Exploring More

This episode features an interview between Michael Thompson and Josh from the Uncensored Advice for Men podcast.

Josh wants to understand better why Orientation is so important for a man. He also asks questions from the perspective of men who may not believe in God but who could benefit from the advice Michael has to share.

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In this episode, Michael, SJ, Tom and Jim are going through the Four Pillars again today. Intimacy and Orientation have been explored, and it’s now time to move into the third Pillar, Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Prove, and Nothing to Fear. The whole concept of the Pillars is to move from duty to enjoying and experiencing the presence of God in our lives.

SJ closes with saying that next coming up is More Life, More Love and More Freedom. Tune in next time for closing out the 4 Pillars of Zoweh!

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Michael Thompson, Keith Daniel, SJ Jennings

In the final episode of the Kingdom in Living Color series, Michael, Keith, and SJ discuss the letter that was sent out by Bishop William J. Barber, II and how it relates to the latest escalation in racial tension in America. The letter harkened to a letter written by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was in prison.

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The Secrets to Fatherhood – Part 4

Michael Thompson, SJ Jennings, Greg Sailors

Part 4 brings about the end of the Secrets of Fatherhood series. In review, as the Zoweh guys have continually reminded throughout the series, first and foremost, you must Get Your Own Heart Back. There is no “Dad Camp” to get away to and come back perfect, though the Heart of a Warrior weekends can be a nice break to reflect. It’s a continual process!

You’ve got this, dads. You can do this.

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Tom recapped on his experience in finding God. He had gone on a spiritual journey at the end of high school, and God was the only one who sought him out. It hit hard and real and since he’s been with Zoweh, it’s been an upward spiral of learning who God is. While he recognizes God will seek him out, it’s a two-way relationship and He wants to be sought out as well. SJ shared his experience meeting the group at a weekend that his first experience with this school of thought was “I don’t even know what I’m hearing, but I want more”. The more he wanted, was intimacy with God.

SJ continues that as he seeks more intimacy, an enemy of that is the closed off parts of his heart. So it’s been his goal to open up his heart to connect more. Tom says that one thing that’s changed is how he prays and learning to ask God questions and connecting with His heart for the situation. Instead of treating prayer as a request system, Tom has been finding himself using it as a time to connect.

Michael confirms this shift, from only the service, obedience, and following the rulebook. While these are good to follow, there is eventually a requirement for “graduation” to intimacy, faithfulness, and conversation…. Relationship terms to connect with God. Michael really felt this, growing up in the church, where he had to slough off the dogged attitude of shame and that God could never be happy with him. So asking God questions, being able to hold conversations with Him, was revolutionary!

They briefly go over authors and speakers who have written about this intimacy with God, as this isn’t a new concept for Christians to explore. Some favorites were Brent Kurtis - “The Sacred Romance”, Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen, Graham Cook, even to the disciple John, who spoke with Jesus directly and had a relationship with Him.

After coming back from the break, they caught up a bit on the previous talks of Orientation. Michael asks “What does it mean to be an oriented man?” The very basis of Orientation, SJ shares, is “a man or woman that knows who they are, where they are, and the good that God is up to in their life”. Who you are is a beloved son and daughter. Where you are is your placement in the Two Kingdoms (see other podcasts). And the good that God is up to in your life, is more subjective to how He is working in your heart and growing you up into Kingdom Life.

One way to put it is “where there are circumstances in your life that is not God’s will, He will deploy His way”. Michael confirms this is true. Sin is a separator from Christ, and whether we have experienced someone’s sin towards us or we have done that to another, it’s going to happen. This is where God deploys His way to redemption, reconciliation, and recovery from loss so we can be reconnected.

Michael opens up the floor to ask the guys “When has Orientation been apparent to them in your lives?” Tom recalls when he learned that wounding affected the “policy decisions” he made for his life. Sometimes it is conscious, but more often it’s a gradual shaping of cause and effect. You begin to calculate the best ways to respond to life and situations that may not be the best or even authentic, and these contribute to the false self. The false self is definitely an enemy to our Orientation. To get to becoming oriented and knowing who we are, we have to also know who we’re not! Ways to distinguish the false self are asking “What am I hiding? What am I proving?”

Tom said for himself, he was a shy and withdrawn person for much of his life, not because he was naturally introverted, but because he feared embarrassing himself and experiencing rejection. It takes going back and evaluating those moments that fed into that, and you will see in time, the false self is reduced. He encourages the listeners, for those of you who struggle with fears that have a constricting effect in your life, that’s not a life sentence. All it takes is taking the time yourself to address it (it helps to have a mentor) and then find others to share that growth with.

An oriented man’s question is “What is this?” Michael shares an example after talking with his daughter recently where he had to go and ask that very thing to God and see that there was an element missing in his life. It is normal to be sad or angry that it’s missing, but answering by saying “All right I want this” opens up your heart for a chance with God to work on that.

SJ says the most important first step is getting to the headwaters of that problem. He says he believes many people, and he admits to doing it to, try to “white knuckle” their way to the change they want when they recognize the problem… They submerge into a check-list for self improvement. This is not a lasting solution! This is why intimacy is so vital, because through intimacy with God you will gain access to those locked and missing parts of your heart and be able to be more in touch with your own heart.

Michael says “more information” is not what he personally craves at this time. Where he’s at is he craves walking with God, and invites the listeners to do the same. Walk with God. Jim laughs as he finds the time he best connects with God is when he is literally walking with Him on morning strolls. He uses it as a time for Q&A. Even perceived inconveniences can be opportunities for connection, both Jim and Michael confirm from their own experience.

Jim was watching “Moneyball” recently and feels like it makes for a good allegory: “There is an epidemic failure in life to see what is going on”.

Michael begins to wrap up the podcast reminiscing about when they made the maps of the Kingdoms and shares about how “Search and Rescue” was very much about their learning of orientation as an element of Kingdom Living.

Orientation of your being is such a large conversation for just a couple short podcasts, but hopefully, this serves as an invitation for you to explore more on your own. SJ invites readers to see the 2 Kingdoms map on https://www.zowehoutpost.com/two-realms-two-kingdoms-map/ and also take advantage of the other free resources at the outpost.

Next time, the Zoweh gang will be tackling Pillar 3 which is “Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Prove, and Nothing to Fear”. See you next week!

Kingdom in Living Color – Part 2

Michael Thompson, SJ Jennings, Keith Daniels

In this episode, Keith recalls a story from when he was in little league football and was returning a punt, dropped the ball, leaned his head down and was cleaned out. He most likely had a concussion from that hit. Going back to the commemoration, he explained that was experiencing episodic depression that effectively caused him to crumble much like getting knocked over in little league football. He was trying to do too much. As an African-American man, he feels like he has to do twice as much to be recognized and therefore ends up with a lot on his shoulders.

#diabolical #blackidentity #diabolicalplans #football #littleleague #12yearsaslave #roots #rootsminiseries #martinlutherkingjr #drmartinlutherking #blackhistory #organizingagainstracisim #OAR

The Kingdom in Living Color – Part 1

Michael Thompson, SJ Jennings, Keith Daniels

Keith Daniels is our friend and one of the founding members of Zoweh. He and Michael have spent years together in ministry as well as on the basketball court. In this series, we dive deep into Keith's story and explore a Kingdom discussion on race and racial tension in America.

#liberationofblackidentity #rememberthetitans #footballisnotrugby #coaching #CoachK #Duke #ACCChampionship #UofMaryland #CoachSpurrier #integration #offeryourbestself #widereceiver #DukeChapel #commemorationofintegration #whiteprivlege #microaggressions #diabolicalways #blackmaninAmerica #blacklivesmatter #georgefloyd

Michael Thompson, SJ Jennings, Greg Sailors

Welcome to Part 3 of 4 on The Secrets to Fatherhood.

Here’s a quick recap:

Point 1 – The 1st episode was about the most important thing you can do for the hearts of your kids, as well as for any heart you love, is to – Get Your Heart Back and become oriented with the Larger Story. While we’d love to go get away to Dad Camp for more than a weekend, it’s actually in living the day to day within fatherhood that raises up what needs treatment, healing, and attention… that need Christ. For some, no one can provoke their False Self like their kids.  This is what brought us to…

Point 2 - the 2nd episode in the series: Wounding Your Kids. It’s not a matter of if, but when, you have hurt your kids. Wounded hearts wound hearts. The goal is “wound them less” because we cannot avoid it happening. Leading to…

Point 3 – the 3rd episode is Fighting for the Hearts of Your Kids. We want to break that cycle of what was handed to you from your father or mother and from the world. The enemy sees what wounded you and keeps a file on that – kind of like the mafia of the kingdom of darkness. Given any opportunity, your kids will invite your False Self to recycle those old wounds or mix them into new ones to impress upon your children when you face difficult moments as a parent. The enemy will even use those moments to wound YOU in having you relive when that wound was delivered to you! When you find that the enemy used you to wound your kids, you can see it on their face. That’s why it’s important to catch these moments and attend to the mess that’s been made.

Fighting for the hearts of your kids is very much about paying attention. And it all circles back to paying attention to your past and what’s in your file that the enemy is using. How your heart is handled will often dictate how you handle hearts. In the process of getting your heart back through training and foreseeing, it directly leads into protecting and going after your children’s hearts. Your own healing is shrinking your file so the enemy can use it less. Recognizing past wounds and getting healing makes the difference in turning a consistently bad reaction to a certain conflict to a good consistent response. How has God shown you that seeing your heart has affected your relationship with your children?

Listening to your children can start changing your relationship with them. When we say listen, we don’t mean preparing your response. Don’t cutoff, minimize, or diminish. And listen internally to your own knee jerk reactions as well as externally. It’s crucial to see what you might be brushing up against from your story when it comes to responding to them. Knowing and being known is important at Zoweh, and while you were both present when the father-child wound was made, how they interpreted it may be different from what you saw of the moment. As he employed better listening, Michael found that he was more likely to attend to the real issue underlying instead of the surface behavior, request, or initial upset. If you assume that your kids simply want to “misbehave” you are missing out. There is a whole lot more going on than that, and you will miss their heart if you can’t see it.

A question that helps is “How could I have handled that differently?” A common thread we found is that if we could go back, we’d want to be “more safe for our children;” more safe as in easy to talk to and relate to.

Some things are flat bad, but sometimes we pick up messages that were not anywhere near said, but felt implied to us as children.

Important tips to remember:

Don’t write Hey My Little DNA Bearer in birthday cards.

Don’t bring a two-year-old on a camping trip.

When it comes to apologizing for wrongs, don’t apologize in anger. Come back when you can say it sincerely. And don’t jump in to correct their response to the wrong, let it linger a minute. Because in that lingering, you can unveil where exactly their heart is at, giving you a better idea of what to do! Showing vulnerability with your children in an apology opens up a dialogue with them. And here’s one you might not have heard before – it helps to hold back on ascribing what you think you should be apologizing for. You might be surprised at what actually hurt them!

How is God fathering you as you father your children? It is a journey worth taking, healing with and being a part of your children’s healing. Joy is not always happy – “Why is it important to do this?” Because healing the wounding you inflicted on them takes that file out of the enemy’s hands, and healing your children helps them take the file out of the enemy’s hands. The older they get, the better they can understand and go deeper in these conversations and experience the holiness of those interactions.

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Join Michael and SJ as they explore the Secrets to Fatherhood and candidly discuss how we've already wounded our kids because we're wounded.