intimacy with jesus

A flashback of a diary entry written by Hanaya's mother as a young single mom. She pens down a prayer for her little Hanaya and commits herself to raising her as the Lord's girl.

What prayer would you pray for your precious little one and their future?

There is no greater gift that you can give your children than to walk alongside them and help them develop their relationship with Jesus. It is the most important relationship they will ever have. If you unconditionally surrender your children to the Lord and diligently do your part, God will lead them for His glory.

We don't train ourselves so we don't train our children. Everything you believe in has to be practical and applicable for your children. That means you yourself need to be fully convinced. Teach them how to engage with the Lord. For your kids, you should always present the supernatural to them. You should always give them the alternative to ask God for help first. Teach them to pray first. Teach them to believe God's Word first and encourage them not to wait for someone else to do it for them.
– Kevin Zadai

Raise your kids as lovers and warriors of the Lord who go on to finish the purposes of God in their generation.

Hanaya Oki Series:  https://superdifferent.com/hanaya

We all face difficult circumstances at some point in our lives. Even though they may not be what we would choose, they provide us the opportunity for deeper formation in Christlikeness.

Tune in for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi discuss enduring discipline. While we may struggle in hard times, we can learn to see God loving us in them and willing good for us. Reflecting on Jesus’ example of suffering helps us practice submission and trust and recognize the hidden blessings in our own sufferings.

Resources for this Episode:

• Attend a Soul Shepherding Institute Retreat
• Earn a Spiritual Direction Training Certificate
• Donate to Support Soul Shepherding and Soul Talks

Suffering is hard. When we face an unexpected stretch of illness or other difficult circumstances, we may feel disoriented and lost. Yet in the pause from our normal rhythm of life, God is doing a deep work. 

Join us for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi discuss a recent experience of suffering. Even in the trial, there is intimacy and sweet companionship to be found in a greater understanding of Christ’s sufferings for you and his presence with you.

Resources for this Episode:

• Earn a Certificate in Spiritual Direction
• Earn a Certificate in Coaching
• Attend a Soul Shepherding Institute Retreat
• Donate to Support Soul Shepherding

Older devotional classics enliven our hunger for God and help us recognize our desperation for Jesus.  Reading stories of average people powerfully transformed and used by God encourages our faith and deepens our intimacy with Jesus.

Join us for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi share insights gleaned from a Russian spiritual director in Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer. This expression of spiritual direction will inspire you to view your soul as a private prayer space for the Lord (a poustinia) where you receive others with hospitality and love.

Resources for this Episode:

• Attend a Soul Shepherding Institute Retreat
• Earn a Spiritual Direction Training Certificate
• Donate to Soul Shepherding
• Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer

Cultivating our enthrallment with Jesus is so important because we are shaped by what we love. For all nine Enneagram types, the Gospels show us Jesus as the healthy and holy perfection of our type.

Join us for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi reveal Jesus as the perfect Enneagram Six. Jesus is the exemplary Loyalist, trusting in God’s authority, and a pragmatic problem solver. As you come to appreciate Jesus as the perfection of your own Enneagram type, you will be drawn to become more like him.

Resources for this Episode:

• Healthy Feelings, Thriving Faith: Growing Emotionally and Spiritually Through the Enneagram
• Soul Shepherding Enneagram Resources
• Enneagram & Emotions Free Assessment
• Contact Soul Shepherding to Invite Bill & Kristi to Speak

You made plans and tried to make it happen, but it's going nowhere. You trusted some people, but then they showed their true colors. Do you find yourself in a similar place in life now?

The sooner you come to the end of yourself, the better. Listen to Hanaya encouraging a frustrated Yuri to start afresh.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways submit to Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
— Proverbs 3:5-6

Song Credit: Sajan Nauriyal

Hanaya Oki Series:  https://superdifferent.com/hanaya

Do you feel the tension of transition? God called you to a new adventure, but you’re not quite sure where you are going.

Are you worried about getting lost midway?

Get encouraged and inspired by Hanaya's contemplation on the journey ahead.

Song Credit: Cory Quintard

Hanaya Oki Series:  https://superdifferent.com/hanaya

Areas of stress are opportunities for the enemy to drive us down. The father of lies takes something that is true and twists it into a half-truth with a lie embedded in it, hitting us right in the most vulnerable parts of our personality. Yet, with God as our shield, we can refute the lies of the enemy!

Tune in for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi share personally about recent attacks from the enemy. Understanding our emotions is the key to understanding our personality, particularly the four core emotions of anger, shame, anxiety and sadness. By working through those emotions we grow in self-awareness, intimacy with Jesus, and the ability to wake up and reject the lies of the enemy.

Resources for this Episode:

• Healthy Feelings, Thriving Faith: Growing Emotionally and Spiritually Through the Enneagram
• Breath Prayer Guides

What is discipleship? Often our understanding of discipleship separates our spiritual health from the other aspects of our life which can leave us disintegrated and soul sick. Our first call is to be a disciple of Jesus — ahead of the specific work of our ministry — so we learn to live in full dependence on him.

Tune in for this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi unpack whole life discipleship to Jesus. You’ll learn how to integrate your mental, emotional, relational, spiritual, and physical health within discipleship to live out of the overflow of your attachment to Jesus. 

Resources for this Episode:

• Breath Prayer Guides
• Ignatian Meditation Guides
• Lectio Divina Guides
• Your Best Life in Jesus’ Easy Yoke: Rhythms of Grace to De-Stress and Live Empowered
• Journey of the Soul: A Practical Guide to Emotional and Spiritual Growth
• Soul Shepherding Institute
• Soul Shepherding Sr. Spiritual Directors
• Soul Shepherding Sr. Coaches
• Soul Shepherding Network—Soul Care Groups
• Contact Us
• Soul Shepherding on Instagram

So much of our lives focus on what we do for God. Yet burnout in ministry is common when we depend on our own strengths, natural gifts, and abilities instead of depending on Jesus. While this often leaves us feeling distant from God, there is hope!

Join us for Best Soul Talks as Soul Shepherding’s Director of Operations and Programs, Jessica Stong, shares one of her favorite episodes— 207: How to Love and Lead WITH Jesus. Bill and Kristi offer deep personal and biblical insight and practical tools to help you step into life with Jesus, where his love and delight restore your soul.

Resources for this Episode:

• Soul Shepherding Institute
• Sr. Spiritual Directors
• Soul Shepherding Coaching
• Sabbatical Guide

joniradio.org

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.

Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

joniradio.org

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Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.

Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you are a survivor of abuse, our Shepherd Jesus sees you. He feels your pain and fear and wants to comfort you and help you experience healing, freedom from shame, and new courage. We want to help you heal and be restored in the care of Jesus.

In this episode of Soul Talks, Sr. Spiritual Director and Coach Jessica Stong shares her powerful and personal account of trauma and redemption with Kristi. Her story of healing is an inspiration to bring our painful memories and trauma to a wounded healer who is a conduit of Jesus’ healing grace. As we allow the Lord to minister to our sacred wounds, we can experience his beauty, grace, and goodness.

Resources for this Episode:

• Sr. Spiritual Director and Coach, Jessica Stong
• Sr. Spiritual Directors
• Soul Shepherding Institute
• Spiritual Direction Training

Sometimes we seek to avoid vulnerability and distract ourselves from areas where we may feel dependent. Yet in vulnerability there is a wonderful invitation into a different kind of life! Jesus has a tender way of meeting us in our places of deepest need and bringing us his joy.

Listen in to this episode of Soul Talks as Bill and Kristi interview Trevor Hudson, South African pastor, teacher of spiritual formation and spiritual direction, and author of Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with St. Ignatius and Dallas Willard. You will be equipped to meet Jesus in a deeper way and experience his joy through the life of discipleship taught by Ignatius and Willard.

Resources for this Episode:

• Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with St. Ignatius and Dallas Willard
• Soul Shepherding Institute
• Ignatian Meditation Guide
• Soul Shepherding Spiritual Directors
• Soul Shepherding Network

You can find the transcript here. 

Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone, flowers appear on the earth, the season of singing has come. Scripture References: Song of Solomon 2:10-15, Song of Solomon 3:1-5, Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Empathy and Intimacy with Jesus can be difficult experiences for those of us who are not bent toward emotion or are not naturally “feelers”. The Stations of the Cross is an enriching journey that the Lord has used for centuries in the lives of Christ followers to deepen our empathy and intimacy with him, and to remind us of magnitude of Jesus’ profound sacrifice.

Join us for this episode of Soul Talks where, as an Enneagram One, Bill tells of his own experience with the Stations of the Cross and Biblical suffering. You’ll be encouraged and enlightened by Bill’s account of the Apostle Paul’s faith both in Jesus and of Jesus during trials, and how we can learn from and model this in our own lives.

Resources for this episode: 

• Journey of the Soul 
• Soul Shepherding Spiritual Directors
• Unforsaken

You can read the transcript, here.

All of us have experienced times in our lives that we have not felt God’s love and presence as deeply or as apparently as other times. It can leave us discombobulated and discouraged, asking ourselves, “Is my faith real if I don’t feel it?” 

In these times of doubt, the Lord offers an invitation of emotional honesty – to bring those feelings even more into our relationship with him. 

Tune into this Soul Talk where Bill and Kristi explore why it is Biblical and healthy to experience these seasons at “The Wall.” You’ll be encouraged to learn why both thinking and feeling are critical in your journey with Christ, and what you can do when you feel they are lacking!

Resources for this episode: 

• Journey of the Soul 

You can read the transcript, here. 

Many who deconstruct their faith do so because they feel it's not working for them, or it's not working for the people that they see; They’ve experienced a trial, been hurt, or had upheaval in their lives. Maybe you know someone going through this. Maybe, it’s you.

To have doubts, questions, and to be wrestling with faith is natural. Similar to remodeling a house, our Sovereign God uses deconstruction to do or build a new thing in and through us. When we lean in, the risen Lord reveals the opportunity of deconstruction: reconstruction. 

Tune in to this Soul Talk where Bill & Kristi discuss why deconstruction happens, what you can do when you or someone you love is working through a faith crisis, and how to come out on the other side with a greater sense of intimacy with Jesus.

Resources for this Episode: 

• Journey of the Soul
• Soul Shepherding Spiritual Directors

You can read the transcript, here.

God, meet with me today. Let the kiss of your Spirit smother my life and launch me into a deeper relationship with you. Jesus, I long to experience your love and glory in ways I never have before. Leave no part of my life untouched by your beauty. Lavish me with your love.

Check out our Journey of the Soul: Soul Talk Cards! They are perfect for spiritual direction, small groups and personal devotion times.

We have Sr. Spiritual Directors waiting and ready to listen to you with empathy and confidentiality! On the Soul Shepherding Network page, you can find out more and book an appointment.  

Check out our online Sabbatical Guide course! Our program has everything you need to experience rest and renewal on your sabbatical.

You can order your copy of Journey of the Soul on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Please post a review to help other readers find us.

In the Soul Shepherding Institute, we’ll show you how to make space to hear God’s voice, be renewed spiritually, and engage in soul training that will equip you to thrive with Jesus in all you do as a pastor or ministry leader.

We love hearing from you! Contact Us and share how Soul Talks has impacted your life and relationships.

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