Brian C. Steele is a pastor, speaker, and author. After spending nearly a decade studying Jesus’ parable of the hidden treasure, he loves helping people to find God’s kingdom right beneath their feet. His teaching venues have ranged from thousands of people in “megachurch” sermons to workshops and one-on-one coaching. Brian is the author of “The Kingdom Field Guide” - an Amazon #1 bestseller that leads people through immersive experiences to live in God’s kingdom. He is also a professional geologist and is in (partial) recovery from a bird-watching addiction. He delights in exploring the alpine wilderness with his wife, Katie, and dog, Banner.

Find Brian’s book at: https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Field-Guide-Finding-Really/dp/1952602173

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are. So that's what you'll find here.

Walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

God's kingdom won't become real until you change the story in your head that you are actually living in God's really real kingdom and that you are part of the unfolding of that kingdom.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide and Today. I'm so excited to have Brian Steele on the POD today.

He is a pastor, a speaker, and an author. And his work is focused on discipleship, leadership development, and small groups.

And after spending nearly a decade studying Jesus's parable of the hidden treasure, he now loves helping people to find God's kingdom right beneath their feet.

And Brian teaches and has taught in venues that have ranged from thousands of people making church sermons to conferences, retreats, workshops, and one on one coaching. And today we get to hear personally from Brian.

He's the author of the Kingdom Field Guide, which is an Amazon number one bestseller and it leads people through an immersive experience to live into God's kingdom. He's also a professional geologist and is in partial recovery from a bird watching addiction. I'd love to hear more about that.

He delights in exploring the alpine wilderness with his wife Katie and their dog Banner. And so there's so much we get to explore with him today. Brian, thank you for hopping on the podcast.

Thank you, Willow. Looking forward to the conversation.

Yeah, you, you've been a geologist, a pastor, and now you're an author. Can you kind of invite us a little bit into your vocational and life journey?

Yeah, I, I have this, this scientific sort of mind. And so my geology career actually started with my English professor or my English teacher in high school of all places.

And he took me and a couple of buddies out rock climbing and for whatever reason, I just got really fascinated with. With rocks. And so that led to getting undergraduate and graduate degrees in.

And fun fact, Willow, for your audience is that I was your geology instructor, which I think you remember as my, as a chemistry class, which maybe says something about my ability to teach geology.

No, you know what, that says everything about how unscientific my mind is. And also I was a complete wreck when I was in your class and knew nothing, nor believed anything of God.

So to be on this podcast is kind of a full circle experience. Me, I'm laughing and I'm getting a little curious.

That's so funny. But I absolutely love geology. Geology is a narrative science.

So when you look at rocks, the geologist is always trying to tell a story about what happened and why is that mountain there and how did that volcano get there and what's that fault zone doing there? And it's a narrative science.

The geologists become pastor, and it's like those stories are a dime a dozen. I was volunteering in a youth ministry at a church in the Pacific Northwest at Christ the King, and I really loved it.

I was shocked at how much I loved ministry. It surprised me and even alarmed me, and I even thought, oh, like, I might be in trouble here.

The church decided it would be a good idea to offer me a job as a pastor, even though I had no formal training in that whatsoever, no seminary background or no Bible school.

And so I did youth ministry for a couple years, and then I think I aged out of youth ministry because, you know, I began this career, this pastoral vocation age in my 40s, and if you can't throw a dodgeball and stay up all night multiple days in a row, you can't do youth ministry. And so I aged out and. And that then started me. Yeah, you can only do that for so long. You need to be in your 20s and 30s.

But then I switched over to doing discipleship and working with small groups, working with adults, and I absolutely. It was a massive jump for me. It was a hu change, and I'm so glad that I made that change, and I'm very satisfied in what I get to do now as a pastor.

And you just came out with this book, Kingdom Field Guide, and it's already an Amazon number one bestseller. What inspired you to write this book?

Yeah, so I had. Well, it's. It's a perfect. The book is a perfect blend of actually my faith and my geology background.

So in geology, if you really want to learn geology, you can read books or you can be in a lab, but if you really want to understand and learn geology, you're going to go on field trips and you're going to get out into the mountains, you're going to put your nose on rocks and you're going to hike through the woods. And it's really the only way you can learn geology truly is by going into the field. And I saw a gap.

How we learn about God's kingdom in that for the most part we'll listen to some sermons and we'll read some books, but we don't take it much farther than that. But I discovered that God's kingdom is really real. And the way that Jesus taught about the kingdom was through immersive experience on location.

And I saw a huge gap and how we learn about the kingdom. And so a big chunk of my Christian life, Willow actually didn't even think God's kingdom was real, or it definitely wasn't living as if it's real.

But so in the Field Guide to God's Kingdom, it's designing these immersive experiences so people can live and experience and encounter the kingdom of Christ in very practical, real ways in their normal, ordinary life.

I love that I have had a chance to, to read it and so I have so many questions for you. And I want to start with a really kind of basic question because you've mentioned it multiple times. How would you define this phrase, God's kingdom?

Yeah, it's a great question and it's super important because that is our beginning place. I would say God's kingd is a kingdom in all of the normal senses, in any sense that we think of.

Any kingdom of all, whether it's Great Britain or whether it is Thailand. Any kingdom has a king or a monarch has a throne. And that throne has power and authority.

There's citizens, there's territories, there's laws, there's an economy, there is. There's roles, there's servants, there's ambassadors.

So God's kingdom is a really real kingdom and that all of those things that any normal kingdom has, God's kingdom has. And that's what makes it really real.

And so I actually draw an important difference between thinking something is just real as opposed to something being really real.

And until we get to this place where God's kingdom is really real, meaning it impacts every moment of our daily life, then we'll live as if it doesn't exist or as if it's something foggy or future really far away.

I love that. And I think so often sometimes it's almost like we started playing church and forgot who we're talking about.

The real, alive, personal God who's here. In our midst. And you're inviting us to recognize that you're passionate about people truly experiencing God.

Where did this passion of yours come from?

Yeah, it came from two different periods in my life that were absolutely miserable and a type of hell on earth. And so early in my life, in my Christian life, I was in a cult and experienced some of the worst of spiritual abuse.

And I experienced church at its worst.

And for people that are listening in the audience, if you have church wounds, you know how deep those wounds go and how long they last and how slow they are to heal. And so I just have some really terrible experiences in Christian malpractice. And so then when I got out of the cult, I swung the other way.

The pendulum went too far the other way. And I had this period where I was just almost completely disengaged with my faith, and I went the opposite direction.

And I would go to church, but it wasn't really compelling. I was going through some motions.

There was, you know, look at my Bible, and I'm blowing the dust off of my Bible every once in a while, but it was too painful to really connect with God through faith because of the wounds that I received. And so those two different periods of my life, one of them, it just reminds me of. Of Egypt. So religion can be a type of slavery.

And then that second period in my life just reminded me of a wilderness, just wandering dry, confused, moving in circles and loops, singing, direct, directionless, parched, thirsty, hungry, like deeply unsatisfied. And. And my passion for God's kingdom came out of those two primary experiences.

I am listening to you, and I feel like so many of us can resonate with this woundedness from Christian malpractice.

And I'm wondering, even just to pause for a second, I want to ask you, how would you suggest those of us who've experienced that would find healing for the Christian malpractice we've encountered?

Yeah, it's. It's such a good question. I had. So coming out of the cult, I had professional counseling that.

That involved multiple levels, including the psychological baggage that I had, the emotional baggage, the social, the theological, the spiritual baggage, and church wounds or spirit, you know, spiritual abuse or wounds from. In spiritual experience. It doesn't just affect you in a spiritual way. It bleeds over to all of these different areas in your life.

And so it affects your personality and your psychology and your. And your maturity and your growth. And so I am a huge proponent of counseling, professional counseling.

And I wouldn't even say you necessarily need Christian Counseling. If you've experienced church wounds, you need a good counselor.

So I'd much rather have a good counselor who's not a Christian than a mediocre counselor who is a Christian. Because a lot of these issues are connected. Very skilled counselors can be able to help you whether, regardless of where the wound comes from.

So if I break my femur, I'm not necessarily going to be checking the doctor's theological credentials. Right. Is this surgeon really good at fixing broken femurs? And so I would just say find a good counselor number one.

And then the second thing is, is you have to take a whole life approach if you're going to heal from any kind of wound. So it's not enough just to say, well, I need to pray more, I got to go to church more. I need to. It really is. We're whole integrated people.

And so the path comes through being a whole person and a healthy person in all the different ways. So it means bringing wholeness to your relationships, your. In your body. It means eating well, sleeping well, getting good exercise.

It means developing your personal relationship with the Lord, but also finding a church that I would say is healthy enough. Like, don't look for the perfect church. What I'm looking for is a church that's messed up in a healthy way.

If it's messed up in a messed up way, like, run as fast as you can from that church. But the very best we can get in Christian faith is a church that's messed up in healthy ways.

Meaning, like, they're pretty transparent about their, you know, about what's jacked up about the organization. And there's humility and there's accountability. And so eventually, through your church wound, you need to get back to biblical community.

And that's going to be part of your road, your road back to, to being healthy and whole.

Such good advice. And, you know, as we talk about being wounded by the church so often, that can translate.

And we really project a lot of our experiences with Christians onto who God is.

And he can, you know, become the bad guy in our lives or someone we want very little to do with, or someone we run from, or someone we no longer think is real. And you talk a lot in your book about how real God and his kingdom are.

One of the scriptures I love so much is in Genesis 28, where Jacob said, surely God was in this place and I was unaware of it.

Wow.

How much of our faith do we sort of base God's realness on? You know, we claim like, I'm hurting or you didn't show up in this circumstance or Christians are lame, so you're lame. Or you can answer my prayers.

And so therefore you're not real versus our awareness. Like, I was unaware you were in this place and I was unaware.

I've been meditating on that the last few days and like, it, like it gives me goosebumps to consider that I, I am so often unaware of the reality and presence of God. And you know much about how God is real.

So how can we become people who instead of sort of projecting our pain and the circumstances we don't like onto God's reality, we instead awaken to his presence by becoming more aware of it?

Yeah, well, the premise of, of the Kingdom field guide is that you can't see what you don't see. And so much of the story in Scripture is an invitation of God. He's begging and pleading us to seek him and seek him in all of our circumstances.

So seeking him in the middle of our suffering and our trial. And we have to get to this place where we reconcile that God allows suffering because ultimately it is what brings us the greatest good.

And so in the middle of the suffering, in the middle of the trial, in the middle of the nightmare, he's not going to remove the suffering with his magic wand because that leads to a lesser outcome. He's asking us to seek him and to find him in the middle of our suffering or of our trial.

And so I say that we can't see what we don't seek because our brains are absolutely brilliant in filtering out what we decide isn't important.

And things that are right in front of our face can be perfectly invisible because we're not paying attention to it, including God himself, including God's kingdom. And this is just one example. So I had a.

Somebody from my congregation was meeting in my office and because I'm still a geologist, I have literally hundreds of rocks in my office. And they're on the desk and on the shelves and on the little coffee table. And she came in and we're talking, we had hour long meetings.

She even moved some rocks out of the way on the coffee table so she could put her cup down. And at the end of the meeting I was like, oh yeah. And I just made this offhand comment like, sorry for all the rocks around here, I'm a geologist.

And she goes, oh my goodness, I didn't even see these rocks. She didn't even see them. Because why would you look for rocks in a pastor's office? There's no good reason for that.

And so because she wasn't looking for them, she couldn't see them. They were literally invisible. And we can't see what we don't seek.

WILLOW and unless we say that God is most important, Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And he's really saying, pay attention to it. Make it top of your mind, make it the most important thing in your life.

And I believe that if we're just seeking God's kingdom, like, oh, where are my car keys? It's not enough. It won't seem real. We have to seek his kingdom as if we're looking for a lost child.

That level of hunger, thirst, even maybe desperation. And when we have that kind of time and energy and attention and focus, all of a sudden God's kingdom, you're going to start seeing everywhere.

And it's been there the whole time. It's always been.

Yeah, that's one of the things that blew my mind when I first started following Jesus was the more I look for him, the more I found him. And I started. My mind was blown on a daily basis. And I want to talk more with you about seeking and kind of breaking that down a bit.

But before we move on, you said something a little while back, back about seeking while we're suffering.

And I want to, I want to stop there for a second and press in on you because I think a lot of people, you know, they'll hear a pastor, someone who wrote a book about God and you know, they'll be like, of course they're telling me, like, oh, when you're suffering, seek God.

And why I want to press into that is, is there a time in your own personal life where you experience, experience suffering and what did it look like for you to still see God in the midst of that suffering? Yeah, because I think people will hear you more if I pause and allow you to share that a bit.

Yeah, I had. So. So four years ago, my wife Katie, we discovered that she had a brain tumor, a walnut sized brain tumor.

And our whole world in an instant crumbled and collapsed.

It was wrapped around her pituitary gland and she didn't even realize it, but she'd been slowly going blind for a number of years, but it was so slow because it was also around her optical nerve. She was getting bumps on her legs and bruises and I'm just being clumsy. No, she was actually going blind and she didn't even know it.

So when we discovered her tumor were in the hospital and she's in the MRI tube. And I had this very powerful sense and I'm sitting there holding her hand and we got the very worst news possible.

I had a very powerful sense that we weren't in an MRI room, but we were in the holiest of holies. And God was present with us in that moment. And with no guarantee of any outcome, I just knew that he was there. And I actually prayed.

I remember I was holding her hand. She's getting her MRI for this tumor they found.

And I remember saying, God, I'm going to need you to give me something to get me through this because I know this is going to be really hard. And I was thinking like some great Bible verse that I'm just going to be able to latch onto.

And what God said, I heard him so clearly was Brian, instead of holding on to a Bible verse, I want you to hold on to me. And his presence was so real. You know, we were praying for miracles. We had hundreds of people praying for us and we didn't get it.

She had a nine hour brain surgery and a long, long recovery. And that was a nightmare. And yet in the middle of it, I felt very close to the Lord.

And honestly, it wasn't even that I had all these great spiritual disciplines going or I had these great. Sometimes the very most I could because it was really difficult. I was numb.

I would sit on my back porch because I had to be totally quiet because the slightest little sound, it would feel. Katie would feel like a nail was being driven through her head in her recovery. So I had to be so quiet, the most I could do is sit on my back porch.

And I just said, lord, would you just sit and be with me? And I felt like he was sitting with me. And that was enough. It was just enough that he was with me.

And there was no miracle other than the surgery was successful. I mean, that actually is miraculous. But it was just, I was intentional in seeking him and it was enough to know he was there.

You know, I, I love that you shared that story because I think in, in so many ways. And I, and I remember when you guys were walking through this, because of course we live in the same community and I was praying for you guys.

But for people to hear that you're not just one of these pastors who's like, you need to seek God while you suffer, but you have actually, like, you've walked through suffering and had to figure out how to find God in the midst of it. When you imagine going through that and not finding God, not seeking God, I mean, how Would that have changed that horrific experience?

It would be. It would be unbearable. I mean, it was unbearable to begin with. But if there was, and it wasn't even, I think I.

We had hope, but there was no guarantee of any kind of outcome. It wasn't like, oh, I had this absolute confidence, everything's going to work out great. I actually didn't.

But the strength came from the presence of God and me being present to him and knowing that he was present. And so, Willow, I just discovered something about the parable of the hidden treasure a couple days ago.

Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man finds and then covers up and then in his joy goes and sells everything and buys the field. And I've been saying, what exactly is in that treasure box that makes it worth selling everything?

And there's some of the things that we'll just call the obvious things, like there's blessings and there's royalty and there's an inheritance and there's a real kingdom in there. But what I discovered a couple days ago, that there is also suffering inside that treasure box that's part of the treasure.

The suffering itself is in some way a treasure that's worth more than everything that you have.

It reminds me of Isaiah where Scripture says, by his wounds we are made whole. It's so fascinating that it's actually through suffering that we find wholeness.

Yeah.

I love what you're inviting us to see in that parable.

You know, you have a quote in your book and, and you said something similar a few minutes ago ago, but the quote that I wrote down in your book that I is stuck with me is you can't see what you're not looking for. Can you kind of break it down for us? What is a day in the life of looking for God or seeking God? What. What can that look like for us?

Because I think you're absolutely right. You brought up like a lot of Christians just go to immediate things, like, I have to read my Bible.

Not that we shouldn't, but it's like we have like a couple, like back pocket things and then that's. And then we go throughout our whole day until the next one.

So it begins with the narrative that's in your head.

And God's kingdom won't become real until you change the story in your head, that you are actually living in God's really real kingdom and that you are part of the unfolding of that kingdom. So stories in our head, personal stories, are very strange because they actually shape what we see and hear and what we do.

And if the story in your head is that the Christian life is about going to church, you won't be able to see the kingdom right in front of you. You have to actually begin with looking at what are you actually telling as the story of your life. Do you believe that you're in God's kingdom?

Do you believe that you're royalty? Do you believe that there is actually a throne right now and the king of kings is sitting on that throne and has all authority in heaven and earth?

Do you believe that you have. That you're a child of the king? Do you believe that you are an ambassador of the king? Do you believe that his kingdom is coming in and through you?

So apart from that story being established in your head, you won't be able to see it. So I would say so. When I wake up, this is just getting a little peek behind the curtain.

Not every day, but most days before my feet hit the ground, I actually wiggle my toes as a reminder that I'm living in God's really real kingdom. And that every step I take is part of a narrative of his kingdom coming.

And so I begin before I even get out of bed, that that story in my head shapes what I'm able to see. And so then as I'm going throughout my day, I have this image actually of, okay, let's make this pivot to Disneyland, right? It's the Magic Kingdom.

It operates in the same way as any other kingdom. And so picture this guy named Carl working in Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom. He's got his little ears on Carl Street.

He sweeps the streets of Disneyland. And he's gonna do everything really, really excellent as he's working because he wants that amusement park, the Magic Kingdom, to absolutely shine.

So when people come there and they're experiencing the Magic Kingdom, they're gonna elevate and praise the name of Disney.

And everything Carl does is so well, like, he's not going to leave a piece of popcorn on the street because he's working for the renown of the mouse, right? He really believes in what he does. So now if you just picture Carl, he's off work, but he still has the little mouse ears on.

He's driving through LA rush hour traffic and somebody cuts him off and he goes, gets out of the car still in his little Disney uniform, his mouse ears, and he starts cursing at the driver and the other car. Well, he is, he is dishonoring the name of Disney by the way he conducts himself.

And somebody's going to see that he's an employment, he's an employee of Disneyland.

And that person who's getting hollered at the renown and the honor and the glory of the mouse is going to be diminished because of the actions of Carl.

And if we take that same thing and apply it to the very practical details of our lives, the way that we conduct ourselves in public and in private reflects on the name of King Jesus.

So if we're throwing elbows in Costco so that we can get the free sample instead of, you know, there's that one sample left next to that little toaster oven and you're super hungry and you're like throwing elbows so you can get that free sample.

If you're a Christian and somebody had just got shoved out of the way, you've just diminished the name of Jesus in that moment, by the way you've conducted yourself.

You give us so much to think about. And I have so many questions I want to ask you.

You talk in your book that Jesus unveiled his kingdom by using ordinary objects, which is really interesting that you talk about this because you're a geologist and you love rocks and birds and you say what is grand often lurks within that which seems bland. Can you tell us more about what you mean?

Yeah. Well, so Dallas Willard, he puts it, he puts it way better than I do, obviously.

So he says the obviously well kept secret of the ordinary is that it's made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows and that the very smallest ordinary details of our lives intersect God's kingdom.

And the life of God flows through how you conduct your emails, how you send texts, how you do your taxes, how you grocery shop, how you spend your money, how you dress yourself, how you dress your kids, how you wear a mask or don't wear a mask and that if we separate our lives into this sort of, oh, there's my spiritual life, that's the stuff I do on Sunday at church. And then there's the rest of my life.

It's like, no, Our daily lives are the place primarily where God's kingdom is going to come and where we're going to find flourishing and thriving. And so when Jesus taught about his kingdom, he used the very most ordinary things that people would imagine immediately recognize.

So they were an agrarian Society. So he talked a lot about seeds and things growing and weeds. They also were fishermen. So we talked a lot about nets and fish.

And he used the most ordinary stuff that they were most familiar with. And so he was infusing their ordinary world they intimately knew with his extraordinary kingdom. Because they're really one and the same thing.

They're not. You can't separate them. His kingdom has dominion over the smallest detail.

And so that means that the normal things we do has the opportunity to become extraordinary and have deep meaning and deep significance. If we're using that so that God's kingdom is advanced, his rule and reign.

I love the invitation that you give us that we can find God and experience his kingdom on a daily basis.

I'm wondering, you know, you shared a little bit about when you were in suffering and you experienced presence, but I'm also wondering, just even in the last week or month, if you could give us some examples of how you've experienced God and His kingdom in your own life or in the lives of some people around you to give examples of how you see this to be true and real.

Both Katie and I, my wife, because we experienced flourishing and thriving. And one way that we do that is every single week, we have a full day where we set aside all of our work.

We turn off our phones, we're not paying bills, we're not doing chores. It's a full day for delight. And when God's kingdom comes, it brings delight and joy and flourishing.

And so that is a very practical thing that we can do, is if we're not setting time aside to enjoy and delight, we're going to be missing some of the best parts about God's kingdom. And, you know, if we begin back in Genesis, that picture of the garden, it was, like, teeming over. It was beautiful. It was like, that's what.

That's what happens when his kingdom comes. It's fruitful, it's blessing, it's overflowing goodness. It's very good.

And so part of what makes kingdom seeking possible is establishing a rhythm where you're. Where you're delighting. And that'll look very differently for different people.

For my wife and I, we're very connected with, you know, with the natural world. And so it's getting into the backcountry or the alpine or backpacking. It's like bird watching. It's Paying attention. So delight is a discipline.

It's paying attention to what God's made. That's beautiful, that is enjoyable. And so a healthy Sabbath rhythm or a rhythm of rest.

It's not like this list of, you can't do this, and you can't do this, you can't do this. It's a gift where God is saying, would you spend an entire day with me delighting in things that I've made delightful?

And that gets really practical because then I believe that one day of rest and delight will overflow to the rest of your week. And it's very countercultural because it is hard to turn off our phone. It's hard to stop work. It requires trust.

It's like, lord, you don't know the projects that I have that are not done, and the bills are unpaid, and, you know, I gotta fix that fence. And there's that relationship over there that's broken.

But I believe that rest is the other side of the coin of tithing, where it's like, lord, I can't afford to be generous because look at all the time, the demands on my money. But I think it's just the opposite. It's like, we can't afford not to be generous because the blessings are too many.

And with rest, it's the same thing. Lord, I can't rest. I got too much to do. My time is like, I don't have enough time.

It's like, no, we can't afford not to rest because there are so many demands on our time. Oh, my goodness. I apologize. That's on my computer.

No, you're fine.

Okay. And. And so that's it. It's like kingdom seeking means we're giving God our time.

We're giving God a full day if he can do it a half a day, a quarter of a day, whatever it is, so that we can delight. And I just feel like it's so important.

Yeah. This year, one of the things.

One of the practices I started doing was I got a health journal this last year during COVID because I had a health scare. And I. I started to see how everyone around me in myself, everything was canceled.

And so just, you know, you start to get discouraged because the wedding's canceled, the concerts canceled, the events, you know, and so I started actually scheduling in this calendar, I would plan joy, so I would actually schedule.

I love it.

In the same way, I schedule stuff for my work. I actually schedule things that I find joy doing. So I'll actually schedule, like, go for a walk with a girlfriend.

So Good.

You know, go get a massage. And we all have different things that bring us delight and bring us joy.

But the more that I could actually prioritize and plan joy, those moments gave me moments with God where I got to this place, my spirit would get to a place where I'm like, I, man, life is such a gift. God, this is such a gift. You gave me, this life and I'm on this walk and man, that sunset is blowing me away.

Wow.

But I needed to do that. I needed to make space and margin.

And even in your challenge on a day of rest, it's, it's kind of sort of prioritizing and giving margin and making space to be present to the Lord. He's. He's waiting, he wants to meet us, but we have to actually make it happen.

That's right.

And Willow, I think if we're connecting that to suffering, if you have a normal rhythm of joy in your daily life, then when suffering does happen, I believe you're bringing that joy into the suffering. Whereas.

And that's why I think when Katie went through her brain tumor, because we already had this rhythm of delight and being present to the Lord, it was already reflexive. It wasn't like we had to learn how to do that when the suffering happened. It's something that naturally carried over.

And so I would say establish a practice.

Even like, if it's even like five minutes, take time to be intentional, to slow down, to pay attention, to actually look at what is beautiful and incredible that's immediately around you. And if you develop that into a discipline, then when it hits the fan, because it will, something's going to happen. We're going to go through a trial.

We will suffer.

We've developed that muscle, if you will, and we have, we have a strength and a resilience that we'll be able to find a type of joy even in the midst of suffering and maybe even because of it.

So good. What are some of the mindsets or attitudes that can get in the way of us finding and seeing God?

For me personally, pride and envy have been really lifelong battles. And it was important for me to separate those two. Like, what I thought at one point was pride actually turned out to be envy. And so envy.

In my struggle with envy, I discovered envy is a feeling of sadness when you think something good happening to somebody else.

And that really came to light when I was like, at our church, we'd have these Monday morning, we call it, or Monday afternoon stand up meetings where people would come around and they would talk about all the great things happening in their ministry. And I found myself when somebody would have this really cool thing, I found a sadness because that didn't happen to me.

And originally I thought it was pride and it just couldn't go away.

And it was like I would just be getting, I'd get flattened every Monday at 1pm and I came to hate those meetings because I was dreading my experience there and the things that I was feeling. It was really kind of gross inside. But once I discovered that it was envy and I gave it the proper name, it completely broke open for me.

And what, what I think I heard the Lord said is, Brian, my kingdom cannot come in and through you. If you feel sad when goodness happens to other people, because that's what happens when God's kingdom comes, he brings goodness.

And so I would say if people are struggling in encountering God in a personal way or discovering God's kingdom as real, it might not be pride or envy.

But usually you know that one thing you really struggle with and it's not just pull yourself up by the bootstrap, but actually make it a meeting place with God and say God and just be super honest with them. And so in my envy I developed this practice. Anytime I started that I got that feeling of sadness. I'd use it as a trigger.

I'd say, Lord Jesus, right now I'm feeling sad because something good happened to somebody else and not me. So would you meet me in this? And my sin actually became an ally.

My sin became a trigger that pointed me to my need for Christ and I got good at catching it before it actually developed into full blown sin. Let me say it differently. Temptation becomes your ally.

Because if the temptation is an indicator that sin is about to happen, I use the temptation to immediately invite Jesus into the moment to be present with him so that the temptation wouldn't bloom into sin. And so then the thing that I dreaded actually became a place of blessing, the envy which hasn't really gone away, but now it's not controlling me.

I know what it is. And when it surfaces immediately I'm turning to Christ and it's just driven me closer.

And it might be if God is hidden, there's that type of work that the Lord is inviting you into.

I love the power in naming, the mindset attitude that is keeping you from finding and experiencing God in internal life. I love that you are bold and brave about your prayers, about it with God in the moment when it's happening.

And I love that you're being this Honest about this. This. I. There's a lot of pastors who would never share that. So I'm. I'm over here clapping.

Oh, yeah, it's so.

We can all so resonate with that too, in, in such huge ways. You know, you talk a lot about the parable of the treasure, and, and I'd love for you to maybe share a bit about that.

And then my, my final question, as you do, is when you collide with Jesus in your book, you talk about Jesus being the treasure. And I'm curious, what are the things about Jesus that make you hope in him in such a way that you'd sell everything and bank on his reality?

Yeah, I think so. When we're reading the parable, the Hidden Treasure, our first reaction, it probably should be skepticism.

I think there's an appropriate level of skepticism. Like, really, Jesus, you're asking me to give up everything and what am I getting in return?

And that parable is actually set up exactly the same way the Nigerian email scams are set up. Like, are you familiar with that? You probably got this email, it's like, congratulations, we're going to deposit $20 million in your bank account.

We just need you to wire us the $10,000 transaction fee.

And it's set up in the same way because Jesus is saying, hey, listen, you give me everything that you have, and I'm going to give you everything that I have.

And unless we trust him, there's no reason why we should go and have the mother of all garage sales so we could buy some piece of property with a treasure box. It would be foolish, in fact. And so when we read the parable of the Hidden Treasure, we're faced with a question of trust.

Do we really trust Jesus that what he's offering us is so much better than what we already currently have? And we have to wrestle with that. And that's why I've been in this parable for eight years. It's a clown car. There's more that keeps pouring out of it.

It's like, there's end. And because what I'm discovering is the riches that are in that treasure.

Like Daniel 7 says, this, Daniel 7, 27, it says, it says, all of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the Saints of the Most High. All of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, which means everything.

All of the kingdoms, all of the vastness God is intending to give to us as a gift. And what He's Asking for us is that we just give him everything that we have in return for everything that he has. But there's a question of trust.

Do we trust him? Is he trying to scam us? Is he like, Lucy holding the football and here comes Charlie Brown, and, man, he wants to kick that football.

But is Jesus gonna pull that football back and you're gonna fall flat on your face, and we have to get it to a place of trust? Do we really trust Jesus?

Brian, you are challenging us. And I. I don't normally do this, but I would love it if you'd be willing to, because I think as you're talking, trust requires faith.

And I think that there's some of us right now who feel like our faith's pretty weak or it's been giving up or it's not super strong right now.

Yeah.

Or it doesn't. It's not strong enough to sort of trust that God is real and God is here and God on the move.

And I think it could be super cool if you prayed over us. A prayer of faith.

Yeah.

And. And if you're willing to do that, that'd be awesome.

And then I, of course, want to hear how we can connect with you further and grab a copy of your book. But would you be willing to pray over.

I'd love to.

That's awesome.

Father, I thank you that every single person who's hearing this podcast right now that you know them deeply and intimately and that you're not a million miles away, but you are as close as their breath. And you're saying, seek me.

You're saying, turn towards me, Lord, Would you help us open our eyes and see right in front of us and have a sense that you're there? Would you help us put distraction away and the million idols that are clawing for our attention? And would you help us trust you, Lord?

I'm praying for the people right now that it feels like it's very, very dark and foggy and they can't see three feet in front of them. Would you point them so they can take a tiny step towards you in trust?

Lord, I thank you that you are present and that you are near and that you've never left us in the middle of the worst of it, and that you love us and that your love is a treasure, that, Jesus, you yourself are the treasure. And when we sell everything and we trust in you, it's worth so much more than all that we have or could have. Help us, Lord.

You are the good shepherd, and we trust you right now for every person that's listening in this moment.

And I'm going to encourage you listeners, as soon as this podcast is done, would you take just five minutes of silence and turn your face towards Jesus and I'm going to ask that you listen and hear if he has something to say to you. You in this moment. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Brian. I needed that. And I'm sure there are so many others who did as well.

And I feel like I could talk to you for hours in the same way that you could go looking for birds for hours. But I know we, we have to come to a close at some point, but. But people are going to want to grab a copy of your book to continue to learn from you.

How can they do that?

Yeah, so the Kingdom Field Guide is on. It's on Amazon, but I'd really love to direct people to Kingdom Field Guide.

Kingdomfieldguides.com There's a free ebook for you about how to make seeking God's Kingdom real in your life. So I want to give all your listeners that for free. You can also get the book there. There's an amazing video course that I'm really happy about.

I don't want to brag, but there's a video course about Kingdom seeking that's [email protected] I'd love for you to enter into that. And so either on Amazon if you want the book, or if you're interested in that free ebook and the video course, check out Kingdom Field Guide.

That's awesome, Brian. Thank you so much for being with us today.

You're welcome. Lord bless you.

And for those of you listening, it is so great to have you join us for the Collide podcast this week. And my greatest hope is that you would hear this as an invitation to go looking for God. And may you see him around every corner.

He is here present and loves you and wants to be found by you. Have a good week. Keep colliding and we'll catch you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us. You can find us on Instagram at We Collide on Facebook as Collide Women.

And you can also visit our website at wecollide.net to find our blog, resources, event information, and more. One last thing. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take a few seconds and leave us a review?

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