The Neurological Key to Hearing God

Between 2010 and 2020, 45 million Americans stopped praying.

Most people, when they think of prayer, they engage prayer through what I would call self-consciousness. We've stripped these practices of their biblical basis, and now they're being manipulated by the enemy. Things like manifesting, mindfulness, because I'm my own God. What they've done is they've taken the robustness of prayer, they've hijacked it, and they've repurposed it to boost the sense of idolatry that is rampant in our world today.

Wow, that's good.

Let me make another statement, and I think this will probably mess with some people. What is the greatest sacrifice that we can make in the morning, Dad? To give God our attention. What do over 90% of people do within 5 minutes of waking? They have reached over and they have grabbed their phone. All of this is happening within moments of waking. Here's why this is so problematic.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Jon Bevere Podcast. This is a special edition, and as you notice, if maybe they got the camera on both of us yet, Arden's not sitting across, but Arden's oldest brother is our firstborn, Addison Bevere. Addison, you're almost 40 years old.

Wow, you're just gonna out me right like that at the beginning?

Okay. All right, well, Addison, you know what, 40 was a wonderful transition for your mom and I and our family. Because that is the very year that we moved to Colorado, and it just seemed like God brought our ministry to a whole nother level, right? And I often believe that your 20s are your growing, serving years where you're, you know, making all these silly mistakes and it doesn't cost you a lot. 30s, your initial years— I'm beginning to enter into what I'm really called to do. But 40s is where it take— it's kind of blast off.

It's blast off.

All right, so it's blast off time.

I'll take that.

And I, and I can see God's really put a message in you a message that I love because I found a stat, I shared it with you, and I think you grabbed a hold of it because I remember sharing it.

You did. Do you remember what we were driving home?

I'm gonna share it.

Okay, okay.

I, I got this stat, and this stat, like, oh, it's so troubled me.

And by the way, I fact-checked your stat.

Well, I, I did.

I just want you to know that. So it is a bona fide stat, just for the record.

Between, between 2010 and 2020, 10 quick years, 45 million Americans stopped praying. So that means, in other words, they would pray— wouldn't necessarily mean on a regular basis, they just gave up praying.

Gave up. Yeah.

Okay, so here, here's my question.

Yeah.

Why did 45 million Americans stop praying? I'm just going to throw the ball in at you, and I'm going to say, talk to me, talk to us.

Yeah. I mean, Dad, I think the fundamental issue is we don't know what prayer is. So their idea of prayer, I think they've abandoned their idea of prayer. And what I've found from a lot of people who rediscover prayer is they actually had to abandon their idea of prayer to actually find what God intends for prayer. So a lot of us were disappointed when it comes to prayer. We prayed for something, God didn't respond the way we expected him to. We pray and it seems like no one's there. So it just further accentuates this sense of isolation or God has abandoned me when we go to prayer, like, God, why aren't you communicating with me? Why does it feel like my prayers are just hitting the ceiling and bouncing back? And so I think, Dad, largely it's pain and frustration with the results. People are like, does this even really work? This is a very busy world. We have all sorts of things that will gladly consume our time and attention. So I think prayer is something with that idea of prayer. It's something that will easily get squeezed out of people's lives. And largely that's what we've seen happen. I mean, you look at the rise of cell phone usage. People really don't have much idle time anymore. If they have idle time, what are they doing? They're turning to their phones. They're pulling out their phone. I mean, people, I see it. It's so funny. I see it at stoplights. I actually pointed out to my children, I'm like, watch this. People will pull up, car comes, and then immediately phones out and their thumbs going, their thumbs going, they're racing, right? And so we live in a world that doesn't create space for connection that requires a different pace. And so I think for people who just viewed prayer as this religious exercise that they have to do to feel good about themselves or to be right in God's eyes, I think that got squeezed out when people feel like it's ineffective or they just don't have time for it. I mean, what do you think? That's a big question.

I think it's a lack of understanding of what true prayer is.

Yeah, I agree.

So we're told to pray without ceasing, and there would be a lot of people that would look at that and go, that's impossible to do. So all this other commands of prayer, maybe they're just overaccentuated and just not really, God doesn't really mean it. No, that's not true. We are to pray without ceasing. Could you just speak on that? Because can I tell you, I'm going to give an example. Okay, I asked you to speak on it, but then I thought, no.

Give me an example.

Okay, so I love spending the day with Lisa. Lisa's my favorite person to hang out with. I remember specifically one particular incident that we spent the day working on her garden. And—

That's a good day for mom.

That's a great day for mom.

Good day for mom.

Good day for me is pickleball court. Okay, good day for me is, you know, speaking at a big conference., but I realize that God wants me to give my wife what her heart's desires are. And believe me, the last thing I like doing is working. No, there's other things, but one of the bottom things is gardening. I'm just not a gardener, okay? But can I tell you, that's one of the most memorable days. Now I'm thinking of one specific, it was one of the most memorable days that I've had in my married life, just because of how rich that day was. Did we talk to each other nonstop that day? No. But we were aware of each other's presence. Yeah, I was aware of what she needed. I was seeing she was going and not getting any water. I'd say, babe, can I get you some water? Oh yeah, thanks. I would see there she was ready to put some soil some way. She'd say, could you possibly get that bag of soil and carry it over here for me? I said, sure. Do you need it open? Yeah, let me get— so we're talking to each other when they're needed, but we didn't talk to each other nonstop the whole day. There was actually a lot of time that we were just in each other's presence. Now, I was constantly ready for her to say, "Can you go get that tool? Can you get the hose?" Right?

So you were present to her.

Present to her. The whole day. Now, what if I had EarPods on? Noise-canceling EarPods.

That's good. I see where you're going with this.

I'm listening to even the Bible. Okay? I'm listening to music. Sure. I can't hear a thing she's saying. Yeah. I spent the day without ceasing with my wife, but I didn't talk nonstop. And we didn't talk to each other nonstop, but we were in each other's presence. There's where I wanna take you.

Wow, there's so many different ways we could go with this because prayer is so robust. Let me start with, I think what you're getting at, which is this idea of prayer is about presence. So prayer is more about presence and far less about performance. But what do people think about when they think about prayer? They think about a posture of performance. They think about getting to a certain place, a certain time, doing something. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong about creating intentional intimate moments. To use the metaphor of you, a mom, you guys have moments where you set aside, where it's a different type of connection, where there's a different type of communication. And there are types of prayer that look and feel like that. But when Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 or Romans 12:12 or Ephesians 6:18, when he says pray constantly or pray without ceasing, he's describing a living prayer, a prayer that energizes every part of our lives, a prayer that clarifies what is most important. And I would also say who is most important in any given moment. And that is what we so often miss because we're thinking about it as our performance. Rather than a gift that we enter into. Now, let me make another statement, and I think this will probably mess with some people. Prayer is less about speaking and more about listening. Now, does that mean that we don't speak when we pray? No, there are times when we speak, and I would actually argue someone who is quiet, someone who is still in the presence of another person, when the time comes for them to speak, their words are going to have power.

It's really good.

Their words are going to reflect intimacy. I think about how we gather in the morning to pray as a team. We come together as a messenger team and we intercede. That type of prayer is full-on intercession. I mean, we are calling for God to move in our country, in our lives, in our team, in our work, right? It's a different type of prayer. But I'm going to tell you this. I see it in our team members. And it's not that I'm trying to judge our team, but you just— and I know you see it too as a leader. You're aware. People who come into that space and they're trying to perform, they're trying to put on something versus people who, you know, like they've been quiet with God, before God. And when they step into a moment that requires words, they have an authority and a clarity that they pray from. And unfortunately, because we think prayer is more about speaking and less about listening and less about being sensitive to the Spirit, when it comes time for us to open up open our mouths and pray, we feel like we lack authority. We feel like we lack unction. We feel like we lack the place or the position to pray like that. And the truth is, God wants to speak with authority through our prayers. So I don't want it to be, oh hey, prayer is just silence. No, but here's the invitation. The invitation of prayer is constant connection with God. This is not praying without ceasing. This is not a holy chore. Or a holy bore, I would say, like, how do you even pray without ceasing with our idea of prayer? It's an invitation into a connectedness with God where you are aware, Dad, in every moment what God is doing in that moment, and you can respond from a place of humility and confidence. That's the life that we were made for, Dad. People are so frantic in our world today, right? Like so anxious, so full of worry, fear of the future, regret related to the past. And prayer, what it does is it centers us. It locates us in this moment. Because God, where does he move? He moves in this moment. The past is not yours. The future is not yours. Those belong to God. What God gives us is the ability to be present to the moment and present to his presence and what he's doing in the moment. But Dad, what happens is for most people, we're going back to what you said at the beginning, it's a wrong view of prayer. Why people stop praying. Most people, when they think of prayer, they engage prayer through what I would call self-consciousness. It's not God consciousness, it's self-consciousness. It's all about what they're doing and what they're not doing. So they have made themselves the hero or the victim or villain of prayer rather than a participant just getting in on what God's doing, letting God be the hero and getting involved and just being mindful of what he's doing. Dad, now we have all of these like spiritual movements that are championing prayer practices that we've largely abandoned or pushed to the margins, and they're using different terminology. And then people are like, oh yeah, now I'm more spiritual, I'm more aware. And unfortunately, we've, we've stripped these practices of their biblical basis of orthodoxy, and now they're being manipulated by the enemy. Things like manifesting, things just like mindfulness, because I'm my own God and I need to figure out what the universe intends for me or what, Even worse, what I want the universe to do for me. This kind of language, what they've done is they've taken the robustness of prayer, they've hijacked it, and they've repurposed it to boost the sense of idolatry that is rampant in our world today.

Wow, that's good. I'm going to interrupt Addison's and my conversation, which as you can see is really, really rich, to tell you that he has come up with a prayer journal. It's a 40-day prayer journal. That really makes connecting with God, as we are talking about, simple. It gives you a framework that will be able to set you up for success in the morning. So to get it, just go to the link in the description and it'll bring you right to the place where you can order it.

I mean, I know there's a lot there.

I want to, I want to address specifically the morning time because Years ago, when I was still serving in the church, in my mid-20s, I, I had some really godly leaders come into our church. One, one was Dr. Cho, who had the largest church in the world.

Yeah.

And he would talk about his time of prayer. And in that, I heard a lot of them saying, morning, morning, morning, morning. And I started making it a practice. I remember when Mom and I You know, I mean, I'm, I'm in my early 20s and oh my gosh, sleep's a premium.

And small children.

Yeah. Well, yeah, we didn't—

we—

you weren't even born yet.

Early 20s. No, I was, I was your mid-late 20s, wasn't it?

Yeah. And I remember, you know, we had physical alarm clocks back then. I set it for 5 AM and I remember actually 4:45. I'd wake up at 4:45 and there were mornings I just thought, I can't get out of bed. And your mother's leg would come over and push me out of bed and I would go—

because she wanted you to turn the alarm off or Because she wanted you to get out and pray?

She wanted me to go pray.

Okay.

She said, I like you better when you pray in the morning. Okay. Okay. So, um, I would go out, I would go out to the living room, and I remember there were a few mornings, and when I first started doing this, I literally fell asleep, and I'd wake up an hour later and go, oh my gosh. And so I, I heard from somebody, it was another minister, I was driving him, and he told me, he said, squeeze a lemon in a glass put warm water in it, you'll never have a cold, and it'll wake you up like crazy. And I started doing it. I was like, whoa, this really energizes you. And then what I said is, I'm going to go outside, I'm just going to walk so that way I don't fall asleep. And it became a habit. Yeah. And it's how this entire ministry has been built. It's— it—

everything built on prayer.

Built on prayer. Yeah. And since I have met so many godly ministers— I was just in the presence of a man who has started over 500 churches around the world. He's in his mid-70s and he's a bulldog still. And I asked him last year when I was in his presence, I said, please tell me, what would be the one thing you would attribute? I said, so many pastors have fallen. You're 50 years, you're still passionate, you're like a bulldog. What's the one thing? And he said, John, I get up 4 o'clock every morning and pray. Now please don't get scared at what I just said.

That's him. I, I could hear people just tuning out.

Yeah, that's the 4:45. That's John. Okay. Yeah. Will you talk to me about the morning? Because Psalm 5:3, we both know it. I love this. You love this. My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning I will direct it to you, and I will look up. Talk to me.

Yeah, I like the way the ESV reads. It says, O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. So it describes the morning as having this special quality. Now, does that mean God doesn't hear our voice throughout the day? No. What David's describing is a special connectedness that is unique to the morning. So in the morning, you hear my voice in the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. So prepare a sacrifice can also be translated. I lift my prayer to you and watch. So there's 3 things that are happening here. Ready? I'm going to break it down. Number 1, this verse is describing a way of waking. So the first idea is wake. Yes. How we wake matters, right? What we do in the morning.

Matters.

Then what David is saying, how we wake determines what we watch. So how we wake shapes how we watch, right? Our attention, what we see during the day, which then shapes how we worship. So how we engage the day in a way that honors God, that reflects his presence and purpose in our world. So 3 Ws to make it easy, how we wake, Yep. Determines how we watch, which shapes how we worship. Now let's talk about brain science for a moment. Okay.

So can I say to everybody, worship, a form of worship is singing a beautiful song, but true worship is obedience to God.

Yes, it's our entire offering.

Okay. So, so I want to make sure. So as a young believer, I thought worship was limited to slow songs. One day the Holy Spirit asked me a question. He said, Actually, he spoke to me and he said, worship is not a slow song. Yeah. And I said, God, what is it? And he said, go to the very first place I talk about it in the Bible. I get in my computer, I go and I find it's in Genesis 22. And that's when Abraham said to his servants, Isaac and I are going up to the mountain to worship and we will return. And God showed me that morning he wasn't going up to sing a slow song. He was going up to obey what God spoke to him the night before.

4.

So when Addison says worship, he's talking about, are you going to be living obedient? Because the highest form of worship is our obedience.

Yeah, obedient. And I would also add sensitive, because a lot of people are like, I want to obey God, I want to do what God's telling me to do, but they don't know how to hear God.

Well, let's, let's break it down. Let's bring it down a little further. Okay. Okay. Hey guys, we're gonna stop right there just for a brief moment because I care greatly about health because these bodies as believers aren't ours, they belong to the Holy Spirit, and therefore we need to put in it what will cause us to live long so we can serve him more.

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Somebody has just really hurt me during the day. Okay. Okay, obedience is Jesus said forgive. So I'm gonna choose to forgive in that moment instead of hold a grudge. That's what I'm talking about.

Because you have a sensitivity, because you're not watching the day through your lack.

Yes.

You're watching the day through an abundance that you access in the morning. Now, we're talking about prayer in a bit of an unconventional way, but did you know, and I would ask you, do you believe that God speaks to us while we sleep?

Oh, without a doubt, yes.

Okay. So there's a poet, Wendell Berry. He says that sleep is the prayer the body prays. Okay. So sleep is the prayer the body prays. And you're like, okay, what exactly does that mean? I want to read something from Psalm 116 before we go back. Okay, listen to this. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord— remember what we're talking about, watching. Yeah. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, because he shapes my life, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my whole Being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure. Notice where this starts. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel at night. Did you know that when you sleep at night, when you're in deep sleep, it's delta, delta state? What I mean by that— and just stay with me. I'm going to geek out here for a second, but stay with me. Delta state, which means your brainwaves are traveling at a very low frequency. Okay. Okay. So at this point of sleep, guess what's happening to your body? 5 profound benefits. You ready for this? Yeah. Your brain detoxes. Yep. Okay. You experience physical healing, regeneration. You experience emotional integration. Right. So this is blending memory and soul story. There's trauma recovery, and it offers entry to spiritual awareness and experience. All of this is happening while you sleep. Love that. And you do not dream. If people think I'm talking about dreams, I'm actually not talking about dreams because you do not dream during the delta state. Okay? This is a time of profound surrender, of trusting God. It is an act of worship, if you will, to give God the night. And you know this about me, but I struggled with insomnia for 5 years. So when I talk about the night, For me, this is a place of great pain and also a place of great promise. I know what the night feels like to be restless in the night, to not sleep, to not experience the health benefits of deep sleep. But now on the other side of that, I see the promise and the goodness and the power of the night in a fresh way. So the reason why I share this about the night, Dad, because how we wake Matters when we are coming out of sleep. What do over 90% of people do within 5 minutes of waking? What are they doing?

Turn on their phones.

They have reached over. If their phone isn't in their bed, their phone might be in their bed. Okay. But they have reached over and they have grabbed their phone. And what are they doing? Scrolling. They're scrolling, checking their email. Right. They're processing whatever that gives them a sense of godness over their world. They're entertaining comparison that feeds a sense of lack and scarcity. All of this is happening within moments of waking. Here's why this is so problematic. When you come out of sleep, you're now in something called a theta state. Now, the theta state, and this is so powerful, is where you have access to your deep mind. So a reservoir of wisdom, a reservoir of experiences, a reservoir of knowledge. And I believe that the deep mind is a place where God speaks to us in ways that circumvent our mental safeguards.

So can I— yes, we're going to— how often that I have woken up the next morning and went, oh, there's— that was not a good decision, or, oh, I shouldn't do that. I, I remember your mom and I, we actually put a contract on a house.

Yeah, I remember.

And we put a contract on land because we were moving to another state. I woke up the next morning and we both looked at each other and said, We are not to get this house. Yeah. And, you know, the owners are gracious. They let us out because it was within 24 hours.

Yeah.

But I could, I could cite story after story after story after story. Now I've come to the place in my life where I say to somebody, and I just did it recently, I said, I'll let you know in the morning. I mean, we found something that we were like, going to say yes to in the moment, in the excitement.? And I said, I'll let you know in the morning. And the next morning it was completely different because in that deep state, that theta stage, God showed me what he wanted. And how many times my course has been altered in that early morning part. Yes.

So I just want to affirm what you're saying. So to explain, and this is, you know, this is brain science, right? So I have, I have a friend who's a neurosurgeon. He actually works on people's brains. And he made the statement, he said, "Your brain has 80 to 100 billion neurons." Okay, think about the neurons in your brain and the work that they're doing. He said the majority, if not all of those, can be guided and affected by how you set your attention or how you watch. So think about the implications. Hold on, you're describing you had to make this big decision. Okay. Yep. You slept on it. What happened? You went into delta state. It was your— you were able to integrate all these different things when you woke.

Well, you missed the point.

You missed the point.

Okay. What did I miss?

Cleansing.

Yes.

Yeah. No, that's, that's one of them. It's a detox.

Yeah. Brain detox. The detox. Yes. That one's so important. It's so important. I detox my emotions. My emotions were so ready to jump on that. I had to force myself to say, I'm going to wait till— It does.

It guides the limbic system, which is where you have the majority of the emotions. Response, but it's, it's so much more than that. It's not less than that, but it's so much more than that. What your body's actually synthesizing and doing, it's doing things that we would almost call like supernatural as far as what God designed our body to do, which makes sense if God is supernatural and he wants to engage with us. He's essentially finding a place where his otherness can encounter our idea of reality. And so here's what happens. You're in that delta state. You're able to process and detox. And all these things are happening. And then you awake into a theta state. Now, scientists tell us that you could probably stay in a theta state for 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how you steward that state. But that is when things from your deep mind move into your conscious mind or into your consciousness. It happens at that place. What happens though, Dad, if you jump on your phone? You completely hijack that possibility. Yeah. Those learnings, those understanding, you go from a place of abundance to a place of lack, a place of scarcity, a place of idolatry. You're trying to be a god through your phone, essentially order your world, figure out all the answers, compare, whatever it is. You're jumping in and you're trying to do something that is not your place or your time to do. So you go from theta state and then you move into alpha state. Now you can experience alpha state for 20 to 60 minutes beyond theta state. Alpha state is when you're incredibly creative, where you start to see connections that you couldn't see before. You're more open, you're more sensitive to the Spirit of God, you're more open to Scripture, you're more open to truth, you're more open to things that may feel like novelty. And then after alpha state, you go into beta state, which is like the typical brain function, moving throughout your day, taking care of stuff. Here's my point. In the morning, your reticulated activating system, your RAS. Okay, just RAS. We're going to call it the RAS. I'm going to explain it. What is that? Your RAS, it guides where you're placing your attention. Okay, so it's determining whether you're going to place your attention on your lack, or if you're going to place attention on the depth, the reservoir that God has deposited in you that is beyond your conscious experience. And it's actually the R.E.S. that brings that out from the depths of who you are into your conscious experience. But here's what happens if you immediately jump into something where you're feeding a sense of lack or scarcity or whatever, then what's going to happen? You're going to look for that throughout your day. Your entire day is going to be defined by that.

Your worship.

Your worship, you're getting it, that's it. Your worship is going to reflect that smallness. So what does that mean, Dad? When you're being asked to forgive, when you're being asked to believe, when you're being asked to take a risk, when you're being asked to navigate a difficult relational dynamic, all of those things are going to be thwarted. They're gonna be compromised because you did not sacrifice your attention in the morning. What is the greatest sacrifice that we can make in the morning, Dad? To give God our attention.

Attention.

Okay. It's to give God our attention. Yep. It's the greatest sacrifice when, when the world says, give me your attention. When your phone says, the algorithms say, give me your attention. The greatest sacrifice for us in the morning is to say, I'm not God of my life. God, you are Lord over my life. I am going to give you my waking moments and I'm going to allow you to shape and determine my day, because how we wake determines how we watch, which shapes how we worship, and that transforms our entire day. So that a lot of people who struggle with insomnia— so I'm talking about from my experience— it is, hey, I got to do things different at night. I got to change this at night. I got to change that at night. I did everything. I got the special pillows. I did the blackout curtains. I did the no water after 8. I took the natural stuff. I took prescription stuff. I mean, I Everything for 5 years. Okay. Nothing worked. What I focused on was the night. Then when God started to transform my understanding of the morning, I realized that how I engage the night is profoundly impacted by how I begin the day. Now we've made like quiet time, we've made it like kind of this religious thing that we feel guilty about if we don't do it. But I'm telling y'all, it's not just a, theological thing. This is a biological reality, right? God hardwired us. And Dad, it doesn't have to be 4 AM. Like, you might be someone who gets up at 6 AM or 7 AM. That's okay. The key is protecting the sanctity, right, of that first movement of the day. So if you wake up at 6 AM and you got to leave for work by 6:30, you're, you're in the, you're in the day, you're in beta very quickly, you're in the day zone. And so you have to back up from there. And I don't even want to say you have to, you get to. And Dad, this looks different in different seasons of life. For some people, when you have small children and stuff, it might look like 30 minutes for you, right? And that's what you can do. But it's a sacrifice of attention. It might look like 15 minutes, but Dad, even 15 minutes of you not being on your phone and being sensitive to the Spirit of God first thing in the morning, opening scripture, not on your phone, There's so much there about reading on your phone or an iPad versus reading scripture.

Well, Addison, we were required, required to be at the office by 8:00 AM. And even when we had you and even when we had your brother— well, no, I wasn't required when I had your brother. When we had you, I was required to be at the office at 8:00. The reason I set my alarm for 5:00 was because I wanted to make sure I had 2 hours with God before I jumped in the shower, ate quick breakfast, breakfast and got to the office. Now, um, I wanted it as a priority. I wanted the day to start out like that. Yeah. And it made a difference. And, um, I, I just— I'm not saying to everybody you got to do 2 hours. I'm saying to everybody— and I know you just said 15 minutes— but I personally feel like in my experience of being 66 years old now. Yeah. I don't want to go a half an hour. I want 30 minutes at least. Yes. And what you've just said, you said 15 minutes theta, and then you said anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes for alpha. Yes. That tells me that first half hour, not just that first 15 minutes, is really important. And I want the word of God coming in. I want But David also said, my voice you'll hear.

Correct. There's a connect— there's a connectedness that's unique to the morning because we have to understand when it comes to the voice of God, it's again, we think of it transactionally. We think of it even, even the saying like prayer isn't a monologue, it's a dialogue. I honestly think that's unhelpful for people to hear that because when you say that, you're almost limiting prayer to their idea of a conversation and they're like, I don't hear the voice of God. And I see your point. I don't hear the voice of God. John says it's a dialogue. I don't hear the voice of God. What you're describing when you say that, and I understand the spirit of what you're describing, what people, and I've said that before, and I've actually been challenged with that language. Like, you know what? Actually, I don't think that's a good way to describe this. It's a two-way communication. It's this place where God is speaking and we are listening. We are listening, God is speaking, or we're speaking, God's listening, this place of intimate connection. I think of what Anthony of Egypt said. And I love this. He said, perfect prayer is to not know that you are praying. You are so God-conscious, you are so in tune. And I know you've experienced this in the morning where you're so surrendered to what God's doing in that moment, you're not even aware of the motions. Like, you are just receiving from the Spirit of God.

Have you ever had mornings where you've not been able to get into his presence, not been able to really connect?

Less and less as I've understood this principle. I would say that— I would say it's the exception. It's the exception, not the norm. Whereas for me before, the exception was getting into the morning.

I would, I would have experienced that. But I'll give you this morning for me, I was up at 4:15. I was on my knees upstairs and because it was raining out, I couldn't go to the tennis courts and pray.

See, that's— you have to be walking for you, even how God's designed you and wired you. You need to be moving. I know there's something to that, which We could unpack that, but we don't have time.

So I couldn't connect at all. And I was actually like, Lord, this is so flat. Because I remember Jeanne, Madame Jeanne Gouillon. She lived in the 16th century or 17th century, somewhere in there. She was in prison and she wrote wrote the book called Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, and I read that early in my Christian walk, and boy, did it profoundly impact me. But she talked about meeting Jesus in the scriptures. Yeah, she said, don't, don't try to read a whole chapter, you know, read one. If you sense his presence, stop there, just stop there. Well, and now dwell. So I made a, I made a point in 2020. I said, I am not going to let the morning go by without getting— knowing I've been in the presence of God. Yes. It was the best, best year I can remember. Okay. Now I have— that's been my motto almost every single— now in late 2025, I'm still doing the same thing. This morning it was so flat. It was so— how do I want to say? There was nothing to it. It was just nothing. It was like— and I kept struggling.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden I knew. It was like I didn't hear the Spirit of God speak, although I've heard him say it before. There are things that have been spoken that are against us, against me. No weapon formed against you will prosper. Every tongue that rises up against you in judgment, you shall condemn. Yeah. And I'm like, I need to go right into battle. Wow. And I remember putting on my armor. I said, Lord, I gird my loins about with truth. I put on the breastplate of righteousness. Now I said, I have the sword. And I said, all right, enemy, you want to fight? You're getting a fight. Wow. I said, it is written in God's word. And I started speaking the word of God. And I remember when I said, I have been raised together with Christ and made to sit together with Christ. Yes. In heavenly places, far above you, every principality and power and might. I command you to go. I cover my children's home, my home with the blood of Jesus. Wow. All of a sudden I'm thinking it's Halloween week. Oh my goodness, all the stuff that's going on, the spiritual activity this week that in the dark realm. And you know, it was a wonderful time after that. That took, that took about 4, 3 or 4 minutes. Yeah.

And then it was glorious. So, so wouldn't you say that you, you woke and then you set your attention— I did.— You were sensitive and the Spirit of God showed you something, synthesized things that I would say—

That theta or alpha state showed me, you got a battle right now.

Even the separation was for what felt like separation was actually for the purpose of intimacy.

He wasn't separated from me. He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

But his manifest presence was being blocked. Was being blocked. Or you could even say, I would say, Maybe it wasn't blocked. Maybe God withdrew in that moment because he knew you would press in. He knew. He's like, wait a second, I need my son to contend. I'm going to prick an awareness in him. I mean, God's ways are above ours, so we could talk about it all day. But my point is, look at the wisdom. Look at the fruit. It led to intimacy, I think. And I want to make this statement. I would actually be curious how you would respond. But I would say that the chief thing that separates us from experiencing God is the lie that we are separated from God. I love that. Okay. I agree. Because what the enemy— the enemy will try to convince you that you are separate from God. Dad, we've talked about this, but the writer of Hebrews, I feel like that entire book is about do not believe the lie of separation. You have this high priest that contends for you. You are known. Every part of you is divided and known, right? Hebrews 4, it pierces, it divides. You have a high priest who can sympathize with you and your weaknesses. Do not shrink back. Approach with boldness the throne of grace where you find mercy and grace to help in your time of need. And we read about the consciousness of the worshiper. We read about the ineffectiveness of a sacrificial system that keeps God at arm's length, but really doesn't transform the temple, which is our body, our entire embodied selves that God wants as his living sacrifice, to use Paul's language from Romans 12, that idea. And so even in those moments, Dad, I feel like it's God saying, "Hey, son, I have your attention and I'm inviting you into an awareness." That might be to fight. Like, I love what you did. You started speaking scripture.

You knew like, "Hey, I need to go to battle." You know, I had a— I know you've heard me tell this story, but a lot of you haven't. A profound story that impacted my life and really kept me sensitive to this. And I think people need to hear this. There was a minister who was faithful to ministry for over 65 years. I mean, the result was thousands, literally tens of thousands of ministers came out of his ministry. He finished well. He's been with the Lord for years now. But I remember he had a vision of Jesus in the 1950s, and Jesus was sharing with him, interestingly enough, from the Scripture And he said, all of a sudden, this demon came between, in the vision, between him and Jesus. And he said, as soon as the demon came in, he said the thing was like half the size of a man. It was green, it was slimy, and it was like, "Ning, ning, ning, ning." And he said, all of a sudden, it was like a mute button went on Jesus. And he said, "Jesus was still talking to me." And he said, "But all I could hear was, 'Ning, ning, ning, ning, ning.'" You know, this thing. And he said, In the vision, I said, Jesus, please, please get rid of that demon. I want to hear what you're saying. I can't hear what you're saying. And he said, I kept crying out. And then he said he knew. The Holy Spirit whispered, yeah, you're the one that is to take authority over that demon. See, Jesus made the same— I just listened to it yesterday in my golf cart because I was playing scripture in my golf cart coming back from the pickleball court.

Right.

I just love hearing the word of God. He said, don't rejoice that demons are subject to my name, but that your names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Ooh, I love that. So I remember he looked at that demon and just said, "In Jesus' name, I command you to go." And he said all of a sudden the demon disappears, the mute button goes off, and he's hearing Jesus again. And I realized how many times I've walked into prayer and it took 45 minutes and I'm struggling and I'm still not in the presence of God. And all of a sudden I realize, Hold on. Jesus said I'd know his voice. How come? And then I wake up and I deal and I address because I don't want people struggling for 45 minutes and then giving up on what you're teaching them, because what you're teaching right now is gold. This is gold. But I want you to realize that, you know, I use this example. I said, can you imagine a father with a son, and there's some bandits that are trying to come in and rape the mother and the sisters, right? And the son comes in and says to the father, I just want to sit with you, Dad. Just tell you how much I appreciate you. I think the father looked at the son and say, what are you doing? Get a baseball bat. Go get the handgun. Protect your mother and sisters.

Yeah.

And then everything's peaceful on the front. Which is most days, and the son comes in with a baseball bat, I'm ready to get him. And the father's going, what are you doing? Yeah. And I think it comes down to, if I can say it like this, that theta stage that you're talking about, being sensitive to what's happening in the spirit realm at that moment. Absolutely. And if it takes a little warfare, which is a very rare exception for me, I'd say it may happen once every couple months, or even, you know, maybe once a month, because you have other times when you intercede like that. Typically, like, that's not typically what you're doing first thing. Almost every morning I go up there, or I go out there, and boy, he's there. Yeah, he's like, I'm here. I love that. I've, I've captured your line. I love that. I'm here. And yeah, he's there, and boom, it's, it's interaction, right? But there we live in a world filled with demonic forces that would try to get want to get us frustrated at God and our minister and the people that are ministering to us.

I was going to say, and each other. So what I would say, the enemy can use that though, to every single day, this like angst, this— I got to use your metaphor. I'm running up every single day to the window looking for someone to shoot, you know, with a bat. It's like, no, actually, you're waking up your child. You should probably stop doing that. Like, there isn't someone at the window. You need to be able to hear and have a sensitivity so you know and can discern, oh wait, there's someone trying to get in that window. I need to go protect my son. And so unfortunately, most people when they engage with prayer, and I've seen this to be true in my life, it's from this place of self-consciousness. And going back to even your story about the demon, I would say that person became conscious, like his consciousness was dictated by what the demon was doing rather than what Jesus was saying. And for a moment there, he forgot, like, hey, no, actually what the Spirit of God is telling you to do is to rebuke that thing, tell it to get out of here because it has captured your conscious attention when your conscious attention should be on what Jesus is saying, not what that little demon's doing.

Right. So, but, but just as Jesus had to say to Satan, it is written. Absolutely. The Son of God could have just turned his mind to his Father and shut the devil off. He would have done that. But he actually had to speak. Yes. To the devil. It is written. Yes, it is written. It is written. Away with you, Satan. So, you know, that's the thing, because Addison, so many times I was frustrated. I felt like a failure. I'd go into prayer. And in reality, what was happening was because in my younger years, Addison, this will go for 2 weeks because I was in an oppressed state for 2 weeks and I was being bombarded. And all of a sudden, 2 weeks later, the Spirit of God said, I heard, addressed this. Yeah. And all of a sudden I'm like, whoa, where's that freedom been the last couple of weeks? It was because I kept tolerating an oppressive force.

And there are people that live this way. And that I would— I mean, I agree with you where I would challenge you. Yeah. And I do this. I do this respectfully. And I do this with— I do this. I do this with honor. You have been doing this for over 4 decades. So you have a lot of muscle memory when it comes to this. There are people, and I would say based on what I read from the data, most people aren't doing this at all. I know. And so what, what I'm— and Dad, they don't even know how to be sensitive to the voice of God. They don't know how to hear the voice of God saying, hey, it's time to fight. They wouldn't know how to discern between the two.

They're still trying to navigate a world where they think God has completely abandoned them. You for speaking to that, because that's, that's the majority of who we're talking to. But I wanted to talk to the people that are walking with God for, for a couple of decades and they're frustrated and they're frustrated.

Absolutely. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help people get into this state where they can recognize like, hey, yeah, today's a day where I'm going to be doing some spiritual warfare, where I'm going to be speaking scripture to the enemy because the enemy is being very loud. Are you really? Are you really the Son of God? If you are, why don't you do something practical? Why don't you do something spectacular? Why don't you do something uber religious? Why don't you set yourself on top of the temple and show everyone how great you are? If the enemy's coming after you— and what does the enemy always do? The accuser, he says, if you're God's Son. In other words, he's saying like, prove it. Yeah, prove it. If you're actually God's Son, prove it. Do something. Any twisting scripture— and I'm just— I know I know what the accuser sounds like. And Dad, I've made this statement before, but I think most people struggle to hear the voice of God because they expect him to hear the same. They expect him to sound the same way the accuser does, the tone and the tenor of the accuser. They expect God to sound like that. And God doesn't speak like that. God doesn't communicate like that. And so, so much of this is unlearning that loud voice of the accuser. And the morning represents a special time where we can unlearn some of this like discursive consciousness, discursive thinking that causes us to be self-conscious, that causes us to withdraw, that causes us to compare, that causes us not to engage the day. We can learn to sacrifice the time, sacrifice our lack, sacrifice whatever it is. I mean, even looking at the sacrificial system, depending on what they had, they could offer what they had, right? So whatever we have, whatever state we find ourselves in right now, Giving that to God and just watching what God does from that place. And 3 really practical things just to get practical with people. People are like, okay, what can I do practically? 3 things that will change their lives. 3 things. Ready? Number 1, buy an alarm clock. Do not use your phone as an alarm clock. Stop using your phone as alarm clock. Very, very simple. And get a Nest, get an old analog, digital, whatever. Buy an alarm clock because you do not want— and the second thing is you do not want to touch your phone for at least an hour after you wake up. Yes. You should not have your phone on your person in your room for at least an hour after you wake up. Yes. I have been doing this for years and the effect on my life is more profound than quite possibly any other discipline I've ever implemented.

Okay, so an hour not on your phone, buy an alarm clock, hour not—

what's number 3? The third one for me, and this starts with prayer and it goes throughout the day, I pull out scripture, I sit down and I do what you described earlier. I'm reading and I stop, and then I'm praying. I'm reading, I'm listening, I'm sitting there. And the other thing that I do, and people are going to be like, wait, what? When I wake up, I do not move. I just lay in bed. I lay in bed because I want to protect that theta state. I don't get out of bed until I'm out of that state. Then I slowly get out of bed and transition to the next part of my day, which is reading and a different type of prayer. And I'm telling people here that are like, wait, what?

I should stay in bed? Actually? Well, actually, alarm going off and your spouse next to you might not be a good thing.

But well, Dad, that's— here's the thing, though. Here's the thing. Yeah, you could turn your alarm off. Yes. And you can stay in that state for a little bit. Or if you're someone who's prone to go to sleep right away, then you might have to get out of bed. But Dad, ideally. Yes. Ideally, you train your body, and this, this is where I'm at, and I think this is where you're at. Your body will learn with time. You will train your body to get up without the alarm.

So I'm, I'm going to actually share something that your mom and I did years ago. We, we felt the Holy Spirit could wake us up, so we actually started praying, would you please wake me up when you want to talk to me? 'When you want me to be with you.' And it really worked. I mean, I remember Lisa was, you know, he was waking her up and she was going, 'No, no, no, it's too early. It's too early.' And it kept happening at the same time every single night. Wow. So because our spirits are alive and he is alive in us. Yes. So Addison, tell us about this too. This is a book that just came out.

I believe it's a journal and It's really good.

Yeah.

So, and we've talked about this, but it's a 40-day prayer journal, and it's this idea, if you will, of letting prayer out of this place of this transactional performative idea and bringing it into our everyday lives. So the 40 days follow a very simple intuitive framework. So this is not a formula. This is a framework that allows us to engage with God in a way that is specific and unique to us, but I hear a lot of people, Dad, they're like, "I don't know where to start." Like, okay, you're describing this morning and you said it earlier, like, "Okay, I get up and then what?" What this will do is it provides a framework for you to move through. I love that.

It's very self-aware. You've got places to write in here, the things that you hear, the things that are coming, to write it down.

And even your kids are using this, right?

Correct.

And it's not, again, I'm trying to redefine how God speaks. God speaks because we just think God speaks through our conscious mind the way that you and I would speak to each other. The goal for this to help people understand the other ways God speaks so we can identify how he is speaking to us and capture that.

So that's a lot of what we're doing throughout this. I love that. So we've got a link at the bottom. You can hit that link and it'll bring you to this Words with God prayer journal. Where Addison talks about reflect, rest, recenter— excuse me, reflect, recenter, rest, receive, respond. This is so simple, and when your own children are using it, that says a lot. So I think I love how you framed it— framework. Thank you. Yeah, it's, it's not something that— it just gets you started. And to be honest with you, I think a lot of you would benefit greatly by getting your hands on this And so please just go to the link. I want to say thank you for coming on. What you've shared could be talked about for hours and hours and hours. And what I see is that God has given you a way of articulating a very great felt need among believers out there that they've, they've wrestled with. And you have a way of articulating that makes it so simple, and That's usually what the wisdom of God does. It takes complex things that the enemy wants to make complex so that nobody can get it. It makes it very simple. I found over the 46 years of walking with Jesus that the wisdom of God is simple. It's so simple that an 8-year-old can understand it if it's shared correctly. And you've done that today. Even when you kind of geeked on us, Addison, it was so simple to see. And I find when somebody really has a message from heaven, you actually see what they're saying. Wow. You don't just hear, you see it. Wow. Uh, when somebody's not anointed, it's just like a lot of words. Okay. Somebody's like, oh, oh, they studied this out. You don't see it. But when somebody really has something from heaven, you can see it. And I could see it, and so could I believe everybody that's listening or watching us. So beautiful job.

Thank you for being on.

Always good. I want to say to all you patrons, thank you so much for supporting the John Bevere Podcast. And if you want to become a patron, you can click on the link in to discover how it just helps us to be able to get the message out to many, many, many more, to be able to minister to many more because Jesus made the statement, go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. It's a wonderful thing that today we can reach nations all over the world with simple podcasts and how YouTube is a, is a vehicle. It's a vehicle. It's like the Roman roads. We're able to get to the nations of the world and bring the word of God to people that are so hungry. So until next time, This has been the John Bevere Podcast with Addison and myself.