The God Journey

When we live by achievement, expectations, or obligations instead of beloved children on a journey we are ripe for condemnation, despair, and inner turmoil. After an important update on the need in Kenya, Wayne takes a poem from a good friend of his, and the events from the last week of Jesus' life to help explain why viewing life as a journey with Jesus as our guide will help us find his joy and his glory even in circumstances that are not to our liking. By waking up into his reality and following him as closely as our life in him allows, we allow him to unfold his purpose in us no matter what life throws at us. Podcast Links: If you'd like to help us in Kenya. The need has grown by another $12,000. Gethsemane by Jenny Rowbory Wayne's Virginia Trip Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

For seven years Wayne and Brad Cummings walked the God Journey together as they shared their journeys with a growing audience of people around the world. Since then the've been involved in different projects that has not allowed their lives to connect as frequently, but today Brad is back! He joins Wayne as the two get a chance to renew their friendship and catch up on how God has been leading them. They talk about the process Brad is involved in to adapt THE SHACK into a movie, about living inside a growing friendship with God, and the deep longing for God that continues to draw them along their journeys. (You can find more podcasts with Brad in the archives. He co-hosted the podcast through August 2012. Podcast Links: Update on Kenya Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

When Jesus told his disciples that what defiles a person is not what comes to them, but what flows out of them, he wanted them to know that his healing, freedom, joy, and life come from within. After a brief update on a couple of movie projects Wayne is connected to, he takes on some listener email and blog comments that demonstrate the incredible transformation that Jesus works in us to set Eden in our hearts. So many times we are inclined to think that healing or freedom rests on what someone else is doing and instead of finding our freedom in him we desperately try to fix or control others or even circumstances around us. Even when others are attempting to manipulate us for their own profit, his life in us is greater than anything this world can throw at us. Podcast Links: An Emergency in Kenya could use your help Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

"Spiritual maturity is moving from confident arrogance to thoughtful uncertainty." Why is it that those who least understand truth peddle their teachings with confident and demanding assertions, and while those who more clearly understand truth share with greater gentleness? Beginning with a follow-up email from someone who has been living through some of what Wayne shared in last week's podcast on Walking in Death's Shadow, it opens up some thoughts about Christians who are seldom right about the things they want others to know, but they are always confident that they are right. Wayne unpacks the diagram at left (click on image or here for a larger view), to help understand how we process life, and why those who are most coming to grips with what's true will also demonstrate a gentle and open heart in making it available to others. Podcast Links: An Emergency in Kenya could use your help Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney". Wayne's blog on his new book Jack's post on the Valley of the Shadow of Death Momastery on Facebook

Everyone knows it's coming but few people are prepare when the process of dying begins to work its way into our lives. Over the past couple of weeks Wayne has been walking with his family through "the valley of the shadow of death" and found out how much learning to live at rest in the Father's loves prepared his heart for things unforeseen. The podcast begins by revisiting an appropriate podcast through some listener emails and comments about coming to rest in his love and how God accomplishes that over time as he wins us into his affection. Then we'll talk about how to live there in some of the darkest and more difficult days that lie ahead for all of us. Podcast Links: Earlier podcast on Finding Rest In His Love An Emergency in Kenya could use your help Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

Some of my fellow-travelers to Israel took me up on my offer to share their experiences and add to the ones Sara and I offered last week. So by email, blog comment, phone, and Skype call, we're get to see this trip through their eyes. One of the undercurrents to all of this is how an environment of relational freedom allows the church to find expression simply and quite easily. You'll hear different facets of that in each of them. Community happens when we are free enough in relationships to love without agenda and without expectations, but simply accepting people where they are and becoming part of a life-giving dialog that allows Jesus to be magnified. (For those that want to skip the Israel stuff, you can pick up the relational freedom dialog at: 23:36). Podcast Links: When Grace Overruns Pain - Earlier Podcast With Paul and Janna Lafrance The God Journey 2013 RSS feed Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

Sara joins Wayne for this week's podcast as they share thoughts and observations from their recent trip to Israel with thirty-eight other friends and God Journey listeners. Though they were strangers to each other when they arrived, over the first few days of exploring Israel, they also experienced the reality of becoming an expression of Jesus' church as they grew in their love for each other. Not only did they feast on the joy and wisdom of those growing relationships, they also saw how that expression demonstrated his reality to others around them. Finding the power and joy of church life is not so difficult when people lay down their agendas and receive others into their lives with love and grace. Podcast Links: Learning Love More Deeply - Earlier Podcast about Sara's Journey When God Shapes a Family - Wayne's Blog on the Israel Trip The God Journey 2013 RSS feed Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

Finally, the promised update of Wayne's current project and newest book, Finding Church: What If There Really Is Something More? This is the rough draft of the second chapter entitled, "What if Jesus Taught Us Everything We Needed to Know About the Church?" We don't seem to believe that he did, since most Christians spend a significant amount of their time and energy doing things that Jesus never did and didn't train his disciples to do. Was he just not aware of the church during his ministry, or did he know that the church wasn't a means to accomplish anything, but that his church would take shape in the world as the fruit of people embracing the reality of his kingdom? Podcast Links: Wayne reads Chapter 1: She's Alive And Well in an earlier podcast The God Journey 2013 RSS feed Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

All growth comes from rest! If that's true then no wonder the new covenant sought first to establish us in God's love by ending any illusions that we had to earn it. It also explains why religion unwittingly pushes us away from God even while it claims to bring us closer. Wayne combs through some recent articles about the brokenness of religion as it seeks to press us into conformity and why so many people, including pastors, are rejecting our religious institutions. Then he plays an audio clip that explains the importance of love setting us at rest, which is critical to all growth--spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Podcast Links: Why Do So Many Pastors Leave the Church? Lifeway Statistics Washington Post Commentary: Church Shouldn't Be This Hard Video Clip: Why Children Need Rest from the video series, Relationship Matters The God Journey 2013 RSS feed Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

What most call success, is merely stress in disguise. Wayne met Philip Akintunde during his fall trip to the UK and a friendship began that continues in this Skype conversation between them. During a recent email exchange Phil shared some of his journey out of the value system of the world and into a freer space to live relationally, vocationally, and economically. He discovered God cared about peace more than currency, wholeness more than other people's perception of him and discovered that the joy God wanted him to know comes from a far deeper place than having the fancy car or the latest gadgets. This is a story of transformation from the insight out--beginning in the heart by the Spirit not the result of self-reformation by human effort. Podcast Links: Phil's Facebook Page Podcast with Daryl, When the World Disappoints Pastor Crap podcast The God Journey 2013 RSS feed Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

Many have commented that moving outside the confines of religious obligation took them to a lonelier space than they thought it would. For some that created an agony in their hearts that destroyed any hope they had for real community. For others those lonely stretches provided an opportunity for God to empty their lives of religious busyness and to discover how dependency on others warped the relationships they used to have. Wayne responds to a lot of listener questions and comments as he opens a conversation about loneliness and how God might want to address it in our hearts and in doing so open wide our hearts to a different kind of community he is breathing into the world. Podcast Links: Order ¡Él me ama!, The Spanish version of He Loves Me. Kindle e-book ePub e-book Printed copy Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

What if the thing you enjoy most also brings joy to God's heart as well? While recording one of the last Engage videos about God's pruning in our lives Wayne was struck with the phrase, "that my joy might be in you, that your joy might be full." Is that Jesus' purpose in our lives, to bring us to the fullness of joy? Religion leaves us with the impression that we are despicable creatures God has to clean up before he can hardly tolerate us. It teaches us to mistrust every desire we have and fear that every obedience is the thing we'd least like to do. But what if we have it all wrong, and that our deepest desires are his, too? Then sin is not about denying us what we really enjoy, but exposing the counterfeit desires in our hearts, so we can find those real desires that we get to share with our Creator. Podcast Links: Engage Video #23 Order ¡Él me ama!, The Spanish version of He Loves Me. Kindle e-book ePub e-book Printed copy Please keep our friends in Kenya in your hearts and prayers as God gives you grace. The need there is great. Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

How can we find freedom from the tyranny of what others think of us, without losing our compassion for them? Wayne takes a look at some news items from the past few months that provide excellent examples of how the world systems manipulate our flesh to our own destruction, and reward the kind of leadership that is most destructive to others. You'll get a taste of comments from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, singer Sinead O'Connor, and columnist Milton Freedman as Wayne talks about the world system that diminishes the lives of others by chasing after the almighty dollar. He also looks at a study of psychopaths and why some of that behavior is essential to be successful not only in business, but also leading religious organizations. No wonder Jesus taught us to live to the beat of a different drummer! Podcast Links: Order ¡Él me ama!, The Spanish version of He Loves Me. Kindle e-book ePub e-book Printed copy How Psychopathic Are You? Take the Test The latest joys and tragedy from our friends in Kenya Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

Dr. Stephanie Bennett is the Professor of Communication and Media Ecology at Palm Beach Atlanta University and has done extensive research into how technology is shaping human relationships. She's also a long-time friend of Wayne's and a fellow-traveler outside the walls of religious institutions seeking more authentic expressions of church life. Wayne had a chance to talk to Stephanie about her family's journey on the release of her newest book, Breaking the Silence, which is her second in the Within the Walls Trilogy. There her academic and spiritual worlds collide as she deals with the oppressive side of technology and the loss of real relationships in a virtual world. In their conversation you'll hear about what it is to let God unfold life before us instead of finding a strategy to follow, as well as virtual church and the power of real community. Podcast Links: Email Stephanie Wayne's review of Breaking the Silence and Within the Walls Order Stephanie's e-book from Amazon.com Order Stephanies printed book from Wildflower Press The latest joys and tragedy from our friends in Kenya Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".

How did the vibrant life of Jesus among the early church get replaced by a legal and administrative institution fragmented by a distinction between clergy and laity and separated from the real presence of Jesus even as it claimed to celebrate him? I've not read a description of that process any better than the one Emil Brunner, a well-known Swiss theologian and author from the mid-20th century, put into his book, The Misunderstanding of the Church. And it was first published in 1952! He concludes that the living church can only be a communion of persons and nothing else, and our attempts to put it in institutional frameworks has not only robbed Jesus of his essential place in the hearts of people, but also destroyed the kind of relationships that Jesus wanted us to experience together. Wayne reads excerpts from his book that not only explores the causes of institutional spiritual impotence, but also points out how our contemporary attempts to copy the illusion of a New Testament model sucks us into the same trap. Podcast Links: Order The Misunderstanding of the Church" from Amazon here The latest joys and tragedy from our friends in Kenya Add your voice to our question/comment line: (805) 539-6980 or Skype us at "TheGodJourney".