We're good at doing, but we tend to question the value of pausing. This intentionally brief podcast is about a shift - from saying more to praying more. The world downplays prayer as a legitimate response to global events. But prayer is a mighty power we've been given to co-determine the future with God, and to compete for the many uncertain outcomes of this global moment. So now more than ever, let's pause. And pray.
The celebration of key events happens regularly in childhood. But then we get older and they stop. We hit a milestone dead zone where important things go unacknowledged - whether the start of a job, the birth of a child, or the loss of a dream. In fact, right now, COVID-19 has caused a full-on celebration moratorium. And the cost is real. Without celebrations, we quit trying. We feel unseen or alone as new chapters come and go with no recognition. Luke Eldredge joins Sam and Blaine for this conv...
How does the trained professional survive hard times? By simplifying. It is the dominant strategy of the mature through the ages: double down on first principles. But those skills don't just magically appear in the moment of need. We learn by doing. Only then can we rely on past training and muscle memory. Hard times reveal the areas where we've grown soft and need to return to basics. Who could you become if you saw this season as real-life training rather than simply waiting for life to go bac...
We live in unprecedented times where scarcity and fear strike in the middle of the day and the dead of night. Yet God promises to provide and sustain us. How can we hold to the belief that God is good when circumstances shout otherwise? Hebrew scholars (and self-proclaimed nerds) Scott and Mandy unpack how Psalm 91 is our rescue once we realize what the invitation to take shelter under the shadow of the most high God really means.
When hard times hit the fan, how shaky is your foundation? The pull is often to gain control...or at least more information. But doing so causes us to miss the deeper initiation. With God, we are fundamentally safe even when nothing in our world is safe. That's because true hope never rests in things being better than they are - but in God's nature and his promise to ultimately make all things right.
What did God mean when he meant Sabbath? Most of us have no clue. Culture and tradition have made it boring and burdensome. So we shrug and settle for a nap or a beer. But something's been lost. What if God's original intent was for it to be a day of delight rather than simply a time to re-charge for Monday? Discover how to reclaim the Sabbath as a time of feasting, savoring, celebrating, and remembering what matters most.
How do you avoid losing hope? For better or worse, it's an everyday question. Answer? It may mean doing the hard thing, which is adoring God in the middle of the mess. Problem is, you can't adore a God you don't know or allow to know you. We sat down with Sara Hagerty to talk about her counterintuitive book, Adore. It's about what happens when we expose our interior life go God, create an evidence list with the attributes of God, and allow the landscape of our minds to be reclaimed by what's tru...
Where to start? Brad Beck has flown T-38s, worked at NASA, traveled the world, been an ER doc, and that’s only half the story. And even so, he’s still great to work with. We sat down for a conversation about calling. How do you walk it out, one step at a time? How do you transition through what seem to be distinct careers? How do you get through grueling seasons? And how to you hold on to the epic once you’ve flown training fighter jets? Turns out, it all comes down to a life with God, and concr...
It is, unfortunately, a common experience: you enter a room, and everyone else seems to belong there. But not you - you're the outsider. And then comes the impulse to get out, check out, hide. In this episode, Blaine and Sam sit down with Allen Arnold, a regular voice on the Ransomed Heart podcast, to unpack the urge to hide: where does it come from, how do you get to its root in your story, and what do you do to engage anyway. From generational norms to the silence of Adam, distrusting people t...
144 | Everyone Else Has it Easier, Right? by And Sons
What do we do when, not if, we face criticism? Often the critique has truth in it, but the internal messages that go along with it aren't the most accurate. Our culture has become a dehumanizing and critical one, but even when the criticism is nothing more than a difficult conversation, there are ways we can learn to navigate well.
An elegant tool, from a more civilized time. Wait, that's not right. A simple tool, for a cluttered time? Better. Pursuing joy and life can feel like uphill and difficult choices in every direction. But what if joy isn't as far away as we think?
Dreams (and we mean aspirations) are difficult. They are, on the one hand, a way God tells you about your future. They are, on the other, vulnerable, sabotaged, and often unrealized. In this episode, Sam and Blaine unpack dreams. What does it mean to share part of God’s heart for creation? What does it mean to see an unrealized potential in the world no one else sees? Because dreaming is, in fact, meant to show God’s heart to the world. But, because we live in this story and not another, dreams ...
FRAMING THE SEASON 1. What are you doing, Jesus, in me in this season? 2. What’s the theme of this season? 3. What do I need to know about my role in your larger mission for this season? 4. What prophetic words, images, or instructions do you want to call to mind to frame this season? 5. What are you doing in my (area of concern: work, marriage, house search, job search, etc) in particular? UNDERSTANDING THE OPPOSITION 1. What warfare is set against me in this season? What strategies is the enem...
Referenced in the show: Space, Time, and Incarnation Thomas F. Torrance Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict Fill These Hearts by Christopher West For Sigmund Freud, nephew Edward Bernays, and marketing, PR! - A Social History of Spin by Stewart Ewan Nephesh by the Bible Project Ruach by the Bible Project
Merry Christmas from And Sons by And Sons
In an effort to fight the creeping, medicating, overextended presence of our smartphones, the And Sons team and four Ransomed Heart team members gave up their smartphones for a month to see what would happen. The goal was to see if technology is really the enemy, or if we use other forms of medication in its place. It's an And Sons experiment.
The season of advent is evoking a lot of longing for us this year. It seems you can't say the word hope without feeling the pain of all the things not yet realized. There's joy to be sure, but the longing for Jesus to come again is getting to feel more like a cry for relief than any joyful carol.
"You will know them by their fruits" Matt 7:16 It's a litmus test Jesus gave us for false prophets, and yet it extends deeper than just teachings. The fruit of an action, the fruit of a train of thought, the fruit of an experience... they all tell us about the Good of the thing producing them. Can we use the fruit and work backwards, though? When we experience inner death, sorrow, grief... can we use those as breadcrumbs to find a deeper root that is producing them, and if so, can we change what...
Friendships are one of the deepest places of pain for just about everyone these days, it seems. How do we become the kind of men who have friendships going back 30 years? What are the rhythms that sustain and invite such things?
Put on your Hebrew hat, it’s time to tackle one of the most productive concepts in the Bible. The Image of God. No single podcast can capture all that’s intended by that phrase, so in this episode, we focus on one dimension: the role. We are, in a word, tselem. Images. Idols. We are endowed with God’s authority to rule, and we affirm God’s ultimate right to rule his creation. Sam and Blaine dive in to our human ability to draw out potentials in creation that would not be realized without our int...
In this episode, Blaine and And Sons team member Justin Lukasavige explore our idea environment as part of a continuing conversation on human nature. The team first unpacks what it means for an idea to be accurate in its essence, explores representationalism and Aristotelian hylomorphism, and finally begins to unpack the dominant views of human nature in the west. Because most people hold one of two assumptions: either human beings are rational free agents, with a mind that is separate from the ...
131 | Worldview 101 - Learning to See, Anthropology, and the Centrality of Human Nature (Pt. 1) by And Sons
This one feels like the title is the description. So, there you go.
It's too easy to focus on the damage of our story. Too easy to focus on what needs healing, or whats been stolen. We all have an innate glory in the image of God that we bare, which on its own should be enough to get our attention. But there's more: we bare a unique glory all our own, and we are called to witness the glory in the lives around us.
It's a common experience: we have a breakthrough moment with God, we see miracles, we get a taste of the life we wanted, and the next week, it's gone. In this episode, Sam and Blaine unpack practices that anchor your heart to the reality of the epic. From contemplation to the ancient practice of "tending," journaling tactics to cultures of remembering, this is an episode to keep the past present.
Inside the covers of the print magazine are things that we believe are important and somehow connected to the masculine journey, if sometimes loosely. The books inside Volume 2 are a little more obvious in that aim. They also demand a little unpacking.
We're betting you are lonely. It's something we can assume is the case for pretty much everyone on the planet, but even more so for someone trying to walk with maturity in their 20's. What do we do with it? What does community look like, and even more so, what is community for?
"Do Not Be Ashamed" by Wendell Berry You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty: you misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their han...
Back in the studio, Blaine and Sam talk about soul care these days. What are we doing to care for ourselves, and what do we think about to orient our story?
