Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / “I wish I could believe, but…” with Mike Hood || SLP664

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“I wish I could believe, but…” with Mike Hood || SLP664 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do you need an experience in order to believe?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: You would not be able to get a GCSE in anything if you only believed what you could see for yourself.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, quite like in the Thomas story.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like if if if you say you want a Thomas experience, you don't know what you're talking about.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because, like, if Jesus appeared to me at the end of my bed tonight and said, I'm Jesus, see my hands inside.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Be amazing.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Scream.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you say amazing.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I would be terrified.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think one of the things I love about the resurrection is it's this one moment in the plot that you can kind of look at and you can you can focus on it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can see it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because nobody does.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think this conversation's really helped me.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm I'm I'm much better prepared now for when somebody says I want to believe.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Naomi, I'm joined by Glenn.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: And today we have a special guest, Mike Hoods.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Mike, down to Sunny Sunny Eastbourne.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mike is a pastor in training at Eden Francis Church in Cambridge.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's the author of The If That Changes Everything.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: New book.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he's also an excellent poet.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we are going to enjoy some of his poetry later on.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we are making him perform at the end of this podcast.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Performing monkey.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: You will not want to miss the poem at the end.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Indeed.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: What we want to talk about today is I wish I could believe.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: What do we do when someone says that some people that are listening might have been getting to know Christians for a while, dipping their toe in church, enjoying listening to our conversations, but may still be thinking, I wish I could believe.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I just can't.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you guys have heard people say before?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something our friends say?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you once said?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could believe.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: What changed?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I've heard lots of people say things kind of like that where they can they can see it's so good, they can see it's beautiful, they've got friends who, you know, they've seen it change their lives even.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I think, yeah, sometimes yeah, I've had friends where it feels like there's something still that makes them think, yeah, but to get there, I it it feels to me like I'd have to sort of just screw my eyes shut and leap into the unknown, and I just I don't feel like I can do that, you know.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: And um yeah, I mean so I I have one friend who who was like that for ages, she was coming to church, she was reading the Bible, she was chatting to her friends about it, um, and then she she went to something where somebody basically talked about Jesus rising from the dead and talked about um uh John John's gospel where he tells us about that, and then he tells us about Thomas, who um like wasn't there when Jesus first appeared to all the other disciples, and all the others told him, they said, We've seen him, he's you know, he's back from the dead, he's alive.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: And Thomas said, I won't believe it unless I can put my fingers in the wounds.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um like the painting behind us.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like the painting behind us, yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: And and Jesus basically tells Thomas off a bit in that story.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: He says, You know, well, all right, you know, you believe because you've seen me.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Jesus appears to Thomas, he says, Yeah, by all means, you know.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and Thomas goes, Oh, flip, right, yeah.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: You my Lord and my God.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And and Jesus basically tells him off a bit.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: He kind of says, Look, you you believe because you've seen me.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are those who are gonna believe, you know, before they see me, basically.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: John chapter 20, verse 29.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then if you read the the bit that comes straight after what John says, Yeah, verse 30.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: So so John basically goes, Look, Jesus told Thomas He should have believed us when we told him that Jesus was alive.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then he kind of turns and looks at us and says, You can believe me, I'm telling you, it happened.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: And um anyway, my my friend basically was at something, somebody sort of talked about this, talked about all the reasons we have to think Jesus is alive, and you know, who knows when exactly or how exactly it happened, but she said basically she went into that event feeling like, oh man, I just wish I could believe like these other people.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: And she came out of it thinking, I believe it.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think I believe.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, and she started praying, and like she's still still going on and loving Jesus and growing all the time.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that in that story, it's like Thomas doesn't then say, I believe.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, look, like um, stop doubting and believe is the command from Jesus.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then Thomas just says, Okay, then you got me, I believe.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's like my Lord and my God.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like he's looking at the wounds of Christ.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: So he's looking at this death-defying love of Jesus that's kind of hell and back for him, this battle scarred warrior, and he looks at him and he says, My Lord and my God, which is what faith is.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that's what's interesting when people ask for faith.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, I I wish I could have this thing called faith.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: As if it's the thing.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the thing is Jesus.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing you get.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what John says in verse 31, is like these things are written so that you may believe what?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's like it's pointing you to the second person of the Trinity, you know, the Spirit-filled Son.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he is life.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when you when you get to that point, you say, My Lord, my God.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you might not have thought that you were capable of faith.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like faith gets pulled out of you anyway.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, okay.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying if if someone's saying, like, oh, I wish I could believe, perhaps the encouragement here is don't concern yourself too much with your level of belief or your concern yourself with this Jesus.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need faith so much as Jesus.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because it because people I think people think about faith like it what you're being asked to do is is scrunch your eyes tight shut and and and just sort of believe it through some strength that you have inside you, some like you have faith in it within you.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas actually it's much more like, you know, faith is just opening your eyes and actually seeing Jesus and like it the shutting your eyes thing is what we do when we don't want to like it's about stopping shutting your eyes and trying not to see Jesus and and ignoring him.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: Stop doubting and believe.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: Come out of hiding, look at me.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: And when you look at him, yeah, faith happens.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So uh very recent, these results of of a survey have just come out.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Finding Jesus survey by the Evangelical Alliance.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um in 2024, they spoke to or they they surveyed 280 adults in the UK who had come to faith in the last um five years, or maybe I should change my terminology, had come to Jesus.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: No doubt they believed all sorts of things before.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, right.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's not that they've started having faith there.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: They had faith in, you know.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could believe.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to finish the end of the sentence.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not I wish to believe you believe in something.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could believe in Jesus, is what you're actually saying.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we can come back to that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are various interesting uh stats that come out of this survey, but one that grabbed my attention um is the question: what finally prompted you to make the decision to follow Jesus?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they could select up to three different ones if if that was the case, but the predominant, like the first one, 39% of people said it was an experience of God.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I uh these comes to mind as I think about that phrase, I wish I could believe, because uh it reminds me of times where I have looked around at other people, other people's descriptions of how they've encountered God, um, and thought, oh, I wish I could have that, or maybe there's something I'm missing.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder whether sometimes the question of like, oh, I wish I could believe the obstacle in the way is wait, that if other people are coming to faith because they've had an experience of God, if 39% of these 280 other people which is the runaway winner, by the way.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the runaway, yeah, yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: The next one is 27%.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it is it's like Yeah.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very obviously the kind of most common thing.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what about the what's that?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 61 What about the 61% who might have been in those five years at some point thinking, but I haven't had an experience of God's in whatever way I think I might need to look.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um what are some of the other things that they say?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so other examples.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the next two 27% um reading the Bible were a course I was taking.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: A bunch of others are conversation with a friend, answered prayer, a sermon, conversation with a church leader, seeing someone else come to faith.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um it made intellectual sense is kind of nine percent.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um finding the answer to a specific question, six percent.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, here's one for us to take to notice.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Social media.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: YouTube.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: One percent social media posts.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Probably probably there'll be much higher numbers on the way in the sort of getting curious phase, right?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what finally prompted you to make a decision?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it'd be a little bit, you know.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm kind of glad that 99% of them what finally led them to make the decision there was probably another another human in the room, like you know.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Although a lot of them do it alone, actually.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's one of the other interesting findings.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um even if they've gone to an alpha course, they're they pray on the bus or they pray at night on the in their bed.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that's the number one But also w in the question, which one or two things have been the most helpful since you came to faith?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: 30% reading the Bible alone.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I also thought that was interesting because I thought Yes, I get that, but I also think we we over-enthise that to sometimes.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, back to the experience thing.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Does someone need if if the question is, okay, oh, I wish I could believe, and the the but I'm not in Thomas's position to experience Jesus physically and like you know, poke my finger into his scars and whatever gruesome situation that might be.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um do you need an experience in order to believe?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like yeah, where does that fit?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I well, so I this was kind of me when I was a a teenager and I was you know, I I was I was at church, I kind of I I had I kind of grasped the the core of it and and everything, but I was trying to work out whether or not I should actually get baptized and sort of uh entrust myself to to Jesus, I guess.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: It felt like I was sort of I knew it, but I was kind of holding, holding myself back and staying, staying in control.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: And part of what sort of made me hesitant was I'd heard loads of people talking about getting baptized and how they'd had this experience of God, and I was really kind of skeptical about that, and I didn't think that I I just didn't really believe it, and I didn't think it would happen to me, but I also kind of thought if I get baptized and then it doesn't happen to me, then am I gonna feel like maybe it's not real after all because that was sort of supposed to happen.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I was sort of all tied up in knots in that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: And and for me it was I guess there were two things.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: One was actually talking it through and seeing that like in the Bible, not every every person that becomes a Christian or um get b gets baptized or believes in Jesus, or you know, not not all of those people have some big dramatic experience.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it just narrates that happening and then just great, they're a Christian now, you know.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um but then it was it was also just kind of thinking through like, well, hang on, no, do I believe this is real?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and and becoming like becoming convinced, yeah, actually I think there must be a God.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the existence of everything doesn't make any sense if there's just matter bouncing around, like, how does that start?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: It only makes sense if there's something that isn't just physical stuff that starts it all off.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then somebody talked to me about the evidence for the resurrection and that that like Jesus' disciples said they'd seen him back from the dead and they had no motivation to do that unless it was true and it it was actually you know dangerous for them.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: And those two facts kind of explained each other to me.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, well, hang on.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: If maybe there's some God out there number one, and then the resurrection, number two.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the two things.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I kind of thought, well, maybe there has to be a God out there of some kind to explain the universe.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that would mean it's not that surprising if somebody, you know, it's not impossible for somebody to come back from the dead.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if this guy came back from the dead, then he's probably the person I should be listening to about who the God is that made the universe.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it turns out he says, it's me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I I kind of got to a place of saying, you know what, I think this is real, and I think I need to follow him, whether or not I have, you know, I don't think I'm gonna have one of these crazy experiences.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: I still feel really skeptical of that.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: But this, if you know, I I think Jesus really is the real thing, I should say that and I should follow him.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I decided to get baptized, and then brilliantly, because God has a sense of humor, just when I persuaded myself that I didn't need to have any kind of experience in the service where I was getting baptized, I had this amazing experience of God's love.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, I got I got baptized in a paddling pool outside in February.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: It was it was not a sort of romantic experience, but I remember getting changed in the kind of grimy, disabled toilet in our church afterwards into some dry clothes and thinking, I still can like I'm still feeling this incredible, overwhelming, like loving presence.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: This is the least atmospheric place I've ever been in in my life.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Getting changed in the toilet, I'm cold, and this is a disabled toilet.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: But like this, this God is is even more real than I realized, you know.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's funny, isn't he, that one?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: He is a one.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: But like so, chasing chasing the experience actually froze you from faith and and and kept you leaning back from faith.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: But entrusting yourself to Jesus on the far side of that, there was an experience.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Or rather the fear fear of not the fear of an experience or not experience.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Was it not?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: It was the It was sort of the Yeah, I think I was thinking that when I thought I this is own I can only really believe this if I have an experience, then I wasn't actually it meant I was kind of stuck, like you were saying, I was kind of paralyzed because I couldn't put my trust in him if I didn't know in advance whether putting my trust in him was going to lead me to have an experience.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was kind of stuck, like you how are you supposed there was nowhere I could go until it was like, no, actually, regardless of the experience, I do trust him.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: I need to trust him.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: It makes sense to trust him.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then he kind of went, ha, come on.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Have the experience anyway.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like we I don't think we know what we're asking for when we say we want an experience.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: No, do we?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's like it's like I mean, I mean, uh I've made a poem about it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that the the painting that's there is was um on the basis of the the Thomas story.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I begin the poem by talking about a friend who said um I said, you know, I said, what would make you believe?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, if God rearranged the stars to spell the Ten Commandments.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: And like, okay, you're setting the bar for proof like to galactic heights.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I just asked him, like, would you like such a God?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: He was like, Oh no, I could never like God.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: But if he proved his existence, I'd have to bow.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's like, okay, what are we even asking for when we have these experiences?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Some some kind of celestial wonder, some kind of spooky thing, some kind of spent spontaneous, weird thing.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: What's that got to do with Jesus?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's that got to do with the the nail-scarred hands and and the the actual Jesus of Scripture?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's that's my question about experience.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: How how how do we tie people's desire for experience to actually the the Jesus of Scripture, you know?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose uh like you're saying there, it's it's because if we have in our minds the idea of what an experience of God might look like, that's on our terms.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is not the one who does things on our terms.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's he's revealed himself, he's revealed himself in the most unexpected of ways, becoming a little fetus and a baby and dying on a cross as an out as a 33-year-old.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like the God reveals his nature and his love, not at all in the way that we would have expected.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and yeah, and so yeah, far be it from us to prescribe the way in which we might experience God so that we would then believe.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I I also wonder if we're maybe like, because people do experience God in various different ways, and we want to be able to celebrate that as well.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like maybe there's a tension there between how do we share stories and testimonies of experiences of God without saying this is the prescriptive norm that you then should ex you then should expect in order to then also you know be welcomed on in and come take that leap of faith or whatever.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's partly what you were saying a minute ago about it's the the the thing is is Jesus is him and the faith is just like what happens when you see him, and I guess if if we end up talking about it like the way to God is this is this particular kind of experience, then like you know, the way to God is is meeting Jesus and people meet Jesus like from all kinds of different angles and stories, and like we end up in the same place because we end up with the same person.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: But it we don't want it to feel like, yeah, this is the sort of um this is the template for how it is that you get to God, because like that's not how it works, you know.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's not that we it's not that we get to God, it's that he comes to us.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, yeah.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of this is this is the story of how he found me, and he, you know, he might that doesn't mean he's gonna find you in exactly the same way, but it's the same him that's gonna find you.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Someone uh used to say, and it stuck with me, Jesus is the only way to the Father, but there are many ways to Jesus.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I find that quite helpful.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So does that mean some people need experience, some people need evidence?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we put in these two things as a false false dichotomy?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: I I think probably it means that some people will, you know, will kind of l be led more by one thing or the other, a little like the way they sort of orientate themselves to the world is a little bit more kind of uh thinky or a little bit more feely, and I you know, God understands that and is yeah, you know, he made that and he he's able to come and find us in in different ways.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: But I I think it's really I think it's really unhelpful if it feels like we kind of pull those things apart or set them against each other because like you really don't want to end up in a situation where you're kind of like, I believe in Jesus because I felt it.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And really the authority in my life is still basically whether I how I feel, you know.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: And and if in a couple of months' time I don't feel like I did at first, then oh flip, now I'm not sure.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe, you know.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like actually, we need to see that like we we need to be in a place where we go, I I have, you know, I trust him for a thousand reasons, you know, and and how I feel is not the defining reality of whether or not Jesus is alive.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Which is why, like in the Thomas story, like if if if you say you want a Thomas experience, you don't know what you're talking about.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because like if Jesus appeared to me at the end of my bed tonight and said, I am Jesus, see my hands and hands inside, be amazing.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean screaming.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Screaming.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you say amazing, I would be terrified.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: If I woke up and there was a man in my bedroom saying, look at my scars.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be like, You would say my Lord and my God in a different sense.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be cast trying to cast out Jesus in the name of Jesus.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't know what to do.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like um Martin, the the the saint in France for for whom Martin Luther was named, um one of the one of his famous stories was that there was an apparition at the end of the beat.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Saying, I am Jesus.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he was almost taken in, and he was almost going to bow down and worship him.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he just said, Where are your scars?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the apparition vanished.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, isn't that cool?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: So the the true Jesus, like his calling card is his scars, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: But like okay.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: But that but that that goes to show like Jesus appearing at the end of the bed would either be just a horrifying experience, or it could be it could give you the warm fuzzies as well, but it would last a matter of hours, days, seconds, weeks, maybe.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could get by on that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: That feeling for for a few weeks, maybe.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then you'd need to see him again and then again and then again and then again.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Which is why I think that the verse 30 and 31 is these things are written.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: These things are written.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that at three in the morning I can turn to this and you can see him again and again and again because we do we need the constant reminder.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it needs to be experiential as well.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like as as I'm reading the Bible, I'm expecting a Thomas experience.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like these these things are written to mediate to me an upper room experience of Jesus.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm got a friend who um in the last year has gone on a wild ride of getting to know Jesus, and um she said a couple months ago, something like um the Bible's not like anything else I read because other inspirational quotes or whatever, like this, you know, it's nice, but it's I I don't even know how to describe it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the Bible is magic, like it's doing something in me when I read it.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh yeah, that's the gold dust, isn't it?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's the the steadfastness and reliability of like I I just I come back to these very same pages day after day, and yet the living God speaks to me afresh every time, like you know, like you can read the most familiar of things and suddenly it's it's like it's highlighted.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't highlight my Bible anymore.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I used to when I was a teenager, and then I realized, oh wait, no, uh the whole thing's gonna be highlighted in my life.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so now I just you know trust the spirit to highlight it instead.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but yeah, that it's the combination, isn't it, of experiencing God through his word and and in our intellect and in our in one another and in in like perhaps we just need to redefine what we mean by experience of God.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like so, Mike, you've written you've written this book, The If That Changes Everything.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it seems to me that it's it's it's a great book.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: We've both read it, loved it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um it seems to me that you are kind of trying to answer that question for the for the interested seeker who is the sort of person who who might say, I I wish I could believe.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um what kind of journey do you want to take them on in order to get there?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because it it's one thing to like people after the fact narrate the fact that they crossed the line.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: We want to know.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get them up to that line?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so well, to be in some ways, I actually try and sort of start.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't know when you pick up this book whether you already wish it were true or not, but I know that you should wish it was true.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and so the first thing I want to try and do is show people look, your deepest like longings and hopes, and the it in some ways the deepest kind of intuitions you have, the sense that when you you lose someone you love, it it doesn't feel like that's it, or if it or that that's okay, you know, if if you're desperate, we're all desperate for love to somehow outlast death to win in the end, um, or like our longing for justice and the sense that you know people have got to answer for what they've done, and and this the fact that if death really is the end of the story for people, then like you know, just so many people who have committed so much terrible evil, like nobody ever brought them to justice, the chance is gone.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: They had a nice, happy, rich life.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so the first thing I I want to do is help people see like deep in your guts, you really, really want there to be some way of knowing there's life beyond death, that love is stronger than death, that there's justice that isn't just you know hoping that the court is gonna catch up with them in time.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then like good news is actually those aren't just like baseless longings.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're there in your heart because it's real.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: There is life beyond death.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus has risen from the dead and he can bring you with him.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: And um so yeah, then then I I then want to kind of help people get their heads around it often.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: You kind of people come to somebody saying, Well, I believe that you know there's evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, and they kind of it they just think, well, you can throw as much, as many facts as you as at me as you like, but that's just too crazy.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just you know, I can't believe something that weird.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: But actually the universe is really weird, you know, like your consciousness is a total mystery, and the fact that maths corresponds to reality.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Not yours, yeah.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: You're a mystery all by yourself.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and the fact that music, like what the heck's going on with music and the existence of anything at all, and the existence, the the origin of life, and that like the world is just a stack of mysteries within mysteries within mysteries.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: You and you need a solution to it, you need something that could explain that.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of very smart people have kind of bumped up against all those mysteries and gone, maybe there's something kind of some kind of God, whatever.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: And there's this mystery about this guy, Jesus, you know, that he is totally unique in in all history.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: He's got this incredible moral wisdom and the the beauty of what he taught and the beauty of the life that he lived, but then he's totally self-obsessed and he's constantly telling stories where the punchline is so the thing that makes all the difference in you know, in the world and forever is what you think about me and how you relate to me.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, uh what is who is this guy?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then he voluntarily like gets arrested on purpose and and dies this horrific death in his mid-30s before he's had a chance to, you know, do any of the things that you might want somebody of that kind of so who is this guy?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's not like anyone else.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: And basically, you if you actually think about it, you have all of these huge questions and if then Jesus did rise from the dead, it solves all of those mysteries.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the kind of it's the twist at the end of the Agatha Christie novel that makes sense of all of the weird clues that have come before that you that weren't clicking into place.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: And if we kind of if we get that, then when we start looking at, you know, all the sort of the reason that we have to believe that it actually happened, or the testimony that we have that people saw it and so on, it's not that we're kind of going, okay, is there is there enough, are there enough facts here to kind of batter me into surrender to believe this totally bizarre, nonsensical claim?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, could this be the answer to all of the questions?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, maybe it is.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, and by the time you've thought about the evidence for a while, you kind of realize, and actually I talk about the number of people who've set out to write a book and kind of disproving the resurrection, showing how it's all been made up and it's all a myth, and in the process have realized, oh flip, and have met Jesus and have written a book that's the other way around.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it's actually like the once you kind of look honestly at stuff, you realize it's not a blind leap of faith to believe this.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to take a blind leap of faith to believe anything else.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is the thing that makes sense.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've pressed into stories about people who sort of narrate a journey in which they kind of say, I, you know, I'm I was the most reluctant convert in all of Christendom, as they sort of quote C.S.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis in in in that.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I and and you know, I looked at the evidence, and by the evidence they they they mean um, you know, the evidence of the empty tomb empty tomb and and and that sort of thing.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I ask, oh, by the way, did you grow up in church?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I grew up in church.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um Or it's like, oh, so what else is going on in your life?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, I had a girlfriend who was just like.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, yeah.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's ne it's never in isolation, is it?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's and it because that's not how we work as human beings.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I think often, I think often what it what it helps people do is realize it's not, you know, it's not this.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: I see, you know, I've I see my family or I see the church friends that I grew up with, or this Christian girlfriend who seems really, you know, I see that there's something different about them.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of want it.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: I see there's this story is beautiful, I see this, this man, Jesus is amazing.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: But I feel like you're asking me to leave like a huge chunk of what it is that makes me human behind in order to be one of these faith people.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I I think partly, you know, what will have happened in a lot of those stories is that as they kind of part of them is pulling them towards Jesus, another part of them is is pulling away and going, no, no, no, no, I don't want to let go of like having a brain and thinking about stuff.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: And as they dig into the things, they go, Oh, right, no, no.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: The irrational thing would be to ignore all of this.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: The the the sort of the yeah, the the unthinking option is to say, you know, I want to stay in control and I don't care whether everything in the universe makes sense if there's a God.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, actually it's this it's just the sensible thing when you see Jesus to to trust him and to be all in and not not to be sort of one foot in the nice story and another foot out in being a thinking person, you know, like all of reality is in here, all of reality is with Jesus.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: I I yeah, I I think for some people it's it's the resurrection that helps them kind of go, oh no, yeah.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_03: Actually I can all of me can come in and trust him.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Why the resurrection?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Why not the incarnation?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Why not the cross?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Why not the ascension?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well I mean the resurrection is the the big twist in the story, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well sorry, I just a good question.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: God dies.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: God dies?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's a quite twist.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, you know, it's like what has the creator there are two things that exist in the world the creator and the created.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the creator becomes create like twist up on Christmas, I guess.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: March March 25th.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, thinking like it's I feel like there's just many Pelop Twists, and there are so many big things to get your head around in some way when it comes to understanding who this Jesus is and knowing him and and trusting it.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and why why is it the resurrection that seems to be the hang up?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if you think about I think if you think about the the disciples, right?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: They say I was preaching the other day on uh Jesus on the road to Emmaus in in Luke, and he's you know Jesus has come back from the dead, he's walking along with these two, he says, What what are you talking about?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: And they say, Wow, we're talking about don't you don't you realize what's been happening?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's like Are you the only one that's a man who's you've been under a rock or something?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus is like, yeah, no.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he and he's the only one who does know, but he's he's basically like they have all of you know, they've seen the rest of the story, you know.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: They they've seen this guy, they've seen him do all these miracles, they've heard him talk about himself.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: He said he's gonna die and then rise from the dead, and then they've seen him crucified, and it just won't compute like that to them just feels like it's gotta be the end.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's no way this guy is rescuing anybody.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: Look at what just happened to him.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so, in a sense, I think it, you know, what Jesus then does is say, You you idiots, have you not read the Bible?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: The whole it's always been that there was gonna be a Messiah and he was gonna have to suffer and then enter into his glory.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like you, this should have made sense to you.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: But and I think partly the reason he gives he kind of does the Bible study first is he like we were talking about earlier, about if you see him at the end of the bed and that's why you believe, you need him to come back next month and the month after.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think he does the Bible study first so that they realize actually, by the end of the Bible study, I had what I needed.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I it made sense to me that actually when the women said they'd been to the tomb and he wasn't there and an angel told them he was alive.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: At that point, I should have said, All the promises have come true.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like I should have been expecting this.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: This should have clicked into place.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: This this is meant to be the twist that makes the whole murder mystery plot make sense.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's meant to be the kind of skeleton key that unlocks everything.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't believe it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and it's then when you know, it's when they realize Jesus is alive.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: That this makes sense of the whole story.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Except that.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: When does that actually happen?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: I got schooled by my hairdresser.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was at Bible college, like training for ordination, and my my barber was cutting my hair, and um he was Eastern Orthodox, and and we were talking about Jesus, and he hadn't been to church in years and that sort of thing.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and he was just he was basically, you know, I I want to believe, but you know, I kind of don't.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and I told him the the Emmaus story.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think, like, you know the story, and he did know the story, and I said to him, Um, and so what was it that that couple needed on the road to Emmaus in order to understand?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I was expecting him to say, Oh, he opened the scriptures, and he said the Eucharist.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like it was a mini church experience, and but they had the mini church experience, yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, you could it says um didn't our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's also oh wait, did I not have an experience of the Holy Spirit?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know I was having the experience.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, isn't that interesting?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was I I thought I was meeting Jesus in the Bible.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I thought I was having a biblical experience.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: It turns out, you know, I was having a heartburning kind of uh experience.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, in the broken bread, their eyes see him.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Then they remember how they felt during the Bible study.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it's uh it's you know, that they need the word of God, they need the people of God.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: They need this mini mini church experience, they need sacraments, you know.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and and I mean also I think they're what you were saying earlier about the the faith is when you see him, you know, those those two are disciples, they'll have seen Jesus breaking bread and thanking God for it day after day after day after day.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's almost like in that moment he breaks the bread.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: This is what Jesus does.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: And they realize it's it's him, it's the same guy, it's the one they've known.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I find really helpful that John says that this is eternal life.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And John 17, this is eternal life, that they know the only true God and Jesus Christ who he sent.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And just thinking, okay, what is this life?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then at the end of the book where he says, so that you may find life in his name.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what is this life, this faith thing that we're talking about?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's no it's knowing Jesus, and you can and so when I when I think about my own sort of faith journey, I do describe it as a journey because it's like I've just been getting to know this Jesus more and more, and will continue to do so forever.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is still far more for me to know and know being a more holistic, kind of being acquainted with experiencing as well as head knowledge.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I find I find that helpful because, like you're saying there, yeah, there might be you know there there is, I guess, theologically a point where you do cross a line in some some way, but but really it's uh it is a continuation of a journey.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's you have been you have been getting to know this Jesus.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Feel free to come back at me and you know challenge me on this, but you've been getting to know this Jesus.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: You've been reading a bit of the Bible, maybe going on to church, chatting to a friend about it, watching some videos online, whatever the situation is, you're getting to know this person, Jesus.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just keep get like keep getting to know him, and that's and at some point you will you'll maybe look back and say, Oh, I think I yeah, I think I maybe crossed the line.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it was probably a lot further back than I thought it was.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: A bit like they did with, oh wait, hang on, didn't our hearts burn past tense in this rather than like uh, oh my gosh, I'm having an experience right now in this this is the moment I'm gonna like probably if you're gonna have a moment of like a yeah, kind of a commitment, which I think is is is good to do, and it might be in various different contexts, the moment where you are confessing with your mouth, Jesus, Lord, believing your heart, God raising from the dead, like that that's a moment that's acknowledging something that has actually already happened at some point, but you maybe didn't know what the point at what point it was.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I do.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: I guess it might be for some people, I think there's a kind of trust is something that grows over time, but it's also kind of an act of the of your like it's something it's like it's also a a decision you make to put your trust in somebody and say, you know what, actually I it's kind of realizing that you do trust them, but also there's gonna be a moment where you kind of there are often moments where you need to you need to know that you trust them and like decide, yeah, I'm gonna trust you on this.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I I guess it's it's a bit like that with with Jesus, isn't it?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: You kind of realize, hey, you know what, I think I I trust him, but you you can't stay forever at a kind of yeah, you know, I I like him, he seems great.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like actually, you know, if Jesus walks up to people and he goes, Follow me.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: Follow me.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like and because you've seen him, because you know what he's like, you know, maybe because of all that, there's barely a moment's hesitation as you just you just drop your stuff and body up and you go.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it it's a beautiful detail of the text in Luke 24 when Jesus makes as though he's gonna go further.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's interesting.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, and and so they they end up receiving Jesus, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: But they don't know that they're receiving Jesus.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is an interesting kind of like they they trust him enough to receive him into their homes without recognizing without recognizing kind of who he is, but he had been incognito like by their side the whole time, which I I love in the context of of this conversation of people who say I I would love to believe.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um I one of the people I think of is is Louise Perry, who's been on the channel a few times and talking about she now does believe, but she did she was in the position of I think it's sociologically true.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I I'm hoping it's supernaturally true.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: I have not yet experienced Jesus.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've yet to have my Emmaus Road, uh my my my Damas Damascus Road experience.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: She said that on the podcast, and I said, Well, but there's also the Emmaus Road in the Bible.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I sort of talked to her about that, and then we got into a conversation offline uh about that, and um I kind of said, like, there's incognito Jesus alongside you right now, and kind of putting putting words to what you do in the f in the first few chapters of this, you know, love is stronger than death, and you've got this sense of justice, and isn't the universe a far more multifaceted thing than you know possibly realize right now?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: And is there a sort of an incognito Jesus right now that you will end up sort of kind of receiving as as he becomes clear to you, how does he become clear to you?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: Get your Bible in, go to church, that sort of thing.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it and it and so it has proved to be, like in the context of church and in the context of other people seem to believe this stuff, and she's found herself swept up in believing as well.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: But like putting a date, uh I think your point is like like do you know the moment at which you kind of cross that line?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think we tend to late dates when that happens in our lives.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: I th I think probably if I've made a conscious choice there, a very, very conscious choice there, it's probably because I've been making some more implicit choices.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: And actually that's interesting with the stat that we started with, I wonder how many of those 39% actually they'd been talking to Christians, they'd be going to church, they've been reading the Bible, they'd got to a point where they did, they did trust God, they did want to follow him, and and almost what then they are describing as the final thing that really, you know, led to me becoming properly becoming a Christian or whatever, is almost what happened when, you know, that what happened once they had got to know and trust Jesus.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: They then started to experience that and went, like I was saying, you know, oh Flip, this is even more real than I realised.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that feels like the sort of for some people that feels like a sort of consternation.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I I was it made me think about I quote in the book Molly, um, Molly Worthen, who's a uh kind of history of religion professor who who set out to write a sort of article investigating this big church in the States and got into a conversation with the pastor and he said, Oh, have you have you thought about the resurrection much as a historian?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: And she, you know, she started reading into it and read the map, you know, the 700-page uh Tom Wright book about it and so on.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: And what she says is, I was, you know, I was reading all this stuff, I was, I was looking into it, I was reading about Jesus, and I was kind of I thought that I needed to wait until a lightning bolt struck me and I had this crazy experience.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: But then I kind of realized, hang on, I'm maybe not a hundred percent certain about Jesus and about him being alive, but I'm definitely more than 50% at this point.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And she she said, like, I realized it was more of a more of a leap for me to go back.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: But it was less of a leap for me to step step in.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: And she's bit and she basically then says, and so I kind of I thought, because if you do think that this man really rose from the dead and is God, it makes sense for me to surrender to him.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: It makes sense for me to live for him.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that's the bit where they, you know, it's it's the realizing, oh, hang on, the chasm's behind me.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: I can't, it makes no sense for me to run away.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how I would even do that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Anymore.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I guess there is still a step in front of me that's just like, am I willing to like entrust my life to him?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: Am I getting when he says follow me?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Am I gonna say, Yeah, great, let's go where you leaded me.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier used um kind of the analogy of dating and marriage, which is I think is quite helpful.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even just because the phrase you've been using this whole time, like is is love stronger than death, comes from the book of the the Song of Songs, um, which is all about relationship and marriage, and um, yes, set me as a seal upon your heart, a seal on your arm.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as fierce as the grave.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's kind of it's a whole poem about about love.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just like that includes that phrase, love is as strong as death that we've been talking about.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um the friend that I mentioned earlier, uh, when I was speaking with her a few months ago, I did ask her, like, have you had like a kind of a commitment moment?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And she was able to articulate this whole thing better than I than I did.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um this time last year, she hadn't, I think, read any of the gospels.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but she said, well, it's a bit like falling in love, in that um, I'm not sure like some people have like a moment or like uh you know, love at first sight, or they can say when that thing was, but a lot of a lot of other people it's just when you've been getting to know this person and gradually it's kind of happened, and so and and I was like, Well, yeah, okay, that's true, but also you do have a moment where you say, Yeah, will you marry me?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right, you you name it and you commit, and and then you have your wedding day and crack on.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of there it there is there's something about the difference between the the dating and the getting to know and the oh okay, yeah, I'm all in, and this is for the this is for the long haul.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and like you were saying uh before, Mike, maybe there is in the question of like, oh yeah, I like this Jesus, I I wish I could believe that he's God, maybe it's like saying, Oh, well, I wish I I wish we could be married, and I kind of need to like test it out before and you're like, no, wait, hang on.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't get like there is there's a there is a knowing Jesus, there's an a level of knowing that you have when you're married that you don't have when you're dating, you know, it's like a there's a there is there is some there is a certainty and an establishing of the it's more like it's the start line rather than the finish line.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's like I've been on this journey of getting to know Jesus and now boom I cross the finish.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I know you just made your way to the start line.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are you ready to to you know fire the cannon off a yeast or whatever it is when they start racing?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_05: It's not a good thing.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Are you ready for the rest of married life?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Which is not exactly the same as the honeymoon, yeah, yeah.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, because it's like you you don't wait until you feel like you're married to someone in order to decide that you want to marry them.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: Or at least you don't have to.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: That would that isn't you know, that isn't how it it's supposed to work.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's meant to be you you see that this person is is beautiful, you see that this person is is trustworthy and good, and you want to give your life to them.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you do and they give themselves to you, like then you start to experience what it is to to be one.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I think often when we you know, often when we're kind of saying, Well, I would believe if God kind of gave me dot dot, what we're kind of saying is I I would believe if I experienced what it was like to be united with God, and he's going, Look, I've I've done everything on my side of this already.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like Jesus has got down on one knee on the cross and he spread his arms wide to us, he's done absolutely everything that needs to be done for us to be united with him.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's crazy for us to say, Well, I'm only gonna say yes and receive that if I already feel like we're one.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's not how it works.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're not one yet.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because you haven't you haven't said yes, you haven't received it.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so you then saying that, even just that if that is a genuine desire, like I wish I could believe, I want to believe, that desire actually is sufficient.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Are you like to then take this is that partly what we're saying?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is that you're really I guess it would depend on what they want to believe.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh yeah, we still need to finish the sentence.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: You really helped with that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's I think this conversation's really helped me.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm I'm I'm much better prepared now for when somebody says I want to believe.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: You want to believe what?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: You want to believe that you'll see Aunt Mabel when you die?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: You want to like what do you want to believe?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to believe that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to believe in Jesus, well now we're cooking with gas and and and I and I'm I now suspect that the Holy Spirit is up to something really quite remarkable in you.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: That you're you're wanting to move forwards towards Jesus right now.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me more about him and I'll tell you more about him.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: And just like focus it on him.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's helpful.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's like I want I want to believe that there's something more because you seem to have a sense of peace about death.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's still quite vague.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: If it's And let me tell you why I have that peace.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it'll be a Jesus-y thing.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's that's that's where you would go next, I guess.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's yeah, finish the end of the sentence.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want to believe dot dot dot.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: What the what the dot dot dot is then matters.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's I want to believe in I want to believe Jesus is who well Jesus Lord, I guess.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: That he beat death in the ending.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to believe that Jesus is God.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: I want to believe that do you know that it's like if you desire those things, you're on you're well on the way.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you there's actually nothing that needs to hold you back.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and um, I now that we're talking about it, I realize that's kind of what a lot of what I've been I was trying to do in the book is is to begin with, to kind of focus some of that in on what it should be focused on.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you come in with a sense of, I I want to believe that love is the real thing.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: I want to believe that justice, you know, is real and will be done.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: I want to believe that life has meaning and that my life isn't just a sort of accident and it matters who I am and it matters what I do.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: And what partly what I want to do is focus that and say, hey, I agree.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I want to believe that too.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: The the good reason I have for believing that is that I believe that Jesus actually, you know, is is like is alive and is the God of the universe and he makes sense of everything.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: And if that's true, then those things you're hoping for you can believe.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't have to believe them just by turning your brain off and trying not to think about it too hard.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_03: And and also then kind of focusing on this coming back to the thing about why the why the resurrection.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's something about like if people can take in the whole story at once, great, good on them.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like the more of the story we we can kind of get at a time, the better.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: But I think there's something about the Jesus rising from the dead is almost like this kind of door that opens up onto the whole thing because it's like, whoa, if he rose from the dead, then how come he like what was he dying for?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like that can't have been just a an accident or he got overpowered, you know, a tragic mistake.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if he rose from the dead, then this guy is in charge.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: He must have died for a reason, and he gives us plenty of explanation of what that reason was.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's that I, you know, I I gave my life as a ransom, I gave my life for you as this act of love.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: It opens up, you know, opens up backwards onto he spent his whole life saying, you know, if you if you see if you've seen me, you've seen the father, like look at me.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: This is what God's like.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: And if he rose from the dead, that you know, he's he's not just some crazy lunatic, it all makes sense.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he's alive now, and so I can actually have a relationship with him.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess I think one of the things I love about the resurrection is you can kind of it's like it's this one moment in the plot that you can kind of look at and you can you can focus on it, you can see it.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because nobody does.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's there's not there's not, you know, um, internal scene, cave, first century, Jerusalem.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: Eyes flick open, heart starts beating.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody sees it.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: So you're right, I I shouldn't have said that.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: What I should say is the risen Jesus is someone you can focus on.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're seeing the risen Jesus who died and rose from the dead, everything falls into place.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: The risen Jesus.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the present tense, risen.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: He is risen rather than he rose once.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: He rose once.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: There was that one Sunday when coagulated blood started pumping again.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's the same.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that I just I just can't.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's sort of the same as the cross, though.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: We often might use this kind of Christian-y language of like, oh, keep your eyes fixed on the cross or something like that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, actually what we mean is the the the keep your eyes on the lamb who was slain who died like in Revelation, it's the we see Yeah, the it's the it's the God man, the person who is on the cross and his see his heart for you, which is present tense the same as it was as he hung there.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's the Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's we're not just talking about these particular moments, it's that they they reveal the present tense thing, the forever thing.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, like at the start of 1 Corinthians, Paul you know says, I preach Christ crucified.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: And by the end of 1 Corinthians, he's saying, If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then your faith is futile and you're still in your sins.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: We're lying about God.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: You should just go home and give up on all of this.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: So it's what he's proclaiming is well, who he's proclaiming is Christ, you know, the Messiah, the king, the victor, the one who defeated sin and death and everything, crucified, like he is the person who died and rose, and he he is alive and he reigns.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's sort of yeah, both that habit that we have of talking about the cross and actually what I just did where I talk about the resurrection in the abstract, mm-hmm, is is a is a step short of that because the the thing is you can like what I'm proclaiming to you is is him, is who he is, and the way to get to grips with who he is is fundamentally to get to grips with the fact that he's crucified and now he's the risen and reigning Messiah.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: Which is great.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: And like, and I think I kind of met the risen Jesus when I was in around about Luke 13, Luke 14, not in Luke 24, which is which is the immense road and the and the risen Jesus thing.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: To the point and and and 13 and 14 with nothing to do with the resurrection.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was just I'm meeting the Lord who is alive.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and dead dead people have interesting things to say that you smile and nod at and go, hmm, what a wise teacher Jesus was.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: But a living Lord who has risen from the dead is able to confront you in Luke chapter 14, uh in his parables, and it's like, okay, I think he's Lord, and if he's Lord, it would be surprising if he rotted in that Jerusalem tomb.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that's the way around that I reason.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's Lord, therefore, I don't know how coagulated blood starts pumping, but he's Lord, you know.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: So this is helpful as we think about uh we're not just asking, do you believe in the resurrection as an abstract thing, as a thing that happened?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's not even abstract as an abstract concept or as a historical thing that happened.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're thinking, is it a is it do you believe in the risen Jesus, that person and um, and so that you know, I want to believe, dot dot dot, circular case, is that is the end of that sentence.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want to believe in the risen Jesus, and uh and maybe an experience of him is necessary.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's why these two things come together.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Conversation about the resurrection and about experiencing God, these are not separate things, it's not the science he types need some evidence for a supernatural thing, and the like the feelings he creative he types as if they're two separate people, which they're not, um exhibit A.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, they they need some kind of like weird and wacky experience of God.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: So actually both things are a discussion on the person of Jesus and and the fact that he is alive.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what then do we say if someone says, Well, I want to believe in Jesus and I am fully on board with you know I've read the gospels and I've been to church and I've I've looked at all the different philosophical arguments for it and and I and I would describe myself as you know a non-resistant non-believer.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um what do we say then?
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is this alive and risen Jesus not able to able to also wake them up?
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: Defeated beliefs, yeah.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: What do you yeah, what do you say?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because because people could turn it the other way and just say this is this is a reason not to believe in in the goodness of God at all.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I want to, and it's his move and he's not making it.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: But I I think it I think it there's a massive overconfidence in that about it's it's a huge claim about what you know you would do if something different happened.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it you know, it's like oh yeah, trust me, I would love and surrender my life to this guy if he did X.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: Are you sure?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like you know, you you know what he's like, you know, you've got loads of ways to find out what he's like.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: You can see the difference that it makes to other people when they trust him.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are you are you sure that if right now you don't want to trust yourself to him, you're you're not willing to follow him?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, are you sure that this thing that you're imagining would actually change that?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I think a lot, yeah.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: This actually comes back to the John chapter 20 thing, doesn't it?
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think a lot of people sympathize with Thomas, right?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_03: They say, Look, I I'm gonna need to see it to believe it.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, that's not how it works.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: There are so many things that you believe that you can't see.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we were talking earlier about we uh me and my wife did a a sketch in a kid's well, an all-age service at church once where she was Dr.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_03: Skepticism and she didn't believe.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: And she had this amazing uh she had like uh lab goggles and a lab coat and everything.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: And she was saying, you know, I it was all in an accent that I won't try and reproduce, she says a great Yorkshire accent.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: But she was saying, you know, I I won't believe it unless I can see it with these eyes and I can touch it with these fingers.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, he's done the exit.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: But then, you know, somebody turns off and tells them about the lovely weekend they had at the beach and the the um donut they got from a stand by the beach.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_03: And can I see it?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: Can I touch it with these fingers?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I don't believe you.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: Go away.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, how am I supposed to believe that?
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then you know, a historian comes up and talks about Henry Henry VIII and his wives, and I can't see that, can I?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_03: I can't touch it, so I don't believe you either.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: And a scientist gets up and talks about his work on DNA that he's doing.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: Can I see it with my eyes?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: Can I touch it with these fingers?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: No, right, so I don't believe that.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh, you know, I there was, you know, they say something about, you know, I only, you know, I I just rely on this this brain of mine.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: And they they go, sorry, your your brain.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, my brain.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and you believe you believe in that.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you see it with your eyes?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: Can you touch it with your fingers?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: And she she screams, I don't have a brain, runs off.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: But like we you would not be able to get a GCSE in anything if you only believed what you could see for yourself.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you would not be able to sustain a friendship with anyone, let alone a marriage, if you would only believe things you would see for yourself, right?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's a totally crazy way to talk about how you how you know things, how you believe things, how you trust things.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: We all the time we trust things because on the on the testimony of people we have reason to trust.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's how, you know, that's that's how everything works.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so when we get to Jesus and John says, Look, we, you know, we were there.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: We saw him, we've seen his glory.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we let me give you a whole bunch of signs that he performed that show you who he is, let me tell you about the resurrection, let me show you this example of Thomas and how Jesus kind of tells him off and says, This was crazy, mate.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: They they were all telling you they saw me, you knew me, you've seen what I've done, you've heard what I've said.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: How did you not say, hey, actually that makes sense?
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: Why on earth did you say, I'm gonna need to see it for myself?
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like, actually, John says, You've got plenty of reason to trust me.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: Why do why do you think it is that you're suddenly applying a totally different criteria for this than you do to every other relationship in your life, every other thing in your life?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it maybe that a bit of you doesn't want it to be true as much as you say you do?
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're more resistant than you think, Thomas.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's yeah, it's beautiful, but it's scary too, right?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, I think for a lot of people, what would be more helpful than kind of going around in circles, like you were saying about my where I was kind of paralyzed by the idea of needing an experience?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: What would be more helpful would be to start asking them the question, is there a bit of me that doesn't?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, doesn't want this and why?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: And if I keep looking at Jesus and I keep talking to people about him and getting my head around him, does that start to melt?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like the bit of me that doesn't like it, that doesn't want it.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_03: Is there anything that I'm not seeing, I'm not grasping about him that would actually change, change that?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you're actually challenging the two premises of the arguments.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, if there are non-resistant non-believers, then um God has clearly not done an enough to uh you know overcome their their objections.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can challenge the resistance thing.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe the first person to challenge that resistance, like the first way to get them to face their own resistance is to confess your own.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like I don't I don't entrust myself to Jesus the way I should, right?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had practice of doing it for a quarter of a century now, and I I still I'm still resistant.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm you telling me you're not resistant?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm resistant.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_02: Just show me how.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've been trying to be non-resistant for years.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm resistant all the time.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: And ev every way I lie or take shortcuts or pride or whatever, whatever I'm doing in life that's not the way of Jesus.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I'm resisting his way, I'm resisting, you know, him in all in all sorts of ways.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm resistant.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: Probably you might be a little bit not as much as me, but maybe you're a little bit resistant to.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you're more of a believer than you think.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm more of a I'm more of a resister than you imagine.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: You're more of a believer than you imagine.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's let's like examine those, maybe.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, thank you so much.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: That has been so helpful and wise.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like we've got lots to chew on in this conversation.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um thank you to everyone who's been listening in or watching us.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you were one of those 280 or more who has come not to faith in the abstract, but come to faith in Jesus, in the risen Jesus.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the last five years.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: We love to hear your story.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can get in touch podcast at speaklife.org.uk.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you are one of those people who's thinking, I just wish I could believe in Jesus.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my invitation would be to come and see life the way we do for a little bit, put on the Jesus glasses.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, go and visit 321course.com and understand a bit more about life according to Jesus and how this risen Jesus impacts our understanding of God and the world and you.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um that would be a really good place to start.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we've mentioned John's gospel, we've mentioned Luke's gospel, we've mentioned various bits of the Bible today.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Song of Songs.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: Song of Songs.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that is yeah, go for it.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, keep getting to know um this Jesus in uh in the accounts of his life.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: And why not read Mark's book?
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, once once you've done the other stuff.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: Whether you are, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Laugh resort.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, um, yeah.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you are a non-resistant non-believer, a resistant non-believer, a resistant believer, a non-resistant, I'm trying to get all for the wherever you are, in the resisting and the believing.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: The if that changes everything by Mike Kidd.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can find that.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where can you find that?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: Online.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all the all the all the bookshop things on the internet.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um we love to finish off.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, you uh you write books, you also write poetry, and um it would be awesome to hear one of your poems on this very theme of the risen Jesus and how they gives.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so I I this is a poem that I wrote kind of reflecting on uh my first experience of actually being with somebody that I loved as as they were kind of drawing close to death, which I feel like is a big moment for for everybody when you kind of first you're actually there in the room and you can see them and you're kind of feeling how close it is.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, I uh I ended up a bit after I wrote this uh about it.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_03: As you lie, eyes hazy, half there, struggling to receive each precious breath.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know if love is stronger than this unnatural dragon death?
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_03: They told us it was natural.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't worry, this is all there is, you're free.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: But now the chains are in your chest and I can feel them tightening round me.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: What if this isn't natural?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: If this is not how things should be?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_03: What if darkness is absence of light, but the light is the ultimate thing, and our dark is the absence of love, but it's love in the end that will win?
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know that however tight I squeeze your hand, I can't hold on, but there is one who can, who can go where you're going and has been where you'll be, and who can lift you up once more.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: Look at me.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure, I'm sure that yes, you are flesh, and flesh is only dust, but you are destined for much more than ashes.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_03: You were made to trust.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you will only trust, he will take that faltering, outstretched hand and raise you, raise you up and make you stand.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: He'll make you more than you have ever been.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because there is a love more jealous than the snatching grave, a joy more poignant than all grief, a life more truly real than anything our feeble hearts have ever seen.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know that love has lived and touched and cried, that love has held and bled and died?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know?
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: Please know, he has been far further gone than I will ever need to let you go.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_03: Love clothed in human flesh longed for you more than for another breath.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know?
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_03: Please know his love is stronger now than death.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_03: Love is not dead though he did die.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_03: Come, see the sun on Sunday rise.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: Can you see?
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_03: Please see the living care in those old tear stained eyes, the suffocating quiet of the grave too thin to hold the rising roar of him who was wrapped in our shroud and smothered in our tomb, who made our death his death, so his death could be our womb of bright and everlasting birth, so that in his rising he could raise this aging, withered earth.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know?
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_03: Please know the wound that shattered death's dark knife.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: Will you trust?
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: Please trust this dying love that can bring you into life.