47: Joy Bonds

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father- daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 47. Today we are starting a new series. A joy-filled life is possible, let’s talk about how to cultivate one.

Hello, Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. We get to talk about joy.

[00:35] Stephanie: We do. And it’s a very happy topic for today, it is actually my birthday on the day that we are recording this. So, happy birthday to me! I get to spend the whole day with my father.

[00:48] Marcus: This is kind of fun. And when we’re done recording these we’re going to go out and celebrate properly, so this will be fun.

[00:54] Stephanie: Yay.

[00:55] Marcus: Yay.

[00:56] Stephanie: Yes. I was very excited to see that the main bulk of the work I had to do today was to be with you. So Huzzah.

[01:04] Marcus: Yes. And we’re in person today, so that’s nice.

[01:07] Stephanie: You did, you came down and saw me and everything. I am excited to hang out with you and mom tonight. All right, well, every week we travel together on the trail toward a deeper walk with God. And this week we are turning onto an exciting trail where we will explore joy. This is in honor of the new book that was just released by my own wonderful father, Marcus Warner, and our friend, Chris Coursey. It’s called The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled People. Before we begin this discussion, I just want to remind everyone that we have a free tool for you that you can access today

It’s never too late to grow your capacity to feel joy because your brain has the capacity to grow joy as long as you live. And it only takes 28 days to form a new habit. So THRIVE Today and Deeper Walk have partnered together creating a 28 day joy challenge for you. You can sign up for free at 4habits.org. That’s the numeral 4 – 4habits.org.

When you sign up you’ll receive 28 days of simple joy exercises straight to your inbox. Plus, you can choose your favorite printable calendar for a physical reminder about each day’s exercise. Take the 28 Days to Joy challenge and start at 4habits.org. S,o Father, my little commercial spot makes me happy. All right. As we were brainstorming this series you referred to this episode (I loved it) as Joy Bonds, two words that blew up my old paradigm.

[02:44] Marcus: Yes, right.

[02:45] Stephanie: And that’s a great title so I just had to throw that in there. In order to understand the revolutionary nature of these two words however, we’re gonna first need to go back to the old paradigm. And I guess I’ll just say, our very first series on the On the Trail Podcast, we talked about a lot of these old paradigms, so you can go back to that series and relisten to it. There’s also a lot of this content that’s going to be in The Solution of Choice book. If you want more than you can get here in this episode, those are places you can go. So, Father, you were raised with a very voluntarist mindset. Please explain what is voluntarism?

[03:23] Marcus: What is voluntarism? Well, I didn’t know I was a voluntarist, but all of us evangelicals were, we just didn’t know it. So volunteerism is a philosophical system that says “the will”. You can hear that latin word volae. What is the Latin word? Do you remember?

[03:38] Stephanie: Voluntas?

[03:41] Marcus: Yeah, Voluntas. So you can kind of hear that latin word for “the will” in there. And it’s the idea that our life choices are at the foundation and heart of what it means to be human. Well, there’s obviously a lot of truth to that, right? Making choices forms a lot of the things that we do. And so voluntarism basically says that believe the right things, make the right choices, and things will change, your life will be better. And so we are taught to preach the truth and encourage people to make choices based on that. But that was it, that was the whole system. It was kind of like here, you know, believe the right things, make the right choices, and everything will change.

So that’s essentially what volunteerism is and even my own father, we were all raised this way. You know he used to say all the time it would be nice to write a book called believe right, live right. Because he kind of had it in his mind, if we can just get people to believe the right things then everything else will flow from there. So we have a lot of evangelical literature on, you know, common lies people believe, this is a choice, and that is a choice, and salvation is a decision.

And while there’s elements of truth in all of that it misses a whole bunch of other things. And so that’s what we’re trying to correct. So I was a happy voluntarist, didn’t know it and just went along trying hard to make my Christianity work. And then I watched these videos by Jim Wilder called “Joy Bonds” and it just sort of blew my brain up. So I was like, what is going on here?

[05:11] Stephanie: Mind blown!

[05:13] Marcus: Yeah.

[05:14] Stephanie: Yes. And I do think it’s important to circle back just to the fact that beliefs and choice are very important. We’re not discounting that, it’s just what role do you ask them to play in transformation?

[05:25] Marcus: Yeah, the problem isn’t with right beliefs and right choices. The problem is asking them to do all of the heavy lifting. It’s like, if it’s all just this then we create too much of this impression especially for what’s been called the duty generation. I mean that was a very sensible thing, okay, I’ll do my duty. You just tell me what choice to make and I’ll go make it. And so we’re finding out that there’s actually something deeper going on even in the Bible and in the brain than just beliefs and choices.

[05:55] Stephanie: So joy bonds, the two words that blew up your old paradigm. How did you discover joy bonds?

[06:01] Marcus: So in 2005, 2006, I made the transition from being a pastor to starting Deeper Walk ministries as a discipleship organization, to seeing the ministry merge with ICBC and becoming the president of that organization. And through ICBC I got access to a whole lot of training curriculum. And one of them was a set of workshops that Dr. Wilder had done at a recent ICBC conference. And it was simply called “Joy Bonds.”

And it was one of those things, you talk about dense, right? It’s one of those things where you watch for three minutes, you pause it while you take notes and think, and then you watch for five minutes and you pause it while you take notes and think. It was just so packed with vocabulary that I’d never interacted with before, brain science I’d never heard of before, and with a paradigm shift that I was unfamiliar with. As it began to sink in I was like, this is gonna change everything, and it really has.

[07:02] Stephanie: So I guess we’re holding ourselves in suspense here. What are joy bonds?

[07:07] Marcus: Yeah, what are joy bonds? Okay, so the two words. Joy basically was not on my radar. My idea of Christianity was duty and intimacy. But the idea of intimacy with God was basically spiritual disciplines, do spiritual disciplines and form your intimacy with God. And there wasn’t really a category for joy in my thinking other than I know the joy of the Lord is my strength. And they talked about joy now and then but it felt like a minor theme in the Bible, it was not a central idea.

And so just that shift to the idea of wait, joy is actually central and not just icing on the cake? And then the idea that the brain is actually wired for joy and wants to run on joy, this tells me something about God, right? So if God wired my brain to run on joy, that tells me that joy was God’s plan for my life. Well, that got my attention. And then you get the word bonds which has to do with attachment. And this is the idea that below the level of cognition, shall we say, below the level of my thinking, my analyzing, and my belief system, there is my attachment system.

What I find is that my attachment system will either bond to people in fear or bond to people in joy. And so all of a sudden just learning that there was a system called the attachment system, just learning that there was something deeper going on than just my thinking was revelatory. And then understanding the power of these attachments and how so many of my beliefs were actually driven by my bonds or my attachments, even more so than what I realized. And then you put all this together, joy and bonds, those two things just kind of blew up my little voluntarist world. And I realized, all right, I’m going to have to rethink everything. Because it’s that kind of a paradigm shifting idea.

[09:03] Stephanie: And we’re gonna just keep unpacking and keep unpacking and it’s going to be great. So while this series is about joy, we’re going to be talking a lot about attachment and maturity, because they’re pretty inseparable. Do you have anything up front that you want to say about attachment first?

[09:20] Marcus: Yeah. So the model I taught and I thought explained everything was a worldview model that said, at the heart of culture is the worldview. And then from the worldview come the values and from the values come behavior. But what I began to realize is that deeper than even the worldview is the belonging in a culture. In my little subgroup of my people, I have a sense of belonging that these are my people. And whoever I feel that belonging to is going to influence which worldview I embrace.

So if my parents were missionaries in tribal Africa, if you’re a member of that tribe, then your worldview and your values will tend to be similar to one another. So what is this driving force that has everybody embracing the same worldview and has everybody embracing the same values, and living in the same basic way? And the answer is that they have such a strong attachment to each other.

And so I realized that attachment was actually a deeper driving force than even the worldview itself. And so that was like, wow, I’ve really got to think about that one. Especially when it comes to Christianity because we tend to think that we became Christians to embrace the worldview and that forms our belonging. And there is some truth to that and  sometimes we create belonging around what we believe. But even if I’m creating belonging around what I believe, it’s the belonging that ultimately fuels what is going to follow. That’s why it becomes such a powerful, transformational force.

[10:56] Stephanie: So in that sense attachment is not like a tool in the toolkit, but it is the toolkit.

[11:01] Marcus: When I was starting out in ministry that’s the way I looked at, I’m just here to collect tools to try to help people. And so we had spiritual warfare tools, inner healing tools, Bible meditation tools, biblical study tools, and community group tools. But when we get to this idea of attachment and maturity development all of a sudden you realize, okay, this is actually the purpose of all of the tools. The purpose of all of these other tools is to help people grow their maturity by growing their emotional capacity, and all of these things work together to do that. And that even our intimacy with God is helping us grow our capacity and our maturity. And so I’m like, okay, this kind of ties everything together and gives the goal of what this is all about.

[11:54] Stephanie: Yeah, and on that note, talk more about maturity.

[11:57] Marcus: So maturity is kind of interchangeable with the idea of emotional capacity. Life Model basically talks about six levels of maturity and this is a system that Dr. Wilder and his co workers came up with at Shepherd’s House.  The first one is in utero which we sometimes skip, but there is emotional capacity actually developing in the womb before we’re born.

[12:20] Stephanie: That’s incredible.

[12:21] Marcus: Yeah, there’s a lot of things developing there already. And then every time you move from one stage to another it’s like a death and resurrection. So you die to living in the womb and you are born into a new reality where all of a sudden everything has changed. You’ve got to grow into this new reality. And as an infant I can’t take care of anything. I need somebody else to recognize what’s going on, meet me in that problem and take care of me. At the infant level I just need somebody else to recognize it and to take care of it. Then I die to being an infant and I am born into the child level years.

That happens when I’m weaned. I’m actually getting to the point where I’m eating food and feeding myself and not taking a bottle, not on the breast kind of thing. So now I am moving to a stage where I need to learn how to take care of myself. I have to dress myself, I have to learn how to eat, I have to learn how to go potty and all those things. But also as I progress I have to learn how to take care of my own emotions. So just like I need help with potty training, with walking, eating, dressing, and all those other things, I’m going to need help with my learning emotional regulation. So those are all child level skills.

And then I hit puberty, I died of being a child and I am born into this world of adults. And what’s supposed to happen now, is that I am well practiced at taking care of my own emotional needs so now I am ready to take care of two people at the same time. I can not only make sure I’m okay, but I can make sure that we’re both okay. Like we can do something together and find a win,win together. And my whole brain system goes through a major renovation at puberty where my core identity is no longer coming from my parents, but it’s coming from my peers. And that’s not just a cultural thing. That’s actually a brain thing that my brain is more wired to my group. And that brings us right back to belonging and attachment. Who I am attached to, who I see as my people will give me my identity.

So in classic high school terms, if I’m a nerd, these are my people and I see myself there. If I’m an athlete, those are my people, or if I’m in the drama group, or whatever group it is, these are my people? Well, as soon as you start thinking that I belong with them and  these are my people, you are now predisposed to embrace a worldview and a value system that goes with those people. And so belonging leads to worldview, which leads to values, and creates the behavior, it drives things. The Bible warns us we have to be very, very careful who we bond to and who we attach to because it’s going to have such a powerful influence on the way we live.

The other two things just to touch on briefly, are parent level and elder level. It’s not when you get married. It’s when you have your first baby that you go from adult to parent, because now you’re taking care of not just two adults, but you’re actually passing on life. And again, you die of being an adult to become a parent and then you die to being a parent to becoming an elder. And having gone through this recently myself I was a little surprised at how hard it was. Like there was a real sense of, this stage of life is over and there is a new calling on me, who I am and how to go through that. And I was a little surprised at how big of a transition that actually was.

[15:55] Stephanie: That was an excellent crash course in the maturity levels. We’ll keep talking and these things will keep coming up throughout our conversations I am sure, but where can people go if they want more right now?

[16:08] Marcus: Well Life Model’s core book is Living From The Heart Jesus Gave You. And so if you want the core Life Model stuff, go there. If you want to get a summary of all this that Jim and I wrote together, Rare Leadership, that actually has the fullest explanation of everything that I just walked through. So I would recommend people go there.

[16:30] Stephanie: Awesome. Thank you. We are kind of coming up to the end of the episode here. Before we get Dad’s final thoughts, I just want to remind everyone to check out the free joy building tool, 4habits.org. It is simple, it is fun and effective, and I hope you enjoy it. Father, do you have any final thoughts for this episode and maybe a vision for what you want to do with the series?

[16:52] Marcus: Well, one of the reasons I want to camp out here is because Joy Bonds sort of messed with my head and messed with my world. It’s like, okay, I’ve got to rethink everything. I sort of want to take people on that journey with me of what it was like to try to rethink all of this. How to re-envision not only how I tick, but how does Christianity work and how does this all come together? So that’s sort of the journey I’m hoping that we’ll go on and I am looking forward to it, it should be fun.

[17:20] Stephanie: All right. I’m looking forward to it as well. Well, hey, everyone listening to us, it is so fun to be on the trail with you. Thanks for joining us. Deeper Walk International is a nonprofit organization, and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do. Some are on the trail with us as official Trailblazers who commit to donating $25 or more per month. We invite you to consider becoming a Trailblazer. You can do this very simply by visiting our website, https://deeperwalk.com/trailblazers/. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.