I Am Here: Addison Bevere on Rediscovering Prayer

0:03Welcome to Brave and Big, where we talk about living a Brave and Big Life. I'm Joey Odom, husband to Kristen, dad to Harrison and Gianna, speaker, former tech co-founder, and author.

0:13I'm Chris Hart, husband to Molly, dad to Blakely, Cooper, Landry, and my son Brave. I'm the CEO and founder of the Brave Group and Brave Performance Agency. Joey and I have been having these talks for 25 years, and we're better for it. We believe the same will be true for you. Enjoy this episode. Be brave and live big. All right, let's get after it. Brave and big. Come on. Welcome to the episode. We're on a tear right now with just fantastic people. Crushing.

0:44Yes.

0:44If if if there was an award for just salty guests, I think we we would be close to winning it, and today might put it over the top. Over the top. Stallone, over the top. Oh, bro. Come on. Training in the truck. Absolutely. Come on. Joey, let us not delay. Would you please introduce the guest for the day?

1:01Well, gang, you know our guest as an author, podcaster, speaker, and leader, but this intentional messenger has so many more talents and titles. He's a brother, one of four whose names starts with A, but he's actually a B boy breakdancer. He's a fashionista going back to high school when his name might as well have been Aslan, being voted CS's best dressed lion. He's an author whose home library includes Wright and Lewis, and whose Spotify library includes Mariah and the Backstreet Boys. He's a father who traded nicknames from Lil Addy to Daddison to Asher, Sophia, Elizabeth, and Augustus. He's a pickleball dinker, a gym worker outer, a Catan Conqueror. He drives golf balls better than he drives bikes. Just ask his wrist and his trash can. He likes his candy sour, his olives Greek, his cards Pokemon, and his faith integrative. He and his bride Julie make you feel at home with the Bever's, and like all Christians, they call Franklin home. Please welcome to Brave and Big, our friend, B-Boy Fashionista Pickleballer, head of the fan clubs for both George McDonald and Robin Thick, Mr. Addison Bevere.

2:12Guys, that's one of one. Come on. I mean one of one. There it is. There it is. I don't even know what to say. I am speechless right now. I feel known. I feel seen. You are known. I feel like I belong. So thank you.

2:24Hey, just like Genesis 16, 13 says, you're the guy who sees me. We are the podcast who sees me. Can I get can we do a quick little can we can we review the script real quick? My favorite line in there. I just always have to just do a quick little pat on my own back. The best line in there. And it's brilliant.

2:41I'm actually concerned with direction you're going. I don't know if I'm going to double-click on any of these. Let's just okay.

2:47So in high school, you were named best dressed at Colorado Christian School. I was. The Lions. The Lions. So I said your name might as well have been Aslan because you were voted CS's best dressed lion.

3:03I mean, hello? No.

3:06You can't teach it.

3:07AI free. I was going to say you can't train it. You can't train AI free. No way. I believe it.

3:15You can't train AI. Yes. I believe it's AI free. O Dome. It's an O Dome. Okay. Okay. Teach AI that either. Listen, try to do that. That took way too long. I have no questions for you. We just have to do that. I have so many questions about myself after hearing that. That's just a little little bike riding accident, big guy.

3:36It's still. Man, it just happens. We get older. You just do things you never thought you would do. Like I thought I was an athlete. And then you're riding a bike and you run into a trash can that's not moving. Now, in my defense, I was looking behind me, watching my son press the hill. Good father. And the sun was going down. And so it was a little dark. Yeah. I turned around. Hey. Okay. So I I the father didn't go down. I'm turning, and all of a sudden I know I'm hitting this trash can. And there's just like, there's no way.

4:06There's no way to be able to do that.

4:07He just braced himself. I'm gonna give it a pull. And so I hit it, and I went over the handlebars. I hit the handlebars so hard inside my thigh, which I mean it was dangerously close. All right. Just dangerously close. That I got a hematoma. It swallowed up about that far off my skin, went over the handlebars, put my left wrist down to break my phone because it was going to hit my head, and snapped it. Just snapped it back. It's a lot of action. Yeah.

4:34Too bad it was trash, David.

4:37And the worst part of it was, worst part it was. I flip over and I'm like rolling on my driveway, just taking myself who's ring camp.

4:46That's my first thought. And the answer is nine neighbors. At least four.

4:52At least four neighbors. I went and I surreptitiously deleted all of the footage.

4:56Well, for your for your sweet wife, Julie, who loves roasting you, I am shocked that she has not tracked it down so far. I I'm actually surprised that she hasn't.

5:05Are you a bike ride around the neighborhood with a helmet on, guy? Oh no. No, there's no helmet on. There you go. That's that's our question for every guest.

5:12I just don't get it. No.

5:14No, no helmet.

5:15I just did encounter some neighborhood fellows.

5:17I just saw three in a row and I'm like, guys, take your helmet off. It's a git to me. Now listen. Maybe we should. Maybe wrist guards.

5:26Let me say let me say this. What's really bad is within five minutes of me going inside and telling Julie what happened. She said, you know what? You're kind of a cocky bike rider. Is that right?

5:34That's her take on your style. She was like, this is kind of inevitable. I always want a cocky. You go hand on cards. I do. I put the arms straight out. Like the chins around the wind. Absolutely.

5:52Feed off the pedal you want. I do it all. I do it all.

5:56I do stand up.

5:57I really do it all. My kids. My kids think I'm so cool on my bike. It's one of my sweet spots. Yeah. Like just impressing my children. Sure. Never again. No. No. Now I'm just known as the dad who runs into trash cans.

6:12Well, at least we aren't talking about it in front of a lot of people right now. So that's good. And we're glad that your trauma can become our story. Thank you for that.

6:19You know what they say? Pain that isn't transformed is transferred. Come on.

6:23So already out of the way.

6:25That'll be in your next thing trying to transform the pain.

6:28Oh, that's so good.

6:29That's so good. Well, there's so many ways we can go here. Yeah. There's actually a topic that we're gonna really lean on you for here today. But I do think it'd be fascinating just for everybody. You're a bevere. I am. It's a powerhouse name in the Christian community, impact around the world. Can you speak to growing up in that house? Yeah. Becoming your own man? Basically tell us your life story, but I'm sorry. A little bit. It's fascinating who you are and standing on your own and growing up in the home that you did. Can you speak to that just a little bit?

7:01Yeah. So my I mean, my parents are amazing people. And I I tell people all the time, they ask me, what is it like to be the son of Severe Bevere? Right? Because my dad is known as Severe Bevere. And there were, don't get me wrong, there's a season when he was really intense, even toward me as a son. But one of the things that I love about my parents is my parents, they live life big, both of them. They make a lot of mistakes because they live passionately with each other and as a family. But they're some of the most humble people and sincere people that you will ever meet. And something that I realized intuited growing up with them is that humility creates safety. And there's a lot of formation that can happen where people feel safe. And when when I see my parents, I see people who are better people at home, not because they are perfect, but because they faithfully pursue God. My dad and mom are both wildly successful by whatever standards you want to use. They're both New York Times bestselling authors. They've spoken on all the big platforms, all the things. And I've watched them, especially now, like they're almost 70. I've watched them press into God in their 60s as far as what it looks like to be a faithful son, a faithful daughter, press into God, not coast on what they've achieved or what they've learned or what they've gathered. They press into God in a way that's unique and specific to this season. And they stay curious, they stay humble, they stay teachable, they stay open. And it is stunning. And I like to say this, uh and I've seen this model in their life. You know, we like the sexiness, right? Like the appeal, the uh the gravity, the draw, the platform, everything that comes with that. And something I like to say is that faithfulness isn't sexy, but it sure is stunning. And when I when I look at my parents' life, I see them across four decades of faithfulness. And that tells a greater story than anything that I ever saw them do on a platform. To be honest with you, like I grew up in this world, I've been behind the scenes, I've been on platforms, I've seen all the things. Um none of it impresses me, just being honest. Like I'm not impressed by someone's status or their their reach or whatever it may be. Um what impacts me is when I meet people who are sensitive to God and see the presence of God, see the work of God in the people around them. Where they where they live with that unhurried playfulness, if you will, where they're open and sensitive and and yielded to what God is doing in a space rather than caught up in their own ego or their own importance or whatever it may be. So that's um that's what it's like. It's what I mean, it is. And and and I've seen them evolve and change and mature across seasons. I'm the oldest. So, you know, the oldest kid, I've got four kids. The oldest kid, we we get arguably the worst version of the parents, right? Yeah, yeah. We do. Like the beta test.

10:11I look at my 17-year-old son, I'm like, come on, man, I'm sorry.

10:14Like the beta test, beta test version.

10:15That's the beta version. Yeah, bro. It's like, oh, now we know how to make pancakes.

10:19It's like, oh, this is this is what I shouldn't do. I'm so sorry that figured it out on you. Um but I just even to share this with dads out there in particular and moms, but dads in particular, it's like you're gonna make mistakes with your sons, and it's hard. Like, it's hard because you know God has entrusted you with this man who's being formed and molded. But I'll tell you what, nothing will direct them to their heavenly father faster than you modeling that humility as a father. I think about what Jesus says in Matthew 6. He says, if you then, though you are evil, right? He's talking to them about being fathers, know how to give good gifts. Luke 11, too, this concept. And I remember one time I was reading as a dad, I'm like, though you are evil, what does this actually say in the Greek, right? I'm like, evil? No, it actually does say evil. And compared to our Heavenly Father, like what we offer in the grand scheme of things, like it's so far below what the Heavenly Father can give. And so being a signpost and not the figure, man, it does so much for a child's formation and it creates gaps, if you will, because we all have gaps. Those gaps are created by life. They learn what it means to yield those to the father and discover the father's closeness in ways that will be unique and specific to them and their journey. Right. And that's that's when it's no longer just borrowed faith or borrowed conviction, that's when it becomes real for the next generation.

11:39Man, that's good. It reminds me we we we interviewed some athletes, and it was interesting to compare that. They said at some point to be a great athlete, they had to become obsessed with the sport. Yeah. And I liken that to what you're saying. It's like, man, great examples in the faith. I had to become obsessed with it, I had to fall in love with Jesus.

11:57Yeah.

11:58I really like what you're talking about, man, being aware of what's going on around you, what's stirring inside of Joy, what's stirring inside of you right now. Let's let's hear that, see that, be obsessed with that, and watch the fruit that comes from that kind of living.

12:10Yeah. That's good. Come on. An interesting piece of that story is the is you working with your parents, working with your family, and individuating and having like your voice. And and when I think of somebody, and whether it's been listening to messages you've given, reading your book, Words with God, which is a great book, or even just sitting at lunch with you, and just like the the way that you're able to speak with confidence and wisdom is really interesting. And and the person I think about when I think about prayer is you. I think this this is something obviously you've written about. Um I've gone to you with questions and counsel on it, read you read your work on it. When you talk, and that is for this episode, I really want to center on that for the listener. Is when we did an episode um a couple months ago, we talked a little bit about spiritual rhythms, and I would say one of the comments I've gotten most was almost a throwaway comment that Chris talked on prayer, is almost a demystifying it. Hey, acronym, you know, praise, repent, ask yield. And it was just like, and it I found the reason what jumped out so interestingly to me from that was people were looking for clarity on what the heck do I do to pray? How do I pray, quote unquote, well? Will you start start way early on how did you how did this become a the thing for you, a thing for you, for you to like to really spend so much time on this topic? Well how much time do we have?

13:33We got a lot of so uh for me, I would say this was born out of a place of pain. Uh I grew up with a lot of attention. Um people would come up to me and say things like, You're gonna be just like your dad, you're gonna be just like your mom, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. And my response is always like you don't I wouldn't say this because I was respectful. But my response was like you have no idea who I am. Like you don't know who I am. And I and that was not in a sense of like I'm something special, but in a sense of like I'm nothing special. Like my parents clearly like they're someone special. I'll never be able to live in their shadow. Like I don't even know how to move in that direction. Um and so for me, when it came to prayer from a very young age, I would watch my dad, and it was a beautiful example. He would go out two hours every morning and pray. And then I would get up and like I would try to pray. I'd get maybe two minutes into it, and I would like I'd be done. Like I wouldn't know what else to say. I didn't know what to do, and I would wonder, like, what in the world is my dad doing out there for two hours? I never know what he's doing. So, yeah, like how does this even work? And so the the enemy will take any foothold you give the enemy. When it comes to the accuser, he specializes in that. He finds that place of shame and he starts to weave a very involved story about who we are and what we can become. And so for me, I largely brought that into my adult life. Um high achiever, whether that was school, whether that was sports, um, academic. And so for me, it was, man, I've got to get the answers right. I've I've got to figure out the forms, I've got to figure out the knowledge base. And even though I did a prayer internship after school, I did a year-long prayer internship. I still felt like I was like, I can't figure this thing out. And then I went through a season of five years of insomnia, which was, you know, the mystics, the ancients, they'll use the term like the dark night of the soul, this season of profound disorientation for reorientation. God took me on a journey, and I realized in the midst of this journey that God has a way of not delivering us from a thing if he ultimately wants to deliver us to himself. He's like, So I had my idea of freedom, my idea of success. I thought when I got good at prayer, it would look one way. And God had to deliver me from this idol to take me on a journey to something that was entirely other. So the holiness of God, the kadosh, it's this concept of otherness. And God wants to woo us and bring us into a place that we haven't known, we haven't seen, so that we can surrender that part of us to him and how he moves and how he works in our lives. And so I started doing a lot of research. I mean, this was probably about um, and just to be clear, I got healed from insomnia, radically healed. Uh I did everything too. I did all the things. Like I took all the stuff, natural, pharmaceutical, I did all the good sleep hygiene. Before that was even like language that people were using for sleep. Now I did all of those things.

16:45No blue light after APM.

16:47I mean, I did everything. I had the right pillows, blackout, curtains, nothing worked. I was taking all the stuff, nothing worked. Um, God radically healed me. It's a it's a story I share in words with God. And the Spirit of God made it clear to me in this moment, like I'm giving you this as a gift, and I'm inviting you on a journey to rediscover prayer. And so ever since then, um, that was about seven years ago, ever since then, my life, when it comes to prayer, I can't help but see everything through the lens of prayer. Oh, it's completely transformed my life. And when when we read uh primarily like some of the Pauline epistles, whether it's Romans 12 or Ephesians 6 or 1 Thessalonians 5, this idea of praying constantly, praying without ceasing. If we dig into the text here, really it's an invitation to this place of constant rest, where we're a we're in this posture where we can receive and respond, not from our own strength, but we can be in tune with a strength, a reality, a promise, a purpose that is so far beyond what we can grasp, but we can be grasped by it. It's this posture where we enter into a largeness, a spaciousness, a place of wonder and possibility, where the grace of God makes the impossible possible in our lives, and we find ourselves doing things, saying things, realizing things about us, whether it's a relationship or it's a work, it's something that we set out to do. It just everything starts to shift and change. And so I've been working, I don't think I've even told you this. So good. But I've been working with um a good friend of mine. He's a neuroscientist, neurosurgeon. He's now a New York Times bestselling author. And uh he is a brilliant, a brilliant mind, okay, brilliant mind. And working on the idea of how God designed our physiology for prayer. So how God communicates beneath, beneath our conscious understanding. Okay. So if you think about it, if Jesus is the perfect word and he condescended into the landscape of language, right? He gave us an example and then he says, There's so much I want to tell you, but you can't grasp it. You can't bear it. But when I send my spirit, my spirit's gonna teach you what this looks like, not as an external concept that you can grasp, but as something that is going to change and transform you from the inside out. So, philosophical, real quick, philosophical. You got to go back to Genesis three to really understand why we do not understand prayer. So if you look at Barna, you look at Crossroads, you look at these studies, virtually everyone thinks they're bad at prayer. Across the board. Across the board. Virtually everyone. And it's one of those things that you hear it at church, like people are like, oh, you know, the other day God was saying this or this. And you kind of hear, and people just like, yeah, yeah. And then secretly, they're like, what in the world does she even mean by that? Or what does he mean by that? We get at Messenger, we do discipleship work all over the world. We impact by the grace of God, impact millions of people every month. And so we get lots of messages, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who say, I just have no idea how to pray, no idea how to hear God's voice, no idea what this looks like. But it's one of those things where like the Christian lingo doesn't create a lot of room for curiosity. And it's like either get on board or pretend like you're on board. You know what I'm saying? Make it till you make it. And and unfortunately, the more I've dug into this, the more I've realized that it's one of those things like people are ashamed of what it actually looks like. Most people think I don't pray enough, I don't know the right forms, I don't know the right words, or they come from a background where there's a lot of religious bondage around prayer, there's a lot of shame. It's so so for me, when I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, why? Why, why do so many of us live with this sense of inadequacy? And we know that you cannot be intimate with someone where they're where there's shame. Like shame frustrates real intimacy. It'll it'll cause you to manipulate the other person for your own purposes, or it'll cause you to hold back and not give who you are to that relationship, right? So there's a lack of meaningful connection where shame is the currency. And we look at Genesis 3, this this hit me, and so now I'm like digging into the physiology of this. It hit me that wow, we still try to understand prayer. Even the questions that we ask about prayer, we try to understand prayer through the knowledge of good and evil, through what is useful and what is useless. We are still grasping for answers rather than receiving wisdom at the frequency of walking with God in the cool of the day. So my my daughter, uh, she's 12 now. Okay. Uh you mentioned I've written books on prayer, right? I've uh I've spent a lot of time studying prayer. I send prayer guides to tens of thousands of people every Sunday, every other Sunday, right? So like I I spend a lot of time in this world. So I'm hearing from my older daughter who's 15, she shares a room with her younger sister. Like, man, Lizzie is just praying every night. Like she's praying for everyone and everything, like going through this. And just praying, praying, praying. I'm not gonna lie, I was, you know, that's the guys that's a teaching on prayer. I'm like, okay, okay, let's go, Lizzie. Let's go, right? So this goes on for a couple weeks, and you know, I notice like it's it's really becoming a serious rhythm in her life and is going into the night. Well, one night it's like midnight, and all of a sudden, Lizzie comes barging into my room and throws herself. I'm not kidding you when I say this, throws herself. She's like very she's my wild child. She's my third born, right? Like just throws herself on top of me. And she's like, Dad, I can't do it anymore. I just can't do it. I can't do it. And I you know, I'm half asleep. I have no idea what she's talking about. I go, Lizzie, what's going on? She goes, I can't pray anymore, Dad. I can't do it. She goes, every time if I mess up, I have to go back to the beginning, I have to pray every single thing in the right order. And if I don't, I'm convinced that the opposite of what I want to happen is going to happen. I'm like, and it hits me. I'm like, oh my goodness. Um I have completely failed my daughter. And and I knew in that moment, like my responsibility was not to give her new forms or to teach her how to pray. My invitation was to teach her how to stop. And and I and again, I'm not saying we don't pray, we should pray. Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer, which is the perfect framework for prayer. But when we go into prayer as this activity, this mechanism to grasp and get God's attention, we miss out on the bigger picture of prayer, which is that prayer is less about getting God's attention and more about how our attention is healed. It's this, it's this place where we start to see and understand and receive. And most people, when I say these things, then they're like, is that really true? I tell them, prayer is less about speaking, it's more about listening. Prayer is less about what you're doing or not doing, it's more about getting in on what God is already doing. And but for us, in fact, Jesus is pretty explicit. He says, when you pray, don't pray like the hypocrites of the Gentiles. Don't use lots of words. Pray from this place of quiet trust that then eventually leads into spoken conviction where you're not manufacturing or performing, you're responding to the reality of Emmanuel God with us. And you can't help but give language to that person or that problem or that situation that you're contending for. It just starts to shift how we engage with God and how we see things around us. And for me, so much of prayer is about seeing the world, seeing purpose, seeing people the way that God sees them, and then responding in a way that honors the holiness of his name and the work that he's doing in that situation.

25:01The way you just frame that reminds me in the word where the Pharisee comes in and he's he's boasting about it, he's excited about it. God, I thank you that I'm not like this tax collector, right? And it's this whole thing. And then the tax collector comes in and says, beats the chest, hey, God forgive me, I'm a sinner. But I like how you frame that because it was like the conviction hit him, and then what came out of his mouth was a result of recognizing the reality of who God was, and then he prayed from there. Yeah. Right? I I don't know that I've framed it like you have just now. Yeah. And and recognizing this is less about just saying a bunch of the right words and actually a response to what God's doing in you, and then it flows from that.

25:43Yeah.

25:43Game changer on prayer.

25:44Yeah. You mentioned this idea of our attention being healed and through prayer. Were you it maybe some of it's self-evident, maybe some of it's in, it's in what you just said, but I'm curious what our current attention, they talk about attention economy and all that kind of stuff. Like what is it about our current attention that needs healing? Where is the where's the brokenness of our attention that needs healing? How much more time do we have to do?

26:07Wow. Um Are you familiar with Ian McGillchrist? He's a neuroscientist, philosopher. Um I actually got to send him a question on prayer specifically. He's probably the one of the world's most respected neuroscientists. Um but he says he says something really profound. He says that attention is a moral act. And I and I don't think he's overstating that. What we see and how we see shapes our world. Okay. So when we talk about our attention, we have to realize that attention is the currency of our day. Yeah. What would you I mean, just look at what people are paying for your attention. I mean, it's it's absolutely staggering. Um there's a psalm, it's Psalm 5.3, it's David speaking, and he says, In the morning, you hear my voice. In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and I watch. You and I we talked about this. Yeah. But this I this idea of what is what is this thing that we can sacrifice today? And the truth is it's our attention. Yeah. And when we give God our attention first thing in the morning, and we can get into neuroscience there because we we've been digging deep into that. Um, but when you give that to God first thing in the morning, it literally changes how you see the rest of the day. So you have something called the RAS. Y'all familiar with RAS? It's a function in the brain. So it's essentially the gatekeeper of consciousness. When you wake in the morning, your RAS is incredibly sensitive. So if you grab your phone within the first five to 15 minutes of waking up and you start scrolling and you start looking at things that feed anger or anxiety or this sense of you are a god of performance and you better get your stuff you know in order and you better do the things and be productive and all this stuff, you for the rest of your day, you will look for evidence that agrees with what you're putting in front of you first thing in the morning. It's the phenomenon if you go to buy a car and you're like, oh, I'm gonna buy this car, and you start seeing the car everywhere. Yeah. It's that. That's your RES. And so when you wake in the morning, your your brain state, your brain waves, this isn't like weird new age stuff. It's just neuroscience. Okay, so just be clear. Um, your brain waves are slower. You're in something that's that's called theta state. It's a world between worlds. You can um you're aware of what's happening in your conscious mind, but you're also more aware, more receptive to what is happening within your deep mind. So the unconscious space that catalogs the entirety of your experience, um, your knowledge base. We would believe as Christ's followers, that's primarily where the Spirit of God would communicate to us, is what Paul's getting out of places like 1 Corinthians 2. So that idea, there's a sensitivity that biologically is made possible when we first wake in the morning. But when you get on your phone first thing in the morning, you start scrolling, 95-96% of people are on their phones within five minutes of waking up, depending on what the latest date is. I think it's something like 77% plus sleep with their phone in bed with them. I again don't quote me on that. It's it's something like that. It's crazy, something like that. And it's always changing. But the idea is most people, that's how they're starting the day. Well, if you do that, you are destroying theta state in the morning. The moment you pick up a device, you are now in beta state, which would be the state of anxious.

29:30You just move right through theta state and you're right. You turn your alarm off and now it's in your hands right there, and we're on the thing. Your toast.

29:36Like you're done. So I tell people all the time get rid of your phone as your alarm clock. Yeah. It's that simple. Like there's no I I've had people try to push back on me, and like, well, you know, I just turn it off and go. I'm like, nope. Your phone is an ontological extension of your sense of selfhood, right? Unless you're a boomer. Okay, your your phone has become an extension of you. And so when when you when you grab your phone, you're reaching for something that creates an illusion of omnipresence, omnipotence, right? Like omniscience, which like who who gets to be these things, right? Like God knows. I'm just I'm just saying, but the phone is a mechanism that creates the illusion that we can grasp for what is useful and what is useless. So uh the the tree of the knowledge, good and evil, I like to describe it as the tree of knowing, rather than the tree of knowledge. So just so people can understand this, it changes how we fundamentally know everything. And when you look at good and evil in in Hebrew, you can also translate that uh what is useful and what is useless. So we have to keep in mind, when the uh when tempter came to Eve, he did not offer her wickedness, he offered her wisdom.

30:57Wow.

30:58And so many of us, when it comes to like, oh, I gotta do the right things or be the right person for God, whatever it is, we are grasping for the answers. Oh, what am I supposed to do here? When am I supposed to do it? Who am I supposed to like all the questions that feel innocuous, they feel necessary. Oh, like these are important things. If our posture is we're grasping rather than being grasped by, we're really just saying, God, give me the answers and get out of my way.

31:27Yeah.

31:28Like, like God needs us to have, no, God doesn't need us to do anything. God wants us to walk with Him and receive answers at the frequency of relationship, because that's where wisdom is embodied and contextualized. It's not supposed to just be like, oh, these ideas, and I'm just gonna collect it and then I'm gonna tune into this divine knowledge base that I now have access to. No, it's actually God. This is the mystery of incarnation, this is the mystery of Jesus, the mystery of him being the word made flesh. He is the embodied response to God. He's the perfect response, right? Paul calls him the second Adam, this idea. He got it right where Adam got it wrong. Why? Even though he was like God, even though he was a part of this creation miracle at the beginning of time, even though all things in him have their being he did not grasp. And when we start to understand this, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're supposed to be formed in his likeness? Oh, so maybe we're supposed to learn not to grasp. Oh, wait, the religious community would tell me if I know how to pray, I can grasp. You see, and this is why Jesus got so mad at the Pharisees and religious leaders, because they had figured out all the constructs. Yeah.

32:50I'm curious when when we think about that, that learning not to grasp. Yeah. Take it down, begin to take it into like a very practical. I think like that foundation is massive. I even think about that morning sacrifice because I think about I I do my quiet time in the morning, whether I look on my phone or not where I or I don't first. And so it is funny, like the what I'm able to actually participate in when I've looked at my phone first and what I'm not actually there for. But when you get into like the very practicality of learning not to grasp, what what does that on a practical level look like for somebody when it comes to like quote-unquote prayer life?

33:28Yeah. No, that's that's a great question. So um there's a a few things that I would I think would be really helpful, just simple practices that I think can give language to what you're describing. The first movement, and I would say the most important movement is the first one of the day. And this is this is the same whether you're a morning person or not. Like all of us, we have a first movement of the day, whether you wake up at 11 or you wake up at five, right? You're gonna have a first movement of the day. That really does neurologically set the tone for the rest of the day. So people who are listening to this are like, okay, how do how could my attention be healed? I'm gonna tell them that's the most radical thing that they could do. Like we're just going for one behavior. Uh if they do that, it will actually change their relationship with their phone the rest of the day. That one shift, that one move will change how you engage with your phone for the rest of the day. Simply not looking at it for a thing. Simply making a statement. I've been doing this for about five, six years now where I will not look at my phone for at least an hour. Normally it's an hour and a half, two hours. I've got four kids. Um I have I have a job, I have a team, I get to serve as a president of an international company. I got people across time zones. Uh I've never, never been a better person because I chose to grab my phone earlier than something during that time. Yeah.

34:59No positive impact.

35:00No positive impact. Never. I even had a friend who lost a spouse, and I was on the phone with her the night before. Wow. I knew it was gonna happen that night. I felt the pressure when I woke up and the Spirit of God checked me, said, Don't do it. Like I wanted to, you know, I wanted to know, wanted to text her. Went about an hour and 15 minutes that morning, and then I picked up my phone. Sure enough, text message at 2 a.m., phone call, 4 a.m., text message at 4:30, text message at 5:30, phone call at 5:45. And my first response was, man, I'm selfish. I'm a bad friend. And then the Spirit of God quietly, uh, you know, it's just inside of you, bubbles up from the inside. That's what Jesus is talking about in John 7, like rivers of living water. Something that is refreshing, that is beneath or beyond what you can um sustain or what you can supply. Just something bubbles up, right? There's so much to that passage that we don't have time to get into John 7, but it's loaded, loaded with meaning for what we're talking about. And the Spirit of God just whispers to my spirit. Have you ever lost a spouse?

36:11Yeah, yeah. You're about to dive into that. Oh, yeah, fully in the flesh. Oh, yeah. Like I was ready to go. Right?

36:20Like, hey, come on. She needs my knowledge. Yeah, you know, people respect me. Like people value, like people look to me for words. I'm I'm a leader, I'm a writer. Like they look to me for words. I'm a a good friend. She needs comfort. She she needs to hear something true. She, she, you know, all the things. And then the Spirit God was like, call her now. Now you have what you need. Call her. And it was one of those things where I gave God that first movement of the day, and He gave me what I needed to enter into that moment. Right. So that's that's radical. That's the first thing. Yeah. First thing that I would say. Just real simple. Um the other thing, when it comes to purpose, and I think this is a big thing for people when it comes to how God cultivates attention, how He reveals purpose in our lives. Most of us view purpose when it comes to discovering our purpose as something to transact. Like either I'm gonna fast and God's gonna tell me something, or whatever it is, right? Like I had a friend, we were in a cohort together, and um anyway, there's a whole story of him basically like fasting, asking God, is it this one or this one? Like his whole fast was like, I'm gonna fast and God's gonna give me. God didn't give him anything. Wanna know why? It was neither of them. Right. And he actually needed the disorientation in order to see that there was actually another thing. Like he thought God was ignoring him. No, God was actually posturing him to receive something different. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so when when I look at purpose, it's not something that's transacted, it's something that's cultivated. And we get, we get so hung up on having the right answers, the knowledge of what is useful and useless. And we feel this shame, right? So going back to Genesis 3, this is radical. And I'm gonna tie back. Don't worry, I'm gonna get practical. I'm gonna jump between the philosophical and the practical. Because we need both. Yeah, that's true. Because otherwise, you just reduce the practice to just a thing that you run through. Just the four. And it's so much more than that. But if you look at the the garden, when when they ate, they became what? After they ate of the fruit, they became what? What did they realize? Just aware of their being naked. Yeah, like they they were ashamed, right? Before they were naked and unashamed. And now the movement, the sound of God coming into the garden to walk with them in the cool of the day, the sound that used to draw them in is what? Sending them scattering into the trees, right? Same invitation, different response. Well, in the Hebrew, the concept there with shame actually deals with delay. So it's a space formed inside of them of self-consciousness, where instead of experiencing this integration, this unity with God, now there is this space where things are confused and misunderstood, and we construct ideas and worlds within our own power, our own knowledge base, and it creates shame and it creates confusion. And so, what I tell people when we're engaging God and we're asking questions about purpose, the temptation is to make whatever the thing is, whatever the question, whatever the concern, whatever the request, bigger than God, greater than God. That's all that's inevitably what we do in prayer. And when Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, different, slightly different versions of it, but both of them have this in common. We pray from a perspective of our Father who is in the heavens. Like literally in Greek, it's heavens. You occupy all spaces, all dimensions, holy or hallowed be your name. So we start from this place of awareness and perspective, and then we move into the request. What we normally do, though, is we lift up the request, the source of our anxiousness, the source of whatever it is, and then we kind of like try to get God to bow a knee to that or do the thing or whatever it is, rather than allowing the request to sit in the light of God's holiness and God's goodness and God's faithfulness. And what I have found in my life is like, man, I can be really bold with my with my request, because Jesus likes bold requests. When I have first surrendered that space, I can be really bold with my questions of purpose and stuff. And then I surrender. It's kind of like what he says about asking, seeking, knocking. Yeah. It that there's a progression there. So first you ask. So you do the work, the hard work. Sometimes we don't even know what we're looking for. Like we really actually don't know what we're asking for. Like this is vague, whatever, like vague pain, vague need. I mean, sometimes we know exactly what we're asking for, but other times it's vague. It's a sense of like incompleteness or this sense of like, what am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to become? Starts with ask, then we start to seek. Once we articulate the ask, then we start to see things differently. We start to recognize God at work in our world. We notice things that we didn't notice before. Our attention is being healed. Then we come to a place where there's knocking. And I think about the knocking, I think of the Church of Laodicea Revelation 3, where Jesus says, Behold, I stand or literally look again. I'm the one standing at the door knocking. I want to come in and have intimacy and fellowship with you. You're so in the thing with Laodicea, they were what? They were self-sufficient. That was their problem. Like, we're good. We don't need anything. And Jesus is like, I'm I'm here. Like, I want to hang out with you. I want to be intimate with you. And you don't want that. And so we get to this point after asking and seeking, we get to the point where we knock only to realize that Jesus is already at the door. Like he's already, he's already there. And then that leads us into a bolder life of asking, seeking, knocking. And it's actually like this beautiful cycle. And I would just challenge people, try this. Like release the need to have the answers. Because here's the thing: what I found, when when you make yourself the hero of your prayers, when your prayers rise and fall based on your performance or based on how holy you've been or whatever it is, what inevitably happens is you swing to the other side and you become the villain. So you vacillate between the hero and the villain, right? And the enemy's really good at getting you more so on the villain side. And then every once in a while, he'll get you over on the self-righteous side and kill you that way. But normally it's on the other side, just beating you up, shame, condemnation, all the things. And God's like, hey, I don't need you to be the hero. I don't need you to be the villain. I need you to be a participant. It's like in John 6 when they came to Jesus and like, what do we need to do to be doing the will of God? Like, what does this look like? And Jesus is like, hey, actually, y'all, just believe in me. I am the bread of life. The manna that that is the con, like here, going back to Deuteronomy 8, manna is what is it? Literally in Hebrew, it means what is it? It's like live every day from a posture of what is it, and actually watch how playful life can be. Watch how good God is. I think about what David says in Psalm 119, verse 92. He says, if I wouldn't have made your world my plaything, I would have perished in my pain. People are so stressed out about prayer and performance and all the things, they don't realize that God is actually what is the kingdom of God? Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14. The fruit of the Spirit is love working itself out in what? Love, joy, peace. But we have this idea of like rigid performative prayer. Now let me tell you This though, since I've realized this, my mornings are totally different. I'm now the guy who's in prayer an hour, two hours in the morning, but it's so it's so different. I'm normally silent, I'm normally just there. I'm reading, I'm praying as God puts things, but it's so free. Like I'm going walking around doing this, making coffee for my wife, moving around the house. And I'm just aware of the fact that the greatest promise is Emmanuel, God with us. Like, God, how are you with me right now today in ways that I'm not seeing it? What are you inviting me into as far as peace and purpose and promise? What does that mean for me today? And it just changes us.

44:44It does.

44:46That's good. Man. Sorry, y'all. You start talking about prayer. I could go hours on this. That's it's a problem.

44:53I I'm thinking about the starting point for somebody who is maybe mystified, who who probably lives in like a like a should world, like how long should, how often should, when should, all like living in like like as as some would say, shooting their pants. Um so you so yeah, so if someone is saying, like, okay, man, I love this. Yeah, I get like what is tomorrow morning's they they keep the phone away, what does tomorrow morning's prayer time look like for them? Yeah.

45:22So I'm gonna give something that's a launching pat. So uh, you know, our friend Darren, he did a series recently on the number of questions Jesus asked and the number of questions that he answered. Radically disproportionate. Interesting. Right. Single digit on the one side, triple digit on the other side. Which one do you think it was? I think I know where you're going. Well, I'm just saying, like the word, yeah. Like, shouldn't he have all of the answers to all the questions? Why is he the one asking questions? Right? Yeah. So this is a launch pad, okay? Yeah. Right? Not a formula launch pad. Number one, I would say when you wake up in the morning and don't do anything. Like you gotta go to the bathroom. I mean, just real talk, like go to the bathroom. Like, you gotta do that. But I would say if you can, just lay there in your bed. Like take deep breaths and just like say thank you. Or you don't even have to just be mindful of the fact that God is with you, God is for you, God has given you the gift of life. Like there's a reason why you woke up and rest in that. If you want to pray the Lord's prayer, pray the Lord's prayer. I do a simple breath prayer. It's really meaningful for me. It's just I am here. And for me, I am here is three dimensions. I am in this space, I am in this moment of time, I can't be in a different space, I can't be in a different moment of time. And then the promise that the great I am is here. So when I'm praying that, it's a real simple three words, people are like, that's a prayer? Yes, that is a prayer. I'm praying that, and it's a reminder of God's closeness, his power, his promise. And what's amazing is when you start doing that, like God will show you things, crazy things where you'll know things about people, you'll know things about decisions you need to make. Like, I have wild stories about moments like that where I'm calling people. Like one guy, I was on a plane recently, and I'm taking off, and I'm doing that. I'm actually just praying, I'm here. And I see him, I see him in my mind's eye. And I just know like I'm supposed to send him a text. I haven't talked to this guy in months. Send him a text real quickly, go off, fall asleep on the plane because I was so tired. Wake up, turn airplane mode off. I get a text message back from him. It's like, I'm not kidding you. I was literally on my knees praying, asking God to send me a sign that someone in this world was praying for me and what I'm going. Like literally, he said, and I got up from my knees, grabbed my phone, and there was a text from you. Now, I don't say that as a flex, I say that because I know there have been so many more that I have missed. And the Spirit of God is kind and he keeps inviting us back into these places where we get to partner with them. No one's more aware than me. That had very little to do with that. I just was in a posture where I could follow the prompt. You know what I'm saying? And so that's what I would tell like, don't do anything. Just do that. And then I would say, you know, transition to, you know, gotta go to the bathroom, gotta go to the bathroom. If you're a coffee person or tea, like get up, make coffee, pee, uh, coffee, tea. If you need a pee, go pee. Coffee tea, get up, do do whatever that needs to look like. Stay quiet, get up, try to get up at least 30 minutes before anyone else. It's 30 minutes. You know, don't stay up as late doing whatever, just 30 minutes earlier. That's it. And then I pull out, for me, what I do is I pull out scripture because I love reading scripture in the morning. Um, I read the gospels every single day because I like to read the rest of scripture through the person of Jesus. It's just something I've been doing for about 10 years and it's been really meaningful for me. And then I'll move around scripture, um, pretty much always reading a psalm or proverb, um, and then something from the epistles, something from um the prophets or historical books or Torah. So it's just for me, it's like, okay, God, where are we going? Yeah. And um, and that's what the morning looks like. And then he'll pause me and it's like, oh, I there's someone who's on my heart. I need to pray for this person. Yeah. And I pray for that person. And I bring any kind of cares or things that I'm worried about for the day or decisions that I make, whether it's a team member or it's a project or it's a moment or it's a like we navigated something. I mean, you know, you were part of what you were praying for my son recently. Yeah, like walking through that, you know, praying for that every single morning so I could release that to God and find out, okay, what does it look like for me to walk through this with my son today? And so that is the morning. People are like, well, no, I can't. Well, wait, wait. So your fears or your concerns about the day or something that's making you anxious, like that's prayer. Yes. Giving that back to God, giving it language, locates it, that is prayer. And so it's it's supposed to be so much more intuitive, organic. Uh, I think it's St. Anthony of Egypt. I'm pretty sure it's Sam who said perfect prayer is to not know you are praying. Oh, I love that. And this is what this is one of the desert fathers, okay? So this idea of praying where you're so unconscious of what you're doing because the prayer isn't wrapped up in your self-consciousness. Yeah. You're just a participant. That is the vision for prayer. So, my passion, like what I'm gonna spend the next however many decades, is helping the church rediscover prayer. Yeah. Because I see it across the board, across denomination. Um and it's radical to me how much we've tolerated when it comes to this essential part of this experience of walking with God, how much we've tolerated as far as like a lack of connection, how much we have forfeited from the domain of prayer and we've tried to put into other things, whether it's the therapeutic, and I'm not denigrated the therapeutic, but the therapeutic or this or that. It's like, no, prayer is how we bring our full person into the presence of God. So, what does that actually mean? What does it look like to do that?

51:30Yeah. I would love, we we end every episode with this this question. We want everybody to be brave and live big, and then we always start with a small step. And I think what you just gave, this launching pad, and I just love, I mean, for anybody listening, it's before you get out of bed, I am here, or or or prayer, like what how does that change your day? Then giving some delayed time to phone. I I have a question for you, Chris. If you were to say, because we all think about we all we all have kids, and we want we want us to have a great prayer life, we want them to have a great prayer life. So I'm curious if you were gonna go talk to Blakely, 15 years old, and you're gonna talk with her, you just you're you're excited about this episode, and say, Blakely, here's the small step for you. So this this is a little bit of a different spin on this. If we're gonna take this for ourselves, we're gonna integrate it within our lives, and then if we were to translate it down to our kids, Chris, I'm curious, and you listening to this through this framework, how would you encourage somebody to give their kids a small step in prayer?

52:28I like this tactic because then whatever I say, you can make it better. And how do you remember? Yeah, exactly. That's the move. That was the intent, yeah. But I I do love that because obviously I was thinking about it through the lens of how to translate this to our kids, and then as leaders, a lot of leaders listening, what's prayer and leadership consistently? Right. That idea. To answer your question, and I I would love your take on this. My biggest thing, my oldest daughter specifically, is a goer. She's black and white, everything has a formula, and everything's in her naturally. And so the thing that really stood out was Blakely, I actually want you to lay in your bed and have have the discipline to wake up when your alarm goes off, and then to create the space because you want that time with God to say, I'm here. And I I actually was thinking for her how that would change how she approached the rest of her day.

53:24Yeah.

53:24She walks fast to class, she wants to be first to get there, she wants to be the first in the tennis room. And that's great. I like I like your mission, but man, I love just the power and the tranquility that we would all get, especially certain personalities. Of I'm here, I'm resting in you, I'm getting filled with peace from you, and really living there for a minute. Yeah. But probably the big thing is encouraging her to create the space for that and not jump up and fly into every day excited or not. But but like really setting a new tone for her life that starts with God's presence because she created the space. Because we love God. I want to be around my dad. Yeah. That's kind of what I hear you saying. There's such a a peace and a joy and a love because we love the father, but it's hard to create space for it unless we just decide that's how we live our life now.

54:14Yeah.

54:15That would be my starting point. And then I think it'd be interesting to see what really outflowed from her life because of it.

54:20Yeah. That's so good. I mean, I will tell you, you gave a message at Zeal Church in Colorado Springs on this, and it was it was so practical, and it was those, and it literally, like, listener, it's these two things. I am here, and don't look at your phone for the first hour. Bro, what what if everybody did that today? Is there is there anything in communicating to your kids, again, if we're taking it like trying to make it like super bite-sized next seven days type small step? Is there anything you would you would put in addition to what Chris said there?

54:48Well, to Chris's point, it's not a bad thing to have this sense of like I'm created on purpose for a purpose. I have a mission. Get up and grab. No, because John 15, the classic passage on abiding, abide in me that you may produce much fruit. That's interesting. So there is an element of hey, there's some good things. That's right. Like there's some good things for us to do in this world. What I love that you called out, Chris, is this idea like let's call that moment holy. Because I think for most people, they would call it lazy. Yeah. And and and if that means you set a second alarm, set a second alarm. And and even if you drift back into sleep for a few minutes, but if you're in that place of thank you. Yeah. That you are my father, that you are in the heavens, that in my life your will is being done, your kingdom is coming. That that posture, you start your day with that, with the weightiness of that. Oh, you can go get stuff done. And we don't do that to get stuff done, but we will get stuff done if we do that. Yeah. And we will, it's like Jesus said in John 4. My bread, my sustenance is through the will. And the problem is, and Bethki and I were talking about this recently, the problem is most of us like where like our bodies should be tired when we like, especially men, we should work our bodies to the point where they're tired, but our souls should be filled, should be healthy, should be alive, should be strong. You get a man who's not working hard. That's a danger. Like honestly, that's a and you get a man you get a man who doesn't have a healthy soul, that's a dangerous man.

56:38Well, and it's daily bread.

56:40That's right.

56:40But I think about it's like, okay, I'm gonna do this, and we have that epic moment, and it's 15 minutes and I'm here, and then we don't do it for two weeks. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, man, I did that one thing that one time. And that's a great way to look at it. We don't create a lot of holy moments. What a cool idea. It's like I will create a holy, uncommon moment daily. That's right. And that's the precedent for the rest of the day. Come on.

57:02Everybody has your marching order, and they need to download Messenger X. Is that right? Messenger X, yeah. So disopsive app is free. They need to buy words with God. Yep. They need to listen to At Home with the Beveres. What else do they need to do? I think that's great.

57:16If they could pray for me, all joking aside, if they could pray for me, I would just ask for prayer. Yeah. Uh as I'm working on this project. Yes, cool. It feels it's very weighty. Um I'm venturing into a space. I'm not a scientist, right? So this is a new territory, and I'm so grateful that I have a real scientist doing a scientific review and doing the forward of the book. Um but just prayer. Yeah. Because I I feel, I feel like God's heart and this like holy discontentment as I'm writing it. Like I cannot believe what we are missing when it comes to life with God. And uh it'll come out in February 2028. Love it. Right. So it's like way down, way in the future, but it would mean a lot if people pray for me. We got you.

58:01Absolutely. Hey, thank you.

58:03Thank you, Chris.

58:03I hope everybody listening sees and recognizes they they have heard a last name. A lot of people are already familiar with you, but you are an amazing testament to legacy. Yeah, as you've done everything that you've been called to do just thus far in your life, but your leadership's different. Your leadership's unique, who you are and what you're called to do. And man, it's been cool to sit here with you and experience that. Yeah, it got me really excited about everything that's going to come from you. But then you think about your kids. Yeah, you've set this tone of just legacy, generational, unique ministry, generation to generation. And man, I think the world needs a lot more of that. Yeah. So I'm excited for what you cross.

58:43Thank you.

58:43Yeah.

58:43And thank you for having me, John.

58:45And for the one-of-one introduction.

58:48Come on now.

58:48All right.

58:49Be brave. Live big. Let's go. Okay, real quick, triple S for us. Subscribe, share, star. Give us five stars wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for joining us this week on Brave and Big. Brave and Big is produced by Stonest Podcast and the brilliant Miles All Britton. We will see you next week.