Ep. 519 - Finding Solace and Structure: The Power of Prayer

Welcome back to the All Around Growth Podcast!  While we've been on a unique journey in recent months, today, we're returning to our original mission.  Our podcast is a voyage through life's multifaceted dimensions, dedicating episodes to explore each aspect.  

Through a comprehensive goal-setting workbook (you can find the link in the show notes), we've identified seven fundamental dimensions of life:  

• Financial, Physical, Personal Development, Family, Spiritual, Social, and Career.  

In this episode, we're revisiting one of these pivotal domains – the spiritual aspect, with the topic of "Finding Solace and Structure: The Power of Prayer."  

Today, we'll delve deep into the transformative influence of prayer in our lives.  Revisiting these seven life dimensions provides not just structure to our show but also structure to our lives.  It's been evident that when the show has structure, it extends to my personal life, and today's discussion on prayer will expand on the idea of structure.  

Over the weekend, I was gifted a prayer book after attending church, and it struck me how prayer can offer a profound sense of organization and structure to our lives.  This shift in perspective has taken me from seeing religion as a system of control and oppression to embracing it as a source of tradition, community, and love.  

In this episode, we'll explore several different themes:

• The significance of structure in life.
• How prayer can be a powerful tool for bringing order and purpose to your life.
• My personal journey of exploring prayer and meditation over the past 12-18 months.
• A heartfelt story about the prayer book that was gifted to me recently.
• A brief overview of the various prayer books I've encountered on this enlightening journey.

So, without further ado, let's dive into the show and gain some understanding into what prayer has to offer us when we implement it into our lives.  

~

Provide some feedback on Social Media or email!


Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/allaroundgrowth

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/allaroundgrowth

Email:  allaroundgrowth@gmail.com

Telegram Group Chat: https://t.me/allaroundgrowth

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/allaroundgrowth

Facebook Community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaroundgrowth


~

Discussion Links:

FREE GOAL-SETTING GUIDE: SET GOALS FOR THE 7 MAIN AREAS OF YOUR LIFE by Dan Miller

Theosis - OrthodoxWiki

Discover Orthodox Christianity - Everyone is welcome.  Everyone is wanted.

Introducing Orthodoxy

Jordanville Prayer Book

The Orthodox Study Bible

Pocket Prayer Book for Orthodox Christians - The Little Red Prayer Book

How to Pray: 5-5-5-1 - Orthodox Christian Network

Anthologion Prayer Book

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Well hi there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. Today is Tuesday, October 10th, 2023, and this is episode number 519 of a show that has taken a unique path over the past few months. And not unlike the past few years, a show that has embraced change as its only constant. However, today marks a return to the original mission of the show. Now this podcast delves into diverse facets of life dedicating individual episodes to explore each aspect of life. And for those of you who may not already be aware, through a goal setting workbook, which I will link to in the show notes, we have identified seven key dimensions of life. And those are fit the financial aspect, the physical aspect, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And in today's episode, we are circling back to one of these fundamental areas, which is the spiritual aspect of life. And the topic of today's show is finding solace and structure, the power of prayer books. Okay, so today what we're going to do is we are going to have a deep conversation about the profound impact of prayer books and how they can impact your life. So we're going to, you know, today, like I said, is a launching point to returning to the discussion on these seven different areas of life because it helps provide structure to the show. And in the past, when there was more structure to this show, I felt like there was more structure to my life. And when I felt like there was more structure to my life, I felt more at peace with my life and where I was at, and just more centered and grounded, period. So with today's topic of prayer books and ultimately finding solace and structure within them, we are going to expand on exactly that. So why this topic? Where does this come from? Well, over the weekend, I received a gift of a prayer book after attending church, and it dawned on me how prayer can provide a sense of organization, a sense of structure to life. So during this episode, we're going to explore and talk about several different themes, if you will. The significance of structure in life, how prayer can be a powerful tool for bringing order to your life. I'll also share my personal journey of how I've explored prayer and meditation over the past 12, 18 months or so. And I will share the story about this actual prayer book that was gifted to me just a couple days ago on Sunday, the 8th of October. And then I will also provide a brief overview of the various prayer books that I have encountered over the past 12 to 18 months. So without further ado, let's get into the show. Like I said, the first thing that we're going to talk about is why structure is important in life and the significance of having it. Excuse me. Excuse me. I think that structure is important in life because we live now, especially now, not just in 2023, but in the 21st century in general. And especially people of my generation, right? In your generation, people of Generation X, millennials. Financial, physical, personal, development, family, spiritual, social, and career. You know, for example, maybe we are, like Dave Ramsey says, focused with gazelle-like intensity on our finances. And oftentimes we lose sight of other aspects of life. Or if we're training for a marathon, for example, we may go gonzo and focus so intently on that that we lose sight of other aspects of our life. Or if we go so dead set on personal development and involving ourselves in those spheres, we may we may lose sight of our finances or our physical health and well-being or our social lives because we're so interested in growing ourselves. Or if we've got family problems, we may be so dedicated to addressing those problems that we lose sight of our friends or our career or our spiritual lives. And if you follow where I'm going with this, and but more often than not, I think what happens is that we get so involved in our careers, in the things that we need to do to make money to live, that we oftentimes lose structure in life. We forget about things that are important. We forget about how important our spiritual life is because we're busy, right? And we get so hung up with our families and you know, you know, the kids or taking care of the parents or you know, whatever the case may be that we forget about our spiritual life. Too busy to go to church, too busy to do this, too busy to do that, or we forget about our physical health and well-being. We're too busy to take time to stretch, we're too busy to take a walk, we're too busy to cook and eat right. We're we're just too busy. And because we're so busy, we're constantly focused on how busy we are and how we don't have time for the things that are important to us, and we lose structure in life because we're so focused on the structure of that one aspect of life. So it's not so much that we lose structure, well, we we're living a life that's out of balance, and in doing so, we lose an overall structure to life. We've got too much emphasis on one spoke of the wheel, and when those other spokes of the wheel shorten up or go missing, the wheel becomes unbalanced, and all of a sudden you're going downhill on a mountain bike and you taco that rim, right? So it's important to maintain balance, it's important that all spokes are of the same length, it's important that everything is tight, balanced, strong. And that's why structure is important. And I think that prayer can provide structure and be a powerful tool for bringing order to your life because, based on my own personal experience, when we make time for prayer, we have to do things a little differently. Maybe we have to get up a little earlier in the morning, maybe we have to have a different routine in the evening. And this is something that's new to me. This hasn't always been a part of my life. For a long time, I either didn't pray and didn't go to church and viewed religion as a mechanism and institution of control made by man, not unlike the government, to keep me and everyone else around me oppressed. And that was what religion was all about. You can see it that way if you want. Um, I know I did for a long time, and I'm not I'm not I'm not talking about I don't mention this because I'm I'm here to you know convert you over to my way of thinking. That's not that's not what it's about. I thought like that, but as I continued to go to church, and the the reality is when I first started going to church again, oh yeah, I don't know, five, six years ago, whatever the case may be, the primary objective in returning to church was to get involved in my community. I wanted to connect with my community, I wanted to connect with good people, right? And so I, in addition to doing some volunteer work within the community, I decided to get involved in a local church, and I went to some different churches and found one that seemed like a good fit, church that I liked, with a pastor that I liked, and I did exactly that. I got involved, and in doing so, I found that I was ended up, you know, naturally looking for more, looking to deepen my connection with God. And over time I realized that prayer is one way that I could do that, but I didn't really know how to do that. Uh yeah, we said our prayers and did our things at church and services on Sunday, and um also attended some Bible studies and things like that, but nothing really nothing really clicked. Uh it all seemed like people were not really authentic with the ways that they went about their spiritual growth and development. And I talked about it with the pastor of my church and basically explained to him the the dilemma that I was having, that that my goal was to deepen and cultivate my relationship with God, and I was kind of I felt like I was struggling there with the church, and that all the steps that I was taking weren't really weren't really working, but that that that something inside of me felt like I had the ability to know not only deepen my connection with God, but if I if I worked diligently and and hard enough, I I could I could embody those those characteristics of of God. Not right, you follow me? Like not be a God, but I could be God like, I could be Christ-like. And it was during this conversation that I was introduced to the word theosis, and I will link to that word and some descriptive things about that in the show notes, but I won't get too much into it now. I'll just say that he introduced me to the word theosis, and as I read about it and learned about it, I was exposed to the Orthodox Church, and right around the same time, a friend of a friend was actively participating in the catechumen process and converting to the Orthodox Church, and everything seemed to align, and I thought it was very interesting because it was something I didn't know anything about. So I learned more, and as I learned more, I basically realized that the only way to really learn more about the Orthodox Church was to attend divine liturgy and talk with a priest. So show up, be present, and just communicate that you are an inquirer and you're interested in learning more. And that's what I did. And the first time I attended Divine Liturgy was in March of last year, March of 2022. And for a few months I went to a Serbian Orthodox church. Uh the services were not in English, it was in old church Slavonic. I didn't understand anything that was said, yet there was something going on there with the people. There was a genuine and sincere way about them that I knew something special was happening every time I went. I did speak with the priest, I did talk with him, and he was very nice and welcoming, and simply encouraged me to come back, and we talked several more times. And I continued to go to other Orthodox churches just to see what other churches had to offer because there's there's all kinds of Orthodox churches, right? There's there's you've got the Greek Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church of America, and the uh the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the um the Coptic Orthodox Church, and you've got all these different Orthodox churches, right? And eventually I learned that the only difference with the Orthodox churches was the geographic regions from you know where the churches were located. And here in the United States, when people immigrated here, they like the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is largely formed from immigrants from Bulgaria. The Russian Orthodox Church is largely from people who emigrated from Russia. And so, but nevertheless, the Orthodox Church was the Orthodox Church, and all the tenets and belief systems and traditions, everything was the same. So it was largely defined by the geography of where the people in the church originally came from. And as I learned that I eventually decided to look for churches who or churches that had the divine liturgy in English, because in each country the services were performed in the native language of that country. That's how the church initially grew and spread when people, the apostles, left Antioch back in the day. They traveled to different regions, learned the culture and the customs of the regions that they traveled to, and performed liturgy in the tradition, the custom, and the language of the region where they landed. And that is how the church grew, and that is how the message was spread. And so logically, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do to uh find a church that felt like home, that performed the liturgy in English. And but at that time, I wanted to, I wanted to explore more. I wanted to learn how to uh pray, right? Uh or or at least explore prayer and and incorporate some of this wonderful experience that I was having every Sunday into my personal life on a daily basis. So not knowing much of anything, I simply went to Amazon and looked up Orthodox prayer book. And I, you know, like we do with a lot of things when we buy on Amazon, I bought the prayer book that had the most reviews and that seemed to be the most comprehensive, and it was a little red prayer book, and I later learned that it was the it's it's commonly referred to as the Jordanville prayer book, and it was the prayer book for the Russian Orthodox Church. And like I said, the first few months I attended a Serbian church and then a Russian church, and that seemed to be like a good starting point. And that's what I used for a while, or at least I tried to. But it was it was a little bit difficult for me to do that because um I found some difficulty because there was a lot of mention about you know the the like the Russian homeland and and and like um like the Russian people, and I thought, well, this is kind of odd. I'm not like I'm not Russian, and and I don't I don't really understand this. So I I used it to the best of my ability, and then you know, I I didn't, I would use it on and off, and eventually, you know, it I was very inconsistent with my use of that particular prayer book. Towards the end of last year, in short, I decided to stop drinking and stop using mind-altering substances in any way, shape, or form, and I took steps to do that and began working with other people to you know find a solution to this problem that I had because the long and short of it is uh I I no longer could use those substances in a responsible way, and I felt like I was abusing them, and I felt like that lifestyle was hindering my spiritual growth, so I found a way that worked for me to stop it, and I found some very simple prayers in working with those people that helped me, and for quite some time I used those simple prayers in the mornings and evenings, and ultimately stumbled across some other morning and evening prayers when I went to the church now, which is my home church, which is St. George, it's an Antiochian Orthodox church, and all that means is that the church traces its roots back to the city of Antioch. Which is where the apostles fled to when they left Jerusalem after Christ was crucified. It's the city where people first were labeled or identified as Christians, and where the church, the city from where the church grew from. It was a port city, kind of like a melting pot of all different cultures. And in a sense, it was kind of like the United States of the Middle East at that time, filled with immigrants, filled with hustle and bustle, and a lot of activity, and a lot of people congregated there, and that's where the apostles left from to continue spreading the church. Okay. So when I went to that church in January of this year, I was greeted warmly by the priest, and he sat with me for a long time after service over coffee, and uh they were also having some food there, and he greeted me with a warm slap on the back and threw a gyro down in front of my face and said, Eat, eat, I will be back and I will talk. And he brought me a Bible, and it was the Orthodox Study Bible, and in this book there was morning prayers and evening prayers and prayers that were a little bit easier to read than the Jordanville prayer book that I had, and it was a little bit shorter, you know, it was almost like the prayers that were contained within the Orthodox Study Bible were kind of like prayers for beginners, right? And I started incorporating that into my routine, and it was it was easy, it didn't take a whole lot of time, they were kind of general orthodox prayers that weren't specific to any one particular region or country or nationality or ethnicity or whatever the case may be, and it felt it felt appropriate, and so that's what I used for a long time, and that is a pretty good segue into the book that I was gifted just the other day, and it is called the I'm not even gonna, I'm not even sure if I'm gonna pronounce this correctly. Um, the Antho well, before I get into this book, I think it's worth pointing out that I felt so welcome at this particular church that I decided to stop going and attending and checking out other churches because before this point and throughout the majority of last year, once I realized that I wanted to find a church that performed the liturgy in English, I simply pulled up Orthodox churches on the map, and any church that was within about a 45-minute drive, I would contact the church, see if they performed the liturgy in English, and if they did, I would attend that church. Because even though churches were Bulgarian church or the Romanian church or the Russian church or whatever the case may be, many of those churches performed liturgy in English since they were here. Most Serbian churches did not, and many Russian churches, several Russian churches did not, um, because they are a little bit more old school, and a lot of the Serbian churches have first, second generation Serbian people there that were it's their native tongue, so the liturgy is performed in the native tongue of the majority of people who attend that church. So that that was that was uh that was just something that um happened there, that took place there. And um despite the fact that it was a cool experience, I wanted to I wanted to learn more. Okay, so um basically yeah, I found this church in January, was gifted the Bible, began talking about or began saying the morning and evening prayers, and that was uh that was great. And eventually, as I continued going to this church, I've been going there all year long, um, I attended a food fair on September 10th of this year, just a month ago, and they had oh a book sale and all kinds of things going on, and I decided to pick up something called the uh it's commonly referred to as the Little Red Prayer Book, and it's called a pocket prayer book for orthodox Christians. And the nice thing about this particular book is it is a book that contains daily and occasional prayers along with the divine liturgy by Saint John Christostom, which is the liturgy that is said at church. Um there are other feast days, quick side note, where the divine liturgy of Saint Basil is used, and and um you know that that but that you know I digress, that's a whole different uh story for another time. But this is a prayer book that was written by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and it was originally printed back in the 50s, and I like this little book because well it fits into your pocket easily, it's a nice little book, and it was consistent with the verbiage and the way that prayers were spoken during the various services that I was attending, and that seemed like the natural thing to do, and it you know, it's it's a it's an eight-dollar prayer book, it's a very inexpensive, small little book that's easy to read, fits in your pocket, and uh so I like that. So for the past month, I've been using this routinely in conjunction with the morning prayers out of the Bible and also some other mechanisms of prayer that I learned from my spiritual father. And for those of you who who are maybe not aware, if you're in, if you're into the Orthodox Church and and and you wish to become a uh catechumen, and ultimately uh that is the process which is which which one undergoes to become a formal member of the church, uh it's it's good practice and it's common in the Orthodox Church for people to have a spiritual father. Um more often than not, it is a priest. And the the the objective of the spiritual father is to serve as a um a mentor or a kind of a sponsor, if you will, uh, someone that can help walk you through the process of becoming orthodox, someone that you can call and ask questions and talk with. And it just that in its own right made a lot of sense to me because when I undertake anything for that matter, you know, like let's let's take old-time music, for example. When I want to learn about uh songs, I will find people that play them and I will learn from them. It's it's easy to learn from a mentor, some someone that can you know provide guidance and counsel on the thing that it is you're trying to learn. So the fact that in the Orthodox Church, a spiritual father is commonplace that that really made sense to me. So um he I talked about prayer and challenges with prayer and not like I don't know how to pray. What you know, I'm challenged with am I praying right? Am I doing the right thing? You know, I'm trying to grow spiritually, and you know, he we he laughed and told me that I was overthinking this and you know, gave me some you know things to to take into consideration. And one of the things that he gave me was a small uh study guide, and it was a you know, just a little another little prayer book from the Greek Orthodox Church. Uh and he also gave me a sheet on prayer, and I will try to find this and link to it in the show notes because it's a good one-page synopsis on prayer. And actually, I'll go ahead and read this to you now just so you can kind of understand where I'm coming from and some of the ways that I've approached prayer. And this is an abridged article written by Father Stavros Acrotacis. Oh, so um, like I said, I'll link to this because I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing his name right. But it reads, Many people have discovered the joy of prayer, while many others struggle to pray consistently and do not understand how or why we pray, or while many others struggle to pray consistently and do not understand how or why we pray. Prayer does not work like a vending machine where we put in an order and God fills it. This is why many people do not pray. Prayer is simply being in the presence of God, abiding with God and allowing God to abide with us. Prayer can be offered with words and with no words. Just being in the presence of God brings both comfort and joy. Other times, prayer becomes like a conversation with God. I've said things like, Lord, I struggle to understand why such and such a thing is happening in our world or to me. Prayer involves thanking God, asking for forgiveness of sins that have happened since the last prayer, praying for others, and praying for ourselves. There are many ways to pray. Some people utilize a prayer book. There are several Orthodox books that have numerous prayers to fit every occasion, need, and concern. Some people pray from the heart, whatever is coming to their minds at a given moment. Some people use a repetitive prayer, like the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Some people follow a quote rule of prayer where they offer specific prayers at specific intervals of the day. I call it 5551. In prayer, thank God for five things, pray for five people, pray for five things you need today, and ask God for one opportunity to serve someone else. The second idea when you are struggling with the words to use in prayer is to pray the context in which you find yourself. I thank God that I am alive. I thank Him for the technology that allows me to communicate messages to people far away. We make many decisions each day. Some we make without thinking, some we make in anger, some we make poorly, some we struggle to make, and of course, some we make well. Imagine if we went to God in prayer before each decision to avoid making hasty decisions. It is important to pray and to pray often. We shouldn't go all day without prayer and only pray at night. We shouldn't only pray first thing in the morning and then not pray the rest of the day. We should pray in short spurts throughout the day, bringing God into our decisions, thanking Him constantly, and asking Him to help us find ways to serve others. If you are not in the habit of praying, don't dismay. The great thing about prayer is that you can start praying at any time. Any day is a good day to pray. And I would never have found that wonderful nugget of knowledge if it wasn't for my spiritual father. So if I'm having a rough morning or I just don't really feel like it, then I simply refer to the 5551. I thank God for five things. I pray for five people, I pray for five things I need today, and I ask God for one opportunity to serve someone else. It is this is perhaps the most simple way that I have found to pray. And that was given to me several months ago, and I'm very grateful for that because it has made prayer easy. So, you know, if you're listening to all of this and you're struggling with prayer and prayer books sound overwhelming, then definitely check out that article by uh Father Stavros because it is it is a great little abridged article on prayer, and I think it makes it really simple. And the reality is with me, I kept the prayers simple at first, and the more I prayed, the easier it got, the easier it got, the more I prayed, the more I prayed, the better I felt, the better I felt, the more I prayed. And that is really a good segue into the story that I started getting into earlier about the book that I was gifted this past weekend. And it is called the Anthologian Prayer Book or the Anthologian Prayer Book, and it is described as a prayer book unlike any other, enabling you to bring the full richness of the church's life of prayer into your home. And the way that the book is described is first things first, it's described as a treasure. And it reads, There are many prayer books, but those wanting an authentic and accessible expression of the church's ancient cycles of liturgical worship and its rich variety can look to the anthologian and its riches composed by Saint John of Damascus and others. From the very beginning, Christians gathered for prayer at fixed hours to pray. These prayers centered on the Psalms and in the desert monasteries, they developed into the daily prayers of the church that we still use today. The Anthology of Prayer, or Anthologian, is an Eastern Orthodox prayer book that uniquely includes a treasury of selections from the riches of Orthodox prayer and worship, including the Book of Hours, the Book of Eight Tones, the Common Services of Saints, selections from Great Lent in the Paschal Season, traditional morning and evening prayers, topical prayers for different occasions, and much more. Suitable for use individually or with a group, this monumental book aims to fill the place that the breviary or liturgy of the hours fills for Western Christians, offering the full daily office of prayer in a slightly simplified form with text for special feasts and seasons. It is a prayer library in a single book. Now, before I get into and talk about the features of this book, because it's a book that isn't even an inch and a half thick. It's maybe seven and a half inches by five inches. But the nice thing about this book was that a friend of mine, uh, someone who I've befriended at church and am developing a relationship with, um met me while I was having coffee with some other people and asked me to, you know, give them a hand out in the parking lot if I could help him with something. I said, sure, okay. And he had a couple of these books, and he said, hey, look, I've got a couple of these books. Um father blessed the books, and I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to have a copy of this. I don't have enough for everybody, and I'm hoping to get more to give them out to everybody, but I wanted to make sure that you had a copy of this book because, you know, I can see your your your I'm kind of paraphrasing at this point, your interest and your dedication and your desire to grow spiritually. And I thought it was very humbling that he gave me this book. And um, and it turns out that it is it's it's a comprehensive book. So I'll go ahead and read the features of this book because it's it's very impressive. There's over a thousand pages of sacred prayers, scriptures, and hymns forming the foundation of orthodox prayer and worship. It is uh a leather-bound soft cover with a sewn binding. It's got two-tone red and black printing, ten-point font designed specifically for readability, six ribbon bookmarks, and it's designed for pan-Orthodox use, meaning anything, Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian, whatever, whatever, whatever. And it's got an abundance of supporting material and clear instructions. And with a little initiative and study, anyone can carry on the prayers of the church in any circumstances with just a single book. And I believe that this is the second printing of this book. I'm not entirely sure. Uh, yes, it is the second printing, and new to the second printing is the incorporation of errata and corrections from the first printing. There are two additional ribbon bookmarks, making a total of six additions to the common hymns section and additional instruction material. Now, on the website of this book, the publisher, uh the the this book is published by St. Ignatius Orthodox Press up in Zeeland, Michigan. And I'll link to this in the show notes so you guys can see what I'm talking about, and I will also link to all of the other books that I previously mentioned, especially the easy ones and the easy article from Father Stavros. But what's cool is that you know the links allow you to take a look inside this book. There's an instruct like kind of an instructional video on how to use the anthologian, and um, and ultimately the uh like the the you know it this isn't a cheap book, it's it's a it's a nice well-made book, and and to to be gifted this was was very humbling, and um and I'm very grateful. So, you know, if you find yourself in a position where you're looking to level up your prayer game, uh this is this is kind of like this is it, but not everyone is in a position to you know drop big money on a fat prayer book, and quite frankly, it's kind of overwhelming. Um now, like I said, kind of in in summary, the first prayer book that I bought was on Amazon, it was the Jordanville prayer. Prayer book, which is let's just call it like the baby brother to this, specific to the Russian Orthodox Church. And I use that, I still use it sometimes, but it's kind of overwhelming. And because of that, I was inconsistent with prayer. And then I stumbled across some simple prayers that I used for a while. And once, like I said, once I found a home church, I began using these simple prayers along with the basic morning and evening prayers in the Orthodox Study Bible. And finally, the morning and evening prayers in the Orthodox Study Bible morphed into the use of the little red prayer book or the pocket prayer book for Orthodox Christians, which I think is probably a very good starting point for anybody interested in looking to you know level up their prayer game. It's very easy to read and it's applicable to all Christians, especially Orthodox Christians, and it's uh I highly recommend it. I think the Little Red Prayer Book is probably the best step to initially level up your prayer game. So in summary, you know, why structure, you know, all of this comes from providing structure in life. And like I said, structure is important in life because we used to live in a way where structure was natural in life, we needed structure to provide for our families, to provide for our children, to provide for ourselves. And when society and civilization became more advanced, and we all began working careers and things like that, and you know, the the structure of life changed. And in the United States, in my opinion, we've we've lost a lot of that structure and tradition that is very present in other parts of the world. And and even though I'm not that well versed in my travels worldwide, uh involvement in the Orthodox Church and the various ethnicities of the different churches that I've attended have given me some insight into other cultures and how they operate. And the reality is we don't have that as much here in the United States as other cultures do elsewhere in the world. And accordingly, we have a weaker family unit, we have a weaker society, and quite frankly, I think we have a weaker person. Um so I think that in order to obtain more structure and to implement more structure in one's life, we can easily do that with prayer. And one way to do that and get involved in prayer is through the church. The church not only provides a good framework for that, but it also provides a good community, good culture, good tradition. Now it's important to understand that on a real quick side note, the Bible, right, which so many churches have as an integral part of their worship and doctrine and all of that, the Bible is actually a product of the church. The Bible didn't really come into existence and come to what we know and understand it as today until the fourth century or thereabouts. Yet the church existed for hundreds of years prior to that. Well, how? It existed and consisted of nothing or little else other than tradition. Traditions that were passed down from generation to generation. And the Orthodox Church takes some pride, if you will, in tracing back and following the tradition as it's been passed down through generations and tracing that tradition all the way back to the apostles. All of the other churches, including the Roman Catholic churches and various Protestant denominations, are basically the Orthodox Church with various aspects and components of it removed based on what some individual at some point in time didn't like. Right? So all the books in the Bible that the Protestants use, it's the same books and the same Bible that the Orthodox use, but with a bunch of stuff removed. And the Roman Catholics use the same Bible that the Orthodox use, but with just a few books removed. So, you know, if you're not really feeling satisfied with where you're at in your own spiritual journey and the church that you are currently attending, then it's quite possible that you are searching for something that you didn't even know existed. And it's right here in our backyards, and it's called the Orthodox Church. So while I didn't intend necessarily for the podcast to go this road or to go this route and have it turn into a bit of a promotional uh dialogue about the Orthodox Church, by default, that's kind of what it ended up being because it is through the Orthodox Church where I learned how to pray, how to effectively pray, how to pray simply through the 5551 prayer, which again consists of thanking God for five things, praying for five people, praying for five things that we need today, and asking God for one opportunity to serve someone else. That's a simple mechanism for prayer. I learned that through the church from my spiritual father, and I continue to learn each and every day through my active involvement with the church. So if you're seeking, if you're looking, check out the Orthodox Church. I will link to everything that I discussed in the show notes. And whether you decide to check out the Orthodox Church or not, I would just encourage you to try something as simple as this 5551 prayer. Give it a shot. You don't have to believe in God the way that I believe in God. But if you acknowledge that there's something out there that's greater than you, if you take awe at the beauty of a starry night and wonder how and why it came to be, then you can pray to that, the infinite creator, universal spirit, whatever you want to call it. And if you do that with some sort of regularity, I think that you'll find that that adds some structure to your life. And with some additional structure in your life, I'm confident that you'll feel better about your life. The better you feel, the better able you are to execute your day-to-day tasks, the better able you are to execute your day-to-day tasks, the more productive you are, the more productive you are, the better you feel, the better you feel. So on and so forth. It is a positive feedback loop. And that is really what prayer is all about. It is a positive feedback loop that creates an environment for continued growth and development in all aspects of life. So, guys, give it a shot. I hope that this podcast and this message finds you well. I hope that this episode provided value for you. I hope that you have a great day and a great week ahead. God bless you, and thank you for tuning in for another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

The needs are many.