Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Allen Ratta believes many sincere Christians feel spiritually exhausted despite knowing more about God than ever before. He recommends bringing spiritual simplicity to your life by praying the Lord’s Prayer. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we talk about how to incorporate the Lord’s prayer into your daily walk with God.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:42):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now, here’s your host, missionary and evangelist, Daniel
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:05):
King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Allen Ratta . Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Allen Ratta (01:19):
Hey, thank you, Daniel. It’s good to be here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:21):
Well, let’s jump right into your story. Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing for God.
Allen Ratta (01:30):
Sure. Well, how I got where I am is quite a story. Spent many years, decades pastoring, busyness of growing a church, building programs, learning all kinds of things. And then I faced a crisis. And I was all of a sudden a single dad with four kids, heartbroken. I resigned my church and started asking God, “What happened?” And I found out that when your life is not really centered, it’s like getting up from the table before you’ve had your full portion. Jesus toss a pray, give us this day our daily bread. And you get into what I call slow spiritual malnutrition when we get up day afterwards so busy, so busy doing things. And what I see with a lot of Christians is such busyness. And I think evangelism can be one of, among a multitude of things, can be one of the things that we get so busy that we get our lives where they’re not really centered.
(02:34):
And I’ve found that Christians have often made their life so complicated that they struggled to live it themselves, let alone be able to explain it to others. And Jesus made things so remarkably simple. And this is what really got me on my journey. God ended up restoring my ministry incredibly by his grace. But the things that God brought me to were really the basics. First of all, the great commandment. You cannot separate the great commandment from the great commission. Loving God with all your heart, soul, all of your heart, soul and mind. And in fact, kind of reminds me of my evangelistic efforts as a young teen on the beaches of Southern California, pouch over my shoulder full of tracks, going down the beach and sharing Jesus with everybody. So full of the love of God. It was so simple, natural, and believable. Amazing. You go off to seminary, you get busy, you still love God.
(03:41):
You’re getting up from the table a little bit too soon. And the journey the Lord brought me on is, Alan, what happened and how do you really find the center again? And I spent so much of my life pastoring, working with churches. And eventually I went through a season where I was stripped of everything and I came back to two incredible things. Number one, the great commandment, the simplicity. Our ministry’s spiritual simplicity, spiritualsimplicity.com. The spiritual simplicity of being in love with God. And the second one, and that’s the destination. And the second thing the Lord brought me back to is the incredible gift he gave to the church. Throughout church history, discipleship was focused on the Lord’s prayer. The dedicated, the earliest Christian document we have other than scripture is first century manual on how to do church. They prayed the Lord’s prayer. These were first century Christians who were on fire for Jesus reaching a world.
(04:47):
They prayed the Lord’s prayer three times a day. And because it’s not a religious regimen, it’s a pathway. It keeps your heart in tune with God. It starts in heaven. It ends with the word evil, heaven to hell, and deals with everything in between. So much so that the early church fathers called it the school of prayer and often would say, if you’re praying a prayer that’s not contained within the five sub-prayers or some say seven in the Lord’s prayer, it’s a carnal prayer because every other prayer we praise about God do this and change this. But the Lord’s prayer really is about changing us and keeping us in tune with God. And when we are filled with the love of God, and by the way, what has happened in our modern world is we become increasingly out of rhythm with God. God made it dead.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:45):
I think this is really an important issue for evangelists because evangelists are doers. They like to go and do. They like to preach the gospel, whether it’s one-on-one or in front of a big crowd of people. And I like what you’re saying about bringing it back to the simplicity of the gospel and making sure you keep your relationship with God at the number one forefront of what you’re doing. Sometimes we’re so busy doing stuff for God that we forget about actually having that relationship with God. And so you’re talking about how the Lord’s prayer can help us to keep our spiritual relationship with God in a simple place. So break
Allen Ratta (06:36):
Down
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:37):
The Lord’s prayer for us and how can we use the Lord’s prayer to stay close to God?
Allen Ratta (06:44):
Well, the Lord’s Prayer, it really is part of a rhythm. We were made to be garden dwellers. Adam and Eve, the daily walk with God. God embedded the rhythm of the day. He called a day good when he made it. Son comes up down every 12 hours and he walked daily with Adam and Eve. We don’t live according to the rhythms that God embedded into creation. And those rhythms go very deep into months and into years that God embedded. He spun the earth at a certain speed for us. And it’s a rhythm. And he gave us a prayer. It’s amazing the backstory. God left heaven. He knew he was coming to die on the cross. He knew he was coming to open up the door to reach an entire lost world that needs to hear the gospel. But before he went to the cross, he says, God left heaven, took on the form of man so he could look us in the eye and say, look, this is how you talk to me.
(07:46):
And as we learned the daily rhythm of communion with God, all of a sudden our heart becomes changed in terms of we become more believable. I had an experience where I was trying to lead a guy to Christ as I was pastoring and living a busy life. And he said something one day that just put me flat on my face. He says, “I don’t know. When I look at the way you live your life, I don’t want to be a Christian.
(08:16):
You’re so busy. You don’t seem like you enjoy life.” And there’s something about when you’re in love with God that is so attractive and it makes us believable. In fact, it makes people want to hear what we have to say because the great commandment, loving God, leads to the second commandment, which is loving people, which leads to the great commission. But the beginning point is staying in love with God. And so the Lord’s prayer is a daily rhythm. And Jesus didn’t give us a bunch of religious jargon to follow. I think as Christians, we believe in following the spirit. We’re not under the legalism, but he didn’t say, look, this is how you baptize. This is how you do communion. If he said some of the details, just whenever you do it, do it in remembrance of me. Just be baptized. If he’d answered some of those questions, people wouldn’t be arguing about whether you dunk them or sprinkle them today.
(09:19):
But he didn’t go into any religious jargon. Why? He didn’t want us to turn into Pharisees. But when it came to prayer, 55 words, depending on the translation, he drilled in and said, and it’s a daily thing. And by the way, he didn’t just say pray this way. It’s an active voice and an imperative tense. It’s a double whammy in the Greek. It’s a commandment as much as go into all the world and preach the gospel. But it’s a fundamental way. And what happens when you pray the Lord’s prayer daily is you start having discoveries. Wow. I find, and I tell people all the time, when you pray the Lord’s prayer, be very sensitive to where do I feel resistance? Because if you’re having a hard time praising God for his goodness because of what you’re going through, you’re having a hard time because you’re not forgiving your brother.
(10:19):
Forgive us, our senses, or even we’re struggling with guilt or your kingdom come because we’re trying to build our own kingdom. What the Lord’s Prayer does is it keeps our heart in alignment with God. And the heart needs consistency because our hearts are fallen. And Jesus knew that. He gave us, look, this is how you talk. He put his arm around one of his self. This is how you talk to me. Start out with, it all begins with our Father. And when people see that we are in love with our Father, that is the biggest sermon that we can ever preach with our lives. And it makes such an incredible difference. So in my own life where the Lord’s brought me to, and the message of spiritual simplicity is this, the main thing has got to be the main thing, the do-all thing, really the primary thing, which is loving God.
(11:20):
Because if we’re loving God, everything else, when he becomes a center, what we’ve done is we’ve cluttered our lives with so many things. There’s no room for him at the center. We know more about God in this generation than any other generation. Think of the Bibles we have and Bible translations and all the tools and to keep our souls nurtured. And yet we’ve cluttered our lives because we’re out of rhythm. We’re not walking according to a daily rhythm. We’re living according to manmade hours, hectic minutes, desperate seconds, time clocks, productivity. And that, if we’re not careful, begins to define evangelism in every other aspect of our Christian doing.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:08):
Yeah, I really like what one pastor broke down the Lord’s prayer into different elements, all beginning with the letter P. So first you have papa, our father in heaven, you go to our papa in heaven, and then you have proclamation, which is hollow would be your name. And of course, that’s one of the things that evangelists do a lot is we proclaim that Jesus is Lord. And then you go to promise, your kingdom come. Then you have providence, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And then we have provision asking God to give us today our daily bread. And then pardon, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And protection lead us not into temptation. And then you have praise and power for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And so every single day, I think if we go through the Lord’s prayer, it helps us to cover some of the most important areas in our lives that we need to talk to God about.
(13:12):
And I think sometimes with prayer, we get so focused on praying for what I want and what I need. Lord, I pray that you help me give me gas to put in my gas tank. But we forget all these other elements that are important. So what are some of the elements in the Lord’s prayer that really speak to you and help you develop in your devotional life?
Allen Ratta (13:38):
Sure. And if you study church history, in my book in chapter four, I do a deep dive into history. A lot of footnotes, a lot of research. But let me just give you – What’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:49):
The name of your book?
Allen Ratta (13:52):
Making spiritual. I’m sorry, Spiritual Simplicity. I was referring to a different book I wrote. Spiritual Simplicity: The Great Commandment, The Lord’s Prayer, and the Way Home.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:03):
And is that on Amazon? People can find it there?
Allen Ratta (14:07):
It’s on Amazon. It’s also on our website, spiritualsimplicity.com. We have free resources there, including an entire prayer library on the Lord’s Prayer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:18):
Oh, wow.
Allen Ratta (14:19):
The Lord’s Prayer is a fresh prayer every day. Why? Because every word in it, all 55 words are the word of God. They came out of Jesus’s mouth. You know how many you read your Bible, one word leaps off the page because the Holy Spirit makes it real to you and you think, “Man, I don’t even remember that being in the Bible. And I’ve been studying the Bible all my life.” It just becomes so real in the way it comes to you. And the Lord’s prayer is a fresh prayer every day. It is a prayer for every season if you’re struggling. So in our library, we have struggling with shame, struggling with guilt, struggling with fear, struggling with anxiety, struggling with anger. The Lord’s prayer is fresh every day and different aspects of it. And so in this prayer library, it’s audible prayer with nature scenes in the background, music underneath, but it walks you through, you pick kind of what I’m going through and sit back and you can listen to the Lord’s prayer that dives into application to where you’re at within your life.
(15:22):
Now, for me, when I look at the Lord’s prayer, I’ve broken it down into a heart across it. H for honoring.
(15:32):
Hallowed be your name. E for expectation. Thy kingdom come. Where are we without expectation of the kingdom of God manifesting? If we’re in evangelism especially, we’re expecting God’s kingdom to manifest today through our lives. And then H is honoring. E is expecting. A is asking, give us this day. God dependence. What a different life we live when we are daily dependent upon him. That rhythm was worked in with the Israelites. It wasn’t just them and the manner they were picking up every day. Jesus said, I’m the bread of life. We have to take our daily portion. And then from there, H-E-A-R is repentance. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who said against us. And then T is trust. Lead us. He is the good shepherd. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And I know there’s an addendum to the prayer.
(16:30):
It’s not in the original prayer as many Bible translation won’t even put that onto it for thy needs of the kingdom and the glory. Because of the original, the earliest manuscripts we have, it ends with evil. Starts with heaven, ends with evil. Powerful prayer. And whatever you use, it’s like Luther called it the school of the heart. And so it trains your heart to stay in touch with God. And Luther was a radical revivalist in his day, not like you might think of a modern Lutheran church today. He was a radical revivalist who put his life on the line to promote the gospel to a Catholic church that had really lost its way with paying for absolutions of sins, et cetera. That’s all church history. But the point is when we bring it home, there’s a rhythm that keep us in love with God. And if we’re in love with God and getting in rhythm with God is so critical and realizing, one of the realizations for me is how much God embedded this into creation.
(17:43):
He spun the planet at a precise speed. And the scientists, the secularists say, “Well, that’s just because the pre-mass before they formed the planets, they were just all rotating in a certain direction. The earth spins a certain direction.” Well, why does Venus spin in the opposite direction? Well, we call that whatever. Always excuses. And why does a day on Venus, by the way, take 254 earth days, sunrise to sunset? By the way, I say that when I’m teaching sometimes. You know what they call that? A workaholic’s paradise. 254 days sunrise. But God knows he gave us a rhythm to live by because he doesn’t want us running around frantically overloaded. And I see believers, literally a phrase I’ve come to say is people’s hearts are out of breath. I went to a retreat that Dr. Eugene Peterson, author of the message, well-known. I went to a retreat that he hosted when I was going to Regent.
(18:47):
And I didn’t know when I signed up, but I found out when I picked up the paperwork, it was being held in an Abbey, which really felt foreign to me for my spiritual roots. And I found out it was a silent retreat. I thought, silent? What have I done? But I couldn’t bail because my professor, Dr. Eugene Peterson, here I sign up and take a spot and then I don’t show up. So I go up to the Abbey and I sit there and the first words Dr. Eugene Peterson says floored me. He goes, “This weekend is completely purposeless.” And I thought, “What? Purposeless? Are you kidding me? We’re in a building program. I patted my laptop next to me on my seat. I think, well, at least I brought my laptop.” He said, “Don’t look in a laptop. Don’t read a book. You need to…” So I’m sitting under a tree listening to birds singing, feeling totally out of touch with creation and God going.
(19:43):
Two hours later, all of a sudden, the Lord helped me to slow down. And I began to sense something in my spirit that began to change my life. We don’t know how to slow down because we are so amped up in an artificial world. We were made to be garden dwellers and we live in a concrete jungle with blaring horns and instant on demand. My cell phone buses in my pocket. I remember when we didn’t have cell phones. That dates me, of course, and maybe many people do who are listening. Now people feel they have the right to get to me and we have to put up boundaries around ourselves. But it’s the kind of, we reach over and look at our cell phone before we even get out of bed. What’s going on? Instant information, information overload. And we have information overload when it comes to God as well.
(20:35):
It’s not about knowing more about God. It’s slowing down and knowing him, getting in relationship with him. And that really, the message of spiritual simplicity, I have one of my YouTube videos, our YouTube channel has exploded. Has over 200,000 views. Our YouTube channel’s only been up for 30 days. We’ve just launched this ministry publicly and got another one with over 50,000 views. Why is it our message finding resonance? Because Christians feel their heart is out of breath. They feel that pressure upon their lives. And we get in love with God again. We get so caught up and it affects how we evangelize. I was sharing with a guy and he was so trying to lead him to Christ. And he just kept saying, “I can’t accept Jesus. You don’t know. I’ve done too much. I’ve done too much stuff.” And I’m trying to assure him, no, the grace of God is bigger.
(21:35):
And he goes, “No.” I am Alanor. And then it struck me that he was an avid fisherman. And so I turned to him and God gave me a word for him. And I said, “God doesn’t clean his fish before he catches them. He builds a relationship with us. He fills us with his love. And then our life changes automatically by his love.” He ended up crying his eyes out and accepting Jesus. It was a marvelous encounter of leading him to Christ. But we often get so caught up in the messaging, we forget about the relationship aspect of evangelism. And people really, and this has been said many times in evangelistic circles, until they know we really care, they’re not going to care about what we have to say. But it’s so simple. If we are madly in love with God, we then love them. They know it.
(22:34):
And then as they sense a genuine love for them, they become open. Their heart opens up to the message that we have. And in fact, they want to live the kind of life we have because it is defined not by hecticness, but by joy and peace.
(22:51):
And people say to you, how can you have such peace going through what you’re going through? Because Jesus is the center of my life. I’ve gotten rid of the clutter and he’s the meaning of our lives. So the great commandment is really, I believe, is absolutely indivisible from the great commission if we’re going to fulfill it the way Jesus taught us. And he gave us a great commandment as the foundation for being. And then all of our doing has to come out of our being. Who are we?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:29):
Talk to me a little bit more about what God has done in you as you have sought this spiritual simplicity in your own life.
Allen Ratta (23:42):
Well, it’s been an incredible journey. As I shared at the beginning, I went through a horrible crisis, resigned my church, single dad, four kids. You want to talk about a hectic life? And the wrong time, the wrong time to try to center your life is when you’re in crisis. The time to center your life is before you get in crisis, because if Jesus is the center, you’re used to that intimacy. And it took me a long journey really for the Lord to bring me back. I now have the fervency for Jesus that I had when I was a young believer. The love for God that I had when I first discovered he’s real, as I shouted to a group of teenagers when I prayed the prayer and all of a sudden he revealed himself. I kept yelling, “He’s real. He’s real.” And then I turned to all those teenagers and I said, “Guys, we got to tell people about this.” And they looked at me like I was nuts and they said, “What do you think we’ve been doing with you for the last hour?” Because when you get in love with him, you immediately realize other people need to know.
(24:53):
And I think it changes everything in your life. Being in love with God changes every relationship, not just with God, but the second commandment flows right out of that. The second is like it. Loving your neighbor as yourself. In fact, Jesus took that up a step when he said, that new commandment give I to you. Don’t just love people like you love yourself because some people don’t even love themselves. Love people as I have loved you. And so the fundamentals, I believe, are essential to becoming effective in reaching a world. Because if we are not living it, let your light shine in such a way, Jesus said. In what way? Through great biblical knowledge. Sometimes we think we have to give a big theological explanation behind Christianity to people. They don’t need that. What they need is a reality of a life that’s been lit from within by the light of Jesus.
(26:02):
Let your light shine in such a way where a city set on a hill. We’re unavoidable. We shine because of what’s within us, not because of the words coming out of our mouth. And then we find God begins to.
(26:19):
So what I do is I stay in love with God and then they know I have really a threefold thing to reach people. I stay in love with God. Number two, I’m loving that person in front of me. And number three, I’m listening for the opportunity. Because if you’re in love with God and they see that you love them, the opportunity comes. The door opens. It’s like God gave me that word to that fisherman. God doesn’t clean his fish until he catches them. The ludicrous idea that you have to clean a fish before you catch it to a fisherman, he got it. And I think we are fishers of men. God’s called us to be that. Spiritual simplicity is the precursor, if you will, I believe, to effective evangelism that we have to learn to slow down, get in sync with God, get in rhythm with God so that the love of God just begins to flow out of our lives in just powerful ways.
(27:27):
So one of the things I often say, because we’re so hurried is God is never in a hurry. Makes sense. He’s outside of time himself. He made time for us the day and the month and the years. God’s never in a hurry. We have to slow down to catch up with him.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:48):
That’s tremendous. Well, Brother Alan, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Give us your website one more time and let’s finish by praying the Lord’s prayer together.
Allen Ratta (28:04):
Amen. So spiritualsimplicity.com. And by the way, come to our homepage on the. It’s full of free resources for people. Take a three-week spiritual journey delivered to your inbox where you begin to get into the daily rhythm of spiritual simplicity in your life. Totally free, no cost, no obligation. And we’re on track right now. We have many people every day signing up for a free spiritual journey, three week spiritual journey. We’re on track to see four 5,000 people sign up for free spiritual journeys this year. It’s mind-boggling what God’s doing because the message resonates with them. It’s essential. I didn’t make this up. I didn’t make up the Lord’s prayer and I didn’t make up the great commandment. They’re fundamental. They’re Jesus’s and we call it two mandates.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:01):
That’s awesome. Well, go ahead and lead us in the Lord’s prayer together.
Allen Ratta (29:05):
Okay. Our Father, thank you, Lord, that we don’t come as strangers. We’re your children. We belong here. Who is in heaven? Your perspective, you see the beginning from the end. We have confidence in you. Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Lord, you’re all together good and lovely and you work together all things for good for us. We worship you. We enter your gates with Thanksgiving. Lord, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. Through us, we expect today to see a manifestation of your kingdom through our lives. And give us this day, our daily bread. Lord, you have a meal for us Not so we could just be blessed and look at ourselves and be happy, but so we can be fed and make a difference in a world that needs you, Jesus.
(30:11):
And then Lord, forgive us our sins. Deliver us from guilt and false guilt. And as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us, help us to be free in our souls so that your love can flow through us to a world that needs to know your forgiveness. And then Lord, not only forgive us our sins as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us, but lead us, good shepherd. Lead us, lead us into those places that you would lead us, not into temptation, but lead us, Lord, and deliver us. Lord, you are our deliverer. Lead us and deliver us from evil. We thank you, Lord, for your kingdom, for your power and for your glory. And lead our lives today as we understand the power of the words, the gift, the incredible gift that you gave us in telling us how to talk to you. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:17):
Amen. Alan, thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Allen Ratta (31:22):
Daniel, thank you for inviting me. God bless.
Evangelism Podcast Host (31:25):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over two million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world, learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist? How to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more.
(32:13):
If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to danielkingministries.com/evangelism.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
Do you feel called to preach the gospel? Do you dream of standing before a crowd and leading people to Jesus, but wonder how to do it effectively? Preaching to the lost is an art and few know it better than evangelist Daniel King. In his powerful book, How to Preach the Gospel, you’ll discover step-by-step guidance for preparing messages that move hearts and transform lives. Learn how to preach evangelistically, open a crusade sermon, and work with a translator. You’ll also find out how to share your testimony, tell stories that connect, and even preach to people with different religious backgrounds. Whether you’re speaking to 100 or 100,000, this book is your roadmap to becoming an effective preacher of the gospel. To get your copy of how to preach the gospel, go to kingministries.com. Also available on Amazon.
Evangelism Podcast Host (33:20):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit kingministries.com. Again, that’s kingministries.com.
