The Signpost Inn Podcast

What if the Parable of the Sower isn't a diagnostic quiz to figure out which kind of soil you are — but an invitation to stop, be honest with God, and let his word do what it does? This week we read the parable imaginatively and sit with what Jesus is actually up to when he scatters seed on hard, rocky, thorny, and good ground.

Scripture references:

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Connect with us: Email us at [email protected]

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

Need to blow off some steam? Get off the grid? Zone out for a while? You're not alone. Nearly everyone is chasing relief from something: the pressure to perform, to keep up, to finally be enough.

In this episode, Brandon sits down with David Zahl, founder and director of Mockingbird Ministries, to talk about his new book The Big Relief. They talk about what we're really trying to escape, where David has felt that pressure in his own life, and how God's grace offers the relief the world keeps promising and can't give.

Along the way David explains what he means by making God's grace "not just spiritually or intellectually intelligible, but emotionally so."

If you know the gospel in your head but you're exhausted and struggling to feel it, this conversation is for you.

Links:

The Big Relief by David Zahl https://amzn.to/4rKlfrg

Connect with us:

Email us at [email protected]

Check out our website, www.signpostinn.org, for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com.

If church or a religious leader has ever hurt you, you know the particular kind of tired that comes with it. It's not just disappointment. It's the exhaustion of not knowing where to turn, or who's safe, or whether the faith you still want to hold onto is even yours to hold anymore.

In this episode, Brandon sits down with Heidi Goehmann, LCSW, a trauma therapist, theologian, and spiritual-care practitioner, to talk honestly about what spiritual trauma actually is, what it does to a person's body and daily life, and what a real pathway out of it looks like. This isn't a checklist episode. It's a conversation meant to help you feel less alone in something you may have been carrying quietly for a long time.

Heidi and Brandon are also co-leading a live webinar on this topic, "A Pathway Out of Spiritual Trauma," on Saturday, October 24, 2026. This episode gives you a taste of that conversation and a place to start.

If you've ever wondered whether healing from this kind of wound is actually possible, this one's for you.

Links:

Connect with us:

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

Here's a sentence that'll get you kicked out of most small groups: you need to give up on spiritual growth. On today’s show we have a special guest with us who says that from the pulpit. Join us! By the end of this episode you’re going to have a whole new way of thinking about spiritual growth.

Rev. John Newton has served as an Episcopal priest since 2009 and is the rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of three books exploring grace, faith, and the Christian life, and is passionate about helping people experience the freedom of the gospel. John and his wife, Emily, have three children and a beloved golden retriever named June. When he's not preaching or pastoring, he's usually cheering on the Texas Longhorns.

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Connect with us:

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

You may believe God loves you and still feel like he is one failure, one unanswered prayer, or one hard season away from pulling back. You brace for disappointment. You work to stay acceptable. Or you keep him at a careful distance because needing him feels too exposed.

Brandon, Matt, and Liv talk about attachment theory in plain language, and why the ways we learned to handle closeness can shape how we relate to God. They turn to Psalm 131 and the work of Jesus: his incarnation, cross, resurrection, and gift of the Holy Spirit create a secure relationship with God that we could never create for ourselves.

They also talk about practices that help us receive that reality in the places we feel it least. Confession and absolution let us bring God our worst and hear his forgiveness spoken back to us. Spiritual direction or therapy can help us name the old stories we carry about love, vulnerability, and rejection.

If you keep waiting for God to be disappointed in you, or you don’t know how to let him get close, this episode is for you.

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You picked up your phone 186 times yesterday. That's not a discipline problem, it's a hunger problem. This week we trace the ache behind the scroll back to Augustine and forward to the empty tomb, and land on the strange freedom of a faith that doesn't need you to fix yourself first.

When you scroll, you're looking for something real. The compulsion isn't random, and it's not just weak willpower. It's a hunger for heaven, misdirected. Samuel James calls the internet an "epistemological habitat" — not a tool you use but an environment that shapes what you crave, what you notice, and what you believe is true. And it's designed by teams of behavioral psychologists who know your patterns better than you do.

We walk through the five digital liturgies that form us online, the structural forces stacked against you (and why shame is the wrong frame), and then what Jesus actually offers when you're starving for something real. If you've ever felt trapped by your phone and blamed yourself for not trying harder, this one's for you.

Links:

Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events

Connect with us:

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

The world is genuinely dangerous and your nervous system knows it! The usual answers (trust God more, don't be anxious, just believe) don't seem to help, they only make you feel more ashamed that you must not be “doing it right!”

So what does Jesus actually do with our generalized anxiety and fear?

Brandon, Matt, and Liv work through what it feels like when Jesus changes the context you're living inside. Why willpower-based answers to anxiety tend to make things worse. How Jesus recontextualizes even death. And a few practices — imaginative Gospel reading, the Daily Examen — that train your body to feel what your theology already knows.

If low-grade dread is just part of how you move through the world, this one's for you.

Links:

Connect with us:

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

What does Jesus actually feel when he looks at you — worn out, knocked flat, barely holding on? The Gospels have a word for it. And it's nothing like the soft, managed thing we usually call "compassion." Today Brandon and Matt dig into Matthew 9:36, the Greek behind two of the most overlooked words in the Gospels, and a gut-level emotion that drove everything Jesus did. Then we close with an imaginative exercise to help you actually receive it — not just understand it.

Links:

Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events

Connect with us: Email us at [email protected]

Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn

Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

A listener asked a question we couldn't stop thinking about: if nothing we do saves us, are we just supposed to sit back and let Jesus do everything? Are we "grace potatoes"? This episode untangles what it actually means to work on your relationship with God — and why the real question might be bigger and better than you realized.

Links:

Connect with us: Email us at [email protected]

Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn

Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

Join Matt and Brandon for an incredibly moving discussion with Tom Gibbs, the creator of Art Lectio. After a brief introduction and explanation of Tom’s unique method for meditating on and praying with art, Tom guides the gents through three meditations on three completely different paintings. Each one opens up thoughts, and prompts prayers, that are profound and beautiful. 

If you are listening to this one on your podcast player you’ll definitely want to open the images linked below, or pop over to our YoutTube channel and watch along. https://www.youtube.com/@signpostinn 

Links to view the Art we looked at

Other Links:

Connect with us:

Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources!

Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com