I’m workin’ on a world premiere
And I could see the world from here
They ask me where I’m going from here
****, anywhere long as the runway is clear

“Cheers” by Anderson .Paak

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I felt these lines decades before I heard them.

In these opening verses, Anderson .Paak puts words to a universal feeling: our innate desire to live an extraordinary life. Each of us has dreamed of a “world premiere,” something big we know we are meant for, no matter how far away it seems. It lights a fire inside us and makes our spirit come alive.

Absent trauma, I believe every kid begins life this way.

For me, it began with science. At five years old, dressed in a NASA flight suit, I dreamed of discovery. 

I had no idea where I would go from there—but God did. He cleared the runway for me to discover what it truly meant to live an extraordinary, beautiful, and spiritually powerful life.

He is still clearing the runway for me. He is doing the same thing for you. 

In today’s edition of The Chemistry Lab, we’ll learn to reignite the fire God has placed in each of us and discover what it means to live a beautiful life.

The Workshop: How we lose our fire

A place of discovery where a story sparks insight, observation, and a deeper understanding of walking with God.

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God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things.

Proverbs 25:2 MSG

It was a breezy summer day in Michigan. My parents were out, and my older sister was in charge. I was in my bedroom, intellectually locked in. There, at a kitchen table turned lab bench, I launched my first experiment.

I didn’t follow the instructions. I created my own formula.

The ensuing smoke signaled to me that I’d made a discovery—but what it signaled to my parents as they pulled into the driveway was something else entirely. 

They ran in, expecting disaster. What they found was me—ten years old, grinning, wide-eyed, believing that I’d just made a breakthrough.

This story from decades ago is what inspired The Chemistry Lab. Through that very literal fire in my makeshift lab, God was revealing something to me that had been previously hidden — the fire of discovery, the ability to look at life with wonder and awe.

I learned that even in mistakes and mishaps, something beautiful can be born. While my ambitions at the time were limited to science, God was laying the groundwork for me to discover what it truly would mean to live a beautiful life.

Why did I choose science over God?

Church came first, before the chemistry lab. I remember being six or seven, sitting in pews, surrounded by people doing ordinary things. I didn’t feel wonder. I didn’t hear awe. I wasn’t drawn in.

Then came science—and as you already know, it arrived with fire.

In middle school, I was deep in the world of beakers and Bunsen burners when my mom brought home a brand-new edition of The Living Bible. I devoured books—so I opened it. Genesis. Exodus. I was curious—until I hit the parts that felt repetitive, difficult, or impractical.

The Scriptures are filled with awe, but I needed help to see it. Absent the help, the wonder faded.

I went back to my lab.

Religion without wonder cannot compete with science presented with awe.

Many people lose their fire for God this way.

It’s not because they hate faith. It’s because religion without wonder cannot compete with science presented with awe.

This is what we as religious people can miss about people like I used to be— atheists, agnostics, and those seeking God without attending church. They are looking for wonder. And, at our core, so are we.

The spirit of a person is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the innermost parts of his being.

Proverbs 20:27 NASB

The literal and interpretive translations of the Bible say something stunning in Proverbs 20:27—that our human spirit is the fire of God, a searching light that probes the deepest parts of who we are.

That means God designed us to burn with curiosity, to pursue meaning, and to ignite discovery.

Science taught me that there were mysteries in the world. If I developed the necessary skills and used the expansive number of tools available to me, I could discover and deploy the powers of science to solve problems, answer questions, and resolve those mysteries.

Church didn’t give me that feeling.

Why church often fails to spark wonder

They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly…

2 Timothy 3:5 NLT

Too often, Christianity is presented as behavioral religiosity—a way of acting Christian without being spiritually transformed. We read stories about people in the Bible, and we learn about what they did or didn’t do. But too often we overlook their encounters with the God of wonder—the moments that set their spirits on fire, that show us how we can experience that same God today.

We see the rules and rituals—but not the spirituality and fire.

Too often, Christianity is presented as behavioral religiosity—a way of acting Christian without being spiritually transformed.

God didn’t design us for powerless religion or cold conformity. He didn’t call us to traditionalism or routine. He designed us to break free from the humanistic limitations of behavioral religion to discover his power flowing into our lives.

The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

Wonder isn’t optional. It’s how we wake up. It’s how we find inspiration.

It’s how we see God—not just as a concept, but as the source and spark of our internal fire.

Reigniting the fire

Have you lost your fire? Cynicism and religiosity made me lose mine, while suffering or overload might make others lose theirs. If you’ve lost your fire, Jesus is not waiting to punish you. He’s coming to revive you.

“He will not break a bent twig. He will not put out a dimly burning flame. He will be faithful and make everything right.”

Isaiah 42:3 NIrV

Your fire might be dimly burning, but it’s not gone. While it may be flickering, that flicker is the beginning of moving from religious to spiritual, from powerless to powerful.

Workshop this:

• Have you lost your wonder?
• Are you living religiously or spiritually?
• Does your faith spark anything in you or those around you?

The Element of “Spirit”

A new element from our Spiritual Periodic Table of the Elements that builds a life of spiritual depth and power.

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“Spirit” is my first entry into our Spiritual Periodic Table. “Spirit” is where fire meets flow.

God has given us a spirit of fire burning with life. This interpretive translation from the Jubilee Bible is meant to help us connect with the emotion of Proverbs 20:27, which we read earlier:

“The spirit of man is the fire of the Lord, which searches the secrets of the inward parts.”

Proverbs 20:27 Jubilee Bible

Our spirits aren’t passive—they burn with the intensity of fire.

This fire is meant to fill our lives with light, illuminating our lives with mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical self and soul awareness (Proverbs 20:27 NIV).

But until they’re plugged into God’s Spirit, they operate far below their potential, like a match waiting for a spark.

Spiritual flow: The God connection

Once a connection is made with God, something explosive happens: alignment.

No longer wandering, we begin to discover what a truly good and beautiful life is—not just biologically alive, but spiritually alive.

His Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:16 NLT

[27] Don’t you know that He who pursues and explores the human heart intimately knows the Spirit’s mind because He pleads to God for His saints to align their lives with the will of God? [28] We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.

Romans 8:27-28 Voice

Our human spirit is what makes us capable of experiencing the spiritual chemistry of walking with God. This is what we can call spiritual flow, when God’s Spirit joins with our spirit to unleash light, power, and fire.

This isn’t religion.
It’s spiritual chemistry.
It’s wonder.
It’s awe.

The element of the spirit is what makes us spiritual. It is more than waking up to study our Bible and pray each morning.  It is our connection with God.

The component most responsible for our ability to live a beautiful life might be what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow:

A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

His book summarizes decades of research on the positive characteristics of human experience, including joy, creativity, and flow—which he describes as “the process of total involvement with life.”

While many seek flow through new techniques or settings, God has provided a spiritual path to it. Flow has been available for millennia through the joining of his Spirit with ours

God formed the spirit within

“The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares…”

Zechariah 12:1 NIV

Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 NASB

“But it is a spirit that is in mankind, And the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.”

Job 32:8 NASB

No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. [12] And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

1 Corinthians 2:11–12 NLT

Our spirit was formed by God. It holds our thoughts, our pain, our sin, our potential, and our dreams. But without God, it becomes crushed, disconnected, disillusioned, unfaithful, and wandering:

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18 NIV

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Proverbs 17:22 NIV

The human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear a crushed spirit?

Proverbs 18:14 NLT

Use this week to study these scriptures, working to become aware of your spirit. Ask yourself these questions:

• What affects my spirit? 
• What strengthens my spirit?
• What weakens my spirit?

Then devote yourself to staying connected to God so that your spirit remains cheerful and strong. God has laid dreams on our hearts that glorify him, and we need that enduring spirit to see them come true.

Flow = Spiritual connection

Spiritual flow comes from sustaining a continuous Spirit connection, which is what Romans 8 is all about. It is not merely theological; it is personal.

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father.’ [16] For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:15–16 NLT

When the Spirit of God joins with our spirit, we enter the spiritual flow state.

This is freedom:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. [18] And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:17–18 NIV

This is oneness:

But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

1 Corinthians 6:17 NASB

This is intimacy:

Or do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose, “He jealously desires the Spirit whom He has made to dwell in us”?

James 4:5 NASB

And this is power.

Neglecting the spiritual aspect of life turns the Christian life into a grind instead of a beautiful flow. We cannot let this happen to ourselves or those we love because God longs to have his power flow through our lives without limit.

Creating a flow week

But the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its varied expressions: joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless.

Galatians 5:22 TPT

One of the motivations for me and our team to create The Chemistry Lab is what I learned about Abraham Heschel from his daughter when she wrote that his goal was to make God audible. That is my goal—to not merely have insight about God and Scripture, but to experience his feelings by entering and remaining in the flow state.

… For my father, the importance of prophecy lies not only in the message, but in the role of the prophet as a witness, someone who is able to make God audible and to reveal not only God’s will, but God’s inner life. To be a prophet, he writes, is to be in fellowship with the feelings of God, to experience communion with the divine consciousness. The prophet hears God’s voice and looks at the world from God’s perspective.

Susannah Heschel, Introduction to The Prophets by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Let this be a “flow week,” a week when you experience the limitless qualities of Galatians 5:22 by embracing the element of the spirit!

As Augustine said about God:

You made us with yourself as our goal, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Augustine, Confessions

The field notes

Next week, we will continue with other sections of our Chemistry Lab newsletter,  but I feel this has been robust enough for one week.

In our next edition, we’ll keep stoking our spiritual FIRE with an acronym: Focused Intensity of Righteous Emotion. 

Along with a few other surprises, we will show how this spiritual element becomes a force in how we love, live, and leave a legacy. 

Until then, use these scriptures, insights, and questions to guide yourself forward to living this beautiful life of flow.

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