Jumping Off the Train — http://thegodjourney.com/2012/12/14/jumping-off-the-train/

For those looking to live outside the box of religious performance and inside the love of an awesome Father, this is The God Journey. Hi, I'm Wayne Jacobson and I want to welcome you to this edition of The God Journey. And I got to tell you, I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the response to our last quote-unquote conversation. It didn't feel like one because I was here all alone as I am again today. But the interaction that came on the blog, on emails to me, conversations I've had with people, it's just been tremendous to see how many people were able to interact and keep that conversation going and, man, blown away by all that. I just got off one of the most incredible phone calls that I've had in a while. Friend of mine, he's becoming a friend of mine, someone I visited last year. And something I said as part of my time being with him and the group of people we were with at the time has done a number on his life. It wasn't what I said exactly, just that it so reflected what God was inviting him into. And I sensed that when I said it. But if you had asked me when I got home, what do you think the most significant thing went on that weekend? It wouldn't have been that comment. But that comment has gone on it. The comment was really about this. It was someone who's struggling with some real gifts and life and trying to find a place in ministry. And even going back to last week's podcast, developing a curriculum that's going to help people get in this life and this journey. And when I was there and it was also overwhelming. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it, there was just so much of it. And as we were discussing that, at one point I looked at him and said, you know what, you don't have any idea what a gift you are, do you? And I remember saying it and the gist of it was all this is fig leaves, all this curriculum, all this outlines and notes and pages and pages. This is all compensation for something. You don't know that you're just a gift and that if you'll walk alongside people, things that come out of your life are going to bless and inspire them. And because you don't know that, you're going to retreat into things you can prepare, things you can outline, things that look good intellectually and I had no idea what that would do in a life. And it's a story to tell. Sometime maybe we'll get him on the podcast and tell that story. But it's really allowed him to step back from so much of what he was driven to do and driven to find a place and he said, you know, I knew you were right. I knew I didn't have any idea that I was a gift. And so I've always felt like I've got to perform to find a place. And unlike so many, he actually jumped off that train. It amazes me. Some of that broad road, narrow road stuff I used in the recent Lifestream newsletter Living Love about finding our way on the narrow road. It's so easy to stay on that broad road. It's so easy, whether it's just life and responsibilities and the pressure of living in the 21st century, whether it's that religious agenda and the religious pounding and try and maintain your status in a religious community by your hard work and by the illusions you provide. We are driven down this broad road and it's like this huge train that's just barreling down these tracks. And you don't even have to think to be on it. You can just ride that puppy, let it exhaust you, let it, you know, and it does, it exhausts us all. And then there comes these moments where God just unpack something and we have a choice. Whether we're going to jump off that train and find ourselves living differently or we're going to stay on that train because, you know, jumping off is just really, really scary. I can't tell you how scary it was for him to jump off. And yet, as I'm talking to him today, so grateful, so excited, finding life, finding freedom. His wife and their relationship has grown just because now he's finding out I don't have to be driven by those things I've been driven by. And I just, man, I come away from the phone call just really excited by the work God does in people. And more excited that it's not, as we talked about last week, curriculum based. And I'm going to respond to some of the emails and blogs we got about that in a little bit and talk more about it. But before I do, let me catch you up on the Jacobson Recovery Center. Sarah's now two weeks post-surgery and, man, this was a big one. This is taking her out and will for a time. She's recovering well. She's, you know, she's inside the expectations of this thing, but it was also huge. And so we're kind of walking this through with her and it's brought out some different stuff in me. My goodness, I always knew Sarah did a ton every week just to make our lives work. Now I know that from firsthand experience. And I'm so grateful for the work God has done in us, even over the last six, eight months in our own life and marriage, because I know I'm getting to live in this and participating in it very differently than the waning of about a year ago. And I'm really, really grateful for that. If you haven't, don't know about that. You might go back to learning love more deeply, a podcast I now probably a month ago and find out more about what that means. Got some emails though, particularly about Sarah and my journey. Let me read a couple of them to you and respond just a bit. Love is not about falling. It's about staying. That's a quote. And I tried to look it up and I don't know where that quote is other than if it's just the lady who wrote to me, but love is not about falling as in falling in love. Love is about staying. So thank you for giving us a chance to see the ongoing work of redemption and healing God can do inside the marriage relationship. Thank you for not hiding behind a 37 years we should have the perfect marriage wall of shame. She calls it wall of shame because it really is that false wall of boasting. Hey, 37 years we've got it all figured out and she calls it exactly what it is. It's the wall of shame. I pretend to be together because that's what I'm supposed to be and everybody's mine. And then she said this, my husband and I have faced one precipice after another in the last seven years. A couple of them I was sure would be the death of our marriage. We understand now why the healer is determined to rid us of all toxins. But we too have agonized over the question, why did it take 30 years? The surgeries are terrifying and very painful, but the sweetness of the putrified scar tissue being removed is worth it all. Thanks for your courage. Your story is a beautiful beacon of hope. And I guess the emails I've enjoyed from that conversation with Sarah, not a contest conversation, is that so many people have said, wow, that's freed me to be in my space and to be in the things God's dealing with in us and not having to live the illusion and how courageous it was that we would share that way. You know, and it's sad to me that it looks courageous because it really isn't. It's just that so many people live the pretense, live the illusion, trying to either build a reputation, build a ministry, build something, and when you do that, you've got to provide an illusion of yourself instead of just being real. What Sarah and I have discovered over the last 20 years is nothing encourages growth in other people more than us being real. Does it also give another group of people reason to attack us, discredit us, look down on us? It does. And we get that email, too. I don't read all those, too, yet, but yeah, we get those emails, too, of people that think, oh, gosh, by now you should be better at all. You know what? I'm still hoping 47 years, 57 years in marriage, I'm still saying, look what God's doing us to think that this is a lifetime process of growing up in the things of God. It's not something even God wanted to be over in a week or two or a 10 or 15 years. That unpacking the beautiful life that's in Sarah and unpacking what God's put in me is a lifetime experience. And that, man, that just never lets marriage get boring. That means, well, we can go through anything. She's talking about things getting to the death of their marriage. And I guess people are afraid to unpack to that depth because maybe it does get lost. Maybe they get lost in it. Maybe they risk so much. The reason we stay on the broad road is because we resist risk. We resist putting it out there. We resist what it may or may not do. But Sarah and I have learned that without the honest conversations, without people really singing our lives. We put a lot of stuff out there. So our lives are pretty broadly known because people have read stuff about us. And then people, because they've read, been blessed, been touched, create an illusion about me that I see when I show up places with people who don't already know me except through reading to my stuff or listening to stuff. And there's an illusion about me. That illusion doesn't serve me well. It doesn't serve them well. It doesn't serve the kingdom of God well. One of this on the blog from Susan, one last thought, I was very encouraging to hear you beat on the drum of process, process, process in your podcast and how you've encouraged being patient. Even when I first began understanding more, the majority of my thoughts were still in the old religious vein. It was so exciting when I tipped over 50% of thinking with grace the first time and noticeably restful day. Now most days are greater than 50% and I have occasional times of thinking with such love toward myself or another that it takes my breath. Now I say I love that. This really is a work of transition and if you can't get comfortable in the process, if you can't relax in knowing that, yeah, God's going to expose stuff up the road that gets to be healed and touched because that's what He does and all this stuff takes time for God to move us in a place where He can do the next thing and then that moves and if you're in a marriage, that working together between a couple, my journey, Sarah's journey, finding some way inside that has just been fun. I was with another brother a few months ago and he was talking about, he said, you seem to be pretty free about sharing your stuff. He said, I would never share stuff. People just traipsed all over it and my answer to him was, yeah, people do but you know what? It only owns you to the degree that you care about what other people think. As I said to you, some people take our honesty and serve it back up in the level of accusation and you know what? Let them. I have no interest in stopping them but you know what's different now than 20 years ago? Those accusations don't get anywhere. I'm not defined by what someone else thinks of me. Not even family, not even close friends necessarily. I'm not defined by people who are angry that I'm not further in the process than I am. To the degree that they are, I know they're hiding something. So I don't feel like, oh, I've been caught. I go, oh boy, what are you hiding from? Because the people I know been on this journey the longest are the most humble, open people I know and honest and they're willing to let you have a look at their lives and not willing to try to provide some illusion for you and I said to them, I don't know what's all that courageous. It's just I don't care what people think. If they're going to think negatively of my journey, that's fine. I love my journey. I love what God's doing in me. I love the things it's impacting in the people around me. So that's all good. Cal wrote this to me and said, on the one hand, you refer to Sarah not expressing or having wants voiced into your relationship for the purpose of Sarah being fully Sarah. But on the other hand, you refer to the necessity of giving up wants, laying down one's life as the key to a successful relationship. If both are enabled fully to bring our wants together and work out the details to a, and this is his words, mutually enthusiastic agreement, or I'd like to say mutually enthusiastic relationship are not both in this way, living to the fullest, enabling Christ to be fully expressed. See this is where principles and curriculums drive us nuts, because somebody's going to say, well you said Sarah needs to discover her wants and then you say we got to lay down our wants and people who try to live by principle find that exhausting. So what I need to identify my wants or do I need to lay down my wants and I don't know how to live it and they get all confused and that's what I'm saying, stop living by principle for Sarah who's never allowed herself to want, to have a want. She can't lay down a want she doesn't have. So she has to first discover, I mean part of God's work and you need to discover what it is that you want, what it is that you enjoy. Part of that defines who you are as Sarah and part of that's very godly. It's not just all selfish, not every want is a selfish want. Not every preference is a selfish preference. It's the demand of our preference. It's the demand of our wanting that turns it selfishness. The wanting isn't. And particularly the things we want are things God's created and made and given us or brought near our lives. The wanting of those things is a glorious thing. It's Adam naming the animals whatever you want. God didn't have a special want and Abraham's got to find my want. Just want whatever you want, I want. There's some of that in the relationship and then there's the realization that my wants particularly in a relationship, if I'm always getting my way, my preference I'm pushing for what I want, then I become a manipulator to people around me and then I damage the relationship with my wants and I think what he's saying is just a lovely thing. You're getting to this enthusiastically mutual relationship. I think that's what God wants with us. Mutually enthused and not do it all my way though God's right about everything. Sarah and I are reading Proverbs right now. I love that book. You can read Proverbs like it's just a bunch of law and it just weighs you down with all the things you're supposed to do or God's angry. Or you can read it, I think the way it was written. This is God's wisdom. There are things like honesty, integrity, wisdom, righteousness that when you live that way life works better and then there's that broad road train driving down the tracks. I know it's a mixed metaphor but just have to deal with it. And then there's the other way the world says which is not integrity and honesty and being true to your word and treating people kindly and graciously and it's not that it's grabbed for as much as you can get. It's the language of power and control and you succeed if you have more power and control than the other people around you then you become this driving manipulator in the world and you become destructive. And I love that God's inviting us into a relationship. It's not everything I want, you're a worm so just hang in here and figure it out. He is inviting us into a relationship where some of what he's created in us before sin twisted it gets exposed as the beautiful lovely thing it is and that mixes with his purpose and desire in us and that mutual enthusiastic agreement or mutual enthusiastic relationship. I think is where this life gets really good. I think it's where married the marriage book Sarah and I have talked about working on is called only in all ways and it's about how do we get to us? How do we do in our marriage? And we're not even writing it yet so don't you know let's sort of look on Amazon for it to be a long time to get that puppy done I think because we're still growing in the realities of it. But the idea is the most fun we have in this marriage is the things that Sarah and I both enthusiastically do together and sometimes the enthusiastically doing is because it's for the other one and I you know I'm doing a lot of stuff the practical day-to-day just the work around the house that I've not done in 38 years and some of you say well it's about time and yeah it is it really is and I'm doing those things and I really enjoy right now taking care of my girl yeah and it's cooking and doing dishes and it's shopping at the store and it's things I've not well I've always cooked and we've always helped clean up the kitchen together but there's a whole lot of other things just can helping her with her medication making sure we're getting the right stuff at the right times and just serving whatever need she has and interrupting my day in the office just go down what's next what do you need how can I help you and I'm telling you what doing it for her has made it a joy it's not oh crud wise stupid Sarah the surgery and now it's not that you got to have some wants so you can lay down those wants which becomes even a greater want and that's all a process that God keeps doing in our lives and I actually love it and I'm going to say this as a side note because the saddest email I've gotten over some of the exchanges we've done with what God's been doing in Sarah and my relationship together are people who are saying man I want to be love like that or I want to be in a relationship like that and my partner husband or wife completely uninterested just content with the status quo and I don't know what to do and I and you can feel the frustration you can feel the anguish and I want to say to you I think in the whole context of this being a process that you probably already know what takes this your relationship to another level and it's not pressuring your spouse to get there it's an apology to make something gracious kind to say something that's already in your heart to do and the reason we don't do it is when it makes us feel vulnerable what it what if he doesn't respond or she doesn't respond the way I hope it fearful that maybe it's going to backfire on me in some way or even just the pride thing I don't want to admit where I'm at and be vulnerable in a way my partner my my my spouse may not recognize it may not care about and I don't encourage it there's nothing better in this life than the kind of connection God gives people who are inside each other's lives not to manipulate and control inside each other's lives with come with compassion and caring and love and the depths of partners that come from this mutually this mutual agreement that's enthusiastic and alive there's nothing there's nothing better that's the best human that's the best we get in human relationships and why wouldn't you want that with your spouse and your spouse may not be resisting it just because they like the status quo or just being contankerous they're locked up in their own fears and their own struggles in their own what what am I going to risk and is it going to help me is it going to hurt me and you know somebody's got to break that somebody's got to move the momentum forward someone's got to not by our own design and manipulation I'll go back I think again we know there's things in your heart simple steps to love to forgive to act kindly to open your heart in a way and it's our fears that keep us on that broad road train again the mixed metaphor but it's it's it's just that we are afraid to risk and yet the fruit of the risk Sarah and I wouldn't trade anything this this is in many ways this last year has been has had its brutal moments in our own relationship and we've shared that but the fruit of what's come from this there's nothing like it there is and I never knew it could be this way I never knew that I could care about Sarah the way I do and I always thought I cared deeply for her and did and I thought I was a pretty conscientious conscious husband and I was but this is different and this didn't happen because Sarah and I set about to change our marriage or we read a book on marriage and decided we'd do this or that this happened simply by the inkling of the spirit in Sarah's heart and her willingness to follow it and then the inklings in my heart that man some of my I told you I resisted I man I didn't want to take those risks but from the other side of it and I and I know the risks don't always work out that's that's why it's a risk it's not to say that your partner is going to respond in a way that allows this to grow on but the I guess the alternative is to keep living in hurtful isolation I think it's better to risk even if the risk doesn't work even if the whole thing blows up in your face I think reality is far better than the isolation of our own fears of vulnerability in life and only God can do this and man this is not something that here's the techniques of marriage go apply them like this underscores we've been talking about for two weeks here anyway there's not a curriculum that gets you here there's no obedience there's a sensing of God's life that gets you here and that's what you want to follow and certainly your partner it's not just you know I want to be loved like that the reality is I want to learn to love like that whether or not my partner responds I want to learn to love like that I want to live inside that and that's what God wants to do in us God calls us to live in his ways not because it's just what you have to do to keep him happy God wants his joy to be in you and your joy to be full a lot of comment on our curriculum podcast and a lot of people really enjoyed some of what we talked about there and and some didn't get it I want to read to you one blog comment actually that I didn't post we we moderate the blog postings because I don't want it to go the way of the forum when it got really too conflicting and angry and and I love for the most part the conversations we have on the blog and probably that is there occasionally I don't let things through that I think would would be a problem and that this wasn't so much a problem because I appreciate the brother who wrote it actually I've had some other exchanges with him and other places so it wasn't a problem with the person it was I want to read to you and then we'll talk about a little bit because he said first let me thank you for the God journey been a huge asset for me as God has been walked me into deep and meaningful relationship with him in response to your comments it has been nine months since my wife and I have completed a training experience in which participants encounter God in unique and profound ways that early change your life and he gave the name of that experience but I'm just leaving it off for now I had a personal encounter with God that's enabled my life my me to live loved in a way that was never able to do before it's not the end all but it's a huge step for living free and learning to live in deep meaningful relationship walking out of the training you're given to assignments stay close to the friends you met in the training so they can encourage your walk and listen to the father and trust his voice it's like rancid hearts and lifestreams got married and this was their child just thought I would like you to know something does exist that does exactly what you're talking about and it's awesome now the reason I didn't post that is because I want to talk pretty honestly about it and I didn't want to embarrass or risk embarrassing or you know feel like I was walking on somebody who other people knew what it was who he was the reason I want to talk about this Josh a number of reasons I don't think anything we said last week discounts the reality of people going to retreats or even come into stuff I'm at you meetings all over the world I get with people over the world of conversations over weekends things we talk about sometimes we actually teach that are geared to help people kind of wake up have that awakening to a greater reality and a new moment and I'm not saying that there aren't things that can be done like that I think the point about the curriculum was once we move from and him to an it and I have found something and this it and it's awesome that's the way he ends it it's kind of like you know particularly for sitting in our room saying gosh curriculum doesn't do it why look over the blog comments because we're all so unique and trying to mass produce something as beautiful as a relationship between you and God is something that I think is unthinkable to someone who really has the relationship that this curriculum would guarantee it or this is the magic it that we've all been looking for if those of you listening last week thought I'm looking for that curriculum and I haven't found it yet I'd boy I think you misunderstood the podcast I think the point was it's not there they're people who go to all kinds of things and I love when the fruit of what they've gone to has lived on in a transformative relationship that even down the road they forget how it all happened who they were with what comment was made I love when that's all forgotten because it's become so much about God and who he is and I don't many people who've chased down the Bethel thing or the the Toronto thing or the Pensacola thing and trying to find our went there came back incredibly blessed and all kinds of wonderful things and did some wonder can some wonderful things happen in those environments I've never said they can't yes they can but my greater concern is what does it produce six months out a year out three years out and the problem with these faddish kinds of meetings gathering slash revivals and I've known I've noticed this for the 40 years I've been around such things when it's just an experience and you come away incredibly blessed maybe even closer to God if that doesn't transform at some point into a relationship with God that journeys onward so that God becomes the one you're talking about not be it when it's always been about that place that revival that thing that curriculum that book even the shack he loves me so you don't want church anymore if those become the ongoing point of the conversation and not wow it's what Jesus is doing in me and how do I pass that on by encouraging other people not how do I get people to go to the thing that may have even been instrumental and may have even opened a door for me and that's just so limited and I'm not saying that this retreat thing and I looked a little bit into it you know it's a four different meetings over a certain period of time and you kind of learn different things about the journey can those things be helpful absolutely are they the answer are they the curriculum we're looking for you know not looking for one because there's so much conversation this is so unique this is what I know Pat wrote this on the blog I think one of the things that impressed me from so you don't want church anymore was observing how John character came in and out of Jake's life obviously following the prompting of the Holy Spirit when I first read the book I was just starting to consider that maybe Christ really was the head of the church and didn't need all of our organizations and programs in order to reach mankind so really a radical revolutionary thought and even seemed a little dangerous to me at the time right now my husband and I go to a spin-off group from a group we used to go to he's not ready to go free range yet so I I go to support him basically doing some great things I'm learning some great things in the group but boy do I have to bite my tongue as more and more structure and curriculum is gradually being added on it's so tempting to try to tell them to stop to warn them of the dangers but God never pulls a rug out from under us until we're ready so it has to be done in his timing and with love so I just have to mind my own business deal with the things I know he's asking me to do now which is plenty for instance that old beam that's in my own eye I guess just the fact that I can refrain from telling them I think they're making a mistake shows some progress yeah Pat I think it does I guess not trying to get everybody on a page and but I I share your concern I think one of the reasons why we have a difficult time knowing how to gather as the body as a body of believers is because it's always don't it's always dominated by someone's agenda or curriculum or something and because of that agenda curriculum because there's so much we end up having an artificial framework now can that artificial framework be helpful to some people absolutely it can but it's also more discouraging to many more people and it makes us relationally challenged I know people can't even seem to get in a group of people and have conversations that lead to life without questions to fall a book an agenda a curriculum to fall I've many people right yeah you have questions for the jake closer we'd like to have a discussion on it we have questions but why why have we created and I know it has you know you think it's because they're helpful tools and they may be but there's a whole industry around building study guides and cribbing it curriculum for popular books it gives something else to sell it increases the bottom line on what you can generate by trying to capitalize on something that successful to sell even more product about the same thing into the marketplace and the whole idea is well we're just blessing people and it probably is a blessing when people pick it up but when it's bred in us the ability I've just sent a list of sample questions to people whenever they ask that about the jake book and they basically go like is when I take the first chapter what in this chapter touched your life what in this chapter did you not like what scriptures might you look at to help understand what lies behind some of these realities and whether true or not it just basic generic they think any normal conversation would have but when you've gotten used to boy gotta have a set of questions gotta have a set of questions from the author so I'm really getting to the meat and particularly the little banal fill-in thing you know look up this scripture and you know and people get a kick at a completing that stuff you know what I find three years later is they're just looking for something else to complete the heart of this journey is finding your way into a relationship with God that is bigger than anything else going on in your life it's knowing him but that knowing him doesn't come out of a textbook it rises out of life doesn't come from a seminar and it's not that books and seminars and teaching told me have plenty of on our website I think there's an incredible value in us knowing enough scripture enough truth enough reality in which we can navigate our lives with God I think that background is important if it if I think was important I wouldn't put stuff out there like the Jesus lens and transitions because without a certain platform of truth on which we can engage God in the reality of our lives it's far more complicated it's not that God's restricted by that because certainly he's not but it's easier for us to recognize if you think God is this angry vicious taskmaster then the nudging you're going to hear in your circumstances are all about your performance or lack of it or you should try harder do better and they're going to be accusatory and because your construct of God makes those accusatory voices sound like him and they're actually the voice of the enemy who wants to beat you down all day long and we kind of religion is somehow attached God's identity to the accusing voice of the enemy in our lives God's voice comes in that general point of compassion that prods us toward nudges us toward a different way of living the curriculum of our discipleship is in the reality of life it's the next thing coming it's what you're facing right now it's the next thing coming at you it's it's how you feel about your spouse your job it's your disappointment over something in your life it's not going the way you think it should that's where God loves to make himself known he wants to walk us out of broken places and it's not a matter of just finding a truth somewhere and trying to apply it I don't think we're bright enough but with all the truth that we know and I don't think truth is unimportant I don't think a working grasp of scripture is not critical in our ability to recognize him but again that's going to assume that your working knowledge of scripture is not this religious bashing tool but is in fact endeared you to the father of our Lord Jesus Christ so yeah I want some truth I want some example I want some conversation with people who know God I I want the scriptures the conversations to be part of it yeah those are helpful those can be incredibly helpful but the next step is still in the midst of my circumstance in the midst of my despair in the midst of my joy in the midst of losing a job or losing my house in the midst of that place hearing that nudge it gives me a way to respond that opens a door that opens another door that the curriculum of our lives is life it's what I'm facing it's what I'm thinking about it's what I'm struggling with and then God adds his reality into that moment as I think through with him and that's a process over a great time the outcomes are not assured it's not well if I do that then my life will go well it means we get to continue on a on an incredible process of following him and knowing him through the ups and downs and in that process being shaped and changed by him but it's jumping off the life as I've always known it and the way everybody else always sees it God's nudging us off to a road that's much simpler and far more majestic even when it hurts I want to finish with this Daryl is a good friend of mine he wrote me a long email this week and I just wanted to respond to some of the stuff he said going back a couple of podcasts but also some stuff that's really part of his journey and this is a brother who as he got on this journey lost a lot lost his marriage lost his job lost his business partner who ran off with his wife just went through some horrible things and has lived the life kind of a vagabond he's lived in different cities and finds work temporarily and not and not always you know a real career or job and this is a this is a former pastor type a lot of gifts a lot of passion to help people he's lived in the midst of real struggle for the last 20 years losing many of the things that that I cherish and yet I love his journey it's just drawn him deeper and deeper into the things of God I want to do a podcast with Daryl someday we've talked about it we tried it one time actually and the technology didn't cooperate and we had to abandon the idea but I'd love to talk to him more this is just an excerpt from his letters and he said this I do see the depth of evil around us to be so deep I'm seeing really what is going on in this world is just the epic struggle between God and Satan I know we win even as I see the evil and illusions of the enemy as prevalent so yeah I think we don't we always get dinged we have on the podcast for a long time you guys don't ever talk about the devil enough I don't like giving a lot of place to the devil I accept that he's there I accept that he's got an agenda to destroy what God's doing in you but I think we talk about him in a way that breeds fear in people I love this it's just what Daryl so I just recognize that that's there there's a there's a major component that's competing against your life and freedom and he said one of those illusions is the new age eastern religious stuff as you know I really looked into that because I wanted to find out what was real well that stuff is real but I'm convinced the power of it from the wrong power source it works a little and because Christianity has defaced the image of Yahweh so badly the new age sounds more like who God is than what is shared by the Christian religion the big problem is that the new age all ends up being works and all the truth becomes relative you have nothing to give you a foundation to stand on personally I just wanted a God who loved me and took care of me because of grace and not merit I was so beaten down all I wanted was love and then he showed up I must say that I see the new age mindset to be very hard to give up it seems so much more loving gracious and accepting but I found it to be a big deception took years to detox from how deep I went a little bit of a response to the podcast that Kent and I did together and talked about how some of the people who have gotten into things which we sometimes call new agey or eastern mystical have proved to open doors to God's heart and life and I just want to underscore I love what Darrell sharing here is the other side of it not to say those things are innocuous I think the point Kent and I were both kind of hammering around was this just because you're finding something real that people want to slap a new age tag on or an eastern mysticism tag on don't let that scare you away from a different space God's inviting you into than the one restaurant Christianity is set for us which is so shame based so driven by performance and so hurtful in that we're more being so focused on ourselves and others we don't have space to recognize who God is I think both Kent and I at least I do I recognize that there is a power other in these other religious faiths I don't even know what new age is anymore that that term means a lot of different things if it's crystals and things like that I some people use that for new age some people just use anything that isn't part of religious legalism and slap a new age title on so that gets pretty confusing for me but are there other powers in spiritual things and I agree with him he is speaking from experience he went that way being a bit disillusioned by the God that he knew he tried those things his experience wasn't they led me to God they led him into a dark place that was hard for him to break free of God can get to us through a variety of things and the reality is so can the enemy the reality is there's an enemy who wants your soul and there's ways he wants to deceive you don't live in fear of him but don't by the same token don't live insensitive and undiscerning about the things he brings into your life so there I'll appreciate that anyone said this the other thing that struck me in the latest podcast is the slowing down I believe that this is a rhythm of God finding and hearing father's voice in the quiet and contemplative place I have found that a hard place to be because the world fills us with such noise and distractions that it's hard to hear him I also have found for myself that in the quiet not only can we hear the quiet voice of father but more clearly hear the raucous accusations of the enemy it is hard to quiet down because we see our brokenness man I love that slowing down is so critical so hard but I think it both becomes clear at times like that one the enemy's accusation is to keep us driving on this train that he wants you to fit in with the rest of the world even the religious world and just keep working hard and staying exhausted and God invites us into a quieter space where there's more room in our life to appreciate him to sense him to follow him to find ourselves on that narrower trail as we said at the beginning of this thing if you're not comfortable in a process with God this is going to wear you out it's process process process and when you're involved the best thing about being involved the process I don't have to be complete today I can let today be simply a part of a larger process I can relax in what is hope for what's yet to be and yet be at peace as his work unfolds