David Bowden

David Bowden has a bachelor’s degree in Bible and biblical studies and a master’s in theology. But you won’t hear him use stiff, confusing language to describe the gospel. In fact, he makes it his life’s goal to explain Jesus and his Word clearly and understandably so that as many people as possible can encounter the gospel. Unsurprisingly, that’s also the goal of the ministry he cofounded, Spoken Gospel, which has produced numerous free videos to help viewers find Jesus in every book of the Bible. A master of words, David is also a spoken word poet and an author of books like “When God Isn’t There,” “Rewire Your Heart” and “Learning to Be Loved,” which he co-wrote with Mart Green. Join today’s encouraging conversation about the Oklahoma City Arts District’s best restaurants and tiki bars, the joy of human imagination and the crutch of self-condemnation. And make sure you don’t miss David’s story of how God led him to turn down a lucrative job offer — only to bring him something far better.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

Growing up in Oklahoma City, my conception of restaurants was hemmed in by Golden Arches on one side and Golden Corral on the other. A good restaurant was where you could get stuffed with comfort food.

But as I went to study the Bible at Oklahoma Christian University, my city started to open up to me. In the heart of our city’s Arts District, I found a bar with a slam poetry night. This is not only where I cut my teeth on spoken word poetry but also where I sank my teeth into my first vegan dishes and first scoops of handcrafted cinnamon ice cream.

Now, when friends come in from out of town, our go-to spot is a Mexican restaurant and adjacent tiki bar there in the Arts District. I take them to my old poetry stamping grounds for a bite, but it’s unsurprisingly closed due to unpaid back taxes. My wife and I have had countless experiences over tacos and a tiki drink with friends. We’ve sent and welcomed missionaries, celebrated birthdays, wrapped filming projects and even courted new employees around those tables. There’s something about the history that place has in my life that keeps me going back.

Art and beauty enhanced my city, my calling and my understanding of what food can really be. Now, we let the art and beauty of great meals enhance our friendships, milestones and lives.

Disney World — Christian Lambert; Unsplash

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?

What can be the most stressful place on earth for some is the most restorative place on earth for me. Yes, I’m talking about the most magical place on earth — Disney World.

I’ll go by myself. But I’m not there to ride rides or take pictures. I’m there to be there, to take it in and to enjoy one of the greatest expressions of raw creativity on the planet. That’s what I love about Disney World. It shows the beauty, excellence and joy that human imagination can create.

I love to walk around and experience the world-forming ingenuity God has given to us as creatures made in his image. It fills me with new ideas about what’s possible, what good things we might make and how we can partner with God to bring his kingdom to earth. I often get the same feeling when walking through an art museum or architectural wonder. But at Disney World, I get to eat a churro while doing it. Nothing quite brings out my sense of wonder, sense of calling and sense of childlike faith as exploring an imaginary world come to life in the swamplands of Florida.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?

Everyone has ways to dissociate, numb and medicate. While I’m not at all incapable of physical vices, my poison is psychological. I throw myself into guilt trips. I think, “If I were a better Christian, had a stronger rhythm of spiritual disciples or just loved Jesus more, I wouldn’t be stressed, overwhelmed or anxious.”

I give myself to these thoughts because they actually make me feel holier — even though it’s a false piety. If I feel bad enough, I will have compensated for my failures elsewhere. This crutch is easy to hide because it’s so often accepted by my Christian friends. It looks like repentance and remorse over sin. But really, I’m just hiding from the love of Jesus. I’m refusing to feel accepted and forgiven. That is the main reason I needed to write “Learning to Be Loved.” I needed to find new ways to learn God’s love for me instead of always using guilt and shame to feel like I earned God’s sympathy.

While I definitely still struggle with this, I now have at least 20 new practices through which I can see that God loves me even when I struggle to love myself.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

In my walk with Jesus, I’ve learned a lot of ideas about God’s love. In leading the ministry of Spoken Gospel, I’ve been able to write and make free videos about Jesus’ gospel out of every book of the Bible. Yet, like so many Christians, I have struggled to feel and experience that love. This is why my friend Mart Green and I wrote “Learning to Be Loved.”

Through decades of wounds and mistakes, healing and breakthrough, Mart found dozens of “gateways” through which he learned to experience God’s love intimately. These gateways were things like Bible reading, prayer, generosity and worship — things you would expect.

A few years ago, Mart handed me a little pamphlet that listed all these gateways. I set the gateways on a prayer bench in my office and began to ponder how God wanted me to walk through each one. But that was the problem. The more I tried to get to God through the gateways, the more I felt like I wasn’t doing it right. Then I realized that the gateways weren’t ways I moved toward God; rather, they were ways God was already moving toward me.

This crystallizing thought led Mart and I to write a practical and accessible book called “Learning to Be Loved.” In it, we explore 20 gateways, or spiritual disciplines, you might be familiar with. But in each of them, we learn how we have misunderstood and warped these gateways to God’s love — and how to recover them as doors God uses to love us.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

One of the many stories Mart and I share in “Learning to Be Loved” paints an incredible picture of how the Spirit speaks and what happens when we listen. I was a poor, traveling spoken word poet trying to share the gospel through art. My wife and I were living paycheck to paycheck when I got a job offer for six figures in the marketing space. But what about my ministry?

While processing my answer, I was invited to go on a speaking tour through England. My wife and I went, sharing the gospel in schools and churches throughout the country. During our layover back in the States, I felt an extreme peace about the decision. “I’m supposed to turn down this job and give everything to sharing the gospel,” I said. In a tone that implied she knew all along, my wife said, “I know.”

I called and turned down the job. Dropping my phone in the seat next to me, I wondered if I had made the worst decision ever. Just then, my phone buzzed. It was an email from Mart Green, my co-author for “Learning to Be Loved.” The email said, “God put you on my heart. Do you want to get lunch and talk about your financial needs?” This led to Mart and his wife sowing into our ministry, which, 10 years later, birthed Spoken Gospel and over 100 million gospel presentations online.

When we listen to God, wait for his timing and obey when he speaks, miraculous things happen.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?

This is a really hard question to answer right now. Having just published a book on 20 spiritual disciplines (“Learning to Be Loved”), this has been the hardest and sweetest time in my life for pursuing spiritual practices. In each chapter I found myself having to confess how much I struggle with each practice while also admitting that God has been undeniably working through them despite my weakness.

All that to say, right now, prayer walks are filling my life like nothing before. Each morning, rain or shine, I get up before the sun, have a cup of coffee and then hit the forest trails by my house. There’s no agenda. There’s no quota for words spoken. It’s just time to walk with God. A lot of it is quiet. Those are really the best parts. In the silence each morning, I’m learning to feel the companionship of God, the persistent love of Jesus and the voice of the Spirit.

Two things really cracked open prayer walks for me. One, which we talk about in “Learning to Be Loved,” is the fact that the majority of prayer should be listening, not talking. I didn’t spend a lot of time in prayer because I didn’t know what to say. But now, I don’t have to say anything and can just listen. Second, I love walking. I coupled a practice I struggled in — prayer — with an activity I treasured — outdoor walks. While there are so many more ways I’m learning to be loved in this season, walks with God have been the sweetest.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart? What radically altered your life? What changed your reality?

Nothing has changed my spiritual life more than the gospel-centered movement, championed by people like the late Tim Keller. Keller’s teaching series on “The Gospel in Life” changed everything about how my wife and I saw our relationships with God. His work on gospel-centered preaching radically shaped my ministry. It began in its nascent form in a Reformed Theological Seminary class called “Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World.” These thoughts became distilled in his book, “Preaching.” For me, our ministry at Spoken Gospel wouldn’t exist without the influence of Tim Keller.

No human relationship (outside of my marriage) has shaped me more than my friendship with Mart Green. Like me, Mart lives in Oklahoma City. He and his family founded and steward Hobby Lobby. We met when I spoke at his church. Within a week, he had brought me to New York City to meet a group of Bible translation CEOs who were collaborating in generous new ways to eradicate Bible poverty. His example of generosity, living walk with Jesus and prayerful friendship have shown me the kind of man I want to be. So while it may be cheating, I would be lying if I didn’t say that Mart’s book (which I got to help with) called “Learning to Be Loved” is now one of the most formative works in my life.

And let’s be honest, what answer to this question is complete without a mention of “The Lord of the Rings?”

We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times — times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.

As I’ve said before, prayer has long been a struggle for me. And since I’m a biblical academic of sorts, Bible reading is full of extra obstacles and intentions. There is one practice that combines these two, called Lectio Divina or Divine Reading. Although it’s a long-standing Christian tradition, I have been pretty averse to it. It seemed to approach the Bible too mystically, whereas I was used to approaching it academically. But I knew I longed to learn to pray and to read my Bible more meditatively.

That’s when I heard about an app made by the 24/7 Prayer movement called Lectio 365. Each morning and evening, there is a short, guided prayer through the practice of Lectio Divina. It is simple and beautiful and has stirred up my prayer life in crazy new ways. Also, it’s totally free.

Each morning on my prayer walk, when I’m turning back toward my house, I put on headphones and listen to the guided meditation. In the evenings, I like to use it as my last meditation before falling asleep. This practice has given me so much for language and resources in my prayer life and in my study of Scripture.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

So many Christians struggle to read the Bible. Even those who do read it often walk away feeling confused and, perhaps more importantly, unchanged. Not only can the Bible be hard to understand, but it can be extremely difficult to apply each passage to your life in a way that is transformative. But I think that is because we have been reading the Bible the wrong way. In Luke 24, Jesus told his disciples that the whole Bible was about him. Yet, many of us struggle to see Jesus and his gospel when we read books like Leviticus and 1 and 2 Chronicles. But the beautiful truth is Jesus is there! And when we see him, we will be transformed (2 Cor. 3:18).

That is why, for six years, my team and I at Spoken Gospel have been working on a huge project. We have been making videos that unpack every book and chapter of the Bible with one goal in mind — beholding Jesus. We’ve seen millions engage with these free resources and thousands join us in supporting the mission. But that wasn’t the only goal.

Even though many Western Christians struggle to read the Bible, for unreached people groups around the world, it’s almost impossible. Millions of people have zero resources to help them understand the Bible. That’s why we’re beginning to explore, in partnership with other ministries, how we can address the “theological poverty” facing so much of the world. We are starting in one of the largest unreached people groups in the world — Japan. We cannot wait to see how the kingdom moves in these places as an understanding of God’s Word and the gospel are unleashed.

Why is it that reading the Bible — especially certain parts containing prophecy or genealogies — can sometimes feel like reading a textbook? The truth is, the Bible can’t fill our hearts and transform us without the working of the Holy Spirit.

The apostle Paul knew that, which is why he often prayed “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:17,18, ESV).

How do you need the Holy Spirit to enlighten your eyes today? Next time you read or listen to the Bible, consider praying Paul’s prayer for yourself — God may surprise you with what happens next.