Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1075: Engaging a Mysterious God through Dissident Prayer: Addison Bevere

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Addison Bevere is the COO of Messenger International, a ministry founded by John and Lisa Bevere in 1990 that exists to develop uncompromising followers of Christ who transform our world. Addison is also the author of the recently released Words with God: Trading Boring, Empty Prayer for Real Connection, which forms the basis for our discussion on this podcast. What I love about Addison is that he's super honest, real, wise, and super intune with God. That's a rare combination! This episode is all about prayer, connecting with God, how to pray for miracles, and how respond to God when it seems like he's terribly absent and nonresponsive. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Iran. My guest today is my friend Addison Bevere, who is the COO of Messenger International, a ministry founded by John and Lisa Bevere way back in 1990. Addison is the author of a couple books. The first one is called Saints, and the second one, which just released just a few weeks ago, is called Words with God, Trading Boring Empty Prayer for Real Connection. It's a book on prayer. And I don't know too many people better to talk about prayer than Asim Bavir, not because he, in his own words, is not a master of prayer, but because he is not a master of prayer and he has had to learn through discipline and prayer and research and connecting

with other people on how to be more engaged with prayer. And so this is a really raw, open, honest conversation about prayer with the one and only Addison Bevere. So I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Addison, how are you doing on this lovely morning of your book launch? It's always a stressful, exciting time. You know what? Actually, it's been really good this morning, surprisingly.

I've been at peace. I got up super early this morning. I woke up and just present to what's happening today, which is a gift because I'm not always like that. And I had an early morning interview this morning and it's just been good, man. It's been a good pace. And I knew I was going to get to chat with you. That's something to look forward to when you wake up in the morning. You know, I was just talking to our mutual friend

Kate, formerly Warman. Yeah. I'm blinking on her. She's going to hear this now. Oh, man. Tomlin, right? Yes. I'm actually talking with JJ. I'm on with JJ tomorrow.

I know. She told me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I connected y'all. You did?

I know. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. She's got a great podcast. She does. Her stuff on dating is incredible. Words with God.

I love... I mean, that's a great title. The subtitle is even more provocative. Trading boring, empty prayer for real connection. There's a lot of books on prayer. I'll be honest, right? There's a lot of – Okay, here I'm going to show my cards.

If there's one area in my spiritual life that I struggle with most, it's prayer. Yeah. And my wife and I always talk about this because for me, I could read the Bible all day. And some might say, well, if you read it right, that's not completely separate from prayer. And so, okay, maybe I could slip that in there. Maybe I would love that. If that's true, then that's great. But my wife, for her, it's kind of the opposite. She could pray all day long. It just comes. It's just so natural for her. For me, it's not natural.

And for her, she has to kind of discipline herself to read the Bible. She'll dive into living a kid. She's like, what am I doing here? What am I doing here? So your book, how does it fit in with the repertoire of books on prayer? Yeah. Anyway, I'll just leave it at that. And then I'm sure I'll have more questions. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, that's a massive, massive question.

For me, I would say what's behind this book is this desire to have words with God. Obviously, I think we all want to have words with God, but we often feel like God doesn't want to have words with us. And it's an intimate part of the human experience to reach out to God and to wonder why God isn't reaching back to us. And the temptation is when that happens is to reduce prayer to a formula, or if we put in the right work or we get the inputs right, and then we get the outputs right. And we take something like, for instance, the Lord's Prayer. I don't know if you remember this. You and I actually chatted

about this back in 2020. We were together. And this was very early in the writing process of this book. I actually spent two and a half years writing this. And we were chatting about some of these ideas together. But when you look at the Lord's Prayer, so often we understand the Lord's Prayer as a formula. But it's not a formula, it's a framework. Jesus was reluctant to give us formulas because the religious elite and also just the human tendency is to master and manipulate good things for our own agendas and our own purposes, right? So, Jesus was reluctant to give us things that we could become masters of and then abuse for our own ends. And so when you look at something like the Lord's Prayer, it kind of looks like a formula,

it's been used like a formula, but the reality is the framework on how to first and foremost understand God and engage with God, and then engage with the real challenges, opportunities of our everyday lives. And so I would say if this book goes anywhere, it goes more toward, okay, hey, prayer isn't a problem to solve and it's an experience to share. So we need to let prayer out of its proverbial box. Okay. Tell us what led to you wanting to write a book on prayer. And I appreciate, okay, I appreciate that it took you two and a half years to write this. I didn't realize that until you jogged my memory. I'm like, that's right. Yeah, you were thinking through this.

You were working on this for a while. Because to be honest, a book like Prayer or anything that could be categorized as Christian living, if you've been a Christian for more than 10 years, you could probably rattle off that kind of book in a month if you wanted to. So I love that you put so much time and I, I know, I mean, you're such an incredibly thoughtful person. I wouldn't expect that from you, but like, it makes sense that you would take two and a half years to write this book. Um, what led you to want to write a book on prayer? Is there a backstory to this?

There, there is, there's a backstory. So I grew up, I mean, you know my mom pretty well. I grew up in a great family heritage of faith with praying parents who modeled very different styles of prayer. Real quick, in case the audience hasn't figured it out, your parents are John and Lisa Bevere, who have written a ton of, I mean, they're just rock stars. They're just like the grandparents of even Christianity, I would say. They're just so, and I've gotten to know John a little bit, Lisa a lot more. They're just so godly and feisty and just real. You know, they're godly. Sorry, I'm just going to go off on your parents. They're godly in a sense that sometimes people are godly, but you wonder like, I want to see you behind closed doors.

And it's like, no, their godliness is behind – it's open door. They're not afraid to mix it up. But they just walk with Jesus in what I can tell in just such authentic ways. And they've been doing it for decades. Decades, 40 years. and they've been doing it for decades. Decades, 40 years. Golly, in a time when we see well-known people not doing that,

we need, sometimes we forget the ones that have been in the limelight for decades, have been traveling the world speaking and stuff and are still, all that flows from their love for Jesus. And I just, we forget to, I don't know, mention people like your parents. So anyway, well done being born from them. Which I did absolutely nothing. No, it's been a gift. It's been a gift of my life to have that modeled for me. And after school, I did a year long prayer intensive with 80 other students. And we prayed 20 hours a week. And there were different components of that. But I'm going to be honest with you, Preston. You confessed earlier

on this episode, like prayer is one of those things for you. You're like, I should be better at this than I am, or at least I should feel better about my prayer life than I do. And I think, well, I know that's where I was. And from the conversations that I've had with people, that's where so many of us are. And when I say was, I still am there. I'm still growing in that. I'm still moving in it. Prayer is something that is enlarging and spacious because it moves us into the very person of God and how the person of God moves in our lives, individual lives, collective

lives. And so it's a subject that needs a lot of exploration and needs different voices. But what we don't need is more cliches and more formulas. So for me, okay, so I found myself in a season of life. I had a lot of pressure. I had some things go sideways. And I dove into a season of insomnia. I had five years, five years of insomnia.

I lived in a perpetual fog. It felt like God had abandoned me. And what was challenging for me as I was praying, like, God, search me. Psalm 139, search me. Like, what have I done? Please tell me if I've grieved your heart. And I felt like I was doing the right things. I felt like I was serving in my community, leading well, all those things with my kids,

wife. But for whatever reason, it just felt like there was a disconnect between God and me. And it was that journey of insomnia that drove me into the silence. And I learned that when it comes to connecting with God, silence is not rejection. It's actually an invitation. And so much of prayer, when we think of prayer, we think of noise. We think of us moving our lips. We think of that transactional nature of getting to a certain place and doing a certain thing.

But the reality is God was opening my eyes to the expansiveness that prayer would have and should have in my life. And I learned in that season, because I was crying out, pressing for freedom from insomnia, for peace, for all these things. But I didn't realize that I was basically living like a God of productivity. I wanted God to answer my prayers so I could do the things that I wanted to do and feel the things that I wanted to feel and be validated the way I wanted to be validated. And I learned, man, I learned in this season that God, He's not going to deliver you from something if that thing will ultimately deliver you to Him. And for so much of us, when it comes to prayer and it comes to wrestling with God, there's an invitation there to trade weak and shallow and borrowed ideas of who God

is and how he engages with us for a reality of who he is and an intimate knowledge of his person. So that's my story. So I had, and i share in chapter two of this book i actually share in more detail that story and there was a moment that happened that completely changed my life yeah can you talk about that you want you want to hear it yeah i was gonna ask you to go deeper into what you're just talking about anyway so yeah yeah so it got to the point preston where like my bodily systems were basically shutting down. And Julie, I mean, I would wake up, I'd go to bed, you know, maybe 10, 30, 11, if I fell asleep. Some nights, I just didn't fall asleep.

And then I would wake up at 2, normally between 1.30 and 2.30 at night, just shaking with my heart beat, just racing, sweating. Wow. Just this, yeah this night nighttime anxiety and um it was really bad and then i would have i would have like a moan i would have you know i would get so tired that i would sleep for a couple like i would get a bit of normal sleep and it's like the moment it started getting high enough boom it was right back and i would i would be back in those in those patterns and so at the end of the season, Julie looked at me and she's like, hey, you're not doing anything. You're going away. You've got like you can't do this anymore. The world's going to have to turn without your contribution. I'm a firstborn. I feel a strong sense of responsibility and duty. That's just kind of how I'm wired. And so I went away and I was by myself. I had taken basically a vow of silence. And I went to bed that night after reading Psalm 127, which I had read many times about this idea of it's in vain that you eat the bread of anxious toil, go to bed late, rise early,

eating the bread of anxious toil. And man, it hit me different that night. It's just something, something unlocked in me. I had the craziest bedtime routines because I was trying to like find some type of control to move me into sleep. Like I took everything, you name it. I took it to try to help and do sleep. And I had curtains, like curtains had to be drawn a certain way, pillows, last glass of water, cell phone off at a certain time. I mean, you name it, I did it. And this night, I just went to bed like, quote unquote, normal people do at like eight o'clock and slept 11 hours. And I went to bed with tears. And there was just a holy washing. And I know it doesn't always work like

this. But something woke up in me and something died in me. And I actually, that morning, I woke up with an invitation on my lips. I could sense that God was inviting me to make prayer the center of my life and inviting me to write on it. And for me, Preston, I said yes before I even knew what I was saying. But then when I woke up, it felt like another form of striving. I was like, God, come on. This is me striving to be productive. I come from a family of striving. I was like, God, come on. This is me striving to be productive. I come from a family of writers. There's value in writing a book. I'm here alone,

feeling like I'm not contributing anything meaningful to the world, feeling like I'm away from what really matters, the things that I should be doing. And so I wandered off into nature, and I was praying and just having this time with God and so aware of his presence. I mean, it was powerful. And I said, yes. And I asked for a sign like Gideon. I asked for a sign. Um, and I, and I said, yes. And I was walking back to the place where I was saying, and I heard a voice and this voice said, good morning, young man. And I like, I looked around, I didn't see anyone and like, Whoa, what's going on right now? And no one was there. And I like, I looked around, I didn't see anyone. And like, whoa, what's going on right now? And no one was there. And so I just kept walking. And then I heard it again. I said,

good morning, young man. I look over and I see that there's this distinguished man sitting on a porch. And he, you know, he said good morning to me twice. Now he thinks I'm ignoring him. So I've taken this vow of silence. So I'm like, oh, man, this is awkward. And I felt a release to just respond. And I did. I said, good morning. And I expected that to be, you know, typical pleasantries. And then I was going to walk into the home where I was staying. But he wasn't having that, man.

He wanted to know everything about me, my favorite color, my shoe size, you name it. We ended up chatting for a while. And then he disclosed that he had stage four cancer and had been given six months to live. And it just felt like a very holy moment. Like this invitation to prayer had led me to Ivan. That was his name. Led me to Ivan. And we ended up talking for a couple more hours. We ended up standing there praying for each other, tears on our eyes, tears on both of our faces are streaming down our eyes. And it was a beautiful moment. And I went inside, I called Julie and I said, Hey, let's fast. I believe that God is doing something through this. My family ended up coming out a couple of days later. We spent a ton of

time with his family. The kids got together, all of that. And I expected Preston, I expected like, God, you asked me to write a book on prayer. And then you lead me to this miracle, Ivan from this place of silence, you lead me to Ivan, like surely, you're going to do a work here, you're gonna do a miracle. And this is going to be the genesis for how you're going to shape and work through this book. Well, long story short, I get in more detail in the book, but long story short, I ended up four months later. And that led me, bro, that led me deep into doubt. And that journey of doubt brought me to this place. And reading Romans 5 and how Abraham's described as the father of faith.

And he's not paul describes something along the lines of like he wasn't given over to unbelief right like that's that's essentially how it reads like he wasn't given over to unbelief but when i read abraham's life i'm like that dude like what are you talking about he gave his gave his wife to two other guys he you know ishmael i mean come on like you read his life and it struck me that he was never given over to unbelief, but he did doubt. And doubt has to do with our ideas of God. Unbelief has to do with God himself. And I realized that God wants us to place our doubts on a shell through prayer so both of us can take a long look at them.

And I think of what the psalmist writes in Psalm 142, where David tells us, you know, I lay out my complaints before you, God. And there's something about that process of not complaining about God, but complaining to God that brings us into the reality of who God is. And I learned in that season, like, we really can't know how faithful God is until we've had reason, until life's given us reason to question His faithfulness. until we've had reason, until life's given us reason to question His faithfulness. And so this book on prayer ended up taking on a very different tone and a very different form of exploration than I expected it would that morning, which I mean, who would have thought, right? Isn't that kind of how God works our lives anyway? So, yeah.

That sounds odd, but I don't even say it in a way that doesn't sound insulting, but I like that that story didn't turn out. I mean, of course, I wanted him to be healed. We all want him to be healed. At the end of the day, we're all going to die at some point. But the fact that this wasn't kind of a typical, and then I prayed, he got healed. Because sometimes those success stories, I don't know. I personally, sometimes they put this spiritual discipline out of

touch it's like see i prayed and it worked and got healed and look at all i'm like all right i did and it didn't you know so what do you do with that it's for me i'm always like that the okay what happens when it whatever it is doesn't work you preach the sermon and no one gets saved and you pray and god stops silent and you try to get healed and you don't get healed. And to me, those are – because I see a lot of that in Scripture. Like you said, I'm glad you touched on that. I mean there's so many of the Psalms that – or other books. I mean Job and Lamentations that have lament and even a bit of holy protest built into it and doubt and just being – living this open, raw relationship before an honest God who can overcome our doubts.

Doesn't do away with them, but he can overcome them and work with them and in and through them like with Abraham. I almost despise these kind of flannel graph stories of Abraham. I almost despise these kind of flannel graph stories of Abraham. This is this man of faith that you look at. He's put on a different lens and just say, well, let's actually look at the way he lived. And it's not like God used this like robust, spiritual, has it all together kind of person. He used a really messed up person to do amazing things. And I hear that.

I'm like, oh, that energy. Okay. Oh, so he can also use me. Oh. So even though I suck at prayer, when I pray, God is delighted. He's not like, well, now you come to me, you know? Yeah. You know, and you, you make the comment too, like you suck, you suck at prayer or whoever, like you feel that way. I felt that way. You know, the reality is going back to our idea of prayer, like we view prayer as another thing to do, but prayer isn't another thing to do. It's the thing that brings everything that we must do

together. And so the way Chris engages with God through prayer has an evidence to it, right? But the reality is prayer is resonance. Prayer is supposed to move beyond those moments of designated prayer time, those closet moments, those walk moments, whatever it is, into our everyday lives. That's what Paul's describing in 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, and Romans 12, 12. He's describing a way of living where we're so in tune with what is real that we can participate in what God is doing in that moment. And for us to be in tune with what is real, for us to be aware, we actually have to be silent. We have to bring a silence into activity. And Preston, I share this in the book, but there are words that only form in silence. Like there's, there's communication that is only understood in silence. There's an old quote from Maiderlink and it says,

we do not know each other yet because we have yet to be silent together. Like this idea of when we're silent together, there is, there's a form of connection that, that is forged in us when words that can be weak, that can be tenuous, that can be a poor representation of who we are, what we're navigating, stop trying to do more than what they were intended to do. This is like the holy groanings that Paul writes about in Romans 8. This is meaningful prayer. This is what we've been invited into. And I think a lot of the things that we see,

you know, in the health space, health wellness space, where it kind of looks like prayer, it's like, I think it's, we've abandoned elements of the robustness of prayer. We've forfeited it to these different spaces. And so shadow forms of that are forming. Like people get weird when I talk about how centering prayer meditation, like that's a part of my prayer life. They're like, well, that's Eastern. Like, no, it's like, there is an Eastern form of meditation. And the pursuit of that is self-actualization through nothingness. But for us, for our tradition, cogitation or meditation leads us into a surrender of our ideas of God. So we don't grasp for God. So we can be grasped by God. That's a huge

distinction there. So much of our constructs and our mechanisms that we use to engage God or whatever it may be, whether it's prayer or something else, is an attempt for us to grasp Him rather than be grasped by Him. And as you were talking earlier about doubt, doubt is the pathway to faith. Like if we're not honest, if we're not honest about our doubts, if we don't bring those doubts to God, we can't move into faith because faith is not God doing what I expected him to do or God being who I want to be. Faith comes into view and comes into play when who God is and how he works is around the corner of our

understanding. And we like, we can't, we can't, it's kind of there. Okay, maybe we see a shadow of it, but it is beyond our sight. And that's the quality. You look at Hebrews 11, all of these greats of the faith, they could see the unseen. That was the quality that they all had in common. That's why they were known as people of faith. They participated in a reality that was not quite real to the world. And by doing so, prophetically brought that reality into the world. You talk a lot about exile, right? And you know, I mean, obviously, being the scholar that you are, one thing I love about you, Preston, you are the most, I've engaged with a good number of scholars. Okay. You are the most humble, humble scholar I've ever engaged with. And I'm saying this behind closed doors,

seeing the way you engage with truth, seeing the way you ask questions, seeing the way you genuinely lean into what other people have to share. It's astounding. But this idea of exile, like we as the people of God, we go into exile, we participate in what unmakes the nations. When we abandon, when we abandon our role as priests for the nations, like we were called to be priests for the nations, and we participate in what unmakes the nations. It's not that the evil around us is too bad for God. It's when we participate in that evil, then we're no longer functioning from that place of prophetic and priestly office to reveal the reality of God's good world through our lives and how we interact with each other.

So you just summarized chapter three of a book I'm working on called Exile, where I connect the idea of being in exile with being the nation of priesthood that God has called Israel to be and called the church to be. That from the place of exile is where we live out the vocation of being a kingdom of priests. It's not a retreat where you go live in isolation. It's not a syncretistic where you morph in and just live like a Babylonian. It's you maintain the best way you seek the good of the city is from the position of exile as a kingdom of priests. I'm glad at least two of us agree on that. I'll read it.

You said so many things here I want to follow up on. Okay, the silence piece. Can you tease that out a little more? Maybe even give an example of maybe even in your own life. What does prayer as silence look like is it is it and i as practical as you can get as concrete i'm a very concrete like sitting there and are you actually thinking thoughts toward god or are you reflecting on god's character or are you just trying to just have nothing going on and just sit in the the mystery of nothingness

right you know i don't even want word to use the mysterium tremendum yeah yeah i do want to say it's funny that people accuse your thoughts of being easter like guess what the bible's easter like it's not written in the modern western anyway like come on um which there's something like luke 11 understood within a near eastern context, the story of the friend at midnight. Yeah. If you understand that as a Near Eastern, Near Easterner in that context versus our Western idea of what that story would represent, totally different meaning. The honor, shame, peace. Which I do touch on that in the final chapter of the book.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We probably don't have time for that, but I do write on that chapter 14 of this book where I'm talking about in the name, because that's very much tied to the name, the honor, the absence of shame. Anyway.

And there's a reason why that story follows Luke's account of the Lord's prayer and why it's followed with those words about the heavenly father giving good gifts, giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. And there's a lot of significance there. Kenneth Bailey, I don't know if you're familiar with his work. Yeah, I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but I know he's a genius when it comes to that stuff. Oh my gosh, his work on that parable, incredible. Okay, but going back to your question, because we could geek out on that.

But going back to your question, practically. So let me start with this. And this is, Preston, this is a theme that I take throughout the entire book. And let me just explain real quickly the framework of the book. The book has three parts, three movements, if you will. The first movement is called the canyon. Okay, this is where we meet with God in the silence. The second part, also called the wilderness seasons, dark night of the soul, stuff like that. But second movement is called the temple. So deconstructing the idea that we have to get the ritual right, the place right, the words right, the person right in order to engage with God through prayer. And then the final movement is called the dance. And it's this idea of how prayer ebbs and flows. There are different movements.

There are lifts. There are spins as it moves into our everyday lives because my premise is that prayer is the form of connection between God and me, myself and I, right? Like this, understanding what's going on here. And then also it's an outflow of relationship and understanding as I move into the greater world. And that's why, one of the reasons why Jesus teaches us to pray, not my father, but our father, right? The entire orientation of Lord's Prayer is forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. There's so much significance there that I unpack in the book as to why prayer leads us into the reality of our. But going back to the silence.

And this and, you know, voices across time and within the canon of great prayer literature would agree with a lot of them would agree with us that that we move into silence so that we can unlearn the voice of the accuser. Otherwise, we are tempted to search for God's voice and the tone and the tenor of the accuser. So there are there are three voices, if you will, okay, that are fighting. And fighting is not the right word, okay, because that's really not how God's voice works. So I want to be careful how I describe this, but for our sake, I'm going to use that word. We have the great voice, right, which is the voice of God. We have the accuser, and then we have our own voice. And the way that I would describe it is our own voice is a reflection of whatever voice has our ear. And one of the reasons why God leads us into silence, as I described before,

is so that we can unlearn the accuser's voice. So much of our formation, so much of how this world is formed, the systems of this world, and you can apply that to any system. It's actually formed and perpetuated by the tone, the tenor, and with the style of the accuser. And there's a reason why the rhetoric of our world, especially in points of difference and tension, why it's defined, it's marked by this voice of accusation. And if you look at moments, like for instance, 1 Kings 19, right? We have the famous moment of Elijah and what happens when he flees and God's not in any of the spectacles. He's not in the fire. He's not in the wind. He's not in the earthquake. He's in the thin silence, right? He's not in the fire.

He's not in the wind. He's not in the earthquake. He's in the thin silence, right? Like that's, that's nearly like how it reads. Like he's, he's in the thin silence. There is a, there's a thin silence. And I love that description. It's, it's, we can penetrate that silence, but we don't get to penetrate that silence by becoming masters over the silence.

We penetrate that silence by surrendering to the silence. So let me give you a personal example. I have never shared this on a podcast. So this is something I would not normally share. But right here, right here, pointing to it, this is a prayer closet. Now, my prayer time is energized. I have moments in there that energize my prayer time. And the point of those is so that I can carry prayer throughout my day. But I do centering prayer, which basically means I'm sitting there, it's dark, and I'm focusing on a single word. Like for me, it's presence. I just go back to presence.

Presence. And it's a gift. It's a gift of God to be present to the presence, whether that's the presence of God or presence of another person, someone you love, even the presence of your enemy. There's a gift to that as well. And so I'm in there and I'm having this time where I am just centering my thoughts on this idea of presence and God being present to me. And, you know, thoughts will come through, ideas, distractions, things I need to get done that day, whatever. And one of the great techniques that I've learned, and I share all of this in the book, is you can treat those thoughts as almost like boats floating down a river. And you can choose whether you get on the boat

and interact with the thought, or you can choose to stand on the shore and just kind of let it go by. Now, if you engage with the thought, it will stay there. You'll get on the boat, you'll go deeper, you'll start exploring the boat, understanding the boat. But if you're not feeling condemned for the thought, you just kind of let it be and recognize it, it'll float off. But I had a time recently where I was in prayer, and I lost, I just lost all sense of consciousness, to be completely honest with you. And I had a time recently where I was in prayer and I lost, I just lost all sense of consciousness to be completely honest with you. And I had this moment where I was looking down and there were fractures and fissures in my being.

And I was looking down and I could sense like God wanted to do a work to heal me. And Preston, I was like, immediately I started giving God direction. Like, hey, there's this spot right here. Or like, there's that spot. And I wanted to go to town, like, hey, let's take care of this. Let's take care of that. And then I sensed this invitation to lift, to essentially lift my head. And it almost felt like my head was being lifted. And I looked up, and I don't know how to describe it, but I just engaged with a light, like a substance of light that overwhelmed me. And I felt 2 Corinthians 3, that idea of like beholding by the spirit and experiencing this transformation and a veil being removed. I felt that in that moment.

And all of a sudden, I didn't look down, but all of a sudden I could feel this substance of light start filling these fractures, these fissures of my person. And then I was out of that moment. And I immediately was like, what in the world just happened? And I ran over my journal, I journaled it, all that kind of stuff. But I don't do that looking for those moments. Those moments do come. But for me, it's simply surrendering my agenda, surrendering my needs, surrendering my ideas to God. And then God speaks to me in those moments, and I go and I write them down later, stuff like that. But that's an example of the silence.

But the big idea is, though, and this is what, and I don't want to give people another way to strive better. I mean, like writer of Hebrews tells the Hebrews four, we should strive to enter the rest, right? This is a way of striving to enter the rest. We're supposed to take silence and stillness into activity so that we know what to do, when to do it, why to do it. So we have the clarity to respond, to serve, to act.

So much of us and who we are as a person caught up in frantic inaction. That's why we feel anxious. That's why we feel divided and pulled in so many directions. And a gift of prayer, it's an integrative gift that prayer offers to us. It brings pieces of us back together, becoming, you know, like shalom literally means integration. It means the parts coming together to form a whole. And that's what God designed for us to experience and share through prayer. This episode is sponsored by Faithful Counseling. Okay, I used to think that counseling was for a few like fringe people that just can't cope with life.

But I don't believe that anymore. I think that pretty much everyone can benefit from some kind of counseling. So Faithful Counseling will assess your needs. They match you with your own licensed professional therapist who's a practicing Christian. It's not like a crisis line or a self-help center. It's professional counseling done online. So after you sign up,

you just log into your account anytime. Then you send a message to your counselor and schedule weekly either video or even phone sessions. So you don't even have to account anytime. Then you send a message to your counselor and schedule weekly, either video or even phone sessions. So you don't have to be on camera if you don't want to. Here's the thing that I love about Faithful Counseling. They're committed to making sure that you're connected to a counselor that's right for you. So you can change counselors free of charge until you find a counselor that fits you and your needs.

And I know counseling can be expensive, but Faithful Counseling is more affordable than traditional offline counseling. And on top of that, financial aid is available. And in addition to that, Faithful Counseling is offering Theology in the Raw listeners 10% off your first month if you go to faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology. That's faithfulcounseling.com forward slash theology to get 10% off your first month. The distraction piece is, I think, big for a lot of people because it's not even debated anymore. We live with so many more distractions between social media, soundbite culture, and just everything's just boom, boom, boom. I mean, just, I guess, you know, it's not like an old curmudgeon, but, you know, the pre-internet and post-internet world are vastly, vastly different. So more than ever,

I mean, before the internet, people face distractions and prayer, right? But now it's just so, I mean, that's what's hard for me. Sometimes it's hard for me to even get off the ground because five seconds into silence and my to-do list is just slapping me in the face. Does it just take – and I'm hearing you say let those boats go on by. How do you – is it just – you just have to develop that muscle of being able to let those – that prayer muscle, being able to let those boats go on by? Because I find it really hard right now. Is it something if i just knew that it can it can happen you just have to constantly be letting those boats go on by or how did you

get to a place to where you could let those boats go on by because right now i find it really difficult i hop in boats all the time man oh and i'll ride that boat in weird places next thing i know an hour later i'm like halfway through writing a chapter i'm like oh wait i'm supposed to be brave you know or yeah no bro and there's something i mean there's something even within that riding the boat to the wrong place where it can be redeemed and there's it can be turned into something of beauty it's a spirit like it's a discipline man when we talk about formation so much of it is spiritual disciplines. And we don't like the word discipline. But when we understand discipline as we're trading a short-term negative for a long-term positive, it starts to take on a different form in our lives. Like, this isn't something that I have to do. It's something that I get to do. And what I'm doing isn't working. So maybe I put some intentionality into doing something different, because if we don't put intentionality into it, we're going to default to what is familiar and what we've been conditioned to do, what we've been encouraged to do by the wisdom and the pattern and the pace of the world that we live in. But Preston, it goes back to you need a compelling why for discipline.

I think one of the reasons why people have struggled with prayer and what I would call the discipline of prayer is because they don't understand the reach of prayer. Yeah. When we really get what prayer is and how it encompasses every part of our lives, and it's an invitation to awareness and how that leads to like asking in prayer, because you have people who are like, well, I'm just going to pray vague prayers and blah, blah, blah, because, you know, God's omniscient and omnipotent and blah blah blah if there's a good thing to be done well god isn't god gonna do it because he cares about the world and cares about people so you have that you can theologize your way out of prayer so easily you can and then

the other side you have the group that's like god's gonna do everything i tell him to do i'm gonna i'm gonna be very specific. I'm going to line it out, and God's going to do it. You just watch. And it's like, come on. You look at Gethsemane, and you see Jesus embody specificity. If there's any way this cup can pass, like he was not unclear. If there's any way this cup can pass, please, please let it pass. He was surrendered. Hey, not my will. Yours be done. And he was also, so we have the two sides of the spectrum, but then he was also steadfast.

He wrestled through prayer. He, blood's coming out of his pores. He's asking his friends, pray with me. And then that tension of bringing like the seemingly contradictory parts of how we engage with God and how God engages with us together and how we wrestle with God and how we wrestle through prayer. That's when we grow in our ability to receive from God and become an extension of God's goodness, His purpose, His promise in our world. That's good. So there's no way around it.

There are some things that are just, that does take discipline. I mean, that's the whole, you know, it's the other side of the coin, you know, for people to have a let go and let God kind of attitude. At the end of the day, there is, there's loads of language in the Christian life where pursuing God does involve a lot of striving, a lot of discipline, a lot of failure and getting back on your feet and doing it again, you know, and, and man, that's a, I love hearing, I mean, some people might be a little tripped out at you saying that you lose consciousness or whatever. You get so deep in prayer that it's almost like you enter a different sphere. But what's fascinating is I'm hearing more and more like secular people even talk about the value of meditation. I mean, famously, Sam Harris, one of the biggest antagonists against Christianity and religion in general, right?

He has a very disciplined rhythm of meditation in his life as an atheist. logical benefits of doing something which is not practically too different than what Christians are doing, what Yuri was talking about. And I don't even know where I'm going with this. To me, it shows that this kind of prayer slash meditation slash silence has a holistic value to it. It's not just some odd thing that religious people do. It's actually part of the good of creation. It's through general revelation, through natural law, we see even the holistic spiritual, mental, bodily benefits of sitting in silence, of meditating, of clearing your head. So people, it's Eastern. I don't... Yeah, I think Easterners maybe have tapped into it, but I don't think they have the corner market on it. I think that this is just built into the laws of creation. And when people tap into it,

they see that it produces human flourishing. So I don't know. To me, that almost helps when I see something validated in the realm of natural law. I'm like, oh, okay, that almost helps when i see something validated in kind of the realm of natural law um i'm like oh okay that actually helps me overcome is this just some weird spiritual practice we do it was it really do and i i can talk i get this you know probably like you like i just i get my own head and i have these two the devil and the angel on my shoulder and just that's constant just if people can see what goes on in my mind, they'd probably trip out. But I just. No, they'd be like, that goes on in my mind too, probably. I mean, most people, they would, that's how they would respond.

Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. So yeah, I. And that's, it's very, it's a huge, it's a part of the human experience. Like we have to understand, like even, I mean, Preston, you know, it's Jesus crying out. I'm not, I'm not trying to get into theories of atonement here.

Okay. Like that's not where I'm going but in psalm 22 my god my god yeah why have you forsaken me you know later in psalm 22 we read that god does not abandon the afflicted in their affliction nor does he turn his face from them and the writer of hebrews and hebrews 2 and hebrews 4 talks about how jesus was was tempted in every respect becoming like us so he can sympathize with us and our weaknesses. And this idea, like it's an intimate part of the human experience. Jesus had to know he lived in perfect union with the Father. As it describes in John 5, I only see what I do the Father doing. I believe he had to move through that as we all must move through that. And I think a part of us

moving through that, like, God, I'm reaching out to you. God, I want to have words with you, but you're not having words with me. That's a necessary part of our formation as humans, as sons and daughters of God. And to your point, I think this is, if we deny this as part of the universal human experience, I think we're doing ourselves a disservice. Yeah, absolutely, man. I'm sorry, just going to my favorite passage about Christ. That was Hebrews 5. Yeah, that's what I thought.

I'm looking at it right now. 5, 7. Yeah, 5, 7. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so during his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence or piety. It's just such a, such a human, like, I resonate with this, you know, like the lofty Jesus that walks, you know,

three feet off of the earth and floats through life, which isn't true, but that's kind of some of the images we have. I'm like, I don't, and then follow Jesus. I'm like, well, I can't float across the earth. But I can do this. I can beg God and wonder, are you hearing me? Yes, I hear you, son. And even my life pattern, my rhythm of life contributes to God hearing me. I mean, he was heard because of his reverence, whatever that means. Although he was the son, he learned, I mean, he was heard because of his reverence, whatever that means. Although he was the son, he learned, Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered. Suffering, I mean, that's, so suffering is built into, God redeems suffering to teach us obedience.

After he was perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for those who obey him. Yeah, I don't know. Just the scent of this passage is just so, I think, beautiful. I don't know. Do you talk about this passage? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Lots.

I use Hebrews a lot in this book. And then I talk a lot about suffering. Like even the idea of trials or pray, lead us not into temptation or trials. That prayer, we really like, man, why am I in this trial? Like, I'm praying, lead us not. Well, no, what that actually, how that reads in Greek is like, the trial is not the final destination. There's something on the other side of the trial.

Mark 4 tells us that trials, they come for the sake of the Word. Trials are synonymous with the sun that rises for the sake of the Word, right? And so, this is very much a part of the experience of what it is to engage with God and engage with life. And that's where the formulas, the formulas and the cliches, man, no one needs another cliche, another formula about prayer. Because we are, and I'm a part of a men's Bible study. And this morning, one of the guys, he was one of the early reviewers of the book was telling me, he's like, man, this book has given me language and helped me see how I, like more of my life is actually like an expression of connection with God than I ever thought

possible. And it's much more intimate than I ever imagined. He's like, I've been holding God in prayer at a distance, transactionally, at arm's length. This is bringing it into the center of who I am as a person. And that's my heart, man. That's my prayer for this. That's good. So you're the perfect person to answer this question because, how do I say it? From my opinion, you're a very healthy, biblically-rooted charismatic. and you're a very healthy, biblically rooted charismatic.

I say that because I was raised with a MacArthur background, like very anti. And now I would say I'm charismatic. And I always tell people on paper I'm charismatic, charismatic with a seatbelt, whatever you want to – but I've had to learn – I would say I'm charismatic with a seatbelt. Okay. Just for the record.

That's where I would say I am. And I don't want i don't want it sounds almost demeaning to say but you're a biblically rooted charisma as opposed but there's people yeah you know what i mean you know what i mean i do how do we so i've had to like praying for even like healing or miracles does not that's not like i was raised that yeah i mean i don't know people said this explicitly but that's just not you look that suspicion if you kind of pray sure like that how do we because okay so so there's the one on the one hand people are like you pray for a miracle and you must believe that it will happen otherwise you don't really have faith i'm like but in the back of my mind i still have this like yeah but what if it doesn't doesn't always happen faith. But in the back of my mind, I still had this like,

yeah, but what if it doesn't? It doesn't always happen. I can't ignore that part of my brain. Other people are like, no, you pray, God, if you want to heal, then I invite you to heal. That feels almost a little passive to me. And yeah, anyway, what's your recommendation when there's this seemingly impossible thing in front of you? And I'm not saying get healed from a cold. It's like, well, even if you didn't, you're probably going to be healed anyway. But cancer is a classic one or just things that are just like the Hezekiah moments, right? Where Syria is storming the gates. We're going to – they've slaughtered everybody else.

We're next. We have no chance. We have no military. God, if you don't come through here you're you're we're done like there's nothing there's no other possibility here um how do we pray balancing like god you will do this versus if you want to do this go ahead yeah yeah is there something in between that or yeah i i write i write a whole chapter on that okay in the book just just because so this is i'm going to give you an answer but it's it's going to be an underdeveloped answer what what i would say is going back to what i shared earlier about what

jesus embodied in his moment of greatest need like we have to be people who pray specific prayers and we have to be people who pray surrendered prayers and i what I've seen, like I've seen the miraculous. So, I mean, I've seen things I can't unsee, right? Like, so I'm like, I know it can happen. And I've seen it happen through my prayers. I've also had times, and I highlight one in this book in particular, where it feels like God led me to a moment, and then the outcome was incredibly different than what I expected. And I was full of faith and full of expectation. It's

like, what's the disconnect? Preston, I think it leads us to that place of connection and trust and a willingness to live in the tension of prayer. And can I read, can I actually read something that I wrote about this? I think it'd be helpful. Let's see here. I'll start here. It's tempting to reduce anything and everything about prayer to pithy statements and life hacks, but the pathway of real connection with God is much more exciting. Many of prayer's switchbacks cannot be understood until traveled on, and that's okay. We've been conditioned to chase convenience and ease, especially in our pursuit of God, but basic anthropology will confirm that we crave something much more adventurous.

While creature comforts are nice for the skin and can surely empty our wallets, the soul instead thrives on purpose, meaningful struggle, and authentic connection. Prayer as God intends it is anything but boring and predictable. It is, in a real sense, the ticket into the cosmic

narrative, opening our eyes to the greater story so we can locate our scene and play our part. Will our part involve mystery? Yes. Will it include bold asking? Yes. Will it demand mountain moving? Yes. Will it require quiet trust? Yes. Prayer is the place where all those seemingly contradictory parts of you become integrated. And it's so, it's so tempting. It's so tempting to make it just this thing, be still and know that I'm God, you know, speak to this mountain, cast it. Like it's tempting to go there. I'm just going to pray, Hey, in Jesus's name or whatever. And the reality is God is inviting us to see what he's doing and how he's working in our lives individually in this greater world in new ways through prayer. And that's going to happen through disappointment, disillusionment, success, confirmations,

questions. All of that is a part of the prayer experience. confirmations, questions, all of that is a part of the prayer experience. So that's why again and again and again, we're led back to this life of being led by the Spirit of God, because ultimately it's God's Spirit who reveals who God is and what He's doing in our lives. So just to come back to the original question, do we pray, God, you will do this, you will do this, God, I know you're going to do this, you're good. Not you can do it, but you will do it. Or does that make, yeah. And I really, I don't know.

Yeah. I think there are times I think, and I've, and I've seen this in my life where, where there is, there is a resonance where, where there is this connection where we speak with confidence. Like we speak, I mean, really prophetically into a situation, and there's an authority and a boldness. But I've seen people try to conjure that. I've seen people try to manufacture that, and it's gross. I would say that's the exception. For me, though, I'm not like, God, you can't do this. I'm just praying. I'm like, Lord, I pray that you would do this. And that's how I'll pray. I'll be like, Father, I pray that you would do this. And that's how I'll pray. I'll be like, Father, I pray that you would do this. And here's the thing.

Vague prayers, Preston, don't do anything for anyone. They just don't. Like, not saying that God can't do something with a vague prayer. God can't, but you have no idea what he's doing with that prayer. If you pray something specific, if you cry out and you say, God, I pray that you would do this for my wife or whatever it is, and it doesn't happen, then you get to go have words with God about what happened there. You know what I'm saying? And that's why we come to God with humility in our prayer, but we're also told to come to God boldly in our prayer. I mean, I tell you, the word that we use for ask, it conveys like, I belong in your presence.

I belong making this request. I have a right to make this request. There's so much there that we're growing into and through is how we pray and engage with God. Well, there is, I mean, Hebrews, right, talks about approaching the throne of grace boldly. And there is, or is it a widow in Luke 11 that was persistent? The guest at midnight is Luke 11. The widow is Luke 18. But there is that confident persistence.

And I don't want to say demand, but it's almost a lowercase d. I mean it's – Listen, it's translated. I tell you it was translated demand sometimes. Like it's a stronger form of asking. It's not a timid, like, and that's what Jesus is teaching us in John's gospel in particular. Like come and ask. I've given you the authority.

I have shed my blood so that the curtain is torn down so that you do enter boldly. You're a child of God and your father wants to give you good gifts, right? Yeah. But, okay, let me share this. I think this might help put in perspective. And we see this on the Sermon on the Mount and we see this in Luke 11 as well. Jesus says, look, if you ask for bread, I'm not going to give you a stone. If you ask for a fish, I'm not going to give you a snake. The converse is also true.

You might think you're asking for bread, but you're actually asking for a stone. And so what I would tell people, listen, go to God with confidence asking. And if you ask wrong, God has a way of taking our imperfect prayers and leading us on a process that perfect us to receive the things that we really desire and need and want from him. Going back to what I shared very early in this episode, I made the statement that God will not deliver us from a thing if he knows that ultimately that thing will deliver us to him. Me praying for peace and contending for peace, that was a good thing. But Preston, it was artificial.

It was a superficial peace, my idea of peace that I was chasing. And I know that gets hard. We're talking about lives at stake here. And I hate giving the cliche response, like in the backdrop of eternity, this time is a vapor, all those kind of things. But there are elements to things that we can only understand by the Spirit of God, and that only makes sense outside of the bounds of time. So what do you – okay. I mean that kind of answers a question I was going to ask, but I would love how you maybe pastorally and theologically, but pastorally handle this. You know, like when people – like on paper, I know the answer to this, but but pastorally it's hard to communicate in a way

that's trivial um and demeaning really but um so we i have a friend family friend that um you know they lost a child to cancer like seven year old child i mean just it was brutal she she went she suffered uh she was healed and then ended up coming back and i mean the whole world the whole world is praying literally i mean they were well connected i mean so many people praying yeah god chose not to answer that prayer and it's not like they're praying for like their 88 year old grandpa not to die of cancer which they okay i'd you know like seven year old child this just goes so directly against god's desire and design and creation. And it happens.

And prior people listen. Like, yep. Why did God choose not to answer that prayer in the way that resonates with his design and will? This is an invasion, a real blatant invasion of evil in god's creation he has the power to do it he's a good god and again i know and i love that you don't like cliched answers so i want to hear what you're gonna say because it's like you know and they even had people say well you know god can use the suffering of the teach people it's like well can he work on can he use somebody else's child as a freaking blackboard to teach people like why okay why did he choose you know like sometimes the answer is

ah just pastorally i i don't anyway what would you say to probably the many people who have gone through something like that yeah i mean julia and i were walking through um a season of front some friends of ours who just lost their, their child that they've been praying for, believing for, um, at birth. Um, so stillborn. And it was the same thing, like answer to prayer, like miraculous pregnancy, that all, all of those things that go into a moment like that. And you come into these moments with cliches and with your formulas and whatever, like, please don't, just don't come into the moment. Just stay out of the moment.

I would say when it comes to the experience and walking through, seeing them navigate this, having conversation with them, and they're actually reading Words with God right now, and we're messaging me about it this morning and how much it's speaking to them and encouraging them in this process, we have to realize that is a wrestle, that is a struggle for them to have directly with God. And sometimes we get in trouble when we insert ourselves into other people's doubts and experiences and stuff. When we take on their pain in a way that makes us a victim rather than take on their pain in a way that positions us to pray for them and come alongside them and lend strength and perspective, that feels self-indulgent. And I think a lot of people,

when it comes to unanswered prayers, the people around them, they almost take a response that's self-indulgent. And I know that's probably not the direction you saw me going with this, but when you really think about it, God will—and I've seen God do it in my own life, and I've seen God do it in the lives of other people—God will move us through things that we never thought we could move through. God does, like through the unthinkable, through the unimaginable. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you I understand why God heals this child and doesn't heal that child. I don't understand that, bro. There are things that I'm still having words with God about that I'm like, God, what the heck? How does this work? But what I have found from what I've seen is the doubts that I take to God have a way of, of reforming into new, new and more mature understanding of his character and his faithfulness.

And, and I, and I'm seeing that in their lives, the way they navigate this. Um, and there are some things that I don't, are going to be explained or redeemed, quote unquote redeemed. I don't, I think there's going to be forms of comfort that aren't extended. Like there's a promise of blessedness within that comfort, within the morning that's to come. And so I think speaking to that promise in a way that doesn't belittle the pain of the moment, bringing those together, I think that's how we navigate those moments with our friends. And then for us,

I think we bring our words to God, our pain to God, our dissonance to God, and see what happens through that journey. Because there's a lot of people that are on the other side of that. And almost, yeah, I'm here. I just thought like, maybe giving permission to somebody going back to my friends to even 30 years later going through a season of lament and holy protest. And that's okay. You never get over that, right? That's something that the pain, the real suffering, the confusion, the doubt, the anger. Like these are good and real emotions that you'll probably be experiencing. It's okay to even have a lament 30 years later saying, God, why? Why? This still hurts.

And I think he's like, yes, I know I want to be with you in this pain. You know, like rather than just, again again solving it or thinking that your emotions that that you need to have you have to button it up yeah okay sometime you got to get over it you know i don't know like that just seems demeaning to expect that of somebody with especially some of these deep deep tragedies you know and i've seen people try to do that try to plaster you know other people i know that like they they they they they seem to just be recovered for something tragic a little too quickly and just smile just kind of this you know yeah hillary has a way wow

bill burr better watch out bro you better watch out it's just i don't know just like how are you doing oh it's great everything's fine yeah really how like is it really though like yeah because yeah anyway um oh i think there's a pressure though like there's a pressure we feel this pressure to explain it all and to button it all up and i mean mean, from my own seasons of doubt and sadness and mourning and navigating it with dear friends, it's presence and it's silence and just not coming in there and offering cliches, but just offering presence. And I think it's in those moments, Press, like going back to the idea of the silence, the canyon, it's just sitting there with God and just being real.

Having words with God, expressing that and not turning to the cheap words from the people around us who mean well, but really have no idea what they're saying. Because that's striking that person in ways that they're still trying to figure out. Like, how is that hitting me? How is that striking me? And they will be for decades to come. I had my first moment along these lines that was just so raw. I was an elder, like a lay elder, kind of in between lay elder and pastoral staff, whatever, at a church.

And it happened to be there was one one week where like three of the main elders pastors were out of town or something so i get a call from someone in the congregation i'm like the next line i'm like fourth on the list you know the calls it's a fairly small church but it was a couple in the church that their six-month-old kid they had a cold so they you know whatever you know and then then they end up saying, let's just go take her in. You know this is going to go, right? And sure enough, in the middle of the night,

their child died just out of nowhere, just death. And I got a call the next morning. They're almost beyond crying. They're almost like just dazed. Like, can you come? Our child is... And we had a big scene, you know, that we remember the birth and bringing, you know, just a week before church, you know,

bringing in the little baby carrier. So I show up to the hospital room and I remember seeing this, oh my gosh, this empty baby carrier sitting at my feet and they're staring at me, you know? And here I got, you know, I got a PhD in Bible. I've like 12 years of higher education in the Bible. I have like 12 years of higher education in the Bible and I have nothing. Nothing. And I just sat there and wept with them. And I don't know, to your point, I don't even know where I was going with this.

It's just I always come back to it that sometimes sitting in the doubt and confusion can be the only thing. And maybe even the best of all the options at that moment, they didn't need a Bible lesson. They didn't need it. No, they did not.

Even if I had a really well-worked out problem of evil question. They also didn't need you to rationalize it. They didn't need you to explain it. That would have been literally the worst thing. There is no explanation. There's not. But impressive, you've probably seen this. There are words that will form out of that silence. And as a different spirit, you're not coming in there to master, control the situation. It's a surrender to that silence, that silence of connection and prayer, that silence of grief, that silence of presence.

Yeah. that silence of presence yeah so and sometimes those words look i mean they take on the form of real words other times they take on the form of just a deeper and more profound form of human connection so they ended up i haven't talked to them in years but um they ended up recovering and what i would consider honest but but remarkably healthy, healthy way. And I say healthy, not that like, you know, three weeks later, they're like, God is so good. It was still obviously raw and hard, but they had a very, yeah, they had a very holistically healthy way to recover.

And they were able to mediate God's presence to other people who would go through similar things, you know, in ways that they wouldn't they were able to mediate God's presence to other people who go through similar things in ways that they wouldn't have been able to do, obviously, if they didn't go through this. And so I do believe God, obviously, He uses these moments. It's just even that language is just like, God, can you use somebody else? Hey, dude, this has been so good. I so just love your honesty and your wisdom. And I know you said several times you don't like cliches. I don't like cliches.

But you have a way of like saying profound statements that aren't cliched that are so profound and meaningful and deeply rooted theologically and with wisdom and stuff. So I just – when I had you on, I had my pen and paper ox. I know Addison's going to give you a bunch of stuff like, Oh my gosh, I need to sit on that idea for a while. Um, thank you again for being you and your book again is words with God, trading,

boring, empty prayer for real connection. Addison that deep of ear. Thank you, bro, for, uh, what you do,

man. And I'm excited for you to keep writing. Appreciate it, bro. Always good. Getting time with you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.