The Good Baggage Podcast

Sep 29 2024 19 ep. 35 mins 6

The Good Baggage Podcast artwork

Hello and welcome to the Good Baggage Podcast, a podcast all about learning to leverage the difficulty of our childhoods for the health of our relationships now. Through these conversations we will be exploring the pain of our childhoods, honoring the work our younger selves did to help us survive, discussing the ongoing impact of coping with that pain, and where we have sought and found healing. Typically when we think of baggage, we tend to think of all the ways it makes us bad at relationships, Baggage is more than what makes us bad at relationships. Baggage is the pain we carry and the lessons it has taught us. But, what if it’s not all bad? What if our difficult childhoods also packed some really good relationship stuff in those bags? What if the pain we carry actually prepared us to thrive in relationships? This podcast is about finding the good things packed in our bags and leveraging them for the flourishing of our relationships now!

Religion & Spirituality Health & Fitness

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THIS IS US - We are Alive

Sep 29 2024 34 mins

Ephesians 2:1-10 When it comes to who we are as God's people, one of our most defining characteristics is that 'we are alive.' But what does it mean to be alive? Tune in to this sermon from Pastor Ike as he expounds what it means to truly be alive.

THIS IS US - We are Blessed

Sep 22 2024 39 mins

The notion of being "blessed" is often misunderstood and misused in faith spaces. It plays naturally into prosperity theology, and the idea that if I obey God, I will be "blessed." It also becomes a way of making God a means to an end, rather than the end in himself. We worship God because of what he can do for us, not who God is. But the answer isn't to neglect this language that

THIS IS US - We are 'in Christ'

Sep 15 2024 42 mins

In the book of Ephesians, Paul casts a vision for who the people of God are called to be. Through this series, Pastor Ike will be looking at the specifics characteristics and values that Paul calls the church at Ephesus to embody. This first message in the series expounds Paul's theology of participation in Christ, and the fullness of life available to us in him.

Honest to God - Praying Your Disorientation

Sep 08 2024 33 mins

Whether we believe it or not, we often feel like our prayers have to be pretty. But many of our most urgent prayers are in times of confusion, fear, pain, and disorientation. In continuing this series on the Psalms, Pastor Ike looks at the brutal honesty of some of David's prayers and how that can help us pray in times of disorientation as well.

Honest to God - Praying your Fears

Sep 04 2024 35 mins

Psalm 3:1-8 Tune in to this message on how we bring our honest fears to God in honest prayer, and how God uses that honest to transform us in light of our fears.

Do You Want to Be Well?

Nov 28 2023 27 mins

In the final part of this message series on Good Baggage, we ask the question, where do we go from here? We look at this through the lens of the biblical story of the lame man by the Pool of Bethesda. Jesus asks him a question we are all being asked today, "Do you want to be well?" Jesus tells the man, "Get up, take your mat and walk." In this story, the man is being invited to par

Not Everything Happens for A Reason

Oct 10 2023 26 mins

A common way of coming to grips with the trauma of our childhood is to conclude, "Everything happens for a reason." This logic is well-intentioned, but we often say it without full awareness of what it implies about what we've been through or what it implies about God's role in it. In this week's episode, we talk about this logic, where it goes wrong, and what a better, more bilbli

The Good Baggage of Relational Intentionality

Oct 03 2023 19 mins

This week we look at the good baggage the undergirds everything else this series and my book has to offer: our passion to see our relationships go differently than the relationships we saw in our childhood. In this episode, we look at 3 things our childhoods taught us, and how we can leverage them for the health of our relationships now.

The Gospel for Codependency

Sep 26 2023 27 mins

One of the most prevalent impacts of our difficult childhoods is codependency. When we think of codependency, we tend to think of people pleasing or approval seeking, but those are symptoms of the deeper issue. Codependency at its core, is a loss of self. We do not have a clear sense of who we are and so we seek to be whoever we think others want us to be, or will approve of. Unti

SHARON HODDE MILLER: Being Married to an Adult Child of Dysfunction

Sep 19 2023 26 mins

For better or worse, one of the people most affected by our childhood difficulties, will be the person we marry. In this episode we talk with my own wife, Sharon Miller, about her experience being married to an adult child of dysfunction. She shares how our relationship has been impacted by my childhood, how she has navigated challenges, and what advice she might have for other spo