Latest / The Father's Business Podcast / Creating a Legacy of Faith Through Prayer-Interview with Tony Souder

Transcript

Creating a Legacy of Faith Through Prayer-Interview with Tony Souder · The Father's Business Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I'm Elizabeth Gunter-Powell.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: And I am Kimberly Roddy.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Father's Business podcast.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: We are so glad that you've joined us.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I want to welcome everybody back to our podcast this week.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I am so excited that we have Tony Souter, who is a dear friend to both Kimberly and I and is also the CEO of 100 Years and the founder of the Pray for Me campaign.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'll let Tony explain more of that, but I first met Tony back in the early 90s, when he was a youth leader in Atlanta.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter, he moved to Chattanooga, and what I know you for mainly, tony, is your passion to want to train and encourage and equip youth leaders all over the Southeast.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And so today we want to talk to you a little bit about prayer and the importance of prayer in your life your personal life, your ministry life and also hear more about the shift that has been happening with you since around 2014, where you're focused more on connecting the generations through prayer.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So welcome, tony.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: We're so glad you're here.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here, so thankful that for this moment, to be able to be with both of you, and so, yeah, I've been here in Chattanooga since 1994.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: I moved here to do exactly what you said.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: He's focused on training and equipping and serving.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Another way we say that is connecting, coaching and caring for youth leaders in the Southeast, and it did that until 2014 is when we launched the Pray for Me campaign.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: We did make a shift to that moment For me personally.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I'm still heading up a ministry called 100 Years, which is a ministry trying to help every generation bring the greatness of God to the next generation.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: In some ways, we serve the most influential people in the lives of the next generation, and that could specifically be parents, grandparents, next-gen leaders, but in all reality, it's anybody that is willing to take the initiative in engaging with a young person, whether it's through prayer or whether it's through relationship or a prayer relationship.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: So there's layers of that going on.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: But the reason why we were called 100 Years is because we believe that God has designed us for influence and to make a difference for his glory and the good of others.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: But we can do that by influencing what we would see for generations so we can influence our own generation, we can influence those above us and those coming along behind us.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Depending on where you are on the spectrum, you may not have many people above you or you may have lots of people behind you, but there's four generations and we look at that as about 25 years apiece.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: So 100 Years is kind of encapsulating that vision of how can we help the church, the people of God, to be able to make a difference generationally across these different planes, generational planes.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And we do that in a number of different ways by coming alongside youth leaders with what is now called the Youth Leader Collective.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: That's one of the expressions of 100 Years.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: The Youth Leader Collective they connect coaching, care for youth leaders, helping them to serve students, families and churches around this theme.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: And then the Pray For Me campaign, which is designed to give every young person in every church the relationships they need, cross-generational lines, beginning with prayer.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Tony, I'm pretty sure I met you when I was living in Atlanta, working at Gold Rush and you were doing some PAC Ministry stuff back in the day in the late 90s, but you and I really reconnected around I was trying to think it was probably 2015-ish right after you had launched the Pray For Me campaign.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I was serving as the Youth Director at my church here in Virginia and you and I talked about the Pray For Me campaign and one of the things that I was learning was I was looking at some of the Fuller Youth Institute research and we were looking at sticky faith and all the stuff that they were doing at the time and they were saying you know, it really isn't always about the impact that the pastor or the youth pastor has on the life of the teenager to have lasting faith, it's really about the impact that the intergenerational community has.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: That was one of the other things they were showing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And so, as I was looking at that and I was reflecting back on, youth, ministry for me had been about 20, 25 years or so, and I'm looking back at how we had always been segregated.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: We had always done, had our youth room in the back and we're always inviting kids to these youth events.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: We're having youth Sunday school, youth group on Sunday night, wednesday nights, whatever and so we had done some things that brought teenagers into the greater body of the church, but really, for the most part, my youth ministry experience and leading youth groups had been segregated, and that was one of the things that sticky faith was showing wasn't really going to be working anymore, and that was one of the things that you were doing with the Pray for Me campaign, and I was like this this is something really key.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And so you and I talked several times.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: We did the Pray for Me campaign at my church.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: It was a beautiful experience to see generations come together, and I it was one of the highlights of my 10 years that I was at that church, honestly and so I would love to hear you share a little bit more about how the Pray for Me campaign came up for you, like how you started getting passionate about that and launched that and wrote the, wrote the book so that people can go through praying for this generational impact.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: So talk a little bit more about that and your how that came to be too.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Well, first, I'm just thankful to hear your testimony of what God did and making that a beautiful experience, because that's really the design.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Ultimately, the design is that the whole church would experience the church differently than it does typically, and so one of the things that that God had been way well before 2014,.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: God had been kind of working in my heart with passages like Psalm 145, 4, one generation will praise your works to another and declare your mighty acts.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And I just see this whole generational passing on to the faith that that we're just reaching in and grabbing my heart and stirring me up and thinking how can we make this happen?
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Because it's not happening.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: We're just not seeing it, and you know I'm being involved with the youth ministry for a lot of in decades.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Now that you're looking in churches all across the Southeast in the country, you're not seeing that in any profound way, and so, but knowing, knowing how much my life has changed, was being transformed because of these intergenerational relationships and and wondering, okay, young people are walking by adults and they just they have no clue how much goodness is is passing by them.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: And how do we, how do we dip in there and be able to help them to taste that sweetness and and beginning with the relationship.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: And so, so as that that passage in Psalm 71, 17 and 18, you've taught me from my youth even when I'm old and gray, do not forsake me until I declare your power to the next generation and to those, all those who are to come.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: I was just captivated by those, those passages and multiple other ones.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: But but it was.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: The interesting thing is that, as I am, across the same research, sticky faith research, and then and then started looking at the national study of youth through religion, and then you, it just started seeing study after study, after study over the number of decades.
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: You realize that every major study, that focusing on the faith of a young person, points to the vital nature of intergenerational relationships.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: And then you realize that we're just the the way that youth ministry structured and the way that churches are structured and the way that families are structured, we're just not doing that.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: We're not, there's not a vehicle to create it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: But when, the thing that struck me when I was listening to Carri Powell and sticky faith, and I realized she, she said how important these relationships were because you're looking at the exodus of young people leaving the church.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: So there's two components for me.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: There's also you get the this exodus of young people leaving the church after they leave there, after they graduate from high school.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: Now, conservatively sticky faith would say there's anywhere from 40 to 60%, 40 to 50% somewhere in that neighborhood.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: Other research would say they're seeing about 63%, you know in.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: So you have this anywhere between 40 and 65% of young people that are growing up in our churches are exiting.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: And I'm thinking, okay, that's that's problem.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: But then the other, this like it's almost like this, this other sub conversations taking place, but they're not connecting the two.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: You have this sub conversation that's taking place that says but those young people that stay connected to the church and flourish in their faith have multiple adult believers investing in their lives outside of their family and outside of what's happening in youth ministry.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: And so when we came across that, we said, well, if that's true, how can we give every young person this whole network of adults that love and support them?
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: And but how would we do that?
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: And we just started diving into that question for months and we just started eliminating the different roadblocks, the things that were keeping us from getting to the answer of how to naturally connect more adults with more young people in the church, and so, over the number of months, what ended up coming to the top not very easily, but it came to the top was the pray for me campaign, which is really designed to help every young person in the church have three adults from different generations that are willing to pray for them for a year, and in an ideal world which we do not live in, we would these young people would get three new ones the next year and three new ones the year after that, and so that maybe from sixth grade to 12th grade, they would have 21 different adults outside of the youth ministry and outside of their family that are intentionally investing in their lives.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: And there those adults are, their hearts are getting bigger towards God and towards those young people, and so we we rooted our thought patterns of developing intergenerational relationships in prayer, and prayer is the catalyst for that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: But I was having a conversation with a great friend of mine the other day and we're shifting some of that, some of my language since we created Pray for Me is that prayer is vital and transformative and does this amazing stuff that God wants to do, but in some ways I've been verbalizing it as it's a means to the end for the relationship, for these relationships with intergenerational relationships.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: But my friend said and both of you know this, his name is David Grant, so I was hanging out with David and he goes well, the prayer is a relationship, instead of trying to say it's just the means of getting there.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Because what was happening is I was talking about my passion for prayer and what God wants to do in the lives of the next generation and people's lives, our lives as we pray, and the people that we're praying for, their lives, the non-constraints that's a better way to say it the limitlessness of prayer, because it's not rooted in us, it's rooted in God that when we pray, god can use our prayers to transform generations to come.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: So that's a whole other category that I'm really passionate about, and he was feeling that passion.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: But then over here you're talking, you're separating these two things.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: You've got prayer over here and you've got relationships over here and you're really passionate about these intergenerational relationships.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: But then in that moment he said what you're really creating is you're creating prayer relationships and you don't have to talk about this as the means to the end, because in there, praying, the relationships are being formed, and so this is fresh.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: This is like yesterday.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: So this podcast is growing public for the first time with these words Excellent, excellent Cutting edge.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: So, yes, it is, and I'm still being.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I'm still God's still stirring that whole concept in my mind.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: But that prayer.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: I believe that God is using prayer as the catalyst for the relationships too, because there's so many adults that are in our churches that are never going to go to a lock-in or never even show up in a youth group meeting, but yet when they start praying, their hearts are being transformed and they care about that young person differently.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And then when they see that young person come to church, they're looking for that young person, they're seeking them out.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: But the opposite is happening too.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: The young person knows that this is adults are praying for them and they're seeking out the one that is showing that kind of care towards them in prayer.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: And so it's been pretty amazing to watch over the last 10 years.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: So we're 10 years in that marker, we're 30 years in the marker of being in doing this ministry as a whole.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: But it's been transformative for me to watch how God is using pray for me to transform the experience of young people with the church.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: So you and I, when we walk through the church, we walk through a basically a sea of adults, and we know though we hope this is true that when we walk through, if something goes south in our lives, these people are for us and they're going to help us.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Young people are walking through the same sea of adults and they don't have a clue that these people are really for them.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: Plus, we do something different than we've done for decades upon decades that then they will be in their good children's ministry hub, then they'll move to a good youth ministry hub and then they'll age out of that and they'll look at the church and they say I really don't know these people and it's easy to leave an institution.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: It's hard to leave a family and at that moment they're looking at the church more as an institution because they don't have the relational connections there, and so we're trying to change that.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: So part of what the Pray For Me campaign is about is really trying to transform their experience to what the church really is supposed to be a family of God and so they experience as a family the people that are caring for them in intentional ways.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: We're always learning and trying to figure out how to do this better.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: We've got a long way to go, but we're committed to making a dent in this exodus of young people abandoning what they think they know, which they don't.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: They don't know the beauty and the wonder of God in the midst of the community of God, and we want them to experience that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: And if they do experience that, then I think they're going to be going off to college.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: They're going to get up on a Sunday morning, get dressed, get a church in there and their room is going to say what are you doing?
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: And I'm going to church.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Why would you do that?
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Because these are the people that have loved me all my life and they are the people that are helping, that are shepherding me to know the one that gives me life.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: But that's what we want.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely and I love that phrase not an institution but a family.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I know Kimberly's story in mind.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Both we, I think, were an exception to the rule that we were growing up in churches where there's children's ministry, then youth ministry, then big church, as we used to call it, that we didn't get to go to as often.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I know my story in hers is there were 20-somethings adults that were pouring into our lives, not because the youth pastor recruited them to do it, it just naturally happened that way.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And I know for me this is my generational story is my dad's dad.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So my grandfather.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: His best advice to them when they had me and my two brothers was train them up till about their 12 and then find other people that had the same values as you and let them go spend time with them, because there comes a point in the life where teenagers you know we all went through it Our parents all of a sudden turned stupid and they don't know anything but another adult with the same values saying the same thing is all of a sudden brilliant, and so my parents always taught the young married Sunday school class, and so they naturally recruited adults from their 20-somethings married Sunday school class to then go spend time with the teenagers.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So it's, and you're right, because I had that experience when I went off to college.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted to know well, where's my Susan, where's Bill, where's all these Tammy, all these people that I've had in my life are now still back home in Atlanta and I need new people, and so I think that's amazing that you're trying to help this more on a structural basis happen, and so grateful that in the natural that for both Kimberly and I, both we did have those people that spoke into our lives that weren't our parents, and I think it did make a huge impact.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome, that's awesome yeah.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: I think I was thinking, too, that prayer is a.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: You were talking about prayer being the relationship, right, like.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: I think that that new thought you were talking about it is interesting.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: So often when it comes to prayer, we do tend to segregate our prayer life, right, like we tend to think of we just put everything in a box, and so it to just connect the fact that prayer is the relationship.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: You are building a relationship while you pray, because it is an intimate language.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: It is an intimate connection to something other, to something greater.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: We had this lady in our church here in Virginia.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Her name was Betty Topson.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Everybody knew and loved Betty, and when I moved to Virginia in 2007 and started working at the church, she was 60 or 70.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: She's passed away now, but she would teach.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: She had taught children's Sunday school for years and years and years.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: And so I come into the youth ministry and she's talking to all these kids in the hall.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: She's hanging out down at the end of the adult wing, would enter into the youth wing and she was always down at that end talking to the middle school and the high school kids that she had invested in, and she organically got the nature of that.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: And here's the thing everybody knew about Miss Betty she was a prayer warrior, and that's what you knew, and so she was organically connecting those things.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: And so I remember when we, when we did the Pray For Me campaign, we launched it, she was beside herself.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: She was so excited that this was happening.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: She was, she was there, she was present, she showed up and she couldn't wait to specifically pray for a kid she hadn't met yet and it was.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: It was just a beautiful picture of seeing how, like Elizabeth said, these things are happening.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: But to intentionally help them happen and to create avenues for them to happen, I think it helps us think about prayer differently and relationships differently and connecting the two so that that they're behaving to happen in a new way.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I was watching a friend of mine told me about this docu series on Netflix recently and it's called like the secret to 100, the blue zones.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: It's about being centarians living to a hundred.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I watched it the other night.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It's like five, four, five episodes and this National Geographic researcher went and for years has researched these blue zones, as he calls them, of populations of people, where he was like what is the commonality where these populations of people are living to a hundred and he started piecing some together.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So it was like Okinawa, sardinia, I can't remember all the cities and then he found there was one in Loma Linda, california, the one, the one in the UAS he found, was in Loma Linda, and it was around the seventh day.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Adventists, people had started caring about their health and so one of the things.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: So, anyway, what to simplify this, you can go watch if you're curious about it.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that I thought was he started looking at all the commonalities and he would piece together from each city what are the commonalities?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: And faith was part of the commonality and intergenerational relationships was part of the commonality, not to mention health and exercise and those kinds of things, but beyond the physical component, faith and intergenerational relationships.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: They had this in one city.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: They had I think they were family members some of them may not have been family members all sitting around this elderly woman where she had never married or had children and she had about eight women around her and they said she's our stability.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: She is always there for us.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: And we're talking different religions, we're talking lots of different stuff here, right, but it was a pretty cool picture of what you can like.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Those things matter to our health, to our wellbeing, to our longevity.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: So I think that's interesting, even when you talk about 100 years, right Like there's multiple ways to think about that 100 years and what it looks like.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: And so he took that idea and he said what if we could create pockets of this Cause?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: You start to see as Okinawa gets more Americanized and fast food and other things come in, you start to see the health decline and it's not a pocket, it's not his blue zone pocket anymore.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: But what was interesting, he went into some city and I think let's see if we can recreate this and he started putting in the factors and seeing people rise.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Over time.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: People started rising up and you started seeing a smaller pocket of it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: And I think about that with regard to the church.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I mean again, tony, I'm not kidding when I say the Pray For Me campaign was one of the highlights of my 10 years of being on staff at that church and having that experience of seeing the generations come together and how it impacted individuals and the community and spiritually and relationally, all of that.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And so to think about the way I'm connecting that to the blue zone is like what I think, what the Pray For Me campaign in the 100 years of the youth collective, the things you're mentioning.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: I think what those things are doing it seems like is there giving a catalyst, like you said, for us to be intentional about this, which is so much of what we talk about on this podcast, elizabeth.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: It's how do we make prayer and the way we just did a series on the Lord's Prayer, how do we take the things that are common and make them intentional, and so I hear you really talking about that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: So people listening to this are super excited about generational legacy and wanting to do this, but it also feels a little intimidating If I'm sitting at a church where none of this is going on.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: How does this even start?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: How do you find the adults?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Are the youth required to go find their own people?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Do you help recruit some adults?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Like, how does someone start getting this process started if they want to do something like this in their own church?
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've tried to streamline it to make it as easy as possible for folks to do it in a church.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: So on our website there's what we call a quick start kit that really lays out how to do it in a church.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I'm probably most excited about, and one of the things that we're want to happen, is that when somebody gets this idea is that they think of their children, their grandchildren, whoever's meaningful in their lives, the young people that are meaningful in their lives and think, okay, how can I be a catalyst for getting five people to pray for this my grandchild While they're in school?
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: It could be over the next five years, but how can I be a catalyst as an individual that I can help five people become prayer champions?
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what we call them prayer champions people that are willing to champion the cause of this young person before the throne of God, not because of the best prayers around, but they're willing to champion the cause of a young person before God.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: So there's that level.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: So we're trying to get it down to that level where, if a church never is gonna launch it, well, the last thing I want is for this not to move forward with the people that hear about it that they as an individual can make a difference, that if I'm a parent of three children, how can I build five people around each one of my children to pray for them?
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: That could be one.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Prayers are gonna be transformative.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And then also there's a prayer relationship and so they build this relationship and they know these people are on their team and they're wanting them to flourish in faith in life.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: So for us we're trying to reduce it as well, not just to have the campaign, but when I'm in the elevator with somebody and somebody says, well, what is the prayer for me campaign, we're wanting to help you to be able to.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: If you've got grandchildren, children or you know somebody that you care about, how can you be a catalyst for making sure they have five people that are caring about them through prayer?
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: So trying to reduce it.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: But obviously we feel like it's absolutely advantageous for churches to do it as a church, because there's layers of benefits.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Is there's obviously lay benefits for the direct student that they all sudden are experiencing the church differently.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: But the fact is that that 30 year old, that 50 year old, that 70 year old that are praying for that 15 year old.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: They're in relationship now in a whole new way than they would have been before or have been before that they've been passing by each other or sitting on the same pew and not really knowing what's in their lives either, and so our goal is that prayer is transformative for these relationships across the board.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: But our website has lots of resources to be able to answer those questions on a church scale specifically and we're moving towards the more individual aspect.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: So that because, as you know or may not know, I mean now there's four books, there's four prayer guides that I wrote that the prayer guide at the beginning because I was looking in the mirror and saying, hey, you know, if somebody's asking me to pray for a student for a year, you know I would need some way to do this or it's gonna fade like a New Year's resolution and I've had a lot of New Year's resolutions fade.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: So I wrote the prayer guides wrapped around scripture, or wrapped around what we call the seven essentials come from Luke 2.52 and 1 Timothy 4.12.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: But the goal of that is that, as you all know, you can pray about everything, but what we pray about for these students in these seven essentials is really Christ-like character transformation to take place.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: We're praying for the favor of God in their lives.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: We're praying for wisdom, love, faith and purity to be honed into the core of who they are and that gets expressed in their speech and their conduct.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: And then when we see speech and conduct that doesn't match up with what Christ is like, then we don't just do behavior modification, we pray more specifically that God's favor would move into their lives in wisdom, love, faith and purity.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: So those are the kind of core four that we're praying for in God's favor, so that it's expressed in how they honor God and bless others in their speech and conduct.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: So that's been.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: But we have one for adults praying for students, adults praying for children, students praying for themselves and their peers.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: But then the newest is the Grandparent Edition, where we're helping grandparents pray well for their grandchildren.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Some of that is driving our ability to say, hey, we can really actually help individuals, not just marketing to churches and helping hold churches.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: We want to keep doing that, but you can't have enough people going after this, because there's millions of young people that are leaving the church because they don't.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: They haven't tasted and seen the sweetness of what God, who God is and who he is in the community, that he established the church, and we want them to experience that.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Well, tony, you went ahead and answered.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: My follow-up question is you know what is going to be about?
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: What about individuals where a church either doesn't have it, doesn't want to do it, or an individual that's just looking to do it, or praying for kids that aren't attending church?
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: And what if?
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you are interacting with.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: You know your kids, your grandkids, whatever they're not in a faith community.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: So I love that you're broadening the scope so that anyone can get the resources and pray it for any student, neighbor, grandchild, whoever it may be, because as many kids as there are in church there are millions more that have never even been to church but still need that.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe even more so need that prayer and also the influence of positive adults in their lives.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So when I, if I sign up for this Pray For Me campaign, there is the prayer aspect of it, but do you also encourage them to meet with their students?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Because I would feel that sometimes an adult would think I don't think I can relate to this kid, but I can pray for him.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: So is this more as you're talking about prayer and relationship, is the focus mainly on the prayer side of things, or do you also encourage going out for a coffee or whatever with prayer with the students?
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's layers of the answer to that, so I'm going to answer it like I'm talking to somebody at a church.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Great that if they're doing it at a church and we make the bar prayer because that's accessible to any believer in the church, if they're praying for a student and they're willing and they're engaging prayer with a student, then that student knows that they're praying.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: They've been introduced so that they know that Tony Soutter is praying for Billy and so when I see Billy in the hall, billy knows I've been praying for him.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: So at that juncture we already been introduced.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: It would feel more awkward and weird if I didn't say anything to Billy than if I go up and talk to Billy, even though before this introduction I probably would have.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: If I was somebody that didn't have a history in youth ministry Take that equation I probably wouldn't have gone up and talked to Billy.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: So this creates the bridge to relationship and say, hey, billy, I've been praying for you these days.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Is there anything new?
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I can pray for you, but it allows for a natural conversation to take place and that's what we want.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: But then, so that's what we're aiming at.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: So there's natural conversation and connection and engagement at church primarily and church type settings but say, for instance, I realize, well, man, this is really cool, I really feel like I can maybe invest in Billy's life differently and I want to start taking him out to get a you know, I'll get taken to breakfast before he goes to school or whatever At that juncture that I, at that point I become a youth leader and so whatever the church guidelines are for youth leaders, then I would need to step into that and go through that, because I'm playing a different role than just being a prayer champion for that young person.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: And some churches all have background checks.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: There's lots of layers of that and what I have churches that on the day of their launch they've got background check applications there for those people that know that they're probably going to want to engage with their student differently, at a more deeper level, and but then the parents know that okay, they've got a background check, it's all good.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: And then there's a connection.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: You know, if it's not done by a church year but the year, then there's layers of that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Usually the parents usually the governing factor with that, and the way that we're thinking about doing it individually is that parents would be key in and we're still trying to make it.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: They're going to be more of the inviators to invite people to pray, or grandparents, the inviators to invite people to pray for their grandchildren or children, and so they're the catalyst for the.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: You know who are these people that are coming into my kids' lives?
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: We still believe that prayer is the kind of the, an entry point that creates lavish amounts of goodness coming towards that student and the person that's praying, and so we're very excited about that piece.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: A point I alluded to earlier I didn't say this clearly is that the prayer pieces is something that we are going to ramp up in how we convey the importance of prayer, because typically, what I would do as I talk about prayer being the catalyst for the relationship, because I'm emphasizing this but and part of that is because you may not have experienced this but you start talking about prayer and people start, start yawning, they start their eyes glaze over and they don't, don't realize that this is the most important piece of your relationship.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: If you have a relationship with God, this is the most important piece.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Now, some people might think I'm losing it when I say that, because I'm not talking about the importance of the word, importance to going to church, but I'm saying that you take out prayer out of the relationship, then there ceases to be a relationship.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: It is absolutely crucial to a relationship with God and so in some ways we're we're trying to serve the church, to nurture the adult relationships with their savior and their heavenly father by nurturing their prayer lives, but missionally.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: They're doing it because somebody, a kid, wants to need a prayer champion, but as they do it, their lives start changing.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Now here's the piece that is probably the most.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: It's in some ways befuddling to me.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: But it's also exciting to me is that when I was writing the grandparent edition of the book, it all sudden dawns on me that, okay, when we're praying I mean prayer is basically a future for them we're praying for what's going to happen in the future.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Now we can pray about stuff that's happened in the past, but, but we're wanting something to be different in the future, and so when we pray, we, our prayers work.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: The same way we pray, it goes to the father.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: He has our prayers to execute according to his purposes, plans and providence, and in some point in the future, whenever, and we could be praying about 10 minutes from now or 10 years from now and I'm going to.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: This is the befuddling part or 10,000 years from now, it operates the same way that our prayers go and rest with God and then he executes them according to his purposes.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Now, because God's a generational God and he seeks to do things that to a thousand generations of those who love him and follow him, I mean my mind starts.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: This is the fuddling that I can pray prayers that that can be way into the future, long after I'm gone, that I'm with Jesus, celebrating the beauty and wonder of that, and he's executing prayers that he's called me to pray and ignited me to pray.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: But he's doing something in the future, way into the future, that creates a legacy we're talking about.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: The legacy piece creates a spiritual legacy that far outlasts any material thing we would give to our immediate family when we pass.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: But anyways, you can respond to that.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: I mean I'm saying this this is more new things that this just got searing in that if people get this piece and the fact that you take out prayer from your Christian walk, then you don't really have a relationship with God's, because this is the gift he's given you so that you can actually engage with him.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can know a lot about God, but you don't necessarily have a relationship with him because it comes through this prayer piece.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: I'll let you guys respond.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're singing off the same page on the hymn book, Derek Tony, because we've just spent the last two weeks talking about the Lord's Prayer and, at its heart, the Lord's Prayer, while it may be something that we feel is rote, that we all memorize and can just you know I started and everyone else can finish it prayer is relationship.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, if all the ways that Jesus could have started when he said this is how you should pray, he started our Father, and so, in that we talked to Kimberly I talked about on our podcast, about the hour being the family of God, that we are part of a community and think of all the names that are for God, holy One, most High.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I mean all of these glorious names that are true of him.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: The word Jesus chose to use was Father, because it's about a relationship.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, we are right where you are and totally on the same page with you on that and just so excited about being able to help people understand that, because I think a lot of times we do, as Kimberly said, think prayer is something you do at the beginning of your day or, you know, before you go to bed at night.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It's an exercise or a discipline and there is discipline to your prayer life, but it's so much.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: It's a relationship.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: It definitely is yes.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we did a series on Sylvia's book For the Family, which is a book that when she wrote prayer portions, I think For the Family was something that was like more of a condensed prayer.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Portions is really big, so For the Family was a smaller book that people could pray through, and I think one of the reasons that that book was intriguing to people is because it does connect prayer and relationship and the family is the relationship that has longevity, that we do ancestry, family trees and geniograms and things like that to look at our family and look back at the impact.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: And so the family of God is, you know, god.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Scripture talks about that.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: The family of God is a family and so we have that model family and I shared this with Elizabeth.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Have a dear friend of mine who was diagnosed with cancer in January and she is getting ready to head to Arizona to do some treatments and she and her husband, her mother lives with her and her husband and then she has three local children in the area and they all have grandchildren.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: There's your four generations that are interacting with one another right now in this difficult season of the mom going through cancer, and she posted on Facebook my heart overflows with love.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Tonight, my children and their families gathered around in our home to pray over us as we leave.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I'm blessed beyond words by each one of them.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: This is wealth To raise your children imperfectly but seeing that it was my tide that the Lord blessed and made fruitful.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: They know him, they love him, they trust him, they image him and they are sowing the same into their children with evident fruit.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: I am richly blessed and I thought that's a picture of.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a woman who I consider a friend and a mentor, who I know without a shadow of a doubt, praise for me and praise with me, and we have partnered together to pray for many people in our church.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: And just a dear woman who I know values the word of God and prayer, her relationship with the Lord.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: And so to see her being sick but being richly blessed by her family, coming around her and seeing her I think her oldest grandchild is a senior in high school and the youngest is between one and two years old and so to see her grandchildren come around her and pray for her with their parents and their grandparents, it's to me that's a beautiful picture of what you're talking about the relationship, the legacy, the generational impact that that will have for years to come, of what this 60-something year old grandmother mother is praying her one and two year old granddaughter one to two year old granddaughter sitting in this room praying for her being raised in this legacy.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: What will happen?
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: What prayers is she praying for that grandchild now that will continue, like you said, years from now, to be fulfilled.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful picture, that's very inspiring and that's what I think about as you're talking about those things and what scripture the generation to generation piece that scripture talks about.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: What a great story.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: I mean I'm sorry that she's in the place of health-wise that she is, but what a testimony of the goodness of God being lavished over her through family.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: I've just been struck recently by the kind of the end of 2nd Corinthians, 13, 14.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: So the first 13 says all the saints screech you.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: This is Paul, obviously, wrapping things up, and he says the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father and the fellowship of the Holy spirit be with you.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: But one of the things, I've basically turned that into a prayer.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: So, like every day, I'm turning this and saying I got, I'm committing my life to you and I'm yielding my life to you and I'm surrendering my life to you that I may walk in the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, the love of my heavenly Father and the fellowship of the Holy spirit.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: There's that's.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: It gives cause.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: It just reminds me.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: So I'm so often around people that when they talk about God it's not built into relationship and it's about knowing things about God.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: And my heart starved for Emmanuel.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: God lived us.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: He came here, he pitched a tent so that we wouldn't know him, and when I come across something like that, I'm thinking he wants us to live, paul, I think, once the believers to live in that truth that I'm, that every step I'm taking, I'm taking in the grace of the my Lord and Savior, jesus Christ.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: I'm living in the love of my heavenly Father and the fellowship of the spirit.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: That's not the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ out there, it's not this abstract information.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: It's ours, he's ours, we're in relationship and to me that's just, it's getting away with me, which is good.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: I need to get things like that just to get away with me.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Because that's where the passion for prayer comes from.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Because, again, if it's a duty, a responsibility, something that a good Christian is supposed to do, it's dry and it's one of those resolutions that you start and stop.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: But if it's with my friends, with Kimberly, we text, talk whatever almost every day, and I'm never like, oh, I've got to talk to Kimberly, what a bummer, Because we're what a bummer.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: I've got to talk to her again, because that's what good people do as they talk to their friend Kimberly versus that relationship, and so that's what I totally love your heart for all of this, and that's right.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Where we are with everything that we do through the Father's business is we don't want to teach you how to pray.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: We want you to deepen your relationship with the fullness of who God is and who you are in Him and how that impacts everything.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Where can they find your books?
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all of our books are sold through our website.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: It's called PrayForMeCampaigncom.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: That's where they would go.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: If they see something on Amazon, it's because somebody bought them in there.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: It's not through us, not you so, but through our website.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: As like most things, there's ways to propagate that and serve a lot of people, and we create some ways that you can give some discounts and stuff like that to be able to serve a broader group of people.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: But if somebody wanted to get in touch with us and have more questions, because they hear us talking about these cool things, they could get in contact us through the website and we'd love to help anybody and everybody to be able to help young people have these kind of relationships.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Another practical question here.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: We have people that listen to this from all over the world.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Are there things that are downloadable from your website, in case some, or do you ship internationally if someone wanted your books from another country?
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we do.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: There is some ways that we do ship some internationally, depending where we just I mean it doesn't feel international, but we just ship some stuff to Canada.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are in seven countries and so but some of that's we're figuring out as we go.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: So, like when we come up to somebody who wants something from Australia, how do we get that?
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: How do we do that they're trying to launch something in New Zealand?
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: What does that look like?
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: How do we serve them in a way that feels appropriate on all parts?
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: But if somebody listens to this and wants to know, then we'll figure it out.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Tony, totally unrelated, separate question how are you doing?
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: How's your family doing?
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: I am doing well, my family is doing mostly well, I mean, and really my wife is doing much better these days.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: I mean I would say that, as you well know, there's a 28 or so year journey of her health and stuff, with headaches, muscle pain, bone pain, over 12 years being mostly bedridden, with her thinking going away, memory going away.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: Most people don't know that part, but those are the years we call the dark ages.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: That's when my daughter's from middle school, high school and college.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: But God's given us for a brief and she's doing better.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: We're very thankful to give clarity.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Most people when I tell those things it's hard to get your head around what that feels like, looks like, what does that really like.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: But during the dark ages I never thought I would have a real conversation, a real conversation, anything, nearly what we've had today.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: I never thought I would have a real conversation with my wife again because she couldn't care because of her, just where she was, she couldn't.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: Her thinking couldn't carry the words.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: I mean it was frustrating to her, it was frustrating to me, it was frustrating to everybody.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: Her memory she was losing.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: Her short-term memory was just going away.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: It's hard to put words to the sweetness of God's goodness to allow us to have conversations.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: It's very gracious, wow.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: So my daughter's doing great teacher.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: One's the teacher.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: She teaches second grade here in Chattanooga.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: The other is working on her art business, but she actually lives with us and helps with Rhonda.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: So there's some caregiving that she provides, which is great, which frees me up to do some things that I would not be able to do.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: So we're very thankful, so win-win.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Well, we all have been in places where we are either caring for or have cared for loved ones, but you were always, as I watched from afar, so gracious about all of it.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you had times where you and God had talks about what you thought about His choice of plan, but I never heard that out of you as you were walking through that, and so I would just I mean selfishly, even for myself what encouragement do you have for caregivers out there, those that are having to love on and take care of someone else for a longer period of time?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: You know my story, that I've just finished about a seven-year stint of taking care of my dad with Alzheimer's, and so it can get very lonely and it can get very small.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: So what did you learn through the dark ages, as you call them, that you could encourage and help others with?
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: That's a whole book.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: I mean that's-.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: I know it's a book, but-.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: But the that hasn't been written.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: It's a book that hasn't been written by me.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: There's some, but there I think that probably there's a couple things that I would say that knowing that God loves me okay, I'm just gonna keep it here with me Knowing that God loves me, that he's not poking me in the eye because he doesn't love me and he's not doing that to my wife because he doesn't love her, he loves us, and that what he's doing in us and doing in that moment that we can't see.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: We're in the moment.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: We're only trying to get through the moment, because it is so, so hard and you do feel so alone, because people aren't equipped to hear how hard it is, so you don't share it, you don't share and so.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: But there's this I think he put within me a belief that I'm.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: This is what I signed up for, even though I didn't know I was signed up for it.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: When I looked into her hazel green eyes 38 years ago, or better for worse, richer, poorer, sickness and health.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: So death to us, pardon.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: I totally was banking on the better, the richer and the help, and God was just.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: I think God wanted to do more and it's never.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: It's never just one thing People would ask me all the time Tony, what do you think God's teaching you?
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: I said, well, I think that it's not just me he's teaching there's.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: He's up to doing something.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know all of it.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: He's doing a thousand things, probably a million things.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: But now, where we are today, living that, just trying to get through each day and trusting that he loves me and that he is helping me to love my wife well, as best as a feeble, broken person can do, and perfectly, is that God's always up to something that's so much bigger.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: If we trust him Now, we may not even see it here Now.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: I believe that now I look at it and I can say I believe that God was doing things in people's marriages that weren't even married yet, because of what he was allowing us to go through and not just allowing us putting us through, because he's not aloof, he's not like he wasn't involved.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: I think he was trying to do something in people's lives that heard about us and were praying for us, and because it was thousands and thousands of prayers before God decided to turn the dial and help her to get better, without new medicine, without new doctors, I think the other thing that is, and he didn't have to do any of this.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: I know that and there's some people's lives that don't change and get better after 30 years.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: It just ends.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: And I realized that, and I realized that there's mercy in the fact the way I care for my wife and I love my wife, I look at her and I just start smiling.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I can't help it.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: But there's these because he has put a love in my heart for her and so we're on this call today because of that, all that goodness, all that you take that out of my life.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: We're not having a conversation about prayer.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: We're not having a conversation about what God wants to do in eternity.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Because we're praying now, because he taught me how to pray when I was desperate, and I was desperate, I was a slow learner.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: This desperation was a long time and God is so good.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: I think that even when it was hard and it was alone and in his mercy, he allowed me to believe that he was good and he loved me and he wasn't trying to crush me.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: I do pray that he doesn't crush me.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I don't want to be the guy that I don't want to be Rehoboam.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Rehoboam, you know, follow Solomon.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: He's got his advisors.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: The old guys say, hey, give him a break, give the people a break.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: The young guy said take it to him, show him who's boss, show him that you're more than you're to death.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Well, okay, so here's the tricky part is that he does, he listens to the young guys, which that's not the point of this.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: That's another.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: I'm not trying to get down younger advisors.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: The point is is that, after it's over, it says and, and Rayo Bohm did what God had determined.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Hmm, god was God, had a point that he was going to try to make to the people of the world that that, and he used Rayo Bohm to do it.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be the point that is for the negative, right, all right, I Would be the guy that God uses for the positive, make a positive point here.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be as Rayo Bohm, and and so.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: So when, so when things aren't going the way I would like them to go, I say Lord, you can crush me, but don't crush me for that end.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: Crush me for an end that brings honor to you and and blessing to others, but not through the negative.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to be the life lesson that everyone else learns from the negative.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: The negative life I want you know if, I if people could learn from you, know From my life, in some way, in a positive way, great, but uh, I don't want to be the negative lesson.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, but it was no, you did.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: And that's.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: That's very encouraging and very helpful.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: These relationships are for better and for worse and they're family and you love each other and you care about each other and just trying to keep your, your faith and your Compassion and your grace, and having places for yourself to be cared for in the midst of it all is, it's a holistic thing there.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: So appreciate you sharing because it's Like you said, it's not easy, but God's up to something and we gotta trust it.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but appreciate that.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, absolutely.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, tony.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: It's good to talk, good to see you.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, what a delight.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: What a delight you guys have served me by letting me see your faces.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: This is a gift.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Well, kimberly, I knew just from knowing Tony that was going to be a great conversation.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: But so many rich things in there and just kind of in my own heart stirring up a heart to want to pray Intergenerationally, and just the passion of of prayer.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm so grateful that Tony was able to be on with us and I'm looking at you, kimberly, as the technical person of this podcast.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: I'm sure we can put in our show notes the website to Tony's website so people want to Find out his materials.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: But also we've got several things on our website as well For free.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: In our devotional section you can browse by topic and you can choose family or and or children, and, and there are some devotionals there that tell you 20 things you can pray for your kids and and things like that.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: And then also, kimberly, you mentioned the book for the family.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, for the family is an excellent resource, and what I love the way that I see for the family and the pray for me campaign in some similar ways and intersecting a little bit is Um, you know, one of the prayers and for the family is what to pray when you don't know what to pray, right?
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: Um, is it like?
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: One of the questions you asked Tony was how does this work?
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: What if?
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: What if I'm nervous about talking to teenagers?
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Or what if, obviously, teenagers nervous about talking to adults?
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: So what I love about the pray for me book that Tony has written it sounds like he's got several of them now is that he has written out the prayers in there that will take, take care of it, and that's what we do with that.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: To me, that's what for the family does.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: It is this when I don't know what to pray, how do I pray?
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: And so there may be some people out there that have for the family and they've Uh, you know we've talked about people that have it tattered and torn in the original versions when we interviewed Sandra Stanley From that episode last year, and so it's been a resource that has benefited people for years, and so if you don't have that we would definitely encourage you to go to the father's business website and check out for the family and if you have used that and you're wanting to Pray differently for the next generation, that's where I think you can go check out some of Tony's resources.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: But At the end of the day, they all of these are tools To help us know how to pray better and be like you said and Tony, we were talking about how to help foster a deeper relationship with the Lord, and so please go like search, like Elizabeth said, like you said, search through our devotionals, grab those tools.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Um, there's some, like you said, for free, and then there's lots of resources there that you can purchase and pass out, because because that's part of the gift is, I mean, I would have people and, and when I was doing full-time youth ministry, so many people were just like I don't know what to pray.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know what to pray, and so here's a tool, um, and so the those resources are incredibly helpful, so We'll put those we've given those websites here on the podcast, we'll put those out in the show notes and so people can check out those websites.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: But it was really great talking to Tony today and we hope that you Enjoyed this conversation and that it inspired, encouraged you as much as it did us.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: So thanks for being with us and we'll see you next time.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you for listening to the father's business podcast.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: To donate, go to wwwthefathersbusinesscom.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us at the father's biz on instagram and facebook.