Sara Jacobsen is Wayne's guest this week as they process their current situation and how it has impacted Sara's journey. Here's the honest nitty-gritty of their struggle and how they are finding a way through it with Jesus. They wrestle with the tough questions, such as one asked by a friend last week:  "Have you been disappointed with God in all of this?" How do you hold on to hope when things keep going downhill? They also talk about how Wayne's surgery interrupted Sara's journey into...

As many of you know, Wayne has been battling some medical issues that began with excruciating pain and resulted in back surgery to fuse part of his spine and chemotherapy to deal with the bone cancer that caused it. Wayne felt well enough this week to talk with Kyle about what he's dealing with medically and how this ordeal affects his relationship with God. These are not refined conclusions coming from resolved circumstances but honest reflections from the pit of raw need. How do God and...

After five weeks exploring This Changes Everything with Tobie, Kyle and Wayne take a look at how the shift from righteousness to justice has impacted their lives. They talk about the necessity of a true conversion, not just jumping through some religious hoops that don't begin to fill us with Life and Love. They also talk about how this impacts the gifts of the Spirit play into their lives, and how decisions become a more clearer when focused on fairness and Life, not just making the best...

Kyle and Wayne complete their five-part series with Tobie van der Westhuizen, from Bloemfontein, South Africa. In this episode, they go all the way back to Adam and Eve and how the fall subjected them to a world of injustice and how God provided a way for his fullness of love and life to displace the injustice in our own hearts. Now, through our participation in his sacrifice, we have his life within us and we can be a distributor of life in the world, instead of seeking to find our life in...

Special Bonus Episode!  Tobie van der Westhuizen, joined Wayne and a couple dozen of people for a question and answer session about the podcast series, This Changes Everything. They talk about justice and righteousness and how this misunderstanding of the Gospel came to be. This is the audio version of that recording so people in the podcast feed can give it a listen. Podcast Notes: * Video recording of this FB Live Event * Part 1 of this conversation * Tobie's NaturalChurch Blog and...

Kyle and Wayne continue their conversation with Tobie van der Westhuizen, from Bloemfontein, South Africa. This week they focus on the life love teaches us to live. By focusing on personal righteousness at the expense of interpersonal justice, Christianity robbed its followers of their most powerful influence in the world. As Christ's body, we were meant to be the embodiment of his justice in the world, not gatekeepers of doctrine or piety. Learning the joy of loving and watching how that...

Kyle and Wayne continue to probe through the mind and heart of Tobie van der Westhuizen, from Bloemfontein, South Africa, a self-described reclusive philosopher. What he has discovered in the Scriptures may just be the completion to what Martin Luther began. If true, the Gospel becomes a much fuller expression of God's work in the world than to just save people from guilt or hell. This is the kingdom come!  Wayne and Kyle have been enjoying this conversation and want to invite you to...

Kyle and Wayne continue to probe through the mind and heart of Tobie van der Westhuizen, from Bloemfontein, South Africa, a self-described reclusive philosopher. What he has discovered in the Scriptures may just be the completion to what Martin Luther began. If true, the Gospel becomes a much fuller expression of God's work in the world than to just save people from guilt or hell. This is the kingdom come!  Wayne and Kyle have been enjoying this conversation and want to invite you to...

"The word 'righteousness' does not appear in the Bible." Provocative statement, and at first consideration it sounds absurd. However, that thought has been troubling former pastor and theologian, Tobie van der Westhuizen, from Bloemfontein, South Africa, for eight years. It sent him on a nearly compulsive course of study to some surprising conclusions. It shifted his thinking to a fuller appreciation of the work of Jesus and how he has asked his followers to part of his unfolding kingdom in...

A listener asks Kyle and Wayne to return to an encouragement they made in a previous podcast about taking back your conscience if you have abdicated it to someone else. The conscience is where the Spirit writes God's desires on our hearts and following our conscience instead of taking our cues from a spiritual leader, author, or denomination. This is how we learn to follow God's Spirit. Most of our rationalizations are to avoid our conscience and justify what we wanted to do. By doing so, we...

Doesn't it seem that God often speaks to us in riddles and puzzles? That's exactly what Paul said our perception would be, not because God wants to torment us with a puzzle, but that's how we acclimate to a new way of living. He doesn't give it all at once, but allows us to find our way into his world in bits and pieces. When those pieces fit together, we gain the insight he wants us to have and see more clearly. Until we do, patience will serve us well. Kyle questions Wayne about the most...

"Who is your rabbi?" That's what Kyle asks Wayne as they plunge into a discussion about discipleship. Who is the person affecting your perception of Jesus, your worldview, and how you walk with Jesus.  Where they land is making disciples doesn't mean we're telling people what to do and what to believe, but discipleship is about encouraging and equipping others to enjoy their own adventure of learning to discern the nuances of the Spirit's breath and following him. Others may influence our...

"Shouldn't you be further along by now?" Whether it comes from someone else, or from our own internal impatience, the accusation is never helpful. Who hasn't wished they were further along in the journey than they are, or that a certain thing would be "fixed" that they still struggle with? Sara joined Wayne and Kyle this week for an update on her journey as well as to explore with them the journey we are all on to healing, whether it be from trauma, sin, or being abused by others. They talk...

What would it be like to recognize and step around people's attempts to manipulate us for their own agenda? That's the through line of this conversation with Wayne and Kyle that meanders all over the place—from drag queens at the Olympics, to why Jesus rejoices more over the one lost sheep than the ninety-nine still back in the pen, to a look at The Sound of Music, and finally manipulation tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency. They celebrate the reality of "growing and blooming forever"...

"Wa Wa Wa Wa," is what the Peanuts comic strip characters here with the adults around them are talking. It's a wonderful metaphor about learning to listen to God and what he sounds like sometimes. After reading two amazing stories of redemption from our listeners, and one about escaping spousal abuse, Kyle and Wayne discuss how to trust the Spirit of God enough to relax while he leads us into his truth. In this process, resting beside the still waters is often more important than forcing a...

If God is watching your back, then you don't have to, and that will free you to live with a tender heart in a fractured world. What begins with a conversation about last weekend's assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump soon turns to a conversation about living in the power of tenderness when it doesn't seem to work in the violence and dishonesty of our angry culture. Kyle questions Wayne about chapter seven of his new book, which is being posted chapter by chapter at...

Even though a woman may want men to be more emotionally vulnerable, most find it terrifying when he does. She would rather see the man die on his white horse rather than watch him fall off that horse, according to researcher Brené Brown. It's a common paradox that also affects our view of friends and spiritual leaders. On the one hand, we want connection and yet the vulnerability it requires can be scary, both in being vulnerable and in seeing someone else be weaker than our illusion of them....

"I say these things to you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full." Jesus spoke those words to his fearful disciples on the night when his own pain and suffering would begin. Instead of trying to draw joy from our circumstances, isn't it the guiding light to take us through our most difficult moments safe inside his love? Kyle invites Wayne into a conversation that began with his fishing friends a couple of weeks ago and now expands into how joy can help us navigate the most...

"If you can learn to be at rest in uncertainty, what an incredible skill to have your entire life." And where do we find that rest? In planning for all the contingencies or gathering enough skills to meet any challenge? Certainly not. Cultivating a relationship with Jesus that allows us to walk with him through anything that might come our way is where we find our certainty—in him, not in the control of our circumstances. This discussion comes up from a podcast Kyle listened to on the...

After an invitation to join Kyle and Wayne to pray for a younger generation to come alive with hearts to know God, they talk about the conflict between love and conformity cultures found in corporate environments as well as religious institutions. How does love find a place where performance is more important than transformation? Conformity focuses on control, while love lays down control to invite people on a journey of discovery and wholeheartedness. If we don't find people loveable even as...

After some reflections on how Jesus lived among us without being corrupted by the chaos of this world, Kyle and Wayne talk about the slow arc of spiritual growth. It happens over time as we lean into the challenging breath of the Spirit, inviting us to life by helping us lean away from the illusions and demands of darkness. Also, one listener writes, "Love is a whisper," pitted against the overwhelming distractions of the world and the stringent demands of religion. Find his whisper and...

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to join Wayne and Sara are on their cross-country trip, this episode is for you. They share the transcontinental trip to visit with friends of Lifestream and The God Journey as they pause in Lexington, KY. The conversation includes learning to trust, not being afraid of making mistakes as you learn to follow him, taking back your conscience from whoever you gave it away to, and how is Wayne doing after the difficult times in the last few years....

In their conversation about ways to help people experience the life of Jesus, Kyle and Wayne find themselves contemplating where they found spiritual hunger when they jumped off the performance treadmill. In their early days, spiritual hunger might have been more religiously inclined, in the sense of trying to earn God's favor or increase their status as a zealous follower. How has that changed when the need to earn his favor was displaced by their confidence in his love? What motivates them...

As Wayne has watched God's work of redemption inside Sara's trauma, he's been keen to observe that the soothing safety of Father's love that untangles the darkness, and the anger, threats, and blame make it worse. That is as true of our sin as it is of trauma. Why then does God use so much shame and threats of punishment in the Old Testament to try to get people out of the darkness? Or, does he? Wayne invites Kyle to consider how the prophets saw into God's agony and misinterpreted his words,...