Pathway to Real Freedom — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2008/08/08/pathway-to-real-freedom/

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my shoes and have them lie down to clear the sovereign Lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life. That's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of The God Journey. So you're back from Salt Lake City. Flew in last night. Did you make all those people behave nice and share their toys? Oh, that was... You're going out there as a bridge builder. That was not my job. Oh. Civility stuff. The civility stuff, yeah. It was a conference, did some speaking at, and then we did a half day of a post-conference thing that I mediated trying to get people to describe what a political environment looked like, that tried to respect people involved in the conversation. And I can't even picture that. What's funny is it really feels like in a Don Quixote hopping up on the donkey to go beat a windmill with a stick. But because, I mean, even the comments are made, you know, this is really idealistic. And we're going, yeah, I guess it is idealistic. We're looking to help reshape how we debate in America. And I think we're at a low ebb of our national politics. It's not because there's conflict. It's not because people see things differently. It's how we treat people who see things differently. And Sarah and I just watched that John Adams series that was on HBO that Tom Hanks helped produce. I don't know if you had a chance to see it. I didn't see it. We rented the DVDs and just kind of worked through it this summer. I had a ball. I mean, there was one point where in France in this garden one afternoon, John Adams is sitting down with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. And they're just talking about this new country that they've started in America. It's about seven, eight years old, and it's struggling to exist. And I'm thinking, what would you have paid to be in that conversation? Man, I tell you what, that would have just been to hear those three minds talk. And of course, the mini series, you see how much Adams and Jefferson are at each other's throats. They really see this government differently. I mean, Adams is much more of a federalist and we need a strong government so people don't kill each other. And Jefferson is much more of the rights of the individual and government being distant and minor and not the important influence. And at the end of it, there's an interesting quote, probably from the book that the series based on. But the quote was this, in the end of it all, it seemed that John Adams was polar south and Thomas Jefferson was polar north. And the tension between them produced a statement of democracy that made sense. Well, that's a great way to look at that conflict. Each pulled and pushed the other. But because they stayed, of course, the relationship broke up even for years at a time. But in the end, they stayed friends. Most people don't know these two guys died within hours of each other on July 4th, on the 50 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Really? Incredible. At the end of the lives of this great friendship that they'd shared through letters. But thinking about that and thinking about what we're trying to do in Utah and trying to stimulate a better conversation. Some of the guys said this, you know, we're talking about respect and unfortunately in our culture, people seem to think, I respect you when I respect your opinion. And if I don't respect your opinion, I don't respect you as a person. I can vilify you and lie about you. That's good. That's good to clarify. That's true. Yeah. And we don't see respect as, you know what? I respect the liberty of your conscience. That's a lot of what Bridge Builders is. The environment we try to help school districts develop is it's not the school district that's choosing your point of view over mine, whether it's sexual orientation, morality, whether it's curriculum issues. We don't have the school as the broker of the public morality or the broker of public descent. What we do have hopefully is schools that say what we champion here is the liberty of conscience. That's what we champion here. You as an individual have a right to choose to live your life. And I think this is so garden-ish. This is so, this is what God did in the garden. This is what Jesus talked about in the gospel. You have the right to be an idiot, if you want, to believe what is untrue and to live your life around what's untrue. But what we uphold is the liberty of conscience. You have the right as just because you're a person, you have the autonomy of self that allows you to make decisions and believe what you believe. And you can be wrong about that. What you can't do is be destructive about that to other people. So I think that's a little bit of what I start to get concerned with when you look at the agenda of, and I don't want to just pick on quote the Christian right, but it's almost as if there's that sense of the crusading, we got to bring America back to its Christian roots. And it's like, I think its roots were freedom and liberty of conscience. I don't think the establishment of religion. Well, I think that was the ideal. But for the first 2000 years, we practiced a Protestant Christian view of liberty and freedom. Exactly. And we gave the rights of freedom to the Jewish people, have a synagogue or to, you know, we gave the freedom of religion to other people. But Christianity and Protestant Christianity at that controlled all the forums. So we had this great ideal, all men are created equal, but only Canada, if you're a white male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant landowner, didn't include women, didn't include other races. And I think that the American ideal is how do we spread that to an ever expanding group of people. But what that means is this country moves away from this Judeo-Christian ethic mooring that some people think we had at the beginning. We did. We had a unified and wasn't even a Judeo-Christian. That's been added to make it sound like multicultural. It was Protestant Christianity that ran the day. And the first guy to talk about this, you know, they say it was the first one to even use the language of separation wasn't Thomas Jefferson and the Danville Baptist letter that everybody quotes. It was Roger Williams who said, we don't have the right, you don't have the right to ask someone to act in deference to their conscience, that the conscience is the thing we uphold more than all. And he said this, in its best day coercion. And I think religion is all about coercion, whether they can do it now through the state or whether they do it through the, you know, the letter we read on the last podcast. This guy's having doubts about being part of this fellowship. So they've turned his daughter and wife against him. I mean, coercion, here's a quote from Roger Williams. On a good day, coercion brings hypocrisy. On a bad day, coercion brings rivers of blood. And this is a great say, if I'm going to coerce you, if I have the power to make you act the way I want you to act, then I can make you a hypocrite. But if I can't make you a hypocrite, then I've got to kill you. And that's what Roger Williams was saying. You know, I got friends that, you know, they passionately cared about the moorings of America. And it's like, they want to bring it back to its Christian roots. And it's like, as nice as that is, I just don't think you can force that. And so they would look at me and perhaps my opinion on this is, oh, that slippery slope of, oh my gosh, he is backpedaling from where his passion used to have. And it's like, no, I don't think so at all. I do think in quote, in the simplicity and purity of simple devotion to Christ, why don't you let people discover how awesome he is? If you force them, you're not, you're going to almost preclude them from being able to discover that. Yeah, which is, that's a Salvation Army kind of thing, which I love their whole deal of if we're going to win America, we have to win America one person at a time. You don't get to skip the conscience and change law and make people conform. You've got to make a different case than that. And if you want to win people, if you want to win the nation to Christ, you do it because you've won people by this compelling reality of who Jesus is, not because you amass enough political power to make the rules. And I sort of feel like when people have their agenda and like, I'm going to force my belief structure onto this whole group, and I'm doing it with good intentions, you're just going to like, I think the very execution of that is not going to produce good results. Because if it's going to be forced upon, that seems to be very contrary. I don't see Jesus anywhere in the Gospels walking through time and space and in the history of relationships. I don't see him forcing his way. No, that's the point. When I do bridge builder trainings, and I've done it at times for Christian universities, they're Ed Management schools, and I'll say, I can teach you what I want to teach you about this liberty of conscience and living together with a sense of mutual respect that transcends our differences of belief. And I can do it two ways. I can do it through the First Amendment because it's there, or I can do it through the ministry and example of Jesus because it's there. And which do you prefer? They almost always go, both. We want to understand both because most people really, I think our religious constructs and what we've gotten from religious institutions over time is religious institutions give people the power and in the name of accountability or whatever to coerce people to act in ways they wouldn't freely choose to act. And we think somehow that's the gospel. The gospel is, I've conformed you to the rules of Christ without inviting you into a relationship with Him. And what Paul says is, the rules will never be good enough. We can't keep the rules. We couldn't keep God's rules. How are we going to keep each other's rules? And even if we're trying to codify God's rules into law, you can't make people conform to what they don't freely choose. And here's Roger Williams. We talked about him earlier. This guy, he's living in a culture that's 95% his world view. He's in Puritan New England. And he's a pastor in Puritan New England. He starts talking about, you know what? We don't have the right to make non-Puritans among us live like Puritans. And his argument was, he got exiled in the dead of winter. Oh really? What a shock. Worse than happened to you and I, he got removed from his pastorate and sent out of it in the dead of winter. He walked down to a road down to what's a modern day Rhode Island, established a colony there. And the base of that colony was Liberty of Contra. And here's the beauty of it. I'll argue with you all week long in the legislature that you have a right to your belief no matter what it is. And then on Saturdays, I'll be down in the town square telling you why you're wrong and why the life of Jesus is the only answer there is. Now that's the guy who gets it. Coercion never works. And his argument was this. When you try to coerce somebody to believe what they don't believe, you have asked them to act. They're increasing their resistance. That's what he said. He said, you alienate them. You don't endear them to the God you love. And I say that all the time with the bridge builder, whether I'm with Mormons in Utah, with gay rights advocates in San Francisco, I'm honest about where I come from philosophically and the beliefs I live around. But I get to have great conversations with people who disagree with me because they know I'm not trying to coerce them to my faith. I invite them to my faith, but I'm not going to coerce them. See, I think that's where people have the disconnect. Even look at how they want to use hierarchy and authority. It's like, again, I think it's for coercion. It's for manipulation. It's like, I can pull rank on you. I get to be right. And I can get you to do what I demand because you have to be submissive to my authority. It's like, you know, parents, when they do that to kids, they don't win their kids' hearts and they don't produce lasting behavior. No, for sure. You can pull rank in a lot, frankly. Yes. Can you? Sure. Go ahead. You can. What's it going to get you? You can until 12, 13 or 14. Then they figure out there's a lot they can do behind Papa's back they'll never see. You drive them there. You do. Absolutely. And so I sort of feel like, gosh, when you're not there appealing and gentleness to someone's conscience, where what they give you is something that's free and uncoerced. The value of what you get is little if you get anything in that. When it comes as free and voluntary, oh, the profound reward. Is that really mean something? Because they had the freedom to choose it. I look at that and I don't see God pulling rank. I don't see God using coercion because I think he's desiring that same love relationship. I think he's longing for us to see him as he is and to fall madly in love. If you forced someone to do that, if you were the agent that forced that, would you ever get the reward of someone's love and affection and know that it was real? Absolutely. And that isn't at the point of the whole Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal or incredible father. You've got this kid who wants to go out and make no good and dad pays for him to go. Here's all the money you want. Is that not freedom? We were talking the other day on the phone about someone giving the license to sin. That was one of the arguments about grace. Your comment, I thought was hilarious when someone says, you know, you're just giving people the license to sin and you remember how you responded? I forget. Maybe I was talking to somebody else, I thought it was good. What you said was, didn't Jesus already give him that? And it was kind of a mind bender for me when I'm not sure I can get my head around that one, didn't Jesus give us the license to sin? Yeah, I think we do. We have a registered license to sin. All of us. I'm not sure. I mean, in the sense of freedom, all of us have a profound license to sin. We can. And it's like, okay, well, what's it get you? I don't know that I want to use my license. Just because I can doesn't mean that I now think that that's wisdom or smart. But I do know it's there. I can choose. I can. I know this from a little kid. I can bop the guy next to me on the head. I can. Someone might try to stop me, but I still I can and I'm probably quick enough that if that's what I want to do, I'll do that. It's not. God doesn't like stop the heartbeat right there. Right. And it's not. It doesn't mean he stops the consequences because you still get all that. Well, you speed on the highway. You get an award. I okay. I got myself an award award. Yeah. It's the same one. I don't know what. But you look at that as like people are, oh my gosh, are you going to get it? It's like, I don't think the argument about releasing people to the liberty of their conscience really should do anything about, well, don't we need to control them against sinning? You can't. You really can't stop the inner decisions of the heart. You might constrain the outward behaviors of a body, but you can't and the whole time Jesus is looking for truth in our inward parts. Yeah. And so if you don't allow for a reality of going like, look, let's exalt the fact that God's really looking for true eternal lasting change that starts from the inside out. If the way I think I'm going to get our culture there is to put their outward in a straight jacket. I think I've made the job harder. Yep. One guy wrote me this week about the shack and he said, you know, I'm an editor for this particular publisher. I've been an editor 15 years and understood you helped edit part of this. Well, you didn't edit it enough because here's this line he quotes about, you know, I'm not about following rules is one of the things that I think Jesus said or papa. And he said, of course it's about following rules. And he quoted the, you know, if you love me, you keep my commandments. I wrote him back and I said, wow, you really miss that. I think I think what Jesus is saying is if you love me, if you get the loving down, you'll keep my commandments. They'll take care of themselves. The emphasis on that is the loving because the whole gospel is about that. But I said, even if you want to take it legalistically, if you keep my command, his commandment was that you love, that you love like you. This is a new command I give you. Forget everything else. Here's the new one. Love like you've been loved. So even if I take your interpretation of it, the command is still not fulfilling a list of rules. It is loving. It is loving like you've been loved. The problem is most of us don't know that we're loved. Therefore we don't live like we're loved. And because we don't live like we're loved, we do all kinds of stupid things to ourselves and others that God calls sin. But the license, I would just think about that license coming because that really bugs me. I hate to think I'd give anybody a license to sin. And I really hate to think that Jesus would or that God did in the garden. But I still think we have one. But if it was just a license to sin, then the prodigal father would be saying in the parable, well, if you must go, go. But don't expect me to pay for it. That'd be the license. Go ahead and go. It's even worse than that in the parable. It's, yeah, it does. Here's the money. Yeah, here's the card. Here's all you need to get into as much trouble and destroy your life as you want to destroy it. And somehow at the end of that, I hope you realize who I am and come back to me. But he never even says that. No, he doesn't say that. I think that's the thing that is so outrageous to me. Yes. He's using the card and the money and the means and the blessing to go for it. And you're just going like, and he isn't sitting there saying, but I know you'll come back. You're just going like, he's so, I think that's the thing that most people don't realize. I think about the heart of God is he lives an absolute security of being. I think he knows who he is. You think? I think. I think, I don't think I'm on shaky ground there. Have you ever, have you ever tried to threaten him that like, you know, you won't do this or believe in him if he doesn't do his deal? Do you find God incredibly defensive about stuff? I never have. No, I don't. Never. But I do find some of the most religious zealots to be very much needing to take care of that for God as if he might be insecure and you're just going like, you know what? I don't think, I think that's the disconnect for me. It doesn't seem like God has the same concern as a lot of the religious folks I know on the issues of rules. You know, when I look at all the rules, do I want to say that living right matters? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I think there's a reason Jesus is saying, I'd like you guys to live this way. I think because it not only will bless me, it will bless and touch everything around me. I think there are profound, ugly, awful consequences to sin. Absolutely. Okay. So I don't, there's nothing inside me that's wanting to say, yep, go for it. That's it. That's a great way to go. But I do think that, you know what, when Roman says whatever is not done of faith is sin, you're not talking about the bad behaviors anymore. You're really not because you can follow the rules in fear. And that's sin. That is sin. And that's what you, I tell you what, there's just no way to convince some people of what we're talking about right now. Oh, that's fine. But I think it's the absolute truth. But I mean, to me, that's the ultimate leg sweep on everything where it's like it isn't about the rulekeeping. It's about the relationship. If faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God, which wasn't the Bible. It was the voice of our Lord. If that's where faith is born, then this thing called following Jesus can only be done in a relationship that is the fruit of a dialogue where He's directing my steps and I'm listening and I'm responding. If you take this outside of a relationship, your little righteous principles are not going to guarantee that you're not living in a biblically defined arena called sin. And you cannot read Paul and not get here. Because Paul is, you know, is for freedom that Christ has set you free. The only thing that counts, it's all Galatians 5, is faith expressing itself in love. Nothing else counts. It doesn't matter what rules you're following to, you know, escape the flames of hell to keep them. And He had a lot of stars on His chart. Well, he did earlier, kind of ripped all those off and tossed them away. But I tell you what, there's so much of how it is that we get to live in God, which is liberty opens the door for real relationship. Real relationship opens the door for real righteousness, this plastic follow the rules with this malicious, condemning, disrespectful behavior to other people. I just, we watch a lot of pushback on the shack now or some of my other books that, it's riled up people. And it just amazes me how they'll just make up stories. Well, Paul is from this Hindu ancestry family and the name Saragu was to bring people into a Hinduism new age kind of motif. Wow, I didn't know that. You know, you read that stuff about other people you don't know and you go, gee, well, that's bad. When you know a person. And you know what they've written. Well, what you know is somebody just makes that up. Somebody makes up the, the first guy that makes up the story, lots of other people might repeat it. But somebody sits down and says, you know what? I think the only reason you could use that is this must be true. And so then you create a false thing. And back to the political debate, our whole political discussion right now in America, I think is that it's lowest ebb since I've been alive. Not because people disagree about substantive things. Disagreement doesn't bother me. What bothers me is we've have to vilify the opponent. Let's make up whatever you want. One of the guys said yesterday in a meeting we're negotiating language is what does respect mean? One guy says, you know how I define respect? You assume the wisdom and goodwill of your opponent. Now, what kind of discussions? I've never seen that. Wouldn't that be great though? I think in the Bridgeville thing, that's what you do. You go in a room and you assume, okay, no one's in here because they're trying to destroy America. Everybody's here because they really have a heart for making a better America. But people are going to disagree as to what that is. But you would hear what they say through a different set of ears. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, Kelly and I were talking about some stuff the other night and I just, and she's asking me, you know, why do you think that is? And it's interesting, a few years ago I probably would have ventured an answer. I would have answered for that other person why they did that. Right. Today? I just find myself more often than not saying, I don't know. I, because I know enough, I know more now to go, I don't have a flipping idea. I can come up with whatever conclusion I want. But the truth is, I don't know the inner workings of that heart so clearly that I can just define for them why they're doing what they're doing. I can see the inconsistency. I can understand some of the pressures on either side. But the truth is, is I now recognize I have a greater hunger to ask them and hear what they actually say as opposed to decide for myself why it is that in some... Because when we do that to people who disagree with us, we assume the worst motives. Oh, we do. And then we make them... Villify them. In concrete, yeah, because now, well, it has to be this. Well, it has to, well it is. And all of a sudden, it's a reality. And I love Paul's thing on this. First Corinthians four where he says, I don't even know what motivates me. Why would I guess what motivates you? Only God's... I don't even judge one heart. I don't even know how to get in there. I don't even know that I'm right. I know someday I'm gonna stand before God where every motive in my heart's gonna be revealed. And I say, if you have that kind of humility, if I don't know what my heart is leading me to do at times, why would I venture a guess about yours? Just be nuts. Well, Jeremiah says the heart is deceitfully wicked and part of me wants to go like, look, the part I'm concerned about is not the wicked part. It's the deceitful part. It means I can fake myself out. And you think of all the, I think we have supernatural powers of rationalization. And I think you look at all the things that have been justified in the name of following God or in just going like, how in the world did we ever get to some of the places we did with the thought that, well, I'm serving and it's like, you know what? I think we can fake ourselves out. Wisdom starts to look at the fact that I could do that and I need a guide and help, Lord, please navigate me through the recesses of my own decision-making. What's governing me? What are those impulses? And I think, you know, to me, it's like when you put this life in the context of freedom and I start to see Jesus for who he is, there's a sense in me that starts to go, oh, Lord, it's not safe for me to be quote by myself. It's not, oh, I got it. I'll take it from here. I just go, wait a minute. I need a guide. I need your help. I do want to lean on you. Not because I have to, but because I think the outcomes are gonna be far better than if I was doing this on my own. And it isn't fear. It's, if I get that help for free, I want it. You know, I look at his desires for me and I trust God's eternal perspective on the what I'm doing to be far better than my selfish self thinking this is the choice I want. Right. It's like, wait a minute. I kind of think he wants a far better outcome for me than just my little wish list. Isn't, maybe that's the lie of religion, which isn't even the wish list, but even the rules list. The lie of religion is a person is better off being forced to act right than they are being invited to be real. Wow. That's the lie of religion. That's worth repeating. That somehow we benefit people by forcing them to act right. Even in opposition to their own conscience, then we are inviting them to be real and out of that reality, see what God does. So I think when the language of our of our deck to go back to Thomas Jefferson's words, all men should have included women. Everyone is created equal. I think that's as godly a statement as can be made. But the first time it was made was in 1776, 1700 years after Christ lived on the earth. Up until that time, it was all about men who had power to coerce others to act. The idea that we're all created equal and are endowed by creator with certain rights and those rights have to be guarded by the state, not trumped by the state or by power. That's something that took culture 1700 years to get. And now it's fairly well known in the culture. It's still not known in the religious cultures of America. Where we still have the clergy, lady distinction, the whole idea that some men get to be rule makers and force others to follow the rules is what ministry is all about. Instead of I'm to introduce people to a Jesus who's changed my life so that Jesus can change theirs. The thing I wrote back to this publisher guy was, this editor guy, I don't think our outcomes are any different. My outcome is still I want people wholly shaped in the image of God living in the world. You think rules will get you there and I think you've got to miss the whole New Testament to embrace that. What I'm telling you is, relationship will get you there. You follow all the rules. And if you want to, the great freedom chapter, Galatians five I just talked about, it's for freedom that Christ has set us free and love fulfills the whole law. So get the loving right. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself. In that chapter is the greatest list of the deeds of the flesh in all of scripture. And if you haven't read that list in a while, read that list. It'll expose so much of your own heart that I don't really, that sin, that yes. But the answer is not, well then do the opposite of all of it. There's all the rules that'll keep you from that. The answer is, I've got to learn to follow, which is Paul's answer. I've got to learn to live by the spirit and not fulfill the desires of the flesh. But it's the living by the spirit. It's living inside this relationship of love. It's from the freedom of knowing, I don't have to act anyway towards God, but I want to enter into a relationship with Him that will then transform me. Well, you think of the fact, if you're keeping the rules, because you think God's a bean counter, and it takes so many good acts to get that certain blessing, or that somehow then obligates the Almighty to bless you, because I've behaved, I did your rules. That's right. If that's what's governing your behavior, as opposed to stepping behind that and saying, gosh, I wonder who has the better desire for my life? The guy who made me, or the me who's still trying to figure out who I am? Who is so broken by his own self-preferring nature? Absolutely. And it's like, I kind of go like, honestly, I've made a shift where it's like, Lord, I kind of trust your decisions for me better than I trust my own. Because I've recognized, when I've reached out for selfless interest, maybe I had the power or the means to manipulate to get what I wanted. Most of the time, it didn't turn out as great as I thought. There was a huge consequence. All the time. Am I getting it that way? Absolutely. Now I recognize, gosh, Lord, it is so much more secure and enjoyable, beneficial on every level. When I get something that you've given to me on your timeframe, under your terms, of however that's come about, when I know that it hasn't been the fruit of my hand manipulating something, gosh, I can live in such a way that that thing doesn't own me. It could go away tomorrow. I didn't bring it. I can't keep it. I don't have to control it. I don't have to protect it exactly. And it's like, when you look at that, you're just going like, gosh, that way of living life, because I have drank from both wells, I go, oh, Jesus, yours is so much better. I really have lost the taste for my own selfishness as thinking that somehow is gonna lead me to the wonderful green pastures I dream about. You're just going like, you know what? I'm pretty sure that's gonna lie to me at some level. And what I wish the religious crowd could get their head around is that that kind of life and transformation has to begin with a spirit of freedom. Freedom is not the end result. You can't clear any other way. Freedom is not the end result. Everybody needs to be free. Do whatever they wanna do. That's what you guys are saying. No, we're not saying that. We're saying you are free to do whatever. You do have a license. But that'll give you, and you don't have a license, you have a blank check. I'm not a blank check. I guess it runs out. But you have a check and so go. But hopefully the whole discovery in your freedom and the chance to be real is, you get to see how ugly real is when it comes out of your own brokenness and shame and hurt. And it goes back to the fact that when you're talking about how some people believe that we should not let someone live in their freedom. We've gotta control their behavior so they don't do. You know what happens? You stop that learning process. You keep someone from the inner workings of their heart in the outworkings of their life so as to learn the fruitlessness of that endeavor. You don't change it. You imprison it. You restrain it. But you don't ever transform it. And then religion is just another act. I've learned to act the way I'm supposed to around you. But in my closeted moments, the real me comes out that I've learned to hate, that I've learned to despise. And so people who live religiously live in this conflict between- Is that self-hatred? Yeah, it is because I can't perform well enough all the time. I can sometimes so it proves I can do it. I'm told that these things and impulses are all bad and evil and wrong. Yeah, and because I never have gotten them into the light. And that's first, John. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we'll have fellowship with him. And I used to think that meant perfection. Walking in the light means, well, I've got to be perfect. Because I'm not perfect. But then the very next phrase from John is, and he who says he's without sin is a liar. Makes God out to be a liar. So then walking in the light doesn't mean I'm perfect. Walking in the light means I just got my stuff in the light. So me and Jesus get to work on it together so that I can find freedom in a real unraveling of myself and the fact that what I'm doing, because I don't know that he loves me, so I don't trust that he has the better deal in mind for me. So I've got to go out today and earn my way into the whatever it is I want. And I think what you were saying earlier about, boy, what the love relationship does with Jesus more than anything, it's that you don't come to this theological conclusion. God knows best about everything. You come to the real practical reality. He really does. And wherever I wander without him, trouble awaits. And wherever I wander with him, good things happen even if it's in the middle of trouble and strife and horrible stuff. See, I think because religion has been so much an issue of peoples evaluating each other and then describing, well, if you don't perform well enough, then you don't have value. I think because there's so much of that comparative worth that's always going on, you're not empowered to live in the light because if all of a sudden something ugly reveals itself, well, then I'm terrible. I have no value. Whereas opposed to, if we're supposed to live and walk in the light, when all of a sudden something ugly emerges, the available transformation is, oh God, did you see this on me? Do you see, you better do something. This is ugly, Jesus. Please change this in me. Where it has nothing to do about, all of a sudden I am more or less valued. It's more like, oh gosh, Lord, this is here. Could you take care of this? This is where the community we live this out is is so important. If the community you leave this out in is a community of actors, so that when something ugly comes out, everybody pretends to be shocked because we really don't know what's in each other's closets. We really believe the illusion we're all living. These guys that we met with from Arizona, the true face guys, you know, they got this guy going into what they call, they said there's two rooms to go into. One room is the room of striving to be all God wants me to be. That sounds so right, but you get killed in there. And the other room is trusting Jesus to be all who he is. And this guy goes into that room and he just asks the Holy Spirit, well, how are you doing? And he says, I'm doing fine. And it just seems so hollow in the room of grace. So he finally just begins to pour out his stuff. And he just, he thinks he's being so blood-curdlingly honest that the whole room's gonna be offended. And when he's done, somebody in the room, back in the room, shouts, is that all you got? I just think, see now, what community are we gonna live out transformation? If the community is a community of rulekeepers, we'll become actors and hiders. If the room is a room of grace, we can all be authentic. Hey, struggle with your, that's all you got? You don't got anything more than that. You're not struggling any, imagine that as the community in which people grow up. And for the last 10 years, I would say that's where Sarah and I have gotten to grow up. We've gotten to be with people who you can say, hey, this is what I'm struggling with, or this is what I'm fighting, or this is, gosh, this is the thing in my life that I'm battling. And in the conversations, nobody's shocked, everybody realizes we've all got stuff Jesus is unpacking. And the only, the people that are in the least state of health are those who pretending they don't. Yeah, and if you're, if this isn't lived out in quote, the liberty of conscience, where it's like, you know what? You recognize, I can if I want to. If it's not lived out there, I don't think you ever discover what's really in your heart. Yep, you don't, you don't get to walk it out with God. And so I don't get it changed because I think that the way it gets changed, it doesn't happen without me. It seems that the process I'm aware of is that something gets revealed because something happens and all of a sudden recognized, oops, I was a part of that. And I didn't take that to Jesus and something marvelous gets to happen. It gets to happen as far as it gets changed. If I'm always hiding that, none of it gets changed. That's what the rulekeepers don't get. It makes us seem like, oh, you guys are not, not firm on holiness. Oh my gosh, I am. Is this just a different way to get there? Holiness is the only way I want to live. But I know holiness is not keeping the rules. It's being transformed by him. And that's what I want. Keep it traveling with us on the Goat Journey. You can be part of the conversation by visiting our website, TheGodJourney.com.