Rediscover Prayer: From Performance to Presence (Addison Bevere)

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined today by Addison Bevie, and we're going to be talking about his new book, which is actually based on a previous book he wrote, Words with God. We're going to be talking about Words with God, Prayer Journal, as well as some of the other things that he does. He's president of Messenger International, which is the discipleship ministry, and he also started something that's called Rediscover Prayer dot Com. And so Addison, welcome to the podcast. Man, thanks for being here.

00:00:59
Speaker 2: Thanks Doctor James's honorby on the show.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so.

00:01:03
Speaker 1: I think you were talking a little bit before we got on and started recording. But I mean, I'd just be interested. How did rediscover prayer start? I think that's a cool story. It might be a nice place for us to jump into the conversation.

00:01:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. So I grew up in a home with two amazing parents who are both authors ministers, and so I grew up in an environment where prayer was modeled for me. My dad is the kind of person who would get up early in the morning, would be out there four point thirty five m in the morning. He would go out and pray for a couple hours. Come in. I would get up. I would see him reading his Bible in his study, and so that was modeled for me my entire life. And I've got to be honest with you. I would watch him do it, and I would think to myself, I could never do that. He's on another level. And so I would see that, and I would think to myself, man, because he just going out there for two hours and just praying to God, just saying after thing after thing, articulating the you know, the depths of his soul. Like I start praying for three minutes, and I feel like my mind wanders, and I feel like I get distracted and I lose interest, and so I had this performative view of prayer, and the enemy did a really good job of convincing me that prayer was more about my performance and less about God's desire to be a constant presence in my life. And that led me on. That led me on a journey, come to find out years later. Okay, so I'm in my early thirties. At this point, I'm having a conversation with my dad and this is two funny. I'm like, Dad, I have to know, like, what were you doing? What do you do when you go out and pray for twevers of the morning. He's like, well, Addison, I prayed for like fifteen minutes and then I just listen. I listen. I just pace and I'm quiet, and I'm still. I'm like, Dad, you're telling me you just go out there and you listen. He said, that's what like that. I had this idea of you just being out there going through every single scripture going through He's like, no, No, that's not what I'm doing. And what was amazing is God taught me that in a different way, through a different experience, but it was it was fascinating to see how we both arrived at the same place. Even though our styles are different, our emphasis is different. It was neat for me. It was a full circle moment because I had this idea of my dad that actually wasn't accurate. Yes, he was a man of prayer, but the idea of prayer was different than what I thought. It wasn't. What I found out James studying prayer is that ninety eight percent of corn to Barna, roughly ninety eight percent of people they share this this sense that they're bad at prayer, that when it comes to prayer other people they have it figured out and we're missing it. And I think the accuser does a really good job of making prayer about a performance that we have to get right, turning it into a transaction rather than a transformational experience that extends outside of a moment, energizes every moment of our lives. And of course, shame is a powerful disqualifier when it comes to intimacy, so of course he wants prayer to be a place of shame where we think we're never doing enough, we're not enough, we don't know the right words, we don't know how to long to pray, we don't know the forms, we don't know the place whatever it may be, or you haven't been doing this well, so of course God's not going to engage with you in your moment or hour of need. And so I love going into that dissonance, that question and be like, Okay, no, what really is prayer all about? And how does God meet us in that intimate place of purpose and peace and provision and protection.

00:04:46
Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Do you find that, you know, as you've been working with people on prayer and interacting with people on prayer, do you find that many people have as much difficulty starting sort of the talking part of prayer as they do slowing down to do the listening part of prayer? I mean, when you talk about your dad's experience there he prays for fifteen minutes. I can almost get my head around that. But then pacing around and listening for the other, you know, hour forty five, I'm kind of like, man, it just it feels like our fast paced world really squeezes that time out, And you know, so you're like, well, what am I doing? Shouldn't I be on the treadmill multitasking my prayer life or something like that?

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Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Do you find that people struggle with that aspect.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And I think going back to the fundamental disconnect is this idea we make ourselves the hero or the villain of our prayers, and we vacillate back and forth between the two. It's like, oh, I'm checking the boxes. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, so of course God's going to engage. Or I haven't done what I should be doing. I'm not checking the boxes, so of course God's not going to disengage. And the invitation that God has extended to me is like, look, I don't need you to be the hero, and I don't need you to be the villain. I need you to be a willing participant. And if you look at first Sessonians five seventeen, right the famous pray constantly pray without ceasing a Romans twelve twelve pray constantly pray always or Ephesian six's eighteen at all times pray this idea of constant prayer. We hear that if we engage prayer as a chore, that becomes a burden right that we could never lift, rather than a blessing, rather an invitation to constant and intimacy it becomes a burden. And when you dig into the Greek at First Sessions five to seventeen, it's actually an invitation to pray from a place of constant rest, where there's a receptivity that allows you to engage with what is most real about life, what's most real in your circumstance, in that moment, where you can engage the moment for what it really is, rather than superimposing your own insecurity, your own sense of lack, your own doubt, your own fear, whatever it may be. And to your point about this idea of praying, articulating the words, that's difficult, but then also being ill and rest that's difficult. I love what James One actually says. I mean, I think a lot of us when we read James we don't realize that, James One, that chapter is predominantly about prayer, and we miss there's an instruction in there where it talks about actually being being slow to speak, be quick to hear. This idea of being being sensitive, and it's it's built on this foundation that our God is good, that there's no there's no shade, there's no shadow, that he gives wisdom to those who ask that even though we go through various trials, we know that these trials are forming and forging something in us that is of eternal value. And so when we start to understand, hey, the pressure isn't on us to perform. We can engage prayer in a way where when we need to speak, there is a confidence because we're sensitive to the leading of the spirit, And when we need to be quiet and still to receive something that we don't have, we can just be still and know that He is God. And then that prepares us to partner with God. When we do speak, prepares us to partner with God. And I think about the Lord's prayer not as a formula, but as a framework. It starts with this sensitivity to God's goodness, his otherness, his power, his might, his kingdom, the extent of it and invades every dimension. Our Father, who is into heavens, who permeates every dimension, everything that we know about time and space and beyond. He is there. And from that place that God consciousness is what I call it. I was, like most of us, we try to pray from a place of self consciousness. And the reality is it's really hard to be God conscious when you're self conscious, and that is why even the way Jesus teaches us to pray, it's forming this God consciousness before we move into things like asking for our daily bread, or struggling to receive forgiveness and extend forgiveness, or understand the trials, the temptations, the difficult things we're walking through in life. And so those are the types of things I like to bring people into before we even talk about how long we're praying, or are we praying, are we articulating, are we listening. I'm like, hey, let's go back to what this is actually all about, this connectivity with God, and what are some of the foundational principles that allow us to build a healthy life of prayer.

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Speaker 1: So much of that you mentioned, you know, sort of blessing, so much that aligns with the sort of theology of blessing and the general trajectory that God wants to take us toward. I just reviewed a book on this. This gentleman was reviewed or was analyzing the priestly blessing in Numbers, and the whole book was basically just on that. But in the process he talks about what it meant to be blessed and that these weren't just sort of well wishes. They were aiming to sort of redirect you into the stream of what God is doing, to allow you to participate in where God wants you to go. And so part of the blessing what brought sort of an obligation that now you knew what that blessing trajectory was, and now you're supposed to fit within the stream of that. And it just seems like the way you're the way you're thinking about prayer would fit so well within that.

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Speaker 3: Is that Is that a fair statement?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, because again going back to it, the enemy is the enemy is brilliant in one sense, right, Like so even if you look at if you look at the blessing of the garden, the blessing was that God walked with them in the cool of the deck. The blessing was this uninhibited intimacy with the reality of God, with the presence of God. And what does the accuser do. The accuser comes in and says, hey, actually, you can have knowledge of good and evil, you can have control, you can you can grasp for this godness, you can have it, but you can't walk at the pace of intimacy. You can't walk at the pace of wisdom. You have to actually circumvent God's way. If you eat of this, if you partake of this, then you're going to know, You're going to understand, and you are going to be God's in your own right. And I feel like James in so many ways prayer. The enemy has misconstrued prayer, and he uses religiosity to do this. Misconstrued prayer as this thing that actually allows us to go outside of God's design for wisdom, because God offers wisdom at a relational pace. Okay, So even as you're describing the priestly blessing and tying that to James one where James is describing these various trials and this process of perfection in the Greek, I know you know this. It's to Laos, it's this journey. It's a perfection that only comes through a process. So it's not a perfection that comes from knowing all the right answers. See, so often when it comes to prayer, when it comes to life, we think, oh, if I just do all the right answer and I'm good, and we forget that God actually doesn't need us to know all the right answers. What he wants us to do is he wants us to walk closely with his person. He wants us to understand his ways, and from there we participate with him to do whatever it is he's called us into. And if I'm honest, James, this is just me. Maybe you're different. If I'm honest in my life, when i'm really the anxiety of being is coming at me right, the questions of protection, of provision of purpose, when those are coming at me. If I'm honest, I'm like, Hey, God, this whole like relational pace, this pace of wisdom, it's not working for me. Here's what I need. I need you to give me the answers. I need you like I'm gonna fast, I'm gonna do whatever I like. I need the answers. And I would never articulate this, but it's almost like God, I'm saying, give me the answers, then get out of my way. I don't really want to walk with you and encounter the messiness of real relationship and dependence on you. I'll be faithful, I'll do the right things. And I think of James, I think of Isaiah thirty because I love this. I love this picture of how God speaks to us because I tell people, when it comes to matter as a prayer, God states his will in you more than he speaks his will to you. And even when we say things like, hey, prayer isn't a monologue, it's a dialogue, people are like, Okay, great, I don't hear God. Like why you say that? Right?

00:13:31
Speaker 1: Maybe that works for you, but he heard voices I'm not but.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I'm not hearing these voices. And what's sad Because again, prayer has become so transactional and we reduce prayer to our idea of a conversation. We forget that God designed our entire person to be a receptor. So even if you look at the life of the Son and I'm gonna come back to Isah Isaiah. Thirdy look at jesus life. There's only three times when the Father audibly speaks into Jesus' situations. It's Baptism, Mount, Transfiguration, and John twelve. All three times the Father speaks. Truly, the Father is mainly speaking for the people around Jesus. He's actually not really speaking for Jesus's sake. And we read in John five Jesus says, I only do what I see the Father. Doing so, he's living in step with God through the power of the spirit. This is why he tells us in John fourteen fifteen sixteen different ways, it's better for you that I go away. There are things that you are trying to grasp intellectually, conceptually that can only be understood as you surrender to the reality of My spirit. Something about your internal reality, your interior life is going to change when you receive the spirit of God. This is the I think of Luke e Levin where Jesus makes a statement. He says, even though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in Heaven give his very spirit, his nature to those who ask. It doesn't say that he's going to give them the bread. It says he's going to give them his nature. And when when I think about how God speaks to us, and I think of my own life, when I when I look back and those moments when it seemed like God was silent or it seemed like things weren't clear, I know there was an invitation to step in faith. And then it was like as I was taking that step, the clarity came, the wisdom came, when I just stood there and I was like, all right, God, give me the answers. It was almost like I was like, hey, just start, just start taking that step, and to watch what I do. Watch how I will confirm that if you look at it Day thirty, where it talks about this voice behind you guiding you when you step to the left or the right, it's this idea that when you start taking the step, it's like he's directing it. It's not before, it's actually when you start taking the steps of Okay, God, is this the right move? Okay, okay, you want me to move a little left, I'll move a little left. And when I started to understand that, a life of prayer and a life of connection with God started to take on a different form than I was like, God, I better get the exact answer, and I bet it. Have all my boxes checked, and I better know the point and all the sub points and have all the clarity. And then I roise, you know what, I'm just a control freak, and God's inviting me beyond the anxiety that comes when I'm a control freak.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: It's a really interest. I mean, they tell you this in seminary. You know you'll never be able to apply everything that you learn. And I think that's true, you never are able to apply everything that you learn. But I think what they sometimes miss is that in applying, you're going to learn more than you could ever know. And so you sort of sit back and you're like, you know, I love going to Malachi three ten. It's sort of been co opted sometimes by the health and wealth kind of stuff, But you look at that dynamic, it's perfectly describing what you're saying. God is telling me Israelites, Hey, you've held back these sacrifices from Me and you're expecting that to solve your immediate problem. The logic makes sense, but the theologic doesn't make any sense, right, So bring me the tithe test me, you know, test me by trying me. This is the kind of test that we're supposed to have. And I think it's a beautiful dynamic that you're painting there with prayer, because it is just it's not about saying the right words.

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Speaker 3: It's not like a magic incantation.

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Speaker 1: We have to get all the accents right and all the you know, say all the right things, and then all of a sudden, that's like you know, rubbing the Genie in the bottle and we get all our wishes.

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Speaker 3: The reality is it's about the process of just doing it. Yes, I often use the now.

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Speaker 1: I was a personal trainer when I was doing my MDIF and I'll tell people, you know, I never had a client come in and say, Okay, today for your workout, you're gonna sit in the corner and watch me lift. Like there are just some things you have to do yourself for you to get any benefit out of it.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: You've actually got to do the work yourself.

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Speaker 1: And that's what I kind of hear you saying, is that prayer has to become this practice because not so much because it's a yes, it's an act of obedience, but also it's really formative that will change you as you do it, even when you're.

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Speaker 3: Not doing it, you know in the quote unquote.

00:18:03
Speaker 1: Right way maybe right like you know they're not doing it as you're the best prayer or something like that.

00:18:09
Speaker 2: Sure, So okay to use your metaphor, because I think that's a great metaphor. Jim showing up in the gym uh regularly. You know, getting in the gym with a with a regularity is more important than intensity. Wouldn't you agree, okay, So so what what I have? What I have found, So there's an interesting relationship here. What I've found is showing up with what we have is a great place to start. Now that being said, you know this, if someone gets in the gym and they start doing an exercise in a way that is going to hurt them, injure them, they're going to end up being out of the gym for a long time, okay, or unable to do any kind of movement that is specific to that area. And James, I think this is what has happened with prayer. When you make yourself to hear or the villain of prayer, you stop showing up because you become disillusioned, You become injured, You bere like, no, this isn't working when I go in here. Actually there's just there's more pain, there's more suffering. I'm not able to navigate my daily life in a way that's healthy. And no, it's not. It's not that the gem is the problem necessarily, because pain is formative. I mean, I think about what Hebrews five says and describing the sun. Though he was a son, he learned obedience, he learned what it was to be a son through the pain that he navigated, through what he suffered, and I love what you called out from Alci three ten. Going later in Hebrews Hebrews nine and ten, where the writer of Hebrews is describing this dynamic of Look, God doesn't want your transaction. Really, it's not about the blood of bulls and goats. It's not about something that is at arm's length. It's about purifying the consciousness of the worshiper. The worshiper needs to be able to enter, going back to chapter four, enter the Throne of Grace. If I'm mercy and grace to help in their time of need. There needs to be this confidence that isn't predicated on what you've done and what you haven't done, but on your submission. You're surrender to the work of Jesus in the spirit of grace and the transformational power of grace, which gives you the ability to do what you otherwise can never do in your own strength. It's not about your own moral muscle. It's about the work of the spirit, the sanctifying work of the spirit that makes the impossible possible in your life. And so for me, when it comes to prayer. There there's so much religious bondage that keeps people from moving from this place of self consciousness to God consciousness. And when you're God conscious in prayer, there is a freedom, there is a liberty. You're practicing the right forms if you will, so you're able to increase weight, You're able to go places with God in prayer. And I'm talking getting real with God in prayer. I mean, I think about what Jesus, Jesus prays on the cross, quoting David sal twenty two, My God, my God, will have you forsaken me? I mean that's that. I honestly think that is the most real prayer any of us can pray. I think when when Hebrews two and Hebrews four describes Jesus someone who is who has fully understood the human experience, I think that right there that prayer captures perfectly captures the greatest temptation of the human experience, which is to believe that God has abandoned us. Sure, because and you know, the end of Psalm twenty two is actually this, I think is his first twenty four is is you do not abandon the afflicted in their affliction, nor do you turn your face from them, but you hear when they call. And then Psalm twenty two is this beautiful messianic psalm that talks about the reconciliation of the nations being brought into you know, the Family of God, the Kingdom of God. And so that's not where it ends, but you better believe that's where it starts. And I tell people all the time, listen, God does not tell us to deny our pain, but we are invited to defy our pain. And you cannot defy by pain if you're not honest about its existence. And prayer is such a powerful and intimate place for us to be honest with God. To let messy words fly if you will. That was what my book Words with God was all about, the first one I wrote back in twenty twenty three. It was this idea, like a messy prayers, messy words with God, there is there a right way to pray? What does that look like? And I've had so many people reach out to me who are in their sixties, seventies, eighties. I had one gentleman reach out to me. He was in his eighties and he said, I can only imagine what my life would have been like. If I would have read this book four decades ago when I got sicked, he and he actually asked his daughter. I didn't know this until after he passed, but he asked his daughter. He said, you know, when I passed, would you please reach out to Addison and ask him to do my funeral because the book had such an impact on his life, which was, I mean, an incredible honor, and I was able to fly down and do his funeral. But my point is this, my passion is I don't want people to be held back in that place of prayer because I think, James, I think even putting prayer in a spiritual discipline's bucket is problematic. And you might be like, okay, and I've opened your pushback here because it still puts it in this place of like something you do, you start your stop. Don't get me wrong, there's certain types of prayer that would belong in that spiritual disciplines bucket, but prayer isn't a thing on the list. It's the thing that energizes the entire list. And I think we're losing We're losing people, especially younger generations, who I would say are more spiritually just because the nature of our world. There's a spiritual hunger that's unique to gen Z and they're turning to manifesting, they're turning to diy spirituality, They're turning to these other things. And I think a part of it is we've lost the robustness of prayer. We've truncated the domain of prayer. And I want people to realize it's like when Paul is using temple language, like in first Cindu history, when he calls us God's temple. That's not hyperbolic. He's saying, your embodied experience is a microcosm where Heaven touches Earth. God wants to inhabit your embodied experience in a way that releases grace, is transforming power, his spirit in and through you and into your world. And that can't happen if we categorize and we systematize, and we limit how God speaks to us and how He works through us. As you can talk so a little passionate about.

00:24:33
Speaker 3: This, No, it's really helpful.

00:24:35
Speaker 1: I mean, I've thought a lot about the spiritual disciplines and tried to get my head around them because one of the things I used to have this buddy in college and we talk about recipe theology, and recipe theology is like you know, here, you just here's your list of ingredients, and you do these things and then all of a sudden, you turn out in your life is wonderful. And intuitively I kind of knew that was wrong, but then what's the alternative? And so when you look at the spiritual disciplines, they can really start to feel like that. They can feel like these are ingredients on your recipe list, and whenever you use all of them, and you know you bake the right cake, you're going to eat well. And it's not exactly how we should be thinking about them at all. But I also think prayer does hold a unique place within the Christian life, and so there's a fine line. And maybe you agree with this, maybe you won't, but I would say there's a fine line between helping someone figure out how to move into prayer, how to practice it, what to do with it, and there does take some level of discipline or a renewed cadence of life, but ultimately that's not supposed to be what you do your whole life. This should these things I often talk about. It is like prayer should become as necessary as breathing right, like it should just be what we do. It's no longer a practice that I put it into my day, It's just what I do. And so, I mean, I wanted to ask a question as you were talking. One of the things sort of struck me is a lot of the things I've read about prayer. You hear about the power of prayer and how prayer can affect things, and you know, you hear, you know, the old storage of George Mueller, right, this man of prayer, and you know he gets this orphanage funded all the time. Sometimes I think, you know, those are amazing stories, obviously, but they also set a different sort of standard right for prayer that doesn't always realize itself.

00:26:33
Speaker 3: And so I'm wondering, if you think.

00:26:36
Speaker 1: That prayer in our common church discourse, the discourse about prayer that we normally use in our in our conversations, how does it need to change so that we understand what prayer is.

00:26:52
Speaker 3: Going to do on a sort of a corporate level.

00:26:56
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you kind of hit on this a number of different ways, but I'm thinking about like great awakenings, where you know, prayer is the first.

00:27:03
Speaker 3: Thing we do, and those kind of aspects.

00:27:06
Speaker 1: But I think there's a sense in which prayer can become a little bit of a magic incantation, right where we point our wand in something and it also transforms. That's not the sense that I get from you, but sometimes that's the sense I get when I'm reading about prayer. I'm kind of like this sort of fell into a magical moment here. So, yeah, any thoughts on how we situate prayer, how we begin to talk about prayer differently.

00:27:31
Speaker 3: So that we really understand the dynamic that's happening here.

00:27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I love that. And to go back to what you're saying for me, don't. I don't like formulas. I love frameworks. Though frameworks give us, give us handles, but they create space for the Spirit of God to personalize that experience in a way that reflects whatever we're navigating in that day and whatever we're called to. So there's so much when it comes to prayer about the power component, which, don't get me wrong, prayer is, prayer is powerful, and I've seen I've seen the power of prayer in my life. I was just real quick. Sorry. This summer, I was speaking at a men's event and this I mean, this is wild. I'm just gonna warn you this is this is a wild war speaking out of this men's event. I get up there and I have this pain in my back right like back right of and I'm like, what is this pain? And I'm not ready to get up to speak, and they're finishing worship and I get up there and I'm not please hearing, Like I'm not someone who like gets up and I do believe that God heals supernaturally, but I'm not someone who gets up there and they're like, all right, it's healing ministry, like that's that's That's just not me. And I just I'm just gonna leave it there. So I get up there and there's just pain in my back fright, and I'm like, God, what's going on? And then the Holy Spirit, this this just comes out of my spirit, I would say, through the back of my mind, into the front of my mind, out of the deep mind, and into my conscious experience, and I just I knew that there was someone in this room who was experiencing this pain and that God was going to heal them. And I haven't I haven't preached, I haven't shared my message, Like I'm just great, and I'm my God, like this isn't like, this isn't my thing. I'm not going to begin this message like I'm not started, Like what if no one raises her hand?

00:29:23
Speaker 3: I feel like.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: Just like this, Hey, did you forget who I am? Like no, I'm more of the teacher, Like this is not me anyway. So but it would lead me in this sense, was just like, hey, God wants to heal some Ofe's room. So I just go, okay, hey, if you're here tonight and you've got a pain in your back right and I just you know, described it very specific, would you know, would you please would you please raise your No one raises her and I'm like, oh gosh, And I just gave it like ten seconds. And then second row, right in front of me, this young man raises his hand, and I knew it wasn't about me. I did don't want the room to make it about me, and I just I told the guys around, was like, hey, guys, would you please just lay hands on him and pray for him. God God's going to heal him. And so I didn't do anything. They prayed, they laid prayed on him. I didn't even want to know if anything happened, because I didn't want my message.

00:30:16
Speaker 4: I didn't want that in my head when I was speaking, So I went through, did my you know, share the message got done, and this young man comes up to me and he tells me I was in a terrible motorcycle accident.

00:30:28
Speaker 2: I've lived in chronic pain for two years. I told God, I said, I can't even go to this event's not I can't sit for two hours. And he just sensed. I told God, tell me, if you go tonight, I'm going to heal you. And and he was. He was miraculously healed. Saw in the next day healed heard a story after it healed, had had multiple surgeries like all they said. It was just completely healed. The pain was completely gone. I know I had nothing to do with that, but I also know like there was a prayerful component. He was praying. I was praying going into the service. God moved in did something miraculous. But here's the key when it comes to prayer, its presence. We typically make it about the second, the third thing, the fourth thing, the key to prayer. And you can even see this in the Lord's prayer. Because Jesus didn't give us many things. We're very clear. Was like, this is how you do something, and he was pretty clear with the Lord's Prayer. He's like, hey, there's something to the Lord's Prayer that we need to be careful not to move past. And what he's saying saying, Hey, the opening movement of the Lord's Prayer is actually a call to realize the reality of Emmanuel. And so for me, when it comes to prayer, I firmly believe even the power of prayer, and I've seen this in my life comes from when I'm living in the reality of Emmanuel God with us. Then from that place, and that's why I think the shame and the voice of the accuser. I tell people you struggle to hear the voice of God or articke the voice of God because you look for his voice in the tone and tenor of the accuser. You expect God and the voice of God to sound like the tone in the tenor of the accuser. And that's not how God communicates. It's just that's not how the spirit of God leads and guides and woos and forms, and so that's that's that's how I explain it to people. Look, it's actually about presence and then from presence. And this is why Saul five three, I'm a big fan of what David says in the morning. You hear my voice in the morning, I prepare a sacrifice or I lift my prayer to you, and I watch he's describing this awareness that we even understand now through physiology studying physiology. When you wake in the morning, there's a sensitivity. You're a reticulated activist, activating system. It can go inward and not just outward in the morning. That that's unique to the morning, where you can be more aware of the entire embodied experience, what's happening within your deep mind, the unconscious level. You're more sensitive in the morning. But if you pick up your phone, what do you do? That experience ends to start feeding just disrupted. You start feeding the idea that you need to be omniscient or omnipresent, all knowing, You need to be all places, know all things, which is what the phone represents. First thing in the morning, you shortcut what God's trying to do in your body on a physically physiological physically, oh, physiological level, tough word today, physiological level. You shortcut that with how you're engaging first thing in the morning. So there's there's so much of that, But for me, James, is about presence.

00:33:29
Speaker 3: It's interesting.

00:33:29
Speaker 1: We did a campaign called go Darksheine Bright and one of the things we were it came about we were kind of saying, how do we how do we help God's people pray more?

00:33:40
Speaker 3: What does that look like?

00:33:41
Speaker 1: And what we ended up hitting on was prayer was in competition with shopping on Amazon, scrolling Facebook, you know, watching reels on Instagram, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so what we challenge people to do is to take a seven day fast off social media completely and replace that.

00:33:58
Speaker 3: Time with Bible study, prayer.

00:34:01
Speaker 1: And then we did some guides and different things like that, and people really resonated with it. I mean, the testimonies we got back were, I do feel God's presence more in my life. I feel more almost like awake and aware of what's going on around me, as opposed to having ourselves buried in the phone. And I think you've mentioned this narrative a couple of times at Genesis three narrative, where you know, we tend to think that the more we know, the better off we are, and this is sort of at least part of the temptation that Eve is given. Right, Hey, you can know right now, you can get this information right at this moment, you no longer have to live in this paradise with God. You could be freed from this prison and just you know, realize your full potential right at this moment. But what we consistently heard back from people who did the challenge was man stepping away from it. I just feel so much more at peace, at rest. And there was a sense in which a couple of the people I talked to, they said, no, I felt God's presence more, or I felt wiser, I didn't feel just inundated with stuff right. And so we had several folks tell us that they just didn't go back on social media, that they kept up that cadence, kept up that practice and.

00:35:19
Speaker 3: Enjoyed it.

00:35:20
Speaker 1: And so I think there is something too the way we've managed ourselves, the way we've sort of put ourselves in the position of needing to have all the information we could ever possibly have at our fingertips. It is very disruptive early morning, one hundred percent and even throughout the rest of the day. I think we're really short changing ourselves of what we could be, what we could be experiencing, versus what we are actually experiencing.

00:35:47
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. And the structure of the prayer journal that you mentioned earlier, what the way that I built it is the first movement, so at forty days and every day has the same structure. There's a reflect component that invite people to engage with the reality of God in a way that kind of like, huh, that's a little different. So I tease out different qualities of God or a life of prayer that might make people pause and have to reflect. Then it goes into this place of recenter. So the first one is reflect, then it's recenter. And the idea of recenter is it's a breath prayer. It's just I am here, and the reality is that we can only be in this place. We were prone to chronological wanderings, but only God exists outside of time and space, and we don't get to do that. And so this idea of God, I'm going to surrender to what you're doing right here, to the presence here, whether that's other people or that's you here with me. The reality of I am here, God is here in our midst So like that's that prayer. I am here, and then it moves into rest because rest is not easy to enter into and people are like, oh, well, what am I going to do? How do I rest? And so for me, it's like, hey, let's reflect, then let's recenter. Then we're actually gonna be able to rest. And I invite people to articulate and release any thoughts, any ideas that are keeping them from rest. People don't realize that that's actually prayer. If you're writing down to if you're identifying, Hey, God, these are the things that are keeping me from rest right now with you, that is a form of prayer. And then after they release, then there's an invitation there to receive. So, okay, take inventory of how God has come through for you, what you've received from him, Where was the evidence of his goodness yesterday? And then what are you asking God to do today? Not in a petulant or childish way, but when we ask, we become aware, We start to connect the dots. We see how God's moving in our world. And we're invited to ask with boldness, with assurance, not because we're we're going to get everything that we demand, but because we have the right relationally to go to our Father and ask, and then ultimately he's going to decide whether that's best for us or not. But we are to come to him with boldness and ask. And the final thing is respond, What is the spirit of God leading you to do today? What is that one thing? Those two things? And that's the structure that I use. But something that came out of the Words with God book was that prayer I am here. And so many people now have told me I use that prayer all throughout the day when I feel overwhelmed, when when I feel lost within the shuffle and the hustle of the day, they take a neat breath and pray I am here. But James, as I'm talking talking to you, I'm thinking about this because I preached a message at this church back in July, and it was all about how we wake determines how we watch, which determines how we worship. Right, So it is that and it was from Psalm five specifically, But how we wake determines how we watch or what we see. Because you're ras in the morning, if you feed it one thing, the rest of the day, you're going to see that thing. You're going it's the confirmation bias. It's that reality and your RAS is your gatekeeper of consciousness. So you're going to look for things that confirm and affirm that belief. And so if you feed black, if you feed self sufficiency, if you're doing that first thing more, it's going to compromise the rest of your day. But you hit the nail on the head. You set attention. And the reality is attention is the currency of our day. Everyone in our world is fighting for our attention. And so when you defy the systems, the structure of our world. And even if it's just the first hour of the day, if you say, look, I'm not going to get on my phone for the first hour of the day. And I've been doing this for years, but I'm not gonna get on my phone for the first hour of the day. I'm telling you like a disproportionate effect. If you sacrifice that set it aside. You wake, you listen, you read scripture. You don't get up and perform. You get up in your sensitive to what the spirit of God is telling you to read. I'm telling you journal right down. Whatever it is the spirit of God speaking to you, I'm telling you it'll transform your life. So I shared this message back in July with this church, and it's a church I'm a teaching pastor, and I go back there few times a year, and I went I went back there a couple of weeks ago. I probably had fifty fifty people come up to me and say, hey, I started doing what you did, what you told us to do with that list, and it's completely changed their life, like my life. I can honestly tell you my life is completely different today than it was five months ago. And it was just that first hour in the morning.

00:40:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think people don't give enough credibility, and I think we're seeing more and more research come out of it. But the you know, we're not a distinct mind and a distinct body. In other words, those two are really intertwined together. We're a whole, integrated beings and so you can't parse this stuff out. It's not as if you decide you're going to go on a you know, no sleep bender for a week, you're going to be particularly functional after the end of that. I mean, I think there's a reason that, you know, after Elijah does his you know, little marathon away from Jezebel and finds himself in the desert alone. You know, he's distraught and he you know, you can just the exhaustion. And that is not just spiritual exhaustion emotional exhaustion. There's a physical aspect of this as well. All of it's sort of intertwined, and so I think we have to be really careful about how we're allowing our physical bodies to interact with the world. And I would just say, I mean, I love Ian Mcgilchris's work. He's done a lot of work on attention. He's got some really interesting stuff. And one of the things he's emphasized is, you know, attention is a moral action, and I've kind of picked up on that says it's not really a moral action, it's a theological action first, because yeah, when we recognize God as infinitely more relevant than any other actor or a factor we're going to face during the day, now our attention is rightly oriented and we're well prepared then to respond to God from within situations as opposed to responding to situations as if he's not there. And I think this mode of prayer that you're talking about, this way of thinking about prayer, fits so well. With that we enter into a theological.

00:42:09
Speaker 3: World early in the morning.

00:42:10
Speaker 1: This is now the symbolic world that we inhabit, a world where God actually exists, where He is active and present, where we can experience Him throughout our day versus you know, a world that is largely contained on a small device and is really knocking us around, you know, depending on whether it's good news that day, bad news that.

00:42:31
Speaker 3: Day, rumor here, rumor there like.

00:42:34
Speaker 1: This is not the symbolic and theological world we want to inhabit. We want to inhabit the temple of God. We want to be in the sanctuary with him. We want to be in his presence, and this is where we want to land.

00:42:47
Speaker 2: I mean, I had a situation yesterday, James where I you know, as I mentioned, I've been doing this for years, and I will tell you it's been probably the most transformative thing I've ever done. I actually struggle with insomnia for five years.

00:43:01
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:43:01
Speaker 2: And I made it all about what I was doing at night, but when I actually changed what I was doing in the morning the morning. Actually, I know that sounds crazy, and I've shared that with different people because I write a lot about this in Words with God, specifically the insomnia but when I started to see that differently in the mornings, and how that does set the attention for the rest of the day. I love how you said it's a theological issue. And as you were saying that, I threw that in there behold. This is that concept of behold. You'll find it thousands thousands of times in scripture, and it's this invitation you don't see things as they truly are. You should look again or be willing to be held by something that you haven't seen, that you haven't held before. And as you do that, things start to change in your world. But yesterday, so I got a call. I got a call from a friend who's navigating an extremely difficult situation. Her husband is on his deathbed and they live in you my Arizona, And she called me early in the morning, late at night and early in the morning, and you know, I didn't have didn't have my phone on me, and I came out of that time and I immediately saw I had a call from her. Well you, I mean, you know you served in this role. It is very difficult to enter into that moment with people. Yeah, and we feel this pressure when you enter into that moment. You want to have the right words. And of course the gift of presents is the most powerful gift right in a moment like this. But when you don't, we're not able to give them the gift of presents because they're in Arizona. That looks different. I'm telling you, James, it was way better for her and for me that I called her. After I came out of that time. I was a I was a better friend, I was a better man. When I think about my kids, you know, I've got four kids getting I'm ready for school yesterday. I'm a better father for them getting them out the door to school because I've had that time where I'm not feeding this belief that I am God and that I need to order my world in a way that a God could or a God would. Instead, I'm looking for the reality of God, the Kingdom of God becoming real in my life through the work of the Spirit. I'm looking for that, and what's happening I'm watching. I'm seeing differently, And I love what Psalm FO talks about, because when you prepare this sacrifice, the sacrifice of attention, you watch differently. It says, I prepare sacrifice for me and I watch you start to see things that you couldn't see before, and it's like, and how did I miss this?

00:45:39
Speaker 5: It was always right here? And God's like, well, if I would have shown you this, it would have only fed this strange idea that you had this idolatrous notion that you are God, and you would have gone deeper than your problem. And I tell people, and I wrote this words with God.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: I tell people God is a way of not delivering us from a thing when he knows that that thing is ultimately going to deliver us to him. And he's like, look, it's not this thing that you really want, it's actually me. And then that thing becomes whatever it needs to be, because, as you know, James, there's always a thing after the thing. Like you might move through one thing and then there's another one, and then there's another one, and there's another one.

00:46:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:46:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it never stops. It's always that endless pursuit of something. And if that endless pursuit of something isn't God, we get ourselves into trouble. I've thought about this in a number of different ways. I haven't thought about it in terms of prayer, but you know, in terms of making decisions what does it look like for us to make decisions so that only God gets the glory, keeping our attention tied to him even as we're making certain decisions and really kind of looking through the scriptures and seeing how different characters make decisions that are God glorifying even though they don't really make a lot of sense, you know, And it's like, these are the kind.

00:46:56
Speaker 3: Of things we need to master.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: But I think to your point, we master them by starting well every day. We master them by entering into this world where we recognize that God is present, that He is God and we are not. And just those basic sort of theological affirmations now prime us to make better decisions through our day. They prime us to really enter into prayer at various moments in our lives. And so, yeah, I really I love the way you've.

00:47:25
Speaker 3: Phrased that night.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: I think that the way you talk about prayer has a much more biblical and theological feel to it than just prayers and practice here go do it, which I love.

00:47:39
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you, thank you. It's been a it's been a journey for me. Yeah, it's been a hard journey for me.

00:47:50
Speaker 1: I believe it, man, I always I've had a few people want to talk about prayer, and I always I'm really honest, I'm like, I do I still write out prayers. I have trouble keeping my attention, and so I still write out prayers. And it's like, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that everybody do that, but it's it's one of the ways that helps me to focus in on what I'm doing. And so I think there's always that Studying always came really easy for me.

00:48:16
Speaker 3: Prayer was always really difficult.

00:48:18
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is that, you know, to pray is in part to just surrender control, and it involves that at the very least, and that's not something I usually like to do. So, yeah, I'm with you on the prayers a journey.

00:48:34
Speaker 3: Let me ask you if we're getting kind of to the end of the episode. So I usually ask my guests one last question.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in this because you know you're doing you're doing a lot of stuff.

00:48:43
Speaker 3: You're doing prayer, you're doing discipleship, and.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: So here's the question, what's one thing that you see the church sort of falling short on God's people falling short on that they really need to be doing faithfully in order to be and make disciples in today's world.

00:49:05
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean that's that's a big question. Uh, of course, of course, my my ben is going to go toward prayer. Yeah. And you know, and this idea of rediscovering prayer uh as as the as the central life force of the Christian life, because it's so easy for it to devolve into so many different things where it becomes a social club, where it becomes a you know, a religious competition. I mean, there's there's so many things that we we just look at church history where we missed it and and I feel I feel that you mentioned earlier episode, like this call to revival or practicing the presence or this awareness that God is moving me, He's doing something in our generation, He's doing something in this moment. I think it's respecting the the presence of God and the presence of others. I think it's it's I think it's that convergence is like practicing the presence of God in community and letting the sacredness of the presence of God, letting that spill into our everyday lives. I mean, you know, the idea of consecration, it's this idea of like with the sacred, and so you're doing it with the sacred. So if I'm consecrating my life, I'm doing it from this, this understanding, from this revelation that Paul uses again and again when he calls his holy ones, he calls his saints and his epistles. This idea that my life is holy and the God's doing a holy work through the intersection of the presence of the people that He's put in my world, and what happens when we connect those dots really is powerful. It's it's synergistic. It's that idea one can put a thousand of flight two and put ten thousand, and I think discipleship, and I've seen this. I'm a part of a men's group on Tuesday mornings, a couple's group every other Tuesday night, and then I lead a younger men's estopship group on Thursday evenings every other Thursday evening. And those moments where we just create space for God to move, they energize and they feel the rest of our days. And so it's this idea of both being intentional but then also opening up and allowing them more of our lives, more of our sense of self to belong to the holiness and the presence and the active nature of God.

00:51:38
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it's really helpful.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: I think so often we get hung up on the idea of holiness being about our moral character. It's not that that's missing from the definition. An over emphasis on it tends to leave us without these sort of cultic and sacred varies, sort of present activities where we are ushered into a moment where we.

00:52:06
Speaker 3: Are really consecrated to God. So yeah, I love the way you explain that.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: Well, Man, tell tell folks where they can get Well, you can get your book at Baker book House dot com. I'm sure it's available everywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those fun places. I'd encourage people to get both Words with God, but also then the new one Words with God Prayer Journal, Right, I understand the intended to go together, and then check out recover I'm sorry, Rediscover Prayer dot com. Rediscover Prayer dot com. I'll have the links to all this stuff in the show notes, but I don't have the Messenger International website.

00:52:46
Speaker 3: Is there a website you want to provide people with that.

00:52:49
Speaker 2: I think the best oneud be messenger x dot com. That's our establiship app. We have millions of users on that app in virtually every country and so that would that would be a great place to start. Messenger x dot com.

00:53:01
Speaker 1: Messenger x dot com, Addison Man, thanks for being here.

00:53:04
Speaker 3: This is a This is a great conversation.

00:53:06
Speaker 1: I enjoy these, you know, it's nice to be It's nice to have somebody who really has mastered their understanding of something on and we can.

00:53:14
Speaker 3: Have like a really good back and forth. It's a lot of fun for me.

00:53:17
Speaker 1: So this has been great, and uh, I'm I'm kind of motivated to get get back in and uh, you know, figure out the presence of God myself.

00:53:27
Speaker 3: Make sure I'm not.

00:53:27
Speaker 1: You know, checking my phone right when I get up out of bed, and so some good practical tips here too.

00:53:32
Speaker 2: So thanks, thank you, James. That means a lot.

00:53:35
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, Well we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:53:38
Speaker 3: Take Care.

00:53:40
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to life audio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting and more