When making space for God to speak we have to ask the question: What does it mean to be God’s son or daughter and receive him as a loving Father? How does that change how you relate towards him? In this episode Gina talks to Roy Cochran about his personal journey from servant to son. Roy is a pastor, mentor, worship leader and co-founder of Third Chair Ministry.
For more information about Roy and Christine Cochran and Third Chair Ministry you can visit them at roycochran.com
Meet Roy Cochran
Gina:
Roy Cochran, is a dear friend of mine. We’ve been doing life together for a lot of years. Our families have done a lot of ministry and life together. Roy is a pastor, worship pastor, leader, mentor, father in the faith and a man after God’s own heart.
He and his wife Christine, have a ministry called Third Chair that ministers to, encourages and builds up creatives in the church. I asked Roy to share the story behind the name Third Chair, because it has a profound impact, not just on his life, but the implication for us as believers.
Roy:
I’m excited that you’re doing this. There’s so much in you. You have a lens to see things that Sacred Space is going to be a life-giving river to a lot of listeners. I used to have run on sentences of the people that God would bring into our lives and they were tech directors, they were worship leaders, they were musicians, they were songwriters, they were film people, they were photographers.
And we condensed it down to the word artist. What we’ve found is because God’s a creator and we’re in His image. All of you who are listening are creative.
Our little niche happens to be with those who have carved a living out or they’re leaning into their creative side in a ministry or vocational way. But the truth of the matter is the things that we are trafficking in every person is there’s creativity in everything that everyone does.
Gina:
Roy partnered, for a period of time, with different organizations like Worship Mentor Network and the Grove. And in the last year he and Christine have launched their ministry, which is the Third Chair. Roy and I could sit here and talk for hours.
So many things about intimacy with God, about relationship with Jesus, with the Father, with the Spirit, the things that we’ve experienced, what we’ve experienced leading others and what God’s revealed to us.
Roy, I would love for you to share the story behind the name, Third Chair. There’s something profound about that story. And it was a game changer for you personally. I would love for you to share that story if you wouldn’t mind.
The Uncomfortable Art of Waiting on The Lord
Roy:
In the midst of you and I growing up serving in the church in large platform arenas, we were privileged to see the world from a large viewpoint. It gave me the impression that I understood God in ways that many other people might not, given the privileged position that we had.
More and more there were gaps in my personal life and in my ministry life that I didn’t have anyone to go to, places where I felt like “I don’t know if I could ask that.” So we were introduced to this couple who had a ministry out of their house. When you’re coming from a church of 8,000 people, and you’re going to go meet with someone who has 15 to 25 people in his living room, a young mindset might go, “I wonder, they must not have too much influence.”
I honestly went in a little skeptical. I walked in on my wife now, we were dating at the time. In a sense we were going into a counseling moment. This couple, their whole life was a sacred space and I’d never met anyone like that. I thought I did, but I didn’t until I met this couple.
Looking back, they were, I believe, a picture of what normal Christianity was always meant to look like. Jeff and Joy invited us into their house. They had this expectation, they flipped things, they used language like, “Let’s ask the Father what he has to say about what’s troubling you.”
They led us through some unfamiliar territory, which sounds funny being in high profile ministry, it was new to us at the time. And we had a tremendous connection, through the power of the Holy Spirit, on some issues that were plaguing both of us.
As a result of that, Jeff invited me back to hang out with him, one on one. I came a few weeks later and he greeted me at the door with an uncomfortably long hug, where you release and they’re still holding on. I definitely felt like he was getting a spiritual read on me.
Honestly, it was an indicator of how uncomfortable I was with intimacy. We go in and he says, “Let’s have a seat here, at the kitchen table. In his kitchen there were two chairs, and we sat down. Then he got up and he pulled up a third chair and I go, “I thought it was going to be just us.”
And he says, “No, no.” I go, “Who else is coming?” And he says, “This is for the Lord.” And I thought, “That’s cute. That’s nice symbolism.” He goes, “No, we believe God’s alive. We believe that He loves us. But we don’t have a lot of faith that He’ll actually communicate to us in moments like this.
We have hope that He’ll communicate to us when the word is being preached or, in the midst of a connection in worship. But in our day to day struggles, sometimes we have a hard time connecting our world with the unseen world.”
So what Jeff said is what I do. I pull up this chair in our world to make a place for the One who has authority over the unseen world, so that we don’t talk about Him and we don’t speak for Him and we don’t presume what He would say. It’d be rude if He was sitting there and we say, “God would say this.”
Gina:
Talk about Him in the third person. You have someone over for dinner and you act as if they weren’t there.
Roy:
And I find through the years now, even after having 16 years of him pouring into my life, it’s incredibly awkward if you’re in a coffee house, when someone’s going through life’s challenges and they want to hear God’s Counsel, but they assume that I know Him so well that I’m going to speak on behalf of God.
There’s nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that, but it’s so much better if you hear from Him directly. To pull up a Third Chair in a coffee house, or even on this recording and say, “God, what do You want to say? You have authority over the unseen. And there’s some unseen things that are blocking my friend here.
There’s some things in the way, and whether they’re wounds or scars or whatever, there’s unseen things that are hindering them from becoming the person that You see them as. Can you speak into this?”
It was a little awkward to say the least, I’d bring up an area that I was struggling with and he would say, “Let’s ask the Lord.” And I’d go, “Okay, let’s do it.” And then do you fill up that time with prayer words? What he taught me is the uncomfortable art of waiting on the Lord.
He would ask, then we would sit. Then he would notice that I was squirming out. I didn’t know what to do. So he would ask questions. “Are you getting any pictures in your mind? Do you feel like you’re daydreaming? Is there something in your thoughts that might be Him bringing something up?”
And these were all things that I thought was my imagination or me drifting. And at times that could be true too, but God gave us an imagination to get us comfortable with a place where He could speak into our lives and He could speak into our hearts.
Gina:
How amazing and intentional and tender and patient of Jeff to take your hand and lead you through that. His patience with your uncomfortableness and his loving wisdom to say, “What are you sensing?” I’ve taught prayer classes and I’ve led worship and I’ve mentored. I’ve sat in front of people who have been walking with the Lord for 27 years, 30 years who feel like they’ve never heard His voice.
Who are even insecure about even praying out loud and feel the need for someone they consider to be spiritual to pray on their behalf and then to hear on their behalf. One of the things that I’m passionate about is: how do we help people to do what Jeff did for you? To go, “It’s okay. It might be a little uncomfortable now, but God is here and He loves you and He knows. Let’s hear what He has to say.”
Then start to listen and also have permission to not get it, and to get it, and to know that God’s given us the filters to pass through, “Does this line up with what God says about who He is? Does it line up with what God says about who we are?” If it does, then we’re on the track. If it doesn’t, then it’s not.
Check out Roy Cochran
Check out the rest of the conversation How to Hear God’s Voice
out the Dwell Meditations
