Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success
I was taught that no one rises above their intercessory prayer life. If revival wasn't happening, that meant I hadn't prayed hard enough. So I prayed. We held five morning prayer meetings a week and monthly half nights of prayer, pleading with God to move. He did, slowly. Not the outpouring I was hoping for. Prayer turned into duty, something I dragged myself through rather than something I wanted.
Two things changed that. Time with Trappist monks who taught me to listen more than talk. And years spent inside Luke's gospel, watching how Jesus actually prayed.
This week, I open the first of four reversals from my new book, EH Success: The Move from Praying for Results to Praying for Communion. Jesus didn't pray to get things done. He prayed to stay with the Father, to hear him, and to receive strength from him. That's a different kind of prayer than most of us were taught, and it might be exactly what your prayer life is missing.
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/conference
Most of us were trained to read the Bible the way we were trained to lead — move fast, cover ground, extract what's useful, and get back to work. But what if that approach, by itself, is keeping you from the very transformation you're trying to produce in others?
In this episode, I want to share a practice that has shaped my life for almost thirty years. A practice I cannot live without. It's called Lectio Divina — holy reading — and I believe it may be the single most important shift a Christian leader can make in their relationship with Scripture and with God.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, the ancient monastic stream of reading that treated the Bible not as a text to be mastered but as a sacrament — a place of encounter with the living God. I'll share the four movements that structure it, and exactly what it looked like in my own devotional life this past week.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent reading the Bible the way I approached leadership: achieve, produce, get it done. What that approach cost me — in my prayer life, my preaching, my soul — is something I wish someone had told me at 30.
Lectio Divina interrupts the cycle of leading from information rather than formation. It doesn't just inform your sermons — it transforms the person preaching them. And it begins with something shockingly simple: slowing down long enough to let the Word read you.
Reserve your spot at our upcoming Global Leaders Conference.
September 30 – October 1, 2026
14th St. Salvation Army, NYC
(Live Spanish Translation available)
Register Now: https://ehd.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/3421612
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/conference
Most of us were trained to look for God in the big moments — the breakthrough, the open door, the dramatic call. But what if God is most consistently present in the ordinary moments we rush past every day?
In this episode, I want to share a 500-year-old practice that has quietly transformed my leadership, my marriage, and my relationship with God. It's called the Examen — and I believe it may be the single most underused tool in the modern pastor's spiritual formation toolkit.
I'll take you through the history of this practice, born out of the life of Ignatius of Loyola — a soldier brought low by a cannonball who discovered that God speaks through our interior movements. I'll share the 2-question version you can start today, and the fuller 4-movement practice the Jesuits have done twice a day for five centuries.
This isn't theory. I'll be honest with you about the years I spent pushing past the heaviness in my chest — misreading desolation as something to overcome rather than something to hear. What I missed cost me. You don't have to miss it too.
The Examen interrupts the cycle of leading from wounds and repeating old patterns. It teaches discernment, not just decision-making. And it begins with just two questions.
Reserve your spot at our upcoming Global Leaders Conference.
September 30 – October 1, 2026
14th St. Salvation Army, NYC
(Live Spanish Translation available)
Register Now: https://ehd.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/3421612
Learn more about the EH Global Leader Conference 2026: http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/conference
