Surprised by Prayer: Some Stories and Thoughts for the Season, with Melissa Matthews

Today I finally get to have my bride, Melissa Johnson Matthews, joining me on this episode of Dream Think Do. How cool is that? Plus not only am I joined by my favorite person on the planet but I get to discuss one of my favorite subjects on the planet.  That is prayer. That's right, we're going after prayer. The subject of prayer and the reason for that is I think fourfold. I came up with four different reasons so get ready. Reason one, we've had a number of awesome guests on this year talking about meditation and how that plays into their lives and how that's helped them. I've mentioned on several occasions that I enjoy and absolutely appreciate meditation and at the same time, I pray. I think meditation is complementary to prayer but at the same time different than prayer. Many of you have picked up on that and started to ask questions. You’ve asked how prayer plays into my life. When do I pray? How do I do it? What does it look like for me? You want to talk about it and I love that. So I’m going to answer some of your questions, and we’ll be talking with Melissa too. She's incredibly wise. Prayer is near and dear to her heart too and she teaches on this subject a lot. She teaches classes on prayer as well as she heads up a program called Alpha at our church. It’s an international program. It’s kind of a Faith:101 class and prayer is a big part of it. When I think about prayer, I think about Melissa so I wanted to have her on to join me in this conversation. INTERVIEW: Melissa, welcome, finally to DREAM THINK DO. Well, thank you. It's really good to be here. Hey, DREAM THINK DO family, it's good to meet you finally. No joke, holy cow, like you've been a part of the family forever, you've helped to make all of this happened but now you finally get to be on the microphone. Yes, dangerous spot people, dangerous. Right and… everybody.. put a seatbelt on and get ready for Mrs. Matthews, this is going to be fun. We've been married 26 years. Yes, I believe so, if our math is correct, we've been married for 26 years. Which is just amazing. Yeah, it's pretty crazy and you haven't aged at all. Right. Thanks, honey. Ok. So prayer is a big part of our lives. You teach on it, so before we start to dive into this, what should we speak to before we dive into this subject of prayer? Well, I love talking about prayer. I could talk about prayer all day long and so, we may end up doing this a little longer than your normal podcast, but one of the things that we have to acknowledge before we start talking about this is that you and I will be coming from a Christian perspective. There are all kinds of prayer in the world. All religions of course and most cultures have a form of prayer in some way. It's important to honor the fact that every religion is going to pray differently. That's the first step that we need to acknowledge. So you and I will be coming from a Christian perspective. That's important because the things that we talk about are unique to a Christian perspective and to honor those other religions, I can't speak to exactly what prayer means for them but prayer is such an interesting topic because like I said most people around the world pray and prayer looks different for every person. There are some folks that are more comfortable with a formula or more of a written or a ritual kind of prayer. Some people like to go as I like to say, kind of free-wheeling and four-wheeling, right? They experience it and they say it or they think it. Prayer can take many forms and I am happy to just answer any of the questions that your listeners had or dig into whatever you'd like. Great. The thing about DREAM THINK DO that's been one of my favorite aspects is we've had so many different people on. We celebrate so many different vantage points, so many different perspectives on life. A lot of different faith backgrounds and all of that.