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Episode 12: Why We Need to Experience Inner Healing in the Spiritual Life
69 Plays3 years ago
Mentioned in this episode:
Peter's Life:
The Critical Journey by Hagberg and Guelich
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Transcript
Introduction to Root Like Faith Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ruth Schwenk and I'm so thrilled you're listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It's our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's word, transformed by the love of Jesus and moved by his mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important.
00:00:19
Speaker
Well, in today's episode of Root Like Faith, we'll be taking a look at what God is trying to teach us when we hit the wall. Yeah, maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. And if you don't, be sure to listen back to our last episode. But we can get hung up on this stage. So we want to talk about what we need to do when we hit the wall, what God's trying to teach us, and why it's so important that we journey inward. Let's get started.
Exploring the Stages of Spiritual Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
I think we've all experienced times in our journey with Christ when God seems distant. We talked a lot about that last week. We don't feel His presence. We don't hear His voice. We wonder if He even cares. We can't even get to that point. We've talked about some practical ways to continue walking with God when He feels distant.
00:01:09
Speaker
And in particular last week, we talked about hitting the wall and what we should do when we get to that point. And today we want to take it a step further and talk about some of the specific things that God is trying to teach us in that season. Really, the wall is meant to usher us into the next stage. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, make sure you listen to the last episodes, but let's move on then. We've hit that wall.
00:01:40
Speaker
We're seeking God. We're trying to find Him. Honey, what's next? Well, as we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks, God wants to give us His life. He wants to give us grace. And so the spiritual life is this journey. I mean, it's this process, this lifelong journey, this lifelong process by which He's changing us from the inside out. And so we've talked about different biblical examples of that. Philippians 3 is just one example.
00:02:06
Speaker
of how the life of a disciple, the life of a learner is one who is being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And so we go through these different stages of the spiritual life, different seasons or different stages where God is doing something different in each of those stages. And we just have been talking about how it's so important for us at least to have a framework
00:02:27
Speaker
for that because, you know, I grew up as a Christian, I just thought you get saved and read your Bible and go to church and it just sort of all works out someday you die and you're with Jesus and then you are finally like him. But there's a lot of time in between there. And so there's been, you know, a whole history of different spiritual writers and men and women of God who've walked before us, who've
00:02:48
Speaker
really, I think they give us a great wealth of knowledge and insight into that spiritual journey with Jesus. And so we've talked about these different stages that stage number one is the converted life. It's when we become a Christian. We turn from our sin and turn to Jesus as our savior, and then we enter it into the learning life. And that's really a season or stage marked by knowing. And so we're constantly learning and reading our Bibles, and maybe we go to a conference, we can't get enough of church, and we're listening to worship.
00:03:18
Speaker
And then the third stage is what is called the active life. And that's that season that's marked by doing. We've discovered the gifts that God has given us and we find great joy in serving. And then what you're talking about is at some point we hit that wall, that extended season where we just, you know, it's oftentimes marked by maybe some kind of personal loss or a tragedy or midlife crisis or burnout where we hit a wall and it's when we hit that season, when we hit that wall, that dark night of the soul that we have a choice
Challenges in the Inward Journey
00:03:47
Speaker
to make.
00:03:47
Speaker
We're either going to continue to walk with God and allow Him to disciple us through that season, navigate those circumstances, or we generally turn back and go back to stage one, two, and three and just sort of repeat over again. And that's what we talked about last week. That's sort of where we've been, and yet there's this important stage
00:04:05
Speaker
called the inward journey or the inward life where now God is inviting us to go inward. And this season, this stage is marked by being. And so while other stages have been marked by maybe knowing or doing, this stage is primarily marked by being. We discover who we are as God's son or daughter.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, and so what I love about the whole idea of hitting the wall or when we come to that desperate place in our life is that it's really meant to draw us, like you said, to that towards Jesus and towards this inward journey. And so that's what we want to talk about today is this stage, like you said, the inward journey and what that means and what God is trying to teach us.
00:04:52
Speaker
Well, and I think it would be fair. I don't think this is too much to say this, but the reality is that the vast majority of Christians do not make that journey inward. And so I think we could probably all identify people in our life that have been following Jesus for 20, 30, 40, 50 years that you go, boy, that person's a saint. They are like Jesus.
00:05:14
Speaker
But I think that probably most of us, we can also point to people that they've been sitting under good biblical teaching. They've been a disciple of Jesus for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And you're like, boy, they ought to be more like Jesus than they are. And so the reality is there's a lot of Christians that are full of great Bible knowledge. They know God with their head. They've been in church. They've been serving. They've been doing the great saints.
00:05:40
Speaker
But who they are, the depth of their being has been left untouched by God's grace. And I suppose there's a variety of reasons for that. But one of those, I think, is that oftentimes people don't make that journey inward or they don't know how to. Yeah. And that's what's so interesting. And I feel like why this is so important to talk about, because here's the thing.
00:06:01
Speaker
We get to the wall. We get to something really painful in our life. And I'm sorry, but I don't want to go towards that. I want to turn back around. Right. I mean, and so to have some grace here and just think about, you know, the reason there are so many people that probably are just keep cycling back through these first three stages is just because it's really, really hard.
00:06:24
Speaker
when you hit the wall. Nobody wants to stay there and nobody wants to work through that, but there's such blessing on the other side if we do that. Well, the reality is most of our Christian life up until the wall and the journey inward is external. And that doesn't mean that there aren't things going on inside of us. I mean, clearly there is God is changing us by His Spirit from the inside out, but a lot of the Christian life until we hit the wall, until we journey inward is an external faith.
00:06:50
Speaker
And all I mean by that is that so much of our faith is really, it's about doing, it's about knowing, and there's not a lot of deep transformation that is going on. Now, that's obviously not entirely fair, but the journey inward is especially important because God now is going to begin to really cultivate an interior life or a depth of interior life that we've never known before.
Inward Journey Characteristics
00:07:12
Speaker
He's going to continue that process.
00:07:14
Speaker
And so it's so important that our journey inward is just that, that God is cultivating now a new depth in terms of our interior life, where to this point, much of the Christian life has been exterior. Yeah, and you know what's so interesting as you're talking about this, I'm thinking of there are people in my life that there is just this depth. You know, there's this rich richness about who they are and the relationship with God, and it's all coming through to me. Honey, are you talking about me right now? Because I feel like
00:07:44
Speaker
Well, I wasn't, but obviously, but there is a richness and a depth to you. But I was thinking of some in particular, some women in my life who I could never put my finger on it, but there was just there was this richness and this depth to their life. And this is exactly why I really feel like, you know, there were there was times there were times in their life
00:08:05
Speaker
Where they where they went through a crisis and they they kept seeking God through that and they made that journey inward and there there's just such a depth that comes from that because our relationship with the Lord It takes it to a whole nother level that totally remind when you're saying that it reminds me of a quote I read recently and the author was talking about how we must suffer the coming of Christ if we can offer Christ to other people and
00:08:30
Speaker
One of the things he was talking about is just knowing Christ, walking with Christ, abiding with Christ in a new, deeper way where he comes through the power of his Spirit. We suffer his coming. That's a painful process to begin really being joined to Christ in a new way.
00:08:48
Speaker
When that happens, as God is really allowing us to journey inward, there is this interior depth, and there's a difference. As you relate to other people, you know who has suffered the coming of Christ, because now they have something truly rich to offer other people, and that's Christ Himself. But they journey inward with
00:09:10
Speaker
with Jesus. And so I want to just highlight a couple, you know, maybe sort of characteristics of this stage. So if somebody's thinking about, you know, am I in that inward life or am I journeying through that particular stage? And what does that look like? How do I know that?
00:09:25
Speaker
And so let me just offer maybe just a couple of characteristics of what that stage looks like. You know, Psalm chapter 42, verses one through two, which is one of my favorite Psalms. The Psalmist says, is the deer pants for streams of water. So my soul pants for you. My soul thirsts for you for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God? And so one of the things that is characteristic of the inward life is there's just this new hunger for truth or for God himself.
00:09:55
Speaker
You know, I've talked about, you know, when I was diagnosed in January of 2018, I've shared this story with so many people, but the way I've described that is that I became hungry for truth wherever truth could be found. Now, I want to be careful of that. I mean, all truth is God's truth, but what I meant by that is that I just became hungry
00:10:16
Speaker
for God's truth in his word, amongst his people, even amongst other traditions within the Christian faith. I've learned so much from our Catholic brothers and sisters or from friends that are Eastern Orthodox within the Christian faith. There's this robust
00:10:32
Speaker
amount of truth made available to us. And there are certainly disagreements that we might have with Catholics or Eastern Orthodox. But the point is, is there was this new hunger for God and for truth, unlike I'd ever known before. And so I think that's one of the characteristics that's marked by this journey inward. We just have this new and deep hunger for truth or for God himself, which is really what the psalmist is talking about in Psalm 42, verses 1 through 2.
00:11:00
Speaker
Another characteristic I think that is consistent with this inward life or the inward journey is that people that are in this place or in that stage, they're often drawn away from activity or serving. And so as we talked about, when you hit the wall and you feel burned out or you've experienced some loss,
00:11:19
Speaker
a lot of times you just don't have anything left to give. It's hard for you to call a friend or to text message somebody or to go serve in the children's ministry or student ministry. And so oftentimes you just feel empty. And so people that are journeying inward oftentimes begin to kind of pull away from doing and serving because again, so much of our Christian experience
00:11:40
Speaker
has been external. It's been good. I mean, we use our gifts and we're serving. Sometimes our identity gets caught up in that. And so there's this pulling away from activity that happens on the journey inward. We need time now to focus on ourself and what God wants to do inside of us. And so as a result, you'll see a lot of people as they hit the wall and journey inward, they begin to kind of pull away from some of those normal activities or rhythms that they enjoyed for a number of years.
00:12:06
Speaker
Right. And I mean, in that though, isn't it important to remain faithful in serving? Maybe it's not as much. Maybe you have to recognize your limitations. I think that's important to state here that you do remain committed to serving.
00:12:27
Speaker
I think one of the dangerous things we talked about last time when people hit the wall or they begin to journey inward is you can go off the rails. And so we've seen that over and over again in ministry where people pull away from community, they pull away from their local church, and yeah, they can pull away from serving entirely. And so I think that's an important point.
00:12:45
Speaker
that God still calls us to follow Him. We need to remember we follow a crucified Savior. And so we need to keep doing what we've always done, like we talked about before, reading our Bible, praying, and even serving in some capacity. But I do think as you journey inward, that there is a need to kind of pull away sometimes from maybe giving or doing as much as we were before, like you said, because we don't have the same capacity in that season.
00:13:10
Speaker
And so God is doing something different in us because we know, and we're gonna talk about that at the end, that God is going to pull us out of that journey inward to a life now of giving to others, but it's gonna be from a completely different place, a different reservoir. And so if we shortchange that, then we don't really get to stage five in the healthiest way. Yeah, in the healthiest way, that was a really good point because I think, when I think about what
Peter's Transformation Story
00:13:34
Speaker
we've been through in the past few years,
00:13:36
Speaker
Obviously, it's a little different because we are in full-time ministry. It's not like you can completely pull back and we're not meant to. But there were some things we had to put some boundaries in place because there was only so much capacity.
00:13:54
Speaker
that we had and I think about you know emotionally myself there was only I didn't have as much to give now I still served and I still you know was there and even when it was hard and I didn't want to I kept doing it but I did have some boundaries and I didn't do as much as I was doing before and I so I guess there is a balance there and that's just what I want the listener to understand
00:14:19
Speaker
When I think for us as we were going through that season, there were just certain relationships that we had to pull away from because we didn't have the same capacity to give in those relationships. There are other relationships that were life-giving to us and they poured into us in really critical ways, important ways.
00:14:34
Speaker
within our local community, but also outside of our community. And I think that's so important. One of the things that Dr. Gregg had said to me, who's been just a fount of wisdom, a local Christian psychologist, he just said to me that unhealthy people don't understand boundaries. Boundaries work with healthy people. They don't work with unhealthy people. And I think we saw that as we set some boundaries. The people that were in a healthy place understood that, respected that, and cheered us on, and those that were not.
00:15:03
Speaker
they didn't understand sort of the season we're in. And so all that to say, I think it's so important. Boundaries are meant to keep us together. They're not meant to keep other people out. And I think as we set boundaries, it does require that we have to
00:15:18
Speaker
sort of say no to some relationships or as much time and there will be people that understand that and some people that don't. But you have to do, I think in that stage or in this stage, what is best for your own soul. And a lot of times that means pulling away for a time or a season or to some degree, as you continue to follow Jesus and love him and love others, you have to set some of those boundaries or you're in trouble.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, and so a couple of other things that you can notice during this time is maybe that you're just craving that silence and solitude. Wow, that's how I felt, seriously. I've always loved silence. You crave silence 365 days a year. Unless I'm listening to Rich Mullins.
00:16:02
Speaker
Not me. No, I do crave silence at times, obviously. But I'm more of a people person. I don't need it quite all the time. And while in that season, I really needed time to think. I needed time alone. That's a critical point. I had somebody tell me during that season that solitude is relational. We tend to think of solitude as getting away to be by yourself.
00:16:29
Speaker
But the wisdom in that is what he was saying is that silence and solitude is not about you getting away by yourself. It's about you getting away with God. Because again, we can go through life and be so distracted. I feel like I need to be like, amen. That's so good. I'll never stand in the way of an amen.
00:16:46
Speaker
But I think that there's so much wisdom in that, that silence and solitude again is meant to cultivate that interior life, hearing God's voice in the scriptures, hearing God's voice in prayer, thinking about your life, thinking about your wounds, thinking about your sin. I mean, we live, again, such external lives. We're just reacting day after day, week after week.
00:17:07
Speaker
And so the interior life gets sort of snuffed out. And so the importance of silence and solitude during the inward life is just so critical for those reasons. But one more characteristic, and there are certainly others, but easy answers just don't work anymore. And so I think as you go through the journey inward, again, you're just hungry for God, you're hungry for truth.
00:17:30
Speaker
and some of the answers that maybe you had about who God is, they just don't work anymore. Some of those bad answers are not sufficient. And so this journey, as we hit the wall and journey inward, it's why surrender is such a characteristic of this season because you're surrendering so much to God and you're trusting Him and you're deciding to trust Him and walk with Him, even when some of those answers don't satisfy like they used to.
00:17:59
Speaker
That's so good. Well, I think, you know, one of the ways that we see this or one of the people in the scriptures that I think sort of, and we talked about this in the last episode, but one of the people that we see that models this journey inward is Peter. And, you know, we talked about that. You know, Peter was that disciple of Jesus, that follower of Jesus that always had the right answer. He was always speaking first, always putting his foot in his mouth.
00:18:24
Speaker
And we know that he was a great leader, and he brought so much value to the disciples, and yet he also just sort of was always tripping over what he said. And he, in a variety of ways, is humbled in maybe most significantly by his denial of Jesus. And so you see this
00:18:44
Speaker
transformation that happens in Peter's life where he starts out, he's just ready to follow Jesus, he'll do anything to follow him, he has all the answers. And then he begins to come to a greater awareness of who he really is, that he's sinful, that he's weak, he denies Jesus. And of course, at the end of John's Gospel in John chapter 21, he's restored by Jesus, Jesus comes to him. I love how John chapter 21 starts out. You'll notice that Peter says, let's go back and fish.
00:19:09
Speaker
And that's really important because Peter and Andrew are out fishing when Jesus first comes and calls them. And you wonder if Peter says, you know what, let's go back to what we were doing before. Maybe Jesus is done with me. Let's go back to my old way of life. And so John chapter 21 starts out with Peter suggesting that they go out and fish. And it's when they're out on the water that they're fishing that Jesus comes to them.
00:19:32
Speaker
in such a beautiful way, he calls to the disciples, he yells to them, friends. So just think about that. I mean, for a moment, knowing what Peter had done, how Peter had denied Jesus and to hear Jesus yell friends. Now, he doesn't know it's Jesus at the time. And when he does recognize that it is Jesus, it's interesting that the text says that he actually
00:19:56
Speaker
wrapped himself in a coke and he jumped into the water and the disciples followed him in the boat behind him until they got to the shore. And I don't know, the Bible doesn't say, but I wonder if when Peter saw him and heard him and he understood, it was beginning to understand what Jesus was inviting him back into, he couldn't get back to Jesus fast enough. He couldn't get to him.
00:20:20
Speaker
Honey, don't start crying. That makes me so emotional every time I think about that. Oh, it's so powerful, yeah. But my point in that is that Peter, in his life, you see him thinking he has it all together. He's humbled, and then he's forgiven, and he's restored. And then at the end of John 21 there, Jesus says, come follow me, right? He's the only disciple that I know of that Jesus says, come follow me two times. And there's a lot that happens between the first time
00:20:44
Speaker
that Jesus has come follow me in the second time. There's this deep transformation that happens in Peter's life. He gets a greater awareness of who he is, but as a part of that, he gets a greater awareness of who Jesus is. He is a loved sinner, and that's what happens in the journey inward.
00:20:59
Speaker
When that's what I love that the Bible gives us his story to, I mean, we can just even as you're explaining it, where can we point people to obviously in the gospels, but is there a particular place that they could find his story quickly if they want to kind of read about Peter and his life? I just think that's so powerful when we can see the Bible just sharing this real life story of somebody going, you know,
00:21:26
Speaker
through these stages like we're talking about. There's multiple places in the Gospels, and so we'll link to those passages where they can go and read those different parts of his story. But I think that's so important as we think about journeying inward. Now, Peter doesn't stop there. He doesn't just sort of sit around on the shore and go, oh, I'm just such a loved sinner. That's an important part in the journey, that deep transformation. And then Jesus basically tells him,
00:21:50
Speaker
I'm not done with you, and you go feed my sheep." In other words, I've got a mission for you. You've got a future, and it includes now giving yourself away to other people. And so I think that's what happens in the journey inward, is that ultimately, as we experience deep healing, transformation, we come to know that we really are God's beloved. We really are loved sinners.
00:22:11
Speaker
We journey into that final stage and that's the outward life. And now we're in a much better position to love God and to love others from a free place. And I think, you know, you mentioned some of them, but I want to just restate them that this is really important during this journey inward.
00:22:30
Speaker
The lessons that God is trying to teach us is, first of all, that we are loved. And I think, you know, when I think about the journey inward and even just some of what you've been through over the last few years, honey, and how that was a real turning point for you. Not that you didn't know that God loved you before, but there was something deeper that happened.
Healing and Outward Journey
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I remember meeting with my friend Tom, who's a spiritual friend, spiritual companion, director, and one of the first times we got together, he said, you know God loves you, right? And I thought, I've been through four, five, six, seven, almost 10 years of biblical theological training. Well, I mean, your dad was a church planner. You've been in the church your whole life.
00:23:11
Speaker
But he asked me that and I had to pause and say, well, I know God loves other people, but does he love you? Tom would say, do you believe that he loves you? And that sounds so simple, that's so easy to understand, but when you know the love of God, you can walk through anything. When the love of God is at the core of your identity, when it defines who you are,
00:23:37
Speaker
That's when God's love is transformed. That's when it changes you. And I knew about God's love. I would say that God loved me, but I never really truly experienced the love of God until over the last year.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so it is a transforming. That's what God is after in this particular season. It's not just you having all the right Bible answers, theological answers. He wants you to know that you are the beloved, that by your faith in Jesus, what he's accomplished for you on the cross, he calls you a son or your daughter. And so now to live out of that reality,
00:24:12
Speaker
to live all of your life in response to God's love. Like that is a completely different place. Yeah, and I think not only can you walk through anything when you know that you're loved, but you can love others rightly. And that's kind of then the transition to the outward. But let me, I just want to share a few other lessons that God's trying to teach us is the healing of spiritual and psychological trauma, really.
00:24:36
Speaker
Because I think he's healing us if we're surrendering and open to that in this journey inward and Sometimes that means like for you know counseling a lot of times it means counseling I'm meeting with your pastor, you know Christian counselor I mean that that that journey inward is so important because we live with so much junk from our past We live with so many good things that maybe our parents give us or families, you know Give us or friends give us but we also live with a lot of garbage
00:25:03
Speaker
and we get wounded, we get beat up, we have unresolved sin, unresolved wounds from our early childhood. And so that's part of the inner journey is the inward life is going back with your pastor or with a spiritual director or Christian counselor and getting at the core, you get to the core of what it is that has wounded you and some of that dysfunction. And that is so important, that deep spiritual, psychological healing that can happen.
00:25:30
Speaker
Um, and so that that's a really, I think an important step in the journey inward. And so I don't know if I'm thinking that maybe the listeners thinking, cause I'd be thinking this, how long does this journey take? You know, like, is there a timeline here or how do I know? Like, how do I know when I've journeyed inward and moved on? I guess.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. I think what we were talking about before is each of these stages, they take different, it's not like you move through one stage and never go through it again. And so each stage is so different for each person and there's no sort of black and white, this stage is done and now you move into this, there's sometimes great overlap. And so I think that for some people, the journey inward, like any other stage, it just takes a different amount of time for everybody.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I would say, easily, it takes several years. And again, God is not in a rush with us. He is patient. And just when you think you've journeyed all the way inward, and you've got it all figured out, you're like, oh, there's still a lot of stuff in there that I need to work through. It's a long process, it can be. And like we've said, the different stages, it doesn't mean you do one stage into the next, and then all of these are really all. You keep coming back to them. And they're all a part of your life. It's not like you're not going to stop journeying inward at some point. Absolutely.
00:26:45
Speaker
But what's the purpose of it? I think that'd be a good place to close. The purpose of this journey inward, what is the outcome and the purpose of it? Yeah, I think that final stage, or at least the final stage we're going to talk about is the outward life. That's the fifth stage. And that's really what God is after. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and to love others. And sometimes we're just in such an unhealthy place because of our own
00:27:10
Speaker
you know, wounds from the past or our own sin. And so as we're journeying inward and experiencing healing and forgiveness and rooting our lives in God's love, what happens is we come into that next stage, the outward life, and now we're able to love God and to love others in a much deeper, more meaningful way and a healthier way. And so the goal in the journey inward is that by the power of the Spirit, we are able to be that follower of Jesus, that disciple that is now loving God and loving others.
00:27:38
Speaker
in a healthy way. And I think that there's some characteristics that go along with that, that we really, I think when you begin to journey outward is that you really don't care about some of the things that you cared about before. So for example, me as a pastor, like I don't care so much about how big the church is anymore.
00:27:55
Speaker
Um, numbers don't matter as much to me anymore. Um, you know, oftentimes churches, they, they get into, you know, how many campuses do we have those kinds of things? And so I think some of those things that we sort of thought were successes or important, right? What you thought was successful changed. They don't matter. Right. And so, um, you know, serving to get recognition, whatever it is, some of those important things or what we thought were important, um, they don't matter to us anymore. Um, you know, we use our spiritual gifts, not out of a sense of duty.
00:28:25
Speaker
but with patience and just sort of this inner calm. In other words, we're just happy to love people and to serve people, whether that's our neighbor or somebody in our small group. Like we're not trying to get credit for that. We're not in a rush with that person. There's just this sense of like, no, God's at work in that person, in this church. And I get to be a part of that. I get to contribute to that. And it's okay if that takes six months or two years, God's not in a rush.
00:28:52
Speaker
and I'm not in a rush. Oftentimes, we need a guide to go along with us in this part of the journey. We need somebody to come alongside of us and to help us. But ultimately that journey inward is meant to push us outward so that we are loving and gracious and gentle and patient. Again, we're loving God and loving others in a much healthier way than we were before. I love that. And I think
00:29:16
Speaker
Again, it brought me back to what you said before when when you understand the love of God Which I think is really one of the biggest parts of the journey inward when you understand the love of God you can walk through anything and Then outwardly you learn to love others rightly and that I mean that's really what you're saying there It's oh, it's all so good now I do want to mention here that if somebody wants to go deeper into this and through you know read through these
Recommended Reading and Closing Remarks
00:29:44
Speaker
journeys and
00:29:44
Speaker
There is a book. Can you mention that book, honey? Yeah, the book is called The Critical Journey. I'm sure you can still find it. It's an older book. It's been around for quite a while now, but that's one sort of resource that somebody could pick up to understand the stages in greater detail. And so a lot of what we talked about has come from there as well as other places, but I would recommend that's a great place to start to kind of dig a little bit deeper into the stages of the spiritual growth or spiritual life.
00:30:10
Speaker
So good. Well, friend, we are so grateful you have joined us. If we haven't met, we want to get to know you. So be sure to follow us on Instagram at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. Also, don't forget, everything we talked about will be at rootlikefaith.com forward slash podcast. We'll make sure we put those verses about Peter's life so you can read about that. And we'll put a link to that book that we just mentioned.
00:30:37
Speaker
Well, we welcome you into our family here at Root Like Faith. Would you do us a big favor and leave us a review or rating and share this podcast with your friends? It just takes a second. It's a tremendous help to us as we spread the word about Root Like Faith. Oh, and be sure to tag us on social media when you do that because we are so, so grateful and we want to know about it. All right, friend. Well, we hope that you have a great week and we will chat soon.