Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome along to the youth work state of Mind podcast. I'm Dave and as always, I am joined by Ben Green, the youth advisor for Blackburn diocese. How are you doing, Ben?
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Doing well, mate. I'm doing well.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Well.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Especially, as I found out this morning, NFL Fantasy League. And I won thank you to the Cowboys defense points, 40 points. And I'm still fourth in the league, as you will be aware, because it's the fantasy league that we are both in that you are, in fact, the steering influence on. But, yeah, I'm doing well.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Are you all right?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: I'm doing all right. I'm enjoying this mug you bought me. And the tea that's in it.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: And the tea. This is not cold.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: No, it's not. It was cold before, it went cold very quickly. Today, it's not just going to be me and Ben that's going to be awkwardly bantering our way through the podcast. We are joined by a gentleman who I am told was previously one half of the band, Social Beings, loves collecting mugs, but is now the youth director for Josh Green. Welcome along.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. That'll be a whole probably two things that nobody knows about me, so that's brilliant. You've already got some world exclusives.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Nice. There you go, mugs. Straight in there, everyone. If you are at you're at Wildfires next year, just bring Josh mugs. He loves them. Bring him mugs.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: That would be amazing.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: It's great to have you with us, Josh. As Dave said in the intro, you were in a bando Social Beings. Well, it's 1224 1st. Yeah. Social beings. Yeah. You spent time performing, touring the world, I'm assuming, bits of it. And it wasn't just the music side. You were sharing the gospel with young people.
Now you work with Twenty four, seven Prayer. What inspired the move from music to prayer? And I'm sure you've not given up on music, seeing as you're sat in a music studio, but, yeah, share us a little bit of that journey, mate.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: It's a long story, but it all kind of came to a head during the pandemic. Obviously, the whole music world events, world, most of the world shut down, but particularly that side of the world. And that was very hard to replicate online.
And it just gave me just real time to think and to pray and to seek the Lord and just see if there was anything different. I'd been doing the band, as you say, music, preaching the gospel to young people all over the world. I'd been doing that for about 13 years, up until this point, from the age of 18 all the way through to then. So it was the only sort of real job that I had, if you can count it as a real job.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Ideal, mate, that's perfect.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: Honestly, I was so blessed, lucky, whatever you want to call it, to be able to do what we did.
And I think what I got sort of sensed over the pandemic was that I wanted to take young people deeper into the presence of God.
Not that we weren't doing that with a band, but the band was more about evangelism and engaging with young people who might never show up to a Christian event.
But I think that I just was reflecting more on Jesus's words in Matthew 28 about making disciples. And I think I'd got me personally, I think other people are doing a great job, but I think me personally felt like I was becoming this person who was good at getting people to make a decision to follow Jesus, but actually God calls us to make disciples.
And so I was sort of, you know, a disciple is not necessarily something that you can manufacture. Like you can't just pluck a disciple out of the sky. It takes long term investment, it takes a heck of a lot of prayer takes walking alongside people. And so that was kind of the beginning, the inception point of a transition for me.
And so, yeah, I went into a season of just praying and just seeking the Lord. And during that time I started seeing just visions and having dreams of young people and a revival breaking out in the UK, being led by young people and young people being the forefront of that. And I started to see this picture of little fires all across the nation of Great Britain and just had this sense that there would be small local groups of young people that were burning for God together and that together there would be these flames all across the nation.
And that's all I really had. And then during that season of prayer, somebody from 24/7 randomly got in touch with me. I didn't really know them. They found my number from my mom and we ended up speaking for hours. And I was sharing all these visions and he said, oh, the fire pitch is interesting because we run a festival called Wildfires and the focus is revival and praying for revival to come. And I thought, okay, I'm not sure this is a coincidence, went away and prayed about it and they offered me this job as youth director of went away and prayed about it and God really just confirmed it. And really our vision is all the way back to what Pete Greg wrote in his vision poem. An army of young people rising up, holiness that hurts the eyes and they pray night and day and all those things. We still believe that's the same vision that God's given us next year will be 25 years of. So we're sort of looking at what's the next 25 years? And could there be a generation of young people that rise up again who carry the torch and the flame for night and day prayer?
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Amazing.
You sort of explained quite a lot of what sort of is about in saying that you dropped in the middle of that wildfires. What is wildfires. You've kind of touched on it, but you run the youth venue there. Social media was full of what God was up to at that and it was incredible to see what were your highlights and I believe it's moving and venue. So Johnna, just sort of give us a bit of Wildfires stuff.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Wildfires is an all age festival that's focused on contending for the next Great Awakening to come in the UK. So it's focused on prayer, focused on revival, focused on consecrating ourselves before the Lord, living holy. And so the youth element of that that I run carries that same vision, that same heart, and it's sort of centered around three things campfires so coming together around campfires with your friends. So community, holy fires. So really focusing on the holy fire and the Holy presence of God and then Wildfires about that fire going out from the festival and spreading across the community. So the gospel of Jesus comes across our community and so that's really what we focus on. And it's really an opportunity to take in the youth context, to take young people deeper into the presence of God. I think there's different festivals for different things and different focuses.
Perhaps a young person who is not familiar with faith, they might not really understand what's going on in Wildfires youth.
But I would say if you're a youth group that has some young people like that, there's plenty of other incredible youth festivals across the country for people like that. But we are unashamedly audaciously, focused on deeply experiencing the presence of God and contending for revival and raising up that army of young people. And that Wildfires is one of the parts of my role with twenty four, seven prayer youth that specifically catalyzes young people out of perhaps a bit of lukewarmness or a bit of apathy or they've maybe just never even been in an environment and never really been called up to that. And we used to be in the May Bank holiday, which is right in the middle of exam season. And look, we were happy there, we were fine there. And last year in 2022, the presence of the Lord broke out in the youth venue in a way that none of us have ever really seen before. People started young people getting healed in the worship. We had over 150 decisions for Jesus and there was only 400 young people in the room. So basically not one young person left that festival, not right with God, which was again unusual. And young people were coming up on the stage sharing these visions that they'd had.
Young people were spending through the night in their tent with their torches, like underlying their Bible. I had 16 year old lads coming up to me, showing me chapters of the Bible that they'd highlighted through the night in their tent. And we were sort of saying something's happening here and then same again this year. And we just really felt burdened from the Lord to move to the summer for the sake of the next generation. Again. There's plenty of other youth festivals in the summer and I encourage people to use all of them. But the encouraging thing is I spoke a lot of them this year and they're all growing.
Every single one of them is growing. And I said to one of the guys, Zeke at Dreaming the Impossible, I said, look, there's two things here. Either we're all competing for the same thing and it's not great, or God is purposefully having lots of different youth festivals over the summer to reach lots of different types of young people, because a harvest of young people has come into the nation. And that's what we're praying for, that's what we're contending for. And seeing the growth in all the different festivals is so encouraging. So we feel like it's right to move to the summer for the sake of the next generation, to reach more young people. And I'm believing that next year that all the youth festivals are going to continue to grow. Now, numbers isn't everything, but it is something.
It is something. It's reflecting a hunger in the nation. It's reflecting that young people are interested in God, despite all the narratives that we're getting from culture. So, yeah, we'll still be at Wiston Estate down south, not far from Brighton, and it'll be towards the end of August, where we're moving 23rd to 26 August. That's wildfires. And we're really excited about it.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Each time we do the podcast, we have some sort of fun feature to do together. And today we are going to be partaking in a new favorite of ours. And me and Ben have been discussing this off mic for a long time. We love the ideas that come out of this. It's called if youth work was dot dot dot. So last time out, we had If Youth Was a plate of biscuits. And we got some really cool answers from Martin and Emma, who were on the podcast with us today.
Josh, Ben and I are going to be tackling if Youth Was a box of Chocolates. And this is like anything to do with youth work. So it could be a specific youth work that you've been in and there was different box of chocolates, or it could be just kind of different brands of box of chocolates, whatever. The scope is large for this.
So who would like to start us off?
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Go on.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: I'll start. So it's not like they're not a formal box of chocolates, but I was thinking about Celebrations, which I think is a top tier box of chocolates, in my opinion, because of the variety.
But then I was also thinking about eclairs. Now, eclairs normally come in a bag, right? Okay, I understand. Don't crucify me for picking a bag over a box, but it's the same concept. But I was thinking about Celebrations and eclairs, and what I was thinking about is it amazes me. Like Celebrations. It's a mixed bag, right? You just got so many different types of chocolates in there. It just continues to amaze me how different young people are from each other.
You get this youth group and even, like eclairs, they're all exactly the same. But you open each one and it's a slightly different size and a slightly different makeup. And some have got more chocolate and some have got less. And I just couldn't get out of my mind just the fact of how different young people are and how unique they are. And they all come from different backgrounds and walks of life. And I think it just makes youth work very exciting and very fun. So that's what I was thinking about.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Hi.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Kit jumped in on the whole Youth Festival picture, which is following on nicely, so we can edit out my awkwardness before.
But there's lots of different boxes of chocolates and they suit different people, but actually they're all good.
So there you go. Much like that picture of Youth Festival.
There we go. So I've got my serious one in quite early.
My other one is you get those really nice kids that are just sickly sweet the whole way through. And they're those strawberry creams you get in pretty much every box of chocolates in you. And then you get their sibling, who's probably often equally as sickly sweet, but they've got a slightly bitter edge and they're the orange cream.
You know it. You know it. We've all had those young people that they come up and leaders, youth leaders, they're just heroes, right? So there's one for the audience. You're all heroes. But yeah, there you go.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Firing up the audience. Love it.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Firing up the audience.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: I think I would have been that chocolate when I was a young person. I think I would have been that chocolate in the box of chocolates. That looks really nice, but it's really not.
Honestly, I was always that kid that's like, oh, he's going to be great. He looks up for the sports, he looks up for a good time. He's the pastor's kid, so he must be, like, really on fire for God and really well behaved. But you bite into it and you're like, that was me. Typical pastor's kid.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Hey, love it.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Lovely.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: I had a couple, so I think is it in Heroes, you get the twix. You get like a single twix.
And I think that reminds me of, like, there's this one young person that comes of, like a group of siblings, and you're not quite sure if they're going to be the left twix or the right twix until they get there.
They'll kind of be similar, but you're not quite sure which one's coming.
And then I also thought about Ferreira Roche.
They come in a box. Now. They're a bit expensive, but they're, like super fancy. They've got lovely exterior, but on the inside of a Ferrero Rocher, really, it's just nutella because it's owned by the same company. Sorry to burst anyone's bubbles who didn't know that, but that reminds me of Youth Alpha. Like, Youth Alpha's got this really cool exterior. They update the videos every so often and it gets flashier and flashier and it looks very impressive. But on the inside of Euphalfa, it's the same. It's Jesus, the good old trusty nutella that everyone loves.
So that's my Ferreira russet. Ufalfa.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: I can't work out. That sounds like slightly at one point, like you're taking a dig, but actually it's a really good yeah. David and I had a chat before this, so I came up with a second one to follow on for that, but I'm not going to say it here, but, yeah, I feel a bit bad.
Oh, do you know what? We'll say it here. We'll say it here. So, you know, you get the white one. Is it ruffrelli's or something like that? Which are like almost like the white chocolate with coconut on the outside that look a lot like for a Ferro Roche.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: Those things, they just look gross.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: All right, maybe this falls down.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: You go for it if you like.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: We're not going to do it. I was just going to make the comparison that like like the are it's like Christianity explored. It's very similar, but actually in the middle it's always Jesus. It's always good, it's white chocolate spread.
So I was making that comparison, but I feel like it falls down because two of you at least turn your nose up at it.
So you guys are the people that reject the bounties out of stuff, aren't you, as well?
[00:18:21] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Bottom tier chocolate is I'm sharing a box. I'm happy I'll have them all. I'll have a bounty any day of the so Caribbean.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Ben, we call him.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Thanks, mate. Is that what we're calling me now? Yeah, we're gaining some nicknames now. We're gaining some nicknames. Thanks for that, mate.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: You're very welcome.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Well, there you go. That sprung up some unexpected surprises and some thoughts. Thank you for that, Josh. Dave. Thank you for a new nickname.
As you might expect, we're talking about prayer with Josh, which is handy because twenty four seven prayer always lends itself to this. But I love to kind of take a step back and thinking about sort of Christian youth work. And I guess one of my biggest things that I advocate for, and I'm sure you do as well, is if churches are saying, how do I start something? Or how do we see our youth ministry grow? My biggest thing is get your church to pray. Get your church to pray for this ministry. Not just go, we're going to do something.
Have you got any thoughts, any tips? Any kind of just real ideas of how do you get a whole church behind and praying for young people that maybe appeals to youth leaders as well as and church leaders alike?
[00:19:48] Speaker C: That's a good question. My friend James Aladdin, he kind of taught me how to pray and he always says if you go to church on a Sunday morning you find out how popular the church is.
If you go to like a midweek Bible study where the pastor's preaching, you find out how popular the pastor is. But when you go to the prayer meeting you find out how popular God is. And I think that we have to have a real honest assessment of ourselves and of our church culture, particularly in the west where we've forgotten and neglected the place of prayer.
We've all done it, we've all been there. There's no prayer experts, there just isn't. In luke eleven the disciples come to Jesus and they say teach us how to pray. Jesus gives them a prayer. It's not a methodic know, he's basically saying you learn how to pray by praying.
And so we can sit here and talk about how to pray, why to pray, what the effects of prayer all we want, but God's just looking for us to actually pray. He doesn't care if it's a prayer walk or a prayer meeting or we have a prayer mountain or a prayer closet or we're silent in prayer or we're allowed in prayer for too long we've critiqued to the place of prayer. We've taught about the place of prayer. But prayer is meant to be practiced more than it's preached and God is looking.
Jesus says my house should be called a house of prayer for the nations, demonstrating to us that private prayer brings public power.
The private place of prayer is what produces all nations focused and what takes us out into the nations. But we've got to be a house of prayer.
The church started out as a prayer meeting and Pentecost happened and boldness came and 3000 people were saved. So they gave us the example of what we're meant to do. So it's calling the church of as Pete Greg says, it's calling the church of Jesus Christ back to Jesus Christ.
That's what we're doing.
But my slight pushback is that if I was a youth worker of a local church, I serve on our youth team at our local church.
But if I was the youth pastor, my concern would not be trying to get the rest of the church to pray, my concern would be trying to get myself to pray.
I'm leading these young people and if I'm going to lead them into the presence of God, I better be living in the presence of God.
And I think that prayer is caught rather than taught. So if I'm living as a house of prayer myself as a youth worker, the church is going to catch on.
And most church leaders, their primary focus is growing their church, both spiritually and numerically and I don't think that's a bad focus.
And so if the church starts to see that the youth ministry is thriving and they come and find out why, they will like the disciples, when they came to Jesus said, teach us how to pray. It's the only time in the whole Bible where the disciples come and ask Jesus to teach them how to do anything.
Didn't say teach us how to do miracles, didn't say teach us how to walk on water. Said teach us how to pray. They wanted Jesus'prayer life because they realized that private prayer brings public power. They realized that Jesus would go up the mountain to pray, come down the mountain and cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead. So the church will gravitate to you if they're seeing supernatural results. And then if you're saying it's just my prayer life, then the focus is then going to become we need to pray.
And the fact of the matter is the fact that Jesus prayed, that should be enough.
If he was praying, what excuse do we have not to be praying? So I would say we've got to live it first. I don't know about you, but there's nothing worse than somebody's telling you to do something that you know that they don't live out.
Jesus was so against know we've got to live it first before we speak it. And then if we're calling people to something we're living, people will catch on because they'll see the fruit, they'll see the fruit in your life, they'll see the fruit in your ministry. And so I think for any youth worker listening, I would say if you want to see revival, you want to see growth, you want to see young people get saved, your prayers will preach more than any act of love, more than any sermon, more than any walk out onto the estate to get young people to come. If you be a person of prayer, just like John the Baptist, he went into the wilderness to start his ministry and the people came to him because he was a voice of prayer.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: So I guess then does that once that becomes like an established routine and thing, does then that shift prayer into kind of discipleship and discipling young people? And then I guess a question from that. It's like how can we go about growing that kind of culture of prayer with our young people and kind of leading them in discipleship through that?
[00:25:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. I think you're totally right mate. And I think the core of discipleship is relationship with God. And so when you're teaching people to pray, you're teaching them how to have their own relationship with God. And if a young person has their own relationship with God, that's what's going to help them to reach their mates and to be that kind kid in school when the kid's getting bullied and to do well in their exams and to be free from pornography and just all the different things that are coming against them. If that kid has their own relationship with God, then in prayer we're teaching them one of the most important things. Reading the Bible, going to church and prayer. Probably those three things are probably the foundations of what we're really trying to teach them. And look, at the end of the day this whole thing was transformed in me when I met a lady called Pastor Karen Wheaton who started a youth group in her small town in Hamilton in Alabama. There's only 6000 people who were in this town and she had a youth group of seven kids. Two of the youth group were her own kids and every week she got them in a circle and prayed for 2 hours with them. And she just prayed with everything inside of us, of her and she just taught those kids how to pray.
And the seven turned into 30 very quickly. Now, 30 doesn't sound a lot, but that was basically all the young people in the town got saved very quickly and the 30 turned to hundreds. And then they do these conferences every single month called Ramp conferences over in the States revival Camp ramp and thousands of young people pass through this small town of 6000 people.
And she won't mind me saying this one old lady who was completely unrelevant, completely uncool, taught a group of young people how to pray. And now those young people who learned how to pray from her are some of my leaders and have invested in me and discipled me. And I think that we get intimidated in youth work a lot, we get discouraged in youth work a lot. And I think if we really think about it, what does God actually require of us? He requires us to be burning on fire for Him and to be obedient to what he tells us to do and to love young people and teach them how to be disciples. And I think one of the biggest frustrations I see is you've got these amazing youth workers who are heroes, like you said, who think I need to have 500 kids in my youth group.
And it's like, look, if you've got five young people in your youth group, success doesn't necessarily look like five to 500. For me, success looks like all those five walk with God for the rest of their life.
That is success. What use is it to have 500 young people who all end up falling off the bandwagon when they go to uni? I'd rather have five young people who are burning real fruit, long lasting fruit. And I think when we start to concern ourselves with that discipleship, we start to see a strong and healthy, vibrant church come. And those young people, because they have deep roots and a strong faith, they'll be sharing the faith, they'll be inviting their friends and so we've got to build on good foundations.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Oh mate, this is so good.
Wish we had lots more time to talk about this. I feel like I should ask you about Origins because even though we've said all of that you have got a resource that at least can if you're kind of going hey, we're trying to do this, it feels a bit awkward and if leaders are going yeah, actually I feel challenged by that. I'm going to pray, I'm going to sow into that. I want to build this culture, I want to teach my young people to pray. But yeah, you've got Origins exists to do that.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
Primarily young people need a living example but resources equipping so helpful and along the way we need that stuff. So Origins is an eight part youth resource with videos and you can download the PDF off which will plan the youth sessions and you can use our videos which are on YouTube for free and it just teaches young people the basics of how to pray. Now each session can be minimum eight minutes, maximum as long as you want. Like the videos are eight minutes on YouTube and we basically go through how to pray, why we should pray and then prayer the word prayer and we go through different elements of prayer and so there's a short teaching on prayer and then an actual prayer exercise. So we actually do it in the session and it just gives young people the tools, the different ideas of how to pray, why they should pray, in what different ways they can pray.
For me I just see it as a bit of a spark to get somebody going and to get a youth group going and something to build upon. So yeah, that's for free online on twenty four seven prayer. Com.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Amazing. And we'll make sure that goes in the blurb for this. So if you're going oh I missed that, we'll make sure that goes in there.
Sonny, I want to ask you about, and this is a biggie so apologies, but I've been in youth for far too long and we've had this conversation before, but I learned a long time and the times, which.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Can be really.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Tough, to journey with young people as a youth leader is when you go, yeah. As a group, we're going to pray for this.
And what we see is that God doesn't answer the prayer in the way that we think he will. I'll give you an example.
My youth group in Manchester turned out we had a young man who was really ill and got taken in a hospital and he was due to come on weekend away with us and we turns out he wasn't going to make that journey, he was in hospital. So we were like we're going to pray for his healing. We prayed all weekend. All weekend, all weekend, all weekend. And Monday we got the news that he. Passed away.
And I have to say that's one of the hardest things is going into youth group the Sunday after and going, hey, you guys know this because we weren't with your parents, they've told you. But we want to obviously kind of just talk about this.
It's a tough one because, I mean, I've navigated it, but what would be your words of advice to youth leaders in maybe not necessarily that situation, but how do you start to kind of address this? God doesn't answer every prayer in quite the way. We're going to sort of say that.
[00:32:47] Speaker C: And expect, yeah, it's reality, what you just said. I think more people go through it than people would like to admit.
So I'll start out by saying that Pete Gregg wrote a book called God on Mute, which is all about engaging with unanswered prayer.
Okay? So I just would highly recommend that book. It is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. And I'm not just saying that because I work for Him.
I have been through intense suffering in my life and hadn't read that book. And I wish that somebody had told me about that book.
I think when your faith is linked with the suffering, it can often intensify the suffering even more because your faith is so intrinsically deep to who you are that it can knock you off course because it's messing with your foundations when something's going wrong with the core of who you are.
But let me say a few things on it if I can.
First thing to say is that Jesus faced unanswered prayer.
Now, for some people, they might not really understand why that's important. I find that immensely encouraging because in unanswered prayer, I often think I'm doing it wrong or there's something wrong with me.
And I think we could all say that there's nothing wrong with Jesus. I think that's one conclusion that we could draw from this podcast today.
We'd probably get 100% agreement.
And yet Jesus had unanswered prayer. Three examples. First example, he prays for the blind man. And the blind man says, I can see men walking like trees. News flash men don't look like trees walking. So the prayer didn't work 100%, so he had to pray a second time.
Now, granted, the second time it worked. Of course he is Jesus, but still encouraging because I prayed for plenty of people to get healed and it's not worked.
So encouraging the second time is in the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus asks, father, take this cup from me. Basically, don't let me go to the cross. And we don't know what the Father said. It seems as if the Father was completely silent, and if he did say something, it would have sounded like this no.
So Jesus'prayer was not answered. And of course, wonderfully Jesus responds with, not my will, but yours be done. And so essentially he said, even if I don't get the answer to my prayer. I'm following you no matter the cost. And that is one of those beautiful things that we often see. Somebody is suffering immensely and yet they say, I'm still following Jesus. I mean, these people who go through suffering and sickness are just some of the most wonderful Christian people. Sometimes you wonder whether they're angels in disguise. You think, how are you still doing this? And yet in our weakness, the strength of God is just somehow bursting forth from these people. I've been to parts of the world where people are intensely poor and they are so thankful for God, so happy.
And I think maybe in the west we just have such a problem with comfort that we don't know how to suffer, we don't know how to yield to God like Jesus did.
But again, God raised Jesus from the dead. So it was a short, know thing that happened there. But there is one prayer that Jesus prayed that's still not been answered right now.
And this messes with me, because what is Jesus doing right now? He's at the right hand of the father and he's praying.
So for 2000 years Jesus has been praying next to God and he's still got an unanswered prayer.
John 17 jesus prays that his people would be one, would be unified, and the church is far from that.
I find that immensely encouraging. Pete Greg talks about these three elements of unanswered prayer in his book God on Mute. And I'll try and be as quick as I can with it is God's will, God's world and God's war.
So start with God's will.
The world is just set up in a certain way, but sometimes things happen, whether that's a natural disaster, whether that's everybody dies eventually. There's just ways that the world is constructed that no matter how much we pray, things like that just happen. It's part of the world we live in consequence of the fall of creation and fall of humanity. There are just parts of our world and we need to get to grips with that. We can't just ignore it. We can't just have this faith that just expects that nothing bad is ever going to happen. Jesus said, in this world, God's world, in this world you will have trouble. Take heart, I've overcome the world.
The second element is God's will. We don't always know exactly what God's will is, but one thing that we do know is sometimes it's now, sometimes it's not yet. So I believe God's will is to always heal.
Sometimes it's now, sometimes it's not yet.
Everybody's healed in heaven. There's no sickness in heaven. So eventually, according to God's will, we will all come into health. But some people, they get it right now and that's a miracle.
But sometimes it's not yet. And the thing that Pete talks about in his book on miracles is it's a miracle because it's rare.
If it wasn't rare, it wouldn't be a miracle. And so that just means that it's not always going to be a miracle every time, like the way that the world is constructed. And he talks about this one thing that really impacted me. He talked about the importance of storms on the environment. We only see storms as a bad thing, but he said environmentally storms reset the climate and storms reset the atmosphere and they reset temperatures and they stop temperatures going too high or too low. And storms are really important for the weather and we only see them as a bad thing. So if God stopped every storm wouldn't reset things and stuff like that. So this is just a good example. So God's world, God's will and then finally God's war. We are in a war. Jesus said it's finished on the cross. But Paul also said we wrestle against principalities and powers, so it's know we war from the finished work of Christ. But we still have to fight, we still have to engage in the battle and we engage from victory, but we still have to fight.
My friend James Ladderin, I quoted him before, he says the finished work of the cross is the platform for the current work of the Holy Spirit. So basically that know the work is finished universally, but we have to have individual application of that finished work and that's part of God's war. We are warring in the spirit that the universal finished work and victory of Christ would be individually applied to situations and circumstances. And I'll simply close with this Luke 1113. Jesus says, if you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And I think that that alludes to the fact that in prayer, the primary purpose is presence with a ce, not presence with a TS. We're focusing on God's presence. The Heavenly Father wants to give the Holy Spirit. Earthly Father gives good gifts. Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, God's presence. And so that is the focus of prayer. We're praying for his presence because in prayer, as we're focused on his presence, god is often changing us rather than us changing Him. And he's trying to get us to submit to his will rather than us trying to get Him to bend to our agenda. So there's a small snapshot but unanswered prayer. It's a difficult one and you've got to go on that journey, but I'd recommend God on mute.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Josh is going to be with us as one of our keynote speakers at the Youth Leader Conference in this October, this October, Saturday the 14th, which is in Lancaster. That event is free to attend and you can book via our website bdeducation.org UK.
What are we going to say? Just a quick little kind of one, two minutes about what you're going to be talking about?
[00:42:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I guess I've got to talk on prayer again.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: How to tell you this. It's kind of your bag, though, right?
[00:42:31] Speaker C: I'm going to be sharing some stories about how, as we've been praying and fasting and seeking the Lord, how things we have really seen a change. I think when you're a youth worker, like, you are starving for stories to encourage you and to bless you and to just tell you that it is possible.
So I'll be sharing some stories and just going in a bit deeper on how we can actually pray with persistence and pray consistently, because I think those are some of the things that God is really charging to us as youth workers and as leaders of young people, is to not just casually pray.
A book that really inspired me is called To Sow for a Great Awakening. It's by a guy called David Thomas and he says the Bible is utterly unfamiliar with casual prayer and so we're just going to be looking at how we move beyond casual prayer, mundane prayer, into persistent, consistent prayer.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Amazing. So, yeah, so if you want to catch Josh and dig into that, yeah, you do. The conference Saturday, the 14 October in Lancaster. It's free, so, yeah, get booked, come and join us. It seems haphazard of us, though, to I love that word. Sorry, I kind of wanted to squeeze it in. It does seem haphazard of us to have a podcast episode focused on prayer without praying, because otherwise normally we'd go, Great, thanks so much, we're going to head off, have a great day. But Josh, would you pray for us as we sort of close out this episode?
[00:44:11] Speaker C: Heavenly Father, we thank you. You are good, you are kind, you're merciful, and we want to pray the prayer that the disciples prayed. Teach us how to pray, show us how to pray in accordance with Your word and how you would want us to pray, rather than what culture or our background has told us how we should pray. And we pray for youth workers and anybody who is engaging with this podcast that you, Lord, would gently lead them into becoming a house of prayer, a person of prayer, that you would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you, to get to know you deeper and become that person of prayer.
That we would see an army of young people rising up who engage in night and day prayer. We need a revival in our land, we want to see your power move and we recognize the humility that we need to go to the place of prayer to birth that. So we come before you, Lord, today. We ask for strength and encouragement, wisdom and guidance, and ask that you make us a people of prayer and a house of prayer for all nations. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you so much, Joss, for joining us. It's been absolutely wonderful having a chat with you about prayer and wildfires and everything else, even mugs and chocolates.
And we're looking forward to seeing you in October at the Youth Leader Conference as well. So thank you so much.
[00:45:55] Speaker C: You're welcome. Thanks, guys.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Well, that is all we got time for for this episode of the Youthwork State of Mind podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to Josh as well for his amazing insights into the things we've discussed about today. If you want to listen to more of the podcasts, search for Youthwork State of Mind podcast wherever you listen to your podcast, or you can go to our website, bdeducation.org. UK podcasts, to hear the rest of our episodes. And in the description of the podcast, we will stick all of the links to the resources that were mentioned in this podcast as well. So if there's anything that you like the sound of, you'll be able to find it in the description as well. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll be back soon.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Youth Work State of Mind podcast. It was a Blackburn diocese board of Education production. It was produced by Ben Green and David Harris with music from Purple Planet. You can listen to more of their music at Purple Planet.
For more episodes and excellent youth work resources, visit our website, bdeducation.org. UK and make sure you follow us on Instagram at Youthwork State of Mind to be kept up to date with YouthWorks where you are.
