Will Acuff | No Elevator to Everest: Spirit-Led Self-Awareness, Joyful Work, and Ending Poverty through Ownership

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everybody.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Will Acuff. Will is the author of a new book, No Elevator to Everest. Excuse me, that's my Old Testament coming out. No Elevator to Everest, Shift from Survive to Thrive.

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Speaker 2: Through Spirit-Led Self-Awareness.

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Speaker 1: He's also the co-founder of a ministry called Corner to Corner. And so I'm happy to be here with Will, and I'm looking forward to having this conversation.

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Speaker 2: So Will, welcome to the program.

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Speaker 3: James, thank you so much for having me. I'm a fan of the podcast. So to get to be dialoguing with you today is a lot of fun.

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Speaker 2: No, that's sweet, man. I appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, we were talking before you, you've listened to the episode with Zach and so Zach Lambert. And so I really enjoyed talking with him and I'm sure we'll have a great conversation too.

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Speaker 2: So absolutely.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I thought maybe we'd start out. What is Corner to Corner?

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Speaker 1: I know it's a ministry in Nashville, but kind of explain maybe how that came about and what you're doing in that ministry.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So Corner to Corner, we are a faith-based nonprofit that helps people from historically low-income neighborhoods plan, start, and grow their own small business with the core belief that ownership ends poverty. But how we got started was... 18 years ago, my wife and I, we were just really convicted that we did not have a theology of neighbor. I'm a pastor's kid, grew up in the church, had all this great framework. But if you said to me, how do you show up and love neighbor as self, as a lifestyle? I couldn't have answered that. I knew mission trip. I knew one-off Christian adventure, but I didn't know lifestyle. And we realized that we needed to move in to that kind of neighborhood, a neighborhood, you know, under resourced with all the normal stats that you see in order to learn how to do that. And so 18 years ago, we moved in and my wife, she's incredible. She's way tougher than me as well. And she immediately got a job at the men's prison. And she became a former offender job training specialist, which is a fancy phrase that just means she helped folks moving from prison back into the community, get stable employment.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: And they were coming back to the neighborhood that we had moved into. So day in, day out, we started doing life with these neighbors. And what we consistently saw was that you had all these image bearers, with God-given passion, creativity, and drive, but who often didn't have a bridge to express that in the marketplace. And so back in 2011, we launched Corner to Corner with this vision of how do you do economic development where neighbors get to thrive on their own terms? And I think so much of the nonprofit space, we see, hey, let me do good to you like this. Do you know what I mean? And the neighbor's like, well, that's not kind of what I want, right? Or, hey, I'm going to help you get an extra dollar or two more of earnings per hour. And the neighbor's like, cool, I'm still going to be broke at the end of the year. That's not going to move the needle. And so we saw entrepreneurship as a way to help image bearers grow something that they really owned. And so fast forward, started in the neighborhood, just one neighborhood, And now we've launched over 1600 of these entrepreneurs. Last year, we put 37 million back into the neighborhood economy. And we are on track this year to clear, you know, the mid forties for like $ 45 million. That's fantastic. And it's, yeah, it's good. And it's neighbors like, you know, we had one graduate came through the other year, last year. And she's a school teacher in Nashville. Right. And if anybody knows anything about Nashville, it's gotten crazy expensive lately. Right. So if you're a school teacher living off of those wages and you're looking ahead at how you're going to send your own kid to college, right. Cause you value education, man, you're looking at a massive gap in earnings. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So she came to us and she was like, Hey, I want to launch my own catering business, like as a solopreneur kind of side hustle, right? And her goal was $ 10, 000 in year one, $ 3, 000 of overhead, $ 7, 000 to get that college savings fund going. Well, fast forward the end of the year, I hear from our team that she did over $ 36, 000. And so I called and I was like, what happened here, right? Like, what was your secret? And she's like, well, you know, Will... there's two types of marketing. And I was like, okay, go on, you know, tell me about these two types of marketing. She goes, you can take pictures of your food and put it on Instagram and hope that people order, or you can cater for free and close deals because your food's that good. And I was like, so how did you do it? And she goes, well, I found out that TSU, which is a college here in Nashville, needed a new caterer for their marching band. And this is, you know, the kind of marching band that has like 9,000 different types of drums. This is a lot of people. Grammy award winning. Well, she caters for free and she goes down there and she takes her grandma's caramel crumble cake, right? A recipe that she learned as a six-year-old girl. And if you hear her tell the rest of that, like the story of learning this while, you know, sitting in her grandma's kitchen, Right. You're like tearing up at this story. And you're also hungry. Right. Like you want to taste that cake. And she walks a slice of it over to the band director and says, you know, hey, I made this for you. And he takes a bite. And when his eyes are wide is how good this thing is. Then she says, hey, and I hear you're looking for a new caterer for this season. And she closes the deal. Right. And I was like, that's you're an entrepreneur.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: And now there's this huge investment into that college savings fund. And so, you know, we have one thousand six hundred and thirty two of those stories. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, ownership ends poverty for a family and for a community.

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Speaker 2: That's really fantastic.

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Speaker 1: It seems like, so having read Elevator to Everest, it seems like some of the things that you talk about in Elevator to Everest, well, would apply really well into this sort of entrepreneurial space as you're working with people. Because entrepreneurship isn't, I mean, the successes are awesome, but it's often, you know, a series of failures before you hit that success button.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: And so getting people to be that sort of self-aware and spirit-led, it would.

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Speaker 2: Seem like those two would really merge well together. Do you find that?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, the reality is if you ask any entrepreneur if fear plays a role in their work, they're going to be like, oh, heck yeah, right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But so often we then move subconsciously from that fear, right? And it makes us increase kind of frantic action, right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And all the studies show that it increases our cortisol, our stress hormones, right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Which decreases our creativity and makes us make worse decisions, right? And so self-awareness to go, oh, I am really afraid of this. Okay, what's the story I'm telling myself, right? And for people of faith, often we are telling a story that is not shaped by God, not shaped by His Word, and not shaped by His living Holy Spirit, right? And instead, we're telling ourselves a narrative of fear that then drives our actions. So, yeah, great, great connection point there.

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Speaker 2: And for you, it didn't really emerge out of that.

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Speaker 1: Like this book doesn't come out of a place where you had, you know, some sort of big entrepreneurial failure and all of a sudden discovered something. Yours was more familial and, you know, just your everyday life.

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Speaker 2: I've heard you talk about it. I watched a couple of the other interviews you did.

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Speaker 1: And to me, it's like life was just sort of running ahead of you and you're just trying to keep up. And so talk a little bit about, you know, what prompted you to write this book?

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Speaker 2: What prompted you to find these practices? You know, how did all that come about? Yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 3: So, um, corner to corner had this kind of trajectory of, you know, roughly up into the right. So if you're watching from the outside, you go, Oh man, these guys are killing it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Meanwhile, at home, what was happening was both my kids are through domestic adoption. Both my kids out of Memphis, my wife and I really felt called to grow our family that way. And our son was, At a rate around age two and a half. And we were with both kids from birth. He stopped sleeping through the night, not just like once or every so often, you know, but like, I mean, months and months and then years. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Um and that started us down all the specialist doctors all the diagnoses you know um which we we started living a life that was very different from our peers right yeah um And the stress and the pressure and the lack of sleep and the intensity, right. That was building. And then simultaneously, you know, I had come from a background where if you find a problem, you just work your butt off until you solve it.

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Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Um, and if it hasn't been solved yet, just work harder.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Rinse and repeat until it's solved. Well, this ability doesn't respond to that. Right. Um, And so I was in a recipe for just emotional burnout. And I remember, I remember feeling like battery acid, right? Just like, oh, like I'm just hollowed out and kind of toxic. And my wife was like, hey, she had gone to this great trauma therapy place. And she was like, hey, you need to go. And I was like, do I? You know, aren't we kind of therapized enough as a family? Right. which side note, like marital advice here, don't invent words to debate your spouse. Like that's not a, that's not going to work out for you. But, but she, my wife is an Enneagram eight. If you know that world, right? Like she's, yeah, yeah. And I am as well. Right. We're both eight. And, but she drew a line in the sand and I listened and I went and And I went to this trauma place and like, it's a retreat center. Day one, I'm there with a chip on my shoulder. You know, I'm here to fix my wife, that kind of approach, right? Just, oh, just the arrogance of it. Again, I only have one model, fix, right? And by the end of day two, I was cracked open. Like it's hard to describe, but I was connected to God's infinite love for me. And just such a profoundly healing way that I had this transformative experience, but I knew I was going back to a really hard context, you know? And so I, I was like, okay, God, I don't want this to be this one mountaintop experience I had.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, how many of us have gone to a retreat or a church thing? And then like three weeks later, it feels like nothing changed. And so I took my whole life and I said, God, here's everything. Let's turn it into a joy lab. Let's figure out what does it look like to live more joyfully in the Lord every day. And so I just started coming up with all these different ways and practices and rhythms. A lot of them grounded in kind of the tradition of contemplative prayer and faiths. Um, and, and that's what gave rise to the book. The book is really, I took that journal and turned it into a book. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So when you're, um, just kind of returning to a little bit of this, I mean, I went through, I've been in counseling as well. And one of the things I did is knowing myself as an eight, I was like, Hey, I can't go. And I, so, um, I'm a theologian, right? I did the whole PhD theological studies thing. So I'm like, yeah, yeah. I probably shouldn't go to a Christian counselor. That was my first thought. I'm like, like, it doesn't need to turn into a debate. And so what I found was my choice of counselor was really crucial. to getting anything through, right? I just needed someone to help guide and I didn't need to have a fight with anybody in the room, right? Not a physical fight, but just like, I didn't want to be, you know, sort of in that competitive mode that eights tend to get into. How did that, so when you're in this sort of trauma counseling sort of setting and you're having this big breakthrough, Can you identify some of the elements that really helped you get there?

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Speaker 2: Like, how did you open yourself up to it?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, great question. I mean, so I should say this place that I went to is not faith-based, right? And so it just so happened that in my small group, like my therapy small group, we were all believers. And there was, you know, I laugh at God's, you know. his love for me in that, you know? But I, one of the things they did was they can, they helped me see that so much of my life had been driven by performance. And it made receiving love very hard for me because I linked performance to love. And so I always needed to get better in order to be okay enough.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Almost like you think about the older brother and the prodigal son story. Right. You get this sense when, when the father and his mercy goes out to the darkness and, and to check on his older son who won't come into the party, you know, he, he hears him out and the son's like, you know, you won't even give me a goat. Like, right. Like you're fatted calf for the younger son. Who's an idiot. But me, I don't even get a goat for me and my friends. Right. And the father says to him, wait a minute. All that I have is yours. In other words, this sense of like, you thought this was about like you achieving or you get into a level where then you could have the party. And the father's like, you could have been having a party every single night, right? Like you have all of my love, you know? And so that was a big thing that happened there was unwinding that. And then another big shift for me was I was in a massive victim mindset. um, without realizing it, you know? Yeah. And kind of that, I won't be better unless this thing gets better. That person does this. Sure. Fill in the blank. And they introduced me to the idea of radical responsibility. Um, and that I was a hundred percent responsible for my own physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Um, and, and I don't mean in a salvific sense, right?

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Speaker 2: Understood. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Uh, They helped me to see, oh, wait a minute. If I'm staying in that victim mindset, then I'm always waiting for context to change versus grabbing a hold of the change myself. And I was ready for it, man. Once I saw that, I was like, oh my gosh. And that gave me a ton of freedom.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think I went through that experience as well. I kept saying, well, if I just get past this season at work or, you know, once.

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Speaker 2: This thing gets done, then.

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Speaker 1: I can be normal again. Now I can slow down. And it never happened. Around every corner was just another sprint, you know? And so it didn't matter what I turned, whatever happened, it was like, I'm sprinting again.

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Speaker 2: And all of a sudden I'm back in the exact same patterns.

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, I had to figure out how to sort of put the brakes on and actually break the pattern without, and, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. You, you had a little, you know, your context is a little different than mine in, in dealing with some of this. But one of the things I found was that I became, I had to wrestle with going from overly ambitious James, right. To no ambition, James, right.

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Speaker 2: Because when you start putting the brakes on, you know, my tendency is always the extremes, right.

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Speaker 1: And so finding that sort of sweet spot where I can say, no, I'm ambitious, but I also recognize that a lot of the things people are asking me to do aren't going to have the effect that even they.

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Speaker 2: Think they're going to have.

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Speaker 1: And so how do I start sifting and sorting and actually doing the things that are going to, in your.

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Speaker 2: Words, produce joy, right? What's going to add to that joy?

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Speaker 1: And sort of in my context, what's going to have an impact on the work or an impact on the family or what have you? Like, what are those things that I need to be thinking through? What's going to have the most impact? And then doing those and sort of just being okay, not having control over most of my life, right?

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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: Confronting the illusion of control.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe talk a little bit about that. Maybe if this connects, that whole designing your day concept, I think in your book really resonated with me. I thought that was fantastic the way you described it. So maybe if it connects.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, so I'd say like, I kind of went on this progressive journey, right? Where the first thing I was doing was developing a daily practice that connected me with enough self-awareness to start shifting my day, right? And when I say self-awareness, what I really mean is, you know, kind of the language of Paul, take every thought captive, right? That assumes that you're developing awareness to actually know what's happening in the landscape of your heart and mind, right? And so I started getting still every morning so I could go, oh, here's the big thing that's making me afraid today. Or here's the big thing that's driving this anger, right? How do I name it, release it to the Lord, right? Like cast all your anxieties on God because he cares for.

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Speaker 1: You, right?

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Speaker 3: Like how do you actually do that? And once I did that, kind of a big second phase was what you mentioned, this design your day, which was around, okay, if it's true that I'm an image bearer who has the abiding Holy Spirit, then on some level, I have everything I need to grow in the fruit of the Spirit right now, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, right? And so what I started to realize was, In my day, my normal day to day, I would have work activities and things like that that made me feel incredibly alive, right? Some have called them like a full body yes. And I think all of us can relate. We might have that one work thing where we come away and we're like, yes, I could flip over a car with my bare hands, right? And then later we have a meeting with a couple of people and we walk out feeling like we were hit by a bus, right? And so I started a journal every night at the end of the day. just going through the list of things that I did, not in great detail. And then I noticed, did they give me energy? Did they keep me neutral or did they drain me? And my belief was, and still is, that the things that gave me energy were almost like Holy Spirit breadcrumbs going, hey, this is what you were made for. The reason it feels so good is because that's you being played in tune, right? By the Most High. Gotcha. So then, then it's the belief that I can actually move towards more.

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Speaker 2: Of those and.

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Speaker 3: Design my day around that versus, I mean, usually when you talk to somebody, they're like, oh, you know, most of my day kind of sucks. I get to do one thing a lot, you know, like there's just this acceptance of so much awfulness. It's like, I actually think he gained that you may have life and have it to the full. Right. Yeah. Like not maybe someday when you die, but actually right now you were meant to be an ambassador of the good news. What would it look like for you to live like that's true? Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So what do you do with the aspects of your life that are inevitably there that aren't life giving? So designing around those experiences, I can get my head around that. but you're not encouraging people to go on sort of a permanent vacation and just do whatever makes them happy.

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Speaker 2: Right. So, so yeah, that.

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Speaker 3: Will quickly make you miserable by the way. Yeah. If you just check out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Uh, work by the way was in the garden right before the fall. So like we are meant to create and build. Right. Um, yeah. So the way I look at it is, um, those things that are draining, right. Um, you run those through, if you, if you keep this kind of journal, right. Say like even just two weeks, you'll notice some patterns. Um, and you take the ones that are draining you and then you delete them, you delegate them or you do them differently. Right. Delete, delegate, do differently. Yep. Delete. You'll often find there's a couple of things you're doing that you started years ago and you're like, why do I even still do it that way? Right. Uh, delegate, especially if you're working in a team or even in your family, right? Like for example, at home, I don't mind cooking. Like I kind of enjoy that process. I'm not good, but I don't mind it. And I don't want to do the dishes after. My wife doesn't want to cook, but she'll do the dishes, right? So that kind of delegation. Now I've, you know, handed something off that I didn't enjoy. She's got it, right? And there's plenty of ways we can do that at work. But then the trickiest one, to your point, is do differently, right? Because that requires you to actually seek the wisdom of the Lord, right? And really get still enough and invite creativity. And often I'll pray prayers like, hey, God, this thing is on my plate and it's not going anywhere. What do you want me to know about it? How do you want me to engage in it differently?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: And sometimes that's small wins. I tell anybody, don't start your day with email. Way to start a miserable reactive pattern for the rest of your day. Instead, take that first hour to really think through what the big priorities are. What's really going to have that big driving impact that you're excited about? And then time box your email later in the morning. But don't do it all day. Do it for 15 minutes. You know, there's things like that that create different patterns for us that by the end of the day, we're energized rather than drained.

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Speaker 2: It's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: Like when I read through that chapter, some of the things I've been thinking through lately are the difference between work prior to the fall and work after the fall. Yeah. You know, prior to the fall, we have this vision of work that is, um, cooperative with creation we might say creation is moving in the same direction that we're working so tilling and keeping the garden is not a chore it's it's the job that we're doing but the whole creation is actually doing it with us in harmony yeah yeah versus after the fall we've got all this toil and struggle and difficulty and so now inevitably we're working against creation in a lot of ways like the things are working against us and It just strikes me when you're talking about these challenges that we face in the day, part of it is that we're working against creation. That's not to say that we're going in the wrong direction. It's just to say that we live in a fallen world, and now the world doesn't respond to us in the way that it used to respond pre-fall.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: And so we're trying to figure out how do we repattern ourselves so that we're aligned with what God wants us to do with the Holy Spirit, that we're sort of participating fittingly yeah we're co-laborers yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah i mean on on that point i've been i'd be curious you know with your your phd like i you know i went to reform theological seminary i come out of you know that uh a less uh studious version right um but one of the things that i've been thinking about is in some ways what we have now is better than the garden and here's what i mean In the garden, we have we're with God, right? Kind of side by side, that image of like we're walking in the cool of the garden, right?

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Speaker 2: Yep.

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Speaker 3: And then we have post-fall, you might describe it as like man flees, God pursues in love, right? Like there's this tension. And then we get God with us again in Jesus, right? Emmanuel, right?

00:26:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And then Jesus in John 14, he's like, y'all, I'm leaving. And something better is about to happen. I'm sending you the spirit, right? And he says, we'll dwell with you forever and we'll be in you, right? Gives us that really comforting location, right? Because if the spirit's in us, then he's always close enough to help, right? And that in us feels to me like, oh my gosh, we were either with or in, you know, being chased by, but now we have in right that idea of union is ours so even if the world is still a hard place to till right we are in a new and dynamic way um connected into the life of the trinity right like and and i think where it gets really complicated is if i try to move from my own energy right It's like I'm a hundred watt light bulb versus I'm plugged into the nuclear reactor of the Holy Spirit's life-giving energy. Do you know what I mean? And so that's an idea I've been thinking a lot about that having the Holy Spirit indwelling us is just such an interesting and dynamic shift into what we have access to.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: Well, and I think also it speaks to.

00:28:02
Speaker 1: In the Old Testament, we have, I think it's Exodus 32, maybe, the Spirit of God is given to Bezalel to create the apparatus of the tabernacle. And all of that is done according to a pattern. And so a lot of times when we think of creativity, what we think of is what's coming out of my human imagination that I want to create today that would be different and new. But in that context, his creativity, his skill, his artisanship, Right. It's all used to conform to a pattern that God's already given.

00:28:34
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yeah.

00:28:36
Speaker 1: And so when we fast forward in the New Testament, we're looking at we're filled with the Holy Spirit.

00:28:40
Speaker 2: And what are we to produce?

00:28:41
Speaker 1: Well, we're to produce things in keeping with the pattern that God desires us to establish. So you've got this sort of patterning that the Spirit helps us sort of figure out. It empowers us to live according to that pattern. And as we live according to that pattern, now we're open to these new possibilities. We're open to these new opportunities that God wants to give us. And I think that really does, again, as I was reading through your book, I'm like, that really does relate to what you're talking about with this idea of, you know, designing your life, doing the things that aren't life-giving differently.

00:29:17
Speaker 3: Yes, yes. Right.

00:29:19
Speaker 1: Like that slides right in there. And it's like, this is how we do that. We're led by.

00:29:23
Speaker 2: The spirit into this.

00:29:24
Speaker 1: We're constantly looking to provide, you know, peace, joy, you know, you know, all the different fruits of the spirit. And that's how we approach these things differently.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: That's how we do them differently.

00:29:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, 100 and i think that directly pertains like you know you're not gonna get creativity in you know from god in a way that harms humanity right like that's not you know no you're actually gonna get uh you're gonna build things that create flourishing yeah right And not just for you and your family, but also for your neighbors. Right. Like that, that sense of the spirit will empower you to do the pattern that is good for the people that God loves. Right. So I love that connection point. That's really good insight.

00:30:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:17
Speaker 1: It's, it's just such a fascinating, I think, like I said, when I was reading through your, your book, I was like, wow, yeah, this is all kind of coming together. And these practices that you're referencing, I think they do really fit that understanding of how the spirit works in our lives, the patterns that you're creating. And then I think some of the other intentional practices really do underscore that. If I can pivot just a little bit, because I'm interested also, you mentioned cortisol earlier. And I think this is one of those areas that's sort of beginning to emerge within Christian circles. It's not like we didn't know it. that the spirit, the mind, and the body are all connected, right?

00:30:58
Speaker 3: Yes, 100%.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: We don't think our brain sits in a vat or something. So we've known they're all connected. But I think when I say I think it's emerging within Christian circles, I hear a lot more conversation about the.

00:31:10
Speaker 2: Connection between these things.

00:31:13
Speaker 1: And so I know in the breathing chapter, at the very least, what you had was this research that shows.

00:31:18
Speaker 2: This technique, just breathing. Yep. does different things to our hormone levels in the body.

00:31:26
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah.

00:31:27
Speaker 2: Right. And so we're having these physical changes that are prompted by a spiritual practice.

00:31:35
Speaker 3: Yep. Yep. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: So I mean, I'm not sure.

00:31:42
Speaker 1: I think it's just such an interesting, I guess I'm wondering, you know, I definitely caught it with the breathing chapter. I guess I'm wondering, How do you experience that across these other practices, even if there aren't research studies or anything like that? Like, how does that mind body connection, an actual feeling of calm?

00:32:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

00:32:04
Speaker 2: Isn't just a feeling. It's a it's a whole set of.

00:32:07
Speaker 1: Things that are happening in your body that produce calm.

00:32:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so to me. One, and I'm sure you know way more about this than I do, but, you know, I think historically we got into some sort of platonic dualism in our thinking in Christianity, right? That is not biblical, right? Like we're, we are a whole thing, right? And so, like, one example of this would be, like, growing up, I was taught that emotions were bad, right? And just don't even use those as a reference point, right?

00:32:43
Speaker 2: Yep, yep.

00:32:44
Speaker 3: But, you know, as I've grown up and as I've learned, like, oh, no, no, actually, emotions are things I'm meant to learn from. Like, God is giving me this great sensor pattern, you know?

00:32:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:32:56
Speaker 3: Like if I'm feeling really sad, well, if I get still and get curious, then I realize, oh, there's something that I need to mourn and let go of. And I need to get curious about what that is because God has called us to lament the heartbreak, right? I'm not meant to repress that. I'm meant to understand it and give it to the Lord, right? And so for me, part of it is the physicality of our emotions, right? And then also the physicality of our thoughts. So, for example, if I get cut off in traffic and I believe that person is a selfish punk who's just trying to get to some meeting faster, right? Then I'm going to drive differently. I'm in turn going to be more aggressive and all those things. Whereas if my thought is, oh, I actually don't know what's happening there. Maybe they're on their way to the hospital.

00:33:52
Speaker 1: Suddenly....

00:33:55
Speaker 3: In my body, I feel different, right? And then I drive different. Oh my gosh, right? So, I mean, take that to our relationships, right? If I get home and I'm hoping my wife says something really kind and encouraging and she's kind of short-tempered with me, right? And if I instantly get on the defensive and I make up a story that that's because she's being mean, right? Next thing I know, My behavior, my physical setup, everything is awful, right? Whereas if I go, oh, actually, I wonder how her day was. Hey, honey, what actually happened for you? And now she shares a tough day. And I go, oh, that's why I'm this short-tempered, right? But to connect it all the way to the spirituality piece, our actions, like our sins, they don't exist in a vacuum, right? They're driven by a physical body, right? And a whole being. And so I really love when, you know, the theologian John Stott, somebody asked him, what's the key to spiritual development? And he said, a good night's sleep. You know, there's something really true about that, that we have to take ourselves as a whole person.

00:35:16
Speaker 2: I mean, Paul talks about disciplining his body, right?

00:35:21
Speaker 1: Not just, disciplining his mind or disciplining spirit, but disciplining his body.

00:35:26
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, it struck.

00:35:27
Speaker 1: Me as I was reading through this, you know, cause I, you know, give your example with your wife, you know, let's say she has a, you know, sort of a short comment and you take it wrongly. You're not advocating that you stand there and do four breaths in that moment. Right.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: Which, you know, maybe sometimes, maybe sometimes, but.

00:35:45
Speaker 2: I, I have found personally that I should probably just move away. And if I need to do that, but yeah.

00:35:50
Speaker 1: I think what I, at least the tone I got from your book is this is all preparatory. This is stuff that you should be doing ongoing so that when you hit that, that moment, your first response isn't anger or frustration or whatever. It's, it is curiosity because you've, you've sort of prepared yourself for the various challenges that you're going to face and your response is just different.

00:36:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, again, we can get into the neuroplasticity stuff, right? And this idea that you're rewiring your brain, right? Or anything that elite athletes know, they envision what's going to happen. And so if you have none of that training, right, then often we're just in reaction mode. And like a great example, this is from the book, but part of my son's challenge is he's very dysregulated at times, right? Yeah. And we're driving home from a school event for my daughter. And my son's very upset, very dysregulated. He can't control his body. I'm driving down the highway and he kicks the windshield so hard that it starts to spider crack, you know, this loud popping.

00:37:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:08
Speaker 3: And because I had at that point done so much meditative work, And knew what anger felt like in my body and, you know, all these things. I felt that rising flush, you know, where just like that demand that I must get control now. Right. I think if we're honest, a lot of us know that feeling. Yeah. Right. And I realized that was happening. And in the car instead, I said, nope, we're going to bring up some of the stillness we cultivated this morning. And I got very calm and I got very still. And then he responded to my calmness and we got home safely.

00:37:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:51
Speaker 3: And then I helped get him to his room safely, right? Where he could kind of not be as in sensory overload, right? Right.

00:37:59
Speaker 2: He can have a space where he can kind of calm himself down.

00:38:02
Speaker 3: 100%. And then I came back to the kitchen where he couldn't see me, right? And I let myself feel that anger fully. I didn't try to pretend that that wasn't there. Because I find that if you just try to ignore it, then it will recycle itself.

00:38:18
Speaker 2: You can't bury it.

00:38:20
Speaker 3: No, I was like, oh my gosh, he cracked the window on the highway? Are you kidding me? Right?

00:38:27
Speaker 2: Right.

00:38:29
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes if you get into some of the contemplative faith circles, they often act like holier-than-thou introverts who are floating above the ground and don't feel feelings anymore. Right, right. And that is not at all what I'm saying, right?

00:38:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:38:45
Speaker 3: But I felt it fully and I processed it. And I was like, oh, yeah, that sucks. And now I'm going to have to get that windshield replaced. Right. You know, not how I wanted to spend $ 400. But I did that in a way that kept my son safe and okay. And not me acting in my anger in a sinful way towards my son.

00:39:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:39:11
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I mean, I will say I, so yeah, I don't do a lot of meditative practices. After you're reading your book, I'm thinking about it. Like maybe I should get into some of these. I would say the one that I do most closely is the journaling aspect.

00:39:25
Speaker 2: I write an awful lot. And there was a time where I was coming out of one career.

00:39:30
Speaker 1: And moving into the next. And I really felt angry leaving my previous job. And so I started a blog. And before I published anything on the blog, I'd run it past my wife. And she'd go, nope, too angry. And I mean, it was like it was like nope, too angry for like six months until she finally approved a blog post to go out, you know.

00:39:52
Speaker 2: So I just had this.

00:39:53
Speaker 1: Empty blog because she's just like, you know, you're still like. But to your point, like I think I buried a lot of that because, you know, in a professional setting, you you can't just explode like that's not the.

00:40:05
Speaker 2: Right way to go.

00:40:06
Speaker 3: Unless you're the CEO.

00:40:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Then you do whatever you want.

00:40:11
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of people probably thought I was working that out in the gym. I do a lot of, you know, lifting and working out, but I really don't enjoy lifting angry.

00:40:21
Speaker 2: It's tiring. It's more tiring than you think it is.

00:40:24
Speaker 3: Oh man, you're strumming with the anger. Yeah.

00:40:26
Speaker 2: Right. So the journaling was where I sort of released that. And I've kept that up.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: It's actually really, I find it to be really helpful and refreshing for me to just sort of work some things out. And, you know, you kind of make sure the internet's off and you don't write emails and, you know, where you can click send and it gets out and it gets.

00:40:45
Speaker 2: Done and then you can move on with it.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: But I think these practices you're hitting on as sort of like you're describing, I think that's a great example. the preparatory nature of them so that you can understand what's happening to you and decide in the moment, Hey, I need something else to go on here and I won't bury that forever. But right now this is not the right emotion to feel. This is not actually going to help the situation. Um, you know, and how do you think about that illusion of control?

00:41:18
Speaker 2: Right. Um, you know.

00:41:20
Speaker 1: I mean, you said you're an Enneagram eight, I'm an Enneagram eight. Um, control is just sort of the normal, that's my default. Like I should control this. Right. So yeah, absolutely. I.

00:41:32
Speaker 3: I think about this all the time and, and where I've gotten to is I think, I know this is true for me and I think it's true for most people. We would rather have control than faith. Like, yeah. Right. Like, um, but, But what that does, like to really pursue control makes your life smaller and smaller and smaller. Right.

00:41:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:42:01
Speaker 3: Because there's you realize there's oh, my gosh, there's actually so much I can't control. So if I'm going to go down that path, I'm going to make my life really small. Right. That includes my interactions with people, work, whatever. Right. Yeah. And so what I've found is the key belief to unwind that is, do I actually think I'm safe and in the hands of my loving God? Right?

00:42:27
Speaker 2: That's good.

00:42:29
Speaker 3: If that's true, right? And I don't mean that in a doing sense. I mean that in a being sense first. Yeah. Right? Then I can move outward with as much hope and creativity and expansion as knowing that God's going to literally build the best path forward. Like if all things work for, you know, my good and his glory, then I can trust that he's actually crafting what some would consider like a custom learning scenario for me to grow in.

00:43:02
Speaker 2: Hope and trust, you know?

00:43:05
Speaker 3: And, and then it's, it's, you know, the self-awareness practice becomes like, how in tune am I am, am I to that?

00:43:15
Speaker 2: Right.

00:43:15
Speaker 3: And I really think about this, like, like I'm a guitar player.

00:43:19
Speaker 2: Right.

00:43:20
Speaker 3: And when you first pick up a guitar, you always retune it. Right. But depending on a bunch of different factors, it can go out of tune really fast. Right. Um, And if you don't take enough time to go, wait a minute, let's tune it back.

00:43:34
Speaker 2: Right.

00:43:35
Speaker 3: You can still be quote playing a song, but man, it sounds pretty bad. Right.

00:43:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:43:41
Speaker 3: And so like these practices to me are a way to, to tune our hearts to the Lord.

00:43:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a great analogy. I didn't know that about guitars.

00:43:53
Speaker 1: I have no musical ability whatsoever, but I trust you.

00:43:58
Speaker 3: I live in Nashville. It's part of living here. You have to play.

00:44:01
Speaker 2: At least one instrument. But I like that idea.

00:44:05
Speaker 1: Let's tune it back in because otherwise you're going to be doing the right practices in the wrong way.

00:44:10
Speaker 2: And it's just not going to sound quite right. And so, yeah, that's helpful.

00:44:14
Speaker 3: And I would also say like, I mean, like there's other key indicators, right? You get this sense from, from, I think some old Testament prophetic passages as well as the new Testament, like that streams of living water are meant to be flowing from us. Right. And I think that living phrase is so key. They should feel and be life-giving both for you and for those around others.

00:44:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:44:39
Speaker 3: Right. I mean, like you, that, that image, I think this is an Ezekiel where like the, the water's moving out from the temple and every whatever, 500 yards, roughly, It's getting deeper and deeper and deeper, right? And it's life-giving. Like it becomes fresh water. People are fishing and the trees on the banks are giving fruit and the leaves are good for healing, right? You get this like, oh my gosh. And so I think a lot of Christians I know are not at all living in a way that is leading to more and more of that, right? They're living in a way that's much more self-reliant. self-protection, self-promotion, and doesn't look too different than their neighbors.

00:45:28
Speaker 1: I think that kind of leads me, because we're going to close the end of the episode here, but that kind of leads me into the question I usually ask for the end. What does the church need to do in your mind to be and make disciples more faithfully?

00:45:40
Speaker 2: And I think.

00:45:43
Speaker 1: That your last comment there really points to something that maybe we're missing the boat on. You know, I'm not sure whether that'd be your answer, but what would you say? I mean, what does the church really need to do today to be and make more faithful disciples for Jesus Christ?

00:46:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think we need to have a revolution in discipleship, right? And the way I would describe this is, you know, in my background and a lot of the backgrounds of my peers, we grew up learning that the journey of faith is knowledge of God. And that the knowledge of self just a tiny little bit so that, you know, you need Jesus, right? Like be aware of your sin. But after that, the whole rest of the journey is knowledge of God. Right. And I think we end up in this over intellectualized brain on a stick, you know, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, going back, I mean, Augustine, even Calvin, several others, you know, go to the Greek Orthodox pathway. There's tons of this, but it was no, no, no. The, the, The journey of faith is a combined knowledge of God, knowledge of self, right? And so to your question, I think we need discipleship that helps people to deeply connect with self so that they bring their whole self before the throne room of grace and establish their self there and move from that place. right? To put it another way, it's crazy to me that the secular world has far more guidance, right? On so much of this, when we say we know who made us, you know what I mean? Like Christians who say they know the maker, we should be the experts on all things, physical, emotional, spiritual, like, because we say we know the guy who did it all, you know? So that would be my answer is like, I think we need self-awareness discipleship that helps somebody have knowledge of God and knowledge of self that creates a whole journey.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: That's great.

00:47:49
Speaker 1: I think it resonates with something that I think has been reinforced to me over my many years now of studying the Bible, which is there's a totalizing effect of the Bible.

00:48:01
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

00:48:02
Speaker 1: Like, you know, God doesn't ask us for 99.9% of our lives and we can keep that 0.1% to ourselves, right? There's no way to really prioritize him if we intend to get to anything else on our list. Like, that's just the wrong way to think about it because he wants all we are and have.

00:48:20
Speaker 2: And so as we think of it that way, now what we are is we're immersed in him.

00:48:24
Speaker 1: And that has to influence us.

00:48:29
Speaker 2: Everything else about it.

00:48:30
Speaker 1: We not only know him, we're not only immersed in him, we know ourselves in relation to him. We know ourselves in relation to others. It's the leavening effect.

00:48:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: And you mentioned Augustine.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: He talks about, you know, all of our other love should be caught up in the current of our love for God. I love that picture. It's like, you know, little floaties out there just going along with the current. And it's like, that's what it is. So I think that answer is fantastic. It just feels like we have maybe gotten a little too compartmentalized. We've kept certain areas away from God and haven't explored those.

00:49:10
Speaker 2: To a sufficient extent.

00:49:12
Speaker 1: And we really need to get back to, I think a lot of the practices you talk about in your book would be helpful to people to really get them moving in this direction of how do I understand myself how do I understand myself in relation to God how do I understand myself in relation to.

00:49:28
Speaker 3: Others yeah I think At the end of the day, I believe that Christians are meant to be the most joyful people in all contexts because we're flowing in that love. And it doesn't mean that things are less hard, right? I'm not trying to minimize or Pollyanna-ish. But when you move like that and you move in alignment with self, with God, and with others, life can't help but get more joyful. Like, people are like, oh, man, being around you is life-giving. Oh, you know, like, in the same way that, you know, if we're supposed to be little Christs, right? Like, we're meant to be followers. Like, hurting people couldn't wait to get around Jesus, right? Like, a great question to ask is, if your discipleship is working, do hurting people want to be around you or not? If the answer is no, maybe it's time to do a little more of this work. Hang on.

00:50:26
Speaker 1: Well, Will, this has been a great conversation, man. I really appreciate you being on. And No Elevator to Everest, I would really recommend it for folks. We'll put the link in the show description. But fantastic book, outlined some really great practices that I think everybody would benefit from. And that's not to say that I think it's a self-help book. I think this is sort of a prophetic call.

00:50:49
Speaker 2: Hey, once you figure these things out.

00:50:51
Speaker 1: You're going to live more joyfully for Jesus. And so the fact that you get to live more joyfully is sort of a, you know, an ancillary.

00:50:59
Speaker 3: It's a byproduct.

00:51:00
Speaker 2: That's right. That's right.

00:51:02
Speaker 1: And so not totally not a self-help book, but I really do think this is sort of a nice prophetic call to us as Christians. Get to know yourself in service of the Lord. And so very much appreciated it.

00:51:16
Speaker 2: Appreciate the conversation. And thank you so much. No elevator ever is. Does a corner to corner have a website that folks could, uh, go to?

00:51:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.

00:51:25
Speaker 2: Let's make sure we get that.

00:51:27
Speaker 3: Um, and then it's corner to corner on Instagram and on Instagram, it's will joy a cuff. If you want to follow along along there, I do a lot of like little spiritual guide kind of updates. Nice.

00:51:40
Speaker 2: Very cool. Uh, we'll get those in the show notes as well, but I just encourage you to check out will his book and, uh, everything else he's got going on corner to corner and, um, Yeah, we'll call it a day. Will, again, thanks for being here. This is great.

00:51:53
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me, James.

00:51:55
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, take care.

00:51:57
Speaker 1: And we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.