https://www.patreon.com/Drunk_Pastor, http://www.drunkpastor.com/, https://mailchi.mp/5b86423dddfb/the-existential-hango

Drunk Pastor, 519 S Higgins Ave, Missoula, MT (2026)

09/08/2026

In Psalm 27:8, it says,
"You have said, 'Seek my face.'
My heart says to you,
'Your face, Lord, do I seek.'"

God is not one who hides Himself from us. It is in Him we live and move and have our being. The Divine is not far from any one of us.

Scripture is punctuated by those who dared to pursue God until they broke before His presence. That journey is not only available but encouraged through Scripture. It's the very promise of the High Priestly Blessing:
"The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace."

Faith is daring to meet God in reality, with breath, pulse, and sweat. It's the willingness to let God have His way with us and be molded by His hands. The mystery of peace, life, and fullness is not found in the exterior distractions or certainties we may guard and run our lives by.

God is found before and after and in between all of that. God is in the breath we hold, the fears we run from, and the false hopes that distract us.

Methods, tools, and systems help, and in fact are part of the disciple's formation. Disciplines and a path take a map and tools that can only be fostered and wielded from the inside out.

Meister Eckhart said, “Whoever seeks God in a special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden in it.”

So, no matter what your path looks like, what language you use for the Divine, or what the tools are currently at your disposal, don't forget to let God be a part of life as much as you are.

Look for Him and He will reveal Himself.

The question is whether you can hold eye contact.

09/07/2026

The valley of dry bones appears in the middle of Ezekiel’s work with an Israel that was in Babylonian captivity.

In chapter 37, after showing Ezekiel a valley full of bones, the Lord asked him:
“Son of man, can these bones live?”

And Ezekiel said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Instead of actually answering Ezekiel’s question, he shows him the answer. Ezekiel is told to tell the bones:
“Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”

As he was talking, the bones started coming together, and flesh began growing on them.

Ezekiel is then told to command them:
“Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”

God promised that one day the dead would rise and a unified people would be established:
“Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”

Ezekiel was one of the voices from Israel’s prophetic tradition that people were still wrestling with when Jesus stepped onto the stage.

The prophecy of Ezekiel walked in flesh and blood, and then a group of people trusted Him enough to follow Him.

Spiritual rebirth and renewal produce life and peace, not more war and death.

The promise of the Gospel was not to create a disempowered people obsessed with judgment and certainty. It was not to create people in more bo***ge than what Jesus already promised freedom from. And it was not to provide us with am******on and a mask to hide behind.

The work and promise of the Gospel is life—and life abundantly.

Freedom is the breath the Spirit dances in and invites us into.

When dry bones can dance, it sounds like the music of an advent and a victory march, not the coming of doom and judgment.

When our inner lights shine through all the dead stuff that once kept us in the grave is when we begin to realize that life is dancing.

“A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!”

09/05/2026

Jesus said in Luke 17:20–21:
“The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

Salvation was never about escaping this life. It’s about dismantling whatever keeps us from confronting reality, receiving healing, and walking out a new mode of being in the present moment.

Rebirth is messy—far more like a newborn calf than some tidy transition. It doesn't yield to our demands or preserve our old expectations. To step into what is truer, the old ego has to die. Time takes time, and growth requires surrender.

The promises of Heaven aren't post-mortem deferrals—they are realities meant to be inhabited on Earth, right now. This is how the Spirit sanctifies us into real-world saints, doing what God has always done across human history (Acts 17, John 5:17): moving in between human boundaries and concepts.

The blessing of creation is anchored in community, relationship, service, and the dynamic flow of the Spirit walking with us. We've never been alone, and we don't have to do it alone.

It means we can actually believe in love and try to be more loving: something our world seems to be in desperate need of.

These aren't abstract, extravagant claims. They are everyday practices learned and lived out in real time within relationships, families, work, and neighborhoods.

We can easily run infinite logical loops around theology, but life isn't a puzzle to solve or control—it’s an experience to be entered. When we stop gaming or fearing reality, room opens up. Breathing space appears. The shadow and ego can finally be faced, integrated, and surrendered to healing.

Transformation happens right here. All it takes is one step, one moment of surrender, one act of service, and one person at a time.

It’s always in the small things.

09/04/2026

“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.” — 1 John 4:12

Love flourishes when we stop demanding that human beings carry the weight of our reality. Relationships become exhausting when we demand absolute perfection or ultimate validation from a partner, rather than turning outward toward the Divine together.

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis observed that “Eros will have candidates for payout who are not God. That is why Eros, turned into a god, becomes a demon.”

In a hyper-sexualized culture, this idolatry is loud—we demand that another person serve as an infinite source of passion and validation. But the exact same idolatry operates quietly in stale, repressed relationships. When passion dies, we don't drop our expectations; we just turn them inward. We substitute genuine union with control, perfectionism, and quiet resentment.

Marriages then survive not through love, but through a cold transactional peace—growing comfortable as our blind spots line up, crowning the curated narrative of our household rather than YHWH.

Real intimacy isn't gazing obsessively at one another; it’s standing shoulder-to-shoulder, looking in the same direction toward God. It is being fully seen, fully known, and accepted anyway.

We overcomplicate love because we are afraid of it. Yet dropping the mask of divinity is the very thing that frees us to love people in their actual, messy humanity. As Richard Rohr puts it: “When you try to get a finite object to give you an infinite response, you will always end up angry, addicted, or idol-obsessed.”

It is in the act of loving—in the total surrender to it—that we come alive. We become vessels through which Grace flows, learning how to give love freely and receive it in return.

And these truths reach far beyond romantic relationships. We are called to love our neighbors without excuses, judgments, or conditions.

Most of the time, we just prefer not to.

09/03/2026

Forgiveness isn't canceling a debt—it's handing the judge’s gavel back to God so you can finally step out of your own mental prison.

In John 20, Jesus breathes the Spirit into His disciples and delegates the work of reconciliation. This isn't a brand-new concept; it’s the climax of Genesis. Joseph breaks the ancient cycle of evil brought about in Genesis 3 by forgiving his brothers and trusting God's sovereignty over the story.

Same story. Same point.

When followers forgive, Heaven’s reality invades earth. When we withhold it, we lock ourselves in the cellar with the very toxicity we claim to hate.

As Jesus warned in Matthew: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."

Our grudges, self-justifications, and unspoken attachments are what keep us trapped in anxiety, apathy, addiction, and pride. The line between good and evil runs straight through the human heart—and attempting to execute judgment ourselves only corrodes the soul.

Living in Kingdom reality means refusing to let another person's sin dictate your spiritual freedom.

If you're hungry for peace, the ancient dance of reconciliation is already happening. Humans are just the ones playing catch-up.

Choose life. Hand over the prison keys.

09/02/2026

When Paul writes about being crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20), or Jesus speaks of losing the soul to save it (Matthew 16:25), they are describing a literal shift in our orientation to reality.

What Jesus, and then Paul, calls "dying to self," psychology calls ego dissolution, decentering, or ego-death. A human cannot integrate the unconscious, shadow material if the ego insists on being the absolute ruler of its own kingdom.

The process of individuation requires the collapse of masks and assumptions in order to confront the shadows we hide on the inside. We cannot find the true Self, which Jung viewed as an image of the Divine within, until the ego stops identifying as the ship's captain.

Human culture is built on scapegoating, rivalry, and mimetic desire—all driven by the defensive ego trying to secure status and safety. Such truths are pretty well established and now accepted by leaders across the board.

Ego is the enemy, and it has gotten out of hand. The bigger it is, the harder it fights.

The Cross deconstructs ego's faux control over the world. It exposes how both the individual and collective ego operate in tandem and need a structural exit from these systems to know what it really means to be human, to know oneself and be known fully by God.

The apostle Paul in Philippians 2 refers to Jesus' kenosis, his self-emptying that wasn't a divine transaction; it was the blueprint and beacon of reality.

Irenaeus famously wrote, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive."

It's up to us to figure out what's getting in the way of that, and hang it on the Cross, so we might have life and freedom.

Descent is the ascent path. The cosmos operates on a gravitational pull toward loving participation, not grasping.

09/01/2026

The Bible uses both "mystery" and "secret places" to frame our inner person, the part only we can be conscious of, and especially the parts of ourselves we haven't seen yet, for the Kingdom of God is in us.

Jesus and the New Testament broke open the mysteries of God 2000 years ago. They taught that these mysteries would take time to work through the world. As more was revealed, we could build on what they had already done.

It was already revealed through the person and work of Jesus, and accessible to anyone willing to trust the full meaning: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

From Deuteronomy 29:29 to the fulfillment of Joel 2:29 on the Feast of Pentecost (Shavuot) after the Resurrection, this mystery of Christ, the Spirit, and God has not ceased to work behind boundaries and borders, in the shadows of our neon signs.

It is ultimately encountered when humans learn to trust and surrender to the Divine. God's work reaches the world through transformed people, and transformation begins in the hidden places of human existence.

Israelite prophets envisioned a time when the Spirit would live inside every human and the Law would be upon every heart. This is ontological and thus changes the believer's posture and relationship with the world. It changes everything, from behavior and speech to one's disposition and perspective.

Technology, civilization, and social structures become secondary, human extensions. Creation, with us being a part of it, is God’s revealed baseline of what we were given to steward and participate in union with Him (Genesis 1:28). All that ever separates humanity is fear and ego.

📄 To read more about that, click here: https://drunkpastor.com/blog/god-reveals-mysteries-in-the-secret-places-revelation-and-an-inner-life-with-god-2026/08

08/31/2026

The biblical narrative repeatedly moves divine encounter away from exterior performance and toward interiority, relationship, and transformation.

Every human, as images of God, contains this mysterious place: it’s the inside of ourselves that no other human eye can directly look into.

The New Testament uses "mystery" and "secret place" to give us a window into the hidden places where God continually discloses Himself.

In his epistles, Paul uses "mystery" 21 times, showing it on the move, spreading throughout the Roman Empire as little bottom-up kingdoms, not built on a top-down Platonic Noble Lie but on a bottom-up reality that would never go away.

God who dwells in the heights of heaven and depths of Sheol also reigns in the space between neurons.

It is never out there, in our external circumstances, though God does work with and through those. It is always and only when humans actually trust and surrender to the Divine.

📄 Read more here: https://drunkpastor.com/blog/god-reveals-mysteries-in-the-secret-places-revelation-and-an-inner-life-with-god-2026/08

08/29/2026

Scripture commands us to meditate on God's Word day and night.
That implies taking time to know it well.

Study without application and experience is just data. And data can be manipulated.
Experience without study leaves one ungrounded and drifting.

It doesn't have to be books or classrooms, but not to study is to die.

The esoteric and mystical sides of Scripture, recovery, and the Spirit hit me like a freight train and wouldn't yield until I submitted. I can back up with logic and historical exegesis, original languages and clear science (some might call this apologetics).

Jesus taught, "when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6). The mystery of Christ in us is no mere logical thing to be studied at a distance, nor an emotional crutch. It's a cross that brings life.

Again and again I learned the hard way that my understanding of Jesus, Life, Love, and Salvation matters first and foremost in my daily life, not in a distant future or a separated spiritual realm.

A proper understanding of these words, of these concepts, matters to an authentic spiritual walk. Scripture invites us to dive in, to understand its depths, and discover the mystery of God on every page. If we do not understand it rightly, we will struggle to live rightly.

Contemplating Scripture is not some optional, dry intellectual exercise. It’s a discipline that helps anchor us in God, pulling us more towards Him and our neighbors.

Getting the Word into our bones isn't about rote memorization to win an argument; it’s about giving our soul a vocabulary for when our egos and inner narratives get in the Way. It teaches us how to step into the actual experience of it, not just study it.

Chew the Bible apart until it makes you swallow it. Stare into its mirror until you can see it staring back.

Ultimately, love and truth are not something to be debated, but to be lived. They grow and spread in living.

That old Jewish rabbi was right: it’s a heart, mind, soul, and body thing.

08/28/2026

Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians came after Paul the Apostle laid waste to immature and dysfunctional forms of both relationships and spiritual expression.

The Corinthian church was in chaos: full of drama, broken relationships, and childish ideas about the Christian faith.

Leading up to chapter 13, Paul crucifies the idea that elevating outer spiritual gifts over the true purpose of discipleship is prideful, irrational, and no better than faking it. With frank words, he calls out their 🐂💩, pointedly showing them how their toxic practices and ego were leading to their own ruin.

When Paul pivots to the actual point of what they were arguing over, he points to love.

While this chapter is often read at weddings—and rightfully so—it is also a scathing ideal to stand before.

So, when Paul says that as a child he spoke, thought, and reasoned like one, he’s explicitly calling the Corinthians out for behaving childishly.

When he says he became a man, he had to give up those childish ways.

As a Jewish Christian, Paul was likely thinking of two milestones: his Bar Mitzvah, when he was first tasked with stepping into maturity within his community, and his spiritual journey with Christ, where Jesus forced him to grow up even more.

Paul also penned Ephesians 4, beautifully illustrating that the ultimate end goal of the Gospel is for the whole community to "grow up" in love.

Agape is the Telos of the Gospel.

When we hold this Scripture up in the right light so we can see our society’s—and our own personal—reflections in it, we realize Paul is speaking directly to us right now.

God constantly calls me to let go of my past—both as a child and in my old ways. Even more challenging: letting go of once useful things, but simply aren't anymore.

Spiritual transformation, maturity, and awakening all stem from the exact same Source.

Nothing can separate us from God's love—neither death nor life, nor good nor evil. We are His. We are called to humbly walk with Him, doing justice and loving mercy.

And doing it even when it feels like it kills us. That is precisely where we find growth and life.

Drunk Pastor

09/08/2026

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09/05/2026

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