Speaker 1: Amen, amen.
Speaker 1: We're going to be in Luke, chapter 11.
Speaker 1: Again, family, so good to see you guys.
Speaker 1: We are wrapping up a series entitled Deeper.
Speaker 1: The series is entitled Deeper and here's what we're doing, if you're new.
Speaker 1: We're looking at five rhythms, five decisions that we can make that allow us to grow deeper in our faith.
Speaker 1: And what I want to do is I want to catch up and remind us some of the rhythms we've been talking about, and I want to hear from you, I want to see how well you've been paying attention the last four weeks.
Speaker 1: But before we do, I want to talk about, like why are we talking about this?
Speaker 1: Here can be a reality in our life sometimes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in our spiritual life, we can drift a little bit in our faith.
Speaker 1: In fact, he would be honest enough to say there's been a time or two in my Christian journey where I've drifted If that's you raise up your hand Absolutely so many of us.
Speaker 1: And in those times where we drift, what we can do is we can examine our lives and we can say, hey, are these five rhythms in my life?
Speaker 1: And if they're not, what we can do is we can say, oh, let me reincorporate this into my life and this will allow me to get back on track and go deeper in my faith.
Speaker 1: So, with that in mind, what is one of the first four rhythms that we've talked about?
Speaker 1: And a hint, you can see the icons right there.
Speaker 1: What's that Awesome, that's right.
Speaker 1: Meditating on Scripture.
Speaker 1: Spending time meditating on Scripture?
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 1: In the front row, which I love.
Speaker 1: I love front row.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Some of y'all are allergic to the front row.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1: Meditating on Scripture.
Speaker 1: What's another one we've talked about?
Speaker 1: That's right, aaron.
Speaker 1: Community, having godly community in our life through the church.
Speaker 1: Who we walk with is who we'll be like.
Speaker 1: The importance of having community and real relationships in the church.
Speaker 1: What's the most?
Speaker 1: We've talked about?
Speaker 1: Service.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 1: Service.
Speaker 1: We said Jesus measured greatness not by being served, but by serving other people.
Speaker 1: And then what is the fourth one?
Speaker 1: What is that megaphone?
Speaker 1: Right there it is.
Speaker 1: Somebody tell me, that's right.
Speaker 1: Sharing the gospel, making Jesus known to others.
Speaker 1: You guys paid attention so well, in fact, give yourselves a hand.
Speaker 1: You guys have been.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And I know you guys have just been waiting all week with eager anticipation, wanting to know what is the fifth rhythm.
Speaker 1: Last Sunday, you celebrated because the Kansas City Chiefs lost the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: Wow, let's go 11-15 service.
Speaker 1: Y'all are my people, okay.
Speaker 1: And after you celebrated the loss and threw darts at a picture of Patrick Mahomes, you thought what is the fifth rhythm going to be in the deeper series?
Speaker 1: I have to know.
Speaker 1: Well, after all the anticipation and all the excitement, I'm here to reveal the fifth rhythm, and some of you already know what it is.
Speaker 1: At least you've guessed.
Speaker 1: Here's the fifth rhythm.
Speaker 1: The fifth rhythm is prayer.
Speaker 1: Now, what is prayer?
Speaker 1: What is prayer?
Speaker 1: Very simply, prayer is talking to God.
Speaker 1: Now, before you check out, before you check out and you're like I already know what prayer is, I know this.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's possible that there are powerful realities about prayer that you have not embraced, that are preventing you from experiencing the power of prayer in your life.
Speaker 1: And this is what we're going to do today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the powerful realities of prayer that can allow prayer from going from just something you know about to something you actually live out.
Speaker 1: Now here's what's really interesting about prayer is people tend to pray no matter what they believe, when they go through hard times.
Speaker 1: I have friends that they're not really interested in spiritual things, but when they go through a hard, I have friends that they're not really interested in spiritual things, but when they go through a hard time they'll say something like can you pray for me?
Speaker 1: Like I need prayer.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like God has put something in our hearts that shows us that we need God.
Speaker 1: And it's in those moments when we're out of control, in those moments of vulnerability, in those moments when we don't have the answers, that we are like I need God.
Speaker 1: In fact, that might be what brought some of you here today.
Speaker 1: You might not be a church person, a Jesus person, but you just know there's something out there like you need something.
Speaker 1: And can I just say that is God at work in your heart, because God has put a God-shaped hole in everybody's heart.
Speaker 1: And interesting, the prayer people pray, even that don't even have all types of beliefs.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting to me about prayer is when you think about the apostles that spent three years with Jesus.
Speaker 1: It's only recorded that they asked Jesus to teach them how to do one thing, and it wasn't walk on water.
Speaker 1: If I'm the apostles, I'm saying Jesus, teach me how to walk on water.
Speaker 1: I want to join the walk on water growth group teach me how to walk on water.
Speaker 1: I want to join the walk on water growth group.
Speaker 1: It wasn't teach me how to heal people, it was teach us to pray.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's because the apostles were like me and they struggled with prayer.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was because the apostles saw that prayer was such an integral part of the life of Jesus that they knew that Jesus knew something about prayer that they just didn't have.
Speaker 1: And this prayer life that Jesus had was so centering and so inspiring and so captivating that they said teach me to pray.
Speaker 1: When you look at the life of Jesus, he was always praying.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about this.
Speaker 1: Jesus prayed during the demands of life.
Speaker 1: He prayed before important decisions.
Speaker 1: He prayed during a season of grief.
Speaker 1: He prayed while being busy.
Speaker 1: When I'm busy, I say I'm too busy to pray.
Speaker 1: Jesus said when he was busy, he was too busy not to pray.
Speaker 1: Jesus prayed before significant events and if there was anybody that could have done everything in his own strength, that literally could have been Jesus.
Speaker 1: But he prayed to God, his father, and the disciples in Luke 11 said teach us to pray.
Speaker 1: And he's going to share some powerful realities that I hope that you'll embrace, because my goal today is not just to deliver some sermon, some pep talk, but my goal today is that you will leave this place knowing how you can experience the power of prayer in your life, because it's possible that you can experience the power of prayer in your life, because it's possible that you can experience the power of prayer in your life if you'll embrace these realities.
Speaker 1: So let's learn about them.
Speaker 1: In Luke 11, verse number one, if you're ready for it, would you say amen?
Speaker 1: It says he was praying.
Speaker 1: Anybody want to take a guess who that he is?
Speaker 1: It starts with a J.
Speaker 1: Jesus was praying in a certain place.
Speaker 1: He finished.
Speaker 1: One of his disciples said to him Lord, here it is.
Speaker 1: What are those words?
Speaker 1: Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.
Speaker 1: He's about to teach what's commonly known as the Lord's Prayer, and some of us know the tradition of the Lord's Prayer, but few of us have ever been taught and embraced and understand the power of what Jesus was teaching.
Speaker 1: In the Lord's Prayer he says whenever you pray to them, jesus said this is how you do it.
Speaker 1: Whenever you pray, say here's the word, say Father, now for us.
Speaker 1: We're like yeah, we're familiar with that word in church context and our relationship with God context.
Speaker 1: But to the Jewish listeners here, calling God the Father Father was revolutionary, because Father meant a personal relationship.
Speaker 1: Right, father meant a personal relationship.
Speaker 1: You see, they knew in the Old Testament that they knew that Jesus or God the Father had been called Father in relationship to the nation of Israel, in fact 14 different times, meaning that he was the one that had created the nation of Israel, he was the one that was in charge of the nation of Israel.
Speaker 1: They knew the word father in context, his relationship with the nation.
Speaker 1: But Jesus says no, no, no, it's not about the nation as a whole.
Speaker 1: This is what it's about.
Speaker 1: It's about you having a personal relationship with the father.
Speaker 1: And how do you pray?
Speaker 1: What's the first powerful reality about prayer?
Speaker 1: Is prayers about embracing a relationship.
Speaker 1: Prayer is embracing a relationship.
Speaker 1: Now, for some of us, the idea of calling God Father is hard because of, well, our relationship with our earthly father.
Speaker 1: Maybe that relationship with your earthly father was hard or distant or complicated.
Speaker 1: Can I just say that I empathize with you and can I also say that maybe your earthly father wasn't what he should have been.
Speaker 1: But when you look at your heavenly father, at our heavenly father.
Speaker 1: You see a picture of what your earthly father should have been and what a father should be, should be Loving, caring, compassionate, slow to anger, quick to mercy, unconditionally accepting.
Speaker 1: That's who the Father is.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says, when you pray, you pray based on this relationship, not based on this religious activity.
Speaker 1: Prayer is not about I got these.
Speaker 1: Okay, I need to pray these special prayers in this circumstance, because if I pray this special prayer in this certain way and I got to say all the words, then I'm good.
Speaker 1: No, no, that's not what prayer is.
Speaker 1: Jesus says it is father because you have a relationship with him.
Speaker 1: And the implications of this are incredible Because if he's our father, this means and he's a loving, caring, compassionate father, this means he wants to hear us and this means he wants us to come to him just as we are.
Speaker 1: Some of us have a hard time coming to God because our lives are messy, but the reality is that God wants the real you, messiness and all.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we think, man, if I really bring this before God, if I mean this happened to me or I did this, or I'm going through this right now, I can't truly be open to God.
Speaker 1: Friend, if God is your father, then he wants the real you, messiness and all In the gospel.
Speaker 1: One of the beautiful things of the gospel is that once we put our faith and trust in Jesus, we are God's children, despite how we feel or the junk in our lives.
Speaker 1: This is what Tim Keller says about this.
Speaker 1: If we know we're loved and accepted in spite of our flaws and faults, that makes it far easier to admit our flaws and faults and friends, tattoo that quote on your heart, because if I know that God, the Father, still accepts me in spite of those things, then I can admit those things.
Speaker 1: I don't have to be a self-righteous, pompous religious person or a self-righteous, pompous secular person and say no, no, like I'm good, no, no.
Speaker 1: We can be real with God when we pray.
Speaker 1: We pray calling him Father, based on the relationship he says.
Speaker 1: When you pray, say Father.
Speaker 1: When you pray, say your name be honored as holy.
Speaker 1: What does this mean?
Speaker 1: This means we just acknowledge God's greatness.
Speaker 1: That's all this means is we get an accurate view of God and we say we want to honor you for who you are.
Speaker 1: Now that brings up a question how do we know God?
Speaker 1: How do we know who God is?
Speaker 1: Maybe you watch the movie, or maybe you watch the social media reel, or maybe you watch videos and it's like how do I like know who God is?
Speaker 1: This is how we know who God is.
Speaker 1: We take God's book and we open up God's book.
Speaker 1: We take God's book and we open up God's book and we let God speak for himself about who he is.
Speaker 1: And we specifically read the gospels Matthew, mark, luke and John, because they're biographies about the life of Jesus and what Jesus was is Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God.
Speaker 1: He was the visible image of the invisible God.
Speaker 1: So some of you are wondering like, what is God like?
Speaker 1: Look at Jesus.
Speaker 1: Some of you are wondering what's the character of God, what is Jesus like?
Speaker 1: And watch out for anybody that they say, hey, let me tell you who God is, but make sure you close your Bible first and come here, let me interpret the Bible to you, let me teach you.
Speaker 1: No friend, you can do this for yourself.
Speaker 1: Look at what the scripture says.
Speaker 1: No friend, you can do this for yourself.
Speaker 1: Look at what the scripture says Jesus was the invisible.
Speaker 1: Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God, and we can see God accurately and this is what it causes us to do Lord, we want to honor you because you're holy.
Speaker 1: And then he says something else about this, about prayer.
Speaker 1: There's a last line.
Speaker 1: It's your kingdom come.
Speaker 1: And this one's hard for me.
Speaker 1: Can we all say that those bottom three words together Ready, your kingdom come, your kingdom come.
Speaker 1: You know what this is a prayer for?
Speaker 1: This is a prayer that God's will would be advanced, that God's agenda would move forward.
Speaker 1: How many of you know that God has a plan?
Speaker 1: How many of you know that God has a way that he wants things to go?
Speaker 1: And how many also would admit that sometimes your desires and your plans are different than God's desires and God's plans?
Speaker 1: How many of you are honest enough to say honestly, nate, there's a lot of times where God has some different desires than I have.
Speaker 1: If that's you, would you raise up your hand?
Speaker 1: Me too.
Speaker 1: You know why, because sometimes I'm stubborn.
Speaker 1: You know any stubborn people Don't look around.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I say God, like this is what I want, god, this is what I think is best.
Speaker 1: Because I'm Nate, you know, I've lived on this earth for 35 years.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm really smart.
Speaker 1: And what happens is God's will can come head to head with my will.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says, when it comes to prayer, this is what our prayer should be Lord, I want to advance your will, I want to advance your kingdom.
Speaker 1: Now that brings up a question what is the kingdom of God?
Speaker 1: Here's what the kingdom of God is in short, in a sentence the kingdom of God is God's reign, god's rule and God's ways.
Speaker 1: God's reign, god's rule and God's ways.
Speaker 1: God's reign, god's rule and God's way.
Speaker 1: So you read in the New Testament.
Speaker 1: Jesus would say in this world it's like this, but in the kingdom, what is he saying?
Speaker 1: When God is reigning, this is what it looks like.
Speaker 1: You've heard the Gentiles say this.
Speaker 1: But in God's kingdom, what's he talking about?
Speaker 1: God's ways.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says when we pray, we pray to advance God's ways, we pray to advance God's kingdom.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've learned.
Speaker 1: I've learned that when I do the hard thing, oh, the hard thing of submitting to God's will and God's ways above my ways, even when it's hard and it's really hard and I look back, I can see there were times that God had a plan, that I had no idea what his plan entailed, and when I stepped into submission to him, that he led me here.
Speaker 1: And now I say now I understand why Jesus says when you pray, this is what you do.
Speaker 1: You pray for the advancement of God's agenda.
Speaker 1: And then Jesus gets to verse number three and he starts talking about food.
Speaker 1: How many of you guys like to eat in this room?
Speaker 1: How many of you are hungry?
Speaker 1: Put your hands down, don't get out of here.
Speaker 1: We preaching, okay, I was studying out verse number three and I made a really holy observation in this text Very holy, very deep, very pastoral.
Speaker 1: I mean I was studying everything.
Speaker 1: Notice that Jesus used the word bread Give us each day our daily bread.
Speaker 1: Y'all notice?
Speaker 1: He didn't say give us this day our daily salad, he said.
Speaker 1: He didn't say give us this day our daily kale.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, vegan friends out there, we still love you, he said.
Speaker 1: He said give us this day our daily bread.
Speaker 1: Are there any carb lovers in the house?
Speaker 1: Come on, let's go right.
Speaker 1: Jesus, give us this day our daily bread.
Speaker 1: Now, here's the thing In this time period, bread was part of the daily need, like this was the sustenance for their life.
Speaker 1: And this is what Jesus is telling them.
Speaker 1: He's saying when you, this is what you do.
Speaker 1: Pray for your needs, pray for your needs.
Speaker 1: Can I just say your needs matter.
Speaker 1: Your needs matter to God.
Speaker 1: Pray for your needs.
Speaker 1: Some of you have been told, like my needs don't matter, god doesn't care.
Speaker 1: God does care.
Speaker 1: He says pray for your needs.
Speaker 1: Nothing is off limits.
Speaker 1: Pray what's on your heart, pray.
Speaker 1: Verse 4, he says and pray and forgive us our sins, as we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us.
Speaker 1: Forgive us our sin.
Speaker 1: Why does he pray this?
Speaker 1: Because because, although we are forgiven from the penalty of our sin, the power of our sin can still be in our lives and sin can murky the waters of our fellowship with God.
Speaker 1: So we pray and say Lord, I want to turn from this sin.
Speaker 1: Forgive me for this.
Speaker 1: I want to have all right communion with you and do not bring us into temptation.
Speaker 1: Don't bring us into temptation.
Speaker 1: Help us to overcome temptation.
Speaker 1: So, friend, what are the powerful realities about prayer?
Speaker 1: How do we pray?
Speaker 1: This is what we do.
Speaker 1: We embrace a relationship, we acknowledge God's greatness, we pray to advance God's agenda, we pray for our needs, we confess our sin and we pray to overcome temptation.
Speaker 1: Now, when you look at these things I don't know if you notice anything about this, but there's some things I noticed I noticed that none of these have to do with the posture of our body.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I thought that if you were gonna pray you had to have your hands together or the prayers didn't count.
Speaker 1: Now there was the option you could do fingers up or fingers interlocked.
Speaker 1: That was the two options.
Speaker 1: I also thought that when you prayed you have to close your eyes.
Speaker 1: If you don't close your eyes, them prayers are hitting the ceiling.
Speaker 1: They ain't going up.
Speaker 1: Gotta love that seven-year-old prayer theology.
Speaker 1: But in all of these, if you notice, these have nothing to do with the posture of your body, because prayer is not about the posture of your body, but the posture of your heart.
Speaker 1: Right, the posture of your heart.
Speaker 1: You know what this means that you can pray anytime you want.
Speaker 1: You can pray while you're driving, but please don't close your eyes while you do that.
Speaker 1: You can pray when you wake up in the middle of the night and you gotta go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: You can pray.
Speaker 1: You can pray before you go to bed.
Speaker 1: You can pray in the shower.
Speaker 1: You can pray anytime you want, because prayer is not about the posture of your body.
Speaker 1: Prayer is about the posture of your heart of saying Lord, you're my father.
Speaker 1: So I want to cry out to you.
Speaker 1: And Jesus tells them this is how you pray.
Speaker 1: And then he gives them this powerful story about prayer.
Speaker 1: In the rest of these verses he says this and I want to walk through it with you.
Speaker 1: He says he said to them suppose one of you has a friend, how many of you have a friend in here?
Speaker 1: If you have a friend, raise your hand, you got a friend.
Speaker 1: If you don't have your friend, if you don't have a friend, I'll be your friend.
Speaker 1: All right, suppose one of you has a friend, I'm your friend and he goes to him at midnight.
Speaker 1: So you got a friend that goes to you at midnight and says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me.
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to offer him.
Speaker 1: First century hospitality is a big deal.
Speaker 1: It really matters.
Speaker 1: Also, this is midnight and Taco Bell is not open at midnight In the first century, no fast food places.
Speaker 1: So he comes to him at midnight, if we can put this in 2025 vernacular.
Speaker 1: He has a friend that Calls him or texts him at midnight.
Speaker 1: His friend calls him.
Speaker 1: Then he will answer.
Speaker 1: What's the response going to be?
Speaker 1: He will answer from the inside and say don't bother me, the door is already locked and my children and I have gone to bed.
Speaker 1: I can't get up to give you anything.
Speaker 1: Translation he is not picking up the phone and answering.
Speaker 1: He is not texting him back and answering.
Speaker 1: He is not texting him back.
Speaker 1: He says verse 8, but I tell you, even though he won't get up and give him anything, because he's his friend, yet because of his friend's shameless boldness, he'll get up and give him as much as he needs, verse 9,.
Speaker 1: Jesus says so.
Speaker 1: I say to you ask.
Speaker 1: Jesus says so.
Speaker 1: I say to you ask, ask, ask.
Speaker 1: All of Jesus's teachings on prayer could be summed up in one word guys, ask, so ask, and it will be given to you.
Speaker 1: Seek and you will find.
Speaker 1: Knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds.
Speaker 1: And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Speaker 1: What father among you, if his son asks for a fish?
Speaker 1: Nobody.
Speaker 1: If he asks for an egg, he's going to give him a scorpion.
Speaker 1: If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, to your children, how much more will the heavenly father, give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
Speaker 1: In other stories about prayer, jesus gives a picture of a widow that's persistently asking and asking and asking and asking.
Speaker 1: And the widow receives because she asks.
Speaker 1: Here's what Jesus is saying.
Speaker 1: He's saying this Shameless, consistent prayers make a difference.
Speaker 1: Think about this Earlier in the text, jesus said hey.
Speaker 1: Jesus said God is your father, he's your father.
Speaker 1: Okay, so God's your father.
Speaker 1: So that means you're God's child.
Speaker 1: Think about how shameless kids are when they ask for things.
Speaker 1: Think about how much kids ask for things.
Speaker 1: They don't take no for an answer, do they?
Speaker 1: They ask and they ask and they ask and they just ask like it's like, did you really just ask for that?
Speaker 1: Like, come on, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: That's the picture Jesus gives here.
Speaker 1: And the picture in the story is the reason why the man got the bread is not because his friend was like I, like my friend, but because his friend had the boldness to ask him.
Speaker 1: And what we have to do is we have to be people that are bold enough to pray shamelessly and consistently to God and cry out to him and cry out to him.
Speaker 1: And one way that we can do this is through a spiritual rhythm and I would really call it a discipline called fasting.
Speaker 1: How many of it is?
Speaker 1: If prayer connects you to God, then fasting disconnects you from the world.
Speaker 1: So if prayer is Lord, I'm seeking you.
Speaker 1: What fasting does is fasting says this thing over here.
Speaker 1: I'm going to abstain from this so I can seek after you.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how to formulate it.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily know how to explain it, but in seasons, for me, when I'm fasting, I am more aware of God's presence than other times in my life and I am more aware of God's power and what God can do and how a lot of these other things aren't nearly as important as I think.
Speaker 1: And what?
Speaker 1: Simply, this is what fasting is.
Speaker 1: It's fasting is saying no to something and seeking God about something.
Speaker 1: So this week, as we wrap up our 40 Days of Growing Deeper which about 230 of us are a part of that, which is amazing there's a spiritual assignment of fasting.
Speaker 1: And what fasting is saying?
Speaker 1: It's saying no to something and seeking God about something instead.
Speaker 1: And you can fast for everything, from anything.
Speaker 1: The most popular fast is you guys know, it's food.
Speaker 1: But you can fast from video games.
Speaker 1: You can fast.
Speaker 1: He can't fast for video games, guys From social media, all the rest of us from the news.
Speaker 1: But you can fast from something for a period of time so you can seek God about something.
Speaker 1: Fasting number two it's done for God's direction, intervention or revelation.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're in the midst of something in your life and you're like Lord.
Speaker 1: I need you to reveal something to me about yourself.
Speaker 1: Lord, teach me.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need a health breakthrough, maybe you need a relational breakthrough.
Speaker 1: Fasting is done for that.
Speaker 1: Fasting is done out of a heart of desperation and or submission.
Speaker 1: It's saying, god, I'm submitting this to you.
Speaker 1: When you fast, you pray instead of partaking in what you're fasting from.
Speaker 1: So the regular time that you would spend on video games, instead of doing that, what you would do is you would say I'm gonna pray.
Speaker 1: So if you're fasting from food let's say you fast from lunch on Thursday, from food from lunch, because you're praying for something.
Speaker 1: Instead of taking that 45 minutes and eating on your lunch break which you'll do maybe take a prayer walk and just walk around, listen to worship music, pray for 45 minutes.
Speaker 1: So what it is is it's a rhythm of saying I'm not gonna partake in this, but I'm gonna seek you about this God?
Speaker 1: And again, this is not some like hyper spiritual activity.
Speaker 1: This is not like, oh man, god loves me more because I didn't eat a hamburger at lunch, right, that's not the heart of that, but it's saying Lord, I want to seek after you, and what we want to be as a church is we want to be a church and we want to be individuals of prayer, because if we will be individuals of prayer in a church community of prayer, we will experience the power of prayer.
Speaker 1: We will experience what God can do in our lives and what God can do in our church community through people that pray and guys, we, all of us and my hand goes up.
Speaker 1: First, we have to take steps of growth in the area of prayer.
Speaker 1: We don't just gather here on Sundays because we got nothing better to do.
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you, church is not a very good hobby and I'm a pastor saying that we gather because we want to seek after God, because we want to worship God, because we want to hear the teaching of God's Word, because we want to come together as the church and we want to be people that are praying for each other.
Speaker 1: We want to be people that are seeing the hand of God work in our midst.
Speaker 1: And, by the way, look around you.
Speaker 1: We are seeing the hand of God work in our midst right, like, yeah, let me go get baptized next Sunday.
Speaker 1: But this is only the beginning of what God can do through people that seek after him, and we just have to be humble enough to say, lord, like I want to seek you.
Speaker 1: Some of us think our problem with prayer, our limitation, is that I'm not disciplined enough.
Speaker 1: Discipline is not the enemy of prayer.
Speaker 1: Self-reliance is the enemy of prayer.
Speaker 1: Our problem is not our discipline, our problem is our self-reliance, because we think we can do it without prayer and we're living our Christian life in default of relying on ourselves.
Speaker 1: When God says, no, seek me in prayer.
Speaker 1: Knock and it will be answered.
Speaker 1: Knock and I am here for you.
Speaker 1: Call unto me Jeremiah 33, three, and I will show you great and mighty things that you know not.
Speaker 1: Let me show you what I can do through people, that prayer.
Speaker 1: Let me show you what I can do through people who are humble enough to realize they need me, and I will work in that person's life and I will work in that church community because they know who is the one that does the work.
Speaker 1: And so we got to do guys, as a church I raise my hand first is, as a church community, like we got to get better at this.
Speaker 1: Here's what I mean by that is like when's the last time you asked for somebody to pray for you in this church body?
Speaker 1: When's the last time you went to the prayer of next steps banners after service and was like, hey, can you pray for me?
Speaker 1: I was away for a weekend a couple months ago and I was visiting a church and that church had and I'll use this word, they had this culture of prayer that I hadn't been around before.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times like we pray if, like, we have like a really serious need or something which is important.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the service they had people just like standing around the auditorium and people were just going to them for prayer.
Speaker 1: People were praying for like all kinds of things Like, hey, pray for.
Speaker 1: This week I have a job interview.
Speaker 1: Would you pray for this?
Speaker 1: This week, would you pray for my child?
Speaker 1: They're going through something.
Speaker 1: Hey, would you just pray that God would give me wisdom in my life right here.
Speaker 1: Hey, would you just pray that God would help me to walk in purity this week?
Speaker 1: Hey, would you pray for the?
Speaker 1: It was just like this culture where it was like, wow, people actually prayed here and what's a God, we had that here, that we just be people that just pray.
Speaker 1: After the 845 service this morning we talked about this a little bit and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: After the 845 service, what happened is I looked around the room and literally people were like praying for each other Pastor Cody's praying, people in the back, people at the Next Steps, banners lined up.
Speaker 1: I was praying for somebody and people were praying with people at their seats.
Speaker 1: And here's what can happen, guys If we personally will decide that we'll be people of prayer and we'll take a step to be a community of prayer, we decide that as individuals, we, as a church body, will experience the power of prayer, you can experience the power of prayer in your life.
Speaker 1: So here's my ask and then I'm going to give you some time to reflect on it in your own heart and mind is how can you take a step in your prayer life personally with the Lord?
Speaker 1: And then how can you take a step in your prayer life, with your church family.
Speaker 1: We have this coming Thursday night.
Speaker 1: We have night of prayer and worship.
Speaker 1: Why we just want to cultivate this community of prayer.
Speaker 1: Let's all bow our heads and close our eyes right now.