Notes on Wisdom W/John Walt

This note has impacted me the most. I have been sharing this note with friends over the last few weeks, and it is impacting many of us in powerful ways. I am excited to share it with you. If this note resonates with you, and you want to go deeper in your spiritual journey, then I would love for us to talk. Please reach out to me through my website, and we will find a time to connect.  What we regu...

In this episode, John sits down with Chris Grainger, founder and host of The Lion Within Us ministry, to discuss what it means to lead as a follower of Jesus in today's world. Chris opens up about his personal journey, navigating single fatherhood, suffering profound personal losses, and ultimately following God's call to equip men to step into leadership. Drawing from his background in stock car...

This summer, a friend told me that I needed to meet a guy named Dan Colacurcio. They felt like God wanted us to connect. So Dan and I sat down for coffee, and he shared his story with me. The whole time, I was captivated by his journey and all God has done in his life. So I asked him to sit down and record an interview with me.  Dan got into the adult nightclub business when he was 18 years old an...

Play, performance, identity, and finding freedom in God. I am really excited to share with you a special conversation Heather and I got to have with our friend Jake Locker. In this interview, Jake shares his journey from a sports-filled childhood to college football, the NFL, and eventually a deeper understanding of identity. What starts out as a story about his love of sports and football becomes...

As I write today, I am surrounded by the beauty of nature on every side. No houses in sight, just mountains and water. The essay I have been working on in my head the last few weeks is about expansive versus restrictive language. Today I find myself sitting in the midst of a perfect example of this topic. Pictures can’t do justice to what I am seeing all around me. I keep trying to capture it, but...

Encountering God in prison In this interview, I sit down with Brian Smith for a vulnerable conversation about a tragedy, prison, forgiveness, and transformation. Several months ago, I had the privilege of meeting Bryan through a mutual friend. Each time we've been able to talk, I've been deeply impacted by his story and the journey he has been on. In this episode, our discussion centers on how God...

Tracy Goss says in her book, The Last Word on Power, that we are meaning-making machines. We ascribe meaning to everything, and it is all driven by our past experiences. What has happened in the past helps us interpret the present and try to predict the future. The problem is that most of the meaning we ascribe to things isn’t real or accurate. As Larry Mills says, “Most of what we think just isn’...

One of my mentors, Larry Mills, says, “There's never enough of anything that almost works.”  When John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world, was asked “How much is enough?” He said, "Just a little bit more.” What is it that leads a man who has everything he could ever want to want a little bit more? Clearly, more money wouldn't have enabled him to buy anything that he couldn't buy. More po...

Sometimes we all feel disconnected from God. It’s easy to try and ignore that feeling and just press on to the next thing that demands our attention. Often, days can turn into weeks, months, or even years, and we start to realize we no longer feel the connection to God we long for. This prayer is about being honest with ourselves and God as we ask Him to find us, guide us, and walk with us. JohnWa...

It is impossible to overestimate the role that ego has played in shaping human history and the world. Think of all the wars and conflicts, from tribal feuds to world wars, so many of them have been sparked and fueled by human ego. Think of the economic challenges in nations around the world throughout history that have been caused and prolonged by ego. Consider all the businesses that have used an...

“Most of what we think just isn’t so.” - Larry Mills  There are many things in our culture that are accepted as immovable “realities” that are actually just collectively accepted ideas. More than just being ideas, they are wrong or, at the very least, untrue. We take most of these completely for granted and never think twice about them. That is because we are taught in a million different, often s...

In this episode, I have the privilege of interviewing Scott Friesen, the Co-Founder and CEO of Verdant Frontiers. He is a serial entrepreneur who successfully built and exited three companies in the U.S. before taking on the biggest challenge of his career.  Scott started Verdant Frontiers in 2013 after visiting Ethiopia and seeing that family poverty and unemployment forced some parents to give t...

What is on the other side of ego death? I believe it is radical humility. So what is radical humility, and what makes it different from normal humility? There are lots of people our culture would call humble who have not gone through an ego death. There is a level of social humility that has become the norm. When someone is successful but doesn’t brag a lot or draw too much attention to themselves...

A concept that I have run into many times in surprisingly different works of wisdom is the idea that there are first things and second things. In its simplest form, it means that some things must happen first and are of greater importance than other things. C.S. Lewis is the only person I have read who uses the phrase “first things and second things,” but similar concepts are present in many diffe...

Western Christian Culture has forgotten hard but essential truths that were once foundational to the Gospel. We teach on these topics sometimes and read about them in biblical commentary, but we have often culturally forgotten to practice them. If we remove these truths from the teachings of Jesus, then it is no longer what He taught.  JohnWalt.com

There is only one way the world will experience restoration.  We love Justice because we were made for it. We empathize with others because God gave us a heart. Our love of Justice and our ability to empathize with other people drive us to want to be the solution to the problems in the world around us. Our highest calling in life is to participate with God and his restoration work, so it's very go...

Several months ago, my nine-year-old son told me, “we should make a hat that says crush ego on it, because that's what your book is about.” I was shocked. He’s nine years old, he hasn't even read the book, and yet he somehow got to the heart of the message. Ever since then, we started using this phrase as a family, and kicked around the idea of making hats and t-shirts. This has become a sort of t...

So much of the time, we overcomplicate our spiritual journey. We obsess over theology, or practices, or which faith community to invest our time in, what prayers to pray, or even which devotionals and books to read. This comes from a well-intentioned heart; we want to make sure we are doing it “right.” I think the spiritual life isn’t centered around or driven by any of these things. They can help...

Josh LeRoy is the author of Deeper Than Your Pain , a short book about his healing journey through depression. He is the lead pastor of Emmaus Church in Greensboro, NC, and a former prison Chaplain for 10 years. When I was given his book and told it was about depression, I honestly didn’t think I would get much out of it, but I was wrong. The wisdom he shares is applicable to all of our healing jo...

I have been thinking about one sentence a lot lately. I believe that it holds a key to understanding how we each should expect to feel in response to Jesus. I would like to share it with you and invite you to join me in pondering these powerful words.  JohnWalt.com

Heather and John Walt discuss self-transcendence and how we can make it a practical in daily life.  Heather and I have been having deep conversations since we met. So much of our daily life is filled with discussions about transformation, God’s leading, discipleship, and what we are learning from the books we are reading. This is the first time I get to share one of those conversations with you. H...

I recently sat down to record a conversation with my brother-in-law, Greg Spencer, about my book, Every Man's Journey. Usually, I am interviewing other people, so this was a fun opportunity to turn the mics around and answer questions about the book. Greg was the first person to encourage me to start sharing my writing, so it was an honor to look back on the culmination of that work so far. Whethe...

I met Ken Churchill three years ago in San Diego. I was taken with how he thinks and the projects he is working on. After 30 years at Morgan Stanley in Silicon Valley, Ken now works on innovating pathways to societal health. In this interview, he shares his story and the projects he is working on, including healthcare ethics, preventing mass murder, and addressing forgiveness as a public health go...

The more I have been blessed to spend time with people of wisdom, the more I see how they consistently return to seemingly simple truths. Many things in our world we view as linear progressions; we start with less, and we work towards more. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you make, the more you have. It is inherent to assume that people of wisdom have lots of it, that’s true, but i...

This episode is the second chapter of the audiobook for Every Man's Journey, which is currently in production. The print version of the book is now available on Amazon (Here is the link) . Chapter 2 is titled "The Monomyth," it explores the connection between the greatest stories of all time and the journey every man was born to walk in life. There is a deeper story hidden in our favorite myths, b...