Have you ever felt like God is disappointed with your prayer
life? That you are failing every
single day. I want people to understand like
how God speaks to them uniquely. When you wake in the morning,
you're in this this state of liminality.
You're not fully awake. You're not fully asleep.
And of the time between time. The time between time that
unconscious brain that is below the conscious level, it's very
active when you first wake up. So you're more receptive, you're
more open to possibility, to receiving things that are beyond
yourself. That happens first thing in the
morning and and your body will stay in that state for 5 to 15
minutes if you allow it. He designed your body so that
you can receive the invitation first thing in the.
Morning. I don't think there's been a
more crucial time to be able to hear and rightly divide the
voice of God versus the voice of the accuser.
Tell them what it practically looks like.
They're waking up and normally they're kind of lay in bed.
Maybe I'll go back to. Sleep this.
It's going to sound crazy. Welcome to the least of your
podcast and this is a very, very special day for me because I am
having a conversation with my first born son, Addison David
and Addison has been my son. I've loved the longest.
He has seen us make the most mistakes of any of the children.
And I just, he has such a heart for prayer.
And you know, immediately when I hear prayer, I'm always like,
I'm not doing it enough. I'm not doing it right.
And maybe some of you out there, you are feeling the very same
way. And I'm going to tell you today,
you're going to be able to take a deep breath and you're going
to be able to dive in that this is not about a duty to be done.
It is about a ritual to refresh your soul and reconnect with
your creator. And too many of us have allowed
religion or shame or lack of prayer in our past to rob us of
a life of prayer in the future. And Addison, I'm just so excited
that you're bringing not just prayer, but tools for people to
be able to move forward and words with God.
OK, you wrote the book Words with God.
But I, I am excited about this prayer journal because I am
interactive. You know, I do better
journaling. I do better with journaling and
conversation then I can with just feeling like I'm bringing
something as an offering to God that you know, I, I, you know,
you and I've talked about your dad and I have very different
styles of prayer. And what I love is that you saw
the discipline and the consistency of your father and
then you saw, I don't even know how to describe what my life
would be. And you've come up with
something that's a hybrid that is your own.
Thanks, mom. Well, first, it's an honor to be
on your show on the least of your podcast.
This is the least of your podcast, Mother of Addison.
Pretty big deal to be on your podcast.
So I just want to say it's an honor to be on your show.
Thank you for this conversation. And I'm listening to what you're
saying, and I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about the concept
of discipline, right? So you use the word discipline
to describe dad, and then you're describing you as something
different. I'm thinking about that and I'm
like, OK, I hear what you're saying.
But Mom, I feel like you've actually lived a very
disciplined life. I feel like your prayer life has
been radically consistent. I have these very cherished
memories of you interceding. There were certain moments when
I wouldn't let friends come over to the house because I knew you
would be travailing or you would be war dancing or doing
something there. Was a lot of war dancing.
Yeah, it was a holy environment, and I just couldn't let anyone
into that space. But I watched you as as a mother
of four young boys whose father was gone the majority of the
time. I watched you contend for your
sons. I watched you contend for your
identity beyond even just a mother and a wife, but what God
had placed on your life, cultivating that sense of
calling and purpose across seasons.
And I saw a woman who was radically consistent and in tune
with what the Spirit of God was doing in that day.
I think of what Paul says in Romans 8.
He says that those who keep in step with the Spirit of God are
sensitive to the Spirit of God. They are the sons and the
daughters of God. And I think the enemy, the
accuser, has done such a good job of robbing us of what I
would call living prayer. Because then you hit on this
earlier. There's so much shame, there's
so much misdirection, there's so much confusion, there's so much
performance that is wrapped around the idea of prayer, and I
hope we get to dismantle some of that today so people can see
just how much of their life belongs to the beauty and the
wonder and the power of prayer. And again, I think I think that
you are are mapping this out and repurposing, repackaging it for
people to have a fresh experience with prayer and
props. I don't know, I would have loved
to have your book. I'm just going to say that when,
when I was a young mom and thinking that, you know, I'd
been up breastfeeding a baby late at night and then my
husband would be home the few days and come in from prayer.
And I felt like, oh, God's already gone.
Like he's coming in from prayer and God's already gone.
I've missed my moment again. And I think so many women feel
this constant awareness of I'm, I'm, I'm a mom and I'm doing
this. I remember talking to one of my
friends and and I did try to create an environment that was
conducive to prayer in our household period, not just in
the morning, but I remember talking to one of my friends and
she told me, she said, Lisa, I feel like the only time I pray
is when I put my kids to bed at night.
And, and I don't know whether she felt ashamed about that or
not, but I just, well, at least you're doing that.
And I, I do feel like women want to have more vibrant prayer
life, but they, they don't know how to work that into their
self-care, daycare, childcare, you know, full time woman life.
Whole time woman life. I mean, there's so much being
sent to women that you have to do ABCDEFG and you and I both
know you can do it all, but you can't do it all at the same
time. No, you can't.
And I like to say that prayer shouldn't be another thing on
the list, another thing that you feel bad about not doing.
It should be the thing that energizes the entire list.
And I think there's some misconceptions that we probably
should just go after right now. So first, this idea that prayer
is more about speaking than it is about listening.
Most of us, when we think about prayer, we think about what
we're doing and what we're not doing, when in reality, prayer
is about getting in on what God is doing.
So would that also? Be could we translate that to
what we're saying instead of what he's saying?
Correct. And OK, so let's look at some of
the passages on prayer that we'll find in the New Testament.
You have First Thessalonians 517, pray without ceasing.
You have Romans 12/12, pray constantly.
You have Ephesians 618 pray at all times in the Spirit.
That sounds like a lot of work. And when people when they think
about prayer and, and I've dug into the data, mom, it's it's
wild. So everyone thinks everyone else
is good at prayer, and most people think they're bad at
prayer. In fact, 98% of people consider
themselves Christ followers, think they're bad at prayer,
98%. When you think about, yeah, when
you think about the number of books that are written on
prayer, you think about the sermons on prayer.
But what largely happens is people, they're out there and
like, well, everyone else has got this figured out.
We get so many calls at Messenger.
I remember when I used to work in the customer relations
department, I get so many calls for people.
So your dad talks about hearing God's voice.
How does that happen? Like how, how do you, how do you
hear his voice? And then people say things like
prayer isn't a monologue, it's a dialogue.
And like, OK, but I, I don't hear anything.
So it just feels like a monologue.
And what has happened is prayers become this place of shame.
People feel like they're never doing enough.
They're not good enough. They're missing out on it and
they can't confess to this, to this misconnect, to this
disconnect, to this desire for something more because the
accuser who's brilliant in isolation has convinced them
that everyone else has got this figured out, but they're just
missing it. So you better just keep your
mouth shut and carry on and be a good soldier and take it so you
make it kind of thing. And and the reality is they're
bringing shame into their prayer life.
And mom, you know this, any kind of relationship where shame is
the defining factor, what's going to happen?
It's it's going to, it's going to create a breach.
It will it'll. Breakdown.
You won't experience intimacy, there will be a lack of clarity,
there will be so much confusion. And So what what I love to tell
people is like, listen, prayer is less about what you're doing
or what you're not doing. It's more about what God wants
to do with you. So when you look at even the
invitation of pray without ceasing, like how in the world
do I even do that? What would it look like to pray
without ceasing? Like, so does that mean I just
pray constantly? I'm in a posture of prayer.
The answer is no, like not the way we think about prayer as a
performative posture. If you dig into the Greek there,
what it actually describes is this posture receptivity.
So you're always in a state where you're open to what God is
doing. And what I have found is that
when people are so focused on what they're doing, what they're
not doing, what happens? They stop seeing the world
around them. They become so self focused, so
self absorbed that they become inhibited where they're not able
to step out, they're not able to think, they're not able to be
bold, they're not able to bridge their life in the lives of other
people or a sense of purpose or whatever it may be.
And so when we look at this invitation of prayer without
ceasing this action invitation at constant rest, I call it
deliverance from the frantic inaction that that really is
plaguing our world where we're trying to move everywhere, we're
trying to do everything. We're never doing enough.
We never feel like we're enough. And we're caught up in this
anxious response, right? So we, we're scrolling on our
phones constantly. We, we wake up, we get on our
phones within 5 minutes of waking up.
Most people have their phone in their hand, which from a
neurological standpoint is incredibly destructive to how
you engage truth, reality, your sense of self throughout the
rest of the day, how you receive from God and extend God
awareness through your life. And, and I like to say, mom, I
like to say it's really hard to be God conscious when you're
self-conscious. And for most of us, we're trying
to participate in an act prayer that is supposed to increase God
consciousness, but we're doing it from a place that is terribly
self-conscious. And so there's so many things
when it comes to prayer. We've got it backwards.
And the enemy is so good at this.
And the reason why we're frustrated when it comes to
prayer is we're still making ourselves the hero or the
villain of our prayers. And you'll vacillate between the
two. One moment, you'll be the hero.
For most of us, we're rarely the hero.
We're normally the villain. I'm not doing it enough.
My prayers aren't working because of XY and Z.
I'm a failure. Whatever language is, is typical
for us, but really what God's asking us to do is not be the
hero or the villain. He wants us to be a participant.
He just wants us to take a deep breath and like, watch what I
can do. OK, so somebody's listening to
this and they're like, yes, yes, all true.
I've been there. I've been the villain.
I was a hero for one day and. One day.
Like, well, I remember when your dad and I first married, there
was a teaching, could you not tarry one hour and it was like,
I I am responsible for people dying because I fell asleep in
the closet. I mean, it felt like there was
so much performance, shame, guilt works.
And yet that shouldn't be how we approach it.
Like, if my husband was like, I've got to tarry an hour with
Lisa today, I wouldn't be like, that's it.
You will never tarry again. Get your tearing out of here.
So, yeah. So I do feel like people, they
they need a place to begin. And I've, I've heard you talk
about you've, you've hit so many things, but one of the things is
first thing in the morning when you're first waking up, before
you even get out of bed, what might be a moment?
Yeah, so I've heard this. I've been doing some teachings
on this now for almost almost a couple years now, but I've
started to share through sermons.
I've shared this at a couple churches.
You actually listen to one of the sermons and I'm talking
about what Psalm 5 describes as the mourning sacrifice.
And it's this idea that there is a sensitivity that is unique to
the to the morning. And God has designed us, our
entire embodied experience to be a receptor to his voice, to his
will, to his guiding, to his leading.
It's not just the words that we hear, we think we hear.
And let me ask you like it's just a little pop quiz moment.
I'm going to put you on the spot.
How many times in the Gospels does God the Father speak words
to or over Jesus the Son in the Gospels?
I feel like I know for sure there was 2, right?
Maybe 3? Yeah, you're right. 3 So it's
baptism. This is my beloved son and whom
I'm well pleased. The Mount of Transfiguration
guys, listen to him, right? And it's in John 12 where Jesus
actually says they're like, was that Thunder?
Or was that you know, it was the voice of an Angel and Jesus
actually he's like, that wasn't for me.
That was for you all three times, all three times.
The Father's voice is actually for the people around Jesus when
you really think about it. And it's not that the Father's
in speaking identity over the Son.
He is and it's beautiful. But Jesus lived in this constant
communion with the Father I love and John 5 it says he only did
what he saw the Father doing and he looks at us and and John's
gospel, Jesus looks at you and me looks at his disciples and
looks at us through with them. And he says it's better for you
that I go away because if I go away, my my spirit, the one who
makes these truths internal, the one who invades and fills your
interior life, that very complicated, messy, Dark World
that is you right. Like I think of these gaps in
our beings that we're scared to address.
So we fill them with the pursuit of sex stuff and status.
He's like, I'm going to go in there, my spirit's going to go
in there, and you're going to be able to know me intimately, and
I'm going to know you intimately.
This is the promise. This is why it's better for you
that I go away. And so I think for us, when
we're talking about prayer, we have to realize that is the
Father's intent. It's the Greek gods who need us
to pray so that they're strong and wonderful God.
He invites us into prayer so that we can experience a life
and a life in its fullness because otherwise the enemy, the
accuser, dictates and frustrates our life.
So going back to the morning, I just had to share that because I
think a lot of people when they look at the mornings, they're
like, I got to check the box in the morning.
Otherwise, God's not going to be happy with me and it's his.
Mercy is new every morning. There's like an invitation every
single morning. He's not disappointed when we
wake up. That's right.
And and he designed your body. This is so cool.
He designed your body so that you can receive the invitation
first thing in the morning. So you're I'm going to geek out
just for a moment. Just y'all stay, stay with me
just for a moment. So when you wake in the morning,
you're in this, this state of liminality your, your deep mind,
right? So that, that unconscious brain,
that part of your experience that that is below the conscious
level, it's very active when you first wake up, this the space of
liminality between your conscious mind or discursive
mind and your deep mind, that's, it's like a thin place in the
morning. So you're more receptive, you're
more open to possibility, to potential to, to novelty, to
receiving things that are beyond yourself, right?
That happens first thing in the in the morning, which is
amazing. God designed us to receive from
him in in Psalm 16 and Psalm 17, God actually talks about how he
instructs our heart at night. He gives his counsel in the
night while we're sleeping, while we're sleeping, y'all not
doing anything. I love what Wendell Berry says.
He's a poet. He says that sleep is the prayer
of the body prays, and it's this idea like when you are sleeping,
when you're truly surrendered to sleep, your body is actually
doing something on an unconscious level that is
synthesizing and integrating and making sense of your sense of
self and your life in ways that you cannot do with your
conscious mind. And it's even interpreting
information that you've taken in during the day so that maybe
some nuances you missed during the day.
That's why people say I'm going to sleep on it because they can
go to bed feeling good about something and wake up and say, I
just, I don't know why, but I just feel like something is off.
God actually is whispering and you're actually processing
information. Now.
You keep saying a particular word, liminality.
Liminality. Yeah, can you define?
So liminality just means it's like that in between space, so
you're not fully awake, you're not fully asleep.
Kind of the time between time. The time between time and and
your body will stay in that state for 5 to 15 minutes if you
allow it. So what I tell people as far as
the morning routine, the morning sacrifice, because the greatest
thing that we can give God, in my opinion, is our attention.
Attention is the currency of our age.
So when we wake in the morning, we refuse to grab our phone,
which represents like an extension of our self, our
ability to control the world, to send that e-mail, to check that
feed, whatever it may be. When we reject that and we say,
actually, God, I want to receive from you our reticulated
activating system, Ras is very aware in that moment actually
sets the tone or determines what we're going to see throughout
the day, what we're going to turn our attention to.
And in those first movements of the day, you have the ability to
go inward and then go outward. The rest of the day you're just
outward. So somebody's listening to all
this and they're like still tripping over some of these
definitions. Tell them what It practically
looks like they're waking up. It's 5 AM, 6:00 AM, and normally
they're kind of lay in bed. Maybe I'll go back to sleep,
tell, tell. How did they go in?
And then so they can reset and look at the world with wonder.
What does that look like? What is the practice?
I hear the science. It's so simple like so we had to
talk about some of the science and and then you can transition
to alpha state and stay that stay there for almost 60 minutes
where you're more receptive and open.
It's it's absolutely phenomenal. But this it's, it's going to
sound crazy, right? What I'm about ready to say when
you wake up, don't move. Like if you have to go to the
bathroom, obviously, you know, like, come on, like we're real
people. You got to you got to get up and
go to the bathroom eventually. But my point is just stay there.
Just stay in that place. Just be sensitive.
Ask Holy Spirit underneath your breath.
What are you showing me today and express gratitude.
Hey, thank you. Thank you God for this day.
Thank you for this opportunity. I.
Wake up alive. I teach AI, teach a breath
prayer. It's just simply I am here.
Just pray I am here and it's a it's a surrender to a place like
I'm right here in this place. I'm right here in this time, and
the great I am, God is with me, as if.
We're not. We're not doing it to some.
I talk about. That we're doing it to the God
Most High, to the that I am, that I am.
Yes, very specific. This is it to the universe.
Speak to me Lord, your child is here listening.
This 100% very much biblical. It's tied to the word behold,
which is, which is a biblical word that's used a ton that we
don't really talk about. But I do bring this up in the
prayer journal too, in that framework that I am here, breath
prayer. So you wake up, you lay there,
you don't get up, you don't move, you don't do those things.
And I and I tell people, get rid of your phone as an alarm clock.
Your phone should not be in your bedroom.
You're you should not and and then people are going to
struggle with what I'm about to say.
You really shouldn't touch your phone for at least 60 minutes
after waking up. I support that.
And I've been doing that for years.
And I'm telling you, it's one of the most transformative
disciplines that I've developed is not touching my phone.
I don't sleep with my phone in my room.
My wife and I, we have an alarm clock that's very gentle that
goes off. Most days.
I'm up a little before the alarm clock, but if I need the alarm
clock, it's there. I just turn it off and I lay
there and then I slowly transition out of that state and
then I head out and I have a routine.
I make coffee for Julie in the morning.
I make coffee. I'm in a prayerful state like I
can, I can. I'm not leaving because if you
go into that mode of scrolling, you'll immediately move to a
state called beta state and beta state.
Like your mind is going and it's a little frantic and you're
thinking about everything that you have to do.
And in in this earlier state, if things start to come up, what I
do is I just turn those into prayers.
I turn those into request. If something comes up, my God,
thank you for your grace and your wisdom to navigate that
moment. Or if someone comes to mind and
the Holy Spirit's invited me to pray for that person, I just
pray for him, right? So I make the coffee, I get that
situated. We do French press.
So it's, you know, a little bit of process.
But even that, I like the process, I like the smell of it.
The whole thing is therapeutic. And then I sit down on my Bible,
of the book that I'm reading, of a journal, and I'm just
sensitive to the Spirit of God. I'm reading, I'm writing
whatever God shows me. It's not performative.
I'm not doing it 'cause I have to.
I'm getting. A.
It's. Not a quiz.
No one's checking the number of chapters I read that day, but
for me, I know if I show up like that in the morning, my
consciousness for the rest of the day, I will see the
largeness of my world. I will see the goodness of the
people in my life. I will see the purpose in my
work. I will see the struggles ahead.
I will see them all differently. If I do this in the morning, how
I engage the rest of my day is different.
And David, he says that in Psalm 5, he says in the morning, I
prepare a sacrifice for you, which is our attention.
And he says, and I watch, it's like I watch differently.
I see the day different. And Mom, we don't see the world
as it is. We see the world as we are.
Most of us think we see the world as it is.
But the reality is we see the world as we are.
And that's actually a good thing because who we are is actually
pretty dynamic. Even the brain, what we've
learned from neuroscience, the rewiring of your brain, you can
make actually anatomical changes to your brain based on how you
focus your thoughts because thoughts turn into things.
And so that idea of starting our day with that practice, it leads
to prayerfulness throughout the day.
It just does naturally a greater sense of connectivity to God and
what God is doing. Because you've set a pattern.
Yes, and I would just say to moms out there like maybe
you're, you're nursing like one of the most beautiful things to
do. And, and my wife and I, we've
had conversation about this and you know, our youngest is 9.
So it's been a while since she nursed, but she would feel this
need to do something when she was nursing like, oh, I need to
be doing something. This isn't necessarily
productive or I could be multitasking.
And she got to the place later on with her kids where she
realized, Oh my goodness, this is such a holy moment of prayer
and connectivity to God and with the child.
And yet so many, you know, it's like, oh, you got that extra
hand scrolling on my phone. I'm doing messages, I'm doing
whatever. And there's just this lie.
It's this lie that you have to perform, that you have to do
that you have to check the boxes that you're not doing enough.
And you talk about this like, mother, I've heard you say it's
a mama's out there. You're like mama's, you're going
to get to the end of the day and you're going to realize you
didn't get through the whole list.
That doesn't mean you're not enough.
Right. And, and Mamas do keep a list of
all the things they don't do enough of.
And yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's a rough thing.
You know, one of the things that I I love so much is that you've
made this really easy. Thanks, mom.
No, it you you talk about reflect, recenter, rest,
receive, respond and it's just super easy.
Each day is just like 2. And I think sometimes like I
love that you have reflect, recenter and then rest.
It's I love that you didn't put rest at the end of the day, but
you you put a pause. You put a say law like, OK,
pause and be in wonder. And I love how you created a
rhythm that people could actually follow.
And one of one of the greatest moments for me was, you know, I
had your kids spend the night and.
Talk about the recent time. Yeah, and, and Asher misplaced
his prayer journal and he was frantic and he came over to my
house and we looked all around and we couldn't find it.
We couldn't find it. And, you know, he was just like,
I can't find my journal. And then, you know, I looked
some more and then literally, literally, I went up and I just
prayed. I said, God, my grandson is
looking for his prayer journal where you got to help me with
this one. And and it's not just any, it's
something his father wrote and he's a teenager, which means,
which means sometimes they don't even like their parents.
So yeah, so I was like, where is it?
And I really sense the Holy Spirit say, look over there.
And and I don't know whether John picked it up and put it
somewhere, but I would never have put it there and it was
underneath another book. And so the Holy Spirit wants to
show you things and if, but we have to have a receptivity.
And I, what I'm hearing from you is when you're thinking, I'm not
enough, I'm not doing enough. This is, you know, this isn't
good enough. You're not in a receiving
position at all. And I just remember I was like
Asher, I found it and he came right over and got it.
And he was so excited. Which if, if I, you know, I mean
that just says the world to me and I and, and what I love is
you are training your family to hear the voice of God as young
men and young women. So I know Sophie, Sophie had
one, has one too, but she didn't, she didn't leave hers
behind, but. She's very responsible.
She is very responsible, yes. She has all of it in order.
Yeah. Sophie.
Sophie is almost like a first born.
Yeah. She is and I think with them
being 17 months apart with the male female dynamic I feel like
they both have first born qualities. 100%, yeah.
But mom, I love that you call that out because for me, I
wanted it to be a, a simple yes. That then leads to a much bigger
yes than you realize you were capable of.
So it starts really simple. And I feel like as people get
into it, you're going to realize, oh wow, this, this
practice, we can use the word discipline, but this practice.
A practice is something you do without thinking, so that's
good. Discipline is what helps us
develop a practice, but practice becomes a habit.
Yeah, this, this, this practice of reflect, rest, reflect,
recenter, rest, receive, respond the way that I view this.
And each day has a different reflect, but then the rest of
the components are the same. The reflect is supposed to
challenge our idea of God, our idea of prayer.
So we go into the recenter from a fresh place of surrender like,
oh, because all of us, we, we start to believe these things
about God that I would say cast God in a low view, like Foster
low view of God. And so we should all be
challenged by God's holiness, his otherness.
When we come to him. We should be amazed by who he is
and prayer is that place of intimate connection with him.
So I think there should always be a sense of wonder and awe and
humility and excitement that comes with with a life of
prayer. And so I like to bring people
into that. But then recenter like you are,
you are not God. You don't have to be God.
God is an. Expected pressure.
Pressure is off like. You're not and and and because
you're. Wondering You're not in control
and you're not God. We.
All know that, but it's it's crazy how good the accuser is of
convincing us that we are someone that we're not the enemy
is so good at saying since you're someone or shouldn't you
be someone else? You should do something or be
something. He's so good at going after what
we're doing, what we're not doing by twisting and perverting
our sense of identity like he's he's the master at that.
And it's just a chance for us every day to engage with God in
a way that silences the voice of the accuser.
I like to say that we struggle to hear the voice of God, the
tone and tenor of God, because we look for his voice and the
voice of the accuser. We look for God to sound like
that accusative, shame oriented, performative voice.
That is the accuser. That is the accuser.
That's how he communicates. That's how he convinces you
you're not enough or you need to do XY or Z.
And so the Spirit of God, he coaxes us, he woos us, and he
shapes his voice in US and through us more than he shouts
the words to us, right? And I want people to understand
like how God speaks to them uniquely.
And I believe this experience will help them enter into that
space of connection. Well, I don't think there's been
a more crucial time to be able to hear and rightly divide the
voice of God versus the voice of the accuser.
I mean, we have so much accusation out there on both
sides of every narrative. And God is not in the realm of
compromise. He's in a realm of Kingdom and
he always calls us higher. And I, and I feel like right now
it is so much easier to side with either of the sides.
But like, I remember that a word that was given to your dad and I
was, I'm going to call you to stand in the middle and declare
truth. And you're going to be shot at
from both sides. And so when you actually,
unfortunately, I've experienced it, but, but, but God will
discipline us to get us to bring forth more fruit.
He'll prune us to bring more fruit.
He will, he will guide us. He will lead us, but he will not
force, he will not manipulate, He will not shame.
Like even when I've come to God and felt really bad about my own
behaviour in a situation and come to him and be like, I can't
believe I did that. I can't believe I said that.
I can't. Why do I keep doing this?
Whatever I've never heard him say, why do you keep doing this?
I've talked to you about this before.
You just I've never heard him partner with the problem.
I've heard him speak, I believe you want to change and I forgive
you. I've never heard him say you're
just going to do this again next week.
I mean, he's never gone to the place of defeat with me, but he
has gone to this place of rightly dividing where, you
know, like and even. It's painful.
It is painful like Lisa, you're not right.
This is that was not right. That was and and I think we live
in a culture that is so self self reflective that they're not
God reflective. Yes, it goes back to that God
consciousness for self consciousness too.
Because it's the same idea. I know I, I mean, and, and I'll
hear so many people say things like, I just don't know what it
is. I just maybe if I just look at
myself a little bit longer or go and I'm like, OK, when you just
study self, you are limited to self.
But when you begin to meditate on God, when you begin to think
your ways are higher than my ways, your thoughts are higher
than my thoughts, I'm going to think your thoughts, which is
your word. I'm going to stop looking at my
past and projecting into my future, but I'm going to start
looking into your word. I mean, I love how James talks
about how the word of God is a mirror.
It's a mirror and we don't want to go away and forget.
Exactly that we've been cleansed.
We want that mirror to be the reflection of that as word
begins to facet our life and, and, and we don't have to have,
we don't have to have a constant reframing of what we're doing
wrong. We need to have the reframing of
the one who makes everything right.
Yeah, no, as you're as you're sharing that, I think about what
you just shared from James 1, he describes as the law of liberty
you. Persevere not into the law of
liberty. And it's this, it's this place
of, of freedom. And mom, as you were sharing
this, I'm thinking about something that God has shown me
and it's really wrecked me when when we come to God in in
prayer, we pray to a God that we believe can do anything at any
time with anyone, right? Like that's the idea of God's
Omni omnipotence or he's all powerful, right?
But as I've really meditated on that and even reading Hebrews
and Hebrews fiber talks about Jesus, though he was a son, he
learned obedience through his process, which was painful.
This idea that God doesn't want robots.
He wants sons and daughters. He doesn't want people who can
just like check the boxes. He wants people who are deeply
formed. And the reality is God can do
anything at any time with anyone, but he's chosen to make
the forming of sons and daughters.
He's chosen to make that his decision or his that process of
forming. He's made that his decision.
And that requires time. You know, this is a parent.
You don't just form a son or a daughter overnight.
It's not getting the right answer to the test.
That is a process of intimate discipleship, walking together,
navigating failures and successes.
And and that's how God engages with us when it comes to prayer
in the formative power of prayer.
And, and I hope people hear that and what we're talking about
today, because God at the first attribute of love in First
Corinthians 13 is patience. Don't you think God embodies
that? Certainly has with.
Me. I mean, I, I feel, I feel like
he's been very generous toward me when it, when it comes to
patience and the enemy of our souls.
He just, he wants to get us out of the game like he wants us to
stop playing. And God's like, Hey, just come
back and watch what I do. You were saying you become who
you behold that idea. Hey, let let's get, let's get
the attention off what you're not doing and let's allow your
consciousness when it comes to prayer, let's make it less about
you and more about what I want to do with you and through you.
Can you surrender your idea of what is possible?
That's what I'm asking for today.
Can you surrender it? I love what you're saying.
Now there might be people out there that would say help me
understand the difference between this and new age
manifesting meditation. Yeah, you want me to speak to?
That I want you to speak to it. Yeah.
So. So, OK, so generally I would say
we've done a really poor job embracing the robustness of
prayer. So different camps have come in
and they've stolen what I would say should be a part of the life
of prayer, but we haven't embraced it and brought it to
the central expression of prayer.
So I would say things like manifesting mom, that's a
manipulation of the reticulated activating system.
I like. So manifesting, I'm just saying
manifesting is is this idea of like I'm going to call things
into being that I want to be reality in my life and and the
truth is God and. We're the center.
And we're, and I was going to say that's the difference.
The difference is God wants us to participate with him, to seek
out his will, to be sensitive to what the Spirit of God is doing.
I love what Jesus says in Luke 11.
He says how much more will the Father give his very nature to
those who ask. So when we're asking and we're
participating with the nature of God, we should have an authority
to call those things not as they are, but as they should be, but
not with ourselves in the center of the universe, but rather with
a sensitivity to what God's doing.
When it comes to meditation, mom, meditation, cogitation,
whatever words you want to use for it, that is.
That is a practice from Scripture, right?
We meditate on the Word, we meditate on the goodness of God,
we meditate on the wonder of creation because the owner of
the Creator is revealed. Isaac meditating out in the
field and he looks up and hit the promises.
Wife is coming. I mean, there's so many
instances where meditation. The difference is, is the one is
like emptying myself for the sake of myself, the other is
emptying myself so that I can receive more of the reality of
God, right and more of who God says I am.
And Jesus invites us everyday in Luke 9 to deny ourselves, take
up our cross, follow him daily. Paul says in Luke and 1st
Corinthians 15 he says to die daily.
That idea is laying down our concept of our self, the world,
how this all works, and saying God, I want your reality.
I want what you say to be true. I want that to be true in my
life. That place of meditation is that
emptying of oneself to receive something beyond ourselves.
I love that. OK, I'm going to ask you to do
this. I know there's people and
they've you've said so much and you've done it so beautifully.
I'm so no. I'm so proud of you, Addison.
I'm I love this. But I want you to close this
conversation about prayer with a prayer.
I want you to to pray to the people because I believe that
there is no distance in prayer. And I believe that the people
that are listening, they, they not only need to start doing,
but this is an opportunity for them to receive.
So pray for them. Absolutely.
If you're out there right now and you're listening to this, I
just want to say as we go into this time, that prayer, I know
it's a, a place of pain for so many people and disappointment,
shame. Maybe you prayed something
before and you didn't see God move in the way that you thought
he would move. I, I, I want you to know that
God wants to meet you in that pain.
And God has a way of becoming more real to us as we get real
with him. So as we enter this moment, I
just want to invite you just quiet yourself real quickly.
Take a deep breath and allow whatever is forming in your mind
that's causing resistance to what I'm about to pray.
Surrender that say God, I, I give that to you.
Father, I, I thank you that you created us for communion with
you. You designed every part of us to
be a receptor of your grace, of your wisdom, so that we could
understand what it means to to steward this good world that you
have given to us, what it means to steward it well.
God, I thank you that you go with us, that you go before us.
God, I thank you that as we look back, we start to realize that
you've been with us all along, that we are in fact living in an
answered prayer. And God, I speak against that
spirit of condemnation, the shame that that twist and
distorts the nature of God and the nature of prayer.
I pray, God, that there would be a holy discontentment with with
this false prayer, with this, with this pseudo religious
experience. God, I pray that we would
encounter You in the reality of who you are and that we would
experience Your presence in those parts of our lives that we
didn't realize You could invade. I I thank You for the promise in
Your word in Hebrews 4 that we can approach Your throne with
boldness to receive mercy and grace to help in our time of
need. And God, I ask for greater mercy
and grace for every single person who is praying right now
with me. God, I pray that You would
cleanse their consciousness. You say in Your Word that that
the blood of bulls and goats is not capable of cleansing the
consciousness of the worship for God.
I pray that you would cleanse their consciousness,
consciousness that they would understand what it is to draw
near to you and that you would draw near to them.
That you wouldn't meet them in those daily moments, that you
would surprise them at the times when you meet them as they, as
they surrender their attention in the morning.
God, I pray that you would meet them in ways that direct their,
their days, God, to open their eyes to the goodness and
faithfulness that is with them that has gone before them.
And as they encounter, as James says, trials of various kinds.
God, I pray that they would be full of confidence that they can
ask for wisdom, that they can ask for, for grace, knowing that
you give it liberally. And God, I pray that they would
see that you are making them complete and perfect, that they
would lack nothing for their family, for their marriage, for
their community, for their church, for their friends.
God but they wouldn't do that from a place of having to prove
something, but rather from that realization, from that
revelation that you've called them to become something because
you are giving something through them.
God, I pray that they would rest in your goodness and your
faithfulness, that you are the one who completes the good work
and you are the one who finishes it.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Amen, Amen. Well, listen, you can you can
hear Addison's passion for prayer and I believe this is a
gift to the body of Christ. Words with God, prayer general
40 days. And you're going to want to
actually just restart it again when you're done. 40 days of
getting real with God. You guys, you're not fooling
anybody. God knows you're uncomfortable,
comfortable, God knows you feel like a failure, but he doesn't
want you to continue to feel that way.
And I believe this is a tool that is going to reset.
And we're going to put a link in the notes.
We're going to put all your information.
Addison, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me.
I'm so proud of you. I love you so much.
Oh my gosh, being with my son, He talks about prayer.
I don't. I don't know that it gets any
better than this. Love you, love you.