Ep. 80: Understanding God Through History w/ Jack Mooring

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW, we got a great program today. A dear friend of mine that I haven’t seen in a long time, Jack Mooring, who is an author, pastor, worship leader, songwriter, used to be in the band with his brother, called Leeland. Great guy, he’s pastoring now in Nashville. We’re going to be talking about his new book, Portrait of God, just understanding and rediscovering God’s attributes by looking throughout church history. So we hope that you are encouraged, inspired by this conversation. God bless you, enjoy the show. Well, today in the program we have Jack Mooring. How are you doing today?

Jack Mooring:

I’m doing so good, Andrew, thanks so much for having me. I’m so pumped to hang out with you guys.

Andrew Marcus:

Take us through your journey. For those who are listening, just tell them a little bit about who you are. So you grew up in Baytown, Texas, started a band with your brother, Leeland, and just walk us through your ministry journey to where you are right now.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, we started a band in our youth group, and I was like 19. So our family started a church in Baytown, Texas in 2002, I was 16 years old. We didn’t have a youth pastor, so my parents were like, “You’re going to be the youth pastor.” We just went for it and I was preaching my first sermons ever, trying to figure out how to preach at 16. And the youth group was basically my cousins, and they started inviting their friends and it started growing, but Leeland was the worship leader and he was 13.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Jack Mooring:

And he knew four chords on the guitar, so he would play his four chords and sing a couple songs. I would get up and try to preach and it was hilarious, but God used it. The youth group actually started growing and exploding, it was crazy. It was in the time where youth groups were trying so hard to be cool, they were trying to get game consoles, and… Right, dude.

Skylar:

They got that pizza special.

Jack Mooring:

Literally, they were doing whatever, “We got to reach the kids for Jesus,” and we had none of that. We had fluorescent lighting and hard chairs, the most awkward spaces, like little City Civic Center spaces. Anyways, man, but we would just worship and God started moving and all these kids started getting saved and coming, and it was… And that’s how the Leeland Band started, we started out of our youth group, and Leeland started writing songs. The whole God story, long story about how we ended up getting signed to a label and we traveled the world. It was crazy. I was 19 when we were in the studio for our first record, Leeland was 16, so we were just actual kids, and just crazy that God opened all these doors, and so we got to do that for years, traveling full time and leading worship and meeting cool people like you.

But then in 2014, I came off the road to pastor full time. A couple things, the traveling thing was just getting so intense. I mean, we were gone all the time, and by that point, I had two kids and I just felt like it was just time to stop traveling full time. And I also knew I was called to pastor. I mean, even from that early age, right? Of the youth group time, I knew that was a calling on my life and so said “Yes” and we stepped into it and I pastored an interim role for a while at a church, and we just jumped in. But yeah, I went from traveling full-time with a band to this little small church, being a pastor at however old I was. I was 28, I think. But I’m glad we did it, because here we are, it’s been an amazing journey.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s amazing, man. I remember coming to visit you at your church, I think when you were interming probably. Because that was in Nashville?

Jack Mooring:

Yeah. Yes, that was in the Franklin area.

Andrew Marcus:

Yes, I came to a Sunday. Yeah, I came to a Sunday service. That was awesome. That’s so cool, man. And so traveling… So you have two kids?

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, so exactly. We had two kids at the time and it was just on the road nonstop and… Yeah, it was time to make that transition, and now we have five kids, so it’s-

Andrew Marcus:

Five kids?

Jack Mooring:

… crazy, crazy. Yes, bro. It’s unbelievable. Yeah, I know. It’s wild.

Andrew Marcus:

That is wild, bro.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, my wife is an absolute rock star. She’s amazing. So yeah, it’s been crazy, making that transition of… I do miss… I miss going to fun places, that was cool. I don’t miss the road life anymore, though. I mean, just the grind of just constantly traveling. I definitely don’t miss that, but I do miss going to different places and leading worship, and it was amazing. But pastoring, it’s my sweet spot. You know what I mean? I love people and I love to get to serve people and get to know their stories and help them step into who they’re called to be.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing, praise God. You’re such an amazing pastor, bro. And do you dabble still with music or do you not play anymore?

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, yeah. So I am actually still signed with Integrity as a songwriter, so I still do a bit of songwriting. It’s not a whole lot, but enough to where I can stay on the roster there and not get kicked off.

Andrew Marcus:

Come on, bro. Just enough, you just made it.

Skylar:

He writes his entrance themes before he does his sermons.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s right, they’re just like little…

Jack Mooring:

That’s it, that’s all you need. I write my own… Yeah, my own jingles. Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Your own jingles for your Sunday sermon service. That’s amazing, bro. We should write together. But also, fun fact, people who are watching, you played on my record for the… Remember the live event that we did at Scott and Ed’s place?

Jack Mooring:

Yes.

Andrew Marcus:

And we did those live songs? I think your wife came, too. It was such a special time, man. I just cherish those moments a lot.

Jack Mooring:

Bro, that was so cool. That was an amazing record, actually, and that was so fun, to be able to just be a part of it.

Andrew Marcus:

Praise God, man. So speaking of writing, you wrote your first book, Portrait of God: Rediscovering the Attributes of God through the Stories of His People. Maybe walk through a little bit about your journey, how you felt called to write this, and the process for you.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah. Totally, man. It was 2018, actually. We were down here in Texas and… I’m actually visiting my family right now, so we’re here with them for a little bit. But we were living here for a while and a lot of my friends were just struggling, and I could actually… There were quite a few of my friends who were even starting to walk away from the faith and it was just a weird time. And I was like, “God…” So I just started to write and process it, and for me, it’s like… AW Tozer said, he said, “What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you,” and that’s been one of my life messages of just knowing God is the most important thing you can do. When our vision of him gets skewed, when it gets off, when it gets distorted, everything else starts to fall apart, and bad theology creates a bad life, it creates bad decision-making.

And so in that time where I was seeing my friends struggling in their own way, and I was having my own personal struggles, I began to process this, and so going back to that, “What is God like? What are his attributes?” So as I was writing the book, I was like, “Well, I don’t want to… It’d just be me talking about theology. What if I tell the stories of people who experienced God like this?” And so I went through church history and I’ve always been a nerd, a book nerd, and I only read dead people, basically. And all my family makes fun of me, they’re like-

Andrew Marcus:

It’s a little weird.

Jack Mooring:

… “You could read some living authors, that’s creepy.”

Andrew Marcus:

No, they must be dead. They must be dead.

Jack Mooring:

No, no. Yeah, exactly, exactly. They’re like, “Come on.”

Skylar:

That way, their stance is set in stone. You don’t need to worry about them shifting one way or the other.

Jack Mooring:

But I was always reading, even when we were on the road with a band, and I just love to read. And so I loved all these stories. So when I was writing the book, I was like, “Man, I need to tell some of my favorite stories from church history, the people who experienced this God that I’m talking about.” And so there’s a bit of… It’s basically historical fiction. In each chapter, I tell someone’s story, like CS Lewis, St. Augustine, Fanny Crosby, songwriter, and how they experienced God, and so that was a fun element of the book.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s really cool. And I wondered when I was just skimming through, as I just got it a couple of days ago, I was wondering, did you ever have maybe a fear or a worry that a scandal might come out one day and then, all of a sudden, what you wrote about them didn’t line up with whatever came out instead of writing about characters throughout scripture?

Skylar:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

Did you worry about that?

Skylar:

I totally feel that, too. I wonder, would someone… You probably wrestled with this, actually, when you were writing this, but would someone look at this book and be like, “Why should I read this book versus the Bible?” Is it wrong to be writing about other, I guess, quote, unquote, “Heroes of the faith,” over history that are not part of Scripture?

Jack Mooring:

Totally, absolutely. I think, first and foremost, by the way, if you ever have a choice between picking up the Bible or picking up my book, pick up the Bible, right? But books are helpful. They’re helpful in the sense that they can help us process these ideas and help understand them, but the second they help you understand it, you throw it away and you go back to the Bible. I think the best Christian books lead you back to the Bible instead of taking you away from them. But I picked people who… First of all, the way I wrote about them, I talked about their humanity, first and foremost. Most of these people have been around for a long time, and so they’ve pretty much been vetted and a lot of holes have been poked into their lives, so I didn’t have any worries about that.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s good.

Jack Mooring:

Any bad stuff coming up about them. But one thing we can do, it’s really dangerous with this, is deifying these people and treating them these perfect people, and so I was very careful of that, to talk about their humanity. In fact, that’s the whole point. The reason I chose to write about these people is to go, Hey, these are people post-biblical times who experienced all the craziness of the world. It’s like, look at the world we live in. And they experienced crazy stuff, too. CS Lewis lived through World War II. I mean, the world was falling apart at that time. St. Augustine, the Roman Empire had just fallen. Literally, global civilization had collapsed, and he’s honoring God through this process. So I think that their stories are relevant in that sense, that it’ll encourage us in these crazy times we’re going through.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a good word, and I think it’s important to realize that, when you focus on their humanity as well, it’s actually inspiring to us, because we’re ordinary people, they were ordinary people doing extraordinary things by the power of God and the Holy Spirit, and I just feel like that’s encouraging to us to know, “Hey, we are the same.”

Skylar:

Yeah, I even have those hesitancies, too, when people do label biblical figures as heroes, because I don’t think that that was ever really what the actual takeaway is from the Bible, when you’re learning from it. You don’t take away, “Yeah, they were a hero. You take away-“

Andrew Marcus:

And they didn’t even look at themselves as heroes, obviously, but they’re just so inspiring to us.

Skylar:

That’s cool. I like that a lot, though.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, I think most of those… You’re right, you’re right. Those biblical characters would probably hate that term.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally, totally.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah. We always get in trouble when we start accepting that title in any way. That is super dangerous ground.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally, man. That’s a good word. You mentioned just the importance of remembering, and I guess since you love reading a bunch of dead people, you are going back and remembering just seeing God’s faithfulness and looking back. So listening to your story, growing up in the church and signing and doing Christian music and traveling all over the place and just being in ministry for a long time at the age of 19 or 18, 16, whatever it was you said, there was a moment, I guess, where you maybe forgotten. You mentioned that remembering is so important, you also mentioned that you were going through some things too, maybe not the same things that your friends were going through, but what was happening in your life in that moment, if you don’t mind sharing with us?

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, totally. Well, you reach your early thirties and it’s always… It can be a difficult time in your life anyways, because your twenties have gone and life started getting really, really real. You know what I mean? You’re like, “Dang it, man.” You start going back and saying, “I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve,” all that kind of stuff. And I was in that kind of moment, going like, “Should I have made this decision better?” And then I’m a creative, so I can go down that rabbit hole. And I feel like I was going down that rabbit hole and just getting a little discouraged about my life. And in fact, it was a challenge to continue with this book, because there was oftentimes where I would go, “Dude, why do people need to hear my take on this?” You know what I’m saying? When there’s so many other great books out there, but I felt God encouraged me.

It’s like, “Well, no. People do need to hear my story, my perspective.” It’s like… And anybody listening to this, it’s like there’s a unique perspective in you that the world needs. You know what I mean? The truth is the truth, but I’d love to hear your encounter with the truth, how the truth has helped you, and that’s helpful. And so, for me, I was in that moment where I was just dealing with a lot of that discouragement. And so yeah, going back to God, going back to fundamentals, “What does God like? I know He’s love, I know He’s holy, I know He is a God of joy.” Those basic principles, and it was just really helpful for me in that season. In that sense, the writing of the book was therapeutic and I hope that it will help other people go back to those basics, too.

Andrew Marcus:

Praise God, man. You mentioned… I know one of the questions that we were sent just shared that you were maybe struggling with some depression and mental health, which I totally had. I think… When was it? 2021. I had a mental breakdown, burnout, whatever you want to call it, and had to step away for 10 months from everything, and it was a really tough time. But you mentioned that there was some struggles with that. Did writing this book help you? Is that something that happened, because maybe you forgot some of the main attributes of God?

Jack Mooring:

Yes. I think any of us, even songwriters who identified this too, we to remember. I mean, I think any believer… That’s why journaling, in a sense, is important, because I think it’s important just to sit down and write and we remind ourselves who God is. And yeah, I love to learn, I love learning new things, but that’s not what Christianity is about. Christianity, primarily, is about remembering the first things, remembering the things we already know, and it’s certainly about learning. Obviously, we’re always growing, we’re always learning, but I think when I’ve gotten most in trouble, it’s not because I’m not learning new things, it’s because I’m forgetting the foundational things. I’m forgetting the fundamental things, God loves me. The gift of salvation is free, I don’t have to earn it.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah.

Jack Mooring:

It’s like we have the three enemies. The flesh, the world, and the devil, right? And they’re all working in concert to pull us away from God and distract us, and so it’s a continual battle, to come back to who God is and remind ourselves of who He is.

Skylar:

That’s really cool. I’ve been seeing lots of topics going around, because I’m constantly involved in this stuff all the time, but just seeing lots of articles come about through Christian writers and lots of books and lots of podcasts that are covering this idea of biblical literacy is a very huge danger to specifically this generation that’s coming up, so that’d be a little bit of me, millennial, a little bit of Gen Z, a little bit of Gen Alpha. Just like the biblical literacy. And it touches on what you were saying earlier, too, where you were saying that you had some friends who were falling away from the faith, and it gets really, I guess, dangerous when you get into that, “I feel like God would,” scenario, but you don’t actually know what God would.

So having biblical literacy and then saying that you feel like God would do something in a certain scenario, or even Jesus for that sake, too, we talked about this I think just last week or so. But yeah, if you just don’t have that biblical knowledge and you say that stuff, that’s… Yeah, I don’t know. What’s your thoughts on that?

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, I mean, we are in a biblical literacy crisis, and I think a lot of people are working on that problem. I think pastors… I was just at a pastors conference this week, a pastor of a really huge church. And I really appreciated his humility, because he was going like, “Hey, these are shifts that we’re making, changes that we’re making, because our people needed to know the word of God.” I say this in the book, that we can’t know God exhaustively, but we can know God accurately.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a good word.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah. I mean, we can’t know everything about God. I mean, there’s certain things we’re missing out on. He’s infinite and unimaginably deep, but we can know Him accurately, and there are things we can be sure about Him. And that surety comes from the Bible, being rooted in the Bible, and from church tradition that points to the Bible. Tradition with a capital T, right? These things that have been tested and tried that are rooted in the word of God. So yeah, I think we live in a time where just no one knows what to believe. Even in the media, people are like, “Which one should I believe?” We have a very low level of trust right now with institutions, and it’s like… I think we’ve got to go back to the Bible, we’ve got to go back to God, because we actually can get that trust back and that confidence back of going like, “No, I know what God is like. I don’t know everything about Him, but I do know this, that He’s love. I do know this.” And so just that simple assurance.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s huge. Yeah, that’s really good. And I feel like we’re in a generation and a culture right now where we forget everything very quickly. It comes in, stays in our head for a week, and it’s gone. You look at some of the big news things that are happening around the world, specifically in the States, and I don’t want to get into politics and stuff, but something happens, it’s major, and then, a week later, it’s erased from Google and we’ve moved on, and people have forgotten.

Jack Mooring:

So true.

Andrew Marcus:

And it’s like… What advice would you give to a young person? Because this is just the reality of everywhere, not even just spiritually, but we’re just forgetting all kinds of things. What would you say to a young person who has forgotten the truth, the character of God?

Jack Mooring:

First of all, I would say to slow down, because I think… And all of us feel this, right? I feel it. Slow down. One of the guys I talk about in the book, his name is Thomas Chalmers, and he’s a guy that’s probably the least famous person in the book that I talk about. He was a Scottish preacher, just amazing, has this incredible story of encountering God being born again. Anyways, he ended up coming up with this Bible study system that he called The Keystones. Basically, he would… These young people he was discipling, he would teach them, you basically take one chapter of the Bible and you read that chapter every single day for six days straight, you rest on Sunday.

But each day, you’re reading the same chapter from a different perspective, in six different perspectives, and he has it all listed out. I talk about it in the book. But what I love about it… All that to say, the reason I’m saying it, what I love about it, it forces you to slow down. I tried to do it, Andrew, I was like, “I can’t do this,” because I wanted to move on from the chapter.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally, totally.

Jack Mooring:

I was like, “No.” Okay, “But I read that chapter yesterday.”

“No, read it again on Tuesday.”

“But I read…”

“Read it again on Wednesday.” And it forces you to slow down and really go deep into one chapter. And that’s what I appreciate about him and about that generation at least, is that they weren’t in a hurry, and I think we just get in trouble when we get in a hurry.

Skylar:

That’s so funny. I’m just thinking about how some of the people who come across our reels, or whatever, on social media, they only watch 20 seconds of it, and then they write this big heated comment about how it’s heresy. It’s just like, “Did you not watch the rest of the reel? We literally go over everything that you’re arguing here.” Man, retention such a big issue right now.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, no one has the ability to… I think, for myself, to sit and read one chapter every day for a week would be really challenging.

Jack Mooring:

It’s so hard. It’s such a good exercise in forcing yourself to slow down, because we have this weird FOMO with the Bible. We’re like, “But I’m missing out on the other chapter and the other chapter,” and it’s like, “No, just live here. God’s going to give you grace through this and speak to you through this.” But yeah, I think for any of us, Andrew, I think the biggest thing for all of us and anybody listening, it’s like anything we can do to slow down and rest in God is massive, because… And that’s another thing, when we start to meditate on God’s love and His sovereignty, it gives us that peace. When you do not believe that God is love and you do not believe that He is sovereignly powerful, you’ll be freaking out about your life all the time, you’ll be freaking out about what’s going on in the world.

Once again, when I forget that, it’s my worst moments. But when I remember, “Wow, He loves me. He sent his only son to die for me, He proved it, and He’s really powerful, He is sovereign,” it’s like, “Gosh, I don’t have to freak out and worry.”

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah.

Jack Mooring:

So yeah, it affects the way we live.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, it’s awesome, man. Was there an attribute when you were going through all these characters that blew you away again?

Jack Mooring:

Okay, yes. Yeah, great question. It’s joy. Joy. God is joyful, I think we forget that. God is the God of laughter, God is the God of… Humor is not a result of the fall, joy is not a result of the fall. Now, obviously, humor can get perverse and skewed and wicked, but pure joy comes from God, and it’s all throughout the Bible. I mean, I think we’ve sort lost that idea that God is a God of laughter. And true joy comes from a place of rest and when you’re not freaked out and you’re not worried, and there is no one no more at rest, there’s no one more at peace than God. He’s completely confident in his rulership and authority, so He can be joyful, and I think that’s a surprising one. We need to be a little happier.

Andrew Marcus:

We need to be a little bit happier. Man, that just really ministers to my heart, because I think of the time where I had my breakdown, burnout season, because I was not resting at all ever. And then I finally hit the wall and I crashed and burned. It was 10 months, and in that 10 months, it was like deep depression, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, all kinds of things I’ve never experienced before in my life. But I basically… When people ask what it was like, I didn’t laugh once or say one joke for about 10 or 11 months.

Jack Mooring:

Wow.

Andrew Marcus:

And when I came out of it, when people said, “How are you doing now?” My first answer is, “I’m laughing again.” And it’s like I lost my joy entirely. And I love how you just said joy and rest literally go hand in hand. I had no rest, I crashed and burned, and then the joy, the laughter was gone. I was a different person.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, it’s so true. I feel like some people, like I said, we feel like we don’t have time to laugh. It’s like, “There’s too much to do, there’s too much going on.” It’s like, “Well, yeah, we can be joyful workers.” And once again, it’s like Sabbath, right? A true Sabbath, literally. That’s amazing, to have that rhythm. And then, as we work, it’s like we’re working from this place of rest and, throughout the day, leaning into God. But yeah, it’s so true. The most holy people I know, when I look back in life, were actually very joyful people, and it was just a part of their holiness.

Andrew Marcus:

I see that in you and your brother. I feel like-

Jack Mooring:

Thanks, man.

Andrew Marcus:

I feel like you guys are just oozing joy and it is so contagious. And I feel like I’ve told people that before. Actually, one person even came up to me, he’s like, “Hey, you know, I saw Leeland at some conference,” or whatever, and the guys were just like, “Are they actually like that?” I’m like, “Honestly, they’ve slept over in my house and they’re exactly the same as you’re describing off the… They’re just the most joy-filled people.” So you have that. So if I write Portrait of God part two, I’ll have to wait 500 years when you’re dead.

Jack Mooring:

Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Marcus:

Make sure that you’re really vetted, you know what I’m saying?

Jack Mooring:

So good.

Andrew Marcus:

Just out of curiosity, who is the person that you wrote on joy?

Jack Mooring:

CS Lewis.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay.

Jack Mooring:

Which is interesting, because that’s the thing that people don’t know about him, is that people think of him as very serious, but the people who knew him, if you go and read what his friends wrote about him, they said he was a really funny person, first and foremost. Always laughing, always cheerful. And he actually went through a lot of suffering as well, personal suffering, but joy was the key to his conversion. He actually wrote a whole book called “Surprised by Joy,” and that was his memoir about his conversion story. So he looked back in his life, in his childhood and the moments where he felt true joy, and basically, he realized that it was God the whole time, and that’s really what pulled him out of his atheism. So yeah, I think it’s this hallmark in people’s lives, but it’s one that goes under the radar. We can’t forget joy in this time, we got to really pull that one out and dust it off.

Andrew Marcus:

Well, Jack Mooring, thank you so much for being with us today.

Jack Mooring:

This was so much fun, thank you guys for having me on.

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 podcasts. 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.

Hey, INDOUBT Audio World, we have a great opportunity for you to get a free resource for the month of August. You can go to indoubt.ca and there are three options for you. One is by Laugh Again, 31 Days of Hope and Humor with Phil Callaway. We have a book from Back to the Bible Canada, Quiet Spaces, a 30-day devotional by Dr. John Neufeld, or you can get two booklets as your choice. Five Steps to Making Life Rich and 10 Questions About Money Matters. These are all free for you, so you can choose the two small ones or the devotionals, and it’s free for the month of August. So go to indoubt.ca and check it out. Get your copy today. God bless.

[/wpbb-if]