Become Good Soil

Morgan Snyder
  • 4.8 (304)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Semimonthly

For men, and the women they champion, who are recovering the path and process to become wholehearted mature apprentices of God and His Kingdom. 9326c130-f4a0-11ef-a275-5bd47b0c8b59

  1. 214: Rule of Life – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 9)

    4d ago

    214: Rule of Life – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 9)

    "This is the most difficult and at the same time the most important thing to embrace in the Christian life: that we become willing participants (with God), not only in what God does but in the way He does it." —Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places Friends, we continue to be gripped by these two questions. How are our daily activities shaping us into the people we are becoming? And, what changes might aim our becoming more closely toward the Person and Way of Jesus?  In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series we invite you to reflect with us on these questions and the ancient idea of a rule of life. Our hope—as we revisit the rule of life—is to facilitate a gentle check in regarding how we are arranging our days. Developing a rule of life does not mean picking up a heavy yoke or toeing the line for a critical voice. Rather, “rule” in this case is related to a ruler or guide. Just as it’s helpful to use a ruler to steady our hand when drawing a line, so a rule of life helps guide our lives in the direction we yearn to live.  As has often been observed, a rule of life is like a trellis supporting a growing vine. The trellis supports the vine as it grows and bears fruit, shaping its form and making possible its generativity. As a vine without a trellis becomes tangled, turned in on itself, and unfruitful, so can our hearts and lives, habits and relationships, desires and impulses devolve without the structure of a supportive rule of life.  With characteristic understatement, Jesus reminds us that each day of life brings plenty of predictable challenges (Matthew 6:34). What would it be like to receive from our God and the wisdom of His people a “trellis” of habits and practices that over time will form the resilience, endurance, faithfulness, joy, and love of Jesus? What would it be like to have a Kingdom-trellis upon which to rest our souls as we trust the Spirit to form in us by day and decade the character of Jesus and allow us to persevere through whatever challenge we may face on the Way? Check in with us as we explore a rule of life together. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 6m
  2. 213: Koinonia – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 8)

    May 19

    213: Koinonia – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 8)

    “The Hebrew way to understand salvation is not to read a theological treatise but to sit around a campfire with family and friends, listening to a story. It is the very nature of storytelling to include us, the hearers, in the story… For salvation is not the spiritual diagnosis of souls, one here, one there. It is the story of a people. A community with a past, with ancestors, with common experience.” —Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we invite you to pause and personally explore how koinonia—the heartbeat of the redemptive community modeled in the New Testament—might provide a clue for how we live counterculturally in a world deeply formed by hyper-individualism. In the film Defiance, we see a heroic picture of redemptive community. The Bielski brothers gather fleeing refugees in the forests of modern-day Belarus to escape the persecution of World War II. There in the woods, with only the essentials, a redemptive community is formed as they struggle to survive. When they host a wedding, it becomes a beautiful reminder that joy and sorrow coexist. (Links to the Defiance Trailer and Wedding Scene here.) Throughout the New Testament, we see redemptive fellowship being recovered and nurtured by a remnant of people whose hearts are being captured and apprenticed by the Living God. We catch a glimpse of this in Acts chapter 2. Koinonia is defined as fellowship, association, community, participation, and sharing in one another’s lives. The first picture we have of koinonia exists within the Trinity itself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect fellowship. But more than simply observing that fellowship, we are invited into koinonia—first and foremost with God. And from this place of intimate communion with God, the gospel invites us to love others. Paul helps us explore this idea through the imagery of the body in 1 Corinthians 12:25–26: “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.” To be in fellowship with others in our fallen age is inherently risky. It involves cycles of rupture and repair. How do we pursue, engage in, respond to, repair, and flourish within a redemptive community? Where might God be inviting you to reconsider your participation in koinonia? Join us as we explore this profound idea of koinonia together. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 18m
  3. 212: Whole Person Formation – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 7)

    May 5

    212: Whole Person Formation – Become Good Soil Foundation Series (Part 7)

    “We cannot become spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.” —Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Friends, how do we learn from Jesus to live the life of the Kingdom in every corner of our existence and every dimension of our personhood? How do we learn not only to see reality as Jesus sees it, but also to feel in our bodies, engage in our relationships, regulate our nervous systems, and make meaning of our everyday lives as He would? How do we join the Spirit—and His community of apprentices—in having our whole person transformed into the likeness of Jesus, expressed uniquely through our distinct personhood, relationships and stage of development? How do we include in our whole person formation our vision of self, God, and others, our communal connections, our relationship with time and our place within all of creation? As we continue diving into our Become Good Soil Foundations Series, join us for this podcast episode dedicated to exploring whole person formation into the likeness and way of Jesus. It's all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 4m
  4. 211: Apprenticeship and Initiation – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 6)

    Apr 21

    211: Apprenticeship and Initiation – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 6)

    “For many former Smokejumpers, smokejumping is not closely tied with their (current) way of life, but is more something that was necessary for them to pass through and not around, and, once unmistakably done, does not have to be done again. The “it” is within, and is the need to settle some things with the universe and ourselves before taking on the “business of the world.” This “it” is the something special within that demands we do something special, and “it” could be within a lot of us.” —Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire Friends, how are we to understand the story of our lives as it unfolds across the years? What meaning do we give to our failures and our faithfulness, our losses and our triumphs, the long disappointments and the surprising gifts we never would have chosen—yet somehow needed? And how do we recognize true growth, not only in our own maturing, but in our apprenticeship to Jesus and the life of His Kingdom? Dietrich Bonhoeffer once suggested that the cost of not following Jesus is, in the end, far greater—even in this life alone—than the cost of walking with Him. For discipleship is not merely a matter of belief, but of learning to live in intimate fellowship with Christ, slowly being formed into the kind of people He Himself would be, if He were to live our lives in our place. In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we explore apprenticeship and initiation as two essential lenses for making sense of this question: how our small, particular stories are caught up into something far larger—the redemptive and unfolding story of God. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 5m
  5. 210: A Story Big Enough to Live In – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 5)

    Apr 7

    210: A Story Big Enough to Live In – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 5)

    “It is a world of magic and mystery of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, and where a great struggle often makes it hard to be sure who belongs to which side, because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good who live happily ever after and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, become known by their true name. That is the fairytale of the gospel.” —Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale Friends, What happens in you when you hear the word desire? Is there a kind of quickening—something like curiosity? Or a hesitation… a guardedness? Maybe a quiet opening that feels like hope. Or a heaviness in your chest that carries sadness. Or even a flash of cynicism. What have you come to believe about desire… in your life with the Triune God, in His Kingdom, in your apprenticeship to Jesus? And what if the recovery—the honoring and stewarding of desire in its purest form—is actually central to your restoration as an image-bearer of God? In this next episode of the Become Good Soil Foundations Series, we explore the recovery of longing and desire. Because at the heart of the Christian story is an arresting claim: that desire, in its essence, is not something to fear—but something given by God, meant to lead us to Him and into His Kingdom. It was the awakening of desire—those fleeting, radiant moments—that first beckoned C. S. Lewis. He described this awakening as joy. And that joy stirred something in him, calling him to search for more. And the same is true for us. Our longing is not a liability. It is part of the way back to joy. Everything we love—every glimpse of beauty, goodness, and delight—is from God, is for God, and ultimately finds its home in Him. The story of the kingdom is a story of desire being gathered up and restored—a great homecoming. Let’s press forward together. It's all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    50 min
  6. 209: The Gospel of the Available Kingdom – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 4)

    Mar 24

    209: The Gospel of the Available Kingdom – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 4)

    “To be sure, the kingdom has been here as long as we humans have been here, and longer. But it has been made available to us through simple confidence in Jesus, the Anointed, only from the time he became a public figure. It is a kingdom that, in the person of Jesus, welcomes us just as we are, just where we are, and makes it possible for us to translate our “ordinary” life into an eternal one.” —Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy How would you answer this question: What is the gospel that Jesus preached? When I (Cherie) first encountered this question, I was both arrested and bewildered. I had some sense of what I thought the “gospel” might be, but I could not, for the life of me, articulate what it was that Jesus himself preached. I was new in my adult faith in Jesus and spent most of my devotional time reading the Psalms, the Gospel of John, and Paul’s letters. This question launched me on a treasure hunt that changed my life—and continues to propel me today. It led me first deep into Matthew’s account of the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, then into Mark’s and Luke’s, and back again to John. Over the past twenty years, I have returned again and again to these profound and sweeping accounts of the earthly ministry of the Anointed One. What was the gospel that Jesus preached? And what does an apprenticeship look like when it seeks not only to have faith in Jesus, but to practice living the faith of Jesus? Let’s remember it together. Join us for this episode of the Become Good Soil podcast. Indeed, the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Cherie and Morgan

    57 min
  7. 208: Living From Rest – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 3)

    Mar 10

    208: Living From Rest – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 3)

    “Recovering Sabbath is an alternative to a culture ruled by an endless cycle of consumption, production, and progress. It is an awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God. To be so situated is a staggering option, because we are accustomed to being on the initiating end of all things. We neither expect nor, at times, even want a gift to be given, so consumed are we with accomplishing and possessing. Thus, I have come to think of the Sabbath as the most difficult and the most urgent of the commandments in our society.” —Walter Brueggeman   How regularly do you find yourself showing up in your life from a place of overflow, having been saturated in the reservoir of Sabbath overflow? If you were to describe your evolving relationship with rest over your life in all its stages in seasons, how would your life speak to you? What if the timeless invitation to live from Sabbath—and to cultivate practices every day, every seven days, every seven years, and every seven-times-seven years—isn’t merely an external activity, but a way of participating with God to relearn a way of kingdom living? What if there is a hidden secret that unlocks every other resource of the kingdom, concealed within this mystery rooted in relational security with the one who models rest and created a world sustained through His own participation in Sabbath? Welcome back to the Become Good Soil Foundations Series. Join us as we explore together the possibility of Sabbath not only as an extravagant gift from a God of creativity, delight, and rest, but also as a primary posture in our apprenticeship to Jesus—and a catalyst for transformation: both a resistance to our age and an alternative path to a flourishing life. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 9m
  8. 207: It Starts With God – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 2)

    Feb 24

    207: It Starts With God – Become Good Soil Foundations Series (Part 2)

    “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us…” —St. John Henri Nouwen offers these soulful questions: “In what quiet ways have you bartered the worth of your soul to other grade-givers—some clamoring voices in the world around you, other critical voices firmly within your own being? By what small, repeated surrenders have you allowed yourself to become the very thing the world applauds, and the one thing you did not want to find yourself becoming?”  In reflecting on these questions, we are keenly aware of the reality that we have often “bartered the worth of our soul” and been painfully malformed through “small repeated surrenders.” Yet as we take stock of our precious yet infected souls, we experience Jesus’s pursuit afresh. As the generous host of all creation, as our creator and king, He invites us to once again entrust ourselves fully to Him—everything we are and everything we are not yet—and receive the nourishment, embrace, and affection we so desperately need and is His joy to extend. In this second episode of our Become Good Soil Foundations Series, join us as we explore the wondrous reality whispered through the text of scripture, the text of nature, and the lives of those who intimately live the with-God life: that all reality begins with God—a God who overflows with creativity, energy, love, welcome, and life. Let’s seek together how we might live more deeply from a posture of rest and receptivity, moving through our days and decades as those ever-receiving love and belonging—and, from that overflow, continually extending love and belonging to all those around us.  We are so grateful to venture deeper on this journey together. It’s all been prologue. The best is yet come. For the Kingdom, Morgan & Cherie

    1h 2m
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About

For men, and the women they champion, who are recovering the path and process to become wholehearted mature apprentices of God and His Kingdom. 9326c130-f4a0-11ef-a275-5bd47b0c8b59

Information

  • Creator
    Morgan Snyder
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    215
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Become Good Soil
  • Show Website
    Become Good Soil

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