Practices for cultivating “Spirit-led self-awareness” at work
How to find joy in your work—even when it sucks, how Will’s “trailhead practice” can lead you to “Spirit-led self-awareness,” and how to stop limping towards God’s throne and start running towards it.
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[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey, friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors or religious professionals but who work as postal workers, psychiatrists, and tree trimmers? That’s the question we explore every week, and today, I’m posing it to my friend, Will Acuff. He is the co-founder of Corner to Corner, a Nashville-based nonprofit that equips underestimated entrepreneurs, especially from historically marginalized communities, to turn their God given ideas into thriving businesses, and they’ve done that with more than like 1,500 businesses that generated 37 million dollars of revenue last year.
Will is doing extraordinary work. Will and I sat down recently to talk about how we can find joy in our work, even when it sucks. We talked about how his trailhead practice can lead you to Spirit-led self-awareness at the start of your day, and we talked about why you and I need to stop limping towards God’s throne and start running towards it instead. I think you’re going to love this episode with my friend, Will Acuff.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:20.7] JR: Will Acuff, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:23.0] WA: Jordan, thank you so much for having me today, man. Excited to be here.
[0:01:27.0] JR: Dude, I’m pumped. We – we met – you forgot this, I’m going to call you out here. We met after the speech I gave at – was it at Lipscomb University?
[0:01:35.8] WA: Lipscomb here in Nashville, Business’s Mission Conference.
[0:01:38.6] JR: That’s right, this is like, way back in 2019, we lost touch, your brother John reconnected us, and I’m so glad he did because when I looked up Corner to Corner, I remember what you guys were doing, like, “Oh, right, this is why I loved this guy when I met him.” Tell our listeners about Corner to Corner.
[0:01:54.1] WA: Yeah. So, we are a nonprofit here in Nashville that equips underestimated neighbors with the knowledge, tools, and networks that they need to launch and grow a small business.
[0:02:04.1] JR: Okay, what’s the next sentence? What’s underestimated neighbor? Go a layer deeper.
[0:02:09.2] WA: Yes. So, really, my core belief here is that ownership ends poverty, and when you give incredible image-bearing neighbors with God-given passion, creativity, and drive, right? Which, by the way, no nonprofit needs to give them that. Like, God already did that.
[0:02:24.1] JR: Yes, He already did the hard part, yeah.
[0:02:26.1] WA: He already did all the hard part. All we need to bring to the table is three really simple ingredients: education, mentorship, and capital. That’s it, and you see businesses grow. So, at Corner to Corner, we’ve been doing this for a number of years here in Nashville, and we’ve now launched over 1,600 of these entrepreneurs from low-income neighborhoods, right? And they’ve, in turn, become the economic engines of their families and their neighborhoods. So, we’re talking last year, our impact was 37 million, back into the neighborhood economy.
[0:02:59.5] JR: 37 million dollars in revenue produced by these businesses.
[0:03:03.1] WA: Yeah, and when we say that, we’re talking low-overhead businesses.
[0:03:06.7] JR: Yeah, sure, yeah-yeah-yeah.
[0:03:08.3] WA: Like nobody – none of –
[0:03:08.4] JR: Like, give me an example.
[0:03:09.6] WA: Yeah, so like, one of my favorite from last year, this amazing woman, she’s a school teacher here in Nashville, right? She has invested her entire life into helping our kids succeed, and as she’s looking at the future for her son, she’s going, “How am I going to pay for college?” Right? “I care about education, I want this for him,” right? Oh, and guess what? Nashville has become one of the most expensive cities in the Southeast.
[0:03:34.5] JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
[0:03:35.1] WA: Right? And so, she’s trying to figure out how to make this happen, and she goes, “I’m going to have to create a small business to start a college savings fun, that’s the goal.” So, she comes to us, and she’s like, “Hey, the thing that I can bring to the table is these incredible recipes that I learned at my grandma’s kitchen when I was a six-year-old girl,” right?
[0:03:55.0] JR: Yeah, I love this, yeah.
[0:03:55.9] WA: Like, I’m in the kitchen with her. When she tells you these recipes, Jordan, and like, describes the process of learning it, you’re like, both crying and really hungry, like, at the same time. So, she came, she goes, “Hey, my goal is to launch and do 10,000 in revenue in year one. 3,000 will be my overhead, right? And 7,000 to start this savings fund,” really clear linear goals, right? And so, by the end of the year, I found out she’s done over 36,000.
[0:04:27.5] JR: Oh my gosh.
[0:04:28.5] WA: So, I called her, I’m like, “How? What happened? What did you do here?”
[0:04:30.9] JR: Yeah, yeah-yeah.
[0:04:32.3] WA: And she’s like, “Well, I found out that a local college, Tennessee State University, here in Nashville, that they needed a new caterer for their marching band.” And, like, this is a marching band that made nine –
[0:04:43.6] JR: Pro tip.
[0:04:44.2] WA: Yeah, 9,000 different types of drums.
[0:04:46.7] JR: Yeah, right?
[0:04:49.0] WA: Like, Grammy Award-winning TSU marching band, and on the phone, she goes, “Well, you know, there’s two different types of marketing,” And I was like, “Okay, go on.” Like, I love this.
[0:04:57.2] JR: Yeah, tell me more, yeah.
[0:04:58.5] WA: She’s like, you can take pictures of your food for Instagram, or you can use your marketing budget to give your food away and create passionate customers.
[0:05:07.4] JR: There you go, I love it.
[0:05:08.4] WA: And I was like, “Amazing.” So, she catered for free, and then she took her most, you know, excellent recipe, her grandma’s caramel crumble cake, and she, like, took a slice of that crumble cake, and walked it over to the band director, and waited for him to taste it, and as soon as it was like, in his mouth, and his eyes were like, open and surprised at how good it is, right? She goes, “I heard you’re looking for a new caterer?” Right?
[0:05:35.5] JR: This is so good.
[0:05:36.0] WA: And she closes the deal, right? And then, she comes to us and goes, “You know, I started at 10, I hit 36, I’m just getting started. Do you guys think you could get a pitch meeting for me with the Kroger Grocery chain?” right? And so, we set up that pitch meeting, and Kroger was like, “We would love to help you get ready for this next level of opportunity,” right? And so, you know, the ideas are all over the map.
But none of our graduates are setting up like a medical lab, do you know what I mean? Like, the overhead is lower, and our whole emphasis is, “Start small, start now.” How do you get to revenue as quickly as possible, so you can solve real problems in your life today?
[0:06:19.7] JR: And you guys are just giving them a framework, giving them a roadmap, they’ve already got every – they’ve already got the raw ingredients, you’re teaching them to extend the food analogy, how to bake the cake.
[0:06:29.3] WA: 100%. Yeah, because at the end of the day, who is your target customer, what problem are you solving for them, what’s your financial model, right? Can you actually understand how to – what your breakeven point is, right? And then, what’s your legal entity? You know, all roads lead to LLC.
[0:06:44.6] JR: Yeah, yeah. I love it, but that, that man, but yeah, I love that you’re going to the margins. I mean, this is a truly redemptive quest, in that, you could be – listen, you could be making a lot more money teaching other populations how to build businesses, but you’re intentionally making this crazy affordable. I saw you all’s like, academy product, this program they’re going through, it’s like valued to like, 70 to a hundred bucks, you sell for a hundred and sixty bucks.
I love the work you're doing, man. I’m a super fan of Corner to Corner, so keep doing the work. All right, so you just released a new book called No Elevator to Everest. We’re going to talk about what the book is in a second, but talk about the path to the book, and specifically, the role that this nonprofit, Corner to Corner, played in the formation of the ideas inside the book?
[0:07:28.7] WA: Yeah, for sure. So, to give kind of framework on my life, right? 18 years ago, my wife and I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and intentionally moved into a low-income neighborhood, right? With all the stories and stats that would kind of come with that category, and we did it because we needed to get a theology of neighbor. We had realized, I’m a pastor’s kid, raised in the church, right?
Like, at one point, I was the church janitor, so like, I’m embedded into the thing, but I had learned so many good, kind of maybe, big ideas and doctrinal things, right? But how to actually love a vulnerable neighbor, day in, day out, as a lifestyle, and not as like a one-off mission trip, like I didn’t have an answer to that, right? And so, my wife and I were like, “Let’s move in,” to try to get that.
So, you know, my wife, she’s way tougher than me, anybody who knows us knows this immediately about her, and she started working at the men’s prison, and became a former offender job training specialist, and helping neighbors transition to employment, and that started our journey into like, walking this out. But fast-forward, what we saw over and over again was economic opportunity, and really, the lack thereof, was like the first domino that would fall down, and spiral an individual or a family out of control.
And so, that was the genesis of Corner to Corner, right? Like, what would it look like to have a relationship-based, Kingdom-centered nonprofit, where we’re grounded in like, love neighbor as you love yourself, right?
[0:08:57.0] JR: Yeah, yeah.
[0:08:58.1] WA: That’s kind of critical. It’s not a suggestion.
[0:09:00.4] JR: It’s pretty important.
[0:09:01.7] WA: Yeah, Jesus wasn’t like, “You know, you might also want to try, right?” That wasn’t what happened, and then also this idea that our neighbors are image bearers, which I had really come to see that we had made that a footnote in our theology and not a tenant, right? And so, that was like a grounding. Well, fast forward, we start this thing on our front porch, just as our own side hustle, right?
And God blesses it and grows it, and it gets bigger than we could do, and it was just our side-hustle from 2011 to 2015, and then it, you know, we moved into full-time work, and it keeps growing, keeps growing, and meanwhile, simultaneously at home, we were growing our family through adoption. Both of our kids came out of domestic adoption out of Memphis, right?
[0:09:47.6] JR: I’m an adoptive father domestically, so I love this so much.
[0:09:49.6] WA: Right? And it’s – and a wild and beautiful, and yeah, a journey that starts with so much joy, and also, the brokenness of the world embedded into that story, right? For us, around – I have a son who is 13 now, and a daughter who is nine, and we’ve been with them both since birth, and when my daughter, or sorry, my son was about two and a half, he stops sleeping through the night.
And not like the occasional, you know, blurry nights that I think all young parents get. This was days, turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years. Multiple sleep studies, surgeries, you know, et cetera, and that was our beginning journey into the world of disability. So, on the outside, Corner to Corner is like, “Whoo,” right? “Oh my gosh, everything’s going so well, that the growth looks up into the right.”
And meanwhile, at home, the challenges were getting more and more dynamic, to the point where you know, 10 years into this journey, you know, my wife and I are just at a breaking point and the answers that I was looking to get from the faith community, like, I was getting a lot of like, “You just need more faith, buddy,” you know? Or like, that kind of like, you know, when doctors used to say like, “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” right?
People were throwing bible verses like that, you know what I mean? And I was hurting and I felt like battery acid, you know? Just like internally, just like, “Oh,” and my wife, at that point, she, you know, in the face of all these, she – and I’ve got permission to share this by the way, to any listeners.
[0:11:26.3] JR: For the record.
[0:11:27.0] WA: Yeah-yeah, for the record. She was diagnosed with complex PTSD and experienced clinical depression bouts that would have her struggling to get out of bed, you know? And so, the work I’m doing in the world is framed by a very common thing, I think, in work, whether secular or faith, however you want to frame it, which is there is a problem, and I solve it, right?
And I had become an expert at that ability, and then I’m trying to apply it in my home, but my son is not a problem to solve, and my wife is not a problem to solve, right? And so, I’m basically using a playbook that is never going to work because people are meant to be known and enjoyed, right? Not solved, and so I get to this breaking point, and my wife, she finds this – we call it trauma camp in our family.
But she finds this trauma intensive that really helped sow in the seeds for her of kind of new hope, and she came up with it. She’s like, “You got to go,” and I was like, “But do I? Like, aren’t we” –
[0:12:33.1] JR: Did it? Is it? Isn’t this like a two-for-one deal, like you got? Yeah.
[0:12:35.2] WA: Yeah, I was like, “Can’t you just give me the cliff notes,” and –
[0:12:38.2] JR: Right-right-right-right.
[0:12:39.7] WA: Yeah, my actual phrase was, “Aren’t we therapized enough as a family?” And she was like, “Hey, jerk, that’s not a word, and yes, you do need to go.” So, I went and it cracked me open and returned me to myself, like in a profoundly beautiful way, and what I found in that moment was God’s tremendous love for me, and it was like this combo effect, love for self, intertwined with Jesus’ love for me, in a way that was utterly healing.
And I came back from that, that experience, and I was like, “I’m going back into a hard context, you know?” Like, the context hasn’t shifted, and so I asked the question, like, how do I turn my life into a joy lab? What would that look like? Like, if I’m meant to because I don’t want to survive this anymore, I actually want to thrive this, right? And so, that became the framework that then led to the writing of the book.
And really, I would say, the way that I had learned to be out in the world in a work sense, right? Grind, problem-solve, had given me work success in some ways, but hadn’t given me a way of being, where I could be attuned to the life of the Holy Spirit abiding in me.
[0:13:55.2] JR: Well, and you alluded this in the subtitle of the book. So, the main title is No Elevator to Everest. The subtitle is Shift from Survive to Thrive, Through Spirit-Led Self-awareness, and I think that’s what you're talking about, and I say that and our listeners are like, “I don't know what Will is talking about,” and I’m not even sure that I as the host do, even though I’ve started to read the book.
[0:14:12.4] WA: Yeah, I love it.
[0:14:13.3] JR: What do you mean by that term? Because that’s what unlocked, it sounds like, basing on what I’ve read so far in the book, that shift from surviving to thriving at home, and even in the work.
[0:14:23.7] WA: 100%. It changed everything for me. The way I would describe it is, I think, many of us, and kind of – let’s say, American Christianity, we have learned to do work out here. For those listeners, I’m pointing away from my body, right? But we have not learned to do work internally, right? Which, from a Christian standpoint, produces a fundamental tension, right? And what I mean here, if we break this down spiritually, our faith is a Trinitarian faith: God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.
Jesus in John 14, very clearly says, “I’m sending you the Spirit forever,” right? Forever is a big word in the mouth of our savior, right? That has some weight.
[0:15:02.8] JR: That has some weight, yeah-yeah.
[0:15:04.5] WA: And then, He doesn’t leave it a mystery. He tells us where the spirit will be. The spirit will be in you, right? But from a practical, like, efficiency model standpoint, I learned to do work outside of me. What is the next, “I’m scanning the horizon for the problem I’m solving,” right? And so, internally, I had no methods to go deep internally, right? To get curious about what are my thoughts, what are my emotions?
What are the underlying currents that are driving my behaviors, right? All that internal stuff, that we know is showing up, and is dictating some of my actions, but it’s the current underneath the boat, so to speak, right? And no one had – in my cultural background had said, “This is something that Christians should know how to do.” And –
[0:15:55.7] JR: Well, yeah, you’re a PK, you probably sounded super selfish.
[0:15:59.1] WA: Oh, dude. Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, let’s draw a really fine point on it. In my Christian background, I had learned that the journey of faith is knowledge of God and knowledge of self, just to the extent that you know you're a sinner who needs Jesus.
[0:16:14.1] JR: Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah.
[0:16:14.7] WA: But after that, forget knowledge of self, and just do knowledge of God.
[0:16:19.5] JR: Bible study is always the answer. More bible study, we’re brains on sticks.
[0:16:22.8] WA: 100%.
[0:16:23.3] JR: That’s the only way we become more like Christ. The problem is, of course, the people – a lot of people I know who actually likes Jesus, know their Bibles the best.
[0:16:31.1] WA: Oh dude, yeah, you’re good, you’re good at sword fighting, you know what I mean?
[0:16:35.2] JR: Yeah, that’s good, that’s good.
[0:16:36.1] WA: Like in sword drills, but like the theologians, like Augustine was talking about knowledge of God and knowledge of self. Calvin was talking about knowledge of God, knowledge of self, right? This is not a new idea. When you add the notion that you and I are created by the Most High God, in a very real sense, you and I are image bearers in the world, who have the thumbprint of the Most High upon us.
Why wouldn’t we seek to know ourselves as image bearers, do you know what I mean? So, it was a total paradigm shift, and then the Spirit-led part is really, anyone who does self-awareness work from the framework of faith, never goes alone. We go with the spirit.
[0:17:20.1] JR: I love this, man. So, talk to us about what this looks like, practically. What is – how does Spirit-led, what is that process, I’m getting super practical, right?
[0:17:28.5] WA: Yeah-yeah, I love the practicality, yeah.
[0:17:29.1] JR: That word, “applying my” – well, no, but this may be part of the problem of looking at this inward thing with outward, trying to find an outward solution, but what hasn’t looked like practically, for you, to implement Spirit-led self-awareness in your life?
[0:17:41.2] WA: Yeah, totally. I think there’s a temptation when we get into the more mystical sides of Christianity, right? Which make you doubt about it.
[0:17:47.8] JR: To try to boil it down to three points, yeah.
[0:17:49.9] WA: Well, no-no, but also to go like, it’s either all mysteries, so go, sell your stuff, and live in the desert, you know? And like, you know you’ve arrived when you’re eating lotus, you know? Like you’re – it’s locusts and camel fur and I’m a mystic now.
[0:18:03.8] JR: Yeah-yeah-yeah, totally.
[0:18:05.7] WA: Or, if you can break it down to a three-point sermon, right?
[0:18:07.6] JR: Yeah-yeah-yeah.
[0:18:08.2] WA: Like, we have these two extremes, and I think there’s something for us here in the middle. And so, practically, Thomas Merton once said, “Find your practice and practice it.” What we’re talking about is developing a life-giving daily practice that tunes you to yourself, your true self, your image-bearing self, tunes you to God, right? Tunes you to your relationships and tunes you to the work around you, right? And so, to get, you know, double click again, one practical practice there in the book is called The Trailhead.
[0:18:41.3] JR: Yeah, I love this, yup.
[0:18:42.7] WA: Because I’ve never met a human who wakes up neutral, right? Every single one of us wakes up going, “Oh man, I’m anxious about that meeting or that argument I had right before bed, or I’m excited about this.” Like, whatever the landscape is, we’re feeling and experiencing a ton of stuff before our feet hit the floor. But 99% of us just get up and push all of that down, and go about our day, right?
And we don’t realize later, “Oh, why was I short with that colleague? Why was I really anxious about?” You know, like, “What was driving my behavior all day,” right? And God, in His mercy, He built us with all these indicator tools, right? Like, think about your emotions as like the check engine light on your car, right? And so, the trailhead exercise, 10 minutes in the morning. I wake up for me, I get a cup of coffee.
I actually moved a single-cup Keurig into the bedroom, so I can just press that, I grab the cup, I go, and I sit in this chair, a chair I moved into the room for this purpose, and then I close my eyes, I do a couple of deep breaths just to fully still myself, and I go, “Huh, what am I most feeling right now?” That shift to curiosity, right?
[0:20:00.6] JR: Yeah, what’s the primary emotion I’m feeling?
[0:20:03.2] WA: Yeah, the primary, and again, you use the image of the trailhead, right? Think about this anytime you show up to hike a trail, there’s a little trail marker. It tells you, “Hey, this is how long the trail is, this is what’s going on,” da-da-da-da, and that biggest emotion, that’s the trail sign. Oh, so like, for example, we have some medical stuff currently going on with my son, right? That I woke up this morning with anxiety, right?
And so, it’s getting still, I’m sitting there, “Oh, I am feeling anxious. Huh, what’s driving that anxiety? I am worried that if this doctor can’t give us a clear answer, we’ll never get a clear answer.” What story am I telling? Yeah, I’m telling a story that God doesn’t have more options or God doesn’t have more creativity, you know? I am starting my day from a place of fear-based stuckness, right?
And as I am naming it, and getting more and more curious, I’m going further into the trail, right? And just like if you hike a real trail, you might come through miles into the waterfall that was worth the whole price of the trail. You get these moments of Spirit-led self-awareness to go, and then you’re able to practice what the Bible talks about: “Cast all your fears on the Lord, because He cares for you.” You can’t cast something you can’t even name.
[0:21:21.6] JR: Yeah. That’s good.
[0:21:22.3] WA: Right?
[0:21:23.0] JR: That’s really good.
[0:21:24.1] WA: So, that’s a very practical way, 10 minutes in the morning, showing yourself self-compassion, and self-curiosity, and the self-compassion piece is also critical because I find so many Christians have gotten really good at attacking themselves, but not meeting themselves in mercy, and sometimes, I’d like to ask them the question: “Would you love yourself less than Jesus loves you?”
[0:21:47.5] JR: Talk about that self-compassion, and applying the eyes of the Father to ourselves as it’s applied to your work. Like, can you think of a situation at work where your default mode was beat yourself up, criticize-criticize-criticize, shame-shame-shame-shame-shame, and this exercise, either the trail hike exercise, or one of the many other exercises in the book, kind of led you to have compassion with yourself.
[0:22:12.9] WA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so my primary role these days with Corner to Corner, you know, we’re a team of about 20 people at this point, you know, it’s fundraising, right? My whole job is like inviting generosity, which, if your listeners have not done that, that is a tough job.
[0:22:29.3] JR: I can think of better jobs, many, many better jobs, yeah.
[0:22:32.1] WA: And it’s also funny because you are not selling an actual product, right? There is not like a same kind of exchange that’s happening, and so often, I will – I can get into a place where I go, “Oh man, that meeting didn’t go how I expected it to go because I didn’t quite say the thing right,” or you know, and I’ll go down the shame spiral, right? And I equate this to like the younger brother in the Prodigal Son’s story, right? He has this moment of beautiful awareness where it says he came to himself.
[0:23:03.5] JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:23:04.8] WA: Right? And I love that. That’s the self-awareness we’re talking about, right? And he knows that the only place his true self can be is in his father’s home, and he starts that path homeward, but he gets caught in the shame spiral, and the journey, “Woe is me, I don’t even get to be the son anymore. The best I can hope for is a servant.” And I think that’s what a lot of us do.
We limp towards the throne, expecting condemnation, and expecting that condemnation to match the tone of our own condemnation, right? And so, when I find myself in that place, I used to sit in that, man, for weeks, even months, and it would – that insecurity and self-condemnation would lead to frantic action in the workplace.
[0:23:46.2] JR: So, you beat yourself up, you’re like, “Man, I’m a failure, that meeting didn’t go well. Somebody else will probably be raising money for this.” How does that show up in frantic activity?
[0:23:55.5] WA: Yeah, because what fear drives an increased desire for controlling outcomes, right? Always. Fear leads to control, which leads to activity, right? And fear tells you more activity is always better. Fear never is an editor, you know what I mean? Fear is never like, “Hey, you should be at rest right now.” And so then, it would be like, “Oh, well, that one meeting went poorly, so I need to book six more meetings.”
“Oh, and hey, I have that time carved out on Thursday for rest and reflection and journaling, but I should probably book that with three meetings now,” right? And then, fast forward, by the end of that week, I’m drained emotionally, spiritually, energetically, and then I’m showing up short with my kids, and with my wife.
[0:24:41.9] JR: Probably pretty good, probably a pretty good indicator. If we look at our calendars and see lots of frantic activity, especially activity that is not moving the needle, although even activity that is, it is probably a good symptom of fear.
[0:24:53.6] WA: 100% man, right? But so now, we’re that used to drive the action, the activity would give me the hit that my fear was looking for.
[0:25:01.5] JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
[0:25:02.7] WA: Right?
[0:25:02.6] JR: Yeah.
[0:25:03.3] WA: Feel a little better, feel a little better.
[0:25:04.2] JR: That’s good.
[0:25:04.3] WA: Feel a little better. Now, that will happen on a Wednesday, Thursday morning, I will have that trailhead moment, and now, like if you had said to me four years ago, “Hey, Will, could you do an hour of contemplative prayer meditation?” I would have been like, “Are you insane?” And now, that feels like I’m just getting started, like that length of time, and I will go, “Oh, there I went again, huh?”
I started to believe that I was responsible to obtain the cattle on a thousand hills, right? Oh, no, no, no, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, so I don’t have to. He has called me to faithfully cast seeds and trust Him for the outcome.
[0:25:45.5] JR: That’s good, that’s really good, man. Hey, you’ve experienced a lot of suffering at home, a lot of pain. I can’t imagine having a child who can’t say – in fact, I’m actually thinking about a buddy of mine named Will, who might be listening to this right now. He is going through this with a kid, even less in here, the one you did about a kid who can’t sleep, and I remember telling him like, “Man, I can’t imagine this.”
But you’ve also experienced hardship at work. I want to address this nasty little strand of the prosperity gospel because I hear Christians saying this. They’re like, “Oh, well,” they look at you big, “Wow, Will, man, maybe you just got to have more faith,” or, “Man, maybe you’re experiencing this extreme suffering at home and your work, maybe that work isn’t aligned with God’s will, right?” Which, oh, my gosh, what would you say to that person?
[0:26:29.3] WA: Yeah. I mean, I’d say a couple of things. First, I’d start with, I don’t see a lot of straight lines in the scripture, right? God does not seem to be overly concerned with efficiency, right? And so, somewhere we got it in our heads that the shortest, most successful path was the Godly path, and I can’t – I literally don’t see an example of that, you know?
[0:26:52.2] JR: Even in the life of Christ.
[0:26:53.6] WA: Oh no, absolutely not, no. I mean, think of it, like He, Jesus, is on the earth for 30 years developing, right? Being grown into who He is going to become, His act of ministry is three years, and every time He gets a crowd, He says something that makes the crowd flee, right? So, He is not a good gatherer in the way we would –
[0:27:15.0] JR: He’s a pretty bad marketer by the world’s standards.
[0:27:16.6] WA: 100%, yeah, “Eat My flesh.” “What? What is it?” Right?
[0:27:20.2] JR: Yeah, what are you talking about?
[0:27:21.2] WA: And everyone expects Him to be a King who rides into the city on a white horse with a sword, and He says, “No, no, no, I am going to come in on a donkey to die,” right? And so, I would say that, and then also say, I think in the past, I thought that you couldn’t have a painful story, and have full joy, like it was one or the other, but I actually think that faith is so intermingled, right?
Like, the journey I have been on with my son, and with my wife, with my family, has led me to more joy than I could have fathom being possible, right? Like, it is, like I can’t believe I get to live the life I get to live, like that’s what it feels like. Oh man, every single day, I am getting to sit caught up in the mystery of the most high God, who loves me.
[0:28:17.5] JR: Because you are forced to, because you are desperate, because of the pain.
[0:28:21.5] WA: Yes.
[0:28:22.0] JR: I am putting words in your mouth, but just correct me if I am wrong.
[0:28:23.6] WA: Yeah.
[0:28:24.2] JR: I think that’s what you’re saying, like the pain forced me to my knees.
[0:28:27.7] WA: Yes.
[0:28:28.2] JR: And then, on my knees, I found fullness of joy in Christ.
[0:28:31.6] WA: 100%, yeah. As long as the strategy was still me, you know what I mean? Like, I’m missing the full joy, or to say it again in the language of Jesus, John chapter 12, he says straight up, “Unless the seed dies,” right? “Then the thing can’t grow.” He actually says the seed is going to be alone, right? My own ambition to figure it out, out on my own, was leaving me more and more isolated.
Isolated from relationships, isolated from the God that I followed, you know? And so, the pain and the suffering that comes in life, which by the way, if you hadn’t hit it yet, give your life a little more time, right? Like this is, you know, as one of my friends, Jay Wolf, from Hope Heals, that whole disability community, they say all the time like, “Give it time and you will be disabled too,” right? Like, that’s what happens with the elderly, right?
And so, like at some point, we will meet suffering, and if you really want your suffering to be worse, then don’t think that God uses suffering, and then you’ll also be feeling condemned and suffering.
[0:29:38.1] JR: That’s good. I was really frankly surprised since you’re a first-time author that this book was as practical as it was because in my experience, most first-time authors wiff on that. They say all the things they want to say, and then they don’t put the cookies on the bottom shelf at the radar. There are so many great practices on the book, the trailhead is one of them. What’s one, what’s one that you would recommend?
Talk to the listener right now who is experiencing suffering, especially on the job. They just got laid off, or I’m thinking about somebody who I know listens to the show all the time, her name is Lisa. She’s in the Federal Government, has very high profile job, her job, her life sucks right now. She would tell you her work sucks, and work is very, very hard. What’s one practice that you would recommend to her to experience joy in the middle of the suffering and the pain?
[0:30:27.2] WA: Totally, yeah. So, the practice that I would invite her into is something called the daily notice, okay? Many of us had work moments, work seasons, maybe work decades that feel more stuck and suck, than grow, right? I think that is a common story, and we begin to function in what’s called the default feature. It sucks now, it will suck in the future, right? But for the Christian, we serve a God who conquered death, right?
So, like every day is launch day into a redemptive arc, every day, right? And so, the daily notice is a practical way to help us get at this, and what I mean is you might do 20 activities in a day, and 19 of them suck, but one, maybe just one sparked a little bit of that feeling where you go, “Ah, this is me,” right? This is me aligned with how God made me to be in the workplace, right? And I call those little moments, right?
And I have heard others refer to me as like a full body yes, right, you know? And sometimes, you leave a creative meeting or whatever, and you’re like, “I want to flip over a car with my bare hands. I can’t believe I got to do that,” right?
[0:31:37.4] JR: Yeah.
[0:31:37.9] WA: Those are trail crumbs by the Holy Spirit, saying, “This is who you were made to be. This is the way.” And so, the daily notice is literally, you get out a notebook, a sheet of paper, Reddit, whatever, and at the end of every day, take about 10 minutes, and you just list bullet-style, right? All the things, the main things you did that day. Meeting with Tim, you know, breakfast with blah-blah-blah, right?
Emails for two hours, like whatever it is, right? And then you simply add a plus next to those that gave you life, and the way that I’m describing here, a zero for those that left you neutral, right? And then a negative for the ones that drained you, right? If you do that 10 minutes for 10 days, you’ll have a really good sense of the patterns that are happening in your life, and then you just want to embrace the idea of, “Hey, Lord, what would it look like for me to move towards more the pluses, right?”
And immediately, the objection because so many people are in a stuck place, maybe they even feel cynical about their work, and to those people I would say, what would it look like for you to take some of those negatives, right? From the daily notice, and go, “Could I delete? Could I delegate, or could I do differently?” Any of these three negatives, such that they are no longer on my plate or no longer negative.
So, another practical example, I’ve got a friend who is a research doctor with Vanderbilt, crazy busy, right? A million things going on, an email always felt like a soul sucking activity for them, right? And I was like, “Well, when are you doing it?” He’s like, “First thing in the morning.” “Oh, so, as soon as you’re like, ready to go out and be creative and think about research ideas, you’re doing the thing you hate the most? Cool, that sounds like a terrible plan.”
“Why don’t you shift that to after lunch?” And I said, “What’s your favorite music?” And she named this symphony, you know, this one Bach concerto, right? Or whatever, and I said, “Listen to that.”
[0:33:34.8] JR: Yeah, pair the bitter with the sweet.
[0:33:36.5] WA: 100%, right? And suddenly, it didn’t make email a positive, but it made it a neutral.
[0:33:41.6] JR: Yeah, that’s good.
[0:33:43.0] WA: Do you know what I mean?
[0:33:43.1] JR: Yeah, totally.
[0:33:44.1] WA: But I think, the bigger thing, Jordan, if I could zoom out is a lot of people believe that the suck just has to suck, right? But we serve a God of all creativity. When we left the garden, sometimes I used to think we left the garden empty-handed, but we left it with a brain. Can you imagine? Like, the human brain is the most complicated thing in the known universe, right? Oh my gosh, how would we take a touch of that creativity and apply it to where we’re stuck most?
[0:34:10.1] JR: That’s good, Will, I love it. Hey, four questions we wrap up every episode with. Number one, Isiah 65 tells us that there’s coming a day on the new earth, when there are only pluses on that list that you just talked about, that we will long enjoy the work of our hands, free from the curse of sin. What job would you love God to invite you to do free from sin and suffering on the new earth?
[0:34:34.3] WA: Yeah, I would like to be the person who is the hype man for everybody’s amazing ideas. Like, that’s what I want to do.
[0:34:42.9] JR: You will be amazing at that.
[0:34:44.1] WA: Yeah, I want to be like, “Did you see what she’s doing?”
[0:34:46.5] JR: That’s amazing.
[0:34:47.8] WA: Look at Stacy, guys, right?
[0:34:49.6] JR: There’s no way that’s not the job God’s giving you, there’s no way.
[0:34:53.8] WA: Dude, like, sign me up.
[0:34:55.2] JR: Hype man, professional hype man. I love it. Hey, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?
[0:35:03.5] WA: Yeah. So, the first one you’d see is Henri Nouwen’s The Prodigal Son. But specifically, the 25th anniversary edition, because the second half of it is they took a conference weekend thing that he did, like a small group breakout, and they took all of his notes and put it in there.
[0:35:21.6] JR: Very cool.
[0:35:22.9] WA: And it – I mean, that is a book I never stopped reading.
[0:35:26.9] JR: Wow. You read it over and over again?
[0:35:29.7] WA: Over, and over, and over, again.
[0:35:31.0] JR: I love it, I love it. Hey, who would you want to hear on this podcast, talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world?
[0:35:36.5] WA: I want to hear the Boston Celtics head coach. I might be getting his – I might be getting his name wrong, Joe Mazzulla, I think, is it? I’ve seen him on you know, social media and other things, he’s a believer, and he just has a really funny, and kind of sarcastic way of, when like, people are asking him questions he thinks are frivolous, he’d be like, “Why should I care about that? No.”
Like, somebody once asked them, they’re like, “What was it like to have the prince, like, some royalty from England visiting the Celtics game?” And he’s like, “What are you talking about?” And they’re like, “Did you know about that?” He’s like, “I didn’t know about that.”
[0:36:10.6] JR: Didn’t notice, next question.
[0:36:12.3] WA: And he was like, “I have no king but Jesus. Next question.”
[0:36:14.5] JR: That’s so good.
[0:36:15.6] WA: Like I was like, he didn’t bother, baller answer for also a really successful coach.
[0:36:20.3] JR: Realistically, he is a really young coach, too.
[0:36:21.9] WA: Yes.
[0:36:23.1] JR: He’s 36 years old, it’s crazy.
[0:36:23.7] WA: I would listen to that.
[0:36:24.5] JR: That’s a great answer. All right, we’ll reach out to Joe. Will, what’s one thing from our conversation in the last 40 minutes, do you want to reiterate to our audience of Christian professionals before we sign off?
[0:36:35.9] WA: Yeah, I would just invite them to believe that joy is possible now, no matter, like, our context should not dictate our joy.
[0:36:43.3] JR: I would argue – Can I go on it a little deeper and get your response on this?
[0:36:45.7] WA: Yeah-yeah.
[0:36:46.8] JR: I would argue, if you can’t find joy now, you’re not going to find it when you’re circumstances change.
[0:36:51.4] WA: Oh no-no-no. I think that’s absolutely true. Like I think, so many of us are caught in some version of the hedonic treadmill, right? “Something out here will make me okay.” I mean, that is the way of the world, right? It’s super hard to fight that, but the reality is, you are an image bearer of the Most High God, and you, right now, have the abiding Holy Spirit of Christ living in you. The very spirit that raised Christ from the date is at work in the cellular in you, right? Like, what in the world? And so, we have what we need right now.
[0:37:27.1] JR: That’s good, man. Reminds me of this quote from Annie Dillard. She said, “On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blindly invoke, or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?”
[0:37:48.2] WA: That’s it, dude.
[0:37:50.1] JR: That’s it, man.
[0:37:51.2] WA: Yeah, man, thank you, Jordan, this has been such a joy.
[0:37:54.2] JR: Will, I want to commend you, man, for the exceptional work you’re doing for the glory of God and the good of others.
[0:37:58.8] WA: Thank you.
[0:37:59.4] JR: For believe– not–not, just believing intellectually that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, but allowing a deep understanding of that power to shape your vision of what’s possible in your work, in your community, in your family, but also, man, I love the balance of like, “You taking big swings for God,” but more importantly, doing that work with God, in communion with that source of power, knowing that that is the win.
It’s not the achievement of the goal, the win is what you're doing on your knees in the morning, in communion with the spirit. So, bro, thank you for being such a great example for us. Guys, I highly encourage you to check out Will’s book, No Elevator to Everest. Will, thanks for being with us, man.
[0:38:43.7] WA: Thank you so much, Jordan, it’s been a pleasure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:38:46.5] JR: Man, I love that guy. I love the work that he and his team are doing at Corner to Corner. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. Hey, if you did, leave a review of the Mere Christians Podcast right now on Apple, Spotify, wherever you’re listening to the show. Man, we read every single one of those reviews, and they are huge fuel for my team to keep going, and keep making this show that we bring to you guys, week after week. Love you guys, thank you for listening, I’ll see you next week.
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