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E218: A Guidebook To Hearing God's Voice w/Jonna Schuster | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  What you've done in this book is life changing.
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  What was the moment for you that you first realized?
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  Oh, I can hear God's voice. It's a.
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  Line in the sand, Jesus says the enemy comes to steal, kill and
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  destroy, but I come that they may have life and life abundant.
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  You talk about the languages of God.
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  What are the languages of God? Oftentimes I find that if we're
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  willing to exchange a theology of absence for a theology of
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  presence instead, what that ends up doing is.
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  Why do you think people struggle to hear the voice of God?
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  Hey everyone, welcome back to the Lila Roe Show.
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  I'm really thrilled for today's episode because this is a topic
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  that I think is absolutely essential for every single
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  person to explore. It's one that I have spent the
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  last two decades exploring. And the person I have on the
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  show today, Jonna Shuster, who is a theologian and a spiritual
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  guide, and she just came out with her book called Hearing
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  God's Voice, a Guide to Prayer. This book is phenomenal.
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  And I don't say that lightly because what she does in this
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  book is she doesn't take any new invention.
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  She takes the classic truths about prayer that any Christian
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  or any human being could tap into, and she organizes it into
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  a simple method that anyone can use to actually hear from God.
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  Did you know that God is speaking to you?
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  God wants to hear from you, and He wants to speak to you.
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  He wants a personal relationship with you.
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  He loves you. He created you for communion
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  with Him. And you can have this, of
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  course, through the Bible, through the sacraments, that's
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  all incredible. But he wants you to actually in
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  the day in, day out, the decisions of your life, the
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  decisions of your day, to commune with him.
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  And there is a way to actually hear the voice of God in your
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  life. And so I'm so excited to share
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  this episode with you today and the beautiful work of Jonna
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  Shuster. Jonna, thanks for joining the
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  podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Lila.
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  You're lovely. Thank you for your work.
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  I know it's 20 years in the making.
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  I think about Saint Teresa Le Sue, how simple her spirituality
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  was, but also how profoundly deep it was.
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  And I think what you've done in this book is life changing as a
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  gift for people across the world.
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  So thank you. I'm so excited to discuss it in
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  today's podcast. Oh, thank you, Lila.
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  That's my hope too, is that it's life changing for people.
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  And I know that can be hyperbolic, and a lot of times
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  when people talk about how it changed my life, it just turned
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  everything upside down. But that really has been the
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  experience for myself, learning how to hear God speak to me in
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  prayer. And so it's my sincere hope that
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  other people have that experience too.
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  Beautiful. So tell for folks listening just
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  briefly, your background, how you got into ministry and what
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  maybe was the moment for you that you first realized, oh, I
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  can hear God's voice personally speaking to me and how that
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  changed your life. Yeah, I did grow up Catholic.
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  I'm a cradle Catholic and I went through all the CCD programs and
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  learned sort of the nuts and bolts of our faith, but it
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  wasn't until college that I really sort of embraced faith as
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  a relationship with the Lord. I had a beautiful campus
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  ministry that I was a part of at the University of Illinois, and
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  being in that culture really helped to develop a different
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  type of prayer, a heart level prayer for me.
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  And I would say that that's probably the first place where I
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  was aware that I've occurred the Lord.
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  I'm sure there were times before that that I was hearing the Lord
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  speak to me, but I didn't know that was him.
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  And so basically from that time in college, I sort of just
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  developed a habit of being aware of him communicating with me,
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  speaking to me and docile to that.
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  And when I got into after I graduated college, I did some
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  graduate studies in theology and then I went on to be a full time
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  youth minister and found myself in the position of having to
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  teach others about prayer, about how to hear God's voice.
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  And so that sort of forced my hand to figure out how can I
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  explain this to someone in a more systematic way so that they
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  can learn for themselves these, these skills and this gift that
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  we have of prayer. And so through a little bit of
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  trial and error and a little bit of, you know, looking back at my
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  own experience and the experience of other people, I
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  was able to learn how to teach this in the community that I was
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  a part of at that time. And then in 2018, my husband and
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  I felt called to move to California.
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  We'd been living, thank you. We had been living on the East
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  Coast in the Arlington Diocese. And then the Lord called us to
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  California. And in the midst of that
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  process, we felt him place on our hearts a calling to start an
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  independent ministry, which is what we did.
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  We have an apostle called Catholic Revival Ministries, and
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  so in that apostolate we teach things like hearing God's voice
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  in prayer, how to develop a relationship with the Holy
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  Spirit, how to exercise the gifts of the Holy Spirit and
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  things like that. And so I was able to draw from
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  all of that experience and finally put it into book form
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  just last fall in November. And for we spoke a little bit
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  about this at lunch of for a long time I was resistant to
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  writing a book about this because I feel very strongly
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  that the things of our faith that are more practical in
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  nature, like the how to's of our faith, really are the sorts of
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  things that ought to be learned in discipleship.
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  It's beautiful to be able to read a book and learn about
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  these things on a page. But I really feel like the the
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  beauty that we get to receive from learning from another human
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  being and having them speak into our lives and help us to
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  troubleshoot issues that might come up.
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  I really feel like that's an important part of our growth as
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  disciples. And so I resisted writing a book
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  for a long time because I didn't want to do a disservice to
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  people by simply putting it on a page and not accompany them
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  through the process. And so it took some doing and it
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  took some encouragement from others, but I, I got a little
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  creative with it. And the approach that I took to
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  the book is to walk people through the process of hearing
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  God's voice, Like I'm holding their hand through the process,
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  anticipating their questions, giving them exercise ideas that
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  they could do to practice and that sort of thing.
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  You did a beautiful job here. It is right here.
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  I have got the digital copy. I've been reading by hearing
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  God's voice. And again, like what I think is
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  so compelling to me is that I mean, you mentioned like Saint
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  John of the Cross and obviously Scripture throughout the book
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  you use Holy Scripture and you talk about the lives of
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  different Saints. But what is so beautiful is
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  nothing is new under the sun, right with the faith.
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  Nothing is new under the sun like Jesus is before time,
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  outside of time, in time as well.
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  And truth is timeless. Truth is eternal.
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  But what you did, which I loved, is we provided this simple
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  system for understanding the way that God speaks to us
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  personally. Obviously, there's revelation
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  that he gives us through the Bible, Holy Scripture, and
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  there's revelation that he may be giving to, you know, my
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  friend, say God told me this, God told me that, but how he can
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  work with different souls, all of our different souls.
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  And you provide this very simple, almost like a formula
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  and but there's a ton of freedom there, right?
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  But then there are these kind of bright lines of sort of the
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  boundaries of it, because I do think some people, good
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  Christians included, especially really good Christians, are
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  afraid of presuming or misreading or mishearing or
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  getting involved in some sort of spirituality as that is not of
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  God. And that's the last thing they
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  want to do. And so there's this fear about
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  the spiritual life where they want to make sure that it's very
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  much, you know, Bible based, if they're Catholic, very much in
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  line with the church's teaching. They don't want to get too
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  experimental. And So what what might happen
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  though, to a very well-intentioned Christian is
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  they may take this routine approach to prayer or they've
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  maybe heard this sort of thing that maybe a spiritual director
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  told them, like ask God this question.
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  They'll ask God the question and maybe they'll journal and answer
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  that they think they got. But instead of kind of seeing
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  the whole picture of how God may be speaking in their life, it
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  can kind of feel random or unpredictable or confusing even.
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  And I think, well, God's not really talking to me like that,
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  but that's OK because God so loves me.
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  I know. But you know, I'm just a normal
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  person. Who am I And and we may be
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  missing out on so much wealth and grace.
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  And by wealth, I mean the spiritual riches, but I also
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  mean opportunities in this life to do work for him.
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  So I just think it's incredibly important what you're doing,
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  Jonah. And I'm so excited that you like
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  even me, I was learning like from your because all of these
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  pieces are familiar to me, but the way you organized it.
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  So anyways, what I want to do in today's episode is go through
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  your structure that you provided so beautifully in this book.
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  And then we're going to do a prayer session together, which
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  Use the code. Lila, you mentioned that you
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  know you felt this confidence to start the book after you got
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  encouragement. Can you share a moment in your
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  life for people where prayer for you, hearing personally from God
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  was instrumental in maybe overcoming a fear you had or
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  making a big life decision? Yes, I, I actually had a a
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  pretty significant experience hearing God speak to me in
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  prayer. It was, I think it was my late
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  20s, early 30s. I was dating my now husband Jim
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  at the time, and I had gone on retreat to this monastery in
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  Kentucky, which was so beautiful.
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  It was just a, a wonderful time of encountering the Lord.
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  I had a profound experience with him there where I I just felt
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  his presence. I felt him revealed to me his
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  bigness, his magnitude and a simultaneous permission to be
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  small, to be his daughter, to be cared for, protected and that
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  sort of thing. And it was a very marking
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  experience. And when I got home from that
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  retreat, I went for my spiritual direction appointment
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  afterwards. And I was telling my spiritual
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  director about this wonderful encounter that I had with the
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  Lord and what it was doing in my heart.
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  And I felt like for the first time I had permission to be a
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  daughter and to be small and to be protected.
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  And he's like, wonderful, that's beautiful.
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  So when you get married, I was like, what?
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  I thought we were talking about this prayer experience.
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  This was so significant. He's like, yeah, that's great.
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  But like, let's get a move out. Like, when are you and Jim
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  getting married? Like, what's taking you so long?
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  And I was so offended by the fact that he would change the
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  subject without fully appreciating the significance of
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  an encounter. And, you know, I had come from a
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  background. My family was divorced when I
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  was young, and so it was a broken home.
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  And I was reluctant to get married because I had a lot of
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  fear. And so I I could understand why
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  he would be asking you that question, but I was still
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  offended by it. And so after I finished my
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  spiritual direction appointment, I went to the Chapel and I was
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  praying and like, Lord, Can you believe him?
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  I can't. That was so rude of him.
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  I'm so offended. I was venting to the Lord, a
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  vomit spiritual director being so rude to me.
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  I was like, I just want to enjoy this moment, this, this season
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  of being your beloved daughter and how I feel like he's trying
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  to rob me of that. And oh, that's so unfair.
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  And so as I was praying, I saw in my imagination this image of
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  myself in God's arms being held in this beautiful embrace.
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  My head was on his chest and I just felt so at home.
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  And I was like, that's exactly how I'm feeling right now after
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  this encounter. And I just want to stay in God's
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  arms. And it's so beautiful.
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  Thank you, Lord. That's exactly, ah, I'm at rest
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  now remembering this. And that image slowly
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  transformed where I saw God's arm reach and bring Jim into the
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  picture. And he handed me off into Jim's
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  arm. Wow.
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  From his arms to Jim's arms. And I was not expecting that.
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  That was the last. Like I was still venting.
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  I was still angry and wanting to get my emotions out with the
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  Lord. And when I received that image
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  in my imagination, my mind's eye, it was a huge like pause
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  for me. Like, whoa, that did not
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  originate in me. That image, that movie in my
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  head did not come from me because it's the last thing I
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  was thinking about at the time. I need to sit with this a little
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  bit. And so as I was driving home, I
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  was thinking about that a little bit more.
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  And for the first time I started noticing I was thinking, if I
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  already got married, what colors would I pick?
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  What flowers would I choose? What would I want the readings
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  to be? And I started daydreaming about
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  my wedding. For the first time in my life,
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  I'd never daydreamed about my wedding.
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  I wasn't one of those girls. And I recognized in that moment
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  that that image that I received from the Lord in prayer shifted
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  my heart to a posture of readiness to be married after
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  years of fear and brokenness from my own family background
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  and for my own struggles. He readied me with just that one
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  moment, which started as a moment of offense in my heart
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  that I was venting to the Lord. And then he came in and kindly
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  brought out the truth and what my spiritual director had been
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  saying to me and move my heart. And so when I got home from the
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  retreat, I said to Jim, hey, whenever you're ready to
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  propose, I'm ready to say yes. Was he waiting to propose on
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  you? He was waiting.
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  We had talked about it and yes, yes, he's very honoring of my
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  timeline and what I needed to work through in order to be
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  comfortable with that. And so we got engaged very
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  shortly after. We had a six month engagement
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  that's very quick and then got married, you know, and it was,
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  it's been beautiful. But it was that one moment, that
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  shift that needed to happen, that really it was the Lord's
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  doing. And it came through that that
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  image that I saw, I heard from him through an image in my
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  imagination. What a sweet spiritual director
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  to take the brunt, you know, because you're, it sounds like
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  the Lord was. I mean, the Lord is so gentle.
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  He's so gentle because he gave you this image of just you as
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  his daughter. And then you're telling your
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  spiritual director and he's like, so get married.
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  Like, OK, next step, Jonah, like, and God's going to hold
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  you has his daughter in the arms of your husband, which is such a
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  beautiful image of what marriage is.
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  I remember when I, you know, got married, my spiritual director
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  being saying to me, this is Jesus to you now, like your
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  husband is Jesus to you. And yes, he's the spiritual head
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  of the household in your spiritual head and he loves you.
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  I mean, he loves you and that's not a perfect love, but it's a
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  love filled with supernatural graces.
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  And and then, you know, the Lord revealed that to obviously you
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  in your prayer. And it's just, it's so beautiful
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  that he worked with that way with you.
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  But you were willing to receive it.
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  You were, you were paying attention enough to to receive
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  it. Yeah.
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  And the thing was, I knew it intellectually up until that
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  point. I knew it up here, but my heart
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  needed to receive it. And I couldn't make that journey
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  from my head to my heart. I, the Lord, knew that He was
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  the one who had to bring that shift, and He did it through
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  that moment. Beautiful so that even that
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  example you just shared, which is so beautiful, you know, in
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  your book, you have your first section of your book is called
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  foundational principles and you talk about why hearing God
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  matters. Again, your average Christian
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  would say, of course hearing God matters, right?
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  But it's like how well, how he's not talking to me in any given
• 16:06
  day. The Christian might say like he,
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  he does kind of speak to me largely through the events of my
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  life, but it's not like he's like intimately speaking with me
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  today. What would you say in response
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  to that? I would say we are meant for
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  conversational prayer with the Lord.
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  We not only has he revealed himself to be one who speaks,
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  but he has crafted us through, you know, by virtue of our
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  baptism to be able to connect with him, relate with him,
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  converse with him, receive from him and so commune with him and
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  prayer is conversation. And so I, I could draw from what
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  we know in the natural about relationships between two
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  people, like if you were in a relationship with someone, let's
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  say a friendship, and you wanted to deepen that friendship
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  conversation, communication is a crucial piece of that building
• 16:56
  that deepening. But imagine if you will, that
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  that conversation was 1 sided. Imagine that every time we went
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  to coffee, I did all the talking and you just listened and you
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  would get to know me quite well, but I would never get to know
• 17:09
  you. And so if we think of our
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  relationship with the Lord with that kind of imbalance, we can
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  draw a parallel there. Like if we think of if I'm doing
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  all the talking and prayer and I'm not listening for God saying
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  anything in response, there's, there's a certain level of
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  intimacy and depth we'll never reach because we have to have
• 17:27
  this exchange, this give and take this and speaking and
• 17:31
  listening. And so by looking at our natural
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  relationships, we can identify. Well, of course, that would be
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  an important part of building a relationship.
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  And if God is a person or are meant to be in personal
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  relationship with him, we should be able to recognize that
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  communication with him is vital. And then in addition to that, we
• 17:48
  have the revelation of Scripture where when we read about the
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  Good Shepherd, we've got Jesus painting this beautiful picture
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  of himself as the Good Shepherd. He unfolds it through this
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  metaphor, which at the time the those who were listening to him
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  speak would have been very familiar with.
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  He's talking about the culture of shepherds being one in which
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  the sheep would be able to follow the shepherd because of
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  his voice, not because of his smell or recognizing the way
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  that he walked or the way that he looked, but because he was
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  speaking to them. And we might not be familiar
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  with why this is so important, but back in that day,
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  shepherding culture was a nomadic culture.
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  And so when shepherds needed to lead their sheep to a new
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  pasture, they would have to do it somehow.
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  And there might be other occasions where that flock would
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  intermingle with another flock. They were all the same pasture
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  at the same time. And so the shepherd would need a
• 18:43
  way to call forth their own sheep.
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  And so the sheep were so acquainted with the sound of
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  their shepherd's voice that they could come follow him with ease,
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  with confidence, without being LED astray.
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  And so Jesus is unpacking this beautiful parable.
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  And at the end of it, it's like the mic drop moment where he
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  says, I'm the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep, I know them my
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  name, they follow me. And so we have this precedent of
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  being able to hear him regularly calling to us, speaking to us.
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  We're wired for it. And he is one who speaks.
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  He doesn't withhold how? Important Is it to set aside
• 19:24
  time for prayer? Because I know a lot of people
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  who say, oh, I pray throughout the day.
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  I, you know, maybe they wish they heard more clearly from
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  God, but they don't want to presume, you know, they're doing
• 19:35
  their best. They're trying to live a morally
• 19:36
  virtuous life, and they're trying to do, overall a good
• 19:39
  job, you know, a good job at life, you know, a good job at
• 19:41
  being a Christian. But maybe they're not doing that
• 19:45
  set aside time each day to pray. Or if they are, maybe they're
• 19:47
  just kind of reading something spiritual, but they're not
• 19:49
  necessarily having a conversation.
• 19:52
  I would say it is important to make time for that, but I would
• 19:56
  qualify it by saying engaged prayer is, I think what's most
• 20:02
  important. So going through the list of
• 20:05
  I've rattled off these prayers, I've checked these boxes.
• 20:07
  That was my life for a long time.
• 20:08
  That's what my prayer life looked like for a long time.
• 20:10
  And it's my heart was in the right place and I wanted to be,
• 20:14
  you know, investing in prayer. But for me, it turned into sort
• 20:18
  of this habit of I was just checking off what I thought the
• 20:22
  Lord wanted me to be doing. I wasn't engaged.
• 20:25
  I wasn't. They're listening for him to
• 20:27
  speak back to me. And so I would say that if if we
• 20:32
  want to learn the art of listening for God's voice, we
• 20:36
  have to have those designated times of prayer and those times
• 20:39
  have to include the art of listening, which we can talk
• 20:43
  about later. But then I would also say, I
• 20:47
  don't think that's the end point and I don't think we should
• 20:49
  expect it to be the end point or sufficient because Saint Paul
• 20:52
  says pray without ceasing. That's our invitation.
• 20:55
  And so it's hard to envision what that would look like for
• 20:58
  those of us who are in the world, if for lay people in
• 21:01
  particular, we don't have to run off to a Chapel periodically
• 21:05
  throughout the day in order to be engaged in prayer.
• 21:07
  What he's talking about is a more ongoing, and I would
• 21:10
  venture to say conversational sort of prayer.
• 21:13
  And so those designated times and places that we have chosen
• 21:18
  to put aside for prayer, learning to develop this skill,
• 21:21
  this art, I would say at a certain point it ought to start
• 21:25
  bleeding into the remainder of our day so that it almost
• 21:28
  becomes like breathing where we can, you know, be in
• 21:31
  conversation with the Lord as we are doing things, hearing from
• 21:34
  him as you're doing things, offering things to him in prayer
• 21:37
  and hearing things from him in prayer.
• 21:40
  Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the
• 21:42
  world. It's been downloaded 10 million
• 21:45
  *. I love Hallow because they have
• 21:46
  sleep stories, they have the daily readings, they have
• 21:49
  scriptural commentary. You can listen to Holy
• 21:51
  Scripture. I also love that Hallow has kids
• 21:53
  content for your little ones. You can listen to stories.
• 21:56
  You can listen to prayers that are specifically designed for
• 21:58
  children. An amazing way to help you pray
• 22:00
  together as a family. A lot is at stake.
• 22:02
  We have only one life to live and we've been given each day to
• 22:05
  make something beautiful for God.
• 22:07
  And that's why prayer is an essential part, should be an
• 22:09
  essential part of all of our days.
• 22:11
  Halo App is designed to help you pray and help you meet the
• 22:14
  demands of your day and listen and discern the voice of God in
• 22:17
  your life. So you can download Halo today,
• 22:20
  use the link in the description or go to halo.com/lila.
• 22:23
  You'll get 3 months free and use this incredible tool to deepen
• 22:27
  your relationship with God. Why do you think people struggle
• 22:31
  to hear the voice of God? There are a number of reasons
• 22:35
  I've found that people struggle. I think the first one that seems
• 22:40
  to be the most common that I've encountered is they don't think
• 22:44
  that it's possible for them. They have somehow disqualified
• 22:48
  themselves as being the sort of person who can hear from God.
• 22:52
  And so it's like, oh, I believe that God can speak, but that
• 22:56
  only for those who are super holy, like the Saints that we
• 22:59
  read about only for Saint Catherine of Siena, who, you
• 23:01
  know, we agree about these stories.
• 23:03
  Saint Teresa of Avila, you know, those that statue of Teresa and
• 23:06
  ecstasy. Like we hear these stories of
• 23:08
  people from our history who've had these profound encounters.
• 23:12
  And we think that that sort of thing is reserved to very
• 23:16
  specific types of people. And so it's easy to disqualify
• 23:20
  ourselves and say, I don't fit that mold.
• 23:22
  And so that's not for me. And so overcoming that hurdle of
• 23:26
  self disqualification, which sometimes could come in the form
• 23:29
  of I don't, I don't think I would want to talk to me.
• 23:31
  I don't think he is, you know, perhaps kind or generous enough
• 23:35
  to want to talk to me. I'm just a little old me and
• 23:37
  that sort of thing. And then I think the second,
• 23:41
  once someone has overcome that hurdle of really believing that
• 23:43
  it's possible to hear from God, the next hurdle is usually, how
• 23:47
  do I do it? Because we don't really talk
• 23:49
  about the practicals of it. We still sometimes think it's
• 23:52
  this thing that happens to us sovereignly that we don't really
• 23:56
  have a say in. It's like a big booming voice
• 23:58
  will show up or a bolt of lightning will come and strike
• 24:01
  or something like that. We're expecting it to come in
• 24:03
  the form of something grand or attention grabbing.
• 24:07
  And if that particular vision of what we're expecting doesn't
• 24:11
  come to pass in our lives, we just kind of default to
• 24:15
  thinking, well, then it's not possible.
• 24:16
  For me, that's not that's not happening.
• 24:19
  And so the key there is to learn how to listen.
• 24:23
  What are the different ways that God could speak that might not
• 24:25
  look the way that you're expecting, do you think?
• 24:28
  People sometimes also are afraid of what God might say, and so
• 24:33
  they don't like spend time just sitting there saying, God, speak
• 24:36
  to me, let's I want to hear you. I want to hear you because
• 24:37
  they're afraid of what you might say.
• 24:39
  Absolutely, absolutely. And I, I spent a little time in
• 24:43
  that camp for a bit where I had the idea that what God was most
• 24:49
  interested in talking to me about.
• 24:51
  Once I decided, OK, he's a God who talks and I could probably
• 24:54
  hear him, but I don't want to be just reminded of all the ways
• 24:58
  that I'm insufficient, all of my sins, all of my mistakes.
• 25:01
  I was convinced that his pressing desire to speak to me
• 25:05
  was going to be about my flaws. Correction.
• 25:09
  Yes. And so I, I mean, who would want
• 25:13
  to go to lunch with someone who was going to spend the whole
• 25:16
  time pointing out all the ways that are not good enough?
• 25:19
  We don't have trouble with that. I, I know good and well all the
• 25:22
  areas where I wish I could be better and would like to be
• 25:25
  better. And so I, it's almost like I
• 25:27
  didn't want that reminder of like just how far short I was
• 25:31
  falling. And so I would rather just not
• 25:33
  engage at all. And that misconception was
• 25:37
  rooted in a drastic underestimation in with God's
• 25:41
  goodness and his kindness. He's far more gracious.
• 25:44
  He's far more merciful. He's far more tender and kind
• 25:48
  than we can even imagine. We only have our human
• 25:51
  experience to draw from when envisioning the magnitude of
• 25:54
  God's kindness. And our experience in this world
• 25:57
  is broken. And so we experience things in
• 26:00
  this world like passive aggressiveness or guilt and
• 26:05
  shame as a means of motivating people or, you know, calling
• 26:08
  people out on their stuff. And, you know, oh, I feel like I
• 26:10
  need to fraternally correct you about this thing.
• 26:12
  Like, that's our experience. And we can't fathom a God whose
• 26:16
  love is stronger than even those things to motivate us, whose
• 26:21
  kindness can bring us to repentance.
• 26:23
  We just can't fathom it. And so the the disposition that
• 26:29
  we have that we bring into prayer where we're afraid of
• 26:32
  what God might say is usually rooted in a lack of
• 26:35
  understanding of just how kind he is and just how much love he
• 26:38
  has in his heart for us. It's.
• 26:40
  So beautiful. Do you think some of it too is
• 26:42
  that perhaps there are things that he's calling the person to
• 26:47
  that are greater than they can? And by greater, I don't mean
• 26:50
  that some necessary, some crazy big feat that they have to
• 26:53
  accomplish. But I more mean there's a
• 26:55
  richness to what God's inviting them to that may feel
• 26:59
  overwhelming or or from a distance seems overwhelming.
• 27:02
  So they don't want to go there because it seems foreign to
• 27:05
  them. I think deep down we all long to
• 27:08
  be part of something bigger than ourselves.
• 27:10
  That's true. I think there's something in us
• 27:11
  that would experience excitement even if there was intimidation.
• 27:15
  And so I I don't, I'm not the sort of person who would be
• 27:19
  afraid of that. I would give enthusiasm exactly.
• 27:22
  But I don't want to discredit people who might not feel that.
• 27:25
  Way I'm sure I could sit here and imagine like 20 different
• 27:28
  you know things that might hold someone back Yeah right but
• 27:32
  let's get to let's say let's just go with what we've already
• 27:35
  said, which is God's truth. He is love, he has kindness,
• 27:38
  he's mercy, and he wants to personally communicate with each
• 27:42
  of us in the events of our day and in the vocation that he's
• 27:44
  unfolding for our, our, our purpose.
• 27:46
  So let's go to your part of the book that you had a beautiful
• 27:50
  section called getting practical and you talk about the languages
• 27:54
  of God. What are the languages of God?
• 27:57
  Well, the. Languages of God are basically
• 28:00
  categories that I have collected to describe the different ways
• 28:04
  that I've witnessed God showing up for people that I've sort of
• 28:08
  painted as things to consider that as you are engaging in
• 28:12
  listening prayer, what to look out for, how he might show up.
• 28:15
  And so you could talk about it through like rows versus
• 28:18
  columns. You can kind of look like it's
• 28:19
  just kind of this collection. But the way that I I enjoy
• 28:22
  breaking it down for people is I like putting it into terms of
• 28:26
  four major languages or categories that God can speak
• 28:29
  through seeing, hearing, feeling, and thinking.
• 28:34
  And each of those have subcategories because I'm sort
• 28:37
  of an analytical person to lay things out.
• 28:39
  I think it's, by the way, the categories categorization, I
• 28:42
  think is incredibly helpful and I think is going to I know
• 28:45
  everyone who's read this is like, it's so good, Jonah.
• 28:48
  And and again, I think this book is just getting started.
• 28:50
  I mean, it's going to reach so many people.
• 28:52
  So walk us through the languages, OK?
• 28:54
  So the language of seeing is basically experiencing God
• 28:58
  speaking to you through images that are either happening
• 29:02
  internally in your mind's eye or or externally through your
• 29:05
  visual surroundings. So that would be like something
• 29:09
  the internal scene would be like that experience that I had when
• 29:11
  I was praying and I saw God put me into the arms of Jim.
• 29:15
  So that was happening in my minds eye and it was image
• 29:17
  based. Images that are around us could
• 29:21
  be things like if you are walking through nature and
• 29:24
  something grabs your attention and it becomes a catalyst for
• 29:28
  either further dialogue with the Lord, further revelation where
• 29:30
  you start ruminating on things in a certain way, or something
• 29:33
  that just kind of grabs you and brings you closer to him.
• 29:36
  So that can happen through movies.
• 29:38
  It can happen through the person that you're talking to,
• 29:40
  something just external, visually.
• 29:43
  So. And then there's a third
• 29:45
  category that's more mystical, which is like Saint John, who
• 29:48
  had the vision as he was writing the Book of Revelation.
• 29:50
  It was kind of a blend of physical and spiritual hybrid.
• 29:54
  And it's not as common, but it would be like an apparition.
• 29:58
  So not a lot of people have done.
• 30:00
  Yeah, exactly. But it is biblical.
• 30:03
  It is, you know, part of our body of faith to have this as a
• 30:06
  possibility. And so I like to put it out
• 30:08
  there for the few people who have had that experience and
• 30:11
  might heal alone or frightened because it's just so different
• 30:13
  than what we talk about. So that's one language.
• 30:17
  And then the second language would be the language of
• 30:19
  hearing. So hearing would be like
• 30:21
  experiencing a word or a phrase in your imagination, Hearing
• 30:26
  like a voice in your imagination or in your external
• 30:31
  surroundings. Something audible that catches
• 30:33
  your attention and brings you closer to the Lord through
• 30:36
  revelation and experience of His present.
• 30:37
  Meaning like from another person.
• 30:39
  Another person it could be the line in a movie that.
• 30:42
  Catch or the line in a song. In a song.
• 30:44
  We just had Ryan Bethea in the show and he was saying he had
• 30:47
  this big experience with God where he heard someone yelling
• 30:49
  his name and they were actually yelling his name, something
• 30:52
  else. But it was an answer to his
• 30:53
  prayer and it was way God chose to spoke with speak to him in
• 30:56
  that moment. But that's happened to me so
• 30:58
  many times with even like a like a random song and like something
• 31:01
  that is in that song really speaks.
• 31:04
  And if you pay enough attention, you can have this deeper journey
• 31:08
  with God and what He's trying to reveal to you or coach you on,
• 31:10
  or encourage you on or guide you on.
• 31:13
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 31:15
  And the, the tricky part about it's almost easier for us to
• 31:20
  identify it when it's coming from our surroundings because
• 31:23
  it's like, it catches our attention and we're like, whoa,
• 31:26
  that that wasn't me. That was something like it's,
• 31:29
  it's a grabber, like a heart grabber.
• 31:31
  But the thing that gets tricky is when you hear something
• 31:34
  internally in your imagination, because it usually comes in the
• 31:39
  voice of your own inner monologue voice.
• 31:41
  Like when we talk to ourselves in our minds, like, oh, and I'm,
• 31:44
  you know, making my grocery list in my head.
• 31:46
  It's that same voice that God has to work with when he speaks
• 31:49
  to us. And so we often will miss when
• 31:52
  he's speaking to us because it feels too normal.
• 31:55
  It feels like it's just me and they're talking to myself.
• 31:58
  And so that, that's an area where I think a lot of people
• 32:01
  tend to dismiss the times that God has spoken to them,
• 32:04
  mistaking it for when they've just been having their own
• 32:07
  thoughts to themselves, their own inner monologue voice
• 32:11
  thoughts. And so I, I wish, I say this in
• 32:14
  the book, I wish I could say that when it's God speaking,
• 32:17
  he's going to show up in a distinct way.
• 32:18
  Like James Earl Jones is out in your imagination with the, the
• 32:22
  Bony voice and something like that.
• 32:24
  But alas, he he works with what he's got and he's got us.
• 32:28
  I want to pause on this one for a moment because I think this
• 32:30
  is, like you said, a common one that can trip people up.
• 32:33
  What are the core parameters that you recommend for people to
• 32:37
  discern whether that inner monologue voice is of God of
• 32:41
  themselves or God forbid, of Satan or somebody evil, you
• 32:46
  know, one of the devils or somebody trying to, you know,
• 32:49
  tempt you towards something bad? Yeah.
• 32:51
  So I like to distinguish when we are engaging in listening
• 32:55
  prayer, the stage of listening from the stage of discerning.
• 32:59
  So I like to invite people to when you're listening for God,
• 33:03
  just let it be about listening and make a note of what you
• 33:06
  heard. Make a note of what you
• 33:07
  experience. Journal you recommend?
• 33:09
  Yeah, if you're a journal, you write it down.
• 33:11
  If it's something that is like short and small, you can just
• 33:14
  kind of tuck it away in your imagination, just like I'm gonna
• 33:16
  revisit that later. And then once you're done
• 33:19
  praying and listening, then look back at what you documented and
• 33:23
  enter into a discernment process of that thing.
• 33:26
  One by one, each thing that you heard or experienced, run it
• 33:29
  through the checkpoints that I encourage in the book to
• 33:32
  discern. Because if we try to discern as
• 33:35
  we are hearing it, as we are experiencing it, we could
• 33:38
  prematurely shut down something that the Lord is saying to us,
• 33:41
  because we might think that it's from myself or from the enemy.
• 33:45
  But this? Can't be God.
• 33:47
  This is just a silly old me or, you know, whatever hang up we
• 33:50
  might have might interrupt the flow.
• 33:52
  Or if it is the evil 1, maybe we want to cut it off.
• 33:56
  But it's good to know, I think what his what his tactic is.
• 33:59
  And you have a tip for that too, is how to speak the truth to the
• 34:03
  lie that Satan is telling in God's name and that can help
• 34:05
  Vanquish the enemy. So there's also the because if
• 34:08
  you just always have this little lingering thought and it always
• 34:10
  pops in your head, always pops in and you're not, you don't
• 34:12
  take the time to like deal with it.
• 34:14
  That's could that could be another mistake.
• 34:16
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:17
  And so creating that space, we have room to slow down in this.
• 34:21
  We don't have to be afraid of, oh, I don't want to entertain
• 34:24
  any thoughts that aren't from the Lord.
• 34:26
  Well, it's OK. Like you're not running off and
• 34:29
  sinning. Like just have it space to
• 34:31
  unfold and then you can examine it afterwards before you decide
• 34:34
  what to do with it. And so I like to encourage
• 34:37
  people to do that in in those two steps.
• 34:40
  And then, and that's true of everything that we hear in
• 34:43
  prayer or receive in prayer, whether it's that inner
• 34:46
  monologue voice that we've heard or any of the other languages.
• 34:49
  Like everything that we receive in prayer, we should put through
• 34:52
  a process of discernment before we take any action or consider
• 34:57
  how to treat it. So let's finish the other
• 35:00
  listening format, listening approaches, and then I want to
• 35:04
  you to go through that discernment process.
• 35:06
  I know I started to take you on a rabbit trail just now, which
• 35:09
  is a good one to go down, but I'll let you finish the
• 35:12
  listening approaches. OK?
• 35:14
  Yeah. We did the language of seeing,
• 35:16
  the language of hearing internally and externally.
• 35:18
  And there's also similar to that third category of seeing.
• 35:22
  There's also a hybrid of hearing like a locution, like if you
• 35:26
  heard the audible voice of the Lord, similar to how Samuel in
• 35:29
  Scripture heard what he thought was his master calling his name
• 35:32
  Samuel Samuel. And it turns out it wasn't the
• 35:35
  master, it was actually the the Lord speaking to him in such a
• 35:38
  real way that he thought it was a human being.
• 35:40
  And so sometimes that's a possibility as well for us.
• 35:44
  So seeing, hearing, and then the third language that I like to
• 35:48
  use is feeling the language of feeling either physical feeling
• 35:53
  or emotional feeling in prayer. And this is where I just want to
• 35:57
  give a big validation to all the feelers in the house.
• 36:00
  They enter into a Chapel and they just instantly their heart
• 36:04
  is filled with emotion or they are praying and they're they get
• 36:08
  tingles or they get a sense of deep peace or things.
• 36:11
  Along where they just cry. Are they cry?
• 36:14
  Yes. I know so many people who just
• 36:16
  cry and they don't know why or laugh and they don't know why.
• 36:19
  Sometimes they even just have a swell of emotion that could
• 36:22
  almost resemble grief. Like just there's stuff in them
• 36:25
  that is coming to the surface that they're processing and it's
• 36:28
  happening in prayer and the Lord is with them and he's drawing it
• 36:31
  out. And so it's, it's these things
• 36:33
  that are not as tangible as a word or an image, but it's still
• 36:37
  very valid. And it's very common for people
• 36:39
  to have these experiences in prayer.
• 36:41
  And it is a way of God communicating with us.
• 36:44
  So feeling physical, like tingling.
• 36:47
  I get warmth in my left hand sometimes when I'm praying,
• 36:50
  especially when I pray for healing for people.
• 36:52
  And I don't know why. I just have learned over the
• 36:54
  years that that that's just the Holy Spirit saying I'm here.
• 36:57
  I assume that's what he's saying because I haven't discovered
• 37:00
  anything further. But then those deep abiding
• 37:03
  feelings of peace that are very common joy, anything that's the
• 37:07
  fruit of the Spirit, you know, things along those lines.
• 37:10
  And then the 4th category is the category or language of
• 37:14
  thinking. And so this is a little bit, if
• 37:18
  you were to take to the next step, the idea of hearing from
• 37:23
  God, this is if you were to flesh it out into a full idea or
• 37:27
  an insight or an innovation even.
• 37:31
  I know a few people who have, they just lead very interesting
• 37:35
  lives where they seek the Lord for solutions to the problems
• 37:40
  that they're facing. And I've done this as well.
• 37:42
  And they ask him for input, like, Lord, how should I handle
• 37:45
  this situation? And then ideas will come to
• 37:48
  mind. And I think this is another way
• 37:51
  in which we are prone to dismissing God if we're not
• 37:53
  aware that he can speak this way, because it seems like a
• 37:56
  very human thing to do. Like if I'm coming up with a
• 37:58
  solution to a problem, surely I'm the author of that solution
• 38:02
  that I'm thinking about right now.
• 38:04
  But we fail to recognize that sometimes God is actually
• 38:07
  supplying those insights, supplying those ideas.
• 38:11
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  Washington Carver, He, he's known for inventing hundreds and
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  hundreds of things out of the peanut because he sought the
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  Lord during a time of I think there was like a crop shortage
• 39:13
  and there, there was an abundance of peanuts, but wow,
• 39:16
  just peanuts. And so he needed to figure out
• 39:19
  for the sake of his, you know, town, everybody around him.
• 39:23
  He was a scientist. How do we make use of this in a
• 39:26
  way that is going to help us, you know, get through this?
• 39:29
  And so he said, Lord, show me everything about the peanut.
• 39:32
  And he's a man of God while also being a scientist.
• 39:35
  And so he brought the ideas that he got in prayer to the
• 39:39
  laboratory with him, started breaking apart the peanut into
• 39:42
  its various parts, like the resins and the fats and the oils
• 39:45
  and all these things, and then recombining them, sometimes with
• 39:49
  heat, sometimes with pressure. And he ended up inventing
• 39:52
  hundreds of things from like glue to, I think, like shaving,
• 39:58
  like just crazy things just from this one peanut.
• 40:00
  And so he got those ideas from the Lord, and like this is
• 40:05
  available to us. That's so exciting.
• 40:07
  We were talking earlier. I know this is a little edgy,
• 40:09
  but we were like, this can be so misunderstood, but we're
• 40:12
  discussing a group of Christians that help identify missing
• 40:16
  persons through prayer. Yeah, share briefly about that
• 40:20
  just for people because they're using the listening method of
• 40:23
  God and a culminative effect of using all of them together.
• 40:27
  Where is this missing person located if you're willing to
• 40:31
  share briefly on that? Yeah, they basically have a team
• 40:34
  of people who independently, when they find out that there's
• 40:38
  a person who's missing, they will independently pray and ask
• 40:41
  the Lord for information, the word, can you show me where this
• 40:44
  person is right now? Is there an image that you can
• 40:46
  give me of what it looks like? Is there a route you can show me
• 40:49
  in my mind of a, you know, things along those lines I
• 40:52
  imagine is what they're asking him for specifics.
• 40:55
  And then they get together, they share what they heard and they
• 40:59
  have this discernment process where they basically look for
• 41:02
  patterns. Did anyone else hear that?
• 41:04
  Did anyone else see that? And when they start seeing
• 41:07
  commonalities among multiple people who've independently been
• 41:10
  listening for God, then they can take steps forward and press in
• 41:14
  further. They can go back to prayer and
• 41:15
  ask God for more specific information.
• 41:17
  And it's, it's beautiful. They've come to the point where
• 41:20
  they have a partnership with the local police and the FBI.
• 41:24
  And I, I think from what I am aware, I think the police are
• 41:29
  kind of of the mindset of we don't really know exactly what
• 41:32
  you're doing. All we know is that you are
• 41:34
  gaining results for working. Yeah, they found hundreds of
• 41:37
  people. What's so incredible though, is
• 41:39
  that is available to all of us for anything as much as the
• 41:42
  Lord's willing to provide, but we have to ask and listen.
• 41:45
  Again, this isn't some magic trick or like tell me you know
• 41:47
  all the secrets of the universe, but it's personal, it's real.
• 41:50
  And we're meant to come to before Him and ask Him any
• 41:53
  number of things and listen and see what He wants to tell us.
• 41:57
  And he will. He cares.
• 41:59
  Yeah, imagine the problems that we could solve if we develop
• 42:03
  this skill of listening and inviting him to speak.
• 42:05
  It's not a guarantee that he's going to give us the answer to
• 42:08
  everything that we ask. But, you know, we've got we've
• 42:10
  got good precedent in his character.
• 42:12
  And they like ask initial receipts, like he invites us to
• 42:16
  seek him for these sorts of things.
• 42:17
  And so I just, I love envisioning what's possible, you
• 42:21
  know, and not just in our personal paralyze, in our
• 42:24
  personal formation, but what's possible for the sake of
• 42:27
  bettering the world around us. Yeah, I mean, this is the so
• 42:30
  this was the gospel from just a couple days ago, but it's
• 42:32
  everywhere, right? The words that I speak to you, I
• 42:34
  do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is
• 42:36
  doing his works. Believe me that I'm in the
• 42:38
  Father, the fathers in me. Amen.
• 42:39
  And then I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the
• 42:41
  whoever believes in me will do the works that I do what the
• 42:45
  works of God and will do greater ones than these.
• 42:49
  I mean, if we really believe this, Jesus is saying this in
• 42:53
  the book of John, John 14, seven through 14.
• 42:56
  Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do
• 42:58
  greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father and
• 43:01
  He's going to give us a spirit. And whatever you ask in my name,
• 43:04
  I will do so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
• 43:08
  If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.
• 43:13
  That's scandalous if you think about it.
• 43:14
  It's. Crazy.
• 43:15
  Do we ask? We don't ask.
• 43:19
  OK, so parameters now we just went beautifully went through
• 43:22
  the four areas of ways that God may speak language he may use
• 43:25
  with us, his children. What are the parameters to know?
• 43:28
  OK, this isn't my crazy imagination.
• 43:31
  This isn't something that somebody else told me that just
• 43:33
  keeps coming to mind. This isn't the devil, this is
• 43:35
  God. So there are three possible
• 43:38
  sources for everything that we hear in prayer or experience in
• 43:41
  prayer. There's ourselves, there's the
• 43:44
  Lord, and there's the enemy. So what we want to do when
• 43:46
  you're entering into the discernment step is to determine
• 43:49
  what is the source of what I just experienced in prayer.
• 43:52
  Was it the Lord, Was it me, or was it the enemy?
• 43:54
  Quick interruption when you say myself, that could also mean
• 43:58
  other people, meaning it's coming from my own consciousness
• 44:01
  that somebody else influenced or so it doesn't necessarily have
• 44:04
  to be like my own original thought.
• 44:05
  It could be somebody else's thought, but not necessarily
• 44:08
  from God, is the idea. Yeah.
• 44:09
  And I would point to the specific experience that you
• 44:12
  have in prayer because if something comes to mind that
• 44:17
  someone else told you, it's still your mind that it came
• 44:20
  through. So that's why I would say we can
• 44:22
  attribute it to ourselves still in that case.
• 44:25
  So identifying the source is basically the goal in this
• 44:29
  discernment process. And so I like to think of it as
• 44:32
  there are three sort of filters that you want to run everything
• 44:36
  through to see, does it make it through all the filters?
• 44:40
  If it makes it through all the filters, then what you have is
• 44:43
  most likely this is a word from the Lord, a Rhema word from the
• 44:46
  Lord. And so the first thing we want
• 44:48
  to do is we want to check it against the Scripture and church
• 44:52
  teaching. Do what is the logos truth that
• 44:56
  we believe in our doctrine because the truth of scripture
• 45:01
  of church teaching is eternal. It's like the unchanging truths
• 45:06
  that are lasting throughout all times and all circumstances.
• 45:10
  So anything that we hear from the Lord, I believe that we've
• 45:13
  heard from the Lord in a particular moment will never
• 45:16
  contradict the eternal truths that we believe in our faith,
• 45:20
  because God can't contradict himself.
• 45:22
  He is truth. And if we hear a truth that is
• 45:26
  in contradictory to the eternal truth that he has already
• 45:28
  revealed, that is not possible. And so that's an indication that
• 45:33
  if I heard something that is contradictory to Scripture
• 45:37
  church teaching, right away, I can say that was not from the
• 45:40
  Lord. So for example, if I were to
• 45:42
  hear, let's say I was asking Lord, I use this example in my
• 45:45
  book, like Lord, I'm really struggling right now.
• 45:48
  My family is, we're really tight with finances and I'm, I'm
• 45:51
  really worried and I am not sure how to make ends meet.
• 45:55
  And I have the idea, the thought of maybe I could just skim a
• 45:59
  little off the top at work, you know, I've been working extra
• 46:01
  hours. They didn't pay me for overtime,
• 46:03
  but I put in the work. OK, So right away, you know, OK,
• 46:09
  document what you heard. And then when we go into
• 46:11
  discernment, we can take a look at that and say, what do we know
• 46:14
  that God teaches about stealing like?
• 46:17
  That's an easy one. Don't do it.
• 46:19
  Yeah. Or I love my boyfriend so much.
• 46:21
  I love him so much. He wants to move in it.
• 46:23
  It feels right. It feels right to move in with
• 46:25
  him. I mean, I we do a little bit of
• 46:27
  a call and draw on the side with the show and it's like this
• 46:29
  temptation. We'll just live together.
• 46:32
  And and it says, well, does that violate God's teaching?
• 46:35
  Yes. And even if it feels good, even
• 46:37
  if you feel comfort in the moment around this idea, that's
• 46:40
  not of God. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:42
  And that's the the easiest first step is just check it against
• 46:45
  what we already know to be true. If it doesn't line up with that,
• 46:49
  we're done discerning it is not from the Lord.
• 46:52
  So then let's say it does line up with scripture and choice
• 46:56
  teaching. It's OK, nothing contradictory
• 46:58
  here. The next step we move along to
• 47:00
  is we look at the filter of the character of God as seen in the
• 47:04
  life of Jesus. I'd like to describe it that way
• 47:06
  because it's a little more hands on, easy to envision.
• 47:10
  Is what we heard in prayer consistent with the character of
• 47:14
  God which we know from witnessing Jesus on the earth,
• 47:19
  the things he said, the things he did.
• 47:21
  Jesus was the perfect display of the Father.
• 47:24
  He came to show us the Father and so if we look at the things
• 47:29
  that are consistent with Jesus's MO, if you will, like how did he
• 47:33
  engage with people We can look at I think the the easy
• 47:38
  Scripture passage is John 1010. It's a line in the sand.
• 47:42
  Jesus says the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, but I
• 47:45
  come that they may have life and life abundant.
• 47:48
  And so when we are examining what I experienced in prayer, we
• 47:52
  can ask the question, does this look more like stealing, killing
• 47:55
  and destroying or more like life and life abundant?
• 47:58
  Does it line up with the MO of the enemy or does it line up
• 48:01
  with the MO of Jesus? Does it rob me of my peace?
• 48:04
  Does it steal me of faith? Does it tear me down or does it
• 48:10
  bring encouragement and strength to me?
• 48:12
  Does it is there kindness to it? Is there does it line up with
• 48:16
  the sorts of things that Jesus would say, the way that he would
• 48:20
  engage with people? And so this is a little bit more
• 48:23
  looking at the heart behind the thing.
• 48:26
  The first filter is looking at the objective.
• 48:29
  This is the church teaching. This is the the thing itself.
• 48:32
  This is more like the the manner in which that thing showed up as
• 48:38
  we were praying. And so once again, if it doesn't
• 48:42
  line up with the character and nature of God as we see in the
• 48:45
  life of Jesus, we can say that was not from the Lord then.
• 48:49
  And if it does line up with the character of God, then we move
• 48:53
  on to the third filter, which is the subjective filter.
• 48:56
  It is the filter of. What kind of fruit is this
• 48:59
  producing in me? I have a question before we get
• 49:02
  to subjective filter because what you just said about the
• 49:04
  character of God, I think this can be a source of trip up for
• 49:08
  some folks as well. Like you were describing what
• 49:11
  this last one it could be, which is the character of God.
• 49:15
  There is the God of mercy and he's also a God of justice.
• 49:18
  I think the power of self deception is real and people,
• 49:23
  especially in today's culture, it's so easy to be deceived
• 49:26
  because there's so many lies that are being told about the
• 49:29
  human person, our identity, our purpose.
• 49:32
  And so I, I think especially with regard to issues of
• 49:34
  identity, issues of sexuality, people might feel very strongly
• 49:39
  that they are, you know, as an example, I meant to, I'm, I'm,
• 49:43
  you know, I'm gay, I'm same sex attraction.
• 49:45
  Maybe they think this and so they believe this is their
• 49:47
  identity and that God wouldn't curse them with that.
• 49:50
  And so they might want to be in a relationship with someone of
• 49:53
  the same sex, have sexual activity with them.
• 49:55
  And maybe they say, well, I feel good in this relationship.
• 49:57
  I feel peace. And it's the character of God to
• 50:00
  not want me to be unhappy, happy and lonely right now.
• 50:03
  The first gate has been violated, like you said, in
• 50:07
  discernment. But I'm just kind of
• 50:10
  anticipating maybe maybe not a sexuality issue.
• 50:13
  Maybe it's something else that's kind of more less morally clear.
• 50:17
  It's more ambiguous, right? And there's sort of you could
• 50:20
  make an argument on both sides for the fruit, right?
• 50:22
  Like you could see it on both sides.
• 50:24
  Or how? How does someone discern A
• 50:26
  trickier situation? Yeah, I think one of the areas
• 50:31
  that I see people stumble in most commonly has to do with
• 50:37
  kind of the, they almost feel like there's a harshness to the
• 50:40
  way that God speaks to them. And so if we were to just focus
• 50:44
  on the filter of God's character and nature through what we see
• 50:47
  in Jesus and, and I specify Jesus because he is the perfect
• 50:51
  revelation of the Father. And it's the easiest thing to
• 50:53
  look at because he was on the earth walking.
• 50:55
  And we can actually read the Gospels and see what was he
• 50:58
  showing us about the Father's heart, about the way that the
• 51:01
  Father engages with us. So a lot of people bring a lens
• 51:06
  to how they interpret God feels toward them and engages with
• 51:10
  them. And that lens often includes
• 51:13
  things like tough love or shame or guilt or he's, you know, or
• 51:18
  manipulation even, like he's trying to pull a fast one and
• 51:21
  that sort of thing. And because that's been our
• 51:24
  experience in the broken world around us.
• 51:27
  And so if we are not well formed in our understanding of God's
• 51:32
  kindness and what kindness looks like, goodness looks like, this
• 51:36
  filter might be a little tricky. And I would say I would
• 51:41
  encourage anyone who is a little rusty on figuring this out to
• 51:44
  actually dwell in the gospels for a good long time, to really
• 51:49
  get it into their heart, into their bones, who God is.
• 51:52
  How? The shepherd sounds I think
• 51:55
  about the Bible verse and it it trips some people up where even
• 51:58
  the scraps are given to the dogs.
• 52:00
  You know, why should I give it to you?
• 52:01
  And it sounds very. Harsh.
• 52:03
  What the Lord is saying to this woman.
• 52:04
  But I think some people who who are more like prone to the tough
• 52:07
  love will say, well, sometimes God does talk a little tough,
• 52:11
  saying Teresa of Avila was famous for saying, you know, she
• 52:14
  was on this missionary trip and she was in a carriage and she
• 52:17
  fell in the mud. And she was like, I'm having
• 52:19
  such a terrible day. And it's so I'm so disorganized
• 52:22
  today and like, all these chaotic things are happening to
• 52:24
  me today. And she's like, God, why are
• 52:26
  you, you know, you know, why, why am I in the mud?
• 52:29
  Why do I have mud all over me? You know, I fell off the horse
• 52:32
  or whatever it is, right? And she feels like the Lord
• 52:34
  says, you're my friend. And she says, if this is how you
• 52:38
  treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few.
• 52:41
  Yeah, again, but maybe we're looking at it with a lens of
• 52:45
  like, they were really having a lovely like, like, ha ha, we got
• 52:48
  mud. Let's keep going guys.
• 52:49
  You know, instead of like. Right.
• 52:52
  Yeah. And I, I do have people ask
• 52:54
  those kinds of questions a lot because they can pull out
• 52:57
  Scripture verses where they feel like God is bringing a
• 52:59
  particular tone. But I would actually push back a
• 53:03
  little bit and say, are you bringing a bias into that?
• 53:06
  Are you bringing a particular interpretive lens of sarcasm, a
• 53:10
  lens of harshness, a lens of, you know, what's the tone of
• 53:15
  voice that Jesus used with that woman?
• 53:17
  Was it snarky? How do we know that it was
• 53:20
  snarky? Maybe it was playful.
• 53:22
  Yeah. We don't we until we study the
• 53:26
  context, which is I guess probably the solution that we
• 53:28
  could pursue is if, if you feel like you're bringing a
• 53:33
  particular lens of interpretation like this that
• 53:35
  isn't perhaps unbiased, maybe digging into the context of some
• 53:41
  of these scripture passages to get the full picture of what
• 53:44
  Jesus is saying. Because I think we do bring a
• 53:47
  certain flavor to things because of what we expect him to sound
• 53:51
  like, which again, is shaped by our experience in the world.
• 53:54
  Or by maybe our own personality flaws or challenges.
• 53:57
  I do think the snarky sarcastic stuff too is so common today.
• 54:02
  It's so common. And some of it can be fun when
• 54:05
  it's between friends and just you're kind of teasing each
• 54:07
  other. But it's often used as a weapon.
• 54:10
  And so I but I think people think I'm speaking the truth,
• 54:13
  seeing the truth. And this is, you know, God Jesus
• 54:15
  called the Pharisees whitewashed sepulchers.
• 54:18
  Sepulchers. How do you say sepulchers?
• 54:21
  And he was so, you know, you know, he flips tables in the,
• 54:24
  you know, in the courtyard outside the temple and said,
• 54:26
  what have you? You made my father's house a
• 54:28
  place of money changers and, you know, whatever.
• 54:30
  So I'm going to be like this, you know, I'm going to be a
• 54:33
  crusader. Yeah.
• 54:34
  And I feel like that's another example of cherry picking.
• 54:37
  We're just cherry picking these scripture verses out of context.
• 54:40
  OK, so Jesus had a sterner tone when he was talking to the
• 54:44
  Pharisees. The Pharisees were opposed to
• 54:47
  Jesus. So if are we Pharisees, if we're
• 54:51
  disciples of Jesus, haven't we given our yes to him?
• 54:54
  Haven't we told him? I want to follow you, Lord, I'm
• 54:57
  sincerely trying to follow you. I'm not trying to oppose you.
• 55:01
  Why would we expect Jesus to speak to his followers the same
• 55:05
  way that he speaks to the Pharisees?
• 55:06
  Interesting. So you know, that's the, I
• 55:09
  mostly just put that forth as a way of challenging what's your
• 55:12
  bias that you might be bringing in?
• 55:14
  Are you bringing in a bias of oh, I haven't really examined
• 55:17
  the precise detail of who Jesus is talking to.
• 55:19
  What has motivated him to say it?
• 55:21
  What was the tone in which he said it?
• 55:23
  He flipped those tables for a reason, not because his
• 55:26
  disciples made a blunder, not because, you know, it was
• 55:29
  because there were people who were, you know, doing these
• 55:33
  horrible things like there were, you know, the the Pharisees
• 55:36
  were, I don't know what the best word to use is, but it was like
• 55:39
  a defamation and it was an injustice and he.
• 55:42
  They were literally ripping off the poor and they were leaving
• 55:45
  the, you know, the the elderly with no, I mean, there were some
• 55:48
  severe human rights abuses in the name of religion.
• 55:53
  And so I think that was particularly against the heart
• 55:55
  of God. And he was saying this is not my
• 55:57
  this is not my way. And they were claiming to be the
• 55:59
  religious leaders for the people like this is the truth.
• 56:01
  This is we represent God. So if you look at that context,
• 56:05
  that that magnitude of response is warranted by that situation,
• 56:11
  but why would we expect that same magnitude of response to
• 56:15
  apply to, oh, I accidentally did this thing or like, I'm, I'm
• 56:19
  just, I'm fumbling my way through life, but I'm still
• 56:21
  sincerely seeking the Lord. Like it's, it's that level of
• 56:24
  nuance that I think we need to bring when we try to wrap our
• 56:27
  minds around the the character of God and the degree of his
• 56:32
  kindness. So what would be the third way
• 56:36
  or the third area of discernment?
• 56:38
  OK, the third filter, the third filter would be the filter of
• 56:43
  what is the fruit that was produced in me.
• 56:45
  When I heard that thing in prayer, did it produce in me
• 56:49
  something from the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, Lovejoy,
• 56:52
  peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, did that, Did that
• 56:56
  stir in me? Or when I heard that thing in
• 56:59
  prayer, did it stir up a sense of anxiety, to stir up a sense
• 57:04
  of possessiveness, a sense of fear, a sense of control, a
• 57:07
  sense of, oh, I don't know, I don't know, sense of foreboding
• 57:11
  or something along those lines? And this I bring in as the
• 57:16
  subjective filter because it's looking at not the thing that we
• 57:21
  heard in prayer, but the effect that that thing had on us.
• 57:24
  And we, if we were to only limit our discernment to looking at
• 57:29
  the objective thing that we heard in prayer, we could miss
• 57:33
  the, I guess the personal nature of conversation with God.
• 57:38
  And I've, I've made mistakes in this area myself until I
• 57:41
  understood that this was a part of the discernment process.
• 57:43
  I, when I was in college, I was convinced that I was called to
• 57:46
  religious life because I love the Lord and I love prayer.
• 57:50
  And I, it kind of made sense that that would be the path for
• 57:54
  my life. And so I started going through
• 57:57
  all the internal motions of like, I'm going to, I'm going to
• 58:01
  simplify my life. I'm going to die to solve.
• 58:03
  I'm going to start distancing myself from relationships in
• 58:05
  anticipation of Sunday entering a convent and so forth.
• 58:08
  And it was only after, I think, several weeks of doing this that
• 58:12
  I recognized I was just so miserable.
• 58:15
  I was so sad. And I reached the point of I was
• 58:19
  crying on the floor of the Chapel because I was so hurt.
• 58:22
  I don't want to be a nun. Exactly.
• 58:25
  And it made sense on paper, but it did not were it didn't sit
• 58:29
  right with me. And the mistake I made was I
• 58:32
  didn't discern the fruit that it was producing in me.
• 58:35
  I only discerned it for its merits as a stand alone,
• 58:37
  objective thing that God might have said to me.
• 58:41
  And so that's why I always, I, I don't start with the subjective
• 58:44
  because we have to start with something more concrete than
• 58:47
  that when we discern, but we have to include it because it,
• 58:49
  it makes a difference. I've heard some people talk
• 58:52
  about it in terms of God works through our desires and he it's
• 58:57
  a very rare situation where he's going to call us to something
• 59:00
  that goes against our desires. Now you have to kind of be
• 59:04
  mindful there can be disordered desires.
• 59:06
  We all have them. So it's not like every desire is
• 59:08
  good, but when you subject them to the kingship of God, you
• 59:12
  know, the kingship of Jesus Christ and you make sure what is
• 59:14
  like literally an immoral desire.
• 59:16
  Like that's that's category. Like we got to work through
• 59:18
  that. But in terms of like your
• 59:20
  vocation, calling to be maybe a priest or a religious or
• 59:24
  marriage, like marrying some guy.
• 59:25
  If you don't really want to marry the guy, you should not
• 59:27
  marry the guy, right? Like God's got if you don't
• 59:29
  really want to be that priest. Yeah, maybe there's some, you
• 59:32
  know, a little bit of a sense of loss.
• 59:33
  I'm not going to have biological children in this life, right.
• 59:36
  But I'll see your children. And there's like, you know, you
• 59:38
  would have loved to have biological, but you know, I'm,
• 59:40
  I'm so excited to have spiritual children.
• 59:42
  God will work with that desire. And so I've just heard that as a
• 59:45
  good kind of sniff test that I've heard wise guide say, it's
• 59:48
  like, if your, if your desire is like, I don't want this and it's
• 59:52
  not a right or wrong thing. It's a question of two goods.
• 59:55
  Then God works with our human freedom, which is so.
• 59:58
  Which is so freeing to know that.
• 1:00:00
  Yeah. And we could even extend that to
• 1:00:02
  say God doesn't give us desires only to frustrate us.
• 1:00:06
  Like if it is truly a desire that's from the Lord, then we
• 1:00:10
  can trust that he's going to help bring it about.
• 1:00:12
  And so learning to discern was that kind of like you said in
• 1:00:16
  ordered or disordered desire, that if we identify it as this
• 1:00:20
  desire is from the Lord, that can be a way for us to recognize
• 1:00:23
  God's guidance, his hand on us to help steer us in that
• 1:00:26
  direction. I want to get your thoughts on
• 1:00:29
  this idea of silence from God because I, I've know people who
• 1:00:32
  have told me I pray and I don't hear anything.
• 1:00:35
  I mean, yes, I hear like the, the scripture readings for the
• 1:00:38
  day or I'll read a spiritual book.
• 1:00:40
  I mean, like, that's a good thought.
• 1:00:41
  That's a nice thought, but I don't like hear God speaking to
• 1:00:43
  me. And I've also heard other people
• 1:00:45
  say, well, my spirit, my prayer is so dry.
• 1:00:47
  It's like a dark night of the soul, and this is something that
• 1:00:50
  Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Calcutta and
• 1:00:53
  others actually had. They had something called the
• 1:00:55
  Dark Night of the Skull. Explain the differences between
• 1:00:57
  these things and what it might mean when somebody says I'm not
• 1:01:00
  hearing what might be happening, when they say I'm not hearing
• 1:01:02
  from God. So I'll start with the second
• 1:01:05
  question first. What if someone is saying I just
• 1:01:07
  am not hearing from God? My first question for them would
• 1:01:10
  be what are you looking for? What is the means by which you
• 1:01:14
  are expecting him to show up? And is it possible that it would
• 1:01:19
  help to broaden what it is that you're looking for?
• 1:01:21
  Cause a lot of times people think that they're not hearing
• 1:01:23
  from the Lord, but it's because they're expecting him to show up
• 1:01:26
  in a very specific way or maybe in a small collection of ways
• 1:01:30
  versus a wider gamut of possibilities, kind of like the
• 1:01:34
  ones we were listing through earlier.
• 1:01:36
  So that would be my first question for them.
• 1:01:38
  And then if they're like, well, I, I am on the lookout for all
• 1:01:41
  these different ways and I'm just not hearing.
• 1:01:43
  There are a number of possible explanations that I could think
• 1:01:48
  of for why God might not speak about a particular thing.
• 1:01:50
  One could be maybe he's already spoken to you about it in the
• 1:01:54
  past and he has nothing new to say.
• 1:01:56
  So meaning you like say like God, like why won't you're
• 1:01:59
  you're single and you're why won't so and so date mirror
• 1:02:01
  something And they're like God's just like not the one for you.
• 1:02:03
  And you're like asking again. And I say like, sorry, the doors
• 1:02:06
  closed. You know, it's not going to like
• 1:02:08
  be you over the head with it. Like just, you know, maybe move
• 1:02:11
  your maybe. I mean, what is so beautiful
• 1:02:13
  about and the purge you recommend your book is you say,
• 1:02:15
  God, What do you want to say say to me today?
• 1:02:17
  Instead of coming with your specific question and demanding
• 1:02:21
  that answer for that question, you could try.
• 1:02:23
  It's not a bad thing, but anyways.
• 1:02:26
  Different questions. If he's not answering that
• 1:02:28
  particular question, that doesn't mean he doesn't want to
• 1:02:30
  talk to us. He might just want to change the
• 1:02:32
  subject. There's something else to say.
• 1:02:34
  Maybe gosh, I mean, there are any variety of explanations, but
• 1:02:38
  I think the last explanation that we would arrive at should
• 1:02:41
  be, oh, he's just withholding himself because he's, you know,
• 1:02:44
  put me through a trial like I, the, the idea of a dark night of
• 1:02:48
  the soul, I think is something that people jump to as the
• 1:02:51
  explanation for why they might not be hearing from God.
• 1:02:54
  And they look to people like Saint John of the Cross, Saint
• 1:02:58
  Teresa, and, and they say, well, this is something that has
• 1:03:01
  happened. So this is clearly what I'm
• 1:03:02
  going through because I'm experiencing this desolation
• 1:03:05
  where God is just distant from me and I, he's withholding
• 1:03:08
  himself. And so to that, I, I really
• 1:03:11
  think it's important for us to contextualize the commonality of
• 1:03:15
  a dark night of the soul. If you were to look at the
• 1:03:18
  Saints in our history who experienced that, it wasn't
• 1:03:21
  everybody. It was, it was a, it was rare
• 1:03:24
  and it was almost like just a mystical supernatural gift from
• 1:03:30
  the lure, almost akin to a stigmata.
• 1:03:32
  And it, it again, isn't for everybody.
• 1:03:35
  It's for if you look at the types of people who've
• 1:03:37
  experienced that, those were all people who are very spiritually
• 1:03:42
  mature, who had a long history with the Lord of already hearing
• 1:03:46
  from him. They had trust built up.
• 1:03:48
  They had developed this sort of intimacy, this regular sort of
• 1:03:53
  mystical relationship with Him, and this dark night of the soul
• 1:03:57
  entered in at the tail end of that relationship.
• 1:04:01
  It wasn't something that the Lord threw on them at the early
• 1:04:03
  stages of them learning to hear the shepherd's voice.
• 1:04:06
  That would be cool. And so I, I like to
• 1:04:10
  contextualize that point because I think we jumped too quickly to
• 1:04:13
  that conclusion because we might not know that there are other
• 1:04:17
  explanations. So I, I like to propose to
• 1:04:20
  people to if you aren't hearing from the Lord in prayer, you
• 1:04:23
  don't think you're hearing, try asking another question.
• 1:04:28
  Try listening in a different language, like if you're
• 1:04:31
  accustomed to hearing the Lord through words, try looking
• 1:04:36
  around the room for a visual that might grab your attention,
• 1:04:40
  like be intentional about where are you looking?
• 1:04:42
  How are you looking for his response to you?
• 1:04:47
  So I, I think there are probably more things that I mentioned in
• 1:04:50
  the book, but I think that that's probably a good start for
• 1:04:53
  now. But I, I do think that silence
• 1:04:56
  from the Lord, I mean, if we were to just look at
• 1:05:00
  relationships between parents and children, we could draw a
• 1:05:03
  lot of conclusions about healthy communication just from those
• 1:05:06
  relationships. And I, I think it would be
• 1:05:09
  difficult to point to healthy relationships that look like
• 1:05:14
  intentionally pulling back in silence and creating distance
• 1:05:17
  between you and your loved one in order to better them in some
• 1:05:21
  way. Like it's that's not, I don't
• 1:05:24
  think it's, it's a fruitful way to engage with a person.
• 1:05:27
  And so if we're build, if we know that God is an even better
• 1:05:30
  father than the fathers here on this earth, I think we can
• 1:05:33
  conclude that he would he would have a higher way of engaging
• 1:05:36
  with us than giving us the experience of distance before
• 1:05:40
  we've we've really gotten locked in on his experience of
• 1:05:43
  closeness. What about the role of Lexio
• 1:05:46
  Divina in prayer, especially for people that may be like, I don't
• 1:05:50
  know where to start or what to ask.
• 1:05:52
  What would you what role do you think that might play and what
• 1:05:55
  what is that in in you can explain what it is for people
• 1:05:58
  too. Yeah, I, I feel like Lexia
• 1:06:00
  Davina is exactly this is listening prayer.
• 1:06:04
  So the art of Lexia Davina is essentially you're taking a body
• 1:06:07
  of scripture like a paragraph, perhaps a couple of verses, and
• 1:06:11
  you're reading through it very slowly, methodically, and you're
• 1:06:14
  looking for something that the Lord is catching your attention
• 1:06:18
  with that he wants to communicate to about in deeply
• 1:06:22
  personal way for right here, right now.
• 1:06:24
  It's not a revelation of objective truths of our faith.
• 1:06:28
  It's it's something from Scripture that the Lord is like
• 1:06:31
  John, and this is for you. This is what I want you to
• 1:06:33
  receive from me right now. And, and pulling that out from
• 1:06:38
  that body of text and dwelling with it and allowing the Lord to
• 1:06:42
  kind of, yes, you can almost say minister to us, get it into our
• 1:06:46
  hearts, help us to almost saturate in it and and as a
• 1:06:51
  means of drawing closer to him. And so I see it as a very, I
• 1:06:56
  mean, very easy way to practice listening prayer.
• 1:07:00
  I I think if you don't have an understanding of the role of
• 1:07:04
  listening, you might not piece together that that's what you're
• 1:07:07
  doing with Lexio Davina, but I absolutely think that's what's
• 1:07:10
  happening. And when people back to the
• 1:07:12
  experience of silence, some people might have you you talked
• 1:07:15
  about what the dark night of the soul.
• 1:07:18
  Don't assume it's the dark night of the soul.
• 1:07:19
  It's very rarely that, and that's usually for Christians
• 1:07:22
  who've already had that very intimate experience,
• 1:07:25
  conversational experience with God for many years, typically
• 1:07:27
  before they're given this special cross, kind of like a
• 1:07:30
  stigmata. You know, it's actually as
• 1:07:33
  supernaturally distinctive as that.
• 1:07:35
  And, and, and I would even say rare to have a dark night of the
• 1:07:38
  soul. So for most people, if they're
• 1:07:40
  experiencing silence from God, do you chalk that up to they
• 1:07:43
  don't know how to pray? And so they're they're they're
• 1:07:46
  maybe just missing where God may be speaking because they're not
• 1:07:51
  taking the time for it or they're not approaching it with
• 1:07:53
  this particular the right way to listen.
• 1:07:56
  So they're miss, they miss him. Oftentimes that that could be
• 1:08:00
  the case and without knowing the person, I mean, I think there
• 1:08:04
  are people of goodwill who do know how to listen, but perhaps
• 1:08:09
  it could be further developed, like perhaps they don't know
• 1:08:13
  that oh God could speak to me through feelings.
• 1:08:15
  I didn't realize that I, you know, now that I think about it,
• 1:08:19
  every time I go into a Chapel, I'm flooded with peace and I
• 1:08:22
  just sit and I abide in that peace for a while, but I'm not
• 1:08:25
  hearing any words. I'm not.
• 1:08:26
  And so it's almost like if you start to consider new avenues
• 1:08:30
  through which God might be speaking, you might come to
• 1:08:32
  realize that he actually has been speaking to you, has never
• 1:08:35
  stopped speaking to you. It's just in a different way
• 1:08:37
  than he has been speaking to you in the past.
• 1:08:40
  And I've observed that most commonly with people who the
• 1:08:43
  Lord is growing them. He's growing them in their
• 1:08:47
  capacity to hear Him and to dialogue with them.
• 1:08:50
  And it's almost like, well, like a little bit of hide and seek, I
• 1:08:53
  guess you could say, if you want to bring that lens to it of
• 1:08:55
  like, OK, I'm not hearing God here.
• 1:08:57
  Where else might he be? Like if you bring that playful
• 1:09:00
  tone to it, like I think Scripture says, Oh, I forget
• 1:09:04
  where. But like he hides himself that
• 1:09:05
  he might be found. And so if we think of it that
• 1:09:08
  way, if, if we're not hearing from him and we've tried other,
• 1:09:12
  you know, practices, other means, like, OK, perhaps another
• 1:09:15
  language, perhaps asking a different question or asking the
• 1:09:19
  question in a different manner. Might you know, like, Lord, can
• 1:09:22
  you tell me, you know, a scripture verse that would
• 1:09:25
  encourage me right now? No, Is there an image that you
• 1:09:28
  can give me that would encourage me right now?
• 1:09:29
  Like kind of treat it playfully, almost like you would with a
• 1:09:34
  person. Just like you're, you're just
• 1:09:35
  learning him, you're understanding him.
• 1:09:37
  You're coming to know this dynamic that he wants to have
• 1:09:41
  between the two of you that's so precious and beautiful and
• 1:09:44
  unique to your relationship that it should be something to
• 1:09:46
  explore and delight in and seen it as an adventure rather than
• 1:09:51
  be worried about and scared of. I think having the operational
• 1:09:55
  worldview too, which is the truth that all things work
• 1:09:57
  together for the good of those that love Him.
• 1:09:59
  Romans 828 and God is working through every single event of
• 1:10:03
  our life for His, for our good, for His glory, that His
• 1:10:06
  Providence is bigger than anything we can even imagine.
• 1:10:09
  I mean, this is his world. We are his.
• 1:10:11
  And so that like when you know that that's the truth, then even
• 1:10:16
  if you're not necessarily getting the conversation
• 1:10:19
  throughout the day because you're maybe not listening
• 1:10:21
  enough, right? But you know, as a foundational
• 1:10:24
  level, it changes the disposition.
• 1:10:27
  You can change your disposition towards everything in this life.
• 1:10:30
  And that's why, you know, I think about the Saints that go,
• 1:10:32
  the martyrs that go to their death singing and it was their
• 1:10:36
  operational worldview. This is for good.
• 1:10:38
  I'm going to go to heaven, right, This is and it was also,
• 1:10:40
  I believe, intimacy with God in conversation, like God was
• 1:10:43
  probably giving them the song and their on their lips like
• 1:10:46
  you're like, I love you. Like even maybe even given them
• 1:10:48
  physical emotional consolations, like feeling like lightness and
• 1:10:51
  joy when they're going to the executioners block.
• 1:10:53
  Because you look at some of these stories and they're so
• 1:10:56
  jarring. I mean, I, I feel like we talked
• 1:10:58
  about the martyrs a lot on this podcast, actually, because
• 1:11:00
  they're so jarring. And these are appalled as these
• 1:11:03
  incredible models of faith. And you think about us and our
• 1:11:05
  modern life, our comforts and our inconveniences.
• 1:11:07
  And we're like, oh, gosh, like going to the arena to die, going
• 1:11:10
  to the executioner's block to die.
• 1:11:12
  But if we remember that God, like you said, speaks through
• 1:11:14
  these different ways and he gives us the consolations we
• 1:11:17
  need for, for what he's calling us to.
• 1:11:20
  Yeah. If you believe all things work
• 1:11:22
  together for good, you can only really believe that if you trust
• 1:11:25
  that God is who he says he is and he'll do what he says he'll
• 1:11:27
  do. And so how do we come to that
• 1:11:30
  point of trust? We have to build a history with
• 1:11:33
  him. We have to put ourselves in a
• 1:11:35
  position where we make ourselves vulnerable and we allow him to
• 1:11:38
  show up and we get to witness him showing up If we never take
• 1:11:42
  the risk of what if I, I, I've struggled with this for a little
• 1:11:46
  bit. What if I go into prayer and he
• 1:11:48
  just has nothing to say to me? What if, what if it's going to
• 1:11:51
  feel like rejection? What if it's going to feel like
• 1:11:54
  he's abandoned me? What if it like that fear?
• 1:11:57
  And so if I never put myself out there anyway, if I never take
• 1:12:01
  that risk of perhaps I would feel rejected if God didn't show
• 1:12:05
  up, you know what, I'm going to go anyway.
• 1:12:07
  That gives him the opportunity to show up and a sort of squelch
• 1:12:11
  that fear and that starts to rewire our neural pathways and
• 1:12:14
  how we believe that he is the God who comes through.
• 1:12:17
  He is the God who keeps his word.
• 1:12:19
  He is the one who will show up. And so kind of like that, you
• 1:12:22
  know, we have to build that trust, but that comes through a
• 1:12:26
  process too. And so it's, it's messy and it's
• 1:12:29
  hard, but it's, it's what allows us to arrive at the point that
• 1:12:32
  these Saints did where they're singing on their way to to the
• 1:12:35
  execution because they had that profound trust in him.
• 1:12:38
  Yeah, I think about become like a little child so that you can
• 1:12:41
  enter the Kingdom of God. And Jesus says those to us and
• 1:12:44
  little children are so trusting. They're so trusting.
• 1:12:48
  It's just beautiful. And we're supposed to be like
• 1:12:51
  that. What are some other?
• 1:12:53
  We're going to do the listening prayer together in a minute,
• 1:12:55
  which I'm very excited about. So we're actually going to Jonah
• 1:12:58
  is going to lead us in a little prayer session here on the show.
• 1:13:02
  Are there any other principles or pointers that you think we
• 1:13:06
  should cover before we do the session?
• 1:13:08
  So one thing that I like to encourage people to do,
• 1:13:11
  especially if they find themselves at that initial
• 1:13:14
  hurdle of I'm not sure that I'm cut out to hear from God.
• 1:13:18
  I'm not sure that he would want to speak to me.
• 1:13:20
  I'm not sure that this is going to work if those apprehensions
• 1:13:24
  are present. The way that I like to think
• 1:13:26
  about it is I'm, I'm borrowing some terminology from a priest
• 1:13:29
  friend of mine who coined the phrase a theology of absence
• 1:13:32
  versus a theology of presence. So a theology of absence
• 1:13:36
  basically means that you are carrying the disposition or the
• 1:13:38
  expectation as you enter into prayer that God is most of the
• 1:13:43
  time absent from us, distant from us, not speaking.
• 1:13:47
  And occasionally he'll pipe up and say something, maybe if it's
• 1:13:50
  an important enough thing to speak about, maybe if it's an
• 1:13:53
  exceptional set of circumstances.
• 1:13:55
  But for the most part, he's silent.
• 1:13:57
  So that's indicative of a theology of absence.
• 1:14:00
  And if you feel like you carry that, don't feel ashamed of
• 1:14:04
  that. It's very common.
• 1:14:06
  But at what I would like to invite you to do is to embrace
• 1:14:09
  instead a theology of presence which says that basically God is
• 1:14:14
  always speaking. He always has something to say.
• 1:14:17
  He always wants to be speaking to us.
• 1:14:19
  And occasionally we might have an experience of perceived
• 1:14:22
  absence or perceived silence, but that's the rare one.
• 1:14:26
  That's the rare moment for the most part, He wants to speak.
• 1:14:30
  He wants us to be able to hear him.
• 1:14:32
  And so off Oftentimes I find that if we're willing to
• 1:14:35
  exchange a theology of absence for a theology of presence
• 1:14:39
  instead, what that ends up doing is it, it postures us
• 1:14:44
  differently as we enter into prayer because it takes us from
• 1:14:47
  a place of, I don't know if God is going to show up when I go
• 1:14:51
  into prayer and instead puts us into the posture of, I know he's
• 1:14:56
  going to show up. It's just a matter of how.
• 1:14:58
  And then we start to look differently at where might he be
• 1:15:01
  showing up? Not is he going to show up, but
• 1:15:04
  where is he going to show up? And so that's sort of the
• 1:15:07
  encouragement that I like to offer people who are a little
• 1:15:10
  bit hesitant of like, Oh, I just, I'm, I'm apprehensive
• 1:15:13
  about what might happen if I were to engage in listening
• 1:15:16
  prayer just for a moment as you give it a try.
• 1:15:20
  Embrace a theology of presence. Just choose to believe that he
• 1:15:24
  wants to speak, that he wants you to know him in this way.
• 1:15:27
  He wants to be present to you in this way and and entering with
• 1:15:31
  expectancy. That's so beautiful.
• 1:15:34
  And it's back to that core principle that you said earlier
• 1:15:37
  of trust. I this is coming to mind.
• 1:15:40
  So I'm just going to say it because we do talk about all the
• 1:15:41
  tough stuff on the show a lot. But you know, there was a
• 1:15:44
  bombing recently in Palm Springs.
• 1:15:46
  You probably heard about it. 25 year old kid blew himself up
• 1:15:49
  outside an IVF clinic because he was raging at existence.
• 1:15:52
  He didn't want to exist. He said God, it doesn't exist.
• 1:15:55
  If he did, why would there be suffering in the world?
• 1:15:57
  I just want to die. He called himself a pro
• 1:16:00
  mortalist. And this is the logical extreme
• 1:16:03
  right of thinking that God is dead.
• 1:16:06
  You know, our God is bad or life is bad.
• 1:16:08
  Well, we should all just die, right?
• 1:16:10
  And this is unfortunately his totally crippled mind that he
• 1:16:14
  this, you know, that the lie that he was living under and he
• 1:16:16
  went to the logical conclusion of his life, which is I'm going
• 1:16:18
  to kill myself and bring as many people with me as I can.
• 1:16:21
  Thankfully, no one else was killed, but he died.
• 1:16:24
  This this young guy. And I think about all of the
• 1:16:28
  evils in the world and all the things that scandalize people,
• 1:16:32
  maybe that they've done themselves or that other people
• 1:16:34
  have done to them or around them.
• 1:16:36
  And so I think you can fall into a trap of thinking that God is
• 1:16:40
  absent. Or if God is present, I don't
• 1:16:43
  want anything to do with him because look at all the evil
• 1:16:46
  that exists. Look at the pain that's around
• 1:16:48
  me. What would you say to somebody
• 1:16:50
  who is wrestling with CS Lewis called it The Problem of Pain
• 1:16:53
  and his very beautiful book on this topic, which I highly
• 1:16:56
  recommend. But what would you say to that
• 1:16:58
  person who is struggling with even trusting God because of the
• 1:17:02
  pain in the world? That's the topic that I've
• 1:17:06
  wrestled with myself and I think what I would say is we are never
• 1:17:14
  going to be able to arrive at absolute certainty and
• 1:17:17
  understanding why they're suffering and why things haven't
• 1:17:21
  transpired the way that we wish that they would transpire on
• 1:17:24
  this side of heaven. We will never know with
• 1:17:26
  certainty. So we have to make the choice of
• 1:17:29
  where are we going to assign our question.
• 1:17:34
  We have the option of saying, when I see brokenness in the
• 1:17:37
  world, I'm going to call into question the goodness of God,
• 1:17:42
  the mercifulness of God. I'm going to call into question
• 1:17:44
  God's character, his nature, because I can't make sense of
• 1:17:48
  why a good God would do this. We also have the option instead
• 1:17:53
  to take a look at brokenness in the world and say, I can't
• 1:17:57
  explain why this brokenness exists, but I'm not willing to
• 1:18:02
  diminish who God says he is. I'm not willing to rewrite who
• 1:18:06
  God says he is. He is still good.
• 1:18:08
  He is still kind, He is still faithful.
• 1:18:11
  I can't reconcile these two things, but I'm going to rest in
• 1:18:16
  the I don't know. And I think that's where faith
• 1:18:18
  really lies when it comes to the tough stuff.
• 1:18:21
  I think there's an innate part of all of us that wants to be
• 1:18:24
  able to explain away in a nice airtight model why certain
• 1:18:29
  things have happened the way that they did.
• 1:18:30
  Why, why, why? And the easiest way to do that
• 1:18:34
  is to say it's because God willed it and the mystery of,
• 1:18:39
  you know, well, maybe it's because he's trying to stretch
• 1:18:42
  us. He's trying to grow our
• 1:18:43
  character. Maybe he is, you know, trying to
• 1:18:46
  demonstrate how dissatisfied he is with us.
• 1:18:48
  And it's a warning and this and that, all of these potential
• 1:18:51
  explanations rewrite the theology of who he has revealed
• 1:18:55
  himself to be. And we're comfortable doing that
• 1:18:58
  because it brings a certain sense of closure to be able to
• 1:19:02
  explain in some airtight way why.
• 1:19:06
  And I think it would do us well to exercise the muscle of
• 1:19:10
  saying, I don't know. But I am not going to stray from
• 1:19:15
  the fact that God is still who he says he is and he's still
• 1:19:18
  going to do what he says he'll do.
• 1:19:19
  I, I'm not going to diminish the truth of what we know him to be
• 1:19:26
  for comfort in this moment, for a sense of closure in this
• 1:19:29
  moment. And so I think exercising that
• 1:19:32
  muscle of being willing to say, I don't know, as an exercise of
• 1:19:37
  faith, as a demonstration of faith and paired with a
• 1:19:41
  willingness to just grieve, to just grieve the pain, to grieve
• 1:19:46
  the all the ways in which this world falls short of heaven of
• 1:19:51
  God's design. I I mean, in a certain way, this
• 1:19:54
  is a world of travail like we are, we are in a plight on the
• 1:19:59
  way to greater things. God, it has this world in
• 1:20:02
  process from glory to glory. We're on our way to the vision
• 1:20:06
  of this world that he he meant for us to be.
• 1:20:09
  But along the way we're going to encounter these areas of pain,
• 1:20:11
  these areas of brokenness and and we're going to want to
• 1:20:14
  reconcile it. But I think.
• 1:20:16
  I think it would do all of us as humanity a better service to
• 1:20:20
  simply learn to be comfortable in the not yet part of already,
• 1:20:25
  but not yet, and learn to grieve and hurt and lament with those
• 1:20:31
  who are broken with our own pain.
• 1:20:33
  And then once, once we are able to pick ourselves up from that
• 1:20:37
  grieving, that lament, turn back to Lord and say, OK, Lori,
• 1:20:40
  what's next? Without trying to redefine who
• 1:20:44
  he said he is, Without trying to, you know, mess with the
• 1:20:47
  theology of that. Yeah.
• 1:20:50
  Just walking through this world, this brokenness, with a
• 1:20:53
  willingness to feel what we feel, to feel the pain, to
• 1:20:56
  acknowledge the brokenness while holding it in tension with a
• 1:21:00
  good God. It's beautifully sad, Jonah.
• 1:21:03
  Very beautiful. All right, well, now should we
• 1:21:06
  go to our listening prayer session?
• 1:21:08
  Sure. So in Full disclosure, I've
• 1:21:10
  gotten to pray with Donna before.
• 1:21:11
  It's a big shout out to Simone, my dear, our dear mutual friend.
• 1:21:15
  And it was very a huge blessing for me.
• 1:21:17
  And I know you do this for many people.
• 1:21:20
  You're going to do this with me right now.
• 1:21:22
  And I'm guessing people can pray along with us, right?
• 1:21:26
  This is for everybody listening. So this is a beautiful way to
• 1:21:28
  implement some of these wonderful tools that Jonah is
• 1:21:32
  teaching us to pray. So what I'm going to do is I'm
• 1:21:34
  going to lead you and the listeners through the process of
• 1:21:37
  listening prayer. Beautiful.
• 1:21:38
  We're going to listen for what the Lord wants to say to us
• 1:21:41
  right here and right now. I'm going to lead this by
• 1:21:45
  starting us in prayer. And then I'm going to ask the
• 1:21:48
  Lord questions. Just going to be 3 questions
• 1:21:50
  this time. And after each question, I'm
• 1:21:51
  going to pause, and I want you to listen.
• 1:21:54
  Now, when I say listen, I mean make yourself aware of what you
• 1:21:58
  are experiencing. As you're going through this
• 1:22:02
  pause. Are there any thoughts coming to
• 1:22:04
  mind, images, phrases, anything emotional, anything physical
• 1:22:08
  happening to you? Is there anything in your
• 1:22:09
  external surroundings that is catching your attention?
• 1:22:13
  And whatever it is, whatever you experience, I want you to
• 1:22:15
  document it. Don't pass a judgment on whether
• 1:22:18
  it's good, whether it's bad, where it's from, or anything
• 1:22:20
  like that just documented. So this first part is just
• 1:22:23
  exercising awareness of what you're experiencing in prayer.
• 1:22:26
  And after that, we're going to walk through how to discern each
• 1:22:30
  of those things that you heard, or we'll probably go through one
• 1:22:32
  of them as an example, using the filters of discernment that we
• 1:22:35
  talked about. Beautiful.
• 1:22:37
  And so everyone listening, how long should they plan for this
• 1:22:40
  segment to be of prayer? 5 minutes.
• 1:22:42
  We're going to do a 5 minutes of prayer with Jonah.
• 1:22:43
  Beautiful. All right.
• 1:22:45
  The human Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
• 1:22:48
  Amen. Lord Jesus, we love you and we
• 1:22:51
  honour you. We thank you for being a God who
• 1:22:54
  comes close. Thank you for being a God who is
• 1:22:59
  who he says he is. And we invite you to speak to us
• 1:23:02
  today. So we ask you, Lord Jesus, what
• 1:23:09
  do you love about me? Sweet.
• 1:23:29
  It's very sweet. Lord Jesus, what do you have to
• 1:23:35
  say about that burden that I've been carrying?
• 1:24:00
  Lord Jesus, who do you want to be for me in this season?
• 1:24:46
  Laura, we thank you for your presence, we thank you for your
• 1:24:49
  word, and we thank you for your love.
• 1:24:53
  We honor you, and we glorify you.
• 1:24:55
  Amen. So that was listening.
• 1:24:58
  Now we're going to move on to the discernment phase.
• 1:25:00
  So, Lila, is there any particular answer you'd be
• 1:25:03
  comfortable sharing that we could use as an example of
• 1:25:06
  walking through the discernment? OK, sure.
• 1:25:08
  My, my, what the Lord gave me was very simple.
• 1:25:12
  And many of them, there's things, some of them that he
• 1:25:14
  said to me before. So I mean, the first one I kind
• 1:25:17
  of laughed because it was sort of it, it just is very tender
• 1:25:22
  and familial what our Lord says. And it's also, I don't
• 1:25:25
  necessarily see myself this way and I can be this way, but
• 1:25:28
  sometimes I'm not this way. So it's kind of funny a little
• 1:25:30
  bit like the Lord's teasing me a little bit, but he's also being
• 1:25:32
  sincere with what he said. So he's so he told me You're so
• 1:25:36
  sweet. And he's like, no, Lord, you're
• 1:25:39
  so sweet. And I'm not always sweet either.
• 1:25:41
  So anyway, I just thought that was funny because you know, to
• 1:25:45
  him, we are his children. So when he sees me, he sees me
• 1:25:48
  as I am. He also sees me as Lila, the
• 1:25:50
  baby as Lila, the little innocent child as Lila the you
• 1:25:54
  know, he sees all of us, our souls, right?
• 1:25:56
  And all of who we are. So.
• 1:25:59
  So yeah, I think that in some ways checks out doctrinally.
• 1:26:02
  I mean, obviously I'm flawed by original sin and I've got my
• 1:26:05
  sins, but there's the sweetness is still there because of God's
• 1:26:08
  love in me so. Beautiful.
• 1:26:10
  So the thing that we're looking at is the statement, you're so
• 1:26:14
  sweet. So for those following along,
• 1:26:17
  what we're doing here is we are matching up that phrase with
• 1:26:22
  each filter one at a time. So if we were to look at that
• 1:26:25
  phrase, like you've already said, there's nothing that's
• 1:26:29
  unsound doctrinally about that statement.
• 1:26:32
  So, OK, that means it checks out, checks the first filter.
• 1:26:35
  What about the second filter? Does it line up with the
• 1:26:38
  character of God? Is it the sort of thing that
• 1:26:40
  Jesus would say? So far?
• 1:26:43
  It sounds like yes because of what you shared about how he
• 1:26:46
  said this to you in the past. Not, not those exact words, but
• 1:26:49
  he's, he's given me like definitely encouragements in the
• 1:26:52
  past about how much he loves me and that I'm his little daughter
• 1:26:55
  and nice little 1:00 and all these things.
• 1:26:57
  But in that kind of way. There was a little bit more like
• 1:27:00
  a, It felt a little more like a, not like a joke because it's
• 1:27:03
  true, but it's also, it's like a just very tender, yeah.
• 1:27:07
  OK, So there was tenderness to it and the way that you heard
• 1:27:10
  it, which means that you are experiencing it as like that
• 1:27:15
  statement in and of itself is kind, it's loving, it's good.
• 1:27:20
  It's like objectively we look at it, it's a good statement.
• 1:27:22
  There's nothing snarky or weird about it.
• 1:27:25
  So that checks the second filter and then the third filter we
• 1:27:27
  look at what was the impact that it had on you, the fruit that
• 1:27:29
  it's bearing. It made you smile.
• 1:27:31
  Your word from the Lord did line up with his character and
• 1:27:35
  nature. It did bear good fruit when you
• 1:27:38
  heard it. It brought good things.
• 1:27:40
  It brought things of the Lord in you to stir forth.
• 1:27:44
  And so that means that you can conclude that that thing you
• 1:27:49
  heard in prayer was from the Lord.
• 1:27:51
  Now some people might have gone through this process and they
• 1:27:54
  would say, well, how I know that that was the Lord and it wasn't
• 1:27:57
  just me thinking something nice about myself.
• 1:28:00
  So it's funny to me because I, I've never thought to myself,
• 1:28:03
  oh, you're so sweet, Lila, which is, which is kind of
• 1:28:06
  interesting. Yeah.
• 1:28:07
  And that's oftentimes like a telltale sign because it's
• 1:28:10
  something that you wouldn't have said to yourself, you wouldn't
• 1:28:12
  have expected kind of like that image that I got of like what I
• 1:28:15
  wasn't expecting to be handed off to Jim from the Lord in my
• 1:28:19
  imagination. So sometimes that can be an
• 1:28:21
  indication that that is most likely the Lord and not just
• 1:28:25
  myself, but sometimes it's a little more ambiguous.
• 1:28:27
  Sometimes we're just not sure. And we could envision, well, I
• 1:28:30
  might say something that nice to myself or that's what I think
• 1:28:32
  the right answer would be. So that's what I thought, you
• 1:28:35
  know, So what I would say is during this stage in which you
• 1:28:40
  are learning, be a learner. You are coming to grow in
• 1:28:45
  familiarity with the sound of God's voice.
• 1:28:47
  So during the stretch of time that you're learning, treat, if
• 1:28:51
  it's not from the enemy, treat it like it was from God.
• 1:28:54
  Even if it ends up that it wasn't, that it was just you to
• 1:28:57
  start with, just treat it like it was him because over time
• 1:29:01
  you're going to start to notice patterns and commonalities in
• 1:29:04
  the ways that he speaks to you. And the more data that you have
• 1:29:07
  to work with to pay attention to those things and to recognize
• 1:29:10
  those things, the easier it's going to be overtime to like
• 1:29:13
  recognize that. And so a lot of people think,
• 1:29:16
  well, I don't, I would hate to like.
• 1:29:18
  Get it wrong? Yeah.
• 1:29:19
  Like, oh, God said this, but it was actually me.
• 1:29:22
  Like, Oh my gosh, I would want not want to offend God by saying
• 1:29:26
  that. He's not going to be offended.
• 1:29:27
  If anything, he's going to say like, oh, that's so cute.
• 1:29:32
  Donna thought that was me. It wasn't.
• 1:29:35
  That's super cute that she thought it was.
• 1:29:37
  But you know what else he's going to say is she's taking it
• 1:29:40
  so seriously because she thought it was for me.
• 1:29:43
  I can trust this one. Well, it's funny too, because
• 1:29:45
  like, what does the Lord say to us through the psalmist, David?
• 1:29:48
  Like you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
• 1:29:50
  Like, you know, like these like big things, right?
• 1:29:53
  So like you're so sweet as kind of you can argue it's a step
• 1:29:56
  down, but anyways, no, it's still it's all good.
• 1:29:58
  But I'm not saying that God, I'm not saying it's a step down, but
• 1:30:02
  meaning what he created us to be is beautiful.
• 1:30:05
  Like we're in his image. So if and, we should receive.
• 1:30:09
  That yeah. So hopefully that's helpful for
• 1:30:15
  people who listen along. And then the additional tool
• 1:30:17
  that I would love to give you and to listeners is OK, now that
• 1:30:21
  you've arrived at the point of OK, I think this is something
• 1:30:24
  the Lord said to me. What do you do with it?
• 1:30:26
  It's great. You can tuck it away in your
• 1:30:28
  back pocket and think like, OK, I feel great for a day as I and
• 1:30:32
  then I'll forget what he said to me.
• 1:30:33
  But there are ways that you can almost harness it to deepen the
• 1:30:37
  conversation with the Lord or deepen intimacy with the Lord
• 1:30:41
  with this particular word, this Rhema word as your starting
• 1:30:45
  point. So things that you could do with
• 1:30:47
  this word are #1 you couldn't just soak in it.
• 1:30:51
  You could just let yourself sit and receive the, the delight of
• 1:30:57
  being seen by the Lord as sweet. You could just let it get into
• 1:31:00
  your heart, get into your bones, let it just marinate.
• 1:31:05
  The second thing you could do is you could mine it for more.
• 1:31:09
  And by that I mean you could engage in further conversation
• 1:31:12
  with the Lord by asking follow up questions.
• 1:31:15
  So this is where you could further the conversation by
• 1:31:18
  saying things like, thanks Lord. I'm so grateful that that's how
• 1:31:22
  you see me. Is there any way that I can use
• 1:31:26
  this quality to bless people? Nick or what do you mean by
• 1:31:29
  that? Yeah, if it's something where it
• 1:31:31
  made a little more clarity, like Lord, that doesn't, that's not a
• 1:31:34
  word I would use to describe myself.
• 1:31:36
  What do you mean? What are you, what are you
• 1:31:37
  getting at here? Because I really want to embrace
• 1:31:39
  this. I'm just having a hard time
• 1:31:41
  believing it. Can you flush it out for me a
• 1:31:43
  little bit more or not this particular word, but one follow
• 1:31:46
  up question you could ask about another one could be Lord, what
• 1:31:50
  area of my life is this regarding?
• 1:31:52
  You know, I saw this beautiful image in my imagination of
• 1:31:55
  climbing a mountain. OK, Lord, what part of my life
• 1:31:57
  is this referring to? Is this is this a good mountain
• 1:32:01
  or a bad mountain? Is this me climbing?
• 1:32:03
  Is it someone else climbing? Is it you climbing?
• 1:32:05
  Is this mountain an obstacle or is it a conquest?
• 1:32:07
  Like, you know, those sorts of follow up questions to sort of
• 1:32:10
  just get the conversation flowing.
• 1:32:13
  And then from there you can just continue it throughout your day.
• 1:32:15
  You can let it go on for weeks if you want.
• 1:32:18
  Or I think this was you and I want to believe it, but I'm a
• 1:32:21
  little uncertain if it's you or me.
• 1:32:23
  And so could you confirm it for me?
• 1:32:24
  Could you repeat it for me later, you know, in a week from
• 1:32:26
  now? Or, you know, in some manner
• 1:32:29
  that helps me to really lock in and believe that this is you,
• 1:32:32
  You know, remember that he's a person and this is a
• 1:32:34
  conversation, that this is a dialogue.
• 1:32:36
  And that's the whole purpose of this sort of listening prayer is
• 1:32:39
  to deepen the relationship that we have with him through
• 1:32:42
  conversation. It's so beautiful, Jonna.
• 1:32:46
  Thank you so much for making this your life's work.
• 1:32:49
  It's such a blessing. I know people that it served.
• 1:32:51
  It served me, and I truly think this book is a spiritual classic
• 1:32:56
  and I'm so excited to see what it will continue to do out in
• 1:33:00
  the wild. Where?
• 1:33:02
  Where can people find hearing God's voice?
• 1:33:05
  It is on Ampphone. We will link it in the
• 1:33:07
  description so people can find it that way.
• 1:33:08
  And then where can people find the rest of your work in
• 1:33:10
  ministry? My ministry is Catholic
• 1:33:13
  revivalministries.com. Everything is there.
• 1:33:16
  Beautiful. Thank you so much, Jonna.
• 1:33:18
  And a huge thank you to EWTN Eternal Word Television Network,
• 1:33:22
  which is the largest religious broadcaster in the world.
• 1:33:25
  You can get access to Lila Rose Show episodes 24 hours in
• 1:33:29
  advance at ewtn.com. Slash on demand.
• 1:33:32
  And a big thank you to EWTN and their incredible mission to
• 1:33:35
  bring souls to Jesus.