Between Heaven & Earth

Advent Message 3

The Immanent Frame
Lectio Divina “Sacred Reading”
Highlights🙏 Guided devotional for scripture engagement and reflection✨ Prepares for Christ’s first and second coming📖 Uses Lectio Divina: four readings with different focuses🎵 Original music enriches spiritual experience🕊️ Welcomes the Holy Spirit and all emotions📝 Practical tools: prayer guide and journaling prompts🌟 Encourages healing, transformation, and peace
Key Insights📜 Scriptural Encounter: Engaging Scripture slowly nurtures heart, mind, and body transformation.⏳ Dual Preparation: Advent calls for remembrance of Christ’s birth and readiness for His return.🧘 Lectio Divina: Fourfold reading helps internalize Scripture and foster intimacy with God.🌬️ Holy Spirit’s Role: Openness to God’s Spirit allows emotions to arise without judgment.🖊️ Journaling: Writing thoughts and emotions supports clarity and focused prayer.🎶 Music: Original compositions enhance reflection and prayer.🌿 Healing & Transformation: Advent becomes a season of personal and spiritual restoration.

Advent Message 2B

The Immanent Frame
Lectio Divina “Sacred Reading”
Highlights🎄 Advent looks back to Christ’s birth and ahead to His return.📖 Isaiah 35 is read four times to deepen reflection.✍️ Journaling helps process insights and distractions.🕊️ The Holy Spirit guides healing and transformation.💧 Isaiah 35 shows God’s restoring power.🌿 The “way of holiness” is for the redeemed.🙏 The session closes with worship and blessing.
Key Insights🕰️ Advent holds both remembrance and anticipation of Christ’s coming.📚 The practice reflects Lectio Divina with modern elements like journaling.💡 True spiritual engagement involves heart, body, and mind.🌊 Isaiah 35 highlights God’s healing and renewal.🌟 The “way of holiness” points to protection and joy for God’s people.📝 Journaling keeps focus and welcomes honesty.🤝 The session encourages seeking community or ministry where healing is needed.

Advent Message 2

The Immanent Frame
Lectio Divina “Sacred Reading”
Highlights✨ Advent prepares for both Christ’s birth and return.📖 Lectio Divina engages heart, mind, and body.🎵 Original music enhances prayerful atmosphere.🕊️ Luke 1:5-17 recounts Zechariah’s angelic visitation and John’s prophecy.✍️ Journaling and silent prayer foster personal reflection.❤️ Emotions, questions, and doubts are welcomed.🌿 Practice cultivates healing, freedom, and love through Scripture.
Key Insights🙏 Advent as Dual Preparation: Encourages celebration of Christ’s birth and anticipation of His return, fostering hopeful readiness.🧠 Holistic Scriptural Engagement: Integrates mind, body, and heart for transformative interaction with Scripture.✍️ Journaling as Spiritual Tool: Provides space for reflection, emotional processing, and documenting insights.👂 Listening to God’s Voice: Emphasizes receptivity and prayerful attentiveness amid distractions.😌 Welcoming Emotions Without Judgment: Honors the full range of spiritual experience, supporting healing and reconciliation.✨ Role of the Holy Spirit: Guides and transforms participants through revelation.🌍 Incarnational Theology: Encourages encountering God in everyday life, waiting, and worship.
ConclusionThis Advent guide fosters a holistic, embodied encounter with God through Scripture, prayer, and journaling. Centered on Zechariah and Elizabeth, it emphasizes hope, faith, and preparation for Christ’s coming. Music and resources enhance the experience, offering a gift of spiritual formation, healing, and love amid the holiday season.

Advent Message 1B

The Immanent Frame
Lectio Divina “Sacred Reading”
Highlights✨ Advent remembers Christ’s first coming and anticipates His return.📖 Focuses on Isaiah 9:6–7 and the Messiah’s reign.🧘‍♂️ Uses multiple scripture readings for deeper engagement.📝 Journaling supports processing emotions and distractions.💖 Honors mind, heart, and body in encountering God.🎶 Music by Jared Deem enhances the experience.🌿 Emphasizes transformation, healing, and peace.
Key Insights🌟 Advent as Dual Preparation: Celebrates Christ’s birth while anticipating His return, cultivating hope and readiness.🧠 Holistic Scripture Engagement: Four readings invite layered understanding and transformation, not just information.💬 Emotional Authenticity: Encourages vulnerability and honesty before God as part of spiritual growth.✍️ Journaling as Practice: Helps manage distractions, deepen reflection, and track spiritual movement.🙏 Work of the Holy Spirit: Highlights the Spirit’s role in healing, revelation, and transformation.🎶 Music Integration: Original compositions deepen focus and emotional openness.🌿 Spiritual Outcomes: Aims for healing, freedom, and renewed peace through encountering God.

Advent - Message 1

The Immanent Frame
Lectio Divina “Sacred Reading”
 
Highlights✨ Advent prepares believers for both Christ’s birth and His return.📖 Scripture is meant to transform the heart, not just inform the mind.🔥 The Emmaus story models encountering Jesus through Scripture.🙏 Guided prayer uses four readings: acquaintance, friendship, intimacy, worship.💡 Isaiah 9 centers on light overcoming darkness.🎶 Music and downloadable resources accompany the practice.🌿 Encourages emotional openness and the Holy Spirit’s work.
Key Insights🌟 Advent holds both celebration and anticipation of Christ’s return.📚 Scripture engagement becomes transformative when it involves the whole person.🔍 Emmaus shows revelation through relationship, not only cognition.🕊️ The Holy Spirit is essential for understanding and healing.🔄 Fourfold reading deepens reflection and intimacy with God.💬 Journaling aids emotional and spiritual processing.🔥 Isaiah 9 offers hope and promises God’s light and liberation.

Episode 30: Part 2: Bridging the Divide: A Candid Conversation on Ethnicity, Racism and the Gospel of the Kingdom

SummaryThe Between Heaven and Earth episode, hosted by Justin and Amy Howard, features a powerful conversation with Reverend Michael Worsley about race, ethnicity, and the gospel of the kingdom. Michael shares his journey as a Black Christian in predominantly white spaces, including lessons learned through forgiveness, repentance, and embracing a kingdom mindset. The discussion explores how racism operates not only socially but spiritually, as a principality meant to divide. Both Black and white Christians are called to repentance, forgiveness, and love to reflect the unity of God’s kingdom. The hosts and guest emphasize that political and racial identities have often compromised the gospel, and true reconciliation requires spiritual authority, deliverance, and discipleship. The episode closes in prayer, calling for healing and unity under Christ.
Highlights✝️ The gospel calls believers to live beyond racial and political identities, united in Christ.💔 Forgiveness and repentance break the cycle of bitterness and spiritual bondage.🌍 Racism is not only a social issue but a spiritual principality that must be confronted.🤝 Reconciliation requires mutual repentance, empathy, and active listening.🕊️ The church is called to embody the diverse, multiethnic kingdom of God.
Key Insights✝️ Kingdom Identity: True identity in Christ transcends race and frees believers from resentment, replacing it with grace and love.💔 Healing Through Forgiveness: Bitterness gives the enemy access; forgiveness and repentance restore peace and spiritual freedom.🌍 Spiritual Warfare: Racism operates as a principality—believers must use spiritual authority, not just activism, to overcome it.🤝 Mutual Repentance: Healing begins when both Black and white Christians listen, empathize, and repent of bitterness, fear, or defensiveness.⚖️ Pure Gospel: Political and racial allegiances often distort the gospel; repentance realigns the church with Christ’s kingdom mission.🔥 Deliverance Power: Deliverance and spiritual authority are essential to dismantling division and walking in unity through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The episode reminds listeners that racial reconciliation is a spiritual calling, not merely a social goal—one fulfilled through repentance, love, and the transforming power of the gospel.

Episode 29: Real People Between Heaven & Earth: Nursing, Looking Good, Encountering God

SummaryThis episode of Between Heaven and Earth, hosted by Justin and Amy Howard, features Carrie Wolfe—a frontline minister, pediatric nurse, church planter, and mother of three from Portland, Maine. Carrie shares her journey of faith and ministry in one of America’s most post-Christian cities, reflecting on the challenges of parenting, nursing, and leading amid spiritual and cultural brokenness. She discusses learning to hold onto hope while facing hostility, emphasizing the power of kindness, authenticity, and long-term relationships in ministry. Carrie also recounts her experience of renewal through the Encounter Culture Mission Collaborative, where repentance, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit brought deep personal healing. The episode closes with encouragement to take bold steps of faith and a heartfelt prayer for freedom and transformation.
Highlights🙏 Carrie balances ministry, nursing, and motherhood in a post-Christian city.🌍 Portland’s secular culture demands relational, trust-based church planting.💔 She shares honestly about church hurt and finding renewal through Encounter Culture.🕊️ Repentance, forgiveness, and encounter with the Holy Spirit lead to deep healing.🤝 Ministry thrives through long-term relationships and authentic kindness.❤️ True kindness costs something and stands against cultural hostility.✨ Transformation requires vulnerability and surrender to the Spirit.
Key Insights🌟 Living “between heaven and earth” means embracing tension—trusting God’s kingdom amid brokenness and hope.🏙️ Ministry in post-Christian contexts relies on patience and authenticity over programs or quick results.💔 Church wounds are real; healing comes through honesty, grace, and Spirit-led renewal.🕊️ Encounter Culture’s model shows how repentance and spiritual encounter foster transformation.💬 Kindness in hostile spaces becomes a radical, missional act revealing God’s love.🎯 Leadership grows through intentional relationships and wise use of time.🌈 Transformation is lifelong—marked by persistence, surrender, and grace.
Additional ReflectionCarrie’s vulnerability—from her teenage encounter with Scripture to parenting struggles—reminds listeners that faith is personal, messy, and redemptive. The episode calls believers to live courageously amid brokenness, build authentic relationships, and rely on the Holy Spirit for continual healing and renewal.

Episode 28: Part 1: Bridging the Divide: A Candid Conversation on Ethnicity, Racism and the Gospel of the Kingdom

Episode 27: Part 1: It Takes Two (Male & Female): Edenic Leadership in the Kingdom of God

Episode 26: The Power of an EncounterLife Cohort - A Pastor's Experience

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SummaryThe podcast episode Between Heaven and Earth, hosted by Justin and Amy Howard, features Reverend Matthew McIntosh sharing about Encounter Life, a 12-week cohort for pastors and church leaders designed to foster healing, renewal, and sustainable ministry. Born out of the need to integrate powerful encounters with God into everyday life, the program offers a safe, confidential space where pastors can process wounds, uncover lies, and develop healthy rhythms of rest and prayer.
With nearly four decades of ministry experience, Matthew describes how the cohort helped him face deep emotional pain and find freedom through practices like praying with people rather than just for them, recognizing Kairos moments, and cultivating “soul friends” for accountability. Unlike typical leadership training, Encounter Life centers on heart transformation, Sabbath rest, boundaries, and storytelling as tools for healing. Ecumenical in design, it welcomes pastors from diverse traditions. The episode closes with prayer and an invitation to embrace Encounter Culture’s community, reminding leaders that effective ministry flows from intimacy with God and wholeness of heart.
Highlights🙏 12-week cohort for pastors focused on healing, growth, and renewal.💔 Creates safe space to face wounds and hidden struggles often ignored in ministry.🔄 Emphasizes praying with people for Spirit-led encounters.📖 Curriculum integrates emotional awareness, Sabbath, and storytelling.🌍 Inclusive across denominations, fostering broad renewal.🙌 Encourages “soul friends” and trusted relationships for long-term support.
Key Insights💡 Pastors’ Hidden Struggles: Many leaders mask pain out of fear, leading to isolation and burnout. Encounter Life offers a safe, healing alternative.
🔄 Praying With vs. For: Shifting to interactive prayer invites deeper encounters with God.
⏳ Kairos Moments: Recognizing emotions as signals of God’s timing fosters breakthrough.
🔐 Discerning Lies: Leaders learn to replace false beliefs with God’s truth for authentic ministry.
🛑 Boundaries Matter: The program helps pastors avoid codependency and burnout.
🌿 Sabbath & Rhythms: Healthy leadership requires sustainable rest and soul care.
🤝 Soul Friends: Trusted relationships provide ongoing accountability and healing.
🌐 Ecumenical Reach: Adaptable across traditions, reflecting a growing hunger for authentic encounter with God.