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If God is in Control, Why Pray? · Red Couch Theology

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Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
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Theology podcast. Hey, this week we are talking a
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little bit about prayer and we're talking about sort of the
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sovereignty of God. Does God cause bad things to
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happen directly? And is he trying to get messages
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to us about our behavior or get through to offs to change
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course? And then how do we know when
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he's speaking to us anyway? What does God's voice sound
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like? Is it is it him or is it
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something else? What's up with all of this
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interaction with God And it's how in control is he along the
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way? These are the questions we
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address in this episode. Let's dive right in.
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Well, hello everyone, welcome to the right Couch Theology
0:46
podcast. My fearless partner is running
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into the room right now as we speak.
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So sorry we're getting late. Started a little bit later here.
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Alex book Too Many. Things yeah, he's all trying to
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like be a pastor or something crazy, but he came in just in
1:03
the nick of time for me to not cancel the show so.
1:06
Just in the nick of time. Perfect.
1:08
Too many interesting conversations.
1:10
Yeah, good stuff. Yeah.
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Yeah, you're fully, your gear is fully changed and you're ready
1:15
to go for a podcast. Just need to take a moment to
1:18
decompress, yeah? Just take some breathing
1:21
exercises, deep breaths, yeah. So what have I missed?
1:26
Nothing, I literally just went live the second I heard your
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feet. Brilliant.
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So I was like, here he comes, we're going live.
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Welcome to the Red Couch Theology podcast.
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Yes. Are we still?
1:37
Meet. Yes.
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Yeah, we got some questions. Now I'm not prepared because I
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was, I wasn't sure if I was canceling the show or going
1:48
live. So we did get some questions
1:51
from the sermon and I have not opened them yet, so.
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So you don't know what they are. I don't know what they are.
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We have multiple. Wow.
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We're going to talk about why in the world should we do Lent, if
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at all we. Should do Lent.
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I feel like I addressed that in the sermon, to be fair.
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Well. But I can readdress it.
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I think we can readdress it. And then we have a question
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about John versus the book of Mark.
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And yeah, and then we talked about prayer in Alpha.
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And so I wanted to spend a little bit of time in the show,
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I think, talking about the what God's voice sounds like and how
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do we know it's his voice and how do we know whether he's
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answering prayer, whether it's a coincidence and all of that
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stuff. Should we?
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Should we? Do some low hanging fruit 1st
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and just go with the serving questions.
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But that's where I'd like to end up as far as the alpha
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conversation because I think there's a lot of like, I don't
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think I've ever heard God's voice before.
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And then maybe they have that kind of stuff.
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All right, so we'll start with some of the questions around
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Lent first. So well, first you, you have you
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fully breathed. Are you ready?
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You ready for? This ready to go?
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That's all it took, huh? Wow, does it matter if we
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participate in Lent? So, so I, I think, you know, one
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of the interesting things with that is that I tend to think
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that this church calendar that we have is old and was probably,
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you know, my default, default is like, probably written by people
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that were wiser than me. So, so like the sense of Lent.
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There's this great quote by a guy I'm trying to think of.
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I've got it. And here maybe I'd just put it
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in my sermon notes instead of in these notes.
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There's this great quote by a guy called Easton McAuley.
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He talks about how like somewhere Lent was put in as a
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journey, not out of belief that some of us lose our sense of the
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journey, but our sense that all of us lose our sense of the
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journey that we're on at times. And so Lent, this beautiful
4:22
invitation to come back to those rhythms as we move towards
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Easter. So it's a preparation time.
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So my feeling is just like with Advent, you know, you think
4:35
about Christmas, Christmas just flies up on you and you've got
4:39
everything in the stores and you've got all of the music
4:41
going and most of it's kind of like, you know, it's Santa Claus
4:45
there. So it's and and Advent is this
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season of preparation for Christmas, of actually
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refocusing on the idea that the central element is the the
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advent of Jesus, both the 1st and the second.
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Yeah, Yeah. And Lent is something similar.
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So actually one of the ways that Lent can be directly translated
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is spring. Oh, yeah, yeah.
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It's from the German word Lenten, which actually means
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spring, and is this idea of the emergence of winter.
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And. And that's one of the ways you
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can see resurrection, right? It's the emergence of the cold
5:25
of winter into the life of spring.
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It's the surprising. Yeah.
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Yeah. Rising from death of the bulbs
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that you planted back before winter began and that suddenly
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you watch these green shoots emerge and they catch you off
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guard. Like, there's almost like every
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year of wow, that thing's alive. Yeah, there hasn't been enough
5:48
moisture. It might not be this year.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. No flowers?
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No, that's. That's very.
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But my bulbs are already starting to come up.
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My wisteria has tiny green shoots on it.
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Like slowly. It's all starting to come to
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life. Yeah.
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And that's resurrection. And it's actually the image
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Jesus uses, right? That's a seed falls into the
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ground. So are you?
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Are you a better Christian if you practice Lent than if you
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don't? You know, you know, I, I think
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there's this beautiful tension with how you describe a better
6:23
Christian, isn't there? Because on one hand, like we're,
6:27
we are who we are because Jesus said like, you've been moved
6:31
into a different category from the Kingdom of darkness to the
6:34
Kingdom of light. But is your journey richer and
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will you be able to experience it in a different way because of
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Lent? Yeah, almost certainly.
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Yeah. You know, almost certainly it's
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going to enrich the experience. Yeah.
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And so I, I think my answer partially to this question is
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what do you mean by practice Lent?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like giving up a thing that's
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hard to give up. Yeah.
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Do you mean be more intentional? Like what?
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What aspect of Lent so? I think it's both giving up and
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taking up. So it's yes, there might be some
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and most spiritual disciplines work like that, don't they?
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So if you're entering into any spiritual discipline, the some
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that are about denial and some that are about taking up and
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entering into and they tend to work differently depending on
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what you need that season of. So fasting is a saying no to
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something so that you can say no to other things potentially.
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Yeah, yeah. It's a discipline that helps you
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stop things, whereas certain like intentional ways of praying
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are things that you do to help you do things.
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And so I think it's both, but I think it was so in its old
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traditions, like in my childhood, it would be like give
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up chocolate. Well, that was a standard 1.
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And it tended to come with a sense of not give it up to take
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something else up, not give it up to practice something in a
8:13
different way, just give it up for its own sake.
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So actually going without food is of no value spiritually
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unless you take the time during giving up food to feel your
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hunger and to say God, in the same way I'm feeling this
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physical hunger, can you give me a spiritual hunger for you like
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so? So fasting has a benefit
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physically regardless of how you enter into it.
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But the spiritual piece doesn't just come because you stop
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eating. It comes because that that that
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is a physical cue for you to long for God to be present.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, I agree with
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all of that. I I think it if you think about
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Lent as a tool that can help you on your spiritual journey, will
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you get any special brownie points with God by practicing
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Lent or not? There are no more brownie points
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for you to have. You have all of the brownie
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points already. What?
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And you could never practice Lent ever, and there's
9:23
sufficient brownie points for you.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not how it works.
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But just like with the majority of the commands of Scripture,
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maybe all of the commands except for believe in Jesus,
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potentially they're they're there because God wants
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something for you, not because God needs something from you.
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So, yeah, I think, yeah, you're not a better Christian for
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practicing Lent or a worse Christian for not practicing
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Lent in this sense of your relationship standing with God,
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other than it's a tool that might help you sense his
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presence more or remind you of him or whatever those sorts of
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things. It's just a it's just a tool in
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that sense. So interesting.
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All right, next question. How do you and your family
10:13
members practice the presence of Jesus in the midst of anxiety?
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Poorly. Poorly.
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Yeah, I would say at times not, not particularly well, like I, I
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would say I feel like my job is to be a non anxious presence.
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So I don't, I don't know that we we are, I don't know that we are
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particularly good at corporate practices as a family.
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And I know some people are brilliant at this, like we pray
10:46
together before meals and every night together.
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Like, you know, so I love to pray with the girls and the boys
10:52
separately. And, and one of the things there
10:57
is that I'm always in the prayer asking that God would remind
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them that they are loved in every situation.
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Like, so I want to speak those words over them that tells them
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there is no circumstance where they should feel like that, that
11:12
love might be in question. There's nothing they can do that
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will stop me loving them. And there's no situation that
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they should ever feel like, you know, you hear all these really
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sad stories of, of kids that feel like they hit this crisis
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point because they suspect that something has happened that
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would cause them to be rejected or unloved.
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And I really want my kids to know there is no circumstance
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that could get us there. You know, they could be in
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prison for life. And I would visit them every
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single week. It wouldn't matter what they'd
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done because the love isn't based on their performance.
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Yeah. And so.
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How do they How do you practice the presence of Jesus or help
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your family practice the presence of Jesus?
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Yeah. I mean, so it's specifically in
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those moments we're just causing to allow, yeah, allow that to
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sink in, to allow them to like in those times specifically to
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remind them that they loved like, I love them a great deal,
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but God loves them more than I will ever love them.
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And so trying to help them, like I felt like that was a hard
12:19
thing for me to grasp. So I'm really like, there's a
12:22
lot of parents I'm, I'm working counter intuitively to like, or
12:28
I'm going in a different direction than I felt my journey
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went where if I'm honest, I often didn't feel like God loved
12:34
me because I felt like love was tied to performance and I felt
12:38
like my performance track record was pretty awful.
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So so that that for us is probably where we go as well as
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me feeling it. My job is that non anxious
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presence. What about you guys?
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Yeah. I mean, I think we have a few
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practices that we do as a family that help, but they're not as
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rhythmic and as frequent as I would like.
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But we do have a practice where usually in the August we go for
13:10
a hike as a family, specifically about reflection and
13:15
hopefulness. So I take notes on my phone as
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we hike for each family member and we talk about what we remind
13:26
ourselves of what happened that previous year and we look back.
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That's fun. I so I read their previous
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year's notes. I was anxious about this.
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I was worried about this. I was thinking about this and
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like, so and so just started this relationship or they just
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started a job or whatever. And then it jogs our memory of
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like what was going on. And and then we say, well, how'd
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that go? And then we, we are, we practice
13:52
gratitude around the things that were beautiful.
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And then we try to notice God. So that's the presence of Jesus
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part. We try to notice the work of
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Jesus in each family member's life.
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By the way, this is not my idea. This is my wife, but it's become
14:10
a, a, something that I try and prioritize 'cause there was a
14:12
few times that we did that early on when I was honestly not as on
14:16
board with it. But it became so beautiful that
14:18
now I'm like, we're doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:22
And so that's one way now that's once a year, but it's become
14:27
this like iconic thing that we do as a family that like helps
14:32
us sort of anchor our year each year.
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So there's one something we did for a short period of time and I
14:40
wish we did it more now, but our schedules are so crazy.
14:43
When you get teenagers is like we try to practice Sabbath on
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Friday nights and light a candle and pray the Sabbath.
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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've done that as well at
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different seasons, like candles at dinner time, especially on
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that Thursday night for us, Sabbath Friday.
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Yeah. And I, we just haven't done that
15:04
in a number of months now and because schedules have shifted.
15:08
But the really practical one, I guess, when, when anxieties get
15:14
high, stopping to pray about the issue rather than trying to work
15:18
on the issue is a reminder, I think.
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And I'm sometimes I'm good at that.
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Sometimes I'm horrible at that. Sometimes I'm the most anxious
15:26
person in the room because I'm trying to fix it or whatever.
15:29
But I find if I do have the the mental, emotional and spiritual
15:34
fortitude to be like, you know what would help this entire
15:38
situation as if we all pause or whatever, whoever I'm talking to
15:42
at the time and we just acknowledge the presence of the
15:45
Lord in this moment. It takes the thing down.
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Now my last answer would be 1 of was would be to affirm something
15:53
you said. I think completely apart from
15:56
something you do family wide, your own personal self
16:01
regulation around anxiety and practicing the presence of God.
16:07
Because family systems are so driven by like the dynamic
16:12
relationships between each other's anxieties or lack
16:16
thereof, like the calm presence versus the anxious presence.
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Any work you do to regulate your own anxiety in the presence of
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God will by proxy serve the entire family system.
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And so something I have gotten back to recently because I
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noticed that I was probably propagating more anxiety than I
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thought I was. I think I'm a really good non
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anxious presence. I think that I am and I am not
16:45
like I, I, I can get, I can convince myself to not raise my
16:50
voice and to talk with a cool, calm, collected.
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And I think I'm projecting this thing and I'm learning that I am
16:58
wrong. Even though I'm not raising my
17:00
voice, I'm not panicking, I'm not sweating.
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I don't have a lot of the physiological reactions to
17:05
anxiety that some people have. I'm just as anxious as some of
17:10
the other members of my family who are much more overtly
17:13
anxious. I'm just trying to stuff it
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deeper than they are. And so I now I just do like a
17:21
breathing practice when I sense that anxiety rising, which I
17:26
never even noticed prior to the recent few years.
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And I try to just do it every day where I do 5 minutes of like
17:35
like a breathing practice and my stress level goes down and all
17:42
of these different things. And I tend to show up better.
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Or if I'm going to have a hard conversation or I'm going to go
17:47
spend someone on one time with any of my family members, I.
17:49
Try and do this. Because I just tend to be a
17:52
better human, a better dad, a better husband when he do it.
17:56
So there you go. Yeah, I love that.
17:57
I mean, I, I think we, we're, we're not a super anxious
18:01
family. I don't think maybe I'm wrong
18:05
about that. Anxiety definitely comes up.
18:10
It's more around school than anything else.
18:13
So I just try and really enter into those situations with my
18:16
kids. And again, for me, like I don't
18:19
tend to feel like I am anxious in those situations and want
18:24
them to have some sense of perspective on them.
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So I'm trying to sit with them in those places and say, you
18:33
know, this right now feels like the biggest thing that you're
18:36
going to face. And in actual fact, like, I get
18:39
to be in it with you, like holding some of the weight with
18:43
you, reminding you that, you know, actually this is not going
18:48
to be a significant part of your life.
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And so it's not the, the, the that takes the feelings away.
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It just means they're not alone in the feelings.
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Yeah, You know, so I, I'm usually the one in our family
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that will come alongside of that point and say, OK, like, where
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do you need help? How can I be a part of lifting
19:12
that with you? So I'm, I'm almost like in that
19:15
point, like the guy in the gym that when you're trying to lift
19:18
heavy reps is just giving you that little bit of a like, OK,
19:22
like how can I help you here and make sure that you got someone
19:26
reminding you, pushing you, but reminding you that you're not in
19:30
it by yourself. Yeah.
19:32
Because I think as a teenager, your perception or, or a
19:36
tweenager or whatever age, your perception of the weight and how
19:42
it will land on you is is significant.
19:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
19:52
Yeah, Yeah. We're not the best at it a lot
19:55
of the time, but yeah. All right, next question.
19:59
So on February 22nd, John 1414, I just had an an accident and
20:05
have a long recovery ahead. John 1414 and Mark 1124 have
20:11
similar language. However, first John 514 talks
20:15
about his will and that he hears us.
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I do want to to be healed and restored and I'm praying for
20:22
that. What is God?
20:24
What is God's will that? Or was it God's will that I had
20:28
the accident? Is He steering me in a different
20:34
direction? I know I will learn from this
20:37
experience, so is it part of His overall plan for me?
20:44
So. So I am not one that tends to
20:48
hold particularly close the idea that everything that happens to
20:56
us individually is it must be God's will.
20:58
Like for me, God's sovereignty doesn't seem to extend to that.
21:03
And when you assume that it does, you tend to take out some
21:07
big systemic things that just a part of the way that the world
21:12
seems to operate. So is it is it God's will?
21:15
The the country of Haiti that I've visited more times than I
21:19
can count easily is constantly impoverished.
21:24
Or is it primarily human action? Is that, is that, is that the
21:28
case? I'm pretty convinced that God
21:32
uses almost everything that can happen to us if we'll allow him
21:37
to, but I'm not necessarily sure.
21:40
And I've had these back and forth conversations with some of
21:42
my family members around this. You know, one of my nieces
21:46
pulled a boiling pot off the stove and it just so happened
21:51
that the way the boiling pot fell, it all tipped off to the
21:56
side and missed her by about 6 inches.
22:00
Now the immediate reaction was someone said, oh, well, God
22:03
protected her. And I kind of just paused and
22:07
said, wait, are you saying that the little girl that pulled the
22:10
boiling pot over and it landed on her, God didn't protect her?
22:15
Like, what have we done to receive that arbitrary goodness
22:20
that that little girl in that other family didn't do?
22:24
Was she condemned or have to experience that because a family
22:28
didn't pray as much as our family?
22:30
Like, what's the metric for that?
22:32
And then what about all of the really faithful followers of
22:35
Jesus that haven't received, you know, either awful punishments
22:39
for being Christians or awful impoverishment because of the
22:43
place they happen to live, awful accidents because of
22:47
circumstances that are outside of their control?
22:51
Like, are we are we saying that God is actively moving every
22:55
piece to that degree? And, and that's not necessarily
23:00
how I see the world. How about you?
23:03
No, I, I tend to agree with you now.
23:06
I, I remember a day like in my theological development, where
23:12
this very issue was one of the hardest things to let go of the
23:18
idea that God ordered every droplet of rain.
23:23
That was deeply comforting to me, 'cause I could just
23:29
basically say like, he, OK, he's got it.
23:31
He's got everything figured out. And so every single droplet of
23:35
rain, he like literally is placing each droplet every
23:41
single like that level of of kind of deterministic
23:48
sovereignty. And the idea of letting go of
23:52
that felt like like the world is uncontrollably chaotic to me.
23:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think now I've come
24:04
to see God's sovereignty as even bigger than carrying every
24:08
holding every drop of. Rain.
24:11
I think of God as more like a master chess player that sees
24:17
every possible move and then shifts his pieces in such a way
24:22
that he is guaranteed to win. And and so, so Kingdom.
24:26
And if you don't see the world that way, well, what does it
24:29
mean to live in a broken world? So is the world broken because
24:33
of human behavior? And God is actively working to
24:37
restore it to order. So it's in a place of disorder
24:42
or an order, to use the John Bolton language.
24:48
If you go to believe that the world became disordered and God
24:52
is the primary agent of what disorder looks like, well then
24:57
it's it's hard to place God as actively shaping order through
25:03
his church when you actually see him as the agent of disorder and
25:07
an order in the rest of the world.
25:13
And so I tend to think that we live in a world where accidents
25:17
are possible and the whatever happens, God is willing to to
25:23
use those accidents. I do think there is language
25:27
that I think I've found really helpful.
25:29
This is Wayne Mueller Language around rush and lack of rest
25:37
that sometimes our body revolts. And so when we don't take rest
25:41
seriously, then sicknesses become rest.
25:44
Yeah. Accidents become rest because
25:47
we're less aware of what we're doing.
25:51
And so I yeah, I tend to think that to be true as well.
25:57
Yeah, Yeah. These are complicated questions
26:00
because I do think there's, I think the God is so sovereign
26:08
and so wise and so capable that he's a, he is able to react and
26:17
bring goodness and beauty to the broken outcomes that we create.
26:25
Yes, yeah, yeah. And.
26:26
So I think that's actually a bigger perspective of
26:29
sovereignty. That's so there there's a parent
26:32
for as an illustration, there's a parent who literally would
26:35
like I will always hold that my child's hand in every situation,
26:41
never let them engage anything in life without my assistance,
26:47
kind of sovereignty, like I will control every outcome.
26:51
And if you imagine them an infinitely powerful God doing
26:56
that, that's his capacity to do that would be very, very high
27:00
for every one of his children. And then there's the parent
27:04
who's got all that same power and lets us as children run
27:11
around and skin our knees and bump our our butt, knows when to
27:16
step in and when not to step in. And the latter parent seems the
27:22
more wise, more capable parent than the one that like says, I'm
27:28
gonna like cocoon this child so much that they couldn't possibly
27:33
harm themselves somehow. The, the one that is a little
27:37
bit more hands off seems more strong and powerful as a
27:42
parenting figure than the than the first.
27:45
The other one seems like an anxious control sort of
27:49
situation. And so I, I tend to think of God
27:51
in the ladder. We could get into a bunch of the
27:54
theology around some of these things, but I don't think that's
27:56
the heartbeat behind the question.
27:58
So did did they get into an accident and was God trying to
28:03
communicate something to this person?
28:08
So I would tend to detach the two.
28:10
I would say yes, they got into an accident and also in the may
28:15
well be trying to communicate something.
28:19
And, and again, that could be the speed, the slowness, that
28:24
could be reliance, that could be fears, that could be anxiety,
28:29
that could be any of those things that he's trying to help
28:31
navigate. But I, I had a friend a few
28:33
years ago who said to me, yes, I, I tend to believe that God's
28:39
goodness and grace is so great that even when we do something
28:43
that's the wrong choice, God has an incredible way of bringing it
28:46
about. So it was the right choice.
28:49
And, and you only need to look as far as preachers that are now
28:54
helping people, pastors now navigating people through drug
28:57
addiction that were drug addicts themselves.
28:59
Yeah. You know, who were able to sit
29:01
in the situation and understand it?
29:03
Was it God's will? I I would not say that.
29:05
But is he using that? Sure.
29:08
Absolutely. Yeah.
29:09
And that that's really hard for us to go back to the parenting
29:12
question because we tend to realize we are who we are
29:16
because of our experiences. But our desire for our kids is
29:19
that they have no experiences whatsoever.
29:21
Yeah. Yeah.
29:22
And so I'm the product of learning some school of Hard
29:27
Knocks and that's been an important part of my
29:32
development. But but my desire is for my kids
29:37
to have a wonderful Jesus filled faith with no failures,
29:41
experiences or accidents whatsoever.
29:45
And and the reality is that I have to trust God with that.
29:49
So, so my, my little boy Jude was, he got some general
29:56
anaesthetic the other day to fix some problems with his teeth
30:00
that they just couldn't get to without, with him being
30:03
conscious. And so, you know, you've got
30:05
this little boy just like wiped out, like going through
30:09
something for the third time when most people don't do that
30:12
three times, you know, in the 1st 30 or 40 years of their
30:15
life. Yeah.
30:17
And and you know that like there's some minor risks to
30:20
that, fortunately in our day and age, minor in comparison to what
30:24
was before. And so my prayer during that
30:27
time was a prayer of trust. That's that actually was really
30:34
helped by the prayer initiative that we're sending out.
30:37
So if you're not doing that little prompt that's really
30:39
valuable, was a reminder that, well, God loves him far more
30:47
than I will ever love him. Yeah.
30:51
And so while I attach that to an outcome, I'm also trusting that
30:57
God knows what he's doing. Yeah, Yep.
31:03
You know, back to the parenting illustration, I think a good
31:09
parent, oftentimes one of the there's a wisdom that has to be
31:13
had. You know, you don't want your
31:14
kid running in the street, right?
31:16
But there's a time where like one of the best things you can
31:19
do to a parent as a parent is to let your child make a decision
31:23
that has a natural consequence that's painful.
31:27
And then instead of saying, I told you so, fly into comfort,
31:35
'cause they know that you told them so.
31:38
And the pain they're experiencing for like, don't
31:40
climb the banister and they fall off and they hit their head.
31:45
Rather than like I've been telling you to stop climbing the
31:47
banister, to have the wherewithal as a parent, to say
31:51
now's the time to come in and hold the child, to comfort them,
31:55
to be that, that nurturing presence.
31:59
The pain is the scolding. Yeah, but isn't it feel so good
32:03
to be able to go see see. Totally.
32:06
It takes a lot of restraint as a doing.
32:08
It takes a lot of restraint as a parent to do that.
32:11
But it then the pain becomes a bonding exercise between the
32:15
child and the parent where they remembered that they were told
32:19
not to. They're experiencing pain, which
32:21
is sort of by proxy the the natural scolding of the parent.
32:26
And yet the parent shows up with love and comfort.
32:29
You leave the situation where the kids like subconsciously or
32:33
consciously, they did tell me they were kind of right.
32:38
And yet they showed up with mercy, grace and love.
32:42
I'm closer to them than before, and I learned the lesson all at
32:46
once like these. So did you get into an accident
32:50
because God forced you to? I would tend to think, no,
32:56
there's a chance that God's more active in that.
33:00
I think sometimes he's very active in these kinds of ways
33:03
and sometimes he's. Very much letting them now.
33:04
We're trying to unpack mysteries here, so it's not.
33:06
Totally, we know. But what I suspect is always
33:10
he's the he's the kind of parent that rushes to your aid and
33:15
says, I see your pain and I would like to leverage this
33:20
moment to grow near to you and demonstrate my love.
33:25
So for lack of a, we don't know what he's up to for you, but I
33:29
think that there's good biblical evidence that that's what he's
33:32
always up to in the midst of our pain, which I think is a great
33:37
segue actually to the the subject of prayer.
33:41
We just talked about prayer in this question.
33:44
We just talked about prayer that you prayers that you prayed for
33:49
your son as he's going into anesthesia.
33:51
Like how do we are we changing things when we pray?
33:57
How do we know when he's answered, when it's a
33:59
coincidence, when it's not a coincidence?
34:01
Does he step into human history and literally change something
34:06
that would he wouldn't have changed if we hadn't prayed All
34:09
of these questions that spin around?
34:12
Prayer. On one hand, there's a really
34:15
great quote that I love that I think just gives you like
34:21
something to come back to. And it was a quote that someone
34:23
gave me years ago, and they simply said, you know, I've
34:26
noticed that when I pray coincidences happen, and when I
34:30
don't, they don't. That was in the alpha class
34:32
last. Year, was it OK, Yeah, yeah,
34:33
yeah. So you mentioned.
34:35
It multiple times. The guy's name was Jay John and
34:37
he's a part of the Church of England, so really connected to
34:40
some of the Alpha guys. And stuff. close friends.
34:42
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, when I pray
34:46
coincidences happen and when I don't, they don't.
34:51
And, and so maybe that's just because we're more aware of what
34:56
we're looking for when we pray, but it does seem like a cross
34:59
history that's been like stories that have shown up.
35:03
And, and sometimes you go to small stories that we've
35:06
experienced. Sometimes there's the big
35:08
stories like I've, I've always loved the story of George
35:10
Mueller, you know, the guy who ran the orphanage system in
35:14
Bristol when the government really didn't do stuff like
35:17
that. And he never asked for a penny
35:19
off anyone, but stuff just turned up when he needed it.
35:23
You know, he sat children down with nothing to eat, nothing to
35:27
drink. And the, you know, the the
35:30
butcher walks in and says, hey, like, we had this problem with
35:34
this delivery. It came at the wrong time.
35:36
Do the children need any meat? And so he just hands them over
35:40
boxes of meat and and then the next minute the milkman walks in
35:44
and says, hey, my milk float broke down outside.
35:46
Do you need any milk? And he's like, yeah, thank you.
35:50
So those stories, like a well documented across history as
35:54
mysteries that we don't really understand.
35:59
And and I have, you know, similar stories in my life,
36:02
similar stories in the life of friends that I think just seem
36:07
to point to the fact that we don't know why prayer works.
36:13
We just know it works. Yeah, yeah, we told a bunch of
36:20
stories around our table groups around those kinds of
36:22
coincidences and it and a lot of the stories were like small
36:28
enough things that they could be coincidences.
36:31
And yet Erie in in one sense. And like, one of the things I've
36:37
been kind of ashamed about is I've been leading Alpha is I, I
36:40
taught I'm pretty open about my various doubts I've had over the
36:43
years around Christianity. And, and then some of the
36:47
stories that I tell. I should have no doubt.
36:51
Like we've had literally hundreds of dollars show up in
36:55
cash on our doorstep that match the amount of money we needed
36:59
for a specific issue. We've, my parents have
37:02
experienced supernatural miracles in Rwanda of protection
37:06
of life in the face of supernatural like demon stuff.
37:12
I, I'm wrestling with faith and doubt.
37:16
I mean, I, I think this is, this is the struggle of being human,
37:21
at least this human if you're like me, I've struggling with
37:25
doubt when I've seen things that are inexplicably connected to
37:30
prayer. Well, I I've told.
37:31
Yet I still doubt. Pat, I've told the story before
37:34
of my dad getting sick right before we were planning to move
37:37
and having this sense of man, if he gets really sick, like if he
37:41
does, I just don't think I can move.
37:42
I don't think I can. I think I'm going to have to
37:45
stay. Yeah.
37:46
Not that that would have been the worst thing anyway, but just
37:49
some sense of like, OK, this is like, I need to wait this out.
37:52
So, you know, he, he, he just went yellow one day, like
37:56
jaundice eyes bloodshot, started dropping weight like crazy.
38:02
Went in for like liver, liver scans.
38:05
Like my friend, he was a doctor was like, man, that sounds like
38:07
liver carcinoma to me. Like, you know, that's really
38:10
concerning. And one day, you know, in the
38:15
midst of all that, prayer just suddenly started getting better.
38:18
And he actually went to his doctor to like follow up.
38:23
And his doctor said to him, well, here's what I'm going to
38:27
say to you. Your liver wasn't working.
38:31
We don't know why it wasn't working.
38:33
It is working now. We don't know why it's working
38:37
now. You should probably just go
38:38
home. Like I mean, so, so like you're
38:41
like, could that be an accident or a coincidence?
38:44
Sure, his liver could have failed miserably and started
38:48
working again, But also at the same time, we were very actively
38:52
praying for him. And so also could it have been
38:56
God that did the healing? Absolutely as well.
38:59
And so I tend to like to default towards, I'm going to say it was
39:03
God and give him the glory for that rather than say it was just
39:06
coincidence. Like there's no advantage to
39:08
giving, like giving giving coincidence the credit is like
39:12
giving taxes to the government. Like, is it?
39:15
Is that really what you want to do?
39:17
Well, I mean, if you're an atheist, maybe maybe because at
39:20
least is a confirming Yeah, that's very true potential,
39:24
yeah. Or if you're just a skeptic, you
39:27
know, you're like, well, yeah, like coincidence happened.
39:30
Now, if you're if I'm allowed to be so bold to reveal how
39:37
mentally insane I might be when it comes to things like this, I
39:45
I think of both coincidences and supernatural intervention as
39:51
pretty similar, even scientifically.
39:55
OK, let's say more. So here's what I mean.
39:58
Before we judge you, I have my stake in the car, but I'm going
40:03
to have to go look for firewood, so.
40:05
If we decide to burn you at the stake.
40:07
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, perfect.
40:09
So if God upholds the universe by the word of his power, every
40:16
second that matter exists is a miraculous thing.
40:22
Every natural occurrence that aligns with the scientific laws
40:29
is supernatural. So if you can get to the place
40:34
where you believe in an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause, like
40:39
all the way down to does God exist or doesn't he?
40:42
There is no such thing as anything that isn't
40:47
supernaturally sustained. And I think there's some
40:51
scientific not proof because you can't prove this kind of thing
40:56
scientifically, nor can you prove them like supernaturally.
41:00
Whatever you, there's no like data point that's like
41:05
eliminates the potential of other things.
41:07
But there's some scientific data that implies some of these
41:12
things. One of the reasons why we have
41:15
theories around the multiverse. One of the things, the reasons
41:18
we have theories around string theory and around alternate
41:24
dimensions and all these sorts of things is because there's
41:26
scientific realities that we we have scientific proof that
41:32
things are occurring, but no scientific explanation for why
41:37
they're occurring. Like quantum entanglement.
41:40
We just know that it happens and we know that it happens
41:42
consistently every time, but we can't explain it.
41:46
And it breaks the laws of classical physics.
41:50
So there's like one set of math equations for classical physics,
41:53
which is like physics at a larger particle level.
41:56
And there's a whole different set of equations that work
41:58
elegantly and beautifully in quantum physics.
42:01
In other words, physics at a particle level.
42:03
And they do not, they're not compatible with each other.
42:07
And so then you have physicists who are like trying to
42:09
extrapolate how is this gonna work?
42:12
And all like, like maybe there's this alternate dimension, like
42:16
maybe where God lives that like is somehow communicating faster
42:22
than the speed of light between these alternate dimensions.
42:27
This all sounds so kooky that it sounds supernatural to me.
42:31
And physicists don't even have a clue what's going on.
42:34
So when we pray and when an A a coincidence happens, I think
42:42
it's all part of the structure and systems that God set in
42:48
motion from the foundation of the world.
42:50
So even if it was literally just he knew that an object in motion
42:58
continues in motion. Let's let's say as scientific as
43:01
you want to make it a car was had this much momentum and
43:04
therefore like or let's take your example earlier the the the
43:11
thing of water on a stove. She picks it up.
43:14
It's on this trajectory, so it misses her pure science.
43:21
It was absolutely coincidence, but God created the laws of
43:25
science and the structures from the foundation of the world that
43:29
allows it to be. It's supernatural, every ounce
43:32
of it supernatural. Does that mean he never touches
43:35
the the natural and shift physics?
43:41
No, it just means everything's miraculous.
43:44
We live in a nonstop. Someone once said everything is
43:48
spiritual. Yeah, so there's my overly
43:51
analytic mind pondering somebody.
43:55
You know an awful lot about Aaron, how he sees things,
43:59
because you do have this capacity to just wander off into
44:02
the quantum sphere. Yeah, so, so here's let me just
44:06
now take this in the Bible, just briefly, let me go 11 more nerd
44:10
level. Let me try and weirdly attach
44:12
this to. One more nerd level.
44:14
So when Jesus walks on water, what if he's just doing science
44:20
that we don't know about? Yeah, yeah.
44:23
Makes sense? That he's basically saying like
44:25
I created all things in this dimension, in all of the
44:31
spiritual dimension, the the heaven, space, earth space, and
44:37
I'm just able to interact with all of my created order,
44:40
including the the created order where the angels sort of
44:44
function and the created order where humanity functions.
44:50
And I'm just so one one of the. Really interesting things right
44:56
now and, and David Kinnaman, who does a lot of like research and
45:02
a lot of surveys of people talks about this.
45:08
Interestingly, Christians today in the West are less likely to
45:15
believe in the spirit world than people outside the church.
45:22
So you have this weird system where you start saying to people
45:27
like, well, maybe Jesus is just operating in this like spirit
45:30
world that's like, kind of like invisible and around us.
45:33
And a whole bunch of Christians go, I don't know about that.
45:37
Whereas a whole bunch of people outside the church is like,
45:40
yeah, I mean, seems like there's probably a way to connect with
45:43
that spiritual world and like, you know, operate in it to a
45:46
degree. Like, I mean, which is very
45:49
strange when you think about it. You think about our our supposed
45:52
worldview, but our worldview, our Christian worldview is at
45:55
times become so clinical and knowledge based over anything
46:03
that it's harder for us to imagine or even to trust in this
46:08
world going on around us that I think we've probably lost
46:13
something. Yeah.
46:15
And I, I just tend to think it, it's helpful for me when I run
46:20
into these individual stories that feel difficult.
46:23
Was that a coincidence? I don't know if I buy that one.
46:26
If I zoom out to some of these realities, I think every second
46:32
is miraculous. And then why not like we believe
46:37
in resurrection people? Like, why not the the pot of
46:41
water was a miraculous thing that maybe he said in motion
46:46
when he first said all things in motion and he knew that that was
46:51
the outcome there and whatever. But I just think it's it's all
46:57
it's all kind of miraculous to me.
46:59
All right, so one final question on the subject of prayer.
47:02
What does God's voice sound like and how do you know it's Him?
47:10
So I, I think I would say for me, the process of living into
47:16
that was, was hard. So I started following Jesus,
47:22
you know, passionately at about 18 years old.
47:26
And for the first years of that, I think I tried to, like, do
47:29
everything I could to listen to what God's voice was and usually
47:35
meant that I became very, like, almost religious about stuff.
47:39
Like, I'd always be like, you know, I'd be out and feel like,
47:42
you know, God was like, I want you to pick up that piece of
47:44
litter. Oh, I want you to talk to this
47:45
person. I want you to do that.
47:46
Like, he's very like, always like a basketball coach, giving
47:50
lots and lots of instructions. Yeah.
47:55
And as I've grown up, that's not what I think God's voice sounds
47:59
like anymore. Like to me, God's voice, the way
48:05
I would characterize it, most of all is, is a deeply cleaned
48:10
voice. And and so for me, it's like
48:14
this internal thing of just like describing it is harder than
48:19
knowing it. So usually it's a voice that
48:22
catches me off guard. Now, it's not one that I'm
48:25
trying to listen for, although that happens.
48:29
It's often one that like I'm like, oh, there you are.
48:34
You know, it's comes up mostly in the richest ways and seasons
48:38
where I feel disconnected, where I feel less than.
48:49
And often it seems then like those are the moments for me
48:53
where it feels like to talk about overriding God overrides
48:57
the process of listening and almost comes in surprisingly
49:03
over the top of all those things.
49:06
Yeah. So, you know, I think there's
49:09
some standard safeguards like the things that God says seem
49:16
like the things that he says in the New Testament, like, you
49:19
know, the, the, the way Jesus talks to us today is the way
49:23
that he talked to people in the, in the New Testament as well.
49:29
And so sometimes those words are demanding and require action,
49:37
but a lot of the time they're, they're reassuring and reminding
49:41
of important truths. So if you read like right now,
49:45
we're doing those farewell discourses, the Upper Room
49:50
discourses, like a lot of the things Jesus says in that are a
49:53
lot like the things that he might say to us.
49:58
Yeah, totally. Like, I won't leave you as an
50:00
orphan. I am coming back for you.
50:03
If you love me, do this. Like, you know, those kind of
50:06
things. Yeah.
50:07
So I I, I think to me that I focus on the kindness because
50:12
that's kind of one of the things I didn't expect.
50:16
Yeah. I don't think I I just.
50:17
I'd thought about like that God's voice would sound kind to
50:22
me. Yeah.
50:23
Yeah. But I think.
50:25
Yeah, and I so for me, it was like, I don't think I've ever
50:32
heard an audible voice. Yeah.
50:33
And I think I've only like come to to something close to that
50:37
like one or two times. Yeah.
50:41
And yeah, you want to talk about the philosophy of like the
50:47
transfer of information and it in regards to prayer, you could
50:51
read Dallas Willard's book Hearing God is he actually talks
50:54
about what does it even mean to transfer information from one
50:58
mind to another? The power, the like, do you even
51:03
need the motion of sound waves to do that when we know that
51:06
that's not the case, Like you can we communicate through body
51:09
language. We communicate through all sorts
51:10
of different things, like transfer of information from one
51:13
mind to another doesn't always require the movement of sound
51:17
waves and particles in the air. So he he goes to that deeper
51:21
philosophical explanation or psychological explanation of, of
51:25
listening to God's voice. But so for me, it's never been
51:27
like an audible voice, but it's similar to you in the sense that
51:31
that sounds slight that that idea that came to my mind feels
51:40
uniquely other. Than me, yeah, that's yeah.
51:43
And a couple things that I've noticed is I and this, I suspect
51:50
it kind of shows up slightly different for each one of us.
51:54
Yeah. And here's why I think I talked
51:56
to my kids differently depending on who they are and what they I.
52:01
Imagine if you talk to Clara the same way you talk to Reese.
52:04
Yeah, what? Are you talking about?
52:05
Yeah. And so I think the voice sounds
52:07
slightly different for each one of us.
52:08
And so I've concluded that the reason this particular aspect of
52:12
what I've come to know as God's voice is him also kind of
52:16
chuckling at how dense I am. Persistence is one of the
52:21
markers that I see. I sense when it's God's voice.
52:25
It's something that's popped into my mind so many times.
52:30
And I think it's his way of like, I know that you're a
52:33
little slow. And so because I know my son is
52:37
a little slow, I will say this to him 75 times in the next two
52:41
weeks. Yeah.
52:42
And then finally, he's gonna be like, oh, oh, is that you?
52:45
God. And that's like, so that's how
52:47
one of the things I've come to. No.
52:48
And now when I pray, I, I invite that persistence as a marker.
52:52
And I see if that's you, let it linger.
52:54
A friend of mine gave me this great language of like.
52:57
What he does is if he feels like he's heard God say something,
53:00
puts it on a shelf, it's like, OK, I'm just going to kind of
53:04
drop that there, knowing that God doesn't just say it once and
53:07
then leave us to figure it out. And then you kind of move on
53:10
with your day and then it suddenly comes back.
53:11
And then it comes back and then it comes back.
53:13
And then I do a little bit of a quick check with the character
53:16
of Jesus. Like, does this sound like the
53:19
same character as I see in the gospels?
53:24
Does it sound loving to, to others and and to to God and
53:28
others? And if it it doesn't conflict
53:32
any of those things, I just decide this is him and I try to
53:37
live into whatever it was that he said, whether that's believe
53:41
a truth about myself he's saying or do a task that I think he's
53:47
inviting me to do. And I just trust that that was
53:49
his voice. One other thing for me that I've
53:52
noticed in in recent years, that's a interesting thing.
53:56
And this might just be for me is I, I hear less of it than in the
54:02
past. And I thought that that was
54:06
maybe I'm like, am I backsliding?
54:07
Am I less sensitive to the Spirit?
54:09
But now I have this image of the face of Jesus that I'll ask a
54:15
direct question sort of in the direction of heaven, whatever
54:20
that means, right? I, what should I do about this?
54:24
And I get this cheeky grin image instantly in my head.
54:29
And he kind of just nods. Like, you already know we've
54:33
been doing this long enough, Aaron, that you know the answer.
54:35
And the reason you're asking, I like, I welcome the question,
54:39
but the reason you're asking is you don't like the answer.
54:42
And that happens more and more and more the longer I walk with
54:46
Jesus. And I'm like, but could you just
54:51
tell me just so I could be on the safe side?
54:52
And he's like, so it's a silence, but it's an active
54:56
silence. It's like an image in my head of
54:58
him kind of nodding and smiling with a knowing face.
55:03
And I think he's right. There's, I know enough of the
55:05
scriptures. I know his hard enough.
55:08
I know what he's, I've come to intuit some of the things that
55:11
his Kingdom is about in such a way that I can sort of kind of
55:15
know what he's up to. And I don't need to ask.
55:17
And I want to ask anyway because I don't like the answer.
55:21
You love it. Good stuff.
55:23
All right. Thank you all for tuning in and
55:26
we will be back next week with another show.
55:29
And on that bombshell? And I'm trying to find the
55:32
button as always, bombshell.