091 – Are We Asking the Right Questions?

Cody Johnston 1:21
Hey, everyone, welcome to the reckless pursuit. My name is Cody and my name is Elaine. And this is Episode 91. Elaine, what are we talking about today?

Elaine Johnston 1:28
Yeah. So this week, we’re talking about questions. Are we asking the right questions? Are we talking about the things that we really need to be talking about? Have we actually dug deep into the conversations that we wanted to, and maybe even a new direction for the show?

Cody Johnston 1:45
Yeah, so this kind of got spurred on because we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what the reckless pursuit is. And before we kind of get into any of this, just a quick thing, like we don’t have a ill feeling toward anything we’ve done. We love the conversations we’ve been having. We want to can You having the conversations we’ve been having. But one thing that I really feel like we’ve been lacking with is real relatable stories. I really feel like our conversation with the Warner’s was really good. I think that was a great conversation. We’ve had amazing conversations with professionals, people, like, you know, Todd Vic, you know, just so many professionals that we’ve had Todd being last week’s and then quite a few before that, just going back we have a couple more coming up. We have a great conversation with marriage and youth. We have fellow a couple fellow podcasters coming on and we’re gonna be sprinkling those in, kind of as the year wraps up and into the new year, but really, we’re, we want to talk about the the the topics, the questions, the conversations that we’re all having. That’s the ultimate intent of this show the conversations, the questions we’re having, whenever we’re alone with friends, whenever we’re not in church whenever we’re off to ourselves. He’s really big Struggling things, I think we’ve done a good job of hitting a lot of these points. But I want to dive more into that. So me and Elaine today are just gonna be talking a little bit about that some questions that come to our mind that we want to address. And we’re just going to dive into what this show is going to look like moving forward, but even more. So this is going to be an authentic conversation about having conversation. And before we get into that real quick, if you haven’t done so, so far, go up there, click that subscribe button and then go and leave us an honest review. That helps us out a whole lot. And I really just want to stress don’t skim over this, please. Those reviews help people scrolling by to know what this show is like from an outsider’s perspective. Also, if you’re not a part of nomads yet, go down there. Click that link and ask to be a part. nomads is a great community of people who are all asking hard questions and we would love to have you over there.

Elaine Johnston 3:53
I also have some exciting news. My podcast the prodigal daughter airs to Morrow or November 19, for those of you who are listening after it launches, so if you’re into mindset and meditation manifestation, calling in the things that you want for your life, goal setting, really digging into those topics, and you’re a woman. Yeah, so my show is geared towards women and just linking arms with women to become the best version of ourselves and to step into our God given calling.

Cody Johnston 4:26
Yes, I’ve had Elaine take over the studio for the last week and a half, and I’ve heard her been recording her initial episodes. And guys, I can’t say it enough that I’m extremely proud of my wife. And I think this is going to benefit so many people. So congratulations, anyway. Hey, it’s good.

Elaine Johnston 4:44
Yeah. And so I’m glad that we kind of talked about the new direction for the reckless pursuit before that, because the reckless pursuit is not going anywhere. Like we’re still continuing to have these conversations. I just wanted to kind of branch off and have more woman centered

Cody Johnston 4:58
Yes. So if you love The reckless pursuit you want more, there are three outlets you have my outlet, which is I know Elaine, it’s your favorite thing in the world, right? My biblical history beyond the Bible. And so I know I make you listen to every single one of them to make sure I’m on track. But you have that side of it for me, you have the reckless pursuit, which is both of us. And you have the prodigal daughter, which is just Elaine. So you get us from three different avenues. We’re filling out your podcast feed. Anyway. So Elaine, let’s get right into today’s conversation about having conversations and asking the right questions. So, Elaine, we’ve been talking about having the right conversations we’ve been talking about, have we been having the right conversations and I think between you and I, the general consensus is yes and no, we’ve been having right conversations, but we haven’t been giving voice to everyone we’re wanting to. We want to have professionals. We want to have people who have you know, busted the But wrote books, started podcasts, started blogs started, YouTube channels, etc, etc. We want those type of people, but our heart is for, you know, first and foremost people who are having these conversations behind closed doors. People like you and I before we started this before we decided to be the mouthpiece for so many people and to take that public backlash, you know, we were having those conversations just you and I and so what spurred on just wanting to talk about this on the show, this was a conversation you and I would normally have to ourselves. So why did you want to take it behind the mic?

Elaine Johnston 6:36
Mostly because, one, I want to apologize to our audience. And whenever we started this, you know, all these conversations that are needing to be had but most people aren’t having them or like Cody said they’re having them behind closed doors. And I love all the conversations that we’ve had this year. We’ve had so many interviews and so many amazing professionals sharing their story, but I kind of really We haven’t really diversified our show, we haven’t really given a voice to the people closer to our age or have different backgrounds, religions of different races of different sexes, I have kind of realized that a lot of our guests have been males. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Males have just as much of a voice as women do. But I mean, that’s kind of why I wanted to start my podcast was to allow women to have other have other conversations too, and just giving a voice to other people that don’t look like us that have the same questions.

Cody Johnston 7:33
Yeah. And then the second part to that too, I think would just be to boil it down to what these questions represent. It’s one thing to ask a big question like, Who is God? It’s big a big questions like what is hell? These are all questions that need to be talked about. But there’s so many micro questions within each and every one of these, right? And that’s the beauty of asking, you’re going to go deeper and you’re going to go deeper and our heart more than anything else is to show people that it’s a came to have your doubts. It’s okay you know that Jude 122 is, you know, be patient with those who doubt or have mercy on those who doubt whichever translation you want to read it from. And I think that it’s just a beautiful thing to ask questions to explore the different aspects of God. But we’ve been sitting around lately with just some friends. And we’ve been asking like, hey, what questions are you having and things like, guilt for not going to church, these raw emotions, lack of community, all these legitimate things. And I’ve realized that people have a story to tell and people want to talk. So I, Elaine, let’s just kind of start with this way. What’s the question you have had lightly we can talk about right now. And while I’m giving you a second to come up with something because I completely spring that on you. I just want to talk for a second. You know, like, everyone that comes into our community. One of the guidelines for entering is we have a question. It’s just like, what is something that you have thought about or questioned about God or religion or what is something you could, you know, tell the local church and so many diversity questions come in so many different things from so many different walks of life. And I think that’s just the beauty of it. And I just want to kind of clear the air here about what the reckless pursuit is, and is not. I don’t want to ever come behind this microphone and proclaim I have all the answers. Because if I am doing that, I am very much the exact same thing that we claim to, you know, quote unquote, preach against. I don’t want to be that person who is saying, I have the answers because I don’t. I have opinions. I have thoughts. I can tell you what I was taught. I can tell you what I feel right now. But it’s all subject to change. I could read a book tomorrow that’s going to redefine how I view hell, or God, or eternity, or relationship or spiritual or anything like that. And that’s the beauty of God. It’s just how big and vast he is. And I think that it’s safe to come into a place and share but Safety isn’t in trying to have someone tell you the answer. It’s coming to understand who God is to you in that moment. You know, you got anything yet. Okay, keep rambling.

Elaine Johnston 10:09
Well, I actually, this isn’t necessarily a question where I guess it’s a bunch of questions, but a general topic idea is where are Christian women leaders? Why? We’ve seen the whole thing with Beth Moore and MacArthur and all these things. But my question is, I have a couple questions. One is like, why is it so evil to have women preachers Why? You know, whenever I read the Bible, why weren’t there women, authors of the Bible, why don’t we talk more about the woman experiences in the Bible because there’s a bunch of them and they’re not all just bad. You know, but, but why is even in church deemed as a male dominated thing. Why? Why do you have men telling women that they’re supposed to stay quiet? Why were posed words meaning and this in the scriptures where it says women weren’t supposed to teach church and teach men and Stephanie, where does this idea come from that women are lesser than in the eyes of God?

Cody Johnston 11:12
Well, and I think that is literally Pandora’s box because it takes you. And that’s the beauty of asking, right? You asked something like, well, what did Paul mean? And you could have 50 different versions of that. I don’t know where my Bibles laying out right now. I thought it was on my desk. It’s laying somewhere here. Oh, it’s up on the shelf. And there’s like 30 sticky notes in it right now poking out from every direction, like a red head with like a bad hair day because they’re orange. Sorry, my best friends like red one. My best friends is red headed. Can I say that? Sure. I can say that, like a red hair with a bad hair day. And they’re just poking out everywhere because I’ve been trying to research that very thing, right? Because of some of this whole thing. I’m like, Well, I don’t want to know this for myself. Because I’ve been told the same thing growing up. It’s like, Oh, well, you know what Paul says? Like women can be pretty sure they can be anything else but not preachers. They can even be prophets in the Bible. They just can’t teach Which is funny because those same people believe in the fivefold ministry and that there’s like levels of authority within that. And teacher comes at the bottom, yet profit comes up, you know, second to first and next to what is it not evangelist. It’s a apostle, right apostle, profit evangelist, Pastor teacher. And so they can’t be the bottom two, they can be the ones above those two, right? That’s kind of like that what I’ve heard. And so you’re that opens up that whole can of worms. So what about all of the women preachers in the Bible, there’s quite a few of them, you know, not just married, but there’s Priscilla. There’s, there’s numerous ones. There is a saint in the Bible, that is a woman that Paul sent out to go and teach.

Elaine Johnston 12:38
I was gonna say, Why. Why does Paul say one thing and then completely negate his entire thought process? You know, he talks about women can’t preach, but he actually hung out with women who preached in churches,

Cody Johnston 12:50
and then you go into the whole thing of Well, okay, so it was specific to that church that he was talking to, which is logical. I mean, that’s not illogical to say that. And then there’s the whole View of like most people don’t believe those books were actually written by Paul Paul successors, which isn’t that far fetched when you start researching it, and it opens up more and more and more doors.

Elaine Johnston 13:09
Well, I was gonna say, I remember you telling me one time that there’s this thing of like half of the authors who are like ghost writers of the Bible. And I was talking with one of my friends the other day about this about if they were a ghost riders in the Bible, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s when you have somebody write a story, basically, that you take credit for, like he put your name your

Cody Johnston 13:30
Well, there was also the ghost hand in the Bible that wrote,

Unknown Speaker 13:34
yeah, and episode. He wrote some books.

Cody Johnston 13:36
I mean, he goes hand,

Elaine Johnston 13:37
but yeah, and so I was talking with a friend the other day, and I was like, you know, what if these ghost riders were women riders, but men kind of put their names over them because they thought that they were greater than the women or what if some of these teachings were things that women taught,

Cody Johnston 13:52
which is funny because even Paul and Jesus both went on to say this that men and women are equal There is no man or woman in the kingdom of God there is no gender in the kingdom of God is gender less. And so I don’t understand where this this stigma hadn’t been something cultural to that church or something like that. But then, so here’s where that really goes into. And this is kind of the epiphany of the show and like, what we’re wanting to even push deeper into asking these questions is like, okay, so you look at that, where you have all these different significances of the Bible, there’s 1000 different ways to read the Bible, there’s 10,000 different ways to read into what you’re reading, right? And so if people actively teach in church Well, if you look at scripture, you know, it’s, it’s a it’s meant to be looked at as a lens, you’re looking at it, but yet we read it literal, like I’ve been taught in church like, well, when you read the Bible, you can get, you know, what is God speaking to you in the moment, like, I’m sure you’ve been taught that Elaine, like, whenever you’re growing up in church, like, well, what’s the Bible mean to you in this moment, and then you go and read it. And you’re like, well, this is really what this is saying to me. Sounds are all that’s what that means actually means this right here. You’re like Which one is it? Am I allowed to read it the way I feel God is showing it to me Or am I wrong because of your lenses of truth, you’re shifting, you know through this with. And it ultimately comes down to this of like us being the host of this show. And like I say, you’re welcome to not agree with this point of view because we’re not sitting here trying to tell you, you have to agree with us. We’re actually open to hear your point of view anytime. You can email us mail at the reckless pursuit calm, you can find us anywhere on like, we’re on all the different social medias. But my point of view is, I don’t believe the Bible is an errand. And when I say an era and what I mean, you know, if you don’t know what that means, it literally means I don’t believe the Bible is perfect. I don’t believe it’s flawless. There’s numerous flaws in the Bible. I’m sorry, there is there are numerous historical flaws. How can Moses have written Genesis and Exodus? For one because I think it’s funny because Moses calls them Self, the most humble person in the world, kind of like he’s like Moses, the most humble man in the world at the time, but he’s the author of the book. So he’s got a little bit of President syndrome going on there. But I think it’s funny because it’s it’s maybe not funny. No, just one word. ironic that how can Moses write about his own death if it’s recorded in that book, so someone had to come along and kind of change those words in some kind of way. And that just kind of goes to say, like, the Bible is full of things that don’t always line up. If you read through the Gospels, there are certain things that don’t line up completely when Jesus landed on the shore and the demon possessed man comes out to see him one Gospel says a demon possessed man, one Gospel says demon possessed men or two demon possessed man came out to see Jesus so which one was it and all that to say, does that make the story any less potent? No. Does that make the message any more watered down know what it means is that people wrote this, they were inspired by God. And I’m sure you’ve heard this before if you listen to the show, but it’s like whenever you look at something, and you’re trying to paint a portrait of it, you you’re inspired by the original object, but you can’t ever grasp the full detail of it. And so I think that God is a lot more graceful and a lot more forgiving. And that’s the beauty of asking questions to me. That’s the Piff, like the epitome of this conversation is, God is okay with you asking questions. He wants you to ask questions, and even more. So. It’s great to hear these stories. It’s great to hear people’s perspectives of God. And that’s really what we want to hear more of. We don’t want to just hear about deconstruction or reconstruction or any of these pigeonhole topics. We want to try to get into just hearing people’s perspectives of God people’s perspectives we don’t even agree with or understand, you know, just these conversations. about God where you can see someone else’s understanding. And you’re not looking at things through the same lens because I feel like that’s where things get dangerous. If you all you ever do is look at one picture of the Grand Canyon, you’re doing yourself a major injustice because that’s just one angle taken on one specific type of lighting on a specific day with specific weather and a specific season and a specific time of year and a specific time and you are doing yourself so much injustice because you’re missing all the other uncountable angles in depth. You can take one from inside from this ridge from that raised from this river from that peak, and there’s all these different angles that can start to make up the thing that’s known as the Grand Canyon. The same with God and all of our different perspectives. In normal people’s perspective, a normal I say use air quotes on that normal everyday few people that don’t write about God for living People that you know, work, typical jobs, people that aren’t involved in any kind of full time ministry or part time ministry or left the ministry or even give a crap about ministry, people that grew up in different cultural backgrounds, people that grew up with different practices, different denominations, different religions, all these different things can give us a full grasp and understand of who God is and what our Bible is talking about.

Elaine Johnston 19:23
And something else that I want to hear more of not just different perspectives but more experiences more experiences, either inside the church or outside of the church and just understanding why people believe have certain belief system what what made them think certain ways about God, how they view God and why they view God that way that they have and, and just they’re more emotion and feeling behind it. And less of Well, I’ve done a bunch of research and this is what I gather, but hey, these are my experiences with who got is

Cody Johnston 19:58
and so with that being said, let’s Just take a minute and go into that a lane. What is an experience you have had, that has changed the way you view you view God, not something you’ve studied, not something you’ve read, but an experience you’ve had. I know for me, I can speak personally on just working at a church changed my perspective of God. And I can say and I’m not even talking negatively here, it just changed my perspective. Because I growing up, I always thought if I can make it into full time ministry is my job then like, I wouldn’t have to worry anymore about my relationship with God like I would be set that would be the ultimate honor. I just be praying and worshiping God all day and all this stuff that I used to think was how I needed to approach God, right. And then I got on the other side of that, and anyone who’s ever been in ministry can vouch for this. It’s like you can get so caught up doing the work that you completely forget anything about God. It’s actually further from God trying to do, trying to do what we’re doing here trying to work in a church or trying to be a missionary, or trying to evangelize or trying to write a book or any of these things, it actually takes you further away from God in the process because you’re so caught up in the knowledge that you forget the experience, which is exactly what made you come up with this very idea in the first place. So what about you?

Elaine Johnston 21:15
Yeah, so something that’s really kind of that God has kind of spoken to me or where I, you got most is recently, you know, we kind of stopped trying out different churches, you know, there was a period when we left our church two years ago, where we didn’t go anywhere. And then we kind of started, you know, trickling in different churches and stuff and I feel like we did more of that this year than last year. But within the last month or so, like I’ve just kind of felt I wouldn’t say convicted but just kind of felt like okay, this isn’t doing it for me. We’ve gone to different denominations, different churches, different areas of our city and everything and, and it’s all the same thing. But when I truly spirit to God is it’s through conversations. It’s through talking with people and hearing their experiences and bouncing ideas of What if God is this? Or what if God isn’t this, you know, and just kind of going back and forth, and that’s where I truly experienced God because I feel like that’s what God wants from us is instead of just, you know, under reading the Bible is fine. You know, preaching the Bible is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that if it’s in love, and you know that God really spoke that into that person or that that was on their heart, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with church when it’s done the right way. But for me recently, most of the feelings that I get of peace and comfort and understanding of God is through other people’s understanding of God and just having friends over over coffee or dinner and saying, Hey, I don’t know how I feel about this, or Hey, I have so much shame in this certain area. And it’s just being honest. I feel like there’s not a lot of honesty within the church doors.

Cody Johnston 22:48
Well, and I think that’s, and like I said, we’re not trying to go on like a church bashing raid, because that’s not our intent either. Like if you’re happy in church like that you should stay in church. Like there’s nothing wrong with being in We’re out of church like it’s all your walk. And for one we super spiritual eyes, the word church and I was thinking about this earlier. It’s like, oh, we’re going to church today because we were planning on having some folks over the evening we’re recording this just to sit and talk about God. And I was like, Well, I don’t want to call this church because church is such a baggage word and so many triggers and yada yada. And I’m just like, Wait, where two or more gathered? there I am. Church is an action. It’s not a building. Yeah, church is not a noun. Church is a verb I was coming in, to actually go make myself coffee this morning is when is whenever like, I was having this conversation with God. And last time was crazy, and I wouldn’t get a lot of sleep. And Elaine was kind of up and down all night. Not feeling the absolute best. So you’re being a trooper for being here recording right now. And we, I was just sitting there, I was praying, I was asking God, I was like, okay, God. So what? What does this look like? Like, I don’t want to call it church, because that’s so cliche. I don’t want to like how do I do this because I don’t want to start a church. I’m like, I don’t want to start it. Church, I just want to go over and talk about you. But I don’t want to start a church. There’s enough churches out there like we don’t need more churches. And I just felt so heavy that God was like Cody church isn’t a noun, it’s a verb. You do church you don’t like you don’t have a church, you have church. You don’t go to a church. You are the church as you go right as you go make disciples. And that just like it was profoundly shaking to me, because like you sitting here listening to this podcast, you’re having church. You know, when we talk to people in our group, we’re having church, it’s an action. It’s like prayer. Prayer is a verb, it’s not a noun, it goes up it constantly goes out. You know, you don’t have to end every prayer with Amen. You don’t have to start every prayer with Dear Lord sometimes looking at the sunset or looking at you know, nature or looking at your family. That is the action of just realizing God and all things and I just I’m kind of saying all this to say Kind of what you were going with Elaine like the knowledge of God is great trying to learn and understand and all this is great. But it’s those stories, those real life events that really tug on our heartstrings. And those events can be as simple as sitting around and talking about God kind of

Elaine Johnston 25:14
learn more about who God is than just even the scripture itself,

Cody Johnston 25:17
right? And like that bleeds into like learning about God, right? But it’s also, you know, you learn God through everything through tragedy and loss, like there is God to learn and that’s a hard thing. And that’s why like our episode with Thomas J, Ord was so powerful to me. You can learn God through joy through having a child through adopting a pet through showing a loving act, but God is positive energy in motion. He is love in motion, and that is who God is. And so that is why as we move forward in this podcast, trying to be action oriented, not just have conversations, but put feet to those conversations right to take to Take this somewhere further and experience God and actually allow that to come in and become that verb become church, which is God in motion, love in motion. Every throughout our day, everywhere we go all of this just as a constant state of doing and being in the presence of God and taking moments and allowing ourselves to realize when God is in work, and not getting so caught up on just the questions, but allowing those questions to spark an action. So how do we take a question something like what is God or who is God to you? Or, like you were saying, Elaine, women in the Bible? How do you take that and turn it into an action where it can become an actual experience? Like what does that even look like? That’s something I’m thinking of right now. You know, for us doing this whole, quote unquote, it’s a house church, but it’s not a house church thing, you know, like, what is it called? What is that will? It’s an action because we’re taking action. It is church. But it doesn’t mean that it has to look the way that church has always said like, one definition of word doesn’t define something. So what does it look like to take a question and make it an action?

Elaine Johnston 27:10
I think you can take just about any question. And you can take pretty much any question about God and kind of look through the Scriptures and see, well, I can see this perspective, I can see this point of view from these different authors and stuff like that. But I think to really make it actionable, is being the church and when I say being the church getting with those, like minded or not so like minded people, and getting around and having true discussions if if you say, You know why, why is there not many women preachers or why is this such an issue where you can share your experience of like, Hey, this is a great thing for me, like I, you know, had spoken at this retreat or this event, or this person talked to me and shared me shared with me how hurt they had been from somebody telling them that they couldn’t Speak and just kind of sharing the experiences as a collective instead of just trying to ask everyone else well, what do you think? What do you think and creating your idea of God based on everyone else’s ideas, but really sitting with those conversations and thinking, well, this is my experience. This is who God is to me because this is where I feel God or this is where I don’t feel God. And it’s okay if it’s in different places at different times, because that’s, you know, we’re all God’s children, we all have a different aspect or a different perspective of who God is. And I think to make it to make the questions actionable, is just, it’s great to research things. It’s great to open the scriptures. It’s great to look in historical texts outside of the Bible, that’s fine. That’s great. If that’s your passion, you know, you have a biblical historical podcast specifically for that and looking at the different stories and how other religions kind of tie into the similar stories and stuff like that. And I feel like that’s a great thing is that that’s how you make it experience and Whether some of the stories are true or not true, whether it’s more metaphor than literal and all that stuff, it doesn’t really matter. But whenever you just sit with other people and share your experiences, then I feel like that’s when you make it actionable. That’s when you become that church.

Cody Johnston 29:16
Sure. And I think actionable looks different, different people write to me sitting down and painting through, you know, dozens of old stories and like in apocryphal and biblical texts, and you know, old rabbinic literature and everything that’s actionable to me, because it brings me joy, right? It bears the fruit of the Spirit in me. It brings me closer to God, to some people that may confuse them and push them further from God and that’s not actionable to them actionable may look more like a normal church service. But to me the big thing that we’re lacking with our understanding of church, our tradition or non traditional, but like our westernized version of church is we have lost the ability to come to different points of view, right? It’s kind of become this whole funnel system almost like a business like you have to

Elaine Johnston 30:12
everyone has to be right. Everyone has to have right answers, but it’s the complete opposite.

Cody Johnston 30:17
Yeah, like the the true. I mean, what is it’s in Proverbs where it says like, the wise man asked more questions, and he has answers. It’s good to not have all the answers. It’s good to sit down in a group of people, and maybe be able to look at the person across and say, I completely disagree with what you’re saying. But thank you for sharing it. Because now I understand your relationship with God. Now I understand how you see God, different than how I see God and it helps me

Elaine Johnston 30:40
grow. And it may not even necessarily that you disagree. You just have a different perspective of who God is to you. You have a different dynamic of your relationship with God. It’s not that you’re telling them that they’re wrong, because they may be absolutely right in their relationship with God, but it’s more of you are able to still honor Their perspective, but also honor your perspective, as well as saying like, hey, that’s great that works for you. But this is how it works for me. And I feel like a lot of times, what’s missing is the honest conversations and the appreciation of disagreements.

Cody Johnston 31:16
Yeah. And I don’t get any hate mail. It’s like, Oh, well, there’s certain things you can’t okay. Yeah, I get the God put a few certain rules in place. You know, love God, love your neighbor. Like we have the 10 commandments, I get that. But if it lines up with that, and then it lines up, you know, outside of like, there isn’t really any other way to line up outside of that. It’s just like, if you have down those two, you have it going. You’re right. Like, I think that we take all these different laws and superstitions. We talked about superstition episode before, and we construct these ideals of God. And then we limit and I don’t even wanna say, self limit. It’s almost a generational curse of not allowing ourselves to come to the full understanding of who God is. And when I say understanding of who God is, I mean understanding of who God is to you and what your relationship is like, with God. And that’s just like how you can have multi line you can probably speak to this, so tell me if I’m off, but you can have multiple siblings, and they all have a completely different relationship with a parent. That doesn’t mean any of those relationships are less than less filled with love less filled with joy or peace or patience or kindness or goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self control than the other relationship. It just means it looks different because you’re dealing with to a unique person and their relationship with another. Is that correct? Yeah,

Elaine Johnston 32:38
I mean, you have everyone has different interests. So if you connect with your parent because you and your, you know, mom or dad, have a love for art and have a love for painting, then you, you know can connect or if you have a sibling who loves sports, then you can connect with your parent with sports. And that doesn’t make either one wrong or that or better. The other one is just Hey, well, I can connect on this level. And I can connect on this level. And that’s the exact same thing with God

Cody Johnston 33:06
exactly like we all have our different ways of connecting with God. And the way we can broaden our experiences of him is to understand the experiences of others. And I just want to wrap all this up with this final thing just to get a little spiritual here. ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, guide you in you read guide you whenever you’re doing experience guide you whenever you’re having church, whether that looks like our, you know, Sunday morning blowout bash that we do nowadays, or if it looks like gathering together and just talking about, you know, God and mystery and creation and life and just ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in those and to reveal to you things as you need them about who God is and what he has for you in that moment. And that’s the beauty of experience is it goes from God, let me learn about what you did to God show me what you’re doing. And that is just the the Epiphany to me. God is a God of the now. And it’s great to see like, I understand that, like God is and was, and always will be, you know, the same then as he is, now I get all that. But at the same time, God’s the same, but God is infinitely bigger than our time and space. And there’s a new aspect of him to fill every waking moment from creation, to the last breath of existence. And so to us looking at God, we can view that as God changing almost, because God’s always revealing a new piece of himself because he’s beyond our linear concept. And there’s more to him than will ever then every single one of us put together could ever understand, so long as there is humanity here on this earth. And I think that that’s just the beauty of it is, that’s why we have the Holy Spirit we can say, you know, God, show me Show me by your spirit. What is this moment look like through your lens? What part of you can I learn in this moment? How can I experience and God in this current breath, so I just want to pass that question on to you guys. What does God look like in your experience? How are you experiencing? God hit us up in nomads hop over there asked to be a part we would love to have you. And of course you can send your answers to mail at the reckless pursuit.com We would love to hear from you. And of course, we’ve said it at the beginning will say it here we have other podcasts if you like the reckless pursuit, you love the reckless pursuit and you want a little more of either some biblical history you got itinerant, or if you want some more woman power and just learning, learning to be all you can be as a woman, head over to the prodigal daughter. And you can find links for all of that on our website, the reckless pursuit calm. There’s a nice little toolbar right at the top that links out to all of our other stuff we got going. We love you guys. We want to hear from You hit us up. And as always be brave, be bold and be reckless. We’ll talk soon.