The Letter From David — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2005/10/21/the-letter-from-david/

You're listening to The God Journey, a place for people thinking outside the box of organized religion to share thoughts and conversation along the journey. Here are your hosts and fellow travelers, Wayne Jacobson and Brad Cummings. Well, how do you like the new music, Wayne? Well, you know what? I gotta tell you, it takes me to my happy place. If you could only see this, if we had a camera in here, Wayne was dancing and just, I mean, this is an absolute treat. He's going to his happy place at the very opening of, you were chair dancing. I never left the chair. I look like it. No. He's got some moves. He's got some moves. Well, we want to thank Greg Campbell from Palmyra, New York, I believe, who offered us some new music and some lead in and we thought we'd try it a bit and see how everybody likes it and there'll be some links to his website and the song itself. The whole song is just a wonderful song and we will put at the end of this podcast where we're going to put up the website or something to hear the whole song. Oh, yeah. It is just tremendous. So Greg, thanks. So you've been traveling. Where have you been? Oh, just got back from Canada. Oh. Not far in Canada. Verily snuck across the border through Vancouver out to Vancouver Island. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful up there. Whistler's my favorite spot. Is it? Well, you're a skier freak. See, I'm not. But I went sailing on, I don't know what it was, it was a bay, some bay. It's a beautiful bay. We sailed across to have lunch at a fish and chip shop and then back, but I spent six days up there and I had marvelous time with a great group of people, some of which I'm going to talk about on the next podcast as we talk about children, that'll be fun. But we also spent an awesome weekend with a group of about 20, 25 folks from a variety of ages, folks kind of in their senior years to young married couples and kids that were all freshly thinking outside the box. They showed up for the weekend kind of, okay, what do we do about meetings? What do we do about leadership? What do we do about all these items of concern that deal with body life specifically? But we spent the whole weekend talking about, you know, if we get this relationship with father, right? If we really learn how to live in him, then fellowship is nothing more than sharing that journey. Those other issues become far less important in the face of how do we live in the life of this father and his son? And if we do that, how does Jesus kind of put us together with folks? And I tell you, it was a fabulous weekend. We got off on the cross that we did a podcast on before. We got off on some of the issues of just trust and how God grows our trust and the dynamic of that relationship. And I think sharing that growth in trust is really what fellowship is all about. We're just stimulating that in each other so that we can live in him more deeply and more freely, I guess. That's great. I think when you try to answer some of those questions about meetings and all the other stuff, it is kind of like putting the cart before the horse. It is. It's theorizing about a lot of things that aren't the substance of what this is all about anyways, and then you kind of get off a little bit on the weeds. And it's kind of backward. If you get the horse right, I hate to say God's the horse. You just call God a horse. Not exactly. We're using a metaphor here. When you get that bit in place, it's amazing how unimportant the other questions become. You may have some curiosities about them, but they really flow out very well. This whole idea of leadership and five-fold giftings and what do we do when we get together? Because getting together isn't the main thing. The relationships are. And if we're sharing this journey of growing trust in who Father is and Father's love for us, then man, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. It's like sitting down in an office and turning on a couple of microphones and just enjoying what God's doing in our lives and the freedom that we have to live in him. Yeah, a phrase that I think the Lord kind of breathed when I was wrestling through some of this is, form always follows function. Wow, that's high-brow language there. Yeah, I know. It was catchy, though. And what was nice is the reality is that so often times it's like everyone's in search of a new model or what's it supposed to look like, and it's like when you're in the midst of doing what God has given you to do, and you know, that's the present assignment. That's what he's relating to you with. Everything else seems to kind of naturally fall in place. It's when you try to stop and freeze frame and discuss everything that it becomes a little static and then it's like, well, where'd God go? And one of the analogy we use is like the bride being focused on the bride instead of the bride being focused on the groom. Our task as a body is to be focused on Jesus. His job is to put the bride together without spot or wrinkle. And I just think if we're all focused on the bride, body life, how are we going to do this, how are we going to do that? We always miss it. But when we're focused on him and who he is, he takes first place in everything. Then we get to experience body life. So that's a lot of fun. Eating first things first. That's good. Yeah. On our comment line this week, we heard from John and John post some things. It kind of followed up on our Andrew Strom thing and probably sets us up pretty well for where we want to go tonight. Let's give it a listen. Hi. My name is John. I am from Columbus, Ohio. I just wanted to call in and say that I love your topic because I think it's very level headed. That's one of the things that's really attracted me to your. I just wanted to drop in a couple of comments in regard to Andrew Strom. I was actually on his list from about 1997, just the things that you had to say because I too actually quite go along with or agree with. Although there was some things within the last, a lot of comments a lot of people had to offer that were wonderful, particularly in regard to, I just wanted to comment that it seems I've begun to realize that not every Christian has to go through a desert. This was something I guess I kind of assumed. I thought, you know, well, you're going to go into a desert. You're going to go into a dry time. And that may very well be true. I've come to the rift of that. Maybe if you guys had any comments about that or where you feel we are as a body because it seems to me like we've historically come to perhaps an ending. We may very well see an empty skeleton of it. I'd have to say I hardly agree with what John's saying. I don't think that everyone has to go through a desert. I think, you know, the journey that God leads us on is going to be tailor made to our individual lives. And I don't think God demands that you, I mean, you're going to go through stuff, but the whole idea that you have to be in this is like, I don't think so. Yeah, people say, I think we want to project our own experience on other people. So if I went through betrayal to get here, everyone should. Everyone should go through such a valuable thing. If I got through disillusionment and dryness and I got here, then I like the way that John's opening up beyond that and just saying, you know, maybe that's not required. Maybe God has a zillion ways to get us here. And I think that would probably be true. Yeah. I mean, I think you think of the individualness and the uniqueness that each one of us has our own set of fingerprints. There's, you know, there's 17,000 kind of fern that God has created. You're just going like, everything's very different. And yes, there can be some principles and some parallels and similarities. And that's all great. But I don't think there's a prescription of you have to have, you know, this experience, otherwise you're devoid of, you know, a complete understanding or everybody's going to come the same way. It just doesn't happen that way. Yeah. But I think it's interesting that one of the things I run into with folks who have spilled out of various things, particularly if they've left disillusioned and hungering for something better, is that people do seem to spend a long time feeling very alone, feeling like God's very silent and very distant and don't know what to do about that. And I, that's part of where I'd love to take our time tonight, Brad. I, I got a letter recently from a brother that I visited up in a part of the US a little while back and don't want to give up too many details, because I don't know that he wants this attached to him directly. But his name is David. And I was with him for a weekend and some other brothers and sisters in this area. We're talking a lot about the journey. And he was talking about this dryness and the struggle. And when is it ever going to get real? And is God alive? And even to the point of really thinking about giving up on God on life on, I don't mean suicide, but I just mean maybe this really isn't here. Maybe it's just a pipe dream. I've been trying and I mean, literally 20, 30 years, this guy's been involved in various kinds of expressions of religious activity and things. And from a very diligent leadership side of things, very engaged, very involved. And yet feeling very empty inside. And over the course of our time together, it seems that God's done some incredible things. I got this email from him two weeks after I was there. And I, it's just amazed me at what transitions God's done his life. So we thought it'd be fun to have a look at this letter email and kind of read it to you and make some comments on it and see where it takes us tonight. Because I think this transition is really the reason we end up in the desert for so long, some of us sometimes is because the only tools we have to relate to God are all this religious tools that we inherited that we're going to somehow earn it, that we've got to do this or God won't do that. And so we've got this religious mindset and we're disconnected from it. It is a bit disorienting. And I think it is a bit dry. I think it should be dry. I think religious approaches to God should be like chewing on dust in a desert. I mean, I think it should be. But part of that is God wants to teach us to relate to him as he wants to be related to, and that's where that life comes. So David wrote this, I'll read just a couple of paragraphs. We'll have some comments. He said, this journey that I'm on is really something. I thought you might be interested to hear what the Lord is doing. First, I want to tell you that I can't remember any conference I've attended having the same lasting effect on me that your weekend visit has so far. It's the gift that keeps on giving. I'm putting him on my PR staff. Got some people to replace there anyway. Then he says, I suppose I hear at least a hundred times a day, relax. Now, if you don't, Dave, this is, this is so huge. Kind of a tight bay, high strong, got to go get it somehow. He says, I never realized just how much of my life has been based on performance or how deeply ingrained has been the idea that somehow I must produce the things that Jesus wants to see in me. You can well imagine the sense of relief and freedom I am feeling. Your CDs are a big help. There's a plug. But more importantly, I'm hearing more clearly than ever before directly from Father himself. How wonderful. That's, that's fantastic. I do think that the whole desert, you know, I was just, you know, as I was listening, I think it's our whole performance orientation that almost produces that same dynamic because, you know, the whole desert dynamic is if somehow I'm in a dry place, it's terrible. God's not here with me. And I wonder if it isn't a bunch of our own expectations. Here I'm doing all these things and I'm expecting an oasis. I'm expecting a garden and I'm not getting my results. And I wonder if God doesn't purposely step back and say, guess what? I do not want to reinforce that approach to me. If God's going to reward our performance, then we're just going to keep performing. Yeah. It's not the only reason. The only way God can get through to that is I'm not going to honor that. I'm going to let you withdraw from that enough or get weary on it. Get worn out with it enough to back up and realize this is not something we produce in ourselves. This is something God produces in us as we learn to relax. I know where that comes from. I always say I'm hearing relax 100 times a day. We talked about Eugene Peterson's translation of Luke 12, where Jesus says to disciples after all that talk about the birds of the air and the flowers of the field and they don't worry and yet God takes care of them. He says, what I'm trying to get you to do is to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting that you can't respond to God's giving. And I love the way he says that. I love the way Eugene Peterson translated that in the message. And for me, it really expresses a vital change in my thinking in the last 10 years because I grew up in this Christian life learning how to press in, pray through, seek, you know, contend. And then we get Jesus saying, listen, anxiety, effort is the opposite of what opens God's life to us. What opens it is, relax. Don't think about how I get from God. Think about what God wants to give you today, which is it's a wonderful thing about just temper slowing down. I think that's a big part of it. I think the other part of it is it's not trying to get God on my agenda. It's me finding my way onto his. I think so often times when it really is, and I think it's a subtle thing because our performance dynamic, I think most of the time it at least begun sincerely. It's because something's moved in my heart and I'm wanting to respond to that. But then I think because of so much of the religiosity that is programmed around us, there is that sense that if I do these things, well, that's going to yield this. I mean, I've heard, you know, you know, all your five steps, six steps, you know, whatever little messages that always come with all these, no, not yours. I don't know. But it always gives you that sense of expectation that if I would do these important things, I will get these results. And so it begs us into a performance mindset where when I'm not achieving those things, you know, it's like, ah, I'm struggling and I end up with this sense of angst and inbred sense of disappointment because it's like, oh, I'm not getting this. And in the midst of all of that, I do think that God's trying to just breathe into us and say, you know what, I'm functioning on a whole different order. I want to inject these things in your life, but they're not going to come because you're doing all of this. It really is as you allow my life to work in yours and to work through yours. Then you get to experience my life. I mean, man, with all my sincere efforts, I experienced just a tremendous amount of exhaustion from my toil. And this is huge for people who are spilling out of systemic kinds of ways of thinking because we really think, well, they've got the meeting wrong, the leadership's wrong, all this is wrong. And so we can spill out of all that, but still think we got to find better ways to do those things. And the focus is on doing things. But we're just going to do them differently. But when they don't yield any better fruit, then we wonder what's really going on. And I, boy, I love what David wrote here because when he talks about now, I'm hearing him more clearly than ever relaxing than he ever was performing. And boy, if that could just get through. That's huge. It would be huge. I think so oftentimes in all of our performing, we think that, okay, I'm going to be busy doing these things and then God will reveal himself. And where it's like, you know what, if I'll sit back, God's already here. God's all I'm already in his midst. And if I can sit back and look at that, then even if it is sort of a a desert like experience, if I'm sitting in the desert with him, it doesn't feel quite like that. It's a whole lot more bearable because I don't feel so abandoned and alone. Absolutely. And the circumstances don't matter now. What matters is our perception of his presence and how he makes himself known. He goes on in this letter. He says, all things I used to do that were spiritual, more religious actually, are being overhauled into a new dynamic. Now I find my days are filled more with fellowship with him and that the things I used to do to get close to him are woven into our relationship as I walk through each day. And in that, I am discovering how desperately I have always needed a father, one that I have never had. And he is revealing himself as my father. Man, oh man. The other day I was struggling through some setbacks and disappointments when I just lost it and threw a mini tantrum. How many of us have done that? I've done that. How do you know what a mini tantrum is? After I calmed down and went back to father to apologize, same old perspective. You're a holy god and who am I to challenge you like that, etc. What he said stunned me. He said, David, you've never had a father to whom you could express yourself like that. And when you did, it would have been better if you hadn't. Then he immediately showed me a picture of how I have been with my sons when they did the same thing, reminding me that I didn't punish them, but I let them vent, encourage them, came alongside of them to work through the issues with them. Wayne, I have never made the connection until now. Honestly, God showed me that that's how he is. Matter of fact, he said, you are my son. I understand. And here I am to work through it with you. We are partners in this. Isn't that amazing? He actually said that to me. That is so fantastic. When we get that mindset that God's not this holy, distant, going to whack you if you say the wrong word or come with the wrong emotion, but that God really wants us to come into His presence as real as we are. And with our hurts and struggles and this whole idea of, I'm going to partner with you. I understand this. I'm going to get you through this. That's at the heart of this relationship. If we can't be with God like that, we've got no hope. Because then we've got to fix ourselves before we get there, instead of getting there and saying, God, even when we're angry at Him, I love what this says about what God's done in Dave. And I'm telling you, when I was with him, this is so far from the guy I was with in those days. We spent quite a time in his home. And now we spent quite a time in his truck together. That can go in from one place to another. And boy, this is fabulous stuff. I'm discovering that I have a father, a father that I've always needed. And he's not this mean guy that we've got everything right when we get there. But he's willing to partner with us down and dirty in the places where we're hurting and struggling and are broken. See, it's interesting. When you think of like little kids, and I mean, I have three. And virtually ever. And chipper. Don't forget chipper. And chipper. And I got two dogs, too. We got a full house. Almost everything that the kids do, there is this need and desire. They want to share it with me. They want to make sure I'm observing and seeing what they're doing. It's like, dad, watch me, watch me. And they can do the most silly things. And it's like, you're just going like the enjoyment of their growth and watching them do stuff. I think so oftentimes that is so normal for a little child to want an observant parent that's with them, enjoying them. That it's so foreign to me. Why do we disconnect when it comes to a relationship and Christianity that is supposed to be with a father that so oftentimes people have no sense of that? That he's actually there just like a parent would be watching. I mean, a lot of times we grow up with families that don't accurately reflect the heart of God. And David's saying as much. He's saying, oh, father, I've never had. I mean, this for him, to have a father that wouldn't punish you for venting, but come alongside you in the venting. And there's a lot of people, I'm sure listening to this, who are saying, I've never had that kind of father either. See, I don't know what that is. Yeah, man, I think you got to realize God knows the full extent of what we're thinking, feeling, and the things we actually aren't saying, but would say if we didn't have our little religious constraints around it. And I think he absolutely enjoys the honesty. You know, it's like, I'm not saying, you know, go all, you know, have a major tantrum and just throw a fitted God. But it's like, if that's in your heart, that's the best place to throw it. It's the safest place to throw it. Absolutely. But it's like, there's a whole honest unveiling that happens when we will simply go, this is what is. And God meets us right in the midst of what is. And the uptake of that honesty is, God shows you how real he is and how loving he is. And that disarms all that anger and animosity. When God makes this connection that David's talking about here, and we sense who he is, and that this father is with me, and he's going to partner in my wholeness, in my healing, and he's going to walk me through the things. To me, that's where this journey really takes off. Because until we get that, it's still about so much performance. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, we opened the question with the whole, you know, is it necessary? Does every Christian have to be in a desert? And the thought is, you know, I don't think so. I had a really interesting experience at the dentist's office a couple years ago. And this may seem a little tangential, but I think it's important to kind of add. They were shooting me full of novocaine, because they're going to do work on a tooth. And it didn't, I mean, after two shots, I was supposed to be numb. I wasn't. And I didn't seem to be in the least. And he did another one. I mean, it's like after five shots, I'm supposed to be like having, you know, tongue of an elephant. You know, it's like, you can't feel anything. I can still feel everything. And he's looking at me like, I think this guy's just a wimp. And I mean, you know, it's like, you can't. So he starts drilling. I'm feeling it. I'm having excruciating pain. I've been there. And I'm sitting here going like, God, where are you? And clear as a bell. I'm right here, Brad. And I'm sitting here going like, how can that be true? I'm going through excruciating pain. And you're saying right here. And as if there was a purposeful moment, God says, look, you've always looked at your life that in the presence of pain, somehow there is the absence of God. I'm wanting to use this little moment to just let you know, the presence of pain in your life does not mean my absence. I am right here with you. And I got to tell you, I didn't enjoy that dental visit, but I did enjoy that massive revelation because it made me look at the rest of life going like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I live through that and I'm fine. And you're here and so often times, when I'm experiencing something I don't like, I'm concluding, God's abandoned me. God's left me. And it's like to be able to experience the Father present with us in spite of what we're going through, that alone solves most of the biggest problem because we have this fear of abandonment. And if we don't know that, if we don't know that kind of Father, I think people listening to this are just going, boy, I wish I knew Father that way. I try intellectually. I think the only place we can start is just asking, Father, if you're as real as these guys are talking about, would you show yourself to me? And as one man said to me this week, get up in Canada, he said, even if we're in the desert, what does it say over and over again in the Old Testament, that God makes the deserts bloom and blossom, makes the water flow in the desert. So even when we're in the midst of things that are tough, he's there to hold us, to nourish us, and even then use some of those things that are going on to make us more like him. Wow, I'm enjoying this letter, and I just enjoy what God has been doing in David. Let's pick up his last two paragraphs. And some of these lessons, I think are fabulous. He says, then a little while later, I was thinking about Scripture and pondering something I had read. And I felt like Father said, you know the problem is that all along, you viewed the Scripture from the perspective of, must do, must perform, must make happen. All along, the Scripture has been intended to be viewed from the perspective of discovery of who I am and who you are and all that I have for you and intend to work in you, but only in the context of relationship with me. That's the end of his quote, long quote there. That's a good quote. That sounds just like God. Doesn't that sound just like him? He said, this is amazing, probably elementary to you, but a revelation to me. I'm telling you, it's still a real revelation. It's not elementary. It's, I mean, it's foundational, but man, is it revelatory. So he said, this is how my journey is starting out, Wayne. I understand now that what you meant about Father's tangible love, I think I'm experiencing it. It's not an emotion, but something a lot deeper. There's a connection that's never been there before. This guy's been a believer a long time. And the reason I know it's true is because it is there day after day, all day, not fleeting like emotions. I'm beginning to have a sense of sonship with my father, and he is answering the literally lifelong cry of my heart to know him and to know his love. I can't get my mind around the freedom and peace I am experiencing. I can't get my mind around the sense of being a son and having a father. It's amazing. Wow. I have a hard time just even commenting on that last bit because I think that gets as close to Father's heart as anything I know, anything I've ever read. That he just wants us. And it's a tangible love. It's not, yes, he's invisible, but it's not just an intellectual thing. It's not just an emotional up. It really is a tangible sense that I'm not alone in the world, that I'm safely in Father's hands today, no matter what life is going to take me through and to know that. It's just, this is bedrock beginning of this journey. Yeah, I'm just reminded of one of those, I think poignant things that Jesus is verbalizing in the Gospels that the Pharisees react to and it's like, it's their aspect of, oh, this is blasphemous, when he calls Father Abba. And I never understood that. I mean, I'm not Jewish, but I was at the park one day and I was watching this little family. And apparently it was a Jewish family, but this little kid came running up to his dad, Abba, Abba. He just skinned Disney in his Abba. And it's like, oh, I get it. And it's like, there is a revelation. It's the cry that the Holy Spirit is trying to work in our hearts is that we have that kind of access. We can cry Abba and he will respond. But I remember being in Uganda, we had gone on a little mission trip and we had gone to work in an orphanage in the midst of just sort of the ravaged jungle. And I mean, this is one of those powerful revelations. We were ministering to a bunch of little kids in an orphanage and we would gather with them at night around a little kerosene lamps. And they're such dark skinned, all you can see is the whites of their eyes. And you're looking at it and it's like, these kids would pour out their hearts to a father they knew. And I realize it's like, I don't know if we did much value in their lives, but man, did they ever do amazing, because God took me halfway across the world to reveal who was the real orphan. They had a father. And I was in need of a revelation of father. Yeah, his reference to the spirit of sonship is so close to what Paul says in Romans 8 when he says, no, he did Jesus call Father Abba, but he said, we have the spirit of adoption in our hearts, no longer a spirit of fear leading to slavery again. That was an old deal. The new deal is the spirit of sonship or some translation said adoption, whereby our heart cries out Abba. So it's not even, there's a good intellectual exercise, but no, there's something the deepest cry of a heart is, I belong. And that's what I hear in David's letter here to me is for the first time in his life, that's becoming real and tangible. It's not just a theological thought, but there's something in his heart that said, I belong, there's a sense of presence, it's tangible, knowable, and it touches him. And I love what he said about the scriptures. I think this is key too. Most people, you know, if the scriptures is bad news, you pick up the scriptures in the morning or afternoon or whenever you have a look, and it's all about how far you fall short, get with it buddy, we're all going to stop reading it in no time. But if this scripture talks about who he is and what he's like, and what it is that he's doing in me, and so that my anticipation with the scriptures is not, okay, here's what I need to do now, but I come away saying, oh God, would you do this in me? Would you make this real in me? I don't think it changes everything. Then the scriptures are this painful set of rules that shows how far you're falling short, but in fact, we come, God's roadmap and says, so I'm going to take you. This is like prowling through, if we can use modern metaphors, like prowling through a website of the wonderful things that God wants to accomplish in us as we live alongside him as our Father. Yeah, I heard someone once describe the scriptures much like a mirror. And the person talked about it is, you know, I go there to find out what I look like. And they did it from a positive view. It's not like I look at the scriptures and I go, ooh, how ugly I am, run away. You're as grovel and as like, oh, I, yeah. But it's like, he went to look at the scriptures with this sense of, this thing tells me who I am. And as that starts to bear witness in my heart, it then starts to make its way onto my face. And I start to see myself. I just found that so attractive of being able to just run to the scriptures and say, Lord, please tell me who I am. Tell me what you're going to accomplish in me as I read this and just sort of breed it back in prayer. Absolutely. And that's kind of a feedback of this whole beginning part of, you know, relaxing and not putting the pressure on to perform. Now when I know God as Father, I can come to the scriptures and realize as your son, these are the things he's accomplishing in my life. And it still comes down to what we do is we remain. We just, we live in him. We just keep coming. Just keep hanging out. Just keep enjoying his presence. And as we do that, that to me is the God journey. My goodness. It's not whether you go to this building or that thing or this thing, the God journey is really knowing him as Father in a growing way and seeing our lives transformed. Yeah, that's fantastic. So Dave, thanks for writing. Some of you have similar things you want us to interact with. You're some good things to pass on. We've had a lot of email and phone calls over the last couple of weeks. All flurry of stuff. It's exciting seeing some other folks get involved. So much so that we can't get to it all in this show. We're going to spread it out over some future shows. We're probably not going to get to all of it anyway. But I, we had a neat couple of comments from Sue in Melbourne. She says, just listening to the latest podcast. And I must say, That's the one about the coin in the killers and cultivators. Yeah. Those two podcasts. I must say some of the reactions were a bit excessive, I thought, as far as people's reactions to us. Some people were worried we were kicking folks out. People sometimes take you both too seriously when they think you're being a little bit tongue in cheek. Please don't stop doing that. Just because some people are going to get a bit offended. It's so much fun when you guys just goof off. Ah, so someone loves our little touchy over there. Because I know there's a certain sensitivity that needs to be honored. And I know that goofing off is an area that we can go too far. And she kind of acknowledges her, her error in there. She says, I just love the refreshing that comes from hanging out digitally with you guys. And I hate the feeling to be quashed because there's some people are making things a little too bit serious at times. Well, I tell you, if you hang out with Brad and I very long, you're going to have to worry about us getting too serious because that doesn't seem to be the case. Yeah, we were laughing quite a bit before we hit the record. And not always about things we could actually share with all of you. We do edit stuff. Don't tell them that. We could sell the outtakes on CDs later and maybe make a fortune. It might be funny. It might be. We all started from Gene this week. Gene said, first let me chime in and tell you how much I've been enjoying the podcast. Finally got caught up. And as my techno savvy increases, I have even figured out how to burn on to CDs and share pertinence topics with others. I was struck by a comment Brad made right at the end of the Coinonia Cultivators segment about how busyness prevents us from being available. It echoed a blurb I read in the current discipleship journal. This is the quote, business convinces us that there is always something else we need to be doing. Business exhausts, embitters, divides, and demoralizes the people of God. If we have not exposed this imposter virtue for what it is, then the reason is because so many of our congregational practices depend on it. I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore because that would be like a little knife-twisting moment. But I remember living there. I remember the, everybody calls, are you busy? Oh yeah, I'm busy. That's the merit badge. Yeah. See, I must be important. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. And then Gene finishes up this way. He says, there is something we have been hearing from God about lately as we have been stepping away from the activities of our fellowship, which is becoming increasingly institutionalized according to the agenda of some Quenania killers in our midst. Well, that sounds scary. And I feel God has been showing us that our ministry is first with the family, six kids at home, and the busyness of church life was becoming divisive for us. So I hear and read these quotes on the same day. So I'm listening. Wow. Let's see how God works that together for folks. It's a good segue into next week too because Brad and I are going to talk a little bit about kids and children and family and how they survive outside the box. So it makes a good segue to where we want to head on our next podcast. And before we go, let's listen to the entire song from our new intro music. This is From the Mountain to the Sea by Greg and Jen Campbell. Thanks for traveling with us today on The God Journey. If you'd like to join the conversation, we'd appreciate your questions or feedback by email or at our blog at thegodjourney.com. Or you can call 24 hours a day to our comment line at 805-626-4212.