Sonship is Driven by the Questions [Blog]
Friends and Allies,
I just released my interview with author John Eldredge. I'm not bragging, but I think it's pretty good for a newbie. Only God could have arranged this interview, so I take it as another encouragement we’re on the right path. (Our full post with show notes on that interview is HERE.)
Whatever you might be inclined to think, I assure you, if God hadn’t been on my case to start this conversation for the last several years, I wouldn’t be wading into all the noise of the podcasting world. It used to be there was a healthy cultural pressure to keep your stupid opinions to yourself. Today stupid opinions are celebrated and protected.
Click to listen to this latest podcast interview with John Eldredge.
I don’t want the attention.
I don’t want to deal with learning something new, the criticism, the attention to detail required, the vulnerability or the pressure to tiptoe through the most important topics humanity faces as if through a minefield carrying a large piece of furniture. But the fact is that God does. He wants to deal with all of that. And He wants to do it using Being Sons.
“OK, Papa. Where you go, I go.”
Like you, my life is busy. Too busy. And I am skeptical of people who appear to have all the answers. I surely don't. But I do have questions, and I am finding that questions are serving me far better than the answers I used to pursue. “Answers before questions do harm to the soul” said wise guy Henry Nouwen.
Over the last 2 decades it’s been questions, not answers, that have motivated me like warm cookies on the top shelf into tasting and discovering God’s goodness. Questions have served me like a torch in utter blackness and like secret doorways into rooms I thought I had no access to. It’s new questions that make rabbis dance, exultant for another adventure to discover some new playful, powerful, intimate facet of the great I AM.
It’s fascinating to me how God expresses His heart using both ends of an adventure: A man unconstrained by fear will throw caution to the wind and pay a high cost for the chance of finding a great treasure. And at the other end lies the treasure, waiting, hoping to be found like a woman longing for a lover to discover her beauty. God rejoices in being both the seeker and hider, like children in a game of hide and seek. Maybe that’s why He declares His favor so often in scripture for men with a child-like heart. (MT 11:25, 18:2-4) He wants someone not too busy to play.
For years Being Sons has been crafting experiences for men, but we’ve done so solely in the hope it inspires a man to ask questions and start a needed conversation with God. It’s this ongoing, courageous and brutally honest conversation with the Eternal Soul that is required to unearth the Truth that Jesus promises will set a man free. That’s been my story and the story of scores of men around me.
“Answers before questions do harm to the soul.”
WHY A PODCAST?
We weren't invited to be Christians. We are invited home to live as sons - sons who know who we are because we know who our Father is. And who our Brother is.
Oh, how this invitation has been lost. Stolen. Misunderstood. If only men had a place to hear the invitation more clearly, hear the stories and understand the extravagant offer God is extending, men would be selling everything and sprinting to take hold of it.
While the Kingdom of God is on the move and as strong as ever, the world is in peril. The heart, soul and masculine image of God in humanity is under heavy assault, from all directions. Despite this, there are very few (if any) conversations about this offer into sonship in the podcasting world. In other words, the fields are ripe.
The Kingdom mission of Being Sons is to guide men back home. We offer experiences, or “trailheads” to get men back onto the ancient path leading home, and fellowship with like-hearted men going in the same direction. Friends, it's working. And God's next assignment for us is to share His invitation with a broader audience through the widely popular podcasting format.
TRIBES required
While the world has changed, the way to change the world has not. A man takes a burning stick out of the fire that warms him and walks over to another man in need of a flame. It’s how we love one another and share our humanity. In the podcasting world, fire is carried by a tribe to the masses using keys and swipes. It's still all grassroots, and fire spreads best where the land is most parched. Our culture shares a dry heart with the Psalmist, though it knows not what it is thirsty for, or on Whom it should call…
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
(King David, Psalm 63:1)
And that's why we need a tribe.
We have released 5 podcasts to date. Our goal is to ask and discuss a new question about the offer of sonship each month in 2020, as a start. We are being kind to our souls by not moving too fast. “"Slow is steady, steady is smooth, smooth is fast” say the NAVY Seals. They got that from God’s playbook. We are giving ourselves permission to make mistakes. To be students. To be sons.
My co-host is also my good friend Rich Pantusa from Colorado Springs. He’s a man full of questions and stories we’re eager to share. We’ve had the privilege of serving on mission together in other arenas. He was recently on mission for the heart of his 12 year old daughter, driving down to the Texas Hill Country to attend our most recent First Bloom. With regard to sharing our fires, we’re both “Boots and all” men as they say in Australia.
Me and good friend/co-host Rich Pantusa on a backcountry trip in the Rockies years ago.
We ask you to listen on iTunes and leave a rating and review (Holy smokes this matters to help our podcast surface in the dead sea of worthless podcast conversations)
Or listen on Spotify (They don’t collect reviews but the size of audience brings shows to the surface)
And email us with your questions. What questions do you have about this offer of sonship?
We ask you to pass this along to a friend.
I hope you’ll give it a listen. I pray you’ll be patient as Rich and I wrestle and trust God to father us in this arena. We ask you to pray for us, that we will learn quickly and prefer God’s anointing over talent and polish.
In all the noise and cynicism we are baptized in daily against our will, we pray through these conversations you and many others will be permitted to celebrate the offer of sonship… the impossible possible, like a flower reaching heavenward through a small crack in concrete.
I wonder what God could do through a tribe of curious men who will start new fires and share their discoveries with men whose fires have gone out?
I’d like to know the answer to that question.
As Sons,
Jay