Soul Talks With Bill & Kristi Gaultiere

We model for you the blessing of using Soul Shepherding’s “Advent Meditations and Prayer Cards.” This inspiring resource is for your personal devotions, small group, family meal, or holiday gathering. Our Bible study discussion from the life of Jesus comes from our book Your Best Life in Jesus’ Easy Yoke in chapter one. These and other resources make great Christmas gifts and your purchases support the ministry of Soul Shepherding. They are available in the online store on SoulShepherding.org. Soul Shepherding, Inc. is a nonprofit ministry and your donations subsidize this “Soul Talks” podcast, along with the counseling and mentoring we provide for pastors, missionaries, and other men and women in ministry. Thank you!

Let’s go deeper into Jesus’ “Be-Gratefuls”! This episode draws on Jesus’ Greatest Teaching: Living the Sermon on the Mount by Bill Gaultiere. This 42-page PDF booklet is a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount, based largely on insights from Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy. It includes a guide for small groups. You’ll find these and other books and seminars on our website in the store. You’re invited to participate in Soul Shepherding’s TLC Retreats! This is a certificate training program in “Spiritual Formation and Soul Care Ministry.” We start a new cohort January 15 - 19, 2018. For our podcast listeners we’re offering a $100 discount. Use the promo code “SoulTalksTLC”. To learn more visit our website and find our page TLC Retreats or Contact Kristi. Advent starts soon. Check out Soul Shepherding’s “Advent Devotionals and Prayer Cards.” During Advent on “Soul Talks” we’ll be talking about “Four Ways Jesus Comes to Us With an ‘Easy Yoke’”

In this podcast we (Bill and Kristi Gaultiere) teach on Jesus’ beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-10, especially his blessing for peacemakers (verse 7). We clarify Jesus’ teaching from common misunderstandings and illustrate it’s application through a relationship conflict that we had and how Christ and his kingdom helped us. This conversation draws on the booklet Jesus’ Greatest Teaching: Living the Sermon on the Mount by Bill Gaultiere. The inspiring insights and applications in this 42-page booklet are great for personal devotions and small groups. You’ll find these and other books and seminars on our website in the store. At the end of this episode we have an invitation for you to join us at our Soul Shepherding TLC Retreat January 15 - 19, 2018. For our podcast listeners we’re offering a $100 discount. Use the promo code “SoulTalksTLC”. To learn more visit our website and find our page TLC Retreats or Contact Kristi.

Dumping on people it’s not helpful! Effective listening enables people to feel cared for and to take personal personal responsibility — it doesn’t “fragilize” them. We discuss an example in parenting. Bill’s Bible study and reflective meditation from Habakkuk helps us be strengthened in faith through venting emotion wisely.

A pastor shares, “I thought it was wrong to vent emotions. I didn’t want to name negative emotions and make them more real so I just kept them inside.” Repressing emotions puts them in your body and diminishes your capacity to love and lead well. Kristi helps Bill process his feelings about Brennan Manning’s memoir confessions of ongoing alcoholism and deceit during his ministry.

When the Lord in his Word says, “Fear not” he’s not judging us for having worries or fears! He’s actually inviting us to feel, talk, and pray. He’s opening his arms to us in love. We share a meditation on Luke 12:32 to experience the love of Christ and the Father.

Do you enjoy reading the Bible? You can! We talk about the blessing of “Digging Deeper in God’s Word” and Kristi leads a short “Lectio Divina” meditation on Psalm 138. We’re thankful for Jon Firey of FFH band for the music.

This is the cry of “J. P.’s” heart. We share his story of not feeling God’s presence, struggling with depression and alcohol, being judged. His earnest faith, spiritual disciplines, and service in church aren’t helping. He asks, “Bill and Kristi, what would you say to me?” If you or someone you know relates to J. P., tune in for empathy, affirmation, and spiritual formation coaching.

Jesus says, “Give and it will be given back to you.” (Luke 6:38) But often when we serve, care, or lead in ministry we’re weighed down with burdens, overstressed, or discouraged. We’re missing the joy of Jesus! Bill and Kristi share their struggles and renewals to encourage you.

Kristi asks Bill, “How are you feeling?” He shares he feel’s sad for Jesus. Because a group of Christians regularly go from a church meeting to social meeting in which they drink too much and have unwholesome conversation. It’s like two different lives. Their is great joy and blessing in being with Jesus in all that we do. This is our best witness to the world.

A Soul Talks listener asks, “How do I give empathy when what’s shared makes me feel anxious? I lose patience and just want to fix it.” We talk about repressed emotions, enmeshment, abandoning outcomes to God, and the need for mutuality with loved ones.

What’s God doing when hurricane’s hit? How do we deal with hardships? We go to Jesus together. We validate the emotions and offer empathy. We may need to re-think our perspective and faith and do some training to learn how to live and react to trials from within the spiritual reality of the Kingdom of God.

Like some ministry leaders today Nicodemus was stuck in his head and emotionally reluctant. Jesus offers masterful empathy to help him re-think — and re-feel! — his life to be “born from above” in the Kingdom of God. Here’s an insightful Bible study on John 3:1-17 put into the format of a refreshing empathy-based conversation.

A woman asks, “How can I help my husband share his feelings?” We all have family members or friends who are reluctant to share emotions. Maybe you are too! Here’s how to invite people to be emotionally vulnerable and draw them into the grace of Christ. In a replay of a conversation from the past, Kristi uses empathy to draw out Bill when he was an emotionally reluctant husband.

A pastor is caught in a church “worship war”. Speakers are criticized. Kristi is judged for teaching men in church. Bill is caught in the crossfires of mediating a church leader conflict. Probably you feel pressure to please people too. Empathy, the Word of God, and affirmation of Christ’s call give us courage to please the Lord in all things.

A listener asks, “Kristi, how do you carry your tender heart into relationships that are not so safe?” Kristi and Bill share on the characteristics of an emotionally safe person, how to be vulnerable and yet “contained”, and how to receive empathy from God and his ambassadors.

Probably we all have hidden emotions. Some of us feel emotionally lost, locked up, even numb. A listener who was abused as a child and shut down her feelings asks for pointers on re-learning how to feel. We help her and you not to judge yourself but to seek grace from God, through prayer and supportive people.

Bill and Bobby Schuller (pastor of the Hour of Power) talk about how they find hope in challenging times. All of us at times don’t feel hope. We may be afraid to hope and be disappointed. When we put our hope in God and the eternal good he is bringing we have an anchor for our soul.

Kristi shares her “trauma trigger” and how the Lord ministered his shining face of love on her through empathy and words of blessing. We all have “implicit memories” of childhood distress that need divine compassion. Kristi shows us how a deep hurt offered to the Lord can become a “sacred wound” that heals others.

“How are you?” Whatever our work, or even if we’re retired, often we answer, “Busy!” But CS Lewis taught, “Only lazy people are busy!” How can this be? The most effective and fruitful leadership is born out of rest, prayer, and discernment — it’s not just working hard, it’s working SMART!