The Transformative Power of Prayer and the Gift of Sabbaticals with Pete Greig- Episode 1030

Hi, friends. Welcome to another episode of That Sounds Fun, Spiritually Stronger. I'm your host, Annie F. Downs. I am so happy to be here with you today as we continue our series on prayer. This episode wasn't originally scheduled to air today, but in the midst of so much hard going on around us, the devastation from the winter storms, the chaos, pain, anger, and heartache around the United States and the world. We moved some things around because this conversation felt like the exact right one to air today. I hope all of these prayer episodes give you a picture of what prayer can do and why it matters. Something we say at Crosspoint a lot is we don't only pray, but we pray first. Today, you're going to be reminded from our guests that as you grow in prayer, you grow in your ability to hear from God. And that's my hope for all of us, that these disciplines that we are talking about would grow our intimacy with Him, our connection with Him, and they would allow us to hear His voice clearly, especially in a time when we need to be reminded that God has not left us, that He is right here. He is listening, and He is with us. So today on the show, I get to talk with my friend Pete Gregg, who I love. You may remember Pete when he was on our last prayer series here on That Sounds Fun. We'll link that for you in the show notes and on the substack, spirituallystronger.com. He's an author and the founder of the 24-7 Prayer Movement. Y'all have heard me reference the daily devotional Lectio 365 so many times. And Pete's also the co-host of that and the founder of that. I love it. I love it. I love it. Get it on your phone. Start listening to it. There's a morning, an afternoon, an evening. We'll talk all about it today. Today, we're talking about Pete's recent three-month sabbatical and how time with God and prayer looked different for him and his wife during those times and how it shifted since and what they learned from it and how prayer impacts our relationship with God. I also got to ask him what we do when God doesn't answer our prayers. I think Pete's wisdom and his response is so helpful. I can't wait for you to hear this episode. And I would love for you to keep talking to us about it on Substack and how you're doing and what you're praying and what you're going through right now, wherever you live. You can find today's post and our daily questions. Remember, we hope you do an hour a week with us here on the podcast, hearing about the content, learning and growing in it, and then 10 additional minutes a day with God and at spirituallystronger.com because we'll give you questions and thoughts and some other resources to listen to or to read. Again, that's spirituallystronger.com. And now here is a very poignant conversation for today. Thanks be to God. We recorded it last week. Here's my friend, Pete Gregg. Pete, welcome back to That Sounds Fun. What a joy to see you. Thanks, Annie. Good to be back. Oh, I mean, I'm just glad to have you back all together. You've got to tell us, will you give us a little bit of the overview of your sabbatical you just had? Yes, it was awesome. We just took three months out and it was like a major transition moment for us in our lives as parents, in ministry. We were stepping down from being like pastors of a church after 18 years. So it's like a big change. And we, you know, we centered ourselves and slowed down. That's the first thing. I always get kind of nervous when people take a sabbatical and they're like, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Then I went and did a study course in Jerusalem. Right, right. You know, then I learned to like wrestle yak in Mongolia. You just feel like. I ate gluten free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that. Don't do that during a sabbatical. Yeah. So we slow. I mean, I travel a lot. I'm actually not traveling was great. So we sent it down. We just attended to one personal fitness. We just knew we needed to get physically fit. I got personal trainers. We, you know, did Pilates, all the boring stuff. But I can't tell you, obviously, how much better we feel for that. and i do think sometimes we over spiritualize everything and and we sort of say oh you know i've got i've got to get prayer for something and actually god's going go for a jog like it will cheer you up so i i have given you the mechanism yes like naaman in the river you just don't want to take the medicine yes so that was the that was the first thing and you know it's obviously a lot easier to find healthy rhythms when you're you know you're not busy busy busy the second thing was creativity. We really felt God calling us to push into our personal creativity. For me, that's kind of natural. You know, I nearly studied art. That's nearly the direction I went, but I haven't been able to do that for years because life's been so busy. For my wife, Sammy, that's kind of new, but she pushed into pottery and absolutely loved it. I painted a lot of very average pictures created a lot of bad art did a lot of illustration for my forthcoming book and it's just used a different part of your brain and part of it was part of it is that um you know when you're busy you get efficient and everything has a purpose and it was a call back to just play and the second thing was i've been getting counseling and my counselor said to me you're a highly creative person but you continually sacrifice that because there's always some duty some responsibility that seems more important and yeah it's part of who god's made you so creativity fitness being more centered and we did spend a month in south africa um by the indian ocean in the sun which was awesome so we we and and the headline would be we felt like we got our joy back, Annie. I mean, you know, a bit like the title of this podcast. We realize the anointing in our lives is to do with the joy and the gladness in our lives, and we've lost our joy. And God had to do some healing in us, but we feel like we rediscovered the joy of being alive and knowing Jesus. Yeah. How did you and Sammy, I think a lot of our friends listening are probably wondering, how does a couple get to do this together? I'm thinking of our team is also doing three months in the summer of 27. We have one team member who's married. There may be others of us who are married by summer of 27, please God. But how do a husband and wife get to do that together? Well, if you've still got dependent kids at home, it is a challenge. And you basically either have to not do it at the same time or you have to do kind of a deal um with each other where you know i know i know husbands and wives where you know the wife has said look you know you can go and do this for two or three weeks i'll have the kids then then it's my turn and then we're going to do a really great family holiday together yeah but we're privileged enough annie that our boys have now left home and so we're at a stage where we we we could do that yeah together why three months um it felt like about the right time you know i i always think if people just do a month it's just a glorified vacation you know most of us are addicted to adrenaline and um and have lived so long with lists constantly running through our minds we don't even know who we are without function and it takes a while um to detox you know there have been studies done by sort of you know business reviews harvard yale all the rest of it um into people with high pressure jobs and so that could be captains of industry but honestly for example if you're a pastor you are dealing with unbelievable pressure um you know major crises preaching the whole thing and you just get too good at it you get used to it and your physiology gets used to adrenaline and so these these business reviews actually say that if you've got a high pressure job kind of like a week's holiday is the worst possible scenario because by the end of a week you're maybe just beginning to detox and then you go back to work they say you'd be better just take two or three days and have some fun it's not actually restorative it's just fun um or you need to have enough time physiologically to actually start to detox go flat you know emotionally and then begin to rebuild and come out the other side so yeah that's why we had three months um i'm concerned next summer that i'm gonna get bored yeah is that good yeah boredom is great we don't get bored enough we don't let our kids get bored anymore which is incredibly bad for them um you know i think boredom is the the context in which creativity you know flourishes my wife always says to me i know when you've had a good vacation because you start to have ideas again she she says it's a disaster you know because you'll have you'll have an idea in five minutes Then we'll take the next five years of our lives. But I think I think there is something that that what is boredom? Boredom is coming out the other side of constant activity, constant reaction and entering a place of rest in which, you know, you're not being constantly overstimulated. and I think that's not a bad thing. Annie, if I know you, you're not going to stay bored for long. Yeah. But that sounds exciting. That sounds like innovation to me. Yes, I'm really hoping. Right now, the way our rhythms work is our whole team gets two weeks off in the summer and then I take weeks around them. So I take four. And part of it, Pete, is because when I was doing two as well with my team and spreading out my vacations during the year, my days off. By the middle of the second week, I was finally shutting down and I started to go. And I mean, I remember one year I just sobbed and was like, I cannot go back yet, but I had to be back on Monday. So I was like, I need a little more time. So I'm excited for us all to have such extended time because I think you're right. There will be something in our actual bodies that will settle when there's not a list and there's not a book deadline and there's not a podcast to record. And it's just three months of go live your life and enjoy it and put your phone down and I'll see you in September. And, you know, for me, the big relief was I found out that I really like Jesus and I really like my wife. Yeah. And and that's kind of a relief because you sometimes I know I know Christian leaders who are terrified of sabbaticals. I know organizations, famous ones you'd have heard of that have banned sabbaticals because they're like, people don't want to come back to work afterwards. We'll lose people. We'll have a crisis of faith. And I'm like, what is that? I mean, well, that's control. And so I found out when when Jesus isn't my job, I like him even more. You know, that was kind of a big relief to me. I would say this as we're talking sabbaticals, you know, some people will listen to this who are doing ordinary jobs. They don't have the privilege of ministry. And it is a privilege to say, well, it's all right for you. But I always say to, you know, members of the church that we used to pastor, if you've got a senior leadership role in any profession, negotiate a sabbatical. sabbatical build it into your contract when they're trying to hire you say hey if i stay seven years i want at least three months off paid and if they say if they won't hire you on that basis you shouldn't be working for them that's just told you right there everything about their value system but most businesses will be like awesome you're going to stay seven years of course you can do that right so and most progressive like businesses now believe in sabbatical so this isn't just like a perk of ministry. I think this is potentially for anyone whose life carries a lot of responsibility. Yeah. I would like to think my team likes working here enough to stay, but I also know they all know what happens next summer if they're still here. So I'd like to think they're happy day in and day out, but we all know what's coming next summer. Will you talk about— Yeah, it's so good. I can't wait. In some ways, I'm terrified in other ways because I've been in my brain my whole life, So I know. Talk to me about how your prayer life changed or adjusted or what happened to your prayer life in a sabbatical. You are the prayer guy, right? You started 24-7 like people assume you pray already. How did your prayer life change in a sabbatical? Yeah, although you must always remember, I've always been very open about the fact we only started the 24-7 prayer movement because I was bad at prayer. That's right. Me too. And realized this is the key to everything, and I really need to learn how to do it. Yeah. But yeah, by God's grace, I think maybe I have learned one or two things over the years. The sabbatical was revolutionary in a very beautiful and quiet way for my prayer life. And I'll tell you one of the things. I'm going to be really honest with you here, Annie. sammy and i have not ever really prayed together in a disciplined way as husband and wife and i you know i feel embarrassed to admit that because so many people say if you pray together you stay together and all that stuff and the reason is because sammy has a chronic illness and it means that she's exhausted all the time and some mornings just don't work for her and honestly by the time i get to bed at night the second my head hits the pillow i'm out and so i had to come through quite a lot of guilt around that fact i mean we pray don get me wrong we pray a lot together driving around just stopping the middle but in a disciplined way Well on sabbatical we cracked it And obviously it partly because we had more time But we went to a tiny little chapel, not far from where I'm talking to you now. And we sat in this ancient, ancient place every day. and we spent some time in silence and then we prayed through some the scriptures and then we interceded for you know loved ones and various situations and what was extraordinary was how that was almost like a narrative arc to our sabbatical god began speaking to us very clearly at the start and then took us on a journey with those things and brought us to completion at the For example, again, being very honest. Thank you. I said that we'd lost our joy. I said that, you know, we need some healing. We began to realize, as you know, the snow globe settled down and we got clarity that we were carrying some wounds from people who'd hurt us. And at the start of the sabbatical, we were able to talk really honestly with the Lord about that, like embarrassingly honestly. and at the end the Lord said okay done deal take communion together that now is all dealt with it's all in the past tense forgive move on and so it's like this beautiful like journey of wholeness and that's of course related to our joy but it was lovely praying together every single day without fail. is a smart meal delivery service. They send you fresh meals and a smart oven that does the cooking for you. Get this. You just scan the meal's QR code, pop it in the oven, and it cooks everything automatically. It steams, bakes, and broils. It feels like cooking in the future, like Jetson stuff, except it's right now, and I think it is so cool. They've got a chicken parm, you guys. Oh, my gosh. Listen, we got to try that one. Plus, Tavala's smart oven isn't just for their food. This is mind-blowing. 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Order yours now from the most awarded mattress brand out there. My friends can go to helixsleep.com slash that sounds fun. And you're going to get 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com slash that sounds fun for 27% off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name, That Sounds Fun, after checkout so they know we sent you. HelixSleep.com slash That Sounds Fun. Okay, now back to our conversation with Pete. I'm thinking about our friends who are listening that are married, that are raising kids. Does it need to be an hour of praying together? Or is it like, hey, we both got home from work. It's 530. Let's put on one worship song and just stand in the kitchen together while we're cooking and pray for a worship song. Like what is there a right or wrong way to do this as a couple? You know, find what works for you. Pray the way God made you and keep it fresh. I always say, I think we've talked about this before. Keep it simple. Keep it real. Keep it up. Yeah. And different seasons, it will be different, different things. But again, you know, it's always better to aim to pray for five minutes and go for 10 than to go for 20 minutes and only achieve 10. You know, it's like it's it's like, you know, this is not an Olympic activity. And I do think, you know, that Jesus would have followed quite a strict rhythm of praying three times a day. No question about it. That was the temple rhythm. And we've we've so enshrined the quiet time idea, you know, like an hour a day. And then I've done Jesus for the day. But I think a far more biblical way of seeing it is how do I practice God's presence throughout the day? That doesn't let us off the hook of disciplined times of prayer, because those are what help us to practice. Yes. Yes. But but little and often is often better than just one big lump at the start of the day. Yeah, one of the things we've encouraged everybody during Spiritually Stronger is an hour a week with the podcast, letting it be. You are kind of jumping off and then 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day kind of digging into this topic and going like, I can find 10 minutes a day during my lunch break if I wanted to, you know. And so not to replace their quiet time, but in addition to what you're already doing, can you find 10 minutes to dig deeper into and to practice prayer? Talk for just a second. You know, so I'm not married yet. And a lot of times the advice given to dating couples is don't pray together. Do you believe in that? Do you think it's okay for dating couples to pray together? What are your thoughts on that when you're advising people who are not married yet, but are in committed relationships? I've never heard anything more stupid in all my life. Love it. Actually, I've literally, I've never heard anyone say that. Okay. That is dumb advice. forgive me if if it was one of your previous guests i mean for lots of reasons first of all you know um if you're dating and it's going to go anywhere you are laying foundations for the culture of how how you will uh live together in the future and whilst i said that sammy and i never managed to until recently crack a disciplined daily time of prayer together we have always prayed together when we're dating right the way through it's very normal and natural to us secondly it's important what because you know if we're if we're christians we're dating we're not meant to be sleeping together so we are missing out on a sort of physical intimacy that we believe is reserved for the sacrament of marriage right but and so we we kind of miss out on what maybe some of our friends are enjoying however one of the things that we have that they don't have and it is an exquisite intimacy is the ability to pray together and not only are we allowed to do that when we're dating the scriptures are quite clear you know bring god into everything so i have literally no idea why anyone would ever suggest to a dating couple they shouldn't pray together that's that sounds stupid to me Okay, great. I love it. Yeah, I find the same. I think some of it is protecting particularly younger Christians from over-spiritualizing and over-committing and protecting you, but I'm with you. I've always found blessing the food together and praying together in a dating relationship to be a thing that also teaches you about each other as you're going, about what your prayer lives are like and how you can encourage each other in that. Yeah, I mean, you never get to know anyone better than when you pray with them and um and i don't know i i don't even buy the thing that praying a lot makes you kind of intense in your relationship or anything else you know the the fruit of the spirit is joy not intensity wow and it's dead religion that makes you all earnest and intense and constipated you know including jesus and things brings joy and life and laughter and forgiveness and grace. And the mark of holiness is kind of an effervescence and a laughter and a lightness. And so this idea of praying together is going to make you super intense a couple. I suspect it's the exact reverse. Yeah, I think you're right. Is there anything that came from your sabbatical prayer life that you're able to plug into your back to work with a Sabbath rhythm prayer life? Yeah, yeah. Well, Sam and I are continuing that rhythm. I can't remember the exact statistics on habit stacking and all of that. But, you know, the great thing about having the space to establish this over three months is that now all we have to do is maintain what has become a habit and it's much easier than the starting ones. So there's that. And, you know, I should say a big part of our spirituality and our daily life all the time, not just on sabbatical, is Lectio 365. Yes. A very easy rhythm of prayer. Ten minutes you can listen or read on the app every morning, probably five minutes at midday and then about seven minutes in the evening, just putting your soul to bed. and we have um hundreds and hundreds of thousands of users of that now so that's gone through the roof and um it's so easy and what i find moving particularly would be testimonies the ones that we get like you know a nurse in a hospital saying my life is so crazy but you know i get 10 minutes i can sit in a bathroom cubicle with my ear pods on and do this or i you know i just on my coffee break i just you know press play to pray so um that that it must be jesus because you know we gave it a really uncool latin name lectio 365 um but it's it it's really taken off and it's growing exponentially i can't even i don't even know how many languages it's in there it's unbelievable i mean i don't it is like you throw a rock around nashville and you hit a person using it. And I laugh a lot when, because I listen to it a lot in the night as well. I do the evening one. I very often do not get to the end of what you are praying. And I have been having a lot of strange dreams. And if I will do Lectio and fall asleep praying, they don't happen or they change. And so it feels like also there's something spiritual that happens when God is the last thing for me and not my phone. And when God is the last voice I hear, not my own. And so, I mean, it's your voice, but it is you praying over us and reading scripture over us. Talk a little bit about why a resource like Lectio 365, which is where we are sending people, I mean, that's one of the reasons I wanted you here. How does that, someone might say that's a crutch in your prayer life. You should be able to pray in silence for 10 minutes by yourself. How do resources like that actually help us grow in our spiritual disciplines? Well, you know, Lectio 365 is just praying the Bible. And one of the things we often miss is the Bible wasn't primarily given to us just for doctrine or, you know, for education. It was given to us for meditation. The Bible itself says that we should meditate on the Bible. And so many of us are taught how to do Bible study, you know, the clues in the world but we don't know how to use the bible conversation to grow in our to you and use our imagination and even just you know in terms of you know the way your brain is made there's one bit of your brain that processes you know facts and data and information and we tend to be very good at using that bit that's some people it's the only bit of their brain they trust but there's another bit of your brain the frontal lobe that is about um it's about imagination and creativity it the bit of your brain that you use when you watch a movie if you switch off the bit about facts because if if your brain is continually going it all made up it all a lie you not going to enjoy the movie so you know how to shut down that bit and to engage with your frontal lobe and many of us and this is pharisaism have grown up in traditions that said you can only trust you know logic and language in the way you interact with the Bible and you must shut down your imagination your creativity even though they know it's fine to use that in every other bit of life and so Lectio is about how you pray the Bible how you use your imagination how you read between the lines how you listen for the whisper of the Holy Spirit how you talk God's word back to him yeah so I mean if that's a crutch that's that's crazy i mean that's that's just that's just literally um allowing the scriptures to come alive in your own relationship with god yes and it's the way that many of the bible writers clearly used the new testament writers clearly used the old testament in that sort of way so you know and if if someone is able just to sit in silence for half an hour and commune with god like yoda good for them good for you but there but there aren't many of those people out there i am not built like that how do you a lot of months you will add in feasts from the christian calendar as part of or a feast celebrating a certain person how do y'all decide which of those to add in in the middle of the series that's a great question i've never been asked that before well the first thing is we do the feast days because we just love pausing and celebrating like we just did martin luther king day yeah you know i mean it's a no-brainer yeah um and and we like doing the the the the saints and the heroes of the faith who maybe are a little less famous as well because there are amazing amazing lives out there and you know the hebrews talks about the cloud of witnesses cheering us on these people's lives are inspirational we we we either do it around when they were born or when they died uh or sometimes there's like an anniversary that is particularly you know significant for that person's life i mean like an obvious one would be saint valentine's day 14th of february you know there are a few tricky ones yeah like um like uh father's mother's days on different days in your country yeah that's right yeah yeah so there's a few tricky ones But we probably do, I don't know, maybe one every 10 days, every two weeks, we do one of those. I love them. I think it's amazing because also I'm a pretty Catholic curious person. I feel like I'm learning. I like learning a lot about that other half of our faith family. And so there's a lot of times where y'all will quote St. Teresa. and y'all you know there it brings in the beauty of the catholic side of our faith of our faith friends and um and so i love it i think it's really great it has it does bring scripture life how often are you using things like liturgies to help your prayer life or if you're thinking about something specific reading a prayer that someone else has written yeah i i do that a fair bit in fact there's one um liturgical prayer that i pray every every single day that i've memorized and and um in fact there's two that i use every single day but um i find it really helpful sometimes i think the two extremes are the problem there are some people who only ever pray liturgically and they never just chat to god and that that's really i think that's crazy that that's that's sort of unhealthy it's not a real relationship but i think there are other people who only ever chat to god and don't think well you know if saint augustine wrote a prayer like why wouldn't i want sometimes to explore that and there are seasons in our life annie where we just can't find the words and we need we need a prayer that can pray us because we can't find the language and i think that's when those kinds of pieces of liturgy can be helpful so uh yeah i i i do i do use it and then a lot of what we've done with lecturers we've actually started to create new liturgy i don't see why it all has to be old like we yes we we carefully really really thoughtfully like thinking about every single word written like we have a sabbath blessing that that we that we use every single week that your evening one is almost exactly the same every night or very similar a couple of them very similar yeah that almost feel like a a liturgical it's almost pavlov dog for me it's a little bit like here comes pete time to sleep annie people all around the world say you send me to sleep which i think they're trying to be encouraging but it is not it isn't i've taken to when I go and speak places, I used to say, is anyone here heard of Lectio 365? But I don't because everywhere I go now that people have. I say, who here uses Lectio 365? And loads of hands go up. And I always say, okay, this person is primed to fall asleep to my voice. So if they start snoring as I'm speaking, you need to keep them awake. Brilliant. That's hilarious. I'll tell you, if I get to the end of yours and it finishes, I'm always like, oh no, am I about to be up all night. Why am I not asleep yet? I shouldn't get to the end of these. Listen, I know replacing the sheets you put on your bed is one of the things you never think about washing them, sure, but buying new ones, I never think to do it. But if your sheets are pilling, thinning, slipping, or overheating, that's your sign that it's time to upgrade to Bull & Branch. Bull & Branch's signature sheets are made from 100% organic cotton and designed to hold their shape, stay breathable, and feel luxuriously soft night after night. 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Talk to us a little bit about growth in our prayer life. A lot of our friends listening, statistically, the majority of our friends listening are already walking with God. And they are just wanting to get spiritually stronger from where they are. What does it look like for our prayer lives to increase? What would that actually look like? It's a brilliant question. And, you know, and it underlies this mega series you're launching on growing spiritually stronger. And I think one of the reasons I think it's a great question is sometimes people just think, well, you know, prayer is prayer and everyone can do it. and everyone's prayer is equal and that might sound very democratic but it's not actually true some people's prayers carry more weight than other people's um that there are old ladies of faith who've suffered a lot know the lord deeply have walked with him for decades who can whisper a prayer that will carry more authority than a whole stadium of screaming Wow. Wow. And Jesus had this. Remember when he took three of the disciples up what became the Mount of Transfiguration? The other nine are pretty fed up. I mean, you know, especially when they hear later they've missed out. It's not like on Elijah and Moses. They really missed out. I mean, if you heard you missed out on meeting Elvis, you'd be a bit depressed. but elijah and most i'm like you you talk about fomo so these poor nine are left behind and and they're typical guys you know they're wrestling with their ego and all of that and they're feeling a bit like put out that jesus you know has relegated them and then a dad comes up with his son his poor son who has epileptic fits yeah and says can you pray for him and they do that that guy thing yeah sure yeah you know they want to be the man yeah and they pray and it clearly doesn't work and the only way they could have known that hadn't worked was the boy must have had a seizure in front of yes i mean how humiliating jesus comes back and heals him yeah wow and so they take jesus aside and say what was going on there wow and jesus isn't that pastoral he says hey this this kind only comes out through prayer and fasting yes in other words you can grow in authority um or to use some other biblical language you can be known in the spirit as you go on in prayer you can grow in your ability to hear god in your ability to discern what he's doing in your faith. You can see more miracles. This really is something you can grow spiritually stronger. So I think that's exciting. And I think if we don't tell people that, they'll be a bit like, why do I need to do spiritual disciplines? It's all grace. I'll just kind of vaguely think about Jesus. Drinking a glass of water is an act of prayer. I'll try not to sin and that's me done. No, no, no. There are dimensions of life and the color of life and the beauty of life and the experience of God that you will miss out on. You will never touch unless you push into this stuff, which is freely available to you. Yeah, that I love that story as well, Pete, because we don't have any proof that Jesus was fasting right then. And so there's something about, so I'd love for you to talk about that for a second, because there's something about we can fast and it makes the deposit that God later pulls from. And so will you talk a little bit about the power of fasting with prayer? We're going to do a whole month on fasting coming up, but why are those so powerful together? Yeah, and it's a timely question because we're just coming into the season of Lent. Lent, yes. Right. And that is the traditional season where, you know, Lent lasts 40 days. Jesus spent 40 days prayer and fasting straight after his baptism in the wilderness and engaged in spiritual warfare. And it says he came out of the wilderness in the power of the Holy Spirit and really began his ministry. So, you know, fasting grows as spiritual muscles. And I think that's always been true. But I think it's even more true living as we do in one of the most materialistic ages ever to deny our flesh when so many people are worshipping their flesh. Yes. Now, it can be food. If you struggle with an eating disorder, don't fast food. A bad idea. But there are other kinds of fasts that there's, you know, I know women who fast makeup. You know, I know I know guys who fasted label clothing. Yeah. you know it says of Daniel in the Bible he fasted body lotion I'm not sure I recommend that but that's no shower gel yeah the apostle Paul talks about married couples fasting sex for a season you know I know a lot of people who do digital detox fasts yeah and and that is a super helpful thing even just neurologically so i think it's about denying yourself something as an act of worship to god and as a way of making space in your life to hear from him and then just to finish where you started it's not a magic trick the technique doesn't like push some button to make god do something so jesus wasn't fasting in that moment but he had a fasted life yes beautiful he was walking in the authority and the intimacy of a life that was seeking God with everything, which obviously then involved all kinds of spiritual disciplines, including fasting. That's beautiful, a fasting lifestyle. And actually, one of our episodes in the fasting series is going to be about 40-day fasts. So if you know some people who've done full 40-day fasts that I could interview, if you'll send them over to me, I would love. We have a couple. We have a male and a female already, but we would love some more stories of people who've actually done 40-day fasts. So I'll follow up with you and you can send us some names. Let's kind of finish here a little bit. One of your books that has moved my life is about when God doesn't answer and when he's quiet. And so we'll be sure to link to that over at spirituallystronger.com. But also, what do we do I mean you know my life Pete I been single for 45 years and I asked God for a full 22 of those at least 25 of those to get married And he has not answered and with a yes And what do we do when he doesn answer when we when we digging into this spiritual discipline of prayer, but we've prayed for something for decades. We've prayed for healing and the person has passed away. We and what the what the church will say is she or he got their final healing. And you're like, shut up. I wanted them to live. I didn't. I was praying they would live and they didn't. I think you've experienced that. My nephew passed away and I thought when everybody said he got his ultimate healing, I was like, I appreciate you saying the Christian thing. And that is not what I was praying for. I was praying that I'd get to watch him grow up. And so what do we do when God doesn't answer and what happens to our spiritual discipline if we don't see answers? Well, Annie, yeah, I mean, not everyone will know my story is that very soon after starting the 24-7 prayer movement, which has gone crazy, you know, we've been praying nonstop for over a quarter century. We see miracles like you wouldn't believe. I've written books full of miracles, some of which sound like they're out of the book of Acts. I mean, Red Moon Rising, Dirty Glory. And these are true. These are not made up. These are true. So I believe in the power of prayer. But a year or two into all of that, uh sammy my wife uh got a brain tumor and um it was a very large one and we lived for quite a while with two tiny children wondering if she would survive we were incredibly blessed and you know they were able to operate and she she's still alive and you know i'm so aware that many people don't get to say that and we celebrate birthdays like you wouldn't believe but she's lived with a chronic illness ever since she's had epilepsy which is a really pretty name for a really ugly condition yeah and the medication she takes for that makes her feel continually exhausted and there's a number of other really difficult side effects and so you know how do i live as the leader of a global prayer movement with my longest oldest deepest prayer for sammy's healing unanswered and and it's really tempting to go to one of two extremes either to become quite cynical well god i don't think you love me i don't think prayer works when And my problem is that God does. I can't deny all that he has done as well as all that he hasn't done. The other extreme you can go to is to get real superficial and basically pretend everything's fine when you're hurting like hell. That's right. And so the paradox of faith is to hold together what God has done and what God hasn't done yet. i've got a theory that the first hundred years in heaven will be filled with the sound oh right right right right as we finally work out why but um so you know the first thing you do with your unanswered prayer is you cry is you weep them out you yell them out you lament you know it is a profoundly biblical response to heartbreak to to grieve before the lord and not to pretend you know to be real with god not to pretend and i i do know so many people who find that really difficult to do yes um it's they feel like they've got to pretend to be a good christian to god but you know he sees you sitting on the toilet you know he you don't there's no point in pretending the bible is so much more honest than the church on almost every page so the first thing is to lament the second thing is uh to trust i loved what i saw you had banning leaves yeah my friend on your show recently and he said a great thing didn't he on on trust you guys you should look this up if you've missed it and see it and he just said yeah everyone loves the idea of trust like it's you know we'll get the tattoo the preacher's preaching about trust we're like yeah go for it until we are required to trust and what makes us need to trust is it is pain and confusion and unanswered questions. And so, you know, lament, you know, trust, persevere with your prayers and, you know, learn to find God's presence in your disappointment and not in spite of it. Wow. Yeah, I'll tell you when I, the day I turned 44 on my birthday, I had a, I brought real anger to God and journaled it hard about not being married yet. And the phrase I heard in the process, the reason I got to that is I felt like the Lord said, anger between people who love each other increases intimacy. And I was like, oh, so you're not going to leave. If I tell you how angry I am, like how deeply angry I am, you're not going to leave. And Pete, I think you'll like this because I, you know, So I'm sitting on this couch and I'm journaling it. There's a couch across from me and I'd been picturing my mind. Okay. If the Lord is sitting there, what would I say to him? So I'm just like, just going bananas in my journal and praying and yelling. And, um, and as at the end, what I expected was the Holy Spirit would be like, I love you so much. I'm here for you. I'm caring for you. And the first, when I said, okay, I'm done. The Lord said to me, can I tell you what I'm angry about now? That's great. And I was like, yes. And the Lord said, I'm embarrassed to confess this, but the Lord said, your gossip makes messes that I'm cleaning up all the time. Wow. And I was like, oh, this is a real marriage I'm in. I'm in a real marriage because he did not just coddle me in my anger. He said, if we're sitting down and talking about this, I'm talking to you too. and it changed me. I can't talk about a person without that sentence going through my head of the Lord saying, I've been angry at the message you've made because you gossip. And it has really, I haven't been able to quit gossiping altogether, but I'll tell you what, it stopped me from sending two text messages this week because I thought, no, he told me that makes of angry and i only got that level of intimacy with the lord because i brought my anger in prayer and i'd never done that before pete i'd never done that before and so the lament had the lament brought us closer and also got me in trouble i annie i i've not heard anyone say it like that before i think that is so profound and so powerful it was beautiful and everyone listening to you saying that knows oh that's not what i expected but that actually is what a real relationship's like we're kind of done with the you know jesus is just always nice thing one of the things i thought about a lot you know where jacob wrestles with the angel slash god and there's something in it that's quite dark and alarming like he's wrestling with god for a blessing and he walks with a limp for the rest of his life and yet there's something you know very intimate you wrestle all night yeah you know and the closeness of that and i know the seasons of my life where i've been wrestling with god have been some of the most intimate not the most pleasant right But there's a closeness and a brutal reality about just laying hold of God and saying, I'm not going to. You give me some answers. So there's a night of prayer that I describe in the book you referenced in God on Mute. Well, I prayed, I think, more honestly than I had ever prayed before and didn't even know if it was OK to say amen at the end. and I do think the Lord loves that can you imagine how sick he is of our religion like if my kids when they were younger had behaved with constant weird formality towards me I would grieve it as their dad why is there this distance when we behave towards our father in heaven with a religious facade, he must be like, why are you talking like that? Why are you behaving like that? Be real with me. And Jesus says that again and again when he teaches on prayer, be real. Yeah, it was very painful and very beautiful in the end. It has changed my relationship with him forever. And so I'm thankful, but it is hard to not get your prayers answered. So I wanted people to hear us both say, that is a hard part of this. And it's hard. I'm sure you've experienced this too profoundly. Like you pour out your guts for Sammy to get healed and you don't see the Lord moving in that. And you pray for a stranger at an altar and their leg grows. And you're like, what? How come I have a list of single girls? John Tyson taught this lesson about the power in your weight to pray for other people to get what you're waiting on. And so I have this list of single women. And by gosh, Pete, as you would imagine, they're getting ticked off left and right getting married. And so, but it doesn't keep me from praying because I know God moves. And so we persevere in what we don't have and we celebrate where he does answer the way we hope. Exactly. Yeah. You nailed it. I'm grateful. Would you mind finishing today by praying for us? That'd be a real treat. Thank you. lord jesus thank you that you are more committed to this journey of spiritual growth than we are yeah thank you that you love us and that you are conforming us to your image and that you are transforming us from one degree of glory to the next thank you lord god that it is to the Father's glory that we bear much fruit. Thank you that we are growing in our intimacy with you day by day. Thank you, Lord, that you have given us resources like this conversation, resources like the scriptures, resources like fasting and Sabbath and everything else through which we cannot so much lay hold of you, but relinquish our hold on our own efforts to receive from you who you are and what you're about. And so, Lord, we pray that you would work deeply in our lives and that you would strengthen us and cause us to grow ever more into your likeness. We love you and we want to know you better and we want to look like you more and we want to speak like you and we want to do your stuff. Yes. Amen. Amen. Pastor Pete, as always, thank you for joining us. I'm so, so grateful. Oh, Annie, thanks so much for having me. I'm going to remember that thing you said about God's anger for a long time. Thank you. I'm sorry I gossiped. Sorry I got us there. You guys, isn't he the best? What a timely conversation today with all that is going on around us in our nation. If you're a U.S. citizen in the world, in your own town, as you know, Nashville has gotten absolutely devastated by this winter storm and a conversation on prayer like this is so helpful in restoring my soul. So head over to social media. Please tell Pete, thank you so much for being on the show. And I think you're going to love his book, How to Pray, A Simple Guide for Normal People. We'll link that in the show notes, but it's also listed in the resources over on today's Substack post at spirituallystronger.com. If you have any questions from this episode. You can drop them in the Q&A box on the Spotify app. If you're a Spotify listener like me, jump in the comments at spirituallystronger.com. I'm having a ball over there. We love your information, your conversation, you telling us how you're doing. That's at spirituallystronger.com. And of course you can send them to us on Instagram at That Sounds Fun Podcast. We'll try to answer them there. If you need anything else from me, I'm embarrassingly easy to find. Annie F. Downs on Instagram, Twitter, X, whatever, Facebook, TikTok, now Substack, anywhere you need me, that is how you can find me. I think that's it for me today, friends. We are praying for you. We are thinking of you. We know this is not an easy time and there is no pretending like it is. You can hold joy and suffering at the same time. So go out or stay home and do something that sounds fun to you. And I will do the same. Today, what sounds fun to me? Well, today on this Monday, I'm not at work today. I had a little pipe burst in my house and I'm doing some cleaning. So what sounds fun to me today is getting my house back in order and handling the insurance stuff. And we're going to be all right, everybody. We're going to be all right. It's totally okay. So it sounds fun to me today to be home. I've been out of town for a while. I'm going to be home. I'm going to be getting things in order. So y'all have a great week. We'll see you back here next Monday with the conversation you thought you may be getting today. it's a powerful one about prayer perseverance and it's with my friends Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins we love y'all have a great week holler if you need us we'll see y'all next Monday Spiritually Stronger Spiritsisunna Spiritsisunna