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Unknown
Welcome to the Ordinary Discipleship podcast with Jessie Cruickshank. I am Chris. And here with me today is Julian. And I got to tell you, man, man discipleship we've been talking about, right? Ordinary, mediocre discipleship is what we've been talking about. But if discipleship changes us, if it changes us to what is it changing? What exactly does discipleship change?

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Unknown
Well, I think. Doesn't it make you skinnier? Yes. Changes your face. £40 and becoming my best self. I would I would want to do, if you remember, like those things. Here's an offshoot. Do you remember like they had like the the biblical cookbook and stuff like eat. I've eaten the Daniels fast multiple. you have. Yeah. Ezekiel bread.

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Unknown
Isn't that make you more holy Ezekiel. Yeah. It's actually really good for you. But that's is stuff that's in the freezer, right? Like, it's got, like, you go to the section. It's the weird church bread that's in the. For me, it is. Well, you get it at Costco in California is probably $50 alone felt there. Yeah. I mean, I, I believe in only drinking alcohol made by, you know, monks and nuns, you know, Trappists.

00;01;19;24 - 00;01;45;22
Unknown
That's a lie. Trappist. Do you have any Trappist gin back here? Okay. They don't make do they make beer? That's a beer specific. Okay, So, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay, so now we've known a little bit more about you, but discipleship does not help you lose weight and is not a cookbook plan. But if we are being disabled in community, what are some of the things that are being changed?

00;01;45;23 - 00;02;03;06
Unknown
Like what is the advantage of it? Right. We become more Christlike. Okay. What does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know. Like, do I want to go? You know what I don't want to do my church. A couple of months ago had a road clean up. I feel like I'm pretty Christlike. But you know what I didn't want to do?

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Unknown
Go do a freakin road cleanup. I had no desire. And, like, I'm not feeling very good, Pastor. Yes. I didn't want to do it. Set that up. No, I stopped it. After that. I was like, I don't want to do these meaningless things, but like, then I felt like really guilty after I was going to say, that may not be meaningless to everybody.

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Unknown
I know it's not because, God, we got to. We're called to care for creation. I buried myself already in the first couple of minutes. Anyhow, so what I'm hearing off of you, I have a lot of shame. You have shame? I have so much shame, Shame, shame, shame. I want to where the letter I was. I was actually taught growing up, not by my parents, but by the church we attended.

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Unknown
That shame was the method of discipleship. What was not so shame was what they instilled in you. Yeah. In order to like you weren't good enough. Right. And that you were bad. And they. I mean, at my church for the youth group, this isn't. This is a real story. There's no hyperbole is that they did this little skit and maybe you've seen this because they had to get it from some land in a purity ring.

00;03;09;27 - 00;03;36;16
Unknown
No, but it did have like somebody do something wrong. And then they went and they nailed Jesus up to the cross. my God. And they're like, every time you sing, you are nailing Jesus to the cross again. Don't you feel bad because he already died once? Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that one news before, too. And that's get this idea that we're going to cause shame in people and that's going to be the thing that helps them do, you know, do the right thing.

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Unknown
so I just don't think that that stands up to scripture. Okay, So check this out. This when I was in college, I may or may not have gone to a couple of clubs sometimes. And I remember leaving one time very late, and there was the street preacher on the side of the road. Right. And he's like, got the huge sign and he's like, You're going to repent.

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Unknown
You're all going to hell. Shame, shame, shame. And I remember like, thinking to myself, Does this ever work? Does this ever work? And I had the conversation with the guy. I'm like, Does this? Yeah. He goes, I'm going to have a I'm going to have a church service here at 230 where I make everybody pancakes. And I'm like, I don't see this working.

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Unknown
Like, don't you attract more bees with honey than. Well, I think it's the wrong question. that's good, right? Well, yeah, I was going to say, I don't think it I don't think it was. Hi, Julia.

00;04;29;28 - 00;04;53;07
Unknown
How's it going? Stripping down a little bit, honey. But, you know, when you. It's Shame is not an evangelistic strategy. It's not the way that you grow your church. Right. But let's be real. Shame is a result of the fall, and all of us deal with it when shape or form and shame literally like it, it freezes us.

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Unknown
And in so many ways, we don't. We don't have it. Sometimes we don't have the words to name it. We just know that it exists because we have this feeling, this feeling somewhere deep inside of something going on. And you're like, okay, wait. I just I keep we call it getting stuck. I feel like I'm just I can't move forward.

00;05;10;03 - 00;05;38;06
Unknown
I don't know what's going on. I've prayed the prayers I keep going back to I can't hear from God. I'm just I'm stuck in this pattern over and over and over again. And I'm calling out to Jesus. I'm praying. I want to be changed by Jesus. I believe everything that I'm hearing on a Sunday morning. I actually want to be disabled by Jesus and be changed by him, but I'm not moving forward and what we what what I've seen, you know, I have a good friend of mine who was struggling with this.

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Unknown
We were praying through some things and she said and she gave me permission to share the story. But she was she was continuing to deal with just this being stuck. She's like, I just can't move forward. I can't move forward. I can't move forward. And she's like, I know what it is. She had something really terrible happen to her, and she says, I've walked through forgiveness.

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Unknown
I've forgiven the person that wronged me. And and I just happen to say, well, maybe you need to forgive yourself. It was a passing statement. Super, not spiritual, nothing even super important. It was just maybe you need to forgive yourself. And she's like, No, no, whatever. She actually called me up two weeks later and said, Can we go to coffee?

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Unknown
And when we went to coffee, she said, I realized I had allowed this person into my life. And because I had allowed them into my life, I had never forgiven myself. But she said it took me hours before the Lord. And when as soon as that happened, I saw a breakthrough, I began to hear from God again. I began to see God move and I began to see what Jesus, everything that you've been talking about, all the freedom, it set me free.

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Unknown
And that community is important, folks. Community is important. And I can tell you, she was set free. And I've been set free because of how Jesus, this is the power of forgiveness and this is the power of repentance. Jesse as well. I love the brain science behind repentance. We share that. Yeah, Yeah. So couple interesting things that we need to know about the brain.

00;06;58;18 - 00;07;24;22
Unknown
One is that God made it and it existed before the fall. So the way that your brain works isn't necessarily fallen. It's just been hijacked. Okay. So I'm, you know, I don't believe. I believe in original glory. Like, God made us good. So then the other thing that's interesting about the brain is that your brain isn't designed to seek truth, which is an amazing thing to stop and think about.

00;07;24;22 - 00;07;43;04
Unknown
And if you want to pause the podcast and just think about that for a second, but it is designed for identity, because if it was designed for truth, it would be easy to change our mind. Instead, we have all of these like mechanisms that are not fallen there. God created these mechanisms to prevent us from changing our mind.

00;07;43;04 - 00;08;08;01
Unknown
Well, changing our mind around what? It's around our identity. Our brain is designed to find, create and hold and protect identity so we don't behave in accordance with our values. We behave in accordance with our identity and who we think we are. So your friend had an identity hold of It's my fault. I was a problem, right? That's an identity kind of statement.

00;08;08;03 - 00;08;33;09
Unknown
And so she had to forgive herself to break apart from that. So now she can live in freedom from that, that bondage. It's it's this fascinating thing. And so because of that, the way the brain is created to to hold and protect that. And it's not created you're not created to change your mind, which means when you just change your mind, which is the Greek word noia, which is what we translate into repentance, it literally is a miracle.

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Unknown
Repentance is a miracle because your brain is doing something that it wasn't designed to do because of the power of the Holy Spirit. Wow. So I love repentance, repentance just even by itself. Even when you don't have answers, changes everything, which is why we repent and then believe we don't believe in, then repent, we repent. And then that changes things for us.

00;08;55;29 - 00;09;19;09
Unknown
And now we can lean into this different this different space. But the biggest barrier to repentance is the shame factor. And that I mean, that comes straight to us from from Genesis two. From Genesis two. Well, we can't do any better than that. Guys, thank you so much for joining us and the podcast today. Wow. So Shane Well, and I think the key to making disciples is not Matthew 28.

00;09;19;09 - 00;09;40;23
Unknown
I think it's Luke chapter 24, and it says that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in Jesus name, and that throughout, if you look throughout all of Scripture, what is the theme throughout all of Scripture? It's forgiveness for sins. And I don't think that we really have a great idea of what forgiveness is, of what true forgiveness is.

00;09;40;23 - 00;10;08;28
Unknown
Because when we first learn to receive forgiveness, just like my I talk about my friend, that is repentance. We that is God's repentance literally is his truth, that is interchanged, exchanged, and that's the identity formation that we're talking about in discipleship. And that's what it means to be changed by Jesus. So all this stuff that we're talking about is really in discipleship is identity formation that happens in the context of community, but it is over and over.

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Unknown
It is God redeeming our shame for His glory so we can look at what we've been doing instead for just a minute to kind of name how not to do it a little more clearly. You know, if I think that going back to how I was taught about discipleship growing up with this idea of shame and, you know, here's don't do this wrong thing, here's this whole list of wrong things and they really like to add things to that, like go into movies and write dates and cards.

00;10;38;06 - 00;11;01;10
Unknown
Yeah, well, we all know we shouldn't dance. Okay? I went to college. Did you really? yeah. You signed a contract in college not to dance. You had to. I danced at my wedding. Don't tell anybody. you wiggle. No one did this. Did you feel guilty at your wedding because you broke the contract? Yeah, because I was still in college.

00;11;01;12 - 00;11;26;04
Unknown
you. You Christian kids get married so soon, you're dancing and you're wiggling like. So it looked like Genesis. You and I just. I always start with Genesis 225. And because this talks about, like, the fullness of the goodness of creation, is that now the as is Adam and Eve right now, the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

00;11;26;06 - 00;11;49;00
Unknown
So they existed in the state of imperfection because nobody's perfect naked unless they've got like money and plastic surgery. So they existed in a weird, weird imperfection and it was all perfect and they felt no shame about it. So are you saying after the fall we all need plastic surgery? Well, apparently we need plastic surgery because of the fall.

00;11;49;02 - 00;12;11;24
Unknown
okay. Okay. We didn't need it before because we didn't have it. We didn't care about who we were. Right. And then. And then the temptation happens. The fall happens. And the very first the very first consequence in Genesis three seven is at that moment their eyes were opened and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness because they're naked.

00;12;11;27 - 00;12;33;02
Unknown
So they sewed figleaves together to cover themselves. Right? So when we become aware of what's right and wrong, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we become aware of what's right and wrong. And then we notice that we are naked. We can't do anything about it. There's something wrong here. Then we feel shame and then we go to cover it ourselves.

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Unknown
So if we're discipling somebody through this method by saying, Here's what's right and here's what's wrong, the first result is shame. Okay, that's the same as the fall. This is what the serpent did. And then we're going to try to lean in and make our own answer right. So then when God comes in the cool of the evening and he's saying, Where are you?

00;12;51;01 - 00;13;13;25
Unknown
Because they've also now separated, right? So we have shame. We try to cover ourselves and we separate ourselves from God, God then separate from us, we separate ourselves and they reply that says verse three to him. He replied, I heard you walking the garden and I hid. I was afraid because I was naked. And God said, First thing, Who told you you were naked, right?

00;13;13;27 - 00;13;32;19
Unknown
Boom. It's interesting you said there was anything wrong with. So here's the practical side of that story. I had a really good pastor and I remember this. I sat in, I was kind of apprenticing, right. And this dad came in with this kid and his kid was struggling with pornography. And he said, like, what do I do? What do I do?

00;13;32;21 - 00;13;53;29
Unknown
And the pastor wisely said, Whatever you do, don't use shame because he'll just get better at hiding. I was like, Dang, that's really good, because like so many parents will be like, You should be ashamed of yourself. This is gross. This is not natural. But he's like, no. Instead, he walked beside him and he put some controls in place and just really was loving and said, Man, I get it.

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Unknown
Like, lust is tough, you know? So let's talk about what shame does in the brain, because what you what you just described illustrates that perfectly. So couple of things to know. I love I love this topic of shame. Is that love, Shame, shame, Shame is not one of the core emotions that you're born with. shame comes later,

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Unknown
You're not born with a sense of shame. Shame is a social after you. The shortest kid in kindergarten. Then you get school earlier. Is that right? A little earlier. Wow. So? So shame happens when we have connection with a caregiver, and we call that attunement. And our brains are linked and we feel. Well, you know, when you just feel with somebody, right, your you're connected, you have that bond.

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Unknown
You feel like your hearts are in sync. Well, you literally your biology is okay. So then say, you know, the kid does something, the kid reaches down and picks up the dog poo, okay. And the caregiver makes the gross face because disgust is one of the things they're bored with. So disgust goes across the caregiver's face is like, my gosh.

00;14;56;21 - 00;15;19;19
Unknown
and the kid sees that the attunement is broken because now we're not in the same emotional state. We have a different emotional state. So that attunement is broken. And the kid then is like, Wait, I'm not connected anymore. What's wrong? Right. So the disconnect now, what happens next matters entirely for how this is remembered and encoded in the personhood of the kid.

00;15;19;21 - 00;15;48;03
Unknown
So if the caregiver just freaks out in the disgust and like yells at him, put that down. Don't touch that. I can't believe what you're doing. And and that can that disconnect remains. What fills in the space is shame. So shame is what happens when we had attunement and then disconnection happens and it's just left that way. And our take away from that, no matter how old you are, is there's something wrong with me.

00;15;48;04 - 00;16;12;16
Unknown
I am bad. And that wires itself into our soul. The alternative of what you just described is, you know, kid grabs a dog poo caregiver freaks out, goes, my gosh, what are you doing? And then breathes in, reconnects with the kid saying, I'm sorry I scared you. Like, that's gross. We don't touch that. Let's go wash our hands.

00;16;12;16 - 00;16;32;21
Unknown
And they reconnect and retune. So then what happens in the brain is a completely different chemical signature, because now we have that, my gosh, something's wrong. And our like, amygdala lights up and in our fight and flight goes, What's going on? And then the connection comes in. So it brings in the connection hormones. And we're like, I'm okay.

00;16;32;21 - 00;17;03;26
Unknown
The poo is bad, right? Yeah. I think that's a safe thing to live with too, that the poo is bad, right? But that's the take away instead of. I am that right? Right. So that connection in the midst of everything is the difference between shame and not shame. That's that was beautifully told like that. I hope that every parent out there heard that because you're going to freak out when your kid does something right, Like you don't want to be like, Well, and as a parent, you think, no, I've screwed up my kids for life because we've all reacted in that way.

00;17;03;26 - 00;17;23;12
Unknown
So right now, let's just say to the parents out there, we've all done it. Yeah. And of course, and we've all experienced that level of shame. And so what the beauty of what what Christ has done for us as he is is literally redeeming our shame and he is rewriting our truth in through repentance, with God's truth in our lives.

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Unknown
And and because He does that, he literally takes that feeling of there's something wrong with me, I've done something wrong. And he heals that attachment for to him. And because he heals that attachment, then we can be set free. Right. Which is why the goal of discipleship and disciple making is not right belief or right behavior. It's actually connection to God.

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Unknown
Because when we have that connection reestablished, it defeats shame and then we behave in the right way and we can be drawn into a better belief or, you know, the truth can replace the lie and the connection. And that's also why we have to have community, because shame isn't healed in your prayer closet, right? By the way, it's a social emotion.

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Unknown
It has to be healed socially. So we only are able to walk into the fullness of our true identity as God made us. When we can overcome shame through connection with God and with others, the only way we're and that's how God created us to do it. Like there's not an actual Plan B to that, I want to go back to what Julia said.

00;18;22;11 - 00;18;42;27
Unknown
You know, like all the parents listening here, we've all messed up, right? We've all fallen short of the glory of God. You know how some parents, they get like a503 college plan for their kids? I never did that. My kids are 18 and 16. I've just loaded up their counseling for all the mistakes, like prepaid for their counseling, and they can redeem it at any time.

00;18;43;00 - 00;19;10;18
Unknown
But that that's the way to go. But real quick, before we I know we're going to be closing up, you know, I've a good friend taught me a prayer that has really changed my life. It's because God God is the one that knows all things. It's just a pray God. What do you want me to know? And it's that prayer for me has has changed the shame conversation because I don't have to take an emotion or a feeling and say, this is bad, or I'm bad because I'm having it.

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Unknown
You know, we've we've devalued emotions in in really in Christianity, but in most places we've said, I'm not allowed to feel this way. It's not okay for me to feel this way. Instead of saying it. It's right or wrong. It's just it is what it is. Let's name it and say, God, I feel this way. What do you want me to know?

00;19;28;00 - 00;19;47;09
Unknown
What do you want to speak into this in my life here, in the moment, And for me personally and for many people I know, it has been a completely transformational process because it's an opportunity, just what we talked about with power and of just submitting to God and saying, God, I want you to change me, Jesus. I want you to be change me in this space.

00;19;47;15 - 00;20;07;22
Unknown
I think that's going to do it. That's the great way to end it. Don't you think so, Julia So, so good. Julia Coming in with a mic drop moment. All right, Jesse, if people want to. Since you love shame so much, if people want to know so much more about shame and identity, what should they do? Well, there's probably talk to, like, a therapist who's licensed or, you know, someone in their life.

00;20;07;22 - 00;20;29;25
Unknown
I go to therapy regularly, like I go to the gym because it's an important part of my formation. It's in I go to a Christian therapist. Not that everybody has to, but the point being, God wants you to be healed in your soul as well as in your community. And there are people who actually are trained and know how to do that.

00;20;29;28 - 00;20;59;00
Unknown
But if you want more stuff from us and I'm not a therapist, so don't call me for that. That's outside of my scope of practice. But we can. You can We finally found something outside of your scope. In fact, that's just next. But that's and that's actually a lot of stuff. But you can go to who ology Darko which is wh0l Ogi dot CEO and we've got different cohorts and online trainings and different things there that you can check out.

00;20;59;03 - 00;21;19;17
Unknown
You can also go to ordinary discipleship dot com and get more episodes of the podcast or get a link to pick up the book, which will coach you on how to be a disciple maker. And there is a chapter in there about how to help people be changed by Jesus without using the tool of shame. Awesome. Thank you so much and thank you everybody for joining us.

00;21;19;20 - 00;21;25;26
Unknown
We will see you next time. And God bless. Have a great night. Bye bye.