Fasting, Prayer, Meditation, & the Global Persecution of Christians (With Hallow CEO Alex Jones)
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So I think if someone, not the people, come to me for investments, but I think I think so if you had come to me and said I want to invest in a prayer APP, pretty sure I would have passed on that not for ideological reasons but for business reasons that can work um but I hello seems really big to mate what tell us how big hallow is?

Saw glory to go but he's done yeah have you told me like a thousand people would use this thing? I would have been mind alone. We built IT initially just for me.

But like ten thousand people, a million people, I think we're at twenty two million down those now like six hundred million pears prayed there is we were no religious APP h or meditation APP or wellness APP or workout ipad ever cracked the top ten in the APP store before. And this past lent, we were number one, which was crazy. So is the first time industry would degli ate to got.

It's just been a wild ride. He does really call things with new. Let him.

Welcome the tucker carson show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else. And they are not sensitive, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.

We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do IT honestly ly check out all of our content. And tucker crosson doc com, here's the episode is really an amazing story and unexpected. Um so why did you build IT for you? What does that mean?

Yeah, I was raised religious but fell away from my faith in high school, in college would have considered myself agnostical atias for most that time. And when I graduated, I got really in the meditation. And you know, there was some secular meditation apps that I started using and I started using them every day and I love them.

Um there were like ten minutes with almost like technology, without technology, like you press play, close your eyes, plugged in your headphones, and them were just LED in this meditation. And IT was really the first time that i'd SAT in silence. And the strangest thing started happening, which is every time I would meditate or sit in silence, my mind keep feeling pulled towards something spiritual, like an image of jesus in image of the cross, the word's holy spirit, which I thought was very strange, because I would have consider myself music. And so I started reaching out to people who took their faith more seriously, priests, pastors, people who I knew. And I thought I had this really interesting question, which is, is there anyway, there's some sort of intersection here between this meditation thing, this sitting in silence thing and this faith thing, and they all laugh to me and said, yeah, we've been doing this for two thousand years you've probably you had have heard about IT is called prayer and I was like, no, no, no.

I know prayer purse the like hey, thanks for stuff sorry for stuff helped with stuff um are the things that I memorized as a kid and I had this one, please to said, okay, those are great ways to talk to got it's great ways to share with god what's on your heart but have you ever tried to listen? And I was like, now what does that mean? What does that mean that listen to got? And I started learning about this whole world of contemplative and meditative payer the church, things like, like, you davin a ignition virtual ality, imagined prayers, sitting in silence to change all the stuff that i'd honestly never heard before.

And I SAT down likes you to, as a way of meditating on scripture, you pick over the sticks out to you. And so I google how to do that. Randy opened up a bible.

And just ten minutes in my living room, I open up my bible. Look eleven, where the disciples finny enough as uses to teach him how to pray, and he gives them the, our father, our father, or never hello, be that name. And hello was the word that stuck out to me that I had to ted, ted on.

And IT was just ten minutes, just in the comfort of my home. But I she's soaring. I IT is this beautiful combination of this deep sense of peace, like deep than anything i'd experiences before, but combined with his depth of meaning and purpose.

So like halo means to make holy, and I like well as god trying to make me, holly, my, letting him make me holy. Am I supposed be helping other people grow in holiness? And the answers told, told that was, no, I was just doing my own career following .

my own ambition. what?

What were you doing? I was in consulting, just trying to have a good job make money um you know was a good job I tell me how to work but uh but yes certainly wasn't working for jesus and so I had to quit my job during my four one k only five years older whatever IT is max up my credit cards did a stupid start of thing um just a stupid as god thing so the but yeah ah so is crazy with these really stressful questions, but wrestling with them in this place of depth. And so I knew from then that I one of this APP I like the structure of these apps um and I knew how to code a little bit. So we started building IT, but we had about like twenty to thirty people start using IT just because they heard what I was building in.

One of them a one of them was my air know this this is one of my favorite early stories so I love to tell but the my aunt had just lost her son, my cousin, he was forty, he had just got married and um his wife had just got pretty with their first kid and he went into the doctor said, hey, there's something wrong with my chest my chest feels tight they said her fine a home he went home and he died that night in his sleep uh and IT was my yeah my grandmother, my hands only son and he was just hard broken, just destroyed. SHE could not get out of bed for months. He could not eat.

IT was in we have this big family like a bunch of ants and angles. And we're all trying to figure out like, what can we possibly do for this one and nobody could do anything. I mean, it's a wounds that deep.

I couldn't imagine losing a kid and SHE sends us this, not right? When we launched, I was like december of tone eighteen and SHE says, hey, I just wanted let you know one to like twenty thirty people using this. I had no idea.

There was like ten meditations on, and now there's like one hundred thousand, but there just ten minute meditations on the thing. And SHE said, I just wanted to let you know, like, Christmas is always a really stressful time for me. I got to figure out how to visit as Green kids.

I ve got to fight out how to visit my kids. My grandkids get present for everybody. It's always the time of stressing anxiety, but I just honestly didn't think i'd be able to get through IT this year. I didn't think i'd be able to face my first Christmas without my son.

And I just wanted to let you know that these little meditations on this APP have remind of me that even in the darkest moment of my life, which I am in the darkest moment of my life, but even in the darkest moment of my life, I can still have hope. And they've allowed me to get out of bed and to Carry on. And thank you for allowing got into my heart again.

And I just like I just broke down in tears on my floor, and I remember I went on my cofounder, man IT seems like two things. One IT seems like god really wants us to do something with this thing. Like maybe it's not just a nap for me.

Maybe, maybe other people are going to use this. And at the same time, I, if all we ever do, if we can work for the next fifty years, if we waste all our money, if everybody hates us, if everything goes terribly and we got that one note, all of them infinitely worth IT. I do in one hundred times over, of course I would, for that one note, and like, really cool part about how was we just kids to see these stories all the time from people who are in really dark, really tough places.

And we get to see god bring his love and his mercy and his piece into their hearts. But yeah, from an investment perspective, that was the vast majority of people said no. But I IT was not a popular investment. I certainly did not think anybody would ever invest in IT. But by the Grace some folks said, which is certainly a larger story, but uh, for you have the vast majority, he thought I was a very stupid idea.

What does your wife think?

My wife is a saint? I know my wife more than I could possibly. Particularly, she's always taking her faith very seriously.

It's actually been funny to watch how my wife and my mom have reacted to me coming back to my faith. My, my mom is the same, the same of a woman like the bedrock of our faith. Really tried to get me to believe, grown up, prayed for me, i'm sure a lot. But had you asked my mom, lic of the people in the country who would do anything religious, I would be the last on the list by far.

Um why? Why did if we just rewind for a second? Why did you lose your fate, grow up in a religious family?

yeah. Um I don't know. I mean, so I went to I went to a public school in ohio and like everybody was like people would go to church.

But nobody really, at at least the kids, my friends, nobody believed there is no real beliefs. And just like that, the way of the world, I think, is naturally destruction and naturally away from god. You have to, like, really take the step into faith to believe.

But for me, I just kind of followed the way of the world. I just followed the way that what all my friends believed, which was kind of this new atheism thing, which is like the docker, same here stuff of like this god thing is stupid, is just what our parents did, is there's no real evidence behind IT. Although I never really thought about IT, like I was never a conscious thought, I just kind of followed the tide of my friends and career and, uh, secular society of just falling away and drifting away from my faith, which is heart breaking. IT happens to is the story of way to many people in today's world. But I at the core.

I think for me this sounds you a LED away from your faith.

I think so probably in the society I was in, the friends the school I was in certainly was very secular um but you know for me the thing that gets me excited about hello and the work that we're doing is like at the core, what I didn't have was a relationship with jesus. Like what I didn't have was a relationship was got I would like I knew the beliefs. I would go to church, went to C, C, D.

And church school and all the stuff um but I didn't I never had an actual encounter with Christ. And if you do like if you actually have a relationship produces, it's really hard to pull you away from IT. Like for me, if somebody now is like, okay, what do you believe? Obviously I believe in jesus uh, and if they try to convince me not to believe, you know, there's a lot of intelligent people.

People waste smarter than I am, the the illogical physics, whatever. But convincing me that jees isn't real is like convincing me my wife isn't real. It's like, you know, this is a my best friend.

This is the person who helps me in every moment. It's more really in my wife and so it's like this relationship yeah it's unbreakable, able and that I think the thing that I really didn't have grown up, which. Is what we get excited about, trying to help people to build that relationship, to find god in silence in eur.

Why silence? Well.

scripture is pretty clear on this. The sense are pretty clear on this.

I mean, mother, to be so, I think, is in the silence of the hard cut speaks souls of great prayer, souls of great silence, you know isa client up to the mountain and um a great wind comes by and god is not in the wind and a great earthquake comes and god is not in the earthquake and a great fire comes and god is not in the fire but then he still small voice comes in the silence and god is in the still small voice like it's in the silence that you hear god and it's so funny because for me, I just grew up my whole life. I was just busy. I 就是， i was just busy and noisy like that.

My whole life was noise and I was just scratching. I was worried about work. I was worried about chips. I was worth about my career, was worried about money.

I was worried about everything, and I was just thinking all the time and just talking to people all the time and just listening to noise all the time. In C. S.

Lessees is in his screw tape letters, which is this book about um is from the perspective of a demon trying to tempt people, screw tape letters. And his big thing is noise. We need to make the world noise.

The demand wants to try to make the world noise, get away from music and get away from silence, because that's that's where the people find god. But as demons, our job is to create as much noise so that they don't think about stuff. And yeah, for me I was just that I was so much noise.

And as soon as you'd take ten minutes in silence away from the noise, you just you find god. I mean, so um there was a bunch of these a bunch of these stories of of people who have experienced that I just love to share about. But one of these was a woman who rode to us six months ago and he was married with three Young girls.

SHE worked in the city, and SHE would like go to church, but he had this overwhelming sense of shame all the time, and he can never really connect with god and SHE. Her life was full of noise. You can never really find silence or peace. And he developed an addiction to alcohol and opiates to drugs and became involved in a long standing affair with a with a guy from work.

And her husband found out about IT and um laughter and took the kids and he said he was destroyed like at the lowest possible point of her life, shattered into a million pieces for the whole world to see all of her shame SHE thought often about ending her own life and SHE was thrown on and scram, just stuck in the noise of life and he sees this post from mark wilbert talking about prayer and she's like whitman ah that's the guy from these pair movies talking about jesus, talking about prayer. That's just weird enough that i'll try IT and SHE opens up the APP and SHE just does a meditation in silence and SHE said he realized he was right in that moment, just like five, ten minutes, SHE realized he was right. He was the lowest possible moment of her life.

Everything SHE loved had left her. Her whole life was destroyed. But that he was wrong. He was not alone. Jesus was there with her, and he scooped her up into the thousands of pieces and he had chatted into, scooped her up into his arms and put her back together piece by peace and he started hello like fifteen times a day, which is wait to many times to use, and started going to these retreats and um SHE played for her husband's forgiven ness.

Her husband had his own maculate experience with Christ where he told her to forgive his wife and their families back together and they're having another kid and he just wrote to us and just said, hey, I just want to let you know that i'm confident I wanna be physically standing here life today, if IT wasn't for the Grace that I gave me in simple through this up. So for us is just man, glad god is but but what he can do when we give him just like five, ten minutes in silence of our life and it's hard silence can be intimidating, which is why we built the appeals can be intimidating to twenty minutes of silences through for the first time. You do IT and it's it's helpful to have a structure and somebody to lead you throw in your eyes or clothes, you just listening to something. But what I can do in that ten, twenty minute time is just as macular is beautiful.

it's amazing .

you going .

to so last fall, I was out in less vegas and I ran into theodore was hilarious. And I want of doing a podcast with oval, and I have a tin of zine and he says, what's that? Start joking about product nickey pouches.

And I say, in effect, this is a cure for real, this function. hoa. Joking, of course.

Not serious. Not a doctor. Never even think about making medical claims. I'm no idea that's true until we kidding. It's what we call a joke in the business is a joke is not serious.

So I get home and there is a letter from general council of zin written in the most super silly as nasty to whom I make concern, mister carson, or representative there of IT, has come to our attention that on a abroad chest with a nally known comedian, and you made an inaccurate health claim about our product. What is this? What did I do? You should know that there is no medical study that suggests that our product is an effective e.

Are you kidding, joe? Dom's most humorous thing i've ever seen, and IT was instantly recognizable to me as someone who was worked to big companies most of my life. IT was a product of hr lawyer culture.

Only like a pro and company could issue a letter like, and IT was like, somewhere on this planet, somebody is laughing. We must make them stop, call a general council issue nasty letter. And I thought to myself, I cannot even buying their products.

I have nothing in common with these people. They can take a joke, their stupid, and they hate me, and they hate humor and they hate joy. And I thought to myself, i'm going to create an alternative because there's no way i'm gna spend another dollar on a product made by people like this. And so we created l pouch dot com usher in tomorrow, a brand new world of nickey pouches, the amErica pillow on sale.

This episode is brought to you by live lock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why live lock monitors millions of data points every second.

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What's interesting is that this device is the vector for noise. Yeah, certainly. And but you've use this device to bring silence back.

All the devices. That is, is a tour firm on imaginable evil. I mean, what is contained in that devices? heartbreaking.

ingy. sad. I mean, yeah, noise and distraction, pornography, evil. I mean, there there's so much evil and technology. There's so much evil in social media and the ways of the world. And if we've had a lot of people, you know you can get addicted to, your phone is very easy to get addicted to uh even if you're not looking a bad stuff is just like there's funny stuff on there, there's really entertaining stuff, there's news or whatever. And we've had a lot of people who are like, well, you can't technology is bad.

It's inherently bad ah which is one of the complaints about hello, which you certainly have to find a way to escape from technology to not get addicted to find peace omits the noise but for us it's just like god can use anything we can underestimated. D like god can take any tool we have, whether it's the printing press, whether it's magazines, which also are used for for tremendous evil, or whether it's this incredible tool which is used for tremendous evil, the fast majority of stuff on the internet is evil, is terrible, is awful. But god can still use that.

God can still reach out to people where they are, and it's the same. It's like churches in a city and like cities are places of tremendous evil. There's a lot of sad things that happened in cities, but god can still reach out to people who live in cities with beautiful churches and invite them into a relationship with them is the same thing with us.

It's our job as Christians is to work within the world and to reach out to people where they are. And sadly, where they are is in their phones. And we've seen just time and time again, where god can reach out to people through their phone and change their life is just a, it's a, it's a beautiful thing, frosty. Get to be a part of that. We have this. We have this incredible privilege to get to be in this position where we get all these stories from people whose lives have been changed and it's just i'm going to go on forever about these things, please do but the we had this this other Young woman actually we just talked to a guy yesterday in ireland who um I had a very similar story to me, had fAllen away and in ireland is like in his front group apparently very unpopular to actually ethically to really believe IT um and he had this radical conversion through technology through the APP uh where he came back to his faith but this this one woman I have a four year old daughter so this breaks my heart especially but as he was raised religious but fell away from her faith described herself as a analytic aist as a teenager which is more intense and I wanted describe myself but had a really tough time at school which like a man, the social media for Young kids, especially Young women.

Like just reading comments about yourself for like people insulting you not that is just it's so hard like I I have a little sister who's much Younger than me and I hold her phone for like two minutes and SHE get like fifty snapshot notifications about street SHE has to continue and i'm like, I feel physically stressed holding a thing and for Young people, just in today's world, that is so hard. But anyway, this woman, this Young woman, was a teenager her mom is world about SHE made him her download hello, want to her phone and created account and the Young woman became so depressed that he decided to end her life when he was fifteen and so SHE climbed into um into her bathtub and filled IT with SHE had a bubble bath because he said he wanted IT to be a pretty death heart break kingly so um and right before he went through with IT SHE said, look, god, I don't believe in you i'm an atheist I don't believe in you SHE looked up the ceiling. Bot, if you were real, I will give you one last chance.

This is your shot. Prove IT to me and he had her little phone sitting next to her and SHE opened up the phone, played some random meditation that we had. He was probably during land because he was on Chris passion, and IT was on how he blood, how he died, how he suffered, so that we didn't have to, so that we didn't have to Carry that way alone.

And he said, I don't know what I was, but I realized in that moment that Christ was there with me in the room. He held out as he anti pick me up out of the bath time. And I dedicated the rest of my life to serving him.

And for the last three years i've been serving as a missionaries in the inner city for Christ. And I just want to let you know, i'm confident I would have ended my life that night had had not been for the Crystal i'd gave me through this APP, which is just like all these stories. But it's it's about how god can use the thing that is most destroying us for his good and can reach out to you, throw IT and and transform everything, even bad stuff.

He can transform IT for his good and we can't underestimate the power of god um so yeah it's for us it's it's A I think people have to be disconnected from their phones. I know my kids don't have phones want for a long time but um but god can use technology and there's a lot a really cool parts about technology. Get to pray with honor, retreat with father maxims some great faster leader for ten minutes in the comfort of your own home.

Where is without that? You'd have to pay, you know, a good chunk of money to go on a retreat once a year, maybe. And so we have these, uh, tools with technology, but we have to surrender them to god. We have to let god use them. We can um you know we can make them god, and we certainly can't let them distract us from the .

things that really matter. Whose father makes me father?

Father mike is incredible and love father mike. He is the host of he does a bible in a year pocket um a series which you can find on the APP um where he walks through the bible and explains IT in the really unique way where it's not just from the uh beginning to the end but about how the gospel is kind of interwove and throughout the whole stories so it's beautiful IT brings scriptures to life in any way and then he does a bunch of different things.

Um we work with him on a bunch of different things. Sermons, s home's reflections, prayers are just things to try to open up scripture to focus in new way. Both the folks who haven't really had an exposure description, but also the people have been taken. Their face is decades, so he's has find them.

And have you hear .

about everything in hello? Has been the good lord doing doing everything. So every story has been about us trying and trying and trying and trying and trying, and then just giving up and surrendering in the good lord, doing IT for us. Father mike. I was a fan of father mike.

I, when I was first coming back to my faith, I was trying to figure out with her was catholic or protest center, whatever IT was, because I had come to jesus through this prior experience, but had a lot still to figure out. And so I start watching debates. I start watching, listening to sermons, all the stuff.

And father mick was one of the big ones. He has a hand fully youtube videos um uh on a channel called the tension which is phenomenal and um yeah I love them and so but I keep trying to reach out. I kept trying to email them in different ways because we just started this happens.

I came in is is there any way that, hey, fathers, they're anyway that we could, uh, work together with something i'd love to share what you have with the fox and who we have on the average, just whatever, maybe like a couple hundred people at that point and I gave up and like I i've tried everything I reached in every way and then he just randomly ly reaches out to us in an email and just as, hey, I was with a bishop o new you guys and he mentioned you and that I should reach out so we'd love to do something and the first thing he did for us was we have these a sleep bible stories where at night you kind of read scripture to try to um disconnect yourself in the busy ness of the world and focus on Christ before you go to bed and so he did this um the sleep reading of I think was um you had the gospel of john in the beginning was the word and the word was mid flush and he was just beautiful um then so then we kept trying to work with them forever and he's been is one of the most incredible people I know he he's very close with my wife and my kids and I and so it's been a blessing to get to know. But also to get to share his message with people and is changed more lives. And I could possibly imagine .

mark wolberg.

how did I I find everything about .

that amazing. How did mark wolberg become a part of this?

Mark is awesome. Mark is incredible. Is an honour, privilege to get to work with him.

We, yeah, he, he had this interesting experience he shared where he felt like god was a few years ago. He felt like god was calling him. He's always taking his faith seriously. He's always been a very public witness of his faith which is hard to do in hollywood um and .

will not only hard to do almost without any precedent really I can't think of the last famous actor who did something something like the .

other small given for folks who who aren't really in the hollywood world it's hard to understand how unpopular IT is but it's yeah is IT takes a tremendous amount of courage like people will tell you cai will be over um everyone I hate you um okay maybe you can talk about faith, but like talk about IT broadly. Don't talk about jesus specifically. You certainly can talk about jesus. And you know I have these conversations all the time and mark yeah uh has this incredible courage um but anyway he felt like I really see the .

upside for him oh there .

almost there's none I mean other than doing the good lord wealth, which is a tremendous subside itself but from a career perspective, certainly not so he he felt like god was calling him to use this platform, this gift that he's given, that god had given him.

Um for god glorious to share what god had done with him and he does this great he does a great job of sharing his faith in a way that doesn't feel like he's like ramming IT down your throat or anything. He's just okay. I have this friend named jesus.

He's changed my life. He's giving me everything good in my, in my life has come from god. And I just want to share that with people on sources, bringing way.

He felt like god was calling him to do something. And so he did this film called father's still and this was a few years ago. He produced, he funded himself and was all him.

He started and um and he was this beautiful film. And we worked um initially how I was decent science, but still pretty small. And so we worked with him to help promote IT and to create some content around IT.

And he says he was like god. He thought he was making deal with god where he do this one thing. He like, do this one film.

And that would be his thing. That would be his good thing. And what's happened sensus god, just like was just cracking the door. And now he's like, slammed IT wide open. So now he's does he does all this stuff with hello and with a bunch of things with the faith, but especially with how he does these incredible fasting chAllenges were like he is um he has many uh talents obviously but one of them is this incredible discipline like you know see all the time, wake up at ford, does cold front, does work out like twice pyr every day and so um like leading people in fasting, which people often forget about.

Fasting is like purr and fasting must go together so he has these incredible fasting chAllenges that he leads people through on the APP but he's just been yeah he's a great guy to get to work with um I remember the first time he he face time to me like eight P M unlike a friday nighter. Something was on the first time I talked on and um I don't you know I don't often talk to super famous people and so I was a little nervous you know that that was face time from mark because like this is really cool my wife sitting here next to know just the medal night we just talk and I was like a thirty second conversation he was just OK i'm really excited about fathers do can be great where hearing great things from folks is coming together really nice occa that's all some like, yeah with hello hello can be incredible. We're going to change the world together.

Like you yeah how is going to be great? We're going to pray together. We're going to welcome the lord into people's hearts.

Jesus is going to incredible things is gonna great. I call that to awesome. And like her man, have a great one.

I have good one. And then he hangs up and my wife looks at me. And people ask, like, how you stay humble and my wife looks at me. And instead of saying like, oh me and that's cool, got to tough to mark water or like, you know that he just face time to you and that self SHE was like, um you know you said awesome a lot like that's all you said and I was like, wow, i'm going to be thinking about that for the next two years of my life how stupid I sounded IT on a face time but anyway he's been he's been he's been really honestly incredible.

It's um like this past ash wednesay, he went and did a bunch of P R where he goes in I has a giant ash cross on his forehead and goes and does all these shows on you know nobody he's seen somebody with a giant nash cross on his forehead on the new these shows today show any that stuff and I remember we did there's another funny story about god being in charge, but we are in new york and we were about to go on all these shows for the launch of kind of this land series, which our biggest launches are. Well, we have one coming up about the election, one nation undergown. And then we have kind of a season leading up to which is an advent launch and then alone.

So really right now, this time in year is where kind of our our biggest launches are. Buh IT was ash wednesay, which is the day that our lands chAllenge kicks off. And we did a little mass uh in the hotel, just in a comfort room in the hotel of private mass. We had a priest come and IT was just like four or five of us and he was funny because the reading was like how you're supposed to fast in private, which is true. You was posted fast and pray not like show off like, hey, i'm you know, i'm this great person.

I'm faster and so that was the gospel and mark goes up to get as ash and who's like, hey, father, I know i'm not supposed to like do this publicly from today's reading but could you make this ash cross like really big and really dark and really black because i'm going to be on TV there and um the funny thing about that is we had I had woken up in the APP was we had never cracked the like to fifty before and I had working up on ash wednesday and the APP was number three in the APP store and there were two apps ahead of IT um I think one was open an eye and the other was uh tmo which is the giant mass of chinese social media company that's trying to enter the united states by pitching itself as shopping company. They have a billion and a half dollar facebook add budget a year just for the us. To spend to try to enter this market um and they ran six national superbo commercials. And so we're like there's no way we're ever going to display .

temp from so do you trust your internet service provider? Do you even know what IT does? There are a lot of reasons not to trust your isp.

Many international service various are required to keep the logs of everything you do online. Just in case the government wants to take a look at what you're doing, can you, baby? That's illegal.

IT is in the united states. In this country, your online information, your entire browsing history can be sold to anyone. And IT often is, in fact, is almost always.

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Well, express VPN has a privacy first architecture built from the ground up. Their system is built on something called void memory, literally, the hardware is engineer not to keep track, to keep records of your activity. And we know that works.

Last year, expressed VPN received hundreds of request from law enforcement for sensitive customer data, and not a single one of those request resulted in any customer data being exposed is that they don't comply with law for request. They do, but they can turn over the data because they don't have IT express VPN is designed so they don't have your data when the government asked them to hand IT over, pretty smart. You don't have to be a tech genius to use express VPN. You just tapped one button in the APP about protecting your privacy no matter what kind of device are using. And right now you can get three extra ths for free by going to this link express VPN dot com slash tucker that's express V P N dog com like structure three extreams for free.

How many super bow adds to jura?

We ran a regional one, so IT only covered like thirty, forty percent. And I was one. And so I was watching the super bowl with my wife, and I knew that tami was number one on the up store and I was like, man, we have a chance of getting um of getting up somewhere high, but there's no way we're ever going to be timely.

I just hope that they're not going to do a superball commercial because last year they had done one. And a national susumu commercial is like five to six times the cost of the thing that we did. And so i'm watching the super ball and I see the first time and where i'd come on.

And I like suit man. And then I see the second of two superball commercials. And then I see the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. I just like, this is insanity.

There's no it's absolutely impossible that we would ever so like maybe number two but anyway, I wake up in your number three and like, well, this is incredible. That's nobody's ever cracked the top time before. That's that's Gloria god.

That's that's insane. I go to open the APP and is completely crashed. It's totally White.

nobody. You can do anything. It's not like not fund.

It's like it's terrible. It's not like IT loads slowly. I mean.

this is the biggest day in hello history and so it's it's there's hundreds of thousands of people trying to pray, millions of people trying to pray at this moment. And it's just White, just a White screen. And I know how to code a little bit, but certainly not.

We have people who code much Better than I do now and um and so I call our our developing now I have in things totally down and he's like, yeah okay, i'm on IT and IT usually takes us about thirty seconds to get IT to fix. But there are so many more people trying to use that, that is just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And there was just the spiral going down and down and down.

And so IT usually takes us about maybe one or two minutes to fix IT because you can act capacity or whatever IT is but um but he can fix that. He can figure out how to do IT. It's like the spiral he can get get get control of.

And so we go to mass and the APP is crashing through the whole mass. It's crashing, it's down. Nobody can use IT. And this is like we have a massive Spike right in the morning.

There's a Spike in the morning and in the evening when people pray at the beginning, the day, the end of the day, mostly. And so this is a great in the middle, our biggest Spike. And I was just sit there and mass, I just, I got what? Like, I surrender this to you. Yes, like, this is yours.

But like, why are you? Why are you doing this? There are so many people trying to pray. Like, can you please just fix this up? Like and i'm just like struggling with this thing.

I'm just so stressed and so anxious about IT because it's just dying and no one can use IT and our customer support. Things blow enough and everything is going terribly. And and then mark is about to go on the today show and fox and all these national T V shows.

And what is he supposed to do? Be like, hey, down to the APP, but in like a couple hours maybe. And so nobody else knows that the APP is crashing.

And so the piece comes out to me after mass and he's like, hey, alex, are you okay? And I was like, you have father wine. He's like, well 啊， IT seems like you're pretty distract.

IT seems like you're pretty upset like there's something about you which just feels like you're are upset and I was like, well, to be honesty about the APP has been crashing for the last like thirty, forty minutes. It's just been down. Nobody can use IT IT makes me something like this.

We're hoping to especially to people who found where are people like that Young girl who are in a really tough time, like we want to be a resource for people, we want to help people pray um and he was like that um what would you mind if I just if I just set a quick prayer for you and I was like your father, I guess something poor guys with this a prayer yes, you can pray for us and into a for a second then he just goes, okay. Have a good day, alex and then I get a text literally two seconds later that says, the APP is back up. Like, it's just like, god, this whole story, everything for us is just like, you try, you try and you try and you try and then you're just like, god, can you please take IT and then he does and he's like, I just waiting for you to do that.

I was just waiting for you to let me do IT. And then went on to be to display tamu. At the end of the day, is the number one APP, which is crazy because the top ten apps, all of the youtube, amazon, netflix, tamil, every APP has ten thousand lus employees. We had eighty uh and so is just IT was this crazy story of of hello get to number one over time which was which was fun but but yes, just is just god showing us like, hey, i'm the one who's i'm the one who's doing this just make sure you always remember i'm the one who's doing this but hopefully.

hopefully I do amazing has IT as IT hurt wolberg career since he said that mine.

you know, mark, an interesting place because, you know, he produces most of his own stuff now, can fund a lot of IT. And he's trying to build, you know, what he does really is he tries to focus on a handful of things that he really tries to build. So he is like a health company, clothing company, hello, and handful of other things he's really focused on building.

But honestly, you know, there's a lot like he'll post about like just stay paid up, just something he will just he will literally just look at the camera and be like, hey, stay played up in front of a church, in front of a statue of jesus or marries something, just invite people to pray and he know he had a friend of his come out to him and say, like, hey, haven't you seen that everyone? Like, haven't you read your comments? Like, everyone hate you for these posts and he's like, comments dude, I ve been read comments in like thirty years you can't read comments on social media.

Destroy you is like what I see is that these posts when ever I post about jesus or talk about jesus, they get like, you know ten times the number of views that anything else I talk about this yeah people are clearly hungry for this and we've shared a bunch these stories of how um you know that woman who almost ended her a lifesaver, a post from him talking about jesus and was able to, you know what an interesting thing is to to reach out to somebody who doesn't take their faith serious ly, you know, my face doesn't really going to get in him to stop. But mark face will be like, that's weird enough, like the guy from the bear movies talking about cheese's like that's a that's a weird thing. I'm just going it's it's just weird enough that i'm going to try but um but anyway, for him he's just I don't know he just IT IT IT takes a bravery I mean, for a bunch of folks but then through IT, I think god actually does these really call things and you're starting to see actually in hollywood now I was just talking to somebody, I was in L.

A. This week and they were saying this is the first time in like thirty years that someone has come asking for faith base scripts, asking for faith based material. And they're like, it's not obviously not because people are the studios are suddenly trying to share Christ, is because now you see things like hello, or you see things like five thousand years or the chosen, whatever IT is, and you see these things working.

You see people are actually really hungry for IT. And it's, you know, I mean, scripture again, it's pretty clear as if you seek first the kingdom of god, all the other things will be given on to you. It's like and now it's scary and you go through like a dip.

I mean, for me certainly but god then brings you these incredible blessings on the other side of um so I don't know, I am mark, you know father stood did father stood did really well, has obviously holls um blown any any of our expectations or anything that we expected out of this water. So yeah for him, I think it's been a pretty cool ride. It's it's just awesome to see somebody who has this incredible platform and talent and gift use IT for the grater glory, the kingdom. So there's a blessing and .

be rewarded for IT. I mean, that sounds so like you think things are changing. There's someone going on.

I mean, I think we're in A I think we're in a very dark place. But I have this yeah and hello, I I have this tremendous hope. I mean, it's it's just we get we just get to see IT all the time, like in the darkest places, god reaching out to people.

And chester ton has this quote is like, there have been many times in history that G K. estin. There's been many times in history where people thought the church was dead. The church is not this like straight line, is this time of many times people thought I was over the rise of islam, the death of jesus, the death of his apostles, the fall of room, all these different times when people thought Christian should just beat her out and die.

But Christianne can't die, because as soon as IT gets close to the grave, when everyone expects IT to be in the grave IT resurrects because he has a god that knows its way out of the grave. And I don't know for us, we just see IT. And I I think you can see that you're starting to see a little bit of IT in you know some of these broader things like halloa bible in year, the chosen or um anything.

But for us, it's just in these stories and especially in the in the places when things are when things are really tough and really dark. And like china, we live in a culture of death in in a in a sad secular world that's falling away even more rapidly from jesus. And but still in that he's there.

And like we had we had this other woman write into us and share her story, which was a SHE had become pregnant SHE was SHE had just graduated SHE was unmarried SHE was dating somebody um very Young and had become pregnant and was just petrified, just so scared because all the world does is tell you that if you're pregnant ant as a woman, your lives over and it's the worst thing that can happen here and all these terrible sad messages and she's patric ed. She's like wanted a careers. I'm scared out of my mind.

There's no there's no options. What are my options? And he said he fell down on knees. SHE had the APP and SHE opened a palo fell down underneath.

And she's got, I just I don't know what you want from me here, but I surrender IT to you, which is, man is just an incredible witness of faith. But I surrender to you. I surrender IT to you completely, whatever you want.

And SHE hears odd bly in the silence. His name is luke. Which like if you're going to say one word to save a child's life in the woman, like hearing his name from god for him, like hearing god has a name for him already as I termination is no option, he said.

Because if god has named him and his name is, look and so he goes to this journey, she's I can't i'm not going to terminate him. So what am am I going to do? And he started expLoring and she's like, and SHE shares the storm. She's like, i'd never even thought about adoption and I started thinking about I start expLoring IT like, well, if I could find a family that maybe would make sense that faithful the Christian you know, when I could still be a part of my child's life, somebody that could raise my kid Better than I could with um maybe maybe that's an option for me and so he finds this couple who takes their faith very seriously and ah she's like, okay this is perfect this this is this is the couple that um that I would choose and he says he I just uh one last question before we proceed like do is your kid um do you know what name your name him and they said, oh yeah yeah yeah we've known for a while now his name is look and SHE just like guy and the crazy part is then at during her birth they the doctors found SHE was sex he had an illness um if you get exactly what I was but IT was something that needed surgery that they never would have found otherwise and he would have died from IT and they found IT during her birth they never would have found IT otherwise and so the child who now was like the best part of her life, SHE gets to be a part of this his life in his family's life. And you know, for her, the the peak of her life is the best thing that happened, doors, the kiddin and also literally physically saved her life.

But it's just like even in this world that is so tough, that is so dark um that is going through so much like god is still there and he's still able if we just like give him just a crack, like we just crack the door open of our hearts, he can do the rest. He takes the rest. And so yeah, I have, I have tremendous, I have tremendous hope.

Does IT feel you that people who haven't considered anything beyond other five senses are suddenly asking questions about what else there might be? Or people have a heighten spiritual awareness?

Do you notice that? I think so. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we see IT, obviously, with the habits. That's all we do, is try to open people to Christian and spirituality in a relationship with the lord.

But I think there's a bunch of things for I mean, the one is like I was saying with technology, I mean, it's just so much noise, like is just so much busy as so much stress, so much anxiety. This phone that is especially Young people like you go to women is just like, hey, did you know others like real piece, like a real rest, real piece. And that, I think, has this tremendous poll, which is like the offer you, Chris, offers a lot.

Christianity offers a lot truth, beauty, joy, fearlessness, courage, all these things but also this deep sense of peace and especially in today's world, I just think people are hungry for like it's everything feels terrible, everything feels like you're stressed and worry the world's about the worlds about the end um but real peace I think people are really hungry for and that's what we get really excited. But I mean, I was in silicon valley for. For three years with my wife and I would ask I would talk to people all the time and be like our religious and me like now of course i'm not religious, nobody's religious anymore um but then you ask them what they are and they would say which is this relatively new invention which is spiritual but not religious and spiritual but not religious and it's like our new spiritual and they would also yes, of course some spiritual.

I'm interest in spiritual ty, and there's two kind of ways to go about that. The one is um you know like, well, can you really be spiritual without being religious? Like, okay, your spiritual.

So you're having a relationship with something outside you. What is that thing? Do you want to try to figure out what that thing is? It's funny.

I'll talk to people who meditate and you'll be like, okay, you sit there, you meditate, you're alone in your room um and these are secular people who don't and but is there something else there with you when you mediate and everyone to be like, of course, there's absolutely there's something else there. There's something invisible there. I OK that's the crazy thing in the world.

So you're say so you're saying, like when you stop washing netflix and scroll on tiktok and you sit in silence, there's an invisible force there. Shouldn't life be like focused on what is that thing, figuring out what that thing is and what he wants from you? And the good news is, like, what IT wants from you is to tell you that your love like to love you infinitely, and then to call you to this life of love and service for either people. So is this force of tremendous good dance? But like, do you want to really figure that out?

And I do think we see, well, we'd also there none good forces out there too.

exactly. Now that's for me actually, when I coming from secular meditation, which is mostly as its roots in buddhist meditation or eastern meditation, the Christian meditation, obviously the core of the difference in Christian meditation is a relationship jesus, it's not about whatever like your breath or joined like distress is not about any that it's about trying to let jesus into your heart and transform your heart um let him love you and then to go and share that love with others so at the core is a totally different thing.

But um the other big piece of IT that was different for me that I found really powerful from a Christian perspectives is in eastern traditions of meditation. You know the fundamental belief is hays. There are suffering.

There's a way to escape. Suffering in meditation is one of those techniques. But there's no good and evil fight. There's no good very vil in Christian.

Like if you sit in silence and you just focus on your breath or something, there's two things that can come into your mind. Yes, there's a good thing which is great as jesus, he loves you. And there's a very bad thing. And the very bad thing does not love you and does not want you're good. You want to destruction and you know like this there's this blog and one of the secular mentation .

just so obviously true that look around yeah .

there are I mean, to deny evil is the other thing I was saying when you said, you know, he feels like people are more aware is evil just feels a lot more on its face than ever works like I used to feel. I don't know, i'm only been around for a bit, but like under the surface and now which just feels a lot more, I just right there.

which I I I say so no no, no. You said so there's a book no .

there's on on one of these secular meditation website um you know somebody they write in questions or whatever in the the meditation person the secular meditation person answering them and a woman rode in and said, hey, I was meditating and I had a thought come across my mind about harming my child. You know, what do I do with that and the person just responded like, well, okay, just treat that like any other thought just like acknowledge IT and let her go you know keep trying to focus on your breath and for me, I just as like men that that doesn't feel right, like that doesn't.

And the Christian teaching is so much, so much deeper, like all of there's a spirit ality called ignition spirituality where it's literally all just about, okay, you're sitting there in silence, you're sitting there in poor or at any moment in your day, how do you design between what is good and what is bad is called a designation of spirits. And so it's like, well, how do you figure out if someone is talk in to you, is that the good guy? He is at the bad guy because that's IT.

And our job is he is the bad guy. Get the bad guy y out there. You fortify yourself against your temptations, against your weaknesses.

Ignore him as much as possible. And if it's the good guy, I try to let him in and let him transform your life. And the good guy wins.

The good guys infinitely more powerful than the guy have to build up the guy and being more powerful. Jesus s, but we have to continue the fight. And our job is primarily with our own hearts to discern good versus evil and to get the evil out. And I don't know, I mean.

it's but it's a big deal. You I an the core Christian purses and deliver us from the evil one, certainly. Yeah so mean that suggest like we should be afraid of that .

IT was a war I mean, yes, that's the story of scripture .

but it's not like something we just sort of let IT go and hope he doesn't come back as like, wow, that's really scary that .

you and everyone you love yeah no and and the thing is it's I don't know for me it's like in my own experience if I go back pre jesus um in my life I didn't feel like I was actively trying to do evil like IT IT didn't um but I I was like I was a terrible guy bad friends as bad and relationships I was a terrible son as involved in many things I shouldn't I know that and I believed many things that were truly that were wrong truly evil and you know IT was only after letting got into my heart that like I started seeing all these things and this priest, this homely thing was like a week ago and he said, life is like you're driving in a car with a with a crack and dirty when shield when you're driving away from the sun.

You don't see any of the cracks, you don't see any the far, you don't see any of the defects in the windshield. But as soon as you turn around and you start driving towards the sun, as soon as you start journey towards god, you starting all these cracks and all these defects. Smart and it's with Christ like you started seeing like, oh my god, just like how evil all this was.

But that's the way the world, the way the world is destruction, like the the road is why the way is easy that leads to destruction. And there are many who follow IT in the road. Narrow in the way is hard that leads to life.

And there are a few who find IT. But like once you find IT, it's it's hard, yes, because you have to fight against evil. It's it's not like you just get to disconnect and manage and do whatever you want and just find piece is like now there's a war going on. We need to fight ah but at the same time is this tremendously freeing um and light and easy way which is you know it's a contradiction but is a beautiful one.

No he told you before about his staff favorite here at t cn, the eight sleep pot. What is IT is a high tech matters that we talk about over lunch. Er our mattress because this one is excEllent.

High t is a cover because right of your existing that well, this Christmas you can get IT for the best Price the year up to six hundred box off. The eight sleep pot works by adJusting the temperature, warmer or poor, depending on your preference. And IT maintains an ideal sleep ing network all night long.

You might not know this, but through different phases of sleep, every night, your bodies needs change. Sometimes you want to warmer, sometimes cold. As you throw the sheets off, you pull them around to other parts of the night, you don't have to do anymore with sleep, because IT automatically keeps things exactly where you want them.

Write your entire nights sleep, what's called you sleep cycle. And it's been studied as clinically proven to increase quality sleeping every night that improves your recovery time from physical exertion, makes sharper, make your health Better. IT learns and adapts your sleep patterns over time, and that automatically adjust temperatures throughout the night through each phase of your sleep.

And IT does this independently for up to two people in a bit, so each person can have a Taylor made sleep IT really helps. People here absolutely love to eight sleep dog com, like shock is the promote code tucker to get up to six hundred books off the pod for ultra. You can try with no obligation for thirty years if you don't like you to send IT back at eight sleep dog comes h talker, Better sleep truly.

So I should have asked at the outset, of course, I conduct our interviews backwards. My what is prayer? Yeah, I think .

that there's a bunch of different, really beautiful definitions of per. But for me at the heart is just the way you have a relationship with god. Way you talk to him is the way you listen for me, primarily is listening. I mean, if if you believe what I believe, which is there's a got up there, he can talk to you and he knows what he wants for you for your perfect good in every moment, like all you'd wanted do is listen. All you'd want to do is, you know, pick up your phone every morning and be like a god.

What should I do? Yes, but it's not just in the morning, which is an important time to spend time in poor, but it's every moment like he's here with us now and he knows what he wants and what he wants is for your good. And he wants to enter your heart and transform and turn IT radically on fire with his love to then go love others.

And so prayers, the way in the way we have a relationship with the lord's across the says purse. Lifting up your heart to got at any is the medium through which you have a relationship with the lord is taking time to sit in silence to be alone with the one who loves you. There's all these beautiful definitions but for me it's primarily yes, sharing like it's helpful to share with on your heart and to ask for stuff and god answers those things per is real poor can change things.

I've i've i've seen IT change things. We we um there was a user who was at hello and was driving to work and he heard in prayer um hey, parking a different spot, which doesn't make any sense. He is a teacher is he was like parking a different spot of the parking lot and he's driving his, praying that he hear godd say, parking a different spot.

He goes to a back corner that he never would apart in any parks in IT. And the school he went to was evi, the school that cutch shot off and that day cut, shot up. And had he been parked in the Normal spot he would have parked in, the shooter would have come through his directly through his car.

But he stayed in the parking lot and the shooter went around a different way, which just like, so prayer works. I don't people call me crazy. Whatever thousand prayers prayer works like pair can change lives.

I've seen IT literally actively save people's lives. There was a woman who, uh, was coding out and her friend was sitting next door. So SHE was dying.

They were trying to result, or her friend was sitting next and they said, i'm gna pray a rosy on the APP and SHE opened up the APP and pretor rossy he and the doctor say, OK, i'm sorry, we've, you know, we've been trying to resist the tape. She's not with us anymore. She's dead and the woman said, don't leave.

We'll finish the roster. Y and then you can leave. And the doctor said, okay, I don't know why. And they called time of death. And two, three minutes go by.

And then JoNathan, who is located as the rosy on the out, JoNathan remain, plays jesus in the child. phenomenal. But yeah, he closed the rosy says, in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit in a beef and heart chest comes back.

The woman just comes back to life. So I mean, player works like like, uh, you can ask god for things and he does not them. He doesn't always answer them.

Answer your prayers in the way that you expect. He often, he often lead you to pain and suffering, which is, you know, the way that across. It's the way he promises.

It's the way of his apostles. I mean, I have a lot of your life, then the the apostles have that first, but he will lead us all to pain and suffering. And that's how he leads us closer to him.

But pyr, at the course, is talking to him, asking him for things. Yes, all the stuff that we know, prayers, but then it's also listening. And for me, that's what really changed my life, was learning to listen.

And that's mostly learning to sit in silence. There is a bit of different ways to listen, but mostly learning to sit in silence. Mandatory on scripture, reflecting on work out is in our life, all these different ways is why we built the up, because there's a thousand different ways to grow closer ard, to learn how to listen. And I can I can be scary for people who don't know what that means, but to really try to spend time each day listening for god and, you know, expLoring whatever works for .

you and whatever, can you? I mean, I think a lot of us would like to listen more carefully. And prayer can just be like a litany of complaints and desires, or something really ugly about very nursia c about IT. But listening, you know, into the void comes all, in my case, like fly fishing, you know, are worrying about dumb stuff. How what is the process you used to listen to god?

Yeah, I love the question because it's the question I wasted with and it's the IT is the whole reason we built hello uh, and there's a thousand different techniques of parliament ation on the APP, a thousand different ways to structure your time in silence because one of the real hard parts is distraction. You start thinking about whatever worries or issues and there's a bunch away.

I believe this is addressed .

in the created letters. But one of the is there's a bunch of ways to so there's a book of different techniques of poor. And the first thing i'd recommend is i've not to do nearly as good a job at teaching this as we do on the apps of folks should try hello and download to find whatever session works for them and and give IT a shot but um you know like medicining with scripture as an example was a technical called lexi deva uh has a handful of different steps to IT make sure that you notice that during god's presence at the beginning and then you read like a short paragraph h from scripture. So it's not just total silence, although you is great to also spend time in total silence.

But that can be harder for folks who are newer to IT because you you get distracted and you start thinking about work and then you're just like quit. I just spent twenty minutes just thinking about all this stuff I had to do exit that wasn't prayer and um but you you you ask god, hey helpme, i'm about to try to pray uh, can you help me make this time what you wanted to be and then you pick a passage or you know a few verses from scripture and you try to see, okay, what word or maybe there's an image or maybe it's a phrase, is the holy spirit calling out to me and for me was hello in that first one. But you can be anything and and funny.

Actually the really cool part about scripture when you do this is you can do IT in a group like six seven people and like one sentence, people will be like seven different words will stick out home and seven different meanings for different people at different stages in their life. You are a city built on a hill um IT cannot be hit, uh like city or hill or light h shine, whatever. Like people will monitor on different words and you try to focus on that word.

So as your mind is distracted, that's fine. That happens. You just bring your mind gently back to the word, back to the point, back to the focus what you're trying to meditate on, which is, you know, for me, was hello in this first meditation and then you use that to share with god what's on your heart. So it's good to share with god you you open up to him just like you would want your child to share with you what on their heart, what they are worried about, what they want, even if it's not good for them.

You want them to tell you, you know, you don't want to keep the secret so you share with them and then you try to sit in silence and you just try to, this is the hard part, but it's also the beautiful part, which is after you get through this, you share what's on your heart and you spend your time trying to recollect yourself and sending yourself on on scripture. Then you spend, you know, you can just be like a minute, I can be two, three minutes, and you just let let god, you just sit with god, and you just try to sit with god. And if your mind gets distracted, that's fine.

You gently bring a back or another technic for distraction. And there's a bunch of these things. It's a whole tradition, thousands of years of this month and non and all the stuff doing this. But you take the distraction and you say, okay, i'm really thinking about this thing at work. I'm really thinking about this relationship that I have and you use that for prayer.

So you, the devil, can use IT to distract you away from god, or you can use IT to transform interpreter and say, hey god, this things happening at work is there's something you want me to do. Here is there's something. How do you want me in to handle this? I'm destructed.

I keep thinking about this is there's something you're trying to tell me here, and then you listen. And sometimes that will be obvious, and sometimes they won't be obvious. Sometimes scripture will jump out to you, and sometimes gotta speak directly to you.

Sometimes you might hear something probably, but usually all the funny things. I've been doing this now for six years, and I spend all my time every day just trying to, as a bunch of different stuff. But the core of IT is trying to understand and share like really deep, really awesome Christian contemplative um and meditation spirituality with people and so read all these spiritual directors, all these folks, all these signs, all the stuff.

And the funny thing is it's like at the core of all of IT, there's nothing like the greatest truths are also the simplest. All god wants in prayer is to show you how much he loves you and to just hold you and to just love you and it's like, that sounds name is like a man like you're like, I want to be strong. I don't need love whatever IT is, but you do like you need this love of Christ, and he loves you so deeply and so and IT doesn't matter what we others.

One right into us who was trapped in this tremendous state of sin, SHE said he was overwhelmed with a shame, sexual sin. h. SHE was, he was terrible person, violence, all the stuff.

And SHE entered in the prayer and was just silence. And SHE just heard god say to work. Uh, I love you, you because you can't love me.

I'm a terrible person. I'm the worst thing I know. I am trapped in the cycle of sin.

And he says, I love you. SHE can you can? You can love me.

I'm not worthy. He says, I love you, I love you, I love you. And he just kept saying, and until he said, okay, fine.

And what he does is he loves us so much. So that are hurt overflows, both for love back to him, but also to then go share that love with other people. Another Young girl um who had never heard that he was beautiful from anyone in her life.

SHE was twenty years old. He had never heard breaks my heart as a father, had never heard anyone tell her he was beautiful, just ugly SHE had just heard that he was ugly whole life. And he looked in the mirror.

SHE started a little meditation, not in the audio or anything. And he just heard the words from god are beautifully and wonderfully. May do you think I make mistakes? And it's just like you, god will tell you if you give them, and it's not, you know, don't try at once, try a bunch.

You have to persevere. You have to try for a year. Don't try for two years.

Don't try for four weeks. Try for a year. Just ten, twenty minutes in silence.

But what god will do if you give them that little crack is you'll tell you exactly what he wants to tell you, which no one I can tell you if 拍照。 But IT is at the core that you are loved and that you are called to greatness. You're not called the sit, you're same.

You're not called, called to be the same. You're called to be transformed to be perfect. And he brings that out of you. He brings love out of you. And the other unique thing about player is player is completely useless, a total waste of time.

If IT does not lead to a life of love, and Christiani is very clear, it's not like meditation or working out or anything that makes you feel happier, which IT does that makes you feel all that stuff. But IT must lead to a life of radical love and radical service, and fighting for the good and fighting for the truth, and finding for those who most need. And so you have for prayer, I think, the ultimate stage of IT.

Yes, knowing you're loved. But then ultimately, what you do after listening is you try to surrender your life completely to him. You try to give up everything to him so that you no longer live.

But Christ lives within you and that you pray unseized ly. So the end state is like, I try to talk to get to, try to share with on my heart. I try to listen for him as hard.

I get distracted, but I try my best to listen for him. And then when I try to do is let him into my heart, to surrender my heart completely and totally to him, so that he takes over everything. And so anyway, I know that's a long answer, but that to me is .

what birds it's it's not a long answer to great answer. How does you said earlier that fasting and prayer go together? And that's often forgotten? Mark robarts been trying to remind us of that. What is the connection between them and what do you mean by fasting?

Um what traditionally what is meant by fasting is food um but it's interesting because fasting used to be a massive part of it's not even talked about that much in scripture because I was so assumed like people just knew that .

and that's how was referred to at least in the reference I can think of. It's almost like when you fast, by the way.

when you are think you will be you're supposed to fast of course we're supposed to fast was just assumed was in today's world we don't tell me of all these.

So anyway, at the core, fasting is from food of all these what uh, like we are in, we soften fasting, but which is true like some people have eating disorders or some people have issues with fasting or some people have issues like health issues or women are pregnant or breast feeding or whatever IT is. So there's all these reasons, but like for me as a whatever thirty year old man, I can fast today, like I can go a day without food. I can just drink water.

I can go many days without food, actually but I can certainly go a day without food and it's it's one of the things about especially when we talk to Young man, it's like Christian entry has been soften and sadly so and what IT is is um you know Christian and only really if you read the gospel and if you really read what you is is saying it's not oft it's really hard and it's two things that are both really hard radical mercy and radical justice and perfection and avoidance of sin and defeating the devil like it's it's radical both ah and so yes, there is a radical love which is like, hey, no matter what you do in your life, I will love you. I I will forgive you if you come to me at the same time, you are called to be perfect not like, hey, you're a good person because you go to church on sometimes or hey, you are a good person because you don't yellow people it's like, no you're called to never be angry with somebody again. Um and fasting is one of those things that so I know for me as I mean there's like this this is all there is a bunch of my team makes fun me because I love all these I kind of crazy Christian stories but um there was like these old group of monks called the stylish ts that were just in the desert, uh they were just climb on top of a column um so roman column in the little of the desert, and they would just die.

They would just starve to death on the column for Christ to to sacrifice their bodies for Christ, which is certainly probably not what most people are called to. But fasting, I mean, at the core was food, or at the at, at the basic as food for anybody where that is, you know, accept to, as, I think, something that we are all called to, but I can be anything. So IT really, what is fasting? Is anything you want? When I like food, I like bad food, I like so fasting from food is hard, but I can be fasting from your food, from your phone.

I can be fasting from, you know, a social media grow that can be fasting from anything that you want is just giving IT up. Any addiction that you have, that of this world that isn't something that is helping you grow closer. The lord, just giving IT up.

And IT IT doesn't have to be big, no bad. IT doesn't have to be bad in nature like chocolate. Jesus isn't against chocolate, but you can give up like, hey, you know, i'm not gonna that extra cookie just as a small little sacrifice forgot.

And jesus is really clear in scripture, which is, know there's a story of this man who is possessed in his apostles, les men of great faith. A tried to cast IT out, and they're able to cast out many demons, and they can't cast IT out. And jesus combs and says, okay, i'll cast IT out fine, and cast IT out, of course, and his impossible say, well, why could not we? Why couldn't we do that? And he says some things can only be accomplish through pre investing. And so it's like the power of fasting is, I think this really untapped. And you see IT actually in in today's culture too, like we've tried to pick all these different things where it's kind of like fasting, but not like cold showers or cold lunches.

Now we're like, oh, you should do IT it's like it's hard IT makes you um IT helped you grow in discipline and all this stuff for um you know intermit and fasting all these different things and it's I get Christian and you ve been doing that for two thousand years like cold showers are another great weight fast but for me I don't know whenever I fast, which is traditionally it's like wednesday or thursday and again, you can have like a meal or or something, but it's you should be dramatically less food than you do otherwise or may be it's from coffee or maybe it's from whatever. But whenever I fast from food is this interesting, I just feel like it's the same thing, by the way, whenever I sit in front of the ukraine. But uh, for me, whenever I fast, I just feel like, you know, it's not radical, but it's like twenty percent easier for me to enter into prayer.

And so like you will sit in prayer for like twenty minutes and your mind will get destructed for a while and you share share everything that's on your heart. You're trying to monitor curcio have two or three minutes when you get really into IT. It's just a little bit at the beginning, but like two or three minutes where IT just feels like the same describe this is like union with god, but it's just IT feels like you're really close to god, like you feel very connected spiritually and there's something good and IT takes a while and it's really hard but when I fast, I can do IT and like IT doesn't take like eighteen minutes of mushrooms and or trying to not IT IT takes like thirty seconds like I could just be here and I could just be like, man, yeah I feel like god is right here.

What do you think that is?

I don't know. I think it's the further. I'm certainly not the illusions, so I don't know. But for me it's like further I get from this world, the closer I get to go and the world, you know, we're called to live in the world and work in the world, and we're called to take care of our bodies and to serve as best weekend within the world. But god is not. We are called to not be of this world, to be in the world, but not of the world. And I think as we disconnect from the things that most tether us to the world, we get closer to the spiritual round, which you know to me as a relationship with the lord.

how often do you fast?

I tried to, uh, everybody has their own journey. But I tried to fast wednesday and friday during land. I tried to wednesday, friday. yeah.

Um now, you know, sometimes i'll do kind of like a half fast or i'll still eat, but probably about half of what I would eat in a Normal day. And but during land, I try to do full fast and then I try to do full fast. From good friday to easter sunday and sometimes longer but onesta .

going to show you, you only eat five .

days week ideally yeah during yeah and during regular times I will eat on wednesday and friday, but usually it's it's about a third to a half of the like calories or amount of food that I would even on a regular date.

And then you first three days easter weekend .

yeah I usually I fast good friday, saturday and then to to mass and then you know, there was a year at fast at all of holy week. But what was I like?

My wife was the same through IT.

I was coming back to my fate. There's something special lot of folks or new back to the faith, if got this fire that is important for us. You have taken faith series sly to try to rekindle um which we have a lot of folks on. I've talked a lot about people who have come back to their faith on hello, but it's an hour to get to pray with everybody. I take my favorite I use the three times today but um .

yeah that .

was that was the seventy fast which um was pretty intense like you you start getting I would say I would say the first two days suck because you're just really hurry yeah but then you don't after the second day, i'm not hurry I don't feel the sensation of hungry really maybe IT comes every once a while, but i'm not really hungry. And so IT is just like living a whole day, like what I was saying, like just were within a minute.

Any time you think about god, you can just enter him with this poor space, which is and the other thing that does is, you know, jesus describe themselves as me and humble of heart. And whenever you have a lot of food, I don't know there's something that kind of push you up like when you have all the energy and when you just when you're hunger, you're just like you're so much more humble and so much meeker and so you feel like, man, this is probably how I should be all the time. But then yeah certainly towards the end of IT, you start getting slow and you lose energy and it's hard to walk.

It's hard to do. It's hard to I have enough energy for IT. And then I was supposed you're supposed to like, eat bomb brothers, something when you come back to your faith.

And so after sunday easter, after sunday visual math or saturday visual math, for easter, I had my wife give me some bone brothers something. And I just like this, I need some micco ald. And so was not, I would certainly not recommend the mcDonald's after a long time, did you?

I did.

And I felt, what was easter? So was a few days so I could celebrate. So couple something. Yeah, I don't macon anymore.

but I did. I don't know. But did how? What was that like going from empty tank to filling IT with my Donald?

Uh, yeah. Was not not recommended, not recommended. You feel like crap. I mean, the other actually this is the funny thing about the spiritual life, is actually how how, how many analogies are for. But like I, I so in this year, i've tried to do a lot at a job of eating health here, and like cleaner and more protein and all that stuff are supposed to do.

And is this is this funny sensation? We're like then the bad food, it's it's really hard to beginning because you addicted all these, all these things, all these foods that are terrible for you. You're addicted to him.

So you ve got to break IT and that's really hard like how I want sweets or I want you know process foods or chips or whatever that is. And so it's really hard at the beginning. But then once you get through IT, you start to realize that actually clean food, like good natural food, taste way Better, like is way Better.

And the fast food is IT starts to be disgusting, like IT starts to be like. And so like haven't had me talk, which is a big friend, mcDonald, but I haven't had Mandala a long time, and now is just like my wife and I was saying the same things, like I don't even not only do you not want IT like for for a while there, you just don't want IT and that's nice. But then you start to ultimately like actively dislike IT like the this stuff that's bad for you.

And I think it's very similar in the spiritual life is like this journey of like at the beginning when you try to break a habit of sin, it's really hard to break because you're really attach to IT and then you get to appointment c OK. Well, I don't. You know, by the Grace of god, I don't really want this thing anymore.

And then you get to this pointless, like, I hate that thing. That thing is evil. That thing was destroying me. I see IT now, like, I can see what I was doing to my soul and any time I can anywhere close to IT you like feel uh like now this is bad. This is terrible for you which is kind of this funny analogy with food um but yes so anyway I wouldn't I wouldn't fast um I won't faster than mcDonald's certainly would not be the recommended although Kevin James he shared this on rogue so I can I can share but he did have forty, forty one day fast something crazy which wasn't sane. And I had dinner with him when he during his fast like twenty days into his faster something crazy and he was, um you know I was like, every you okay if I eat and you like, yeah I like to look at food like I need to look at IT so I still have a relationship with IT but unfasten and he did IT first family which is beautiful but um given James the actor the in the incredible man of faith i'm really yeah yeah you should talk to him his I haven't seen my his inspirational I .

want on a sick coming he had once year years ago many years twenty years ago anyway haven't seen him sense I had .

no idea I tell there's we've got some I can I can share everything now but we've got there's there's a lot more people, celebrities or whoever who are faithful folks um who are just you know haven't really had the opportunity or the culture or the the platform to share their faith. And it's cool to get to meet these people and to get to talk to him about what god is done in their life. And it's is way more people than you would imagine. So really no, it's cool. I think there's something culture happened in the world.

So I think that too, I don't think you can have this much evil without .

a counterbaLance. Well, in the darkest night, that's where the light, the darkness cannot overcome the light and it's it's like, yeah, I don't know the night is darkest before the dawn. There's all this stuff.

That's all the traditional wisdom that you say, but you don't really realize. And I think when this time where I don't know, evil feels a lot more on its face than IT never was but so is good. And like I think god is doing something really cool, and i'm excited for IT. So we will see with the glora wills.

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I'm really struck by the persecution of Christians, which I never thought I would see in the modern era in this country on two levels. One IT just doesn't make any sense, because Christians are the most sort of productive police threatening racist. Like, you know, if you're running a country, why would you be bad? You don't want more questions because actually pay their taxes and like have obedient children and their here children yeah have children are easier to deal with. Um so i'm sort baffled by IT and then I look at I like, well, no that is there's something so offensive to the world about the word jesus unless this uses an apathetic that that phenomenon on itself is evidence of god's existence I think that word has power despite two thousand years of misuse .

yeah um I mean we we we have seen a lot of different um backlash from the APP I mean there have you I should have asked to .

that have you really yeah I .

mean there's you know whatever attack articles about more radical because were Polly for any other their actually pieces .

attacking hello yeah certainly.

Would you find .

that kind of areas?

Well, you know at the beginning, the beginning is stressed me out, but certainly actually funny enough. There were two vice and buzzed, both throw out hit pieces and really within like a month, two both were bankrupt. Yeah wishes you I never .

celebrate anyone's proxy and I didn't I didn't allow myself to celebrate other one of those because I don't want to be the kind of person who you know people suffering and the people work, they're suffer and so but um you didn't make my day, i'll be honest.

Yeah the um and we had the APP got kicked out of china, the chinese cyborg security administration or something deemed our content illegal and they removed him from the up story yet.

Uh we've launched to chAllenge on apparently there are not huge fans of john paul second and we did a meditation on how he LED did a lot of work on defeat and communism globally yeah um garbage have uh credit him with being one of major forces to destroy the soviet union and or communism least. And yeah, they didn't like that. So they sent a noted apple and apple removed her the APP store in china.

But there there's so there's spent a bunch of stuff and whatever. You just have to look at twitter to find anybody who hates jees or any of my post or anything. But um no, the thing that bothers me, the monster, the thing that makes me the most side is is like the like there's the on the face persecution where is you know like you're not a lot in china, which is sad like we prefer our brother and sisters in Christ in china is tough. It's a tough environ certainly to try to sure the gospel ends to try to live the gospel but you know the sad thing for me is honest just like the it's like the the undercurrent i've like um trying to get away from jesus and this this is certainly isn't everybody but it's a lot and it's OK you know you can share about faith and you can share about prayer, but like let's not talk about jesus specifically. Let's just not do the jesus think ah let just talk about like religion more broadly or like how you should build a boodles version of this in a hindi version of this, in a muslim version of this you know we'd invest if you were broader spirituality but not you know just the jesus thing and i'm like, yeah sorry i'm it's just gonna be jesus or like I know A T V commercial or somebody like, okay, we can talk about pair and is a pyt I don't show a picture of jesus in IT. It's like has gonna picture .

of jesus and it's don't you find it's not revealing that jesus two thousand years later is controversial .

yeah please always been whether .

but I mean IT dos, it's so irrational that again, it's proof of its reality but like what the guy who told his followers to pray for their prosecutors and turn the other cheek like that guy is controversial like why?

Yeah I mean, it's from a Christian perspective is because it's not it's not just people who are it's not people who are crackey jesus. And so it's like IT almost makes you so much more obvious when you totally agree. okay.

Well, why are you so against um you know why are you so against life and cycle? If I was saying what what I do, that's what I would do ah and I will try to destroy jesus. I will try to get jesus out of everywhere.

I try to secularize society and make IT and remove jesus and the you know and I think our country was, I don't know, we've done you've talked about this before, was like the last whatever, forty fifty years of trying to build a secular society. But that's not what our country is. Our country is a Christian country.

And we're doing this one nation undergo series on the APP as we go through the election. But I just focuses on like even if if you go back to any of the founding fathers, you they talk about the importance of prayer and how god is building this country. Now we have to trust him with a nabhan.

Lincoln has his beautiful quote where he's like, hey, in the midst of this of war he's like, hey, guys, we have really screwed up. We have tricked ourselves into thinking that our own success, that our success with the result of our own hard work and virtue and wisdom, when in reality, we know it's god leading us, but we have forgotten to pray for him. We have become too proud to pray to the god that made us.

This is last year, which just beautiful, but it's like, yeah, we forgotten prayer, like prayer should be. Politics is important, engaging in politics, but IT comes at the end, like, the beginning is the heart and the beginning prayer. And whenever you think of like, well, this world is going down the wrong path, yeah, that's the way of the world.

The way the world is not is not the C. S. Lost describes the world as enemy occupied territory, uh, and Christiana is the story of how the rifle king is landed and invited all of us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. And it's like that's what IT is. The world is enemy occupyed territory.

The world is senator, the world is evil, the way the world is destruction, the way the world is death and Christiani is this crazy thing like I used to be Normal society um and so we kind of forget about IT but is this in saying thing is a crazy thing to believe that god's sent is only sun so that we all shall have life in heaven with him is this crazy thing to in that he's here with us now like an an invisible person is right here who loves us both who's trying to help us both and he's in our hearts. He's trying to transform our hearts. And there's the giant war going on all around, this invisible war with Angels and demons, whatever, trying to convince our hearts, trying to win our hearts like that's a crazy thing to believe, but that's what we believe.

And so but but when you really enter into and and like is crazy, but yeah, you have the worlds, every lasting life, to whom else should we go? And everything becomes just a lot clear. But and also IT takes a bit of the weight off of IT like I used to get so worried about all these world events and it's like, well, you know, god in charge this thing. He's already promised us that he want IT and it's just our jobs to try to be as good to people as we can to try to be thanks, to try to let go into our hearts to transform them.

Is that the message of one nation underground?

Yeah, I mean, the message of one nation underground is politics is important. We should engage in IT. Actually, here's the message.

One nation regard is just inscription itself, but it's the passage of when they ask jesus, should they pay the census tax? We have to room this evil government, evil, evil government jack coin, which is, know, I just killed, like no thirty years and years had just killed all the first born e children in this area to try to kill this like that's a terrible and they're saying, okay, what should we pay the tax to the suppression of government that suppressing us and jesus says, okay, show me the coin and he says, okay, whose face and whose inscription is on this point? They say, scissors.

He says, okay, well, render on the scissor. What scissors give the season, what the scissors. And then that's what we focus on.

Usually that's usually the and then everybody talks about which is true, what that means, which is that is important to engage in the politics of this world. They're important things that are important for us to be had. We need to engage in, we need to take them seriously. We need to be god's hands and feet in the world, given diseases or disease are engaged in politics.

Um do your civic tivy but then the second half of that line is but give on to god what is gods usually throw that part away and psychotic visually we give on to got what is got, but it's PC OK, but given to god what is got OK. Well, the coin had scissors face and scissors inscription stealing us from a harmony ahead from priest. But the coin had scissors face and scissors scription.

Okay, where is god's face? You are god's face. You were made in the image and lights of god.

And where are goddard words printed? Where is his inscription is on your heart? His words are in printed on your heart from the beginning of time.

His words, his law, his love is in printed on your heart. So give on to god's. What is god? Where's his face? Where his inscription is in you? You are his face, you are his inscription.

And so your job, yes, is to give on diseases or diseases, sure, pay the coin back. Diseases, but given to god, what is god? Which is your whole life? You should give your whole life to him.

You have to give everything, your heart, your life, your soul, everything to got. And so when we get wrapped up in politics, it's important, again, we should engage in IT. It's not diminishing politics with the importance of politics in any way.

But the first thing is, do we give on to god? What is god's? And is the one thing that, like I still think, has a chance at cutting across political boundaries, or whatever IT is in in this country and say, man, if we just let chryse indoor hearts, if we just let jesus come, he can fix that.

He can fix IT all. And so we just need to pray for Christ, swell to be done in our world, primarily first within our hearts, and then for all of us to build up our communities in our country and our society. In the way that to get local times that we can dot up the kingdom. I've got.

How do you use the hello .

APP me I used, I used a lot but the are this little I have a routine on my APP we have these little things where you can set up like personal routines which I love um but like my routine is is this which is um there's daily readings, so in there's uh sign reading from the old testers, a song and then the um the gospel reading so I do those in the morning uh and I try to spend like twenty minutes in silence.

There's an unguided, structured silence session um so you don't have to accept alarm anything that takes you out of IT. It's kind of a peaceful way IT. Now just kind of structures the silence for you and so I try to do twenty minutes in silence each day and then when um right when I wake up first thing certainly I tried not to look at my phone. I've tried to get my phone out of my room is terrible of your fun when you first wake up, it's awful and awful for .

you know for your second business. If you could a invent a reliable alarm clock? Yeah, yeah. Just reinvent the alarm clock.

I think I would get phones out of people's rooms .

of the alarm.

I know it's heart breaking, but I think there's there's good on I have a good alarm clock. We figured out alarm clock. You know it's there's I ever my wife and I actually both have a good alarm clock. SHE still has her phone in the room but it's um but he also waited over a two months so SHE has to wake up in the midnight so she's to something SHE um there's a surrender nova that I do in the middle the day there's a libery of humility that I do in the middle which is a series of humility prayers which is like, man, if you want something to put in your place, this would be like, you know what what people think they're humble .

and you're not you love this humility bigger the key to wish, by the way so yeah, I think it's worth pursuing. But how does this put you in your police?

The linning humility is the most intense but we start every every, every land with IT. Um but it's a series of players where you ask god to give you huge milk but tactically like what that actually means for you. And it's asking for these crazy things where you ask god that others may be loved more than I, that in the opinion of the world, others may increase and eye may decrease, that others may be more successful than I, that others may be chosen an eye aside.

come on now, all these crazy .

things that are, uh, you want to mean that yeah well.

what you pray for .

is or from the fear of embarrassment, or from the fear of everyone hating you, or from the fear of people lying about you and merging your name, or whatever IT is from the from fear of everything bad that could happen, deliver me jesus. And so you pray this hate, deliver me jesus from these fears of the world hating you, essentially. And the prayer here is, god scraped me the Grace to desire.

Jesus granted me the Grace to desire. S so certainly I I don't you know like if I just walk down the street and I see somebody I don't naturally want them to be more successful than I am um and so what you pray for us like jesus granted me the Grace to desire. Now the interesting thing about that though, is with kids it's different. Like god, I have a four year old, two year old tomato.

And god is just kids are the greatest theology lesson in the hit that that you could ever possibly receive in the one of them for me is humility, which is like when I look at someone random, I don't naturally want them to have a higher opinion from the world than I do, uh, but when I look at my kids, we d like to have a Better life than I do. But I when I look at my kids, I look my daughter, my son and like, yeah, of course I want you and then no, I don't feel like I don't feel like it's like, no, please like I want you to be in in the last thing you pray actually, that others may be holier than I provided that I may become as holier as I should. And it's like, I want you to be closer to god than I am.

I want you to be holier than I want to be happier, more know whatever worldly success got ones from you. I want you to have IT like, I want you to have such a Better life than I do. And it's not now there's no, like, I feel no, there's no jealous y there no good.

The opposite. That's the deepest desire of your heart. We used to call, in fact, the american dream, right, that your children will be Better off than you know for real. Well, that is what every parent wants for his children.

But what you're supposed, I mean, the crazy thing in Christianity is that how god feels about all his children. And that's how we're called to feel about our brothers and sisters in Christ is how I feel about my daughter and is in the other great piece of IT of fatherhood is like I don't know, as a person, as an adult, you're like when i'm going to do something bad and if I screw somebody over, they're not going to like anymore.

They have no reason to forgive me. They have no reason do anything. That's not the natural way of things. The natural way of things isn't forgiveness.

But you look at your daughter and the in in the Christian, in the Christian teaching, it's like, well, but god forgives you no matter what I like my, I buy that pretty intense like no matter what, really even the really evil ones, the ones we all hate, uh, he forgives them no matter what, if they come to him and if I want, just think about your own like if my son did something terrible, like the worst possible thing I could imagine, and he comes to me and he says, dad, am sorry, I forgive him instantly state, not even a question, not even like anything I would hold over. I love you so much. Yes, i'm glad you're back.

I'm glad you're happy. Like I I certainly aren't aren't i'm not going to lie to him about something bad like he is doing something bad like you stepped. But it's not IT has nothing to do with like me trying to make him smaller, parade him or anything. It's just turn for him and as Christians is psycho kay, oh yeah, that's the lesson you're given, which is you feel that naturally for your kids, some people certainly they're terrible parents out there. But I feel that .

natural and after work I parent know exactly .

what you're talking about. And Christi, you got to do that for everybody. And so the lightning of humility is this like, like, okay, yeah, I can pray the lighting of humility for my kids. And maybe now I can pray for my wife and some my close friends and some my family and it's like, okay, yeah just keep you have to keep pushing yourself and so then you have people will be like, I am humble it's like, no, you are not. If you're humble, you believe some crazy stuff and i'm not anywhere close to IT, but the anyway that's one I do a chaplet uh which is a defined cy thing which is just lord, please have mercy on us and and then a rosy at the end of the day and then I tried to go to mess when I can but hopefully most days. But yes.

that most days, yeah.

daily mass, which is intense. He has a catholic. You called on sundays to go to mass, but I don't for me, I have a spiritual doctor is phenomenal.

And he just said, look, I like there are three things every day, sit in silence for twenty minutes, got to mass every day and do a rosy every day. And everything else in your life will come from that. And it's an interesting one.

It's like IT doesn't change IT. Nothing, nothing in Christian eni is like this. It's like eating good food. It's like it's not gonna make you feel infinitely good immediately the next moment, unless you're really aware how your body acts. But like gradually over time, you just notice how much IT does in you.

And for me, like if I gonna answer or I spend time in iteration and I do a rosy, or if I do the things i'm trying to do, I just seem like it's like ten tony. I'm a pretty terrible guide, naturally, and it's like ten tony percent Better for me to be more patient or more loving or more humble or more more towards others and less worried about myself. And it's just like ten twenty percent easier for me to be a Better person and I need the help. And so I try to get IT as much as I can.

IT is just so striking. I think any honest, personally meet this if you think of all the people you know in your life um who are the happiest, who are the most content, who are the kindness to others IT is sincere .

Christians. Actually i'm in its yeah I mean in terms of happiness, I mean, I can just speak for myself, but I just so like I am so much more joyful, so much more fulfilled, so much less worried than I ever could have imagined and I like hello is like building and start up is a really stressful thing like it's a very it's a very building a company is a really hard things, a very stressful thing most people burn out in.

I am just more a peace in, more joyful than i've ever bent and that we have too many stories for you. But that we we were doing our first fund, aries, for hello, because back everybody saying no. And the first thing we are running out of money was just our own credit, whatever.

And so we are about to have to go back and get regular jobs. And my wife really think god wants do the thing we'd had these stories about and other stuff. And really, okay, well, let's go try to raise some actually money so we can actually work on this full time.

And I have to go back and get regular jobs. And we have to go back and regular jobs. We would, hello, probably would have died.

So I go, and I do this fund race thing in the start of others is the first time we raised any real money. I go and pitch everybody. And IT was like a period two weeks.

I pitch maybe eighty people over the course of two weeks. So that's a lot of minutes, like ten minutes today. And um this is break of IT. So you flying all around, your driving back and forth around the silk valley area, whatever, trying to make these and everybody y's judging you. You have no numbers, you have nothing to show.

So they're just like, do I won a bet on this guy or are you sitting up start enough or you're making enough I contact or you answering questions well enough as your story and good and my story is just my relationship with jesus and uh, so it's like as personal IT could possibly be and then is the idea and I got which most people thought was a stupid idea um and if you're lucky, like five, my say yes of those eighty uh but that means like seventy five say no and the nose come really quick and the yes is take a while and so you just you have meaning after meaning after meaning you're exhausted. You're constantly analyzing yourself like are you doing this right and you just get now that that stupid nobody, y's onna do IT you're stupid and you've never done this before. You never built a business before.

You have no idea what you're doing. Uh and nobody praised him anymore. This is the only thing like hundred years ago. This is um specially jesus like the jesus thing that way over and the so just no no, no, no, no this is never gona work from like honestly the the most intelligence started.

People like the best start of investors in the world are telling you not like the people who know way Better than I do no, this is a terrible idea and I remember I came back to my little studio apartment and I SAT down, and I I was twenty five, and I had, like, four, five knots in my back. I could not eat. I couldn't sleep.

I was just like this crazy stress, which was weird. It's like, i'm not at war, and you think I was trying to kill me, but I was just as crazy stressors like this dream, my head that, uh, I felt so wrapped up. And we have people working for, there are families, whatever, dependent on IT.

And if this didn't work out and that was done with IT was never going to exist. And I said, time I try now I got, I think you chose the wrong guy for this. I don't think i'm the right guy.

I don't know why. I don't know why you chose me. Um this is too much stress.

It's too much weight. I can't handle this. I can't do IT. I'm too Young to be like having my chest was physically tight, like my my heart felt to tight, which was like, I don't think that's good for you and as I guy can do this and then as I got, here's the only thing I know how to do, i'm going to make a deal with you.

I promise you, if this thing works, I will always give you credit. I will never trick myself into thinking, i'm some successful entrepreneur gure this out and i'm some smart I whatever lovel la knows how to do start of stuff. I'm never gonna ick myself into thinking that I know what you doing this.

I promise you, I will always give you credit at the same time, if this thing doesn't work out, that's on you. That's not of me. I can, I can take the weight of IT.

I can't take IT is too heavy and that's fine. Like you want, you want IT to humble me. You wanted to teach me some lesson.

You wanted to reach out to somebody or inspire somebody else to do something else. You, whatever your plan is, that fine, is your thing you can do with that. What you want, maybe you want to to be massive and to come crashing down.

And everybody hates me in the world. Everybody thinks i'm terrible. Whatever is fine, it's your thing.

I'm going to work hards. I'm going to do the best I can. But I, I, I can't take the weight of whether IT doesn't work or not.

That's years. It's yours, whether IT works or whether IT doesn't work. And I just felt this like enormous wait from my shoulders. And the next day we went um the next day we went to meet with our favorite investor and was at a coffee shop and I was late now open up the daily gospel and IT was a story of Peter trying to fish and he's been fish day and there's no fish you can't catch any fish and jesus says, let down unit and Peter says, where you talking about there's no fish up and fish all day for me is like what i've been pitching everybody everybody has said, no.

That list is just now there's like three, four people if there's no, everybody is gonna say, no, this this is never going to what you talking about and he is just says, what down you and Peter catches more fish than the neck Carry. And two seconds later that I gives us an offer to fund the whole thing. And then over the weekend, over the next three, four days, we get three, four more offers more than they can Carry, more than we can take.

And IT was just this hilarious example of god, exactly what I talked about the beginning, which is just like everything with hello, is just us trying to do something and then letting god take IT. And, you know, working the starts we can, but letting god take IT and own IT. And if you do, he just does these incredible things with them um IT was just this journey of just this journey of radical surrender but it's yeah god has done some really cool stuff that so it's a blessing to get to be part of or did .

you take money .

from that investor? Yeah, we did. He's one of my favourite investors all time.

I love the go. And what's his view of IT now?

Uh, you know, it's funny because as as an investor still looking valley is a funny thing because everyone says there they want to be contrarian thinkers. That's and there are some there are some, a few maybe, but no one really is. no. So it's like I when a eis had A I is hot. When bitcoins had IT coins had when you know it's it's whatever IT is everyone's, I call i'm a control and think, but no one ee's really a thing, and think of it's just the tide of .

whatever people are investing .

in the biggest heard of american business. The funny thing, the funny thing for us is like, hello is an obvious idea to eighty percent in the country. If you go to eighty percent in the country and you say, hey, do you want an APP to help you? Please help you grow closer to jesus will be like IT.

Of course, eighty percent of world still praise. Every eighty percent of our country is much air in the world, but eighty percent of our country still praise every week. And whether if you went, said he, you wanted APP to help you monitor, or something that be like, what are you talking about? But in silicon valley is exactly the opposite.

N, N, L, A and new ork and no person chicago and see at whatever. But so it's a contrarian idea, but only in silicon valley, which is great because most of the obvious ideas are taken like you know, whatever the most S R 里。 And so we have this contrary idea where the vast majority people say, no, what IT really takes, honestly, is someone has to have an exposure to to faith. yes.

Does this investor?

yes. yeah. And it's it's interesting because it's either like a very close family member like your mom or somebody took their faiths really serious. Ly, and maybe you do or maybe you don't um but you have to have someone and you're really close orbit who takes their faiths really serious? Ly, and or you take your faith really serious.

Ly, now there's tough parts about you taking your faith really seriously, which is, like, if i'm like a real Christian, do I want to go out and tell my, because their investors who represent other investors, whatever saw their helpers, whatever people who invested in them, do I want to go tell me, the people who invested in my friend, that i'm advanta zing on behalf of my specific religion? You know what kind feels like i'm and like many, like whatever. Uh, there are many religions who are not, certainly not.

The categories are invested in these funds, uh, you know their endowments or whatever universe is IT. And so to go and invest in a specifically jesus thing is, know especially for a Christian IT feels like I while i'm using my secular career, which I usually like separate from my faith, uh, as some sort of faith tool, and that can be scared for many. We had we had several investors who early on, like, I just too scary for me.

I just don't think I can do that. I don't think I can jump. And what what IT really means as most of us have our career when we have our faith, if we take our seriously, we have our career or secular stuff, and then we have our faith, which maybe goes in to our family and stuff and our personalize.

But I usually does not go into our career. And what IT takes is this real courage to be like, well, you should all be one god wants at all. God doesn't.

God doesn't stop having a relationship with you when you go to work. IT doesn't stop trying to change your heart when you're at work in the secular, corporate or whatever he wants at all. He wants your whole thing. And so IT takes like a real courage for some of these people. And so we had many of them who said now with the in the early days, who have now jumped on later, because they were like, you know, I was just scared, and, you know, i'm not.

Which IT still takes courage is still takes courage to investor, be a part of hello, it's know the way the world, although he has been, you know, way more successful than I ever could imagine Gloria, I got, but you know, still takes courage to do that. And so these people, you know that sometimes that takes time but yeah this guy has uh his man I mean his a phenomenal investor is really helpful but also just like him and look, I trust you like you do some people like try to tell you how to do stuff for um you know because they're they know a lot, they've seen a lot. They've been around the corner theyve been around the blocking and for the times.

But this guy is just A A tremendous man of yeah trust in mission. He's you know very passionate about the work that we're doing in the mission that we're working on and trying to help people find love and peace in a relationship with the lord. So yeah he's been great in a handful of the folks that we had really early on in the early days were um but yeah it's all the good lord is finding people in putting him in our path we did most recent founders with A A guy flew out to meet us and I thought I knew everything about talk about I had been working and silk about feel like four years.

So I I thought I know every fun. I thought I knew every organza and this guy i'd never heard before runs a fund called good water capital like a seven billion or funded investments startups and um he comes to me and he goes him and I just wanted to let you know, I think god had me start this fun. He was the founder, the fund, like seven, eight years ago, so that I could make this investment.

And I like, really not like, yeah, not like, why not? Like, good water is the name of our fun, right? And also like, that's the combination of good news and living water.

The goal of the fund is to, uh, you know be a voice for china in technology, which there almost there is none. And I like I didn't even know that's crazy. It's like D I had no I I had never heard this thing before this guy came to us. But just, just this great story of god putting really cool people in our lives and then doing the rest.

What has question, are you hopeful for the future? The country?

Yeah, i'm hopeful for us. I I am hopeful first for the kingdom of god. Like if I had to start at the, at, at, at the core, I have no doubt, no matter how strong evil is, I have no doubt that god will win even when IT seems like like the whole world is start against you and there's something fun about that actually .

like here's to make fun about having .

the world's tech against yeah I mean it's it's great, sad. But I not like I grew up in ohio and you know, like thirty percent of people are catholic to rest. The folks are protesting.

And, you know, people go to church. That's just what happened. But nobody know.

There are few people my mom really believe. There are a few people that really believe. But most, didn't you just went to church, because everybody went to church. And when I was in silicon valley, like, there were four other Christians like that I knew. And so you almost felt like you report of this rebel church.

And so is like you were like up against the world, like, and so you really had to be on fire for your faith because, like, people thought you were the weirdest thing, like the weirdest thing they'd have seen, like an actual catholic, an actual Christian. This is crazy. That's insane.

And you're like, no, jesus changed my life. And and what you found is this community of people who are really, really unfair and actually put in the torch about this was like twenty, thirty years ago, where he had this vision of the church. And he was like, I see the church.

And IT will get smaller, much smaller. IT will lose all the places that had in society. IT will lose this expectation that people would become Christian or would become catholic.

But from that, you would have this much smaller group of people who didn't join just because their pair told them, or whatever I want. I, but because they're on fire for a relationship with the lord and from that smaller group of people, the church would be renewed in a new way. In the one thing that really matters, which is faith in the logic, is Christ.

And I don't know. So that was exciting for me. And in silent ballet, really strength in my faith glad live anymore because I can certainly take a little on you but ah but there's something fun about living in that rebel church.

It's hard obviously is tremendous fleering but that is holy his god says IT brings us closer to him. But there's something fun about living in that, in that rebel church. So from a kingdom of god, I am very hopeful.

Now if god wants the country to collapse, which would be sad. I love our country. I pray for for our country every day.

But if he wanted to collapse, things can be made. I can grow closer to god and a falling empire, and I can grow closer to got in a rising empire. Arguably, more sense are made in a falling empire than rising one. Uh, but I certainly have hope for our country. I don't think it's you know, we get to talk with a lot of people and we get to see what that is doing and a lot of people's lives.

And if you believe that there's a religious revival, a revival of faith, which I do believe and maybe IT doesn't happen the next four years, maybe doesn't happen the next ten, twenty years, but I don't think our problems are primarily political. I think politics comes at the end. I think our problems of problems at the heart, and the only one who can solve the problems of the heart, is a real relationship with the lord.

And so that's at hello. I means why we get so excited about seeing what god is doing with hello. We see this tremendous resurgence, not just didn't like people being like how I want to be a good person, or people being believing in the values of our country, but people being on fire with a relationship with the lord, which then leads to all those things, leads to all that goodness, leads to all the truth and justice and wisdom.

And so yeah, I get I get hopeful for our country, whether it's in the next ten, twenty, thirty years. I surrender IT to the lord, the good lord. I'll do what he wants us to do. And for me is just my job to let him into my heart est best as I can to try to love and serve people as best as he wants me to.

Hi Jones. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me appreciate IT.

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