When was the last time you prayed?
Now, hold on now. I mean, really, really prayed with fervor and with passion and with conviction. Taking a look at how to pray coming up right now on the Clearby Today Show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis. Welcome to the Clearview Today Show. Thank you so much for joining us in the studio with our host, Dr. Abadan Shah.
And if today's your first time ever listening to the show, we want to say welcome. Thank you for listening. And we're going to let you know exactly who's talking to you today. Dr. Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show.
Dr. Shah, we're continuing through James. We're talking about prayer. Prayer is one of my favorite subjects to talk about. And James is talking about the importance of personal prayer, but then also the importance of collective prayer.
Yeah, that's right. There are some things that you can pray on your own and say, God, I need this, and God gives it to you, or He tells you to wait, or whatever. But then there are times that you have to bring others along. And it doesn't mean like we have to now really press God to do this, but there's something that God is expecting us, there's a struggle. Not necessarily against God, but it's a struggle that God is leading us through, and that is prayer, collective prayer.
There's nothing, I don't know of any other. parable or Illustration that I can use to help people understand that. It is in a class by itself where you bring other people along with you to help you approach the throne of God. And you said in our, I think it was yesterday's episode or in this whole series on prayer that there is nothing in this world that compares. There's nothing on this side of heaven that is a good enough equivalent for us to compare to.
So if you really want to understand the nature of prayer, I mean, honestly, we're going to have to wait till heaven. But we can do our best while we're here. That's right. You know, one of the things that, you know, Clearview does, and I'm sure lots and lots of churches out there do it, but I love what we do is once a month at the top of every month, congregationally, the entire congregation comes down to the front of the altar and we open up the service.
Sometimes we do it at the end of service if we pair it with communion, but a lot of times we will open up the service with prayer. And I've got to tell you, it's really something to see like two or 300 people move down as one. And as one body, we are down at the front praying. And of course, Dr. Shell leads the prayer, but for everyone to be praying the same thing at the same time, that really is a sight.
If you're not used to seeing that in church, that is something else. When prayer is something that marks our church life here, more than just congregational prayer, because we have once a month, we have our women's monthly prayer. Every single Tuesday morning, we have our men's morning prayer at 6 a.m. There's a group of guys that come, and from 6 to 6:30, they're spending time in prayer. That's right.
Three times a year, we have a 24-hour prayer vigil.
So, prayer is something that is a necessary and vital part of our church life. Dr. Shaw, I feel like prayer is something that is just sort of tacked on in a lot of church services or a lot of church kind of calendars. Even ours. At times, we have to evaluate and examine our own prayer, corporate prayer, and say, Are we really praying or are we simply going through the order of the service?
Yeah, is this just something we have to check off and say, Yes, we prayed today in service three times, once in the opening, once. At the invitation, and then in closing, yeah, we prayed three times. No, did we really pray? Yeah, talk about that for a minute because I think a lot of people listening to this will be thrown, especially if you're not used to a conversation like this, they might be thrown and be like, wait a minute, there's wrong ways to pray. As long as you're talking to God, that's all that matters.
There's no wrong way to pray. But we've seen that when we pray fervently, and maybe we can get into what that means, that there is. I hate to have greater yield, but that sort of is the best way to say it. Is it fair to say that maybe there's not a right or wrong way to pray, but there's an effective and ineffective way to pray? Yeah, absolutely.
There are levels of prayer, if I may say that, without trying to create some kind of a hierarchy in Christianity, I don't like that because that's not biblical, anyways. There's no hierarchies in Christianity, but there are levels of struggle that we have. And in that moment of struggle, you cannot do this on your own. You have to bring other people along. And James talks about that.
He tells you: if you're sick, pray. But then he says, and we kind of focused on that last week or yesterday: is anyone among you sick? Means if you are. at that point in your life where you are feeling weak. Maybe physical sickness, but it may be relational sick sickness.
Maybe it's financial sickness. Maybe it's some kind of a spiritual sickness that is going on in a church, in a community, in a nation, in the world. You need to bring people together. At Clearview, we have prayer, men's morning prayer, every Tuesday at six o'clock.
Now there are once or twice that we have canceled it, but we are very careful. It's only if it's an ice situation or the road conditions are bad. Yes, we may cancel that. We're not going to cancel it for rain. We're not going to cancel if there's a little bit of snow on the side.
Because it's cold outside. It's cold outside. It's not going to work. Right. Because just a little bit of cold is going to keep you.
From helping somebody who is right on the edge of the cliff. They're on the edge of the cliff, and this is the prayer that's going to help them walk back. This is going to help you as you're facing some spiritual warfare? It's not like Satan's having man, he's wreaking havoc in my home. No, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop bad theology.
That's not what's happening. What's happening is God is allowing the enemy to do what he's doing to maybe help you grow, to maybe pour grace upon you. The messenger of Satan has come towards you, but but it's to make you weak so that you will be strong. That's why when people say Are you sure it's not the enemy just doing something bad? No, it's not biblical.
The messenger of Satan does come But who sent the messenger of Satan? God did. That's right. Paul says, because of these multitude of revelations, these visions that I was getting as I was seeing the other heavens higher up, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.
So that when I'm weak, then I'm strong, His grace is sufficient for me. Because Paul kept saying, Remove this thorn, God, please remove this. Three times, but it really means several times. Yeah. And God said, My grace is sufficient for you.
God did not say, What? The message of Satan. Wait a minute. He then rascal. He got into your life, didn't he?
Get him out of here. Yeah. Or I knew I told you. I told you there'll be warfare coming. No, God didn't do that.
It's like, well, I told him to stay there. Yeah. But so that my grace will rest upon you.
So Paul says, So I will glory in my weaknesses.
So that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
So, all that to say. We should also have This collective prayer to help us understand these difficult seasons.
So, If you're sick, call someone to help you pray. But there's something else that James mentions here in James chapter 5:16. He says, Confess your trespasses to one another. And pray for one another that you may be. Healed.
Confess your trespasses to one another. Does not mean Always that there will have to be some deep, dark, dirty sins.
Okay.
Some some sins need to be confessed in public if they are public sins. If publicly something bad has happened, public confession is necessary. But if this happened in private, Then, private confession is necessary. Yeah, yeah. In this situation, confess your trespasses to one another.
This is not like, hey, I'm going to tell you something. I mean, my deep, dark secret. And the other person is over there going, Oh my goodness, how soon can I get out of here? You get the deer in the headlights. Look like, like, I don't need to alter someone's life in our relationship every single time.
We no, no, no, no. Confess your trespasses to one another has been sometimes mistakenly understood. This is not. Necessarily confessing sins that maybe need to only be confessed to God. Or to your spouse, or to a friend, if that may help you in the process.
Yeah. You know, Ryan, you and I have been friends for a long time. We have more than a decade. But I want to just follow James' advice. I just want to say, you know, I need to confess I've been harboring a lot of hatred to you.
I have been really, yeah, absolutely. I've been really envious of you and your success in life. And I mean, I built a shrine to you and destroyed it with fire. And that's not right. That's not good behavior.
Anyway, I want to listen. I'm very troubled that you. Shared that.
Well, don't worry about that because I feel a lot better. What do you say? We grab a lunch.
So I feel a lot worse. Yeah, we'll grab a lunch. We'll do lunch. Christians love lunch. Your treat.
And then we will head out to, yeah, we'll get our relationship back on track. But I'm glad I confessed this to you. Let's circle back to the whole shrine. I feel like we need to address it. I set up a Trojan horse on your email, and that's why your Mac went down last month.
This is a phishing scam. You know, that happens. Yeah. People go to each other and say, hey, man, I really hated you. And I get it.
I get it. You're trying to follow the Bible, but I don't think that's what is being talked about. Confess your trespasses. And I'm not trying to minimize scripture or sugarcoat it, but some of this has to be as simple as, hey, I haven't put God where He needs to be in my life. Yeah.
I haven't been the leader in my home that I'm supposed to be. Not a leader as in the boss of your wife and your children, but leader as in servant leader who leads the family to follow God, who leads the family in prayer and in church and in ministry. That I have been slacking lately. Yeah, confess your trespasses. Man, I haven't been as diligent in reading and obeying and applying the word of God in my life.
I'm not having been as diligent in sharing the gospel. Yes, confess your trespasses to one another. deep dark sins you need to get counseling for that. Deep, dark sins, you need to go to a pastor who is able to handle those things and give you godly, Christ full and spirit filled. Counsel.
Yeah, your friends, like your Christian friends, unless they are counselors, they're not equipped to deal with that. Yeah, they will alienate you. They'll fall into a depression of their own. They'll feel like, now I've got this huge burden I've got to work through. And it's all, I think, at the end of the day, whether we admit it or not, it's all people who do that are looking for their own emotional catharsis.
They're looking just to. Feel good. Like I confessed it.
Now that's your problem. And I'm good. It's also important to mention that not every person who calls themselves a Christian and is a counselor is a Christian counselor, is counseling from a biblical perspective.
So be very wary. Do your research. There's a lot of great resources. Here we have Lighthouse Counseling with Nicole, Dr. Shah's wife, and she does a wonderful job of counseling from a biblical perspective, of bringing the Bible to bear in the situations in people's lives.
But not every person who claims to be a Christian and a counselor is a Christian counselor. That's right. Or if they do not have the proper education, people say, oh, you don't need education. Just read a couple of books and you're good to go. Yeah, yeah.
And some levels of Christian counseling, that may be okay. But once you cross that certain level, well, at that point, I'm going to send them to somebody else. But then maybe it should not advertise yourself as a Christian counselor or somebody who can give advice on that level to people. Be careful. Yeah.
Because their life. Is now being directed by you.
So I sure hope that you are really walking with God and you're really dealing with those deep, dark secrets of your life. Are your motives really pure? Are you really willing to set aside your anger, your hate, your envy, your jealousy, all those secret sins and saying, Man, all that is covered and now I'm I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I can't even say that on every day.
Yeah. Proceed with caution for sure. Proceed with caution there.
So I know we kind of deviated there. We went on a tangent. But, anyways, the point is here. confess your trespasses to one another, those kind Pray for one another, that you may be healed.
So That healing may be physical healing. But that healing may also be spiritual healing, relational healing, to say that. You know Yeah, I haven't really been praying and reading my Bible like I should. Yeah. I haven't really been taking the leadership in my home.
I'm I'm bitter. Or I have been kind of focusing on what life could have been. Or Man, I haven't been I haven't done anything bad or evil or terrible, but I don't feel like I have really honored God in my marriage. And so I need God's healing and forgiveness in my life. I need him to redirect me.
I need him to get me back on track with the word of God. Can he pray for me? And that person will pray for you that you may be healed. Your marriage will now get better. You'll see your wife or your husband.
In a whole new light, and say, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing here? What was I doing there? Yeah. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it was the devil, maybe it's all the distractions of life, whatever.
But it kept me from loving my spouse the way I should have. That's right. You see, then healing begins to happen there.
So it can be physical healing. Like he's like, man, I got this horrible sickness. Maybe let me confess some sin to you, and then you pray for me so I can get over that sickness. And what happens then? The sickness may not heal because that's not the same promise.
So, maybe you could talk about that because I know we talked a little bit about in the beginning, we opened up with James saying, you know, the effective fervent prayer. And we talked about, you know, when was the last time you really feel like you prayed effectively and fervently and with intensity? And I think if we're honest with ourselves, the majority of Christians, if they looked back and said, when was the last time? It probably involved some sort of physical crisis, some sort of sickness, either with me or a loved one or whatever. But the last time I really genuinely prayed with intensity.
It was some crisis. And that wasn't even the catalyst to now I should pray like that every day. It's like I'll pray like that again at the next crisis. When I need it. Yeah.
Maybe you can kind of give some people encouragement if they're like, yeah, that's me. Yeah. I would encourage you, if you're going through some crisis right now, or maybe you're going through a great period, it seems like nothing is too high or too low.
Okay.
Start praying. Dedicate a time to pray. Take the time to get away, get alone with God. You know, take the time to do those things. Don't get.
disheveled by the things of life. And I encourage you to to write things down if you need to. And pray. Maybe if that's sort of getting old, then maybe whatever scripture that you're reading for your devotional time. You make that a prayer.
Make that a prayer. Yeah. Okay.
So. Like let's say you're reading from The Gospel of Luke, because that's where I'm at right now. The prodigal son. Pray, God, if I am that prodigal. Help me to get back to you.
Help me not to forget. how good it is to walk with you. Let me not look here and there and be enamored by the allures of life. Help me to walk with you. Or maybe you know somebody who is.
a prodigal son. Father, I pray that you would help them come back to you.
So you see how instead of just the typical same old prayer, now you have some energy behind it. You have some fervency behind it.
Some new power behind that prayer. Yeah. Oh, Father, I know someone who is that father or that mother of that prodigal son, prodigal daughter. I pray for them. Or, or father, I know somebody who is the elder brother in this situation, or sister.
I pray, God, that you would help them as well.
So there are many ways to re-energize your prayer. And try different things. Don't get set in a rut. Of course, reading the Bible is reading the Bible. But then you can also read the Bible, take notes, read the Bible and read a devotional, read the Bible and then pray, but pray differently.
Pray a list. or pray extempor, or pray the Scriptures. Try different things.
Sometimes that helps. Yeah, I've learned, you know, I've learned that from you because I'm of the type, just not even with prayer, just with everything in life, to find a template and stick to the template because that's one less thing I got to think about. It's not like I'm lazy or anything. It's just now I don't have to think about it. But I've found that the most success I've ever had in ministry specifically comes from thinking about it, thinking about it differently.
You've helped me there. And now it's really helped me because, you know, I'm teaching it to my kids. Gavin and Holden, they fight over who's going to pray. They love to pray. Oh, yeah, they do.
And that's great, by the way. That's great. Yeah, they'll do it when we all go out as a staff. Like Dr. Shah will pray or someone on the staff will pray and then Holden.
I want to pray. And you've said no. Yeah. They love it. Gavin.
I've noticed he's my son. He's falling into the road. Dear Lord, thank you for this day. If someone's sick, please heal them. Pray that Papa would feel better.
I pray that blah, blah, blah.
So last night we were praying for dinner when we got home. We got home late last night. We were praying for dinner. He did that. And I was like, just on a whim, I was like, hey, Gavin, pray something else.
What? I was like, pray, ask God for something else. Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for that. I have chicken nuggets.
And he prayed for the play. He said, thank you for the Joe play and help it be good. And amen. And it was great, but I would have never, ever did that if I had, I had to be taught that. You know what I'm saying?
I would have never thought about prayer that way. Yeah. I think that presence of mind is helpful. It helps us to, we can so easily fall into the autopilot trap. Just set it and forget it.
Just hit the button and press and play the recording. But when we, when we shake things up, when we start to pray differently, when we, if you've been praying this way, pray a different way, restructure it. It forces you to think and forces you to be engaged and present in that conversation. Did you ever, when you were like, when you, I know there was a big shift in your ministry, probably long before I started working here, but where you started recording yourself and listening back to your sermons. Did you ever find that you could predict what you were going to say or like how you were going to do something?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Like I've noticed that about myself, like at some point when worshiping is starting. I could probably listen to a sermon or a worship set from three months ago and exactly write down what I'm about to say to open up that service. I've seen that. That's a whole topic in itself.
I have seen those things like. You know, when I go through a series again on the book of James, and I'm like, oh, this is a great point. I write it and then look at my notes from 50 days ago. It's like, oh, no. I had the same thing.
And these are not like notes based on something coming out of that research. It was just notes, something that popped in my head. Oh, I would love this way to say it this way. I'm like, oh, I already did.
So, yes, there is a lot of predictability about all of us. And that's okay. That sort of is very revealing that we're not that deep at times. But there's also Something to be said about getting in a rut. Yeah.
If we think I can shoot from the hip. And I can do it. I can make it happen and it'll be good. Once in a while, it's great. I mean, you knock it out of the park.
But if you do it every time and you think, I can knock it out of the park. you haven't practiced well yeah it's not going to go out of the park it'll be a hit It's just not going to be out of the par. And it convicts me because, so also with prayer, it's like, why am I coming to God feeling like I got to shoot from the hip? Right. Why am I not putting any thought into what I want to say to my heavenly father?
You know what I'm saying? Why am I not, or even you want to say that? You're king. Yeah. You're going to come before the king.
I'm going to come before the king and just shoot off at the mouth and say whatever I've been saying because I know that's safe. Or just say something mindlessly. Just run down the list of things that I have to say in a prayer. Amen. How often do we begin our prayer with, Dear God, we come to you today and thank you for every time.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for all you provided. Yeah. I mean, are you really? What am I?
What am I? Well, yes, I am. I mean, we should be thankful. I get it. But are you really, really saying that because you're thankful?
Or are you saying that because it's the thing to do the moment we drop our heads and close our eyes and we get into that rhythm of prayer?
So I challenge myself, and I mess up too many times. And I challenge our team. I say, stop the thank yous, get to the point, and pray. Mm-hmm. And I have to tell that to myself.
It's like, what are you doing? I like that though. And I think there's people who will bristle at that hearing that online. But I think there is so much more power and closeness when I'm putting thought behind what I'm saying to God. You know what I mean?
And it's not like I've got to plan this out so that it sounds perfect for my Heavenly Father. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it makes me engage. Same thing with being a text critic, right? It makes you engage with the text.
Absolutely. You fall in love with it through your study of it. It's not just, I want to study on this so I can be right. It's like, no, it helps me to fall in love with what I'm saying. Because the Word of God is precious.
So I want to see it. I want to study it. I want to know everything I can about that variant or that verse or whatever it is.
So also with prayer, you really get into talking with God and you know that this works. And you know the more you understand about prayer. The better your prayer life will be. People think it's like we talk about prayer all the time, but we hardly ever pray. That can be true.
That can be true. But. I have found that the more scriptural our understanding gets regarding prayer, the better we begin to pray. We had a guest on the podcast a few months back who made a comment: Man, you guys are really like after the cameras cut, we were like, All right, I think that was a good episode. And he said, You guys, meaning all three of us, are really good.
at fostering communication. And having conversation. You guys don't overtalk each other. You don't talk for too long. And this is a person that I thought was really good at what they did.
So to hear that from him, I was like, wow, that made me, I started thinking about it more and more. And it's just the more that we've done it, the better we've got at having conversation. Conversation with God is no different. Exactly. You know what I'm saying?
Having a conversation with God is the same exact way. The more I do it, the more you start to fall in love with the craft. You start to fall in love with what you're saying to God and what you're hearing back. And I don't see anything at all wrong with getting better at talking to God. You start to look forward to it and you start to treasure that time.
Yes. It starts to become more impactful and meaningful for you rather than just something to check off on your Christian checklist. Right. That's right. I encourage people to pray, pray fervently, pray effectively.
And this will take us a little bit of time to go through the last part.
So hopefully, next time we can talk about that part of prayer. What does that fervent prayer look like? Does that mean that we just talk louder and faster? No, it's different. It's more.
I think in some ways we already introduced that concept about entering into a zone of pleading with God. Not pleading because he's not going to give it to us. Not pleading because he is asleep. Not pleading because he's like a father who is or that elder brother who like closes his fist real tight and says, now try to open it. Try.
Go ahead. Give it your best shot. And you're like a little toddler or a little kid trying to, you know, pry open that one finger, but he pulls it back. No, that's not what we're talking about. Did your dad ever play that game with you?
No. Oh, yeah. Dad was not the type to do that.
Now, he played other games, but not the type to say, go and pry my finger. My dad used to do that. Oh, really? Yeah, he would hide stuff in his hands and be like, come on, try to try to get it. He would call it Matt Strength, Matt Strength with Daddy.
And I'd try to pull his hands apart. Or he'd put a treat or something behind his hands. And I'd have to push on him, see if it would fall out. He would do stuff like that. But it's much more than that.
And I want to spend some time talking about what this effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much really means. Because we need it right now. We need it right now. Amen. These episodes help us so much in understanding what prayer is, the role that it plays in our lives, and how to avoid the trap that so many of us fall into in the trap of just autopilot, just being mindless when you pray.
And the reason we're excited about this, man, is because it is impacting our ministry. It is transforming the way that I pray. It's transforming the way that I lead. It's transforming the way that I learn. When I hear the messages, when I hear Dr.
Shah's messages, I'm telling you, it's changing your mind for the better. And more importantly than anything else, I think for me personally, when you get into a production environment like we have, it's easy for stuff just to become business and rote, and we got to push these out and we got to do this. You forget to fall in love with God. And this has, I think this series on James has really helped me fall in love with God again. And the reason we're so.
Passionate about this. It's because we want that for you and your life and your prayer life and your family as well. That's right. So, if we can leave you with one thing, it's fall in love with talking with your Heavenly Father. That's right.
I mean, that's the summary. That's right. Guys, make sure you join us tomorrow, same time, same station. We're going to dig further into this concept of prayer and how it applies to your life, how to develop that effective, fervent prayer, how to pray with intensity. Thanks for joining us today.
Don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show anywhere podcasting content can be found, and you can always support us financially. If this show has been a blessing for you, you can help it be a blessing for other people. That's right. You can always give at Abadanshah.com forward slash give. That's right.
Couple of things we do want to let you guys know.
Some things we've been talking about. Number one is you can pre-order your edition of the Robinson Pier Pont Byzantine text form. It's 2026 edition, brand new. It's not out yet, but pre-orders are available. You can find more information on our website, clearviewbc.org, or you can also visit us on youtube.com, Dr.
Abadan Shah. Lots of great information on there and lots more information coming out. But make sure you get your pre-orders linked in the description right now. Also, we got a couple of new shows in the pipeline. One of them, is already out.
It's how to read biblical Hebrew with Dr. Abadan Shaz. It's an online course, completely free video podcast on Apple iTunes, but it's a great resource if you're wanting to read the Bible in its original language. And we got a new one coming out in the summer, which is how to read biblical Greek.
So we're going to start that in the summer after Hebrew concludes. We'll probably pick Hebrew up again back in the fall with new episodes, but this is what our promise is to you. You engage with these video podcasts. You will be reading the Bible in its original. Imagine getting the Greek New Testament and then immediately learning how to learn Greek.
It's going to unlock parts of your minds that you're going to fall in love with.
So make sure you get your pre-order today. That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear V today.
