Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to let's Talk life. We're live, we're in person. This is the first time.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Carl is in Florida. Yeah. And this is exciting because not only is that a reality, but this is season two, the premiere.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: We left on a cliffhanger. Right. So now it's season two.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: So this is contract renewed.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: It's pretty surreal to be in this life. Not lies office and talking live with you together. Right?
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Yeah. So Carl and his family just drove down yesterday, the last couple days. Last night we were gonna connect. They went to the beach. You couldn't wait to get your toes in the sand. Yeah, it was worth the long drive.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Toes in the sand into the water.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: So I didn't make it out to the beach last night, but we're gonna spend the day there this afternoon. So all those that are listening up in the north, it's 85 and sunny and we're going to the beach here the day before Thanksgiving. Pretty exciting. So unlike most other episodes, I have no notes in front of me and I don't half the time follow my notes anyways, which has been awesome.
That's been the journey of talking life and what a joy to be at. Literally now we've surpassed a year of having episodes and talking. I think that's pretty, pretty cool. And we just had a 40 minute drive from where we met up this morning to coming out here. So we had a lot of to journey and talk about. And so I think we're just gonna go off of what. What's been on our heart recently with a recent book you have and a book that I've been kind of thumbing through for a long time. So just gonna share some thoughts from there. Where do you want to start?
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I just, I'm just at a place where whatever we talk about, God's in it.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: And you know, one of the phrases that you and I keep using is how freeing it is in, in this life. Freeing of trying to fix someone or trying to manipulate to get something we want, even if it's something what we call is good.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: I mean, up here you have a beautiful diagram for you and I to look at.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: On the positively programmed flesh and what that means. Maybe you'd be better at phrasing it.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think, I think that in order to understand the positive, you have to start maybe with the negative.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Maybe just, just in general, like, I don't know, as I walk, as I journey people through some of these diagrams that I use. That's why it's on the TV here.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: You can add the show notes.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah, we can, we can add it. But negative flesh is really easy to see, to understand, to diagnose, so to speak. Because sex, drugs and rock and roll. Right. If I go to those things, that's a negative. That's not a good thing. So coming from that, I love how Dan Stone really explains it in the rest of the Gospel in the Swing. Because there is maybe this negative approach to life. Things have. According to the diagram, there's painful rejection in my life, maybe that I grew up with. Traumatic experiences that I grew with. I didn't have a home like that myself. I, I'm more so stemming from the positive program flesh. But regardless there, there are responses to those traumatic things in life. And I go to those things as kind of a crutch to get through.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah. As a crutch or medication to cope. So it could be full blown, what we call rebellion against God.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Full blown. Like just I'm going this way, whatever I do. And it's like a, a whirlwind of her and just bringing everyone into my path. And we all have people that we know in our life that are like that or, or we've come to Christ out of that.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: You know, Right. What we call all those 180 conversion. Yeah. The radical life change.
It all started back in the beginning with painful rejection, traumatic experiences where they coped and they medicated and they.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: You know, those are real easy to see.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: They're really.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Because there's a train wreck.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: It's a train wreck. It's a, it's a. The typical. I don't want to say typical because it is a real story. It is real life change. But typically what I'm saying is we're going to gravitate to that message, to that story, to that testimony. We're going to hold on to those as if that's the story. And. And then I looked at my life. This, this was me even growing up. So I like boy, I don't have a testimony like that. So therefore I don't have as good of a testimony or I can't share. And the reality is actually that that's just not true.
So I think understanding the negative helps us to understand the positive. And the ultimate thing is that I can actually serve God. I can go to church, I can go to Bible study, I can study God's word, I can be as good of a person as I try to be. And all of that is still flesh, but it's positive because it Looks good. It seems like it's the right thing. And this is why I love the swing, is because you can spend all of your time in these negative flesh. The sex, drugs, rock and roll. If we just sum it up in something simple and ultimately those things don't satisfy. So what it does is it causes me to. Well, maybe I just need to go to church. Maybe I need to study my Bible every day. Maybe I need to be better at praying. And so I'm going to buy a book that teaches me how to more effectively pray. And so we're going to all these things of. Only to come to this recognition that it's still flesh.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you could just push it for you and me, if you just push it up higher so I can. So. So, yeah. So negative flesh.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: It's.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: It's that rebellious life that's very evident for all to see. And what's crazy is, is it's kind of like in the prodigal son story, we always call it prodigal son. It's really the loving father, the amazing dad, were both, you know, one went rebellious and one went religious.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: They both miss God. So a deposit of flesh.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: It leads to, like, pride, self righteousness. Because I'm at. I'm at church this many times a week and I'm reading the Bible this many times and this. And so I become very judgmental. It's. I'm still focused on the flesh. And so when we use the words negative, positive, it's positive in the sense of man. That person's got their life together, but at the core of it, it's still relying on self, Self reliance, self sufficiency. So you blame shift, you control your critical. They both lead to conflict and frustration.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: There's no peace, there's no rest. And so even as we're talking this morning. So we're. We're coming out of these things.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: You know, as a follower of Jesus, believer Jesus, but it's Christ in me.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: And so I'm understanding things better. It's like, okay, well, how am I parenting this way? Or what am I doing? Am I. Am I trying to get. And I've said this a lot, Zach, so maybe I should just stay with my philosophy. My philosophy is I want my three sons to trust Jesus. Right. My. I want my sons to walk by the spirit.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: More than I want them to please dad.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Or mom more than I want them to. I want him to trust the fathers.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: That's.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: That's my goal as a dad, is I want them to trust because it can very be easily. How many times you're reading the Bible week? How many times are you going to youth group and how many verses are you memorizing? And, and all this checklist and, and it's still positive flesh, as our friend Joe Campo says. It's still stinking flesh.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's stinking thinking. That's how Andrew Farley says it. It's thinking. Thinking. But yes, it's so true. And just, just even you're. You're talking about raising your three boys. I'm in like a new season with young kids and I have this season that I went through with my older kids and I'm still going through because we're always going to be family, obviously. But when I think back to. Yeah, what was my approach with my older kids, it's any parents approach is I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing the best that I can with what I know and what I'm able to do.
But it was, it was all a matter of. And I think that's the pressure even that my older kids felt was they wanted to please me because I was a pastor at a church too.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: And so even in you being a pastor's kids yourself, like, you know, the pressure that that creates for you. And unfortunately I didn't create an environment that my kids could come to me and talk in, in realness. And it wasn't because I didn't want that or didn't try for that, but it just. I was stuck in this mindset too of really just I'm trying to live for God and I'm trying to stay close to God. Like I had all these misunderstandings of who I was and so I couldn't equip that in anybody else's life. I couldn't help them and equip them with that truth. And so I too look forward to just journeying with my two boys and my little baby girl. And I have a whole different mindset of understanding now where I'm free. Like you talked about freedom. Like I'm. I know I'm a new creation. Before I always just knew the verse, but I didn't, I didn't understand the concept from my own life. And so it is so much different. I think the pastor, I've mentioned him, I think I've mentioned this a few times maybe, but it kind of grieved me a little bit when he was sharing that he was a youth pastor for, you know, a number of years. And he found himself, like, with teenagers. And I remember that when. When my two oldest, Johnny and Emma, got to be teenagers, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm the youth pastor. I'll have my kids in my youth past group, his kids. So Pastor Brett here, his kids came to him when they got to that junior high, high school age, and they said, dad, can you just be dad?
And not our youth pastor. And he actually approached the board and said, listen, I'm ready for a change. And it caused basically him to move into a whole different step in his life. I. I had to look at that and say, that's not where I was at. I didn't have that. Like, my kids couldn't come to me and say, dad, can you just be dad? And not our youth pastor? Because I didn't recognize and I didn't create the space for them to be able to share that. And so there was a part of me that all that really grieved me when I heard his even testimony. And so it changed even my perspective on, like, how do I parent and how do I take people on this journey without trying to fix them? And that's. That's still a journey. I was just sharing with Carl here this. This morning already that I sat down and what was going through my mind just coming off of virtual call that I had throughout this last week. And like, boy, I think I just talked too much because that's. That's more. So the journey is let other people just share where they're at and just journey with them.
And I don't want to get back into that fix it mindset. Here's the answer for you. Here's what you need to do. And I felt like I did a little bit. And that's what led me to this book again, Authentic Relationships by Wayne Jacobson and his brother Clay. And I just think that's what. That's what my kids didn't have early on. And unfortunately, there's.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Sure, there are. There are. And yet trusting the father is saying, God, you can. You can do something more amazing so I don't have to live in shame of, oh, I wish I would have known this. Well, I didn't know. Yeah, right. And so the. The truth is that you're older, too, on their journey, too.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: And that God's big enough to redeem.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: 100 anything that we did in failure. Right.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: And that's what's so beautiful is. Is God bigger than our circumstances? He bigger than our failures? Is he bigger or. Or our failures or our sin? Or our struggle. Is that bigger than God?
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Oh, man. And that's.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: That's quite a good question to.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: To really examine. Right.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: For all of us.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So I really believe God's bigger than this.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's all such a beautiful picture because. Yes.
My kids, Johnny and Emma, you were struggling through stuff. I was struggling, too. And that was. That's the reality. We were all kind of on this struggle to try to figure all this stuff out. And then there was this big transition, even for me, and I think it's actually drawn us closer together, you know, and have that. That's part of our story. And maybe someday I'll get them on video to talk through these things and. And to just journey, because I don't want to use them as too much of an example and talk too much about it. But I just loved how Johnny came around to, like, recognize and see some things, and it actually, I think, brought us closer together, and it was only because I was coming around to see things differently myself.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Well, let's just talk about you and me, our relationship.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: You know. Yeah. Like that's safe.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Is that when you don't have to try and impress them, when you don't have to try and appear something different than you are, you just show up in yourself. It's so freeing that Christ in you and the Christmas. Me and our spirit together.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: And. And so I don't have to try and.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: You know, lie or pretend or brag or blow.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can be you, I can be me, and you can be at rest with that.
It's. It is so beautiful to be able to operate from that perspective. And I think that it actually creates also more effectiveness in our ministry. And I think you've said this, and you might even said it on recording, that the reality is because of vulnerability, because we know who we are in our identity in Christ, we're actually able to also get much closer, much quicker. And we share that about our own life experience. We grew up together, so to speak. We're distant apart, but we came together. We're family. When we saw each other, Bible college days, we got closer, but it still wasn't what we have now.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Because we're still both very masked up and trying to figure a lot of things out. But I find that so true. Even with the guy up in Sarasota, which I've shared, too. Met him a couple times, and I was just being able to just be vulnerable and real with them. And he so appreciated that this is what's missing. And it oftentimes is what's missing in the reality of most ministry mindsets. Because we think as a pastor's kid, well, I better shape up as a pastor. I better keep my kids in line. You know, because it's all about this image. And basically all it is is that positive, positive.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: It's just an image, it's an illusion. And so it's, it's, it's having the right answers, it's having the, the best ideas right. And just the pressure of that.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. I love, you know, Wayne Jacobson's this whole book is, is on authentic relationships, but it's all about, it's all the one anothering passages throughout Scripture. And man, I just threw my Bible closed. I had it marked here, but I'll get back to it.
It's. This just blew me away. Even when I read it this morning. I don't even necessarily have to go to that passage because the context of Jesus telling his disciples that he came not to, to be served, but to serve the context of that is so amazing. That is why I wanted to read it.
Because Jesus is sharing something in Mark chapter 10 with his disciples. He's saying, listen, I'm going to Jerusalem. This is verse 33, 3 mark 10. I will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. I'll be condemned to death. They're going to hand me over to the Gentiles. They will mock and spit on me and scourge and kill and three days later I'll rise. So he's telling his disciples this, the very next verse, James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus saying, teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask.
It's just so mind boggling. Here Jesus is sharing his heart with these guys. And where is their heart? It's on themselves and man. Because that, that flesh just likes to take over and we like to control and to do what we think that we need to do. And they were so they were more concerned about their place and being at the right and the left of him in paradise. And they were, they were missing the very reality that Jesus was coming. And this is what he was trying to teach them, that I'm coming to give you that life. You don't have to be on my right or left. You're going to be a child of the king and just trust this reality. And it's so easy to get so caught up in all that stuff. And the Result is why is there so much conflict and frustration within the church is because of this flesh stuff. It's just really interesting to dig into and to understand and. You ready to journey?
[00:17:09] Speaker B: You heard a quote in that book about one another.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: There's so many. Which one did I read?
[00:17:14] Speaker B: No, no, I had you read it twice to me.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. If we are going to participate in the joy of one anothering, we need to let Jesus rewire our thinking so that we're even more aware of others than we are of ourselves. And I think that's the journey through. A lot of this is. There's that. Romans 12, the renewal of the minds. There's that rewiring that has to take place now. It's not. I don't get there by my behavior. I don't get there by what I do. The reality is the Christian life is not about me becoming something that I'm not. The Christian life is all about maturing or renewing the mind into really who I already am. That's. That's the Christian life. And, and as a general rule, that's never been my mindset. It's always, let's do better, let's be better, let's try harder to be obedient to God. You're not the only one. Yeah. And unfortunately, that's what's causing only conflict and frustration that's on our screen here. And it's causing so much conflict and frustration because I can't do that. I can try harder, and then next week I can try even harder. But in the end, I'm failing. And so I'm conflicted and I'm frustrated. And that's the swing between positive and negative flesh. It's like eventually I just throw up my hands and I'm just going to go get drunk instead. I'm just going to go to this crutch or that coping mechanism.
That's the reality of what we're really talking about. It's interesting, man. We've been school. This is another quote that I read. He says I had been schooled in environments where ministry was all about my gifts, my abilities, my passions, my vision. It's amazing how blind we can be when our lives orbit around our needs and our desires. So it's like, yeah, I was called by God, stepped into that call. What on earth does all that mean? Sure.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: And, and, and so if you're a pastor who's been called here, we all have to listen to what you have to say, man.
How dangerous is that?
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Right?
[00:19:17] Speaker B: I mean, Just our whole setup. Just.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: One person's heard from God, they're going to stand up front, we're all going to listen and go home.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Somehow we shared life together of Christ. And it's like, what is this?
[00:19:29] Speaker A: And so think about this. Go ahead.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: I was just gonna say, like, even with my story, I share this all the time. That God used my gifts, but he always wanted my heart.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: And. And that. And that's where there's great connection when there's two hearts.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Together. It's the new heart, your new heart speaking my new heart. My new heart shook in your new heart. And it's like a deeper spiritual realm. There's like something like you had mentioned earlier about marriages. If I am not seeking my own. Whatever phrase I was. If I'm seeking your betterment.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: You know, whether it's a relationship with cousins or friends or marriages. So. So if I'm seeking Jennifer's betterment and she's seeking my betterment.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Right. That's union. Right? Yeah. Like that's, that's the union. Truly. That is where we are to live. That's. That's like our.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: But what, what happens? We get caught up in the flesh. We get caught up in the negative flesh. We get caught up in the positive flesh. So we get caught up into who's right. Who needs to change. When we think about. Think about any type of context of marriage counseling, usually it's one person wrong.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: And the other person.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: You know, holding it over them or whatever. And it's just. I just love this idea. Right. And you learn the same T. Just surrendering my rights, my right to be understood. I'm going to be misunderstood.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: I mean, that.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: That we could podcast all day on something.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: And the, the crux of the whole thing is that when I know my identity in Christ.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: 100, my expectations are. Are non existent. Really.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Sure. We can still have them. But guess what. Yeah. What's first? What's first is my rest.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: What's first is who I am in.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Christ or I can actually talk about my expectations.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: To say this is how I'm feeling.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: It opens up that door. And then whether I'm fulfilled in what I'm looking for or not, I'm actually fulfilled in just the sharing of my feelings. It really does change everything.
And so I. I mean, I love that we're at the 25 minute mark.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: So. Yeah. Because I want to dig into that other book that you got over there too. And so. Yeah. We'll do that. So that man, our first and of two live recordings together on let's Talk Life.
