Ten things only my wife knows: knowing the shepherd's voice
Mike shares what he told his youth group last week: God wants to be in a love relationship with you - 'not a casual' one. He wrote down 10 things specific to him that only his wife would know, and had the kids guess - the point being that he and his wife are in an intimate relationship: 'she knows things about me, I know things about her.' Likewise, to know the shepherd's voice you have to know him well enough to distinguish him from other voices that 'sound the same' but didn't come from the Father. One host cites John 15:15 - 'I no longer call you servants... Instead, I've called you friends' - as closeness, 'but it's not like buddy, buddy': everybody got John 15, not just Boova.
More on Holy Spirit
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'When God is silent': what counts as hearing from the Lord?
- What does it mean to 'hear from the Lord,' and how often should we expect it?
Mike brings a question from his Bible study, whose paragraph heading was 'when God is silent': the author wrote that he experienced God's silence for a couple of weeks and freaked out, and Ben expected a relatable years-long drought story — 'Oh, two weeks.
From No. 603 · Found Out
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Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
- Should following Jesus feel more comfortable as time goes on?
A host asks whether following Jesus should feel more comfortable as time goes on — noting the low-level tension many feel around am-I-doing-enough and the stigma that contentment equals laziness.
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Do accountability partners actually work?
- Do accountability partners actually do anything?
Mike raises his accountability-partners question: the standard dude-circle advice to get a buddy to hold you accountable for Bible reading, porn, church attendance, and drinking.
From No. 598 · Emphasis | Accountability, Worship and Praying with Strangers
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Mike frames the question: are more people hearing from God?
- Does it seem like more and more people are hearing from God — and is that real or a lie and a huge distraction?
Ben asks Mike for a two-sentence framing; Mike says listening to the book of Job while mowing made him furious when Bildad 'received a word from the Lord,' turning a bad human argument into an unarguable divine claim.
From No. 597 · Maybe A Word From God