Always being joyful and finding meaning in life can be challenging for many of us. In his new book, “A Full-Hearted Life: Following Jesus in This Secular Age,” Bishop Jake Owensby offers a guide for navigating our culture’s complexities by encouraging us to embrace our true selves, cultivate genuine relationships and walk through life as Jesus did, offering wisdom and love to all we meet.
Guest: Bishop Jake Owensby
- In addition to being a theologian and author, Owensby is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana and the Chancellor of Sewanee: The University of the South. Read his bio here.
- Learn more and/or purchase "A Full-Hearted Life: Following Jesus in This Secular Age" from Abingdon Press.
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This episode posted on Nov. 15, 2024.
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Transcript
Prologue
Always being joyful and finding meaning in life can be challenging for many of us. In his new book, "A Full-Hearted Life: Following Jesus in the Secular Age,"Bishop Jake Owens V offers a guide for navigating our culture's complexities by encouraging us to embrace our true selves, cultivate genuine relationships, and walk through life as Jesus did offering wisdom and love to all. We need.
Crystal Caviness, host: Jake, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Jake Owensby, guest: Crystal, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Crystal: I'm excited that you're here. I'm excited to talk about your new book that's coming out in just a few weeks on December 3rd. That book is titled “A Full-Hearted Life: Following Jesus in this Secular Age.” And as I told you before we started recording, I have just so many questions that we probably won't even get to all of them, but I'm going to really try because this book was so rich, it is just so filled with wisdom and it just touched me in a lot of ways. So I'm anxious to get into that conversation. Before we do that, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself?
Jake: Oh, I'd be happy to do so. Let me start with the really important stuff. I'm married to Joy. We were married in 1983. She's my best friend and partner in holy crime. There you are. We've got two sons and a daughter, all adults. We've got three grandchildren, two boys and a girl. And actually my dog, Gracie, who is my constant companion is at my feet. So she may speak up because she loved the book. I'm the bishop of the Diocese of Western Louisiana, and if you think about Louisiana as a boot and you cut the toe of the boot off, we're everything else. So we don't have New Orleans for example, which a lot of people know about, but we're the vast majority of the state. And I'm also the chancellor of the University of the South that a lot of people call Sewanee. So I wear a lot of hats and I try to stay busy.
Crystal: Well, I am sure you have no trouble staying busy, and I agree with Gracie. I love the book too. So Gracie is welcome to join our conversation. We also talked a little bit about we have a joint love of Sewanee. My daughter is a graduate from there a few years back, and what a beautiful place in Tennessee. So I love that we have that connection as well.
Jake: Oh, me too, me too. And listen, anytime she comes back to Sewanee for a visit, I hope she'll look me up.
Crystal: Well, I will pass that on to her. Thank you for that generous offer. Jake, when we talk about “Full-Hearted Life,” as I was reading the book, what I read in that was that you defined this as having a sense of who we are, that we're being true to ourselves, that we do what we do in this world because it matters, that we're passionate about a purpose. We have genuine relationships and we have joy in being alive. Wow, that's a tall order.
Jake: Oh my goodness. And you're such a good reader. Thank you. For any author to hear himself properly and wonderfully summarized, it’s just a great joy. So thank you. And yes, that is what I mean by a full-hearted life. I tell you Crystal, sometimes people think of Christianity as this terribly dreadful and dreary thing that we have God looking over our shoulders, judging us all of the time, but what God wants for us, and I'm trying to get at that in a full-hearted life. God wants us to know the great depth and joy of what it is to be alive, to be God's own creation, purposely created by a God, by love for love, so that we would know his love for us, that we would know love for one another, and that we know that we are the beloved right down to our toes. So yeah, that's what I'm getting at with a full-hearted life.
Crystal: But we live in a world and really a society that makes it hard to live a full-hearted life. And in the book you talk about fragilization and that was a term that I wasn't familiar with before I read your book, but wow, as I read the book, I completely identified with it. I see it all around me and I experienced it myself even. Can you talk a little bit more about what that is, fragilization?
Jake: I'd be happy to. Let me step back and pretend for a minute that we are in a different historical period where pretty much everybody's Christian and there was such a time, wasn't there? And we never really had to question our beliefs at a deep, deep level because we weren't surrounded by people with all kinds of different beliefs. Well, today we are surrounded by people with all kinds of different beliefs. And also if you really think about it, I did a conference out in Nebraska with folks and I said, I probably hurt some clergy feelings with this, but I said, look, TikTok has more influence on people's thinking and their beliefs and so forth than most preachers are ever going to have. And what I mean by that is then we're in a kind of spiritual, cultural, social environment where we're not sure that what we're believing is really true or at the very least we know that there are other people who can question us or think that we're kind of weird for believing what we believe or even ridiculous and stupid.
And then from the flip side, we really want to engage people who are different from us. We don't want to demand that they're just like us. We don't want to sort of impose our beliefs upon them. But how do you negotiate that? How do you live in a world that has so much diversity in belief in practice, and yet at the same time continue to be faithful to a path to stay on a path that will define you for your whole life? And talk about fragilization then is to talk about the way in which this context makes our belief structures fragile. They're shakier than they used to be. So we have some projects, some spiritual projects, look at it that way. One is to really take reflection time to see, hey, what do I believe and how's that working for me? And about really being consistent with it?
What's it really look like in my life? Am I being honest with myself about what I say I believe? And also we're surrounded by neighbors who are different from us. We really are. And instead of getting into fractious relationships with 'em and arm wrestling about who's right and who's wrong, we can kind of lead with our ears. It is immensely rewarding to listen to somebody who's different. And that doesn't mean I have to be persuaded by them to become like them. I have to say I know my own path better because I learn about other people. I hear how they live their life and I hear how their beliefs well work for them or frankly don't work for them. Listen, write down to my toes. I believe in Jesus. I believe that I'm God's beloved through Jesus Christ. And that leads me to be very secure in listening to people who approach things a different way and who knows? I got to tell you sometimes that leads them to say, well, tell me you look kind. Happy Owens P, right? Tell me about your life. Tell me how's this Jesus thing fit into you? And they'll ask me all kinds of questions that sometimes come from preconceptions about what we Christians are like. And so it's very fruitful conversation territory.
Crystal: Part of this conversation I think is where you were writing that Henry Nouwen said, we must let go of our adored self. And another way, I believe you called it your relevant self, we all seek to be relevant. We all want to feel that we belong in a space, but if we live this full-hearted life and it's requiring us to return to perhaps a place where, what does that look like? How do we get back to that?
Jake: Wow, that's really at the center of so much of what I think is the good news of being a follower of Jesus. We live in a context in which achievement is everything, and that's part of what it means to be in a secular age. We live in a context in which we feel as if it has to do with theory of self and all that. I won't bog us down with it, but read the book in other words. But we live in a society and live in a time in the western world, not just the United States, where you're supposed to make something of yourself to prove that you're valuable, to prove that you're lovable, to prove that your life matters. You're always proving it by what you accomplish and by what you achieve, building as it were, your existential resume. And that never stops, does it? Because if you're on that track, if you're on that track by golly, the question that you're always going to hear in the back of your mind is, well, what now, what next?
And that can lead some of us to believe that what we're supposed to do with our lives is to write some sort of spiritual resume that we offer to God. And in fear and trembling, we hope that God's going to accept it. Why am I good enough for you, God? Right? Am I good enough for you, Jim and Bobby and Sue as neighbors? But that adds up to am I good enough for God? Am I good enough for myself? How many of us look in the mirror and look at somebody that maybe doesn't measure up to even our own standards? And that's just life crushing. And what now, when was getting at in there and some other writers these days too, is that that's actually the exact opposite of what the gospel is. The gospel is all about, look, bring yourself as you are so that you are loved without ever having had to earn it.
I'll put it in an extreme sort of way, coming to God in Christ, coming to Jesus, coming to Jesus and just saying, I got nothing. Will you take me? I got nothing. And to have the profound experience of hearing Jesus say to you in whatever way you might hear Jesus say it. Well, that's what I've been looking for all along, for you to see that I love you. You don't have to prove that. In fact, you can't. That's what gift love is all about, isn't it? Gift love, as CS Lewis would've put it, gift love is all about having the realization that this is this thing given to you gratis completely for free, and it can't ever be taken away from you. You can't lose this. And that's what makes you who you are. I say beloved, probably way too much, right? That I am the beloved and I got that from Henry now and tell you the truth.
But that if you begin every day, every moment, and that's a tall order, alright? None of us going to get that. All right? But if you begin, if your starting place is, well, I'm already loved. So as you enter into relationships with other people, enter into your job, enter into your relationship with nature, enter into your relationship with God really is how you do all that. If you're responding to a love that's already given to you, instead of reacting to circumstances that are changing all the time and over which frequently you have no control, there's a whole lot in life you're not going to be able to control. It's that simple, right? And you can get all reactive, and we see it all the time way people get angry, they name call, they demonize other people, and instead of reacting to what comes at you, really kind of ceaselessly, we can begin from the heap confidence that I am the beloved. And that it's like love's being poured into you as a great fountain. It's being poured out to you. And the whole purpose of it is so that it'll overflow from you into the world. We're sent into this world to be conduits of that love. It's the only thing in this world that will heal it. It's the only thing that'll make it whole is God's love for you, for me, for this world.
Crystal: As I'm hearing you talk about that, I'm also thinking that it almost, if you're telling this to someone unfamiliar with Christianity, it just seems too good to be true. Surely there's a catch to this.
Jake: And you're so right about that, especially look, let's face it, we live in a world like filled with commercials and filled people selling you stuff all the time. And whether it's selling products or they're selling a political line, or they're selling actually a spiritual bill of goods, we get that all the time. We're surrounded by it. Words are cheap. And so really, I have to tell you, if you're ever going to convince anybody that Jesus's love for us is real, we have to live that life. We have to be the people who love. That's how people can at least have a shot at believing that Jesus really loves him. And this isn't about, let me be real clear, yes, I believe that Jesus told us to make disciples. He didn't say, go fill up our membership roles in the churches so that we'll make sure to get a lot of good pledges or something like that.
That's not what it's about. What it's about is yourself to be loved. That is so fantastic. That is so fantastic. Go share that with people. And the only way that we're really going to be able to convince people of that in this world, in a world where there's just a lot of cheap talk that very often doesn't have a big connection to the truth, the only way is to be truth. Okay? Jesus said, I am the truth, right? He embodied it. He embodied the love that is God. And we can embody his love for us in every way that we can. Look. We're going to get it wrong a lot. And that's why we say I'm sorry, is why we repent. We know we're forgiven. We can say, I'm sorry, it's a lot easier when the forgiveness is adding your way, but try the best we can to do little things like be friendly to somebody when you're checking out in line at a Walmart, call 'em by name, ask 'em how they're doing.
That's a really simple thing. But you know how frequently people pass by other people not seeing them. It's so common and we can give that gift as best we can. And when we drive in the car, talk about a place where we can be right on edge and be our worst self as something as simple as letting somebody merge in front of you. I mean, these are simple things. You don't really have to be a spiritual hero. Now, there are times you have to be, you speak up and say, we need to be kind to one another. And no, we can't talk to one another that way. And we do have to be fair, and we do have to try to feed the hungry as best we can. Shelter the homeless, clothe the naked. Jesus told us to do that and told us that we'd be doing that for him in those situations. But all of us find an opportunity every day to be just a little splash of love in somebody else's life. And it probably sounds sort of corny, but I got to tell you, life's ordinary isn't. It isn't most of life kind of ordinary, and I believe that the birth of Jesus tells us that's where God shows up in that very ordinary, anonymous kind of place. That's exactly where you're going to find God.
Crystal: And in the book, Jake, you talk about how it's in loving others, which is Jesus. That's straight Jesus words. In loving others, we find the path to truly loving ourselves. That kind of blew my mind there for a minute as I was reading that because it seems this loving others is altruistic. We're serving others, loving others. Jesus said, go love your neighbors. But in that, we get the gift of truly finding our own.
Jake: Yes. Yes we do. And I see how that's mind blowing. I think it's mind blowing for a lot of people because we hear you have to love yourself first before you can love another person. And I mean, I understand that especially when somebody has been brought up in a situation in which they didn't feel a lot of love by parents or something like that. By golly, yeah, I get it completely. I don't criticize anybody for needing to learn that they're the beloved. And in fact, I think you never get over needing to learn that you're the beloved. But what I think is mind blowing is that when we love, we experience God's love flowing through us, and that's the source of our being the beloved. I don't understand how all that works. I don't have the mechanics of it down. I can't write a manual about it. But in my own personal experience, I know I've walked away from situations where I've done just the simplest thing. Could I tell you a story? I'll tell you a story.
Crystal: Please.
Jake: So I was at Walmart and I do a lot of Walmart shopping. I live in the country and where are you going to shop? And I saw a lady, I guess she was early twenties and she had a baby in tow, had a basket full of stuff, just really juggling all kinds of things. And when you're carrying a baby, you're pretty vulnerable. And so I detoured walked up to her and asked if I could help her. And I said, I could hold your baby for you, but that'd probably be a step too far. You don't know who I am. How about I unload your cart for you in your car? And I didn't have a collar on or anything, so I was a much safer person. Sometimes the collar doesn't make you look real safe.
But anyway, so I just did this simple thing. I helped her unload her stuff from her cart and she started telling me about her life just because I showed that I was interested in that moment in her life. I'm not some saint. Listen, I can be the grump of the planet just like anybody else can. But the point is, in that moment, that simple act of just kindness, really decency, I walked away feeling like, gosh, I got engaged with a conversation with a person who's very different from me. I learned about her family situation over a 10 minute period, family situation, how old she was in the early twenties, how old the baby was, baby's name. So forth. Forth. And to say I made a friend would be shallow, wouldn't it? Because I don't know that I'll see her again. But I had a connection.
We got woven together by power that was greater than the both of us. That sort of God was at work there making something happen that I don't know that I could have just made happen myself. So that's what I mean by I found out that I'm the beloved by loving. I experienced that weaving together of people. That's the divine thing. So look, I don't ever want to underestimate though. Let me be real clear. I know there are people who struggle with sadnesses, with depressions, with anxieties, and they really do need to feel loved. And what I'm saying, I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a lot of really important work to be done there. There is. But when we can come to a place where we feel ourselves loved, not as a reward for having achieved something or having accomplished something that's a life changer, it's a game changer for our whole existence and we then do experience, the more we love, then the more we know we're loved. You know what? We'll just have to ask Jesus on the other side about how that's all supposed to work. But in my experience, it’s OK.
Crystal: Well, and your story, Jake just perfectly segues into this. I wanted to talk to you about this a little later. In the book it says, and wisdom is the art of doing the ordinary and the extraordinary things of our life with love. And love is the essence of the full hearted life. So I would just comment that with your experience where you did connect with that young mother, that while that might look ordinary, that was really extraordinary and it was definitely a place of love and how full you both probably left that space.
Jake: I think that's really true, Crystal. I think in many respects it was ordinary. But anywhere God shows up anywhere, the Holy Spirit sort of infuses our lives. It makes the ordinary extraordinary, doesn't it? We're moving our way toward the Christmas season now, and it seems to me that the reason we love seeing major scenes is it reminds us that the extraordinary, the God who created everything, the God who created everything from subatomic particles to stars, to my dog, Gracie, to my grandchildren, to the whole universe, that same God showed up in this place that you could walk by and not even notice. And that that's how God is today in I say the daily offices, and I can explain that in a minute if you want me to, but every day I say prayers at the beginning of the day, and it began today with a line from scripture that reminds us that God sits in the high and holy places, but also sits in the very center of the hearts of the humble and the contrite.
So there is the sovereign of the entire universe who also in humility seeks to yearns, to dwell right in our old ordinary lives, right where we are. And that's it, isn't it? I mean, that whole love thing that we've been talking about that is mind blowing. And no wonder somebody who didn't grow up Christian or somebody who's in battered by a church, they can find that really hard to believe, and it's only when you run into these loving people who do simple loving things that might get you to think, gosh, there might be truth in that love thing.
Crystal: You talked about, you gave this an example of a friend, a priest who's a friend in the prayer was after meeting someone who was difficult, well, Jesus, you better show me what you love about this guy because I'm really not seeing it right now. I might just have to put that on a post-it and stick it on my laptop. That needs to be a daily prayer for me. I'm running into these people, but yet we are called If we are going to be a reflection of Jesus, we're definitely called to do what I'm going to say is maybe the most extraordinary thing and show love.
Jake: Amen to that. I'll tell you, I say to folks about things like that repeatedly, Jesus would not have found it necessary to teach about it if it came automatically. For instance, I don't remember Jesus ever saying, now remember to breathe. But I do remember Jesus saying, love your neighbor as yourself. I do remember Jesus saying, turn the other cheek. I do remember Jesus saying, forgive a whole bunch of times, not just the once. Right, walk the extra mile. These are really high demands. They're super high demands. And what I want to come back to there though is remember, they're not achievements. Something I was reading about today because I'm writing a couple of things about John the Baptist, you remember he called the gathered people, Bruta vipers, which is talk about you great one-liners. Anyway, calls 'em a bruta vipers, they've come out that he baptized, and then he goes on to say, to talk about fruits worthy of repentance, right?
Let's think about what that actually means. What that actually means is this. This isn't about, look, don't lead a life where you get all the actions right? In other words, but have a change of heart instead of relying upon your own accomplishments or the world's applause for you or building the best resume, why don't you just lead a life where you trust Jesus has got you, okay? That's where it starts. You know what? Then what happens where you really believe, okay, you know that Jesus guy's got me, he's got me, he loves me. I'm going to fall on my face and he's going to pick me up and dust me off. We're going to keep walking together again. When you really believe that, then things like forgiveness start to happen. Those are fruits of a life that rely upon, that depend upon God's love for us rather than a life where we're going to have to morally achieve God's love for us, a moral achievement life.
I don't want to down on anybody here. I mean, I get that some folks may disagree with me or that may sound really strange to people, and that's okay. We can have a great conversation around that. But what I believe, what I think the gospel is, is to say the starting point is always is that now and thing your un unadorned self. That business is all about saying, I rely upon Jesus's love for me to make me who I am. My role in this life is not to make myself into something, but rather to trust in who Jesus is making me into. Jesus is making me a new creation. Jesus makes me the beloved by loving me. And all I got to do is let that happen. And then when I do let that happen, remarkable stuff starts happening in my everyday ordinary life. I face a lot of challenging things in life like everybody else does.
Being a bishop does not exempt me from all the stuff everybody else has. I do the dishes like everybody else, and I got to wash my clothes like everybody else. And I run into people that really challenge me to say the prayer that my friend said, well, Jesus, you better show me what you're loving about this guy. I'm not seeing it and I don't always succeed, do I? And here's the other piece. If I really take seriously all this stuff I just said about relying on Jesus, then I realize I've been set an infinitely high standard, and I've also been given infinitely high grace to realize that I don't have to get it right on my own. That God's grace is at work pulling me along and raising me up. Yes, I'm the one who can't get it right off my own power, but Jesus is making something of me I couldn't have made myself. And here's the other thing. Grace happens over time, by the way, you know what it does. So give yourself a break for crying out loud folks that maybe have a conversion experience, which is a great thing. Listen, conversion experiences are great. I've had more than one myself. But you're not a failure if you're not an automatic perfect person. In fact, if you're a perfect person, I haven't ever met you.
I haven't met you, I haven't met a perfect one yet, especially not the one that looks back at me from the mirror.
Crystal: Something you wrote has probably forever changed the way I talk about when you were talking about failure. I frequently feel like I'm a failure at the spiritual practice of meditation. And it's one of those things I know it's good for me. I've been told it matches with my Enneagram number, all of the things I should be doing meditation, and I get about 32 seconds in and then my mind is gone somewhere else. But in the book you wrote that a spiritual practice is not a self-care routine. It's all about relationships. And that was another place I would just put my head down for a minute and had to just think about that because I wonder if maybe like myself, we're going after spiritual practices as maybe checking it. I mean, I write it in my to-do list and I very seldom get to check it off. That’s just being real honest here.
Jake: No, I totally hear you. I know, I get it. Yeah. Well, I'll tell another story. There's a thing in the Episcopal Church where the diocese bishop like me, will have resources to pay for a newly ordained clergy person to serve on the staff of a church. It's called acy. And I had a curate, that's what that's called. I had a curate years ago who told me that he had missed the daily office, and it's a prayer form that we use, and it's got scripture readings in it. We read scripture every day. He said, well, I missed it yesterday. So I made sure to read yesterday's. And I said to him, actually, part of the reason we do this every day is we learn that we miss a day.
And what's really important is to realize a couple of things. One is other people didn't miss the day and they carried us along with 'em, right? And you know how Jesus has got you. It's okay. You don't have to live a spiritual life where you're constantly having to make up for your missed assignments. Jesus isn't going to say, well, you don't get a good grade. You didn't turn in all your assignments. I mean, it's not how it works. And it is a good good to remember, so right Crystal. It's good to remember, spiritual practices are about showing up for a relationship. That's what they are showing up for. And we're not, our relationship with Jesus is this remarkable relationship. It's really not like any other, because I mean, Jesus is human and divine, and there's only one of those. So at least that's how we Christians understand it. So you see, we don't have to fear that Jesus is going to cut us off. We don't get it perfect, or that we drift in our prayers. Listen, if drifting in prayer sort of got us kicked off the island, hey, I'd be off the island. My mind drifts just about anybody. Now that's really bad. When you're leading the worship service and you can't remember where you are, then you're caught. But the truth of the matter is, doesn't the God who became a human really get what it's like to be a human?
And doesn't that God becoming human guarantee us, assure us that, oh, that God really wants to have relationship and we'll go way out of the way in order to have it. So yeah, it really is about connection. It's about relationship and not, it's not an achievement, and you're not building your soul. God is making you into God's beloved by loving you. Yeah.
Crystal: Yeah. And I really do believe in seeking to feel that connection with God. That will be a sea change, honestly, for the practice or for the time, how the time is being spent.
Jake: Yes.
Crystal: Yes. I love that. I loved what you said there about how it's not about about relationships. So thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. So I didn't ask half the questions I wanted to ask. I'll just send you an email separately.
Jake: Sounds great. I'll look for it.
Crystal: But is there anything we didn't talk about? I know there was so many things that we didn't cover from the book, so just everyone just go by the book on December 3rd when it's available.
Jake: Oh, yay. Yay. Well, I think you really, really got to the center of what a full-hearted life is all about. And if I could ask people to just take away from our conversation, and I hope away from the book is this, we are in this world as an expression of God's love. If you can have eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus loves to say that, right? If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you can come to a place where you realize, when you look at every person you see or you look at, I'm looking at my dog right now. She's snoozing away on the floor or the waterfowl. I see all around me. We live near a lake, at least it really sort of heightened moments. I can see that as evidence that I'm loved, that they're loved. I'm surrounded by and woven into it. If I could give you a takeaway to just sort of work on for a bit, right? To think about, not necessarily by my words about it, but give it a whirl, right? Give that a thought. If this whole universe came into being as an expression of God's love, what's it mean to see anything that God made a tree, a horse, a star, the moon, beautiful crescent moon last night, that that's what I'd leave you with.
Crystal: Yeah. Viewing through the lens of love.
Jake:. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.
Crystal: Well, now I'm going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests on get your spirit in shape, and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Jake: Thanks for asking. It's several things. I do have what's called a rule of life. What that means is a pattern of life. So I have a prayer life that begins in the morning before I'll put my feet on the floor. I say prayers that basically the serenity prayer because I know part of life is about know what you can control and what you can't. And you need wisdom to see that and how to respond to it. And also to give thanks that I'm breathing today and to preserve me, oh God, that I neither fall into sin nor be overcome by adversity. And then I pray the daily offices, and that's called the prayer hours by some people. So I'm steeped in scripture and in prayer, and this may not sound terribly holy, but it is what rule of life gets at. I am very intentional about having relationship times.
I've got friendships that I maintain intentionally. I am intentional about family time and family dinner as a gathering time. And I spend time with my dog who is wiser than me because she focuses in the moment I exercise and I eat right, and I fail miserably at sleeping right, because I guess I'm getting closer to 70 than sevens. I think that comes from my place in the lifecycle. But for me, a rule of life is a pattern for daily life that holds my life together as a rhythm, as an orderly rhythm that it's going to get interrupted of course. And writing is a very big part of my life. As contemplative practice, as I read scripture, I take time and write. A lot of it is really awful, and I never ever wanted to see the light of day. And it's not meant to. It's not meant to be a product. I can see more clearly what God's been doing in that prayer time with that, just writing it out stuff. So that's it. And you know what? Let me, that all sounds like just personal private stuff. I'm heavily involved in our community seeking ways to reconcile black and white in Louisiana, rich and poor in Louisiana.
We're about God's church for God's world here. And so to be engaged in love in the broader community is a regular part of my life, and it's a part of the rule of my life. So that's it. What I would say for anybody is there is no one size fits all. Each of us has our own shape. God made us that way. Each of us is God's own unique beloved, and what works for you is what God wants for you.
Crystal: Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing with us, and thank you for being a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” This was just a delight to have you as a guest, and thank you so much for the book. Thank you for your ministry and just all that you were doing for Gods. Thank you so much.
Jake: Well, thank you, Crystal. It's been a real delight to be with you, so thank you so much.
Epilogue
That was Bishop Jake Owens b discussing his new book, “A Full-Hearted Life: Following Jesus in this Secular Age.” To learn more, go toc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you will find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners: gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
