From Struggle to Structure: Praying with Purpose

Today, we're exploring the powerful world of prayer structures that can guide and enrich our spiritual journeys. Let's get real for a second. Have you ever struggled with how to pray the right way? You hear preachers or others who, in public, seem to say all the right things. You're not alone. Many of us felt unsure and overwhelmed when it comes to finding the right words for our prayers. That's why in this episode, we'll begin by unpacking the timeless wisdom of the Lord's Prayer, a cornerstone of Christian faith that offers a profound template for our conversations with God. Think of it as an ultimate prayer cheat sheet. But wait, there's more. We'll also introduce you to three more approaches that are based on the Lord's Prayer. Whether you're a seasoned prayer warrior or just starting to explore your faith, this episode is for you. Get ready to deepen your understanding and experience the transformative power of prayer. Relax and be calm. We might just have a little fun along the way. I'm Curtis. My prayer warrior pal over there is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe, what's going on? Good Friday morning.

I'm praying that this episode goes better than the beginning. I had some technical difficulties. I was on a coaching call last night, and I was switching some things around and moving chords and trying to figure all that out. I think I messed myself up, but that's okay. Direction's more important than position, right?

That's right. For those of you who often say to me they struggle with technology or they're just not a computer person, let me assure you, those of us who do this for a living struggle with it, too. And yesterday morning, or was it Wednesday morning? Not that it matters which day it was, I was really excited to do a podcast with some friends I've known for a long time. They're podcasters also, and they're from Australia, Joe, which is really cool. The Land down under. They did a long trip to Disney World. They've been to all the Disney parks. They're world travelers, although they were disrupted quite a bit with COVID and some other things. So I was really excited to talk to them. And we had. Well, it was across the entire other side of the world. Matter of fact, it's summer there, 90 degrees, and it was like 10 degrees here. But they could not get their Internet to work. Their computer was in bad shape, and several other things. We ended up rescheduling. And they're technical and podcasters, so there you go.

Yeah, it happens to the best of Us. Not that I'm the best of us, but I can hold my own, technologically wise. If technology wise, I can hold my own. But, yeah, the best of us. We have issues. This morning, it was a weird setting on my computer. I just bought a new laptop, and there's a. There's an odd setting that it defaults to and the notification that it defaulted to that problem. That audio problem is not conspicuous. So I'm looking all over for the usual suspects plugs gain is adjusted, volume's adjusted, the mics are turned on. I'm awake, all that stuff. Right?

Yeah.

Finally got it working. So there you go.

Well, I'm so glad I got a really. I think it's gonna be a fun episode. I want to say.

I want to say this about that, too, to my coaching clients. See, even I have problems. Right? Kurt has problems. The best of us have problems. So don't sweat it out there. If you're setting yourself up, setting the computer up, or setting a mic up or whatever it is, we all go through it.

Yep. Just get through it. You can do it. Well, Joe, we're going to talk about prayer. This was something I went to church for a long time. I went to Sunday school, although I don't remember a lot about that. I can remember joining the church that my wife was born into after we got married, and I sat there for so long, and why didn't anyone ever teach me how to pray? That was something I was really interested in learning. It sounds like a pretty basic thing, but it's something I struggle with. Did you ever struggle for the right words or have that same issue that I had?

Yes, absolutely. When I first became a Christian, I didn't know what it meant to talk to God because I didn't actually. I didn't hear an audible voice through my ears. Now, some people might claim that they actually do hear an audible voice through the ears, and I'm not going to. I'm not going to question their experience, but I didn't. I just felt like I'm talking out into the air, and I didn't know what to pray for. I didn't know anything about it other than I'm just going to say stuff that comes to my mind, stuff that I'm concerned about, and I'm going to pray to God on what I should pray for and hope something comes. Hope for the best, right?

Yeah.

But this is why I like what we're about to talk about today, Kurt. And I love that you're bringing this subject up, because a Lot of people have the same problem as I did. And it sounds as you did how to pray and what to pray. And I love this process. And I love that Jesus gave us this process straight from his mouth on how to do this. So it's pretty awesome.

Thank you. Yes, he did. But I didn't know. I knew he did because my parents had me memorize the Lord's Prayer and we spoke it in church all the time and didn't think much about it because it was such a ritual. So I gotta talk a little bit about the Lord's Prayer and a couple other structures that have helped me along the way and I currently use and like to go back to. And it was always intimidating because either preachers or lay people, I always felt they. They just had the right words, it seemed, or they. They did it so well. And I always felt like I struggled. So these things have helped me. Do you think there's a right way to pray so that God hears you, Joe?

Nope. I think God just hears you.

Right?

Yeah, I think God just hears you. And sometimes when you don't know what to pray for, there's a passage. There's a passage in the Bible that talks about the Holy Spirit groaning for you. And I don't want to get it out of context, but it's a theme throughout, especially in this one passage, and I don't have it here. I should have been more prepared. But where the Holy Spirit groans for you, it's basically God intervening when he knows you don't have the words.

Yeah. Okay.

And I'm not talking about talking in tongues and speaking in tongues and all that other stuff. We don't need to go there. But yeah, sometimes you just open up your mouth and say, God, I have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm hoping you can figure it out.

Yeah, I think you made me think about this too. If you want the best two word prayer and do it with lots of feeling and meaning because he already knows. What you need is the honest truth. Help me.

That's.

Help me.

Yep. That's awesome.

I need you. Help me. So if none of this makes sense at all, start with that.

Kurt, you have no idea how profound the words that you just said are. Because if that's all you have, then that's enough.

It is? Yeah.

It's not that it's the best you have and you wish you had more. That's enough.

Yeah, Help me.

That's enough. And let God take it from there.

But if you'd like to be More on point to what? Well, here's the thing. I love watching the Christ story in movies. And this kind of. I've seen this scene where the disciples say to Jesus, and it might have been. Was it after the Sermon on the Mount? Possibly. I don't know. It seemed like a. The timing was right, but even they said, lord, can you teach us how to pray? And he did. As I read through this, Joe, don't just think about how you've memorized it. We're going to break it down a little bit. But all the structures that I have really follow the Lord's Prayer. I think I've heard you say once you like the King James Version, so I think that's what I've got here for you. Yeah.

I like the King James Version because that's the one we all know. Right.

That's the one I learned in Sunday school.

That's the fun one. Right.

It's got the words that we might not use every day, like thy.

Here's an important point, and I don't want to steal your thunder if you're going to make this point, but many times we look at the Lord's Prayer as the prayer. Right. As the prayer.

You just memorize it and you say it and you memorize it and you.

Say it, and you think you've said the prayer in.

Yeah.

Very liturgical. It's sometimes in very structured faith traditions.

Yeah.

The Lord's Prayer is the only prayer said in the entire service. And that's really not what Jesus intended. This is a great prayer in and of itself and by itself, and it's a good start. But Jesus intended it. Intended this to be a model.

Yes.

Not the prayer.

Yes.

But pray like this is what he says.

That's what I've read this way. Yeah, yeah.

Use this structure.

Yeah.

Include these things.

Yes.

These are cool things to pray for. If you need to pray. These are really cool things to pray for. It's not meant to be this mundane, repetitive process. It's to be a model.

Yeah.

How to pray.

Yeah. And I think in the order that he gives it to us, too, because we'll take the first part. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. And so you're saying to him, you're our Father. We recognize you. You're the Source. Right. You're celebrating Him.

And I think that's the best word. We recognize that you're the source of our needs. You're the source of you're the answer. You're what we need. Ultimately, we surrender to you. Right?

We want your will to be done on earth like it is in heaven. So that's a great way to start, is what he's saying. But right after that, give us this day our daily bread. Let me just read through the rest of it and then we'll go back. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Amen. Show over.

That's all you got to do. Give us our daily bread. Like you said, Joe. Yeah. This is where most of my stress comes from. How am I going to feed my family and myself and stay fed till I'm 80? As we said in the fourth quarter.

And this is important, Kurt, because it doesn't say, hey, here are my plans for Q3 of 2025. Help me plan this out and put this together and make sure I have everything I need for the next quarter. And heck, while you're at it, God, the next year or decade, right? He is asking us to surrender to him today and ask for today's needs. Nothing beyond that. Give us this day our daily bread.

What we need right now, provide for us today.

Yeah.

But again, I look at this, at the opportunity to go to him, and this is probably the prayers that have been answered the most for me. Are these in the subject? Because help me find interesting, lucrative work that I can support my family with. I prayed that prayer, and I think, and I hope that anyone else who does finds the answer. But that one was probably something I prayed the most, especially when I was a young father trying to raise a family. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Forgiveness is in Jesus prayer. We're going to do a whole show on that one time.

Can we go back to that? Give us this day our daily bread. I just want to piggyback on what you said, if you don't mind. Give us this day our daily bread. I look at that as, like I said before, what are my needs right now? And I trust you to take care of me today. But I also like your broader view of it. It's okay to ask God for things that you need. We need bread. It's okay to ask God to go to God. And that's what this, the prayer is about, is going to God, going to the source and making a request. And the first request is make sure my needs are met. Make sure my family needs are Met. And then it goes. And then it goes on to the other stuff. But isn't it interesting? This is almost like God, you saying to God, help me put my oxygen mask on.

Yeah.

So then I can. So then I can move forward. Give me this day my daily bread.

Yeah. It's good to know that a lot of people, I think even like I said when I was trying to learn this, sometimes you feel a little bit guilty asking for yourself. Selfish. I suppose you feel as a young Christian, forgiveness. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. I'm going to go into a whole book about anxiety. And I, as I'm reading this book, I'm going, boy, does the devil love anxiety. I think that's one of his favorite tools to torture you, Tear you up inside, spit you out, doubt everything, make.

You question yourself, make you question your decisions, make you question the future, make you question everything.

There's two things there. Temptation. There's lots of temptations out there that aren't good for you.

So some versions of the Bible will use you. They'll use a couple different phrases here. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Some will say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who. Yeah, yeah, you've probably heard that version.

Yeah.

But I think the idea behind that first part, because we didn't spend a lot of time on that, on that first part, Kurt, is forgive us for anything, any. Anything that we've done wrong.

Right.

Forgive us.

Great.

Forgive us what we owe the world. Right. For what we owe.

Fell short yesterday.

Yeah. Forgive us where we fell short. That's exactly. That's a beautiful way of saying it. Forget it. If, if you're trying to pay somebody back and you owe them 10 bucks and you give them nine, you fell short. So, God, forgive me for where I'm falling short.

I like that definition better than debts. Yeah, yeah.

And as we forgive those who may have fallen short in our lives.

Yeah. You dig deeper in the Bible, you're going to learn that God is going to forgive you a lot easier if you're. He's not going to forgive you so much unless if you don't forgive others.

Yeah. There's some, there could be some debate to that comment, but I understand the spirit of what you mean.

Yeah.

Part of the Christian life. And this is an overtly Christian episode, as few of ours are. But this is an overtly faith based Christian episode. But we can take away from this. If you're secular and you don't have a faith foundation, first of All I invite you to. To contact either Kurt or my me. And we can talk to you about that. But if you're not, that's okay. This is still a very cool pattern to give grace to the people that owe you something. Don't hold them to account, because it's going to eat you alive. Kurt. It's like that saying, and I don't know who said it, but it goes something like this. Resentment is a poison that you take hoping to kill somebody else, right?

Yes. Oh, my gosh. I never heard that's. We got to do a whole episode on forgiveness. I think I'll let you preach that one.

Yeah. Forgive us our debts, man, as we forgive our debtors. When we started talking about lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. There are some versions of the Bible that use deliver us from the evil one, which is appropriate as well. But this is you telling God. This is the way I read it. This is you telling God I'm going to be tempted. I know that there's parts of me that are weak. Protect me from that, God.

Yeah.

Will you just protect me from that? If you see me going down a path there I not go, nudge me a little bit.

Yeah.

And keep that guy away from me. Keep that evil one away from me. Keep evil away from me. Deliver us from that. And this is a very practical request. This is you saying to God, I know there's going to be times that I'm not strong enough. Keep me away from temptation. Keep me away from the temptation to sin or to be anger, angry or to be resentful, whatever the negative emotion is that you're feeling towards yourself or some direction you're headed. Yeah, I just love that.

Talk about a concise response to the disciples. You unpack this thing, you could probably get a PhD on the Lord's Prayer. It's incredible. And then he finishes up where he started. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Praising God again like you did in the beginning.

Great pattern for prayer.

I'm gonna so keep that in mind as I go through. I've got three structures here that might help us even more. We talked about this one. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this one, but we talked about the. In the fourth quarter by Matthew Kelly. He's got a structure of gratitude, awareness, talking about significant moments in the last 24 hours, asking God for peace, freedom to speak to God, like we said in the Lord's Prayer. You can go to him Lift others up. Refer back to the episode that we talked about this structure from Matthew Kelly. But that's the one that kind of got me started thinking about this. I know I did this years ago, so I'm going to bring a couple of new ones to you, Joe.

Awesome.

The first one that I came across when I was doing my research, and this goes back several years ago, I found this book called the Battle Plan for Prayer by Stephen and Alex Kendrick. And I think you had heard about this one before. It's called Acts A C, T S. You had heard about this one before. How did you hear about it? Do you know?

When you read enough Christian books and study enough Christian things and live in the Christian community for a while, you hear about all these little tricks. Where I heard about it, I don't know.

I had to do it on my own, but that's okay.

Well, I'm a lot more Christian than you anyway.

Well, yeah, you're in the Bible Belt. We have a disadvantage here in the Northeast. I've told you, we have to go search these things out on our own. It doesn't come knocking on our door.

With a little piece of paper in hand that says repent or you're going to hell.

But the acronym helps. Adoration, confession, Thanksgiving and supplication. These are big words. I usually have to go back. I wish I could memorize these, but I usually got to to open the book up. And what was that again? What did that stand for? Adoration. So when we pray in adoration, we stop focusing on ourselves and our storms and start fixing our eyes on the only one who can and who's fully able to handle any situation or request that comes from the Bible, Corinthians 2. So with adoration, you're going to have a reminder to yourself who God is, the Creator. You can say, hey, you're awesome. You're the Lord of all again. Going back to the Lord's Prayer, you can do a recounting of what he's done. What has he done for you before? These are different ways that you can achieve this part of the prayer structure. I often use these and think of something. I've been reading a lot in the morning, some books, and sometimes it was like, hey, remember this author said, this is exactly what I want to say today. You saved us. You provided for me when I was in a rough spot, a recognition of his holiness. There's nobody like you. You are greater, you're better, you're higher. You're more powerful than anyone else. Rejoicing in his name, we lift up your name. I praise your name. We honor your name. And I relent. This is a tough one. I relinquish my control. I love you. You give me life. I surrender to you. All I am and have is yours.

This is what I love about this Little Acts format, because it. This adoration part sets the stage very similar to the Lord's Prayer. Right. This adoration part sets the stage, Kurt. It says, it appropriately humbles yourself and puts you in a position to say, okay, I know that whatever or whoever or wherever you are, that you are greater than me, and I am seeking you right now. And here's the reasons you are greater than me. Here are the things you've given me. Here is how I. Here's how I'm positioning myself for this conversation to be open to you.

Confession, this is a prayer that gets honest about sin. Getting right and staying clean before God is necessary to remain close to him and be effective in prayer. We are all sinners and all stumble in many ways. These first two are things that I wouldn't think about on my own to include in prayer. I understand asking for help, that's probably all I knew, but these are really interesting and helpful. We're not ready to probably serve God or ask him for much of anything until we honestly confess and turn away from unaddressed sins in our lives. And you talked about that in the Lord's Prayer.

Yeah. And if you don't know what you need to confess for, confess that, ask for that. Say, hey, God, I don't even know. I know I've fallen short. I know I've fallen short of you. I've disappointed people. I've broken promises. I've not lived up to who you want me to be. Expose that to me. Show me those shortcomings because I know they're there. And as God exposes them to you and you recognize it and you see it clearly, simply ask for forgiveness. I recognize that I've done this. I'll try to do better. Repentance is an interesting word. Uh, it's not used here, but the idea behind confession is repentance. It's telling you, it's. It's confessing that, hey, this is where I've fallen short. And it's also saying I'm going to. Repentance is the act of turning your back on it, on wherever it is you falling short and moving in a different direction. So it's very action oriented. I like this. I like this a lot.

As Joe sometimes says, I'm Going to read my mail out loud. I'm not going to give it. I'm not going to give you the specifics other than I've been doing this really consistently this year in my morning time. And if I've included some of these things, well, guess what? He answered my prayer just as you said. I said, hey, I can't think of anything. I don't know if I said it that way, but, you know, he kind of reminded me when someone sent me a message and said, you know, I didn't appreciate the way you said this to me. Wow. And I recognized that right away as answer to prayer. And I was thinking about this. I've often said to Joe, I don't have a lot of regrets. Well, I found an area that I do regret. Okay. And I've done it. And I talked to you about it in private, but I won't say that far out loud what it was. And it's not horribly hair. It's not totally terrible, but it's something I've done in the past on a regular basis. And I've had more than one person say this to me. And it's not often someone will call you on it. So I appreciated that they did and I could do better.

Awesome.

Yeah. So there you go.

Well, that's a good thing. You realize that's a good thing that happened.

Yeah.

Maybe a little painful. Awkward.

Yeah.

But it's a good thing.

It is. Thanksgiving is God directed, Humble, expressed gratitude. Praise focuses more on who God is, and Thanksgiving highlights what he's done or what he's doing. Unthankful people are consistently sour in almost all circumstances. They tend to complain about everything, never fully enjoying what they have, yet always wanting more. I love gratitude. I did not know that early on how awesome that is, and I think about that all the time. The book I'm reading about anxiety right now, you know, you really can't have two differing thoughts at the same time. You can't be angry and happy at the same time. And you can choose whether to be grateful or to be constantly sour and complaining about everything all the time.

I know, I know it's difficult. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried to put on the happy face and still grumble about something that I feel is wrong in my life.

Yeah.

That said, this is where we've talked about this a lot. This is probably one of the most important positions that you can take in life in general. Not just in prayer, but in life. The attitude of gratitude, being thankful for things in your Life, people in your life, where you're, what you're, what's going on in your life, find something to be thankful for and grateful for. And I'll be honest with you, not that I'm not a grateful person or I'm not gracious and I don't appreciate and I'm not thankful, but for some reason it doesn't come to me in the moment that I want it to come to me when I want to express gratitude or thankfulness. It just doesn't come to me when it needs to come to me. I mean, I tell people, you know, when people do something for me, I'm thankful to them and I tell them I'm thankful and that I appreciate them and I appreciate what they've done or I appreciate who they are. Person to person. I'm pretty good at that. But where I fall short, Kurt, is recognizing the things in life that have come to me, probably not even by my own doing, that are kind of the universe, the universe's gifts to me, God's gifts to me. I need to do a better job at recognizing those things.

We take it for granted. And it's really fulfilling to review those every day. Sometimes I struggle with this too. It's okay. I want to do, I want to look at what am I grateful that happened yesterday? And I sit there and I sit there and go, oh, you dummy, you were praying about this. It just happened yesterday and you've totally washed over it and moved on. Drives me nuts. But that's why this is so important to reflect on it. Supplication. Now that word is tough. I don't know what the heck that means, but it's asking something from God. Petition, appeal to him to do or provide something for yourself.

Yeah, supplication word.

Yeah.

Almost feels, it feels forced just to fit it into a good acronym or acrostic or whatever they're called. But I get it, right?

Yeah.

Asking something from God. And this is a cool thing we're supposed to. It's not selfish or self centered to say, hey, God, I need this in my life. I want this, I desire this. I think God cares about our golf score.

All right. Awesome.

Yeah, I think God cares about the little things in life. I think he cares about you making it to work on time as well as the big things. He's God. He can handle it all, dude. So I don't think it's a bad thing to say, hey, God, I'm just having a terrible fricking day today. I'm going. I don't golf, by the way, but I'm going to use this as an example. I'm having a terrible day today. I'm going golfing. Just help me have a good time. Just help me get my mind off of this stuff. Help me have a good time because I feel like I need it right now. It can be as what you perceive as trivial as that. Or you could pray for. You may need healing in your life. You have a disease or whatever it might be, or a loved one has an issue that. It's a big deal. It's a big issue. So God cares about it all, man. Yeah, but you, but he wants you to ask. He wants you to come to him and petition him and ask. There's a, there, there's a dynamic to that when you ask God for things. It's. It goes back to the law of attraction, I think. Not in the woo woo sense, but this is faith based. So it is. Some people might consider it a little woo, but this is putting your needs out there to God and saying, this is what I want, man. This is what I desire. Yeah, help me get it.

It's in the red words, Joe, which is important. We know in the Bible as we learn from the comedians that Larry the cable guy taught me that.

Yeah, that's funny.

The Bible says you do not have because you do not ask. That's in James, Book of James. We talked about giving us our daily bread that Jesus said in the Lord's Prayer. But he even gets into it more when he said ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receive and he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. That's the subject or the part of the Bible every preacher wants to preach about.

Right, right, right.

That's as new age as you can get right there.

Yeah. From thousands of years ago. New age from thousands of years ago. How about that?

It's good to know that he wants to have a conversation with us. And no matter, he's not going to laugh at you. He's not going to make fun of you. Might even give you some help. Those are four types of prayer. You can put them all together, take them separately, but there's biblical wisdom there.

Yeah, this is good. I like, I like this as a. I don't know if you're looking this as four types of prayer or one prayer with four parts, but each one of these by themselves can be a prayer.

Yeah.

And, but if you have some if you have a prayer time, I invite you to go through this process, this acts process, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. This acts process as one single prayer where you start off the prayer with adoration and you move on to confession and thanksgiving and then supplication. Or if you want to have just a little mini prayer right now, there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, God, I need you right now, dude. And here's what I need. Here's my supplication.

Right? Yeah.

But don't forget to throw in a prayer for adoration and confession and thanksgiving as well, because it's all part of the package.

Yeah. They ask, are you heavier in one? Are you heavier in one aspect, but you're non existent in the other aspects, so look for balance when you can.

Awesome, man. I like this a lot.

A book that I'm reading right now, I'm rereading, which I often don't do, but I've talked about a little bit of anxiety. I've recognized some people I care about have talked to me about it and this comes up a lot. Anxious Thoughts. It's a book by Max Lucado. It's called Anxious for Nothing. I am re. I'm really enjoying rereading this book. And I started going back to it because I was thinking of the prayer structures and I remembered he had one called calm, which is a great way to think, easier to think about. And calm stands for celebrate and ask, leave, meditate, and it again. You're going to hear some of the same themes over and over again. I love his writing, though, and his examples, and he's so comforting in his writing and some of his words. I am going to go into his book a little deeper. But celebrate is easier to think of when you're rejoicing the Lord always again, I say rejoice, turn your attention away from the problem and for a few minutes, celebrate God. It does you no good to obsess yourself with trouble. The more you stare at it, the bigger it grows. Yet the more you look to God, the quicker the problem is reduced to its proper size. So celebrate God to start out. Yeah.

Celebrate God in your life. Celebrate the things that God has done for you and the things that God will do for you and who he is. But I do like to celebrate. This is something that my kids are much better at than I am.

How do you know that?

Because I see them right? I see them do it good. And celebration's a good thing. Even the small things. One thing that tweaked me For a while. And this is just me maybe being a crotchety old man, but is the idea of a gender reveal party. Now I'm going to make the connection here, okay? That's where, that's where people get together. Now my thing was I always thought you should wait until the baby's born to decide to know what the baby's sex is, right? The baby's gender. Wait till the baby's born before if it's a boy or a girl, because that's part of the surprise thing. But they've taken that and used it to, number one, be able to prepare in advance but also have a bit of a surprise to it. And the gender reveal party is when somebody, some trusted friend finds out the sex of the baby, the gender of the baby, and they have some kind of methodology for revealing the sex, either a balloons or whatever it might be. Anyway, my point to this is it seems like a weird thing to celebrate. And I was like, what, What a big waste of time. Just. But man, find a way to celebrate. No matter what. Find a way to celebrate. If you're. And this is what I like about. There's a generation here that likes to celebrate, that likes to take time to, to have fun in the moment. And I really like that. I've really embraced that and I, and, and I really appreciate it.

I understand your perspective there. Although I'm thinking about it. When you let people know that you're having a baby, that is one piece of news that everyone gets excited about, right? People you never even hardly talk to. So I can understand where this party is. An opportunity to celebrate the coming of the baby, which is really, I think can be a lot of fun. That's get it all together.

Absolutely.

In a big party. I like that idea. I've heard about it, but I've never experienced it myself.

My point was find a way to celebrate.

Yeah. Let your requests be known to God. Fear triggers either despair or prayer. Choose wisely. So ask. When anxiety knocks on the door, say Jesus, would you mind answering that? Reduce your request in one statement. Imitate Jesus who taught us to pray. Give us this day our daily bread. Engage in specific prayer and engage in promise based prayer, meaning this is something that God has promised you that he'll answer. Stand on the firm foundation of God's covenant. He talks a lot about. Memorize a couple of biblical statements that give you confidence. Let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence. He wants you to come to him. So ask.

Yeah, ask is a lot better word than supplication.

Yeah, Right. There you go.

But ask. God wants us to ask. He makes it very clear.

That's right.

Let your request be known to God. And they can be trivial.

I did feel like I was being self absorbed or who am I? Who am I to go and ask the creator of the universe for anything?

And that's the beautiful thing is he lets you know that although he's the almighty creator of the universe, you can go directly to him. Isn't that cool?

Yeah.

And it's okay. And throughout the Bible, men go directly to God.

What's that book in movie? It's like in a cabin. Is it called the cabin? You know what I'm talking about, where this man loses his daughter?

Yep. It's not the cabin, it's the shack.

The shack. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know. It took me a while. I heard about it and I think I saw the movie. I don't think I've ever read the book. And I read the book. It's very controversial, I think, isn't it? It's a story in a way.

It's a story and I think what it communicates is important, but it's a story. It's not the Bible. Okay, so don't confuse it with the Bible. But it's a story of how God could interact with us in our time of need.

The thing that as we talk about this subject is the way Jesus is portrayed there. Just like a common friend who's interested in what you have to say and interested in helping you. And the character just I found really intriguing or comforting.

I like what you just said, Kurt, that Jesus was a common friend because that's how he interacted with his apostles, right?

Yeah.

And he clearly was not common. He's doing miracles and he's healing the sick and he's making water into wine and he's bringing a new light to. To scripture and wisdom and who God is and what God is. So he certainly wasn't common. But these are people that he hung out with every day and they saw his struggles and he saw their struggles and they lived life together. So, yeah, he was a pal. He was their friend.

Yeah.

And that's okay, dude.

Yeah. Just the way, if you watch that movie, think of the way that he interacts with the main character. I think it's very comforting. Leave your concerns with God. So leave is the last part of calm or second to last. Let him take charge. Let God do what he's willing to do. Guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. God does not need our help, counsel, or assistance. Please repeat this phrase. I hereby resign as ruler of the universe.

Not done a very good job of it.

I'll repeat it. I hereby resign as ruler of the universe. When God's ready to. When he's ready for us to re. Engage, he will let us know. Until then, replace anxious thoughts with grateful ones. God takes Thanksgiving seriously. Leave your concerns. He talks about a story of if you brought something to the repair shop and you left it with the repair guy, would you sit there and try to give your assistance and counsel to the expert that's fixing your equipment?

Gosh, I love Max Lucado. What a great example. Right now. The truth is, if somebody's coming to my house, a plumber or something like that, I can tend to. Hover. I can tend to. And there's something about somebody working on my house that makes me want to get involved. And every once in a while. That's not often because I know my boundaries most of the time. But every once in a while, I'll get the stink guy. Yeah, I'm sure. You got to go to work or something, don't you, there. Mr. Taylor, you don't have to be here.

Give up some control, Joe. It might be helpful.

I love that analogy. I love that example.

Thank you. He's got some good ones. Meditate on good things. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are good. Report. If there is any virtue and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.

This may be my favorite verse in the Bible.

Kurt. Yeah.

This is a lot about mindset. This is a lot about where. What direction we want to head. Right. We want good things in our life. We want to think about good things. We want to dwell on good things. Let God handle that crap. Right. Our job is to focus on whatever's pure and lovely and good. Report. Focus on these things.

This isn't that easy. He says, don't let anxious, negative thoughts take over your mind. You cannot control the circumstances of everything, but you can always control what you think about them. I know you have. You disagree with that sometimes with me, Joe, but I want you to try.

I don't necessarily disagree. It just. Yeah. There's a weird side of me that wants more control.

Yeah. So that's calm. You want to celebrate, ask, leave and meditate again. We'll get more into this book. But, Joy, wonder if you'll pray with me right now. This prayer I wrote and it's usually in my own prayers I get more specific. I'm going to be a little general to give you an example of a prayer that demonstrates calm. Are you ready?

I'm absolutely honored to do this with you, and I mean that sincerely.

Lord, we're grateful for all the amazing blessings you bring into our lives. Your love and kindness are constant and we really appreciate everything you do for us. We need your guidance and support. Lord, life can be challenging and we rely on your strength to help us through the tough times. We trust you to lead us in the right direction. God, we're handing over our worries to you. We don't want to carry these burdens alone. We trust that you have everything under control and that gives us peace. Help us to focus on the positive things. Lord, there's so much beauty and goodness around us and we want to keep our minds on those uplifting thoughts. Fill our hearts with your joy and peace. Amen.

That's awesome, man. This. We're going to church here, man.

Have a good day.

Joe, that's a beautiful prayer. I love that a lot.

Now, honestly. And I say, Joe, have a good day. Have everyone that's listening, have a good day today. If you're listening, it's in the middle of the day or at night. Have a good day tomorrow. But what a great way to go off and do what you got to do today.

Beautiful. Great episode, Kurt. Great show, great thoughts. Even if you're not somebody with a faith foundation, you'll hear me say this several times. These are good things. What's. If you just say this out loud, the things that Kurt just prayed for, nothing but good things can happen from that. And I mean that sincerely.

Yeah.

Good stuff. Thanks, man. Thanks for this episode.

You know what's good is to celebrate your wins. Joe, what's your win for the week?

Awesome transition. My win for the week is this. This may sound a little weird. This past Tuesday, I had one day of. No, here's what I mean by that. I filled my calendar with some important but not necessarily urgent things. And that's important that I said it that way. They're important, but not urgent. They weren't deadline related things, but they're the important things that I had to work on to get things moving forward and to develop some plans for the coming year. So I filled my calendar, my whole day with important but not urgent work. And I said no to every single request for that day, no matter who asked me. And I had a couple come in that said, hey, can you. Can we meet Can I meet with you today? No, I can't do it today. Yeah, and I filled my calendar. There was not a. There was not a. There was not an open spot on my calendar. Hey, I see that you're busy at 3:00, but can I just get 15 minutes? Man, I'm sorry, I can't. I'm pretty busy. I've got a. I've got an important project I'm working on. I love that. And it is.

I love that. Yes.

And I said, and one of them was my boss that had a request of me. One of them had. One of them were a couple people that report to me that had requests of me. And I want to give and I want to be supportive and I want to. And I want to help people along, but there are times that you just got to say no. And I state, and it was uncomfortable, man.

Yeah.

But what I found is this is a really good exercise. Now, could we do this every single day? Maybe? Probably not, because you have. You do have things that come up that are urgent and important that have to be handled. Now if somebody came to my office and, hey, Joe, by the way, your car's on fire, don't know what happened, but it's out there burning up, would I have said, oh, nope, no. I have this important thing, these important but not urgent things on my calendar. No, I wouldn't have. But rarely does that ever happen. So my win for the week is I had a day of no where I said no to every request that came my way for that day. And I only worked on important but not urgent things.

I think the number one reason for me as you're explaining this, that this is so important, it lets people know they can't just arbitrarily interrupt you. If you want to meet with me, schedule time. I'm not bouncing to every single person's whim that comes to me because I get a lot of that, too, and I train them to schedule time with me.

Yeah, that's it. And if it's not open on my calendar now, you have to have some open spots on your calendar, dude. Right. You have to have some things that are. That are some margin that. Where people can schedule things for you. But yeah, for the most part, dude, saying no is an important part of giving to people.

Yeah. Like, I don't schedule my whole calendar out for next week. This is my working time. And I don't necessarily do that. But if I say Tuesday, I need to. I need all afternoon to work on this project, then there you Go right. Or if I'm doing a training class that I think I'm is important, I'm putting that out there and I'm gonna, I'm gonna honor it.

Here's what I will say. If somebody hasn't scheduled something for me by the day, that day, then they're not getting on my calendar. Yeah, yeah, I have. I have. What I'll do is I'll look at the things I need to do, the must meetings, the. The important and urgent things. And I will, I'll schedule those. And then I'll schedule the important but not urgent things, and I'll fill my calendar. By 8:00 in the morning, my calendar is full. You're not going to get in. And if you've not gotten in before, then it better be really important. But my door, I leave my office door open. That's something that I do is I leave my office door open even when I'm working on important but not urgent things, as long as it's not private so people can pop in for a quick engagement. There's flexibility there, but it's got to be really quick, and I make it known. Hey, happy to chat with you for a minute or two, but I got to get back to this.

Well, my win for a week. It looks like I've excited you because you did a bunch of bold letters and I just turned the light on in my closet so you could see. I hope you can see it better now. But I cleaned out my office closet. I spent about an hour on Sunday and I had a big cabinet that my uncle built for me. It's like a stereo cabinet that was there taking up most of the space. And I brought that into my, my bedroom and I set up my record player and I have a speaker there. And then I didn't clean up everything. I basically had an hour that I wanted to spend doing this, and there's still more that I could do. But I've got my new vinyl storage unit in my office, and I moved and consolidated a lot of my records that were in different places into my storage unit. So not only did I build my storage cabinet, my vinyl storage unit, I've moved it and it's heavy. I had to go one step at a time up the stairs. But it's so nice I'm listening to my records more because I'm so organized.

So you're not as blessed as I am to see Kurt a few times a week. Right? But every him cleaning out this closet behind him is a glorious thing because it's been a source of distraction for me, who was easily distracted for years. I'm always asking because there were certain things back there, right? And every once in a while, something new will show up in this eclectic, interesting view. What is that purple thing hanging up there? Wow, that's a hat. New hat that I got from my community or whatever. So there's more work to do. Congratulations. Yeah, but one day looks good, man.

One day Joe will paint the wall behind him.

Hey, listen, I'm not reading my mail out loud today. This is you. It's not you. This is about you.

That's fine. What's your resource or tip or hack?

This week my wife and I got a gift from a friend, another couple that we owe. My wife and I got a gift from a friend, actually, another couple that we know. And it was a Christmas gift and it was very generous. It's called the Adventure Challenge Couples Edition. And it's really cool, Kurt, because what you do is you take this book and you start with the first page and there's instructions in there, but it's a it there. The pages are thick and there are scratch off things, so you don't know what's going on, what's coming up ahead of you, right? And you scratch it off and it tells you something to do for that day once a week.

I think I've heard of this kind.

Of thing like that. And it tells you what to do, and it gives you the approximate cost and some alternatives and things like that. And then there's a space in the book where you scratch it off, you tell it, you make a little note about what you did, and there's a space to put a picture of the event, whatever is important to you. So my wife and I are going to go through this. I don't know how methodical we'll be or how regular we'll be, but we'll do it here and there. And I think it's a really cool thing to do if you're, like, sitting around on a Friday night and you don't know what to do. And let's scratch off the Adventure Challenge book and see what happens. So it's called the Adventure Challenge, and I guess if there's a couple's edition, there's probably several editions that you can get, depending on your life and your lifestyle and your stage in life. But it's a really neat book and a really neat concept, and I'm looking forward to rolling through the rest of this book and see what's in store for me.

Did you do one already?

Couples Edition? I have not, but I've seen it. I've seen it done and looks pretty cool.

You haven't done any of the challenges yet?

Not yet. We just got it, so.

Okay. All right. You'll have to keep me. I think that's really interesting. I think I've heard of this. Where can we get that? Do you know where you can get one?

You can get it on Amazon.

All right.

It's called the Adventure Challenge Couples Edition. And who is the alt. Who are the authors of this? And author is a loaded term. They're more designers or a Bryant Ellis and a Ben Day. Pretty cool, I think.

I like that. I'm going to check it out. My Resource Tipper Hack is a game. This is a Sony PlayStation 5 game I got for Christmas. My wife bought me, got me a gift card and I played this. This was like a series that I played when I first got my PS5 last Christmas. And I played them hard. I did. They had five versions out there and I played two through five and I enjoyed them a lot. It's a lot of World War II sniper and lot of stealth that goes on. Intrigue and story. And they had a new game coming out. It was due to come out at the end of January. And if you bought the pre or the pre buy of on it and you got the. I. I got the deluxe version and you got to play it two days ahead of time. So I've been playing Sniper Elite Resistance. This time the character is an English bloke and he's not the. The American Fairborn. His name was this guy. He's got the English accent and he's part of. Is it S O S A S. I'm trying to remember the elite kind of special forces.

Yeah, I know who you mean from.

Remembered either from England during World War II, but he's infiltrating before D Day into France and he's working with the resistance. And I am. I'm almost halfway done. I'm like, I'm playing this game too hard. I'm enjoying it way too much. My. My son Ben says I'm legit now. I'm a legit gamer. Joe.

Awesome, man. Well, if Ben says it, it's true.

This has taken the place of TV for me as far as an entertainment source. It's. If I find a good game, it's really just consuming. Wow. I am really enjoying this. My wife also bought me this game called the Last of Us Part one, which is a zombie. Apocalyptic. Apocalyptic. Which had A movie.

There's a whole series about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. That is disturbing in some ways, that story. But I like that apocalyptic stuff. I finished that just in time for Sniper Elite Resistance. Yeah, I'm enjoying my PlayStation 5 one day on this.

I'll bring up that. I don't know if I've talked about it here, but I bought a Nintendo Switch.

Oh, you were talking about that. You know, my daughter Lindsay and I went. I was thinking of you, Joe, because we went into New York City, they have a Nintendo store you could play. I was watching the kids because that's a really ingenious gaming console because you can play it as if like next to somebody through WI Fi against somebody. My daughter was telling me about that. And then you could connect it to your tv and it's got all the. Of course, the Donkey Kongs and Mario Brothers and all that fun stuff.

Right.

For the kids. Yeah. Have you. Are you playing with the grandkids?

Yeah, yeah. The grandkids came over and we played some stuff and we did Mario Kart and I just bought Nintendo Switch sports where you can bowl and tennis and all that fun stuff. The old Wii style stuff. So I'll give you a full report.

All right. I like it. Thanks. Let's go with our quote for the week.

I love to hear about people of. Well, I'll just call it certain celebrity status, famous people that. Whose faith is important to him.

Yeah.

And I didn't necessarily know this about Alicia Keys. You know who Alicia Keys is, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Great. What an incredible voice.

Yeah.

Talented.

An amazing voice. Absolutely. And I found a quote by Alicia Keys that is really cool. She says this. I feel the presence of a higher power. I believe that what you give is what you get. It's universal law. I believe in the power of prayer. How cool is that?

That's very cool. Very insightful. I agree with you. I know Mark Wahlberg has been an actor. I've enjoyed watching a lot of his movies, his characters. I think he was born in Boston. What an interesting story. Remember him from long ago as a rapper?

Yeah. Marky Mark.

What an incredible business he's built in franchise around his talents. But yeah, he's promoting Halo and he starts out, would you come pray with me?

How neat is that?

Yeah, I was like, that kind of surprised me. But this doesn't surprise me from Alicia Keys in some ways, but very beautiful in the way she stated this.

No doubt.

My quote comes from Max Lucado.

Perfect.

The presence of anxiety is unavoidable. But the prison of anxiety is optional.

Only Max Lucado could say something like that.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Thanks. Yeah. Try to take control. I know it's not easy. Give it a shot. That's our episode for today. Joe, take us home.

So our website is dudesinprogress.com, dudesinprogress.com. if you want to reach out to us, you can email us dudesudesinprogress.com. let us know what you think about the show. Let us know what ideas you might have about the show. And you never know. If you give us an idea and you want to, we might just have you on the show as a guest. But, Kurt, prayer is important, man. I'm so glad we're talking about prayer today. It reminds me that I have to pray more, that I have to pray about certain things, and I have to not be afraid of prayer. Part of the fear of prayer is not doing it right. You talked about that earlier. That's what I like about what you did today, is you gave us some structure to prayer, because if we're trying to be perfect, we'll get locked up. We just got to make progress, because in prayer, even when you're talking to God, you don't have to be perfect. Progress is better than perfection.

Yeah.

God just wants us to keep moving forward.

Love it. You don't have to do it perfect. And try to make time for it this week as you sit down in the early mornings or late at night. And I hope some of these structures help you get started. You don't have to do it perfect, but no matter how you do it, it'll be perfect to God.

Awesome. Talk to you soon.