From Distant to Deep Faith with Mike Neelley

Willow Weston
00:00:00.160 – 00:01:57.210
Hey there.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast.

So glad you hopped on.

And I just want to hand you this conversation that I just had with my friend Michael Neelley.

He’s been on the podcast several times and today he hopped on to talk about his latest book, A Longing for, where he writes about encountering the Holy Spirit.

And that sounds to some people, like, scary or weird or like something that happens for other people and not for me kind of vibes.

But I promise you this conversation will enrich your relationship with Jesus and will challenge you and will leave you longing for more.

Truly.

Truly.

So please listen to this and if you.

If you think of a friend while you’re listening to it and you want to pass it on, simply share it with them and be blessed.

I hope, I hope you truly encounter God listening to this conversation.

Mike Neelley, it is so fun to have you on the podcast today.

You might be.

You might be.

Oh, this is hilarious.

I’m actually going to do this on the podcast.

My son just opened the door.

He’s not allowed to open the podcast door, but.

Because I said, Mike Neelley, my son opened the door because he’s so excited to see you.

So this is a hilarious.

This is a hilarious moment.

Aiden, you’re on camera right now, my friend.

So for those of you listening, Mike is a mentor and invests in my son and I’m so grateful for that.

And Aiden, say hello.

And then we gotta, you know, get to this.

Mike Neelley
00:01:57.610 – 00:02:00.330
I love you, Mike.

I love you too, Aiden.

Or something.

Willow Weston
00:02:00.890 – 00:02:02.810
Freak her out.

Okay.

Mike Neelley
00:02:02.970 – 00:02:04.410
What the Holy Spirit can do.

Willow Weston
00:02:04.490 – 00:02:30.050
Okay, tell me, Mike, what the Holy Spirit can do.

Love you, Aiden.

Mike, I think I love him too, but I’m glad you love him.

I’m grateful you love him.

Yeah, we can all use more love in our lives.

You might get the award for being on this podcast.

The most.

I don’t know, I’ve never actually counted who.

Who’s been on, but is this your third time?

Mike Neelley
00:02:30.050 – 00:02:31.510
I think it is.

Third time.

Willow Weston
00:02:31.990 – 00:02:34.910
Yeah.

You might get the word.

I’ll have to get you a trophy.

Mike Neelley
00:02:34.910 – 00:02:41.430
Mike, are you going to be like staring at live and have like the five timers?

Like I’ll get like this terry cloth robe.

Willow Weston
00:02:41.430 – 00:03:11.570
That a robe?

Oh, geez.

I’m not giving you a robe.

That’d be weird.

Maybe more like a letterman’s jacket.

That’d be cool.

And you could have like a letter, like a C or something.

I like that you just came out with your second book, A Longing for More.

And I’d love to just jump out of the gate and hear your heart on what you’re hoping people most receive from this book.

Mike Neelley
00:03:14.290 – 00:05:24.140
Oh man.

Well, the, the book is birthed out of my own longing.

So I, I was raised in the Catholic church in, then in college and post college I was involved very much in the Presbyterian Church.

And I remember my, my post college pastor saying, he said it enough that I remembered it something along the lines of the Holy Spirit is the silent partner in the Trinity whose job is to point to Jesus and help us understand the Bible.

And beware all the bad theology of the Pentecostals, which was really kind of summed up in, you know, the speaking in tongues is the sort of exclusive evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And so that that statement kind of put me in a theological box that really limited my understanding and therefore my participation in the personal work of the Holy Spirit.

And when I began to experience breaking out of that box 20, almost 26 years ago, I just wanted to drink from every stream I could find.

There was such goodness.

You know, the invitation of scripture is taste and see that the Lord is good, not think and agree.

And I think most of my formative years of theological formation was a lot about think and agree.

Read the Bible more, believe more, Believe in a bigger God, but don’t actually expect to have an experience of a bigger God.

And there’s just so much goodness of God to be experienced and we experience it by the Holy Spirit.

And that’s my hope, is that whatever I’ve put together in this book would be a platform for an encounter for people and, and when growing, growing in encounters.

Willow Weston
00:05:25.260 – 00:05:37.260
I love that when you talk about, at one point you thought faith was about think and agree.

And now you also think it’s about taste and see.

Do you think it’s both?

Mike Neelley
00:05:37.900 – 00:06:34.770
Absolutely.

Because our theology, our theology, I think is meant to set us up for an encounter, but, and we can have an encounter without the theology.

But theology helps us to understand the encounter.

So we, we like it gives us a place to stand as we gaze into the mystery of God.

And I’m definitely not anti theology at all.

I would call my book an Experiential Theology of the Holy Spirit.

I think, yeah, I think my, when I was in the school of spiritual direction, our, our lead teacher was a former Jesuit and he would look at us and kind of shake his head and go, oh, you evangelicals, you think the Bible is to be studied so that you can learn about God, but the Bible is to be experienced so you can encounter God.

And I just I love that reframing.

Willow Weston
00:06:36.130 – 00:07:03.860
I wanted to talk about this a little bit since you brought it up, because I think there are some people who veer one side and other people who veer the other side.

And there’s also encountering and experiencing God and never reading the Bible.

Right.

And then there’s people who only think and agree and read the Bible, but they don’t realize that we have a God to be experienced.

So it seems like when you get too far on either end of the spectrum, things could get a little bit wacky.

Mike Neelley
00:07:04.180 – 00:07:50.380
Oh, absolutely.

I feel like my book is an invitation to both.

I feel like for the most part I’ve been in sort of the think and agree camp.

But then God’s made me a bridge into a more charismatic context, I guess.

But then also within the charismatic context, as you said, sometimes it’s really not rooted in scripture or it can function that way where the emphasis is so much on the experience that that becomes like an idol.

And there isn’t even necessarily a well formed theology.

So, yeah, we’ve got the issue on both ends of the spectrum.

Willow Weston
00:07:51.580 – 00:07:58.700
What would you say was your first encounter with the Spirit of God?

Mike Neelley
00:07:59.740 – 00:10:41.710
Well, it’s funny because I think I encountered the Spirit of God early on, almost immediately when I gave my life to Christ.

But I didn’t have a theology of the Holy Spirit.

So I, I remember.

So this was.

I was 15, way back 1979, and my family, we went down to the Oregon coast, a little town called Seaside.

And I remember walking around the town with, with this guy, the kid of the family we were staying with.

And I just had this weird sense that something was in me that hadn’t been in there before.

And, you know, and scripture talks about the indwelling Holy Spirit and that’s what was going on.

But I didn’t have language for it.

And then I didn’t really know how to pray.

As a Catholic, you only pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

And I wasn’t praying either of those at that point.

And so I would sit on my bed at night and I guess I could only describe it as the presence of God coming into my room and communicating with me.

And like in the midst of sort of the chaotic atmosphere of my adolescent years, this sense of God’s presence was really anchoring and comforting.

So those were some significant ones.

I mean, the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

I was still smoking potential after I gave my life to Christ.

And I tell this story in my first book where like the Holy Spirit basically put a stop Sign in front of.

I asked him.

I was, I was starting to feel guilty about it.

I asked him for a sign and then there was actually a sign, a stop sign where there, there shouldn’t be one, you know, and I stopped smoking pot after that.

So, yeah, so early on, early on, there were a lot of things going on that I didn’t have a theory theology for.

It was just an experience of God after I said yes and invited Jesus into my life.

But then, then I went off to college and got involved in this Presbyterian church, which wasn’t big on talking about an experience or experiences of God, but was really big on theology.

And, and it was stuff that I wanted to learn.

I was really hungry for it.

But I, but there wasn’t.

I wasn’t around people who were talking about experiences of God.

And so even for myself, it seemed like that got quenched for a long time.

Even to the extent where I would, over the years, I would write over and over in my journal, where are you, God?

Why do you feel so far away?

Willow Weston
00:10:43.150 – 00:10:52.830
So when you talk about someone telling you that the Holy Spirit is the silent partner of the Trinity, debunk that for us.

Mike Neelley
00:10:55.230 – 00:12:47.150
Debunk that.

Well, so I think the Holy Spirit is saying an awful lot.

In fact, Jesus said the Holy Spirit will testify about Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth who will lead us into all truth.

I think, and I might be making splitting too fine of hairs on this, but, but if we want to talk positionally, like the Father is on the throne in heaven, Jesus has been raised and seated at his right hand.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God on the earth doing stuff.

So whatever we’re experiencing of God is via the Holy Spirit.

Paul says the gathered people are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

He also says individually, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And the temple was where the presence of God, where heaven and earth met.

So to say that the Holy Spirit is silent really diminishes vastly what the Holy Spirit is.

Holy Spirit is speaking all the time.

And it’s not always scripture that the Holy speaking Holy Spirit speaking the Spirit will never say something that’s contrary to the witness of scripture.

But the Spirit’s talking to us about all sorts of stuff.

And so to number one say it’s silent and to number two, say its only job is to help us understand the Bible is really limiting and untrue.

And then to say its only job is to point to Jesus, well, that’s actually more accurate.

The Holy Spirit is always going to point To Jesus.

He’s always going to honor Jesus.

He’s always going to glorify Jesus.

The Holy Spirit wants to make the name of Jesus great.

And so, yeah, absolutely, the Holy Spirit is going to look, sound, taste and feel like Jesus.

Willow Weston
00:12:51.870 – 00:14:11.360
If you’re longing to grow in Jesus, make sure you check out my new Bible study book, a Six Week Journey Toward Healing.

It comes with six teaching sessions.

Reflection, questions, prayers, all the things you need to grow.

If you’re longing for that, you can do this by yourself, but could also grab some girls and gr.

There’s powerful things that happen when we gather together.

We’re already hearing feedback on how this is impacting lives.

So make sure you get your very own collide study wherever you get books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever.

Let’s keep colliding.

Thinking about people listening to this podcast and I don’t know, maybe, maybe they haven’t done a lot of study on the Holy Spirit.

I’m not saying you haven’t.

If you’re listening and you have, that’s awesome.

But I think there might be a lot of people who feel like their prayer journals look like yours.

Like, where are you, God?

Like, I want to experience you, I want to hear you, I want to encounter you.

And I’m not.

What’s your.

What’s your wisdom and advice on where does someone begin to.

To what?

What are they supposed to do if they don’t feel like they’re experiencing and encountering God?

Mike Neelley
00:14:12.400 – 00:17:26.980
Well, there’s this great new book out, Willow.

It’s called Baby Steps, Bob.

You know, I love Ruth.

Haley Barton says that.

That nothing in the spiritual life originates with us.

And so the very fact that there’s a longing originates in the heart of God.

We only love God because He first loved us.

And so we only long for God because He longs for us.

And he put that longing in our hearts so that we would seek Him.

So my first thing would be just be encouraged by the longing that you have and then follow it.

All right, Holy Spirit, Mike and Willow are saying you’re the real deal and that I can experience you.

Would you come?

Would you reveal yourself?

Would you remove any obstacles in me that are in the way?

There’s this great quote, and I know it’s in my book and I can’t remember where it is, but it’s by a guy named James Jordan from his book Sonship.

And he says that the Father’s love is continually raining down on us.

Right now, as you and I are talking, the father’s love, 100% is raining down on us.

The question is, why am I not experiencing that?

Or why am I not encountering a greater fullness of that?

And he goes on to say, because there’s obstacles in the way.

And, and, and.

And then he says this great thing.

He says, what if spiritual growth is about removing the obstacles that keep us from encountering and living in the love of the Father?

And I think that’s what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us.

Because According to Romans 5, God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

And so.

All right, Holy Spirit, if I’m not experiencing you the way that we’re talking about here, like, what are the obstacles?

You know, and there could be all sorts of things.

There could be, oh, there’s actually still unbelief in me, or maybe I need to forgive somebody.

I got to tell you, man, unforgiveness.

Doing that work of forgiving those who have wronged us unclogs the spiritual arteries like nothing else really brings us into greater freedom and joy.

But, but then I would.

I would also say, let’s find some other people who are hungry.

Let’s.

Let’s pray together.

Let’s seek the Lord together.

Because, I mean, it’s meant to.

It’s meant to happen in community.

It’s meant to be in the family, in the.

In the community of faith.

But there’s also.

We can hear for one another.

Like.

Like it’s.

It’s not just up to me to have all the gifts or to have all the.

To hear everything that’s from the Lord.

Like, I need you.

I need Aiden.

I need other people who are also listening and go, you know, Mike, I don’t know that everything you’re hearing is from the Lord or, or.

Oh, you’re not hearing.

Well, I hear God say this for you, Mike.

You know, so community.

Willow Weston
00:17:27.060 – 00:18:31.690
You know, there’s so many.

So many things I want to go back and ask you questions about what you just said.

One of them is you talked about this idea that God is always raining love down on us, and sometimes there’s obstacles in the way that keep us from receiving that love.

And I. I can personally resonate with that, but.

And I know so many people can who are listening.

It kind of reminded of a husband and wife, and the husband saying, I’m sure Rob said this to me at some point.

Like, I’m trying to love you, and you’re not letting me love you.

Like, you’re.

You’re not letting me love you.

I’m trying to love you, but you.

You’re pushing me away.

And so I’m curious when you talk about obstacles and you gave forgiveness as one, if there’s other examples or if you’ve seen somebody’s obstacle be removed and what it did in their life once it was removed and, and how they got it, received that love that’s been raining down on them.

Mike Neelley
00:18:33.850 – 00:21:00.690
Yeah, well, I think, yeah, I can do.

I can do both of those.

Talk about other obstacles and tell us a story or two.

Other obstacles are fear.

Like, we’re, we’re, like, we have a.

We have a view of God that’s not actually the Father that was revealed by Jesus.

And so, and, and sometimes we project our experiences with our own earthly parents onto God.

And, and so even though scripturally, that’s not who God is revealed to be, that’s our heart theology.

That’s how we relate to God.

And so there’s, there’s, there’s fear there.

There’s.

Like, I used.

I spent the first 21 years of my life thinking God was as disappointed in me as I was in myself around my sin and my failure.

And then we also have these false beliefs about ourselves.

We have false beliefs about God.

So there’s these lies that we believe that are also obstacles.

You know, like somehow, like there’s a lie of performance.

Like somehow I’ve got to measure up in order to experience God’s love.

You know, that’s a big one.

One of, one of the stories that actually happened recently was I was praying with a young guy and he was just kind of in a stuck space.

And I think in his relationship with God and with, with some other people and, and in the process of, of praying through and really this had to do with one big forgiveness piece where he needed to forgive someone that he just had so much resentment in his heart toward a lot of pain, too.

And so as we prayed through that, we, we came to either side of it and he, he was just like, crying with joy and experiencing God’s love after, after forgiving this person and, and then also receiving the love that God wanted to give him.

Like, it was.

Yeah, it was remarkable.

And, and I, I’ve texted with him a couple of times since then.

It’s been probably a month or more since we had this prayer time.

And yeah, God’s just doing stuff.

He’s like, God’s taking him to a new level through doing that kind of work.

Willow Weston
00:21:02.290 – 00:21:57.480
It’s amazing.

It.

It reminds me of you.

And I have a mutual friend, Derek, and I actually write about this in my book, but he was on this podcast and shared the story of his.

His father had committed suicide when he was really quite young, and he had kind of hid his story from everybody.

He didn’t know Jesus.

When he came to college, people were telling him about Jesus and he just thought to himself, I could never have a relationship with Jesus because he’ll require me to forgive my father.

And I could never forgive my father.

And he tells this crazy story as a non believer about how he went and sat on the steps of a hall up on campus and he spoke to God for the first time and said, God, God, can you get my dad on the line?

Mike Neelley
00:21:58.760 – 00:21:59.240
Wow.

Willow Weston
00:22:00.200 – 00:23:06.410
And he.

And he told his dad that he forgives him and he loves him and he misses him.

And the way Derek describes this is like he’s.

It sort of like released all the ways that he couldn’t receive love from God and love from others his whole life.

And after he.

He was able to deal with that unforgiveness that he had for his dad that was no longer here.

He was able to rece.

Love and give love.

And it was a breakthrough.

And so that’s kind of what you’re talking about is like, are these, these obstacles in our lives that keep us from experiencing God’s love?

One of the things you said earlier, which I really liked, is you redefined longing for us.

You, you said, if there’s a longing in you that actually comes from God.

And the reason why I like that so much, Mike, is that sometimes I think if we have a longing inside of us for God and we don’t feel like we’re experiencing it, we equal that.

To mean God is insufficient or I’m insufficient.

Mike Neelley
00:23:06.650 – 00:23:07.090
Yeah.

Willow Weston
00:23:07.090 – 00:23:28.390
Like God is either not real, it’s all bogus, and he’s not real because I’m not experiencing him, or there’s something about me where God reveals himself to other people and not me.

So can you talk to us a little bit about that thing we do where we start to define ourselves or God is insufficient when we’re not experiencing him?

Mike Neelley
00:23:31.990 – 00:26:13.070
Well, I mean, for me, that, that again, weaves back to my heart theology.

So when I was.

I had a very.

Felt like, very challenging relationship with my dad where I felt like he was disappointed in me a lot.

And, and really it was kind of about like keeping the rules and being the good son and.

But I.

But I didn’t keep the rules well enough.

And I hurt him very deeply.

And when I was 25, he disowned me said, I don’t want to have a relationship with you anymore.

You go on with your life without us, without a father, I’ll go on with my life without a son.

And so that like, deeply impacted what I call my heart theology that there’s.

There’s going to come a point where I.

God’s forgiveness runs out and I’m either set aside or I’m rejected altogether.

And so, yeah, this idea that God isn’t enough or isn’t going to come close or yeah, that his love runs out, that idea comes from somewhere.

It doesn’t come from God, although it might come from some of the theologies that we received in our churches.

There’s plenty of bad non Jesus theology about God.

You know, like, it’s so.

And I talk about this in my first book.

It’s like, it’s so essential that Jesus is the revelation of God.

Jesus said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.

And his primary, primary message of the Father is the prodigal son story in Luke 15. Who runs down the road every time.

Not just the first time that we come to faith, but just every single time he runs down the road and gathers us up in his arms.

And the like, the grace and the embrace that Jesus reveals.

I love.

Brian Zahn has this great quote.

He says, God is like Jesus.

God has always been like Jesus.

There’s never been a time when God was not like Jesus.

We haven’t always known what God is like, but now we do.

And I think that’s like.

So whether it’s our experience of people in authority over us who should have been trustworthy that have shaped our idea about how God thinks about us, or the theologies that we’ve received have shaped our idea of what we think God thinks of us.

Those are the things that I think build a lot of like, I think they build more distance than sin does.

Willow Weston
00:26:15.550 – 00:26:41.820
I agree with you.

And I think that a lot of us have toxic theology that we don’t even realize we believe.

I know for me, and I’m kind of curious for you, or even if you have advice for us on, on how to locate it, because I don’t think I necessarily always located it by going, what do I believe about God?

That’s inaccurate.

I.

Because I couldn’t see it for myself.

Mike Neelley
00:26:41.980 – 00:26:42.380
Yeah.

Willow Weston
00:26:42.380 – 00:27:24.470
But when I started processing some of the deep hurt and pain I’d experienced as a child, then I could go, and how.

How did that make me think about God?

I almost had to do it the backwards way where I had to look at this and go, how did having a dad who didn’t show up for me in the way that a dad should show up for me, how did I start projecting that onto my heavenly Father?

Like, I had to go that way instead of ask myself, because I think some people might be listening, going, I don’t.

I don’t think I have toxic theology going on.

So, like, how do we recognize when we’re projecting things onto God that we shouldn’t?

Mike Neelley
00:27:29.430 – 00:28:45.020
Well, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is.

Is David’s prayer at the end of Psalm 139.

You know, search me, O God, know my heart, test me, and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there’s any.

Some translations say wicked.

Some others say wayward way.

Is there anything I believe that’s actually out of alignment with your heart that’s revealed in Jesus?

Would you begin to show me that, Lord?

Would you begin to show me that in my own experience or my own interpretations of my experience?

Would you show me that in my theology?

There’s another book I would recommend that’s from a guy named Brian Zond, one of my favorite authors, and it’s called Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.

And in that book, he unpacks a lot of sort of, I think, standard theologies of sort of evangelicalism, Protestant, you know, mainstream Protestant evangelicalism, and.

And talks about his own process of sort of unwinding himself from.

From the toxic theology and discovering a more beautiful gospel.

Willow Weston
00:28:46.860 – 00:29:31.140
That’s a brave prayer.

Is there anything in me that’s out of alignment with you?

It is interesting because I feel like a culture where we’ve sort of started treating God like a salad bar, where we kind of walk up to the salad bar station and we go, I. I really like peas.

I like the kidney beans.

I like cottage cheese.

I like the sunflower seeds.

But no way on the mini corns.

I’m in no way on those, like the croutons that are 100 years old.

No, and definitely not.

I don’t know.

Do you know what I’m saying?

Like, oh, yeah, kind of like, I’ll take a little this.

I’ll take a little this.

I’ll take what I like about God.

Mike Neelley
00:29:31.220 – 00:29:31.940
Oh, yeah.

Willow Weston
00:29:32.340 – 00:29:47.940
And God needs to be in alignment with me.

And what I’m looking for in a God versus a brave prayer of saying, is there anything out of alignment in me?

Yeah, that’s.

That’s a brave prayer, Mike.

Mike Neelley
00:29:48.980 – 00:30:22.970
Well, and I totally agree, what you.

What you describe is American Christianity, which is.

Is the smorgasbord, you know, And I’m going to pick and choose, and I’m going to create God in my image, which is an idol.

It’s not.

It’s not the full picture of Jesus.

And.

And Jesus is both better than we’ve been told, but he’s also going to challenge some other stuff in us that we might not want, have to have challenged, like love.

Love is going to get in our face and challenge everything in us that’s not love.

Willow Weston
00:30:26.890 – 00:30:50.880
It’s good.

This is a good challenge.

Mike, I have to ask you, you wrote this second book.

What was the thing that you were either most surprised to learn about the Holy Spirit and encountering God, or the thing you’re just most excited that you learned in the process of writing this book about God?

Mike Neelley
00:30:53.430 – 00:32:47.080
Well, I’m sure you experienced this in your own writing, but how much?

The writing process was a conversation with the Holy Spirit.

It wasn’t simply, I’ve learned all this stuff.

I’m going to put it on the page now like it was.

I was formed in the writing, and I learned from the Holy Spirit in the writing.

And I remember one of the chapters where I was halfway through it and I was just stuck.

And I was just, I don’t know where I’m supposed to go with this.

I don’t know how to land this.

And I was just like, holy Spirit, if you want me to write this chapter, you’ve got to show me where to go.

And that night, I woke up in the middle of the night and suddenly just got this download of, this is the lens you need to go at this from.

And it was like, oh, what a great way to write a book.

And then there’s a point little over a year ago where I.

Because the book came out in October, and I gave it to my editor, I think, in June of last year.

So a little over a year ago, I was maybe at chapter 13, and I knew that there were a couple more chapters, but I didn’t know what they were.

And then one day I heard somebody say something.

I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s one of the chapters.

And then it was like, okay, Holy Spirit, you need to form that chapter in me.

Those aren’t ways that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it.

So the later chapters.

So like the Holy Spirit and the beloved community.

Actually, one of the chapters was kind of sparked by a conversation with your son.

And I actually mention him in the first paragraph of chapter 15.

I don’t mention him by name there that he asked me.

Willow Weston
00:32:47.160 – 00:32:49.560
He’s going to be really bummed about that, Mike, that you didn’t.

Mike Neelley
00:32:51.560 – 00:32:53.560
I mentioned by name in a different chapter.

Willow Weston
00:32:54.360 – 00:32:55.560
Okay, gotcha.

Mike Neelley
00:32:56.760 – 00:34:03.020
But he asked me, how do you tend the fire?

How do you tend the coals so the fire doesn’t go out?

And that led me to begin to reflect on sort of my Catholic contemplative tradition and history and how God has.

Has brought those two streams of the church and of the Spirit, the contemplative and the charismatic, together.

And I think how essential that is contemplative is about.

Richard Foster talks about this in the Streams of Living Water that the charismatic brings us into the experience of the immediacy of God’s presence, and the contemplative brings us into the experience of intimacy of God’s presence.

And I just thought, oh yeah, immediacy and intimacy, oh, that’s exactly where I want to be.

That’s the intersection.

And so, yeah, I loved.

Back to your question.

I just loved how much of this was collaborative with the Holy Spirit.

Willow Weston
00:34:05.660 – 00:35:02.370
That’s really cool.

You have so many stories of experiencing God and I’ve read about many of them.

I’m wondering if you’ve had any fresh encounters recently that you can share that you feel comfortable sharing, that sort of illustrate how you can experience God in the ordinary.

Like that people, I think sometimes, you know, is people are listening to this conversation.

They think they have to, like, I don’t know, I, like, go to some beautiful chapel and light candles and I don’t know, like, who have you seen recently?

Who have you been with where they were surprised by how they were experiencing God and it was, wasn’t that some big magical thing had to happen and, and what went down?

Mike Neelley
00:35:07.020 – 00:35:13.660
I feel like there’s a couple that come to mind, but setting them up requires so much context.

Willow Weston
00:35:14.300 – 00:35:15.100
Right, right.

Mike Neelley
00:35:18.940 – 00:37:59.660
I think the most regular way that I experience the Holy Spirit is what I call name dropping, which is where, like, just out of nowhere, somebody’s name comes to mind.

And, and then I, I start.

I, I just have come to recognize this is becoming familiar with how the Holy Spirit communicates with me.

I just, I just recognize, oh, the Holy Spirit put this person on my heart.

So I just start to pray for them.

And sometimes I get a thought of what to pray.

And so I’ll pray that and then I’ll fire off a text and say, hey, the Holy Spirit just dropped your name on me, and this is what I was praying.

Let me know how I can pray for you more.

And I would say 85% of the time, like, the, the timing of it and the content of it are just like, exactly what that person needed at that moment.

And, and what I, what I love about that is that, number one, it happens when I’m, like, washing the dishes or I’m making coffee or I’m getting the dog out of the back of the car at the field to go play ball.

It doesn’t happen in my prayer space.

I think my prayer space helps to attune my spirit so that I’m more sensitive to those things.

Maybe later in the day, but it doesn’t happen because I set up a religious context.

And, and, and I think I, I, I’m not sure that I’d put money on it, but I’m, I’m pretty sure that everybody listening to this podcast has experienced that.

They may, they may not have recognized it as the Holy Spirit, but I, I, I’m pretty sure that everybody has experienced somebody’s name coming to them out of nowhere.

And you just like, oh, that was weird.

Why am I thinking about Willow?

Like, huh?

And you go on with your day.

Or, or maybe, or maybe you just, or maybe you send, send them a note.

But, but the, the, the idea that actually the Holy Spirit is prompting that so that you can step into it.

Yeah, this is, I, like, I tell this, this story happened last year that I, and I share it in my book, but, like, I was at the field getting the dog out, and this name of a guy I went to college with comes to my mind, and I haven’t, I haven’t actually talked to him since my 20s.

And so I start.

Willow Weston
00:37:59.820 – 00:38:06.700
So that was like, two years ago.

Yeah, five years ago.

Okay.

Okay.

Mike Neelley
00:38:07.500 – 00:38:10.540
Yeah, Yeah.

I was in college for a long time, Willow.

Willow Weston
00:38:11.820 – 00:38:14.140
I’m just saying, people don’t know how old you are.

Mike Neelley
00:38:14.140 – 00:38:16.860
So I’m 62.

I’m 62.

Willow Weston
00:38:16.860 – 00:38:23.150
I’m gonna crack some jokes here.

Yeah, yeah, college, like 40 years ago.

Mike Neelley
00:38:23.470 – 00:38:31.230
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was the 80s that I was in college, which I think is 20 years ago, but it was actually 45 years ago.

Willow Weston
00:38:31.790 – 00:38:32.750
Right, right.

Mike Neelley
00:38:33.709 – 00:39:36.970
Yeah.

So I start praying for him, and, and the word son S O n comes to mind, and I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know if he has kids, let alone a son, but I’ll start praying.

All right.

Lord, I don’t know what’s going on with my friend and his son, but I, I pray for healing, for, for that relationship.

And then I, I was able to track down an old email address for him.

And I just said, hey, this is what the Lord put on my heart this morning.

And, and he was like, man, like I had been praying this week that God would give me a sign that he’s hearing my prayers about this situation with my son and wow.

And, and that’s.

God’s continued to bring them to mind every once in a while.

So I continue to pray for that and then he gives me updates on, on sort of things that have been going on.

So it, even though like the Holy Spirit dropped his name on me, it wasn’t one and done in his case it was.

It’s.

No, you’re going to be praying for him for a while and, and keep, keep pressing in for that, you know,.

Willow Weston
00:39:38.240 – 00:39:39.600
So that’s very cool.

Mike Neelley
00:39:39.840 – 00:40:04.280
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s so fun.

It’s so fun to get to co labor with God like that.

He would even like, he doesn’t need us, but he’s like, oh, you know, I know what Mike would like.

Mike would love this.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna drop his friend’s name on him right now and we’re gonna partner together for, for healing and goodness.

Willow Weston
00:40:05.480 – 00:40:11.400
There’s so much I could ask you about this topic, Mike, but we’re going to leave people with the longing for more.

See what I did there?

Mike Neelley
00:40:11.800 – 00:40:12.760
See what I did there?

Willow Weston
00:40:14.760 – 00:41:14.580
Yeah.

But I do want to ask you one more question as we come to a close.

Earlier in our conversation, you said something I think people need to hear twice.

You said, we don’t just long for God, but God longs for us.

I think there’s people who have never considered that idea.

And as we kind of come to a close on this podcast, and maybe we have a stronger hunger or bigger curiosity to experience God, I just wonder if you could close with speaking over us.

These words, this idea that God longs for us, for people who need to hear, hear that for.

For people who maybe that idea might even heal something in them that’s been hurt and broken for a very long time.

Mike Neelley
00:41:15.860 – 00:45:45.740
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Let me just pray.

I pray into that.

So, Father, you so long for us that you sent your son, you sent your son to be, to be born and to then to spend his life showing us what you’re like, showing us how much you long for us.

Showing us how much you want to remove every obstacle that’s in the way.

Father, you long for us so much that you sent your son to the cross to remove the obstacles of sin and death so that there would be nothing in the way.

Nothing in the way.

And Lord, I recognize that right now, one of the things that’s in the way is a lie.

That you don’t long for us, that you’re waiting for us to come crawling back up the driveway to the house when Jesus said no, you actually saw us when we were a long way off and you picked up your skirts and you ran, you ran and you ran and you ran.

Not one time, not a hundred times, but thousands and thousands and thousands of times because you long for us, Jesus.

That’s a revelation that you bring of what the Father is like.

And so I, I pray, Holy Spirit, since you’re the one who makes, makes everything that’s revealed about God through Jesus, makes it real to us that those who are listening you would make that real or we can’t think our way into it.

We can’t certainly work our way into it.

Paul prayed that we would know the love of Christ.

That’s beyond our capacity to know.

So if we can’t know something, how can we know something that we can’t know?

It’s because you reveal it to us, God.

So, Holy Spirit, this is what you do, Lord, you pour the love of the Father into our hearts.

Would you do that right now, Holy Spirit?

Wherever the cracks are, maybe we’ve got walls up of self protection, walls of fear, walls of false things we believe about you.

Toxic theology.

Lord, would you just come like a flood?

Would you come like a flood with your pursuit, like you so want to be with us, you so long to be with us that you did everything in heaven and earth through your son Jesus to make that possible?

So would you take that theological truth and make it an experiential truth right now?

Holy Spirit, would you roll back the stone from the tomb?

Roll it back, Lord.

Roll it back in people’s hearts who are listening.

Holy Spirit, come.

Bring the love of the Father, bring the longing of God, bring the pursuit of God to begin to taste and see.

Yeah, Lord, your Word says that perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

And the one who fears has not yet been perfected in love.

And Lord, we come today saying we have not yet been perfected in love.

That’s just where we are and you know that.

So would you bring your perfect love and begin to undo the fear of punishment, the fear of whatever the fears are?

Would you be perfecting us in love today so that we could actually not just have theology about it, but experience of it?

Willow Weston
00:46:01.510 – 00:46:01.910
Amen.

Mike Neelley
00:46:02.630 – 00:46:03.270
Amen.

Willow Weston
00:46:03.830 – 00:46:17.110
Thank you, Mike.

Thank you for Being on Today, I. I want to give you a moment to be able to tell people how they can get a hold of this new amazing book and follow along with you.

Mike Neelley
00:46:17.510 – 00:46:51.380
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks, Willow.

Yeah, so it’s called A Longing for More, Deeper, Wider, Further with the Holy Spirit and it’s available on Amazon.

It’s self published through Amazon, but you’ll have to look up Michael Neelley rather than Mike.

And yeah, both of my books are there, but yeah, so that’s where.

That’s where this one is available.

And you can also follow me on my podcast called A Church Without Walls.

There’s a fairly recent interview with Willow on there about her book, so True story.

Willow Weston
00:46:51.780 – 00:46:53.780
Well, Mike, thank you for being on today.

Mike Neelley
00:46:54.580 – 00:46:55.580
Thank you for having me.

Willow Weston
00:46:55.580 – 00:47:49.710
Willow Friend, if that conversation impacted you in a way that you think could also impact some people that you love, I would love for you to share it.

Also, make sure that you subscribe to this podcast so it can hop into your inbox next week and the next week and you can hear amazing conversations with amazing people who God is showing up to and meeting them in the midst of all they have going and using them in mighty ways too.

And remember this week that Jesus collides with our life.

God runs right into our lives and he is one that we can taste and we can see.

So be looking for him this week.

He’s on the move.

He’s running towards you and he is a God to be experienced and encountered.

Have a great week and we’ll catch you next week.