Unveiled
279 | “Not Diane Sawyer”
Behold the Lord and Be Changed
Ever feel like your spiritual life is just a never-ending construction site full of sweat and long to-do lists? What if the Bible's real model for change isn't a renovation project, but a mirror? This week, Ryan’s playing “Diane Sawyer” and interviewing Bryan about his recent “Unveiled” preaching series in Plainfield, Indiana. We’re digging into why we're so obsessed with “image management” and why we keep snacking on the world's junk food when we’re spiritually bored. It turns out, we don't have to knuckle down to grow — we just have to take the veil off, stop pretending, and become what we behold.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Transformation isn't a project we’ll complete, it’s the image we reflect as we keep turning our faces toward Jesus.
This Week's Challenge: Identify an area where you are performing or wearing a “mask” and take the veil off by being honest with God about that struggle.
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Welcome and Big Idea
Bryan: it's awkward enough, even in this conversation, to be not Diane Sawyer, you know, [
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.
Bryan: And thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. You know, we all want to grow, but most of us treat spiritual growth like a home renovation project with a lot of sweat, a long to do list and a constant feeling of being under construction.
But what if the Bible's primary model for change isn't a construction site, but a mirror? All
Ryan: So today we're looking at what happens when we take the veil off and discover that we become what we behold.
Interview Setup Unveiled Series
Ryan: [clears throat] Every once in a while, there are these subjects where it's kind of fun to ask each other questions and one of us kind of be the Diane Sawyer of
the interview. So I'm gonna get to interview Bryan a little bit. We'll have mostly a conversation here, but I wanted to talk to you, Bryan, about this series that was excellent around this passage, 2 Corinthians 3, verses 12 to 18, and some of the big ideas that you spun off of that into other topics.
And it was just, first of all, it was really cool to be together and for me to actually hear you preach and then get to talk to you about it and you and me and Allen had some awesome conversations afterwards and throughout the process. But, know, is it okay if I just start throwing some questions at you?
Bryan: Sure, I mean yeah, we had a really good time, I think, a while back when we were able to meet together and maybe just rolling it into this conversation is perfectly fine. I think for those people who have not yet heard those lessons, if you actually want to go listen to them, they're available.
We'll throw links in the show notes. But yeah, we're going to talk about this series that I did called "Unveiled" at the Plainfield Congregation in Indiana. And really we're just focused on 2 Corinthians 3 and the idea of transformation and I guess the whole undercurrent of the week was focused on discipleship and what it means to be like Jesus and how transformation really happens.
And I think this really does weave its way into a lot of the cross-training stuff that we did, you know, some years ago here on the podcast. So yeah, bring it on. I'm ready, Diane Sawyer.
Ryan: All right, well, let's start with a scripture du jour about
Scripture du Jour: 2 Corinthians 3
Ryan: 2 Corinthians 3, verses 12 to 18.
Bryan: Alright, bring it on, buddy.
Ryan: All right, I'll have that. So let's just start, like, what is this passage about and what is it about the passage that felt important for Christians? Or like, to put it a different way, what change did you hope for hearers to experience as they engaged with this
Bryan: Yeah, so 2 Corinthians 3 kind of comes right out of left field in Paul's second letter. You get the sense that he's pretty frustrated with the church as he begins the third chapter. Basically like, "Do you think we need some kind of authority to come and speak to you?" You know, these letters of recommendation.
And he's talking about boldness, really. He's getting into like why he can be so bold to be a teacher to them. And so then he begins to kind of go on this little rant about glory, which is actually one of the highest concentrations of this word "glory" per chapter in all the Bible is 2 Corinthians 3. But the idea that he's getting into that I've just really latched on to was that the Old Testament had this level of glory that made it so that Moses, whenever he would go before the presence of God, his face would glow.
And the idea was that, of course, the new covenant in Christ has so much more glory, but that it doesn't fade away. It's not fading away like it was with Moses. And so what we saw there in the story and what Paul's getting into is Moses would put this veil over his face because the glory was fading. And how much more now do we not have to worry about that same kind of fading glory?
Because when we look to Christ, when we behold Christ, we can become like him. And that's what this whole verse is about, talking about, you know, we all in verse 18 with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
So that was where we focused the whole conversation around. And I just wanted people to get this idea of transformation and how we do that, not as a way of like knuckling down and, you know, really getting ourselves disciplined and stuff, but really the idea of transformation is what happens when we just naturally turn to Christ, focus on him, behold him.
We don't have to hide and pretend or put on a show.
Ryan: Yeah, we'll get into this, the idea of putting on a show here.
I have a couple questions for you there, but I love what you're saying there.
Being Transformed Not Self Made
Ryan: One of the things you brought out in the lesson was just the tense of a verb. Notice the tense of the verb, right? In verse 18, you said
about being transformed. So what do we take from being transformed
Bryan: that we are being transformed. It is. It's a passive thing that we we are not necessarily transforming ourselves, which is a challenge, I think, for us to kind of wrestle with. We are being transformed or this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. It's God who transforms us. It's the it's his spirit within us that transforms us.
And I struggle with that so often because I feel like I have to, again, be the one doing the shaping, doing the molding. And it is the more I look to Christ, the more I focus on him and understand his character and see his see the way that he dealt with people and all the situations that he went through.
I am transformed by that. And that that is going to come as I meditate and think about and just really behold Christ every day in my life.
Ryan: And that's a process, as this talks about, from one degree of glory to another.
There is this growing glowing, growing transformation. I mean, it's so hard not to think of Matthew 17 and Jesus' transfiguration. I think this might even be the same word. His face glowing on a mountain, but it was not because he saw God like Moses did and it wasn't fading away in that same way.
It's because of who he is,
Bryan: I was telling you in our conversations, you know, while we were there, like this part of the lesson, this part of this verse actually was one of the one of the things I struggled with. Just wrapping my head around what he was saying there, we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
That idea of one degree of glory to another was really something I wrestled with a lot. And you guys kind of like latched on to it and we're really bringing it up a lot in our conversations together. What was it that, you know, when you think about that idea of from one degree of glory to another, what does that immediately spark for you?
Ryan: That it is not, you walk out of the waters of baptism and done, I am all that I'm meant to be. It is this process of becoming. Becoming is different than, it just gives you a different framework, a different mindset. And in a way I am completely new, of course. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creature.
Behold, all things are new. And so I have a new identity, but I am learning to live in that and I am becoming more and more like him from one degree of glory to another is how I see it because it's talking about this transformation. And my part in that, like you were saying, this is something that, this is a work that God is graciously doing within us.
We talk about the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and all these things. It's not the fruit of Ryan. It's not that I'm not involved. He's not zapping me like with nothing. What is my part in this, in this passage here? Obviously we could do a whole theology around this, but in this passage, what does he say I need to do as he, for him to continue this work?
Veil and Image Management
Bryan: And that's that's where we keep coming back to is like just the idea that when one turns to the Lord in verse 16, the veil is removed. And part of it is part of it is just being honest with ourselves that, boy, I might want to think that I'm the source of it all, or I might want to think that I've got to have it all put together.
But if I'm able to see that it's really not about me as much as it is about where my focus is and where my eyes are, when I turn to the Lord, I can remove the veil or the veil is removed. And in our lessons, I was really talking about the veil as like image management, because that's actually what it's talking about when it's referring to Moses having this veil.
Like he put the veil on because he was trying to manage appearances like the glow was fading, but he didn't want people to see that. Like he didn't want people to know that the glory of the Lord was was fading from his face. And so he put a veil on to hide it, which is what I think is so cool is like you don't actually read that in in Exodus 34, but you read that here in 2 Corinthians 3, you read that that's why he put the veil over his face, because he was trying to to kind of manage appearances.
And boy, if that doesn't just completely speak to me, I am a person who wants to manage appearances and wants to look a certain way. And unless I can get honest with myself and take that veil away, I'm never really going to to let the Lord transform me in the ways that he's going to.
Ryan: Okay, yeah, so that takes us to this mask idea. Like the veil, we're covering our face or people have a veil over their hearts as they're hearing Moses in chapter three, verse 15. And then getting to this idea of a mask, which
you started to unpack that, how that fits into this context with this insight that Paul gives us maybe here of what was happening with Moses. But maybe more important for us is the application.
Masks Hypocrisy and Fear
Ryan: Why do you think some of us may feel the need to veil our true selves, whether that's in the church or maybe even before God? And how does that affect
Bryan: Yeah. You know, everyone's going to have a different response to that. But I think my response would mostly be that I want I want to look like I have it put together. You know, I want to look like I've got things figured out or that I have, you know, that I've got the answer in some way. And that is that's a difficult one to deal with, I think, because like wisdom is good.
And, you know, having the right answer, having discernment is is where we want to be. Like, that's, of course, what the Proverbs is really leading us to and all sorts of wisdom in Scripture is leading us to be able to have a good answer, to be a person who's well-respected in our communities, to be honorable in the ways that we live our lives.
And so, like, in some ways, I think we put on a mask because we we want to be something we're not quite yet or that maybe we're not actually working that hard to be. And so it is pretending, it's putting on a face, putting on a show. And why we do that is mostly because of fear that people won't respect us or accept us? - or, and in the case of Moses, his fear was really that I think the implication here in this passage is that, by his face, the glow being removed slowly from his face, the people would look at God differently.
And that's another one that maybe deep down, like if I'm not the person I know I need to be, am I really able to reflect God's image out in the world and, you know, be a good representative for him in the ways that I need to be? Or, you know, do I put on a show? I don't know. There's lots of reasons, I think, why we want to hide or pretend.
about you? Do you have like a does this any of this resonate for you in deeper ways?
Ryan: It's definitely something that, you know, it's a journey for all of us. And I still have times when I, yeah, definitely want to look good or you have to, we live in a social context where you have to think about how is this gonna land or how do I wanna come across to this person or those kinds of things?
And there's an appropriate amount of that, but it's really easy for that to take us away from being authentic and being willing to just do what we need to do, say what we need to say and let the cards fall where they will and like just know that I'm a servant of the Lord. I'm here, he goes on to say in the next verse or in the next chapter, we proclaim not ourselves, but Jesus Christ and ourselves as servants.
And he talks about how we're just jars of clay here and the power isn't our power. And it's really one of the most dangerous things, like for instance, when you're teaching a class, I've seen this happen to others and this has happened to me, where you feel like you need to be the answer man,
the person with all of the, you know, I know the answers, I've studied and prepared, I'm in the role
Bryan: The source of
Ryan: teacher here.
Yeah, and that is, boy, that is a trap. And mature teachers know, you walk in ready to say, I don't know, ready to say, hey, let's explore that together. Somebody pushes back on you or argues with you, you know, with some maturity and the right preparation and the right heart, then you can just say, oh, that's really interesting and, you know, tell me more about that and let's explore this together.
And it doesn't have to be an argument where my position is like where I'm standing and now I'm gonna look like a fool if I don't protect my position or something like that. So, you know, teaching a class is one place where you have to have the right preparation to not wear a mask that I am this guy. No, I'm just Ryan, I'm just a jar of clay, I don't talk about myself, like I'm not trying to make myself look like the great expert, I'm trying to help you see Jesus is the great teacher and let's find him together,
Bryan: Yeah. I appreciate everything you just said, because, you know, it's awkward enough, even in this conversation, to be not Diane Sawyer, you know, [
Ryan: laughing] - Right.
Bryan: the one being as if I have come to like some source of authority about, you know, Second Corinthians 3 or anything like that.
Mirror Confession and Weakness
Bryan: But this conversation kind of reminds me of the sinful woman in Luke 7 that, you know, was just awesome on our recent draft, you know, Bible bracket.
But I was thinking about her and just her ability to own up to her sinfulness, you know, to her, to who she is and to not hide it. And it wasn't like it wasn't something that she was holding up as like a badge of honor, but she she wasn't like running away from it either. And, you know, she was honest enough to be able to to not, you know, shrink into the shadows.
But, you know, that caused her, of course, to then get on her feet and, you know, wash Jesus feet with her hair and, you know, didn't stop kissing him from the time that she showed up and all of these things. And boy, like his response to that sort of humility was so much better than the like, "I think I've got it all covered," you know, Pharisees and people who were around at the time.
So I think that that kind of highlights for me just like own up to who you are and be honest about it. and then Jesus can do the work. The Spirit can do the work of bringing you back in line with who he is.
Ryan: so much of the rest of the book of 2 Corinthians is about in our weakness we can be strong and his power is perfected and his grace is sufficient and those pictures, and it's hard not to go to 1 John 1 and the importance of just acknowledging, acknowledging before God or even in James 5, sometimes acknowledging to one another, confessing is the word we usually use, just being honest about, hey, I have sinned or that was a sin, I own it and I should not have done that and, you know, it's amazing as a dad, teaching my kids to do that has given me so much insight into psychology, like the human resistance to admitting you're wrong in any way or being the one to apologize, but once it clicks, once they get, okay, I can say this, I can be honest about it and the world doesn't end and actually healing begins there and it's not like I, everybody's like, oh, he confessed, now sentence him to life in prison, it's like, no, he took ownership, he apologized, he asked for forgiveness or she did this and that created a whole new environment where healing and good relationships and reconciliation and all these things can happen, but as long as we're masking or pretending to use these words you were using, that can't happen, this is just, in a way, somebody said in the ladies weekend that we just had and Adrian reported it back to me that in some ways, confession, it's kind of like the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man, not for God, we do it before the Lord, you know, under the old law, they did do it, but it was for man and confession is really for us, we need it, God tells us, here's what you do because you need this, this is how it works, this is just like an axiom of the universe as they say in AA or some of those programs, you know, you have to, the first step is admitting you have a problem,
Bryan: For sure. And I think that's, you know, the first lesson in this whole series was really focused on this idea. And I called it the mirror because, you know, we are reflecting Christ. That should be our goal is to be more and more like him. And sometimes I make that mirror look real messy and I'm unwilling to wipe it all off unless, you know, I'm honest about what's going on and what I'm actually using to cloud my reflection of him.
And, you know, that was sort of just the setup here for a whole discussion for the rest of the week about the way that we live and how we are transformed and how God is able to make us into that better reflection, better image of his into the world. And that's, I guess, where we kind of started in this whole lesson
Spiritual Boredom and Snacking
Bryan: series that I did on Sunday.
Ryan: Well, going on from there, as we continue this work of transformation, of putting ourselves in the situation for God to do this work in us, right, we are turning to the Lord, one of the things you pointed to, you talked about snacking on the world and you use this term, spiritual boredom, what does that mean, spiritual boredom, where does it come
Bryan: Yeah. I think snacking on the world is just the, you know, on one hand, you have this idea that we should hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." And that idea of just being hungry for what is good, for things that are broken to be put back together, for our, you know, for our desires to be satisfied in what God provides us.
But I talked about spiritual boredom so much because I think it's real. It's like a, boy, it's what happens when we just snack on noise all day long. And you see it with kids and you see it with, you know, adults alike, people who spend their entire day scrolling on their phone or just listening to whatever, you know, loud shouting voices they might hear coming from their YouTube machine or like whatever, like 24-hour news as there's outrage everywhere.
And it's just this constant stream of being angry about this and then angry about that. And then you get like, you get to the end of the day and what do you do? Well, you try to open up your Bible and start thinking about the Lord. And it's like, holo, you know, everything that your senses have been bombarded with all day long, just feel like, you know, feel like now it's dry, I guess.
And people are like, "Well, why aren't I hungry for the Lord?" Because you've been eating candy and like, you know, empty calories all day long.
Ryan: use the word boredom, a word that comes to mind for me is numb, we've talked about nose blindness like the Febreze commercials or like,
you know, if our kids are always eating junk food and then you put a good dinner in front of them, they're not gonna be hungry for it, but you know, how do we cultivate a taste for the glory of
Bryan: Yeah. So it was interesting. As will happen sometimes, you give a lesson and you're talking about something and you start using analogies and these pictures of, you know, nutrition and eating different foods. And there was a sister there at the congregation who is a nutritionist. And she actually came up to me pretty much every evening afterward and just kept talking about how it resonates with her in her experience as she's trying to coach people into eating better, changing their health through what they eat and things like that.
And she was saying, you know, like, it is so difficult to try to retrain someone's taste buds. Because in the beginning, like, if all you're ever doing is eating, you know, steak and candy and like every, you know, whatever it is you want, burgers and stuff, for you to then start eating vegetables is like, what on earth is going on?
This is not good at all. And she said, you know, at some point, once you lean into that and you allow it to become your new normal, then it's what you start to crave. And we started talking about craving and how we can find satisfaction in what God offers us if that's what we start training ourselves to want.
And, you know, I think that's why the spiritual disciplines like prayer and study and meditation are so important because they really just center us. And you and I talked about so many times over the years on the show, like scripture before phone, you know, in the mornings you wake up, what is it the first thing that you do?
Scripture before phone, you know, and that's not like a rule that I would, you know, enforce on anybody, but it is a great practice to just either that or to find your first moments in prayer or to find your first moments in silence, whatever you need to do, but like, absolutely, journaling, gratitude, all of these kinds of like introspective, thoughtful things you can do first thing to start off your day.
I love that. And I think that helps us really develop a craving for what is good and what is right and true.
Cultivating Hunger Psalm 63
Bryan: And I talked about in the lesson, Psalm 63,
Ryan: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. You said this is your favorite verse, I think, did you say
Bryan: it is one of my favorite verses. Yeah, because When you get to verse five, he says, "My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. I will remember you on my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help." And it's like, this language is, you know, he is literally in the wilderness.
which is what the superscript says here. He is in the wilderness, but he is like thinking about fat and rich food. And it's just such this visceral picture that I can totally put myself in the mindset of like, I want fat and rich food when I'm out in the middle of nowhere.
And that's what David is craving here. And he only is going to find that in a relationship with God as he's thinking about him and meditating on him. And I love that thought, thinking about hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because the world is never going to offer you that level of satisfaction.
Ryan: That satisfaction is such a great word here and it's the word Jesus uses in our translations in that passage you talked about in the Beatitudes, when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we will be satisfied.
And I have to read the rest of like the first four verses 'cause you started in verse five of Psalm 63 and this is, it was interesting to hear you say that in the sermon because this is for a very, very long time, been my favorite passage, on my phone are these two songs that are inspired by this Psalm. If you look at our website, the North Church of Christ website, and you go to where it's talking about me, each one of us, the deacons, the elders, and me, the evangelist, had to choose a verse and then talk about it, you'll find a quote from this.
So let me just read this because it's not just, it is this desire to be satisfied with rich food, but like you said, in the wilderness, God is like, he's like the water he's longing for, there is something, his power and glory give and praising him gives that nothing else can. So he says, "Oh God, you are my God, "earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you."
Or some versions say, "In the morning, I will seek you, "my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, "as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. "So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, "beholding your power and glory, "because your steadfast love is better than life." I know we've talked about
this. God's love is better than life itself. "My lips will praise you, "so I will bless you as long as I live, "in your name I'll lift up my hands, "and then like you said, I'll be satisfied, "I'll praise you, I'll remember you, "I'll meditate on you, my soul will cling to you." It's just such, like of all of David's Psalms, this expresses to me the heart of the Psalms, the heart of a person who has discovered, or as he says elsewhere, Peter 2, 3, We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good."
And that's the thing, we're beholding him and we keep turning our face towards him, not just towards the truths in his word, but towards learning about him, worshiping him, serving him, thinking about him, because he is what it's about, you know, to know God, to know Jesus and be in relationship. Oh, so good.
[laughs]
Bryan: Yeah. Well, yeah, that was just one of the nights that we talked through that. And I think it was one of my favorite lessons, you know, just to really think about what it means to hunger and thirst and to develop that appetite for the Lord, because that is, you know, that speaks to our heart. That is absolutely feeding us from the inside.
Student Trellis Team Framework
Bryan: And so, you know, we talked about that and then the night before we had talked about being a student as well, you know, focused on our mind and shaping our mind. The night after that, we talked about our actions and about the trellis. You know, this is a concept we've talked through on the podcast quite a few times, but just the idea of how habits don't save us, but they do orient our face in the right direction.
You know, some of these things that we were just talking about, like getting up in the morning and studying and prayer and gratitude and these kinds of things, they're not going to earn us a spot in heaven, but absolutely they will keep our face oriented towards Jesus, who will then do the transformation.
And then the last night we talked about the team, which was just all about community. So you can kind of see how the cross-training themes work their way through in that part of the meeting.
Ryan: Well, I wanna come back to the team here in a minute, but just a note, going back to the, from one degree of glory to another idea of this is a process, I thought you really brought that out well in the student night. And it's such a simple idea that to be a disciple is to be a student and not a master, not a graduate, as you said, you will not arrive, basically.
You are going to be on a process, and it sort of gives you permission, this goes kind of with this grace class that I just finished teaching, that you just are not going to be perfect in your faith, in your humility, in your love for the Lord, love for others, until we get to the other side. So it's just a pursuit, it's a constant growth.
Or as Paul says, you know, in Philippians 3, I'm pressing on, I haven't arrived, I haven't achieved it yet, but I press on, and I keep moving forward. I thought that simple idea that you are a student, not a graduate, just shifts our understanding about what the life of the disciple is supposed to be.
Bryan: Darth Vader was wrong, which was my hook in that lesson. I don't know why Darth Vader came to mind, but he was a conversation topic during the entire week. As
Ryan: Are you gonna do the voice for us? [laughing]
Bryan: I will not, but I'll throw in a clip for that right here.
Bryan: Anyway, so yeah, he was wrong. He was
"We All" Community
Bryan: not the master. Come on now.
Ryan: So let me bring us back to the team, where you closed, and I didn't get to hear this, I had to come back up and teach a class and everything. But so I wanted to come back and notice that you were focusing on that last verse, that powerful verse that the whole thing is built on in 2 Corinthians 3, 8, in two words there,
we all.
Tell us about how that shifts our whole understanding of what it means to look on the Lord and be
Bryan: Yeah, so we all, right? It's such a, you know, when you go back to Exodus 34 and you see what Moses' story that sort of set all this in motion was really talking about, it's Moses going before God alone on behalf of all the people. and unlike now, where we all, with unveiled face, we all get to experience the glory of the Lord.
We all get to be in the position of Moses because of Jesus, because of his access that he made available to us. And so I think it's such a powerful reminder that like we are not leaving this transformation up to someone else. We all get to experience this same presence and relationship with the Lord together.
And so thinking about it that way, you start to just see like the beautiful design of the church in so many powerful ways. And I kind of touched on this metaphor, but like, you know, if we were talking about being a mirror and reflecting the glory of the Lord into the world, I talked on that Wednesday lesson about how, you know, it's like you're just a small part of the larger mirror as the church.
You are able to reflect a different quality or characteristic of the Lord and his glory into the world. But like once you put all these shards of the mirror together, then It really begins to reflect more of the complete picture of who Christ is And, you know, for me, that just resonates so deeply when I think about like that word of encouragement, like apples of gold and settings of silver that one sister brings to me, you know, in my time of weakness.
Or, you know, that one verse that I remind somebody of when I see them, you know, broken down after a difficult situation in their life that maybe can lift them up. You know, just these moments that we're able to each bring something small and how each of us as part of the church are able to, you know, to build each other up in so many different ways and in so many small moments.
We're just not alone. And that's the encouragement, I think, that I walked away from seeing we all there in that verse in verse 18.
Ryan: clearly he is trying to show us a distinction from Moses, and that is, you know, Moses, in all of the Israelite community, he's the only one, and that changed the whole way all of the people related to God.
They related through Moses, basically, right? But not us, we all are beholding the face of the Lord together, we're all on the mountain, and becoming these glowing faces that won't ever fade away, if I'm understanding the metaphor right, and being transformed into that, I mean, someday, those glorious bodies that will be like the body of the Lord, and a spirit that continues to be transformed into that new heavens and new earth way of living, on earth as it is in heaven.
Bryan: Well, Diane Sawyer, I've appreciated, you know, being on this side of it.
Reach Out Question: Real Struggles
Ryan: Yeah, you wanna close it out with a reach out question?
Bryan: let's do it. It's been a minute since we've done a reach out question. Bring it on.
Ryan: Okay, well, we were talking about this performing mindset, or the mask idea, and so I think in a conversation about being real, not masking, it's appropriate to ask each other, what's an area where you struggle with performing for God, or others wearing a mask instead of beholding him, or snacking, or trying to do it alone, or some of these other things we've talked about?
Where can you take all of these things to heart and grow?
Bryan: Yeah. I felt a very special kind of dissonance with this topic as I'm standing in front of people, you know, giving a sermon series about all of these things, you know, and just seeing that, like, it's so difficult you know, for me and dealing with like I think a lot of people call it imposter syndrome.
But just not to unpack that too much here in this conversation. But I think for me, it's it's such a difficult role to imagine being an authority on anything or to like imagine that somebody would want to invite me to show up and talk to people for a while. And it was it was very special to have been there.
And it was a great blessing to, you know, be invited. And Allen basically made made it pretty clear that I wasn't allowed to say no when he invited me. So, I mean, that was great that he he was so persuasive as he tends to be to get me to go. But, you know, it's just a reminder for me that like I need to be real when I'm up there and I need to be real when I'm with people.
And that was one of my big challenges that I tried to put on myself while I was there. And I think it came out in some of the discussions we had and, you know, some of the conversations I had after the sermons with people just one on one. Because once once I think somebody opens the door to saying, I don't have it all figured out or I still struggle with these things, too.
I think that really begins to resonate with people. And I heard from so many people that they felt the same way and that they've struggled through those things, too. And so, you know, I think when we can just show up and be honest, that was what I really tried to do in these in these sermons. I think that helps people to see that, like, yeah, we don't have to pretend.
I feel like sometimes we get this picture that like people in the church are perfect and they don't have any problems and we're the only one. Right. And but that could not be further from the truth if we're just willing to open up and say, I'm struggling with this, too. And, you know, this is this is how we're all in this together, because every one of us needs to, you know, from one degree of glory to another, turn to the Lord and reflect him better.
Ryan: That's really powerful, and I think what you talked about there with the imposter idea goes with what we said about teaching, and trying to play a role. You and I had a conversation a year ago in a little retreat we did about not playing roles in people's lives, like, okay, who am I in this situation or that situation, but trying really hard to be, just be honest and real, and of course, different relationships, different moments call for different tones or different approaches, but taking away all of the, if you wanna use a photography term, the gel filters of this color or that filter that you might put in front of a light to give a, all of those, and it's just, this is the reflected light, as pure as I can
Bryan: It's the raw image.
Ryan: the raw image that I'm just, I'm trying to be a mirror, my version of a mirror, what I can be, and my struggles and my gifts are gonna be different, and what I see in the Lord is gonna be different so yeah, I think there's something really beautiful and powerful about that, and all the more as we take these more public roles, like what you experienced, stepping up, and it's even different being at a gospel meeting like that, not everybody's experienced that, but you come in and you don't, you're not at home, at least people know you and your home church, whenever you get up and you, sorta know where you're coming from, but you are just, you're just in the spotlight as the star, as the guest star, showing up and featured, and it is kind of a difficult spot to fill and still just be totally human I think Paul really, again, models this well with 2 Corinthians, it's a rough read,
Bryan: is a rough read and it is what he's trying to accomplish, I think. He is he's trying to strip away, you know, their need to, you know, uphold him to some great standard. And
like that's that's the goal of what he's trying to get them to, you know, eventually land at. But it is, like you said, a tough read.
But as for this reach out question, what about you? When you're thinking about beholding God, what kind of keeps you from doing that and maybe entering into more of a performance or, you know, veiling your life in some way?
Ryan: Yeah, one place that I'll highlight that has been a journey for me is thinking about parenting in the public eye and just letting my kids be who they are and trying to, of course, discipline them, train them, constantly redirecting and hey, that's not socially how we deal with this or whatever, but also just continually seeing the good and allowing that process to play itself out and knowing people are gonna see it and just accepting, like,
I don't need to have my parenting look a certain way for people, it just needs to be shepherding well according to what God taught. I don't need to have my kids look a certain way according to what other people see, I need to keep directing them to the right way of behaving and they're gonna,
it's gonna be messy sometimes and I just have mostly come to accept that, but it's still something that I think about sometimes, you know, especially like even us down in an environment where we're with new people and you're trying to help the kids navigate that in a way that is appropriate.
So that's an area where I want to keep pointing my kids towards the Lord and myself reflecting the Lord in the way I parent rather than worrying about how it looks.
Bryan: I appreciate that so much, especially because I just got to see all of that firsthand. You know, it is I I can see that in myself. My wife and I are a very different type of, you know, influence on our daughter than you guys are. And that's great because you guys are shepherding your kids and their unique personalities in the ways that they need.
And, you know, we're doing the same just ever so slightly differently on our end. And it's I think it's so helpful to see that, like, we all get to bring something different to the table.
even as it relates to parenting and the ways that people might, I think, can be critical about stuff like that. Right. Which is maybe why this is
Behold Jesus Glory and Cross
Bryan: something you're bringing out,
Ryan: you know, a climax here, just again, what we are in these reach out question answers even, trying to reflect is Jesus. What we're talking about beholding is the radiance and exact imprint of Jesus to see how we were originally designed to be by seeing who Jesus is. And, you know, maybe that's the end point of all of this is to just remember, this is what we, we've been living in this space for a long time, at least this is kind of a fundamental building block of this podcast and what we try to do together is, we are students, we are on a journey and that journey is all about Jesus.
So we always try to, at the beginning, at the end, somewhere, remind all of us, ourselves especially, to notice Jesus, notice who he is and how he is and keep becoming more like our teacher. -
Bryan: Well, and I brought up, you know, chapter four, verse six in the sermon in Second Corinthians, chapter four, where Paul says, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And so that's who it's all about, right?
It's about the glory of the Lord, the radiance of the Lord. That is that is Jesus. That's who he was. You know, Hebrews 1, verse 3, Colossians 1, 15. You know, we are looking at God made visible, the perfect human, the one who did everything in the ways that, boy, I wish I could have done, but absolutely could not have.
And when I'm just honest about it and see I'm not Jesus, but I know Jesus and I have a relationship with him and his glory is shining in my heart every day. That is, that's clarifying and helpful to make it not about me, but it's all about him. And yeah, like you said, I think that he is the reason for this entire podcast, why we do what we do.
And, you know, specifically, if I could just turn this ever so slightly, one of the points that I brought up was John 12 and 13, where Jesus is talking about now the son of man is to be glorified. You know, this is the hour now for the son of man to be glorified. And you think about that, like he's talking about the cross there.
And so there's another facet of this where the glory that Jesus experienced was not just a radiant face, you know, there at the mountain of transfiguration. The ultimate glory that God demonstrated in this world was Jesus dying on a cross and all the things made possible through that, where everything about his plan was fulfilled and accomplished there in his son who he gave.
And I don't know, that's just a helpful reminder too about sacrifice and putting ourselves lower that glory actually comes when we give it up.
Ryan: yeah, it's when am I most moving towards that whenever I am obedient like the cross, when I am humble like the cross, when I'm sacrificial like the cross, when I'm a servant like Jesus was for us.
And that, boy, that verse, both of those verses, the John verse and the 2 Corinthians 4, 6, as there's about a dozen sermons in each of those. And
Bryan: yep.
Ryan: the next verse after verse six and verse seven is, but we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. So here we these little clay pots, fragile, cheap, easy to buy, easy to break, but within us, somebody decided to put the most glorious thing, the light, the light of the glory of God, the light of the knowledge of Jesus and let that shine out of us.
So that's our task, that's where we wanna go from here.
Weekly Challenge and Wrap Up
Bryan: so maybe a challenge for the week. And this was kind of generally the challenge I gave as part of the meeting was to look for an area where you're performing for God or for others, where you're wearing a mask, where you're hiding instead of beholding him. And just put the focus on, you know, the Lord and on Jesus and admit that you're going through something and admit that struggle to God and just take the veil off.
Be willing to be honest about what's going on because like you said, I think it's one of the first steps that we can take to actually letting the Lord change us is to admit that we've got this going on.
Ryan: we can't look honestly on the Lord unless we're honest about who we are. I mean, that's what it means to show up before Him and we get exposed by the word of God So yeah, thanks again for letting me ask you some questions.
I just think that you're really good at pulling together profound, practical lessons that have somehow both simplicity and depth. And I thought this series was worth us spending one episode getting into and I hope it was helpful to others.
Bryan: Well, thank you very much. And thank everyone else for listening to this episode. This has been the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player. We'll have links to some of the things we've talked about and maybe you can go and listen to these sermons that I preached there in Plainfield.
And until the next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
Ryan: Shalom.