[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: All right, so I just sat down with Jim Beckman, author of God Help Me, How to Grow in Prayer. And it was an amazing conversation. I promise you, wherever you are at in prayer, whether you are just beginning or whether you have been pursuing prayer for years. You're going to get something out of this conversation that's going to help you grow in prayer. Take a listen. 

[00:00:22] Intro: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the EquipCast, a weekly podcast for the Archdiocese of Omaha. I'm your host, Jim Jansen. Now let's dive into some encouragement and inspiration to equip you to live your faith and to be fruitful in your mission. Let's go.

[00:00:46] Jim Jansen: Jim Beckman, welcome to the EquipCast. How are you doing? Great. 

[00:00:50] Jim Beckman: It's good to be with you, Jim. It's like two of my favorite things all mixed up into one. I love to talk about prayer. It's like one of my favorite topics, uh, but then, uh, over the past year or so getting to know you a little bit better, really longer than that.
Cause I think our first connection has been through our diocesan work, but, um, I love prayer and I love good friendship, authentic friendship with other disciples, you know, where you kind of rub off on each other. So. 

[00:01:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah, well, and we've been blessed. There's been some, some providence bringing us back-to-back together too, in our conversation.
Introduce yourself a little bit, like tell us a little bit about your, your faith journey. 

[00:01:27] Jim Beckman: Well, I usually start the answer to that question. I was like, well, I was born at a really young age. 

[00:01:34] Jim Jansen: Well, that's unique. Yeah. Different than some.

[00:01:37] Jim Beckman: I think I have an interesting faith journey. Met the Lord at a very, very Young age of only eight, eight and a half years old and was just really in a very difficult family situation with my dad who was paralyzed for almost the first nine years of my life and a sister with numerous medical problems and another sister who had passed away and my mom had had a nervous breakdown.
You know, at some point after my sister's funeral. 

[00:02:08] Jim Jansen: Wow, that's a lot. 

[00:02:10] Jim Beckman: Family situation was just in a very, very, you know, kind of precarious situation. But in the midst of all of that, like my mom encountered Christ in a very powerful way through a retreat at our parish. And she started getting involved in the prayer group at the parish.
And next thing you know, people are talking to my dad in the nursing home who's paralyzed from the neck down. Um, One thing leads to another, and six, eight months later, my, my dad is being prayed with, and is miraculously healed. Wow. That all happened around my 10, my 10th birthday. 

[00:02:47] Jim Jansen: Yeah, I'd say that's an interesting faith background story. Holy cow. 

[00:02:53] Jim Beckman: As a 10-year-old kid, I was just so absolutely convinced about the reality of God, the, the power of God, all of those things, you know? 

[00:03:03] Jim Jansen: Yeah. And just to make sure, your dad was in a, paralyzed in a nursing home. Your mom's not able to, to care for him or not able to meet his needs. And he's miraculously healed.
I'm presuming he comes back home and... 

[00:03:16] Jim Beckman: Yep, came back home, could walk again. We'll get completely dislodged on this, on this part of the story, but I mean, he had things happen over the nine years that he was paralyzed, where surgeries were done that severed nerves. In his body, or he had lung cancer, so they took one of his lungs out the lower for vertebrae of his back had been eaten away by cancer of the spine.
And when he was healed, all of that stuff was back in his body. Wow. It's somewhat documented. There's people who wrote books and stuff about all of this back. Back in the day, but, uh, yeah, I said, yeah, just. Phenomenal beginning to my spiritual journey as I grew up as a teenager and, you know, went to end up going to Franciscan University to college.
I think my faith really got rooted in the Catholic Church and, and then just huge desire to do youth ministry on the other side of graduating from Franciscan. So, I've been very involved with the Steubenville Youth Conferences and youth ministry efforts, you know, over the years. Prayer has just been the rooting foundation of everything.
Yeah. And that, that experience of prayer has changed over the years as I've changed, but it's just always been there. It really has just been the sustaining force. My relationship with Christ, my relationship with the Father, my relationship with the Holy Spirit, like those have just been very, very active dynamics through all my years, you know, and have, have been the things that have kind of kept me.
kept me there, if that makes sense, you know. 

[00:04:58] Jim Jansen: As I'm reflecting, and I'm sure I might have some friends that like, call me up and correct me, but I've been blessed to have friendships with a lot of people who have had the Lord, uh, as a very real and living part of their life. For, you know, many, many, many years, contra to some folks like myself or my relationship with the Lord really, you know, came about as part of a conversion in my twenties, but I don't know too many people where real kind of living prayer with kind of all the, all the members of the Trinity has been a part of their life from, from when they were so young.
Any of my friends that are listening, like, I'm sorry if I've forgotten your story, but it just strikes me that for folks, it's one thing to have been, you know, to know the Lord. It's another thing to have that kind of routine of prayer to be so, such a big part of a person's journey for so long. 

[00:05:56] Jim Beckman: One side tangent, I was just at I was at a meeting this past week up at the focus headquarters and people are sharing their stories how they got connected to focus and how they've ended up in the role that they're in.
This was an offsite retreat with one of the departments up there. And one of the missionaries starts telling the story about when they were at college and Jim Janssen knocks on their dorm room door. 

[00:06:25] Jim Jansen: I was like, Oh, this is awesome. Yeah. It's pretty, yeah. It's uh, yeah, probably illegal. Yeah. And it probably is like, it's like probably illegally.
I probably snuck into that dorm. So, But I'm glad the Lord, glad the Lord used it. So, okay. So, as we dive into the prayer thing, I mean, you know, like Jim, you, you are the executive director or founder of the impact center. You mentioned youth ministry, you’re mentoring and consulting, but you're also an author and, uh, the book, God helped me how to grow in prayer.
Just full disclosure, we buy that by the caseload because we give that as one of the kind of, uh, early texts for folks that are in the mentorship program, uh, here in the Archdiocese of Omaha. We, we train lay leaders how to share their faith in this mentorship program. Prayer is like, foundational to this and we use your book.
I love it for a lot of reasons, but I love just at the very start, you relate this very honest conversation that you had with your spiritual director. Could you just get started by, by retelling that story? 

[00:07:31] Jim Beckman: Yeah, it's a palpable memory. I, I'd started seeing a new spiritual director, Father Scott trainer. 

[00:07:38] Jim Jansen: So, this story is Father Scott.

[00:07:40] Jim Beckman: Oh wow. That brings it to life. I was probably having my fourth Meeting with him, you know, meeting once a month, I didn't know that I was starting out the meeting always the same way. But so, I'm, I'm sitting there, and I said, well, it's been really busy and then all of a sudden, he slams his fist on the table in front of me.
And it's just the two of us in a conference room, you know, up at the seminary. So, it was just incredibly jarring. I almost jumped out of my chair. 

[00:08:11] Jim Jansen: He has large hands. For those who don't know, by the way, he's well over six-foot tall, large hands. So, I'm sure there was a good impact. 

[00:08:19] Jim Beckman: So, he, he slams his hand down on the table and he's like, stop, let me, let me tell you what you're going to say next.
You're going to say, it's been really busy. I haven't been praying as much as I would want. Right. Isn't that what you're going to say? And there was just this awkward, awkward moment, which God bless him. He didn't rescue me at all. He just left it hanging there. Uh, you know, a couple of times made some facial expressions, like, you know, you know, like just looking at me, like, do you have an answer?
My mind is racing. With ways to respond and, but I'm, I'm an introvert by nature, so I process internally. So, I, every, every thought that I have to say out loud, I'm refuting it in my own head, knowing like, that's going to be stupid. That's not going to work. That, that won't really answer. So, I don't know. At a certain point, I just gave up.
Like, there is no good response. And I just said, you're right. And he was like, you're just wasting both of our time. You know, it was kind of, kind of what he was saying. I can't direct something that you're not doing, like the whole point of spiritual direction is you need to be praying so that I can help give direction to your prayer.
Yeah. If you're not doing that part. Nothing else can actually happen, you know, and then he said, Jim, what is it going to take? I think he asked it as a question, like, what is it going to take to convince you that there's literally nothing more important that you can do every day than spending time with God in prayer?
What's it going to take? And I was just like flabbergasted, you know, that's so good. So, I mean, that really was a critical turning point for me. I mean, I obviously I couldn't say that I've prayed every single day, but I would say for the most part. I consistently have a rhythm, you know, of I'm always finding time for prayer, even if it means sometimes not eating lunch or canceling another meeting.
So, you know, I did become convinced, I guess. There really is nothing more important than that. 

[00:10:34] Jim Jansen: I don't know why I just jumped out of it. You're like, and I think it's because my days are filled with meetings too, but you're like, I'll cancel the meeting to take the urgent meeting with Jesus in prayer.
Urgent and the important meeting with Jesus in prayer. Wow. Prayer's the easiest thing in the world, and it's the hardest thing in the world in some ways. I appreciate, sometimes I don't actually like when, when authors or church folks kind of blame the culture. Like, well, it's the culture, right? For like why things are hard to be a Christian.
But I think in a, in a not so scapegoat y. way, you really point out that we live in a culture that isn't particularly conducive to helping us pray. Um, can you break that down a little bit for us? 

[00:11:24] Jim Beckman: I actually tell this story in the book about being on a World Youth Day trip with this teenager who came up to me and said, would you teach me how to pray?
And like, I literally laughed out loud. It was like, are you serious? Um, I just was not expecting it at all from this kid. But what was really interesting with him was the first thing that I did, I actually didn't try to say anything about prayer. I just tried to find out, could you be quiet? And so, I said, let's just spend some time and just I, I would call it stretching for silence.
Like, how, how long can you be quiet before you have to look at the clock or you have to think about something or you… How still can you be? Uh, like the first time that he tried it, we were in the courtyard outside of St. Francis Basilica. He lasted 39 seconds, you know, it's like, okay, wow, that's pretty pitiful. But hey, it's a start. 30, 39 seconds. 

[00:12:24] Jim Jansen: Well, yeah. And he's in Assisi. It's not like he's in Manhattan at the time either. 

[00:12:28] Jim Beckman: What was fascinating was two weeks later, you know, a little bit less than two weeks later, I think that trip was like 13 days or something. We're flying home and, you to him like, look, I actually can't teach you how to pray.
Hmm. Because I'll just be giving you a lot of information about prayer. And some of that information might be, it might be helpful to you. So, I'm happy to give it, but I can pray with you. And I think that would be far more impactful for you is just to have somebody who's had a lot of experience praying to just spend some time praying with you and let you kind of come alive in prayer, you know.
Almost two weeks later on the flight home, I said with him, and he comes and asks if he could sit in the seat next to me, so we traded with the person who is sitting next to me and he wanted to do it one more time. Which up to this point I would say most of his experiences have been pretty ok but pretty limited you know like.
I wouldn't say that he had become a master of prayer or anything like that. But on this flight home, we got quiet. I kind of did the same thing that I did every time, you know, like, just give Lord, give him the grace of receptivity, give him the grace to receive, you know, expand his capacity to receive you as we take this time to pray.
And we were just quiet. And I just let him pray. And 10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, he's not moving. And I'm like, holy smoke. I think he finally is praying. And it was beautiful, you know, listening to him when he finally kind of opened his eyes and he started telling me all of the things that he had just experienced.
But you know how, when he opened his eyes, the first thing out of his mouth. Hmm. 

[00:14:27] Jim Jansen: How long was that? Yeah, yeah. Total timeless. I love it. 

[00:14:30] Jim Beckman: Like he was not aware. He thought it'd been like 60 seconds, you know, and I was like, that was more than 20 minutes. And he was like, what? No way. He just could not believe it.

[00:14:43] Jim Jansen: I love that. I used to do that, and it was interesting. I noticed you're like, you're not giving, you're not using a prayer method with him. Like, you weren't like doing lectio or even, you know, like ARRR. You're just like, okay, you're just gonna be quiet and receive from the lord. 

[00:14:58] Jim Beckman: Well, I mean, granted, we, we were on a pilgrimage, we were in Rome, CC, you know, it's like we were constantly around these things where you didn't need to do lectio, you just had to talk about what, what was that like, like crawling on your knees up the stairs, right?
Yeah. So, like, there, there was a lot on that trip that really went well. 

[00:15:19] Jim Jansen: Yeah, but still, that's, because I had had a similar experience, I would often, as a missionary teaching a young man how to pray, it's like, all right, come on, man, we just, we'd meet in the chapel, and I'm like, you're just like, okay, here, here's a missalette, and we just do the Sunday gospel.
And as we'd start to do it, they would have a very similar experience with that kind of timeless moment where they're like, I just had a certain point. It's like, just so you know, do you realize we've been praying for like 30 minutes? They're like, what? Yeah, it's beautiful. 

[00:15:45] Jim Beckman: One of the things like for the people listening, like the encouragement that I would give is I think we have to understand just the role of nature.
Like, in our humanity, our nature is human nature. And we're actually being invited into a relationship with God, whose divine nature. So that is just very, very, that's an awkward invitation, actually. We're trying to converse and relate and have communion with somebody who's not Anything like us. We're not made of the same stuff that he's made of.
Like C. S. Lewis would say in mere Christianity, but here's the thing. The whole aim of the spiritual life actually is for us to be made of the same things that God has made them to be elevated, right? Yeah. He wants to heal, perfect, and elevate our nature to divine nature. St. Irenaeus, you know, Jesus Christ became man so that man could become God.
So, you have to spend time praying with this. being that's not of your nature in order to become his nature. But when you first start that, it's going to feel awkward. It's going to feel clunky. It's, it's going to feel like you don't know the language. I like to think of it a lot of times, like a little child learning how to speak English.
Hmm. You know, so I'll say to young people, young adults, even sometimes even adults, saying like, look, just mimic me. That's how little kids learn how to talk. And, and a lot of times they'll start saying things they don't even know what it means. Like, our children, you know, when they're growing up and they first learn how to talk, like that's half of the humor in a family is, uh, kids will say the stupidest things that make no sense, but they're mimicking words.
that they've heard their parents, or their siblings say, but they don't know what they mean. And so, what they're saying just doesn't, it comes out like all, all messy, you know? Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Jim Jansen: And yet as a dad, you still love it. Yeah. Yeah. 


[00:17:48] Jim Beckman: And over time though, they actually start to understand the words that they're saying.
And now they're not just mimicking. They're actually really talking. I think prayer is very, very much like that. Sometimes you have to do something. It's, it's awkward. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel natural. You're dealing with somebody that's not of your nature. 
[00:18:11] Jim Jansen: And you're learning something new. It's a new skill.
I mean, this is not, not nearly on the same plane that you're talking about. But I used to, you know, I had an epiphany in, in some of my missionary work that I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm trying to teach a skill. And it's like, if I was trying to teach someone how to swing a golf club. You know, written instructions just would not be adequate.
Even a video wouldn't be adequate. Like, they need to see it. They need to do it. They need, like, the encouragement and the feedback as somebody's doing, like, you know, settle down. Don't try and kill it. Just, just natural swing. You know, just like, I want to give you a chance to explore more because what you, what you're saying is.
If we're going to learn prayer, we need to let ourselves be mentored by someone who knows the language. And if we're going to teach prayer, we need, yes, sure, books, techniques, methods, but we need to pray with others. Uh, expand that out a little bit, because that's huge. That's a big thing.

[00:19:15] Jim Beckman: I, I just would encourage people all the time, like stop reading books about prayer.
Stop studying prayer or watching videos about prayer. Just spend time praying. And if you can pray with other people, particularly people who would be ahead of you, they'd be advanced a little bit from where you are, maybe in the spiritual journey, that's going to get, that's going to help you the most.
You know? I love the way Jacques Philippe describes us. He has a great book. 

[00:19:47] Jim Jansen: He has, he has a couple of great books. Which one are you thinking of? 

[00:19:51] Jim Beckman: I think I've read every single one of his books, but Time for God is the one that specifically His book on prayer. Yeah. In the first couple of chapters, he has this whole thing that he talks about these critical dispositions.
And he says, you know, like there's three fundamental things that you have to believe if you're actually going to make any progress or get any traction in prayer. Number one, you have to believe that God's actually there. And it's one of the things that most people in today's modern culture are kind of fundamentally handicapped because they sometimes doubt.
It's easy to doubt. Is God, is God there? Right? So, I have to believe with all my heart that God's there. Second, I have to believe with all of my heart that He actually wants to meet with me. He wants to spend time with me. And then third, I have to believe with all of my heart that if I actually spend time with Him, it's going to be fruitful.
Even if it doesn't feel like anything or I don't experience anything, I can't spend time with God without it bearing fruit somehow. I'll encourage people sometimes who are just beginning, you know, like they're very new to prayer and it's not something that they've really done much of because they just don't understand it.
And I'll just encourage them, like, look, just take time to pray every day and say those three things, make them a prayer. God, help me to believe hmm.
Help me to believe with all my heart that you really want to meet with me. You want to spend time with me. And help me believe with all my heart that this time that we spend is going to be fruitful. God's just going to answer those three prayers. And like what I find happens with people over time is it, it, relationship actually starts to come alive because they're, they're specifically asking for those things.

[00:21:49] Jim Jansen: Jim, if you can, can you give a little bit of the, the contrast? I mean, cause knowing like. And maybe this is, I don't know if pitfalls are the right words, but there's a common and maybe kind of subtle way that, you know, if you ask somebody, Hey, do you believe God's really that the God's real, that he's really there?
Most of us, if we're listening to a podcast on prayer and we're trying to pray, we're like, Oh, yep, yep, yep. I believe God exists. But there is a. subtle, uh, way that, well, but maybe we don't quite, can you break that down a little bit? Because I mean, what you're saying and what Jacques Philippe is saying makes sense, but I think it might be helpful to contrast it with kind of the common pitfalls that we fall into where we find ourselves not actually believing those things.

[00:22:41] Jim Beckman: Yeah, well, and this goes back to the question you'd asked a little while ago, just about the culture, like how does a culture almost sabotage the, the ability to experience God in prayer? We're just saturated with media and noise and, you know, like that young teen on, on the World Youth Day pilgrimage. You really had a very, very difficult time just getting himself to be still and quiet.
I think that is part of this dynamic, but the culture also sabotages our beliefs, even in very, very subtle ways. Like you, you can't watch. Netflix show or or a movie nowadays without atheistic at least agnostic type of belief systems kind of bleeding through the way that everything is presented the whole culture is just full of that I was just with somebody the other day for lunch.
And they were talking about a lot of things going on in their life and kind of struggling and, and you could hear this despair and this discouragement and a lot of what they were saying. And at a certain point I said, do you believe that God is God? And there was just like this, you know, almost like dead silence.
Like you could tell I was asking a question that they weren't sure if they really believed that. And I think it was in the moment as they were sharing all of these hard things that they're in the middle of. And it was like, God wants to meet you in that deepest need. So, all of these things that you're experiencing, they are hard, they are difficult, but don't slog through life without inviting God into that need that you have.
Like he wants to be right there. Yeah. And even if part of what you need to share with him is like, I don't know if I even believe that you're there anymore. Like, look, look at all this stuff going on in my life. Like everything seems to be falling apart. Where are you anyway? I think most people are trying to pray their rosaries or, you know, pray their novenas or they're, they're approaching their spiritual life in this very kind of programmatic way where they're trying to do what they think they're supposed to do, but they're, they're actually missing the relational side of what God's inviting us into as disciples, I think.

[00:25:05] Jim Jansen: You have this line in the book where you say, like, you know, the, the measure of our prayer is our honesty and our consistency, and you're kind of beginning to open up this, like, the honesty part of it, which is huge. When you think about it, it's like, as though God doesn't know that we're... holding back, failing to come to him, as though he can't see that our confidence in his power and his care is melting away.
And we're like, gonna hide it from him. Say a little bit more about honesty in prayer. Because I think that's a, I mean, it's not rocket science, but that's kind of a new thought for many of us who were raised Catholic. You know, we, our first exposure to prayer was some of the, the beautiful. uh, wrote and memorized prayers, Hail Mary, Our Father, Rosary, whatever.
Talk about the role of honesty in prayer. 

[00:25:59] Jim Beckman: It's one of the critical measures of prayer. You know, so if you, if you wanted to hold a measuring stick up to us, am I a prayer? You know, honesty and consistency would be the only two things that you could actually measure. Everything else, is really what God does.
So, I, it wouldn't be that I'm having powerful spiritual experiences, or I'm really, you know, experiencing God revealing himself to me, or... 

[00:26:26] Jim Jansen: Right. Deep insights. All of those would be a gift. 

[00:26:29] Jim Beckman: All of those things are gifts received, right? So, the, the only thing that we contribute to the equation are honesty and consistency.
I can consistently make time for prayer, and I would even argue the best time of my day. Like, I don't want to give the leftovers, you know, or the time that I can squeeze in. I want to give God the absolute best that I can give as much as possible. But then I have to be honest when I'm there. Like, this would be a great way that any listener could kind of measure this within themselves.
What voice do you pray in? Mm. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like, have you ever been to something where, you know, somebody that you know well enough that you know the way they talk, and then they're invited to lead the opening prayer? And all of a sudden, their voice changes and the way that they're articulating things completely changes.
It's like... 

[00:27:25] Jim Jansen: They don't sound like themselves. 

[00:27:26] Jim Beckman: They become a different person and they're, they're not talking in their normal voice almost to the point. You're like, what are you doing? Like, that just sounds weird. 

[00:27:36] Jim Jansen: Did you just develop a British accent? 

[00:27:39] Jim Beckman: When I've asked people, you know, pointed out, you know, like most people will say, I don't know. That's kind of my prayer voice. Yeah. 

[00:27:46] Jim Jansen: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. You don't usually talk in these and those. Oh, my goodness. 

[00:27:52] Jim Beckman: Yeah. Like that's part of the honesty. There's another whole chapter in, in time for God by Jacques Philippe about this. He talks about like, Like, you can fool God that you can pretend to be something other than you really are.
Or you can pretend that you're not struggling with some of the things that you're struggling with. Like he knows you through and through. He knows everything about you. You can't deceive him. You can't trick him. You can't hide anything from him. So why not just give up on that right away and just be who you are.

[00:28:23] Jim Jansen: I want to build off that because I remember when I first heard this concept, you know, that honesty and consistency are kind of the measure of our prayer, I began to see, uh, particularly the honesty everywhere in what I would say, uh, are, are the kind of divinely inspired examples of prayer in the scriptures.
I'll just name a few. But when you see Moses and the Lord, you know, up on the mountain, uh, when the Israelites are disobeying, worshiping the golden calf, like their conversation prayer, right back and forth is so, I mean, it almost sounds like a marital dispute. It's like, no, no, your people who you brought up, they're, they're kind of going back and forth.
And there's this, this honesty that is. When you really, you know, when you kind of like really read it and start to imagine the conversation, you're like, oh, wow. And it's, it's this very, very human conversation. There's countless examples in the scriptures, but the, the Psalms, like the complaining, divinely inspired complaining that happens in the Psalms is so freeing.
I mean, it's like, there's one other too. I mean, this is not a scripted one, but Mother Teresa, you read some of her journals back and forth, and it really sounds like, I mean, a lover's spat between her and Jesus back and forth, you know, and it's beautiful. And I'm, I'm, I don't want to say I'm ashamed, but, but like, oh, I was challenged by the honesty.
and slightly sassy tone that this beautiful woman of prayer, now saint, was, was having. And it's like, why am I afraid to go there? Why don't I speak with that boldness because she has a confidence and a trust in the Lord that I'm not letting myself go to. Jim, how did we get there? So, I mean, knowing is, is a good chunk of it.
It's like, no, it's okay. You need to be honest. How do you grow in that? 

[00:30:24] Jim Beckman: Well, I think you have to start to live in a way, and I think this is incremental. I don't think you can jump into it like right away, but there's, there's a way again, you talk about our modern culture and how is the culture.
Challenging us to grow in the spiritual life when, when you are surrounded by activity and by noise. Every waking minute of the day and just numerous opportunities to watch something or look at something or, you know, social media or whatever, like all of those things are actually cutting off these capacities that we have for silence and for solitude.
That's where real honesty actually begins to happen. 

[00:31:13] Jim Jansen: Yeah. When we're not distracted by the pain?

[00:31:15] Jim Beckman: I don't know if you can be fully honest. If you don't ever take time to think, it's in silence and solitude that you actually will for the first time begin to experience doubts about yourself and questions that you might have about yourself and insecurities. 

[00:31:33] Jim Jansen: And frustrations and anger all the uncomfortable stuff. 

[00:31:36] Jim Beckman: Yeah, and many many people keep themselves so busy so active because those things are uncomfortable, right? They don't ever want to actually have to experience them But I would argue you actually can't become a whole person unless you let yourself begin to have those experiences Because otherwise you just over compensate first of all, you can keep yourself really busy You You know, enough of the time that you don't have to think those kind of deeper, more transcendental types of thoughts, but then things will happen, challenges or you'll get loaded at work or lose a job or, or you're in a relationship and something, you know, the, the person breaks up with you or, or, you know, like all of the things that happen in life that all of a sudden will bring those things front and center.
Well, if you've never let yourself ever begin to think about them, um, You could be completely overwhelmed by them in that moment. You know, this is what the great gift of prayer is, is I think this invitation into this quiet and into this solitude. And, you know, so one of the things you see a lot of a lot of young people, college students, even even high school teenagers, they're doing media fast.
I mean, there's, yeah, there's groups of people that are giving up smartphones, you know, uh, and whether it's for a period of time or permanently, you know, and I'm, I'm a big advocate of stepping away from all of this exposure and all of this kind of franticness. This is a random tangent, but have you ever heard of the book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry?

[00:33:18] Jim Jansen: Yes. Oh, it's one of my favorites. I love it. I love that book. Oh, it is so good. There are a few books that I have read, uh, more than once or twice, and I think I'm on my fourth reading. True confession, I'd listen to it on one and a half times speed, which seems wrong. I know. Jim, I know. I'm a hypocrite, but that's like an oxymoron.
I know it is. It's a fantastic...

[00:33:43] Jim Beckman: I don't have time to read this book. I better hurry. 

[00:33:48] Jim Jansen: I'm just being honest, Jim. 

[00:33:50] Jim Beckman: I know, I know. I'm razzing you. So, so anyway, I, I just think there's something about the interior life. That requires interior integration. Yeah. If you're not kind of at peace with yourself interiorly, you're not going to be able to be in the space where God can really meet you there.

[00:34:11] Jim Jansen: Gosh, there's, I mean, so much there. I mean, you pointed out, you know, how young people, but really, I mean, I think about like the Exodus 90 phenomenon and a number of other things. There's this rediscovery of. Uh, yes, fasting and, and some degree of self-mastery there, but big part of those movements is A detox from some of the digital media, uh, so much of the noise in our lives.

[00:34:39] Jim Beckman: It's what I would call one of the silver linings of the cultural problem, right? So, you're, you're right. And other people who would make the observation like, man, the modern culture is just sabotaging us. There's actually a silver lining in that, right? Because everything that the modern culture is depriving us of are the things that we authentically need to be truly human.
We actually thrive on quiet and solitude. We thrive on truth, real truth, beauty and goodness. These deep, deep riches that are actually the things that speak to our soul. Modern culture is just like ripping those things away, uh, you know, from almost every single person. So, what starts to happen is when people are starving, uh, you know, it would be like depriving somebody of food.
I mean, unless you have them chained up and in prison somehow where they literally can't go get food. If you just deprive somebody of food, but they had means to go get food, they're, they're going to find something to eat, right? And this is what's happening. So, you see all these movements and all these groups and all of these things happening where people are, they're actually shutting off stuff from the culture because they know how toxic it is for their souls.

[00:35:58] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I've never seen any data on this, but I would not be surprised if our culture continues to trend the way it is if there's a renewal and a rediscovery of the monastic traditions that there's the rediscovery of the ascetical lifestyle, you know, fasting in all its various forms and, and self-sacrifice and silence.

[00:36:22] Jim Beckman: Yeah. Yeah. This is anecdotal, but, uh, I was helping lead a group of teens to the student vote conference last summer. We get on the bus and one of the first things we're trying to do is figure out how we're going to communicate with everybody, make announcements, stuff like that. So decided to make a group me with everybody's phones.
And so, I'm sending a tablet around on the bus, asking everybody to, you know, give their name and their cell phone number so that we could add everybody to a group me so that we can have kind of a seamless way to deliver messages to everybody simultaneously. Well, 15 of the 50 kids Didn't have cell phones.
Wow. It's like, this is almost a third. And so, when the list comes back with the names with people with no number, I'm, I'm like asking the question, like, I can't put you in the group me, but I don't have your cell phone number. And they're like, I don't have a cell phone. I've maybe experienced, you know, like 3 percent in a group and they're the homeschool kids, right?
We have almost a full third of the kids on that trip that didn't even have cell phones. I mean, at a certain point, I'm like, this is awesome. Like, this is showing a complete shift here. 

[00:37:41] Jim Jansen: These are kids that had had a phone and decided to divest themselves? 

[00:37:45] Jim Beckman: Yes, yes. I mean, there was maybe a couple of them that was a parent choice, where the parents didn't want them to have a phone.
But the majority of the 15, it was I don't want a phone anymore. Wow. I, I don't want to have that distraction going on. And that is huge. Again, it's anecdotal. You're like, that was one group of teens, but man alive, if that's actually beginning to happen out there among young people, wouldn't that be amazing?

[00:38:11] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Holy cow. Want to return just to the very, uh, beginning kind of like our first conversation. And I want to give you a chance to speak to the, some of the leaders listening. So, you know, I remember at the beginning. You know, as now I know Father Scott, your spiritual director, challenges you to pray.
Part of what was so convicting for you in that is that you were, you were serving in ministry at the time. There is something, you know, you can call it spiritual warfare or whatever it is. There is this thing that happens sometimes when, as a parent or a priest. uh, parish staff member, teacher, volunteer, whatever, where you're in a ministry role.
You're trying to share the Lord with others and you just kind of stop talking to him. Can you speak to that a little bit, especially for those, let's just presume that we're not the only ones that sometimes struggle with, you know, the challenge to, to remain consistent in prayer. Can you speak to those who are listening, who feel that, and maybe they're in that place right now where prayer slipped away?

[00:39:19] Jim Beckman: Like an expression of what you're talking about. I was on a priest retreat this past year. I mean, this is actually what I do kind of my day job is ministry to ministers, ministering to leaders, priests, lay people, you know, all across the board. But I was on a priest retreat ministering to this group of priests.
And at some point, you know, we were talking about re engaging the relationship. That God is inviting us into and this priest, you know, has a moment to speak up and he says, relationship with God. I don't have a relationship with God. I just work for him. And it was, it was such a profound guttural statement.
You could tell he wasn't trying to say it sarcastically, he wasn't even trying to say it resentfully. He just felt so overwhelmed by all the work that he had to do, that the prospect of having a relationship with God wasn't even a possibility for him. Like he couldn't even fathom how it would be possible, you know.
Therein lies the problem, right, because I think that's what happens to all of us, you know. I would be convinced that every scandal that we've experienced in the church all started with this fundamental choice to stop praying. That was the beginning, right? And then there were some steps that, that followed beyond that, that led to bad choices and horrible choices and then even harmful choices.
God is inviting us into this place of real authentic relationship. I think the thing that makes it inherently challenging is And this is just a fundamental truth, like the proper disposition in, in the life of prayer is I'm not looking for anything. I'm not trying to get my needs met. I'm not trying to feel good.
I'm, if I approach prayer like that, like I'll stop praying pretty quickly, right? The proper disposition is why do we pray? We pray because God invites us to, he asks, what if I don't experience anything? It doesn't matter. God, God asks me to pray. I'm going to make time to pray every day now. I would argue in my life.
I pray every day. I don't frequently experience real dramatic things. Definitely not every day. You know, I would say not even on a weekly basis, but when I do experience God, it's only happening because I've been praying every day. Like, I don't know if the more substantial, significant moments where God really reveals himself to me would have happened had I not been consistently making time and being honest and really open and transparent when I'm in prayer.
Like that steady, consistent rhythm opens up the periodic moments. Where God makes the breakthrough. 

[00:42:26] Jim Jansen: Right. It builds a muscle and conditions us to go back to your, your language metaphor. I know the language now. And so, when he chooses to say something, I can receive it. I can hear it. Jim, talk a little bit more about, you mentioned your day job, right?
The impact center and, uh, the service you provide to ministry leaders. Those, those who, who are trying to serve the Lord.

[00:42:52] Jim Beckman: I actually started it 16, 17 years ago for several years I was doing it full time and then I just ran out of money I couldn't keep the thing working financially back in that time the whole model like focus uses of having you know where you would raise a mission support team right.
It would be kind of supporting you through monthly donations and stuff that that really was not a thing back then. Right. Yeah. It was right about the time that focus was starting and was actually having trouble getting into that kind of mentality in the Catholic space. 

[00:43:26] Jim Jansen: Oh, yeah. I was one of those first, first missionary fundraisers.
I was like, there were a lot of eyebrows that went up.

[00:43:34] Jim Beckman: I ended up going back to a parish youth ministry job and then I was working on my master's at the Augustan Institute. And then I eventually got hired at the, at the AI. So, I, I continue to do impact center, but just very, very off to the side of full-time jobs.
And then most recently was down in the archdiocese of Oklahoma city for, for five, six years. So now I'm returning to this full time. I'm actually raising a mission support team. So, I feel a little bit like a focus missionary. I have a bunch of monthly. You know, supporters that are kind of keeping me in what I'm doing.
They're free me to be a missionary to leaders. Here's the crazy thing. When I would, when I started this 16, 17 years ago, I would go into a diocese and do a retreat for all of the lay ministers in the diocese or all of the youth ministers in the diocese, I would have a certain percentage that like, Oh, wow, you're, you're really struggling.
You're in trouble. That would be like three to 5%. It would be a handful of people out of, out of a group of 50 or 60 that they just needed a little bit of extra help, you know, to get some help. I'm finding pretty consistently, I started back up into this intently last January, and I've probably had five or six retreats that I've done since January.
That number is pretty consistently around the 25 to 30 percent mark. These are people in full time ministry, they're not praying. They're struggling with alcohol addiction. They're struggling with porn and sexual addictions. Their marriages are falling apart. Their financial situation is so dire that they're like on the verge of bankruptcy.

[00:45:20] Jim Jansen: Exhausted, burned out, cynical. 

[00:45:22] Jim Beckman: Yeah, I've run into a number of people that are so depressed that they're really having suicidal ideation kind of stuff happening. This is what I do. I feel like God has uniquely called me at this time in my life to be like an army field medic. I'm out on the open battlefield in the church, and man alive, there's just one wounded soldier after another, and, and they're kind of paralyzed.
They, they can't, they almost can't move from where they are to get to whatever help they need. I'll get onto the battlefield and around people through retreats or through, uh, trainings or through, you know, work, work with other Catholic apostles. But then once I'm there, you know, like, I, I typically will negotiate, like, if you ever invited me into the archdiocese of Omaha.
One of the first things I would ask for is for the freedom to be a safe passageway. What does that mean? If one of your leaders comes up to me in the context of a retreat and says, I'm really struggling with a porn addiction, I don't have to tell you about that.

[00:46:25] Jim Jansen: So, you can be a safe place. It's some confidentiality.

[00:46:28] Jim Beckman: I have to be safe to help these people. And I'm very clear, like I, there's been a number of people that my coaching to them has been, you need to get out of ministry. You are a scandal waiting to happen, and until you can get some healing, until you can get into a better place, you just shouldn't be in a situation where you could slip and make a really, really bad choice.

[00:46:52] Jim Jansen: Yeah, it's not safe for you to represent the church. 

[00:46:54] Jim Beckman: But that's so much better to coach and counsel somebody to make that decision on their own than to somehow be found out and fired. Which just adds to their brokenness and adds to them feeling like they're, you know, they're just completely abandoned.

[00:47:08] Jim Jansen: Jim, we'll put a link to, to the Impact Center, uh, in the show notes, because I know there are people listening who are like, yee, that's, that's not me, but it's almost me. Or I know someone who maybe, and, um, God willing the Lord will use this to direct people. I just want to give you one, maybe kind of like a last kind of closing comment to speak to those who are listening.
They want to take a step out. They want to go deeper in prayer. All of it's been inspiring, convicting, um, where do they start? 

[00:47:41] Jim Beckman: My invitation would be just start. Just make time. Jacques Philippe, in his book, says a quarter of an hour is really the bare minimum. Like, you can't really experience a whole lot if you don't spend more than 15 minutes.
But if that's where you're at, like if you've either never really prayed and you're just starting or you prayed at one point, but you've really fallen away from it and you need to kind of rekindle that, 20 minutes, but consistently make time for it. Get yourself up earlier or stay up a little bit later or take it during your lunch break or whatever.
But honesty, consistency, like, if you just start there with, I'm going to make time and I'm going to come and be in the presence of the Lord. Uh, and then those 3 things that I shared earlier, you know, like. I don't know anything else to do. Just start praying every day. Lord, help me to believe that you're really there.
Help, help me to really believe that you want to spend time with me and help me to believe that this 15, 20 minutes that I'm spending today is going to be fruitful. Even if I don't feel anything, nothing comes. Like if you just start doing that every day, I just think you're going to start experiencing, you know, over time that fruitfulness will just start coming alive.

[00:49:03] Jim Jansen: Jim, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for sounds so trite thanks for being you. I mean, thank you for just the conversation today, for your ministry, for your service. Very excited to link to the Impact Center and trusting that this is going to be a first step for some people who need to reestablish the habit of prayer and who maybe could be blessed by more of your work.
Thank you. 

[00:49:31] Jim Beckman: Well, and people could always reach, reach out for my book, God Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer. Cause I, like you said, it just all kind of all impacts in that book. 

[00:49:41] Jim Jansen: Yeah. That's awesome, Jim. Thank you. All right, everybody. You know, somebody who needs to hear this. So, uh, I encourage you to take a moment when you're done, just like before you go onto the next thing, uh, share this out.
Thanks for being with us. Thanks for listening to the equip cast. We hope this episode has inspired you to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission. Stay connected with us by going to Equip.ArchOmaha.org. God bless, and see you next time.