Casey Tygrett is an author, pastor, and spiritual director. He is the host of the “otherWISE” podcast, a place for gathering wise conversations about living well on the journey with Jesus. He holds both a Master of Divinity degree and a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation degree from Lincoln Christian Seminary. He has taught both graduate and undergraduate level courses in Christian higher education in the United States and Australia. He also serves as a board member for the Apprentice Institute, a program focusing on Christian spiritual formation located at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.
He is the author of two books, Becoming Curious: A Spiritual Practice of Asking Questions (2017) and As I Recall: Discovering the Place of Memories in the Spiritual Life (2019), both with InterVarsity Press.
Casey has served both in rural churches of 25 and suburban megachurches of 10,000. He and his wife Holley and their daughter Bailey currently live in Chicago, IL where he is the Theologian in Residence at Parkview Christian Church.
You can find Casey on:
Or check out his work at caseytygrett.com. If you're interested in booking Casey as a speaker for your next retreat or conference event, let him know!
Resources
As I Recall by Casey Tygrett
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
Grafted Life Ministries (Evangelical Spiritual Directors Association)
Christos Center for Spiritual Formation
Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen
Thanks for being a member of the Daily Growth Community! Here's the Daily Growth Journal: Redeeming Memories free download mentioned in Chapter 2 - Healing Painful Memories!
Join the Daily Growth Community to get access to the free Daily Growth Journal: Redeeming Memories journal prompts download mentioned in Chapter 2 - Healing Painful Memories!
Episode Audio:
Chapter 1 - The Role Memories Play in Spiritual Growth
Who you are right now, comes from who you were yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Who you are right now comes from your experiences and your memories. This is especially true of the way you view God and your identity in Christ. The experiences you had growing up affect the way you see God now. In this chapter, Casey unpacks how important it is to surround ourselves with the true story of the Gospel. And it's in remembering the Gospel that we form new memories that will in turn shape who we are in the future.
Chapter 2 - Healing Painful Memories
In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul said, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." You probably have a painful memory. It's hard to make it much past early childhood without some sort of painful experience that shapes who you are for the rest of your life. There's good news though. These painful memories can find healing as you begin to work through them with the Holy Spirit and with another person. In this chapter, Casey talks about a few of the tools he's found and developed for healing memories and allowing God to redeem the painful experiences of our lives. It's not an easy journey to take, but it's well worth it because redeemed memories always become tools that God can use to help others find healing as well.
Chapter 3 - There is Grace for Your Memories
The way God created us never ceases to amaze me. It seems as though every part of our being has some sort of connection to every other part. And even though we don’t always recognize connections, they are at work in our lives shaping us into the people we are. For instance, it's amazing that small, consistent actions each day can end up defining your entire life. Our habits, like our memories define who we are. And there is a powerful interplay between the two. One forms the other, which forms the other, and so on. And because of our conversation with Casey, I’m more convinced than ever that God created it this way. Our memories are the record of the past. Our habits are the projection of the future. It it would seem like they would be at odds with one another as each attempts to pull us in opposite directions. But in fact the opposite is true. When we allow our habits and memories to work together, we find God’s grace working in our lives to redeem our memories so that we may create new habits of walking with Him.
Chapter 4 - Finding a Guide for Processing Your Memories
If I told you that your memories didn’t belong to you, would you believe me? Probably not, right? And that’s because unless we share our memories with another person, no one else will know about them. But there has been two recurring themes have come up throughout our conversation this week with Casey. The first one is that we need give our memories over to God so he can redeem them through his love and grace. And the second is that we be walking with someone else in order to process these memories and make space for the Holy Spirit to do this work in us. And today’s chapter is about we can combine both of these practices into one. Because Casey serves as a Spiritual Director I wanted to ask him how walking with a Spiritual director could help us find Jesus in our own lives.