Travis Michael Fleming and Kyle Strobel engage in an enlightening and fun conversation on prayer, delving into its complexities and the common misconceptions that often hinder genuine spiritual connection.

Their conversation confronts the barriers that individuals face in their prayer lives, such as feelings of inadequacy and the tendency to approach God with a façade of performance rather than authenticity.

Kyle emphasizes that prayer should not be viewed as a chore or a checklist item, but as a vital means of fostering a relationship with God, wherein one can present their true self, including doubts and struggles.

Their conversation emphasizes the significance of honesty in prayer, encouraging ministry leaders to embrace their vulnerabilities and acknowledge their need for divine grace. Through the conversation, Kyle and Travis aim to inspire a reimagining of prayer as a deeply personal and transformative practice, urging ministry leaders to cultivate a prayer life that reflects both sincerity and a genuine desire for connection with God.

Takeaways:

• Prayer is fundamentally about presence rather than performance, allowing us to bring our authentic selves to God.
• The disorientation many experience in prayer often stems from an overemphasis on theological knowledge at the expense of a genuine relationship with God.
• Honesty in prayer can reveal our deepest struggles and desires, ultimately leading us closer to God's transformative love.
• Our spiritual practices should encourage us to draw near to God, acknowledging our need for His mercy rather than relying on our perceived goodness.
• Feeling distant from God can often be a part of the spiritual journey, as He uses these moments to invite us into deeper communion with Him.
• To truly engage in prayer, we must confront our inner conflicts and bring them before God, allowing Him to work through our vulnerabilities.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Eugene Koch.

May the Lord bless you and your lovely bride.

And so God isn't kind of allergic or afraid of our mess, God is wanting to call us into the truth so that we can abide in him where we actually need Him.

Welcome to Apollos Watered.

In the Ministry Deep Dive podcast, we tackle the big questions few are willing to ask about ministry, culture, and the challenges you face every day.

Ministry is hard.

The road ahead isn't always clear.

But with God, nothing is impossible.

We come alongside pastors and ministry leaders like you, exploring obstacles, uncovering opportunities, and sharing practical ways to thrive.

Our vision is simple to see thriving ministry leaders and churches noticeably transforming their world.

So let's dive deep together.

Refresh your soul, renew your vision, and get ready, because it's watering time.

Welcome back to Ministry Deep Dive, the podcast that takes you below the surface to explore the heart of ministry, theology, and life with God.

I'm your host, Travis Michael Fleming, and today we're diving into one of the most essential and, let's be honest, misunderstood parts of the Christian life.

Prayer.

This.

There's so much going on in our world.

Last week we spoke with Dr. Christian Smith about all of the factors that led to religion being considered obsolete in our culture.

But with God, there's always hope for change.

That's one of the reasons why God gave us prayer.

My guest today is Dr. Kyle Strobel, a theologian, author, and spiritual formation teacher at Talbot School of Theology.

Kyle has written profoundly on topics like spiritual formation, humility, and the inner life with God, including including his book When Prayer Becomes Real, co authored with John Coe.

In our conversation today, Kyle unpacks why prayer is not about performance, but about presence.

Not about getting all the words right, but bringing our real selves before the real God.

We talk about what it means to come honestly before the Lord, how our minds wander in prayer, and why God sometimes feels absent in order to draw us deeper into his life.

Love.

If you've ever struggled to pray, if you've ever felt distant from God, or if you've ever wondered why spiritual practices can feel dry or mechanical, this conversation is for you.

Let's dive deep with Dr. Kyle Strobel.

Happy listening.

Kyle Strobel, welcome.

Travis.

Good to be with you, brother.

I am so excited for this conversation.

But you know, as I talked to you about in the pre show walkthrough, are you ready for the Fast5?

Let's get to know you.

I like it.

Let's do it.

Okay, here we go.

Number one, when you were at Aberdeen, what was the Scottish dish that you learned to embrace?

That's only in Scotland.

Oh, the Scottish dish.

That's only in Scotland.

I had.

Whatever.

Well, there's two things that come to mind.

They deep fry everything in Scotland, and there was a deep fried cheeseburger, which.

Was both horrifying and intriguing, but also haggis nachos.

Also horrifying and intriguing.

Haggis nachos.

I am so curious.

That's what caused me to order it.

It's like, okay, you had me at nachos, but yeah, the haggis, sir, that's like.

I mean, that's a fusion.

I didn't know that I wanted.

Yeah, I'm still not sure if I want.

But that's.

That's the thing.

Okay, here we got number two, because you are.

You are a scholar, and you did your study on Jonathan Edwards.

It always makes me want to know, what's a historical figure, not a non biblical.

A non biblical one that if you could meet today and want to talk to you and pick their brain, who.

Would it be and why?

Well, wow, that's a great question.

You know, I mean, I.

Do.

I. I kind of have to say Edwards, I think, because I just have so many questions for him, like, what.

On earth were you thinking here?

Or like, you know, there's.

There's.

There's plenty of things that.

And Edwards is a funny figure because there's.

He has such a universal mind, but he also had a weird corpus.

So sometimes you have this note entry, and you're going, what on earth were you thinking here?

Like, is this actually a big deal or were you just, you know, I don't know, you had a stomach flu.

Or something, and you were just, you know, hallucinating.

Okay, I. I mean, I have a lot of questions for Edwards, but I.

Sometimes I'm just like, do I want to hang out with you?

I haven't figured.

That's the thing.

Yeah, I mean, you got to go with Luther.

I mean, if you're gonna push, Luther.

Would by far be the most fun.

I mean, there's no question about that.

But, yeah, I, I. Edwards owes me some time.

I. I put.

I put in my time.

I have some questions.

Okay, question three.

Here we go.

If you were a restaurant, let's continue the food theme.

What restaurant would you be in?

Why?

If I was a restaurant, like any restaurant.

Pick one.

You can be any restaurant.

In and out.

It can be a brand or to change.

In and out.

What would you.

In and out.

In and out in and Out Burger.

And mostly because, you know, one of the things I love about in and out now, in and out, just donated a large sum of money to Biola to build a sub media studio.

That's not the reason, but they're on my mind a lot because every time I go there, I feel like I'm just kind of supporting Biola.

But if you go to In n Out menu, you could order a hamburger.

Or a cheeseburger, and that's really it.

And it's.

They know what they're about and they're.

Not about a lot.

It's very narrow.

And that's kind of me.

I, I, I remember my dad used.

To say this about his own ministry.

He's like, you know, I, I'm not.

Good at a lot of things, kind of know what I'm good at, and I stick in that lane.

And that's, that's what I've tried to do.

I get that.

I get that a lot.

I get, I understand that can totally.

All right, number four.

What's a subject that you have interest in but you've not been able to study yet?

Yeah, feels like there's so many, you know, the.

One of the big ones has been Lord Supper stuff.

I've had some impulses ever since my PhD that I've been itching to kind of explore on a deeper level, but I keep getting sidetracked.

I think I finally have charted out a course on how to get there, but it's still probably a decade out, unfortunately.

But I think about it all the time and I collect books on it.

Like, I go to my bookshelf and.

There'S this growing section.

One day I'm going to read these books.

All right.

You know, I was talking to Craig Keener one time, and he was talking to me about how much research he has.

He's like, I could Write till I'm 100.

He's like, I have so much stuff, and it's like people just don't realize.

I mean, there's so much knowledge and we can never take it in completely.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just.

All right, now, here we go.

Number five.

The movie that most epitomizes my life is what and why.

Well, you know, one of my jokes I tell my students when I introduce myself is that you may have seen my birthday in a movie, because they, they made a movie about my dad's life, and in it I was born.

And I've been trying to, I've been trying to kind of Reframe it as mostly about my birth.

I realize it's hard sell, you know, that is that so many different things come to my mind right now.

You know, I was a child of.

The 80s and so like I was obsessed growing up, particularly late 80s, early 90s with John Cusack.

Okay.

And I loved Remember the movie say Anything.

Yes, I actually memorized.

There's this really awkward scene in that movie where he's at her house for dinner and the dad asks him like what do you want to do with your life?

Because he's like why is it, why is my daughter with this guy?

Like this guy's the worst.

And I, and he gives this absurd answer like it's totally ridiculous.

I memorized every word of it.

And as, as a 15 year old I was, I dated a girl throughout high school and you know, it was.

Kind of serious for 15 and her.

I was at her parents house with.

That dinner and her dad asked me.

What do you want to do with your life?

And I just spat out word for word.

It was so stupid.

I didn't preference it.

I never told them what I was doing, but I was like, you know.

I don't want to buy anything, sell anything or produce anything for a living.

I just want to do that.

I don't want to buy anything, sold or processed.

I don't want to produce anything.

Bought it.

And I was like for no reason.

And so for whatever reason, that's the movie that comes to mind.

Anything with John Cusack in it.

I, I, for whatever reason related to him on a deeply personal level.

That is a first, I have to say, in the history of our show.

I don't think of anyone, anyone attached.

John Cusack.

Okay, well, let's try to change gears.

I want to talk about your book because it's been out for a while and it's one of those things doing ministry you never know about.

If everyone's kind of a new book comes out and everybody wants to read a new book and you have that.

But there are certain books that kind of sustain over time and to me I want to know, do they go beyond a shelf life?

Are they a flash in the pan?

Do they really actually hit a need and they go on.

And this is what I think about your book that you co authored with John Ko, When Prayer Becomes Real.

And as I was telling you in the beginning of the show or we were talking beforehand, this was a book that honestly I'm going to be trying to be really transparent.

I wasn't ready for, you know, being in ministry for a time, you're like, yeah, I know about prayer and any contemporary book about prayer try to stay away from.

But you come to a point in time in your life where you, like, I need to think different.

Like, you get desperate.

Not to say, oh, I go to your stuff because I'm desperate.

But it was one of those things.

I know.

What kind of bio is that, by the way?

I was desperate.

So then I read your book.

But it was more.

I was at a point in my life where I needed to get real with God and I needed to get beyond kind of a performance spirituality and really get beyond the fluff and really have a communion with God.

And I found that your book did that.

It was very helpful and very refreshing.

And then I reached out because I wanted to talk about it.

When you wrote this book with John, why did you feel the necessity to articulate this book or put this book together?

Yeah, well, you know, when John and I.

So John's my mentor, and so.

And he's not really written all that much.

I mean, John, he.

You know, he was a part of that whole group with Willard and Foster and these guys of that generation, kind of really launching some.

Some centers and things in universities and on spiritual formation.

And I actually thought John was the most profound because he.

He actually did his PhD in philosophy, but taught theology in a school of psychology for 20 years.

So when I studied under John, I was just like, I've never seen the breadth that he brings.

Like, he brings a breath to this question that.

No, I'd never seen anyone bring that.

That.

That.

That broad and deep of an analysis.

And it was interesting because when I studied with John, prayer was a kind of constant topic.

And it really got me wrestling through prayer because for both John and I, and John and I are very similar.

We were similar backgrounds, and we both, looking back on our academic lives, realized that the more we learned, the less we prayed.

And we kind of experienced this disorientation in our theological training as we're kind of growing in knowledge and yet finding prayer more and more confusing and isolating and disorienting.

And so, you know, it's funny because both of us would say we're not people that prayer comes naturally to.

And it's actually something that I think kind of drew us to engage it more precisely because it wasn't something that we naturally turned to.

We naturally turned to study.

That's what we do.

And we found ourselves turning to study instead of turning to prayer and.

And to kind of communing with The Lord.

And so, you know, for John, this has been a 30 year journey.

For me, it's been the last 15, 20 years.

We find ourselves talking about prayer a lot because prayer for, for the way we approach spiritual formation.

If, if you want to get into it, you start with prayer.

Most, most of the time that isn't how it's gone.

Actually.

Most time people talk about just spiritual practices in general.

And we've always thought that's actually the wrong place to start.

That if you want to do spirit.

And in many ways, this book Where Prayer Becomes Real is kind of our spiritual mission 101 book.

Actually.

It's.

If you want to talk about spirit information, spirit information is, is about drawing near to the Lord and recognizing that you only bear fruit if you abide.

And that spiritual practices are actually quite dangerous when you think about it.

Because right away in the New Testament, we see the earliest churches trying to construct spiritualities of the flesh.

And they're doing so, as Paul says in Colossians 2, with bodily asceticism, with spiritual practices, actually.

And so we want to kind of undermine the kind of fleshly impulse to put in your words, Travis, this kind of performative spirituality by actually giving an account of drawing near.

And prayer for us is just the place that, that, you know, is, is.

Is all worked out.

Like, in many ways, your prayer life is your Christian life in miniature.

And so if you want to get a sense of, like, what is my life with the Lord actually like, sitting with your time with the Lord in prayer actually reveals quite a lot.

And so we thought this is.

This is probably the place to begin and to draw people in in a more in a kind of a way that both gives them a path very practically, but also as a path that has a lot of mirrors illumining to them what is actually going on in your life.

Because that's the thing that's easy to shut down.

Like, it's easy to read a book on kind of spiritual practices and think, okay, I'm gonna get my act together.

And it actually shuts down the truth rather than leading you into the truth.

And our goal has always been, well, no, we need to lead the people into the truth so that they can actually show up in God's presence and draw near.

That is what I felt like.

I didn't need to pray.

More details.

Like, sometimes you go through, I mean, I'm sure you encountered this with so many people that you've interacted with over years and your students, you go through your list or you go through One of the styles that you learned or models you learned early on, like acts, you know, the adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

But sometimes I found as I aged, I was like, okay, I'm going to try to practice gratitude.

I'm going to, I'm going to do this.

But you do lose that intimacy.

And then you doubt, am I, am I hearing from God right now?

Or is this my flesh?

Or is this the evil one?

Am I hearing from?

And yet there's this calmness, I think, when you enter into the presence of God, there is a reality that you, you mentioned in the book, because you talk about coming.

Honestly, I appreciated that.

And I remember C.S.

lewis saying, don't come to God with what should be in you, but.

But what is in you.

Yeah.

And I always love that idea.

But when you guys talk about honesty, it was in a different way than I had done previously.

Can you describe what it means for us to come before the throne of God, Honestly?

Yeah.

Well, let me.

Actually, there's a funny occurrence when we were writing the book that really kind of encapsulates what we're hoping to do in it.

I, I, I had a couple people in mind.

I don't always do this when I write books, but sometimes I have, like, a specific person in mind.

And so I gave them actually a, a copy of the manuscript before we published it and said, hey, can I just get some feedback from you?

And they'd been a Christian for, like, 50 years, and.

But they were later converts, became a convert in their 20s.

And, and I remember getting feedback.

And it was so funny because they were very sheepish about it.

And they said, you know, I'm really embarrassed to say this, but my entire Christian life, from the second I became a Christian, everyone told me, you can tell God everything.

And she said, and I thought I did, until I read this.

And she's like, I guess I don't even.

I didn't know.

I didn't know what that meant until now.

And I think that's one of the biggest problems with something like prayer.

And, you know, to your point, with the axe model and things, the thing about prayers, most of those are good.

Yeah.

Like, most cliches of prayer are pretty good.

And this is what publishers would ask.

It's like, do you really want to write a book on prayer?

Our agent asked us, are you sure you want to write?

Everyone has a book on prayer.

And most of the time, like, and this is just.

I found this to be true.

Like, if someone wants to read a book on prayer.

They just look up, who's my favorite author?

And of course they have one, as well as read their book on prayer, because pretty much everyone has a book on prayer.

And the pushback on us was there's so many of the, do you really want to do this?

And you know what?

John and I, one of the ways that we approach this question is as spiritual theologians, and for us, that on a topic like this means at least three things.

Like, the first thing is you have to have a really theoretically rich account.

So there's a lot of books on prayer that never stop and ask the question, question, what do we even do?

Like, what is prayer?

And what is, let's say, a Muslim doing?

And what is a Christian doing?

And why is Christian prayer a distinctively different kind of prayer?

And one of the really interesting things about Christian praying is that the, the Son and the Spirit have already prayed for you, through you and from within you, right?

We learn that the Spirit and the Son are interceding for us.

The Spirit is groaning with groanings too deep for words.

The Son always lives to intercede for.

And so when we come to pray, we are actually entering prayer.

We're.

It's not.

We're not creating it, we're not generating it.

We're entering the prayers of the Son and the Spirit.

And everything that needs praying has already been prayed.

And so that's actually going to be the foundation for honesty because you can come to pray and realize God already knows.

And so I can actually be with them.

Now.

What's interesting is one of the biggest questions I hear.

I hear this question more than any other question after people read my book is, well, if God already knows, why bother praying?

And right away, there's a huge breakdown that's occurred.

And I say, well, imagine you're a kid and your mom scolds you and looks at you.

She goes, she knows.

You want a cookie?

No cookies before dinner, right?

You have to eat your vegetables.

You have to then do not have a cookie.

And.

And then five minutes later, she walks in the kitchen, your hands in the cookie jar.

And, you know, your mom looks at you.

You're.

You're scared.

And then she says, you know what, though?

I know what you were doing.

It's okay.

Well, you're probably relieved, but now you're just trying to figure out, how do I get back to my room and get.

Get away from this scenario.

And then your mom stops and says, you know what?

Let me tell you the other 20 things I know you've done today.

That are increasingly worse than that.

And let me go beyond that.

Remember when I scolded you that thought you had about me?

I heard that.

And it's okay.

Like, notice that this would actually be an invitation into intimacy rather than something that shuts down intimacy.

And so that's.

That's what a Christian understanding of prayer will lead us into.

It kind of opens up intimacy.

So we knew we needed to give a theoretically rich or a theological account of Christian prayer.

But then the other thing with prayer is you also want it to be practical.

Like, I've read some good books on prayer that are just theoretical, but it's also like, if I'm gonna read a book on prayer, it should actually help me pray.

But often what I find is there's a lot of books that are helpful practically, but are never theoretically rich.

Like, they.

They actually have never considered what Christian prayer is.

And so there's some helpful things here and there.

But you kind of wonder sometimes, is this actually Christian?

Like, are you just giving me kind of performance kind of tools?

But then when John and I were thinking about this, we realized we could both name a lot of books that would do one of these well, and there's a handful of books that do them both.

But what we wanted to do is we wanted to do both those things, but we also wanted to push into a third, which was, can this book be existentially meaningful?

Which meant, I want to actually climb into your life, the reader.

And I want to actually look around a little bit and say, I know you know, you should be honest with God.

Let's talk about why you're not.

And let's also talk about why you don't even know you're not.

And so we thought, you know, if you're going to write a book on prayer, you have to answer questions like, why does my mind wander when I pray?

Or why do I go to pray and I fall asleep?

Or.

And so we.

We really wanted to try to give an account that actually showed people not just told them, but showed them you're actually not with God.

In fact, prayer is actually the place where you are trying to be absent from God rather than with Him.

It's.

It's like a lot of your spiritual practices that you're doing, and you don't even realize you're doing this, but you're actually doing so in a way to draw kind of close.

Close enough where you don't feel guilty about not doing it, but then also stay at arm's length so that the mess of your Life doesn't start leaking out.

And so, you know, for, for our, for our kind of account of the Christian life in general, the only way to bear fruit is to abide.

And the only way to abide is to draw near.

I love the language of drawing near is the language of Hebrews, which is kind of reversing the language of Exodus, Right.

In Exodus, it's don't draw near lest you die.

In Hebrews, it's boldly ascend.

It's draw near.

And so we wanted to give an account of drawing near to God that actually fronts honesty.

Because now in the Spirit, the only way to be present to God, the only way to draw near to him is to do so in the truth of my life.

And so that means actually calling forth the reality of our life and making our lives the actual material of prayer.

There is so much with what you just said when you talk about your mind wondering, why do I fall asleep?

These are questions that we don't talk about very often.

Yeah.

And I think we need to talk about them if we are going to actually commune with God and not try to put on any type of performance to, as you said, God already knows.

And I, I found that immensely freeing.

Even as you talked about the terms, I, I.

You talk about the terms to talk.

You talk about the, the Lord's Prayer and using Father, a term that is employed that God already knew had baggage.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting that you put that in there when you, you talk about so many different models of prayer and different kinds of prayer, the five kinds, if I remember correctly in the book.

But getting back to the honesty part for a second, what do you see?

I mean, do you find that the people that you interact with don't really are not being honest with God?

Yeah, well, you know, I see.

So, so my seminary students are a good example of this.

You know, I'll give you two examples of this.

Like, one, I have a lot of seminary students that devote a lot of their time to the doctrine the atonement, which, you know, not a bad place to spend your time.

You know, you want to get something to get right, you know, but the.

Funny thing is, when they go to pray, most of their prayer life is trying to atone for their sins.

And that's interesting.

Right.

Like, they could give you a really good account of the atonement, but then they go to pray and it all falls apart.

Or I know a lot of Christians who are, you know, they could give you a relatively good account of the Trinity, you know, they can get the terms right.

And then when they pray, they have a different God behind the back of Jesus.

So Jesus likes them, but the Father's pissed.

And so they draw near to pray.

And at best, the Father rolls his eyes and is like, here we go again.

What do you want?

To put it in theological terms, I would say for most Christians I meet, they pray their entire prayer in their own name, and they end by saying in the name of Jesus.

And they think that's a magical formula that somehow sanctifies their prayer instead of something that's supposed to give shape to their prayer and actually pray in the name of another.

And so allowing the.

The atoning work of Christ to actually pave the way for their ascent to the Lord that we now boldly ascend precisely because we have a great high priest in Jesus.

And.

And so this is where, you know, honesty tends to break down for a lot of folks because what ends up happening in prayer is they draw near to God and the experience itself is confusing.

Actually, John and I just.

We just submitted.

I'm actually working on the copy edits of the sequel to Where Prayer Becomes Real Right Now.

And it's about navigating God's feelings of absence.

Like, it's fascinating.

The Protestant tradition in particular talks all the time about how God gifts you an experience of his absence.

You could think of this as Gethsemane, or you could think of this even as the thorn of the flesh for Paul and the experience of prayer and just hearing, no, I'm not.

I'm not gonna take that.

My grace is sufficient for you, Paul.

And we used to talk about it all the time.

And yet people, when they have the experience, project outwards.

God's abandoned me or I've done something wrong, and they think they need to perform to get him back.

And so I often find for folks that instead of being honest, they pray as they imagine a good Christian ought to pray.

And in the.

In their subconscious, I don't think it's even conscious.

In their subconscious, they imagine that if I just pray in the right way, or if I show up with enough zeal or if I get the words right or if I say these, you know, then I'm kind of getting my hooks in God and I'm tethering into myself and I'm being good, and that means I'm in good standing.

Rather than recognizing you're kind of just talking to yourself this whole time, you're kind of just navigating the mess of your life rather than bringing your life to the only one who can actually do something with it.

And, you know, it's interesting, if you look in Scripture, you'll.

You really don't find places that God turns away people who come in honesty.

What you find with Jesus in particular is him turning away people who come in their goodness and who come in their performance.

You know, when the two men go to the temple to pray, it isn't the Pharisees who pray in their goodness.

It's the man who won't even lift his eyes to heaven, who just beats his breast saying, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And so God.

God isn't kind of allergic or afraid of our mess.

God is wanting to call us into the truth so that we can abide in him where we actually need Him.

And so one of the verses that because become really important for me in all of this is Luke 7:47, that the one who is forgiven much can love much.

And so if you think of the Christian life, we know it's a life that is supposed to be loving God and loving our neighbors ourselves.

So we're called to grow in love and overflow in love.

Well, Jesus has told us the only way to do that is to be on an increasing kind of maturation of knowledge of how much we need him and how much we need his forgiveness.

So notice that the developmental maturation of the Christian life will be one where I increasingly see and know how much I need Him.

Which means that the difference between me today and me 10 years from today is I'll look back on this moment ten years from now and think, I had no idea.

I had no idea how angry I was.

I had no idea what my greed was actually about.

But you see, most Christians don't think that.

Like, they think, 10 years from now I'm going to be 10 years better, and I'm going to be 10 years more ignorant of my sin.

Like, no one.

Again, no one's saying that out loud.

But.

But that is presupposed.

And so I think one of the biggest problems we have with Spiritual Nation today is, is not that folks aren't doing enough.

Not that folks aren't disciplined enough.

Not that.

No, the problem is that folks have this wonky expectation of the Christian life where they think that shutting down the mess of my life is the solution, when in fact God is actually opening that to you.

Like, just think about the image that Scripture gives us of God is a purifying fire.

When you draw near to a purifying fire, impurity comes out.

Why do you expect to be oozing.

Purity in his presence.

When you draw near to God, you.

Shouldn'T be surprised that you're like, oh, what on earth is that?

Like the Spirit is groaning in your mess.

But what most Christians I meet presuppose is that when I draw near to God, I'll actually have an experience of my goodness.

And so when they begin to kind of feel like their mind wanders, the solution is stop it, get better.

Which is a self help solution.

Right?

That's, that's like a self mastery.

That's not Christian.

It's, it's like the prophets of baal, like you're just trying to kind of whip yourself to prove to the Deity that you're good enough for him to receive and to respond to.

No, God is calling you into reality because he only works in reality.

And so we, we, we as Christians have this weird notion that Jesus died for us in our sins, but he'll only minister to us now in our goodness.

And it's, it's debilitating.

And so the, the call to honesty is a call to draw near to your Lord and not be surprised that when you draw near into the presence of God, your heart begins to leak its treasures and to not be surprised that what is going to leak out of you is impurity.

The very places God says, now let's enter this, let's talk about these sorts of things.

And so that's ultimately where we think the only way to draw near is to draw near to God in the truth of your life.

Because you actually have to show up when you draw near.

As, as you were talking, I kept thinking about when you talk about the absence of God for a moment is the absence of God.

I want to make sure that I'm understanding exactly what you're saying.

Is the absence of God just simply meant to get our attention or is it that we're just not aware that he's there?

No.

So what a lot of the Protestant tradition talks about, usually the phrase that gets used, I mean, sometimes it's just the metaphor of the desert becomes one of those standard ones that God always leads his people in the desert to show them who he is.

But also the language of spiritual desertion is very deep in the Protestant tradition where God deserts you.

Now, of course the whole point is God hasn't left you, but what God is showing you is he's actually showing you your life and he's revealing to you, you know, do you have sin?

Sure.

Do you have vices?

Yeah.

And a lot of Times you see those things and you have to wrestle with this.

Part of what God also wants to show you is, you know, what's also broken and sinful.

Your ministry, your devotional life.

Those things that you fantasize as being.

Kind of purified and sanctified.

No, those are a mess.

Let's unfold those.

See, the problem, though, is when we're living with, with the excitement and the passion, all these things, you actually don't see how warped a lot of your, your areas that you consider good are.

And so what God does is he.

He leads you into the desert and he begins to pull back the truth.

Or with Paul, you know, I mean, you take, you know, the thorn of the flesh.

I mean, that it's interesting.

Like, God gifts Paul a messenger of Satan to harass him, and he does.

That, he tells us, because he gave.

Him a different gift.

This, this, carrying up to the third heaven, this, this.

And it's what is.

It's a religious experience, right?

Like, he gave Paul this profound religious experience.

Interestingly enough, it didn't heal his character, because religious experiences tend not to heal your character.

And actually it led him into temptation.

He was tempted to actually be.

Be filled with pride because of this religious experience.

And so because of the first gift he gives him, a messenger of Satan, to harass him, and then tells Paul, this is good for you.

My grace is sufficient.

My power has made proven your weakness.

But this will help you.

And so, so learn to learn to be with me in your weakness rather than where you want to be with me in your strength.

And so this is where, you know, I think, you know, I.

One of the things that I almost inevitably say.

So I'm sorry, if people have heard myself, you'll no doubt have heard me say this on numerous occasions, but I. I've become convinced over the last decade or so that as evangelicals, we've all kind of gotten together and just agreed.

Like, let's just, let's just all agree that when Jesus said my powers made perfect in weakness, that he was being hyperbolic, because we all know that's not true.

Like, like we've just universally decided it's nonsense and it won't work.

And I, you know, part of our understanding of spiritual formation is that what if we actually believe that was true?

Like, what if we actually believe Jesus knew what he was talking about?

Well, again, what do you think will lead you into your weakness to know the power of God?

You're not going to go there.

Like most people that I know as Christians, the Second, God leaves in their weakness, they turn to anything possible to leave that place.

And so, you know, part of what our own tradition tells us is that God leads us into the desert.

He removes that passion from us, actually.

He removes our excitement from us.

He leads us.

He actually gives us this dead feeling.

We used to also call talk about spiritual deadness.

He gives us this feeling where preaching feels like death.

Worshiping God is just like, oh, man.

And now we're having to experience that.

I've actually been holding up my Christian life in my own power.

And the invitation there is.

You don't have to do that.

You know, my yoke is actually easy.

My burden.

It's actually light.

And.

And we're holding the dog.

Jeez, it's okay.

I'm gonna hold this thing up.

And God is showing us what we're doing.

And unfortunately, too often, we just start thinking, you know, this church isn't doing it for me any longer.

Maybe I'll go to that church down the road.

I bet they'll get me excited again.

I think about CS Lewis and Mother Teresa.

Both had experiences as they felt.

They.

They're articulating what you have just said.

Where they said, as we matured in our walk, God didn't get closer, but it seemed further away.

Yep.

And that was like, you mentioned an eye opener to me.

I was like, wait a minute.

I wanted to be George Mueller.

You know, I wanted this amazing prayer life.

I wanted Ian Bounds.

I wanted Andrew Murray.

I wanted, like, John Hyde, you know, where there's, like, the spirit of God comes down and transforms these lives.

I don't want it to be more hard.

This sucks.

And it's like, even then, like, I.

You said something else, and.

And I've seen this with other people where we're talking about prayer, and everybody gives lip service to prayer, you know, but we don't have prayer meetings very often anymore.

Let's put that aside.

But I remember so many people I know don't like prayer because for the exact reason, they don't want to come face to face with their idolatries.

Yeah, it's uncomfortable.

It's painful.

It's work.

And there's times where I was coming to my spiritual life, and it's like, okay, I know I need to pray.

I know I need to do this stuff.

I know I need to go through this.

And I would.

And I'd never connect.

I'd go through the motions.

But I remember reading your book, and I think the spirit was just working that time where you're Talking about praying through the Psalms, which, of course, I remember Keller saying, psalms show us how to talk to God.

And I'm like, okay.

But I don't think I ever took time to actually appropriate it in that regard, where you talk throughout it and you give examples of that in the book.

Praying through the Psalms, being honest.

And I had to really sit in that for a little bit.

What does it mean to be honest before the Lord?

And that's when it got really ugly, because I started seeing, like, my own idolatries, my own motivations.

I was telling this to my wife today.

I was praying the other day, and I'm in the book of Luke, and Luke.

It's when he gives the account of blonde Bartimaeus.

I always love the story of Bartimaeus, but I skipped through it.

You know, kind of just read through it, like, I need to do my Bible reading and come to Bartimaeus.

And the Lord really speaks to my heart and is like, what do you want me to do for you?

Because that's what he says about Bartimaeus.

He says, I want to see.

And he asked me, what do you really want?

And I was like, I want a ministry that glorifies you.

He goes, really?

And I was like, oh, this is not good.

And Lord's like, what do you really want?

And I was like, respect.

You know, it's just one of those things.

It's like.

And he goes, isn't that freeing that you can say that?

Totally.

And I realized there were so many different things that I was doing in my spiritual walk that were much more performative.

But I think the older that I get, people don't care about that as much.

I mean, yes, you can.

You can.

You can build crowds, you can build audiences and platforms and all that different stuff, but that doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, at least it didn't to me.

I needed real communion.

I needed to know that God was there, that he was.

He was more than a doctrine, that he was a person, and that he cared for me.

And I think so many other people do, too.

That's why I think your book is so, so helpful, intending to be with God.

And one of the things you mentioned, and you alluded to it again, is it's in the devotional time where we can get most screwed up.

Isn't that weird?

Yeah.

I mean, it is for me.

Yeah, but totally.

Well, I mean, when Lewis even said that, he was talking about that in the Chronicles.

Not Chronicles, but in Screwtape Letters where he talks about the devil tempting him closer to the altar.

I was like, man, that sucks.

Like, I, I wanted to get to like George, George Mueller level.

Like that's like, to me, like black belt Christianity.

That's black belt prayer.

You know, like I'm impervious to spiritual forces.

They bow down and they bounce off of this force field of prayer that I have.

But it doesn't get that way.

Yeah.

How do we though help can help people recapture that or convey that when we're fearful of our own vulnerability and what people might take away from that.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I'm reminded of the, the George Herbert or.

No, it wasn't George Herbert, it was Herbert McCabe.

Herbert McCabe is a great quote and which we, we have in the book where he says that says, you know, the problem with prayer is that most Christians pray like they imagine a good Christian should pray.

And, and I think that's what you're referring to.

This is the performative element.

Like we, we draw near to God and we, we begin to imagine how we actually should show or he wants us to show up.

So actually right there, see, this is where, you know, like your point with what Keller said, you know, praying this, I'm like, the problem is we have all this good teaching.

It's like, yeah, we should pray the psalms, but we can't stop there because we actually have to unfold for people.

What's gonna, what are you going to experience when you demand to know that God has fallen asleep on the job?

The psalmist does demand to know if God's fallen asleep on the job.

So when you utter those words.

See, the problem is that most Christians, when they leave prayer, they feel bad because their subconscious is telling them this is not what God wants from you.

And they have a theology that hasn't given shape to their kind of Christian imagination.

So they're not actually able to live in the presence of God.

They're.

They're projecting and imagine.

This is what I think they do with the Father stuff as well.

Actually there, a lot of them are just talking to their dad and it turns out dad couldn't hear those things.

Praise God, you have a heavenly Father who can.

Right.

Like we have to be re fathered and we have to relearn what God can hear.

And the fascinating things about the psalms is that God teaches us who he is, like, based on what he can hear.

And so we begin to learn kind of experientially with him.

Oh my goodness, you can hear me say that you actually want me to tell you what I want, and not just a good Christian answer, but like, the real stuff.

Like, you want real stuff.

And so this is where we need to begin shepherding.

And this is why, you know, part of what I think spiritual theology requires, that maybe doctrinal theology doesn't require is much, is wisdom.

Like, there's a kind of practical wisdom.

You know, you can.

You can write a profound academic text on a doctrine and not be wise.

It actually gets a lot harder when you're shepherding souls before their Lord.

And so what people need to lay down is the ideal.

There's an old adage when it comes to prayer, don't pray as you ought, pray as you can.

And I think that's right.

And so the question isn't like, well, what's the right way to pray?

It's no, draw near to your Lord and then allow your life to kind of come before him.

And I think what most people will discover is, to your point, the hard part of prayer is that all the stuff you're avoiding to bring to God is going to come out if you actually give it time, and you're going to discover, oh, I don't want to bring my anger into prayer.

I just want to be pissed.

I just want to mull it over and think of ways to dominate and win and get control and kind of, you know, prove that person wrong or, you know, whatever it is.

Well, that.

That needs to come out in prayer.

I just want to think lust is bad.

I need to get over that rather than actually entering into, what is this really about?

What do I really long for, and why does it show up as this?

And so, you know, to use what Richard Foster, you know, when he starts his book on spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines, the kind of classic text, you know, the beginning of that book, the starting point is the problem we have is superficiality.

And I think for most of us, we've actually embraced the superficiality because not.

Not that we don't want something deep, and not that we don't want to be known, and not that we don't want authenticity and vulnerability.

But when push comes to shove, there's a point where we don't actually want what it takes.

We don't want the road like I want.

I want the goal.

But I don't want to walk that path because it.

It means I'm gonna have to tell Jesus.

You know, it turns out I don't actually want to be with you all that much.

I don't actually want to read your word.

I'm gonna have To.

I'm gonna have to admit, you know, when I preach, I'm actually most interested in people thinking I'm impressive.

I'm more interested in that than being faithful, actually.

You know.

You know, this.

I don't want to love my neighbors myself.

It turns out, my neighbors, a piece of work, you know, like.

Like, these are things that actually come out in prayer.

And I actually have to discover him and his grace in the midst of my life.

And the advantage of that is it means prayer is actually not that hard, at least conceptually.

I don't need the secret formula.

I don't need.

The difficulty of prayer is an existential one, is I'm gonna have to navigate what emerges in my life.

And, you know, I. I share the story in the book, but one.

One of the stories I share with prayer is that I. I was putting my kids to bed, and I. I walked out, and usually I spent a time in prayer afterwards.

And I looked at my.

Which I don't usually do at this point at night, but I actually looked at my, you know, Twitter page, and someone attacked me on Twitter and tagged.

Me, which was, looking back, hilarious to me that they took the time to tag me.

But I'd never been.

I've been attacked plenty of times, but.

No one had ever bothered tagging me in it.

And it was baseless.

It was.

I get attacked a lot because of.

If you speak in.

Right.

In Spiritual Nation, there's a lot of people that attack Spiritual Nation, folks.

Not based on anything we say or believe, but things they could imagine, we believe.

If you do guilt by association, seven degrees.

And so, you know, anyone who uses.

This word must believe all the same things.

And it was one of those things.

And for whatever reason, I got set off and I was pissed.

And this guy.

It was an attack on my character, attack on my ministry and faithfulness and things.

And I stupidly responded, you know, I.

Did all the things that, you know, not to do, you know, and I was furious.

And so I look at my wife, and I said, you know what?

I'm just going to spend a while in prayer.

And so I go to pray.

And my first probably, I don't know, 10 minutes or so of prayer was, God, I can destroy him.

Was it?

Yeah, it was imprecatory prayers, wasn't it?

You're like, it went to kill him and his children.

Lord, let's.

And I've got some plans.

Like, I. I have some ideas for you.

You're good at this.

But I can really, you know, and it was for 10 minutes throughout the minutes.

I mean, I was just fuming.

And I'm thinking of ways to respond.

I'm thinking of ways I can get this person.

We can, you know, and it, at a 10 minute point, it probably shifted.

And I remember I, I was reminded of Psalm 73.

Psalm 73 is a little bit like this.

The psalmist is really pissed, and he's really pissed about evildoers getting anything they want, you know, and everything works for them.

They get, you know, and, and eventually the psalmist even begins to wonder, have all.

Has all my devotion been in vain?

And then he draws near to the Lord and everything changes because now I've.

Gone to the temple of God to discern their end.

That's right.

And now when he draws near to God, he could begin to see in light of the relation to God now, oh my goodness, God, you actually have given them quite a long leash because of what their end is going to be.

And, and it's actually an invitation.

It isn't just blessing or something.

It's.

And suddenly in the midst of this prayer when I'm railing at this guy, I, I kind of vented my anger and I brought it to the Lord and just held it in his presence.

And I began to realize, you know, I don't know anything about this guy, Lord, I don't know what you're doing in his life, Lord, I don't even know.

Maybe he, maybe he actually needs me for whatever reason to be the enemy.

And maybe you're going to use this meaningfully in his life in ways that are totally beyond me, in ways that may take decades and decades and decades.

I don't know, Lord, there's so much I don't know.

There's so much I don't understand.

And so I ended a prayer.

I began the prayer with saying, let's destroy him.

And I ended saying, lord, he's yours, he's not mine.

And Lord, I don't need to defend myself.

It's not my job to make sure the Internet has the correct views of me.

Praise God.

Praise God.

The Internet's not in the purview of my responsibility.

And, and then I could lay it down and I, and you know, it was interesting because I realized for most of my life, instead of that, I would have just been pissed.

I slowly would have gotten over.

Of course you're not.

You don't get over angry.

You just kind of store it away for another time.

But I would have thought I got over it.

Then I would have apologized to God for being Angry in the past tense, which meant I was never actually, you know, hearing the impaired of the Lord.

Be angry and do not sin.

I was actually pretending I wasn't angry any longer.

And then I'd pray about it in the past tense.

Lord, you know, sorry I was angry, forgive me.

But now I'm better when the reality is I've just tried to deal with my life in my own power.

I never brought it to God.

I just apologized for the reality and moved on.

And that's where, you know, we have to bring the truth so that we can actually be formed in the presence of the only One who truly can shape our lives according to his image and likeness.

And the Mo.

The average Christian, I have found, and it's been my own experience.

And you see this right away in the New Testament, right?

I think of Galatians 3.

Why, when you began with the Spirit, are you trying to be perfected in the flesh?

And we could put that as, why were you saved in.

For in your mess, and you're now trying to be perfected in your goodness?

No, no.

Come to the Lord in reality, where you actually need his mercy, and discover it there.

And what you'll find is prayer won't be boring anymore.

It's like that other Herbert McCabe quote that I love when he says, you know, on the Titanic, when the Titanic was sinking, for many of the people on board, it was the first time their mind didn't wander when they prayed.

Which is a hilarious side comment, but it's.

His point is accurate because it was.

The first time that many of those people prayed for what they actually wanted.

Wanted.

And, you know, it turns out, you know, when my kids, when Christmas is coming, like, my kids never have their mind wander when they're telling me things they want because their hearts in them, like, when they're bringing their.

Their wants to me, their hearts right there.

The reality is that many of us, when we pray, our hearts nowhere near that place, because our heart, our heart, we fall asleep because we're bored.

Like, our heart knows this is all total bs.

Like, this is just, hey, God, here's the here.

You know, it's just this, you know.

You know, feathery life of, you know, like fat babies with, you know, with harps and things.

It's like, no, when you begin praying the deep things, like, you're actually in them.

And that makes a difference.

Oh, my goodness.

There's so much that we've talked about and there's so much more that I want to.

I want to delve in but we're going to have to come back and do that another time because we can, we can talk for hours.

I know we can.

What's a concluding water bottle that we could give our folks that could encourage them?

Yeah, I, I would say pay attention to what captivates your imagination or what captivates your attention and use that as a kind of vehicle to draw near to your Lord and just trust that he is your hope.

Another way to put that is just always go Godward.

Always go Godward.

I am so tempted to just worry about things instead of taking my worries to Him.

I am tempted to endlessly analyze instead of taking those things to Him.

So whatever captivates your imagination or your attention, bring that to the Lord and rest in his presence, holding your life before Him.

That is a good word and it's an encouragement.

I think if we can bring all of that and, and before him, knowing that he cares before the face of God.

That Quorum Deo, which you.

I'm not going to get into this one, but you talk about it and illustrate frustration in there that was disturbing on the face of God, but it was more of what would be like if God didn't show care and concern and a delight and was just straight faced.

And he's not straight faced.

He's.

He's compassionate, he's loving.

He loves us in a way that I think we need to be reminded of.

And for those that are out there today and you're, you're really experiencing that.

You feel like you're having that dark night of the soul.

I would encourage you to pick up this book, order it.

It's with John Coe.

Kyle Strobel, When Prayer Becomes Real.

It's been out for about four years.

It is fantastic.

And it's going to help you in your walk with Jesus because we want to be able to help you fulfill the purpose that God has for you.

You're out in the trenches, you're doing the ministry and we want to encourage you because we need one another and we all need to, to help one another connect with God and, and to be the people that God wants us to be.

Kyle, it has been a delight.

I hope to have you back.

It would be awesome to continue this conversation.

But thanks again for coming on the show, Travis.

I'd love to be back, man.

So good being with you, brother.

That was Dr. Kyle Strobel helping us see that prayer isn't about performance.

It's about presence, about showing up honestly before God and learning to live in his love.

I know that the burdens that you're carrying.

I know that everyone's looking to you.

I know that you have to preach.

I know you have to put together messages.

But I also know how quickly prayer can become unreal and it can be something that we talk about and not do.

And that's why I'm so thankful for Kyle Strobel and John Ko and this book, When Prayer Becomes Real.

It's one of the most freeing and insightful guides to prayer that you will read.

And don't forget, we have our next blueprint coming up that's beginning November 5th.

It's a space to go deeper in your faith, sharpening your theology, and form a life rooted in Jesus as we delve into God's blueprint for his church in this chaotic moment today.

Sign up in the show notes spots are limited, so sign up today and be sure to tune in next week as I welcome back Trevin Wax to the show along with Thomas west as we discuss their book the Gospel Way Catechism and why you need it for your church today.

Until next time, this is Travis Michael Fleming encouraging you to stay grounded, stay honest and keep going deeper because the deeper we go, the more life we find.

Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the Ministry Deep Dive, a podcast if Apollo was watered the center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

We hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture.

Let's keep the conversation going.

Check out our ministry@apolloswater.org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts.

Connect with others in the battle.

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