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so I think if someone not that people come to me for Investments but I but I think if someone had if you had come to me and said I want you to invest in a Prayer app pretty sure I would have passed on that not for ideological reasons but for business reasons that can’t work um but I hallow seems really big to me what tell us how Big Hallow is it’s all glory to God um but he’s done yeah had you told me like a thousand people would use this thing I would have been mind blown I we built it initially just for me um but like 10,000 people a million people I think we’re at 22 million downloads now like 600 million prayers prayed there was we were no religious app uh or meditation app or Wellness app or workout app had ever cracked the top 10 in the app store before and this past lent we were number one which was crazy so it was the first time in history which glory to God it’s it’s just been a wild ride he does really cool things when you let him [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] really an amazing story and unexpected um so why did you built it for you what does that mean yeah I I was raised religious but fell away from my faith in high school and college would have considered myself agnostic or atheist for most of that time and when I graduated I got really into meditation and uh you know there were some secular meditation apps that I started using and I started using them every day and I loved them um they were like 10 minutes it was almost like technology without technology like you press play closed your eyes plugged in your headphones and then were just LED in this meditation um and it was really the first time that I’d sat in silence uh and the strangest thing started happening which is every time I would meditate or sit in silence my mind kept feeling pulled towards something spiritual like an image of Jesus an image of the cross the words Holy Spirit which I thought was very strange because I would have considered myself agnostic and so I started reaching out to people who took their faith um more seriously priests pastors people who I knew and I thought I had this really interesting question which is hey is there any way there’s some sort of intersection here between this meditation thing this sitting in silence thing and this Faith thing and they all laughed at me and said yeah we’ve been doing it for 2,000 years you probably should have heard about it it’s called prayer and I was like no no no I know prayer prayer is the like hey thanks for stuff sorry for Stuff help me with stuff um or the things that I memorized as a kid and I had this one priest who said okay those are great ways to talk to God it’s great ways to share with God what’s on your heart um but have you ever tried to listen and I was like like no what does that mean what does it mean to listen to God uh and I started learning about this whole world of contemplative and meditative prayer within the church things like Lexia deina ignatian spirituality imagin prayer sitting in silence chant all this stuff that I’d honestly never heard of before and I sat down Lexia deina as a way of meditating on scripture you pick a word that sticks out to you and so I Googled how to do that randomly opened up a Bible and just 10 minutes in my living room uh opened up my Bible to Luke 11 where the disciples funnily enough ask Jesus to teach him how to pray and he gives them the Our Father Our Father who are in heaven Hallowed be thy name and hallow was the word that stuck out to me that I meditated on and it was just 10 minutes just in the comfort of my home but I was just sobbing I it was this beautiful combination of this deep sense of Peace like deeper than anything I’d experienced before but combined with his depth of meaning and purpose so like hallow means to make holy and I was like well is God trying to make me holy am I letting him make me holy am I supposed to be helping other people grow in Holiness and the answers to all that was no I was just doing my own career following my own ambition what what were you doing at I was in Consulting just trying to have a good job make money um you know it was a good job at taught me how to work but uh but yeah it certainly wasn’t working for Jesus and so I had to quit my job drain my 401k at 25 years old or whatever it is Max out my credit cards do this stupid startup thing um which isn’t stupid it’s God’s thing so the uh but yeah so it was crazy it was this these really stressful questions but wrestling with them in this place of deep peace and so I I knew from then that I wanted this app I like the structure of these apps um and I knew how to code a little bit so we started building it but uh we had about like 20 to 30 people start using it just cuz they heard what I was building and one of them uh one of them was my aunt I know this this is a is one of my favorite early stories so I love to tell it but the uh my aunt had just lost her son U my cousin he was 40 he had just gotten married and um his wife had just gotten pregnant with their first kid and uh he went into the doctor said hey there’s something wrong with my chest my chest feels tight they said you’re fine go home he went home and he died that night in his sleep uh and it was my yeah my godmother my aunt’s only son and she was just heartbroken just destroyed she couldn’t get out of bed for months she couldn’t eat it was and we have this big family like a bunch of aunts and uncles and we’re all trying to figure out like what could we possibly do for this woman and nobody could do anything I mean it’s a wound that deep I couldn’t imagine losing a kid and she sends us this note right when we launched it was like December of 2018 and she says hey I just wanted to let you know you know there one of like 20 30 people using this I had no idea there was like 10 meditations on it now there’s like 100,000 but there were just 10-minute little meditations on the thing and she said I just wanted to let you know like Christmas is always a really stressful time for me I got to figure out how to visit she has grandkids I got to figure out how to visit all my kids my grandkids get presents for everybody it’s always a time of Stress and Anxiety but I just honestly didn’t think I’d be able to get through it this year I didn’t think I’d be able to face my first Christmas without my son and I just wanted to let you know that these little meditations on this app have reminded me that even in the darkest moment of my life which I am in the darkest moment of my life but even in the dark moment of my life I can still have hope and they’ve allowed me to get out of bed and to carry on and thank you for allowing God into my heart again and I just like I just broke down in tears on my floor and I remember I went to my co-founder and I was like man it seems like two things one it seems like God really wants us to do something with this thing like maybe it’s not just an app for Me Maybe maybe other people are going to use this and at the same time like if if all we ever do if we work for the next 50 years if we waste all our money if everybody hates us if everything goes terribly and we got that one note it will have been infinitely worth it I’d do it 100 times over of course I would for that one note and like the really cool part about hallow is we just get to see these stories all the time from people who are in really dark really tough places and we get to see God bring his love and his mercy and his peace into their hearts but yeah from an investment perspective it was the majority of people said no uh it was it not it was not a popular investment I certainly did not think anybody would ever invest in it um but by the grace of God some some folks did which is certainly a longer story but uh but yeah the vast majority thought it was a very stupid idea what did your wife think my wife is a saint I owe my wife uh more than I could possibly articulate uh she’s always taken her faith very seriously it’s actually been funny to watch how my wife and my mom have reacted to me coming back to my faith my my mom is the same a saint of a woman it’s like the Bedrock of our faith really tried to get me to believe growing up prayed for me I’m sure a lot but had you ask my mom like of the people in the country who would do anything religious I would be the last on the list by far um why why did if we just rewind for a second why did you lose your faith it sounds like you grew up in a religious family yeah um I don’t know I mean so I went to a I went to a public school in Ohio and like everybody was like people would go to church um but nobody really at least the kids my friends nobody believed there was no real Believers and it just like the the way of the world I think is naturally destruction and naturally away from God um you have to like really take this step into Faith to believe but for me I just kind of followed the way of the world I just followed the way that what all my friends believed which was kind of this new atheism thing which is like the Dawkins Sam Harris stuff of like yeah this God thing is stupid it’s just what our parents it it’s there’s no real evidence behind it although I never really thought about it like it was never a conscious thought I just kind of followed the tide of my friends and career and uh secular society of just falling away and drifting away from my faith which is heartbreaking it happens to it’s the story of way too many people in today’s world but I at the core I think for me it sounds like you were LED away from your faith yeah I think so probably you know the society I was in the friends the school I was in certainly was very secular um but you know for me the thing that gets me excited about hallow and the work that we’re doing is like at the core what I didn’t have was a relationship with Jesus like what I didn’t have was a relationship with God uh I would like I knew the beliefs I would go to church I went to CCD and church school and all this stuff um but I didn’t I never had an actual encounter with Christ and if you do like if you actually have a relationship with Jesus it’s really hard to pull you away from it like for me if somebody now was like okay well what do you believe obviously I believe in Jesus uh and if they tried to convince me not to believe you know there’s a lot of intelligent people people way smarter than I am the theologians philosophers whatever but convincing me that Jesus isn’t real is like convincing me my wife isn’t real it’s like no this is a p this is my best friend this this is the person who helps me in every moment it’s more real than my wife and so it’s like this relationship yeah it’s it’s it’s unbreakable um and that’s I think the thing that I really didn’t have growing up which is what we get excited about trying to help people to build that relationship and to find God in silence and in prayer why silence well uh scripture is pretty clear on this the Saints are pretty clear on this I mean Mother Teresa I think is in the Silence of the heart God speaks Souls of great prayer Souls of great silence you know Elijah climbs up to the mountain and um a great wind comes by and God is not in the wind and a great earthquake comes and God is not in the earthquake and a great fire comes and God is not in the fire uh but then a still small voice comes in the silence and God is in the still Small Voice like it’s in the silence that you hear God and it’s so funny because for me I just grew up my whole life I was just busy I just I was just busy and noisy like that’s my whole life was noise like I was just scrolling I was worried about work I was worried about relationships I was worried about my career I was worried about money I was worried about everything and I was just thinking all the time and just talking to people all the time and just listening to noise all the time and CS Lewis says this in his screw tape letters which is this book about um is from the perspective of a demon uh trying to tempt people screw tape letters and his big thing is noise we need to make the world noise the demon wants to try to make the world noise get away from music and get away from Silence because that’s where you that’s where the people find God but as demons our job is to create as much noise so that they don’t think about stuff and and yeah for me it was just that it was so much noise and as soon as you like take 10 minutes in silence away from the noise you just you find God I mean so um there’s a bunch of these a bunch of these stories of of of people who have experienced this that I just love to share but but one of these um was a woman who wrote to us about six months ago and she was married with three young girls um she worked in the city and uh she would like go to church but she had this overwhelming sense of Shame all the time she could never really connect with God and she her life was full of noise she could never really find silence or peace and she developed uh an addiction to alcohol and opioids to drugs and uh became involved in a long-standing affair with a with a guy from work and her husband found out about it and um uh left her and took the kids and she said she was destroyed like at the lowest possible point of her life shattered into a million pieces for the whole world to see all of her shame she thought often about ending her own life and she was scrolling on Instagram just stuck in the noise of life and she sees this post from Mark Wahlberg talking about prayer and she’s like wait a minute uh that’s the guy from these be movies talking about Jesus talking about prayer that’s just weird enough enough that I’ll try it and she opens up the app and she just does meditation in silence and she said she realized she was right in that moment just like 5 10 minutes she realized she was right it was the lowest possible moment of her life everything she loved had left her her whole life was destroyed but that she was wrong she was not alone Jesus was there with her and he scooped her up into the thousands of pieces she had shattered into scooped her up into his arms and put her back together piece by piece and she started using hallow like 15 a day which is way too many times to use it started going to these Retreats and um she prayed for her husband’s forgiveness her husband had his own miraculous experience with Christ where he told her to forgive his wife and their fames back together and they’re having another kid and she just wrote to us and just said hey I just wanted to let you know that I’m confident I wouldn’t be physically standing here alive today if it wasn’t for the grace that God gave me in silence through the app and so for us it’s just like man glory to God it’s but but what he can do when we give him just like 5 10 minutes inside Silence of our life and it’s hard silence can be intimidating which is why we built the app it’s can be intimidating to sit in 20 minutes of silence for for the first time you do it and it’s it’s helpful to have a structure in somebody to lead you through it when your eyes are closed you’re just listening to something but what God can do in that 10 20 minute time is just it’s miraculous it’s beautiful it’s amazing yeah glory to God what’s interesting is that this device is the vector for noise yeah certainly and but you’ve used this device to bring silence back well the device is the is is a tool for unimaginable evil I mean what is contained in that device is heartbreakingly sad I mean yeah noise and distraction pornography evil I mean there’s there’s so much evil in technology there’s so much evil in social media in the ways of the world and we’ve we’ve had a lot of people you know you can get addicted to your phone it’s very easy to get addicted to your pH uh even if you’re not looking bad stuff it’s just like there’s funny stuff on there there’s really entertaining stuff or there’s news or whatever [Music] um and we’ve had a lot of people who are like well you can’t technology is bad it’s inherently bad uh which is one of the complaints about Hall which you certainly have to find a way to escape from technology to not get addicted to find peace amidst the noise but for us it’s just like God can use anything we can’t underestimate God like God can take any we have whether it’s the printing press whether it’s magazines which also are used for for tremendous evil or whether it’s this incredible tool which is used for tremendous evil the vast majority of stuff on the internet is evil is terrible is is awful but God can still use it God can still reach out to people where they are and it’s the same it’s like churches in a city it’s like cities are places of tremendous evil there’s a lot of sad things that happen in cities but God can still reach out to people who live in cities with beautiful churches and inv invite them into a relationship with him and it’s the same thing with this it’s our job as Christians is to work within the world and to reach out to people where they are and sadly where they are is in their phones and we’ve seen just time and time again where God can reach out to people through their phone and change their life it’s just a it’s a it’s a beautiful thing for us to get to be a part of and we have this we have this um incredible privilege to get to be in this position where we get all these stories from people whose lives have been changed and it’s just I’m gonna go on forever about these stories but the um we had this uh this other young woman actually was just talking to a guy yesterday in Ireland who um had a very similar story to me had fallen away and in Ireland it’s like in his friend group apparently very unpopular to actually be Catholic like to really believe it um and he had this radical conversion through technology through the app uh where he came back to his faith but this this one woman I have a four-year-old daughter so this breaks my heart especially but she was uh raised religious but fell away from her faith described herself as a nihilistic atheist as a teenager which is more intense than I would have described myself but had a really tough time at school which like man the social media for young kids especially young women like just reading comments about yourself or like people insulting you not it’s just gosh it’s so hard um like I I have a little sister who’s much younger than me and I hold her phone for like 2 minutes and she gets like 50 Snapchat notifications about streaks she has to continue and I’m like I feel physically stressed holding this thing and so for young people just in today’s world it’s just so hard but anyway this woman this young woman um was a teenager her mom was worried about her she made um her download Hall onto her phone and created an account and the young woman became so depressed uh that she decided to end her life when she was 15 and so she climbed into um into her bathtub and filled it with she did a bubble bath cuz she said she wanted it to be a pretty death heartbreakingly so um and right before she went through with it she said look God I don’t believe in you I’m an atheist I don’t believe in you she looked up at the ceiling but if you are real I will give you one last chance this is your shot prove it to me and she had her little phone sitting next to her and she opened up the phone played some random meditation that we had it was probably during Lent because it was on Christ’s passion and it was on how he bled how he died how he suffered for us so that we didn’t have to so that we didn’t have to carry that weight alone and she said I don’t know what it was but I realized in that moment that Christ was there with me in the room he held out his hand he picked me up out of the bathtub and I dedicated the rest of my life to serving him and for the last three years I’ve been serving as a missionary in the inner city for Christ and I just wanted to let you know I’m confident I would have ended my life that night had it not been for the grace that God gave me through this app which is just like man all these stories but it’s it’s about how God can use the thing that is most destroying us for his good and can reach out to you through it and and transform everything even bad stuff he can transform it for his good like we can’t underestimate the power of God um so yeah it’s for us it’s it’s a I think people have to be disconnected from their phones I don’t my kids don’t have phones and won’t for a long time but um but God can use technology and there’s a lot of really cool Parts about technology you get to pray with a on a retreat with father Mike schmidtz or some great Pastor leader for 10 minutes in the comfort of your own home whereas without that you’d have to pay you know a good chunk of money to go on a retreat once a year maybe and so we have these uh tools with technology but we have to surrender them to God we have to let God use them we can’t um you know we can’t make them God and we certainly can’t let them distract us from the things that really matter who who’s father Mike schmidtz schm father father Mike Schmitz is incredible love father Mike um he is the host of he does a Bible in a year podcast um series which you can find on the app uh where he walks through the Bible and explains it in this really unique way where it’s not just from the uh beginning to the end but about how the gospel is kind of interwoven throughout the whole story so it’s beautiful it brings scripture to life in a new way and then he does a bunch of different things uh we work with on a bunch of different things um sermons homilies Reflections prayers uh just things to try to open up scripture to folks in a new way both to folks who haven’t really had an exposure to scripture but also to people who’ve been taking their faith seriously for decades so he’s he’s phenomen how you find him how’ you hear about him everything in hallow has been the good Lord doing doing everything so every story has been about us trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and then just giving up and surrender Ing and the good Lord doing it for us uh father Mike I was a fan of father Mike I when I was first coming back to my faith I was trying to figure out whether I was Catholic or Protestant or whatever it was because I had come to Jesus through this prayer experience but um had a lot still to figure out and so I started watching debates I started watching listening to sermons all this stuff and father Mike was one of the big ones he has a handful of YouTube videos um uh on a channel called Ascension which is phenomenal and um yeah I loved them and so but I kept trying to reach out I kept trying to email him in different ways because we had just started this app and I was like hey man is is there any way that hey father is there any way that we could uh work together with something I’d love to share what you have with the folks who have on who we have on the app which was just whatever maybe like a couple hundred people at that point and I gave up I was like all right I’ve tried everything I’ve reached out in every way and then he just randomly reaches out to us in an email and just says Hey I was with a bishop who knew you guys and he mentioned you and that I should reach out so would love to do something and the first thing he did for us was we have these uh sleep Bible stories where at night you kind of read scripture to try to um disconnect yourself from the busyness of the world and Focus On Christ before you go to bed and so he did these um this sleep reading of uh I think it was um yeah the Gospel of John in the beginning was the word and the Word was made flesh and it was just beautiful um and so then we kept trying to work with him forever and he’s he’s he’s he’s one of the most incredible people I know he you know is very close with my wife and my kids and I and so it’s been a blessing to get to know him but also to get to share his me message with people and he’s changed more lives than I could possibly imagine Mark Walberg how did I I find everything about that amazing how did Mark Wahlberg become a part of this Mark is awesome Mark is incredible it’s an honor and privilege to get to work with him we uh yeah he he had this interesting experience he shared where he felt like God was a few years ago he felt like God was calling him he’s always taking his faith seriously he’s always been a very public witness um of his faith which is hard to do in Hollywood um and well not only hard to do almost without any precedent really I can’t think of the last famous actor who did some something like that other than Mel Gibson for folks who who who aren’t really in the Hollywood world it’s hard to understand how unpopular it is but it’s yeah it’s it takes a tremendous amount of Courage like people will tell you your career will be over um everyone will hate you um okay maybe you can talk about faith but like talk about it broadly don’t talk about Jesus specifically you certainly can’t talk about Jesus and um you know I have these conversations all the time and Mark yeah uh has this incredible courage um but anyway he felt like I don’t really see the upside for him oh no almost there’s none I mean other than doing the good Lord’s will which is a tremendous upside and of itself but from a career perspective certainly not so he he felt like God was calling him to use this platform this gift that he’s given that God had given him um for God’s glory to share what God had done with him and he does this great he does a great job of sharing his faith in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s like ramming it down your throat or anything he’s just like hey this is I have this friend named Jesus he’s changed my life he’s given me everything good in my in my life has come from God and I just want to share that with people and so it’s this um but anyway he felt like God was calling him to do something and so he did this film called father stew and this was a few years ago he produced it he funded it himself it it was all him he starred in it um and it was this beautiful film and we worked uh initially Hala was decent sized but still pretty small and so we worked with him to help promote it and to create some content around it and he says he he’s like God he thought he was making a deal with God the where he’d do this one thing he’d like do this one film and that would be his thing that would be his God thing and what’s happened since is God just like was just cracking the door and now he’s like slamming It Wide Open so now he does he does all this stuff with hallow and with a bunch of things with the faith but especially with h he does these incredible fasting challenges where like he is um he has many uh talents obviously but one of them is this incredible discipline like you know you see him all the time wakes up at 4 does his cold cold plunge does workout like twice does prayer every day and so um like leading people in fasting which people often forget about fasting it’s like prayer and fasting must go together uh and so he has these incredible fasting challenges that he leads people through on the app but he’s just been yeah he’s a great guy to get to work with um I remember the first time he uh he facetimed me at like 800 p.m. on like a Friday night or something and it was one of the first times I’d talked to him and uh I don’t you know I don’t often talk to super famous people and so I was a little nervous you know it’s that that was FaceTime for Mark Wahlberg I was like this is really cool my wife sitting here next to me um it was you know just the middle of the night and we just talked and it was like a 30 second conversation he was just like hey I’m really excited about father Stu uh it’s going to be great we’re hearing great things from folks it’s coming together really nice and I was like oh that’s awesome and he was like yeah and with hallow Hall’s going to be incredible we’re going to change the world together and I was like oh that’s awesome and he was like yeah Hall’s going to be great we’re going to pray together we’re going to welcome the Lord into people’s hearts Jesus is going to do incredible things this is going to be great and I was like oh that’s awesome and he was like all right man have a great one have a good one and then he hangs up and my wife looks at me and people ask like how you stay humble and my wife looks at me and instead of saying like oh man that’s cool you got to talk to Mark Wahlberg or like you know whatever that he just facetimed you or any of that stuff she was like um you know you said awesome a lot like that’s all you said and I was like wow I’m going to be thinking about that for the next two years of my life how stupid I sounded on a FaceTime but any anyway he’s been he’s been he’s been really honestly incredible it’s uh yeah like this past Ash Wednesday he he went and did a bunch of PR where he goes and has a giant Ash cross on his forehead and goes and does all these shows on you know nobody’s seen somebody with a giant Ash cross on their forehead on any of these shows today show or any of that stuff and I remember we did uh there’s another funny story about God uh being in charge but we were in New York and we’re about to go on all these shows uh for the launch of kind of this Lent series which our our biggest launches are well we have one coming up about the election one nation under God and then we have kind of a season leading up to Christmas which is an advent launch and then a lent so really right now this time of year is where kind of our our biggest launches are but uh it was Ash Wednesday which is the day that our lent challenge kicks off and we did a little Mass uh in the hotel just in a conference room in the hotel a private Mass we had a a priest come and it was just like four or five of us and it was funny cuz the reading was like how you’re supposed to fast um in private which is true you’re supposed to fast and and pray not like show off like hey I’m you know I’m this great person I’m fasting and uh so that was the Gospel and then Mark goes up to get his ashes and he was like hey father I know I’m not supposed to like do this publicly from today’s reading but um could you make this ash cross like really big and really dark and really black cuz I’m going to be on TV all day and um the funny thing about that is we had I had woken up and the app was we had never cracked the like top 50 before and I had woken up on Ash Wednesday and the app was number three in the App Store and there were two apps ahead of it um I think one was open Ai and the other was uh temu which is the giantes massive Chinese social media company that’s trying to enter the United States by pitching itself as a shopping company they have a billion and a half dollar um Facebook ad budget a year just for the US to spend to try to enter this Market um and they ran six National Super Bowl commercials and so we’re like there’s no way we’re ever going to displace temu from so do you trust your internet service provider do you even know what it does well there are a lot of reasons not to trust your ISP many internet service providers are required to keep logs of everything you do online just in case the government wants to take a look at what you’re doing can you believe that’s legal it is in the United States States in this country your online information your entire browsing history can be sold to anyone and it often is in fact it almost always is so what can you do about that well one obvious solution is to get a virtual private Network a VPN the one we use is called expressvpn a VPN is an app that reroutes all of your online traffic through encrypted servers so your online data is private no one can get their hands on it but how can you trust your VPN that’s a good question well expressvpn has a privacy first architecture built from the ground up their system is built on something called volatile memory literally the hardware is engineered not to keep track to keep records of your activity and We Know It Works last year expressvpn received hundreds of requests from law enforcement for sensitive customer data and not a single one of those requests resulted in any customer dat data being exposed it’s not that they don’t comply with lawful requests they do but they can’t turn over the data because they don’t have it expressvpn is designed so they don’t have your data when the government asks them to hand it over pretty smart you don’t have to be a tech genius to use expressvpn you just tap one button in the app to start protecting your privacy no matter what kind of device you’re using and right now you can get three extra months for free by going to this link expressvpn.com / Tucker that’s expressvpn.com Tucker three extra months for free how how many Super Bowl ads did you run we ran a regional one so it only covered like I don’t know 30 40% and it was one and so I was watching the Super Bowl with my wife and I knew that U was number one uh on the App Store and I was like man we have a chance of getting um of getting up somewhere high but there’s no way we’re ever going to be U I just hope that they’re not going to do a Super Bowl commercial cuz last year they had done one and a national super Super Bowl commercial is like five to six times the cost of the thing that we did and so I’m watching the Super Bowl and I see the first U ad come on and I was like shoot man and then I see the second and I was like two Super Bowl commercials and then I see the third the fourth the fifth the sixth and I was just like this is insanity there’s no it’s absolutely impossible that we would ever so like maybe number two but anyway I wake up and we’re number three and I’m like wow this is incredible that’s high nobody’s ever cracked the top 10 before that’s that’s uh glory to God that’s that’s insane I go to open the app and it’s completely crashed it’s totally white nobody it’s you can’t do anything it’s not like it’s not funny I don’t know laughing it’s horrible it’s not like it loads slowly I mean this is the biggest day in hallow history and so it’s it’s there’s hundreds of thousands of people trying to pray millions of people trying to pray on this thing at this moment and it’s just white just a white screen and I know how to code a little bit but certainly not we have people who code much better than I do now and uh and so I call our developer and I was like hey man thing’s totally down and he’s like yeah okay I’m on it and it usually takes us about 30 seconds to get it to fix but there were so many more people trying to use it that it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and it was just this spiral going down and down and down and so it usually takes us about maybe one or two minutes to fix it because you can add capacity or whatever it is but um but he can’t fix it he can’t figure out how to do it it’s like the spiral he can’t get get get control of and so we go to mass and the app is crashing through the whole Mass it’s crashing it’s down no can use it and this is like we have a massive Spike at at right in the morning there’s a spike in the morning and in the evening when people pray at at the beginning of the day and the end of the day mostly and so this is like right in the middle of our biggest Spike and I was just sitting there and MK and I was just like God what like I Surrender this to you yes like this is yours but like why are you why are you doing this there’s so many people trying to pray like can you please just fix this app like and I’m just like struggling with this thing I’m just so stressed and so anxious about it because it’s just dying and no one can use it and our customer support thing’s blowing off and everything’s going terribly and and then Mark is about to go on The Today Show and fox and all these National TV shows and what’s he supposed to do be like hey download the app but in like a couple hours maybe I don’t and so nobody else knows that the app is crashing and so the priest comes up to me after Mass and he’s like hey Alex um are you okay and I was like yeah father why and he was like well it seems like you’re pretty distracted it seems like you’re pretty upset like there’s something about you it just feels like you’re upset and I was like well to be honest yeah the app has been crashing for the last like 30 40 minutes it’s just been down nobody can use it it makes me sad it’s like this is we’re hoping to int especially to people who have fallen away or people like that young girl who are in a really tough time like we want to be a resource for people we want to help people pray um and he was like all right Alex um well would you mind if I just if I just said a quick prayer for you and I was like sure father I guess I’m the prayer guy it’s a Prayer app yes you can pray for us and he he just sits there for a second and he just goes okay have a good day Alex and then I get a text literally two seconds later that says the app is back up like it’s just like God this whole story everything for us is just like you try and you try and you try and you try and then you’re just like God can you please take it and then he does and he’s like I was just waiting for you to do that I was just waiting for you to let me do it and then it went on to be to to displace temu at the end of the day as the number one app which is crazy cu the top 10 apps all of the YouTube Amon Netflix temu every app has 10,000 plus employees we had 80 uh and so it’s just that it was this crazy story of of hallow getting to number one over temu which was which was fun um but but yeah it’s just this it’s just God showing us like hey I’m the one who’s I’m the one who’s doing this just make sure you always remember I’m the one who’s doing this which hopefully hopefully I do amazing has it um has it hurt hurt Wahlberg’s career since you said that it might you know Mark is an interesting place because you know he produces most of his own stuff now and can fund a lot of it and he’s trying to build you know what he does really is he tries to focus on a handful of things that he really tries to build so he is like a health company a a clothing company hallow and a handful of other things he’s really focused on building but honestly um you know there’s a lot of like he’ll post about like just stay prayed up just something he’ll just he’ll literally just look at the camera and be like hey stay prayed up in front of a church or in front of a statue of Jesus or Mary or something and just invite people to pray and he had he he you know he had a friend of his come up to him and say like hey haven’t you seen that everyone like haven’t you read your comments like everyone hates you for these posts and he’s like comments dude I haven’t read comments in like 30 years you can’t read comments on social media that’ll destroy you and he’s like what see is that these posts whenever I post about Jesus or talk about Jesus they get like you know 10 times the number of views that anything else I talk about gets yes people are clearly hungry for this and we’ve shared a bunch of these stories of how uh you know that woman who almost ended her life saw a post from him talking about Jesus and was able to you know it’s an interesting thing because to to reach out to somebody who doesn’t take their faith seriously you know my face isn’t really going to get them to stop but Mark’s face will it’d be like w that’s weird enough like the guy from the bear movies talking about Jesus like that’s a that’s a weird thing I’m just going to it’s it’s just weird enough that I’m going to try it but um but anyway for him he’s just I don’t know he just it it’s it takes a bravery I mean for a bunch of folks but then through it I think God actually does these really cool things and you’re starting to see actually in Hollywood now I was just talking to somebody I was in LA this week and they were saying this is the first time in like 30 years that someone has come asking for faith-based scripts asking for faith-based material and they’re like it’s not obviously it’s not because people are the studios are suddenly trying to share Christ it’s because you know you see things like H or you see things like Bible in year or the chosen or whatever it is and you see these things working you see people are actually really hungry for it and it’s you know I mean scripture again is pretty clear it’s if you seek first the kingdom of God all the other things will be given unto you it’s like and now it’s scary and you go through like a dip I mean for me certainly uh but God then brings you these incredible blessings on the other side of it um so I don’t know I mean Mark’s you know father St did Father St did really well his obviously Hallows um blown any of our expectations or anything that we expected out of this water so yeah for him I think it’s been a a pretty cool ride it’s it’s just awesome to see somebody who has this incredible platform and talent and gift uh use it for the greater glory of the Kingdom so is a blessing and be rewarded for it I mean it sounds like you think things are changing there’s something going on I mean I think we’re in a I think we’re in a very dark place um um but I have this yeah and Hall I I I have this tremendous hope I mean it’s it’s just uh we get we just get to see it all the time like in the darkest places God reaching out to people and like wait Chesterton has this quote that’s like there have been many times in history that GK Chesterton there’s been many times in history where people thought the church was dead the church is not this like straight line it’s it’s it’s this time of many times people thought it was over the rise of Islam the death of Jesus the death of his Apostles the fall of Rome all these different times when people thought Christianity should just pet her out and die but Christianity can’t die because as soon as it gets close to the Grave when everyone expects it to be in the grave it resurrects because it has a God that knows its way out of the grave and I don’t know for us we just see it and I I think you can see it you’re starting to see a little bit of it in you know some of these broader things like hallow or Bible in year or the chosen or um anything but for us it’s just in these stories and especially in the in the places when things are when things are really tough and really dark and like you know we live in a culture of death and a in a in a sad secular world that’s falling away even more rapidly from Jesus and but still in that he’s there and like we had this we had this other woman right into us and share her story which was uh she had become uh pregnant she was uh she had just graduated she was unmarried she was dating somebody um very young and had become pregnant and was just petrified just so scared cuz all the world does is tell you that if you’re pregnant as a woman your life’s over and it’s the worst thing that can happen to you and all these terrible sad messages and she’s petrified she’s like oh I wanted a career as I’m scared out of my mind there’s no opt there’s no options what are my options and she said she fell down on her knees she had the app and she opened up hall fell down on her knees and she said God I just I don’t know what you want from me here but I Surrender it to you which is man it’s just an incredible witness of Faith but I Surrender it to you I Surrender it to you completely whatever you want and she hears audibly in the silence his name is Luke uh which like if you’re going to say one word to save a child’s life in the womb like hearing his name from God’s voice like hearing God has a name for him already it’s like well this termination is no option obviously because God has named him his name is Luke and so she goes through this journey she’s like all right well I’m not going to terminate him so what am I going to do and she starts exploring and she’s like she shares the story and she she’s like I’d never even thought about adoption and I started thinking about it I started exploring it I was like well if I could find a family that maybe would make sense that’s faithful that’s Christian you know and I could still be a part of my child’s life somebody that could raise my kid better than I could with um you know maybe maybe that’s an option for me and so she finds this couple who takes their faith very seriously and uh she’s like okay this is perfect this is this is this is the couple that um that I would choose and she says Hey I just uh one last question before we proceed like do do you it’s your kid um do you know what name you’ll name him and they said oh yeah yeah yeah we’ve known for a while now his name is Luke oh and she’s just like glory to God and the crazy part is then a during her birth they the doctors found she was sick she had an illness um I forget exactly what it was but it was some something that needed surgery that they never would have found otherwise and she would have died from it and they found it during her birth they never would have found it otherwise and so the child who now is like the best part of her life she gets to be a part of this child’s life and this family’s life and you know for her it’s the the peak of her life is the best thing that happened to her as this kid and it also literally physically saved her life but it’s just like even in this world that is so tough that is so dark um that is going through so much like God is still there and he’s still able if we just like give him just a crack like we just crack the door open of our hearts he can do the rest he takes the rest and so yeah I have I have tremendous I have tremendous hope do does does it feel to you that people who haven’t considered anything beyond you know their five senses are suddenly asking questions about what else there might be or people have a heightened spiritual awareness do you notice that I think so yeah I mean I uh I mean we see it obviously with the app it’s that’s all we do is um try to open people to Christian spirituality um in a relationship with the Lord but I think there’s a bunch things for it I mean the one is like I was saying with technology I mean it’s just so much noise like it’s just so much busyness so much stress so much anxiety in this phone that especially young people like you go to him and it’s just like hey did you know there’s like real peace like real rest real peace and that I think has this tremendous pull which is like the offer you know Christ offers a lot Christianity offers a lot truth beauty Joy fearlessness courage all these things but also this deep sense of peace and especially in today’s world I just think people are hungry for it like it’s Everything feels terrible Everything feels like you’re stressed and worried the world’s about to the world’s about to end um but real peace I think people are really hungry for and that’s what we get really excited about I mean I was in Silicon Valley for um for three years with my wife and I would ask I would talk to people all the time and you’d be like are you religious and they’d be like no of course of course I’m not religious nobody’s religious anymore um but then you ask them what they are and they would say which is this relatively new invention which is spiritual but not religious I’m spiritual but not religious and it’s like are you spiritual and they would all say yes of course I’m spiritual I’m interested in spirituality and there’s two kind of ways to go about that the one is um you know like well can you really be spiritual without being religious like okay you’re spiritual so you’re having a relationship with something outside you what is that thing don’t you want to try to figure out what that thing is and it’s it’s funny I’ll talk to people who meditate and you’ll be like okay you sit there you meditate you’re alone in your room um and these are secular people who don’t and but is there something else there with you when you meditate and everyone will be like yeah of course there is absolutely there’s something else there there’s something invisible there and I was like okay well that’s the craziest thing in the world so so you’re to so you’re saying like when you stop watching Netflix and scrolling on Tik Tok and you just sit in silence there’s an invisible force there shouldn’t your whole life be like focused on well what is that thing figuring out what that thing is and what it wants from you and the good news is like what it wants from you is to tell you that you’re loved like to love you infinitely and then to call you to this life of love and service for other people so it’s it’s this force of tremendous goodness but like don’t you want to really figure that out and I do think we see well and also there are non- good forces out there too exactly yeah now that’s for me actually when I was coming from secular meditation which is mostly has its roots in Buddhist Meditation or Eastern medit to Christian meditation obviously the core of the difference in Christian meditation is a relationship with Jesus it’s not about whatever like your breath or trying to like de-stress it’s not about any of that it’s about trying to let Jesus into your heart and transform your heart um let him love you and then to go and share that love with others so at the core it’s a totally different thing but um the other big piece of it that was different for me that I found really powerful from a Christian perspective is in eastern traditions of meditation you know the fundamental belief is hey there’s suffering there’s a way to escape suffering and you know meditation is one of those techniques um but there’s no good and evil fight there’s no good verse evil in Christianity like if you sit in silence and you just focus on your breath or something there’s two things that can come into your mind yes there’s a good thing which is great it’s Jesus he loves you and there’s a very bad thing and the very bad thing does not love you and does not want your good he wants your destruction and you know like there’s there’s this blog and one of these secular meditation that’s just so obviously true though look around yeah I mean to deny evil it’s it’s it’s the other thing I was saying when you said you know it feels like people are more aware is evil just feels a lot more on its face than it ever was like it used to feel I don’t know I’ve only been around for a bit but like under the surface and now it just feels a lot more like it’s right there it’s staring at you which sorry I interrupted you about to say so no no no but you said so there’s a book uh no there’s this there’s on on one of these secular meditation websites um you know somebody they write in questions or whatever and the the meditation person the secular meditation person answers them and a woman wrote in and said hey I I was meditating and I had a thought come across my mind about harming my child um you know what do I do with that and the person just responded like well okay just treat that like any other thought just like acknowledge it and let it go and you know keep trying to focus on your breath and for me I just I was like man that that doesn’t feel right that doesn’t and the Christian teaching is so much so much deeper like all of there’s this spirituality called ignation spirituality where it’s literally all just about okay you’re sitting there in silence you’re sitting there in prayer or at any moment in your day how do you discern between what is good and what is bad it’s called a discernment of spirits and so it’s like well how do you figure out if something’s talking to you is it the good guy or is it the bad guy because that’s it and our job is hey if it’s the bad guy get the bad guy out of there you know fortify yourself against your Temptations against your weaknesses ignore him as much as possible and if it’s the good guy like try to let him in and let him transform your life and the good guy wins the good guy is infinitely more powerful than the bad guy we don’t have to build up the bad guy into being more powerful than Jesus Jesus already won but we have to continue the fight and our job is primarily within our own Hearts to discern this good versus evil and to get the evil out and I don’t know I mean it’s and but it’s a big deal I mean the the core Christian prayer says and Deliver Us from the evil one certainly yeah so I mean that suggests like we should be afraid of that well that’s a war I mean yeah that’s the story of scripture but it’s not like something we just sort of Let It Go and hope it doesn’t come back it’s like wow that’s really scary that can destroy you and everyone you love yeah no it’s and and the thing is it’s I don’t know for me it’s like in my own experience if I go back pre Jesus um in my life it didn’t feel like I was actively trying to do evil like it it didn’t um but I was like I was a terrible guy uh I was a bad friend I was bad in relationships I was a terrible son I was involved in many things I shouldn’t I I mean it and I believed many things that were truly e that were wrong truly evil and uh you know it was only after letting God into my heart that like I started seeing all these things and I had this priest at this homy I think it was like a week ago and he said life is like you’re driving in a car with a with a cracked and dirty windshield when you’re driving away from the Sun you don’t see any of the cracks you don’t see any of the fog you don’t see any of the defects in the windshield but as soon as you turn around and you start driving towards the Sun as soon as you start journeying towards God you start seeing all these cracks and all these defects that’s smart and it’s with Christ like you start seeing like oh my gosh like how evil all this was but that’s the way of the world the way of the world is destruction like the the the road is wide the way is easy that leads to destruction and there are many who follow it and the road is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and there are a few who find it but like once you find it it’s it’s hard yeah cuz you have to fight against evil it’s not it’s not like you just get to disconnect and meditate and do whatever you want and just find peace it’s like no there’s a war going on we need to fight it uh but at the same time it’s this tremendously freeing um and light and easy way which is you know it’s a contradiction but it’s a beautiful one now I’ve told you before about a staff favorite here at TCN the eight sleep pot what is it it’s a high-tech mattress that’s we talk about over lunch here our mattresses because this one is excellent It’s high-tech it it’s a cover it goes right over your existing bat well this Christmas you can get it for the best price of the Year up to 600 bucks off the eight sleep pod works by 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made sleep it really helps people here absolutely love it eight sleep go to 8sleep.com Tucker use the promo code Tucker to get up to 600 bucks off the Pod 4 ultra you can try with no obligation for 30 days if you don’t like it just send it back that’s 8sleep.com Tucker better sleep truly so what I should have asked this at at the outset of course I conduct all interviews backwards um so my apologies what is prayer yeah I think at there’s a bunch of different really beautiful definitions of prayer but for me at the heart it’s just the way you have a relationship with God um it’s the way you talk to him it’s the way you listen for me primarily it’s listening I mean if if you believe what I believe which is there’s a God up there he can talk to you and he knows what he wants for you for your perfect good in every moment like all you’d want to do is listen all you’d want to do is you know pick up your phone every morning and be like hey God what should I do yes but it’s not just in the morning which is an important time to spend time in prayer but it’s every moment like he’s here with us now and he knows what he wants and what he wants is for your good and he wants to enter your heart and transform it and turn it radically on fire with his love to then go love others and so prayer is the way in the way we have a relationship with the Lord there’s a quote that says prayer is lifting up your heart to God it’s anything it’s the medium through which you have a relationship with the lord it’s taking time to sit in silence to be alone with the one who loves you there’s all these beautiful definitions but for me it’s primarily yeah it’s sharing like it’s helpful to share what’s on your heart and to ask for stuff and God answers those things prayer is real prayer can change things I’ve I’ve I’ve seen it change things we we um there was a a user who was had hallow and was driving to work and he heard in prayer um hey Park in a different spot which doesn’t make any sense he was a teacher he was like Park in a different spot of the parking lot and he’s driving he’s praying God he hears God say park in a different spot he goes to a back corner that he never would have parked in and he parks in it and the school he went to was Uvaldi the school that got shot up and that day it got shot up and had he been parked in the normal spot he would have parked in the shooter gone through his directly through his car but he stayed in the parking lot and the shooter went around a different way was just like so prayer works I don’t people call me crazy whatever thoughts and prayers prayers works like prayer can change lives I’ve seen it literally actively save people’s lives there’s a woman who uh was coding out and her friend was sitting next to her so she was dying they were trying to resuscitate her and her friend was sitting next to her and they said I’m going to pray a rosary on the app and she opened up the the app and and prayed a rosary and the doctors say okay I’m sorry we’ve you know we’ve been trying to resuscitate but she’s not with us anymore she’s dead and the woman said don’t leave yet we’ll finish the rosary and then you can leave and the doctor said Okay I I don’t know why and they called time of death and two three minutes go by and then Jonathan who’s the guy who does the rosary on the out Jonathan roomy who plays Jesus in The Chosen is phenomenal but he uh he closes the rosary says in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit in a beep and the heart just comes back the woman just comes back to life and so I mean prayer works like like uh you can ask God for things and he does them he doesn’t always answer them answer your prayers in the way that you expect and true he often he often leads you to pain and suffering which is you know the way of the Cross it’s the way he promises it’s the way of his Apostles I mean I have a lot easier life than my than the the apostles had that’s for sure um but he’ll lead us all to pain and suffering and that’s how he leads us closer to him but prayer at the core is is talking to him asking him for things yes all the stuff that we know prayer is but then it’s also listening and for me that’s what really changed my life was learning to listen and that’s mostly learning to sit in silence there’s a bunch of different ways to listen but mostly learning to sit in silence meditating on scripture reflecting on where God is in our life all these different ways it’s why we built the app because there’s a thousand different ways to grow closer to God to learn how to listen and it can it can be scary for people who don’t know what that means but to really try to spend time each day day listening for God and uh you know exploring whatever works for you in whatever time can you I mean I think a lot of us would like to listen more carefully yeah and prayer can’t just be like a Litany of complaints and desires or something really ugly about that very narcissistic about it but listening you know into the void comes well in my case like fly fishing you know or worrying about dumb stuff how what is the process you use to listen to God yeah I love the question because it’s the question I wrestled with uh and it’s the it is the whole reason we built Alo uh and there’s a thousand different techniques of prayer and meditation on the app a thousand different ways to structure your time and silence because one of the real hard Parts is distraction you start thinking about whatever worries or issues and there’s a bunch of ways I believe this is addressed in the screw tape letters as I certainly but one of the there there’s a bunch of ways to so there’s a bunch of different techniques of prayer and the first thing I’d recommend is I’m not going to do nearly as good a job at teaching this as we do on the app so folks should try hallow and download it find whatever session works for them and give it a shot but um you know like meditating with scripture as an example there a technique called Lex deina uh has a handful of different steps to it you you make sure that you notice that you’re in God’s Presence at the beginning and then you read like a short paragraph from scripture so it’s not just total silence although you know it’s great to also spend time in total silence but that can be harder for folks who are newer to it cuz you you get distracted and you start thinking about work and then you’re just like wait I just spent 20 minutes just thinking about all the stuff I had to do exactly that wasn’t prayer and um but you you you ask God hey help me I’m about to try to pray uh can you help me make this time what you want it to be and then you pick a passage or you know a few verses from scripture and you try to see okay what word or maybe there’s an image or maybe it’s a phrase is the holy spirit calling out to me and for me it was hallow in that first one but it can be anything and and it’s funny actually the really cool part about scripture when you do this is you can do it in a group of like six seven people and like one sentence people will be like seven different words will stick out to them and seven different meanings for different people at different stages in their life you are a City built on a hill um it cannot be hid uh like City or Hill or light uh shine whatever like people will meditate on different words and you try to focus on that word so as your mind gets distracted that’s fine that happens you just bring your mind gently back to the word back to the point back to the focus what you’re trying to meditate on which is you know for me was hallow in this first meditation and then you use that to share with God what’s on your heart so it’s good to share with God you you open up to him just like you would want your child to share with you what’s on their heart what they’re worried about what they want even if it’s not good for them you want them to tell you you know you don’t want to keep it secret so you share with them and then you try to sit in silence and you just try to this is the hard part but it’s also the beautiful part which is after you get through this you share what’s on your heart and you spend your time trying to recollect yourself and Center yourself on on scripture then you spend you know it can just be like a minute it can be two three minutes and you just let let God you just sit with God and you just try to sit with God and if your mind gets distracted that’s fine you gently bring it back or another technique for distraction and there’s a bunch of these things it’s a whole tradition there’s thousands of years of this monks and nuns and all this stuff doing this but you take the distraction and you say okay I’m really thinking about this thing at work I’m really thinking about this relationship that I have and you use that for prayer so you the devil can use it to distract you away from God or you can use it to transform it into prayer and say hey God this thing is happening at work is there something you want me to do here is there something how do you want me to handle this I’m getting distracted I keep thinking about this is there’s something you’re trying to tell me here and then you listen and sometimes it’ll be obvious and sometimes it won’t be obvious sometimes scripture will jump out to you and sometimes God will speak directly to you sometimes you might hear something audibly but usually all the funny thing is I’ve been doing this now for six years and I spend all my time every day just trying to there’s a bunch of different stuff but the core of it is trying to understand and share like really deep really awesome Christian contemplative um and meditative spirituality with people and so I read all these spiritual directors all these folks all these Saints all this stuff and the funny thing is it’s like at the core of all of it there’s nothing like the greatest truths are also the simplest uh all God wants in prayer is to show you how much he loves you and to just hold you and to just love you and it like that sounds lame as like a man like you’re like oh I want to be strong I don’t need love whatever it is but you do like you need this Love Of Christ and he loves you so deeply and so infinitely and it doesn’t matter what you we had this woman right into us who was trapped in this tremendous state of sin she said she was overwhelmed with shame sexual sin uh she was ter she was a terrible person violence all stuff and she entered into prayer and it was just silence and she just heard God say to her uh I love you and she goes you can’t love me I’m a terrible person I’m the worst sinner I know I I I’m trapped in the cycle of sin and he says I love you she goes you can’t you can’t love me I’m not worth it he says I love you I love you I love you and he just kept saying it until she said okay fine and what he does is he loves us so much so that our heart overflows both for love back to him but also to then go share that love with other people we had another young girl um who had never heard that she was beautiful from anyone in her life she was 20 years old she had never heard it just breaks my heart as a father had never heard anyone tell her she was beautiful just ugly she had just heard that she was ugly her whole life and she looked in the mirror she started a little meditation not in the audio or anything and she just heard the words from God you are beautifully and wonderfully made do you think I make mistakes and it’s just like you God will tell you if you give them and it’s not you know don’t try it once try it a bunch you have to persevere you have to try it for a year don’t try it for two weeks don’t try for 4 weeks try it for a year just 10 20 minutes in silence but what God will do if you give him that little crack is he’ll tell you exactly what he wants to tell you which no one I can’t tell you I don’t but it is at the core that you are loved and that you are called to Greatness you’re not called to sit in your sin you’re not called called to be the same you’re called to be transformed to be perfect and he brings that out of you he brings love out of you and the other unique thing about prayer is prayer is completely useless a total waste of time if it does not lead to a life of love and Christianity is very clear it’s not like meditation or working out or anything that makes you feel happy which it does it makes you feel all that stuff but it must lead to a life of radical love and radical service and fighting for the good and fighting for the truth and fighting for those who most need it and so yeah for prayer I think the ultimate stage of it yes knowing you’re loved but then ultimately what you do after listening is you try to surrender your life completely to him you try to give up everything to him so that you no longer live Christ lives within you and that you pray unceasingly so the end States is like I try to talk to God I try to share what’s on my heart I try to listen for him it’s hard I get distracted but I try my best to listen for him and then what I try to do is let him into my heart to surrender my heart completely and totally to him so that he takes over everything and so anyway I know that’s a long answer but that to me is what prayer is it’s it’s not a long answer it’s a great answer how does you said earlier that fasting and prayer go together and that’s often forgotten Mark Wahlberg’s been trying to to remind us of that what is the connection between them and what do you mean by [Music] fasting um well traditionally what is meant by fasting is food um but it’s interesting because fasting used to be a massive part of it’s it’s not even talked about that much in scripture because it was so assumed like people just knew that you were supposed to that’s how it’s referred to at least in the reference I can think of it’s It’s almost like you know when you fast by the way when you are fasting assuming you will hey you’re supposed to fast it’s like of course we’re supposed to fast it was just assume whereas in today’s world we don’t and we have all these so anyway at the core fasting is from food we have all these what uh like we soften we soften fasting which is true like some people have Eating Disorders or some people have issues with fasting or some people have issues like health issues or women are pregnant or breastfeeding or whatever it is and so there’s all these reasons but like for me as a whatever 30-year-old man I can fast a day like I can go a day without food I can just drink water I can go many days without food actually but I can certainly go a day without food and it’s all it’s it’s one of the things about especially when we talk to young men it’s like Christianity has been softened and uh sadly so and what it is is um you know Christianity really if you read the gospels like if you really read what Jesus is saying it’s not soft it’s really hard and it’s two things that are both really hard radical mercy and radical Justice and Perfection and avoidance of sin and defeating the devil like it’s it’s it’s radical both uh and so yes there is a radical love which is like hey no matter what you do in your life I will love you I will I will forgive you if you come to me at the same time you are called to be perfect not like hey you’re a good person cuz you go to church on Sundays or hey you’re a good person because you don’t yell at people it’s like no you’re called to never be angry with somebody again um and fasting is one of those things that so I know for for me for as I mean there’s like there’s there’s this old there’s a bunch of my makes fun of me cuz I love all these like kind of crazy Christian stories but um there was like these old group of monks called the stylites that would just in the desert uh they would just climb on top of a column um so Roman column in the middle of the desert and they would just die they would just starve to death on the column for Christ to to sacrifice their bodies for Christ which is you know certainly probably not what most people are called to but fasting I mean at the core was food or at the at at the basic is food for anybody where that is you know acceptable is I think something that we are all called to but it can be anything so it really what is fasting is anything you want which I I like food I like bad food I like so fasting from food is hard but it can be fasting from your F from your phone it can be fasting from you know a social media scroll it can be fasting from anything that you want is just giving it up any addiction that you have that’s of this world that isn’t something that is helping you grow closer to the Lord just giving it up and it it doesn’t have to be you know bad it doesn’t have to be bad in nature like chocolate Jesus isn’t against chocolate but you can give up like hey you know I’m not going to have that extra cookie just as a small little sacrifice for God and Jesus is really clear in scripture which is you know there’s a story of this man who’s possessed and his Apostles men of great faith uh try to cast it out and they’re able to cast out many demons and they can’t cast it out and Jesus comes and says okay I’ll cast it out fine and cast it out of course and his Apostles say well why couldn’t we why couldn’t we do that and he says some things can only be accomplished through prayer and fasting and so it’s like the power of fasting is I think this really untapped and you see it actually in in today’s culture too like we’ve tried to pick all these different things where it’s kind of like fasting but not like cold showers or cold plunges now we’re like oh you should do it it’s like it’s hard it makes you um it helps you grow on discipline it’s all this stuff or um you know intermittent fasting all these different things and it’s like yeah Christianity you been doing that for 2,000 years like cold showers are another great way to fast but for me I don’t know whenever I fast which traditionally it’s like Wednesdays or Thursdays and again you can have like a meal or or something but it’s you should eat dramatically less food than you do otherwise or maybe it’s from coffee or maybe it’s from whatever but whenever I fast from food it’s this interesting I just feel like it’s the same thing by the way whenever I sit in front of the Eucharist but uh for me whenever I fast I just feel like you know it’s not radical but it’s like 20% easier for me to enter into prayer and so like you’ll sit in prayer for like 20 minutes and your mind will get distracted for a while and you share share everything that’s on your heart and you try to meditate with scripture but then at the end you’ll have like two or three minutes once you get really into it and it’s just a little bit at the beginning but like two or three minutes where it just feels like the Saints describe this as like Union with God but it just it feels like you’re really close to God like you feel very connected spiritually and there’s something good and it takes a while and it’s really hard but when I fast I can do it in like it doesn’t take like 18 minutes of me sharing or trying to not to it takes like 30 seconds like I could just be here and I could just be like man like yeah I feel like God is right here what do you think that is I don’t know I think it’s the further I’m certainly not a theologian so I don’t know but for for me it’s like the further I get from this world the closer I get to God and the world you know we’re called to live in the world and work in the world and we’re called to take care of our bodies and um to serve as best we can within the world but God is not we are called to not be of this world to be in the world but not of the world and I think as we disconnect from the things that most tether us to the world we get closer to the spiritual realm which you know to me is a relationship with the Lord how often do you fast I try to uh everybody has their own Journey so I but I try to fast Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent I try to Wednesdays and Fridays yeah um now you know sometimes I’ll do kind of like a half fast where I’ll still eat but probably about half of what I would eat in a normal day and but during Lent I try to do full fasts and then I try to do a a full Fast um uh from Good Friday to Easter Sunday and sometimes longer but uh honestly at the beginning so you you only eat five days a week ideally yeah during Lent yeah and during regular times I will eat on Wednesdays and Fridays but usually it’s it’s about a third to a half of the like calories or amount of food that I would eat on a regular day and then you fast three days on Easter weekend yeah I usually f i i fast Good Friday Saturday and then to to mass and then you know there was a year I fasted all of Holy Week but what was that like ah my wife was a saint through it I was coming back to my faith there’s something special about folks who are new back to their faith you’ve got this fire that is important for us who have been taking Faith seriously to try to rekindle um which we have a lot of folks on I’ve talked a lot about people who have come back to their faith on Hall but it’s an honor to get to pray with everybody I take my faith seriously and I use the app three times a day but um yeah that was a that was a 7day fast which um was pretty intense like you you start getting I would say I would say the first two days suck because you’re just really hungry but then you don’t after the second day I’m not hungry I don’t feel the sensation of hunger really maybe it comes every once in a while but I’m not really hungry and so it is just like living a whole day like what I was saying like just where within a minute anytime you think about God you can just enter into this prayer space which is and the other thing it does is you know Jesus describes himself as Meek and humble of heart and whenever you have a lot of food I don’t know there’s something that kind of Puffs you up like when you have all the energy and when you’re just when you’re hungry you’re just like you’re so much more humble and so much Meer that’s true and so you feel like man this is probably how I should be all the time um but then yeah certainly towards the end of it you start getting slow and you lose energy and it’s hard to walk and it’s hard to do it’s hard to you know have enough energy for it and then I was supposed to you’re supposed to like eat bone broth or something when you come back to your faith and so after Sunday Easter after Sunday vigil mass or Saturday Vig mass for Easter I had my wife get me some bone broth or something and I was just like this is disgusting I need some McDonald’s and so which was not I would certainly not recommend eating McDonald’s after a long fast did did you I did and I felt pretty B what you get fet of fish or did you go all the way oh no it was Easter so it was a feast day so I could celebrate so I had a I had a couple burgers or something yeah I don’t eat McDonald’s anymore but I did that no I don’t either but how how did how what was that like going from you know empty tank to filling it with McDonald’s H yeah it was not not recommended not recommended you feel like crap I mean and the other actually this is the funny thing about the spiritual life is actually how how how many analogies there are for it but like I’ve I so and this year I’ve I’ve tried to do a lot better job of eating Health here um and like cleaner and more protein and all the stuff you’re supposed to do and it’s this it’s this funny sensation where like then the bad food it’s it’s really hard at the beginning because you’re addicted to all these all these things all these foods that are terrible for you you’re addicted to them so you got to break it and that’s really hard it’s like oh I want sweets or I want you know processed foods or chips or whatever it is and so it’s really hard at the beginning but then once you get through it you start to realize like well actually clean food like good natural food tastes way better like is way better and the fast food is it starts to be disgusting like it starts to be like ah and so like I haven’t had McDonald which is I’m a big fan of McDonald’s but I haven’t had McDonald’s in uh a long time and now it’s just like and my wife and I were saying the same thing it’s like I don’t even not only do you not want it like for for a while there you just don’t want it and that’s nice but then you start to ultimately like actively dislike it like the the stuff that’s bad for you and I think it’s very similar in the spiritual life it’s like this journey of like at the beginning when you try to break a habit of sin it’s really hard to break because you’re really attached to it and then you get to a point where it’s like okay well I don’t you know by the grace of God I don’t really want this thing anymore and then you get to this point where it’s like I actively hate that thing that thing is evil that thing was destroying me I see it now like I can see what it was doing to my soul and anytime I get anywhere close to it you like feel H like no this is bad this is terrible for you which is kind of this funny analogy with food um but yeah so anyway I wouldn’t I wouldn’t fast um I wouldn’t fast and then eat McDonald’s certainly would not be the recommendation although Kevin James he he shared this on Rogan so I can I can share it but he did a 40 41 day fast something crazy which was insane and I had dinner with him when he during his fast like 20 days into his fast or something crazy and he was uh you know he I was like are you okay if I eat and he was like yeah I like to look at food like I need to look at it so I still have a relationship with it but I’m fasting and he did it for his family which is beautiful but um Kevin James the actor yeah incredible incredible man of Faith awesome really yeah yeah you should talk to him he’s he’s I haven’t seen him he’s inspirational I went on a sick com he had once years ago many years 20 years ago anyway haven’t seen him since I had no idea I’ll tell you there’s we’ve got some I can’t I can’t share everything now but we’ve got there’s there’s a lot more people celebrities or whoever who are faithful folks um who are just you know haven’t really had the opportunity or the culture or the the platform to share their faith and it’s cool to get to meet these people and to get to talk to them about what God has done in their life and it’s it’s way more people than you would imagine so really yeah it’s cool I think there’s something cool happening in the world so we I think I think that too I don’t think you can have this much evil without a counterbalance well in the darkest night that’s where the light the darkness cannot overcome the light and it’s it’s like yeah it’s I don’t know the night is darkest before the dawn there’s all this stuff that’s all this traditional wisdom that you say but you don’t really realize and I think we’re in this time where I don’t know evil feels a lot more on its face than it ever was but so does good and like I think God is doing something really cool and I’m excited for it so we’ll see what the good Lord Wills we are proud at TCN to offer quality long form programming films documentaries short series and we’ve got a new one rolling it out it’s a six-part documentary series called All the President’s Men the conspiracy against Trump it’s made by our friend the documentary filmmaker Shawn Stone all six episodes available now at Tucker carlson.com it’s an in-depth look at what happened in the first Trump Administration 2016 to 2020 and while the rest of us sort is busy watching TV behind the scenes permanent Washington particularly the Intel agencies and the law enforcement agencies under the indirect but pretty clear command of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton set out to systematically destroy not just Donald Trump but the people around him the people who supported him and this series explains exactly what happened it’s worth seeing as Donald Trump starts his second presidency this Series has interviews with the people who are targeted and presents it in a way that will help you understand exactly what happened how American democracy as democracy was undermined by the people who claimed to be defending it it’s in this series and it’s absolutely worth it all the presidents men the conspiracy against Trump out now on Tucker carlson.com I’m really struck by the persecution of Christians which I never thought I would see in the modern era in this country on two levels one it just doesn’t make any sense because Christians are the most sort of productive least threatening nicest like why you know if you’re running a country why would you be mad you’d want more Christians because they actually pay their taxes and like have obedient children and they’re just EAS yeah have children they’re easier to deal with um so I’m sort of baffled by it and then I look at it I’m like well no that is a there’s something so offensive to the world about the word Jesus unless it’s used as an epithet that that phenomenon itself is evidence of God’s existence I think that word has power despite 2,000 years of misuse yeah um I mean we we we have seen a lot of different um backlash from the app I mean there’s have have you I should have asked you that have you really yeah I mean there’s you know whatever attack articles about we’re radical because we’re pro-life or any other there have actually been pieces attacking hello oh yeah certainly um which you find that kind of hilarious well you know at the beginning it it it beginning it stressed me out but certainly actually funnily enough there were two Vice and BuzzFeed both wrote hit pieces and really within like a month or two both were bankrupt yeah which is um I never celebrate anyone’s bankruptcy and I didn’t I didn’t allow myself to celebrate either one of those cuz I don’t want to be the kind of person who celebrates you know people suffering and the people work there suffered and so but um I it didn’t wreck my day I’ll be honest yeah the um and we had uh the app got kicked out of China the Chinese cyber security administration or something deemed our content illegal and um seriously removed it from the App Store yeah uh we launched a challenge on apparently they’re not huge fans of John Paul II and we did a meditation on how he led did a lot of work on defeating communism globally yeah um Gorbachev uh credits him with being one of the major forces to destroy the Soviet Union and or communism at least and yeah they didn’t like that so they sent a note to Apple and apple removed our app from the App Store in China but there there’s so there’s there’s been a bunch of stuff um and whatever you just have to look at Twitter to find anybody who hates Jesus or any of Mark’s post or anything but um but I don’t know the thing that bothers me the most or the thing that makes me the most sad is is is like the like there’s the on the face persecution where it’s you know like hey you’re not allowed in China which is sad like we pray for our Brothers and Sisters in Christ in China and it’s a tough it’s a tough environment certainly to try to share the gospel and to try to live the gospel but you know the sad thing for me is honestly just like the it’s like the the undercurrent of like um trying to get away from Jesus and this this is certainly isn’t everybody but it’s a lot and it’s like hey you know you can share about faith and you can share about prayer but like let’s not talk about Jesus specifically let’s just not do the Jesus thing uh let’s just talk about like religion more broadly or like how Alex you should build a Buddhist version of this and a Hindu version of this and a Muslim version of this and you know we’d invest if you were broader spirituality but not you know just the Jesus thing and I’m like n sorry I’m it’s just going to be Jesus or like a you know a TV commercial where somebody’s like oh okay we can talk about prayer and it’s a Prayer app but like don’t show a picture of Jesus in it and it’s like it’s going to be a picture of Jesus and it’s so don’t you find it so revealing that Jesus 2,000 years later is controversial yeah but he’s always been whether but on what grounds I mean it doesn’t it’s it’s irra it’s so irrational that again it’s proof of its reality but like what the guy who told his followers to pray for their persecutors and turn the other cheek like that guy is controversial like why yeah I mean it’s from a Christian perspective it’s because it’s not it’s not just people who are it’s not people who are cranky at Jesus oh I’m I’m exactly right it’s a spiritual war and so it’s like it almost makes it so much more obvious when you’re like I totally agree okay well why are you so against uh you know why are you so against life it’s like well if I was Satan what would I do that’s what I would do uh and I would try to destroy Jesus I would try to get Jesus out of everywhere I’d try to secularize society and make it and remove Jesus and the you know and I think our country was I don’t know we’ve done you’ve talked about this before where it’s like the last whatever 40 50 years of trying to build a secular society but that’s not what our country is our country is a Christian country and we’re doing this one nation under God series on the app as we go through the election but it just focuses on like even if if you go back to any of the founding fathers you know they talk about the importance of prayer and how God is building this country and how we have to trust him with it and Abraham Lincoln has this beautiful quote where he’s like hey in the midst of the Civil War he’s like hey guys we have really screwed up we have tricked ourselves into thinking that our own success that our success was the result of our own hard work and virtue and wisdom when in reality we know it’s God leading us but we have forgotten to pray for him we have become too proud to pray to the god that made us is his last quote which is just beautiful but it’s like yeah we’ve forgotten prayer like prayer should be politics is important we should engage in politics but it comes at the end like the beginning is the heart and the beginning is prayer and whenever you think of like well this world is going down the wrong path yeah that’s the way of the world the way of the world is not our it’s not the CS Lewis describes the world as enemy occupied territory uh and Christianity is the story of how the rifle King has landed and invited all of us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage and it’s like yeah that’s what it is the world is enemy occupied territory the world is satans the world is evil the way of the world is destruction the way of the world is death and Christianity is this crazy thing like it used to be normal societally uh and so we kind of forget about it but it’s this insane thing it’s a crazy thing to believe that God sent his only son so that we all shall have life in heaven with him it’s this crazy thing to in that he’s here with us now like an invisible person is right here who loves us both who’s trying to help us both and he’s in our hearts he’s trying to transform our hearts and there’s this giant war going on all around us Invisible War with angels and demons and whatever trying to convince our hearts trying to win our hearts like that’s a crazy thing to believe but that’s what we believe and so but but when you really enter into it and you’re like ah it’s crazy but yeah you have the words of everlasting to whom else shall we go and everything becomes just a lot clearer but it also it takes a bit of the weight off of it like I used to get so worried about all these world events and it’s like well you know God’s in charge of this thing he’s already promised us that he won it and it’s just our job to try to be as good a people as we can to try to be Saints and to try to let God into our hearts to transform them is that the message of one nation under God yeah I mean the message of one nation under God is politics is important we should engage in it well actually here’s the message of one nation under God is just in scripture itself but it’s the passage of when they ask Jesus should they pay the census tax to Rome this evil government evil evil government check the coin which is you know had just killed like you know 30 years earlier had just killed all the firstborn children in this area to try to kill Jesus like that’s a terrible and they’re saying okay well should we pay the tax to this oppressive government that’s oppressing us and Jesus says okay show me the coin and he says okay whose face and whose inscription is on this coin and they say Caesars and he says okay well then Render unto Caesar what is Caesars give unto Caesar what is Caesars and then that’s what we focus on usually that’s usually the and then everybody talks about which is true what that means which is that it’s important to engage in the politics of this world they’re important things they’re important fights to be had we need to engage in them we need to take them seriously we need to be God’s hands and feet in the world give unto Caesar what is Caesar engage in politics um do your civic duty but then the second half of that line is but give to God what is gods and we usually throw that part away and it’s like okay yeah obviously we give unto God what is Gods but it’s like okay but give unto God what is Gods okay well the coin had Caesar’s face and Caesar’s inscription and I’m stealing this from aamal I heard from a priest but this the coin had Caesar’s face and Caesar’s inscription okay where is God’s face you are God’s face you were made in the image and likeness of God and where are God’s words imprinted where is his inscription it’s on your heart his words are imprinted on your heart from the beginning of time his words his law his love is imprinted on your heart so so give unto Gods what is God’s where’s his face where is his inscription it’s in you you are his face you are his inscription and so your job yes is to give unto Caesar what is Caesar sure pay the coin back to Caesar but give unto God what is God’s which is your whole life you should give your whole life to him you have to give everything your heart your life your soul everything to God and so when we get wrapped up in politics it’s important again we should engage in it it’s not diminishing politics or the importance of politics in any way but the first thing is do we give unto God what is God’s and it’s the one thing that like still think has a chance at cutting across political boundaries or whatever it is in this in this country and saying man if we just let Christ into our hearts if we just let Jesus come he can fix it he can fix it all and so we just need to pray for Christ’s will to be done in our world primarily first within our hearts and then for all of us to build up our communities and our country and our society in the way that the good Lord intends so that we can build up the kingdom of God how do you use the Hello app me I I use it a lot but the um I have this little I have a routine on my app we have these little things where you can set up like personal routines which I love um but like my routine is is this which is um there’s daily readings so in uh there’s a a signed reading from the Old Testament a Psalm and then the um the Gospel reading so I do those in the morning uh and I try to spend like 20 minutes in silence there’s an unguided structured silence session um so you don’t have to like set an alarm or anything that takes you out of it it’s kind of a peaceful way to In and Out it just kind of structures the silence for you and so I try to do 20 minutes in silence each day and then when um right when I wake up first thing certainly I try not to look at my phone I’ve tried to get my phone out of my room it’s terrible to have your phone when you first wake up it’s awful awful for you if you know for your second business if you could uh invent a reliable alarm clock yeah yeah just reinvent the alarm clock I think that would get phones out of people people’s rooms yeah you need them out of your rooms it’s it’s everyone uses the alarm I know it’s heartbreaking but I there’s there’s good I have a good alarm clock we’ve figured out alarm clocks you know it’s there’s I have a my wife and I actually both have a good alarm clock she still has her phone in the room but it’s um but she also we we have a two-month old so she has to wake up in the middle of the night and feed the kitten so she’s got to do something while she’s feeding the kitten or else she’ll fall asleep but um there’s this surrender Novena that I do in the middle of the day there’s a Litany of humility that I do in the middle of the day which is this series of humility prayers which is like man if you want something to put you in your place this this will be like you know what what people think they’re humble and you’re not you’re not even close so give me an exact give me you’re not even close you love this uh humility being the key to wisdom by the way so I think it’s worth pursuing but how does this put you in your place the Litany of humility is the most intense part we start every uh every every lent with it um but it’s the series of prayer is where you ask God to give you humility but tactically like what it actually means for you and it’s asking for these crazy things where you ask God that others may be loved more than I that in the opinion of the world Others May increase and I may decrease that others may be more successful than I that others may be chosen and I set aside um oh come on now all these crazy things that are uh you’re supposed to mean that yeah ex well what you pray for is or from the fear of embarrassment or from the fear of everyone hating you or from the fear of people lying about you and merging your name or whatever it is from the P from the fear of everything bad that could happen to you deliver me Jesus and so you pray this hey Deliver Me Jesus from these fears of the world hating you essentially and the prayer here is God grant me the grace to desire it Jesus grant me the grace to desire it so certainly I I don’t you know like if I just walk down the street and I see somebody uh I don’t naturally want them to be more successful than I am um and so what you pray for is like Jesus grant me the to desire it now the interesting thing about that though is with kids it’s different like God I have a four-year-old 2-year-old two-month old and God is just kids are the greatest theology lesson in the H that you could ever possibly receive and the one of them for me is humility which is like when I look at someone random I don’t naturally want them to have a higher opinion from the world than I do uh but when I look at my kids or or like to have a better life than I do uh but when I look at my kids if I look at my daughter my son and it’s like yeah of course I want you to have a better life than I do that’s exactly and there’s no I don’t feel like uh I don’t feel like jealousy no it’s like no please like I want you to be in and the last thing you pray actually is that others may be holier than I provided that I may become as holy as I should and it’s like I want you to be closer to God than I am I want you to be holier than I am I want you to be happier more joyful you know whatever worldly success God wants from you I want you to have it like I want you have such a better life than I do and it’s not there’s no like I feel no there’s no jealousy there’s no comparon just the opposite that’s the deepest desire of your heart we used to call that in fact the American dream right that your children would be better off than you no for real yeah um that is what every parent wants for his children but what you’re supposed to I mean the crazy thing in Christianity is that’s how God feels about all his children and that’s how we’re called to feel about our Brothers and Sisters in Christ is how I feel about my daughter and and the other great piece of it of fatherhood is like I don’t know as a person as an adult you’re like well I’m going to do something bad and if I screw somebody over they’re not going to like me anymore you know they have no reason to forgive me they have no reason to do any of that that’s not the natural way of things the natural way of things isn’t forgiveness but you look at your daughter and then in in the Christian in the Christian teaching it’s like well but God forgives you no matter what it’s like I don’t really buy that that’s pretty intense like no matter what really even the really evil ones even the ones we all hate uh he forgives them no matter what if they come to him and it’s like well just think about your own like if my son did something terrible like the worst possible thing I could imagine and he comes to me and he says Dad I’m sorry I forgive him instantly in instantly not even a question not even like anything I would hold over it’s just like I love you so much yes I’m glad you’re back I’m glad you’re happy like I I I I certainly AR aren’t am not going to lie to him about something bad like if he’s doing something bad I’ll be like hey you should stop doing that it’s bad for your soul but it’s not it has nothing to do with like me trying to make him smaller or ber him or anything it’s just concern for him and as Christians it’s like okay well yeah that’s the lesson you’re given which is you feel that naturally for your kids some people certainly there are terrible parents out there but I feel that naturally I didn’t have to work at it most parents know exactly what you’re talking about and so then Christianity is like okay well then you got to do that for everybody and so the Litany of humility is this like okay yeah I can pray the Litany of humility for my kids and maybe now I can pray it for my wife and some of my close friends and some of my family and it’s like okay yeah just keep you have to keep pushing yourself and so then yeah people will be like Oh I’m humble and it’s like no you are not if you’re humble you believe some crazy stuff and I’m not anywhere close to it but the anyway that’s one I do a Chaplet uh which is a Divine Mercy thing which is just Lord please have mercy on us and uh uh and then a rosary at the end of the day and then I try to go to mass um when I can but hopefully most days but yeah so that’s most days yeah daily mass which is intense you as a Catholic you’re called on Sundays to go to mass but I don’t know for me I have a spiritual director who’s phenomenal and he just said look Alex there’s three things every day sit in silence for 20 minutes go to mass every day and do a Rosary every day and everything else in your life will come from that and it’s an interesting one it’s like it doesn’t change it nothing nothing in Christianity is like this it’s like eating good food it’s like it’s not going to make you feel infinitely good immediately the next moment unless you’re really aware of how your body acts but like gradually over time you just notice how much it does in you and for me like if I go to mass or I spend time in adoration or I do a rosary or I do I do the things I’m trying to do I just am like it’s like 10 20 I’m a pretty terrible guy naturally and it’s like 10 20% better for me to be more patient or more loving or more humble or more oriented towards others and less worried about myself and it’s just like 10 20% easier for me to be a better person and I need the help and so I try to get as much as I can it is just so striking and I think any honest person will admit this if you think of all the people you know in your life um who are the happiest who are the most content who are the kindest to others it is sincere Christians actually I mean it’s yeah I mean in terms of happiness I mean I can just speak for myself but I just so like I am so much more joyful so much more fulfilled so much less worried than I ever could have imagined and I like hallow is like building a startup is a really stressful thing like it’s a very it’s a very uh building a company is a really hard thing it’s a very stressful thing most people burn out and I am just more at peace and more joyful than I’ve ever been I the um I’ve got too many stories for you but that we we were doing our first fund raise for Hall which goes back to everybody saying no and uh the first F we were running out of money it was just our own credit cards our own whatever and so we were about to have to go back and get regular jobs and we’re like well I really think God wants us to do this thing we’d had these stories about my aunt and all this stuff and we’re like okay well let’s go try to raise some actual money so we can actually work on this full-time and not have to go back and get regular jobs and had we had to go back and get regular jobs we would have hall probably would have died so I go and I do this fundraise thing and and the startup world it was the first time we raised any real money I go and Pitch everybody and it was like a period of two weeks I pitch maybe 80 people over the course of two weeks so that’s a lot of meetings like 10 meetings a day and um this is pre-co so you’re flying all around you’re driving back and forth around the Silicon Valley Bay Area whatever trying to make these meetings and everybody’s judging you you have no numbers you have nothing to show so they’re just like do I want to bet on this guy are you sitting up straight enough are you making enough eye contact are you answering questions well enough is your story any good and my story is just my relationship with Jesus and uh so it’s like as personal as it could possibly be and then is the idea any good which most people thought it was a stupid idea um and if you’re lucky like five might say yes of those 80 uh but that means like 75 say no and the NOS come really quick and the yeses take a while and so you just you have meaning after meeting after meaning you’re exhausted you’re constantly analyzing yourself like are you doing this right and you just get no that’s that’s stupid nobody’s going to do it you’re stupid no you’ve never done this before you’ve never built a business before you have no idea what you’re doing uh and nobody prays anymore this is an old thing like 100 years ago this is um especially Jesus like the Jesus thing that’s way over and uh so it’s just no no no no no this is never going to work from like honestly the the most intelligent startup people like the best startup investors in the world are telling you no like the people who know way better than I do no this is a terrible idea and I remember I came back to my little studio apartment and I sat down and I was I was 25 and I had like four or five knots in my back I couldn’t eat I couldn’t sleep it was just like this crazy stress which was weird it’s like I’m not at war or anything nobody’s trying to kill me but it was just this crazy stress it was like this dream I had that uh I felt so wrapped up in we had people working for it there were families whatever depending on it and if this didn’t work out then it was done we it was never going to exist and I sat down and I prayed and I was like God I think you chose the wrong guy for this I don’t think I’m the right guy I don’t know why I don’t know why you chose me um this is too much stress it’s too much weight I can’t handle this I can’t do it I’m too young to be like having my chest was physically tight like my my my my heart felt tight which was like I don’t think that’s good for you and I was like I can’t do this and then I was like God here’s the only thing I know how to do I’m going to make a deal with you I promise you if this thing works I will always give you credit I will never trick myself into thinking I’m some successful entrepreneur who figured this out and I’m some smart guy whatever blah blah blah knows how to do startup stuff I’m never going to trick myself into thinking that I know it’s you doing this I pr you I will always give you credit at the same time if this thing doesn’t work out that’s on you that’s not on me I can’t I can’t take the weight of it I can’t take it it’s too heavy and that’s fine like you want you want it to Humble me you want it to teach me some lesson you want it to reach out to somebody or Inspire somebody else to do something else you want it whatever your plan is that’s fine it’s your thing you can do with it what you want maybe you want it to be massive and then to come crashing down and everybody hates me in the world and everybody thinks I’m terrible whatever it is fine it’s your thing I’m going to work hard I’m going to do the best I can but I I can’t take the weight of whether it doesn’t work or not that’s yours it’s yours whether it works or whether it doesn’t work and I just felt this like enormous weight from my shoulders and the next day we went um the next day we went to meet with our favorite investor and it was at a coffee shop and I was late and I opened up the daily gospel and it was a story of Peter trying to fish and he’s been fishing all day and there’s no fish he can’t catch any fish and Jesus says let down your net and Peter says what are you talking about there’s no fish I’ve been fishing all day for me it was like well I’ve been pitching everybody everybody has said no the list is just no now there’s like three four people left there’s no everybody’s going to say no this is this is never going to work what are you talking about and Jesus just says let down your net and Peter catches more fish than the net can carry and two seconds later that guy gives us an offer to fund the whole thing and then over the week over the next three four days we get three four more offers more than the net can carry more than we can take and it was just this hilarious example of God exactly what I talked about at the beginning which is just like everything with hallow is just us trying to do something and then letting God take it and us you know working as hard as we can but letting God take it and own it and if you do he just does these incredible things with it um and so it’s just this journey of just this journey of radical surrender but it’s yeah God has done some really really cool stuff with it so it’s a blessing to get to be a part of did you take money from that investor yeah we did he’s one of my favorite investors of all time I love that guy and what’s his view of it now uh you know it’s funny because as as an investor Silicon Valley is a funny thing because everyone says they’re they want to be contrarian thinkers and there are some there are some out there a few maybe but um but no one really is no of course so it’s like oh when AI is hot AI is hot when bitcoin’s hot bitcoin’s hot when you know it’s it’s whatever it is everyone’s like oh I’m a contrarian thinker but no one’s really a contrarian thinker it’s just the tide of whatever people are investing in it’s the biggest herd in American Business but the funny thing the funny thing for us is like Hall is an obvious idea to 80% of the country if you go to 80% of the country and you say hey do you want an app to help you pray help you grow closer to Jesus they’ll be like yeah of course 80% of the world still prays every 80% of our country it’s much higher in the world but 80% of our country still prays every week and whereas if you went and said hey do you want an app to help you meditate or something they’d be like what I don’t what are you talking about but in Silicon Valley it’s exact the opposite and in LA and in New York and in you know parts of Chicago and Seattle whatever but so it’s a contrarian idea but only in Silicon Valley which is great because most of the obvious ideas are taken like you know whatever they’re mostly already built and so we have this contrarian idea where the vast majority of people will say no what it really takes honestly is someone has to have an exposure to to Faith yes um does this investor have an exposure to Faith and it’s it’s interesting cuz it’s either like a very close family family member like your mom or somebody took their faith really seriously and maybe you do or maybe you don’t um but you have to have someone in your really close orbit who takes their faith really seriously and or you take your faith really seriously now there’s tough Parts about you taking your faith really seriously which is like if I’m like a real Christian do I want to go out and tell my because there are investors who represent other investors whatever so their LPS whatever people who invest in them do I want to go tell my the people who invested in my fund that I’m evangelizing on behalf of my specific religion you know it kind of feels like I’m and like many like whatever uh there are many religions who are not certainly not the Catholic Church who are invested in these funds uh you know their endowments or whatever or universities and so to go and invest in a specifically Jesus thing is you know especially for a Christian it feels like oh well am I using my secular career which I usually like separate from my faith thing uh as some sort of Faith tool and that can be scary for many we had we had several investors who early on were like I just it’s too scary for me I just don’t think I can do it I don’t think I can jump and what it what it what it really means is most of us have our career and we have our faith if we take our faith seriously we have our career our secular stuff and then we have our faith which maybe goes into our family and stuff and our personal lives but it usually doesn’t go into our career and what it takes is this real courage to be like well it should all be one God wants it all God doesn’t God doesn’t stop having a relationship with you when you go to work he doesn’t stop trying to change your heart when you’re at work in a secular corporate thing or whatever he wants it all he wants your whole thing and so it takes like a real courage for some of these people and so we had many of them who said No at the in the early days who have now jumped on later because they were like you know I was just scared and you know I’m not which it still takes courage it still takes courage to invest or be a part of hallow It’s You Know the Way of the World although Hallow’s been you know way more successful than I ever could imagine glory to God but um you know it still takes courage to do that and so these people you know sometimes it takes time but yeah this guy has uh he’s been I mean he’s he’s a phenomenal investor he’s really helpful but also just like hey man look I trust you like you do some people like try to tell you how to do stuff or um you know because they’ve they know a lot they’ve seen a lot they’ve been around the corner they’ve been around the block a handful of times but this guy is just a a tremendous man of yeah trust and Miss he’s you know very passionate about the work that we’re doing and the mission that we’re working on and trying to help people find love and peace in a relationship ship with the Lord so yeah he’s been great and a handful of the folks that we had really early on in the early days were phenomenal um but yeah it’s all the good Lord just finding people and putting them in our path we we we did a a most recent fundraise with a a guy flew out to meet us and um I thought I knew everything about Silicon Valley I’d been working in Silicon Valley for like four years so I thought I knew every fund I thought I knew every organization and this guy I’d never heard of before runs a fund called goodwater Capital it’s like a$7 billion fund that invests in startups and um he comes to me and he goes hey man I just wanted to let you know I think God had me start this fund he was the founder of the fund like seven eight years ago so that I could make this investment and I was like really and he was like yeah I was like why and he was like good water is the name of our fund right and I was like yeah he’s like that’s the combination of good news and Living Water the goal of the fund is to uh you know be a voice for Christ in in technology which there almost there is none and I was like I didn’t even know that’s crazy it’s like I I had no idea I had never heard of this thing before this guy came to us but it’s just this great story of God putting really cool people in our lives and then doing the rest last question are you hopeful for the future of the country yeah I’m hopeful for us I I’m hopeful first for the kingdom of God like if I had to start at the at at at the core I have no doubt no matter how strong WR evil is I have no doubt that God will win even when it seems like like the whole world is stacked against you and there’s something fun about that actually like there’s something fun about having the world stacked against you yeah I mean it’s it’s sad but it’s it’s like I was in like I grew up in Ohio and you know like 30% of the people are Catholic the rest of the folks were Protestant and it you know people would go to church that’s just what happened but nobody you know there were a few people my mom really believed there’s a few people that really believed but most didn’t you just went to church cuz everybody went to church and when I was in Silicon Valley like there were four other Christians like that of that I knew and so you you almost felt like you were part of this Rebel church and so it it’s like you were like up against the world like it and and so you really had to be on fire for your faith because like people thought you were the weirdest thing like it was the weirdest thing they’d ever seen like what an actual Catholic or an actual Christian like this that’s crazy that’s insane and you’re like yeah no Jesus has changed my life and and and what you found is this community of people who were really really on fire and actually Pope Benedict talked about this this is like 2030 years ago where he had this vision of the church and he was like I see the church and it will get smaller much smaller it will lose all the places it had in society it will lose this expectation that people would become Christian or would become Catholic but from that you would have this much smaller group of people who didn’t join just because their parents told them or whatever it was but because they’re on fire for a relationship with the Lord and from that smaller group of people the church would be renewed in a new way in the one thing that really matters with which is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and I don’t know so that was exciting for me and in Silicon Valley it really strengthened my faith now I’m glad I don’t live there anymore because it can certainly take a toll on you but uh but there’s something fun about living in that Rebel church it’s hard obviously there’s tremendous suffering but that is Holy as God says brings us closer to him but there’s something fun about living in that in that Rebel church so from from kingdom of God I am very hopeful now if God wants the country to collapse which would be sad I love our country I pray for our country every day but if he wants it to collapse Saints can be made I can grow closer to God in a falling Empire and I can grow closer to God in a rising Empire arguably more Saints are made in a falling Empire than a Rising one uh but I certainly have hope for our country I don’t think it’s you know we we get to talk with a lot of people and we get to see what God is doing in a lot of people’s lives and if if you believe that there’s a religious revival or a Revival of Faith which which I do believe and maybe it doesn’t happen the next four years maybe it doesn’t happen the next 10 20 years but I don’t think our problems are primarily political I think politics comes at the end I think our problems are problems of the heart and the only one who can solve the problems of the heart is a real relationship with the Lord and so that’s at hallow I mean it’s why we get so excited about seeing what God is doing with hallows we see this tremendous Resurgence not just in like people being like Oh I want to be a good person or people being believing in the values of our country but people being on fire with a relationship with the Lord which then leads to all those things leads to all that goodness leads to all that truth and Justice and wisdom and so yeah I get I get hopeful for our country whether it’s in the next 10 20 30 years I Surrender it to the Lord the good Lord will do what he wants us to do and for me it’s just my job to let him into my heart as best as I can to try to love and serve people as best as he wants me to Alex Jones thank you very much thanks for having me appreciate [Music] it so it turns out that YouTube is suppressing our show oh I know shocking that in an election year with everything at stake Google would be putting its thumb on the scale and preventing you from hearing anything that the people in charge don’t want you to hear but it turns out it’s happening so what can you do about it well we could whine about it but that’s a waste of time we not in charge of Google or we could find a way around it a way that you could actually get information that’s true it’s not intentionally deceptive and the way to do that on YouTube we think is to subscribe to our Channel subscribe and you’ll have a much higher chance of hearing what we say and we hope you will
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