October 20, 2025 • 39 mins
If the Spirit sounds like Jesus, how do we make sense of Old Testament passages where God seems to command violence? In this episode, I sit down with theologian Greg Boyd to explore what it really means to hear God’s voice—and why the Spirit always sounds like Jesus. We talk about Greg’s personal journey, the ultimate test for discerning God’s voice, and how to read Scripture through the lens of the cross.
Full post here: https://www.godconversations.com/podcast/103/
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About Greg Boyd
Greg Boyd (reknew.org) is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author. Greg received his Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, his M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota. He was a professor of theology for 16 years at Bethel University where he received the Teaching Excellence Award and Campus Leadership Award.
Greg is the co-founder of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota where he serves as Senior Pastor, speaking to thousands each week.
Greg has authored or co-authored 22 books and numerous academic articles, including his best-selling and award-winning Letters From a Skeptic and his recent books Crucifixion of the Warrior God and Cross Vision. His apologetic writings and public debates on the historical Jesus and the problem of evil have helped many skeptics embrace faith, and his writings and seminars on spiritual transformation have had a revolutionary, freeing impact on thousands of believers.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
God Conversations with Tanya Harris I.
Think it was Mother Teresa? Someone asked her.
When does God speak to you? And she said, whenever he wants.
How could I know if God was speaking to me?
And how could I know that that was actually just me thinking
about I just had some bad pizza?I just thought it was normal to
dream and have experiences. And she said to me, I actually
(00:21):
have a relationship with Jesus and he talks to me and it just
blew my mind. And then hearing the Lord speak
again very clearly and just say this, this is where I've called
you to love yourself. Jesus said we'd recognise his
voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation. How do we know it's God?
(00:43):
It has to be the most common question people ask when it
comes to hearing God's voice in Scripture.
The answer is clear. The Spirit sounds like Jesus.
Everything the Holy Spirit says today is consistent with what
the living Word Jesus has already said and done.
Tragically, we haven't always understood this, and the
(01:03):
consequences in history have been dire.
Hi and welcome to the God Conversations podcast.
My name is Tanya Harris and I'm a pastor, practical theologian,
author, and the founding director of God, Conversations
and Ministry that equips you to recognize and respond to God's
voice. Well, on this show today we are
(01:24):
talking with pastor and academicGreg Boyd all the way from St.
Paul, MN in the United States. Greg is an internationally
recognized theologian, preacher,teacher, apologist, and an
author who's written over 20 books and a whole range of
theological topics, but all of which come down to 1 common
(01:45):
thought that God is like Jesus. Well, given that God is like
Jesus, the Spirit will always sound like Jesus, which is what
we're going to talk about today.It's a fabulous conversations.
You know, one of the reasons whyI wanted to get Greg on is not
only is he a brilliant theologian and a practitioner,
(02:05):
he also lives this out. He knows what it is to hear the
voice of God for himself, to know the way of the Spirit in
his own life and has been transformed by it.
So I know that this is going to be a rich conversation for you
and hopefully help you to think more like the God revealed in
Jesus to discern God's voice more clearly.
(02:26):
Hey, just before we do kick intothis conversation, and I just
want to say hello to our new Irish friends.
If you've just joined the God Conversations community.
I've just come back from Belfastin Northern Ireland and was
ministering there with the Elam Conference and a couple of
wonderful Elam churches there. Had a great time with my Irish
(02:49):
friends. Did have some challenges
checking out the accent, quite hard to understand sometimes
they talk very fast and I, I didtry it on but not very
successfully, but met some wonderful people.
So if you're from Ireland, the Ireland of Ireland, welcome, a
special welcome to you. And hey, don't forget, we also
(03:10):
have a fabulous resource that's available to you at our website,
godconversations.com. We have an e-mail that goes out
every two weeks that notifies you of podcasts and articles and
videos that are regularly comingout.
And also a brand new devotional plan that I encourage you to
check out so you can go to godconversations.com and you
(03:30):
will see us there. But right now, on to a
conversation with Greg Boyd. All around the Spirit sounds
like Jesus. Greg, so great to have you on
the podcast and we've had some fun connecting in Zoom and
software has problems connectingwith the USI think at the
moment, but so great to have youhere.
(03:52):
Really good to be here, thanks for inviting me on.
Greg, I first actually met you some years ago, actually when I
was asking a whole bunch of questions and I came across your
book, God of the Possible. And I was asking about when God
speaks and can we be sure what happens if someone says no?
Can we be assured that it's always going to happen?
And then I came across your bookand that was when I first met
(04:14):
you. Love your work and we just so
excited to have you on the podcast today.
Perhaps for those people who don't know you, you could
introduce yourself a little bit.What's a little bit of the Greg
Boyd story, how you got to be doing what you're doing now?
OK, well Greg Boyd, pastor, Woodland Hills Church in
Maplewood, MN. I've been going for 33 years.
(04:35):
I was Co founder of that church and I really never saw myself as
a pastor. I thought I was going to be a
professor. But we we started Woodland Hills
as a side gig and after about 10years, I really with the Lord
telling me to let go of the academia and pour myself into
the church work. I'm a pastor.
I'm also an author and an armchair theologian and I like
to play drums. I'm married to a wonderful
(04:57):
woman, Shelley. We're going on our 45th
anniversary and we've got six kids and three and three kids
and six grandchildren and a sweet little quirky dog, Saint
Paul. I love how you call yourself an
armchair theologian, Greg, Perhaps a little more than that,
given your the amount of books and the work that you've done.
(05:18):
I think what I love about your work is that you are able to
take lofty concepts and make them understandable for everyday
people. Just love what you do there.
Our our podcast is all about Godconversations and I wondered if
you could share a little bit of a perhaps a God conversation
with time when God spoke to you that's been significant for you.
(05:39):
I I don't know if this is God first stations covers a lot of
ground and I talk about God all the time.
So I got to think about this onethat's interesting to me is I
have a lot of my most interesting conversations about
God are with atheists. And so I have a friend, a really
good friend with a runs this, I call it a ministry.
He calls it a service, but wherehe in throws parties once a
(06:00):
month and it runs it like a disco.
But he invites people with cognitive disabilities and other
disabilities to come, as well aspeople who are neurotypical and
to come and party together because these folks are the most
quarantined, invisible people insociety, and they never get a
chance to go out and be normal with normal peoples.
Everyone comes together. We throw off all labels.
(06:20):
The. His minister is called the Tap,
and his slogan is proudly dislabeled.
He now runs that mystery out of our church, even though this guy
is an atheist. And so he and I have got to be
good friends. And he loves to smoke cigars.
So we'll go out and smoke a cigar and talk about, oh, God,
every once in awhile. And The thing is, this guy gets
love. He really understands love.
(06:40):
Yeah, but I'm trying to show himthat living for the purpose of
love only makes sense if love isthe ultimate context of the
universe, if God is love, if there's a creator of his love.
Otherwise it's just a neurochemical reaction in their
head. So we're talking about this and
I end up saying to him, look, Dan, here's the thing.
If I'm right, then I'm going to live my life as though God is
(07:02):
love, as though Jesus is the full revelation of God.
Because I think I've got reasonsfor believing that.
I'm not certain, but I'm going to live that way and on faith,
like as though that's true. And if I'm right, I'll know it.
But if you're right, you're on one hand, you have to live
without any kind of hope whatsoever, which is a miserable
way to live. In my case, I'll live with hope,
I'll live with love. And if I die in a moron, I still
(07:25):
live my best life, right? But if I But in this case, he'll
never know if he's right. So you live with me his life and
you'll never know whether it wasworth it or not.
Why not just embrace this and I I didn't convince him, but you
move the goal posts a little bit.
I slowly winning lower. I finally got him to he's now
the first atheist I know who is an atheist despite the fact that
(07:46):
he's got an accurate picture of God.
Almost every atheist, in fact every other atheist I know, they
have jaded pictures of God. The God they reject is a God.
I would reject this guy as I've explained things he's listened
to some of my sermons. He gets his gospel.
He still doesn't bow the knee, but I think you'll get there.
That's a pretty good starting point, isn't it?
I love that, Craig. We're talking about God looks
(08:08):
like Jesus, the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
And you've just released a book,very simple book that's released
also with Jesus Collective. And you tell a story at the
beginning of that book, a God conversation when just in terms
of your own journey about your ideas about what God was like.
Do you want to share perhaps that story?
I think you're referring to thisstory where the area Bible of
(08:31):
the Romans 8 yes, yeah. So I so I was saved to this
hyper holiness Pentecostal sectarian church.
And man would they had more rules you could shake a stick
at. But I really followed Christ
there. I really did.
I I I met God and my life reallywent under real transformation.
But in one area that I couldn't ever kick was pornography.
(08:52):
And I was living with my dad at the time and my dad, ever since
I was 13, he's left his hooker magazine's out.
He just thought it was normal for kids to have access to that.
And nowadays every kid access tothat.
Unfortunately, the back in the 70s, I was a real exception.
I was a popular kid in the block'cause I could give all the
stash to my friends. Anyways, when I become a
Christian, I got to deal with this.
(09:13):
I'm 17th at the time. You're a walking hormone and
I've got access to this porn. And in this church, you're only
saved as your last sinless moment.
Every sin Brooks Fellowship you had to repent and get received
and so I was getting saved and re saved daily.
It was I was a yo-yo on God's strength and I would go on
Sunday nights we'd have a conversion story or evangelism
service and I'd always go forward and recommit my life to
(09:35):
Christ. I'm sorry and I'll withstand
this pornography. I won't never again and I'd make
it to me the Wednesday and a good week, but then I'd fall and
then I'd figure I'm unsafe so I might as well enjoy myself.
So then you go on a sin binge and and then I get re saved
Sunday. I finally after two years of
this gave up and there was 1 evangelist service where I
didn't go forward. I was tired of this who am I
(09:56):
kidding? And so we walked out of this
church. We were talking out in the
church parking lot while everyone else left and in the
end we were the only ones there and we're into this parking lot
light and he's the only kid in the first in the church.
I could tell my issues to. I everyone else in this church,
they're worried about girls showing their elbows and
covering their knees with their dresses.
My issues are a little beyond that.
We're all this church working a lot.
(10:16):
And I, I was just saying, I'm done with this.
I can't do it anymore. And I get again to get angry at
God because it's like, God, you set me up with these hormones.
You give me this dag who just thinks it's normal to have
Bernardo roll around. You step me up.
How am I supposed to? And now you're going to send me
to hell because I can't live according to your rules.
But there's I didn't have, I didn't stand a fighting chance
and I was just, I was what I hada lot of anger about God that I
(10:39):
had not dealt with. And I just blew up my friend
because at one point he, he tooka step a couple steps back, I
think because he was afraid thatI was going to get hit with
Thunderbolt because I was laughing.
I was like, I was, I can't tell you what I was saying to God.
At one point he said, Greg, and he struggled with this too, not
as severely as me, but we both had this.
And he says, Greg, we must be missing something.
We must be missing something. And I in anger took my King
(11:00):
James Bible and I threw it on the truck of his car and flopped
open. And I started to read it
sarcastically and I read there is therefore now no condemnation
to them or in Christ Jesus. Is that where we're missing Tom,
There is therefore and then I just I just stopped at what does
that verse even mean? There is therefore now no
condemnation to them which aren't crazy Jesus, you know,
and and and I started reading out.
(11:21):
You've got to be forced who could be again and for the first
time. It's like when I finally got
honest with God and looking backon it, I I think that was the
most honest prayer I'd ever prayed, even though it was vile.
It was Job, but it was came out like gut.
No more this pious Willy nilly thou thither with her.
It's here's what I really think.It's like God said, Hey, thanks
for the honesty. Here's some honesty back at you
(11:43):
and boom, it was a revelation and I finally got a picture of
God that loved me ahead of apartfrom my behavior, ahead of my
behavior. His love is what transforms my
behavior. It's that my behavior is the
precondition for his love. So a God who loved me instead of
just my behavior, my picture of God was a behavioral God,
behavioralist. If you've got what he really is
(12:04):
interested in that people, it's behavior.
You got holy behavior, you're inthe holy behavior, you're out.
So people are really in consequence of the equation.
And so I didn't feel loved in that.
I feared that. And the thing we talked about
God is love. Oh, the love of God, love of
God. But man, the love was so
restricted and tiny and conditional impunity and full
threats wasn't really threats oflove, love at all.
(12:27):
And then the other thing that happened with that was that I,
for the first time, I got a motivation where I actually
wanted to live for God. I I like I I such as I have to
no, I'm a King's kid. And when I got that I'm a King's
kid, I saw that I'm better than the smut that I'm pigsty that I
wallow in. I'm a kid.
I got Jesus, man, This didn't all come on that one night, but
(12:49):
the gist of it did. But I've got he's declared me
holy and righteous. Why would I want to go down to
the pigsty? And and then in the final thing
I'll share is that that had as apart of this tail end like a
scene. And it started as a scene that I
had seen as a adolescent and it was from a Penthouse magazine.
It was very lustful and just fora 13 up kid to yolks of energy.
(13:14):
But now I saw them, they were covered in there were these two
girls. It was just as I remembered it,
except now they're covered in this like vomit and this
excrement and pus and it's voweland there's maggots and it's as
vile and it's finally seeing it as God sees it.
Now it it, if I represent that as a positive thing, my hormones
(13:37):
are didn't want to get it. But if you frame it in truth and
frame it as God sees it, and that is a turn off if ever there
was one. And then I occurred in the
background and this is all taking place in my imagination.
A girl screaming, a little girl screaming.
And it was just God's way of anchoring in this truth that
when you vote yes to this activity, you're voting yes to
this activity. The kidnapping, the trafficking
(13:58):
of our little children, It's thesame demonic, perverted empire.
You don't want to give any energy to that.
And so I've encouraged a lot of men.
And the truth is, I'm told this is somewhat true of women, but
I've never been the one to speakto them.
But that men who have struggled with this, but the battle, it's
good if you can resist the temptation and put in all the
blocks and all the safeguards and all the stuff that you have
(14:18):
so that you can't watch it and keep feeding your brain this
pornographic stuff. But real freedom is not when you
just say no to what you want. Real freedom is changing what
you want. And that takes place on how you
frame things. You have a choice.
Am I going to think about this as something that I know my
flesh is going to desire, or am I going to reframe it in a way
that that speaks to according totruth that sees it the way God
(14:41):
sees it? It was appropriate time to
imagine it in real lustful ways,and that's in your marriage.
But imagine the heck out of that.
Go for it. But when it comes to I'll say
the marriage put extra mint vilestuff on it and it's as.
A yeah, I love the way the Spirit gave you God's
perspective. Like, that's a just a powerful
thing, isn't it? And then helping, you know,
(15:01):
motivate transformational change.
Greg, coming back to your experience as a young man and
how you saw God, I can relate tothat because I had that same
kind of framing. We're talking about how God is
like Jesus. That means that we can have a
perception that God is like something else.
Where do we get that perception from?
That God is like something else.If I don't understand that God
(15:23):
is like Jesus, where do I get myunderstanding of God from?
The thing is, you'll just absorbit.
You'll get it from a song that you heard and a sermon that you
heard or something that someone said or something that you read
or something your own brain inferred.
And it will just be a godly gookof slam together of a montage of
different things. Yeah, and often a reflection of
ourselves too. I think we project what we think
(15:44):
about God, the prosperity God. I want finances, I want material
blessings. So I'm going to project that
onto to God, or I've got an anger problem, so I'm going to
project violence onto God. Greg, one of the pivotal things
that we talk a lot about God conversations, hearing the voice
of the God, voice of God, hearing the voice of the Spirit.
And one of the most common questions that people asked me
(16:05):
was how do I know that it's God?And so the question of what God
is like becomes super, super important because absolutely
discern what the Spirit is saying is the reflection of
God's character and nature. It's, I think the most important
question that you can answer. It's what is your mental
conception of God? Because if you think about it,
(16:28):
the only God you know is the onethat you experience between your
ears. And so your love for God is
never going to outrun the love ability of your mental
conception of God. Your passion for God will never
outrun is you have a conception of God that's worth being
passionate about and the beauty of your life.
Because we always are transformed into the image of
whatever God we're worshiping. That's kind of a principle and
(16:50):
it works for better or for worse.
But so the beauty of our life will never outrun the beauty of
our mental conception of God. Everything hangs on how do you
conceive of the divine being? And here's where I think the
most important revelation. This is why I wrote the book God
Looks Like Jesus. I think it's the most important
revelation there is and that is that God looks like Jesus and
more specifically, God looks like Jesus suffering on the
(17:10):
cross for you, for every person,for the whole creation.
God is that. But John says God is love verse
7 for eight and he says here's how we know what love is.
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
So also we should lay down our life for one another.
And so God is this self giving other oriented love, this humble
self sacrificial love. And that's the ultimate
(17:31):
criteria. So anything that I hear in my
head, this helps me when I have thoughts in my head.
And if it's something that true love, perfect love would say, I
assume God said it because I think God's talking to us all
the time. And So what would perfect love
say to you now if perfect love had something to say?
(17:52):
And just listen to that. And if what you hear is
reflective of that, I encourage people to just assume that was a
God-given. And so when there's promptings
in what happens a lot is it would confess Jesus Christ as
Lord. But we retain the reigns of
99.99% of our life. We make our plans, we go about
our day, we do our business and maybe we should prepare here and
(18:13):
there or whatever, but we go about our plans.
And then when I when things pop into our head that aren't
according to our plans, we dismiss them.
We don't, they don't even register our cut.
We get so habitual at this we just dismiss them and we've
turned off the voice of God and then we're wondering where is
God where is God. Sometimes we turn off that voice
because it interrupts our plans.It's rain fart.
(18:36):
Oh, forget about that whatever give $20 that guy over there.
Why would I do that? I got answer.
We just go on our way and we miss all these opportunities to
be used as the body of Christ tothe hands and feet of Jesus in
this world. So the ultimate criteria is, is
it is what you're hearing something that Jesus would say?
Is it loving? Is it other oranges, self
sacrificial? And often you'll know that it's
(18:58):
the voice of God because it is convicting and that you really
know when you're hearing from God, when you hear stuff that
you don't want to hear. So I'm just reflecting on your
own journey. What is interesting to me when I
understand the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
First of all, no condemnation. So struggling with an area of
sin, but when the Spirit speaks,it's without condemnation.
(19:20):
And then the Spirit helps motivate to transform, not by
condemning you or shaming you, but showing truth of so for the
pornography thing, giving truthsthat then calves away for you to
move away from it, I think. And so when we think we talk
about the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
That's how Jesus treated people when he caught the woman in
(19:42):
adultery, he didn't throw rocks at her.
He said go and sin no more. And so you've got this
beautiful, loving response that involves discipline, which is
very different to guilt and shame, isn't it?
And. Absolute no.
I whenever the Spirit says it has a convicting word for me,
(20:03):
it's always along the lines of come on, Greg, you're better
than this, you're better than this.
The Spirit's always right. So I encourage people look.
When you hear something convicting, when the Spirit
speaks to you and it's not something you want to do, maybe
you don't think you're ready to give that up yet.
You're not whatever. Rather than dismissing it as not
(20:25):
being of God, rather than sayingwhat God didn't say that, which
is how what we usually do, but that just makes us good at not
hearing God. The more you hear his voice and
respond to it, the clearer you'll hear the voice.
And the less you, the more you dismiss it, the less clearly
you'll hear it. And so rather than do that, be
honest and just say I'm not ready to give it up yet.
Yeah, but don't deny that you'rehearing God.
(20:47):
You're hearing God and but you're not ready to give it up
yet with the Lord. That's.
Such a good wisdom, Greg. We're talking to Greg Boyd,
pastor and theologian all the way from Minnesota in the US.
We'll be back in just a moment. The Creator God is a
communicator. Jesus himself came as the living
Word and later sent the Holy Spirit so that we could all hear
(21:11):
God's voice for ourselves. But what does God sound like?
How do I know it's God? And what difference does hearing
God's voice make in my life? These questions and more are
answered in the God Conversations Online course.
Biblical foundations and pastoral wisdom are brought
together in this seven week series that includes streamable
(21:33):
videos, digital study guide, andbonus resources.
You can join with a small group.We recommend that if you can or
study it on your own, you know, Jesus's promise was that we
could all recognize his voice and follow and he sent to us the
Spirit so that we could do just that.
It was never meant to be a one way conversation.
(21:55):
Come check it out now at godconversations.com/courses.
And we really pray that it is a blessing to you.
Welcome back to God Conversations chatting with
friend and pastor and theologianGreg Boyd who has written a
mountain of books. But I think probably the catch
cry of your life is this beautiful messaging around God
(22:17):
looks like Jesus. Greg, The big question for me on
my journey, having started to hear the voice of God as a young
woman, I remember very clearly then going back to the Bible and
going, OK, the Spirit sounds like Jesus, but hang on a
minute. In my Bible I read, God told
people to commit genocide. God told people, God spoke to
Hosea to marry a prostitute. God said to people in Nazareth
(22:40):
time to divorce their spouses because of different races.
And so if we come to God and say, how do I know it's God?
I was always told to test it against the scriptures.
And I remember thinking if I tested against the Scriptures,
someone could justify genocide. And this is where I went on this
big journey of, OK, hang on, what does the Spirit sound like?
(23:02):
And then in my PHDI landed very squarely on the Spirit sounds,
Jesus, and I know you've done a lot of work in this area as
well. What difference does it make
when we realize that we should be discerning the Spirit of the
Spirit's voice against Jesus, asopposed to perhaps the
Scriptures as a whole? Because you say follow the
(23:24):
scriptures, like as you just pointed out, man, you can find
some nasty stuff in there that supplies in the face of what
Jesus is about, genocide being the case in point.
Go slaughter the mole. Everything that breeds every
man, woman, child, even the animals.
But then it's the spare of the trees because they've done
nothing wrong, which you might have thought would apply to
babies. I don't know, but I think it's
bizarre stuff. So here's where I think I I
(23:46):
propose in my book, what I call it cruciform Hermaniotic that
the cross is the center of everything Jesus was about.
And so Jesus is the center of everything God's about and the
cross is the center of everything Jesus was about his
whole ministry. And I I spent a lot of time
laying out the evidence. The cross is the definitive
revelation of what God's like and that should be the lens by
which we discern everything elsein Scripture.
(24:07):
Jesus said all Scripture points to me.
It even specified points to to to the cross in in in Luke 24.
And so we should read all Scripture pointing to the
revelation better went to the revelation of God on the cross.
So how does a passage of scripture like genocide go
slaughter them all, show them nomercy.
Be careful you make sure you show no mercy.
You might be tempted to because it's hard to kill women and
(24:28):
babies, but show no mercy. Can you imagine Jesus ever
saying that? So how does a picture like that
point to bear witness to the Godis revealed on the cross in
here's what I propose. I wrestled with this for so long
before I start to get some clarity and I'm not I I still
won't say that I had a Holy Spirit revelation That's for the
church to discern. But here's what I think that
(24:49):
when I stopped in that I began to declared when I asked the
question how does God reveal himself on the cross and and the
cross if that we on the surface that reveals God, we on the
surface reveals us. It reveals the ugliness of our
sin, but what reveals God is we know that God stepped into our
sin right he went this evident distance is what's an
unsurpassable distance even experiences separation from the
(25:12):
father and becoming our sin saysin Corinthians 5 so that we
could be reconciled to him. So God reveals himself.
The revelation of God on the cross comes not by what you see
physically or what can be naturally discerned, but what by
fate. It's what's going on behind the
scenes. It's a God who Stoops an
infinite distance to enter into solidarity with people who are
(25:33):
who are sinful. He bears that sin, and he takes
in an appearance that reflects the ugliness of that sin.
So if this is the center of whatthe Bible's all about, maybe we
should read the Bible knowing that God reveals himself at
least sometimes by stooping to enter into our sin.
It takes on an appearance that reflects the ugliness of that
sin. And my proposal is that whenever
(25:53):
we come to sections of Scripture, you also have to read
Scripture with bifocals, becauseyou have to read the cross with
bifocals. What's on the surface, what's
going on behind the scenes, what's going on behind the
surface or what's going on on the surface?
That's what you can determine byexegesis.
What did the original author mean?
And all the rest. But that often reflects not
God's will, but reflects our sin.
(26:15):
But what reflect God's will whenwe find the sinful sections of
the Bible and even simple depictions of God, what reveals
God to us is that we're seeing God stepping into how people
thought about him. God is if God is love, he's not
coercive. He doesn't manipulate neuro Nets
in order to get people to believe true things.
He works by means of loving influence.
(26:36):
And if he works by means of a loving influence, that means
there comes a point where he's got to refrain and accept the
people as they are. And so I think the Holy Spirit's
always been moving and influencing as much as possible,
but there's a point where God has to accept them as they are,
And that's where he's inspiring them to tell the story.
That's where he's willing to, out of love for them, out of
covenantal solidarity, enter into their conception of him.
(26:59):
And he relates to them through their conception of him, even
though their conception of him is very typical of ancient
nearest and people. It's very violent, very bloody
and sometimes genocidal and so Isee all the passage of
scriptures all the passage of the Scripture that that that are
sub Christ's life bear witness to the God who condescended to
(27:19):
take out our sin on Calvary. Yeah.
And I think that understanding of revelation is super, super
helpful. So what was happening, say, for
the prophets of old? And Hebrews says in the past God
spoke through the prophets, but now God has spoken through the
Son. So we get the definitive
revelation of God in Jesus. But what was happening with
those prophets, they were hearing God through the filter
(27:42):
of their understanding of what God was like.
So we come back to what we were saying at the beginning.
And in the ancient world, peopleunderstood the gods were violent
and they were territorial and they were like that.
The spirit, I love the way that you describe it as the spirit
breaking through. So what in Scripture?
And this super helped me. I think your book particularly
(28:02):
Cross Vision, which is when you explain some of this, where you
talk about you see the spirit breaking through in some in
people's lives throughout the biblical history.
So you see increasingly God saying that them hearing what
God is full of mercy and kindness and glow to anger and
patience mixed in with God's head commit genocide.
(28:24):
So you get this increasing revelation and in some ways
tracks our own walk, doesn't it?Because we're moving into truth.
And so the degree to which we can hear God's voice is a degree
to which we can receive revelation of what God is like
in Jesus. Would you say that's a good way
of describing it? I think it's an excellent way of
(28:46):
describing it. There's also a way of, you know,
this isn't new with me in the early church.
Excuse me, I think it was Gregory of Niazi Anzen.
But this is representative of a lot of different people.
But he'd be liking the human race to one person.
And just one person has to grow to maturity and learn things.
So also we as a human race had to grow.
(29:07):
And so Gregory Nazhansen says atfirst God accommodated their
sacrifices. He just changed the purpose of
him. Later on he says I don't want
your sacrifices. I never want to just you hear
things. I saw that because it looks like
it looks contradictory, doesn't it?
When you read these passages side by side and you realize
it's almost like you can't handle the truth.
(29:28):
But as you get to know me and you come closer, you can start
to handle it. No.
And you find that where different passes of Scripture,
where the Lord says now you're my servants, someday you'll call
me friend. And so there's this promise.
And then when more's coming, Jesus is that more?
I love that I say they're calling.
It's interesting when I was starting to teach this a lot
more now. What does the Spirit sound like?
(29:49):
One of the key tests we advocate, the language we use is
would Jesus say this as opposed to as the scriptures say this
and people say, Oh no, Tanya, that's not what we mean.
We don't mean that we can justify genocide and therefore
it's OK to say tested against the scriptures.
And I say, no, it's not OK because you only have to look at
church history. That's all the times that people
(30:12):
justified these horrible actions.
I think about slavery in the 1850s America.
I think about the Pilgrims coming across and killing the
indigenous Americans. Yeah, everyone's and everyone's.
God told me. And then they've got a verse in
the Bible. And I think it happens on a
micro level all the time in individual lives, testing it
(30:33):
against Jesus. The perfect revelation of the
invisible God is where we need to be, I think.
I would put like I'd be OK with tested against scripture if you
can add the qualification testedagainst scripture interreted
from a Jesus centric perspectiveor a cross centered ersective
that would work. But to just go blank card block?
(30:56):
No. It's every subjective thing you
want to find, you'll find. Yeah, absolutely.
When you test it against Jesus, it simplifies it a lot, I think.
I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a ministry in
Uganda amongst the slums where they have no biblical literacy
and they can't read. And I said, how do you teach
them, you know, how to hear the voice of God?
(31:16):
And she said we just tell them the stories of Jesus.
And that makes it really simple,doesn't it, even for a child.
So Greg, I, I was listening to apodcast of yours recently and
you told a story that which I think was profound because it
gives a very Holy Spirit revelation around evil in the
world. And I know that you've had an
(31:36):
interest in the Holocaust. I wonder if you can share that
vision that you had about the young girl interacting with
Hitler. Oh, yeah, this goes back to the
early 90s and Joseph Wetterling had just been kidnapped.
It was a famous case of this kidnapping.
And I've always had and partly autobiographical, but a certain
(31:58):
sensitivity to stuff happening, kids.
It just cut me deep. And so when he was kidnapped, it
threw me into Kevin Faith Tizzy for a while.
And they're looking for him. I can't find him.
And you're wondering what's happening to this kid.
At one point I was praying and it just asking, God, can't you
intervene? Like, why don't you show up
here, have a moratorium? Yeah, there's people.
(32:19):
Free will can hurt people, but not until the age of 12 or
something like that. I was just being honest with
God. And then I got this picture of
Jesus and his playground, and there's all these kids in this
playground playing on them and the crying on Jesus and pulling
out his beard, and they're all wearing these concentration camp
uniforms. And yeah, I've always had a real
thing for the Holocaust. I used to teach a course on God
(32:42):
after Auschwitz, hardest. I finally had to stop teaching
it for mental health issues, butit's always been a hard place
for me. But these kids are all just
having the time of their life and somewhere on swings and
teeter towers and stuff that they're all just having so much
fun and they're crawling at Jesus and, and Jesus turns to
me. And then he just says, he says,
Greg, just trust me. I plan on making it up to the
(33:05):
kids. And after that, he slaughtered
me because in the end, that's what you have to use.
You have to trust him. And I don't that they're getting
all eschatology saved, unsaved, whatever.
And how if love wins in the end,justice will be done for
everyone. And so I just, that was precious
reframe. And then right after that, you
know, make up a kit of kids. I saw a picture, an image in my
(33:27):
mind, this little girl, another girl just in concentration camp
and Hitler's kneeling beat in front of her and she has his
hands on his head and she's saying it's OK Mr. Hitler, I
forgive you and and that always is for me as the most beautiful.
I hope that something like that is true.
(33:47):
Even Hitler will someday find forgiveness from God and from
those who nice have you hear himwaking up to the horror of what
he's done. That's what judgment is in in in
back 217. It says to the this king of I
think it was Babylon, that the horror that you've done to
animals will come back upon you.And I think that's what it is.
You face the reality of what you've done and the truth of
(34:10):
what you've done and that will open up the possibility, open up
an Ave. of repentance and transformation.
But yeah, that's and that alwaysis the most.
I always tell people that heaven, the ultimate eternal
Kingdom, was beyond the new heavens and under the new earth,
that Paul says that the sufferings of this present age
can't be compared to the glory that got it as a store for us.
(34:32):
And, yeah, I can't imagine a glory so wonderful that it
renders the Holocaust and all the other atrocities that
children and others have experienced our history.
It renders them insignificant. I can't even but a picture like.
So I just try to imagine as beautiful as possible and know
that it's better than that. And that picture of the young
(34:53):
girl forgiving Hitler is my apex.
That's the ultimate beautiful thing.
Yeah. Understanding the Spirit.
Sounds like Jesus puts that intostark relief, doesn't it, The
Spirit. So we, the Spirit speaks to
remind us of everything that Jesus taught, but then also to
speak about things to come. That's where Jesus was before he
left the earth. Yeah.
And So what is things to come? It's all the things that come up
(35:15):
in life, the problems, the issues that we face.
So what does it look like to face evil and to deal with those
who hurt us? The Spirit speaks to show us as
the continuing voice of Jesus what that looks like.
Which I think it's why when I heard that story, I thought
it's, it's just so profound. It's such a profound God
conversation for us to understand.
(35:35):
What does it look like to keep hearing God's voice in our
context, in our situation? It's going to sound like Jesus,
isn't it? And the implicit thing.
Here, you know, all we've been saying is that when it comes to
listening to the Spirit, paying attention to your imagination is
extremely important and the HolySpirit is so creative at and
(35:56):
ingenious it giving you just exactly what you need.
I I my greatest healing moments have happened in imaginative
prayer where it you just in the church tradition, they call this
the inner sanctuary and you havea place within you.
It's a it's your sanctuary whereyou can go and you meet God.
You were the things of this things that you spiritual
matters become concrete and tangible and experiential.
(36:17):
This is why I imagine seeing Jesus and talking with Jesus and
Jesus talks to me and sometimes a scene will come up and it's
about my childhood and he'll just show me where he was in
that and how he's bringing good out of that and whatever.
But those are the most healing moments of my life.
And sad to me that so many people never learned the the
beauty and the importance of theimagination and to learn how to
(36:38):
trust that. We always think of it as make
believe, but it's really a portal and you use it as a
portal to make believe. You can also use it as a portal
to the spiritual realm and man, that that's when it gets
exciting. I I love the way you framed
that. When I read your book, Seeing as
Believing, you explained that really well for me,
understanding that the Spirit speaks on the stage of our minds
(36:59):
and it's in that internal space.I when I first started trying to
hear God's voice, I thought it was going to be an external
loud, booming voice. But you you've certainly showing
that is. Oh yeah, yeah, that's.
Exactly. An.
Australian accent. Too.
Yeah, Greg, it has been such a delight to have you on.
I feel like we could chat for hours.
(37:20):
You've got so much wisdom to share.
You and I could vam forever. I think I'd definitely.
Think so. And what I love about you as a
person is that you are a spirit LED man, but you also have the
theology and the mind to to understand and reflect on it.
So you're such a great gift to the church.
Super quickly, I want to recommend a couple of things out
(37:41):
of this podcast. The first one is God Looks like
Jesus, published recently by Jesus Collective.
We've also talked about cross Vision, brilliant book.
And the third one is seeing is believing.
Is that right? Did I get those right, Greg?
All these are highly recommend. These books are super
significant. They really help answer a lot of
these questions around this areaand will encourage you in
(38:04):
practical ways. I've got some good stories in
them as well. Thanks so much, Greg.
Thanks for Ben Meitreed. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for persevering through the.
Technology, if someone wants to,you also have a ministry called
Renew, isn't it? So Renew what's the website
againrenew.org and renews. With a KREKNEW like rethink
(38:24):
everything you thought you knew and you can.
I got a lot of essays on there and I answer all sorts of
questions out there. We got a podcast on there.
Brilliant set of resources you also.
Been doing a series on Revelation I think is on there
as well. That's on Woodland Hills.
Yes, that's OK, we're in. Our second year in the book of.
Revelation. I'm loving it, man.
I used to hate. I'm with you on that one.
Look, just Google Greg Boyd and you'll find him.
(38:46):
Thanks again Everything you readwhen you Google Greg.
Boyd, it's not a possible Oh, that's true.
It's. Just knocking down some of these
preconceived ideas people have had.
We're all on a journey. Thanks again Greg, it's been
awesome to have you. Appreciate you.
God bless. Bye bye.
Thanks for listening to God. Conversations with Tanya Harris
Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the show and your
(39:09):
favorite podcast app. And remember, the Holy Spirit
was given so we could all hear God's voice.
It was never meant to be a one way conversation.
God Conversations with Tanya Harris I.
Think it was Mother Teresa? Someone asked her.
When does God speak to you? And she said, whenever he wants.
How could I know if God was speaking to me?
And how could I know that that was actually just me thinking
about I just had some bad pizza?I just thought it was normal to
dream and have experiences. And she said to me, I actually
(00:21):
have a relationship with Jesus and he talks to me and it just
blew my mind. And then hearing the Lord speak
again very clearly and just say this, this is where I've called
you to love yourself. Jesus said we'd recognise his
voice. It was never meant to be a one
way conversation. How do we know it's God?
(00:43):
It has to be the most common question people ask when it
comes to hearing God's voice in Scripture.
The answer is clear. The Spirit sounds like Jesus.
Everything the Holy Spirit says today is consistent with what
the living Word Jesus has already said and done.
Tragically, we haven't always understood this, and the
(01:03):
consequences in history have been dire.
Hi and welcome to the God Conversations podcast.
My name is Tanya Harris and I'm a pastor, practical theologian,
author, and the founding director of God, Conversations
and Ministry that equips you to recognize and respond to God's
voice. Well, on this show today we are
(01:24):
talking with pastor and academicGreg Boyd all the way from St.
Paul, MN in the United States. Greg is an internationally
recognized theologian, preacher,teacher, apologist, and an
author who's written over 20 books and a whole range of
theological topics, but all of which come down to 1 common
(01:45):
thought that God is like Jesus. Well, given that God is like
Jesus, the Spirit will always sound like Jesus, which is what
we're going to talk about today.It's a fabulous conversations.
You know, one of the reasons whyI wanted to get Greg on is not
only is he a brilliant theologian and a practitioner,
(02:05):
he also lives this out. He knows what it is to hear the
voice of God for himself, to know the way of the Spirit in
his own life and has been transformed by it.
So I know that this is going to be a rich conversation for you
and hopefully help you to think more like the God revealed in
Jesus to discern God's voice more clearly.
(02:26):
Hey, just before we do kick intothis conversation, and I just
want to say hello to our new Irish friends.
If you've just joined the God Conversations community.
I've just come back from Belfastin Northern Ireland and was
ministering there with the Elam Conference and a couple of
wonderful Elam churches there. Had a great time with my Irish
(02:49):
friends. Did have some challenges
checking out the accent, quite hard to understand sometimes
they talk very fast and I, I didtry it on but not very
successfully, but met some wonderful people.
So if you're from Ireland, the Ireland of Ireland, welcome, a
special welcome to you. And hey, don't forget, we also
(03:10):
have a fabulous resource that's available to you at our website,
godconversations.com. We have an e-mail that goes out
every two weeks that notifies you of podcasts and articles and
videos that are regularly comingout.
And also a brand new devotional plan that I encourage you to
check out so you can go to godconversations.com and you
(03:30):
will see us there. But right now, on to a
conversation with Greg Boyd. All around the Spirit sounds
like Jesus. Greg, so great to have you on
the podcast and we've had some fun connecting in Zoom and
software has problems connectingwith the USI think at the
moment, but so great to have youhere.
(03:52):
Really good to be here, thanks for inviting me on.
Greg, I first actually met you some years ago, actually when I
was asking a whole bunch of questions and I came across your
book, God of the Possible. And I was asking about when God
speaks and can we be sure what happens if someone says no?
Can we be assured that it's always going to happen?
And then I came across your bookand that was when I first met
(04:14):
you. Love your work and we just so
excited to have you on the podcast today.
Perhaps for those people who don't know you, you could
introduce yourself a little bit.What's a little bit of the Greg
Boyd story, how you got to be doing what you're doing now?
OK, well Greg Boyd, pastor, Woodland Hills Church in
Maplewood, MN. I've been going for 33 years.
(04:35):
I was Co founder of that church and I really never saw myself as
a pastor. I thought I was going to be a
professor. But we we started Woodland Hills
as a side gig and after about 10years, I really with the Lord
telling me to let go of the academia and pour myself into
the church work. I'm a pastor.
I'm also an author and an armchair theologian and I like
to play drums. I'm married to a wonderful
(04:57):
woman, Shelley. We're going on our 45th
anniversary and we've got six kids and three and three kids
and six grandchildren and a sweet little quirky dog, Saint
Paul. I love how you call yourself an
armchair theologian, Greg, Perhaps a little more than that,
given your the amount of books and the work that you've done.
(05:18):
I think what I love about your work is that you are able to
take lofty concepts and make them understandable for everyday
people. Just love what you do there.
Our our podcast is all about Godconversations and I wondered if
you could share a little bit of a perhaps a God conversation
with time when God spoke to you that's been significant for you.
(05:39):
I I don't know if this is God first stations covers a lot of
ground and I talk about God all the time.
So I got to think about this onethat's interesting to me is I
have a lot of my most interesting conversations about
God are with atheists. And so I have a friend, a really
good friend with a runs this, I call it a ministry.
He calls it a service, but wherehe in throws parties once a
(06:00):
month and it runs it like a disco.
But he invites people with cognitive disabilities and other
disabilities to come, as well aspeople who are neurotypical and
to come and party together because these folks are the most
quarantined, invisible people insociety, and they never get a
chance to go out and be normal with normal peoples.
Everyone comes together. We throw off all labels.
(06:20):
The. His minister is called the Tap,
and his slogan is proudly dislabeled.
He now runs that mystery out of our church, even though this guy
is an atheist. And so he and I have got to be
good friends. And he loves to smoke cigars.
So we'll go out and smoke a cigar and talk about, oh, God,
every once in awhile. And The thing is, this guy gets
love. He really understands love.
(06:40):
Yeah, but I'm trying to show himthat living for the purpose of
love only makes sense if love isthe ultimate context of the
universe, if God is love, if there's a creator of his love.
Otherwise it's just a neurochemical reaction in their
head. So we're talking about this and
I end up saying to him, look, Dan, here's the thing.
If I'm right, then I'm going to live my life as though God is
(07:02):
love, as though Jesus is the full revelation of God.
Because I think I've got reasonsfor believing that.
I'm not certain, but I'm going to live that way and on faith,
like as though that's true. And if I'm right, I'll know it.
But if you're right, you're on one hand, you have to live
without any kind of hope whatsoever, which is a miserable
way to live. In my case, I'll live with hope,
I'll live with love. And if I die in a moron, I still
(07:25):
live my best life, right? But if I But in this case, he'll
never know if he's right. So you live with me his life and
you'll never know whether it wasworth it or not.
Why not just embrace this and I I didn't convince him, but you
move the goal posts a little bit.
I slowly winning lower. I finally got him to he's now
the first atheist I know who is an atheist despite the fact that
(07:46):
he's got an accurate picture of God.
Almost every atheist, in fact every other atheist I know, they
have jaded pictures of God. The God they reject is a God.
I would reject this guy as I've explained things he's listened
to some of my sermons. He gets his gospel.
He still doesn't bow the knee, but I think you'll get there.
That's a pretty good starting point, isn't it?
I love that, Craig. We're talking about God looks
(08:08):
like Jesus, the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
And you've just released a book,very simple book that's released
also with Jesus Collective. And you tell a story at the
beginning of that book, a God conversation when just in terms
of your own journey about your ideas about what God was like.
Do you want to share perhaps that story?
I think you're referring to thisstory where the area Bible of
(08:31):
the Romans 8 yes, yeah. So I so I was saved to this
hyper holiness Pentecostal sectarian church.
And man would they had more rules you could shake a stick
at. But I really followed Christ
there. I really did.
I I I met God and my life reallywent under real transformation.
But in one area that I couldn't ever kick was pornography.
(08:52):
And I was living with my dad at the time and my dad, ever since
I was 13, he's left his hooker magazine's out.
He just thought it was normal for kids to have access to that.
And nowadays every kid access tothat.
Unfortunately, the back in the 70s, I was a real exception.
I was a popular kid in the block'cause I could give all the
stash to my friends. Anyways, when I become a
Christian, I got to deal with this.
(09:13):
I'm 17th at the time. You're a walking hormone and
I've got access to this porn. And in this church, you're only
saved as your last sinless moment.
Every sin Brooks Fellowship you had to repent and get received
and so I was getting saved and re saved daily.
It was I was a yo-yo on God's strength and I would go on
Sunday nights we'd have a conversion story or evangelism
service and I'd always go forward and recommit my life to
(09:35):
Christ. I'm sorry and I'll withstand
this pornography. I won't never again and I'd make
it to me the Wednesday and a good week, but then I'd fall and
then I'd figure I'm unsafe so I might as well enjoy myself.
So then you go on a sin binge and and then I get re saved
Sunday. I finally after two years of
this gave up and there was 1 evangelist service where I
didn't go forward. I was tired of this who am I
(09:56):
kidding? And so we walked out of this
church. We were talking out in the
church parking lot while everyone else left and in the
end we were the only ones there and we're into this parking lot
light and he's the only kid in the first in the church.
I could tell my issues to. I everyone else in this church,
they're worried about girls showing their elbows and
covering their knees with their dresses.
My issues are a little beyond that.
We're all this church working a lot.
(10:16):
And I, I was just saying, I'm done with this.
I can't do it anymore. And I get again to get angry at
God because it's like, God, you set me up with these hormones.
You give me this dag who just thinks it's normal to have
Bernardo roll around. You step me up.
How am I supposed to? And now you're going to send me
to hell because I can't live according to your rules.
But there's I didn't have, I didn't stand a fighting chance
and I was just, I was what I hada lot of anger about God that I
(10:39):
had not dealt with. And I just blew up my friend
because at one point he, he tooka step a couple steps back, I
think because he was afraid thatI was going to get hit with
Thunderbolt because I was laughing.
I was like, I was, I can't tell you what I was saying to God.
At one point he said, Greg, and he struggled with this too, not
as severely as me, but we both had this.
And he says, Greg, we must be missing something.
We must be missing something. And I in anger took my King
(11:00):
James Bible and I threw it on the truck of his car and flopped
open. And I started to read it
sarcastically and I read there is therefore now no condemnation
to them or in Christ Jesus. Is that where we're missing Tom,
There is therefore and then I just I just stopped at what does
that verse even mean? There is therefore now no
condemnation to them which aren't crazy Jesus, you know,
and and and I started reading out.
(11:21):
You've got to be forced who could be again and for the first
time. It's like when I finally got
honest with God and looking backon it, I I think that was the
most honest prayer I'd ever prayed, even though it was vile.
It was Job, but it was came out like gut.
No more this pious Willy nilly thou thither with her.
It's here's what I really think.It's like God said, Hey, thanks
for the honesty. Here's some honesty back at you
(11:43):
and boom, it was a revelation and I finally got a picture of
God that loved me ahead of apartfrom my behavior, ahead of my
behavior. His love is what transforms my
behavior. It's that my behavior is the
precondition for his love. So a God who loved me instead of
just my behavior, my picture of God was a behavioral God,
behavioralist. If you've got what he really is
(12:04):
interested in that people, it's behavior.
You got holy behavior, you're inthe holy behavior, you're out.
So people are really in consequence of the equation.
And so I didn't feel loved in that.
I feared that. And the thing we talked about
God is love. Oh, the love of God, love of
God. But man, the love was so
restricted and tiny and conditional impunity and full
threats wasn't really threats oflove, love at all.
(12:27):
And then the other thing that happened with that was that I,
for the first time, I got a motivation where I actually
wanted to live for God. I I like I I such as I have to
no, I'm a King's kid. And when I got that I'm a King's
kid, I saw that I'm better than the smut that I'm pigsty that I
wallow in. I'm a kid.
I got Jesus, man, This didn't all come on that one night, but
(12:49):
the gist of it did. But I've got he's declared me
holy and righteous. Why would I want to go down to
the pigsty? And and then in the final thing
I'll share is that that had as apart of this tail end like a
scene. And it started as a scene that I
had seen as a adolescent and it was from a Penthouse magazine.
It was very lustful and just fora 13 up kid to yolks of energy.
(13:14):
But now I saw them, they were covered in there were these two
girls. It was just as I remembered it,
except now they're covered in this like vomit and this
excrement and pus and it's voweland there's maggots and it's as
vile and it's finally seeing it as God sees it.
Now it it, if I represent that as a positive thing, my hormones
(13:37):
are didn't want to get it. But if you frame it in truth and
frame it as God sees it, and that is a turn off if ever there
was one. And then I occurred in the
background and this is all taking place in my imagination.
A girl screaming, a little girl screaming.
And it was just God's way of anchoring in this truth that
when you vote yes to this activity, you're voting yes to
this activity. The kidnapping, the trafficking
(13:58):
of our little children, It's thesame demonic, perverted empire.
You don't want to give any energy to that.
And so I've encouraged a lot of men.
And the truth is, I'm told this is somewhat true of women, but
I've never been the one to speakto them.
But that men who have struggled with this, but the battle, it's
good if you can resist the temptation and put in all the
blocks and all the safeguards and all the stuff that you have
(14:18):
so that you can't watch it and keep feeding your brain this
pornographic stuff. But real freedom is not when you
just say no to what you want. Real freedom is changing what
you want. And that takes place on how you
frame things. You have a choice.
Am I going to think about this as something that I know my
flesh is going to desire, or am I going to reframe it in a way
that that speaks to according totruth that sees it the way God
(14:41):
sees it? It was appropriate time to
imagine it in real lustful ways,and that's in your marriage.
But imagine the heck out of that.
Go for it. But when it comes to I'll say
the marriage put extra mint vilestuff on it and it's as.
A yeah, I love the way the Spirit gave you God's
perspective. Like, that's a just a powerful
thing, isn't it? And then helping, you know,
(15:01):
motivate transformational change.
Greg, coming back to your experience as a young man and
how you saw God, I can relate tothat because I had that same
kind of framing. We're talking about how God is
like Jesus. That means that we can have a
perception that God is like something else.
Where do we get that perception from?
That God is like something else.If I don't understand that God
(15:23):
is like Jesus, where do I get myunderstanding of God from?
The thing is, you'll just absorbit.
You'll get it from a song that you heard and a sermon that you
heard or something that someone said or something that you read
or something your own brain inferred.
And it will just be a godly gookof slam together of a montage of
different things. Yeah, and often a reflection of
ourselves too. I think we project what we think
(15:44):
about God, the prosperity God. I want finances, I want material
blessings. So I'm going to project that
onto to God, or I've got an anger problem, so I'm going to
project violence onto God. Greg, one of the pivotal things
that we talk a lot about God conversations, hearing the voice
of the God, voice of God, hearing the voice of the Spirit.
And one of the most common questions that people asked me
(16:05):
was how do I know that it's God?And so the question of what God
is like becomes super, super important because absolutely
discern what the Spirit is saying is the reflection of
God's character and nature. It's, I think the most important
question that you can answer. It's what is your mental
conception of God? Because if you think about it,
(16:28):
the only God you know is the onethat you experience between your
ears. And so your love for God is
never going to outrun the love ability of your mental
conception of God. Your passion for God will never
outrun is you have a conception of God that's worth being
passionate about and the beauty of your life.
Because we always are transformed into the image of
whatever God we're worshiping. That's kind of a principle and
(16:50):
it works for better or for worse.
But so the beauty of our life will never outrun the beauty of
our mental conception of God. Everything hangs on how do you
conceive of the divine being? And here's where I think the
most important revelation. This is why I wrote the book God
Looks Like Jesus. I think it's the most important
revelation there is and that is that God looks like Jesus and
more specifically, God looks like Jesus suffering on the
(17:10):
cross for you, for every person,for the whole creation.
God is that. But John says God is love verse
7 for eight and he says here's how we know what love is.
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
So also we should lay down our life for one another.
And so God is this self giving other oriented love, this humble
self sacrificial love. And that's the ultimate
(17:31):
criteria. So anything that I hear in my
head, this helps me when I have thoughts in my head.
And if it's something that true love, perfect love would say, I
assume God said it because I think God's talking to us all
the time. And So what would perfect love
say to you now if perfect love had something to say?
(17:52):
And just listen to that. And if what you hear is
reflective of that, I encourage people to just assume that was a
God-given. And so when there's promptings
in what happens a lot is it would confess Jesus Christ as
Lord. But we retain the reigns of
99.99% of our life. We make our plans, we go about
our day, we do our business and maybe we should prepare here and
(18:13):
there or whatever, but we go about our plans.
And then when I when things pop into our head that aren't
according to our plans, we dismiss them.
We don't, they don't even register our cut.
We get so habitual at this we just dismiss them and we've
turned off the voice of God and then we're wondering where is
God where is God. Sometimes we turn off that voice
because it interrupts our plans.It's rain fart.
(18:36):
Oh, forget about that whatever give $20 that guy over there.
Why would I do that? I got answer.
We just go on our way and we miss all these opportunities to
be used as the body of Christ tothe hands and feet of Jesus in
this world. So the ultimate criteria is, is
it is what you're hearing something that Jesus would say?
Is it loving? Is it other oranges, self
sacrificial? And often you'll know that it's
(18:58):
the voice of God because it is convicting and that you really
know when you're hearing from God, when you hear stuff that
you don't want to hear. So I'm just reflecting on your
own journey. What is interesting to me when I
understand the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
First of all, no condemnation. So struggling with an area of
sin, but when the Spirit speaks,it's without condemnation.
(19:20):
And then the Spirit helps motivate to transform, not by
condemning you or shaming you, but showing truth of so for the
pornography thing, giving truthsthat then calves away for you to
move away from it, I think. And so when we think we talk
about the Spirit sounds like Jesus.
That's how Jesus treated people when he caught the woman in
(19:42):
adultery, he didn't throw rocks at her.
He said go and sin no more. And so you've got this
beautiful, loving response that involves discipline, which is
very different to guilt and shame, isn't it?
And. Absolute no.
I whenever the Spirit says it has a convicting word for me,
(20:03):
it's always along the lines of come on, Greg, you're better
than this, you're better than this.
The Spirit's always right. So I encourage people look.
When you hear something convicting, when the Spirit
speaks to you and it's not something you want to do, maybe
you don't think you're ready to give that up yet.
You're not whatever. Rather than dismissing it as not
(20:25):
being of God, rather than sayingwhat God didn't say that, which
is how what we usually do, but that just makes us good at not
hearing God. The more you hear his voice and
respond to it, the clearer you'll hear the voice.
And the less you, the more you dismiss it, the less clearly
you'll hear it. And so rather than do that, be
honest and just say I'm not ready to give it up yet.
Yeah, but don't deny that you'rehearing God.
(20:47):
You're hearing God and but you're not ready to give it up
yet with the Lord. That's.
Such a good wisdom, Greg. We're talking to Greg Boyd,
pastor and theologian all the way from Minnesota in the US.
We'll be back in just a moment. The Creator God is a
communicator. Jesus himself came as the living
Word and later sent the Holy Spirit so that we could all hear
(21:11):
God's voice for ourselves. But what does God sound like?
How do I know it's God? And what difference does hearing
God's voice make in my life? These questions and more are
answered in the God Conversations Online course.
Biblical foundations and pastoral wisdom are brought
together in this seven week series that includes streamable
(21:33):
videos, digital study guide, andbonus resources.
You can join with a small group.We recommend that if you can or
study it on your own, you know, Jesus's promise was that we
could all recognize his voice and follow and he sent to us the
Spirit so that we could do just that.
It was never meant to be a one way conversation.
(21:55):
Come check it out now at godconversations.com/courses.
And we really pray that it is a blessing to you.
Welcome back to God Conversations chatting with
friend and pastor and theologianGreg Boyd who has written a
mountain of books. But I think probably the catch
cry of your life is this beautiful messaging around God
(22:17):
looks like Jesus. Greg, The big question for me on
my journey, having started to hear the voice of God as a young
woman, I remember very clearly then going back to the Bible and
going, OK, the Spirit sounds like Jesus, but hang on a
minute. In my Bible I read, God told
people to commit genocide. God told people, God spoke to
Hosea to marry a prostitute. God said to people in Nazareth
(22:40):
time to divorce their spouses because of different races.
And so if we come to God and say, how do I know it's God?
I was always told to test it against the scriptures.
And I remember thinking if I tested against the Scriptures,
someone could justify genocide. And this is where I went on this
big journey of, OK, hang on, what does the Spirit sound like?
(23:02):
And then in my PHDI landed very squarely on the Spirit sounds,
Jesus, and I know you've done a lot of work in this area as
well. What difference does it make
when we realize that we should be discerning the Spirit of the
Spirit's voice against Jesus, asopposed to perhaps the
Scriptures as a whole? Because you say follow the
(23:24):
scriptures, like as you just pointed out, man, you can find
some nasty stuff in there that supplies in the face of what
Jesus is about, genocide being the case in point.
Go slaughter the mole. Everything that breeds every
man, woman, child, even the animals.
But then it's the spare of the trees because they've done
nothing wrong, which you might have thought would apply to
babies. I don't know, but I think it's
bizarre stuff. So here's where I think I I
(23:46):
propose in my book, what I call it cruciform Hermaniotic that
the cross is the center of everything Jesus was about.
And so Jesus is the center of everything God's about and the
cross is the center of everything Jesus was about his
whole ministry. And I I spent a lot of time
laying out the evidence. The cross is the definitive
revelation of what God's like and that should be the lens by
which we discern everything elsein Scripture.
(24:07):
Jesus said all Scripture points to me.
It even specified points to to to the cross in in in Luke 24.
And so we should read all Scripture pointing to the
revelation better went to the revelation of God on the cross.
So how does a passage of scripture like genocide go
slaughter them all, show them nomercy.
Be careful you make sure you show no mercy.
You might be tempted to because it's hard to kill women and
(24:28):
babies, but show no mercy. Can you imagine Jesus ever
saying that? So how does a picture like that
point to bear witness to the Godis revealed on the cross in
here's what I propose. I wrestled with this for so long
before I start to get some clarity and I'm not I I still
won't say that I had a Holy Spirit revelation That's for the
church to discern. But here's what I think that
(24:49):
when I stopped in that I began to declared when I asked the
question how does God reveal himself on the cross and and the
cross if that we on the surface that reveals God, we on the
surface reveals us. It reveals the ugliness of our
sin, but what reveals God is we know that God stepped into our
sin right he went this evident distance is what's an
unsurpassable distance even experiences separation from the
(25:12):
father and becoming our sin saysin Corinthians 5 so that we
could be reconciled to him. So God reveals himself.
The revelation of God on the cross comes not by what you see
physically or what can be naturally discerned, but what by
fate. It's what's going on behind the
scenes. It's a God who Stoops an
infinite distance to enter into solidarity with people who are
(25:33):
who are sinful. He bears that sin, and he takes
in an appearance that reflects the ugliness of that sin.
So if this is the center of whatthe Bible's all about, maybe we
should read the Bible knowing that God reveals himself at
least sometimes by stooping to enter into our sin.
It takes on an appearance that reflects the ugliness of that
sin. And my proposal is that whenever
(25:53):
we come to sections of Scripture, you also have to read
Scripture with bifocals, becauseyou have to read the cross with
bifocals. What's on the surface, what's
going on behind the scenes, what's going on behind the
surface or what's going on on the surface?
That's what you can determine byexegesis.
What did the original author mean?
And all the rest. But that often reflects not
God's will, but reflects our sin.
(26:15):
But what reflect God's will whenwe find the sinful sections of
the Bible and even simple depictions of God, what reveals
God to us is that we're seeing God stepping into how people
thought about him. God is if God is love, he's not
coercive. He doesn't manipulate neuro Nets
in order to get people to believe true things.
He works by means of loving influence.
(26:36):
And if he works by means of a loving influence, that means
there comes a point where he's got to refrain and accept the
people as they are. And so I think the Holy Spirit's
always been moving and influencing as much as possible,
but there's a point where God has to accept them as they are,
And that's where he's inspiring them to tell the story.
That's where he's willing to, out of love for them, out of
covenantal solidarity, enter into their conception of him.
(26:59):
And he relates to them through their conception of him, even
though their conception of him is very typical of ancient
nearest and people. It's very violent, very bloody
and sometimes genocidal and so Isee all the passage of
scriptures all the passage of the Scripture that that that are
sub Christ's life bear witness to the God who condescended to
(27:19):
take out our sin on Calvary. Yeah.
And I think that understanding of revelation is super, super
helpful. So what was happening, say, for
the prophets of old? And Hebrews says in the past God
spoke through the prophets, but now God has spoken through the
Son. So we get the definitive
revelation of God in Jesus. But what was happening with
those prophets, they were hearing God through the filter
(27:42):
of their understanding of what God was like.
So we come back to what we were saying at the beginning.
And in the ancient world, peopleunderstood the gods were violent
and they were territorial and they were like that.
The spirit, I love the way that you describe it as the spirit
breaking through. So what in Scripture?
And this super helped me. I think your book particularly
(28:02):
Cross Vision, which is when you explain some of this, where you
talk about you see the spirit breaking through in some in
people's lives throughout the biblical history.
So you see increasingly God saying that them hearing what
God is full of mercy and kindness and glow to anger and
patience mixed in with God's head commit genocide.
(28:24):
So you get this increasing revelation and in some ways
tracks our own walk, doesn't it?Because we're moving into truth.
And so the degree to which we can hear God's voice is a degree
to which we can receive revelation of what God is like
in Jesus. Would you say that's a good way
of describing it? I think it's an excellent way of
(28:46):
describing it. There's also a way of, you know,
this isn't new with me in the early church.
Excuse me, I think it was Gregory of Niazi Anzen.
But this is representative of a lot of different people.
But he'd be liking the human race to one person.
And just one person has to grow to maturity and learn things.
So also we as a human race had to grow.
(29:07):
And so Gregory Nazhansen says atfirst God accommodated their
sacrifices. He just changed the purpose of
him. Later on he says I don't want
your sacrifices. I never want to just you hear
things. I saw that because it looks like
it looks contradictory, doesn't it?
When you read these passages side by side and you realize
it's almost like you can't handle the truth.
(29:28):
But as you get to know me and you come closer, you can start
to handle it. No.
And you find that where different passes of Scripture,
where the Lord says now you're my servants, someday you'll call
me friend. And so there's this promise.
And then when more's coming, Jesus is that more?
I love that I say they're calling.
It's interesting when I was starting to teach this a lot
more now. What does the Spirit sound like?
(29:49):
One of the key tests we advocate, the language we use is
would Jesus say this as opposed to as the scriptures say this
and people say, Oh no, Tanya, that's not what we mean.
We don't mean that we can justify genocide and therefore
it's OK to say tested against the scriptures.
And I say, no, it's not OK because you only have to look at
church history. That's all the times that people
(30:12):
justified these horrible actions.
I think about slavery in the 1850s America.
I think about the Pilgrims coming across and killing the
indigenous Americans. Yeah, everyone's and everyone's.
God told me. And then they've got a verse in
the Bible. And I think it happens on a
micro level all the time in individual lives, testing it
(30:33):
against Jesus. The perfect revelation of the
invisible God is where we need to be, I think.
I would put like I'd be OK with tested against scripture if you
can add the qualification testedagainst scripture interreted
from a Jesus centric perspectiveor a cross centered ersective
that would work. But to just go blank card block?
(30:56):
No. It's every subjective thing you
want to find, you'll find. Yeah, absolutely.
When you test it against Jesus, it simplifies it a lot, I think.
I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a ministry in
Uganda amongst the slums where they have no biblical literacy
and they can't read. And I said, how do you teach
them, you know, how to hear the voice of God?
(31:16):
And she said we just tell them the stories of Jesus.
And that makes it really simple,doesn't it, even for a child.
So Greg, I, I was listening to apodcast of yours recently and
you told a story that which I think was profound because it
gives a very Holy Spirit revelation around evil in the
world. And I know that you've had an
(31:36):
interest in the Holocaust. I wonder if you can share that
vision that you had about the young girl interacting with
Hitler. Oh, yeah, this goes back to the
early 90s and Joseph Wetterling had just been kidnapped.
It was a famous case of this kidnapping.
And I've always had and partly autobiographical, but a certain
(31:58):
sensitivity to stuff happening, kids.
It just cut me deep. And so when he was kidnapped, it
threw me into Kevin Faith Tizzy for a while.
And they're looking for him. I can't find him.
And you're wondering what's happening to this kid.
At one point I was praying and it just asking, God, can't you
intervene? Like, why don't you show up
here, have a moratorium? Yeah, there's people.
(32:19):
Free will can hurt people, but not until the age of 12 or
something like that. I was just being honest with
God. And then I got this picture of
Jesus and his playground, and there's all these kids in this
playground playing on them and the crying on Jesus and pulling
out his beard, and they're all wearing these concentration camp
uniforms. And yeah, I've always had a real
thing for the Holocaust. I used to teach a course on God
(32:42):
after Auschwitz, hardest. I finally had to stop teaching
it for mental health issues, butit's always been a hard place
for me. But these kids are all just
having the time of their life and somewhere on swings and
teeter towers and stuff that they're all just having so much
fun and they're crawling at Jesus and, and Jesus turns to
me. And then he just says, he says,
Greg, just trust me. I plan on making it up to the
(33:05):
kids. And after that, he slaughtered
me because in the end, that's what you have to use.
You have to trust him. And I don't that they're getting
all eschatology saved, unsaved, whatever.
And how if love wins in the end,justice will be done for
everyone. And so I just, that was precious
reframe. And then right after that, you
know, make up a kit of kids. I saw a picture, an image in my
(33:27):
mind, this little girl, another girl just in concentration camp
and Hitler's kneeling beat in front of her and she has his
hands on his head and she's saying it's OK Mr. Hitler, I
forgive you and and that always is for me as the most beautiful.
I hope that something like that is true.
(33:47):
Even Hitler will someday find forgiveness from God and from
those who nice have you hear himwaking up to the horror of what
he's done. That's what judgment is in in in
back 217. It says to the this king of I
think it was Babylon, that the horror that you've done to
animals will come back upon you.And I think that's what it is.
You face the reality of what you've done and the truth of
(34:10):
what you've done and that will open up the possibility, open up
an Ave. of repentance and transformation.
But yeah, that's and that alwaysis the most.
I always tell people that heaven, the ultimate eternal
Kingdom, was beyond the new heavens and under the new earth,
that Paul says that the sufferings of this present age
can't be compared to the glory that got it as a store for us.
(34:32):
And, yeah, I can't imagine a glory so wonderful that it
renders the Holocaust and all the other atrocities that
children and others have experienced our history.
It renders them insignificant. I can't even but a picture like.
So I just try to imagine as beautiful as possible and know
that it's better than that. And that picture of the young
(34:53):
girl forgiving Hitler is my apex.
That's the ultimate beautiful thing.
Yeah. Understanding the Spirit.
Sounds like Jesus puts that intostark relief, doesn't it, The
Spirit. So we, the Spirit speaks to
remind us of everything that Jesus taught, but then also to
speak about things to come. That's where Jesus was before he
left the earth. Yeah.
And So what is things to come? It's all the things that come up
(35:15):
in life, the problems, the issues that we face.
So what does it look like to face evil and to deal with those
who hurt us? The Spirit speaks to show us as
the continuing voice of Jesus what that looks like.
Which I think it's why when I heard that story, I thought
it's, it's just so profound. It's such a profound God
conversation for us to understand.
(35:35):
What does it look like to keep hearing God's voice in our
context, in our situation? It's going to sound like Jesus,
isn't it? And the implicit thing.
Here, you know, all we've been saying is that when it comes to
listening to the Spirit, paying attention to your imagination is
extremely important and the HolySpirit is so creative at and
(35:56):
ingenious it giving you just exactly what you need.
I I my greatest healing moments have happened in imaginative
prayer where it you just in the church tradition, they call this
the inner sanctuary and you havea place within you.
It's a it's your sanctuary whereyou can go and you meet God.
You were the things of this things that you spiritual
matters become concrete and tangible and experiential.
(36:17):
This is why I imagine seeing Jesus and talking with Jesus and
Jesus talks to me and sometimes a scene will come up and it's
about my childhood and he'll just show me where he was in
that and how he's bringing good out of that and whatever.
But those are the most healing moments of my life.
And sad to me that so many people never learned the the
beauty and the importance of theimagination and to learn how to
(36:38):
trust that. We always think of it as make
believe, but it's really a portal and you use it as a
portal to make believe. You can also use it as a portal
to the spiritual realm and man, that that's when it gets
exciting. I I love the way you framed
that. When I read your book, Seeing as
Believing, you explained that really well for me,
understanding that the Spirit speaks on the stage of our minds
(36:59):
and it's in that internal space.I when I first started trying to
hear God's voice, I thought it was going to be an external
loud, booming voice. But you you've certainly showing
that is. Oh yeah, yeah, that's.
Exactly. An.
Australian accent. Too.
Yeah, Greg, it has been such a delight to have you on.
I feel like we could chat for hours.
(37:20):
You've got so much wisdom to share.
You and I could vam forever. I think I'd definitely.
Think so. And what I love about you as a
person is that you are a spirit LED man, but you also have the
theology and the mind to to understand and reflect on it.
So you're such a great gift to the church.
Super quickly, I want to recommend a couple of things out
(37:41):
of this podcast. The first one is God Looks like
Jesus, published recently by Jesus Collective.
We've also talked about cross Vision, brilliant book.
And the third one is seeing is believing.
Is that right? Did I get those right, Greg?
All these are highly recommend. These books are super
significant. They really help answer a lot of
these questions around this areaand will encourage you in
(38:04):
practical ways. I've got some good stories in
them as well. Thanks so much, Greg.
Thanks for Ben Meitreed. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for persevering through the.
Technology, if someone wants to,you also have a ministry called
Renew, isn't it? So Renew what's the website
againrenew.org and renews. With a KREKNEW like rethink
(38:24):
everything you thought you knew and you can.
I got a lot of essays on there and I answer all sorts of
questions out there. We got a podcast on there.
Brilliant set of resources you also.
Been doing a series on Revelation I think is on there
as well. That's on Woodland Hills.
Yes, that's OK, we're in. Our second year in the book of.
Revelation. I'm loving it, man.
I used to hate. I'm with you on that one.
Look, just Google Greg Boyd and you'll find him.
(38:46):
Thanks again Everything you readwhen you Google Greg.
Boyd, it's not a possible Oh, that's true.
It's. Just knocking down some of these
preconceived ideas people have had.
We're all on a journey. Thanks again Greg, it's been
awesome to have you. Appreciate you.
God bless. Bye bye.
Thanks for listening to God. Conversations with Tanya Harris
Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the show and your
(39:09):
favorite podcast app. And remember, the Holy Spirit
was given so we could all hear God's voice.
It was never meant to be a one way conversation.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!