0:02

Hey, my friend, I'm so excited to be with you today. I'm Dr.

0:05

Lee Warren, and we're about to do some self-brain surgery.

0:08

I've got a guest that's coming on the show today that I really think is probably

0:13

the most anticipated episode I've ever recorded.

0:16

And I know I've said things like that frequently when I have somebody I'm really excited about,

0:20

but I remember this episode, I started planning in my mind when I read a book

0:26

called God on On Mute, that had a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury back in 2022.

0:33

And the author was Pete Gregg. I didn't know Pete at the time,

0:36

but I discovered the book through one of those Amazon accidents where I was

0:40

buying a book and it said, hey, you might also like this.

0:43

And I saw the title, God On Mute, and I read the synopsis. And basically the

0:47

book was about these times when we can't feel or hear or even know for sure that God is there.

0:53

What do we do when we're really hurting? We don't have the words to communicate

0:57

or the ears to hear that God's really there.

1:00

And that really resonated with me because I found this book that just spoke

1:03

into my heart of some things that I really had walked through,

1:06

Lisa and I had walked through, and our family had done after we lost our son, Mitch.

1:11

And I remember how excited I was when I read Mark Vrogep's book,

1:15

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, and subsequently read Tish Harrison Warren's book, Prayer in the Night.

1:20

And I finally had had some language around lament, these ideas of how to pray

1:24

to God and ways to pray to God when you're really upset and hurting.

1:29

Sometimes you don't even know what to say or not even sure you believe in Him,

1:32

but you find yourself unable to avoid prayer anyway.

1:35

And the Bible, it turns out, is full of these episodes of people praying in that mode.

1:40

And I didn't have the language for it based on the way I was raised and the

1:43

tradition that I was raised in in Christianity. I didn't have the language to understand what lament was. And I had grown so

1:49

much and learned so much from Vrogep and Tish Harrison Warren.

1:52

And I remember being excited to have both of them on my podcast.

1:56

But after I read Pete's book, God on Mute, I subsequently read How to Pray,

2:00

A Simple Guide for Normal People, and How to Hear God, A Simple Guide for Normal People.

2:05

And then Lisa read them. And we basically just began to just anticipate an opportunity to speak with him.

2:10

We found out that Pete Gregg and his wife, Sammy, had started the worldwide 24-7 prayer movement.

2:15

And now, for more than 20 years. People have been praying every second of every

2:19

day all over the world for the world, for God's work in the world and His healing for the world.

2:25

We found out that he's been involved in the development of the Lectio 365 app,

2:31

which now we're using twice a day, every day.

2:34

We start in the morning with a few minutes of this contemplative prayer and

2:37

a few minutes in the evening of this sort of.

2:40

Evening, examine type prayer. So we do the lectio, this eating the word,

2:45

chewing on the word, meditating on the word, drawing everything out of the word

2:48

that can be drawn out of it, coming to it with open eyes, not to exegete the scripture,

2:53

but to exegete the scripture, not have a filter in place of what God's trying

2:58

to say, but just ears open, heart open, mind open, brain open to hear what he really has to say.

3:03

And I've learned all of that from Pete Gregg.

3:07

And I sent an email back in November of 2022 to talk, asking Pete's assistant,

3:12

Rachel Hall, shout out to Rachel for her incredible work in getting this done.

3:16

And I sent an email way back in November of 22, and it took a long time to get us together.

3:21

Our schedules are so hard to match up. And finally, we had it scheduled,

3:25

and on the day it was supposed to happen, something happened,

3:28

and I had to do emergency surgery. Now, there's a funny moment in our conversation.

3:31

I'm going to play it for you as we start out. I told Pete that I had emergency

3:35

surgery, and his response was classic, and you'll enjoy hearing that before

3:39

we get into the interview. So I'm going to leave that in there, even though it was really part of our little preamble.

3:43

And so you'll hear that, and then we'll get into the conversation.

3:45

I asked Pete to pray for us before we started, but I just, I wanted to give

3:49

you this little intro to say that this conversation was almost two years in

3:54

the making, and it's worth every second of that waiting. You're going to learn so much from Pete.

3:58

You'll find in him a trusted friend and guide as we try to get to know our Savior and our Creator more.

4:04

And especially if you're an agnostic or an atheist or you're a doubter or you

4:08

have been hurt so badly by life that you feel like God's given up or maybe He doesn't even exist.

4:13

Pete Gregg is a guy you should read because his story is one of real pain and

4:18

real heartache and real doubting in a time when he rejected God and said,

4:22

I don't even believe you anymore. And he tells us what to do and that it's okay to have those moments.

4:27

And his work is so important and so so personal to me.

4:30

When I met him on this conversation, I felt like I was seeing an old friend

4:33

for the first time in a long time. And we just had an incredible conversation.

4:37

And I'm confident the Lord is going to arrange another opportunity or maybe

4:41

more than one additional opportunity in the future for Pete to come back on

4:45

the show and us to have more to do to talk about for you and with you.

4:49

But for today, I want to give you a conversation about a lot of different things,

4:53

mostly about our Savior and prayer and what to do when things are hurting and

4:58

you can't quite hear with Pete Gregg.

5:00

And before we do any of that, the only thing you have to do,

5:03

my friend, is change your mind and change your life. So let's get after it.

5:09

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

5:14

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

5:17

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and faith.

5:21

Everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

5:24

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

5:28

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

5:31

take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

5:34

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

5:38

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

5:42

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

5:44

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time,

5:49

my friend. Let's get after it. Music.

5:56

I first reached out to Rachel in November of 2022 to try to get this done.

6:04

And then you were on my schedule and I had emergency surgery one day.

6:08

And I'm so glad that we finally got this together. Oh, are you okay?

6:14

Yeah, I'm good. No, I had to perform surgery that day.

6:17

Oh, this is like, Lee, this is like in my line of work.

6:22

Sometimes I say I had to marry someone and it means a different thing for me.

6:28

I guess I should be more, a little bit more specific when I say that.

6:33

Well, friend, we're back and I can't remember a podcast that I've ever been

6:35

more excited about this one. I've got Pete Gregg on the show today, all the way from the Isle of Wight in

6:42

the UK. Welcome to the show, Pete. It's so good to be with you. I feel the same, Lee. I am so excited to be on your podcast.

6:49

Your latest book is helpful and moving, and I'm going to try and ask you some

6:55

questions, too, if that's all right. We'll reverse the microphone in a minute. That's beautiful. Hey,

7:01

before we get started today, would you mind saying a prayer for us? I'd love to do that.

7:07

Lord Jesus, thank you that by your spirit, you are in the room right now with

7:13

every person listening to this. And thank you that you know us better than we know ourselves.

7:20

And we pray that something out of this conversation would be hope bringing and transformative.

7:28

And that you would speak as Lee and I have a conversation. In Jesus name. Amen.

7:35

Amen. Thank you so much, Pete. I'm excited to have a chance to talk to you because I've been reading you for

7:41

years, and now for the last six months or so, thanks to my wife,

7:46

Lisa, I've been listening to you with the Lectio app twice a day every day.

7:51

I've been sending you to sleep is what you're telling me. That's right.

7:56

So Lisa and I, we started using the app at night to help us get ready to sleep,

8:02

and then now I've been doing it both twice a day.

8:04

And so I feel like I kind of hear your voice all the time and I've been reading

8:09

your books for years. So great to have you with us today.

8:11

And maybe my listeners have heard about you many times.

8:16

And your book was we called God on Mute, our book of the year for 2022 on the show.

8:22

So they know who you are. But let's hear a high level, maybe 30,000 foot view

8:26

of Pete and your life and what you're all about.

8:30

OK, sure. Well, as you can hear from my accent, I'm English.

8:34

And I live in the UK, although I did have a wonderful year living in the Midwest

8:39

of America. Very happy time.

8:42

I am a pastor of a church just outside London.

8:47

I'm the bewildered founder of the 24-7 prayer movement.

8:52

We've been praying nonstop for 25 years now, and we're in over 100 nations.

8:56

And we're working with everyone from the Catholics at the highest level to the

8:59

Salvation Army at street level. And one of our ministries that Lee, you're kindly referring to there is Lectio

9:07

365, which is just an approach that's helping people each day to pray the Bible.

9:13

And we're using ancient models. The morning is Lectio Divina, holy reading, just prayerful reading the scriptures.

9:20

And the evening is the Examen, which again is an old Ignatian approach to prayer. That's taken off.

9:26

That's just gone crazy. We're translating it into new languages as fast as we can.

9:31

And then I'm also,

9:34

you know, I've written a few books and most importantly,

9:38

I'm a husband to Sammy and I'm a dad to two adult sons who continue to surprise

9:46

and make us laugh. So that's a little bit about me.

9:50

Amazing. Now, you the first time I heard about you was actually just just kind

9:56

of one of those fortuitous moments. once I was buying a book on Amazon,

10:00

and it was one of those people also bought this book.

10:04

And it was your book, God on Mute. It was the first time I'd ever heard your name.

10:07

And it was right in a season when I was starting to write Hope is the First

10:11

Dose, my most recent book. And it just struck me as something I needed to read. And I started reading you

10:16

and then delayed my writing by a month.

10:19

I read three of your books in quick succession.

10:22

And I've learned so much from you. But I think you started God on Mute with

10:27

sort of a personal story of your wife having encountered somebody like me, like a neurosurgeon.

10:33

So give us a little bit of that history and how that led you to this understanding

10:38

of there's times when, or experience rather,

10:41

of times when we can't seem to hear what God's doing or hear His voice and how

10:45

medicine and health care kind of put you into that place. Yeah.

10:50

Yeah, sure. We were about a year into the 24-7 prayer movement,

10:54

which, you know, we realized prayer is the key to everything, and we were bad at it.

11:00

And so we had started praying night

11:03

and day in a warehouse in the south of England, and it began to spread.

11:08

Back then, we used to say it went viral. We probably can't say that anymore.

11:12

And, you know, we were suddenly all over the world, and it was very exciting.

11:17

We had Rolling Stone magazine and mainstream TV companies checking out what we were doing.

11:23

It was a wild, really a wild time.

11:25

And I think, Lee, if I'm honest, we became a little insufferable.

11:30

Like, you know, that first year we thought if we if everyone prays the way we're

11:35

praying, Jesus will be back before breakfast time on Thursday.

11:39

Day you know and then what happened about a

11:42

year in is uh we just had our second son

11:46

he was seven weeks old my wife woke

11:49

me in the middle of the night um and uh

11:52

i watched her slip into an epileptic fit and

11:56

i'd i'd never seen anyone have a

11:59

seizure before let alone that you know the face i left more than any other and

12:03

she bit her tongue there was blood coming out it was it was terrifying and and

12:07

I called the ambulance and it was so strange because in a movie the baby would

12:13

have woken up and started crying but Danny, our seven week old,

12:16

was just fast asleep through the whole thing waiting for his next feed.

12:20

And I think at that moment my worst fear was that for some strange reason my

12:25

wife was developing epilepsy. But then of course,

12:30

What they discovered after a brain scan is she had a very large brain tumor.

12:36

And they said it's the size of an orange. And for a while, they didn't know

12:41

if they'd be able to operate. That was a very, very dark time.

12:45

And so we were kind of plunged into this.

12:49

And then, you know, we're incredibly lucky, Lee. And I use that word advisedly.

12:55

You know, I don't think God micromanages everything. I remember reading somewhere

13:01

Jimmy Carter, when he was president, used to still run the White House tennis roster.

13:06

I don't think God's like that.

13:09

I think God's a little, you know. And so we're lucky in that they were able

13:14

to operate and they got the tumor out.

13:19

And many people have a much darker story than ours.

13:23

But our battle has been with epilepsy ever since.

13:27

So that's been 23 years now of

13:30

my wife sammy who's still alive living with

13:33

a chronic illness and i've watched her

13:36

slip into fits more often than i can

13:40

say and prayed and prayed for it

13:43

to stop and most of the time it doesn't work yeah she

13:46

has a very bad kind of seizure it's a status epilepticus it's a cycle of seizures

13:51

you can't get out of without sedation so it's the flashing lights in the hospital

13:56

and all that and um i think lee i went pretty quickly from thinking my prayers

14:02

could save the world to questioning whether my prayers could save my wife,

14:06

and i found my faith

14:09

suddenly had to enter paradox which we

14:12

all by the way we all have to enter paradox at some stage and i guess many of

14:18

the listeners to this you know know all about that and I started to realize

14:24

that the Bible was more honest about suffering than the church was or is yeah I started to.

14:34

Relate to that aspect of god's

14:37

nature that that that that is with us in

14:40

the suffering so the book you kindly mentioned god on

14:43

mute traces jesus's story from morn

14:47

from good friday you know the god who suffers

14:50

with us martin luther says became the atheist on the cross my god why have you

14:55

forsaken me through the easter sunday okay but very importantly tarrying at

15:02

holy saturday that That space most of us live our lives in somewhere between

15:06

dear God and amen, between the cross and the resurrection.

15:08

We know God's done something for us, but he ain't done everything yet.

15:13

So that my theology was morphed.

15:17

And as for neuroscience, I am so grateful for a neurosurgeon called Liam Gray.

15:25

An Irish atheist brain surgeon, surgeon who

15:28

whilst operating on my wife experienced what

15:32

he called lucky intuition which meant

15:35

that he didn't cut her sinus vein which would have resulted

15:38

in paralysis or death and i think was a miracle i think i think the god he doesn't

15:44

believe in spoke to him and and then subsequently of course we we we spend a

15:51

lot of time with epileptologists and and even now maybe Maybe I just land it here, Lee.

15:56

You know, why does a prayer movement that begins out, you know,

16:01

shouting, you know, in tongues and ends up creating Lectio 365.

16:06

Which is very contemplative. I think probably I've been on a bit of a journey from my frontal cortex to my

16:12

limbic region in terms of the ways I relate to God.

16:16

Wow. You said something in that book that was just dumbfounding to me because

16:23

I'd never thought about it, Pete. You said basically that God's will, the reason He put that line in the Lord's

16:31

Prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,

16:35

is because God's will is not always done on earth.

16:38

And when you said that, I was like, holy cow. I spend so much time thinking

16:42

that the suffering I'm experiencing is somehow God's will.

16:47

And it's not. It's not God's will. And His will is not always done on earth.

16:52

And that's why we long for heaven. Unpack that for me for a minute,

16:55

but that was a powerful shift in my own personal theology when I read that.

16:59

I'm so glad you said that, because I wrestled over that line.

17:04

It's something like God doesn't always get his will, his way, even though he's God.

17:10

That's right. I wrestled with it because it sounded like heresy.

17:15

But the more I looked into it, the more I realized it's not.

17:19

It's actually theologically and just philosophically true.

17:24

So let me put it like this. Forgive me for being, I'm not trying to be too stark or provocative here.

17:33

When I say this, I'm a pastor. I deal with every kind of tragedy.

17:37

But when a child is killed in a car crash, that is not the will of God.

17:43

That's right. When someone is trafficked, that's not the will of God.

17:47

When a five-year-old gets leukemia, that cannot be the will of God.

17:51

And, you know, whatever, whether you're a Calvinist or an Armenian,

17:55

everyone goes, yeah, no, of course that's not the heart of God.

17:59

And I think one of the problems is that we don't understand there is a real

18:06

spiritual battle in our world. If you step outside the Western world,

18:11

world everyone understands that there is there

18:15

the god's will is contested that there

18:18

is evil in our world and and even people are very progressive and i think it's

18:23

very primitive to believe in satan and demons and evil the moment there's a

18:27

mass shooting the word evil appears in the headlines and so uh but i'm also

18:35

i don't want to be too binary the i don't think. I also think our lives are infinitely complex.

18:47

And as C.S. Lewis says, miracles, by very definition, have to be rare.

18:51

And preachers like me are often not honest about that.

18:56

That's right. So I guess give us a short, because I want to pivot and talk about

19:02

prayer and about how to hear God's voice. But give us a short little pastoral moment maybe for somebody that's listening

19:10

that's in that middle of that time when God seems to have muted himself,

19:14

that you can't hear, you can't feel him, you're in that dark place where you

19:18

just don't know if God's even there. How do we move through that season with faith but also with hope? Yeah. Yeah.

19:26

Well, the first thing I want to say is be real with God about your questions,

19:36

your struggle, your suffering. It's really OK not to be OK.

19:41

And God doesn't need you to do his PR for him.

19:47

You know, God is not insecure if you ask him a few questions.

19:51

And so be real with God.

19:56

I, in the very darkest days of...

20:02

What I went through with Sammy, I prayed prayers that felt so irreverent,

20:07

I didn't even know if it was okay to pray them. Wow. I mean, I remember the time when I thought she was, one of the several

20:15

times I thought she was definitely going to die. And our kids were so little.

20:19

And I was having to put them to bed every night. And it was a horrible.

20:24

It was a wonderful and horrible time. I remember always thinking, well, I wonder if they have to show them photos

20:28

and try and describe who their mom was to them, you know. Wow.

20:32

And I know you Lee have

20:35

been through your own absolute shattering heartbreak

20:38

you understand and and and so I

20:41

ended up praying one night my friend Dan had come around

20:44

somehow our conversation became prayer

20:47

I don't even know there was there wasn't a let us pray moment we

20:50

just I became prayer and and I said

20:53

to God I don't care what you want I know

20:57

I'm supposed to pray not my will but yours but for

21:00

a change let me just tell you what i want you know

21:03

i want my wife to live i i want my

21:07

kids to know their mom and if if

21:10

you have some plan on a heavenly wall planner

21:13

to take my wife from me i'll

21:16

fight you for her wow and and

21:20

i felt i think dan my friend didn't

21:23

even know if he was allowed to say amen to that prayer you know

21:27

and i was weeping as i said it and i

21:30

felt ashamed i felt ashamed for a while uh because in my gethsemane i couldn't

21:36

do the jesus thing i couldn't pray that you know not my will but yours be done

21:40

and jesus is so kind and he eventually spoke to me yeah maybe a bit like peter

21:47

on the beach you know do you love me do you love me do you love me?

21:50

And he just said, I love that you prayed that way.

21:53

I love that you're willing to fight for your wife. And that is love.

21:58

So be real. You know, remember, Jesus told an explicit parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

22:07

The Pharisee's praying all the right things. I thank you that I'm not like that other man.

22:11

And the tax collector is praying this snotty prayer, prayer,

22:15

hunched in the corner, you know, I'm not worthy.

22:19

And Jesus with a twinkle in his eye, he looks at the crowd, he probably eyes

22:23

a couple of Pharisees in the crowd and says, who do you think went home heard by God?

22:28

So be real with God. There's many other things I could say, but that's 101 for me.

22:35

I love that. And you know, that's a completely biblical kind of prayer,

22:38

too. The prophet shook his fist at God and said, I would question your justice.

22:43

And the guy in the New Testament, Jesus walked right up to him and said,

22:47

what do you want me to do for you? Remember? He said, what do you want me to do for you? So it's okay. Tell God what you want. I love that.

22:53

And I love the way you kind of gave us the tools to process and navigate through.

22:58

So listener, check out that book, God on Mute. It changed my theology,

23:02

changed my own look at my own suffering. and it'll help you too.

23:05

So Pete's done a tremendous gift for the kingdom with that book.

23:09

So Pete, with your permission, I want to switch to how to pray.

23:13

And first of all, I want to ask, what does it feel like to title a book How to Pray?

23:18

That had to be a little bit nerve-wracking for you to say, hey,

23:22

I'm going to teach people how to pray. Yeah, it's terrifying.

23:26

And especially because, remember, Lee, I said I only got into this because I

23:31

one day held up my hands and acknowledged I was bad at prayer. prayer.

23:34

I was a pastor and I was bad at prayer. And so this is God's joke.

23:38

Now I'm going to be the prayer guy. And I spent years going around the world saying, hey, I struggle with this too,

23:44

but let's try and work it out. And eventually Sammy, my wife,

23:47

took me aside and it wouldn't be the first time she's dressed me down.

23:53

You know, she said to me, hey, by now, if

23:56

you haven't learned how to do this thing what are you even talking about and

24:00

maybe it's

24:03

a little bit of a British psychosis this as well

24:06

Lee that that we like to be you know very self-effacing but the truth is that

24:11

in 25 years I have learned some things about how to pray and I've made a lot

24:16

of mistakes I'm very honest about that I still struggle in many areas but I

24:21

have learned I've I've learned about the breadth of prayer.

24:25

You know, I refuse to be handed a limited menu.

24:30

You know, so many of the listeners, you'll be in a particular Christian tradition

24:35

that has said, this is the real kind of prayer and that kind isn't.

24:38

But Ephesians 6 is all kinds of prayers on all occasions.

24:42

And I feel like, you know.

24:46

I want to grow in contemplative prayer, you know, and I have certain places

24:52

trying to ban my books because I encourage some breathing techniques and prayer.

24:57

And I just think, well, if you need a Bible verse for breathing,

25:01

well, you're in deep trouble, you know. But I also still believe in miracles.

25:06

You know, I've seen them. And, you know, Einstein said there's only two ways to live your life.

25:14

Everything's a miracle or nothing's a miracle. I mean, what could be more miraculous

25:18

than getting out of bed this morning as a sentient being on this rock spinning

25:24

in the eclipse the other day?

25:27

You know, we could predict the minute when when the sun would fall behind the moon.

25:33

I mean, this world is a miracle.

25:37

So so all kinds of prayers.

25:41

And but the subtitle is important to the book. The title is How to Pray,

25:46

but the subtitle is A Simple Guide for Normal People.

25:50

And what I really wanted to do was write something that was accessible because

25:53

all the research shows that most people pray way more than go to church.

26:00

Many atheists admit they backslide and pray regularly.

26:05

And and very few people you know i

26:08

think i say in the book no one ever holds a newborn baby

26:11

aloft and says behold a biological fluke born into

26:14

a meaningless universe we all know that's that's

26:17

a miracle and then we also you know no one walks away from a terminal diagnosis

26:21

and says i really should pray about this but i struggle with prayer we cry out

26:25

to god and the root of the word prayer in latin is precarious so we pray because

26:30

life is too precarious and too wonderful for us to cope on our own. So the question is not,

26:38

why do we pray but how do we pray and then

26:41

of course ultimately the this was

26:44

the question the disciples asked jesus and my

26:47

authority comes from him he replied with giving the lord's prayer this then

26:52

is how you should pray in the book the book traces the lord's prayer yeah and

26:58

it's well done i found so many little things that i learned even just a little

27:03

acronym that you use the The P-R-A-Y.

27:05

Maybe you can unpack that for us in a second and give people a little tool to help us pray.

27:10

We all have these little formulas and little ideas that we use,

27:12

the ACTS model and all that. But you gave us a new one. Talk about the PRAY model for a second.

27:18

Well, you know, part of it, Lee, was ACTS. It's terrible.

27:22

Everyone grew up with, you know, adoration, confession.

27:28

What is it? Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Supplication.

27:33

Supplication. like even harry potter doesn't talk about supplication

27:36

like no one has used the word supplication outside church for

27:39

like 300 years and yet we teach children

27:42

this is how to talk to god and i sat around one day

27:45

thought we got like we got to come up with something that we can teach our kids

27:49

here better than acts yeah and i just thought i wonder if we can do something

27:54

with pray why um and we can and it goes like this and this really works okay

28:01

i know i don't i'm not really brilliant acronyms.

28:03

I know they can be reductionist. No, it's simple.

28:06

But this, this is helpful. Okay, it goes like this.

28:10

Pause, or as you'd say, pause. Rejoice, ask, ask, and yield.

28:20

Or if you're teaching this to children, don't swap that tricky word yield for

28:24

the word yes, it works just as well. And so it goes, it goes super simple. just before you start before you stop before you start,

28:34

stop before you fill your Amazon cart with all your prayer requests and ram

28:41

it into the shins of the almighty just stop,

28:45

be still centre your scattered senses become aware of God it's not him that's

28:51

absent, it's you it's me God is always with you,

28:57

my wife experienced God's presence with her in the MRI tube,

29:01

which for her was the most frightening place of all, and learnt.

29:07

Learned to experience his presence with her in that place

29:09

no one else goes become aware of the presence of god

29:12

that's the first thing i give some simple tools because we

29:15

don't find it easy actually to stop and to be centered and

29:18

to be still then rejoice is it's so

29:22

simple isn't it you know read a psalm give thanks to god

29:25

and this is not hyping up or positive

29:28

thinking this is relaxing into reality the reality is

29:31

god is good he wins and as julian norwich says all should be well and all manner

29:38

of things should be well it's going to be okay so by worshiping god we actually

29:42

we we our lives are primed by fight and flight you know and freeze and it's a moment of saying no.

29:51

Life is good and god it god

29:54

is with me so take a bit of time rejoicing then the

29:57

bit we find easy ask and then yield

30:00

is that moment where we you know

30:03

we relinquish ourselves we sacrifice we say

30:07

well you're God and I'm not so if I can

30:09

give you one example of how I'm having to yield every day right

30:12

now Lee yeah this isn't in any of my books because

30:15

it's more recent but my my mom had a massive stroke

30:18

I'm sorry um whatever it

30:21

was just over a year ago and she is a woman who prayed for me every day of my

30:25

life she taught me to speak obviously she taught me to feed myself and now she

30:30

has to be fed through a tube um she

30:34

can't talk she says the word yes very occasionally no that's about it um.

30:41

And my prayer life went like this for her. The start, I was in warrior mode.

30:46

God, heal her. You know, she's in the hospital. God, you know,

30:50

pray for a miracle. That's where we always start, right?

30:53

Then it moved into more of a kind of a state which flipped the request for a

31:02

miracle from healer to take her home. Like, this is no life.

31:06

She knows you. you so i my advice

31:09

to you god is this a really good time to take

31:12

a home and i had to process all the guilt around

31:15

how do you even pray that prayer about your mom who i

31:18

love dearly and then when god didn't

31:21

do that uh i've had

31:25

to come to a place of yielding of just saying i trust

31:28

you i don't understand you because if i

31:31

was you i would either heal her or take a home i

31:34

wouldn't leave her in this this state but

31:37

i guess you're cleverer than me i

31:40

don't begin to understand you but i'm going to choose to trust

31:43

you so one of my areas of yielding every day is i've moved from healer or take

31:47

a home to god you drive me crazy but i trust you that's my yielding but and

31:54

pray will work with a six-year-old you know you can you just get in get in bed

31:59

with them as you put them them to bed and say,

32:02

hey, let's take some deep breaths and just be still for 15 seconds.

32:06

And then it's, hey, what was good today that we can say thank you to Jesus?

32:10

And then it's, what do we want Jesus to do tomorrow?

32:13

And then it's, what do we need to say yes to Jesus about? What might he be asking us to do tomorrow?

32:18

And you can do that in 10 minutes, or you could spend a whole weekend retreat

32:22

working through P-R-A-Y. So I hope that's useful to people.

32:27

It's extremely useful. And I think one of the other things I love,

32:31

so if you're listening to this and you're wondering, like, how do I get deeper

32:34

into prayer and what can I get out of this book? I'll tell you something I got out of it. As a neuroscientist,

32:38

as a brain surgeon, you tied in the brain science to what we're doing in prayer.

32:43

And I love it. It's one of the few places I've seen that outside of sort of

32:46

scientific stuff. And the idea that BDNF is increased when you're walking around.

32:51

We see Jesus walking and climbing and drawing and walking around the Galilee

32:55

and all that. And you tied that in beautifully. And I don't know if you've read Ian McGilchrist or not. He's a neuroscientist from Scotland.

33:02

And he writes a lot about the difference between the left and the right halves

33:07

of our brain and the way that they interact. And you talked about how sometimes using instrumental music that doesn't have lyrics.

33:15

Is a helpful way to get into kind of a contemplative prayer space.

33:19

And that's perfect on the neuroscience side because left side is all about this

33:22

sort of language and making something into an object.

33:26

This is how God is. This is who God is. This is what God is.

33:29

And the right side is more of the whole experience, the calm down,

33:33

relax, get your brain calmed down and being able to listen and hear.

33:38

And you did that beautifully. So I can't encourage you highly enough to read

33:42

How to Pray, A Simple Guide for Normal People. And it's really helped me.

33:46

I can tell you on a personal side, Pete, Lisa came into my office the other

33:51

morning. Her eyes are swollen. She's been crying.

33:53

I can tell she's really torn up about something.

33:56

And I said, what's wrong, honey? And she said, I've been reading Pete again.

33:59

So every time she reads your book, she finds something that connects her.

34:04

Please say hi to her. I hope to meet her one day.

34:08

I hope so, too. So you've just you've helped us a lot with that.

34:11

And the final book that I know you've written more than three books,

34:14

but the final one that I've read that has helped me so much is How to Hear God.

34:19

And again, subtitled Simple Guide for Normal People.

34:22

And just a little bit of background here that'll help you understand why it's

34:27

impacted me so much is I was raised in kind of a legalistic kind of fundamentalist

34:33

version of Christianity Christianity where you're sort of discouraged from talking

34:39

about things that might sound sort of charismatic or,

34:42

you know, talking about hearing God, because you hear God in the Scripture, right?

34:45

And so for me, as I've matured and grown and learned that I really do want something,

34:51

I want to hear Him. If He wants to talk to me, I want to hear Him.

34:53

So that book was really personal for me as I learned to listen to God more,

34:58

listen for God more effectively. So talk about how we can hear God,

35:03

and especially those of us who aren't sure that we can. Like, how do we get there?

35:09

Lee, you're so kind. Thank you for all these thoughtful questions.

35:16

And I mean, I'd love to ask you more from your angle on the neuroscience of this.

35:23

But I mean, simply the first thing is, you know, let me reassure everyone.

35:29

First and last is scripture. I mean, we hear God in the Bible. And, you know, Lee, that has turned out to

35:35

be one of the more controversial bits of how to hear God. But I hadn't expected

35:40

it to be. I thought I was kind of doing due diligence.

35:42

But it's amazing how many people, especially younger people out there,

35:46

they are very comfortable having experiences. And they actually measure God in experiences.

35:52

And the idea of absolute truths and of God's unchanging word,

35:58

it turns out, is quite controversial for some of them.

36:03

So, you know, I can talk at length about that,

36:07

but you probably don't need me to um but so so the

36:10

the bible is is that is the heart language

36:13

of god and ultimately i talk about reading the bible

36:16

through jesus through jesus lenses you know earlier when we were talking about

36:21

you know god doesn't always get his way even though he's god yeah you know i

36:25

talk about jesus had at least three unanswered prayers one of which is still

36:30

unanswered so i'm gonna have to read the bible through that that of jesus and and um,

36:37

And then to Lectio Divina, you know, how do we pray the Bible?

36:41

How do we read the Bible with our limbic region?

36:44

You know, that part of us that's emotion and less logical, less mechanistic.

36:54

That part of our brains that we all know how to use. Like you go to the movie theater.

37:01

You know, if you try and watch that movie through your frontal cortex,

37:05

you're not going to enjoy it. You're going to spend the whole time going, it's only a movie. They're just actors.

37:09

That's right. But you know how to switch into that limbic system.

37:13

So you suspend disbelief and you become emotionally connected to the movie. That's right.

37:19

And I think that many of us, especially if your background is fundamentalist,

37:25

were taught to read the scriptures through the frontal cortex,

37:28

but to switch off that part of your brain that God created and that Jesus specifically

37:34

speaks to by telling stories you know, which is a limit region.

37:38

So there's a lot about the Bible. But then I also talk about hearing God in

37:42

dreams, which is fascinating to me because,

37:45

When you do a Bible study on it, and when you talk to people outside the Western

37:50

world, it's still one of the main ways God speaks.

37:55

And yet, probably since the rise of psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud and all

38:00

of that, in the West, we've slightly sort of relegated dreams as an untrustworthy thing.

38:06

So I talk a bit about that. I talk about prophecy. For me, this is not a tribal issue.

38:13

You that's for Pentecostal charismatics I just

38:16

think you know 1 Corinthians chapter 14 the apostle Paul says

38:19

I want all you to prophesy in fact you should eagerly desire

38:22

he says to prophesy and he says prophecy is

38:25

just speaking God's word to people in a way that encourages them strengthens

38:29

them and builds them up and so again I talk about how we can all grow in hearing

38:34

God that way and sharing his word in that way and you know I don't mind what

38:39

tag you put on it but it It seems to me that all Christians believe in hearing God.

38:45

Jesus said, my sheep listen to my voice.

38:49

Yeah. And I know them. They follow me. And the word, the Greek word there for

38:53

listen is akouo, which is where we get the word acoustics from.

38:56

So it doesn't, he's not saying my sheep know a few Bible verses.

39:01

He's saying my sheep know the acoustics, the nuance, the tone.

39:06

They're in a conversational relationship with me.

39:09

Yeah. And so, you know, the book just tries to help us grow in the greatest

39:15

thing any of us can ever learn to do, which is hear the voice of God.

39:18

It's the great superpower we all have.

39:21

And some people live almost their whole lives without ever learning how to activate

39:25

it, which seems tragic to me. It is tragic. That's exactly right. I love your line.

39:30

You said that hearing God is not a skill to master, but a master we must meet.

39:37

Like Jesus is what God sounds like that's exactly

39:40

I was like yeah I've been trying to figure that out for 55

39:43

years and that and you gave it to me on one page I love it yeah yeah tell me

39:49

can I ask you a question well that's course absolutely so so so talk to me more

39:55

about from a neurological angle.

40:01

How do we grow in hearing God? How do we know when it's God or just our brains?

40:08

Just speak to me a bit about that. I think that's a really good question.

40:14

And it's actually kind of the subject of the new book I'm working on, Self-Brain Surgery.

40:19

The idea is this. I think our brains present to us many thoughts,

40:25

thousands of thoughts every day. And most of them sound kind of like us. They sound kind of like our own idea, right?

40:32

You're such a loser. You'll never be able to get this done.

40:35

And a high percentage of the thoughts that we have are negative and challenging

40:41

to our sense of worth and all that.

40:43

And I would say God never speaks to us in that voice.

40:48

He never speaks to us in a shaming sort of accusatorial voice.

40:53

When the Holy Spirit, at least in my experience, When the Holy Spirit speaks,

40:57

it's always from a place of compassion and love.

41:02

And when it needs to be corrective, it's in a sense of, I need you to correct

41:07

this because it's good for you to correct this. Does that make sense?

41:11

Yeah. And so I think from a neuroscience standpoint, the first thing we need

41:16

to learn is that not all of our thoughts are true and not all of our feelings are facts.

41:21

We have a lot of feelings that are designed to make us aware of something that's

41:26

happening on a subconscious level. And then our job is to test that out against what we're needing to learn from

41:32

that feeling so that we can then apply truth and reason to it with our frontal lobes, like you said.

41:37

But I think when we hear the voice of God, it's always designed to help us navigate

41:44

the world in a way that will honor Him, improve us, and help other people.

41:48

And if the voice you're hearing is not doing that, I don't think it's from God.

41:54

Does that make sense? Yeah. So I love that line. Our thoughts are not always

41:59

true, our feelings are not always facts. And you said that many of our majority of our thoughts are negative.

42:07

Why is that? Why, why are we so prone towards negative thinking?

42:12

Well, I think the evolutionary biologists would say it's a survival thing.

42:19

Our brain's primary job is to help us not get eaten by the bear and help us

42:25

not get killed by the caveman. So I think part of it is God wired us with protective instincts and that our

42:32

neurochemistry is designed to sort of serve as an alarm system or a warning system.

42:37

But I think life comes along and we learn over time that things are going to

42:42

hurt us and people are going to disappoint us and things are going to let us

42:45

down and we're going to fail at things. And I think so we start making synapses in our brains between chemical signals

42:52

that are designed to alert us to possibilities and we attach those to memories

42:56

of previous experiences and encounters with other people and we decide what they mean.

43:01

So you have a feeling, and for a good example, you have a very limited set of

43:07

neurochemicals that your brain makes, right? Very small number,

43:10

dopamine, serotonin, GABA, norepinephrine, a small set of things.

43:14

And therefore, they can only combine to produce a limited palette of things that you can feel.

43:20

And that's why fear feels the same when there's a bear in your house trying

43:26

to kill you as it does when you have a random thought in the middle of the night

43:30

that something bad is going to happen to you the next day.

43:33

The feeling of fear is the same, whether it's based on something that might

43:37

happen or something that is happening. Does that make sense?

43:41

That's fascinating. Yes, it does. And it makes sense intellectually,

43:46

but also experientially. When you wake afraid in the night, it does feel as overwhelming as if a bear

43:55

has been let loose. That's fascinating. That's what C.S. Lewis was getting at, really, in his book A Grief Observed,

44:02

when he said, nobody ever told me that grief feels just like fear.

44:06

What he's getting at is we have a limited palette of things that we can feel,

44:10

and we attach what they mean.

44:13

We decide what they mean based on our experience.

44:16

And Lee, forgive me, I'm probably disabusing your podcast platform.

44:22

No, I love that. But listen, one of the beautiful things that's come out of

44:27

our story is that my wife, Sammy, is now a professional therapist,

44:32

a counselor, because of what she's been through.

44:35

And she's busy. I mean, she helps a lot of people.

44:40

And, you know, she's at the front end of what we all know, which is that anxiety

44:46

seems endemic in Western culture right now.

44:52

How do we help people to...

44:57

Receive the peace of God when they are overwhelmed with, you're talking about

45:04

this blunt instrument of cortisol, these overwhelming feelings of anxiety and fear.

45:12

How do we put into practice, Philippians, for the peace of God guarding your heart and mind?

45:21

Well, I think that the first step is to, this is going to be a little bit of

45:27

a tangent here, But there's something we learn in quantum physics about something

45:31

called the quantum Zeno effect. And it is basically the more you observe something, the more you look at it

45:36

from a particular point of view, the more it stays stuck in that reality.

45:41

And it turns out that that thing in quantum physics is true of all of us.

45:45

Like the more you think about how you feel, for example, the more you feel the way that you feel.

45:51

The more attention you pay to something, the more it stays stuck in that state.

45:56

So you get stuck in it, yeah. You get stuck in it. And so the same thing is true with grief and depression and anxiety.

46:01

So the first thing is I think a lot of our therapy colleagues.

46:06

Have focused us in the wrong direction when we talk about how we feel in that

46:12

we spend a lot of time talking about and thinking about what we feel instead of saying,

46:18

okay, here's how we feel. What can we do to not feel that way?

46:22

And so part of the right… Causes of behavioral therapy, yeah.

46:26

Shifting your attention from the feeling, the problem, the event,

46:32

the trauma that got you to that place to what can we do about it now.

46:36

And I think from a Christian perspective, that's the whole mission.

46:39

I mean, Jesus came up out of the tomb, but he still had his wounds.

46:43

I mean, he still had his scars and his holes and the nail holes.

46:46

And that was to teach us that you're going to move through life with some wounds,

46:52

but if you focus on the wounds, you can't ever heal.

46:55

If you keep picking the scab off, you can't heal, right? So I think part of it is to say.

47:01

Anxiety is a complex set of things that you feel, but it's not something that you are.

47:07

And so we have this tendency in our culture right now, Pete,

47:10

to make everything a diagnosis and to constantly sort of pathologize everything.

47:16

And I think rather it would be a better strategy to say let's understand what

47:21

we feel and then let's make a path forward.

47:24

Let's make a treatment plan to try to step through it and move towards the healing

47:28

that God wants us to have. Have so helpful i mean this is you this is self-brain surgery that's what you're

47:35

self-brain surgery i had another this is a really strange thought but so if

47:39

jesus never sinned with his thinking right if jesus never sinned and we know

47:45

he didn't from scripture that means he never,

47:48

acted on a thought that led him into sin in his

47:51

mind right and since we know that we

47:54

can direct direct through the process that they

47:57

called applied neuroplasticity we can direct how

48:00

our minds influence the structural things that happen in our brains right that

48:05

means that jesus never harmed his brain structurally with his thinking and so

48:10

since paul tells us that we can have the mind of christ that means that one

48:13

of our goals ought to be to have a brain that's more like like Christ.

48:16

Oh, that's so interesting. Isn't that interesting? Yes, and.

48:23

Was it we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.

48:29

That's right. You know, so if we don't just walk in the paths of righteousness, but learn to think,

48:38

in the paths of righteousness, that's right, we see everything differently.

48:43

Oh, that is so interesting. That's what what Romans 12, 2 is about. So don't be conformed to the world the

48:49

way the world wants you to think or the way the world wants you to feel or the

48:52

way the world wants you to process your trauma. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, right?

48:56

And the back half of that verse is, I think, super important.

48:59

It says, then you will be able to test and approve what is good and pleasing to God, right?

49:04

So if you want to say, how can I know what God wants for my life?

49:07

God says, think differently. Change the way you think. That's what I want for you.

49:11

Wow, that is, I mean, you've just thrown out something. I need to think about this for about a week.

49:19

We'll have another podcast. And it raises all these other questions about what's

49:24

the difference between thinking sinfully and then presumably Jesus did experience hurt and rejection.

49:31

So how did he handle those feelings appropriately? Yeah, that's fascinating. That's right.

49:37

That's what we call self-malpractice, right? So Jesus never,

49:42

because he was human, he had automatic negative thoughts.

49:47

What he didn't have was taking the first thought and turning it into a second

49:51

thought that led him down a rabbit trail of harming himself with his thinking.

49:54

So that's self-malpractice when you take it and you run with it and you let

49:59

your limbic system get overactive. And I think it's interesting from a brain imaging standpoint,

50:04

they know now that the path from hippocampus to amygdala, because it goes from

50:10

a thought to a feeling to a fight-flight-freeze reaction,

50:14

is the same circuit that goes from hippocampus to frontal lobe when you get gratitude.

50:21

So you basically can't go towards anxiety and towards gratitude at the same

50:25

time because it's a one-way street. That circuit only goes one direction.

50:29

That is, oh, this is so interesting.

50:34

It's good stuff, Pete. And it's so, the thing is, it's so empowering because

50:40

we talk in so many metaphors and so many shoulds, right, in the church.

50:46

And these are just simple tools.

50:49

Take your brain to the gym, you know, train it, develop some new mental muscle memory.

50:56

That's great. Yeah, I love that. I had a thing recently.

50:59

I was getting some counseling. And my counsellor, who's great,

51:05

she, someone had hurt me a lot.

51:10

And she was pushing into asking how I felt

51:13

and and I realized I felt a

51:15

little bit angry about it and she she said I want you to you know

51:18

unpack that more the more I talked to them what angry I was

51:21

feeling about this person and I eventually stopped I said can I just ask you

51:26

said at the start I didn't feel that angry I'm feeling this isn't helping this

51:30

is making it worse yeah I'm gonna leave this counseling session furious with

51:34

this person it doesn't feel healthy and I posted with with Sammy, my wife later,

51:40

she said, Yeah, that wasn't the best bit of counseling,

51:42

because a numbers of studies now have shown that, for example,

51:47

if you do scream therapy, you punch your pillow, you become more angry, not less. Right.

51:53

She said, that's talking therapies are not going to help with feelings of anger.

51:59

She said, now that there are other things, anxiety, talking therapies can be

52:03

helpful with mindfulness can can be very helpful with and so on.

52:08

And yes, I'm learning about all this. I'm just an amateur pastor,

52:13

but I find it fascinating. So thank you.

52:16

Yeah, I love this. I love this conversation and this dialogue.

52:19

And I love how much I've learned from you, Pete.

52:21

And I've changed the way that I pray, the way that I've listened for God's voice.

52:26

And I've changed, frankly, the way that I grieve and process some of the trauma

52:29

that we've been through. And you've been incredibly helpful to you. So I'm very grateful for the work that you're doing.

52:34

I hope we get to meet in person someday and maybe have another time on the podcast

52:37

if you have time in the future. Yeah, I'd love that. Thank you for having me. It's been fascinating.

52:43

Absolutely. Hey, as we come into a time of closing here, can you switch into your pastor chair?

52:48

And let's just acknowledge that there's some listeners today, Pete,

52:52

who, I mean, they just buried their kid or they just got the diagnosis that

52:56

their wife has a brain tumor that something is in the middle of happening to

53:01

them that's the biggest thing they've ever been through and they're turning

53:03

to this podcast right now hoping to find some hope,

53:06

or some ways to move forward like just as a pastor

53:09

what would you have to say to that person who's right in the thick of it right

53:12

now well i mean lee there's no there's no words at one level for those sort

53:20

of situations that many people do go through but yeah we're in a podcast so

53:26

just going Going silent and crying isn't going to help much.

53:28

So let me just try and say a couple of things. I'd love to pray,

53:31

if that's all right, afterwards. But I think the thing I've learned is firstly, you know, Psalm 23.

53:42

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil. Why?

53:46

For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

53:49

That Psalm is saying that God is with us in the shadows and the death and the valley.

54:01

And that is, of course, the message of the cross amongst all the religions on earth.

54:06

It is only Christians that believe that God suffers with us and understands in the way as a human.

54:14

And so I think it is possible to grieve with God, not just as it were before God in front of God.

54:22

That's lament actually with God to realize that he is feeling the agony, too.

54:29

Who yeah um and you know

54:31

we always i would say we always ask understandably our

54:36

prayer is always to god would you airlift me out of

54:39

this problem would you make would you do a miracle would you

54:42

make the problem go away and sometimes he does yeah but

54:45

mostly can we be honest he doesn't that's right

54:48

more often than god airlifts us out he

54:51

parachutes in and joins us in the rest

54:54

of the brokenness the MRI tube at

54:58

the funeral and you know

55:01

we we recently we had a new a couple lovely

55:04

couple who'd become Christians not married yet living together had a little

55:08

baby um the baby in fact she was we baptized her the mom as she's carrying this

55:16

baby in her stomach and she didn't want to go over backwards into the water

55:20

because she she had lost a number of children miscarried before for.

55:24

And so she we she knelt in the water and we poured water over her head.

55:28

She was so careful about this baby.

55:31

And we prayed and prayed and she's now she's a Christian. She's trusting God,

55:37

right? It's a new thing for her. And the baby was born, we all celebrated and then the baby died a few weeks later.

55:46

And I was so furious with God, you know,

55:48

and I didn't know how this very new

55:52

Christian couple were gonna cope and the funeral the

55:56

coffin was the size of a shoebox I know

55:59

it was one of the worst I've ever done and it was agony there were no answers

56:05

except this what became so clear is they were now grieving with hope instead

56:14

of complete despair yeah before they knew God it was was just despair.

56:20

Because your sufferings have no consequence. The world is meaningless.

56:26

If you're genetically weak, you should die out of the pool. Bad stuff happens, so what?

56:31

But if there is God, no matter how hard you find it to hold onto him at these

56:35

times, there is still hope for this life and the next.

56:41

And I always say to people, it is possible

56:43

to trust that which you do not understand. You all did it as a child.

56:49

As we get older, we think it's not possible to trust unless we understand it's a lie.

56:54

And so relearn how to lean into God. I don't understand you, but I trust you.

57:01

And I believe you are with me in this.

57:04

And the final pastoral note is don't leapfrog Holy Saturday.

57:10

Some people will try and rush you real quick to Easter Sunday.

57:14

They'll quote Bible verses at you. They'll say, you know, I don't know,

57:18

there's resurrection, there's heaven to come, or whatever it is.

57:22

And just God allowed the whole world to live without easy answers for 24 hours.

57:29

God himself was dead in the grave. It seems to me that we're not very good at

57:34

waiting with the chaos and the unanswered questions in the pain, in the unknowing.

57:40

There is a time to move on. You cannot allow your grief to define and destroy your future.

57:47

There does come a time where it is appropriate to say, I will always have wounds.

57:52

I will never fully recover, but I am going to move on with my life.

57:56

But don't do it too quickly. Allow yourself to live on Holy Saturday,

58:01

and you will know when it's time to transition into Easter Sunday.

58:05

So those are just a few thoughts. If any of that's helpful, then I'm grateful to God.

58:11

That's perfect. Let's finish with prayer. Let's pray for those folks. Okay.

58:16

If you're able to do so, if you listen to this, if you're not driving or whatever,

58:21

you may want to just open your hands or put your hand on your heart.

58:24

The Spirit of the Lord, Jesus Christ, is with you. He is deeply present to you in this moment.

58:31

He has brought you to this podcast now because he loves you. He's with you.

58:37

And he wants to minister to you deep to deep, beyond words, actually. Yes.

58:43

But I want to pray of you an old apostolic blessing. Romans 15, verse 13.

58:49

May the God of hope fill you with peace and joy as you trust in him.

59:00

So that you may overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

59:08

Amen. Amen. Thank you, my brother. brother. It is such an honor to get a chance to talk to you.

59:15

I feel like I've known you for years, but it's such a good time to talk to you today.

59:19

Lee, thanks for having me. I found it fascinating and I'm so grateful for your work. Thank you.

59:25

What's the best way for people to connect with you, Pete? Well, social media is, you know, Instagram or Facebook or whatever.

59:36

Pete Gregg, g-r-e-i-g weird Scottish spelling and then,

59:43

247prayer.com love it and then the app we mentioned the Lectio app, absolutely,

59:50

hey, God bless you and your work keep praying and hopefully see you soon, face to face sometime,

59:56

thanks Lee, God bless you see you soon that was fantastic, thank you Pete oh,

1:00:03

thanks for having me and please say hi to your wife I will.

1:00:07

And you as well. I feel like I know Sammy too. All y'all have been through and

1:00:11

so vulnerably put your work out there and your life out there.

1:00:14

It's very helpful. Thank you. Sammy's great.

1:00:16

People come through the door to meet me and they stay because they meet Sammy.

1:00:21

That's what I say about Lisa. That's awesome. Hey, enjoy your day.

1:00:25

Thank you so much, brother. See you. Bye.

1:00:28

I told you so, right?

1:00:32

I don't mean to say I told you so, but that was one of the most profound conversations

1:00:36

I've ever had on the podcast or any other time in my life.

1:00:40

Pete Gregg is the man, he's getting it done, helping us see God in a new way,

1:00:44

helping us hear God in a new way, helping us find God in those moments when

1:00:48

we can't feel or hear him or see him.

1:00:50

And I'm telling you, his books, God on Mute, How to Hear God,

1:00:54

How to Pray, three of the best books I've ever read.

1:00:57

And they will have, when I get my signed copies, Lord willing,

1:01:01

get a signed copy from Pete, it's going to be up on the shelf next to Yancey

1:01:04

and Foster and Keller and all the great books on prayer that I've read and love so much.

1:01:10

Pete Gregg is my new sort of favorite current spiritual guide and mentor,

1:01:15

and I know he's going to be important to you too. What a great conversation.

1:01:18

I hope it was a blessing to you. Remember, friend, you can't change your life

1:01:21

until you change your mind. And the good news about all of that is that you can start today.

1:01:27

Music.

1:01:33

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

1:01:37

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

1:01:41

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

1:01:44

It's available everywhere books are sold. And I narrated the audio books.

1:01:48

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

1:01:52

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

1:01:55

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship

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the Most High God. And if you're interested in learning more,

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check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

1:02:06

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

1:02:10

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

1:02:13

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

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every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries around the world.

1:02:25

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend,

1:02:27

you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.