Kyle Norman | Finding Jesus When Faith is Hard

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, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Reverend Kyle Norman, and he's the author of a book, Alive, Loved, and Free, Finding Jesus When Faith is Hard. He also works a lot with Salem and their podcasting side, Your Daily Bible Verse. You might know him from there. And so it's great to welcome you here, Kyle. It's good to meet you. We evidently met over email. We were kind of talking about how we got connected, but I remember now. You just messaged me and told me about your book and coming on the show, so welcome. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's wonderful to meet you. I've been a listener of your podcast for a while. I love what you do, and so I'm super happy to be on the podcast. Appreciate that, man. Well, like I said before in the pre-interview, I read your book last night and so really appreciated a lot about what you wrote here. And just so you listeners know, you know, sometimes we have a little pre-conversation before we get on here, but I was telling Kyle, I really like the structure. It took me back to my Lutheran days, Monday, Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday. I was like, really cool. But before we kind of jump in, what prompted you to write this book? I know it comes out of a very personal experience, but can you kind of talk that through with our listeners? What was the impetus for the book? So the impetus for the book was really an intersection of two things. So the book talks about my experiences around my wife's diagnosis and battle with cancer. So that's kind of a lot of what I talk about. And so a lot of what I was writing, and just in terms of my own blog, was, well, it was kind of reflections on that and the discouragement that I felt in the midst of it, kind of the upturn of my whole spiritual life that happened in the midst of that time. And so it was a way for me to process things like that. But through that, the other component, which really drove me to write this, was recognizing that I'm a priest, and so I'm an Anglican priest. I've been an Anglican priest for about 23 years. And in every single church that I've been in, I've met men and women who carry around a secret guilt and shame, feeling like somehow they are doing the faith wrong because they are battling, does God actually love me? Do my prayers matter? I don't know if I'm really forgiven based on what I do. And these are people who sometimes have sat in the same pew for 30 years, but they feel like things are... And so reflecting on these conversations that I had with these faithful men and women about that kind of dynamic, and then recognizing how I went through this tumultuous time in my life, that really led me to want to write something that leans into that experience and digs around in it for a little bit. So that really what drove me to write Alive, Loved, and Free. Yeah, and you talk a good bit, like in the first part of your book, you talk a little bit about discouragement. And so I thought maybe I'd just ask you a question about how are expectations and maybe our, you know, Augustine often talks about misdirected desires, right? And, you know, and so we tend to want something that God doesn't want us to have, or we want something with the wrong reasons, or we, you know, we have this sort of misoriented, misdirected sort of perception about what should happen. Sure. And so I'm wondering, as you went through this time of discouragement, how did you process some of the expectations you had for life, how those weren't being met, and recalibrating to new expectations? Yeah, you know, so that's a great question. So one of the expectations that I didn't know that I had was that, you know, as a priest, I needed to have everything locked in. Like, what would people really think of me as a priest if I articulated in the midst of this time that I'm really struggling with prayer, right? Like, you know, that's not a good thing for a priest. And so I would mask it with a sense of kind of bravado or, no, everything is fine and all this kind of stuff. But underneath that was this feeling, like in some sense, that the life of faith, the expectation was that faith needs to make everything easy. And, yeah. Right. And so what recalibrated for me was this recognition that actually in these moments of discouragement, in this mess, this is a place where I meet Jesus in a new way. And so one of the things that I try to articulate is, could it be that the place where we are most discouraged in our life is actually an opportunity to meet Jesus in a new and powerful way, not as somebody who all of a sudden magically makes things better, but as somebody who dwells with us in the midst of what we go through. And so that was the recalibration for me, not that in some sense, oh, I was thinking about my struggle and my discouragement wrongly, and now I think about it right, so everything's okay. But actually, no, I can actually affirm my discouragement, my frustration, my wrestling, and be faithful at the same time. Yeah. And that wrestling and that discouragement and that crying out to God might actually be what faith is about in this moment. Did you find it, you know, you mentioned, you know, as a priest, you know, struggling with prayer wouldn't be a good thing, right? And, you know, sort of sharing your struggles with the congregation. You tried to sort of cover that up. I don't minister, like I'm not a pastor or anything like that, so I'm not involved in a congregation, but more where I see my lens is more towards scholarship. And so we're starting to see a little bit of an explosion of scholarship re-evaluating God and evil, you know, thinking through those themes, looking at lament as a Christian practice. And so I'm wondering, you know, from your side of things, as you're looking at this as a, you know, somebody who's leading people as an Anglican priest, do you think the absence of lament within the congregation is part of the reason why people feel like they're, you know, their prayer lives aren't right, or God doesn't love them, or what have you? Absolutely. You know, the, which, you know, if you think just the lament, right, the majority of the Psalms are lament. Yeah. You know, if we want to pray like Jesus, Jesus lamented, right? He wept over Jerusalem. He quoted Psalm 22 on the cross. So if we want to pray as Jesus prayed, we need to lean into lament, but often we don't. And I understand in some sense, you know, people come to church and, you know, we want them to feel good and we want them to feel encouraged. We want them to leave feeling more uplifted than when they walked in the door. So I understand all that, but what sometimes that ends up doing is making people feel like prayer can't involve complaints, that I actually can't bring the fullness of myself to God and I have to kind of mask things over of the near of, you know, pious respectability. Yeah. And so I do think that we need, particularly in the time that we're living now, I think we can, I think it's faithful and I think it actually unlocks something deep within us if we lean into lament. Somebody asked me the other day, just, you know, what's the purpose of prayer? And I think she was digging at, you know, is the purpose of prayer to, to change things? And obviously that happens. I believe God works in miracles. I believe God can kind of change people's lives. God can heal. But the purpose of prayer is to bring the fullness of ourselves to God and to open up ourselves. And that could mean, God, where are you? God, what are you doing? God, I don't understand this. God, do you even care about me? Like all of this kind of stuff. I think that's actually, again, I think that's a faithful, that's a faithful prayer. And that actually acknowledges that I can bring the fullness of myself to God, to Jesus because he's with me.

that he embraces me in my rawness and in my ugliness. Yeah. It's interesting. Again, I'm interested to know how, after your experience here, how are there ways you think you can cultivate that within your congregation? Have you tried to set that sort of aspect of spirituality free within your congregation, right? Giving people license to do more than just offer a quiet prayer request and then go on their way, right? But to really like, man, this is killing me right now, and I just need the time to talk it through in a corporate moment. Like, have you done anything with that? Yeah, so I've done two things. One, in our structure, we have somebody from the congregation, we call it prayers of the people, and they come up and they lead the intercessions and prayers. And so I've talked to them and said, you know, like lament is a thing, and we can do that. And I've even challenged some to, you know, to have that whole time as lament. When COVID hit and we were kind of all online, one of the people who lead the prayers actually did that. And they felt that that was the moment that they could kind of, before the congregation, articulate probably everything that the congregation was feeling, right? And so I challenged that, but it also is incumbent upon me as the priest and as the preacher to be honest and vulnerable, not in a self-focused kind of way, not in a humble brag kind of way, but in a way that says, that preaches, here's some of the struggles that I've had, and here's a time when I would try to pray and the prayers just felt empty. And here's kind of maybe what I learned and how I've struggled through it and what I've learned through it. And when we're honest about that, that allows the congregation to then feel, be honest about what they are feeling. And then the whole culture of the congregation just begins to change. Yeah. I had a former colleague, and he wrote a book on prayer, and I'm blanking on the title right now, but when we had our conversation on the show, he talked about his deep struggle with prayer, never really feeling like it was doing anything. Sure. Right? He would just talk and it just felt like he was just talking to himself almost. Yeah. And I think I'd certainly resonated with his perspective. Prayer has never come naturally to me. It's not something I, you know, the reading and the study and, you know, that kind of stuff. That's where you live. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like that works for me. I get it. And I feel very connected to God when I'm thinking deep theological thoughts and reading really, you know, deep theology. Like I love that aspect, but then when I have to pull out into prayer, it's like, well, this sort of intimacy, this sort of conversation is very difficult for me. And so I've had to find ways to sort of progress past that. But one of the chapters in your book is, you know, how to pray when you don't have the words. And so I'm wondering, just talk through your experience in prayer and what does that even look like when you're just sort of, you're almost sitting in stunned silence because something is so wrong that you can't even articulate what's wrong with it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Fabulous. So two things that I learned. One from a spiritual director, this guy named Father Bob, who was just amazing, who I was speaking to frequently in the midst of the time. And so I went to him one day and I, you know, sat in the room that we met and I just, I articulated like, you know, long, I do morning prayers. I do evening prayers. I have a liturgy that I say and I sit in the special chair and, you know, this has been a long practice for my life. And I said to him, like, I can't. All of these words that I've said that I've memorized, like I sit in my chair and I just go, like I just, I, it doesn't come. And I, and it was what's wrong with me? What's, what's wrong with my faith? These are some of the things that I felt. And one of the things that he said to me was that a child in distress doesn't need to say anything to their parents. It's just enough to sit in their presence. And so he said, claim the grace that you need to just sit there. Right. Dallas Willard says that, you know, the strongest Christians are not the people who need the less, less grace, but the people who consume the most grace. Claim the grace that we need. And I often go kind of go back to that. The other thing is if we recognize, oh, I just, I can't say, I just don't know how to say anything. I just don't know what to say. You know, I'm just kind of my capacity to think my way into prayers is just done. Then we can rest in the prayers of the community. I think it's really significant that on the cross, Jesus didn't utter an extemporaneous, well-thought-out, massively pious prayer. He quoted Psalm 22. Yeah. Right? And so when we don't know what this, again, this is about laments. When we don't know what to say or we can't just think of the words to articulate what we are feeling, well, the Psalms are the prayer books of the Bible. We can go to the laments and we can make their words our words. Yeah. And, and it gives us something to do, something to, to go through. What it might end up doing is unlocking a different way of praying for us and a different way of expressing what we are, what we are going through. I often tell people, pray as you can, not as you can't. Right? So if all you can do is just sit there, that's okay. Right? God knows God's with you. If you struggle through a lament, that's okay too. So don't, don't heap upon yourself a sense of condemnation that you are not praying rightly because you're not sitting in this effusive light of ease and heavenly glow when you pray through a hard time. No. Whatever your experience is, claim the grace that you need and trust that the one who goes to the cross and to death dwells with you in the midst of whatever death and hell you are experiencing in this moment. Yeah. And one thing I, I found myself thinking as I was reading through that, that chapter in your book and just kind of reflecting on prayer in general, uh, I started thinking through the conversations I've had with others. And so, you know, I've been married for, uh, 20, almost 26 years now. And there'll be times where my wife and I just don't have a lot to say to each other. Sure. Right. And, and so it's, and that's fine. I mean, you know, you drive in a car, you know, we, we took a trip recently to Nashville. It's a five hour drive. We didn't talk the whole time. Sure. Uh, you know, that, yes, we talked and we had a good time and, but there were times there where it was just being silent. It was fine and we can be comfortable in that silence. Yeah. But then there are other folks that I, I mean, I'll meet them at a conference or something, you know, and maybe we've worked together in the past and we didn't particularly like each other even when we were working together, you know, we weren't fast friends or something. And I always walk away from those, like, Hey, we should grab a coffee kind of conversations. And just thinking in my head, wow, that was awkward. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I think what I, what I came to in my reflection was, you know, prayer should be more like what I'm doing with my wife in a four hour, five hour trip to Nashville, right? That's how I think prayer should go. Sure. Yeah. But so many times when I go to prayer, it's more like the colleague that I didn't really like that's asking me out for coffee. And I have this really awkward conversation and I feel like there's something wrong with that. Sure. And I'm wondering if I just have that perception wrong. Like maybe sometimes prayer is just awkward, you know, maybe in that, and maybe that's okay. Uh, so any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think, I think prayer can be awkward. Well, and, and I think we have to, again, we claim the grace and we have to let ourselves off the hook. Yeah. Every, like if you read books on prayer going all the way, you know, even if you read brother Lawrence practicing the presence of God. Yeah. I would, I try to be in God's presence and recognize God's presence every moment of the day. Right. And you think, wow, that's just amazing. Even he said in his book, I've struggled with this for 30 years. Right. Everybody struggles with prayer. Uh, Henry Nowen talks about how we have to kind of reclaim the uselessness of prayer. The prayer is in some sense, like we enter into these times of prayer, not because they're productive, but because we are, we are embodying a relationship with God, with the Lord. So, um, and, and it can,

It can feel awkward and it can feel disconnected, and we can pepper our prayers with ums and errs and ahs and I don't know what to say, right? But that is all the stuff that is wrapped in grace. And again, what I think the heart is, is bringing our stuff, our raw stuff, our real stuff to the Lord, right? And that might mean silence. That might mean we can just not say anything, and as an expression of tiredness and fatigue and struggle, but also as an expression of love. People in love don't need to say anything to each other, right? It's enough just to have this silence, I'm with you, and all that kind of stuff. There are sometimes, you know, probably with maybe, I shouldn't say probably, maybe with your life as with my life, my wife, sometimes there are awkward conversations that we need to talk about in terms of where we're going together, right? Like, and all those kind of things. That's part of relationship. That's part of life. And I think that we have to reclaim that that's also a part of our faith. And it doesn't mean that we are faithless. It doesn't mean that somehow we are dismantling the strength of our relationship with Jesus. I actually think it's the opposite way. When we embrace those things as part of our life of faith, again, we actually find that we meet the presence of Jesus that is closer to us than we maybe have ever realized. 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. You talk about in the book, you talk about the feeling of condemnation, and I'll connect a couple chapters here, but the feeling of condemnation and the feeling of not being loved by God. And it's difficult for me as I read those chapters not to think that those emotions contribute to this sort of awkwardness. Like we're basically creating a vicious cycle, right? Where I start to feel condemned and I don't feel like God loves me and oh, now I'm really bad at prayer and oh, look, I can't think of what to do, you know? And it's like, you have this sort of odd narrowing that goes on so that at some point all you're really feeling is condemned by God, not loved by God, and inadequate to serve him. And so how do you, just talk a little bit about how you think through moving beyond feeling condemned, moving beyond feeling unloved. It is something that I've really had to work at. I'm the proverbial middle child. And so I compare myself. Like I was never as awesome and as beautiful as my sisters, as my younger sisters. I was never as cool and respected as my older brother. Like I was just always lacking, right? I'm the middle child. And so I had a lot of self-esteem issues growing forward, growing up. So I had to work a lot on, and probably for a case of about two years or so, tell myself every single day that I'm called to be nobody else than who I am in this moment, and I'm called to be nowhere else except where I am in this moment. And just, I had to kind of return to that again and again. Somebody once asked me, Kyle, do you always feel God's love? Because I don't. And I had to say no. Like one of the things I write in the chapter is that God's love is a fact. It's not a feeling. So God's love for us is not the equivalent of a schoolyard crush. It just makes us feel all butterfly and wonderful and all that stuff. It is a fact of God's existence, and God's love is fundamental to who God is. And again, what I think the heart is, is bringing our stuff, our raw stuff, our real stuff to the Lord, right? And that might mean silence. That might mean we can just not say anything. And as an expression of tiredness and fatigue and struggle, but also as an expression of love. People in love don't need to say anything to each other, right? It's enough just to have this silence, I'm with you, and all that kind of stuff. There are sometimes, you know, probably with maybe, I shouldn't say probably, maybe with your life as with my life, my wife, sometimes there are awkward conversations that we need to talk about in terms of where we're going together, right? Like, and all those kind of things. That's part of relationship. That's part of life. And I think that we have to reclaim that that's also a part of our faith. And it doesn't mean that we are faithless. It doesn't mean that somehow we are dismantling the strength of our relationship with Jesus. I actually think it's the opposite way. When we embrace those things as part of our life of faith, again, we actually find that we meet the presence of Jesus that is closer to us than we maybe have ever realized. 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. You talk about in the book, you talk about the feeling of condemnation, and I'll connect a couple chapters here, but the feeling of condemnation and the feeling of not being loved by God. And it's difficult for me as I read those chapters not to think that those emotions contribute to this sort of awkwardness. Like we're basically creating a vicious cycle, right? Where I start to feel condemned. I don't feel like God loves me. And oh, now I'm really bad at prayer. And oh, look, I can't think of what to do. And it's like you have this sort of odd narrowing that goes on so that at some point all you're really feeling is condemned by God, not loved by God and inadequate to serve him. And so how do you, just talk a little bit about how you think through moving beyond feeling condemned, moving beyond feeling unloved. It is something that I've really had to work at. I'm the proverbial middle child. And so I compare myself. Like I was never as awesome and as beautiful as my sisters, as my younger sisters. I was never as cool and respected as my older brother. Like I was just always lacking, right? I'm the middle child. And so I had a lot of self-esteem issues growing forward, growing up. So I had to work a lot on, and probably for a case of about two years or so, tell myself every single day that I'm called to be nobody else than who I am in this moment. And I'm called to be nowhere else except where I am in this moment. And just, I had to kind of return to that again and again. Somebody once asked me, Kyle, do you always feel God's love? Because I don't. And I had to say no. Like one of the things I write in the chapter is that God's love is a fact. It's not a feeling. So God's love for us is not the equivalent of a schoolyard crush. It just makes us feel all butterfly and wonderful and all that stuff. It is a fact of God's existence. And God's love is fundamental to who God is. And so we can, just as much as we can claim that God is here, so we can claim God's love is here. And it, I think it does take a certain amount of graceful boldness just to, sometimes I say, dare to believe it. In the midst of everything that I might be feeling or that others might say to me or what the devil might be saying to me or my own processes of you're never going to be good enough and all that stuff, is just to dare to believe that God is love and in him there is no darkness. And Jesus promises to be with me until the end of the age and all that kind of stuff. To rest on those promises and dare to believe those. And I think the more that we do that and allow those words to be louder than the words of our condemnations, our self-condemnations, the more we are able to possibly slowly, but continually work, work our way into this full-bodied acceptance of God's love in our lives, which is a fact, which is a fact. So it's not a, it's not a feeling. I don't feel God's love all the time. But just, but my not feeling God's love all the time doesn't deny the fact of

His capacity to understand. Right. And only when he steps into it, it's only when Peter jumps out of the boat that he is able to recognize, oh, something is happening here. Yeah, yeah. And so, absolutely, right? But, you know, when you were talking about this kind of this loyalty that it is everything, that it's not just this, you know, the butterfly, that, you know, back to Augustine, disordered affections. If we are chasing our affections, if we're chasing these butterfly things with things that make us feel good, then we are effectually not chasing God, not reaching out to God. We are actively worshiping something else, right? Yeah. So love is more about this loyal embracing of God despite what we might feel, despite what we might be experiencing, despite what others might be telling us about this, but this daring belief that no, in this moment, because of the incarnation, we can trust that we can trust that the Spirit of God is with me in this moment. And I'm going to dare to believe this and I'm going to dare to be faithful to that in the midst of my struggles and my wrestling, right? Israel is called Israel for a reason because Jacob wrestled and that was a position of faith and that has to be that for us as well. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, the wrestling with our faith is an aspect that I don't think we wrestling with God is an aspect of our spirituality I don't think we often think through very well. No. But as you go through hard times, you actually do think about it quite a lot. It's what you're doing. You know, you're trying to decide in some ways, how can I remain loyal? How can I remain loyal? How can I follow God? How can I walk with him in this moment of deep pain and suffering when it feels like he's nowhere near me? You know, you're starting to feel that sense of absence. I mean, this is the book of Job. This is, you know, lament psalms. This is, you know, all these different things. Yeah, I think that's a fascinating point. You know, yeah, one of the things I did want to ask you about, and I think it's a good time to kind of bring it out, but you talk about self-rejection a little bit. Can you talk a little bit through that and maybe how it relates to some of these other concepts we've been talking about? Yeah, so like, so self-rejection. So Henry Nowen said that the greatest danger to our spiritual life is our own self-rejection, right? It is this belief that somehow I don't measure or I'm not worth the promises and the goodness of God. And it works out in so many interesting ways, and we might not even understand this or understand that we believe this. You know, I've seen people in the parish, they affirm God's love and they affirm God's blessing and they affirm all of that kind of stuff. But when it comes to them, no. After everything that I've done, no, like after, well, you know, because I'm not the best Christian, so God blesses everybody else, but God doesn't bless me. One of the upturns that occurred in my life or the, you know, the kind of thing that caught me off guard was my wife got cancer and all of a sudden I started asking questions I never thought that I would ever ask. As somebody who went through seminary and all this kind of stuff, started asking, oh, is this God's punishment on us? If I was a better priest, would this not have happened? If I was, you know, like, and so, you know, it's all of these kind of insipid little things that make us feel like there's some legitimate reason why God is hurling a lightning bolt of misfortune at us. Yeah. Which sometimes can go very, very, very deep. Yeah. I knew somebody once who grew up with a, you know, a faithful aunt who whenever they stepped out of line, they would say, God will get you for that. You know, if they knocked something off the table, God will get you for that. And so they grew up with this feeling like anything that was going wrong or awry in their life, this was God getting them for whatever it is. And as much as you say, well, God is love, God is forgiving, God is grace, Jesus on the cross, the resurrection, new life, as much as you say that, there is that voice, God's going to get me, God's going to get me, which just turns into this cycle of, well, so I'm not actually loved as much as everybody else. I'm not actually blessed as much as everybody else. God is against me more than God is, you know. And so, and all of that stuff, it just eats at us and pushes us away from God. And so the more that we can recognize that, that we are surrounded by the presence of God, that Jesus on the cross is Jesus for us, and have that to be our vision and claim that and wrap our arms around that as much as we can in the midst of whatever we're going through, the more we actually meet a love that embraces us in that moment because the incarnation is about Jesus dwelling with us in the midst of the horror and the heartache and the mess. So as I was thinking through that idea of self-rejection, and even just the way you articulated it now, I think drives home something that was sort of itching around on my brain while I was reading the chapter. But it feels to me that it's the opposite side of the coin of a prosperity gospel. You know what I mean? We're rewarded now for being righteous. We're rewarded for being faithful. We're rewarded for giving tithes and all these kind of, you know, you could take it out to the nth degree. And then you flip the coin over and you say, well, we're punished for not being, we're punished for not, you know. And it just feels like we've, I think a lot of times, practically, I would even say this about myself, practically, when you're looking at objectively, and maybe it's just something about the pain of the experiences that we're having, we lose sight of the fact that the arc of Jesus' life is glorification, ascension and glorification through suffering. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, it's hard to read the book of Revelation and the encouragements to, like, let's say, the church in Smyrna, right? Hey, continue to overcome, continue to suffer, but suffer faithful to me and you'll have the crown of life in heaven. It's like, man, that's hard for us to grasp, that our faithfulness to God isn't going to necessarily yield in the moment. No, sure, yeah. Positives. But it's going to forge us in a way that we participate with him in the new heavens and the new earth as, you know, faithful worshipers. You know, we've been, the dross has been, you know, pulled off and now we're refined through these sufferings. I don't, it seems like such a clear biblical teaching, but we get it wrong both ways. We do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and, you know, this isn't a glorification of suffering, right? This isn't worm theology or anything like that. 100%. Right? Yeah, yeah. But we do have to recognize, like, I love the fact that all the times that Jesus says, follow me, follow me, follow me. Where is he going? He's going to the cross. That's where we follow. Right. Right? Like... Well, he doesn't even sell it that well, bro. I mean, it's like, you know, the foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. But follow me. Exactly. Follow me. Come on. You know, yeah, exactly. I think, I think it was Gregory of Nyssa that says, whatever, what is unassumed remains unhealed, right? And so, like, whatever is not taken up within, within Christ, the raw, the ugliness, whatever does not... Yeah, that's great. is not a part of Christ's humanity. Yeah, yeah. Like, we actually end up denying the incarnation, which is the fullness, which is at the heart of our faith. God with us. Right? And so, yes, this prosperity gospel that says, well, God only loves you if he gives you a mansion. Right? And if, if you get laid off your work or whatever it is, well, that just God was clearly just not upset, was unhappy with you. And, or you just need to have more faith or you just need to pray more. Um, if you're going through something and it's not being physically healed, well, that's just you're not praying hard enough and all this kind of stuff. And, and it turns God away from a God with us and a God of, um, a God who just kind of works the scales. And that's just in kind of a puppeteer kind of God. And that's just, that's not the biblical understanding of God. Um, the biblical understanding of God is Jesus who comes, who Christ

He's in the garden, who feels alone, whose friends abandon him, and who is nailed to the cross and experiences the harshest experience of human life that could ever be experienced so that we can know that that is the place where God goes to to be with us. Yeah, 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. And again, I'm with you. We don't want to glorify suffering, but as I just think through the various passages in the New Testament, you know, find it all joy when you experience trials in James. You have in Peter this talk of filling in the sufferings of Christ, right? It's also, and I think this goes to your point, that these points of discouragement don't have to be, they can be opportunities to experience Christ in fresh ways. And so, again, agreed. It's not a glorification of suffering, but it is a reframing of suffering. It is. It is reframing, yeah. It's an immersion of suffering into a deep and abiding unqualified love of God that says, if this is where you're leading me, if this is the valley of death that you're leading me through, I shall not want, right? I know you're with me. I won't fear. I'm going to keep my eyes on you. That kind of idea. Because there is this sort of rich teaching in scripture about suffering. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we don't wish it upon ourselves, but we shouldn't not expect it either. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And so we need to understand how to frame that for ourselves. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And for me, the journey to the cross is the way that we frame it, right? The struggle that I always had in writing the book, because I wanted the three days before Easter, I didn't want to get to Easter. So the book doesn't talk about the resurrection, right? And so like how to, and because I wanted to kind of rest in the mess a little bit and kind of dig around there, I didn't want to go fully into new life and resurrection and hope and glory and all this kind of stuff, which is the biblical promises. But you're right. It happens through this messy journey of faith that God both leads us into, which is the journey of faith, this wrestling, but also transforms into these places where we are embraced in God's love and new life does shine out of, right? And this is the entire story of scripture. Like this prosperity gospel, pie in the sky kind of thing. That wasn't Israel's story. It wasn't that the disciples, it wasn't Jesus' story, right? And so why would we think that it should be our story? Yeah, right? One, I think the converse is true too, just like you're saying. The converse is true. This wasn't, you know, I go back to the book of Job. This is exactly what his friends, like the self-rejection concept is exactly what Job's friends are trying to get him to buy into. Like, you've done something wrong. You need to repent. The way out of this is repentance. Exactly. And Job's saying, then there's no way out because I didn't do anything I need to repent of. Exactly. And it's that sort of response that, you know, allows him to have a different experience of God and to remain faithful and to actually represent God well. And so, I mean, we've got both of these in scripture. It's fantastic. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's almost like scripture talks about real faith and real human life. What is that? Right. It's not just a theory. Oh. It's not. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. This is real stuff that we go through. And when we try to explain it away under some sort of, you know, pablum of easy answers or something that sounds spiritual but doesn't actually mean anything, you just need to pray the pain away. What? Like, you know, we, if we try to do all that, what we are essentially doing is denying that God can be experienced in the midst of whatever I am going through right now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm teaching through Revelation, and that's why I keep bringing it up. I'm teaching through Revelation at a study I do on Wednesdays. And you kind of look at those letters to the seven churches, and the main, and I would say the whole book of Revelation, but the main exhortation is just, hey, overcome. Endure. Yeah. Yep. It's not pray the pain away, which I agree is trite and sort of ridiculous. It's like, no, the pain may not go away. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So just pray. That's part of endurance. Just pray. Yeah. You know, that's part of overcoming, is continuing to obey even when obedience isn't working the way you want it to. Yeah. Like, that's just part of it. Exactly. Exactly. And even if the path of righteousness that we are led into for His namesake leads us into a valley of darkness, right? Yeah. Sometimes I think in Psalm 23, we separate everything. We take this kind of, you know, the Lord's my shepherd. I will not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He restores. Right? Like, that wonderful idyllic scene. And we think, oh, well, that's just such an intimacy. That's the position of faith. And then we kind of, like, scene two, well, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And we kind of separate the two. Well, what if, because as, like, as you know, and as your listeners probably know, you know, Hebrew wasn't written with punctuation or spaces or a verseification. Right. Right. So he leads me, you know, besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me along right pathways for his namesake. And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Like, the right pathway that He leads me leads me here because I'm following Him to the cross. Yeah. But it is here where He is with me and He helps me journey through this place. He helps me journey through my enemies. And yes, I can believe in the mansions in the sky and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. But this journey that I have is not always this journey of pastures and still waters. It is this journey of struggle sometimes and wrestling. And that's the position of faith. That's the way of faith. That's the way of Christ that we sign up for. So I'm going to circle back to something you said because I think it's interesting. I did notice that you didn't talk about the resurrection at all. You know, you didn't structure that in the book. I was like, this is interesting. So your rationale is, you know, kind of living in the suffering. Is that, that's what you mentioned, but kind of flesh that out a little bit. Why didn't you take that extra step? Do you feel like it's, I mean, I have my ideas about it, but I'm just interested to hear you talk through. Yeah, you know, it's because I guess when I was writing the book, one of the things that I felt with, that I felt or that I was worried about, was that if I tack on like a fourth section or even just like a chapter that that would be seen as kind of the easy answer to everything. That, oh, well, it's just like, it's just the resurrection. Yeah. My editor, so I sent my manuscript to an editor and he got, came, gave it back to me with all sorts of stuff. And his first suggestion was, you should change the subtitle. So Alive, Loved, and Free, he said it should be finding Jesus when faith seems hard instead of when faith is hard. As if, if we find that faith is hard, it's our fault. Why? Well, because of the resurrection. Faith isn't hard anymore because of the resurrection. And so I just really wanted to avoid that kind of, you know, yeah, that appearance that somehow everything I wrote beforehand is somehow discredited because of the resurrection and we join in the resurrection.

It's true, we join in the resurrection, and all of these promises. And I try to kind of bring that in as much as I could. You know, it's because we know that Jesus is with us, because of the resurrection and all this kind of stuff. But, you know, I wanted to end at, I wanted to deal with Maundy Thursday, which is this day of rejection, Good Friday, the day of death, and Holy Saturday, this day of almost silence and waiting, and also this day, this day of kind of community. You know, I got, you know, I wanted this to end there, and not, yeah, and not go into, not go into the resurrection. So. Right. And for what it's worth, I think it's effective, because I think that, you know, that Holy Saturday is in some ways very ambiguous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there, there's a, at that point, when the historical characters are, are actually experiencing Jesus's death, he's buried in the tomb there, they haven't experienced the resurrection yet. They were in a very ambiguous moment. Yeah. And I think it sort of captures often what we feel, even though we know Christ is resurrected, even though we know we're going to have a resurrection like his, you know, the Romans, I think, 6, 5-ish, somewhere in there. You know, but we know that, but we're not there yet. And so we live in that space between, we still experience a lot of the ambiguity, not about Jesus's resurrection, but the ambiguity of when. Again, going back to Revelation, the, the martyrs under the altar that are crying out to the Lord, how long, right? How long until we're avenged? How long? Like, there's an ambiguity to that. There is, yeah. There's an anticipation to that. And I think you captured that really well in the book. I think if you, personally, I think if you'd included the resurrection, I do think you run the risk of sort of like, hey, everything's going to be all right, sort of vibe. Sure. And it's like, yeah, yeah. That's not exactly the tone of the book. I just... No. So I think you made a good choice there. I appreciate you thinking through that. Yeah. There's, there's an interesting debate in terms of Holy Saturday, you know, in scholarship, which is kind of what does Jesus do on Holy Saturday? Right. And there are, you know, there's two, there's two thoughts. One is, you know, the, the hallowing of hell. Jesus goes to, like, Jesus goes to hell and body slams Satan and just releases the captives and all that stuff. Right. The other thought is, no, no, no, that takes place, like, on resurrection. On Holy Saturday, Jesus is dead. Like, he, he lies there. And, you know, and, and there is this place of, you know, kind of this full embracement of death on Holy Saturday. Right. Which, which is, I guess I'm a little bit more in that camp. That just seems to make a little bit more sense to me that, you know, Holy Saturday isn't this day of victory. That happens, that happens on the resurrection. Right. That, that Holy Saturday is this day when nobody knows what's going on. Right. And, and so often, and maybe it's just in my own personal spiritual life and in my ministry, I often don't know what's going on. Like, I just don't know. Right. And it could be so many different reasons, which is why I need to embrace the spirit as robustly as possible in whatever situation I'm in. Yeah. Daring to believe that, that he's with me, because it's only in that way that we'll be able to go forward. Moses asks, you know, when he's crying out to God once about, you know, listen, you're asking me to lead these people and you haven't told me where we're going to go. And, you know, and you need to do something. And God says, I will be with you. I will go with you and I will give you rest. He doesn't say to Moses, this is, this is the plans here. This is how everything is going to work out. But it's just, no, like it's going to be a 40 year slog. Sorry, Moses. But I will be with you and I will give you rest. Right. And, and I think that's what we lean into, that even if we don't know what's going on and even if we can't really see where, where God is in the midst of this moment, we can, we can dare to believe that the response to us is I will be with you and I will give you rest. Yeah. I love that, man. I mean, I think Moses is a great example. Jacob is an interesting example of this. You know, he ultimately ends up wrestling with God. But if you look at the time between when he, when Rachel sort of has him go and steal Esau's blessing all the way through that time when he's wrestling with God, he's almost just handled by everyone in his life. I mean, there's a point where his wives barter mandrakes to determine who's going to sleep with him one night, you know? And he's just like, okay. But until he ends up wrestling with God, you know, so it's like we have these sort of different cadences in our life to, to say at some point, we're just sort of floating through it. And then at other times we need to wrestle with God's presence. We need to make sure that he's with us. And I think, honestly, I think your book does that really, really well. It helps us understand what that is. Well, we're getting, we're getting close to the end of time, so I want to. Sure. I usually try to end the show with just a sort of a normal question, the same question every time. So I'll ask, what do you think that the church needs to be doing that isn't doing right now? Needs to be thinking about that it's not thinking about right now in order to be and make more faithful disciples for Jesus Christ. That's a great question. I think what the church needs to do, well, obviously I'm always, I'm always, you know, you're always talking from, in some sense, with your own context. And so, you know, like I think that the church needs to reembrace Jesus. And I'll kind of say what I mean. Like, you know, in church world, it's so easy to make the church about other things. Right. To make the church about, well, to make the church about the church, our own glorification, or to make the faith about, you know, about politics, or to make the faith about certain whatever hot button issues is occurring in your denomination, your church, you know, whatever it is. But you make the faith and you make the Christian community about that. Right. And the more that we do that, I think the more that we get away from what it means to be followers of the way. Right. Which is what Christians were known as. Right. And so, and I think what we end up seeing and what we are seeing demographically is that that's not attractive to people and numbers go down and down and down and down. And so sometimes what we end up doing is we lean into, whoa, let's, let's lean into church growth. Let's lean into these programs. Let's lean into this, you know, in order to get us back to where we think we should be, which, but it is again, what we're doing is we're making the church about other things. So I think what we need to do is just kind of get back to, you know, we are a people about, about Jesus. And let's, let's talk about Jesus as robustly as we can. Let's be forthright that we are people of Jesus, that we follow Jesus, that we are followers of the way. And that means, that means cross. That means Gethsemane. That means resurrection. But you know, all of this stuff is what we are about. And I think that the more that we do that, the more that people outside the church who are feeling like they are struggling or they're questioning, is God for me and all that kind of stuff. They will hear then a message that, oh, you mean this Jesus can meet me here. Oh, okay. Well, maybe I'll, maybe I'll think about that. So robustly embracing Jesus more, I would say is the answer to that question. Love that answer, man. Love it. Well, Kyle, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate you writing the book. I think it's fantastic. Thank you. Just really recommend it to everybody out there. Alive, loved, and free. Finding Jesus when faith is hard. Not when faith seems hard, when faith is hard. And I just encourage you to go check it out. It's available on Amazon. I'll put the link in the show notes and any other, you know, sort of web links so you can get to know Kyle and see some of his other work. We'll put those in the show notes as well. But just, yeah, Kyle, really appreciate you being here. Thanks for the conversation. This was great. Thank you. This was, this was amazing. This was wonderful. Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody. We'll close the episode there and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks, everybody. And take care. We'll see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast.

Since then, I've gotten my master's degree in seminary and published a book called A Change of Affection. On my podcast, The Becca Cook Show, I sit down with fascinating Christian scholars and thinkers to address the lies of the culture and bring the biblical truth to bear on those lies. To start listening now, go to lifeaudio.com or search for The Becca Cook Show on your favorite podcasting platform.