Be honest — have you ever felt offended by God?
You prayed. You believed. You stepped out in faith. And things still didn’t go the way you expected. Maybe it was a health crisis, a relationship that fell apart, or a dream that didn’t survive. Whatever it was, you were left wondering — is God broken? Am I broken? In Episode 207 of The Daron Earlewine Podcast, Daron and Coop dig into one of the most honest and universal struggles of faith: living in what they call the messy middle — the space between what God has promised and what we can see right now.
From offense to invitation: how John the Baptist reframes your struggle
The story of John the Baptist cuts deep here. John was Jesus’ cousin — the one who leaped in the womb when Mary walked in the room. He spent his whole life announcing the Messiah. And yet, while Jesus was out healing the sick and feeding thousands, John was sitting in prison wondering, “Are you really the one, or should we be expecting someone else?” That’s not a crisis of weak faith. That’s a deeply human moment. And Jesus’ response is stunning — He doesn’t argue with John’s circumstances, He just says, “Blessed is the person who doesn’t stumble on account of me.” The invitation isn’t to ignore the pain. It’s to shift from an indictment of God to trust in the author of the story — even when you don’t understand the chapter you’re in.
Repentance isn’t about shame — it’s about thinking differently
One of the most freeing moments in this episode is when Daron unpacks the Greek word for repentance: metanoia. It doesn’t mean grovel, feel terrible, and clean up your behavior. It means change the way you think. When Jesus said “repent and believe,” He was saying, “The kingdom is here. You need to start seeing differently.” That shift — from shame-based behavior modification to genuine mind renewal — is what Daron credits for the most significant growth in his own life. If you’ve ever felt stuck in the messy middle, this episode is your halftime break. Sit with it, pray through it, and get ready for part two. Reach Daron at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
Have you ever felt offended at God when life didn’t go the way you prayed? Daron, Coop, and PJ open up Part 1 of The Messy Middle, the space between the kingdom being here and being fully here. Through John the Baptist’s prison crisis and the Greek word metanoia, this episode reframes disappointment with God as an invitation, not an indictment, and redefines what repentance actually means.
Key Takeaways:
- The moments you feel most offended at God are often the exact invitations to deeper faith
- Biblical repentance is not shame-fueled behavior change, it’s metanoia, a transformed way of thinking
- Trusting the story means trusting the Author, especially when your prison cell feels nothing like a kingdom
Connect with Daron on Social Media:
If this episode hit you in the messy middle, share it with someone who needs the reminder, leave a comment with where you’re feeling stuck, and hit subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2.
Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
All right, be honest with me. Have you ever felt offended that God didn’t do what you wanted Him to do when you wanted Him to do it? Have you ever felt offended by yourself that you keep doing the thing you said you wouldn’t do, and you’re trying to figure out, is God broke? Am I broke? What’s happening?
This episode is for you. Let me encourage you with this. We have all thought those exact same things, and we’re going to deal with where God is at and what our response should be.
This is a two-part episode. This is the first part because it gets so deep we had to take a little halftime break in the middle. So enjoy the first part of this conversation about this messy middle space we get into in life. I think it’s going to be encouraging to you. Let’s jump in.
Created on purpose, and for a purpose.
Hey, welcome back to The Daron Earlewine Podcast. Glad to have you back sitting down with the crew. We need to come up with a name, guys. Not the crew. Not the boys. Darren, Darren, and PJ.
Oh, that could have a little bit of a thing. Yeah. We’ll think about it. Have a little jingle that Coop pushes the button for every time. Darren, Darren, and PJ. It’s good. It’s good. Doesn’t take very long to come up with anything. It’s just fine. I didn’t say it was good. I know. I didn’t either. It was just that it came out.
It’s a real podcast. You know that because you clicked on it, and we want to say thank you for doing so. If you haven’t subscribed on YouTube or Spotify or all the places you can get podcasts, we’d love to see the subs go up. Sure do. It means you’re part of the community and you’re mashing it. Sub Smith’s. We need to add a sound effect over there for you, Coop. Like when you smash it, that smash that like and subscribe. Did we figure out if the buttons come through in the recording yet? They do come through. Put them in there.
Oh, a little rim shot. When you say something funny. We can do your wait staff. Try the veal. Try the veal. That’s an old thing. Like when you’re at the place and you’re doing that. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal. Do you know what veal is? Yeah, it’s baby cow. Maybe that was baby lamb. No. What’s that? Deer? Mutton? No, venison is deer. No, veal is baby cow. It’s very, very tender. I thought it was lamb. No. Rude. Sorry, lambs.
Anyway, we have fallen off the rails. What are we talking about today? We’re kind of in a messy spot. Oh, look at that segue. We really lean into the segue. I like that. Yeah, that’s a segue joke.
The messy middle. It’s a sermon series we’re doing at Mercy Road Northeast Church that I get a chance to teach at from time to time. By that, I mean like twice a month. We had a conversation that was in the zip code of this conversation in the past. I don’t know, six months, could have been three months. As I’m prepping this, I’m thinking, we said these things, but this is a different context with some different biblical stories.
This has been such a narrative that I can identify with in my own life. And especially as I went through and did some research biblically, this is one of the massive narratives in the Bible.
The whole idea is this. Jesus shows up on the scene. Basically, the first declaration teaching thing He says is, “The time is here. The time has arrived. The time has been fulfilled.” There are a couple of different ways He says it. “The kingdom of God is at hand, or is here, or is near. Repent and believe.”
So He declares, “Hey, the kingdom is here.” Then obviously He lives His whole life, perfect life, teaching all the stuff, the miracles. He dies on the cross, comes back from the dead three days later, and then the kingdom is established. It is now here, but not fully here.
So we live in this what we’re calling the messy middle. I’ve heard it said multiple times that the kingdom of God is now, but not yet. Because what we understand from the scriptures is Jesus will return and then completely fulfill all things. Wipe every tear. No death and sorrow and night. The fulfillment and restoration of the earth, where all the struggles, pain, death, cancer, all that will no longer exist.
We’re not there. We’re in this middle space. I think that makes it, if you don’t fully understand that, even if you conceptually understand it, it’s one of the places we stumble, we get stuck, we get offended.
When I’m praying for this and Jesus says I can ask for anything and it’ll come true, there are all these promises, but I’m still struggling with the same addictions or the same depression. Or I prayed for my grandma and she still died of cancer. Injustices. Things like, look at the world, read the news. And it’s like Jesus says, “I’ve come to bring peace.” And then you’re like, I don’t see it anywhere.
So you get this tension. And often we go through there’s some type of indictment. It’s either an indictment on God, on Jesus, who is God. He’s fake. He didn’t know what He was talking about. He’s not there. He doesn’t care. He’s not powerful. Whatever it would be in the context, this is an indictment on Him.
Or when it’s not working out the way I’m expecting it to, by the way I expect life would work in the kingdom of God right now, or not understanding that we’re in this middle, it’s an indictment on myself. I’m probably sinning too much. God’s probably mad at me. I can’t figure it out. There’s something wrong with God, or there’s something wrong with me, or it’s an indictment on others. There’s something wrong with them. They are my enemies.
What I want us to look at today is, for one, kick that idea around of how we have experienced living in this messy middle. And to look at the idea that when we come to these moments where we feel offended, where we’re stumbling, where we can’t figure it out, where it’s not working out the way we expect, could we shift from “It’s these exact moments that aren’t an indictment” to “they’re an invitation”? An invitation into something deeper. Into greater understanding. Into greater dependency.
The more I live and the more I look around my life and others’ lives, look in the scriptures, it seems like this may be one of the greatest struggles, wrestling realities of faith that everybody walks in. Agreed? Disagreed?
We’re not even talking about the theological aspects of end times living in the messy middle. We are just talking about, indictment versus invitation, on a Monday. Not, is this the Antichrist and these things. I’m just trying to figure out this Jesus stuff. I’m trying to believe that the kingdom of God is here, and there’s a kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. It is at hand. I’ve been invited into it. I am participating in it. But man, there’s a lot of evidence in my life right now that it doesn’t seem like this works the way I expect it to work.
Something I’ve heard recently in some of the studies I’ve done is the phrase “trust the story.” I think it applies here. When you’re in this messy middle, you have to trust the story. When you trust the story, obviously the story of God and the fact that He came and He’s resurrected, like He’s making all things new and He’s doing His part, we don’t see it. We don’t understand it. We don’t always get it when we’re in the messy middle.
But if we can trust the story, that’s where the faith journey is. Obviously that’s hard. When you look at biblical stories, the story of Joseph, that’s “trust the story” part of his life. All these ups and downs, all these things. And that’s years upon years upon years of being in that messy middle. Sometimes feeling like he got out of it and then put back in it.
So the idea to me of trusting the story, I’ve been trying to embrace that each and every day. When I get up and I have the worries, the cares, the things aren’t working the way I think they should, do I trust the story and the author behind it enough to keep pursuing, to keep allowing myself to show up each and every day? Because it’s easy to just give up. It’s easy to walk away. But persistence and consistency and trusting the story over time allows for beautiful things to come.
Yeah. I’d build on what you just said there. Trust the story. I think the invitation is trust the author. Have you seen the comedian, I’m not going to remember his name, but there’s a comedian doing a thing right now where he’s talking about how people who believe in God are trying to prove that the author exists, as if they were characters in a story. So you’re in a story in a book written by an author, and you’re trying to prove that the author exists.
He ends up talking about it from the standpoint of, it’s almost the greatest proof that there is a God. Because you’re in the story. Because you’re in the story. I dig that.
Yeah, dude. I’ll have to look up who that is, because I’ve watched the video multiple times and I’m like, that’s a way of looking at it. This is why creativity is so important. God’s such a creative God that He gives all these different people the ways to think about things different ways. It’s such a creative way to look at it. It’s like, oh my gosh, I’m in the story. I’m trying to prove that the author is writing my story, but my story is being written as I’m going through it, even though I don’t understand it.
So trust the story. Trust the author of the story. Yeah, like there’s a story being written. I don’t even have a pen, and I’m trying to prove there’s a writer.
That’s good. So let’s get into a couple of the stories. The first one we’re going to look at is John the Baptist. Crazy John. Crazy John from The Chosen. Yes. Crazy John out of the desert. Eating honey, locusts. Honeycomb. Yes, not just honey. Isn’t it honeycomb? Maybe it’s like the cereal. I mean, it’s delicious. It is delicious. It was around then. First cereal ever. I will eat a box of Honeycomb with milk, or just like straight up. It’s a waste of time. Waste of time is painful.
So whether it was cereal or honey, John’s eating either way. It’s funny, not funny, it’s very intriguing, because when Jesus in Mark chapter one gives the announcement, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel,” what I think is really, really interesting is verse four, that’s verse 15. Verse 14 is this:
“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel.”
Time out. If you’re reading you’re like, that’s just a sentence. No. After John was arrested. Let’s really get into context here.
John has been appointed, called by God to announce the coming of the kingdom, to be the forerunner of Jesus. He’s been baptizing people. He’s been telling people, “Repent and believe. Man, this is amazing.” He’s one of the main characters in this whole deal. And for doing what he’s been called to do successfully, he’s going to jail. Yeah. And ultimately to be beheaded. We don’t know that yet. But that’s the setup.
One of the main dudes that you would think it’s going to really work out for, because the kingdom is coming. Well, he got arrested. And then Jesus stands up and says, “Hey.” I’m just thinking about, if you’re standing there with your disciples and you know, let’s just say the horse and wagon, whatever, taking John to jail, is just cresting the hill. They’re like, “What? John just got arrested. John’s going to jail. What have we gotten ourselves into?”
And Jesus is like, “Hey, calm down everybody. In light of what we’ve just seen, I want you to know this. The time is fulfilled now. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. The good news that if you believe in this and buy into this, you may get to go to jail like John did.”
That’s the opening scene. And by the way, my burden is light. Just as John on his way to jail. Who’s in? Guys. Everybody. This is the gospel. This is the good news. You follow Jesus and you get sent to jail. And you guys don’t know this yet, but like you said, John he doesn’t, well, he does, when he comes out, he won’t have his head. But repent, believe. Good news. Kingdom’s here.
You take a look at how the story actually was when they were happening, the contextual understanding of what was happening in their lives. For us to ever get to the point where we’re like, I don’t know why this is difficult, it’s like from the drop, this doesn’t make sense. There is a massive need of faith and something happened that we can’t see. And people are not getting what they would regularly want to order off the menu of life. And Jesus is going, “Yeah, I know. Totally get it. But listen, time’s out. We’ve got to repent and believe.”
So what I want us to get to is, there is a massive need for us to really understand what Jesus is saying we need to do. Repent and believe. We’ve talked about that a little bit on the podcast before, but we’re going to keep talking about it because I think it’s such a central thing you see with Jesus and with understanding this. So I’ll wait, we’ll give the repent later. Because it gets even worse for John.
He goes to jail. Jesus thinks this is the great time. “I need to announce that, guess what? The king’s here.” Then we go into Matthew 11. So John’s been in prison for a while and he sends a message, verse two:
“Now when John in prison heard about the activities of Christ,” so he’s in jail thinking, “Man, this is not how I was expecting this would work out. Here’s a bunch of all this cool stuff Jesus is doing.” He sends a message by his disciples and asks Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we keep on expecting a different one?”
Full time out. We’re going to go full, full time out. John, wait a second. When we first find out about you, while you’re being created inside your mother’s womb, Jesus shows up inside of Mary’s womb and somehow your spirit or something in you knows He’s the Messiah, because you leap inside your mother’s womb. So before you were born, you knew. You’re Jesus’ cousin. I mean, you guys probably played with football in the backyard together. If they had football. Eating honeycomb. Probably.
He’s been there the whole time. I don’t know what He completely understood. We’re not going to dig into the whole thing, even exactly what Jesus understood and had the fullness. Anyway, they grow up together. He’s been there the whole time and knew that God had called him to go out and be crazy John, in camel’s hair and eating locusts and being the guy to announce the kingdom of God is here. The Messiah is here. He even sees Jesus. “Look. Behold. Look guys, it’s the Lamb of God that’s going to take away the sins of the world.”
He has been locked in his entire existence, even in the womb existence. And here he is in jail, hearing Him do all the stuff that he’s been telling people, “This is what the Messiah is going to do.” But he’s like, “Hey, just double check. Are you really the Messiah, or are we supposed to wait for someone else?”
But don’t we do that every single day? Correct. I’m sorry if I’m jumping ahead in your notes, but isn’t that exactly what we do every single day? “I’m stuck in traffic. God, why are you doing this to me?” I mean, obviously that’s a trite thing. Yeah. From stuck in traffic to dad got cancer. Right. My friend died. There’s another war. I’m still single. I lost my job. We can’t have kids still. Fill in the blank of whatever it is.
What I take comfort from is, if I were to make a biblical character of this guy who for sure would be locked in the whole time, it’s John the Baptist. And even he, seeing it, we’re trying to believe it thousands of years later with no evidence. He hung out with the Messiah his whole life because it was his cousin, saw the whole thing. Even in the midst of that, he’s like, “Wait a second. Are you sure you’re it? Maybe I’ve made this whole thing up my whole life. Maybe this is just because my mom would tell me these stories, and Aunt Mary would say all these things. And it was her thing. And maybe because I just grew up in the church, all of these things.”
But John’s going, “Listen, here’s the deal. I had some expectations and they are not being met.”
So Jesus sends back a response, and His response makes it even worse. Jesus says, “Hey, go tell John this. Tell him what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news, the gospel, being preached to them.”
Which kind of feels like, yeah, but that would make it even worse, because you’re going, “Wait a minute. So all this awesome stuff is happening, but how I’m being written into the story, I’m the guy who takes the risk. I’m the first in line telling everybody this is the deal, and people are getting healed. The deaf are hearing. Well, John the Baptist is rotting in prison.” I don’t like the plan I’ve got. This is not the way I expected it to work. Dead in fight the kingdom to me. That’s heavy.
But that’s also how we’ve all felt in one way, shape, or form. Correct. At any given time, on any given week. Probably multiple times.
Then Jesus says this in verse six. I love watching The Chosen. I’ve been watching it again. I think it’s one of the best depictions of what it maybe could have been like. I love the way you can watch a scene, the timing, the pauses. Obviously we’re taking creative license with that. But it’s way better than how we read the Bible. Verse four, five, six, seven, eight, no pause. We take it in as information. Not like, I just wonder, what was the pause between verse five and six?
“Hey, listen guys, go tell John, the deaf, the blind, the dead, all these things are happening.” Not for dramatic pause, but just the weight of the moment.
And then Jesus says this: “Here’s the deal, guys. Blessed,” the Amplified says, “happy, fortunate, and to be envied is he who takes no offense at me, and finds no cause for stumbling in or through me, and is not hindered from seeing the truth.”
NIV says, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” NLT says, “God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.”
In early times of my life, that didn’t make much sense. I thought, why don’t they all? And then “blessed is he who doesn’t fall away on account of me. What is that? What are you even talking about, Jesus?”
But here’s what He’s talking about. What does fall away mean? Fall away, from the Greek word, which I’m not even going to try to pronounce, means to be offended, to stumble, to be tripped up.
So Jesus says, “Hey, this is all happening, but guess what? Blessed is the person who doesn’t get tripped up when I don’t meet their expectations.”
Because really what John’s saying from prison is, “Hey, I’m offended. Really? All these things happened. I took the risk. I stepped out. I thought this was going to happen. Here was my, let me show you my expectations of how the kingdom was supposed to work out of my life. And it’s not working. So guess what? I’m offended.”
We all as well have our list of “God, I’m offended.” What happens when I feel offended? I lose trust. I disconnect. I move away. And I begin to build my indictments against God.
Do you ever feel like you can say truthfully in your heart, “God, I trust you completely,” but then also kind of underneath it all, you have those lists of expectations? Almost like thinking of John going, “Yeah, this is, I’m feeling good,” but then all of a sudden it doesn’t work out exactly the way that he thought, and he’s probably going, “Yeah, I do trust, but I mean, that’s almost in this question. Are you sure? Here’s because there’s that list that kind of sits underneath all of that.”
I think I’ve seen that in my life a few times where it’s like, “I kind of trust you, whatever, whatever you want to do.” And then He doesn’t do it exactly the way that I thought, and I’m like, “Oh man.” We still have these lists of, “This is how I need it to work,” even though I’m saying I trust you completely.
Yeah. Well, let me make up a part of the story that could be true. Maybe John’s hanging out in prison and people are talking about, “Bro, you know how most people die in here? They cut their heads off. That’s what’s going to happen to John.” But who knows? He’s sitting there talking to the other inmates and they’re like, “Dude, well, go another step farther with that conversation.”
Yeah, they’re sitting there and they’re like, “Wait, aren’t you crazy John, who was talking about the Messiah? And this is what He’s letting you go through? Wow. Bro, why do you trust Him?”
“If this is what He’s letting you do now for Him, but He’s still out there. Everything’s fine. He’s getting more famous. He’s doing all that. He was in a room that had 5,000 people in it and He fed them all. He’s doing all that for them, can feed 5,000 people with a couple of fish and loaves. And you’re lucky to get moldy bread and water before your head gets cut off. And you’re His cousin, and He’s letting you rot in here. You know, most people get their head cut off. I think I need to send Him a letter. Hey, email Jesus. It’s me, your cousin John. Do you remember the time that we wanted grape juice and you turned the water into grape juice because our moms said that we couldn’t?” Sorry, that was a joke about a miracle. But yeah, you’re totally.
Hey, sorry for the interruption here in the podcast, but I wanted to take this moment to invite you into something. If you’ve ever been in a place in your life where you just felt stuck, you felt like maybe you’re just spinning your wheels, you’ve been thinking, “There’s got to be more for me.” I listen to the podcast all the time and I hear Daron talk about “on purpose and for a purpose. I have to discover my purpose.” Well, that feeling is right. You do need to. I want to help you. I want to help be a guide for you to step into who God created you to be. That’s the purpose and the design of what we do with Rogue Collective Coaching.
So if you’re curious, or you’re saying, “Listen, I’m not curious. I know it’s time for me to take action,” here’s your call to action. I want you to go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. I want you to click the button that says “Book a Discovery Call.” I want you to jump on a 30-minute conversation with me. We’ll talk about where you are, and if Rogue Collective Coaching is your next step to help you become who you were born to be. RogueCollectiveCoaching.com. Book a discovery call. Can’t wait to chat with you. Let’s get back to the episode.
Let’s go back to Jesus’s first announcement. “Hey guys, John’s going to jail. Things don’t work out like you think. Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to repent and believe the good news.”
So for the past couple of years, repentance is something that has continually been coming up as a theme in my life. It comes back to a conversation I had going through a discipleship huddle with one of my mentors. I had never been taught this my whole life. Then I got a new kind of download on it last year at a conference.
For me, growing up, repentance, I heard it said, means to turn and go the other direction. Most of the time it was taught in apologize to God. Feel really bad. You better feel as bad about the thing you did wrong. Grovel at His feet, beg for forgiveness. I need to repent. So it’s a really negative emotional situation. And then in the repentance, what I’m saying is I’m promising God I’m going to turn and go the other way. I’m not going to do the bad stuff. So it was behavioral change wrapped in shame and really negative emotions. That for me was my thought on what repentance was.
So Jesus is saying, “Hey, the kingdom of God is here now. There’s a bunch of big new rules and I’m taking the standard higher. You suck at it. You’re going to fail at it. So what you need to do is start feeling bad right now about the way you’re doing things. So emotionally feel terrible, and in your behavior, completely transform the way you’re doing everything. And believe, or else probably bad things, and for sure hell.”
Don’t you love the way that we as people have screwed it up so bad? No, I don’t love it at all. That was sarcasm. But thank you.
The repentance and forgiveness piece. That’s the other thing with it too. The forgiveness side of the repentance, we’ve talked about forgiveness stuff on the podcast before. But when you’re, I’m trying to find my words right now, when you, the way we forgiveness in our family, at least the way we try, is that it’s not just an “I’m sorry” and we move on. Because that’s apologies, which is different.
But this repentance thing of “I apologize, I own my mistake, and then we work to make it better.” We work to go the other direction. Sometimes I think maybe we’ve wrapped the shame piece in it so much as people because we think we have to have that struggle, because the Bible tells us God’s going to love us anyway. He’s going to forgive us. So that feels like I can just do whatever I want and He’s going to forgive me anyway, which is a whole extra issue, compared to the repenting going the other way. We as people have screwed it up by laying all that guilt and shame on top of it.
Yeah. I think because we feel like we have to. I don’t ever see Jesus act that way. It makes no sense. If that’s what He’s saying, John’s going to jail. He says, “Hey guys, listen, kingdom is here. Feel terrible. Change everything you’re doing. Stop all the bad stuff.”
It’s almost like if He was teaching it like that, and if that’s what the word meant, it’s almost like He was giving it as a warning to them: “You see what happened to John, huh? You want worse to happen to you? You better freaking get it straight. You better start living differently. Change all of your behavior, because listen, the kingdom’s here now. And if that can happen to the best.” Because Jesus does say later, “John’s the greatest in the kingdom. Greater will come. But right now he’s the greatest.” If I do that to him, oh, boy, you better stop it. You better start living differently.
But here’s what the word means. This was a life changer for me. The word in the Greek is metanoia. The word for repent. Meta means after, beyond, change, or transformation. Can also mean higher. Noia means to think, to perceive, to understand.
What Jesus was saying was, “The kingdom is here now. I need you to start thinking different. I need you to start thinking higher. I need you to change the way you perceive what’s happening. Because the kingdom’s here now.”
I would credit the majority of life change in my life over the past decade, has not been from changing the way I behave. It started by changing the way I think. We are transformed, Romans 12 says, by the renewing of our minds. It’s how I see, it’s how I perceive, it’s how I think, that leads to my behavior. When I try to behave my way into different thinking, it does not work. I’ve got to change the way I think. I have to repent.
The mentor that taught me another part of this said, “Repentance is agreeing with God.” It’s agreeing with the author, like you were talking about. Trust the story. Trust the story. “Man, this is the way I see it, and the narrative is this and this and this. I’m going to choose to agree with God. His way is better.” Even jail. Yeah. The kingdom’s here.
You even see that back in Old Testament, when the law was being put together. Even the idea of Sabbath, work six days, take a day off. That time and that culture and that understanding would have been like, “What? We can’t survive.” So you had to trust that thing, because you’d want to go, “I don’t know, maybe I’ll work just a little bit.” And you wrestle with it. He’s inviting you into something different. He’s inviting you into something more.
We see that now played out in our own lives. What is He asking you to see differently or trust a little bit more? I love that framing of changing the way that you think. Let’s think differently about this.
Well, to take the Sabbath, let’s say back in the day, you’re breaking the Sabbath. Somebody comes up, “Bro, you better repent.” Better repent of that. That means you need to feel real bad about the fact that you’re breaking the Sabbath, and stop breaking it because God’s going to get you. Rather than what Jesus was saying here, and would have been saying, like, “Hey, bro, listen, I get it. I understand the way you’re thinking about this. You have to work harder because you don’t trust that I can help you. What you’re thinking is that you are your own source. Okay, here’s what I need you to do. I need you to change the way you think. I need you to actually repent and believe I can handle the seventh day.”
But what do we as people do? We put guardrails in that then get blown out of proportion to the point that our oven at home has a Sabbath mode that it won’t work on Saturdays. Yours? Yes. Really? Like there’s a button, a setting you can do that? If Sabbath mode gets turned on, it won’t work on Saturdays. It legitimately locks you out. Was it made by Jewish people? I don’t know. I’ve never even heard of that. So we didn’t know either. Legit, I was cleaning it. We were cleaning, and like a couple of weeks later we went to turn it on and it wouldn’t work. What the crap? Sunday worked fine. Monday worked fine. Next Saturday wouldn’t work. So we thought there was something wrong with it. We called the home warranty company who comes out, charges me 150 bucks to be like, “Hey, you just push that button and it put it in Sabbath mode. That’s why it doesn’t work.”
It didn’t deliver you like an Old Testament Bible and say, “Turn to page for Sabbath.” No. No. We’re like, “Great, thanks for charging me 150 bucks to tell me to push that button ever again.” So this is what we do. We go all that far with it, that something as simple as that to make sure that we don’t, that’s not mind renewing. That’s white-knuckle religion.
That’s what you see from the Pharisee side of things. You see the stories of them coming to Jesus saying, “Well, your disciples are working on the Sabbath, or doing this wrong, or doing that,” because they had that black and white perimeter around everything. “We’ve got to make sure that we please God.” Jesus comes along and goes, “Ah, you’ve got to change the way that you think. So let me heal this guy on the Sabbath.”
Yeah. Because you guys are thinking wrong. You’re missing it. The kingdom is different than you think. It’s going to blow your expectations out of the water. But it’s happening all three. Think about Mary and Martha. When they say, “If you would have been here, my father wouldn’t have died,” He’s not meeting their expectations. What do they do? They get offended. Or when Martha says, “But Mary’s just sitting, talking at the party while I’m doing all this work,” she’s offended. Yeah, “I’m offended.”
Which comes back to one of the things we’ve been talking about and one of the people we’ve been talking about a lot lately, Jamie Winship, and the identity exchange. Yeah. That’s all scarcity. That’s all separation mindset. A worldview, versus the connected kingdom worldview. Absolutely.
I just had to make sure we got Jamie Winship in the podcast this time, because we’re sponsored by Jamie. If you, you’re probably not listening, if you do, we’re going to have him on soon. His post yesterday was actually right in line with all the purpose stuff that we talk about. Yeah. If you are on socials and saw it. By me saying we’re going to have him on soon, doesn’t mean I’ve contacted him or, sorry, I was prophetically putting that out into the world. I’m here for it. Yeah, I’m here for it.
So interesting. So Jesus is saying we’ve got to change the way we think and begin to believe. Agree with God, because the kingdom is here. “John, listen, buddy. The kingdom’s happening in town. Listen, the deaf are hearing. The kingdom’s breaking out. But buddy, you’re blessed when you don’t stumble and fall away when you’re offended by what I’m doing now.” What was edited out wasn’t edited out, but the reality was Jesus was basically, “Blessed are you and you’re not offended or fall away on account of me by my plans, by what I know. Because John, but you’re getting your head cut off by an evil king’s wife’s request, because her young daughter danced provocatively in front of him when he was drunk. And he was like, ‘You’re so beautiful, I’ll give you whatever you want.’ And the evil queen was like, ‘John the Baptist’s head.’ Bro, that’s the worst.”
Hey guys, can’t remember, how did John die? You know, the greatest in the kingdom. Oh, well, this girl probably gave some kind of provocative striptease of some type, whatever, to a drunk king who, his evil wife was like, “This would work. I’ll get whatever I want because he says it. And then it would be a chance for her to get his head cut off. Oh, and by the way, they cut it off, and they bring it down on a platter.”
That’s how his earthly story ended. Indictment that God wasn’t there. Indictment that God doesn’t care. Indictment that John was somehow evil and wrong and God was punishing him for sins. Indictment that, no, none of that.
Why did it go like that? I don’t know. I’m not arguing with Jesus. I’m just saying there probably could have been a little bit of a different plan somehow. You know what I mean? How about one of those last second hail Mary shots where it’s like they were going to cut his head off, and then John disappeared. Could have happened. Didn’t. I don’t know why.
But what Jesus is saying to us is, “Hey listen, here’s how this is going to have to work. I know this is not what you wanted. I know this is not what you expected. But you are so blessed. You are in such a place of peace. You’re in the right place when you can believe higher than you’re offended.”
Take a breath. We’re going to pause this episode and do the second half in the next episode. We got done recording this episode and Coop and I and PJ were like, “Man, we need a few minutes to process.” I wonder if the listener might be like, “I got halfway through this and thought, I need to think through this. I need to pray through some of this stuff.”
So we’re pushing pause on this one to give you some time to process, to pray, to maybe ask God what He wants you to know about what you’ve already learned. Then come back in the next episode. We’re going to go a little deeper. We’re going to walk through the story of Paul and the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament to give a little even more biblical context.
Enjoy the pause. This is a halftime break. Get a Gatorade, maybe an orange slice, and rehydrate your spirit and your mind, and be ready for the next half of this conversation in the next episode of The Daron Earlewine Podcast.