102 – Thinking Is Good (With Kyle Butler)

Elaine Johnston 1:21
Hey, everyone, welcome to the reckless pursuit. I’m Elaine. And I’m Cody, and you are listening to Episode 102.

Cody Johnston 1:29
This week we’re talking with Kyle Butler. Kyle is an amazing guy that honestly don’t even remember how we met online. But hey, it doesn’t matter. Kyle has an entire life motto. I’m Kyle. I’m sorry, I’m giving you this life motto. Kyle says something all the time that gets us thinking and that’s the whole point because he says thinking is good. This seems to be something lacking a whole lot in modern Christianity churchy in the room religiosity

Elaine Johnston 1:57
to me all of this

Cody Johnston 1:59
so We’re just going to dive into what it means to think for yourself to think about why we believe what we believe. And I just absolutely love this conversation because it’s the epitome of why we do what we do here at the reckless pursuit. Before we hop into that episode real quick if you haven’t done so, so far head over to nomads nomads is our Facebook community group where we give all of you wonderful people a safe place to ask unsafe questions. It is the powerhouse behind the show and even more so now that we’re in the hundreds. we’re shifting focus even more to this group. So if you want to be a part of the conversation, get highlights before stuff happens. Be able to ask questions and influence the direction of the show, head down to the show notes. Click that link and ask to be a part. Also, if you’re enjoying the show, maybe this is your first show. If you start to enjoy the show. Do us a favor, take a screenshot, head over to your favorite social media. Share it there and be sure to tag us and Kyle you can get links To all of our social BIOS, and his in the show notes below. And lastly, if you haven’t done so, so far, go down there and click that review button and leave an honest review. It helps us to help others as they pass by to see what this shows actually all about. So let’s get right to today’s conversation with Kyle Butler. Alright everyone, we are here with Kyle Butler, who has become one of our absolute favorite people on the internet. And so I am super excited to be able to have this conversation right now. It’s something that I have been thinking about for a long time now like months upon months now, since we pretty much found somehow found I don’t know how we like came to know each other on the internet, but hey, we’re here now. And so Kyle, how are you?

Kyle Butler 3:48
I’m doing great. I’m doing really great. And you know, I feel the same way about YouTube. I think anytime you you find someone, an internet, social media, what have you and you do You immediately resonate with the message. And I felt the same way that soon as I read one of your first few posts and, and I thought, yeah, these are these are cool people I need to I need to rock with them.

Cody Johnston 4:12
Well, I’m glad we’re getting to do so today. So let’s just open this up, give me the down and dirty version of who you are and why on earth you do what you do and what you do.

Kyle Butler 4:23
So I’m an old Pentecostal holiness boy.

That’s where I came from. That’s where I started. I grew up in a Pentecostal holiness church, where the word holiness was emphasized. And it was solely emphasized from the perspective of you’ve got to become holy. And here’s a list of things you cannot do, because it will validate your holiness. And here’s the list of things you can do that will make you holy, and it was a really short list and let’s just go to church and read the Bible. So that’s kind of where I came from. And you know, I started in ministry at a very early The age, my first sermon so to speak, sermonette, whatever you want to call it was I was 13. I was full blown pledge into ministry by the time I was 20, or Dane at 21 pastoring at 26. And, you know, just kind of went through this whole roller coaster thinking that path, the track that I’m on, man, I’m going to be the next mega pastor the next four or five years. That didn’t happen, and maybe, you know, throughout some of the things I’ll say today, I’m glad it didn’t happen that way. So that’s kind of a little bit of my history and kind of how I got here. And there was there was a metamorphosis, so to speak, that started back and started happening within me and about 2000, about 2008. And it really set me on a whole different pathway and whole different course to where I am right now. So we’ll probably, you know, share a little bit about that as well.

Cody Johnston 5:55
Sure. And I was gonna say like, kind of what was that process that kind of Yeah cuz like to go from I’m gonna be the next mega pastor to I guess your message now is little is a little different. So I’d love to hear what kind of brought you there.

Kyle Butler 6:10
Yeah, it’s 2007 where it kind of kicked off, but it really didn’t start taking form into 2008. And out of a moment of incredible panic and fear, like I had always done when when I saw a problem about to rise, I went in my normal mode of reaching out to God, God, what are you going to do? God to kill it, this happened to me, God, I can’t take another one of these moments in my life. And I heard something that I you know, when I heard it, it was instinctive to me, I knew that that’s what I needed to do. And what I heard was, you have to find the right seed for the need. Now at the time, all I can think about it is okay, I gotta find a scripture. I gotta find a scripture that’s going to that’s going to talk about this matter and it’s going to help me it’s going to get me out of this mess. And it appeared to do just that. But that, that when I look back on it now I realized that that was the baby step I needed to get to where I am, you know, and then in 2008, the latter part of 2008, as I’ve already, you know, begin to deconstruct my faith at that time, because the best my faith was, hey, let me work. Let me strive, let me do you know, let me do it really hard and really well, and maybe God will look upon it and say, Okay, so this is really good. Now I’m going to help you because of it. So by the end of 2008, I’m, you know, because when you when you start getting into faith that way, and the word of faith that way, Grace kind of starts to emerge a little bit as well. Because you know, you’re trying to do something to get into this grace. You know, we’re saved by grace through faith. So you’re thinking, Okay, if I get my faith right, then it’ll bring me into the grace and then Oh, boy, everything will be okay. Well, like I started to get into a better understanding of faith. One day, I heard this song And this is what really changed it all. And it was son, you have no idea how big my graces and when I heard that I was now curious. And I was pretty much taught for the most part. When God tells you something, you don’t say anything. You don’t you just take it and you don’t say anything. Just shut up is listen. But I was almost too curious by that statement, not the state anything. So I thought the only thing I could say to be safe was show me because maybe you’re right. Because at that time, all I knew was My grace is sufficient for you. Now, growing up Pentecostal holiness, whenever that message was preached, and then I lead a priest it was you go through whatever you’ve got to go for you suffer through whatever you got to suffer through, but God will sprinkle you a little bit of grace so you can keep suffering until one day it changes and if it never changes, just keep suffering. The name of the Lord. And to me that message never made me feel good and I was always curious. As to why Paul would say most gladly then, but what’s wrong with that dude? Like, I’m like, God, take the crap away. Like, I don’t want to deal with it. And I’m not saying most gladly, I still gotta deal with it. But that’s all I understood. So he was absolutely right. I had no idea how big race really is. And when I said show me Well, that’s exactly what started happening.

Cody Johnston 9:22
That’s interesting. I love just that whole analogy because something that I feel like I went through not too long ago was it was kind of similar I guess, in the whole idea of like, what is it me like, you see all these like, Oh, I’m going to suffer for Christ and we get this martyr mentality of like, I’ve just if something bad’s not happening, I must not be pissing the devil off enough, right? Like I must be I’m lukewarm in my faith because I mean, like almost like I was taught that if not, like directly, even positively, because like, Oh, well, I’m not under spiritual like air quotes here attack. So I must be like lukewarm in my faith. And like, I’m like, What? Maybe wait and I was kind of like, and this is like recently I’m like, I’ve been having this conversation for years now. And I’m like, even recently, I’m like, man, why do I beat myself up when things are going good? Like, I’m like some kind of spiritual like, like lackey or something like

Elaine Johnston 10:14
what is going on? I’ve definitely heard and still see people on Facebook who say if you’re not being attacked by Satan, you’re not doing something right. And like just that mentality of like, I have to be doing something or something has to be happening, or I’m not in God’s will. But that’s not

Cody Johnston 10:33
into play to that even more so. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and then we can kind of get into what we’re actually talking about today. right but like I love where we’re going with this already. The whole idea of Satan when you start studying is a mindset like Satan himself the idea of like this big bad thing like the whole Get behind Me, Satan. You know, Jesus is talking to Peter. It’s a it’s a mindset against God. And so by adopting a mindset of I’m spiritually weak because I’m not under attack. That’s actually so satanic, in essence, right. And so I don’t know, I just I love what you were saying there. I would love to elaborate on that a little bit more if you don’t mind.

Kyle Butler 11:07
Yeah. Again, growing up in that environment, you know, everybody was always under attack. Everything was a crisis. Everything was spiritual warfare. I my church services growing up, and even as a young adult was conducted this way, if we came into the service and our praise and worship at that time was called devotion service. So, you know, someone get up, a couple of people get up and start singing songs. And this this time of devotion was really a cry to hate. We got to get the spirit to fall. Now for us, the only way the spirit fell was if someone started shouting, not shouting in the dance, you know, we call that shouting. That was a sign that God was now in the building. If the devotion Time went by, and no one danced, and then testimony service would happen and if no one Dance by way of a testimony, then the choir would singing if no one danced, there had been no breakthrough in dancing, shouting, the radical move of what we thought was the Spirit of God, the pastor would get up. And he was an older guy. We had tremendous love and respect for him. So I’m not saying anything to make him look or sound bad. He would get up and say, the devil has his service bound. We got the loose this thing, and he would start to radically speak in tongues until it caught on and then somebody else would catch it and someone else would catch and then all of a sudden, here’s the dance. And then we all felt this silently, like, okay, God is here. You know, every week it was this classic tug of war battle. was God gonna show up? Or is the devil going to prevail and we kill it down. We prevail because this is not what we do. It’s interesting. And so you grew up in that mindset. So you you think right away. There’s this cosmic good and cosmic evil, but it seemed like the cosmic evil the Satan, the devil was always winning. busier than God, more active than God more quick to get on the same thing, God, you know, that service was bound from the beginning. Where was God? Why was he waiting? All this time to show up? Why did we have to do a whole service for him to finally show up? And we didn’t realize I didn’t know this till years later, we didn’t realize that we had created this mindset that if someone didn’t want to lift their hands or dance or shop, it was okay. It wasn’t the devil. We created that mindset. We created this atmosphere and we lived it out week after week after week, until we started waking up a little bit. And amazing thing happened. But we stopped trying to chase out the devil from the service that wasn’t going to service anymore.

Cody Johnston 13:47
Crazy Wow. That’s That’s amazing. That kind of ties into exactly like what we love so much. And that is your tagline. Thinking is good. I’m calling your tagline is I Tag I don’t know I’m calling it a tagline. It’s your phrase you’d like to use a lot

Elaine Johnston 14:03
caught on to it’s catching on next

Cody Johnston 14:05
year. That’s, that’s what we’re coining it as So, what kind of brought up or what? What about thinking is good, Kyle, why should we think?

Kyle Butler 14:14
What we’re not taught to think in church? Right? And again, not to slight anyone or, or to bash the institution we call church, but we’re not taught to think, what do we do? We go to church on Sunday, we participate in worship, and then someone will stand in front of us and talk and the perception is I’ve been there. So I know, the reception is, I have the word of God. I’ve been with God. God has spoken to me he is he has spoken to you yet because I haven’t told you. But I’ve been with God. He’s spoken to me and I’m gonna tell you what God says. And even though it’s not necessarily said verbally, in some cases, it is probably but the indication is still the impression is you don’t question what I’m about to tell you. Because of because the question me is to question God. And you can do that. So you take what you hear. And I remember, as a young minister coming up in church, there was things that were happening like those, you know, moments of waiting for God to break through. There was other moments in the church service where I would just be so uncomfortable on the inside. And I would I would have this sense of feeling like, something’s not right. But I thought because again, I was under that mindset. I thought it was a devil. I thought it was a devil trying to block me the devil trying to hit me up on I had a devil side of me, because part of me was saying, How can I be upset about what’s happening? This is God, but inside I was in total and total tomorrow. So, you know, again, we don’t get the impression that we can think for ourselves. We don’t get the impression that we can ask questions. But when you start to pay attention, and I call it the burning bush, you and I may never see a physical burning bush cheney. That is probably billion to a trillion or some crazy number. Yeah, to one. I mean, that probably will never happen because one, the bush would have to keep burning. And by the time someone sees it burn, they’re gonna try to put it out. And if they can’t put it out in the News, the news is going to come and say, why can’t this happen happening is probably never going to happen to us in a literal sense. But there is a burning bush burning inside of us and that bush, it’s true. That bush is an easy feeling of, I’ve got to kind of step away from all of this stuff. It looks pretty it sounds good and tickles me perhaps. But I’ve gotta I gotta turn within. Because within is where the questions are, you know, you’ve been there, right? You hear something you say, doesn’t make any sense. And it makes no sense whatsoever. And then you start thinking about why it doesn’t make sense. And you come up with all of these different scenarios. Why does it make sense and then you start thinking, I must be wrong. I must But I must be deceived. I must be delusional. But then you hold on to, and you just keep thinking. And eventually, you’ll think your way out of the mental constructs that you’ve built through the religious influences that you’ve had. And it’s not all at once, like you don’t wake up one day, say, oh, you’re gonna believe in is the devil, you actually have to start thinking about this concept, right? You have to think about why would God create a devil? If he knew that this devil a physical being was going to create so much havoc? I mean, from the jump if I know, guess what I do? I don’t create it, you know, using certain It doesn’t make sense anymore. And then like you think, Okay, well, if you did create the devil, and if he really did, you know, you went to sleep and then when you were asleep, you started this Riot and in whatever, why kick them down here to Earth. Now you knew you were going to put us here. You don’t. You can send the devil any other place. I mean, you can get Put them in storage somewhere in husband, or or senator some darkness somewhere where he can’t have any human contact. You send him to Earth amongst what you saved your most precious price creation doesn’t make any sense, you know? And then you just start thinking and thinking and thinking and then you come to the conclusion that, wait a minute, maybe what I thought isn’t right. And then that’s when the answers really start to come. Because you run into people like you. And you run into other people that are that are posting things they’ve discovered because they actually studied some things through and then they start, you start reading this information that to a Jewish person. They didn’t believe in a physical being called Satan or the devil. They knew this to be an accusatory mindset. They understood this to be an accusation, as you said, Cody against God, they understood this and they didn’t walk around looking around their shoulders or over their shoulder behind every door for physical devil, you know, and then you start hearing that You say, Ah, so now you’re thinking that you’ve done that was validated. And I’m sorry I’m talking probably way too much now.

Cody Johnston 19:15
I’m reading through that or I just finished reading through the Book of Enoch because like it has so much influence over a lot of New Testament like you know, it’s it’s not technically canonized, whoever but it has a ton of influence. And it talks about all these like leagues of angels. And whenever it comes to talk about Satan, it actually says Satan’s it’s plural. And in parentheses, like the literal interpretation is mindsets, these binding mindsets so this is like common Jewish knowledge it’s just something we in our what we have to have an enemy right it’s the it’s the Wild West we gotta have somewhere to go like mow down like tear up like we’re war base. Like we’ve got to have something we can beat up and headlock and put into submission, right? That’s our mindset. That’s what we’re raised is like Uncle Sam wants you we’ve got to go to war. We’ve got to pick up our our Bible like a sword. Go beat the crap out of some like spiritual, you know, demons and all this and like we have this. If there’s not an enemy then what are we fighting kind of like? And that kind of comes to thinking is like, well, we’re so scared of thinking logically right? And we put it in these these mindsets of like, oh well the knowledge the tree of knowledge was bad actually. Like, let’s be really honest, that wasn’t God’s plan B. I mean, I mean, also like Genesis to me is metaphorical. Like that part of the story is metaphorical anyway, but when you start realizing it’s like, well, what did what did the Tree of Knowledge do? Well, it made them like God, and then what does Jesus come and say, hey, you’ve been separated, but now I’m going to make you like me who is God? So maybe like you get it like you start looking at and you’re like, wow, maybe God wanted us to have free will. How are we supposed to have free will if we never exercise it you never have free will unless you exercise for like, it all starts to kind of look of like maybe there’s a bigger story here than what we’re being taught and Even if you’re right or wrong, does that really matter in the

Elaine Johnston 21:04
information that you have writing?

Cody Johnston 21:06
And just to kind of like play into this a little bit our us something that happened to us very recently. Yesterday, we’re on Tick tock, we do a lot on Tick tock, right. And we get a little, let’s just put it this way, most Christians wouldn’t like us on tape talking. That’s okay. Most Christians probably wouldn’t like our show either. But hey, let’s let’s just be honest, like, and so we’re on tape talking. There’s this audio that drops like, you know, like what we would deem as a cuss word that we’re using. And this young girl and I feel really bad and I’m not gonna like call her out by her username or anything like that. But like she gets on there. She’s just like, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re not a Christian. How dare you use like the name of God to promote your videos when you’re using a cuss word? And I’m like, Okay, I understand you’re upset. But like, let’s think through this a little bit, and I’m like, I’m not even trying to tell her to go cuss like if he has a conviction if her parents tell him

Elaine Johnston 22:00
That we didn’t actually even say

Cody Johnston 22:02
we’re using it. jokingly that’s the whole tongue in cheek.

Elaine Johnston 22:06
Well, okay, I’m just gonna say what the video was. So it’s the verse where it’s like, john the baptist is is being beheaded. And so there’s, there’s this lyric, it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna say it. It’s like, I cut that video, or whatever. And so we’re like acting this out. And so his head’s like on this platter, it’s stupid. That’s what TED Talk is. It’s stupid, but it like gets people’s attention. And so um, she was she was commenting on there and basically saying, like, this was hurting our witness.

Cody Johnston 22:33
Yeah, basically saying we’re not Christians because of because

Elaine Johnston 22:35
we had a cuss word in a video. And this

Cody Johnston 22:41
Yeah, well, and then I was like, so the conversation of course, this is a child like, I don’t know how old she is probably 14 or 15. And so like, I’m trying not to like belittle her in this or anything, but I’m like, hey, like curse words are in the mentality. like to say the word bitch isn’t a cuss word unless you’re using a derogative Lee, the same thing. can be said about going, Hey, I’m gonna pray for you like How many times have I use someone that phrase has been used as a cuss word is someone right? Like you’re cursing like, Oh, I need prayer. Like, it’s just it’s this mindset and it’s like, I was like, see this is it we’re taught these laws, but we’re never taught that goes back to what you were saying last week, Elaine, that’s like, hey, spiritual law or you know, you have law and that may be the milk but love is the meat. And I would love to just kind of kind of like get into that like, what is this? How do we start getting out of this mentality and into an actual freedom of thought how do we start exploring those thoughts? How do we notice when we we start having those how do we beat those convictions? There’s so much there that I feel like people feel like scared or, and even people that listen to the show regularly, like we talked about asking questions, everything but how do we do that?

Kyle Butler 23:50
I think everyone is probably a little bit different. The I was always a thinker. Before I got saved. I got saved and I stopped thinking because you The program is you don’t have questions. You don’t think you use your faith. Faith is blind. Faith is just whatever someone tells you and you just believe it. So, you know, faith is there was a talking serpent wrapped around a tree that enticed Eve to eat of this fruit. You say, I believe that, although chances are you’ll never see this ever happened in real life. You’ll never see a donkey talk more than likely in real life, you’ll never see. You know, creative animation, you’ll never see any of these things probably happened in natural life, you’ll probably never be standing in front of the almost 10 foot man with the sward and, and you got it you have a slingshot. But since we’re taught not to ask questions, and to take these things, literally, we frame them that way that you just have to believe. But see, the problem with that is if I just blindly believe something just because someone said it Oh, I read it in the middle sets. That’s going to neatly cut off my ability to think. So, you know, for me what I needed to do, I needed to start to shut down from everything I had been taught. Because when God told me, Son, you have no idea how big my grace is. And as it would start like this, like for example, I’m in bed one night, and I’m asleep, and I wake up maybe four o’clock in the morning, and I hear someone’s that with my eyes. Hey, Sir, how did the anointed come? Now? I’m Pentecostal? No, I’m holiness. You understand? We know something about the anointing. You see.

Cody Johnston 25:34
I grew up he saw I relate, by the way.

Kyle Butler 25:36
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I’m like, Well, you know, you got to pray. You gotta fast you got to seek your face. You gotta live holy and you know, all that whole stuff. And I thought I hadn’t given the answer of all the answers and the best answer ever. So I went back to sleep. I woke up again about an hour later, immediately, I hear the same question, son, how does the anointed come

Unknown Speaker 25:59
and preach the gospel?

Kyle Butler 26:05
I’m doing all that now cuz I’m thinking okay, I didn’t impress him the first time. Let me get my recharge for some really good yet some

sleep on it. Yeah, you got this thing, right. So I’m laid back down I’m thinking okay, I hit the homerun God is up there saying Yeah, boy, you know you got it. Yeah. So, I go back to sleep and maybe about an hour and a half later this time I wake up and I hear the exact same question again. No, no, no, I’m a little pissed off. Be honest with you. I’m like, Dude, what you can hear already answered the question twice. You know, that’s how I’m feeling on the inside. So I say sarcastically like I am. Wow, no, I’ll try you tell me then you got all the answers. Why don’t you tell me said pick up the Bible. Turn to Matthew chapter 10. Because you know costel passes. We sleep what our Bible right?

Become a Bible in

Matthew chapter 10. And there’s a story I’ve read countless of times, I’m sure before probably preached on them before in the story. It said, Jesus is what his boys, they just hate him. And Jesus said, Hey, y’all come here. So he come and he says, Hey, I’m just giving you this anointed, go out here and do this stuff. And the names, all 12 of them. And it says, and Judas also now, when I read that, that was the first thing that jumped out, you would know to Judas also knew that he was going to betray you. Like, I’m like Mind blown right now. And then the next thought hits me, wait a minute, this would make sense to my programming, if they had just come out of all night prayer, or they had just come out of revival, or they had just come out in some, you know, explosive move of God. And they came out full of the anointing, you know, they had just fasted or they just prayed or did they just dumped something or that can read into the story, they just keep It just chillin. And Jesus is like, Hey, come here, take this anointed. And then you read a little further down. This was the icing on the cake. Jesus says to them freely you have received, freely give. And that’s when the question hit me for the fourth time. So how is the anointing come? Now I just read it freely you have received. Now, inside, everything inside of me was in chaos. It was internal because what I’m hearing now what is appealing truth to me it is as true as anything I’ve ever known. It is conflicting with every bit of everything I’ve ever been taught about how to get into it. And I had a decision to make. I’m going to hold on to this or not going to acknowledge this moment this my eyes will just open up to this freely you have received and it was at that moment. I knew that I need to start thinking again. And from that moment on, it’s been a think fest that’s all I do is So

Cody Johnston 29:04
you were kind of talking about this parallel here. And I think this is interesting because depending on what denomination you grow up in, you know, hearing from God is either like the norm and like everything is hearing from God or hearing from God is like non existent. God doesn’t speak like that if you want to hear from God open the Bible. So where is like, we obviously know the Bible can be used however you decide to it is a book full of parabolics stories, old interpretations that we just legitimately do not even understand the context of anymore and even if we could understand the context of we probably wouldn’t take the time to figure it out. And like there’s just you can take it and swing it any way you want it slice it however you want. Also, there’s this whole idea that like, oh, if you know when God starts talking, like is it really God? Or is it the devil? Like does God allow which I know we’ve already established the devil and all this but like, you know, is that what is God? Like? How do I know if that’s if I’m actually hearing from God or not. And so let’s talk a little bit about that. How can we use the Bible to think but not in a negative way or a law based but in that grace mentality? How does that play? And then what is it like to hear from God in that as well, I feel like a lot of people get hung up. As a matter of fact, I feel like we were having a conversation in nomads about that, like I was having a conversation with that, like this morning about like prayer of like, not like feeling like it’s a one way street and all that. So, I don’t know, let’s just kind of tap into that a little bit.

Kyle Butler 30:28
You know, it’s, again, this may vary for each different person, but for me, you know, I can’t say it everyone loves the Bible. I can’t say I ever cherished it as something that you know, I felt like, okay, I love the scriptures. I love this word, as a young boy and growing up in a holiness type home. You know, if we wanted to go outside and play, there were some days my mind would say, and nothing gets my mom. I love her dearly Of course respect her tremendously. She was only doing what she understood to be wife, she would say, you read your Bible yet. Have you been with the Lord yet? No, mom, would you go back upstairs and you get the word first we get with the Lord first the new outside. So, to a little boy, this is a chore. I got to do this to go outside. All right, let me get this chore done. So I go outside. Yeah. As a young minister, growing, you know, being under an older season, man who built his life around prayer. And were you hear from him? You got to get into this word. You got to get into this word, you know. So he’s connected is what we thought power, his anointing with, how much he prayed and how much He fasted and how much he read the word. So as a young impressionable minister, you think, all right, well, I’ve got to get into this word. So I get here. So in both of these cases, a word was nothing more than a chore to me, was something I had to do. So I never fell in love with the word now. There was a short period of time when I was in the Word of Faith in the early 2008, nine season where I started to appreciate the word, but only because I thought, if I embrace this word, it’ll transform my life and bring to me what the Word says it has. So the Word says he became rich. So he became poor so I can become rich. If I wrap my faith around his becoming poor, then I’ll get rich. So, again, I was just using the word for Okay, what can you do for me? So, as I started transitioning in this journey, of, you know, understanding grace, and then grace began to show me unconditional love, and unconditional love and grace began to show me Our oneness with Father. And the more these things were happening, the word Bible became a more distant type tool. It was, it was going to it less. I was reading it less. I was using it to teach less and less and less and when I guess when I got far enough away from in a sense of you know how When I looked at it, I was then able to go back into it. And the very first thing that hit me was Noah’s Ark, the story of Noah’s Ark. And by this time, I was able to go back and say, Okay, what is this all about? So I read it. And after I read it in the past, what I would do, I’d read it, and then I would try to find a way to believe it word for word, because that’s how I was trained. You read it, and you need to believe it. That’s what you need to do. But this time when I read it, I said, I need to know why this doesn’t make any sense. Because unconditional love has shown me a much different image of itself. Grace has shown me a much different image of itself. And then of course, I’m thinking, right, so I’m thinking, this makes no sense. God, you knew Jesus was coming one day. You also don’t have any reference of time meaning time doesn’t mean anything to you. You say your long suffering and full of patients. Do you mean to tell me you just couldn’t Wait a few years for Jesus to come and solve the issue you had with mankind. You just couldn’t wait. You had to kill the whole earth. That doesn’t sound like that makes any sense to me, you know? So, you know, when I read the story again, and I am looking at it now, like this makes no sense. That’s when I heard, perhaps I was just a weatherman in the story. Perhaps I will just let him know and know what was coming. Because I knew it was coming. And I was getting him to prepare himself, and probably other people too. But you know, we read the story the way we read it, but and that’s was the first time it gave me a different inside. So I think for everyone, again, the journey is different. Some people perhaps can read the Bible and hear it speak to them in a way but i’d wonder if that way. It’s just more sort of a way to help you believe what’s there. Even though you probably should be questioning some of the stuff you’re reading that’s there. Yeah. That’s really good.

Elaine Johnston 34:55
So how do we extend that grace to other people, whatever. They start thinking for themselves. And our beliefs and thoughts are different. How do how do we come up with people who think differently than we do?

Kyle Butler 35:10
And see that again. That’s a that’s another journey. Right? I’ve come to a place to understand that this is a journey, not only for me, but for everyone. So I need to respect course, and appreciate my journey. I appreciate where I am. And I appreciate how I’m getting here. But I also need to understand that you’re on a journey and Lane you’re on a journey, Cody, every single person is on their own journey. And I don’t believe that we were ever supposed to be all together at certain points of the journey will probably end up at the same destination to some extent, I’m sure. But we weren’t supposed to all be here. We’re all supposed to believe the Bible’s hundred percent true. And then we all got to get to here. We all supposed to believe that Jesus died for our sins. We all got to get here. I don’t believe we’re ever supposed to all be collectively on the same point in the journey at one time. So we have to Let people have their journey. And so over the years, I’ve learned how to do that in a way that keeps me at peace, but also presents the love that I want to share with people. I’ll say stuff like, Hey, this is true. I fully respect you. And I honor your opinion and your views. I just see them totally different. I’m not saying I’m right, and you’re wrong or, or anything. I’m just saying I see it differently. I want people to be okay where they are, because I can’t. Someone asked me the other day, they said, can you talk to this person because they believe you got to go to church. And my first initial response to them was one, one will only see what one will see when they’re ready. Then when one is ready to see, one will see a whole lot more than they were ready for. And in people and I don’t like to make like divisions amongst us, right. So I don’t want to say people that are more awake. Are people that are more awakened or people that know God better? I don’t like divisive titles and groups. But you know, I guess for lack of a better word, I’ll say for, for maybe for those of us who, at least in our conscious awareness, believe that we are more awake perhaps to to something. Well, let’s not Lord over people or try to Lord over people who we think are not there. Let’s extend to them the grace and the love that’s been extended to us by Father to walk out their journey. And if they see it one day, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s really great too, because I’m not responsible for what they need to see. And no one is responsible for what I need to see. So that’s how I try to go about it.

Cody Johnston 37:47
I love that and I think it just kind of plays to the whole thing of like, different people. I mean, you think about different bodies, different metabolisms, like totally like literal, biological, we all have certain dietary needs. We all have certain things. So person may be deficient in this, some person may, you know, have an excess of that. And you take that to the spiritual, there are people that probably need that rigid, you know, they may have come from a background where they need something a little more rigid, they need something a little more structured, versus someone like me who like crumbles under that and just folds in, like decays inward, you know, and like, sooner or later just pops. And so like there’s different walks or different journeys, but ultimately, all of those journeys inevitably, are under God’s control, right, like every person is receiving from God what they need specifically. Yeah, it’s kind of the whole thing of like, why would your, you know whenever you ask for a loaf of bread, why would you receive a snake right? That person is receiving from God what they might need. Now, they may have divisive, there may be other things influencing that, but ultimately, we’re never going to show that you’re never going to show someone anything. It’s just like politics, right? You can get online and you can argue politics till you have no breath left. Your lungs, or no fingertips left on your fingers, I guess, and you’re never gonna change anyone’s mind. You’re never going like, you know, your where your hands down to nubs. And it’s not going to do a thing. And it’s the same thing with religion, the best thing you can do is just say, hey, let me try to understand your perspective. So we can come together on the common ground, the middle ground, which is Christ, in my, in my opinion is Christ. Yeah. So let me ask you this, as we kind of like wrap it all together here, which we’re gonna have to kick this conversation back up again, just saying like, because I already already have a million other things, but for sake of time, I have one more question, then I want to let you ask a question. So how I guess what’s a quick way we can take or not quick there, nothing about this is quick, but what’s a quick explanation for how we can take we talked about how to apply thinking to the word how do we apply thinking to prayer because that’s something you and I are about to really start focusing on here for the next few weeks is prayer.

Kyle Butler 39:58
Yeah. be totally open. What are we like to be totally honest right now, not to say I haven’t been honest before, but

Unknown Speaker 40:08
be honest with you right now.

Kyle Butler 40:11
I really, sincerely and passionately, and, you know, humbling belief that we really need to take a look at what we were saying, in the body of Christ certain church, right, for example, will say, Well, if you pray and you believe in the name of Jesus, it’s going to happen. Well, it doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t happen a lot. And I don’t know why we’re too afraid to say, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve done it. You’ve done I’ve done it countless times. I’ve done it so many times where I’ve probably lost count. And every time it doesn’t happen, then you start fishing within your logic of where you did something wrong. You didn’t have enough faith. You didn’t believe it wasn’t God’s will. It wasn’t his timing. Well, what timing does love really mean to make something happen for someone who loves says they will take care of my Cody I’m sure if if the link said, Honey, I need to come help me with this, you’re not going to say I’m get your faith. Right. And when you read it without fail you’re fast enough to believe outcome over there to help you. I will. Yeah, you do that, you know enough times, Cody and you’re forced. Yeah, it’s gonna happen, you know. And we need to divorce ourselves from the rhetoric that we’ve heard. You know, prayer changes things. It doesn’t just believe it’ll happen. It won’t. So, to me, the reason why I’m saying it this way is until we really until we’re really ready to acknowledge that the way we’ve done it doesn’t work. We won’t be willing to take a look at it to find out what does work.

Cody Johnston 41:57
Oh, whoa, okay, we’ve got to stop for a second. We just got off into a whole other section with this conversation on prayer and it was absolutely gold. But we’re going to have to make you wait a few weeks to hear it. This entire next few weeks, Elaine and I are going to be talking about prayer, what prayer is, how to do it, and what it looks like for each individual person. And honestly, we went on for a whole other 40 to 50 minutes chatting about prayer. So that’s going to be tacked on at the end. So you got to wait for three more episodes. So be sure to click that subscribe button now. If you haven’t done so already. So you can hear part two of our conversation with Kyle. We didn’t we kind of since we had to cut this he didn’t get to say all his social links and everything. So those are all in the show notes. Be sure to go down there. Find Kyle give him a follow. He’s completely one of the most inspirational people on social media and he will definitely get you thinking so if you believe thinking is good, he is a guy I cannot recommend enough to go and follow so Head down there, give us a follow find him. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it along with a friend and tag us so we can give you a shout out. And as always, just another quick reminder to go down there and join nomads. Kyle, thank you so much for part one of this and we’ll save all of the official outro stuff for part two. So, we’ll catch you then. And as always be brave, be bold and be reckless.

Elaine Johnston 43:24
We’ll talk soon