“A Spiritual Spiritual?”
EPISODE 228
Reflect on What’s Not Working in Life
Welcome to the “extended version” of our back-to-basics Square One guided study, starting with session one, “Why are things so messed up?”' We reflect on personal struggles, the brokenness we see around us, and the need for spiritual healing. We also discuss the powerful imagery in Isaiah 59 and how it relates to some heavy words like iniquity, transgression, and sin. Plus, we share our thoughts on leading and participating in these soul-searching conversations. Join us as we administer a spiritual physical and explore our need for Jesus' healing together.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Humanity has slipped into some terribly unhealthy patterns — and if we’re honest, we can see that brokenness in ourselves.
This Week's Challenge: Let’s watch this week for both healthy and unhealthy things in the world.
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Bryan: I can have a physical physical I can get analyzed that way. But like, I am in need of a spiritual physical.
Ryan: a spiritual spiritual?
Bryan: Yeah, spiritual, you know, it's something, I don't know. Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. This is episode 228. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.
Bryan: And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. We are back on the heels of picking our favorite Bible verses in our amazing Bible bracket. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in and participating in that, getting involved and rocking the vote as Ryan always likes to say.
We are back though for really the focus of this season is going to be an entire end to end version of square one, all 13 sessions back to back. and so we're getting into session one here. And if you'll remember back in episode 221, we've already done this episode. We've already had this conversation from square one, and we did it in sort of an abbreviated version along with the other checkpoints there that we did in sessions five and 10.
But here we're doing session one again, and we're going to do all 13 sessions starting from this episode until the end of the season. And so all of the discussions that we're having in this square one series, we really hope that it'll be helpful for people.
Ryan: it was either that or replay the last episode because we didn't want to just have it chopped up without the checkpoint sessions, which are number one and number five and ten, like you said. You can't just skip over them. They're pretty important. So hopefully we won't be just repeating ourselves. So hopefully it's helpful as we get into the flow of this that everybody can see how now all 13 connect together.
And then if you want to go back and hear how just the three short version connects together, you can go back and listen to
Bryan: Yeah, yeah.
so again, like a choose your own adventure sort of style, here we are in session one, and we're addressing this really fundamental question, it's a question we don't want to camp on for the entire study, but a question that's super helpful to begin things. Why are things so messed up? What is broken about life, about all kinds of things in life?
and so to get this all started, we do have a hook, and a little bit of an icebreaker question, and then we'll circle back and talk a little
Part 1
Bryan: bit more.
Audio: This is Square One. "Why are things so messed up?" Sitting in your doctor's office, you might explain how much your back hurts when you wake up in the morning, an increasingly common complaint as we get older. You'd expect them to ask more questions, maybe feel around or even do some scans. The last thing you'd want them to say might be, "Well, why don't you wake up in the afternoon instead?"
Really? It's almost as bad as telling them how much it hurts when you touch your arm and hearing, "Then don't touch it," as their remedy. Dad jokes are great, but when you're trying to get to the root of your aches, pains, and more serious ailments, it's best to seek more professional guidance. So when you notice an ailment, do you tend to run to the internet for self-diagnosis, schedule an appointment, or ignore it and hope it goes away?
Part 1 Discussion
Bryan: Okay, so the icebreaker question that we covered here, when you notice an ailment, do you tend to run to the internet for self-diagnosis, schedule an appointment, or ignore it, and hope it goes away?
you know, I think I've started to realize that I can do all of these things. can't remember my answer from the last time we did this, but as hard as I try not to Google my own symptoms, sometimes I just find myself doom-scrolling through all the comments somewhere about my impending death. Or other times I think I've had the presence of mind to wait and see if things get better, you know, I've waited days to make sure that that weird thing was gone.
you know, okay, so I don't notice it anymore, but then there are some times that I find myself at the doctor or the ER for things that I probably don't need to be there for. So I think generally speaking, I'm a mess. Why are things so broken, Ryan? I'm a mess.
Ryan: You know, I don't know that my answer is any better, though it is the direct opposite. It's kind of a mess itself. I come from a long line of men who think that if you just ignore something, it will eventually go away. And so, you know, who has time for a doctor that can't be really what do they really know that?
I don't know. What are they really going to do? It's merely a flesh wound as they say on Monty Python, right? It's fine. And so I I'm not a big doctor's office guy, but My wife is helpful in encouraging me. You know, you really should go in and Somebody look at that. I'm getting better.
I think as we go
Bryan: I remember I think the last time we did this, you had some like chronic tooth issue that had been going on for
Ryan: Oh
Bryan: and like some huge time before that. it's like,
dude, go get that taken care of, man. It's fine.
Ryan: It's fine.
Bryan: Oh, boy. Yeah, well, for sure. All right.so as we sort of wrap up this lighthearted intro into the conversation, let's get into part two, where we talk about the purpose and get into something that Jesus said and then really hone in on that big idea, asking each other our
Part 2
Bryan: reach out question.
Audio: Let's get into it and reflect on what's not working in life. Maybe you face issues with money, relationships, health, concerns about your marriage or kids, bitterness about your past, paralyzing fears about your future, addiction, depression, heartbreak, and the list goes on. And looking beyond ourselves, what are the world's most significant problems?
What's going wrong here? We see poverty, disease, hatred and bigotry, political unrest and war. Real issues, but not the root. We have a long history of misdiagnosing our condition and treating only the symptoms. We don't even see our situation. A chronic disease plaguing us almost from the beginning of human existence.
In Matthew 9:12, Jesus said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." In the next verse, he says that's why he came, to treat a kind of sickness. He didn't come to tell us how wrong we are. He came to heal us. So here's the big idea. Humanity has slipped into some terribly unhealthy patterns.
And if we're honest, we can see that brokenness in ourselves. When you think about your life, is there an area where you've struggled or seen a real need for change?
Part 2 Discussion
Ryan: okay, so we ended up with a reach out question. When you think about your life, is there an area where you've struggled or seen a real need for change? So we're getting into the real issue and we've stated here the purpose of this conversation to reflect on what's not working in life.
And so this is a discussion that is meant to lead us to some thought, to some meditation, to some reflection on problems. And one of the things that we've talked about a lot through the years is that you can't get the good news until you get the bad news. And so that's why this topic and this purpose is so important to see the big idea that humanity has slipped into some terribly unhealthy patterns.
And I did a study last week in my sermon on what it means to be holy. And holiness is another word, like sin, that we're gonna be talking about in this one, that seems like a church-only word. There's no secular equivalent. We don't talk about holiness all the time, and it's kind of the opposite of sin.
And the problem with that is we start to get a distorted picture of what the goal is, that there is this sense of perfection that you're either outside of God and you're a sinner or you are a saint and you're And the reality is the saints are sinners who have been saved by the gospel and who are learning to walk with Jesus.
We have been saved, we have been set apart for God's service, we've been set apart for a purpose, and now not that we don't need the doctor anymore, it's that we are on our way to healing, you know? It's that we are walking in more healthy patterns life than we ever did before, You know over last few years the place that I most is in interactions with family. Both with my wife and my kids and how I properly do my role, that is a pretty important role as a husband and father, but also here more recently, trying to work through how I interact with my mom and my siblings and thinking through that. And I've found that
I can start to get into my own space own sort of insular world and miss the need and the opportunity I have to love people, to be an influence on people in my circle. And you know, you get busy with life and you don't realize that you've been a little self-absorbed until you kind of have that eyes open moment and you see that there's a chance for you to do something that you've been neglecting all along.
Sometimes the need for change is not in what you've been doing that's wrong, but what you haven't been doing that's right. And that's something I've noticed here
Bryan: Oh, man, I connect with that a lot.
Like you said, with relationships with your family and extended family and all the opportunities that you can have, and I've been there too, just like focusing on those, there's always more ground to take. There's always a better approach.
And I feel like something that I can connect with pretty deeply as I was thinking about this question, is there an area where you've struggled and seen a real need for change? I keep thinking about that old horror movie trope, like the call is coming from inside the house, where it's like you perceive the threat to be out there somewhere and it's like, oh, it's just their problem or they're the ones who are leading me to be frustrated or angry or whatever.
But it's like, no, no, no, it's me. I'm the problem. Hi. The call is coming from inside the house. You know one of the areas I've struggled with a lot
in the past is being a chronic people pleaser where I'm like over emphasizing what people think about me.
And that kind of like fixation over the years has really caused some personal problems, professional problems. And the choices that I've made have really led to a lot of anxiety and frustration. But there's totally one thing that I can be sure of. I cannot make everyone else around me happy. Right? Like when I try to do that, try to be overly concerned about what people think about me.
It's just always leading me to some kind of frustration or disappointment. And that is not their problem. Like if they don't see me accurately or they don't care enough to ask me deeper questions or make a deeper connection with me, I can easily be like, no, no, that's their problem. But really it's an internal issue.
It's something I've got to work through. And knowing that and reminding myself that Jesus sees me, that I would be welcome at his table like at Matthew 9, I'd be welcome alongside everyone else. But developing that confidence, I think, to just look at myself more accurately and holding myself against God's standards and not brushing off sin, not like you talked about ignoring it, ignore, ignore.
really honestly looking at myself and judging myself according to the right standards and not by what everyone else thinks around me.
Ryan: that's something that has been a journey for me, you know? especially whenever you have to do something that serves someone, but doesn't please them.
Bryan: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
Ryan: What is going to be best for this person, even if they don't like me afterwards, even if our relationship is more strained by it. I've been on like a, I don't know, 20 year journey on that one. So I really appreciate you sharing that also.
Bryan: So I guess ours was all about relationships.
Ryan: Yeah.
Bryan: All right, so let's move on to our third part here, which is focusing a little bit more on the book. We're going to get into this passage here in Isaiah 59 verses 1 to 13. And ask some questions about it, we'll dive into that. And then we'll come back and read this passage together.
Part 3 DiscussionPart 3
Audio: Centuries before Jesus' birth, Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 59:1-13 about people breaking their relationship with God, with one another, and even their own peace.
Like the first readers of this passage, we might find ourselves needing help from God and wondering why he seems so distant. It's a pretty morbid poem imagining people trying to feed and clothe themselves with snake eggs and spider webs. Thankfully, it's not all bad news, as Isaiah looks forward to God stepping in later in the chapter.
So read Isaiah 59:1-13 together to better understand the sickness Jesus came to heal. After reading, take some time to discuss it. What strikes you about the picture Isaiah 59, 1-13 paints? So let's go ahead and read this passage and I'll kick this thing off. Isaiah 59 verses 1 to 13. It says, " Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
Bryan: For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue mutters wickedness. No one enters suit justly, no one goes to law honestly. They rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
They hatch adder's eggs, They weave the spider's web. He who eats their eggs dies, and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched. Their webs will not serve as clothing. Men will not cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity. And deeds of violence are in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, they are swift to shed innocent blood. thoughts of iniquity. Desolation and destruction are in their highways.
Ryan: The way of peace they do not know, And there is no justice in their paths; They have made their roads crooked. No one who treads on them knows peace; Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us. We hope for light and behold darkness, And for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind, We grope like those who have no eyes.
We stumble at noon as in the twilight; Among those in full vigor we are like dead men. We all growl like bears, we moan and moan like doves; We hope for justice, but there is none; For salvation, but it's far from us; our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities.
Transgressing and denying the Lord, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart Lying words. Boy, that has no less power than last time. This is why we do this. There's no substitute for reading God's Word. And man, Isaiah has a way like nobody.
The writings in this book are so powerful and they connect up as we follow our way through from one to the next as we will pick up again later
Bryan: And we ask the question here, what strikes you about the picture Isaiah 59 verses 1 to 13 paints? And, you know, we obviously both at the end of this reading are just like struck again. But I think every time I think about this picture, it reminds me of like those movies where like, you know, you've got this idyllic scene, kind of a suburban neighborhood and like wonderfully kept lawns and people are out there doing their yard work and someone's throwing around the football, you know, having some backyard barbecue.
It's like this idyllic 1950s suburban scene. And then the next day it cuts to a scene of like World War Three in the streets where it's like, you know, I don't know, Red Dawn or some movie like that, where all of a sudden everything that was peaceful and lovely and well put together is just broken. And, you know, people fighting with each other.
They're barricading their houses, like things like that. When I read this verse, that is the picture that I get. Like what verse 8 says, you know, "The way of peace they do not know and there is no justice in their paths. They've made their roads crooked and no one who treads on them knows peace."
It's like there should be a place of peace and rest and comfort, but everything is just broken. You know, it's like no one is at peace. No one is doing the right thing. Everyone is just running around in their own selfishness and broken. I open my eyes to this reality of sin and I read this passage like this just reminds me like, this is the world around me. It's not an idyllic place. You know, it's not a place that I want to think it is. The realities of sin really do highlight how much things are broken and how many people around me are just fending for themselves and doing the best they can, but really, you know, misguided And as much as I look around and see everyone else around me in that situation, I know I am the same way.
Ryan: you know, the two places that jump out at me are the beginning, and then I was really hit also by verse 12 and how convicting it is. You know, like the beginning is about the Lord, and like the false pictures people have about God as they pray to him, and you know, things aren't happening the way I want, Well, one place to start, you know, one place to check before you even go anywhere else on whether your prayers are answered is looking at yourself and your relationship with God and the sins that can be a separation.
Your iniquities have made a separation. It's like you're standing at one side of the Grand Canyon trying to yell across, and He says, "Still, it's not like I can't hear you." He's not hard of hearing. Or like that my hand is shortened, like he's got T-Rex arms or something, he can't reach to make a difference in our lives.
I mean, this is the image I get is like the short hands that can't reach to us. No, God is still God. He can reach anything. He can hear everything. But our sins create this distance from Him, create this break in the relationship and hide His face from Him. So it's not that He cannot hear, but that He does not hear, in verse 2.
And then go into verse 12 to just get a clearer sense of these transgressions. First, He says they're multiplied before you, and like I see this, you know, just multiplication of the sins, like dots on our garments over and over again, just being multiplied before God. And then the sins themselves start to be the key witnesses in the case against us.
Our sins testify against us. Each one of these sins is giving their statement about who we are, who we have been in our faithfulness to God, or our lack thereof. And then he says, "For our transgressions are with us, "and we know our iniquities." we get it, we see it, we try to look away, but really we know our
Bryan: Yeah, ignore,
Ryan: Ignore,ignore, but they're there. You know, yeah, that's exactly right. And so that's just such a powerful place to end as that wraps up that reading, that we know our transgressions, we know our iniquities, transgressing and denying the Lord and turning back from following our God.
Bryan: Well, and I think that leads us to our next section here, part four, which is going deeper. And just when you thought we were done talking about Isaiah 59, we're back. And so we're going to talk a little bit more here about some heavy words for sin. And then we're going to ask the big question here at the end.
Audio: Ready to go deeper? Writers often use clinical, technical words that seem impersonal until they become your disease.
Like medical terms, some religious words don't seem to relate to real life, like church words you wouldn't use any other time. But the matter isn't distant, invented, or theoretical. Until you're cured, it's your disease, the source of problems you're painfully aware of and those you don't even realize. So that passage in Isaiah repeatedly used three words to describe the problem and help us understand our need for healing.
The first is iniquity, our crooked heart disease. Iniquity envisions a twisted lifestyle and worldview. In the Bible's first pages, humanity receives every good gift and then perverts them all. Like a poorly hammered nail, we're all bent out of alignment. The second is transgression, our shattered lives. In our transgression, we break apart what was once whole in ourselves and our relationships.
More importantly, we wreck our connection to God, smashing it into a million pieces like a brick through a window. The third word is sin, our chronic failure. Sin describes bad aim, like an archer who can't seem to hit the mark. It points to moral failure since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
God gave us such potential and purpose, it's heartbreaking to think how off target we've gone. So these words name the dysfunction that defines so much of the human condition. Sin lays a heavy burden of guilt on us, and more bad choices seem to lurk around every corner. Sometimes it feels like our worst impulses, desires, and habits have more power over us than we do.
It almost seems like too much to hope for, that God would save us from all of this. So here's the big question. Do you see your need for Jesus to heal you from the afflictions you face?
Part 4
Bryan: All right.
Part 4 Discussion
Bryan: So do you see your need for Jesus to heal you from the afflictions you face? And you know, tying Isaiah 59 here with our conversation back in Matthew chapter 9, where Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners, what is it that you see here about your own need for the Lord to heal you from afflictions?
Ryan: Yeah, it made me think about the Beatitudes, and "Blessed are those who mourn." You know, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, and blessed are those who mourn, for they'll be comforted. Those who hunger and thirst will be filled." And you know, you think about that idea of mourning, and as I've studied that, I think it's on two levels, just like this conversation we're having is happening on two different levels.
You're mourning and you're hungering and thirsting for justice in the world because there is so much injustice, so much evil, so much sin, so much of a lack of love. You know, you think of all of these different pictures like Isaiah 59, but so many others as well in scripture of children don't honor their parents and people are enslaving other people and people are being hateful and treating each other as objects and all of these things.
And so you mourn that and you hunger for justice to happen. And then
the camera zooms in realize that you are at the center of it all. You are as much a part of that picture of injustice and evil and sin as anyone, at least historically in your life. And that is where you find
the way to, in your morning, start to be comforted. Not because, "Oh, the world is turning around, but because God can heal me, and someday He will create a new heavens and a new earth where all will be healed. Not only is my hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice going to be filled as He teaches me His new way, and I'm starting to walk in this new path, but there is a justice that in the end will reign supreme.
There is a peace that will conquer at the end through Jesus. And so, you know, as we look at these three pictures of a troubled world in iniquity and transgression and sin, certainly I see my need for God to heal me, and that is where the comfort comes in is even though not everyone will be healed, I will be, and I can speak this word, this healing word to others, and others can be as
Bryan: Yeah, it's really just such an eye-opening picture, right? Like, when you look at these words, how twisted and broken and just how fractured they all are, these are not good words. And when I start thinking about these in more detail, it kind of reminds me of my recent physical. You I had a blood test recently. It's like the time of the year where you go get your physical done. And you know, I was able to look at the portal where they have the graphs of everything and they measured my cholesterol and white blood cell count and everything else.
And I don't really know any of the details about what they provided me there, except for the fact that they gave me these little graphs with like red and yellow and green on the graphs and the little arrow on the graph to tell me like, you know, where I am and how things are going. And you know, if I'm in the normal range, it's going to be green.
And as you start scrolling through there, you're like green, green, green, green, green. Okay, wait, wait, that's not green. What is that? And then you start, then you start Googling. It's like, you know, from a physical standpoint, I can have a physical physical and I can, I can get analyzed that way. But like, I am in need of a spiritual physical.
Ryan: a spiritual spiritual?
Bryan: Yeah, spiritual, you know, it's something, I don't know. Spiritual evaluation as you start thinking about, you know, crooked heart disease here. Am I going to suffer from that? Am I going to suffer from a shattered or broken life? Am I going to suffer and struggle with chronic failure? And you start looking at these words.
And yeah, I faced all these things. And just like you're talking about, you know, you zoom out and you start to see like everyone around you having these problems. But then you zoom in. And it's like the call is coming from inside the house, right? I've had these problems myself. Yes, all of it, all of these problems.
I need Jesus to heal me. I need Jesus save me from these conditions. And you know, I can't heal myself, only he can heal me, but only if I'm willing to have this light of examination shined on my own heart. That's not an easy thing for me to do. But you know, as you were talking about earlier, ignore, ignore. It's like, you know, the easiest thing to do would not be to go to the doctor You know, the harder thing to do would be to come out and to have it all out on the table. You know, somebody's stick their finger in my face and say, you know, you got to get your cholesterol down, buddy. You know, that's the more difficult thing is to know the truth and to know what's actually happening.
And it's like ignorance could be bliss, but ignorance is still going to leave you in the dark at the end of the day.
Ryan:
the Bible talks about our salvation in all three tenses. We have been saved.
Ryan: We were saved, you know, and that speaks to that moment of conversion, when our sins were forgiven and we were adopted as children of God, we received the Spirit, and we were brought into the family, into Christ. And then it talks about being saved, you know, 1 Corinthians 15. This is the word that saves you, present tense, you know, and we are being saved and continue to work out your salvation and that idea that He is continuing to heal us, He is continuing to save us.
We need His work constantly in us to not only get rid of our past sins, but to continue to work in us and strengthen and support and bless us and be with us. And then He will save us. In the end, we can be confident, as we are holding on to Him, He will heal us, He will save us, He will make us ultimately and completely whole—physically, spiritually, in all the ways, right?
In a particular kind of a spiritual body, but in a new body and the spirit that He has already started to make new and ready for that time. It
Bryan: All right, so let's wrap this thing up with the
final section here, part five, where we'll get into our challenge for the week and then we'll look ahead to the next session where we'll offer a
Part 5
Bryan: blessing.
Audio: With all this focus on our biggest problem, let's watch this week for both healthy and unhealthy things in the world.
As you start the next conversation, take a moment to talk about what you noticed. It's hard to appreciate the good news without recognizing the bad news first. Our biggest problem, sin, is terminal. So we need salvation from sin and death. But as we'll start to see next time, God wants to heal us from the problems we discussed today and lead us into an abundant life with him.
May the Lord help us look at our lives honestly and bless us as we come to Jesus for healing.
A Closer Look: Leading the Study
Bryan: All right, so let's take a little bit here at the end of all this to take a bit of a closer look on leading and maybe even participating in this session of Square One.
All right, so we're going to take a closer look on leading these conversations here.
We did talk through this in some amount of detail in episode 221, so if you want to hear some more details about that, go back and listen to that episode. It'll be in the show notes, but I do appreciate here again that we spend some time talking through how to lead this conversation.
It's like, it's not where you want to put all your focus and energy, you know, thinking about what's broken, but I think it's a good way to acknowledge what's going on. As we talked about in episode 226, connecting what we know about someone, connecting the story that they've brought to us, you know, things we've heard them say, connecting those struggles, the disappointments, all the frustrations that might be going on in their life, connecting those things with this conversation is a big step, I think, in helping them understand what this is all about, that this is about them.
It's personal to them, and the things I think we're talking about here, the brokenness and difficulty is about their own life.
Ryan: yeah, I definitely think that these truths and trying to apply them as you said to themselves, it is disorienting. I mean, if you're not used to this, it can be a hard thing. This is, as much as we tried to start light and everything, if this is reaching somebody, especially if it's reaching them for the first time, it is going to be something that shakes them.
I mean, we put one of our first draft picks going back to our bracket that we just did. Isaiah 59 was one of our hard truths, and there's not a harder truth than that your sins are separating you from God. And so I would just say, as you're leading it, be aware, be compassionate, and gently lead them through.
It doesn't mean you pull back from any of the truth, but be with them as the spiritual Sherpa we talked about a few episodes back, as somebody who is walking with them through some hard things that they need to get. be merciful and know that this first foray into these conversations is a hard place to start. I agree with you, it is an essential place to start, to be cut to the heart about your need for Christ. But not sugarcoating anything and saying, "Oh, let's take it easy on this first one." I mean, it's like all bad news in this one. I mean, we hint at the good news, and we talk about that Jesus is the one to heal, but it is intentionally meant to create a desire and an interest in hearing the full message of the next studies when we start to really unpack the answer to all of
Bryan: In the way that Jesus was able to do in his own ministry, he clearly focused on healing as a teaching tool. And people would come to him with all sorts of afflictions
and things they were facing from a physical standpoint. Jesus didn't pull punches about what was really most important. This was not about their physical condition, but their spiritual one.
And I think these ideas here about iniquity and transgression and sin, focusing really on difficult passages like Isaiah 59, like you said, is heavy hitting. I think at the same time, you know, as a leader in this discussion, it's such a valuable thing to open up and share your own personal experience because you don't want people to feel like they're the only broken ones in this conversation, right? Like you're there too, you were there too, you struggle through the same situations, you've made a mess of things.
Just like they have, you know, you're not better than them, you're not putting yourself on a pedestal above them. And that empathy and that connection that, you know, you're able to put yourself into their shoes. You're able to connect with them. You know what it's like to have gone through those kinds of things.
And just to be able to make that connection right off the bat here in these discussions, you know, tearing down the wall, you know, remove the barriers, right? I suppose.
Ryan: Yeah, And that really leads well into something we haven't talked much about, which is what would you want to say to someone who is going to be participating, not leading, but is going to be on the other side, and receive this information and participate for the first time as they're, again, jumping into something pretty heavy.
We've all, I mean, those of us who are Christians have all been taught these hard truths at some point and come to the point of conversion, and it's challenging. So what would you say to someone who is on that side of it?
Bryan: Yeah, I think the first thing I would want to express is that, you know, that they're loved and that this really is coming from a place of genuine concern for them because too often people feel, I think, that they're being talked at, if that makes sense. Like this is a script that we're going through or like something, you know, we're just lobbing a bunch of bullet points at somebody, but really this is about giving them, especially in this first session here, it's about giving them the space to show that we're genuinely concerned and that we care about them.
You don't see somebody who's going through illness and difficulty and, you know, walk on the other side of the road or, you know, walk away. If you're the kind of merciful and compassionate loving person that you ought to be, it's going to come out in what you say.
And I think for someone hearing this, just for them to understand that I love you not in a weird way, but I care about you. I care about not only what's going on for you today, but what will happen to you someday in the future. You know, someone's wellbeing, just making sure somebody feels the warmth and connection that I can really settle in on the fact that this is not like a sales pitch.
We're not trying to sell you anything. This is not a multi-level marketing scheme or some sort of pyramid operation or anything like that. Like this is,
really just about some questions that hopefully you'll find helpful.
And it starts off light and it gets heavy, but it also starts off heavy as a whole series and gets lighter in some ways. So I don't know, starting off with what's broken leads us to this joy in our discipleship and all the really positive progression in this study as a whole, knowing where these things are going.
I hope that if people know where this is heading, that they'll be receptive to the good news.
Ryan: it has to be about hope ultimately. And as we're leading these conversations, I think we can show that in our lives and in what we're pointing to and how we react to them and even just say it. This is ultimately a message of hope, even though we're starting at this pretty hard place and the comparison that you made building on what we talked about here about the sickness idea.
Like if somebody is really sick, you just want to be with them. you want to serve them, you want to take them to the doctor, you know, you want to tell them, hey, you got to, you need to, you need
it takes as long as it takes. And so I would definitely want somebody participating to take their time considering these things without pressure to respond quickly; just make sure you hear it. Luke 8, Mark 4, all the chapters in the Gospels where Jesus, you know, the parable of the sower chapters are about whether you hear or not.
How are you hearing? In Luke 8:18, Jesus says, "Pay attention to how you hear." And so that's where I would want them to put their attention is just try to hear it, try to not fight it, you know, just listen, receive it, let it be implanted like a seed in your heart that does its work. And, you know, that's the whole thing, is create, as we're leading it, trying to create an environment where they have the opportunity to hear well the word of God, for it to do its work, for them to not harden against it, not let it get scattered away, but rather to let it settle into them.
And
Bryan: I think that comparison to Mark 4 and other passages, obviously, where Jesus is talking about people's hearts and their lives, it is something that we can control how receptive our hearts are to the truth. And I think that's an important point here to highlight.
Like obviously people are going to hear it and they're either going to be receptive or they're not, but they'll respond however they're going to respond. But in our leadership of this conversation, like I think it is helpful for us to help them be more open, to not be a stumbling block in their way, you know, to really make sure that we're not placing any roadblocks or obstacles in their way, but that we're helping clear the path of debris, like a Sherpa, you know, and you might be trying to cultivate that soil in their heart along the way in this conversation.
Ryan:
I mean, I think we talked some in the getting to square one about this kind of idea of like being a thinking partner and helping people to notice where they're stuck and asking questions to help them, you know, like unjam their, uh, their, their wheels that are spinning in the mud or whatever, and help them to get unstuck and move forward, mixing all kinds of different things in metaphor land here.
Ryan: but yeah, I mean, I think that is a critical part of this this is a conversation design. There is a road and there is a way there are way points,but if they're not really ready to move into this next piece of it because they just keep bringing up the same thing. This happens a lot in my experience and studies that the same things show up over and over again until they're dealt with.
And they just like, they'll have different language, different ideas. And you're like, where did that come from? We're not even talking about that. It's because it's the roadblock. And so, you have to prayerfully think about it. You might say, "Hey, let's pause here," or, put a pin in that.
I want to start next time by talking about it." But, you know, sometimes you might have to go off of the roadmap and say, "Hey, you know, this is where you're struggling. And as we go through this process, you might notice that there are some future questions that they're bringing up, that this is where they're getting stuck and you know, that that's where you might say, okay, hey, I was only going to do three sessions, but I think we need to jump to the fifth one in the extended plan to deal with this particular place where you're stuck.
You know?
Bryan: Yeah, so choose your own adventure. And so, yeah, I think this
wraps up here our first session our second version of our first session this first checkpoint discussion. Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in and for focusing on these things with us. Man, this is so important.
We really hope that this is a great launching point for a good discussion with somebody. You know, all the resources that we have on our website, you can go to biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/228. You can also go and look at our guided study here at biblegeeks.fm/squareone, where you'll find all the resources for these conversations.
You can sign up for our newsletter. You can check out our blog for more details and all the other things that we have on our website. So go check it out. We'd love to have you there. . And until next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
Ryan: Shalom!