Life can be gut-wrenching. And when the bottom falls out, we need people who know how to hold and honor our pain. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know how to respond well to the feeling of pain for others. In this episode we explore Jesus’s response to a desperate situation in Mark 9. His first impulse wasn’t to fix the pain, but to feel the pain. And if we can emulate this in our lives, we’ll understand how to serve one another well, especially in difficult seasons.

We’re often oblivious to and annoyed by distractions and interruptions because we inhabit a culture obsessed with speed, efficiency, and productivity. But hurry is trouble for the soul. “Hurry,” said Dallas Willard, “is the great enemy of the spiritual life.” This teaching explores how Jesus led an interruptible life, and how our willingness to slow down and entertain the interruptions can allow us to do the same and not miss out on the “holy interruptions” that come our way.

Too often, we live with divided hearts. On the one hand, our hearts are devoted to God. We want God’s best for our lives. We want God’s kingdom to come. On the other hand, we continue to allow places in our lives where evil and sin persist. This episode explores the life of King Asa and our deeply human tendency to be devoted to God without tearing down the high places in our lives. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to identify the high places in your life and begin the process of demolishing them for good.

The idea that we don’t have enough permeates our lives. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough sleep. We don’t have enough time. We’re constantly looking for ways to acquire more. But “more” rarely delivers the contentment we’re looking for. And the wilderness is the place where God strips away the faulty distractions and excess that increasingly define our lives. In the wilderness, God recalibrates our understanding of what’s essential and what’s enough so we experience the contentment we were made for.

There are moments in life when the path ahead is unclear or downright scary, moments when everything in us wants out of the situation or circumstance we’re in. It’s only natural to ask God to rescue us or change things. That’s part of what prayer is about. But there’s another dimension of prayer we find in the Scriptures. It’s one we often fail to pray, making our prayers incomplete. It’s the prayer David prayed. It’s the prayer Habakkuk prayed. And it’s an astounding prayer of strength and trust that God will empower us no matter where our path leads. This teaching explores how to pray more completely in the wilderness seasons of life.

You’re not where you were, and you’re not where you’re going to be. You’re in between. Welcome to the wilderness. It’s in these ambiguous spaces where we either become who God is inviting us to be or we shrink into the smaller, more manageable stories we write for ourselves. Because it’s easier to be a slave in Egypt than to trust God in the desert. But no one aspires to be the person who shrinks. We want to learn to trust well and become all God intended for us to be. This teaching will give you practical ways to grow your trust in God in hard times.

The practice of grounding yourself in gratitude is essential to a life well-lived. But in the wilderness experiences of life, gratitude isn’t enough. In those times, we need to identify, name, and express our losses. The Psalms are a case in point. Filled with both songs and prayers of praise, they’re also packed full of songs of lament. Because being grounded in gratitude and lamenting the loss are deeply human and deeply biblical. This teaching will give you a new perspective on how to hold both the gratitude and the loss.

In Hebrew, the root word for midbar (desert) is the Hebrew word davar, which means to speak. While God is always speaking, we usually hear God best in the desert experiences of our lives. Why? Because in seasons of hardship and challenge, busyness and distraction are stripped away, and we become more present and open to God’s voice. When that happens, God often speaks exactly what we need to hear. What if the COVID-19 pandemic is a desert experience in which God is inviting us to pay attention and listen for His voice? If so, we might just receive a davar in the midbar that could change everything.

When things go wrong in life, one of the first things we feel is that we’re alone. And the social distancing and stay-at-home orders of the COVID-19 pandemic only amplify our sense of isolation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the wilderness is the primary metaphor for challenging seasons of life. But what if the challenges and limitations of the wilderness actually call forth the richness of our creativity? This episode explores how creativity can help us overcome isolation so we can experience grapes in the desert.

The number 40 is hugely significant in the Scriptures. Noah. Moses. Israel. Elijah. Jonah. Jesus. It shows up again and again, and for good reason. The number 40 represents testing, trial, opposition, challenge, and refinement. But all the challenge and struggle are in service of the wisdom and newness that’s seeking to be born. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, may we not give way to fear, anxiety, and self-preservation, but instead, embrace the hope of what life in the 40 will turn into.