What does it mean to walk the world by Christ’s design? Did he really mean for believers to perform miracles like he did? How are believers supposed to manage pride and ego in the midst of all of it? So many questions come up for people when they reach the point where they feel called to be an aspect of the divine, to live as though they’re already free. Disrupt Reality host Tonya Dawn Recla talks with Dave Stone, former senior pastor at Southeast Christian Church, about this hard-hitting, faith-challenging topic. Listen now as they uncover the complexities of Christ’s guidance and how you can apply his teachings in your life.

Hello everyone, this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. And I’m giddy. Listen, I’m so excited to share this man with you. We have had the amazing blessing of being in his presence and listening to him speak and just feeling God moved through him at Christ’s Church of the Valley. The church that you all know that we’re very vocal about attending. And when we came out of the closet saying, “The Reclas go to church”, it was a thing for us. But we love it. And part of the reason we love it is because it attracts people like Dave Stone to teach and to share God’s word, and the wisdom, and the years of experience.

And just what I love about Dave mostly. I’ll get into him here in just a second, but what I truly appreciate is just the spiritual maturity that he carries. And just to be able to relax into it. You know when you’re listening to a speaker or a teacher and it’s like your mind doesn’t have to activate or wondering if they’re going to fumble or if they’re going to say something you don’t agree with. Or if you have to be on hyper alert or hyper discernment. It’s like you don’t really want to relax into them because you’re not really sure where they stand. Well with Dave, you know where he stands. None of that happens. It doesn’t get activated because you just can relax in. What you see is what you get. And he knows what he’s talking about. And he walks his talk and there’s nothing about his countenance that would suggest otherwise.

And so it creates this really beautiful exchange where you can just receive the information that you’re designed to receive. And you don’t have to work that hard at it. Shouldn’t it all be that way? And, so for 30 years Dave’s preached at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. And what’s so impressive is during the last 13 as the Senior Pastor, he was able to grow that attendance from one campus to seven. From 17,000 to 27,000. You all know this game. It’s a numbers game. It’s an influence game. And as many people as we can touch with the light of God and the divine. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we’re all doing. And so I mean, he’s authored eight books. Totally he’s in it folks. This is his life. He walks, talks, breathes and sleeps it. And it’s obvious.

So, I’ve invited him on the show today to talk about a concept that so many of you ask us about. So many of you are struggling with, how do you live this work? How do you be devoted to this, and not supersede and become this like egotistical, maniacal and crazy person because you think you know everything. It’s one thing to say, of course we have access to all knowingness through God, but that’s a very different statement than saying, “I know everything.” And so how do we walk that really delicate balance? And so I’ve asked him to come on the show today to talk about living by Christ’s design. So without further ado, please, please, please join me in welcoming Dave to the show. Dave, I can’t thank you enough for coming on a crazy super power show. So thank you.

Well you sure were kind with all of those remarks that you made. I’m not really interested in hearing what I have to say.

Sorry buddy, you’re on the hook. We are interested in hearing what you have to say.

Well, it’s an honor and thank you for having me on.

Well, you are more than welcome. And again, we’re delighted. So, we’re going to dive right in and then ask you our quintessential question here. What are your super powers?

People are my passion. I work at remembering names.

Oh, I knew that question was coming. And it’s an unusual question, but I certainly understand from where it comes. I think my superpower would be pouring into people. I don’t know if I can narrow it down a lot. People are my passion. I work remembering names. If you talk to people probably say, “Oh, his unique gift or super power is encouraging by learning your names.” That’s something important to me. And I’m trying best to live the action in the Bible that says, “Honor others above yourself.

It was interesting because Ashley was talking about that this past weekend around the concept of, what does it look like to be as Jesus was? And I think a lot of times people consider the Christ led way to be very meek and very passive and very self deprecating on some level. For some reason that’s how it gets translated. And so I love that you spoke to this idea of that’s actually not it at all. And, it’s a really delicate balance of being in the world, which I believe is the directive that we were given. And yet recognizing that ultimately you’re as a person, in our personhood, are fairly insignificant. That’s a really fine line to walk. How do you reconcile that?

Well, I think most people take it, one of the two extremes. Either they feel like they are worthless and they have very little value that they can bring, or else that they are God’s gift to the world. And when they walk in the room, everybody should bow down and go on and treat them with respect. And the biblical view of understanding how we’ve been designed and created in the image of God is to realize that we have our weaknesses and strengths. And we’re all on this journey of trying to allow the spirit of God to mature and change us. To help us become the person the God wants us to be.

There’s one of the simplest acronyms that I ever heard probably over 35 years ago. Just this acronym of SHAPE. You put it on the whiteboard and you write downhill, SHAPE. And, I like to go back to Job or Jeremiah is both of them talked, how your hands shaped me. You made me. What you do as a simple teaching on, on what the word stands for. S stands for spiritual gifts. God has gifted each and every one of with different gifts. H is for heart. You have a heart, you have a passion. Something is something that makes you sing and some gets you up in the morning. The A is for ability. God’s given each one of us natural abilities. They’re in innate there. We didn’t have any say in them.

Maybe they’re a great athlete. They have super hand eye coordination or they’re good with their hands, whatever it might be, but it’s some natural ability that they had little say in, but they’ve got it. And the P comes back to your personality. Personality and temperament. And we tend to think that well, if I had that personality or if I could be like this person, everything would be. No, God gave you that personality for a reason. And then the E stands for experiences. And by that I mean everything that you’ve gone through, your vocational experiences, your relational experiences, the good and the bad, your spiritual life experiences that you’ve gone through, all of those things help to shape who it is that you are. And the problem most people have is I think we ended up trying to be somebody else. And yet you’re the only person who can be you and get it right. And so that’s what we want to do is we want to say, “How can I use the way God has made me to his glory? I can be a difference in this world.

Dave, I love that. We’re going to take a quick break both. So when we come back, Dave I’m going to hit you up with the hard stuff because I think that in a lot of the Christian interpretation, I’m not going to say the doctrine, but in the interpretation of the material there seems to be this abdication component that comes in because the discussion between the idea that we are saved with doing nothing and yet we’re never good enough and then to reconcile that or let me rephrase that. We don’t deserve it. “I saved even before being deserving of it,” somehow meshes then with the follow on directives of being as Christ was in the world. So we’re going to hit that folks when we come back after this break so you’re not going to want to miss it. Before we cut the break, Dave, where can we send people to find out more about you?

Yeah. You know most all my sermons from least the last seven years are on the southeastchristian.org website, and you can just go to sermons and you can look and find what I’ve given in recent years on that website.

Beautiful. You can also hear a lot of his messages at the ccv.church site as well because he’s featured there so many times. Go to their messages also. So stick with us. We’re going to be right back, folks. We’re talking about Dave stone today about living by Christ’s design. We’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.