Episode 1415: Interview with Dr. David Chotka About his Books on Prayer

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1415 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Hi, my name is Rev. Dr. David Chotka, and I just want to challenge you to be a steward, to invest in yourself, to invest in others, to develop your influence, to impact the world by using your time, your talent, your treasures, to live out your calling, because that's what stewardship is.

[00:00:24] Having the ability to find your relationship with God in prayer and faith is the key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer. May God bless.

[00:00:44] The desire that God has to speak to you is bigger than your desire to hear. It might be a big surprise to you. But he wants you to discover that his mind, actually Jesus says it in the middle of John's gospel. My sheep hear my voice. Now there are dumb sheep and there are smart sheep. [00:01:00] It doesn't say only intelligent sheep hear.

[00:01:03] It doesn't say only the trained sheep hear. It says sheep hear.

[00:01:08] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:39] In today's podcast episode, I interview Reverend Dr. David Chotka. I asked David to share why prayer is so important and why it's so hard for us. I also asked David to talk about how he came to his current beliefs about prayer and about stewardship and David also shares with you How his faith journey has influenced his prayer journey.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] I've got a new book coming out called inspired living Assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time your talent and your treasures You can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over at inspired stewardship comm inspired living That's InspiredStewardship. com, Inspired Living.

[00:02:24] Rev. Dr. David Chotka is the founder and director of Spirit Equip Ministries, a transdenominational equipping ministry focused on developing spiritual disciplines. He is also the chair of the Alliance Pray Team, a ministry developed by the General Assembly of the C and MA Canada to serve as a catalyst to developing prayer equipping resources, and leading events across the movement and beyond.

[00:02:48] In addition, David has served as the Canadian Director of the College of Prayer, Canada, a transdenominational ministry dedicated to working with every stream of the Lord's Church to deepen ministries of intercession. [00:03:00] Dr. David has led many prayer, deeper life events in differing contexts, including Sacramento, Evangelical and charismatic churches and transdenominational gatherings of leaders in Canada, in

[00:03:12] the

[00:03:12] Scott Maderer: U.

[00:03:12] S., and across Europe, Australia, Japan, as well as in various nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. He has studied many different forms of denominational and transdenominational forms of worship and sacrament, and he's been mentored by many different leaders from across several denominations.

[00:03:35] He's also collected four degrees of various types in theology and spirituality, and serves as an adjunct instructor in the Pathways School for Ministry. Welcome to the show, David.

[00:03:47] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Thank you, my friend. It's good to be here. And how's the weather in Texas? Actually, it's,

[00:03:51] Scott Maderer: it's warm right now.

[00:03:53] We're when we're recording this, it is winter time. It's February in Texas, which means it's about 64 [00:04:00] degrees today. So we we had our week of winter about a week ago, and I think we're going to have a couple of more days at the end of this week. But

[00:04:07] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: I'm a Canadian, I'm a Canadian 64 degrees.

[00:04:09] That's nice.

[00:04:12] Scott Maderer: Given where you're at. I'm sure 64 degrees is a nice spring day.

[00:04:17] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: That is actually. And today, strangely enough, it's February. Usually it's 20 and right now it's about 60 and that never happens in this part of the

[00:04:27] Scott Maderer: world. There you go.

[00:04:29] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: It must be because I'm on the Inspired Stewardship. I'm here with you, so you've had an influence on the weather.

[00:04:34] Yeah,

[00:04:35] Scott Maderer: probably not. Okay, so David, we shared a little bit of the intro about and you've done a lot of different things over the years, and I always laughedly tell People that I think intros and bios are always like the Instagram photos of our life we make sure that we frame it so that the dirty laundry is not showing up in the background or the other, the bumpy part of the road isn't showing whenever we share our bio, [00:05:00] because that's what we're sharing is the highlights the top, can you talk a little bit more about what wasn't in the bio, the journey, the rest of the journey, what's brought you to this point of putting out the books you're putting and doing what you're doing today as an instructor and other things?

[00:05:19] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Actually, there's a story that impacts stewardship and and what you're talking about. At the beginning of my journey, I became a believer. I was the first believer in my home. I was 16, 17, something like that. And I didn't know there was a Genesis or a Malachi or a Revelation. I had no idea where those books were in the Bible at all, because I'd never read the book.

[00:05:39] I didn't know anything about it. But in the course of time, I began to become a student of the Bible. And then here's what happened. I wound up going to a bunch of studies with different denominational traditions all the way through. So I would go to my Sunday morning service at the United Church. And then the evening I would go to somebody else's prayer and praise and then on Tuesdays, I went to an inner varsity Bible study with all kinds of different [00:06:00] denominational guys there.

[00:06:01] And there was everybody from brethren to Pentecostal, to Baptist, to Presbyterian, to everything is that the mix was all there because all of us were Christians trying to figure out how to live in a secular institution and let our faith shine. Then on Thursday I went to a prayer meeting, and then Thursday night I went to a Brethren Bible study, and on Friday night I went to a prayer and faith meeting.

[00:06:18] I was hungry for the Bible, and that, that pattern lasted for years. But there was a moment, a defining moment, that changed the way I understood hearing the voice of Jesus, and how I understood stewardship, and the two of them intersected. So I think if I was to say what it is that, that has defined my life, it's that God wants to speak to us more than we want to speak to Him.

[00:06:41] I'm serious. The bottom line here is we're always whining about how we can't hear God or something like this, but it's because we've not been trained to pay attention to that. And all through my days as somebody who was a novice believer and right on through until I became a mature Christian, I don't know if I'm there.

[00:06:58] Yeah. [00:07:00] But bottom line

[00:07:01] Scott Maderer: was it's a journey, not a destination. Yes,

[00:07:03] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: yes, absolutely right. And I still think in heaven, we're going to keep becoming, I think there's some, it's just not right to stop growing anyway. I think part of the heaven thing is that, but getting back to this, there was this moment where I had to learn to give.

[00:07:17] And I didn't know how, and nobody trained me, and I was a tightwad cheapskate. Pull up your bootstraps and save your lunch money for a savings bond. That's the kind of thing I was doing. Anyway, there was a moment where, you know, new Christian, I'm bumping along, and I go to the Tuesday Bible study.

[00:07:36] And it's a book, and it's on tithing. And my first response on that was, I have to eat. God doesn't have to eat. What's the issue here? Why does it need my money? So I endured the Tuesday and I said that very thing to myself. And then I went to the prayer meeting and somebody mentioned the fact that they were praying about giving their money.

[00:07:59] And I thought, Oh [00:08:00] boy, I don't want to do this. Then I went Thursday night to the Brethren Bible study and I was bothered by this crazy thing. There had also been a Friday Night Prayer and Praise where people had testified about how they practiced giving, and how it was a blessing to them, and I just didn't buy that!

[00:08:14] The question in my head was this eating thing. So I go to this Bible study, I'm sitting in somebody's living room, and he pulls out His, our next Bible study, and it was on stewardship. It was on giving, it was on tithing. And so I thought, oh brother, here we go again, right? I so the guy in a small group, you can't escape, they look you in the eye and they ask you these questions.

[00:08:34] And so he said, are you practicing the tithes? I said, no. And he said, what are you going to do? Eat God's money? That's the phrase. He used the phrase. So that led to an in depth conversation. And you got to know about this guy. He was what you call the verified teacher. He would not answer a question unless I looked up the text and then he'd make me read the text and answer the question from the text.

[00:08:56] And so I said to him where is this in the Bible? He said take a look, get [00:09:00] yourself a concordances on the shelf over there. So I walked over, I grabbed one of these things. Now we have phones to do that, but we had paper concordances. So I flipped through and I found tithing. It was actually, it was a knaves topical Bible and then it had all these scriptures.

[00:09:13] So I looked it up and I said what does that mean? He said read it. And it was about tithing and giving the first 10 percent and so on and so forth. Anyway, when we had this deep conversation, and then I went back to the prayer and praise and that was Thursday, went back to the prayer and praise on Friday.

[00:09:28] And once again, three people got up and testified about tithing. Brother, this is crazy. Now, I was a broke student teaching music lessons on the weekend. So there wasn't a lot of money in my hand, but I had an envelope. And so I was now convicted. There were three or four of these things in a row. I think it was by the third one that I realized I had to do something.

[00:09:46] Took an envelope, put the put 10 percent in. And I didn't know about the storehouse. I didn't know about where I should give it. I just put the money in the envelope. And I don't know, three weeks later, I had about 120 bucks in there, [00:10:00] and it's not much, but it was something. And of course, in those days, 120 bucks was a lot of money.

[00:10:04] For me, it was a lot of money. For a

[00:10:05] Scott Maderer: broke college student, 120 bucks is always a lot of money.

[00:10:09] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Yeah, and I was making just enough to pay for the to drive to the music lesson. Anyway, the point was, I don't need money. So there was a couple of people in that Thursday prayer meeting. who wanted to go overseas.

[00:10:20] Their names were Derek and Deb. I now have their permission to tell the story. And so anyway, they, I was, I thought to myself, I guess I better give this money away. And 120 bucks in the fund. So I knelt beside my bed and I said to God I should get, I probably should give this money away. Who should I give it to?

[00:10:39] And as soon as my knees hit the carpet, I just immediately thought of Derek and Deb, who wanted to go overseas and serve in Southeast Asia. And I know they were broke students too. We're all broke together. We've done broke things all the time play party games or something because you have no money to go and get yourself a cup of coffee down the street.

[00:10:57] Anyway I, I said, okay, Lord, [00:11:00] how much should I give him the whole thing? And I didn't feel settled. So I picked the number out of the air. I picked 110 bucks and the only way I can describe what happened next, and this is the moment that changed me forever, was that I had an interior sensation of, how do I say this, a rapid diminishing of presence and peace inside me.

[00:11:19] It was almost like a moderate punch in the stomach, but then an encouragement to try again. And I don't, I think it was cheapskate David. I went down instead of going up. So I went down a buck, I said 109 and it felt more peaceful. And then I said this. And as soon as I said it, I leaped off from my prayer place and I said yes, I have to give that money to Derek and Deb.

[00:11:44] So I got another envelope. I put 108 in cash in the envelope. It was a Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon, and that detail is very important. Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon, I had this moment. And then it was about quarter after four, I put the money in the [00:12:00] envelope. I had to help in my parents restaurant, we had a diner, and I had to do the cleanup chores.

[00:12:04] And so I finished the cleanup chores, and then I went for a walk, and Derek and Deb lived about three blocks from my home, because we were not too far in proximity. So I walked down, and here's what I did. It was sunset and their porch light was burned out. I didn't want to be seen. And I had put a scripture verse in there.

[00:12:23] I can do all things through the one about my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus. So I put that scripture there. I put their names on the front cover and I waited until that was clear. Nobody would see me. And I snuck up and I lifted the mailbox and I put, and then I ran away because I didn't want to see them.

[00:12:40] And then two weeks

[00:12:42] Scott Maderer: later. I got really curious. Ding dong dash to giving up

[00:12:47] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: here in Canada. We call that Nikki nine doors, right? So anyway, I was curious. Now we're friends, we've done things together and I liked walking. I had a dog too, and it was going for it. So I just decided I want to find [00:13:00] out what happened, but I didn't want to knock on the door and ask.

[00:13:02] So I was walking up and down the street with my dog. Because, and I was doing it deliberately so they'd see me and I knew they were home. And Derek sticks his head out the door and says Dave, come on over here. I said, what is it? He said, our God is supplying all our needs according to his riches and glory.

[00:13:15] He quoted the scripture verse I put in that envelope. And so I went into the living room and I said what are you talking about? And I was really feeling how to, how it's the word I'm looking for obnoxiously I don't know my nose. Proud of yourself? Exactly. But I wasn't going to say anything.

[00:13:31] So here's what happened. He said, Two weeks ago, on Friday, at four o'clock in the afternoon, my wife and I realized that I had to take a course before I could go overseas, and the course was only going to be offered in a two year cycle. It was a six week summer spring evening course, and I had to take the course or I wouldn't get my BA.

[00:13:52] I said, oh, okay, and he said what was the problem? He said it was Friday. My parents and my wife's parents were both out of the [00:14:00] country and we had enough money in the bank. We had enough food in the fridge and gas in the car, but we only had 50. And the price of the course was 158.

[00:14:14] And so on Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon, the two of us said, Lord, would you please raise up somebody to give us 108 in cash? And it was Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon when I got that downloaded about the exact number. Anyway, there's some hilarious things that are attached to it. They spent the weekend not knowing the money was in the mailbox.

[00:14:35] Because it was Friday, Saturday is no mail, Sunday is no mail. And they wrestled in prayer because they needed the course. They went outside, no one out there was. Anyway, the bottom line is. It was the exactness of the communication with people who weren't related to me and who hadn't told me and I was praying about how I should use my resources and they needed those resources and here's what came out of that.

[00:14:59] [00:15:00] Suddenly I believed, number one, God could speak. Number two, I could actually get it right. And we're talking exact. We're not just talking. We're talking. And that that God's desire to communicate with me was even more profoundly powerful than my desire to hear. And he wanted to guide.

[00:15:22] So the, all of that clustered together in that little moment with 108 bucks in cash. So I don't know if that's, I think that starts the conversation. Absolutely.

[00:15:29] Scott Maderer: So let me. I want to circle back to something you said at the beginning and then you alluded to it again there at the end, which is that idea that as Christians again, I think most of us are told told to give we're told pray.

[00:15:48] But with about as much instruction in context that's it. That's the context right there. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times we and again, I'm not saying there's anything [00:16:00] wrong with this, but a lot of times our prayer tends to be. a dialogue at God and again, that's not a good or bad.

[00:16:07] That's not a value. It's just an observation. This tends to be what I do first, at least, is talk at God. Yeah. For a long time. Yes.

[00:16:18] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Yeah. Let me get back to this because here's the point. You're absolutely right. Nobody trained me to pray. Nope. I know I was a new believer and nobody told me I could do this.

[00:16:26] Nobody gave me a resource. Nobody set me down and said, Oh, by the way, you got to learn this. And so that's the burden of what I'm doing actually. So I founded an organization called Spirit Equip to equip people in spiritual disciplines. That's what I do. And it has entirely to do with what you just said, because it was like a fish out of water or swimming upstream or whatever phrase you want to use.

[00:16:45] I had not a clue about how to pray. And you go to one of these meetings. And one of these elders would get up and he'd pray this long thing. He was showing off! Had nothing to do with

[00:16:56] Scott Maderer: engagement. I actually had the pleasure in college [00:17:00] of going to dinner with a gentleman who was a very well respected prayer.

[00:17:06] Warrior he was well known for his prayer life and he had spoken at the university. And so I was part of the organization that had actually hosted him. And we got to take him out to dinner that evening. And so there's about 20 of us sitting around the table and him, and of course you've got this well respected Bible scholar, prayer warrior, someone like, so before the meal, what do you do?

[00:17:30] You say, Hey, would you mind praying over the meal? It's like token. If there's a pastor in the room, they have to pray over the meal. I think it's, I'm pretty sure it's part of the vows that y'all take during ordination. Oh

[00:17:42] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Every time,

[00:17:46] Scott Maderer: I actually like doing it cause I'm a lay servant in the Methodist church and I like calling on.

[00:17:51] The not pastor in the room to say the prayer just to watch the person go, wait, why'd you call on me? There's a pastor right over there. But [00:18:00] anyway, because we all should be able to do it. But especially if we're trained as lay people that, that should be able to do it.

[00:18:05] But it, we asked this gentleman to pray and he actually started the prayer with so he sits there and he takes a breath and he goes, Hey God, how you doing? It's me. And it's we're all looking around going, wait, this isn't a kind of prayer that we're used to this doesn't sound like the formal prayer.

[00:18:25] And he went on from there. And it was just like having a conversation with a friend. And that was my first introduction to this idea of, wait a minute, it's not me. It's not me just talking to God. There's also meant to be a relationship or a conversation as well. Again, not that there's anything wrong with talking to God, cause we do that a lot, but that conversation unpack that a little bit.

[00:18:52] Well,

[00:18:52] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: so yeah, so I've written a book called Hey, are you there? It's me, God. The title is almost like what you just described. [00:19:00] Yeah. How to listen, test and know when God speaks that came out in 2022. And Jack Canfield, the storyteller guy he wrote the foreword to that. At any rate, the bottom line is I personally believe that's completely correct.

[00:19:12] That there's something most people don't know about Jesus prayer life. And this is an astonishing thing that I tripped over when I went to seminary. There was a great big famous scholar by the name of Yoshin Yeremias who looked at every Jewish prayer all through the history.

[00:19:28] He went to the Mishnah and the Talmud and the rabbis and the Targums and all this stuff. He looked at all of it. He discovered until Jesus came, not one Jew ever called dad, called Jesus, called God, dad, not one. He was the first in human history to do that. And he got all these texts he examined.

[00:19:46] And it's the very same kind of thing as dad says, Hey, how you doing? Let's have a chat. So again, it's the same thing. Nobody trains us to pay attention to the signals that God sends down to recognize when he's speaking the big [00:20:00] one. And this happened in that encounter. I just told you about the big one is an increase of presence.

[00:20:05] And it's marked off by three things that I always summarize this with Romans 14, 17. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, and put that aside because it's a long issue, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, which means those three things comprise the content of what it means to be a servant of King Jesus.

[00:20:27] Okay. So righteousness is a sweet walk with the Lord. And if something distracts you from that's a bad idea. Peace is internal serenity, despite external circumstance. And joy is internal celebration, regardless of what you're dealing with. And the apostle Paul had. One ridiculous mess after another.

[00:20:49] All of his work was dealing with disaster.

[00:20:52] Scott Maderer: Or at least that's all that's captured. We don't hear about any of the good stuff.

[00:20:56] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Yeah, maybe he'd laugh from time to time. I [00:21:00] love to laugh. Anyway, the point is as you look at that means that if those three identity markers are missing, something's wrong.

[00:21:07] And if those three identity markers are constant, Things are pretty good. And if those identity markers are growing large all in a moment when you're trying to make a decision, that's a signal. And so I developed that into 25 different things to 25 different methods of being able to hear the voice.

[00:21:25] And at the end of that particular book, I have a process. Actually, I worked it out with a Methodist guy, a guy named Danny Morris. I don't know if Danny or not. Danny was the guy, was like one of the prayer guys in the United Methodist Church. And I met him through a series of delightful circumstances, but he wrote a book called Discerning God's Will Together.

[00:21:43] And that was the very first book on, on communal discernment not on an individual hearing. First one in human history. 1997! 2000 years of Christian history. He's the first guy to write a book on listening to the voice together. There's something wrong with that, which means nobody's trained for this.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] They just don't do that. So the bottom line here is, if we don't train people to pay attention to the signal, they won't know how. We have driver instruction for drivers. We have writing instruction for learners. We have music instruction for people who want to become musicians. We need prayer instruction for people who need to learn to pray.

[00:22:23] And we need hearing the voice instruction for people who want to discover they're being guided. We need prayer for healing instruction for people who don't need to know how to do that when their friend is in the hospital and sick, dying of cancer. And sometimes they're going to be healed. Sometimes they're going to die.

[00:22:37] But surely we can pray for their consolation, but none of this was trained. I went to seminary and they taught me church history. They taught me the pastoral care. They taught me new Testament studies. They did that. They asked me systematic. They taught me that and teach me how to pay attention to the leading of the spirits.

[00:22:55] Now I have been, I looked across the seminaries in the United States and [00:23:00] Canada and Australia, because I've been there in England, I found one course. How many seminaries do you have in your country? A lot. I know it. One course? Come on now there's something not right here about this. I don't care what your tradition is.

[00:23:15] There's all kinds of them. And you know what? In Canada, the only course I found was taught at a Roman Catholic institution. And them's were the days when Protestants didn't talk Catholicy. And the Catholics did it better than the Protestants.

[00:23:28] Scott Maderer: So one of the ways I've described it to people, that feeling that you're talking about, just to put it in another set of words, because I think sometimes one person will hear it another way and other people will hear it another way, and I've shared this with folks before.

[00:23:41] For me peace is the primary feeling that I'm looking for if I'm going the right direction. It just feels a reassurance that Yes, this is the right direction. It contentment is another word that I've used to describe that. It's low key. [00:24:00] It's soft. It's gentle, but it's at peace, but at the same time, because this is the important point at the same time, for me, I always feel an.

[00:24:14] Itching under my skin, almost like there's ants running underneath my skin, or there's this kind of electric energy running underneath that's telling me. Yes, this is peaceful, but it's not passive there's something active to it as

[00:24:29] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: I got to write what you said down because I struggled to describe this and what you just did was to describe what I attempt to describe in the book.

[00:24:36] So I, the way I describe it is it's a velvety, smooth assurance of warmth in behind your emotional state, whether you have a migraine, whether you're throwing up or whether you're happy and content and joyfully that kind of thing. You get this sense of a tap on the shoulder because you're being told to do something.

[00:24:51] And maybe it's something you don't want to do. Maybe it's forgive the jerk that hurt you, or maybe it's go and visit that person who you don't even hardly know, or whatever the issue happens to be. Maybe it's

[00:24:59] Scott Maderer: pray for that [00:25:00] person right now in the street who instead of saying, Oh, I'll pray for you when we don't really mean it.

[00:25:08] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: In fact, this, I do this by way of signals. I've been in the pastor ministry for years and years, decades. And you're right. There's no, this, if there's none of that kind of praying in the Bible. And there's none of the kind of praying that says, Oh God, he'll says he if it be here. It's not in there.

[00:25:23] It's you wait, and then you sense an increase of presence. And then you pray into what's popping into your spirit as you're meeting with that person. And that's a whole different way of doing care. And that wasn't taught again. Oh, no, it's not taught. No, and it's not taught in seminary. It's not taught in Bible school.

[00:25:39] It's not even taught in late training institutes. It's not done. And this is something that we need to put, this is why I founded Spirit Equip. I want to equip people in spiritual disciplines. And I have to tell you, I made so many ditzy, stupid mistakes. We all do. I know, but you're right. The bio sounds really good.

[00:25:58] You read this bio, it's got all this [00:26:00] important information on it. But I'll tell you something, the way I describe it, my parents are both Ukrainian immigrants to Canada. They broke the prairie soil. And on a Friday night, what they did for a good time was pick roots and rocks. They didn't go to the cinema, because there's no cinema there.

[00:26:15] And I'm just, so I'm in my mind, I picture this beautiful field, it's cultivated, and the rocks are gone and the roots are gone, because my mama and my daddy did good work. And I'm walking across the field, looking at the waving wheat, when suddenly I trip on a root that my daddy missed and bang my head in a rock that my mama missed, and then I want to say something that neither mama nor dad would be very happy about me saying.

[00:26:35] My head is bleeding and I look at the rock I hit my head on and it's a diamond or a sapphire or a ruby. I have tripped into most of what I'm teaching now and I am saying I did get the classic disciplines. I have it in the background. I have I can read you Greek, New Testament, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:26:54] I can do that. But the point is not whether or not you're trained to do the classic disciplines. The [00:27:00] point is whether or not you pay attention when God is trying to get yours. That's what you have to do.

[00:27:05] Scott Maderer: And let's go there because I think a lot of times Christians and non Christians but let's stick with the Christian audience because they're on the hook for this.

[00:27:16] Deep down, a lot of times. If you could really get him to say it there, they probably won't say this out loud, at least not in church on Sunday, but they might say it offsite in a small group. One of their reticence about praying is they don't really believe that prayer works. That prayer doesn't have a function.

[00:27:35] It doesn't do anything. What would you say to that person who's got that going on in their heart and their head?

[00:27:41] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: I would say you need to hang around with people who's got some answered prayers and go to a testimony meeting. And actually the best way to do this. is to have a bunch of people who just got freshly converted.

[00:27:51] Oh yeah. No, put five of them in a row and have them talk for five minutes each. They'll start crying or laughing and then they'll [00:28:00] trace it back to somebody whose grandma was praying in a prayer closet. And then they'll discover that a whole series of things happen. Now, I can tell you some the story I just told you at the beginning with 108, that was in the middle of a prayer time.

[00:28:14] And then I would say have you read the New Testament? And they'll say, oh, yeah, I read it. And they'll say that kind of thing. And I'll say, did you notice that? Jesus is God. It isn't what the Bible says. Oh, yeah. Jesus is God. I said it says that Jesus prayed. I said, yeah, that's right. Jesus prayed.

[00:28:27] That means this is God at prayer. You want to talk about somebody who believes in something, you pay attention to what they're doing. And if that's the case. Jesus believed in prayer. In fact, none of the miracles happened until he prayed. None of the miraculous teaching happened until he prayed. No acts of power, no acts of healing, no supernatural gain.

[00:28:50] And he admits it. He actually says it in John's Gospel. It's all through the book, and that's why I wrote this book on hearing the voice. All through John's Gospel, it says, I can do nothing unless [00:29:00] the Father shows me. Or, he was having spectacular success, and instead of doing more of it, he went off to pray.

[00:29:05] Now, Jewish culture is prayer saturated. Every Jew would pray three times a day together. Okay. And on, on Shabbat, they pray four times and on some of the festivals, five to seven times is one festival where they pray seven times in a day together. And when it says that Jesus went off to pray by himself.

[00:29:24] it was over and above the prayer saturated culture he was in. Now European culture still has little towns and villages with bell towers, see, and the bell tower rings to call people to prayer. That's what, that was the culture. Now we have abandoned that in this place. So we have a lot of learning to go into to get to the place where we actually understand that prayer is to be a rhythm.

[00:29:45] Prayer is to be ordinary. Prayer is to be built into the framework. But again, we don't train it. And you're right, if you don't practice it, you're not going to see the fruit of your labor. It's like a piano player. I played the piano and I played it a lot better when I practiced. [00:30:00] The same thing is true with spiritual disciplines.

[00:30:03] Sure. And so you have to teach them. So actually I just did a seminar this last weekend on hearing the voice of the spirit in a church that has a tradition of being open to the power of the spirit and believing in prayer and so on. And I talked to the pastor who'd been there six years.

[00:30:19] They'd had two times in six years where they had opened the altars with prayer for healing. Two times. And so here's, we decided that I would preach on prayer for healing because it's interconnected with hearing the voice. And so I did, and there was about 150 people in my church. 60 wanted prayer. There was one of them, of course, we had five or six of us praying at the front.

[00:30:42] We were expecting 10 that kind of thing. 60 people. So anyway, one lady walks up, tears streaming down her face. She's just weeping. And I said, what is it? She said, I'm professionally trained as a musician. And I had a thyroid surgery. And I've not been able to sing for 20 years. I said, Oh, that's so sad.

[00:30:59] [00:31:00] What did you do? She said I can play the piano, but it's not the same as singing. So may I ask the Lord to heal your voice? And she said, would you please? And I started to pray for her and my hand got flaming hot and she felt consolation that experience you and I are trying to describe here where the interior of her being began to witness to the fact that something was happening.

[00:31:21] Now we had an afterglow in the evening, which is a very Methodist church. Anyway, we had this afterglow. It wasn't a Methodist church. Anyway, and the lady walks out to me, tears streaming down her face. She said, Pastor David, you have to know what happened today. I said, what's that? She said, I sang for three hours this afternoon.

[00:31:37] That just happened on Sunday. We're talking just. I sang for three hours. I said, Wow. She said, I was unable to sing for 20 years. We prayed together. The Holy Spirit touched my larynx. I felt that fire go into my larynx and my voice was restored. Now that's as fresh a testimony as I can give you. That's just a couple of [00:32:00] days ago.

[00:32:01] So I just have to tell you. Not training people to do this is to rob the church of its power. Now what we also need to do is to have testimony. So I said, do you want to share this? And she's very shy. She said can I tell the pastor? I said, Oh, please do. And maybe in the course of time, you'll tell the church because the congregation knows you're a worship leader and this is a small town.

[00:32:22] and they know you. And it would be delightful if you could let them know that this is but again, we don't train prayer for healing either. So I wrote this book called Healing Prayer, God's Idea for Restoring Body, Mind, and Spirit. I did that in a co write with a guy named Maxi Dunham, who is a prayer trainer.

[00:32:37] In fact his book trained me. So I met him, it was a delightful thing to meet this guy, because I'm a Canadian, lived in the north, and he's a southern guy, and I never studied with him, didn't know anybody who knew him, and in the course of time, I had one of these amazing, I was praying, and I was praying because I'd written a book.

[00:32:56] And the big publishing house that promised to publish me didn't, [00:33:00] I was ticked off . I'll just have a little fun with you with this. So the pub, so I said to the publisher, and it was a big publishing house. I said, did, is there something wrong with the manuscript? He said, no, it's the best manuscript I've read on that topic.

[00:33:12] I said, oh, what's the problem? He said, you're not gonna what I'm gonna tell you. I said please do. He said number one, you're not famous. Number two, your church is under 3, 000. I had 1, 200 in the weekend. And number three you're Canadian. You're not American. We can't publish. You didn't have the reach in the audience that they wanted.

[00:33:31] I know, but so I whined for a week and some of you say, how you doing? I said, I'm lousy. I'm not American. I said, I'm lousy. I'm not famous. I didn't say that. Finally, my wife looked at me.

[00:33:42] Scott Maderer: I'm teaching at this little church of 1200 people. We

[00:33:47] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: had five services in a weekend the Americans thought that wasn't big enough anyway.

[00:33:53] So I'm whining and my wife looks at me one day and she said, now, David, is that book on prayer? I said, [00:34:00] yeah. She said, have you prayed about this? I said, no. And she said, you might want to think about that. So I went into the office. At which point you went.

[00:34:10] Scott Maderer: Be quiet.

[00:34:11] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: No. You're right. I just said, oh brother the girl's right.

[00:34:16] So I went into the office, I closed the door, I put the do not disturb on and I sat down and I poured my heart out to the Lord and bubbling up into my spirit came this word, call Maxi Dunham, the guy who wrote the workbook of living prayer, which is a million seller, ask him to review your manuscript.

[00:34:31] He will help you. And I didn't want, I didn't, I don't know about you, that experience you're talking about, that interior fire, I don't, however you want to describe it, it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and I kept saying no, because I didn't want to listen to the fact, number one, my wife is right and I'm wrong, but beyond that, I never met the guy.

[00:34:49] If I'd have hit him on the sidewalk, I'm sure I would have apologized. And he wouldn't want me to walk by each other. We didn't know each other at all. Different cultures, different denominations, different country different age and stage. I'm fully [00:35:00] 25, 26 years younger than him, et cetera. And I just made up all these excuses.

[00:35:03] Call him accidentally. I'm asking. So I went to the computer, I Googled his name, found he was at Asbury Seminary. So I called Asbury and I just missed him. Like we're talking about. seconds. He'd just walked out the door. I felt like I'd missed the mark completely. So I wrote this note and the note was, Oh, dear Maxi, all your books have helped.

[00:35:21] And I described seven and I read, I'd read nine of his books. I said, I've written a manuscript. Would you prayerfully consider looking at this? And three hours later, he wrote back. And I actually, I got his secretary. She thought I had a manuscript underway with him and she gave me his contact info, which he wasn't supposed to do that.

[00:35:41] Again, it happened when I was in prayer. And this guy is famous. He's a million seller and he trained me to pray and I never ever dreamed I'd meet him, so anyway, the bottom line is done. So he writes a note back and says, thank you. I have a two week, a two day window, two weeks from now.

[00:35:57] And if you can get the book to me. [00:36:00] And. In that time, I will read it in that two day window. You know what? In those days, photocopiers didn't have the automatic feed. And I had 300 pages of manuscripts. So I went into the hallway and fed the manuscript in one page at a time. And it took me, I don't know how long however you could just imagine that.

[00:36:18] It was at least 45 minutes. Then I put it into a package and then I went down to Canada Post. And over the border was more expensive than in country. I paid 57. 27. to overnight that thing to him. And then I looked at myself and I said, David Archaka, you just wasted a whole afternoon whining about the book.

[00:36:38] He's not the guy. He doesn't know you from a hole in the ground. He's not even going to pay attention. And two weeks later, I was doing a hospital visit. I'm driving on the ring road around the city of Edmonton and those days there was no distracted driving legislation and I just got my flip phone and I'm a Star Trek fan.

[00:36:53] Live long and prosper. So I opened the phone, I flipped it open and it's a man with a southern accent saying, David, this [00:37:00] is Maxie Dunham. And he said this, he doesn't remember it, but he said this, God has commanded me to make you successful. I'm going to help you any way I can. So we put the forward to my, onto my book and he's co written with me and so on.

[00:37:12] But again, it happened in So I would say to anybody who doesn't believe in the power of prayer, get yourself to a testimony meeting of some kind, and then start taking that scripture seriously and then ask God to guide them. And actually I would direct them to my, Hey, are you there? It's me God book, because it's not hard to read.

[00:37:30] It's full of stories of people who are the voice. And if it's Methodist, I've got the story of John Wesley having his heart strained. Or if you're a Quaker, I've got Hannah Whitehall Smith. talking about her experience of listening to the voice. I got the 19th century people in there. I got George Muller, the guy who fed thousands of orphans.

[00:37:48] Have you read the stories of Muller? Just you'll know this. He fed 10, 031 orphans by faith when he had 20 cents in his bank account. And he would have the very same thing you just talked about in [00:38:00] this experience of internal presence when he was praying around getting those orphans fed.

[00:38:05] And there was one moment where he prayed until three o'clock in the morning because there was not a crust of bread in the orphanage. And he didn't know how to feed, and the staff had all exhausted their volunteer time and their pay, there was nothing left, and he prayed from 11 o'clock at night until 3 in the morning, he just told the staff he couldn't pay them, and he got an internal witness of the spirit, this test, this thing you described, and he said, I'm, there's going to be sweet rolls and milk for the children.

[00:38:33] That's what popped into his brain. And so a baker on the other side of London woke up in the night, had a dream and he sensed that he was supposed to make sweet rolls for the kids at Mueller's Orphanage, and he made enough to feed 2, 000 orphans. That's a lot of bread. And then he brought it over, and as he was doing this, the milk wagon that was delivering milk, pre refrigeration days, Broke down right outside the orphanage and they were gonna throw the milk away and, oh, I'll give it to the orphans.

[00:38:59] And so [00:39:00] they had sweet bread and milk for breakfast. These are the kinds of stories, right? Read stories like that and do it across the spectrum. This is not restricted to any one denominational tradition at all. The founders of every tradition can tell stories just like that. And whenever I go to seminars and tell some of these stories, it's the funniest thing.

[00:39:19] You should see the looks on their faces. They walk up to me at the door, they look in all directions like they're scared puppies or something. And then they'll say, do you mean when that happened to me three years ago when I had the bad experience and my piece left? That was Jesus of Nazareth trying to tell me it was a bad idea.

[00:39:34] I said, yeah, that was God talking. I said, you mean I can hear the voice of Jesus? I said, how about that? Yes, you can. What's interesting

[00:39:43] Scott Maderer: in all of the stories that you shared, it's noticed too, that it's not only that, that, that internal feeling and the hearing, whether it's hearing it vocally or whether it's just hearing it, experiencing it, and that feeling, [00:40:00] it's also a lot of times reinforced by other messages that somebody else doing or saying something like you, the very first story you shared of somebody preaches on tithing and you're like, I don't want to hear it.

[00:40:14] And then you hear somebody else and they're talking about, it's like, why are you still talking about it? And then you hear it in another way. A lot of times it shows up. Your wife speaking from outside. Hey, you wrote a book on prayer. You haven't prayed about it. Maybe you should start doing that.

[00:40:29] I tell people all the time, the voice of God often comes through the words of my wife. Very often, which, and by the way, that is not a insult or a comment. It often shows up. That's where I hear it. Cause she'll say something, not even knowing that's something that I've been wrestling with.

[00:40:48] The funny one, I haven't shared it. And then she tells us.

[00:40:51] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Yeah. And if you don't get it right, God will ensure that you do. So the best story I have of that is Balaam's donkey. He doesn't get it right. So he makes the donkey speak so [00:41:00] the point is actually Cyrus of Persia heard the voice. The King of Nineveh, who was an enemy of Israel, heard the voice.

[00:41:07] Saul of Tarsus, when he's going to kill Christians, hears the voice. You've got all these people in scripture. Many of them have no connection with the God of Israel at all. And they hear the voice. I am completely convinced that everybody can hear the voice because that's how God has structured what it means to be human.

[00:41:25] And this impacts our stewardship. This impacts the way we live. This impacts our disciplines, but that needs to be trained. That's where I'm trying to come back to. It needs to be trained. And we have to create resources that will make it possible for Joe or Jane average person to be able to access what they need to discover they can grow in spiritual discipline.

[00:41:45] So I'll talk Christianese right now. You're saved by grace. No, nothing can take that away from you. God does that. God initiates. We respond. Isn't that marvelous? But you grow by the practice of spiritual disciplines. It's the same thing with stewardship. You grow [00:42:00] in your stewardship by practicing stewardship, and if you do not order your affairs, you will have an unordered life.

[00:42:08] And so this is that, in fact, Jesus didn't want converts. He wanted disciples. And the word disciple comes from the root idea of somebody who is in a process of reshaping their disciplines to become someone who becomes like their

[00:42:21] Scott Maderer: teacher. That's why disciple and discipline have the same root. Yep.

[00:42:25] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Absolutely so if you're a disciple of Gershwin, it means you play the piano till you get the F sharp, what do you call that? The F sharp diminished chord. You get that. You can do it. And that's because you're playing Gershwin. And if you're a student of him, you study him until you sound like him.

[00:42:42] So also with disciples of Jesus, you study him until you sound like him. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:42:49] Scott Maderer: Yeah. I've got a few questions that I'd like to ask all of my guests. Before I, I ask the, those, is there anything else about this [00:43:00] prayer journey that you think it's important for the listener to hear? Straight up.

[00:43:05] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: If you're panicked, so was I. If you're trying to figure out how to do it, so was I. And oh, by the way, all those great guys out there at some point stumbled and fumbled and mumbled some ditzy prayer and made bad mistakes. I'll just say this to you. You can't pray a dirty prayer because it passes through the cross and all the dirt lands on one side and the answer comes out beautiful.

[00:43:28] The secret to praying is praying. But if you want instruction, there's resources out there and I can help you do that and so can many others, but I will send it on the screen, I'll tell you. If you're just brand new at this, the easiest way to get started is my Hey God book because it's filled with stories.

[00:43:43] Right after that I would, if you want to learn discipline, I'm actually teaching a zoom course right now on the Lord's Prayer. I've structured a course because we're not supposed to just pray those words. We're supposed to find out what those words mean and pray those words in harmony with His purposes.

[00:43:57] Or so. I will tell you that there [00:44:00] are resources out there that will help you do it, and the best ones are the ones that don't just teach you about prayer, but actually require you to journal your praying. And so Maxie's workbook, A Living Prayer, is excellent. But I'm, I built my resources on that model, so the Hay book is actually, it assumes you know this much, and here's what I did with the course.

[00:44:20] Before I published it, I had 127 different readers. I had young teenagers into early 20s. I had seekers. I had different ethnic groups. I had a professional Christian office. I had the seniors group. I had I had pre Christians and I had longtime believers, 120s. I had a Chinese cohort with 40s and 20s in it.

[00:44:41] I had a Filipino congregation do this. I had people from multi ethnic backgrounds do this. And I said, look, yeah. If you don't understand what I'm trying to get at, please tell me. I'll rewrite the book. And so it had 127 people vet it and changed the stories so that they were user friendly. So if you want to learn [00:45:00] how to hear the voice of Jesus, which is the first part of that, then I would pick up my book, Hey, Are You There and Speak God?

[00:45:05] How to Listen, Test and Know When God Speaks. That's on Amazon. But the other side of this is. You have a friend who's sick and you want to know how to pray for healing. That's why I wrote the Healing Prayer book. I wrote that book so that people could learn. Everybody's got somebody in trouble.

[00:45:22] Everybody knows somebody who's depressed. Everybody knows somebody who's got cancer. Everybody knows somebody who's going through a struggle with diabetes or ordering their affairs because there's this catastrophic disease. You want to pray for them. You don't know how. I can train you. There it is.

[00:45:36] It's there. We're actually, this month, I'm going to be producing some videos for that. I wrote the first two scripts yesterday around how to teach you in 10 minutes segments, hearing the voice of Jesus around prayer for healing. So that's what I'd say. The resources are there and you can access it at www.

[00:45:53] spiritequipped. com. That's my website. Okay. Anyway, there's the ad. So

[00:45:59] Scott Maderer: let me [00:46:00] ask you a couple of more questions that, that I like to ask all of the guests. We've mentioned stewardship several times and then I've learned over the years that's one of those words that like leadership and some other words that we all use.

[00:46:13] We think we know what it means, yet it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you? It doesn't

[00:46:23] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: mean a building program, although I've done those things. Okay, so let me just back. Stewardship means that you have to be trustworthy in how you handle the resources that God has committed to your charge.

[00:46:33] It means that you have to learn to practice. Generosity, and wise planning, and wise investing, and you have to be wise with your time, wise with your money, wise with your stewardship of relationships, and you have to invest in all of it, and because I didn't have the church background, I understood stewardship at first to mean giving, and it's partly that, but it's not just that.

[00:46:59] Stewardship [00:47:00] is the oversight of a well ordered life. And it means that you build your time well, you build your investments well, you work on your relationships, you cherish your friendships, you labor to make sure that your wife or your husband feels loved, you invest in making sure that you are doing everything you can to be a follower of Jesus who hears the voice.

[00:47:23] All of that intertwines around this word called stewardship. Now, I know I've done stewardship campaigns in churches. We actually had to pay off the debt of a new building that had 1, 200 seats. Oh, my heavens. That was a lot of money. Took them years to pay it. And we had to teach the principle of tithing.

[00:47:38] But no. It's not just tithing. It's living. It is inhaling planning. And it's openness to the intervention of the spirit around the resources that you have committed to his charge. And every now and then he gets surprised, like I did with that 108 story. But you make a plan to give, you don't just do it off the top of the cuff.

[00:47:58] In the same way as you make a [00:48:00] plan to learn. When you're going to university around a trade. or around some skill of some doctor. I don't want some doctor opening him up without having had some previous training. I want to know he's worked at it. That's a discipline and that's his stewardship and God would use his hands to make someone.

[00:48:18] Does that make sense

[00:48:19] Scott Maderer: to you? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is my favorite question that I like to ask all of my guests. Imagine for a minute that I was able to invent this magic machine, and with the machine I was able to pluck you from where you are today and magically transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years.

[00:48:40] But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the ripples, all of the connections, and all of the impacts you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left on the world?

[00:48:52] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Actually, I had this chat with many seniors. I've had this conversation and I have said to them, Are you praying this way?[00:49:00]

[00:49:00] I want my dying to be far more powerful than my living ever was. And they say, What? And I say, I want my dying to be more powerful than my living ever was. So why do you pray that? Jesus talked to about Oh, I know. 5, 000 people. And he's now impacted billions. The Apostle Paul planted churches across Mediterranean.

[00:49:24] And now he's known across the planet. Thank you very much. And in modern history, D. L. Moody established the Moody Bible Press. He established the Moody Training Institute. He made it possible for students. R. Biola University. He was the first instructor. And his dying is more powerful than his living ever was.

[00:49:43] I want to leave a posterity of learning that can be accessed beyond my current role so that 150 years from now the flow of learning and equipment will continue all the way through those days. That's what I'd like to see. I'm doing it [00:50:00] right now by establishing resources and creating this. In fact, I just had, I'm going tonight to speak at the church I attend.

[00:50:06] They have 48 acres of land and they've developed 15 of it. And I said to them in a previous meeting, you need to establish an international training center. You have critical mass to be able to do this. I'm not the lead pastor of that church. And they all looked at me with shock and they showed me the notes and they said, here's the plan.

[00:50:27] They had already made the plan to establish that on that 48 acres of land. I'm going to speak there tonight. Now the bottom line is. If you do not pay it forward, you're paying it backward. What you need to do is to make a plan to leave something that grows beyond your current life. And my plan is to invest in training people to learn the things that I was not taught.

[00:50:52] So that when it comes time for some new believer to get started, they will not be foundering in the mud. They'll actually have a process and an [00:51:00] on ramp to get on the highway.

[00:51:02] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. Absolutely. So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue down 2024?

[00:51:10] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: Actually, I have just, I just told you a little bit about this.

[00:51:14] I joined up with a group called Journeywise, and they're the ones who took me to Whitaker House, which is a large publishing house. They have asked me to do 15 videos. So that there could be 10 minutes segments to be used in conjunction with this book. It was just released. This book was released in November of 23

[00:51:29] Scott Maderer: and that books, the healing prayer book, the healing

[00:51:31] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: prayer book.

[00:51:32] Yeah. And it's coauthored. I'm not the only coauthor with Maxie. Both of us have experiences of prayer for healing. And some of those are high. And some of those are low. And some of those are in between. We believe in medicine, miracle and mystery intertwining. And again, this is not taught. You get people slapping people in the forehead and screaming instead of sitting down with someone saying you could be an instrument through whom God makes someone well.

[00:51:53] So I'm going to be recording 15 videos of 10 minutes each that can be used to train churches [00:52:00] so that they can purchase a package that includes the book and the training videos. And then over 15 weeks, they can develop healing prayer teams in their churches. That's just happened where I'm going this month, end of the month to do that and after that I have some conference activity and I'm going to actually another thing just happened when I was in Australia about a year ago, I met some Vietnamese pastors, and I was teaching them my large prayer book and the content of it, and they said, is this in Vietnamese?

[00:52:27] I said there was a rough translation done. They said, we're going to put it into fine Vietnamese. There's going to be a gathering of my denomination in Ho Chi Minh City in October. And I am flying there to meet pastors who have been the persecuted church. There'll be 1000 of them there. It's that I want to give them the book and their heart language so that they can rebuild after being oppressed and persecuted.

[00:52:51] Now the Vietnamese government is allowing Christian resources to go into that country. I got the invite. And it was this crazy thing. I was [00:53:00] doing a pastor's conference in Australia. Then the president of the branch said, I'm CMA Canada is what I am. The president of CMA Australia said, I oversee CMA stuff in Southeast Asia.

[00:53:12] Do you want to be a speaker at one of our events? I said, I'd love to. He said it's going to be in Vietnam. The persecuted church is finally able to talk freely. And that's when those Vietnamese pastors asked me if that could be possible. That's. That's a posterity thing. I don't, I, that, that is what I want my charity to accomplish.

[00:53:33] I've founded a charity. So the question I have for the Aussie leader is this, is it better to make him pay a little bit or is it better to give it to him at no charge? And I haven't had an answer from yet because he's pondering it. My hunch is they have to have a little skin in the game. So make them pay a fraction of the cost, make them pay something so that when they get the resource, they value it and use it.

[00:53:56] So that's the future. There's more coming, but [00:54:00] that's the future that I can tell you about right now. Awesome.

[00:54:03] Scott Maderer: Awesome. And you can find out more about David over at spirit equip. com and you can find out more about his books that spirit equip. com slash books. Of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well.

[00:54:17] David, anything else you'd like to leave the listeners with?

[00:54:20] Rev. Dr. David Chotka: I will say what I said already, that the desire that God has to speak to you is bigger than your desire to hear. It might be a big surprise to you, but he wants you to discover that he might actually, Jesus says it in the middle of John's gospel, my sheep hear my voice.

[00:54:37] Now there are dumb sheep and there are smart sheep. It doesn't say only intelligent sheep here. It doesn't say only the trained sheep here. It says sheep and, by the way, sheep are dumb as a bag of hammers. There's not they're not great. I was going to say, you said there's intelligent sheep.

[00:54:55] I'm not so sure that's true. No, so you don't even have to be brilliant to hear the [00:55:00] voice. You have to be someone in connection with them. And actually, very often, there are people who aren't in connection with him who can hear the voice to be drawn to him. So what I would try to say is, cultivate that, learn it, let it grow in you.

[00:55:15] And as you do that, God's desire to train you is bigger than your desire to be trained too. It's the same thing.

[00:55:27] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor, go over to inspiredstewardship.

[00:55:50] com iTunes rate, all one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to [00:56:00] leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.