Bible Study Podcast

Why Lust Is Not About Sex — and Every Sin Is Actually a Misdirected Desire for God

• Darren Rouanzoin, Angela Halili

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0:00 | 54:07

Every sin is a distorted desire. Underneath lust is a longing for connection. Underneath anger is a loss of identity. Underneath sloth is an inability to love yourself enough to take care of yourself. This episode walks through the seven deadly sins not as a list of behaviors to avoid but as a diagnostic tool for understanding where the soul has gone sideways — across every dimension of your life

In this episode:

  • Pride as an inaccurate view of self — and why inferiority is just as much a form of pride as superiority
  • Anger as a sign of lost identity — and why most angry people are actually the most insecure
  • Envy and the spark of pleasure when someone else fails
  • Sloth — not laziness but the neglect of things that matter, while staying busy doing everything else
  • Why greed, gluttony, and lust are all misdirected longings for connection with God
  • How the seven deadly sins work themselves out in each of the five dimensions of the soul
  • You can hide from God in 10 hours of prayer — the spiritual unhealth nobody talks about

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SPEAKER_02

Hey friends, I just want to say I hope you've loved this podcast. We have been finding ways to make this sustainable because there's production costs and all sorts of things that you don't see behind the scenes. And rather than doing ads, we found some partners. And first of all, we are trying to empower this as a nonprofit to give it away. And if you want to participate in giving, you can go to commissioned collective. The link will be below, and you can give. We'd love your support to make this what it is. But we also have partners. So we have two partners we've aligned ourselves with. First is Dondervan. Dondravan is a Christian publishing house. They have produced lots of resources that we use. Things like the NIV translation, which is what I use and I encourage people to use. They have Bible study resources, publishing, they have so many books and all sorts of things online. Check out what they're doing. They're coming out with a whole bunch of resources that you'll love to partner with. And we are so glad that they're partnering with us in this Bible study podcast.

SPEAKER_05

And we're also partnering with Logos, which is a Bible study app and resource and website that has so aided me in my journey with studying scripture, teaching on the podcast. We love Logos so much. It is a journey in there. When you open it up, there's so much to learn from, so much to glean from. So we love Logos and we're so excited to partner with that.

SPEAKER_02

And I would love for all of you to download that. It's a free app. You can get free resources, but then you can build a library. So if you love studying scripture, that is the app I use for all my study. I've been training Angela in it, and I want to encourage all of you to get that as well. So thanks for your support. We're so glad you're partnering with us in this journey.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you guys so much.

SPEAKER_02

How about that?

SPEAKER_00

Is that better? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome back to the Bible study podcast. I'm Darren.

SPEAKER_05

I'm Ang.

SPEAKER_02

I'm Bill. We got Bill. He's back, and we are getting our minds blown and our hearts are getting lit on fire.

SPEAKER_05

And we're crying a lot. Some of us, yes. I saw you.

SPEAKER_02

We're excited to continue this conversation on soul care. And if you missed last episode, last episode was about really the fruit of the spirit, that a marker of a healthy soul will reflect the character of Christ, which is found in the lists of the fruit of the spirit, which we also talked about, are not these things that we develop in isolation alone, but in the real battlefield of life. You don't need patience when you're sitting alone on your bed meditating with some type of no-string or no lyric music. Instrumental is the right word. With your scented candle, which is probably. Yeah, sorry. Um, I use words for a living occasionally. And uh, but it it's found in the life that is ordinary and it's often met with conflict and and challenges and things going not the way you desired. And so um I was truly wrecked in the last episode. So I'm excited for the next section as we talk about um the dimensions of the soul. I know you want to jump into this, how uh it gets distorted, how we go, we move towards unhealth. We're gonna start there and then we're gonna try to get to how to steward your soul. So thanks for being back.

SPEAKER_00

Well, uh, because last time we talked about what health looks like and the character of Christ and and and why Christ-likeness is uh a worthwhile goal, because that's what it means to be fully human. When you think about those characteristics, that's where we started in Genesis 2 before we decided to go our own way in Genesis 3. And it is that self that God is restoring in Christ, enabling us to become fully ourselves. So God is not going to make you something you're not. He is going to empower and enable you to be who he created you to be in the first place.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_00

So that means when we are kind of off the reservation, if you will, if we have missed the mark, if we have have ceased to be human in some way, um, it is in the the markers of that are what are called the seven deadly sins, right? This comes from uh Gregory the Great around 590, 600 AD, he noticed in his practice of spiritual direction before he became the Pope, but he noticed that the patterns of uh brokenness were predictable and uh were were common. Uh and it arose from his observation because we live and move and have our being in God, who is love, these distortions or perversions or manipulations of love are how the soul gets gets broken. And so these uh really real quick, I want to define this term.

SPEAKER_02

You use the word sin, and then you're using definitions like distortions of love, manipulations of love. I love that phrase, but the word sin biblically it's an archery term, right? To miss the mark. Yeah. And it's you're designed for shalom and wholeness, yeah, integrated soul in the image of God. Yep. And we've chosen to in Genesis 3 to choose to go away, to turn away from God by going our own way. Yeah. So that distortion of we're designed to flourish through connection with loving, loving relationship with God, perfect loving attachment relationship with God, perfect loving uh relationship with ourselves, each other, and the rest of creation. Shalom. When we chose to move away from God's design, Genesis 3, that distorted everything else. Yes, right. So our relationships are destroyed, relationship to creation got distorted. Um, we see that what what one author calls the vandalization of shalom is the result of sin. That's the the crisis that has taken place. And so uh in your and Gregory the Great uh help frame what we call the seven deadly sins. You're gonna walk through those things now. These are common. I mean, I they're very they're biblical, but they're also framed as what you're describing as a common distortion of living outside of what you were intended to be. Mm-hmm. I'm just in a nutshell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

No, that's so helpful. Yeah, good. That's what it comes down to. And we don't need to spend a lot of time on this because we're all walking case studies and what that brokenness looks like, right? Nope. No, no, you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, wait, that's deceit. Dang it. Other people, other people, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But that's an important dynamic because they do we have accommodated ourselves to brokenness. Yes. We have figured out how to make it quote unquote work, and then we're surprised and shocked and dismayed when it actually doesn't work. So Gregory identified the first set as being kind of perversions or distortions of love, the first one of which is pride. And like love is the source from which the rest of the character, the fruit of the spirit, flow. Pride is the one from which the rest of the brokenness flows. Pride is essentially, it comes in one of two forms. It's either thinking more highly of myself than I ought to think, or it's thinking more lowly of myself than I ought to think. And uh what I ought to think is what God thinks of me. Yeah. So that's what you were saying, that that central connection. He's the one who's the definer of my reality. When I think more highly or think more lowly, I'm essentially disagreeing with God about my own reality. Identity and reality, identity and so on and so forth. So that then obviously throws everything else in for a loop.

SPEAKER_02

It it's so pride being an inaccurate view of self and reality. It's either positive or negative.

SPEAKER_00

So inferiority or superiority are both forms of pride.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

One feels like it isn't because it feels humility, but it's really a false humility. Yeah. It's still a disagreement with God about who I am. Wow. And I would argue, especially now as we're dealing kind of 2013, 14 with the ubiquity of the iPhones and the thumbs up models, that we're probably now dealing pretty a great deal with the inferiority as the primary place of damage, which then gets mitigated by this false superiority that is about what I do or my productivity or the plastic pieces that come along along the line. So again, a variety of ways where that this shows up. Where it's the most damaging, because you think about the five dimensions of the soul, social, intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, there's pride in each of those elements, right? And where the most damaging of those is that spiritual pride. Yeah. Where my unique relationship with God gives me unique standing with God. It's like James and John, which of us is the greatest? You can be first, Jesus, right? But which of us is the greatest after you sitting life, and that's where the problem comes in. Because then we become experts in other people's sins, we ignore our own brokenness or justify it, which is even more damaging. And uh comparison is huge instead of the Genesis one collaboration, cooperation, partnership that enables us to work together, each unique fully ourselves, in collaboration with the rest of the community, you've already identified that, which is what it takes to image God. Now I'm in competition with you, and not healthy competition, but destructive. I'm comparing, and all of that flows out of that. So that's the first one. The next one is anger, which while at one time being a gift to identify boundary violations, we talked briefly about that, I think, a couple of times ago. But anger here is when that's my kind of home base, where I'm constantly in displeasure with another, I'm constantly frustrated, I define myself at that level of competition. So bitterness, indignation, rage, resentment, sometimes it's icy cold, disdain, contempt, sometimes it's this volcanic, and all almost always it sources from insecurity. The most angry people are the ones that are are the most are in all likelihood the most insecure in identity. They are have lost their touch with who they are as beloved of God, and as an appropriate emotion, it can be really helpful to identify those boundary violations. But if it becomes our home base, if it becomes our primary way of responding, then it becomes harmful and destructive. And not just to us, not just to other people who feel the rage, but also to us. We could at some point, if you wanted to think about, okay, how do I be, how do I deal with how to identify anger and where does it come from? And that might be worth worthwhile. But the third one is envy, where you can see how if I don't know who I am, if I'm not accepting my own beauty, my own belovedness, my own core identity, my own goodness, then I and if comparison starts to be the primary driver, then I'm displeased when somebody else has something good happen to them. Well, I take pleasure even at their failing. There's a s there's a little bit of a spark when I hear the gossip, when I hear the rumor of yet another failure of one kind or another. I'm not grateful for my own life. Yeah. Well, because it's not as good as somebody else's. And this works in all five dimensions. I look at somebody's marriage or I look at somebody's spirituality, or I look at somebody's intellect, or whatever. And when it goes to jealousy, it's I don't just envy, I don't, I don't want them to have what they what they have. And so when I do that, I start to head head sideways. So that's the distortions. When love is insufficient, it becomes sloth. This old-fashioned word that is uh can be about laziness uh or can appear as laziness, but usually what it is is negligence to things that matter, apathy, despondency, hopelessness, um uh listless half-heartedness. I think this is, if you will, the way our current generation is missing the mark. Because we're not lazy in the classical sense. No. We have people who are busy doing all kinds of things, yeah, except the one thing necessary.

SPEAKER_02

So in the busyness, in the hurry, the running around, in the activity, in the streaming and scrolling and activity, neglecting the things that matter to the soul and to God. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And to relationships and all kinds of other things.

SPEAKER_02

It's you could be hyperactive, but it's actually the the intentionality of neglecting that co that's the the thing God's inviting you into.

SPEAKER_00

It's avoidance of responsibility. I don't want to be accountable, I I don't want to do the necessary thing, all of that. Um and it roots in insufficient love for like to do the what I need to do for myself. This is a big one. We gotta come back to this. This is huge. This is huge. It is a big one. I feel like this one's a good thing. I don't want to take us off course, but there's a million things about that. So you think through the whole victimization piece, or you think through the what's in it for me is the only motivation for service, or you think about the self-protective you think about how this works itself out in addictions, for example, of all kinds, whether it's pornography or alcohol or drugs, but spirituality can become an addiction, yeah, where I hide from my pain in hyper spiritual behaviors. Just keep showing up to justify. Just keep showing up for the things or going to the next big event. Yeah. And instead of sitting with my pain until it gives up, I will medicate or I will hide or whatever. And that ends up being about sloth as well. You think about how we're watching, for example, the age at which people make lifetime commitments to one another in marriage or relationships. We're seeing that drift further and further into the late 20s, early 30s. And what's that? Well, it's a fear that I'm gonna miss out. It's a fear that if I say yes to this person, then the my soulmate is gonna show up three months from now and I I'm gonna, it's the FOMO. Yeah, yeah, literally.

SPEAKER_01

Which theologically we don't believe in a soulmate.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Oh, really? We can talk about that at some point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But I just think you could just throw a brick anywhere and hit somebody and live the way God intended.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and in reality, that's true. You become soulmates with the person you marry, yes, not marry your soulmate. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah, okay, good. But the fear of commitment, the fear of um failure to, you know, that if I'm I'm settling, and uh without realizing that your life doesn't come to you from the outside. Yeah. Your job, your relationship, your house is not supposed to bring you life. You're the source of life. It's out of your being that the rivers of life flow. So you you build up a life of excuses, of rationalization, of justification, of or an over-reliance on gifts or talents without doing the hard work to develop those. There are tons of talented musicians, but who haven't done the work to really hone their craft and hone their ability because they're just toasting on their gift until it's not enough. Wow. And it leads to this passionless, half-hearted, play it safe engagement and involvement in life. We're terrified of being ridiculed, of being made fun of, so we never quite engage at a at a full level. And of course, our world gets smaller and smaller. Yeah. Loneliness is on the increase. It's a fear-driven avoidance of my own life, those kinds of dynamics that that kick in kick into that. And then the final two are the ones that we spend, final three rather, that we spend most time with. But what happens when we don't love who we ought to love and as we ought to love, we will tend to turn it to possessions with greed, to food and appetites with gluttony, or towards sensual pleasure with lust. And each of those three are that misdirections, right? And remember, under all of them is a deep desire to know and be known, a deep desire for intimacy, a deep desire for connection with God.

SPEAKER_02

No, there's what I think this is important, like the framework of how we move in sin, in disobedience. It's it doesn't start that way. It starts with a god, often godly desires, human desire that that is distorted in the way it comes out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. This is why when you're walking with people, when I'm walking with people out of pornography addictions or sex addictions, it's like just make it go away. Make we pray, God take away my desire. And it's no, that's never going to happen. That's right. Because that's fundamental to who you are as a person. And underneath that desire that has gotten hijacked by lustra in pornography, underneath that is a longing to for connection with another person. Yeah. But underneath that is a longing for connection with God.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Yeah, so God can't can't take that desire away. He can only heal the distortion. That's then that's what we're after. That's what we're after. Such a different framework for a lot of teaching. Very different.

SPEAKER_05

Very different. And the my spiritual formation was very much like rebuke, renounce, reject. And so you're good luck with it. Yeah, Pastor Bo said, I don't like that. Yeah. So it's not really a case of like Lord, just like I rebuke the spirit of lust.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, let's sit with it long enough until we win and it doesn't.

SPEAKER_05

Wow.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Until we finally settle to the desire underneath what that's about.

SPEAKER_05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Also, because there's a lot of people listening that framework, the spirit of lust. Um it could just be a desire, right? So when we put it like this, it that's a bit Gnostic where it's just you're attaching natural human desires that are distorted to an element that is outside of yourself. That okay, if I can get that delivered, then I'll be cured. That's I don't see that in the scriptures. I do see a case for deliverance. And sometimes there are spirits attacked to it's attached to the inappropriate anger and all these things. I get that. But I would say that framework is unhelpful for most people because that's not what's going on.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, interesting. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's the same thing with greed, which is the sin that makes our current economy work really well. It's not having things as much as it's wanting things. Yes. And because we know that people who are greedy, even if they get what they want, they now want the next version of that. And of course, the whole economy is built around cultivating desire for the next the most for the thing. Yeah. So things, and then gluttony is the the typical thing is the obesity and the portion size and all of that. But another form of that is a failure to be satisfied with simple. So it's the hyper focus on I I need this brand of water or that brand of olive oil or that brand of balsamic vinegar and become obsessed with the colour. Hyper pickiness and focus on an excessive focus on a particular thing, which then again gives that thing power. I can't be satisfied unless my coffee is this roaster or something. Sorry. That happens to be my besetting sin.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you can't talk about other people's sins right now.

SPEAKER_04

Coffee, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Jesus, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is really fascinating. So you're you're saying gluttony is not just overeating. Correct. You're saying something else.

SPEAKER_00

It's giving food power that it does not ought not ever possess over us. I can't be happy to have a glass of cold water with a friend. I have to have this particular mountain spring, this particular whatever. Yeah. Oh man.

SPEAKER_05

I feel a little bit called out right now. Oh good. Because I like glass water bottles when you know what.

SPEAKER_00

But you see how that has gotten leveraged. The greed piece, the gluttony piece. And of course, lust is underneath so much of our marketing and and on the list goes.

SPEAKER_05

Where would addiction fall? Oh, sorry. Where would addiction fall in that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it's addiction, this is very simplistic, and those who are really good at this will take want to take this further. But essentially, as I think about it, addiction is where I go to deal with my pain. Yeah. So hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bored, the typical five-fold gateway. Instead of sitting with my hunger, instead of sitting with my anger, instead of sitting with my boredom, I medicate. So I'll go to a video game, or I'll go to a website that is not helpful or appropriate, or I'll go to Rocky Road ice cream in the refrigerator a gallon at a time, or you know, whatever, rather than sitting with what my anger, what my sadness, what my loneliness, what my boredom is trying to teach me, I can't stand, I can't be with my discomfort long enough until I get underneath what that's trying to teach me. And so I will, and then that creates first a psychological. And then it becomes often, especially with drugs and alcohol, totally a physical now, it's a hunger that has to be satisfied.

SPEAKER_05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so when you resist and you sit with the hunger or the loneliness or whatever it is, you're saying that essentially your dopamine gets restored, and as time goes on, you need those things less and less.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Unless your system has been so compromised. Yeah. Because that happens.

SPEAKER_05

How do you heal a system that you can't?

SPEAKER_00

You're just okay, I will never ever be able to have a drink of alcohol for the rest of my life, say. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. If you can. Yeah. And if you can sit with that until you win and it loses, then you're on the way to some progress. Wow. That's why the 12-step programs can be very helpful with for some people, because it just trains them into you're not the boss of you. Yeah. You've got to pay attention. Stay in the game. Don't do it alone. Have a sponsor, have somebody you can call so that you can get talked down off the ledge of your longing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

That's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00

So anyway, that sorry, did you that kind of sets up the ways of brokenness? Yes. Now we want to think about how that works through those five dimensions of the soul. So as we think about what that looks like, I just want to keep myself on track here. As we think about health in the soul, we want to say the first kind of piece of that is to reconnect our identity to God as the source of our identity. You think through the Genesis 3 that we've already alluded to when I say I want to be on my own, I want to be like God without connection. And we then we lose our relationships with one another, we lose our relationship with ourselves and of course with God. So how does that work itself out in the individual piece? The physical element is probably the easiest to demonstrate because the body carries so much of the trauma, the body carries so much of the pain of the rest of the system. But think through physical illness, whether it's high blood pressure or stomach ailments, or where how how is their body carrying stress? How is your body carrying disappointment? How is it showing up with exhaustion or with food issues over under indulgment control? How do we manage our discontent with caffeine, with comfort foods, et cetera?

SPEAKER_02

You're saying that these seven deadly sins begin to work themselves out in every dimension of the soul, and we can identify that through how our bodies are living. Yeah. So it's very from sickness, we see the effects of illness. But some of our sicknesses are the result of not eating properly, not sleeping properly, stress, you know, cortisol spikes and all these things. Or yeah, like that impacts the physical aspect of our soul. And stewarding our soul requires a hard look at our lifestyle choices that have enabled us to go that far. Yep. So for me, when I was a pastor, I'm still a pastor, when I was pastoring and I was 20 pounds lighter, probably 25 pounds lighter, really sick, no energy, not eating well, working 60 to 8 hours a week, not working out, like all of that wasn't just a sin of identity or like an issue of pride, although it was because the pride was I have to do it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

The church God called me to build, I was like, I'm responsible.

SPEAKER_00

And God gave me an assignment, it's now my job to fulfill it without him.

SPEAKER_02

So I was running as fast as I could, and I was neglecting all sorts of things that impacted my body, but the deeper layer was actually just an inaccurate view of God. Because I was trying to prove my love, my that I was worth his love. So it was, it came down to identity. That that pride came to impact my literal intestines. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I think we should pause for a moment and just say thank you to our body.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Red light, flashing light.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. It's been trying to say things. We haven't treated it with kindness, we haven't treated it with respect, even in many cases. And I'm not talking about excessive fitness routines or whatever. It's just no, what does health look like? Yeah. What is moderation? That's great. And then when your body does signal something, pay attention. Yeah. No notice that clenching. What's that about? Is there a what there's such a thing as biospiritual feedback where you take a moment and just sit and just inquire in the presence of the Lord of your body?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What do you what would you like to tell me?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Where are things settling? So sorry.

SPEAKER_05

My I was wrong. It's my uh ring camera. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, we do look at those extremes. And then the other piece of this that we have failed to take into account is how generation after generation this compounds.

SPEAKER_05

It's great. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So you talk about childhood or you talk about trauma of varying kinds, and that word has gotten hijacked and misused. But there is a reality of the fact that anxious parents produce anxious children. Yep. And we train our kids in fragility if we're not careful. Yes. And they're not, they're built for anti-fragility. They're built for not just resilience, but for tensility, for strength. And we train them in weakness. And that keeps on passing on generation to generation. So what does it look like to be an embodied being with honor and respect for your physical reality without shaming it for the size it is or the shape it is? Notice how embarrassed we are in many instances about the uniquenesses. But that's part of humility. Remember, humility is accepting the truth of yourself and not letting the pressure to conform define what beauty looks like for you or what health looks like for you. It's a conversation with the father that says, Who do I who do I have to please here? Oh, nobody. I can accept myself as I as I am. And of course, the three major factors of soul health relative to the body are exercise, diet, and rest. There's a reason why Sabbath is foundation and destination. That one day in seven in which you do no self-defining work. You can play, you can work as creativity if you want, but really at the end of the day, it's the no excuses life of hell health. That then enables us to receive the gift of pleasure that the body provides, taste and touch and sight and smell and and all of those things. We also have to accept the and embrace the gift of our sexuality. And that's why sexual self-control, self-control as fruit of the spirit, is so important because otherwise it'll bully us, it'll push us around, it gets tweaked and distorted, but it's also a part of our physical self. And to accept it as it is, uh would be would be really a helpful gift. Learning to relax, learning to do nothing well. Never heard of it. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Can we do a whole class on that? What does that mean? How do you relax and how do you do nothing well?

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's why the first thing that he says to us, here, you I need you to take one day and seven. Yeah. And I want you to do nothing well. I want you to get used to being loved for no good reason. I want you to receive. I'm going to put one day and seven in the bank account of your life. And if you want to waste it, there will be a price to pay for that. But if you'll receive it, there will be a benefit that accrues in in all of the things that come from that. So when it comes to caring for ourselves, maybe that that is often if you want the loaf hanging fruit of soul care.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

A lot of times when I'm walking with people dealing with depression or anxiety, we can deal with a good chunk of it just with diet, exercise, and rest. So sure. What where's the sugar level? Where's the caffeine? Where are the what are the places you're going? And maybe a nap might be the most spiritual thing you can do. So good. I would just add one more. Screen time. Just add one more to that. Yeah. That's coming. Maybe not. Yeah. And it's why you know this from some of the work we've done with classes and whatnot. When I tell people to take a retreat day, it's very common that what happens on the day that they set aside chunks of time to be alone with God without performance, without any spiritual thing, the very first thing that happens is that they fall asleep.

SPEAKER_02

We do retreats. I remember the first time it was like a four-hour nap.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And you walk I wake up refreshed, and that is the single most spiritual thing you can do.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. It's funny too, because I even now when I take vacations, it's like the naps just come back immediately. You just go right into rest. Or if I go visit family members and stay at their homes, it's like all of a sudden I'm not my home and I fall asleep.

SPEAKER_05

Wow, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_02

It's a big deal. Yes. And even for pastors who've never taken a retreat, I would always, they would always say, give me the structure. I'm like, or a sabbatical. Let me just tell you the first thing you're gonna do is sleep a lot more than you think.

SPEAKER_04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Because your body has been trained in ill health when it comes to the sleep patterns for the most part.

SPEAKER_02

And I would say we're addicted to the adrenaline. We're addicted, and that's where screen time, it's like diet exercise. I might put that at diet, because there's an unhealthy consumption of entertainment that is impacting the physical part of our soul in ways we don't even realize.

SPEAKER_05

So as of recently, I've been listening to more podcasts than usual, it feels, because I've been trying to go on social media less. So I've been no, literally just switched so you make a distinction between podcasts and social media?

SPEAKER_00

I do, like Christian podcasts right then.

SPEAKER_05

I'm you know what I mean? But I realized I was listening to so many podcasts that I'd be like socially is I that's where I thrive. I love being with people, I love being on FaceTime. I spend most of my day on FaceTime with my family or my friends and in a good way and reporting it to each other.

SPEAKER_04

That's great.

SPEAKER_05

But I realized because I've been listening to so many podcasts, my attention span in conversation grew so low that I was like, oh my gosh, I'm getting frustrated more easily. I'm not paying attention. I'm only like half present. I'm not fully here because I'm already listening to a bunch of people talk that I don't even want to talk to the people that I love talking to. Yeah. So I literally, it's only been two days, but I'm doing no podcasts for till I feel released.

SPEAKER_00

Even your own?

SPEAKER_05

I have to listen to mine every week when I edit it. But that's like with different ears, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

So funny. No, and those become part of the spiritual practices, right? Yeah. To be it's moderation.

SPEAKER_02

But you're saying it's like paying attention to where you are. Someone else, it's not they're not struggling with podcasts, they're struggling with m 12 hours of mindless scrolling on TikTok. Or I I'll just be the case study. It's like that same season where I was physically unhealthy. I would say I went to food or second glass of wine. I haven't, I don't, I haven't had alcohol for 10 years. That was part of the journey of identifying what are the things that I'm having an inappropriate connection to, like in ways that were not sin in themselves, but they were they became outlets for me to to escape reality. Watching like I don't really watch any shows right now. I don't have time. I don't have a lot. I've got two kids, I got a lot going on with the church. I'm not inner there's no entertainment happening right now in my life. And that and that's not a bad thing, but there were seasons where it was like I would just binge watch the shows because I wanted to escape the responsibility. Yeah. And so everyone's has a unique way of doing it, but it all comes down to what you started with the love and the joy and the barometers of what does the health look like, and then finding our patterns. And for you right now, this is a great observation as you're doing a you've slowed down enough to go, my attention span is not as is not there because of this. Yeah. And I want to have my attention focused on people and Jesus when I'm around. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Totally. And that's we'll talk about this next a little bit, but that's where people get distracted from Jesus by their service of Jesus. It's so true. Where we talked a couple of times ago with the Mary Martha dynamics. All the things that because the next one here is the spiritual component, which is the markers of unhealth spiritually are things like a dryness, spiritual dryness. Yeah. Now that could be a dark night, it could be an invitation into so we want always to be careful in diagnosis and self-diagnosis. We want to be attentive to that. But at the same time, yeah, that could be part of it. Or a hyper-spirituality, yeah. Where we're but you can hide from God in 10 hours of prayer just as readily as you can in binge watching.

SPEAKER_02

You can hide from God in reading chunks of scripture without Him being a part of that process. Without hearing the word of the Lord. Yeah. Wow. We can find ways to hide through the spiritual practices. I'm an expert at that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I think I am too.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. Because you replace it's one thing to replace it with bad behavior for a good thing, like reading scripture is a great thing, but then it be it becomes a thing that it was not supposed to be. Wow, yeah. And it's like the it's the Pharisee, right? It's the Pharisee. Great. I did that. I did my quiet, I read the Bible in 30 days. How great. Meanwhile, I'm impatient and rude to my wife. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm disconnected from friends and I'm I'm I'm angry at my kids because I didn't sleep enough because I had to read for an hour and a half. Not saying that anyone here did that. Yeah. Let's just say perhaps. I know people who have heard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And what did you mean a second ago? The dark not self-diagnosing, but at times you mean if there is a mental health.

SPEAKER_00

Sometimes when God will lead you to an arid place, a desert place, for the sake of learning to walk by faith, for the sake of slowing our pace down. John of the Cross, that's where that language, dark night of the soul, comes from. And so I want to be attentive. Is that what's going on? We could probably do a whole conversation on those kinds of kinds of things. Yeah. Because it is a real thing that I want to be. Is this an invitation of the spirit? Am I being invited and accompanied by God in this? Or is my spirituality just drying out because I'm not attending to the still waters and the quiet pastures, that kind of thing? Yeah, definitely. So that's one of them. Hyper-spirituality, spiritual exhaustion, where figure out what that is. There's an addictive spirituality where we hide from the pain of our lives by hyperspiritualizing, by going to church, by doing all of the things. All of these are good things. Yeah. But they can become places where we hide. Pharisaism, we talked about that as being one of the ways of unhealth. Legalism in some ways, yeah. Where I see it a lot in our current cultural space is we become uh spirituality becomes defined by our experiences. Yes. By our encounters. The encounters, the the fresh word and revelation. Growing up on a classical Pentecostal space, I knew those moments, and in a charismatic space, I don't I'm more Lord, but at the same time, I realize I can make the experience of God substitute for actually being with God. Yeah, absolutely. And then I can find ways to generate the experience without actual encounter.

SPEAKER_05

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

And that's a problem. Or spirituality by comparison. Yeah. That's another thing.

SPEAKER_05

What kind of spirituality? Sorry?

SPEAKER_00

By comparison, where I look at other people's purported people are hearing from God, they're getting a word here and there. And we never ask, wait a minute, what did you mean when you said God said? Is that what that is about? Or I can see people being moved by the spirit, weeping perhaps, and I haven't cried in 10 years, or whatever. And it's no, there's an individual walk with God. Right. And so these are indicators of some unhealth there. And so I want to get used to being loved by God for no good reason. I want to get used to being, if I can say it this way without being misunderstood, probably I can't, but I want to be get good at being spiritual the way I am spiritually tuned. Yeah. And that is going to change over time. It's going to ebb and flow as I mature and develop. I want to have a healthy spirituality that has a flexibility to it, that is non-judgmental, that is not rigid, that is responsible and responsive towards building intimacy with God and knowing the nature of that relationship. And again, images of God are probably helpful indicators as to how I'm doing. Do I see God as a mother embracing, nurturing, or do I see God as a harsh taskmaster? And here's where then spiritual disciplines properly applied can become really helpful. Yeah. And why there's maybe need some change up with what I've my routine or my rhythm, because I can hide from God in those spiritual practices. So prayer is relationship rather than prayer is getting stuff done. Getting stuff done. Spiritual direction can be helpful, retreat can be helpful, any of those dynamics.

SPEAKER_02

Fasting or feasting, you know, or and both can be spiritual practices. Yeah, celebration or sacrificial giving. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_02

I remember, and I'm gonna say this and then someone's gonna take it and run. But I remember a season where Alex and I were like consistently giving financially to our church, local church. We still tithe, we always tithe. But there was a season where you're like, you should celebrate. And we're like, what's the gift of celebration? And you're like, go on a vacation. I think you said go and celebrate a big meal and go on vacation. And it had never occurred to me that like the way I've been formed, and it was like real spiritual life is sacrifice. It's hard, it's giving more away. And you're like, no, I think you said, and this is in the Old Testament, one they tithed about what 23.3% annually. And they would throw this festival every year. It was a 10% tithe of the whole people of God for one massive party. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I was like, Deuteronomy 14.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, Deuteronomy. I was like, how did I not see Deuteronomy 14? We're gonna spend 10% of our resource on a party. That's there's something about God in that. Sh tell me more.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, when you think the first miracle in John was what? Water into wine, party. Water into wine. And not just wine, the best wine any of them had ever had. And in such copious amounts that there was two to three gallons per person in that little village.

SPEAKER_05

Wow, wow, wow.

SPEAKER_00

That's the kingdom.

SPEAKER_02

It's so good. So good.

SPEAKER_00

So anyway, that's the spiritual dynamic.

SPEAKER_02

Hold on. You guys keep going. Sorry. Ezra, I'm recording a podcast. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00

The next piece is the emotionally, the soul is emotionally expressed. Yes. Which is, you know, unhealth is the grayscaling, the places of where we don't have pleasure in the small things. Depression can be part of that. Yeah. Moodiness, anger, hiding or soothing behaviors, weariness, all of those, you know, places where our emotions are registering. So you think through anxiety, the dashboard indicator of you know fear or sadness or anger, and they're pegging the meter. That's okay. What's wrong? What's wrong there?

SPEAKER_05

Can I ask you a question? What was that called? Which one is this one?

SPEAKER_00

This is the emotions, the emotional health of the soul. So we think through yeah, how am I doing it being loved for no good reason? Love. How am I doing with a sense of capacity for my life? Joy. Yeah. And then where are the markers of the three protector emotions? Fear, anger, and sadness. Yeah, got it. And and then if I'm sitting with a grayscaling depression, a weariness, food has lost its flavor, my relationships are not life-giving. I feel like I'm circling the drain. What's that about? What is going on there? And we are trained or mistrained in our emotional responses by family systems, probably more than anything else. Was it okay for me to be angry? Was it okay for me to be sad? Yeah. Was it okay for me to be afraid and learn how to be afraid, not never to be afraid? Totally.

SPEAKER_05

I love that.

SPEAKER_00

And so I have to cultivate that. I have to train that. I have to calibrate that. My emotions help me to experience beauty, art, nature, music, the creativity, all of those are part of the dynamic there as as as well. And it's an invitation then is to say, have my emotions been abused? Has shame been a primary way of controlling behavior? Have I given in to despair or hopelessness?

SPEAKER_05

Totally.

SPEAKER_00

And have I put voices in charge in my head that shouldn't be allowed a megaphone, but we've given them platform. And then the thinking sphere is when we get stuck in our I think of it as a trained ADHD where we don't train ourselves to I recognize there is such a thing as ADHD. I know I recognize that as a reality, but I think at the same time we train ourselves in in attention. We don't because I've watched people who think they have the inability to concentrate, but they can stay focused on a video game for an hour. I'm not sure that you actually know what that word means. Yeah. Or the addictive behaviors again, hiding behaviors, lack of creativity. Where it really shows up, I think, a lot in our current cultural space with the Christian community is an intellectual laziness, where we will listen to a podcast or read a short blog and think that makes us an expert on something. And especially on things with which we disagree.

SPEAKER_05

Tell them on that particular issue.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. You know, I need to sit down with the leading expert in that particular issue and let him or her school me on why they think the way they think.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that has been massively important for me over the years. And it has been really important to train towards that dynamic as as well. The final one is our relationships. And in the middle of all of that, sorry, I'm just wanting to find my notes here.

SPEAKER_02

I love all your paper. Huh? I love all the paper. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I want to make sure that I didn't get off track. The social aspect of it is thinking about how we are in relationships. Alienation, one of the things that we probably should recognize is that as a function of our creation, we are completely and utterly alone. There is nobody in the universe like you. Yeah. You are utterly unique, just like everybody else. Totally. But we don't want to be alone because aloneness either drifts into loneliness or properly understood into solitude. If it drifts into loneliness, most of our relationships will be parasitic because we will be using other people to deal with our condition of aloneness, which is only meant to be dealt with in solitude, relationship with God. So all of our relationships between become commercialized. They become networking. We don't have anybody who actually really knows us.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. We are because we've curated a few.

SPEAKER_00

We are not present. We are relationally uh void of intimacy. Nobody sees us when we aren't on with our armor in place. And then of course that that becomes obviously a challenge because we lose out on intimacy with God, we lose out on the nature of that relationship, and spiritual disciplines then become about dancing to somebody else's music or or whatever. So, anyway, the social aspect is going to build. How do I have a non-intentional friendship?

SPEAKER_02

So you're not using someone for a purpose, but you have to. Correct.

SPEAKER_00

You have yeah. How do I engage in somebody who knows me when, who's not impressed with me, who's not gonna just agree with me because I'm me, who will be able to push back on those some of those dynamics. So I know we've moved fairly quickly through those five, but the health of the soul requires us to take each of those five dimensions, make them a part of a prayer process, a conversation with God. And then how do we move towards health in each?

SPEAKER_02

What's great about this framework, which I would go back and listen to the list that Pastor Bill walked through, but you can self-diagnose some of the things you're talking about. You've given us an engineer or you know, the mad professor that you are, the the ability to kind of check the dashboard of our soul and and then go back and go, okay, are there ways of not judging the issues that are off, but to see them as signals for transformation? Okay, inappropriate anger, impatience. I'm I let's say you're struggling with gluttony, you're these definitions all of a sudden make sense. Are there counter practices, what we would call spiritual disciplines, counterformation to the ways the default setting has shaped us? Can we now take on disciplines of fasting, disciplines of walking with God as our prayer now, knowing that our body needs to be connected? We've been hyper-spiritualizing things. So let's not show up to that Thursday night this week, or we've been going to Monday and Tuesday and Thursday and Sunday. Let's go to Thursday and Sunday and just see what happens when we feel like we're missing out on Monday and Tuesday. These are ways we can just move forward in health and wholeness for the goal of formation into Christ-likeness for the sake of others. That's what this is coming into. It's not the goal of being the best version of Darren so I can flourish and be it's that I be shaped in the image of God for the sake of others. That's what this whole thing is about. That's exactly what it's about.

SPEAKER_05

So thank you, Jesus.

SPEAKER_02

Let's go.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Jesus, for leaders like this. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_02

So we're gonna continue this conversation. There's a lot there. We're gonna unpack even more and kind of break down each area of the soul. Probably talk about healthy practices in the future podcasts. But we're so glad you joined us this week. Pastor Bill, thanks for being with us. Good to be with you guys.

SPEAKER_05

Thanks, Pastorville. And you guys really don't want to miss those because we've talked so much about the soul and so many different aspects. But you really we want to get to the part to the how to's, how to practice how you can implement different practices into your life. We love you guys so much. Go love Jesus and make friends for God. Yeah, that's it. Love you.