Deeper Moments | Danny Sinquefield and the Prayer Pattern Called BREATHE

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Danny Singh Phil, I just look forward every chance I get to be around you because you are a Barnabas. And uh if you haven't gotten a chance to see this book, this is gonna be an instant classic, I think. Uh just a great book, lots of great information. But I wanted to talk to you just about your relationship with Christ and where where did that begin with you?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, just a couple of minute version of that. Um I grew up as the youngest of five children in the home of an alcoholic father who was very angry and somewhat abusive. He was a World War II vet, probably had post-traumatic stress issues and self-medicated. So he he went to work every day, but when he came home, it got pretty loud and pretty violent, and so the weekends were the worst. Um so we we had that kind of background. We weren't church people. We didn't, even though I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, the city of churches, church on every corner, we never visited them. And they they didn't seem to bother us very much either. So but I did get invited when I was a young pre-teenager, 12 years old, to a youth camp that a church, uh Baptist church hosted, and um I heard the gospel for the first time. Clear presentation of how um that we were in big trouble because of our sin. I knew that. As a 12-year-old boy, I knew that I was I was guilty and um uh began to hear the story of God's plan for covering that sin. God demonstrated his love toward us. Man, that was overwhelming to me. And I realized that Jesus did for me what I could never do for myself. And there was a Thursday night at that camp that I uh walked down toward the preacher and told him that I wanted to give my life to Christ. And um that began a journey for me. Found my way to a Baptist church, was baptized, began to be discipled. Um few years later, called into ministry and preached my first sermon. Uh it was there that my dad gave his life to Christ. Oh, wow. My dad was baptized. Our family dynamic changed drastically from that point on. And um, so yeah, then the Lord just um has been very faithful to me for these years serving in ministry.

unknown 2:09

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

That's an amazing story. There was a time when you became a Christian and and the time that your dad became a believer. What was the evolution there in your prayer life and your yearning for your dad to screw place?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

So I really did. I our church taught us how to pray for lost people, and we had these index cards, and I had written my brother's name down there, I'd written my my dad's name down. But honestly, honestly, I could look back, and even though I prayed for my dad had a burden for him, I never believed that he could change. I mean, I never would have thought. It was like the craziest thought that my dad could ever change. I've got people like that in my life. We all do, yeah. And so I thought, man. And then when it happened, it was like I felt guilty because I was like, Lord, I believe, but helped my unbelief. Yeah. And how did it happen? So uh again, you know, I don't it under the inspiration of the spirit, God did it. Because the sermon that I preached that and I was on John 3, 16 through 19, it was a seven-minute sermon. I was done in seven minutes. I have no idea what I said. I made up some stuff, I'm pretty sure. But the Holy Spirit arrested my dad's heart. You can imagine seeing your your baby child preaching, and you knew you were far from God, and you just knew that you wanted whatever that is. Yeah. And that's what he did. He came down the aisle, knelt in front of the Lord's Supper table, and began to cry and cry out to God. And I went over and helped him.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

How old was he?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

He was in his uh early fifties. Wow. Yeah, at that time. That's right. Yeah. So it was uh it was an amazing transformation. He checked himself into a rehab center and got help with his addiction and uh started going to church, started reading the Bible. It was he he was not a saint. He was not, you know, it was my dad was had rough edges.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So it wasn't a flip of the switch, everything's okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

There's a sense of we had bumps a long way. Yeah. Uh he relapsed when my mom got sick. She subsequently died when she was 62. And uh he he went into a deep place, went back to his old things, and we thought, well, you know, we're gonna lose dad too. But he came out of it and uh wrote us all a letter apologizing because he he, you know, he knew that God wanted to be a a better man than that. And I thought, I think he's got the real deal. Then I was able to s you know, speak at his funerals a few years later and and have, you know, some significant confidence that he was he was right with the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

It'd be really great if our stories were all neat.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

It would be. But they're m you know, uh it was there's a book called Messy Grace. And you know, you think about who Jesus had to deal with, it was messy. Yeah. There was there was all of them, you know, every one of them had a had a story. And I am grateful for, you know, for God's forgiveness. I'm grateful for God's grace in my life, and and um part of the beauty about salvation is that um you know, the end of the story is in in heaven. Uh we're still on a journey down here and we still have some uh growing to do, some learning to do, and lessons to learn, and um it's part of the deal.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

You're probably one of the most authentic Christians that I've ever been around. And uh I I want to know more about that. What do you do to continue to foster that connection with Jesus?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Um here's what happened in my journey. I I really I I'm I'm not happy with where I am in my spiritual journey. I don't think we're gonna be until we get home. Um even as a pastor, I remember feeling guilty that people would say, Brother Danny, can you pray for this or pray for that? And I would say, sure, I'll I'll pray for you. And then I would forget, and then I would feel bad when I saw you next, and I realized I'd I remember what we were supposed to pray about. So I got tired of that, and so I started praying with people on the spot. I started trying to, you know, really um uh connect with my prayer life so that it's not just uh uh something I do early in the morning once or late at night, you know, once I I wanted to know what what did Paul mean when he talked about praying without ceasing? Like being in the spirit of prayer all day long. Right. And so I came up with it was actually a sermon series that I did, but it was the little acrostic breathe. And I think we we breathe all day. We don't always think about it, but we're always breathing. Um someone said that we can go 40 days without food, four days without water, four minutes without air, but I don't think we can go a second without a relationship with the Lord. So so I started thinking about breathing and this quote um that what air is to the body, so prayer is to the believer. So as we think about our our body taking in and then breathing out, as we're going through the motions, the function of breathing all day. I I use that as an acrostic, but maybe prayer was more like being in God's presence. So the be and breathe was being, waking up, just realizing when Jesus said, when you pray prayer like this, our Father, which art in heaven, there's no there's no hoops that you have to jump through. He's there. So just just practice the discipline of being We don't have to summon Him. Don't have to summon Him. He's already there. He's ahead of us and He's for us. So being uh in God's presence is the beast. The R is reflecting on God's promises. Just spend some time in your day thinking about how good God's been to you, and um think about and maybe even pray back some of his promises. Um, you know, I think prayer is a conversation where we are talking to the Lord and then and then we listen. But some of what we talk to the Lord about is maybe just um affirming some of his promises, reading the Psalms, you know, out loud back to the Lord, but it's reflecting too. It's just it's sometimes being still and knowing that he is who he said he was. So reflecting on God's promises. The E and breathe is enjoying God's blessings. There's an old hymn that says, Count your many blessings. Yeah. Name the one. So sometimes just having some conscious awareness of the goodness of God, the grace of God in your life, the blessing of our family, the blessing of our freedom, the blessing of food that we you know, all those things. But the idea that we're acknowledging it through the day and we're enjoying that. It's okay to enjoy it. God wants us to enjoy some things. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

And it seems like if you just start out your day and turn on the idiot box, uh you're gonna get just the opposite of that. You're just gonna get a lot of opinions and noise and as well as your phone. Uh and starting out that day, I think, with gratitude is just so important.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Aaron Powell Well, the Puritans practice this the discipline of solitude. But yeah, just having time where you just focus, we let the noise of the world kind of be be still. And um right in the middle of the acrostic breathe is the A for asking for God's help. Sometimes we start there. We're all about asking for stuff. I think maybe if we back that off a little bit and and uh express our gratitude to God and the fact that we're in his presence and those things, then asking for God's blessings or asking for you know God to help us, just to help. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be articulated that well. He knows He knows the burdens of our heart. And sometimes things are even too hard to say. Um again, there are seasons that we all go through where words fail us. The groanings, right? The Holy Spirit translates those and into the presence of the Father and does the help that we need. Tea and breathe is trusting God with your burdens. So it's similar, but it's a little different. Um we all carry some burden, whether it's a family member that's far from God or uh maybe some crisis, there are health crisis or whatever, some something that we would like to see change or lifted. The Lord can do that, and so we trust him. But the issue is not on the burden, the issue is on trust. Casting all your care on him because he cares for you. Yeah. In order to cast something, you have to turn loose of it. You have to let go of it. Yeah. So and then hearing God's voice, the H and breathe, hearing God's voice, that's that's when we listen. You know, let the Holy Spirit speak to us through the Word, through, you know, the the the wind, through nature, through creation, all of that. God speaks to us in all those ways. Sometimes through our wives. Sometimes. Uh most of the time. Yeah, when she speaks, I have to listen. Hearing God's voice through the people that he puts in our lives. So our pastors, of course, and our teachers. And then the last one is engaging in his mission because prayer is not just about the talk, not just, but it's also about the, I think, the shoe leather. It's about actually putting into practice what you know what the Lord has told us to do, what we already know to do. And so in our prayer life, it'll lead us to engagement. It'll lead us to, you know, giving a cup of cold water in Jesus' name, or sharing a word of witness, or offering some generous gift to somebody.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Right. So that's great. Um as you look through this, I'll have to tell you a personal story. Uh I've actually used this thing just in my quiet time, just the PowerPoint, and just go through those things and have an opportunity to reflect uh just using that. And if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to share that with our folks who listen to this. And so if you want a copy of that, just um make a comment or message me, and I'll be glad to send that on behalf of Brother Danny. Um I was wondering if you might be able to share. I love stories, and I wanted to ask you if you could share sometimes when you felt God's presence intimately involved or his presence was just thick around a certain situation in your life.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah. I would love to share a couple of stories and encounters. Um we hear, you know, um sometimes conversations about people who experience the manif manifest presence of God. Dr. Bill Eliff talks about that in some of his books, and and um I've always been a little careful about how you say that or, you know, because I don't want to I don't want to take any this is like you don't want to touch touch that doesn't belong to us. You can be struck down for something like that. So but there was a there was a time um, and it was at a youth camp that I was actually uh junior in high school, and our youth minister of the time gave two or three of us speaking sessions, and we uh so I had an afternoon speaking session where I was asked to take the morning and pray and prepare, and then I was to do the afternoon um, you know, the gathering the the message for the gathering. Well, one of my buddies was playing the guitar and I began to share, and I can't explain it exactly everything in human terms that happened, but um something unusual happened in that moment. When we came to the invitation time, um the guitar player couldn't play. He just laid the guitar down, people began to hit their knees, there was a sense of God's pres an overwhelming sense of God's presence. And uh it was the first time I'd ever experienced anything like that at all. I think it was a revival moment in our group of about 30 or 40 teenagers. Um several um put their faith and trust in Jesus in that in that s in that session. Um we've sp the group of us who still exist, the ones that are still alive and and ha maintain friendships, we refer to it as remember that time at camp. Wow. Because we can't even talk about it. It was overwhelming. And I think that's what that was, Matt. And an experience that I uh it's Leonard Ravenhill has a quote in one of his books about um heaven. He said, if I could crack the door of heaven one inch and ask you to look inside, you would never turn around. And I'll be honest with you, I've always wanted more of that in our worship. And it's been elusive because it was just real, it was so honest. We were teenagers, you know, but God showed up. And you say that language is like, no, he really showed up. And we couldn't even breathe. It was hard to even know what to do.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

And uh it was And it was probably wasn't the talent of the people who were facilitating.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

It was He was the major lack of all of that. Yes, it was it was so pitiful, all of it. But it was just uh hungry hearts. Yeah. And again, God goes, the Holy Spirit goes where he's invited. Uh I believe that. And we've had that through the years a couple of times at our church where there were turning points. Like we, I think at our early days of Faith Baptist as we began to grow, and the church began to be uh got a little uh prideful, maybe a little too big for our britches, thought, you know, that maybe it was all about us. We had an experience of God weekend um and we realized that it had nothing to do with us. And again, the Lord just moved in and there was confession and repentance and tears at the altar, and um there was a humility. You know, so I think one thing that God blesses, two things, two lightning light rails that the track of God's blessings run down. One is generosity. You wrote a really great book about that, Lordship Generosity, but the other is humility. When you combine humility and generosity, I think God is at work and can do great things in a in a church that uh of of any size, it can happen. And that's what we saw. That was the history of Faith Baptist. We just saw humility. We didn't think too highly of ourself. We, you know, it didn't belong to us. We didn't, you know, we didn't create it. Yeah. God did it, and we just want to be good stewards of it all.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Right. So if you were speaking to someone who felt like they just uh their prayers just hit the ceiling uh disconnected. Yeah uh what would be your uh what would you say to it?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I I've had that counsel with a couple of folks, and one one of the things I would say is stop talking and be still, to be quiet and listen as you read the scripture. You know, don't don't feel obligated, you know, to use words um and and maybe just receive what God's saying to you right now. And um you know, I think sometimes it is in those quiet moments the still small voice of the Lord can whisper, you know, uh his word very loudly into our our our spirits. But I I think sometimes we we push too hard and the Lord is the Lord is already there. Um so yeah. And and we can get stuck. I mean it's true in our our disciplines, you know, whatever. And I would just say try something a little bit different, go outside. Uh go to a different room, go you know, do something a little bit different, change the environment a little bit. But mostly it's about sometimes just listening more than speaking.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

And we when we think about our connections with other people, could you talk to me because I know your book is pretty much about this, but the how important that connection is with other believers.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah. It's um not only important, it's imperative. You know, we are built for community and fellowship. Um, you know, in my own life, my own ministry currently, uh I don't have a congregation that I'm preaching to or teaching through books of the Bible now as I did for 30 years. I'm at a different church almost every Sunday. But there is a rhythm. There is a rhythm that I have with a group of men on Friday mornings early, 5 45 for about an hour, that I teach about a hundred guys at our our church at Faith Baptist. Oh, wow. And so that's been my rhythm, and and that those guys are my family, they're community. You have to have that. Um forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, right? So that's been my rhythm, my community. How long have you been doing that? I've been doing that for over 20 years. With uh some group of some of those guys for have been there the whole time, but a lot of new faces as well. But uh yeah, that's been a long time. Um, and I love that. I love the fact that I still get to do that.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah. That sounds like something that could be replicated.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Think so.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

In people's lives.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yep, yep. Find a group, um, be a part of a group, start a group, create a group. Two or three, create one. Yeah, two or three are gathered in his name. It doesn't be a big group. They have a way to grow. You know, but but we believe in you know sharing life together as a as a community of believers.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Aaron Powell, yeah. How do you use the margins of your life in prayer? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

So I was challenged. Uh, Rhonda, my wife Rhonda and I have the chance to speak to our bivocational pastors in wise retreat. Uh, we've done that through the years multiple occasions. And on one occasion there was a bivocational pastor sharing a testimony, and he shared about praying for his wife. And he and he was telling a story how he does it every day. He said, Now, I actually go and lay hands on her. I put my hands on her head or her shoulders and I pray out loud over my wife. And I thought, man, I'm not doing that. I need to do that.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

And that that's been a discipline.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Why is that so hard for you?

SPEAKER_00 18:36

That's the weirdest thing to pray with or for your spouse or whatever. You'd think that'd be the most natural thing to do, but it's it's a discipline that has to be cultivated.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

And that's been a that has been a game changer. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

And it's easy to fall out of that routine. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Oh. So you have to keep keep coming back to it all the time. And so I you know, I don't brag about doing it every day because I don't. I'd like to, I want to, I mean to, but it's it's a it's something that I learned that would be a a great thing. And then, you know, the other the other thing is um I I like to write I write a lot of um personal notes and cards where I'm actually praying for somebody. Yeah. Dear Matt, you'll probably get one after this podcast. Uh praying for you to continue to be the master genius that you are, that God would continue to use you. I just I just think that's a way of expressing prayers.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah. I had this friend in college that uh he was a youth minister at an Assembly of God Church, and I was a youth minister at a Baptist church, so we were totally different, but he was a real good buddy of mine, and uh it was a Louisiana college. And I would see him and uh our conversation at the at the pancake house or wherever we were, you know. Hey, how you doing, brother Matt? I'm doing good. What are what are you doing this weekend? Well, uh we're doing a lock-in. Pray for me, you know. Okay, here we go. And he would do it right at the table. And I think a part of it was he didn't want to lie. Yes. He wanted to get that desperate. Yeah. It's a good plan. But I appreciate you so much and uh and your uh uh investment in other people. You're really a barnamist to so many people, but also your authentic connection that you have with the Lord. And you're one of my favorite people.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Thank you so much.