Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation · Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw

119 Finding Miracles Between Doubt and Joy (with singer-songwriter Andy Squyres)

·46 min·3 clips

Squyres says God can bring “profound pleasure” through unanswered prayer and “utter mystification.”

1. Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation focuses on singer-songwriter Andy Squyres, a conversation about doubt, joy, and prayer. 2. Jeff Holzclaw hosts the episode, and Squyres matters because he writes songs about faith, disappointment, and spiritual honesty. 3. The episode asks what faith looks like when childlike trust, grief, and miracle-language all coexist. 4. Squyres says he was raised Pentecostal in the International Four-Square Gospel and later rethought parts of that tradition. 5. He describes a young-adult season in a charismatic, explicitly evangelical church community that formed him deeply. 6. He says that community also faced tragedy, which forced him to rethink how God works in the world. 7. Holzclaw brings up Squyres’s line that he would rather hope in God for everything and be disappointed than hope for nothing. 8. Squyres connects that stance to a California desert church with a sign reading “miracle service every Wednesday night at 6 p.m.” 9. He says the sign felt audacious because miracles were being put on a calendar. 10. He describes the sign as tender because it pointed him back toward innocence and reliance on the living God. 11. Squyres says disappointment and grief led him to stop asking God for help. 12. He says that shift dampened the part of the heart that connects with God. 13. He describes his current posture as wanting a friendship with God that is “more open than closed.” 14. He argues that faith cannot be reduced to intellect, morality, aesthetics, or ethos alone. 15. He says the Psalms gave language for both sorrow and trust, and Holzclaw links that to secure attachment. 16. Squyres says his song “Death Defying Joy” came from writing as “a disappointed charismatic.” 17. He says he wrote it while wanting to make room for chronically sick people in a church that prays for healing every Sunday. 18. He says Paul’s language about abounding and abasing helped him see meaning in seasons where prayers are unanswered. 19. The conversation is informal, reflective, and personal, with theology moving through stories, songs, and Bible references. 20. People who like honest conversations about prayer, grief, and charismatic faith will likely listen closely, while people wanting quick devotional tips may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady conversation about doubt, devotion, and the stubborn hope that nothing is wasted.

Jeff Holzclaw hosts a conversation with singer-songwriter Andy Squires that stays close to doubt, worship, deconstruction, and the claim that nothing is wasted.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a singer-songwriter conversation that holds deconstruction, doubt, worship, and zeal in the same frame, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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