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Hey guys, I just want to tell you about something else that Bill Voldemort and I are working on. It's called Living Influence Leadership. It's for business leaders who also happen to be Christians. We think we've got some great stuff that can be amazing in your companies. It wasn't mine. Check us out at livinginfluenceleadership.com. Welcome to Living Influence. For when you're going to get to hear this, it's probably going to be a little late, but for us, it's Happy New Year.

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It's our first time podcasting in 2026. And today I'm going to bring you my friend Bill Thoreau along with my other friend, Baltimore Cole, who's joining us again all the way from New Hampshire. Thanks for being here, Baltimore. Thank you.

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We want to talk to you about a couple of things. First is we're getting close to having the final editing done on our book called Living Influence. It's going to be coming out this spring. And in preparation for that book, one of the things we've been thinking about and spending a little time wondering about is who's our reader? Yeah.

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And what do you guys actually think what's going on in your lives? I started to think about this in terms of how might I describe myself today? You know, and as I thought about how might I describe myself today, I thought about how I've described myself over the many seasons of my life. I mean, at one point in time, I got a list. One point in time, I described myself as an underachiever.

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or as not disciplined, or as I was coarse and harsh to people. A procrastinator, I must show you how I'm worthy by telling you my stories. I'm addicted. People, if they really knew me, they'd make fun of me. I'm lazy. Or maybe I'm not.

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If people really knew me, they wouldn't like me. You should be careful with people. You should be afraid of people almost. I got that from my mother, actually. But today we're talking about the exhausted Christian. That's a spot to start. And an exhausted Christian, you know, why don't I feel more joy? As that exhausted Christian, what might you have tried?

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Where are you in life? Maybe you're trying to podcast today, this one, a new one, thinking maybe another podcast might fix me. Or he might be working on, I need to do a journal and I need to be more grateful, so I'm going to do a grateful journal. And you're just trying to get to a place where you're not exhausted.

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So it's kind of a place to start. And so we thought we'd just like, I just want to open it up, talk about maybe times, I can remember a time in my life, I've talked about it on the podcast, where my business had just almost gone bankrupt and my kids were in high school.

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And my wife is diagnosed with breast cancer. And I was trying as hard as I could. And I just was exhausted. We kind of want to offer hope for that person. Absolutely. What's going on in your head, Bill? Did you listen to me? Thank you. Thank you. As you do that, I do. I would just be honest. And I have a lot of empathy for people who are just worn out.

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in their sense of their Christianity. They don't feel spiritual. Yeah. And so to me, as I hear that, I imagine the questions they're asking.

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one of the questions I'm pretty sure they're asking is, why don't I feel more spiritual? And I think that part of that question, and even the exhaustion, comes from something that they may have not thought too clearly. We often talk about the Christian life and born again and

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and having a new creation, but I'm not sure that people understand deeply enough what it means to really live out of who God says they are.

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When I'm exhausted, I don't feel spiritual. There's a sense in me that I've not done enough or that I am not enough. That's the sense I have. So all those things I try to do to become something I'm not or to do less of something, it all, to me, it boils down to a misunderstanding of an amazing principle of grace that

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God is the one in grace who gets to decide how I'm doing. God is the one who has made the decision to create in me a new reality. Could I begin to learn how to live into who God says I am?

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It makes me think about, I'm more careful with my words today. And so the words I would use often were as a greeting. It would be like, Bill, how are you doing? And I'm like,

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The doing word just shows up. Exactly. It's just sort of like actually. Not Bill, how are you? But Bill, how are you doing? Exactly. Yeah, good point. Yeah. And it's like, could I change the dynamic of how I think about this? How are you, Bill? Yeah. And how are you, Voldemort? Instead of like.

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Tell me the things you're doing so that I know you're good. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the term exhausted, the exhausted Christian, what comes to mind is it's time frame in my life over a few years where, and I'll just list the things I was doing, all of which were good things.

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And I was an elder in my church. I was on the school board as a director. I was coaching junior high basketball at my boys' school. A lot of doing, plus a marriage that was growing. We had, I can't remember, in that timeframe, of course, we ended up with five kids, but just trying to be a good parent. And I was trying to fit in whatever it took so that I could be close to God. And just this exhaustion of...

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how do I make sure I'm right with God in all this busyness? So I try to fit in things. Yeah. You know, and just, I can't tell you how many times it was, I'm going to read the Bible in a year this year. This is the year. I think you made a phrase in there, Voldemort, that we want to pick on a bit. And that is, you were doing everything you could to be right with God. And I don't think there's anything more tiring.

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I can't imagine what could exhaust a person, a Christian, more than trying to be right with God as if it depended on their effort. Now, the minute you said that, it triggered in me how that by itself creates a loss of hope. Because all of a sudden, I'm not doing enough.

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And then when I realize the cycle of I'm not doing enough, enough of enough, I get exhausted, and then I get discouraged. It's inevitable. So just go back to that phrase, I'm not doing enough to be right with God. The answer is so simple, yet we miss it. You never will. Nobody can ever do enough to be right with God.

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The responsibility is on God to make us right with him. That's the key. Can I trust God to make me right with him? And he did that, of course, in Christ at Calvary. But what if I believed that? What if I believed that the minute I accepted Jesus, I was and will always be right with God?

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that he has no further expectation. He looked at Jesus on the cross, and he said, that's enough. I want to come back to something we've said a lot over the course of this podcast. We don't often realize that the problem we're dealing with that makes us exhausted is rooted in our theology. We don't realize that.

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But it's rooted in our theology because the theology that we call sin management puts the responsibility on us to do something, like your phrase, to do something to be right with God. And if I work hard enough as a Christian—now, I'm a Christian.

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And I know people go, what's he talking about? Did he just say that it's my theology that's my problem? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. If you are feeling exhausted as a Christian, if Voldemort, you rattled off seven or eight things you were doing simultaneously to all be and never made you right with God, that's a theology problem. Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, and let me add in here and then have you react to this. Voldemort and I were talking about how does this hit? What happens? And so where I went with Voldemort, as I said, I've seen couples over a long period of time where one was extremely negative,

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You know, an overbearing dad, a wife that was super critical of her husband all the time. And when you see those couples and it doesn't change and that dynamic stays in place for a long period of time, it crushes. Absolutely. The person that's being critiqued. Absolutely. It crushes their spirit. Absolutely. And so here's why this matters so much.

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We all have a voice in our head that speaks to us. And does that voice crush us? And if it does, it's because our theology is bad. Absolutely. Thank you. It's this crushing voice that we have. Right. And this message of grace and influence and living influence that Jesus gives us.

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can take that voice and classify—I don't know if we can ever shut it up, but we can classify it as a lie. Absolutely. Well said. That's not true. Well, Scott, that's extremely well said. Let's give that voice a name. Okay. Let's give that voice the name of shame. That's exactly right. It is the voice of shame. Now, what's happening here is, again, I have a theology problem. I don't realize it, but I have a theology problem.

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My shame is deciding for me who I am. Instead of letting God. Instead of letting God define me. Yeah. So why am I exhausted? Scott, what you just said is amazing. Why am I so exhausted? Because the voice in my head is convincing me I ain't enough. Yeah. Or I'm the worst of. And by the way, it's also going to convince you that you need it.

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Very good. Yeah, because you become a slave. You need what? You need the voice? The critical voice is going to say, you need me. Otherwise, you'll just be a bum living under Trailer down by the river.

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Oh, Scott, that's very, very true. And so we're sitting here, we're going, wait a minute, are there reasons? You mean my exhaustion may not just be my busyness? Oh, I see. It may not just be my busyness. There may be something rooted in my attempt to...

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to be right before God, or well said, or this crazy voice in my head called shame that is causing me as a Christian to be exhausted because my theology has no answer for my attempt to be right with God or for the voice of shame. But what if there was an answer?

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What if the answer to this voice of shame was, of course, who God says I am, but something else? What if God was capable of dealing with the voice of shame, just like he dealt with the sin? What if he could do that? What if my theology could learn to trust Jesus to die for all of my sin,

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is the same Jesus that I could trust to deal with my shame. And what if, and you said it so well, Scott, and what if there was a day where I could be aware of this reality? That voice...

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In my head is my shame, and it's a lie, because that ain't who I am anymore. Anymore. Right. It's not who I am. Yeah. That's who I was. The redemptive power of Jesus Christ has given me a new reality, a new identity, a new life. Right.

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Now, I'm going to pause again, interrupt myself and say, for many Christians, they haven't learned that. I'm telling you, I've sat across the table. They can tell me the Bible says I'm who should I be with Christ. They can tell me that the Christian life is a new life. They just don't believe it for themselves. They're not really, so to speak, saying to God, thank you, God.

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Thank you for giving me a life without condemnation. See, I just wish I had known this so much earlier. And that there was a solution to silencing that shame voice. Because it is never satisfied. Exactly. It's never satisfied. It'll keep asking and demanding.

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And you can keep, you know, putting in endless effort. And degrading. And degrading. And degrading. And you can do endless good works and it's still telling you that lie. And yet I didn't, I just wish I had known there was a solution to silence that voice. Because what happened to me instead was I started getting so frustrated that I acted out.

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Then my behavior, in my case, my particular behavior was, I just would have so much inner anger and rage at my fatigue, my deep fatigue, that I got into this habit of just pretty violent profanity in my mind. Did you ever blurt it out? You know what? I was able to control it most of the time. Isn't that amazing? I know. It's controlled. But even blaspheming, I'm just really just dark. And of course, that fed the shame voice. Yeah. Yeah.

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And it just went on and on. I can almost hear your shame voice say, I got him. We got him this time. Look at him. He's turning into an idiot. Look at him. We got him. We got him. And it's interesting. What you just said is amazingly exhausting. It is amazingly exhausting.

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So I can hear my wife right now, Eileen, sorry, but she's going to say, so what? What do you mean? So what do I do with this? How do I act? How do I trust on it? Good point. What difference does this make? Good point. And that's where we began to think as an antidote to I'm an exhaustive Christian is we began to think about imagined statements. Right.

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And I like imagine statements because to imagine something is to think of something that isn't. Absolutely. As if it is. Exactly. Which is like Hebrew's definition of faith. It's the substance of things hoped for. Right. The evidence of something not seen. So imagine if the most spiritual thing I could do is to just truly be me. Amen. In a moment. Amen.

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There's no should. I just get to be me. Amen. I actually found I was spiritual. Amen. I actually found I loved God. I loved my family. I loved my friends. I was well-intentioned. I think that's the thing that we see with this grace message is people are afraid that if they leave that voice behind of what will be, what they'll discover.

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Yeah. I think you're right. And so let's give them hope right now. Yeah. Let's give your dear wife Eileen, we love her, but let's give hope right now. Yeah. Here's the hope. That voice, when left behind, frees the voice of love in me because of God.

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In other words, when that voice is left behind, it's not a vacuum. When that voice is left behind, the voice of God declaring who I really am is the message my heart hears.

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For the Christian. For the non-Christian, there's no hope. But we are believers. We are believers. You were a believer when you did that. It wasn't like that was in your pre-Christian days. No, that was you as a believer, so frustrated with you're not doing enough that you started to be a man using profanity against the very God you loved.

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What do I do now? That's your question. What do I do? Could I do this? Could I just look at the Scripture, so to speak, with this in mind? Father, remind me who you say I am. I know the voice of my shame. Bill Thrall knows the voice of his shame.

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Could I hear the voice of God? Could I actually look into this book and discover the voice of God and who he says I am? If we just stay with that theme of shame for a minute, here's the voice of God. Romans 8, verse 1, Bill.

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You're familiar with your voice of shame. Let me give you another voice. Because you belong to Jesus Christ, you are without any condemnation. That's God's voice for me. You are without condemnation. I'm so used, you guys, to believe in the voice of shame. I have to sneakily sort of begin at the beginning just to let that seep in. What do you mean without condemnation? Me?

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Yeah, Jesus really did say it's finished, Bill. You're not condemned. You are very lovable. And I gave you a new heart from which you have the capacity to love in a way you never thought you could. That's what you discovered. You discovered when that voice was no longer heard that there was a reality in you just waiting for expression.

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So our answers to this are very different than, say, well, you're so exhausted, you need to do less of this and give up one of those things and stop being a coach. No, no, no, no. Our answer is very different. The root of the exhaustion is in a theology that keeps you trapped in your shame. So if you're an exhausted Christian?

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We give you some hope. We hope we gave you some hope. We hope we gave you some hope. And you're welcome to be with us. We thank you for being here to listen to us this episode. And we hope to see you next week. Thanks for watching. Thanks again for listening to Living Influence. We appreciate you. We'd love it if you'd go to livinginfluence.com, contact us, and send us an email. We'd love to know what you're thinking. See you next week.