Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Jesse French
Hey guys, my name is Jesse French and welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast. Excited that you've joined us here once again and excited to be joined by my colleague and friend, Mr. Greg Ellert. Greg, how are you, man?
Greg Ehlert
doing very well, glad to be here with you today. It's always good to be together.
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for being game today. We're going to continue kind of in the trend that we have started over the last couple of weeks. And that is really teeing up something that we're just so excited about a restoration project. And that is the fact that at the end of September, we are launching a digital summit, a gathering of conversations between experts and thought leaders around.
restorative masculinity and it's called the restorative manhood digital summit. And we have been working hard at this as a team, haven't we Greg? Lots of weeks. And as part of that for this episode of the podcast, wanted to play a clip from a conversation that you had with John Ortberg, and to be able to kind of tee up some of our conversation. And so to not only lead us into some deeper exploration of
spiritual disciplines and spiritual practices, maybe understanding that in, in some different ways. And then also as a way for our listeners to say, Hey, this is just a snippet of the conversation that will be fully available to all folks for free as part of the summit, at the end of September. And so we'll play that clip here in just a few minutes, Greg, but would love to ask you, you were able to interview John recently as, part of the summit and some of.
your conversation was around this notion of spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices. And maybe we can just begin with how our spiritual practices may be commonly understood and what was some of the invitation in that conversation with John that felt hopeful for you as we think about being restorative men, men that are able to bring life in the way of Jesus and bring presence to those around them in life-giving ways. Yeah, let's start there.
practice may be commonly understood and what was some of the invitation towards something different.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, that's good. There's a lot there. think, well, I mean, you know, this might have been your experience as well. But when I was growing as a Christian in my teen years, we would talk often of something called the quiet time, which was supposed to be, you know, a time of where you were quiet, you were alone. Maybe you were reading the scriptures, maybe you were praying or journaling or some kind of combination thereof. Yep. And, you know,
Kind of spiritual maturity might have been measured by you know how regularly you did that or maybe how long you did that whether that was something you enjoy doing. Right it kind of almost became a litmus test or some kind of metric for self evaluation or something and i think the crazy thing about us humans is we can kind of turn anything that's good and when we make it the main thing it starts serving kind of our sense of.
self or identity, we try to validate ourselves through the performance of it, it really can be difficult. so, so yeah, I think this is something I've seen in my own life where I find like I'm measuring, you know, am I doing well? Am I not doing well? Trying to get some sort of a sense of whether I'm improving or growing. And then just in pastoral ministry, I've seen the same kind of thing, whether it be with parents, with youth, it can be something that can be really frustrating.
Sometimes where it's kind of like you just feel like you keep failing you try and try again and it's just Yeah, you can get caught up in the midst of that it can feel more like a discipline That isn't very there's not much pleasure in it. There's not much joy in it and it can be Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah. Yeah
Jesse French
of that word discipline,
Greg, even as you're talking, like, you use the phrase, to take something that is good and kind of make it distorted a little bit. At the core of it, right? The goodness of spiritual practice is what? It sounds sort of like a basic question, but maybe let's even ask that.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, there's a couple things that come to mind. I'd answer that question by just saying the goodness of spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines is it opens us up to live in the love of God. Dallas Willard used to talk about how a sailboat, you know, your job as a sailor is just to get the sail up in the right position and to get it going and tied down and taught so that when the wind comes,
it carries you. not the one bringing that energy, but you're setting yourself up to be able to catch the energy of the wind. I think spiritual disciplines, the gift of them is it gives us the opportunity. puts us in a space where we could have like a disposition of receptivity to the reality that God's already there with his love and wants to connect with us. And I think that's, yeah, that's the gift.
Jesse French
Yeah. Which that strikes me that starting place of, know, in that metaphor of kind of raising our sale, making ourself available to the love of God. That's a much different posture than one of generativity, right? It is up to me to generate something. No, is the opportunity to be available and to consent to what is already there.
Greg Ehlert
Yes
Yeah, and as you said that for the first time, I realized that there's a severe mercy in that because since it's not us trying to generate something, it puts us in a place where we're not in control. And that is actually part of the gift, but it's coming from left field, as it were, and not what we expected. But there's actually great freedom in that rather than the tyranny of striving.
Jesse French
Gosh, yeah, I can feel the, as you say that, the, on one hand, that could and can feel like a gift and the, the contrast to that of to put ourselves in places we are not in control, very counterintuitive. I would add for lots of us is like, no, we're trying to avoid that. That is the opposite of gift.
Greg Ehlert
It is, but we live in, at least here in the West, we live in such a kind of a quantitative world where you're constantly evaluating things. You know, you don't put something like, I'm really good at resting and just being still and allowing, you know, goodness to come my direction. You don't put that on a resume. You put all the things you've accomplished and all the skills you've acquired and all the knowledge that you have, you know, you want to put down and credential yourself.
the world and this whole spiritual disciplines thing just goes right counter to all of that.
Jesse French
Which I think that posture that you're talking about that Willard is inviting us to of making ourselves available to the love of God. I think that is one of the postures that a restorative man is willing to embrace, right? The sense of it is not up to me to generate all of the goodness out of my sheer effort.
Greg Ehlert
It is. I think that's both the freedom and the frightening tyranny of it because because it butts right up against what so often can motivate us in life. And there's lots of ways to frame that and understand that. I think there's a spirit of religiosity, you know, that really tries to just work on self-improvement or, you know, self-transformation or self whatever.
The problem with that is it puts self right at the... self is the key reference there. But when you put God at the center, then that really changes our posture even towards ourselves and how we employ or how we engage these spiritual practices.
Jesse French
Yes. Before we hit record on this conversation, we were kicking around some ideas. You had some language, I think that came from Willard around striving and practice, but I think it was really helpful. Can you share some of that?
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, so one of the things that Willard said quite often was he talked about grace and he said grace is opposed to earning, but it's not opposed to effort. And what he meant by that was grace is all about the fact that we already have favor, that we already have validation, that we already have God's initiating love. Like there's nothing we do to earn it. There's nothing that we do to lose it. There's such freedom in that. But
It doesn't mean that we don't do spiritual practices or disciplines. We just approach them now out of the freedom and the disposition of already having received what we need rather than trying to strive or gain or generate what we need. That's the big difference.
Jesse French
Yes. So grace is supposed to striving but not opposed to effort. that-
Greg Ehlert
That's right. That's right. There's nothing to be earned here. But when we put, you know, something good like spiritual practices into the paradigm of striving or earning, then it's frustrating.
Jesse French
Well, I would say it's, it can be frustrating. There's some clarity around that. But I think at least for me, probably is drive some of it, right? Of like, if it can be viewed through the striving lens, the formula of my effort yielded this results, right? Feels clear, feels dependable. It's much less dependent upon the mysterious grace and presence of God.
Greg Ehlert
Sure.
Jesse French
So it feels like that initial movement towards striving, there's the clarity there. And I would say just as a human and as, as a man, man, I love places where I'm able to put forth effort and tie the result to that effort.
Greg Ehlert
Of course. Right.
Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. it's living here at the coast. The thing that keeps coming to mind as we're talking about this is surfing. And I know we didn't talk about that earlier, but it would be ridiculous for a surfer to go in the vast ocean and think that it's up to him to create the energy of the wave. Right. Like that's that's what it's exactly. Yeah. I mean, would be great. Wow. Look at the wave that I've made, you know, like whatever. But it's.
If you think of the disciplines as putting ourselves in the right position to be able to catch the energy of the wave, then it opens and offers itself to you as it's unfolding. And it's just an absolute joy to write it, to be a part of it. There's actually no pressure to get something right or make something happen. You're opening up yourself to the goodness that's already there. And I think this goes to the heart of what we're about in Restoration Project, right? Like you can't will yourself to believe
that you're loved by God with no accolades or striving or achieving. Like that's not something you just think yourself to that reality. we don't usually think about spiritual disciplines as surrender to the fact that we're not in control. But it actually is. When we surrender ourselves and we stop the striving and we stop the trying to achieve something and let it just be something that opens ourselves up to receive how God wants to be present to us in that time.
Jesse French
Yeah.
Greg Ehlert
It takes the pressure off.
Jesse French
Yeah, which gosh, this is probably a rabbit trail for another conversation, but I'll say it anyways. I wonder if some of the goodness of a posture of not striving, of making ourselves available and the true practice of that with God over and over and over and over again, is that then as that becomes more intuitive, as that becomes more comfortable for us to actually be in a space with God where there is
participation but not striving. Does that not also bleed over to our relationships with other people, right? And what a gift to actually then be with our family, to be with our friends in ways of like, I'm not striving as I'm sitting having coffee with someone else. I can be available here. Like what a tremendous gift where that type of presence is then experienced by other people.
Greg Ehlert
No, it's so good. I think that's absolutely right. think in my conversation with John, he was talking about that, that the Pharisaical spirit is one that's constantly trying to measure or evaluate. Yes. And then when we live in a world where we're constantly being evaluated, then we start self-evaluating. And that's a very transactional, religious sort of energy rather than a relational and a personal one that's open to initiative and response.
Jesse French
That's Greg, what if we play the clip from the interview with John here that will be part of the summit here in end of September? So we'll play this clip here right now.
John Ortberg
I realized, particularly through reading and listening to him, but also many others, that the problem with measuring spiritual maturity by devotional practices is if you do that in the first century, the Pharisees would always come out on top. And so we've got to find some way to measure spiritual maturity where the Pharisees don't win or else they'll just produce more of them. So I asked Dallas one time if that's not the right way to think about or gauge spiritual growth or spiritual maturity.
How do you do it? And his immediate answer was, he said, I'll ask myself, am I getting more or less easily irritated these days? And am I getting more or less easily discouraged these days? Because I find if I'm living in the love of God, I'm just not as irritable. And if the peace of Christ is raining in my heart, as Paul says, then I'm not as easily discouraged.
Jesse French
When I heard that clip, I was like, wow, even just those paradigms, they feel helpful. And in a way again, right. And you and I were just talking about quantification and metrics, right. And what John Ortberg is inviting, right. Through his conversation with Dallas, right. These categories of irritation and discouragement. I think to use those as spaces of curiosity, right? Like where are those present or what is the arc of that?
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, that's good. I mean, you just use the language of curiosity, right? Like, if I find myself getting more or less easily irritated, I think was this language, or more or less easily discouraged. Those are helpful. And I guess full circle to integrate this into what Restoration Project is about is, and this is what I think grace is supposed to do in our lives, is when something is brought to our awareness that is less than optimal.
Right? Like, you know, we realize, I am getting more irritated or I am getting more discouraged. Not to judge it. Grace says, notice it. Be curious about it. Bring the kindness of God to it, because probably God is really actually trying to free you from something. He's trying to free you from, you know, what it's disordered loves, false identity attachments, anything that would cause us to live outside of the free flow of his.
know what the Hebrew word chesed means, the unfailing love. that's, you know, if we see spiritual disciplines then, not as something to measure ourselves by or to evaluate others in terms of what spiritual maturity is, in terms of how much time did they put in and when did they do the, you know, punch the clock and all that kind of thing. Again, we don't want to co-opt these practices to serve some sort of idol of self-validation.
Jesse French
Yeah, well said. I appreciate what you said there, Greg, around the curiosity piece, because I think what you're saying, think, right, is like, when there are discouragement or irritation in our life, right, to use that as a lens for further engagement, for further wonder and curiosity, for further engagement with others, with God, and to not just short circuit that and say, because I don't think that's probably what Willard was saying either, was just like, well, let's just feel that less.
And cut that out, right? It's no, actually to live in the love of God is to bring our whole selves into that space. so if there is discouragement, if there is irritation, wonderful. May that be invited and engaged and not just like, that's negative. That's bad. I shouldn't feel that. So let's, let's sort of short circuit that out of the process.
Greg Ehlert
Absolutely and i think let's be honest to me if this is true of all humans but i think is men. Write we gravitate to the things that we feel like we have competence and agency and write me we just go to the things that we feel like we're good at are gonna be successful everybody does that. And i think in my own life for sure but in ministry i've time and again met you know dad's younger men older men or whatever that just live within the realm of competence but when it comes to spiritual confidence it's not very common.
to find men who have a disposition of feeling at ease with that, who don't take themselves too seriously. On the other side, it's like, man, like, you know, I meet men who feel frankly a lot of shame around it. Like I've never been able to get good at this. It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't care anything. Right. Cause it's, it's, I've got things, you know, I've got all these ideas and thoughts that are flowing through my head. Right. I think full circle to what you're saying, you know, Willard,
Jesse French
Is it making is
Greg Ehlert
Well, again, I think Willard would he talked a lot about freedom like he says, okay, he's like, if you want to have the freedom to play, you know, Beethoven's fifth or something like that, he's like, I can play Beethoven's fifth, I can pick out every note, I just can't pick them out when they're supposed to be picked out. Because I haven't disciplined myself as a pianist enough, so that I have the freedom to play it, you know, so if we understand that the spiritual practices is to have the freedom to just the same if you're going to try to run a marathon.
you tomorrow, but you haven't done any training, you know, that is going to be an exercise in futility. think what the practices do is they develop it. But this is what Dallas Willard said, too. He said, they give us we do by direct effort, which are the spiritual disciplines. What we do by that, we do those so that we can be responsive in life and be in community with God in such a way that we couldn't do by direct effort. In other words, he calls it the through indirection. So these spiritual disciplines produce in us
I mean, it's wild how the Spirit does this, but the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5, it produces in us more and more the character of Christ, not as something to be earned or as a badge to wear, but actually a space to live in more abundance and freedom.
Jesse French
That's right. That's right. We used the phrase earlier in the conversation around how spiritual practices can drift into the space of performance and doing so that is performative and learning. You contrasted that with practices that are personal and connect. You used those words earlier. Talk a little bit more about that around the difference between those two, between the personal and the performative and how we can.
again, make ourselves available and practice these spaces and engage in these practices more out of the space of personal connectedness rather than performance.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah. Well, that's good. That's a big one. You could write a chapter, a book on that topic. I think the first thing I would say is I think the performative or you could even say the transactional, even the pragmatic can so often come from, again, this striving energy and this need to accomplish something, approve something or establish something or, you know, it becomes a means to some other end. That is
I would call that a really constrictive or anxiety producing type of dynamic. mean, let's be honest, as men, we feel like we're being evaluated all the time in our work, you know, in our finances and everything. And I think for it to be personal means it has to do with connection. What is the nature of the connection that I have with God? And I think we start, of course, with Christ because we see Him disengaging from
kind of the tyranny of the urgent, the needs of the immediate moment. And he's going away in solitude, meaning he's not bringing... Sometimes he brings people with him, but most times he doesn't. And just to kind of re-hone and re-tune and refocus on his connection with God as the source of life. So this is what I encourage people to do. Recognize a couple of things. Number one is there are a lot more spiritual practices or disciplines out there than you've heard of, right?
So here's the thing, there is certain seasons of life, there are certain practices that are just not going to probably facilitate the kind of connection that you're hoping for looking for, and they could become really burdensome. I think there are lot of people who might not realize that there's something called apathetic prayer, where you can just go for a walk, and slow, you know, slow down at in your walking and allow your mind to slow down. And that could be a way you mean that counts as prayer? Yes, that counts as you know, so
We're talking here about personal connection with God. I'll recommend this resource. It's called the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. It's a terrible title because it doesn't fly off the shelves, right? Discipline Handbook. me just sign up for that. That'll be a great, you know, stocking stuffer. I think, but if you look at it, there are over 70 different spiritual practices in that book. People are like, what? I had no idea that the resource of church history
Jesse French
a little transactional.
Greg Ehlert
and what people have practiced both individually and in community, how life-giving that is and how that facilitates personal connection with God.
Jesse French
I'd love to really glad that you brought that up because I think that opening up of the category of spiritual practice to me feels really hopeful and helpful. Joseph Beale, he gives some language to spiritual practice this way. He says that it's any act habitually entered into with your whole heart that awakens, deepens and sustains within you a contemplative experience of the holiness of the present moment.
Wow. That's a long phrase. There's a lot there, right? That's very rich. Yeah. That we enter in with our whole heart. Yeah. It awakens, deepens and sustains us to the holiness of the present moment to the love of God. Like to me, that feels kind of what you're saying of, wow, the category just got blown open. If we do it through that way, through the personal connective of what you are talking about, gardening can be.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah.
Right zone.
Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Jesse French
Woodworking can be absolutely right like that.
Greg Ehlert
Absolutely.
Jesse French
Feels like really, really good news that moves us into that personal rather than the performative that you were talking about.
Greg Ehlert
do, and I think that's right. I think that, I mean, there are so many layers to that quote, holy moly. I think the freedom in it is, I think where we can go wrong is, okay, I've got to do these spiritual practices to become somebody I'm not. yes. And that is like, wow, that couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, these spiritual practices are to help connect me with the one who's the source of who I am. yeah. Right? That is a paradigm shift.
And then in there, in those things where we might be in the flow of gardening or we might be in the present moment of a walk or maybe you're hiking some trail where you live or something, it's an opportunity of how are we personally connecting with God? How are we experiencing His delight for us? How are we recognizing His face of delight in us? Like you can't... Anyway, I think that's really good. That quote made me think of
brother Lawrence who would talk about you know on practicing the presence right and it's not that our practice makes the presence happen it postures us for our capacity for attention to be attuned with the holiness of the present moment which was in that quote yeah.
Jesse French
Yeah, to be aware of what is true.
Greg Ehlert
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jesse French
Greg, that's so helpful. I love that you talk about the wandering around who we are and our natural bent, our natural, like, am drawn to these spaces and to view that through the lens of opportunity as a means for spiritual practice rather than, no, it needs to conform to this, you know, these five things.
Greg Ehlert
Right.
Right. And I think, you know, as you're saying that, reminds me that Dallas Willard used to regularly say, you know, especially at these contemplative retreats, that's a word that was in that quote. Contemplative just means slowing down enough to let your mind and heart and body just reintegrate and be again, fully present to the moment to be grounded. And Willard would say, hey, you're at this, you know, spiritual retreat. It's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever.
and you've got free time and you go to your prayer closet to pray and next thing you know, you fall asleep. Falling asleep might be the holiest thing that you could do. That might be the best spiritual practice in that afternoon because your body needs the rest, you know, because of how you've been going. And again, I think there's an ease to this. think it doesn't mean that we're flippant or not intentional. I don't mean that. But what it does mean is we're not anxious. We're not nervous. We're not kind of with our
fists clenched trying to get through something or accomplish something. Yeah. You know, I think if you make a relationship into something that's supposed to be accomplished, then it becomes inherently impersonal. It's like, yes, I'm taking my wife out to dinner because I'm trying to accomplish something. Well, guess what? That doesn't feel very loving. Yeah, let us know how that goes. Right. right. But we do we approach our relationship with God that way so often. And I think another thing that came to mind, Jesse, is that
Jesse French
Let know how that turns out for you.
Greg Ehlert
I think what Ortberg was saying in that quote, what we're talking about today, what Willard's trying to say is let's take the shoulds out of the spiritual practices. Like I should feel this, I should do this. Shoulds usually aren't fueled by a foundation of love. There's usually some other ulterior motive there. There's no shoulds here. It's an invitation to connection.
Jesse French
That's right. That's right. And that again, going back to that, tension of it is not the striving of shoulds. And yet it is also the intention of effort, right? To apply effort to be available of.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, yeah, being measured and evaluated, it's a stressful thing and we do it from the earliest ages, whether we have siblings and the comparison schools, constant evaluation, resumes are some of the most inherently dehumanizing things where we somehow sum up our worth, you know, in that finances can be the same thing. It's in our language, net worth. You know, it's like, really? Wow. It just goes on and on. And so it conditions us.
Jesse French
And I think that's one of the things that I think it was just to be able to set it that as we do make ourselves available to spiritual practice and we do enter that into our lives and make that part of our lives. He said, like, that makes us available to the work of God of which we might not have any sense of what that is or the fruit of that. Right. he's acknowledging that just the mysterious nature of that, like we enter into this and we might not have this crystal clear. Yeah.
Greg Ehlert
Absolutely.
Jesse French
This is what was born out of it, which I hope is good news, right? That like, it doesn't mean don't partake in that, but it is what you said earlier. Like it relieves the pressure of these results have to be generated.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah, it's right. I think when we, you know, as you were saying that, what came to mind is that actually to have intention in our engaging of the spiritual practices is a way that we express and exercise trust in God. So instead of putting our hope in what we can accomplish by our own efforts, our own wit, our own experience, insight, will, whatever, what we're doing is we're saying,
Lord, a lot was accomplished before I was born and a lot will be accomplished after I'm gone. Anything that's going to be lasting has to come from you in the first place. So there's this inherent trust. And trust, if you think about it, inherent to trust is surrender. It's not despair. It's not giving up, but it's actually this anticipatory yielding that creates space for realignment, right?
Jesse French
Yes.
Greg Ehlert
with what God's doing. And I'm telling you, if you're getting on a wave and you catch it properly, it's effortless. Like, it just lifts you and you go, right? And I'm not saying there isn't work in it, but it's not a striving, anxious, should-driven type of thing. It's very, very different than that. And I think the disciplines are there as a gift to us. You know, again, as Jesus said, know, man is not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath for man. Let's not have a spirit of religiosity around this.
where again we're measuring ourselves or others. That's not the intent at all.
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. Greg, thank you. Thank you for this conversation. Selfishly, feel so much of it. Thank you for that. But thank you for sharing your heart and your insight. And like we said, all of the conversation that you had with John is available as part of the Restored Manhood Digital Summit. The link to that is in the show notes and that's happening the end of September. Please join us for that. It's free.
Greg Ehlert
Yeah.
Jesse French
If you listen to this episode after the summit has happened, and you're like, man, that, sounds great. you can access all of that content from the summit by joining our growth collective, which is our online community. And so that that'll be available there. Greg, thanks. Great to be with
Greg Ehlert
Fantastic. You as well. It's fun.