Bible Study Podcast

You Don’t Have A Soul, You Are A Soul - A Biblical Framework with Bill Dogterom

• Darren Rouanzoin, Angela Halili

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 56:57

You are a soul, not someone who has one. This episode introduces a biblical framework for soul care with Pastor Bill Dogterom — covering what a soul actually is, why the physical and spiritual were never meant to be separated, and how discovering your primary window to God changes the way you grow for the rest of your life.

In this episode:
• What a soul is — Genesis 2 and the Hebrew word nefesh
• The five dimensions of the soul: physical, spiritual, social, mental, emotional
• Why your body is not separate from your worship
•  Discipleship is making friends for Jesus
• How to discover your primary window to God

SPONSORS
This series is brought to you with the support of the New International Version (NIV) — the Bible translation we use when reading and studying the Bible, as well as for preaching. With more than 650 million copies distributed worldwide, the New International Version (NIV) is the most widely read Bible translation in contemporary English. The NIV Bible delivers the very best combination of accuracy, readability, and clarity, making it easy to read and easy to understand. It is true to God’s Word and true to the reader.

📖 Find an NIV Bible that’s right for you! https://www.thenivbible.com/niv-bibles/

We are also supported by Logos Bible Software — the tool all three of us use when studying Scripture. Logos isn't just a Bible app, it is your whole study desk, your library, and your study partner in one place. Start your free trial and check out the Bible Study Pdcst bundles at https://logos.com/biblestudypdcst

📖 Visit https://logos.com/biblestudypdcst to start your free trial today

Become a supporter:
https://commissionedcollective.org/

Hosted by:
• Pastor Darren Rouanzoin — https://www.instagram.com/darrenr
• Angela Halili — https://www.instagram.com/angelahalili
• Pastor Bill Dogterom — https://www.instagram.com/bdogterom

#BibleStudy #SoulCare #ChristianPodcast #Faith #Jesus #BibleStudyPodcast #Discipleship

SPEAKER_01

And then you can have screen for an hour at the most right now. So all right, we're here. We're gonna start. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02

Not get into another conversation about parenting.

SPEAKER_01

Parenting. We already did that one.

SPEAKER_02

All right. So the music is playing.

SPEAKER_01

Music's playing.

SPEAKER_02

Hey guys, I'm Ange.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, I'm Darren. I'm Bill.

SPEAKER_02

And this is Pastor Bill.

SPEAKER_01

Pastor Bill is in the house. I am so excited. Oh, we we are the Bible study podcast. We're so excited that you're joining us. I have been looking forward to this moment since we started this podcast because, well, I've been a pastor for uh almost 20 years. And I think 23 years ago, I met Pastor Bill at Vanguard. And here's the story that I have. Pastor Bill is my pastor. He has been walking with me since I was 19 years old. I took a spiritual disciplines class. I took, I took every class, how to intro to preaching and teaching, preaching and teaching, intro to pastoral care, pastoral care and counseling. I had to take a bunch of extra classes to graduate because of you, like John's letters, the minor prophets. Uh, what am I missing? I took like nine classes of yours, I think. Yeah. But more than that, Bill has been the single most influential person in my life when it comes to all things ministry, marriage, church. I say this to you to hear this, and Bill knows I said this. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this man. I wouldn't be a pastor still. I probably would have burnt out were it not for you.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

I wouldn't be still married. Bill has walked with my wife and I. Gosh, I'm already gonna start crying. He did pre-engagement counseling, premarital counseling, and he's done marital counseling and pastoral care for my wife and I, helping us maintain love for each other and Jesus. One of my favorite stories, I have so many, I'm gonna share, and then you can finally talk. I had a dream when I was about to start garden church. I was 23 years old. And in the dream, uh it was very specific. I don't have a lot of dreams, but it was in regards to Pastor Bill. And in the dream, I was like, he was driving me in his truck. We'd get out, he went to a wedding, and I was standing next to him as he officiated the wedding. And then we got in his truck and we went to another place and he was like unlocking doors and locking doors and cleaning up. And I was like, maybe I'm supposed to invite Bill to help us plant this church. And so it was August, I'll never forget August 2009, right before we officially launched our church. I said, Would you come and preach and help me out? And you've been at our church ever since. So Pastor Bill is my hero. He's taught me how to preach, he's taught me how to read scripture, taught me how to pastor a church. And one of the things that he carries is this extraordinary gift uh for lots of things, preaching all those things. He preaches at our church, but he has lived this message of soul care for so many years. And I'm doing a monologue right now. I'm so sorry. No, but this is your introduction. He has been uh in a great way obsessed with the inner life of leadership, pastoral care, that the inner life of who you are with Jesus matters more than what you do for Jesus or or with Jesus. It is about who you are becoming. And I'll let him share that story, but I wanted him to kind of give us a framework for soul care, the nature of a soul, who you are, and we'll go from there. So, anyways, that's my long introduction. This is Pastor Bill Dockham. Thank you for coming. It's good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know what to say after all of that. I feel kind of set up, actually. Good luck. Now, where are we going? Oh downhill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Bill, thanks for being here. Bill's uh with us. He preaches at my church, he's walking with lots of people. He's been a professor at Vanguard for 30 years. He just finished his last year. Yep. Like a couple weeks ago. Yes. So he's done that. You led a church in Glendora for 33 years.

SPEAKER_00

No, uh 27. 27.

SPEAKER_01

But you were on staff for longer, or no.

SPEAKER_00

I was youth music guy for five years, then lead for 22, came down from Canada where I helped plant a church there. We were there for four years, four and a half years before I came down to Glendora.

SPEAKER_01

And then I met you in it would have been 2003. Right. So that's a long time ago. Yeah, it's crazy. Right.

SPEAKER_02

And I want to say too, I have benefited greatly off of your preaching. Every single Sunday that I walk in and we know Bill is preaching, I'm like, oh Lord, where are the tissues? We're going directly into the heart of Jesus. So you guys are really in for something beautiful. And I think what we need more than anything in a time of kind of what you described about how we're all so focused on what we can do for Jesus and with Jesus, focusing on the inner life and what's going on inside is so crucial right now.

SPEAKER_00

So and of course, always in this, it's always the tension that creates, it's always the tension that makes life happen, right? It's not either or. Nope. It's both and. Even the desert fathers back in the day, they didn't go so they could escape the world. They go went so they could serve the world. Yes. Their their cell language, go to your cell, know yourself at the center, was always for the sake of mission. It wasn't that's isolation.

SPEAKER_01

That's a really good clarification because there is a temptation right now where people are rediscovering the spiritual disciplines in the evangelical world. And it very much feels like an escape. Like if I could just do what feels like Jesus is my life coach in a way, like Jesus, me, myself, and Jesus alone, away from the world, like then I could really live out my faith. Yeah. But that was never the intention of the disciplines, the practices of the early church fathers.

SPEAKER_00

Well, no, because spiritual formation, which is what we're talking about, is just another word for disciple making.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And that's just another word for how do I become like Jesus so I can do what Jesus did in the world. It's always about mission. For the sake of others. Say again?

SPEAKER_01

For the sake of others.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's it. Um, and this is where, like, we we have this false dichotomy between the Mary and the Martha, right? In Luke 11, uh, where or or 10 or wherever it is, um where we hear Jesus say essentially to Martha, you need to become more like Mary. But in fact, that's not what he says. What he says is Mary has chosen Mary's part, you need to choose your part and be Martha without distraction because both are needed, and we we love to pigeonhole, yeah, and that then ends up getting us into trouble.

SPEAKER_01

I love what you're saying, though, about the dichotomy. We want to focus on just becoming Marys, but the context of Luke 10 is sending out the 72, the Good Samaritan, Mary and Martha. And if like if you're reading scripture, we talked about this context matters. You can't just take that one story and say discipleship is just sitting at Jesus' feet. No, it's not just sitting at Jesus' feet, it's also going out like the 72 and casting out demons and healing. It's also recognizing the parable of the Good Samaritan that sometimes the religious thing you're doing gets in the way of the compassionate thing God is calling you to do, right? Which is a story of the Good Samaritan. Um and then you get to the Mary Martha thing, and you're recognizing hospitality was a command in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

And Martha was doing what was commanded, but she's missing Jesus in the midst of it.

SPEAKER_02

That's wild.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, because that's that's the challenge. Jesus' response to her, you can see the twinkle in his eye when he says, You're you're really stressed out about so many things. Yeah. And things, not just a thing, but she's got a lot of irons in the fire, yeah, as you know in that story. And what happens, as you've had just identified, I think, is she's distracted from Jesus by what she's doing for Jesus. And that happens a lot. All the time. And that's where the being with and doing with is so critical in this. Wow. And why I think it's important for us to take marching orders from him as to what we're supposed to be doing and when and what and how and all of the things.

SPEAKER_01

And so this is a great segue because we're gonna talk about soul care, which comes not just from hey, I studied and developed this idea, this came from your experience. Would you share a little bit of how you stumbled into what is the spiritual formation, discipleship, the way you're talking about from within out soul care?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, probably mostly it came from failure because I had become lead pastor. I was a youth pastor and kind of knew how to do things a little bit there, uh, meeting with kids, picking them up after school, and going for coffee and showing up at games and walking with people through that thing. But when I became lead, I thought I had to lead. I thought I had to make things happen. And I suck at that. I just am not good at it. So I took courses and I went to seminars and I was in seminary at Fuller at the time. And so that was part of the curriculum and put plans together and vision statements and all of the things, and it just didn't work. Um, my marriage was suffering, my church was stalling out, and uh people were were like, Where did you go? And so that moment of kind of crisis really brought me to, and it coincident coincided with a course I was taking at Fuller with uh Dallas Willard, yeah, who required us to take a retreat day. And so that day, pretty miserable, to be honest, because uh uh God showed up, but I didn't. And that was a pattern, but it started me on a trajectory that reminded me that when I learned ministry in the first place, it was with a man in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, a guy named Albert Lindhoff, who made a thousand personal visits a year. Wow. As a pastor. As a pastor. It was just we would meet people for coffee, we'd meet them in their homes, we'd and you know, this was 50 years ago, but that model is what I was trained in and learned. That's how I did youth ministry to the degree that I did it. It wasn't the big program and the sizzle, because I'm not good at that either. But I thought, oh, well, I know how to do that. Yeah, I can meet people for breakfast, I can visit with folks. And then along the line, and as part of my doctoral work, the whole spiritual formation, spiritual discipline, soul care, pastoral care all kind of coalesced in, well, this is this is how I'm supposed to be doing this. Yes. Uh, my primary gift is, I think, preaching and then this soul care, pastoral care piece, and then praying. So those components of pastoral ministry uh have driven much of what I've done since.

SPEAKER_01

It's uh, I mean, it's beautiful. I I think for me, it was stepping into ministry. I was shaped by your convictions. Like this is what pastoral ministry is, it doesn't exist apart from relationship. Yeah. You know, we were I was introduced at 1920, 21 to Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Eugene Peterson, the what was, you know, what is spiritual formation? And it's interesting because I remember starting in church as a pastor, getting paid at a big church in Orange County. And I just remember going, wait, when do we pray? Like I was so, I was so like, wait, when are when are we reading scripture? Like, when do we meet with people? We're we're spending all of our days meeting with staff to organize events. I remember being like four of the five days are meeting days with staff. And it was so counter, it was a very large church, a mega church, and it was just so counter to what I was shaped in. And so, you know, launching a church from you know, three of us to what it is now, the pastoral conviction has been in place. And you're constantly beating that drum in my ear, yeah, yeah, to remind me, which is so good. And I think there's nothing wrong with having a vision statement, these things. But the point is that shouldn't drive. We know that it's God who builds his church. We we have to get come alongside him. But the deeper thing I I'm really passionate about is trying to get this to everyone. Because for me, we've talked about this. Like, how do we translate the ideas of the things we're gonna talk about today to the mom who's a single mom working two jobs, you know, to the guy who's running the AC company, you know, with seven employees, to, you know, the kid who's getting his master's degree right now and living with his parents. Like, there is a context of the local church where all of that matters to the junior hire that's interested, who might be listening, to the pastors that are listening. I'd love to talk about now just your framework of of jumping into soul care and shaping kind of the the next several weeks as we we launch the next few weeks on this topic, what it will look like to map it out.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, at a core level, and just before we kind of pivot into a little bit more on what a soul is, it's just disciple making. It's it's it's relational, it is conversational, and it scales down. It gets challenged when you try to do it too big.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But it really works with the people that you've identified, you know, the the neighbor, the coworker, the roommate, the spouse, even, the folks that I'm in school with or working with, that those are the ones that I'm I'm engaged in mission and ministry with. Yeah. So can I care for them in a way that is helping them make incremental progress towards falling in love with Jesus and following him? Because that's really ultimately all he's asked us to do. As you're going, he says, Matthew 28, as you're going, be making disciples. Yeah. Make friends for me. Help people to fall in love with me. And that scales down to those particulars. Uh, and really, I think, embodies whatever else it is that we're up to when we talk about uh spiritual formation or soul care or disciple making, yeah, any of those, any of those words.

SPEAKER_01

All right, so let's talk about terms. Your definition of spiritual formation and slash discipleship. What would you Yeah?

SPEAKER_00

So I Mal Holland's definition is my favorite. You probably know it better than I do, but it's it's the process of being formed to the likeness of Christ for the sake of others, something like that.

SPEAKER_01

The intentional process of being shaped in the image of Jesus for the sake of others. Yeah, but I love those components. It's a process. So is it a program? No. Could is it a single course? No. Can it be courses? Yes, but that's part of a process, right? Yeah, it's Sunday, it's midweek. Is it just content? No, it's not just content. It is this long, ongoing process. What I say in our church is we don't have a discipleship program. The local church is the discipleship program. Yeah. So that is the intentional process, right? So, and you have to choose to do it. It can't happen to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, and and obviously, you know, Dallas's ad on that is the is the work of the Holy Spirit. And the goal of it for Willard is that we start to think with the mind of Christ, so much so that our inner life is transformed, Romans 12, until we think with the mind of Christ. Wow. That's where we're going.

SPEAKER_01

You would say that the process, we would get to a place where we would think like Jesus without having to think about it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right? Yeah, that's it. So there will be a point where we don't have to look at the braceless bracelet and say, What would Jesus do? We would naturally do and think what Jesus would think and do. Yes. Well over a long period of time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You said one of the my favorite things I think I've heard. Uh, you said making you uh describe making disciples as making friends for Jesus.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That is the best way to think about it. You go out and get other people to just love Jesus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and it's it's like I'm sure people are enthused by the things that you're enthused.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, if I were to talk very long about my wife, you would love her.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's how it works, I think, with Jesus. It's great. And the problem is we talk more about Jesus, uh and more particularly about the things that we think he said or did or that you ought to be doing rather than helping people fall in love with him so that they can be with him.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right? The behavior gets straightened out in the following, not as a precondition of it.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. That is so good. That is so good, Pastor Bill.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I think, I mean, I know we're kind of wandering around here, but that's why he says he's the way before he's the truth. Follow in the way of Jesus, the truth will become clear. It's not a weapon you can wield to label people wrong or right, it's a relationship. He is the truth. When you follow in his way, you learn him, and then you discover this is what life is all about.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

You know, yeah. That's the invitation.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's so good, Pastor Bill, because especially in the age, you go on Instagram and you see everybody's fighting and debating, and everybody just wants to be right. And it's not getting us the result that we're looking for, of getting people to fall in love with Jesus. That's so good.

SPEAKER_01

I'm paraphrasing Eugene Peterson, but he says you can't just sell the Jesus truth and live any way you want to. Right. And I think when I look at what you're describing, I see it too on social media. I look at it as like the cheaper, easier way to lead people is to just hold up propositional truths as though that is the way of Jesus. Yeah. And meanwhile, their lives are falling apart, but they're holding this standard of you know morality as the goal versus how you respond to that person you disagree with is probably more important than making the claim. Yeah. And I think that's really important. That's part of, I mean, Jesus clearly had a morality and an ethic, but I think his tone and his way of living would have been, would have sh would shock most leader, most Christians today, yeah in the way they're engaging.

SPEAKER_00

Well, especially in the way that he embraced those who weren't living.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

In in the way that was life-giving to them.

SPEAKER_01

And if you were to look in scripture, I want to, I don't know, you could debate this, but when you see him getting appropriately angry, I the only time I see him using anger appropriately is the injustice that's taking place by by the religious folks of the day misrepresenting Yahweh in the places of power and religion that oppress. Because he flips the tables, he calls out woe to the cities, but woe is more of a heartbreak, in my opinion. Yeah. And then he calls out the Pharisees and the scribes, like with a level of tone that's judgment.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I you can push back. No, no, no. I think that's it. But the one thing that I would add is that he also gets pretty angry at the disciples when they try and keep kids from getting to them.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, great.

SPEAKER_00

But again, religious leaders it's people who who think they have Jesus in a box and are making, you know, tick the box as entry.

SPEAKER_01

This is so good.

SPEAKER_02

That is so good.

SPEAKER_01

So your journey of uh walking through lead trying to follow the church growth model, was that what you were walking through? So 80s and 90s, there was purpose-driven. Very much everything was that was.

SPEAKER_00

We went to schools of church growth.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So schools, so like you don't know this, but I do because I study history and it was a little before my time. But I know it because it was the pr the dominant kind of way, which is like, hey, if you want to reach people, you do these these things. And it was, it's what birthed kind of the saddlebacks and the willow creeks and the mega church model, which is the seeker model. And there's there's been models since there's the missional church, there's the house church, there's the millennial kind of, I don't know how you would describe the millennial, but it yeah, there's a millennial church that expression, but there's something new happening right now that I think is truly authentic, and and it's a hungry church, which I don't know if we can define, but there is something new happening. But that that journey of letting go of the church model, the church growth model, and pursuing this other thing led you to your conviction and your passion for soul care, which I took every class I took, whether it's preaching and teaching or pastoral care, you would do a soul care intro in all of it. So I heard it like nine times, and then I've heard it every day that we've met.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Would you break that down? Would you give us that framework? And I don't know, you know, where we begin, and you have a lot to unpack, but look, can we just start with some of it?

SPEAKER_00

Just the one piece I'd like to put in even uh those church growth models, yeah, people still met and fell in love with and have followed Jesus since.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

So it's not that everybody got everything wrong and here we are. No, it's no no, people were struggling and striving and finding and and failing, and it is as a result of that. And the beauty of this is the Holy Spirit is at work drawing women and men to himself. Yes. And uh, so it's not the problem with the model, it's that. When we get our teeth into something, yes, then we own it and try and control it. The same thing Willard was concerned about the spiritual formation movement, that it now becomes this thing rather than what the church is about at its essence. Yes. So that that would be the corrective balance, maybe. We talked about this.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what we talk about is look, it doesn't like God is using mega churches, giga churches, microchurches. Like it doesn't matter. He's using everything. Yeah, he loves his church, he's building his church. And and like that's important. It's not about the model. Some people are finding Jesus in those large churches, some of them are finding Jesus in small churches. Our church was a small church for a very long time, and now it's something else. And who would have thought? But God's using all the things and leaders in that way. This conviction though comes from pain and passion and a rediscovery, I think, that has helped. I mean, you've pastored hundreds, if not thousands, of pastors all over Southern California. I mean, it's touching so many. I would love to take this now and like really get it out. So let's go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So maybe a place to start is when we use language of soul care, the most logical question is what is soul or what is a soul? Yeah. Yeah. And as is often going to be the case, it's a bit squishy. It's a bit uncertain. We love certainty. Yes. Uh, the soul is a part of this or that heart, soul, mind, and strength. That means, oh yes, it's part of the human condition. And and all of those are true, yes, but not true enough. Yeah. It's like the three blind guys in the jungle running into an elephant who each describe the elephant based on their current experience. It's a tree, it's a wall, it's a snake. They're all right, and they're all not right enough. Right. Yes. So from the first place that we run into the word soul, Nefesh, it's in Genesis chapter two. So it's the second kind of story of creation, out of Sabbath, out of the rest, out of the stillness that sealed the first account. Now we have this foundation of this second story. And we see this here in Genesis 2, 7, where the Lord God far formed man of dust from the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. That living being is Nefesh's soul. Right? That's how it's translated. So at its core, soul is this combination of the dust of the earth plus the breath of God. And both of those elements, and you can see how they kind of dust of the earth, the material, the physical, the natural, and the breath of God, the spiritual, the supernatural, both of those are required for soul. Yes. So it's the it's the being that arises out of that creative tension. Right now, soul gets used, Nefesh gets used to just stand in for life. Hebrew is a relatively limited vocabulary language, unlike English, which we make up words all the time. Hebrew has five or six thousand words that kind of gather everything up. So you want context to determine what it means. But in its majority usage, soul is who we are. It doesn't work for the man to be alone. I need to make him a helper, uh one who will enable him to exist. Yes. Right. And then when that h and we can go into any of this that you want to, but when that helper arrives, the text is, and obviously it's doing a couple of different things there. One is what is the relationship between men and women in specific? Genesis chapter one has male and female humanity. Genesis two brings it down to almost an individual male-female setting up marriage and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_00

But the general principle is still the same. So we are built for that oneness that enables uh intimacy, knowing and being known. We are built for relationship. So that suggests that the soul has capacity for relationship, the social dynamic, but it is also a self-reflective component, the intellect. And then the emotions are kind of the dashboard indicator, the health that's where you register kind of the health of the system. Right. So if you think of the physical and spiritual, that echoes kind of that liminal in-between space. We're we're not animals, but we're not angels. We're we're souls. We're we're we we have a spirit, but we're not spirit. Yeah, we have a body, but we're not body. We don't have a soul, we are soul.

SPEAKER_01

You don't have a soul, you are a soul, right? You are a living being. This is this is a profound switch because this also fights against Gnosticism, yes, which is the the belief of you know, physical's bad, spiritual's good. That's like the dumbed down version. Material is corrupt and the spiritual, supernatural is pure. Well, but in the Hebrew consciousness, there is no word for spiritual. They coexist, like humanity cohabitates this physical, spiritual world. Yes. There's no divorce or better, or like this is the pinnacle of creation in many ways. It's God inhabiting a human inhabiting God's creation. Yeah in the Genesis story.

SPEAKER_00

Correct? Yeah, yeah. No, that's that that's that's it. And it and you see it how it echoes the Genesis one creation narrative, which is you know, be fruitful, fill the earth, steward it well. Yes, because you're my image. You're you're you're the one who translates me to the planet, if you will, uh this idea that Carmen Eimes has done a brilliant job on in her work. So the the challenge is how do we live in that liminal space? Yeah, because we feel the pull of the dirt, the material world is the primary definer of identity and the marker of uh place and all of that. But eternity is in our heart. So we're constantly living in that in that tension and will default to the Gnosticism of the spiritual as superior or to the material, which is my whole identity, is wrapped in what I own and what I consume and what I produce. Yeah, what people say, and we're instead built for that in-between space where we image God to the world and we represent the world in intercession and mediation to God. And we're correct right now.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to my life. 23 years, folks. This is what I'm using. Okay, well, let's pause and talk about this because yeah, these are new concepts, right? These are old concepts for me. But I think the way you're articulating this, I want to help translate this because we're talking about discipleship right now. We're talking about spiritual formation, the process of becoming like Jesus. And we're starting with redefining something that is so essential. It's like David Foster Wallace saying, like the most ubiquitous things are the things that we are swimming in. Like it's the fish going, Hey, good morning. How's the water this morning? And you, what the heck is water? You don't realize, right? You don't realize that we're missing something before we even start. And what we're missing is when we start talking about life with Jesus, we disconnect the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the relational from the life with God. And we just say, Oh, he wants my prayer life, or he just wants me to read scripture. We just got to worship, and we're like, wait, no, you're an integrated being, you are a soul. Yeah, what you eat, how you rest, how you, how you reflect, how you treat your mind, all of that is part of this dynamic of soul health.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and and scripture never it'll use language, heart, soul, mind, and strength. Yeah, but with the clear understanding that this is a whole being integrated. You you when when so we'll talk as a way of maybe giving some handles to things, just because we I don't think we, I don't have the capacity to see the the whole at all at once. So we're gonna have to come at it from different angles. But the challenge, as you've identified, is that we'll lock and load on one and ignore the other. And identity, instead of flowing from what God says we are, flowing as part of our image, becomes what we're attracted to, or what our preferences are, or what our desire is. Yeah. Rather than those things being an expression of a healthy soul, they become the limiters of identity in frame. And then we lose, we've we're off track. So that's what the Bible calls sin.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and we're gonna talk about unhealthy soul. And here's the thing. So Matthew 22 says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is to like it, love your neighbor as yourself. So just for people listening, because they're gonna go to that and be like, wait, I don't get this. Yeah, your heart, this is frame frame from the language of the Greek, right? But also, so how it would have been interpreted as Jesus taught. Heart is like the emotions and the will, right? You're that's what the the Greek and Jewish consciousness would have been. Like the soul that they're using in Greek, Jesus is using, is your spirit and inner life in that context, correct? And then your mind obviously is your thinking. And this is all in Jesus' language, uniquely designed to love and worship God, uh, to experience the abundance that God has for us. That's how it's working out. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00

Like, am I missing the the except to add the second piece, which is the relational component? You can't, you can't love God, heart, soul, mind, and strength without at the same time. They're moving together. Right.

SPEAKER_01

Which I just keep coming back to this because I see it in the church. We want to do me, myself, and Jesus. I want to, I want to do my journey with God and recognize you can't fulfill the commands of God or live a new testament life. Like if you're like, oh, I want to live like the early church, 59 commands in the New Testament for one anothering. Oh, yeah. So if you you can't like go and be my be alone with Jesus, you miss 59 commandments about love like one another, bear with one another, forgive one another, share with one another, all these commands.

SPEAKER_00

Put up with one another.

SPEAKER_01

Put up with one another. That's great. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02

Does it actually say put up with one? That is amazing.

SPEAKER_01

So good. So just recapping this, because I know this is a lot of information. If you're gonna look at Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, we're we're starting off the bat with God creating Adam. He breathes the breath. So ruach is the Hebrew word, breath, wind, spirit, yeah, into Adam, physical dust. He creates the soul, the living being, which has we'll say the five dimensions of the soul.

SPEAKER_00

Just as a way that we talk about the dimensions.

SPEAKER_01

So it's it's all integrated. You know, it's the spirit, physical, emotional, mental, and relational capacities. Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_00

Or you can think of another way to think of it. Willard poses this that maybe the soul language is kind of like the operating system that coordinates, yes, integrates the whole. So that's another way to think about it.

SPEAKER_01

So it's the OS.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Or the Android. I don't know what the I can't translate Android. I don't know. Sorry to love you if you have an Android. Sorry. Great. So that's where we begin with you are a soul. And where do you want to take it from there?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it might be helpful just to I know that we kind of think we know what each of those are. So maybe it would be helpful to just kind of look briefly at those five dimensions. Yeah. And then uh then we can talk as we go forward what health and unhealth looks like. Because each of these five dimensions, you'll hear me talk about this when we talk about what does it mean to care for our own souls. But each of the five, we all have all five, right? But each of us has one or two that are primary for us as a way of praying, as a way of worshiping, as a way of knowing God and intimacy with God that brings life into the whole. And we will talk about how it's important to know kind of which I'll say window of the soul through which then the spirit blows to bring life to the whole. When he refreshes your soul, Psalm 23, he restores your soul. How does he do that? Yes. Uh, and so it might be helpful to look at that.

SPEAKER_01

I love this.

SPEAKER_02

So I can't wait to hear.

SPEAKER_01

Let's do an overview. I just want to say throughout my life, this was a huge awakening because I think I applied this religious approach to walking with Jesus that was like primarily like I just do spiritual things. That's how God refreshes me. I just memorize scripture, I read a lot of the Bible, I pray with this intensity that's separate from anything else. Like, I'm not praying in the kitchen when I'm making coffee. I'm lighting a candle and I'm on my knees or I'm, you know, praying at the specific thing. I couldn't possibly allow my quiet time to be on a long walk with Jesus through the park. Like you help me see like what I was doing was applying like what would be religious language to things that were never intended to be that should you have a quiet time? Of course. Should you read scripture? Of course. Should you have time where you're praying? Yes. But watch what happens when you make it the only way that God connects with you. And especially if you're like someone like me who's very physical. Like, I need, I need to, you would tell me, like, go on a run and pray. Like, oh, I can't. And then all of a sudden I'd be on a run without distractions. And I'm having like communion with Jesus and crying, or you know, wreck being wrecked by a verse, and I'd have to run home and write down this is my new sermon was written in five minutes on a run. Like, but there, that's what you mean as a window into life with God. There are these dimensions, right?

SPEAKER_00

And that's the that's the point, right? The physical is the platform. Uh, it's we we live around our bodies most of the time. Uh, we do we don't we're most of us are fairly close to where our bodies are. But if you watch people you need a translator, watch, watch the eyes. And Jesus told a parable, his first parable was yeah, sometimes people are gonna be there where their bodies are, and sometimes they're not. So I'm gonna sow the seed, sometimes it's just gonna bounce off their forehead because they're not even paying attention. They're they're not for some, they're not there. Yeah, yeah. And we're built that way. I mean, we I mean, we have the breath of God, we have the kiss of the father as we become beings. Of course, we're gonna have a mind that races, but now we want to bring it into presence. Yeah, and body helps us to anchor. So of it's not just that we pray while we run, it's that the running is prayer. Yeah, it's not that we pray while we're making coffee, it's that the making coffee is our communion, it is a place of prayer, it is a way of worship, it's a way of engaging. And so the body often carries the bulk of the pain of the system. Think how how your body will register tension, uh headaches or gastrointestinal stuff or random shooting aches and pains. Well, maybe the body is trying to tell you something, yeah, and it would be worth attending to.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the body becomes the kind of the platform, it's the the how we perceive the physical world, beauty, wonder enters through the physical realm. Uh, we see things, we hear things, we the fragrances, all of the tangibles. So that window, if you will, through which the physical world is engaged in and that we are present, present in it.

SPEAKER_01

Can I ask? So the body's not just an instrument for worship in the sense of singing songs. Correct. That you're describing a kind of life where your body in its glory and beauty, made in the image of God, rededicated as an instrument of righteousness to use Romans language, in the running, in the playing with your kids, in the in the doing the work, in the working as an architect in Irvine, that that be the body becomes the container for the glory of God and what happened in that way.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. Have you heard this?

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_01

How does this reframe some of your things? I'm wondering what you're thinking in real time.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, this is something that I have been walking through as of recently is just that like bringing, I mean, coming to a place of stillness and true presence and like letting Jesus be a part of every moment of my life, not just that, because I have the same story as you. Like I'm such a spiritual disciplined type of person. And I think I spent a majority of like the beginning of my journey with the Lord getting my spirit in such good shape, becoming a prayer warrior, becoming like someone who knows scripture and can uh teach scripture, and like letting my soul kind of be in the background and not tending to it the way that I needed to. And so I've been on a journey of like letting Jesus tend to the parts of my soul that have been like broken and hidden for a long time, but not in the ways that I've learned to do it, not in the ways of just like sitting and praying it away, but just like sitting and like genuinely letting myself be refreshed and restored. And so I'm excited today to learn practical ways. And I think everybody, we need to learn practical ways of letting the Lord refresh our souls and tend to our souls. That's what I'm getting from this.

SPEAKER_00

That's good. Yeah, because otherwise we think of the body as kind of a container that is disposable, and we don't realize we will always have a body. Yeah, in the age to come, we'll have a new body, you will have a body that is suitable to the nature of that age, but like this one is suitable to this world that we live in. But body matters to God.

SPEAKER_01

Your body matters, and this is revolutionary, I think, because even as a pastor, I mean, you walked with me through that season. I was burning out at like 29 years old. I was bleeding internally because of stress. So I got all this three months of treatment. They're looking for polyps and colon signs of colon cancer after all a colonoscopy. After like at 29, all these issues. Doctor's like, what do you do for work? I'm a pastor, I lead a church. Like, we think your stress is causing you to bleed. So, what did that do to my spiritual life? Here I am praying, preaching, leading a church, fasting, doing all the things disconnected from my body.

SPEAKER_02

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like my body at that point was not honored, it was a tool to do the religious thing. Yep. And I've had to learn how to slow down and run at a zone two pace. How to honor the limitations as I'm getting older, the limitations I need to stretch. I never had to stretch before.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

There are things where I'm like, wow, there's ways that I've dishonored or I've not honored my body in the way that I just have to embrace the limitations. I'm not 20-something anymore. And yeah, and that's not a bad thing. And I think in our Western culture, in our our church culture, I want to just add some of our church culture has an eschatology where the we're just gonna get zapped out of here when we go. Yeah. So it's all about the Casper living when we go in heaven. And that's not a theology that's biblical.

SPEAKER_00

No.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and the other element of it is is is a misunderstanding of what healing is, yeah. Where we want to be healed of the symptoms, but not of the cause. Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Like what? Give me an example.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Well, you you think through how much of the body, how much the body is carrying the weight of our brokenness. Yeah. Right? You think of the way we start to tense up when we think about Thanksgiving dinner at grandma's house. It's like, what's that about? And the body then starts to carry some of the symptoms. And I think there's it's not just psychosomatic, there's actual olives. Yeah, yeah. Right. And so we want to pray those away without ever dealing with the message that the body's trying to say to us. It's yelling at us to pay attention to this tension headaches or the whatever. And think of the way it's gotten uh distorted with sexuality and the way it's gotten distorted with the fitness craze or uh the uh eating disorders of varying varying kinds. The body has been asked to carry an enormous amount of weight, and we have not honored it well, or we have idolized it, yes, and that doesn't honor it well either. So that's the dynamic. So that's the first one physical. First one, yeah, good. Uh second one is spiritual, which is uh what we kind of think. About uh in terms of things like prayer, are mostly the spiritual thing focuses as a desire, a deep longing, a deep yearning that can be hijacked with sexuality, with food, with all kinds of other things. But underneath that is a realization that we're we're built for profound knowing and being known by God first, and then by others in in in relationship. So that yearning, that desire, that vulnerability, that's part of the dynamic of the spirit. And it's it's made for God, it's the breath of God. So it's that peace that we think about typically when we think worship and prayer and scripture and all of those things. Yeah, that's that's one aspect of it. Yeah. But there are other other dynamics attached to that, just very quickly, given our our time. But the the social aspect is how do we manage relationships? Yeah, yeah. Um, and notice how carefully scripture is on hey, if you have unforgiveness, what are you praying for?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What what what why are you coming to talk to me when you've got a brother that you know has got something against you and you have something against him or her?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What do you what deal with that? The social dynamic is often again where a lot of our internal stressors surface. We would rather scapegoat somebody than deal with our own issues.

SPEAKER_02

So true.

SPEAKER_00

And so the social place of connecting with each other, a place in which we will know ourselves in relationship differently than we will know ourselves outside of relationship.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

There that 360 view is only possible as I have somebody coming along saying, Hey, have you noticed? And we haven't. And if we're not wise, we will shoot the messenger and not attend to that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and I'll just add like the context for discipleship is always community. You cannot follow Jesus without others. There it that is part of the process of formation, of becoming like Jesus. You you can't exist as a follower of Jesus without the body of Jesus, like the body of Christ. Like that's really important to recognize. So and most of us think that just means showing up to an event on Sunday, but no, we're talking about living in a way where people have hold up a mirror and reflect back to you the good that they see, the encouragement, but also call you out and to draw you into who you're supposed to be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So and typically with relationships, we see this online all the time where people will say, I thought that I was so healed when I was single. I thought I was so ready for a relationship. And then you get into a relationship and there's a bunch of things that come up that you didn't have to face when you were single, like insecurity, like selfishness, like all types of different brokenness. Like you can only discover those things and heal from them in the right relationships. That's right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So good. Well, and that's why in my soul care classes, I talk about what does intentional dating look like?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, what does premarriage, pre-engagement conversation, what does that look like? What does it look like to embrace the gift of singleness as a legitimate form of following towards Christ-likeness? Because that's all part of soul care. Yeah. Just quick again, the mental component is how we identify and process uh reality, assign meaning to it. It that needs to be trained, obviously. It's it our our mind is not just our brain. It's our our body knows things, our body remembers things, our soul has an intellect, has a way of knowing. Uh, you think about discernment. Most of that's not an intellectual process. It's a we'll use language of a gut feel. Yeah, right. Second brain.

SPEAKER_01

Scientists call it like the second brain is the gut. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So we want to think through what does it mean to be more than a brain on a stick kind of thing? Uh, what does it mean uh when my perception has been misshapen? Right. And I need to repent, re- reconnect. Yeah, that's good. And then the final one is the my favorite one to talk about, and maybe we want to bridge this, uh, but the emotional window or aspect of the soul is kind of the dashboard indicator of the health of the system. So you think through the the gauges on a on a on a car or something like that, and you think through the primary markers of emotional health are love and joy. As the environment within which we live and move and have our being, we exist in God, who is love. So love is God is with us. We are then needing to be with him. And the more that gauge registers love, the more we are recognizing that not only is he with us, but we're with him. Yeah. I think of love as kind of the Christmas emotion, the incarnation emotion that I'm I I will be with you, et cetera. And then joy is the energy cell, if you will, of the soul. It's the capacity for life, it's the Easter emotion. God can raise the dead, yeah, uh, and all will be well, right? So, or it's the that internal pressure that equalizes the external pressure. Yeah. You know, like the fish that swim off the shore here at thousands of feet below sea level are not crushed by the hundreds of pounds pressing in on their bodies because inside there's a an equal pressure that equalizes it. That pressure in a world that wants to conform us is joy. Yeah, great. It pushes out from the inside so we don't get crushed. Oh and then and then the three protector emotions sadness, which helps us to identify and process loss, fear, which helps us to identify and process uh threat. Yeah. Wow. And then anger, which helps us to identify and process uh boundary violations. So good. So all of those three are on. It's like with the red lights, if I'm sh low on, you know, the oil air pressure comes on or the oil pressure or whatever it is, those function in that way. And they're not intended to be a permanent state of being, but it's how we, as we go through life, process losses, and we can build this out more if you want, and or how we identify threats is is because it's important with all three of these that they be properly calibrated to reality. Is the is the degree of anger I feel appropriate to the boundary that's been violated? And really good. And then how do we how do we identify and process that? And then how do we let love and joy reframe anger with response rather than reaction?

SPEAKER_02

Love that. Can we have a whole episode on that?

SPEAKER_01

Go off on emotions on the next one. But yeah, we can. Because what one thing, I feel like most of us are not trained in emotional health. No, or even awareness. Like men in particular are trained in anger. Like, pretty much that's the dominant emotion that they're allowed to feel based on society and you know, system family system. But like the I read a book, Voices of the Heart, last year, which was extraordinary because it showed, I think, nine emotions. And I would say reading it, I'm like, wow, eight of the emotions are negative. And that's exactly how other people in the class read it. And one of them is joy, that's nine. And the other ones were like sadness and you know, anger and all these things. And I'm like, and he's like, All of them are gifts from God to shape you in Christ-likeness. And they are either, you know, hijacked or redeemed. Yes, and they're all good. And this is really important to identify. So I do think we need to go off on this. This is the overview right now. You're gonna get into signs of unhealth for all of these, because and then signs of health, like because for me, what I want to help people understand is how do you steward your soul? Yeah, how do we steward the various dimensions that you've laid out as part of our practice, not as Jesus, my life coach, but as a way of worship towards the integrated self. And so we need a better framework, I think, for all of these to understand what the Bible, what Jesus intended for us to be as humans, as a soul. And then also uh a healthy framework to like, hey, as we discover our primary window. So with these five, can you just talk about the primary window, how one might find the primary window?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so just give yourself some permission to say, how do I, where do I feel most alive? Yeah. Where, where do I? So if your primary window is is spiritual, you will connect with God easily through worship, through prayer. You'll love that altar playing at the church, you'll love the reading the scripture, all of that thing will just bring life to you. But if your window is not spiritual, we still need to do most of those things, but it will be hard work. It will be a discipline, a practice, and not always life-giving. Sometimes you're just gonna have to do to do it. If your window is spiritual, we already are physical, rather, we've already talked about that. You probably will pray more effectively and easily on a run.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Wow or doing uh working out at the gym or going even on a power walk, then then all of a sudden you're finding yourself in and Jesus can keep up with you in in the jog. He's got a fast pace, he knows how to do that, and he can also slow you down where your your running becomes work rather than refreshment, right? Uh, if it is uh emotional, you need art, you need beauty, you need nature, is going to be a primary one. You just go down to the beach and within half an hour your soul is restored, your soul is refreshed. Well, pay attention to that, right? Beautiful. And sadly, a lot of our churches, especially the modern ones, have no beauty. Just a box. It's just a box. You go back to the cathedrals in Europe, yeah, and uh think about the artworks of art, the stained glass, the architecture that is just preaching and declaring the glory of God. So good. If it is social, you probably already have one or two soul friends who you get together and Jesus pulls up a chair at the table, and it's just life-giving, right? There's just energy and there's enthusiasm for the next journey. And if it's intellectual, you probably will find a systematic theology or spiritual theology or a dense book that just, oh man, I need a dictionary to get through this, I need to think through this, I need to read a paragraph three times to get it, and I love it. I'm just all the little gray cells are vibrating with life and energy. Everybody's got all five.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_00

But most of us will bring life into the system and refreshment into the system with one or two of them as as primary.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. And and it will change in stage of life. Sometimes it moves from this one to that. And that's why it's not this rigid structure, but you're you're looking at looking at yourself, going, what are the ways that bring life? And in the season that you're in, like there are seasons where you're like, hey, I've been super isolated. I need to anchor in this season with social. I need to have two people that are walking with me and carrying with this stuff with me. Yeah. Or there are seasons where you're like, I need to be in solitude. I need me to reflect deeply and and identify why are my emotions out of control.

SPEAKER_02

That's so great.

SPEAKER_01

And my anger to the guy that cut me off is a 10. Why is that a 10? Like, if anger is like a real threat, I'm not threatened at all, but my anger mechanism is completely distorted. And then sit with Jesus and let him help you along the way. We're gonna talk about all those things. Get in each one. I promise you, that's the goal.

SPEAKER_02

So that was so but this is the first one.

SPEAKER_01

This is the intro. So there we go.

SPEAKER_02

And and I want to say too, if we can, I really want to learn how trauma and childhood and upbringing shapes your soul and the health of it. Because I think that's what most people are dealing with.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. All right, so that was it.

SPEAKER_02

That was that was insane.

SPEAKER_01

Episode uh one with this guy. What episode are we on? We're like 20 something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we are on 27, I think. 24, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for joining us with Pastor Bill. We're so glad you joined us.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks, guys. We love you so much. Go be with Jesus and go make friends for Jesus while you're at it, too.

SPEAKER_01

Good plan.