Ep 1269 | The Robertsons Turn a Middle-School Dance Into a Prayer Breakthrough

Unashamed with the Robertson Family

Tread Lively

Religion, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 24.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Zach, Al, Christian, and John Luke dig into why unanswered prayers can feel like personal rejection from God—and how faith survives that silence. Zach surprises everyone first with his unexpected knowledge of cosmic anomalies, then with an embarrassing middle school dance rejection story he’s clearly still not over. The conversation turns to C.S. Lewis’s struggle with loss, doubt, and the “sincerity spiral” that nearly drove him from faith. His journey becomes a hopeful illustration of how to move your prayer life beyond fear and into something both deeply sincere and thoughtfully rooted in Christ. In this episode: Romans 12, chapters 1–2; Romans 8, verses 18–27; Genesis 1, verse 28; John 1, verses 1–2; John 1, verse 14; John 5, verse 39; Luke 24, verses 13–35; Colossians 2, verses 20–23; 2 Peter 1, verse 4 Today’s conversation is about Lesson 5 of C.S. Lewis on Christianity taught by visiting Hillsdale professor Michael Ward. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/. More about C.S. Lewis on Christianity: Encounter the faith & wisdom of C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis’s writings bring the great questions of the Christian faith to life. Through his imaginative and invigorating style, Lewis answers these questions in ways that are compelling to those outside Christianity and energizing to those within the Christian faith. In this free, seven-lecture course, Professor Michael Ward—a leading scholar of C.S. Lewis—will explore Lewis’s: argument for objective moral value in response to the rise of modern subjectivism; bittersweet path to conversion and the role of enjoyment in the Christian life; advice regarding the proper way to pray and read the Bible; teachings concerning the purpose of pain and how to confront suffering and loss; insights about the nature of heaven and hell. This course examines these fundamental topics not only through his classic works—including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Abolition of Man—but also through Lewis’s personal experiences with doubt, conversion, suffering, grief, and joy. Through this course, students will discover Lewis’s core lessons regarding the truth and goodness of the Christian faith and how to apply those lessons to one’s life. Join us today in discovering C.S. Lewis’s enduring lessons about the meaning and practice of Christianity. Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 00:00 Prayer Pushed Lewis to Atheism 03:02 Losing His Mom & Losing His Faith 07:48 The Sincerity Spiral 13:10 The Union of Wills 18:42 Romans 8 & Wordless Groans 24:08 Breaking the Self-Imposed Spell 30:05 Stop Standing in the Corner 36:20 The Word Made Flesh 41:15 Reading the Bible by Genre 45:12 Christ Unlocks Scripture 48:22 Hearts Set on Fire — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I am unashamed. What about you?
0:05.0	Welcome back. Here we are yet once again, Unashamed for Hillsdale Friday. We do this every Friday. It's a free course. We actually have taken several now, and we are now into a course on C.S. Lewis.
0:20.0	C.S. Louis on Christianity. We're taking C.S. Louis on Christianity with Hillsdale.
0:25.4	You go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com, sign up for free. We're in Lecture 5, and we are now C.S. Louis experts, I would say.
0:35.0	Al, do you feel like an expert? I do not. I do not feel like I'm an expert,
0:39.4	but I am learning to appreciate the philosophical ways of Dr. Lewis, but also of John Luke and
0:50.0	you, Zach, the different ways you view things. And so the whole time I've been taking these
0:54.8	courses, anytime I can't understand something, I always take joy knowing that y'all are loving.
0:59.7	Yeah. Well, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain. And Chris and I are totally in this
1:03.7	together. We're in the same camp. However, Lecter 5 was the most accessible for those like us.
1:10.4	Yes. Yes. Yes. This is really good one. I struggle
1:13.7	with the last one, but this one spoke to me because it's about prayer in the Bible, which,
1:19.6	you know, I spend a lot of time talking about. Yeah. And it started out being a relatable,
1:25.7	like you talked about, lecture four started out a little way above our heads,
1:30.3	but Lecture 5 started out talking about prayer and kind of what led to Lewis's intensified
1:35.1	prayer, but also what led him to abandon it. And I feel like the reasons for both were
1:39.9	relatable for things we kind of go through. So yeah, I thought the way Lecture 5 started was really interesting. We, uh, it was interesting about this episode was that Jill and I, we went, um, to London last year for a conference on, and ironically, it was on, uh, Western civilization. I think, Christian, you were there. Zach, you know I was there. You were there. We had dinner. I think you were there. What I just hit me as I was saying. We were there like the whole time together. Yeah, we hung it. I seem to remember some hulping figure that sat there by. Was it a body card or wasn't Christian? And we had the same reaction every lecture i was like what do they talk
2:18.1	about and you were like this is the greatest thing ever he's like he's like the kid of the candy
2:24.2	and you're like i want to go somewhere and do something fun it was good it was a great conference
2:30.0	well jill and i said an extra few days uh i mean when you're in you know when in rome when in London, when in Europe, you know, you want to, if you're flying over there, it's a, it's a, what, 10-hour flight.
2:39.4	So you're, you know, pack it in a few more days.
2:41.4	I'm the same way, Zach, because we travel, I travel for a living.
	...

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