Soil and Roots

What if the Christian life is meant to be more?

More than information.
More than Sunday services.
More than simply believing the right things.

What if discipleship is an invitation to become more like Jesus—to love as He loves?

Join us in exploring the deeper journey of spiritual formation and why so many of us are still searching for it.

Read the full entry here: https://vist.ly/5it8m

Ever Felt Disconnected in Your Faith Journey? Discover the Keys to Deep Discipleship Now! Welcome to Soil & Roots: Cultivating Deep Discipleship

Brian Fisher shares the results of Soil & Roots’ recent spiritual formation survey, which revealed a striking tension: many people consider themselves spiritually healthy while still longing for something deeper. More than half described themselves as spiritually healthy and connected, yet many also reported spiritual hunger, frustration with modern church culture, and a desire for a more experiential relationship with Jesus.

The survey also uncovered a strong longing for authentic Christian community. Nearly two-thirds expressed interest in joining a deeper form of community, and 65% said they might consider facilitating one with proper training and support. For Brian and the Soil & Roots team, the findings affirmed the need for Greenhouses—two-year communities designed to help people explore the hidden places of their hearts with Jesus and become more like Him.

Read "There Must Be More" on the Soil and Roots Substack page: https://vist.ly/5inps

We all have a self we present to the world and a deeper self we sometimes hide. The journey with God invites us to let go of the false self and discover who we were created to be.

Enjoy episode 147 of the Soil and Roots podcast on YouTube and Spotify!

YouTube: https://vist.ly/5idgy

Spotify: https://vist.ly/5idgw

Does God like some people more?

Most Christians would immediately say no. We believe God is impartial and that His love cannot be earned. But our hearts may tell a very different story.

In this Greenhouse episode of the Soil & Roots podcast, Brian Fisher, Kyle, and Dr. Tim Boswell continue the conversation from Episode 146, Is God Partial? Spiritual First Class and the Love of God.

They explore transference—how experiences with parents, pastors, teachers, employers, and other important relationships can unconsciously shape the way we experience God. We may intellectually believe He loves us unconditionally while still feeling that He prefers people who are more useful, successful, disciplined, influential, or spiritually mature.

The conversation also examines the “looking-glass self,” Heartview, performance, suffering, the masks we wear before God, and the difference between obeying God as an expression of love and trying to use obedience to acquire love.

They also wrestle with a difficult possibility: sometimes believing that God is partial may actually feel safer than receiving the full weight of His delight.

Enjoy episode 147 of the Soil and Roots podcast on YouTube and Spotify!

YouTube: https://vist.ly/5i6e9

Spotify: https://vist.ly/5i6e8

Brian Fisher explores one of the most powerful hidden ideas many of us carry: that we’re in control—or at least that we should be. Drawing from his own ongoing health struggles, Brian describes the tension between intellectually believing that God is good and trustworthy while living as though everything ultimately depends on him. Our anxiety about the future, attempts to rewrite the past, and frantic efforts to fix what we can’t control can reveal just how difficult it is to accept our limitations and remain present with God.

But surrender isn’t resignation. Brian suggests it can actually be an invitation into greater freedom: to lament honestly, accept our limitations, release what we cannot control, and trust that God remains at work. He sees that lesson playing out at Soil & Roots, where significant growth has occurred precisely when his own capacity has been limited. Sometimes our limitations reveal something we’d rather not admit but desperately need to experience: God is perfectly capable of holding things together without us.

Read "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on the Soil and Roots Substack page: https://vist.ly/5i4fc

Brian Fisher turns from our hidden ideas about God to our hidden ideas about ourselves, beginning with a fundamental question: Why are we here? He argues that many Western Christians have been formed by a reduced, “escapist” Gospel—the idea that Jesus primarily came to forgive our sins so we can eventually leave Earth for Heaven. While forgiveness is certainly good news, Brian suggests that this misses the much larger Gospel Jesus proclaimed: the arrival of God’s Kingdom and His invitation for us to participate in it.

Read "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" on the Soil and Roots Substack page: https://vist.ly/5hxt7

Brian Fisher wraps up his exploration of our hidden ideas of God by asking why they matter so much. The “Good Life” Jesus offers is an intimate, ongoing experience of God’s love, delight, security, and presence—but that kind of relationship requires vulnerability, surrender, and trust. If our hearts actually experience God as unsafe, partial, disappointed, or withholding, it makes perfect sense that we would keep our distance, even while intellectually believing all the right things about Him.

Those hidden ideas don’t just affect our relationship with God; they shape the people we become and, ultimately, the cultures we create. Brian argues that distorted ideas aren’t usually changed by simply learning better theology. They’re gradually re-formed through relationship and experience as Jesus meets us through self-awareness, story-sharing, suffering in community, and spiritual practices. The Good Life begins as we increasingly surrender to the God who actually exists rather than the god our wounds, relationships, institutions, and cultures have taught us to expect.

Read "I Have Trust Issues" on the Soil and Roots Substack page: https://vist.ly/5htdv

Brian Fisher explores another common hidden idea about God: that He is perpetually disappointed in us. While we may intellectually believe God loves and delights in us, our experiences with parents, teachers, churches, and performance-driven cultures can train our hearts to expect something different. Instead of experiencing God as loving and present, we may unconsciously picture Him as an evaluator—watching closely, waiting for us to fall short.

Read "I'm Not Mad, I'm Disappointed" on the Soil and Roots Substack page: https://vist.ly/5hnvc