Jason Lyle is the founder of Sacred Grit, a men's personal development brand built around NSR (Nervous System Regulation) a methodology he developed to help men move out of chronic fight-or-flight and into grounded, embodied living. He leads retreats at Elohee in the Blue Ridge Mountains, runs open circles through his nonprofit AIR Georgia, and coaches men one-on-one through his 12-week NSR Integration program. A former pastor turned nervous-system-focused coach, Jason writes and speaks from a deeply autobiographical, theologically grounded perspective shaped by his own path from ministry to somatic work. He's also an avid climber training toward a 2028 ascent of El Capitan, and his book Sacred Grit is available on Amazon

Links

• Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/1935218
• Website https://thesacredgrit.com/
• Book on Amazon https://a.co/d/07pdjXaU
• Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576917194889

Hi, I'm Angel.

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God chose us to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Jason.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Georgia, just about two hours north of it.

Well, about an hour and a half north of Atlanta.

Did you always live in Georgia?

I did.

I was born and raised here in Georgia.

Oh, the accent is so thick.

I hear you.

I hear that quite a bit.

Tell me about your journey and how you came to meet Jesus.

How did that work out?

Well, I would say that, you know, I was quote-unquote saved when I was eight years old.

It was December the 7th, 1979, and I went down the aisle and had this moment where I took the preacher by the hand and did the whole thing.

But even before that, I was always extremely curious around all things spirituality.

And so after that, I read the Bible all the way through for the first time when I was nine years old.

And I have spent a lifetime just chasing after things spiritual.

And that has been an evolution.

I mean, it wasn't something that just happened all of a sudden.

It wasn't something that, you know, I had this one moment in time that I could point to.

There's been hundreds of moments in time over the last 55 years that I could point to to say that were encounters with something much bigger than myself that actually led me to the spot where I am today.

What was it like, though, back then being nine and having that type of vigor for the Bible reading?

What was that like then?

It was very, I mean, I think it was quite comforting just kind of having this understanding at a young age that there was this thing bigger than myself that we call God that was in control of everything.

I mean, I think that's the reason why I wanted to read the Bible through is I just wanted to understand.

I've always been extremely curious.

So I just wanted to understand.

And I came up in a Southern Baptist tradition.

And so to a Southern Baptist, the way that you understood God was to understand the Bible.

And so I spent a lot of time doing that.

I went to vacation Bible school.

I went to youth group.

I went to Sunday morning service, Sunday night service, Wednesday night service.

I just spent a lot of time in the church because I felt like the answers that I was looking for was inside the Bible.

And so I really wanted to know that.

And that led me on a journey to where eventually I ended up in seminary at 33 years old, and I did a degree in biblical theology and became a pastor.

And I was trying to understand why we believed what we believed as best I could.

And so I've just always been very curious.

That power that I always felt like was something bigger than me, I just really was curious around it.

Hindsight is 20-20 most times, yeah?

When you hear back from where you are today, if we jump forward on the timeline and look back, were the foundational blocks of that nine-year-old important for where you are today?

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

Here's the thing, you know, that I've had to come to accept, and I hear a lot of people have conversations about deconstructing their Christianity or reconstructing their Christianity, or they have, you know, bitter feelings toward pastors and people who were, you know, teaching them back then.

But here's the thing, I've come to realize that every one of those people, just like the folks who wrote the Bible, were doing the best they could with what they had.

They were chasing an understanding just like I was chasing an understanding.

So yeah, I mean, I feel like the foundation that I got as a kid, that while I probably had some resentment toward it growing up, was actually very foundational into, you know, finding a way toward faith.

Because you don't know what you do believe until you figure out what you don't believe.

And so all of those different expressions of, you know, me going through different theologies, and reading all manner of books, and going to different seminars, and, you know, coming up with my own belief system, all stood on the platform of, you know, December of 1979.

And I think that that is such a huge part of my story, because it was the beginning of something that has continued to this day.

What does present day look like?

Yeah, present day looks much more, you know, I mean, I'm probably the guy who, when I was in seminary, would say, was going to hell.

You know, I mean, I just believe that God is so much bigger than any sort of doctrine, any sort of writing.

Rather, it's the Bhagavad Gita, or it's, you know, the Torah, or it's the wisdom literature, or it's the Bible as a whole.

God is just so much bigger than that.

And so I've come to realize, much like Rumi said, Rumi said, I searched for God in the synagogues and churches and found God in the most unlikely place inside myself.

And there's good expressions of that.

And, you know, St. Augustine said something very similar.

St. Francis said something very similar.

And I've come to realize that the greatest expression of our faith is to become the best version of ourselves.

And that's what Jesus taught.

You know, Jesus taught, you know, that we were to chase after this thing called the kingdom of heaven.

And the kingdom of heaven began with ourself.

You know, before you help somebody else get the splinter out of their own eye, get the plank out of your eye.

If you have something against a brother, don't come before the altar.

Go and straighten that out and then come back to the altar.

You know, Jesus taught us that the way forward in our spiritual life is to take care of our own life first.

And once we have taken care of our own life, then we have something to give to the rest of the world.

And so for me, that expresses now is, you know, much in this way of I need to make sure that I am living the best version of myself as authentically as I can.

And if I can live the best version of myself as authentically as I can, that's the greatest thing I can give back to the world.

Not more knowledge around a book, not more prayer, not more Bible study, not more any of that.

It's just becoming the best version of myself.

The common sense side of me says, well, that's so simple.

Yeah?

And the part that is so simple is the fact of how challenging it is to actually do it, right?

Like the proof is in the concept.

Why is it so challenging that the temple that we've been given, the opportunity to drive or direct is so challenging to give attention to when it comes to what we desire in proving ourselves?

Why is it so tough?

Have you had that experience?

Getting people to understand putting themselves is important.

I have, and I'll tell you, I have a pretty good idea of what it is.

Those of us who are raised in Christianity, most of us were raised with an idea of original sin, that we were born a sinner, that we came out of the womb already evil in some ways because of Adam and Eve.

And we're also taught that if we can just somehow believe the right thing, then one day when we die, we'll get to go to this place called heaven where everything is perfect.

Now, I mean, you know, that's fine if somebody wants to believe that, but the problem comes in if you believe that you're always a broken, evil person, you have a reason to act like a broken and evil person.

But when you push the honest back onto someone and you say, no man, listen, if you become, if you believe that you are a perfect person, you will become a perfect person.

But see that pushes back onto you, the responsibility of being perfect.

And that, that feels very, very hard to people because I think that most folks, if they can believe that they're broken, they can live inside the comfort of their own brokenness.

And it feels like an old pair of warm blue jeans.

But when you tell them to try on something new that actually makes them responsible, you know, it's like we have all the stuff, the GLP one stuff out the, you know, this new shot that you can take to help you lose weight.

Well, everybody would much rather have the secret shot that helps you lose weight rather than doing the hard work of trying to control your weight.

And I think our spiritual life is the same thing.

So if somebody says, well, I can pray to Jesus and accept him as my Lord and savior and say, I believe in him.

And so I get to go to heaven when I die.

But they're all the while ignoring the fact that most of them live in hell while they're alive.

So it's very difficult to try to get people to understand that while we may one day go to someplace called heaven, I don't know.

I've never been there.

What we can 100% do is create a hell for ourselves here and now through our own decisions.

How are you helping people?

Well, it all starts with learning them how to be embodied.

So I use yoga, breath work, meditation, and cold water immersion as ways to teach people how to be embodied, how to feel their body.

You know, Jesus talked about the body being the temple.

Paul taught about the body being a temple about how we're supposed to treat this thing that we live in.

And the interesting thing is neuroscience backs all of this up now.

You know, we can connect our prefrontal cortex to our amygdala.

We can connect our rational thoughts or our emotional center at will if we just train ourselves how to do that.

And I believe that that is us connecting the mind and the body, and that allows us to have access to the soul.

You know, I think about meditation and in prayer, you know, I was raised that prayer was to be this laundry list of things that I asked God for, but I've begun to realize that when I'm meditating, I'm actually going through the process of what Jesus called being born again and what Paul called being transformed by renewing my mind.

Because what I do is I sit in meditation.

I let all these thoughts come into my mind that I believe are true because they're based off my experiences and my memories.

But then I let them go and come back to pure presence because I believe that is where God lives.

God lives in the full presence.

And in this present moment, if I look at it in a way that I think it should be, or the way that I think it has been, or I think the way it might be, I can't necessarily access God.

But when I remove all that I think is real so that I can actually be left with nothing but exactly what is real in that moment, I can actually find this thing that the Bible calls a still small voice called God.

Message in a bottle, five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

What's a message you'd leave for future Jason?

Don't stop loving yourself radically.

Don't stop.

Keep going.

And even when it feels like it's not the right thing to do, do it anyhow.

Because love covers a multitude of sins.

It's been an honor having this conversation.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

No, just I would love for people to know if they'll love themselves first that everything else will come in place for them.

Links are in the show notes.

If this voice caught your attention, there's a ton more.

Go to the show notes, click the links.

Jason, a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being what is inspired by 12 o'clock.