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101 | Dr. Charles Stone: Holy Noticing : Christian Mindfulness and How to Love Your Life More
Dr. Charles Stone has been a student of the brain for a dog’s age and written on neuroscience across fields. It turns out, understanding human nature, physiology included, outlines a path into practices that promote make your life better. We know: not exactly a surprise but it got us thinking. Anyway, it turns out mindfulness, or being present to God in your moment, is a Christian discipline with roots reaching back millennia. In our conversation, Dr. Stone outlined a mindfulness practice that produces practical relief like happiness, gratitude, an experience of the presence of God, empathy, etc, as well as complex stuff like cognitive reserve, new neurological defaults, and a diminished fear response. One more thing. Get this: in a brain study on nuns, researchers found that nuns experienced Alzheimers and dementia about as often as other people. Surprise surprise. BUT: you wouldn’t know. The nuns didn’t show symptom of either. That’s because they had healthy brains, cultivated through practices like mindfulness and contemplative prayer and statio. When parts of their brains stopped working, other parts took over. It’s called having strong cognitive reserve, and the point is, take care of your brain now, and you’ll thank us later.
Spiritual Warfare: A Biblical Foundation
Spiritual warfare is a confusing, lightning rod topic for many Christians. In this new multi-part series, John and Morgan ground it in Scripture, dispel myths, and explain what it is—and isn't.
100 | Decade by Decade by Decade
For our 100th episode and Sam's 30th birthday, we reflect back on what small, daily, choices made in the days can look like over time. And the reverse: to not look at a single moment and miss all the choices that led to it.
A Lost Treasure
What does the thought of the return of Jesus provoke in you? John and Allen discuss this massive lost treasure of the gospels.
99 | Stasi Eldredge: On the Mother Heart of God and Mercy
What better way to explore the mother heart of God than through the eyes and experience of a mother? Whether you are a mother, had a great mother of your own, or missed everything that was intended, there is mercy for you. And not the "you are excused, we can move on now" mercy that gets slapped around. But deep, affirming, loving mercy from the heart of God.
What Sets You Off?
When something sets you off, do you shut down or blow up? Morgan and Allen share front-line stories that focus on our hearts when the heat is on.
37 – Intimacy – 3/20/2019
3/20/2019: Intimacy – "For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." Song of Solomon 2:11. Where is winter for you? Where are you feeling frozen, buried, the ground of your soul hardened? Where do you need Jesus to come with His Rivers of refreshing? Because your Frozen Places are the very places He wants to meet you. Join Stasi for this months Women at the Well.Video Clip One Night with The King (Youtube clip): https://youtu.be/Ob8DTU_m-aI End at 4:40Song Played at end of SessionHere I Am - (4:46) (Chris Renzema; Age to Age)Worship Set from March 2019Reckless Love - (5:33) (Cory Asbury; Reckless Love)When You Walk Into The Room - (4:49) (Bryan & Katie Torwalt; Kingdom Come)How He Loves - (6:48) (Jared Anderson; Live From My Church)Where You Are - (6:30) (Leeland; Christ Be All Around)Pasm 45 - (5:26) (Shane & Shane; Psalms Vol 2)Jesus, We Love You - (6:55) (Bethel Music; We Will Not Be Shaken)Arms of Grace - (4:21) (Bryan & Katie Torwalt; Praise Before My Breakthrough)Awaken Love - (5:10) (Kim Walker-Smith; On My Side)Throne Room - (4:45) (Kim Walker-Smith; On My Side)
98 | Making Choices for the Year while Living in the Day
Our lives are more than just the moment we are living in. They are the accumulation of billions of small moments, they are filled with weeks, months, years, decades. When we live in "the now" and forget about the trajectory of our lives we begin to make random and unhelpful decisions, but if we could see the small choices we make each day as fitting into the trajectory of our year or our decade we might make them differently. Throw in the momentum and direction and story of your community, your town, your country, and most importantly of all... the story of Jesus, then we might make very different decisions day to day. This is an area of maturity and balance. It takes maturity to not get lost in the now and lose the forest for the trees. But it also takes balance to not get swept up into the momentum of the culture all around you and forget that you might be called to live in a different direction.
Faulty Interpretation – Part 2
Discover tangible ways to gain a truer interpretation of God, your life, and the people you love as Morgan and Allen conclude this series.
97 | A Playful Jesus?
We've been reading "Beautiful Outlaw" again and it's been surfacing some wonderful things. What is Jesus' personality like? Yes, he is kind and merciful and all those other over-used but totally true things. Is Jesus playful though? And if he is, how does that play out on a personal, relational level? Might we learn something of him that draws us closer in and allows us to see his hand in our daily lives more often?
Faulty Interpretation – Part 1
There's a high cost when we misinterpret the people and events of our lives. Morgan and Allen share examples of faulty interpretation and the hope for seeing our stories clearly.
96 | A Profanity-Free Podcast on Swearing (aside from the intro)
Aside from the intro, of course. So we’re not going to do a series on drinking, swearing and smoking, but we are interested in talking about right action—how do we decide what to do? The word profanity comes from pro-fanum, Latin, literally meaning “before the temple.” The implications are not sacred, outside the sacred, etc. It’s interesting though that God doesn’t identify as sacred. God is holy. That’s a whole different animal. In this episode, we explore a set of related concepts. First, we talk about the human inclination to destruction as revealed in three Old Testament words: khata, pesha, and avon (not English words, btw). Khata is sin, i.e. moral failure, self deception and the devouring self. Pesha is broken trust. Avon is iniquity, or crookedness, and the consequences of human failure everybody’d live with if Jesus hadn’t come. Then we talk about transformation. Jesus is all about the restoration of the human heart. It’s what Moses predicts in Deuteronomy (30, we need a circumcision of heart), what the Psalms ask for (Psalm 51, for example), the Proverbs enjoin (4:23), and the prophets Ezekiel (36) and Jeremiah (31) and Isaiah (61) and yup, others anticipate God doing. In fact, in one of the passages folks reference in regard to profanity (Eph 4:29), Paul instructs the church not to let any unwholesome/corrupt/useless/un-life-giving talk come out of your mouth. The word is sapros, and it’s the same word Jesus uses when he says that you’ll know a tree by its fruit. “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad (sapron) tree bears bad fruit” (Matt 7:17). What you produce comes out of who you are. This is the ultimate lesson of right action: become a transformed person (by receiving what Jesus has done and becoming his disciple) and the fruit of your life with change.
A Busy, Unhurried Life - Part 2
John and Allen offer practical ways to attain a less hurried way of being within the whirlwind of our busy lives.
95 | Developing a Family Culture of Readers
This podcast episode began percolating when we received several emails from different listeners, all of whom were asking the same question: how do you create a family culture that loves reading? Our love begins with enjoyment of story. To be able to enjoy the Gospel, theology, the sciences, the classics... it all begins with our love of story. Our very lives are a story, and we will not see the story unfolding all around us if we have missed learning to love the most simple of stories. Fairy tales may have more to teach us about ourselves and reality than you may have guessed.
A Busy, Unhurried Life - Part 1
Our lives are busy - but they don't have to be hurried. John and Allen discuss how to eliminate hurry and create space for soul care.
36 – Naomi, an Unsung Hero – 2/20/2019
Join Stasi as she unpacks the book of Ruth highlighting Naomi as well as the treasured characteristic of God's Hesed and how He mercifully multiplies what we have to offer even when it isn't very much. Video Clip Syrian Refugees (Youtube clip): https://youtu.be/hiujzFNgHcE Worship Set from February 2019Steady Heart (Youtube version): https://youtu.be/tp80oWtnJc0Met By Love - (5:30) (United Pursuit; Simple Gospel)Do It Again - (6:38) (Elevation Worship; There is a Cloud)Praise Before My Breakthrough - (6:03) (Bryan & Katie Torwalt; Praise Before My Breakthrough)Have it All - (6:30) (Bethel Music; Have it All)Faithful to the End - (6:36) (Bethel Music; Have it All)Who Can Compare - (7:56) (Mary Kat Ehrenzeller; Emerging Voices)Ain't No Grave - (8:13) (Bethel Music; Victory)What A Beautiful Name - (5:41) (Hillsong Worship; Let There Be Light)Throne Room (Youtube Version): https://youtu.be/aAVHxXcOM78