Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A .J.
Hoge, where A .J.'s more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills.
Here's A .J. with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.
Ask and you shall receive.
That is the title. The topic for today's Effortless English Show.
Another way to say this.
Ask and it will be given to you.
Now, this is a partly a review of two books by a man named Andrew Murray, and the books are about prayer, about praying.
Book number one, The Ministry of Intercession by Andrew Murray.
And book number two, The Prayer Life by Andrew Murray.
Andrew Murray was, well, he lived about 100 and I think 150 years ago, something like that.
200 years ago. So Andrew Murray.
Now, Andrew Murray was a Christian, but I'll be reviewing this book in a non -sectarian way, meaning not specific to one religion, but just in a more general, you know, eternal philosophy way.
Ask and it shall be given you.
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Now, situation, some of you may know this, but at the beginning of this year, about nine, ten months ago, my child, my son, my young child, he was about five years old, was diagnosed with a heart problem.
We already knew about it, but we were told by his doctors in Japan that he needed another open heart surgery, a very serious surgery.
This was horrible. This was horrible for us, and for me, as his father, because he'd already had two surgeries.
Once when he was a tiny baby, and another when he was around two years old.
He suffered a lot during those, especially the second surgery.
He had to stay two weeks in the Japanese hospital.
The first week, the ICU, and the Japanese hospital would not let me stay with him during that time, that first week.
I stayed with him the second week, but not the first week.
I visited him that first week, and he was obviously in pain and scared.
It was horrible, one of the most terrible experiences of my life, seeing him suffering like that and them denying me, not allowing me to be with him during that first week.
When we were told he needed another surgery, I had all these horrible fears and feelings came up.
I remembered all of the terrible experiences from that last surgery, and his suffering, and just a tremendous amount of fear, and really despair for me.
So despair means no hope.
I said, I vowed, I made a promise to God that I would never ever let that happen to my son again.
Meaning, I would never let him be alone during that kind of horrible, scary, frightening, painful experience again.
Fortunately, a new hospital we were going to in Japan, they had a policy.
They still have a policy, which I think is cruel and evil and terrible, that kids who get surgery can't have visitors, that parents cannot stay with their children as the children go through serious surgeries and have to stay in the hospital for a long time.
I don't understand it.
I think it's inhuman and cruel.
I have no problem saying that.
It's horrible. So this hospital was saying that he needed a new surgery, that he would be in the hospital for two weeks, and that I could not stay with him.
He would be all alone during that time.
And I was filled with anger and rage about that.
I was filled with sadness, despair, hopelessness, fear, everything.
If you're a father or a mother, you understand.
Absolutely horrible.
And I was disgusted with the hospital, honestly, that this, how can they have this kind of policy?
I don't understand it.
I still don't understand it.
So that's where I was.
And this is where this is what I've been like and how I felt for much of this year.
It's one of the reasons you have not seen me doing mini shows.
I have been completely distracted from effortless English and work and anything else.
All of my focus has been on my son and knowing this, he had to go through all of this.
And many of you know already that I am a devotee of Sanatana Dharma.
And I was so hopeless, I didn't know what to do.
And so I really started reading and praying.
Many times this is what happens in our life.
Many of you might understand this too.
We have a point in our life where we are hopeless.
And there seems like there's no other hope.
There's nothing else we can do.
All you can do is pray.
Because it seems like there's nothing else.
So you turn to praying to God because that's the only thing that offers any possibility of hope or comfort.
And this is what I did.
And I have been praying consistently daily throughout the day, at night, sometimes very intensely, you know, I've been very distressed, very unhappy, very worried and upset about my child.
Sometimes more calm, you know, goes up and down, up and down.
It went up and down, up and down.
And during this time, I discovered a writer named Andrew Murray.
And I'm going to talk about his books today.
I highly recommend his books, all of his books.
He has a lot of books.
He wrote a lot of books.
So Andrew Murray was a Christian from Scotland, I believe.
But although he lived a lot of his life in South Africa, and he wrote a lot of books, and especially on this topic of prayer and praying, and why should you pray?
And how to pray and, you know, anyway, really, really good.
Great books. And not just for Christians.
I'm not a Christian.
But I found these books to be amazing and wonderful and powerful.
If you're a Christian, I think you especially love his books.
If you're a Muslim, I think you would love the books.
I think Anisunath Anadarmis would love the books.
Buddhists would love the books.
Even if you're just, you know, vaguely spiritual, and you're not quite sure about a specific religion.
I think these books could still be quite wonderful for you.
So, let's talk about two of them.
One is called The Ministry of Intercession.
That seems like a little difficult.
Intercession means to help someone else.
Just means to come in and help someone else.
And the second book is called The Prayer Life.
All right, so let's get into these books.
And what did I what was my experience with all of this?
You know, I was absolutely hopeless.
And what did I do? I just started praying and praying and praying.
And, you know, at first really, I got, I don't know, I didn't feel anything different.
Nothing seemed different.
I was still hopeless.
And, you know, we went back for another appointment at the hospital.
They said the same thing, we had to schedule a, what's the word?
It's like a test, a serious test called a catheter.
One second, please don't spam my comments with tons of tons of tons of.
Okay, so sorry about that interruption.
So we had to do a serious test called a catheter, which in Japan they were telling us at the hospital would be three days in the hospital.
They were going to make an exception and let me stay with my son during that time.
But we'd already done this in the past a couple times in Japan.
And it was horrible, a very painful, uncomfortable, frightening test for my son.
They had to, you know, he had to go under and be unconscious.
They put this needle in the leg and go up their arteries all the way to the heart and put it like a, kind of like a camera, not exactly a camera, but kind of.
And then they take pictures of the heart and they get a good view of the heart.
And they ran after that, they would wrap in Osaka, they wrapped up his legs at the hospital so he couldn't move.
He was really uncomfortable and frightened and it was terrible.
It was horrible. So, this they, we scheduled that.
And then I just kept praying and praying and praying.
And then I finally just, you know, you start getting intuition and you don't know, is this coming from yourself?
Is it coming from God?
Is it coming from, you know, bow, which is just an impersonal name for God?
Brahmin. But anyway, I started to follow it and I just got the determination.
No, we're not going to do this.
We will not put my son through this.
And so I started looking at hospitals in America because I had this feeling that there were children's hospitals in the United States where they treat the children much more kindly.
And I talked to my sister who had experience with some of her children at a children's hospital here in Indiana, where we are now, called Riley, which it's been great there.
I'll talk about that in a minute, the good news of all this.
So, I started researching that and I started sending out emails and calling different children's hospitals in America, including Riley here in Indiana.
And there were a lot of obstacles, a lot of problems.
The health system in America is complicated.
It's expensive. You have to get health insurance.
If you can't get it from a job, you got to pay for it yourself.
It's quite expensive.
There are all these rules and regulations.
It was a lot of things.
So, I just kept praying and praying and praying.
This was my main thing.
I just kept praying and praying and praying.
And it just seemed like the more I prayed, answers would just come.
Things would happen.
My aunt who lives here in Indiana, she works in the health care.
She's a physical therapist with kids.
And she started sending me information and she started doing research and helped us and connected us with a great heart surgeon and a great heart doctor, cardiologist here in Indiana.
And then I got connected.
It seems like it was just like the perfect person here in Indiana at Riley Hospital.
And then I tried all these different people to get help for insurance.
And I thought, oh my God, we're not going to be able.
We're not going to get insurance.
We can't do it. We can't go to America.
Somehow, I just kept praying and the answer finally came.
And I found someone who helped us and we got connected and we got health insurance.
And we got connected with a heart doctor.
And I got an appointment for my son here in Indiana at Riley with the cardiologist.
And so then, like, you know, then I'm like, oh, how are we going to do this long, long trip with twin five year olds on this big flight?
And I kept praying about that.
And, you know, we got on the plane and the flight went the two flights.
It was like a 24 hour trip.
It went amazingly well.
Like, I could not believe how well my kids did.
Yeah, there were points of stress where especially my son didn't like being stuck in his seat that long in a plane.
But really, it went amazingly well.
And I just kept praying and I thought, you know, I followed a lot of the advice given in Andrew Murray's books and then it was time for the big catheter.
This terrible thing that we went through this test.
This is just before the surgery.
There's a test. You know, like I said, they said in Japan, it was going to be three days and it was going to be horrible.
We did it here at Riley.
I could not believe how well it was.
It was like America.
No overnight stay. It was all done in the same day we went.
He did it. He woke up.
And when he woke up, there were these like two nursing students who were taking care of him and showing him videos and giving him water to drink.
And there was this amazing nurse there taking care of him.
He was not scared. He was not stressed.
Yeah, he was a little uncomfortable but nothing terrible.
They did not wrap up his legs and make him all, you know, scared and freaking out.
We just, you know, I was with him immediately right after he woke up and we went to a room and we sat and he watched cartoons for like four or five hours.
And then we went home and it was like, I mean, I want to cry because it was so wonderfully easy.
And he wasn't in great pain and he didn't suffer.
And he wasn't afraid, you know, unbelievable.
But this was just the test.
And after the test, we know we got confirmation.
The doctor said, yes, he does need surgery and he needs surgery soon to repair this problem in his heart, which, you know, they kind of repaired in Japan.
But there was another issue.
And I just admit I was terrified, you know, for two reasons.
Number one, I as a father just scared, you know, for him, his safety, his health and worried for him.
And then two, just the suffering because I know how hard that process is.
But the good news is that this hospital, I could stay with him the whole time.
You know, of course, not during the surgery, but, you know, he went back to the surgery.
And like after the surgery, I was there before he woke up in the what's called the ICU Intensive Care Unit.
So they did the surgery two weeks ago.
And like I said, I was in the room when he woke up, he woke up.
He was scared because he had a breathing tube.
That was kind of maybe one of the worst things, worst moments.
But they took that breathing tube out, took a couple minutes.
They got it out of him.
He was not comfortable, but, you know, he was not terrified.
It was so much better than the last time.
And I was there with him the whole time so I could help him and comfort him and take care of him.
And the nurses were great.
And they did. They were really great about giving him, you know, pain medications.
And there were a few rough times, some difficult times.
He had, you know, IVs in his neck and his arms and a tube in his chest.
And, you know, of course, the big cut down the middle of his chest and, you know, during his stay, different times, they had to take like that tube out.
They was frightening, but they gave him some medication to help with fear and anxiety.
And they gave him pain medication.
And three days after we came home.
I mean, it's for me, it's a miracle.
They took two weeks.
It was going. They said in Japan it would be two weeks in the hospital suffering without me there.
So scared, horrible.
I know what it would be like because it happened before this time in three days.
And there were some tough times, but he got through it and he was never terrified.
You know, he was not happy sometimes.
He was scared sometimes.
But I was there with him and we got through those tough times quite well.
And after three days, he came home.
I couldn't believe, I was like stunned.
I was shocked that surgeon came in on the third day.
And he said, well, I'm thinking maybe you guys go home today.
I was stunned. I couldn't believe it.
And he's like, you know, if you want to, I'm like, yes, yes, we want to go home.
And so I took him home and he's been great.
His recovery now, he's been like two and a half weeks and he's doing amazingly.
In fact, he's running around.
The problem now is we're here to try to have to keep him calm because he still has to heal that bone, you know, his chest bone.
And the big problem now is just he wants to run around and jump and play.
And, you know, that's a great problem to have.
But he's so cheerful.
He was never terrified.
He was never super scared.
I can't believe how well it went and how well he did.
Like to me, miraculous.
So much better than I expected.
I can't even believe it.
Still, I'm shocked.
And I can only, you know, give this credit to, you know, God and prayer because I didn't do anything.
And I feel like we were just led and guided and helped the whole way.
And there were so many times this year where I was losing hope and it seemed impossible.
And somehow we got here and got the perfect doctors in the perfect situation and everything worked out so well.
You know, so, you know, hallelujah is what I want to say.
Hallelujah. And I'm sharing this.
Why am I sharing this?
Because I know that other people, many people in the world, you at some time in your life, will have these moments and no, it's not always going to work out perfectly.
And believe me, this year was not perfect.
There were a lot of moments that were really hard and tough.
So, you know, when you face this, I highly recommend, you know, praying and praying and praying.
So let's talk. Let's go ahead and go to this.
I want to just read some parts from Andrew Murray's book.
I'm going to read from the book called the Ministry of Intercession.
And it's a chapter about praying.
And you can, you know, get any of his books you like.
Like I said, you know, he was Christian.
I'm not Christian, but I find that I think anybody would benefit from these books.
So let me read it. Okay, let's just remove some stuff on my screen so I can see.
Okay, the spirit of prayer.
So this is Andrew Murray.
Okay, let's see. Here we go.
Okay, he said, God's giving is inseparably connected with our asking.
He applies this especially to the Holy Spirit.
All right, what does that mean?
In English. So this guy wrote, you know, like 150 years ago, they used a higher level of vocabulary then.
So sometimes might be a little difficult reading this, but let's talk about it.
Inseparably means cannot separate.
You cannot separate it.
So what he's saying in this in this sentence, this paragraph, is that God gives when we ask, you can't separate them.
He's saying that God wants us to ask.
He wants us to pray.
And later he'll talk about why he believes that.
Okay, and he says this is especially true for the Holy Spirit.
What is the Holy Spirit?
So in Christianity, they use this word in English.
Holy Spirit, Espirito Santo.
You'll hear this in movies all the time.
What does that mean?
That's kind of like God's presence or spirit within us.
It's not that Adharma the word I believe is Paratman.
Okay, so Paratman Holy Spirit.
I'm not sure what the word would be in Islam.
You can tell me in the comments.
In Buddhism, it would be something like suchness or Buddha nature.
Okay, so, it's this idea of the divine, the holy God's spirit within us.
We're not separated from God, we're connected.
And actually, the spirit of God is within us.
So Paratman Holy Spirit.
So it says, as surely as a father on earth gives bread or food to his child, so God gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.
So he's saying that he will give his own spirit, right?
That power, healing, strength, help when you ask.
So it says the spirit is ruled by one great law.
God must give, we must ask.
So he's saying the same idea.
He's saying it again and again.
This idea that this prayer is asking God, right?
Connecting to God, communicating with God.
We ask, that's our job, right?
Because we are low and small and God gives.
Okay, and then he gives a quote from the Bible, which is translated in different ways, but in English.
But ask, and it shall be given.
Ask, and you shall receive, is another way.
It's translated frequently, right?
Now, how to ask is also important because we all know that just praying a few times for something, you know, you're not just gonna get everything you want.
Oh, please God, make me rich.
Oh, please God, you know, give me lots of women.
And sometimes our prayers are not answered.
And sometimes frequently, I would say they're not answered immediately.
So he gives in this next section, he talks about the kind of prayer that's necessary.
He said, it was intense, continued prayer that prepared the disciples hearts that opened the windows of heaven that brought down the promised gift.
So he's talking about the disciples of Jesus here.
But what he's really talking about is what kind of prayer intense and continued.
So it has to be intense.
Like in other words, it has to be a very strong, powerful feeling and praying and asking.
It's not just, Oh, please give me some money.
You know, it's intense, strong, powerful, and it's continuous.
So it's continuous meaning through the day, just like five minutes, right?
But long, maybe 30 minutes, an hour a day, maybe in the morning and at night, and during the day, maybe just every moment you have during the day.
And it's many, many, many days, many weeks, many months, sometimes many years of asking and asking and asking.
So this is persistence, right?
It's continuous and persistent.
And then he says, where there is much prayer, there will be much of the spirit, the spirit of God, where there is much of the spirit, there will be ever increasing prayer.
So he's saying, it's almost like a yin yang here, that the more you pray, the more you pray, the more you're going to have that spirit of God within you.
And the more you have that spirit of God within you, the more you will want to pray.
So they reinforce each other.
I'm trying to get out of the sun here a little bit.
Okay. There's a living connection between the two.
And he says, God's delights to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.
This is another kind of important idea that God is not mean and nasty, but God is happy and full of love and wants to give these blessings.
Especially to those who persevere in prayer.
To persevere means to not quit.
To keep trying, even when things are tough, it's like running a marathon, right?
It's not just like one time easy.
It's keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, keep trying.
Okay. So this is the, you should get his books because they're so, so, so much more.
It's hard for me to cover everything because these books are so wonderful.
There's so many great ideas, but certainly, you know, these are some key ideas that I followed myself this year.
It's like, I just would not give up.
I just kept praying, kept praying.
And it's it's easier to do when you're hopeless.
When you've had nothing else to pray, when it seems like everything's hopeless, then you turn to that and you don't give up.
And, you know, I'll tell you something else too.
Sometimes those prayers are answered in ways you don't expect.
Sometimes you're praying for something and your direct prayer, the thing you think you want, maybe is not actually that good for you.
Like, for example, if you just ask him to be super rich, you might not have that prayer answered.
Is that a spiritual prayer?
Not really. You know, part of this praying is putting your is being humble, lowering yourself, not being so proud and looking to God for, you know, to just surrender is the word that you'll see.
Surrender to God, you'll see this in the three proper talk about that.
I mean, you'll see this again and again in all these religions.
And in the saints, we'll talk about this phrase of surrender, surrender, surrender to God.
So, get one of these books, Andrew Murray, M -U -R -R -A -Y, his last name, Andrew Murray.
And I'll give you the simple title.
It's easier to remember the prayer life, the prayer life.
Just start with that.
If you do a search on Amazon, you can find, there's a lot of ebooks.
Some of them are free actually on Amazon.
Some people have made these books free because there's no copyright.
They're old books. So, you can find free ebook versions of, from Andrew Murray.
And he's got so many books.
So, just get one of them and they're free.
You can find them, download them for free.
It's great. All right.
I'm going to go to the questions and comments now.
Oh, my thing is moving on.
It's great to see you all, by the way.
It's great to be back.
All right. Okay. Lots of people saying, you know, great, you know, congratulations for your son and, you know, sorry to hear about it.
He's doing so well now.
I'm so happy. I can tell you.
Um, a little Harvey asks, what should we do with pornography addiction?
You know what? This is another one.
Once you start relying on praying, you will, I think you will start to use it for everything because that's what I'm doing.
So, um, you know, of course, with my son is what started it, you know, a great distress.
I think oftentimes in life, uh, we can be, I'm gonna move back here a little bit.
Maybe it's which way do I want to?
This way? Yes. Many times it's a great distress, a great whole, a problem, a great fear that starts us, that motivates us first.
And, uh, in this way, when you look back on your life, years later, you can sometimes even be grateful for those difficult, frightening, tough times because they lead you higher.
They lead you to be humble.
They lead you to start praying.
They lead you to greater faith.
They strengthen you.
They teach you lessons.
It's not in the moment.
It's very tough to do that, but with time, it can happen.
It's happened to me many times in life, but often so we'll start with something that's very distressing, very frightening.
That's causing us to suffer.
But then when we, then we start realizing, well, we can rely on this, uh, on prayer for everything.
And I would certainly recommend that for addiction.
When you rely on just, this is part of being humble, I think, is that you can try to rely on yourself.
And this is kind of that Tony Robbins self -help approach.
I've taught that. I teach that a lot.
It's good. We should try to help ourselves.
We should do what we can.
But I will tell you now that I'm older, 56, almost 57, that, um, there are many things in life where we're just not strong enough by ourselves.
We're not good enough by ourselves.
We're not you and we all have certain weaknesses and a great many more than we admit.
I think we try to pretend we're stronger than we are.
And by trying to do everything ourselves, we are going to fail and there are just things you can't do by yourself.
And this again, I think is where faith and prayer helps because something maybe you can't break or can't stop or can't do yourself.
You can, if you will be humble and rely on prayer.
And that's what I'd recommend for certainly any addiction.
That's exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous teaches.
I used to criticize that because they teach addicts and alcoholics, you know, the first steps.
There's 12 steps that they use.
And one of the steps is to admit that you are powerless against the addiction.
I thought, oh, that's terrible.
Teach people they're powerless.
But, you know, if someone's an addict and they've tried stopping and they can't stop and they can't stop, well, maybe that person is powerless against the addiction or they would have stopped already.
But then the next step is to turn to a higher power.
That's the phrase they use, a higher power, which of course we all know that means God.
So, and that by turning to God and then following the other steps, the addicts, many, many, you know, millions at this point of addicts and alcoholics have stopped drinking, have stopped doing drugs.
They broke their addiction in that way.
So I think that would be equally true for any addiction, including pornography.
That's what I'd recommend.
Samia, thank you for the great wishes for my son.
Yeah, there's a quote.
I can't read the Arabic, but.
It says, who is not.
He who responds to the distressed one when he calls him and removes the evil.
Right. So that's I assume that's an Islamic.
Um, either quote or idea, same idea.
It's not an Adharma.
You know, they're, uh, they talk about Sri Prabhupada talked about different types of devotees.
Right. devotees of God.
People devoted to God and kind of a class like a, like a levels at the lowest level is the distressed, the distress at the highest level would be the people who are saintly, who just love God because they love God just because they're pure and good and hearted.
Most of us are not that at the lowest level are people who turn to praying and God because they're distressed, they're unhappy, they're suffering.
Uh, and that might seem, okay, that's the lowest level.
I understand that, but the good news is that, um, that's still a real devotee.
And that, that is a perfectly good and common reason.
To turn to faith and prayer and don't be ashamed of it.
In fact, be humble and admit it.
Okay. Let's see. I'm just kind of going down.
I got a lot of comments here.
I'm going to try to catch up with them.
Hi from Moldova. I wish that your family would be well soon, says Sergi.
Great, Sergi. You know, actually I am, let's see, one fourth Moldovan, one of my grandparents, my grandmother, uh, is from Moldova.
In fact, her last name was Moldovan.
So, uh, yeah. Ali El -Habi says in our religion, prayer is the basic solution.
Correct. Right. Um, I think in most, certainly in Sanatana Dharma, certainly in Christianity, certainly in Islam, prayer, prayer, prayer is, you know, extremely important.
Right. It's not the only thing, but it's right up there.
It's probably the top thing.
Prayer, meditation, fasting.
You know, you're going to find this in all.
Anthony Duryabhan says, the Lord bless you and keep you.
Make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.
Amen to that. Absolutely.
Blesses you, keeps you, protects you, shines on you.
Yes, exactly. Kind of have a lot of Slav, good, good point.
Says there's still something better in America that in Japan, well, well taken.
It's a good point. That's true.
Absolutely. There are a lot, a lot of things I like about Japan.
So I'm not criticizing Japan as a whole, but their healthcare for children sucks.
It sucks. Now I don't mean, I don't know.
Technically, it's okay, I guess.
Right. But in terms of like caring for the children and being gentle and sweet to them and caring about families, it sucks.
It's all just the suck shit is what it sucks.
I'm just going to be brutal.
It's crap. And we'll never put my son through that again or my daughter either.
So I will say that the, they're not perfect.
I mean, there's a great many problems with the medical system in America, a lot of problems, but I will say that the experience we had at Riley and with the children's hospital there here in Indiana, it was, his experience was fantastic.
Absolutely wonderful.
And even too, you know, they're in Japan, they're saying he would need to be in the hospital two weeks and hospitals are terrible places to be there.
It's hard to heal or rest or in a hospital.
And here's three days.
Like I can't, like the difference is unbelievable.
I think the surgeon was better too because the surgeon, he didn't criticize the Japanese surgeons.
They're too diplomatic, but he kind of did say that the repair he did, I think it's going to be better than what they did in Japan.
The doctors here are saying that, you know, hopefully my son will not need any more surgeries he's done with surgeries.
That's all. I mean, there is always a chance he might need another one, but there's a good chance he, that this is all that we are done.
And thank God for that too.
Okay. All right. Fasting is a good choice says, Ella, elegant to sir.
Yeah. Another fasting is absolutely.
And again, you'll find this with, I'll just call it the eternal philosophy.
There's a book called the perennial philosophy, but the eternal philosophy.
So I'm not, uh, I'm not interested in nor do I have the authority to try to talk about any one specific sect, right?
I'm no guru. I'm no priest.
I'm no, none of that.
I'm not, I'm not qualified to do that.
I'm a regular person.
That's all. And so that's why I'm trying to avoid, I'm not trying to push any one specific religion.
And I, in my, you know, I have my own, but in, when I talk, I liked it, you know, my preference is to just talk about what I see as the common eternal similarities and agreements between, you know, the, the major religious traditions.
Um, of course there are differences too.
I'm not saying they're not, I'm not saying all religions are the same.
They're not, but it is quite amazing that you will find these deep similarities.
And to me, that points to something very powerful.
If you find these similarities and common points, fasting is one of them.
You'll find traditions of fasting in, in all major religions you find in Buddhism, Sanatana Dharma, Islam, and Christianity, especially traditional and orthodox Christianity, um, possibly in others, you know, I'm not sure about Taoism and other philosophies.
Even it's not even just religion, even philosophies such as, um, uh, you know, you might qualify Taoism as a philosophy more than religion.
I don't know stoicism, you're going to find a lot of similarities through all of these.
And those that's powerful.
That points to something that's deeply true.
When you find it in all these different cultures, all these different religions and philosophies and traditions, something deeply powerful and true to praying and fasting and meditation or some people call meditation, Andrew Murray calls meditation, uh, waiting on God.
In fact, I think he has a book that the title is waiting on God.
Um, but when I read it, he uses different words, but as I read it, it's like, Oh, this is meditation.
This, I know what this is.
This is just a different, a very kind of a little bit different way to talk about it.
But in the end, it's meditation waiting on God, listening for God.
Hey, Sloppy. So I get to see you.
Okay. Uh, I'm just gonna kind of go jump down here a little bit.
A few more. I get to see.
Okay. Shaw O 'Glee says I'm a big fan of yours first.
This is my first time joining live.
Welcome. You've helped me so much, not just in English, but also in life in general.
And that's what Christian says.
Well, thank you very much to both of you.
Keep praying. Yes, indeed.
It's meant, Abilof says from Azerbaijan, what do you think about being multilingual?
Great idea. It's great.
Do it. Obviously, I think that.
Can you make a video related to this case or a live show?
Well, I will say this hat now that I have children who are bilingual Japanese in English.
It's definitely easier for young kids.
So if you have young kids.
Kids in general, by all means, I highly recommend teach them another language because it is so much easier for them to learn it when they're five or seven or even younger.
Even 10 than it is as teenagers or adults.
When with young kids, you can basically show them cartoons and videos and read some books, if you know the language, and they will pick it up.
I mean, my kids speak English.
English is their top language.
They're most fluent with English.
I mean, they're native speakers with English, but their Japanese is also quite good.
And they're Japanese.
You know, of course, my wife's Japanese.
So their mom talks to them in Japanese, usually in the mornings.
They'll do, she chats with them a little bit for a couple an hour or two.
But then a lot of times we found a few little cartoons that are nice and sweet.
There's no weird programming, social garbage in there.
So we let them watch those a little bit in Japanese.
And my wife reads books to them in Japanese.
And just that is enough.
They're speaking fluent Japanese and they talk to their grandparents on FaceTime or Skype in Japanese.
And I've got a, you know, I've mentioned my jujitsu instructor in Japan.
His kids are learning three languages, English, Portuguese, and Japanese.
And his approach with English with his kids is the same.
He just lets his kids watch lots of cartoons in English and that gave them enough fluency.
And then now they also, you know, they're starting to read it and things.
So as adults, it's a similar approach with lots and lots of listening and reading as the foundation.
And then later, maybe we study a little bit and have to practice, but it's just, it's a little more tough with as adults.
We tend to get busier.
Our brains are a little less flexible, but it can be done still.
Okay, let's see. You also have said your son's suffering is just a test from God to you.
I have thought of this.
I believe you're right.
God bless you AJ and your family.
Thank you very much.
I certainly have been tested this year and I'm better as a person because of this.
Of course, I'd rather I suffer than my son.
But I do believe that.
Sloopy says, I'm happy your son is fine and that he's at home.
Me too. It's a great time.
He's home for the Christmas holidays and he's just doing very well.
Both my children are doing well, but of course, so happy for him.
Shadiq says God says, I'm ready to give whatever you want.
Just plunge yourself into prayer.
That's a great phrase.
Plunge yourself into prayer.
Plunge is the idea of you jumping into water and going under the water.
Okay. So it means completely cover yourself with prayer.
And this fits Andrew Murray's teachings in his books because that's what he's saying.
So it's not just like pray a couple of times.
Oh, please, please.
It's like your whole life becomes focused on prayer and that you pray.
That you start to rely on prayer and focus on prayer for everything all through the day.
It's not just some little thing you do sometimes a little bit when you need something or you want something.
It becomes like a full, total part of your life all day, every day.
Plunge yourself into prayer.
Great phrase. I like it.
Okay. Oh, Harvey says, AJ, I improved my English with the power English course and I have finished.
I can understand you 90 % now.
Now I want to participate with you in a course like developing myself, being a good person socially, try my VIP program because I have a lot of those kinds of topics in my VIP program.
You know, my VIP program is in fact focused on that kind of thing.
And so it's more than just language.
You know, you guys know, I don't like just teaching English.
It gets boring. So I always try to focus on interesting topics in English.
I want you to learn other things while you're listening to English while you're learning English because then the English is interesting and useful.
If you just study the language, just memorizing words, it's so boring.
And it's not life. It's not helping you in life at all.
Max says, God forgive all of us in such a crazy time.
Tanushka White says, thank God for the soon, the quickest and soonest recovery of your son.
Thank you, good to see you.
By the way, good to see you again.
And thank you. Gladys Olliv asks, do your kids watch movies at home?
Do you choose them carefully?
No movies, no. Before, it was almost no screens at all with the hospital stay, you know, my son just stuck in the bed and very uncomfortable.
So actually in that in that case, watching videos on on the screen on on a television was actually useful.
It was good. It distracted him.
So I just broke our rule and he watched lots of cartoons and stuff.
It's okay. So now we're kind of using it for language learning.
So my son is a little delayed with his English speaking.
He speaks English, but he's just a bit lower level.
My daughter's super advanced with that.
But so we actually have found that watching some cartoons, a few videos in English helps him.
It's helped it's helped his fluency.
And then a lot of it too, we just will do Japanese to give them extra input.
In Japanese, just the same way you would if you were learning Japanese or the way you learn English, you're watching me on a video, right?
So we do that a little now.
But I choose super carefully.
I watch everything myself and I don't want any crazy social messages or anything like that.
And even you just got to limit it.
Got to be very careful.
It's not necessary.
I mean, it's good for language learning.
It was great for helping my son during his recovery time from the hospital because we have to keep him calm and it's hard to keep him calm.
Now he's feeling good.
He wants to run and jump and climb and he's not supposed to do that for one more month.
Mohammed Difly says, do your best and God does the rest.
Well said. If you have solace, if you have anything to ask about Islam or any points, I recommend the channel message foundation channel one message foundation.
I'll check it out. Hossain Kaya says you were a gift I got from Allah.
I was able to learn English from a very, from a very poor level to a very high level in a very short period of time through your podcast.
And Oh, it made me get a master's degree.
Well, congratulations.
That's fantastic. Good for you.
Flavysus' prayer and gratitude to God helps us to make our lives easier and happier.
Indeed. And that's part of prayer too is gratitude.
It's not just asking, asking God for things.
It's also thanking God for what you already have or I mean, obviously I've been doing a lot of that in the last two weeks because I'm so grateful.
So. Judah Joseph says, did you grow up as a child talking a lot about God?
Absolutely not. My as a child, my family was not religious at all.
Zero. They never talked about religion.
Never talked about God.
Never talked about faith.
Never. No prayer. Nothing.
So, you know, most of my life I've been reading and thinking about these questions and obviously I'm 56 now.
So it's been a long journey.
But that should give some of you hope, give people hope because, you know, some people are blessed with very, I would say almost saintly families with parents who are, who have already have a strong faith and provide that to their children.
Some of us not. And we have to find our own way and, but it can be done.
Just keep seeking truth.
I like that phrase.
Truth, beauty, and goodness.
Keep searching and asking and looking for that in your life.
Truth, beauty, and goodness.
And you will be led.
You will get there.
And it might take decades and decades.
You might be starting in total ignorance.
You might be starting with zero faith.
You know, you might be even a hardcore atheist.
And you might have no hope and you might have maybe you had a terrible childhood or early life or young, when you're young and you might be full of sin and addictions and just miserable.
It's possible. But if you just honestly, sincerely don't give up, keep looking for truth and beauty and goodness.
And reading, searching, finding people who are like that or books that are like that.
Yes. Keep doing it.
And never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.
As long as you're alive, keep looking for those three.
You will be. I believe that God will lead you and help you.
I mean, I look back on my life.
That's what I feel like happened.
And it was a long journey.
Still is. Okay. So I'm not saying it's going to happen in one day because it probably won't.
Unless, you know, on the on the other side, many people grow up and with wonderful families and they learn this as children right away.
And in that case, you should pray, pray in gratitude and say thank you.
Be happy for that. Martha Fernandez says, I have been following you for 24 years.
Wow. Crikey. Because of you, I have an excellent level of English.
Thank you very much.
I'm happy your son is getting better.
Thank you, Martha. That's wonderful.
Thank you so much. Hey, Lisa.
Good to see you too.
Oh, lots of familiar hands and Olga.
Hey, Jay. She says all good.
Good to see you. And Osman off do Marad, another great name that, um, uh, regular listener member.
We need prayer more than food.
Says who's more off.
Del Marade. We have to pray five times a day in my religion.
Islam, I assume prayer gives us confidence, relief from stress.
But when I don't pray, I lose confidence.
Why? I don't know. Absolutely.
And yes, we need prayer more than food.
I agree. In fact, not eating.
Is a very good thing.
Sometimes it's called fasting.
Do it. Okay. Um, Is man ask, what do you think about when we should, when should we jump into another language to learn?
Is there a specific level?
There are no rules.
Those are the great great news guys.
There's no rules about any of this.
Do it when you want to.
You can, um, you know, like for me, like I'm always just, uh, the truth is I don't care so much about being super fluent.
I don't need it. So I, uh, I, I like to get, what I do is I just play, have played around with languages a bit over the years and, uh, I get up to like a high beginner level, maybe low intermediate level, which allows me to get around and do things and travel, uh, or in Spanish, maybe to actually have some
conversations, you know, some basic simple conversations.
And, um, and then usually I don't have a need to go farther.
And for me, it's not a hobby.
There's people like, uh, you know, we all know people like a Steve Kaufman or others who, uh, language learning is a hobby.
They love the process of it.
They find the whole thing enjoyable.
And, uh, uh, we know people who, you know, are obsessed with speaking with, you know, perfectly, or maybe they're just people.
And maybe you who need it, you actually do have a need with English.
There's often a strong need, you know, an economic need where it helps you in business or with travel or with, uh, other goals in life, going to school, you know, getting advanced degrees, all these things where you do need a very high level of English and that's fine.
Then if you need it, do it.
But then also, like with this question, ask, when should I jump to another language when you want and do as much as you want.
Maybe you want to learn a little Russian, you just might want to travel to Russia and you want to maybe get taxis and stay in hotels and chat a little with people, order at restaurants.
And that's enough. And you don't have to be, you can learn a little Russian and enjoy it.
And maybe if you're lucky, take a trip to Russia and, and then stop.
You don't have to keep going.
You don't have to become like super fluent, uh, perfect Russian speaker.
You can if you want to, but if you have a need for that, if you want to do business in Russia, well, then maybe you wouldn't need that.
But, um, if not, you can just play with languages.
You can learn little bits, you know, learn a little Persian and go to Iran, uh, learn a little Portuguese and go visit Brazil or just chat with Brazilians, you know, whatever.
So totally up to you as an adult.
You can jump over to a new language anytime you want.
You can play with two languages.
If you want, you can do anything you want.
Okay. So late Leo has a similar question.
I I'm about to finish power English course.
Can you recommend something to help me strive for an advanced level?
My VIP program is the one is the next one to do.
Definitely VIP program.
Okay. Couple more and then I'm going to go.
Okay. Isma says I asked this question because so many YouTubers call themselves polyglots.
Yeah, it's kind of a status thing.
You know, these people do now.
I think it's a bit ego, honestly.
It inspires me to be a polyglot, but I'm curious.
What are their levels in these languages?
That's right. And you gotta be careful because there are people who claim, you know, for ego reasons, maybe marketing sometimes, I speak, you know, five languages.
I speak 15 languages.
I speak 20. You know, maybe they do and maybe they don't.
Some of them, I most likely do, you know, I don't know, but we don't know.
But I think, you know, we, you also hear about and I think it's quite probable that they may say they speak 10, but, you know, who knows, three, five, eight of those might be at a very basic level.
What does it mean to speak a language?
I mean, I could say I speak Thai because I remember a few phrases because I live there for a little bit, but not really.
I don't speak Thai at all.
I would never claim it.
But, you know, I could claim that and then say, Oh, I speak all these languages, but, you know, what does it mean?
It's hard to say. There's no, there's no accepted definition of that.
So just trying to come up, trying to sound good because you have a big number.
I speak three language.
I speak five. I mean, who cares?
You don't have to say it.
There's no need to advertise it.
You speak what you can speak.
I speak, you know, I know some Spanish.
I speak some Spanish.
I could probably go.
If I spent a few months, I could activate it again, you know, review.
Then I could get around Spain and chat with people and quite happily.
I speak a basic level of Japanese.
Just again, getting around living, but I'm not going to have any advanced conversations and I don't care to.
So I don't know. People ask me how many languages I speak.
I speak one very well, my own, and that's the only one I teach because it's the only one I'm a master of.
And that's English.
So it doesn't matter.
You know, just enjoy languages.
There's no, it's not a competition.
You don't need to keep track of how many.
You don't need to worry about levels.
Okay. Just enjoy it.
But it says, did you vote in the elections?
I did not quite consciously.
I chose not to. Is it MR?
Actually, people can't realize how many priceless things they have until they lose them like health or peace.
We should be thankful to God for everything.
Nowadays, we can see how people suffer.
Yes. Palestine and etc.
Syria, etc. Yes. So true.
We have so many blessings, most of us, that we don't even realize or think about.
We should pray and be thankful for them because they're all impermanent, as Lord Buddha taught.
So we should remember that, that impermanence, right?
Nothing's, nothing in this material world is permanent.
It's all changeable.
Certainly our bodies.
Right. We're mortal.
We're going to die.
We're going to get weaker.
We're going to get older.
People sometimes in comments, oh, you're so, you're older now.
Yeah, of course I'm older.
Everybody gets older.
Ruben says, Ruben says, maybe that can be your next topic.
Why didn't you vote?
Yeah, that's a big topic.
You know, at this point, I think I'll give you my short answer.
I just feel that so -called democracy is such a lie at this point.
You can see that in Romania now.
Oh, they voted for the wrong person.
So they're just not going to let them, they're just going to ignore the result.
You'll see this all through Europe now, these so -called democracies there.
It's all a lie and a sham.
It all is just, I think it's like professional wrestling.
Now, I just think it's all a show and the people with the real power are not elected.
And what you do in elections, I don't think matters much.
That's been my experience of 56 years now.
I've never seen an election change anything.
Because the same demons continue to control the world, certainly the west, Europe and the USA and Canada and blah, blah.
So that's why I didn't, I just not going to participate in it anymore.
I think what we do in our life is far more important than some vote.
Because the vote, they give you the choice.
They give you, they choose who you can vote for.
And if they don't like who you vote for, they just change the result, as they just did in Romania.
Right? Like, oh, the powerful people don't like it.
The bankers and the, you know, the EU, whoever.
I can't state clearly this on YouTube.
But anyway, they'll just change the result if they don't like it.
So what's the point?
I think you're more like, it's better to just focus on what you do in your own life and don't cooperate with them.
You know, that's...
So that's my short answer.
A few more and then I gotta go, gotta go back with my kids.
But it's been a long time, so I'm trying to do a long show because it's been a long time since I've been here with you.
Oh, Rodrigo Silva says this is what we call half true in Portuguese.
A native, you can be a native speaker of some languages that are similar and they can kind of understand each other, but they're not true polyglots.
Yeah, right, well, exactly, right?
So like, if you know, like, if you're a native Spanish speaker, then kind of easy for you to pick up some Italian and some Portuguese and maybe not quite fluently, but then you could call yourself a polyglot.
It doesn't matter, it's just a word, polyglot.
What does it mean? Doesn't mean anything.
The good part of this is that YouTube and the internet made it, made this whole idea of independent language learning fun and attractive.
So that's the great thing, I'm not attacking people who call themselves polyglots.
It's good for them.
There's a lot of them that are great and they have shown people so many different methods of learning independently and you don't have to go spend tons of money at a big school and suffer and study, you know, endless grammar and take all these tests and you can just do it from your own home.
So that's a wonderful example.
And you know, I've talked to Steve Kaufman many times.
I really like Steve Kaufman over at Link.
He's such a positive example of that.
You know, are there also people now where it's become kind of trendy and on social media, people kind of, maybe there's a little bit of ego trying to, you know, or a little bit of a competition to show, oh, I speak this many languages.
I speak this many and oh, this guy's not real.
And they start sometimes criticizing and attacking each other.
Yes, there is that.
But that's just the nature of social media, honestly.
As you find that in anything, it's not just language learning, you'll find that same kind of thing happening in a lot of stuff.
So there's no need to get involved in any of that.
It's not a competition.
That's the whole point of independent learning.
To me, you're not competing with anyone else.
It doesn't matter how many languages someone else speaks.
It doesn't matter if they really speak 20 or not, or really speak five or not.
It doesn't matter who cares.
Doesn't matter. That's them.
That's their life, you know, just do what you want.
And at whatever level you want.
And, you know, I recommend just be modest, be humble.
And if people ask you how many, you know, just say a low number.
Right? I see this with our students, people who speak English very, very well, that I have met traveling, like in Europe, who are very advanced levels, have a very advanced level of English speaking and understanding.
Who've passed, gotten high scores on TOEFL.
But then when people ask them, oh, do you speak, oh, you speak English?
Well, they say, no, no, not that well, not that good.
You know, they're modest.
They're humble about it.
So I think that's the better approach in life.
Recently in Moldova, they changed the elections.
Yeah, right. And Moldova and Romania, I believe, right?
They didn't like the result.
So suddenly, we'll just change it.
That's democracy in Europe and America.
That's what it means.
It's nonsense. There is no democracy.
There's none. It's not real.
It's just fake. It's just propaganda.
More and more. It's becoming so obvious now, that's the good news, is that it's so obvious, the fakery.
Is all this stuff about human rights and democracy and blah, blah, blah.
We can see now that it's all just lies and propaganda because it's in the West and Europe and America and et cetera.
It's the exact opposite.
Do I speak Arabic? I do not.
I do not know a single word in Arabic, not one.
A lot of stuff says, in Georgia, they also don't like the results.
So they call people to protest.
In Georgia too. Yeah, I should have brought that up.
Same thing. They don't like the result.
Oh, we'll just change it.
We'll just send a bunch of our European protesters.
And it's all coordinated by primarily the United States, the CIA, and others.
So yeah, they don't like the result.
So anytime they don't like the result, you see all that too, even in years ago with votes for the EU.
They would, countries to join the EU, they would have to vote and the people would vote.
No, we don't want to do it.
So what would they do?
They would just say, ah, we're not going to accept that.
We're going to vote again and vote again and vote again until we get the answer we like.
And of course, they, the other thing is they cheat.
There's tons of corruption with the counting of the votes and, and America.
It's horrible. So yeah.
What is your opinion of Andrew Tate?
I have none because I've never listened to him or read anything from him.
I've heard the name, but I don't know anything about him really.
Oh, cool. Delmarat said, I've been listening to you for a long time.
Recently, I listened to Tony Robbins.
I found it understandable.
I was able to catch more than 75 % of Tony's speech.
Thank you, AJ. That's impressive because Tony speaks so fast.
Usually. So if you can understand him at that level, that's quite advanced and that's fantastic.
So congrats to you.
Great. Okay, guys, I think it's time for me to go.
I got to go do stuff with my kids.
It's so great to see you all again.
And I'm so happy to be back.
So look, from now until new year, I'll try to do maybe another show or two.
Not so many. It's holiday season.
My son's still recovering.
I have to spend a lot of time with him helping him, but he's doing great.
You know? But my intention, my plan is that at new year, after new year, that I will be back doing shows regularly, frequently.
So several shows every week.
I'll be doing live shows like this many, many times during the week.
Okay, back to doing regular.
Get back into it. This year was quite a challenge and ordeal.
Thank you, God. Literally, thank you, God, for getting our family through this and helping my son.
And I want to share some of that energy and faith and gratitude with you all.
So I feel like I am ready to come back to Ephraim's English and doing shows with great energy and great motivation and great inspiration.
So I look forward to that.
We'll be starting that, okay, at the beginning of 2025.
Just a few more weeks.
So until then, I'll try to do a few more shows, but I'll be really back in January.
Plus, I'm getting cold now.
I'm doing these shows outside, okay?
So, lots of love to you all.
As always, effortlessenglishclub .com.
You can see here the website.
That's my only official website.
Beware of pirates. They will steal your credit cards and cheat you.
So effortlessenglishclub .com.
Start with my Power English course.
After that, or at the same time, VIP program for Advanced.
Native like speaking.
Lots of love to you.
Pray every day. See you next time.
Bye for now.
