Why do many Christians find support for learning about God but little guidance when faith becomes difficult, disorienting, or deeply personal?

Brian is joined by spiritual director Rhonda Jenkins and pastor and coach David Smith to discuss the previous episode (The Story Beneath), performance-based Christianity, the Wall, double knowledge, spiritual friendship, and the need for communities that can accompany people through the inward journey.

They also share how Soil & Roots is developing the Greenhouse as a two-year guided pathway into deep discipleship.

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In this bonus episode, Brian steps away from the usual Season 7 format to share the personal story behind Soil & Roots.

Episode 144 traces the last five years: betrayal, loss, the dark night of the soul, chronic Lyme disease, financial uncertainty, and the slow emergence of a deeper calling. Brian shares how Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, A.W. Tozer, C.S. Lewis, the Critical Journey, and the language of hidden ideas helped shape the Soil & Roots vision for him - and for you.

This episode also explains what has been happening behind the scenes this summer, including the emerging two-year pathway through the inward journey for the next generation of Greenhouses.

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Substack: https://soilandroots.substack.com/

What do we do when we find ourselves doubting God’s goodness?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 142 by exploring one of the most difficult tensions in deep discipleship: how to affirm God’s goodness while honestly grieving the pain, injustice, and suffering of the world. Doc brings his own struggle into the conversation, naming the friction between experiencing God’s kindness in his own life and seeing deep suffering in the lives of others.

This episode is not a philosophical defense of God’s goodness. It is a conversation about lament, authenticity, doubt, secure attachment, and the kind of community where people can bring their rawest questions without being rushed, corrected, or shamed. Brian and Doc explore why modern church culture often struggles with lament, why easy answers can fail the heart, and why the deeper question beneath “Is God good?” may be a cry for withness.

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Is God good, and do our hearts actually experience Him that way?

In Episode 142, Brian continues Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, by exploring one of the most powerful hidden ideas many followers of Jesus carry: the suspicion that God may not actually be good. We may consciously affirm God’s goodness, love, mercy, and faithfulness, yet our lived experience can tell another story.

Drawing from the Soil & Roots distinction between beliefs and ideas, Brian explores how hidden assumptions about God are formed through suffering, disappointment, family systems, trauma, illness, and repeated experiences. The episode considers how distrust of God’s goodness often shows up through the Eight Indicators: control, anxiety, resentment toward reality, and difficulty receiving love.

This is not an episode about forcing certainty or defending God with quick answers. It is an invitation into honesty. If somewhere deep down we do not really trust God’s goodness, healing begins by telling Him the truth. The Good Life is not built on pretending harder, but on bringing our hidden ideas into the presence of the God who is already with us.

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What if your view of God shapes everything?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 140 on what God is really like and why our deepest ideas of God matter so much. Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, is exploring how we become people of depth — people who are increasingly attuned to God, others, themselves, and the world.

The conversation begins with Richard Foster’s claim that the world does not need more talented or intelligent people as much as it needs deep people. But becoming deep is not always safe, comfortable, or tidy. The inward journey can involve pruning, tearing, fire, pain, and the slow process of being unmade and remade by God’s goodness.

Brian and Doc then explore how our view of God becomes the root system beneath nearly every other view we hold. Our theology shapes our philosophy, our politics, our view of creation, our understanding of the sacred and secular, and even how we think about suffering, the church, and the Bible.

This episode also wrestles with several common Christian phrases and ideas, including “Jesus is enough,” “just read your Bible,” and the assumption that God only works through explicitly religious spaces. Brian argues that Jesus is enough precisely because He is Lord over all things — not because God is limited to church services, Bible studies, or religious language.

The Good Life is not about becoming more religious. It is about becoming more like Jesus from the inside out, learning to recognize His presence in all of life, and allowing our true view of God to be healed.

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What is God really like?

In Episode 140, Brian returns to one of the founding questions of Soil & Roots: what do we actually believe God is like? Not merely what do we say in our creeds, statements of faith, or Bible studies — but what do our hearts assume about Him?

Drawing from A.W. Tozer’s claim that our real idea of God may be buried beneath “conventional religious notions,” this episode explores why deep discipleship requires more than correct doctrine or Bible knowledge. It requires the uncovering of our hidden, often unconscious ideas about God.

Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, is exploring how we become people of depth. Brian argues that the journey into depth depends on four necessary conditions: self-awareness, story-sharing, suffering in community, and spiritual habits. The first condition, self-awareness, begins with the painful but essential work of uncovering our true ideas about God.

This episode walks through several common distorted images of God: God as the Great Taskmaster, God as the direct cause of suffering, God as a performance-based Father, and God as an angry judge waiting to condemn. These ideas may not match our stated beliefs, but they can quietly shape our emotions, behaviors, relationships, health, words, and spiritual lives.

Brian also challenges the common response, “Just read your Bible,” by reminding us that people bring their own assumptions to Scripture. The Bible is deeply formative, but discipleship is not about becoming more like the Bible. It is about being formed into the image of the One who authored it.

The Good Life begins as Jesus uncovers and heals our distorted views of God, inviting us to experience Him as He truly is.

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What if your hidden ideas about God shape your life more than your stated beliefs?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 138 on ideas, beliefs, and the unconscious forces that shape our discipleship. Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, is exploring how we become people of depth — people who naturally and unconsciously think, act, relate, and love more like Jesus.

The conversation begins with Psalm 42 and the season’s theme: “Deep calls to deep.” Doc unpacks the water imagery of the psalm, reminding us that the journey into depth is not always gentle or peaceful. Sometimes God’s invitation into the Good Life comes through waves, breakers, chaos, suffering, and the painful process of being unmade and remade.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc then return to the Soil & Roots language of ideas: the assumptions, conclusions, and experienced realities in which our hearts are rooted. These hidden ideas often operate beneath our stated beliefs. We may say we trust God, believe in His goodness, and affirm His love, while our actual lives reveal a different operating system.

The episode explores modern psychology, Dallas Willard, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, the difference between head and heart, and the powerful idea that “this is not my home.” If our hearts assume the Christian life is mostly about escaping earth and going to heaven someday, we may have little reason to pursue the with-God life now.

But Jesus invites us into the Good Life today — not merely knowing about God, but experiencing His love, presence, and beauty in the middle of real life.

Deep discipleship begins when we allow Jesus to uncover and heal the hidden ideas that actually govern us.

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What do you really believe about God?

In Episode 138, Brian continues Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, by returning to one of Soil & Roots' central ideas: our lives are not shaped primarily by what we say we believe, but by the ideas our hearts actually assume.

Ideas are the unconscious assumptions, conclusions, and experienced realities that our hearts are rooted in. They sit beneath our belief systems and quietly shape how we relate to God, ourselves, others, and the world. We may intellectually believe that God is good, loving, safe, and trustworthy — while our hearts live as if He is distant, disappointed, unsafe, or unreliable.

This matters because Season 7 is exploring the journey into depth. If the first step toward the Good Life is receiving God’s love with vulnerability, then our true ideas about God become essential. How can we surrender to love if our hearts do not trust the One offering it?

Drawing from A.W. Tozer, Dallas Willard, Jonathan Edwards, Heartview, the Great Omission, and the Soil & Roots framework of ideas, Brian explores how our bodies, emotions, relationships, words, thoughts, health, time, and money reveal what our hearts really believe about God.

This episode asks a deeply practical question: if your anxiety, your relationships, your body, and your habits could speak, what would they reveal about your idea of God?

The with-God life begins as we allow Jesus to uncover and heal the hidden ideas that keep us guarded

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Why do we resist the very love that could heal us?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 136 on receiving God’s love, vulnerability, and the Good Life. Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, is exploring how we become people of depth — people increasingly formed by the love of God from the inside out.

The conversation begins by revisiting the Good Life, the with-God life, Christian mysticism, and the surprising reality that many people who identify as Christians do not experience deep, daily, relational intimacy with God. If Jesus invites us into abiding peace, secure attachment, love that surpasses knowledge, and a conversational life with the Father, why does that life feel so rare?

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc then move into four obstacles to receiving God’s love with vulnerability: our need for control, our avoidance of pain, our sense of shame and unworthiness, and our mistrust of God’s character. These are not merely intellectual disagreements. They are often unconscious ideas rooted in our stories, wounds, relationships, fears, and experiences.

The episode also explores the phrase “I’m fine” as one of the great enemies of depth. Many of us have learned to hide pain, avoid need, manage appearances, and present ourselves as okay even when we are not. But the Good Life requires vulnerability. It requires surrender. It requires allowing ourselves to be loved where we are actually hurting.

Using personal stories, the Prodigal Son, contemplative prayer, C.S. Lewis, David Benner, and the Soil & Roots framework of ideas, this episode invites us to ask a deeper question: what keeps me from receiving the prodigal love of the Father?

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Why is receiving God’s love so hard?

In Episode 136, Brian continues Season 7, Deep Calls to Deep, by exploring one of the central questions of the journey into depth: if God is constantly inviting us into the Good Life, why do so few of us actually experience it?

This episode suggests that the doorway into the with-God life is not more striving, better behavior, or additional information. It is vulnerability. Drawing from David Benner, Dallas Willard, the six core ideas, and the Soil & Roots framework of unconscious formation, Brian argues that genuine transformation begins when we allow ourselves to be loved unconditionally by God.

But receiving God’s love is not as easy as it sounds. Brian names four obstacles that often keep us guarded: our need for control, our avoidance of pain, our sense of unworthiness, and our mistrust of God’s character. These obstacles are not merely intellectual doubts. They are rooted in the deeper ideas of our hearts — our unconscious assumptions about power, anthropology, value, and identity.

The Prodigal Son becomes the episode’s central case study. The younger son leaves home, seeks control, avoids pain, distorts his value, and rejects his identity as a son. But suffering awakens him. When he returns, the father runs to him, embraces him, interrupts his speech, restores him, and throws a party.

The most astonishing part is that the son receives it.

This is the beginning of the Good Life: not earning love, explaining ourselves, managing sin, or proving our worth, but vulnerably receiving the prodigal love of the Father.

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Web: ⁠⁠https://soilandroots.org⁠⁠ 

Substack: ⁠ https://soilandroots.substack.com/