The Signpost Inn Podcast

Do you feel like you're always rushing? Rushing to fix the problem, to answer the text, to make the bad feeling go away? Most of us don't even notice we're hurrying. We just notice that we're tired, anxious, short with the people we love, and far from God. In this episode Brandon, Matt and Liv look at the old line "Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil." We talk about where hurry shows up in our bodies, homes, churches and workplaces, and why it's so hard to stop. Hurry isn't just a bad habit you can will away. It grows out of fear and a deep lack of trust we're all born with. And it's not the end of the story. If you're worn out by trying harder to slow down, this one is for you. Come hear how Jesus has already answered the fears that keep you running, and what it looks like to help other people without hurrying them. Links: Changing the Conversation by Brandon Booth https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Conversation-Dance-Instead-Everyday-ebook/dp/B08HM744HC?tag=signpostinn-20 John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry https://www.amazon.com/Ruthless-Elimination-Hurry-Emotionally-Spiritually/dp/0525653090?tag=signpostinn-20 Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Discipline-Path-Spiritual-Growth/dp/0060628391?tag=signpostinn-20 David Benner, Strategic Pastoral Counseling https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Pastoral-Counseling-Short-Term-Structured/dp/0801026318?tag=signpostinn-20 Merlin app (birdwatching app)  iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/merlin-bird-id-by-cornell-lab/id773457673 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.labs.merlinbirdid.app&hl=en_US  Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events  Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

What do you do with your faith when the suffering is real and nobody has an answer that actually helps? Many of us have been handed tidy explanations for pain that left us feeling more alone than before. This week Brandon, Matt, and Liv sit with "Faith," a raw poem by G.A. Studdert Kennedy, the British army chaplain known as "Woodbine Willie," written out of the horror of World War I. Liv reads the poem in full, and then we talk about why honest faith in the face of evil feels like such a relief, why suffering is the number one reason people walk away from Christianity, and why Jesus answers the problem of pain with his presence instead of an explanation. We also talk about what it means that Jesus descends into every one of our hells, why the spiritual life is not always a story of ascent, how the AA meeting down the hall might be full of the luckiest people in the world, and how the resurrection turns the abyss into a doorway. If you are tired of being told to look on the bright side, if you are walking through a valley right now, or if you love someone who is, this episode is for you. You do not need to have the answer. Come sit with us, and with a chaplain who bet his life on Christ crucified. A heads up: the poem includes some graphic imagery from the battlefield. Links: The Unutterable Beauty: The Collected Poems of G.A. Studdert Kennedy: https://link.amazon/B06Jt2JLP More about G.A. Studdert Kennedy ("Woodbine Willie"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Studdert_Kennedy Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends Our Assumptions About God and Shows Us How to Be Human, by Kenneth Tanner: https://link.amazon/B0dwoJikL Hinds' Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard: https://link.amazon/B0gJqgKhY Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Has this podcast helped your walk with Jesus? We would love to share a few testimonials as we head into year-end giving. Send a short note to [email protected] or [email protected]. Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

What if the Parable of the Sower isn't a diagnostic quiz to figure out which kind of soil you are — but an invitation to stop, be honest with God, and let his word do what it does? This week we read the parable imaginatively and sit with what Jesus is actually up to when he scatters seed on hard, rocky, thorny, and good ground. Scripture references: Matthew 13:1-23 (CSB) Mark 4:1-20 (CSB) Luke 8:4-15 (CSB) Links: Photo from Liv of stack of read aloud books for homeschool. Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events AI Psalms  Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

Need to blow off some steam? Get off the grid? Zone out for a while? You're not alone. Nearly everyone is chasing relief from something: the pressure to perform, to keep up, to finally be enough. In this episode, Brandon sits down with David Zahl, founder and director of Mockingbird Ministries, to talk about his new book The Big Relief. They talk about what we're really trying to escape, where David has felt that pressure in his own life, and how God's grace offers the relief the world keeps promising and can't give. Along the way David explains what he means by making God's grace "not just spiritually or intellectually intelligible, but emotionally so." If you know the gospel in your head but you're exhausted and struggling to feel it, this conversation is for you. Links: The Big Relief by David Zahl https://amzn.to/4rKlfrg Mockingbird Ministries: https://mbird.com Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook: www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram: www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website, www.signpostinn.org, for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com.

If church or a religious leader has ever hurt you, you know the particular kind of tired that comes with it. It's not just disappointment. It's the exhaustion of not knowing where to turn, or who's safe, or whether the faith you still want to hold onto is even yours to hold anymore. In this episode, Brandon sits down with Heidi Goehmann, LCSW, a trauma therapist, theologian, and spiritual-care practitioner, to talk honestly about what spiritual trauma actually is, what it does to a person's body and daily life, and what a real pathway out of it looks like. This isn't a checklist episode. It's a conversation meant to help you feel less alone in something you may have been carrying quietly for a long time. Heidi and Brandon are also co-leading a live webinar on this topic, "A Pathway Out of Spiritual Trauma," on Saturday, October 24, 2026. This episode gives you a taste of that conversation and a place to start. If you've ever wondered whether healing from this kind of wound is actually possible, this one's for you. Links: Register for the webinar, "A Pathway Out of Spiritual Trauma" (Sat, Oct 24 @ 10am MT): https://givebutter.com/pathway-out-oct26 Learn more about Heidi Goehmann: https://heidigoehmann.com/  Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

Here's a sentence that'll get you kicked out of most small groups: you need to give up on spiritual growth. On today’s show we have a special guest with us who says that from the pulpit. Join us! By the end of this episode you’re going to have a whole new way of thinking about spiritual growth. Rev. John Newton has served as an Episcopal priest since 2009 and is the rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. He is the author of three books exploring grace, faith, and the Christian life, and is passionate about helping people experience the freedom of the gospel. John and his wife, Emily, have three children and a beloved golden retriever named June. When he's not preaching or pastoring, he's usually cheering on the Texas Longhorns. Links: Falling Into Grace by John Newton https://amzn.to/4gTussb Join us for for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

You may believe God loves you and still feel like he is one failure, one unanswered prayer, or one hard season away from pulling back. You brace for disappointment. You work to stay acceptable. Or you keep him at a careful distance because needing him feels too exposed. Brandon, Matt, and Liv talk about attachment theory in plain language, and why the ways we learned to handle closeness can shape how we relate to God. They turn to Psalm 131 and the work of Jesus: his incarnation, cross, resurrection, and gift of the Holy Spirit create a secure relationship with God that we could never create for ourselves. They also talk about practices that help us receive that reality in the places we feel it least. Confession and absolution let us bring God our worst and hear his forgiveness spoken back to us. Spiritual direction or therapy can help us name the old stories we carry about love, vulnerability, and rejection. If you keep waiting for God to be disappointed in you, or you don’t know how to let him get close, this episode is for you. Links: The Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson https://amzn.to/4fQ1sB5 Attachment styles slide The attachment project Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email: [email protected] Facebook: www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram: www.instagram.com/signpostinn Website: www.signpostinn.org Music credit: Rex Daugherty, rex-daugherty.com

You picked up your phone 186 times yesterday. That's not a discipline problem, it's a hunger problem. This week we trace the ache behind the scroll back to Augustine and forward to the empty tomb, and land on the strange freedom of a faith that doesn't need you to fix yourself first. When you scroll, you're looking for something real. The compulsion isn't random, and it's not just weak willpower. It's a hunger for heaven, misdirected. Samuel James calls the internet an "epistemological habitat" — not a tool you use but an environment that shapes what you crave, what you notice, and what you believe is true. And it's designed by teams of behavioral psychologists who know your patterns better than you do. We walk through the five digital liturgies that form us online, the structural forces stacked against you (and why shame is the wrong frame), and then what Jesus actually offers when you're starving for something real. If you've ever felt trapped by your phone and blamed yourself for not trying harder, this one's for you. Links: Samuel James, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age (Crossway, 2023) https://amzn.to/3RLOZX4 Giving Up On Growth: Rest in Restless World. Lecture by  John Newton https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/giving-up-on-growth-rest-in-a-restless-world-john-newton/id1381533696 Augustine’s Confessions https://amzn.to/4fyXMEQ Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

The world is genuinely dangerous and your nervous system knows it! The usual answers (trust God more, don't be anxious, just believe) don't seem to help, they only make you feel more ashamed that you must not be “doing it right!” So what does Jesus actually do with our generalized anxiety and fear? Brandon, Matt, and Liv work through what it feels like when Jesus changes the context you're living inside. Why willpower-based answers to anxiety tend to make things worse. How Jesus recontextualizes even death. And a few practices — imaginative Gospel reading, the Daily Examen — that train your body to feel what your theology already knows. If low-grade dread is just part of how you move through the world, this one's for you. Links: Check out Liv’s substack https://livbooth.substack.com/ Book: How your 21st-Century Church Family Works by Peter L. Steinke: https://amzn.to/3QXcMTy Book: A Roman’s Confession by Kade Dutton https://amzn.to/4eNpbmd Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com

What does Jesus actually feel when he looks at you — worn out, knocked flat, barely holding on? The Gospels have a word for it. And it's nothing like the soft, managed thing we usually call "compassion." Today Brandon and Matt dig into Matthew 9:36, the Greek behind two of the most overlooked words in the Gospels, and a gut-level emotion that drove everything Jesus did. Then we close with an imaginative exercise to help you actually receive it — not just understand it. Links: Käthe Kollwitz, The Downtrodden https://i0.wp.com/nmwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1986.187-GAP.jpg?fit=1200%2C999999&quality=80&format=webp N.C. Wyeth, The Lost Sheep: https://www.manresa-sj.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/11-N-C-Wyeth-The-Lost-Sheep.jpg.webp Join us for an event: https://www.signpostinn.org/events Connect with us: Email us at [email protected] Facebook www.facebook.com/SignpostInn Instagram www.instagram.com/signpostinn Check out our website www.signpostinn.org for more resources! Thanks to Rex Daugherty for creating the original theme music for this podcast. He's an award-winning artist and you can check out more of his work at rex-daugherty.com