Latest / MESSmerized - Funny and faith based encouragement in marriage , family , Christian parenting , and finding purpose / Episode 164: When You’re Not Sure What to Pray With Doug McKelvey

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Episode 164: When You’re Not Sure What to Pray With Doug McKelvey · MESSmerized - Funny and faith based encouragement in marriage , family , Christian parenting , and finding purpose

• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is Cynthia Gannelp, and you are listening to the mesmerized podcast.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alright friends, glad you're here today, and I am super excited like more excited than usual about today's show, and I'm always excited about them, but I just feel like the Lord has a word for someone today, like I hope he has a word for all of you in this, but I just know in my
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: hard of hearts that there's somebody that's listening right now that the Lord is going to use this to speak some truth over you.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I say that because it happened to me, our guest is Doug McKelvey and I was listening to a podcast and I never listen to podcasts which I know weird, right?
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Podcasts or doesn't listen to podcasts.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go figure.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also a former lawyer that doesn't read any of the legal books or the watch the drama's on TV.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's a whole situation.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I flipped on a podcast one that I think I'd probably listen to twice ever in my life.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it just seemed like my chance, I was just going to listen, which now I know it's not my chance at all.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was Doug McKelvie and he's written all the every moment holy books, their liturgies, which is prayers.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm familiar with his work, and I'm just interested in what he would say about.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: writing these liturgies and his philosophy behind it and theology, all the things.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out there was a story beneath the story.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had something to say about spiritual warfare, about how life just kind of stopped working when he was writing his very first of these books.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as he was saying that, I knew it was word for me.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're trying to do the things that God has called you to do, don't have to be writing a book.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you are trying to raise your kids for the Lord, or you're trying to share your faith at work, or maybe like our family, you're trying to just stay on mission.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you have decided, like, Lord, if your eyes are roaming the earth looking for people that will be faithful to you, let it be our family.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That has literally been my prayer, my family's prayer the last several months.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll sudden life kind of stop working.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: things got hard, didn't really understand why why is this going on?
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this happening?
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This seems unfair.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was pieced together for me a lot with Doug today.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I just was sharing that with a friend the other day at a football game, which, you know, naturally you would go into the deepest hardest spiritual things when you're in a football game, right?
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she said,
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's what my life feels like right now too and I was like okay there's a lot of us probably that are walking this so I'm thrilled I have dug here today I would like to ask you to listen power through the whole thing but also I'd just be praying and ask the Lord like what's the story beneath the story for my life
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at the end, I will remind you of this, but I would love for you to reach out, go through my website, shoot me an email, or DM me and tell me what this meant.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if the Lord spoke something to you, because I just, I just have a reason to believe that he will.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm gonna link everything in podcast notes for Doug's different books, but for now, I'm excited to kick it off with Doug and Kelly.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Doug, welcome to the podcast, how are you?
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you're here and such a fan of what you've been doing for so many years and to get to talk to you about it is just a pleasure.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's just kick it off with that and say I'm a big fan and thank you for your hard work.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you for the invitation to be here.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have this conversation.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every moment, holy.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just talk for a minute.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: How long have you been doing this work and being an involved with the liturgies?
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: it has been around a decade now since I started working on the project probably a little longer if we go back to when I wrote the first handful of prayers.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first one I just kind of stumbled into backwards because I
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: it was something I realized, oh, I need a prayer when I sit down to work on this novel that I was being very undisciplined as I tried to work on.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I wrote a liturgy for fiction writers, thinking it was just something for myself.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then,
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when I showed it to a friend, his response was, yeah, I love this, but I wish I had a liturgy for beekeeping and one for gardening and, you know, some other things that were interests of his and so it was in that moment that I realized, oh, there probably is something in this model that really could serve the body of Christ in a broader way.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a novel
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: that there's this prayer that I wrote for my own use.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, so if we go back to that, that might be more like 11 years ago.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my next thing.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one, what is the liturgy?
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, someone is just listening to this.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't really understand what we're talking about.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with that.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I want to follow up with kind of my thoughts growing up on this idea of liturgical prayer.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what do you define it as?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is a liturgy?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's a good question.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Early on in the process of working on the first volume of every moment, holy, the publisher and I had conversations of, okay, I started out tidling these as a liturgy for fiction writing and various other ones.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But do we call them liturgy or do we just call them prayers, a prayer for this, a prayer for that?
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: because we didn't want to court misunderstanding and certainly there is a wide range of definitions of what liturgy might mean.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, broadly it can mean just the order and content of a worship
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: in that regard, every church has a liturgy.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if their liturgy is, we show up and someone spontaneously starts singing a song and then the preacher or someone gets up and shares a message that they feel like God has just given them.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if spontaneity can be the liturgy in that sense.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then you do have
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: certain traditions like the Orthodox churches, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That when they talk about liturgy, it's this very sacred to them, ancient liturgy that was passed down from some of the earliest believers in the early history of the church.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So to them, for people to use the word liturgy more broadly is problematic from their perspective.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I understand that, but there's the sense in which liturgy is the work of the people.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is, I mean, that's one of the meanings of the word liturgy is, is the work of the people, and so it is the way the body of Christ.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: is engaged in following Christ and in the work of building the kingdom of God in the various places to which we have been called in the various relationships of which we find ourselves apart.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's this sense of the word liturgy meaning those shaping rhythms that are
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that can be happening through, I mean, in the case of the every moment, holy books, the idea and why we landed on using the term liturgy was because what we were offering were prayers that we hoped individuals, families, churches, small groups,
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: would find that some of those prayers fit naturally into the rhythm of their lives together such that as they begin to incorporate those prayers into the rhythm of their lives, it would provide moments of reorientation, of turning their heart back to a realization that God is present.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: is active desires to use this moment, this circumstance of my life, even this emotion as I yield it to his purposes.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He will use it to make me more like Christ.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: He will use it to advance his kingdom in and around and through me or through us.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So,
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because the hope was that these prayers would become part of the rhythms of people's lives and would provide those moments of reorientation that over time.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: would channel their heart toward the things of God and toward God Himself and toward the remembrance that all of these moments of my small life, of my small story are sitting in this great river of God's redemptive movement across history and the story he's telling.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, and it all ends the big story and my little story in it, both in at the marriage supper of the lamb, and the new creation, the redemption of all these things that are broken in this world.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I say the story ends there.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I tend to agree with CS Lewis at the end of the Narnia Chronicles of the Last Battle.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And,
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: when he makes reference to, you know, as the, as the children are finally in the true Narnia and running further up and further in and, and he says that's actually where the real story began or the real adventure began and, and would go on forever.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, so when I, when I say that's where it ends, that is an ultimate
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: which then is the beginning of all we've ever longed for, I think.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I ask that about what a liturgy is to you, because I, and I think a lot of people may feel this way.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if maybe you felt this way at first, but I remember struggling with the idea of a prayer liturgy, because I felt like, well, aren't I supposed to be praying my own prayers?
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, why am I praying someone else's prayers?
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's cheating.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord wants to hear from me.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to go through this process.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did not grow up in a liturgical background.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I thought of it, I thought a lot of maybe like the Catholic church where they have a lot of the things they say over and over, you know, this traditional historic way they go through things and I'm an evangelical girl and I just need to pray what's on my heart, have the Holy Spirit and so I went through this whole thing until I got to a point where I went through stuff where I didn't know what to pray.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't actually have the words any longer.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in comes every moment, holy, one of the first ones I remember receiving again, literally as a part of what I do podcasting and opening it and seeing all these prayers for different things and speaking words that in the depth of me, I felt but I couldn't articulate and that's where the rubber met the road for me as being like, oh yeah.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I heard you on this other podcast, I was so excited to have you here because you said something that really like glued it for me, cemented it down, and you talked about how we sing worship songs that were written by someone else for decades, that were written decades and decades ago, get there just our own crying out plant to God.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why can't we do that in prayer?
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, oh, yeah, that's where it is.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so not to give away the answer that I'm of the question I'm gonna ask you, but really, can you just speak to that a little bit for someone who was like me has had to work through his journey or hasn't worked through it yet?
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And wonders is reading a prayer as that cheating doesn't matter, is it still effective?
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it's so obviously a both end.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: cultivate a mindset of recognizing that God is present in all moments of our lives, that every part of life is lived under his gaze, and he is sovereign over it, belongs to him.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: When Paul talks about offering our bodies as living sacrifices, offering our whole selves and then begins to flesh out what that means to mourn with those who mourn, to rejoice with those who rejoice to, you know, and he has the long passage there of some of what that would look like.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: that, of course, a lot of that is spontaneous, just ongoing conversation with God.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the example that you brought up that I had mentioned in a previous podcast,
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was kind of an epiphany moment for me when I realized that because I grew up like you did in traditions that where we looked very suspiciously at the idea of something highly liturgical, of pre-written prayers, of how could the Holy Spirit be involved in that?
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yet we sang these worship songs every Sunday morning that other people had written in advance, giving us the words to say, and never thought twice about, oh, can I join my heart to this and make it us in zero expression?
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just did it.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just poured out your heart to God through these expressions other people had written.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So,
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just you pull the music back from that.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, okay, is it not possible that someone could have prayerfully and thoughtfully wrestled through the writing of the articulation of a prayer that I can now join my heart to those words.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over the last decade, the comment that we have most consistently received from people about every moment holy prayers is just what you said earlier that it gave me the words to pray when I didn't have the words, but I found that the words of these prayers were articulating those things that were in my own heart and mind that I couldn't name in the moment.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't, you know, when you think of it in those terms of how we treat a worship on, let alone that Christ gave us the Lord's prayer, true, good point.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, most of us, even in those traditions, we grew up in that we're suspicious of pre-written prayers, would sometimes pray the Lord's prayer.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: and not think about how O that was previously.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess maybe we gave it a pass because it came from Jesus himself.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But... And Jesus, yeah.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I think there's a word in that.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that, yeah, if you strip away the music, it's a worship song, right?
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The worship songs are prayers and their...
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: written over the over the years and they're meaningful to us in the tradition.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you've written the newest one I believe of every moment of holy is rights and passage is that right.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got a copy of it and I'm just going to tell you guys, I know that so many of my listeners have older kids.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is like the best, just be thinking ahead.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: graduation gift, Christmas gift, all this for your kids because it's literally these rights of passage.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when you, I'm going to read one because I want you guys to hear how beautiful this says.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this one, I was going through at this morning looking at all the different ones.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's literally one for dating.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's one for a first date, a third date.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's one for praying over your generation.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're, you know, whatever age you are, your generation, if you're struggling to communicate with your parents.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's everything that
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: year, young adult needs to and wants to be praying for is in here, but this one got me.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought this was in Shema and read the whole prayer because it's long, but I want to read a little bit, and it's a liturgie for turning 21.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it says, Oh God, who gives me life, I woke this morning and adult in the eyes of the law, but in truth, my sense of self contains almost the same inner mix of independence and dependence I felt yesterday.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm skipping down a little bit
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it says, um, there's neither the distant plane from which I came from nor is it dizzing peak, which I hope to one day reach.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is, that is an elevated place of in between, a new height from which I might look back with satisfaction, at past investments of time and effort that are already bearing fruit and various ways setting the stage for whatever comes next.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this part gets me.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm adding that in everybody.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, there remains so many consequential choices still to make in these next few years choices that might dictate my course for decades to follow.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether and whom I marry, what town or city I will settle in, what career path I will follow, and what settings to put down rates and serve others in what expression and community of faith I will be rooted, what core beliefs I will hold to be true, come to my own and set about to build my life upon.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could have used that right when I was 21 like that's a pair I needed to be praying and I wasn't probably sophisticated enough but and recognizing that the decisions and now as a parent you know this decisions you are making around that age they can change everything.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that there's a prayer written for that, I think, is so amazing, and it's long, and there's a lot more to it.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I just want to give a shout out for this as something we want all of our kids to have on their bookshelf.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I curious, as you were writing it, did you feel a weightiness?
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know you've written down grief.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've done so many things.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But was there a weightiness in this one in particular, this writes a passage idea?
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: it was probably somewhat mixed because, you know, a lot of the prayers in there are celebratory or, you know, thankful prayers of Thanksgiving.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the idea was to offer a book that could be a companion to young people during that
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: stretch of life where they're emerging into adulthood.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of envisioned it as maybe 17 to 27 years old age range where so many significant things are happening.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So many decisions have to be made that will affect the course of the life of a young person in the decades following
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's also so much to enjoy during that season of life.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's a lot of anxiety.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of stress and distress from various things.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of difficult learning of life lessons that takes place during that time.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the idea was to offer
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: a collection of prayers.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it ended up being around 150 prayers in that one.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually the longest of the books though it looks like the shortest.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just change the format to make it, you know, not as thick a book, not as big a book in the trim size, knowing that young people would be more likely to take it with them in a book bag or
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: whatever, if it wasn't as big and heavy as volumes one, two and three of every moment holy were.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that was the hope that it would be that kind of encouragement and comfort and consolation to young people in that
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: very pivotal, very important time of life, and so there certainly were some of the prayers that there was a real gravity to them and a weight as I was sorting through some of those things.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one that comes to mind is a liturgy for one who's tempted to self-harm.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: that I knew needed to be addressed in this context, as well as things like a liturgy for feasting with friends or for hanging out with friends or whatever those kinds of situations might be.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But again, it's all about reorienting the heart and training the eyes of the heart
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: to look toward God in the midst of whatever circumstance, to recognize Him as the giver of good gifts in those moments of happiness and celebration, and to recognize Him as our rock, as our savior, as the one that we run to for shelter in times of storm.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's so many good ones in there.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a pretty a book.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like leather looking color and hard back.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really, it's a great book.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm handing it out to lots of young adults right now.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the other thing when I urge you on the set of podcasts that, and I told you before we started taping, but I said, I don't know if you're on that podcast for anybody else or just for me that day, and it was a podcast I don't typically listen to.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I bet you have listened to one of
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That particular podcast in the last year, and it was the one, like the Lord just put me in the right spot at the right time to hear what you had to say.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you were talking a little bit about spiritual warfare, and I thought the question was really that she asked was really smart because she just said when you're writing these kind of things.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And something is significant is prayer.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's gotta be some pushback in your life and as a girl who's written a couple of books and I always tell when authors come to me and say I want to write a book or I'm about to put one out I'm like well, you're getting ready to really live what you just wrote like that's been my experience You're gonna live it out 10 fold as that book is coming out and you talked about just this process of writing these and How you Didn't even recognize it as a spiritual attack until you did well You just talked to us a little bit about that
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when I was writing the prayers for volume one, which took about a year, that writing process, I've described that year as a fog of confusion in which it felt like the wheels just fell off
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, any, any fault line that existed in a significant relationship, you know, was under pressure, was under extra stress and de-ress, um, financially things were going backwards rapidly.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: which, of course, then creates ripple effect and stresses and chaos in other parts of life.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There were family just, there was, there was some chaos, just sort of that arose,
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: just a lot of additional layers of stress in life.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it just seemed like nothing was working.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I went through a year of that of just, you know, I had a sense that I was supposed to write this book that this was one of those good works that God had prepared in advance for me to do, had over the years, over the course of my life, prepared me for the doing of,
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I kept dragging myself back to my writing space and just trying to focus again, you know, day after day on the next thing in front of me.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it felt like I was just living in this darkness.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what was what was going on.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was only
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I reached the final stages of editing the manuscript, there was an editor that was in a quaintance who lived out of state, but she had been hired by the publisher to do the grammar and punctuation kind of editing.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I was having back and forth conversation with her for a couple of days as we worked through all of that.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a couple days before the final manuscript was turned in, she asked me how I was doing.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in an unguarded moment, I just poured out, basically all of that that I've just described to you that just feels like life isn't working.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm in a fog, the wheels just feel like they've come off.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And her response was,
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, do you think it's spiritual?
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does it feel like it's resistance?
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my response to that was just to start balling.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I had gone through that year with no, it had never crossed my radar.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: that this might be resistance, that as I'm engaged in a good work that I believe God has prepared an advance for me to do, that the enemy might step up a strategic resistance in an attempt to try to thwart that.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that just her, suggesting that suddenly,
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: gave this twist of the focus ring on the camera lens of my understanding.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I suddenly had this greater depth of field and realized, you know, I had had this very narrow depth of field like a macro focus on something.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But just that understanding that, oh, yeah, we do have an
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: who goes about like a roaring lion seeking who we may devour.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, you know, we read through the New Testament, you can't come away from a reading of the New Testament without realizing, okay, these authors of the New Testament books were certainly aware of
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that the advance of the kingdom of God was being resisted in their lives, in the lives of the people in the church around them, that this was a reality.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, should we expect for any reason that that would be different today.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, a friend of mine, Heidi Johnston, who's a Bible scholar and author in Northern Ireland, we had a conversation about this years ago, and she said that when you storm out of the trenches, you should expect to start taking sniper shots.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: and but she went on to say what we have found she and her husband and the the various ministry works that they do.
• 29:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um she said what we found is that inevitably it's worth it.
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know to be part of what God is doing and is is calling us into as his followers.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So um
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that experience of writing the first book really changed my perspective.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that I have seen that the enemy of our souls,
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, will change his strategies that over the over the course of working on these four books and and various other things that I've been doing over the last 10 years.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I, in hindsight, I can see how some of those strategies have shifted.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: that initially with that first book, when I turned in the manuscript, it's like that year-long fog lifted.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: All those stresses just went away.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, okay, the, seemed that the enemy was trying to thwart the creation of that book that would be a gift to the people of God to serve them.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But once the thing was done,
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: then strategically.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I do think our enemy has limited resources.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: They may be vast.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: They probably are vast, but they're not infinite.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there is strategy to where he allocates his resources at a given time.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, once the attempt to thwart the creation of that first book
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, a relevant strategy because the thing was written, um, that just lifted, but by the time I got to the third book, as I got toward the end of it, it felt like the resistance got so stepped up beyond anything it had been before and it was things that were suddenly
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: potentially for the rest of your life, feeling it every day, now what are you going to do?
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you going to respond to that?
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so we've seen those kind of shiftings of strategy, I think.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I try not to dig too deep into it, because I don't want to go beyond
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: what God reveals to us in Scripture about what's going on in the spiritual realm and the warfare, but I think certainly we are told to be aware that this is happening, this is real, that there is going to be resistance.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the works that God has prepared in advance for us to do that are going to bring Him glory are going to be for our good are going to be for the good of the people of God are going to expand and extend the reach of the kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world that are going to shine the light and the darkness that are going to proclaim freedom for the captives
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that's just such a powerful word and and word I needed to hear when I heard you talk out this on that other podcast and I just don't want you to anyone listen or to miss this because you may not be writing every moment holy probably aren't hopefully aren't it's already taken everyone so don't do that but
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're listening to this, I'm guessing you're trying to raise your kids in the Lord that you're trying to have families that are set apart, that you're trying to live as a witness and your workplace, like whatever those things are, I needed the reminder and I think we all need the reminder that the enemy is real.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, you have works that were prepared and advanced for you to do, and as you're doing them, there will be resistance.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love that word, and I'm not one that looks at everything as like, oh, that had to be the devil or, you know, and maybe some people do and maybe rightfully so.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do know that.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: at a period of time in our lives and my family right now where we've kind of just this summer as a family came together and just kind of opened our hands and said, Lord, whatever you want to do in our lives, whatever you want to do with us, whatever ministry that is, whatever you want to shift, add in, take away like, we want that.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want more of you.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I just feel like from that moment on, everything, as you said, stop working.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like everything is just kind of quit working and that sense of like,
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: not being able, I didn't put those things together until you said that.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh yeah, like when the Lord is going to start using you and you are just giving him the opportunity to use you in whatever way, then you will find resistance and I've felt it in a lot of ways that you have.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've felt it financially.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've felt it in friendships.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've felt it in some accusations that I do not feel like we're fair to us to our family, just different things have come up.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I say that not from place of woe is us, but listen,
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you were feeling that in this moment, know that there is an enemy in his real and forge forward, be encouraged.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, for heaven's sake, Doug, he's writing these incredible books, has been through this.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not feeling it, then sometimes that can also be a little bit of like a wake-up call of like, man, I've never felt like there's resistance, sorry.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And well, then maybe we need to just be praying through, like, as the Lord using you and all the ways are you allowing him to use you in all the ways you're called to do.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: to do his things.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just wanted someone, I just know this mental out to me and I wanted someone else to hear this.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: If it's for one person or maybe it was for me to hear again, I wanted you to hear Doug talk about that and just be aware that there will be resistance and so it will be hard.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: and yet it's still worth it.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the key.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet we still do it.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not our home, right?
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not our home.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we're not storing up for here.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're storing up for later.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so be encouraged in that.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we wrap up, this is the one thing I want to ask you.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could you read to us or at least just describe or tell us about one of the liturgies of any of them that you've written that most closely,
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: was on your heart that you had lived or that you just know the Lord gave you that one.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there one that you could share with us?
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to read part of a petition for my generation, which as I was, this one came about toward the end of the 27-month process of writing the Rights of Passage Book.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and this somehow to me felt like a breakthrough moment because some of those prayers took more than a year to write and, you know, it does an iterations and this one just poured out, um, you know, in the space of a couple of hours, I think, right toward the, toward the very end, but I, yeah, I felt like it would be significant for young people, but also
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, all of all of the other generations of us as well.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just going to read like the first paragraph.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll skip to I think it's the fourth paragraph.
• 36:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then just to the the second half of the prayer.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not going to read the whole thing.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: A petition for my generation.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: O Jesus, reclaimer of all that is lost.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are a generation unmord and drifting in search of something greater than ourselves.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have mercy upon us, deliver us from emptiness.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have come of age and tumultuous times in a fractured age that cannot point the way to anything greater than its own half collapsed idolatries.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh Christ, we need the reviving power of your Holy Spirit at work in our lives.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need it quickening each of our hearts.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need it quickening our entire generation for we are not merely suffering from some passing malady.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are dead in our trespasses.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We do not simply require a little help and then
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now and then to get us back on track, we need to be revived, resuscitated, raised from death to life.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need the power of the resurrected Christ running through our veins, a move of your spirit, O God, to deliver and reclaim, to proclaim freedom to the captives, to break the chains of bondage by which so many are constrained.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: to call us out of darkness, and into your purifying light.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: To tender our hearts of stone, to renew our minds, to make us your own a people for yourself, a people set apart for the glories of your name.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So send your spirit and your workers' old Lord to labor in these fields, to plant, to water, and to gather in a great eternal harvest yield.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Place your royal seal upon my generation, O Christ, pressing into it your own bloodstained fingerprint.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Speak over us and say, they will be mine, my own inheritance forever.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was one of the songs that John Lauri and I who I've partnered with for the every moment
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: prayer songs project where we've been releasing these, these songs as aids to personal meditative prayer as well as a lot of them that work in congregational settings.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But on the second quarter release of those every moment holy prayer songs, John had created a beautiful melody for some of the key lines from
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: from that prayer and we've also incorporated that into our every moment holy live touring event that we've been doing this fall and there've been a number of universities that we've gone to that have hosted us for that event and yeah it's a beautiful thing to hear 1500 college students
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: singing, you know, some of those words, you know, pleading with Jesus to speak over us and say, they will be mine.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: How powerful.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that every moment, holy prayer songs, tell me if there's a better way to do this, but I just went and found them on Spotify, and I just added to my library, and that's where I listen to them, is that our best way to do that?
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There, yes, they're available on all the streaming services.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, and then yeah, and then every moment holy rise of passages out you can get it wherever you get books I'm gonna link all that podcast notes anything I'm missing any is there any other place you want to point us to for every moment holy
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think if you, I mean, someone can go to everymomentholy.com and from there, you know, there are links to the, to the books and other printed resources to the live events and to the prayer songs.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's a good central place.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: central spot.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, Doug, thank you for being here.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for all the hard work, work that you've put into this.
• 41:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am using, I think you said 27 months for rights of passage.
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's that's dedication and listening to the Lord.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so thank you for your hard work and reminder to be praying over Doug, but praying over our leaders, um, your pastors, anyone that's doing, um, all that should be doing.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm doing the things that the Lord
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Santiago.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, a huge thank you to Doug for being here, and did you catch it?
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you get the story of an eighth story?
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Lord speak to you.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Would you DM me if so?
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: If there's something that you walked away with, it's like, wow, I needed to hear that.
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Will you DM me?
• 41:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That just reminds me of God's faithfulness, not only in my life, but through my life, allowing other people to hear what he has to say.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I would just love to hear from you.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: DM me, Instagram, or Facebook, or just go to my website, Shibyan email.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, would you share this with a friend that would be encouraged?
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: through this one.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would really appreciate it.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right you guys, I've linked everything in podcast notes.
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So great for for you.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being a part of the family.
• 42:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're the very best.