Hi everybody, a huge welcome to the Faith-Filled Therapy Podcast. It's wonderful to have you with us. If you are a regular listener, well, I say regular, there's often huge hiatuses between my podcast, but I really am intentional about what we talk about and what guests I get on. So yeah, if you've listened to this before, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, Faith-Filled Therapy podcast is really to give glory to God and to help us understand how we've been knitted together, as spirit soul body, how God's making us holy and whole in every area of our being as we read in 1 Thessalonians 5.23. And sometimes we have guests and today we have an incredible guest to the point I actually had to ask my assistant and teammate, is this definitely right? Have you given me the right name of the person that we have? So let me welcome him. It is Chuck Coker. And Chuck, you told me that your name comes straight out of Somerset in the Southwest. So maybe I should call you Chuck Coker, but it's so good to have you with us. welcome
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, it's great to be here, Joanne. I'm I'm just really excited about the opportunity of sharing with you today.
Jo Hargreaves:I have questions to ask you and I would love to introduce you properly in a minute and talk about the things that you have done, the things that you are doing, the book that you have coming out. You just told me you're 80 and I hope that when I'm 80 I am writing books and books are coming out too. think incredible. I have questions to ask you but I am tempted to kind of just go, do you know what, Chuck, over to you, tell us everything you know, everything you've learned, everything God's shown you, everything you do differently. But let me honor you by giving you an appropriate intro, because if you have listened to the Faith-Filled Therapy podcast for a while, you know that I personally am endlessly fascinated by how God designs our minds. to work or our brains really. We talked about this difference between the mind and the brain but we're not necessarily going there today but how we continue to discover through neuroscience and what we just continue to discover just shines a light on the truth that scripture has been teaching us all along as Dr Caroline Leaf says, scripture science is always catching up with scripture and so when I heard that Dr Chuck Coker's new book A God-Shaped Mind and we're going to talk about that in a bit was coming out soon I knew that I really wanted to have him on the podcast and I'm delighted that He's here. so Chuck has spent more than 30 years helping people grow in emotional intelligence, leadership, spiritual maturity. He's the founder of the Life Thrive Performance Systems. I didn't actually know that about you, Chuck. Has written several books, developed courses that have helped. thousands of people and spent decades exploring what happens when we bring together neuroscience, psychology and biblical wisdom and some of those years being here in the UK. And as you join us today, Chuck, you are in the lovely Milan in Italy. So, Oh, wow. Well, what an incredible CV. Why don't you tell me actually, what's been your favourite part of the whole journey? What's the best thing that you've done that you just love?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, the best thing is is seeing my grandson and my daughter who live here in Milan and they have a home in Ostia also. But just getting some downtime i is amazing because for some reason God has kept me busy and I can't find retirement in the Bible.
Jo Hargreaves:So
Dr. Chuck Coker:I continue to go at almost eighty years of age, you know, my forty to fifty, sometimes sixty hours a week, and it it keeps the purpose that God has given me in front of me, and that is pouring into the next generation.
Jo Hargreaves:Wow, I love that from generation to generation. They will tell of good works of the Lord and I love that. And so tell me then investing in the next generation, your work is kind of intersex theology, neuroscience. I know that you talk about epigenetics in your new book, of these kind of brilliant and spiritual formation, all of these things, brilliant things that you talk about.~ What's the thing that you find most pressing to pass on to the next generation that if you could pass on a baton saying if you could just know this one thing, what would it be?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, it's it's been extremely exciting to me to see how Gen Z is responding to faith because they're eighteen percent higher according to Barna in their receptivity to faith than the millennials were. And as you know, the things of this world are so distracting and there's so much confusion, so much ~ dissension between different groups Yeah. that My focus is giving them hope, number one, that through faith they can experience real truth. And that truth is only found in Jesus Christ and through the structure of our brains that God has literally formulated before the foundation of the earth to be receptive to spiritual things. Because once we are, we've learned through scientific research that the brain will never reach its full capacity until faith is a part of our lives.
Jo Hargreaves:Whoa, okay, that is incredible. I am 100 % aligned with you on that because any kind of, I guess, living life to the full, John 10, 10, living holy and whole, 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, you know, all of this, all of how God's designed us to live in abundance, truth of understanding who He is, all of these kinds of things. This isn't just about soul and body is it? This is a holistic experience of spirit, soul and body and unless all of those things, we really understand that spiritually we're seated in heavenly places, you know, we understand the soul, the mind, the will, the emotions, but also the body, the somatic experience of the body isn't separate to all of this and that God has created us. I talk about how God's fingerprints are all over our spirit, our soul and our synapses, that he's over every part of us. And so tell us a little bit more about this idea of not being able to live fully until we embrace faith.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, here's the thing is that when we are born, we are born with a natural instinct for survival. It's called the default mode network of the brain. And that focuses purely on what we can see, touch, taste, smell, or data we can gather. It is truly for the physical aspects of our lives. But at the point of salvation, God does something. He dumps oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine into our brain to expand our brain literally at the rate of 700 to 1,000 new neurons every second. Not minute, but second. And when they do that, the the neurosynapsis of our brain begin to explode and open up a whole new dimension That has never been born before in our body. So, what God is doing, He's actually giving us new, complete, scientifically validated aspects of our brain so that we now have the ability to perceive dimensional aspects that we never could before. And those dimensions are the dimensions that God lives in, because you and I live in a four-dimensional world: length, width, depth, and time. God lives in ten dimensions and executes from the eleventh dimension. And so in that process, what happens is we are getting an infusion from the invisible world. that literally expands our brain. So therefore we can take in the kind of concepts like cause and effect that we never could before.
Jo Hargreaves:This stuff is incredible. I love to hear it. kind of cacophony of neurotransmitters and hormones that you talked about, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. And we know that all of those things, that we chase those things often, don't we, in our own strength. We get dopamine by scrolling and serotonin and all these kinds of things. And I was reading some research. I mean, I think it's my favorite bit of research. this kind of intersection of scripture and neuroscience is that oxytocin, the love hormone, bonding hormone, connection hormone, that when we focus on how loved we are, that when we receive love from God, know, meditate on Romans 8.38, nothing can separate us from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. Then we respond neurobiologically, we respond, our body produces oxytocin. And I read some incredible research of how oxytocin works to negate the effects of cortisol. So perfect love casting out fear at a deep biological level. And I just think there's nothing that God hasn't thought about. And so I love that part of what you said. Then you talked about this idea of just being able to perceive things in a way that we couldn't beforehand. Do you think that this is akin to the language that we would use is like the spirit coming alive? What language do you think we put around those kind of neurobiological processes to help us make a link?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, when the Holy Spirit comes in and we are able to understand spiritual things, it's first Corinthians two fourteen. The natural man can understand spiritual things because they're spiritually discerned. So now we get this extra dose of of the good chemicals that help us build our trust in God and allow our faith to expand to a point to where we can actually Hear things and see things that we haven't seen before. This is why we're given spiritual gifts, people think spiritual gifts are things we're supposed to do. And while that may be true, the reason that God gives us spiritual gifts, and I'll give you an example. Joanna, I love what you're doing. Because you are reaching people that I never could reach, and you're bringing me into your sphere of influence, and you're allowing me to share some things, but then next week you're gonna be with someone else and you're gonna bring other things into their world, and you're going to build and bless the kingdom in ways that no one else can. Now, why did I do that? Because God told me to encourage Joanna, because Of what she is doing and what she's accomplishing that she doesn't even know about. And the exciting thing is, is that I did that because God spoke to me. In other words, that spiritual gift is only executed when God tells us to execute it. So what he's doing is he's developing a conversation with us to take us to the next level. And when we execute those spiritual gifts, Guess what? We begin to develop fruit of the spirit. And as we develop fruit of the spirit, I want to share something with you that Dr. Michael Hartsfield at Regent University and I not so much discovered. We believed it was true, but we ran 37 correlation studies to be sure. What the Bible says are the nine aspects of fruit of the spirit, or what psychologists say. Our emotional intelligence.
Jo Hargreaves:In
Dr. Chuck Coker:other words, what God is doing through these gifts and as He develops fruit of the Spirit, He is making us more in tune with other people so that we are drawing people to us the same way that people were attracted and drawn to Christ. And in doing that, what we're doing. is we are helping them develop spiritual prosperity. And you know there's four Hebrew words for prosperity in in the Old Testament. Tekha, Sakal, Tob, and Shalim. Tekha, reaching a level of success. Sakal, developing that success through goodness. Of ourselves. Tob beginning to live in a state of goodness and shalim, making yourself complete. And when we talk about being complete, that is what sanctification is all about. So the natural progression that starts with gifts builds fruit and emotional intelligence that draws other people to us. Why? Because we are living in God's state of. Prosperity.
Jo Hargreaves:Hmm. I, wow. Okay. I love this. I love this. I'm like, oh gosh, we need longer. We need longer. We need more because as you're talking about all of this, I'm thinking about brain processes and almost thinking about sanctification at a synapse level, cellular level. Cause I think a lot of what you're talking about of that, this emotional intelligence, um, connectivity, all this kind of thing. I think about the prefrontal cortex coming online, where we feel grounded, where we are regulated, where we're able to make good, wise decisions, be empathic, give love, receive love, all of this good stuff. And so all of these things that you're talking about, they're not separate from our biology, are they? That our biology isn't a barrier to God, that he designed it.
Dr. Chuck Coker:it's so exciting to me that science is finally catching up to the Bible. And when we talk about Romans 12, too, the transformation of our mind, it's now proven that it actually occurs. Our mind literally is transformed. And if you can't get excited about that, something's wrong because now we're better than when we started.
Jo Hargreaves:Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? And it's so application based to our everyday ordinary lives. We're not just reading about principles that happen in a spiritual ether somewhere that we'll get to understand one day. These are things that happening in real time that impact the way we live and move and have our being. And also I think the way we live out the most important commandment, how we love God, how we love others as we love ourselves. these are deeply important for our everyday, ordinary human lives, aren't they?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Yes, absolutely. And the exciting thing is, is that the Spirit can use us through these processes to literally convict and bring other people close to us because the Spirit draws and brings people in and it gives us whatever we need. That's why Jesus said, Don't worry about what you're gonna say. Because he'll give you the words. And so I know that the years that I taught there at Westminster was times when I felt a bit inadequate. When you when you have people that are there, first of all, because they want to be, second of all, because they love God, what more could you ask for than that kind of audience? But God was always faithful. And he continues to be faithful, regardless of where I am and what I'm doing. And I mean, just today is a great example.
Jo Hargreaves:He's so good, so good, so kind and so, so close. I've been thinking about Psalm 139. I love this with regards to our type of work of being knitted together and thinking about the God who knows a thought before we think it, a word before it's on our tongue. He knows everything about us and his posture in all of that is to move towards us, to hem us in behind and before, to lay his hand. upon us and that just honestly that chokes me up that even with all of our humaneness, all of our brain being a complex, sometimes tricky machine for us to live with, all of the obsessive thoughts that we might have, the difficult thoughts that we might have, all of the things that go on in this complex brain of ours, that God understands them completely and he doesn't stand off, he moves towards and lays his hand upon us which is so, that just makes me feel very safe. And safety in and of itself is very powerful for the brain, isn't it? Sense of, I feel safe.
Dr. Chuck Coker:It is indeed. And and this is the dimensions that I was talking about that God lives in, that He's transferring, some of which to us. You know, the book Beyond the Cosmos by Hugh Ross was written a number of years ago, and he talks about the fact of these different dimensions that God lives in, and he is able to reach from outside of time into time. He it is actually fulfilling everything that you just said. He knows ahead of time what we need, not so much to make us happy, but to grow us and develop us. And that's why I love what Proverbs 2024 says, that the Lord orders a man's steps because what does a man know about his own way? So he's there ahead of us. And that's exciting to me. That even though I may not relish the circumstances, they're there for my benefit because he loves me so much.
Jo Hargreaves:It's just enough to make you get on your knees, isn't it? And just say, thank you, God. Thank you that you're good and kind, slow to anger, abounding in love, so full of compassion towards us. And all of that is for our good spiritually, but also I'm thinking about in our body what that sense of feeling safe and feeling loved does to us. It takes us out of the sympathetic nervous system and what fight, flight, freeze grounds us in this parasympathetic nervous system. slows down the amygdala, the fear part of our brain, lights up the prefrontal cortex, mean, boosts oxytocin in our body. It's just, it's incredible. And you are obviously so knowledgeable about this stuff. And how do you feel when you intersect that deep understanding of how the brain's wiring, and I'd love to talk about epigenetics, all of the things that you talk about in your book, with faith, have you come across much tension for that in your world with teaching, I guess, in teaching at universities, all that kind of thing.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, the thing I tried to do in writing this particular book, Joanna, was to document it well enough to make sure that if there was a scientist who disagreed with my opinion, an atheist and agnostic or whatever, they'd have to go long and hard to deal with these things.
Jo Hargreaves:Because I started
Dr. Chuck Coker:out with 297 citations in the book. And my copyright editors who I bless the Lord for, searched it out and found that about 67 or 68 of them were true, but they were sponsored. So therefore, we had to take them out. And I ended up with 228. And here's the thing that people cannot argue with. And that is the fact that these scientific studies prove the facts that I'm saying, but also they prove that. The five characteristics that are prominent in blue zones are prominent in Christianity. Now, what's the hidden benefit of that? If we have our faith, we have an appropriate diet, we have purpose, we you know, treat our bodies properly, and we focus on community. Listen. You will live seven to fourteen years longer. That is the magic of doing things God's ways. there's a promise of long life that the rest of the world is just not promised. By doing the five things that bring us together as a faith-based community and allow us. To experience life to its fullest, but not only that, it it blesses us physically. It's not just the mental and spiritual aspects, it blesses us physically. So when people want to argue with that, there's research that says you're barking up the wrong tree.
Jo Hargreaves:I love that. And I love in all of these things how God, I think about when you talk about that, I immediately think about worship and that when we worship God, it's not because he's some egomaniac sat on a throne that even needs our worship. It's this, the health that it brings to us spiritually, our soul, but us physically as well, know, better heart rate variability. better grounded and groundedness in your parasympathetic nervous system. All of these kinds of things. It's just his kindness to his creation.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Yes, absolutely. And and you know you you talked about worship. The mirror neurons are activated during worship. And when that happens, it's as if God is bringing the experiences of the worship process into our mind and it it ingrains and deepens the aspects that, like you said, reduce the size of the amagdala, bring that prefrontal cortex and those wonderful chemicals that God gives us to build the trust and reduce the anxiety so that it's embedded in us. And this is so exciting because what happens during that process is something called epigenetic changes.
Jo Hargreaves:And I know you've dealt
Dr. Chuck Coker:with this a bit yourself. obviously, and I'm not saying this to fluff your feathers, but you are probably the most knowledgeable person I have spoken to about the book. You actually have studied it and and brought some of this information to bear. And because of that, what we can experience is now going to give us a greater, not just appreciation for life, but a greater experience and a greater integration into his kingdom. And I love that because people don't understand what Jesus said in Matthew, because it's often translated in my mind a little bit improperly. Most translations say the kingdom of heaven is near. It's close to you. Well, that's cool. But if you translate it from the original Hebrew that Matthew wrote it in before it was translated into Greek. It meant the kingdom of heaven is within your reach. No. You can bring it into yourself. And that's the exciting thing that I'm think most people miss is the fact that we can bring the kingdom into ourselves. And when we bring the kingdom into ourselves, God's ordering our steps, we don't have to worry about where we're going.
Jo Hargreaves:I love that idea of kind of raiding heaven, raiding the dimension of heaven and then, and having it within. I just love that idea. I also, when you talked about dimensions earlier, my heart leapt because I've always thought about heaven as a different dimension. I remember having a friend in sixth form and they were really into the idea of... aliens and dimensions and all of that kind of stuff. And I spoke with them. I didn't follow Jesus when I was that age, but then I met with them, like many years later in our life and said, all of these dimensions that you speak of, I think that's where God lives and, you know, and heaven and all of these kinds of things. And they couldn't get that, they didn't align with that at all. But the thought of heaven just being up in the sky within our understanding, I'm like, no, this is a completely different dimension. But you're saying we're able to raid it and Yes. live with it within.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Love it. And when we do that, it not only affects us, it affects the people we come in contact with.
Jo Hargreaves:yeah, how incredible, how wonderful. So we skirted around epigenetics and I love it. I would love you to just give us almost like a layman's guide to it because I don't know if I describe it rightly. So I talk about epigenetics not being your DNA. It's almost like Google Translate for your DNA. So it can translate your DNA in certain ways depending on... circumstances, all that kind of thing. Why don't you give us a better, better example of what it means and what does it mean for us?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, here's what happens. As we study the scriptures, we interact with our disciple groups and things like that. What God does is he takes that default mode network that we're born with and this faith portal that has been opened and he merges it so that the faith portal creates what's called crystallized intelligence. And crystallized intelligence takes over. The old parts and gives us the insight and wisdom. That's what a fourth stage spiritual development person is. They're a painter. They begin to invest in the next generation because they know how the spirit has literally changed and transformed their life. But let's talk about epigenetics, because this is what is occurring during that crystallized intelligence. Joanna's is always going to be Joanna. But before you were Joanna, but when salvation occurred and the giftings and the spiritual maturity began to reorganize you, something happened to the DNA in your cells. This is this is outside worldly type dimensions, but God has done something. He has literally changed the DNA. You're still Joanna. But he's changed the DNA so that it expresses itself differently.
Jo Hargreaves:In other
Dr. Chuck Coker:words, that's what epigenetic changes is. The every cell in your body now wants to speak differently, wants to think differently. And this is how you develop that deep cause and effect that only the Pater stage of spiritual development can possibly comprehend. And use and pass on to the next generation because when we get to that point, that's the last thing that Christ tells us to do is make disciples. And the only way that can happen is through intimacy and accountability, because there is no accountability without intimacy. And you're not going to get it from preaching in the pulpit. You're going to get it through deep. meaningful relationships with other believers so that those mirror neurons can take in the information that they give you and begin to format them. Your DNA will format them as if they were your own experiences. In other words, you're learning from other people's experiences. And that's how your DNA begins to change.
Jo Hargreaves:I could talk about this. Four hours and I think a case study, obviously, the person, I would just love to do a case study on Paul of the road of, on the Damascus road of the light in his eyes, know, scales, the light, the scales falling off his eyes. I'd love to be able to do a case study. This is what's happening. This is what's happening epigenetically. This is what's happening in his brain. This is what's happening here. Because when we read about people in the Bible and their experiences, They occupy the same brain, the same nervous system, same kind of the same, the DNA is formed in the same way. The epigenetic principles work the same way. Um, and I think when you can study the Bible through that lens, brings a level of application that is, yeah, incredible.
Dr. Chuck Coker:And and that's what Gen Z wants.
Jo Hargreaves:They want
Dr. Chuck Coker:truth. They want reality. They don't care if it's covered with mistakes, if you admit them. They just want the truth. They want you to be real. And that's what I'm trying to share with that generation is the fact that we're all flawed. And because we are all flawed, we're loved anyway. Yeah. And it's about the relationship, not the performance,
Jo Hargreaves:Yeah.
Dr. Chuck Coker:because performance is conditional and God's love is not conditional.
Jo Hargreaves:yeah, thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Wow. Okay. So tell us about this book, this brilliant book and when it's coming out, where people can get it. Cause I know that people are going to be now tell us Chuck, tell us more, give us more. Where can they find more? Obviously we've got your website and we'll put all of that in the show notes and in the website. I know you've got free resources, free courses, assessments. a wealth of stuff for people, but the book specifically, where can people engage with that?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Well, the book actually was released June second and it's available okay. it's available now through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Walmart, Target, all of these other places. But I have a special offer for your people, Joanna, and that is this. If they will take a screen capture of the purchase of that book, I will send them personally a 16 week Bible study that will take them through the book. And it's not just research. It's fun. There's going to be some humor in there. They're going to have fun with this, but I will send it to them at no cost. No cost. That's going to be on the website very soon, chuckcoker.com. And that is for your listeners.
Jo Hargreaves:thank you so much. Hugely generous because that level of Bible study will take a lot of time for you to develop. thank you so much. And I'm sorry, I thought the book wasn't out. I thought I just got a copy because I was special. But anyone could get a copy. And that's wonderful. So if I take a photo of me with a copy of your book, send it to you, I will get in return that Bible study.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Yes, indeed. All they have to do is send it to CW Coker @ life thrive LIFE T H R I V E . com and they will have it back within twenty four hours.
Jo Hargreaves:How wonderful. Oh Chuck, thank you so much. Would you come on again? Could we do this again?
Dr. Chuck Coker:I w I wish you would. I I a as I told you earlier, I'm not trying to to fluff your feathers or anything, but this has truly been one of the most engaging and best podcast I've been on. And I've done a couple in my lifetime. So thank you. I've enjoyed it tremendously.
Jo Hargreaves:I have to. I feel like my intellect has got a really good challenge but I also feel such a sense of the Holy Spirit as you're talking. I really do and just God's kindness and his blessing over what you're doing. I just really thank God for you and thank God for what you're doing and that I love that. have a founding pastor at our church who says exactly the same, retirement isn't in the Bible. I'm going to keep bringing in the kingdom, keep doing what God has called and commissioned me to do. So God bless you to do. I wonder if, you pray for our listeners, pray for people who are listening, who are like, I want some of that. I want this otherworldly Christ-censored infusion of the kingdom. Would you pray?
Dr. Chuck Coker:Sure. Lord God of Israel, we're just so grateful for you. We're so grateful that you not only hear us, Father, but you answer our prayers in a way that will not just bless us, but grow us and develop us to be more like Christ. And so, Father, I ask you for a special dispensation of grace that will just be poured out upon our listeners, Father, and most of all through those who have Taking the time, energy, and resources to put this podcast together, Father. I just ask you to bless them with a supernatural infusion of your grace, of your knowledge, of your understanding, but most of all, Father, of your wisdom. And as they take it in, Father, I pray, Father, that you would continue to speak through us and whoever else you would call into your kingdom, Father. for the betterment of each other, and may the resources that we have available be given freely to those who ask. In Jesus' name, amen.
Jo Hargreaves:Amen. Amen and amen. Chuck, it has been an absolute pleasure. I am going to straight away email straight after this to see when we can get you back on again or we could do something else together. But thank you so much for your what Eugene Peterson writes, a long obedience in the same direction. And I am just grateful for that. The world is better off for you. So thank you so much.
Dr. Chuck Coker:Thank you so much, Joanna.