The Great Adventure of Growing Spiritually: Q&A with Russ Ewell

Russ Ewell

Hey, Mike. Great to have you on. I’m here with Mike Query. Hello. This is Russ Ewell.

And I guess, given the last podcast, I should say to you, welcome to the lab. 

Mike Query

I’m honored to be the first person to let let into the lab. I think I’m the first official, lab guest. 

Russ Ewell

This table I’m sitting at is actually smaller. This is half the size of the table I had in my bedroom when I set my chemistry labs up, two chemistry sets and a, what do you call it, a biology set.

And interestingly enough, when I was getting the chemistry lab, and for those who are listening for the first time, we announced the release of the new newsletter. It’ll be called the chemistry lab. And, I wanted to be a chemistry, a chemist when I was younger. I wanted to play in the NBA and be a chemist. And, science was the first thing I loved and really delved into.

But, I was in the it was at home. I think I was by myself, or one of my sisters was home with me, and I was about 10. And, my parents came home and smoke was coming out of the window. So they raced in thinking there was a fire, and they opened the door to find me with my Bunsen burner and chemicals, you know, bubbling along and smoking up the room and everything. Because what I would do is I’d read the book, but then I’d be like, hey, I think I can come up with a better way to do this than that.

Or I wanna try and see what these four or five chemicals would do together. But anyway, that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna bring the chemicals together, and and and we’re gonna get better and better. My goal is to get us better and better, or get me to get better and better at the podcast. And for us to be able to weave together, especially for the people who are asking and encouraging to join us, who are on my previous one of my other podcast newsletter called Lead Different.

We’re gonna hit leadership, and we will talk about leadership a lot. We’ll talk about technology. We’ll talk about spirituality. We’ll also talk about inclusion, the inclusiveness of those with special needs, which is a big interest of mine with two kids with special needs, having advocated that for a long time, and also having Digital Scribbler, my company, where we develop special needs, where we develop inclusive technologies for those with special needs. So we’ll get all that in.

That’ll all be discussed in the lab. So if you’re listening, you’re gonna have to bear with us as we evolve and we develop and we grow. And again, please remember to subscribe to our newsletter. You can go to dspirituality.com to subscribe to it. And you can even share it with your friends.

And, yes, it’s gonna be about spirituality and God, but it will be woven into life. And that’s what its real spirituality is about. But, anyway, Mike, again, welcome to the lab. And what do you have in mind today? 

Mike Query

Well, first of all, if folks see, smoke and fire, but I guess now we know that’s just part of the process.

So so that’s that’s reassuring. Process. That’s reassuring. Yeah. I’m excited to be in the lab.

So, I thought what we could do today would be kinda fun, is have a little Q&A session for you. Alright? So this is for the kickoff of the chemistry lab, you know, just having some conversations, you know, with Amy, my wife, some friends, and also just feedback we’ve gotten from listeners and readers of Despirituality over time. You know, there’s some just common things that have questions that have come up, and we thought it might be cool to take a little time. We can run them by you and have a conversation.

Awesome. Alright. So thought we could pick up where we left off in the last episode, you were just, you wrote an article devotional. It was called What if it’s true, one question that leads to an extraordinary life. So I wanted to start there.

It’s a good read. If you haven’t, let’s read it already, hit pause unless you’re driving. Don’t read it in the car. Go read it. It’s a good it’s a good read.

But, you know, you open it with Acts four thirteen. He talked it’s it’s a passage that talks about how Peter and John, they’re ordinary guys, but they spent time with Jesus, so they became extraordinary. So I think in reading that and thinking about it for myself, having conversations, that kind of question was and again, a lot of it will come from reading it, but I just wanted to like to hear from you. You know, what does it look like in real life to be with Jesus in a way that transforms us? You know?

Like, what are practical things we can do in our lives to become extraordinary? Because I wrestle with that a lot. I can feel I’m a pretty insecure guy. I can doubt myself. I can also feel, you know, what, guilty, stressed, and I limit myself a lot, and I wanna know what I can do in my relationship with God to have that confidence that I can live something extraordinary, just by spending time with him?

So curious about your thoughts on that, and kinda what went into you when you’re putting this together. 

Russ Ewell

So, Mike, what you’re referring to then is Acts 4:13, and I use the voice translation in the article, what if it’s true? Now the leaders are surprised and confused. They looked at Peter and John and realized they were typical peasants, uneducated, utterly ordinary fellows with extraordinary confidence. The leaders recognize them as companions of Jesus.

The NIV and other translations say they recognize them as having been with Jesus. Several of those translations also say that instead of using the term confidence or extraordinary confidence, they use the term bold or courageous. So what they’re telling us is that when you have your relationship with god on straight, you’re gonna have a life that’s transformed. It’s gonna be bold. It’s gonna be courageous.

And so just rephrase for me again, what was it that you were asking the question about regarding that passage? 

Mike Query

Well, when I’m looking at it, I’m seeing okay. They’re ordinary. I relate to that. And it says they were reckoned the leaders recognized them as companions of Jesus.

So I’m wondering, is there something just in our personal lives, like, practically that we can and how we spend time with God, how we look at our bible reading, how we pray that will allow us to live those kinds of lives where they go, like, wow. The way that guy’s living is you could tell he spends time with god or something’s different about them. That’s that’s I know that guy. He was just a guy I knew from work. He was kind of a slacker.

And now look at, you know, like, something like, what does it look like to spend time with god in a way that leads to that kind of outcome in my life? 

Russ Ewell

Yeah. I’m one of those guys. In high school, I was voted most likely to be recruited by the mafia, and, that was by my senior class. I never did an investigation to find out who was driving that.

But when I went back to visit my high school one time, my coach, my basketball coach, was there, and he saw I was in the locker room. I’d come into the locker room after a practice of theirs. We went to watch a practice. And when I came into the locker room, he said, Hang on a minute. Wait a minute.

He said, I heard something about you. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s true. I heard something about you. And, I go, what are you talking about?

He said, I heard you’re a minister. I can’t believe you’re a minister. I said, yeah. Yeah. I am.

He goes, unbelievable. I would never have thought of that. That takes commitment. He put that out there. Well, well, well, I think your relationship our relationship with God should transform us, and I wanna read a scripture.

In Romans four verse one, in the NIV, it says, What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? In keeping with the idea of the chemistry lab, I think God wants us to discover. And I think sometimes we may not think that way.

In my previous episode of the podcast, I talked about Proverbs 25 verse two in the message. God delights in concealing things. Scientists delight in discovering things. Discovery is part of biblical Christianity. It’s part of biblical spirituality.

And so to me, it’s not about knowing how to do anything in your relationship with God. It’s about the fact that Jesus took Peter, James, and John on an adventure. And if you look at the Bible, everybody who has a great relationship with God is taken on an adventure. Abraham was asked to go someplace where he did not know where it would be. Jacob was put in a position where he had to leave home and go live with, I believe it was his uncle Laban, and in living with him, go through so much difficulty in a sense to drive some of his godlessness and fleshly instinct out of him.

The Bible describes it as deceit. So he could become, in Genesis 32, the man who wrestled with God and overcame, wrestled with God and man, and overcame. And so as you go through life, Esther, she’s asked to be a queen when she seems to be just a young woman trying to mind her own business and live her life. Right. Ruth and Naomi lost their husbands.

Naomi loses a husband and a son, and then God takes them on an adventure, not because God’s causing suffering, but because God, in all we go through in life, he’s gonna let everyone of us live life. There’s nothing out there that’s gonna say you or I won’t suffer, you or I will be successful in a worldly way with money and possessions. That’s not that’s not, I don’t think, all in the cards. God doesn’t go, let me deal these individual cards out to each one of you, and make sure you have that experience. You live life.

But God takes you on an adventure. What we learn here in Romans four in verse one, what then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? He discovered things about God as he walked in life. I believe it was Jacob who said, You have been my shepherd all of my life. In Psalm 23, it talks about the Lord being my shepherd.

What does that mean? He’s taking you. He’s protecting you. He’s urging you. He’s guiding you along in your life.

And so I think the first thing to do when we think about what it was like for Peter, James, and Don to be with Jesus, it was an adventure. Wow. And I don’t think we always read our bibles the way that Christopher Columbus probably navigated the oceans, the way that Magellan navigated the oceans, the way that Lewis and Clark explored the Western Part of America to be able to produce the Louisiana Purchase, which is responsible for the Western United States even being a part of things, them being sent out by Thomas Jefferson. All of that was an adventure. When we open our Bible, we should open our Bible and say, I’m opening the word of God, which will give me a map that allows me to take my adventure.

If I’ve become a Christian, I have the Holy Spirit, and I’m being guided on this adventure. I think too many times we have a quiet time, and it’s a static experience. It’s I’m just sitting here with my Bible. And what we end up doing, too, is we end up trying to get insight and go around and quote scriptures and insights we have instead of making sure we’re having experiences. See, I think that it’s easy to be behavioral in your Christianity.

And just have insights. Instead of having experiences, and experiences are I’ve changed. Experiences are I’m gonna apply for a job that no one thinks I can get, but because I’ve prepared and I’ve prayed and I believe that God has this vision for my life, I’m gonna try it. We’re doing that right now, moving deep spirituality into a whole new world where we’re gonna change up who does what here, and we’re producing this new podcast or this new pot, the new newsletter to go with the podcast called The Chemistry Lab. All of that is not being afraid to take an adventure.

And as a control freak, adventures make me nervous, and therefore, most of the time, my relationship gets nervous. So what am I telling everybody out there in answer to your question? We have to have the mentality of What if I discovered something about God today? What can I discover about God tomorrow? And as I discover things about God, I’ll discover things about myself.

First Corinthians eight verse one talks about the fact that when we’re known by God, I believe it’s trying to tell us we’re fully known. And I think there’s an adventure in pursuing that. So that’d be my long-winded, but I think passionate explanation, or answer to that question. 

Mike Query

As long-winded as we need. I think that’s one for one in the Q&A session so far, I’d say.

And we can be okay. So, so here’s another one for you. This is related to you when you’re talking about, you know, the things we go through in life. You know, one of our most-read devotionals on our website is called 10 examples of trusting God in difficult times to inspire you. And it’s one that clearly resonates.

People look when they search online, one of the things they look for a lot, according to what we see on our site, like guidance for when life is hard. How do we trust God through what we’re going through? And, you know, that’s physical pain, emotional struggles, stress, and I think when the question is, you know, come like, how do we trust God through those times and not give in to, you know, like, I I just, got off of having a brutal flu. Right? It took me out for over a week.

Yeah. It was not. I don’t think I’ve ever been sick like that as an adult. And I tell you, it’s Wow. I think as it went on, there was one night, I was like, I feel like I’m in a nightmare. Every part of my body hurts.

This is, like, terrible. And I wasn’t, it wasn’t, I felt it was a bit of a struggle to have passionate prayers with God, and I think it kinda yeah. I wasn’t on my I would imagine. Yeah. It wasn’t on my a game, you know.

But I know, you know, it’s a flu that but there are people who I have friends who have chronic health challenges, financial struggles. Right? So that’s what I’m guessing is why it’s a popular article on our site. And then I would imagine for the chemistry lab newsletter, that would be something that a lot of folks would look for is faith in that area. So, one of the scriptures in that article in the beginning is 2 Corinthians 5:6.

It says, therefore, we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body, we are away from the lord, for we live by faith, not by sight. And so I I guess the question I’m trying to get at is, you know, from your experiences, your life, and the things that you’ve done personally in relation with god and working with folks is, you know, what’s helped you to stay close to god during painful or challenging periods? And how can we keep our hearts soft and trusting God instead of, you know, giving in to the temptation to be bitter, to be hopeless, to be discouraged? 

Russ Ewell

Well, I wanna reflect back on the scripture that is in Mark chapter five. I think sometimes we look at the stories of Jesus healing people, and we recognize, at least a large majority of us recognize, that no human being has the ability to heal like Jesus could heal. And so sometimes when we look at the miracles in the bible and the miracles that took place for people, we think, well, that can’t happen today. So I’m stuck in my suffering. I’m stuck in my misery, I’m just gonna have to be defeated.

And one thing I’m working on for the chemistry lab is some content and some writing, and some consideration of a concept called learned helplessness. Martin Seligman is the first person who kind of got into that, and I hope to talk about that more later and how that pertains to scripture and what God teaches us. No, why is that important? Because one of the things about learned helplessness is it tells us that when we go through adversity or difficulty, sometimes the choice we make is not to be resilient but to quit and to give up. Yes.

And once we train ourselves to quit and give up, every time we face adversity, we feel powerless to do anything different, and so we just stop and we say, it’s no use trying. And he actually has this test that you can take where you determine whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. And then based on whether or not you think you’re permanent, whether you have a permanent or sort of a transient view of your difficulties in life. If you have a permanent view of it, it’s basic, and I’m not doing a good job with this right now, but good enough that people can generally understand until I write some more about it. If you have permanence, you say let’s, for instance, let’s say, you know, you get rear-ended by a car.

I didn’t know they were behind me, and they weren’t paying attention. These things happen. I’m not worried about it.

Let me go get the car fixed. But if you have a more, impermanent or what I’d say pessimistic viewpoint, maybe to be more clear, you think every time I go out driving, somebody hits me. Right. Every time I pull out of the drive with someone, I just don’t know when the next time’s gonna be. And so one of the reasons that Mark five is important is because it talks about the woman who touched Jesus and was healed by touching his cloak.

And it says this in Mark 5:27, when she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought, if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed. Immediately, her pleading stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. Okay. What he’s saying is that basically this woman was going through all these things, but she stopped long enough to touch his cloak. One translation said she dared to believe.

She dared to believe. I think a lot of what we have to do in life, in our walk with God, and I’ve gone through a lot of different things as have most of our listeners, is in the midst of trial and adversity, dare to believe. Be bold enough to say, I’m daring enough to believe in this. And it says that because of that daring, she was freed of her suffering. And so that would be an answer that I would give, is that it’s not so much that one person’s tougher or another person’s not tough.

It’s not so much that one person has, like it’s I don’t know that I have an incredibly greater relationship with God than other people. I think whenever my relationship with God works out, it’s because I’ve dared to believe. Whenever your relationship with God works out, it’s because I’ve dared to believe. And then I think there’s also and we can’t get into now. There’s also an element of understanding what it means to be close to God.

So you said you were sick, and you, you know, it was hard to have passionate prayers. I don’t think God expects you to have a passionate prayer in that moment. I remember reading one passage. I can’t remember because I can’t even remember. It is Isaiah 26.

It could be somewhere in there. I’m I’m I’m I won’t look it up right this minute. I may look it up in a second. But he says, when I could barely whisper a prayer. When Elijah brings back rain, I know I’m getting into a lot of stuff that maybe our listeners may not be familiar with if they’re not big-time Bible readers, which is totally okay if you’re not.

His prayer is not long. It doesn’t last for an hour or three hours. It’s a pretty short prayer. And so I think some of understanding what it means to have a relationship with God is understanding when you are sick, God’s presence is with you, whether you utter a word or not. No.

That’s awesome. And we also know from Romans eight that the Holy Spirit is interceding for you with groans and letting God know. So there’s a spiritual thing taking place. Even when you’re not praying, the holy spirit is saying, Hey. I’m gonna let God know just how bad Mike feels, and I’m gonna intercede and communicate all those aches from head to toe you experience.

The Holy Spirit is communicating those to God. Remember, Paul, different times, at least one time, says it’s the spirit of Jesus. Mhmm. That Jesus is holy, the Spirit really puts Jesus in the center of your life and allows him to speak for you when you can’t find the words. And I would like to expand people’s view of what it means to have a relationship with God.

Think of your quiet time as the start of the race. If you like track, I ran sprints, you’re in the blocks, you come out of the blocks. When you come out of the blocks, that’s your quiet time. If you stop running five feet after you get out of the blocks, that’s you saying I’m not going to be thinking about God. That’s one eerie way to have a great relationship with God.

You gotta think about him. I’m not gonna be talking to God throughout my day. That’s another way that we can practically have a great relationship with God. I’m not gonna return back to my Bible after I’ve had a quiet time to read a verse or two. Right.

That’s another way to have a great relationship with God. I’m not going to talk to other people about God as I go through my day and bring up what I have learned about God. Here’s what I’ve learned about God. I feel like God didn’t answer my prayers. Have you ever had a time like that where God is at the center of our conversations?

These are all very practical ways to grow your relationship with God beyond a quiet time. And as I reenter as I mentioned and will reiterate, when you were sick, just because you didn’t with your mouth or mind audibly say or communicate a passionate prayer, that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit wasn’t communicating a passionate prayer right. On your behalf, based on the ache of your heart that it takes and then communicates to others. And book of Romans talks a lot about this. We have to remember the Holy when we become Christians, the holy spirit combines with our human spirit to turn us into a transformative individual who is connected to God in ways that human language and human explanation can’t even make clear.

So hopefully that helps a little bit. 

Mike Query

Oh, yeah. In thinking about it. Absolutely. That’s huge. And like I said earlier, there are a lot of people looking for that, and I think that’s gonna be huge.

Even thinking back to the newsletter, that’s I wanna interject a reminder of how to sign up for that. You just go to deepspirituality.com. There’s gonna be a sign-up right on the home page. I definitely encourage everyone to sign up, and that’s gonna lead into the next question too, because it’s another topic that comes up a lot. And that’s basically how to know what to read in our Bibles.

Right? Like, I know me personally, like, I often will make time I’ll make time to sit down and read the bible. I usually do it in the morning. Right? And then, however, like, sometimes I’m not always sure where to start.

Right? Like, I’m sometimes it’s because I’m not very clear on what’s going on with me, so I’m just kinda like, what am I doing here? And then sometimes, just my bible knowledge isn’t very good. I’m like, where do I start? I kinda have a sense.

I know I’m not alone in that, and that’s a big reason why folks have signed up for the newsletter, and its previous iteration was, you know, just getting some kind of bible study to help them when they’re trying to start in the morning. So ,so I guess a question just to kinda build on the last thing you’re talking about is, you know, what’s a oh, and and just one scripture to read in here too. This one came to mind when preparing this question, 2 Timothy 3:16. It says, all scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So one hand, it’s it’s encouraging knowing, okay.

I know the Bible can and will help me in my life. It’ll train me, but I can almost feel like, you know, where do I where do where do I start sometimes? Right? I I know I know some scriptures, but just curious, you know, given on what things you’ve worked on in your life and, you know, what is there, you know, approaches or or ways that you approach your relationship with God that helps you know how to prepare going into your bible reading and sort of know where where to start. So anywhere for like, even if you’re going, I’m I’m listening to this.

I’m square one. I’m just getting started. Like, I have one friend who’s just getting started with the bible. Like, what what are the what’s the table of contents? You know?

Like, what ways I can help everyone from someone like my friend to myself who’s been around the bible a long time but can still feel kinda stuck. 

Russ Ewell

Let’s, let’s just unpack that because it’s a great question which has a lot of, there’s a lot of connective tissue to that packet that package you put out there, to the body of thought that you’ve, put forth about how do you select what you’re gonna read. So the first thing I would tell everybody is they’ve got to go look at our best life series. Mhmm.

Our best life series. Because in our best life series, they’re it’s all about developing the kind of spiritual life skills that will allow us to be able to grow our life in every area of our life from our personal life to our education life, to our career life, to our social life, to our dating life, all areas of our life, to our family building life. And one of the keys to that, the bedrock of the the life skills is is self awareness. And we have podcasts on that. We have articles on it.

So to me, one of the things we have to begin with is, am I self aware? Do I have self awareness? You and I can’t figure out what to read in our Bible if we’re not self aware. And so we’ve gotta go back to Jeremiah 17, try I think it’s verses five through nine. In verse nine, it says, the heart is deceitful and sick above all things.

In some translations, it says it is extremely sick. But then it goes on to say, but I, God, search the heart and mind. So God is saying I can figure out the heart and mind, but you will not be able to figure it out because the heart is filled with emotions that’ll trick us and deceive us, blind us, and overwhelm us. Right? And so one of the things we have to do is go, how can I be aware of my heart condition?

Because I think it’s I’m I’m just having to toss these out here off the top of my head so I could be inaccurate. But Proverbs chapter four, talks about the idea that the heart is the source of life. Guard your heart for it’s the source of life. It is your life, depending on the translation. And so your heart is filled with emotions, and they can fool you unless you’re really aware and paying attention to them.

But the key to being aware is, I think, starting with the fact that, okay, am I paying attention to everything God is showing me every day? Now we’re gonna take a look at this and we’re gonna go back to that Mark five story about the woman. We’re gonna take it from the top and we’re just gonna break down how do I figure out what I’m gonna read in the bible. Alright? So we’ll start with Mark five in verse, 24.

Immediately Jesus went with him, and the huge crowd followed pressing in on him from all sides. And this is a man who wanted Jesus to come and heal his, his daughter. But it brings up a woman that’s really important. Now this is verse 25 in Mark five. Now in the crowd that day was a woman who had suffered horribly from continual bleeding for twelve years.

So what do we see? I mean, everybody will go, well, this is obvious. Sure it’s obvious, but a lot of things are obvious that we don’t do. She’s aware that she needs help. I think the first thing to knowing what to read in your Bible is being everyday aware of where do I need help because God is there to help us.

Where do I need help? This woman’s aware. She knows she’s bleeding. She knows it’s horrible, and so she’s aware. In verse 26, she had endured a great deal under the care of various doctors, yet in spite of spending all she had on her their treatments, she was getting worse instead of better.

So not only was she aware she was sick, she’s aware she’s been sick for a long time and things are getting worse instead of getting better. And remember, in the previous podcast, I think, I talked about the four dimensions of life the way I look at it, your mind, your heart, your soul, and your physical body, your strength. And so we need to be aware. Where is my mind? Where am I where am I intellectually?

How am I thinking? Do I have doubts? Do I have things that are stifling me and sticking me and burdening me? Number two, where am I at emotionally? Where what’s going on with me emotionally?

What am I thinking? What am I feeling? Am I feeling? Am I allowing myself to feel? Number three, what do I feel in my soul?

Soul, if you go back and read the article, what if it’s true, we talk about psychic disturbances. These are disturbances that occur that are not able to be explained by any type of medical science, that are not able to be explained by any kind of psychology, that are not be able to explain by any kind of human intellectual observation. These things are outside of the definitions of what man feels he can understand or control. Those are psychic disturbances, and those come from the soul. Being aware that you’re experiencing something that people don’t have an answer for.

And fourth, body. Being aware of your body. Am I healthy? Am I not healthy? Am I feeling good?

Am I not feeling good? All of that comprises the self-awareness that this woman had, and because this woman had that self awareness and knew that she wasn’t making progress, in verse 27, when she heard about Jesus, healing power, she pushed through the crowd and came up from behind him and touched his prayer shawl. For she kept saying to herself, she did that self talk, if I could touch even his clothes, I know I will be healed. Then she goes on, as soon as her hand touched him, her bleeding immediately stopped. She knew it, for she could feel her body instantly being healed of her disease.

One of the things that was hardest for me as a Christian, and it can still be a challenge, is seeing my need for God. If we get focused on, did I get up in the morning and need my Bible, then we’ll develop a a ritual a ritualistic behavior that will become a tradition that will never touch our heart or our mind or soul or our body. But if we learn to see our need for God, where we say there are things going on in every human life that we cannot handle alone, and there are people who will say, yeah, you’re weak and that’s why you need God. Well, you know what that tells me? That that individual doesn’t think they have any weaknesses.

Right. So why do I need to defend the fact that I’m weak? It’s obvious that a human being is weak. We’re physically frail. If we get hit by something, stung by something, you know, we freak out, we cry because we are weak.

And I think a lot of times human beings don’t like to admit the weakness. But she sees her weakness, she sees her need, and she says, okay. There’s Jesus. I’m gonna go get it done. In verse 30, Jesus knew at once that someone had touched him, for he felt the power that always surged around that had passed through him for someone to be healed.

He turned and spoke to the crowd saying, who touched my clothes? His disciples answered, what do you mean who touched you? Look at this huge crowd. They’re all pressing up against you. But Jesus’s eye swept across the crowd.

I love that. Swept across the crowd looking for the one who had touched him for healing. And look at this. When the woman who experienced this miracle realized what had happened to her, she came before him trembling with fear and threw herself down at his feet saying, I was the one who touched you, and she told him her story, what had just happened. And then here’s the clincher.

Then Jesus said to her, daughter, because you dared to believe, your faith has healed you. Go with peace in your heart and be free from your suffering. When we actually look at our felt need, our need for God, don’t try to hide it, don’t try to suppress it, and we see that need. And then we take that need and we say, I see my need. What part of the Bible will tell me about that need?

Someone says, well, I don’t know my Bible well. Well, one thing I can tell you, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospels of Jesus, they have everything you need. So you can just go read one of those and you keep reading it the entire time with a thought in your mind, here’s what I need. This is what I need. So I one of the things I’ve been working on is daring to believe, letting go of control, not feeling insecure or afraid if I can’t control things, if it’s out of my control.

And by when I read my Bible, whatever I’m reading, I was reading Ephesians last week. When I read Ephesians, I’m always reading it thinking, what is this teaching me about letting go and giving up control and having what I call absolute trust in God? Someone else may be having marriage challenges, and you say, well, why am I having a marriage challenge? Well, if you’re like me, if you’re a guy like me, oftentimes I’m not listening because I’m too busy trying to tell someone what I think. Right?

So when I’m reading my Bible, I’m looking for everything my Bible says about being willing to hear God, being willing to hear other people, etcetera. And so hopefully, you know, that packages it up about how to figure out what you wanna read. And someone said, well, is there any other way? What if I wanna learn more about the Old Testament? Well, you just a lot of times, you can just start real simple with going to a book that tells a story you may be familiar with that’d be interesting.

And so I’d recommend right off the bat, if you really wanna kinda get engaged with an exciting part of the Bible in the old testament that will really awaken you to your need for God, go read first and second Samuel. That’s a great book. Has some three really compelling stories in it to me, the story of Saul, the story of David, and another one, the story of Absalom. You have to go read that. Those are three really compelling stories in first and second Samuel, and it has a lot of family in it.

Maybe you’re someone who’s like, hey. I really wanna learn about a guy who wrestles and struggles and and and fights to become who he needs to be. Go back and read the book of Genesis, and you can go get yourself, something like the Tarkada Bible. You can get that on on Apple’s, app store, and then you just do a search for the name of David or the name of Jacob, and you find the first place their name comes up. Start reading from there until you get all the way to the end of their life, and you’ll be surprised at what you get.

Someone else will say, well, I wanna learn more about is God truly God? Is the Bible really true? Is there anything that teach them about that? Well, you can start with the book of John. That’s the gospel, And it’ll tell you who Jesus was and how the world and life came to be.

So there’s just a lot of different ways. And you can also do something really great and go on our website, dspirituality.com, and we have an article in there about how to have a quiet time. It breaks down translations. It breaks down things to look at. So there’s a whole world of stuff there.

But that’s my answer, Mike. And I think we’ve probably given our folks a good second podcast here in the lab. 

Mike Query

I feel like we’re I feel like beakers are overflowing and bunsen burners are going hot. Man, we got we got test results. We got yeah.

There are measurement tools I don’t understand. There’s a lot happening in here. It’s, I got my glove I got my gloves on. 

Russ Ewell

Flubber. I think he invented flubber.

The rubber that I think Robin Williams was in the movie, and then Fred McMurray was in the original Flubber, which is the absent-minded professor. Wow. They’re digging deep. I’m gonna give that one to you free. But, hey, everybody, thanks for listening, and please, please, please join us in this because, you know, we’re gonna get better at doing podcasts.

We’re gonna get better at writing articles because we’re trying to grow ourselves. But you can really help us get the message out because in all those voices out there in the internet, all those voices out there on podcasts, all those voices out there in streaming, we think there needs to be a voice out there talking about spirituality, talking about how we can deal with this technological age, this age of misinformation and polarization. How do we do it spiritually? We hope to be able to hone the message that God has given us, make his voice audible. And if you just like, subscribe, share, read the newsletter, and talk about it, utilize it, and then give us feedback.

Just post if you have some insight or you got a great scripture, post it, and we’re gonna begin to even utilize the stuff you give us. Thanks a lot for listening to Descriptuality and reading our content, and, of course, continue to help us on the launch of our new newsletter, The Chemistry Lab.