The God Journey

Last week Brad and Wayne began a conversation with Gil Michel about the racial divide in our culture. Gil is along time God Journey listener, and a bi-vocational pastor of an inner city fellowship in South Bend, IN. They continue their conversation with an eye toward what we can practically do to make a difference in the racial tensions that divide us in the world. Podcast Notes: First podcast with Gil Michel Previous Podcasts about Race: Just Mercy and Reaching Across the Racial Divide NY Times Article by Eric Reid on Why Colin Kaepernick and I Decided to Take a Knee Gil Michel hosts a podcast at HisStoriespodcast.com and pastors That Church Downtown Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

After our last podcast on the racial divide, we were surprised at the audience reaction. Most white people I know loved Vince's perspective hoping it would define a way forward for us, while many people of color didn't think his experience spoke for them. We invited one of those who wrote us, Gil Michel to join us to further shed light on the racial divide and continue the conversation that will hopefully lead to better understanding. Gil is along time God Journey listener, and a bi-vocational pastor of an inner city fellowship in South Bend, IN. With the recent brouhaha between President Trump and the NFL, it seemed important for us to take another look at the racial tensions in our society. Podcast Notes: Previous Podcasts about Race: Just Mercy and Reaching Across the Racial Divide The Doll Test that Gil referred to NY Times Article by Eric Reid on Why Colin Kaepernick and I Decided to Take a Knee Gil Michel hosts a podcast at HisStoriespodcast.com and pastors That Church Downtown Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

There's a difference between God always being with us, and those moments where he specifically manifests his presence in the outpouring of his grace or the revelation of his heart and will. It seems that while we humans have the desire for God to make himself known, we are willing to settle for our plans and activities if he does not. Perhaps that is one of the downsides of our weekly attempts through song services and sermons to get God to show up and do something to make himself known bigger than what's in our own hearts. What if he doesn't conform to our schedule, nor seeks to overcome all we are trying to do on his behalf? Is this what Paul meant when we warned us about having "a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." (2 Timothy 3:5), and those who are "always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." (v. 7). The reality of God lies not through our activities, but our surrender to him and his ways. Podcast Notes: Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

Two major hurricanes have already assaulted Caribbean islands and the United States mainland this year. Every time a major disaster like this hits, someone speaking in the name of God positions it as God's punishment to command repentance or humility. Is that true? Does God roll hurricanes at the U.S. like bowling balls to teach us a lesson or to punish us for some sin? Brad and Wayne discuss all this in response to an email and look at what Scripture has to say about disasters as God's judgment. They also end up wandering into related topics like unanswered prayer, and why so many prophecies about coming disasters are wrong, ill-timed, and unable to communicate the life of God to people. Podcast Notes: Kirk Cameron's Comments on the Hurricanes Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

"Repentance is responding to God's invitation to life and living it differently than I already am." That jewel comes out of a letter to Wayne and Brad from Lauren in Tennessee. It is part of a compelling story where she was faced with choosing between doing what she wanted or responding to the Spirit's nudge to lay down her life for someone who was mistreating her. Jesus did say, "The greatest among you will be the servant of all," but that is never easy to live. That theme keeps cropping up as Brad and Wayne catch up from the last couple of weeks as they both helped move their sons cross-country. The kingdom of God invites us to live counter to the world's pursuit of its own pleasures and actually connect with others in a way that transforms us from the inside out and allows the kingdom to break into the world. Choosing his way in our circumstances is rarely our first thought, but doing so will shape us into the men and women he wants in the world. Podcast Notes: Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

Vince Coakley, host of The Vince Coakley Show out of Greenville, SC and a friend of Wayne's, joins the podcast for a very different look at the growing racial divide in our culture. From Charlottesville to #blacklivesmatter, it appears America is coming apart at its racial seams. Is it? How can we change the conversation so that we move toward constructive resolution of our racial angst instead of continue to diverge into a polarized culture? Vince shares from his own childhood and the lessons he's learned about navigating American society as he finds his identity in Christ. This is an honest conversation about racism, immigration, and the current temper of our political dialog. Podcast Notes: Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

A variety of reactions to an earlier podcast about God's judgment, draws Brad and Wayne into a further conversation about how we explore truth inside a relationship with Jesus. Is it enough just to seek what makes us comfortable or sets us at ease? Our exploration of his love does not negate our hunger for truth, but actually intensifies it. Love is the conduit in which God brings truth, especially the difficult realities in our lives. They talk about what touchstones they use to help them know if what they are seeing is just a comforting thought or the truth as God knows it. They talk about the value of listening to the Spirit, finding an anchor in the story of Scripture, and giving weight to the thoughts of those further down the road than they are. Paul's passion for righteousness did not change after his conversion, only the process to find it, did. It was no longer something he could attain by keeping rules through human effort, but that which would flow out of a growing trust in the Father's love. But want it, he did! Podcast Notes: Working Through the Story of Scripture: The Jesus Lens Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

Why do prayers for rain in Pokot go unanswered for tens of thousands of people starving in a severe drought, while God seems to change the weather for two Americans hiking through Norway? That provocative question rises out of an earlier podcast starts Brad and Wayne on a conversation about sorting through the ways God works in our world, and why he rarely does the things we think love would compel him to do. They talk about the inherent conflict such questions provide, and how it is tat we move from theories about the way God works, to actually discovering how he is working in and around us. How do we follow God with some degree of freedom, knowing that his thoughts are way higher than our own? Podcast Notes: Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

Some people don't think Brad and Wayne talk about they devil enough as a real adversary that has impact on the circumstances of our lives. Responding to a listener's question they share from their own experiences about the reality of the enemy in the world, how they deal with him, and why an unhealthy focus on what the enemy is doing can distract us from our life in Jesus. While aware of his reality, they are not fearful of his activity because he was disarmed on the cross by the work of Christ. They talk about dealing with exorcism, fruitless efforts to cast out the flesh, and how to resist the major way he works with us — by inviting us to live in the domain of his lies rather than the truth of who God is and what he is doing in people around us. Podcast Notes: Japan Connection Page Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

After a brief contemplation as to whether or not Mark Zuckerberg is the antichrist or a pastor wanna be, and how much gets distorted in our lives when we have to monetize our gifts. After that Wayne and Brad fall into a conversation about judgment at the end of the age. Are we going to stand accountable to God for what we've done and said during our lives and how we've treated others? Scripture seems to suggest that we will. Or, does the Resurrection zero out our past and everything starts over from there, as many believe? As God's children judgment is not something we need to fear, but embrace with joy. Father is coming to set things right in the universe and that may give us the opportunity to be part of some amazing hearings in the brokenness of human relationships. What a way to start eternity! Podcast Notes: Japan Connection Page Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

If God wants a relationship with us so much, why does he make it so difficult? Or does he? It seems like it some times, to be sure, but would that be true to his nature? Wouldn't he rather do it in the simplest way possible so that he would help us come to know him as he really is? What begins as a discussion of healing and some of the physical challenges in the Jacobsen household these days invites Brad and Wayne to discuss why our hopes in God sometimes fall short, and how it is that he could be revealing himself and we miss it because of our religious sensibilities or misplaced expectations. Learning to live in his love and life is a bit of a journey, not because he makes it difficult but because it is quite a process to connect broken humanity with the transcendent God who made heaven and earth. Podcast Notes: Japan Connection Page Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

Can you imagine a world in where people couldn't tell a lie even if they wanted to? Knowing the damage that deceit and duplicity do to relationships, that may well be heaven. But not everyone would agree since many use lies and pretense to cover their own shame and brokenness. Living loved will increasingly give us the freedom to see God as he really is and find our way back to honesty and truth. Perhaps it would be better said that heaven is a place where there is no reason to lie — ever! That's why salvation is not just about forgiveness, but finding a path to God that will transform us from the inside out, and why performance-based living will never set us free. Almost everything in Scripture can be turned into religious rules that kill, or be seen as relational realities that invite us to hope and freedom. Podcast Notes: Japan Connection Page Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

A genuine God Journey is the best adventure of all. Wayne is just back from South Africa and shares from his time there and the excitement of meeting so many young people finding traction in how to live loved. Brad's two boys are trekking through Norway, learning the difference between viewing a country from the train, or getting off the train and experiencing it for yourself. They also talk about an opportunity in Kenya helping a new group of people begin some agriculture, and then hit the mailbag where an email about a personal failure allows Wayne and Brad to revisit their discussion about how religious people add guilt to failure to great destruction and how religion divorced from a significant relationship with Jesus always ends in disaster. They finish up with new research about emotions that show they actually shape reality around us, not just our perception of it. Podcast Notes: Lyrics for "One" Hear Song on You Tube Human Emotions Physically Shape Reality Japan Connection Page Helping with Agriculture in Pokot Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

A dip into the old mailbag takes Brad and Wayne on a journey through the power of forgiveness in a curative view of atonement, what do you do when the Sunday service sucks the life out of your relationship with God, and how our so-called "Sunday worship" became so empty and lifeless. What Brad and Wayne celebrate through it all is the human heart that is unrelenting in its search for what's real and the risks it will take to find it. Some people settle for the comfort of the status quo even if they have to pretend, but those who continue to search for authenticity in their own connection to God will find it even though the journey be challenging and fraught with the mistaken accusations of those they love. Podcast Notes: Photo courtesy of Andrew Jacobsen Photography Christianity Today article: Do We Treat Sunday The Way the Earliest Christians Did? Japan Connection Page You can find our latest update on our work in Kenya here. Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"

What's so amazing about God is that he is deeply invested in the lives of his creation and often Scripture expresses that assigning emotions to God that parallel our own. And yet, many of us have been taught to cover up our more painful emotions instead of celebrating them whether we find ourselves in joy or sorrow. Love is not just a commitment it is expressed as a deep affection or concern. Brad and Wayne talk about the importance of our emotions and how they connect with God in ways that can touch us far more than the intellect alone. When we deny our emotions, however, we cut ourselves off not just from pain but from joy as well. They discuss how our emotions play into our relationship with God, inviting us into deeper spontaneity with him and more heartfelt engagement with people around us. Podcast Notes: Wayne's Tour of South Africa You can find our latest update on our work in Kenya here. Add your voice to our question/comment line via Skype at "TheGodJourney"