Try Out Our New Trail Guide
A few weeks ago, my web guy asked whether I’d be interested in adding an AI guide to my websites—something that could help people search for information, explore questions, or stimulate their thinking and prayers in situations they are facing.
I was skeptical at first. I wasn’t sure we needed another feature. But with thousands of pages from books and blogs, along with hundreds of hours of audio, I began to wonder whether it might help people find resources that would otherwise remain buried. It does a wonderful job of synthesizing my thoughts into a few paragraphs on every topic I’ve covered.
The contents of my books and Lifestream blogs, along with more than 1,000 episodes of The God Journey, have now been made available to our new Trail Guide. It can help you explore a question, locate relevant resources, summarize material, or point you toward books, articles, and conversations that may be useful for your journey.
It can also respond in multiple languages, allowing people around the world to receive recommendations and summaries in the language most comfortable for them.
I’ve been testing it over the past few days, and I’m genuinely impressed by how helpful it can be. That said, it won’t always get everything right. It is AI, after all. In one of my test runs, it confidently informed me that my friend Luis was from Kenya. He is not, and we trained it not to make that mistake again.
So, use it as a guide rather than an authority. And should it tell you something that doesn’t sound like me—or simply gets the facts wrong—please let me know. To find it, simply click on this button on the bottom right of any page at Lifestream.org or TheGodJourney.com. They look like this:
At Lifestream:
At The God Journey:
It is the same bot, so the answers you get will be drawn from all the resources at both websites. We’ve also included information from My Friend Luis.
To give you a taste of how you can use it, here are three sample questions I posed to it:
Question: I love the way Wayne presents relational church life, but what would he say about Hebrews 10:25, “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”
Trail Guide:
Wayne takes that verse seriously—but not the way many churches do. He’d say the problem isn’t with Hebrews 10:25 itself; it’s with how we’ve narrowed what “assembling together” actually means.In Relational Church, Wayne points out that this passage has “suffered more abuse than” almost any other Scripture. It’s been weaponized to mean you must show up to a Sunday service regularly or you’re disobedient—but that’s not what the writer of Hebrews is talking about. The call is to relationship, not to meetings. It’s about staying connected, not isolated. Wayne notes that he’s watched gifted people “die on the vine” because they got relationally isolated—and that’s what the passage is warning against.
The real assembling, as Wayne sees it, happens when your life is genuinely open to others’ lives and theirs to yours. In Thinking Outside the Box, he explores the Greek word for “gathered together”—it’s reflexive, intimate, suggesting real interconnectedness. That can happen in a pew, sure. But it also happens at coffee with a friend, in a home, or anywhere two or three are genuinely present to each other in Jesus.
The point isn’t where you assemble or how often. It’s whether you’re living in authentic connection with other believers who know you, encourage you, and help you grow in Jesus. That’s what Hebrews is protecting—and Wayne would say that’s exactly what relational church life offers.
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Question: I am frustrated with my wife’s spiritual journey. She doesn’t seem to share the same level of passion. What might Wayne say to help us?
Trail Guide: I hear the frustration, and Wayne has thought deeply about this. The heart of what he’d say is this: your wife’s spiritual journey is hers, not yours to manage or measure against your own passion.
In “Lonely Seasons On a Relational Journey,” Wayne talks about a couple where the husband had deep spiritual passion but the wife’s approach was different. Instead of letting him have his own journey, she kept trying to badger him into alignment with hers—and it became painful for both of them. The answer wasn’t to make him see what she saw. It was to stop trying to control his path.
The same applies in reverse. Wayne has written about this in “The Obnoxious Self” and touched on it in “The Simplicity of a Loving Life“—when we’re passionate about something spiritual, we can become deceptive in our passion to help people see what we see. We end up trying to make them into versions of ourselves, which actually damages the relationship.
What Wayne encourages instead is to let her be herself on her own journey with God. Support her where she is. Don’t badger, evangelize, or try to awaken her to your level of passion. That’s between her and the Father.
For a deeper exploration of marriage when partners are on different spiritual paths, I’d point you to the curated collection on Family Life in The God Journey archives—there’s real wisdom there about honoring each other’s journeys.
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Question: I’m thinking about forming a house church in my area. Would Wayne have an advice for me?
Trail Guide: Wayne has a lot of wisdom on this, and it flows from his deep conviction that the church Jesus is building is far more organic and relational than most people imagine.Start with “Finding Church” — it’s his book on exactly this question. Wayne explores what authentic church actually looks like when it’s not bound by institutional structures. He talks about the beauty of smaller, relational gatherings where people can truly know one another and encounter Jesus together, rather than performing for an audience. The book will give you a framework for thinking about what you’re building.
Beyond that, Wayne’s core conviction is this: don’t start with a model or a program. Start with people and relationship. In his teaching on church, he emphasizes that real church happens when a group of people genuinely know the Father’s love and are learning to live that out together. It’s not about getting the structure right; it’s about creating space where people can be honest, vulnerable, and help one another encounter Jesus more deeply.
A few things Wayne would likely encourage: First, make sure the foundation is grace, not performance or control. Second, let the gathering serve the people’s real spiritual hunger, not an agenda. Third, invest in genuine relationships—that’s where the real work of God happens. And fourth, stay flexible. Let the Spirit lead rather than trying to replicate someone else’s model.
For more on the nature of relational church life, explore the curated page “Where will I find the church Jesus is building?” — it has organized links into Wayne’s teaching on authentic community.
People often ask me where to find certain things on my website; this will make it much easier and more fun for you to explore on your own.
What do you want to ask our Trail Guide?
Just Love: