What is the Good Life with God?

In this first Greenhouse episode of Season 7, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 134, Rediscovering the Good Life. Season 7 is called Deep Calls to Deep, and it asks the central Soil & Roots question: how do we actually become people of depth?

This episode begins by clarifying what the Good Life is — and what it is not. The Good Life is not ease, prosperity, success, comfort, or a pain-free existence. It is not “your best life now” in the shallow sense. Instead, the Good Life is the with-God life: a daily, relational, embodied experience of God’s presence, love, delight, and nearness, even when life is difficult.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc wrestle with whether this kind of life is actually meant to be normal for people who follow Jesus, or whether it is only for “super-Christians” and famous mystics. They explore Dallas Willard, Christian mysticism, John 17:3, Ephesians 3, the love that surpasses knowledge, and what it means to know God in a deeply experiential way.

The conversation also names why the Good Life often feels elusive. Many of us were formed to think the Christian life is mostly about being saved, going to heaven, knowing the right information, or avoiding sin. But the New Testament describes something deeper: a life grounded in receiving the love of the Father as a daily experience.

The Good Life with God is not a circumstance. It is a withness. It is being rooted in love, held by God, and slowly formed into people who can love like Jesus.

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What kind of life did Jesus actually invite us into?

Episode 134 launches Season 7 of Soil & Roots, Deep Calls to Deep, by asking a simple but unsettling question: how do we become people of depth? Before exploring the path, Brian begins with the destination — the Good Life, or what Dallas Willard called the with-God life.

The with-God life is not merely being saved, learning more theology, attending church, or trying harder to behave. It is a daily, embodied, relational reality with God. It is a life marked by deep security, inner freedom, conversational intimacy with God, and love that flows from the inside out.

Brian explores why many followers of Jesus quietly assume this kind of life is unrealistic, reserved for spiritual elites, or simply not meant for them. Drawing from Scripture, Christian mysticism, Dallas Willard, David Benner, and everyday experience, he reframes discipleship not as more effort or better techniques, but as the risky and transformative work of receiving God’s love.

This episode also introduces the three-part map for the Soil & Roots journey: the Good Life, the Great Omission, and the Journey into Depth. The Good Life is the life Jesus lived and invites us into. The Great Omission explains why many of us are not experiencing it. The Journey into Depth explores how we become people who are increasingly attuned to God, others, ourselves, and the world.

Season 7 begins here: not with striving, but with receiving the love that makes us deep.

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What is deep discipleship?

In the Season 6 finale of Soil & Roots, Brian takes a sweeping journey through the core themes we’ve explored over the past three years: The Great Omission, the tension between the head and the heart, the hidden power of ideas, and the invitation to become deep people shaped by divine love.

If you are new to Soil & Roots, this may be one of the best episodes to start with. If you have been with us from the beginning, this episode connects and clarifies the major themes we’ve been wrestling with since Episode 1.

Brian revisits Dallas Willard’s concern that modern Christianity often makes converts, educates people, builds institutions, and engages people in service, but struggles to help people become genuine disciples — people who are being transformed from the inside out to think, act, relate, and love more like Jesus.

This episode also returns to the Soil & Roots framework of ideas: the hidden assumptions and experienced realities in our hearts that often govern us more deeply than our stated beliefs. True formation is not merely learning more information. The head learns through instruction, but the heart is formed through relationship and experience.

Brian then revisits the three primary problems: the Discipleship Dilemma, the Formation Gap, and the Forgotten Kingdom — or story, community, and purpose. Deep discipleship requires self-knowledge, formative community, and a recovered vision of the Kingdom of God.

The episode closes Season 6 by returning to the central question: if we are becoming like Jesus, what is He like? He is secure, beloved, mysterious, relationally shrewd, gentle, just, relaxed, and rooted in the love of the Father.

Deep discipleship begins not with striving, performance, or religious busyness, but with receiving the love that surpasses knowledge.

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How do young adults become like Jesus in a distracted, anxious, hyperconnected world?

In this bonus episode near the close of Season 6, Brian invites his two young adult sons, Caleb and Zach, into a conversation about spiritual formation across generations. Both grew up in church, but both describe a deeper awakening in young adulthood — through hardship, relationships, service, community, and the slow realization that following Jesus had to become their own journey.

Caleb and Zach share honestly about growing up in a Christian home, wrestling with shallow faith, experiencing crisis and renewal, and learning what it means to follow Jesus as young men. They talk about Jesus as comforter, His mysterious and indirect ways, God’s delight, church involvement, worship, service, small groups, and the joy of discovering that God not only loves them, but likes them and wants them involved in His Kingdom.

The conversation also explores what younger generations are facing: social media, identity confusion, institutional skepticism, shallow content, and the difference between information and real discipleship. Brian, Caleb, and Zach discuss why spiritual formation cannot happen through short videos, religious checklists, or church attendance alone. The heart is formed through time, habit, community, intimacy, instruction, experience, and relationship.

This is a warm, personal, and hopeful conversation about fathers and sons, church and culture, young adults and discipleship, and what it means to become more like Jesus in our age.

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What are you still clutching?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 130 on being rested and relaxed like Jesus. If Jesus is remarkably calm, present, unhurried, and at ease with the Father, then what does that reveal about the kind of people we are becoming?

The conversation begins with a simple image: a raccoon trapped because it will not release the shiny object in its paw. At any moment, it could let go and be free. But it keeps clutching what it thinks it needs. Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc use that picture to explore surrender, control, performance, anxiety, and the things our hearts refuse to release.

This episode asks why surrender to God is so difficult, especially in a culture built around productivity, achievement, rebellion, performance, and self-protection. In many church settings, surrender is treated as a one-time conversion moment rather than an ongoing way of life. But the relaxed life of Jesus is formed through daily, experiential surrender.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc discuss trust, rest, chronic illness, performance-driven faith, David Benner, Dallas Willard, Christian busyness, intimate community, and the difference between obedience as compliance and obedience as the natural fruit of experiencing Jesus’ love.

Surrender is not giving up to a cruel power. It is relaxing into the love of the Father. It is loosening our grip, receiving Jesus’ delight, and learning to rest in the present with God.

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What does it mean to be relaxed like Jesus?

In Episode 130, Brian continues Season 6, The Object of Our Formation, by exploring one of Jesus’ most surprising characteristics: He is deeply relaxed. Dallas Willard once described Jesus with one word: relaxed. He is not rushed, frantic, controlling, anxious, or hurried. Even in storms, conflict, pressure, confrontation, and suffering, Jesus remains remarkably present and at ease with the Father.

This episode gathers the Season 6 portrait of Jesus so far. Jesus is emotionally secure. He lives as the Beloved. He is mysterious, relationally shrewd, discerning, just, and gentle. And beneath all of that is a settled inner life. Jesus is at home with Himself because He is at home with His Father.

Brian explores what it means for deep disciples to become relaxed from the inside out. This is not emotional numbness, passivity, or pretending life is easy. Jesus feels grief, anger, distress, joy, and compassion. But He does not live in the past, trying to rewrite what happened. He does not live in the future, trying to control what has not yet come. He lives in the present with God.

The episode explores surrender, presence, control, anxiety, the Critical Journey, the life of love, and the practice of presencing. A relaxed person loosens their grip. They stop trying to control the past and future and learn to receive the present as a gift.

To become relaxed like Jesus is to become increasingly rested, present, surrendered, and at peace — even when life is not.

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Would Jesus talk to you the way you talk to yourself?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 128 on the gentleness of Jesus by focusing on one often-neglected area: self-gentleness. Most of us would never speak to a friend, spouse, child, or fellow disciple the way we speak to ourselves. Yet our inner talk tracks run all day, quietly shaping how we relate to God, others, creation, culture, and our own souls.

The conversation begins with the four relationships Soil & Roots often explores: God, self, others, and creation/culture. If gentleness is power restrained, then self-gentleness means restraining the power we have to curse, demean, shame, or tear down our own hearts.

Brian and Doc discuss metacognition, the uniquely human ability to think about what we think about. What do you say to yourself when you fail? When you forget something? When you sin? When you disappoint someone? Do those words sound like Jesus?

This episode also explores why many followers of Jesus struggle to be gentle with themselves. Brian and Doc discuss the reductionist gospel, sin management, shame, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difference between seeing sin as a relational problem and treating it as a valuation problem. We are not worthless people God grudgingly tolerates. We are image-bearers, sons and daughters, beloved by God, and invited into transformation.

Self-gentleness is not arrogance, denial, or self-worship. It is learning to treat your own heart in a way that reflects the gentleness, compassion, and delight of Jesus.

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What does it really mean to be gentle?

In Episode 128, Brian continues Season 6, The Object of Our Formation, by exploring the gentleness of Jesus. Gentleness is often misunderstood as weakness, passivity, softness, or simply being nice. But in Jesus, gentleness is something far stronger. It is power restrained, strength refined, and love expressed with precision.

Drawing from Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride, Francis de Sales, The Hulk, Mr. Miyagi, Jesus on the cross, and Elijah hearing the gentle whisper of God, this episode reframes gentleness as one of the clearest marks of deep discipleship. True gentleness does not exist where there is no power. Gentleness is the ability to hold power in check and use it for love, protection, restoration, and goodness.

Brian also explores how gentleness has been distorted in Western Christianity, especially in conversations around masculinity, strength, toughness, and success. Jesus was not weak. He was the ultimate warrior, protector, and King. Yet His strength was never frantic, insecure, cruel, or self-proving.

The episode applies gentleness to the four core relationships: with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation and culture. What would it look like to be gentle with our own hearts, gentle with others, receptive to God’s gentleness, and gentle toward the world we are called to steward?

The gentleness of Jesus is not weakness. It is holy strength submitted to love.

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What does it mean to judge others as a Christian?

In this Greenhouse episode, Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc continue the conversation from Episode 126 on Jesus as judge. Judgment is unavoidable. We judge situations, actions, ideas, motives, culture, and one another every day. The deeper question is whether our judgment reflects the heart of Jesus.

The conversation begins by revisiting the larger Soil & Roots journey: the Great Omission, deep discipleship, the Discipleship Dilemma, the Formation Gap, the Forgotten Kingdom, and Season 6’s exploration of Jesus as the object of our formation. If we are becoming more like Jesus, then we must learn not only to love like Him, but also to judge like Him.

Brian, Handsome Kyle, and Doc wrestle with why the word “judgment” often feels negative, why some forms of modern Christianity come across like the sin police, and why judgment apart from relationship can become harmful. Jesus judges with perfect knowledge of the heart. We do not. That means humility, self-examination, patience, and relational attunement are essential.

The episode explores judging in a polarized, soundbite-driven culture, parenting teenagers, Zacchaeus, moral relativism, church community, and the need to recover deeper, slower, more vulnerable Christian relationships. Judgment is not merely calling out wrong behavior. In the way of Jesus, judgment is meant to serve restoration, healing, human flourishing, and right relationship.

To judge others as a Christian is not to prove we are right. It is to seek another person’s good with wisdom, love, and the Spirit of Jesus.

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What does it mean to judge like Jesus?

In Episode 126, Brian continues Season 6, The Object of Our Formation, by exploring one of Jesus’ more uncomfortable traits: His role as judge. We all judge, and we all get judged. The question is not whether judgment exists, but whether our judgments are rooted in the ideas of the Kingdom or the hidden ideas and desires of our own hearts.

This episode wrestles with the tension between “Do not judge” and “judge with righteous judgment.” Jesus does not forbid all evaluation, discernment, correction, or moral clarity. Instead, He warns against condemnation, superiority, hypocrisy, and contempt. Before we help someone else with the speck in their eye, we must first remove the log from our own.

Brian explores judgment through the lens of Heartview, the Soil & Roots practice of paying attention to the signals our hearts give through thoughts, emotions, health, actions, relationships, words, time, and money. How we judge others — and how we react to being judged — often reveals the deeper ideas and wounds beneath the surface.

Judging like Jesus requires self-examination, humility, compassion, discernment, and love. It means refusing both moral relativism and religious condemnation. It means seeing beneath appearances, listening to the heart, and asking whether our judgment is meant to protect, restore, heal, and build right relationship.

The right kind of judgment is not contempt. It is a loving act of discernment rooted in the heart of Jesus.

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