25: Resilience (Series Compilation, Part 2 of 2)

[00:00] Stephanie: Welcome to the On the Trail podcast. For this week’s compilation episode we are revisiting the Resilience series, and this is part two of two. Let’s start with a story, I like stories. I like the story that you tell from Bill Gillham with the bear chasing you. It actually helped me when I was a child and was afraid of storms. It reframed my perspective on storms so much that I adore storms now. So why don’t you tell us that story?

[00:29] Marcus: Yeah, all the credit goes to this story. Bill Gillham wrote a book called Lifetime Guarantee. I saw some videos that he had done that were really helpful in getting me thinking about the difference between walking in the spirit and walking in the flesh. He tells a story about fear and beliefs which basically goes like this, imagine I’m running through the woods because I’m being chased by a bear. The bear is just about to get me when I notice that there is a cabin ahead. I sprint to the cabin slamming the door shut just in time to hear the bear bounce off and bang, the whole cabin shaking.

I locked the door and I am in this cabin now, and the reality is I am safe. The bear cannot get to me. So at this point I have options, right? I can literally pop popcorn, put on some nice music, read a book, and have a good time. Or I could sit there and worry about every possible way that the bear might be able to break in and literally die of a heart attack from the stress that I put myself under.

It really all comes down to beliefs, where I set my mind and what I’m filling my mind with. And so the idea here is that it’s always possible to imagine a scenario I can’t handle, right? It’s always possible to imagine how something could go wrong. And it’s not that we never go there but we don’t want to camp out there.

We want to get ourselves back to a place of what I can control and what is possible. So learning how to attack the toxic thinking is really what we’re talking about here. And a lot of times the best way to attack toxic thinking is to replace it.

Let me tell one more story. This is a Karl Payne story. So, Karl Payne was talking about the idea of replacing thoughts versus just saying, “I’m not going to think about this. I’m not going to think about this.” He says, “Suppose that you are thinking about pink elephants with green booties and giant sunglasses. It does no good to say, “Stop thinking about pink elephants with giant sunglasses and green booties.” You know, “stop it, stop,” that doesn’t really help it.

[02:34] Stephanie: That just reinforces the image in your head. You’re like, “Well, now I’m definitely thinking about them.”

[02:38] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. And so that happens to  us a lot where we’re like, “Stop thinking about this thing that’s making you afraid.” That doesn’t help. You have to replace it. So he’s like, if I don’t want to think about the pink elephants, the sunglasses, and green booties, maybe I should think about an iceberg floating out in the middle of the Atlantic, with two polar bears on it waltzing. When I think about an iceberg floating in the Atlantic with two polar bears on it waltzing and I think about that often enough, pretty soon I realize I’m not thinking about this pink elephant anymore. So that’s the idea. It is a way more effective strategy when it comes to attacking our toxic thinking to replace thoughts, than it is to try not to think thoughts.

[03:20] Stephanie: And sometimes you can’t replace the thoughts. And then that might be a sign that there’s a spiritual warfare issue going on.

[03:25] Marcus: Yep. If you’re trying and you can’t replace the thought and that strategy isn’t working, then sometimes I have to take a thought captive with the authority that is mine in Christ. I would say, “In the name of Jesus, whatever spirit is behind this I command you to go.” That’s why I tell you sometimes it is appropriate to shoot the messenger. “You bringing me this message of doom, you get out of here in Jesus’ name.”

[03:48] Stephanie: Going back to the storms and the bear chasing story. There was definitely a lot of attachment there too because you were there with me telling me these stories. Then I’d get all my dolls and my stuffed animals and come get into bed with you and mom or on the couch, and we’d watch the lightning outside and say, “Ooh, ah.”

[04:10] Marcus: I remember we got to the point where you would ask, “Oh, is there a storm coming? Can we set up the couch, can we pop popcorn?” It became a thing.

That was pretty cool.

[04:18] Stephanie: I was also thinking as I was praying about this episode about a time in my life when I’ve had my beliefs changed about something. I went back to when we were at the house (we moved around a lot when I was younger) where I was in first through third grade, maybe. When we left that house I left behind a bunch of friends. I came back one time and there was a new girl who had moved into the neighborhood and I felt replaced. Everybody was so excited about this girl and telling me all these things and it was all about her and I just felt replaced. I was talking to you just a couple years ago and this came up again with some different wounds that were kind of along that same pattern.

And there wasn’t a “Jesus healing the memories” thing where like, “Oh, I know for a fact what the reality was,” but you kind of recast the frame for me. Maybe they were immature and maybe they did move on, but more likely they still considered you part of the group.

They were so excited to introduce you to this new part of the group it didn’t even cross their mind that you weren’t part of the group anymore. Obviously you were part of the group and look, we gotta catch you up on the new person and our group kind of thing. You just recast that for me. And I remember finding a step of healing in that just from having it recast. And so, again, who knows if that was true or not in that instance but it helped me a lot.

[05:59] Marcus: Yeah, beliefs are powerful things. My dad, your grandfather, used to say, “People don’t always practice what they say they believe, but people always practice what they really believe.” That was one of his standard teaching phrases. It gets to the idea that there is a real strong element of belief in everything that we feel. So it might be worth taking a moment here because at Deeper Walk we teach a lot about Life Model and we teach a lot about attachment.

To just clarify here it helps me to think, and this is obviously oversimplified, but it helps me to think about right brain and left brain. I picture that emotions generate on the right brain. They go from the bottom of the brain to the top and they’re going up the attachment pathway on the right side.

So they’re going from the bottom to the top. I will feel all kinds of emotions just out of the attachment and things happening before it ever gets to the left side of my brain where the beliefs kick in. But the beliefs can really turn those things toxic in a heartbeat. Dr. Karl Lehman, in his book Outsmarting Yourself, talks about the VLE, or the verbal logical explainer.

And basically, that’s the left brain getting a hold of incomplete facts and incomplete perspective based on what my right brain is feeling. And so my right brain is sending over data, my left brain is getting incomplete data, and it’s putting together together a storyline that is actually toxic. So even with your neighborhood thing, your VLA put things together and said, “Well this is true and this is true and this is true, therefore, my story must be true.” And we all do that.

And so on our left side, I picture our beliefs going from the top down. At the top I put a belief system in place with this and now that drives its own set of beliefs. And so it hits the amygdala on the way up, which is the fight, flight, or freeze, part of the brain. The amygdala can also be involved in giving us low energy emotions like shame, sadness and despair.

But our belief on the left side is going from the top down and it also passes through the amygdala, so we can trigger really strong beliefs. And because of that there’s an attachment element to believing. So sometimes we feel the thing first and then our mind puts a narrative to it. And sometimes it’s the narrative that’s creating the problem in the first place. Either way, we usually have to address the narrative at some point.

[08:30] Stephanie: So in the chicken and the egg scenario, sometimes it is emotions that comes first and sometimes it is the beliefs that come first.

[08:38] Marcus: I was taught basically that all emotions come out of our beliefs. And that’s just true enough that people will believe it, so pun intended. It’s just true enough that people will build their whole ministry around that. I like the way Dr. Amen talks about this in the Amen clinics.

He talks about anteaters, and he talks about these automatic negative thoughts that we have. What triggers the automatic negative thought is the emotion we feel. So for example, I might see a redhead walk by and all of a sudden I feel something and I don’t even know why. Maybe when I was young I had a red haired older sister who I loved and so it creates warm feelings. Or maybe I was abused by a redhead and so now I am getting feelings of fear. I will have that reaction before I even think about it.

And then my brain might pick up on that and give me a completely right or wrong explanation for why I’m feeling the way I am. So the idea behind automatic negative thoughts is that I actually feel the emotion first, and then I fill that emotion with all the thoughts that reinforce it and make it bigger.

So part of taking our thoughts captive and part of attacking our toxic thinking, is learning to recognize the typical thought patterns I go through when I feel certain emotions. So when I feel anger, what do I always say to myself? When I feel shame, what am I always saying to myself? Let’s learn to identify those things so we can take them captive and replace them, right? And that’s ultimately the goal.

[10:16] Stephanie: Well I’m thinking as you’re talking about this, in Building Bounce you list out three principles, beliefs, drive, and emotions. Emotions can’t distinguish a true belief from a false one. Attachments influence beliefs and also drive emotions. So you kind of covered the beliefs driving emotions a little bit there. Do you want to talk about emotions not being distinguished from false ones?

[10:41] Marcus: Yeah beliefs drive emotions just like in that bear story, right? When I’m in the cabin, what I’m believing can drive me to peace or it can drive me to death. But then my beliefs can’t tell fact from fiction which is also illustrated in that same story.

I can believe with all my heart that I am in mortal danger when I’m not. I can believe that I am doomed when I am not. I can believe all kinds of things and it feels absolutely true but it doesn’t mean it is true, because my emotions can’t tell fact from fiction.

[11:16] Stephanie: So if we’re only listening to our emotions we can be very deceived because our emotions don’t know the true truth.

[11:24] Marcus: Yeah, exactly and this happens a lot. I look back to a time in my life when I was at my worst. I was in the most anxiety, the most distress, and nothing I was afraid of happened. It’s like none of it actually took place. And so I look at that and it’s a reminder that fear is a liar. That 90 something percent of what we’re afraid of never does happen.

And so it really is important to learn these things because if our thought life runs amok, we’re going to get taken with it. We do want to talk about strategies for how you do that and largely with emotions. People will also recognize this has to do with compulsions and behaviors, the things that I’m trying to go after, and they are related things because those are so often driven by emotions. So there was a third one, there were three things, right?

So beliefs often do drive emotions. Emotions can’t tell the difference between what’s a true and a false belief. And then the other one is that attachments also drive emotions. And so what happens is one of the deepest emotions we feel is attachment pain. You mentioned I think in the last podcast, that when you’re away from Kentucky there are some things there that you miss.

It can actually cause pain that it’s not available to you. Or when you were a freshman in college and you were away from all of your people and all of your family, there was attachment pain there. And we can feel this in everything from oh, I really feel like being with somebody right now but everyone’s out shopping, to someone has died and I have no more access to them. Or they’re out of my life.

[13:12] Stephanie: Then you get attachment pain plus hopeless despair.

[13:14] Marcus: Yes, exactly. And so what happens is that attachment pain can combine with these others. And I think part of what’s happening in the grief cycle is that attachment pain is connecting to various emotions, whether that is hopelessness, despair, anger, or shame, they can all factor in.

[13:35] Stephanie: So maybe coming out of this part of the conversation we could talk about the five engines that help us understand our emotions. You’ve got three physical and two spiritual.

[13:45] Marcus: Yeah,  I mentioned this briefly in Building Bounce. There are three physical engines and two spiritual ones. With the three physical engines one is my body. The idea here is simply that if you don’t get enough sleep, it can make you more easily anxious and more easily depressed. If I have something in my brain that is actually not functioning correctly, it’ll affect me emotionally. So my body is a big engine that drives my emotions.

Second is my beliefs and then the third is my bonding, by bonding that is attachments. And so this is just looking at these from that same perspective.

When something isn’t going right with my emotions I need to look, see, is there something in my body that needs addressed? Is there something in my belief system that needs to be corrected? Are there attachments that are all anchored in fear and I need to find a way to get some joy in my attachments?

And then the two spiritual engines are the Holy Spirit and wicked spirits. And so what tends to happen is that people put all of their energy into one of these five engines, or maybe two of them. And I’m just saying it’s helpful to remember that there are these five that do exist. If we are looking for a breakthrough and we aren’t finding it, it might be because we’re not addressing one or two or even four of these engines that really need some attention.

[15:10] Stephanie: I really appreciate how you simplify and bring together all these different areas that are so important. So let’s segue off of that to talk about the battle for the mind in relation to emotional capacity.

[15:22] Marcus: What we usually teach is to believe the right things and then make good choices. But there is more to it when it comes to our emotions than just believing the right things and making good choices. And deeper than that is the idea of emotional capacity, do I even have the capacity to accept that truth? Some of us don’t and we have to build that over time.

So one of the reasons we start with appreciation and quieting is that  appreciation and quieting is what builds our capacity. It gives us the capacity to even embrace certain truths and certain things like yeah, I think I could believe that.

For example, there’s some people who have been so wounded that the idea that God exists angers them. So before you can just say, “Well, you need to believe that God exists,” something’s probably going to have to happen to radically change a paradigm for them. Or they have to grow some capacity to make that possible to even hold on to that.

We can do this in a lot of different areas. You meet with some people and you give them some advice and they just run with it, because they’ve got the emotional capacity already in place to do that.

So it was one of the things that I learned from Life Model that was really helpful right at the beginning. There is a concept of capacity versus choices. And that is, life is more than believing the right thing and making good choices. It’s also about growing my capacity that enables me to stay with a better train of thought, and then those choices more naturally flow out of it anyway.

[16:58] Stephanie: Well and sometimes you can make the right choice but you don’t have the capacity. I know sometimes when I know exactly what I need to do and how to do it, I can’t seem to do it because I’ve just run out of myself.

[17:12] Marcus: That’s why we need breathers and we need to take breaks. We need to learn rhythm.  All those things factor into it. And then just growing my brain’s ability to perform certain tasks has to be grown. Just like I have to grow my ability to throw a football or play the piano or whatever. I have to grow my brain’s capacity to do some of these things and then as that capacity grows, they get easier.

[17:37] Stephanie: Well, and it’s helpful even to just remember beliefs as like a tool in your pocket asking, “Do I have beliefs that I need to assess?” That’s good. Well, there’s always so much more we can say. Next week we’re going to continue with the ABC”s of bounce and look at connecting with people. But for now, are there any final thoughts for beliefs?

[19:26] Marcus:  I remember I got to a point in my life one time when I felt like my life was ruined or I felt like I was doomed to a story of ruin. And I began to study scripture and I realized that if I’m a Christian, my story is never a story of ruin, it is always a story of redemption. So it doesn’t mean that there won’t be bad things in it, but in the end it’s going to be a story of redemption. We all love redemption stories in novels, right? You know bad things happen, things fall apart, but they come back together at some point. It may be in this life or maybe the next life. But it’s helpful for me to have an overarching narrative view that says, the overall narrative that I am in is never a story of ruin, is always a story of redemption. And that’s been something that’s been very helpful for me.

[18:57] Stephanie: Yes, it’s the way to go and good to do it with people. So the ABC’s of building bounce, let’s dig into the “C” and we’re going to break this up. So there’s connecting with people and connecting with God. And so in this episode we’re going to look at connecting with people. Why don’t we start with the importance of belonging?

[19:13] Marcus:  Yeah. So belonging is a word I think we’re all familiar with. But when I first came across Life Model Works, Jim Wilder’s teaching on this, it took on a new significance for me. And it was this idea that belonging has to do with knowing who your people are. Maybe you’ve had the experience (I’m talking to listeners now) of being at a church and feeling like you’re on the outside, knocking on the door trying to get in. It’s not that you couldn’t get in the building but you didn’t feel like you really belonged, like people were not really letting you into the circle.

I think a lot of us know what that feels like to be on the outside trying to get in. And so belonging is the idea that I know I’m in and because I know I’m in, I know that these are my people. That’s significant because when I know who my people are then I know who I am. From my brain perspective it anchors my identity and it lets me know that not only these are my people, but this is how it’s like for us to live. So all that’s included in the idea of belonging but there’s more to it as well.

[20:14] Stephanie: Oh, yes we actually dug into identity and belonging in two different episodes back in our FISH series.

[20:21] Marcus: We talked about identity.

[20:24] Stephanie: Well, that makes sense. So that’s the identity side of belonging, how about the building bounce side of belonging?

[20:34] Marcus: So part of what happens with belonging is what my co author in Building Bounce, Stefanie Hinman, likes to talk about, being safe, secure, and connected. And when I feel safe, secure, and connected, I’m not as easily overwhelmed as when I am all alone with my emotions. So the more isolated I am and the more I feel alone in dealing with things, the more overwhelming those emotions are. So you may have had the experience of being in a big group and actually feeling more alone than you would have just being on your own. Because you’re with all these people and they just don’t get it and you don’t feel seen and heard.

So that’s the opposite. You know, when I don’t have belonging it can actually escalate the trauma that I’m in. And on the other side of that is what Dr. Wilder calls, “Being with somebody with a bigger brain.” This goes back to the idea of infants who will sync with their mom or dad, or their big sister who they feel is freaking out, but there’s somebody there with a bigger brain who isn’t freaking out with what is going on. And so they’re able to kind of borrow that calmness from them.

[21:44] Stephanie:  It reminds me of when we talked about when I used to be afraid of storms. It touches on many things, me being afraid of the storms and there was attachment and joy building there. I went to you and mom and you were my bigger brain in that situation and you could handle it

[22:09] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. So one of the things that belonging does is it puts us around people who maybe can handle things that we can’t. As a result, there’s a little more peace that comes from knowing I’m going to be okay. Just like a child when they’re with their parents and the parents aren’t freaked out by what’s going on. The child can say, “I guess I’m going to be okay because mom and dad are okay.” You take that to a spiritual level and that’s kind of what our connection with God is meant to provide. We always have access to this bigger brain who is never overwhelmed, never worried, and is always happy to be with us in the middle of whatever we’re going through.

[22:47] Stephanie: Hallelujah. So in the conference this weekend and in your book Building Bounce, you talk about two principles, vulnerability and empathy. Let’s talk about both of those. But vulnerability, what is it? What is it not?

[23:01] Marcus: When we talk about vulnerability I always think of turtles sticking their heads out or pulling them back in. When I stick my head out I’m literally making myself vulnerable and I’m putting myself out there. And so there are levels of vulnerability. There’s the level of vulnerability where I just let people know that I am struggling, or I’m feeling sad today, I’m feeling angry today, or I have some kind of an emotional struggle. That’s one level.

The next level is where they get the background behind why I’m that way and what’s going on. Then the third level is where we get to the real root issues and we’re dealing with all of the junk. What you find is that if I am going to form a belonging with people and form a safe, secure, attachment with people, vulnerability is the only way to get there. The problem is that not everybody meets that vulnerability with empathy, which is what we’re after.

[24:02] Stephanie: So what are some strategies for determining if you can be vulnerable with someone?

[24:08] Marcus: Yeah, so that’s a good question. I do tend to think of this in terms of the three levels. A lot of small groups and churches will go to level one, I can admit when I have a struggle here or there, but I don’t go into a lot of depth about just how bad it gets. Then you have what we would call the journey group level. I am on a  journey with other people that I can share with and they see me, and I can be really honest about how bad this gets sometimes. And then there’s what I call recovery group level where I’m just laying it all out on the table and letting the chips fall where they will.

So one of the things that determines how deep you go with people is the maturity of the people that you’re sharing with and their trustworthiness. So for example, some people don’t have the maturity to deal with my deep stuff. You can tell they don’t have the maturity to deal with it because they shut it down quickly, they try to fix it really fast, or they gossip about it to other people. So I’m not gonna share with them.

And we see this modeled actually by Jesus himself. It says in the end of John two that many people were putting their trust in Jesus but he wasn’t putting his trust in them. Right? It has this interesting line that says, “Because he knew what was in a man.” And then right after that it says, “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus who came,” which was setting up the idea that Jesus knew what his issues were and where he needed to go with him.

But at another level it shows us that Jesus was not somebody who just dumped everything out there for everybody. He was very careful about who he shared his true identity with. He was very careful whether he shared that with other people. I think that he models for us that we don’t have to wear all of our emotions on our sleeves. Some of us actually drive people away by being too vulnerable in too many settings, and people aren’t ready to go there.

[26:06] Stephanie: Well, and Jesus is a good model that he wasn’t wearing a mask when he was withholding. Sometimes people will say, “I’m just being me or you can’t deal with how big I am”, or whatever. Even on the reverse if people are not being vulnerable enough. But you are still you even if you’re not wearing everything on your sleeve.

[26:30] Marcus: Right. And part of the idea here is that there are two ditches you can fall into. You can fall into the ditch of being too vulnerable with people who can’t handle it, and the ditch of never being vulnerable with anybody, even with people you could trust. So we started with this idea of belonging and how do you create belonging? How do you create safe, secure attachment? If I wear a mask and you’re attracted to that mask and you like who I am when I’m wearing the mask, then we’re not actually making a connection. You’re connecting to the mask.

And after a while I’m going to wonder if you would really like me if you really knew me. And so that doesn’t work, or at some level it does work because a lot of times people are attracted to the mask, but it doesn’t form a connection or a deep attachment. So that’s why you have to have vulnerability in order for connection to form. And then if that is met with empathy, that’s when connections grow deeper and people are like, “Okay, you’re not overwhelming me with this. I’m okay. I can stay relationally engaged with you while you go there.”

[27:40] Stephanie: But let’s dig into empathy more now. What is empathy? What is it not?

[27:48] Marcus: So empathy is the ability to stay relationally present and seeing people without having to fix them, and without having to do anything else. It’s just seeing and acknowledging that this is what is going on, and being okay with you while you’re there. Let’s say you’re struggling with despair, people will cut you off from going to the depth of your despair and try to fix you fast. They want to inject hope as soon as possible to keep you from getting too low. But a lot of times what they really need is somebody who is willing to go to that deep dark place with them, and still be happy to be there, to just be there.

[28:31] Stephanie: To understand how deep and dark it is.

[28:34] Marcus: Right, this is all part of that. Empathy is what we would call in Rare Leadership, being gentle with weakness. The idea is that I’m not trying to fix your weakness. I’m not trying to stop your weakness, I’m not trying to shame your weakness,  I’m just trying to be gentle with it.

[28:57] Stephanie: Can we talk about boundaries?

[29:00] Marcus: Boundaries, sure.

[29:02] Stephanie: I’m just thinking that I’ve had conversations with people in the last week or so who are constantly giving empathy with people who are being vulnerable with them. Sometimes people helpers can fall into an almost a savior complex of you know, they need me, or how can I help?

[29:27] Marcus:.It creates what we often call compassion fatigue, and that is, I’m just worn out from constantly having to be there for this person. That’s not the same thing as being an empathetic person. So the best way that I’ve heard boundaries explained to me was  the purpose of a boundary is to make sure that I’m going to be happy to see you when we’re together.

[29:56] Stephanie: Yes.

[29:56] Marcus: Right. So let’s just say as a pastoral counselor you just start with the obvious. Like, if I’m going to the bathroom, I’m not going to be really happy if you show up and want to talk to me about your problems. There’s a boundary there. If I’m in bed with my wife, I’m not going to be real happy if you walk in the room and want to start talking. There are obvious boundaries that are there. So what we’re doing is we’re just extending that out. These boundaries exist partly so that you can be confident that when it’s your time, I am all there for you. You can count on the fact that I’m going to be happy to see you. One of the reasons when we don’t do that is out of fear that we’re going to lose the whole relationship. And so the opposite of the boundaries is codependency.

[30:44] Stephanie: Well I think it’s so important to keep our eyes on Jesus and to recognize just like you always say, “There’s only one wonderful counselor and it’s not me.” At the end of the day we are called to walk alongside people and to help people, but we are not their saviors. We are not the person who is going to fix it if we just show them enough empathy, enough compassion, enough whatever.

[31:12] Marcus: I’ve known people like this too and I’ve struggled with it a bit in my own life. I say a bit facetiously, I’ve struggled with it a lot in my own life. One of the problems I had when I was a pastor was that people would call and want to talk in the evening, and I would lose family time because I didn’t put up a boundary and reschedule for it. I felt like it was my job to stay on the phone with them until they felt completely better.  I was actually damaging other people in order to help them. In the end I was just creating a codependent situation where I couldn’t be okay until they were okay, and they couldn’t be okay without me.

In the long run that was not a good scenario. So when we talk about empathy, boundaries and empathy are perfectly compatible. Like, if it’s a true emergency, that’s one thing. But what people define as an emergency in most cases is that “I can’t handle the emotions I’m feeling right now, so this is an emergency.” Well that isn’t technically an emergency, we can wait and talk about that later. It’s a good thing to bring up because those things are not incompatible. In fact, the reason for boundaries is to make sure that I can be fully empathetic when I need to be.

[32:30] Stephanie: And maybe we should address one on one connection versus, a group connection.

[32:39] Marcus: So we are talking about primarily the individual connection. I remember talking to Amy Brown about this and she was trying to help me understand how they measure certain things. For those who don’t know Amy Brown, she was the creator of the Journey Group curriculum that Deeper Walk promotes and publishes. And in these  journey groups they had two extremes that we were trying to avoid. One is people not talking, not sharing, and not being vulnerable about their emotions. The other extreme  for instance, was in a mixed group and guys coming in talking about their p*rn addiction with women who had sexual trauma in their past. That’s not a good combination. How do we make this a safe place for everybody to talk about their emotions, without getting so into it that we’re traumatizing everybody left and right? And so part of it takes some leadership in the group setting to kind of pave the way for this is how deep we want to go. If you need to go deeper than this then there is a place for that, but not right here. We’ll deal with that in another place, in another setting.

[33:49] Stephanie: Too many things to talk about and not enough time. Let’s talk about the three levels of connection, or the three up, three down.

[33:58] Marcus: Okay.

[34:00] Stephanie: When you’re in a group setting and you’re building connections with people what are some good strategies?

[34:05] Marcus: So let me start with the idea behind the strategy of three up and three down. Most people who are really struggling with resilience and bouncing back from things are also struggling with isolation. Those things routinely go together. And so part of this is how do you help somebody who is living in isolation and who has maybe not had good relational skills modeled to them. They do not have a clear image in their mind of how they create belonging in new situations? What do they do? Again, I’m going to refer to Jim Wilder on this because I learned it from him. He said that he would encourage people to do a couple of things. One of them is a three up, three down strategy. And that is no matter how low you are or how broken you may be and feel, there is always something that you have of value to offer.

And it might just be a smile, it might just be a word of encouragement, or something. But the idea is to have three people downstream, three people you’re feeding into. It doesn’t mean you have to be mentoring them and sharing life changing insights, but that you are just an encouraging, joyful, presence in their life. And in the same way we need three people upstream from us, those people who are having a positive input into our lives. Again, they don’t have to be in depth mentors, just somebody who’s having a positive role and input into our lives. So where do you even find these people, is the next thing. Start looking at this in daily, weekly, and monthly categories and say, “Who do I see every day anyway? How can I inject a little joy into that relationship? How can I bring them a smile?”

Who do I see every week that if I gave it a little thought, I could think of a way to brighten their day and add joy to their lives? Who do I see every month? And by thinking through those categories most of us do see people, we just haven’t thought in terms of trying to develop a level one connection. Because sometimes we’re so desperate for level two and level three connections, that we ignore the level one connections that are available, and that in and of itself is helpful. Like, if we have enough of those level one connections that does help us with our capacity. It does help us with our bounce and then eventually we gotta find somebody who can go to level two and three with us.

[36:33] Stephanie: Well seeds start small. So it’s very rare that two people meet and they just have an instant connection and they’re just instantly best friends. And you know that sometimes that happens, but on the whole you know, instant love is a trope and is hated on for a reason.

[36:47] Marcus: You are crossing over to the novel writing side of you.

[36:52] Stephanie: When you talk about three up, three down, I think of it in terms of three levels and in terms of peers as well. Peers can be up and down from you depending on your skill sets.

[37:12] Marcus: Yeah, they definitely can. And so when you think about it, generally when we have the most resilience, it’s when we are in a group that we are happy to be a part of. We are with the people we know and they know us. And that gives us a sense that we’re never in anything alone. That is a huge part of resilience and capacity and that’s why we made connection such a big part of resilience. And again, we could do a whole course on this, one short podcast isn’t enough to do justice.

[37:49] Stephanie: We try to cram a lot in here but there’s a lot.  So how can we be intentional about connecting with people in life giving sustainable ways beyond smiling?

[38:04] Marcus: Honestly, this is where CAKE comes in, the acrostic CAKE from the book. Be curious, show appreciation, be kind, and make eye contact. I don’t know if you ever just go into a coffee shop, right? It’s amazing how many people won’t look you in the eye when they’re taking your order and the people who do. If I show a little curiosity, right. I try to be curious about neutral things. You have to be careful what you’re curious about. But I’ll be curious about tattoos, or about a new nail job, or about something like that. It’s amazing how they’ll light up like somebody noticed.

And so you’re looking for ways to be kind, to make eye contact, and just passing on that little bit of joy,  just in that little 32nd interaction. I remember on Valentine’s Day not too long ago I went to pick up food from a restaurant and clearly the people were overwhelmed. And this young lady was there with stacks of to go orders next to her. And it was a high end restaurant, but people were just mean to her all night long because of this or because of that.

And so I had a chance to be a little curious. How has your night been? I imagine it’s not been easy.? And she just went on, that was all she needed, she told me about five stories. And by the time my food was ready to go she was thanking me profusely and saying her whole night had turned around. And all I did was be curious and kind and made eye contact. I saw her, it took five minutes and her whole evening was turned around and then I left. And here I am a year later and I still remember it because it brought me joy to bring her joy.

[39:44] Stephanie: Yeah and I would just add onto that, kind of where my brain was is that (myself included) a lot of people who sometimes, especially in a new environment, will say, “There’s no community here.” Or it’s hard to build a community and we’re not going to where the community is. So if you’re not going to where the people are or inviting people over or doing something to actually have the community, it’s a common sense thing. Sometimes we need to remember that dose of common sense of yes, go to that game night or go to chapel.

[40:22] Marcus: You actually have to put yourself in an environment where there are people sometimes, that is true. And for some people that’s really scary because they’ve gotten burned in situations like that before. The other part that goes with this is a lot of us are looking for someone to provide belonging for us. And where we’re trying to put the focus here is the ability to develop belonging wherever I go, it is actually a skill set that we can learn. There are some people who don’t worry about moving to a new city. They don’t worry about taking a new job because they know they have the skillset to make friends.

They know they can connect with people. They know how to build belonging. There’s others who go places and wait and wait for somebody to build belonging for them. And so we have to start where we are. But the goal is to learn some of those skills that go into how to start establishing and creating community. That’s why we teach CAKE. It’s why we teach the three up, three down. That’s why we teach being intentional about these things, spreading joy wherever we go and trying to make people’s problems smaller. There are a whole lot of skill sets that go into this that we can use to begin learning how to grow belonging, even if somebody isn’t inviting us into it.

[41:38] Stephanie: Very good. I’m so glad you came back around to that, that’s so important. Hey, next week we are going to continue our conversation about connecting with people with an in-depth look at the tool VCR. But for now, any final thoughts on the episode?

[41:54] Marcus: Well, you know I think back to times when I’ve really struggled. I think back to times when I was really dealing with anxiety and how helpful it was at times just to be in the same room with somebody else.  And you think about that and you extrapolate that out, we can borrow the resilience of other people sometimes just by being in the presence of somebody who isn’t stressed out. And if I can get my relational circuits on and connect with them relationally so I can get into the higher levels of my brain, that can help me bounce back. Part of what we’re talking about is I don’t want to get stuck in the non relational part of my brain. I got to bounce back and return to joy by getting back to those higher level functions. So sometimes just being curious with other people and being relational with other people can actually help me with my own emotional state, because it’s getting me back into that part of my brain.

[42:51] Stephanie: So today we are talking about an important tool that I’m looking forward to getting into, what it is and what it isn’t. Also some stories maybe of when you’ve used it. So this tool is not for watching videotapes.

[43:09] Marcus: Right and that’ll make more sense when you hear the tool, right?

[43:11] Stephanie: Yeah, it’s VCR.

[43:13] Marcus: Yeah, so you know VCR. I’m trying to remember, you were a little kid when those things were around.

[43:19] Stephanie: I remember VCR.

[43:20] Marcus: Yeah.

[43:20] Stephanie:  I remember VCR’s. Yeah, I remember winding back cassettes.

[43:24] Marcus: I remember when you were little mom and I would have date nights and we would go get vhs tapes from the grocery store, and give a couple of them to the babysitter. Yeah, it’s been a long time since that was a thing.

[43:40] Stephanie: Yeah. Or having to sit and rewind it. Yes, I said the wrong word. I also remember cassette tapes, but yes vhs tapes. Anyway, VCR the tool is all about?

[43:57] Marcus: Is validate, comfort, and recover. I first learned about this tool when I was in Colorado and Bren and I were in a car  with Jim Wilder and his wife Kitty, who has since passed away. We were just looking at the mountains and having a good time together. But I asked him a question about something and he told me about an organization that was called, I believe it was VCR or something along those lines. And the idea was that you would call in for help, and they would have two people on the phones. One person, who their only job was to validate the emotions they were hearing from you. And the other person, their only job was to offer comfort.

And what they found was even those people who had zero skill at validating and comforting themselves to recover from their upsetting emotions, after a month or two of doing this they were beginning to develop the skill for themselves. And within three months most of the people didn’t have to call back anymore. They had developed this internal capacity to validate their own emotions, comfort themselves, recover, or what we might call return to joy.

[45:11] Stephanie: Yeah. So it’s a really helpful tool for both being able to work through an issue yourself and recognizing what emotions you’re feeling. Taking yourself through VCR and also relationally with other people. Not just through counseling but also in day to day relationships, I know it can be really helpful. So let’s dig into it. Actually, before we dig into that, could you give us just one quick story of a time when you used it?

[45:42] Marcus: Well, you know, your mom would say that learning about validation was the most important tool in our marriage history. Right. Because when you validate emotions it makes the other person feel seen and heard. And the goal when you’re trying to validate somebody’s emotion is to get them to nod their head and say, “Yes, that’s how I feel. Yes, you’re correct and that is what’s going on right now.” One of the things I learned about it was that you don’t have to agree that they should be feeling that way, that’s not the point. You’re just acknowledging that this is the starting point of where they’re at. So we do it all the time.

[46:24] Stephanie: The one that comes to my mind if you’re searching for a story, is when you were on a live radio program and you’d write VCR at the top of the page so that you would remember.

[46:35] Marcus: Yeah, now I remember. First time I was on a national radio program doing a live call in, I wrote VCR at the top of the notepad. To remind myself that before you start solving the problems these people bring up on live radio, validate the emotion that you’re hearing first. I remember one lady who called and we were on a spiritual warfare topic and I had said something about spirit guides. And this person was like, well spirit guides are good I’ve got spirit guides and they’re really helpful. And so the temptation is to just go, no spirit guides are demons, and there’s only one spirit guide, the Holy Spirit.

But I remember you validate first. And I said, “Well it sounds like you’re very spiritual, that spiritual things are really important to you, that this means a lot to you and you have  found a lot of comfort from this.”  And she’s going, “Yeah, it’s been a very comforting thing.” So now that she feels seen, we can go to, but from a biblical perspective, there’s really only one spirit guide. So that was the direction it went and it was a very helpful tool to be able to do that. In fact, I got feedback afterwards that they were like, wow, you really handled these callers really well. And that was kind of the secret sauce behind what was going on with VCR.

[48:00] Stephanie: Very good. So now with that kind of complete picture in our head, let’s dig into validation. So what it is, what it isn’t. So like you said, “You don’t have to believe that the person should be feeling that emotion in order to validate it”

[48:18] Marcus:Yeah. So another example of this is parents and kids and we do this all the time. So if your child comes in and they have just stumbled and fell and they think they’re dying, right? Ah, my world’s falling apart. You don’t have to agree like, “Oh no, you’re dying your world’s about to end.” You don’t have to agree with all of that in order to go, “Wow that must be really painful and this has got to be really scary”. And they’re like, “Yeah painful and scary.” And the goal is to get them nodding their heads and going, yes, you see me you’re correct. So this is where it starts. And every parent kind of knows that you’re not always going to agree that they should be feeling this way. Parents with teenage kids sometimes get hung up on this  like, why are they such drama queens? Why are they such drama kings?

And so they want to just shoot down the emotion or they want to fix the problem really quickly. And what we’re saying is take the time to validate the emotion and let them know this is what you’re feeling. You’re feeling betrayed, you’re feeling this is hopeless, you’re feeling absolute despair and you’re doing it in a very non sarcastic way. So we tell people validation really has two core elements to it. You have to accurately name the emotion they’re feeling and you have to accurately name how big it is. I think about the conversations you see in movies and tv shows between parents and their teenage kids where they sometimes miss completely where they’re at.

A kid will be feeling despair and fear and they’ll say, “Why are you so angry?” And I was like well that’s not validating if you misidentify the emotion. If you say, “Why are you so angry,” when they’re just a little bit miffed, that’s not validating the emotion. You have to be correct on what the emotion is and how big it is. And it gets a little more complicated when you think that sometimes people can be feeling a mix of emotions. And it’s like, “You’re a little bit angry here aren’t you?  But you’re also feeling some shame I think, am I right on that?” And so you’re pushing in. So this can be a conversation as well as you are trying to make sure you’re pushing into understanding what exactly is the emotional state that they are in.

[50:46] Stephanie:Yeah. You are not telling somebody what they are feeling. You are figuring out what they’re feeling. You’re not imposing an emotion on someone.

[50:58] Marcus: Exactly. And that’s why the goal is to try to figure out what in fact they are feeling.

[51:06] Stephanie: You’re listening to them for their emotions and not first for their problems, but you first listen for the emotion.

[51:12] Marcus: In the book I wrote with Chris Coursey, The Four Habits of Joy Filled Marriages, we have “PLAN”. Play together, listen for emotion, appreciate, and nurture rhythm. The “L” there is listen for emotion. And we talk about this a little bit more extensively there. And it’s this idea that most of us listen for problems and as soon as we hear the problem we quit listening, and we kind of tune them out until they stop talking and we can fix their problem. And I find that people when they’re not validating make one of two mistakes. They either only listen for problems or they lead with their own emotions instead of taking the time to validate the other person’s emotion.

For example if I’m leading with my own emotion, I’m like, “You are making me so angry right now. Don’t you see what you’re doing to me, don’t you see how this is affecting me?” And especially when parents do that to little kids it’s really bad because it’s teaching the child that you need to parent me in my upsetting emotion, and not that I need to parent you in your upsetting emotion. And so it’s very important that we start with validation and that becomes a habit in the way that we interact with people.

[52:19] Stephanie: Yeah. What you were describing feels like somebody needs to be validated, but instead you’re jumping into demanding that they validate you.

[52:33] Marcus: I see parents do this with even little kids. It’s like you’re going to make me mad or don’t you see what you are doing? Don’t you see the problem you’re causing for your brother or your sister? Don’t you see? And they start with the problem. They start with somebody else’s emotions. They start with their own emotions instead of saying, “You’re really upset about this, aren’t you?” Connecting with where they are at in their emotion right now.

[52:56] Stephanie:  So once we get that order correct it is good to not just leave it with validation we can move to comforting, and that can look like a variety of different ways. But why don’t you describe what we mean when we say comfort?

[53:09] Marcus: So comforting has three parts to it. The big idea here is we want to take a big problem and make it smaller or take a big emotion and make it more manageable. Either way we’re trying to make something smaller. So the first strategy for doing this is to tell people what isn’t true or what isn’t going to happen. Like, don’t worry this is not the end of the world, don’t worry I’ve been through this before. You’re not going to lose your friendship, you’re not going to lose whatever it is that’s going. You tell them this isn’t going to happen. And by doing that you are kind of chipping away from the top down and making this thing smaller.

[53:50] Stephanie:And I will just interrupt here to say like we said before with the validation. If they’re not feeling a huge emotion but you say, “Why are you so mad?”Or if somebody is not thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to die”.  You don’t say, “Don’t worry you’re not going to die”, because their brain wasn’t even there, but maybe now it is.

[54:07] Marcus: Right. So, yeah. You’re trying to meet them in what is overwhelming them right now.

[54:12] Stephanie: So once you have accurately identified the level then you can meet them at that level and make it smaller.

[54:17] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. And you also have to be accurate about what’s not going to happen.

[54:21] Stephanie: Well this isn’t going to happen, but actually maybe it will.

[54:26] Marcus: But that’s one strategy for how you comfort and how you make this thing smaller.

[54:32] Stephanie: That would be a perspective strategy..

[54:35] Marcus: That is a type of changing perspective and actually strategy number two is to change the perspective. This is the lens through which you’re seeing it but what if we looked at it from this angle? Or what if we looked at it through this lens and have you thought about it this way? Offering somebody a different perspective can sometimes change the whole thing. I think of a guy who was either on a train or an airplane, but in the story he was behind somebody whose kids were just acting up. They were disrupting all of the passengers who were trying to have a quiet flight or a quiet train ride. And he finally said, “Why don’t you keep your kids under control?” And the guy was like, “What?” And then he noticed that they were out of control.

He said, “Oh I’m so sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. We’re flying home from my wife’s funeral right now.” All of a sudden you got a whole new perspective on what’s going on. And sometimes helping people whatever it might be, by changing their perspective it can just change their whole attitude towards something. It all of a sudden looks a whole lot smaller than it did a minute ago. So the first one is, what’s not going to happen. Second one is, let’s look at this from a different angle altogether. And then the third strategy for making the problem smaller and comforting someone is to help them develop a manageable plan. And a manageable plan is not three phases or seven parts; it can be as little as one step or it could be two or three steps at the most.

And so again you think about a parent with a kid who comes in from playing and somebody hurt their feelings or they got hurt, or they’re in some big emotion. It’s like, ah my life is ending, I hate all this. I don’t want to ever do this again. And what do you do as a parent? So you start by validating the emotion, “Okay I see how big this is and I see how overwhelming it is.” And you’re getting to the point with the goal being getting them to be  like, yes, that is what is going on.  Well don’t worry I’m sure that eventually this is going to get fixed. Here’s some ways we can look at it. What if we look at it from this angle?

And then eventually you get to the point where you’re saying things like, “So do you think you’re okay to go back outside and play?” And they might go, “No, that’s too much.”  “Well, do you think you are okay to go color in your color book for a little bit?” And they go, “Yeah I could do that.” Well at that point they have recovered, right? They have gotten to the point, not where they’re all better and everything’s all better, but they can function. They are back within their capacity and you have managed to make this smaller.

[57:15] Stephanie: The problem isn’t fixed, but you have recovered from the big emotion. You’ve returned to joy enough to be yourself.

[57:22] Marcus: So there’s a lot of terms for this in various literature. Window of tolerance I think, is Daniel Siegel’s term for this. It’s the idea that when you’re overwhelmed you’re outside of the window of what you can tolerate. And so what we’re trying to do by validating and comforting is making this fit back into that window again. Where I am not overwhelmed by this and I can actually take the next step and be okay here. That’s the whole idea behind VCR though.

[57:54] Stephanie: Awesome. And I know we’ve talked about in all of that literature sometimes VCR is recover, sometimes it’s repattern, or sometimes it’s return to joy.

[58:07] Marcus: We have changed it in different books depending on the topic or the audience. For instance, in Rare Leadership we call it repatterning. The more times that we go through the process of validation and comforting our brains learn a new pattern, of how to handle the emotion and how to handle this. And we are retraining our brain to quiet more quickly from this particular upset. And so there is a new pattern being developed. So we call it repatterning. And other times it’s recovered, in the sense of  okay, I am back within my window of tolerance. I’m back within my capacity to handle what’s going on here and to do some and be productive.

[58:54] Stephanie: And part of the repatterning would also feed into that return to joy language, because what you’re doing as you’re training yourself to do the VCR with each emotion, you’re building that joy pathway.

[59:05] Marcus: VCR is the classic pathway for how do I return to joy from something that is upsetting? And by return to joy we’re talking about from a neuroscience perspective, which is how do I go from operating in the lower parts of my brain while it’s in a cramp? How do I get uncramped and get back to having a whole brain function, back to the higher levels of my brain where my joy center is? And so we talk about return to joy because it is returning to the ability for my joy center to be in control of what’s going on and not shut down.

[59:39] Stephanie: Will this look different for different age groups?

[59:41] Marcus: Yeah, it looks different for different age groups although the process is the same. So the VCR part doesn’t change. But one of the things that’s happening is as a parent I have to do this for my infant level children, and then I am training my child level kids how to do this for themselves. And by the time they’re adults I may just have to remind them or coach them through it a little bit.  And so I still do this, your whole life you do this. What happens is a lot of people do this without even realizing they’re doing it because they’ve just kind of developed that skill through the years. This doesn’t have to be  a rote thing. Like I got to make sure I do step one, step two, step three every time and you’re consciously thinking about it. But if you don’t have the skill then that’s what you need to do. You need to consciously think about this while you’re developing that habit until it just automatically comes out without you really even thinking about it.

[01:00:40] Stephanie: Well and sometimes I’m just thinking about it in the context of connecting with people. You know sometimes VCR can look in function to be a very counseling kind of feeling and sometimes that’s okay. But sometimes you can do it just naturally without turning it into a sit down session of like, let me listen to your emotions or whatever. You can do it more on the fly. Just making sure that you’re actively listening for emotions and addressing that first.

[01:01:13] Marcus:There are nonverbal validations. Right. And I didn’t spell this out initially and I probably should have. Sometimes you just have to make eye contact with somebody and they feel validated.

[01:01:25] Marcus: Yeah, we’re making eye contact nodding like, I get you, I see you. There are non verbal ways to validate people and that communicates a lot. And so it doesn’t always have to be this formal thing. The other thing is it can be very quick. I do a lot of corporate leadership training things and I tell people there that you’re not here to be a counselor to somebody. But we still use VCR in the corporate setting and the validation of a person’s emotion can be a 30 second process. But that 30 seconds is going to save you hours or days or weeks on the other end if somebody leaves feeling like you don’t get it, you don’t care, and you don’t see what’s going on. So spend the 30 seconds to a minute to validate before you go into the problem solving part of it.

[01:02:10] Stephanie: So people don’t think you’re just saying,”Shut up.”

[01:02:12] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. Right.

[01:02:14] Stephanie: “You’re stupid and here’s how I can fix your problem.” But people feel cared about and seen.

[01:02:18] Marcus:  Exactly. So just the order is important and making sure that you get it in there at some level will make the rest of it go much better.

[01:02:27] Stephanie:  Do you want to circle back again while we’re on validation, to talk about left brain emotions and how you can’t validate them?

[01:02:34] Marcus: Sure. Left brain emotions and how you can’t validate them. All right so the right hemisphere is like its own engine and the left hemisphere is like its own engine. So you can picture it this way, on the right hemisphere the neural pathways are kind of going from the bottom to the top, and then on the left they’re going from the top back down to the bottom. So there’s like this little bottom to top, cut over top to bottom, and out. So because of this what’s happening on the right hemisphere of the brain is all happening pre conscious thought. Everything that happens in the right hemisphere of my brain is operating before I even start thinking about it.

And that’s why somebody can walk into the room and you can have a reaction to their presence that you didn’t talk yourself into, it just happened. And then it gets over to the left side of your brain and now you put a narrative to it as to, why am I feeling this way? What’s going on? So just understand that when we’re talking about right versus left, the right side is largely the intuitive side that is reacting based on my life training. And then the left side is where I’m putting a narrative to it and it’s where my belief system enters into the picture. So there are emotions that are generated on the right side that are just intuitive, automatic reactions. And that’s actually what we’re trying to validate. We’re trying to validate those right hemisphere emotions.

If you get to the left hemisphere it gets harder to validate the emotion because the emotion is so tied to the narrative. And that is when somebody says to you, “My mother hates me.” So how do you validate that? You can separate out the emotion a little bit by saying, “I can see that you’re feeling really angry right now.” But if you say ,”Yeah, you’re right your mother hates you.” You have to be careful there. Validating left brain emotions is a whole lot trickier process because you can really only validate the anger that they’re feeling or the despair that they’re feeling that is on the right hemisphere of it. But if you’re not very careful about how you do that then you have to end up agreeing with them.

[01:04:49] Stephanie: You want to validate the emotion and not affirm the narrative.

[01:04:54] Marcus: Yes. And there are people who are very manipulative and controlling about this and they’re going to get angry at you if you don’t agree with their narrative. So it can be tricky. That’s where we get ourselves in trouble.

[01:05:10] Stephanie: All right, well, so this has been a really good crash course in VCR, really helpful. It’s a tool we can use for ourselves and with other people. Next week we’re going to wrap up the ABC’s  of bounce by looking at connecting with God. But for now, are there any final thoughts or stories or anything you want to give on VCR?

[01:05:31] Marcus: Yeah. The classic story that always comes to my mind on VCR is the premarital counseling appointment where we had a young lady and her fiance. They were talking about their argument over whether to build the house they were going to move into before the wedding or after. And it was just one of those classic things where before the argument they were holding hands, sitting close together, and just oozing joy. As this conversation went on they stopped holding hands, they moved away from each other and the joy just left the room. And so I had them practice just listening for the emotion this time, don’t listen for the problem, and try to tell the other person what emotion that you hear them expressing. And the first time we went through it the husband to be, bless his heart, he just totally missed the emotion.

She was afraid that he was going to get preoccupied and it was going to diminish the joy and the value of the wedding day itself. And he said, “Well it sounds like you’re angry.” And  it caught me off guard, I was like there was no anger in what she was saying. I told him that you’re either a really bad listener or you’re really intuitive. And he says, “I think I’m really intuitive.” So I’m like, “All right, so where did you hear anger?” And he’s like, “She knows she’s losing this argument and she’s mad.” Well that’s completely reading into something that’s going on. So I said, “All right let’s try this one more time and this time don’t be quite so intuitive. You tell her what she thinks she’s feeling.”. And to his credit he did a great job, hit a home run. And he’s  like, she’s afraid I’m going to get so caught up in this project that I won’t be available. Now she’s crying because she feels understood and seen.

Then we flipped it around and asked him, “Why is this so emotionally important to you to do this?” And at first she didn’t think there were any emotions to it. But as they pushed in and asked a few questions it came out that he knew how proud his dad would be if he had a house built for his new wife. And now everybody’s crying, I’m crying, they’re crying. We hadn’t even gotten to the comfort part yet but just through the validation process everybody felt seen and they felt heard. And now all of a sudden solving this problem became a whole lot easier. And the rest of that story is they waited till after the wedding to build the house and they’re still happily married.

[01:08:11] Stephanie: I’m an Asbury student at the seminary and I know you’ve heard. I know people all around the states and I think the world are starting to hear about what is being called the Asbury Revival 2023. A lot of people are also calling it an awakening and a lot of people are wrestling with what the appropriate thing is to call this. But whatever it is, there is a work of God happening down here, it’s pretty amazing.

[01:08:47] Marcus: It does sound pretty amazing. Clearly revival is anytime that Christian’s hearts are connecting with God in a deeper way and there’s some breakthrough taking place. There’s some change that is happening where people who have been walking away from God find themselves being drawn back to him, revival is to bring back life. I think people are praying that it will turn into another great awakening and that this is going to sweep. What we’re seeing right now is that people are starting to come in from all over the country because they’re hoping they can take this, and see it spread and turn into an awakening, which would be really cool.

[01:09:27] Stephanie: Well, and for those who don’t know, it started last Wednesday.  (Okay, I’m not going to try to do the mental math from when this is recorded.) It started at a Wednesday chapel and basically that chapel didn’t end. And more and more people have just been coming. What I have heard being described the most is its sweetness. And that’s what Ihave felt. I haven’t been there as much as I would like but I’ve been a couple times and I’ve talked to many, many people. I’ve had classes in the atmosphere of it and my takeaway from it has just been the sweetness and the gentleness of it. I know I’ve heard testimonies of healings. I’ve heard testimonies of confession and repentance, testimonies of reconciliation, and of inner healing breakthroughs. It is just a sense of peace and God working on people’s hearts helping them know him deeper. So many good testimonies and so many people coming and seeing it, and a lot of people coming skeptical and leaving, saying, “Wow!”

And also, frankly, people who show up and they haven’t felt that peace yet, so they’re wrestling with it. A lot of people who come in with a lot of experiences. And the more it grows, the more people come with their expectations or their needs. And so I’m just really in awe of God’s grace through it all. And how I heard one person say, “The more and more people who come, the more temptation there has been to have sort of a hype or emotionalism. And then it’s like as soon as that starts building it’s like God just pours water over it and brings that sweet peace back. And the leadership and students have just been working nonstop to have a space where God can work at his pace, where he can do what he needs to do, and we try to just facilitate that. And it’s just been really encouraging to watch.

[01:11:50] Marcus: Yeah, it’s amazing. I don’t know that I’ve ever been this close to something like this when it’s been taking place. It’s pretty amazing.

[01:12:01] Stephanie: I just wanted to read two quotes actually. I know I’m taking a lot of time on this, but I think it works for the topic of connecting with God. One of my professors wrote an article for Christianity Today. His name is Dr. Tom McCall and it was really good. And I just wanted to read what he says, “As an analytic theologian I am weary of hype and very wary of manipulation. I come from a background and a particularly revivalist segment of the Methodist holiness tradition, where I’ve seen efforts to manufacture revivals and move movements of the spirit that were sometimes not only hollow, but also harmful. I do not want anything to do with that.

And truth be told this is nothing like that. There is no pressure or hype. There is no manipulation. There is no high pitched emotional fervor. To the contrary, it has so far been mostly calm and serene. The mix of hope and joy and peace is indescribably strong and indeed almost palpable. A vivid and incredibly powerful sense of shalom. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is undeniably powerful, but also so gentle.”

I just loved that, it was a wonderful explanation. And then I’ll leave it at this. The president of Asbury seminary, Dr. Tennant, he wrote a blog and I just wanted to read the end of it here. He says, “But what we are doggedly seeking is not lasting memories but transformed lives long after the lights go out in Hughes auditorium, Estes chapel, or all the other places which are experiencing this work of grace. In short, it is not about this place or that place whether Wilmore or any other city. It is about Christ himself. None of us owns this awakening, but all of us must own in our own lives his work and his gracious beckoning to that deeper place. Come, Holy Spirit.

[01:13:58] Marcus: Amen.

[01:13:59] Stephanie: On that note, let’s talk about this being with Christ himself and the work in our lives.

[01:14:06] Marcus:Absolutely. Well, and there’s actually a little Deeper Walk connection there too. Our board member Randy Peterson who’s in Lexington, knows the man who was preaching and there have been connections there. Not that we’re taking any credit for what’s going on, just that there is a connection. God does want to have a connection with people, and that’s what we’re talking about, connecting with God. And what I’m hearing is that people are recognizing that there are obstacles in their lives that need to be gotten rid of and that there is something else. It’s like we’ve all felt that, right?

We’ve all had times in our lives where there’s got to be something more to Christianity than this. There’s got to be more to my walk with God than what I’m experiencing right now. And there’s this hunger that says, I hope I could find it here, I hope I can find it there. And so when you get something like this there are those people who come and they will leave disappointed because they didn’t get everything they were hoping for. But there’s others who, absolutely, this is going to be a turning point in their lives. It’s an amazing thing. I’m just still taking it in.

[01:15:19] Stephanie: Yeah, you and me both. As you guys are praying for people’s lives to be changed and transformed and for revival to spread. I would also encourage you to pray for the care of the people who are involved. Like, I’ve heard people talking about sometimes the holiest thing you can do is take a nap. Like, go take care of yourselves.

[01:15:45] Marcus: We talked about that. That rest is an act of worship as we’re trusting God to keep carrying on, and that it is not all on us.

[01:15:53] Stephanie: Yes. Well, gosh, I was just thinking of when we’ve gone to family camps before, and this is kind of a funny segue. I was just thinking of a folder I bought at a bookstore at our family camp where we would go. Back in high school I bought this folder and it had artwork on it that was depicting the idea that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. And I always loved that concept but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been feeling like sometimes that idea maybe gets overblown.

We need to define our terms on what we mean by that. When some people throw religion out and only want relationship. (And I think that’s a different conversation, so I shouldn’t segue us into that.) I wanted to talk about what does it mean to be in a relationship with God. What is relationship as attachment? And why does connecting with God matter so much? And what does it even look like to connect with God and have a relationship? So could you speak to that a little bit?

[01:17:03] Marcus: Certainly that original phrase, “Not a religion but a relationship,” came from when America was a largely Christianized country. And, like 80% of some polls had people professing to be Christian. Most people had a church affiliation and there was this need to distinguish between the fact that I attended church, and that I actually have a relationship with God. Because Christianity was so cultural. I think the idea behind it was people were like, oh, don’t just tell me to go to church, I already go to church so I must be a Christian. They’re like, no, there’s something here about actually living with God on a day to day basis. And so part of this was talking about Sunday Christians. They were the ones who went to church on Sunday but you would never know they were Christians throughout the week. And that’s really partly what this was trying to address.

Now, when we come to Christianity as a relationship my favorite analogy there is John 15. Jesus said, “I am the vine. You are the branches.” My father is the gardener or the husband who’s going to manage the vineyard. He wants that connection like being grafted in. A branch being grafted into a vine, that’s the essence of the Christian life. So we want that to get stronger and stronger and stronger. I love the way Bruce Wilkinson illustrated this in his book, The Secrets of the Vine, where he said, “If you find a really healthy vine, what happens is there’s a connection between the vine and the branch that is sometimes the size of your fist. So if you have a really big connection between the branch and the vine, and then the gardener is pruning that branch so it stays short. There’s a lot of life coming from the vine into that short branch and it only has one place to go, and that’s into the fruit.”

And I just love that picture that my connection with God has those two elements to it. God the father, his job is to prune my life and to keep that branch from just becoming a straggling, long thing that is wasting all the life that’s flowing into it. So his job by pruning us is to keep that branch short and then our job is just to abide in Christ. To stay connected and to grow that connection as big as possible. And when you get those two things happening, a short branch and a big connection, that’s when you get this really big juicy fruit. So I love that picture from John 15.

[01:19:56] Stephanie: Yeah, and going further with that, I love the imagery of relationships being like plants. Seeds are so small and yet they grow and grow, and they grow into something beautiful and cultivated. Starting small and starting tiny, don’t underestimate it.

[01:20:15] Marcus: Well, and you realize too, that everybody has to start with a small connection and everybody has to go through pruning. And this is not something that happens in one season, let alone in one week or one day.

[01:20:28] Stephanie: Right. If you see somebody who has a really, really strong connection with God, don’t beat yourself up for not having it. Just start working and taking the steps to get to know him and it will grow naturally.

[01:20:43] Marcus: Yeah. It’s easy to lose that battle of comparison, isn’t it?

[01:20:46] Stephanie: Yeah. So in your book Building Bounce, you talk about three keys to growing a deeper walk with God, and you place them in a triangle. At each corner is know, trust, and obey. Will you walk us through that triangle?

[01:21:01] Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. So the analogy of know, trust, and obey starts like this. I used to tell my students when I was teaching college if I tell you I want you to move to Alaska, then why would you do that, why would you obey me? And you would only obey me if you trusted me. So in order to trust me you have to know me. So there’s this natural connection that before I’m going to obey you I need to trust you. Before I’m going to trust you I need to know you. And so we see this triangular structure that when I obey and I see that it turns out well, I get to know you even more and I build even more trust. Then this just keeps cycling around and growing and so it is with our walk with God. Sometimes when we separate obedience from trusting and knowing God then our Christianity becomes just purely transactional. It’s just about duty, doing the right thing, and it becomes very behaviorist and that leads to legalism.

So legalism happens when that obedience part is detached from relationship. So knowing God is where this all starts. The Hebrew word, and I love the Hebrew word there is Yada. This idea is not an intellectual knowing but a relational knowing. I think the first usage of Yada in the Bible is Adam Yadad Eve, and she got pregnant. So I mean, that’s a very relational connection there. And so you can in certain cases call this intimacy, being intimate with God.

This takes me directly to Proverbs 3:5,6 which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways Yada him.” To know him in all your ways. Being intimate with him would be another way of saying it and he will direct your paths. And so we see this connection between knowing God, Yada, having an intimate connection with God and trusting him which then leads to obedience. And the fruit comes from the obedience. And so that’s why these things are inseparably linked. We obey people we trust and we trust them because we know them. And those things feed each other.

[01:23:11] Stephanie: I feel like I have an example of this in my own life. Just in the last two weeks my car has been having issues. It’s been in the shop twice now, once last week and once this week. And along with everything else that’s going on it just felt like, oh, my goodness, why is this happening right now? And I was texting, calling, and talking with both you and mom at the same time trying to figure out how to solve this latest car issue this week. I could feel myself starting to get upset and it all happened in a blink.

But if I break it down I felt like I was prompted to recognize that I was being tempted to start thinking in a direction of fear or anxiety or whatever. And I was like, no and I stopped, I listened to that and I sought God. I was like, God, we have a history my whole life. But even as recently as last week when my car broke down you took care of me.

You raised up people in my life to take care of this and to take care of me. You have been so faithful to provide for me my whole life when things like this happen. And so I don’t know why I’m starting to get anxious right now because I know you’ve got me. And I was like, so, Lord, how do you want to solve this? Please work this to your glory and I trust you to take care of me.

And literally within minutes of praying that Randy Peterson texted me. And he was texting me about the revival but he helped me, and my landlords helped me. Yeah, God has been so good to me. And that’s just one example of even in the past two weeks how he’s been providing for me. And I know that he will so I’m choosing to trust that he will. I feel like I’m going deeper with him and he’s teaching me more of himself,  it’s really good.

[01:25:24] Marcus: Yeah. It’s also a great example of the SLOW acrostic that we talked about. You stopped, you listened, you obeyed, and you watched what happened. It happened very quickly because it’s not a rote, step by step. Okay, first I must do this, then I must do that. But you’ve done that often enough that it all happened very quickly. Like, okay, I need to stop. And you had a sense from God, trust me on this. You obeyed and you got to watch how God took care of it. And so I think that’s a wonderful illustration of how that process works.

[01:26:00] Stephanie: Huzzah.

[01:26:01] Marcus: Yay.

[01:26:03] Stephanie: Oh, so good. Well, hey, I think in an earlier episode, we talked about the bigger brain idea that Jim Wilder will talk about. Can we come back to this now and talk about it where God is the bigger brain?

[01:26:19] Marcus: Yeah, just to set the stage, little kids when they get scared they want to be around somebody who’s not scared. It makes them feel a sense of peace, like, okay, mom and dad have this and I don’t have to be afraid. And what they’re really looking for is somebody who’s got a bigger brain, a well enough developed brain that they’re not overwhelmed by the problems that we’re going through. So in the same way all of us have limits on our emotional capacity. There are none of us that are completely mature and have no limits and never get triggered, we all have some limits on that.

But we can always lean into a connection with somebody who has no limits. That is, Jesus who is never overwhelmed. Nothing is ever too big for him and so he is the bigger brain. Sometimes we don’t always have to have a solution from God and understand how things are going to work out or why things are happening or what’s going on. You never got an answer to why is this happening this week? You didn’t get an answer to how are you going to take care of this? But there was this relational sense of I’m going to be okay because God, the bigger brain, who is not overwhelmed has this. Somebody who has the capacity to deal with it is with me and is in this. And that’s what we see over and over again in the scripture where it says, “Trust in the Lord. Do not be afraid, because I am with you.” And the idea of the “withness of God,” if you will, is that we are with somebody.

[01:28:09] Stephanie: Allen Arnold.

[01:28:10] Marcus: Yeah. We are with somebody who is not overwhelmed. For those who don’t know Allen Arnold, he wrote a book called The Withness of God.

[01:28:17] Stephanie: Oh, very good. Well, we. I feel like we’ve covered so much and so little time, but also it’s been so rich. Next week we’re going to be talking about listening prayer. And that’s kind of continuing the connection, connecting with God topic, but also moving into, I think we want to spend a couple of episodes talking about listening prayer. I’m really excited for it. So for now, any final thoughts for this episode?

[01:28:47] Marcus: Well, you know, I sometimes consider myself a recovering left brain Christian. And I think a lot of us feel that way. We want a connection with God and we’re not quite sure how to get there. In listening prayer, I remember my journey with this was very frustrating and at times it still is. I mean, it’s not like you can just sit there and on demand hear from God whenever you want to. So a large part of this is learning how to recognize the fact that God does in fact speak to us and what that’s like. And how we begin to recognize it and then learn some of the things that we can do to begin  pushing into it more readily.

And then we specifically apply it to the emotional healing process of helping people. Really push into what God wants to do for them, say to them, and be for them in the pain they’re in. So we’ve been talking about ABC’s of Building Bounce and we’re going to be moving into the repair part. How do we not only build a connection with God, but how do we move into repair, for the damage that sometimes keeps us from building the kind of resilience that we want? So hopefully this series has been helpful to people and given them some tools.

[01:30:03] Stephanie: Do you to give a final thought for the series as a whole?

[01:30:07] Marcus: Yeah, sure, the final thought on the series is going back to ABC’s. I remember working with Stefanie Hinman on this book and she had put together a program for traumatized children, it was just really obvious to see the need. You get some of these children who just don’t bounce back from things the way other kids do. You realize very quickly it’s because of the kind of family they grew up in or the kind of life experiences that they have had, and that there’s something missing. And so what we’ve been trying to do here is the same things that you learn about helping a child grow their resilience.

We find it’s the same thing that adults need to do to grow our resilience. So practicing appreciation, quieting from upsetting emotions, learning to get control of our body, doing battle for our mind, and getting our beliefs under control. Then also having safe secure connections with other people. And then the tremendous advantage that we have as Christians is the ability to connect with God. When you put all those things together we have a nice little recipe for that process. I would also just say that again, that this is not something you do once. This is something that has to become a habit over months and months of practice, but it does work.

[01:31:22] Stephanie: Start small and it will grow.

[01:31:23] Marcus: Amen.

[01:31:25] Stephanie: Amen. Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend. Do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.