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Welcome back to the Weird Souls Are We Podcast! Ep. 3
We’re going to talk about:
- What Christianity is all about
- What are the area’s we need to focus on to grow our relationships
In EP 4 we’ll talk about
- What does Rest look like
- What is a sabbath really
- how do I start resting
Are you a Weird Soul? Weird Souls live a Jesus-centered life in modern culture.
Got Questions? Leave a comment.
Transcript
hey everyone welcome back to weird souls are we I’m so glad you’re joining me for episode three of the show today we’re going to be talking about buckets and I know this does not sound uh like Faith at all but we’re weirdos so of course it’s gonna sound a little weird to start so this is kind of the episode where we’re really gonna start getting into some of the ways that we’re going to talk about faith around here if you haven’t listened to episode zero that’s what I talk a lot about kind of my
background um I was a children’s Minister for a long time and we’re always looking for ways to help explain big Concepts in simple ways one of the reasons why I wanted to start this so that I could help adults understand faith in simple ways because we make it way too complicated but part of teaching Faith to kids is I never wanted it to be a checklist because well one of my favorite churchy sayings is it’s a relationship not religion that was commonly set around my church for a while but I laugh about it because
so many times I’m like yeah it is about relationship not religion like yep it’s about relationships it’s amazing how often I don’t equate that until I do it should be so obvious but it’s not always so I’ve used compasses as a way to think about it I’ve used thermometers as ways to think about it different things like that making it more about growth than necessarily about I did the thing but as I was looking at weird souls and everything I was like a thermometer doesn’t really
it’s not exactly right and how I should examine my face so I was trying to think about things and I came back to John 4 13-14 which was one of my Ministry um versus once upon a time and how we came up with the name but I kind of came back to it and I was like the this is this is how we should think about our faith this is the image that I had in my mind I’m gonna read the verse first and then I’m going to talk a little bit about it so uh John 4 13-14 says Jesus replied to anyone who drinks this water
will soon become thirsty again he’s talking to the Samaritan woman at a normal well so it but those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again it becomes a fresh bubbling spring within them giving them eternal life so the image that I had is like of a waterfall basically um like multiple waterfalls just pouring into each other and it’s that whole concept that if we’re all dried up and not constantly filling up in at this spring at Jesus um filling up with him it’s hard to give anymore
and that’s something we talk a lot with in Ministry because we are giving lots to people we’re teaching and all that stuff but if we’re not constantly filling up eventually we’re going to run out of things to teach eventually we’re going to run out of uh kindness to give eventually we’re going to run out of all those things that God is equipping us to do if we’re not continually filling up on Jesus and so I was like okay so what are the areas of life that I need to make sure I’m constantly filling that area with
Jesus so that I have more to give in that area and so as I was thinking through it buckets seemed like the best analogy because the Samaritan woman was going to fill up her bucket at the well and that’s what started the conversation with Jesus so I came up with nine different kind of categories of life nine different buckets that um kind of create a waterfall effect in our life to hopefully spill out on other people and we’re going to talk through those nine buckets just real surface this is kind of the intro to it and then
we’ll go deeper into the different categories in later episodes it’s kind of a whole like this bucket fills this this bucket fills this and we keep filling up until it overflows into the world around us so that first bucket fills in from Jesus and Jesus just keeps flowing into our other buckets until we can share and overflow into the world around us so there’s lots of different ways we’re going to talk about this one is the fact that we need to be creating depth with our bucket but not digging so deep that
we never spill out uh so there’s a balancing act with how much we should be doing in one particular area if we have a shallow bucket and then a really deep bucket meaning we spend a lot of focus on one area of our life but not enough in another we’re going to feel depleted in both areas because this bucket is constantly depleting but it’s not enough water to get this bucket full and then it never transfers into any of our other buckets and we just feel dry all over the place so it’s about making sure
we’re focusing on all the areas and trying to keep Harmony amongst them um it’s about making sure we’re growing deeper but not deeper than we’re pouring out otherwise what’s the point if we just keep all the water to ourselves and never pour out to anybody else that’s not what we’re supposed to do either so let’s talk about the nine different areas that I kind of came up with so the first one I decided on was rest and it’s because in Jewish culture or at least at Jesus’s time I don’t know
if this is still the understanding for juice if there’s a Jew out there that happens to watch this I’d love to know but at least in Jesus’s culture the concept was that we rest so that we can work we don’t work so that we can rest and in modern American culture especially we have this concept of I’m going to work really hard so that I earn my rest it was flip for Jesus it was very much I’m going to rest so that I am ready for the work ahead of me because that’s the mentality God wants us to have that’s
what we should put at the very beginning we need to rest so that we’re prepared for everything else and we’ll get more into what Sabbath is what’s resting what actually benefits Us in filling this bucket up but it’s not just sleep and laziness it’s not just wait around it reading my Bible it’s not that so make sure you check out more about that because I’ve learned a lot about this category in ways that I never would have contemplated before uh and have some good resources for that and actually
it’ll be our next episode after rest I put listen because if we do not listen to God and start with what does he want us to do we will be very lost in the rest of it and we’ll just be filling up any bucket we can find hoping that that’s going to fix the problem so rest flows into listening to God I think they’re very linked I think when we rest and pause that gives us space to hear from God but listening to God is so important in our faith a part of that that we’ll talk about too is listening
to others listening to people who have more experience and faith more wisdom and Faith finding out what is God saying to me through them things of that nature uh Bible reading our Bible Bible studies how do we do that that’s going to be a part of listening and then also there’s a little piece of just learning how to listen to people in general I think it’s such a lost skill it’s one that I am trying to be better at being married is forcing me to get better at this but listening to others and understanding
them and just meeting them where they’re at With No Agenda without trying to think about what I’m going to say about myself next all of those very human things that we are that we do after listen um listening pours into talking specifically talking to God obviously prayer looking at what that looks like a prayer life is something that I have always struggled with understanding if I’m doing it right am I doing it good enough in my am I missing something and I think I finally got into a little bit healthier of a space with my prayer life
and not feeling like it’s a it’s a box I need to check or it’s something I need to get right but we’re definitely going to talk more about how do I talk to God what does that look like talking to others how do I share my story the Bible says that we need to always be prepared to share the story with people so how do I share my story in a productive way how do I talk about God to other people how do I admit when I don’t know the answer and I’ll find it or there isn’t an answer to find I think
those are two things that people are always so scared about when they talk about their faith um so we’re going to give Frameworks on how do I do that how do I think about it so that in any moment I can have an honest discussion with people we’re going to talk about what the Bible says about prayer and what does the Lord’s Prayer really mean and prayer without ceasing what does that look like all these things how to talk to God how to talk to others how to talk about faith in our story we’re gonna we’re gonna
talk we’re gonna talk about that stuff uh from Talking we flow into Focus so once we’ve rested and really aligned ourselves with God part of that is focusing is making sure that we’re going to keep working on realigning our focus and our world view on God and what he says is best so it the world is a constant distraction trying to point us in a million different directions uh if you’ve ever read this through tape letters they talk in that about how if Satan can’t defeat us and call us away
he’s going to distract us and I think that is so prevalent in our modern culture that it’s just distraction so how do we focus on the right things how do we focus on God first and foremost and carry that throughout our day and our life how do we focus on things that are also important how do we make sure we’re being productive with our time uh how do we make sure that what we’re spending time on matters um what does all of that look like so we’ll be talking about that through the bucket of focus so once we’ve rested and
we’ve listened and talked with God and we’re focusing on him and all the right things in our life the next thing is about Simplicity or contentment and this is one that is a newer challenge for me I would say they all have their own challenges in their own ways but learning to be content learning to be okay with what is in my life not needing more not searching for the next Buzz um when we focus I think Simplicity and contentment becomes easier but I think Simplicity is a good transition between focus on our next bucket because
it’s learning to be happy in the moment to have joy with where we’re at because we have Assurance through all the other things that we’ve already established the truth in God and our relationship with him and everything but uh Simplicity will talk about how do I simplify my life how do I simplify what is important to my family that doesn’t overshadow what’s important to my faith and how we want to live our life in God we’ll talk about minimalism I’m not a minimalist but I think there are ways to
put some of those things into practice so that it benefits me long term so we’ll we’ll be talking about how do I minimalize the things of Life maybe not live a minimalistic life but how do I how do I let modern living and culture uh not consuming to the point that I can’t live a fruitful productive life in Jesus and once we’ve talked about simplifying I think it becomes becomes too care for our things this is one of the things that have got me started with Simplicity is that I got tired of taking care of so much junk and
things and organizing and storage and all of this kind of stuff I started wanting to get more simplified I started wanting to clean up and organize and care only keep the things I care about and only have to care for the things I care about because it was obnoxious to spend so much time caring for things that I just had and didn’t put effort into using in other ways so we’re going to talk about taking care of the things God has given us and making sure that we only have the things that we need to take care of in our life
and making sure that things be take care of are of intentionality finances will be something we talk about not that I’m a finance Guru at all if you’ve ever taken the Dave Ramsey course I’m a free spirit so my method of budgeting before my husband was very free-spirited it was basically a goal to just have more money at the end of the month than I started with was my form of budgeting not practical in any way but I’ve learned lots of things and we’ll just talk about how do we look at our things our money
our house our food our family our body our mind health all of these things God has given us how do we look at that through a god-centered lens and take care of them with good stewardship and then once we’re taking care of things well we are more apt to share things it is easier when you take Simplicity and Care into account uh we’re able to look at things and say oh I don’t need this I can share this with somebody else or knowing that oh I’m just a steward of this God God wants me to give up whatever it is give some
more money or give some clothes or give my time or give my home and use those to share with others um it can be with other Christians to help people that are in need in the church might be to share with people that aren’t Christians in the hope that they start understanding more of what Jesus’s love looks like but sharing is so integral to how we express our faith and I think this is kind of the transition moment to where it stops becoming about how are we dealing with our personal faith and sphere and now
we’re starting to transition with share to how we interact with other people and the outside world not just personal faith but practical faith and so from share as we start interacting with others and sharing our things with others we get into the relationship piece and faith is all about relationships the reason I did not put this at the front end is that if you don’t have things right with God and right in your house it is difficult to have healthy relationships anywhere else in life and so I wanted all of those
buckets to kind of feed into at the end of it all this is how we get right so that we can have right relationships we can have good relationships god-centered relationships and relationship means the other person is also having God in their relationships it means that we are approaching it from our little weird Soul God transformed us selves so we’re going to look at relationships um with others we’re going to look at how do we represent God in our relationships and how do we live out a life that makes people interested in
faith and not apprehensive to it um so we’re going to be talking about all of those the whole concept of follow me as I follow Christ that Paul has written before and especially talk about how do we have healthy relationships within the church I think that’s one of our downfalls is that not all the time do we as Christians have God honoring relationships amongst ourselves and we can be as ugly sometimes as the world and when that happens I’m not surprised the world looks at us is like why do I want to go over there
and get the exact same thing and sometimes worse than what I have in just regular World culture like we want to show that we don’t have to be happy all the time we don’t have to agree all the time to have good Godly relationships and so we’ll talk about what does conflict look like what does accountability look like what is the need for relationships and people in the church if I’m able to worship God on my own look at all of those aspects of relationships and then the final bucket is one of my personal
favorites but you have to get through all of those other things a lot of times to really hone in on this last bucket which is purpose I wholeheartedly believe that God has created every person on this Earth for a purpose um a very intentional purpose in the grand scheme of the big story picture of all time and I want nothing more than for every person to find what is the purpose God has placed them on this Earth for now purpose may not mean the same thing as role you might have a purpose that takes you in a million
different areas I know I have I have not been a children’s Minister my whole life like I at one point thought I realized my purpose is just helping people connect with Jesus and the purpose that he has given them I want people to live fully and freely in Christ um and not feel like a weirdo in the corner but a transformed weirdo and be good with their identity and their purpose that God has given them so those are the nine buckets and how I kind of see Jesus filling us up in water cascading uh that living water down through the different
areas of our life so that then by the time we get to purpose it is all outflow into the community into the people around us into the place that God has called us to and so we’ll talk a lot more about that concept but that’s the overview of what we’re actually going to be talking about for the next nine weeks uh each of those buckets will get their own episode and we’ll talk more about what does that practically look like and what are some ways that I can start stepping into more opportunity to dig
deeper in those areas and also Cascade out in those areas so I will see you next time thanks for joining me on episode three make sure to like subscribe notifications on whatever platform you are watching or listening to this and I will see you next time weirdos.
