If God is watching your back, then you don't have to, and that will free you to live with a tender heart in a fractured world. What begins with a conversation about last weekend's assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump soon turns to a conversation about living in the power of tenderness when it doesn't seem to work in the violence and dishonesty of our angry culture. Kyle questions Wayne about chapter seven of his new book, which is being posted chapter by chapter at Lifestream.org. What did Jesus mean when he said the meek will inherit the earth? When we stop seeing meekness as weakness, we can learn the secret of living tenderhearted without being a doormat for the abuse of others.

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Even though a woman may want men to be more emotionally vulnerable, most find it terrifying when he does. She would rather see the man die on his white horse rather than watch him fall off that horse, according to researcher Brené Brown. It's a common paradox that also affects our view of friends and spiritual leaders. On the one hand, we want connection and yet the vulnerability it requires can be scary, both in being vulnerable and in seeing someone else be weaker than our illusion of them. Kyle and Wayne begin their conversation talking about learning to let God initiate our encounters and then talk about how vulnerability and our fear of it affects relationships. They conclude by discussing how our best growth opportunities come from struggle instead of expedience.

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"I say these things to you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full." Jesus spoke those words to his fearful disciples on the night when his own pain and suffering would begin. Instead of trying to draw joy from our circumstances, isn't it the guiding light to take us through our most difficult moments safe inside his love? Kyle invites Wayne into a conversation that began with his fishing friends a couple of weeks ago and now expands into how joy can help us navigate the most difficult situations we face. If so, instead of trying to get God to fix the chaos of darkness that surrounds us, we could ask him to show us how his love penetrates the chaos and molds it to an even greater redemption.

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"If you can learn to be at rest in uncertainty, what an incredible skill to have your entire life." And where do we find that rest? In planning for all the contingencies or gathering enough skills to meet any challenge? Certainly not. Cultivating a relationship with Jesus that allows us to walk with him through anything that might come our way is where we find our certainty—in him, not in the control of our circumstances. This discussion comes up from a podcast Kyle listened to on the challenges facing twenty-somethings, which is timely given our previous invitation for others to pray that God will give a new, younger generation hearts to know him. They also talk about the recent sex scandal by a popular pastor in the Dallas area that came to light this weekend, one of a growing list of leaders who have a history of abusing women.

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After an invitation to join Kyle and Wayne to pray for a younger generation to come alive with hearts to know God, they talk about the conflict between love and conformity cultures found in corporate environments as well as religious institutions. How does love find a place where performance is more important than transformation? Conformity focuses on control, while love lays down control to invite people on a journey of discovery and wholeheartedness. If we don't find people loveable even as they struggle in the darkness, we will not be able to open a door for them into the light.

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After some reflections on how Jesus lived among us without being corrupted by the chaos of this world, Kyle and Wayne talk about the slow arc of spiritual growth. It happens over time as we lean into the challenging breath of the Spirit, inviting us to life by helping us lean away from the illusions and demands of darkness. Also, one listener writes, "Love is a whisper," pitted against the overwhelming distractions of the world and the stringent demands of religion. Find his whisper and follow it to find the fullness of life Jesus wants to give you.

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If you've ever wondered what it would be like to join Wayne and Sara are on their cross-country trip, this episode is for you. They share the transcontinental trip to visit with friends of Lifestream and The God Journey as they pause in Lexington, KY. The conversation includes learning to trust, not being afraid of making mistakes as you learn to follow him, taking back your conscience from whoever you gave it away to, and how is Wayne doing after the difficult times in the last few years. Throughout it all they keep coming back to the power of Presence—Jesus with each of us leading and guiding us through life.

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In their conversation about ways to help people experience the life of Jesus, Kyle and Wayne find themselves contemplating where they found spiritual hunger when they jumped off the performance treadmill. In their early days, spiritual hunger might have been more religiously inclined, in the sense of trying to earn God's favor or increase their status as a zealous follower. How has that changed when the need to earn his favor was displaced by their confidence in his love? What motivates them now to live deeply inside his reality?

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As Wayne has watched God's work of redemption inside Sara's trauma, he's been keen to observe that the soothing safety of Father's love that untangles the darkness, and the anger, threats, and blame make it worse. That is as true of our sin as it is of trauma. Why then does God use so much shame and threats of punishment in the Old Testament to try to get people out of the darkness? Or, does he? Wayne invites Kyle to consider how the prophets saw into God's agony and misinterpreted his words, and so do the literalists of our day.

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Kyle is back and has some questions for Wayne about the process of emotional maturity and finding healing from those emotions that fire from the unhealthy side of our brains. What is the arc of emotional freedom and how do we deal with your failures during that process? This conversation also includes dealing with anger and frustration, disruptions in our established rhythms, the tyranny of the urgent, and how we can lean into tenderness to find the unforced rhythms of his grace.

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