God’s Grace in Struggle: Insights from Jonathan McLernon

In a recent episode, host Emmanuel Manishimwe sat down with Jonathan McLennon, also known as Coach Jon, to uncover powerful insights on how we should work with our brains instead of against them. By weaving together his Christian faith with an understanding of human physiology, psychology, and neuroscience, Coach Jon offered a deeply compassionate perspective on human struggle.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You welcome Coach John. John is here with us today and he'll be sharing with us for a science of reconciliation to have a perception on how we should work with the brain. I like what I've read about you. You talk about working with a brain instead of against it. The statement itself, it's it's it's massive. Please help us understand it.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Yeah, well, I think about and and I'll put I'll put my Christian lens on it as well. Um I I let's say I was raised in, I'll call it like a fairly fundamentalist Christian group. And as such, there's a lot of shame around sin and struggle. And it's not that we're permissive of sin, but it can also lead to what I'll call performative Christianity where obedience precedes love. That's that's in the wrong sequence. Because Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Don't keep my commandments to show me that you love me. And that's a small but significant distinction. And so our brain is wired in a certain way, whether it's for survival, it's wired for keeping things consistent and keeping us safe. And so a lot of times when we when we struggle with something like sin, we may look at our behaviors in a certain way and say, I am a terrible person for having this struggle. When in fact we're just behaving in a way that is consistent with how our brain actually works. So you know, when I'm having a binge-eating episode or engaging in any kind of substance use or things like that, a part of it is my brain seeking for escape, seeking for relief, seeking for something that's not what I'm presently feeling or experiencing. It doesn't mean the behavior is helpful, but it means the behavior is understandable. And I often use this phrase, I will say a compassionate awareness becomes the foundation of transformational change. Now there's a lot of things that are also captured in that phrase, but the ability to you see, our all of our sin is ever known before God. It's not surprising to God that we sin. God understands us as our creator. But we struggle with with the shame of our sin because we realize it creates separation between us and God. But we're prone to it because of how we're created. And so that in itself creates a need of God. If we can let go of the shame and the stories that tell us how horrible and worthless we are, and recognize that we're actually very precious to God, in that we can bring our sin to him and say, Hey, I'm struggling, I need help. And it's almost like God would say, Yes, I know, and I understand. I think about Jesus who sits at God's right hand as our advocate and our intercessor, saying, I lived as a man, I lived the struggles, I understand the struggles. He didn't say to people, keep doing the thing that's hurting you, but rather he said, Let me help you, because your struggles make sense. You know, I'll use one example from the Bible. Uh the woman who was caught in adultery and had multiple husbands and partners, worthy of death under the old law. But Jesus could look into her heart and say, I know why you're doing what you're doing, but you are looking for something you cannot find in those patterns of behavior. He didn't use those words, of course, I'm paraphrasing. But he's he could say, I know why you're doing what you're doing, and it's not because you're a terrible human being. It's because you're in struggle and you're trying to solve a problem, you're trying to meet a need that cannot be met by what you're doing. And that's when he would say, I will give you water to drink, that if you drink this water, you'll never thirst again. I will give something that satisfies the need you're trying to fill through those behaviors that can't.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

When you use that analysis, you might be helping us find one reason why people know there is God, but they don't want to walk with him. A problem that you've already solved. And now I'm beginning to think, do we have a particular laziness in our brain that just refuses to explore more of God? Why do you think some people want just to be wrong and don't want to take a closer walk with God?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

I would say, so I often it's funny, I very rarely use the word lazy because I have this expression. So just to quickly give people an understanding, in my professional work, I'm a uh health coach, I'm a I'll call it a systems integration coach, which sounds very buzzwordy, but essentially I I combine things like fitness, nutrition, sleep, stress management, nervous system health, psychology, and neuroscience. I combine all these different elements together to help people live healthier lives as a whole. And when when relevant, when someone's open to it, we may also talk about Christian principles as well. It's only ever if the door opens for that. I don't, you know. Um but anyways, so I have a very, very strong understanding of human physiology in multiple domains as well, and that sort of informs the work. Now, the reason for that backstory is a lot of times what we might describe as lazy, I would describe as weariness. So there's a certain expectation that we should behave in a certain way, and there's a we have difficulty accepting time and a place for rest. I feel like when someone is well rested and when they have purpose in their lives, they're not going to be lazy, but they're going to tend to want to engage in something meaningful or purposeful. But when we think about God, when we think about death, when we think about life, when we think about eternity, when we think about the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent God, that can be a terrifying thing to consider. And so in that we have kind of two choices. We can shrink away in fear, we can, in a sense, keep ourselves at a, might I say, a safe distance from God, because we're scared of um trying to acknowledge, and really we can't, of course, in our human brain actually comprehend the fullness of God. But we're going to create distance between us and God, not necessarily because we are, again, trying to be defiant, but we're actually terrified by the reality of it. And one of the one of the things I've, especially in recent years in my Christian journey, I've thought, I would like to get to the place where I'm not afraid of death. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't maintain a survival instinct. Of course, God has given us that. But it's rather to not live with this existential dread. I really think that uh hinders people. You know, I think what Jesus said, I think it was to Philip, when he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. What is he really saying in that? He said, the way that I move and interact with you, speak to you, feel about you, um, the compassion I have for you, the desire I have for you to help you. And it I'm I'm literally an agent of the Father. You are seeing the Father's nature and love embodied in me. And so sometimes I think there's this idea that God is, you know, in the eternal realm, sitting there with a sledgehammer waiting to crush us for our mistakes when in fact he sent Jesus to suffer for our sins to reconcile us to him. And maybe this would be the other part of it is we think about God as an angry, vengeful, punitive father, not one who wants to, yet we see the father's heart again in the parable of the prodigal son, someone who runs to meet the one who's lived a ruinous life and saying, I'm so glad you're back because I want to share this with you. That's the heart of our God. But if we are raised to believe in more in the punitive, and it doesn't say that I'm not gonna pretend there's not wrath and judgment and things like that. I'm not gonna, I'm not trying to make it sound like God is just a fluffy, you know, teddy bear here. But what I mean is if we see the deep heart of God, it is for us to be reconciled to him and ultimately through Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross. But it's a terrifying thing to think about. We have to move through that and move closer to God because we are mortal and we are finite. And that in itself could be a terrifying realization until we realize that Jesus conquered death.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

This is the time for you to tell our audience what you do.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Thank you. Freedom of Nutrition Coach.com is where you can find me. Uh, the the website itself probably needs to grow and be updated. I have a new kind of umbrella company in the background describing the fullness of what I do. But um, common the way that people find me is wanting to improve their health or weight loss or things like that. And so that website is still there. I'm relatively quiet on social media right now, which is why I steer people towards the website. Will be some new things emerging probably this year at some point in time. It's just a matter of capacity. It's not that I'm unreachable, I have quite a full schedule. I still have room in it, but I have quite a full schedule. I have a lot of people that I work with. It just so happens that when you do kind of the unique work that I do and people start to learn about it, people start to talk about it and find their way to me somehow. But there, if people do want to, you can see there's a link. You can book a 30-minute chat with me, no charge. We can just have a talk about whatever's going on in your life and figure out if I if I'm able to help you or not. And uh most people I would say you have that chat, and uh you'll leave with a different perspective on yourself, on your health, on your life. And that's that's why I offer that because sometimes that's all people need is is a is a change of perspective from one conversation. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

A guest this week is Jonathan Mark Lanon. Uh, we are ending here in this episode, and be back very soon. Please stay updated. Uh, please consider subscribing to make sure you do not miss the next episode.