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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 862: Practicing Sacred Assumptions | Faith Eury Cho, Never Alone
00:53:46
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Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Erson, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and Faith. Yuri Cho is here. She has just come out. She actually in 2026 has two books coming out, which is remarkable to have two. It's hard to even come out with one, but she has a kids book that came out earlier this year called Never Alone. Jesus is the Friend who's Always There. A beautiful, beautiful book for children and a lot of the addressing a lot of the deep questions that children have. And then you also have a book coming out in September. So in just a few months here cult for adults called Unlikely and Anointed. How Everyday Believers Experience the Power of
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the Holy Spirit Faith.
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Welcome.
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C
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this.
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B
I am too. I am too. I also read you have a lot of books. I also read your book called Experiencing Friendship with God. How the Wilderness Draws Us to His Presence. And you talk about your faith journey in your. Your books. Really? You see it in the kids book. You also see it in Experiencing Friendship with God. Can you talk about how you moved to the United States, you moved to California as a child from Korea and you didn't come from a religious background, but in your Heart. And you do hear people talk about
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the spirituality of children.
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Dr. Meg Meeker talks about it. She works with families and children therapy. And she's like, it is remarkable how spiritual children are and can be. And the things that they say, even when they come from families, families that are not going to church or don't really have much religion infused into the home. So this was your story where at night you would think about God and eventually you say to your mom, you know, we gotta go to church.
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C
Yes, I mean, I totally agree with that assessment of children's spirituality. I believe that children are the most honest in their spiritual journey. And I see that in my own kids. And even for myself, when I was around five to six years old, I don't know, I just figured if there's a God, I should get to know him. Like, it's like a good idea to get to know him. And we were on a family vacation and for some reason, while we were in the hotel, I remember my parents were packing and I was watching a Jesus film on the, on just cable television. And I remember asking my mother, who is that man? And she said, that's Jesus. And I just said, he looks like a really nice guy. Like, he looks like a really nice man. And what was so crazy was later that day we got into a huge car accident in the Nevada desert. Our car flipped over like twice. And it was a miracle that no one was severely hurt or injured. And I remember it took about a month to heal from that and just kind of regain our strength. But afterwards I just asked my mom, can you take me to the library? And I asked the librarian at the library, do you have any books on Jesus? And she looked at me bewildered and said, child, you got to go to church for that. And so I just asked my mom to drop me off at church. And it was just a step by step journey. Since then, I wasn't officially a follower of Jesus and a believer until I was 16 or 15. But that was just how it all began. It just started with a childlike curiosity. And to my parents credit, they didn't stop my questions, they didn't stop my honest journey. And if anything, they just kind of followed along. My mom became a believer before me, and she is, what's funny is like she just never forced the religion. But she cultivated my curiosity, she cultivated my search. And so that's why I'm where I am today.
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B
And where you are today is incredible. You have all sorts of books. You've got a Bible study on Joshua, you have Deep in your friendship with God. A 52 week devotional and your co pastor of a church alongside your husband in New Jersey.
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C
Yes, Paramus, New Jersey.
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B
You ended up in New Jersey. That's interesting too. What, what a story. What a story. You talk in this book about wandering through the wilderness and like God guiding. You talk about it in experiencing friendship with God, you know, God guiding step by step. And you really see that in your story about this step by step direction in your life. So not born into a Christian home. And so you wrote this. Every night while I lay in bed, a curious longing brewed in my heart. Each evening as I felt the silence of my room, I would think, God,
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are you out there?
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Can you help me? Can you hear me?
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Where do you live? What do you look like?
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I never heard a sermon or attended a church service in my life. However, in my heart there was a longing to know a higher being.
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I figured that if a deity truly
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existed, I should be on his good side. And I loved faith that you went to the librarian. That's brilliant because you, that's where you're supposed to learn things, right? If you have a question you don't know, I'd like more information on Jesus, please. And then yeah, encourage you to go to church. And so this is the start of this path to where you're at today. Author and founder of a non profit as well and church planter. All of these things that you've done with your life. So this book Never Alone is basically like a depiction of your early childhood thoughts and questions. So is that where the idea came from? I mean, these books are almost a decade apart.
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C
Yeah, I mean, no, I mean they are a couple years apart.
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When did, when did Experiencing Friendship with God come out?
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C
I think 2023. Oh, I wrote it down in my book.
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I don't know why I had written down 2020. It just came out a couple years ago.
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C
Yes.
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Yeah.
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Okay. All right.
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I have it wrong in my notes. So it just came out a couple years ago. Experiencing Friendship with God. And then the Never Alone is taking your childhood experience and putting it into a kid's book.
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Yes. I mean, and it's, it's a lot of things that was, that were synthesized for this story. I have had four children in five and a half years. And that journey was unique. Maybe not that unique to all the listeners, but it was intense. And so basically I was putting a lot of children to bed in a very truncated period of time. And a lot of the questions that the main character, Mera asks In this story are questions that my own children have asked. I remember once I was kind of just shutting down the home, you know, closing the windows, locking the doors, and I heard whimpering in the hallway. And I remember thinking, oh, my goodness, one of my kids, they're awake. And I searched through each room, and I found my firstborn. And she was just on her knees on her bed, and she was just kind of rocking and whimpering. And I rushed to her and I said, baby girl, what's wrong? What's going on? And she looked at me with just. Just grief. And. And she said, mommy, he's stuck. And I'm like, what on earth? What do you mean? Who is stuck? Who's in here? And she goes, he's Jesus. He's stuck. And I go, what do you. Okay, explain, explain. And she said, at church, they taught me that Jesus lives in our hearts. And I told him, you could come out. It's okay. You don't have to just sit there. And she's like, and he's stuck. He's. He can't come out. And. And she started tearing. And I go, oh, my goodness, my precious girl. And that's just a great example of a child just trying to understand the mystery of God's presence. And although we think she's cute, adults have same questions. The adult have similar line of reasoning. So I just thought, wow, what a beautiful way to capture our curiosity of trying to understand this mystical aspect of who God is. That was why the children's book came to be. Because although it's for children, adults could relate to it, too. And I find that in my experience of putting children to bed, a lot of times, parents often dread the experience, right? Like, not that we don't love our children and love putting them to bed, but, you know, it's not always peaceful. It's not always fun. And so I thought, okay, what could make this potentially stressful experience into something that is a discipleship opportunity? Something that's funny, fun, something that will let children giggle before they go to bed? Because I think discipleship should be fun. And I think when we are pressured to force a Bible study down our children's throats, it's miserable for them, it's miserable for us, right? But when it's an experience that we could participate together, oh, it's. It's so much fun, and it's. There's so much joy. And our children could correlate Jesus to joy and pleasure. And so that's why I wrote the book. And a lot of it was from my children's journey, my journey. And it's because of that. Hopefully it's authentic to a lot of parents and children.
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B
I love that you told me that because I saw some parallels between your book for adults experiencing friendship with God and you talking about, you know, as a young child being like, are you there? You know, is there a God there? Can you really see me?
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What's going on?
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And then you brought up your, your, your children, the questions that they ask, you know, are you stuck? Are you in my belly button? That type of thing. And then question everyone has, I'm confused. You know, there's mystery here. So what, what do I do if I don't understand? You wrote, even if I don't, this is in the kids book. Even if I don't get how you work even when I can't feel you near I'll just close my eyes I won't worry and fret I'll get comfy and snugly and remember what you said. So about Jesus always being with you. So that's a topic that's coming up in the adult book as well, this experiencing friendship with God. So it's a combination of a lot of different things. It's called Never alone. We talk about that. That's a topic that you bring up in both books in the book for adults and for kids, is that there's a lot of mystery here and we try and manage the mystery. Often we want to control things. So you brought up this story in the Bible where they make a fake God out of gold and that's easier to control because mystery is awkward to sit with you. Right. So can you talk about the beauty of mystery and how we should handle that? Because you're dealing with that in the kids book and the adult book and, and you really talk about nature. Nature is a place where there's a lot of mystery.
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C
Yes. I mean, just general God being mysterious to us should be good news. Right. Like for example, when a three year old is trying to understand physics, it's because the concept of physics is beyond their understanding. Right. It's. And it's a mystery to them. And I could try to spend two hours teaching my three year old about physics and they'll be lucky to grasp any element of that.
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Right.
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So it's basically a testament to how big God is. The fact that there's a lot of questions that we have. Like when people say presence of God, what does that mean? Isn't God everywhere? And yes, God is everywhere, but he's also somewhere And I think when we realize, okay, this is a God that we're meant to know, and the God that we read about in the Bible is also that was constantly encountered, experienced, walked with, received, understood, I think that should be an impetus for all of us to wonder, okay, I may know about Jesus, but do I know Jesus personally? Do I know what he likes? Do I know what upsets him? And I think when we settle for the things that we understand and not have the courage to. To really dig deep in the things that we don't understand and let God color in between the lines. I mean, color in the lines as opposed to us trying to fill in the blanks with our own assumptions of who God is. I think, for example, if we've never had a steady father figure, we may attribute just what we assume to be a father onto God. And that may shape our relationship with Jesus. Instead of sitting with this mystery of wait, he's a good father and he goes after the 1 and leaves. In 99, he if I am the prodigal son, he's the father that runs to me and waits for me. That is a concept that makes sense in my head, but my body does not understand it right. I think just walking into that and just letting God help you understand what may be a mystery to us, the concept of a good father. It's pretty in a song, but for a lot of us it's a. It's a messy journey to try to understand that, right? But letting ourselves go through that, being curious enough and just trusting that we don't have to understand Jesus to go to Jesus. We could go to Jesus trusting that he will help us understand Him.
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Well, what I think is really interesting between the two books is that if you were kind of stuck with how to answer some of the questions, you would be able to use the book for adults to help with answering some of the questions for your kids. Because in the book Experiencing Friendship with God, you talk a lot about this book called the Practice of the Presence
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of God by Brother Lawrence.
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And he said things like, neither skill nor knowledge is needed to go to God. He is within Him. We don't need to seek. He is within us. We don't need to seek him elsewhere. And so these are things then you could use to teach your children. It's how there's a lot of crossover
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of all of these topics.
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I wanted to read what you wrote about mystery. I thought it was so interesting. This is such a beautiful writing. In this book you wrote, mystery is awkward to sit with, especially when God doesn't feel present and his ways make no sense. When you are under the torrent of one disappointment after another, it's hard to imagine what a loving God could possibly be doing. Sometimes he asks for your trust instead of providing you with perfect understanding. The discouragement may tempt us to turn away. And yet turning away would merely lead us to substitutes that offer counterfeit peace. The existence of mystery isn't evidence of his aloofness. Rather, it's a testament to his eternal nature. It means that he is greater than our ability to comprehend. If toddlers were offered or were offended by their first exposure to the world, they would never explore and ask questions which is essential for them to reach milestones and grow to maturity. And then you talk about nature, like the vastness of nature. If marine biologists were discouraged by the blackness of the ocean floor, they wouldn't send divers and machines to explore the deep sea. You talk about NASA, you know, research into space. The mystery of God isn't a rejection, nor is it the result of lack of proximity. Instead, it is heaven's red carpet rolled out for you to discover the pleasures and beauty of his infinite glory.
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C
Oh, yeah. Amen. Who wrote that? I'm just kidding. I mean, what I love about just this whole concept of mystery is we could raise a rested generation of children if we teach them how to interact with the mysteries of God's presence. Well, because I think as parents, we get really nervous when our kids start to ask questions that sometimes may sound doubtful of God. And, you know, we throw a we'll just pray or just believe right at them. Or we try to answer these questions with very clear answers. And of course, if you have the answers, great, you should give it to them. However, I think another valuable piece of discipleship for our children is just teaching them that it's okay that you don't have answers, because if we allow them to have peace in the mystery, then we are teaching our children how to rest. Rest even when the questions are unanswered, Rest when things don't make sense, when we are rushing into answering our children's questions right away and get nervous and stressed when questions are left unanswered, we are also teaching them, hey, you need answers for all things in order to be at peace, in order to be at rest. Right. And so I think developing a trust and a comfort even with sitting in the mysteries of God's presence and also just believing that the answers will be there in due time, I think is a great way to not only have them sleep in the night, but also a great way to teach our children how to use that curiosity to develop an authentic friendship with God.
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One of the mysteries that you talk about that I think pretty much everyone can relate with is, why am I suffering? What's the purpose of this darkness? Why would God allow this? Where is God in this? Don't my years of serving the church merit, you know, shouldn't they merit his favor? So can you talk about that part of the questioning? You know, you. You gave your own story about when you had a child that was born and had to be rushed to the icu and you weren't expecting it. I think a lot of times we're not expecting it. Sometimes we are. But then all of a sudden, you're in this really dark place. You're desperate. And you wrote, eventually my desperate place prayer slowed to a resentful silence. I had called, but God refused to answer, or so it felt. So can you talk about the. You know, when the fragility of life hits and there's a lot of grief and you have to try and deal with the confusion of that?
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C
Yeah, I think when we go through things that we do not understand, especially suffering, we rush to assumptions and we start to interpret the suffering as God's absence or rejection. And I think practicing sacred assumptions during Dark seasons of our lives will be life changing. It's kind of like this. It's like, I remember once my Facebook account got hijacked for some reason, like, or it just got hacked into, and all these Facebook statuses start to go up that were just very uncharacteristic of who I am.
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Right.
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And obviously if anybody goes through that, they're, you know, panicking because you have all these followers or friends that are like, what is going on with this lady? And I remember once seeing on my Facebook page someone writing, this isn't faith. This is. This doesn't sound like who she is.
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Right.
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And I remember thinking, wow, that felt really good. That felt really good because there's somebody out there that assumed the best of me and not just take this moment and rush into conclusions. There's. There was somebody that knew who I was and trusted in my character enough not to create a narrative from what they were seeing. And so. And I think we do the same thing with Jesus. It's like, if our. If our prayers feel like they were left unanswered and we're left in this disappointment, do we rush to the conclusion, oh, I guess God's too busy for me, or I guess I'm not important to God. Do we rush into that or do we practice sacred assumptions? Maybe it's still now, but maybe God's up to something really good that I don't understand. Maybe the Father knows what's best for me. Maybe God is doing something in this that will really bring him glory, and I have the honor of participating in that story. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise and I just don't know it yet. Right? And I think when we practice the sacred assumption. Sacred assumption is just something that only friends do. Right? Strangers don't really do that as much, but friends are the ones that say, no, I know. I know who this person is, and this doesn't mean that this person has neglected me or ignored me. And so practicing that is also practicing friendship with God.
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I love that phrase sacred assumption you had written in the book, experiencing friendship with God. Faith reminds us to assume good things about God. Assuming he is good while we are in the mystery is a choice to trust in his kindness and integrity. It is a refusal to create a false narrative of who he is, regardless of what the circumstances feel like. Believing he is good enough for you changes everything. So these are some of the answers. So if you're reading Never Alone with your kids and Talk, it's really a book about all the questions, these deep questions that we have kids ask them. I think it reminds a child that it's okay to ask all of these deep questions. It gives them an opportunity to bring up the questions they have and to talk about the questions that this main character asks in the children's book. And then these are. This is a place where you can find some of the answers. You say that, you know that people say in church all the time, God is good all the time. But you say, if you use the phrase he is good, to me, it's different and it's very subtle, but the implications are massive. Can you talk about that?
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Yes. I think a lot of people could agree that God is probably right. Even if you. You're, you know, you're not very familiar with Jesus, if there is a God out there, that he's probably better than us in some sense. But to say that God is also good, kind, merciful, trustworthy. I think that's a different narrative. You know, I think a lot of people carry this sense of, well, I know God is probably right and he rules all things and he knows more than me. So I get it. I get that he's purer than me, he's more righteous than me. Like, you know, and I think that's easy to believe, but to also trust that God is forgiving, that God cares, right? I think that's a lot of the challenges that we face in our faith. And I think it's so essential that we take that seriously, because I think some of us, we settle with, yeah, he's glorious, He's. He's almighty, sure. But is he almighty on my behalf? Is that glory something that he's inviting me into? It's essential that we take these questions seriously, because think of what led to the Fall in the garden. I'm sure Adam and Eve believe that God was, like, good, relatively good. But was he good enough to obey in that moment? Because what the enemy did was make them doubt that he was good enough, that God was good enough for them. And if he was good enough, they wouldn't have taken the fruit. But because they started doubt, wait. I think he might be holding back on me. I think he's keeping me from this knowledge of good and evil that could be good for me, right? Like, he doesn't want me to be like him.
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Right?
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C
And so because they started doubt in God's character, that's what led to the Fall, right? And so when we start practicing sacred assumptions, when we start practicing just believing that he is good enough, and if you don't believe it doing that deep dive and being okay with some of these questions and letting God answer them for you in due time, that will serve your faith way more than suppressing your questions.
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B
Yeah, yeah. The books both cover these, these deep questions that we have. Kids have them, adults have them and they matter. They matter and the answers matter. And you find a lot of answers and also hope it in a lot, in simplicity. A lot. A lot of these statements that you have in the book from Brother Lawrence are fairly simple, but they're very powerful. You know, it's just one sentence here, one sentence there.
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motherhood hit you hard. So you're just you were like I'm an ambitious person, and I have all these accomplishments.
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They are exciting. The.
- [35:44]
B
I know I'm getting things done. I'm traveling around the world. This gives me a reason to live. But then you had kids. This is a big question. I think people have too, which is, yes, what is my new purpose? What is the point of my life now? I was doing these grandiose things. Now I'm rocking a baby at 3am can you talk about that transition to motherhood? You have these four kids in five. Five in a year. Five years. It's very quick, you know, but even I always say, we have. We have a lot of kids too, and they're pretty close in age. But I felt like it rocked my world with the first one, just one. Like, if there's one kid, it rocks your world. So whether you have 1 or 2 or 4 or 5 or 10, it doesn't matter. It, like, really changes the pace of your life and changes your focus. So can you talk about how you navigated that, how you're still navigating that? And when you're rocking a child at 3am Wondering what the point of life really is, where does that question lead you?
- [36:47]
C
Yes, I. In retrospect, I realized that motherhood set me free. It set my prayer life free. Because before motherhood, I always felt like I needed to be somewhere or do something in order to be close to Jesus. In order to be in proximity to Jesus, I thought I had to go find holy ground to be in. I remember by the time I had my second child, I remember my. In my flesh being very frustrated, thinking, okay, so do no mom get to be close to God or something? Because when do we get to burn our candles and do the journal writing and, you know, turn on our favorite worship music really loud and get immersed into this experience? And, you know, I. I started to feel really hopeless. And I realized, oh, my goodness, my intimacy with God is so bound up in this ability to create this experience, to go to an event to hear a sermon, right? And I. And I thought, wait, the blood of Jesus isn't that fragile. Like, it doesn't stop working just because I get busy. It doesn't stop working just because my circumstances change. And so that led me to a deep dive. And I realized that motherhood really clarified my faith because I thought that the purpose of my life was to do all these things. And I realized, oh, no, that's actually not it at all. In the same sense of. The Israelites thought the purpose of the wilderness was to get to the promised land. When actually that wasn't the purpose. The purpose of the wilderness was the presence of God. And if the reason why you live is to know Jesus intimately, authentically and passionately, then every season will be a gift. Every season will have a blessing. For example, if in a season of failure, you get to know God's grace, and if the purpose of your life is to just know Jesus intimately, authentically and passionately, then you fulfilled your purpose. You've got to know him in a deeper, more authentic way. If in a season of pain leads you to know the God who comforts, if a season of lack leads you to know the God that provides, then you have succeeded to fulfill your purpose. And whether you are in hospice, whether you are in a wheelchair, whether you are retired or not able to get a job, you can still fulfill your purpose. That is why we breathe. It's to know him, to know that love, to know that mercy. And everything was supposed to overflow from that. Like when Adam and Eve were created, they were given this commission to go and subdue the earth, be fruitful, and so on.
- [40:03]
B
Right?
- [40:03]
C
But that was supposed to overflow from this perfect communion with their God, which is why it made sense that after they received this commission, the next day they rested. It was a day of rest, right? Like, was God distracted? Was he really tired? Or was that the first step to be in alignment with the presence of God so that they could fulfill that commission to subdue the earth and be fruitful? And I think today we are trying to expand our gardens not as friends of Jesus, but as strangers. We're just trying to make it our purpose, make it our goal and dream. And we start to blame motherhood and blame our husbands and blame our schedules for not being able to succeed and fulfill this reason to breathe, when actually our reason to breathe is. Is to know Jesus. It's the intimate communion. And everything is supposed to be an overflow from that.
- [41:07]
B
That's a great message. It's a great message that it doesn't have to look a certain way. Because I felt like that for a really long time. You know, you have these kids, and then you're like, well, maybe if I get up at 4:00am Maybe if I get up at 3:30am you know, I'm gonna have this little bit of prayer time. And then they inevitably get up as. As soon as you're up, it doesn't matter how quiet you are. It's like they smell you or something.
- [41:29]
C
Totally.
- [41:30]
B
They know you're up.
- [41:32]
C
Yes.
- [41:32]
B
And so that actually is a season to Learn about a God who never slumbers. That was one of the biggest things, that was probably one of my biggest takeaways from the early mother years is you're like, oh, you know, God is all knowing, all caring all the time. So then part of what this motherhood journey does is it allows you to have some of these different kinds of rhythms, like a bedtime rhythm. So you can pick up this book never alone. It can be part of your bedtime rhythm where you're talking about these matters of faith. And it's funny, it has toot in there. So your kids are going to like that.
- [42:07]
C
That's a favorite. That's a fan favorite.
- [42:11]
B
Yeah. The pictures are. Are fantastic. And just talking about the questions, like, does God still love me even when I'm mean to my brother, when I get bad grades, when I forget to pray, when I make bad choices? So you talk then about rhythms and experiencing friendship with God. And I thought, these rhythms are beautiful. And I thought I was. I would love to talk actually about all of them. I don't know if we'll have time. But you talk about rhythms of gratitude, rhythms of consultation, just asking for wisdom, often ask, ask, ask. And I thought that's a great thing for kids, right? Like, ask for guidance, Ask for wisdom anytime you're stuck. But you also have in here rhythms of grief. And so you talk about having almost like a spiritual flush and reminding yourself on a somewhat regular basis to bring your heartaches to God and to search in your heart for sorrows or burdens that need to be flushed out. So actually, if we could focus on one of the rhythms, because you also talk about rhythm of petitioning. We petition because we're confident in God's ability to meet our needs. But I thought this rhythms of grief was especially practical.
- [43:18]
C
Yes, they're all practical.
- [43:19]
B
They're all practical.
- [43:20]
C
You know what I thought?
- [43:21]
B
I thought it was especially like, I wasn't expecting it. Right. You know, okay. Yes, I should be grateful. I need to be in a rhythm of being grateful. Yes. I need to be reminded to ask God for wisdom. Okay. But I don't think I've ever considered having a continual rhythm of grief.
- [43:40]
C
Yeah. And I think the reason why we don't think about it is because we. We wonder what's the point? Right? Like, we gotta get stuff done. A lot of women feel like they have to be everything for everyone. And so in a way, grief feels counterintuitive. It feels unproductive. It feels like, what am I gonna do, sit there and cry? You know, but actually, like I said before, if the purpose of your life is to know him, and if it's for that intimate communion, then grief also has a purpose. Because often when we stuff it down and we try to ignore what's happened and just rush into forgiveness, rush into being better behaved, rush into that attitude of gratitude all the time, and we just completely neglect what our hearts experienced. We bypass a huge element of getting to know God, because pain tends to usher us into the deeper things of his presence. Pain allows us to know him in a way that mountaintop moments may not necessarily be able to expose us to. Right. And this is not to say, oh, you have to have pain or you have to have sorrow. No, but all of that is going to be a part of our journey as long as we are on this side of eternity. And it's just really about, what do you do with that grief? A lot of the psalms is about grief. And it doesn't end with perfect solutions. It just ends with the psalmist being able to turn towards God and reorient themselves towards God. So, as in to say, this is not an invitation to just bury yourselves into it, into a pile of your sorrows and laments and just stay there. No, a true holy grief is being able to take our sorrows and reorient our face towards Jesus and bring it towards God, turn it into worship. And it's not to ignore it. And I think sometimes we think it's holy to ignore our issues and our pain and our grievances and our laments, when actually, no, God invites us to bring it to Him. And you may not end up with perfect solutions, but you will have God.
- [46:13]
B
Yes, don't ignore it, because you have this verse in here. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. As letdowns come our way, we must regularly bring our sorrows to Jesus. Pain makes us deeply dissatisfied with empty religion. It causes us to reject shallow cliches and powerless transition traditions because we want nothing less than the pure, wise and deep presence of God. Presence is the only acceptable answer to deep pain. So this is a part of your rhythm. And everyone who talks about say three things that you're grateful today. This is also a rhythm, a rhythm of grief, a spiritual flush. And you wrote, don't wait till you have your life together to speak to God. Don't wait till you feel holy to sit with Him. You don't have to shake off any sense of guilt before you.
- [46:55]
A
You pray.
- [46:55]
B
Pray first and allow the Holy Spirit to address your burdens.
- [46:58]
A
He will accept you as you are
- [46:59]
B
and he will also sanctify you. So once again, you know, this book, Never Never Alone. This kid's book is about coming to God. It's about not waiting. It's about having this rhythm, this nightly rhythm of talking to God and thinking about spiritual things. And then the book, Experiencing Friendship with God will help and I would imagine, unlikely and anointed as well, how everyday believers experience the power of the Holy Spirit. So that's coming out in September. People can pre order that already. Now, let's talk about this book by Brother Lawrence. I had no idea. I've heard of it. I think a lot of people have heard of it. The Practice of the Presence of God. His name used to be Nicholas Herman.
- [47:42]
C
I'm like, what? He rebranded. He rebranded to Brother Lawrence.
- [47:48]
B
Good rebrand Nicholas Herman. Interesting. But he, but this book, this book actually became a book after he died.
- [47:59]
C
Yeah, isn't that funny? I mean. Okay, so the story of the reason why we're even bringing this up, for those that may not know, Experiencing Friendship with God is basically a modern day take on Brother Lawrence's book, the practice of the presence of God. And the reason why I felt like we could all use a modern day take is because not all of us are Carmelite monks that existed many, many, many, many years ago. We don't have the privilege of just being in a monastery and cutting onions and peeling potatoes. You know, a lot of us have very complicated, noisy lives. And what does that mean for us? And the thing is, I remember when I was a newer believer, I was just like, okay, so I need to get to know Jesus. I gotta get to know him, you know, like, I want more. I want to understand him. And, you know, this, this book was so highly recommended by our pastor. And so I went to go get it. It was. Well, first I went to go to look for a book that would help me understand Jesus. And it turned out this book was the smallest one. So I'm like, yes, give it to me straight. It's the smallest one. And so I read it and I was immediately disappointed because I was looking for just a groundbreaking formula and I was looking for like just a ten step. This is how you fix all your problems and this is how you become a super Christian. But I think it was a simplicity that just discombobulated me, that just confounded me. Like, it was just a simplicity of, hey, you know, I was just doing my daily chores and I was just praising my God and aware of his presence. And so I realized, wow, in an age where all of us want a formula that will just change our lives and help us to overcome our flesh, have we overcomplicated it? And so when people ask me, okay, so how do I develop a friendship with Jesus? And when I say, it's a lot simpler than you think, it's just really practicing awareness. You know, in to that, they're always like, what? Like, you know, they want something more profound.
- [50:31]
A
Yeah.
- [50:31]
C
You know? And I go, no, it's just constantly practicing an awareness. And it's like this. And moms will understand this. It's like when you go grocery shopping at Costco with your children, with your maybe one child, you are still. You're still shopping for the eggs and the milk, but you're still aware of your child. You know, where your child is generally, right? I hope so. Right. Like, you know, your child is in the car. You know, your child's either climbing the cart or touching the fruit. Or, you know, like, you have a general awareness of who you're with as you are on task. Right. And so it's not about just interrupting your day for God. Right. Although that's a good thing. Jesus did that, too. And there is a redemptive value in making sure that you have your quiet times with Jesus and your allotted moments where it's just for God, but at the same time, it's about including him in your life. And when you include him in your life, you're not just visiting him during your quiet times. And that is the disconnect that a lot of people experience. They feel like, oh, I leave him once my prayer moment is done. And when that gap between prayer time to prayer time is long, you come back to the next prayer time feeling guilty. You're like, oh, man, I was so distracted. And you feel guilty that you haven't thought about him or talked to him, right? When actually, if you practice including him in your day, that's when we truly understand when the Apostle Paul told us to pray always, right? To. To constantly be praying. I mean, and if some of us feel like, well, I don't know, I'm spiritual enough for that, and if I am too distractible, right? And I would say, well, you're constantly doing something. If you have anxiety, you're constantly worrying, right? If you are. If you're distracted easily, you're constantly looking for dopamine, right? We're constantly doing something. Right? And when we're practicing constantly being aware of God's presence, that changes everything. It changes how you wash dishes, it changes how you treat the local barista. It changes how we talk to the Uber driver. It just, it just changes everything.
- [53:11]
B
This one sentence that you had in the book from Brother Lawrence, AKA Nicholas Herman, said, I still believe that all spiritual life. This is exactly what you're saying. I still believe that all spiritual life consists of. All spiritual life consists of practicing God's presence and that anyone who practices it correctly will soon attain spiritual fulfillment. Yeah, that's it.
- [53:30]
C
Absolutely that's it.
- [53:31]
B
Is it in the book? All your ways. In all your ways, acknowledge him.
- [53:35]
C
Acknowledge him. And it's so simple that people don't believe it. Like, they're just like, wait, that's it. And, and I would say this. And the reason why it's so hard oftentimes is you have to get your theology straight. I think when people think that the presence of God. I love the way Alicia Brits it. She's like, like, it doesn't thin just because you're doing something else. Right? Like it. And we can't thicken it by. Thicken him by like just being more well behaved. Right. And I think when our theology is a little off and we forget that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit, back in the Old Testament, people had to go to the temple to be able to have any proximity to the holy of holies.
- [54:26]
B
Right.
- [54:28]
C
But when Jesus died, he tore the veil and now the holy of holies is within us. And I think we forget what we carry. We forget who we carry. And because we need to, some of us, we need to relearn and be reminded of what we're actually believing in order to practice it. And so, hey, if that means just going back to that scripture and just relearning what the presence of God really is to us, amen. Right? And that's why we have books, that's why we have teachers to teach us. Okay. This is why it's as simple as practicing an awareness. It's like having a Ferrari in your garage and never taking it for a drive. You have this, this blood bought presence in you. And yet we just always just say, well, I don't feel him. Right. You know, and that's kind of where. Okay, that's okay if you don't feel him. That's why we're practicing an awareness. And we tend to experience what we're the most aware of.
- [55:35]
B
Yeah, right.
- [55:36]
C
Which is why practicing the presence of God is so important.
- [55:40]
B
I love that you had this sentence. It was at like the very beginning of experiencing friendship with God. Where you had sort of the same responses. You wrote. If someone had told me that to befriend Jesus was the ultimate reward of my faith, I would have been underwhelmed. But this is.
- [56:00]
C
Yeah.
- [56:01]
B
About that simplicity and about how Moses. You wrote to Moses, God wasn't just a solution to a problem. Instead, God was his friend. We fulfill our purpose because we commune with him. And that does set you free. It sets you free. I mean, it's very important, I think, especially to hear that message, I think, in seasons of. Of young motherhood, when maybe you did have a candle and worship time and journaling and, you know, 30 minutes that you could. I remember that as a, you know, as a high schooler. And I felt like for so long, I was always trying to get back to that, you know, like, oh, right before school, I've got this time. And then you have these kids and you don't have that anymore. And you have to adjust. And it's a good adjustment. It's a good adjustment to practice the presence of God. So. So you have a lot going on. You have a master's of divinity. You are like we talked about earlier, co pastor of Mosaic Covenant Church in New Jersey. So. And you have this new book that's coming out in September, Unlikely and anointed. People can go and grab a copy of that now. Huge congrats. Huge congrats. You know, it's really cool to see that you have a lot of success in what you've done, and you see that step by step, walk with the
- [57:14]
A
Lord the whole way through.
- [57:15]
B
Because you even talked in this book about COVID You're like, we're supposed to start a church. We don't have any people. We don't have any money. You know, you take. You take those. Those single steps, and then you see God's hand in your life. Often in retrospect, right. With all these books and all these things that you've done. So it's really an honor to get a chance to meet you. Huge congrats on these two books.
- [57:36]
C
Likewise, new books.
- [57:38]
B
The kids book is called Never Alone. The book that's coming out in September, Unlikely and anointed. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory for from your childhood that was outside?
- [57:48]
C
Oh, man. So many things. But I would say Christmas. I love Christmas. Just the feeling of a quiet, snowy day. I mean, I was in Chicago for a lot of my childhood, so we did have snow during that time. And I just remember just, you know, like, just the fun of being outside with my sister and making snowmen and playing in the snow, taking pictures with my mom and just being able to go inside and open presents is just the best. I'm the kind of person that counts down to Christmas from January 1st, so I love it.
- [58:33]
B
We're halfway there.
- [58:35]
C
Yeah, totally. It's almost Christmas.
- [58:38]
B
There is like I. I remember reading that snow does absorb sound, so it really is. Yes, it really is quiet out there. There's something about it.
- [58:46]
C
It feels different. So I love it.
- [58:49]
B
These are incredibly important topics. They were incur. It was encouraging to me to read both books and I loved how I always love if you compare a book for an adult and with a book for a child, then it enhances the whole family. So, Faith, huge congrats and thanks for being here.
- [59:04]
C
Thanks for having me. This was such a pleasure and an honor.