Breaking the Hex (#607) — http://thegodjourney.com/2017/11/10/breaking-the-hex-607/

Outside the box of religious obligation lies a road less traveled into the heart of the Father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God-Champion, the God-Champion, the God-Champion. Chapter 13 is called, Doing the Splits, Ouch! Imagine you own two boats, you want to roll away from the shore, now you have a decision to make. Which boat should you use? One of your boats is in tip-top condition, the other is full of holes and needs major repair. Which boat are you going to choose? Of course you're going to choose the good boat, it floats, the other won't. That's how faith works. Jesus lived a perfect life, you can trust him, however your life is already messed up, you can choose to trust your life, the messed up life, his life floats. Yours will sink. Choose one. But not so fast, religion puts people with one foot in each boat, and there's a cute little sketch here. That's not good. They put one foot in the Jesus life boat and one foot in the do a little more, try a little harder boat. They trust in Jesus and their own efforts. What happens? Splash! The only sane solution is to trust Jesus, the good boat totally, both feet in his boat. Give up on your own efforts, your goodness, that's faith without the religion. No splits, no ouch, no splash. That's chapter 13 from a new book entitled Breaking the Hex, Life with God After the Cross Killed Religion, it's by the Fields Brothers and we've invited one of those brothers to join us today. Hi Jeff. Hello, Wayne. Hello, Brad. Hey. Hey, and Brad's here too. I'm Wayne Jacobson. I'm Brad Cummings. This is the God Journey. And that's Jeff Fields. New book out. Give us an opportunity to talk to a friend of ours. Jeff, I've known for a few years by his invitation to come out to Lexington, Kentucky and stir up a little trouble out there. Yeah. Go big blue. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Don't make this about that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm surprised your coaches haven't gone to jail yet for something with the shoe company of some kind. I'm at the lovely man in Israel. Yeah. And he and your wife, Teresa, went to Israel with us this past February. We survived it with them. Had a great time. Had a great time. Yeah. So I want to welcome you to the podcast. Give us a good chance to talk to you and get to know you a little bit. So Jeff, you had a long time listening to the God Journey. So how'd you find us? How'd the connection happen there? In terms of me finding the God Journey? Yeah. Yeah. We know how we found you. I got a Skype to get you to say. Right. I friend of mine several years ago emailed me a link to, so you don't want to go to church anymore. That was, I think in about 2011, somewhere in there, I had been a part of a congregation and it just dissolved in a friendly way. Not a bad way, but in a friendly way, we just dissolved the congregation. And yeah, I thought about starting a consulting firm. I've had to dissolve a church, you know, they have these consulting firms. They build one. I have some experience in how to dissolve one. But right about that time. And we need more help with that evidently than planting them. Seemed to plant them crazy. They kind of blow up more than they dissolved though. That's a whole other podcast probably. And were you on staff there or were you a real involved normal person? There was no paid staff. There was no paid staff. It was just a small group and just one step above a house church. We met in the least spot. I was one of a handful of elders and we rotate the teaching. None of us were paid to salary. We rented a spot and we, a lot of the kids had grown up and kind of gone other directions. And so we dwindled down and we kind of, we were in a wonderfully flexible position because we, you know, when you don't own any real estate and you don't, no one's salary depended on it. No one's vocational success depended on it. We were kind of free to do what seemed appropriate and good. So we decided, great, let's just dissolve this thing. So we did. Yeah, if you're a consultant, that'd be hard to find that set of circumstances. There's not many of those out there. Yeah. I guess that's why you didn't go into consulting then, huh? So this reverse consulting or whatever you call it. But so we had the privilege of giving away a bunch of our, we had a state-of-the-art overhead projector that we gave away. And um... A what? That's awesome. Overhead what? Art, overhead projector. I remember those. What'd you do with the flannel graph? We actually had one of those. We gave that away too. We gave away a bunch of stuff. Did you have a pole pit? We had a pole podium. A pole podium? A pole pit? You gotta have a pole pit. So we had money to give away. So anyway, so during that time after we dissolved, a friend of mine emailed me this link, this strange book called So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore. And so I read it online. It was already completely out. I know you initially released it little by little, but it was completely out. Please don't remind people of that. That gives PTSD. That's good. I liked it. So I read that and it, it had never, I had never read anything like it and it really resonated. I know a lot of people tell you, you know, it gives voice. It put words to what I think God has already been speaking in my heart. I felt like I had been on a search for like 30 plus years for the church. So how is, how is church supposed to happen? And I was a full-time pastor for 10 years in my earlier years and just, you know, thinking that we had the right way to do things, the right people, and God's going to bless this thing. And it never dawned on me to think outside of the whole organization to begin with. And so I started thinking, okay, maybe we don't have to have much of an institution or any institution at all. And church, it just becomes a day to day of the gathering and family and all that. So it was a breath of fresh air. What's that though? He got there on his own? What kind of tradition were you a pastor in? Is there a specific domination? The independent Christian church, what we call the independent Christian church. I don't know if that tells you much one way or the other. Are they outside Kentucky at all? Was that pretty, was a snake handling? No, no. That was a conservative group, Bible believing group all over the country, pretty good size, congregations all over. Believe most of it or just some of it? Pardon? They believe most of it or just some of it? Believe the Bible? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hear a lot of Bible believing churches and they don't live in much of it. So I always confused by what that means exactly. Believe all of their version of it, but I had already left that. This little group that we were part of was not part of that. So I had already kind of gone away from that. But I'm thankful for my heritage and the emphasis on scripture and all that. So this group was dissolving and you grab hold of so you don't want church anymore. What kind of journey were you on after that? Well, it was kind of strange. That first Sunday after we dissolved was like for the first time since college, we had no place we were supposed to be on a Sunday morning. If we didn't show up, no one would know. And so that was very freeing. So we spent a year just kind of seeking the Lord as to what direction do we go now and visit around different places. A lot of places, not because we intended going there on a regular basis, but just show up on a Sunday morning with a work associate or something and see where they gather on Sundays. So that was fun. And then a lot of Sundays we wouldn't go anywhere and I really enjoyed the freedom. We actually do now are a part of a very small congregation but it's kind of a low obligation type of place. But I see that as optional. What's going on in your Jesus journey through all this? Not just the church journey, but what's going on in your own heart? Yeah. I've told a lot of people during that year in particular it really became more meaningful. I can honestly say the relationship with God's Father of Jesus became more meaningful. We've always said church is not the building. It's not the institution. And I said that and everybody says that. Did you say that, Brad? I've said that. I don't know what we mean by that. Yeah, you got it from me. I'm the one that said it before. But anyway. I didn't know. Just kidding. But I know it's a lot of stuff of what you all said but I kind of experienced that time and we don't realize how much we depend on the institution as the foundation and the framework of our relationship with God. And so when all of a sudden I didn't have that it kind of brought that to the forefront. Yeah, it is. And it's kind of like, okay, this really is a day-to-day thing because I can't just, you know. So we depend a lot more on the Sunday morning congregational structures than we realize. And it becomes a substitute at times or can't. Not for everybody, but it can. It's a substitute and kind of take up that spot that Christ wants to fill in our hearts and that relationship. Yeah, it's amazing how we don't realize that until it's not there anymore. And I hear a lot of people say that. Gosh, without my Sunday morning church, I'd just wither up and die. And they think that's a positive statement. I'm always thinking like you, really you don't have a relationship with God bigger than this meeting you go to once a week. I think we use it for our sense of validation. Like, you know, I'm doing the right things. I'm doing what I should. And when all of a sudden you're not doing that, you kind of, you go through a little bit of disorientation like, gee, you know, I'm playing hooky and am I going to get in trouble for this? And is that the right thing to do? And do other people know? And then it's like, well, where do you go to church? And I don't know how to answer that anymore. And it just becomes a little disorienting. I like the one guy. I actually had a chance to consult with a group alongside them while their congregation was dissolving. And it did have facility and it did have paid staff. And yet they were all, and I didn't encourage them to this. They were moving that direction, asked me to come along and hang out with them. And they were finally talking about, why don't we just stop doing everything we're doing? And I remember one of the elders looked over at me and said, I'm going to have to walk with Jesus now. And it was full on panic mode. It was like, oh my gosh, I've never done this. And he'd been an elder with, and it's a good congregation. It wasn't a bad one. It wasn't a legalistic, cultic thing. It was just a group of people who really love Jesus, but doing a lot of stuff together and finding validation in this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you're going to take that stuff away. I'm going to have to follow Jesus. And the connection in his head was immediate and it was hilarious and so real. I think so real for all of us. Question for you, Jeff. Did you find that the relationships that you had lasted beyond the gathering? Several of them did. I mean, to some extent. Now, we were from a little bit of a distances around here, but to a large extent, they've continued, which is great. And that was a while after. I was a full-time pastor for 10 years and that ended in 1993. We were part of this group. We lived another little town for four years. Then we were part of this group from 97. So ended in 93 as a full-time pastor. Started this group with this group in 97. So we were part of this group for 14 years. That's a long time. So I saw the kids grow up. And a lot of little kids initially, then they all kind of grew up and scattered it. So we kind of dwindled down to a small number. What vocationally were you doing during that time, Jeff? I work in the financial services industry. And so I work in investments and all that. And I probably, for compliance reasons, I probably don't need to get too technical and titles and all that stuff. Or I'll have to throw in a whole bunch of disclaimers so you launder money. Wow. You actually work for the CIA. We'll skip that. When I resigned as a pastor, I had no other job lined up at the time. I was part-time with hospice as a chaplain. And so resigned. And I resigned. There were no, at the back of the book, we put there that we're both recovering pastors with no record of scandal. So there was no money missing. Marriage is broken up or anything like that. So you didn't have anything to write a book about? No. But I was working part-time as a hospice chaplain. So I kept that up and thinking, okay, God's been providing through the church board. And they were very kind to us. I don't have a horror story about being spilled out of a congregation or being mistreated. They were very nice to us. I put a thank you to that congregation for putting up with us and being patient with us. I was 21 years old. Teresa was 19 when we went there as a pastor's wife. What could possibly go wrong with a 21-year-old pastor? So experienced in life. I've been there too. So experienced in life. It worked all right. They were nice to us and we were there 10 years. Everything was fine, but just felt like this is not what God had for me. And so decided that he could support me some other way. And so a few months after that, had the opportunity to get into financial services industry. And that took a while to go. And so we improved overnight. There were many, many years of financial challenges and things were difficult and all that. So I'm very glad now that we made that step. Okay, cool. So you still live in Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky? Yeah. Tell us about your family bit. Teresa and I married in 1983. We have six children. You've met I think most all of them, Wayne. I have. Oldest is 31, youngest is 19. We have five grandchildren and all of the oldest grandchild is three. And they're all in the Lexington area. So that's a lot of fun. And so Teresa and I enjoy them. That's great. And then you and your brother got together and decided to write a book, huh? Yeah, about a year and a half ago. I'm driving down the road, minding my own business. My phone rings. I see Roger's name on my phone. He and I are the family, just the two of us, two boys and our family. And I pick it up and say hello. Well, how about if we write a book together? So, well, okay. I don't remember what all we said after that, but we got talking about it. And so started out thinking kind of a devotional book without whether it be kind of easy to write, but then as it changed, kind of morphed into a little something else, the chapters are extremely short as you've seen. I mean, they're short like a devotional book. But it's, you know, we thought at one time, well, write a devotional book that only has about 50 or 60 chapters because most people start at the beginning of the year and they give up by the end of February anyway. So, you know, it really doesn't need to have 365 of them. The best link now is 40 because that's a length. That's how long length is. 40 is the way to go. Now you tell us that after we've already come out with the book. Well, you shouldn't call me. So as we started talking about what to write on it, and Roger and I had both come to very similar conclusions on a lot of things, kind of through our own separate paths. I mean, we never really disagreed. I mean, we always got along, in terms of living out our walk with God and church life and that type of thing. We kind of each had our own path and things were fine, but we kind of came to some very similar conclusions on some of the things. And so as we talked, I realized, you know, this is a lot like Galatians 3. A lot of what we were talking about was Galatians 3. This idea of trying to finish what God started. And so we're trying to add our own performance, our own abilities to what God is doing. And so that's when we started, we went through various titles. We went through a lot of different subtitles. I ran some past y'all when we were in Israel, you might remember and you kindly nodded your head and, oh, that's nice. Then had a good laugh later. No, we couldn't do that. Come on. So we arrived at the title pretty early on, arrived at the title Breaking the Hex. That word hex comes from the message version of Galatians 3, chapter 3 verse 1, where Paul kind of says, you crazy Galatians. Does someone put a hex on you? And so that's where the title comes from. And what is the hex? What is the hex referring to? The hex is when we try it to, it's a trap. It's when we try to add our performance to God's grace. It's trying to live on, we use the term this side of the cross. It's trying to live on both sides of the cross. You read that chapter earlier about the foot in each boat. Everyone says it's by grace. We all know that. No one says it's not by grace. So we all say it's by grace, but then we'd live it out. I thought you were saying by grace. I couldn't figure out what the by grace was. But by grace, I got that. In case anybody else was confused. So we all say it is by grace. But then we add, that's what the Galatians were doing. Paul kind of chastises the Galatians. They had not given up on trying to walk with God. It's not like they had just full fledged, turned their back on everything. They were still trying hard. But they were trying to finish what God had started. And it's just really, really easy to do. And we think very common in our day. And so that got us thinking and writing. And so we would write a, so we just wrote a bunch of chapters, little short chapters, and we would come up with ideas. And then we just kind of, okay, and we got to organize things. You know, we came to a whole bunch of unrelated little short chapters. And so we kind of categorized them. And so there's a little bit of a progression of thought through the book. But it's also, could be used as an emotional type of book. And you call it rapid, rapid fire chapters with a bit of humor thrown in and. Yeah, we, I tell people, I think the, the humor loans worth about 499. So, you know, if you don't like the book, then you're only out, you know, the difference between that and whatever you paid for it. But we, we keep it fairly lighthearted. We think it's a unique book. It deals with a serious subject. What to us is extremely important, but we don't take ourselves too seriously, hopefully. And we try to make it extremely easy to understand. Constantly through this, we were always reminding ourselves, you know, we're not writing this for people like us. We're not writing it for people like Wayne and Brad. We're not writing it for people who went to Bible college or seminary. You know, is there an easier, is there a simpler way to say this? Is there a shorter way to say this? We want this to be understood. One of the things we kind of had to refrain from, you know, there's some things in here we're thinking, well, someone might not agree with that. Someone that, you know, we went to Bible college with may not agree with that. And there would be a tendency to try to preemptively anticipate that and answer it. And with O&O, that's going to make it too long. Too many people don't care about that. So we'll just say what we really believe. And that's not who we're trying to reach. So we think it's very easy to understand, very simple, a lot of white space, as you've seen. A lot of font changes. A lot of charts and font changes. Roger did the whole, he's done a ton of work in laying it out. He's good at the graphic design issues and all that. And so he's done all the work on that. And the writing is about pretty close to 50-50. I don't know exactly. We haven't got into that. But you know, neither one of us has tried to add that up. But it's that text itself is really close to even between the two of us. Some of the chapters we each actually have kind of honestly forgot who wrote. Because some of them we would kind of work together on and change a few things here and there. So a lot of them were much longer on point. Wayne, I took your advice about whittling down the size of a book and what we're writing. Is there a shorter way to say this? And we went through pretty much every line and every chapter saying is there a shorter way to say this? Is there a more creative way to say this? We try to avoid cliches and inside language as much as possible. So it's just well, yeah. What is the takeaway that you want people to get? Is there a singular kind of sense? We tell people that this is not a how-to book. It's a what-happened book. It's not primarily good advice. It's good news. So we want people to come away excited about the good news of what really happened at the cross. Because we think we've tend to relegate the cross and the impact of the cross. It's just to get out of hell-free card. Yeah, it gets us to heaven. But then we go on the rest of our so-called Christian life just trying to do the best we can that there is much more to the good news of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. And so I tell people the book is about how the cross set us free from the trap of trying to add our performance to grace. We think there's kind of an open lane. There's a lot of material out there. And you all are in that lane, I think, and stuff you all put out. But a lane where there's all about commitment, trying harder and that's discipleship. We're in that lane? No. You see us in that lane? No. Okay. Wow, I was going to shut the thing off here. Do you? And then on the other side, there's kind of a wishy-washy, anything goes. God is just a softy and all this. And so we think there's a, you know, that grace is grace, but that doesn't mean, like the term I've heard you all use, freedom is not self-indulgence. So this is not just, you know, anything goes type of thing. It's not couch potatoes for Jesus, but that the work of the cross is far more than we realize. And that there is a freedom that brings about inner transformation through that. And the rules and the pressure don't, you know, rules don't change the heart at all. But there really is a transformation that can come from the power of Christ inside. Jeff, do you feel like there's a lot of people that are kind of at the end of the day insecure in regards to their salvation and standing with Jesus that they just, they don't really have that joyful sense of confidence of something being finished? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I think so. We're trying to, I think we spend a lot of, and we in a general sense, we're believers in general, we spend a lot of time trying to do what's already been done. We spend a lot of time trying to become who we already are. So the idea that, you know, what happened at the cross brought an end to who I used to be. And it opened the door for the life of Christ inside of me. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And he is now my life. And so I'm not trying to live for him. But he is, he is in me. And he lives out his life in me. And I can trust him to do that. That just as I trust him to, for my eternal standing before, before the Father, I trust him to create his life in me here and now. I think it's mostly true that Christians really have the grace thing down in terms of salvation. I know it's by grace, through faith, we're saved, and we get to go to heaven, get our health-free card. And then in terms of Christian practice, we go right back to the Old Testament kind of performance, pre-cross kind of thing. So when you talk about by grace through faith, yeah, I get that. But then they don't actually end up living that way. Because they end up with, okay, now I've got to try to be a good Christian or a better Christian, so I'm always kind of working at it. But I think that's because of the way we define grace. Go ahead, what do you mean then? Well, I just wonder what most, I mean, we hear the word, it's a common word that we have in Christianity, you know, the word grace. I don't know that a lot of us really know the meaning of it. It's one of those religious words, like, okay, yeah, I'm supposed to know and I think most people are like, oh yeah, it's an unmerited favor from God. And it's like, well yeah, but if that's true, then how come only the humble get it? And if it means that, then how can you fall from it? Yeah, I read something years ago, and we put this in the book. It's a quote from a watchman knee. He said, I thought it was a great quote. So simply, he says, law means I do something for God, grace means God does something for me. And one of the chapters in the book, I kind of ask that question, okay, when you boil it all down, does your walk with God do you really feel like it's something you're doing for God, or do you feel like it's something God's doing for you? And it's only going to, you know, it only happens as long as you keep pushing and making it happen. And I know for me personally, a lot of times through the years, when I really tried hard, you know, I've doubled down efforts, okay, I'm really, you know, you go to a concert or you go to some meeting and get all inspired, okay, it's really going to be, you know, I'm really committed this time. I'll be radical for Jesus. Yeah. And also the heart just kind of grows cold in that. And then occasionally I would get the point, okay, I give up. I wouldn't go out and commit some horrible sin or anything like that. But just inwardly you think, okay, I'm giving up. And a lot of times when I got to that point, you know, a short time later, I sent something in my heart of kind of like being drawn toward God. And so, you know, we can really trust him to create that life in this instead of trying to produce something of our own work that looks like that, but runs cold after a while. I mean, I think this relationship's pretty hard to do if it doesn't actually have a relationship communication component. I mean, if it's just principles, I think, you know, you'd probably likely have someone finish this book and go, okay, so I'm saved, so now what, Jeff? Yeah. And so we put at the end of the book, we kind of made a conclusion to it that, okay, where do we go from here? And I don't know if y'all have gotten that part. You may have only read the first two sections. I don't know if you've probably just read the one chapter I read to you earlier. We took a deep dive. Are you talking about on this side of the cross? No, no, no, waking up tomorrow morning. So we kind of, we have a section that says, okay, where do we go from here? You know, what is life with God look like when the hex is broken? What you need to do next is faithfully follow the 12 steps listed on the next page. It's all up to how hard you work and how committed you are, and then you're right, just kidding. We have no steps, we have no list, we have no list of principles. And so talk there about relationship and trusting God, and I appreciate what y'all have said through the years about, you know, you don't know what that's going to look like. You know, there's a sense of expectancy, but not an expectation. Exactly what that's going to look like. We all say it's relationship and not religion, but we tend to go, we try to combine both. Yeah, we're still trying to master the principles, it feels like, that, you know, I think people get a little frustrated that if it's not a system I can work, then how do I feel validated in it? You know, I think that's why, you know, the whole idea of going someplace as opposed to being someone is a whole lot easier, because those feel like extra things, like, you know, you know, because those feel like external handholds. And when I live with myself, and I know what I do, and I know how I mess up, I'm, you know, as opposed to really recognizing the transformation that God wants to bring on the inside. I mean, there's an experiential dimension, I don't know how you get away from. It's like, there's a difference when all of a sudden God's on the inside, you stop asking some of the same things that God used to ask when he wasn't. Yeah. So that's been meaningful to us. There's a lot of stuff in the book that you all were recognized, and your listeners will recognize, and hopefully you're not going to send us a cease and desist later somewhere along the way. We've got some right here that we can use. We've got the format done. Now, when I enjoyed this little chart you kind of used throughout, you got a picture of a cross and you got the cross, obligations, sweating it out, works, whatever, and on the other side what it is now in Christ. And I think that's a great tool for people who are, I think what helps does identify where I've kind of fallen into that old religious obligation kind of pattern, and how that's influencing my thoughts and emotions, and where I embrace the other reality that is, because it's been our contention for a long time, that most of what we do in terms of religious performance in our view of Christianity oftentimes, we act like the cross never happened. It got us our Get Out of Hell free card, but in terms of transformation, it's still all coming from us. It's got to come from in here, it's got to come from feeling guilty about the bad stuff I'm doing, it's got to, and I think it will be helpful to people to be able to say, okay, that was what was true under the law. Now, no longer is true in Christ, and that doesn't mean we just become couch potatoes, and like you said, do whatever we want, it doesn't matter, but now we have a whole new opportunity to go on this adventure with Jesus, which is far more transforming than religious performance would ever do in your life anyway, even if you could work it. Absolutely, and it dawned on me a few months ago, and I wrote one chapter in this, it's like we, we skip over the cross, it's like imagine if Jesus came to earth, the Son of God, he lived a perfect life, he modeled life with Father, he taught, and then he just went back to heaven. So assuming he never went to the cross, he just, that's what he did, he came, he lived, he taught, and model, went back to heaven. Here's how you do it, go on. And then they just said, okay, we'll take care of the sin, we'll just, we'll forgive your sin. Well, that's pretty much the way I think a lot of us approach the day-to-day walk in the Christian life, that we kind of, we just, okay, Jesus said this, so this is what I'm supposed to do, and it really struck me that Jesus almost never quoted after the cross in the New Testament. The Book of Acts, and in the, of course he's there, you know, it does the essential there in the first chapter, but in the Epistles, the only time he's ever directly quoted is involved in the Last Supper, basically as you know, remember the the loaf and the cup, and the New Covenant and all that. So it's not like we think the words of Jesus and the Old Testament need to be interpreted through the cross. And so a lot of what he taught, so he said, you know, we need to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Well, we learn after that, you know, he is our righteousness. And so to interpret everything that's in the Old Testament and in the Gospels through the lens of the cross and how that fulfilled, how Jesus accomplished what he called us to do so many times. Yeah. I did have a question. Uh-oh. No, it's not an uh-oh. Towards the very end where you say, you know, I will never again need to, and you have one of the things like ask God to forgive me. And I don't know, I raised a little flag that just says, okay, but when I do sin, I know I have been forgiven of my sin, but I have found a real desire and a need to sort of be transactionally honest. Right. I'm not questioning my salvation, but I sort of feel like I don't really get cleansed of my guilty conscience having just done what I did until I'm honest and transacted with him and say, hey, I did that again. What the heck is my issue here, Lord? Yeah. There's definitely a place to be honest with God and transparent and all that. So the idea, if I mess up, whatever, then yeah, it's very good and helpful and I think pleasing to God and just within the context of a relationship. Yeah, God, I know that's not- But it's not getting saved over again. Absolutely correct. And that's what we're trying to point to. We're not having to, yeah. Yeah, I think the operative word is have to. Do I have to to maintain salvation? Yeah, I don't have to. But I think a growing relationship with him is we are honest about our stuff. We're honest about where we struggle. We're honest about, oh, God, forgive me for the way I just treated that person and I want to be changed in a way that I don't do that anymore. And we've talked a lot about the importance of that repentant forgiveness conversation. But again, it's not to earn anything. Yeah, I think once I know I am accepted by him, it's like it's a whole lot easier to then be honest about what I'm struggling with and almost being inquisitive, like, hey, I think you understand me better than I understand me. What is my deal here? I keep tripping in this spot, this space and I don't know that I understand why I keep doing that. And when if I'm really insecure about my sense of standing for my acceptance before God, then that's like a crisis moment. Once that's secure, then it's a whole lot easier to just say, hey, need some healing here, please. But how many of us were taught, I know I was, that your sins aren't forgiven until you've asked forgiveness or confessed them, even to point of being told that if you have one unconfessed sin between you and Jesus when you change, you'll be left. And I think that's what this is addressing, that whole idea of, my goodness, if I've missed something, God's still upset or God hasn't forgiven or God hasn't, whatever. I think a lot of people need that underscored because I do think that's a lot of what some of us were taught. It's the effective tool to leave open so that I can modify your behavior. I gotta leave you a little bit insecure about what's going on if I want to make sure that you start behaving right. That you're going to try harder, which is back to the performance thing again. For me, it's a lot of, God, I know that's not part of who you are and me, and I thank you, so I thank God for his forgiveness, but I don't feel like it's something that if I don't ask for it, that he's forever going to hold it against me and that's going to be the thing that keeps me out or whatever. But a lot of it comes down to who is Christ and me and that Christ lives his life through me. It's not what I'm doing for him, he's living his life through me. One of the things, Wayne, I've been very helpful for me through the years. Galatians 2.20 was always very meaningful to me or has been for many years, but I think I kind of glossed over the part where it says, but who loved me and gave himself for me. So I think for me a lot of times this whole concept of Christ is my life was just kind of doctrinal to me and not really alive, but when I got to see more of the relationship aspect of the love of Christ, the love of Father for us, it brings life to the doctrine. So it's no longer just a cold doctrine or whatever, but it comes to life. Did you learn personally anything in writing this book? In working on this stuff and putting it together, where do you feel like your eyes were open to this life in a better way? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I feel like it definitely was. Roger and I both, as we would talk, the collaboration was very helpful and he would say something that would trigger a thought and you all certainly know the benefit of collaboration and the creativity that comes from that. There definitely were things now. I'm trying to pinpoint one right now. I don't mean necessarily one thing, but more the broader sense of how was this just putting down things you already knew or was this also part of a discovery? Were you open wider to it? Both, absolutely both. It's been 35 years of the making to some degree, but it definitely actually opened up a lot more beyond that. The last section is how the Father adores you. One thing that really struck me through this is John 14.6, we all know that and I've known that since I was little. I'm the way of the truth in life, no man comes to the Father, but by me and I always kind of saw that versus that's how you know who gets to heaven and who doesn't. That's what it's all about. I do believe Jesus is the only way, but that verse I don't think is really talking about that. No man comes to the Father and so that knowing Christ is obviously hugely important, but that's not an end in and of itself. Knowing Christ is to bring us into that relationship with the Father. Know him and the one who loves us. There are various areas where it definitely opened up more for me. That's great. The times when you had something written and you guys are pointing out, do you have any kind of wakeups to that? Really? I mean, we cut out a bunch of stuff. The first edition this had about 86 chapters. This one has 74 and we added four or five more. There's about 15 chapters that all got eliminated. Not really because we thought they weren't worth saying it's just redundancy. We thought, okay, we pretty much already said this. We try to keep it condensed in that way. This is pretty much hot off the presses. This is just available. Yeah, I guess. 20 seconds. People are already complaining to me that you don't have an e-book of this. Is that right? We hope to at some point. We're kind of focused on this. It's almost comical. We're new at this. I've never written anything before. I've written a couple of little things, but something like this is all due to us. We're kind of learning as we go to some extent. So we will at some point but hope to have it in the e-book. We created a website. We got the breakingthehex.com and there's a little bit more about it. Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the podcast notes and to Amazon, I guess, the best place people ordered or from the website. Where's the best place for people? Amazon or for individual copies of Amazon, there's at the end of the book or on our webpage. We'll have an email address. They can email us about bulk orders if someone wants to order 10 or more. They can send us an email and be a little cheaper that way than it would be through Amazon. That's great. Multiple times almost every day for the last year and a half working on this. That's pretty sweet as brothers. Yeah, we don't know of other books that were written by brothers or hardly any. Hold it, hold it. Hold it. I wrote one with Clay, my brother. Okay, you're the other guy. I might be the other guy. We always had a hard time with what we put on the cover. We don't put Wayne and Clay Jacobson. Sound like we were married. And people are always asking, you guys went with Jacobson. You guys went with the Fields Brothers. I like that. We went through that exact same thought process of what you just described. This day, you don't know how someone's going to interpret that. And we had the I don't know if the cover, you or Wayne recommended someone to us that we might want to get to design the cover. So we had that professionally designed. So we were happy with what came out of that. Well, I wish you all the best. I've been following the story for at least a year. You've been sending me stuff and talking about it. So I've been kind of aware it's happening. Congratulations on getting it done and getting it out to people. Jeff, what kind of response have you gotten from your regular church going folks? Have any of those come across this? Some. It's brand new. I think some that we've given it to haven't read it all yet and we're waiting to hear back. We're expecting at some point to get some pushback or some places where someone that's a more, you know, what we would consider legalistic may not like it. But we've not seen that yet or probably will come. While we have seen some people that have the term joy and freedom comes up a lot when people talk about their response to it. You'll first hear from the legalists when they're outside your door with torches and pitchforks. You know what, I really appreciated those. I didn't feel like this was attacking anything like that. It's like a lot of times I think when we're trying to make our point we usually show our opponent and for what a knucklehead they are and it just sort of felt like you guys didn't have any of that kind of residue in this. I sort of felt like this was a breath of fresh air and it was kind of celebrating something that's very much finished with us. Maybe that's because of the tongue-in-cheek poking fun at this humor but I didn't feel like anyone was getting attacked which I thought was really refreshing. I wanted to commend you for that because I kind of went a lot of times in our little grace versus law debate it's not always done with a smile and a cheerful sense of, well isn't that now joyful? Because we usually just gave somebody a pop in the face. It's not like we've achieved to use the eclipse terminology it's not like we've arrived at the point of totality in our understanding of God or anything like that. So this is where we are at this point. Oh, shoot! I thought that was what the last page was about. Sorry to disappoint you on that, Brad. It's okay. I'll read it again. He'll live. Thanks for being with us. Like I said, we'll put the links in the podcast notes, Jeff, so people can get ahold of you and Roger if they want to and find a copy of the book. But happy for you. Happy to have this done. Happy to have it out. Well done. Thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey. You can join this conversation by visiting TheGodJourney.com