All theeffect audio messages for 2016 from most recent.

2016

Dave Brisbin | 3.6.16
As we look at religion and church practice, it all looks so polarized, so black and white, right and wrong—so binary, as if all our spirituality comes down to a choosing of sides. Which side is right and has the power to save and which does not. A young poet writes about why he hates religion and lists all the evils for which religion is responsible. Religion is bad; Jesus didn’t do religion; Jesus ended religion. Really? Jesus didn’t do religion? Truth is, Jesus was more religious than most of us could ever imagine or approve. He followed the written tenets and practices of his faith to the letter, but within that practice, he cleared a path to the freedom that actually fulfilled the intent of his religion. Jesus didn’t choose sides, and though he revered and followed his religion, he never put mere religious practice above the pure relationship his religion was meant to convey. When we study Jesus carefully, better, when we live Jesus carefully, we realize it was never about choosing sides, but about seeing both sides as one whole: each side contributing the structure, discipline, mercy, and compassion that is kingdom.

Choosing Sides

Dave Brisbin | 6.12.16
Speaking of the contemplative way of spirituality in conceptual terms is necessary at the outset, especially for those of us from the West, who are so intellectually based, but it is in many respects, a contradiction in terms. The contemplative way is not intellectually based at all—it is by definition a stepping away from the intellectual in order to non-judgmentally experience the lived moment. But how do we do this? How we step away? There is prayer and there is suffering that can guide us in intensive and specific ways, but there is another. Br. Lawrence called it the Practice of the Presence of God. Instead of specific times of prayer and devotion, there is a constant awareness of God’s presence that we can cultivate through all the daily details of our lives, an awareness that will give us the continual prayer, the constant contact that Paul speaks of. Today, this is sometimes called mindfulness—but mindfulness without the awareness of Presence may still not take us where we want to go, so it’s a blending of the two that Br. Lawrence is showing us. How do we do it, what are some day to day exercises we can use to bring us another step closer to kingdom?

Mindfully Present

Dave Brisbin | 6.5.16
One of the words ancient Christians used to describe the contemplative way was the word “apophatic.” From the Greek, it literally means to deny speaking or saying. In Latin, it is sometimes called the “via negative” or negative way—negative in the sense of emptying the mind of words, images, ideas in order to rest in God’s presence. In our contemporary culture, this seems somehow perverse in terms of coming into a connection with God. But as we look as Jesus’ time in the wilderness, his staring down the temptations of the adversary from a place of emptiness, his wild, paradoxical sayings of accomplishing by letting go, finding our lives by losing them, his insistence in the Beatitudes of the centrality of “negative” aspects of poverty of spirit, mournfulness, meekness, hunger and thirst as characteristic of kingdom, we see the apophatic way illustrated. To sell all we have and give to the poor in order to follow Jesus into the father’s presence is a letting go of all we think we have and know and believe in order to stand like children in the father’s presence and see what is really before us again for the first time.

Apophatic Way

Dave Brisbin | 5.22.16
As we dig deeper into the contemplative way of spirituality, we need to break down religious and cultural barriers. Contemplation, as we’re using it, is a stepping away from the all the thoughts, worries, concerns, and noise in our minds that keeps us from mindful presence right here and now—the only place we will ever meet our God: here and now. Modern Western Christian churches have expressed concern over contemplative practice, labeling it occult, but there is nothing occult about Christian contemplative practice that dates all the way back to the earliest generations of Jesus’ followers, and of course to Jesus himself. How did Jesus practice contemplative prayer and life? Where do we see this practice in scripture, and how do we enter into such practice in our lives today? We need to know more about a contemplative how.

A Contemplative How

Dave Brisbin | 5.15.16
Jesus is often seen, from a modern, Western viewpoint as a social reformer, a radical revolutionary, the founder of a new religion, working to tear down existing systems in favor of the poor and marginalized. Though Jesus was revolutionary in his expression of his relationship with God/Father, to see him as a social reformer or radical is to misunderstand his message, mission, and Jewishness. Jesus wasn’t trying to start a new religion, but purify the one he was already in. He was an observant Jew to the core, but his sense of oneness with his Father, our Father, made him one with everyone and everything else in creation, including those his religion had excluded. When you look at Jesus and his way of life from a Jewish point of view, what you see is someone so immersed in life and relationship and the lived moment as to be truly radical, but the radicalness is only accidental, a by-product of purposeful immersion in life.

Accidental Radicals

Dave Brisbin | 5.8.16
On Mother’s Day, we look at the role of mothers and fathers in ancient Hebrew society as illustrated in the language itself. Father in Hebrew means “strong house” and mother means “strong water,” that when understood in context means the “glue that holds the family together.” Strong house and strong water speak to the necessity of both doing and being, of accomplishment and relationship that undergird human life as a whole. We won’t find meaning and purpose without both father and mother in our lives, and we won’t find God either. God is neither masculine nor feminine and is both at the same time. Hebrews understood that their God carried the qualities of strong house and water in perfect balance, and that though God as king was indeed the strength of the house, we always experience him first as mother—the compassion, mercy, and wisdom of the glue that holds everything together. That Jesus always led every encounter, every relationship with compassion and mercy shows us the Way of God, loving first no matter how unlovely we may be—loving as only a mother could love.

Only A Mother Could Love

Dave Brisbin | 4.24.16
Continuing to look at the method and approach to spirituality at theeffect, one of the hallmarks is the contemplative life and contemplative prayer. How to understand contemplation? Simply stated, it’s the letting go of habitual thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns, letting of what we think it means to be ourselves, our ego-self in favor of what really is here and now present in the form of God’s spirit. What does that feel like? It feels like waking up inside your dream, to realize you’re dreaming, that the dream isn’t real, and that you can make a different choice than the one your habitual thoughts and triggered feelings have always dictated. How do we do this? Through contemplative prayer and practice, the constant practice of presence, stepping away from all our mental activity to find that Paul called prayer without ceasing, not unceasing words, but the unceasing presence and awareness of someone who has awakened in waking life.

Waking

Dave Brisbin | 4.17.16
We continue the thread started in the last message, which summed up the approach of theeffect ministry as working to help each individual find acceptance, get involved, build trust, and live theeffect of God’s love. Now what was that second point, again? Getting involved is really all about participation. Participation in what? Faith? Well, a much better way to put it is that participation is faith and faith is participation. Biblical faith is always action, not thought, but biblical faith is also not obedience. Obedience is not faith because it is based in fear of punishment, and the moment obedience is no longer based in fear of punishment, but love of the one to whom you’re submitted, then obedience is no longer obedience, but the action of trust. How do we get there? By diving into relationship headlong. But then relationship is only as good as our participation in it, so it’s really all about participation.

About Participation

Dave Brisbin | 4.10.16
As we near our ninth anniversary as a ministry, seemed time to step back redefine what theeffect was founded to be and what we work to do each day in the minds and hearts of those with whom we connect. Our approach can be summed up as a working to help each individual find acceptance, get involved, build trust, and live theeffect of God’s love. That love, the Good News, Kingdom, the quality of life lived steeped in the awareness of and participation in the Father’s presence is theeffect we seek and without which there is no purpose to a spiritual life.

Who, What, Why

Dr. Rocco Errico | 4.3.16
Renowned international Aramaic scholar Dr. Rocco Errico, founder of the Aramaic Institute and long time student of Dr. George Lamsa, joins us to present Jesus’ model prayer, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, from a deeply Aramaic, Semitic point of view.

Abwoon

Dave Brisbin | 3.20.16
On Palm Sunday, we look again at our expectations and biases and try to pry loose all we think we know of Jesus: from what he looks like to what we believe of his mission and teachings to test whether we, like those greeting Jesus along the streets of Jerusalem would miss the moment of our visitation. What we think we know limits what we see and are willing to accept as truth. Jesus rides into our lives on the back of the foal of a donkey, bringing a message and truth that unless we have conditioned ourselves to see with the eyes of a child, we will miss completely.

Least Of These

Frank Billman | 3.13.16
Our recovery pastor, Frank, takes the mic to work through the essentials of a spiritual walk, pulling from Matthew, John, II Corinthians, and even his own dreams to show us the shape of the journey from descent to ascent—the heartbeat of life.

Heartbeat Of Life

Dave Brisbin | 2.28.16
James Series 8: In this final session on the book of James, James makes the transition from more commentary on harmful practices and attitudes among those in his community—speaking ill of each other, arrogantly believing one’s own capacity to control circumstances independently of God, swearing—back to prayer and submission to God. And in this transition, he comes full circle from the acceptance of life’s difficulties and challenges with which he began, to the acceptance of our most basic relationship with life. From the endurance created by accepting life challenges and working through them to the realization and acceptance of our complete dependence on God for the life we lead. From acceptance to acceptance. James has taken this journey himself, and he is inviting us to take the journey as well. Only one question remains: we will accept the ride?

Accepting The Ride

Dave Brisbin | 2.21.16
James Series 7: James continues to hammer on the theme of making our actions match the ends we seek in Kingdom. He points to counter-kingdom practices and action he witnesses in his community—the fights, quarrels, covetousness—and harshly admonishes his people. But again, we need to resist the temptation to just see more rules to follow here. James tells us to draw near to God, humble ourselves, submit, and allow ourselves to let go and descend into a kind of mourning, a sense of loss of all the things we held dear in order to find what is really dear in life. We have built the idea that kingdom is achieved by following rules, when what Jesus and James are telling us is that kingdom is realized by falling in love—in love with a life that looks like kingdom, so that our behavior matches the kingdom we seek. We need to let the rules fall away so we can fall…into the embrace of the Father.

Falling Rules

Dave Brisbin | 2.14.16
James Series 6: Continuing to develop his theme of the law of liberty, James is determined that we understand how fully becoming the law as Jesus framed it—the fulfilling of law as opposed to mere rule following—was the embodiment of faith. His famous passage about the power of the tongue comparing it to rudders on ships and bits on horses is a colorful way of restating Jesus’ teaching that it’s not what goes into man that defiles him, but what comes out. It’s tempting to see these admonitions as more rules to follow, but James is trying to convey that we must use the same means as the ends we seek. If we wish to live in the unity of the Father, then we must begin practicing that unity and connection first. Sounds like a catch-22, but only if you think of heaven, understood as God’s ultimate acceptance, as the end of the journey. What if, as Jesus says, the kingdom, God’s acceptance and love is already within? What if heaven isn’t the end of the journey, but the beginning? That would be really Good News.

Starting With Heaven

Dave Brisbin | 2.7.16
James Series 5: James launches into another major theme of his book, the law of liberty. At first glance, his phrase seems to be an oxymoron—joining two completely contradictory terms. Isn’t law the opposite of liberty? But its very definition, law limits and restricts freedom for the greater good of the group. So what is a law of liberty? James speaks of being a doer of the word and not just a hearer, that action is necessary, that hearing without doing is just another way of saying faith without works is dead. James is zeroing in on the essential point that though law as we understand it, restricts, and such law is not what Jesus or James are teaching. When we follow a law with which we have no connection in terms of purpose and highest good, then our freedoms—things we desire to do--are restricted, but when our purpose and highest good in life has become the same as the law’s purpose and highest good, then in what way are we any longer obeying? We and the law have become one and what we desire to do falls entirely within the code. And when that code fully expresses God’s purpose and highest good, then we are completely free to live life abundantly without restriction…and without ever restricting the liberty of others.

Law Of Liberty

Dave Brisbin | 6.26.16
In our society, and especially in the midst of a presidential election cycle, it is easy to become completely polarized—to “drink the kool-aid” and go all in with one group or another, one party or another, one religion or another. To become completely imprinted with the tenets, the groupthink of our choosing. From this perch, it is easy to imagine that we have the corner on truth, all the truth, and all others do not, that we are good and others are bad, are less than, need to be persuaded or controlled for their own good, and ours. It is a perch from which personal growth stops as we hunker down to convert the world to what we already know. In this mindset, there is no dialog or conversation, there is no relationship or love that is not conditioned on first meeting our standard of belief. But Jesus and the great contemplatives of the world show us another way: a way to live on the edge of inside, on the threshold between groups and belief systems that keeps us open and aware, watching the comings and goings, alert to truth wherever it presents. This is sometimes called liminal space, but Jesus simply calls it Kingdom, the place where like children we are open to the moment as it presents and not always imagining it as we believe it should be.

The Edge of Inside

Dave Brisbin | 7.03.16
What is the effect of the mindfulness, the presence and awareness of the contemplative way? Living on the edge of inside, neither fully inside or outside, at the threshold, able to see what is really now and not just what we already think we believe, gives us a way of living life that simply can’t be experienced except with gratitude. Gratitude is the reaction, the state of living in the awareness of a gift given to us that we could never give ourselves. It is the sense of awareness in us that creates both a humility and sense of dependency, but also the sense of being cared for that leads to trust. Deeper than a mere feeling, gratefulness is the effect of beginning to know a truth about ourselves and God and the relationship between us. It is the sensation of the freedom that comes from knowing this truth. Jesus is insistent on knowing this truth that sets us free, and to bring this truth home, teaches us two basic principles, that if internalized and lived out, will bring us out along the way of gratefulness.

The Way of Gratefulness

Dave Brisbin | 7.10.16
What is the greatest impediment to gratefulness? To the trust of gratefulness? Seems it would have to be the hurts and traumas, the victimization, the evil that we encounter in our personal lives, and those of others either close or in the world at large. How do we continue to see God as compassionate and fair, how do we see life as fundamentally nurturing or safe, when there are monsters about hurting us and others? The problem of evil in our lives seems to contradict the portrait of God painted by Jesus as loving father. The oldest book of the bible, the book of Job, deals with these essential themes—as they’ve been questioned as long as there have been human being experiencing them. And the final answer to Job as God speaks to him from the whirlwind is that there is no answer that can be given to us in this life that will satisfy our minds, but there is an answer that can satisfy our hearts. A way of living that brings the paradox of the reality of perfect love and the experience of evil together in a way most unexpected.

The Answer

Frank Billman | 7.17.16
We have become so familiar with what we belief about God that we believe we know and understand him—who he is, what he does, how he works…that he is “he” at all. But the moment we define God, create edges that allow us to handle and carry him around, we have changed everything. God won’t fit into any definition or category or theology. God won’t fit into human thought at all, and the more we think on God the less we are open to his presence in our lives. How can we know God as God really is?

God in a Box

Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.