Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, and welcome to your spiritual Sunday. I'm
Speaker 1: Amy roboch here TJ is with us in spirit. But
Speaker 1: we have got a very exciting guest. His name is
Speaker 1: Alex Jones. He's the CEO and co founder of Hello,
Speaker 1: and I bet a lot of you know exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about because this is the world's largest Catholic
Speaker 1: prayer and meditation app And Alex, I was reading the
Speaker 1: background of how you even got to where you are now,
Speaker 1: and it's remarkable your story, and I think it will
Speaker 1: be relatable for a lot of people, or at least
Speaker 1: for anyone who's questioned their faith or anyone who is
Speaker 1: lost their way and is trying to find their way
Speaker 1: back to some sort of religion, some sort of spiritual path.
Speaker 1: And you have taken your personal experience and created a
Speaker 1: remarkable organization that is helping so many people find their
Speaker 1: way as well.
Speaker 2: So welcome Alex to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 4: All praise to God. I appreciate the kind words he does.
Speaker 4: God does really cool things. I just screw it up
Speaker 4: all the time and then he fixes it for us.
Speaker 4: But it's been really cool to watch him work he's
Speaker 4: done absolutely phenomenal things.
Speaker 3: So it's been a blessing.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a blessing to have you here on the
Speaker 1: program because I just think your story is probably so
Speaker 1: familiar to a lot of people. I too was raised
Speaker 1: Catholic as well, so I come from that background and
Speaker 1: had my daughters go to Catholic school. My daughter actually went,
Speaker 1: my little one went from pre K all the way
Speaker 1: until she graduated from high school here in the city
Speaker 1: at Catholic school. So very familiar with that specific religion.
Speaker 1: But tell me a little bit about your journey and
Speaker 1: your faith because you two were raised Catholic and then
Speaker 1: you drifted away as a teenager, So can you explain
Speaker 1: a little bit about that part of your life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the one thing that I'd say, we certainly
Speaker 4: I'm Catholic and I love being Catholic.
Speaker 3: It's changed my life.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell a little bit of the journey to
Speaker 4: me coming back to my faith. But Hallo is Hell
Speaker 4: is just about trying to grow deeper in a relationship
Speaker 4: with Jesus.
Speaker 3: We don't do any other religions. It's just Jesus.
Speaker 4: But anybody who's interested in a relationship with Jesus is
Speaker 4: uh is well meant hollow. We started very focused in
Speaker 4: the in the Catholic world, and we're always authentically Catholic.
Speaker 4: It's we never hide who we are, but we've always
Speaker 4: tried to build something for anybody of any Christian background.
Speaker 4: So at this point we probably have about half the
Speaker 4: people on the app who are Catholic and half the.
Speaker 3: People who are who are Protestant. Brothers and sisters are
Speaker 3: people interested in broader Christian spirituality. But yeah, my.
Speaker 4: Journey, so I was, like you said, I was raised
Speaker 4: Catholic by my mom, dragged me through all the Catholic
Speaker 4: sacraments in religious education, all that Jazz is a saint
Speaker 4: of a woman. But when I was a teenager, high school, college,
Speaker 4: fell away from my faith. Would have considered myself agnostic
Speaker 4: or atheist for that time. And when I graduated, I
Speaker 4: got really I started working, you know as stressful, working life, busyness, anxiety,
Speaker 4: all that stuff. But even more so than that, I
Speaker 4: was fascinated with this idea of whatever a spiritual and
Speaker 4: contemplative life was, of like trying to find real peace.
Speaker 4: And so I started meditating. I started trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how to meditate, and this was maybe seven eight
Speaker 4: years ago, and so I was about my mind first
Speaker 4: went to kind of India and Eastern Buddhist meditation, and
Speaker 4: so I was about to hop on a flight to
Speaker 4: go to India, and the flight was like two grand
Speaker 4: and there was these two apps that had just launched,
Speaker 4: had Space and Calm that kind of walked you through
Speaker 4: secular Eastern Buddhist meditation mindfulness meditation, and they were like
Speaker 4: seventy bucks. So I was like, all right, I'll give
Speaker 4: the apps to try. That's a lot cheaper than the flights.
Speaker 4: And I loved them. I started using them. I started
Speaker 4: using them every day, and I thought they were great.
Speaker 4: Like really it was almost like technology without technology, Like
Speaker 4: you could piss a pick, pick a session, press play,
Speaker 4: close your eyes, plug in your headphones, and be led
Speaker 4: through this meditation.
Speaker 3: You didn't have to go to a studio. It was
Speaker 3: just ten minutes.
Speaker 4: Before you went to work. It like was personalized. It
Speaker 4: was with some of the best guides in the world.
Speaker 4: And so I really liked the structure of this app.
Speaker 4: But every time I would meditate and mindfulness meditation and
Speaker 4: mostly is just you're focusing on your breath for a
Speaker 4: while and then you let your mind go at the end,
Speaker 4: and you build up longer times as you advance. And
Speaker 4: there's a bunch of different ways to meditate, but that's
Speaker 4: kind of the core way. And every time I would meditate,
Speaker 4: my mind kept feeling this weird pull towards something spiritual,
Speaker 4: like an image of the cross, or the name Jesus
Speaker 4: or the words Holy Spirit. Which I was agnostic, so
Speaker 4: I thought that was very strange, and I started reaching
Speaker 4: out to people because it kept happening. I started reaching
Speaker 4: out to people, you know, whether it was a priest or,
Speaker 4: a pastor, or a friend who took their faith more
Speaker 4: seriously than I wasn't. Just asking this question, Hey, is
Speaker 4: there any way there's some sort of intersection here between
Speaker 4: this meditation thing and this Jesus thing. And they all
Speaker 4: laughed at me and said, yeah, it's we've been doing
Speaker 4: it for two thousand years.
Speaker 3: You probably should have heard about. It's called prayer. And
Speaker 3: I was like, no, no, I know about prayer. Prayers.
Speaker 4: They're like, hey, thanks for stuff, sorry for stuff. Helped
Speaker 4: me with stuff or maybe the things that I memorized
Speaker 4: as a kid. But I had this one pastor who
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, those are great ways to talk to God,
Speaker 4: but have you ever tried to listen for him? And
Speaker 4: I was like, what is that even mean? How do
Speaker 4: you listen for God? It's not like he calls you
Speaker 4: in the morning, it's And I started discovering this whole
Speaker 4: world of contemplative and meditative prayer within Christianity that I
Speaker 4: just never heard of before. There's dozens and dozens of
Speaker 4: different techniques, and it makes sense. There's hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of different monks all praying contemplatively within the Christian tradition,
Speaker 4: and things like suit to be in ignation, spirituality, all
Speaker 4: these really beautiful caramelize spirituality, recollection chant, all these really
Speaker 4: beautiful ways to pray. And one of them's like you to vino,
Speaker 4: which is a way to meditate on scripture. You pick
Speaker 4: a short passage of Scripture and you pick a word
Speaker 4: that sticks out to you from it. And so I
Speaker 4: randomly opened up a Bible, I think it was my
Speaker 4: wife's that was laying around to Luke a levin where
Speaker 4: the disciples asked Jesus to teach him how to pray,
Speaker 4: and he gives them the our Father, our Father, who
Speaker 4: are and haaven hallowed be thy name, and the word
Speaker 4: that stuck out to me in that passage was Hallow
Speaker 4: and it was just ten minutes and I just sat
Speaker 4: with that word. But it just completely and radically changed
Speaker 4: my life. Brought me back to my faith, brought me
Speaker 4: back to the church, brought me back to his most
Speaker 4: important part of who I am. Let me to quit
Speaker 4: my job during my four one K like twenty six
Speaker 4: years old, and did this crazy idea for an app
Speaker 4: But it was just this beautiful combination of this deep
Speaker 4: sense of peace, deeper than any secular meditation or any
Speaker 4: workout or any breathing exercise or anything I'd ever done,
Speaker 4: but combined with real like hallo means to make holy.
Speaker 4: So was God trying to make me holy? Was I
Speaker 4: letting him make me holy? Was I supposed to be
Speaker 4: helping other people grow in holiness? And the answer was no.
Speaker 4: I was just doing my own career, trying to get ahead,
Speaker 4: trying to do whatever the world literally just following the
Speaker 4: ways of the world as best as I could.
Speaker 3: And so it was really stressful.
Speaker 4: It was like these big life questions, but it felt
Speaker 4: like I was wrestling with something real, something on the
Speaker 4: other side. So I wouldn't do that for the rest
Speaker 4: of my life and that's what started Hallow certainly not
Speaker 4: my idea, just got beat me over the head with
Speaker 4: it till I did something about it.
Speaker 1: But that's so fascinating Hallo obviously the name of your
Speaker 1: app and it was it really just like in that
Speaker 1: one moment with that one word that resonated with you
Speaker 1: and it changed the course of your life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, is the short answer. I guess
Speaker 4: the longer answer. You know, there's a bunch of pieces
Speaker 4: to a spiritual journey you can't fit in a fifteen
Speaker 4: minute you know, conversation or story and so things get
Speaker 4: simplified down and you know, so there's an intellectual side
Speaker 4: to it too, which for me, I'm not the brightest
Speaker 4: intellectual theological philosophy ball, but I get lost in a
Speaker 4: handful of the different arguments or whatever. But for me,
Speaker 4: it was important to have really smart people arguing for Christianity.
Speaker 3: There was a piece of it.
Speaker 4: Like I grew up, Christianity was just dumb. It wasn't
Speaker 4: thought through, it was just some old man in the
Speaker 4: sky and actually hearing really smart people argue about it
Speaker 4: like crack something open, like well, I don't really understand this,
Speaker 4: but there are really smart people who have thought through this,
Speaker 4: and they're pretty compelling arguments. I'd say another really big one,
Speaker 4: and especially looking back, I mean, men mostly just follow
Speaker 4: what my wife was a saint is a saint and
Speaker 4: took her faith very seriously. And so I'm sure like
Speaker 4: ninety nine percent of it is I just wanted to
Speaker 4: be like my wife and grow close to my wife,
Speaker 4: so that that's like, that's I'm sure a vast majority
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 3: The prayers of a mother.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can't underestimate the power of the prayers
Speaker 4: of a mother. So my mom is certainly a massive
Speaker 4: part of it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: I mean for us, and it's what we're focused on
Speaker 4: at Hallow, all those things, you know, whether it's appreciating
Speaker 4: the intellectual side or even diving deeper into service, all
Speaker 4: of all of the really beautiful parts of faith. It
Speaker 4: doesn't mean anything if you don't know Jesus, Like if
Speaker 4: you haven't met Jesus, and you have to know him,
Speaker 4: you have to meet the guy. It's not just like
Speaker 4: a it's not just a political ideology that you subscribe to.
Speaker 4: It's not just a set of things that you like
Speaker 4: say out loud. It's like you have to know a person,
Speaker 4: and for me, I didn't. I'd never met him, and
Speaker 4: so that was the first encounter I think with something real.
Speaker 4: And I met him in the silence, like I met
Speaker 4: him in the silence through his word, which is pretty obvious,
Speaker 4: you know. It's like, well he wrote us a love letter.
Speaker 4: You should read it and you should sit in silence
Speaker 4: with it. And I did, and I met him and
Speaker 4: I fell in love with him and he's changed my life.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting, Alex.
Speaker 1: You said you met him in that moment, and yet
Speaker 1: you were raised Catholic, you went to either I know,
Speaker 1: for those of us who were raised Catholic, yes, you
Speaker 1: go to church every Sunday. But when you aren't in
Speaker 1: Catholic school, you go to see you go to a
Speaker 1: weekly type of meeting with priests, and you're learning about Catholicism,
Speaker 1: you're learning about the Bible. But what was missed in
Speaker 1: those years that you didn't connect with any of it.
Speaker 1: It didn't resonate with you in any way. What did perhaps,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say the church got it wrong,
Speaker 1: but how you were raised as a Catholic, obviously it
Speaker 1: didn't impact you the way it did later when you
Speaker 1: sought him out on your own. What was missed or
Speaker 1: what was wrong or why didn't you connect with that
Speaker 1: at that time?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know, I think at the core
Speaker 4: it's it's the hardness of my own heart. So it's
Speaker 4: and actually, Mother Teresa has a really beautiful quote. She's
Speaker 4: talking to the missionaries of charity, who are nuns who
Speaker 4: have dedicated their life to serving Jesus and the poor
Speaker 4: and the poorest parts of the world.
Speaker 3: And she's talking to them and.
Speaker 4: She goes, I worry some of you have still not
Speaker 4: really met Jesus one to one in your heart. Have
Speaker 4: you heard him say how much he loves you. Have
Speaker 4: you heard him say how much she cares for you,
Speaker 4: how much he thirsts for you, how much he longs
Speaker 4: for you when you don't come close.
Speaker 3: Like there's is this beautiful quote.
Speaker 4: But she's speaking to people, and even now, I mean
Speaker 4: I can in my own prayer I feel myself just
Speaker 4: talking to myself in my own head, and it's like, wait,
Speaker 4: I'm not talking to myself. I'm not just like listing
Speaker 4: through a thing or memorizing a thing or repeating a thing.
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to be I'm supposed to be with Jesus
Speaker 4: and then like when you raise your mind to him,
Speaker 4: then you do you encounter him?
Speaker 3: And I don't know. It's sad because I wish there was.
Speaker 4: There's all these words that we as Christians have tried
Speaker 4: to use, but they've been so overplayed that they've become cheesy.
Speaker 4: Whether it's encounter or whatever it is, but that's the word,
Speaker 4: like encounter, you actually do have to meet the guy.
Speaker 3: For me, I don't know.
Speaker 4: The church I think. I mean my church was a
Speaker 4: beautiful little parish church. They did a great chold proclaiming
Speaker 4: the word, went to Mass every week, was my dad
Speaker 4: was elector my mom taught one of the religious classes.
Speaker 3: I mean it was. I think it was almost entirely
Speaker 3: the hardness of my own heart. And that's I mean.
Speaker 4: There were people alive when Jesus was physically here on
Speaker 4: earth who did not, you know, really truly encounter him.
Speaker 4: But for me, I think we have an opportunity as
Speaker 4: a church to lead with prayer. And you saw this
Speaker 4: it was a much bigger thing maybe seven or eight
Speaker 4: years ago, where the number of people who were calling
Speaker 4: themselves religious had dropped like ten percentage points in the
Speaker 4: last decade, which is a crazy precipitous drop.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't replaced by atheists.
Speaker 4: It was replaced by people who would call themselves spiritual
Speaker 4: but not religious. And so there's a part of that
Speaker 4: that's like, well, you could argue with that. You could say, well,
Speaker 4: you can't really be spiritual without being religious. Religious is
Speaker 4: just to set a belief. So if you're spiritual and
Speaker 4: you're sitting alone and trying to whatever, prayer, meditate, you're
Speaker 4: praying with something or you're meditating with something, and whenever
Speaker 4: you ask anybody who's meditating, they always say, yeah, I
Speaker 4: sit in the silence. There's something else there, Like, there's
Speaker 4: definitely something else there. And so religion is just trying
Speaker 4: to put words to that, in structure to that, and help.
Speaker 3: You to live it out.
Speaker 4: But the other thing you could do, as opposed to
Speaker 4: arguing with it and as opposed to debating it is
Speaker 4: lean into it and say, okay, hey, you're interested in
Speaker 4: spiritual life, you're interested in something finding peace and having
Speaker 4: a relationship with something on you there is something, There
Speaker 4: is a great piece that the world can offer you,
Speaker 4: and there's a great love waiting for you that nothing
Speaker 4: else can offer you. I've got a way for you
Speaker 4: to find it, and I've got the guy that I've
Speaker 4: met through this process that i would love for you
Speaker 4: to meet, and leading with that, I think we as
Speaker 4: a as a church, as a Christian church, although different
Speaker 4: groups within Christianity have done a much better job of
Speaker 4: it than others, but I think we have a real
Speaker 4: opportunity to lead with that and to just you know,
Speaker 4: to stop talking and just be silent and just let
Speaker 4: God talk. You know, we talk so much and we
Speaker 4: explain what he's saying, but it's just like, hey, just
Speaker 4: let people alone with God. And that's most of what
Speaker 4: Halla does is we talk for a little bit, mostly
Speaker 4: just to make it less intimidating, and then we just
Speaker 4: leave you in silence for two three minutes and God
Speaker 4: does these He tells you exactly what you need to
Speaker 4: hear in the silence in your own heart.
Speaker 3: And it's just beautiful to get to watch.
Speaker 1: And obviously it's resonated, it's hallow, has been downloaded more
Speaker 1: than eighteen million times. You've surpassed one billion minutes of prayer,
Speaker 1: and you're the number one Catholic app in the world.
Speaker 1: I'm curious and this all began in twenty eighteen, so
Speaker 1: not that long ago. When you were in that period
Speaker 1: of being an agnostic or even an atheist and searching
Speaker 1: but not knowing what was out there, could you, in
Speaker 1: your wildest dreams have imagined that this is where you
Speaker 1: would be today, the influence you would have, and what
Speaker 1: your message is.
Speaker 2: To the world.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, how like reflecting back to that period
Speaker 1: of not knowing and searching to where you are today,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty dramatic shift.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's the craziest possible thing you could imagine.
Speaker 4: I mean, the uh, and it's only getting crazier. I mean,
Speaker 4: we I think those numbers are probably we sent you and.
Speaker 2: Oh they're old. You got better numbers, bigger number.
Speaker 4: It's like thirty five million or hump and downloads. It's
Speaker 4: crazy billion prayers. But it's uh. But God just does
Speaker 4: incredible things. I mean, And it's funny, like the influence.
Speaker 4: When you say the influence I have, I don't do anything.
Speaker 4: I just I just put microphones in front of people
Speaker 4: that read scripture and then leave people in silence. And
Speaker 4: God does so it's literally and when we've tried to
Speaker 4: do things, it's always failed, and it's just us letting
Speaker 4: God do it. And so the influences and anything that
Speaker 4: works or anything that impacts souls is just God. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, had you told me we built the first
Speaker 4: thing just for me, I liked the structure of this app.
Speaker 4: I wanted to grow deeper in this practice of prayer.
Speaker 4: I had never a real contemplative, meditative prayer in silence,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't find anything. And I knew how to
Speaker 4: code a little bit. It was kind of fun. So
Speaker 4: we did it as a project for me. Maybe spend
Speaker 4: a couple months building something and helps me get into
Speaker 4: heaven a little bit, and maybe hey, there's a friend
Speaker 4: or family or something who finds use of it. But
Speaker 4: had you told me like a thousand people would use
Speaker 4: this thing, I would have told you were absolutely insane.
Speaker 3: That's a lot. A thousand is a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Like if you look outside and you were if you
Speaker 4: were given, if I I was given to talk to
Speaker 4: it a thousand people, I would be pretty nervous. Like
Speaker 4: you're standing in front of a big room of people,
Speaker 4: ten thousand people. It's like, okay, that's that's also really big.
Speaker 4: And then it's like one hundred thousand. It's just I don't,
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: My mind doesn't even doesn't a million, My mind doesn't.
Speaker 1: Even MetLife Stadium is seventy thousand people. But you're it's
Speaker 1: so much more than that, Like that's that's mind blowing.
Speaker 3: But it speaks to just this.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just it's God has been very kind
Speaker 4: to me in that. It's there's absolutely no chance that
Speaker 4: any of it was what we did. We have an
Speaker 4: incredible team who does a lot of really beautiful work,
Speaker 4: but all of it is God, and He just each
Speaker 4: one of the you know, we got to number one
Speaker 4: in the App Store, which no faith based app had
Speaker 4: ever done in the history of the App Store. We
Speaker 4: did that twice now, and each one of those was
Speaker 4: just like the app was about to crash. Everything was failing,
Speaker 4: and then we just surrender it to God and we're like, look, God,
Speaker 4: this is your thing. If you want it to fail,
Speaker 4: it'll fail. If you want it to succeed, it'll succeed.
Speaker 4: The one thing we are not going to do is
Speaker 4: we're not going to take the credit. And he was like,
Speaker 4: all right, good, that's what I was waiting for. Now
Speaker 4: you can watch it go to number one or now
Speaker 4: you can get whatever number thing that is exciting and fun.
Speaker 4: And for us it's I don't know that the numbers
Speaker 4: are fun, but like like like thirty five, if we
Speaker 4: got to seventy million downloads, I don't, I mean, there's
Speaker 4: no I don't. I don't have any I don't have
Speaker 4: any conception of what that is. For us, it's it's
Speaker 4: mostly watching what God does and people who are really lost.
Speaker 3: And really fallen away.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've had moms who have lost children, who
Speaker 4: haven't been able to eat and months, who are able
Speaker 4: to get out of bed for the first time. We've
Speaker 4: had dads who are alcoholics who haven't been able to
Speaker 4: be there for their kids, who are able to be
Speaker 4: sober for the first time. We've had young people who
Speaker 4: are really really wrestling with depression and suicide who are
Speaker 4: able to find some sense of hope. It's some sense
Speaker 4: of peace again. And I mean, it's just like the
Speaker 4: coolest possible things you could imagine. We get to watch
Speaker 4: God do in people's lives, and so it's just the
Speaker 4: greatest blessing of a lifetime to get to watch them
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And you've enlisted some pretty high profile folks or I
Speaker 1: don't know how this all if they've come to you,
Speaker 1: if you've gone to them.
Speaker 2: But when I started seeing names like.
Speaker 1: Gwen Stefani, Chris Pratt, Mark Wahlberg, just to name Liam
Speaker 1: Nice and Kevin James, I mean, just all of Hollywood's
Speaker 1: A listers being a part of this in terms of
Speaker 1: the meditations and leading folks down a certain path. How
Speaker 1: does that collaboration even take place? Because look, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of celebrities don't want to attach themselves
Speaker 1: to certain either political beliefs or religious beliefs. They don't
Speaker 1: want to alienate themselves from their potential fans. I just
Speaker 1: I think it's remarkable to have such big names be
Speaker 1: a part of something like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and people, especially people that don't live in you know,
Speaker 4: like in Chicago, even it's it's where I live, you'd
Speaker 4: be surprised, it's hard to relate to. But certainly in
Speaker 4: the middle of the country and most of the country,
Speaker 4: but in LA and parts of New York, in you know,
Speaker 4: San Francisco, but especially Hollywood, like it takes an actual
Speaker 4: it takes a tremendous amount of courage to step out
Speaker 4: and speak publicly about your faith people. The number of
Speaker 4: voices that will come out and say, you know your
Speaker 4: career is going to be over. You know you're never
Speaker 4: going to be on Netflix again. You know, whatever it
Speaker 4: is that the world holds up as something that you're
Speaker 4: going to achieve is something that you have to sacrifice.
Speaker 4: And so for each of these people, it does take
Speaker 4: a tremendous amount of courage. Now they all actually, I mean,
Speaker 4: and they're the nicest people. It's funny that they're They're
Speaker 4: all hilarious, super humble, very nice, and have gotten to
Speaker 4: a point where they're just like, look, God gave me
Speaker 4: these things. I just want to use the gifts that
Speaker 4: God has given me to bring other people to the
Speaker 4: Lord and share what He's done for me in a
Speaker 4: way that's relatable and not like I'm shoving anything down
Speaker 4: anybody's throat. But I'm just inviting you to the thing
Speaker 4: that's changed my life. And you know, I'm going to
Speaker 4: get a lot of hate for it, and that's fine.
Speaker 4: I get a lot of hate for a lot of things,
Speaker 4: and if I get hate for Jesus, then that's great.
Speaker 4: I mean, each one of them has been a story
Speaker 4: of God working in people's lives. And us getting the
Speaker 4: great benefit of that. I mean, Mark Jonathan Rumy from
Speaker 4: The Chosen Mark Wahlberg were probably the two earliest ones.
Speaker 4: So Hala was really very not well known at all
Speaker 4: when they started working together. And Mark had just had
Speaker 4: this call from the Lord to work on Father Steu.
Speaker 4: And so we got to partner a little bit because
Speaker 4: we were kind of a niche religious app at that time,
Speaker 4: and so we got to help kind of promote that
Speaker 4: movie or work together on content surrounding that movie a
Speaker 4: little bit, and then we just got to know each
Speaker 4: other and started trying to do more work together. And
Speaker 4: Mark's line was like, I felt like Father Stu was
Speaker 4: the God asked me to do one thing, and it
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, I'm just going to do this Father
Speaker 4: stew thing and then I'll be done and I can
Speaker 4: go back to my normal life. And it's like I
Speaker 4: cracked the door open and he just took the whole
Speaker 4: He took the whole thing, and so now it's all
Speaker 4: and both him and Chris, and Chris has been phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Chris like posted.
Speaker 4: About praying with the app, and so we reached out
Speaker 4: to him and started working together because he had been
Speaker 4: using the app separately, but both him and Mark had
Speaker 4: said that, you know, they they get people coming up
Speaker 4: to them now more so than any other movie that
Speaker 4: they've done or any show that they've done, and just saying, hey,
Speaker 4: I just wanted to let you know I pray with
Speaker 4: you. You know, you know you helped me grow closer to Jesus,
Speaker 4: So thank you. When is like the most humble, incredible
Speaker 4: person I've met. She's and she started she posted about
Speaker 4: using the app to something publicly, and then we started
Speaker 4: working together. Kevin is like the most faithful guy, one
Speaker 4: of the closest people to Jesus, and absolutely hilarious. Obviously,
Speaker 4: well it's funny because you meet a comedian and you're like, eh,
Speaker 4: you know, they're probably I mean, I've seen their stand up.
Speaker 4: They're probably not actually that funny, and they are actually
Speaker 4: mostly hilarious. But for them too, it's it's funny. The
Speaker 4: vast majority on the content is of the content on
Speaker 4: the app is led by kind of spiritual guides, so
Speaker 4: people that you probably wouldn't know the names of who
Speaker 4: are very deep, prayerful people, very deep scripture experts or
Speaker 4: theologians or whatever it is. But our goal really is
Speaker 4: to reach out to the people that have fallen away,
Speaker 4: that don't walk into churches often, or who haven't tried
Speaker 4: praying in a while. And unfortunately, my face does not
Speaker 4: get you to stop scrolling for half a second, but
Speaker 4: Marx does and Chriss does, and we have just countless,
Speaker 4: countless people who are like, wait, is that the guy
Speaker 4: from the Bear movies? Or is that the guy from
Speaker 4: Perks and rech telling me about Jesus?
Speaker 3: Like what is this?
Speaker 4: And it's just weird enough that I'm going to give
Speaker 4: it a try, or I'm going to at least see
Speaker 4: what it's about. And that's just enough. That's all God needs.
Speaker 4: And then he hooks you for one minute of prayer,
Speaker 4: two minutes of silence, and then tells you the thing
Speaker 4: that's been on your heart forever. So it's really cool
Speaker 4: to watch those guys step out, be courageous and invite
Speaker 4: other people into a relationship with Jesus.
Speaker 2: It's very cool.
Speaker 1: And for the skeptics out there, because look, anyone who's
Speaker 1: listening to this isn't necessarily we don't all think or
Speaker 1: believe the same things, but I think we all want
Speaker 1: the same things out of life and peace and security
Speaker 1: and to know love is all a part of it.
Speaker 1: What would you say, what is the power of prayer?
Speaker 1: Where does the power lie like when you meditate, when
Speaker 1: you pray, when you use hallow, what do you hope
Speaker 1: people receive from it?
Speaker 3: You know? I mean most people say.
Speaker 4: Most people say peace when they think about hollow you
Speaker 4: want peace. Our lives are full of noise and busyness
Speaker 4: and stress, and your mind is just racing in a
Speaker 4: thousand different places. And so when you sit down for
Speaker 4: two seconds, and it's hard actually, like at the beginning,
Speaker 4: it's really hard.
Speaker 3: It's like going for a run the first time.
Speaker 4: It becomes therapeutic after a while, but for the first time,
Speaker 4: it's really hard to go for a run. For the
Speaker 4: first time, it's really hard to sit in silence because
Speaker 4: you got all this crap in your head, like all
Speaker 4: this Twitter feed and all this Instagram reels and all
Speaker 4: this whatever it is, the stress about the news or
Speaker 4: your job or all the things that are just percolating
Speaker 4: in your mind.
Speaker 3: That I had a.
Speaker 4: Spiritual director who said, like, it's like a snow globe
Speaker 4: that just constantly is being shaken around. You're constantly being
Speaker 4: shaken around. And then when you sit in silence. You
Speaker 4: just like let the snow just kind of all and drift,
Speaker 4: and there's like this tremendous sense of peace and recollection.
Speaker 4: It's like you're coming back to yourself. It's this really
Speaker 4: beautiful experience of finding real peace. Not like you know,
Speaker 4: where do you turn when you're really stressed. It's usually
Speaker 4: a Netflix show or scrolling or alcohol or whatever it
Speaker 4: is it's and those never give real peace, Like you
Speaker 4: never end with like, oh I feel now after scrolling
Speaker 4: for thirty minutes, I now feel like I am ready
Speaker 4: to take on something else. You're just distracted, You're more dissociated.
Speaker 4: But I so that's I think what most people would
Speaker 4: say is peace. I think for me, though, I mean
Speaker 4: there's something deeper than peace, which is certainly you collect yourself,
Speaker 4: but then you get to like really deep, really difficult places,
Speaker 4: really really quick. We all have places in our life
Speaker 4: that are really tough. And what God pours into it
Speaker 4: is just love. He just pours in love and he
Speaker 4: just well And it's so funny because I'm I like
Speaker 4: to consider myself a young man still, and as a
Speaker 4: young man, you like, don't that doesn't it doesn't appeal
Speaker 4: as much like if you if I heard it saying,
Speaker 4: if I heard someone saying that, like, hey, you're gonna
Speaker 4: sit down and somebody's going to pour love into you.
Speaker 3: But you just don't know how much you need it.
Speaker 3: It's just it's it's it.
Speaker 4: Is the only thing you need, and it's like you sit.
Speaker 4: It's like me, I have four little kid as, like
Speaker 4: the real tiny little kid as, a four year old
Speaker 4: and a two year old boy, and like, if I
Speaker 4: had one thing, if I'm just sitting with them and
Speaker 4: I had silence with them, and I just want them
Speaker 4: to know one thing, it would just be how much
Speaker 4: and how profoundly I love them.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: If they get nothing else from me for the rest
Speaker 4: of their life, that's the only thing I want. And
Speaker 4: that's the same thing God wants infinitely more. Is he
Speaker 4: just wants to sit in silence and let you know
Speaker 4: how profoundly and deeply you are loved. And then that
Speaker 4: love sets you on fire to go serve the poor,
Speaker 4: to go do good in the world, to go be
Speaker 4: a better person, all the different things that the Christian
Speaker 4: life calls you too. But it starts with this tremendous
Speaker 4: outpouring of love and It's just the best thing in
Speaker 4: the world for anybody who's ever been in love or
Speaker 4: ever felt love or the love of like something truly pure,
Speaker 4: to be loved that profoundly, and it's infinitely more than that,
Speaker 4: and it just changes everything. It brings you peace, certainly,
Speaker 4: but courage and purpose and meaning and everything that you
Speaker 4: are searching for, answers to your difficult questions, what you're
Speaker 4: going to do with your life, trust, surrender, The anxiety
Speaker 4: goes away. It's like you still have all these difficulties,
Speaker 4: but you face them with someone. It's like, well, I
Speaker 4: have the God of the universe who loves me and
Speaker 4: is right here, right next to me right now, So
Speaker 4: what could go wrong. There's nothing that could go wrong.
Speaker 4: Nothing matters.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 4: For me. It's if I had one thing from Hallow,
Speaker 4: it would just be for especially people who haven't heard it,
Speaker 4: but even for people who have just that they know
Speaker 4: how profoundly and how deeply.
Speaker 3: They are loved.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's absolutely beautiful. I want to ask on behalf of.
Speaker 1: Folks who might say, how can I feel love from
Speaker 1: something I can't see? How can I receive love from
Speaker 1: something I don't know?
Speaker 2: Whether or not it or they or he exists.
Speaker 1: Because you were in that camp, you were admittedly exploring it,
Speaker 1: being an agnostic, being an atheist, and so you know profoundly,
Speaker 1: maybe even more than most, what it's like to to
Speaker 1: question or to just not believe in the supernatural, not
Speaker 1: believe in a higher power.
Speaker 2: How did you I'm just so curious how you.
Speaker 1: Went from that to feeling this love, to believing in
Speaker 1: this love, to having the faith that it requires to
Speaker 1: receive all of what Hallo and the connection you're able
Speaker 1: to make. But do you have to suspend judgment? Do
Speaker 1: you have to have a belief system in place? Can
Speaker 1: you sit down and listen to your app and just
Speaker 1: see where it takes you. I'm curious how you think
Speaker 1: folks should potentially use this or approach this if they're
Speaker 1: in that place, whether they're not sure or they kind
Speaker 1: of think they know nothing exists outside of this world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think there's any argument I could there's
Speaker 4: certainly no argument I could have said to me that
Speaker 4: would have convinced me of what I just said and
Speaker 4: that what I just said is true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: When you have kids, you just enter this new state
Speaker 4: of reality that you love something more than you ever
Speaker 4: could have imagined. It's like I would cut off my
Speaker 4: leg to make you smile, like it's it's a crazy
Speaker 4: love in it. And to explain that to someone else
Speaker 4: or to rationalize that to someone else, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I get it, you have like a natural biological whatever.
Speaker 4: But it's like, no, you don't. You don't get it.
Speaker 4: It's not you can't. You can't explain it. There's no
Speaker 4: words that come with it. It just you have to
Speaker 4: you have to feel it. I don't know for me,
Speaker 4: And this was the thing that resonated most with me.
Speaker 4: It was like, I can promise you it's real. You
Speaker 4: can't see him, you can't, you can't, you don't always
Speaker 4: even feel him. But I can promise you he's real,
Speaker 4: And so why not just try it, Like, just give
Speaker 4: it a try.
Speaker 3: And maybe maybe maybe I'm a.
Speaker 4: Total psychopath and I've just lost my complete mind and
Speaker 4: I'm just living in a completely external reality. And but
Speaker 4: you know, fine, but I don't think so. And I
Speaker 4: like my life even if I have lost my mind.
Speaker 4: I like it a lot better than it was before.
Speaker 4: So I'm happy with the mind that I've lost, but
Speaker 4: you've tried everything else. I mean, you've tried everything to
Speaker 4: try to find peace, You've tried everything to try to
Speaker 4: find love, You've tried everything to try to find meaning.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't fulfill.
Speaker 4: Money doesn't fulfill, status doesn't fulfill, Achievement doesn't fulfill. Not
Speaker 4: even people can fulfill, not even real relationships. They always
Speaker 4: let you down.
Speaker 3: Everything.
Speaker 4: Everybody always lets you down. That's fine, that's people, that's life.
Speaker 4: But there's one that doesn't. And you should just give
Speaker 4: it a try. But you got to give it a
Speaker 4: try for like a real period of time. You can't
Speaker 4: be like, Okay, I'm gonna sit down for like five
Speaker 4: minutes and if I don't feel anything, fine, you got
Speaker 4: to give like two years. Now that's kind of crazy,
Speaker 4: but whatever, you got to do like two years something
Speaker 4: real where you're like, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 4: try this thing and so what then you prove God
Speaker 4: doesn't exist after two years, so fine, And then just
Speaker 4: try to listen for him. Don't try to talk to him,
Speaker 4: although you can share with him what's on your heart,
Speaker 4: but just try to actually listen to him, not just
Speaker 4: in your head, actually listen. And the thing is it's
Speaker 4: in silence. So you have to learn to sit in silence.
Speaker 4: And if you learn to sit in silence, it's Elijah
Speaker 4: goes up to the mountain, Old Testament. Great win comes
Speaker 4: by God's not in the wind, great earthquake comes by
Speaker 4: God's not in the earthquake, a great fire comes by
Speaker 4: God's not in the fire. And in the silence, a
Speaker 4: still small voice comes by. And so the question is
Speaker 4: is there a still small voice? Try to learn to
Speaker 4: sit in the silence and to listen. And that's I mean,
Speaker 4: you can do that in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 4: There's God's Word, there's learning how to sit in silence,
Speaker 4: there's courses, there's a bunch of stuff online, there's an
Speaker 4: app that literally only does that. We have thousands of
Speaker 4: thousands of different ways to try to pray. So I
Speaker 4: would highly recommend it. But it doesn't have to be
Speaker 4: at Hallow.
Speaker 3: I don't care. Just get to know Jesus. But just
Speaker 3: give it a try.
Speaker 4: And if you my guess is you're going to meet
Speaker 4: them because he always, he always reveals himself and it's
Speaker 4: not maybe it's in a feeling, maybe it's in something
Speaker 4: that happens to you in your life. Maybe it's in
Speaker 4: his word, maybe it's him speaking to you directly through scripture.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's in a song, maybe it's I don't know.
Speaker 4: He does it a thousand different ways to a thousand
Speaker 4: different people, but I can promise you he's real.
Speaker 3: So why not just give it a shot? Is what
Speaker 3: do you have to lose? That's my pitch to myself.
Speaker 2: I love that, and you know what I loved.
Speaker 1: I love the pitch and I love the analogy you
Speaker 1: made to running. I'm a runner, And that totally landed
Speaker 1: for me because, yeah, it's not fun at first, and
Speaker 1: you're going against maybe even what you want to be doing.
Speaker 1: But if you do it enough and you keep you
Speaker 1: keep at it, all of a sudden you get the
Speaker 1: beauty of it and you become like, for me, that's
Speaker 1: just a huge part of my life.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's not fun.
Speaker 1: It's hard, and sometimes you resist it, but once you
Speaker 1: learn the value of it and what you get from it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, most things that are worth it, that are valuable,
Speaker 1: that are meaningful, require work, require patience, require dedication, and
Speaker 1: so that that really landed for me. I think people
Speaker 1: can understand it from something that you said, but I
Speaker 1: thought you were amazing in the pitch you just made.
Speaker 2: I mean, what have you got to lose?
Speaker 4: Well, it is true, like with most good things that
Speaker 4: actually follows a similar pattern, like eating healthy is very similar.
Speaker 4: Like the bad things have this huge appeal and it's
Speaker 4: you know, that's not good for you, even even secularly,
Speaker 4: like like ignore God. It's like I know tomorrow I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna be happy that I did this thing. Whatever
Speaker 4: it is, food or whatever it is, whatever it's sin
Speaker 4: or bad habit, you're caught in and you give into
Speaker 4: it because it pulls you right away, and it's easy
Speaker 4: right away, but then long term is destructive.
Speaker 3: The good stuff, though, is really hard right away. Eating
Speaker 3: healthy sucks for a while, Like I used to eat
Speaker 3: McDonald's every day and I loved it, and I tried
Speaker 3: to stop eating it for like and it was the
Speaker 3: worst thing, Like you crave it.
Speaker 4: It's like the worst possible thing, breaking any addiction. Going
Speaker 4: for a run, same thing, Like your.
Speaker 3: Knees hurt, you're out of shape. It's terrible.
Speaker 4: But then there's this thing at the end and you
Speaker 4: only get to it if you persevere through it, and
Speaker 4: for running it. Running is such a beautiful example, because
Speaker 4: it's so hard for so long, but then once you
Speaker 4: do it, it becomes like a prayer, It becomes very spiritual,
Speaker 4: it becomes very meditative. You just get in this habit
Speaker 4: it's and things start to like your your stresses start
Speaker 4: to clear out, like your mind starts to clear out.
Speaker 4: It starts to become this place of peace for you.
Speaker 4: And then it's not that you like crave it. It's
Speaker 4: like you it's almost like you need it a because
Speaker 4: it's like, man, if I don't go for a run, like.
Speaker 3: I just feel like crap.
Speaker 4: But it's also like you know the promise that's waiting
Speaker 4: for you. And it's the same thing with eating healthy.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, I know how I'm going to feel
Speaker 4: after this meal, Like I'm gonna feel great and I'm
Speaker 4: going to feel like my life is clear.
Speaker 3: I'm not lethargic.
Speaker 4: And there's another piece that like when I if you
Speaker 4: eat decent for like a month or something and then
Speaker 4: you eat like crap, You're like, wait, I feel awful now.
Speaker 4: Or you don't go for a run and you rent
Speaker 4: for a run every day, You're like, wait, I feel terrible.
Speaker 4: Is this how I used to feel all the time?
Speaker 4: Like I just I feel like absolutely, like I can't
Speaker 4: do anything. I'm sluggish, I'm lethargic, I can't I feel bloated.
Speaker 3: It's awful, and prayer is like it. It's very hard at.
Speaker 4: The beginning, but once you get into it, it is
Speaker 4: this tremendous I don't know, it's this life, it's this
Speaker 4: life giving thing in your life that then if you
Speaker 4: don't do it in the morning, you're like or at
Speaker 4: night or whenever you do it, if you don't do it,
Speaker 4: you're like, man, I just don't have the thing. I
Speaker 4: don't have it, And then you feel like crap. You
Speaker 4: feel scatter brained, You feel like you can't connect with
Speaker 4: the one thing that matters most to you, and you
Speaker 4: miss the you miss the beauty of life, which is yeah, heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: I was so inspired by everything you just said, so
Speaker 1: I can see why Hallo has had this success it's
Speaker 1: had and I know you wouldn't take credit for it fully,
Speaker 1: but certainly it's a beautiful gift you have given the
Speaker 1: world and you're sharing it with everyone with the purest
Speaker 1: of intentions, and I applaud you for a lot of
Speaker 1: people will focus on what's going to make them rich
Speaker 1: or what's gonna they think make them feel good at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. But you are in service
Speaker 1: and for that I applaud you, Alex Jones.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone listening was inspired to at least check
Speaker 1: it out. And who doesn't want peace, who doesn't want
Speaker 1: love in their life? And yes, it comes with a
Speaker 1: little bit of commitment, but you've made it very easy
Speaker 1: for folks with using technology. It's you really don't have
Speaker 1: an excuse not to give it a shot, not to
Speaker 1: see what it's all about.
Speaker 4: Well, I appreciate it. This has been such a fun conversation.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you having me on. It's been a blessing.
Speaker 4: And please pray for me. I'll be praying for you.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you Alex Jones. Everybody, we appreciate you. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being on the podcast.