Justin and Trisha Davis | Breaking Free from the Messy Middle: One Choice Away from Change

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Before I jump into the episode, I wanted to remind you about all the resources that we have available at UsefulToGod.com. You can check those out at UsefulToGod.com. I also wanted to alert you to something that I think is pretty special. It's a German Reformation tour that we're running this fall. We'll be walking in the footsteps of Luther and Bonhoeffer and traveling from Berlin to Munich and just reflecting on the enduring witness of faithful believers. The tour runs October 30th to November 9th, and we're hoping that everybody can book by May 31st. Spots are filling up fast, so check that out. The link to that tour is in the show description of today's episode. So if you're interested, check it out. Now let's dive into this episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Justin and Trish Davis. They are the authors of a new book, One Choice Away from Change, and they're also the founders, and you run, Refine Us Ministries. So welcome. If you want to fill in anything there that I missed, that'd be great. But how are you guys? And welcome to the program. We're good. Thanks so much for having us. Well, there's a lot to fill in there, but, you know, we've been married for almost 30 years. It'll be 30 years in July. So, which we were talking how that's like, yes, thank you. We're like, that's amazing. But it's like, gosh, we're old. We did get married when we were 12. I'm the guy that I used to make fun of that pickup basketball at the Y. That's who I am now. But anyway, we have five kids that range in age from 28 down to 15. Okay. Very cool. And you're both in graduate school. You mentioned that in the pre-interview, so maybe give a shout out to your schools there. We'll give them a little free advertisement. Yeah, I met Justin actually at Bible college in the middle of central Illinois. It's called Lincoln Bible College, Lincoln University at some point. Yeah. And then I joke that I got my MRS degree because we got married and then four months into marriage, I found out I was pregnant. So our first kid came five days after our first year anniversary. So all these kids later, our youngest, our younger two are adopted. We adopted them, gosh, eight years ago when they were seven and nine. And so half of our kids have graduated from college. And I thought, you know, it's time to go back. So I actually just graduated with my undergrad in December and decided to just keep going into my master's. So I attend Indiana Wesleyan's online global program. Yeah, and I was inspired by Trish going back to school. And so in September, I started my graduate work. I had a 2.68 GPA in college. I just basically wanted to be there to play basketball. And so I was super intimidated to go back and I'm getting my master's in Christian leadership. And so, yeah, so it's been a good experience so far. I'm at Liberty University online. And so, yeah, I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of reading. And that's what I've recognized that graduate school is. A lot of reading and writing. That's pretty much how it works. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, so we thought, hey, we're releasing a new book. Why not, you know? Go to grad school. Are you guys from the Illinois area? Since you went to Lincoln, I'm kind of assuming maybe you are. Yeah, I grew up south of Chicago in a city called Joliet, Illinois. Sure. So the Wheaton Moody Bible, you know, those youth group days of going to events, you know, in the city. My mom actually worked downtown Chicago for 30 years. So I feel like I've lived a little bit in the entire, you know, region. But that's where I grew up. And I grew up west of Indianapolis, Indiana in a little town called Crawfordsville, Indiana. And ended up going to Lincoln because the basketball coach came to speak at our church when I was like a sophomore in high school. And so wanted to go someplace bigger and better, but ended up there. And God kind of used that experience really to transform the trajectory of my life. I wanted to be a basketball coach and a teacher and decided after my freshman year to go into ministry. So, yeah. So I know you are an adjunct professor or you are a professor at Moody. I used to be at Moody. So, yeah, yep. I used to teach at Moody. Now I teach at Wheaton College. So I was up in the Chicagoland area for a lot of years. Lived downtown Chicago out in Plainfield, which is right adjacent to Joliet. But I actually grew up probably maybe an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes from Lincoln. So, yeah, we were in central Illinois, Carlinville. So, yes. So a lot of common ground there. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of cornfields. A lot of Interstate 55 to get to, you know, anywhere you want to go. Traveling that up and down the whole way. Yes. That's awesome. Well, talk to me a little bit about one choice away from change. Why did you decide to write this book? What was the impetus for it? And maybe before you answer that question, just tell me a little bit about Refine Us Ministries. Yeah, I think, you know, Refine Us and the book are kind of overflows of our own story and experience. So Trisha and I got married in 95 and really had this vision to change the world through the local church. You know, we were young and in love and not necessarily bright. And so we dove headfirst into ministry and started doing youth ministry. And then seven years into marriage, felt like God had laid on our hearts this vision to plant a church for people who didn't go to church. And so we started our first church in September of 2002 and had no idea what we were doing. There's no church planting books out at this point. Like I had, you know, yeah, like a pamphlet. I maybe taken one class on, you know, church growth or something and thought I was an expert. But had this vision really to help people who are far from God, you know, come into a relationship with Christ. And so that was really our heart. And we, at that time, I think we equated ministry success with character development. And so, you know, it felt like if we were doing something for God and we love God, then our character would develop at the pace of our church growth or at the pace of our success. And that really, you know, James, this didn't really happen at all, especially for me. I just brought a lot of wounds and a lot of unidentified pain and sin into our marriage relationship. And it began to catch up with me. And what we realized now, 10 years into marriage and three years into this church plant, is that Trish and I had become really good ministry partners and really toxic marriage partners. Everything from the outside looked great, but just the internal aspect of our relationship and my relationship with God just really began to show a lot of deficiencies. And so all this culminated in October of 2005. I came home from church and told Trish that I didn't want to be in ministry anymore and I didn't want to be married anymore, that I was having an affair with her best friend and I wanted to be with her. And I wish, you know, almost 20 years later, I wish it was a confession of remorse or repentance. It was just a confession of resignation. And, you know, when you give to a relationship and you give and you give and you don't get anything in return that you think you deserve, what begins to happen is a sense of entitlement begins to live in your heart. And that person can never repay you all that you think they owe. And that's kind of where I was with Trish. She wasn't gonna be the wife I felt like I deserved, and so I was done. And at that time, we had three boys. They were 9, 6, and 3. And, you know, the church was, you know, three years old and we had grown to 700 people and everything just imploded. And because I wasn't broken, Trish kicked me out of the house and we were separated for two and a half months. And we didn't talk for the next 10 days. And God began to use that separation just to break my heart for our marriage relationship. And so I started going to counseling by myself. And then a few days after we separated, Trish and I started going to counseling together. And that really began a restoration process, you know, that continues to this day. And I share all of that context to say, we had no vision of ever going back into ministry or ever doing anything with our marriage story because I grew up in a church culture where once you were a morally failed pastor, there was, you go be an insurance salesman. That's your future. And so we were asked to share our testimony at a local church here in Indianapolis four years after the affair. And that really kind

For married couples specifically, correct? It's kind of for anybody who is, like you described, sort of carrying this baggage into ministry with you or believing that fallacy that as your ministry grows, you're just going to grow with it from a, you know, from a character perspective, that kind of idea, right? Yeah, and the conversations we were having, we tell people all the time, like, the affair gets all the attention. It's what, you know, people hear. But the affair was symptoms to deeper issues in our individual selves, in our thought processes, our belief system, our theology, everything that we thought at the core was just be a good person. And if you are good, you'll be successful in God's eyes and then everything else will just follow suit. And what we realized is so many people want to be healed. They want healed relationships. They want to walk in freedom. But we get stuck in cycles of unforgiveness and shame and blame and thinking about going back to our past feels so overwhelming. So in the chaos that feels like life, decision fatigue is a real thing. And so many of us stay stuck in relationships, stuck in our relationship with God. And when we feel stuck, probably the most dangerous place and the heart behind the book is when you feel stuck and you feel like there are no options for change. That's where hopelessness seeps in. And when you don't have hope, you feel helpless. And what we've come to realize is we've heard crazy stories. Our story is crazy. People ask, like, how? And what we recognize is that you are not as stuck as you think you are. That literally one choice can change the trajectory of your life. And it's not a five happy hops to a better you. It begins with the first choice that we talk about is just getting honest. Being honest, where are you in your relationship with God? What do you think about yourself? What do you, what is the truth about your relationships? And it's freeing to be able to say, you know what? I am in a messy middle and it, it, it's messy and I don't know what to do with it. And I don't even have words for it. It just feels messy. And so I feel messy. Yeah. Talk a little bit about the messy middle, because that's an important concept in the book as I understand it. It's, yeah. So just describe that for folks, the messy middle. It's, you know, when we talk about our story, there's this big moment of failure and it's almost something we can wrap our minds, our heart and minds around. Like there was failure, sin came into the picture, healing needed to happen. But oftentimes it's the little messes in life where we have, we feel slighted, we feel forgotten, we feel hurt and the messy in it. Our messes are always like in the middle of life. It's like they come at the worst times. And so when we don't know what to call it, and we don't know what to do with it, we hide our messes. And I think that for the most part, that feels negative. Like shame on you for hiding your mess. But what we've learned over 30 years of walking with students and singles and married couples, even retirees, is that most often we don't know what to do with it. And so we do our go-to and that's just to hide it, put it away, deal with it later. And then several years of messes later, you try and open up that closet and all the messes come spilling out and you think, gosh, where did this come from? And so the messy middle is really the journey of understanding your why. Like, why, why did I hide that? Why, why was I willing to put so much under the rug that I literally was tripping over it every day in my life rather than just like pulling the rug out and going, okay, let's figure this out. Let's figure this out. But again, that decision fatigue of like, if I do that, oh boy, like I don't know if I can handle it. And the reality is you probably can't, but with God, literally all things are possible. Yeah. When you talk about decision fatigue, and I'm just trying to think it all through, but you know, you, you start hiding one thing, by the time you hide the second thing, that decision fatigue is getting bigger. And it's almost like, I talk about weight training on the podcast an awful lot. And so, you know, you just keep putting weight on the bar and eventually you're not going to be able to lift it. It gets really daunting because, you know, you're just not going to be able to get it off the floor. And that's what it feels like to me when you're talking about, you know, hiding things for a series of years, it, it almost becomes, it almost starts to feel like it's necessary to hide it and keep it hidden. Because if you open it up, it's just going to slaughter you. Like you're not going to be able to lift any of that off the floor. Is that sort of decision fatigue you're talking about? Is that a picture of it? Yeah, for sure. That's a great illustration. I think, you know, for the most part, when we think about hiding things from people that we love, from God, we don't compromise truth in our relationships because we want to be liars. We compromise truth because we want to be loved. And so we have a pain quotient that we put on every relationship and we think this is as much pain as that person can handle. So this is as much truth as I'm going to give them. And what we don't, what we fail to realize is there's destructive pain and there's redemptive pain, right? As you go through the process of weight training and lifting weights, it is not without pain. Right. But is the pain of working out greater or less than the pain of laying on the couch? Well, eventually it's going to be less because the pain of not being in shape is going to catch up to you eventually. And I think the same thing is true when it comes to this idea of hiding and this idea of the decision fatigue. It's like, my counselor used to tell me, Justin, you lie when the truth will do, right? Like I had become so used to exaggerating or adding or embellishing a story or a sermon illustration that it became this, you know It became this idea of image, you know, creation or protecting my image. Brennan Manning, you know, calls it the imposter. And we create these imposters that we present in different environments in our life because we want to feel accepted and loved. It's not from a malicious standpoint. And so when it comes to this idea of transformation and change, God doesn't transform who we pretend to be. He only transforms who we actually are. And so it's not until we are willing to offer the authentic version of ourselves to God and to others that the transformational power of Christ can actually be alive and work in our hearts. Do you find that, you know, as you're sort of working through that process, do you find that the more you tell lies when the truth will do, right? I like that. I like that phrase. Do you find that you start believing the lies, that, you know, this image that you're projecting becomes the self you actually think you are? Because there is a self-deceptive aspect of it that's sort of reciprocal back on you, that you no longer have a capacity to understand authentically who you actually are because you're so consumed with this image that you've created of yourself. That's so good. You know, the greatest of all deception is self-deception because if we can deceive ourselves, then everything we share with other people is filtered through that self-deception. In our first book we wrote in 2013, it's called Beyond Ordinary, and it is about marriage. This book is more about relationships. It's not about marriage. But in our first book, I share this story of coming to a place of like finally wanting to be a person of truth. And I confessed to Trish that I had been sexually abused and that I had struggled for the first 10 years of our marriage with pornography. And obviously those two things were additional bombs I was dropping in our relationship. And then I said, I've got to share something else with you. And she's like, what? And I said, I was never recruited to play basketball at the University of Evansville. And to her, on a scale of... That was like, okay. That was like a 0.5 lie. Right. For me, that was a lie I'd been sharing since I was a senior in high school. Yeah. Right. And so that lie actually became a part of my identity and it wasn't until I was willing to be honest with myself about that and confess it to someone else that I was actually able to then find healing from that deceptive gene that I basically had made a part of my spiritual DNA. Interesting. So, I mean, aside from the lying and the honesty, what are some of the other things? I mean, I've got to think, you know, shame is involved here. You know, at some point that shame just sort of piles up and you don't want to admit something you've lied about. There's probably a whole host of other...

sort of emotions and processes that people are going through that hinder them in relationships and keep them from presenting themselves as they truthfully are. What other aspects would you all highlight in addition to honesty? You know, what we have found and what we wrote about in One Choice Away From Change is oftentimes the lies that we're living out are messages that were spoken over us. There were words spoken over us that we turned into messages, and sometimes it was a compliment, like, gosh, you're so good at that. You're the good kid. Thanks for always helping out. And then we internalize that message of, oh, I have to be perfect or I won't be loved. Those words that we don't realize when we don't look at them, we are living out those messages that some of those lies we're living out, we have no idea where they came from or why we're doing it. And so we talk about part of breaking the cycle of, you know, feeling shame or blaming others is to understand how did you get to where you are today? Where did that messaging come from and is it true? And if it's not true, what can you do about it? Where can you... But I think to get to that is like, it is like bone deep. And so what we look at is, I feel such shame about this. And in the blame game, and Justin talks about kind of that journey of why we get there, but at the heart of it, it's truly a belief of like, how do I feel about myself and how am I projecting myself onto other people? So it's almost in that scenario, well, I'll give kind of an example that I thought about throughout my own life. I was voted most dependable in high school. It may be the most possible boring thing you can get voted as in high school, right? I was voted most dependable in high school. And I think throughout my life, there's been a tendency for me to act out that status. Now, I don't know, I don't really think I cared that much about being voted dependable in high school. But I think the insight has a tendency. There's a way for me to take it to its nth degree that I have to be dependable. And that if I'm not dependable, what am I? You know, sort of those kind of, that kind of verbiage and that sort of self-talk, right? When I'm thinking about it, it's like, well, I've got to be the dependable one here. I need to take care of everybody. And this needs to, like, I need to be in control of the situation. And you know, those kinds of things. And it sort of snowballs a little bit. Now, that's not all the time, but it's certainly part of the time. That's kind of what you're talking about here, right? You take something good that may be a valid observation about your character, your personality, your whatever. And you just sort of zoom into it so closely that it pixelates and becomes distorted, right? That it encompasses too much of your life now. And it becomes who you are as opposed to a characteristic of who you are. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yes. That's so good. One of the stories that I share, and we're not, the things that some of us struggle with, we're not always talking about sinful things, right? Like some of the reasons why we're not changing or a relationship has become toxic isn't necessarily over sin. It is over those messages. But as I mentioned, we have three adult kids. And when our kids were little, we would pray with them every night before they went to bed. That's what you do as a pastor, right? And we would pray with our kids, and we would tell our kids, you're going to be a world changer. God's going to use you to change the world. One of our kids loves that message. Got it tattooed on his arm. Trisha wrote it on his senior year. She wrote a letter to him and she signed it, Be a World Changer. He took that and got her writing tattooed on the inside of his bicep. Our other son, he and I got into a really intense conversation his sophomore year of college, and he just broke down and went off on me about how much pressure I put on him to change the world. Do you know how debilitating that is? Do you know how much pressure that is? Do you know you and mom travel all over the country and you're speaking everywhere? Do you know how much pressure I already live under? Now you're going to expect me to be a world changer? And so the message is, can be the same, but they're received through our own insecurities and our own identity and our own brokenness. And that message was a cycle in my son and I's relationship that had to be broken for us to have a whole relationship. And so, you know, some of the things that we talk about in the book, the ways that these cycles come up are, I lose my temper or maybe I drink too much or, you know, we look at the external things that we want changed and that's behavior modification. What we really wanted to get to in the heart of this message is, okay, heart transformation is going to change your behavior, but behavior modification isn't going to change your heart. So how can we break cycles at a soul and heart level that then affect how you operate in relationships? So, I mean, faith has to factor into this, obviously. And so, you know, talk a little bit about how you ground a lot of this change, not in behavioral or cognitive therapy or something like that. There's nothing wrong with those things, obviously, but how do you integrate faith into this such that people are really finding their identity in Christ and understanding who they are from that sort of theological anthropology, you know, what it really means to be human in relation to God, dependent on God, not independent from him. How do you deal with that in the book? What does that process look like for a person of faith? We kind of, we go back to the Garden of Eden and the first choice. You had the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and then you had the tree of life. So there's this opportunity that God gives us to walk in the cool of the day with him. And obviously the narrative of humanity, sin broke that, but we don't live in the Old Testament anymore. We live in the reality that Jesus did die on the cross and he took on our sins and it changed everything. And so through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have the opportunity to walk that out with God's power, like right, right now. And the reason it's so important to be a person of truth is that when we, when we lie, we cap off our capacity to be able to walk in the spirit. And what I love about Jesus is the messier our lives become, the more cool he becomes. Like, gosh, yep, he knew what he was talking about. And so when he gives, like when he, people ask like, how should I pray? And he, he gives the Lord's prayer. And there's a very interesting aspect that I hadn't really taken into consideration before, but he said, give us today our daily bread. And then he says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And what I realized is that a lot of these situations, God knew, or Jesus knew that we need daily bread to sustain our lives. We, we need forgiveness to sustain our soul. And if you look at just the little example of me writing a letter to my son for college graduation to say, or high school graduation, you're going to be a world changer. My heart in that, my words, the message I hope he heard is I believe in you. My second kid, the message that he heard from my words became a wound that I have expectations of you. And so for me to break that cycle, I have to make a decision. Am I willing to ask for forgiveness that something that wasn't intentional to hurt him, it did hurt him. That give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts. It's this reality that every day we walk in forgiveness, that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. While we were still sinners.

Christ died for us. And I write in the book, the struggle with forgiveness is we live under so many misconceptions of what forgiveness isn't that we feel like, I don't know if I can really trust Jesus' words to say, you know, you mean I got to do this on the daily 70 times 7? And the answer is yes, but it's not punitive. It's freedom. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I appreciate you bringing up, you know, the idea of asking for forgiveness for something you didn't intend. You know, there is a category of sins in the Old Testament that are unintentional. And they still need to be atoned for. And I think we see that even in the New Testament where you have this dynamic between Paul and the strong and the weak, Romans 14 and 15, where he's discussing, you know, listen, if something is going to make your brother stumble, don't do it. Like, this is not something you want to do, but you can imagine how some things that we would do unintentionally do cause people to stumble. And so, our dynamic is not about forgiving for the things that we know we've done wrong. Obviously, that's part of it. The other part of it is just asking for forgiveness in order to participate in building up the body of Christ to its maximal level. And so, I just love that you brought that out because I think oftentimes we just think about the things we do intentionally. But there's a lot that we just do unintentionally. It's just kind of messed up and messes other people up. And those things have to be fixed too. Yeah. Yeah, that's so good. And we get stuck because if I'm living out of words that became a message that became my wound that, let's say, I'm not good enough, and then my son comes to me and says, Mom, that really, it didn't hurt my feelings, but it set me on a trajectory. I could operate out of that message and that wound. I'm not good enough and I'm not, I can't even be a good mom. And so, when we're stuck in cycles, we bring those cycles to those type of moments in our lives and then relationship battles happen that become level 10 that are just level 2. And so, when we break cycles in our lives, it doesn't just bring freedom to you, it brings freedom to our relationships to be able to come. The goal of breaking these cycles has one purpose, and that's to be fully known and fully loved by God. And our inability to be fully known and fully loved, stuck in cycles, is where many of us live. And what happens, I mean, to your point, James, of sharing, like, that's your message of, like, you're the dependable one. That could also become your message of what you think God thinks about you. And so, if you're not dependable and, you know, whatever that means for you in your relationship with God, you must be disappointing him. So, it's just, it leads to freedom in so many different areas, not just that specific cycle that you feel stuck in. I understand. So, you've got this, when you said that, you know, the whole dependability aspect and the phrase of how you view dependable. There's a self-determining aspect to all of this. Like, we decide what it means to be dependable. We decide what it means to be loved. We decide what it means to be worthy of anything. And so, that self-determination is, you know, you guys took it back to the Garden of Eden. It's part of the problem in the Garden of Eden. There's a desire to self-determine one's life, to determine one's own course. And when we start to do that, our categories get all screwed up. And so, what we're, part of what I hear you saying is, you know, we do have to sort of set aside these things and allow God to have his way with us. We have to live life on his terms, allowing him to define who we are and what we do, how we feel about things, really shaping our affections and our desires and our identity as a whole. Otherwise, these things are just going to keep coming up, right? I mean, you're in that vicious cycle in part because you're the only one in that vicious cycle, like that kind of idea, right? Like, you know, in the prison of my own mind, I'm not going to escape it, right? It's like something else has to enter there. So, how do you think through that kind of dynamic when, you know, again, when you're looking at people who are trying to change and break out of these cycles, how do you coach them in a way that isn't, hey, you know, go, go pray, right? And they're like, well, I'm already horrible at prayer. I don't see how I'm going to pray. And like they just take that advice and it feeds right back into the negative feedback loop. You know what I'm asking? Yeah, 100%. Well, I love that you bring this up because I have an affection for the American church. And I also recognize that the American church model has set people up to feel like they're spiritually failing all the time because what we have convinced ourselves is if I'm struggling with something, my faith isn't strong enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not praying enough. I'm not reading the Bible enough. I just need to go to church more. I just need to, you know, join a small group. I just need to serve in the nursery because that's extra credit in heaven. Like we have all of these, we have written prescriptions to help the spiritual pain of our situations go away, but we have really not diagnosed things at a deeper level because our goal usually for American church is growth, not necessarily change and transformation. And so, I feel like what you're saying is so right on because when we get to this place, what we think is I'm not doing enough and I'm already stressed out. I'm already maxed out. I'm already, I don't have any more time. So, I'm just going to settle for this is what Christianity looks like. This is what spirituality looks like. And I'm never going to get it. And what we hope this, not just this book, but really God communicates to people is this isn't about you trying harder. It's about surrendering more. It's about actually recognizing I got to give up. I got to wave the white flag because God is so committed to my transformation that he promises to recreate me every day. Like those who are in Christ are a new creation, not an improved version of the old you. And I think that's what we've lost, I think, in the version of Christianity that is, you know, Instagram-worthy today. It's my little soapbox. No, it's helpful. I mean, I think the question it prompts, you know, are we looking for incremental change? You know, again, I'll go back to the weight room analogy, right, where, you know, I don't go in and throw another 90 pounds on a barbell and expect to bench it, right? You know, I'll put the two and a halves on each side and hope I can get it off my chest, right? That's an incremental change. But when we talk about transformation, the picture would be it's just done, right? There's something in us that clicks and it's all finished. Are you thinking of something in between those two, right, where, you know, this transformation is still in process and so there's still going to be some learning as we go forward, but that ultimately it isn't a, hey, I'm going to plan this out. And my goal for the end of 2025 is to get rid of these feelings. And here's the process I'm going to use to do it, right? That would be awesome. Right. I mean, it'd be like I plan my workouts, right? But that's not exactly what you're talking about, but it isn't also just sort of this magical transformation that God's going to do in us. Is that, you know, somewhere in that spectrum? Is that kind of the way you describe it? I can see why this podcast is really, you know, so good. It's a both and, which we talk about. I think the picture I have is Paul on the road to Damascus. There was that immediate transformational change, right? Yep. I'm not murdering Christians anymore. I'm going to go be the greatest evangelist of all time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But then there was also Paul calling himself the chief of all sinners. Yeah. So there was this recognition of, yes, my life is completely different and I'm going in a different direction and I'm sold out now for Christ. I also have this thorn in my side that allows me to rely on the grace of Christ in such a dependable way that I can't exist without his grace. I think that is the balancing act. Yeah. If you can go to the gym for the first time and be like, I went to the gym and you literally stepped in the gym, like, what's up? And then you left. Like, you technically went to the gym. But when you go to the gym for the first time, you don't know how to operate the machinery. You don't really know where the bathrooms are. Like, it's very overwhelming. Yeah. And the same principle to walking in the gym is the same principle of growing in our faith. You have to start somewhere. So you have to pick a machine. You have to pick a bench. You have to start.

start somewhere, but you can start somewhere just to start, or you can start with intentionality. And that's what we do when we coach people is, listen, James benches, I don't even want to know. I'm not going after James bench. I'm going after, like, what are, where are the areas that need healing? Where are the areas am I weak? What, what is my motives? Why am I here? Those are the questions we have to ask in life. Like, okay, I understand that you want that relationship healed. What's the heart behind that? Where is that person? Where, where are you in, in the mix of it? It's the duality of not being individualistic in our faith. We need community, right? We walk with the Holy Spirit, but at the same time, God created you so unique to your DNA. It's not an either or. It's a both and. So imagine walking into the gym and you have friends there who welcome you in and they've learned a little something over at another area of the gym that you didn't even know existed. It's like, it's like a win-win. We're changing the conversation to Justin's point of stop being bad, but we're answering the question that Jesus asked. Do you want to be well? And this is how we help guide people to, do you want to be well? And it's recognizing that God created you uniquely, your perspective of how you see the world, the, the words and the wounds that have been spoken over you. They're unique, but what unites us is that Jesus tells us that while we are all sinners, he died for us. Like we get to be on this journey together and it just, it changes everything. It changes our approach and it changes our desire to not want to hide messes anymore. We're going to call up that friend and be like, I got, I, I got some things. You know, I'm going to call up the friend and say, I don't want to go to the gym today. I don't feel it, but they're going to meet you there. It just, it changes everything. It's interesting to hear you talk, talk it through that way, because I think what it emphasizes is there is this degree of participation that you have to get involved with. And in other words, this isn't something that you solve in your head. This is something you solve by having new experiences and leaning on Christ and, you know, opening yourselves up, yourself up to others. And you do that probably little by little, you know, to your point, there's a, there's a shift with intentionality. And I, it reminds me of what Paul talks about in Philippians 4, where he talks about learning to be content, uh, with, with wealth or with poverty. And it's like, well, he didn't just reason that out. Like, oh, well, let me think about this. Right. I mean, the guy's been in prison. The guy's been, you know, he's had those experiences and as he's gone through them, he's leaned on Christ's strength and learned to be content regardless of his situation. And so there's this, this really active process that it sounds like you're asking people to go through, an intentionally active process of stepping out, doing this, and then stepping out, doing it again, doing it again. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's not just breaking cycles. It's creating new ones. Yes. You know, it's like, yeah, there's a, there's a, I'm not a psychologist, but I think there is a psychological aspect is if you just take something away and don't replace it with something else that's good, you're going to go back to what was destructive eventually. And I think that's the same, you know, concept here is, yeah, we don't just want you to break the cycle of unforgiveness. We want you to replace it with forgiveness, with God's grace, like recognizing how much of a mess you are and how loved you are is going to give you the capacity then to break the cycle of unforgiveness and extend that to someone else. So I think there is an active participation that we have to play in this. Otherwise, if, if inactivity would break these cycles, they would already be broken. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And this is a question about your process, like how you get people to actually do this, because when I was an academic dean, I had the privilege of having an executive coach for a year and we did like a 360 review. So, you know, my superiors, my, the people who reported me and then my peers all reviewed me. And then I sat down with my executive coach and she and I walked through some of the things that people thought were strengths, people thought were weaknesses. And then she helped me sort and sift, um, which parts to pay attention to, which was actually really fantastic. You know, and she was like, yeah, this one you, of course you should do this. Like it's not a negative. They're, they're mistaken about that. Right. And she'd like take someone off the table and she'd be like, but these, these are things you really can, you need to change. And so we're going to work on those. My point in saying all that is that I had the, after I'd gotten all this feedback, all this sort of counsel from folks, and I had a guide that I had a pretty clear understanding of what I needed to do and how I needed to do it, how I was going to go about exercising my leadership in a different way, um, consistently so that I could change my leadership. So in this scenario, like, like what my head is going to is how do you get folks to, to understand, like, how do you give them that initial feedback? Because these are pretty, you know, in leadership, I wasn't in like a real fragile state, right? I knew what I was signing up for and I was kind of prepped for it, you know, but for folks who are really struggling with these relationships, how do you create that, um, that moment where you can kind of speak a word into their life and not break them? Um, how do you navigate their own fragility so that they're, they're ready to receive a message and then start walking forward as opposed to just sort of sitting there and shattering over thinking that anyone would think that they ever need to change. And oh my gosh, my image isn't what I thought it was. And you know, that sort of downward spiral. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, such a good question. We really wanted to walk out. There's a fine line we try to walk in the book and really in our ministry in general because we don't want it to be about us. It's about the reader, right? This book is about the reader. At the same time, we do our best to leverage our story and experiences and failures and examples from our own life. How we phrase it is we go first to give people courage to go second. And so there's a level of authenticity and vulnerability that we try to share in the book to not shine a light on us, but shine a light on the dysfunction in us that was then brought healing so that the reader then has the courage and the capacity to say, well, if God can do it for them, I'm not as jacked up as they are. So I can know he can do it for me. So there's a sense in which your own vulnerability creates that space for them to be vulnerable. Yeah, it's like we want to try to create a safe place. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. At the same time, I think if you were to ask from like a life coaching perspective, you gave such a beautiful example of the ingredients that is a must to be able to move in that direction. And the first one is the willingness to be intentional with your own life and recognizing it's really not up to anybody except for ourselves to take that initial step. Secondly, and this is so hard, but being open to what other people are saying, and you did it in such an intentional and beautiful way. And most of the time we're getting that feedback out of negative situations. Right. Rather than like, hey, who are a few friends in your life that do show up? Ask those folks. Ask the people you work with. So teaching them how to get good feedback that isn't just all, you know, you're perfect, but people who love you and that are for you. And so that intentionality piece, that willingness to be open. But I think what I'm most passionate about, because I believe it's in our DNA, is that God has wired you to be an expert of your own heart. So you may not understand like what you need to do to find healing, but someone may say to you, gosh, you're a really, and you may say, oh, I get, I thought I was this, but I must be that. And then you try and fix a problem

life. And it's trusting your heart to go, gosh, I do, I feel like this in my relationships, and even if it's not true, it's how I feel. And that is like, OK, now we're getting honest. And so when you get honesty, intentionality, and then equip yourself to gather information that helps you grow, it's solidifying two very foundational parts of our faith. And the first is our identity, which is non-negotiable. We are chosen, loved, redeemed by Jesus. No circumstances, nothing you do, becoming a better leader, being an awful leader. It can't change that foundational part of who you are. But at the same time, we have the opportunity to look at growth as opportunity rather than growth to make us a better version that Jesus will like us more. Yeah. Let me ask kind of a sideways question just because I'm interested. So, but I've found that when I've coached leaders and talked to other people in more public ministry spaces, that one of the things that they often struggle with is the criticisms that come from what I'll call um critics at a distance, right? Many times we refer to these as trolls, right? Um, but it seems like such a pejorative word, but critics at a distance, people who don't particularly know you, you know, they don't, they don't have any, any real relationship with you, but they're willing to sort of lob a grenade in and, and, you know, sort of critique everything that you're doing in a relatively harsh manner that doesn't seem like they're particularly interested in building you up. They're just interested in blowing you up. And so I find that when I'm dealing with leaders and, and it, it's exacerbated by the digital space. And so I'm wondering if you find something very similar with people you're working with and how do you counsel them to either avoid those online spaces or learn to ignore voices that are obviously not intending to build you up? Yeah. I, I write a, I write a part of the book about people pleasing and how, you know, we're called to be um pleasing to people, but not people pleasers. And I really struggled with this throughout my whole life. I went into a counseling session and was talking with this counselor, my very first session, and he said, after I got done with my little monologue, he's like, yeah, I think I can really work with you. A lot of the pastors I deal with are people pleasers. And I said, wait a second, you think I'm a people pleaser? He goes, no, I know you are. I just need you to think you are. And I, if you, if you look up the one star reviews of our book beyond ordinary, my favorite one, my favorite one-star review is This book should be titled The Diary of an Arrogant A-hole. And, uh, and they were talking about me, not Trish. And, um, and that really messed with me for, for a lot, you know, a long time. And there's more one-star reviews than that one. That's just my favorite one. But I think a lot of times when we live from the approval of God rather than for the approval of people, it helps us reorient some of the noise that we feel and some of the expectations that we think other people have of us. When, when I was doing research for the book, there was an article I came across by this PhD from Harvard and the, she wrote this article entitled No One is Thinking of You. And it was basically the scientific data behind how little other people think of you and how much you think about what other people think of you. Right. And the whole point was if you think they're thinking of you for one minute, try maybe 10 seconds, right? But we orient our entire public persona around what other people may think. And the truth is they're not even thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves because that's how selfish we are. Right. I think the people pleasing dynamic is, is really problematic these days. I will admit, I don't read comments on anything. If I put it out, I don't read the comments. I don't read the reviews. Um, I guess I'm happy they're there, but I really, I don't do it just because I'm not sure whether the good ones or the bad ones really give me a sense of what I'm doing. You know, I, I really tried to whittle it down. This is what the advice I give to people is, um, I wrote a little blog piece. It's called, uh, I think I call it like, um, I'm sorry, I wasn't listening and I'm not going to. Um, the whole idea was that there are just some people that I'm not going to listen to. Um, I, I know they don't really know me. They, they haven't taken the opportunity to get to know me over the years. And so if they critique me, it's like, well, that's just sort of like a out of left field sort of, you know, response. I'm not going to listen to that. I'm going to listen to the people that I've had relationships over the years who actually know me and understand my life and, you know, the varying things that are going on in my life and may have better insight into, wow, uh, you really biffed that one, you know, maybe, maybe there's some explanation here. Like, but I, yeah, I really tried to counsel him. Like, don't just don't let other people in your head. You know, you gave your own answer of like, who's in your sphere. Who are the people that you know your heart? Who are the people that are going to call you out or, but we were, I don't know, as a, as a woman, I find myself oftentimes speaking, Justin and I speak a lot together. And so I'm often the first woman to speak at a church and it's been awesome. I'll get invited back and I'm the first woman to ever speak by herself. And this was like recent, like last year I was in Florida and spoke at a 150 year old church, large church. And I was the first woman speaker. And so, you know, criticism, you know, I'm either a unicorn or other things. Yeah, but I had a woman come up to me and she was just vile and I was like, I, I was, I was thrown. And then she emailed me that following week. And she was really broken in her marriage. And she was upset that my marriage restored and hers didn't. And so that moment changed me to actually become an expert in listening. You listen, what is the pain behind these words? What is the worldview? What is, what is the broken Holy Spirit that's happening? And when I can respond appropriately with kindness, not pleasing, not you're probably right or, but I'm sorry that that hit you that way. Um, how can I pray for you or how it sounds so cheesy, but the disarming that happens in those conversations, like those are the people that it's, it's, they're worth listening to, but we can't do it for all people. It just, you know, you think about the ministry of Jesus. He had a small crew for a reason. And even his crew was like, I'm better. You're better. Like they were all messed up too. Like poor guy, like couldn't even get like, you know, a crew that was just. But if that's who Jesus invited in his life, it's an example of you probably have a very small sphere of people that are going to be able to do that in depth about what you're writing, what you're doing with your life. And everybody else brings all of what we've talked about this whole conversation. They bring in those words, those messages, those belief systems that even if you said the dress was blue and they're like, no, I saw gold. It's like, if that's how they see it, it's how they see it. Trisha is much more empathetic with me than me. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really good insight is to recognize that, especially in a person to person interaction, like your interaction with this woman at the church, cultivating an appropriate care and concern and a curiosity about the other person you're speaking to is, I think, really a great insight. And, you know, limiting the way that impacts you is different than being able to be open to having curiosity and concern for that person. And so I think that's a really great point. I will tell a story real quick of Justin and I speaking at a very large high church. Like they just built their building with brand new mahogany pews in the South. And I'm already nervous because I know I'm the first woman at full orchestra, full robed choir. And we get up to share our story and I go rogue. I start talking about the Israelites. I'm not, I'm like trying to teach a different message. Justin thinks I'm having a stroke. Like what is going on right now? You don't even know how to fit in what I'm supposed to be saying.

It was a mess. And so we go to sit down afterwards and we pull up our hymnal and he puts it in front of his face. He's like, what was that? And I completely freaked out. And I made all these assumptions about the people in front of me. And then, James, the the guy that was leading the orchestra, the choir director in the three piece suit, makes a bee line for us. I'm like, here we go. And he starts sobbing. And he says, your story is my story. And this church has loved me and my family back into a relationship with each other and with God. And it was like, OK, God, I'll never I'll never not listen to you again. You know, so I, I just that story to say, don't change the message ever again. We bring our own humanity into those spaces as well. And we have to recognize that as well and not beat ourselves up for it when people are pretty crappy and it does hurt. And sometimes it's just OK to say that was awful. And that was all. Sometimes I think you're an arrogant a-hole. Well, hey, we're we're closing in on time. And so what I usually like to do with my guests or I think some of them think to my guests, is ask them sort of a surprise question at the end. And so I'll ask you guys this question. It's not intended to sort of rip on the church. I've tried to give that disclaimer. But I think that, you know, as a collective, Christians are limited. We don't always see what we should see. And so the questions just, it comes with that heart, you know, what should we be seeing that we're not seeing? So here's the question. What do you think the church needs to be doing that it's maybe neglecting or just not noticing in order to be and make disciples more faithfully today? That's good. You know, this has been a journey that I've been on for the last couple of years in my own personal walk and in pastoral ministry because I grew up in the seeker movement of the church. And I'm 51 and, you know, Willow Creek and, you know, that that model of ministry was kind of like the gold standard, you know. And, you know, the big show, the lights, the impressing people with excellence and all that. And over the last year and a half, our son has started a church and it's very stripped down. Sometimes they're just an acoustic guitar. It's in a, it's in a rental facility, but they focused on community, not just like a small group, but like they're, they have dinner together. Their small groups have dinner together every week. There's a depth of intentionality with their spiritual growth and understanding the Bible. They don't, they don't put scriptures up on the screen. They encourage people to bring their Bible. Well, oh my gosh, I would never do that. You know what I mean? Like people, people can't bring their Bibles, you know, you're going to offend somebody. And just to see, I've, I've, I would say that my perception of the church was way more shallow than my son's church is becoming there. You know, they're not a mile wide and an inch deep. They're becoming a mile deep and people are being baptized and people are coming to faith. Like it hasn't been this, you can, you can lead people in spiritual depth and not make them feel spiritually excluded at the same time. And so I think that's, that's been something that's really been reshaping my own theology and perception of the church. Cool. Thanks, Justin. Trisha, anything? As a little girl, I grew up with a brown skinned dad. My dad's Hispanic and my mom is white. And growing up in Joliet, Illinois, I grew up just in a multicultural and not, not just like black, white, Hispanic, but you could be white and you were Italian or you were Jewish. And we had the best like cultural days. And it at school and it's all I knew, you know, we had people with all kinds of differences and we had grandmas and grandpas that came and read books to us. Like it was just crazy. Like this utopia of people. We had a family that were like a little person family. Like it literally, the representation was crazy. And so when I graduated from Bible college and went into ministry, I, I was shocked at the segregation of our churches. And I think my heart is for the invitation to change, to not just be inclusive because we're saying that word, but to get back to the beauty of how messy it was with the Gentiles and the Jews. Like every, every city they landed in, it, it was just like, and, and, you know, Jesus's crew is like, no Jews first. And then it was like, no, Jesus is like, no, this is like, like Gentiles too, guys, come on. We're, so I think I just have a passion for a shift of kindness to the conversation of those of us who are leading churches that are predominantly of, of one ethnicity or maybe even socioeconomic, whether wealthy or more poor. But that it, it becomes a shift of us and not us and them, but just us, like humanity in, in what Christ has called us to. And that's to love our neighbor, take care of the widow and the orphan that it's out of overflow of how we are loved and taken care of by our heavenly father, that it's just a no brainer to do that for the world. That's great. I really appreciate those answers and appreciate you both being here. This has been a great conversation. I'd encourage listeners to go out and get the book and, and check out the ministry. We're going to have everything in the show notes. So we'll have a link to the book. We'll have a link to the ministry. You can find out more about Justin and Trish and everything that they're doing at revive or refine us. And, and you'll have a link there to buy the book. I'd really recommend it. Both of you really just thanks for being here and thanks for this conversation. It's been great. Thanks for having us. It's been awesome. Absolutely. All right, everybody, we will catch you on the next episode of thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at life audio for their partnership with us on the thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. What do you do when your world is falling apart? How do you march when it would be easier to stay where you are and die? Join me every week on the March or Die podcast. And we'll discuss that and so much more.