Three Core Tools for dealing with Change

In this episode, Keith and Megan Peeler share their prayer journey around change. Dealing with trauma and healing prayer can be difficult, but it's possible when we allow God to change our heart and mind. The Father gives us wisdom in the scripture along with power in the Holy Spirit to grow closer to Him daily.

Transcript

Hey, welcome to the next episode of the Everfree Podcast.

We're glad you're here and thanks for listening.

Well, everybody, welcome to this next episode.

We are now in episode number five, right?

I think so.

You know, we got to do the math somewhere, but I'm pretty sure it's number five.

On season three, and we've been talking about the nature of prayer and marriage again, because well, one, I just turned 50 last week.

Happy birthday, babe.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

You can send money to Venmo for birthday presents.

No problem.

Just kidding.

But I did get a sweet grill.

I'm very excited about that as a 50 year old man.

I'm excited too.

I'm going to benefit from that.

My first Weber like four burner and like Cadillac grill.

Never had one.

Anyway, I digress.

But in the process of turning 50, you and I've had a lot of conversations about, you know, I mean, a lot of people are saying, what are you, what are you thinking about being 50?

What do you, you know, what are you reflecting on?

Are you having a like a friend who's just called, are you, did you buy a Corvette?

Are you having a midlife crisis?

No, I did not.

But we've been talking about how things are changing and this is a milestone for me and I'm not really worried about the big number 50.

I don't feel that way other than my body creaking all over the place.

So but what we have been doing is talking about some of the major changes that have happened in the last five years, particularly the cancer journey.

We kind of already outlined that in the previous, the previous podcast about our story in season two.

But things are changing.

Yeah, life is changing.

Our bodies are changing.

Our communication is changing.

Our roles in Everfree are changing.

We have been one thing for a while and now we're becoming either a broader thing happening with teaching and training and other things happening.

And so, you know, as you and I've talked, what, what would you say as we've been talking because we wanted to share like what we're going through in the midst of communication.

What was that kind of big idea thought that you had as far as what we want to share with people today about how this is just a continuing journey and give each other space to change?

Yeah, we've been talking about how it's hard to accept the changes and communicate them in love.

Things that are hard for me to talk about in regards to the cancer journey and how it's affected my body physically.

And I think we have to have grace for one another to share what, what is working and what isn't working from just common communication, like everyday communication and even expectations as well.

And so I think that sometimes it's hard to allow people to change, especially when we've been married for 18 years.

I just think about the holidays and going home and being with family and it does our family allow us to change and to be different and to grow and to mature and to be to have a different perspective on my life than I did last year, even.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It reminds me of when we did college ministry and the talk that we would have with the parents, we would always, we worked basically with students at the SMU campus in Dallas and an SMU would have a parents weekend and the parents would come up from wherever their kids were from and they would visit and the college ministry that we had was connected to the school.

And so we would host them for a dinner and just let them come and meet us because their kids were getting involved.

You know, their students are being in our home every week, eating dinner and washing clothes and whatever.

And we always had that talk with them about, hey, your kids are about to come home for the holidays.

They're not the same kid that went away.

They've had freedom and they're going to expect that they're going to come and go from your house more than you want them to.

They're not going to want to sit on your couch and just sit with you the way you want them to.

Right.

And your job is to continue to separate themselves from you.

Right.

Your job is to let them and still provide them support.

And there's great tension in that.

Right.

Yeah.

Remember those conversations about expectations.

Expectations and, you know, making, making my children feel guilty for not wanting to be present and just kind of laying it on thick, but it's not benefiting them or me when I do that.

Yeah.

And I think it's going to be very mindful of our children's perspectives and where they're coming from, especially our college kid.

Yeah.

Well, I'm just thinking of how change is not easy.

Yeah.

In that college environment, we had to learn it.

We were teaching people how to deal with it, but now here we are in marriage 18 years later, we were talking this morning or last night and, and there's some things that are changing and the phrase, I said this phrase to you a week ago and then I had to use it on myself today or the last night whenever, which was I need you to believe the words that are coming out of my mouth.

Yeah.

And basically what that means is, and without getting into our personal conversation, the things that I was feeling and how I was trying to describe it, I needed you to hear it as just my feelings, that it wasn't trying to affect you in any way.

And then the thing that you reflected to me was, you know, this is, I'm willing to do this.

I'm willing to share this way.

And I was like, okay, well that hasn't happened in my mind that way in our whole marriage.

So how do I do that?

Like I've been thinking a certain way about that part of our marriage for 18 years and I'm having to choose, I have to use the same words I gave you as like, I have to choose to believe you, even though the way my mind is about that topic and the way I've been thinking about it for 18 years has been one way.

Now I'm having to go, okay, I have to change the way I think about this.

Yeah.

And I think that impacts everything from intimacy to parenting to engaging with your community and friendships.

And I think sometimes we don't realize the inner dialogue that's going on in our heads and what we're thinking about thinking as the person's talking.

So we're putting it through our own filters and don't even realize we're doing it.

And it can be destructive.

It can be, it just can result in conflict, intense conflict and disagreements.

Well, and it's interesting, right?

The format of the listening prayer and the inner healing prayer and deliverance prayer that we do on behalf of and with others requires us to be good listeners.

So we are trained, good listeners, right?

We have a lot of experience and yet in our own marriage, those tools quickly fall apart.

Yeah.

And that's where with this morning we were just sitting and we were listening and like we need to do this more.

We do this for other people, but are you doing it in your marriage?

Are you doing it in your friendships?

Are you doing it with people that you trust and love?

Because we need to be doing this more with one another because what it brings in result, results in is rest and it brings revelation.

It brings, I got the song, Rest On Us.

And it's just about the Holy Spirit coming and resting on us.

And I felt that, I felt that rest just waving over, like crashing waves over us as we listened to that and sat and took communion and just acknowledged what God's doing in our life together.

Well, and we also talked about the reality that as we have prayed for a lot of people, pastors, missionaries, and lay leaders and all kinds of folks that prayer in couples, we've talked about this before.

We're going to keep talking about it because it's a real thing and it keeps changing in our marriage.

So it's going to probably be changing in your lives.

And it's not just for people that are married out there, but the idea of intimate communication.

Right?

So if you're single, this still applies to you.

Intimate communication is how am I allowing the people that I love the most and are closest to me, how am I allowing them to change?

And what am I being asked to do in that change?

And without honestly, for me, I mean, I did some hardcore grieving for about 10 days, you know, a week ago and you were like, what's wrong with you?

And I was like, I don't really know fully, but I had to go through it for about 10 days of some lamenting, some, and you know, people thought, you know, some of my close friends were like, man, you just turned 50.

It's not that big a deal.

And I was like, that's not exactly what I'm talking about here.

Like there's more than that.

Like this is me kind of thinking through and processing, not just becoming 50, but what has changed in our lives in the last five years.

And those of you that have followed our journey know that there have been significant traumas all over the place.

And so I think part of what I was going through is just allowing my body to catch up with the repercussions of some of those things.

And I think what I shared last week, and this is part of how I have to allow myself to change, I have to allow you to change, I have to allow our marriage to change is I was holding on to, I called it this way, the difference between resuscitation and resurrection.

And here's what I mean.

There were certain parts of things that had changed in our life and lifestyle that I was trying to resuscitate, meaning I was trying to blow air into it and do chest compressions on that to bring it back.

That's exactly right.

This is how it used to be.

I'm trying to resuscitate what was and believing I could have again, what used to be.

And so the part of my lamenting was kind of calling the time of death and grieving like, Oh, no, that that's never coming back.

That's not going to be resuscitated, but it can be resurrected.

I haven't seen what resurrection in that looks like yet.

I haven't seen where these changes of the things that I was holding on to, I haven't, I haven't seen the promised land of the new yet.

But that's the hope.

But that there is.

That's right.

And an exciting expectation of what's to come.

But I think for me, like I'm a pretty down to earth realistic guy.

I mean, I see things for how they are pretty quickly, usually.

And so it was kind of surprising to me that I was living in some fantasy land a little bit about, no, no, this is going to come back and be this is I'm going to get this back.

And it's like, no.

And it's not a death in a morbid sense.

It's like the better way to say it is calling it a changing, closing of a chapter to a new chapter.

We have lots of promises that we've heard the Lord speak to us over our marriage and our family and our ministry and the way that God's moving us.

But when you're in that in between place, makes it very hard to communicate.

Like I didn't know how to say to you last week and we were in this tense, tense place not because we don't love each other, but because we just we couldn't even comprehend how to feel about what we were talking about.

And we were taking it personally.

Oh, yeah.

I don't get what you're saying.

I don't know.

I feel like this is my fault.

I don't know what you said, but this is what I'm hearing.

And it was just a massive, chaotic, confusing confusion that was coming at both of us.

I don't know what your problem was.

I mean, you were all because certainly I was not defensive at all.

Right.

Right.

But I do believe that when when you choose to let go of what you thought something would be and embrace what what what the resurrection power will allow us to embrace, which is hope, which is a release of expectations and a hope for what God has in store for us.

I think that it allows us to operate more freely and the gifts that he has for us.

Yeah.

Versus sitting there wallowing in what we thought things were going to be.

Yeah.

And I think it's different for everybody on what grieving looks like.

You know, I had different people challenging me along the way, encouraging me along the way about.

You know, I use that resurrection versus resuscitation.

And, you know, one person, no, that's two more of it, bro.

And I was like, no, I don't mean it that way.

I really mean in the true sense of having to deal with the reality of something and and not wishing for something to be different than it is, because that's that's insanity.

Right.

Like like if you think something is is something and it's not that thing, that's it's not real.

And I think as we were processing and praying and we've been, I think, very lucky to have a pretty healthy communication.

Our marriage is prayer ministry has forced that upon us because we can't sit with other people and not deal with our own junk because it just wouldn't it just wouldn't work.

But even in that, what has felt so common to our marriage felt really uncommon and uncomfortable last week.

And so it's like, I don't know what to do with this.

Like, what do I do when I don't know what to do?

Yeah.

And I think where I want to encourage the people that are listening is to consider the places that you are praying with your spouse or where you're not.

And if you're not praying with your spouse regularly, like I get it.

Like, that's a thing that's pretty pretty common.

I mean, I think a lot of marriages struggle to find out, figure out how to pray together for a variety of reasons.

So this isn't a shaming thing about what you should be doing.

This is an invitation, though, to a deeper place of connection.

Ultimately, you know, we're talking about the idea of intimacy that that can be both physical and spiritual.

And I think our physical intimacies of this life and that don't just mean sexual, but physical intimacy is connecting with other people and in appropriate ways.

And and we have an intimacy with God that is our real desire.

And sometimes we're holding on to some kind of physical intimacy to fill that gap in us when what God is inviting us into is a deeper spiritual intimacy.

And that requires a deeper level of letting your guard down.

And so my encouragement for you friends, as you're listening, is can you identify a place in your life where you absolutely know you're guarded and you're not letting people in?

And what would it take or what would it what would you have to choose?

Or what would you have to allow God to do with that thing so that you could share it with just one person?

So I wonder what that would look like for us to model that right now.

Well, we could do a little prayer experiment.

Yeah, you want to do that?

Yeah, let's do that.

So let's just see what the Holy Spirit wants to do here, guys.

All right.

So, Father, thank you.

That we just have an opportunity to sit with friends, even in a podcast.

Friends, I bless you now in Jesus name that you are loved.

And I bless you to hear in not just with your ears, but with your entire presence, your being, that your spirit would be open.

I bless you to be open.

And so Holy Spirit, I ask whoever's listening now, would you just take a second as you're listening?

Maybe you're driving or maybe you're working out or maybe you're put on makeup or maybe you're just sitting on a back porch somewhere and just take a second as I'm going to leave some space for silence.

But I'm going to ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, what's that thing?

What's that one thing that maybe my friends are guarded with that you want to bring to their mind right now?

And a follow up question, Holy Spirit, why is it what impression, what word, what song, what picture, what scripture?

Why is it, Holy Spirit, that you brought up this particular thing?

And finally, Holy Spirit, who's the one person that you want to nudge my friend's heart to reveal or to share in some deeper way with this?

Who's that person that you want to bring to mind right now?

All right, well, friends, that's a little, it's kind of a little taste of a lot of what we do in the prayer appointments, right?

The idea of asking the Lord to come near to be to be with us.

He's always with us.

But just that idea of embracing his presence as part of that opening part of prayer and then and then asking simple questions and then just asking and trusting that the Holy Spirit is going to lead.

When we've done that, we just did some listening prayer together.

That's a form of listening prayer we just did.

So Megan and I made some, she made me some breakfast, it's delicious, tamales, fried eggs, coffee, it's wonderful.

And then we did communion and then we sat to talk through some of the conversations we had last night and to just be thankful together.

And then in that space, we just talked about, you know, how are we going to connect more and really just meet each other in this place?

And so we just let's just do some listening prayer.

And we did a very similar thing together.

And I heard a few different things that were important for us to kind of pay attention to.

But it was doing that, that we didn't spend, I mean, what is it, maybe five minutes?

Yeah.

I mean, the song that we listened to took longer than the actual listening prayer time.

That's true.

Yeah.

But I mean, I think the Lord was showing me in that moment that rest was so important and that sometimes rest meant not doing the things you typically do.

And so that meant us waking up normally on Tuesday mornings, we're prayer walking the high school.

That's right.

And we're going and prayer walking Wimberly downtown and all the things and the Lord was like, no, I need you to rest this morning.

I need you to slow down and rest.

Yep.

And I was like, Lord, what is it about my me that prevents me from resting?

What gets in the way of that?

And he just was showing me different things that stressed me out that I feel like I need to get done.

And it just puts me in a unrestful state.

Yeah.

And there's, there's a battle with rest.

Is there anything that you wouldn't mind?

I mean, I'm not asking you to go anything deeply personal if it was revealed, but is there anything so that there's a specific thing out there that people like what what's been getting in the way for you that you wouldn't mind sharing?

I think sometimes I have anxiety for my kids and how they're doing and what they're up to because they're teenagers.

I get overwhelmed with the state of my household, like my house, the physical cleaning that needs to get done and the list or the grocery store list.

You know, it's just it's just those obligations that I have that can sometimes interfere with what I think I should be doing.

Shoulds, man.

Man, should, should, should.

Oh no, they will mess you up.

What about you?

What did you get from our time of prayer this morning?

You know, should happens.

Should.

People should.

Anyway, what did you just ask?

I was having enjoying myself in my own little comment.

I was just asking what were some of the things that you got from our time of prayer?

Well, I'll be vulnerable and I won't share any of the any things that's like our personal personal stuff.

But where did I put that listening prayer with Megan?

I heard that the first thing I heard was you listen more for others than together.

And it didn't it didn't it didn't feel heavy.

It was not like a rebuke.

It was more of like, hey, Peter, here's an observation.

Right.

Like you got to protect the household first.

So how about we change that?

And we had a lot of tension last week and a lot of stuff.

Our marriage isn't perfect friends.

People, people sometimes this it's kind of goofy.

I mean, people think because you have a podcast and you share your testimony and you teach on listening prayer and inner healing deliverance, that must mean that we have it all figured out.

We do not.

We're we are figuring it out.

I love our marriage, but it ain't perfect.

And and so I heard I'm making your hearts tender again.

I also heard you're getting stronger.

And so I also heard touch more, kiss more, talk more, which I like because I'm a tactile guy.

Yeah.

I don't know how you feel about that, but I'm going to be enjoying that.

But it was so serious.

What's simple about that, right?

Like it's none of that necessarily needed to be groundbreaking.

Uh, revelation of sin or revelation of a major issue.

It was, it was a daily conversation.

You're not having a daily conversation.

And then we're taking that conversation to the Lord and asking him to breathe on it, asking him to reveal in those listening prayer moments.

Um, you know, what's, what's really going on here?

And, and again, we do this so well for others in the midst of those prayer appointments.

And it's, it's often easier to listen for strangers.

Um, because there's no, there's no relational baggage to get in the way.

And there's no tension of relationship to get in the way, but those same things apply.

And that's what we're talking.

That's why we're talking about this to you guys out there is, um, the, the daily conversations we have with each other and with the Lord matter at a much greater level than I think we realize.

And we do this all the time.

Yeah.

And yet it's easy to neglect with each other or get busy and you have your stress, you know, you have the things to get in your way.

I have my own list of things to get in my way of what I have to get done to get to be successful for the day or to feel accomplished or whatever.

Um, so I totally get that.

Well, what would you say then is, cause the core of this is really, we're talking about allowing people to change.

Yeah.

So let's reflect a little bit about what we're talking about.

What are we saying is helpful for both us and maybe for others.

We're just offering suggestions here.

We're not, we're not relationship gurus here, but we're just talking about our prayer journey and sharing it.

Um, what are the, what are the spaces that we need to find or why don't you, and I think about this, like, what are the spaces that you need to find for yourself so that you and I can listen together.

And what are the spaces that we need together to listen so that we can, cause I think one of the things that people might ask is like, yeah, but how do you do that?

Yeah.

Like that's always been my question.

Like, yeah, I've always been the so wet guy at church.

Right.

You read the scripture, you hear the message and I'm kind of like, yo, it's so, what does that actually mean for me right now?

What does that mean for me today?

Yeah.

Well, I think the Lord is asking you and I to focus on what is true and expose the lies.

And so we can do that by putting an issue out there, like our marriage and recalling what's true.

And I mean, I recently did that.

I put our wedding portrait, I visualized it on the wall and I sat there and I looked at it and I'm like, Lord, what, what is true about what you brought together?

Cause you brought this marriage together.

I do that for the kids.

Uh, if I'm having some issues with them, I will visualize them on the wall.

They're portrait on the wall and visualizing Jesus, what is true about my children and what do you say about them?

And it just allows me to hear from him, but also it exposed what I'm actually hearing.

And so that's what I do personally.

And then when you and I do it together, I feel like it gives us a two different perspectives to bring together.

And typically they do, they do tend to overlap and join and encourage both of us.

Yeah.

It, but it comes down to exposing the lies and you don't know what's a lie because the enemy sneaky and he makes you believe that it's true.

And our minds too.

It's like both, you know, we get, you know, we get accused all the time of saying, well, y'all just think the devil's behind everything.

No, no, we don't.

We're no, but the devil is behind a whole lot more than we think.

So we are banging that gong a little bit more than we need to, to make people aware that, no, the enemy really is influencing us.

And so we are praying for protection over that every day.

Uh, and what Megan is talking about you, most of you, they're listening probably to know, but on our website is that white wall prayer tool.

And we've got, um, two different versions of that on there.

We're building more tools, hang in there.

I'm writing a ton of stuff right now.

It's going to get out.

I'm promise, but I'm, I need new boundaries in my life and I'm apparently not very good at those anyway.

I like to say yes to people because people are fun and I have projects that I have to focus on.

So if you are praying for me, y'all can pray for me.

That's the side note, but I think you're right because I think if, you know, if we want to be real practical, I think that if we're, we're dealing with the truth and our number one core place to go for truth is the word is the word.

Right.

We always go back to the word.

The word confirms, clarifies, gives boundaries.

The word surrounds everything that we do.

Yeah.

None of the prayers that we lead.

Now we don't have scripted prayers from scripture per se, but the core and the essence of everything that the scriptures teach us about the nature of the father, the son, the Holy spirit are reflected in the boundaries that we hold in prayer sessions with people and for each other.

So, you know, if you're, if you want to be practical one, you know, what are you believing about yourself or your marriage or your partner or your work life or your hobbies?

There's, there's something that's on your mind out there, right?

So you want to get real practical on top of the listening thing we just did.

Um, go to the word and go back to the last clear thing that you heard.

Yeah.

That's the first, that's the last foundation that you received.

And when you don't have a new one, you go back to the one that's the last one he gave you with the last promise, the last scripture, the last like anchor point.

And you stand on that and you wait for the next one until it comes.

The second thing I would say is in that place of listening prayer, Holy spirit, ask that question, Holy spirit, what lies in my belief.

And you can use that white wall tool or you can pray out loud or you can journal this out, whatever that's the second step.

And then three is the part that we're really getting to is that vulnerability piece that we talked about during the earlier little experiment we did.

Who is one person that you can be vulnerable with and expose that stuff?

Who do you trust that's going to actually help you?

Well friends, that's about it for this episode.

Babe, any last thoughts before we shut this thing down?

We just bless you guys to go out and try new prayer experiments and, you know, step into an area that's unfamiliar in order to expect freedom and expect breakthrough.

I love it.

All right, friends, blessings to you in the name of Jesus.

Until next time.

Bye bye.

There you go.