Healing Through Prayer: How to Build a Daily Prayer Life in a Distracted World

22:12And to your point, what they do is, you think of nothing. There's nothing that you're, it's just sort of empty your mind. But to me, the Christian meditation, as the Bible talks about it, and feel free to correct this or confirm, but I typically tend to think of it as two things. One is you're chewing on something. You read one scripture or verse and you're chewing on that or think about the person of Jesus or a word, you know, a single word like hallow. And what does that mean? And you're kind of chewing on that and letting that penetrate you and thinking from a Christian perspective, how can I apply this?

22:47Or what's God saying to me through this word? And there's also kind of a form of meditation of letting your mind be clear, but in order to hear from God. And maybe that's also kind of that meditation prayer crossover. But we'd love to hear your thought, more of your thoughts on what meditation is comparatively to prayer and how we can meditate better. Yeah, it's sad because in today's world, when I was first coming back to my faith, if you told me the word meditation, my mind would go towards, I mean, maybe it's some forms of Eastern religion. So maybe Buddhism or Hinduism, but mostly secular meditation.

23:21And that's what like when we say the word meditation today, we think of. But I mean, the word meditate on God's word day and night is in the Psalms. So like this goes back to the beginning of Christianity is this idea, at least using the word meditate. I want to mention this because I think it's so important. So my mom growing up, she used to tell me this, and I'm so, I had amazing Christian parents. My mom would like place her chest on me and said, I named you Joshua for a reason. So you'd be Joshua. And she would read the book of Joshua to me sometimes. But in Joshua one, early on in Joshua, it says, you know, God is talking to Joshua and he says, you know, meditate on my word day and night.

23:56Then you will be prosperous and successful. Yeah. So if we're going to be prosperous and successful, God's like, hey, you want to be prosperous and successful? Meditate. Yeah, and he says it later too, that my sheep know my voice. The sheep know the sound of my voice. So like what you had said, you've become like the person you spend time with. Yeah, and you also want to know his voice when he's speaking to you. Because in Christian theology, what I believe as a Christian is there's good and evil. So in Buddhism, that's one of the biggest differences. And most of these kind of secular meditation things or most of the new age things do come mostly from Buddhism or a philosophy built out of Buddhism.

24:32And one of the big differences is in the Christian world, there's two things, there's good and evil. So if you sit in silence, and meditation is great. I was in Silicon Valley for a time when we were starting Hallow. And yeah, you would go talk to anybody and you'd say, are you religious? And everybody would say no. And you'd go talk to somebody and you'd say, are you spiritual? And they'd all say, of course, I'm spiritual. My question for that person is, okay, you're spiritual, so you're meditating, which is a beautiful thing. Like you have that snow globe and our minds are so, they're so split into a thousand pieces.

25:01So to just give them silence and to let them kind of fall and to let it collect is a beautiful thing. It's like working out. It's like any of those things. It's a good thing for you to learn how to sit in stillness. But okay, you're sitting in stillness. You're sitting in silence. My question for them would always be, there's no other people in the room. Are you alone? And their answer would always be no. No, I'm not alone. There's something else there. And I was like, okay, well, that's crazy. So you're saying when you sit in silence in the room and you stop distracting yourself with social media and Instagram and Netflix and work and worries and all this stuff, you sense the presence of something else.

25:40Is it a good thing or a bad thing? They're like, it's a good thing. Does it love you? Maybe. And you just feel that. There's something very weird about silence that it just brings that. And it's from Elijah. Like Elijah climbs up to the mountain. He's looking for the voice of God. A great fire comes by, but God is not in the fire. A great earthquake comes by, but God is not in the earthquake. A great fire comes by, but God is not in the fire. And then in the silence, a still small voice. And God is in the still small voice in the silence. So there's something crazy about silence in that you can just notice God's presence, both within his word, and there's a bunch of other ways to notice it, but something unique about silence.

26:18But then my answer to the spiritual, but not religious group or kind of new age spiritual group would be, okay, so you sit in silence and there's something invisible there that feels like probably something good, shouldn't you spend your entire life figuring out what that is? Like, isn't that the most important thing? There's some invisible thing here. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. And it's just here with you and it's good. Like, shouldn't you really try to figure that out? Not just try to learn the breathing technique or whatever, but really try to figure out what that other thing is and what it wants for you.

26:47And the thing that I believe, and I know for truth, and I want to share with you, is that that thing does love you and it loves you infinitely so. And it's got a name and it's got a son and his son is Jesus and you listen to his word and you read his word and you meditate on his word and you tell me a person wrote that. Tell me a human being wrote that. You can't because it's so beautiful. It's so deep. It's so powerful. But prayer and meditation, at least secular meditation, the way that our world describes it, there's like two or three big differences. One is in prayer, you can sit in silence.

27:18You can still your mind. You can take deep breaths. You can do all the things that you do in meditation. But in prayer, there is both a good thing and a bad thing that could influence your mind. And secular meditation really struggles with this because people will have thoughts that are really negative, really evil thoughts when they sit in prayer. And the answer as a Christian is that's not the good one, that's the bad one. And so a big part of prayer is how do you learn to discern? How do you learn to figure out what are the good thoughts and what are the bad thoughts? And how do you try to emphasize the good ones and lean into the good ones and follow the good ones and try to fight against the bad ones?

27:48And secular meditation doesn't have that. The other big piece of prayer, which is unique, is it is all about dying to yourself. And meditation, along with most things in life, like when you get good at something, your ego grows. When you get good at, when you get healthier, when you start working out more, when you do anything good, your ego grows. And it's the same in the spiritual life. Your ego grows because you, or it's a temptation for your ego to grow because you're becoming closer to God, which is a very good thing. The thing that prayer does that balances that radically is that the first step of prayer is humility.

28:21Like the foundation of prayer is humility. The first thing you have to do is die to yourself. So you're constantly in prayer trying to humble yourself. You're constantly trying to let God humble you. And so you're trying constantly to die, which is a very weird thing. You're definitely not doing that in secular meditation. And then the last thing that's the biggest difference, and really the only thing that matters is meditation is, okay, I'm gonna take some breaths, mostly mindfulness. I'm gonna use some breathing exercises and then I'm gonna let my mind go at the end. But prayer is just about, I wanna spend time with Jesus.

28:48There is a real, it's not just the technique. It's not just how many breaths am I gonna take? What am I gonna count to? Whatever it is. It's no, I'm just, I don't honestly really care about the technique at all. I just wanna spend time with Jesus. And he can cut through the technique. He can do whatever he wants and enter into your heart in whatever way he wants, but he's real. He's a person. He's there. And prayer is just about spending time with him. So it's all about him, all about growing closer to the Lord and letting him change you. And meditation is mostly just a health activity that can be a precursor to prayer.

29:16Like you take some time, you take some deep breaths, but certainly is not. prayer could never be a replacement for it. Yeah. Yeah. And this is also why, I mean, I think there's so much value in spending time reading your Bible in order to better discern the voice of God. You know, for me, I think being able to, and I was really blessed, as I mentioned, growing up, going to a Christian school up through eighth grade and be very involved. And, you know, for me, it was, we went to church, then we went to Sunday school, and then we went to Wednesday nights. And so, you know, being able to do that.

29:50Yeah, I had amazing parents, amazing parents. And being able to do that, I think, really allowed me to better discern the voice of God. Because when you're sitting there listening to that still small voice, you want to determine, okay, is that God or is it something else? I mean, I believe that there's demonic forces in this world. There are evil spirits, just like there is the good spirit, you know, good spirit and specifically God. And so I think being able to decipher that, I think that's where also the Bible has such great value in sort of pairing this voice of the Spirit with the written word, the physical with the spiritual.

30:25100%. And, you know, I remember back, so I, that whole time being blessed, having this Christian upbringing, and then I had two years in college where I really felt like I turned from the Lord, didn't focus on my faith. And then I was in my junior year, and I remember just sitting there one day and just feeling like just so empty. And I'm like, I have kind of all these so-called friends, and everything feels like it should be going great. But I just felt this deep, deep sense of emptiness because it had been a couple years since I really had gone to churches regularly. And I remember praying to God, and I said, God, I need you.

31:05I feel so empty right now, and I feel lost and I need your direction. And I remember praying and just kind of just starting to feel kind of a sense of his presence. And then I said, I realized I'm gonna start going back and getting involved in church. And I went on a Wednesday night and I remember when I was praying earlier though, what I'd prayed to God was, I said, God, I feel so lost, I feel so empty and I feel like I need other godly men to be around me that can help guide me. And then here's what was my exact prayer. I said, God, would you send a flood of positive Christian influences and men into my life?

31:41And that was my prayer. And then on Wednesday night, I go, and somebody was speaking. There was a guest speaker there, and there was like 150 people there. And the guy was on stage, and he said, hey, is anybody in this fraternity? He's like, because I was when I was whatever. And I'm like, 150. I was the only one that raised my hand. And he's like, hey, I want to talk to you after. I was like, okay. And so anyways, this pastor ended up like, we ended up having a conversation. He said, hey, I feel like I'm called to connect with you and help disciple you. And so I joined a discipleship group he was in.

32:17The next week I went and a younger guy was starting, who was in seminary starting a Bible study that I joined. And literally since that day, and he's still doing it today. He, like, sending amazing Christian mentors and just people into my life constantly. And that was just an example of, like, God just answering a prayer so directly. And I can think through time and time again where God has been so unbelievably faithful in me praying. And sometimes he does it immediately. And sometimes it's two years later, all of a sudden, whoa, I'd been praying for that. Yeah. And so it's just amazing, you know.

32:55So again, I love this topic of prayer because it's so important. Again, if you're going to have a good relationship with anybody, you've got to communicate. And God is the most important relationship, and prayer is how we do it. A hundred percent. And I think for me, I think if you were to really distill down prayer to something, for me, it's been learning this process of surrender, which is just such a freeing process. It just takes so much stress off your life and so much worry out of your heart. But it's everything, everything has been this like gripping something so tightly and then just letting it go and just being like, God, okay, I can't do this.

33:39I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. And as soon as you do that, and I've experienced this so many times with Hallow, but also so many times with family, where as soon as you just let that go to God, he's just like, ah, okay, that's what I was waiting for. And then he, once you crack that door open, he just takes all the rest. I remember I was talking with Mark and Wahlberg, who we've been working with for a long time and has been awesome. And he like, he initially did this Father Stu movie a long time ago. And we started working together on that. And then he's been doing a bunch of stuff.

34:11You know, it's super. It's a great film. Yeah, he did a great job. But we started working together from that and then continued to work together through Hello. And he was like, you know, I felt like God was called me to do that movie because he was like, okay, I've given you this platform. I've given you this career. Now I need you to go share with people about me and just share me with people. And he was like, okay, fine. I'll like check the box. I'll do my God thing. And then I'll be done and that'll be great. Like that'll be my movie and I'll be done with that movie and then I'll go back to my normal life.

34:41And he was like, and that's just not what happens. He just cracks the door open and then he just takes the rest of it. And just like you said, like you meet one person and then the flood comes. But for me, it's this beautiful process of like you just relinquishing a little bit of the control of your life. I remember like, I mean, we had the newborn recently and our two big kids were sick. And so our five-year-old and our three-year-old were sick. And we were really worried about the newborn because she was like five days old. And so we were trying to keep quarantined, whatever. And the big kids were coming and sleeping with me and snoring.

35:12And like, there was just all this and I was trying to get them in and we're trying to do all this stuff. We have our two-year-old, whatever. And so in the middle of the night, it happened like every night in a row where I would just like two kids would wake up and I'd be like, God, like if the third kid wakes up, I don't, I don't know what to do. I can't get my wife. I have no idea what to do. I want to keep him healthy. And these two are sick. And, and so I was just like, I'm, I can't, I give up. I don't know what to do. Like, there's no answer here. And then they all just sleep through the night.

35:41And it's, you know, it's the same thing actually. We, um, I mean, part of this is, you know, it's, it's releasing control. It's like we're trying to play God's role. And so when we're trying to play the role, God's like, well, listen, you're trying to do it. Like, okay, I'm going to - Too many cooks in the kitchen. Like my daughter does this now. She wants to carry 30 things at once. And she wants this independence and whatever. And I'm like, honey, can I carry that water bottle? Can I do this? And finally, sometimes she's like, okay, dad. But it's that, and by the way, this is a cure for anxiety as well.

36:15So many people, you know, one thing I know that I've seen, one of my biggest, I think that the most surprising thing for me as a physician has been, I spent a lot of my career studying really in-depth nutrition, and I believe that diet makes a huge, huge impact in people's lives. However, in taking care of so many people with many chronic illnesses, I think the single greatest thing causing people to be ill today, diet's number two. Number one is stress, emotional trauma, spiritual issues. I mean, the mind, body, the spiritual things of this life where people are holding on to the point, even something like that, they're trying to hold on to things and control things that we should be giving to God.

37:02That is the single greatest cause of health issues today, not just anxiety and depression, but even cancer, heart disease, you name it. We see it. We see it all the time. It's this, I mean, we had this story of this, there's a bunch of people really struggling right now with anxiety, depression, suicide. We had this, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of really hard things. And it's so clear. It's so, it's crystal clear when you're at your absolute lowest. There's just nothing else but God. There's nothing else that can speak to that. There's no meditation. There's no working out. And all those things are good for you.

37:35They're good for you, but nothing can talk to you when you're at your lowest. We had this young woman who was 15 who was really depressed, really stressed, really anxious at school. And it got so bad that she decided she was going to take her life. And she wrote her dad a suicide note, got into the bathtub. Her mom was worried about her, so it downloaded the app onto her phone. She stepped into the bathtub, prepared to end her life, got a little random push notification from the app telling her to pray. she looked up at the sky, which was the ceiling of her bathroom and said, God, look, you know, I don't believe in you, but fine.

38:07Before I go through with this, I'll give you one last shot. Here's your chance. And she presses play and it's meditation on Christ, Christ's passion and bleeding on the cross and the blood that he poured out for us. And she realized in that moment that he bled for her so that she didn't have to bleed that night. She said, I realized he was real. He was in that room. He picked me up out of the bathtub and he healed me. He brought me back to him and I started serving the poor in the inner city and happened for the last three years. She reached out to us when she was 18. And we just, we get this all the time, which is people at, you see it in addiction all the time.

38:38People who have struggled, we see it with people who have struggled with addiction. There's just nothing else but God that can break through that. And maybe you can break through it for a moment, but sustained sobriety. I mean, AA has seen this for, you know, decades, but the hard part is it's a little bit to use a bad analogy. like food if if i were to give you like a giant cake of chocolate and be like hey you can you eat this you'd be like no that that's awful that's disgusting no of course not but if i just give you a little bit each day it's like okay yeah sure and then it just turns into this giant problem so you can see it so clearly when you lose a loved one or something or you're nearing the end of your own life or you're wrestling with something really awful like addiction or whatever it is like when you're at these really low moments, there's only God.

39:25And you know that as a friend, like, you know that as someone whose family members, you've lost people, you've seen death. There's nothing else you can say to that person. You can't say like, well wishes. You can't say like, I'm going to get you some flowers, nothing. It's all just nonsense. The only thing you can do is pray and say, the Lord is with you. Like just, and he is, when you're in those moments, you feel God is with you. He's closer to you than he ever is in those moments. But in the little moments, in the little chocolates each day or the little treats each day. It's you forget it.

39:54The little anxiety, the little stress just builds up and you're like, well, I'm not at my lowest. So like, I don't need to do the 10 minutes of prayer. And it's like, no, but you do. Those are the things that are going to hold you through. Yeah. Well, let me piggyback on this and how I see prayer with this is like, you know, there's a lot of people, sometimes when I take care of patients, sometimes there's just, there's one major deficiency they have, and it's wreaking havoc on their health. Like vitamin D is a big one with some people. I mean, if you're deficient in vitamin D, your immune system's weaker, your bone density, your hormone, that's a pro-hormone, so your hormone signaling, all that's off.

40:24But, you know, same thing, taking one capsule a day of vitamin D for some people, it can be transformed. It's this very similar thing with prayer, right? I think a lot of times people think, okay, in order for me to, you know, see any results, again, I'm just saying like a comment, I got to pray like, you know, so much, so many times a day. But sometimes it takes two minutes. Two minute prayer. You know, Is that something that you've seen through the Hallow app? And by the way, when somebody's in the Hallow app, I mean, are there different lengths of time, like two minutes, five minutes, 30, in terms of what people can do in terms of prayer and meditation?

40:57Yeah, it's the biggest thing that we have seen over the last seven years, seven, eight years working on it. And the biggest thing we try to do really well is people are at very different places in their spiritual journey. And they're at very different places in your life. Maybe you have a bunch of young kids at home. Maybe your job's crazy. Maybe you're working two jobs, who knows? But God works with, like, if you just give them just what you can, he works with the rest. It's the beautiful, again, to go back to scripture, which the vast, I would argue everything on the Hallow app, but the vast majority of everything, when you're praying and you're trying to listen to the Lord's voice, it's just meditating on scripture.

41:30But one of the parables we meditate a lot on is the fishes and the loaves. And it's you just, the five fish and the two loaves. The disciples give, Jesus says, hey, let's go feed this crowd of thousands of people. And the disciples say, all we have is five fish and two loaves. What are you gonna do with that? Jesus says, well, just give it to me. And they give it to him. And then he feeds the whole crowd with it. And that's a miracle. It's great because he can multiply food. Awesome. That's like what most people think about that. But the other piece that we miss is the disciples have to take, we have five fish and two loaves.

42:01That's all we have. The problem is infinitely bigger than this. And yet all I have to do is give it to the Lord still. And then he's gonna do the rest. And it's the same with your heart. And it's the same with prayer, which is if one minute a day is all there is, If two minutes a day is all there is, if three minutes a day is all there is, fine, start there. Just don't give up. Just don't give up. And even if you get up to, hey, I'm doing 30 minutes of prayer a day, and then things go crazy, it's like, well, but just hold on to something. Just try your best to hold on to something, two minutes a day, three minutes a day.

42:29And so we have all these different, I mean, we have a 30 second thing on the app. We have a 60 second thing on the app. But mostly people do like a 10 minute session or so. That's probably the usual. But we have people doing like an hour, two hours, three hours. We have monks and nuns on there all the time. I mean, so there's this incredible depth to it. But just to your point, it's the key is just, hey, just give it a shot. And what he does is, I mean, he's God. He doesn't, all he needs is you to take one step back. It's like the parable of the prodigal son, the God, while he was still a long way off, he didn't make him come all the way home.

43:04He just wanted him to return. He just wanted him to make the turn and say, well, I wanna go back to my dad. I just wanna go back to spending life with my father. And even though in that parable, the son was, he wasn't being all that genuine. He just wanted food. Like it wasn't even real that he wanted to go back to his dad because he loved him. But still the father runs out to you. And so if you just give him 30 seconds, it's like this little door. If you just crack it open for him, he takes the rest. And it's this beautiful what he does in prayers. Man, he's very good. He changes your life. That's so good.

43:34You know, one of the things is I was writing, we were talking about right before the show, I co-wrote a book called The Biblio Diet. it. And, um, and you know, I spent years with my friend, Jordan Rubin writing the book and really going through the entire Bible, looking to see, to see, see what God says about health, you know, what he says about, I mean, and by the way, it's amazing. I mean, the Bible is, you know, the amount of things that says about health farming. I mean, you know, you want to know how to have a great farming, like letting the land rest every seven years or regenerative agriculture.

44:06It's in the Bible. If you are sick with mold issues, the Bible talks about it in Leviticus. You wanna know what to eat for healing GI issues and numerous, it's in the Bible. And so the Bible is the greatest health book. It's the greatest book ever written, but obviously even the greatest health book ever written. People don't think about it like that. But one of the things that as we were writing the book and talking about fasting, that was one of the topics that we get into in the book of how to fast to heal. and we bring in both what the Bible says, also the latest medical science and research.

44:40But one of the things that I got turned on to was, you know, the early church, they would fast every Wednesday or Friday or both days. Entirely. Entirely. Yeah, well, a lot of them, they would fast until, and sometimes do one meal a day around. Some of them did three o 'clock. Some of them, once it started to get dark, so to your point, yes, it still would be fasting all day. And that way, my point there is, is that it was, the Bible talks a lot about fasting. And Jesus, at one point, his disciples are trying to cast out demons. And Jesus is like, yeah, hold up. If you want to get rid of that demon, it takes prayer and fasting.

45:15So talk to me a little bit about fasting. I know that I've done Lent before and I think it is such an incredible practice doing Lent. I've done Daniel fast before. I've done fasting like was done by the early church, taking one day a week. Typically for me, It was Wednesday and fasting for that day. And I've seen great fruits in my life from fasting. And medically, you activate something called autophagy, where your body is actually like eating itself, but in a good way to clear out anything that's damaged, anything unhealthy, including cancer cells. So I'm a huge fan of fasting. I know you are too.

45:52So talk to me a little bit about sort of pairing fasting with prayer and Lent as well. Yeah, they have to go together, which is, it's one of the things that we miss so much in our world today. And it's sad because you read scripture and they talk about fasting and they just talk about it as though they assume everyone knows what you're talking about. Like the Jesus just references, well, they will fast when I'm gone. He doesn't specify like what is happening because everybody's fasting regularly. That was just the, that was just what they did. And especially in the early church, you didn't like prescribe, okay, on Wednesday, we're going to have one, you can eat a thousand calories and you're going to have one meal and half a meal or whatever it was, they were intense fasts.

46:29It was these, and all of Lent was a really intense fast for many monks. And I know a bunch of monks who have fasted for 40 days during Lent. Kevin James actually did a 40 day Lenten fast, like two years ago. The, um, his joke is he had, he had enough fuel to burn for the, for the 40 days, but the, but fasting is such an important part. I think it's a beautiful part of health. So I've noticed it in my own life. Like, yeah, it's just, it cleans you. It helps you to like grow in discipline. It helps you to detach from your need for food. It helps you to see food in a lot healthier light. But mostly for me, you're the health guy, so you can give the wisdom on the health stuff, doctor.

47:08But for me, it's a spiritual thing, which is a beautiful, it's a beautiful spiritual practice. And you're right, in Mark, the disciples do try to cast out a demon and they can't. And they had been casting out a bunch of demons before. Jesus had sent them out and all the demons obeyed them and this demon did not. And they said, Jesus, why can't we cast this demon out? And he said, this kind can only come out through prayer and fasting, which it's also funny because in some Bible translations, they remove the words and fasting, which is like, which is crazy. But so sometimes it just says, this kind can only come out through prayer.

47:38So you have to check your Bible translation. Most of the time they put it in the footnote, which is crazy, but they put it in the footnote that says, sometimes this is interpreted as and fasting, which it is. It just originally was written as fasting, but the fasting is this beautiful. Okay. So spiritually, what you try to do with prayer, there's this really beautiful prayer. And what we try to do in Lent, Lent, there's three pillars of Lent. There's prayer, fasting, and then almsgiving, which is charity and good works and giving of your time and treasure. And what you try to do in prayer, really what you try to do in the spiritual life, we have this beautiful prayer that we're going through in this Lenten challenge is just Lord, empty me, fill me, use me, empty me, fill me, use me, empty me, Fill me, use me.

48:18And that's like the whole thing. That's the whole game, which is empty me. God wants to come into you, but you've got a lot of crap in there. You've got a lot of stuff piled up in the way. And so you've got to clear it out. He can't come in if he doesn't share. He's a jealous God. He doesn't share. He wants your whole heart. And so you've got to clear out all this other stuff. You've got to make space for him. He can't come into this crowded, noisy, and he has to come in to a place where there's space. And so you have to make, even if it's just a little bit of space, you have to make space. and you have all these attachments to the world, like the younger son that are pulling you away from God.

48:50And so you have to disconnect from those. You have to detach from those is the word that you would use in the spiritual life, which takes discipline. That can be social media. It can be overeating. It can be gossip. It can be judgment. It can be whatever it is that is pulling you away from God that you know you shouldn't be doing. And if you sit down for like five minutes and you're just like, God, what should I not have in my life right now? It's, you know it within like 30 seconds. It's like, okay, those two things. Like, yeah, I know those two things. All right. So you have to empty yourself of that and then fill me.

49:19He then, it's not just empty. He doesn't just want you to be some, like I'm gonna sit and meditate and be empty of everything. He wants to fill you with his love and then he wants to use you for his goodness. There's this, one of the great saints from a contemplative meditative tradition, it's St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Those are two, they're called like the mystic saints. And they have written these incredible books on prayer and like way deeper into prayer than I, well, hopefully, maybe by the end of my life, the Lord will bring me there, but like infinitely deeper than I am in prayer right now.

49:50Just like beautiful meditation. They're where the two hours comes from. They're Carmelites. That's probably what your friend was talking about, but they spend two hours in prayer at a minimum every day. It's this beautiful journey of spiritual life. And St. Teresa of Avila, who was the first, and then John of the Cross came after her, but wrote this a lot about fasting, which was, she has these beautiful quotes. Those who are not detached from visible things cannot be attached to invisible ones. And then she has this other one, which was, I tried so long to harmonize these two things, which are so contrary to one another, which is the spiritual life and sensory joys.

50:25And what I would do is I would try to shut myself within myself, which was her practice of trying to meditate and pray. But what she would do is she would shut herself within a thousand vanities, is what she said. It's a beautiful line. You would shut yourself within a thousand vanities, which all things are vanity, all is vanity, which is this. And so then what she learned from that is I have to detach from these sensory things. I have to detach from the world, which can sound really intense. And Christian life is really intense. And John on the cross goes even further. He says his prayer every day was to desire not what is easiest, but that which is most difficult, not that which is most pleasurable, but that which is least, that which is harshest, which is like to ask God for the hardest things.

51:05That would be, I can't do that. But it's to try to completely and totally disconnect from the world. And St. Paul says this a lot too. The flesh and the spirit are at war. You know, it's the spirit has to be the ruler. But often, so often in our lives, the flesh is. And so what we learn in this fasting is how to detach from these things. But if you actually do it and you fast, you know, for like a day, what you'll see at what I feel, one, it's so much easier to enter into prayer. There's just this, like if you sit, it takes me like 10, 15 minutes to actually really enter into prayer if I'm just sitting and I'm fed and I'm normal.

51:41But if I'm fasting, I can do it like 30 seconds. I just sit there and there's just, I'm just closer to the other side than I was before. And the other thing is, you know what meekness is. And that's what Jesus says, I'm meek and humble of heart, hear me. I'm meek and humble of heart, follow me. This meekness, which is something that we just don't ever talk about in our regular life because we're all supposed to be big and strong and independent and prideful and whatever. But this meekness is what does it mean to be meek? And when you're fasting, you just feel this surrender. It's just like, oh, well, maybe I'm a little lower energy, but I still can do all the things I need to do.

52:18But I just feel this joy and this freedom that I didn't have before. Yeah. You know, when I've done fast, especially longer ones, I did a 21-day Daniel fast. But the way I did it was the only thing I ate was vegetables and fruit. And that was it. Tense. No beans? Huh? No beans. No. And so that was all I did. And I felt such a sense of need. Like I need food, but also I need God. Like I, you know, I just felt this sense of, wow, like I'm a person who, it was humbling. I mean, that's what I would say. It felt very, it's felt very, very humbling when I've done longer fasts. Like I have a, you know, the other thing that I did when I was on this fast, I didn't eat any salt.

53:04So it was just fruits and vegetables. And one of the things I realized too, like if you're eating just a plain steamed vegetable and it doesn't have salt. It's gross. Yeah, exactly. It's gross. It does. No, like salt brings, so even though, you know, the Bible verse is about salt, like it spoke to me in a whole new way in terms of where to be a salt of the earth and sort of bring a richness and a flavor. And flavors, they're impactful. So it calls me to really even read scripture in a different way when I was fasting. And so there's so much powerful there. The other thing I love about Lent is the fasting, in Daniel fasts, there's fasting of food, but also there's fasting of those, to your point, those worldly connections, right?

53:47So fasting from your cell phone, You know, thinking about what are those things that are most pulling you away from God? I mean, part of the thing there is preparing. You know, obviously with Lent, there's that connection to at the end, Pentecost. Yeah. Right? And God sending his Holy Spirit to fill you and lead you. And preparing yourself, making yourself a holy vessel, preparing for, you know, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So I, anyways, I love fasting. I love that's something that you guys, you know, encourage. encourage the Lenten challenge we do on the app. So Mark and Chris lead these fasting Fridays challenges every week where you fast from a different thing.

54:25And then we journey through this kind of spiritual journey that's meditating on scripture and some beautiful books and just how the Lord is calling us to deepen our relationship with him. But the theme, the whole thing kicks off with, amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. And that's like, Jesus says that actually all the time. If you really listen, you pick up your cross and follow me unless you die to this world. And it's so consistent and it is his story also, which is Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter.

54:59And then you're right at the end of the Easter season, you have Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes. And so it's this 40 days leading up to Easter and what happens at Easter? Well, Holy Week, Good Friday, he's killed. He dies. He dies voluntarily for us. And then he rises again. And that's like, if you were to say, okay, hey, tell me the gospel. Jesus died and he rose again. That's it. Like Jesus died for us and he rose again. And that is what we're called to do in our hearts, which is to die to ourselves so that Christ can live within us. And that's what we do, are called to do and to prepare to do.

55:31It takes us a lot longer than, you know, just the Holy Week to do it. But through this Lent is to try to die so that God can live within us. And one of the really beautiful ways that you do that is through fasting. And then he sees that. And it's again, one of those things where it's like, like, ah, Lord, I, and what we also fail to do so often is we try to do it as like, oh, I'm going to fast because I'm a big deal. Like, you know, I can, I can do the Daniel fast. I can fast for seven days. I can do the Kevin James 40 day fast. I can, cause I'm awesome. I'm super. And that's just pride. And what you do once you see when you're really fast is like, oh no, I can't do this.

56:02Like, that's actually really hard. And then you just say, God, I can't, you know, if you want to do this, you're going to have to do it. And then he does. And it's this beautiful opportunity for humility, which is like, okay, yeah, you're dying to yourself, both your attachments, but also your pride and letting me come into your heart. And that's what I want for you this month. That's what I want for your life is to let me in so that it's not you. It's not you trying to carry all these things. It's me. That's so good. It's so good. If people are, you know, I was, Michael Nils was on the show and we were having this conversation around spiritual practices and rituals.

56:37When you think about the spiritual practices that have most impacted your life, I love a ranking order here, okay? So if you're like, these are the top five that have changed who you are, impacted you positively, you see impacting others, what are those top five spiritual practices in ranking order? Okay, I'm gonna answer this a few ways because that's a very difficult question. The one that matters most is, the practices implies like daily, but I'm gonna say a couple things before that. Baptism is the most important and I was baptized as a kid. You don't like recognize it, but once you understand what happened in that moment, you're made a child of God.

57:12everything changes when you're baptized. It's a beautiful thing. Marriage, second most important, changes everything. You become one with someone else. And that's the main way that you learn how to die to yourself is with the wife, which is beautiful. But also how you learn how to love and like life comes from it. It's this beautiful, beautiful thing. But for me, okay, so I'm Catholic. So for me, the mass, which is receiving the Eucharist and praying with God's word is, I do it every day. And it's, oh, it's just like, it's the medicine. I need it. It gives me like strength. It's my armor. It's everything.

57:44Everything comes from that. Confession is another beautiful way to realize your humility and to ask God for his forgiveness. But then in terms of prayer, which all those things are prayer in a way, but in terms of prayer, for me, the two big ones were, I had the spiritual director who said, you got to do three things every day and everything else flows from that. You have to do 20 minutes of silence, a daily rosary, and daily mass. And the 20 minutes of silence has been the most impactful, but all three have been really beautiful. The rosary is another way to, I like it at the end of the day, it's another way to like really collect yourself after everything is crazy.

58:26I don't think everybody probably knows that is not Catholic. Yeah. What the rosary is. Can you? Yes, please. Okay, so we have it on the app. So if you don't know how to do a rosary, you can just look it up on the app. Mark does it in like 12 minutes, which is actually quite stressful because he's like, hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. But it's usually takes like 15 minutes or so, but often you'll have beads with you. And so what it is, is a series of, um, repeated prayers. You do the, our father and then the hail Mary 10 times, which both are, our, our father is the perfect prayer taken from scripture that the Lord gives us obviously.

59:00And then the hail Mary is taken from when the angel shows up and says, hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. And, um, Hail Mary full of grace, when he first appears to Mary to tell her that she is going to bear the child of God. So those two prayers, you repeat, you do the Our Father and then the Hail Mary 10 times, the Our Father and Hail Mary 10 times, you do that five times. So each one's called a decade, you do that five times, it's five decades. You have the little beads. Again, it's confusing, the like how, which is why it's a lot easier on the Hallow app. But the key of it is that in each decade, you meditate on a mystery of scripture.

59:34So you meditate on something that has happened in scripture. And so there's different sets of these mysteries. There's the joyful ones, which are mostly surrounding Jesus's birth. And so you meditate on the angel appearing to Mary and telling her that she's going to be the mother of God. You meditate on the nativity, Jesus being born to Mary and Joseph. You meditate on the early days of Jesus's life. There's the sorrowful ones where Jesus is killed. And so you meditate on the passion, You meditate on the crucifixion. And then there's the glorious ones where he rose again. And there's luminous ones and all these different things.

1:00:04But the glorious ones is when he rose again. So you meditate on, what you try to do is spend as much time in these stories of scripture as you can. And so you'll hear, you'll say, okay, for this decade, I'm going to meditate on the resurrection of Jesus. And then you pray the Our Father and you pray the 10 Hail Marys. But what those Hail Marys do, and this is especially helpful for anybody when you sit down and pray for 10, 20 minutes of silence and your mind is just going all over the place and you're just thinking about a thousand other things, the rosary can be a great way to just say, okay, I'm just going to do the Hail Mary full of grace.

1:00:34The Lord is with thee. It takes a little bit to memorize it, two seconds. If you do it on the Hallow app, you don't have to memorize it. You go along with us, but it just kind of, it's like when you're driving and you can think a lot better, you know, or you're like in a shower and you think a lot better. Like your mind is just like 5 % engaged. So then the rest of it can, you're not busy and stressed. You're actually able to focus. the rosary gives you that like structure so that you're able then to be, to enter into the mystery of the resurrection, to try to spend as much time with the passion or with the nativity, which are, you know, Jesus being born or Jesus being killed or Jesus rising again, and just sit at the foot of the cross and just be with Jesus at the foot of the cross or just sit with Mary Magdalene as she recognizes the Lord risen from the dead for the first time.

1:01:12So it's this beautiful prayer. I love it at the end of the day. And then 20 minutes of silence, which usually we have a bunch of different things on the app that structure this, but usually is in scripture. Those two things for me have been like, ah, they're just like everything then comes from them. And it's also, health is actually a really great analogy for the spiritual life because it's a good habit. You're trying to build it. And it's really hard at the beginning because you're like, you've got all these addictions to food, you know? So you're like, you really want your Doritos or your chocolate or whatever.

1:01:40It's really hard at the beginning. But once you get into it, you actually start to desire clean eating. That's right. And you start to actually feel repulsed by the other stuff. You're like, oh, like McDonald's, like the burger. Yeah, big man. I couldn't even imagine. But you actually do like, you start to want it. And so your day starts to become like, man, if I don't get that, I need that run or I need that whatever. But for me, it's the silence. I need that silence. So anyway, those are my big ones. You know, it's in a similar way. Like I have had my best, I don't want to say this, best ideas for like something I should doing my family or business or anything during, you know, when I go to church, we do a praise and worship and it's like 30 minutes.

1:02:24I mean, sometimes I feel bad. Sometimes I'm like, you know, I'm in their praise and worship and things come to me and I'm like, okay, I need to be praising and worshiping. I know, but you want to write it down. Exactly. And I'm taking notes furiously and I go back to praise and worship. And so I've definitely experienced that during that time. And then also same during prayer, it's the other time. It's like prayer and meditation. It's like, wow. I mean, And God's thoughts are better than my thoughts. Certainly, the faith are above your ways. So powerful. All right, so this has came to me. I would love to hear from you.

1:02:52So I'm Protestant, but I really respect and love the Catholic faith. In fact, one constant conversation I have with all the Catholics that come on is there, I really wish that there were elements of Catholicism that Protestants would practice, like confessing. And whether that's more confessing to the Lord or confessing to a priest or a pastor, I think that is something that Protestants should be doing a lot more. And a lot of the ritual habits, I think that's something we should be doing a lot more. And all that being said, so I have a lot of Catholics I follow and listen to and absolutely love.

1:03:31And I know, I think most of the people I'm going to say now, you are familiar with. And I'd love for you to describe something you love about them in one word. Oh, that'll be fun. Okay. Bishop Barron. Wisdom. There you go. That's good. Mike Schmidt. Art. Lila Rose. Courage. Michael Knowles. Intellect. Mark Wahlberg.

1:04:03Discipline. There's a lot there, but discipline. That's good. That's great. Wow. I mean, And Michael Knowles, that had to be intelligent. I'll tell you when he was on the show. He's a funny guy too. I'll tell you this. When he was on the show, I was like, I have never heard anybody with this level of vocabulary. Oh, it's insane. It's like talking to Thomas Gwinn. Yeah. And he talks as though he's reading from a literary book in class. It's like, how are you doing that? Yeah. But no, it's so beautiful. And one thing I will throw out, I'm Catholic. I love being Catholic. we have on Hallow what we try to do for Hallow is build a place where anybody who's interested in a relationship with Jesus can come and grow closer to the Lord well you mentioned Chris Pratt there's a lot of Protestants on Hallow we have a lot of folks on there so about half of the folks now coming into the app are Protestant or non-denominational or non-Catholic Christians and then half are Catholic so it's a very even split and again all we try to do is just meditate on God's word and most of that we can agree on and if you want to skip the rosary you can skip the rosary again I think it's great you should try it.

1:05:06And there's a lot of Protestants actually who love the rosary. But yeah, all we try to do is meditate on God's word and to be a place where we can all grow closer to Jesus. That's so good. Well, thanks so much for coming on today. Oh, praise the Lord. Thanks for having me. This is amazing. I love what you're up to. And I love that. Again, you've had so many impacted people so positively. We know that prayer, we're called to pray. We're called to meditate. And these practices literally change who we are. They bring us closer to Christ. and so anyways, I just, and the other thing that I love too is it could take five minutes.

1:05:39You know, to your point, most people just do 10 minutes and what that can do for who we become, becoming more like Christ, growing closer to Christ is so powerful. So thanks so much for what you do. Let people know, obviously, Halo app is the thing you can go get the app, download the app, start a practice. It could be one minute a day to open the door to change your life. Oh, that was a great pitch. I don't think I can do better than that. But thank you for, it takes a lot of, I love doing these conversations and with folks like you who have platforms of their own or expertise of their own in health or whatever it is to be willing to step out and share what the Lord has done from them and for them and invite other people to that.

1:06:21It takes a lot of courage that people don't often appreciate. And it's a beautiful thing. It's the real important work of Christians is to reach out through different folks, but not just at church, but to reach out to people who, especially people maybe if you haven't prayed in 10, 20 years, to give it a chance. Just give the Lord two, three minutes. So I appreciate you doing that with your career. It's beautiful. Well, thanks so much for the encouraging words, and thanks for coming on today. I want to encourage everybody to go check out the Holo app and just get started with prayer and meditation on that app.

1:06:50Again, just a couple minutes a day can radically change your life, change your faith. I also want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Ack Show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. Also, don't forget to subscribe and share. The number one thing you can do to support the show is to become a subscriber. It allows it to show up on your feed more. It allows me to bring in more high-profile guests here, like Alex, who came on today.

1:07:21And also, don't forget to share. There are millions and millions of people who need God in their life and who could benefit from prayer, from fasting, from meditation. So thanks so much for sharing this as well today. And we'll see you on the next episode.

1:07:39Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.