S3 EP 25 Brian Russell on Faith, Struggle, and the Power of Silent Prayer

Hello, hello everybody, and welcome, welcome. Welcome to God's diamonds in the rough. We are here and ready to do it again. Amen, god bless you. Thank you so much for being here one more time. Amen, hallelujah. Honey, how are you?

I'm feeling Good.

Hey man, as you can see, we have a guest today. You all, hello, brian. We're gonna say hello to everybody, yeah hi.

Thank you for the opportunity. It's great to be with both you and everybody listening today.

Yes, sir, we surely do appreciate your presence, amen. So Tell us about yourself. Yeah, thank you, yeah, I do a couple of them actually. Let's pray. I forgot to pray my bad I, so I so apologize. This is totally unscripted. You heard me I. Let's definitely have a prayer and we gotta pray.

Let's pray. Dearly father, our Lord and our Savior, jesus Christ, we just come to you once again and say thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share more with your people about how they are diamonds in the rough. We pray in the name of Jesus, counseling any assignment of the enemy that will be sent back into the picture when it came from. We pray and beg your forgiveness for anything we might have said, done or thought that's not pleasing your sight. That's your grace, your forgiveness, and cast it back into the picture how it came from. We pray in an image Is for the ones is this has no desire to know who you are. We pray in an image. You attest them where they are, touch upon the crown of their heads to the soul of the feet, that they would Get the true renewed and transformation of their mind into knowing and knowing who you are. We pray in an image. You just have your way and Jesus Christ, and we do pray. We say thank you, we say man and man and a man.

So Alright, mr Brian, now tell us who you are and what is all about this, sir.

No, that's great. I appreciate the prayers to such a great prayer in the name of Jesus, a man. So yeah, I'm Brian Russell and I've been following Jesus Really most of my life. My parents were converted Under an associate of Billy Graham, believe you're not back in the 1970s, so I've been going my by going to church. I'm 54 now, so I've been part of the church for 49 years, gave my life to Jesus when I was a little kid and then Essentially rededicated in a really powerful way when I was like 15 years old, in the 10th grade. So I was like back in the 1980s, and so I've been. I Felt a call to ministry, went to a seminary. I've been a a Methodist pastor I guess I grew up in the Methodist family for Over 20 years now, so I served a couple of churches and I've primarily known as a professor of biblical studies at Asbury Seminary. The main campus is over in Lexington, kentucky. I live in Orlando because we do have satellite campuses in different places, and so I've had the privilege of being on the faculty, for this is my 24th year now, and I also work with with pastors, particularly not just around issues of the Bible but also on on spiritual formation. Now that's kind of a highlight reel and I feel ever I've written, some have the privilege of Writing some books and speaking a lot of churches, but I've also recognized I've also Gone through some painful difficulties in my faith, which is presumably why I ended up being on pod match and I've written up. And and the last, my big, my most painful experience was back in 2010, and essentially the last decade has been, I would say, god resurrecting me, bringing me back to life and actually doing things in my life that probably wouldn't have happened if I wouldn't have gone through a real Dark night of the soul type of a period. And so the last few years I've been speaking more on what I call silent, what's called silent meditative prayer and real contemplative practices, ways to really engage God on an even deeper level than Sometimes we believe it's possible, open myself up to even more Elements of God's grace and then also combining that with, like, biblical studies. So that's, that's a little bit about me.

I'm, I'm married, I have two, two daughters, four-step children and, yeah, like said, I live down in a very hot Florida, right now, okay, okay, well, um, we are definitely excited about what God is going to do here on today, so Michael's gonna hit you with a question, right?

See what is Centering prayer and how can it change my life.

Yeah, sintering prayer is sometimes called the prayer of silence and probably everybody listening to this the show prays which you use words or we can pray silent words in our mind. Sintering prayer is actually when we just sit in silence with God and the goal of that isn't to pray anything, it's to allow God essentially over time, to sort of pray back into us. And the way that you do that and what sintering prayer does is. The greatest hindrance to this would be if you sit in silence for any amount of time with your eyes closed, you immediately recognize it's not really very quiet because your brain's racing around. You're thinking stuff, you know some good things like. You may be thinking about the Lord, but also you could be thinking, like Jesus, is this ever going to end? Or worried about what you're going to do when you're done, or other things can pop up in our minds, and so what sintering prayer does is like I just suggest, especially everybody starting out, take the word Jesus and when you're sitting in silence and some thought, idea, sensation in your body, feeling good memory, bad memory, whatever is, you essentially just say Jesus as a way of offering whatever's going on in our mind up to the Lord and essentially what that kind of does is. Again, doesn't happen instantaneously, but it just sort of lets us settle into a space where we can be fully present with a God who loves us and over time that practice and again, this isn't a quick fix thing but over time it can literally change your life, because God can, it allows the spirit to get into parts of us that perhaps we've blocked for whatever reason.

So would you agree that that's what's missing in the in in today's world? I mean, and I mean that in directed toward believers, you know that prayer, that's that, that sintering prayer, like focus on type of prayer.

I really do. Again, do you need to do sintering prayer to be a Christian? The answer would be no. But in our world, again, our world's incredibly noisy. We're, you know we're distracted by cell phones. You know absolutely Our country, you know, if you just the news gets us all ramped up. People are divided over politics, I mean all kinds of stuff, right, and so we're always kind of amped up. What this kind of practice actually does is it allows us really to be present, and you know, and what you'll see how this manifests in your life ultimately is, you know, I like to think for myself like I want to be an ambassador of God's loving abundance with every person I meet, right, and the greatest hindrance to that is usually me, because maybe I'm upset about something or you know it cuts me off in traffic or whatever. But what about doing this kind of practice over time? You can literally see the stuff going on inside your head and you surrender it to God and that let's give you a reset. So, yeah, I would say that this type of a silent practice, this is not like something you do like one time and it fixes everything, but like over time, it literally allows us I would say, number one, to love God more profoundly, because God's love is going to be flowing into us easier than we reciprocate. But it also allows us to go into the world outside of that silent and silent time and take that presence, that calmness, and then that manifests in our love for others, which that includes within the church but also with when we, you know, most of the time we're we're engaging people that don't yet know the God who loves everyone, right? So it just really helps us even in our evangelism and work, help us in our marriages, all those kind of things. So, yeah, I would say this is, this can be a game changing practice.

Absolutely. And so you know, and you know, with that being said, it's like, you know, we gotta, we gotta know that prayer essentially is conversation with the Lord. And you know, I believe, that for some, most of us, most folks, most people, they won't talk to the Lord unless something's wrong. You know what I mean. And we if, if, if, because our series this season is about revival. It is revival and we have got to decide that. You know, communication, communicating with the Lord, is a part of the resurrecting power of Jesus. You know, we have to. You know, I believe, I truly believe that it is an essential thing in serving him. You have to have conversation with him. You know what I mean. What's your thoughts on it?

You know and what I. What I see about it is, you know, like you were saying, that the only time we really call on God is when something is going wrong, and the other time when we see things as we think it should be, like everything's. You know how do you say peaches and cream? We had to realize that we got to call on God even when things look good and look bad, because his word says in season and out of season. That's right.

That's right and and you know, with you saying you, you had said when you first came in, you said that you had to go through this period of revival back in 2010. Would you say that your prayer life was essentially, essentially, how you came back? I'm going to say came, came back. I would say in the presence of the Lord.

Yeah, and I would say it's a combination of a couple of things that are all these kind of these deeper prayer practices, because, you know, when I went through the real dark night of the soul, I mean I was teaching the Bible already, so it's like reading more of the Bible wasn't really connecting, so like what I would really say happened and this was through prayer and also a lot of journaling, like there's there's prayers that you do with journaling and stuff like writing down what you're grateful for, what's really bothering me. But this time of sitting in silence revolutionized everything Because in a sense, you know, I teach at a seminary, so you could have actually said that I was basically a brain on a stick.

Right, right, right yeah.

And so you know in some level. You know our minds are gifts that God gives us, but we're every single person listening here we're more than just the stuff that we think about or our intellect or all that kind of stuff. We're a whole body, and so what the all what these silent prayer practices has done? It's actually pulled me into my body and allowed me then to basically be what I always wanted to be and again, I'm not claiming perfection here at all and I got. I'm still growing in grace, just like we all. Our God's love is so infinite. We have all eternity to keep growing in love. But the one thing that people have noticed is when you live in your mind, you're only thinking about stuff that doesn't exist. You're either remembering the past or you're thinking about the future. When you become fully present with the God who loves us, you're actually available, like we're having this conversation. I'm listening to you all carefully and back and forth, but you know I'm not worried about what am I going to say when you all are talking. I'm listening to what you're saying and then, okay, now I can respond right. So, yeah, so this what happened to me in 2010 and after that is as I was allowing God to put me back together. I needed to become a whole person, meaning connecting my mind with my body and, if you want to talk about soul, just becoming living out of my soul and not just living out of part of some part of me. So that's how I, yes, I, yeah, absolutely.

So, with all of that being said, it sounds like you shifted from religion to relationship.

Absolutely. I think that's the right language, yeah.

And this is the way, this is what we teach here in this podcast that you know, it's more than religion, it's more of relationship, and relationship allows us to be a lot more transparent with him than that of religion. So we say to diamonds this is yet another person outside of us who's saying to you the same thing. We have got to get out of religion so that we are present in Jesus. You know what I mean, Because religion just allows us to go through the customary things and, you know, do what we do, because, hey, I'm supposed to do that and I should know that. And you know what I mean. These are the steps that I'm supposed to take, but are these the steps that Jesus requires me to take? Is Jesus really concerned about my bad day? You know what I mean. The day you know quote unquote the day from hell. You know what I mean. We say it all the time, but you know this is the thing he's concerned about, that, and he wants you to see your value. Even when you make mistakes, even though you're flawed, even though you're this and you're that, he still wants you to see the diamond that is in you. And what is dead he's look, what's supposed to be dead is dead, Then you got to choose to live with your thoughts and never go.

And then add to it. I absolutely love it. I mean, two of my favorite prayers are these are like two, like I always like to say. These are like two one line prayers that God seems to always answer. And the first one is just relates exactly what you said. The first one is it's the Jesus prayer. It's in this, comes right out of scriptures Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me. You can sometimes add a center to that. So, lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a center. We always need grace, we need to open ourselves up and God gives us forgiveness, takes away our shame, all those kind of stuff. But then I mentioned this one when you're speaking before the podcast. But one of my favorite prayers and a lot of folks that have grown up in the church they kind of know that Jesus prayer. But they need this other prayer and this comes from. This was a spiritual director named Makrina Veder Kair. She's a European, it's a European name, it's Lord, help me believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is, and you know your podcast about this diamond stuff. I mean that I love that prayer because so many Christians are like the frozen chosen we don't recognize. We just think we're lost, broken center, and when, in fact, I mean, that's what, that's what that's what Jesus is for. But Jesus wants to remake us right, so that we, like you know, like I love your image, diamonds, right, right, god, help me believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. And it's amazing the kind of stuff God will show you when you break that one too. So I love what you said, right?

I like that. I like what you just said. The frozen chosen, michael. What you think about that? The frozen chosen?

And I was just sitting here, you know.

I like it.

I was just sitting here when you were saying that, it was like, oh, that's, that's a deep concept, because you know, we, even even with that frozen chosen, you can even throw in sometimes. You know we have to stop talking and listen, because so many times we we we get in this mindset of I'm a had the last word. But sometimes God wants us to sit down and be quiet and listen to what he said, and that way you have to be frozen, you have to be still.

Absolutely.

Aha, okay, you have to be still in order for God to move.

So yeah, Anybody else want to elaborate?

Anybody else? I didn't think anyone say before we go to the next question and I guess you could say no, all right, we got another question.

All right. So how do we, as Christians, overcome personal bias and blind spots while reading the Bible?

Yeah, yeah, and this is some of my my new stuff. On on August 15th which I guess that that's tomorrow when we're recording I have a new book coming out called Astonished by the Word Reading Scripture for Deep Transformation and basically that. What I'm trying to get at with there is. It's interesting. Right, there's lots of different denominations and people can read the Bible. There's plenty of Christians, like you can just take our own country, the United States. Right, there's lots of Christians, but sometimes you don't always see the love manifest out of that phenomenon. I've seen that in my own life. Right, I'm so dumb that I'm even gonna point a finger on this whole thing. So the interesting thing is like, how can you read the Bible consistently? And sometimes you don't see the obvious result of that which would be the fruits of the Spirit and the person that reads the Bible all the time. So it has to be some block that we have inside of us, and so what I've been experimenting with my own life is, again, this is another kind of contemplative practice. It's got roots in the ancient church it's called Lectio Divina, which essentially I'm doing this silent prayer while reading the scriptures and in Augustine, who was an early church leader who lived around 400 AD, has a really powerful quote about reading the Bible, and I'll give you the exact quote here. Let me just look it up here real quick so I don't get this wrong. But the exact quote is he says anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, but cannot, by his understanding, build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them. And what he's meaning is like if you really understand any part of the Bible, you need to understand how it teaches first the reader, us, how to love God more profoundly and then how to love neighbor. Right, and then you'd think yourself and I was like, and I read that I thought, well, geez, that's like so obvious, that's obviously what should happen. So what would be the blocks to that? And I think the one thing I'm trying to articulate in our age is like it's always easy to say, oh, this text is talking about that person across the room, right? So you hear a text and it's like, oh, I wish so and so would read this. or you see, you know who's thinking, oh, that group needs to read this text. And what I've decided is, like, whenever I think that I realize the person that God really needs to read this text is me, that's right. And so what I want to ask myself and this is where it gets kind of hard and again, this could be a really long conversation, but you know, you think, ok, I want to see how this text teaches me to love God. Well, I think what I also need to do at the same point is like, what's the flip of that? Like it's not, like, oh, applaud myself Brian. Like, oh, yeah, of course I love God. It's to explore the ways that I really don't love God according to this text. So it's like a reversal. Or, if this, how does this text teach me to love my neighbor? Well, what are the blind spots in my own life where I really don't live out this text? Like you know, we know Jesus. He was always breaking down boundaries, right when he would touch lepers, the very people he wasn't supposed to hang around with. He does, and you know you can read that text your whole life and think, ok, if I ever see a leper, I need to be nice to him. But you know, but how often do we really say OK, if Jesus was living in 2023, you know, like I live in Orlando Florida. So I'm like, if Jesus was in Orlando, florida in 2023, who would be the people that that story would be about? And it probably isn't a leper, because I don't think there's too many lepers anymore, right? And so it's that explore the flip of a text and sort of assume that I don't live out the text before I even think about turning the text outward on any person other than myself. So I don't know if that was clear, but that's what I'm kind of getting at about the blind spots. It's about a real sensitivity and it's a recognition that I myself, when I'm reading the Bible, I always need to be the first one that that text converts.

Right. So I hope everybody got that. And just to be clear, he said and this is what we really need to take away from everything he just said is that when we are reading the word, we might see somebody else, but we really need to see ourselves before we see anybody else. And you know, that really brings home the verse that he tells us. While you know, take the mode out of your own eye before you go to try to take it out of somebody else. Ain't nothing wrong with trying to help your brother, your sister, ain't nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure that you worry about you first before you, before you go and try to help somebody else. Because really, what can you give somebody else that you ain't got yourself outside of religion?

And I don't know if it's, and I'm probably just, probably just repeating what you say it. But you know, and I don't know if it's a scripture, because I'll be the first to say I'm not a theologian, but you know, don't try to sweep around somebody else's front door and miss your own dirt.

Come on, you sound like a theologian to me there, my friend.

I'm far from it. Far from it, I'm still learning. But you know, sometimes we're so worried about cleaning somebody else's mess up that we forget about our own mess.

Yeah.

Absolutely. And one of the interesting things that happens and, by the way, you know it's funny when you started talking about the passage from Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount there about the speck and the log, that's the part of the tech that's in the book, actually right around the section, so you actually intuitively actually knew exactly what I was talking about. So I love how much you know those scriptures there and I think the interesting about that passage too is obviously every person needs to surrender certain parts of their life to God so that God can make us whole. But I've also noticed, you know, the more that I'm willing to surrender and own my own junk. It's I don't always even see specks and other people anymore. So it's almost like you get new glasses and you can see the person for who got, how God sees them, and not just for all I need to fix this thing and the other person. There are obviously other people and we do ministry. People do need deliverance, people do need to, but it's you're able to see the person completely differently, other than an object that needs, you know, needs me to give them a verse or something like that. So I love both here what both of you said that was good.

I love the sweeping around the door thing. I like that. Yeah, absolutely, I'm telling you it's, it's, it's real. It's so easy for us to look at somebody else and so they got this problem, they got this issue, and then we just only take the same way. We're looking at them and look at ourselves first. Oh man, it would change, because it would. It would allow us to be much more merciful, much more graceful, much more, much more compassionate when we are dealing with them, because we understand how hard that thing might be to you know to deal with, to walk away from, to you know work through or whatever have you. We understand it. And I believe that that's why he says OK, don't try to go, take it out of there, you deal with you first, because then you can see how hard the struggle is for them to let it go to.

You know what I mean. Yeah, come on, that's good stuff. I mean that's starting to sound like Jesus there, so I love it.

Absolutely Hallelujah. All right, we got time. One more question, then. We're going to have you to pray us out today. All right, one more question.

All right. So last question what does it mean to be astonished by the word and to be deeply transformed, transformed by scripture?

Well, I'll start with the deep transformed. I mean, the deeply transformed person is it's, that's God's, you know, he's the fancy where that's God's sanctifying grace coming into our lives and making us holy. And so what does that look like? That looks like love. I'm able to love God and I'm able to love my neighbor as I love myself, and so I'm able to at some point, to do my ministry out of seeing myself and loving myself, the way that God sees me and God loves me, and that then just manifests outward. So that's what deep transformation is going to look like. It looks like the love. It looks like the love that we all want. Okay, and so how do you get that? I love that word astonished, because at some level you know I've been. I've been reading the Bible since I was 15. So it's been what? 39 years I've gone through dry spells, everybody. I think that's sort of normal. You sometimes you just get through dry spells. But one of the things that I've really found helpful in my reading of scripture and I try to teach every class, I try to teach them this prayer is like I just pray Um, when I, before I read the text Lord, astonish me anew. Yes, because when you, because when we're astonished, you know you all are preachers, right. So it's like when you're astonished, you potentially can be astonishing Somebody else. We're going to stand up and preach the word. That's right. Wanted to do its thing. Power In me first, I'm getting kind of goosebumps even saying that, but we, you want to. Oh, you want to be astonished. So that's that's what that's. So to me that's that's like I'm not going to stop, I'm not going to. When I got is my Bible, I get it Like I want when I teach, when I write about it, when I preach, when I speak. I want to make sure that I've been, that I've converted that text, that I've been astonished and I kind of got that a little bit. I've got that from writers like Thomas Merton, who was a, a contemplative monk, and then Ellen Davis, who I think used to teach over at Duke Divinity School no, she's still there, or not. But all both of them are going back to Psalm one, where it talks about the righteous person and it says is, or her delight is on the word of, or the law of the Lord, and so I like okay. So I don't just need to read the Bible, I need to let God astonish me the Bible. So I'll stop there.

Because I'm going on the elephant Amen, but we are out of time and I don't know what Zoom is going to do. I think it's going to cut us off. But I'm just going to pray. I'm just going to pray really quickly and we just want to say thank you so much for being here. We enjoyed your presence and we hope that you'll come back again.

Any time. Thank you, it's been a real delight, and blessings to everybody listening to this Amen.

To God. Be the glory Father. We thank you so much for this day. We thank you, god, for Mr Brian. Bless his ministry, continue to draw him to you, continue to shape him, not only him, but his family, and everyone that is attached to him. God, do a work in his life that he's never seen before. Pray for every diamond here. We thank you, god, for bringing them, but we pray that you will bless them abundantly, exceedingly abundantly, above all that we can ask or think of, according to the power that is working in us. God, we bless your name and we say thank you, thank you, thank you. We pray, this friend, the mighty name of Jesus Christ. We do pray, amen.

Amen.

And amen, amen, amen, hallelujah to God be the glory. Thank you again. We certainly certainly appreciate you, honey. You got a word for him.

Oh, my word, my word, my word. Come on my word and remember until next time you are a diamond in the rough, amen, amen.