The Water Had Not Yet Turned to Wine
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jeremy_1_08-22-2025_113236: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Cabernet and Prey, where we sip the wine and stir the faith.
I'm excited to have you on board for this one. Before we begin today's episode, I wanna let you know of a resource I recently created. It's called the Deconstruction Field Guide. I love that deconstruction field guide.
Basically a 10 page resource. How to navigate and figure out your next step. If you are questioning some of your beliefs, you're questioning things, you're not really sure what you still believe, what you might be on your way to believing, you're trying to make sense of all of this. Hopefully you're looking for something better than what you've got right now.
You're looking for a Jesus looking God to emerge, trying to figure out how to navigate where you've been. This will remind you that you're not alone, that you are on a journey that many others are going through. It may feel lonely, it often does. Feel lonely until you find someone else who says, oh yeah, I, I have that same question, [00:01:00] and I wrestle with that same thing.
And then you go, oh, I'm not alone. And there's tremendous encouragement in that. And you can download this guide for free friends. This is available. I'll put the link in the show notes and you can download it. Dive into it today and hopefully. Take a step forward if you're into this stuff and you're, trying to figure out your next step, I'm wanting to help you.
So that is a guide I recently made that a number of people have downloaded already and hopefully is helpful. And so I'd love to hear from you if that is helpful and, how you're navigating your own journey. Well, today I wanna talk about, in light of what I just said, how do we grow, how do we keep evolving?
How do we keep becoming. Better versions of ourselves, fuller versions, if you will, of of who we can be and who we were meant to be. And what does it look like for a person to evolve? What does it feel like [00:02:00] when you're in that process? What kinds of questions should we ask? How should we think about that?
How should we think about. Our former selves. All of these are questions we're gonna get into in today's episode. This is episode number 54. The water had not yet turned into wine.
I have never shared this with anybody publicly. There's so many things happen in this conversation right now, thousand years from now, people are gonna be looking at this podcast saying, so this was the breakthrough. If this was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bales would've no idea.
Stephen A. Smith would've no idea what to. You drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, how'd you learn so much? You gotta drink a lot. The power of food and beverage to lubricate an environment, resistance to change is hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all.
I mean, the camp [00:03:00] to God is at Universal spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I've been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. So this is my second glass and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected. So if I get a little loopy, it's your fault. You tell me to drink and I just show up.
I'll also say as a confession, I am a lightweight, so I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so this is fun. You've uncovered the mystery, you've exposed the formula. You've just duct taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down a table, we're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about the beauty of Jesus. Thank you for the, the hospitality that this particular podcast. Provides folks like myself and I know others to, to be curious around their faith practices. I really appreciate this venue, what you're doing.
It is fun, and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor [00:04:00] and that you explore the world of faith through wine that's very unique. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine. By myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology, so I, oh, I got a little spicy there.
It's the peach wine early. The wine is, here we are. Here we are. Beer, we are, no, it's wine. Jeremy. By the way, drinking this Pinot Grigio at three o'clock in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guest drink wine. Makes sense now.
Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage. You really unleash the beast. I think you've got a good podcast throwing the wine bit in there. That's nice, doesn't it? Cabernet and Prey. Yeah.
jeremy_1_08-22-2025_113236: Well, today I am drinking a 2023 Stoler Pinot Noir Rose, which is a lovely color. The, the Pinot Noir obviously gets a little [00:05:00] red tint, but it's not the full Pinot noir. So you're getting just a beautiful color there. And this thing is so refreshing on a blistering. Day in, in Arizona, in the middle of summer, and I'm enjoying this so far.
I'm getting some grapefruit notes, citrus notes, and some strawberry, and it's delightful. This is a nice, refreshing drink. And so part of enjoying wine is knowing when to drink what. Right. You know when you're having a sit down meal or you're having a, the bottle to share with a, a friend over a late night discussion or you're recording a podcast episode and it's hot and you want something refreshing while you do it, all of that works.
And so hopefully you're able to dive into something as you enjoy this episode. Cheers to you and cheers to another episode.
Alright, I've got an analogy for you. What should come as no surprise to any listener of this podcast, [00:06:00] but I'm a big drink person. I like drinks. In fact, my wife and I have both noticed , we share this quality about ourselves. Some people, they have other things about, we like drinks. We always, are drinking something.
And I can think about my day by what I'm drinking, and I have a variety of drinks. And so I, I listed, this is not like every day I do this, but I listed like, what would be just a great day of drinks? What might that look like? And you can kind of see how my day progresses. So I begin with firstly in the morning I have water and I have this little electrolyte salt mixture that I mix in it.
And that just gets you going, makes you feel good. Gives you some energy after sleeping all night and, and laying in bed. And so I always start my day with that with some water electrolytes. Then after breakfast, it's a cold brew. I am a cold brew lover and I love a good cold brew in the morning. Then usually after that, I'm gonna go out and so I'll have my [00:07:00] workout shake and that has, different supplements in it.
Sometimes, depending on what the workout is, I'll add a protein shake in there as well. Depending on what I'm working out that day, then it's lunchtime and at lunch, if I'm at home, I'll have probably a squirt zero. It's a drink. Many of you probably are going what? A what? A what? Yes.
A squirt zero. I like grapefruit, and as you notice, I picked out grapefruit in my wine today. I'm a big grapefruit guy. I like that flavor a lot. And so squirt is like a grapefruit soda, but I don't need all the sugar, so I go zero sugar, and it still tastes amazing. And it's refreshing. And again, you're noticing a theme.
When you live in a hot place, you need drinks that can refresh you. So that's what I'm having for lunch. Okay. So we're just working our way through my day. Then after lunch and early afternoon, I usually will do. A, a kind of a combination that my wife and I have created. It's an espresso with [00:08:00] protein. So we, we found this like protein that's I think it's like brown sugar flavor protein, found it on, on TikTok and it is so tasty.
And then you mix that with water and then we add a couple shots of espresso in that. And that is like my go-to afternoon drink. And man, is that delicious? Just even talking about this drink is making me excited for the afternoon. I haven't, I haven't got to this drink yet today, and so I'm excited for that.
Then we get to dinner time and dinner. I may have a diet Dr. Pepper. Love me some diet Dr. Pepper, change it up a little bit. And then in the evening, if I'm able, I'm gonna finish the day with, with maybe like a wine or a whiskey. That's when, the fun drink comes back into to the day for, for a typical day.
And that's how you can think about. A day in, in my life it's, it's based around drinks and I don't know if you are a drink person. Maybe you have a few of those in your day. Maybe they're not the same. Maybe you kind of think about [00:09:00] it, but perhaps you can resonate with Yeah, my, my day is kind of broken up into different drinks and it's kind of like thinking about my day has season.
Like little mini seasons in each and every day. And we actually have a communion shirt that, that we made that plays to this idea. I'm, I'm wearing this shirt for those of you that are, are enjoying this on video and it's got a checklist of two different boxes. The first one says it's too early for wine.
There's a checkbox there, and the other one says it's too late for coffee. Now the idea being. It's time for one of them, right? Like you, you gotta pick one you gotta pick one of the boxes. It's, it's time for coffee or it's time for wine. That's obviously a simplification. When I just told you how many different drinks I'm, I'm drinking in a day.
But I love the idea of what time of day is it? What are we drinking? And I do think there's something to, like I mentioned, enjoying a good wine at the right [00:10:00] time, in the right way, in the right setting with the right people. That's usually when we have guests on and they share. A wine that was their favorite wine ever.
It's usually because all those other conditions hit just right. I happen to be in this place with this person and this was happening, and so I really do think that affects the way you, you enjoy wine and, and so I, I've played on this idea, you can get your own shirt in our, in our merch store if you're interested.
But I wanna suggest that life is also a little bit like this, except expanded, right? So I broke everything down to like a day. Now let's go zoom back out and let's look at it like life has seasons. We have seasons where we have different eras to use another term, and you're a different person in each one of these seasons.
And this is something I don't think we talk about enough that you're not the same. You, you were 20 years ago, or, or 30 years ago, or 10 years ago, [00:11:00] five years ago. And we often struggle though to realize the season we're in. So sometimes we can look back and we can go, yeah, I, I remember that season. Or we, we see a photo, we see a video, we see something that triggers that season.
And you can remember what that was like. But it's, it's much harder in the moment to discern what, what season am I in? What's going on right now? It reminds me, in the finale of the show, the Office, there's what's become a bit of a famous quote. Now you've probably heard this quote where Andy Bernard says this great line.
He says, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them. That's such a great idea. I, I wish there was a way to know. If I'm in that sweet spot, if I'm in that amazing season, I wish I could know that's a really hard thing to do because we, we are just on to the next.
But I think if [00:12:00] we can take a step back and maybe give some, some names to these different seasons, to this, this structure as it is, it can begin to allow us to realize maybe where we are and where we've been. Now, the goal being in all of this conversation. Is to build on the previous versions of you, right to, to look at who you used to be and to be better than that version.
Now we're not competing with other people. We're not competing with social media and what we see projected out there, we're competing with us. It's you versus you. It's me versus me, but it's me versus previous versions of me. It's you verse previous versions of you. Are you better today? Are you more holistically better? Are you different? Are you kinder? Are you more loving? What are you that incorporates all of the best of who used to be, but keeps it getting [00:13:00] better? In episode 46 of Cabernet and Pray, I interviewed Brian Zahnd and there was a part of that interview, and I encourage you go back and watch it.
It's one of my favorite episodes if you haven't seen it. But there was part of the conversation that was kind of off the cuff, wasn't even like scripted, but it ended up being the thing that I, I kept thinking about over and over. And over I, I asked Brian, like, how many books have you published? Or, we got into that subject somehow and he gave me a number and, and then almost immediately he follows it up and he goes, well, that's not actually true.
I, I lied to you. And I'm kinda like, what? And he goes, actually, I have two books before that, but I don't count those books. And I think he said something about they're orphans. They're, they're not mine. I don't claim them. I remember going, okay, why, why don't you claim these books?
And I was intrigued by this. And then he used the phrase, which, speaking right to my heart, he said the water had not yet turned into [00:14:00] wine. Talking about who he was when he wrote those books that he had not yet got to the place where he is now to see what he sees now. So he created something and a previous version of him that now he goes, yeah, that, that doesn't quite hit.
Who I am today. It doesn't quite resonate with who I am today, and I thought that was such a fascinating concept to, to look back on a season and to be able to acknowledge, yeah, I'm not that person anymore. I don't really resonate with that version anymore. Now this made me think of my first two books that I published.
I, I published the second of the, the two of my first books 10 years ago. So I've, I've taken a 10 year break and in that book 10 years ago, I had a chapter about sex and there was a book on pleasure. And I addressed [00:15:00] homosexuality in this because that was the Supreme Court had just made that ruling.
Everybody was talking about it. It was a big thing in our culture, and yet I was really torn up about my stance at that time, and I didn't feel a peace about it, if you will. I felt like this was where I land. This is what makes the most sense. But I wasn't fully bought into. This is who I am, this is where I'm going to land.
In fact, I went back in preparation for this episode. I went back through the book and I read something that I had written in that chapter 10 years ago. Here's what I said. Of all the chapters in this book, this one makes me the most nervous. It's hard to know how culture is limiting the way truth.
It feels as if this conversation is moving somewhere, and I'm not sure where most of us will land 20 years from now. And as I read that, I realized [00:16:00] I didn't even make it 20 years. I didn't make it 10 years before I changed my mind on what I wrote in that chapter. And as I glanced through that book, I realized.
This is a totally different version of me. It, it's me. I can recognize it. I remember it. I remember writing it. I remember feeling it. So it's like time travel a little bit. Like I can go back and remember that version, but it isn't the me who is here today. And so it's this weird feeling to look back on something you've created.
I can remember all that. I, yeah, I remember why I said that. I remember why I felt that. I remember why that made the most sense, but now this version of me doesn't resonate with that in the same way. Now I've heard Rob Bell use a helpful phrase when he talks about his own versions of his [00:17:00] story and how he has evolved over the years.
He actually uses numbers. And so he'll say something like, oh, that was four Robs ago. Which I think is such a cool way of, of talking like, oh, that was, that was four Robs ago. And that's how I feel about a lot of my early stuff that I, I wrote or sermons that I preach. I go, yeah, that was like three Jeremy's ago.
Like, yeah, I remember it. I was there. But like so much has changed so much has. Progress. I have built so much onto that version of me that you're like, yeah, I remember that. But, but this version of me today see things way differently and way more clearly than I did back then.
So I wanna ask you the question, what are those things from your past that you don't resonate with anymore? [00:18:00] No, it's fun to, to look at other people and go, I can't believe you believe that, or you said that or you did that. But let's, let's take a moment. Let's just evaluate where are you at on your own journey?
Now, let's make it easy. You can probably think of some like hairstyles, right, that you used to have. You're like, that is not me anymore. Maybe some clothing choices you could look back on and go, that was a different version of me, but hopefully you can look back and see. There were some opinions.
That you had back then that maybe you don't have those opinions the same way today. If you have kids, you probably feel this way about some parenting decisions that was made. In fact, as I record this James Dobson just died recently, and there is this collective. Outpouring of the pain and the hurt and an entire, actually multiple generations, gen X and millennials, as I've seen in on social media, both acknowledging just the.
Utmost [00:19:00] damage that was done from this man's parenting advice that was given to many Boomer parents. And that's what was considered normal in Christian culture. And many of us, I was raised thinking, this is what's normal, and began my parenting journey with that as the default setting. And then realize I don't like this and I don't wanna do this and I'm not going to keep this.
Going anymore. Right? And, and that's a lot of parenting, hopefully, is you looking back on decision. You went, I would not do it that way again. And all of this. You go, that was like two or three or four versions of me ago. Now you might look at this and you go, well, I don't want to have any of that.
I don't, I don't wanna feel that feeling. And, and yet I would encourage you, this is what growth. Looks like now Taylor Swift has a song lyric. We're going all over the place today. Taylor Swift has a song lyric and the song, look what you made me do, and I always love this line. She says, I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't [00:20:00] come to the phone right now.
Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead. And I love that because that's how I feel. If you tried to call the version of me from 10 years ago that wrote that book, I would say, I'm sorry he can't come to the phone right now. Because he is dead. That version doesn't exist anymore. All you can talk to is this version of me.
This is the version that is here now. You can't talk to that guy anymore. You can talk to the current me, but the current me incorporates the best of all the mes. That's the goal for each of us. That the current, you would be the, the collection of all the best versions of you that you put together and you, you leave off the junk, you move beyond that stuff that you go, yeah, I used to think that.
I used to believe that. I used to do that, but you don't have to be that person [00:21:00] anymore. And so you go, yeah, that was three, three mes ago. That was four. That was five. Five mes ago that was a long time ago. I have a section on this in the deconstruction field guide that I mentioned earlier.
I talk about how we need to learn to practice compassion for the versions of yourself that believed differently. Because what we often wanna do is look back and go, I was so stupid, or I cannot believe, I used to think that I cannot believe I used to do that. And rather than channel that into anything productive, we just get bitter , and remorseful and like unhealthy ways and like guilty and just shame.
And I can't believe that version of you carried you to where you are now. So it didn't have to be the best version of you, but that version got you here today for you to have the chance to be a better version of you so you don't [00:22:00] have to agree with the previous versions of you in order to use what they taught you.
This is a huge way to grow, to say, I'm taking the best of those versions. I am acknowledging there was things that, that version got wrong, and I'm going to use that to become the best version of me today. Now again, it's hard to realize. When you have made that shift, when you've shifted over? That was to me ago, it was two Jeremy's ago.
It's hard to know as you're doing, 'cause it happens slowly and it happens a day at a time. But you have moments where you get these reminders, where you get these little gifts from the universe, if you will. , Or from God that, hey, maybe I am growing and I've got a great story that reminded me of this.
I was on a fun run walk with my daughter at her school, and this is one of those raising [00:23:00] money for the school. And so, they sign up how many laps they're gonna do. I know the details, but she is having this fun run and it's like more of a walk-a-thon is a run. But I was gonna go walk with her and spend some time with her.
And so we get there and we're walking around, this field and, just lap after lap of this. And she's got one of her friends there, like one of her real close friends at school. And then her friend had her mom there. And so, I'm meeting, my daughter's friend and then I'm meeting the mom of my daughter's friend.
And so she's talking and I'm realizing like, okay, all that this mom knows of me is whatever her daughter has told her from conversations with my daughter. Right. So, this is kinda one of those parenting moments. You're like, what do your kids say about you when you're not there? Like, I don't really know.
And so you find out, when the parents come to you and. I got this conversation that I realized like, oh, this is funny, because the mom was setting up, she's having small talk, but I could tell she was setting up to ask me something. I didn't know where this was going. And [00:24:00] then she just flat out said, Hey, I don't know if this is, too bold to ask, but your daughter has said that you guys don't attend church anywhere.
We would love to invite you to go with us. And then she said the church that she went to and. It was one of those moments where I just remember thinking, oh, I've become the unchurched person that they're praying for. I'm the one, to use the language law churches use. Pray for your One or love your one.
I'm the one for this person. This family has chosen us because they know we don't go to church and we weren't going anywhere at that time. And so that's, they have concluded we need this. And so they're going to be the ones to bring us in. And it was one of those moments for me in my journey of being in full-time ministry for two decades and being a lead pastor and all this to be like, oh, I've never had this, I've never been on this end of this conversation [00:25:00] before.
It was just one of those like, oh, this is a new me. This is a new version of me that lead Pastor Jeremy was a couple Jeremy's ago, evidently, because this woman has no idea who that Jeremy was. She just knows this Jeremy. And so I was like, oh, that's really funny. But I am the, the sum of all those other versions of me.
Right. Which makes this next part of the story funny because the church she went to, I happened to be really good friends. With their lead pastor. And so I have this moment where I'm like, you're inviting me to your church because you don't think I go to a church and you clearly don't think I, I am in the fold.
I'm not experiencing Christianity. And yet I'm really good friends with your lead pastor because I have been in the ministry and I have. I have created a friendship with this guy. And so I said to her, I said, oh yeah, I know all about that church. And she goes, [00:26:00] you do? And I said, yeah.
And I said, I'm really good friends with, and I named her pastor and friends the look on her face. Like when I tell you she didn't have a box to put that in. She had no room for that. Her face is like trying to catch up to, what do you mean? You're friends with my pastor, how do you even know him?
You don't go to church. Like she had this narrative that I did not fit in and so I just said, yeah, we actually, I was on staff at church and I catch her up to the previous versions of me. Why this all makes sense. But that was this little moment of a reminder, you're not that you. Anymore, and maybe you have those reminders or maybe you've had one recently, pay attention to them because they're helping you see where you've been and where you're going.
Right? When someone has that conversation and you [00:27:00] like, what, how do you not know this? Or how, why are you saying this to me? We don't need to get mad about that. We don't need to be like, do you not realize? No, it's a beautiful gift. To realize, oh, I have grown. I'm not that same person, and yet I incorporate the best of that person.
I bring what I learned in that season with me into this version of me, and that is a beautiful thing. Now, if this idea. Of becoming different versions of yourself sounds sketchy. You're like, I don't know about this. I want you to consider what is the alternative? What's the other road you're gonna go down?
If you're like, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not gonna be become different versions of me. No way. What's the alternative? That you're gonna stay the same person you were when you were in grade school, that number version [00:28:00] of you is the same you. Today or the same version you were as a teenager, the way you understood the world.
That's the same way you understand the world today, or the version of you in your twenties. That's the same version of you today in your thirties or your forties or your fifties or your sixties, right? Like at some point you go, what's the alternative? If we're not willing to evolve, to grow, to say, I'm not that person anymore.
This is what growth looks like. In real time. It's to say, I, that was three Jeremy's ago. I don't even know the guy you're talking about anymore. That's not me. You can't talk to him anymore. He's dead. Right? All of this is language we use in our journey to becoming what we were designed to be what we can be.
I recently read a great book by Adam Grants called Think [00:29:00] Again. And he has a quote in the book that I love and I think it speaks to this idea. He says, part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we are mental misers. We often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones.
Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit the facts may have changed, that what was once, right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we are losing a part of ourselves.
And yet I want to suggest losing a part of yourself is what [00:30:00] growth looks like to say. I am not that person anymore, and so I want to encourage us to get more comfortable changing our minds. Saying, I used to believe this. I used to think this. I used to do this, but I don't do it anymore because I am not that version.
That was three Jeremy's ago. I'm not that version anymore. That version carried me to where I am today, and I have gratitude for him, but he's not here anymore. He's not around. That is not the version you're talking to. Much of the content that I make today, whether it's what I'm writing, what I'm speaking, the podcasts I'm doing, I'm making this content for the earlier versions of me.
I'm going back to that version four Jeremy's ago, five Jeremy's ago. [00:31:00] And trying to figure out what does he need to hear to get to where I am today and how can I help him get there quicker? How can I help him get there more directly? Now, I grew up as a preacher's kid. I grew up in the church environment with church ideas and friends.
Here's my experience. I didn't know that there was multiple Christian views of hell until I was in my late twenties. I didn't know it. Now you may say, well, you should have known or you weren't paying attention. I'm just telling you in the circles I walked in. That was not a conversation that was normalized.
I didn't discover that till my late twenties. So I make content for that version of me that didn't know these I ideas even existed. I make content for that person to know, Hey, there are ideas out there that you may have never heard of, but I want you to know they exist. I want you [00:32:00] to be aware of them.
And if you are trying to figure out how do you use your voice today, what is it that you can do that's most meaningful, I would figure out how do you offer your gifts to others by talking to the previous versions of you? What did the earlier versions of you need to know? Be the person today that tells people that.
Tell people the things that you have learned in the later versions of you. That is how you can help others who resonate with your journey, who resonate with your story and go, yeah, I didn't know that. I didn't understand that. You can create content and whatever way that looks like for you to those versions of you, because that will connect with people in a similar story.
Get all that to say this. This hopefully sounds good to you. You're like, yes, I'm in. I'm ready to grow. I'm ready to evolve. I'm ready to be a different version of [00:33:00] me, but there is a catch. I know I waited till the end of the episode to tell you that there's a catch. Here's the catch. My friends. If you're on board and you're willing to do this, the current you.
Can't become the next you. That's the catch. Something is going to have to change Something is going to have to get left behind. That is what is required for you to be become the next version of you. So if you say, I'm going to be exactly how I am, exactly the way I think everything exactly the same, this is gonna be the next version of me.
Nope. You've just locked yourself in time to perpetually be the same person until you are willing to say, the version of me today, right now cannot [00:34:00] be the next version of me without something dying. Something getting left behind you will not be able to make. The next step. So is it time to say thank you to the current you and then retire it?
Yeah. Some of you're feeling that maybe it's time with gratitude to say thank you to the current you and to lean in to those things You've been thinking about those things that are, they've been rolling around in your head. You thought maybe, maybe that's where the future me, maybe I believe those things.
Maybe I have the courage to explore those to see where those go. Yeah. That's where the next you is gonna come from. That, that you, that's willing to retire the current version of you. So then the question I'll leave you with is this, are you willing [00:35:00] to lose a current part of you? To grow in to the next version of you.
I'll see you on the next episode of Cabernet and pray.
