Episode 312 - Jim Smith, "The Journey of Surrender and Transformation, Part 1"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." In today's conversation, Michael and Jim Smith dive deep into the complex and ongoing journey of surrender and spiritual growth. Michael opens up about his own experience with the painful yet rewarding process of counseling, emphasizing that surrender is not a one-time event but a continuous journey. Jim shares his profound moments of surrender and discusses the concept as a transfer of power that can lead to a new way of being.

Drawing from the insights of William James, they highlight that life's most significant changes often come through slow and subtle conversions rather than dramatic emotional experiences. As they explore the intersection of religion, God's unconditional love, and our personal narratives, they underscore the importance of experiencing and internalizing divine love to truly transform our lives.

This episode also delves into groundbreaking research conducted by Jim Smith and his colleague, Matt Johnson, uncovering nine "leaps" crucial for deep spiritual growth and Christlikeness. Join us as we explore these pivotal moments, the process of restoring one's soul, and the journey toward becoming secure in God's love.

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Transcript

0:56

Well, Jim Smith. Doctor Jim Smith. Welcome back to the restoring the soul program, my friend. Oh, it's so good to hear your voice, Michael. And I'm glad to be on this podcast. I love this podcast. I think this is the. We have 312 episodes currently, and I think you've been on 294 of them. Your math can't be right, but I am happy to be back at least five. We've had you on. We've broken up the episodes. But I'm really excited because we reached out to one another for different reasons because the apprentice gathering is coming up, and that's in September, and that's sold out for the 12th year. This is coming up on 13. This will be 13 years. Wow. And I've been part of it. This will be my fourth apprentice gathering over three years. So I just think it's the greatest thing for people that are interested in spiritual formation and your writings and writings of Dallas Willard and so many others and so many great speakers. So I just want to do a shout out for that at the beginning. But tell me, you let me know that you have been doing some research and you've got some fascinating spiritual data from that that we're going to be talking about today. Let me know some of the background of that. Yeah. Well, first, one last thing I have to say is that though this is sold out, the 2024 apprentice gathering. The 2025 apprentice gathering. Michael J. Cusick is one of the plenary speakers. So, you know, get that early in your calendar, late September, 2025, because you are. Michael is going to be on the stage. Thank you for that shout out. And we've talked about. Have some of the other people we discussed come through? Yes, they have come through. Andy will be there and Kurt Thompson will be there. James K. A. Smith is going to be there and waiting on one or two others. But. But, yeah, so far, yes. Is from that, that dream team that you and I talked about. So it is official myself, Andy Kolber, Kurt Thompson, James K. A. Smith. The other Jim Smith. He's a philosopher at Calvin College for people don't know about him. Yeah. It's going to be really remarkable. I think it'll be great. I do, too. I'm very excited about it. So tell me, what led to the research question, because we both know that all research begins with a question. Yeah. What was the question you were trying to answer? It actually wasn't my question, Michael. It was a colleague of mine, Matt Johnson. Matt and I worked together for years. He helped me in collaborating to create the good and beautiful series. So he was in the very pilot group. He wrote the study guides. Matt's a spiritual director. We've been working together a long time. And he came to me over a year ago and said, I really want to do some research on what are the components when people really have a deep growth, a maturity, a leap, something happens in their journey where they experience something quite profound. And Matt was asking that question because he had been a part of. Has been a part of a lot of these two year discipleship formation programs. Like, one, we had the Apprentice experience school of Kingdom Living, Renovar Institute. There's some wonderful programs and people Matt got to actually witness, watching people have these big movements of growth. And he said, I just want to talk to them and find out what was it that happened to you that led to this? And we're calling them leaps, just because right now that's the word that we like. You have some kind of a big leap in your faith journey. And so I said, well, you know, the Apprentice institute, or an institute, we do research. This is perfect. So we hired Matt a year ago, and he started having these. He calls them learning conversations. He's had 25. They're about 90 minutes conversations with specific questions. And he's been compiling all of this information. And then I went back and looked at all the work that I had done when I created the good and beautiful series. And so then he and I got together and started, we like two mad scientists in the lab, and started saying, okay, what did you see? And then we put it together, and now we've come up with what we call these nine leaps that we have determined. These things happen when someone grows in christlikeness. Well, I'm excited to unpack them. And one of the beautiful things about you and I, not at the end of our careers, but having three decades of experience teaching, you've written many more books than myself. But that what I'm hearing is that you were able to kind of build upon the research and the writing and the thinking that you've done, which allowed you to ask certain questions that might not have otherwise been asked. Because I don't recall that a lot of people were asking questions 30 years ago, when I was much younger in my faith, about what are the maybe unexpected or outside of the box ways of thinking about what helps people to grow spiritually, and especially to have these leaps. Yeah, I agree, Michael, because I was there at the beginning of the formation movement in the early days, we were noting that people were growing significantly. We know Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline, came out in 1978. That was a beginning in many ways for a lot of Protestants to start thinking about spiritual formation, even though we didn't call it that then as often. But we're noticing, boy, people really were changing and growing. But why? What happened to them that made that happen? And then when I was working with Dallas Willard throughout the nineties as his teaching assistant, I'm sitting there at the table watching it happen to every year. It was 40 different people in their demon program at Fuller, and I was watching people go through these changes, and I go, what is happening to them? Why are they different people? And then looking at them 1020 years later, and they're still significantly different than they were before. So I just wanted to know, what's that about? And even at a level with what you do, Michael, I mean, when I was with you for my intensive, what happened, like in that, what happened in that week? Because I was fundamentally, my soul was restored and is restoring, but something happened. And so looking back at all of that and then saying, oh, look at these components. These are the things that happen when significant growth occurs. So let me play with some of these semantics, because the word leap, I really like that leaping forward. It's not just taking a step, big moment. These are moments when people would say, and it's not limited to these words, but I had a breakthrough, or my life was changed. Yes. And doesn't mean that the struggle ends, but I went from a to lmnop in a way that was unexpected, that wasn't entirely my effort, and that it was actually as a result of some kind of new experience, new encounter, new way of thinking, new orientation, something like that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I love that. I'm going to steal that. I like from a to l mnop, because that's what it is. It's like you somehow leapt over some things, and, you know, what is that about what happened that made that change? Obviously, the work of the Holy Spirit's profound in that, but there's a mystery to that. But what are those things? And so as he began having these deep conversations, they were all transcribed. He's reading, he's got hundreds and hundreds of pages, and I've got all these notes as well. And then we put together went, okay, I can see what's happening. And then the work that I've done in formation from, you know, for over, as you said, three decades, I was able to say, oh, that's exactly what William James said, or Willard. Willard writes about that on page, whatever in the divine conspiracy. So we were able to kind of piece together and say, ah, there it is. Now we're not done with all the research. There's going to be some more done. We're not, but we're close enough to have this conversation. Yeah. Like, you may find out that just serendipitously, that every single one of these people were taking over 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C. But it's the apprentice institute blend that you can only buy for$69.95, available in a subscription base. That's right. In the end, yes. It will monetize it. Yes. No. But, yeah, all of these things, none of them were brand new things. Like, I've never heard about that before. But they all gave a kind of context or a crucible for people to have this leap. And it made me think of the story. I think I've shared it with you before. Parker Palmer initially wrote this in one of his books on politics. Actually, it's an old, old book, and I came along it, and a student goes to the rabbi and says, why does the Talmud tell us to place the word of God upon our heart when the Torah tells us to place the word of God in our heart? The rabbi says, because one day your heart will break and the words will fall in. That's why you place it upon your heart. And it feels to me like there's something in these moments where this growth process or the seed has been there all along, and suddenly something breaks open, and there's this surge or this leap that, as I read through this list, and thank you for sending this in advance. And also, Jim, I don't take for granted. Thank you for being willing to discuss this, because this is very, as they would say in academia, nascent research, not published yet. You're still thinking it through. So this is an honor, but I think this will be helpful to people because it names for them their experience that they might not have put words to. I hope so. I mean, yeah, I hope so. It certainly helps me as a practitioner to understand the kinds of things that need to happen for people to grow, but, yeah, for other people to look back and see. Okay, that's an area that I haven't explored yet, because we hope to provide a lot of resources for each one of these nine leaps. So, how would you like to do this? Are these ranked, like, from one to nine? Do you want to just go through them? Well, I would say that one and nine are sort of beginnings and endings, in a sense, but they. But one and nine constantly occur. So because one is surrender and nine is integration. So what we've discovered, Matt and I, in looking at, is that at every one of these leaps, there's always surrender. And at the back end of it, there's always integration. So one and nine kind of, you know, we could start with one as just the general principle of all of them and then unpack a few. That might be good. Yeah. So number one is surrender. And you've talked about that as a fundamental sense that this isn't working. But what have you learned about surrender as one of the leaps? Yeah. At every juncture there's this point at which someone says something's wrong, and I need this to be different than it is. And it can be something as benign as in my own conversion, where my life was really great all throughout high school, but at the end of high school, I had this emptiness, this ennui, the sense that this can't be it. And I went on a search, and I was reading, like, transcendental meditation books. I was reading power, positive thinking, anything, whatever it was, because it wasn't working for me. Even though outwardly my life was great, there was this gap in my soul. And I ended up talking with this guy. He was a part time fireman in Denver and part time street evangelist. And we got connected by the spirit, I believe. And I spent a summer with this guy, reading the Bible, reading Cs Lewis, reading various things. And at the end of it, I finally just said, okay, I'm done with this. And I took my leap, was to say, jesus, I think you're real. I'm not sure, but by faith I'm going to say, I want you in my life. I'm giving you a chance to be lord of my life. And I look at that experience and say, there was a surrender that had to happen. And then what happened is I took that little leap. It was a leap to say everything that I've known, I'm going to just put it behind me and jump into this new way of being, which is a Christ follower. And then we talk about the leaps that always lead to lifts. And the lift came when suddenly I felt like a new person. The scriptures came alive to me. I wanted christian community, and I'd grown up really not liking the church. I wanted to learn hymns and things like what was happening. Something big happened. But surrender was that movement that had to happen when you let go of one to another. I'm curious, Michael, from your perspective as a therapist, what does surrender look like in the work you do? When you're looking at someone that has to, because I suspect many come to you saying, this isn't working in some other form of that. Yeah. I think of surrender as, in part, humility. Surrender requires humility. So sometimes, and I think this was the case for you when you came to restoring the soul, which I want to always caveat that you've talked about publicly. So if there are clients or future clients listening, we're not going to put your story on a podcast. You've decided to write a book about it. But there was a certain surrender in picking up the phone and calling me after you heard, you know, Jonathan Merritt and Ian Cron talking about Enneagram threes. And you said, I'm an Enneagram three. I'll check. I'll check that place out. And I remember that first conversation we had, what, five years ago, 2018? Yeah. Six years ago. Six years ago. And I knew of you, but I hadn't met you. And since then we've become friends. But. But I think there's a humility that precedes surrender, and it might not be a chosen humility. Right. We can either humble ourselves or be humbled, and that humbling can look like suffering, but it requires a relinquishment, a yielding to something bigger than us. So, yes, it's God, but it's also a yielding and a surrendering to the process. Yeah. To a process where sometimes it's like I'm here doing this counseling and what I need to surrender to. I'm doing the painful work, but I'm surrendering to the fact that I'm here for two weeks and I'm not going to be fixed. And doggone it, I want to be fixed and I want this season to be over. I remember when I was going through complex trauma from zero three to roughly ten or eleven, took seven or eight years. And I just would say to my therapist month after month, when is this going to be over? It's so grueling. It's so brutal. And there would be these invitations again and again to surrender. So, you know, this goes with what you're saying, and I'm sure it plays out in the rest of your research, because surrender happens at every stage, but that surrender is not a one time experience. It's actually something that we continue to do. Which reminds me of a quote from Gordon Dalby, that writer of the masculine soul that preceded John Eldridge. He said, the question about surrender is not whether we surrender, but to whom or what we surrender. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, and you're right. I think humility is obviously a huge part of it. But sometimes it is desperation like this isn't working. That realization itself is an act of humility, to say, all of my resources can't do this anymore. And of course, I think that's the beginning with all the twelve steps you've come to admit this situation is unmanageable. So surrender is the letting go of something that I think it has to happen in everyone, because we're going to look at various things that happen along the way. But I love this quote by William James. He says, he calls it conversion. In his great classic book, varieties of religious experience, what he calls conversion, we're kind of calling leaps. But he says a conversion comes from transferring power from one set of ideas to another. And that, to me, I think that movement of transferring power is that surrender. It's like, I didn't understand this, and now I do. I thought, this way, I've got to let go of that, relinquish that way, and accept the other. And it's that transfer of power that William James was so brilliant to see. That's what happened. So, I mean, remember, Michael, the moment that was so profound for me with you was when there I was, you said, like, tell me your story. And I told you the story, and I thought, I'm just gonna let it all hang out. And it was like all the brokenness I could manage to say in I don't what felt like hours, but was probably 20 minutes. But I remember, and when you said, oh, wow, I just admire. You're such a person of integrity. And you used the word integrity. And I thought, was he listening to me? Because I just. I just shared every possible area of brokenness and sin I could think of in my life that got me this place of desperation. But see, what you did was there's that transfer of power from one set of ideas, because I could not believe that I was a person with integrity. But you went on to explain, Jim, look, the fact that you're here is. That's integrity. Like, your soul wants rightness. It longs to be holy. It longs to be good. It longs to your longing for, that is the integrity. And that was a huge conversion for me. That was a huge surrender. Yeah. And it's interesting that you bring up William James, because Bill Wilson quoted at least two different times. I know of William James in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I've spent the last two years going through for my compulsive, overeating issues. And James talked about in the big book that there were conversions in the way that you are referring to that were of. Many were of the academic variety. And he didn't mean that they weren't real, but they weren't this big. Aha. Breakthrough with fireworks. They were more slow and subtle, but there was a accumulation that led to a changed life. And so you are a thinker, you're a writer. And so we're not saying that all of these moments of surrender are going to be big emotional kinds of experiences, but they all have this effect of giving us a new paradigm, a new orientation, a new set of ideas by which to think about, because that idea of integrity, in the example of you and I, it's like, oh, well, if that's true, then all these other things can't be true. Right? It negates. If that's the case, then. Then I've got to let go of some things. Which leads you right back to surrender. Right? Yeah. Is the letting go of those things. So, yeah, every leap, I think, going forward requires some aspect of surrender. Every time I'm stepping away from something, onto something new, and I've got to let go of that, and that's. That's surrendering that. And it's hard because we like comfort and routine and control. And the narratives that I've put into my mind, I think those are what makes my life what it is. So if I'm going to let go, if I'm going to jettison some view about God or myself or the gospel, that's going to be painful. Yes. Number two, in your research, in terms of ways that people experience these major leaps, religion for God to relationship with God. Talk about that one. Yeah. You know, a lot of people, certainly, if you look at, like, James Fowler's work about the stages of faith early on, religion is, for most people, something I do to get God to like me, bless me. I'm engaging in practices, whether it's prayer, going to church, reading the Bible. I'm doing things so because God will be happier with me. And religion, the latin word religio means to connect. So we're wanting to connect with God. But quite often, my religious practices are ways to change God's mind about me. I don't think he likes me. I don't think he's happy with me. But if I fast enough or pray enough or go to church enough or don't quit that habitual whatever, then he'll be happier. So, for many people we've seen in these conversations, there was early on this arrangement that they had with God where I'm doing things to get you to like me, to this discovery of, wait a minute, this God actually loves me as I am, not as I will be. But right here, right now, that's a huge jump for people. You know, like the great Brennan Manning quote, God loves you as you are, not as you should be, you'll never be as you should be. When we saw that people were saying over and over that truth, when that hits you that I am loved by God, because God is love. God doesn't love sometimes and then stops the next day, and then he starts and stops. But that's God's character, God's nature is love. That's huge. And at the same time, here's what's interesting, Michael. At the same time, what we were hearing in these conversations is not only is that God, God is love, but God really is near me, like wants to be close to me. So the nearness of God was right alongside that, because you don't want to be with a God who's this angry judge in the sky who, you know, the mighty smiter who just wants to punish you. But when you realize this God is love and God is here. I had a student this past semester, and he's a big, strong kid from Texas, and we did a number of different breath prayers as an exercise. And I gave them, I don't know, a dozen or so of classic sort of short prayers. And so I said toward the end of the semester, you guys have been using these. Which one was the one that meant the most to you? And again, this is a big, strong, powerful, masculine guy, and he just got a tear in his eye and he said, I just. That breath prayer you taught me, God is here and God is love. God is here and God is love. He said, that's my go to. And when I'm struggling, when I'm in pain, whatever, that awareness that God is here and God is love, that combination we saw, Michael, was huge for so many people. That led to a big leap. You know what? I'm very, very aware of both personally, I hate to admit at almost age 60, but also professionally, that I see people. And Jim, I know that you see and talk to people that have been christians for decades and they know the Bible inside and out, but they've not ever experienced or embodied that God is here and God is love in that kind of way. Yeah. And so, I mean, sometimes I'm in conversations, you know, what is the gospel with different, different thinkers and writers and like, that's the gospel. God is here and God is love. Yeah, it's right at the heart. And that's a big breakthrough. I mean, that was for me, again, personally, I filtered all of these, as did Matt. We're doing, like, did you experience this? And for me, it was when I, my time with Brennan Manning, as I was beginning to develop a friendship with Brennan, it was on a professional level, we were working together. But I remember we were vividly, we were having lunch and he just looked me in the eye with this deep voice that Brennan had. He looks at me and says, you don't believe God loves you, Jim. And I was like, no, I do. I quoted John 316 and. And he goes, no, you don't believe it. In your heart, you don't really believe it. And, you know, thanks to reading the Ragamuffin gospel and then some time I had with rich Mullins, who was also working with Brennan, and Rich and I had these deep conversations. At some point, it sunk in. At some point. I love what you said about it. What is it about? Upon the heart. Not in the heart. Yeah. We place the word of God upon our heart so that when our heart breaks, the words fall in. And that's what Talmud says. The Torah in Psalm 119, for example, it says, hide the word of God inside of you. Yeah, but I love that image because something needed to break inside of me because I was. To be honest, that was a time when I was really thinking of leaving ministry. I mean, I just. Because if you can't embrace God's love for you, well, there's no way to plow around that one. I don't know how I function in ministry. Not actually really believing it. I mean, I could say it, but it didn't get down into my heart. But when that finally broke, that was massive for me to discover this is who God is. I also am sure that you have conversations with people about, you know, I did x, y or z, and so I'm not sure if God's going to let me into heaven or if I'm still saved. And this whole idea, the emphasis that has been such a part of at least conservative Protestant Christianity for so long, and that is that I always have to be making sure that I'm still saved or that I'm not going to go to hell. And the idea that we're talking about here is if I can't feel God's love or if I can't let myself feel God's love here in life, I'm going to get to heaven and be a miserable person because it's all love, it's all being beloved, it's all being embraced, it's all the kingdom. So moving into these areas and experiencing these leaps is not just so that we become more christlike, but it's so that we become more capable of living in the kingdom. Reality. No, I love that. Absolutely. Yeah. Because it's a blockage that will block that from happening if I can't receive it. And again, if God is near, that's what the kingdom is. The kingdom of God is the with God life. So if I don't understand that, then I will. I will stiff arm that and keep it a distance away from me. Jim, let's do two more, and then we'll wrap up this podcast episode. And hopefully you can come back for a second one because we're spending a lot of time on each of these, which I think is really valuable. Number three in your research is unearthing our belovedness. So unpack that. Yeah. Another thing that was consistent along the way. I mean, as I said, the fundamental question is, who is God? And I think right behind that is, who am I? And quite often people create a sense of identity that's based on what other people have said about me, my parents, my authority figures, teachers, friends who do others say that I am. And we build a sense of an identity based on that. And so when we come to God, if we think, well, God's this angry judge who's poised to punish me, then we think, well, God must really hate me. I must be terrible. I must be awful. And some people think that's crucial. If I'm going to accept grace, I need to think about how bad I am. And we all need grace. We're all broken, we're all fallen. We would need God even if we didn't sin. But to come to this understanding that this God who is love loves me, that I am actually the beloved. So the way Matt and I phrase it is unearthing our belovedness. It's always been there. But people who experience the second leap are the ones who have said, something happened in me, something broke. And I realized that I am. I am divinely designed. God knew me before the foundation of the world. I'm deeply desired. God chose me. I'm lavishly loved. Because God is love. I'm forgiven. I'm a sacred story of grace. And when people begin to grasp that idea, it's absolutely fundamental. And Michael, I learned so much from you with attachment theory here because this idea of being seen which you explained to me is, I don't just see you, but I value you. So can you talk about seeing safe, soothed, and secure a little bit? Because I think this is right here. Unless you don't, because I know you talk a lot about that, but I think it fits. No? Yeah, I would love to. And I can say it pretty simply because this is a big theme of my new book, sacred attachment, escaping spiritual exhaustion and trusting divine love. So it's right up the alley. So I have a little chart, actually, of the scene. Sue. Safe, secure, because I love what you can print on the back of a t shirt. So, scene is when the caregiver says, I get you. It's not just physically seeing you, but I get you. I get who you are as a person. Soothe is I've got this. In this particular situation, I have got this situation, and I've got you in this situation, and I'm bringing a sense of soothing and comfort. Safe is I've got this, and I've got you, where whatever is happening to you on the outside, I'm protecting you. And then secure is love has you. And that's the sense that whether it's the parent, the caregiver, or the divine presence of love with a capital l, because scriptures say that God is love. That's what security is. And so when we read all the verses about psalm 27, the Lord is my stronghold. Psalm 62. He is my rock, my salvation, my fortress. That's security. The problem. And this is where it comes back to your research of leaps. We experience a leap when we realize and are able to move into the fact that only to the degree that we were seen, soothed, safe and secure in our childhood and growing up and through our life will we be able to freely receive from divine love. So very often, people hit the roadblock or that this is not working is because they're trying to get something from God that they never learned or were able to receive on a human level in their growing up, when their body and their nervous system was formed. And people are walking away from the faith saying there's something wrong with me or my addictions or my sexual orientation or whatever it might be, is incompatible with Christianity, but it's actually generally just something that has to do with upbringing. And the first point is acceptance. So, yeah, I would go so far as to say we cannot establish ourselves or be established by God in the spirit as the beloved unless we've experienced some belovedness somewhere in our life that's gotten inside of our nervous system and into our body. Okay, so if there was a deficit there, because you talk about attachment deficits, like, if there's a deficit there, it doesn't mean that it's impossible, right? Yeah, no, absolutely. Kirk Thompson would talk about earned secure attachment. I like to use the word gained attachment because evangelical Christians don't like the word earned, like, right. I'm not supposed to earn my salvation. And it almost feels a little bit contrary that if it's love that I'm gaining the ability to receive love, how can I earn it? But they called it in secular developmental research, earn secure attachment. But no, absolutely not. Some people will start with God allowing him to love them in an embodied kind of way through breath, prayer and some of those practices. And other people will have to start with a human being, a therapist, a safe friend, a pastor, I, not going to mention the person's name, but your friendship with an individual who you have just provided a safe embrace for them to be their wild, woolly self that doesn't fit into any box and how that person's heart has softened and opened themselves up to faith because of you seeing, soothing, creating safety and security. So all of what we're talking about in your research, too, it feels like it's evangelistic for people that may not know Christ that make that leap and for people that might be believers or even long term believers that are getting to a place of growth. Because I think the thing that's most compelling about your research is that there's a lot of people that live their whole lifetime in some christian context and as a believer, and they don't actually have leaps. Right. It's not a given that you will grow. True, as Dallas used to say, it is a given that we're being spiritually formed, but that might not be a positive thing. Right, right. But it's not a given that we're actually going to grow into more love and fruitfulness and maturity. No, absolutely. I just came actually from a lecture with some undergrad students, and we were talking about how, I think I quoted Brennan Manning once again, who said the greatest cause of atheism are christians who are not christlike. And that is a real problem in our churches, that people, you can be there for decades and are you nicer? Are you loving? Are you kind? Do you have any joy? And yeah, these leaps aren't a given. And so it's typically, it happens. That's one of the things that Matt and I sat back and realized that the people who we are doing this research with, the people who've had the leaps are people who at some point really got serious about their life with God. That's why they would join, like, a two year intentional formation and discipleship group and spend money and time, because they're, in a way, desperate. And so. Yeah. How do you transfer this to the masses of people? That's another question. But we do realize our research is a bit skewed because we're looking at this smaller percentage of people who are very dedicated. Right. It would also be interesting at some point to do the same kind of learning conversation with people that have moved in the other direction where maybe they've lost their faith and they might see it as a gain, but where from the pastoral perspective, it might be seen as a loss. Yeah. Interesting. But let's finish with number four for this episode. And it's interesting that the first four provide kind of a foundation, and then there's a shift into practice, resources, relationships. Yes. So these four are kind of the big framework, still maybe four legs on the table, re narrating the big stories. A shift in the dominant framework. What's going on with this one? Yeah. So it's really, I think when you take numbers two and three, you've got that God is love and that I am the beloved, and those are foundational. But we also saw that people made a big shift in restorying everything. Like, as you said, the implications are massive. If God is actually love, if I am actually a beloved, that's going to mean I've got to let go of a whole lot of stuff. And, like, again, back to my time with you. I mean, I had to realize, as I walked away from that intensive, I realized there's stuff I have to get out of my story. Like, they don't belong in my story anymore. Now my story is going to be defined in a new way. So what we were seeing in the conversations is people at some point had to restory their soul. There's a pun intended there, Michael, on your, on your podcast and your ministry. But that's what it was. I have to restory this because the old story was broken. It contained falsehoods, things that just don't work. And we saw that's, again, like I said, number nine is integration now. It's that integration that happens where my stories now begin to reflect the truths of the things that were a part of leaps two and three. Jim, thank you so much for unpacking this research about the leaps forward. You had said earlier that this will likely become a book and can't wait to read that. But thanks for being willing to come back for a second episode. So as we wrap up now, I just want to say as people are listening to this conversation and you've been on the podcast before and if they're drawn to this conversation and to the way that you talk about God and life with God, please check out the Apprentice institute and it's got its own website, the Apprentice Institute. There's the annual apprentice gathering and maybe you're somebody that is considering a graduate program or certificate and friends university offers those. And as Jim talks about talking with undergrads and the kind of conversations that happen there, maybe you long for those kinds of conversations. Check out friends University, their certificates, their programs, their degrees. They have an excellent counseling program as well as well as the Apprentice institute. But Jim, I'll look forward to talking to you again for episode two. Absolutely love it. Michael, I learned so much from you, man. Let's keep going.