The Pondify Podcast

Hello and welcome to the Ponder Fire podcast. I'm your host, Matt, and I'm joined this evening by two lovely looking guests, and of course, a lovely looking co-host. Hello,

Nigel. You've never called me lovely looking before I

feel touched. No, I thought I'd better compliment you to, to start this particular podcast off with a bang.

So , we've got some lovely looking guests here. We've got Steve and Jack. Steve, can you introduce yourself, actually tell us a bit about you and how you come to know Jesus.

I'm Steve and I've been going to the community church for 29 years. Wow. Well done you, it seems a long time actually.

I've always had sort of church in my life , I was in the church choir I was confirmed in the Church of England when I was 14. but then when I went off to uni, I wanted to do things my way and I sort of put Jesus on the back burner, but I sort of always knew he was there.

I always knew his pull, but I was pulling the other direction and I wanted to have my own independence. I wanted my life to look how I wanted it to look. yes, , I managed to keep that distance from Jesus for quite a number of years, actually, until I was approaching 30. And it was quite strange. On one Sunday morning I was lying in bed and I thought, well, yeah, life's not going too badly.

I've got a good job. I've got somewhere to live. I've got some friends, but I had a really empty feeling inside as though something was missing and I couldn't put my hand on it. And as I was thinking about this, I just suddenly felt very emotional and very upset, and I had tears streaming down my face.

I didn't really know what was going on, and I just kept feeling that's this empty hole inside. And I didn't know what to do with it. I sort of knew who it was, who was missing, but I didn't give my life to Jesus there. And then it was just a new awareness. But that was the start of a new dawn. I think there must have been some people praying for me.

Prayer, by the way, is so important, it was the beginning of me coming to know Jesus. So anyway, fast forward, we were at a Baptist, sort of event really. And there was a visiting speaker and I was there with my wife and I was quite enjoying it. He was playing some nice songs and then he said, I think there's someone here in the congregation who wants to give their life to Jesus.

And I was looking around and I thinking, I wonder who that is. I thought, I thought that guy over there looks a bit needy. I could be him. Um, and then my wife said to me, my wife Toby, said to me, I think it might be you. And my goodness, it was like a ton of bricks had landed in my lap and then he started inviting people forward and said, if you think it's you, will you come up to the front?

I thought this is just too much. Anyway, I did actually go up to the front and he put his hand on me and I was a complete wreck on the floor and he said, you've been given a new name. Your name is now son of the living God. Wow. And. That was it really. life started to look quite different after that.

Yeah. So it was quite a, pivotal point in many ways. Quite emotional. Mm. But then the journey sort of started. Yeah. And it was a while after that that I actually got baptized.

Wow. Brilliant. Thank you so much , for sharing with us. And thank you also for bringing in the topic there.

I noticed that you gave a note to prayer cuz that's exactly what we are, what we're gonna be talking to, to you and Jack about . So Jack, tell us a bit about you and, and if you could share a little bit of, of your testimony.

My testimony would be shorter than Steve's, but, but that is, that was great. I, I was brought up in a, a church family, you know, dragged to church every Sunday.

This is in rural island. I had an opportunity to go to New York for the summer in 1974. And a long story short, I became a Christian in New York. Okay. Through, uh, A service. You know, everybody welcome over the door of this Baptist church. And, uh, no idea what I was going in for, but the sermon must have been powerful because quite a few people responded and the guy next to me in the, in the front row seat said, I murdered somebody this week.

And I thought, wow, it must have been a powerful message. I don't remember anything about it. But anyway, I, I gave my life to the Lord in August, 1974 and came to England in a year later and looked for a church and, you know, got baptized and you know, the rest is history really. , it's been a. Circuitous journey, shall we say.

A couple of dead churches, , but I've been here, , , , for 24 years. Wow. This church. Got three kids and have, they've all flown the nest and off the payroll as they say. They're never off the payroll, so, yeah. So it's, it's, uh, that's me really.

Great. Great. Well, it, it's so good to have you guys here.

And we're, we are really appreciative of, you spending, time with us. . The big question is how can we pray well, Why did we come up with that, Nigel?

Okay. So we are, as a church, we're doing this series, long series called Practicing The Way We Know Prayer is Gonna Come Up As a part of that.

Prayer is such a key, important part of the Christian life, the Christian discipline, the Christian discipleship, whatever you want to call it. And this was the thing we needed to look at. Now, this is a bit of an odd podcast because usually we record, , a session and we do a half hour. We are taking the breaks off tonight and we're just gonna record and see what happens and then what we don't cover, we'll do other podcasts to cover, but we wanted to cover prayer as a big topic because prayer is a big topic and we've invited Steve and Jack because one, they are both men of God, but two.

Out of the people we could think of, we were thinking of all sorts of people to invite. You guys show prayer in your life. You show the result of prayer. And so we wanted to plumb into that a little bit. So if I was going to go to a passage, there are so many passages in the Bible that we can refer to 'em, we probably will talk about those a little bit.

I think the key passage for me is both in Matthew and Luke and it's where Jesus says, ask and it shall be given. Seek. And you will find knock and the door will be open to you, which Jesus talks about in the context of prayer and in the lead up to the Lord's prayer. So it's a kind of a really important thing.

So when we ask how can we pray? Well, unlike many of the questions we've asked, this is kind of where we wanna end up because we are really aware. We are very different. So I know I pray differently. Well, I know I pray differently to Steve because Steve and I are friends and we've talked about stuff like this.

But the reason I pray differently to Steve is because we are different. But what we both do is we both pray and that's the key simple

question. Then guys, what is prayer?

We're now gonna sit back and let you answer all of those questions. Brothers and sisters, what would you say prayer is?

I think I would say that prayer is communicating with Jesus.

I mean, some people pray to Jesus, some people pray to God. Some people ask the Holy Spirit, but essentially it's it. It's talking to Jesus or Holy Spirit or God, and it can be a request. It often is a, a request when we pray. So we, we are asking and we are listening. So it's a two-way process. It's, it's a conversation in my view, rather than being one-sided.

But that varies depending on the situation. Um, if I'm in a crisis, I might say, help Jesus help. Um, and I may not sit and listen and wait for the answers. I just keep going because I need to know that I've been heard, because I know that when he hears he answers

and you said it's a, a conversation. So how, how does that work? Because when, when I, when I'm in a church service, for example, and people begin to pray, I see them pray, but I don't. I don't sometimes see , a response, but I understand that, that people hear from God and see from God in, in different ways.

What, what's been your experience of that?

So, if I perhaps talk about my prayer routine, that might help. So what I try to do is to spend half an hour or so with God. Every morning. I say I try, cause I don't always manage it. Part of that time I'll have like a prayer list of things that, I want to put before him and ask him for prayers for the family, prayers for friends, prayers for people who need them really.

so that would be one aspect. But also when I pray, I say, okay, God, how would you like me to pray for this situation? How would you like me to pray for this person? And as I'm praying, I try to listen to his prompting to try and pray in line with how he might want me to pray for that person. Cuz at the end of the day, he knows everything.

I know very little. So if I'm praying for a particular thing for that person, I might not have hit exactly the spot. So if I ask God to try and guide my prayers, I'm possibly more likely to pray with more precision, if you like, for what that person might need.

What about you, Jack? How would you, how would you define prayer?

How does you, how does that work for you?

Can I start at sort of the beginning a bit? Because like most Christians, you know, in the early stages of my Christian life, I was taught how to pray. And looking back now, it was very legalistic, very, um, rote. You know, you did this and this and this very fixed paths and fixed Exactly. And almost set prayers, it took me years to unlearn that stuff, it's been purely by the grace of God after 10 years as a Christian, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and that changed everything. And I learned, I learned through various teachers and experiences that that prayer is for me in, at its deepest level is almost like, it's not wordiness.

You know, we were taught in the old days, it was all the more words you use, the better prayer you are. And, you know, if midweek prayer meetings were utterly dull and boring because, you know, the, the loudest bloke took the stage. But I'm now learning that, that it's almost, there are times when, you know, like it says in Romans eight that the spirit praise through me.

I'm allowing. The spirit, the Holy Spirit to pray through me. And so I'm learning that, that about getting quiet enough and at rest and no words, but allowing the Holy Spirit to, to pray through me. And it's, it's quite extraordinary. This is a, a new thing, uh, relatively new thing for me. And, um, it's, it's not the, the full picture cuz obviously I do pray, in a normal way as well, whatever normal means.

But the, the whole thing of of of, I mean, I work, um, I work on my own. So I pray a lot in tongues while I'm working in the workshop and when I'm driving, I pray. A lot in tongues. Then you're not quite sure what you're praying, but you know, that's the Holy Spirit in you that's, that's doing his work.

Mm-hmm. And it's, it's just a, been a fantastic discovery for me , of finding that it's about being quiet and silent and allowing God to flow through you. Because, you know, John seven, um, says that if we believe in him, out of our innermost beings will flow rivers of living water. By that he meant the spirit.

Father, son and Holy Spirit lives in us and it's, , becoming more aware of that. Mm. And allowing them to flow out in whatever way they choose. That's so going from , the early stuff, you know, to, this has been a long journey, but it's, it, that's what it, it's beg, that's what prayer is beginning to mean to me.

I'm not there yet, but, but it's allowing, you know, holy Spirit to free reign, I think is the word. So

is it fair to, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it fair to summarize that as actually, it's not how you pray, it's the, it's what prayer is for, it's this, both of you have said there's this element of communion with God.

There's this element of, the presence of God and allowing God to speak in the two way. Absolutely.

I'm speaking from my own experience with, with regards to prayer, life can get so busy. I hadn't even thought of this about, you know, waiting on God, life gets so busy that actually there can sometimes be very little time for quiet for actually pausing and listening.

Just reflecting back on, on some of the best times that I've. Spent with God has been when I've finally shut up. And I struggle to do that. And on that note, I'm gonna be quiet for a bit and listen to what, what you guys have said. Nigel. Questions from you. That's

it. No, I feel really bad now.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stop you there. What? Well, no, cause I mean both of you, this is, this is something that both of you have had as an element and I'm asking the question cuz I know the answer to this. But has your prayer life grown as you've been a Christian longer, as you've gone through your life as Christians?

Has your prayer life grown? How has that grown? How have you seen the difference? Jack, you've shared a little bit about that, but Steve, how have you seen that change?

Well, similar experience to Jack in some ways, , when I was, a young lad grown up in a fairly high Church of England. The prayers were one directional from me to God, prescribed prayers and they didn't carry a great deal of meaning at the time.

But it's interesting, as a choa, I got to know a lot of the Psalms and I can still recite the words now. And sometimes when I'm praying God will remind me of Psalms I learnt 50, 60 years ago, uh, as a young lad. And I've found that he uses everything. Nothing is wasted, nothing we've learnt is thrown away, and he uses everything for good.

So, moving on from that, how's that developed? I think. When I came here to an evangelical church, then the whole dynamic of active prayer sort of opened up really, and you can basically say what you like to God, in whatever accent, in whatever colloquial language you use. It doesn't have to be said in a particular way.

And it can be from your heart. And that was quite an eye-opener as well. people here put their hands in there air when they're praising God, and I've never seen that before, uh, until I came here. So yes, it's a new dynamic and I've learned a lot about prayer as time has gone on, about listening to God as well as, actually speaking out.

, how do you know when you are doing good prayer? I know that sounds like a really stupid question, but you're both talking about listen to God and dynamic and being in God's presence. Okay, so I mean, I, I have experience with the traditional prayers too, but I have the experience of leading services in the traditional prayers.

And for me, the service called kolin, which is the last office of the monastic life. I'm not traditional in, in my church manship at all. But the first time I did that with somebody, it blew my mind. And we used to do it on Easter Saturday every year in the church where I was a leader. And it was just, it was the formality that gave people space to pray.

So whether you are praying formal prayers or you know, structure prayers or silence with God, how do you know you're doing it right?

I don't think there's any one right way of doing it. I mean, prayer is, means a lot of different things to lots of different people. for me, in this church I've been developing, um, my prophetic gifting, uh, with others and, uh, we've been trying to help other people to develop their prophetic gifting as well, which is about listening to God because he speaks to all of us and we are all his sheep.

We all hear his voice full stop it just really depends on how well we listen to what he's saying to us. And it's almost a discipline to actually. Learn how to hear from God and how he speaks to you. He can speak in words, he can speak in pictures, and it's quite often that soft, gentle voice that he's so easily missed.

So that's what makes it a two-way process when we take time, when we are praying to listen to God, to see what he wants to say to us. So I think that is what I'm trying to develop. I'm very good at asking God for things, and I'm very good to have a list of things. But I don't always wait on him, cuz as you said, Matt, I mean we all live busy lives and if you are pressed for time, you haven't, you feel sometimes you haven't got time to wait to hear what God's got to say.

You just want to get it out and get on with the next thing. But when we do take time, I often journal as I pray. So if I'm praying, I will write down what's going on and sometimes I ask him the question, Jesus, what do you think of me? As I'm praying And I can quite easily fill a whole page when I start writing.

I just seem to carry on writing and sometimes I've got no idea as to how much he loves me and what he thinks of me. And I've got this whole page of writing basically a love letter from him to me. And it just made me, makes me realize how much he loves us, how much he so much wants to draw close to us.

And it's a journey I feel. I'm only scratching the surface.

Can as a, as a new Christian, cuz you, you talked about, you know, being a Christian for a little while as a new Christian, is it just like a light bulb moment? Can do you start hearing from God straight away? How does it work? I mean, do you have any experience with that, Jack?

You can literally start hearing from God soon as you give your life to him. There's no problem. There's no steps to. Effective prayer. It's just chatting to Jesus. I've seen a number of people recently give their lives to Lord and just whoosh, they've taken off.

, there, there isn't a, a, a system or a scheme to, to get people from bare beginnings to effective prayers, I don't think. , I know somebody, an older lady I was on team with here and, and she just chatted to Jesus constantly. It was just a conversation and she'd wait, she'd chat, she'd wait.

And it was just the most beautiful picture for me of prayer. And, and it wasn't all gabel, gabel, gabel, it was. Just conversation, two-way conversation during housework, during driving, whatever. And um, also during a quite a busy job. So, um, it's, um, I've forgotten your question.

Do you hear from God straight away?

The, the minute that you give

you lie

to Jesus? I think you do. I think you do. I mean, it's, it's certainly possible because you, you are, you're, you are in a new creation. You've been adopted into this amazing family and, and it, you can hit the road, run, hit the road immediately, I think.

So to ask a question that kind of caveats on the back of that, you've been a Christian for a long time.

Have there also been seasons during that time where your prayer has been less effective? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so, uh, is it kind of, I mean, is it like a waveform thing? Is it just something that you just work your way out of?

We all have, you know, massive challenges at times and, and mega disappointments, you know, the, the usual stuff of life and major issues.

I found there's been times in my life where I haven't prayed for months, you know, and I've just gone

stone cold dead spiritually, but there were people praying for me, and it didn't last, I didn't drift away from God completely. Even in the worst of times, I've always continued just con conversations with God. Maybe it's the Irishman in me. I dunno the Blaney, , , . I think the Holy Spirit just, it's so beautiful when you're reading the, the Bible or chatting to someone and suddenly you get this whoosh and the Holy Spirit's there and just the light bulb moments, I think the light bulb moments get for me, get more and more, and.

It's sometimes to do with prayer. Answer prayer. Sometimes it's to do with just. Having fun. But to answer your question, yes, I do think , , you can start praying from five minutes in.

The, the reason I ask that question is be, again, I remember becoming a Christian and it being strange that all these people were praying what they thought and in, in different ways.

And, and people were bringing these pictures and, and I just thought, wow, this isn't, this isn't uniform. We aren't all, , closing our eyes, bowing our heads, got our, our hands together, thanking the dinner ladies for helping us with our knives and forks, um, at, at school. And it was very strange. I suppose what I wanna know is , for those who aren't used to praying out, What encouragement would you give them?

For me, it was just, I wanted to give it a go because I, I saw how free people were praying with their, he to their heavenly father out loud in a group. Not worried, but what, what ad what advice would you give to somebody who maybe isn't used to that? Isn't used to praying out?

When you say praying out, do you mean, um, in a church meeting context or a small group

.

When I pray, I prefer to pray out loud, um, at home. Or in a group or in a church meeting as well. So in all

contexts, I think it very much depends on the individual. Some people are more outgoing. Matt, I know you are a very outgoing person, am I? No, I'm shy. some people are quite comfortable speaking to, to large group groups of people, whereas others aren't.

So there's no right or wrong way. There's nothing wrong not speaking out from the front. I mean, to be honest, if everybody was scrambling for the microphone all the time, uh, it will be a bit of a bun fight. So it's good in a way that not everybody does. , some people feel a stirring to pray from the front, in a group situation.

I think if you are new to a group, People tend to sit and listen first of all, and just get an idea of how safe this feels. but more often than not, once people get to know other people and think, actually, I, I could probably do this, I could probably pray out for somebody. I think one's confidence grows.

So it does depend on the dynamics of the group about people being encouraged and, affirmed as they pray out.

I know for me, as I've, grown, I, I, I have a tendency, whilst I'm not quite as outgoing as Matt, I do have a tendency to talk quite a lot. And one of the things that I've found as I've grown in faith is that my prayers have become shorter. And I find it very frustrating when people stand up.

I remember, I do remember the times when you'd been in prayer meeting. The person who could pray the longest, most complicated theologically sound prayer they could, was the one that obviously God was going to listen to them more than anyone else. But actually, if we believe scripture, the prayer of the faithful person, it doesn't matter how long or short is it's given.

And I find myself praying short prayers out loud, . .