Become Good Soil

“For many former Smokejumpers, smokejumping is not closely tied with their (current) way of life, but is more something that was necessary for them to pass through and not around, and, once unmistakably done, does not have to be done again. The “it” is within, and is the need to settle some things with the universe and ourselves before taking on the “business of the world.” This “it” is the something special within that demands we do something special, and “it” could be within a lot of us.” —Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

Friends, how are we to understand the story of our lives as it unfolds across the years? What meaning do we give to our failures and our faithfulness, our losses and our triumphs, the long disappointments and the surprising gifts we never would have chosen—yet somehow needed? And how do we recognize true growth, not only in our own maturing, but in our apprenticeship to Jesus and the life of His Kingdom?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once suggested that the cost of not following Jesus is, in the end, far greater—even in this life alone—than the cost of walking with Him. For discipleship is not merely a matter of belief, but of learning to live in intimate fellowship with Christ, slowly being formed into the kind of people He Himself would be, if He were to live our lives in our place.

In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we explore apprenticeship and initiation as two essential lenses for making sense of this question: how our small, particular stories are caught up into something far larger—the redemptive and unfolding story of God.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan & Cherie

“It is a world of magic and mystery of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, and where a great struggle often makes it hard to be sure who belongs to which side, because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good who live happily ever after and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, become known by their true name. That is the fairytale of the gospel.” —Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale

Friends,

What happens in you when you hear the word desire?

Is there a kind of quickening—something like curiosity?
Or a hesitation… a guardedness?
Maybe a quiet opening that feels like hope.
Or a heaviness in your chest that carries sadness.
Or even a flash of cynicism.

What have you come to believe about desire…
in your life with the Triune God,
in His Kingdom,
in your apprenticeship to Jesus?

And what if the recovery—the honoring and stewarding of desire in its purest form—is actually central to your restoration as an image-bearer of God?

In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we explore the recovery of longing and desire. Because at the heart of the Christian story is an arresting claim: that desire, in its essence, is not something to fear—but something given by God, meant to lead us to Him and into His Kingdom.

It was the awakening of desire—those fleeting, radiant moments—that first beckoned C. S. Lewis. He described this awakening as joy. And that joy stirred something in him, calling him to search for more.

And the same is true for us.

Our longing is not a liability. It is part of the way back to joy. Everything we love—every glimpse of beauty, goodness, and delight—is from God, is for God, and ultimately finds its home in Him.
The story of the kingdom is a story of desire being gathered up and restored—a great homecoming.

Let’s press forward together.

It's all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan & Cherie

“To be sure, the kingdom has been here as long as we humans have been here, and longer. But it has been made available to us through simple confidence in Jesus, the Anointed, only from the time he became a public figure. It is a kingdom that, in the person of Jesus, welcomes us just as we are, just where we are, and makes it possible for us to translate our “ordinary” life into an eternal one.” —Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

How would you answer this question: What is the gospel that Jesus preached?

When I (Cherie) first encountered this question, I was both arrested and bewildered. I had some sense of what I thought the “gospel” might be, but I could not, for the life of me, articulate what it was that Jesus himself preached. I was new in my adult faith in Jesus and spent most of my devotional time reading the Psalms, the Gospel of John, and Paul’s letters.

This question launched me on a treasure hunt that changed my life—and continues to propel me today. It led me first deep into Matthew’s account of the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, then into Mark’s and Luke’s, and back again to John. Over the past twenty years, I have returned again and again to these profound and sweeping accounts of the earthly ministry of the Anointed One.

What was the gospel that Jesus preached? And what does an apprenticeship look like when it seeks not only to have faith in Jesus, but to practice living the faith of Jesus?

Let’s remember it together. Join us for this episode of the Become Good Soil podcast. Indeed, the Kingdom of God is at hand.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,
Cherie and Morgan

“Recovering Sabbath is an alternative to a culture ruled by an endless cycle of consumption, production, and progress. It is an awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God. To be so situated is a staggering option, because we are accustomed to being on the initiating end of all things. We neither expect nor, at times, even want a gift to be given, so consumed are we with accomplishing and possessing. Thus, I have come to think of the Sabbath as the most difficult and the most urgent of the commandments in our society.” —Walter Brueggeman
 
How regularly do you find yourself showing up in your life from a place of overflow, having been saturated in the reservoir of Sabbath overflow? If you were to describe your evolving relationship with rest over your life in all its stages in seasons, how would your life speak to you?

What if the timeless invitation to live from Sabbath—and to cultivate practices every day, every seven days, every seven years, and every seven-times-seven years—isn’t merely an external activity, but a way of participating with God to relearn a way of kingdom living? What if there is a hidden secret that unlocks every other resource of the kingdom, concealed within this mystery rooted in relational security with the one who models rest and created a world sustained through His own participation in Sabbath?

Welcome back to the Become Good Soil Foundations Series. Join us as we explore together the possibility of Sabbath not only as an extravagant gift from a God of creativity, delight, and rest, but also as a primary posture in our apprenticeship to Jesus—and a catalyst for transformation: both a resistance to our age and an alternative path to a flourishing life.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan & Cherie

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us…”

—St. John

Henri Nouwen offers these soulful questions:

“In what quiet ways have you bartered the worth of your soul to other grade-givers—some clamoring voices in the world around you, other critical voices firmly within your own being? By what small, repeated surrenders have you allowed yourself to become the very thing the world applauds, and the one thing you did not want to find yourself becoming?” 

In reflecting on these questions, we are keenly aware of the reality that we have often “bartered the worth of our soul” and been painfully malformed through “small repeated surrenders.”

Yet as we take stock of our precious yet infected souls, we experience Jesus’s pursuit afresh. As the generous host of all creation, as our creator and king, He invites us to once again entrust ourselves fully to Him—everything we are and everything we are not yet—and receive the nourishment, embrace, and affection we so desperately need and is His joy to extend.

In this second episode of our Become Good Soil Foundations Series, join us as we explore the wondrous reality whispered through the text of scripture, the text of nature, and the lives of those who intimately live the with-God life: that all reality begins with God—a God who overflows with creativity, energy, love, welcome, and life.

Let’s seek together how we might live more deeply from a posture of rest and receptivity, moving through our days and decades as those ever-receiving love and belonging—and, from that overflow, continually extending love and belonging to all those around us. 

We are so grateful to venture deeper on this journey together.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet come.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan & Cherie