Unceasing Prayer with John Mark Comer, Christine Caine, Tim Mackie, Pete Greig | Tyler Staton

[Music] all right friends thank you so much for being a part of this conversation uh the the kind of destination point of the book praying like monks living like fools is uh the idea of unceasing prayer or rebellious Fidelity which uh obviously unceasing prayer that we're called to by the Apostle Paul is an internal state of being but like every uh spirit every spiritual practice is aiming at some internal state that we want to inhabit right and so I advocate for a three times a day daily prayer Rhythm which is taken from the church's first 300 years preserved in monastic communities which is beautiful because it's been preserved throughout history and tragic because it was taken out of the common church and assumed to be just for like special spiritual Elites or something like that and so dreaming about what would it be like to put that back into the life of the of the common believer of the stay-at-home parent and the student student and the busy executive and that hourly worker and everyone just the ordinary person and uh so I was hoping that we could have a conversation about that about what that could look like and Tim I'd love for you to kick us off because we've been having an ongoing dialogue about the motif of Paradise in the scripture maybe as a picture for what prayer is meant to be or how it's meant to be experienced so why don't you kind of lay that Motif for us and then we'll just pick it apart yeah sure um I know for me just personally um the challenge of unceasing prayer is really forced me to think about my basic assumptions about reality and the the nature of reality and uh there's a motif in Scripture that always it feels like a puzzle to me um that became like the key personally for me kind of unlocking this in an experiential way um it's the famous scene where there's the criminal being crucified next to Jesus there's two but one of them asks you know remember me when when you come into your kingdom and Jesus's reply is um I will meet you later today in Paradise um which I think most of us maybe think he meant Heaven I'll see you in heaven later today but of course that's not what he says he says I'll see you in Paradise and what's interesting is that word Paradise both in Greek and Old Testament Hebrew it's the word Garden so what does it mean for Jesus to say I will meet you in the garden later today because he's a Jewish man who's learned it in the scriptures there's only one Garden he's talking about and that's the Garden of Eden and last time I checked the Garden of Eden was like something way in the past like on page two of the Bible uh and in fact it is on page two of the Bible and so for me the form of the question was um when is Paradise and is it like something in the future for people who are dying or is it something like way in the past like in Genesis and then there's one other part of the New Testament that really messed with me and it's what Paul was actually talking about his own prayer life in uh the letter of two Corinthians and he talks about how one time when he was praying he had an experience that he called the vision and an apocalypse and he was transported he's not even sure if it was in his body or not um to heaven which he then proceeds to call Paradise and so that was the puzzle for me was like okay so where's the garden and when is the garden you know is that like way back when is it in the future or is it very much available in the present and that may seem like a Bible nerd trivia like question that you would ask but for me it became really meaningful when all of a sudden what paradise and Gardens are in the storyline of the Bible is one of the most potent symbols to talk about a place where Heaven and Earth are one where Heavenly abundance and the source of all life creates this environment that's just exploding with divine presence in life and that's what Adam and Eve forfeited you know in the story of Eden but apparently it's a it's a reality that isn't like lost from the world it's accessible now particularly through prayer and so that became really powerful for me when I realized that paradise is a way one way you could but you could there's biblical imagery about temples and about rivers and about mountains these are all places where God's Eternal Perpetual presence that is hovering and sustaining every moment and molecule of reality uh prayer and becoming aware of paradise now it's really about me tuning in to what reality actually is um and that's the reality that undergirds all of my life experience and um so I hope that's a coherent thought but it has become coherent for me and it's become a framework for me to think about prayer that is opposed to drawing away from reality in fact it's an opportunity for me to become grounded in the personal presence of the one who is the Eternal now the source of all life and Beauty in our world and the moment I had that shift of this is what I'm after in prayer or would I have the opportunity to connect to uh it just really transformed my own journey of Prayer yeah so what what thoughts is that prompt because I remember the thing that was such a breakthrough for me as you were sharing is uh another place where the the paradise Motif is explored in Revelation one where John on the island of Patmos finds himself having a revelation of Jesus in Paradise but he's exiled on an island so this ordinary Place actually a place he wouldn't choose to be becomes a place of encounter through this thing called prayer so we have that line I was in the spirit on the Lord's day what does that mean I was in the spirit on the Lord's day yeah yeah so what what thoughts does this prompt about this crazy broad concept called prayer I mean I I find it in not thrilling because it is both very challenging because I can't just box prayer and say I've had my quiet time now I can get on with real life but also incredibly reassuring because it means that prayer instead of being this other thing that I'm constantly trying to grasp hold of from the future into the present or from somewhere else in church history or whatever is actually continually God's presence is continually available to me and therefore it's something I relax into I think that the word for continual prayer Jessica and it means to come to rest there's this sense we're not striving after God's presence but we're learning to relax into it and and I think as we talk about spiritual disciplines and things like that it's understanding that that that is a way of opening your hands unclenching your fists it's not a grasping it's it's that so and this gives me a framework for grace and the the the the the the the the possibilities of every moment you're in a Cancer Ward you're on a Maternity Ward you're going to work somehow Paradise the presence of God is running parallel every moment can be a port into God's presence so I I find that incredibly exciting yeah that reminds me uh the commentator Frederick Dale Bruner and his come commentary on the Gospel of John makes the argument that everywhere that you see the word believe in the Gospel of John the great the best translation is relax into yeah and so you know he talks about the invitation to relax into Jesus to relax into his promises roleheiser defines prayer as relaxing into God's goodness so I wonder whether I love all that I'm thinking about in the book of Hebrews where it says labor to enter into that place of rest and I'm wondering if prayer is the portal through which we get to that place of rest so it's it and the laboring is whoa suddenly I've stepped from here to there even though I'm still here like I'm in this realm but I'm not in this realm anymore and then I can labor from rest for the Kingdom so it's a whole um different thing I I just kind of think that a lot of us try to do things in our own strength but we've not we've got the labor around the wrong way if we labor to enter into that place of rest then from that place of rest we can labor in this realm and and see God's Kingdom Come and gods will be done here on Earth as it is in heaven I think yeah I I think labor is a helpful word because the the truth is I think the beautiful biblical Motif you're talking about can just be an abstract concept if I don't plant it in some kind of container where I'm now ordering my life in such a way that I'm curating taste buds for that paradise or for that recognition of God who is always present to me in my ordinary life and so I wonder for each of you how how have you stumbled across or how do you attempt to practice the presence of God and to recognize him as you move throughout your ordinary life because most it's become common in the church today it seems like to have a set box that God fits in where like if I'm a particularly disciplined average churchgoer it's a 15 to 30 minute morning time and then I go about about my day but but how do we allow Paradise that's running parallel to all of our ordinary moments how do we begin to tap into those portals well for me uh I mean a real pivot point in my own Journey um was seeing a spiritual director and they invited me to start beginning each day with a long period of Silence which is really counterintuitive I feel like my tradition shaped me to think of prayer as talking a lot you know even if it's silent but talking mentally to God um and so what's interesting is that actually is a setup part time um but the fact that it's at the beginning it's almost like it's setting the tenor as it were for the day and recognizing what's true starting right here in the beginning and will be true every waking moment for the rest of my day that I am in the presence of God and that's been enormously meaningful to me it was so surprising and at first I didn't feel like anything was happening but as more and more time has gone by that's become one of the most meaningful rhythms to my own life is marking that that season of time those few moments at the beginning of the day that's one practice one way that it's become significant for me it's something that plays in my head right when I wake up every morning is something I've heard you say which you tell me exactly how it is but it's something about how the first thing you give attention to shapes your imagination for the day or shapes your attention do you know what I'm referring to oh I could not off the top of my head do a good job but I read this neuroscientist years ago that talked about how the two most important moments of your day for the development of your brain and your Consciousness and your neural Pathways or what you think about right before you go to sleep and what you think about right upon waking and that just it was almost devastating for me as a pastor to realize most people end their day by consuming quasi-pornographic material on Netflix yeah and begin their day with either Twitter email Instagram or the news and like can you imagine two more deformative acts for the curation of your Consciousness which that might be weird language but I really think that's much of what prayer and discipleship is about especially if you read the ancient Christians desert fathers and mothers it's really about you know Paul would call the renewal of the mind but it's about curating the the flow of thoughts and feelings and desires through your mind toward the trinitarian presence of love you know so I do think those moments of right before bed and ride in the morning are crucial and I would be with Tim you know morning silence you know my morning time of prayer which is nine times out of ten the highlight of my day yeah yeah I mean I just I look forward to it all day long I miss it when it's over I'm set and that's not because I'm so virtuous I think it's I don't know how it got there you know and I don't remember I remember being I grew up in a really good Christian home so I was like forced to have a morning quiet time like we literally had a rule in our house like no Bible no breakfast but it was very much that kind of Western Evangel that was like a thing uh hey you can just stuck on that maybe that's spiritual abuse maybe it's good parenting I'm not sure I'm the oldest of four kids all four of us look again our day reading scripture it worked it worked breakfast actually and we do intermittent fasting so what can I say uh but but it was very much that kind of Western Evangelical morning prayer was reading through the Bible in a year and interest session like verbally asking God to do things in the world both of which are beautiful practices it was not resting in God's love it was not anything contemplative it was tiring you know so it didn't click over for me until I was I think in college and went through a real bad season of mental health and extreme depression and suicidal ideation where I needed God to survive and so at that point every morning was like two hours of early morning prayer and it wasn't because I was spiritually zealous or virtuous it was because I didn't want to kill myself and I couldn't get through the day and so I think pain for most of us is the great driver so ever since then now you know 20 something years later my morning time of mostly silence some scripture but it's very slow sometimes it's just a Psalm or maybe a Psalm and a portion of the gospels in the New Testament and I'll do longer reading at other periods it's just the richest time in my day the challenge for me is how to carry that through the day and so I've been like trying to move toward a daily prayer Rhythm fixed hour prayer for like a decade and trying and failing trying and failing because of the the labor is not on the god side it's on the me side and on the world side that you know that the Hebrews line is mostly translated strive to enter his rest so preachers are always like we're against striving I'm like God's not he's all forced driving but you're not striving on the god side like God is there waiting available to welcome you you're striving on the iPhone side Wi-Fi side busy inside and that's where one thing that's been really helpful for me in those later touch points of prayer has been using whether you want to call it liturgy or pre-written prayers or the Psalms not having to make up my own it's harder for me to get to that place of Stillness in the middle of my day or the end of my day with teenagers and a job and so using other prayers from the Psalms or right now at night I've just been reading Phyllis tickle's little you know literature yeah literally the hours and I just do her her vespress thing you know every night and it's so helpful I can lie in bed I'm exhausted I can barely think but it's a lot better than Netflix and I just kind of go through it it's a page long it's it's pretty bad prayer like if we're if we're judging the performance it's really bad and we're not but but it's a little guide to carry me in my exhaustion back into trying to have my last to be of God yeah well one thing I found helpful in terms of because I actually practice early morning silence too which is interesting there's a theme emerging when I think of it as giving the first word of my day to God and I don't mean that like every time I'm silent I receive Revelation or I'm awaiting Revelation but it's just like I want to start with consent because there the spirit is within me at work for my transformation at a level deeper than I have language for and so I want to consent to the spirit's work and surrender my day as I begin it but and then to return to whatever it is that then as I open up the Psalms or look at pieces of the gospels to return to it I find the examine really helpful I I practice the examine in the evening not not as the last moments before I fall asleep which if you're unfamiliar is just you know reviewing your day with God and often I will I will talk to God about my morning time with him and say I remember talking to me about something I can't remember and I take I talked to him about like what were you saying like I do with a friend and usually I can recall it and sometimes I can then see wow you were at points throughout my day and sometimes I just say I'm really sorry that I didn't do anything with that today please keep talking to me about it until it gets worse this little thing I'm reaching for it I'm gonna get in trouble for making noise but I have these little scraps of paper and I just every morning write down anything that I sense from God it could just be and I put my gratitudes on here and it's normally it's just little phrases from scripture sometimes it's more serious and then I just stick it in my pocket and then every time I reach for my phone or my car keys or my wallet I feel it there and sometimes it just goes there and you know ends up in the laundry but sometimes that helps me not forget you know it's like they say that the most common command in all of scripture is do not fear Tim you can you can shut this down yeah careful this is don't claim make any claims about the Bible with Tim or prayer next to Tyler it's like what can I talk about I don't even know um uh and I'm told the second most repeated command is remember I don't know if that's true but it's sure that's awesome yeah there's a whole there's definitely a lot of remembers and there's definitely a tie between those you know the more we remember the Fidelity of God and his goodness and our present and our past the less fear we have I think as we posture toward the future you know so I think hearing from God on a daily basis and then remembering remembering remembering you know yeah I'd love to hear from you guys on this thing you go I I love it and okay so for every mom that's got a million things going on in kids and she's been saying I'm listening to us right now going I wish that I could uh practice you know the examine every night and um if the kids weren't throwing things at me and if I you know um and because my life even now in my 50s is still uh very subject to Airline schedules and delays and I've had to learn uh to do it practices I learned even as a young mum like you know that where you were you had two seconds you couldn't even go to the bathroom by yourself then like I mean some people are literally watching us going I would love to do what you're talking about but I can't even go to the bathroom without six kids around my ankles or you know um so I've learned even I could be in an airport and there's delayed flights or I'm often on an airplane at what would have been normally an early morning or a late night and whether I'm sitting in close proximity to someone and then other times I have the opportunity not to be in close proximity I've got a little bit more space so I've had to learn to go into a Zone however it is wherever I am with whatever time I have and I would have variations of all of that so if I'm at home at my home where I have a lot more control over my own time my kids are older my environment's there um then I'm listening to you and I'm going yes I have aspects of all of that but where I often am which is not like that and Nick and I are often in a small hotel room where we're sharing that space and a tiny little bathroom and that happens many dozens of nights a year um we've just had to make it work like he'll go and leave our room and go downstairs into a hotel lobby where it's nearly like pitch black and have some time and I'll um I do get the room and so then I'll have the some perks of 26 years of marriage but we make it work going okay um and mine is and it can always go how do I connect with god with some people it works the same way doing it the same way every day and there's a great intimacy um it's like any married couple your intimacy it Alters like Nick and I have been married for 26 years so there's a lot of various ways we express our intimacy and we show that and so the way it works in my relationship with God and I think in light of what I'm called to do it's so many different time zones so many different environments where I have to make this intimacy work in some places it's much longer there's a there's a whole different way that we we go about our connection and then in other places we can get there a lot quicker and and we can and it's okay like it's um I'll go through whether it's the word or the spirit I'll have different times I remember when I was going through a really hard time where I wanted to quit truly even think walk away from Ministry it was so difficult in my tradition I was able I had the word but I also had 22 years of prophetic words that I had transcribed spoken out over my life and for a six-month period um I read every one of that that was my quite time with the Lord I would just remember I would read those prophetic words with my children when the pandemic first hit I got all the prophetic words outside my daughters down and Nick and I um of course we had the word of God and then words from God given to us through people and we just read to and we said you know right now kids we don't need to fear because this is what's been spoken over our lives and so much of this has not yet come to pass so I don't know where this is going but I can tell you that this is the promise of God and it was just even teaching you were building the present moment on the on the promise rather than the anxiety absolutely yeah so go rather than look at this this is what the word and then other words from God by God's people have come to us so it's a way of training my kids but even reminding myself so and there would be other days you know I've done entire three years straight of My Utmost For His Highest um as my you know quite like I I could just so I'm saying this for the people that maybe think oh my gosh I couldn't think of anything worse than the same way all the time every day I'm like there are variations and I think what you're gonna and however this is gonna explain what you the commonality between all of us amongst our different temperaments is that we would all say the intimacy of connection is what is absolutely important however that then is outworked in our lives and I think like every married couple has a different way of doing that everyone has their unique way of doing that with God too yeah it's something that you're touching on I think is really important is I look at the Apostle Paul's prayers and his letters and they're so instructive for me especially the prison letters like the letters he wrote from prison because the way he prays it's it's like he gets himself to the promises of God he acknowledges his situation and then he gets himself to the promises of God and then he prays the promises into being so his prayers are not I've noticed that I think I inherited a way of prayer that is in reaction to circumstances right oh no this has happened God please help and Paul acknowledges he doesn't ignore his circumstances which would be equally unhealthy but he he acknowledges that the circumstances are there and then he lays the promise of God on top of the circumstance and builds his prayer on that and so I think one way to have like a portal to Paradise is to acknowledge your current circumstance bring the promise of God to bear on the circumstance and then pray in the promise rather than pray in reaction to the circumstance the promise would be my starting point in my prayer life um which for some people that's a little bit disconcerting because they'd be like you're denying reality I'm like I'm not at all denying reality I'm actually declaring reality first then I'm bringing my circle now I know this can get messy so um you know we're not talking about blabber and grab it and we're not talking about that but there has to be a space and I think part of why some people's prayer life is feels like it's not achieving anything like why am I doing it do I have an imaginary friend is this this is not really real is um it's an imaginary friend when you don't know the promises it's a fine line people that take it to extreme don't want to take any responsibility for this realm but I think if you're willing to take responsibility for this realm then the the truth is the word of God the facts so the truth never changes but the facts can change so a lot of us we build our prayer life on the facts of our circumstances and I'm like facts can change but the truth never changes so I'm going to subordinate the facts to the truth as my starting point and then bring it into alignment that's where it would work for me does it bring me back to where you said Tim earlier about it's really about what's real you know like I kept as you were chatting I kept thinking of Douglas steer who was a 20th century Quaker spiritual writer said to pray is to pay attention to the deepest thing I know and it's to a tune and a line to Ultimate Reality but if you're in a materialist framework and you don't have to live in Portland and some super secular context most of the western world is just very materialistic just meaning what is real is what you can empirically verify in a lab and inside that kind of a world view that is the air we breathe we cannot not be influenced by that as followers of Jesus prayer can feel like reading a shopping list to Santa Claus in the sky or making up thoughts in your mind or just an excuse for resting or whatever or daydreaming and but if prayer is actually to see if actually the material world is the the Blurred world and and the spiritual perception which includes material reality and doesn't just transcend it it incorporates it if that's actually the real seeing the world through the lens of God his presence his promises his history his Redemptive history if that's actual reality and my New York Times every morning is actually the very distorted version of reality then actually in prayer I'm not vacating reality I'm coming back to it and re-learning how to see the world through its lands I I agree with all of that but we've got a guard against a kind of Jewelers that says you know reality is kind of me sitting on my own with Earl Gray tea and squirrels being silent with a Bible verse squirrels are not silent for the record they're quite distracting those of us in Oregon know girls can be quite distract quite distracting to prayer okay and then and then sort of unrealities New York Times and I I know we're all on the same page here but really I think the principle here is whatever practices we use is actually to try and help us encounter God in the material world in that and it's not just that he's somehow more elsewhere than there but that actually the the the removal of ourselves enables us to find him in in the place I'm talking about our interpretation of the real world yeah I'm not talking about vacating the messy everyday life because God is only in Stillness I'm saying when all I do is live in the chaos and the noise I accept the web browser of choices interpretation of this world around me yes and they can prayer I get the right lens the right interpretation of this very real very Earthly very material world yeah you know it has to be significant that um in these biblical moments when people are encountering heaven on Earth um they're usually in moments of real duress and and suffering and so you mentioned John exiled on an island in Patmos um there's that well-known story about Jacob in Genesis where he's running his brother's gonna murder him yeah and he's estranged from his father and his brother and he has he has nowhere to sleep so he's asleep in a field and this field becomes the place where Heaven meets Earth and it's you know it's the famous Stairway to Heaven story um or Ezekiel sitting in Exile in Babylon and I I remember when I started to observe that I mean what what other circumstances seem like they're determining reality for you than when our lives fall apart and that's just and of course Jesus he's dying and he's thinking of where he's going to meet up with the criminal and so uh whatever kind of shaping of those people's awareness of divine presence in every moment of Life uh that kind of it doesn't just happen by itself like you are only in those types of moments with Paradise on the brain if you have been shaped or have shaped your mind to become aware to it um so I appreciate it that's a that's a really good point Pete and I think that's the place that's the desired end goal is like whether it's a quiet morning with some chirping squirrels or whether my life is falling apart that in either of those circumstances I can be equally aware of divine love and presence that is that is here and let me try and push this a tiny bit further because I loved what you said about you know being a busy mom and and all of that stuff firstly I was primary carer for our kids for a number of years and I remember going to the prayer room at 3am taking a few months old baby who's you know asleep in his thing going in I was tired I felt like I need to be awake when the baby's asleep like a hole in the head he was waking every two hours that stage I settle in I'm like okay Jesus you and me and at that moment little Danny starts crying and I I'm I'm all ready to like rebuke him in the name of Jesus and he needed his nappy his diaper changed and I was resent deeply resenting this intrusion on my hour of you know esoteric Stillness and I realized and this is a deeply Celtic holistic spirituality here I need to forgive me but I need to find Jesus in the changing of the diaper or I will never find Jesus so this is a little graphic but we're humans yeah as I'm wiping the what's it you know off his backside I am realizing this is my sin and as as I'm tenderly cleansing him I'm I'm repenting and receiving forgiveness and and that lovely moment when they've got a clean diaper on they're all cuddly I'm thinking about the father so I had to take the thing that felt like a distraction and make it my moment of of encounter and and let me apply that in a different way most of the books on spirituality been written by hyper introverts and um we have to start to explore those bits of the Bible that actually talk about spirituality in a corporate contexts and kinesthetically like energy so I didn't know it was okay that I often get clarity in my thinking and even hear God when I'm running I didn't know because so much was sit still you know remove distractions and all this and and I didn't know that you know it was okay sometimes to do an activity that enabled me to focus and then I started thinking about Jesus climbing mountains to pray and realized I had this romantic notion that he just liked Hills and he was a hiker and and didn't think actually it may be that that was releasing certain hormones in the blood of Christ that was actually enabling him to focus I mean there's pretty good Research into that now and so it may have been that he was actually deliberately taking physical exercise for his prayer time and I I say this because one I want busy moms changing diapers to know you don't necessarily have to sit for an hour in silence to meet with Jesus two I want people who maybe have a little ADHD or they struggle to Center and focus no maybe there's some active ways you can with equal validity encounter God so pray the way God Made You yeah that I connect with God most that way yeah I walk in the morning right I walk in the morning I have a run that I do on Friday morning so I don't take headphones or anything and it is the best prayer time of my week it's what restores me more than anything and long stretches of it I'm not actively talking to God but then a thought will pop and I'll have this Clarity between me and God and then I'll go back into another stretch it's like being on a road trip with a friend we have amazing conversations and then you just don't talk for an hour and then you re-engage but you're comfortable enough to know you're gonna go in and out yeah I'm thinking of you mentioned the examine and I have been trying to pray the exam it every day for a decade and failing for a decade I believe in the exam man I've literally given a sermon on the exam it was a pretty good sermon and I believe in all the theology behind it and I just find it incredibly difficult to do by the end of the day I'm so tired it requires more mental discipline than I have but the funny thing about so I'm still trying to figure it out so help me we can that can be an offline conversation help me figure out how to do this but you know historically Ignatius developed that coming out of a thousand years of monastic tradition of fixed hour prayer seven times a day or six times a day because they took vows of stability and they lived cloistered behind walls in the same spot and so here comes Ignatius you know and he's starting a new order that isn't a monastic order it's an Apostolic order they're going out to do Mission and Justice the world has opened up through sailing and trading and they're sending missionaries to parts of the world they didn't even know existed and they need a form of contemplative spirituality for a busy active life on the go and if you're traveling to Japan or whatever in the 16th century you can't pause six times a day you can't do Vespers and lots and you can't do that you're traveling you're going in another culture so he developed the exam and as I understand it to develop a whole contemplative life that you could do in 15 minutes a day on the go in an airport in a hotel room on a ship or whatever so I think of the exam and as like the deep end of the pool for like uber Elite contemplatives but it was actually designed for it was the travel extroverted for people not like me it was a problem extroverted active kinesthetic kind of people to still cultivate and interior life with God you know you know what I'm hearing as as we're all talking is whatever your spiritual practices are and and they will change in your life as as the spirit invites you to to be formed in prayer in different ways at different times but whatever your spiritual practices are they're ultimately about developing intimacy which I think is often expressed through interruptability I I was just thinking about the fact that when when I'm at work I'm I'm lo I love whenever Apple Incorporated the do not disturb feature on on a iPhone because I can just you know get no notifications and it's amazing and then they're waiting for me whenever I turn it off except um Kirsten on my phone her her contact to me my wife it gets pushed through because we we didn't make it you didn't make it she's the only one who made it but but it's because intimacy like she can interrupt me because she's never an interruption to me right and intimacy allows for that um we have a regular date night but but all that that date night is doing I think is facilitating deeper interruptability and that seems it seems maybe even in those biblical pictures you were exploring less like oh John on the island of Patmos was tapping into something and more like maybe it was more like John is interruptible to God and so this is where uh God punctured something to get to John rather than the other way around yeah and just as a you know talk about the Bible with Bible nerd but uh Ezekiel throughout all of the experiences that he has some of them he's actually really angry about one of them he's straight up angry he says after he had an encounter with God because it was a commission to do something he didn't want to do um so that's really I've never thought about that yeah but the point is that these are things as much happening to him and you have to imagine to get to that place requires a whole life shaping to get to a place where you would even know that God wants to get your attention in the first place yeah to think about prayer not as something we do but as also something that is done to us is a paradigm shift you know like um it's a French philosopher who writes about how technique is the secular version of superstition so in pre-secular scientific eras it was throw salt over your shoulder or whatever and you'll get the right outcome in life and people just trying to keep bad things from happening to them and make good things happen to them secular people think we're so much more evolved than enlightened so we're like I'm an intermittent fast and I'm gonna calorie count this I'm gonna do this mindfulness app and I'm gonna hack this thing as all these life hacks and I'm going to read this parenting thing I'm gonna adopt this philosophy whatever and it's technique it's trying to do the right thing to engineer the circumstances of your life and I think it's really hard for people that take prayer seriously to not accidentally carry that technique mindset into prayer yeah and think that prayer is about I need to posture my body the right way or this the right and it all matters our body matters how we pray matters where we all of this stuff matters but the danger there is the goal of prayer is not to master the circumstances of your life it's to be mastered yes that will make some people really uncomfortable with that language but the goal is not to control your life it's to let go of control so yes there's a skill there's posture matters how you stand how you breathe how you sit sure I find all of that very helpful but there's not like if you get the right prayer technique down then you can control and you're just living in the third heaven all day long it's not that's not how life with God is you're trying to let go of control so I do think that over the Arc of a life and this is not to say that intercession becomes any less important I don't think it ever does but I do think there is a gradual shift of prayer feels less and less like something you do and more and more is like something that God is doing in and through you yeah yeah it's availability and awareness isn't it that openness to to what God wants to do um that's exactly right I love that can can we land this way I would love just if each one of us would share what is a way that God is shaping you or stretching you in prayer right now I got this moment in in your spiritual journey as the asker of the question I can name mine first because it something just happened last week that caused me to realize so I've been pausing for this midday rhythm of praying for the Lost meaning people in my life who are outside of relationship with Jesus it's typically like 60 seconds it's an attempt to stop in the middle of the day and cultivate compassion yeah um because sometimes being a pastor can erode to that right you spend all of your time around professional Christians and you turn inward to the work of the church and you forget uh what it is to walk not knowing where home is and and um I have found that my heart is just beginning to be softened it's so slow it's like a calloused heart that is having lotion rubbed on it day in and day out it's so slow and my eyes are beginning to be opened that the spaces in my life where I used to be mostly zoned out and feel that I had earned being zoned out by my work or something are the places that my eyes become more open like oh this is the place Jesus might meet me now for instance last week um there's this one particular friend of my wives who I found myself praying for Midday regularly and then through a straight A Strange set of circumstances Kirsten had to leave gave my son's soccer practice while I was arriving she happened to be talking to that friend I've never had a conversation one-on-one with this person and then we're just sitting on the grass at a soccer practice next to each other and there's 45 minutes left and suddenly my eyes widened in that moment of wait a minute I wonder if Jesus is opening up space I've been praying for people like yes yes so anyway how's God meaning you let me do one I I've been exploring a lot how to engage with God through my limbic region rather my frontal cortex so frontal cortex is language and logic limbic region is creativity empathy and and intuition all that stuff and and um when Jesus teaches in pictures um and Parables he's deliberately speaking to the limbic region so what that means is um I always understood journaling is a is a useful discipline particularly for an external processor but a psychologist said to me the trouble is if you're writing in words in your Journal you're still using the frontal cortex so you need to be using imagery Doodles uh colors um to switch into that part of your brain that is more meditative it's the bit of our brains we'll use when we go to the movie theater you know we all know how to use that we all understand that but many of us switch it off when it comes to God so um even if you use a digital journal of some kind you know spend a little bit of money I've got a nice Apple pen now so I can actually draw on the screen and use colors I spent a month just exploring Psalm 23 and bringing images in and and uh you know drawing lines and and and just exploring I'd be embarrassed for anyone else to see it but it was a way of creating that Stairway to Heaven thing as it were into that part of me that knows how to do empathy and Imagination so that's journaling but it's not writing lots of words it's and people get scared of it because they're like I don't know how to draw or I'm worried how stupid it looks if someone else sees but there's something quite powerful in engaging that part of my brain in my engagement with God so that's just one really practical thing I'm doing absolutely here's something that's happening like right at this moment so for me if I sense the Lord starts saying something to me that's not going to be for now but it's it's going to be so about three so this is like in real time I hope by the time this video comes out it actually helps someone um but about three or four months ago I started to get uh you know I felt very drawn to in my own personal time I've got a systematic way I read through the Bible but this was like Jonah Nineveh and this is how it all happens in my quiet time anyway so I'm I'm sitting there with the lord and there is this thing and this person specifically that I know I should be praying for but I don't want to because I'm still you know I don't want to because God will change my heart but this is just me being very honest and um and you know and that I you know have to bring forgiveness and release to a whole new level that I I'm feeling like I'm I'm probably out of a minus but you know there's there's some way we can go here and so it's this is just what happens in my time so it's almost like the Lord and me we go through all this stuff and then there's this it's not finished because I have this lingering thing that I just know and it lingers and then it about three months ago it was like okay I want you to start going through Jonah and just with what you're doing I just want you to add this thing so I'm reading and I'm having this moment in real time as we're recording this very uh tug of war with the Lord in the midst of my entering the seventh heaven and Jacob's Ladder and we're like um in Patmos and I'm you know ushering in the second coming and this is all awesome this simultaneously what is happening is um Christine what if I send you to Nineveh and you're not going to you don't want them to repent because you know I'm going to be merciful and for me this is how the Lord is speaking to me about I'm about to do a big number on the earth and within my body and so much of my body is going to have to go to Nineveh and they're not going to want to because of everything that's happened in the last few years wow um and because and they're not going to want an Innovative repent because they're not going to want me to forgive them because So Christine are you willing now in our time together this is what I'm feeling I mean I'm being very open um over the next year or so to allow me to take you to places there so that you can be ready for what I want to do out there so that this would not be now this is a very specific example because we're doing this but this is generally how I know oh I think I know where the next few years are going yeah and one of the themes I hear in there as well I love your honesty in that thank you is is it an eyeballing or a wrestling with God and I I think we sometimes underestimate those times where it's like God's eyeballing us we're eyeballing him there's that wrestling you talk about that in in the book and as long as we we rush to say the right thing or do the right thing but that radical honesty before God yeah is part of the awareness and the openness yeah absolutely is there anything comes to mind for either of you guys yeah um you know I I spent most of my adult life developing a set of skills for engaging scripture uh in a way that removes subjectivity from The Experience so that I and that's important like that is yeah I don't want scripture to be an echo chamber where I just actually am importing my own thoughts into it I want to hear what like the spirit has to say um through what these authors were communicating and but I realized um in recent years that that has also shaped me um to undervalue subjectivity and experience in the way that I hear from and interact with God and so my growth area right now is in learning in times of silence or often when I'm when I'm running or riding my bike to and from work and I feel like and I I don't know how to describe it except a word or phrase will enter my mind and sometimes I'm just like I don't know our brains are weird you know but there have been some times where it feels like I think that's important and um it could be like that I had too much coffee or not enough but it could be significant and I've had a few experiences where there will be something that happens later in the day that's like totally connected to that yeah weird thing that was in my mind and then I'm like wait a minute it feels so slow when I tune in and a few of those have been like really remarkable like that's just too much of a coincidence yeah um so I I would if that's a skill or a habit that can increase in my own life I would really really love to experience the subjectivity of more of that and I feel like really it's a it is another form of surrender of my preconceptions of what prayer is and what it means to have my life become a dialogue with God that's definitely my growth area right now in prayer hmm uh mine would be very simple um you know um I've been going through just a really difficult time in my personal life and emotional life and I find it really hard to pray sometimes when I find it hard just to think you know when life is upside down and confusing and what I thought we were doing God was leading us to didn't work out and it's just a very confusing and disorienting time and in those Seasons you can't help but wonder where is God and where am I and I just feel very chaotic on the inside of my brain it's just find it very hard to pray Stillness is like harder than normal and it's hard all the time and I've been thinking a lot about the Lord's Prayer and when Jesus taught the disciples to pray he gave them a prayer to pray and I grew up in a church tradition where prayer was all extemporaneous it was all just saying what's on your mind to God and then as I got older kind of became enraptured by more contemplative prayer which is you know requires a bit of mental dexterity and discipline you know what I mean and he's even even requires more at some level and I think I skipped like the beginning point of prayer accidentally which is praying the prayers of Jesus and the church to God I don't think you ever mature beyond that I think there are different aspects of prayer but that first one of just talking to God in the language of Jesus or scripture or the Psalms or the Saints or I didn't grow up in a liturgical church tradition I'm not even especially drawn to that but I find that pre-written prayers end times are really helpful in different times they're really helpful to me when I have an early morning flight and I don't have an hour of Stillness I have you know a middle seat and it's 7 A.M and there's a baby crying next to me I'm probably not going to pray really well contemplatively in that moment but I can I can pray Psalm 5 to Jesus you know um when I'm exhausted from I didn't sleep good and I slept four hours last night because I had this thing with my kids or whatever so I'm just going to pray this in the morning when I'm in the Dark Night of the Soul when I'm doubting God when I'm confused and so one thing I've done that has been but you know kind of sometimes liturgical prayers feel really impersonal so one thing that I'm just finding great life in that's new to me in prayer is all in each kind of different seasons of my life so I did one for about three months and I just started a new one about a week ago I'll kind of spend some time thinking about and mostly in solitude and in close friendships with other people what is it that God is trying to do in my life right now and how do I cooperate in prayer and how what what is it that the spirit of Jesus is trying to pray through me back to the father to accomplish his purposes in me which is kind of a hard question to answer sure yeah and it requires like like I last week I went away for a day and I know some people can't do that but that's really important to me to go away for a day and it requires like really honest conversations with my wife and close friends try to articulate it and then I've like forced myself to get it into a page and this is not like going to show up in a Phyllis tickle book someday this is not a beautifully poetic written prayer but it's my attempt in a kind of page to capture everything that I think God is trying to get through me to him and so I printed out and I just pray it every morning and I read a prayer writer recently that said you should always begin and end your prayer the same way just he was kind of on the you know just your brain follows ritual can help to focus so I kind of just began my morning prayer with some gratitude and a Psalm and then I'll just end it by praying this yeah and the nice thing about it if you read it you could read it in two minutes to pray it takes me about ten but honestly it kind of says everything that I feel I need to say to God and kind of says to me everything that I think God needs to say to me and so I kind of feel like if all I do is take 10 minutes and just breathe for a minute and pray this to God I kind of feel like all right I'm anchored now for the day yeah and it doesn't solve all my problems but I have just found extraordinary life with God in praying a prayer that I wrote and sometimes I'll pull in from other people or they'll be quotes or the Serenity Prayer will be part of it or whatever you know but it just feels like this is what God is wanting to pray through me and I just find that in a season of confusion and pain in incredibly helpful way to just bring my soul to God yeah well you're you're all brilliant so your insights are helpful but thank you more than that for opening your lives and sharing where you are it's the words of Ruth Haley Barton you know the greatest gift that we have to give the world is our own transforming selves so thank you for sharing that gift [Music]

Channel: Tyler Staton

Views: 147,454

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Id: YMS5QNI4ABU

Length: 55min 9sec (3309 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 28 2022