Passive Follower or Active Participant?

Brad and Wayne couldn't find a slot to record a podcast this week, but Wayne had some visitors in town over the weekend who are long time friends and frequent listeners to The God Journey. Watching their lives grow in joy and freedom over the last decade, Wayne gleans lessons from the journeys of Kevin Tupper, Kent Burgess and Mike Rea (pictured left to right). Each talk about finding their way into a real and effective growing relationship with a Loving Father by moving from being passive followers of religion to active participants in their engagements with God. You'll learn about switching your default position from God is against you, to the reality that God is for you and find out what a quiet time really is.

Podcast Links:
Joy from our orphanage in Kenya
Previous Podcasts with Kent: The Painful Process of Transformation and In the Land of Kenya
The movie Instinct

23 Comments

  1. Thank you brothers! It’s the friends we meet along life’s road who help us appreciate the journey. . .

  2. Hi Kent. I was thinking the same thing recently. I just sent you a PM on the forum. 🙂

  3. We have only one thing to give up. Our dominion. We don’t own the world. We’re not kings yet. Not gods. Can we give that up? Too precious, all that control? Too tempting, being a god?

    You were right, freedom is not just a dream, it’s there, beyond those fences that we build all by ourselves.

    Words spoken by Ethan Powell…Anthony Hopkins’ character from the movie Instinct

  4. This was so wonderfully inspiriting for me. Four men talking about their personal relationship with God for 40 minutes and not one sport metaphor. Thank you Jesus. Love the transparency of the conversation. Hope we get another opportunity to hear from these guys. Great job. Thank you for doing this as I am sure it took great courage. Very cool.

  5. Joni, it is because Wayne warned us before hand if we used sports analogies we weren’t getting dinner. The time was great fun and meaningful for me.

  6. This was a great podcast, a capstone on the last few weeks. Lines like “presence-fused life”, “God is FOR us”, “God is with us IN the mess of our lives”, and in my view the best one “in a moment of feeling more exposed to the inadequacy of my own ability, I found myself being loved instead.”

    Thank you guys, I really enjoyed this podcast, so utterly real, so utterly full of Jesus. That is the definition of living loved. I love the way that greater depths of love and kindness reveal the shadows and façades of our own lives. Painful but worth it and not possible without walking beside Jesus. He said He would shepherd us and truly he does! Amen

  7. Hi Leon,
    I sent an FB to Kent stating what excellent insight that statement is. (in a moment of feeling more exposed to the inadequacy of my own ability, I found myself being loved instead). I wonder if that was what Peter felt that morning on the beach.

    It certainly is a point of real transition.

  8. Leon – What you said . “So utterly real, so utterly full of Jesus. That is the definition of living loved.” is what I njoyed about their conversation. Being real and being loved just that way is what Jesus is all about.
    It really helps me to listen to others talk about this. Being loved as I am is becoming more and more real in my life in a solid way, and this will happen whether I hear others share about it or not, but is also very encouraging and strengthening to read about/listen to other’s experiences with Jesus and being loved.

  9. Just to add a little more to this statement: “in a moment of feeling more exposed to the inadequacy of my own ability…instead of feeling condemned or judged…I found myself being loved.”

    To come to the end of our attempts to work it all out and to get our lives, and everyone in our lives, all situated and running smoothly, and call off the attempts to try to find God’s presence ‘out there’ somewhere in the midst of it all, if in that season we can just learn to lay aside all the manipulation in hopes of getting God to move, and as we were all saying in the conversation, learn to quiet ourselves, I think we come to find a completely different experience with God.

    Religion left us all with deficient, inferior images of God. Mistaken notions about the character of the Divine and how the Divine engages with us and why the Divine engages with us. If we can lay aside all those things we think we know, and approach it all in a fresh newway, I think we will all be shocked at the abiding presence that will begin to become real to us.

  10. Hey, there

    Carol I absolutely agree. Friends have try to rile me up, and say but those guys ARE your pastors. But they don’t realise the value of listening to others share their journey. It is very encouraging to listen to others real life experience, how they understood this or that at different times of their lives, lived through this pain, mistakes etc. One thing is for sure, is that we do not use our testimony enough when sharing our lives of love. Too often our brothers and sisters believe they need to get the doctrine right first – PAINFUL.

    A year ago, after listening for two years I suddenly realised that I had been listening to gratefully disillusioned for a long time but hadn’t experienced it. Then suddenly I got it, thinking wow, now things are moving, then after listening multiple times of listening I realised just as these guys said, so busy doing stuff but not encountering Jesus in the moment. So just recently (in the last 2 weeks) I realised that I haven’t been living in the moment encountering Jesus right there. Now that I am its a pleasure.

    As Kent says we live with inferior images of God, but now I realise that as I walk this road with Jesus I get called into a deeper and greater truth, every time scrubbing the silt and hard stuck grim of my heart away. (In South Africa we have these big black pots that require a metal scrounger to clean, its hard elbow work). That’s how I feel, not condemned by the grime, but in relief for the layers that Father keeps on removing. His elbow must be enormous – thank goodness. Also it means I stay in humble, not thinking I got it at any given moment. There is still much to remove, but through His love it doesn’t matter where I am only that I am with Jesus. Hallelujah!

  11. My wife and I listen to you great folks every podcast. We each have come out of strict fearful legalistic church backgrounds. Even though Jesus said we’d never thirst again after meeting, hearing, receiving Him, we do feel a yearning to connect with others of like mind on this incredibly wonderful journey. So, first, we say a big THANK YOU! for providing this … I don’t ever want to diminish what we find with you guys, .. but I have to say it was nice to hear this podcast and not hear the giggling that we almost suffer through waiting for you guys to get to the meat of the sharing. Okay, having got that off my chest, I say Thank you Wayne and Brad again. You may never know how much you are used to affirm exactly who we are in union with Jesus. If you did know, it might give you a big head.. so, just saying thanks. By the way Wayne.. we’ve devoured your books, dog-eared pages, underlined passages, high-lighted in yellow many paragraphs that have spoken to us and invited a revisiting. God bless you guys real good.

  12. Leon…you said ” There is still much to remove, but through His love it doesn’t matter where I am only that I am with Jesus. Hallelujah!” Double triple Hallelujah to that! True rest comes when it is okay where we are as far as messed up things. It is about being with Jesus. His elbow is enormous. He is right here with us and He keeps saying to me…it’s okay you feel weak, it’s okay things aren’t all worked out, it’s okay you are how you are. I can only turn to Him more and more with that kind of grace and acceptance!!!! Another Hallelujah!

  13. Dan – I know about the yearning to connect with others of like mind on this journey. Doesn’t always happen, but the times it does are really wonderful and help us keep going!

  14. Thanks Carol.

    Now I want to hear what scared Wayne? When Wayne said to I don’t know who but, “you taking it that far?” That sound like a great story of itself

  15. Leon, it would be difficult to capture the feeling and particularities of the change I walked into that really scared the people around me. It has to do with taking my ‘white knuckled’ hands off of so many situations in a way that would leave most of the ‘wise’ thinking I was a fool. I was not a fearful person, or at least not what most would call fearful. But in my greatest season of change I came to find out that just about everything in my life…my way of being in this world…was all done from a place of fear…afraid of what would happen if I didn’t continue doing the things I had been shaped to believe I had to do/or should do. It touched the dehumanizing religious mind I was still functioning in. It touched the dehumanizing political mind that controlled me. And it touched the dehumanizing economic mindset that had a hold of me. All those things that had kept me acting very anti-Jesus/anti-Christ.

  16. And all that Leon brings this to mind.

    “There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn’t mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.” The Shack

  17. What you said makes all the sense in all the world. Having studied philosophy for many years, been involved in politics and of course having a “touch” of that economic mindset, I think, I completely understand when you say “dehumanising” dimension driven out of fear. Its quite a shock to realise how un-Jesus like all the traditions of the world are. As I slowly saw through it all, the greater fear is moving to something else. Not yet there, its great not having to know where exactly I am going. Super-rationality faith is the way to go. Thanks Kent

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