LOVE IS FEARLESS

You're in the right place if -

• you've ever wondered why your home sometimes feels like a battleground rather than a safe haven, and you long for more connection and peace.
• you feel stuck in cycles of fear, control, and performance in your relationships and want to learn how to build a truly supportive home environment.
• you’re ready to shift from focusing on “good” appearances to creating a home where everyone feels safe, loved, and truly supported.
• if you want to understand how to make quick and meaningful repairs in relationships, even when things go wrong, to build a culture of trust and resilience.

In this episode, we share the practical characteristics of a supportive and unsupportive environment at home. We also share stories about how relationships get stuck or unstuck based on the environment we breathe in. Janet shares a powerful reflection about the families she supports in consulting relationships. "So many times, families reach out because their child is stuck in a chronic struggle. In almost every case, the home environment is “good” based on cultural standards. But the child’s struggle is tied to a family dynamic where safety—explicitly or implicitly—is missing.   I’ve seen profound transformation when parents begin to intentionally repair the damage done by a lack of safety. Disabilities become capabilities. Dysregulation becomes regulation. A supportive home environment truly brings healing." Listen to this episode to find great hope and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

1. Transformational relationships are built on love, trust, and grace, not on control or performance. When love leads, fear loses its grip.
2. A supportive home environment is not perfect, but it prioritizes quick repairs through confession, repentance, and transformation to maintain safety and connection.
3. Making your home a safe place involves more than meeting physical needs—it means nourishing each person’s mind, body, and soul, with joy, rest, order, and healthy boundaries.
4. When we make repairs and lead from a non-anxious presence, we teach our children how to navigate struggles with resilience and security. This helps everyone in the family grow into who God says they are.

Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. Visit our recently updated website! john15academy.com Find powerful resources from our friends at trueface.org. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

We recorded this episode less than one week after Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States, knowing it would publish one day after the presidential elections. Devastating loss is all around. So is chaos. Fear has been eating our peace for lunch since this decade began. Maybe it's because what we're experiencing isn't really peace. Maybe it's pseudo-peace. Listen in as we share wisdom from Dr. Jim Wilder, Dr. Todd Hall, Dr. Curt Thompson, Jamie Winship and more. We start this episode with this working definition of PEACE: Peace is not just the absence of conflict; it’s a deep sense of security and relational harmony. It comes from trusting God, living in our true identity, and being deeply connected to others in love and truth. Peace allows us to live without fear, rooted in our identity in Christ, and to offer grace and connection to others. We share personal stories of chaos and moving on in the direction we learned from insecure attachment patterns - and how that's different than moving on in the direction we experience in secure relationships with God and others. Listen and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

1.  Peace isn’t something we have outside of a secure relationship. It is the gift of a  secure relationship. Parents, peace is a gift we’re designed to give our children, so they will learn to receive it from their heavenly Father, too.
2. "And everything I've taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!" John 16:33 (The Passion Translation)
3. Ultimately, healing our early attachment wounds and moving toward secure attachment with God and others is essential for experiencing true peace in life. True peace comes from living in our authentic identity, secure in God’s love and grace, and being able to offer that same love and security in our relationships with others.

Please pray with us about our upcoming end of year campaign for John 15 Academy. Because we're excited about a new initiative we get to offer that will have impact and influence on hundreds (maybe thousands!) of families, we're setting our biggest fundraising goal ever. Visit our website to sign up for our newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE, and to give now. We promised links to these three LIF episodes in today's conversation: An episode from New Year's Eve, 2019 - #79 - How Does Fear Make Us Weak? We talk about the healing power of lament in #134 - G is for GRIEF, GRATITUDE, and GENEROSITY An episode with John Lynch - #86 - Why Love Is The Only Weapon Against Self-Sabotage DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find fun choices by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com. Thank you, Jana Dickson, for making a donation to John 15 Academy for every purchase made from this collection. Together, there is great hope.

Once upon a time, gas stations gave you a choice - leaded or unleaded fuel. Now, the choice we make is now how unleaded do we want to be? If we pay more, we get cleaner fuel - which is better for our vehicles, but also better for the environment.   We have this choice at home, too. We can either run on the fuel by design or fuel by default. By default, we buy the cheap stuff. Fear and shame get the job done. It burns dirty, but it doesn’t cost much - and it works.    By design, we make a different choice. Love and truth are not cheap. They cost us time. They require that we sacrifice the efficiency and control that fear and shame give us in our relationships. But they offer something more that efficiency and control can never provide.   Learning to benefit from love and truth as the fuel in our homes, instead of the fuel of fear and shame, is the heart of everything we offer at John 15 Academy - and it is the foundational message of this podcast. Find resources and an invitation to support our work with families on our website. In this episode, we make key distinctions between "the old way" of fear and shame and "the new way" of Jesus, and we offer these TAKEAWAYS:

• Life by default offers a good life. Life by design offers an abundant life–more than we can ever dream or imagine. 
• A man-made life conforms us to the patterns of the empire/this world. We are our own source. A God-made life transforms us more and more into the likeness of Jesus - and we only experience transformation when we follow the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is a God-sourced life.
• The New Way is the original way. The old way is a knock-off. It’s like buying a counterfeit story and counting on it to be a fairy tale. We are designed to be transformed. We will never be satisfied in a life of conformity–no matter how high we set the standards.
• As parent and youth leaders and pastors, we get frustrated when we don’t see evidence of spiritual transformation–but we don’t stop to consider that transformation is impossible in a transactional system. 

Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. Contemplate new ideas in Janet's book - Education by Design, Not Default - How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

We're jumping back into THE CURATED LIFE alphabet in this episode - marking places on the map of our new life in Christ in the Kingdom of God. You're in the right place if...

• you’re ready to make a change - not just in what you’re eating or how much you’re exercising, but you’re ready to look honestly at the stories you’re telling yourself and at the relationships that are having a significant effect on your soul.
• you feel exhausted by performance-driven living and parenting and want to create a home where love, acceptance, and growth are non-negotiable.
• you want to understand how meeting your family's true needs can lead to deeper connection, joy, and spiritual health.

Doug and I are geeking out right now about the great resources on Dr. Ben Edward's website. We're excited about nourishing our bodies in the way God designed them to stay healthy. And we're recognizing that our family relationships need nourishment, too. Without relational nutrition, our relationships shrink instead of grow. Our relationships get sick instead of heal. In today's conversation, we're playing with an analogy that our families are the carburetors in our homes--designed to make clean energy with love, not fear.  Transformational relationships offer love in these individual-sized portions:

1. Emotional safety
2. Active listening
3. Grace over performance
4. Consistent routines
5. Conflict resolution
6. Encouragement and affirmation
7. Presence and engagement
8. Shared responsibility
9. Spiritual growth
10. Freedom to struggle

Learn more about offering this menu of relational nutrition to your family and linger in these TAKEAWAYS: 

• When we struggle in a culture of fear, we often change the truth. The change conforms us to the patterns of this world and deforms God’s story for our lives. When we struggle in a culture of love, the truth changes us. The change is called maturity, God’s story for our lives. God calls this change transformation. 
• In the kingdom of God, love is a process of meeting needs, not rewarding or punishing behavior. As parents, when we say “I love you” to our child, we mean, “I will meet your needs and help you tell your story more truly.” We can say that to our children because we’ve let God say that to us. 
• We can build homes where families intentionally prioritize transformational relationships, build emotionally supportive environments, and enjoy an identity-focused lifestyle that metabolizes the potential damage of excessive transactional relationships, emotionally immature environments, and a performance-obsessed lifestyle that feels toxic–because it is. 

Enjoy these resources, mentioned in this episode: Veritas Wellness, Dr. Ben Edwards John 15 Academy The Power of Knowing Your True Identity - You're The Cure - a conversation with Dr. Ben Edwards and Jamie Winship LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. You can follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE—A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

We're honored to welcome David Gregory to the Love Is Fearless podcast today. David is a bestselling author known for his compelling storytelling and insightful exploration of human connections, including our connection to God. His upcoming book, One of Us, promises to explore profound themes that resonate deeply with our journey of living loved and fearless. Join us as we dive into a conversation about identity, belonging, and the transformative power of understanding our shared humanity. We highlight these quotes from this retelling of the gospel, set in current times, in modern-day America:

• "God is going to completely change things up," he announced. "So get ready. Change how you think about God. Believe what he's about to show you." 
• "God is completely changing how your lives are going to work," he proclaimed. "A bigger change than you ever imagined. A new government is right around the corner. God's government. A new system is coming! A totally new arrangement! The bulldozers are already on the way." 
• "The time has arrived to accomplish what I'd come to earth for: to connect people to El Papa."

The TAKEAWAYS from this episode are questions for our listeners to play with:

1. Creativity is a gift in the Kingdom of God—and when we’re afraid, we conform instead of create. If you could create anything that would benefit humanity today, what gift would you give to our world?
2. What would be different in your life today if Jesus came to your town? What keeps you from believing He’s here now?
3. “God is completely changing how your lives are going to work,” he proclaimed. “A bigger change than you ever imagined. A new government is right around the corner. God’s government. A new system is coming! A totally new arrangement! The bulldozers are already on the way.” What if Jesus drives a bulldozer? What hope can you find when you trust He’s already changed the world and now we get to live like the change has already happened?

One of Us is available on davidgregorybooks.com, Amazon, and other online bookstores. David's new website, freewithGod.com, is coming soon! Other books by David Gregory include: The Rest of the Gospel: When The Partial Gospel Has Worn You Out by Dan Stone and David Gregory Dinner With A Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering Beyond Rules: God As You Never Imagined If Jesus Loves Me, Why Isn't This Working? LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. You can follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE—A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

Today’s episode is about how the traditions of fear and law teach us to navigate marriage, money, and mystery–and how safe relationships and secure environments transform our distorted stories.    You’re in the right place if…

1. Your marriage is good. You have a good routine. You even have date nights built into your routine. But if you’re honest, even the conversations you share on date nights have become routine–and if you’re really honest, you wonder if there’s something better than a good routine. 
2. Your finances are in good shape. You’ve survived COVID, and the inflation of grocery prices has been noticeable to you but not detrimental to your family. You even give an offering at church and make a few charitable contributions to causes you care about at the end of every year. But if you’re really honest, there’s a thought buried deep inside that tries to come to the surface that says, “Playing it safe in the kingdom is different than playing it safe in the empire,”--and you’re curious.
3. Your marriage is not good–or you’re not even married. Your finances are not good either. But you are on a journey of restoration. You’re hungry for wisdom, not just another formula–or a better way to stick to a stale routine or false tradition.

We've discovered a hunger for wisdom in our journeys of healing and wholeness. Wisdom is not the same as validation for what we've already known and are desperate to prove because we need to be correct. Being rightly related provides the safety we need to risk changing our minds. Join Doug and Janet in this conversation about marriage, money, and mystery in the kingdom of God and linger in these TAKEAWAYS: 

• The kingdom is a safe place to do the real work of recovering from the empire.
• The kingdom of God is a wealth of resources, and we experience the benefits of these resources when we see them with the eyes of faith. Contemplation, creativity, and collaboration solve problems that tradition, legalism, and self-effort can't resolve.
• "When we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus." (Corrie Ten Boom) This is the power of grace. In the kingdom of God, we discover we have personal agency--and that gift gets lost in the empires of this world. Better than that, we find out we have the power of grace. God's agency is more powerful than our own--and we are abiding in Him, and He is abiding in us. 

These valuable resources are a part of this episode: Strong Like Water--Finding the Freedom, Safety, and Compassion to Move through Hard Things & Experience True Flourishing by Aundi Kolber Living Fearless - Exchanging the Lies of the World for the Liberating Truth of God by Jamie Winship Secure Love - Create A Relationship That Lasts A Lifetime by Julie Menanno Season Three of the LOVE IS FEARLESS podcast - Love Is A Process of Meeting Needs LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

The worldview of the state we grew up in significantly impacted our view of personal identity, worthiness, and purpose in life. Our worldview teaches us what to value. It also teaches us our language, including the words we use and the stories we tell ourselves. More than that, our worldview constructs our nervous systems, so even when we want to change, we can't--without supernatural intervention. You're in the right place:

• If you’re brave enough to admit you’re stuck. It's not that you don't fit it in--you do. You may even be successful. But the underlying stuff that’s nagged you for a while is not going away. It may even be getting worse.
• If you love God and love church and want to pretend that all this deconstructing faith stuff is a lousy pandemic. You pray it will end soon. OR - you love God, and it’s painful to go to church, and you’re deconstructing your faith, but it seems the new theology you’re embracing is still drawing lines in the sand, which is one of the reasons why going to church is painful and you started deconstructing your faith, to begin with.
• If you have ever considered this idea, Jesus didn’t come to train a few followers in a new message, who then went out and changed the world. Jesus changed the world and sent out followers who embodied that change because they had trusted and experienced it. They invited others to step into what was already changed because Jesus had already changed everything. 

The disciples didn’t change the world; Jesus did. The disciples died because people didn’t want the changes Jesus made, but that didn’t re-establish the world to its previous state.  This episode is a wild ride, friends. Thank you for believing in the changes Jesus made with us. We conclude this conversation with these TAKEAWAYS:

• We’re either going to listen to the stories written in our nervous systems, or we’re going to listen to God. Listening to God will rewrite our stories because it will rewire our nervous systems.
• New relational experiences matter because those experiences are how we construct a new nervous system that allows our new identity to live and have an impact. Without building a new nervous system, we’ll try to live in our true identity in a false state. 
• For such a time as this, the impact of our God-given identity will be as a part of the construction crew for God’s kingdom. Our identity is our gift to the world. The kingdom is here now, and we’re building it. A new state. A new worldview.

LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. Contemplate new ideas in Janet's book - Education by Design, Not Default - How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning. Contemplate new ideas in Jamie Winship's book - Living Fearless - Exchanging the Lies of the World for the Liberating Truth of God. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

If you’ve listened to even a few of our latest episodes, you know we’re digging in pretty deep into Jamie Winship’s teachings about our God-given unique identity and his teachings about worldview. Why is identity and worldview important? Jamie reminds us that organized religion is very resistant to paradigm shifts, and he explains it this way. “We’ve exchanged the great commandment for the great commission. Instead of lovers, we’re theological conflict starters, with a goal of overpowering.” How we see the King determines how we interact with the King.  How we see ourselves determines how we interact with the King. How we see the Kingdom determines how we impact the world.   In this episode, we remind ourselves that the kingdom is about a family. God is our Father. We linger in the dynamic sweetness of this question, "What does it look like to live confidently as His child?"  Father is singing a song over us as His children and we may have missed the key change. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. That changes everything.    Join us in this new conversation, and prayerfully consider these TAKEAWAYS:

• Changing how we see ourselves, how we see the King, and how we see the world impacts how we engage with God, how we engage our stories, and how we impact the world. 
• We have a King who sets us free and who came to earth to show us how to live free, not simply to announce we’ve been set free.
• This journey in our earthly bodies is experienced in the Empire, but the story Father has written for our lives since before the beginning of time is experienced in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is at hand. 

LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED, at janetnewberry.com. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com.

Christopher Cook says, "Transformation doesn't happen in a day. Transformation happens daily." And this is true, too: Conforming doesn't happen in a day either. Conforming to the patterns of our insecure attachments happens daily, too.  Until it doesn't. Father is committed to our healing and transformation, friends. Our part is to let it happen. We get to keep putting ourselves in the way of faith, hope, and love. We get to keep on remembering that we are in the Father's keeping. Join Janet and Doug in this episode about the power of JOY, JESUS, and TRUTH-TELLING and linger in these TAKEAWAYS - 

1. “Your truth is a trap. For me in my story, the first step was surrender. But surrender wasn’t giving up, it was giving into a process of confrontation of my dysfunction that would lead to transformation and the renovation of my heart–to use the language of Dallas Willard.” Chris writes about the trap of self-creation in his book, Healing What You Can’t Erase. This quote is from a podcast conversation Christ had with Dr. Lee Warren.   https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spiritual-brain-surgery-with-dr-lee-warren/id1727926069?i=1000649682902 
2. In that same podcast, Dr. Warren said - "Our great Physician designed our minds to interface with Him and influence the wiring of our brain to optimize the function of our bodies. And He did that so we can live this life we’re created to live. We are transformed so we can help other people transform. (Isaiah 61)"
3. Insecure attachments are the patterns of this world. Being transformed happens when we participate in the renewing of our minds and building an earned, secure attachment to Our Father–who still speaks. “Abide in Me” means more than we can imagine. (Janet Newberry)

Janet and Doug mention these resources in this episode - Follow Janet on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for her newsletter THE CURATED LIFE - A FRESH TAKE ON LIVING LOVED at janetnewberry.com Hailey Paige Magee - STOP People Pleasing And Find Your Power SECURE LOVE - Create A Relationship That Lasts A Lifetime by Julie Mananno, The Secure Relationship Education by Design, Not Default - How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning by Janet Newberry LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities by visiting the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com

Episode #136 is all about wiping the fog off the mirror and looking more clearly at our worldview. For a long time, "worldview" was a philosophical concept, but it wasn't very practical to us. This episode unveils the freedom we find when we admit there's more than one way to see the world. God doesn’t see us the way the world does. God doesn’t see the world the way we do either.  Seeing ourselves from God’s perspective is a big deal. Seeing the world from God’s perspective is a big deal, too. How does God view me? That’s my identity – and He knows me best because He made me. How does God view the world? That’s the worldview I want to see.    You’re in the right place if - 

• You’re ready to live in peace. Our lifestyles are sourced in fear and scarcity. Our souls are cluttered. Even though our identity with God is settled for eternity, we’re distracted here and now. Fear–in one form or another– prevents contemplation so we stay stuck in false identities and false traditions–that keep us living in conflict instead of at peace. 
• You’re curating a life of faith–intentionally putting yourself in relationships with people who help you see yourself the way God does…and who help you see life (and the world) the way God does, too. 
• You’re risking something other than a status-quo life. You’re trusting that voice inside you that tells you there’s more than the current state of our social structure and the values that come with a traditional life. 

God isn’t building an empire; He’s building a kingdom—and we believe that, before the beginning of time, He knit us together in our mother’s womb with unique identities. That means God has wired us to contribute our gifts to each other, to our community, and to the world–to help bring His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And He’s wired us so that we need the gifts others are wired to contribute, too.   TAKEAWAYS - 

1. Living loved happens more often in a connection worldview than in a separation worldview–and living loved generates a connection worldview, too. Giving what others need and receiving what we need is a dynamic way to explain what it means to love one another. 
2. God is asking us, “Can I help you think differently about the world around you?”
3. Fear is the biggest obstacle to innovation. A worldview based on love and interconnectedness is necessary for positive change. Learning to view ourselves and the world the way God does is becoming my new way of understanding how Jesus, the Source of our lives, gives sight to the blind. 

LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. DON'T FORGET - We have MERCH! Find so many possibilities, including an 11x14 poster for sale for only $12 that reads - She was not hindered by fear. Nor was she penned in by personal preferences. Her mind was curious and her heart was open and alive. Visit the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection on dicksonthreads.com In Season Three, we started a new conversation with Scott Morrison in episode #76 - WHY INTEGRITY MATTERS. Check it out! We found inspiration for this episode in many sources, including these podcast episodes - Knowing Your Identity + Hearing From God with Jamie Winship Education is The Key To ALL Social Issues with Jamie Winship Janet's book Education by Design, Not Default - How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning shares innovative ideas for families and educators about childhood in a connected worldview. Get your copy on Amazon today.