Yesterday Today Tomorrow

Guest (Male): Yesterday connecting past, today with an outer view, tomorrow to understand future. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow is the program that covers the current contemporary social issues in the light of our history to understand our yesterday, to live fully today and tomorrow. Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow with Inseong Kim.

Inseong J Kim: Hello, this is Inseong Kim from Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. We are going to talk about the timeless topic: prayer. We have a special guest, Linda Evans Shepherd, is with us. She is an award-winning author of 40 books and CEO of the Right to Heart Ministries. She is founder of AWSA, Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. Thank you so much for being with us.

Linda Evans Shepherd: I am delighted to be here.

Inseong J Kim: I am really fascinated about your new book. Would you share a little bit about yourself and this new book? It has a beautiful cover.

Linda Evans Shepherd: Thank you so much. I have been a prayer author for a very long time, and I got a lot of training in prayer when I was in a terrible car crash, and my daughter was injured and in a coma for a year before she woke up and we put her brand new baby brother into her arms.

Through all of my trials, I decided I was going to really learn how to pray. I learned so much from going through a lot of suffering in those days. I learned so much from that and I learned so much about what moves the heart of God, what God loves to hear us pray, and how to pray.

This book, Praying the Word, is one of my very favorite books that I have written on prayer because you have what to pray right in front of you when you learn how to pray the word. You know number one that it is God's will. Many people say they do not know what if they are praying outside God's will. If it is the word, you are not praying outside of his will. You have it.

This book was birthed so that people would know how to pray, how to contemplate on the word, to get to contemplate on it, you get to pray it, and then you get to journal about it and write down what God is speaking to you.

Inseong J Kim: That is a profound message from life experience. Thank you so much for sharing. There are many of us out there that go through very difficult times but do not know how to navigate. Especially with the social media dominating with negative messages, it is really difficult to hear about this beautiful book like yours. Thank you so much for working hard writing those books to encourage so many people.

Linda Evans Shepherd: It has been a delight. One of the things that I love so much about praying and writing about prayer is helping people connect with a God who really does love them and to prove it to them through the prayer and through the work that we do together in prayer. It has been a very rewarding thing to do.

Inseong J Kim: What if the problem is not that people do not pray enough, but that they have been praying without God's word? How does that shift how we understand prayer?

Linda Evans Shepherd: People are afraid to pray because they are afraid they are going to get it wrong. They do not know the right words, or they get fixated on something that they really want. Maybe it is a bigger bank account. Not that God does not answer prayers for provision; he does. But they get their priorities wrong because what prayer really is, is just about building a relationship with a God who loves you.

It is learning how to talk to him like he is really there, like he really loves you. Going to someone, the God of the universe, and just to imagine who he is, the God Almighty, the Creator, who wants to have a relationship with us, who wants us to know him through his Son, who wants to even let his Holy Spirit and his presence dwell inside of us as his temple. It is about knowing who we are and about knowing who God is, and then knowing how to talk to him.

Inseong J Kim: I bet there is a journey in prayer. After your life experience, many people go through difficult times and think, how can God who loves me allow this? From that point to thinking God still loves us no matter what happened to my life, how do we get there?

Linda Evans Shepherd: That is an important thing that we all have to resolve because basically what we do as Christians is we say the proof of God's love is my difficulties, meaning God is angry at me, God does not care about me. I hear other people get miracles and I have not gotten the miracles that I have been praying for. Therefore, I have done something wrong, God does not forgive me. The list goes on and on.

What people have to do is they have to know what the word says, which is one reason why I am teaching people how to pray the word. What the word says is that God is with you, God loves you, God hears your prayers, God is moving even when you cannot see him. There is nothing about God being mad at his children so he is just going to ignore them.

God is waiting to hear from us. He longs for us to connect with him. There are times of drought; there are seasons of difficulty. But God uses those seasons in our life to teach us how to trust him even when we do not see the way forward.

A lot of what we go through are just trust exercises with the Lord. What the enemy means for evil, God means for good. We learn that from Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery, but yet ended up as the controller of the supplies for the coming famine that then rescued his family.

God sees the big picture. We only see the little picture and feel the pain in the moment, and we do not trust God until the big picture is finally shown to us. That may not even be shown to us until we are sitting, having a moment with Jesus when we are in heaven and he might reveal it then. Sometimes we do not even know. In other words, it is just a walk of trusting God. Prayer is the way you talk to God as you learn how to trust him and then watch him go for the long game, for the big picture, as he answers the prayers of your heart.

Inseong J Kim: That is such a beautiful message that you share with us. Joseph was my favorite character. Coming from a different country and living here, he was kind of an anchor of my story that I was able to overcome a lot of things in my life. Thank you so much for sharing that. Sometimes we might see that he became a Prime Minister, but we might not see all the worldly position or wealth, everything that we want. But when we go to heaven, I think we will see the all the beautiful picture that God placed in our lives, including difficult times.

Linda Evans Shepherd: My daughter lived for 28 years and she had a difficult life. She was a disabled child. But her life was a miracle. If you looked at it from the outside, you might click your tongue and shake your head and say that is just pitiful. But it was not pitiful; it was holy.

My daughter had spent a year in heaven and she came back on assignment to love and be loved. Actually, that is the assignment of each one of us, but hers was easier to see as you lived with her and worked with her. She related that she had been with Jesus. People would come into my home and say, "What is that weird thing in your house?" I would ask what they meant. They would say it is like a river of peace. I would say that is just my daughter; she is just radiating peace today.

People had no idea that this trial that we were in was creating such beautiful treasure. So many people came to faith because of my daughter. Now that my daughter is with Jesus, she is already meeting people who have gone on before who heard her story because we shared it for so many decades. She is getting to see the fruit of her difficult life now.

Inseong J Kim: To me, one of the many reasons I came to America is because I was reading books about testimony when I was in Korea. The beautiful Christian testimony really captured my heart. That was something that I have never seen. While I was in Korea, there was a different Christianity that were more promoted. But what captured my heart is the final picture of a Christian, how it looked like through the difficult times. That was like it does not belong in here; it is something different. That was such a beautiful, heavenly thing that I could not even describe. For a person like you that is going through so much difficulties to share that God is good and God loves you and still teaching prayer is a profound power of testimony.

Linda Evans Shepherd: Too much of American Christianity focuses on prosperity. The Lord was my provider. We never missed paying a bill through all the hospitals and all the tests and all the things that happened. God is our provider, but that is not the main point.

The main point is knowing the God who loves you. That is what my book does. It helps you understand the word, to meditate on the word, to pray the word, and then to listen for the voice of the Lord to speak to your heart and to write those thoughts down that you get. It is about getting to know God; that is the treasure. We get our focus misaligned. The focus is not how big is your bank account. The focus is don't worry, God has got it. You can just keep walking with him and loving on him and you do not have to freak out today.

Inseong J Kim: A lot of people struggling about understanding prayer is we have to put ourselves together before we go to God, rather than just be there as we are, being broken or angry or all kinds of emotions that with it that we can go to God and talk to him.

Linda Evans Shepherd: That is exactly right. I am thinking right now about the prodigal son who found himself in the pigpen and said, "I am going to go home to my dad now because even my dad's servants live better than I." He did not say he had to go take a shower, go get a job, look like he prospered, and get right before his dad could see him and smell him covered in the filth of the pigs.

We think we have to clean up. We can blow it and right there in that very moment that we blow it, we can say, "God, I am sorry. Help me. I want to walk with you. I do not want to be stuck in this moment and feel like I have to punish myself because I do not have enough purity to continue walking with you." We forget we have the purity of Christ; he is our covering. His grace and his mercy continue to flow to us so we do not have to lay around and roll around in the pigpen. We can say help right where we are.

Inseong J Kim: Whoever is listening to our program, the first step is just go to God and talk to him as we are.

Linda Evans Shepherd: Right where you are. The help prayer is a great one to start with. If you have no idea what to say, just say, "Here I am, Lord. Help me." And then say, "Forgive me through the blood of Jesus." Then just start talking to him.

Inseong J Kim: Sometimes people are in real anguish. In the Bible, it describes sometimes like there is not even a word as people are murmuring and just pour out their heart to God without even words. Sometimes we go through that phase many times where we do not even have words to pray but are pouring our heart to God.

Linda Evans Shepherd: That is beautifully said. There are times when we just need to abide and just say, "God, I do not even have any words, but here I am with you and I am going to just rest in you in this moment." The Lord will strengthen us in those difficult moments.

Inseong J Kim: Anxiety can feel like a rollercoaster ride that keeps pulling back into motion even after you think the ride is over and then it is coming again. Why is anxiety so persistent and how does praying scripture interrupt that cycle differently than ordinary prayer or positive thinking?

Linda Evans Shepherd: Anxiety is just worry. We think we have to figure it out. We think we have to know what to do next. What if instead of worrying, we go to the word? There are five scriptures with every prayer in my book that you meditate on.

Just listen to this one: 1 Peter 5:7, "Turn all your anxiety over to God because he cares for you." In other words, what if we took that verse and we said, "Yes, Lord, I am sorry I just cannot figure out what to do about this situation so now I am going to give it to you and now it is your problem." We are not God.

When it comes up again, you tell your anxiety, "Oh yeah, that is God's problem." Then just say, "God, I am going to trust you with this because I know you can turn this fear that I have into a blessing." That is what God is so good at. He can take our anxieties, our worries, our difficulties; he can turn them into blessings and miracles.

That is what he did for me until my focus was not, oh dear my daughter was injured and is disabled. It was, look at my beautiful daughter with her pure spirit and her loving way and her fierce love for her family and friends. What a blessing that is. Sometimes it is a matter of changing our perspective. But when we let life jerk us around like a rollercoaster and all we do is worry and fret, we are going to get whiplash.

Inseong J Kim: Especially with all that younger generations going through a lot of anxiety and making like anxiety is new things, but throughout history anxiety was there, is here, and will be there. Rather than trying to fix it, we have to accept anxiety is a part of life and how we deal with it is we do not teach enough to pray and connect with God and give it to God. It is a journey; nobody perfected it and mastered it but we are all in it. We are learning more and more to depend on God and trust God and that is what we need to promote to the younger generations.

Linda Evans Shepherd: We just have to learn to trust God. I think that is the whole battle right there: to walk the walk, learning how to trust God in the no-matter-whats.

Inseong J Kim: Sometimes it is difficult for parents too, as children fall and they are in pain. It is difficult to watch.

Linda Evans Shepherd: I have so many friends who are just in such grief about what is happening to their children. A lot of their children have just cut them off, or they are living a life that is just heartbreaking. Even there, we have to be willing to give God our kids.

I had to do that with both of my kids, my little disabled daughter and my smart little boy. I got to watch the Lord transform both of their lives. My son who is still living in his 30s goes to church with me, he and his brand new wife; they just got married. Watching them grow in the Lord it has been a blessing.

There was a day I could not even have predicted that my son would come to this place. But yet, I continued to pray for him. I kept breaking the lies of the enemy off of my children, breaking all of those evils that come after our kids, just saying, "No, I just cover my child in the power and the blood of Jesus." I saw the Lord move and move and move through those kinds of prayers and then just through the prayer of relinquishing my children to the Lord. In the very end, that is exactly what I had to do for my daughter when she left. I did not want her to leave that day, but I could see the Lord was taking her home. I had to see that even in her death, she would have her complete healing in heaven and that in many ways, even though I was going to be heartbroken, there was such a miracle in her passing.

Inseong J Kim: That is the most difficult part in human: watching a child pass away before parents. That is the most painful experience that people go through. Thank you so much for sharing of uplifting message. I do not know how other people without God go through difficult times like that. Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful testimony today. Please share with our audience what you want to share on the last minute or two about your book.

Linda Evans Shepherd: You can visit me at gottopray.com. I have many things; I have a YouTube daily show and different things there that you can see. I have a magazine and things. You can get my book at Christian bookstores everywhere and also online. It is a hefty book with solid covers and a metal spine on the back that you can open and write and journal and read and cry on and pray through and get to know God on the level he is calling you to know him on. It is a beautiful book and I would just encourage you to grab a copy: Praying the Word, 90 Scripture-Powered Prayers to Calm an Anxious Heart.

Inseong J Kim: As soon as I saw this, I am going to get this book. People can get from Amazon. The publisher is called Christian Arts Gifts Publisher and they just do beautiful things. Mine is white with daisies and it is a beautiful book. All the pages are decorated and illustrated. You can go to any online bookstore and many outlets will carry these books, and of course Amazon and Christian bookstores. It is such a powerful message that we can share when we cannot even describe what to pray. Thank you so much for what you do: all the 40 books, beautiful books that you wrote and especially these 90 scripture-anchored prayers over 300 Bible verses. I think it will be a powerful tool for today that a lot of us go through difficult times. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you.

Linda Evans Shepherd: Thank you and God bless.

Inseong J Kim: Thank you, God bless. Thank you so much for listening Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. We all should get this book and prepare us for difficult times that we might encounter. Thank you for listening Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. We will be back next week. Thank you.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow with Inseong Kim. You can also find more from Inseong Kim at inseongkim.org. That is i-n-s-e-o-n-g-k-i-m.o-r-g. Thank you for listening to the show.