Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation Podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for following Jesus. Today is episode 264, and if we haven't met yet, my name is Tony. I'm your host. I love the local church, and I wanna help you connect with Jesus in practical ways. Today's a good one, guys.

Addison Bevere Words with God is his latest resource, and it's really all about a robust life connection with the Lord. It's about. Making sure that you aren't just praying to God, but that you're integrating God into your life. We get into some really deep stuff. I think you're gonna really enjoy this conversation.

Addison has such a great voice. He, he's so both thoughtful and reflective, which I just really appreciate. And if you do appreciate it, do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts and [00:01:00] share this episode with a friend, maybe somebody who you know, struggles with prayer. Now without any further ado, here's my conversation with Addison Bevere.

Addison, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast today.

Addison: Tony, it's so good to be on. Thanks for having me.

Tony: Listen, you've done a number of things. As a matter of fact, your websites kind of gives your, your bio as husband, father, author, poet, speaker, and follower of Christ, and with, with all the things that you've done, one of the things that I'm really curious about is how would you describe the calling that God has placed on your life?

Addison: Yeah, you're actually the first one. I've, I've done quite a few episodes recently, and you're the first one to ask you this question, so I've taken, taken aback by it. It's a good question. I love it. I would, I would, I would say my, my passion when it comes to discipleship is, could be boiled down to a single word and it's integration.

Hmm. If, if you look at the idea of shalom, And where we're going. [00:02:00] This promise of of peace, it's, it's not piece that we can manufacture. It's a piece that is a byproduct of integration of all the pieces coming together to make a whole. And so I'm very passionate about any kind of work that leads toward an integrative expression.

Of what it is to be people of faith, what it is to do family, well, what it is to understand and work out purpose through connection and community. And so I, I, I would say that's my passion, that idea of integrative discipleship because I think so much of. The robustness of what it is to be people who follow Jesus and who are people of the kingdom, and people who practice and participate.

And the reality and the promise of the final day, right, that we're moving toward by the spirit of God is to embrace this integrative call that there is no division between the secular and sacred. That every moment has the potential to be a holy expression of what it is to be human and what it is to surrender our [00:03:00] every day to God.

Tony: So, I, I, you know, I've done over 250 podcast episodes. I ask this question almost every single week, and you're the first person to say integration. And I, I'm kind of curious if you could gimme the origin story of like, when did, when did the Lord reveal to you that like, Hey, this is where I want you to serve with your gifts?

Addison: Yeah, I've always been really comfortable with tension. I think part of that is I, I have parents who are very different and are both very intense and they, and they've been doing, they've been doing something together for 40 years and they've been doing it faithfully together despite their profound differences.

And, and being the first born of four sons and watching that and seeing that and just appreciating the beauty and the wisdom that emerges from tension done right. I just, I, I see how [00:04:00] God moves through that. I see that. Displayed in the meta-narrative of scripture, and we have this tendency to pendulum swing when it comes to how we engage with God and how we work out what that means for our everyday lives.

And the truth is, if we're going to be people of faith, if we're going to understand what it is to be faithful, we have to embrace both mystery and certainty. We have to hold them both. You know, some camps, they're all about certainty and they reduce everything to something they can fit within their, you know, systemic grasp for control.

There's, I should say they're systematic, grasping control. And then you have another group. It's all about mystery and it's just whatever you want it to be. And it's. It ends up reducing truth or reducing reality to whatever you can manufacture in a different way, but very similar to what we see on the other side of the pendulum with certainty.

And so when, when we look at the kingdom of God and the promise of the kingdom of God, and even the way Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord's Prayer, you'll notice that it's a convergence of. These opposites. It's a, it's a coming [00:05:00] together. It's a, it's a fresh expression of a more robust and complete truth.

And, and I believe like that is the promise and that's the journey of integration.

Tony: Well, one of the interesting things about your story is that you are the COO of a ministry that your family kind of does together. Mm-hmm. And I was thinking through my own life, the thought of doing ministry with my parents.

And I love my parents. They're great humans and they're great Christians, and they're all that. Stuff, but I'm pretty sure that I would last like five seconds. So I What, what have you learned about yourself in the process of doing ministry with your parents for now? I mean, this is, you've kind of been doing this for a while now with them, right?

Addison: Yeah. Yeah. I've been I've been doing this, I mean, my whole life in one sense. Professionally, I've been doing it for nearly 18 years, and so it's been, it's been a big part of my, my story, my journey. But I, I've learned, [00:06:00] I've learned the, that the stakes Our high. When you do things like this together, you have to have a high tolerance for conflict.

You have to high have a high tolerance for discomfort. And it's not for everyone, but when it is a part of the calling that God has placed on your family, I. It certainly was something worth fighting for. And that's, that's something that I've learned like, you're going to fight. There's no question about it.

Especially in our family. We're a bunch of Italians and Sicilians, and so there's, there's a lot of colorful conversations. But at the end of the day, we, we remember that as a family, we're very mission-centric. We're very vision focused, and from that place, we fight for each other, even when in the moments it might feel like we're fighting against each other.

And so finding, finding the space, giving everyone space and room to figure out their contribution and what it looks like for them to add breath to the expression of mission. Anyway, that's unique and specific to them is, is challenging, but when you get it right, it's [00:07:00] incredibly rewarding. And we've seen the way Messenger has taken on new dimensions as not just.

Family members as far as the blood family, but also the way we do ministry. It's very family oriented, the way people have come in and they've added to the fold and we've seen God do extraordinary things through that.

Tony: I love the mission of Messenger as it's kind of called to make disciples of all nations, and you're, you're getting discipleship resources, which as we mentioned before we recorded is near and dear to my heart.

You're getting that into the world. What, what's kind of the prayer that your family prays around this ministry? Like, you know 10 years from now, what are we celebrating that God did through messenger?

Addison: Yeah, that's a great question. So when we say internally, we say we're praying that every person has access to translated deceptive resources regardless of where they live.

Or how much money they have. And in the last 10 years, we've given away over 60 million translated resources in over [00:08:00] 200 nations and countries. And we're the leading provider of discipleship resources in over 70 languages. And we're the only provider of translated destitute resources in over 30 languages.

And so for us, we're really going after those, those groups, those countries those languages that don't have translated resources. They have a bible. In, in their language. And we work with Bible societies to make sure that that happens. That's first and foremost. But they also need practical discipleship resources that are specific to their context and, and the challenges that they're facing, but are also universal in the sense that they connect them to the greater struggle across Christendom and what it means to be people of faith in our world today.

And there's, there's something that. Unifies us in this mission. It's so powerful because we see churches coming together across denominations when they hear we wanna come in and provide aship resources to their, to their nation, to their language. It breaks [00:09:00] down denominational barriers. Hmm. And people are like, yes, we want to be a part of this.

And it actually ends up becoming a gateway for the church to connect in ways that maybe they haven't previously connected. And when we do all of our work in country or in a sister country, we're not using any services here in the west or anything like that. We're working with regional directors. We have over 90 regional directors that work all over the world.

And they're the ones contextualizing, they're the ones leading the charge. They're the ones galvanizing for their respective areas and in their respective areas. So that's a, that's a bit about Messenger.

Tony: What have you learned about the vastness of the kingdom of God working with all these countries?

I, I have so many questions. As a guy who just loves to talk about discipleship like what's, what's disciple making look like in a country where it's not really welcomed? It, it feels almost as if the hunger would be, I mean if you know greater, I I, it's kind of an assumption there just cuz I, I have some friends who are Sure.

Are pastors in [00:10:00] Cuba, but I, I'd be interested to hear your, kind of, your broader viewpoint on that

Addison: are, you're gonna have to ask your pastor friends in Cuba if they have access to our resources in Cuba. You'll have to ask. I'll, I'll ask Cause we do, we do a lot of work in Cuba. Actually I don't, I think I can say that on air.

I, I won't, I won't say, I won't disclose anything beyond that, but Good idea. But we, we, we have, we have done, we have done work in Cuba. No, there's, there's definitely a commonality, right? When it, when we look at this, this desire to be formed, I believe it's an innate human desire to be formed. Into something Ecclesiastes three says that eternity was written on our hearts.

We know that we were made in the image of God. There's an apriori sense in us that we're made in God's image, and we want to pursue that. We want to understand that. And the enemy of our soul, the accuser, leverages that desire for his own schemes and to manipulate us toward his own ends. But, but we see that tension across the world regardless of the culture.

And even if you look at the US, I mean [00:11:00] Barna according to one of their original study or one of their recent studies is said at 2%, 2% of Christ followers, active Christ followers believe we're doing a good job with discipleship here in the United States. Wow. 2%. So it, it's one of those things where clearly what we're doing isn't working.

And so we, we certainly have our ear to the ground as we're working with these different countries to figure out what's working for them. It's not a west to rest model. I think that's a a small way to view the world cuz God breathes on different countries and different peoples for specific purposes.

When we see Revelation five and we see this. This moment where the prayers of the saints are being poured out and, and the, the line has become a lamb. And the elders are like, you know, who, who is worthy? The, the lamb is the one who is worthy. And it's because the lamb has done the unthinkable. He is reconciled nations, people's tribes, tongues to himself.

They're still nations, people's tribes, tongues. Like there's [00:12:00] something beautiful to the breadth of God's creative power and how that's revealed through the nations. But we come together. As one voice, as one people in a unifying way that still honors the, the dignity of difference that's represented in God's unique way of creating and mobilizing and calling peoples and nations for specific purposes.

So I would say we have to be very careful to honor that with how we work with and how we navigate our relations with these leaders across the world. But all of them have a desire to be formed. All of us want to go deeper. All of us want to experience a more what, again, going back to what I shared earlier, a more integrated life.

Yeah. And, and when we think about where we're most frustrated, it's, it's disintegration and Tony. I mean, sin disintegrates, like by definition sin disintegrates. That's, that's what sin does. So it wouldn't make sense that the. The counter play is this movement toward integration, wholeness, and [00:13:00] connection.

And, and we feel that on every level of existence, every level, personal, micro, macro. I mean, we feel it, and I believe the, the invitation that Jesus extends to us to be followers of the way to be people embody the gospel message. It. It is this return to what it is to be human. I mean, Jesus is the only one who got this whole humanity thing right, and he tells us to follow him and he shares the radical message that what is most true about God and what is most true or most promised about us.

Is realized in the intersection of who he is. Like that's, that's who we look to. That's why he's the author and the finisher of our faith, and that's why he sent his spirit to teach us the nuances and the robustness and the power of what it is to people, to be people who embrace that way of living.

Tony: One of the things I appreciate about your work is that you're clearly dripping in that relationship with the Lord and I it's my favorite when I get to talk to somebody who [00:14:00] has that.

How, how did God tell you that this was the time to write a book called Words with God in Prayer? And like, this isn't, this isn't just a book about prayer. This is really a book about robust connection. How, how did you know that this was the nudge? Like God was like, okay, I want you to sit down and write about this.

Addison: Yeah. So I actually was coming out of a season when I felt very, very bad about my ability to pray. I felt like a te terrible prayer. I had, I had been navigating five years of insomnia. Hmm. So a good night of sleep for me was, Two, three hours, four hours. Some nights no sleep at all. And, and at the time this was, this was early in my, in my career, I was leading I was leading a significant portion of what we do at Messenger and the weight of it all.

Tony was just crushing me. And I was allowing pride and insecurity to just beat me down. And I would, I was not implementing healthy [00:15:00] boundaries. I believed that the world could only spin if I was contributing to its spinning. And, and honestly, I became a slave to a form of idolatry. Hmm. And I would cry out to God and be like, God, please, like your word promises, sleep to your beloved.

Like, this is a gift from you. Why aren't I sleeping? I'm doing the right things. I'm being faithful. And, you know, very much made it about me. Like, God, I'm, I'm holding up my end of the bargain. Like I'm doing the right inputs. Why aren't I getting the right outputs? And, and in this season, Tony, I learned something that has profoundly shaped my life.

I learned that God, Doesn't deliver us from a thing when he knows that that thing will ultimately deliver us to him. Wow. And, and I had such a transactional view of calling and life and getting the answers right. I think so many of us do. When we're trying to figure out what our purpose is and we're trying to be faithful, it's like God just, you know, gimme the answers.

I just wanna be faithful. Like we [00:16:00] go on hunger strikes, we fast, whatever. Like, God, I wanna know and, and there's nothing. Wrong with that necessarily, but the reality is the end goal is not for us to get the answers and then move on with our life and kind of move God out of the way. The end goal is for us to live in connection and harmony with God, where our, our, our mission, our purpose, and how that unfolds in relationships and every day is a reflection of that communion.

It's not, it's not the result of the equation that comes from that. It's a reflection of the ongoing communion. And these five years, they led me to my knees and led me into a moment. And I, and I write about this in the book in chapter two, where where God asked me to write on prayer, which was the exact opposite of what I thought I should be doing.

Hmm. I had done a prayer intensive, For a year after school. I mean like, and I come from a family of praying people stuff, like I know what good prayer looks like. I'm like, I'm [00:17:00] the opposite. Like I am so self like, self-focused, self-centered, living in a small world of my own worries, to my own cares.

Like God. How in the world are you inviting me to write on prayer? And God brought me through a Gideon like fleece type experience. I was basically like, God, if this is actually you, you're gonna have to do this. And God did in a crazy upside down way. And and I said, I said, eventually said yes through a lot of travailing.

I said yes to this invitation. And man, this book, it is, It is, it feels like a gift to me. Like it does not feel like the byproduct of my in ingenuity or my training or anything like that. It feels like such a gift. And it's, yeah, it's been it's been a pleasure to be able to, to write it and share it.

So that's a bit of the backstory.

Tony: Yeah, no, I, I love it. And I, I think one of the things I [00:18:00] appreciate about the book is that you can kind of sense the, the movement of the story in the different parts, cuz you ha you kinda have it broken down into three different parts. The canyon, the temple, and the, the dance.

Yeah. I'm curious if you could kind of give us a little bit of a, a peek behind the curtain on how you. Went with each part and what that means for somebody who's listening, who, who maybe doesn't have a, a robust prayer life either. Yeah.

Addison: So before I answer that question, let me back up real quickly to make sure we're all talking about the same thing when we talk about prayer.

Oh, goodness. Because I think Tony, wouldn't you agree? Like prayer can mean something different Absolutely. To everyone, right? A hundred percent. Yeah. So, So when I'm talking about prayer I'm not talking about a transaction to solve because I think a lot of us, when we think of prayer, we think of like, just give me the right words.

Give me the right motions. Tell me the right place to go. Tell me the right posture to be in. I'm not talking about transaction to solve. I'm talking about an experience to share and [00:19:00] when. When Paul writes, like in first S five 17, in Romans 1212, we communicates this idea of praying, constantly, praying ceaselessly.

We gotta take a step back and be like, okay, that doesn't fit with our idea of prayer. Largely our idea of prayer, which is, you know, saying the right things to God and hopefully getting the right things from God. Now is, is prayer as a part of prayer, asking God bring a request to the father. Absolutely.

And I do not want to belittle that dimension of prayer. And as you know, I write about that in the book quite a bit. Cause that's an important part of us growing in our awareness and our understanding of how God responds to us in our time of need. But prayer is more than that. It includes it, but it's more than that prayer.

And going back to this idea of integration. If we really do accept what Paul says as true, this idea of praying without ceasing, then we have to believe that that our lives can be one mighty integrated expression of prayer. [00:20:00] And if that's true, then we have to look at prayer. Very different. And we have to look at having words with God as something very different than what we've known it to be up to this point.

And so one of the reasons why a lot of people struggle to have words with God and to pray is because they feel like God doesn't want to have prayer. God doesn't wanna have words with them. God doesn't wanna engage with them in prayer. And this is very much what I felt during those five years. I felt like God had abandoned me.

And in this season, Tony, I learned, and this is the first movement is the Canyon. It's the season, the first part of the book where we were like, I may be hearing something, but I think I'm just alone in what I'm hearing is probably an echo of my own thoughts, my own cries. I don't know if God's actually here with me in the silence and in the pain, and I learned in that season that the silence when it comes to prayer and connecting with God, it's not.

It's not a form of rejection, it's actually an invitation to a deeper, more personal form of knowing and being known, because ultimately that's God's goal [00:21:00] for us, is for us to know him as we are known by him. And, and I thought I was being rejected, but really I was being invited to let go of. My small idea of prayer and connection and how that unfolds in purpose and to rediscover God as the one who wants to be intimate with me, and that includes the messiest and ugliest and most upside down parts of who I am.

If we look at what the writer of Hebrews rights and hi, Hebrews two and Hebrews four, the writer of Hebrews talks about Jesus as this high priest who can sympathize with us. And our weaknesses. And there's this, there's this promise that there's no, especially in Hebrews four, it's a bit subtle in the text, but there's this promise where when he or she, the writer of Hebrews was a woman, I don't wanna leave that open.

He or she describes this idea of Jesus occupying spaces. Heavens, there's no place that is an occupied, there's no place that isn't known. And it's this idea like there isn't a part of us that is unknown to God. And and what it also [00:22:00] tells me if Jesus really did have to go through all of our temptations, and Jesus had to endure the what I believe to be the greatest human temptation, and that is to believe that God has abandoned us.

Yeah, and if you look at Psalm 22, this is the Psalm that Jesus quotes on the cross where David writes, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I believe in that moment on the cross. Jesus is fully engaging the human experience, crying out, my God, my God, why have you mistaken me? Because up to that point, he had lived in perfect union with the Father, John, John Wrights and John five.

Well, Jesus makes a statement. He says, I only do what I see the Father doing. We see this idea of Jesus walking and harmony with God all throughout his life. But in this moment, he's like, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then what's interesting, if you look at the Psalm, Psalm 22, it's a messianic psalm later in the Psalm.

David writes, but you do not abandon the afflicted in their affliction, nor do you turn your face away from them. And so Jesus had to move through this idea of separation and [00:23:00] isolation and come out on the other side and believe, and how he responded and how he surrendered his life to the Father on the cross to believe that no, actually God hasn't abandoned me.

God hasn't forsaken me. And if Jesus modeled that, and if Jesus moved through that, then we probably should expect that our journey with God and our journey of intimacy with God is going to come with those movements. But what the enemy of our soul does is the enemy that our soul says, no, no, no. God actually has rejected you.

And so you should shrink back and shrink away because God doesn't wanna have words with you. And one of the reasons why we have to move into silence, and you see this in Jesus' story, where after being tempted or after having his beloved identity spoken over him by the father, this is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased, he goes into the wilderness where he is met.

By the accuser. What's the first words that the accuser says? If you're really the son of God, prove it. Hmm. Do something practical. Do something miraculous. Do something spectacular. And I [00:24:00] believe that the silence is an invitation for us to reject and let go of the voice of the accuser. Otherwise, we look for God's voice within the tone and the tenor of the accuser.

So we have to unlearn the voice of the accuser because so many people, they think God sounds like the accuser, right? They're looking for the voice of God in prayer, in the voice and tenor of the accuser. Because so much of this world, the systems of this world, the way formation is done in this world is actually accomplished in line with the voice of the accuser, not with the voice of God.

And so it makes sense that in prayer, in this intimate place, we're ha we have to face off with that voice and start to experience a degree of freedom. It's like a rite of passage. That's how I describe it in the book, Rite of Passage, where, where we enter the wilderness believing certain things about ourselves, but not really knowing if they're true.

And then we emerge from the wilderness knowing like, Hey, everything is different [00:25:00] now. So that's the wilderness. The second part is the temple. And that's where I deconstruct the idea that the temple is not just this religious place where we meet with goddess's, not just a singular location. As Paul writes in First Corinthians three, we are God's temple.

God's spirit lives in us. Where we go, we're essentially creating microcosms where heaven touches earth and religion In the accuser, speaking through religion wants to convince us that we have to parse our world, that there's a difference between secular and sacred. And, and that's just not the case. So when we start to realize that the temple is where God meets with us, and that is a sacred space that belongs to everywhere we go, and that changes everything and opens our lives because a lot of people believe that religion has to tell them when and how.

To pray. We see this in the moment with Jesus and the Samaritan woman, John four, where she starts to engage him with this religious conversation about where she should go to worship. And Jesus's like, no, the time is coming. And it's even now, we're true worshipers. [00:26:00] Worship in spirit and in truth. Like this is what we're moving toward.

This is integration, this is wholeness. And then the final movement is the dance. And it's the idea of prayers in just about us and our experience. It swells. It moves into every part of our lives, our relationship, our purpose. Every day. And, and that's why we're even taught to pray in the company of others.

Our father, not my father, our father who is in heaven. Hallowed be your name. There's so much to that. Hmm. That we start to understand and live. Out of, as we see this as a dance, as something that ebbs and flows and there are different lifts and movements, and that's okay. That's a part of the robustness of prayer and we get to move into it as an adventure and not just this static, singular thing that is performed at specific places at specific times.

Tony: Hey guys, just pausing this conversation with Addison to let you know about a brand new thing that I'm doing that I want to invite you to be a part of. It's follow to lead coaching. Follow the [00:27:00] number two lead coaching.com, and it's a coaching service that I'm doing to help Christian leaders in the world.

I really believe that if we want to continue to expand the kingdom of God and the way that we have, And the way that God's calling me to, we have to make disciples everywhere that we're planted. And that means taking our faith from Sunday mornings to Monday afternoons. So if you're a leader in the world and you are interested in either group coaching or individual coaching, and how to take your faith out there, how to live in.

Integrity with your faith and your work. We'll do things like strategic planning, values assessments. We'll talk about how you can order your inner world, change the world around you, and then give the world away. I'm really excited about this guys, and I hope, I hope that maybe if you're out there listening and you're like, I'm ready to take the next step, this could be it.

Go to follow the number two lead coaching.com for more information. Now [00:28:00] let's finish up this conversation with Addison. So you, we've got these three different parts, and one of the things that I was thinking as I was hearing you talk about each one so beautifully is like, do I get any say and when I get to move from one to the other?

Because I, I know that there's somebody who's listening right now who's like, I've been in the canyon for five years too, and I wanna get out and I don't like it. And like, do, do we, what's our part in that? I, I know that God facilitates all things. But like, how, how do we, do we get a say at all?

Addison: Man, that's such, that's such a great question. So when we, I'm, I'm gonna use it, I'm gonna use a story to answer that. So you see, you see the moment when the children of Israel, when they're leaving Egypt and they're going to the Promised Land, right? And, and Moses takes them to Sinai, which is where he encountered God.

And he extends this invitation to them. He is like, Hey, God's going to meet with you. You're going to be a nation, nation of priests. And what did they do? They shrunk back. They said, no, [00:29:00] Moses, you meet with God. God's too great. God's too other. God's too holy. And we'll do whatever you know, you tell us to do, basically like be our priest, be our intermediary, and we'll do whatever you tell us to do.

They wanted a transactional relationship with God. Is it any wonder that 12 chapters later, 32, they're making a golden calf and they're calling it Yahweh? We weren't made for a transactional understanding of God and what, what I have found when it comes to journeying through these, these different seasons and.

And I would also say, Tony, it's not singular, it's not linear. I'm describing these as dimensions of the experience. You might find yourself in all three of them in different ways, and that's, and that's okay. And that's, I'm trying to help people find language for what they're experiencing when it comes to prayer and connection with God.

But what I, what I would say is the key to expediting, which I don't know if I like that, but the key to moving through it is essentially like being honest with God. Yeah, [00:30:00] is the doing business with God. That's the key. They would've spent much less time in the wilderness. I'm convinced they would've spent much less time in the wilderness if they would've met with God at the mountain.

I think they would've been people ready to take on the giants of the land of the promised land if they would've met with God at the mountain, but instead they shrunk back. And so in these temple or in the canyon seasons, there's this temptation to shrink back. Because we feel unworthy, because we feel like we have failed because we feel like we're underwater in doubt.

And the truth is, doubt is the journey of faith. Like pe, like I, I just think everyone needs like, Embrace that like doubt and faith are twin sisters. Like you really can't have one without the other. Cuz doubt is this idea of like, I'm disoriented, I can't see the end from where I'm at. I don't know how this is gonna happen.

And faith is the choice to surrender those doubts to God. But we have to articulate those doubts. And I write about this in words with God. Like people are scared of having the wrong words with [00:31:00] God. Like, I don't know, maybe God's gonna cancel them or whatever. But. God likes messy words. Yeah. Like, God, God.

And we see this model like, I mean, Psalm 1 42, David says, I pour out my complaints before you, God. I pour them out. He's saying like I'm pouring, like I'm not, you know, dripping them. I'm pouring them out before you God. And God doesn't mind it when we complain to him. He doesn't like it when we complain about him.

But he likes when we complain to him. Mm-hmm. Because when we complain to him, we start to see God in fresh ways. We start to understand ourselves in fresh ways, and that's where real connection intimacy happens. So I would say the journey through any of this, any season with God, and it goes back to what I shared earlier.

God has a way of not delivering us from a thing when that thing will ultimately deliver us to him. His end goal is not us doing the right things. It's not us checking the right boxes. His end goal is intimacy with him.

Tony: Yeah. I, I, I appreciate that and, and I, I [00:32:00] wanna ask an intimacy question in kind of a that's completely self-serving. So I'm sorry for podcast family if this doesn't help you at all. But, but, so I'm in ministry and my biggest fear is that my kids will one day walk away from the faith. Yeah. You know, and, and.

You know, being in the local church, you know as well as I do that there are ups and downs in those seasons. Y your family has been in ministry for a long time. You grew up with your family in ministry. Your kids are now growing up with their family in ministry. I'm curious. What are some of the best practices?

What are some of the things that you saw or learned that kept you engaged in the words with God and, and that you're doing to keep your kids engaged with the words with God? Just cuz I, I just wanna make sure that my kids have that same connection that

Addison: I do. Yeah, that's such a great question. A couple things.

Number one, don't try to be God in your kid's life, right? Like you have to trust God to be God. I would also say be very careful you don't make church or [00:33:00] ministry God in your kids' lives because church and ministry will fail your kids. Amen. I've seen that time and time again, and I remember when I, when I was pretty young, the church that we were at, the pastor had a, had a significant moral failure.

And my dad sat us, we were around the table, and this was someone who we knew, like did, like, did life with. And we were sitting at the table and my, my dad looked at us and was just checking on us saying like, Hey, how are y'all doing with this? And I, and I looked at him and, and you know, I was a teenager and, you know, there's different things that come with being a teenager, but I just said, Hey, pastor Blank is not God.

And I said, pastor Blank didn't die for my sins. And that was like, and that was my like,

Tony: boom. That was my walk away. And that was, and that was like, you

Addison: know, that was my response. And yeah. And, and, and you know, it was probably a little flippant, you know, but Sure, of course. But there's, but, but there's truth to how we were raised, as, you know, as, as kids.

To, to realize that [00:34:00] hey, God does a perfect work through imperfect people. I mean, just read the Pauline Epistles. We'll see that the early church, we, we like to talk about how great it was in the early church. We need to go back to the early church model and stuff. And, you know, there are some things that we should definitely embrace from the early church that we, we could learn from today.

But the reality is, you, you, you dig into church history, you, you study. Paul epistles, you will see that there, it's a very broken group of people trying to figure out how to follow Jesus in a way that makes sense. And the culture that they're living in also honors and reflects the heart of God. So that's first one, like give God space and room to be God in your kid's lives.

Otherwise, otherwise your kids will end up presenting you because you can't be God. Second one I would say is humility creates safety. And church and ministry contexts often don't feel safe because there's this illusion of perfection. And I would say it's very important as [00:35:00] parents to. Model humility specifically through apologizing to your children when you miss it.

Like be honest about dissonance, be honest about mistakes, be honest about failures, and if your kids see you model that, then they're gonna realize I don't have to be perfect. I tell my kids all the time, I'm like, you don't have to be perfect, but I do expect you to be honest. Yeah. And that has, that has led.

That has led to some really great moments of confession and moments moving through things that they probably would not have brought me into if I wouldn't have made it clear to them. Like, I will celebrate honesty, because we can do a lot with honesty. Like, I can't do much with an artificial perfection.

Like it's really, it's really difficult to do anything with that. So, two practical things. Another one that I, I would share is and since we're talking about this, Is training your kids to have words with God, to open the conversation from a very young age. I, [00:36:00] I had a, I had a friend, and I actually write about this in the book who looked at me and he said, Hey, I'm done with prayer.

And he said, this is why I'm done with prayer. And he, it, it was one of those things he, like, he deconstructed church, deconstructed faith was on his way of deconstructing. God was probab, would probably consider himself an agnostic at this point. And we were talking and I just, and he just said, Addison.

And he's, he's, he's a really smart guy and he's got great wit and I love his humor. And he goes, Addison, God's the only one who could get away with not showing up for a conversation that he expects for you to show up for, show up for daily. He's like, God's the only one. He's like anyone else in my life, I'd be done with them.

And. For him, that was his view of prayer. Mm-hmm. That's, that was his idea of prayer was, I've got these 15 minutes, 20 minutes, I'm gonna ask God some things. If God shows up, if God gives me answers, if God gives me peace, then prayer works. And if he doesn't, well then it doesn't work. And if prayer doesn't work, then God isn't real.

And a lot of [00:37:00] people go there. I mean, 90% of people believe that there is a higher power that they can access through prayer in some way. Access through prayer. Yeah. But the majority of us are completely lost as to how do we actually engage. And so we live in a way that's disconnected and disintegrated from this.

This part of us that we recognize intuitively and intrinsically, like is a part of what it is to be human, is this connection with God. And so my challenge to him was I said, man, you haven't opened the conversation. I'm like, you're closing the conversation. You haven't opened the con conversation. And Went into that idea of a transactional prayer versus an ongoing conversation and, and a connection that that it, that supersedes words.

There's an old quote, and I love this quote. I put it in the book but it goes, we do not know each other yet. We have not yet dared to be silent together. Mm-hmm. So many of us, like we, we haven't dared to be silent. With God. We haven't [00:38:00] realized, as the psalmist says, that praise waits for you in silence.

Oh, you who hear our prayer, like silence is a language of god's. I want, like, I want everyone to hear that silence is, I didn't say it is the only language of God's. Right, but it, it is a language of god's. And there are words that only form in silence. But the problem is, in our world today, we live in a world that's so distracted, so disintegrated, so busy, so full that we haven't learned how to cultivate time to hear, to really understand our own interior lives, and to see how God wants to move and speak in those places of brokenness and pain.

Amen.

Tony: Amen. That's Yeah, that's really powerful. Okay, I have one more question for you and yes. Before, before I ask it, I know everyone's gonna wanna know how to follow what God is doing in and through you all over the innerwebs. Where's the, where's the best place to stay connected [00:39:00] to what God's calling you to.

Addison: Wow. So words with god.org. Is a great resource. People can learn more about the book and also they can, they can sign up. I'm doing something, we're on Sunday nights, I send out an email on prayer and it's something that I pray into and it's specific to the upcoming week. And I've got, I've got about 10,000 people who said, like, I, I want to experience prayer as a way of life.

Wow. And so that's been something real meaningful. And I'm, I'm, I'm going to build along with some other people, build words with God into this place where it's an artistic expression of the different ways God has words with us. And and I'm, I'm really excited about that. Awards with god.org, as you mentioned, messenger International.

We have a app, it's called Messenger x. That has a ton of establishment resources that are all completely free. So, and then Words with God, the book is available wherever books are sold. Audiobook, e-book and regular book. And I do read the audio book. People often ask me, they're [00:40:00] like, do you read the, and I, yes, I did narrate, I read the audio book.

So there we go. I always

Tony: appreciate it when the author reads it because it's just got a little bit more feeling to it, you know? Yeah. You know, obviously you birthed this book, you, you know, how the word should sound in your head, so

Addison: I cried multiple times reading this book in the studio. Oh yeah. It was rough.

Like, there were, there were the two times in the book where I, like, I had to stop and, and the audio engineer was like, no. Like, this is so good. Like please like keep, I was like, I gotta collect ourselves. He's like, no, keep reading. This is like, this is good. It's good that it's coming across like this because people need to hear this.

I was like, okay. So,

Tony: so that happened. Oh, that's great. That's great. Okay, last question. I love to ask people, it's an advice question. I'm gonna ask you to go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, except I get to name the season of life that you're in. And so I want to take you back to the end of your very first day officially on [00:41:00] staff at messenger International.

And so you know, 18 years ago, if you could go back in time and sit knee, a knee, hold hands with that younger version of yourself, you're gonna look him in the eye and you're gonna tell him one piece of advice about what lies ahead and about what God has for him. What's the one thing you're gonna tell him?

Addison: I'm someone who, by default, has a way of living in the future which can create anxiety in me. Like that's, that's the thing that I have to navigate. I would tell myself insight leads to foresight. Hmm. Be fully present to the day. Be fully present to the people, the moments, the opportunities. Don't miss a single day, and you will find what you need by being present to the day.

You won't find it around the day, you'll find it through the day. So be present through the [00:42:00] day. And I think from that place, there's so much joy and peace and just awareness that God desires us to live in. And I think there would've been some seasons that would've been a lot easier than they, than they were.

So yeah, there's so much though, so much I would share with myself, but to like, to comfort, like, you know, to comfort people though too, like God has such an amazing way, even as I share that, of redeeming our mistakes, our brokenness as we surrender it to him. Because even as I look at like the mistakes that I made and the seasons of perpetual failure, that's what it felt like.

Perpetual failure and frantic inaction where I felt like ineffective, but I was so frantic and frenzy. I would say, man, like there's so many gifts from those seasons of surrender of. Trading ideas about God and ideas about [00:43:00] myself for like a, a real knowing that that is rooted in, in a permanence and asurity that you only get from, from walking through the fire.

So, yeah.

Tony: Beautifully stated, and I, I don't normally do this, but I feel this prompting, so I'm just gonna go out on a limb. Would you, would you mind closing us in prayer? I, I think that there's probably somebody listening who's ready. To just kind of lean in and I think it, it'd be a beautiful way to end our time together.

Addison: Absolutely. Tony. Yeah. Father, we thank you for the gift of living in, in this place of connection with you. We thank you for your promise that, that you speak, that your voice goes out across the earth day today. God, we, we thank you that, that the heavens declare your handiwork, your, your faithfulness, your power.

And that's amazing on a cosmic level. But God, it's extraordinary that you want to know us [00:44:00] intimately, personally, wherever we find ourselves in the world right now, wherever we find ourselves on this journey of life, whatever kind of season we're in, whether we're in the temple or the dance, or feel like we're in the canyon, God, you want to have worth with God and I pray.

Are those listening, that they would've the courage to open the conversation, that they would bring their doubts, that they would bring their pain, that they would bring their dissonance to you. In doing so, father, I pray that you would show yourself true to them. Your word promises that when we draw near to you, that you draw near to us because you are already drawing near to us.

When we tune into you, we realize that you have always been tuned into us. When we tune into you, we realize that those answers that we're seeking, that. We try so hard to find. We actually find them by being in tune with the one who is the answer. You are the answer to every question, to every problem, and when we live in a way of connection with you, our lives to start to take on new forms, even in the trials and the pain and the confusion, God, we find [00:45:00] you to be true and sovereign, and faithful and good, and I pray that you would strengthen the, the backs of those listening, that they would know what to do and how to do it.

And that they would be people who are willing to surrender what is not theirs to take on surrender to you and find that you truly are the good shepherd, that your sheep hear your voice, and that you lead us and guide us to those places that we need to go. In Jesus' name,

Tony: amen. Amen. Addison, thank you so much for your generosity and your heart today.

I, I deeply appreciate it.

Addison: Thank you, Tony. It was a pleasure doing this with you, man. I, I

Tony: appreciated that conversation with Addison so much because I love his heart for discipleship, for the work that God's called them to, and the idea of intimacy and connection. It's so important for all of us, whether you're a new believer or a longtime saint that intimacy.

Is what will move us forward. So guys, I'm really thankful for you and don't forget to go to [00:46:00] follow two lead coaching.com. We'll put a show in the show notes and and hey, I'm thankful for you and that the opportunity that I get to do what I love because of a listeners just like you. Remember guys, if you wanna follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.

May 22 #264: Addison Bevere: Words with God

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