Unconditional Love: The Key to Real Change with Richard Rohr & Zach Meerkreebs
This episode mentions suicide and may be triggering for some listeners.
Richard Rohr: An experience of infinite, unconditional love—that’s what changes the prophets, and that’s the only thing that changes us. Not threats of hell, not promises of reward after we die, but an experience in this world of the touch of unconditional love.
Unconditional Love: The Key to Real Change with Richard Rohr & Zach Meerkreebs – Episode #459
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. This week, we’re diving into something truly transformative—the power of love to change everything. First, we hear from Father Richard Rohr, who shares his lifetime of wisdom about how experiencing deep, unconditional love—not rules or fear—is what really brings about meaningful change.
Then, Pastor Zach Meerkreebs takes us to Asbury University, where a truly extraordinary event happened in that faith community. He reminds us that following Jesus’ example of humility can open our lives up to amazing possibilities.
Let’s begin with Father Rohr.
Richard Rohr: I’m about to turn eighty-two. I’ve already had a full and wonderful life. I joined the Franciscans when I was nineteen, and it was one of the best decisions I made. They gave to me a wonderful spiritual education, and little did I know that I would join the Franciscans and see the world.
From there, they started asking me to write books. I never thought of myself as a writer, but it emerged. I’ve been here in New Mexico with the Center For Action and Contemplation for thirty-eight years now. My traveling days are over, but I still love to teach when I can.
The Importance of the Prophets
When I founded the Center in 1987, early write-ups called this place a school for prophets. I was teaching in a major way each group of new interns and students on the Jewish prophets, and their importance became more and more real to me. I think the lineage in which we must and can understand Jesus is in the lineage of a prophet. There’s no lineage of messiahs. There’s no lineage of sons of God. We’re all sons and daughters of God, but the prophet is the way He talks. And once we learn that genre, that’s where He’s at.
What you want to listen for in the prophet, in the speaker, is eventually the centrality of love and respect. They start angry, and that’s why a lot of us don’t want to read them and give up on them. But they change in the middle of every prophetic book, and what takes over is their divine encounter of an infinite lover, maybe as you see in Hosea 2 or Isaiah 40-55. They move from anger to tears. This becomes very explicit in Jeremiah where he writes a whole book called Lamentations. Anger doesn’t strengthen the soul. It strengthens the ego on both sides. Tears or sadness evolve the soul to compassion and empathy.
“Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,” the New Testament [Ephesians 4:26] says. But that doesn’t say, “Don’t be angry.” Right now there is so much that deserves anger—the wars in our world, how we treat the very ones Jesus told us to love, the little ones, the rejected ones. That comes from an excess of anger and a deficiency of sadness.
“‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,’ the New Testament says. But that doesn’t say, ‘Don’t be angry.’ Right now there is so much that deserves anger—the wars in our world, how we treat the very ones Jesus told us to love, the little ones, the rejected ones. That comes from an excess of anger and a deficiency of sadness.” – Richard Rohr
Recognizing That Anger May Be Sadness
I learned that in my years of giving men rites of passage out here in New Mexico. It was a five-day event, and the third day was called the Day of Grief, based on the historic initiation rites. Teaching men, men in particular, how to grieve was considered central to initiation. And when I’d say that on the third day, “A lot of you think your father was angry, and probably in many cases he was. Maybe a lot of you think of yourselves as angry, and maybe you are. But I want to give you a great mystery. You are more sad than you are angry, and so was your father.” The room would just turn ashen and silent. I kid you not, it never failed. The whole five-day retreat turned on that moment, where so many men, for the first time, recognized their anger was sadness.
An experience of infinite, unconditional love–that’s what changes the prophets, and that’s the only thing that changes us. Not threats of hell, not promises of reward after we die, but an experience in this world of the touch of unconditional love.
“An experience of infinite, unconditional love–that’s what changes the prophets, and that’s the only thing that changes us. Not threats of hell, not promises of reward after we die, but an experience in this world of the touch of unconditional love.” – Richard Rohr
What Remains Is Faith, Hope, and Love
Three things that Paul said would last forever—faith, hope, and love [1 Corinthians 13:13]. They are not achieved by practice, like maybe patience or temperance is learned. Faith, hope, and love are fallen into, if I can say it that way. They’re fallen into as the very life of God—a participation in the very life of God. God is faith, God is hope, God is love.
You can’t prove faith. Those who are inside the flow of participation know it to be true. Not I, but the Spirit that blows through me. Those who haven’t experienced that yet—they’re not being hard-hearted or cold, I don’t think. They just don’t know yet that faith, hope, and love are the very life of God and it’s a participatory experience. It’s the whole message, really.
This poem by a poetess, Rosemary Watola Trommer, “For When People Ask”:
I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.
Narrator: To learn more about Richard Rohr, you can visit the Center for Action and Contemplation online at www.CAC.org. His new book, The Tears of Things, is available wherever you get your books.
Stay tuned to Zach Meerkreebs’ story after a brief message.
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Our next guest is pastor and author Zach Meerkreebs from Asbury University. He joins us to share how what began as an ordinary chapel service during his visit as a guest pastor ignited something far greater—sparking a movement that continues to resonate today.
Zach Meerkreebs: I am Zach Meerkreebs, and I am honored to be married to Kristen, which all of us call her KP. I am Dad to three little girls—Eden, Esther, and Mercy. I have the gift of serving as one of the pastors at Asbury University, a small liberal arts Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky, about twenty minutes from Lexington, Kentucky. I work with athletes, at risk students, speak in chapel, and travel the world to encourage and cheer on the church.
Relationship Versus Religion
I actually grew up in a Jewish family. I didn’t know anything about Jesus. I didn’t know anything about the Gospel or the New Testament. I also grew up in a broken home. I think through that brokenness, I didn’t experience friendship with God at all. I didn’t experience relationship with God at all. It was all practice, all religion. It was in high school, after a season of great brokenness—I was struggling with substances and we had lost a dear friend to suicide. It was a bunch of Christian guys on my soccer team and their parents that helped introduce me to Jesus. So I gave my life to the Lord in high school. And pretty immediately felt called to ministry, specifically evangelism. I was so blown away by the message that I heard and the person I met in Jesus that I couldn’t imagine doing anything else besides just telling people about Him.
I ended up as a pastor in Lexington, Kentucky, specifically in college ministry, and that led to me planting a church and pastoring there. From there, I moved into mission work and was the guest preacher at Asbury. It feels like an assignment from the Lord that I get to do this and encourage churches and new friends, but ultimately, my heart is just to create spaces to introduce people to Jesus.
An Ordinary Service Becomes Extraordinary
Asbury University has three mandatory chapels a week. I was just a guest preacher on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, and preached on Romans 12:9-21. I preached about authentic love—how we can’t authentically love one another without experiencing the authentic love of Jesus first. I prayed what felt like a very simple prayer. I sat in my chair and texted my wife debriefing the sermon and let her know I would be home soon. Almost all the students left except about nineteen of them. And those nineteen students stayed and prayed and worshiped.
“We can’t authentically love one another without experiencing the authentic love of Jesus first.” – Zach Meerkreebs
After about an hour, those nineteen students had grown to about fifty students, and then another hour, probably a couple hundred students. By the evening, the chapel had probably a little over a thousand students in it, and there really seemingly was an encounter with God and His spirit—people were experiencing healing and experiencing joy and experiencing His presence through worship and encouragement of one another. And then, we decided to keep the chapel open, and it just continued to roll into the next day, and to the next day. Within a couple of days, it had been spread around the world that God was moving on this little campus, and we started having guests from South America and the Middle East and Asia to come and encounter God at our chapel service.
“Within a couple of days, it had been spread around the world that God was moving on this little campus, and we started having guests from South America and the Middle East and Asia to come and encounter God at our chapel service.” – Zach Meerkreebs
During those sixteen days, there are stories of people just dropping drugs off on the altar or their smartphones. There were people that brought razor blades or different things and left them on the altar. It wasn’t because we were preaching fire and brimstone angry messages. I think they were really experiencing the authentic love of God.
By the end of sixteen days, we had conservatively about 70,000 people visit for worship and prayer and encountering the Spirit, and it really felt like God had moved into the room in a really unique way. I had the joy of sitting in a front row seat and being able to preach and minister. It was a real gift.
“By the end of sixteen days, we had conservatively about 70,000 people visit for worship and prayer and encountering the Spirit, and it really felt like God had moved into the room in a really unique way. I had the joy of sitting in a front row seat and being able to preach and minister. It was a real gift.” – Zach Meerkreebs
Following Jesus’ Example of Humility
By the next semester, fall of 2023, I had the joy of coming on staff at Asbury to help the students, staff, and faculty continue to process what happened. What were we learning? What could we take away from this experience at Asbury? What have I taken away from my own personal journey with Jesus? It was hard to get away from this foundational ancient virtue of the Christian walk of humility, and as we leaned more into that, and as I studied it, I just realized that humility really is a foundation in what’s countercultural and captivating and convicting and compelling of the Christian walk. Because of Christ, we don’t have to prove ourselves. Because of Jesus, we are rooted in identity. We don’t have to strive for that, and that gives us the opportunity to go low in humility and rely on the cross more than our resumes.
“Humility really is a foundation in what’s countercultural and captivating and convicting and compelling of the Christian walk.” – Zach Meerkreebs
I hear messages like ascend, climb, prove yourself, and once you climb to the top of the ladder, then it gives you a platform to tell people about Jesus. But when I look at Jesus, the pinnacle of His greatest impact on earth, like the top highest moment of ministry in the world’s eyes, that was probably His lowest moment because He was humiliated and murdered on a cross.
But what if we can redefine and use scripture in Jesus’ example to find our gauge of success? I think it starts with our identity. I think so many people can gain a lot of freedom, peace, and security when we are rooted in our identity of Jesus. If you read scripture and study the person of Jesus, humility is the most captivating thing about Him. Even in Matthew 11:28-30, it’s one of the only times that Jesus uses adjectives to describe Himself. It is really one of the only times, and He says that, “He is gentle and humble of heart.” He could have said anything. He could have said victorious and strong and King and holy or whatever, but He said, “gentle and humble.” As the church and disciples and followers of Jesus, we need to remember that if the person we worship and follow acknowledges and points out those characteristics in Himself over all others, I wonder if people would pull out and name those things when they think about us and how we live. For people that don’t have a relationship with Jesus, what would they see if those who followed Jesus were the most humble people they met?
“If you read scripture and study the person of Jesus, humility is the most captivating thing about Him. As the church and disciples and followers of Jesus, we need to remember that if the person we worship and follow acknowledges and points out those characteristics in Himself over all others, I wonder if people would pull out and name those things when they think about us and how we live. For people that don’t have a relationship with Jesus, what would they see if those who followed Jesus were the most humble people they met?” – Zach Merkreebs
Jesus taught in Luke 14, when He saw a bunch of people trying to get the best seat at the table,
He says, “Imagine you’re at a feast and you sit in the seat of honor and the host has to invite you out of that seat to a lower seat.” How embarrassing would that be? He says, “How about you go and recline at the lowest seat,” and recline means to settle in, get comfortable. So many times I might sit at the lower seat, but I sit on the tip of my chair trying to get their attention, trying to prove that I should sit in a better seat. But He says, “Go sit at the lower seat so when the host invites you up, you can walk in confidence.”
I think that’s a new kind of success, and that’s what I’m experiencing as I contemplate and study these passages—that I can recline at the lowest seat or I can confidently sit in the higher seat because of who I am in Jesus, not because of anything else.
What Drives Us to Pray
I think the gift of relationship with God through prayer and reading and things like Jesus Calling that prompts our thoughts, is ultimately understanding who God is and who I am. Because I understand who I am and I understand who God is, that drives me to pray. I want to spend time with Him, because I know my life is better when I spend time with Him and when I listen to His voice. And that takes creating space to submit myself for Him to point out the things that don’t honor Him in my life, to point out the things that He wants to take out of my life. A lot of times that’s through prayer and reading scripture and pointing things out. It’s contemplating and asking the question, “Lord, is there anything in my head and my heart and my actions and my calendar that don’t honor you that I need to get rid of?” And when I lose track of that, and I start relying on myself, I’m on a fast track of pride.
“Because I understand who I am and I understand who God is, that drives me to pray. I want to spend time with Him, because I know my life is better when I spend time with Him and when I listen to His voice.” – Zach Meerkreebs
In the Bible, we hear about our adoption. We hear about being a friend of Jesus. We hear about being filled and advocated for by the Holy Spirit. It says that, “He’s a father to the fatherless, He puts lonely people in families.” That was the first thing that captivated my heart around the gospel. I’m substantially more proud of being a friend of Jesus and a son of God than being the guy who preached at Asbury, and that gives me a lot of freedom and peace.
Jesus Listens, August 8th:
Precious Savior,
You created me a little lower than the heavenly beings, and You gave me an amazing mind—with the ability to think things through and make decisions.
I’ve learned that my thoughts are extremely important because they strongly influence my emotions and behavior. So endeavoring to make good thought-choices is well worth my efforts.
Whenever I’m feeling joyless, I need to pause and remember that You are with me—watching over me continuously.
Thank You, Lord, for loving me with unfailing Love and for giving me Your Spirit.
In Your brilliant, joyful Name, Jesus,
Amen
Narrator: To learn more about Zach Meerkreebs check out his new book, Lower: Igniting Spiritual Awakening Through Radical Humility, at your favorite retailer.
If you’d like to hear more stories about the power of unconditional love, listen to our bonus podcast episode, titled “The Power of Love,” featuring multiple guests talking about how unconditional love changed their lives.
Next week: Emily Compango
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from attorney, TV host, and advocate Emily Compango. Emily shares about her experiences as an NFL cheerleader on a USO tour in Iraq, and her deep appreciation for the men and women of our armed forces.
Emily Compagno: The USO has obviously been present for decades, and USO tours have been a really vital part of improving, boosting, and securing troop morale for decades. I remember when I first arrived in Iraq as an NFL cheerleader, being struck by how young so many of the servicemen and women were. I was just so struck by these earnest, selfless, and determined men and women who were serving on behalf of our country so that we could enjoy our freedoms.
