Ep. 23: YOU CAN’T MANIFEST YOUR LIFE w/ Jen Pollock Michel

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus. Thank you for joining us for THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a fantastic show for you today. We have Jen Pollock Michel, and we’re going to be talking about something that is very, it’s just becoming more and more popular. We’re talking about manifesting. How you can just manifest things into existence. It’s kind of similar to name it and claim it, how some weird spiritual origins do. And so, we’re going to walk through just the history of it, what it’s about, and how we can just avoid it and be going straight to the word where we find everything we need. And so, we hope this is a great episode for you. God bless you. Enjoy the show. All right, we have Jen Pollock Michel all the way from Cincinnati. Jen, how are you today?

Jen Pollock Michel:

I’m great, Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Marcus:

I’m doing fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Thanks for having me.

Andrew Marcus:

Awesome. And I saw in your bio that you were actually, I thought you were Canadian, because I was super pumped. Because, I saw you were living in Toronto for 11 years, and now you’re in Cincinnati, but you said you have dual citizenship. So, you’re Canadian.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Yes.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a big deal.

Jen Pollock Michel:

I know. So, I feel like even though I have an American accent, even though I currently live in the U.S. We actually left Toronto for some family obligations. My mom is sick, and so we just knew that we needed to be close at hand to care for her. But, we’ve left our three older children in Canada, two at McGill, one at the University of Toronto. And then, we’ve got two kids that are in high school. And so, they’re obviously here with us in the States. But, lots of our heart is in Canada.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing. Because, I saw your last name, Michel, and I thought, I wonder if we’re, the conversation in French today like, oh, oui oui!

Jen Pollock Michel:

We could actually. That’s what initially kind of even, I guess, gave us a desire to even think about living in Canada. Lots of great things about Canada, but one of the things was just knowing our kids who were super young at the time could be in French schooling. And so, they’re actually all fluent in French. I’m fluent in French as well. I used to be a high school French teacher. Little fun fact about me.

Andrew Marcus:

No way. Wow. tres bien! So, my wife teaches French immersion, grade-

Jen Pollock Michel:

Oh, amazing.

Andrew Marcus:

… five French immersion. She did French immersion. She loves it. And another fun fact, we’re having fun facts this morning. So-

Jen Pollock Michel:

We are.

Andrew Marcus:

… I did a tour. I do music as well. And so, I did a tour in France, and my wife came with me and I just had to memorize all the songs I’ve written in French. So, I wrote out just the phonetics of how it sounds, and I was hoping the band was very loud. I told the band to play very loud so people can’t actually hear me.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Exactly.

Andrew Marcus:

Well, people were worshiping. It was amazing.

Jen Pollock Michel:

That’s awesome.

Andrew Marcus:

So, I got to do that. That was so fun. But, I’m not as good at French, obviously, as my wife, and definitely not as you, if you speak French fluently. So, we’re not going to do this interview in French.

Jen Pollock Michel:

That sounds good. Because, actually my older kids think their French is better than mine now, and they’re probably right. And so, whenever I speak French, they’re like, oh my gosh, mom. The cringe. Stop.

Andrew Marcus:

The cringe. That’s so funny. So, tell us a little bit about your life. So, I know some of our listeners know who you are, some of our listeners don’t. So, tell us a little bit about who you are, your family life and your ministry life?

Jen Pollock Michel:

So, I do have five kids, as I mentioned, three in university in Canada and two in high school. And, I’ve been married to Ryan for 27 years. We met at Wheaton College, and I was just one of those people who I think I’ve just done a lot of lay ministry throughout my life. A lot of that looks like leading Bible studies and I don’t know, speaking at my church, and honestly, I don’t know that I even would’ve said that I was setting out to become a Christian writer. It just happened, I think as often happens with us very providentially that God was opening some doors and my first book got written. And then, I remember when I had a conversation with the sales manager for that particular publisher when he was actually in Canada. We were in Paris, Ontario. I like to just leave out the Ontario part.

Andrew Marcus:

That was in Paris.

Jen Pollock Michel:

I was in Paris, France, and him saying, how many books do you want to sell? I’m like, however many you can, so you’ll let me write another book. And so, really honestly, five books has just kind of come out of that, just one after another. And now I think I’m fully inhabiting the role. This is what God’s called me to do. I’m in an MSA program. So, finishing that at the end of the year too.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow, amazing. So, five books, one of them award-winning book. I know you wouldn’t throw that in there, because you’re not going to do that kind of plug, but that’s pretty awesome.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Thanks for doing that for me.

Andrew Marcus:

You’re certainly most welcome. I understand. If I won an award, I want you to do the same, actually. So, I read your latest article that you’ve written called, You Can’t Manifest Your Life. And I was intrigued by the title, of course, and just that topic, because I just see a lot of Christian young adults and non-Christian young adults, just when I’m scrolling through my Facebook and I see a lot of the language, or a lot of the theology behind the term manifesting. Maybe some people do that even as believers, but they don’t know that’s what they’re actually doing or that’s what it’s called. But, I thought that’s a very timely article, because a lot of people are just hungry, and they’re looking at a lot of different places to feed their souls. And unfortunately, a lot of the places they’re looking, it’s going to leave them hungry still. But, with this specific article, can you walk through what manifesting even is, and just we’ll walk through this article together, but maybe start with that.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Well, I didn’t know what manifesting was until I had this conversation. And I opened the article, obviously talking about this conversation that I had with the younger woman at my church, and she had gotten a new job. And she told me I didn’t manifest this. This was clearly a gift from God. And I was like, oh, manifest, what does that mean? And she’s like, you don’t don’t know what manifest means? And so, she explained it to me, and then I obviously did further research. And interestingly enough, I think one of the first articles that I clicked on was from Oprah. So, I think it’s in that realm of self-help, kind of vague spirituality that in essence if you want something, you can manifest it by saying a series of affirmations. So, let’s say that you do want a new job, you just hate the job that you’re in, and you’re hoping to get a new one.

Maybe every morning as you look in the mirror, you say a series of I am worthy of a new job and it will happen for me this year or something. I honestly don’t actually even know exactly what the affirmations themselves would sound like, but it’s an affirmation of your worth, of a future reality that you want to have happen. And the idea is that you say these affirmations with quite a bit of regularity, sometimes it’s really spelled out for you how often you would say them throughout the day, how many times you would say them each time throughout the day, and then you just expect that that will move the universe. That’s sort of the idea. It’s going to move the universe to give you what you want.

Andrew Marcus:

Clearly I don’t even know how to respond to that, because it’s just… When I was reading, you give a little excerpt, I think, where you talk about where is it? Do I have it? Yeah. So, it’s like three times in the morning, this is a potential pattern that someone posted on TikTok or something where it says three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon, nine times at night for 33 to 45 days.

Jen Pollock Michel:

When you say it like that, you’re like, oh gosh, that actually sounds like a Lenten practice. This whole idea of a habit or a practice that you take up and you just do it over and over and over again. And I think that they’re, and interestingly enough, even we’re recording this in lent, fasting is a practice that people often, a lot of Christians take up in lent, and the idea is a practice. At the heart of a spiritual discipline is this idea of practice regularity, repetition. And so, you see that in manifestation.

The thing that I was really struck by is how directly countered this practice is to the practice of prayer, and prayer for Christians is a central practice. I don’t know that you could have any sort of relationship with God apart from prayer. But, if we were to put them side by side, manifesting your reality, your future versus praying about your future, those are very different. I would say though, and Andrew we could certainly talk about this, I think that some people appropriate, take parts of manifesting, like methods, and they apply those to prayer. And they think that maybe if we just say our father at the front of it, then that is prayer. I think that the postures of these two things are very, very different.

Andrew Marcus:

The postures are very different. And I do see the temptation for Christians to pick a couple of those patterns, baptize it and think that they’re incorporating it in a Christian way.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Exactly. So, this idea of naming what you want, actually my first book is about desire and the life of faith. And I think that we can go on one particular side of a fear of desire. I’m afraid to say what I want. Can I even say that to God? And so, I think often Christians have a complicated relationship with their own desires. So, in manifesting it’s like you lay claim to your desire, you say it and you say it over and over and over again and you hope, or I guess, you really count on the fact that saying it, laying claim to it will then bring it to fruition. It will make it happen for you. So, on the one hand I want to say I think that we should name our desires to God in prayer. I think God really wants to hear that from us, and I think that’s one way that we build intimacy with God, is to say what we want.

Now, that’s not the whole of prayer though. If you look at the Lord’s prayer, which is what I went through in my first book, is that there’s this whole beautiful structure to the Lord’s prayer and architecture, if you will. And the first three requests of the Lord’s Prayer have nothing to do with our own personal earthly desires. They’re really about being caught up in God’s desires for the world. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then it gets to, give us this day our daily bread. And I’ve found a lot of people explain, and I think this really makes sense of the logic of the Lord’s prayer, is that we don’t really know what to want until we know what God wants.

And so, expressing what we want is a good thing, but we also as Christians want to learn how to want. We want to learn what to want. And that whole step is obviously missing in manifestation. It’s all just about if you want it, presumably, I guess, it’s good, because you’re never really engaging a process to examine, or critique, or scrutinize to understand the goodness of this desire that you’re naming six times in the morning and 13 times in the afternoon and 37 times of, however many times over the course of these weeks and days.

Andrew Marcus:

Well, it depends on how bad you want it, I guess, hey.

Jen Pollock Michel:

I guess. I guess so.

Andrew Marcus:

45 times in the afternoon. But, do you think manifesting has a similarity to the name it and claim it prosperity gospel, or are they a little different?

Jen Pollock Michel:

No, I think that’s a really good parallel to draw. It’s this idea so central to what both manifesting and name it, claim it theology. The power is all invested in the person who’s either manifesting or praying. So, when you manifest your reality, you know it’s going to happen because of your efforts. You prayed with regularity at these regular times of day for this specific period of time, and then you’re going to get it back in relationship to how your own efforts, and regularity, and faithfulness. And I think similarly, name and claim it really puts the onus on the prayer, how much faith do you have?

If your faith is strong enough, then you will receive whatever it is that you’ve asked. And this is just not the truth of prayer as we see it in the Bible. We actually have examples in the Bible of people who pray with great faith and don’t get what they want, and it’s because they’re coming up to the limits of their own wisdom and knowledge of what God’s doing in the world. So, I can pray for something and I should bring every request to God, but what I can’t be sure of is that my request is exactly in line with God’s will.

Andrew Marcus:

And what would you say to the young listeners? How do you navigate that, or how do you comfort them in the reality that, hey, your prayer might not be answered?

Jen Pollock Michel:

I love the way that Tim Keller explains it in his book on prayer. He says, when you pray, you will either have what you’ve asked or have what you would have asked had you had all of God’s wisdom. So, there’s something really beautiful about that. And so, I’m just going to say it again. He says that, you will either have what you’ve asked or you will have what you would have asked had you had God’s wisdom. And I think at the end of the day, it doesn’t solve the real griefs involved in living in a fallen world. One of the things that I’ve done in just all of my work is just explore my own stories of loss, and grief, and disappointment, and I would say even doubt. I think those are real experiences for Christians.

And I think you can have real faith and have real sorrow, real trouble, real kind of sometimes perplexity about what God’s doing in the world. And I think ultimately what faith is, is not that God will give us everything that we’ve asked. It’s that, he is to be trusted to be good. We can trust God’s goodness. The only way that you know that God is good is A, you have to start with the cross. That’s where Paul goes in the book of Romans. He says, here’s how you know God’s goodness. Here’s how you know God’s for us. If he did not withhold Jesus from the cross, if he led him straight there to suffer on our behalf, then what would he not give us? If it’s good for us, he will give it to us, and that’s the whole testimony of Jesus and the gospels too. It says, gosh, you as fathers know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more does God know how to give good gifts to you?

And then, I go back again to the logic of the Lord’s prayer. It starts with our Father. And that’s really where it all, all of prayer. And I would say the whole lives of faith is about learning to relate, and trust, and surrender to our good Father, and that’s hard. We can go into a long talk about that, but I think you can only do that if you know the cross, the crux of the gospel, if you know the scriptures, if you start keeping a record of your own history, Psalm 78 would say the people of Israel knew some of God’s goodness because of all that he revealed to them just in the everyday ordinary events of the nation. And similarly for us as people, keep your story, keep a record of how God has been faithful and good to you, so that when you go through a time where you’re like, where is God now? He’s not answering my prayers now. You look back and then you say, but I remember that he’s been good in these ways and I’m going to keep trusting.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, that’s such a good word. And I’ve started journaling this year, and trying to be as committed to it as I can. But, I know when I read back even a few days before or a month before, oh yeah, he did that thing with my boy, or oh yeah, wow. And so, you’re right, remember is so important. So, when the trials come, or hardship comes, or you’re doubting, or your faith is shaky, you remember and that changes everything. So, instead of trying to name, and change, and correct, and get the universe to do whatever you want, it’s almost like instead of trying to predict your future, just look at the past instead, actually.

Jen Pollock Michel:

And maybe name the things that you know to be true about God. I think one really encouraging example of persistent and honest prayer, if people want to go through the Book of Genesis, and specifically after Genesis 12, look at how Abraham prays. Because, God gives him a promise, and then he waits 20 years on the promise to be fulfilled. And he didn’t wait 20 years just twiddling his thumbs like, I’m happy as a larch to wait for God’s fulfillment on this. He was like, what? I don’t understand.

God, maybe you could do it this way, maybe you could do it that way. And all the while God is building his faith in the waiting, but he’s always just kind of, so there’s an example there for us of how Abraham just kept finding God faithful all the while he was still at wrestling with his own human experience of being bewildered. And I think it really is that both, and it’s okay to feel perplexed at God’s timing, at God’s wisdom, because he says his wisdom’s greater than ours. But, what can you name about God’s character and how can you keep finding him faithful?

Andrew Marcus:

It’s so good. Even thinking of the Lord’s Prayer again, the first line, our father, hallowed be your name. Just focusing on his holiness, declaring who he is, that it would reshape and just steer you in the right, recalibrate you towards truth, and it’s literally the opposite of manifesting.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Manifesting, there’s no, obviously God’s not in the equation unless you substitute universe for God, which I think then you’re in a position of pretty, you’re on perilous dangerous ground there. Because, God’s really not on the hook for all of our demands. He’s just not. And I think the Christian life, again, why manifesting doesn’t really work is A, it’s not dependent on God, it’s dependent on your own efforts. And it’s sort of putting God on the hook for our demands. Again, if you substitute God for universe like, well, as long as I do this, then God will do that. Well, we just don’t always know that God is going to do what we say simply just because we practice a certain thing, and that’s true of anything in the Christian life. You can be obedient and you can suffer, you can pray and you can lose things and not have what you’ve prayed for.

You can be faithful and hardship can come your way. And I think where doubt, or the loss of faith, or deconstruction, whatever you want to call it, can really come in as when that breaks down like, I did that, this, so God was supposed to do that, and when he doesn’t do X, Y, Z, well, now I don’t believe in God. And it’s like, well, maybe you should challenge the assumption you brought into it in the first place, that God was on the hook for your demands and he’s not. He is, mercifully, if you read the Psalms, we know that God inclines his ear to hear the prayers of his people. He’s always listening, and I think that’s beautiful.

Andrew Marcus:

Listening and twisting his arm are different things though.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Absolutely.

Andrew Marcus:

So, he’s always listening, but it’s not like he owes you anything, and if you twist his arm hard enough, he’s going to give it to you. I think that’s the huge difference.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Absolutely.

Andrew Marcus:

But, we can find peace and assurance knowing that he’s listening, and that his plan is perfect. I feel like the danger with Christians dabbling with manifesting, and I think it’s interesting that you talked about substituting the universe and then just putting God, and then now we’re doing everything and we’re saying it six times in the morning, and then nine times in the afternoon, and 12 times in the evening towards God. There’s obviously a lot of risks in that, and I just want to walk through the dangers of that, because I think a lot of Christians are probably doing that without realizing they’re doing that. Maybe they take pastors that are context like, oh, if you ask anything in my name, I’ll do it. So, now it’s like, oh, sweet. I want a new Ferrari 488.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Awesome.

Andrew Marcus:

That’d be fantastic. I want red with red interior. So, maybe there’s dangers where Christians are taking passages like that out of context and saying, hey, it actually says right here that I could do this.

Jen Pollock Michel:

100%. I think that there, you’re bringing up a larger question for us, or maybe lesson for us is like, how do we read scripture? And we could have a whole nother conversation about this, but I think reading scripture like as a whole story, and that means honestly Genesis to Revelation. And it also means that every individual book is its own part of that story, but a whole unified work, so that you can’t like, the Bible’s always interpreting itself. So, if you were, for example, to just pluck out the verse that whatever you asked for in my name, that will be given to you. Well, if on its own, you might say, well, this means that whatever I pray for I get, but then you’re like, well, you’re going to have to grapple with Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12, where Paul prays three times for this thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what it was exactly to be taken from him and God says, no, I’m not going to take that from you, but my grace will be sufficient for you.

We’re going to have to grapple with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. There are three prayers in the garden of Gethsemane. Lord, take this cup from me. Father, take this cup. If you won’t take this cup, your will be done. So, there’s a real wrestling that Jesus has, and this idea of Jesus had to surrender his human desires to just avoid suffering. And you’re going to have to again grapple with King David, for example, in the Old Testament who, he has a son who dies. He has praying all night for him, and maybe many days, I don’t really remember. And actually his servants are like, they see how bereft he is praying for the son who looks like he’s on his deathbed. And then, as soon as the son dies, they’re like, now what’s going to happen?

Is he going to take his own life? And he washes his face and he goes to worship. And it’s essentially like, I did the work of prayer. I submitted my desire to God, but now I accept his answer, his wisdom, and I will worship. Job, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. So, that one verse standing on its own, whatever you ask for in my name, I will give it to you. If you want to construct a whole theology over that, well, you’re going to then have to dismiss a whole other parts of scripture. And so, when we go to the Bible, we really do want to be reading it all as an interconnected whole. I think it’s really important.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s huge. So, what warning would you give a young person who’s watching or listening, who is dabbling with manifesting or considering exploring this spiritual practice?

Jen Pollock Michel:

My warning would be to just, not just manifesting, but anything that requires you to rely on your own efforts to put all your hope and your own efforts is going to be a dead end road for you. That could be manifesting, that could be self-help, that could be time management, there’s all kinds of things out there that say, you know what? You’re the hero of your life. And if you want something good, it could even just be hard work and productivity, but ultimately the Christian life is about dependence on God, not dependence on us. And that’s actually really good news, because you and I, we can’t really work hard for all of the good things. We can’t perform morally. We can’t say enough affirmations. We can’t pray with enough faith.

If all those things, if a good future is going to be secured by my own good performance, then I’m in a world of trouble. But, the good news is that it’s not, and that you’re reliant upon Jesus Christ who is good on your behalf, and stronger and more powerful than any affirmation. So, the danger is to turn your eyes away from Christ and then turn them back on yourself, relying on your own efforts. And I just want to say, you know what? There’s someone that’s way stronger, and more powerful, and far better than you. And so, turning to him and dependence and trust is really where we need to go.

Andrew Marcus:

We really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for diving through this topic and just giving us some pointers on what healthy prayer looks like, the importance of scripture, and how manifesting is literally the opposite of all the things we need to do. We need to look to Christ and not look to ourselves for success, but just look to him and trust him. Have faith in him. And so, I appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much for your time, and-

Jen Pollock Michel:

Thank you.

Andrew Marcus:

… I was going to say au revoir!

Jen Pollock Michel:

Au revoir!

Andrew Marcus:

Wow, yours was way better. Have such a great day. Thank you so much.

Jen Pollock Michel:

Thank you.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.