What if the thing keeping you from experiencing God’s power is your insistence on fighting the battle yourself?

Episode Summary

Have you ever worked, planned, prepared, prayed, and done everything you thought you were supposed to do—only to find that life still didn't turn out the way you wanted? When the doors keep closing and the outcome feels like defeat, it's easy to wonder if God is really in control.

In this conversation, Matt McCoy and Willow Weston unpack Proverbs 21:31: “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord.” Matt shares honestly about seasons when he relied on his own abilities, became disappointed with God when He didn't "perform" the way Matt expected, and eventually found himself in what he describes as a dark night of the soul.

Together, they explore the tension between preparing faithfully and surrendering the outcome. Following God doesn't mean sitting back and letting life happen. We are called to work, plan, prepare, use our gifts, and take action. But we're also invited to walk with God, remain interruptible, and trust Him when the outcome isn't what we hoped for.

If you're exhausted from trying to control your circumstances, disappointed by an unanswered prayer, or struggling to trust God after a season of loss, this conversation offers a different way forward. You don't have to stop preparing for the battle—you just don't have to fight it alone.

Meet Matt McCoy

Matt McCoy is a husband, dad, theologian, chaplain, and church planter who has spent his life exploring what it means to follow Jesus in the real world. His career has included ranching, construction, commercial real estate, land development, energy-sector work, college ministry, chaplaincy, and serving people experiencing homelessness.

Matt holds a Master of Divinity and has spent more than two decades leading small groups. He and his wife, Denise, are passionate about cultivating uncommon friendship and common discipleship—creating spaces where people from different backgrounds can experience the Christian life together. In this conversation, Matt brings both theological depth and hard-earned personal wisdom to the question of what it looks like to trust God when life doesn't go according to plan.

Key Takeaways

• When you're tempted to control everything: Ask what you're relying on to "win" in life—and whether you've left room for God to lead.
• When your prayers aren't answered the way you hoped: Learn how to remain connected to God instead of shutting down or walking away.
• When you're disappointed with God's plan: Discover the difference between following Jesus and asking Jesus to simply bless your plans.
• When you're facing a closed door: Consider that some of the defeats you experience may eventually become part of a story you couldn't see at the time.
• When you're exhausted from fighting: Learn how spiritual practices like prayer, Scripture, friendship, and community can help you keep walking with God.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

• You don't have to understand what God is doing to trust that He is with you. Prepare, work, pray, and take the next step—but leave room for God to write a story bigger than the one you were trying to control.

Follow Willow: Website | Instagram | Facebook

💑Check out Collide’s website for info on upcoming conferences, events, and resources.

📲Follow Collide on Facebook and Instagram for encouragement, inspo and a fun peek into our ministry.

📰Plus, subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on all things Collide!

If I'm relying on myself, I'm not creating the space to where God gets to display his power. God gets to show, hey, look. Look what I'm going to do. I can do even more than this.

And my life is so much more full because it's filled up with the things that God wanted to fill it up with and not the things that I wanted to fill it up with.

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. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide and today we have Matt McCoy jumping on.

And I love that I get to have a conversation with him and invite you in on it. Matt is a unique individual. He's the kind of human that, as you get to know him, it really feels as though he's lived nine lives.

He's done ranching, construction, commercial real estate, land development, energy sector work and ranching. And most of all, he's a husband and a dad, and a good one at that. He studied five languages, and I don't think any of them are big Latin.

Matt has his Masters of Divinity, and he's traveled across the country leaving family and friends to say yes to this newfound calling to do vocational ministry. He spent the last few years as a chaplain for kids at a private school and served as a chaplain at the mission, doing life with homeless.

He's planting a church, and I'll tell you right now that it's unlike anything you've ever experienced when you think of church. The way that Matt thinks about Jesus and what it looks like to follow him and do life in community is thought provoking. Beautiful.

And I'm thrilled today to get to be invited into a few of his nine lives and his wisdom in this podcast and invite you to come with me. We're in a series on the Proverbs, so we'll be talking about a proverb today. So, Matt, welcome to the Week Alight podcast.

Thank you. That was remarkably beautiful. Wow. Thank you.

Well, before we jump in the proverb that we're going to wrestle over today together, tell me how it resonates with you when I describe you as someone who's lived nine lives.

I think that fits. It's the sort of thing that I kind of grew into. I don't think I woke up one day and said, wow, I'm really high energy.

I'm going to go see if I can do a bunch of things at once.

But it just sort of happened though, you know, when I was a kid, I was in late high school and my mom took me and my little sister to this foundation down in Houston. I'm originally from Texas and this foundation did testing on aptitudes, things that you're good at.

And it was helpful for us because they tested 16 different aptitudes and then they tell you, this is what you're good at and we should look at.

And I don't know what they use the results for, other things for themselves, but I remember getting the results and they said out of 16 aptitudes, a normal person would have between two and six aptitudes. So like two is normal, you know, six is kind of high, high. End of that range. And I had nine.

And I thought at first, you know, being 18 years old, I'm like, haha, look at me, I'm really talented. And they said, well, on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, unused aptitudes will drive you crazy.

Like if you have a gift, you want to use it, that gift wants to be used, it wants to be on display, it wants out. And you're going to need to find outlets for a whole wide range of things. And that's absolutely been the case.

I'm more of a generalist than a specialist. And so I've enjoyed getting to explore life, getting to see what God's up to and all the different people that come along in life. It's been a.

It's been a beautiful journey.

How would you describe, you know, when I describe you as someone who's lived nine lives?

Because I feel like every conversation that I've had with you or every dinner party or social gathering, it's like unpeeling the layers of Matt McCoy and you realize, oh, wow, I didn't know you did this right. So how would you describe this life that you're living right now, this season?

You, when you talk about aptitudes and I feel like you're someone, you get so excited about all these different things, you could be a part of what is right now, this season of life. What are you engaging in and what opportunities are you saying yes to?

I feel like as I hit middle age, a lot of things are starting to come together a Lot of things are starting to congeal a bit more.

And so it's felt like in the past there's been a lot of different streams running parallel to each other, and those streams are starting to find confluence. And I feel like they're starting to come together. And I've never had higher job satisfaction. That's probably a wrong way to put it.

That sense of vocational calling, of what the Holy Spirit's put inside my heart, of the song that I want to sing, it's starting to emerge in a new sort of way now. And it's taken a lot of years for those things to mature. It's taken a lot of years for me to mature. And it's.

It's fun watching, watching this season of life emerge.

That's awesome. Well, we're going to talk a little bit more in detail at the end of the podcast on what you're up to so people can know.

But let's jump into this proverb. We're in a series this summer on proverbs, and really the idea of grabbing hold of God's wisdom and taking it with us wherever we go.

And as I was studying this, this verse, the handbook on the proverbs says the horse stood for superior military strength. An army with a strong force of horses would expect that it could overcome its enemies.

So, Matt, I'm wondering, what is it that we think in our day and age that if we have it, we'll win in life?

What I love about this proverb is that it gets at the heart of what is it that I love? What is it that I depend on?

And in particular, if you think about battle, when I'm scared, when I feel like my life is at risk, what is it that I lean on? And I think that that's a really individual question. You know, what is it that people tend to do? I think that there's any number of answers to that.

I know for me, I can easily get my identity wrapped up in work. Because I enjoy a really diverse work life and because I enjoy the people that I get to live life with, I can get my identity wrapped around that.

And this proverb helps me pause and say, no. I still am called to use these gifts. I'm still called to work, but my identity is found in who God is.

And I Think I'm mindful, too, having just had my oldest daughter graduate from high school last weekend. That sense of, what is it that I depend on when I'm fearful for my kids? I'm certainly not fearful of my daughter graduating.

I'm really excited for her, but I'd be lying if I didn't say there's a part of me that, yeah, I'm scared for her. I'm scared for the amount of suffering she has ahead of her.

I'm nervous for the bad decisions that I know she's got ahead of her, that we don't even know what they are yet. I'm scared for the suffering that she'll have to enter into. And where do I take that?

Do I take that to me trying to fix her or help her or serve her or.

And I need to take good care of my daughter, but ultimately, I have to trust in the Lord that the Holy Spirit is living and active inside of her and will guide her on her journey.

I love that you say, you know, you asked the question, what is it that we depend on? And that it's a personal question. I absolutely think you're right that we all depend on different things to win our battles or to.

To sort of define like we're winning in life.

But what are the things you see in general, like, to give people a sense to walk alongside this proverb that some of us rely on, to sort of lean into, to think, oh, if I have this, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win in life.

Sure, sure. Well, I think it is. It is rare. I shouldn't say it's rare. It's common in this culture for me to encounter men whose fear gets manifested in anger.

That's a very common thing. And it's a common thing for me to encounter women whose fear gets manifested in control.

And so just being a podcast for women, if I sort of put the spotlight on control, that sense of, if I get my life in order, if I get my life organized, if I get my relationships in order, if I can do the right thing or be the right person, then I can manage my world the right way. And I think when I was first married, where that one.

Where that one really surfaced for me, where we had been married, oh, what is it, seven years, and I got a book on marriage from a friend, and it was an interesting book. The thing that it had in there was, here's 30 things you can do to show your wife that you love her.

30, Huh?

Yeah. List of 30 things.

You know, Rob, take Notes.

That's my husband, Rob. Yeah, I'll get Rob a copy of it after we're done.

But it really upset me because I was already doing 29 of them, and Denise wasn't doing what I wanted. Like, my wife wasn't doing the things I wanted her to do, and I was doing everything I could.

Interestingly, the one thing that we weren't doing was praying together. On this list of 30 things, the 1 that we left out was praying.

But I was doing all these things for my wife, Denise, but I wasn't doing them out of a spirit of loving her and caring for her. I was doing it because I was trying to get her to do certain things. I was trying to control her behavior, her attitudes, how she was acting.

And, Willow, would you believe my wife could tell the difference?

I do believe that between me loving her because I love her, and me loving her because I'm trying to influence her, you know, and so I think that element of control, it's. It's easy to. I'm going to try to take control of my own life because God's unpredictable. We don't know what God will do. So I'll take the reins.

Yeah, I think that's so true. I resonate with that. Think about another time.

I'm just curious if you've ever been in a place where you thought, if I do X and I do Y, everything will fall into place just as I planned. And have you ever had that mindset and then found out you're absolutely wrong?

I think you just described my twenties really, really well.

That's awesome.

Yeah, for sure. If I just, you know, I. I can. I can look at what the Christian life is supposed to be, and I can look at the. Let me rephrase that.

More specifically, I look at the way the Christian life was handed to me, both from culture around me and from my own reading of scripture and thinking, if I jump through these hoops, if I do these kinds of things now, somehow God is obligated to respond a certain way. And that God was very disappointing because that God didn't exist because that God didn't perform. And, yeah, that was really disappointing.

And I think life is. Life has done a good job of removing that illusion from the world I live in, because that's just. That's not how. That's not how God works.

That's so interesting that God didn't perform because it reminds me of your illustration about your wife. Like, you did X, Y, and Z to try to get her to do X, Y And Z.

Right.

And in a sense, our spiritual life can be all about like, if I do this, then God will do this. And if I do this and God doesn't do this, then we project all of our bitterness and anger and disappointment on him because he did not perform.

For us, for sure. And in fact, you can read the proverbs from a simplistic kind of way, and you can find proverbs that say, you know, if I do this, God will do this.

Blessed is the person who does this, and curse it is the person who does this.

And if you, if you read that, if you read proverbs really flatly, you can walk away with this impression that I can yank these levers and it's going to make God do stuff. And you know, that's, that's voodoo, is if I, if I do things and I don't think God's going to do anything in return, then that's superstition.

You know, that's like the Seahawks fan that wears the same jersey through the playoffs. Like, if I do this because I, you know, it connects me to what I think God is, but I really don't think God is going to show up.

And I really don't think God is going to do anything. That's superstition. And on the other extreme, if I do something and forces or obligates God to respond in a particular way, that's voodoo.

And the life we have with God is, is neither superstition nor voodoo. It's something else.

It's so easy to read this proverb and make preparation, planning and effort out to be bad. But I don't actually think that's the intention in scripture.

What I see when I collide with Jesus is I see a God who calls people to be a people of action. That over and over again when he shows up on people scenes, he calls them to move.

He says, pick up your mat and walk, or go and sin no more, or go back to your priest or love your neighbor, give it away to the poor, come and follow me or harvest when it's time to harvest, or be ready for the Master to come, or protect your faith from thorns, weeds and drought, or prepare the trees for fruit. So as I started to think about this, I was thinking about our interview.

I was thinking, I don't buy into the idea that God is calling us to be kind of what I would call let lifers. Just letting life happen. I think, yeah, just like let life happen.

But God is actually calling us to act and move and prepare and plan and Work hard and get ready. But there's something else in this proverb that God is calling us to. What's the invitation here?

I think the invitation is to walk with God, is to walk through life closely with the Holy Spirit, to be in a close relationship with. With God, which involves planning on. On one level for sure, planning and training is. Is a vital part of that.

But at the same time, it's a free relationship where things happen back and forth. It's not like. It's not like I do everything and God does nothing. And it's not like God does everything and I do nothing.

And one of the things I love about the Bible is that we see stories where it seems as though God is doing everything and the people are almost like puppets on God's stage. And God is so active and so in control and so involved that people's free will really takes a backseat.

And then we have plenty of stories where God is almost invisible and everybody's running around kind of doing whatever seems right in their own eyes. And it seems pretty crazy. And you wonder, where is God in that mess? And that way the Bible feels like my life.

There are times when I feel the presence of the Spirit so incredibly profound. And I feel like I feel that sense of Jesus is closer than my next breath. And I love those moments.

And there's also moments where I feel like God is nowhere to be found and I don't know where the Spirit is. Well, I know the correct answer. Yes, the Spirit is still here with me and still inside me, but I don't feel anything like that.

And what I like about this proverb is it covers that in a very short, poetic phrase that, yeah, we still have to train, we still have to prepare, and it's still God who directs our steps.

I want to go back to what you said a minute ago. You said sometimes you can tell me back what you said because I'm not going to quote you. Right.

But you said something about we either kind of go to this place of I do nothing and God does everything, or I do everything and God does nothing.

Right.

I love how you put that, because I think there's this sense where this proverb is saying wisdom is found in we do all things together.

Right?

And that's the crazy part, is that this proverb is about these people and they're readying themselves for the battle. And they think if they have these strong war horses and they prepare their horses, they're going to win victory as long as they have this huge army.

And yet they Go into battle without inviting God to go into battle with them. How do you see us using our preparation and our planning in life to replace God?

That's a great question. I think the proverb.

One of the things I like about proverbs, the book, is that by and large, Proverbs is a book of pithy short sayings that people would have talked about in their home. Wisdom is taught first and foremost in the home. And Proverbs is a collection of those sort of home fireside wisdom things.

The things we would have that are equivalent would be look both ways before you cross the street or eat your vegetables before you have dessert.

We've done that.

We're still right and we're still here. And, and so I, I don't know that the proverb itself necessarily says that training the horses aren't important because I think it still is a way.

In my own life where I enter into this tension is I found really helpful a theologian by the name of Sam Wells who described it through improvisation.

And improvisation is one of my favorite genres of comedy because you see these people on comedy stage, doing, doing these shows and on the one hand it feels like it's made up, but on the other hand it requires a tremendous amount of training and practice. And the illustration that helps me enter into that is that I have to know the life that God has called me to and what the Christian life is.

And so that's what scripture is for, that's what history and theology is for, that's what the church is for, that's what my friendships are for. All of those things are there. But then our day to day lives come up and we have to make decisions based on where we are and what's going on.

And sometimes when I look back on the decisions I've made, sometimes I feel like I got it right and sometimes I feel like I got it wrong. And it's hard to know. And I think if God wanted us to have a Bible that told us what to do and when, God would have given us that Bible.

But that's not the Bible we got. The one we got teaches us how to cultivate wisdom through both the forms and structures of what does it mean to be a Christian.

And then also the freedom to write those stories based on what the, what the Spirit is doing in our lives on that day.

You know, I'm thinking a lot about Emma, your daughter. You brought her up that she just graduated and there's this balance that she is invited into where she couldn't have gotten into a College.

She's going to Point Loma. Yeah. Which is awesome. Right?

So excited.

California.

Yes, ma'. Am.

Oh, my gosh. It's like a dream come true.

Going to visit there in February, getting out of the Pacific Northwest ring lots of college visits. That's it.

So she couldn't have gotten into Point Loma without planning and preparation.

Correct.

But when you think about sending her out of the nest, all this time, you've invested in her and poured into her and cared for her and prayed for her, changed her diapers and fed her and instilled values and beliefs in her, and she's going to go. And the victory waiting for her is not just going to be had because of the planning and preparation. The planning and preparation is.

Has gotten her to where she's going, but she needs something bigger than that.

Right.

When you think about when you look around at what's going on in your life, your neighbors and friends lives in the state of our nation, in the world, what do you see that's going on that needs some. Someone bigger than preparation and planning?

That's an impossibly huge question, Will. That's so fun. Okay, everyone. Everybody needs to use it. A story that kind that leads into that. With Emma in particular, she loves kayaking.

She's a sprint kayaker. She's among the top in the nation in her age group at kayaking. And when she went to her first international competition, she was 16.

And I'm putting her on a plane, and she's gonna go fly with her team to Prague. And it's this weird moment of here's my little girl, and I'm gonna go send her off on a plane by herself.

But in that moment where I'm dropping her off at the airplane, I didn't. I didn't have to download all of my fears onto her by saying that.

Don't forget this and don't forget that and don't forget this and remember this, and here's this, and call your mother, and, you know, that sort of thing.

Such good parenting advice. Don't download your fears onto your child. Okay, I'm ready.

But I'm totally feeling that. Right. I'm feeling that sense of, oh, my goodness, it's gonna go, and all kinds of terrible things can happen. And, I mean, I saw Mission Impossible.

I know what happens in Prague. Stuff blows up in the streets. And so all I had to say was, remember who you are and whose you are and make great decisions.

Jesus loves you, and so do. So do we. And that was it.

And I think there was something freeing for her, and I know there was something freeing for me to know that our preparations are raising her, are training her, are equipping her. It's either going to carry her or not. And the areas in which it is adequate is going to be great.

And the areas where it's inadequate or where she makes her own poor decisions, you know, it's not. And there's a certain freedom in that. And I think this transition of her graduating from high school, it feels a lot like that.

Like, well, it's there, and there's a sadness and a relief and a joy in saying, well, that season of her life has been written. And I can't hardly believe that that season of her life has already been written, but it has and it's been beautiful.

And I'm looking forward to, to the next season.

It's kind of this. There's planning and preparation and work, but there's also this relinquishing of control.

Totally.

I'm wondering how much of the wisdom God is gifting us in this proverb is really about us recognizing who actually has control for sure.

And that God is in control. And that's a scary and beautiful and terrifying thing. And we still have to live our lives.

And having been to a couple of high school graduation events, one of the things, scriptures that gets misquoted often from Jeremiah is, you know, I know the plans I have for you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.

And I'm sorry to get kind of raw here on the microphone with, with you, Willow, but 90% of the people that heard that prophecy from Jeremiah originally died at the hands of a foreign army like this. The Babylonians are coming. They're going to destroy. They're going to destroy the people of God. They're coming to destroy the Israelites.

And they were successful at conquering the land and kicking them out and taking them into exile. And a lot of people died. And so it doesn't mean that that hope in that future that you get is the one that you want.

And there's a lot of suffering that has happened in my life that I would not have wanted. There's a lot of suffering that happens in the world around us that we would not have wanted.

It doesn't mean that God is the one that causes the suffering, and it doesn't mean that God is the one that makes that suffering happen.

But it does mean that the God who allows for free will and the God who gives, still in control, even in the midst of hard and broken places and even in the midst where evil causes great harm to all of us, it's still there, too. And so it's too simple to say, oh, look, if I do this, then God is going to give me that.

And that scripture is a stark reminder that the God that we put our trust in. Can be at times silent when we don't want him to. And I wish I had an easy answer for that, but I don't.

Where's the Hope in Jeremiah 29, then?

That's a great question. For Jeremiah 29 specifically, the short answer is I'm not totally sure.

I know that eventually all things get brought back to Christ and in a fullness in Christ in the end. And so I think for some people in there, that hope was a fulfillment that only gets realized in heaven.

And if I put myself in that story and listening to that prophecy and thinking about how Jeremiah died in exile, Jeremiah never saw that prophecy fulfilled in his own eyes in the sense that he had a hope and a future in the land that God had given him. It wasn't there. So Jeremiah's hope and future was both in heaven and in the fulfillment of all things there.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get too far down a bunny trail, but I think about Hebrews, and I think it's Hebrews 11, not sure, but the people of faith and how so many of them were these people of faith that held on to God's promises even though God's promises weren't fulfilled in their lifetime. And I think so often we think like we're saying, if I plan, if I prepare, if I do these certain things, then I will get the outcome I want.

And so much about being a people of faith is realizing that we're a part of a greater, grander story.

Right.

And so often I think we're defining the win in the battle as what we can see right now. But we're a resurrection people. There's a grander story. There's not even a period on the end of our story when we die. There's.

There's a life or promise beyond this life. And yet so often we're defining what happens right now that I can see and in my lifetime. And yet we're part of this larger narrative.

And so it's easy to kind of, kind of put God in a box and say, God is this because he did this? Or God is this because he didn't do this. And what's interesting to me is in this proverb.

The proverb is basically saying, you know, ready Your horses. But victory comes from the Lord. Well, what does it look like when you don't get the victory you wanted? I think that's when you get your.

Horse and you don't know if you're gonna win or not.

So how do you trust in God when you don't get the victory you wanted?

Exactly. And I think I might take a step back from Jeremiah's prophecy for a moment. Only because people going through trauma are in a gentle, tender place.

And a podcast doesn't give us a chance to interact with people who are in the midst of trauma. And so I just. I want to signal that if someone's experiencing trauma, that's a unique spot to be in, and it's a holy, sacred ground kind of place.

And that's kind of beyond what we can cover in this particular podcast. But that saying, please lean into your friends, lean into who God is, and lean into hope. Maybe another analogy that's easier to talk about is how I.

The way I treat God tends to be the way I treat other people.

And so one of the things I've had a difficult time with Denise is how do I use my voice and listen to her voice, and how do we blend our voices together? Like, how do I listen to what it is she loves and what she wants and what I love and what I want? And sometimes those things line up really well.

Would you believe? Sometimes they don't.

This should be a marriage podcast,.

But the proverb does highlight what it is we love the most. So it's natural that we'd be thinking about our families while reading this proverb. And.

I can have a hard time putting my needs, wants, desires before Denise.

And if she doesn't respond the way I want to, it's easy for me to either work harder to get the response I want, or shut down and say, I'm just going to stop talking about it and pretend like it doesn't matter, and I'm going to disassociate from it and just kind of move on. And it's easy for me to go to one extreme or the other.

It is much more difficult for me to stay attentive to who she is, where she's at in life, what she's going through, and my own desires, wants, needs for whatever that particular situation is.

And then how do we blend those two, two together in real time, given all the other things that are going in life with real exhaustion and real stress and all those things, you know, that's really tough. And this proverb, the first time I Read it. That was.

That was the first thing that came up to mind, actually, was times with Denise where what I want to do is disengage or what I want to do is overwhelm, but what I don't want to do is walk alongside. And, yeah, it's a hard place to be, and it's a holy place to be, and that's the place where God wants me to be with Denise.

Turns out it's where Denise wants me to be with Denise, too. And this is an intensely personal example. But I don't think it's. If someone's having a hard time thinking, well, okay, where does this apply to me?

Like, go ask your friends, because they'll tell you, you know, go ask the people that are close to you in your life about, you know, where is it? Where. Where are the places that you've seen in my life where I'm either trying to disengage or overwhelm?

I'm not trying to walk alongside and walk with.

Well, and I think to make the connection over to our relationship with God, when we're experiencing defeat, there's a temptation to shut down and not walk alongside. And I think what you're inviting us into is when you experience defeat, what does it look like?

In the same way that you need to in an intimate relationship, in a marriage, what does it look like to say, I'm going to keep walking alongside you, God, Even though I didn't get what I wanted, even though the score, you know, wasn't what I wanted it to be, even though I didn't have my prayers answered, even though I'm steeped in grief and I lost sight everything I ever wanted. What does it look like for me to not shut down on you, but still trust that you are with me and you're good and your promises are true for me?

Yeah. Our spiritual practices carry us through those moments, for sure. I remember at a very dark place in my life, not sure what was next.

I was weary of being married to Denise. I was weary of what felt like a long string of defeats. Doors shut in my face, a whole bunch of no's.

I have all this energy and all this talent and all this passion. And the sun comes up in the morning, and I have no idea what I'm going to do next. And I don't even care. And I can't believe that I don't even care.

But there I am. I'm sitting in this dark night of the soul, you know, as it were.

And there was this moment where the Spirit revealed to me that if I treated everyone else in my life the way I treated God, I would be totally alone because I had gotten to where I just didn't. I didn't count on God for anything anymore because God didn't come through for me.

And I. I had gone past being angry at God to just being like, yeah, whatever, you know, very much that disengaged, whatever. And then my heart was broken for realizing that if I treated my wife with that same level of disregard, I'd be alone.

If I treated my kids that way, like, they wouldn't want to be around me. If I treated my friends with the same, well, maybe I'll. Maybe I'll pray today, maybe I won't.

Well, if I treated my friends with, maybe I'll take their call today, maybe I won't. My friends wouldn't put up with that. And then, and then that was the process of saying, okay, so how do I. How do I come back to God?

How do I learn how to love God again? How do I learn how to walk with God again? And I had no idea how to pray anymore. So I thought, okay, I need to learn how to pray.

And so I started looking around, how do I do that?

And as I started leaning into that, discovered that the Psalms have been used to teach people how to pray for thousands of years and found a pretty handy guide. Tremper Longman wrote a book called how to Read the Psalms. It was great. And then started praying through the Psalms every day.

And it was a lot like starting a new workout routine where, you know, after one day of praying through the Psalms, nothing was different. And after two days of praying through the Psalms, nothing was different.

Different.

But after six months of praying daily through the Psalms, light started to open up in some dark places and I was able to hear God's voice in places where it previously had felt silent.

And learning how to pray and praying as a means of staying connected to God rather than praying to get God to do something or get God to stop something from happening. Like, my prayers became less about petitions and requests and more about friendship and conversation.

I really appreciate you sharing about that time in your life because I think so many of us can resonate, but I think there's even people maybe listening right now who are in that place. And I love the invitation of asking the question, if I treated everyone else the way I treat God, where would my relationships be?

Because what a great question. Ask for the self awareness and self reflection to understand how we're relating to God.

Right?

You Know, I feel like as you're talking, I just keep thinking we treat God like a product, like a vacuum at Costco. Like, I bought this vacuum, I took it home. There's still dirt heavy, and there's stains on my floor. So Costco is going to take it back.

And we're just kind of like, you didn't work for me because you didn't do what I expected you to do. And so, like, I'm done with you.

And I think you inviting us into that, you called it, you know, the dark night of the soul, like the season of time where door after door was shut and you had so much in you that you wanted to give and live and it wasn't happening for you and you were discouraged. That shutdown that we do on God like we can do on other people, the way we treat him is so like, I did all this planning and prep.

That's what's interesting to me is like, I call it, we were Jesus draggers. We're not Jesus followers. Like, Jesus, Jesus just come and follow me.

And we're supposed to follow him, but instead we're like, no, Jesus, you can follow me. I'm gonna drag you along.

I'm gonna go to this city, I'm gonna get this job, I'm gonna marry this guy, I'm gonna do this thing or whatever, and hey, come bless it. Bless it, God bless it. And that's what we do is we just say, bless it. Bless my plans, bless my preparation, bless my hard work.

And then when it doesn't feel blessed, then we're ticked to God.

Right? There's a Japanese theologian. I'm gonna forget his name. Yep, it's gone. It's gone.

But he talks about how the primary mode of us relating to God is through walking in the Bible, that we walk with God and that we see this.

I mean, also, certainly there's eating and there's a lot of different modes, but he focuses on the walking with God and how a person walks at three miles an hour. And he talks about how Jesus is a three mile an hour God. And so if we're going faster than three miles an hour, we're not following Jesus anymore.

We're following something else or dragging it. We're dragging him along. And I've spent a lot of time trying to go faster because I like to go faster. I like speed.

And let's make decisions quickly and make things happen. And I'm no longer following Jesus. That doesn't mean that I shut down and stop making decisions and stop Doing those things, it just means, how do I.

How do I walk at the pace that God has before me to walk? And back to that. If I treated other people the way I treat God?

As I leaned into that, I realized that even on the days when I was weary of being married to Denise, I still went home. And even on the days when I was weary of being a parent, I still took care of my kids.

And even on the days where I was weary of my friends, I still spent time with them. And how God had taken this other space in my life where I was weary of God. And so I felt like it was okay to. To not stay connected with God anymore.

And I never completely disengaged. But that element of prayer certainly disappeared. And it's interesting when I look back on that season, how I still.

I still would journal, I still write in my journal daily. And I would still reflect and I would still Sabbath, you know, still take a day where it would stop and rest and.

But the prayer disappeared, the conversation with God disappeared. And when it felt like I couldn't depend on God to show up or I wouldn't like what God would do if God did, I just got sick of talking to him.

Yeah, I think.

I think of prayer a lot as sort of this relational experience with God where you're continually inviting him into your life and asking him to go before you, to be ahead of you. And I think about another book in the Bible that's full of wisdom, James.

And I don't know which verse, but it talks about, do not say, I will go to this city or that city, or I will do this or I will do that, but instead say, if it's the Lord's will. And I just wonder how. How much of this proverb is about leaning into the sovereignty of God and trusting capital D, destiny.

How much of it is trusting God and how much of it is trusting destiny?

Well, how much of it is trusting the sovereignty of God? And I say capital D, destiny, like God's destiny for our lives. Like, so often, we're trusting our own plans and our own preparation.

We're trusting our horses. And how much of this is also saying, I'm going to do this work and I get to be a part of authoring my story along with God.

But ultimately I'm going to trust his sovereignty is resting over my life and the way in which it should write?

For sure. I love this proverb for that very thing. For me, where that landed on was I had to stop and ask myself, okay, where am I Not interruptible.

Where do I feel like I can't be interrupted? And certainly when I'm doing some of the more creative work. Turn the phone on airplane mode, and I shut the door and that kind of thing.

It's not that sort of interruption, but more like when my kids have something important that needs attending to. Can I still attend to it? Last night when we were getting home, my youngest son wanted to go on a bike ride with me. I'm tired.

I'm not interested in bike riding right now. I just want to go put on my pajamas and grab a book and sit down in my chair.

I like how you say pajamas, by the way. Pajamas.

Pajamas. Pajamas.

Is that Texan?

I guess it. I don't know.

How do you say pajamas?

Dude, Pajamas.

You at home, you're doing this. Say it out loud. Get it out of you.

I do. I wonder if I picked that one up from living in Canada. I'm gonna blame it on that totally.

So you wanted to.

But that's all I wanted to do. I didn't want to be interrupted by this. And, you know, this kid is.

He's in middle school, and I got a middle school kid who wants to hang out with me, and I can't say no to that. And so it's. It's hard to maintain a posture of being interruptible by those kinds of things.

And that's where the prayer comes in to say, God, I want to go through today.

Open to where you're already at work, where you're already at play, where things are already happening, and I don't know who I'm going to see, and I don't know what burdens they're carrying. I have no idea what burdens people are carrying when I'm meeting with them or hanging out with them.

And I want to be in a space where I can be wise about, is this an interruption that I need to lean into or not? And setting good boundaries is a matter of cultivating wisdom. Yeah.

Yeah. I love the idea of being willing to be interrupted on this kind of daily life experience. I also think about more than being interrupted by or.

Or along with being interrupted, I should say, is being disrupted with an entirely new direction. Like, I think about my daughter Bella, who applied to go to a high school outside of our. Where we live, right.

And all her close friends are going there, and she didn't get in. And we went through an appeal process two times. And over the course of this entire last year, I.

Every time I drove by this high school, because it's on my way to work, I would pray for God's will in Bella's life. And at one point, the kids. And I think I've shared this before, but one point the kids had said, well, why don't you just lie about the address?

Or why don't you just put the address of our building that we own in in that school area? And I kept reminding them, no, because I don't want to force something that is not God's will. Right.

And I think there's this thing of, like, resting in sovereignty in the sense that after two appeals, after a phone call with someone from the, you know, school district office, the final answer was no.

And yes, I can advocate and we can plan and we can write letters, and we can do all those things, but at the end of the day, at what point do you also go, maybe the. No, the door slamming, the complete disruption and change of direction is from the Lord.

And we had to tell Belly, you didn't get into this high school. And of course, she bald and was so upset that she doesn't get to go to high school with any of her best buddies.

And it's been weeks of having to kind of navigate what that's going to look like. But I keep going back to not how she's feeling right now, but I keep going to her middle of her sophomore year for some reason in high school.

And I keep thinking, what if she was at the high school and I forced our will upon her life and didn't trust God for the victory? Right? We got this defeat, and I forced it. And I did some.

I lied about her address or I called again and got angry on the phone or whatever and got her to go to this high school that clearly like, we were told not to go to. And then she's in the middle of sophomore year and she's having some terrible circumstance or experience.

I would struggle with feeling like I messed with sovereignty.

And there's something about that, to me, where this proverb is saying, like, you can prepare all you want, you can advocate, you can work hard, hard, but at the end of the day, when you go to that battle, you have to trust in the capital D, destiny that God has for your life.

That's such a. That's a great example, because it's hard to know, like, wisdom takes time and wisdom takes mistakes. And. And Kali's parents, you know, we just.

We just don't know. And should you. Should you do more or not? When do you. When do you stop? It's. It's not easy to know that.

And while I regret the bad decisions I've made as a parent, it's worth having the space. I'm just grateful that God gives us the space to co create, to co author alongside God and where we are and where we're going in life.

Because what a gift to get to be with the spirit as our kids grow up together and discover together where the stakes count, where the decisions matter, where the, the words we write in our co authorship with God. They admit it counts a lot.

Well, definitely this defeat that we're experiencing as a family now we're on the lookout for, okay, what is God going to do? We're not in a happy place of this is great.

But I think over the course of the years we're watching and waiting and going, help us see how this is going to end up being what you wanted for us.

You know, my grandfather used to say some of the best deals I've ever done were the ones that didn't happen.

And yeah, there's a certain element, some doors open and some doors close and particularly when doors close that we can't open, you know, that weren't of our choosing. And high school and the loss of, that's a great example.

There's a million examples out there of people that had loss, that had trauma, that had pain, that had accidents that were not of their choosing. And now you're here and finding what God is up to in the midst of that, it gets at the heart.

Of what this proverbs about and giving God time. I love what your grandpa says. Some of the best deals I've ever done on the ones.

Some of the best deals I ever did were the ones that didn't happen.

Didn't happen. But you don't necessarily see that in the moment. Yeah, you don't know you didn't nail the deal. You feel like you lost it.

But then five years later like, oh, thank God I didn't get that deal.

So I get to work with your husband, Rob, on a very regular basis. We had a deal fall through last week that we were both excited about, but I didn't know that we both had.

This is good. This is good.

I don't think Denise knows about it either.

The next podcast will be on marriage.

That's right. But it didn't come. But you know, that deal didn't come through.

But we're both old enough and been done this enough times to go, okay, like that's a bummer. I wish it would have come about. But now we'll wait and see what's next.

Right, right. Elsewhere in Proverbs. In Proverbs 33, 17, the Bible says a horse is a false hope for victory, nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength.

So I'm wondering, how do you see us as humans looking to our horses for victory, hoping they deliver us?

That's a great question. How do. Like, another way to reframe that question, too, is to think about the horses is going to deliver you. Is that in that.

In that imagery, a horse is an idol. A horse is a something else that you put your trust in.

Yeah. A horse is what you're relying on for deliverance.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And particularly in those days and age. Day and age, horses were huge compared to the other weapons that were available. A horse was. A horse is what you wanted on your side.

And a recognition that as big as a horse is and as powerful as a horse is, God is still sovereign, even over that. And again, I think it's really individual in terms of what kind of idol do people lean on? We can turn anything into an idol.

We can lean on anything to avoid leaning on God. And what are the things that I use to numb myself with? What are the things that I use to distract myself with? What is it that I trust? And these.

These moments of hurt, these moments of disappointment, these moments of no, give us a chance to stop and say, am I. You know, am I really trusting, Trusting God with. With this outcome? And last week, Denise and I took our daughter Emma, and she wanted to spend that.

We spent the day together, and we went for this hike and. And we went up to this bluff, and we were overlooking this. It's a beautiful cascade view overlooking the water.

And Denise was praying, and we were praying for Emma, and Denise just had this beautiful prayer of release for Emma to send her into this next season of life. And I realized, oh, no, I'm not ready yet. Can't. I thought. I thought I already had released her. And then here we are in this moment.

We're praying together, and we're with God there on this bluff overlooking all of God's creation here in Cascadia. And I'm not ready. I'm not there yet.

There's still something in me that is holding on to her childhood or holding on to my role as a father, that's not.

And that whatever that is, and I haven't even sat with it enough to figure out what it is, but whatever it is, is going to come out sideways if I don't deal with it, it's gonna come out via control. It's gonna come out via anger. It's gonna come out some other way if I don't sit with God and really lean into.

Okay, what is it about releasing her that I'm hung up on, you know, that I'm still not, not ready for.

And whatever that is that's in this situation, that's the horse that is my idol, that I'm not ready to give my daughter fully over to God in this next season.

Yeah. I love, I love the charge in the Bible that the horse is a false hope for victory and that it won't deliver you.

But if you're trusting in a horse to win your battles, God is saying you need to trust in him. Right. Psalm 27 says, Some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God.

And I think so often we boast about our own doings, our own accomplishments, our own goals met, promotions given, victories won, whatever. But the psalmist here wants to boast in the Lord, and I think we often don't boast in the Lord because we don't often let him into our battles.

And I'm just wondering. It seems like our self reliance has then become the very thing that keeps us from seeing the power of God. God in the battle?

Yes.

What do you think about that idea?

Yeah, that I am. That's interesting. I've not thought of it quite like that. My inability to trust God in certain areas.

Because let's be honest, if I trust God to deliver me in battle, what if God chooses not to? Lots of people experience battles and they don't turn out well.

And I've prayed for healing for a lot of people who have been in the hospital, been gravely ill. Occasionally people have been miraculously healed. Most of them are dead. Like, most of the time it doesn't happen.

And I can't explain one or the other other than to say that it's all held, it's all held by God. And so that level of like, how do I trust a God like that?

With my own battles, with my own family, with my own heart, with my own desires, when I don't know what God's going to do. I can petition and beg and plead and God is going to hear my prayers. But.

To me though, there's like self reliance and God reliance.

And this proverb is really saying, like, if you're going to go into a battle on your, your own, you're gonna miss out on seeing the power of God, your own self reliance, Keeps you from seeing how powerful God can be. Because you're going in and deciding you're gonna fight it on your own. But then God reliance is, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna bring God.

God can do anything he wants. He's bigger, he's stronger, he's mightier, he's more powerful. And I'm gonna see what he's gonna do.

And if it's victory, it's because he showed up and did something awesome. And if it's defeat, I'm gonna rest in the sovereignty of God. Because he is bigger, he is mightier, he is strong.

I love. I think that's spot on, that I'm. If I'm relying on myself, I'm not creating the space to where God gets to display his power.

My God gets to show, hey, look, look what I'm going to do. I can do even more than this. And my, my life right now is so much better than I would have ever imagined it could be possible.

And when I think back to my 20s, and particularly those that dark night of the soul I was describing towards the end of my 20s, when I, the way I was living my life with God totally ran out of gas. And my life now is so much better than I would have ever imagined to be possible.

So much so because I didn't get what I wanted, but I got what God wanted.

And my life is so much more full because it's filled up with the things that God wanted to fill it up with and not the things that I wanted to fill it up with. And I would have never experienced any of that if I had tried to continue the same self reliance that had gotten me to that dark place to begin with.

There's a real gift in the fear that comes from knowing that version of God had to die.

I had to let go of that version of God because that was the idol, that was the horse, that was the thing that I was trusting in, was, I'm going to take care of this myself. And by setting that down, it created this space for the spirit to start playing in my life in ways that I would have never thought possible.

That's awesome. This is my last question for you.

When I was reading the handbook on the proverbs, it kind of puts a period on the sentence of this proverb and saying, only the Lord can make you win.

For those out there who feel like they're losing or those out there with big battles to fight right now, what are your closing words of encouragement to them today?

That's a Great question. Becoming a Christian is not about changing what I believe, but about changing what I love and learning how to love differently.

Learning how to love as God loves has been tremendously fruitful for me in terms of how do I live out this proverb, particularly when things don't go well, and to hold on to the truth that God is all good and that God is all loving and that you can't get any closer than in, and God lives inside us. These things are all true, even when it doesn't feel like it's true.

And that these spiritual practices of prayer, of scripture, of church, of community will form and shape us. And that we can trust that the Spirit will guide us and form us and shape us, and that God desires better things for us than we can imagine.

I found it terrifying to let go of some dreams that I had for my own life. And by letting go of those dreams and stop fighting to try to make those dreams happen, created a space for God, to God to write those dreams, too.

And by God and I, by the Spirit and I, writing together those dreams, weaving those dreams together, created a space for things that are far more incredible than I could have ever imagined. Yeah, I'm gonna sit. I'm really carrying that with me.

That image of I don't want to fight the battles alone or get too far ahead because it doesn't allow room for God to work. That imagery is really beautiful to. To hold on to, particularly in those dark moments when it feels like God's nowhere around.

Well, I think we all have our own battles that we're fighting right now, and we have battles ahead of us that we have no idea are coming our way.

And I love your encouragement of really holding on to who God is in the midst of defeat and giving God the space for sure to work and us not relying ourselves but to see his power now. But if we don't see it now in defeat, someday we will understand.

And cultivating friendships to where on those days when I forget who I am, I've got my family and friends around to remind me. Yeah, that's been a gift.

Yeah. So tell people real quick, if you can, about your current project, planning this church, and maybe how this newfound calling has found you.

Planning and preparing, but also waiting and watching and trusting God to do what only he can do now.

You bet. We. I've been leading small groups for the last 26 years or so, which makes me feel really old when I say that.

But when I hit the equal sign on the calculator after adding them up that's what number comes out. And so we. We love small groups and small group ministry, and it's very much a part of who we are. And we love the church dearly.

And the mission of our church is uncommon friendship and common discipleship. And so we're wanting to cultivate a space where people can experience the Christian life alongside people that are different than them.

And so right now, our church has worship services that are heavily involved with homeless people that are in recovery and people with disabilities, and the youth are the folks that we're blending together right now.

It came out of a desire to live out the Christian life where the discipleship needs I have are pretty similar to the discipleship needs other people have. And I certainly affirm, and I'm grateful for ministries like Collide that focuses on women. And so how do we.

How does collide cultivate the Christian life among a diverse group of women is fantastic. And then those women go back to families that have, you know, husbands and kids, and those people are going to be different than them.

So moving from a common friendship, in this case women, to your families, you've got people that are different than you. There are different ages and different genders.

And so how do we create a. Cultivate a space where people can experience common discipleship alongside one another? So that's. That's what we're working on right now.

That's awesome. I sat in Matt and Denise's living room, and I have to tell you, and I. I think I've told you this, but we used to host church in your living room.

And we showed up and you made this amazing dinner. Like Texan meat. I don't even know what to call it. It was just amazing. Texan meat slathered in barbecue sauce.

Yes, ma'. Am.

And. And everyone was invited to share.

And it was this beautiful picture of what I picture the kingdom of heaven to be like, where it ran the ages from older to younger. You know, your daughter read a poem that she'd written.

There were people who were from the mission and people who shared with me about their drug addiction and trying to get clean. And what really stood out to.

To me was this man who opened up to everyone and said that that dinner was the first time he'd been in someone's home in, I think he said, a year.

Yeah.

And the next thing you know, everyone was crying. I. I started crying. Just the idea that. I think a lot of us forget that there's these people who don't feel wanted or welcomed anywhere.

And you're Opening up your house and your life and your ministry, and you're inviting those people in and you're saying there's a place for you and there's nothing more Jesus like than that. So I love what you're doing.

One of the things I like about hanging out with you, Willow, is that you want to take a hard look at life as we really find it. And the fragile ships of middle class friendship just aren't built for the storms of life.

And that with Clyde, you're given a different way forward for a lot of women. And with our church, we look around and think, okay, who.

Who's sailing on better ships if the middle class ships are too fragile, who's learned how to do this?

And our friends that are homeless and are going through recovery programs have actually learned how to sail on better ships than that because they've. They've had to learn how to. To wrestle with their past. They've had to learn how to live despite feeling tremendous amounts of shame.

They're learning how to get their legs underneath them and walk with God again after going through some pretty hard, in most cases, some really traumatic things. And one of the most popular TED talks ever is Brene Brown talking about vulnerability. Brene Brown, what's her name? Yeah, I would think so. Right?

Okay, there's Jesus, and I think so,.

But I know, you know, new social circle for me. Yeah, there's this attraction to what she's doing.

And we started thinking, okay, well, what if we tried living this out with a group of people, but instead of grabbing people that are demographically similar to us, what if we did it with people that are different than us?

So that way we can learn how to do it with our kids, we can learn how to be more vulnerable with our kids and our spouses and our parents and our co workers. And then we thought, okay, who's going to help lead us in this?

Well, the people who are doing this better than anyone else I know right now as a group are homeless people that are coming out of recovery programs. Obviously, anybody coming out of any recovery program, you don't have to be homeless.

But anyone coming out of AA or NA or any of those programs, they got a. They've been through some hard stuff and they've learned, they've learned how to live out this vulnerability in some pretty profound ways.

And I love it because then it upends the power dynamic. Most middle class people, when they think about living alongside the homeless, they're only thinking about what I have to give them.

They're not thinking about, well, what do I have to receive from them? And what is that? Friendship.

What does it mean to be in a friendship where there's giving and receiving going both directions and cultivating that kind of worship space? Oh, my goodness. It's the coolest thing.

That's awesome. How can people connect with you?

I've been asking that question for a long time.

How can they follow what you're up to?

I am. We are only just now starting to. We haven't come. Our church hasn't come up with a name yet.

I'm pretty heavily influenced by Leslie Newbegin, who talked about it's Jesus first, then mission, and then church structure. And so we've only recently kind of got the mission thing dialed in.

And so now we're hitting some of the church structure issues, which among them is what the name needs to be. The only place that we are at online right now is called betachurchsite.com because it's a beta site.

Like, we're just testing it out to see what it's like. Somebody could do that. Otherwise they would have to email me McCoy mattack.com or they can reach out to you and you can find me.

Sounds good. Sounds good. Thank you so much for hanging out. Yeah, it was really fun. Hey, for those of you guys listening, thank you for joining on.

And if you want to keep up with us at Collide, you can check us out out on Instagram at We Collide and on Facebook and Pinterest as Collide Women. And you can also visit our website at wecollide.net to find our blog and resources and event information.

And if you know that this podcast would bless someone else, we'd love for you to pass it on and share it with them. And we'll catch you here next week.