Welcome to the Table

At some point you made a decision. You said yes to Jesus. What you may not have been told is that discipleship is not the moment of yes — it is a lifetime of it. And the deeper question is not whether you are willing to follow Jesus, but whether you are willing to keep following when following gets costly and the destination is still unclear.

Lori Warning has spent decades in full-time ministry, most recently as the National Director of AG Girls Ministries, and she is stepping into the next chapter: moving to Cameroon as a full-time missionary. She has seen what it looks like when discipleship produces the real thing — including watching a child she poured into as a kids pastor grow up to become a kids pastor himself. She joins Khalil, Sean, and Jeff to talk about what lifelong discipleship actually requires, why dependency on God is the key word nobody teaches, and what open-handed ministry has cost her and given her over a lifetime. This episode explores what lifelong discipleship looks like, how to give God an open-handed yes, and why abiding in Christ through John 15 is the only foundation for fruitful, sustainable ministry, hosted by two pastors and a missionary.

You will learn why dependency is not weakness — it is the entire operating principle of discipleship, because a branch that tries to produce fruit without the vine is not noble, it is dead — and why the church keeps producing striving disciples instead of abiding ones. You will hear Lori describe what it looked like to meet people who had literally never heard the name of Jesus, and what that moment does to any comfortable understanding of calling and comfort. And you will walk away with one challenge: give God your yes before you know what you are saying yes to — and then watch what he does with it.

If discipleship has felt like a program you attend rather than a life you inhabit, this episode will reframe the whole thing. It is not about how much Bible you have read or how many services you have attended. It is about how completely you are willing to depend on Jesus and how open your hands are to wherever that takes you. Lori’s story is proof that open-handed faithfulness produces fruit you could not have manufactured on your own.

Related episodes: Living Life on Mission: What Everyday Evangelism Actually Looks Like | Incarnational Living: How to Share Your Faith Without Being Pushy | The Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Chapters:
(00:00) Intro and meet Lori Warning
(22:00) What discipleship actually means
(35:30) Start by sharing your story
(40:30) Your next step

Most Christians have more books on their shelf than pages in their body. You buy them with good intentions, start them in January, and find them face-down on the nightstand by March. But the right book at the right time has a way of doing what sermons and podcasts sometimes cannot: it follows you into the slow moments and changes how you think when nobody is watching.

This episode started as a simple question — what should a Christian who is serious about spiritual formation actually be reading? — and became a curated conversation about 15 books that belong on the shelf of any believer who wants to grow. The list spans spiritual disciplines, prayer, Sabbath, Gospel fluency, Holy Spirit, formation theology, and leadership, drawing from authors including Donald Whitney, Kosuke Koyama, John Mark Comer, Kevin DeYoung, James K. Smith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Tim Keller. This episode is a curated Christian reading list covering spiritual disciplines, prayer, Sabbath, the Gospel, spiritual formation theology, and leadership books every serious believer should know, hosted by three pastors.

You will learn why Kosuke Koyama's "Three Mile an Hour God" may be one of the most countercultural books a hurried Christian can read — and why genuine formation does not happen at the pace most of us are moving through life. You will hear honest commentary on each recommendation with enough context to help you decide which ones to read first based on exactly where you are in your formation journey right now. And you will walk away with a short list of two or three books that fit your current season — not another pile to feel guilty about, but a specific next step that will actually move you forward.

If your spiritual reading has gotten thin — if you are consuming more information than formation — this episode is an invitation back in. The right books do not just inform you. They form you. They interrupt your assumptions and give you language for what God is already doing. This list is a starting place.

Related episodes: The Spiritual Discipline of Study | The Spiritual Discipline of Journaling | The Spiritual Discipline of Reflection

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You know you are supposed to have joy. The New Testament commands it more than almost any other emotional state. But most of us treat joy the same way we treat the weather — something that happens to us, not something we have any say over. When it is present, we are grateful. When it is not, we wait for it to come back. Nobody told us we are supposed to choose it.

Philippians 4:8 is not a suggestion for feeling better — it is an instruction for where to direct your attention. And Psalm 37:4's command to delight yourself in the Lord is not a passive invitation to sit back and enjoy God — it is an active discipline that requires practice, intention, and a willingness to fight for it. Jeff Gowing joins Khalil and Sean to make the case that joy is a responsibility, not a reward — something a believer can take ownership of beginning today, with a set of practices that interrupt the drift toward anxiety and reorient the attention toward what is actually true. This episode teaches how to choose joy as a spiritual practice, why joy is a Christian's responsibility, and how morning praise, biblical meditation, and awe reorient the heart toward God, hosted by two pastors and a ministry leader.

You will learn why awe and worry cannot coexist — and what it practically looks like to cultivate awe in a season where you feel far from it and the circumstances are not cooperating. You will hear Jeff's practice of beginning each day by lying on the floor before God — not as a spiritual performance, but as a posture that names who is actually in charge before the demands of the day make you forget. And you will walk away with a daily rhythm you can begin tomorrow: five minutes before the noise starts, directing your attention toward who God is rather than what your day requires.

If joy has felt like a distant option instead of a daily reality, this episode will reframe the whole thing. Joy is not a feeling you wait for. It is a direction you choose. And the believer who learns to choose it — morning after morning, season after season — is the one who ends up with a life that looks remarkably different from the anxious default most people are living.

Related episodes: The Spiritual Discipline of Reflection | The Spiritual Discipline of Biblical Meditation | The Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Most people know God is eternal. Almost nobody has stopped to think about what that actually means — or why it should change anything about Monday morning. Eternity feels like an abstraction, a theological category to nod at and move past. It is not. It is one of the most practically stabilizing truths in all of Scripture.

God does not experience time the way you do. He has no beginning and no end. He is not waiting, not anxious, not watching events unfold from a distance hoping they resolve. Augustine wrote that God is the maker of all time, which means time is not a container God lives inside — it is a reality he created and stands entirely outside of. CS Lewis described it this way in Mere Christianity: you travel along a single line on a page, but God is the whole page at once. Khalil and Sean walk through what God’s eternal nature means across Scripture — from the Psalms to the story of Joseph — and show how a God who exists outside of time is the only God worth trusting when your own timeline feels out of control. This episode teaches what it means that God is eternal, why his eternity changes how you live today, and how to orient your daily decisions around a God who is never surprised, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why starting with who God is — rather than how your situation looks — is the discipline that makes faith stable rather than reactive, and why top-down theology is the only framework that holds when circumstances bottom out. You will hear CS Lewis’s picture of God as the whole page while we travel a single line — likely the clearest picture of divine eternity you will encounter outside of Scripture itself. And you will walk away with one concrete shift: living with eternity in mind is not a vague spiritual platitude — it is a way of reorienting every decision around a God for whom the outcome is already secure.

If anxiety about the future has become a default setting, this episode names the root: you are relating to time the way God does not. God is not worried. He is not surprised. He is not rushing. And the believer who understands his eternity is the believer who can finally stop white-knuckling a timeline that was never theirs to control.

Related episodes: God Is Infinite: How God’s Boundlessness Changes Prayer, Trust, and Faith | God Is Triune: What the Trinity Means and Why It Changes How You Pray

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

If you have watched someone you love walk away from the faith, you have probably asked why. Not the easy answer — doubt, or a bad experience — but the deeper one. Something about the version of Christianity they encountered did not hold. This episode is willing to name what that something often is, even when the church would rather look the other way.

This is Part 2 of Khalil and Sean's breakdown of Carey Nieuwhof's landmark article on why young people are deconstructing — and Reasons 3 through 5 are the ones most churches are least willing to examine. Reason 3: the church has accidentally produced high-performing Christians whose spiritual identity is built on output, visibility, and approval — and when they burn out, there is nothing underneath. Reason 4: many Christian communities have confused conformity with unity, building tight theological tribes where questions feel like threats. Reason 5: political idolatry in the church has turned Jesus into a mascot for a party rather than the Lord of every nation. This episode explores how burnout, conformity culture, and political idolatry drive young Christians away from the faith — and what a biblical, pastoral response to deconstruction actually looks like, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why there is no such thing as a high-performing Christian — because performance was accomplished by Jesus Christ — and why a faith built on performance is a faith that cannot survive a season where you cannot perform. You will hear the critical distinction between uniformity and unity, and why a church that expects everyone to think alike is not a community, it is a tribe — and tribes are fragile in exactly the moments community is most needed. And you will walk away with nine practical steps for anyone in the deconstruction process — not as a formula, but as a map for someone who needs to know there is a path forward through the hard questions.

If you or someone you love is in the middle of deconstruction right now, this episode will not tell you the questions do not matter. It will take them seriously — and then point toward a God who is not threatened by them. The faith that survives hard questions is stronger, not weaker. This episode helps build that kind of faith.

Related episodes: What Is Faith Deconstruction? | Confronting the Deconstruction Movement | 5 Reasons Young People Are Deconstructing Their Faith, Part 1

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Are you ready to dive deep into the limitless nature of God? In this awe-inspiring episode of the Welcome to the Table Podcast, we'll explore the infinity attribute of God, a concept that stretches our understanding and invites us to experience God in an entirely new way.

So, grab your headphones and join us at the table for this thought-provoking and soul-stirring conversation.

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You have ended friendships and felt guilty about it for years. You have stayed in relationships that slowly drained you because you did not know how to let them wind down without feeling like a bad person. Nobody told you that not every relationship is meant to go the same depth — and that protecting that boundary is not selfish. It is discernment.

Will Caesar is back at the table, and this time the conversation is about one of the most practically important subjects any believer faces: how to navigate community well. The hinge point is John 15:15 — Jesus made a distinction between servants and friends, and the difference was not affection. It was access. The same principle holds for every relationship in your life: intimacy is earned, access is graduated, and the person who gives everyone the same level of entry into their life has no real inner circle. This episode explains how to build healthy Christian relationships, discern whether your relationships are for a reason or a season, and why setting relational limits is biblical and not selfish, hosted by two pastors and a ministry leader.

You will learn why conflict is not the end of a relationship — it is either where a relationship deepens into something real or where it reveals it was never meant to go further — and why avoiding conflict is often just delayed relational death. You will hear Will and Khalil unpack how Jesus modeled graduated intimacy, how to identify which relationships in your life are forming you and which ones are pulling you away from who God is making you, and why pride is the number one barrier keeping most Christians from building community that actually works. And you will walk away with a practical filter: not everyone gets total access to your life — and the question is not whether to have an inner circle, but whether you are building one with intentionality.

If your community has felt more draining than forming lately, this episode names what is likely happening. Not every relationship is a mistake to release. Some are gifts for a season. Some are gifts for a reason. Knowing the difference is one of the most underrated formation skills a believer can develop.

Related episodes: Reclaiming Pentecostalism: What the Holy Spirit Actually Does — with Will Caesar

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

Something is happening in the church. People who grew up in the faith — kids who got baptized, went on mission trips, led worship — are walking away. Not all at once. Quietly, over years, in a direction you did not see coming. And the church's most common responses have been either to hold tighter or to look the other way. Neither is working.

Khalil and Sean open Carey Nieuwhof's landmark article on why young people are deconstructing their faith — and the first two reasons cut deeper than most church leaders want to admit. Reason 1: trust in institutions has collapsed, and the church is not exempt. Trust in pastors among 18-to-34-year-olds is at an all-time low — 24%. Reason 2: in an increasingly diverse, accessible, and mobile world, the faith claims of Christianity are tested against alternative truth claims every single day — and most believers have never been equipped to engage that pressure with anything deeper than the answers they were given at age twelve. This episode explores why young Christians are deconstructing their faith, examining declining institutional trust and exposure to alternative truth claims as two of the primary drivers, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why Yuval Levin's distinction between institutions that form people and institutions that merely perform for people is one of the most important lenses for understanding why the church is losing a generation — and what it would take to recover the formative function. You will hear why the response to deconstruction is not to double down on rules or soften the theology — but to recover the understanding that knowing information about Jesus is not the same as knowing Jesus, and the person who has one but not the other is vulnerable in ways they do not realize. And you will walk away with a charge: you do not have the luxury today to be a theologically lazy Christian — and this episode is the beginning of taking that seriously.

If the deconstruction trend has felt distant or abstract, this episode will make it concrete and urgent. This is not a fringe phenomenon affecting a small number of people. It is a generation. And the question the church has to answer is not whether to engage the hard questions, but whether it is equipped to engage them honestly. This is Part 1 of 2.

Related episodes: What Is Faith Deconstruction? | Confronting the Deconstruction Movement | 5 Reasons Young People Are Deconstructing Their Faith, Part 2

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You are moving so fast through life that you rarely stop to learn from it. The week ends, a new one begins, and whatever God was trying to do in the middle of it gets buried under the next task and the next commitment. The truth is, you are not too busy to reflect. You might be afraid of what will surface when you do.

Reflection is one of the most under-taught spiritual disciplines in the church — and one of the most transformative. It is a deliberate, intentional pause to look backward, to learn from your experiences, and to create the space where God can bring healing to what you have been too busy to face. Khalil and Sean show you why avoiding stillness is actually an act of distrust in God, and why the person who cannot reflect is the person who is missing God's deepest formative work. This episode teaches the spiritual discipline of reflection — what it is, why reflection is remembrance, and five questions that will change how you end every day, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why God often wants to bring things to the surface not to condemn you but to heal you — and why staying busy is one of the most effective ways to resist his work in your life. You will hear Khalil walk through five reflection questions every Christian should be asking, from "What good has God done for me this week?" to "What is God trying to teach me in my current situation?" — each one designed to move you toward gratitude, confession, and Christlikeness. And you will walk away with a simple rhythm you can start this week: when to do it, how long it takes, and how to move from fear of stillness to freedom in it.

If you have felt distant from God lately and cannot explain why, this episode may be pointing directly at the reason. Reflection is the discipline that ties every other practice together — it is how you learn, how you grow, and how you keep your heart open to the renewing work God is always doing. Start here.

Related episodes: The Spiritual Discipline of Biblical Meditation | The Spiritual Discipline of Journaling | The Spiritual Discipline of Silence and Solitude

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.

You probably do not bow to wooden statues. Your idols are more sophisticated — and more dangerous because of it. The approval you are still searching for. The thing you cannot say no to. The area of your life where the thought of losing it would feel like losing yourself. Idolatry is not ancient history. It is your Monday morning.

Khalil and Sean do something in this episode that is easy to talk about and hard to actually do: they name their own idols out loud. Sean's is the applause of man — the slow gravitational pull of needing to be seen, approved, and affirmed — and what makes it especially stubborn is that it can wear ministry as a costume. Khalil pulls the thread from John 15 and Psalm 1: abiding in the vine is not a metaphor to admire — it is the only thing that produces what performance cannot manufacture. And 1 Timothy 6 makes it plain that the love of what we covet is the root of every kind of evil, including every version of idolatry. This episode teaches how Christians can identify their idols, pursue contentment, and practice abiding in Christ, addressing the spiritual tiredness that comes from covetousness and performance-based faith, hosted by two pastors.

You will learn why Kevin DeYoung's diagnosis of busyness as idolatry is not rhetorical — it is a theological claim that the schedule you keep reveals what you actually believe about where life comes from, and whose approval you are living for. You will hear an honest conversation about what it feels like to be spiritually tired versus spiritually dead — and why the difference matters for how you respond to the dryness. And you will walk away with the one phrase that may reorient your entire approach to formation: you do not drift into holiness — you act your way into feeling it.

If your spiritual life has felt dry, stale, or mechanical, this episode will name what is likely underneath it. Not a sin you have never dealt with — an idol you have never named. Until you name it, you cannot put it down. And until you put it down, the abiding you are trying to practice is always competing with something else for first place. This is the conversation that starts that work.

Related episodes: How to Win the Daily Battle Against Sin | The Spiritual Discipline of Worship | The Spiritual Discipline of Journaling

Take the free Spiritual Health Assessment at growgodly.com/health-check.