KENT DENLINGER ON SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP | EP 24

[DAWN GABRIEL]
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Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes Podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado, not only where I love to live, but I also work as the owner of a counseling center in the historic downtown. This podcast is a place to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. For those desiring deeper connection with God and engaging their spirituality in new ways, this will be a safe place to allow doubt, questions and curiosity, without judgment. We will be creating intentional space to listen in on other’s faith journeys, whether that is deconstruction or reconstruction, with the hope of traveling alongside you on your own spiritual path. If you’re interested in getting even more out of this podcast, grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my websitefaithfringes.com. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello, this is Dawn Gabriel, your host. I am so glad to be back with you today. I don’t know about you guys, but we have just started school the last two weeks here in Colorado, and my kids are trying to get used to being back in the swing of things. And of course we have the craziness with the Delta variant, with COVID and masks or no masks and exposure, no exposure, and just a lot of intense polarization and how people are responding again. And I find myself being so sad at people fighting and people just kind of screaming at each other and being unkind. It makes me want to turn off social media. It makes me want to hide, runaway to a cabin in the mountains and not come back for a few months.

So today though, as I was thinking about all this, I was really, there was really good timing to talk with our guest today. I hope you will feel kind of the same way I do when you listen to this interview. I’m going to be speaking with Kent Denlinger, a spiritual director that I met, well, actually I knew of him years ago when I lived in Indiana, but I never officially interacted and met with him and spent time with him on until we met again this October with he and his wife. You’ll hear more about that. Anyway, Kent is such a kind soul and it was just such a breath of fresh air and peace to sit with him and talk about some of my favorite things of soul care and spiritual direction and how just listening to the Holy Spirit and grounding ourselves in what is true.

I feel like we need that right now with so much going on in the world and in our nation and in, just even our state and our county and our schools, we need to have something deeper to believe in. We need to have something deeper to, and it can’t be based on circumstance. It can’t be based on how people are responding to us. It can’t be based on whether school’s open or closed. It can’t be based on if that person’s wearing a mask and that person isn’t, or if that person’s vaccinated or not. It’s like there has to be more than this chaos right now. So today listening, as Kent and I talk about spiritual direction on what I think is a deeper level than I’ve talked about it before, I know we’ve talked about it a lot on my episodes, but the reason I had Kent come on is because I feel like there’s something different about the way he and Carla, his wife do spiritual.

And I believe it’s because as you guys have heard me mention, I talk about Larry Crabb a lot here and quote him or mention him. They have been close friends, we’re close friends with Larry for 35 years. He was their mentor. So I feel like a lot of that is shown in how Kent and Carla led to their spiritual direction. And you’ll hear Ken talk about Larry too. So let me just read a little bit of an introduction to Kent. Kent Denlinger served as a lead pastor of Valley Springs Fellowship in Warsaw, Indiana for 32 years and for the past 15 of those years, he has also worked for New Way Ministries as spiritual director at the School of Spiritual Direction and NextStep. After he retired from the pastorate in 2018, Kent has worked as a corporate chaplain for a pharmaceutical company in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kent has a Master’s in Counseling as well as a Master of Divinity degree, both from Grace Theological Seminary. In 2010, he completed a Doctorate of Ministry in Spiritual Direction from Gordon-Conwell. Kent is married to Carla. They have two adult children and two grandchildren. Their friendship with Larry and Rachael Crabb extend back 35 years. Not only did Kent train under Dr. Crabb, he considers Larry a personal mentor over that same period of time. Kent has been described as relationally gracious person who comes alongside people in a natural, ongoing journey of life, helping the individual discover what the spirit of God is up to in his rehearsal. I love that relationally gracious. I feel that very much when I’m with Kent.
[DAWN]
Hi, Kent. Welcome to the podcast.
[KENT DANLINGER]
Oh, hey, Dawn. Thanks for having me on.
[DAWN]
I am excited today to talk with you and just kind of hear what you’re thinking about spiritual direction. I know my listeners don’t know this, but you and I, just to catch them up, got to know each other more at a school of spiritual direction back in October, 2020 and it was really life changing for me to be at that school. I know I said this in my email, that the way you and your wife do spiritual direction is very different than what I’ve been studying the last couple years. So I just thought it would be a great idea to get you on here so my listeners could hear kind of your thoughts on spiritual direction and go from there. But before we do that, kind of tell people about you and kind of your background and what brought you up to spiritual direction.
[KENT]
I was a pastor for 32 years at the same church. I also spent about 15, 16 years working as a spiritual director for Dr. Larry Crabb at the school that where you and I met. And then I do spiritual direction, what we call spiritual direction, although there’s a lot of different understandings about what that involves. But I do that with about 25 individuals once a month who are scattered around the globe. So really got my master’s in counseling, got my doctorate in spiritual direction, spiritual formation, but I think really if I could, and maybe this will get us into a topic if I could change it, I think I would prefer using the word spiritual companionship because not that there’s anything wrong with spiritual direction, but sometimes we tend to professionalize stuff. And I know my heartbeat is more in line with wanting people to be able to in the church really have me conversations with each other that advance the life and work of God in each other’s hearts. So in that sense, I love just coming alongside people. That’s what I did as a pastor. I now work as a corporate chaplain and that’s what I do at work and that’s what I try to do on the phone.
[DAWN]
You had 32 years as a pastor, but with spiritual direction, you would kind of change it to spiritual companionship, like walking alongside people together in that spiritual journey?
[KENT]
Yes. There’s all kinds of ideas about what spiritual direction means. So when you do use the term, you probably have to ask for clarification of what somebody is referring to when they think of that. What I think of is spiritual companionship, actually walking alongside of people who aren’t necessarily coming because they have a specific problem in mind, but rather they just long to go deeper with God, they long to be honest about whatever’s going on their hearts. And I think spiritual companionship that we sometimes call spiritual direction to me is just listening for that life, trying to put words to it and identifying the life of God. Also sometimes pointing perhaps what gets in the way of the release of God’s life from a person all the while at times sharing my own journey as it’s appropriate and talking about how God is working in my life, as it might illustrate something that I’m trying to communicate with the individual. So a lot of really just listening curiosity, because I deeply believe that God’s spirit is alive in a person and I’m kind of tagging along to what he’s trying to do in somebody. So I’m listening and hoping that perhaps he gives me a moment of wisdom.
[DAWN]
I love that, what you said is the spirit of God is alive and of every person. How would you say that is different than what maybe you have heard of when you hear people talk about spiritual direction? Is that something different?
[KENT]
That’s a great question, Dawn. I don’t know. I don’t always know what people mean. I think my understanding in my doctoral training was that was a lot with the spiritual disciplines. And I think they certainly were talking about trying to attune to what the spirit is doing. I happen to think that works best when you do it in companionship with somebody. I think we’re created relationally and I think it helps, because it’s really easy to maybe assign things to a Holy Spirit that aren’t really the Holy Spirit and sometimes somebody who maybe has some ability to listen well, has some theological background can help me actually see, is that really true? Is that consistent with the story God is telling that I’m participating in, but I don’t know that specifically answers your question, but I know that I personally believe that, obviously when we come to know Christ that the spirit of God takes up residents in our lives.

And when I think about the Holy Spirit, I don’t think about the gifts and charismatic type of movement. I think more about this incredible voice that God has put within us, who is intent on guiding us, convicting us and moving us to become more like Christ. So that’s what I think though, when I think about the spirit. You know, Peter wrote in, I think it’s 2 Peter 1:3, that we have everything we need for life in godliness. So the life of God, it isn’t about putting something on about releasing something that’s already present, that the spirit of God has put there when he takes up residence in the believer’s heart.
[DAWN]
Yes. I think the difference I see with that is so many times, at least how I was brought up was you have to do this list of things to be a good Christian, and I say that in air quotes, and to really connect with God. But in reality, you’re saying, no, the spirit of God is already within us. What does it look like to release that within us so we can live in that freedom? And I think that’s a different perspective, a different starting point for a lot of people.
[KENT]
Yes. I remember a number of years back where I came to an understanding of the sanctification process as a sense of release versus impose. I think what you’re addressing Dawn is something that I would agree that I grew up with. It’s almost like if you think that sin is the deepest reality in our hearts, which I don’t believe is true, I certainly think sin is there, I think sin is an impediment to the release of God’s life, but I think what happens when we accept Christ as our savior, I think the spirit does a work of transformation in our heart. He gives us a new heart. That’s what Ezekiel 36, 26, I think says, that we’ve been given a new heart, a heart with a disposition to actually want to love.

And it’s oftentimes buried beneath our flesh, you know, the default mode is self to gravitate towards self. So what we’re trying to do is help a person discover the life of God that is already present within and release that life, rather than it’s my job as a pastor or a counselor or a director to somehow impose upon a person the way they ought to live. That’s a mighty uncomfortable way of going about the gospel. And I don’t think that it’s really the biblical way. I think we have to rethink about what does it really mean to help call forth the life of God that’s already present in a person.
[DAWN]
I love that. And even you just saying that is bringing me back to the school that I attended, where you were speaking at, and just the freedom that those words bring of releasing versus imposing. But I also remember we took a long, hard look at all our crap and like you said, the flesh and we jumped into that, but it was just such a good balance of speaking out truth from the flesh of calling it out and saying, no, this is not the way God intended, but to also do that in freedom, not as judgment and shame. It was just such a different, I just loved the combination. I don’t see that very much. Honestly, I see people falling off either side of that where they’re like, whatever you feel is fine and that go with what you feel versus, “Well, no, let’s address it,” but also call you back to who you truly can be in Christ and who He has designed you to be. I honestly don’t see the combination very well, except with like, when I’m sitting with you or Carla or Larry Crabb, it’s like, okay, it really speaks to my soul.
[KENT]
I think where I first thought about this was I was taking a class. In fact, I was just writing about that this week. I took a class back in 1999 at Regent College from Eugene Peterson and he talked about how this book, it was called The Art of Soul Crafting or the class title was the art of soul crafting, which I loved. It was centered on the book of Ephesians and we weren’t an hour into the class when Peterson stopped and said, “Did you notice what Paul calls people of the church of Ephesians? He calls them saints and he does that, not as flattery. He does that because he’s trying to acclimate them to the truest reality of their hearts.” He goes, “A Saint is not who you see when you look in the mirror. A Saint is who you are declared to be by Christ, despite who you see in the mirror.”

Peterson went on to say that Paul dealt with people from a position of health, even when he was addressing their unhealthy ways. And that was a paradigm shift for me to think that this is an image bear of Christ. This is a person who’s redeemed. This is a person who has a new heart that wants to love like the Trinity loves. And if that’s true, then I can move towards people with a vision of who they could be, even as I address what’s wrong in their life. So the only reason to speak to what’s wrong in his life is to remove what’s an impediment to the release of God’s life. And I think when that’s the case, then people feel a sense of vision and compassion. I’m always amazed that the woman at the well is exposed for the way she’s living her life and yet she runs home and says, come meet this man who’s told me everything I’ve done. Now, exposure in the beginning of time, back in the garden of Eden —
[DAWN]
Yes, she’s not hiding in shame. She is released.
[KENT]
Exactly. She came hiding because she came at noon when everybody else came in the morning to the well. So she comes hiding, Jesus doesn’t try and step around what’s going on in her life. He speaks the truth to her, but for the purpose of calling to something deeper in her heart, which she must have felt, she must have seen eyes of compassion that gave her the potential to believe that maybe there’s hope, maybe there’s something more. And that’s what I want to do with people.
[DAWN]
Yes, offering hope and compassion. I love that. I wonder though, can we go back to what you were saying about, because I think this is foundational in how you are looking at spiritual direction is, you said we’re made in the image of the Trinity. And if people don’t understand what that may, I was wondering if you could explain that briefly, if you can. Explain what does that mean, the Trinity and how are they relational?
[KENT]
Well, I think it’s easy to think God is singular when the reality is what the court truth about God is that He is a being who happens to be three persons, one God. So there’s a lot of descriptors about God, holy righteous, sovereign, all those kind of things, but who He is, His ontology, which is a big word for being, His being is relational. And then He comes along and says, “Let’s make man in our image.” And I think what that means is that we’re made to be in relationship. So we’re made. And then why did God create man? Because he was lonely? Well, certainly not. Because he wanted us to enjoy what God had going on. God had a good thing going on amongst the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit and He wants us to enjoy the life and have the same purpose that they had.

And that’s why we were created, put in the world to be his representatives. If you remember when Adam was created, he’s created perfectly. Obviously no sin in the picture yet, but God saw it’s not good for you to be alone. So he’s made to be in relationship with another human being and with God. So part of what it means to be made in the image of God is that we’re made for relationship and we’re made to represent God in how we relate in this world, which means to really love, to really learn what it means to love like the father and the son love. And that’s the mystery and the depth of Jesus’ prayer in John 17. It’s this incredible sense of oneness going on between the father and the son into which Jesus at the very end of that prayer says, “This is what I want you to, I want you to be in our love. I want you to be in me and in the father, the way we are.”

So that’s really at the core of what’s true inside of us is that there’s this deep, deep desire to be part of the life of God. And this incredible mystery is unfolding before us, is that God has done that very thing. He’s removed the barrier so that we could once again, not just kind of be included, but be in. We’re sons and daughters. We’re in the inner circle. And how do we live like that’s true? Of course we all struggle to believe that and we have a lot of fear and we feel like we screwed up too many times or whatever it is and God says, “No, no, no.” And if we can help move people beyond that fear keeps us in bondage, I think is really the work of spiritual direction or spiritual companionship as I like to call it.
[DAWN]
Yes, that’s just such a beautiful way to explain it. I don’t think people hear that often and I just love even revisiting that. And then you also were mentioning the things that get in the way. I think you use the word, the impediments that get in the way of us relating to others and that is why we have to expose the sin to one another. And to me that goes into one of my pillars of this podcast, authentic community where we can truly be caring for one another in a deep way. And sometimes that means talking about the stuff that gets in the way of us being relational with each other and with God, because it’s directly related.
[KENT]
Yes, I love what you’re saying there. If you’ve grown up in the church you’re tired of certain lingo and we certainly live in a culture that doesn’t want to hear the word sin. Well, I suggest that you just transpose over the word self, because that’s truly what sin is. It’s a commitment to myself above all else. And the temptation in the garden was you really don’t need God. You can do it yourself. You can be on your own. And that’s the temptation every day. It’s to isolate, to make it about me, but really true that only grows out of fear. I’m just scared to death. When Adam and Eve sinned, man, I think terror, it wasn’t just fear, it was terror entered their souls.

We have that phrase, they were naked and not ashamed. There’s no thought for self until after sin. And then it’s all about self. It’s all about getting what I’m afraid I don’t have. Will I be seen, will I be heard, will I be respected, will I make any difference in this world? All those kind of things. Will I fit? So we all scramble and start trying to make life work according to our definitions and then we just make a mess of things. So the reason why we want to help people see their sin and the deceptive insidious nature of it ultimately is so that they can join the joy of the Godhead of giving your life away as hard as that is. It’s like that’s where our true joy. It’s in giving, not in getting. And when we taste that we taste a bit of what it means to be in community with God. And that, of course that leads into then how should we relate to one another and what you’re talking about in community?
[DAWN]
Yes. Do you have any like examples of how that shows up in community or what that looks like, because I feel like we’re diving to a whole nother level here. This isn’t just Bible study and reading a book together. This is like real messy stuff.
[KENT]
It is messy. Mike Yaconelli, I don’t know, he was part of, I’m going to forget the name, it was a youth organization. He’s since passed away, but, he wrote a book called Messy Spirituality and that’s exactly what we’re talking about. I think it’s part of the reason why church likes to, at some level it’s really easy to stay on the surface, just come to church, watch the service and then go home. I think that’s a far cry from what God intended when He created the church. As Larry Crabb used to like to say, “Hey, I’d like to see us turn our chairs toward each other, not just towards the front as an image of what it should be.” And that’s not devaluing Sunday morning. That’s certainly important part of it, but it’s not the whole picture.

So yes, I want to first just say this, I don’t think you try to create community. I think community is the byproduct of something more and that feels really important because everybody wants to try. I was pastor of a church for 32 years and we tried to make community happen and that’s just a sure way of failing. I just think community surprises us when it happens and it’s not this necessarily ongoing thing we feel all the time. It’s, a lot of times just those occasional moments where we’ve worked side by side and we feel like hearted or we’ve wept together over loss or somebody has spoken the truth to me in a gracious and compassionate way that redirects my life, or I hear the word of God and I’m moved to worship and be generous together with other people and or we live as an authentic individual.

I like the word authentic better than vulnerable because vulnerable almost feels to me like I’m trying to do something and I’m kind of opening up where authentic is just live as who you are. Larry Crabb, again mentor, been a mentor to me so I mention him probably numerous times, but he said the spirit of God works with us where we are not where we pretend to be or where we wish we were. So if the Spirit’s going to do His work, He’s going to have to start in us where we’re at. And frankly, I think if a church doesn’t have leadership, that’s willing to model that, then I think authentic community is almost going to have to happen subversively or underground. Because I think so many times we think in order to represent God will, our lives need to be together.
[DAWN]
Yes, and it’s the opposite.
[KENT]
Yes, it is. But I also don’t want it to be heard, is sitting around. We’re all sitting around sharing our ugly stuff.
[DAWN]
Like all the time, that’s all we do.
[KENT]
I think it’s so much more than that. I think it’s just, it’s hungry hearts seeking after God, wanting Him to know, wanting to know Him better and that we’re willing to plum the deaths of whatever needs to happen in any given moment as the spirit directs. So we could put ourselves in that position.
[DAWN]
Yes, it’s bringing up for me, one of the most powerful things that I took away from the school that I was at with you is the concept of like, what means life to you and what means death? And I think as humans, we go through life thinking like, subconsciously we think all this stuff means death to us. So I’m going to make all these promises to myself and make these false declarations of that will never happen again. And it’s usually when we’re in times of pain or hurt or trauma even, and we make these statements. I remember like a lot of what we worked on in the school when we broke up into triads is like what has spoken false life to you and what does true life mean as a believer? And that’s just so powerful. I think when you’re living in authentic community is really being able to listen for that and notice that and others, and that’s been super transformational, like paradigm shift for me as I kind of entered back into my world after, after the school ended. Yes, I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about the life versus death. You probably would explain it better than I would.
[KENT]
I wish Carla, my wife was here. She loves that. She can do a better job than I will, but I love that that’s stuck with you. I think that that’s a really important point. I was an athlete and small fish or a big fish in a small pond. So I found a lot of life in doing well, getting applause, being nice, even as a Christian young man, as a good guy in high school. So that’s a false definition of life. We have to listen and pay attention even in our own souls to what am I calling life that is not consistent with what God calls life and what am I defining as death? I’ve for years had this sense of the word small comes to mind. If you make me feel small that’s going to feel like death to me and then I can feel a scramble in my soul to not feel that.

I can remember times, smallest example, standing up front and somebody distracts everybody and 200 heads turn and look to the left or the right. And you’re talking, pouring out your heart talking, and it feels like, oh my goodness. Suddenly you feel like a, for me, I felt small and I could find myself scrambling to get everybody’s attention back rather than even being willing to stop and laugh about whatever’s going on or say, “Hey, what did I miss here? What’s going on?” Because it felt threatening to me. So I think things that threaten our souls and make us feel like we’re going to be small or unseen or unvalued or whatever it is, those feel like death moments. And then we quickly find things where people made us feel alive, or we got attention for whether it’s our humor, our sports ability, our looks, and then we live to try and avoid death and we live to try and feel alive. And just think about what I just said. Those are two sentences that are absolutely about self-addiction. That’s all about me, not feeling death and feeling alive. And when we’re consumed with ourselves, we’re not going to love anybody.
[DAWN]
Yes. I feel like the spiritual direction that I desire and that I want to bring to other people is asking ’em to go deeper than, I call it the false definition of life and the false definition of death, because it’s not true. It’s not true death and it’s not true life. As believers, what is true death? Life apart from God. And once you really look at things, you’re like, oh wait, like, there’s a kind of a phrase that’s going around, but you didn’t die. And I don’t mean that to be callous, but really like, no, I actually have God with me in the midst of whatever I’m going on. And if I can cling to that rather than clinging to, let’s say, for example, having a huge fight with your spouse and going into your defense mechanisms and going into I have to avoid this at all costs. So, I mean, there’s just so much you can unpack there, but if I can cling to, “Actually I’m okay and yes, I don’t like this at all, and this sucks, but I’m okay,” like it’s not death, that to me, and it’s probably the reason it stuck with me is because I do work with your wife in spiritual direction. I feel like she brings that up a lot. It’s so powerful.
[KENT]
Yes. I mean, you’re right on it. I think at any given moment, if I can say to myself, what I’m calling life is not life and that could happen in a split second, especially in a fight with your spouse, then I could actually maybe hear what’s going on for my partner. And now I’m closer to actually loving and I’m closer to, I mean, Jesus moved around in this world and I think even though stuff came at Him and impacted Him. It never distracted Him away from having eyes to see you. I mean, the woman at the well was pushing back against Jesus, but it never made Him back away. He kept His eyes on her heart and soul and wanting to appeal to her thirst for something more than she knew. Boy, I long to be more like that.
[DAWN]
Yes, because so many times if someone’s pushing back, we have a tendency to deflect or defend or rise up within ourselves and go back after them. And what you’re saying is like, what Jesus did is He knew her heart so well that, like you said, that’s what He wanted to release. And I just wish I could channel that more. I wish I could bring that in more when I’m in the midst of a rising emotion and a rising defense coming up within me. That’s what I long for as well of how can I see this person’s heart and who they really are rather than focusing on protecting myself.
[KENT]
I mean, that’s a beautiful longing Dawn and that I think that’s the right place to get to. We don’t try harder. I think the only way to get where we’re describing is through brokenness, brokenness over our self-centeredness. I sat with a guy the other day, who’s a superior of mine and he was being critical of something I had written in an email and it touched on that smallness in me and I just stared him down with eyes of daggers. Because I just felt like you’re not even reading the whole context. I had all kinds of defense things going on inside of me and I walked away from that and I felt justified and I was talking through it with Carla, and it just dawned on me there’s nothing about the way I interacted there that was of Jesus.

And I remember thinking there’s no thought, there’s no compassion towards this person sitting across from me, even if they’re wrong, even if they’re hurting me. I thought, Lord, that’s so inconsistent with who you are and I know no way to get there than just to call that wrong. It’s a sentence I’ve said in many weddings I’ve done, you have to become more troubled about yourself than what’s been done to you. And until we get to that point, because other people’s sin always feels far worse than our own —
[DAWN]
That’s so true.
[KENT]
Your sin justifies mine. And it’s just not true. Until I’m more troubled about mine, what feels like 35% compared to your 60%, we’re not going to get anywhere. And I think we don’t say, oh, I want to be more like that. I’ll try harder. I think we say, no Lord, I don’t know how I’m ever going to sit across from that person and have compassion if you don’t do a work in my soul.
[DAWN]
Yes. It’s like supernatural at that point because it’s so hard to stop a full-blown reaction, I think. Yes, I think sometimes for me going back to that person and saying, let me tell you what really was going on, if that, well, I was going to say if I trust that person, but even, maybe not.
[KENT]
Well, I think you can do that as a way, or I think you can just do it in your heart too. Just to say, “Lord, I didn’t love that person.” Because a lot of times you go back to people and they’re clueless, “No, I didn’t know that.” But you know in your heart what was going on.
[DAWN]
That’s true. Yes, some people don’t want to go that deep.
[KENT]
So you confess it to God. I think that’s the door opening and God says, “Okay. Thank you for giving me permission for my spirit to go to work in your life.”
[DAWN]
Hmm, yes. Wow. Well, I have just loved talking about all this. It just helps me, I’m selfish, I just love having conversations like this. I don’t find it often and so I just love any time I get to spend with you or Carla and talk about these kind of things. Anything else coming to your mind when you’re thinking about spiritual direction or sorry, spiritual companionship? Anything else that really is sticking out as you want to comment on today?
[KENT]
Yes, there’s probably just a couple more things that I would love to just make sure I say and that’s that we really need to understand that there are no experts in matters of the soul. There’s only the Holy Spirit, but the good news is He’s in me and hopeful He’s in the person that I’m talking with. So it really is an issue of listening for the Holy Spirit and helping a person hear what God is, discover what God might be saying to them, not talking at them, not imposing something on it, but listening, asking questions, wondering with them because they’re a brother or sister and yo have a vision for who they could be in Christ. So you’re really listening for, that’s where I think our theology has to come in. What is it that I’m listening for and what is going on in a soul?

What does the Bible tell us about is going on in a soul. And as we just try to be genuinely curious about what the person is saying, because I don’t know what God is doing, but I know he’s up to something and oftentimes if we’re just quiet in our souls and slow down with people and really listen and ask questions, then it opens up space for God to bring a memory to mind, a story to mind, a thought to mind to the person. And it gives me permission to kind of listen for Him and maybe He gives me a moment wisdom to speak to this person. I have to remind myself every time I talk with a person, I literally, I think almost every time say to myself, nothing has to happen. It’s just a way of me almost repenting from the start to feel like, well, people look at me as the professional so I got to look sound wise here.

And that just gets in the way of meaningful conversation and a deeper relationship. And we’re so at the mercy of God to open our eyes to anything. And I want to come to it humbly, but believing deeply that God is at work in this person or they wouldn’t be here. And He’s at working me at the same time. I’ve got to pay attention to what’s going on in myself, unless my addiction to myself gets in the way. I can’t tell you the number of times I have to repent of, oh, I need to say something profound. Oh my golly, there’s silence here. I need to fill the space. Oh my golly, whatever, that just gets in the way of truly listening and being there for another person.
[DAWN]
Yes. You are calling me out because that is one of my things. As a therapist, I’m paid to talk to people and sometimes it’s like, I forget, oh yes, the Holy Spirit can be at work in both of us and I don’t have to bring it to the table. I just need to back off and listen. That’s been struggle and I’ve worked on that the last few years. I’ve felt very convicted about that and it always rears its ugly head. But it kept me from deep relationships in my own life. To be honest, it kept me from having close companionship because I felt like I always had to be on a therapist, whether it was in like a group that had nothing to do with therapy. So it’s been a journey for me over the last few years to kind of let that go but I still struggle with it. So I’m glad you said that. It brought some memories.
[KENT]
You say all that speaks to your integrity, that you’re willing to make knowledge that those things are going on. And I just think that kind of stuff is that just in that small way, gives the Holy Spirit permission to do His work. And we find ourselves a little different down the road and kind of wonder why, how did that happen? But I think it’s because of moments like this where you just simply call a spade a spade and say, “I’m not good at that. I need to get better at that.”
[DAWN]
Yes. Thank you for saying that.
[KENT]
I’ll never forget. I’ll just say this too, one last story. I sat with a woman way back 30 years ago in counseling. I met with her for a year and she came in one day and she said, “Hey, I need to end.” I was like, “Oh yes, why?” She said, “Well, my husband just got transferred and we’re going to be leaving in two weeks.” I said, “Well, why don’t you come back next week and let’s kind of have a wrap up session?” So I was in my twenties at that time and she showed up the next week and I said to her, I’ll just call her Susie, I said, “Susie what about our time has been profitable for you?” If I’m being honest, I really was looking for a pat on back. I wanted her to say, “Wow, man, when you said this, that was just profound.” I’ll never forget. I can still picture the moment. She sat up in her chair as I asked that question, she leaned forward, she looked me in the eyes and she said, “You know what, Kent, you’re the first man who’s ever sat across from me, looked me in the eyes and listened.”

And frankly, those were her exact words, by the way. Never forgotten it. Frankly, I was disappointed in her response. I was driving home that night after meeting with some other people and that conversation came back to mind and that’s when I realized that’s what every soul wants. That’s what the church could do for each other. Because what God offers, what I offered that woman was presence. She wasn’t talking about anything I said. She was talking about the fact that I was present with her. And what does God offer to us? Every time we’re scared God says, “I am with you.” Emmanuel, God with us. God came to be close to us, to walk with us, to show us His heart. And of course, presence needs some definition. What does it really mean to be present with somebody? It doesn’t just mean physicality. It certainly includes that, but it means to really be there, to really hear, to really listen for, to engage at a soul level. And when we do that, something mysterious happens that’s part of God’s forming of another person and forming of me. And I suspect we could all tell stories of where somebody’s really, really been there for us and we deeply value that even if their words don’t necessarily stick with us. So one of the great gifts we offer each other is presence.
[DAWN]
I love that. In fact, that’s how I hope my team of counselors at my counseling center, our name Authentic Connections is the counseling center name, I tell them straight up, “It’s not about, I mean, I’m glad you have skill set and I’m glad you’ve been trained, but what clients love the most is our authentic connection with them and just creating that space to be present.” Whether they’re believers or not, that doesn’t matter but they still feel that presence and I still feel like that is us showing them God, whether they’re aware of it or not. And you’re right. All the time I’m sitting with therapists who are like, but what about I should try this skill or that, and the feedback we continually get is the clients say, “No, just you being here, showing up with me is huge.” And we’re like, oh, but I gave you all these skill sets. What about those? And if we’re true, like you said, if we look at ourselves, isn’t that what we really long for when we’re in a moment?
[KENT]
That’s really is what God offers us. He doesn’t offer to always fix things, but be with us.
[DAWN]
No, never.
[KENT]
And truthfully, if we’re not careful our training and our skills and even our giftedness sometimes can get in a way.
[DAWN]
Oh, often, for me at least. Yes, I agree with that. Wow. Well, thank you so much. This has been great to kind of just talk through it. Even for myself, I was like, how can I, I don’t even know how to put into words some of the difference I’m feeling when I talk to you or Carla. And I think as we talk today, I’m realizing a lot of it is really being clear on our, for lack of a better term theology, but what our true beliefs are and then how that plays out, like getting clear on what the Holy Spirit means in your life. You kind of have to know where that’s coming from in order, like you said, the release versus imposed. I just think it’s really knowing, and being grounded on some truth in order to bring out the, to create that connection with other people and God and to really just say —
[KENT]
I wish we had another hour, because we could unpack that whole idea of, I really think one of the things I deeply appreciated about Dr. Larry Crabb was that he had a model that was truly theologically grounded in ways that I’ve never sensed. And he called it spiritual theology because one of his mentors said spiritual theology is theology that matters in the way we relate to one another. And I think that’s true. We don’t want to throw theology out, but most of us kind of theology we’ve often heard just feels like boring facts. We know they’re kind of true, we know the Trinity is kind of true, but what difference does it make? It makes a huge difference and so out of our theology come categories that guide the kind of questions we ask, that guide the kind of things that we’re looking for in the soul.

I mean, I think you could take Jesus’s interaction with a woman at the well and you can spend immense amount of time defining what to put it in our language today, spiritual direction or spiritual companionship really looks like. There are so many things there and that’s great. That’s spiritual theology, but it gets grounded in who is God and who are we and what went wrong and what’s the Spirit’s role in that and all those kinds of things that lead to these categories, these ways of thinking that affect how I interact with a person. So we can unpack that for a long time.
[DAWN]
Yes, maybe I’ll have you back and we can just go through those questions. I do feel like that would be super long, like another session episode, I should say. It would be another episode, but super powerful. Well, so, Kent, if someone wants to get ahold of you, I don’t know if you’re open to taking on more spiritual direction people, or if you want to talk about that at all, let me know. We can talk about it on here.
[KENT]
Yes. They can always go to where my wife and I serve as the kind of the lead spiritual directors on largerstory.com, which is a ministry to further the legacy and the work that Larry Crabb has done. We have other spiritual directors on there who think the way we think and so it may not get me, but as I have openings, I’m always willing to take people. But there’s other capable ones. And again, it’s not come because you have a problem, it’s come because you feel like, and this is where I feel sad at the church because it feels like people can’t seem to find others who will journey with them and listen and ask questions and not feel like they’re trying to fix them either by prayer or by a verse. Good things, but oftentimes they’re offered prematurely before you really listen to what’s going on in a person’s soul. But yes, on a largerstory.com is one way to, if this appeals to you and you want to walk with somebody or have somebody to walk with you, that’s one option.
[DAWN]
Great. I highly recommend that as well. As my listeners know, I have sought out spiritual directors and it’s been instrumental in my life. I just texted Carla this morning saying, ‘Hey, I know I took the summer off, but I’m ready to jump back in. I’ve missed our conversation.” So highly recommend that largerstory.com and you can find a spiritual director there. Well, Kent, thank you again for our time. I’ve really appreciated talking about all this stuff.
[KENT]
You’re welcome, Dawn. Thanks for interacting and asking. So maybe we can do it again.
[DAWN]
Yes. All right. Thank you.

Thank you for listening today at Faith Fringes Podcast. If you want to explore more of your own faith journey, I offer my free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections, where you take a deeper dive into your own story included as a journaling workbook that has guided exercises. So if you want to explore more of what you were brought up to believe, or even look at where you may have been disillusioned or hurt, but yet still deep down you desire to authentically connect with God, then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up.

Also, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can reach me at dawn@faithfringes.com.

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