Latest / Growing Closer to God with Guided Meditation / How Praying for Others Can Change You! | Deep Dive with Dan & Sheila
Transcript
- 0:15Speaker: Usually, um, when we want to help someone, or you know, when we finally sit down to pray for a friend who is going through a genuinely tough time, there is this underlying unspoken anxiety that creeps in.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
- 0:27Speaker 1: It's like this anxiety of guesswork.
- 0:30Speaker: Yes, exactly.
- 0:31Speaker: We end up just, well, throwing words at the ceiling.
- 0:34Speaker: We're trying to be helpful, trying to sound spiritual, but mostly we're just hoping we are asking for the right thing.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Right.
- 0:40Speaker 1: It's a lot of hoping and guessing.
- 0:41Speaker: Welcome to the deep dive.
- 0:43Speaker: We are Dan and Sheila, Pastor Young's AI co-hosts.
- 0:47Speaker 1: So glad to have you with us for this one.
- 0:48Speaker: Today we are exploring this fascinating excerpt from the book How to Become an Intercessor in Seven Days by Pastor Robert Young.
- 0:56Speaker 1: P which originally comes from the podcast Growing Closer to God with Guided Meditation.
- 1:00Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:01Speaker: That's the one.
- 1:02Speaker: And before we really get into this, just a quick note for you: you can receive the book by clicking the links in the description box below.
- 1:08Speaker 1: Yeah, and other resources are available by clicking the links in the description box below.
- 1:13Speaker 1: Definitely check those out.
- 1:14Speaker: P So our mission for this deep dive is to unpack a radically different, highly effective method of praying for others.
- 1:20Speaker: It is basically the practice of using the exact words of scripture as your template.
- 1:25Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:26Speaker 1: Because I mean the core problem with our usual prayer habits is that they're entirely driven by our own limited perspective.
- 1:32Speaker: Oh, for sure.
- 1:34Speaker 1: We see someone hurting, our empathy kicks in, and boom, we immediately switch into problem-solving mode.
- 1:39Speaker: We completely do.
- 1:40Speaker 1: We just start guessing at solutions based on what we can see on the surface.
- 1:44Speaker 1: We think uh maybe they need a new job, or maybe they just need a vacation.
- 1:48Speaker: Or, you know, maybe their boss just needs to get fired.
- 1:50Speaker 1: l Exactly.
- 1:51Speaker 1: So our prayers essentially become these well-intentioned, highly specific wish lists that we present to God.
- 1:58Speaker: which is so exhausting when you think about it.
- 2:01Speaker: Relying on our own situational analysis all the time, it drains you.
- 2:05Speaker 1: It really does cause cognitive fatigue because quite often we are just guessing at what a person actually needs on a soul level.
- 2:12Speaker: Right.
- 2:13Speaker 1: But Pastor Young's approach, it completely bypasses that.
- 2:16Speaker 1: We are looking at taking the ancient, established words of the Bible and using them as the direct vehicle for our modern-day prayers.
- 2:23Speaker: So, practically speaking, the text refers to this as praying the scriptures as intercession.
- 2:28Speaker: Let's kind of define the mechanics of what that actually looks like when you are, say, sitting in your living room holding a Bible.
- 2:34Speaker 1: Yeah, let's break that down.
- 2:36Speaker: Intercession at its simplest is just standing in the gap for someone else, advocating for them.
- 2:40Speaker: But this method asks you to completely stop relying on your own ideas or even your own emotional state.
- 2:47Speaker 1: Which is hard to do.
- 2:48Speaker: It really is.
- 2:48Speaker: But instead, you are taking the prayers, the promises, and the truths that are already laid out in the biblical text, and you turn them outward toward the person you are praying for.
- 2:57Speaker 1: So to do that, you actually physically alter the text as you read it.
- 3:01Speaker 1: Like you shift the pronouns and you redirect the focus.
- 3:04Speaker: Okay, give me an example.
- 3:06Speaker 1: Well, say you are reading a letter from the Apostle Paul, and he prays that your love may abound.
- 3:12Speaker 1: You don't just read that as a nice historical fact.
- 3:15Speaker: Right.
- 3:15Speaker: You make it personal.
- 3:16Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 3:17Speaker 1: You redirect it toward the specific person God has placed on your mind.
- 3:21Speaker 1: So you would say, God, let their love grow richer and wiser, shape their relationships with your wisdom.
- 3:28Speaker: Wow.
- 3:29Speaker: So you are taking the foundational structure of the biblical text, and your intercession becomes a living, breathing expression of that exact phrasing.
- 3:38Speaker 1: That's exactly it.
- 3:39Speaker: I sort of think about it like architecture.
- 3:41Speaker 1: Oh, how so?
- 3:42Speaker: Well, imagine you want to build a house for a friend who desperately needs a place to live.
- 3:46Speaker: If you just grab some wood and start hammering away based on what you guess they might like.
- 3:51Speaker 1: Just winging it.
- 3:52Speaker: Yeah.
- 3:52Speaker: Or based on your very limited knowledge of construction, I mean that house is probably going to collapse the moment a storm rolls in.
- 3:58Speaker: You are basically sketching something on a napkin.
- 4:01Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great way to put it.
- 4:02Speaker: But using this method is like taking a master architect's blueprint.
- 4:05Speaker: Someone who actually understands load-bearing walls and deep foundations has already drawn up the plans.
- 4:11Speaker: Right.
- 4:12Speaker 1: Because the foundation is solid.
- 4:13Speaker 1: The blueprint has been tested over thousands of years.
- 4:16Speaker: Exactly.
- 4:17Speaker: But um I do have to ask you about this.
- 4:20Speaker: Does relying on a scriptural blueprint imply that our own natural words, you know, our own spontaneous cries for help just aren't good enough?
- 4:29Speaker 1: That's a really valid question.
- 4:30Speaker: I mean, are we supposed to just throw away our personal vocabulary?
- 4:34Speaker 1: No, not at all.
- 4:35Speaker 1: And that blueprint analogy actually perfectly highlights the difference.
- 4:38Speaker 1: It is not that your spontaneous words are invalid or unheard by God.
- 4:43Speaker 1: The issue is that our human vocabulary for blessing someone is just incredibly narrow.
- 4:48Speaker: l Oh, I see.
- 4:49Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 4:50Speaker 1: Like when we are stressed or worried about someone we love, our brains actually shrink our imaginative capacity.
- 4:56Speaker 1: We default to survival mode.
- 4:58Speaker: That makes so much sense.
- 5:00Speaker: We tend to focus entirely on the immediate, the visible things, the temporary fixes.
- 5:04Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 5:05Speaker: We ask for the pain to stop or the problem to disappear.
- 5:08Speaker 1: But the scriptural blueprint provides this massive, expansive language for the things that matter on a generational, eternal scale.
- 5:17Speaker: Which moves us right into the underlying mechanics of why this method is so effective.
- 5:21Speaker: The excerpt lays out these five distinct whys for this scriptural intercession.
- 5:26Speaker: Aaron Powell.
- 5:27Speaker 1: It lists several psychological and spiritual reasons why adopting this script changes everything.
- 5:33Speaker: And the most foundational shift, it seems, is that it forces your intercession into alignment with God's will.
- 5:39Speaker 1: Right.
- 5:40Speaker 1: Because you are praying the words of scripture, you are quite literally praying what God already desires for humanity.
- 5:46Speaker: The guesswork just evaporates.
- 5:48Speaker 1: It really does.
- 5:49Speaker 1: You no longer have to wonder am I asking for the right thing here?
- 5:53Speaker: Right.
- 5:54Speaker 1: Right.
- 5:54Speaker: And then uh another point it makes is that it builds confidence.
- 5:57Speaker 1: Huge Surge in confidence.
- 5:59Speaker 1: When you pray your own wish list, there's always this lingering doubt.
- 6:03Speaker 1: You are essentially crossing your fingers and hoping the universe agrees with your assessment of the situation.
- 6:08Speaker: Yeah, just hoping for the best.
- 6:10Speaker 1: l But when you are standing on established promises, praying for someone's endurance or their spiritual wisdom, you are operating with real authority.
- 6:18Speaker 1: You are agreeing with a divine reality.
- 6:21Speaker: Okay, I want to dig into a very specific point the source material makes here because it genuinely surprised me.
- 6:27Speaker 1: Oh, which one?
- 6:29Speaker: The text claims that praying scripture acts as a protective mechanism to keep our prayers from becoming self-centered.
- 6:35Speaker 1: Ah, yes.
- 6:36Speaker: On the surface, that sounds contradictory, right?
- 6:38Speaker: We generally don't think of praying for other people as a selfish act.
- 6:42Speaker 1: No, we really don't.
- 6:43Speaker: But if you think about it, we often camouflage our own desires as intercession.
- 6:48Speaker: If I have a coworker who is incredibly difficult to work with, my prayer might be, Lord, please give them peace.
- 6:55Speaker 1: Sounds very holy.
- 6:56Speaker: Right.
- 6:56Speaker: But if I am being brutally honest, what I'm really praying is, Lord, please make them quiet so my day is easier.
- 7:02Speaker 1: Oh, completely.
- 7:03Speaker: Or if I'm praying for a family member to get a job, part of that is just because I don't want to carry the anxiety of worrying about their finances anymore.
- 7:11Speaker: Our intercession is often just a desire for circumstance manipulation that benefits us.
- 7:17Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 7:17Speaker 1: We want our environment to be comfortable.
- 7:19Speaker 1: So we use prayer as a tool to try and arrange the people in our lives into a more comfortable configuration.
- 7:26Speaker: Wow.
- 7:26Speaker: Yeah.
- 7:27Speaker 1: But when you bind yourself to a scriptural blueprint, when you are forced to pray for their spiritual growth, their character, their deep internal flourishing, it acts as a guardrail against that manipulation.
- 7:38Speaker: It forces you to advocate for their ultimate good, completely independent of how their life impacts your day.
- 7:44Speaker 1: Right.
- 7:45Speaker 1: It strips the selfishness right out of the equation.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Because you are adopting God's perspective on their life rather than trying to bend God to your perspective.
- 7:53Speaker: Okay, so if someone listening right now is completely on board with this philosophy and wants to apply it today, how do they actually bridge the gap between staring at an open Bible and interceding for their friend?
- 8:04Speaker 1: Let's get into the practical application.
- 8:06Speaker: Yeah.
- 8:06Speaker: How do we take this from a lofty theological concept down to the living room couch?
- 8:11Speaker: Pastor Young outlines a five-step process.
- 8:13Speaker 1: The process is incredibly accessible, but it does require intentionality.
- 8:18Speaker 1: First, you need a starting point.
- 8:20Speaker 1: The letters of Paul, the Psalms, and the teachings of Jesus are really the most concentrated areas for this kind of language.
- 8:27Speaker: Okay.
- 8:27Speaker: So step one is choose a passage.
- 8:30Speaker 1: Right.
- 8:30Speaker 1: You begin by choosing a passage, but you don't just read it blindly.
- 8:33Speaker 1: Step two is you look at the text and actively identify the core theme.
- 8:38Speaker 1: You ask yourself, what is the divine architect trying to build in this specific verse?
- 8:44Speaker: Is it endurance?
- 8:46Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 8:46Speaker: Is it peace?
- 8:48Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 8:48Speaker 1: Once you identify that core material, you move into the mechanical phase we discussed earlier.
- 8:53Speaker 1: Step three.
- 8:54Speaker: Right, the pronoun swap.
- 8:56Speaker: You take out the I or the me or the general you and you insert the specific name of the person you are carrying in your heart.
- 9:04Speaker 1: Yes.
- 9:04Speaker 1: And step four is where the pacing becomes critical.
- 9:08Speaker 1: You cannot rush this.
- 9:09Speaker 1: You pray the text slowly and intentionally.
- 9:12Speaker: l So no speed reading through the chapter.
- 9:14Speaker 1: Definitely not.
- 9:15Speaker 1: You treat each individual phrase as a literal spoken blessing over their life.
- 9:21Speaker 1: You aren't just reading a paragraph, you are dispensing an inheritance.
- 9:25Speaker: That's a beautiful way to phrase it.
- 9:27Speaker 1: And then the final step, step five, is as you slow down, you create space for the spirit to highlight specifics.
- 9:33Speaker: l What does that look like?
- 9:35Speaker 1: Well, you might be reading a whole chapter, but suddenly one single word, maybe the word courage or clarity, just feels heavy.
- 9:42Speaker: It jumps out at you.
- 9:43Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 9:44Speaker 1: That one word might be the exact blueprint needed for that person on that specific day.
- 9:50Speaker: Think about what that does to your own nervous system.
- 9:52Speaker: If you are prepping for a really chaotic day or you are spiraling with worry over a loved one's bad decisions, taking just two minutes to run a single verse through this filter completely anchors your mental state.
- 10:03Speaker 1: It really does ground you.
- 10:05Speaker: You pull your mind out of the reactive, panicked spin of what ifs, and you anchor it to something ancient and steady.
- 10:12Speaker 1: And to fully grasp the weight of this, we should examine the concrete examples provided from the Apostle Paul's letters.
- 10:17Speaker 1: These are phenomenal case studies in how to pray beyond our immediate circumstances.
- 10:22Speaker: Let's dive into those.
- 10:24Speaker 1: Let's look at the theme of inner strength and love, specifically drawing from Ephesians chapter 3 and Philippians chapter 1.
- 10:31Speaker: In Ephesians 3, the scriptural blueprint asks God to strengthen a person from the inside out with the power of his spirit.
- 10:37Speaker: It is asking that their inner life be so fortified that Christ's presence becomes the absolute center of their identity.
- 10:44Speaker 1: It's such a deep prayer.
- 10:45Speaker: And the specific phrasing that just blew me away is the request for God to stretch their hearts wide enough to grasp the dimensions of his love so that love becomes the atmosphere they breathe.
- 10:56Speaker 1: Oh, I love that phrase.
- 10:57Speaker: Imagine the sheer power of praying that specific phrase over a rebellious teenager or a spouse you are struggling to connect with.
- 11:05Speaker 1: It changes everything.
- 11:06Speaker 1: You aren't praying for their behavior to improve, you are praying for the very atmosphere of their soul to change.
- 11:12Speaker: And Philippians 1 builds right on top of that, doesn't it?
- 11:15Speaker 1: It does.
- 11:15Speaker 1: The prayer there is for love to grow richer and wiser.
- 11:19Speaker 1: It distinguishes between uh a shallow emotional affection and a love that is shaped by deep spiritual understanding.
- 11:27Speaker: So it's about discernment.
- 11:29Speaker 1: Yes.
- 11:29Speaker 1: Teaching them to intuitively recognize what is truly worthwhile in life and what is just noise.
- 11:35Speaker: Which transitions nicely into the next theme: perspective and wisdom, utilizing Colossians 1 and Ephesians 1.
- 11:42Speaker 1: Right.
- 11:43Speaker 1: The Ephesians 1 prayer is all about spiritual vision.
- 11:47Speaker 1: It asks God to impart a deep, spirit-born wisdom that actually opens the eyes of a person's heart.
- 11:53Speaker: Opening the eyes of the heart.
- 11:55Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:55Speaker 1: Praying that they will be able to clearly see the hope they are called to and to physically feel the weight and beauty of their inheritance.
- 12:02Speaker 1: You are praying for the blinders of their current circumstances to fall off.
- 12:07Speaker: And then Colossians 1 takes that vision and applies it to daily choices.
- 12:10Speaker: It asks God to fill them with the kind of wisdom that allows them to see their overarching purpose through God's eyes.
- 12:16Speaker 1: Right.
- 12:17Speaker 1: It is a blueprint for bearing good fruit, like compassion, courage, hope.
- 12:22Speaker: But crucially, it also asks God to strengthen them with endurance for the long haul, when life inevitably feels incredibly heavy.
- 12:30Speaker: Now I want to pause on Colossians 1 because there is a very particular phrase embedded in that prayer that completely stopped me in my tracks.
- 12:38Speaker: Oh.
- 12:39Speaker 1: Which phrase?
- 12:40Speaker: It is the phrase patience when things move slowly.
- 12:44Speaker 1: Uh yes.
- 12:45Speaker: Yeah.
- 12:46Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
- 12:47Speaker: In our modern culture, we operate like we are at a cosmic drive-thru.
- 12:51Speaker: We want immediate delivery on all solutions.
- 12:55Speaker 1: We really do.
- 12:55Speaker: When we pray for someone who is in a tough spot, maybe they are sick or unemployed or heartbroken, our default prayer is just God, get them out of this quickly, end the problem.
- 13:05Speaker 1: Make it stop.
- 13:06Speaker: Exactly.
- 13:07Speaker: Praying for patience in the slowness is a total paradigm shift.
- 13:10Speaker: It almost feels counterintuitive to ask for them to endure a slow process.
- 13:14Speaker 1: It feels counterintuitive because we equate slowness with failure or you know divine abandonment.
- 13:21Speaker 1: But praying for patience in the slowness acknowledges the profound reality of human formation.
- 13:27Speaker: Formation takes time.
- 13:29Speaker 1: It does.
- 13:29Speaker 1: God rarely operates on our preferred, highly efficient timelines.
- 13:33Speaker 1: The deep, lasting changes in a person's character almost always happen in the crucible of waiting.
- 13:39Speaker: Wow.
- 13:40Speaker 1: So when you pray for them to have patience in the slowness, you are no longer asking for a magical teleportation to the finish line.
- 13:47Speaker 1: You are equipping them for the journey.
- 13:49Speaker 1: You are honoring the growth that is occurring in the dark, slow spaces.
- 13:54Speaker: We want the microwave solution, but this blueprint is asking for the fortitude to handle the slow cooker.
- 14:00Speaker 1: That's a perfect way to describe it.
- 14:02Speaker: That takes us to the final category of Paul's prayers highlighted in the material: calling and endurance, which draws from 1 Corinthians 1 and the Thessalonian letters.
- 14:11Speaker 1: Yeah, in 1 Corinthians, the intercessor isn't starting with a deficit.
- 14:14Speaker 1: They are thanking God for the grace that has already been poured out and asking him to deepen those existing gifts.
- 14:21Speaker: It is a prayer for the person to speak with clarity, to walk confidently in their specific calling.
- 14:26Speaker 1: And to be steadied by the absolute assurance that God will sustain them right to the end.
- 14:31Speaker: And the prayers found in the letters to the Thessalonians complement that beautifully by focusing on character.
- 14:36Speaker: They ask God to establish the person firmly in holiness, shaping their daily decisions with a steady, refining love.
- 14:44Speaker 1: Right.
- 14:45Speaker 1: The goal of this intercession is to empower every single act of faith and every step of obedience so that the character of Jesus becomes undeniably visible in their everyday lives.
- 14:55Speaker: When you lay all these examples out on the table, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, a massive contrast emerges between how we normally pray and how this blueprint operates.
- 15:07Speaker 1: It's night and day.
- 15:08Speaker: Which brings us to the ultimate transformation discussed in the excerpt.
- 15:11Speaker: This method isn't just a tool for changing the spiritual reality of the person you are praying for.
- 15:17Speaker: It fundamentally rewires the brain and the heart of the person doing the praying.
- 15:22Speaker 1: This is where we see the critical distinction between what we call reactive prayer and formative prayer.
- 15:29Speaker: Reactive prayer being our default setting.
- 15:32Speaker 1: Exactly.
- 15:32Speaker 1: We observe a problem, a financial crisis, a medical diagnosis, a relational breakdown, and we just react to it.
- 15:39Speaker 1: We pray for the problem to go away.
- 15:41Speaker 1: We pray for the external environment to be smoothed out.
- 15:44Speaker 1: Our entire focus is completely tethered to circumstances.
- 15:48Speaker: Aaron Powell It is the dart throwing we talked about at the very beginning of this deep dive, just trying to hit a moving target of daily problems.
- 15:55Speaker 1: Precisely.
- 15:56Speaker 1: But formative prayer, which is the inevitable result of using the scriptural blueprint, operates on an entirely different plan.
- 16:03Speaker 1: You stop agonizing over their external circumstances, and you redirect all that spiritual energy toward their inner life.
- 16:10Speaker: You pray for their wisdom, their endurance, their capacity to love.
- 16:15Speaker 1: Right.
- 16:15Speaker 1: You are advocating for them to be transformed from the inside out, completely independent of whatever storm is raging around them.
- 16:23Speaker: So think about how that shift from reactive to formative prayer changes the actual day-to-day relationship you have with that person.
- 16:31Speaker 1: Oh, it changes everything.
- 16:33Speaker: Because if you are only praying reactively, it is incredibly easy to become frustrated with them.
- 16:39Speaker: If you've been praying for their financial problems to go away and then you see them make a reckless purchase, you get angry.
- 16:46Speaker 1: Naturally.
- 16:46Speaker: You think, I'm putting in all this spiritual work to fix your life, and you are messing it up.
- 16:51Speaker 1: Yeah, we've all been there.
- 16:52Speaker: But when you shift to formative prayer, when you are consistently praying for their hearts to be stretched, for their wisdom to deepen, for them to have patience in the slowness, it seems like it would radically increase your empathy for them.
- 17:06Speaker 1: It creates an almost unbreakable lens of grace.
- 17:11Speaker 1: When you are praying formatively, you no longer view them as a problem to be solved or like a project to be managed.
- 17:18Speaker: They're a person again.
- 17:19Speaker 1: Yes.
- 17:20Speaker 1: You see them as a complex human being, a work in progress being slowly shaped by the hands of God.
- 17:26Speaker 1: You stop demanding that they be convenient for you, and you start genuinely desiring their ultimate wholeness.
- 17:32Speaker: The excerpt concludes with a thought that really summarizes the gravity of this practice.
- 17:37Speaker: It suggests that carrying another human being into God's presence using his own language is one of the most profoundly loving things you can possibly do for them.
- 17:47Speaker 1: It really is.
- 17:48Speaker 1: It is steady, it is faithful, and it is deeply rooted in unshakable truth.
- 17:54Speaker: Because you are offering them the highest possible good.
- 17:57Speaker: You aren't just sending them positive vibes or wishing them well.
- 18:00Speaker 1: No, you are actively partnering with the creator of the universe to speak eternal foundational truths over the architecture of their life.
- 18:08Speaker 1: You are literally giving them the gift of God's own vocabulary.
- 18:12Speaker: It is the ultimate architectural blueprint.
- 18:15Speaker: We started today talking about the anxiety of guesswork.
- 18:18Speaker: You know, that feeling of staring at the ceiling, throwing darts in the dark, hoping we are saying the right thing for the people we care about.
- 18:25Speaker 1: Yeah, that exhausting guesswork.
- 18:27Speaker: But by using the scriptures as our template, we bypass all of that exhaustion.
- 18:31Speaker: We shift from reactive, panicked problem solving to formative inner life intercession.
- 18:37Speaker: We allow the ancient text to become a modern-day blessing.
- 18:40Speaker 1: By utilizing the rich language of Paul's letters, the Psalms, and the teachings of Jesus, and just simply shifting the pronouns, we protect our prayers from our own selfish biases.
- 18:50Speaker: We expand our limited imagination.
- 18:53Speaker 1: And ultimately, we unite our own hearts with God's heart for the people we love most.
- 18:58Speaker: Before we wrap up today, I want to remind you one more time that you can receive the book we discussed today by clicking the links in the description box below.
- 19:05Speaker 1: And remember, other resources are available by clicking the links in the description box below.
- 19:10Speaker 1: It is a fantastic guide for bridging the gap between ancient theology and your daily routine.
- 19:16Speaker: Now, as you head out into your day, I want to leave you with a final thought to chew on.
- 19:19Speaker: We have spent this entire time talking about how this method changes you when you use it to pray for others.
- 19:24Speaker: But turn the camera around for a second.
- 19:27Speaker 1: Okay, let's turn it around.
- 19:28Speaker: Think about your own struggles right now, your own stress, your own slow seasons.
- 19:34Speaker: What happens to your own self-image and your own inner strength when you realize that someone else out there might be using this exact method, praying these massive, formative, world-shifting scriptures over you today?
- 19:46Speaker: Wow.
- 19:47Speaker: What if you are walking through your busy, chaotic day completely unaware that someone is using a divine blueprint to build a fortress of strength around your inner life?
- 19:56Speaker 1: That is a beautiful and staggering thought to carry with you.
- 20:00Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive.
- 20:03Speaker: Keep asking the big questions, keep exploring the blueprints, and we will catch you next time.