Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download What was it about Jesus that allowed him to become quite possibly the most relaxed and lovingly unpredictable person who ever lived? Join me as we explore part two of an eight-part series in which we're going behind the scenes into the most recent Become Good Soil Intensive. If you haven't listened to episode one, start there . You can find the Part One, Part Two and images I refer to in Getting Naked—and much more— here . Through Octo...
Aug 28, 2018•38 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Many are saying that in the automobile industry, there has not been a revolution of this magnitude since Henry Ford inaugurated the assembly line for the Model T Ford on December 1, 1913. Yet as with every revolution and in every growing kingdom, there are hidden costs. Even in an endeavor as brilliant and groundbreaking as the Tesla Corporation. ‘This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career. It was excrucia...
Aug 23, 2018•16 min
In time it sometimes comes to pass that familiarity can give way to presumed familiarity. That presumed familiarity can then give way to unfamiliarity. And unfamiliarity can give way to boredom, obscurity, or even contempt. – Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download There’s nothing like the practical. In this third and final episode of an Inquiry into Contemplative Prayer, we explore the pragmatism of integrating this practice into our da...
Apr 30, 2018•32 min
Meditation and contemplative prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself. ― Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download What is it like to really know God? Not just know about God but to know him, thoroughly and comprehensively in the most essential places of our souls? What if there were a way to practice experiential knowledge of...
Apr 19, 2018•36 min
All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace. –Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download I find it fascinating that when Jesus speaks of eternal life, it's less often about a specific time or place where we transition into some other state of being and more often about a quality of life—robust, deep vitality—that is being made available to us, right here and right now. He offers this invitation to a rich yo...
Apr 04, 2018•38 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Spontaneity is the fruit of preparation. – Jonathan David Helser "Did you bring me out here in the storm to kill me?" This pained and brutally honest prayer poured from Jonathan David Helser's heart in the midst of a moment of exposure and hand-to-hand battle with the living God. Jonathan explains, Over the years, the Father has engineered circumstances to expose some of the core beliefs and lies that have tried to silence my heart. He...
Feb 16, 2018•51 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download If we have a crisis in this country. It’s more than a fatherless crisis, though. It’s a crisis of manhood, of masculinity. It’s affecting our families, our schools; it’s filling our prisons, and it’s killing the hearts of our women. – Donald Miller Check out the news on any given day and you’ll find stories that illuminate a crisis of masculinity. It's a crisis rooted in the loss of effective masculine initiation, for a boy does not be...
Jan 27, 2018•55 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download When we worship, we silence the fear and declare who our father really is. – Jonathan Helser "Messy could describe the first moment that God has with man. He gathers dirt in His hands to form Adam. There is dirt under God's fingernails and then on God’s lips as He draws Adam close to breathe in His Spirit. What is it like for Adam when he opens his eyes and sees and feels God’s face pressed against his? Surely God is both willing and r...
Jan 17, 2018•50 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download The whole point is presence, the with-God life. That’s the real substance of our relationship with God. – Dallas Willard, 1935-2013 Amidst the clamor of contemporary life, there is the narrow path of slowing down and setting our souls before the insight of the elders. We can take heart: there are wise ones who have gone before us, men and women who have recovered the lost treasure of the Gospel and can effectively communicate it. Wise ...
Nov 15, 2017•48 min
The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited. - Neil Armstrong, NASA astronaut Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Brad Beck has spent a lifetime offering strength in a myriad of roles in countless missions. As a flight surgeon in a supersonic jet for NASA, a crew member in international theater performance with YWAM, a physician i...
Sep 26, 2017•57 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. – John Muir Piecing together a string of single-track trails that meander through a dry, rocky, cactus-strewn landscape, it’s possible to make a 48-mile continuous trek across Zion National Park. For most people, this trek would be one of the epic adventures of their lives; if you’re Dave Eitemiller, you count it as a solid training workout for yet another 100-mile ad...
Jul 21, 2017•59 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul. –Victor Hugo, Les Misérables Kelly and Phil are getting a divorce. The email from a mutual friend sharing the news hit me like a punch in the stomach. Brandon and his dad are in deep contention. It’s the kind of painful, two-sided misunderstanding that could finally sever the strained relationship...
Jun 16, 2017•44 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download The offer is Life. Yet that abundant life is often found in the least likely of places. What is the most effective path toward the much looked-for restoration in the heart of your spouse? Join Cherie and me in this second half of a conversation in which we reflect on the particular elements of Reality as Jesus reveals what can bring more life to our marriages than we ever thought possible. Jesus, we choose to pause. Jesus, we open the ...
Apr 17, 2017•17 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Jesus and his words…are essentially subversive of the established arrangements and ways of thinking. That is clear from the way they first entered the world, their initial effects, and how they are preserved in the New Testament writings and live on in people. He himself described his words as “spirit and life” (John 6:63). They invade our “real” world with a reality even more real than it is. – Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy Wh...
Apr 04, 2017•43 min
If we are relational to our core, fashioned in the image of the One who is Three, then it is in dynamic relationship that we participate in the unending Life of God. And among human relationships, there is none more brimming with the loving potential to both expose our "not yet" and to beckon us forward than marriage. In The Mystery of Marriage, Mike Mason writes, The book of Proverbs as a whole takes a view of marriage that remains proverbial to this day: there is nothing in the world worse tha...
Mar 22, 2017•28 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download By day and by decade. These words have become a mantra for my masculine soul. A sort of North Star as I attempt to orient and re-align my life with the Reality of God and His Kingdom. Allen Arnold and I had an opportunity to share some dialogue and prayer regarding how we're choosing to orient our souls at the beginning of this new year. In the podcast, we reference A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God, which I'd recommend strongly as a rea...
Jan 13, 2017•35 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download This most recent episode was a treasure to record, featuring Esther Sparks, a Scottish poet and musician whose music has been uniquely sustaining to Cherie and me throughout this decade of excavation and becoming. Offering transparently from her own story, Esther’s music speaks to central themes of the human experience: love and loss; betrayal and forgiveness; abandonment and embrace; birth, death, and resurrection. Luminous in her ins...
Dec 03, 2016•1 hr 3 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download It has been said, "The lives of many rest in the courage of a few." How are you becoming the kind of person to whom God can entrust the lives of others? How are you becoming the kind of person to whom God can entrust his Kingdom? In this third episode of a three-part series, I take us deeper into a Become Good Soil Intensive, where we are invited to participate in portions of a guided session inviting more of us to belong to more of Go...
Nov 01, 2016•21 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download In part two of the three part series, we venture behind the scenes into a sacred space where sages of the great nation of Australia offer their counsel at a Become Good Soil Intensive in New South Wales. I want to invite you to savor some wisdom from the ancient path. We are now accepting applications for the upcoming Become Good Soil Intensives in Colorado and Australia in May of 2017. Find out more Morgan...
Oct 05, 2016•26 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download What astonishes the heart of God? In part one of this three-part series, I want to invite you behind the scenes into a session at the heart of the most recent Become Good Soil Intensive in Colorado. We are now accepting applications for the upcoming Become Good Soil Intensives in both Colorado and Australia in May of 2017. Find out more ....
Sep 26, 2016•21 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download It was a shimmering rehearsal dinner, the headwaters of which were most certainly in Eternity. The choicest wine flowed, but even more, the choicest stories: stories of daring, risk, and deep redemption. Family and friends honored Abbey and Shaun with words of profound affection, honor for obstacles overcome, and the kind of faithful knowing and seeing that forms the texture of our deepest longings. In the transcendence of that evening...
Jul 04, 2016•16 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download It all started with a lawnmower, a skateboard, a women's clothing magazine, and a set of flip flops. What if play is God's idea and is at the epicenter of Kingdom living? (A version of this podcast is also available in written form .)...
May 31, 2016•17 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download God’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic—what a find!—and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field. -Matthew 13:44 In the sunset of his days, D. L. Moody realized that the catalyst for the deepest portion of his conversion was this sentence spoken to his soul by a trusted sage: The world has yet to see what God will do w...
Apr 14, 2016•21 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download This episode of the Become Good Soil Podcast is a reflection I wrote after ongoing ventures in recent years through The Message paraphrase of Matthew 21:12-18, the passage commonly referred to as “The Clearing of the Temple.” My hope is that it might help us thirsty ones peel back the glaze of over-familiarity and experience the scene afresh, as we find ourselves among the crowds in the Temple on that day. Once you've listened to this ...
Mar 23, 2016•20 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download Eugene Petersen, author of The Message, makes this observation: The two most difficult things to get straight in life are love and God. More often than not the mess that we make of our lives can be traced to the failure in one or both of these areas. Sages have a capacity to see our lives illuminated with a glow that can only be appreciated through the view of many decades to come. From victory and defeat, agony and hilarity, they can ...
Mar 14, 2016•21 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download I've lost the ability to bullshit. It's the me I've always wanted to be. It's one of my all-time favorite film quotes, spoken by Jerry Maguire as he sheds the Poser and becomes more and more the kind of man to whom God can entrust His kingdom. The film is a modern parable of a transformational process being made available to us every day. Of the men I’ve encountered, few have become the kind of man who embodies these words more than Re...
Feb 09, 2016•26 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download It was Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, who suggested, Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak, to heal, and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ORDINARY human beings, living ordinary lives and coping in their daily surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imp...
Nov 02, 2015•39 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download How we relate with other people is one of the greatest indicators of our spiritual maturity. This was the counsel offered by an older, wiser man years ago as he helped untie the knots in my rope and my marriage. One tough conversation began the beautiful and life-changing process of understanding how our predominant style of relating shapes all the relationship in our lives. God is after the wholehearted integration of a person. This p...
Oct 09, 2015•54 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download "Deep calls unto deep..." the Scriptures suggest (Psalm 42:7). There is in every moment of every day an accessible onramp to the narrow road that leads to Life. Often the onramp is hidden in the ache and longing to ever more wholly experience life as a son. And when we pause and let this ache rise, we begin to sense the voice of our Father: His deepest provision tirelessly, freely, joyfully calling unto our deepest need. In Orthodoxy, ...
Aug 05, 2015•13 min
Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes | Play in new window | Download C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, once said this, What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Every time we encounter the Living God in a deeper way, we are given another glimpse into the re...
Jul 01, 2015•45 min
