May 28, 2025 • 55 mins
SUMMARY
Living in awe of the mystery of God and His ways is meant to be part of our normal daily life. Teaching us to enter into that mystery, with Him, is God's delight, and the way He makes provision for our every need. But our world, it's pace, technology, and near-instant access to information is proving to be a barrier to the intimacy with God we need to live. Through this conversation with John Eldredge, author of the new book "Experience Jesus. Really." you will see more clearly the assault against our intimacy with God, it's evil effects on the soul, and the rich provision He has for us if we will learn from our forebears how to once again live as "Ordinary Mystics". God's love, refuge, counsel, comfort, healing and deliverance are lavishly available to everyone who enters His presence in what He calls "the secret place".
CHAPTERS
00:00 – The Purpose of the Conversation
01:08 – Introducing John Eldredge and His New Book
03:06 – The Need for Intimacy with God
06:05 The Impact of Modern Life on Spirituality
11:46 Understanding the Problem of Spiritual Intimacy
17:46 The Role of Ordinary Mystics in Spiritual Life
26:57 The Ordinary Mystic Experience
34:36 Exploring the Secret Place
40:30 Practicing the Presence of God
51:10 Provision in Times of Crisis
For more on John Eldredge and Wild at Heart: click here
To order his books, click here
Being Sons helps men live in union with God as Father and sons.
Learn more: https://www.beingsons.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
This is for our consolation.
It's for our healing.
It's for our strength.
And I believe God is making more of himself and more of his kingdom available to hispeople because we need it in this hour.
(00:24):
We need it.
So it's not just like, wow, that'd be really cool.
No, no, we're not doing this for curiosity.
We are doing this for rescue.
Sons, hey, welcome back to the Being Sons podcast.
(00:44):
I'm Jay Heck and today I'm privileged and excited to have a conversation with a man whohas been used by God to father and bless me in immeasurable ways.
And I know that many of you are familiar with this Father in the Faith and that you'regoing to be blessed as you have been blessed by him in the past.
(01:05):
He is the author of a new book that we're going to discuss.
that I have read, my son has read, my wife has read, and I've got a copy on my daughter'sbedside table to give to her when she's coming home.
Experience Jesus, really.
It is disruptive in the best kind of way, and I want to have a conversation that we get toinvite you into as sons.
(01:32):
Because I think that this conversation about experiencing Jesus and some of the things andsome of the ways that he expresses things is going to help us grow tremendously in our
relationship as sons of God, teach us how to be sons of God and how to become sons of God.
And I know many of you know who this special guest is.
So of course, John Eldredge.
(01:53):
John, thank you for coming back and joining this ongoing discussion about being sons.
It's such a privilege to have you here.
Thanks Jay, it's good to be back.
Thank you.
Thank you.
um Congratulations on your new book.
This is number 18, correct?
I think that's right.
Looking in the front, I count 17 books and then the front cover here.
(02:16):
Well done.
Well done.
I have a desire to write one book inside me, but the hurdle just feels so big to do it.
And here you are cranking out 18 of them.
And every one of them has had a great purpose.
Every one of them has been a blessing.
Every one of them has been unique.
It's not just a repeat over and over again.
And this particular book, I think...
(02:37):
my wife and I have discussed it, it feels like it's just so appropriately timed.
And that's not new for you.
Your books seem to come into our hands under our roof at exactly the time that they'reneeded for us.
uh this one has helped us move forward in the discussion that we've been having in ourhousehold about regaining intimacy with God in light of
(03:06):
a very modern, fast-paced world with lot of distractions.
John, how many interviews have you had at this point?
Because the book launched March 4th.
Do you really want to know?
You are my ah I think you're my 80th.
(03:29):
It's been a wild ride.
It's been a beautiful look into Christendom.
Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and talking to really good people.
ah I've enjoyed immensely, just like we were doing the pre interview uh talk.
It's been a fascinating, fascinating look into.
(03:53):
the world outside my world.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I don't I don't normally do that.
I don't normally do interviews.
I don't normally do 80.
Yeah, it's been beautiful.
It's been fascinating.
So is this the most interviews that you've done?
Why do you think that is?
(04:13):
Well, I want it out.
I want this.
I wrote this book out of deep compassion and empathy for the human soul and for the heartsand souls of God's dear ones who are not.
They just haven't been tutored in the practices that whereby they will really draw uponall the lovely things of God.
(04:43):
It's just I mean,
taught most of us.
didn't.
This wasn't kind of what our church was doing or it wasn't.
We didn't have anybody to kind of walk us through it.
So because my heart and soul is just so in this for people, I'm like, yeah, sign me up.
I'll do 80.
Like, get me out there.
(05:05):
Let's talk about it.
Let's go help a bunch of people.
Has this required ah some intervention on God's part to give you the strength to do thismany?
I get worn out when I talk too much and I can't even imagine repeating the same answers tomany questions over and over again.
(05:26):
Yeah, of course.
Of course it does.
ah
God will use different circumstances in our lives.
unfortunately, it usually is demanding times or the crisis or the loss um to to teach usto draw upon him.
(05:51):
And the vine and branch relationship as branches, we kind of tend to like float aroundover here and try and get stuff done until we can't.
And then we come back.
I don't want live like that.
So, yeah, of course it has been.
It's been a it's it's it's fascinating, Jay, because when you're talking to someone m andagain, this, you know, we're going to we're going to talk about the neuroscience because
(06:21):
um everyone now is a disciple of the Internet and they're very left brain.
And if you don't talk about the latest research, they don't believe you.
um
Being with someone eye eye, interacting, you calibrate to them.
And everyone knows this intuitively.
(06:43):
It's like, my gosh, being with your mother is so exhausting.
Or being with your mom is so refreshing.
She's just like such a peaceful person.
You calibrate to whoever's in the room, which is why most of us go home from a party or asmall group pretty tired because of all the different people.
Right.
Like this guy is here and this gal is here and they're really anxious, but he's reallypeaceful and you're calibrating all that.
(07:11):
Well, imagine doing that over 80 interviews.
It's just been wild to because I want to meet them where they're at and I need to use alanguage that fits their audience.
So, yeah, it's it's it's been what I want to call it is
(07:31):
beautifully demanding, beautifully demanding because then I need God.
Mm hmm.
Mm Yeah.
And it's not a shtick.
I don't just roll out the shtick.
yeah.
No, I appreciate.
I did other day with a guy who had a shtick and it was so it was so unenjoyable, know,because he just had his his pat thing, know.
(07:59):
Yeah, nobody wants to listen to that.
You're right.
You're right.
There's some podcasts that you can just turn off with no sweat and about 30 seconds andjust go, this is such a waste of my time.
where they're headed exactly what they're going to say and you're like, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Well, I've got some questions that, uh you know, as I'm reading the book, the whole timeI'm thinking, what would I want to ask John, you know, for clarity?
(08:30):
Because when I am reading this, I'm bumping up against my own personal experience.
And then when I'm practicing what you're inviting me to practice, you know, I close thebook, I go through the prayers, I practice, and then I bump into things.
And as I am
in circles with other men, which I do around uh campfires regularly for a long time.
(08:54):
And so a lot of these practices have been practices that we have been practicing for along time.
Your book is an invitation in some deeper realms of it, which I deeply appreciate.
uh So, you know, as we go through this, uh I want to be open about what I experience andwhat the other men experience.
(09:17):
uh and maybe get some insight that you're unable to give in 278 pages of the book.
But first, of course, we need to just get the basics.
You say that this has been an act of love and compassion to people.
So every one of your books is addressing a problem and then it's addressing, it's offeringa solution.
(09:43):
So just share with us from your heart, what is the problem?
that you are addressing and what do you feel is the solution that God's offering?
Yeah, so we were just talking about the Vine Branch relationship, which is one of themetaphors that the scripture uses.
But it's a metaphor that's not just meant to remain sort of poetic, like, what a lovelyimage.
(10:08):
It's it's describing an ontological existential reality.
We we are meant to be so integrated.
Into God.
And particularly, Jesus was saying, he's divine.
You so we are meant to be so integrated in a shared life, a shared union with Christ thatwe have everything we need.
(10:35):
We can be gracious to that guy that just cut us off in traffic.
We can also be patient with our 16 year old daughter.
We can rise to the new challenge at work like all of it, like all.
All of the resources we need in our day to day are available through that union.
uh The big idea, the heartbreak, the crisis that I wanted to alert people to is yourparticular moment, our moment, the shared cultural moment has conditioned your soul
(11:08):
against that union.
Like this isn't just, we'll have a longer quiet time.
Spend a little bit more time reading.
It's like, no, you dear, dear souls, um you haven't done something wrong.
Something wrong has been done to you.
And and it's it's it's a combination of a perfect storm, the pace of life, the amount ofmedia.
(11:34):
Everybody's been talking about that.
Our our constant use of the Internet looking stuff up all day, every day.
There's just a collective effect on the human soul that makes finding God and enjoying himmore difficult than ever.
(11:58):
And I think a lot of people just felt guilty of like, well, I guess I just don't hear God.
I guess I don't.
I don't experience him.
You know, like I read St.
John the Cross or something and I go, no, I don't get that.
ah That's not your fault.
You're not.
spiritually immature, blowing it.
(12:19):
Your soul has been conditioned against intimacy with God.
And I think if we can just out that, let's daylight that, let's expose that.
First off, we can get a lot of the guilt off and go, Oh, it's not just me.
I just thought it was me.
You go, no, no, no, it's not just you.
(12:42):
And how could we heal that?
How could we recover that?
here's a lovely, fascinating story.
So there was a woman named Evelyn Underhill, British gal, previous century, early 1800s.
And she was intrigued by the lives of the Christian mystics.
(13:07):
know, Augustine Athanasius, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, those folks.
And she was intrigued by this deep, deep life they had in God.
They would hear from him.
They get visits.
They have visions that, know, not like the super wild, wacky stuff, but just like thisrich, rich intimacy.
(13:28):
Brother Lawrence, you know, the Carmelite fryer in the kitchen, experiencing the presenceof God while he's doing the dishes.
So she did a lot of research on this, and it was fascinating what she came out with.
She came back from her research.
to say two things.
One, this is much more widely practiced than you've been led to believe.
(13:52):
You thought it was just like the famous saints.
And she's like, no, you read the biography of God's people down through the ages.
Like this is everywhere.
This rich life in Jesus.
And then the second observation and the reason she wrote was to say,
Everyone has the capacity for this, that you already have the faculties to experience andenjoy God and his kingdom deeply.
(14:25):
This isn't for the few.
I love that.
I believe her.
I think that's absolutely true.
In our moment, those faculties have been damaged.
So let's fix them.
but let's heal those faculties and show folks the way back in.
(14:50):
I can testify to that.
My wife and I are on a 30-day media fast somewhere in the middle of it.
I don't even care to know when it's supposed to end because I'm enjoying it a lot.
uh
The reason we did it, you highlight in the book, is because really it accelerated in 2020when we spent so much time on our screens.
(15:19):
But I'm 53 and I'm looking ahead going, you know what, the years ahead should be the oneswhere I'm growing in intimacy and in my relationships with people.
They should be getting richer.
I should be having more patience with people.
I should be having uh deeper, easier prayer.
(15:44):
I should actually be enjoying slowing down in this portion of my life.
I should be feeling wiser.
I should be able to read books more.
And as I consume books, it should integrate into the other knowledge, you know, that...
(16:05):
I've been gathering for years and I felt, no way, I'm feeling stupider, more distracted,more fearful about the future.
And another thing that I am aware of is that when truth comes to me from scripture,
(16:28):
I'm skeptical about it.
I can read a passage that maybe many years ago I would have just taken at face value, butnow if I go onto the internet and I say, can you help me understand what this means?
There will be multiple translations of it, people who vehemently disagree with it.
I'll listen for years to Tim Mackey, right, or the Bible Project, and I'll think, is the,this is, God, thank you.
(16:56):
Thank you, thank you.
I'm going to go on a run so I can listen to Tim and John talk about something that feelslike it sets my soul free in some ways or answers questions I've had.
And then I will read other people on the internet.
You look up Tim Mackey and somebody will say he's a heretic, the Bible project is no good,and then they will defend that position.
(17:18):
And so there's these heroes that I have placed in my heart.
RC Sproul, and T.
Wright, uh many of the men that I actually sat under, that I worked under, have now beenouted.
They're literally being prosecuted for things.
(17:40):
particular guys by the way we need to let people know not those particular too
No, no, not those particular two.
Exactly.
Right.
So, so yes, there are people who, you know, are being accused of things on the internetwith no proof.
And then there are people that I've actually had in my life who are plastered all over theinternet.
Yeah.
(18:00):
That um their lives were not as they appeared, you know.
And so there is a skepticism that is uh it's just so damaging to the soul.
that even though you're gaining information, you're going to look for information, youhave this presupposition or this, you're predisposed to not even believe the information
(18:26):
that you're getting.
And it's very wearisome.
Very wearisome.
So that's one of the reasons we wanted to MediaFast is just how is this going to affectour soul?
And I'd say we're probably about two weeks in and within about three or four days of goingto bed with a book,
instead of the internet, totally cutting out YouTube, which has been my primary source ofinformation and entertainment.
(18:54):
I began feeling the fog lift and I was able to read more than 10 pages at a time.
uh this idea, this problem, I'm so deeply uh familiar with it myself.
So I can testify that what you're saying is absolutely true.
Yeah, yeah.
(19:15):
And again, folks, you didn't do something wrong.
It's had an effect on you.
This is just normal life, right?
You have a human being.
You got a smartphone in your hand and and you're looking stuff up and taking in the news.
And the thing is, Jay, like what you just described about the larger scandals causingsuspicion, it's not only that it's every single day you get on the Internet.
(19:44):
And the news has changed.
And you're like, wait, thought so and so.
Wait, no, that's not true anymore.
It's the constant overturning of facts.
OK, I hurt my lower back last year, two years ago, and I was looking for the rightexercises for it.
So I got on.
I found this one, you know, physical therapist.
He's got a YouTube channel.
I'm like, far out.
(20:04):
I like this guy.
I like his thing.
Kind of thing.
I get on.
Well, now YouTube knows my algorithms.
So they start serving me up, other people doing their back exercise thing.
We're talking about back exercises, but it was as if it was heresy.
Right?
Because then you get the new expert who comes along and goes, wait, what?
Don't do that.
You're actually damaging your back.
(20:26):
People who have tried to lose weight know this.
That the constant new weight program, right?
And then and then everybody attacks it because it's like, no, no, no, that doesn't work orthat actually is.
teaching your body to hold on to weight.
This is our world.
This is our daily.
(20:46):
It's made everybody cynical and suspicious.
guess what, folks?
Your capacity to trust and believe is precious and essential.
To love to life, to and to life in God.
(21:08):
And so.
That's one of the ways Jace just described personally.
That's one of the ways we have been conditioned.
Right.
uh Against the very thing we need, which is the vine branch, intimacy and union.
(21:28):
You use the term ordinary mystics and uh I wish you had named the book that.
I know that was contested, you know, because I'm probably not the audience that you'retrying to gain.
You've already got me, right?
So I'm going to read whatever you put out there and you're going and you're reaching forpeople who uh really need this message but are...
(21:57):
are, I guess, a little bit fearful of a topic like that.
But you use the term ordinary mystic throughout it, and you do a wonderful job ofdescribing what it truly is and removing some of the fear about it.
So would you share what an ordinary mystic is and...
(22:19):
the invitation for all of us to become them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I chose that phrase very deliberately ordinary because as Evelyn Underhill was tryingto persuade everyone, this isn't just a rare few.
ah This this life of experiencing the unseen realm, experiencing the presence of God, youdon't see him like you see your car, you know, but he's there experiencing.
(22:51):
all of the resources of the kingdom.
I know John seven when it says rivers of living water are going to flow from your inmostbeing ordinary because it's for everyone and it's meant to just be normal daily mystics.
I had to I had to use this because again our conditioned moment even the way you and I areprocessing right now is very left brain.
(23:18):
We have an
overdeveloped left brain approach to everything.
Everything.
my gosh.
But particularly the spiritual life.
this is this, know, again, we're grandchildren of the Enlightenment.
We're disciples of the Internet.
It's just your moment.
You know, this is just what people do.
(23:38):
You've been conditioned to have a very left brain approach.
But God gave you two hemispheres of the brain, literally half of you.
is right brain.
Half of you is intuitive and relational.
It's all about connection.
The left brain does not does not uh the right brain rather is not impressed with facts.
(24:02):
It's not impressed with critical reasoning.
It's intuitive and instinctive and in some ways more like childlike.
Yeah, it in its desire for wonder joy tends to be more right brain.
I who doesn't want more joy for him?
but we're very, very left-brained.
So mystics as an invitation out of this highly uh content-driven, suspicious,
(24:33):
cautious approach to life with God.
So like just like you were describing, you were giving a personal testimony.
Now, when I read the scriptures, there's part of it, it's like, yeah, maybe, you knowthat.
OK, we've been conditioned to it.
It's just happened.
So we're exposing that now.
I think some people are relating to that as as we're talking about it.
(24:58):
ah Because all the good stuff in life, like
When you go on vacation and you're enjoying the beach or you're enjoying a bike ride oryou're out on the water, you know, kind of thing, you're not also evaluating it.
Your right brain's just loving it.
(25:20):
Your heart, I think the right brain is more connected to the heart, expresses the heart.
Your heart's loving it and it doesn't need to dissect it.
in order to enjoy it.
Most people still find joy in their relationships.
That's very right brain.
So mystics to pull us out.
Mystics because.
(25:40):
OK, so like you, for example, Psalm 63.
ah For years I would read the Psalms and I would go.
That that's lovely.
I like the language.
I like the cadence of it.
And I believe you, David and the other writers of the songs.
(26:04):
I believe you.
I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you.
know, honestly, that would be my experience.
You read Psalm 63 and David says, I've seen you, God, I've seen you.
I've beheld you in your sanctuary.
I've seen God, your beauty.
Wow.
Your glory.
(26:24):
Your love is better than anything else in my life.
and you satisfy and nourish me more than than any like banquet I could go to.
David is not trying to be poetic.
He's trying to report an actual experience of God.
(26:46):
OK, he's not making stuff up.
He he's doing his best to come back to you with, hey, guess what?
God is so nourishing.
God is so wonderful.
His presence and his love.
Wow.
There's nothing that compares.
So I would read that and I would go, I completely believe you, but that's not my personalexperience.
(27:14):
And ordinary mystics, because it's meant to be.
That's actually meant to be our daily.
And I can delightfully say now it is my daily.
Is my daily.
know that I know that life to be utterly true.
And I'm not boasting.
I'm just saying folks, this is accessible from a guy who didn't access it, access it fordecades.
(27:42):
It is.
so mystics, because there's this whole tradition in the Christian faith of men and womenlike David and the Psalms, like John, the beloved Paul.
I mean, Paul did not become a Christian because somebody showed him the latest research.
He became a follower of Jesus because he met him.
(28:04):
Personal encounter with Jesus.
Okay.
And that formed his life.
He became a mystic.
He's like, my gosh, everything's available.
Wow.
Everything I studied in the Old Testament is suddenly like living, you know, it's now.
HD in front of me.
It's uh so the mystic life is opening up the right brain.
(28:29):
It's opening up the heart.
It's opening.
It's healing our faculties, by the way, it's back to we got to heal the harm that's beendone to our capacity to get to Psalm 63.
And you can you can.
uh And John, that's one of the things uh that comforts me about you, just to get real withyou.
(28:58):
I've been under pastors, I work for pastors that are now humiliated and they're gone.
And you are actually one of the few spiritual fathers that I have that has not fallen.
You know?
And doesn't that suck?
Can we just all say that's horrible?
(29:22):
does.
you know, that compels me to pray for you and Stacey, for your protection.
um But what I see in you and what you're describing is that this intimacy that you havewith God, it...
(29:47):
It is a thing that they did not report to have.
And so I believe they were operating in their gifted soul and they were not connecting bythe Spirit with God and receiving that from them.
know, mean, that's as best as I can understand.
(30:09):
You know, and I'm comforted.
You know, I keep hearing God say, you can trust that John...
will not ah disappoint uh you.
He will not be another fallen father because he does have a relationship with me.
And you can read that in his books.
He's laying his heart out there.
(30:30):
So I just want you to know that I appreciate that about you, John, and it makes yousomebody that uh men do want to follow.
So sons out there, you are...
ah
Following um what I'm saying, I would just invite you to join me in continuing to pray forJohn and Stacey and for all of your spiritual leaders that uh God is using because we all
(31:01):
need it.
We all need it desperately.
um The ordinary mystic thing, I remember when um I was working in the field of mining, wetook some...
of the men that we work with that work for another company.
Just as a gift, we took them to a basketball game.
And my heart was always to befriend them, to love them, to treat them well, and to justinvite them to experience Jesus.
(31:30):
And so we're sitting watching the Spurs play basketball, and it was just an opportunitywhere they were open.
And I just said, well, so what is your relationship with God like?
And he said, I could never believe in God um because of the stories of Noah's Ark and theflood and all that stuff.
(31:56):
There's no way I could believe that.
And I remember just in my spirit being so disappointed and so shocked that they did nothave the capacity to have the childlike faith to believe in those stories.
My immediate reaction, which I held inside was,
Well, why would you even believe in a God who was not capable of doing those things?
(32:18):
Like, he would not be worth following, you know?
How could he come for you?
But it's made me appreciate that so many of the stories and scriptures that were given inthose Sunday schools, even though they may be simplistic and even though the teachers may
not really fully understand what they're saying, just the fact that those stories arebaked in as when we're young.
(32:43):
when we have the ability to believe those things.
ah I'm just so grateful because that was the first step to me now looking at theinvitation to become an ordinary mystic and saying, okay, this is the adult step deeper
and deeper into the mystery, into the miracle of the impossible that God intended for usto live in, be...
(33:10):
ah
as you call it, uh I'm sorry, is it a hybrid?
What do you call it?
Amphibian, yes, amphibian to live in both worlds.
The next question that I wanted to ask you was about the term secret place.
I've had some ideas for a long, long time.
I approached that term exactly as you did all of the Psalms, the secret place.
(33:34):
Well, clearly that's not for me.
But for those of you who are listening here, sons, I want to go ahead and just read youone example of the many places in Scripture that refer to what God calls the secret place.
Psalm 91, 1 and 2, John unpacks this a lot and uses it a lot in the book.
So here it is.
(34:06):
my God in Him I will trust." I've had some ideas, John, about what the secret place is fora long time, most of the time feeling that I was unqualified to step into the secret
place.
But I wanted to ask you about it because the Scripture has so much to say about what isgiven and what is received and what is exchanged in the secret place.
(34:33):
So will you talk about that?
Yeah.
Yes.
So let's work our way into it in language and experience that I think people canappreciate and track with.
So um Brother Lawrence, the beautiful Carmelite friar worked in the kitchen of the friaryin Paris.
(34:56):
He was actually wounded in combat.
He didn't become a Carmelite until he went through the trauma of war.
And he
He wrote a famous book called Practicing the Presence of God.
I like that title practicing it right.
It's something to be learned.
It's something to be cultivated, just like riding a bike or learning to surf, you know.
(35:19):
And what he would describe.
uh So would Teresa of Avila, so would David, so would so many at John the Beloved, someonewould describe what I first wanted to.
How do we get to the deep end of the pool, the secret place?
Well, you start with communion, communion, practicing the presence of God.
(35:43):
You practice his presence with you.
You practice his presence within you.
And this is one of the big new ideas for most people is that as you're praying, as you'reloving Jesus, you're actually connecting with Jesus who dwells in the center of your
being.
um
(36:04):
Primarily looking for a sense of, God's filling the room right now, because he's alreadyinside of you.
So in Ephesians three, this is what Paul prays.
He prays with his inner communion.
He says, I pray that God would strengthen you in your inmost being by his presence therethrough the Holy Spirit.
(36:27):
And and through that inner communion, we learn the Vine branch relationship.
We learn, wow, we have a shared life.
I have a shared life with God.
He's he's right here within me uh now because you are trained to be impatient and you'retrained to be distracted.
(36:49):
It's something that you have to learn how to do again.
But tuning in to.
the presence of God.
fact, let me read a big pile of books on my floor.
I'm going read from Madame Guaillot, Jean Guaillot, Guillaume Jean Guaillot.
She was a French Catholic, beautiful, mystic, 1700s.
(37:13):
And she says this, Your spirit instructs your soul that since God is more present deepwithin you.
He can't really be found anywhere else.
Henceforth, he must be sought within.
So this is all the saints and the mystics down through the ages to say, yep, yep, yep,you're moving into the inner communion with Christ and he must be enjoyed there.
(37:41):
Therefore, from the very beginning, you find great joy in knowing that your Lord is withinyou and that you can find him and enjoy him in your inmost being.
Okay, so that's very biblical.
That's Ephesians three.
That's revelations three.
That's, know, okay.
But learning the practice of it is tuning back in.
(38:02):
I'm tuning into the presence of God with me, but primarily within me through loving himbecause the left brain process is the thing like people go.
I have a quiet time going in and and in quiet time is mostly content.
It's left brain.
You're studying the Hebrew.
(38:23):
or you're listening to a good teaching, you know, very left brain.
This is very, very heart centered.
You are locating the presence of Jesus within you and communing with him.
Now, your inmost being is where Christ dwells.
It's the new holy of holies.
You are the temple of God.
It makes that very clear, right?
(38:46):
And when John, in the Gospel of John, he says of Jesus, he dwelt among us.
The word is tabernacled.
He tabernacled among us.
So you're like, holy cow, the tabernacles back because the presence of a living God ishere.
now you are.
Paul makes that very clear.
(39:07):
You are.
We are the temples of God.
Well, the holy of holies is your heart because that's where Christ now dwells.
So we're little temples of God working and playing and riding bikes around in this world.
And in the center of that temple,
And the Holy of Holies is our heart and Christ dwells there.
(39:27):
Okay.
We track them with this.
Yeah.
Well, the same holds true of God.
His in most being is the inner sanctuary of his life.
And that's the secret place.
And as we learn to commune with him, he invites us to know his.
(39:52):
and to even take refuge in him.
And again, this isn't poetry.
I'm talking about an existential, ontological, experiential reality that the human soul isactually made for union with God.
You are completed when you come home to God and you can learn to move very deeply into hispresence and enjoy.
(40:23):
His heart and his heart is wonderful.
Ahem.
So there's a practice, um the life model, Jim Wilder, uh there's a practice that he hasbeen teaching called having a manual prayer, if you're familiar with that.
(40:48):
Just the language of it.
I'd never done it.
A manual prayer is uh inviting Jesus to be with you, but often it's just inviting Him,would you, Jesus, take me to a place?
It could be a place that you've been, it could be a memory, or it could be some place thatyou've never been before.
(41:09):
Take me to a place where I feel, and let's just say I'm feeling, let's just say I'm...
wanting Jesus to address my lack of joy, okay?
Or grief or something like that.
I'll say, Jesus, would you take me to a place where I felt joyful, where I felt fathered,where I felt fully myself, right?
(41:35):
And then just to let Jesus, sometimes you get a flurry of options and He'll say, where doyou want to go?
You know, sometimes one moment will become very, very prominent.
Other times you have options, but the thing is God can use any of them.
So just getting over the fear of getting it wrong is huge.
So, okay, I'm gonna go to this place.
(41:57):
And most of the time it's a place in my memory bank where I felt just truly, deeplydelighted in.
I just felt the joy, like you were talking about being at the beach.
You don't think left brain about it.
You're just on vacation.
You just enjoy it.
And so from that place to just allow myself, okay, be fully present, know, Jesus helped meto use all of my senses to be present in this place and then reveal yourself to me in this
(42:29):
place.
And then to be able to have a conversation with him in a place where you're feeling lovedand you're in his embrace, a place that he's chosen.
In many ways, it feels to me like Jesus lovingly bringing Peter back to the charcoal.
you know, the exact place that he denied him, bringing him back there and letting thecharcoal be a place where he received God's love again, you know, so that he's healed from
(42:59):
that.
And I've experienced that many times.
So, I've got a couple of questions about that.
Would you consider that the secret place?
Because I've never thought of it as going inside, okay?
But he does...
offer healing and consolation and love and reinterpretation of parts of my story?
(43:20):
um Or is that something different?
And then another question is, I've wrestled with whether or not He's actually inviting meinto the kingdom.
Am I in those moments when I'm with Him?
Am I actually in the kingdom?
Am I in Eden somewhere?
(43:41):
Am I in the coming kingdom?
So I would love to hear your thoughts.
On that.
Oh, I love this.
I wish we had four hours.
uh Okay.
So first off, the kingdom of God is a forest, not a front yard.
We like manicured lawns and, you know, cleanly edged sidewalks.
(44:07):
We like things very neat and orderly.
But if you've ever gotten in nature, folks,
A forest is a wildly organic place.
Everything's interconnected and underneath it all are these huge uh fungus networksthrough which the trees talk to each other.
(44:28):
It's crazy, but it's a wild place.
Okay.
If you ever gone snorkeling, it's wild and beautiful.
And there's stuff in that reef that is so enchanting.
You do feel like you just fell into a Pixar movie.
And there's stuff in that reef that wants to kill you.
OK, so the natural world was given to us to understand the unseen realm.
(44:54):
It's our preschool.
It's our tutoring.
And the first thing you learn about the natural realm is that it's a forest, not a frontyard.
It's not highly organized in the way our current left brain
likes to organize things and you drag the email into the file.
Yeah.
Okay.
Why do I say that?
(45:14):
Well, because um as soon as we begin to try and explain, I can explain those Kingdomexperiences, but I wanted to say the unseen realm is like putting a snorkel mask on and
going snorkeling.
It's that wild.
It's that beautiful.
It's that diverse and the dark side of the unseen realm is that deadly.
(45:37):
Okay.
So what is happening?
So Jim Wilder is actually using St.
Teresa's prayer of recollection and she has Teresa was trying to both Teresa and John thecross were friends and it was a time when they were trying to invite uh what we would call
highly religious people, people who want they're devoted.
(45:59):
They're trying to you know, but they were not experiencing Jesus.
uh
I like this conversation.
so she developed this thing called the prayer of recollection.
And it was find a beautiful memory or think of a gospel passage and the locating of thatkind of helps draw you into communion.
(46:20):
So let me say several things about Jim Wilder's approach.
First off, fabulous.
Far out.
Go for it, man.
That stuff will help you.
um The use of the imagination, for one thing, is helpful.
But it can lead people to think, well, this isn't really real.
Like, I'm not really with Jesus.
(46:42):
And we didn't really go back to high school.
uh He's just he's just somehow accessing a memory right now and kind of using it in mylife.
And I would say, nope, you're actually going there.
You are actually going there.
The unseen realm is wildly diverse and beautiful.
(47:05):
And Jesus lives outside of time, folks, so he can take you back into your story in a waywhere you're like, Holy smokes, man, I am feeling everything.
I'm seeing everything.
It sure feels real.
So he can heal things there.
I would say that most of that is taking place.
(47:25):
Okay, if it's a healing experience, most of it's taking place inside you.
It's taking place inside your soul.
He's accessing places inside you.
If it is a I don't know, you know, like people will say, I have my special place.
I go when I'm with Jesus, we're always at the beach or when I'm with Jesus, we're alwaysby a mountain like I would say those are probably visits to the kingdom of God.
(47:49):
You didn't know it, but he actually took you in the spirit into the kingdom of God.
And by the way, this is very, very biblical folks.
You know, this is the whole book of Revelation.
John says, I am, you know, on the Sabbath day, I was in the spirit.
And then he starts seeing the kingdom of God.
He sees the New Jerusalem.
He gets a tour of it.
(48:10):
They walk around.
They measure it.
know, Paul says, Yeah, I've been to the kingdom.
I've been to the city of God.
Well, so did Bernard of Clairvaux.
So did people down through the Christian tradition.
I know people who claim to have seen or been to or visited or however you want to describethat the kingdom of God.
(48:31):
ah
So those experiences, we go to a beach, we walk together, we're in a beautiful forest.
You're probably visiting the kingdom of God by the help of the Holy Spirit with Jesus.
Those, yeah, and that's the mystic life.
It's part of it and it's part of our and here.
(48:53):
me let me because this this can all sound like woo woo.
It's like, you know, Jay and John are doing mushrooms.
First off, this is very, very biblical.
It's very, because David, Psalm 63, no, I was in the sanctuary and I saw you.
Paul, you know, I know a man once who visited, you know, the kingdom, he went to heavenand he saw all kinds of things.
(49:16):
Yep, John.
So it's very, very biblical, first off.
But why are we even talking about this?
This is where I want to go for a moment.
Because again, you just don't know what your age is doing to you because it's just ournormal.
None of us lived any other time.
This is just what we know.
(49:37):
Your age is constantly unsettling.
The news changes every single day.
The new crisis, is it tariffs on, tariffs off?
Do I buy a car now?
Do I wait?
It's just all that stuff.
the practice of the presence of God.
(49:57):
First off, just the simple union and communion that that's everybody will tell you.
That's the good stuff.
This is for your this is for your care.
This is for your sustenance.
I would say this is for your rescue in an hour like this.
We're not just saying this is exactly why Jim Wilde is doing it, by the way.
(50:21):
OK, because he did it.
You know, he had a long career as a therapist and he's like, that's not enough.
You know, good understanding of your story is not enough.
We need the presence of God.
And then and I would add, and his kingdom, because, yeah, sometimes you're at the beachwith him.
Sometimes he's taking you to a memory.
This is for our consolation.
(50:45):
It's for our healing, it's for our strength.
And I believe, Jay, that
um I was just reading Tyler Staten's new book on the Holy Spirit.
This is exactly what he's talking about there.
Talking about the availability of the Holy Spirit through very ordinary encounters withGod.
(51:05):
Okay, so it's fascinating that he wrote that and I wrote this.
God is making more of himself and more of his kingdom available to his people because weneed it in this hour.
We need it.
So it's not just like, wow, that'd be really cool.
(51:26):
No, no, we're not doing this for curiosity.
We are doing this for rescue.
It feels common that people say no one has ever been in a time like this.
It's worse than it's ever been.
I believe some of those statements are true and some of them are just our way of copingwith the fact that we can't cope easily with where we are.
(51:56):
But I've heard you say that um every new season
God will always provide the necessary provision for it, right?
And so it's encouraging to me that no matter how bad any of this gets, AI, robots all overthe place, teaching us literally, reading our children books at nighttime because we don't
(52:28):
have time to do it anymore, that even in the midst of all that, if we go that far,
there will always be provision from God to escape it.
I am, uh it's scary, but I know that what you're offering here is right because my spiritis testifying to it because I'm, my heart is telling me.
(52:56):
and the spirit inside me has been telling me, you need more of me, you miss me.
And God's not saying it in an angry way.
It's this invitation.
I almost feel his broken heart because he sees my broken heart.
He's like, please, uh please listen to your spirit.
You need me and you're clinging to relief and other places.
(53:18):
I'm not angry about it.
I just, I want you, I want you back.
I want you back.
So, um John, think your words bear testimony.
They bear witness to what me and Heather and my son um and my daughter probably whodoesn't talk as much about stuff like this.
(53:41):
But um it's just, it feels very on time.
um and it's beautifully written.
um John, thank you for being so generous with your time.
on.
been wonderful conversation.
Obviously, we could have talked for four hours about so many of the other pieces ofcontent in your book, but uh Friends Sons highly recommend this book.
(54:07):
I think it needs to be absolutely on your bookshelf.
It'll be highlighted all over the place with...
I thank you for the little tiny short chapters that just made it so much more easy todigest.
It's a very easy read, but it's super well written and uh I love it.
John, thank you for em taking your post seriously, for manning your post and doing whatGod's called you to do and doing it with all of your heart.
(54:36):
I so appreciate it.
Hmm.
Yeah, thanks for this time.
I have seen him in the sanctuary.
His love is better than life.
He nourishes me more than any feast.
I want people to know that for themselves.
So thanks for helping me.
(54:58):
Let them know.
Thanks for helping us know.
Appreciate it, John.
Father, we bless John.
We bless all that you're doing in him and through him.
We thank you and we bless you, God, for the opportunity to be here with John and what youhave given to us through your servant, through your son, John.
We would you continue to encourage, to strengthen him for all of the duties that you havefor him.
(55:24):
And we ask this in Christ's name.
Amen.
Come
Bless you, John.
Thank you, sons, for joining John and I as we talk and walk for a mile learning how to beordinary mystics and sons of God at the same time.
All right, take care.
We'll talk to you next time.
This is for our consolation.
It's for our healing.
It's for our strength.
And I believe God is making more of himself and more of his kingdom available to hispeople because we need it in this hour.
(00:24):
We need it.
So it's not just like, wow, that'd be really cool.
No, no, we're not doing this for curiosity.
We are doing this for rescue.
Sons, hey, welcome back to the Being Sons podcast.
(00:44):
I'm Jay Heck and today I'm privileged and excited to have a conversation with a man whohas been used by God to father and bless me in immeasurable ways.
And I know that many of you are familiar with this Father in the Faith and that you'regoing to be blessed as you have been blessed by him in the past.
(01:05):
He is the author of a new book that we're going to discuss.
that I have read, my son has read, my wife has read, and I've got a copy on my daughter'sbedside table to give to her when she's coming home.
Experience Jesus, really.
It is disruptive in the best kind of way, and I want to have a conversation that we get toinvite you into as sons.
(01:32):
Because I think that this conversation about experiencing Jesus and some of the things andsome of the ways that he expresses things is going to help us grow tremendously in our
relationship as sons of God, teach us how to be sons of God and how to become sons of God.
And I know many of you know who this special guest is.
So of course, John Eldredge.
(01:53):
John, thank you for coming back and joining this ongoing discussion about being sons.
It's such a privilege to have you here.
Thanks Jay, it's good to be back.
Thank you.
Thank you.
um Congratulations on your new book.
This is number 18, correct?
I think that's right.
Looking in the front, I count 17 books and then the front cover here.
(02:16):
Well done.
Well done.
I have a desire to write one book inside me, but the hurdle just feels so big to do it.
And here you are cranking out 18 of them.
And every one of them has had a great purpose.
Every one of them has been a blessing.
Every one of them has been unique.
It's not just a repeat over and over again.
And this particular book, I think...
(02:37):
my wife and I have discussed it, it feels like it's just so appropriately timed.
And that's not new for you.
Your books seem to come into our hands under our roof at exactly the time that they'reneeded for us.
uh this one has helped us move forward in the discussion that we've been having in ourhousehold about regaining intimacy with God in light of
(03:06):
a very modern, fast-paced world with lot of distractions.
John, how many interviews have you had at this point?
Because the book launched March 4th.
Do you really want to know?
You are my ah I think you're my 80th.
(03:29):
It's been a wild ride.
It's been a beautiful look into Christendom.
Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and talking to really good people.
ah I've enjoyed immensely, just like we were doing the pre interview uh talk.
It's been a fascinating, fascinating look into.
(03:53):
the world outside my world.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I don't I don't normally do that.
I don't normally do interviews.
I don't normally do 80.
Yeah, it's been beautiful.
It's been fascinating.
So is this the most interviews that you've done?
Why do you think that is?
(04:13):
Well, I want it out.
I want this.
I wrote this book out of deep compassion and empathy for the human soul and for the heartsand souls of God's dear ones who are not.
They just haven't been tutored in the practices that whereby they will really draw uponall the lovely things of God.
(04:43):
It's just I mean,
taught most of us.
didn't.
This wasn't kind of what our church was doing or it wasn't.
We didn't have anybody to kind of walk us through it.
So because my heart and soul is just so in this for people, I'm like, yeah, sign me up.
I'll do 80.
Like, get me out there.
(05:05):
Let's talk about it.
Let's go help a bunch of people.
Has this required ah some intervention on God's part to give you the strength to do thismany?
I get worn out when I talk too much and I can't even imagine repeating the same answers tomany questions over and over again.
(05:26):
Yeah, of course.
Of course it does.
ah
God will use different circumstances in our lives.
unfortunately, it usually is demanding times or the crisis or the loss um to to teach usto draw upon him.
(05:51):
And the vine and branch relationship as branches, we kind of tend to like float aroundover here and try and get stuff done until we can't.
And then we come back.
I don't want live like that.
So, yeah, of course it has been.
It's been a it's it's it's fascinating, Jay, because when you're talking to someone m andagain, this, you know, we're going to we're going to talk about the neuroscience because
(06:21):
um everyone now is a disciple of the Internet and they're very left brain.
And if you don't talk about the latest research, they don't believe you.
um
Being with someone eye eye, interacting, you calibrate to them.
And everyone knows this intuitively.
(06:43):
It's like, my gosh, being with your mother is so exhausting.
Or being with your mom is so refreshing.
She's just like such a peaceful person.
You calibrate to whoever's in the room, which is why most of us go home from a party or asmall group pretty tired because of all the different people.
Right.
Like this guy is here and this gal is here and they're really anxious, but he's reallypeaceful and you're calibrating all that.
(07:11):
Well, imagine doing that over 80 interviews.
It's just been wild to because I want to meet them where they're at and I need to use alanguage that fits their audience.
So, yeah, it's it's it's been what I want to call it is
(07:31):
beautifully demanding, beautifully demanding because then I need God.
Mm hmm.
Mm Yeah.
And it's not a shtick.
I don't just roll out the shtick.
yeah.
No, I appreciate.
I did other day with a guy who had a shtick and it was so it was so unenjoyable, know,because he just had his his pat thing, know.
(07:59):
Yeah, nobody wants to listen to that.
You're right.
You're right.
There's some podcasts that you can just turn off with no sweat and about 30 seconds andjust go, this is such a waste of my time.
where they're headed exactly what they're going to say and you're like, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Well, I've got some questions that, uh you know, as I'm reading the book, the whole timeI'm thinking, what would I want to ask John, you know, for clarity?
(08:30):
Because when I am reading this, I'm bumping up against my own personal experience.
And then when I'm practicing what you're inviting me to practice, you know, I close thebook, I go through the prayers, I practice, and then I bump into things.
And as I am
in circles with other men, which I do around uh campfires regularly for a long time.
(08:54):
And so a lot of these practices have been practices that we have been practicing for along time.
Your book is an invitation in some deeper realms of it, which I deeply appreciate.
uh So, you know, as we go through this, uh I want to be open about what I experience andwhat the other men experience.
(09:17):
uh and maybe get some insight that you're unable to give in 278 pages of the book.
But first, of course, we need to just get the basics.
You say that this has been an act of love and compassion to people.
So every one of your books is addressing a problem and then it's addressing, it's offeringa solution.
(09:43):
So just share with us from your heart, what is the problem?
that you are addressing and what do you feel is the solution that God's offering?
Yeah, so we were just talking about the Vine Branch relationship, which is one of themetaphors that the scripture uses.
But it's a metaphor that's not just meant to remain sort of poetic, like, what a lovelyimage.
(10:08):
It's it's describing an ontological existential reality.
We we are meant to be so integrated.
Into God.
And particularly, Jesus was saying, he's divine.
You so we are meant to be so integrated in a shared life, a shared union with Christ thatwe have everything we need.
(10:35):
We can be gracious to that guy that just cut us off in traffic.
We can also be patient with our 16 year old daughter.
We can rise to the new challenge at work like all of it, like all.
All of the resources we need in our day to day are available through that union.
uh The big idea, the heartbreak, the crisis that I wanted to alert people to is yourparticular moment, our moment, the shared cultural moment has conditioned your soul
(11:08):
against that union.
Like this isn't just, we'll have a longer quiet time.
Spend a little bit more time reading.
It's like, no, you dear, dear souls, um you haven't done something wrong.
Something wrong has been done to you.
And and it's it's it's a combination of a perfect storm, the pace of life, the amount ofmedia.
(11:34):
Everybody's been talking about that.
Our our constant use of the Internet looking stuff up all day, every day.
There's just a collective effect on the human soul that makes finding God and enjoying himmore difficult than ever.
(11:58):
And I think a lot of people just felt guilty of like, well, I guess I just don't hear God.
I guess I don't.
I don't experience him.
You know, like I read St.
John the Cross or something and I go, no, I don't get that.
ah That's not your fault.
You're not.
spiritually immature, blowing it.
(12:19):
Your soul has been conditioned against intimacy with God.
And I think if we can just out that, let's daylight that, let's expose that.
First off, we can get a lot of the guilt off and go, Oh, it's not just me.
I just thought it was me.
You go, no, no, no, it's not just you.
(12:42):
And how could we heal that?
How could we recover that?
here's a lovely, fascinating story.
So there was a woman named Evelyn Underhill, British gal, previous century, early 1800s.
And she was intrigued by the lives of the Christian mystics.
(13:07):
know, Augustine Athanasius, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, those folks.
And she was intrigued by this deep, deep life they had in God.
They would hear from him.
They get visits.
They have visions that, know, not like the super wild, wacky stuff, but just like thisrich, rich intimacy.
(13:28):
Brother Lawrence, you know, the Carmelite fryer in the kitchen, experiencing the presenceof God while he's doing the dishes.
So she did a lot of research on this, and it was fascinating what she came out with.
She came back from her research.
to say two things.
One, this is much more widely practiced than you've been led to believe.
(13:52):
You thought it was just like the famous saints.
And she's like, no, you read the biography of God's people down through the ages.
Like this is everywhere.
This rich life in Jesus.
And then the second observation and the reason she wrote was to say,
Everyone has the capacity for this, that you already have the faculties to experience andenjoy God and his kingdom deeply.
(14:25):
This isn't for the few.
I love that.
I believe her.
I think that's absolutely true.
In our moment, those faculties have been damaged.
So let's fix them.
but let's heal those faculties and show folks the way back in.
(14:50):
I can testify to that.
My wife and I are on a 30-day media fast somewhere in the middle of it.
I don't even care to know when it's supposed to end because I'm enjoying it a lot.
uh
The reason we did it, you highlight in the book, is because really it accelerated in 2020when we spent so much time on our screens.
(15:19):
But I'm 53 and I'm looking ahead going, you know what, the years ahead should be the oneswhere I'm growing in intimacy and in my relationships with people.
They should be getting richer.
I should be having more patience with people.
I should be having uh deeper, easier prayer.
(15:44):
I should actually be enjoying slowing down in this portion of my life.
I should be feeling wiser.
I should be able to read books more.
And as I consume books, it should integrate into the other knowledge, you know, that...
(16:05):
I've been gathering for years and I felt, no way, I'm feeling stupider, more distracted,more fearful about the future.
And another thing that I am aware of is that when truth comes to me from scripture,
(16:28):
I'm skeptical about it.
I can read a passage that maybe many years ago I would have just taken at face value, butnow if I go onto the internet and I say, can you help me understand what this means?
There will be multiple translations of it, people who vehemently disagree with it.
I'll listen for years to Tim Mackey, right, or the Bible Project, and I'll think, is the,this is, God, thank you.
(16:56):
Thank you, thank you.
I'm going to go on a run so I can listen to Tim and John talk about something that feelslike it sets my soul free in some ways or answers questions I've had.
And then I will read other people on the internet.
You look up Tim Mackey and somebody will say he's a heretic, the Bible project is no good,and then they will defend that position.
(17:18):
And so there's these heroes that I have placed in my heart.
RC Sproul, and T.
Wright, uh many of the men that I actually sat under, that I worked under, have now beenouted.
They're literally being prosecuted for things.
(17:40):
particular guys by the way we need to let people know not those particular too
No, no, not those particular two.
Exactly.
Right.
So, so yes, there are people who, you know, are being accused of things on the internetwith no proof.
And then there are people that I've actually had in my life who are plastered all over theinternet.
Yeah.
(18:00):
That um their lives were not as they appeared, you know.
And so there is a skepticism that is uh it's just so damaging to the soul.
that even though you're gaining information, you're going to look for information, youhave this presupposition or this, you're predisposed to not even believe the information
(18:26):
that you're getting.
And it's very wearisome.
Very wearisome.
So that's one of the reasons we wanted to MediaFast is just how is this going to affectour soul?
And I'd say we're probably about two weeks in and within about three or four days of goingto bed with a book,
instead of the internet, totally cutting out YouTube, which has been my primary source ofinformation and entertainment.
(18:54):
I began feeling the fog lift and I was able to read more than 10 pages at a time.
uh this idea, this problem, I'm so deeply uh familiar with it myself.
So I can testify that what you're saying is absolutely true.
Yeah, yeah.
(19:15):
And again, folks, you didn't do something wrong.
It's had an effect on you.
This is just normal life, right?
You have a human being.
You got a smartphone in your hand and and you're looking stuff up and taking in the news.
And the thing is, Jay, like what you just described about the larger scandals causingsuspicion, it's not only that it's every single day you get on the Internet.
(19:44):
And the news has changed.
And you're like, wait, thought so and so.
Wait, no, that's not true anymore.
It's the constant overturning of facts.
OK, I hurt my lower back last year, two years ago, and I was looking for the rightexercises for it.
So I got on.
I found this one, you know, physical therapist.
He's got a YouTube channel.
I'm like, far out.
(20:04):
I like this guy.
I like his thing.
Kind of thing.
I get on.
Well, now YouTube knows my algorithms.
So they start serving me up, other people doing their back exercise thing.
We're talking about back exercises, but it was as if it was heresy.
Right?
Because then you get the new expert who comes along and goes, wait, what?
Don't do that.
You're actually damaging your back.
(20:26):
People who have tried to lose weight know this.
That the constant new weight program, right?
And then and then everybody attacks it because it's like, no, no, no, that doesn't work orthat actually is.
teaching your body to hold on to weight.
This is our world.
This is our daily.
(20:46):
It's made everybody cynical and suspicious.
guess what, folks?
Your capacity to trust and believe is precious and essential.
To love to life, to and to life in God.
(21:08):
And so.
That's one of the ways Jace just described personally.
That's one of the ways we have been conditioned.
Right.
uh Against the very thing we need, which is the vine branch, intimacy and union.
(21:28):
You use the term ordinary mystics and uh I wish you had named the book that.
I know that was contested, you know, because I'm probably not the audience that you'retrying to gain.
You've already got me, right?
So I'm going to read whatever you put out there and you're going and you're reaching forpeople who uh really need this message but are...
(21:57):
are, I guess, a little bit fearful of a topic like that.
But you use the term ordinary mystic throughout it, and you do a wonderful job ofdescribing what it truly is and removing some of the fear about it.
So would you share what an ordinary mystic is and...
(22:19):
the invitation for all of us to become them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I chose that phrase very deliberately ordinary because as Evelyn Underhill was tryingto persuade everyone, this isn't just a rare few.
ah This this life of experiencing the unseen realm, experiencing the presence of God, youdon't see him like you see your car, you know, but he's there experiencing.
(22:51):
all of the resources of the kingdom.
I know John seven when it says rivers of living water are going to flow from your inmostbeing ordinary because it's for everyone and it's meant to just be normal daily mystics.
I had to I had to use this because again our conditioned moment even the way you and I areprocessing right now is very left brain.
(23:18):
We have an
overdeveloped left brain approach to everything.
Everything.
my gosh.
But particularly the spiritual life.
this is this, know, again, we're grandchildren of the Enlightenment.
We're disciples of the Internet.
It's just your moment.
You know, this is just what people do.
(23:38):
You've been conditioned to have a very left brain approach.
But God gave you two hemispheres of the brain, literally half of you.
is right brain.
Half of you is intuitive and relational.
It's all about connection.
The left brain does not does not uh the right brain rather is not impressed with facts.
(24:02):
It's not impressed with critical reasoning.
It's intuitive and instinctive and in some ways more like childlike.
Yeah, it in its desire for wonder joy tends to be more right brain.
I who doesn't want more joy for him?
but we're very, very left-brained.
So mystics as an invitation out of this highly uh content-driven, suspicious,
(24:33):
cautious approach to life with God.
So like just like you were describing, you were giving a personal testimony.
Now, when I read the scriptures, there's part of it, it's like, yeah, maybe, you knowthat.
OK, we've been conditioned to it.
It's just happened.
So we're exposing that now.
I think some people are relating to that as as we're talking about it.
(24:58):
ah Because all the good stuff in life, like
When you go on vacation and you're enjoying the beach or you're enjoying a bike ride oryou're out on the water, you know, kind of thing, you're not also evaluating it.
Your right brain's just loving it.
(25:20):
Your heart, I think the right brain is more connected to the heart, expresses the heart.
Your heart's loving it and it doesn't need to dissect it.
in order to enjoy it.
Most people still find joy in their relationships.
That's very right brain.
So mystics to pull us out.
Mystics because.
(25:40):
OK, so like you, for example, Psalm 63.
ah For years I would read the Psalms and I would go.
That that's lovely.
I like the language.
I like the cadence of it.
And I believe you, David and the other writers of the songs.
(26:04):
I believe you.
I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you.
know, honestly, that would be my experience.
You read Psalm 63 and David says, I've seen you, God, I've seen you.
I've beheld you in your sanctuary.
I've seen God, your beauty.
Wow.
Your glory.
(26:24):
Your love is better than anything else in my life.
and you satisfy and nourish me more than than any like banquet I could go to.
David is not trying to be poetic.
He's trying to report an actual experience of God.
(26:46):
OK, he's not making stuff up.
He he's doing his best to come back to you with, hey, guess what?
God is so nourishing.
God is so wonderful.
His presence and his love.
Wow.
There's nothing that compares.
So I would read that and I would go, I completely believe you, but that's not my personalexperience.
(27:14):
And ordinary mystics, because it's meant to be.
That's actually meant to be our daily.
And I can delightfully say now it is my daily.
Is my daily.
know that I know that life to be utterly true.
And I'm not boasting.
I'm just saying folks, this is accessible from a guy who didn't access it, access it fordecades.
(27:42):
It is.
so mystics, because there's this whole tradition in the Christian faith of men and womenlike David and the Psalms, like John, the beloved Paul.
I mean, Paul did not become a Christian because somebody showed him the latest research.
He became a follower of Jesus because he met him.
(28:04):
Personal encounter with Jesus.
Okay.
And that formed his life.
He became a mystic.
He's like, my gosh, everything's available.
Wow.
Everything I studied in the Old Testament is suddenly like living, you know, it's now.
HD in front of me.
It's uh so the mystic life is opening up the right brain.
(28:29):
It's opening up the heart.
It's opening.
It's healing our faculties, by the way, it's back to we got to heal the harm that's beendone to our capacity to get to Psalm 63.
And you can you can.
uh And John, that's one of the things uh that comforts me about you, just to get real withyou.
(28:58):
I've been under pastors, I work for pastors that are now humiliated and they're gone.
And you are actually one of the few spiritual fathers that I have that has not fallen.
You know?
And doesn't that suck?
Can we just all say that's horrible?
(29:22):
does.
you know, that compels me to pray for you and Stacey, for your protection.
um But what I see in you and what you're describing is that this intimacy that you havewith God, it...
(29:47):
It is a thing that they did not report to have.
And so I believe they were operating in their gifted soul and they were not connecting bythe Spirit with God and receiving that from them.
know, mean, that's as best as I can understand.
(30:09):
You know, and I'm comforted.
You know, I keep hearing God say, you can trust that John...
will not ah disappoint uh you.
He will not be another fallen father because he does have a relationship with me.
And you can read that in his books.
He's laying his heart out there.
(30:30):
So I just want you to know that I appreciate that about you, John, and it makes yousomebody that uh men do want to follow.
So sons out there, you are...
ah
Following um what I'm saying, I would just invite you to join me in continuing to pray forJohn and Stacey and for all of your spiritual leaders that uh God is using because we all
(31:01):
need it.
We all need it desperately.
um The ordinary mystic thing, I remember when um I was working in the field of mining, wetook some...
of the men that we work with that work for another company.
Just as a gift, we took them to a basketball game.
And my heart was always to befriend them, to love them, to treat them well, and to justinvite them to experience Jesus.
(31:30):
And so we're sitting watching the Spurs play basketball, and it was just an opportunitywhere they were open.
And I just said, well, so what is your relationship with God like?
And he said, I could never believe in God um because of the stories of Noah's Ark and theflood and all that stuff.
(31:56):
There's no way I could believe that.
And I remember just in my spirit being so disappointed and so shocked that they did nothave the capacity to have the childlike faith to believe in those stories.
My immediate reaction, which I held inside was,
Well, why would you even believe in a God who was not capable of doing those things?
(32:18):
Like, he would not be worth following, you know?
How could he come for you?
But it's made me appreciate that so many of the stories and scriptures that were given inthose Sunday schools, even though they may be simplistic and even though the teachers may
not really fully understand what they're saying, just the fact that those stories arebaked in as when we're young.
(32:43):
when we have the ability to believe those things.
ah I'm just so grateful because that was the first step to me now looking at theinvitation to become an ordinary mystic and saying, okay, this is the adult step deeper
and deeper into the mystery, into the miracle of the impossible that God intended for usto live in, be...
(33:10):
ah
as you call it, uh I'm sorry, is it a hybrid?
What do you call it?
Amphibian, yes, amphibian to live in both worlds.
The next question that I wanted to ask you was about the term secret place.
I've had some ideas for a long, long time.
I approached that term exactly as you did all of the Psalms, the secret place.
(33:34):
Well, clearly that's not for me.
But for those of you who are listening here, sons, I want to go ahead and just read youone example of the many places in Scripture that refer to what God calls the secret place.
Psalm 91, 1 and 2, John unpacks this a lot and uses it a lot in the book.
So here it is.
(34:06):
my God in Him I will trust." I've had some ideas, John, about what the secret place is fora long time, most of the time feeling that I was unqualified to step into the secret
place.
But I wanted to ask you about it because the Scripture has so much to say about what isgiven and what is received and what is exchanged in the secret place.
(34:33):
So will you talk about that?
Yeah.
Yes.
So let's work our way into it in language and experience that I think people canappreciate and track with.
So um Brother Lawrence, the beautiful Carmelite friar worked in the kitchen of the friaryin Paris.
(34:56):
He was actually wounded in combat.
He didn't become a Carmelite until he went through the trauma of war.
And he
He wrote a famous book called Practicing the Presence of God.
I like that title practicing it right.
It's something to be learned.
It's something to be cultivated, just like riding a bike or learning to surf, you know.
(35:19):
And what he would describe.
uh So would Teresa of Avila, so would David, so would so many at John the Beloved, someonewould describe what I first wanted to.
How do we get to the deep end of the pool, the secret place?
Well, you start with communion, communion, practicing the presence of God.
(35:43):
You practice his presence with you.
You practice his presence within you.
And this is one of the big new ideas for most people is that as you're praying, as you'reloving Jesus, you're actually connecting with Jesus who dwells in the center of your
being.
um
(36:04):
Primarily looking for a sense of, God's filling the room right now, because he's alreadyinside of you.
So in Ephesians three, this is what Paul prays.
He prays with his inner communion.
He says, I pray that God would strengthen you in your inmost being by his presence therethrough the Holy Spirit.
(36:27):
And and through that inner communion, we learn the Vine branch relationship.
We learn, wow, we have a shared life.
I have a shared life with God.
He's he's right here within me uh now because you are trained to be impatient and you'retrained to be distracted.
(36:49):
It's something that you have to learn how to do again.
But tuning in to.
the presence of God.
fact, let me read a big pile of books on my floor.
I'm going read from Madame Guaillot, Jean Guaillot, Guillaume Jean Guaillot.
She was a French Catholic, beautiful, mystic, 1700s.
(37:13):
And she says this, Your spirit instructs your soul that since God is more present deepwithin you.
He can't really be found anywhere else.
Henceforth, he must be sought within.
So this is all the saints and the mystics down through the ages to say, yep, yep, yep,you're moving into the inner communion with Christ and he must be enjoyed there.
(37:41):
Therefore, from the very beginning, you find great joy in knowing that your Lord is withinyou and that you can find him and enjoy him in your inmost being.
Okay, so that's very biblical.
That's Ephesians three.
That's revelations three.
That's, know, okay.
But learning the practice of it is tuning back in.
(38:02):
I'm tuning into the presence of God with me, but primarily within me through loving himbecause the left brain process is the thing like people go.
I have a quiet time going in and and in quiet time is mostly content.
It's left brain.
You're studying the Hebrew.
(38:23):
or you're listening to a good teaching, you know, very left brain.
This is very, very heart centered.
You are locating the presence of Jesus within you and communing with him.
Now, your inmost being is where Christ dwells.
It's the new holy of holies.
You are the temple of God.
It makes that very clear, right?
(38:46):
And when John, in the Gospel of John, he says of Jesus, he dwelt among us.
The word is tabernacled.
He tabernacled among us.
So you're like, holy cow, the tabernacles back because the presence of a living God ishere.
now you are.
Paul makes that very clear.
(39:07):
You are.
We are the temples of God.
Well, the holy of holies is your heart because that's where Christ now dwells.
So we're little temples of God working and playing and riding bikes around in this world.
And in the center of that temple,
And the Holy of Holies is our heart and Christ dwells there.
(39:27):
Okay.
We track them with this.
Yeah.
Well, the same holds true of God.
His in most being is the inner sanctuary of his life.
And that's the secret place.
And as we learn to commune with him, he invites us to know his.
(39:52):
and to even take refuge in him.
And again, this isn't poetry.
I'm talking about an existential, ontological, experiential reality that the human soul isactually made for union with God.
You are completed when you come home to God and you can learn to move very deeply into hispresence and enjoy.
(40:23):
His heart and his heart is wonderful.
Ahem.
So there's a practice, um the life model, Jim Wilder, uh there's a practice that he hasbeen teaching called having a manual prayer, if you're familiar with that.
(40:48):
Just the language of it.
I'd never done it.
A manual prayer is uh inviting Jesus to be with you, but often it's just inviting Him,would you, Jesus, take me to a place?
It could be a place that you've been, it could be a memory, or it could be some place thatyou've never been before.
(41:09):
Take me to a place where I feel, and let's just say I'm feeling, let's just say I'm...
wanting Jesus to address my lack of joy, okay?
Or grief or something like that.
I'll say, Jesus, would you take me to a place where I felt joyful, where I felt fathered,where I felt fully myself, right?
(41:35):
And then just to let Jesus, sometimes you get a flurry of options and He'll say, where doyou want to go?
You know, sometimes one moment will become very, very prominent.
Other times you have options, but the thing is God can use any of them.
So just getting over the fear of getting it wrong is huge.
So, okay, I'm gonna go to this place.
(41:57):
And most of the time it's a place in my memory bank where I felt just truly, deeplydelighted in.
I just felt the joy, like you were talking about being at the beach.
You don't think left brain about it.
You're just on vacation.
You just enjoy it.
And so from that place to just allow myself, okay, be fully present, know, Jesus helped meto use all of my senses to be present in this place and then reveal yourself to me in this
(42:29):
place.
And then to be able to have a conversation with him in a place where you're feeling lovedand you're in his embrace, a place that he's chosen.
In many ways, it feels to me like Jesus lovingly bringing Peter back to the charcoal.
you know, the exact place that he denied him, bringing him back there and letting thecharcoal be a place where he received God's love again, you know, so that he's healed from
(42:59):
that.
And I've experienced that many times.
So, I've got a couple of questions about that.
Would you consider that the secret place?
Because I've never thought of it as going inside, okay?
But he does...
offer healing and consolation and love and reinterpretation of parts of my story?
(43:20):
um Or is that something different?
And then another question is, I've wrestled with whether or not He's actually inviting meinto the kingdom.
Am I in those moments when I'm with Him?
Am I actually in the kingdom?
Am I in Eden somewhere?
(43:41):
Am I in the coming kingdom?
So I would love to hear your thoughts.
On that.
Oh, I love this.
I wish we had four hours.
uh Okay.
So first off, the kingdom of God is a forest, not a front yard.
We like manicured lawns and, you know, cleanly edged sidewalks.
(44:07):
We like things very neat and orderly.
But if you've ever gotten in nature, folks,
A forest is a wildly organic place.
Everything's interconnected and underneath it all are these huge uh fungus networksthrough which the trees talk to each other.
(44:28):
It's crazy, but it's a wild place.
Okay.
If you ever gone snorkeling, it's wild and beautiful.
And there's stuff in that reef that is so enchanting.
You do feel like you just fell into a Pixar movie.
And there's stuff in that reef that wants to kill you.
OK, so the natural world was given to us to understand the unseen realm.
(44:54):
It's our preschool.
It's our tutoring.
And the first thing you learn about the natural realm is that it's a forest, not a frontyard.
It's not highly organized in the way our current left brain
likes to organize things and you drag the email into the file.
Yeah.
Okay.
Why do I say that?
(45:14):
Well, because um as soon as we begin to try and explain, I can explain those Kingdomexperiences, but I wanted to say the unseen realm is like putting a snorkel mask on and
going snorkeling.
It's that wild.
It's that beautiful.
It's that diverse and the dark side of the unseen realm is that deadly.
(45:37):
Okay.
So what is happening?
So Jim Wilder is actually using St.
Teresa's prayer of recollection and she has Teresa was trying to both Teresa and John thecross were friends and it was a time when they were trying to invite uh what we would call
highly religious people, people who want they're devoted.
(45:59):
They're trying to you know, but they were not experiencing Jesus.
uh
I like this conversation.
so she developed this thing called the prayer of recollection.
And it was find a beautiful memory or think of a gospel passage and the locating of thatkind of helps draw you into communion.
(46:20):
So let me say several things about Jim Wilder's approach.
First off, fabulous.
Far out.
Go for it, man.
That stuff will help you.
um The use of the imagination, for one thing, is helpful.
But it can lead people to think, well, this isn't really real.
Like, I'm not really with Jesus.
(46:42):
And we didn't really go back to high school.
uh He's just he's just somehow accessing a memory right now and kind of using it in mylife.
And I would say, nope, you're actually going there.
You are actually going there.
The unseen realm is wildly diverse and beautiful.
(47:05):
And Jesus lives outside of time, folks, so he can take you back into your story in a waywhere you're like, Holy smokes, man, I am feeling everything.
I'm seeing everything.
It sure feels real.
So he can heal things there.
I would say that most of that is taking place.
(47:25):
Okay, if it's a healing experience, most of it's taking place inside you.
It's taking place inside your soul.
He's accessing places inside you.
If it is a I don't know, you know, like people will say, I have my special place.
I go when I'm with Jesus, we're always at the beach or when I'm with Jesus, we're alwaysby a mountain like I would say those are probably visits to the kingdom of God.
(47:49):
You didn't know it, but he actually took you in the spirit into the kingdom of God.
And by the way, this is very, very biblical folks.
You know, this is the whole book of Revelation.
John says, I am, you know, on the Sabbath day, I was in the spirit.
And then he starts seeing the kingdom of God.
He sees the New Jerusalem.
He gets a tour of it.
(48:10):
They walk around.
They measure it.
know, Paul says, Yeah, I've been to the kingdom.
I've been to the city of God.
Well, so did Bernard of Clairvaux.
So did people down through the Christian tradition.
I know people who claim to have seen or been to or visited or however you want to describethat the kingdom of God.
(48:31):
ah
So those experiences, we go to a beach, we walk together, we're in a beautiful forest.
You're probably visiting the kingdom of God by the help of the Holy Spirit with Jesus.
Those, yeah, and that's the mystic life.
It's part of it and it's part of our and here.
(48:53):
me let me because this this can all sound like woo woo.
It's like, you know, Jay and John are doing mushrooms.
First off, this is very, very biblical.
It's very, because David, Psalm 63, no, I was in the sanctuary and I saw you.
Paul, you know, I know a man once who visited, you know, the kingdom, he went to heavenand he saw all kinds of things.
(49:16):
Yep, John.
So it's very, very biblical, first off.
But why are we even talking about this?
This is where I want to go for a moment.
Because again, you just don't know what your age is doing to you because it's just ournormal.
None of us lived any other time.
This is just what we know.
(49:37):
Your age is constantly unsettling.
The news changes every single day.
The new crisis, is it tariffs on, tariffs off?
Do I buy a car now?
Do I wait?
It's just all that stuff.
the practice of the presence of God.
(49:57):
First off, just the simple union and communion that that's everybody will tell you.
That's the good stuff.
This is for your this is for your care.
This is for your sustenance.
I would say this is for your rescue in an hour like this.
We're not just saying this is exactly why Jim Wilde is doing it, by the way.
(50:21):
OK, because he did it.
You know, he had a long career as a therapist and he's like, that's not enough.
You know, good understanding of your story is not enough.
We need the presence of God.
And then and I would add, and his kingdom, because, yeah, sometimes you're at the beachwith him.
Sometimes he's taking you to a memory.
This is for our consolation.
(50:45):
It's for our healing, it's for our strength.
And I believe, Jay, that
um I was just reading Tyler Staten's new book on the Holy Spirit.
This is exactly what he's talking about there.
Talking about the availability of the Holy Spirit through very ordinary encounters withGod.
(51:05):
Okay, so it's fascinating that he wrote that and I wrote this.
God is making more of himself and more of his kingdom available to his people because weneed it in this hour.
We need it.
So it's not just like, wow, that'd be really cool.
(51:26):
No, no, we're not doing this for curiosity.
We are doing this for rescue.
It feels common that people say no one has ever been in a time like this.
It's worse than it's ever been.
I believe some of those statements are true and some of them are just our way of copingwith the fact that we can't cope easily with where we are.
(51:56):
But I've heard you say that um every new season
God will always provide the necessary provision for it, right?
And so it's encouraging to me that no matter how bad any of this gets, AI, robots all overthe place, teaching us literally, reading our children books at nighttime because we don't
(52:28):
have time to do it anymore, that even in the midst of all that, if we go that far,
there will always be provision from God to escape it.
I am, uh it's scary, but I know that what you're offering here is right because my spiritis testifying to it because I'm, my heart is telling me.
(52:56):
and the spirit inside me has been telling me, you need more of me, you miss me.
And God's not saying it in an angry way.
It's this invitation.
I almost feel his broken heart because he sees my broken heart.
He's like, please, uh please listen to your spirit.
You need me and you're clinging to relief and other places.
(53:18):
I'm not angry about it.
I just, I want you, I want you back.
I want you back.
So, um John, think your words bear testimony.
They bear witness to what me and Heather and my son um and my daughter probably whodoesn't talk as much about stuff like this.
(53:41):
But um it's just, it feels very on time.
um and it's beautifully written.
um John, thank you for being so generous with your time.
on.
been wonderful conversation.
Obviously, we could have talked for four hours about so many of the other pieces ofcontent in your book, but uh Friends Sons highly recommend this book.
(54:07):
I think it needs to be absolutely on your bookshelf.
It'll be highlighted all over the place with...
I thank you for the little tiny short chapters that just made it so much more easy todigest.
It's a very easy read, but it's super well written and uh I love it.
John, thank you for em taking your post seriously, for manning your post and doing whatGod's called you to do and doing it with all of your heart.
(54:36):
I so appreciate it.
Hmm.
Yeah, thanks for this time.
I have seen him in the sanctuary.
His love is better than life.
He nourishes me more than any feast.
I want people to know that for themselves.
So thanks for helping me.
(54:58):
Let them know.
Thanks for helping us know.
Appreciate it, John.
Father, we bless John.
We bless all that you're doing in him and through him.
We thank you and we bless you, God, for the opportunity to be here with John and what youhave given to us through your servant, through your son, John.
We would you continue to encourage, to strengthen him for all of the duties that you havefor him.
(55:24):
And we ask this in Christ's name.
Amen.
Come
Bless you, John.
Thank you, sons, for joining John and I as we talk and walk for a mile learning how to beordinary mystics and sons of God at the same time.
All right, take care.
We'll talk to you next time.
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