017: Practice The Presence of God

Musician Jason Gray joins us this week to share how being fully present with people and doing things out of love are some of the ways he practices the presence of God in his 10000 MINUTES.

This week’s Practice:

Practice The Presence of God

+ 017 Practice the Presence of God - Jason Gray Transcript

Chris: Aah.

Tim: That's Chris's version of me opening the show.

Emmoe: He said welcome to 10,000 Minutes in his language.

Tim: Yeah, that some kind of Ewok or Chewbacca?

Chris: I just want to make sure the mic is on.

Emmoe: He's just testing it out.

Tim: Yep, no it is.

Chris: You have a compressor on here?

Tim: Yeah. Everybody, Tim Timmons here with another 10,000 Minute podcast experiment, crap.

Emmoe: [inaudible 00:00:28].

Chris: Congratulations.

Tim: Nailed that.

Chris: Well done.

Tim: We're on 17 right now.

Chris: Holy cow.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Emmoe: We're at 17-

Chris: You know what? That's the best age too, it's the most amount of freedom with the least amount of responsibility. So this is peak podcast number right now.

Tim: Wow.

Emmoe: Wow, that's true.

Tim: I didn't see that coming.

Chris: Yeah [crosstalk 00:00:47].

Jason: Still a little foolish, but yeah, on a good trajectory [crosstalk 00:00:00:53].

Chris: We're not quite an adult, so we can still be idiots, but it's all good.

Tim: Gosh, well everybody that was Chris, Chris Cleveland.

Jason: This podcast can still eat pizza in the middle of the night without any great ramifications.

Tim: Right, right. I mean, I can too, I mean just look at my body.

Jason: Oh wow.

Chris: [crosstalk 00:01:09] specimen.

Tim: Speaking of awesome humans, I've got Emmoe to the right.

Emmoe: Hi.

Tim: Emmoe to the right would be a cool band name.

Emmoe: Emmoe to the right?

Tim: Emmoe to the right, I mean, not politically.

Emmoe: I'll sleep on it. I don't know, it's hard to...

Jason: I love their live in Germany record from '86.

Tim: Emmoe to the right?

Jason: Yeah. I think you took that to a political place. I wasn't-

Tim: You were, I wasn't thinking-

Jason: Thinking ideologically, right? I was just thinking Emmoe to the right sounds cool.

Tim: It does sound cool.

Chris: So we need Emmoe filter on most of everything we do at this point. Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. We should start this podcast again.

Emmoe: Let's do it.

Tim: Okay. And to my left, I've got Mr. Jason Gray.

Jason: Woo.

Tim: So Jason listen, I will have given some exciting details about your giftings and what you do.

Jason: Wish you do that right now. I'd like to hear that.

Tim: Okay, Jason Gray. He is a dancer in a cabaret band.

Jason: Man., I'm, yeah. Keep going.

Tim: No. So Chris and I have both done stuff with Jason through the years. Jason's one of those guys for me, and Jason has said this on his show. So, Jason, you have this XM radio-

Jason: Acoustic story time-

Tim: ... acoustic story time thing,

Jason: ... singer-songwriters in the round thing.

Tim: Yeah, it's awesome, and so Jason leaves it-

Jason: It sounds fun.

Tim: It's almost like this, but there's music to it, you know? Because it's just dumb and so Chris and I have both done that with you, but something we've both said about each other is someday, maybe in heaven or somewhere, we're going to be like really good friends.

Jason: That's true. I know. I feel that about you all the time. I feel like, man, I feel like he's my friend, but we actually never hang out except for when we're doing something like this, so in the last year or two, I started to have the sense that I have a lot of acquaintances, a lot of friendships like, my life is rich with wonderful relationships, but it's not clear to me who my pallbearers would be. I don't have that small group of best friends, stuff like that, and so about a year ago I thought I need to go find me some pallbearers, and so two times a month, I would have people over to eat and we'd hang out. They didn't know that I was interviewing them for being my pallbearers- [crosstalk 00:03:23]

Chris: Or checking out myself [crosstalk 00:03:25] see if he'd be able to carry me? I'm not sure.

Jason: He's totally going to drop me, but in the back of my mind, I've wanted to be intentional about building friendships that when called upon could be there for me to bear my casket and maybe other things too.

Tim: Yeah, it's a little morbid.

Jason: It's a little morbid but [crosstalk 00:03:45].

Chris: I like it, I'm just sad that I didn't get that phone call. We'll find-

Jason: Yeah, I mean, maybe this is the beginning of that.

Chris: Maybe it is, maybe it is.

Jason: Because I'm looking at you guys. I'm like these guys would make pretty cool pallbearers.

Chris: You know why? We'd keep the light-

Jason: Chris is very strong.

Tim: Yeah, he's very strong. He's a jerk, but he is super strong.

Chris: We'd keep the mood light. That's all I know.

Jason: Yeah.

Tim: Yes. Remember when Jason farted that one time? Yeah, that's what we'd say over the casket.

Emmoe: My gosh.

Jason: But I've never done that in front of people. My goal is that people would never know that I use the restroom in any capacity. That's what I'm working towards, yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Congratulations for getting this far.

Jason: Thank you. Thank you very much it's-

Chris: Wow.

Jason: It can be tricky sometimes, so...

Tim: Gosh, I had another friend who said he's like, I don't think my wife's ever gone number two before, and I'm like, you're married 25 years and you have no clue-

Jason: That's what I'm aiming for right there. Good for her, I resonate with that.

Chris: Wow.

Tim: Gosh. No, it's like my poor wife, kids, they've been indoctrinated, so this podcast-

Chris: That's what this podcast is about?

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Okay, great.

Jason: Right, Let's dive in.

Emmoe: Okay, so perfectionism. Let's do this.

Tim: How do we practice going potty and coming out with that? Okay, wow.

Emmoe: I'll go last.

Chris: We also don't edit much of this which is the best part.

Jason: Do you ever like to throw in random beeps to make it sound like people are cussing?

Tim: I haven't yet. Haven't had to.

Jason: Yeah, well, no. I mean like-

Chris: Necessary censorship?

Jason: Just kind of throw it in there, yeah.

Emmoe: Might be season two, you know?

Tim: Yes, this is just [crosstalk 00:05:23].

Emmoe: Yeah, people are comfortable-

Chris: We'll probably start with you, Jason.

Jason: I mean, I could give you some material, or if you want so-

Chris: I think everybody's heard many things you've said so far.

Tim: You want to give us a line?

Jason: What's that?

Tim: So I can (beep) it.

Jason: Yeah, why are you so (beep) (beep) (beep)lyness.

Emmoe: Nice (beep) (beep).

Tim: Okay, just so you know, I will try it. On this episode, I will try that. Hey everybody, thank you for listening to this 10,000 minute experiment podcast. This is another great episode with a pretty incredible human named Jason Gray, and really, I hope that these practices that we talk about are things that you're able to actually put into your life, and if they've been helpful for you, would you let us know and maybe even share it with somebody else or share your journey with these things with somebody else. And as always, if you guys want to partner with us financially, just go to 10,000 minutes.com on the upper right it says donate, and monthly would be awesome but we don't really have a Patreon, so that's kind of how we're supporting this thing at the moment. So thank you for jumping in, especially if this has been helpful for your soul.

Tim: Also, if you guys want to get free text messages, please text 10K to 55678, and we'll just give you two encouraging texts in the week to remind you of whatever practice we're doing, and then also as usual, please, would you go and rate, like, and subscribe to this channel or even find us on Instagram or the Facebook and for whoever and whenever you're listening to this, we're doing a bunch of Instagram lives on Friday at noon Central time, so come join us and check those out. Here we go with the incredibly talented recording artist, songwriter, and our friend, Jason Gray.

Jason: I should also explain here for people who don't know me. I do have a speech handicap. It's not because I'm always making me nervous or anything like that.

Emmoe: Oh, come on!

Jason: It's just what I do. Hopefully you think it's cute., so-

Tim: I've used that a few times. I'm always looking.

Emmoe: It's always my fault.

Jason: But yeah, I just have a speech handicap, so don't be alarmed. Don't adjust your radio dial. Everything's just fine, anyway so-

Tim: You're welcome at this table.

Jason: So I have a friend who's a worship leader and he took his pastor's sermon and he went through and added all these beeps in, and then I play it back, and then it sounds like his pastor is just cussing up a storm it was beautiful. It was so great.

Tim: Okay. Well, I'll definitely do that for this.

Jason: All right, good.

Tim: Early on, when I was getting into what I do musically now, my wife started listening to the Christian radio for the first time., my wife and I did, and it was kind of in my early seasons of my first record deal, first record, and you had a song about your kingdom or what was it...

Jason: Bring the kingdom come with every act of love?

Tim: Yes, and Hillary and I had just begun, I don't know, almost like waking up to a bigger reality of Jesus at that point. I had always thought that the gospel, you know, I was a youth pastor and worship leader and the gospel was always, Jesus died for your sins, he rose again, and you get to be with him forever. That was the main message. You're a sinner going to hell, I mean, it's just all these things, which there are pieces on all this that we could talk about. But it was like, that was the entire story, and when we began to almost wake up to this idea that maybe Jesus never even used those ideas when he talked about the gospel, the actual good news, he never talked about the death and barrel and resurrection. I mean, those are wonderful, wonderful, powerful things that he did talk about in some ways, but when he talked about gospel, good news, 57 times, I think it was always about the availability of this kingdom, that was the good news.

Jason: The kingdom is at hand.

Tim: It's here and the death and barrel and resurrection, those are the ways in like, that's the vehicle to this kingdom life, and we were just blown away like, what if that's the bigger story going on? And we remember hearing your song going, "Oh goodness! He's talking about this stuff."

Jason: Oh, wow. That's great, yeah.

Tim: So anyways, behind your back, we were so, not just impressed, but encouraged by your writing.

Jason: Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah, I played that song again this weekend and I was just thinking about all those things that were on my mind when I wrote that one and about how that shift in my mind that went from the kingdom of God not being someday when, like in the afterlife, but it actually being right here right now. Heaven and hell begin right now, and that I can do things that last forever right now if I do them with love like the example that was on my mind when I wrote the song and I tried to make it into a verse, but it just didn't quite work and stuff, but was that like, if I do chores around the house, like wash the dishes or do laundry or make a meal for my kids. If I do that out of a sense of duty or begrudgingly or something like that, it fades away, right? But if I do it out of love, then all of a sudden it lasts forever because it becomes a part of the eternal kingdom of God, and so, I want to start doing things that last forever, I want to do things born out of love and so that was where that song idea came from. Yeah, so thank you. You didn't ask me about the song, I'm sorry.

Tim: No, we'll just erase most of that.

Jason: Okay, great. Just beep it out, yeah.

Tim: I will beep that out.

Jason: Great.

Tim: No, I love that, and it kind of brings us to our point for this week, and the practice for this week is actually practicing the presence of God.

Jason: And do you know that was one of the first books as a young believer that was given to me and that I fell in love with? The practice-

Tim: Okay, so why'd you fall in love with it? What was it about that concept, this idea that blew your mind?

Jason: The practice of the presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a little monk, I think-

Tim: Was he a little monk?

Jason: Well, I mean, well, you know-

Chris: Mason's like 6'4''

Emmoe: He gave short vibe vibes. Yeah, yeah. Short vibes.

Jason: I'm actually 6'6'' not that anyone's counting, but anyway, so, but I-

Chris: My apologies Mr. Gray.

Jason: I just have to say that because your biceps are very intimidating and I got to take what I can get, so I think I was so drawn to it because if you've read the book, there's this tenderness to it and this humility and a gentleness, and so I think I was drawn to that initially, and it tasted so true and it was the beginning of breaking down that dichotomy of, oh, there are spiritual things I do in spiritual times and unspiritual things like the breaking down of those categories, and beginning to realize that no, there isn't a prayer time, I mean, I can live my whole life in a kind of mode of prayer and an awareness that God is with me and so much of what interests me and that I try to explore in my songs is this breaking down of categories because I think categorizing things can be helpful and it has its place, but then it's also important to kind of break those categories down.

Tim: Give me an example of a category.

Jason: Typically growing up, I believed there were very clean categories of this is good, this is bad, and just recognizing that these things are a little more fluid. An example I give in my concerts, I used to think that when, when the storms of life would hit, and when I'd go through hard times, my mind thought, oh, this is bad, these bad things are happening, so that must mean that there's something wrong with me that I've, you know, that God is punishing me for some reason, or maybe I don't matter to him or maybe he doesn't exist because if good things happen to you, then that means you're blessed if bad things happen, that means there's something wrong. But kind of blurring those categories a little bit because some of the things I'm most grateful for in my life came out of situations and experiences that originally I would've put in the bad category.

Jason: An example is how do we learn courage unless we are faced with something that scares the hell out of us? But we have to face it anyway, and how do we learn forgiveness unless somebody wounds us so deeply that we are in danger of losing our own heart if we don't learn how to forgive? Because we can become bitter and closed off and how do I come to trust the faithfulness of God, unless I fail it over and over and over again and find that he's still there? So these things that I would've put in the bad category eventually reveal themselves to be, oh, actually these were very good and produced some of the best fruit in my life so... and the categories of spiritual and unspiritual and all that kind of stuff like, okay, one more example, please.

Jason: I was hanging out with my son and his college buddies. We were out on my back deck just a guy's night, so I got everybody cigars and we were just hanging out, back there and laughing and they were telling jokes and they were the kind of jokes that I wouldn't repeat to my mom, but they weren't so awful, like what's wrong with your heart? But they were on the edgy side.

Tim: Tell us one of them.

Jason: And we were laughing, and I just had this moment where I realized I was on holy ground that this group of guys were hanging out and they know that I'm on gospel singer and all that kind of stuff, and yet they felt safe enough in my presence to be themselves. Earlier in my life, I don't think I would've recognized that as holy ground, I would've been distracted by surface elements of that, the content of the conversation and all that, and because of my categorical way of thinking. Yeah, you know, could only be holy ground if we were doing a Bible study or something like that, but that was very holy ground that night. Yeah.

Tim: So what is easy and what is hard about practicing the presence of God? So we're going to be practicing it this next week, I mean, this week, as people are listening to this, it's going to be, what's that look like? To not make this some kind of duty thing that we do that is gross out of the place of like I'm earning some kind of love from God, right?

Jason: Right. Well, I think the keyword is practice, right? It takes, practice takes continually doing it. For me, I've got two ideas that I want to share with you, and there's that wonderful verse and terrifying verse where Jesus paints a picture for us of what it's going to look like at the end of days when we stand before God, and we're going to be asked some questions and they won't be theological questions, they won't be like, did you believe in the Virgin birth? Did you believe in the inherency of scripture? Did you believe in infant baptism? It's going to be when I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me a drink? When I was alone, did you come and visit me? And then Jesus says, whatever you did onto the least of these, the poor, the powerless, and the vulnerable, you did that on to me.

Jason: And we know that God's heart is for the poor and the powerless, and the vulnerable so much so that he takes it personally when we care for them which, side note, we live in a church culture now that celebrates worship and that's great, and that's wonderful that we get to sing heart songs to God, wonderful, do more of it. But for me, my most significant worship happens when I'm attentive to the poor and the powerless, and the vulnerable because in my mind, I think Jesus has done so much for me like, I've made so many mistakes and he's been so good to me. So faithful that there isn't anything I can do to pay him back, but I get to come the closest to that when I care for the poor and the powerless, and the vulnerable, because I know his heart breaks for them.

Jason: And so when I do that in some magical way, I get to minister to the broken heart of God. Okay, so what I was going to say with all that is that the poor and the powerless, and the vulnerable are with us all the time. There's four of us in this room right now. One of us is going through something, that makes one of us the least of these, and so one of the ways that I try to practice the presence of God and his heart in the world is to try to identify okay, with these people I'm with right now, who's the least of these who needs a love of God in a more focused way? I try to practice that sometimes I'm that person like I've been on big tours is where I was the least of the artist and one time I was out with a number of big artists, including Toby Mac and Toby was so kind and attentive to me in a lot of ways.

Jason: And I was like, ah, he recognizes that I'm the least of these on this tour, and he's taking care of me and I've always wanted to do the at on my tours when I have a guest artist out, and so one of the ways that I can practice the presence of God is that active empathy, experiencing God's heart for somebody else and allowing it to pass through me. Maybe when I'm talking with somebody who has a different view ideologically or theologically than I do and recognizing that I'm naturally oppositional in my thinking, most of us are and self-righteous. I want to, you know, man, I wonder if self-righteousness is underneath all of our other sins and maybe fears underneath that, but self-righteousness to me, it looks like is driving the car a lot of the time, meaning we think we're right.

Jason: If we didn't think we were right, we would do things differently, but just what we're doing right now, we're doing this because we think it's the right way to do it, the right thing to do, and so we are very vulnerable to believing we're right and self-righteousness which can make it, you know, there there's a guy I love, I'm sure you guys have heard of him, his name is Jordan Peterson. He's a psychologist, and he says, you can, you can either love what you know, or you can love what you don't know, and there's so much more that you don't know, so be careful what you fall in love with, and I was doing the show up in Wisconsin about a year ago and had to pause to tune my guitar and I'm tuning it and I asked the audience, and so while I tuned, do you have any questions? And so this kid in the back, he hollers out, "Yeah, what's your favorite endangered species?" I'm like wow, I was not prepared for that level.

Tim: Yeah, you didn't see it coming.

Jason: Like, "Well, okay. I have an answer for you. My favorite endangered species are human beings capable of having a reasonable discussion about politics."

Tim: Strong.

Jason: But why is that so hard for us? Well, it's so hard for us because we love what we already know. That's hard for me because I love what I already know and when, but if I can learn to love what I don't know, then I can stay in discovery mode, I can stay curious. That's one of the ways interpersonally that I practice the presence of God is recognizing my own inclination towards self-righteousness and asking the Lord to be with me and all of these conversations.

Jason: The other thing I was going to bring up and I didn't realize that it would fit so seamlessly with this and that is, I've got a mentor in my life right now and he's a very wise man, and I've been asking him why am I so defensive? Why am I so sensitive to criticism? How do I be less sensitive? And his name is George [Fandult 00:21:47], and he says, well, you don't want to become less sensitive, you want to grow your capacity to be offended and have more stamina for that. Brilliant, you know, and we were talking about what do I do when I'm with somebody in conflict and I feel like they're me? And well, some of the attack may be warranted because I'm broken and I can-

Tim: Like you said something offensive or something to somebody else or?

Jason: Yeah, or I'm in air or something like that. Gosh, I want to say something else that he taught me, but it would require a beep, but it might be worth it.

Jason: I'll come back to it. I'll come back to it.

Emmoe: Two beeps, an episode.

Jason: But some of the attacking is because of their own woundedness too, right? And so how do you love a person into healing who's attacking you? Maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a friend or your own child or something like that. How do you not get defensive? And he said, by staying in the presence of God, because a person who is attacking you and if that's coming from their own woundedness, you can't be a part of their healing through techniques and through trying to mutually understand each other, sometimes that can work, but okay, an example, if I have a beef with you and we have a tight relationship, and because of my own insecurities, I'm attacking you. If you get defensive and try to tell me how unreasonable I'm being, we're just going to stay locked in that our argumentative mode.

Jason: But if you are able to stay in the presence of God, then I get to experience you as a person in the presence of God, loved by God then I also get to experience the love of God in that way, and that can actually begin to help me heal, and I'm terrible at it, but I'm trying to learn how to be that. And I'm not even able to articulate all of that in a way that I'm happy with, but I'm just beginning to learn what that means.

Tim: Well, there are more facets to practicing the presence of God than just me being a monk and sitting on a hill and just being in the presence of God. I mean, that is so beautiful, and there's something beautiful about that, but there's this other part that you're bringing up that's really because I actually am a re-presenter of the same spirit that raised Jesus from the freaking dead, inside of me like, if the spirit of God is actually in me, and I'm a re-presenter of that power and love and grace, then practicing the presence of God is actually in our conversations on Instagram, Facebook. In the midst of other things, and I think the beauty it's so Dallas Willard-esque that he talks about living an unoffendable life, and it's that same thing. If my aim was the kingdom of God, seeking first the kingdom of God in all of my interactions, conversations, whatever, then nothing can offend me because it's not about me anymore.

Jason: Exactly.

Chris: The thing I like about what you're saying is it has a lot less to do with you and a lot more to do with the community that you're building around you and who you're being to other people. Are you being Christ to other people? So you're almost making the presence of God known through you to other people and that's how you're finding the presence of God. In some ways.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. The beauty of practicing and making it a part of your life is that eventually, it does become second nature. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine and his wife was really down on herself because she was trying to spend time in the word and quiet time with the Lord and she kept falling asleep and she just felt like she was failing God and all that, and I remember because I had the children at the time and I thought, well, that's kind of like when they crawl up in my lap to hang out with me and then they fall asleep. And I just love that.

Jason: I bet your heavenly Father is so pleased that you're crawling up in his lap and falling asleep and taking a nap and those little shifts in viewpoint helped me to shed a lot of shame and a lot of striving and like, I'm watching a movie and maybe an earlier version of myself would've been fixated on the language or some of the content, but as I practice the presence of God, it means I'm taking in this story. God is with me, and I'm just in conversation with him about it. Like, oh, I wonder why these characters are doing this. What's underneath that? What's their motives? What does that help me understand about my own motives?

Tim: Like when John Wick three, when he comes and just-

Emmoe: Great trilogy guys, I [crosstalk 00:26:52]

Tim: No, totally. There are things to learn everywhere.

Jason: Everywhere, everywhere. Yeah. There's that awesome quote by Rich Mullins. He said, "Truly, it can be said of Balaam that God spoke to him through his ass." If you should find God speaking through you some time you didn't think too highly of yourself.

Tim: Yeah.

Jason: He'll use whatever is at hand. I tell the story about the first time that I heard God speak to me. I didn't grow up in the church and nobody was talking to me about God, and I was in the midst of a very ugly custody battle with my parents, and I was growing up on the road with my mom's bar band, and so I was around a lot of music and what that looked like is we would haul all the gear into this old converted school bus and drive around Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas, load in the gear at the corner bar in some small town, and then my mom would stick me on a stool at the bar while she'd go on the stage and sing the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles and Heart, and I remember complaining about the smoke all the time, but I had a bottomless glass of root beer and my star wars action figures.

Jason: So it was pretty good life and the truckers, they loved having a little boy hanging out at the bar and they teach me how to play pool and all these things, which I think are illegal in 2021, but it was the wild west in the seventies. So I grew up around a lot of music, but not in the church or anything like that. So I suppose it's no surprise that the first time I heard God speaking to me, it was through, through music. It was through a song by the first artists I loved, which were Simon & Garfunkel. That was the first music I cared about after that it was Kenny Rogers and Kiss, but I'm not going to go into that part of my story, but loved Simon & Garfunkel, and was living in this very chaotic situation, divorce happening, caught in the middle of a custody battle, living at my grandparents, my grandpa was an alcoholic, all kinds of chaos.

Jason: And God knew how to speak the words he wanted me to hear in a language he knew I could understand, and I remember being on an errand with my grandpa and it was winter in Minnesota. So he left the car running when he went into the liquor store and over the radio, I heard Bridge Over Troubled Water by my favorite artists Simon & Garfunkel. When you're weary, when you're feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all like a bridge over troubled water. I will lay me down for you.

Speaker 9: (singing)

Jason: And I heard those words in the song, something in my heart went, "Hey, I want you to know this is my heart toward you," and it would be years later before I'd have the language to say that I believe God spoke to me but I remember somebody challenging me on this idea that God could speak through whatever, when I was a new believer and they said, "You can't get clean water from a dirty well," and that sounded true at the time. I like, oh, that sounds wise, but I completely just agree with that now God speaks, however, and through whatever he wants to speak.

Tim: So as part of the practice of practicing the presence of God, is staying curious?

Jason: Curiosity is a great word for it, right? Oh, gosh. That's the best word for it. What I love about the word curiosity is I believe God made us curious and then he answers that curiosity by being mysterious like a place that we can bring our curiosity to, and there's no end to it. Richard Rohr said this beautiful thing, "It's not that God is unknowable, it's that he's endlessly knowable."

Tim: I was about to say that.

Jason: Yeah, isn't that so good? I'm sorry. I stole that from you. That's so good.

Tim: I was hoping you were about to say that.

Jason: Yeah, but I think curiosity. Gosh, that's well put, I think that is maybe the key ingredient to practicing the presence of God.

Tim: You know, I hear somebody saying, God told me to do this, and it's like, I surely do not think God told you to do that. There are all these things. So how do we kind of put these things together?

Jason: "It's the song that God gave me," has anyone ever done that to you?

Tim: Oh my gosh, I mean, how many times as artists have people come up to us.

Jason: Yeah, "I want you to hear the song that God gave me," like, oh wow-

Tim: He told me to come up here and give me, give you this song, so you're supposed to write it for me. Yeah. How do we temper some of these things? Because I'm all in on curiosity. I mean, part of this practice, I think this week is really us saying, okay, Jesus, I'm in your presence, so it's almost not even... It's practicing, living in the presence no matter what, whether I feel it, see it or not, it's just, I want to be more aware of the presence for his presence in me, toward other people. But how do we then talk to other people about that or question it?

Jason: Yeah, that's a great question. I think this is where you're headed with this, but how do we not have an or overconfidence? Well, okay. In my mind, one of the tragic things that I think that we've done with the scripture is that we've applied it in the opposite way that I think is meant to be used, and again, I think that's because we're so prone to self-righteousness, we're so prone to the need to be right, to think the right way, believe the right way, or I'll be excommunicated from my tribe, my life depends on it, and it can be so painful to be wrong, and so we can use scripture to prove that we're right to ourselves, right? I feel like it becomes an answer book and here I can, I'm right, and here I can show you chapter and verse. I could be wrong about that, but that's just one way of wondering about it.

Tim: Even that line is awesome. What you just said, I could be wrong. I mean, I think there's even a curiosity to that. The willingness to say, I don't know if I'm completely certain about much. I could be wrong. This is the way I'm seeing it. I'm asking this question because I was sitting with a guy recently, maybe it was like a year ago, everything's recent, you know, pre-COVID...

Emmoe: That's such [crosstalk 00:32:45]

Chris: Yeah. Like three years-

Tim: Last week. No, that was 2019.

Chris: Such a weird time.

Tim: It was 2019. He said he had just left his wife for this other woman and said, "I think God really put this girl back in my life. I was with her in high school and yeah, he's he told me to do this," and I'm like, "Wow, man, I... can we talk about this?" So all his friends and the people that he was really doing life with were going, "Man, I don't know."

Tim: There was this metric of putting up with your friends and going, okay, your pallbearers the people that are in your life going, hey, what do you think about this? I'm sensing, I'm hearing this as I'm walking in the presence of God, but maybe that's just, like my mom said last week, indigestion or something or maybe it is the heart of God and then putting it up to scripture. But even saying, gosh, I've always thought this was exactly the way that it was interpreted in the scripture, but I could be wrong here too. Yeah. I mean, there's really... curiosity is dangerous. It's dangerous to the system, to a systematic theology. It is very dangerous.

Jason: It requires a lot of trust and humility and vulnerability, right? Like legalism. Just tell me what to believe and tell me what to do, I'll do it. And there's no intimacy in it, there's no faith, there's no trust.

Chris: I think it just all fits seamlessly together. The more curious I've been able to be, the more vulnerable and open-handed I've been able to be. The more I've been able to say I don't know and I'm okay with that, and on the other side, the more I've been able to trust God for who he says he is. And the more I've been able to lean into faith and find happiness and freedom and hope and see Christ in and through much more than I ever saw before. And I did a show this past weekend in Kansas.

Tim: In 2019?

Jason: Yeah, in 2019, sometime. Shows are happening again. It's crazy, and there's this older gentleman, he started sending me some messages on Facebook and he sends me these book requests, which we get crazy people sending us emails all the time. And for some reason, this guy he just kind of stuck out, was really kind, realized we read a bunch of the same books comes from a way different background, so it's like, I want to go talk to him. He came to the show early, so I went out and talked to him for like an hour before the show.

Jason: Oh yeah. Nice.

Chris: He came from this completely different world than I did. We came together both knowing, we probably believed a lot of different things, but it was this beautiful moment of both of us saying, you know what? We could see Christ in each other and feel it in our conversation, and even though we knew we didn't probably agree on some stuff. And to me, finding Christ and being present with Jesus in the week is that.

Chris: Yeah. It's like those curiosity moments of saying, "Oh God, now I see you everywhere," and I remember you said something a second ago. It reminded me of a podcast I listened to and this woman was talking and she was trying to strive for it. I'm going to get up before my kids get up, I'm going to go, and I'm going to do my Bible study and all of this stuff. And it's like five minutes in, some kid wakes up and runs in and runs on her lap and kids so excited to see her, but she's like, "I've been trying to do this!" Whatever and she went to one of her mentors and he changed her perspective and he said, can you imagine that your child is God saying, oh my gosh, I just woke up and I'm so excited. I have to see you right now, and I don't care what you're doing, but I just need to be in your lap. It was like, oh wow, there's Christ.

Chris: And so as I try to find those moments of meeting the presence of God in my daily life, those are the things I'm looking for now, and this is what I'm hearing you say a lot too Jason, and it's like, it's much less about whatever practice of I'm going to read my Bible or pray like this, or do these things and much more about like seeing God work through the ordinary, which is where I think he is and most of all the time.

Emmoe: I was just going to say, I think it's also maybe what we might think the purpose of the presence is. I could see being like, the purpose is if I do all these things, read my Bible, go to church, that's me practicing the presence. I will then be present with my kids when that happens or all these other things. So I'm gaining something by practicing the presence instead of it actually tying in with like, that's actually, God's grace, his presence being present all the time. So when I fail my kid, that's me practicing the presence. That's me acknowledging grace. Instead of trying to squeeze something out of it so that when I'm out of it, I'm practicing the presence.

Chris: Well, I don't think it's one or the other either, we have to take it all. You know what I mean?

Jason: As you were speaking about somebody who I think we all know who lives here in town-

Tim: Bono.

Jason: Bono, no, not Bono, but an even perhaps arguably a better songwriter than Bono, and I'm a huge Bono fan. His name-

Tim: Andy Gullahorn?

Jason: ... Andy Gullahorn. Exactly. He talks about how he went to his theology, professor a number of years ago and said I want to grow closer to God. So what am I supposed to do? Read my Bible more or this or that, or the other thing and his prof said, "Well, you can do those things if you want. Yeah, read your Bible more amazing, that's great, no contempt for any of that." But he asked the professor this and he said, "Well, what do you enjoy doing?" And Andy's like, "What? What do you mean?", "What do you enjoy doing?" I mean, I really enjoy taking my dog for a walk each night when I do that, I feel God's pleasure and I have this, this communion with him in these things that I enjoy and which the idea behind that is that our enjoyment might be a clue of some sort something to be curious about.

Jason: And Andy was like, "Well, I like bowling," and he said, "All right, we'll go and do that," and Andy started a bowling group that would mean on Tuesdays, over lunch, bowl and lunch as his spiritual practice. And the beautiful fruit that came out of it is eventually all kinds of other men gathered around it until there was like a hundred people who were a part of this bowl and lunch and a number of them we're some older guys, and one day this guy comes to Andy and he's in tears and he thanked Andy so much for starting this bowling thing.

Jason: He said, "I spent all my years in corporate America building a career, and I never made the kind of friendships that I would be grateful for, at this time in my life," meaning he didn't have pallbearers maybe, "And this bowling time has been a gift to me," and so this beautiful, holy fruit that came out of him like, I enjoy bowling and I think that maybe a way that I can be plugged into the things of the lord is to do this thing that I enjoy. Things like that I think are so beautiful. Okay. I want to say one other thing, just what you're asking me about earlier, curiosity can be dangerous. So what are some guardrails around that? And one of the most life-changing things that I ever heard was from my mentor when he said confused people don't know they're confused.

Jason: Huh? Oh, shoot because I definitely have experienced that. I've talked to people who are confused and they clearly, they can't see it. But then when you kind of point that at yourself, it's like, oh, that can happen to me too. That means I can be totally confused and have no idea, and he said, you're the last person to know that you're being a jerk. I thought about that. I thought it's beautiful and humiliating at the same time, right? You can see what is wrong, what is off in me before I can. And that's humiliating, it's like walking around with your fly open but it also means that I desperately need you. I need to be in community with other believers and I think that those are the guardrails that liberate us, make us free to be curious.

Tim: So we covered a lot of space today. What did you hear? What'd you learn? What triggered you in a good way or in a bad way today? What would it look like for you and me this week to practice? Just staying curious as we rest in the presence of God all day long. Okay. Jason, we're just going to end this with some questions. What we like to call in the podcast world, realm if you will, 10,000 questions.

Jason: All right, great. So this going to be a really long podcast.

Tim: Its going to be a long... Yeah, thank you very much, thank you. So we're just going to say just some words, some thoughts, and then you just respond as quickly as you possibly can.

Jason: Oh, I'm horrible at this-

Tim: This isn't think through it.

Jason: So, and...

Tim: I haven't even asked you a question yet.

Jason: This is interesting. I know I'm already doing it. I'm so bad at this, I think this is why I'm not a good dancer because I think through things like, oh I think this is how I should move whereas-

Chris: This could be the 6'6'' happening too. It's like, there's just a little bit too much Lincoln in there.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. 6'6'' height, yeah.

Jason: There's that too. It is a lot to manage. It's true, but I think everything and a part of my spiritual work is to like, I think if I could be a good dancer, that would be evidence of good fruit of the Spirit's work in my life. Because I can just feel it and flow with it and stuff so...

Chris: I'm like dancing is all attitude.

Jason: Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Chris: Ask Emmoe, she dances every day.

Emmoe: I do dance every day.

Jason: Oh yeah?

Emmoe: I don't dance well, but I dance.

Tim: I don't know. I feel like you do probably dance well, you're just saying that right now.

Speaker 7: I do it to really practice the presence. It's not a joke.

Jason: Really?

Speaker 7: Yeah, because I-

Jason: Tell me more about that.

Speaker 7: I am an Enneagram 1, so I'm obsessed with progressing, and refining, and when I dance with no structure, I let myself play for like 45 minutes and know like it didn't push me three steps behind everyone else. That's why I dance, not because I'm like, man, I can't wait to try out that new 1/2 step. It's like, I am so in my head right now, and I think I'm unworthy today. I have to dance, and I have to reconnect with my body and just be grateful I can move my feet and I can move my hands and that's why I do it. Not because I'm trying to dance with J Lo on her tour or anything like that.

Tim: Read Jason. You Haven not seen my phone, but would you just read what you see. First two lines.

Jason: Oh my gosh. It says when I dance, I look like sometimes it's amazing. Guys, we are so spirit-led right now. Man, this is happening.

Tim: (singing) that's a song I've been working on too. It's really good. It just-

Jason: Let's shut it a little bit more.

Tim: Yeah. Okay. Ready?

Tim: The eighties.

Tim: First thing that comes to you.

Jason: Don Johnson, Miami Vice.

Chris: Ooh.

Emmoe: Whoa. The fit.

Tim: Oh, what's your best feature?

Jason: Physical or emotional or? What do you mean?

Tim: Jason, I've asked you one question.

Jason: Yeah, I don't... My best feature is my openness. It's also my worst feature.

Tim: Really?

Jason: Yeah.

Tim: I think I would disagree with that. It might get you in trouble.

Jason: It's got me into trouble. Yeah.

Tim: But I wouldn't say that's a bad feature. I think it's a beautiful feature that has repercussions with sad people. Okay.

Speaker 10: Well [crosstalk 00:45:22]

Tim: I just mean that's on other people that hold some... Okay, well might I'm going to stay curious. I'm going to stay curious.

Jason: Okay, okay.

Tim: It's so true. Okay, bad habit.

Jason: Defensiveness.

Tim: Why are you being defensive? Just kidding, nickname.

Jason: Nickname? Oh my gosh.

Tim: Go quick.

Jason: My nickname in grade school was Gaybird. Now what people don't know about me is that my name was originally Jason Gay and I changed it to Gray. A lot of people think, oh, because... the main reason, because I was told you can't have a career in Christian music with the name like Jason Gay it's too problematic, and I'm like, well God knew my name when he called me, he didn't seem to have a problem with it. I'm not, going to change my name to cater to your immaturity on the one side and the sexualization of everything on the other side but what began to happen because I'm old enough that I was around when the internet began to be a thing is people couldn't access my website or receive my emails because of spam filters, and if you did a Google search for Jason Gay, you'd get way more than you bargained for, and I was speaking at camps with young kids and all that stuff and it just became more of a technological issue. You just add an R in there and then...

Tim: Wow. I didn't see that coming. I didn't have a question for that.

Chris: I've learned something, I didn't know that was it.

Jason: So as a second-grader at recess, one day, Ronald [Brasansky 00:47:00] out of the blue-

Tim: Ronald, of course.

Chris: What did you do Ron.

Jason: Called me Gay bird, in high school, it eventually just became bird. Okay. But yeah, it used to be Gay bird.

Tim: Thank you, Okay. Do you know where Ronald is these days?

Jason: I don't, but just bringing up his name. I was like, I should look him up on Facebook and see what's going on in-

Emmoe: Yeah.

Tim: I have a guy like that. I've got a guy that called me names and I've Jeff told him his name. It was (beep) and I (beep) awesome, but when I was little, he called me some strong names, but we all those names don't we? Okay, something on your bucket list.

Jason: I'd love to hang glide. Wouldn't that be fun? Hang gliding would be fun.

Chris: For a few seconds.

Jason: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, then dead. Pet peeves.

Jason: Pet peeve.

Tim: This is a speed round.

Jason: Yeah. Sorry. There was a moment, many years ago when we got a Betta fish for our house and we named him peeve, so he could be my pet peeve.

Emmoe: Oh my gosh. Big brain.

Tim: I think that almost just concluded the whole round [crosstalk 00:48:12]

Jason: Actually, I do have a pet peeve when you're driving and you want to leave a parking lot and they got that median thing because they're trying to, no, we don't want you to turn left. We want to make you it's like, let me live my life.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: Quit telling me what to do.

Emmoe: Stick it to the man.

Chris: Okay. I have one question for you.

Jason: Okay. One book, the rest of your life. What is it?

Chris: One book that I would read for the rest of my life besides the Bible?

Chris: Well obviously.

Jason: Maybe The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky I think. That'll tell you like really rich-

Chris: I don't even understand what you said.

Tim: It's one of my wife's favorite book.

Chris: Oh really?

Jason: It's pretty bottomless. It's full of of truth. It's a novel.

Tim: Yeah, So it's one of Hillary's favorites too, which says a lot. Okay, the nineties.

Jason: The Counting Crows or Sheryl Crow, and the first song I learned to play on guitar was by the Black Crows. So anything Crow? I mean,

Emmoe: Yeah, yeah. I'm seeing a theme. We all have phases.

Tim: Yeah. Favorite song you didn't write.

Jason: Ooh. The Book of Love, Peter Gabriel's version, to me, it's a miracle of a song. I don't know how you write a song like that. The Book of Love is long and boring and can lift the thing. It's full of facts and figures and instructions for dancing, but I love it when you read to me and you can read me anything.

Emmoe: Those are some lyrics. Yeah.

Jason: It's beautiful. It's like this. Oh, there it is. Yeah.

Tim: Jason-

Chris: I knew today. It was going to be great. As soon as I saw Jason coming in, I was like I'm not going to say anything.

Tim: Well, speaking of crying, thank you so much for being on this.

Jason: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Tim: Thanks for hanging out. Anything that you've got coming out fun that people need to know about? I mean, you just had a record come out.

Jason: Maybe on the bug list. I should have said write a book because I'm trying to write a book and it's difficult.

Tim: It's called 6'6'' and counting or?

Jason: Yeah. I don't know what-

Tim: 6'6'' and dancing?

Jason: Oh, 6'6'' is my height?

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jason: 6'6'' and counting down. Because I'm getting old enough now where I think I'm starting to lose [crosstalk 00:50:34] so Thank you Tim and Chris and more.

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