelt Leslie. Thanks for your time today, my man.
Roosevelt Leslie: All right.
Welcome back to Part 2 of Karlene’s conversation with Mimi Dixon where they discuss what it means to always be invited into conversation with the Father, always welcomed into the Beloved Community of the Trinity, and always enjoyed by the one who calls you “dear, worthy one.”
Bio: Renovare’ Board of Directors, Institute Faculty, Ministry Team
Miriam (Mimi) Dixon began her ministry in 1979 serving as an associate pastor at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. From April of 1985 to May of 2019 she served as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Golden, Colorado. She earned both her MDiv and DMin degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. Mimi is on the Renovaré Board of Directors and teaches for the Renovaré Institute. She is faculty for Next Frontiers, a ministry to pastors in transition, and actively promotes Christian Spiritual Formation, crediting Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for their influence in her life and ministry. Mimi has authored a biography of Richard Foster’s bestselling Celebration of Discipline, which is projected for release through Barclay Press in the autumn of 2023.
Show Note Links:
Renovaré | Christian Spiritual Formation Resources, Education, Events
Who is Julian of Norwich – Friends of Julian of Norwich
Lilias Trotter
Rob Marsh
Joni Erickson Tada
Psalm 39
2 Corinthians 12:1-10
John 17
The PAPA Prayer
Transcript
Karlene Cannon: Welcome Larger Story family to the Relational Spirituality podcast. A place where we talk about how you can belong, become, and be known. Last week, you heard the first part of my conversation with Mimi Dixon, and if you missed it, you will definitely want to go back and listen. She talked about how we all live in Alcatraz. Life in a broken world is more than hard, it’s impossible. But as we continued our conversation, Mimi began to share about with-ness. Going with Jesus into the dark places, not just so we can participate in His work, but so that He won’t be alone. It’s a big, new thought, that God enjoys us and misses out somehow if we’re not present with Him. I hope you enjoy our conversation about prayer and how we are always invited, always welcomed, and always enjoyed. Always. Every. Single. Time.
Mimi Dixon: We know that He says, dear worthy child of mine, I love you so much. Thank you. Thank you for throwing in your lot with mine. Thank you for being present to my redemptive plan. Thank you for being a welcoming, forgiving, loving presence in the lives of the people around you, especially the ones that are pretty hard to love. Thank you for being with me in this. I think he really appreciates us.
Karlene Cannon: I’m just thinking, Larry told a story of a conversation with Brennan Manning, where at the end of it, Larry asked him why he was going away on a silent retreat. Brennan said, I just think God likes it when I show up. That’s a real paradigm shift for me. I think of prayer as about me, me talking to God, I need to commune with God. Just turning that upside down and thinking that there’s something that God enjoys about my participation in His larger story that I not only get to join in that vibrating power that she talks about, I get to participate in that with God. Not only that God’s invited me to participate, but He enjoys it.
Back to the illustration of the father and his son or a mother and her child, there’s hardly anything I enjoy more than just being with my children. It makes sense when you stop and think about it. The way that I approach prayer, that God is eagerly anticipating a conversation with me, just like I anticipate conversations with my adult children. Now that’s still not part of the fabric of my imagination, if you will, and my experience necessarily. That’s a really good story and a good metaphor to think about not only being part of something bigger but also being so personal.
Mimi Dixon: That’s the whole thing. Larry would always say that it’s about relationship. It’s not about transactions, it’s not about us running out and being all productive for God and the higher our percentage of productivity is, the more favor we have from God. It’s really relational and He wants to know what hurts me. He wants to know what makes me laugh. He wants to know what I noticed today. And He wants to join in it. It’s the delight of a parent in a beloved child. It’s interesting to me that in His post-resurrection appearances, most of the time, Jesus called them children. Now, isn’t that interesting? Children, did you catch any fish? Children, come and have breakfast.
It touches me so much and it reframes everything that here is this person who has already paid an enormous deeply personal cost and journeys with us. He’s saying, remember how this ends now. Remember, all shall be well. Remember that. Hang on to it. Be confident. It means everything to Him when we join Him in His work. I think it meant everything to Jesus to look down from the cross and see the three people who loved Him most standing there. His mother, John, and Mary Magdalene, would not go away. They would not leave him alone. Ad I think, do I want to let Jesus handle what’s going on in the world by Himself? I want to do what Mother Teresa of Calcutta said. I want to be the one who, as you said, shows up. The one who’s willing to go and just be present with somebody who’s gone through something. It’s something that changes everything.
There’s a poem written by Rob Marsh. Rob is a Jesuit priest. In this poem, he describes the way His relationship with Jesus changed from thinking theologically about what Jesus accomplished on the cross for our salvation. You know, a Flat Stanley view of Jesus.
Karlene Cannon: I love that. If you don’t know who Flat Stanley is, it’s a children’s book that all my kids had to read. You actually cut Flat Stanley out and you color him and then you send him places. He goes on all these adventures. That’s a great metaphor of how often maybe we do think about God,
Mimi Dixon: This is how Rob describes it. As Jesus goes to His cross, what dies is not just a dream or a project. It is my beloved. I’m not mourning my shattered hopes, my doomed calling. I’m mourning a man I have come to love. At the start, He was all abstraction and hope and activity. But by the end, He is the man I have come to know intimately. I’ve watched His birth and held His warm weight. I’ve been there as He has grown up and been made man before me. I’ve seen His struggle and loved His laughter. I’ve gazed at Him and found Him gazing back. I’ve heard my name on His lips. I’ve been drawn into His friendship. I’ve watched Him work, suffered His hardship, wrestled with His self discovery. I’ve discovered that I need Him, and been sweetly shocked that He needs me too. Something has happened. I have fallen in love.
Karlene Cannon: Wow.
Mimi Dixon: Yep, pretty much says it all.
Karlene Cannon: That’s really beautiful.
Mimi Dixon: It means everything to be given the opportunity to accompany Him. To know how much it means to Him when we choose to be present to what He’s doing. Even when we’re afraid or even when it doesn’t feel safe. Even and especially when we know it’s going to cost us something. But when we choose to be present to Him, as He is so generously present to us, that’s the shift I’ve experienced in myself, Karlene. I’ve experienced a shift between thinking primarily, as you said so wisely a moment ago, about what I want Him to do for me, into thinking about how, in this time of great turmoil in our world, when there’s so much at stake, He is carrying and continues to carry a great burden. How could He not? And what does it mean for me to answer the call to be present to what He’s doing in my own sphere of activity, in my own existing relationships?
This is where Larry helped me so much, because that was the focus toward the end as he was straddling heaven and earth and the veil was so thin for him. What he wanted to talk about is how does this show up in our relationships, because that’s the center of the call. I’m very grateful to him for that, because it was very clarifying. When we start thinking about our call, what does God want, that’s what He wants is for us to love, to be good lovers. That’s very simple.
Karlene Cannon: Very simple and very difficult.
Mimi Dixon: Very, it requires a sacrifice.
Karlene Cannon: It requires some giving up of self, some dying to self.
Mimi Dixon: And what we consider to be, I have a right to this. I have to watch that in myself.
Karlene Cannon: That entitlement spirit that Larry always talked about.
Mimi Dixon: Exactly. He had it going and he would press into something and he wouldn’t stop until he got ahold of it. And when he did, like Julian of Norwich, he was generous and he shared it with us. And I’m so grateful.
Karlene Cannon: Yeah, I think that is one of the things I have appreciated most, especially as I’ve gotten really immersed here working in Larger Story and in Larry’s work is just the way he shared not only his internal world, but his relationship with God. He shared that with us. You said how that’s the relationship that’s most important to you. It’s the primary relationship in your life. It was for Larry and he generously welcomed us into that in a lot of ways, through his books, the conversations at breakfast, in the speaking and the various things he did. It is so helpful, like you said with Julian of Norwich to have shared that 10 hour conversation that echoes down through the centuries to give us a vision of what this invitation God has been holding out, from the beginning of time when He’s actually inviting us. I think maybe our perceptions are just way too small, our targets are smaller, our vision is small because often you hear the phrase like pray big prayers. I had a pastor who would often say, pray for things that are so big that they can only be accomplished if God is in them. I think all of that’s good and true. But what we’ve talked about today is something even grander, even more true, more real than accomplishing something big for God.
Mimi Dixon: As you say, it’s rooting our little story in God’s larger story. Our assumption is that you and I were born when we were, very intentionally. You and I have had the experiences that we’ve had in our lives that have shaped us and formed us in ways to have access to people who are struggling and hopeless. Joni Erickson Tada is one of my heroes. I just love Joni. Rachael was telling me – and she may have told you this story as well, Karlene. – She was at a prayer breakfast. She and Larry were there and she had an opportunity to help get Joni ready for her workshop. Rachael said that in the workshop, one of the first things that Joni said to this packed room of people was, when I go to heaven, I hope I can take my chair with me. Rachael said that everybody went, Oh. She said, what I’m going to do is I’m going to wheel up to Jesus in my wheelchair. She has a little control thing. I’m going to wheel up to Jesus in my wheelchair and I’m going to look up into His face and I’m going to say, thank you Jesus for this chair. And then I’m going to stand up. I’m going to put my hand, this restored whole hand, I’m going to put it on the back of the wheelchair and ask him to send it to hell. She said that chair has taught her dependence on the Lord. It has shaped her inner journey. But here’s the other thing she says. The reason I’m grateful for this chair is that I can wheel into places that able bodied people cannot walk. She’s not talking about the American disabilities, she’s talking about people who are suffering and if I walked in, they’d look at me and they’d say, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Take your platitudes and leave. She can wheel in there and they look at her and they’re going to listen to what she has to say because they know that she gets it. The things that have happened to me, I may not be in a wheelchair, but there are things that have happened to me that give me access to some people in a way that others would struggle to gain.
I think this is why Paul can say in 2 Corinthians that we can be grateful for the things that have happened to us because it can be a means of grace in somebody else’s life if I can be willing to accept and embrace the things as Peter was told by Jesus when Jesus welcomed him back with the three loves. After his three denials, He says to Peter, essentially, Peter, don’t worry about it, you’re never going to fail like this again. You don’t have to worry about it because next time you’re in a situation where you feel threatened and you’re afraid, you’re going to put out your hands and you’re going to let them take you where you don’t want to go.
I think that as followers of Jesus, very often He invites us to go some places in a relationship or whatever that we would rather not go. I show my love for Him in being willing to embrace that and to say, I’m going to trust you when you invite me into this. I’m following you into it. You’re not sending me, we’re going. I’ll be with you and you’re going to give me what I need. It’s a shift from thinking about in prayer what I want God to do for me and the people I love and for my business and for my future and my dreams. It flips around and now I’m realizing, as Julian said, that the time is short. We don’t have that long to write a love letter with our lives. This is the only chance we’re going to get. So in my mind, bring it on.
Karlene Cannon: There’s so many things about that I’d love to follow up on and what you just said, but a couple of things really struck me. When you told the story about Joni Erickson Tada. Somehow, I think I can see being grateful for the wheelchair, even though I don’t know how I would get there. But then her saying, send it to hell, that’s what made me think that’s legit. Like she’s having some sort of weird denial, some sort of, I’ve convinced myself that this is okay when it’s really there’s a real awareness and I know, if she still experiences a lot of pain, there’s a lot of suffering that never really abates in her story. That deep awareness of the tension between what is good and holy and what is, corrupt and Alcatraz, as you said earlier, in our world, and the inner certainty that the good has won. I found it really profound in that little anecdote, because it’s not just that the good wins in the future. There’s a real winning in Joni and the way that she has embraced the story and the good wins today as well as tomorrow and for eternity. So that really struck me.
I think that in what we’ve been talking about, that willingness to live in this constant reconciling of the good and the bad and inviting Jesus into that. I love when you brought up the story of Peter, because I love Peter. He’s impulsive and he’s all the things. Jesus sees something sterling in him and will not let him go and he prays for Peter, you know, Satan has asked to sift you like chaff, but I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to hold you like he says, but I pray for you that your faith will not fail. I think the idea that Jesus is praying for me – we’re talking here about praying to Him and being invited into a relationship with Him, but He’s praying for me. Just like back to the story of Abraham Lincoln, He’s reaching down and holding onto me, praying for me when I’m not even clued in to what’s really going on and He has prayed for me that my faith will not fail.
Mimi Dixon: That is so good.
Karlene Cannon: I just think that, as you’ve said a lot in this conversation, we’re on a journey. It’s a long journey and yet the time is short. I thought that was really profound. I just lose track of some of that, in the day to day in a way that Mother Teresa, on the streets of Calcutta or whatever, was unable to lose track of. She had put herself in a situation where every day she went with Jesus to go do something important
Mimi Dixon: The Trinity is a community of persons created in the image of that community. So we’re not alone. We’re not separated from God. In John 17, it says, may they be one as we are one. Mmay we be in them the way that they’re in us. There’s this mixing. It is hard when you live in Alcatraz and you hear the banging of the bars, and you’re hearing people yelling, and you know that this is not a safe environment. Nobody should ever try to make a home in a place like this. This is a wilderness. Being together makes all the difference because we call to one another in the night.
When Paul and Silas were in prison, it says that all the other prisoners were listening to them. Then there was a great earthquake and the Lord broke off all of their bonds and opened up the doors. And that’s when the Philippian jailer thought, oh no, they’re all escaping, but they didn’t escape. They didn’t escape. Now what does it look like for me in the darkness to sing in the darkness because I know that the dawn is coming and that there is a light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome.
I love what you said just a moment ago about the way that Jesus is present to us in our situation, we’re never by ourselves. We’re always accompanied and we find one another like this Larger Story community. We find one another. We read the scriptures. We receive His word to us. We communicate with Him in prayer. We listen to podcasts. We hear about a book that might be exactly what Jesus is inviting us to marinate in for a while. It might well be The Papa Prayer like we’re doing here. We’re spending time together, marinating in the name of the God who loves us, and sees us, and has breathed life into us, and who has promised to never ever leave us. We remind one another of these things, and it’s a handhold. We can keep moving forward because we’re encouraged by one another. This is not a solo journey.
Karlene Cannon: That’s a good word. I’m thinking of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago talking about conversations that matter, like one of Larry’s terms. What makes the conversation matter is that we’re stirring up an appetite for God. I think that’s what you’re saying is that in those moments where we get lost in the chaos of Alcatraz that we’re there for each other to stir up that appetite for God again in whatever way that comes about. I love poetry, I love history. I love reading the older books from the great cloud of witnesses, if you will. I look out my window like there’s all sorts of ways that God calls to us through each other, through His creation. The still small voice in our heart. I think maybe part of what we’ve been talking about here is that a lot of times prayer feels like my burden. If you like my thing to do my obligation, or I need to do this in order to whatever. God is just more active in that Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail long before Peter knew his faith was going to be challenged. There’s a whole part of the relationship, a whole community of divine persons who are holding this relationship together. My part is just to, as Brendan Manning said, just to show up,
Mimi Dixon: Yes, and to know that you are part of something that has movement. You already know what the destination is. We may be going through a dark place. If we’re on a train, we may be going through a dark place right now. We can’t see very clearly, but He knows exactly where we are. Psalm 39 says it is not dark to Him. The darkness is as light. So He’s not surprised. He has traveled this path already. He knows exactly where we are. I may well be in a pinchy place because of some decisions I’ve made or other people have made. I may well be in that valley of the shadow of death, but He is with me, He’s guiding me, He’s protecting me, and He’s going to provide the meals that I need, the sustenance that I need, the courage I need. It makes all the difference to me.
I’ve come to view myself as a little person, a little girl. He just loves having me be with Him, so He sticks out His hand and I grab His hand and we go. I may not like some of the places that we go, but there are places we go that are stunningly beautiful. There are relationships when He says, I have a good friend, Karlene, I want you to meet her. And I say, Oh Goodie. Then we meet some of His friends and we encourage one another. It means everything to know that He’s got this, He is proven and reliable, and He knows exactly where I am at this point in my life, and He’s present. I’m not in some kind of situation where I’m unsafe and I’m at risk.
This is how Dallas Willard could say that this universe is the safest place that we could possibly be. My response to that the first time I heard it is to say, are you paying attention? This is not a safe place. This island is dangerous. You need to watch your back. But he’s communicating what we’ve been talking about in this whole conversation. He’s talking about what we have. Jesus says, when you pray, say Abba, Daddy, the one who sees me and loves me and enjoys me and leans in to hear what I did today, what I learned at school, who my friends are, who asks me when I’m drawing to tell Him about my picture. He’s interested.
Karlene Cannon: It strikes me that maybe a good thing to close on is I think something that gets talked about a lot, but a lot of us didn’t have fathers or parents who did that, who were not interested in us. Sometimes our frame of reference is a little bit warped or just missing. My story is more one of absence and neglect. There’s just not a lot filling in that landscape of what father is. What do you offer to people who may have that kind of a story where their experience of family in the Trinity is really all they’ve got, or at least the formative experience that they have.
Mimi Dixon: Thank you for that, Karlene, because you’re so right. If we haven’t had an experience like that in the human family, it is extremely difficult and there are wounds there. There’s trauma there. The only thing that I know in bringing my own experiences to the Lord is just to say, Jesus tells me to call you Abba. I don’t know what that means.I need you to re-parent me. I need you to show me what you’re like.
It’s interesting that in that prayer, Larry Crabb shows up. You have somebody who does see you. Somebody who loves the Lord and you look at him and you say, is this for real? Can I trust this? Are you trustworthy? I think this is the amazing thing in the family of God. We are all re-parented because even at our best parents don’t always get it right. We are in this space of being restored. Of having the walls rebuilt, not the walls that keep people out, a strengthening and a refreshing and a renewing and we start getting better. We start really coming to know that the one who calls us dear, worthy, the one who calls us His beloved, His child, that He is trustworthy.
When you live in Alcatraz, these are hard messages to get through, because our experience is in such a contrast to that. I think that’s where community is so important. There was a young woman in our church who came to me and said her heart was full of fear and she couldn’t read the Bible because it made her afraid. She was sure that she was going to go to hell, and she just didn’t know what to do. I said, ask. She said, ask what? Ask who? I said, ask. Just put a prayer out there and say, Jesus says to call you Daddy. I don’t experience you that way. I wonder why things have happened to me that you might have prevented. It’s hard for me to think of you that way. I said, just say, please reveal yourself to me and please reveal me, show me some of your friends who can help me learn to trust you.
We don’t take trauma lightly. We really don’t. This is a real thing. And in our world today, it’s rampant. This is where the work you’re doing is so important in Larger Story. You’re creating safe places for people to reform their image of God.
Karlene Cannon: What you just articulated echoes a lot of my story in that, I did have a father who was largely absent and so when I got to places in my life where I was starting to really grapple with, what does it mean to be a child of God and to have a heavenly father, I had a season where I was asking that question. It was in the season where my husband was reconnected with the Crabb family. He had known them as a child and I was connected with Larry for the first time. There are actually two Larrys in my life. I went to my other Larry, that’s how I talk about them. In this whole season, it was just like, okay, tell me, what is it? What does the father do? What does He do? It was in that asking, and there was some anger and other things going on there, but it wasn’t that kind of pushing and asking that, God brought these Larry’s into my life. You were able to stand in that gap for a period of time and kind of at different points. To then shape my understanding of God as Father because I had that taste, even if I didn’t have that lived experience as a child. I think that’s really a good word. It felt to me like I was like taking God by the collar, if you will, and just saying, I want to know what this means, and some of my conversations were a little bit hostile like that, but there was a real deep longing to know the fatherhood of God and a need to fill that in.
Mimi Dixon: God is not afraid of chaos. He certainly isn’t afraid of anger. He says in Isaiah, let us reason together. Tell me what’s on your mind. When you read the Psalms, right?
Karlene Cannon: Some of the imprecatory Psalms, they’re scared of God.
Mimi Dixon: God, why in the world are you letting those dirt bags be so successful and people like me who are following you to experience such traumatic events? Why? What are you doing? What’s going on? This is something that Larry would talk about. You say God wants you to be honest. He is ready for that. What He doesn’t want is for me to project some kind of holy hologram, because you can’t have a relationship with a hologram, right?
Karlene Cannon: There’s nobody there.
Mimi Dixon: He wants to get behind that. He wants to know what’s really going on in Karlene’s heart and mind. He wants to know what’s going on in mine. He invites me into that space. He welcomes it and He’s grateful for it. Because now we can get someplace together.
Karlene Cannon: I think that’s been my experience. When I’m most intense and really longing and asking, that’s when I most experience God. He’s faithful and it might not come exactly in the moment that I want, or exactly the way that I want it, but back to that persistence. If I stick with it, He always brings something or someone to bring Himself to me.
Mimi Dixon: Isn’t that wonderful? That’s what He’s like. That’s what He’s like.
Karlene Cannon: I think if you have those experiences, you do start to count on it. Larry was very good at saying this. It’s not a demand or an entitlement. I have to watch that in my heart, but if there’s an honest desire and expression of that desire and a willingness to just receive what God offers, He always offers.
Mimi Dixon: Sometimes I see it all that a little more clearly in the rear view mirror.
Karlene Cannon: True, that’s very important.
Mimi Dixon: The story is there and you begin to say, oh, in that time when I felt so, lost and disconnected, now I can see that you were there the whole time. Thank you. It’s good. Honest conversation, that’s what it’s about. It’s a real relationship and not a fake one.
Karlene Cannon: That’s right. Mimi, thank you so much for giving us so much of your time and your wisdom and your story and just letting us have a little bit of a glimpse into your heart and your relationship with the Trinity, with the one you find most important.
Mimi Dixon: Thank you, Karlene. I really appreciate the invitation. It’s been wonderful to have this conversation with you.
Karlene Cannon: I would love to talk more. Maybe we’ll do this again if you’re available, but I really do appreciate it. Larger Story family, we just thank you that you’ve hung in there and listened to our conversation and joined us as we talked about the most important relationship, the relationship that holds the whole universe together, the relationship that created all of us and everything we see and that we’re actually privileged to be a part of, invited to join and live in that community that we know is the Trinity.
Mimi Dixon: Could I offer a prayer of Julian of Norwich?
Karlene Cannon: That would be wonderful. Thank you.
Mimi Dixon: God of your goodness, give me yourself. You are enough for me and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honor. If I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone, I have everything. Amen.
Karlene Cannon: Amen. Thank you.
Mimi Dixon: Thank you very much.
Karlene Cannon: Thank you for joining us on the Relational Spirituality podcast. It is our prayer that these conversations are a blessing to you, giving you courage to keep living with the Trinity, to go with Jesus into the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of relationship, even into Alcatraz so that He doesn’t have to go alone.
I hope we’ve reminded you who you belong to and that a greater desire for Him has been stirred up in your heart. I pray that you’ve been inspired to stay the course and become the fullness of all He created you to be. I long for you to be reassured that it is safe. To be known and to go with Jesus as He knows those around you. Until next time may the Lord bless you and keep you and may His face shine upon you. Amen.
What is prayer? Is it an art- a creative expression of your soul? A science- a persistent and methodological accounting of your needs and the needs of others? Or is it a mysterious invitation that welcomes you into the heart of the Trinity and the story They are telling? Join Karlene, and her guest, Mimi Dixon as they talk about the vibrant power of our consistent and persistent praying.
Bio: Renovare’ Board of Directors, Institute Faculty, Ministry Team
Miriam (Mimi) Dixon began her ministry in 1979 serving as an associate pastor at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. From April of 1985 to May of 2019 she served as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Golden, Colorado. She earned both her MDiv and DMin degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. Mimi is on the Renovaré Board of Directors and teaches for the Renovaré Institute. She is faculty for Next Frontiers, a ministry to pastors in transition, and actively promotes Christian Spiritual Formation, crediting Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for their influence in her life and ministry. Mimi has authored a biography of Richard Foster’s bestselling Celebration of Discipline, which is projected for release through Barclay Press in the autumn of 2023.
Show Note Links:
Renovaré | Christian Spiritual Formation Resources, Education, Events
Who is Julian of Norwich – Friends of Julian of Norwich
Lilias Trotter
1 John 5:14-15
Psalm 56:8
The PAPA Prayer
Transcript
Karlene Cannon: Dearest Larger Story family, a real treat awaits you today. I was blessed to have a rich conversation with someone who is very dear to our ministry, Mimi Dixon. Mimi was Larry’s and Rachael’s pastor for over 15 years, and if you keep listening, you will immediately know why.
My conversation with Mimi was so nourishing and enjoyable that we talked for over an hour, so we’ve broken the episode into two parts. In this first part, you will hear Mimi share how she experiences prayer and intimate relationship with the Trinity. I think you’ll enjoy the many resources and inspiring stories she brings into the conversation. So get comfortable and enjoy our conversation on relational prayer, inspired by Larry’s book, The Papa Prayer.
Karlene Cannon: Welcome Larger Story family. We’re so grateful that you have joined us today. We’re Glad to welcome you to the Relational Spirituality podcast, the place where you can sink into the reality that you belong to God, that you can become all that He’s made you to be, and in that process you can be safe to be known and to know others.
Today I have the delightful opportunity to have a conversation that matters with someone who’s really important to the Larger Story family. Mimi Dixon has been the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Golden, Colorado. She was there for 34 years and has over 40 years of pastoral experience. During that time, she was the pastor to our founder, Dr. Larry Crabb, and so they spent a lot of time together talking about some of the things we’ll be talking about today. I know that was a sweet relationship for Larry. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Mimi through that connection. I think you’re going to really enjoy her and what she has to share with us and our conversation today. We’re really grateful that Mimi, you have joined us. She is also now on the board of the Ministry Renovare’, which focuses on spiritual formation and spiritual direction; she is a teaching fellow.
She listed all the content and things that she’s a part of, but she’s still very active in producing important content, events, webinars and opportunities for people to learn and grow and really get to know this Trinity who we’ve all decided to join. So Mimi, thank you so much for being with us today.
Mimi Dixon: Thank you, Karlene. It’s a real privilege to be here with you and with this community that has learned so much from Larry and Rachael. It’s an opportunity to share together for a little while. I’m looking forward to this conversation. Thank you.
Karlene Cannon: Thank you so much. I am too. One of the things we chatted about just a little bit before we got on here, you mentioned the long history you had of breakfast with Larry. Many of us in this audience had our opportunity to have breakfast with Larry, but I was just wondering if you might have a special memory or just a little anecdote or maybe just what that meant to you before we move into our conversation today.
Mimi Dixon: Breakfast with Larry was something you never forget. It was lots of hot coffee and wonderful conversation. The thing that he and I enjoyed talking about the most was our growing and deepening relationship with the Trinity. To understand who the Father is as our Abba. To think about who Jesus is as our Teacher, our Savior, our Lord, our Friend. To be open to the way that the Holy Spirit is deep at work within us, shaping us and reshaping us into the character of Christ. These are the things that Larry and I talked about and it was absolutely wonderful. One thought and idea and experience would trigger another and we’d lean in and it was rarely less than four hours.
The people in the Blue Sky Cafe where we met in Golden, Colorado were so hospitable in allowing us to have that time together to imagine and dream and understand and look forward to all the ways that in this Larger Story, this redemptive arc of history, to think about where we are right now, and how our understanding of God’s wonderful plan of salvation changes the way that we deal with the difficult and sticky parts of our everyday lives and our experience. And particularly Karlene, as it comes to prayer and the problem of unanswered prayer and the question of persistent prayer. Is it nagging? Or is it participating at a deep level in something that God is doing and He’s inviting us into it? These are the kinds of conversations that Larry and I had over breakfast.
Karlene Cannon: Breakfast that turned into lunch it sounds like. That’s very dear. I think to remember that I had a few of those breakfasts as well So I know a little of what you’re speaking of. I hope that we can have a similar conversation today. I want to just jump right in. We are focused on Larry’s book called The Papa Prayer. I was particularly excited to have this opportunity to talk to you Mimi, because one of the first things I ever noticed about you was just the way that you prayed and the authentic, real sense that you had a deep relationship with each member of the Trinity in a way that I thought was different. I was just drawn to that. This opportunity for us to talk about prayer has been really exciting for me too, I’ve been anticipating this eagerly. Where do you start when you think about what it means to commune with the Trinity? With this guide we all have some sense of who we’re talking to, to actually have a conversation? Where do you start with that?
Mimi Dixon: That’s a great observation because you’re absolutely right. One of the things that you and I talked about briefly before this conversation was recorded is, how important is our image of God? When we think about God, what kind of picture do we have? Are we drawn? Do we feel resistance? Are we worried that we’re going to be weighed and found wanting? What is our picture of God? Larry in The Papa Prayer on page 104 says that there are 10 common images of God. So he lists them as being a smiling buddy, a backroom watchmaker, preoccupied king, vending machine, stern patriarch, kindly godfather or grandfather, impersonal force, – “The force is with you” – a cruel tyrant, a moral crusader, a romantic lover. The kind of conversation that we have with God or anyone has to do with our experience of that person, with the way that we perceive them, the kind of relationship that we have, whether we perceive ourselves as being welcomed and beloved and cherished, and we respond very differently to a person like that, as opposed to a person that we feel is judging us, or we don’t feel safe, or we don’t know what they’re thinking. In the back of our mind, we’re wondering if there’s approval or disapproval. So our image of God is a place where eventually the Lord draws us into an exploration of that. We begin to get a sense, what is our gut feeling, our emotional response, when we think about God being right here?
I can remember when I was in high school, my mother once said to me, remember God is watching all the time. Now Karlene, I did not experience that as being a positive thing. I thought, in the shower? My image of God that was immediately conjured up wasn’t of someone who welcomes you into their lap and holds on to you and listens quietly, but rather a sense of being observed and scrutinized in a way that felt uncomfortable.
Then I heard a story one time about Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad, who died when he was in late elementary school, but he was pretty sickly in his early years. This was a time when the White House was open, so people could come and just camp in the vestibule waiting for an opportunity to sit with the president. Among the people waiting in the White House was one of the commanders of his army, then the union. He waited a couple of days and finally his turn came and he knew he would have 15 minutes with president Lincoln. He was angry about the way things were going. He didn’t feel there were enough resources for the troops, so he came with a whole list of complaints against the Commander in Chief. He finally is welcomed in, he goes in, he sits down across the desk from President Lincoln. Lincoln had just welcomed him, thanked him for coming, and asked him what his concerns were when there was a knock on the door and the door flew open, and in ran his son. He ran around the corner of the desk, jumped into his father’s arms, into his chair. Lincoln turned his back, it was a high back chair, so that his the back of the chair was between him and the commander of his army. Tad was in tears. There was lots of crying and Lincoln mumbling something quietly and then more crying and after about five minutes, the little boy was all sorted out and he ran out again. Lincoln turned the chair around and he apologized. He said I’m so sorry, but my son knows that he has access to me all the time. The commander stood up, saluted, and said Mr President I don’t have any questions.
I think the way that we approach God matters. I can approach God with my complaints and my requests, with my challenges, with my petitions, or I can approach Him knowing that I am a beloved, and that I have access to Him all the time. That’s a relationship that deepens over time, I think. Some people may enter into it immediately, that’s their experience of God from the first, but so many of us have had experiences in our lives that are wounding and there’s been trauma and we wonder why a loving, kind, gracious God that we read about in the scriptures would ever allow such a thing. If you would give me permission, I would like to share with you some of the things that I learned from my old friend, Julian of Norwich, who lived in the 14th century, one of my really old friends.
Karlene Cannon: I would love to hear that. I just want to highlight that what you did there was to take something that perceived scrutiny that often feels invasive or even frightening in some way and actually turn it into this really significant gift that we have access to the Commander in Chief, someone far beyond that, the creator of the universe, who is also very focused on our tears and whatever’s going on with us. What could be perceived as scrutiny is actually this unfettered access to the source. I think that’s really significant. I just didn’t want to glide past that. I thought that was important. Yes, I’m very interested to hear. Larry quoted Julian a few different times and different things, but I’m interested to hear what you brought for us from Julian of Norwich.
Mimi Dixon: Thank you. What Julian is trying to do is to help us understand that we have the kind of access to God that a beloved child has. The actual word that Jesus used with Julian is dear, worthy, that you and I are dear and worthy. That’s how He sees us. Furthermore, that we are one to Him. There’s no separation. It’s like a mother. In fact, Jesus compares himself to a mother, the way God feels about us is the way that a mother feels about a child and a mother’s relationship, as you well know, to a child is so intimate. It’s so bound up that you would draw into yourself anything that could possibly harm them. That’s exactly what God has done for us in Christ. This is some of what Jesus told Julian in 10 uninterrupted hours of conversation. I’m so glad she wrote it down and shared it with us. Thank you, Julian.
She says, we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves us. And yet, deeds are done which appear so evil to us and people suffer so. Such terrible evils, that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them. We consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it, so that we cannot find peace. In the blessed contemplation of God, as we should do, we revolt against the darkness, our minds filled with groaning, enduring the pain and sadness, praying for the time when the divine presence will once again be revealed to us. The Lord brought to my mind our customary way of praying, how through our ignorance and inexperience in the ways of love, we spend so much time in petition. I saw that it is indeed more worthy of God and more truly pleasing to Him that rather than piling up our petitions through His goodness, we should pray with full confidence and by His grace cling to Him with real understanding and unshakable love. The problem is that our reasoning powers now are so blind, so simple, that we cannot know the high, marvelous wisdom, the might and the goodness of the Holy Trinity. This is the medley of human life; faith and sorrow, insight and darkness, joy and agony, singing in counterpart throughout our days. God wants us to know that through it all, the divine presence is the melody that never changes. Our Lord God tenderly touches us, and blessedly calls to us, speaking to our souls. Let me be the only object of your attention, my beloved child. Focus on me alone, for I am enough for you. Rejoice in your Savior and your salvation. This is what He meant when Jesus told me, You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well. Jesus says, Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, and at the end of time, you will truly see it in the fullness of joy. Two duties then belong to our souls. One is to reverently marvel. The other is humbly to endure, always taking pleasure in God. He wants us to remember that life is short, and it won’t be long until we clearly see within Him all that we desire.
That’s really powerful. It’s a description of what that general witnessed, isn’t it? He saw that there was a child that was so disturbed and upset that he didn’t have to make an appointment. He didn’t have to wait two days. He could just bust in, and his dad would scoop him up in his arms, listen, hold him, talk with him, and help him know that he was heard, seen, and safe. It wasn’t long before that little boy was sorted out, and that’s all the general needed to know. The Commander in Chief was that kind of man. When we come to know our God as that kind of God, it changes everything.
Karlene Cannon: I think one of the most powerful parts of that story you tell about Abraham Lincoln is him turning the chair and just attending and focusing on his son. I know as a parent, that’s often a hard thing to do, but I also know the power of your eyes and attention being on your child or on somebody. I think that’s part of what she’s trying to communicate here is that God is always attending to us, but He’s always ready to be focused and personal. We know we have a personal God, but there’s something about that particular illustration and making the connection to the parent-child relationship or an earthly relationship that I think gets lost, at least for me. To go back to Larry’s list, sometimes God feels far away or disinterested, like He’s already got His plan and His story and I’m just a gadfly, if you will. What you’re saying, what Julia is saying, is that’s the furthest thing from reality.
Mimi Dixon: That’s very perceptive. I think you’re right. It’s a journey into intimacy. That’s what this is and it’s a journey into the heart of the God who sees us and loves us and created us and who longs to be with us. The thing that I appreciate so much about Julian and this 10 hour conversation is that there was a plague in Norwich where she lived. Nobody knew then about fleas. Nobody knew about the black plague. The rats came over on ships from the continent to Norwich in the bottom part of England, not too far from London. Before long, this bustling community, people just started dying. Within 10 days a person would be dead and the dead were piling up and commerce stopped and it was horrible. It was a nightmare and what people said is, these are the days of Noah and God means to destroy us because of our sin. So Julian in prayer said, is that how you see us? Do you look at us as sinners? Are you turning away in disgust? What’s happening here? And so Jesus came and talked to her about it. Over the course of these 10 hours, Jesus tried to show her what God sees when He looks at us. AThere were many things. He talked about hazelnut. He talked about God clothing our nakedness with Jesus. He talked about the Lord and the servant. There were a number of different illustrations. Julian was a very bright person like yourself. She would listen and she’d say, yeah, but what about this? How can you look away from sin? Are you not disgusted the way I’m disgusted when I look at myself, when I look at others?
The illustration that finally got through to her was when Jesus said, I am a mother and you are like a little child who’s just been hurt. When you’re afraid, when you’re hurt, when you feel unsafe, run to me, don’t run away from me, don’t hide in the bushes, run to me. That did it for Julian of Norwich. Then she said, Oh, now I understand. Because she knew what that felt like. When Jesus said, we have made you male and female, we have made you to be parents so that you would have a direct connection with how God sees us, how the Father, how Jesus, how the Spirit sees us. They’re all in. They don’t hold back. They don’t say, you have to get sorted out before we’re going to pay any attention. They say, this door is always open to you. You never have to wait. You just come and we’re always welcomed. So then the question becomes – and this is where Larry and I enjoyed conversation so much, and I know that many of you listening had the same experience.
We would talk about what was wrong in the world. How can God stand it? Now, Larry Crabb had the courage to address issues that many people would rather not address, would rather not talk about. In his books he just laid it out there. It was honest, it was raw and it was true. So one of the things that we would talk about and that he wrote about and that is on everyone’s mind who was serious about prayer and a deepening relationship with God is, what about evil and suffering in the world?
What the scriptures tell us, what that transformational arc reveals that Larry talked about, what he wrote about in his books, is to say that God is at work with this, and there’s always a balance of free will. Because God will not violate free will. That’s a line He won’t cross. And so He invites people into this redemptive, sacrificial, healing place. We join Jesus. We follow Jesus into it. Now, what you and I know, Karlene, what all of us who are listening know, is that Jesus is a first responder. He runs toward the fire when everybody else is trying to escape. He moves toward the gunfire when everyone else is trying to get away. He’s always a first responder. What He says to me is He says, Mimi, would you come with me? Would you follow me? Would you come with me into that? Now it doesn’t mean I’m going by myself. He doesn’t say go. He says, come. He invites me to be present with him in situations that are very troubled. The reason that Larry Crabb lives is because he was and always has been a first responder. He was a man who wasn’t afraid to come to where people were cowered in fear, to where they were overcome with fear, with suffering, with trauma. Larry was a person who would come and be present with Jesus to that person in that situation. So we are seeing things that are very difficult, but really great things.
I have a good friend who loves English murder mysteries and you know what she does when she cracks one open? She reads the first chapter and then she reads the last chapter. She does that. I said, why would you do that? Because you miss all the tension of them trying to figure it out. She said, I’m not looking for a solution. What I want to do is make sure all the main characters are still alive at the end. That’s exactly how the scriptures are structured.
Karlene Cannon: Yeah, that’s a good point.
Mimi Dixon: We have the last chapter. We know that we’re still alive. We know that Jesus wins. We know that when the whistle blows, we know what the score is going to be on the scoreboard. We know that there’s going to be a renewal of all things.
One time Dallas Willard, when he was in the last couple of days of his life, Richard Foster went down to visit him at the hospital. The afternoon when Dallas was sleeping, Richard went out and he went to the little church where he first met Dallas. It wasn’t there anymore. It had become an apartment building. So that evening when he went back to the hospital, Dallas said, What did you do this afternoon? And Richard told him. And Dallas said, Oh, don’t worry, Richard. That little church will be there in heaven. What if in heaven, all the dear things that the locusts have eaten, what if they will be restored? Dallas was pretty sure that they would. Larry knew that they would. He talked about it, and he looked forward to it, and he said, these things are not lost. These things are being held in trust. Even your tears are being collected in a bottle. Not one drops to the ground and is missing.
I love the Trinity. I love this God who doesn’t hold Him apart from our suffering, but pours Himself in and holds it with us and helps us remember that we’ve read the last chapter. We know how this ends. This is the pinchy part of the story, but it’s going to be okay. Jesus told Julian, remember sin is inevitable. There’s going to be hard stuff, but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Don’t worry, I’ve got this.
Karlene Cannon: I think that’s not just a good reminder, it’s just the reality. I have a good friend who – echoing the idea of the scrutiny turning into this full access – she’ll say, our God is a God who casts our sins as far as the East is from the West and cherishes our tears in a bottle. That’s who we worship. I think that’s such a powerful reality to approach God that way. Larry was so fond of saying, He’s serious about sin. But He’s more serious about us, He wants us. That’s what we’re invited into, the relationship where our tears matter, we matter, and we can rest in that famous phrase that all things will be well, all manner of things will be well.
Mimi Dixon: Yes, Karlene, that’s right.
Karlene Cannon: So Mimi,if you don’t mind sharing with us, as you’re engaging in prayer with the Trinity and communion with the Trinity, how do these realities impact you when you’re the little boy who’s just had something that’s upset him and needs to sit in his father’s lap, if you will, to be settled, to be reminded, to be comforted, to be restored?
Mimi Dixon: That’s a great question. The first thing that I remember is that it’s the order of things that Jesus was willing to move into and take hold of all of the violence, all the persecution, all of the ways that things are torn from us, He moved into it and through it, keeping his eyes on the Father. Now we know that in Gethsemane, we really see His humanity. He was in agony. He was grieving. He was weeping sweats of blood. He was really suffering. He asked, Abba. Is there any way we can accomplish the same thing without having to do it this way? And He goes back to the disciples and they’re sleeping because many of us sleep when we’re really upset about stuff. It was easy to just take a little nap and avoid it. He goes back twice and then each time He comes back it says that He renewed that request. Abba, please, Daddy, is there any way to do this a different way? I’m going to trust you with that because I know I am securing your love. I’m confident in it. I know that you are with me. So when I experience suffering, I know that part of the brokenness of this world where earth is Alcatraz. We all have numbers instead of names, we have the orange suits on. We learn to survive, we learn what to avoid, we learn what alliances we should have to stay safe, and we put a lot of energy into navigating those relationships.
Jesus has already said that Alcatraz is not our normal way of living, and one day we’ll get the beauty of Earth back, but right now we live in a very broken world, and there’s no way to avoid it. We’re swimming in raw sewage. It’s toxic here, and we learn to be really careful in navigating things. When we enter into suffering, that’s the reality that we have created by our choices, and we know that Jesus and God, the Father are not apart from that, and the Holy Spirit is implanted within us, helping us increasingly with our permission to respond as would Jesus in our place. We’re living now, as Larry would say, as we will for all eternity in God’s heaven. We can begin living that way now, by shifting our perspective. Now you and I are being called to be President, Father Lincoln, we’re the one who’s invited to view others with that kind of openness and with kindness to treat them the way that we’re being treated by God. We’re in this place, but there’s a lot wrong.
Mother Teresa used to say to her sisters, if what we see every day breaks our hearts, imagine what it’s doing to Jesus. Every day, she told them, every day when we go out, we’re going with Him so that He’s not alone. We’re going with Him. He’s not alone. That’s the shift of perspective that we experience increasingly where now we begin to view these things as an invitation of Jesus to offer somebody what He would offer them in our place. If those people are people that we don’t really like, or people who have injured us, or where there’s some kind of wound and they’re the kind of person who’s poking it all the time, these things are very difficult.
I want to share with you, if I may, a story about Lilius Trotter – she’s become one of my new old friends, Karlene. I hope that you get to know her. Lilius is a person from the 19th century. She was a single woman, British, who loved Jesus. He called her to go and live in Algeria. She went without knowing a word of Arabic in a country where missionaries were not allowed to do anything. You couldn’t build a school, you couldn’t build a health clinic, you couldn’t do anything at all to set up a visible presence. She just moved there with some friends and started loving people and telling them the story of Jesus. Lilius was there for 30 years. She died there. In those 30 years that she was there, Karlene, she saw almost no fruit from their ministry. That was troubling to her. She said, where’s the evidence of the work God has called me to do? Did I get it wrong? Jesus taught her something about prayer that has taken on a real important place in me because she talked about why we persistently pray. When we’re in a dark place where it doesn’t seem like any of our prayers are being answered, then what is the invitation from God?
This is what. He told Lilias, when one of the support columns in our ancient Arab home collapsed suddenly one morning shattering on the pavement below and carrying with it a block of masonry and shower bricks and blue and white tiles from the arch above it, I recognized this as an illustration of Jesus’s teaching on prayer. An architect explained to us the probable cause of the collapse. Each night for the past eight years, the two bakers in the attached shop next door had swung a huge seesaw to knead their bread. Every blow backward and forward had sent a vibration through the house, and now at last, the result was seen in the shattering of masonry that looked as though it would last as long as the world. I recalled an article I had recently read in a weekly periodical in which this same phenomena had been observed in similar situations. Soldiers walking in step over a bridge, the beating of looms, each resulting in the bringing down of a structure. I wrote in my journal, there is a vibrating power going on down in the darkness and dust of this world that can make itself visible in startling results. In the upper air and sunlight of the invisible, each prayer beat down here, vibrates up to the very throne of God and does its work through that throne on the principalities and powers around us. We can never tell which prayer will liberate the answer, but we can tell that each one of them is doing its work.
Then she quotes 1 John 5:14-15, this is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of Him. So persistent prayer isn’t trying to beat on the door of God and saying, are you listening? Don’t you care that we’re drowning here? It’s instead participating in this way of releasing in the heavenlies something that will have a visible effect on earth, breaking down strongholds, touching the lives. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see some of those prayer beats being fulfilled, but it goes back to that whole thing of confidence, doesn’t it?
Karlene Cannon: I hate to stop there, there is so much goodness to come, but I hope we’ve left you with a savory taste of what it means to wrestle with God and to pray persistently, joining in a vibrating power that breaks strongholds and touches lives. What a transformational thought. I hope you can carry the inspiration and promise of that idea into your week. I pray that you’ll join us next week where Mimi will share more about what God has taught her about this most important relationship. Thank you for joining us here on the Relational Spirituality Podcast. I hope you were reminded of how good it is to belong. I hope you were inspired by all that God desires for you to become, and challenged to be known and to go with Jesus as He knows those around you.
Until next time, Blessings to you. All shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.
What is your prayer life like? Get a chance to hear a unique conversation between brothers who have wrestled with their prayer lives for years – what does it mean to live a SPIRIT led life starting with prayer? An eternal perspective can change the way you pray!
Bio: Ken Crabb is the youngest of Dr. Larry Crabb’s two sons. He has been married for 21 years and has three daughters. Ken and his family live in North Carolina.
Links:
The PAPA Prayer
Reading & Relating Book Club
Transcript
Kep Crabb: Welcome everyone to Relational Spirituality, the podcast of Larger Story. I’m your host today, Kep Crabb. Our topic this last quarter of the year, as we get ready to roll into the advent season, as we’re beginning this last quarter, we’re going to be talking and looking at the ideas, the themes, and the thoughts covered in the book, The Papa Prayer. If you don’t have a copy of that, make sure you go to Largerstory.com today and get yourself a copy. We still have several left, but this book was written in 2006. It’s written by Dr. Larry Crabb, my dad, who basically wrote this book out of confusion and sometimes frustration with his own prayer life.
He begins the book with nine questions. I’m just going to read those to you real quickly. He divides those into three categories. The first three questions I think we all could probably answer a hundred percent yes on, but let me just read you these questions. He says, the first question is, have you ever asked for something from God and didn’t receive it? I think we could all probably say yes. Have you ever prayed for guidance, especially in a difficult relationship that never came? Have you ever really needed to hear God’s voice and then tried to believe you did, even though you weren’t really sure?
The next three questions are a little different. He says, do you sometimes feel that God is turning a deaf ear to your most desperate prayer requests? Have you ever prayed for comfort yet ended up feeling more empty and alone after you’ve prayed? Has praying for strength to overcome temptation ever left you feeling just as weak and the temptation feeling just as strong, maybe even a little stronger?
The last three questions he has are a little bit deeper. This is really the essence of the book as you start to dive into it. Do you know God well enough to enjoy His company the same way you would enjoy being with a family member, like a brother or a close friend? Do you want to know God better and enjoy Him more than you know and enjoy anyone else? These are hard questions. The last question, did you connect with God in such a way that enables you to hear His voice and to know He’s right there with you?
As Dad went on to write this book, The Papa Prayer, the word Papa really stands for something in the book. As we begin to introduce this book today, let me just tell you what the word Papa means. The first P of the word Papa, the first letter P stands for present. What Dad says is to present yourself to God with no pretense. Be a real person in the relationship. Tell Him whatever’s going on inside you that you can identify. That’s the first P of Papa. The second letter is the letter A, and that letter stands for the word attend. Attend to how you’re thinking of God. And again, you can’t pretend when you’re doing this. You have to be honest. Ask yourself, how am I experiencing God right now? Is He a vending machine? A frowning father? A distant cold force? Or is He your gloriously strong but intimate Papa? The next letter is the letter P that stands for the word purge. Purge yourself of anything blocking your relationship with God, put into words whatever makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed. When you are real in your relationship with Him, how are you thinking more about yourself and your satisfaction than about anyone else’s, including God and His pleasure? And the last letter of the word Papa is the letter A. So the first letter is present, P. A, attend. P, Purge. And now the last letter is A for approach. Approach God as the first thing in your life, as your most valuable treasure, the person who you most want to know. Admit that other people and things really do matter more right now. You long to want God so much that every other thing in your life becomes a second thing. That’s really where this book starts from.
As we dive into this book, I’m joined today by one of my closest confidants, and my closest friend, who also happens to be my brother. Many of you may see him and think that he’s my older brother, but he’s actually my younger brother. I’d like to welcome Ken Crabb to the show now. Ken, thanks for joining us today. How are you doing brother?
Ken Crabb: I am doing well. I don’t know who would think I’m older.
Kep Crabb: I like the fact that you have the background that lets you know what’s going on there. There’s two reasons why I wanted you to have you on today. The first one is just because you haven’t had a chance to do an episode with me yet. ‘m so excited to have this because this is how you and I talk most of the time. But the second reason is really because after Dad had passed away, you made a comment that has stuck with me, but you said it really did impact or affect and change your prayer life. Can you unpack that a little bit?
Ken Crabb: Yeah, I did. I remember saying that to you. It’s funny. One thing that our father always said is, there’s three ways that we draw near to God. Number one is through His Word. Number two is through community and fellowship with other believers. And number three is prayer. Those are the three things. And very often our community feels like it’s missing us. So often our prayer life seems anemic. remember him giving a sermon on this one time. He said, if you’re climbing up a wet rocky cliff wall, which is life, and you’re slipping, the guaranteed ledge you always have is God’s Word.
It’s funny, I’m part of the leadership team with a very large men’s Bible study and routinely the guys say, can we do something on prayer? Because my prayer life doesn’t feel real. It just isn’t nurturing me in the way I think it should. And I can resonate with that. When I taught prayer in that group, I intentionally did Daryl Johnson’s wonderful book, 57 Words That Change The World on the Lord’s prayer. I pray the Lord’s prayer, I would guess 15 to 20 times a day. I do that purely because I know Jesus instructed us how to pray. I know I’m doing something right when I pray in the Lord’s prayer. I can’t miss. It’s just a great starting point.
For me, what happened when my dad died, when our dad died, I knew he was with Jesus right away. I started thinking about heaven. I started approaching the throne with a different visual. And then for some reason, probably six to eight weeks after our dad had died, I started calling God the Father, Dad in my prayer life. I could put a face to that. It just felt so intimate to picture God the Father, knowing my dad’s somewhere in that throne room. Go ahead and pick up revelation four if you want to see what he’s up to right now. I started calling God, Dad. My brother and I both had such a wonderful relationship with our father. He was not perfect, but really close, and just a wonderful dad. Nobody imaged God the Father and Jesus Christ to me more than my dad.
Having that unbelievable influence as our spiritual mentor, who also happened to be our biological father, just really changed my prayer life.
I’d love to tell you guys two and a half years later that there’ve been no lulls, but there have been. It was a pretty big spiritual high when that happened. I probably got three or four months from really feeling, just very much abiding in Jesus Christ. Just by the simple thing of calling God the Father, Dad really helped that connection and it faded. I needed more time in the Word. I think I have a hard time praying for longer than three to five minutes without my Bible open on my lap. It’s really hard just to focus and do that. So if I know I’m going to spend some significant time in prayer, especially if I’m trying to figure out what the heck it means to listen, I don’t know how to do that without the Bible open. It just keeps me focused. I can think about my family and friends.
It was a huge thing. It’s not a little trick. It didn’t change my whole prayer life forever, but it was helpful. It was a big deal. And it was really the first time in my life that my prayer life felt like it was a vibrant part of my spiritual journey. Unfortunately I was 50 years old the first time my prayer life felt like a vibrant part of my spiritual journey.
Kep Crabb: You hit on something when you just said it there, and it really just caught my ear because you’re now picturing Dad with Jesus. What I love to say is that Dad is no longer living with any faith. He’s no longer living with any hope. All he’s living with is just an abundance of love and seeing Jesus. There’s no faith or hope that he’s going to see Jesus because he’s seeing Jesus
Ken Crabb: His faith is sight. And that’s not faith.
Kep Crabb: The impact that has had on how you prayed has an eternal perspective and you talk about the ebbs and flows or the ups and downs of that kind of journey, because I believe I’ve had that too.
But the one thing that seems aside from scripture – which is always there, that ledge, like you said, that you can rest on – the fact that keeps eternity on the forefront of your mind, the fact that our dad now is in heaven. I often say, what is he doing right now? He’s doing something because time still exists at whatever that means in heaven. I don’t even know, it’s beyond whatever our minds can wrap around. But to have that eternal mindset, that eternal perspective, that has been what has changed me in the last definitely a few years since Pop passed away. I think that’s where you sustain that, because I have that hope of heaven is what’s really pushing me now and driving me.
Ken Crabb: I just reread Waiting for Heaven – I know this is on Papa Prayer, so I’m not going to confuse books, but I just reread Waiting. I had read it before Dad died and then I read it after. The impact of that book, knowing he was in heaven as I read it, I was brought to tears multiple times. I had a hard time seeing the conclusion. It was just awesome. But The Papa Prayer, the other thing I think that when I was starting to call Him Dad, that whole idea of purging. I think repentance and prayer is a lost art too. I think if we learn to repent continually, frankly, it’s just… My Christian life, when I feel as though I’m abiding with Jesus and really walking with Jesus Christ, it is a posture of continual repentance. That’s the posture of my heart. That’s so huge. When my prayer life feels stagnant, a lot of times I can take it back to a lack of repentance. That’s why that purge before you attend to the throne is so important. When I’m thinking about Dad in the throne room in Revelations chapter four, which is one of the wildest chapters in the Bible, because it’s happening right now in the present and it’s absolutely happening in the future. It’s all those things. It transcends time. I’m thinking about the solemn nature of approaching God in prayer. I know as a kid, Jesus is our friend and that’s great. I want kids to understand that, but Jesus is also sovereign Lord and Savior. I don’t want to go into that when I think about my prayer life now. I don’t want to have that casual approach.
Kep Crabb: Again, that’s such a huge point that Dad made such an emphasis on in this book, the whole notion of self love of ourself and how self gets in the way. He even says in the book, giving priority to our relationship with God may not produce the maximum satisfaction in our souls that we legitimately desire, because we’re still so wound up in self and the distinction between, self and spirit, because that’s the battle, right? Dad jumps into it in about the middle of the book. I can’t remember exactly where, but in the middle of The Papa Prayer, he talks about, what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? He talks about centering prayer and some of those kinds of things.
Again, the whole notion of letting the Spirit rule us and guide us and drive us is something that you and I’ve been chatting about now for forever. But it’s become something that’s so pivotal and so foundational. And I think it begins in your prayer life.
Ken Crabb: I think it does. For anybody that is having a chance to watch it, I don’t want to give you the illusion that my prayer life is some amazing thing. But there are moments, there are tastes to where my prayer life is good, and it just requires obedience, commitment, and time. Our Bible study last week was looking at the very first missionary trip where Paul and Barnabas were launched from Antioch. It occurred to me, the church got together and they were praying and fasting at the start of, I think it’s Acts chapter 13. They were praying and fasting and it appears that they were doing that for days or even weeks before the Holy Spirit spoke. I said to all these guys in my men’s Bible study, is our life too noisy to hear the still small voice of God? Who is living a contemplative life anymore with the internet and media and all this other stuff?
I think that the enemy of prayer is noise, is busyness, is not centering your heart and I fall victim to that as much as anybody else. I really want to take that time every morning. As soon as my feet hit the side of the bed, I say, I know I’m God’s man, right? That’s true no matter how my day goes, but am I a man of God? That’s when my prayer life starts every morning. If I don’t have that – and I’m probably not 30 for 30, but I bet you I’m 29 out of 30 – on the mornings I miss I feel it. I feel like something’s missing.
Kep Crabb: There’s something really important about starting your day with prayer. You talked about repentance and so much of that purging.
Ken Crabb: See, Mere Christianity talks about us becoming little Christ’s and the battle of our flesh every morning. The challenge for the Christian is they have to wake up and realize they’re an alien. We’re not part of this world. We want to have outposts. We’re an outpost. I want my home to be an outpost in enemy territory. That’s what all of our homes are as Christian homes.
The other thing that I think Dad expressed in the book, but thinking about attending, is where Thomas Chalmers had a quote, “the expulsive power of a new affection.” I’ve always loved that quote because as you’re falling more in love with God and you’re attending and really trying to think about His magnificence, you’re blown away. You fall more deeply in love. I learned last week, Albert Einstein was a religious man. I did not know that, I came across this in some research, but he had a fellow scientist that he told he didn’t really like evangelical preaching in America because it downplayed the magnificence of God. He said, the Milky Way light travels at 5.76 trillion miles per year and it takes a hundred thousand years to get across the Milky Way. And God’s named all those stars. The preaching just doesn’t capture that.
This was from John Piper, actually. And John Piper said to a bunch of pastors, may that never be said of us. I think that’s that huge part in attending, understanding you’re attending to the sovereign creator and with His word has a 576, 000 trillion miles long universe. That’s just crazy.
Kep Crabb: Yeah. You really hit on so many things there that I think are so important in respect to just staying in constant prayer. When your feet hit the floor in the morning, that’s when prayer begins.
Ken Crabb: I haven’t read Papa Prayer for about six months, but I think he does get into C.S. Lewis and Screwtape Letters talks about the idea of posture and prayer. Wormwood, the junior demon tempter, is being instructed by his uncle’s screwtape to have us humans not believe posture matters in prayer, right? Don’t bow down. Don’t get on your knees. Don’t let them do that because they’re animals. If they have a worshipful posture, it will actually impact their heart. So posture really does matter when we pray. Praying lying in bed at night is not as powerful for me when I’m on my knees.
Kep Crabb: You hit on it too, you almost have to be on your knees when you start to be aware of the magnitude of God and what’s really going on, what Einstein was talking about, we look at God as being, like Dad said in the beginning of the book, is He just a vending machine?
Is He just a frowning father who’s disappointed in us or a cold force who’s there to hand out justice when it needs to be handed out? Or is He really our Papa, an intimate relationship with God the Father, because we know how important fathers are. So many people don’t have a father, but we’ve got a heavenly father that fortunately, our earthly father gave us an example of, but there’s a heavenly father available for people that don’t have the father that they’re called to have because they do have that father in Jesus and in God the Father.
Ken Crabb: They can still be that father. I understand having a role model is huge. It. But wanting to be the father that our dad was, could other people that did not have a great father be that father? The answer is absolutely, because that’s what prayer is so important about.
You have a heavenly father. It’s as real as calling Him Dad. And that can just be huge. Rather than looking back on what you missed out on and how your father failed you, be the father that you wanted, knowing that you’re fully supported and have the Holy Spirit to do that.
Kep Crabb: That’s the key. That is the absolute key. How do you live in the rhythm and the guidance following the Holy Spirit?
Ken Crabb: One of the things struck me and I’m as guilty of it. When we take prayer requests, how many of you guys and gals out there hear prayer requests? It’s usually about someone’s job or someone’s health. If you pick up the prayers of the Bible, just read the Pauline prayers. Here he is, being beaten, imprisoned and all that other stuff. He doesn’t mention any of that. He is just praying that they grow in the knowledge and love and grace of Jesus Christ. It’s an amazing thing how our prayers are so different from the prayers of the Bible. That’s why I really try to pray the prayers of the Bible to keep my selfish interest out. I want God’s interest going forward, because without His Word, I don’t really even know how to pray.
Kep Crabb: That’s why Dad calls this a different way to pray and gives us an opportunity. I think the nice thing about this book is – I was reviewing it the last few days knowing I was doing this, sorry I didn’t give you a whole lot of heads up on this, but thanks. I was going to do it by myself and I thought, no, I want to have Kenny join me on this and I think that’ll be fun – the interesting piece is how this notion of presenting yourself and attending and purging and approaching, opens up doors to your prayer life in a way that you didn’t expect.
You might be running through what you would consider an A, B, C formula, = or whatever the word is there. Formulaic, a formula, formulaic and it’s what Dad was totally against, but this is not a formula. This is a way to just open the door to say where to start. Because as you mentioned before, and I think it’s so true, so many people, if not all of us, struggle with our prayer life.
Ken Crabb: So the disciples spent three and a half years with Jesus. The only thing they ever asked him to teach them was how to pray because Jesus went off and prayed. If you look at that, Jesus went off and prayed for eight hours at a time. And so the disciples, they didn’t say, how do we take care of people? They saw that. How do we love others? How do we do ministry? He exemplified that always, but they weren’t with Him when He was praying very often. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. They never asked Him to teach them anything else. Even the disciples were going, we don’t know how to pray like you. We really want to start praying better. How do you do that?
One other quick thing from Daryl Johnson’s book 57 Words That Change The World. I did not know that, but, the Lord’s Prayer has six stanzas and you guys are all familiar with it, but our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Those are in a command. It’s like you’re telling God what must happen. They were an imperative. It’s just a really bold prayer. John Calvin wrote eight different books on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s six stanzas, 57 words, but for some reason he needed eight theses to get through it all because there is so much to that. I’ve done that with the Lord’s prayer and Papa Prayer thinking about, before I will get to saying “our father”, where am I right now?
Dad would say your red dot, and there’s no point about being dishonest. That’s just silly. You’re with God. He knows everything. So just be honest. I’m having a terrible time. I’m a train wreck. I’m being tempted by this and feeling like I want to just be selfish and yell at my wife today and pick fights with people or whatever, just be that honest to start and get ready to pray, present honestly, this is where I am. Approach, attend. Who is God? He is the creator of a 576,000 trillion mile universe, and for some reason loves you so much He sent his son to die for us. That’s the attend portion, purge, get rid of what’s in your life that’s blocking. And not only are you blocking and not only do I block my relationship with God, but when my relationship with God is blocked, it’s impossible for me to love others. The only love I can even provide comes from the Holy Spirit. So unless I’m purging, I can’t even love my wife and kids. That’s how important repentance is. It’s just that big of a deal. I think it’s a lost art. And Satan loves that, right? Keep that over you. You feel shame, so you don’t want to approach. And that’s silly.
Kep Crabb: This has been fantastic, bro. I hope that you people have enjoyed the conversation I’ve had with my little brother on prayer. If you haven’t gotten a copy of The Papa Prayer, please go to Largerstory.com and get one of your copies today. We’ll send it out to you. This next quarter, we’re going to be talking about prayer and the themes from this book and really all about that kind of thing. How can we improve our prayer life? How can we improve our relationship with the Father through our prayer life? What does that look like? And so continue to join us every Tuesday through the end of the year as we continue to talk to you about Relational Spirituality.
Thanks for joining us today.
Have you met Larger Story’s newest team member? Join us as Rosanne Moore introduces Brittany Wood, our Gen Z addition to the team, and they talk about SoulTalk, what gets in the way of meaningful conversations – especially inter-generationally – and how we can be on the lookout for the ways God shows up in our daily interactions.
Bio: Brittany Wood is 23, and has been married to her husband Andrew for 2 years. She is an avid reader and enjoys spending time in nature. She asked the Lord into her life when she was 7, and has since participated in many Bible studies, even leading her own for a year. She works at Larger Story as the customer experience manager, and personal assistant. Brittany and Andrew bought their first house a yar ago, and currently reside in Charlotte, NC for the foreseeable future.
Links:
SoulTalk
The SoulCare Experience
Reading & Relating Book Club
Transcript
Rosanne Moore: Hello, our Larger Story audience. We’re so happy to have you today on the Relational Spirituality podcast. I’m your host, Rosanne Moore. I am excited to have with me today, my niece, Brittany Wood. We were talking about how to come up with one title that describes what she does, because some of you are interacting with her. If you email us, Brittany is going to be the one who’s probably going to be responding to your emails. She’s keeping up with orders, helping make sure orders go out and that Kep has everything for those who order books. She’s keeping us all on top of deadlines for meeting our deadlines. So we figured she’s our “master juggler.” She’s keeping everybody going, not to mention all the I.T. stuff that she does, because she’s our Gen Z-er who knows how to do all of that. It is awesome. We’re very thankful for Brittany Wood. We just wanted to introduce her to you today as a newest member of our little team, Brittany, thanks for coming.
Brittany Wood: Hi, everybody. I am excited to be talking with most of you, depending on whether most of you email us or not.
Rosanne Moore: And if you don’t, you should be, right?
Brittany Wood: Exactly. Hey, if you email me, then I get to talk to you, so that’s fun.
Rosanne Moore: There you go. When Brittany joined the team – had you heard of Larry other than me talking about him?
Brittany Wood: You had talked about him. I actually hadn’t really known about Larry a whole lot, but I do remember when I was like, 13 or 15, I went to a conference that Rachael did and I actually remember that conference. I was actually talking with her just yesterday about the IT side of things, helping her figure out why her email was broken and I mentioned that. She was like, that was so long ago!
Other than that, not really. I hadn’t read any of his books. Other than what you had said, I hadn’t really heard much of it. And now I’ve read seven books, maybe more just listening to them randomly.
Rosanne Moore: You had at least seen the concept of spiritual direction in action, because I can remember when we got together with a friend of yours at one point and what started as just a casual question on my part, asking him how you guys had met, led into this whole, deep discussion. I remember afterwards you and Anita Grace looked at me and went, how did you do that? But that was an example of the SoulTalk, which is this quarter’s book, which is great.
Brittany Wood: I love SoulTalk.
Rosanne Moore: Did you? So you’ve read the book.
Brittany Wood: I have read that one.
Rosanne Moore: And you’ve listened to some of Larry’s audio recordings discussing it.
Brittany Wood: Yeah. Part of the book club is there’s four recordings that we’re doing; one ahead of time and one for each of the months. I have listened to those as well.
I just love the concept of SoulTalk. It’s basically just deep, rich conversation that actually has more meaning than, “I worked today; the weather is nice.” Not even just the, “I was struggling at work because my boss was not in the best mood,” but actually getting deeper into the roots of everything and getting to know them as a person. I just really like those conversations.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that’s why you and Brittany – you and Anita Grace, sorry, my brain.
Brittany Wood: Brittany and I do get along pretty well.
Rosanne Moore: That’s good, because you’ll live with her a long time. You and my daughter, Anita are close; you are lifelong best friends. You were built-in best friends as cousins. Not that that automatically means anything, but for you guys it did.
Brittany Wood: We were talking about that the other day and the random things we went through, and there was a point in time where both of us thought the other person was actually closer to others. I thought she was closer with Tyler, my brother, than me, and she thought I was closer to one of my friends than her, and we were both like, “No, I’m losing her!” Anyway, that was really funny to talk about since we never lost that connection in the slightest. We’ll not talk for two, three months, and then we’ll be like, “Hey, we haven’t talked in forever!” And then be on a phone call for seven hours straight. It’s great.
Rosanne Moore: It is great. One of the fun things about having you work with me at Larger Story is that we get to see more of you because you come down periodically as we work on things. If Anita is not working, then she gets to see you too, so that’s nice. It’s fun.
Like you said, I think most people want to be able to have deeper conversations like you’re talking about, but it’s really hard. We don’t do that.
Brittany Wood: I think it’s a lot of – I guess I can’t speak for everybody. There’s jokes about how I speak for my generation on this team, since I’m the only 23 year old on this team, but I don’t even necessarily want to do that. Which is also something that we were talking about that my generation does. We don’t want to speak for everybody, but me and some people I know do this.
I think there’s a little bit of being scared to go deep. There’s two sides to it. When I am talking with somebody – and we’re going to assume it’s not somebody like Anita or my husband, someone I haven’t already gone super, super deep with – there is a fear that if we go this deep, they’re not going to understand me or where I’m coming from.
Then there’s also the tendency of focusing on me and not being able to understand them as well. I know me personally, I really like to understand where people are coming from in certain things. A lot of different things. So a lot of different situations will happen, and I’m like, but why is it that they think that way? No matter what it is that they’re doing, sometimes it’s something I agree with, sometimes it’s not something I agree with, but as long as I can understand why, then it’s easier for me to understand and accept that person, even if I don’t agree with the decision that they made. Then there’s also that fear that, what if they don’t want to try and understand me that way?
Rosanne Moore: It’s interesting as you say that, because we have this longing to be known and a fear that we’re not going to be. I think everybody, no matter what age group you’re in, can be a barrier. So without speaking for your entire generation, are there things that you wish – I know some things my kids have said to me about barriers that can happen intergenerationally in conversation and what you described, you’re saying could happen with anybody, right? Are there any things that you think specifically can be generational barriers or places of misunderstanding?
Brittany Wood: I think there’s a lot of preconceived stuff. I was talking with my mom at one point. Now I’m 23. I’m an adult. I’m married. I’m living on my own. All that fun stuff. I was not like that when I was growing up, even as a teenager. I didn’t move out of the house till I was 20. So even up until then there were some things that mom would tell me and I’m like, “You’re supposed to say that because you’re my mom,” and she’s like, “You will understand this when you’re an adult. This will make sense when you’re an adult.” And I’m like, “But you’re not understanding me now.” Whereas she was completely right. That’s something that both the adults and older people will do to younger generations. “I know it doesn’t make sense now. You’re going to understand when you get to my spot.” Because it makes sense to them, they’re like, “I know you’re going to understand this later.” It’s harder to connect in that moment. Because then, the younger generation thinks, “Look, I know you say that. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not” – the older you get, the more you realize it probably will be true – but it’s not now. There’s that kind of disconnect here where you both know it’s probably going to change, but that’s not where you’re at right then. Things like that.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, I can relate to that. I know there have been times when Anita Grace or the boys have said to me, “Mom, you’re not listening.” They will tell me something, and I’m honestly thinking, “I’ve already lived this. I know where you’re headed is not going to take you where you want to go. I already know the shortcut that can involve avoiding a lot of pain. Let me just hand that answer to you.” And that is not helpful. They’re really good about telling me. Anita Grace said to me – because you are at the age where part of what is healthy and normal is for you to be getting a sense of who you are yourself independently. Somebody else can’t hand you what to think or feel or believe. It needs to be something that comes out of who you are. I know Anita Grace has called me out on that and then I have to back up and I have to listen better.
Brittany Wood: There’s definitely a fine balance between, “Look, I’ve had this experience, so I want to give it to you,” and then there’s some stuff we just have to learn on our own. Sometimes it is that the situation is different. You don’t want your kids or anybody that you care about to go through the same struggles that you did. – That in and of itself doesn’t even have to be from the older generation to the younger generation. It could just be anything you’ve gone through that somebody else hasn’t yet. – And you don’t want them to go through that hurt because most of the time learning things the hard way means it hurts, and nobody really wants anybody that they care about to go through that.
Rosanne Moore: That’s true. That’s a good point. It’s not just intergenerational at that point. You can feel that way about a friend or somebody that’s not necessarily your child or an intergenerational thing.
You brought up something good too. I think part of the issue sometimes is we make the assumption that – as a parent, this is another conversation I’ve had with my kids. It’s also something that I have seen with my own parents, so it works both ways. Sometimes I’m making different decisions, not because I don’t understand. My kids are making different decisions, not because they don’t understand what I’m saying. It’s that they want a different outcome. Something else is more important to them than it is to me. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s not a moral issue. It can feel like, wait, this makes sense that you would do it this way. I’ll make an example. I attended a private Christian school growing up and then I chose instead to homeschool. Now, my parents were okay with that, largely because I couldn’t afford it, but I know families who just are horrified if a family member chooses to homeschool. But the other thing that can happen is my kids look at their homeschool experience and there are pros and cons with it. And they say, this is what I would have done differently.
If I am tied up with my decision making, if I’m getting my identity out of that, then I’m going to be really threatened by them saying, “I want to make a different choice in this way than you did.” My parents were not threatened, but it did challenge them a bit when my youngest two kids went to a charter school. They had more trouble with that because that wasn’t a specifically Christian environment. They struggled with that. For me to make a different decision in that, in some ways felt like a judgment about their decisions, and they just thought it wasn’t as good. But it was the right decision. It is the right decision for where we are and what’s happening in the lives of my boys. I think that’s a good point that you make that sometimes it’s our set ideas that we don’t hear well, or we have other motivating factors that make it hard for us to hear.
Brittany Wood: It also depends on what you’re expecting. If I have some situation in my life and I make this decision this way – One great example of this is with my parents with college. My dad especially has been like, “You need to be able to have a path, you need to have a career, you need to have a plan.” His emphasis was on, “You need to have a plan.” I heard, “You need to go to college.” So then I’m in college, and I ended up dropping out. Clearly, it worked out fine. I did an associate’s degree, so I have some college. I was in the American Sign Language interpreting program, I’d been in it for three years, and it just was not right for me. I thought it was at the time, and it just wasn’t right. So I decided to drop out of college and just get a job at a bank. I worked at Wells Fargo. I was like, this makes sense as a decision because even though I don’t have a career path, I do have a college degree. It’s an associate’s degree, but a lot of places just want you to have a degree in college. And working at the bank makes enough money for me to support myself. I can move up in it if I need to, I can support a family if I need to, et cetera. But I was thinking, “My dad says that I have to go to college. He is not going to be happy with this decision at all.” I was so scared to tell him because I just knew, in my head, I just knew he was going to be very upset because I wasn’t going to college. Then I talked to him and he wasn’t upset because he just wanted the plan part, and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh that’s what he meant.” That’s one of those set ideas, I knew how he was going to react. I thought I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he wanted. I knew how he was going to react. I was just wrong.
A lot of times something like that can happen, just assuming that we know something or thinking that we know how somebody’s going to think, especially if you’ve had previous circumstances with them where they reacted this way. I’m trying to learn that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll act that way again, because everybody grows. I’m like, look, I can change, but sometimes I forget other people can change. Having those preconceived notions can also get in the way of a lot of communication, sometimes even relationships depending on how severe it is. In communication in general, having the preconceived notions that you already know what they’re going to say, you already know what they’re going to think, may or may not be right.
Rosanne Moore: That’s true. I’m curious, you said you really liked the SoulTalk book and I think you heard that you said you heard the recordings too, right?
She made reference to our book club. Reading and Relating is our book club. Quarterly, we do a deep dive into a book, and we have monthly discussion times. If you haven’t already joined and are interested in an online group for connecting once a month with other like minded people, we would love to have you.
What stood out to you? Because I was listening again, and I’m being reminded again that two barriers that often get in the way of meaningful conversations, like you’re talking about, is not paying attention to what’s happening in me that might be important to me and driving me in the moment, like you were talking about with your dad, having that assumption. If you didn’t recognize you were being driven by that, that could get in the way of having a conversation. And the other is asking what’s going on in the other person. Where are they? Asking for their red dot rather than assuming what it is. What stood out to you about what you read or heard? What did you like most about the book?
Brittany Wood: I am a person who’s just very concepts oriented, I don’t hold on to details very much at all. So it was honestly the entire thing, the entire concept of SoulTalk; like you’re saying, paying attention to what is going on in them, paying attention to what is going on in you, stuff like that. Just the concept of, we just need to do better about relating to people. As an entire society, a lot has happened and changed. COVID made it so a lot of people don’t know how to communicate. The internet made it so a lot of people don’t know how to communicate. Stuff like that. Especially because on the internet, a lot of it is putting out your opinions, for example Twitter, where somebody says something and you just say what you’re thinking back, and nobody is actually like paying attention to, why do they feel this way? Why is this person responding this way? Let’s just get into arguments via Twitter, Facebook, whatever. I don’t actually have either of those so…
Rosanne Moore: You’re right. I see it all the time.
Brittany Wood: I hear about it a lot. And I’m on Instagram, so I’ll see posts of screenshots from those other places. Regardless, concepts like that. We as an entire society would be a lot better off if we just try to understand each other better.
Rosanne Moore: I think one thing that’s been driven home to me lately is how – I’m always leery about blaming it on new technology, because I don’t think the real issue is the technology. Like, there was outcry when there was a printing press, people were freaking out over that when that was a new thing – but I think every new technology gives an opportunity for us both to do good or to do evil; it has a good impact or negative impact depending on how we use it. One negative certainly is that I think people are more prone to “meme thinking” rather than nuanced thinking, like you’re talking about. Somebody put something up, it’s not very deep, it’s not very thoughtful, it’s not very nuanced. But it signals, “This is a particular tribe,” so if you’re this tribe, you run with it. You’re excited about it, and you cannot hear anything from another tribe, so yeah, I agree with you. I think that’s certainly an issue for our day.
Brittany Wood: I definitely agree that technology can do both sides. I wasn’t trying to say it was all bad.
Rosanne Moore: I didn’t take it that way.
Brittany Wood: I know a lot of people are like, we need to get rid of it. Well, we’re doing this right now. We are currently recording you and me in different states talking to each other and we’re going to send it out to people from different states, and I’m pretty sure different countries and even continents for them to hear this conversation. Technology is great. It just can also lead to certain ways of thinking, which is, I just have to say my one piece and everybody knows what I’m thinking. A lot of my generation especially, and me specifically, I struggle a lot with wanting to be heard. Which I know everybody does. And I can trace it back to all these different places in my past, all that kind of stuff, but also – I’ve actually done it a couple times here already – I’m also really bad at interrupting people, because when they say something and I have a thought, I need to get that thought in at at the moment, because it’s connecting with you. I have to tell myself, “Nope, you’re still interrupting.” I’m not the best at that.
Being heard is very important to everybody, and the internet makes it so all I have to do is say my thing and I can be heard. They’re not necessarily paying attention to what other people say at that time. When you’re face to face, it’s a little bit easier to be able to try and listen to the person because while you can have 17 people typing and sending something at the same time, having 17 people talk in a conversation is very difficult to hear anything.
Rosanne Moore: That’s a good point.
Brittany Wood: Definitely, the internet has led to a lot of fantastic things. It can lead to a lot of really good conversations. You get to hear from people who aren’t in your circle. If you live somewhere and you know all your neighbors and you know your church and your school. I was also homeschooled. I went to a Christian co-op. I had the same kind of people around me all the time. When you get on the internet, you can just talk to other people who think differently. It doesn’t mean one of you is right and one of you is wrong; you can actually both be right. But hearing differences helps you to expand your knowledge, your opinion, that kind of thing. So it’s both good and bad.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that’s a good point. A lot of times I’ve heard complaints about, and I’ve been concerned about, how algorithms keep people in thought silos, but you’re right. If you look for it the way that you’re talking about, one of the benefits is being able to consider other points of view and hear other people’s experiences and so much of that has to do with the posture of your own heart. Are you threatened by somebody who’s different? Or are you inviting it?
And you’re right. When you were talking about technology, when I gave my caveat, it’s because I don’t want to be a grumpy old woman. It’s not because I thought you were saying that. But that’s a good point.
I think that was one of the things in SoulTalk; the thing about not making assumptions, but trying to hear the other person’s red dot. It’s easy to project your own experiences and to assume; it’s easy to do that. One benefit of social media is just putting yourself into circumstances with people who are different than you are, who don’t believe the same thing. One of the best things I ever did was being in a small group with people who were politically very different, complete opposite of everything that I had grown up in. I heard that people of that political persuasion were…: then there were all these stereotype labels. What I found was, that was not at all true. It was not true. Although I remained having some very significant differences on policy, I found people who love Jesus very much and were very active in practicing what they believed in and seeking to follow Him faithfully. They also challenged some of what I had accepted was true about policy and added nuance that I didn’t have. I was just mouthing talking points that I had grown up hearing. A lot gets said about the need for the body of Christ to be unified. I think “soul talk” is key to that. Maybe it’s soul listening too.
Brittany Wood: I think that’s part of the soul talk, or maybe soul conversation. To have an actual conversation, you have to be able to both talk and listen because just listening actually doesn’t necessarily get you super far. I think it could get you a little bit farther than just talking, especially in understanding them, but then you’re not giving any of yourself to them. Then all you’re doing is just getting all this information and changing your mind, or maybe not changing your mind, but having all this information to be able to shape your opinions, but nobody else is getting that either from you, so that’s conversation. Soul conversation. I’m changing the book title. Let’s go.
Rosanne Moore: There we go. Sorry, Larry. He’s in heaven. I don’t think he’s worried about anything right now.
But yeah, that’s a good point. I was going to say more about that, when you’re not sharing anything of yourself. Is there more you want to develop about that? Because I think that sounded important.
Brittany Wood: I did a lot of that when I was – I say younger, but it wasn’t a whole lot younger to be honest. The past three years, I’ve developed a lot more as a person. Up until I was 20, so in high school, even out of high school into college somewhat, I was very intentional about listening to people. Like I said, I want to know where they’re coming from. So all I would do is listen. Which was fun and all, but, like I said, that led to a lot of me not feeling heard at all when I did talk. You would think that if somebody doesn’t say something a lot, then whenever they do speak, it has to be important and you should listen to it. That can be used a lot in media and stuff like that, especially in movies. There’s one character that doesn’t talk a lot, but when they do, they mean it and it’s impactful. That doesn’t necessarily happen in life a whole lot.
For me to listen, I would ask them a few questions, or I’d throw in little comments. But when I was trying to actually talk, I still was regarded as the listener and I just wasn’t heard a lot. I was the kind, empathetic person who would always hear what you had to say, who would always try and understand you. But then in some cases that led to me not being understood at all. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends, but I didn’t give myself a chance to be friends with people because I didn’t give any of myself to them. To have a relationship, whatever kind – friendship, parents, any sort of relationship – there has to be give and take. The saying is, it takes two to tango. You literally can’t have a relationship without both sides. I can talk to you all I want and you can listen, but if I don’t know anything about you, I have no investment in you, it’s just me giving myself.
Rosanne Moore: Then you become someone who just exists to serve me instead of it being a real relationship. That’s a really good point. I guess that – again, not speaking for your entire generation – but we tend to have an older audience, and often there are cross-generational conversations that are happening that can be a struggle. Are there any things that stood out to you as you were reading this and thinking about it that you think, I want to apply that more in my relationships? It might be a good insight for somebody.
I’ll offer one thing. I really feel as a parent that I’ve “held the mic” for most of my kids’ lives, so it becomes really important for me to do more listening than talking as they get older. Because the world they’re growing up in is different from the world I grew up in, it also is very important for me to do good listening before I start talking, rather than assuming that it’s the same as my experience. Although there may be similar factors that apply, the world is different, so automatically assuming that my experiences will fit well with what’s going on with them is not reasonable. When I’m having conversations with people who are struggling with that, that’s something I put out there. If you were having a conversation with somebody like that, is there anything that comes to mind that you would offer? That you think would help make those deeper conversations possible?
Brittany Wood: I think it’s a lot about balance, like I mentioned with the whole, talking and listening, giving and receiving of yourself and other people. When it comes to experiences, when you’re trying to help give advice, it is important to give advice, but it is also important to let them make their own decisions and listen to what they’re saying, especially if the advice doesn’t exactly fit. I think there is also a balance between giving advice or ideas or things like that, and – especially as a parent – letting them take the information and make their own decisions and beliefs. Not as much for decisions because that can be something that’s already having the give and take of, I’ll give you the information, you make your own decision – but trying to figure out their beliefs on things. It’s something that I didn’t do. We’re just talking about cross-generational, and I have more of the interaction with the upper generation coming down to me than the other way around where I’m at in my life right now.
Especially spiritually, there are different beliefs and stuff like that that I was just handed as, “This is what’s true, this is what the Bible says.” It happened at Bible studies, especially growing up in the same church my whole life. I knew what was true, and I had no idea why I believed any of that. When I was older and there was some challenging of my beliefs, I knew what was true. But then I was asked why, and I didn’t actually know why. A lot of my beliefs didn’t change in that regard, but I never had the chance to develop the why, and so they grew from there. So for a lot of beliefs, opinions, things like that, not just telling them – Especially because I believe Jesus came and died for us, and so therefore, if you believe in Him, we are saved. That is true. But if you don’t know why, it actually doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
I think there’s a lot of balance between giving them the information, telling them what’s true, especially as kids are growing up. They need to hear the truth in order to know anything. But also, trying to challenge them a little bit. Here’s what we believe. Do you know why? You need to decide for yourself why this is. So that’s one thing I thought about.
Rosanne Moore: I agree. I think there’s humility in that because there are core things that we’re sharing that are true, but I think as you go on, if you’re not changing your mind about peripheral things, you’re not paying attention. You’re not growing. I think about some of the things that I taught my kids when they were little that I see very differently now. If I don’t give space for them to find their own way, there’s an arrogance in that. There’s an arrogance in that I’m demanding that they accept my perception, and then 10 years later, I find out I’m wrong about something. I think that’s really good, giving that opportunity because that trusts the Holy Spirit. That lets God be God in their life. And more than anything, you have to find God yourself. You can’t have a relationship with your parents’ God, you have to find God yourself.
Brittany Wood: That’s one of those things that can work across the same generation, just relationally; being able to know why you believe something is helpful. If you don’t know, you should probably figure that out, especially when talking about what you believe. When talking, when having these conversations, when trying to figure out where people are coming from, to both know where you are grounded in yourself, and also be open to other ideas. Because if you don’t have one or the other, then you’re probably going to be wrong in some aspect of something. If you are just, I know what’s right, I know exactly why, and nobody can change my mind, and I’m just going to give everybody my advice because I know I’m right, you could be wrong about something, and you’re just hardening your heart to being swayed the direction the Holy Spirit would like you to go. The other side is, I just believe what I’m told, especially by people who are smarter than me, and they know what they’re talking about, therefore it must be right. You switch around a whole lot, and you have no actual beliefs for yourself. Like you said, you have a relationship with somebody else’s God, not with your God; you have no personal relationship with Him. And that can go with other things that aren’t spiritual as well. Political opinions. Even something that’s neither of those, just a belief you have in life, like credit cards are good or bad, things like that.
I was like, what’s something that’s neither political nor spiritual? Credit cards. Things like that.
Rosanne Moore: And the answer on that may be different for different people. Yes.
Brittany Wood: Which is also why you need to know why you think what you think and be open to other ideas.
Rosanne Moore: That’s true. When you were saying that the idea of just following what somebody else says is true. That also makes you ripe for abuse, because that’s where the biggest abuses take place – systemic abuses in countries, organizations, churches, families, whatever – that absolutism. I have a friend who has said he started asking whenever he hears something he disagrees with, instead of the knee jerk argument about what’s not right with that. Which is what the tendency is, right? To come up with all the reasons why their logic is wrong. He started asking the question, “What led you to that conclusion?” He has a second question. I can’t remember right now, but then his third question is for himself. “What if I’m wrong?” I think there’s value in believing that God is big enough to be teaching all of us. That’s not that you have to give the same level of access to every person. Some people are safe and healthy people, and others are not, and you shouldn’t give them access. But I think there’s value in genuinely holding a posture that is, “Lord, what are you saying here? What do you want?” I think that’s one of the things Larry emphasizes in SoulTalk. One of the things that made him a really effective counselor and spiritual director was that he actually believed that God showed up in the middle of those conversations, and it was to reveal Himself to both people, not just one giving to the other. If actual soul talk was taking place, if spiritual direction was actually taking place, then God was doing as much in the person who was giving as the one who was receiving in that conversation. And it is a blessing both ways.
Brittany, thank you for being with me today. I’m looking at the time, and we probably ought to wrap it up.
Brittany Wood: As somebody who has to edit it, I don’t want to edit 17 pages.
Rosanne Moore: Yes, just one more thing that Brittany does. She keeps us running. Thank God. She’s been such a blessing.
Thank you all for joining us today. If you’re interested in getting a copy of SoulTalk, we’re going to have that in the show notes. If you are interested in going deeper with a group of friends locally, we have the soul care experience, a whole 8, 10, 12,-something week study with DVDs that you can do with your own group at home. You can also join us for the monthly Reading and Relating gatherings that we do online, and we would love to have you.
Brittany Wood: If this is something that you enjoyed or would like to hear more about or anything like that – first off, if you’re on YouTube, do the whole like, comment, subscribe thing, I know, here I am, the Gen Z telling you to like, comment, subscribe, woo.
But one of the bigger things, more so than that, is just sharing this with other people, whether you think that they would benefit from this, whether you think they would enjoy it, whether you think they agree with it. Especially if you think they would benefit from this book, send them this podcast. Send them the link, send them the book, “The Soul Care Experience.” Start your own Bible study conversation groups with this book, with this podcast. Just sharing it with people is the best way to… God can only grow if people are not – “can only,” God can do whatever He wants. But He tends to reach people via other people, so sharing things with other people is one of the best ways to lead them towards the Holy Spirit guiding their life.
Rosanne Moore: Yes, absolutely. I was just mentally thinking, I ought to tell them that they ought to share this, and the Gen Z-er did it for me. So awesome. Thank you, Brittany.
Brittany Wood: Whoops.
Rosanne Moore: No, you’re great. And super. We hope you’ll join us again next week. And like Brittany said, share it, like it on whatever podcast app you listen to or on YouTube and share it on your social media channels or in an email. If you’re on our email list, you can share it there as well. Thanks so much, everybody. Bye.
Brittany Wood: See you in the emails!
Three Friends Reconnecting: The Power of a Redemptive Chat Between Spiritual Friends. Conversing with soul friends on the journey toward home.
Bios:
Anthony Vartulli – Anthony Vartuli has been gifted and called as a shepherd of God’s people, serving in various capacities over the past four decades: pastor, spiritual director, and hospice chaplain. He holds a Master of Theology degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Master of Biblical Counseling from Colorado Christian University, and a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is married to Diane who together have three adult children. Anthony and Diane reside in the Denver Colorado area.
Duncan Sprague- Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.
Tim Burke – Tim Burke played professional baseball from 1980 until 1993. For the last 20 years Tim has been involved in sports ministry serving players in the NHL. He and his wife Christine live in Florida with their adult special needs adopted daughter.
Links:
SoulTalk
Reading & Relating book club
The SoulCare Experience Study
Transcript
Anthony Vartuli: Welcome, everyone who is listening. My name is Anthony Vartuli. I am gratefully part of Larger Story Ministries in some capacity. I know Kep Crabb, he’s part of my small group. I’m very grateful for the work that is being done in Larger Story. This is a podcast that’s part of the Relational Spirituality series.
I was asked by Kep at some point to do one of these podcasts, and immediately what came to my mind was to meet with these two dear friends of mine, Tim Burke and Duncan Sprague. I’ll let them introduce themselves to you, but I just want to think about a question that Larry always used to ask.
Tim, Duncan, the question is, where’s your red dot? How are you coming into the time? The red dot idea, the way that Larry talked about it, was you go into a mall and you don’t know where your store is. You look on the map and you see the red dot and it says you are here. So the question is, where are you? As you come into this listening to us, where are we? I’ll tell you right now I’m excited, but if I’m to be honest, I’m a little bit nervous because we’re coming into this unscripted, this is not something that we prepared a lot for; we are trusting that the Spirit’s going to lead us in His direction as we talk about something really neat that the Spirit did among the three of us for a good three years, maybe even longer than that, with the hopes that you find something good and encouraging through what the Lord had given us and really continues to give us as friends. The three of us are friends now – soul friends – however Larry might call it. We’re friends for the journey, it’s a wonderful thing. I’m going to let these guys introduce themselves and then we’ll just jump into it, whoever wants to go first.
Tim Burke: Larry Crabb is our common denominator. He’s the one that is responsible for getting us together. Christine and I’s lives came crashing down and God put Larry right in the midst of that. I met him and he started walking with me, and then God used him in unbelievable ways. Then we became dear friends and one of the dearest times of our lives was our times with Larry. I remember the three of us and our wives at Larry’s for a Superbowl Party and I was winning.
Duncan Sprague: Not much of a Superbowl.
Tim Burke: No. Anthony was the one that had the idea of us getting together, I believe. I had no idea. I didn’t know you guys that well, but I had no idea that it would turn out to be as great and meaningful and fulfilling as it was.
Duncan Sprague: Yeah. I think all of us came into that time hungry for something. I think God had already raised an appetite for us to have a Spiritual father. I think all of us would say Larry filled a place that he was a friend, but he was also a step or two ahead of us in the ways that we were processing life. He had gone through some of his own midlife crashes and we’d gotten a front row seat to that. We watched this man walk with dignity, with humility, with some angry outbursts. It was all there. He just let us have a front row seat to it. There was something attractive about that, where I think all of us found ourselves mutually encouraged to have a man like that pour into us.
There we were February 2nd, 2014, going to watch the Denver Broncos beat the Seattle Seahawks and that didn’t happen. In fact, it was one of the most lopsided games, even early on in the game. Maybe that was a gift to us. It wasn’t much of a game and the Broncos got demolished, so we had a lot of great conversation. There was an itch that all of us had that Anthony said, Hey, we should carry this conversation forward. Do you guys have any interest in doing Saturday mornings together? And that was the beginning of a number of years of regularly getting together when we were all in town at a local Panera back in the back corner at the same place, same time every week. It was just a rich corner. I still go into that place and I can’t help but think that corner is a sacred place for me. There’s many sacred conversations that began there.
Anthony Vartuli: I look back and I can see that spot as well. When we started going – tell me if you guys would agree – we didn’t really have much of a plan, it was really more to just be together and, like what we’re doing today, just see where the Spirit would take us. I just remember the time feeling very unforced. It wasn’t something that we were trying to pull off but rather something that the Spirit was doing among us and we were together to try to discover what it was the Spirit was saying.
Tim, you mentioned something interesting about your life falling apart, and Duncan and I could definitely put words to how our lives have fallen apart in the past, and how Larry, as Duncan mentioned, had been a spiritual father to us walking us through some very difficult times.
Mine was a church that was a beautiful thing, but ended up ending really hard and difficult for me and put me into a time of transition where I just had no idea what God was doing. I was scared. I had been a pastor my whole life, I wasn’t really trained for anything else. I was finding it difficult to find any jobs at that time in my life. Providentially, I would say this group between the three of us started and it felt like God was going before us and it was truly a gift. You guys continue to be a gift of course, to me, and I know the feeling is mutual, but I always just sensed that He was going before us, and what a sweet gift it’s been for a long time.
Tim Burke: It was. When you think back on it, we all went through difficult stuff financially and with jobs and kids and all sorts of things. I think what made it special was what you said Anthony, we had no game plan. It was just, you know what, we’re just three guys, we love Jesus, and we haven’t figured this life out yet, but let’s just get together. Then the Lord just takes it from there. Every single time out of the countless times we’ve gotten together, I would walk away so much more encouraged, so much more hopeful, more full of life. It just stirred the Spirit in me to where it’s, you know what? I can make it. I can keep going. Anthony’s doing it. Duncan’s doing it. We’re going through these hard times and God keeps doing whatever He does. I always walked away encouraged.
Duncan Sprague: I think there was a change. My red dot when we first started getting together is different than my red dot now when I get together online with you two. All day yesterday, we had difficulties trying to get on and I was so frustrated after we got off. I was going, why didn’t that work? We have to give this gift of our friendship to the world. Then I thought maybe that was its own pressure to do something, show something. I thought God just gave us a gift. We haven’t chatted together in a year, maybe longer. Tis is what I love about friendships like this. You pick right up and you just keep going. You know that a whole year has gone by and we haven’t tracked with each other, but there’s something about walking with somebody below the surface, under the waterline, where you go, I know this person’s soul.
As I look at the screen, I’m looking at two friends now. When we first started meeting together, I thought, this is my friend Anthony Vartuli. Anthony and I go way back, to graduate school with Larry. He already had a master’s degree coming into it. I was going after my first, and then he kept going. He went on, did a doctoral piece, and I’m sitting there going, my friend is smart. He’s read a lot of books, he’s written some. My red dot then was, I have to be impressive with my friend. I was more concerned about being impressive than being a friend. That was the same pressure as yesterday. I wanted people to be impressed with the three of us.
I love that right now, Larger Story is doing the book of the month is SoulTalk. I just went back through it. Tim, your story is in that book and it’s Larry talking about his red dot as he meets with you. He tells some of your story. You’ve been at the top of your career, as high as you can go, a pitcher in the National League. I remember thinking, oh man this guy has really achieved something. The pressure when we first started meeting… Larry, I love the way he describes his red dot in getting with you. Larry says, I’m pretty good with words. I wonder if I can zing a few past him and get him to strike out on me. You just see the pressure.
Anthony Vartuli: I remember that story.
Duncan Sprague: I love the fact that now as we get together, I don’t see my former pitching friend and my highly educated friend. I see my friends. There’s something that God does in a community, a band of brothers, a band of sisters, when real life gets shared all of a sudden. I work with military ministry as one of the things I’m doing. At some point, the stripes come off the arms and the rank and everything comes off. All of a sudden we’re all standing at the foot of Jesus and it’s level ground. That’s what I loved with what Larry created a space for. He just was not that enamored with titles and positions and things like that.
My red dot now is I’m spending time this morning with two of my close friends and I can’t wait for the world to see that these are my friends. I think of Paul, I think 82 names are associated with him. Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Timothy, Paul and … I sit there and go, if somebody ever tells the gospel according to Duncan, they’re going to see Duncan and Tim, Duncan and Anthony. These are going to be front row folks that I did life with. We’ve never done ministry externally together, but none of us would be doing the ministry we do apart from the ministry we do internally with one another. So that’s where my red dot stirs me.
Tim Burke: I love that.
Anthony Vartuli: That’s great.
Tim Burke: It’s funny, you were talking about life falling apart and transition and all this stuff. I remember through tough times with you guys, it was back 2014 when we started. The three of us went through difficult times together, all of us. They were just difficult times.
Now I am in a transition in these next few months. The Lord’s going to have to figure something out with me. I’m in the hockey world and walking with hockey players and stuff, but my role is being handed over to a hockey couple. It’s a step up, it’s a step forward, but it’s hard on me financially and all this stuff. The Lord’s going to figure it out. I remember going through this in 2015 with you guys, and I am much more on solid ground nowadays. I’m prepared to go into this knowing, Lord, I’ve seen you do this so many times in our lives and others’ and Antohony’s and Duncan’s. He’s going to do something. I know it. His track record is crazy. In two days from this taping it is going to be our 41st birthday. Christine and I came to the Lord 41 years ago, August 25th.
Anthony Vartuli: The two of you came to Christ together, at the same time?
Tim Burke: Yeah, that was awesome. In the minor leagues in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, that’ll drive you to the wall.
Anthony Vartuli: No offense to anyone who’s from Buffalo listening to this.
Duncan Sprague: My son is getting ready to move up to upstate New York, so I’ll make sure that he hears that.
Tim Burke: I was just thinking while you were talking, Duncan, I’m going to have times of panic, but I’ve seen Him work so much over my 41 years of knowing Him. He’s been at work a lot longer than that. His track record goes back thousands of years to eternity past and He’s been flawless. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t come without hardship, but it’s going to be okay. I think through those times, the three of us together, I’m feeling some good fruit from it right now, just from coming into a transition time, it just feels different than it did back then. And that’s really cool.
Anthony Vartuli: You say you feel like you’re on solid ground, can you say more about that?
Tim Burke: I feel like I don’t know what the Lord is going to do. I’m not sure how this is going to work out. I have no answers, no possibilities. We have to wait two more years untill I can get to social security time. But the Lord, He just knows. He does it. He loves us, He cares, He will do something. It’s exciting too, because it hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m still getting paid a little longer. It might change in the next month or two, but I know that He will do something and it’ll be so odd. It’ll be so weird that it will be obviously from Him and then Christine and I will sit back and go, Lord, you are incredible. That’s what it’s all about.
Anthony Vartuli: As you’re talking here I’m remembering a couple of things. One, Duncan, how ironic you would talk about how you felt about us when we first were meeting. I truly did feel intimidated by the two of you. I felt in some ways, I was lagging behind. Maybe that was true in some ways, but as we continued to meet, I would say the same thing you said, Duncan, we truly became brothers. I’d use this word to describe both of you and that is an increase in solidness that I see in both of you guys that comes from dealing with very uncertain times in the middle of the uncertainty. I was just reading this in one of Larry’s books, When God’s Ways Make No Sense. He talked about three different ways of approaching life. You’ll remember these.
The first one is resistant run, which comes from Jonah. The second one is distort and deny, which was Paul before he was converted. And then Habakkuk, which was tremble and trust. It felt like when we were together, we were learning that third way of being trembling and trusting because we were all dealing with job uncertainties – that’s just so difficult on a man in general – and the three of us had been ministering for years and then hit with uncertainties like that.
What does it mean to tremble and trust? I felt like we did this together. We felt the freedom to really struggle in the present moment together. A lot of times what happens in groups, at least groups that I have been in, there’s no place for present struggle. You can talk about past struggles, but to be able to talk about present struggles being resolved and then have that response be one of safety and not people trying to fix you or give you advice or throw some Bible verses at you. That just was such a blessing to me to be able to freely struggle in the present moment and really learn. I’m still learning; trembling and trusting. There’s things I’m facing today that feel uncertain and, just having the freedom to tremble about it and tremble about these things and then the trust comes as well, but I think that was one of the gifts of our time together and it lingers today.
Tim Burke: Yeah. I think that left on our own, we’re going to tremble longer before we trust, but when we’re walking together, trust comes hand in hand when we’re walking together and we’re in it together. I know Anthony struggled with this stuff and Duncan, I know he’s working, having to redo bathrooms and all this stuff while doing his ministry and trying to fill in the gaps and it’s hard but we just remind each other of God and Him being in the midst of our lives. Every time we got together, it was a perspective fixer, because if I focus on myself too long, my perspective is going to be off. That’s all there is to it. But when we get together, I go, oh yeah, God, I remember Him, I forgot about that guy.
Anthony Vartuli: Oh, yeah. God.
Tim Burke: Oh, my gosh. He is actually bigger than my problem and He loves me. When we’re together, then trust comes out of the tremble.
Duncan Sprague: Yeah. There were plenty of times when we borrowed trust from one another because we go, I don’t have it in and of myself. I’m too weak right now and I’ve got blinders on. I’m not seeing the bigger picture. Part of getting together was confessing our sins. Sometimes it was the sin of, I’m just willfully not seeing God in the middle of this. I’m willfully choosing to cling on to my own control, my own management, my own whatever.
I love, Anthony, that you brought up the idea that what keeps us from trusting is also a refusal to tremble. I often wonder, what keeps me from trembling in the middle of this? It’s my own self confidence. I can handle this. A real man would deal with this. There is a sense in which, even my red dot with you guys, I was intimidated by what you had done, thinking that somehow God was super impressed with what you guys had done because I was, but then to realize that God is not impressed with the same thing.
You said don’t quote Bible verses, but the one that does come to mind is about trembling, and it’s what I think that God will esteem us doing great things. At the end of Isaiah, He rebukes Israel for thinking they had done a great thing. He says, listen, guys, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where’s the house that you can build for me? They think that He’s going to be impressed by building a great monument for Him. He says, this is not what I esteem. I don’t esteem the great accomplishments. This is the one that I esteem, or the one that I lift up, the one who is humble, and who is contrite, and who trembles at my word. I think that’s what we learned together. We learned what humility looks like in the middle of when all of us faced job and career shifts, transitions while we’re in the middle of it.
I call it my midlife crashes, where all of a sudden we lose a step. We got younger people who think faster and are quicker on their feet, taking our jobs. Instead of seeing them as competition, stepping aside, I love what you just said, Tim, about this couple that’s coming in. Oh, it’s an upgrade. You’re saying, I want to launch them. I don’t want to stand in their way. I don’t want to do a Saul thing with David. I want to launch them into what God has called them to and see my transition is shifting that now in the season that we’re all in entering right now is we are in a season of launching others. It’s no longer about our accolades, no longer about us getting our name on the billboards and things like that. I have to die so that someone else can live. And God has gifted us to be encouragers. We got enough old men out there who are saying, “Oh, this generation that’s around right now? Oh, man. Problems? In my day…” Instead of doing that we get to be those who are launching a new generation saying, keep going for it. Tim, you always, at some point in all of our times together, you’d always say the same phrase. You know what I’m going to say?
Tim Burke: Yeah.
Anthony Vartuli: Yeah.
Duncan Sprague: Go for it.
Tim Burke: We’re still here.
Duncan Sprague: That’s it. We’re still here.
Tim Burke: We’re still here. We would have such difficult times and we didn’t see answers or anything. And then maybe we don’t see answers the next time we get together, but it’s Hey, here we are, we’re persevering, we’re pressing on, we’re maybe not enjoying it, but dang, we’re in this together. I found a lot of encouragement in that.
To change the subject, I just thought of something. I’m encouraged so much these days by something Duncan, you and Anthony talked about early on in us getting together that I had not heard before. I think it goes back to Larry or something, but Isaiah, where it says we’ll soar on wings like eagles and then run and not grow weary and then walk and not faint. Maybe it was Larry’s interpretation, how did you word it? It’s kind of the evolution of life.
Duncan Sprague: Yeah. The crux of it was, I was preaching my last message at a church years ago that imploded and I ended the message by saying do you want to rise up on wings like eagles? Wait on the Lord. Do you want to fly like an eagle? I can’t remember saying that, but my whole vision at that point was that the goal of the Christian faith was to rise up on wings like eagles. Afterwards, Philip Yancey was part of our congregation, and he walked up to me. All he said was, you do know there’s more to that passage, right? That’s what caused me to pause and I went and reread it. A few weeks later, we were at a mutual friends’ house. I said, do you think Isaiah is giving us a glimpse of what it means to transition through life through the soaring years? We’ve all had soaring years. The young men who leave the nest and go out and find their wings and soar. Then we have our running years, and that’s when our wings get clipped and we’re no longer soaring. Now we are on the ground running through the trees, but we still have the energy to run, and we’re running hard. There’s just more obstacles in the way. Some people call it midlife crisis, I call it midlife crashes. All three of us have had doozies of midlife crashes. And now all of us are transitioning into that last stage where we are walking with the strength not to pass out.
The thing that I love is, when you say, we’re still here, Larry said, I want to make sure that we say this at my funeral. The thing that he hoped would be said is he never quit. And it’s the same idea as we’re still here. We’re not quitting. Paul would say, we are not those who shrink back. That’s the thing that I see in both of you, you’re not men who shrink back. I needed men who were leaning into the transitions like you are right now, Tim, leaning into them going, we’re coming into our walking years and I want to make sure we’re walking in love. I want to make sure we’re not walking as grumpy old men. We’ve got enough angry evangelicals out there who are complaining about this generation and all the divisions. I want to see old men and women who are finishing well like Larry did, and that was said of him. Finish without quitting.
Anthony Vartuli: I actually remember another thing that Tim said. Before I get to that, were you going to say more, Tim, about that progression?
Tim Burke: No, that’s what I was thinking. Finishing well. That’s what we really want to do, the three of us. And we’ve helped each other along the way. But we still need each other and the Lord, or I know I won’t finish well. Christine is amazing with us walking together, her and I. And it’s not guaranteed. There’s too many examples in the Bible of guys that were pretty dang awesome. But they didn’t finish well.
Anthony Vartuli: I know that our wives were very encouraged by the time that we had together and they were like, go, be with these guys. You’re going to gain some perspective. You’re always going to come back, like you said, Tim, a little more encouraged.
I will tell you one of the things that the time did for me. This was just a slow progression, but what a gift this was. I had pastored for so many years, 27 years, and I was so used to wearing that hat of Pastor Vartuli. I’m a chaplain now, I do hospice work, but back then it felt like I needed a title. I needed something to describe who I was. The Lord graciously did wonderful things while I was a pastor. I have a lot of gratitude from when I worked in the churches. But the Lord really wanted to get down to something deeper than that. He wanted me as a person, as Anthony, to emerge. And over that period of time meeting with you guys, I believe that really happened more. Today, yeah I’m a chaplain, but I really don’t care about that title. What I care more about today is just meeting people as Anthony and allowing, as the Spirit permits, to speak about the struggles that are going on in my life, if appropriate to speak about, and to speak about the incredible ways God is moving in my life and just meet soul to soul.
I think it was probably providential that we didn’t get on yesterday. Maybe we were all needing to be more prepared by the Spirit. But even now, as I talk to you guys, I feel like this is soul to soul, this is very incarnational. I could weep about it really, to think about, just the gratitude I’ve had for you guys. Duncan, like you said, we’re picking up where we left off, but to think that the Spirit right now is with us, right in this moment, as we’re talking, is an astounding realization. To believe Father, Son, and Spirit eavesdropping in on the conversation and doing what they do best. To redeem us, to instill courage in us. One thing I remember you saying, this was at a particular time we were meeting Tim, you said something like, how much time do we really have left? Maybe 15, maybe 20 years. We can do that. We can do it. And we laughed so hard.
Tim Burke: We got a lot less now than we did
Anthony Vartuli: Yeah, exactly right. By God’s grace, we have 15 or 20years. We’ll see, that’s up to the Lord. But I just remember thinking, that’s so true. We can do it. We’re struggling hard, but we can do it. There’s a better day coming, and the best is yet to come. I think we said that a lot together. The reality of that reality that heaven is coming gives us strength and courage to move today, in whatever the Spirit wants us to do.
Tim Burke: YeahThe difficulties that we’re going through now, this is the last time in all of eternity we’re ever going to go through these. 76 is the average age a man dies. I’m 64, that’s 8, 12 years. I’ve got 12 years of hardships and getting to see the Lord in the midst of that doing whatever He does, but it’s just 12 years of hardships. Even if it’s just really brutally brutal. 12 years and then I got Eternity. We can do that. We can do it.
I just think, here’s another thing. You two will get it. You guys watching or listening to the podcast, you won’t get it because you don’t know me. Two weeks ago I had to sell my motorcycle.
Duncan Sprague: Oh no.
Anthony Vartuli: Oh my gosh.
Tim Burke: See, those reactions tell it all. I loved my motorcycle for 30 years. My wife bought me a Harley when I retired from the major leagues. And so for 30 years, I’ve just had a love affair with the bike. God meets me on the bike. I have great times. It’s incredible. But, I had to sell it financially and stuff. Two weeks ago I sold it, and Christine wanted to talk to me about it the night before I took it in, and she asked, how are you doing, and stuff, and I just said, I can’t even talk about it, I just don’t even want to talk about it. I didn’t, and then I went to bed. Then I got up, got on the bike, and went to the gas station. I got a 45 minute ride to the dealer and I got on the bike and immediately God took – you guys are caught up on The Chosen and watching The Chosen?
Duncan Sprague: Sure.
Anthony Vartuli:Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Burke: It’s incredible. Anyway, the last episode of season three focuses on Psalm 77, part of it. God just took me right to that where it says – it’s just so cool the way they do it in the show – I will remember the deeds the Lord has done. As soon as I got off the bike at the gas station, that popped into my head. I was so sad and bummed, but then that popped into my head. And then all of a sudden I’m thinking about 30 years of my bike and my experiences riding through every Rocky Mountain Road in Colorado and loving it, and being around in Tennessee and the Natchez Trace Parkway, all these different experiences.
Anthony Vartuli: I always love the stories.
Tim Burke: I was overwhelmed with thankfulness for having what I had for 30 years. I just let the Lord just go and he just took me through all these memories, and I was just thankful. I remembered that was a gift from God that I had; an unbelievable, passionate gift He gave me.
I got there and did the transaction. Christine and Nicole came 15 minutes later and picked me up. So I get in the car and Christine goes, how are you doing? I said, you know? I’m pretty good. I am thankful. I’m telling you, I would not have had that perspective in 2014, 15, 16, 17, when we were meeting you guys. I wouldn’t have done that. But God has brought me to a point where He made even selling my bike okay. You guys can understand that. Even since then it’s been like, great, it’s okay, no problem, that’s where we’re at, and that’s growth. We’re going to make it through.
Anthony Vartuli: I’m going to tuck that one away and hold on to it, because I know how meaningful the bike, motorcycle was for you. Just to hear you talk about it feels like trembling and trusting.
Tim Burke: It just blew me away. It still blows me away. God, you did that, you made it okay. We’re going to make it, we’re going to be okay. But when you see a solid example of growth, that’s something God did. Yeah. And man, we wouldn’t have been able to do that 10 years ago.
Duncan Sprague: The thing that that strikes me is, it’s not the last time that any of us are going to do that. We’re going to take a lot of things that we have valued in life and we’re going to say, thank you for the season, Jesus, this one is yours. Horrors that come our way, we may do that with wives, with children. They may do it with us, where we go, thank you for the season and help me in those transitions the same way every other transition you walked with me. If Tim said, we’re still here, Anthony always said, the best is yet to come. The truth is, that’s real because of the hope we have in Jesus. Tim, I have one request. The first ride in heaven, I want to go with you because we never had a ride here on earth.
Anthony Vartuli: Duncan loves motorcycles as well.
Tim Burke: Absolutely, yeah. Tose roads are going to be streets of gold, that’s going to be fun.
Anthony Vartuli: I’ll be riding on some angel or something like that. You guys can be on heavenly motorcycles.
Duncan Sprague: Is that the brand?
Anthony Vartuli: Yeah, who knows what the brands are? Boy, we’ve gone 45 minutes. I would love to…
Tim Burke: Take a break and then go another 45?
Anthony Vartuli: We could easily, right?
Tim Burke: We’ll have to do that off camera.
Anthony Vartuli: This is so wonderful.
Duncan Sprague: We’ll do it again.
Anthony Vartuli: I guess I want to ask you guys one question. What would you want to say? What would you want to leave the people who are watching, who are longing for something like what God has given us? What would you want to leave them with? What would you want to say to them? If anything at all.
Duncan Sprague: I have an immediate thought. In a world of isolation, do life together. Find friends, spiritual friends, mentors. Don’t abandon relationships, that’s the easy way out. Larry’s commitment was to a relational revolution, that we would find radical discipleship through relational risk. And that’s, I think, what we’ve experienced and that we’re richer because of it. We’ll go to our graves – Larry always said, I want to go to my grave without any secrets. You guys carry secrets of mine so that I don’t carry them alone. Don’t live in a world of isolation. Do life together. That’d be my thought.
Tim Burke: Yeah and like I said, when we got together, my perspective changed. It didn’t change when I was just sitting there by myself. I’ve known myself for a long time now. I can’t trust my perspective. It changes and shifts. But with other people, it’s a lot easier to get our perspective back where He wants it when we’re with other guys. I always equate it to, the Holy Spirit is in me, He’s in Anthony, He’s in Duncan, but sometimes, a lot of times, I’m just by myself, and so the Holy Spirit is just sitting there and He’s not getting stirred up. But then, all of a sudden, the three of us get together, and maybe the three of us are just caught up in life, and the Holy Spirit’s in us, but it’s just sitting there, and it’s like chocolate milk and some chocolate syrup at the bottom of a glass of milk. We get together and then all of a sudden we’re encouraging each other and it starts getting stirred up and then the chocolate gets mixed in with the milk. And now all of a sudden it’s like it’s full and that’s what happened time and time again. And it will happen whenever we get together with other men that are wanting to finish well and to press on where we’re at now.
Anthony Vartuli: I appreciate it guys. The thought that comes to my mind is very much along the same lines as what you guys just said. I don’t know if this is Eugene Peterson, whoever it is, such a good quote. We cannot be ourselves by ourselves.
Duncan Sprague: That’s right.
Anthony Vartuli: The Trinity is a relationship of three: Father, Son, and Spirit. We are made in the image of God, which means we are made relational.
Duncan Sprague: That’s right.
Anthony Vartuli: We walked relationally together. We would all use that word. We walked relationally and still walk relationally together. And that doesn’t mean it was always easy. There were awkward times…
Tim Burke: I think there were more hard times than good times that we were going through back then, but even in the hard times, it was okay. Something good came out of ’em. I love that. I wouldn’t have wanted to get together with you guys if we all had our lives going great. It wouldn’t have been as thrilling.
Duncan Sprague: I wouldn’t have fit in.
Anthony Vartuli: Guys, we could go on and on, but I think we need to stop here and let the Spirit do what He wants.
Tim Burke: Thanks Kep for all you’re doing.
Anthony Vartuli: Yeah, thank you Kep, and thank you Larger Story, and thank you for all the people listening.
May the Spirit of God do whatever He longs to do in your life, and may you trust Him to do it. Thank you, and take care.
Tim Burke: Thank you.
What makes a conversation matter? How do I know if I had any impact? Join Karlene and Arlita Ibach as they talk about what it looks like to see every conversation as an opportunity to stir up an appetite for God.
Bio:
A soul hungry for the life of God, Arlita Ibach sovereignly stumbled on the work of Larry Crabb in the early 2000’s and her life was changed. She and her family (husband, Butch and two sons, Chad and Drew) soon became great friends of Larry and Rachel and continues to be good friends to Larger Story. In 2016, Arlita’s love of drinking coffee and having conversations became The Red Dot Coffee Company, a place where being curious, exploring and listening provides opportunities for conversations to unfold. The exchange of laughter, tears, silence and impactful words. Everyone has a story – the good, bad and ugly is part of all of our stories. Arlita has created a place where people are encouraged wherever they are (their “red dot”) in their stories, to come together and perhaps engage in conversations that matter.
The hope of Arlita and the Red Dot Coffee Company is to awaken each other to the beauty of craft coffee, conversations and companionship; that whatever direction your story is taking, you will find time to be in the present and discover the place that says “you are here”.
Links:
SoulTalk
Reading & Relating book club
The SoulCare Experience Study
www.reddotcoffeeco.com
Hebrews 10:24-25
Finding God
Men of Courage
Transcript
[00:00:28] Karlene Cannon: Hello Larger Story family. This is Karlene Cannon, and I am here with my good friend Arlita Ibach. She’s also a very good friend of Larger Story. She has been in relationship with Rachael and Larry Crabb for a long time. They’ve been an important part of her life. As a result of that connection, Arlita made some decisions to start a coffee shop, and some of that was because she wanted to talk to people and she wanted to have conversations that mattered with people in her community.
And so I just thought, as we’re talking about SoulTalk and what it means to have conversations that matter, that Arlita is an expert and she’s someone that we could just hear from and get to know a little bit and I just wanted her to share with us what it’s like to have conversations that matter and how that’s changed her and changed her family and is impacting her community.
So Arlita, thank you so much for joining me. I’m really looking forward to our time together. I thought we’d just jump right in. Maybe you could just share a little bit of your journey and then particularly how your journey was impacted by Larry Crabb and the teachings that he offered and what you chose to do with that.
[00:01:46] Arlita Ibach: Sure. Thank you so much for having me. This is so fun. It was good to see you again as well. I prefer in person, with coffee, just chatting away. Again, thank you for having me. I started out with the School of Spiritual Direction in 2008. I started to read Shattered Dreams and I didn’t like the book so much, but it really stirred a lot and resonated quite a bit with me.
So when I read that book, I researched New Way Ministries and researched Larry Crabb. I ended up going to the school of spiritual direction in 2008. As for many people, it was life changing. I was on a trajectory of a lot of whether I was going to even keep seeking God, or seeking the path of God, and Christianity, and church.
A lot of good conversations happened that week, I think conversation with the Holy Spirit. Curiosity that I feel Larry Crabb displays very well; the transcendent curiosity that he talks about in SoulTalk. A lot of good conversation happened that week, and then it continued over the years, and with Larry through letters, through phone calls. Letters that were hard to read, so I’d call him to ask if he could transcribe them for me. We would chat and talk, and then I went to SSD a couple times. And Next Step as well. I got to know Rachael as well, and just really had some good talks throughout. I think I was at a place where church was not the safest place on earth for me and I just started thinking, what do conversations that matter look like? Because he talked about conversations that matter and how that can be defined a lot of different ways and so I just would ponder and process, what does that really look like? I thought, what does it look like in church? What does it look like with your neighbor? What does it look like sitting on my front porch? What would that look like in a coffee shop? So that was just some of the background. I love the book SoulTalk. It’s one of my favorites and I even went back through it this week before this conversation and it just resonates again in so many different ways.
I think it’s going to be a book that I read once a year just to revisit. Lots of highlights, lots of circles, lots of underlining.
[00:04:47] Karlene Cannon: So when you talk about the importance of SoulTalk and the need to go back and revisit it. Tell me a little bit about what you find so compelling in SoulTalk.
What is it that really – you mentioned Holy Curiosity. That’s a very weighty concept when you really get into what Larry’s talking about in the book. But what about SoulTalk inspires you or how does it shape your conversations? What are the core parts in that?
[00:05:19] Arlita Ibach: I think what resonated with me is, before engaging or entering into New Way Ministries or Larry Crabb or the Larger Story, part of my faith background was in ministry and women’s ministry, and I worked with a youth group and I was born and raised in a Christian home. I have a missionary background. There were a lot of pieces that felt really important, like to sit with people and to listen to people and to offer people ideas or thoughts or verses. So when I heard in the book and also in SSD that it’s the language that the Spirit – how does it go? That arouses that appetite for Christ. I leaned into that. I was like, what does that look like to arouse this appetite for God?
That alone right there, that’s a lot to unpack when you’re sitting with someone and you’re listening and you’re having these conversations. I think Larry introduced that to me, not just through the book, but in person, that someone that had that higher vision, that thought beneath. I was just fascinated by that. I was just like, wow. What does that look like?
[00:06:52] Karlene Cannon: I really like that. I think you’re right. I think that is not just the premise or the center of SoulTalk, but of all that we’re doing here at Larger Story, that this idea of spiritual formation as relational formation and that being centered or carried out in conversation, then the focus of every conversation is to not just – I think I heard this growing up because I had a similar kind of background to Jesus, whether it was a gospel conversation or not that was always the idea.
I think Larry takes that a little bit deeper and maybe even gives it more intentionality or purpose to say, no, the point of your conversation is to cultivate and stir up, just like in Hebrews. His favorite verse in Hebrews where you stir one another up to love and good deeds. But that’s what our conversations are meant to do is to stir up that appetite for God.
[00:08:07] Arlita Ibach: That’s just so fascinating too, because at one of the SSDs, he talks about, do I trust the Spirit enough in a conversation? Do I trust the Spirit to be moving? I think previously, I thought stirring up meant, oh here, read this book. Oh, here’s a verse, right? Like you said, I’m pointing them to Christ and there’s nothing wrong with offering a book or offering a verse, but is it leaning into that rhythm? As Larry would say, listening with a third ear and waiting and what does that look like when I’m thinking beneath of everything that’s going on in this person’s story and just for a glimpse going, but they really want Jesus more than they want to be fixed.
Where I think I always entered into conversations probably pretty arrogantly. I have these answers for you. I’m just going to come alongside and I’m going to stir up the appetite by giving you all these things. And so for me, it was like, what does it look like to just be aware of what’s going inside of me? Wanting to fix this. If that makes sense..
[00:09:24] Karlene Cannon: I think we all resonate with the trap, almost, of getting in a conversation and feeling that pressure to have something substantive to offer, to have an answer, to fix the problem.The whole chapter in SoulTalk on “Think Passion” where you’re really paying attention to what’s actually happening in you and what’s driving your questions and your responses and even just your sort of attitude toward the person is really critical.
I’ve learned a lot about myself in conversations by having some part of my brain attentive to what’s happening in me and why I’m responding and wanting certain things and thinking of those things I’m wanting, which often are, can I give them something that they’ll think is helpful and valuable instead of, can I stir a desire in them that is holy?
How could the Spirit be using me to do that? How could He be inviting me into something that’s much bigger than whatever piece of advice or suggestion I might offer?
[00:10:37] Arlita Ibach: Also, not just fixing, but how can I provide relief? It’s so uncomfortable when someone’s sharing something and you’re just like Romans 8:28. Which is so true, I do believe that, but is it the right timing? Am I in rhythm, am I in step? When he talks about that later, the movement, I’m just in a panic mode because I don’t even know what else to say, so here you go, and that’s just what’s going on inside of me, whether I’m feeling inadequate, which I think Larry always says is a really good thing. Can I lean into that?
[00:11:19] Karlene Cannon: How have you experienced conversations that you’ve had with people, whether it’s family or friends or community? How have you experienced those differently? We’ve talked a little bit about what is different, but how has that experience been different for you? And what has that meant? What is the result, if you will?
[00:11:42] Arlita Ibach: Yeah, let me think. There’s a little bit of tension and angst, but it points me back toward Jesus and the larger story and what’s unfolding. It can provide even possibly this drawing near, this rest that Jesus calls forth. It’s very strange. At least for me, that’s provided. But yet again, there’s the tension there. I have an example in my mind, I can share that if that’s helpful.
[00:12:28] Karlene Cannon: If you’re willing, we’d love it.
[00:12:32] Arlita Ibach: My mind just went back to when this was just becoming a huge part of how I was learning to relate to people. To listen to the sound of heaven versus the sound of health, so to speak, or the clanging and the noise. It’s not to say I don’t agree at all with offering life-giving words as Jesus did, but I think for me it’s this following and thinking beneath, having the vision, having the passion, knowing the stories unfolding. But then how do I move with the Spirit within that conversation? I think for me in response to the question, how has it changed? There’s little pockets of conversation, but when it comes to your kids, it’s like a whole new level. How do we have these conversations? My husband had been to spiritual direction. My oldest son had already been, and my youngest son, it had become part of some of our family dynamics. How can it not when it’s really touched the depths of your soul? My son was 18 ten years ago, and he had a lot of health issues. It was a journey going on for us. I’ll never forget, several doctors had lots of tests and one of the tests was to check for cancer. As a mom you’re just, rested soul, angst, what do I do? How do I say he’s finding his own journey? I’ll never forget when we got home and I could feel obviously at 18, I don’t even know what he’s feeling, but there was a lot of angst in his own soul.
I was wanting to have this conversation, but I was like, it’s not time, I’m not going to say anything. Finally he whipped around just very angry and went into this, how could God, etc? I remember just not even thinking relief or how do I provide this?
This fear just obviously just came up inside of me. So I did what I’ve done often and I just blurted out Romans 8:28. It’s a true verse. I believe that with all my soul, but in that moment there, he couldn’t hear that. His heart wasn’t open to, God works things for good, when he just shut down and he just backed off.
I went to my own space and I was like, God, what’s stirring in me? I was like, I’m afraid, not afraid of the outcome of the result. You know what I was grasping to was, what if the result was cancer and my son never wants God because of it? That’s my gift. I want that guarantee. I know whatever happens in my husband’s life and my friends life and in my children’s or my kids life’s and my daughter in law’s, I want them to want God and I want that to be their appetite. That’s not a wrong or bad thing, but when I grasped that, to just throw a verse out in a conversation because of my fear.
Years later, we were able to even have a conversation about that time. It was really sweet, but that’s how it’s changed for me is to be able to say, wait a minute, what’s happening in my soul that can start to rise up. So then I speak quickly, or I’m not stopping to listen, or I’m not rested. That’s just a thought that came to mind about how maybe that shifted for me.
[00:16:47] Karlene Cannon: That’s a really powerful story. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think as I hear what you’re saying, it strikes me as, it’s very important that the things we keep coming back to in this conversation are what’s happening in us. I think when you have a conversation about how to have a good conversation, usually about techniques are things, the right questions to ask or how to listen well, or how to it’s more about the other person and how you can help or impact properly the other, but very seldom is it really focused on, what is happening in me in this conversation? I think that’s one of the unique emphases that Larry was always drawing us back to is the way that spiritual formation occurs in relationships. If God is working all things together for my good in these conversations, in these realizations, in the painful recognition of the broken places in me, He’s working that for my good and not that there’s some kind of narcissistic, motivation for conversation, it’s just the divine efficiency of how God works.
He’s always loving me, even in a situation where my fear has spoken louder than my faith. God is working all things together for His good. I think to your point and your story, the hardest thing is to trust that He’s working all things together for whomever I’m talking to, for their good, even in my mistake. Even in my selfishness, even in my lack of competency, that the Spirit can use all of that and I can trust God in what He’s doing.
[00:19:00] Arlita Ibach: Absolutely. It’s so beautifully said, Karlene, thank you for that reminder. It’s not a narcissistic way of, let me always think what’s inside. But I have to be aware of that because if I’m not aware of that then I have found that there’s this broken… how do you say it? Like a glitch or something in what the Spirit’s doing and is moving. I’ve given up on trying to figure out how to do this conversation perfectly. I’m like, there’s just no way, and since 10 years ago, I’m still like so many times, just go right in there.
Larry used to say, he was so kind. He was always like, I love how you want everybody to get it, but why do you want that so bad? I’m like, that’s a really good thought.What is that about? Can I trust again that the Spirit is doing a work and I’m just tagging along, like he always says.
And what does that look like? And have that sense of wonder and be intrigued. What would that have looked like in that conversation with my son in the moment of fear? What would that have looked like to stop for a second and go, I wonder what’s happening, in his soul and my soul.
[00:20:29] Karlene Cannon: That’s so supernatural. I think the wonder and the mystery often drive the fear because I want everything spelled out and I want to know where we’re headed and I want a plan. One of my favorite books of Larry’s is Finding God and he talks about, are you looking for a plan to follow or a person to trust? If I’m really honest, I’m mostly looking for a plan to follow. Give me five steps, give me a guaranteed outcome, and I’m on it. Acronym or alliteration or something so it’s easy to remember. A person to follow, that’s terrifying because I don’t know where He’s taking me all the time.
[00:21:15] Arlita Ibach: Absolutely. In some ways, I’m like, I don’t know if you’re trustworthy to follow, what has life shown me? That’s a whole other path.
It’s fascinating to even think about that. That’s good though. I’ve forgotten that part.
[00:21:37] Karlene Cannon: I like what we’re talking about here, with the conversation with your son. It was a pivotal moment, but even in conversations that are just everyday relational fodder, there’s so much opportunity for these deep theological, but here we are, this conversation is circling around Romans 8:28, and really probing into, what does that actually mean when it’s not just embroidered on a pillow or coffee mug or whatever, what does life look like if you truly surrender to the reality that God works all things together for our good, according to His purposes?
Back to the person to follow, how then in a conversation do I believe that and follow Him, no matter what else is going on in the conversation? Whether it’s a fairly simple conversation with my son about his homework, or a much more sober and heavily laden conversation that you had with your son.
I think that certainly changes and maybe a better way to say it is, what makes the conversation matter? What is it that makes the conversation matter?
[00:23:04] Arlita Ibach: Boy, that’s good. Even now, in our culture today, I’ve heard that in other pockets, people are like, we know we’re having conversations that matter. And you’re like, how do we even define that?
[00:23:20] Karlene Cannon: Who gets to be the judge of what matters?
[00:23:24] Arlita Ibach: I think that’s why I was going back through the book and thinking about that, even in the workplace or at the red dot coffee company or with my staff. It’s interesting for me, the whole idea behind the red dot coffee company was to offer a safe place for conversations that matter.
And again, how are we defining that? For me working with a generation, and no judgment here, this isn’t often the, what conversation is this, so even for me, just seven years later after opening, I’m like, I’m having to redefine what is that? It’s fascinating.
What are your thoughts? What do you think? Having 14 all the way through being around kids.
[00:24:28] Karlene Cannon: Sso much of our conversation revolves around whatever was just seen on the phone, and I’ve actually done some work.
Some of the work I’m doing at Larger Story is to try to tap into that, to maybe even use that as a bridge between generations to see, look, here’s something on the phone, let’s talk about it. The question that weighs heavy on my heart is, how do you determine a conversation that matters?
Because we can be having a conversation about his homework and whether or not he did it on time or thoroughly or the way I think it should have been done, and that can be a conversation that matters and it feels like something that in the grand scheme of things, maybe doesn’t matter very much. I can also define how his homework matters in a way that doesn’t actually matter. I could focus on the performance rather than whatever’s happening in his heart or mine.
As we were just talking, I was thinking about that again. It’s a question that I’ve struggled to define because it was one of Larry’s catchphrases, something he said a lot, but it’s very hard to nail down how you define or determine.
I think going back to what you said in the beginning about stirring up an appetite for God, that can look like a lot of different things. Back to my example of David’s homework, even stirring in him a desire for excellence or to do this for God’s glory instead of just to get me off his back, like there’s lots of ways to think about that.
The shifted mindset for me, at least of these conversations, are opportunities. To go back to the whole thing about the person to follow, it’s an opportunity that’s offered me, I’m invited into something that God wants to do. Will I be self aware enough and connected enough to the Spirit to actually recognize the opportunity first?
That’s the first problem, right? Or the first hurdle to overcome. And then will I step into it with a holy curiosity instead of my hidden agenda? Which crops up so quickly.
[00:27:08] Arlita Ibach: I hear that. I love that. The thought of it just being an invitation for my ministry purpose that I can go into work every day, let’s have conversations that matter, and grasp tight for this better hope versus the better life. I come in and just say, it’s an invitation. See where it goes. Trust what happens and be obedient to that. And then when it’s not going the way I think it should, what’s happening inside of me then? Can I do this without expectations of anything in return? What is that part of what matters and what doesn’t matter? Can I just accept this invitation, be obedient to that, have this holy curiosity, stay rested? If I don’t get anything in return, I’m going to get up and do it again tomorrow, and that’s what matters.
[00:28:17] Karlene Cannon: I think that’s really important. I find myself often tempted by the futility or the feeling of futility that if I don’t see some sort of impact or result, how do I keep myself motivated to get up the next day and issue the invitation or respond to the opportunity? How do you do that Arita? How do you stay protected against the feeling of futility?
[00:28:52] Arlita Ibach: That’s such a great question. I had that thought when I first started Red Dot. I thought, you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what people, their reach, their touch, I’m just doing this. It was a neat way to soul care incognito. It wasn’t in a church building, but it was in a place. The whole mission statement behind it, Larry and I would even talk. What do you think it would look like? How do you think you go about having conversations that matter? And I’d be like, I’m going to trust the Spirit.
Even the way I’ve designed it, laid out the way that the games, the games I have are questions or words that I have up, and I’m like, Oh, this’ll do it. This will stimulate, this will stir up. I would go in and year after year like, this looks totally different than I ever thought it would.
So I’m wondering if now, instead of embracing the futility, instead of protecting, I embrace it. I just feel like I’m going to face that every day. I’m like, why am I doing this again? Have I touched anybody, has anybody’s life been stirred toward a higher vision or toward the larger story of what’s happening or toward the heart of God? If I repeatedly asked myself that without looking at what’s going on inside, I think at that moment I can start to protect myself. But if I embrace the futility of it, is it working? Does it make a difference? And then it’s like the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity goes, that doesn’t matter. We’re doing what we need to do. You keep listening to me and step into it. So maybe more embrace than protect.
[00:31:01] Karlene Cannon: I like that a lot. I think the verb matters a great deal, and so I appreciate your discernment to change that because I think futility is a real enemy that I struggle with. The idea of embracing it in the way that you’re talking about I find really compelling. There’s a lot of surrender in what you’re talking about because to protect against the futility is still me fighting my own battle. To embrace it and trust again, trust the person instead of the plan, that feels like something distinctly different and maybe holy. I like that.
[00:31:53] Arlita Ibach: I think I’m wondering too, for me as I’m an empty nester as I’ve gotten older, you put your head on your pillow at night and I like what you’re saying, what am I trusting? This process, this plan, how’s it going to go? I’m drawn to what you’re saying. No, just trust Jesus, turn your eyes upon Jesus. It sounds so simple, but yet that’s the truth. What choice do I have? I can live in this protected layer, but I’ve done that, and that was not free. There was no freedom in that.
[00:32:28] Karlene Cannon: Let me just ask one more question. Since we’ve followed the Spirit in this conversation, and it’s been a lot about what’s happening in us in a conversation. How would you sum up or articulate your – to use one of Larry’s terms – your prophetic burden? What God has put on your heart at this point of your journey? The seven years of this particular focus, how would you describe what God’s asked you to do and what He’s done in you as a result?
[00:33:11] Arlita Ibach: Wow, that’s a big question. It is such an interesting one because my mind goes to last year when I graduated with my master’s of spiritual formation. I’m almost finishing up my certificate in spiritual direction. You’re like, you’ve opened a coffee shop, you can do all these things. But my prophetic burden, I don’t know.
I guess just to sit with people, journey with them, and see them want God more than anything else. Whether that’s within the church, on my front porch, at a coffee shop. If you would have asked me 10 years ago, that question may have looked different. I have the little frame that Eddie gave, in one of the classes, the prophetic burden, and my journal probably says something different.
But right now when you ask that, it’s probably just to come alongside and just be with people. Whether it happens or not, if I see it great, but I don’t need to. I guess what I mean is, if I could stir that up in someone and I feel like I’m doing what God’s asked me to do, whether I see the result of it.
[00:34:49] Karlene Cannon: I’m a little bit curious now. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but we started there. When I asked the first question, that’s what you said. I find it really powerful that, 40 minutes later, you’re saying that you’re back to the same answer and yet there’s a lot more emotion in you right now.
I was just wondering if you’re open to sharing what’s being touched, what may be happening with the tears.
[00:35:24] Arlita Ibach: Probably a little bit when you brought up protecting futility and to say we can embrace that, but what all that means underneath that. I think the emotion can come from this passion I have to come alongside people, knowing that it’s looking different, knowing that technology is changing that, knowing that a lot of times even since COVID things are more transactional than relational. I think God, for some reason, has created that within my soul. When I’m wondering if it really matters, there’s changes ahead, I’m getting older, what all does that look like? So maybe a slight grieving, but yet hopeful that there’s still opportunity to speak the language of soul talk and to tag along. When I think I’ll get to tag along, it just stirs an emotion, and that’s okay, that’s good. I think some of the tears may come from the angst of life or the tension of that. It doesn’t feel heavy. It just feels like it’s a beautiful opportunity that God’s given me.
[00:37:03] Karlene Cannon: I was just thinking as you were talking, the word beauty was just roaming around in my head. It is a beautiful opportunity and it’s beautiful to me the way that you’ve embraced that opportunity as I hear you talk about the emotion of considering this prophetic burden. I think God has given you first, you know a long time, but particularly the last seven years I do find when the veil is thinner and I feel more aware of the reality that I live in the Trinity with the Trinity, the tears just come. It’s frustrating sometimes, but the thing about that felt proximity to that amazing reality that just opens me up in a way that usually results in emotion and tears.
I do think the felt difference between the alone of the Trinity versus the challenge, whether it’s futility or just the difficulty inc things you mentioned about our culture and society. All of those things that tend to – at least if I heard what you’re saying correctly – it’s this juxtaposition of that grief over what’s missing in that taste of what’s most true and what’s most real, and they hit each other and it just starts things up.
[00:38:41] Arlita Ibach: It’s so true. I think just reading the book this past week here in 2023, compared to when I first read it. Oh my word, what could this look like in our culture today?
I think you’re right, the juxtaposition of, it’s just different now. Some of the angst I feel or the tears that come is oh, but God used His word to speak life. Word spoke life and I’m just like, how in the world is that going? So I’m just like, okay, Larry, I won’t give up on this. I’m going to keep going. I’m invited into that and no matter what changes come and to look at it, it’s a privilege and it’s sweet that God says, I’m going to trust you with a little bit of that. You trust me, I know what’s happening, I see the culture, and I’m just asking you to come along and when you can have some. Don’t even worry, you’ll have conversations and I’ll take care of the rest.
[00:39:54] Karlene Cannon: I think that’s so beautiful. I think you’re beautiful and what you’re doing is beautiful. I’m so grateful that I got to be introduced to what’s happening there and that I’ve gotten to spend a little bit of time with you. I thank you so much for this conversation. It’s a lovely exploration of how God uses words. You touched on this just a minute ago. One of the things that Larry says in his book, it used to be called Silence of Adam. Now it’s called Men of Courage, but he makes the point that when God spoke, all of creation came into existence and then Adam stayed silent and all of creation was broken. I think that’s a powerful sort of testimony to what God can do in a conversation. I think that’s part of embracing futility is knowing that in your faithful surrender to keep going.
Thank you so much. Thank you for your time and thank you for sharing your heart. That’s what we’re about here on the Relational Spirituality Podcast. One of our little phrases is that we want to be known, to belong, and to become. I think that’s what you’re trying to do with your offer of conversations that matter.
And so thank you. Thank you again for joining me and thank you Larger family for being a part of what we’re doing here. We hope you enjoyed our time together and we look forward to sharing a conversation with you again next week. Thank you.
How do you open yourself up to the Spirit’s movement in your marriage and with your friends? How do we rely on the Holy Spirit to relate with people? Tap into the power of the Holy Spirit in a way that changes how you live and love. Soul talk is the Spirit moving through us toward another. The Spirit will lead you as you move into the life of your spouse.
After over 40 years as a psychologist, what did Dr. Larry Crabb find were some foundational ways of fostering spiritually forming relationships? Moving beyond psychological techniques and beneath surface struggles, he offers a framework for developing the kind of conversation where the Spirit can do His deepest work. Tune in for his conversation with fellow psychologist Dr. Jim Cress.
When life as you’ve known it is entirely upended, how do you not only survive the grief but also find new ways to grow and reflect more of God’s grace in the midst of loss? Rachael Crabb joins Rosanne Moore today to share how God has met her in the 2.5 years since her husband Larry’s death and the opportunities she’s found amid loss to offer His love to others.
As we learn to understand the ins and outs of SoulTalk, how do we allow ourselves to Think Beaneth what’s happening at the surface, how do we find a passion for who we engage with, how do we see a vision for what we could be, and how do we fit into the Larger Story God is telling?
Introduction to the 7 Questions of Spiritual Theology – and how that adds to our opportunity for SoulTalk.
Aren’t we all starving to be known and to know others? Join Karlene and her son-in-law, Jimmy Hill, as they talk about the beautiful mess that is community and how our self-talk can be disrupted by soul talk, resulting in conversations that really do matter.
Kep has a conversation with his late father’s best friend. James “Trip” Moore tells stories and reflects on the key changing times in his life. And what is most important to him now as he prepares himself for heaven.
A SOULTALK conversation with 2 counselors who have been counseling for many years. We chat about what goes on inside a counselor as they work with people. What do you do when you don’t feel the Spirit’s guidance and don’t have any place to go? How has this profession impacted your personal lives?
A SOULTALK conversation with 2 counselors who have been counseling for many years. We chat about what goes on inside a counselor as they work with people. What do you do when you don’t feel the Spirit’s guidance and don’t have any place to go? How has this profession impacted your personal lives?
When our hearts are torn between the life we were created for and the life we live in a fallen world, what kind of conversations will genuinely comfort and strengthen us? Rosanne Moore invites us to consider whether the words we speak are motivated by avoiding our own discomfort or offering genuine companionship to those around us.
Kelly Hawkins joins Kep today to talk about the amazing transformation that she has been experiencing in the last several months of her life. She unpacks some of the stories of her life that led to deep shame and how the Spirit has freed her from that shame. Kelly also talks about her latest book titled “Warrior Women” and how that book has had a lasting impact.
Karla Denlinger joins Rosanne Moore today to trace how God revealed Himself to her through a community of faithful people who reached into her life as a small child and how that journey of seeking Him has always interwoven relationally with fellow followers of Jesus willing to trust Him and one another with their brokenness.
Spiritual friendship – See the Spirit’s work in real time as lives are changed. Connecting with other men in church. Why is community so important? The ripple effects of a Christ centered life are amazing.
There’s nothing like close relationships for revealing who we really are, both the glory God is creating and the messiness of what is still unrenewed. Karlene Cannon shares today about the decade that her family hosted a large church community group in their home and how God used those relationships to reveal Himself and grow His people.
What stirs in me that makes me want to know God more? How is “church” supposed to move me in those good directions? Hear a pastor of more than 4 decades talk about the church and God’s people today. Where are we heading and was is happening to the Church? Is it worth it?
Show Notes:
To allow His Story to continue unfolding, we must conclude the current chapter and welcome the next. This week, Kep Crabb, the founder of Larger Story, and Kris Gamble, one of its first employees, have a bittersweet conversation as friends and coworkers as they discuss Kris’ upcoming transition to a full-time MBA program and the remarkable journey they’ve experienced personally and professionally while launching the ministry.
Final Transcript:
[00:00:28] Kep Crabb: Welcome everyone to the Larger Story podcast: Relational Spirituality. Where you belong, you become, and you can be known.
Today’s going to be a little different. I’m joined today by a colleague of mine for the past, almost five years. Five years here in about a month. Kris Gamble. Kris has been with me since basically the beginning of Larger Story, and I have been so grateful to have had Kris by my side as we’ve leaned on each other and hopefully relied on the Spirit’s guidance to get us to where we are now with what you know is Larger Story. Kris is, as you can guess, moving on to the next chapter of his journey and he’s going to be leaving us at Larger Story here pretty soon.
We just wanted to spend a little time chatting about his time here with Larger Story, what he’s leaving with, and what the Lord’s going to be doing with him in the rest of his journey. So I guess without any further ado, Kris, thanks for joining me today, brother.
[00:01:29] Kris Gamble: Hey Kep, good to be here. And hello everyone.
I will miss these times, if this is the last one I end up doing. Maybe I’ll make a guest appearance at one point in the future.
Kep Crabb: I sure hope so.
Kris Gamble: As I sat down to think about this conversation, Kep, I started to write some questions: How did I come to the conclusion of leaving? What’s my experience been working with Larger Story? What came out was a narration of my time with Larger Story over the last five years. What I mentioned to you just a little bit ago is, maybe I can jump into sharing some of that and you can chime in along the way, fill in details. I’d love to just share my smaller story within Larger Story here on this episode. I think that can lead up nicely to explaining the transition.
I was first introduced to you, Kep, five years ago, right around this time, by a good friend of yours and a mentor of mine, Rich Cannon. I was, at the time, a couple of years into launching a mobile app startup that was struggling to get off the ground. We had built this app around this idea for more meaningful event networking that was less random and hoping to run into the right people, but using an app to connect people with the right people in real time at the events.
Well, we built an app, but we weren’t making money. Rich knew that you were looking for help with Larger Story and building a website and that I was looking for income and connected me and you and said, “Kep, here’s a guy, if it works great. Kris, here’s a guy, if it works great. And if not, no problem.”
I think we had a good conversation because that first one turned into this, five years later.
[00:03:43] Kep Crabb: If you remember, it was going to be a very temporary situation. You were only going to do maybe six months to a year just to help me out in some ways and get a little dollars to do some of that, to continue to do what you were doing.
It kind of morphed into what it’s been for the last five years, which I always like to refer to as a very divine data point. I think our friend, who I’ve known for years and who’s been a spiritual mentor to you in many ways over the past several years of your life, was just used by the Holy Spirit to put us together.
It was really cool. It was fun to see, even in retrospect, how the Lord’s working and what the Lord’s up to.
[00:04:26] Kris Gamble: Yeah. It felt like a good fit for me because, prior to my app startup, I helped start a ministry in college that I then ran for a number of years after college. Also, Larger Story is the legacy ministry of Larry Crabb. Larry Crabb was a Christian psychologist. My degree was in psychology and my undergrad. And, personally, I did a lot of soul care within my ministry setting and didn’t even realize that term existed until getting into work with Larger Story. So, it felt like a God appointment on my end as well from the get-go.
It’s been quite a journey, Kep, that we’ve had over the last five years with Larger Story. Plenty of ups and downs and twists and turns, but we’ve come a long way since. Today I just wanted to take some time talking about how far we’ve come.
[00:05:37] Kep Crabb: Let me step in for just a second. I know you’re going off some notes, but I think at this point a lot of things happened in your life since you’ve been part of the team at Larger Story. You’ve gotten married, you’ve gotten your home, you got a dog, – which I always think is so cool – but a lot of big things have happened. You went through a lot of big things with me as we were continuing to build Larger Story: Kimmie’s diagnosis, Dad passing away, all these different things that were big pieces. You were in the trenches with me during a lot of those really intense moments that I think will always leave a mark on me, bro. You kept me energized, you kept me encouraged, you kept me moving when sometimes I felt like I really didn’t want to and there were times where it would’ve been easy to say, I want to walk away from this, we’ll do something else, maybe we can honor Dad some other way but this is too important. I think that’s been some of the lessons that I’ve learned in these last five years working with you.
[00:06:46] Kris Gamble: I may get to it here in a little bit, but it’s mutual; getting to go through my major life transitions with getting married and some of yours with your wife’s diagnosis, as you said. I’ll probably share a little bit more later, but you’ve been an inspiration to me through the journey.
Continuing on with the narrative, we hosted our first event since your dad passed – the Larger Story summit – which was a tribute to his life. I think it was a wonderful event. From that, we introduced some of your dad’s very good friends that have learned from your dad and embodied his teaching, but are now expressing those learnings in their own unique voices in their spheres of influence.
We had our first event without your dad. We’ve introduced new voices through that event and through our podcast, which we’ve launched this year. We’ve got another event coming up early next year. Lord willing, as many people know, we filmed the first of a three-part spiritual formation digital discipleship resources, what we call it, and we’ve got the next two on the way as we speak. We published the first of the last three of your dad’s books, Waiting for Heaven. We did that self-publishing when all of his others have been produced by a publishing house. We have a pretty regular following with our podcast, which is cool.
Kep, personally, you and Larger Story and the team have been a tremendous blessing to me in my life. Digging into that and, what you alluded to earlier, just a few months before I started with Larger Story, I had met a girl and started dating her. If I had not joined Larger Story within a few months, I wouldn’t have had the means to take her out on a date much longer, which probably meant she would think, “This guy is not capable of being a provider,” and may have dipped out. She’s probably not that shallow, but I say that to say that I got engaged to and married my wife while at Larger Story.
When I think about my time at Larger Story, a word that comes to mind is that it’s been stabilizing in my life. It’s been the first job where I did work but I didn’t have to fundraise myself personally. Knowing that I did my work and I had a paycheck coming in and it was relatively guaranteed felt stabilizing.
[00:10:14] Kep Crabb: I think what I’d want to chat more about with you today is, there’s a lot of logistical things that we’ve done. I think we’ve had a chance by the grace of God to do a lot of neat things and a lot of things that I think really do have some opportunity to be life-changing. We’re in the middle of some of those now, and that’s really the essence of it.
That’s where I want to go with you; you’ve now worked with this ministry. You didn’t know Larry Crabb from anybody before, you got a chance to meet Dad several times. You actually got a chance to go through the SSD before he passed away. What did it do to you from a relational standpoint in respect to how you look at yourself now as a husband? How you look at yourself now as a son of God? How you look at yourself in different ways? I think that’s where – I’ve said this to you before, Kris, and I really mean it – I’ve known you now for five years. I’ve seen so much growth and desire to know the Lord at a deeper level in a way that really does change how we live. I’ve seen that with you and that’s been the thing that’s been most exciting to me. I’m so grateful to have had you on the team, but now to send you off and keep doing that.
I’ve said this to you, you’re always going to be a part of Larger Story, that’s never going to change. You might not be working for Larger Story anymore, but you’re still going to be with Larger Story and involved in what we’re doing, because you’re part of God’s Larger Story; your smaller story is, my smaller story is and so how do we continue to keep this movement? I guess my big question is more, what has happened to you relationally since you’ve been with us?
When I first met you, you had really long hair and you were like, “I think I know what I’m doing here. I’m pretty sharp.” and you had all these things going on. Now you’re a mid 30 year old guy with a wife that you just celebrated – was it your three year anniversary? Four year anniversary. My gosh. Four years, just yesterday, congratulations on that. How are you different? I want to believe, and I really do, that you are a different person than the first Kris Gamble that I met in 2018. You’re not the same guy. If you were, I think I would be really disappointed in that you shouldn’t be the same guy and you’re not.
[00:12:56] Kris Gamble: That category is one of the ones that I’ve been thinking about. One way of saying it is, I’ve grown in awareness of how I impact others; which is something your dad emphasized knowing, how do we impact others? Some of the conclusions I’ve had are on the “need for growth” side.
I do think I’m aware of – and you kind of allude to it, long-haired guy that thinks he knows what’s up – I do think I’m aware that God impacts people through me in positive ways. But there are also some more difficult ways that I impact people, particularly on our team, that He has helped me to see. I don’t know that I’m over those things, but I can be very judgmental of others and I can wear that judgment or I can even express that judgment. I can be condescending. That is how my judgment can sound. Kep, you unfortunately have been the recipient of that. I’ve said this to you prior, but I’m sorry that you have been the recipient of that judgment and pride and condescending tone. I’m grateful that you’ve been gracious and patient with me in my process of sanctification that is uncovered as we relate authentically and closely, like we do on our team.
[00:14:49] Kep Crabb: One of the reasons, Kris, that I’ve been so patient with you in so many ways – we’ve had our times and I can handle somebody being condescending or any of those kinds of things – I think one of the things that really has given me hope is to see your desire to grow.
We talk about at Larger Story, what does it mean to put Jesus on display by how we relate to people? I’ve talked many times about, you can say the same thing in two very different ways to get your point across. One of my mentors talks about how you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
The growth process that I’ve seen in you in the last five years as a young man moving into now, where you wouldn’t be considered as young of a man anymore. You know, you’re five years older now, you’re a mid 30 year old man. I love to see the growth that you’ve made in respect to how you love people. I feel like you’ve challenged me in ways in these five years, which has been awesome. I’ve been grateful for that. I think I’ve challenged you in ways and I think that it’s been such a great example of an older guy – I’m 20 years older than you are – and a younger guy who are working together for the same purpose and yet still that iron sharpening iron piece. You know, we’ve had a chance to pray together a bunch. We’ve had a chance to cry together a bunch. We’ve had a chance to laugh together a bunch, and we’ve had a chance to see God’s work taking place – not just in creating courses and producing books and putting together groups and ambassador groups and prayer teams and all that stuff and all the spiritual directors – That stuff’s awesome. But what’s it doing to you? What’s going on in your soul, in your heart? As you get ready to leave us at Larger Story, what are you taking with you?
One thing that you’ve become aware of is, whether you’re on a team of two people, three people, four people, or 25 people, there’s going to be tension. It’s just the way it works. Remember what I said when we were going through some of those times? I said, if Peter, James, and John couldn’t pull it together at the Mount of Transfiguration – arguing who’s the coolest guy of us down here – we all don’t have a chance.
Dad used to say – I’ve said this to you Kris, and I love this line – It’s not about failing because we’re going to fail. But what do you do with that? Where do you go with that? How do you respond to your failure? Know that you’re completely covered in the blood of Christ and you’re completely redeemed, even though this side of heaven you still have that flesh-spirit battle.
I think you’re going to have that all the way up to the very end. I’ve had a chance to see a few people finish and my biggest prayer for all of us is that we understand what it means to finish well. I think what you and I have talked about is, what does it mean to finish well as you finish with Larger Story?
I think, Kris, you have been. I think you are in the process of doing that. I know you haven’t found a job yet, you’re looking for one – we’ll get into explaining that, I want to keep moving here so we can keep things rolling.
Just to tell you all, Kris is going to be starting a master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins University in some very cool things, and he’ll talk about that in a little bit. So, there’s some transition happening. He called me at the beginning of April and he said, very candidly, “Kep, I’ve really enjoyed this andI’m never going to leave you hanging, but I’m going to be looking for another job.”
And I said to Kris, if you remember, I said, “I’ve been waiting for this call. I knew this would happen at some point. This wasn’t going to be the last job you ever had. But let’s finish this thing well. Don’t give up on me and I won’t give up on you. Let’s do this well and continue to have this relationship that we’ve built.”
I love how we’re ending this professional relationship, Kris, but yet our personal relationship continues. That’s something that I’m excited about, because I would want to call you and say, “Kris, I got an idea. Give me your quick thoughts.” Just because I want your mind on it. I like the way you think. You’ve been probably the closest partner I’ve had as we started Larger Story, through all the ups and downs. You alluded to a few of them earlier, but it was rough early on. I didn’t know what I was doing. We didn’t know what we were trying to do. We knew we wanted to do something – this was when dad was still alive. Just so you people know too – I’m sitting here kind of giving Kris some accolades, but he deserves these – before zoom webinars became popular – which of course during Covid, all of us realized that’s how we lived, but probably about a year before we had to live that way – Kris said, let’s get your dad doing webinars and we’ll record them. We probably recorded a couple of dozen of those in that year. That’s material today that, when I watch some of those videos, I’m in tears listening to my father teaching the scriptures.
Those were your ideas. Those then turned into this. Then, dad, believe it or not, said, “Can I do something during Covid on Saturday nights to teach the Bible?” And I said, “Done. We’ll promote it and we’ll do it on our Zoom line, and you do whatever you want to do.”
He started to get excited about doing that, which by the way is a miracle in itself, as you know. All the stuff that you’ve been part of in helping create, helping develop, helping direct, has been so important and you’ve been a huge inspiration to me as we continue to move forward with Larger Story in the post Kris Gamble era.
I’d like you to unpack a little bit about what you’re going to be doing and what’s going to be happening. You’ve kind of alluded to some of the reasons that brought you to the fact that you need to move on. Talk a little bit about that for us now.
[00:20:48] Kris Gamble: I kind of had a “third of my life crisis” when I turned 35 and I realized that I’m getting close to 40 and to that stage where we start to establish ourselves, or at least historically, in a career direction. I’ve always been entrepreneurial minded, hence the startup as I got hired and starting up a ministry before that. I realized through helping you start Larger Story that there is still a lot I don’t know in business finance and product development. I came to this conclusion, maybe I need to go back to school. Not to mention my wife had just graduated with her masters. She got this job with a college starting here in Savannah. Everyone on their staff has at least one PhD, if not multiple. They are very inspiring to be around. It just got me thinking, I think I want to go back to school and learn how to do business and learn more about technology.
That was part of the seed there, and then I started looking at MBA schools; particularly remote ones so that I could continue to do Larger Story but also get the education in the evenings or on the weekends, however they structured it. I found this program. It’s a dual master degree program, so it’s an MBA at Johns Hopkins, and it’s a Master’s of Arts in what’s called “design leadership” at a school called Maryland Institute College of Arts – MICA for short. A master’s in design leadership is a degree in what’s known as design thinking; it’s a way to solve problems and it’s related to user experience design. How does a person experience a website? How does a person experience a software? How does a person experience walking into a store? That’s a user experience design. It’s related to strategic problem solving. So this alternative Masters of Arts in design leadership really perked my interest. That’s how I landed at the particular master’s program that I’m going to.
Then I started to think about the cost. It’s not cheap to get an MBA from a good school and it’s not cheap to get two master’s degrees. I thought, there are jobs out there that do tuition reimbursement. I bet Kep might want to work with me to help me go through school, but I was like, I don’t want to ask more of Larger Story. I then started thinking, what do I ultimately want to do? What direction do I want to go in?
Think about the world we’re in today. We’re in the middle of a technology revolution, and this is a little bit of what I was telling you in the team. We’re in the middle of a technology revolution, maybe like no other in history. I know you’ve mentioned it, but AI, artificial intelligence, is close to the point of being equitable to human intelligence. They think we’re only a couple years off from having a machine that’s as smart as a human and indistinguishable from a human and it sounds kind of sci-fi and farfetched. Elon Musk has a company called Neurolink and he’s implanting computer chips into brains so that brains can control things with their thoughts alone, and that the chip can also influence the brain, which is just scary. We’re in an age where augmented reality and virtual reality are also just around the corner.. I say this, but people are going to be living inside virtual reality worlds. They already do. It’s video games like Fortnite and World of Warcraft, they spend most of their days on these video games, and it’s got me thinking. What is the role of a Christian with all of this hitting us in our world today, and what’s the role of the church with all of this hitting us in our world today? What is biblically ethical? What should we speak out against and say that’s too far?
Something you said at one point or another Kep, at one point the church in history set the standard for culture in arts, in innovation, particularly around the Renaissance period. The church created the university system and hospitals, and commissioned much of the art in the world at that time. Now, this is what you had said, “It feels like the world is dictating our culture and the church is playing catch up.” If we want the church to have an influence on society – there are many aspects, but one aspect is what’s happening in technology – I hope to see more Christian minds in that sector contributing to what is ethical and innovative.
And I hope to be one of those by going into a master’s program at an innovative research institution like Johns Hopkins. Now as I look at this transition and thinking about all this and I was thinking, I want to move in the direction of more software technology, business, product development. It’s got me looking and applying to various companies. And that’s where I’m at.
[00:27:15] Kep Crabb: It’s been so fun, Kris, to see what the Lord’s done in your life and the commitment that you’ve made to Him and the growth that you’ve made in the last five years with Larger Story, with us. It’s been such a fun thing to be on the sidelines watching you grow and watching the Lord use you. I don’t think He’s done, man. I think He’s got big plans for you and I’m excited for you.
I mean, when you told me at the beginning of April, I knew it was of the Lord because I felt so relaxed and so at peace and said, I’ve been waiting for this call. I knew it was time, and you’re leaving Larger Story in a really good place. I think you’ve allowed me to understand what it means to help manage people a little bit and be the leader of this organization in ways that I’m super grateful for. I’m really grateful, Kris, for what the Lord’s doing in your life more than anything. I’m super thankful to have had you on my team for the last five years and I’m grateful for the relationship that we’ll have for the rest of our lives.
We just wanted you all to know what was going on with Kris, because so many of you guys have developed relationships with him as well, which of course will not end when his time working for Larger Story ends. Your relationships will continue, like mine will with Kris. I’m just really proud of what the Lord’s done in your life, Kris and the husband that He’s made you, the man that He’s made you. I hope I don’t sound condescending when I tell you I’m proud of you, but I’m grateful to have had you on my team and to have known you and I can’t wait to see what God’s going to do with you, man. So, anything you want to say as we conclude your time with this ministry?
[00:29:01] Kris Gamble: Yeah, I did have a few more thoughts. You asked how I’ve grown relationally and I could share a bunch of other ways that I’ve realized the sinful ways that I’ve impacted others. I’m just thankful to not just you, but the whole team for the team’s graciousness and patience in loving me through the way that my sin does impact folks. Like you’ve alluded to, it impacts the way that I relate to Allison and want to relate to her differently because if you guys are getting it, how much more is Allison experiencing that?
Also, just to touch on, I’ve developed so many skills vocationally within Larger Story related to website development and maintenance, podcasts, audio editing, marketing, and so on. What a blessing it has been to grow my tool belt while I’m here.
A couple more thoughts for me. You mentioned seeing your dad finish well. I know that I won’t forget how I got to watch your dad finish his life well. My last grandparent died 30 years ago, so I didn’t get to see that. I haven’t actually lived next to older generations passing. Sadly, as you know and we’ve alluded to, it’s common to see folks choose not to finish well, so what a privilege it was to watch your dad finish his life.
I wrote something that I wanted to say to you, Kep. I’m grateful for the risk you took of bringing somebody you didn’t know onto your team, and for what I’ve perceived as a genuine love and care for me and my wife and my spiritual well being, and for doing what it takes to keep the lights on and your employees paid, and that sense of stability that has brought in my life. Ultimately, I’m grateful for seeing you be obedient to God and trying to see the impact that your father had and the legacy that he has established continue on to reach a broader audience for God’s glory.
I also wanted to share that it’s been an honor. We talked about your father’s memory and legacy. It’s been an honor to participate in sharing and stewarding that memory and legacy, one that I hope that I haven’t taken lightly. As you mentioned, in the ups and downs and walking through significant seasons in one another’s life, it’s been an honor to walk next to you as your dad and friend, mentor, and hero passed into glory. It’s been an honor and inspiration to see how you’ve loved, served, cared for and sacrificed for your wife as she has battled for her life in her smaller story – because we know her life in the Larger Story is one that’s eternally sealed. I hope that if I ever have to face something as scary as you have with Kimmie, that I face it with the eternal perspective that you’ve had throughout it and the perspective I’ve seen ground you and keep you when it could be easy to lose hope to quit or to turn to other sources for comfort. So thank you for caring for me, Kep, and this team in the way that you sought to lead us through each step of this journey.
[00:33:13] Kep Crabb: That means a whole lot, Kris, thank you for those words. In respect to Kimmie and the cancer stuff with her, I don’t think I had that perspective early on. I think that’s what’s come. I think that God really put that in my life to allow me to have the perspective to be able to lead this ministry. I don’t think I would’ve had the maturity or the perspective to be able to lead this ministry in the way that I think I’ve been able to get because of the Holy Spirit’s work in my life in these last few years. That’s why, early on, I was operating out of fear, and then you came in and we started to get a little more confidence in what we were we were wanting to do, and made some changes and some decisions, and then all of a sudden we got hit with some big things. That’s just, God’s plan and God’s Larger Story is perfect. Even though it has our screwed up, smaller stories in it, it’s not going to be thwarted, and it’s going to come to fruition. And Kris, I’m just grateful for you, man. I’m grateful for where you’re going. You’ll always be a part of Larger Story, for sure; you’ll always be a big part of it and a big part of establishing where we are now. So Kris, I love you. Thanks for being part of my team and part of this team, and more importantly, part of God’s team, and none of that will ever change, you’re on the team.
Folks, thanks for joining us today. Be praying for Kris and this transition. Be praying for us with Larger Story during this transition as well. Our goal is to put Jesus on display as we wrap up this chapter, but it continues and life continues until Jesus comes back to take us home. Y’all have a great day. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next Tuesday.
[00:35:09] Kris Gamble: Thanks guys.
And I love you too, Kep.
How do we sift through our journey with God when it takes turns we don’t expect and ushers us into places we never wanted to go? And how do we companion one another as we walk through seasons of overwhelming heartache and deep questions? Rosanne Moore and Sheri Glorioso, her best friend from college, trace the ways God has revealed Himself in their lives, often upending expectations and stirring a re-evaluation of assumptions.
The Question that Never Goes Awayby Philip Yancey
The Unselfishness of Godby Hannah Whitall Smith
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Transcript
[00:00:28] Rosanne Moore: Hello Larger Story audience. I am so grateful for a chance to be with you again today. I’m Rosanne Moore, I’m your host today, and I have a very special guest, my dear friend, Sheri Glorioso. Sheri has been my best friend since Bible college. We met at the dorm on the first day that I arrived, and I knew this lady just brings joy and is so welcoming.
I knew we were going to be friends. I had no idea at that point that she was not just going to be a friend, but she was going to be one of the best companions I’ve ever had in my life. Somebody who’s walked through all of the crazy seasons of my life and just been a rock. I’m so excited that she’s here today.
She is married to Emil, and they are parents of two sons and a daughter, ages 16, 13, and 10, so she’s right in the thick of the early high school, middle school years. So God bless you my dear.
[00:01:32] Sheri Glorioso: And one elementary.
[00:01:35] Rosanne Moore: Yes. I wanted to have Sheri here to talk about Real Church with me, in part because she and I have both wrestled with, together, what does it look like to be walking with Jesus in community? Even though we don’t live close to each other in very many ways, we’ve provided spiritual community for one another in times where we were struggling to find other places. We’ve had lots of conversations over the years, but what does this look like? What does this whole following Jesus look like when it doesn’t ever look like what we think it’s going to? I have yet to meet somebody who has it figured out and has that work for very long.
[00:02:23] Sheri Glorioso: Right.
[00:02:24] Rosanne Moore: Sheri, welcome. Thank you for being here today.
[00:02:29] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you so much for having me, my best friend from college and my heart.
[00:02:33] Rosanne Moore: She specifically told me, “I can’t tell you how long to go back.”
I’ll just say, that laugh right there got us in a lot of trouble in the dorms a certain number of years ago.
So Sheri, let’s start by you sharing a little bit. You had a before and after experience of coming to faith; you didn’t grow up with a childhood belief in Jesus as much, it was a more coming to Christ. Would you share about that a little bit?
[00:03:21] Sheri Glorioso: Sure. So I always knew God existed. I prayed, but I didn’t know how personal He was. Then the fertilizer hit the ventilator and my work, my family, my debt was all out of control, and I had no idea how to survive.
[00:03:40] Rosanne Moore: You were a young adult, right?
[00:03:43] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. A coworker shared with me – she used the word scripture, which made me go woah because it sounded so serious – about how God needs all of our needs; not some, not one, not a few, but all of our needs. As long as I didn’t have to stand up in front of a church and proclaim that, I was good.
That night on my way home, I was like, “Lord, I really need you. I really need you in my life.” I just felt this lightness and freedom start to come, and then my relationship started to heal, and my financial situation started to get better. Then I was like, “I really want to learn more about you, God.”
As I was alone in a filing room, I heard, “Christian College locally.” And so I was like, “wow,” and then I sobbed and then I went to this Christian college, and then that one closed so I had to go to another Christian college, which is where we met. I was only a Christian nine months before going to Bible college.
There were times when people would talk about the Lord and how great He is and use all these wonderful adjectives, and I thought, “Wow, He’s really an egomaniac.”
[00:05:01] Rosanne Moore: The things people think, but don’t say out loud.
[00:05:06] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. I didn’t until now.
[00:05:07] Rosanne Moore: Right. No, it’s awesome to own that. Yes, go ahead.
[00:05:14] Sheri Glorioso: I was confused about that. I didn’t see how it all connected. Then when I went to South Carolina for college. It was very structured and conservative, and I just embraced everything that I was taught because I had no clue as to what was going on, what’s real and what’s not.
You could have told me the sky was purple and if that made me closer to God, I would look at the sky and see it purple. But it was also a good experience and it was a safe experience of meeting and learning to study the Bible and having amazing professors and all of that.
There were some glitches along the way that they didn’t understand, but I just tucked them away.
[00:06:01] Rosanne Moore: Give an example. When you say glitches, what are the kinds of things that raise question marks?
[00:06:07] Sheri Glorioso: Okay. The dress code was supposed to be modest for men and women, I think, but especially more for women as we were taught that we can cause somebody else to stumble if we’re not properly dressed. I have a lot of thoughts on that.
[00:06:22] Rosanne Moore: The burden of somebody else’s sanctification was suddenly your responsibility.
[00:06:29] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. Thank you, I couldn’t find the words for it, but that’s exactly it.
I was walking to my dorm and I saw a guy in a tank top who was very well built, and I went, whoa. And then I felt, wait a minute, this isn’t right. I’m not supposed to feel this way, but you shouldn’t be in a tank top, so that was confusing. I was going through some old papers and stuff and I even found where I wrote on a paper that, I have to be careful with what I wear because I can cause somebody else to stumble. And I was like, whoa, this is crap. Oh, sorry.
[00:07:02] Rosanne Moore: That’s so okay. This is why I have you on here. Yeah. The whole thing of holiness being external instead of relational and one-sided.
[00:07:20] Sheri Glorioso: There was another situation – I don’t know if you were there when this happened – but we had a dean of women that was there who was lovely and she couldn’t stay because she got divorced. I don’t know why she got divorced. However, one of the professors openly shared during a chapel that he had an STD that he got from seeking outside his marriage, brought it home to his marriage, and he still has a job. That totally freaked me out.
[00:08:01] Rosanne Moore: I wasn’t there for that, but yeah, with that kind of discrepancy, I can imagine. It was probably presented like there was damage control around the situations and you accepted the explanation, right?
[00:08:24] Sheri Glorioso: I did with the dean of women because I had no knowledge myself what was going on. I never saw a divorce as bad, because if my mother didn’t get divorced, I would be a very different person; my father was not a nice person. I don’t know how it was exposed that this professor went astray, but he gave a big preaching moment about how he was throwing things away and blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, what is he talking about? I didn’t have him, which was nice. I remember sitting in the back going, this is really weird. I didn’t connect that until way later – I won’t say how later, but until way later – when I started to see the structure of what I was being taught.
[00:09:14] Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I ended up having to leave school because of my health breaking down, but you and I stayed in touch, and you were one of the few people who did. I was so isolated during that time when I was so sick battling an autoimmune disease, but you stayed.
[00:09:34] Sheri Glorioso: I wasn’t letting go.
[00:09:35] Rosanne Moore: Thank God for that. You came and visited at times, even though you lived many states away. This has always been an issue for us with God, why she has to live so many states away.
[00:09:54] Sheri Glorioso: I know. Move them closer together now.
[00:09:57] Rosanne Moore: One of us, or both of us; that’s one plan we’ve had. Let’s meet in the middle someplace, like in Virginia or something. Oh dear. But, within a few years after I left school you also left and you faced a really difficult situation with your mom’s health. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
[00:10:30] Sheri Glorioso: It’s hard to talk about because unless you saw what was going on, it was really weird. My mother was not eating for long periods of time. She felt that she had to fast, like Jesus did for 40 days and 40 nights, but she would go for 80 days and 80 nights; she wouldn’t even swallow her own saliva.
[00:10:53] Rosanne Moore: And she was also battling cancer at the time.
[00:10:56] Sheri Glorioso: We didn’t know that at that point. She was thinking that the reason why she couldn’t eat was because she was going against God, so if she did eat or drink something, she would have tremendous pain. It turns out that the pain was coming from the cancer because she had a tumor the size of a football.
[00:11:18] Rosanne Moore: Oh, wow. What I remember of that time was you were trying to take care of her. Because she was responding to this, what she felt was like a spiritual battle in ways that weren’t, it was hard to know how to support her and help her, and you were dealing with the logistics of caring for a very sick person and trying to hold everything together.
And then the emotional burden of trying to figure out, what kind of help does she need?
You went from, “I’m going to turn my life over to Jesus because He’s going to take care of all my needs”, to going to Bible college, where this is the list of what good Christians look like and do, and now you’re in the middle of this situation with your mom that is crazy and there’s a lot of spiritual language. How do you make sense of that? Talk to me about in the middle of that, what were you wrestling with in terms of what it meant? Where was God in that? Where was spiritual community helpful in the nitty gritty of the mess of real life? Where was it not?
[00:12:45] Sheri Glorioso: When she was doing the fasting, unless you said what she wanted to hear, she wouldn’t listen to anything you had to say. She was admitted to the hospital and the psychologist was talking to her forever about needing to eat and blah, blah, blah. Her priest came. Friends came. But she was on her quest and she felt like she was on the right path. I didn’t know anything and I just was like, I’ll do whatever you want, just love me. I would bring her to the hospital when she would agree to go.
She was in and out, I think three times, in an eating disorder unit and everything. So it was pretty crazy. The church community really came – my mother became very active in her church – and a lot of people came to help take care of her when she was in the cancer stage. It was almost like cancer was a relief from this.
[00:13:43] Rosanne Moore: It made sense to them.
[00:13:44] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. I don’t know if she ate three meals a day, but at least she was eating, because I would have meals with her and stuff. That was a bit of a relief. And then instead of going to hospice, people from church who were very close friends of hers came around and did home care for her around the clock; stayed with her throughout the night, stayed during the day when I went to work. They were very generous with their time and their love towards my mom. I was really grateful for that because I couldn’t handle it. I remember my aunt was calling me to come home because it was my shift and I’m like, but I don’t want to.
[00:14:22] Rosanne Moore: You were in your twenties before she died, you were young. Oh, sorry. Am I supposed to not say that?
[00:14:31] Sheri Glorioso: I’m still young. I have found the fountain of Youth.
[00:14:35] Rosanne Moore: Yes, but your youth then was like, that was a lot for a daughter.
[00:14:43] Sheri Glorioso: For any person.
[00:14:45] Rosanne Moore: Yeah, it would’ve been difficult for anybody, but it was a lot for you to be caring at that life stage, let’s put it that way.
I know one of the things we were both trying to make sense of was, how do we find God in the middle of this? What’s He doing? We were looking for answers, looking for ways to make sense of it. I know for myself, a lot of what had shaped my view of walking with God was, you figure out what God’s will is, you try to be obedient to it, and He blesses you. He might not bless you with money and worldly things, but certainly He’s going to bless you with meaning and things will have purpose and He’ll provide and you won’t be ground to dust. And we were both in situations that were just overwhelmingly grueling.
Just really difficult. And so what did it mean to trust? How did we make sense of that? What did faith look like? I think I went through a lot of stages. You were talking about the whole “He seems full of Himself.” I remember reading Hannah Whitall Smith, The Unselfishness of God, and thinking, “maybe He’s not as big a jerk as it seems” – because I had those questions too, it’s like, “You demand so much.” – I remember reading that book where she talks about everything that God does, even His call for us to glorify Him. If He is utterly unselfish in His nature, then everything He calls for us to do, even when it involves sacrifice, is ultimately good because He is good, He is unselfish.
At that time, that was very comforting. There would be later seasons where I’m like, are you sure about that? I think whenever I go through dark night seasons, wrestling with the goodness of God is probably something that I may do for the rest of my life.
That’s probably the issue of the struggle of doubt, of questioning, that I have the most in the seasons that have been darkest. That’s the question I wrestle with most. Not, is God powerful, but is He good? I have to come back to the cross again and again as evidence of his goodness.
[00:17:45] Sheri Glorioso: I’ve struggled with the cross for a long time. I’m a Christian walking with the Lord, but felt everybody’s “saved” but me. I just happened to be in the room at the right time. If I had come to Jesus sooner, I wouldn’t have so much pain in my life.
I saw healings going around and I was in the thick of depression and had all this stuff going on. I didn’t know what it was, but I’m like, how come everybody else gets something but me? What am I missing? I went very inward for a long time.
[00:18:16] Rosanne Moore: One of the things I think Larry talks about in Real Church is the danger of coming together in a place where the focus is on right living and behavior modification and not being able to struggle with the kind of things that you’re talking about.
Everybody has a story, everybody has underlying questions. You’ve been through school spiritual direction; Larry talked there about how we have ways as children before we have a knowledge of God that we wrongly define as life or death. This thing that feels so good, feels like that is the source of life for me, or this painful thing that feels like it has to be avoided at all costs, that is death. Whereas scripture defines life as drawing near to God and knowing God, being close to Him, and death as separating ourselves from Him, stepping back from Him. I wonder what it would’ve been like for either of us during those years of struggle that was so intense to be able to go beneath how you felt about depression and to be able to really name and find the gospel meeting you. The Lord’s done that over time; He’s gone to the core of that.
[00:19:59] Sheri Glorioso: But a little sooner, just saying,
[00:20:01] Rosanne Moore: I wonder what it would look like as believers if we were more focused on that inner story and finding God in that personal story of where we’re looking for life in the wrong places, like fearing death that’s not really death. It’s painful, it’s traumatic. It can be evil, but it doesn’t have to separate us from God. I wonder what it would’ve been like to have been able to look at that in spiritual community instead of to be wrestling with anxiety or depression and be told, oh, just don’t fear.
[00:20:42] Sheri Glorioso: Yeah. Just give your fear to God and pray it’ll go away. I didn’t get a lot of over-spiritualizing depression, but I struggled with it so much because it affected me so much and it’s very self-focused.
As I’m battling this, I’m not available for my family. I’m just like, leave me alone. I’m having a bad day. And that’s not fair, there is a genetic component to this. There is a spiritual component to this. There’s so many things that were going into it, but now I finally feel like I could be depressed, but still be a mom. You know what I mean? To fight the depression. It’s becoming more common now for people to talk about – I hate the phrase – mental health issues; celebrities and whatever. That’s good, but I don’t know if everybody really has a full understanding of what it means and how it affects people. Because there’s that taboo, “Ooh, ooh, you’re taking whatever, you must not be trusting God,” or, “If you were really a Christian…” that kind of mindset. I didn’t experience that, but maybe I didn’t talk about it.
With the depression, it was very self-focused, so I don’t think I would’ve been able to be part of a church community to work through the way that Larry talks about: what’s church? I don’t think I would’ve been emotionally available to get there.
I had a lot of work when I first met Larry, I remember. What did he say, I had to take off…?
[00:22:20] Rosanne Moore: Take off the grave clothes.
[00:22:24] Sheri Glorioso: The grave clothes, yes. And start living. That was something like bumped me in the right direction – that phrase, at that conference. God’s appeared over the years in different places in my life where I’m like, I know this is God. I never stopped believing.
I just got to the point where there was no fellowship outside of Sunday, and if there was, it was like always a nice and polite conversation, and I’m not really good at nice polite conversation. “So how’s your dog? Are your toenails still bothering you?” That’s not where my brain goes. Tell me your heart and I’ll give you mine.
[00:23:12] Rosanne Moore: You get deeper.
[00:23:13] Sheri Glorioso: Then covid hit and there was no church, and then I started to get more clarity of who Jesus is, but I didn’t have anything to hold onto yet.You know what I mean? I was like, oh, so He’s funny, He has a sense of humor. He’s not this “holier than thou, you will obey me because I saved you.” So that’s what I feel has been missing, the heart of Jesus, because you can go to any church and you can get theology and you can get doctrine, but I need the heart of Jesus.
I really need the heart of Jesus because life is not easy. Stuff has happened to women over whatever, we’ve gotten the short end of the stick because we were told to be a certain way, and that’s not what God is saying for us to do and all of that. I hate that word, but that misogynistic stuff.
[00:24:11] Rosanne Moore: No, I think in the last few years things have come out in the SBC and other denominations; and not just denominations, of course it’s in Hollywood. But then to have it come out again and again, that abuse has been covered up in churches.
I think that has, for me, I’ve really wrestled with the question of, “Okay. I believe in Jesus. I know He hates this evil, but how do I do community with people who don’t seem to hate this evil?” I know you’ve wrestled with that too, how do we respond to this?
How do we respond to things that have been exposed? It’s not just, they didn’t know how to handle a situation well, but like you said, there’s deep-seated misogyny and I think idolatry of celebrities has also played a role. And it’s not just out there. You knew me during the season I spent 10 years in an organization that had a lot of abuse of people, and so I know some of the ways that I colluded with the organization. I accepted explanations and glossing over and was a part of that to maintain my position in that organization, that community. We conform; scripture gets misused to make us think we’re protecting the church, we’re protecting what God is doing because “He is not big enough to take care of His own church.”
[00:26:08] Sheri Glorioso: How warped is that? He only created the world in seven days.
[00:26:10] Rosanne Moore: It’s so twisted. It’s so warped. The whole idea that He actually gave His son to deal with sin, it was drastic. Sin is evil enough, drastic enough that it required the cross for our redemption. Yet we think we somehow need to cover this thing up to make things look good. If He was willing to take it that seriously, then we should too.
[00:26:42] Sheri Glorioso: “We might prevent people from coming to Jesus if they know that we sin. We’re not perfect, so we have to present perfect so we can draw in the lost. Because we’re not lost once we’re saved.”
[00:26:56] Rosanne Moore: Yeah, because “Jesus saves perfect people” right? “He doesn’t save sinners.” It’s so messed up. It’s such a distortion. That’s a good point though, because I think a lot of times what gets presented is that we’re saved by grace, but we’re sanctified by effort. One of the things that I loved most about Larry was the whole invitation to be willing to own where I am, not where I wish I was, not where I want to be, but to own where I am and to bring that to God again and say, yeah I still need a savior. Here I am. I still need a savior. To realize it’s almost counterintuitive. Instead of trying harder to be better, to be able to enter that darkness to bring it to Him. Not just enter it and wallow in it, but bring it into His presence, trusting that I’m going to be met with love and delight.
Not over what I may rest in sin over, but He still delights in me and He’s not shaken by my ability to fail. That does not shake Him at all. He’s able to handle it. Looking bad in the presence of love, as Larry talked about, the liberating power of looking bad in the presence of love has released in me the desire to live differently. Not the pressure to live differently, but the actual desire to live differently. It’s been quite a journey.
[00:28:52] Sheri Glorioso: You’re talking about the red dot that Larry talked about? That’s hard. That looking inward is not easy, but it relieves the pressure valve on something that’s ready to explode. When you’re being that honest and laying it down, even though we might have to do it again and again, you can breathe better. God knows I’m going through this. He knows why I feel this way. He knows how I feel. He’s not going to be shocked.
One of the other trick phrases is, “God allowed it.” Crap happens in life. Sorry, stuff happens in life. Bad things happen to good people, bad people, whatever. I had bad stuff happen. I was abused and I was told that God allowed it.
But then at the same time, I was told He was weeping next to me. So which is it? Was He sad or was He just saying, here, have her? I need to believe that He was weeping. Just because something happens doesn’t mean it’s God’s will in my opinion. I think people get in the way of God’s will and cause an effect that goes onward from the consequences and everything. Does that make sense?
[00:30:11] Rosanne Moore: Yeah. I think if it were His will for people to do evil, then He wouldn’t judge it. He wouldn’t wind up punishing it.
[00:30:24] Sheri Glorioso: Unfortunately you don’t always see the punishment here on earth, right?
[00:30:28] Rosanne Moore: No, but it’s promised that it will come; all things will be brought into the open and judged.
[00:30:34] Sheri Glorioso: We have choices, like the guy who drinks too much and hits another car and there’s people in there and they die. That wasn’t God’s will for that car to be there at that right time. Can He redeem it? Without a doubt. Will He? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean it was His will. That’s a big thing that I struggled with. I needed to get that out there.
[00:30:53] Rosanne Moore: I agree. I feel this way a lot too. It’s not enough for me to know there’s reasons, all that stuff does not help me. No, I need to know that His heart is even more broken over evil than mine is. That bridges things so that I can trust Him in the midst of things.
Last winter we did a webinar with Philip Yancy and I mentioned to him that his book, The Question That Never Goes Away, had been really faith saving for me at a really difficult season because he said in there Christianity is the only religion that gives us the language of protest, that other religions try to minimize evil, make it so that we should be able to just be okay and go on. And he said when Christians do that, they’re not being biblical. The Psalms are the language of protest. It’s God crying. It’s not just the Psalmist crying out against evil, but God Himself crying out against evil and what it does in the world, and promising that judgment and redemption will come.
That’s a good point, Sheri, I’m glad you brought that up, because I think for a lot of victims of abuse, it’s meant well. I’ve done this, I’ve been guilty of this. Sometimes it’s meant well of trying to reassure God’s going to redeem and all of that, but it ends up being minimizing and I think it’s an avoidance of pain rather than being willing to enter the pain.
[00:32:55] Sheri Glorioso: I think people use that language because they can’t do it themselves. Like you said, we all have a story, and we all have an ache in our hearts, and it might not be the same type of situation.
They have to stay in the mindset, I need to believe that this was God’s will in order for me to survive the pain of looking at it and going this really – can I say a bad word? – This really stinks.
It’s just not easy. I mentioned that recently at a Bible study because they were talking about God’s will. This was part of my confusion: somebody would use a scripture verse and say this is God’s will. Then somebody else would take another scripture and say that it’s not. So what’s real? My struggle for a long time has been, who are you? Where’s your heart and who are you? I haven’t given up on my faith, I just can’t take a theology class in church.
You know what I mean? Where’s your heart? I need to know your heart because if I know your heart and I know that you were there, and all those times that I went through my pain with my mother and with the abuse and a whole bunch of other stuff, then I could breathe. But if it’s because it was your will, that kind of makes it like you don’t really like me that much.
Does that make sense?
[00:34:23] Rosanne Moore: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s the will of God that we be holy as He is holy. That pretty much takes out all the crap that we do to one another off the table. What he does redemptively is His will, but that’s Him stepping into our evil. That’s not Him initiating the evil.
[00:34:47] Sheri Glorioso: When I mentioned that to the lady who was leading it, she goes, I think that we, as Christians, should not use that phrase, “He allowed it.” There’s so many horrors in this world, and I don’t think God’s going, “You should suffer this, and you should suffer that,” for any reason. It’s just that there’s evil in the world that interferes with who God wants us to be.
[00:35:12] Rosanne Moore: A fallen world is a serious thing. We talk about how we live in a fallen world. That’s just a thing to say, but you’re talking about the intricate, complicated impact of life in a fallen world is that granular brokenness. That’s not just a theological construct; that is a daily agonizing reality in so many ways.
We are getting close to the end of our time. I want to bring this back to how God met you recently in this whole thing of coming full circle, because we’re going to see what God does going forward.
You were just telling me that He really met you last weekend. I want to give you a chance to talk about that.
[00:36:02] Sheri Glorioso: It was so exciting because I didn’t expect it, but He is the God of the unexpected. For years I was like, love God, love people. That was my theology. I was searching for the heart of Jesus and trying to find a place where I’ll belong that will share that, because there’s a, them versus us with Christianity; you can’t hang out with the sinners – although we’re supposed to because they need to be saved. – There’s, “this person has a certain sin in their life so you can’t be their friend” or, “they’re not worthy of love” and stuff like that.
I was really struggling with that a lot. I was really struggling with what’s true. “Who are you, what is true about you? Are you this stern, blah, blah, blah. Do you have a heart?” Back and forth. And then, for whatever reason, I listened to an Easter service online – which, I hadn’t been to church online or in person since pre-covid.
I just listened, and for the first time, my wall came down and I connected and it felt so good. It just felt so good as she was sharing about the resurrection and who Jesus is and what we have with Him. I was like, wow. So the next week I went to church live and in person, and God used her to cover every issue that was in my heart.
[00:37:35] Rosanne Moore: That’s so cool.
[00:37:37] Sheri Glorioso: She just gave this incredible sermon. It was so Spirit-filled and it was just so amazing. In my head I’m thinking, what about A, B, C?
And then she said, “Oh yeah, and A, B, C, blah, blah, blah. We all have those moments when the service was meant for you, but every single thing this woman spoke was like, “Sheri, this is for you.”
[00:38:07] Rosanne Moore: She was being led by the Spirit of God in that moment and it’s so evident that He’s speaking through her and to you. That’s awesome.
[00:38:16] Sheri Glorioso: I like the part that I’m saying “her.” Just saying, I didn’t think that would happen. But she’s awesome. She’s amazing. She’s the real deal. She doesn’t worry about forgetting what she’s saying, or losing a thought. She just puts it all out there, and that’s what I need. Not, “this is what we SHOULD do, and this is what the Bible says.” I mean, we need to listen to the Bible, but don’t give me, uh…
[00:38:45] Rosanne Moore: She’s incarnating it. She’s not just teaching it from her head. She’s incarnating it.
[00:38:50] Sheri Glorioso: That’s a good word for it, yes, that’s very much what it was. At the end she said, “If you’ve been away from God or you’ve been doing this, or you’ve been doing that” – everything I’ve been doing – “if you want to come up to the altar.” I had a friend who was behind me who had always asked, “why haven’t I seen you in church?” We ended up sitting in front of her. She didn’t really give me a choice, just put her hand on my back and led me up to the altar.
[00:39:16] Rosanne Moore: We all need friends like that sometimes,
[00:39:20] Sheri Glorioso: It was just what I needed. She prayed exactly what I needed. After the service, I just got to tell her how she was used by God to help me. It was a really cool thing. It was a really cool thing because I never had that kind of direct instruction come from somebody and I really didn’t know her well.
You know what I mean? But I like that we have the same background and she’s just the real deal, so I feel like I could trust “here.” Not that she’ll be perfect or anything, but God is working in this church.
[00:39:55] Rosanne Moore: That’s the thing, right? Larry talked about this in Real Church, you could meet together in an organization and it can be no different from a country club. You can do good things, you can feed the poor, you can do various good things, but what is it that happens in our midst that only the Spirit of God can do? That pastor was allowing the Spirit of God to move through her. You were opening your heart to hear His voice and your friend behind you was obviously being led by the Spirit too.
What does it look like to be tuned in to the Spirit of God and allow our coming together as the people of God to encourage one another. That’s a beautiful example of what only God can do.
Thank you for sharing that. We’re going to need to wrap up for today. This has been so fun, Sheri. I’m going to do it again at some point. Thank you for being with me.
[00:40:58] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you for having me.
[00:40:59] Rosanne Moore: We got through this without anybody spitting their drink into the computer from laughing.
[00:41:05] Sheri Glorioso: I’m thirsty, but I’m going to wait.
[00:41:09] Rosanne Moore: We have many of those memories.
[00:41:12] Sheri Glorioso: When we were talking, pictures popped up in my head of those moments.
[00:41:18] Rosanne Moore: Yes. You know what? It was funny, on the way to school today, we took one of my son’s friends who’s here in the neighborhood, and he accidentally said photogenic memory instead of photographic memory. And I’m like, that’s the memories where you look good in all of the things you remember, right? Those are our memories, Sheri. Oh dear. It’s so good.
[00:41:38] All right, we are going to wrap up for today. Everybody, thank you for joining us. I hope you are encouraged and if you want a copy of Real Church – either to read on your own or to be a part of our reading and relating book club discussions – go to the Larger Story website and you can get one there. Actually, you can get one “buy one get one 50% off,” there’s a sale right now. We hope you’ll join us in our reading community and see you back next week. Thanks so much.
[00:42:15] Sheri Glorioso: Thank you. All righty.
[00:42:16] Rosanne Moore: Bye.
Show Notes:
How is meaningful community formed? How can we join with the Spirit in making space for people to belong and be known? Listen in to a light-hearted discussion between Kris Gamble and his former roommate and friend from high school youth group, Joe Spiccia, as they discuss the origins of meaningful communities, they have both belonged to and helped to form.
Order your copy of Rea Church: https://store.largerstory.com/products/real-church-does-it-exist-can-i-find-it
Joe Spiccia’s Bio: Joe is the Content Director at Fresh Harvest in Atlanta, Ga. He and his wife, Jordan, live with their dog Oscar and four chickens. Joe enjoys fishing, exploring new ideas, and getting absorbed in meaningful conversations with those around him.
Transcript:
Kris Gamble: Welcome everyone to the Relational Spirituality Podcast. My name is Kris Gamble. I’m your host for this week’s episode, and today I am joined by one of my good friends, Joe Spiccia, or Spix-ee-eye-ay as Siri likes to pronounce his last name. This week we are chatting around the theme of community. The Book of the Quarter at Larger Story is Real Church and it talks about what really is church and community therein.
Joe has been somebody in my life that has been an instigator of meaningful community, almost just out of what seems like the overflow of his being. Hopefully we can mine a little bit of his mind and dig into some of those stories and just see what God might have for us through this time.
I wanted to start off and give a little context. I met Joe about 20 years ago. I don’t remember our specific meeting, but we met at a church that we were attending and did the youth group of through all of our high school years.
We also, for the latter part of my high school years, went to the same high school and occasionally, and speaking of community, I’m a year older than Joe so a grade ahead of him, but some of my guy friends from church, as a part of what we just somehow fell into doing, we played poker many nights on the weekends throughout high school. Joe, I think you made it to some of those occasionally. Is that correct?
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, I’ve never won a dollar ever.
Kris Gamble: Well, yeah, we don’t condone gambling here anyway, so that is maybe a sign of your purity, Joe.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, that’s what it is.
Kris Gamble: Joe and I were actually roommates for a few years after college into our late twenties and early thirties.
I would say that we refined each other into the godly men we are today, which helped us to meet our lovely wives. So, community is important because if you’re single, it’ll help refine you to meet your spouse.
Joe, as I mentioned, has helped form some communities, and I’m just going to briefly touch on them here and hopefully we’ll jump in a little bit deeper.
Somewhere after college, around 2014, 2017 ish, Joe invited myself and a bunch of other mostly single folks to a thing we called “Cabin Weekends,” where we would rent a cabin and just have meaningful community centered around the thing that united us, our faith and they were like at a lake or by a river and we’d go fishing and hang out, and it was really just a place that I felt like I belonged in my latter twenties. We have made such great memories and have such wonderful stories out of that.
Another place where really meaningful community happened was, around the same time, Joe and I were looking to move into the downtown Atlanta area, so he, myself, and a few other guys ended up getting a house. And that was a place where, for a number of years, we really got to spur one another on and be accountable and just talk about what different seasons we were in, in our spiritual journeys. It kind of became a place of a community gathering, where we’d have, you know, house parties, not like wild, crazy ones, but bonfires in the backyard.
In and around that time we were part of a men’s group that Joe also initiated, and that just took the whole community and spiritual formation and intentionality thing to a deeper level. So, that’s kind of why we’re here, Joe, is to learn from the master. Really, I’m just glad you’re here. We’ve thought through some questions to talk about and I’m looking forward to digging in with you.
Anything you want to say or share after that long intro?
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, I think so. So first off, I’m grateful to be on this podcast with you, Kris, and I actually call Kris, Cris-ph. I don’t know why, but he calls me Joe Spix-ee-eye-ay, I call him Cris-ph. There is like a lot of little consonants that get added in there at the end, so if you want to start calling him that, you’re totally welcome to. Kris has – he’s talking me up and all that stuff, but my first caveat is that I feel like a complete newbie when it comes to these things. I think part of that is actually because I’ve never done them just alone. When I think about all those stories you’re telling Kris, especially like moving into the house, Kris came to me and we met at Little Azio on Howell Mill Road in Atlanta, and he was like, I’m looking for some guys to live with, but I’m not just looking for just a roommate situation, I want a community.
I think there’s an element of Kris bringing this intentionality too, not just trying to live within a house, a place where you sleep and eat and all that stuff, but he wanted an actual community of people that were intentional about pursuing their faith, pursuing friendship, pursuing community.
I think there’s something that we will hopefully get into today, about, this isn’t all on one person’s shoulders to foster community. There is an initial initiative that’s taken by one or two people, but what I think really leads to these things is people realizing, I want this, and let me find some other people who also want something. We don’t even have to have a name for it. We just know there’s something that we want, and we hope it looks something like this. And then that drive’s there, that’s attractive, and other people want to be a part of that. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. I want to figure this out, and I just knew a bunch of people who were kind of in a similar stage of life.
There’s multiple roles to be played in a healthy community. I’ve really learned that in this process of being friends with you, Kris, and all the other guys that we’ve met and lived life with along the way. So yes, I guess all that to say, I’m grateful and I love talking about community. I love dreaming about it and also living it, and I think that’s probably the most important part of it. So yeah, I’m looking forward to the questions and what we’re going to get into.
Kris Gamble: Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, it isn’t on one person’s shoulders, and I’m glad you made that distinction. So, jumping in, what is community, and maybe more specifically, what would you say is meaningful, effective christian community?
Joe Spiccia: I’ve been reading a book right now with a group that I’ve been a part of with my church here in Marietta, Georgia. I’ve read it a couple times actually, and I really have enjoyed the depth that it’s been pulling out of me. It’s called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. The author is Peter Scazzero, and he has a couple quotes that I’ll reference here, but this one came to mind. He said, “Community is not just a group of people who agree with each other. It’s a diverse group of individuals who are committed to loving and serving one another.”
I think it’s so easy to think about community as just, what’s fun and who are the people that are like me that we’re going to get along and have a good time together.
That’s a beautiful thing too, that’s just a very base level. I’ve realized that that’s not bad either, because it does lead to this other thing, which is committing a commitment to loving and serving other people. But I guess the diversity of a group as far as, we just don’t all agree on everything, we have conflict, that’s normal community, and I think it’s easy to shy away from that. I guess there’s a lot of different definitions of what community is and what it can look like, but that’s one that really stood out to me.
I think another really big one for me is that community is a gift from God. It is truly a gift of Him inviting us into sanctification. We’re all born into a family, which is like a type of community. Some of us aren’t in that family for long and other ones have an amazing family that we’re with for the rest of our lives. God gifts us either that type of family, or leads us into a family that allows us to see who we are meant to be.
I think that, for me, is what community is, is an opportunity and a gift to explore who God made me to be. In that process of identifying that better and better, as I get older and experience more community, I am able to do the same for other people. It’s this real back and forth, and it’s this cycle of this really beautiful gift that, the more we open ourselves up to other people, the more they will open to us, and the more we grow closer to God.
I think, obviously, there’s all kinds of community; you could have a really negative community too. That’s where I think the biblical version is something to strive for. A community that pursues the heart of God and allows God’s heart to pursue them. It’s a process that I think of, of God making us more like Him. He uses other people around us to do that, whether they’re totally different than us or they’re similar in their backgrounds and their personalities.
There’s a lot of thoughts there, but that’s my idea of community.
Kris Gamble: When you said community is a gift from God, I thought about how community is also a reflection of God, God being in community with Himself. And so when we are fellowshiping – fellowshiping is a christian-ese word for hanging out and having fun. But when we’re enjoying one another, we’re actually reflecting the joy that God has in Himself and it’s on display through us.
Those are some Larry Crabb derived ideas that I ascribe to. I also think community could be a label or a term that defines a group of people that are somehow interconnected; I’m in the community of Savannah, or the community of Wilshire Estates – which sounds much more fancy than it is – yet I might not really know anybody all that well in my neighborhood community. There is something about a biblical community that is worth digging into.
Joe Spiccia: I’m going to throw out a couple quotes here.
I had one more quote on this that is in line with what you’re talking about, but it was another Peter Scazzero quote from the book. He says, “We can’t grow in isolation. We need others to become who God has called us to be.” And that was sort of what I was searching for, that community is a catalyst for spiritual, emotional, mental growth. It is God’s gift to us in that way. From the biblical perspective I personally see this as God’s heart – like you’re saying – He’s always lived in community. God never had isolation with the Trinity. I think His heart is just that His creations that are made like Him would also be in community as well. So, defining that through scripture, I’m curious what you think about that.
Kris Gamble: Well, Hebrews 10:25 essentially says don’t forsake gathering together.
Also, Acts 2:42-47 is probably worth reading. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
I think this is one of the best pictures of the New Testament church that we have in description.
A couple things that we can draw out of it: a biblical community is gathering and they are studying God’s word. They’re enjoying one another, and I think mixing in some food and prayer is an important part of a christian community. The don’t forsake gathering I think is just a call to not be isolated.
Joe Spiccia: I’m just thinking, how does that look for where we are in this culture right now? It can sometimes be difficult for me to distill down the Church of Acts to my life.
Some of those takeaways, like get together and eat food together, very basic things, right? But that’s the building block; we all need certain things, so let’s go do those things together. And then at the same time, there’s a deeper element of prayer in singing worship and of being intentional about worshiping the Lord and about pursuing God together.
Whether we’re going to read scripture, or we’re going to talk about scripture that we don’t understand and that we have problems with. I think there’s a really honest version of this for me. I don’t know that I am always there and ready to say, let’s go do a service project for the Lord today, or whatever it is; maybe it doesn’t feel like I’m hearing from the Spirit, or God doesn’t seem like He’s talking to me. But just being with other people and other believers, being with somebody like Kris – for me, in these settings there was a conviction level, there’s an intensity and a passion here, and there’s a newness to the perspectives of different members of the community that have always driven me closer to God, wanting to know God more, wanting to explore Him more.
That’s what Acts 2:42-47 really looks like in my life; being around others and letting the Lord use them, or letting Him use me in moments where my faith is strong. Kris, I think you used an example of this in our guys group at one point, an analogy of a fire and how some of us are really close to this fire and we are warmed by it, and we walk into a crowd where it’s colder and that warmth really reaches those people – other christians maybe, or maybe it’s not christians, but there’s something attractive about that. We want to be around the warmth. I think, trying to distill it down in my own experience, it’s often looked realistically like that.
Kris Gamble: One thing I love about you, Joe, is your humility and honesty; even now readily able to say, “When I picture community, sometimes it’s not as perfect as we see in the scripture here, and that is my reality and my real life.” And it’s everyone’s, it’s mine too. Nobody’s able to live out every time you get together studying the word and prayer and singing songs. I don’t even know if it’s necessarily that that has to be every time you gather, but a picture of some amount of their gatherings.
I wanted to just dig in on the same kind of theme about markers of biblical community, and popping over to another scripture, James 5:16 says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
I love this verse. It’s a hard verse because there can be fear and shame associated with sins, and there’s so much cultural baggage around confession and why do I need to do that? A culture that often touts accomplishments and independence. But I think good, biblical communities are, marked by the humility of confessing our sins.
This scripture is telling us such that we may be healed. It could mean a physical manifestation, but I imagine on some level it’s the release that comes from letting light shine on the dark places. In particular when you do that, doing that as – in Larry Crabb-ism – looking ugly in the face of love, realizing that you still are loved, even though you’re showing something ugly, is a healing thing.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah this is the verse that really takes community to, not even the next level, it’s the next level beyond that. I think there is a bit of a cultural stigma to the word confess. Why do I need to confess?
Let’s talk about it from a human perspective of being honest about where you are. Maybe you are doubting God or maybe you are struggling with some sort of sin that’s more overt; maybe you’re looking at pornography or whatever it is. There’s a tendency we all have to hide that stuff, to push it down and keep moving. I think that’s part of our Western culture, let’s just be productive, let’s just move through it, let’s not talk about it. But God invites us into that and He does that through community.
A lot of times, my idea of God has been shaped by seeing others confess and Him letting me see people humbly stopping and saying, this is something I’m trying to hide from myself and from others and from God, and I need to let it out there, I need to bring it into the light.
It’s so refreshing. I think, for me at least, to be a part of that where you can be totally honest – scary honest – you are taking a big risk by sharing something with other folks. And it is so rewarding to feel that moment of, we love you. I love you, even though you have all these things and you have these doubts.
That is God’s heart. If that happens in community, and I tell Kris something really hard that I’m going through and he accepts me and he loves me and he tells me he’s going to pray for me and he wants to be there by my side, that’s powerful. That shapes my vision of who God is and how He stands for me.
From a person to person perspective, it takes time to cultivate this, but it is so life-giving and so rewarding to be a part of a community that fosters honesty and confession to one another, and it just makes you want to confess to God because you know that He is the only one that’s capable of forgiving you, but also the one who loves you more than any anybody else.
Today I had a small group meeting with the guys group that I’m in, and we were talking about this weekend. I just had a tough struggle with my wife.We were having a hard time and we’ve had a hard time at various points in our relationship.
One of them reached out to me and said, “Hey, how can I pray for you?” She was about to walk through the door, so I’m like, “Oh gosh. Well, I need to be humble. I need to be calm. I need to not be defensive, which is my tendency, and I need to be straightforward and honest and I need to listen.”
And literally, they prayed for that and that happened, and there was just a real restoration for us – me and my wife – and there’s something about that. That in itself is a confession, I think. The way I’m thinking about confession is that if you would rather not tell other people about it, and then you decide to tell them, that’s a confession, whether you’re trying to hide something wrong that you did or just something that you’re struggling with.
Being able to submit that to other people and to dive into it, I think is an opportunity for God to answer the prayer in whatever way He wants to answer it. That’s us, depending on God, and it takes humility and that’s His gift to us.
Obviously, I’m passionate about this; being open and honest about where you are with other people and knowing that that is something that can really bring us closer together, but also bring us closer to our creator.
Kris Gamble: Right. Yeah. When we were back at the question of what is community, sort of three words we’ve added to our tagline for the Relational Spirituality podcast come to mind: belonging, being known and becoming. I think one of the things about being honest – confessing is how we are known in our good light, but also in our fallen humanity side. And how known are we if only the good side that we present of ourselves to others is held up, and that is all people see?
I chatted a little bit on my previous podcast about brotherhood, we chatted a bit about confession there, so if you want to get even more, check that one out. One of the other markers of community, and we kind of touched on it even in Acts 2, but 1 Corinthians 14:26. What then brothers, when you come together, each one of you has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation. Let all things be done for the building up or the edification of the body.
I think edification is a goal of community. I think one thing I extrapolate out of this verse is that there can be different gifts that members of the body have and that we bring into the community and that they are to be brought for the building up of all of us. Some of that is singing hymns – we’ve had poetry reading nights – or just just reading nights together, lessons, sharing teachings of what God has put in our hearts.
Any thoughts there?
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, I think about our guys group that we had and we rotated who facilitated the group, and each time we gathered somebody new, they took us through something that they were learning or scripture of some sort. I think more than just, “everyone’s got to facilitate, that’s the rules.” I think what it did was it helped us understand ourselves a little bit more as individuals too. Think, what is my gifting? I think a lot of people don’t know that, and it is a great place to learn that in a safe community of other people to say, “You know what? I don’t really know what my gift is, so I’m going to try and facilitate or lead a conversation or I’m going to do something creative.” It’s a place to be encouraged in those things. Like, “Man, you really brought that, that was really helpful. I really took a lot away from that.”
That’s where you learn what your giftings are from the Lord, in that community. It’s okay to not come into it knowing like, what, what am I, what am I gifted with? because that’s part of the process of just being with other christians is like learning that about yourself, which is another gift really.
[00:27:58] Kris Gamble: Right. In Acts 2 they sold their possessions such that they gave to everyone that had need. It makes me think about the marker of taking care of each other and serving one another. To your point, as you are serving, you realize, “Hey, I’ve got a gift for this hospitality thing, or a real passion for reaching our neighbors.”
Great point to say that community is also just a place to learn what God’s deposited in us, and the way that we can serve and love each other as we seek to follow His commandment to serve and love each other.
As you said earlier, there’s a ton of scripture on community. 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.” And Hebrews 10:24 just before the one that says, “don’t forsake the gathering,” says “spur one another to love in good deeds.”
Any other markers you want to share on?
Joe Spiccia: There’s just so much. I feel like these are all tied together. There is just so much commonality in each of these verses. But in encouraging one another like it says in Thessalonians and building each other up, that really ties in with confession if we’re going to be vulnerable and real. A way to encourage someone in that, is by listening to them, by hearing them out. It’s not trying to give them advice, it’s being there for them and encouraging them, “Hey, you’re not alone in this. You’re not the only one to struggle with this. You’re not the only one to have these questions,” or whatever else it is. That’s encouraging. It’s not always, “You’re a great singer.” There’s just so many elements of each of these verses that all just tie in together. I feel like a big part of it is just understanding God’s heart and being in a place with other people and letting that come out of you.
I guess that’s one of those things that you live and you see it happen. The mystery of community is there’s not a vision of community that is going to be accurate. There was one other quote from, I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together. He said, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” Sometimes we can overcomplicate things. We can say, this is how it should be and I need to make sure I line all these points up. And that’s suffocating. People don’t need that to thrive. They need someone to love them to thrive and to know that they’re safe and loved and heard and listened to. So, if in doubt, simplify, and just try and love the people that are around you.
That’s a very broad point, obviously, but I think it can be easy to get lost in the shuffle. So, anyway, that’s my 2 cents on that.
Kris Gamble: Well, it makes me think of another verse, which is admonishing one another or exhorting one another. At the end of James it says, roughly, if you see your brother in error and correct them, you win your brother and save his soul, so to speak.
Not meaning you literally are saving him, but delivering him from that sin. There’s a place for correcting in love. It is loving to say, “Hey Joe, the way you responded to your wife just then wasn’t what I believe is how you actually feel about her.”
I am guilty of the same thing so many times, but I’d encourage you. There’s such a delicate finesse to correcting each other; there’s no formula for how any of these line up or are lived out. I loved your point about simplifying it by just trying to love.
Joe Spiccia: Even admonishing somebody comes with trust. To be able to do that for somebody, to say, “Hey, you’re in the wrong here,” that is earned, and you earn that through loving somebody well, listening to them, caring for them, and they trust you. All of that stuff really just comes back to the simple point of loving someone well, and that a good way to love someone is to correct them if they’re wrong.
Kris Gamble: It’s worth noting why community is important other than in a christian sense. It’s biblical and God inspired and all the points that we just mentioned to be known and be loved. But it’s also a place to exchange ideas if you’re in a diverse community, exchange culture, learn, and grow. I think one of the main points that I wanted to make here is something you said early in our conversation about how it helps us to become who God made us to be.
And it’s kind of intuitive to say that, but how does that actually happen? Just because you show up at community? I think, what’s underneath that? How do you become who you were created to be in community? That community is reflecting back to you how they’re experiencing you. So, you know, Joe, I experience you as somebody who has a gift for hospitality, A gift for allowing people to feel trusting of you and safe with you.
I think that reflection that the community offers back to us highlights and draws out things that maybe we weren’t even able to see ourselves. That self-awareness affords us the opportunity to cultivate those things or to change in the admonishing sense away from who is not our most truest self, which is the sin side of us, to our most truest self, which is the God-honoring side of us.
Joe Spiccia: I’ve learned so much about who I am in community, for sure, and who God has made me to be. It’s a gift that I don’t think you can get anywhere else. I’m not saying that people are God, but God speaks through people and you can hear God’s heart for you through people who are in your community. There’s discernment involved with that, of course, but it really does change how you see yourself, to be a part of a true community, a good community, a rich community where love is the baseline.
Also, in a very real way, there is opportunity with people you trust to say, “Hey, how do you perceive me?” That’s a really hard question to ask, and I’ve been blown away by people who have actually asked that of me. I have such mad respect for people who are willing to do that because it’s super vulnerable, but it also says, “I trust you. You’re a trustworthy person Joe,” and that means almost as much in itself as whatever I would share with them. So yeah, that’s a super cool element of community.
Kris Gamble: Getting a little more practical, how did these communities actually form, and particularly as somebody that’s been an instigator of community, what kind of thoughts do you have on that?
Joe Spiccia: If I think back on the house thing, I think it was you who said, “I want to do this and I want to do this in this way.” That really did inspire me and led me to, I think, take on more of that approach with my own desires of community in the future.
With the guys group, I remember feeling this deep desire to be growing in my faith and this conviction that my faith was stagnating at that time. I wanted something more than what I had.
Just listen to that voice which I believe is God saying, “This is who I’ve made you to be, go out and pursue this.” And then reaching out to other people and being vulnerable. It was scary, I sent an email out to 10 or 15 guys and just said, “Hey, here’s the thing. I’m feeling isolated. I’m feeling like I’m not pursuing the Lord. I love you guys and I want to get to know you better. I want you to know me. Is there anybody else who’s feeling that way?” It’s a vulnerable thing, to open that door, but, at least in my situation, it really paid off and it really spoke to other people who are feeling the exact same way.
I think a constant desire that people have is community, they just need someone to start it. That listening and then taking a step forward felt like the way that I’ve been able to pursue community, and then it ends up being this colossal, super meaningful thing in my life that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
So it’s totally worth the risk, I guess, is what I mean by that.
Kris Gamble: Was that email to 10 or 15 people, were those randos, or were those people that you had a decent depth of relationship with already?
Joe Spiccia: They were all people that I knew; some of them I knew really well, and some that I didn’t know very well, but mostly we knew each other. I would say that most of us have this fun element of, we love being around each other. It doesn’t have to be this challenging, hard thing necessarily, that I’ve got to put myself through this hard situation in order for community to happen.
I think in some ways it should start with, I want to enjoy other people. And in this case it was people who I already enjoyed, but even in that it still can be scary. It was a little bit, because you don’t want to put yourself out there, and then everyone’s like, “Nah, I don’t really feel that, I’m good or I’m too busy,” or whatever.
That’s part of my personality too, I can be a people pleaser and I really want people to like me, to agree with me. It makes me feel comfortable. So anytime I do that, it is a risk for me. But thankfully these are all guys that I knew and they were on board as well.
Kris Gamble: I’ve said this – maybe on another podcast, I can’t remember – that a currency of relationship is trust, and that maybe there was a trust coin out there that you had with some of those guys that you invited to cash in and say, “Hey, would you want to try this thing that may or may not fail?” It doesn’t necessarily have to happen with that currency coin of trust, but I think in church groups where communities form, there is a trust currency with the organization forming it that provides this stability for people who don’t know each other that well to be able to have some level of safety or the right ingredients to step out and try something new like this that can be risky.
I wanted to say that the email you sent casted a vision. Something that I think helps create biblical communities is a shared vision for what this thing is that we’re hoping to be a part of, belong to, and ultimately journey spiritually together towards.
I remember in those early days it ended up almost everybody you emailed showing up to the first meeting. In those first couple meetings we did do some vision casting where we were like, what do we want this to be? How do we want to structure it? Do we want to go through a book? Do we want to go through some sermon series? We somehow ended up on what you mentioned earlier, having a different person bring the Word, so to speak, each week. It was fun and beautiful and different. We did that for at least a couple years, meeting every Wednesday night.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah. With this group that I’m in now at my church, the point is to train us in how to have our own group that we will lead and facilitate, of other men. One of the things that our leader said was, we encourage and it’s a good thing to co-lead or find somebody else that you’d want to do this with. I think that is an approachable way that’s awesome. In something that somebody might think, I need to do this on my own and I need to be the leader, or there needs to be one leader. It doesn’t have to look any certain way.
There’s a beauty to, like you said, having a shared vision where me and Kris just get together and we say, “I don’t know if I’m going to do this on my own, but are you interested in this? I trust you and I know you, let’s both talk about it and figure it out. Let’s message some other guys that we know or whatever that looks like.”
There’s all kinds of ways and none of them are the right way.
Kris Gamble: I really like that point because Jesus sent the disciples out in groups of two – again, I don’t know that that has to be mandated to do it that way – But there’s a sense of accountability to staying true and one person not dominating when two people are leading out in that. In fact, two is a community of two that you are wanting to invite more into, in a sense. So, kind of multifaceted.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah. To some of the other points about how it’s formed, that shared vision obviously stands out.
The commitment is another piece that is tricky. I think that’s probably harder because you can’t make people commit to something, right? You can set up a structure and say, here’s what we’re going to do, are we all good with that? But we found in every group I’ve ever had or been a part of, there’s always people that will come sometimes and won’t come other times. Maybe there’s people who have bailed on groups in the past completely. And that’s just hard. It’s hard to deal with and it feels like your group’s falling apart or your community doesn’t have any structure to it. But it’s such a balance to be found; people have lives and they have their own things going on and their own agendas and priorities, but also we need structure if we’re going to make this thing happen. That’s where I do feel like either it’s co-leading or finding another group of maybe two or three other people who are on the same page as you, rather than saying, okay, I’m going to try and hold this thing together, because that is the burnout recipe for sure.
I think if anything, it’s more important to either be a facilitator for a church, so there’s that structure there that’s provided by your church, or you’re going into it with other people so it’s not just you trying to hold everything together.
Kris Gamble: To that point, I think the maybe more biblical or scriptural example, and I’m open to your thoughts on this, is that community exists within the context of a church such that the community is subject to the leadership and oversight and mentorship and vision of something bigger than itself. Again, it doesn’t always have to be that way. We had a wonderful community, some guys that all belonged to different churches coming together.
Joe Spiccia: My last point on how it’s formed goes back to honesty and a shared struggle. A really good community doesn’t necessarily have to be founded on, here’s the guy that’s got it all down, and then here’s the people who want to get it all down that are going to follow them. Oftentimes it seems like it’s almost the opposite. It’s, I am struggling here and I need help and I need community and I need more of the Lord.
That in itself will bring people together. And then from there, maybe there’s a common struggle or maybe there’s a group that forms to help someone else and that just leads to deeper community. Maybe it’s not a formal thing, maybe it’s an unstructured community, but that’s a good place to start too, I think.
Kris Gamble: Yeah. To that honesty and shared struggle, where have you seen community in your life done effectively and maybe conversely done ineffectively?
Joe Spiccia: I guess there’s been a lot of different versions of community.
Kris Gamble: Give us the juice, you know what I mean? Those raggedy institutions.
Joe Spiccia: The juice, yeah. I think a lot of times where I felt like this doesn’t feel like a good community to me is when it feels like there’s a really strong pressure to be there, and if you’re not, then you shouldn’t be a part of this group anymore. Or, the rules win, so if you don’t follow all the rules, then you’re out. Or, what we talk about has to be confined to these certain things. Again, it’s the structure versus the openness. I feel like what has most often gone wrong in my situations of community is structure gets way more of a priority and there’s just not any grace, and people don’t want to be a part of that, it’s just not fun and it’s not a picture of who God is and how He sees us. So I would say those are the main ineffective examples. I don’t want to name a particular group, but I think we’ve all been a part of a group like that.
I just, I do feel like there’s been so many versions of effective, but to me it comes down to, are we talking about what’s real here? Are we still enjoying each other? There’s a couple elements to it where we’re actually getting closer to each other in this process.
The guys group that we had was a version of, this is cool from a time perspective, – it’s been a couple years and we’re still meeting. How awesome is that? – but also from a depth perspective that we were able to get closer to each other and get closer to the Lord in the process and encourage each other and all those things we already talked about.
And then at the end to be able to celebrate and not be like, oh, it’s dead we’re not meeting anymore. God must be mad about this, or there’s something wrong with us. But to celebrate what God gave us in that period of time, I think is a sign that that was healthy; there was something effective about that.
Also, for a church facilitated group or a church sponsored group, the structure there that feels effective is that I’ve walked away with a feeling of, I’m cared for, I feel more known, I feel trusted that people want me to to be a part of this church on the whole, that they want me to lead in some sort of capacity.
I think there’s all kinds of different ways you can feel like it was effective, but the ineffective sort of comes back to the overly structured .
Kris Gamble: I’ve led some groups and I can have this tendency to try to over control the outcome or want to make sure that everyone’s sharing their story at some point, or that everyone shares, otherwise they’re not being authentic.
I think that pressure is such a good word. That pressure that people have to be a certain way, look a certain way, and the leader’s temptation to control it can quench the work of the Spirit
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s a really good example. Another one is, do I feel listened to, or are people just vying to talk to get their point across? That’s a hard balance because some people are talkers and some aren’t. I think it oftentimes does come down to the facilitator or the leader and whether they’re able to navigate the different personalities in a group. That’s a really tough thing to do and I’ve seen it done well and I’ve seen it done poorly and I’ve probably been on both sides of that.
One last thing on that; I’ve been a part of a group that was what I would call transparent. And transparent is great. It sounds like you’re taking some risks, but really you’re just saying what is a fact or what is easy versus vulnerability, which is really taking a risk by saying it. That, to me, is what brings things deeper. Transparency is just surface level and pretending that you’re really going deep.
That’s a tough thing to distinguish and I think you can really only truly do that within yourself. That’s another one that I feel is ineffective as a participant in a group, at least you can say I’m really not sharing. I’m really not letting people know me even though I’m sounding like I am.
Kris Gamble: Another thought that comes to mind is asking questions and being curious. I think these are things that will draw out creating a space to feel heard. For people to be curious, but not necessarily leading so much as to where you think you want the conversation to go.
For example, if you shared something and instead of being curious and saying, can you share more about that? Saying, well, don’t you think that made your wife feel …?
Joe Spiccia: Yeah.
Kris Gamble: You’re asking question but you’re really just trying to make a point and that’s not curious.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah. And it’s not safe either. People will sense that. I shouldn’t share anymore because this is how it’s getting dealt with. So, yeah, that’s a big one.
Kris Gamble: Well, I think you’re somebody that makes people feel safe. I’ve seen people from all kinds of backgrounds and political beliefs and ideologies feel safe around you. I wanted to try to uncover, what do you think it is? Obviously the Spirit in you, and love, but what do you think it is that offers that safe place to people?
Joe Spiccia: Part of my background is that I have often felt unsafe. I felt like I needed to prove myself, so community for me was this sort of a safety net where – probably to some unhealthy extent – I found my worth in community. I think as that’s advanced, I’ve continued to really subject myself to other people and hear them take big risks with me.
That’s probably the biggest part from a human to human perspective is somebody saying, I’m going to share something with you because I trust you. Maybe I didn’t even earn their trust, but they were willing to go there. That helped me see what a catalyst for depth and richness and community with other people could be.
I think I’ve really tried to foster that in myself too as a result. Being a safe person I think comes from feeling safe, and that’s because other people have been that for me. It’s something that’s a byproduct of being a part of community with people who are healthy and know that you can be trusted and they can be trusted.
Kris Gamble: I think judgment is something that is not safe; judgment derived by thinking you’re better than somebody else because they struggle with X, and the reality is we’ve all fallen short and we all sin and we’re all capable. I don’t know if there’s particular scripture behind it, but I think we’re all capable of any sin given the right circumstances, whether it’s intoxication or just desperation. You know, who knows what we would do? We’re not above any particular sin, and if we go into group community or we go into relating and we have this pride or we have this judgment, that kills safety quickly.
I think humility and lack of judgment invites that safety.
Joe Spiccia: I’ve felt a fear of rejection for a lot of my life, and I think knowing that I’m not rejected by a person or a group of people, and that it’s not a one time thing for me. It’s been like a process.
Knowing that somebody’s not going to reject me because I tell them this about myself, that is what has allowed the door for me to be open to becoming safe in that way because it’s been given to me. Once you have that and once you see that it’s possible, you want to be that person for other people too.
I’m so grateful for those people in my life that have been non-judgmental of me. And you’re one of those people, Kris, for sure.
Kris Gamble: Well, thank you. The truth is, I’m often judgmental but I am not judgemental all the time and people see those times. Or I am being judgemental and it might be hurtful. Particularly with my wife, I judge her and she sees it and it stinks, but my goal is to not be judgmental. My goal is to be equal and equally as in need of a friend and of a savior.
Joe Spiccia: You brought up the point of marriage and I was thinking about that a lot because that’s something that I can forget is a version of community as well. Maybe not the exact version that we’re talking about in the broader context here, but people talk about the sanctification of marriage, it’s in the same way there’s a sanctification of community and friendship and all these things. What’s hard about marriage is you can’t escape from those deeper things in yourself, they just come out like they wouldn’t in other relationships. It has been such a good, healthy, difficult community for me in marriage, but I want more of that. You know? I want more of that with my wife and I want more of that with my friends because it’s sanctifying me. It’s chiseling out all of these things that I didn’t even know were in me. I think at the end of the day, if the result of community is that for me, then I want more of it.
Kris Gamble: Maybe one of my final thoughts here is, the goal of community is not to not hurt each other. It’s not to be perfect or look perfect. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. It’s to be able to be at the place where you can be who you actually are, which is broken, and therefore going to hurt somebody, and yet still being loved and received and forgiven and repentant and keeping that commitment to continue on.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah. Amen.
[Kris Gamble: Well, anything else you think we didn’t touch on? I mean, we probably hit everything that could have been said about community by now.
Joe Spiccia: Yeah, definitely. We didn’t even scratch the surface, but it’s a good start and I think it’s worth the time to think through, but also just to live; go out and talk to people and love people and know that community is surprising in the joys that it can bring and the growth that it can bring.
It’s the way that God intended it, for us to live in community. It’s a beautiful thing.
Kris Gamble: Well, thank you Joe for your time today; such a pleasure and I look forward to our next phone call when we do our micro community and catch up on our lives.
Joe Spiccia: Let’s do it soon, man. This is fun.Thanks Kris.
Kris Gamble:Thanks Joe.
During different seasons of her life, Karlene Cannon has seen God show up among His people in a variety of ways. This week, she shares with Rosanne Moore about how each spiritual community that she has been part of has been a place where God revealed Himself.
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Transcript
Rosanne Moore: Hello Larger Story audience. We are so happy to have you back with us today. I’m Rosanne Moore, your host today on the Relational Spirituality Podcast. And I have Karlene Cannon, a co-host. She’s getting interviewed today because when we first introduced this podcast we had such a fun conversation that we both walked away going, we need to do this more.
So, it’s my turn to ask Karlene some more questions today. Karlene, thanks for being here.
Karlene Cannon: Thank you Rosanne. I’m really looking forward to our conversation. I love talking to you.
Rosanne Moore: I love talking with you too. So part of the whole Real Church conversation that we’re having comes from our deep dive into Larry’s book, Real Church. What is it? Does it exist? Where can I find it? Those are some of the questions he asks. What would make me want to go to church? Those are some of the questions he wrestles with in the book, and I think they’re highly relevant. Maybe they always have been, but they’re certainly highly relevant in our culture today.
Let’s start with, what has been your experience with church? If you gave an overview timeline, what has that looked like for you?
Karlene Cannon: I was thinking about that yesterday before this conversation and was surprised by my own internal reaction to the question as I started to really consider my journey with church.
I’m going to hopefully not get too emotional. I was actually driving in the car as I was thinking through this and had a few teary moments. I think when I think about my first experience with church, I grew up in a Christian home. I was very fortunate and we went to a little country church. I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and we lived probably 20 minutes from this downtown area, but another 20 minutes out was just country. Now it’s all big suburbs. We went to this small little church and it was like a family reunion every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. That was my sense of family.
I was an only child and was adopted. My parents had waited for a child for a long time. So that was where I had a sense of siblings and aunts and uncles. In fact, in that time period, I called all of the adults of the church, aunt this and uncle that. That was just how we talked to each other.
That was a very safe, secure home family experience. Then, when I was 10 years old, my parents got divorced and it was like the church divorced us. In 1980, you just didn’t do that in church settings. There was nothing in that little church that was there for us, and because I guess it was smaller, maybe there was some sense of divided loyalty. I don’t know. I was young, so I’m not really sure, but we left that church and left my family behind. That was my first experience of what is now thought of as church hurt; the whole side of dealing with human humans, that is hurtful. It happens in church too. We moved from there to a larger church that had a singles group and a more robust children’s and youth program, and that became a home church and was a really good place for me to land. Me and my mom, we met other families that were made up more like ours, single mothers and divorced parents.
That’s where I spent my junior high and high school years and really where I grew up in my faith. I was really fortunate to have adults that cared about young people and noticed me and invested in me.
I became my own steward of my faith in that church. That was really important. I learned a lot of spiritual disciplines and because of my personality and the way I had chosen to do life, that fit very well for me. The whole, check the boxes and do all the right things, you have your quiet time every day, so you have a good day. It really worked for me. I did get to know Jesus through that. I was doing it in a lot of ways for the wrong reasons. I very much bought into that. If I do these right things and pray this way, and take these sermon notes, then I will succeed in life and have a blessed life. But it worked.
Then I went to college and went to a very secular university. My faith was challenged everywhere, in every class and every interaction. I turned to my church for support in trying to navigate that. I had a conversation with my pastor at home and asked him questions of things that I was running into in college. I don’t remember much of the conversation except him just saying, “This is a unique situation. Most kids don’t run into this stuff in college. I don’t really know what to tell you.” I was shocked by that. That was my second experience of, I really need something here, and not only do you not have anything to offer me, but you don’t really care. It was kind of a cavalier, I’m sorry, I just can’t help you. At least, that’s how I remember it; I could be remembering it unfairly, but that’s how it landed with me.
Fortunately, God is the one who is orchestrating my path. I went back to school and found some people there and a church there that had more answers to my questions and that had more affinity with the journey that I was on. It was a very formative time in my life. In some ways I’m really grateful to that pastor because he left me in a desert where I had to decide: do I know God? Have I really experienced something that is more real and more true than anything I’m hearing in all of these classes and all of these conversations? What is really meaningful? What is really solid? I was pushed to a place where I had to decide.
I don’t remember the exact moment, but I remember very clearly this point of decision where I was brought to tears because I knew, not rationally, but with everything in me, I knew that I knew God, that God was real and that He had sought me out and that I was His. Even though I had made a profession of faith as a kid, and would’ve said I was “ saved” and baptized as a child, there was that moment where, in the midst of not having what I thought I needed from church, I was very certain that I had what I needed from God. I’m actually really grateful for that.
Rosanne Moore: Say that again! In that moment that I knew… I’m not going to say it the way you did. Say it again.
In that moment you weren’t getting what you needed from church, you knew that you were getting what you needed from God.
Karlene Cannon: Exactly. In the stripping away of not getting what I asked for from church, not getting my questions answered, not getting the encouragement or even just being taken seriously – some of what I experienced, it just felt like, you don’t even care – God was there. God was taking me seriously. God was answering my questions and He answered them in ways that, perhaps, I would’ve wanted a different answer; I might’ve wanted a rational, point by point, logical argument, but He came in and gave me something I never had before. This certainty, this relational experience of with-ness, that went beyond the rational argument.
And for that, I am so grateful. I could look back at the pastor and wish that he had been more supportive, but in some ways – I think this is a lesson for all of us when we talk to people – in some ways it was his failure to meet me where I was at that kept my heart hungry for God and kept me open to this other opportunity where God wanted to meet me in a way He hadn’t before, or that I hadn’t been available for. Even in my earlier experience, I learned that, whether it was conscious or not, in the human failings that I had experienced at church, that God stepped in and filled in the gaps, and if I was open and expectant that I found Him in new ways that I don’t know if I would have thought of that consciously. I think I was collecting these experiences where I was being disappointed, but God was showing up in unexpected ways.
Rosanne Moore: I think that’s such an important distinction, because there’s nobody who’s not in the process of being sanctified. The best people are still in the process of being sanctified. Which means they fail. We all fail. I think what you’re describing is the difference between church hurt and church trauma.
What you’re describing is things where people didn’t have ill intent toward you, but they just didn’t meet your needs – where they were in their own journey, there was growth that they needed and so they couldn’t meet you in truth the way you needed.
Karlene Cannon:That’s an important distinction. I agree with that.
Rosanne Moore: I think that’s really different from a person who is deliberately using spiritual power to do harm for their own gratification. For those who have experienced that category, I think the process of finding God in the middle of that can look very different.
But, because our culture tends to put things in big baskets, the distinction you’re making for people who have been failed in some ways, not harmed. There’s pain. There’s harm. There’s hurt. That’s a good word. There’s hurt. There are consequences to somebody not meeting you the way that you need it, but that is different from trauma. What you’re saying is so important because it empowers a person to go on with God and not wait for somebody else to get it right.
Karlene Cannon: That’s really important because I don’t get it right. I fail people in my best intentions, and part of being in relationship is extending grace and and hoping that grace is extended to you. I think it underscores both the importance of really seeing people before you maybe act or respond, really trying to get inside what they’re asking for or what they’re needing.
But also trusting that, just like with me and my story, that God is on their journey with them. Just like He’s on the journey with you and he has all of those possibilities held in His hand. I think that’s part of what makes Christian community frightening, at least for me, is the fear that I’m going to fail somebody in a way that would damage their faith.
My own experience of that, when I’m really thinking clearly, gives me confidence that God has them just like He held me. He could use my failure, which, honestly, my pride hates this thought, but He could use my failure in their life just like He used other people’s failure in my life.
It’s not just that I was failed. Lots of people stepped in and showed up in ways that were really profoundly good. It’s just in some ways the failures catch your attention because you’re not necessarily expecting them.
Like CS Lewis says, “God shouts in your pain.” Those are sometimes the ways He most effectively gets your attention, because when you’re not experiencing pain, I think, or at least I can be deluded into thinking, I’m actually walking with God when I’m maybe walking away from Him or at walking farther from Him.
Rosanne Moore: I think too, just from a sanctification standpoint, I know in my own life God has made me sensitive to things He needed to change in me by letting me experience that kind of poor behavior from somebody. It’s like when somebody treats you badly in a particular way, all of a sudden you realize what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that and it can make you very aware that that’s not how you want to be. It’s the whole difference between trying to behave well and really having a heart to want to do the right thing instead of feeling pressured to do the right thing.
Sometimes that really does come out of experiencing somebody else’s sin and realizing that is not the person I was created to be. That’s not the person I want to be. And the Lord can use that.
Karlene Cannon: You’re right, He uses everything.
It’s interesting, this whole exercise of mentally preparing for this conversation. I don’t know that I’d ever reviewed my trajectory, my story of church, but it is very interesting that the story unfolds how that pattern of real growth and substance and newness would happen at each church I went to. Then there was some sort of pain or failure or disappointment that moved me to the next place.
So when I look back at my whole story of church and the people in the church as I moved from church to church, I just did the normal sort of development of life, moving different places.
I was thinking about that yesterday. In each situation I got something profoundly transformative for my spiritual walk. A new, almost breathtaking way of seeing life and knowing God. And I also got a hefty dose of pain and disappointment.
I moved from my home church to college and found a church in college that was really different than the church I had grown up in – very experimental with their worship. I remember clearly, worship services where they just did all music from Africa or all Jewish music or just these really different worship formats that were not the hymns that were in my little red hymn book that I had sung my entire life.
It really expanded my way of worshiping. The pastor was a really good communicator and preached this whole series while I was there on grace. That completely blew my mind open to what grace actually is and what the gospel really accomplished.
It was so ironic because I remember sitting in those worship services just being this sponge that soaked up this different take on theology. Then, two years later, we discovered that he had been having a 26 year long affair with his secretary. What I had received from him that felt so true and real then comes into question because, obviously he was making choices that didn’t align with what he was saying from the pulpit, and so I had to wrestle with that and just trust again that God was speaking through this man to my heart in ways that nobody else had up until that point. I could trust what was true because I was hearing that from the Spirit of God, not from this man who had failed morally in his personal choices, and could be grateful for that. It could be sad for the church, we had moved on by then, we had graduated and moved to a different city, but I could still be grateful for what God had given me even though it felt icky, honestly.
Rosanne Moore: I would imagine you’d have to reevaluate, what part of it was true and what part of it was his distortion to justify exactly his behavior.
Karlene Cannon: Exactly. I think, there’s always something good in the reexamination of, because – a lot of things were happening in my life in college – and I was just open to hear truth, what else was I open to?
Being able to reexamine and refine and and go back to God with these theological principles and wrestle them out, it was an opportunity to do that. That probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t heard that news and called into question what we had listened to under his teaching.
So I do think as I look back – and my story gets a little more, I wouldn’t say necessarily traumatic in personal trauma, but there was some trauma – as I look back at those early experiences, I’m very grateful for the way God kindly shepherded me into evaluating what I was experiencing at church.
I don’t think I thought of this until yesterday. Almost training me for what was coming and giving me a good foundation of being open to the goodness that He was offering me through these different experiences and being resilient and careful to steward where I put my trust in the painful times, so that when some of these other things happened, I didn’t have the same foundational shaking of my faith because I had these experiences where God had kindly carried me through smaller pains, if you will, such that when the larger things happened I had something to fall back on. I had an experience with God that I could count on even when my current experience was very unsettling and painful.
Rosanne Moore: The term deconstruction gets used a lot, and while that can be a literary term, it’s not often used that way when we’re talking about church. I think unbundling maybe is the word that I like better. Skye Jethani on the Holy Post Podcast used that.
It sounds like the Lord had already guided you through a practice of unbundling as you went sifting through, all right, what part of this is God, what part of it is not right. You already had a process or a practice, almost like a spiritual discipline in place, to be able to continually unbundle and reexamine what is of God, what is true, what is not.
I saw that in a church environment that I was in, it was very abusive and very damaging. The people who were harmed the most were the ones who came to Christ in the middle of that because they had no other frame of reference. Those of us who already had a strong foundation with the Lord could pass through that. It was definitely harmful, but it did not shake our core belief in God the same way.
I think that’s why, because we already had a sense of who He was that had not been shaped by that environment.
Karlene Cannon: I think that’s really important. I think that’s why, as I was thinking yesterday, that experience in college became so much more important in my mind, because it was where I really became personally convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was real. That He loved me, that He chose me, that I was His.
And all of the other things could shake that; I wasn’t impervious, but He was. He would hold me through whatever, and that just was personally mine. You could do a lot of things to me to hurt me, but you couldn’t take that from me unless I chose to give it away.
That was my experience, my choice, my conviction, and it wasn’t shaped by my circumstances. In fact, I work for Larger Story, and I’ve been working on a course of Larry’s material. I’ve been reading so much Larry, but I read a statement that I hadn’t actually seen before, or it hadn’t stuck with me, that was so profound. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect of, “God promises to form me, but He doesn’t promise to form my circumstances.” It crystallized what I had experienced. The story keeps going. In all of these circumstances, God was faithful to form me, whether it was the pain of leaving my little church family or my pastor, or not answering my questions or on and on. He was always forming me. And my frustration with the situation was that He wasn’t forming my circumstances the way I wanted Him to. But that’s when I could step back from that pain and disappointment and see the good work He was doing in me.
That’s what He promised in Romans eight. He’s forming me and if I can be really glad for that, really grateful, and hold on to that, it gives me the strength to weather the circumstances that He’s not forming the way I want Him to.
While I don’t think I could have articulated that, certainly not that clearly as it was happening, I do think that’s what was happening in me. Some recognition that the forming that was happening in me was more important than what was happening around me, at least for my personal walk with God.
Rosanne Moore: I think ultimately, even with church trauma, you’re still not at the mercy of circumstances. The process looks different. It is a lot harder for somebody who has no other sense of God than what they’ve had from an evil person misusing His name. But He still knows you and wants you, and there is still a path forward. Nobody else can take away your ability to find God.
I think that’s, part of what I’m hearing that’s really key to understand is, we still can come to God with all the broken pieces, with all of the confusion; whether it’s setting aside and recognizing that there’s just hurt that we forgive and we move on and we still choose Him, or whether there’s a really hefty process of taking apart and then finding Him in the middle of the brokenness. He’s still there and He still wants to be known and He still loves us and He doesn’t break a bruised reed. He says that. There’s a tenderness in His dealing with us, in drawing us on to know Him, and He can still be known. Even when we’ve experienced great harm.
Karlene Cannon: That’s so good. In fact, maybe go a step further and say, sometimes He can be more readily known or more deeply known because, at least for me, I’m so much more aware of my need in those places of being deeply bruised.
If I can open up my heart to what grace He’s offering, it’s very profound in those moments or seasons of deep hurt. I want the blessed, easy life as much as anyone, maybe more. But when I look back on my journey, the greatest difficulty were the times that I was the most connected to the Trinity and the most desperate for their love and pursuit. And I think, in reality, I’m just as desperate on a good day as a bad day. But my awareness of that desperation is much more accessible to me, and I act on it in a much more passionate way when I’m aware of that desperation.
I think it’s harder to do in the middle of those situations, but as I look back, I can be really grateful for those times, because those were the times where I really grew up in my faith and in my understanding of who God is and how He loves me.
I hear what you’re saying. My story is not as fraught with trauma as many stories are, and I’m grateful for that. But I am grateful for the desperate times. At least right now. Check in and remind me to be grateful.
We moved into adulthood and I got married in college. My oldest is just out of college and I have two boys in college. This is a difficult season for your life in church. I think churches don’t know what to do with young adults very well, and they’re moving a lot, their life is very transitory. We experienced that too. Mostly, as I think about that, we were just looking for friends. You leave college where you have this great friend group and then cast out on this sea of adulthood and it’s somewhat traumatic, going from that college bubble to real life.
We floundered trying to find a church for almost eight years; we just bounced around. We did find a really good group of Christian friends, a small community. We still connect with those guys every year, even though we’re all in different cities now. That was just such a blessing to have friends who are in a similar season and we could just enjoy entering into this season of life together.
Church was a means to an end, if I’m honest, of just finding people in that season. And I’m grateful for that, but I wouldn’t say that it was a significant part of my spiritual life in those years. Then we had kids and, something about having little ones, you have greater needs again.
We had moved to Atlanta by that time and we found a great church here. We were in this church for 12 years. It was a large church, and it just became the hub of our life. Our kids went to school there. Rich was an elder; that’s my husband. We were very involved in their small group or discipleship programs. We went on mission trips with this church. It was a fundamental, significant part of our life.
What started as just a small group that met in our home became, I think what today we would call a home church. We had, regularly for about 10 years, 50 to 80 people who came to our house after church on Sunday. It was that little church I had grown up in, way back in the day. It was basically just an extended family that we did life together for probably about eight years. Obviously that whole experience was very formative for us.
Personally, God reached into my life and shifted some of my theology in ways that had a profound impact on how I lived my life. Mostly, I think God was preparing me for what would eventually be my experience with Larry Crabb and another ministry that’s led by a man named Larry Bolden.
So both Larry’s came into my life in that season, but a lot of that transition for me was moving away from the wrongly held belief that if I was good enough, God would love me enough. If I checked all the right boxes and did all the right things, my life would work out. That kind of worked for me as a teenager, and even into my twenties, but in my thirties, life just got out of control. There were not enough boxes and I couldn’t check enough of them. The relational pain had accumulated enough that I couldn’t escape it. I also developed theologically and gained a real, restful understanding of God’s sovereignty and how He held me, no matter the circumstances of my life. It was walking me toward this way of living in pursuit of relational holiness because of my relational sin, and away from, if I can just get my behavioral sin managed well enough, I’ll be okay. So that was significant. It was a decade of kindly moving me toward that. But, at the same time, like I said, we were tightly integrated in that church and even family members were part of the church. We had some family situations that, I won’t go into detail, but they became very divisive and even though the church was large, it became untenable for both families to stay in the church. It became clear to us that God was moving us somewhere else.
It was very painful. 12 years so tightly integrated and I loved my church. I loved the people. I loved what it stood for. I loved the way it impacted the community. It felt very aligned to my own theological beliefs at that point. It was painful to leave. At that point we did have, like I said, this community group or home church meeting in our house, and they weren’t leaving the church. Pretty much all of them stayed, which I wanted them to stay, but it created this difference of church loss. So, for a couple of years we actually maintained our home church with members from the church we had been at and the church we went to, which was interesting because, we would come from these different services and come to our house and there was a little bit of a culture clash, because the two churches were very different. That was actually a significant learning experience for us, just to see that in microcosm every Sunday afternoon.
We went to this smaller church, which was actually fun to go from the big church. Even though we were well known, I felt like we had the best of both worlds because we had all of the opportunity of a large church and yet we had this tightly knit, smaller group within the church.
But going to a smaller church, especially for our oldest child, was really important. It was a place where she felt much more at home. She was entering high school at the time and it was just a good place for her to land. We’ve made a lot of decisions about church based on what’s been good for our kids, and that was a good decision for us. But in that small church, we experienced a misunderstanding or a misuse of spiritual authority. We also responded to that in ways that weren’t honoring, if we could do some things differently, I probably would do them differently. But we were also dealt with in a way that, I wouldn’t say it was abusive because we weren’t particularly vulnerable, but it was a misuse of authority. I think, had we been vulnerable, it would’ve been considered abusive. One thing about us as a family is when we’re in, we’re all in. We had come in and we had embraced this little church and the people in it and had tightly integrated our life with them, so when we knew we needed to leave, it was difficult. It was definitely a break, and now our kids are involved. They were also at ages where they weren’t very communicative, teenagers are definitely old enough to know what’s going on and not really comfortable talking deeply about what’s going on in them and maybe not even able to really articulate it. It created a lot of confusion in our family about what was happening and why we were making certain decisions. It was just painful, and we had to weather that storm as a family, and even as an extended family because it impacted the people who were part of our community group.
And so once again, we were now trying to process what’s happening and trying to help our kids process it. God, I think, used those circumstances certainly for me, in ways that He had been doing all along. But for our kids, they now had to make some of the same decisions I had to make when I was a teenager, and they had to decide, am I going to trust God even when I can’t trust the people of God? Or am I going to put the sins of the people at the feet of God and blame Him for them? We did have to walk through that together and though I would never choose it, it was a good working out of our faith. I’m grateful for the things that God did, both in me and in my kids.
And that story’s still going on. I had Ivy on this podcast, my daughter, a couple of weeks ago, and she was mentioning a little bit of her experience and I just thought, it’s time to have another conversation. She’s further along and she’s processed more and I’d love to know what God has done in the meantime in her.
Rosanne Moore: Thank you Karlene for sharing all of that. For our audience, I hope that you won’t just listen to this. I hope that you’ll be thinking about your own experience in some of the categories that Karlene talked about and that’ll become a source of conversation with God, maybe to look back and revisit even the narratives that you’ve told yourself and start a conversation with God about, how did He show up? Where did He show up in ways that perhaps you missed at the time? At various points in my life I can look back and see more clearly in retrospect than sometimes I did in the moment. How God was at work.
Karlene Cannon: One more thing I wanted to share; as I was reflecting yesterday, I would say my current situation is less than what I wish it was. The church we go to is solid, it’s a great church. It’s been really good for our kids and for me it’s just not the place I would choose to land, but it’s clearly where God has landed me.
It’s a larger church. The worship service is typical of what you would experience in a larger church these days. Very topnotch, excellent musicians. People that we know really love the Lord, but maybe just not the way I would choose to worship and yet, every time I walk in, almost every time, and I’m just in the worship service and maybe even a little grumpy or wouldn’t have chosen that song or don’t even like it, I then just experience God and the tears just run down my face and I feel embraced by the Holy Spirit. I’m not a hands in the air person, I’m a stand there and sway person. It’s not that kind of emotional experience, it’s just this deep knowing that God is with me. Once again, even when things aren’t ideal in my mind, I can’t escape the fact that God wants me there and meets me there.
I know that it’s trendy, if you will, to question church, to maybe even give up on church. I think there’s lots of things that need to be reformed or done differently, yet it’s still the place where God’s people are and where God is. He says when we gather He’s there, and I experienced that in a way – as I’ve gotten older – that is inescapable.
So keep going to church. Maybe not the one you’re at.
Rosanne Moore: Find some fellowship; somebody in your life that is helping you form into the image of Christ.
Karlene Cannon: That’s right. And don’t give up. God has used the church for 2000 years and he still intends to do that, I think.
Rosanne Moore: Thank you Karlene. We are going to have Karlene next month as well. We’re going to do a little deeper dive into what that home church experience was like.
For our listeners, thank you so much for joining us and we are having a book club right now on Larry’s book, Real Church. If you want an opportunity to discuss and explore with other believers – maybe you haven’t been in church for a while and you’re trying to figure out how to come back, how to sort through all of what your experience has been and figure out what God’s leading you to next, or how to find Him again in the middle of what your experience was – that might be a good way to dip your toe in. To have conversations with some other believers and to be able to revisit what has happened to you, but also to look back and see where God was with you and where He is still with you. So thanks for joining us everybody. We’ll see you next time.
Karlene Cannon: Bye.
Show Notes:
What can church really be? Where is “the Church” heading now? Kep chats with pastor Anthony Vartuli about the “small” church that they have been a part of for the past almost 2years – How do these kinds of deep relationships develop with the Holy Spirit’s leading.
Order Real Church by Larry Crabb: https://store.largerstory.com/collections/featured/products/real-church-does-it-exist-can-i-find-it
Anthony Vartuli’s Bio:
Anthony Vartuli served as a pastor in various different churches for 27 years. He has also served as a spiritual director in Larry’s School of Spiritual Direction for the past 7 years. Presently, he serves as a hospice chaplain. Anthony holds a Masters in Theology (with an emphasis in pastoral counseling) from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Masters in Biblical Counseling from Colorado Christian University, and a Doctor of Ministry degree (with an emphasis in Spiritual Formation) from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Anthony is married to Diane, who together have 3 children. Both have enjoyed a lasting friendship with Larry and Rachael Crabb since 1995. Larry has also been a trusted mentor as Anthony and Diane have dealt with both the joys and the difficulties of life. Anthony enjoys playing golf, reading books, and hanging out with his family. People have described Anthony as a calming presence, perceptive when it comes to the movement of the Holy Spirit in other’s lives, able to meet people where they are, not where they are supposed to be.
Have you ever had a conversation in which you were passionately sharing what you believe is true only to realize that the other person has completely disconnected from what you’re expressing? Or maybe the discussion spirals downward into an argument. In today’s episode, Relational Spirituality Host Rosanne Moore is joined by her daughter Anita Grace to explore how we can become better listeners, more influential mentors, and more connected members of multi-generational spiritual community, in spite of social divides and competing narratives.
Anita Grace Moore’s Bio:
From the time she was a young girl, Anita Grace wondered about the “why” that was behind people’s choices. A simple “because” or “that’s just how it is” left so much unsaid, and to her, that piece of how humans exist and interact has always been the most vital.
Anita Grace is a college student who is studying to be a trauma therapist. She volunteers at various counseling setups that incorporate animals to gather knowledge to personally use in her future career. Raised in a Christian household, Anita Grace constantly grapples with how to lead life of faith centered around authenticity. Her hope is to make Jesus known and give back through therapy and the practice of holding space for the pain of others.
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Show Notes:
We are created in the image of a God that exists in Community. On today’s episode, Kris Gamble is joined by one of his closest “brothers in Christ,” Taylor Huse, as they discuss: What is Christian brotherhood Biblically and what is it practically? What are some of the obstacles we face that can prevent this type of relating? All while sharing stories that span from being roommates and co-leaders of a ministry while in college to what their friendship looks like today.
Taylor Huse’s Bio:
Taylor, a former CPA and former attorney for the IRS, helps commercial and nonprofit entities with their tax needs.
He started his career working as a CPA at Ernst & Young for three years before enrolling at the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school, he worked in the Office of Chief Counsel for the IRS in Washington, DC for three years.
Taylor’s experience with nonprofits has given him an understanding of their unique goals and needs and fueled his passion to provide these organizations with quality legal advice and services. He spent part of his childhood as a missionary kid, including living in South Africa shortly after the end of apartheid, and in college he interned at the global headquarters of a multinational mission organization. In 2020, he co-founded a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping individuals experiencing homelessness and continues to serve on its board. Taylor also found time in law school to give back, serving as president of the Law Christian Fellowship.
Although he isn’t originally from Colorado, the area is a natural fit for his love of hiking and skiing.
Having just moved to Colorado, Taylor will work on federal tax issues until he is admitted to the Colorado Bar.
Show Notes: Aren’t we all starving to be known and to know others? Join Karlene and her daughter, Ivy Hill, as they talk about the beautiful mess that is community, relational holiness, and real church!
Get your copy of Real Church: https://store.largerstory.com/collections/featured/products/real-church-does-it-exist-can-i-find-it
Ivy Hill’s Bio:
In fifth grade, Ivy wrote one thing in her journal: “My goal- Get into Duke.” Seven years later, she met that goal, which tells you a lot about her enormous capacity and remarkable work ethic. But as a junior in high school, she confessed to her parents, “I have learned if I make my goal anything but loving other people, I will run right over them and do a lot of damage in the process.” And now you see a glimpse into her unusually self-aware and wisely beautiful heart.
While in high school, Ivy fell in love with two young kindergarten students who had just come to the country and spoke no English. She tutored them for 4 years and watched as the language barrier caused them to fall further behind their peers with each passing year. The pain of watching their love and excitement for learning erode as they faced overwhelming obstacles kindled a passion in Ivy to teach and help newcomers overcome the challenges of school while learning a new language.
Ivy is the oldest child of Karlene Cannon, Director of Content and Product Development for Larger Story. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 2020 with a degree in Linguistics and Neuroscience, and received her Master’s in Teaching from Union University in 2022. She married fellow Duke alumnus, Jimmy Hill, in 2020, and today they both teach high school students in Memphis Tennessee.
Show Notes: An introduction to the book REAL CHURCH – This week we are changing things up a bit having a little “church service” as Kep Crabb is joined by two of his good friends, Duncan Sprague and James Shelley. Join us this week for a time of worship and conversation about what church has been and what the church could become.
Order Real Church by Larry Crabb: https://store.largerstory.com/collections/featured/products/real-church-does-it-exist-can-i-find-it
Watch the podcast here: https://youtu.be/p0Yljnr3WkA
James Shelley’s Bio:
James Shelley by day, is a product manager at Denver Hardwood Company, and has been actively serving in his home church as leader on the worship team for over a decade. James and Kep met in late
1998, they quickly became fast friends and brothers in Christ, and have played in a band together, led worship at each other’s churches, for nearly 25 years. He is proud to have know Larry, and is excited to see Larger Story grow. James and his wife Brandy have been married for 28 years and reside in a small town on the eastern plains outside the Denver metro area. They enjoy spending time together at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska in the summertime and are avid Denver Nuggets fans!
Duncan Sprague’s Bio:
Originally from the beautiful Pacific Northwest, Duncan Sprague grew up in the rugged mountains and river breaks of Northern Idaho. There, in his late teens, he became a committed Christ-follower.
Duncan completed an undergraduate degree in Bible and Theology from Multnomah University in Portland, OR. Throughout the 80s he served in multiple pastoral positions and regularly led summer mission teams overseas, where he met his wife. Duncan and Angie were married in 1990 and spent their early years of marriage on staff at Multnomah before moving to Denver in 1994. Both worked at Colorado Christian University while Duncan completed a master’s degree and internship in Biblical Counseling. After graduate school, Duncan spent several years in the technology industry, creating online curriculum. In 2001, Duncan returned to full-time ministry.
Today, Duncan is an itinerate, bi-vocational pastor and missionary serving with several ministries,
including Cadence International (Alumni Pastor) and International Christian Ministries (Bible Teacher, Trainer & Trip Leader). He regularly travels domestically and internationally to teach, preach and train local leaders and believers. Duncan brings a shepherd’s heart for spiritual formation and years of cross-cultural experience to everything he does. Duncan and Angie have four adult children.
What is essential to following Jesus? Lillian Jardon shares with Rosanne Moore her journey from striving for God’s approval to resting in His transforming love.
Lillian Jardon’s Bio:
Lillian Jardon graduated from the University of South Florida with a BA in Education, immediately followed by an MA in Education from Southwestern Seminary. Her career as a schoolteacher spans 40 years. Her counseling ministry with Grace Fellowship Int’l was interrupted when she was introduced to Dr Larry Crabb, and she earned an MA in Biblical Counseling under his teaching at Grace Seminary. As a lifelong learner, Lillian later earned a PhD in Clinical Christian Counseling through Cornerstone University and NCCA, and, finally, a Certificate in Spiritual Transformation through Ruth Haley Barton’s Transforming Communities. Lillian has served her church by both teaching and pastoral counseling. She most delights in sharing new covenant truths and their relationship to deepening faith and transforming relationships.
The Ignatian Adventure: Experiencing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in Daily Life
Show Notes:
What gets in the way of having meaningful (spiritual) relationships across generations? Join us this week as we connect with our friend Chad Ibach DMin as he shares with us some of the key insights from his doctorate research on studying the intergenerational spiritual relating.
He concluded in his findings that: fear, lack of skills, lack of trust, physical safety concerns, stress/busyness, sin/brokenness are the main obstacles to meaningful relationships. These conclusions are likely not a surprise, the answer to “What we do about these obstacles?” might surprise you.
- Order The Pressure’s Off
- Join the Reading & Relating Book Club
- The Experience a Grand Adventure Course – Coming Soon
Chad Ibach’s Bio:
Chad Ibach is a senior executive assistant at Community Financial Credit Union in Plymouth, MI. Chad recently finished his doctorate of ministry in leadership & spiritual formation from George Fox University in Portland, OR. Chad has a passion to see others spiritually formed and challenged in their journey of faith. He and his wife, Hailey, both have a passion to see the hearts of others changed through spiritual formation in the church and their surrounding communities. They enjoy spending time with family and friends, watching survivor, and playing outside with their pup, Neville.
Show Notes: Are you riddled with anxiety and overwhelmed by the pressure to perform? Have you every truly experienced the abounding unconditional love of God? Join Karlene and her oldest son, Nick, as they talk about how he discovered the freedom of living from the love of God instead of for the love of God.The prepositions matter. Living for something reduces you to the product of your performance, but living from the source of love and grace, that unwavering smile of Heaven, yields a life of beauty, rest, and freedom.
Nick’s Talk at Furman FCA: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qs9OUbBXdVJ9MAbaWQ44V?si=flHlX98TTBqsihnIpXHS8w
Nick Cannon’s Bio:
Growing up obliged to have conversations that matter around the dinner table, after arguments with siblings, and every Sunday with a larger community of families, Nick Cannon has reluctantly come to appreciate knowing how to deeply engage with others in any circumstance or condition of soul. Nick is the son of Karlene Cannon, Director of Content and Product Development for Larger Story. He is a junior business major at Furman University and plays football there. He is also a photographer and filmmaker and will be releasing his first documentary film at the end of March. You can find his portfolio on Instagram @nickcann0n.
Show Notes: How do we fill in the gaps in young people’s lives? How do we have relationships that are contagious? In this week’s episode of the Relational Spirituality Podcast, Kep Crabb and his guest Roosevelt Leslie discuss basic principles for fostering little moments that can have a significant impact on another’s life.
Roosevelt Leslie’s Bio:
Roosevelt Leslie, is a graduate of Colorado Christian University with degrees in Sports science and Biblical studies. Married to Elizabeth Leslie from Lima, Peru in which they met at CCU (both from families of pastors in ministry), and have been married for 20 years with two sons Micah and Jordan.
Professionally Roosevelt is a health and wellness teacher and head basketball coach at Mullen High school. Mullen’s core principles are Faith in the presence of God, Respect for all persons, Inclusive Community, Concern for the poor, and the pursuit of Quality Education.
Roosevelt also by trade is a personal trainer, life coach, motivational speaker, and mentor. He enjoys spending his time helping youth non profit organizations in the community locally, nationally, and abroad in the capacities of education, sport, mental health, faith, and economic disparities which build people to become whole rounded individuals.
Show Notes: What does it mean for us to show up in life in a way that offers our gifts without a demand that others respond in a particular way? Andrea Wenburg joins Rosanne today to discuss what it means to live in the freedom of embracing our God-given strengths as opportunities to serve instead of pressure to perform.
Andrea Wenburg’s Bio:
Andrea Wenburg is the CEO of Voice of Influence, a leadership and organizational development consulting firm serving the US Government, nonprofits, and businesses of all sizes. She is also a speaker, author of the memoir UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You, and host of the Voice of Influence podcast. Andrea lives in Nebraska with her husband and two teenage kids.
Voice of Influence® https://voiceofinfluence.net/
UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You https://voiceofinfluence.net/unfrozen-book/
Show Notes:
Millennials and Gen Z – What has the Church done right in her efforts to reach these youth with the message of Christ? Where might she (the Church) have gotten it wrong? How can you as a parent best encourage your teenager toward Christ? How might you be an obstacle to your child’s spiritual growth? Tune in to this week’s episode as Kris Gamble hosts his friends, co-laborers, and the youth ministers from their local church as they discuss how to reach the next generation for Christ.
Tyler Abbott’s Bio:
Tyler Abbott is the Associate Student Minister at Community Bible Church in Savannah, GA. He has a passion for the Word of God and discipling students. He and his wife Brittany love getting to be a team as they do student ministry together. They also love to play disc golf and pickleball together with friends, students, and family.
Show Notes:
Do you long to be energized by a beauty that draws you into something rather than a pressure that drives you toward something? Join Karlene and her young friend, Anna Lee as they talk about how pressure has energized too much of their lives and how they both long to be invited by beauty into God’s goodness. Hear about how their relationship spans a generation and gives richly to each of them as they journey together toward relational holiness.
Transcription:
[00:00:24] Karlene Cannon: Hello, Larger Story family. Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m Karlene Cannon and I’m here with my good friend Anna Lee. I want to tell you a little bit about Anna and how I know her and why she’s here talking to me today. Anna is a good friend of my daughter, Ivy. They met at Duke University, which is a really important place to all of us.
As a result, I got to know Anna through my daughter Ivy. Anna lives here in Atlanta where I do. She has been part of our family for a while now. She’s spent Thanksgiving with us. She’s gone on a trip with my husband and my daughter to Italy. She’s just been an important part of our extended family.
And she’s also been working with me on our new course that we’ve been developing for a while now, and will be launching this year. She not only starred in a couple of the videos, but she’s been helping me develop the curriculum and get that set up in the digital format. So Anna, thank you so much for joining me.
I am looking forward to our conversation. Is there anything else that people need to know about you before we start?
[00:01:50] Anna Lee: No, I think, honestly, you covered it all. Better than I could have done. But thank you so much also for inviting me to be part of this.
[00:01:59] Karlene Cannon: I’m really glad to have you. You’re really special to me and to our family and it’s just a delight that you would be willing to join me in this conversation.
So I wanted to get some of the logistical things out of the way first and talk about the course. I think people are interested in that. And it’ll set the stage for some of the rest of what we want to talk about. But tell me a little bit about the role you played in the videos.
I drafted the script and just asked you to step into a role. Tell me a little bit how you felt about that, because frankly I was just amazed at how well you played a role so naturally and I think it really comes off on the videos very well. I think people are going to respond well to them. Tell me what that was like, how you experienced it.
[00:03:02] Anna Lee: Yeah, I think part of the reason why it probably came off that it was natural, because I definitely resonated a lot with the person I was playing. We were talking about The Pressures Off by Larry Crabb and I was playing the role of the person who is always doing and constantly trying to prove their worth by being busy. That is definitely something that I resonate with. I think especially when I was in college, the role that I was playing was almost as if I was a college student.
I’m sure it’s for every single college, but Duke definitely felt at times like one of those hamster wheels where if you stopped running, you would just fall flat, exhausted. But if you kept on running the momentum would eventually get you to the place that you’re going.
And that was pretty much every day. My calendar was booked solid, especially since I was involved in the campus ministry and involved with Cru. There was a lot of the mentality that if I keep on doing things and if I keep on being good at planning this event or, if I get an A in this class or that, that was proving who I was as a good Duke student. At Duke, we call it effortless perfection. There’s the idea that you’re just going to do everything really well, but with almost zero effort, which obviously is completely a lie.
[00:04:51] Karlene Cannon: That’s a phrase that resonates with me. It’s not enough to be perfect. You need to also do that without really expending any effort. When I was in college, I had a significant battle with perfectionism and the disappointment in my performance that I had never experienced until I hit college.
And one of the things that I came out of that with was that my deep longing for perfection is my deep longing for God. God is perfect and he’s effortlessly perfect. It’s just endemic in who he is, and it doesn’t require effort on his part to be perfect. And so, there’s something in my compulsion to be perfect that is of God, and yet I’m not God and so the recognition that was forced on me in my college years, that I’m not perfect and that I can’t be perfect, is actually me trying to take something from God when I’m trying so hard to be perfect. That was a really important part of my journey. And so I wonder how you experienced that and what were the lessons for you in the hamster wheel? You’re three years out, four years out now?
Four years out? You’ve actually had some good years of adulting and living in what can often be an even more vicious hamster wheel, but not as predictable in the feedback that you get. How have you experienced that sort of pressure to perform effortlessly and perfectly after college?
[00:07:11] Anna Lee: No that’s, honestly a great question. I think taking a step back to college. During the summers, I got to this place of just being left with nothing to do.
Which I think is interesting, especially as a Duke student, because there is that pressure of finding an internship or finding the perfect summer job or doing something really impressive with your summer and every summer no matter how hard I would try to plan and, create that perfect summer it, it would honestly fall a little bit short.
One year, I did Duke Engage, which for those of you who don’t know much about Duke, it’s basically a really neat summer program where if you do something in the nonprofit sector, you actually will be funded. And so my family was living in Cambodia. They were actually just moving, and so I really desired to spend time in this culture that they had experienced.
And so I created this independent program in Cambodia through Duke Engage. And I was supposed to be volunteering with World Vision. And essentially, they would give me a job, I would get it done that day, and so every single time I would ask for something, it was oh, we don’t have anything for you right now. Can you wait? They were shocked by the amount of stuff that I was able to do. in such a short time. I guess that was in some ways good because I was able to help at the same time every single day, I would get my task done for that day within an hour or two, and then I would be left at my desk doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the time. Honestly, it was really challenging at first because it was going from that hamster wheel to just having nothing to do. And so I really felt frustrated, but looking back, I ended up spending that time reading my Bible at my desk or like journaling, reading a bunch of books. And through that summer, I was in this prayer group, this prayer service, and I just felt like God put the story of Mary and Martha on my heart and I just felt really convicted about that. And I read it aloud and I just was sharing that I’m totally the Martha, and this summer God just stripped that entire identity really, that I had placed on myself of having the pressure to constantly do things right and just forced me to sit at his feet.
And so I just really felt like that analogy, really rang true and, then again, there was COVID. I had just graduated and I was working with CRU as an intern the summer or the year after I graduated from Duke, and then Covid happened. I probably worked, I’m ashamed to say, probably over 60, 70 hours a week during that year, just because there was always so much that could be done on campus.
And so COVID just hit me like a bullet. All of a sudden you’re done. There’s nothing left to do. And so I took that the week after, I think it was like March 13th that Trump had this announcement of everything shutting down. So the week after I literally fasted and prayed for the whole week.
And again, it was just like, okay, God, I don’t have any plans. I don’t know what I’m doing afterwards. And so really, I need to trust you, and I just need to reset. And so I think honestly, because Covid took all of the possibility of doing that for that summer really of 2020 that I think God really used that to just, again, strip that performance mindset.
Not that I don’t have it still , but it was definitely like “Anna, let’s reset this and let’s come into this with a new kind of mentality of how to live life.
[00:12:22] Karlene Cannon: I think we all have our COVID story and I do think one of the themes across people is how disruptive it was in the way that we were all feeding our interior world and what made us okay. And so I’m curious, as you talk about the times where God just intervened and put the brakes on the hamster wheel- I have this picture in my head, this poor little hamster flopping around when the wheel just comes to an immediate stop- As you sat with God, which I find on the one hand I can appreciate how disruptive that was and, maybe even traumatic in some ways, certainly some of those situations you described. And yet it also feels very kind of God to step into your story in such a visible way. I’m wondering, as you were engaging with him in those sorts of enforced moments of stillness and maybe solitude and quiet, what were you aware of, or did you become aware of what the busyness was doing for you? What was it either protecting or promoting or providing for you? When it was stripped away, did it become clear how it was propping you up in some way?
[00:14:15] Anna Lee: Probably, a lot of people can relate to this, but I think it really was the whole worth of you are what you do.
Really, if you think about it from the world’s perspective, it’s what do you do for me? And, I think that, even when you’re thinking about your friends, it’s always okay, what are they doing for me?
And I think that there are good and bad things, good and bad things to that philosophy of okay, is somebody your friend if they’re only stripping your energy? Because obviously you do have to have that sense of okay, is this healthy? But I think that still is wrapped up in this idea of, okay I’m only going to be friends with you if you make me feel good about myself or if you do good things or if you serve me, and so I think even, from a friendship perspective, that’s big. But then from a cultural perspective it’s all about how we’re performing. Are we contributing to society? Are we contributing?
Even, in the church, it’s like, how are we contributing to the church? And so I think it, it’s this subtle twist of a really good principle of servant hearted leadership. But I think it also can be a slippery slope of when does it stop becoming servant heartedness and when does it actually just become performance?
It’s like buying or selling. I’m doing this for God, so he’s going to bless me, or I’m doing this for other people so that they’re friends with me, or I’m doing this to fill in the blank for my job. So I got a promotion. I’m doing this for my classes. So I get an A, it’s this transactional relationship really, rather than an unconditional love and that’s what the Bible says is Jesus was a servant hearted, but it wasn’t because he was trying to buy anything. Yeah. He had his identity fully set in God and in his identity as the Son of God.
And so I think that for me, there was that slippery slope of okay, I’m trying to do this to win approval. And, for me it was oftentimes to win approval of man and that was my way of buying friendship however bad that sounds, looking back at it.
I think really he showed me at the end of the day, all we have is Christ, right? If we’re not focused on the kingdom of heaven as our ultimate goal, then we’re just filling in and trying to create that on earth, which is just not, it’s never going to actually satisfy.
The people pleasing really got hit a little hard.
[00:17:32] Karlene Cannon: There are so many threads I could pull in what you were just saying. But one thing that stuck in my mind and the way you described how, and I don’t even recall exactly what you were talking about, but you used the words, it’s like this subtle twist and I, kind of hung onto that phrasing because I think so many of our efforts and our desires and the intent that we move toward people with can have this little subtle twist that just takes the goodness out of the servant leadership and makes it more about me accruing something for myself. And I think that happens in all sorts of different situations. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about that because I find, at least for me, what the busyness will protect me from is if I’m moving too fast, I lose track of those subtle ticks that where things go off track in my heart and my head, and It does often take some sort of unforeseen and somewhat unpleasant disruption to bring me back to, oh yeah, that happened and I wasn’t aware of it.
One, how do you experience that and, two, what do you think the role of other people is in that sort of recalibrating or even just increasing awareness of when the internal barometer is off and it needs to be reset .
[00:19:49] Anna Lee: And it’s actually funny because as you were talking I was even thinking back to the course and how we talk about desires. That really hit me that this is the desire that I have, and then this is the action. But again, you’re always going back to what’s the root of it, because the actual desire might not be right. Because God gives us desires and he gives us these emotions, but then what do we do with them?
And, how do those actually manifest in our daily life and in what we’re going for? So I think that was a huge awesome realization for me- the desire is to serve. Maybe when you’re saying, how do you actually tell, I think it’s when you look at your desires and you ask what is my desire behind this action?
If my desire behind this action is because I want to serve this person. They’re going through a really hard time. I want to be there for them in that or is it, I want to be there for that person so that they like me. It’s always having to go back and checking okay, where is my heart at? And so I think that’s where your family has been really instrumental in me unveiling that because as a kid, I was just trained to do things and it was like, if the action is good, then that’s good, as opposed to where’s your heart behind it? Because the action is what gets rewarded. People don’t really think about oh, did she have a good heart? No, they think about, oh, she did this and that was really great that she did this for that person. Or she got an A. That’s really great that she got an A.
Having conversations with Ivy, with you, with Rich, I think one of the things that you all have really taught me is how to actually get at the underlying desire that goes with the action. And I think that’s where other people entering into those conversations with you can be really helpful because oftentimes I’ll be unaware of it. And then if somebody’s like, oh, so why did you do that? Then I’m like, oh yeah, you’re right. I did not do that out of the goodness of my heart. And that’s conviction.
[00:22:50] Karlene Cannon: Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right. What makes God, and sets him apart from us is he doesn’t have those places of fragmentation or misalignment. His desires and his actions and his thoughts and his feelings, are always the same and always consistent and always aligned.
And they all work in harmony. And we got broken in the fall and those things are all out of whack and it often is only through conversation that you become aware of the twists which are slight. I thought that was a really good description because it’s not always glaringly obvious, but most of the time it’s pretty nuanced and subtle.
I’m going to out myself a little bit here- one of the things that I actually find so powerful about these conversations that I have been privileged to have with, you and my own children and other younger people who are friends of yours, is that you are a good reminder and reflection back to me of where things have gotten off in me because I’ve had 30 more years of pain than you have 30 more years of responding to the circumstances of life in ways that are unhealthy, unkind and unloving and have built up protective strategies that are really hard to untangle and not turn to in moments of difficulty. And so often you guys will remind me and point out to me places where my heart has gotten hard or just fallen into some unpleasant ruts or just inappropriate ruts of hopelessness or futility or cynicism.
And so talking with you and others in your peer group is really helpful to me. And I want that to be clear in all of these conversations that you do as much for me, probably more for me than anything I do as I talk to you. I want to go back to one more kind avenue on this performance thing.
One of the phrases that we’ve used in the course that you and I have worked on together that continues to stir something in me is just a simple phrase- what are you energized more by, a beauty that draws you, or a pressure that drives you.
We talk in the course a lot about the beauty of God, the relational beauty of God that draws us to him, versus this pressure that most everybody I talk to has absorbed from our fallen world that we must do and we must do a certain way at a certain level in order to be good like you said.
Have you experienced anything where that sort of energy has shifted? A pressure that drives you to a beauty that draws you in. And would you mind sharing if you haven’t? If not, what do you think are the things that get in the way of that?
[00:27:13] Anna Lee: Yeah, That’s a . That’s a good question . Gosh, I think so.
I really find making space to be a really important part of being driven by the beauty, or being pulled by the beauty that drives you, or sorry, the beauty that draws you as opposed to the pressure that drives you. I think that when I again go with the rat race of okay, I’m going to schedule my calendar.
Every single moment has to be packed. That’s when I find myself really feeling that pressure. And, I think honestly that that, that’s , it’s sometimes hard for me to push back on that because, I and, this might just be me, but I sometimes feel like I do better when I have that pre, like the pressure is like a fire, it’s okay, I was totally that person who wrote papers the night before. Yeah. That they were due and I never was one of those people who could plan out. a month in advance and start on the outline and then and then right as the weeks went on. So I think that there’s that, there’s that reliance sometimes on, okay, I need that pressure in order to perform well.
And so I think what I’ve had to do is allow myself the space to. Rebuke that in me a little bit. And so I think, and I think that that is one of the things that my husband and I are really just, we’ve really just started it, but we were like, we really need to create space for more space for being in the Word and just like allowing that to.
Time as opposed to it just being something that we need to get done. And so we’ve even had it like we started having it via time over dinner because we’re going to have to eat every single night and I’m not very good at waking up in the morning . And so just all transparency, it was not getting done when I was like, oh, I’m going to do this in the morning.
And so even just creating that space of. We’re going to have dinner and we’re going to read the Bible every single night and talk and just allow that to not be a pressure filled time, but instead just be like, okay, it’s going to get done when it’s going to get done.
And I think also, like even nature for me is a really big place where I just feel that. Space. I don’t know, I don’t know a better word for it. Where I can just take a walk and it’s okay this is a time where I’m not going to try to get back before and just, I don’t know, I don’t know if that really answers your question.
But I think just almost pressurizing the space is like just booking it into the calendar so that you can’t actually take it away from it. And I’m not good at it all the time. I’m going to be the first to say, but I think trying to respect that, I don’t know.
I don’t know if that’s a great answer.
[00:30:56] Karlene Cannon:No, I appreciate your willingness to struggle with the question and I find that a really challenging thing as well. And part of it is so much of my Spiritual formation almost has issued the idea of beauty. Like beauty is at best kind of a sort of frivolous empty pursuit.
And to actually get in my head that the Psalms are rife. God with David and the Psalm is talking about how beautiful God is and how he just gazes at God’s beauty, and you know that he’s captivated by beauty. And we all have experienced that whatever kind of beauty it is that draws us and so I think you’re right to say part of it is just becoming disciplined in being aware and being open to how God might invade your day with something beautiful and, with his love.
And so that’s a different kind of spiritual discipline or spiritual reality than most of my Christian life has been characterized by. It is a paradigm shift in a little bit of a, in a way because the pressure does offer its own sort of implicit form of discipline and you have to check boxes.
And there’s a little bit of fear in just being still and seeing what happens so you mentioned your husband Walker, who also has been a part of our lives for the last year, and we’ve greatly enjoyed getting to know him. Tell me a little bit about you guys who have been married a little over a year now.
So how does this idea work? Relationality and relational holiness, relational formation. How does it influence the two of you as you’re building your future and your family as we speak? These were ideas we did not have any notion of 31 years ago when we were in your shoes.
And so I’m really curious to know how you guys have grappled with some of this and you know how it’s impacted your first year of marriage?
[00:33:49] Anna Lee: Yeah. I think it’s definitely been a journey. And I, yeah, and I really also appreciate you and Rich being part of that. I think we both see that having conversations with you two has been really helpful. I appreciate also even you say that you didn’t have that concept, but I think now having that frame of mind and being able to look back and see, okay, this is where we were 31 years ago, and here are the lessons that we’ve learned that’s been instrumental in our lives and also in our marriage so far. We definitely appreciate that. Just to just to put that out. Yeah. But I think to answer your question, I think one of the things that I’ve really gathered and, was something that we set out with was and, now plans are a little bit up in the air of Walker. He was applying to med school. He might be now going into engineering. And so I think. . But with that sort of, again, pressure, , I won’t use that word, but with that idea in mind, we’re OK a year after marriage, he might be going into med school for the next four years and then there’s the whole residency and so there’s going to be, at the time, there’s going to be this 10 year span of intensity.
And so I think when we got married, we have to make the most out of this one year. And not necessarily in terms of doing tons of things, or trying to get as much done, although we’ve, we have also tried to make the most of our time that way. But I think just that urgency of where we really want to spend that time.
First year of marriage and obviously, the rest of the year two, just really focusing on building our relational relationship and getting to know each other and having hard conversations. Because I think that’s one of the biggest things of the idea of relational holiness, is it doesn’t just happen overnight.
It’s not just something that you can switch on because we’re all we’re all people. And so I think that the priority of having hard conversations about where, what our personalities are, where we differ, but also how we see the world, like how our upbringings, how our childhood has influenced and shaped our way of thinking about family or thinking about marriage. That’s been a really big thing that I think we both have really wanted to pursue and think about. And then yeah, and then also just like how, we relate to each other and, With marriage also comes this like constant being with each other and obviously that that exposes a lot of sin issues
And I think even like for me just constantly being like, oh wow, okay. I’m not perfect . I knew that, but having somebody else who’s like a constant witness to your inner thoughts or to your actions at home. Yeah. I think that is a really big accountability.
And so I think even just having to face that both in ourselves, but also in each other is okay, we recognize that this might be an area where we need to grow. How, what does that look like? So I know all the different sorts of areas in which it changes. Those of you who are married, probably think that makes sense. Duh . But obviously for a newly married person, these are the things that you don’t really think about until you’re in that situation.
[00:38:16] Karlene Cannon: Yeah. I think you make a really good point.
It’s ironic that you talked about the newness of having a witness to your good and bad and ugly days, and We were just Rich and I, my husband and I were having a conversation about that. When you’re, for the first time in a one bedroom apartment with somebody and it’s not a roommate who has their own, like you’re building a life together, you are exposed, that’s a really good word.
And a lot of surfaces that you might have thought before you could keep contained. We were just having a conversation about our stage of life. Now we have this house, it has three floors and we have lots of places we can go. In a one bedroom apartment, there’s not very much space that you can use to keep yourselves separated. And he was just sharing about a friend who has a much different living situation and he and his wife struggle in different ways because that very thing you just can’t get away from. And so there’s a real goodness in God in those early years putting some boundaries around your time together.
And I think it’s really wise. One thing I’ve appreciated about you and Walker is you are thinking ahead and thinking about the intensity that could be coming, which by the way will come if it’s med school or something else, but to really take advantage of this year and be very intentional about building a strong foundation.
I don’t think we were smart enough to really be thinking that way when we were your age. I really admire that about you two. And you guys have pursued us probably more than we pursued you in just wanting to, have conversation and wanting to share your decisions and what’s going on, and that’s been, like I said earlier, that’s a really powerful, it’s a powerful witness to me of the internal posture that I think we all should, have of humility of openness of curiosity and Like a real awareness that we need each other. I struggle and certainly would’ve struggled with those things at your age. I was driven by a pressure to figure it out and have it all together and, not only figure, but figure it out on my own.
And, both you and Walker have demonstrated a kind of winsome humility of wanting people involved and wanting to learn and desiring for people to come alongside and be part of your team. And That’s been a very meaningful and privileged experience for me. And I think I speak for Rich when he says that too. So that brings me to where I wanted to land this plane today. And you’re aware of this because you have worked with me here at Larger Story.
But one of the things that we really want to do is to help support people and equip them and galvanize them as they go. Into their world and have the kind of conversation you and I are having and we’ve, we have had in the past and it, and start to make this kind of the norm as opposed to something that people might think is unusual.
If you were to talk to somebody more like in. My side of things, like further along what would your advice or best practices be for someone in my shoes who wants to have a meaningful relationship with people who are younger but may not know how to do that, may not have, like I have some things built in because of my children who have friends. What would you say to someone like me who would love to be in a relationship with someone your age or your stage of life and finds that difficult?
[00:43:30] Anna Lee: Yeah. So I think and, obviously this is from my perspective, , I can’t speak for everyone.
[00:43:36] Karlene Cannon: I know what you have to say, Anna.
[00:43:44] Anna Lee: For everyone my age. But honestly I think it is just a willingness to enter in, because I will say, honestly, like I mentioned before, Walker and I are so blessed by having people like you and Rich who are willing to do that.
Because I think oftentimes there’s for instance in, college and, Was super blessed to be part of a Christian ministry. Where they did have every single person who wanted to be discipled. Had the opportunity to be discipled. And that was huge. Just having somebody who I could go to and say, hey look this is what’s going on in my life and I really could use some godly wisdom. And so that coming out of college especially, it just feels like a vacuum. Like you, like the first year after having graduated, especially if you’re going to someplace new where you don’t have a bunch of people who you know, it can be really lonely and even, especially during Covid that was definitely a hard transition. And so I think just having. I, we, and we just for those of you in the audience we, or who are listening we, just moved to Atlanta and so for us, that was a huge blessing because then we were able to come to your house and, enter into that relationship of, and fellowship.
But not everyone has that connection with somebody who’s older. And I think especially in the church, it can be daunting to go up to someone and say, hey, can you disciple me? Or hey I would love some godly wisdom on this because it’s just a very daunting thing. And so the fact that you and Rich both have offered that and are willing to enter that conversation and willing to give us . Yeah. And especially from somebody who is not our parents, because you really do offer this like unbiased, maybe not completely unbiased , but just like a more neutral space where we can come with problems. And even if they’re occurring in our family like that’s also so helpful.
And so I would just say Be willing to. even make an effort to take the initiative. If you notice someone who’s my age, invite them to lunch because personally I would always try to say yes. I know for, guys , I could speak to Walker. If you have food, he will come.
I don’t think that ever ends. Just having coffee. I’m just kidding. He would come for other reasons , but just having coffee or like having lunch with somebody just to break the ice and get to know each other. And then I don’t know, like seeing where it goes, but I think just being willing to that’s something that I try to do is offer, like invite, but, and I know it’s oftentimes that’s putting yourself out there, and, we’re all busy. So there are multiple facets to that. But I’ve been really blessed by people who in the past have. Offered. And I think that’s made such a huge difference in my life. Cause again, it’s, everyone wants to be known. Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be loved. I really feel like God has just, throughout my life, put people into it who are just willing to do that. And that’s been such an instrumental part of my life. I don’t know how better to say it,
[00:47:59] Karlene Cannon: I love that. I think one of the things I’ve learned later about God is just how invitational he is and it’s hard for me to offer those invitations- my husband and my children are much better at that. I tend to have this sense that people don’t want an invitation from me.
They don’t care if they, if you want an invitation for them or not, they’re just going to offer it. So I actually get to benefit from that a lot, but I think you’re onto something because God’s nature is essentially invitational. That’s the whole story of the incarnation and is, making a way for us to accept the invitation that he’s been offering from the beginning of time.
And being willing to offer an invitation. And it might be rejected, it might not, it might be awkward. All of those things sound more like middle school thoughts than middle-aged thoughts. I don’t think that goes away with age .
[00:49:08] Anna Lee: Definitely not .
[00:49:10] Karlene Cannon: So I think your advice is really insightful and helpful.
Just to have the courage to, to offer the invitation. So one more question on the flip side of that, if you were to talk to other people who are your age or in your stage of life, what advice would you give them about, both about what it means to seek Jesus and, do this adulting thing, but also, how to bring people into that journey with you on?
Especially people who, might be further along and might have a different perspective than, your peers.
[00:49:57] Anna Lee: Yeah. Gosh, I think what I was saying earlier is just the idea of space I think is really important because I think that again, the rat, like the rat race, never ends. The hamster wheel never ends, and you can fill up your time with as much as you want. But, I just think that idea of, and that’s actually something that Walker’s really good at, and he’s very good at setting boundaries and saying, no. I’m really bad at that. And so he’ll actually be like, Anna, you need to say no to that . You need to, it’s five, it’s six o’clock and you’re still doing work.
Anna, shut down your comp. It’s that kind of accountability. And I have a friend who we still will text and just say like, how is your quiet time? Have you been spending time with God lately? And I think that also is just really valuable to have that accountability partner.
Who’s making sure that you’re not just, again, it’s so hard. In the moment I sense like, my desires for this, the desires behind this action are not good. It’s so God has given us a community for a reason. And so I think even having somebody who you can go to, who’s going to ask those hard questions and that can be a peer, it also can be somebody older. And so I think that as long as you have somebody and, honestly, the more people , the better, the more people who, cause there are going to be weeks where you’ll go without talking to one person. And that is, there are just seasons of your life in which I think different people are so instrumental.
But I also think the biggest thing that I’m not always good at is just recognizing I don’t know everything. And so I think that also is really important, and that’s where I think it’s with marriage the whole idea of newly married, that’s something I was like, I don’t know? So that, to me, was a lot easier to go to people like you and Rich and just say, “Hey I would love to know more about how to operate under this because, it’s a new thing”. So, I think even finding those places where you really don’t know anything about this area, or, I really need some wisdom.
And then I think that can also lead into other areas because then once you get into the habit of asking, then it becomes a habit and so then it’s then Karlene, and hopefully you feel like this , because I definitely want you to speak into more areas of my life.
Besides, and I feel like you, you have besides just marriage, but it’s just like getting to know a person and finding one thing that you really would like to develop and maybe it’s a character flaw or maybe it’s a certain situation you’re in. And then find somebody who you feel like has some wisdom on that matter and ask them again. It’s all about the asking. And I think that can go both ways. But it’s about asking somebody Hey, I would love to get coffee with you and learn more about your experience with X, Y, and Z. And they might say no, but also, they might say yes. And then it could actually become really almost like an unofficial discipleship.
[00:53:53] Karlene Cannon: Those are great. That is really good advice, good thoughts. A couple things you said that really stuck out to me when you said something to the effect of, I don’t know everything.
One of the things that’s so daunting for me in these conversations is you come and talk to Rich and I about the first year of marriage and I actually feel incredibly humbled and often almost totally unworthy to have that conversation with you because I’m so aware of what, we didn’t know, what we don’t know how much I fail is, and so there’s actually something redemptive for me in those conversations because it’s, okay.
It’s okay not to know. And I’ll struggle in a conversation to think 30 years and I still am getting this wrong, or I still not further along or and, what I often experience in the conversation is God’s kindness. To remind me that I’m on a journey and, you’re on a journey and our journeys intersect in these really important places and that he promises to be there. And as disappointed maybe as I am, that in 30 years, I don’t have better advice for you. He’s actually not disappointed with me. And that he’s still able to use whatever little bit I offer. Him taking those pitiful little minnows and crusty crumbs of bread and turning that whatever he’s going to turn it into.
Anna, thank you so much. I always like talking to you. It’s always not only enjoyable, but really encouraging and inspiring. Yeah. It inspires me to do more to not settle. So thank you all. Same .
[00:56:25] Anna Lee: I also really appreciate all of you for all the wisdom.
I will argue with that scrap of crumbs and analogy. I’m going to say it’s a lot more than that, but I really appreciate it. All the wisdom that you have given.
[00:56:43] Karlene Cannon: Thank you, Anna. And hopefully we’ll get to do this again. I’d love to talk to you again sometime on screen . Great. Thank you so much and thank you to all of our listeners.
Thank you for hanging in there in our conversation and we hope that God uses something to bless your life today.
If you like what you heard today, hit the like button just below. Then come back by subscribing to our podcast channel. For more resources on relational spirituality, go to our website at largerstory.com.
Anna Lee’s Bio:
Anna was first introduced to Larry Crabb’s work while in college at Duke and was able to go on a few retreats that centered around Larger Story. While there, she was struck by the profound depth of community and relationship. In a culture where truth is seen as relative and life is lived on social media, she found this community centered on God and real connection with Him and others to be a breath of fresh air. In the years since graduating, Anna started working at Rali, which offers a change experience platform. She has found it to be a joy and a privilege to help bring the Larger Story material onto the platform, and even be part of some of the videos.
Anna grew up overseas as a missionary kid, living on 5 continents and traveling to over 20 countries. As a result, she deeply resonates with the idea that our true home is in heaven, as home in her experience has been more of a transitory concept. Anna loves adventure in all forms—traveling, reading, hiking, art and painting, and even cooking. She got married a little more than a year ago and is enjoying the new adventure that has brought as well.
Show Notes:
An honest discussion on the pain of life, spiritual warfare – and victory in Christ. Join in reminiscing over past conversation between 2 men who seem to understand what this life is all about. We discuss Steve Shore’s 4 book “The Relational Project” – hear a 30 plus year counselor unpack his thoughts on relational honesty in a pretend about nothing conversation.
Steve Shores’ Bio:
I was born in 1954, one of a pair of identical twins. Went to college at UNC-Chapel Hill (home of the Tar Heels!), graduated in 1976 with honors in English and Psychology. I had met my wife to be, Susan, in the fall semester of our senior year, and we were married the next August 14 (46 1/2 years ago!). A year later, we took off for Dallas Theological Seminary where I received a Th.M. with high honors and majored in Pastoral Ministry. We also had our first child, Katy, in Dallas (born 1981). After graduation in 1982, Susan and I moved to Jacksonville, NC, for a church-plant, which became Jacksonville Bible Church. I pastored there for 3 1/2 years, during which time, our second daughter, Jenny, was born. I felt I was spread too thin as a pastor and wanted to focus on counseling as a ministry. I had just read the first two of your dad’s books and was struck by the counseling model he was developing. I applied to the counseling program and Grace Theological Seminary. Susan was big-time pregnant with our third child as we moved lock-stock-and-barrel to Winona Lake, IN, where Christy was born. Our two years there were absolutely life=changing, and I became a much more Christ-centered person and a lot less selfish. I am grateful. From there, I returned to Dallas Seminary to be the Director of Counseling Services and Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry. I was there for four years and wrote my first book during that time (one of a series of Institute for Biblical Counseling study guides for which your dad wrote the flagship study). Soon thereafter NavPress published my False Guilt. We left Dallas in 1992, because Christy had severe asthma and also to take care of my mom who had cancer. So, we moved to Hickory, NC, where I opened The Center for Biblical Counseling and have been practicing there ever since. In the meantime, I’ve published eight more books.
How has pressure to perform shaped your view of God and your approach to life? And how has God shown up and disrupted that false perspective? Those are some of the questions that Karlene Cannon and Rosanne Moore ponder together as they share some of the formative events of their lives and the ways that they have encountered Jesus, whose breathtaking grace, truth, and freedom continues to re-shape them in ways that only He can do.
Karlene Cannon’s Bio:
In 2012, Karlene Cannon sat across a dinner table from Rachael and Larry Crabb and was captivated as Larry talked about his Teleios project- his dream for how his lifework and legacy of relational spiritual formation would be passed on to a new generation on a broader scale than had been possible in his lifetime. That evening eventually led to Karlene joining the staff of Larger Story as the Director of Content and Product Development, where she uses her experience in education, content development, and software business consulting to direct Larger Story’s strategy and create new products that bring to fruition the Teleios vision Larry articulated over a decade ago.
Karlene has written curriculum, developed retreats, and hosted a large Christian community group in her home in the ensuing years, but nothing has prepared her for the current task of reaching a new generation more than raising 4 children (ages 25, 21, 18, 14) in a family culture where relational formation is the norm, relational holiness is the goal, and the Holy Spirit gets all the credit. As she now launches them into a world rife with divisions on all sides, where the truth is often regarded as optional, Karlene’s vision is to reach this connected-but-lonely generation with the transforming certainty of a relational God and His Larger Story. Her passion has found an outlet in digital course development, content creation, and the kind of spiritual direction that occurs over a cup of coffee, via text, and through long conversations in the car.
Karlene loves sports (actually, just Duke basketball and whatever her sons are playing), all things vintage and historic, great books, fragrant coffee and crackling fires. She feels God’s pleasure when her home is full of courageous people sharing their hearts and lives for the glory of God and their own growth and healing.
Rosanne Moore’s Bio:
If Jesus is Who He says He is, why doesn’t being a Christian seem to work better? More to the point, why didn’t it seem to make people better? Those were some of the questions Rosanne Moore was asking about her own life when she first encountered Dr. Larry Crabb’s book Inside Out as a teen and in its pages discovered an invitation to journey into a radically different understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, one that was focused on relationship with God rather than rule lists or behavior modification.
Drawing on her background as a writer, editor, reading instruction specialist, language arts tutor, homeschool mom, speaker, and social media marketer, Rosanne now serves as Larger Story’s Communications Director. She has run a successful small business and worked with several missions and church organizations, but her greatest delight is in listening to the unfolding story of God’s work in the lives of others and sharing her own journey of seeking God in every part of life, even (or, perhaps, especially) in our darkest nights.
Nowhere is Rosanne more passionate about seeing God’s redemption cultivated than in the lives of victims/survivors of abuse of all kinds. Her Lifeline course for women escaping domestic abuse was birthed from her personal experience, as well as out of more than two decades of advocacy work serving women and children impacted by intimate terrorism, coercive control, spiritual abuse, and sexual violence.
A single mom since 2011, Rosanne seeks to create opportunities for rich conversations with her 4 teen & college-aged kids who continually amaze, amuse, and humble her with their awesome selves and their crazy menagerie. She enjoys honest friends who are both hilarious and wise, a lapful of snuggly kitties, and a good book on a rainy day. Lily’s chocolates, Jane Austen movies, and crisp autumn days are a few of her favorite things, and music is her heart’s prayer language.
On our inaugural episode of the Relational Spirituality Podcast, the Founder of Larger Story, Kep Crabb, introduces Kris Gamble, the ministry’s Operations Director, as one of the four hosts of this new weekly podcast. Kris unpacks the direction of his show by introducing some of the themes: reaching the next generation, reaching the lost in the church, and pursuing radical vulnerability. Kep upacks how his show will be about the topic of STORY – we all have stories that have helped shape and form who we are, and they’re all important.
Part 4| Dr. Crabb draws on 40 years experience to share 7 keys to having a spiritually forming conversation.
Part 3| Dr. Crabb draws on 40 years experience to share 7 keys to having a spiritually forming conversation.
Part 2| Dr. Crabb draws on 40 years experience to share 7 keys to having a spiritually forming conversation.
Part 1| Dr. Crabb draws on 40 years experience to share 7 keys to having a spiritually forming conversation.
Dr. Larry Crabb Speaks to a group of leaders on how to move from relational poverty to relational wealth at the 2019 Ministry Leaders Conference. Organized by Hope Road Counseling, Longview, TX.
Dr. Larry Crabb Speaks to a group of leaders on how to move from relational poverty to relational wealth at the 2019 Ministry Leaders Conference. Organized by Hope Road Counseling, Longview, TX.
Dr. Crabb talks about the primary jobs over every parent and unpacks the 8 stages of a child's foolishness.
Preaching is vital. One-on-one relating is necessary. But small groups offer unique opportunities for spiritual formation that must be siezed. Imagine the life of Christ flowing back and forth among people overcoming tension and deepening joy. Learn to come alive in your small group.
Preaching is vital. One-on-one relating is necessary. But small groups offer unique opportunities for spiritual formation that must be siezed. Imagine the life of Christ flowing back and forth among people overcoming tension and deepening joy. Learn to come alive in your small group.
Legalism is subtle. Many Christians live pressured lives to "get it right" so life works. In this four-part series based on Romans 7:6, Dr. Crabb helps the listener discover the real meaning of what it means to live in freedom: to live for Jesus out of passionate desire rather than draining guilt.
Legalism is subtle. Many Christians live pressured lives to "get it right" so life works. In this four-part series based on Romans 7:6, Dr. Crabb helps the listener discover the real meaning of what it means to live in freedom: to live for Jesus out of passionate desire rather than draining guilt.
Legalism is subtle. Many Christians live pressured lives to "get it right" so life works. In this four-part series based on Romans 7:6, Dr. Crabb helps the listener discover the real meaning of what it means to live in freedom: to live for Jesus out of passionate desire rather than draining guilt.
Legalism is subtle. Many Christians live pressured lives to "get it right" so life works. In this four-part series based on Romans 7:6, Dr. Crabb helps the listener discover the real meaning of what it means to live in freedom: to live for Jesus out of passionate desire rather than draining guilt.
Is it possible to have conversations that really matter?
Conversations that stir the deepest longing in our soul, our longing for God? Conversations that cooperate with the Spirit's desire to form us into the image of Christ? Conversations in which the Cross is not optional but necessary to make us into the people we long to be?
Too many conversations leave the depths of our souls untouched. Too many conversations unknowingly hinder the Spirit's movement to transform us into the image of Christ. It could be different. More is available to everyday Christians. You are invited to explore the possibilities through the recordings of a one day seminar.
Join Anthony Vartuli, pastor of Trinity Church of Centennial, CO as he discusses what it would mean to seize the very real opportunities made available by the Holy Spirit to transform our ordinary dialogs into redemptive conversations. Joining Anthony will be his long-time mentor, Larry Crabb, who deeply believes in the Spirit's work at Trinity Church and who will also have some time to share his thoughts on redemptive conversations.
Is it possible to have conversations that really matter?
Conversations that stir the deepest longing in our soul, our longing for God? Conversations that cooperate with the Spirit's desire to form us into the image of Christ? Conversations in which the Cross is not optional but necessary to make us into the people we long to be?
Too many conversations leave the depths of our souls untouched. Too many conversations unknowingly hinder the Spirit's movement to transform us into the image of Christ. It could be different. More is available to everyday Christians. You are invited to explore the possibilities through the recordings of a one day seminar.
Join Anthony Vartuli, pastor of Trinity Church of Centennial, CO as he discusses what it would mean to seize the very real opportunities made available by the Holy Spirit to transform our ordinary dialogs into redemptive conversations. Joining Anthony will be his long-time mentor, Larry Crabb, who deeply believes in the Spirit's work at Trinity Church and who will also have some time to share his thoughts on redemptive conversations.
Is it possible to have conversations that really matter?
Conversations that stir the deepest longing in our soul, our longing for God? Conversations that cooperate with the Spirit's desire to form us into the image of Christ? Conversations in which the Cross is not optional but necessary to make us into the people we long to be?
Too many conversations leave the depths of our souls untouched. Too many conversations unknowingly hinder the Spirit's movement to transform us into the image of Christ. It could be different. More is available to everyday Christians. You are invited to explore the possibilities through the recordings of a one day seminar.
Join Anthony Vartuli, pastor of Trinity Church of Centennial, CO as he discusses what it would mean to seize the very real opportunities made available by the Holy Spirit to transform our ordinary dialogs into redemptive conversations. Joining Anthony will be his long-time mentor, Larry Crabb, who deeply believes in the Spirit's work at Trinity Church and who will also have some time to share his thoughts on redemptive conversations.
Is it possible to have conversations that really matter?
Conversations that stir the deepest longing in our soul, our longing for God? Conversations that cooperate with the Spirit's desire to form us into the image of Christ? Conversations in which the Cross is not optional but necessary to make us into the people we long to be?
Too many conversations leave the depths of our souls untouched. Too many conversations unknowingly hinder the Spirit's movement to transform us into the image of Christ. It could be different. More is available to everyday Christians. You are invited to explore the possibilities through the recordings of a one day seminar.
Join Anthony Vartuli, pastor of Trinity Church of Centennial, CO as he discusses what it would mean to seize the very real opportunities made available by the Holy Spirit to transform our ordinary dialogs into redemptive conversations. Joining Anthony will be his long-time mentor, Larry Crabb, who deeply believes in the Spirit's work at Trinity Church and who will also have some time to share his thoughts on redemptive conversations.
Four truths about hope: 1) Hope stirs what is deepest; meaning and live. 2) What is deepest is the desire to know God. 3) Life that desires to know God will survive every trial we’ll ever experience on this planet. 4) True spirituality and how we discover our passion for God in order to live it out.
Larry describes the fallen structure in every human being and how to disrupt the bad, sin, and affirm the good, trusting God.
Some problems in life take a long time to solve so God can increase your dependence on Him. Big problems are often solved after small problems are solved.
Two ways to grasp the secret of contentment. 1) Our relationship with each other should substantially reflect the relationship we have with Christ. 2) Our conversations should not contradict the truth that we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.
Using Joshua’s life Larry draws three principles about accessing the power of contentment. Joshua was rescued by God’s power (salvation). Joshua did not cop out of his responsibilities. Finally, Joshua accepted without complaint a difficult circumstance.
The cause of discontentment and how to trust Christ for needs. Contentment, and all resources I need to be what God wants me to be.
The cause of discontentment and how to trust Christ for needs. Contentment, and all resources I need to be what God wants me to be.
The three wrong approaches to contentment - tune out the problem, accept the problem, hang in there. Each are exposed as false the false method they are. Contentment is complete control of self, the ability to handle anything without falling apart, through Christ.
Men who provoke curiosity pant after God, admit their own sin and follow hard after God. Larry used the Passover, Deuteronomy 6 instructions to fathers, and Joshua 4 instructions about the twelve stones to drive home his point.
Processing is basically bringing the current relationship, the two in conversation, into the conversation for the purpose of seeing sinful strategies of relating.
Processing is basically bringing the current relationship, the two in conversation, into a conversation for the purpose of seeing sinful strategies of relating.
Five anchor points in chaos. 1) No way out, only a way forward. 2) God does not seem terribly interested in solving our problems. 3) We need to understand what keeps us from knowing God, not what is causing our problems. 4) Flesh reveals itself most clearly in how we relate. 5) We must enter the mystery of deep change by continually facing ourselves and God.
Five anchor points in chaos. 1) No way out, only a way forward. 2) God does not seem terribly interested in solving our problems. 3) W need to understand what keeps us from knowing God, not what is causing our problems. 4) Flesh reveals itself most clearly in how we relate. 5) We must enter the mystery of deep change by continually facing ourselves and God.
How do I keep going when I feel empty, alone and deeply discouraged? Larry’s answer is to meditate on the seven questions of Spiritual Theology. Poets don’t go mad, chess players do. Poets accept and don’t try to understand God’s providential dealings with man.
Character develops by shifting from being controlled by fear to being controlled by truth. Live your life in such a way that if God’s Word isn’t true, you will be destroyed. Only by trusting fully in the promises of God will the truth of God become a reality.
Larry begins this two part series with what character is not. Character is not based on how we perform. Nor is character based on how we feel about ourself. Character is a deep awareness of truth. Character is being controlled by truth.
Taken from a lecture, this talk by Dr. Crabb highlights what it means to be a Biblically-based counselor. It talks about homosexuality and how this affects relationship to a father and mother. It finishes by comparing the fallen structure of the world to a Godly one.
Larry begins with illustrations of illegitimate discouragement and ways to engage the discouraged. His two points in this tape are the power of presence and words to encourage others. Want to see more encouragement in community? Start with a few people.
There is a profound need for encouragement in the body of Christ. Programs don’t usually work to create a community of encouragement. Encouragers affirm courage and perseverance, and call forth potential.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Introductory session to one-day seminary on authentic masculinity. Men need to learn to move toward others in relationship rather than hide their true selves in an attempt at self-protection.
Larry Crabb's father reflects on spiritual insights he has received during his lifetime.
Jesus' central mission is to reveal the Father. God speaks only three times in the New Testament--affirming His pride in the Son. Christ's death reveals the depth of the heart of God. Effective Christian counseling points clients to Christ who reveals the heart of God.
Jesus came to reveal the Father's glory. Satan's agenda is to make relationship with God impossible. Jesus is God's answer to the evil that has afflicted humankind since The Fall and as we continue to walk in the way of Cain.
The fruit of doubting God's goodness is living the way of Cain. We look at life and conclude that God is not good enough to be trusted.
The key to becoming an effective Christian counselor is to develop a passion for Christ which shares the Father's passion for Christ. Since the Fall, humans fear that God is holding out on us (He is not good) or we mistrust the depths of His goodness (He's not good enough). Through Jesus, God reveals His true, full character.
Using the Hebrew words for male and female from Genesis 1:27, Dr. Crabb discusses what the implications of the definitions are for a biblical understanding of true masculinity and femininity. He shows how the core fears of men and women are related to God's purpose in how each sex is to reflect His character.
Using the Hebrew words for male and female from Genesis 1:27, Dr. Crabb discusses what the implications of the definitions are for a biblical understanding of true masculinity and femininity. He shows how the core fears of men and women are related to God's purpose in how each sex is to reflect His character.
Introduction to a week-long conference addressing counseling methods that can lead to change in clients.
A conversation on what it means to release our souls to a true expression of gender. Emphasis in this talk is on true masculinity--after summing up femininity.
A conversation on what it means to release our souls to a true expression of gender. Emphasis in this talk is on true femininity.
Larry speaking to a large crowd of leaders regarding the new covenant provisions & passions. Lower Room/Upper Room.
The hope of the second coming gives us the courage to face and acknowledge our lesser desires unmet, and to discover our deepest desire to know God well and to be WITH people in community.
The hope of the second coming gives us the courage to face and acknowledge our lesser desires unmet, and to discover our deepest desire to know God well and to be WITH people in community.
Teen rebellion surfaces a demand in the parent's heart for the kid to be god for them--to affirm the parent's value and identity. This will put pressure on the kid, and can cause rebellion.
- We must deal with what’s happening in our lives. We won’t deeply know God without an inside look. Change requires an inside look.
- Because we were built to enjoy what is not fully available until heaven, there will always be an ache in our soul. The ache in our soul is not the evidence of immaturity. It’s the evidence of realism. It’s OK to hurt.
- Nobody wants to hurt. We’ll commit ourselves to avoiding as much pain as possible. Our problem with sin shows itself most clearly in our relationships. We commit ourselves to self-protection. We “play it safe.”
- If we’re to be deeply changed, we must face the pain in our soul and the sin in our relationships. Only then is it possible to meaningfully trust the Lord and deeply repent of our sin.
Understanding "What's wrong with people?" If we just see affirmation as the deepest way to help people who have been wounded we will never get to the root of what's driving them--their depravity. We have to dive into people's souls for profound change to occur.
Understanding "What's wrong with people?" If we just see affirmation as the deepest way to help people who have been wounded we will never get to the root of what's driving them--their depravity. We have to dive into people's souls for profound change to occur.
It is in the confusion of life that we discover the sovereignty of God. Rather than become bitter, we learn to tremble before a sovereign God in such a way that invites trust and rest. Dr. Larry Crabb uses the story of Habakkuk as an illustration of what it means to trust and know God.
If you buy into what is being taught, it will mess you up with only one solution: the Gospel.
Your red dot starting college, where are you at emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? It’s not primarily about what you want to do with your life but how you relate to people. It is the most important thing about you.
How can entering freshmen move toward intimacy with God during college? What will spiritual formation look like? What is masculine spiritual formation?
Trying harder isn’t freedom - pressure never leads to growth, it always leads to failure.
Elder-Shepherds entering into the battle for another's soul by releasing the energy of Christ. Includes Larry & Rachael's vision letters to each other.
Elder-Shepherds entering into the battle for another's soul by releasing the energy of Christ. Includes Larry & Rachael's vision letters to each other.
Defining Dr. Larry Crabb's "new (1996), clearer vision and burden for ministry" and the need for Elder-Shepherds who above everything else dispense grace in to the deepest parts of another's soul.
A Q&A session at the end of this conference. Eight questions asked about various subjects on Finding God.
Dr. Larry Crabb answers the last question from the 1 John passage, "Will God reveal Himself to me?" He systematically walks through how Jesus answers that question, how our sin gets in the way of believing, and how faith takes the risk of believing that He is Good and that our greatest joy is revealing Him to others.
Pursuing God by facing what's true in my life and heart and by asking the hard questions. Learning to not expect an answer but to wait for God to disclose Himself to me.
What it means to change; to mature; defined by a confidence in God's goodness that frees me to continue with a sense of meaning & a taste of joy; using our pain not a s a problem but opportunity to find God.
Finding God & knowing Him more deeply; seen through life of Enoch, who walked with God, pleased God, and saw his sin as a greater problem than his pain.