#210 | Living A Spacious Life | Ashley Hales

The idea of limits, we just feel like that constraint and we just feel like the inch of them. And we kind of think that what it means to be happy is to be free.

And what it means to be free is to have unlimited personal autonomy to define ourselves, which is actually a lie from Satan.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for a power a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

Do you ever feel stuck? You might even feel mad at God because of the space and place you find yourself in right now. You might be even saying, hey, this wasn't the plan.

God, I'm supposed to be doing blank. Why is my world so tiny? Why are my options so limited? Look at all the people around me who are getting what they want and have it all together.

Why is my situation so messed up? I know you feel that way. I think many of us do. If you've ever felt that way, then today's episode is for you.

I'm speaking with Ashley Hales about her new book, A Spacious Life.

Sometimes we talk with some pretty heady academics about foundational ideas that can take a lot of work to figure out, and you also need a lot of patience to see how these ideas meet our everyday lives. And sometimes we talk with creative types like Malcolm Guy and Karen Swallow Pryor about the importance of our imagination.

And sometimes we can talk with the on the ground types, the ones living out a missionary encounter with their Western.

Culture, even if they don't use those terms.

And Ashley is the trifecta. She has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. And Ashley is a writer, speaker, podcaster, mom to four.

Oh, and she's married to a pastor.

There's a lot going on in her world, to say the least.

So she's really the perfect person to talk to about limits.

And not just in the I can't do anything more sense, not like that, but in the we are supposed to have limits, and those very limits are the things that help us to trust God more and to grow into who he wants us to be sense. This conversation actually reminded me of another conversation that we had last fall with Kelly Capek about his book you're Only Human.

And for those that want to go.

Back, it's episodes 129 and 131. They are at once deep and they touch on our need for wonder. And they're also very immensely practical.

I think you're going to really enjoy and benefit from this conversation because we do need to know that we have limitations. Our world today, especially in the west, makes us think we don't have any limitations at all and we shouldn't, we should shatter through them.

But that's not the case.

Actually, our limitations can be a very good thing when you look at them from God's perspective.

And if you want to check out more of our episodes or learn more about our ministry, please feel free to check out our website, ApolloSwatered.org there you'll find what we've been doing resources to help you in your missionary encounter. Find out where we're going to be and how you can have us come to your church or group to speak with you with one of our watering weekends.

Now let's get to my conversation with Ashley Hales. Happy listening. Ashley Hales.

Welcome to Apollo's world.

So glad to be here.

Okay, are you ready for the fast five?

I will do my best.

Okay, here we go. Number one, first question for the fast five. The most your most favorite place that you ever have lived so far is where and why?

I would just say Edinburgh, Scotland for graduate school with my husband and I before we had children. So it was fantastic cosmopolitan city with an ancient castle in the middle of it and we were free and fancy free and so we could go travel.

It was really fun.

I had a friend once that was there and I said, hey, what's it like living? And he was in Aberdeen. I said, what's it like? He goes, well, if you don't mind not seeing the sun and having good food, bad food, it's great.

We had a little bit bigger so maybe that was helpful. But yeah, dark at 3:30 is a little rough.

Okay, number two, here we go. My most go to item at Costco is what and why.

Oh, probably either the protein powders and the chips for my kids. So it's kind of we got some cross country runners so getting them fueled is pretty important.

How old are your kids?

They are 16, 14. Now you've got put me on the spot here. 11 and almost 10.

It's funny, you're like, I can't remember.

I know because we just had birthdays too.

So I have a friend of mine, he's got six and he went to Walgreens to get medication for one of them and they said, what's your kid's birthday? And he's like, are you Kidding me.

I need a cheat sheet.

Yeah. He's like, I can't remember that. The kids are in the back. Are like, dad, thanks. This is really helping ourselves. Do that.

I feel so loved.

Number three. The best advice I could give someone in ministry is what?

Make sure you have good friends and counselors and spiritual directors around to support you who are not in your ministry context.

That's a good advice. That's a really good advice. Yeah, I, I gathered there was some wounds.

After reading some of the ministry I've been in ministry, I'm like, oh, I can recognize that you recognize when someone's been hurt. Oh, yeah.

And I'm sure we've dished them out, you know, in equal measure. So.

You mentioned that part. I like the hurt part. I didn't like the fact that I hurt other people.

I know. Try not to, but it's inevitable.

Oh, you're right. You're right. Okay, here we go. Next question number four. Because you are a writer and you're.

You've got a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, so you have to be a reader of some sort.

Yes, yes.

The section of a bookstore that you don't want to leave is what and why.

I like that one. That one's fun.

I would say too, probably just like your classic fiction, because I want to see, like, ooh, how have they redone new covers and what have I not read and I really need to pick up. And then I would also say probably like the decorating section. Like home decorating.

I like things to be beautiful, and so I like that big glossy page that you can look at and get inspired by.

Well, that actually leads us to our. Our fifth question. If you were a trend, like a fashion trend in your home for decorating, what would it be and why?

That's really good. I mean, we tend to have a lot of mid century modern or like elements that are classic and mid century modern in our actual house.

But I think if I was going to put my personality, I. It would definitely not be Chip and Joe in the shiplap sort of thing. That feels like too overdone.

So it would have to be something a lot more odd, like something abstract maybe that felt a little bit more splashy than just mid century modern or shiplap in the modern farmhouse sort of thing.

I get that. I understand that and I agree about. It's hard because when Chip and Joanna came out, I really liked it.

I did too.

But as time's gone on, it's like, okay, now everybody's doing it.

Right. And some houses should not be made over in that same style. Like, you gotta fit with what you got.

I am in total agreement there. All right, so there we go. Let's get into a little bit not about the book yet.

I want to hear a 30,000 foot view just of your bio and the reason behind your book, A Spacious life.

Yeah, well, 30,000ft. I kind of started my career thinking I was going to be an academic and then had lots of children. And we've been in ministry for about 20 years or so.

And with moves and all of that, I just kind of turned to writing as a way to kind of scratch some of that creative itch. And so A Spacious Life came out of my experience just thinking about, like, what.

How would I write back to myself as a young mom that felt disoriented by my limits? You know, I'd kind of. We went to Edinburgh. I have a PhD.

I should be doing more than, you know, making Chef Boyardee for my children and, like, telling them, no, really, they need to go take a nap. It felt like the limits of my season were particularly restrictive.

And so I got angry, got angry at God and my husband because he could have real conversations with, like, adults and. And, you know, so I wanted to. To kind of engage in the same way that my first book, Finding Holy in the Suburbs, kind of ask the question.

If you're in a place that's affluent and if you're in a place that maybe isn't even your first pick, like, it's still possible to find a life of faithfulness there. It's still possible to push back against some of those kind of cultural idols and to find what God would have you do in a particular place.

In the same way, I think we all really come to terms with our limits. And we come to our limits in college. We come to our limits, you know, in middle age.

We come to our limits in particular life places and circumstances.

And I wanted to, you know, ask the question, what if those were actually a pathway to greater understanding of God and love of God and love of our neighbor?

The fact that you had mentioned the goodness of limits in the title, these limitations that are there. Very few of us think of limits as good in our culture. We're told to have no limits, to push through the limits.

And the fact that you even phrased it and turned it that way was a bit of an eye opener. And it made me stop and go, wait a minute, these aren't bad things. These are actually good things that we see right now.

How Are our limitations from God actually a gift to us?

Yeah, you know, I think it's so important to kind of start at the very beginning. So in, in God's good creation before sin enters the world, we actually have limits, right? Creation requires limits.

That the light is separated from the darkness, that the land is separated from the sea, that planets have particular orbits, that the land has seasons where it is to lie fallow and where it is to flourish. And you know, Adam and Eve of course, have limits. They have limits of their body.

They're limited to a place, they're limited to the relationship that God has given them to one another. They're limited in their work.

And all of those things are good because I think just kind of we have this knee jerk reaction, especially in American culture anyway, that the idea of limits, we just feel like that constraint and we just feel like the inch of them. And we kind of think that what it means to be happy is to be free.

And what it means to be free is to have unlimited personal autonomy to define ourselves, which is actually a lie from Satan, you know, back in Genesis chapter three. But it's important to remember limits are good. They're actually built into creation. So they are.

The way in which God designed us as creatures to flourish is through limits.

Okay, you, you really do talk about, I mean, not the just limits are, are, are good that God has given us the limits. But then you put it into the category of what happens when we go outside of those limits.

I want you to talk for a moment in how you define transgression or how the transgression is defined. I thought that was kind of an eye opener. And I went, what am I sinning?

Right. I know, I love that. As like an English PhD nerd, I'm like, ooh, I love words and where they come from.

So yeah, the idea of transgression, right, we, we think of that. It's a really fussy Christian word. We just talk about sin or debts now, right? In the Lord's Prayer, we don't use the word transgression anymore.

But the idea of transgression, if you think of the, if you split it up, right, Becomes trans means to move across. And gradier is the Latin root which means to go. So the idea of transgression is really to go beyond, right? To go across.

And, and so what, when we can think about sin that way, is that sin is actually a going beyond of God's good limits, right? To try and grab something for, for ourselves that we believe.

He, you know, functionally Anyway, we believe he's not going to really come through for us. We don't really believe he's good. And so sin in whatever action or behavior kind of crops up is transgression.

It's going beyond the good limits that God gives us in creation and in.

Our culture today, we don't like to think about that again, like you said, because we are. We're too busy. And you write not only about busy because everyone is busy. Yeah, but the habits of hurry was the terminology and description you use.

What. How are we? Not that I think you need to define this because anyone listening already knows, but just. Just to help us out.

How are we in habits of hurry?

Yeah, you know, I think we often don't think about the small ways that we're formed. Right. We. We can easily compartmentalize. Well, my faith is over here, and, you know, my ministry life is over here.

And, you know, when I'm in this particular place, I kind of turn on those things.

And we don't often think about the ways our small little habits are actually forming us and forming not only what we think and what we do, but also who we really are.

And so even things like scrolling through our phones kind of to numb out right at the end of the day, or you're waiting in line at the supermarket and you again, right, pull out the phone, we begin to kind of isolate ourselves in those. Even in those moments when we have some margin handed to us by living in society, we tend to numb or isolate ourselves through media.

And it's not to say those things are bad or like listening to a podcast on your walk is bad. So hopefully all you walkers are enjoying the conversation or if you're doing. Listening to the podcast while folding your laundry, I do that too.

But if we are never uncomfortable, if we're never experiencing silence, if we're never, you know, trying to even just have a conversation with people that we don't know in those, in those spaces, in those third spaces, we're really missing out on what it means to be a creature. So I would say the phone is the easiest way that we tend to hurry.

We tend to do that with our calendars too, where we fill them all up where we feel like often, you know, for mothers or fathers, if they have children to feel like I have to do all of these things because all of their.

Their kids, friends are doing all of these things, whether all these extracurriculars, and we don't actually take the agency that God has given to us, and instead we kind of just get on the conveyor belt of what our culture might say. These are the things that look like love. There might not be.

There's so much in that, in our culture that's just so busy. And you said the conveyor belt. That's a really good picture, by the way.

You mentioned also this idea of the sins of omission, the sins of commission, and how digital addiction is a form of a sin of omission. I had not thought of it in that way, so thanks for compounding my guilt. You did a great job at just making me feel like a bad parent.

I'm like, I mean, because I think, I mean, I, I. So we started a nonprofit. Right. We talked about this on the show. And so it's dependent upon you in some respect. I mean, of course, it's.

By God is the one who has to do. But you have to work. You have to do the work. And it's that startup season. But there is times where you're so emotionally drained.

Yeah.

And you, you, you don't have the energy to fight, unfortunately. And, and, and that's not an excuse. It's just where things are.

But when I saw it as a digital addiction, because it's easy to scroll, it's easy to go and watch, you know, Downton Abbey or whatever, the Crown, and. But how. What made you put it as a sin of omission?

Well, I think we can only think of sin often in terms of commission, like what we do, you know, so even if I say something unkind to a family member or a friend and they're hurt by it, I tend to be like, oh, well, I didn't mean to hurt you. Like, I didn't, you know, you shouldn't have taken offense.

And so we don't actually repent for the fact that we hurt people, even if we didn't mean to.

And I think, you know, we're always kind of judging so that we don't actually have to reckon with our, our sinfulness, so we don't actually have to repent. So we generally think we're okay. And so we generally feel like functionally we don't actually need God.

And so I think for our digital habits, and then I'm not saying it's, you know, it's fine to scroll through social media. I think what, what becomes. When that becomes a habit. Right.

So every time we lay down in bed and out comes the phone, and it's kind of an indeterminate amount of time, like, we're not actually consciously trying to choose the phone we just, like, let the phone choose us, for instance. Those are sorts of things where we become malformed, right?

Where we're taking in so much information, we're not even able to really engage with anything we see, particularly on our phones. It's not like, oh, there's this huge earthquake somewhere halfway across the world. I'm going to pray for those people.

It's just kind of like, we just, like, take in emotions, we take in information, and we don't do anything with them. And so, you know, that gets our nervous system all whacked out and it makes us more tired.

And we're not actually bringing some of those things to God.

So ideally, the ways in which we engage with people in our world should enable us to move through, you know, our work days and weeks with a sense of, you know, I can bring this to God, that this is kind of a constant conversation, and, you know, that I'm able to think creatively.

And when we work so hard and we don't actually incorporate moments of rest, and then we opt out of real rest, real restorative rest by sprawling or numbing in various ways, and we don't actually allow for a transformation or growth.

Because it is in the rest where that growth does occur, to shut that off. And I know there's been several that have addressed this. I remember reading Restless Devices by Felicia Wu Song. She's been a guest on the show, or J.

Kim talking about Analog Christian and how we're all facing this idea of what technology is doing to us. What really struck me, though, is the image that you. You gave of what it's actually doing.

And I'm going to give this quote because I thought it was so enlightening is probably the right word. And I mean, the eyes of my mind saw it in a different way. Actually, I. I didn't see it how you intended it.

Actually saw it more from a parenting perspective. But let me get you what you wrote.

Another thing. Yeah.

Well, we're. We're children wandering the aisles of the Internet because we've lost the presence of a loving, of our loving parent.

And I took that as my children are wandering the aisles at first, because I went, because I'm on my phone, right?

They're like, oh, no.

And then I read it again. I went, well, that's less convicting. I mean, but it's still convicting. That was a really beautiful image, but also very poignant.

And I thought it just opened you up, your imagination to see it a different way. But do you really feel that's what it is for us. It's the equivalent of G.K. chesterton's.

Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God. Is that us flipping on the phone and the Internet looking for God?

I think so.

Because it's always like, if I just have this one more piece of information or if I just have this great new health hack, if I have even just this other book that I'm ordering to give me more, more, more like good things. It's important to take care of our bodies. It's important to, you know, find out about better parenting techniques.

It's important to go like, oh, there's this cool new ministry conference. But I think we can often turn to our devices to fill something deeper than just like informational transfer.

Have you ever wondered. My wife and I've had this conversation. We have all of these different books about everything, we can learn about everything.

But yet our grandparents didn't have any of this stuff. And sometimes I'm like, didn't do so bad, right? I mean, I don't know if they sat.

My great grandparents were sitting around the table going, man, my parents really screwed us up, right?

You know, I do. Yeah, I do.

We have like so much more information and you know, when it comes to parenting or trauma or generational issues, right, Some of it's so helpful, but it can just also turn us so completely in on ourselves. And that's, you know, when you could, you couldn't afford to do that if you had to like go work in the fields for 10 hours a day.

Well, even in the. I read through the scriptures and I'm like, I don't think these guys were as self obsessed as we are.

But I do know in the great commandment, right, we have to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind and strength. Love our neighbor as ourselves. But you love your neighbor. But I'm also myself in a biblical way to understand who I am, my own limitations.

Because I do think that technology has pushed us along in such a way that we have pseudo tapped into like pseudo omniscience or pseudo omnipotence. And that's why I love how you even preface the book at the beginning from Psalm 16.

The lines have fallen to me, you know, to me in, in these is pleasant places. I'm butchering it. But so when, when you talk about this, you don't talk about balance, because I think balance is possible personally.

But you mentioned like rhythm and how does, what part does these, these rhythms help us to find that we can't get with that elusive balance, if that makes any sense. That's the weirdest question ever, Ashley. I'm sorry.

Okay. It's okay. I'll try.

No, but I think I like your aversion to the word balance because again, that's kind of making our lives like some sort of math equation or those, like, rock stacks at the beach where it's like, if I just get this little teeny rock in the right spot, I will be well. And so that ultimately leaves it all up to us and our kind of productivity churning.

But I think the idea of rhythm, it's a beat, right, that you inhabit, that you participate in something that lives outside of you and your. And your work. And so I think that's important.

But, you know, if we think about rhythms too, I feel like it takes the pressure off of needing to get, quote, unquote, it right, whatever it is. And so we realized that, you know, in various seasons, you know, when my children were little, I didn't do a lot of writing or speaking.

Now that they're older, that's possible. And it'll be different, right, when they all leave home.

That we have different kind of moments and seasons of our lives and different, like, emotional or psychological energy for people or for. For ministries. And I think it's important to name those and to realize, like, that is part of a rhythm.

And then we have like, our internal daily and weekly rhythms as well. So, you know, for me, and I'll. I'll say it like this.

I realized like a few years ago, like, if I can get, like a walk outside in nature or get to the gym, if I can drink enough water, if I can make sure I eat some vegetables, read my Bible, like, I'll be happier human, right? Like, and if I can read something that, like, makes me excited, that's beautiful, like, that's feels like directly and actually sort of thing.

Well, you know, there are several days where I am able to check all those things off the list and I'm still like, shouting at my children and. Or, you know, I'm short with my husband or I don't extend myself. And so it's.

It can't be that, like, well, I've checked off all of these things and therefore I'll be a better human.

But it is to say, you know, these are the rhythms that are life giving, that are important to prioritize, but also, like, they're not the thing that saves me. The thing that saves us.

Of course, Christ is the one who saves us. And when you Mentioned this idea of balance in the rocks. I actually had a picture of Jenga in my head. And Jenga though is in some ways respect.

Some people can put stack it a lot better, but you still can't go that far. Eventually it's going to fall over. Every one of us has limitations.

Yeah.

I like how one guy told me, he said some people are big Legos and other people are small Legos.

That's good.

Especially when you have kids. It makes a lot of sense when we're talking about Christ saving us.

What I've noticed is that some people have no problem with Christ saving us, but there's still this idea within that that I still have to present myself in a way. Christ isn't become the all in all, he's my savior, but functionally right. He's removed from my everyday.

Yep.

How do we help people see, put those back together to change the actual trajectory, not just management within the western culture, but help them change and create a counter direction.

You mentioned when living in the suburbs and after your first book, we can bloom here, but we can also confront some of the cultural idolatries that are here.

Yeah.

How can we help do that? By living the spacious life and living within these limits.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that is the question, like how do we get real spiritual growth and transformation? You know, I'm just reminded of like we want, oh, use this curriculum and like we've used Pete Scado's emotionally healthy.

Well, his whole emotionally healthy, what is it? Discipleship work.

And that has been helpful because it helps you certain things in that, like where you're doing a praying, a daily office where you are actually being silent before God, before you do your Bible reading and prayer.

And that idea of being present with God without needing to perform for God is hugely transformative for, for people if they haven't tended to do that or relate to God in that way. I know for preachers, the kind of, you know, you're always worried about the sermon on every Sunday. Right.

And so you can even turn to the word of God as you know, this is the data I need to produce a product rather than first seeing ourselves as God's beloved child that he gets a kick out of. So I think there are some practices and there are some curriculum that are helpful.

But I am reminded of, you know, Jesus talking about unless the kernel of wheat falls and it's broken apart and goes into the ground, that it's not going to actually grow. And so I think honestly, a lot of our spiritual growth and Transformation happens through little and big suffering, hardship.

Like we have to be broken apart in some way.

You know, I remember Keller saying that part of what we do in order to be heard in our culture is to be able to articulate the position of unbelievers back to themselves in a way that they would agree. Yeah, but I also remember newbigging.

They Keller quoted him in his book Center Church, but he's quoting him again, these ingredients for missionary encounter. And he says we must be able to serve the people around us, but serve sacrifice and I think suffer in such a way that people see that it's different.

And listen, that's one of those that are kind of within that. But we don't suffer well in our culture and no one likes to suffer. And you actually bring out the one part of suffering, the. The word waiting.

I mean, let's just talk about patience too at the same time. You know, let's just keep throwing stuff in there. People don't want to hear suffering, waiting, patience.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you read, I don't know if you're familiar with it. Perhaps you are, Alan Kreider's book on the ferment of the early church.

I have it. I'm just starting reading it, which it's been suggested to me for years, and I'm like, okay, I'm finally, finally getting around to it. So.

But that idea of that slow, steady growth, but we don't want that. That doesn't bring donors, that doesn't bring the show, that doesn't bring eyeballs that no one wants to see and put a camera on something grow.

They want to see it fast forward.

Right, Right.

But they don't want to see it yet. God invites us to wait and he's not going to change his tactics for our multimedia generation.

Right? Yeah, he's really slow. Right. Like, you know, Paul talks about, right. Our perfection that we will see right in heaven. Right.

It's not even like, oh, in the next 70 years it's going to all be sorted, you know, so waiting is really, really hard, I think. You know, even just like, we moved, we've moved a lot in the last three years over the COVID pandemic and jobs and all of that.

And we've been in our house here on the central coast of California for a year and we're renting and we love it.

And it's like, okay, God, when are you going to help, you know, figure out our investments or give us a wealthy donor so we can actually afford to purchase a home? And we Just don't know. We don't know if that's even what he's going to do. Right. And it's really hard to wait.

And I think for a while I was just like, it's easy when we're in that waiting space to look around and be like, well, all these other people have X, Y, Z, or it sure seems like someone else has a lot of success in their line of work, and why don't I? But that waiting really is an invitation to cast our cares and to cast ourselves on a loving God and to realize that often when we're waiting.

And the hard part about the waiting periods in our lives, from something as small as a house to something much more significant in our lives, is that in those waiting periods, really what we want is control. Right? We want. We want to control the situation. We want to know, yes, our kid's going to turn out okay.

And when they're walking through a valley and they're walking away from God, we want the end story. And so each moment of waiting really is an invitation to cast ourselves on the control of God and to give it up ourselves.

I had a friend who recently, they moved overseas with their family to be missionaries, which is really exciting. And she's just said in these. They had several months where they had left their job. They're waiting for their fundraising to finish coming in.

They're waiting to get all these. The paperwork from the government so they can stay and move. And. And she says, you know, it feels.

And I think this was part of their missions organization, but it feels like you're an uprooted tree with your roots kind of dangling out in the air and everything feels really, really tender. You're waiting to kind of be planted in the next space, the next place. And that was a. It was a potent image to take with me.

I think it feels a lot like that and to give ourselves grace to. For that fragile feeling as we're midair.

I like that picture. I feel like with God, with us, he took the tree, turned it upside down and shook it, and then start slapping the dirt off of it.

And then it's like I'm in shock.

That's what it feels like sometimes it's a lot more violent. Yeah.

You also talk about, in, in this idea of waiting, you mention what you actually mentioned, a negative example of some who. Who didn't wait and some disastrous consequences for their unwillingness to wait. You want to elaborate on who that is, if you remember?

It's been a while.

I know I'll need to look. Yeah. I'll give you a hint.

Involves. It involves the Old Testament and a big cow.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, there's lots of people on the Old Testament.

That's my bad. That's my bad. Ashley. I feel like. Just pick one. I mean, Israelites 101, 201.

Yes.

First year, second year, third year, 40.

Right. We can just list them all, which is so great though, right? We're in good company, but. Right. You know, the Israelites are. Are waiting. Right. For God.

And then. And Moses goes up to hear the actual God, and there's thunder and lightning and all these crazy things right. On Mount Sinai.

And they're like, I know, let's choose to build a cow. Like, we will worship. We will worship this calf. Right. And so we easily turn to other things.

You know, the point of that, you know, in our modern day analog, is when we are. When we don't actually believe and trust God, when we're not willing to wait, we're gonna turn to something.

We're even gonna create something to worship instead.

So whether that's ourselves, our productivity, our schedules, children, our work, our ministry, that those things become functional gods when we don't wait.

Well, do you think that Covid made people have to come face to face with their lack of control?

I think so. I mean, that's why you got right in the very beginning.

We were supposed to, like, like, go to the grocery store in like, a hazmat suit and like, spray down our groceries because, like, we didn't even know how anything, like how it transmitted. And you know, I just, like, there is a sense that, like, if I can just do this thing, that maybe I'll be safe and okay. Right. Like, I'm gonna follow.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't follow guidelines at all. Quite the contrary.

But there's this idea that when we are thrust into this moment of total lack of control, we try to find something to steady ourselves. So for sure, yeah, there was a whole lot of fear. And I think that that fear didn't actually unite us, right. As a nation that fragmented us further.

With a whole lot of other, of course, things come up.

Yeah, yeah.

But the one thing that I thought about is you mentioned that waiting makes us wrestle with the deep questions of our identity. And I'm wondering if Covid really brought it to the forefront that we.

We weren't who we thought we were, and we start finding out who we are, and it's not pretty.

Yeah.

And so there's this idea of control, of escapism, of Netflix, because it's in the waiting that we do come face to face with who we really are, what we really believe about ourselves. What do we really believe about God? And we can Christianize anything, right? That's the.

That's the worst part of it, because people then become living out of a cliche, right? And the cliches don't help at all. Nevertheless, God doesn't stop. He continues to press his spirit in the waiting.

As we become more aware of those motivations, those idolatries in our own hearts and minds, how do we help? Not in that process, but how do we embrace in it? You actually referred to Paul. He learned the secret of contentment. Describe that for a moment.

Yeah, you know, I think. Right, yeah. Paul talks about. Right. I've learned the secret to being content. Like, what is that?

You should write a book.

Give me a 5 cents to Contentment 101. But, you know, like, he has been in. You know, he's had everything. He's had nothing.

He's been shipwrecked, he's been beaten, you know, and it's really. It's that he has Christ, right? He says, I count it all for not right, That I might have Christ and gain Christ.

And so I think that we don't actually believe that, you know, as modern Westerners, like, we have refrigeration, we have cars, we have the Internet. We have, you know, processed foods. There's so many things that we can use.

I thought you said these are good things, not bad things.

Right? But we can use so many things. Right. To bring us pleasure, to bring us joy and even good things. Right? And it's almost like the rope never runs out.

And so it's only as we experience kind of that rope ending that we can choose to cast ourselves on the mercy of God and to realize that's really all we have. And it's really the only thing that.

Satisfies us, which is my. This is what we contend as we talk about our missionary encounter with Western culture.

It's that in some ways, the Western culture is more dangerous than places where outright persecution, because it's the killing me softly idea. People don't realize how they've been lulled into this spiritual slumber, and they don't see the reality of their own condition.

And we have to wake up to this idea of where we are really. I think of the Book of Revelation with the seven churches. You think you're doing this, but you're really not. You're really pretty bad.

And we're not talking just about being sinful. It's delighting more in the gifts and losing the sight of the giver or making the giver embrace your idea of what the gifts should be and do. Right.

We're pretty good at that, too.

God is cosmic genie to give me what I. What I want.

And that's what we've seen in our culture. But at the same time, this is what's being exported of Christianity outside of America into Africa and Asia. And we see this all over the.

With the prosperity gospel. Yeah, but that's not. That's. There's not a theology of suffering. There's not a theology of sacrifice. It's all about getting.

Yeah.

And not. Not of giving up.

In this culture of performance and production and consumption, you quote a Brazilian theologian who says that play breaks the cycle of that. How does play break that cycle? And what do we mean by this cycle of production and consumption?

Yeah, I think I'll answer that second question first. But we tend to. In our modern Western world, we tend to work for rest. So we work, work, work, work.

We overwork, and then we, like, collapse and exhaustion. And so there's this sense that we have to earn our rest. And the Bible, of course, flips that we always work from rest.

Right on the seventh day that God rested. Right. You didn't have to rest.

It wasn't like, I'm tired creating the world, but rather he shows us how to properly live for his creatures that he delights. And part of rest is delight, that he looks at everything and says, wow, that is good. So very good.

And so it is from that position of rest, from Sabbath, that we actually do our work, which was hugely, of course, instrumental. My husband's preaching through Genesis, the early chapters of Genesis right now.

And he keeps reminding us every week that, you know, that the book of Genesis, of course, was given to the Israelites after they came out of slavery.

And so thinking of people enslaved for 400 years, never having had a day of rest, and what does it mean to actually experience like that you are not what you do. You actually get rest. And so I think we've kind of, in our modern culture, tended to, like, enslave ourselves. Right.

And to continue to work, to work to earn rest and to not actually accept the rest we've been given, because rest, like play, to return to your question, is really vulnerable. And I think oftentimes we don't play and we don't rest because we don't know what's going to Come up.

So, you know, like, when my daughter was little, she wanted me to play like dolls with her. And I really, like, I don't remember how to play dolls. I don't want to do it. You could just go like, go play outside, find one of your brothers.

Because it was like, I didn't want to look stupid. And like, come on, I'm not going to look stupid stupid to my like 5 year old daughter. She just wants the presence of her mother, right?

To enjoy something.

And how often do we choose to not play with other people or even to like, look, deign to look foolish in front of other people or even with God and to be like, you know, the silence thing is weird. I've never done it before. I'm going to try it, you know, and to say, like, God takes great delight in us.

He's not like judging our, our behavior or our spiritual disciplines. As a helpful reminder.

How has, how is Sabbath helpful? I mean, the Sabbath keeping helpful in keeping us in a pattern of rest?

Well, I think, I mean, I still struggle with Sabbath. It's tricky because as I was saying, my husband's a pastor, so most like, he takes his like, pastoral Sabbath on Monday.

But we try to at least have the afternoons feel Sabbathy as a family, the six of us. And with teenagers in the house, we're, you know, we're trying to let them sort of figure it out as they grow into adulthood too.

And often, you know, unfortunately, it does look a lot like, okay, everyone's just on their devices. This is not what I had intended.

And but the idea, you know, when we try to, when we have more successful practices for us as a family looks like engaging in rest, like engaging and not having a planned sort of day so that it doesn't feel like, oh, gosh, we got to get here and here and there. So we don't do our errands. We don't know if we have people over. We enjoy good food and good drink together. We try to get a nap.

And the biggest thing that I feel like we've been consistent with is the idea of sir. And so I always, right, if the Sabbath is. It's not like just like, don't do all these things. And it can feel super restrictive.

And so I remember reading, I think it was in AJ Swoboda's book A Glorious Dark, where he talks about the Hebrew children being awoken with honey on their tongues so that they would know that the Lord's day is always sweet. I was like, I can get on board with that. So we don't always have dessert around the house.

And so it became a way to have dessert and we have dessert first. So we have it before dinner. Just as a way to remember that God is good and he gives us things to delight in.

So that if anything, my kids, for a long time, actually, my daughter would be like, is it Sabbath? Is it Sabbath? Which basically meant like, is it time for dessert?

I'm trying to imagine putting honey on my kids.

Right.

That.

That feels like some bad thing from the Parent Trap that is not gonna end well.

Then of course not having honey. I'm like, dessert. Do I just put like a piece of cake in their mouth?

Right. They have chocolate cake ground into the carpet.

I like the nap. Jesus took naps. So I'm all over the napping part of the whole deal. And I, and I, and I understand being. Being in pastoral ministry. Sundays are hard.

And like, I didn't do Mondays. Actually, we took off. I took off Thursdays.

Okay.

Just because we had deadlines without lines on Fridays. And everybody was trying to get stuff done the other week Thursday. No one wouldn't interrupt me.

But then you don't get a weekend and your kids don't get involved.

Right, right.

So those are those tricky moments and helping communicate to them those limitations. And even with devices.

I think of Neil Postman when he said that when you have a technology that's designed to do something like cell phones to connect.

Right.

But when it becomes flooded, then it does the opposite. So you can be in the same room and everyone on their phone. So you're not connected.

Yeah, yeah.

And then reversing that. How do you. How do you. And that. I think of Andy Crouch where it's that. Tech wise.

Yeah, Tech wise family. Yeah, yeah.

Which, which I agree with. Theoretically, it's the application is the part of it that's the hard part.

What? You know, where he says it, you know, you should have a tech free hour every day and, you know, around the dinner table and ideally.

And a tech free day and then a tech free week.

Tech free week. I haven't read. I just got the book. I just picked it up. I've. I've had it sitting on my list for some time.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's got to the point in time where I'm like, I think my son's phone is a permanent attachment. I've got to change it because I know it has changed. Like, and you wrote about this how it's changing your person's brain.

But just because we know this doesn't change it. That's the hardest part.

Right. It's the implementation.

Yeah. The implementation of it in the personal discipline, myself that my own discipline.

And that's where I'm reminded of the self control, the patience, the lack of hurrying. And again, something you wrote. You were quoting John Mark Comer. Hurry and love are incompatible.

Yep.

How are hurry and love incompatible?

Well, I mean, hurry, like when you're hurrying, you're event.

You're eventually using people as objects, like where you're the hero of your story, it's the movie about your life, and everyone else is just like a bit part. Right. And so when you can't actually love another person sacrificially if you're the main character. Right.

All the time and everyone involves around you. But, you know, love always requires limits to be love. Right. I'm not married to, like all men generally.

I'm married to one particular man with particular desires and particular ways of being in the world. And so for me to ignore, you know, the fact that he likes a tidier house than I keep isn't love.

Do you have. I have to ask this question. Do you have different definitions of clean?

Oh, probably. Yeah. He's learned to live with some of my mess, for sure.

And we kind of figure if we can get things tidy generally by the end of the night, that's ideal. But we also try to just minimize the amount of stuff in the house, so that makes it easier.

But yes, the reason I ask, my wife and I have two different definitions. Mine's tidy. Hers is like dust free and clean.

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah.

Which, I mean, she's like, it's. She's like, it's not clean. I'm like, look, there's no piles.

Right? Yeah.

She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, that's a whole nother level.

Yeah.

I just would be good if we can get to the tidy. And my husband would love probably tidy and clean. But we also realized we have four kids and here we are.

And that's the stage of life that you're at. And that's where I wonder how many. My own kid. I'm like, how did the socks get in the lawnmower? I'm trying to figure that out. Seriously.

He's like, I don't. Do you even. Like, I want to walk up to him. I'm like, do you even have socks anymore? Because I found so many around. Goodwill said, stop, we're good.

We don't need anymore. We've closed half of the county because of your son. That's what it feels like.

Just close the room door.

Oh, gosh. I don't even want to. It smells so bad in there. It smells so bad.

I know.

It's just. Oh. Because I have two girls. I have four. Two girls, two boys. So my girls are older and my boys are sharing a room. One's 13 and one's nine.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's. It's like Hazmat suit. Oh, yeah, Yeah, I can hear you.

It's like things are growing in here. Isn't that good?

It's not the boys. It's not the boys. Matter of fact, we got to call the cdc.

Do it.

Okay. I want to read this. I want to read one of these paragraphs that you wrote that I loved, and I wanted to quote it at length.

Thanks.

From page 81.

And when what Jesus offers to his disciples and to us as recipients of the gospel to the ends of the earth is more than an individual golden ticket to heaven when we die.

He offers a long line of fulfillment of generational promises, of making a home for those burdened by slavery and exile, and fulfilling the promise to have a descendant of David on the throne. He not only keeps purification laws, but teaches that the kingdom of God demands more a new heart. He's a prophet, or he is prophet, priest and king.

The freedom he offers is a collective freedom. He has come to prepare to marry his bride, the church. This is the part I wanted to read that part because it leads into this.

We have lost something when we've made the Christian life all about going to heaven when we die and about an individual experience of God. While it is those things, it is more than that. Jesus fits us together, living stones on the foundation of Christ alone.

And as our shepherd guides us into spacious places, not only for ourselves, but also for the good of the world, he does so by taking in diverse individuals, calling us to follow him and enabling us to practice community together. What role then does this community participation have in our living this spacious life?

You know, it's amazing sometimes when you're like, oh, Paul really knew what he was talking about, or Jesus was really correct, right? When you.

Like, we're surprised.

I know, I know. Like, oh, the word of God is actually living and active in all generations. What? But you know, when. When at various points, right? We're.

We're heard in scripture, like different metaphors for the church, right? Jesus calls us salt and light in the Sermon on the Mount. And Paul talks about we're a body where the body of Christ and many members of the body.

And so I think often, I think the salt image is helpful because it reminds us that we're not very effective as one little single salt crystal, right? We're not, we're not going to get much done, right? A little.

If you put one little teeny piece of salt in your pasta water, it's really not going to taste great or do any good. But if you put handfuls of salt into the pasta water, it's actually going to taste the food. The pasta is going to taste better.

It's going to taste as pasta should taste. And you know, if you think about the metaphor of the body where Paul writes, like, should the hand say to the foot, I don't need you, right.

Is that we all have a different role to play and we all have different limits, right? And the hand can do certain things that the foot can't do. A leg muscle can be stronger in different ways, right. Than a hand or a neck.

And so we just think about these actual metaphors really make sense that we are joined together to be something as the whole that we can't really be individually and that there is some identity formation in the process of being a whole that we can't really get past.

And I think we've just, we've kind of made Christianity in the Western world so individualistic, so kind of infused with this idea of unlimited autonomy that we don't actually see. Hey, I'm actually losing something when I only see my Christian faith as an.

Individual experience, which that's the new begin idea of that the community is the hermeneutic of the gospel.

And, and I know you work with Russell Moore when he mentioned that people are leaving the church not because they don't believe the truth of the scriptures, but ye, that the church itself doesn't believe because the church is the greatest hermeneutic that we have, unfortunately becoming just this individualistic salvation. We come in, get our fix and go and then we have a thin.

And I love how you put that in the book you mentioned we have a thin connection, we need to thicken that.

But you also mentioned, and you quote Seth Kaplan writing for comment, which we've had in on the show, the editor, she says you wrote that or quote, excuse me, that we are increasingly allergic to constraints and losing community in the process because few want to compromise their privacy. Privacy and surrender their freedom. And that was on page 87. So how are people then not wanting to give up their privacy and their freedom?

Because that seems to be the price in order to have community, you have to give up something. Why are we so against giving that up?

To embrace this idea of community that we know is good and necessary for us to be the people, I mean, selfishly, for us to be the people that God wants us to be. As you said, we can't do this individually away from community. So how do we then help people to see that and enter into it?

Yeah, you know, it's so hard. It's so hard because we still, even though so many of us love the church, they are committed to the church.

They believe in the tenets of Christian faith and practice.

I mean, we've seen this, and I'm sure you have too, where people just decide to leave, right, and they just kind of ghost you or, you know, members who have committed and made vows then just leave, you know, and think an email saying, hey, we're out is okay.

And so, you know, as folks in pastoral ministry know, that becomes kind of an aggregate pain and hurt where you're, you feel like everything's personal and it becomes frustrating when you go, when you think big picture.

How is the church going to be a counterculture of love when we can't even stick with one another or even have the hard conversation about like whatever X, Y, Z issue was the precipitating issue. I mean, and that's just one example.

We see it in, you know, lots of small ways where people don't volunteer or people just don't care or they'd rather go to all of these fun vacations or have their kids involved in sports every single Sunday, whatever it is, where we don't actually functionally believe that the church is how Jesus says he's going to save the world. Right.

We don't, we don't believe in, you know, Genesis 12, when, when God says to Abram that you're going to be a blessing so that you can bless the nations. We kind of just see church as this nice little feel good experience that gives me another injection shot for another week of nice Jesus feelings.

And, you know, the challenge then, I think for us who is to put our money where our mouth is to show up and to suffer with difficult people, with, you know, people who have a lot of pain, to suffer through awkward conversations, to engage with people we might not naturally engage with because we know there's something in that person that I need and there's something that they need from me and it can't, you know, I don't exist. John Dunn said, right, no man's violent, so we can't actually flourish apart from other people.

Although that is hard to communicate when they're not even there. Yes. When they're at home, just walled up in their little mini castle, insulated from the cares of the world. It does call for a radical reorientation.

One of the things that we've called for is a missionary ecclesiology. Basically, the church needs to recover that idea of being sent on mission into the world. And part of that mission means vulnerability.

Yes.

To the people around you. And I love how one person put it years ago, I think it was Ann Dillard. I think was what she wrote.

She said in the church, people are one of two things. She said there are marbles or grapes. Marbles repel one another and send each other off in other direction.

But when grapes collide, they bleed and they mingle. Juices quitting the sweet. I know, I love that image. No, Ann Ortland, not Ann Dillard, Ann Orland, sorry.

But I love that imagery because it's the mingling together of that sweet fellowship that becomes the aroma of Christ that other people then are drawn to.

Yet in our culture we have allowed, and I think this is in many respects because of an anemic or shallow teaching of what the kingdom of God is that in some respect has. Was allowed to flourish on the back of where America was 50 years ago and worked within a certain cultural context.

But the topography has shifted, culturally speaking. So now we have to go deeper into the roots of what the gospel is. And I see that in the younger generation too. Some of these younger people.

I was at a conference recently and they're asking me questions of theologians that I, that I know postgraduate students are just studying. So I'm sitting here going, they long for this. They don't want the McDonaldization of the church anymore. They don't want the show the light.

Show the lights. They don't care about that. And some of them said, Again, these are 25 year olds, are like, get rid of all the lights. We don't care.

Just give me the depth of the word and what it means to have a relationship truly with God. Not just individual salvation, but I need to know how it applies and seeps out in the other different spheres of my life. And I love.

I think God is doing a work there.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah. Praise God. Sorry, pass the plate. All right. We're having an altar call. We're going to run this thing.

Yeah, you quote a German philosopher, which you didn't name the philosopher, by the way, so I figured you were trying to get by fast. With here. It's Nietzsche, isn't it?

No, it's a new guy. Hartmut Rosa. Yeah. I haven't read his big stuff. I just read a short little book he wrote. He wrote.

So you're trying to be safe. You're like, okay, I don't want anybody to fry me. I don't know who this guy is.

Right. Well, I know, like, his little book, but I don't, like, read his corpus.

Okay. Okay. She said. I was like. She's. She didn't name him. So I do that when I don't want people to know who it is.

Right.

Then they'll yell at me.

That's a good tactic, though. I'll remember it.

But you quote the German philosopher who writes of. Because I didn't know his.

Or her.

So now I know it's a hit.

Yeah.

Of his exasperation with the way the world works and says it's not. Because what is out there, that is still being denied, denied to us. But the frustration is, is that we now have it under control.

Please translate for those who are not PhDs from Edinburgh. You knew the Scottish accent, by the way. Can you do it?

I. There was one children's book that we would read to our kids in a Scottish accent. So I still have that one.

It was Harry McClary from Donaldson's Daddy a Wee little Puppy. So, yeah, I got that one still.

I like it.

So I want to do Scottish all day long. If I could preach like a Scotchman, I would. I'd do it. I love it. Anyway, Keep going.

Yes. So heartfelt Rosa writes about this idea of resonance. So, you know, whether it's kind of the magic of new falling snow.

He uses that example in his book about that we somehow. It's almost like what Taylor would talk about, you know, as these sort of windows to transcendence, that in.

In our modern world, you know, everything has become flattened. That everything is within this imminent frame is how Charles Taylor would talk about it. And there's a sense for Rosa that, you know, there's.

There are certain things that provide this sort of resonance that kind of widen our view that actually a lot of our angst that we feel in modern life isn't because we're trying to, like, control everything, but almost like we're dissatisfied with the fact that we feel like.

We can control because the mystery has been removed.

Yeah.

We need that. The idea to connect with God. See, it's my. It's been my. My.

It's been kind of my thesis, and we've talked about this, but ad nauseam on the show, is that if you go back to the. The Jesus films, like the early ones, the. The transcendence of Jesus was very high and the humanity was just too real.

But now it's like, because we've tapped into the kind of the transcendency idea. We need Jesus to be human and close, but we still need to have that mystery of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Because when Jesus doesn't, we've tamed him, you know, in a way. But again, Louis, he's not a tame lion.

Right.

And I still love that imagery.

But he's good.

Yeah, he is good. He is good.

As we've talked about through these ideas, low limits of waiting and being a part of the kingdom of God, this necessity of community kind of recessing how to live in the midst of this world in some respect, calling people out to counter cultural practices that show the reality that we are God's people and we are distinct. It's not just. I mean, it is the idea of better humanity. I remember Kelly Capek mentioning that.

And so Dan Strange saying that part of what we have to do in this midst of our culture is we've lost touch with our own humanity. We need to be able to recover those limits. And those aren't bad things.

And you've addressed that, I think, in our everyday lives to be able to see and be more transcendent and experience it a bit more as we've gone about it.

As we conclude our time today, what is something that we can give to our audience that might help in the implementation or experimentation with this idea or becoming aware of their limits, but what else that they can put into their lives as a practice so that they might not be carried on this river of modernity and Western culture that's always looking for success and material prosperity, but rather seeks to live the spacious life that God calls us to? So what's this water bottle that we can leave for them as we conclude our time together?

Yeah, you know, I think I would say I would practice just being in God's presence as a daily personal practice. So whether often we can look at our Bible reading and our prayer time as, you know, check marks or as helpful for study.

And so we can even use God and the Bible, right. As a. As a way to kind of curry favor or to make ourselves look good as, oh, yes, I've done now, my quote unquote Christian thing.

So I would say, yeah.

Are there ways in which you can practice silence or stillness, creating margin, creating time just to be with God, maybe light a candle, set a timer for a few minutes and just be like God, I'm just gonna keep thinking about you and your work for me and just be with you. In the same way that a parent delights to be with his or her child. You don't have to do anything, you don't have to say anything.

You can just be together. And I think that'll probably make you feel really awkward for a while and that's good and normal.

I think sometimes just rattle us out of our complacency, but then maybe even try inviting someone else into that practice. What would it look like to pray together? What would it look like to be silent before God together?

What would it look like to practice some vulnerability within community and not just with, you know, someone that you know really well, that you've developed 10 years of friendship with? Do you receive help as much as give help? Those might be some practical starters. And then also encourage folks to do both. Like a time audit.

Whether it's your day. I mean your iPhone might give you a oh gosh, how long have you been on your phone Every day Update once a week.

But those sorts of auditing sort of things are just helpful check ins to know what maybe what you're running to or running towards when those moments of silence or stillness or waiting feels really challenging.

Thank you for that. I hope that really does help our people. And lastly, how can people follow you and learn more of what you're doing?

Thanks for asking. So you can find links to my podcasting work.

My husband and I host a podcast on called the Cartographers on Kind of Christian leadership for 21st century Christian leaders. Feel kind of stuck in the middle of the culture wars.

I have various writing things there and also coming up on October 20th, I'm leading a writing webinar with Mike Kosper at Christianity Today.

So we're going to be talking about how do you write newsletters, how do you write sermons, how do you write whatever it is you're writing as ways to actually stir the affections like Augustine said.

Awesome.

That'd be fun.

Thank you Ashley for coming on Apollos water.

You are so welcome. It's been such a pleasure to be with you.

There is a goodness of limits when we go beyond those limits. There's transgression instead. God is calling you to trust, to find rest, to practice a different rhythm. He's calling you to wait.

You can't force a conversation with God. That's not how God works. You have to wait on that conversation coming face to face with who you are in the midst of it.

I was reading something the other day. It was actually a quote on G.K. chesterton, who said, a man who knocks at the door of a brothel is looking for God.

I think for many of us, we are so busying ourselves with scrolling on social media, keeping ourselves so busy, because we too are also looking for God, but we're fearful of what he's going to show us. You can have the spacious life that God wants for you, even in the midst of the tight spaces of where you're at right now.

All of the hurry and stuff that you place in your life, often by default, aren't adding up to the happiness that you are seeking, and certainly not the good and flourishing life that you expect God wants you to have. Our modern Western world promises all of these things, but it's increasingly obvious to so many that it can't deliver.

And instead you tend to live a life of quiet angst and isolation, or as Henry David Thoreau once said, a life of quiet desperation. You find yourself cut off from others and more importantly, God. And secretly you're suspicious that he really isn't there for you.

So you just keep doing Christian stuff and that becomes your checkbox on your to do list.

And the pictures on your social media or the trappings of your faith seem to give this image that God is there with you, but you feel this aching feeling that he's not there. See, Ashley's reminder to you and me is at once obvious and profound. It's a pause. It's a call for us to take time to be with God.

Just be with him and listen. Not to check a box. It means put away your phone, put it in a different room, turn it off, close a computer, light a candle.

Get in a dark room, focus on.

The Lord, open the word of God, and just be willing to wait, to live with. And in the silence, it's going to.

Feel odd, it's going to feel weird.

But do it. Your mind is going to wander. You're going to have all these strange thoughts, but you got to get through those. You have to quiet yourself.

Start by thanking God for five things in your life. Five things. Spend time in five memories.

We've heard about this from Chris Corsi and from Charles Stone and from Jim Wilder and Marcus Warner to quiet yourself. What I'm saying is not a magic bullet. It's not a formula. It's going to be a struggle. And it's not the kind of stuff that sales pitches well.

It's not the kind of message that's easy to build a ministry around because it's not a quick fix, it's a kingdom fix. It's a perspective fix. It's getting in line with God, what he does and who he is. And it's true.

The kinds of things that Ashley is talking about are the kinds of things that will be required of each one of us if we're to truly live a faithful and fruitful missionary encounter with our culture. It's calling us to have a crock pot experience, not an insta pot one.

And if you are truly going to show the world that you have something better and a better humanity, that's what we're offering to people. I mean, we're offering them forgiveness, but we're showing them through our lives that we have something better.

Because if we don't have anything better, if our lives are completely a mess, why would anyone want to follow or even listen to what you're saying? Why would they want what you claim? I'm not saying you have to be perfect. I'm not saying you have to have everything together.

What I'm saying is that the trajectory needs to be going toward God and showing that you are living according to a different standard and a different rhythm. And it's God's standard and God's rhythm.

And you're showing by your life the reality that God is present in you and it's going against the current of our culture. And when you do this, you're going to find the cultural idolatrys that you have held on to come to the surface.

And I would encourage you to identify them, confess them, give them over to God, renounce them and any demonic presence that is associated with them, and then cling to the Lord. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. That's my encouragement for you today.

And I want to thank you for listening to our show and I want to thank all of those out there who pray for us and who financially support what we do. If you're not doing either one of those things, why not? We would love to have you join the Apollos Watered family again.

I would encourage you to check out our website, ApolloSweater.org especially our watering weekends for churches and groups. We'd love to be able to come out to serve your people so that they too might grow in their missionary encounter with Western culture.

I want to thank our Apollos water team for helping to water the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered.

Stay Watered, Everybody sa.