HS | "Praying Out Loud" | Zack Jernigan

Date: April 8, 2026
Series: One Off
Passage: Matthew 6
Preacher: Pastor Zack Jernigan

Transcript

Hey, big thank you to our worship team. Thank you guys so much for leading us in worship, pointing us straight to Jesus. Let's give it up for our worship team real quick. Let's give it up for our friends in the production booth as well. We wouldn't be able to hear any of the people up here on stage. Uh, maybe we wouldn't even be able to see them if we didn't have you guys in the back there. Thank you so much. Uh, I'm glad that you guys are here. We're gonna jump into God's word in just a little bit tonight. Tonight's message is called Praying Out Loud and uh I invite you to get out your Bible. Uh get out a copy of God's word if you have one and go to Matthew. It says Matthew 6 right there. Yeah, that's right. We're going to Matthew chapter 6. For a second I was like, it's not Matthew 6. It totally is.

Guys, it's been a day. How many of you guys by show of hands, you've had a day? You feel like, it's a miracle that I'm here. I don't even know how I ended up here. Uh, there's probably a few of you that have had some drama. Anybody had some drama lately? Anybody have car issues? Uh, some of my friends said, hey, I was trying so hard to be on time tonight but then there was a wreck and the traffic was so terrible. Guys, the Tampa Bay traffic is just something else. Uh, but by God's grace we are all here. By God's grace we all get to open God's word and learn together tonight. And we're going to talk about prayer. We're going to talk about what it means to commune with God.

And I want to go ahead and explain to you at least one misunderstanding that I had for a long, long time about prayer. And maybe some of you guys have had this similar misunderstanding. For most of my life, I thought that prayer really only happened in one kind of place, one kind of setting. In my mind, prayer only happened when I was alone. Prayer really only happened, at least it primarily happened, by myself when I was maybe waking up in the morning, doing some morning quiet time devotions. Or maybe if you're like me, I would get into a habit like this before I went to bed. I would say, dear Lord, thank you for giving me a good day. Thank you for helping me to follow ya. Pray you give me a good night. I'd say some sort of like end of the day prayer or beginning of the day prayer. Uh, I might pray, you know, around the dinner table with family. And I might listen to the preacher or Sunday school teacher pray out loud for the group. But in my mind, prayer was really something that happened primarily, maybe even only, by myself. And that's not true. That's only a small part of the picture.

Uh, I do think I looked up to guys, you can read about preachers and famous historical figures like Charles Spurgeon, uh, or um, or other legends of the faith like that who would historically wake up at like 4:30 in the morning to pray. Uh, one guy, I like to read a lot of his writings, is a guy named Leonard Ravenhill. And he would talk all the time about prayer. And he would talk about how you have to prioritize that solitude, time with God in the morning. You have to wake up early, early, early before the rest of the day gets on you. And before all the distractions come your way. And you got to wake up at like 5 a.m. And as a high schooler, I would just be so discouraged. I was like, I don't know that I'm gonna do that. I'm definitely not going to be able to do it every day. Man, I guess I'm just gonna be a lousy, apathetic Christian my whole life. And so honestly, that was, that was a very private thing in my mind. Prayer was something that you did by yourself, maybe in a prayer closet or in your own room. And I think that's only a small piece of the picture.

If I'm totally honest, I actually kind of judged people who were always volunteering to pray in Sunday school or small group. I actually kind of judged people whenever the Sunday school teacher was like, hey, could I have a volunteer to pray? Uh, a volunteer to close us in prayer this morning? If there was one guy or one girl who was like always raising their hand, I was like, okay, we get it. You're very spiritual. Uh, you guys are judging me a little bit. I feel like some of you guys are like, really, Zack? Uh, but that's just where my heart was at. I thought, why do you want everybody to hear you pray? Why do you need other people to recognize you? Uh, why do you feel like you got to be the center of attention? These were wrong thoughts, but they were just honest thoughts. Because I had some misconceptions about prayer. I thought that it was primarily a private thing. But the Bible actually teaches us that it's also a very social thing. Or a very, uh, corporate, you could even say congregational thing. It's something that we do together. It's something that the church has done together for years and years, actually centuries upon centuries.

So I'm gonna talk to us, uh, about prayer tonight. And we're gonna get into Matthew chapter 9... wait... Matthew chapter 6. But like I said, some of us have this misunderstanding that prayer is just this private thing between me and God. And I shouldn't involve other people. I could pray out loud for a group if I wanted to, but it's really just between me and God. And I think that's, that's missing something. When I was judging other people for praying out loud or leading a group of people in prayer, that wasn't humility. That wasn't me just saying, hey, I don't want to be the center of attention, I don't want to be a distraction, I don't want to get puffed up. That was really a blind spot. And I had this idea that prayer was just a private issue. But it's also public. It is personal, but it's also social. And if you never pray alone... rather, I said that wrong. If you only ever pray alone, I think you're missing an essential part of what Jesus intended our prayer life to look like.

So, uh, like I said, we're gonna be in Matthew chapter 6, but I do want to kind of acknowledge something. If you're here for the first time, especially if you'd say that you're not a believer, you're not a Christian, I gotta tell you this is a really special privilege that all of us have to talk to God. To be able to, uh, tell God what we're worried about, what we're anxious about. We can bring our requests to God. And that's an amazing thing. The Bible says that God hears our prayers anytime of day or night, wherever we are in the world, whatever is going on. If we're anxious about something that might seem small, like, uh, we got a B minus on a test and we felt like we should have done better. Or if we're afraid that we're going to lose our home. Or if we're afraid that we're going to lose a loved one because, uh, they're sick. God says we can take all of those requests to him. Yes, you can even pray that the person you're trying to ask out would say yes. God is actually interested in that. He actually hears those prayers. Somebody say amen? Man, somebody's still looking for some faith.

Uh, Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 9 says this. This is so helpful, the way Jesus just explains it to us so clearly. He says, hey, when you pray, pray like this. And this is going to sound familiar to many of you. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive..." Uh, I started to quote the KJV, I'm so sorry. "...as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." This is the word of God. Uh, how many of you guys struggled to not say it out loud with us? Because a lot of times we'll actually pray that together, we'll recite that prayer, uh, as a group. And even if you're not a Christian, even if you haven't grown up in church, you haven't spent very much time in church, I think there's probably a lot of you in the room who are familiar with that verse. You're like, that sounds familiar. Especially that "Our Father, hallowed be your name." It's a famous passage. And even if you didn't grow up in church, you may have heard it. It might be familiar.

But notice, in these verses, there's something very important that I didn't notice until I was an adult, honestly. What you see right here is Jesus didn't just teach his disciples to pray alone. He taught them to pray together. I understand they were asking him, "Hey, how do we pray? What are... how do we pray like you, Jesus? You seem like you really have got this figured out." You seem like you're just a prayer warrior. You seem like this isn't your first time, you seem like a pro. I want to pray like you, Jesus, how do I do that? And he answers their question and he says, okay, when you pray, pray like this. But he says, if you don't mind putting the verses back on the screen for me, he says, pray this: "Our Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And then look at verse 11, he says, "Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors." Notice all of the pronouns that he uses in this prayer are plural. Every single one of these.

And I think very often we imagine that Christianity, that this faith of ours, if you're a Christian, is a private... well, that's between me and God. Yes, there are things that are between you and God. But you're a part of the body of Christ. You're a part of the church. This is not a lone wolf faith. This is not something that you do as a solo mission for the 70 or 80 or maybe 90 years that God gives you on this earth. He's called you to be a part of a body. He's called you to be a part of a household of faith. He's not called you to do this by yourself. And you might be like, but my prayers really? Do I have to do that with people? At some point, yeah, I think you're missing out if you don't. At some point, yeah, I think if you're gonna pray like Jesus commanded us to pray, you've got to every once in a while at least be willing to say, "Our Father," and not only "My Father." You've got to be willing to pray with some of these plural pronouns. And say, "Lord, give us this day our daily bread." Not just, "Lord, give me what I want."

When you pray like this, it honestly helps steer you away from the very selfish, individualistic tendency that most of us have. I don't know about you guys, but most of the time when I start praying, I start with what do I need? What do I want? What is stressing me out? What are the things that I'm anxious about? What are the areas in my life where I need God to come through for me? Maybe it's for my family. Maybe it's also for my kids. But I mean, those are my kids. I'm not praying for somebody else's kids. And so even in that way, it's kind of a little bit self-serving. I'm praying for my son because I love my son and I'm burdened for my son. So even when I pray for family members, sometimes it's kind of, sort of a little bit about me. And so when we come together like me and Mikey and a few of us did in the back of the room, and like several of you guys did tonight in our prayer huddles, we're not just saying, "Lord, solve my problems." We're saying, "Lord, we're begging you and pleading with you to solve our problems." Lord, we're asking you to give us grace.

And so, like I said, in this prayer, the Lord's Prayer, this very famous prayer in Matthew chapter 6, all of these pronouns are plural. So Jesus gives us this template, or this prompt so to speak, to say, hey, when you pray, here's an outline. And I think it's beautiful that we can recite that. How many of you by show of hands, you think if you had to, I'm not going to call on you, don't freak out. How many of you think if you had to, you could recite that verse? Okay, Jacob, do you mind standing up real quick? I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. I'm not going to do that. But you feel like I've heard it before. Jesus is not saying only use these words. He's not saying only structure your sentences exactly like this. He's not saying this is the pre-approved vocabulary for prayers and you can never deviate from this. It's okay to rip it off, so to speak, it's okay to quote scripture, but he's not just saying these are the right words. He's saying these are the right pieces of the puzzle. These are the right elements that you can see in a prayer.

I think there are actually four kinds of prayers that are listed here and we're going to inspect those tonight. I think we're going to see that sometimes we really do just one of those sort of well and we ignore at least two, sometimes three of the other four. But he gives this prompt and he says, here's how you pray. And he says this is something that's not just a private devotional tool, it's a blueprint for the way that the church, or the way that a youth ministry in a church, can pray together. And it can change us as a group, it can change the way that God engages with us. But here's really the problem, I'm going to break this down in just a moment, but let me explain where I think the problem is.

I like sports. How many of you guys like sports by show of hands? What's your sport of choice? If you like to play it, or just watch it, or you follow along. Go ahead and shout it out, just go and tell me. (Audience member: Boxing!) Boxing. Okay, I wasn't ready for that one. What else? What about MMA? Wrestling? This is a violent group of people tonight. You need more prayer, I'm just joking, I'm joking. What about over here, what's your sport? (Audience members shouting) Baseball. Volleyball. Basketball. Basketball. Huh? What did you say? (Audience member: John Cena!) I don't know what you're saying, you keep saying it, I still don't get it.

Hey, I'll be honest. Hey, there are certain sports... There are certain sports, maybe this is you. There are certain sports that you like to play, and there are certain sports that you like to watch. There are certain sports that you like to play AND you like to watch. But there are certain sports that you're like, I can play it, but man, watching it will put me to sleep. I don't know, I'm going to disappoint some of you guys right now. I heard somebody say they're a big baseball fan. Hey, when I need a good nap, I put a baseball game on the TV. Oh yeah, it's just too slow for me. I'm ADHD like some of you here who are having a hard time sitting down, sitting still for five minutes. I cannot watch a baseball game. I'm like, there's, it's so slow, the pace is just, I'm struggling with it. Soccer. I'm going to disappoint some of you. I don't mind playing soccer. I'm not even good at it. I like, but I enjoy playing. Hey, settle down, settle down. Save your rotten tomatoes for something later. I struggle with soccer because you play for what, 90 minutes? Is it 90 minutes, Jacob? The score is like two to one. I like basketball where it could be like 100 to 105. Like that's more my speed. It's a problem with me, it's not a problem with the sport.

But here's the deal. I was watching a little bit of soccer with my son Maverick, and I was literally falling asleep, I couldn't handle it. But I don't mind playing it. And here's the thing. For me, it's not engaging, it's not something that I enjoy, it's not even something that I think is probably very good for me, to watch soccer or baseball or golf. Don't get me started on golf. Hold on. But I think it's healthy, it's a good exercise, and I enjoy and I'm spending time with people when I'm actually participating in it. And there's a lot of followers of Jesus. I think when you come to church, when you come to being a Christian at all, sometimes we come into a space like this, and you're like, "Hey, honestly, this is kind of boring. Hey, honestly, this is not for me." But maybe that's because we have a misunderstanding about what church is supposed to be, and what following Jesus is supposed to be. Because if church is something that you come and sit down and watch and listen and maybe casually pay attention, one guy walking back and forth with a microphone for 30 minutes is a snooze fest, right? And if it's just something that you come and you say, "Okay, I'm watching people on stage, they're singing songs about God and I'm listening, but honestly there are some performing artists that would put on a much better show." If it's something that you're observing, if it's something that you're just watching, that's going to be boring.

But if church, and if Christianity, is something that you are a participant in, that's something completely different. That's something that is something you could give your life to. That's something that is anything but boring. It might be exhausting at times. It might be stressful at times, trying to keep up with all God is doing and all the different things that he's calling us to do. But most people attend church like, "I watch a soccer game, we're expecting to be entertained when the point is actually to participate." And so as we talk about prayer tonight, I don't just want you to imagine that this is like a moment to download more information. I want you to recognize that this is something we get to do every week, and this is something that we can actually be a player on the field in.

And so let's look at Matthew chapter 6. I'll show you just a little bit about what I'm seeing here. There are four different kinds of prayer that I notice in Matthew chapter 6. The first one is this. It's adoration. The first one is adoration. I see that right there in verse 9. I'm gonna be scrolling back and forth because I kept the verses right up there at the top. But in verse 9 he says, hey, pray like this. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." This is huge. Right here, and it's a little bit in verse 10 too when he says, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When he's talking to God, he says, "Our Father, hallowed be your name." Somebody tell me, what does it mean to be hallowed? What does it mean for a name to be hallowed? What does that sentence even mean? Yeah, Chloe, tell me. It's holy, it's like holy. It's not just that though, it's... that's probably the closest thing that we can come to. Anybody else? Anybody else want to tell me?

Hey, in a roundabout way, when we say, "Our Father who's in heaven, hallowed be your name," what we're saying is, "God, we want you to be famous. We want your name to go to every corner of the earth." "We want you to get all the glory and praise. We want the whole world to worship you. We think your name is so holy and beautiful and majestic and great, everyone should be singing your praises. You should be the center of attention for the entire world." And he goes on to say, "Hey, we think your kingdom, your agenda, your plan for this world is the most important thing in the entire world." He says, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God, I'm not concerned just about my agenda, my list of things that I'm interested in. "I'm concerned about your glory, your greatness, and about people worshipping you."

Can I tell you, very often, we pray for our friends who don't know Jesus to accept Christ. By a show of hands, how many of you guys have a friend that you are praying or hoping will accept Jesus one day soon? By a show of hands. Praise God, that's amazing. I think very often though, sometimes we're only even asking God to do that for half of the good reasons. We should pray that our friends come to know Jesus so that they are not separated from God for eternity. So that they have life in his name. So that they can go to heaven one day, so that they don't have to be separated from him in that way, so they don't have to die in their sins. But we should also pray, "God, I pray that you would save my friend, I pray that they would follow you and know you, because then they will get to worship you. Because then they will have an opportunity to give you the praises that you deserved." "Because, God, I want your name to be hallowed. I want your kingdom and your agenda to move forward." So we should pray for our friends to accept Jesus so that they can be saved, but we should also pray for our friends in the whole world to know about Jesus because God deserves to be worshipped. Somebody say amen.

And so, when we pray like this, when we start off with prayers of adoration, God does something incredible. I think I've got some definitions for you on the screen. Uh, prayers of adoration are this: they're accurately acknowledging who God is before we ask him for anything. He says, God, not to sound vain, not like I'm just trying to flatter you, not just like I'm trying to butter you up in a manipulative way, but God, let me start off by telling you how hallowed, how holy, how great, how powerful, majestic, and beautiful your name is. God, I want to start off by just telling you how good you are, how powerful you are, how deserving you are of our worship. God, there's no one in the world like you. You hung the stars in the sky, you put the moon in its place, you knew me and created me and gave me life. God, there's no one in the whole world even close to you. That's adoration. When we say, "God, hallowed be your name," we're saying, "God, we want you to be famous, not us. We're saying, we want you to get the glory, the recognition, the praise, because you deserve it." That's adoration. That's what we see right there in verse 9.

But uh, these aren't necessarily in order, but this makes a nice little acronym that helps us remember this in case you're like, wait, what was the A, what did that stand for? It's ACTS. Uh, and this is not original to me, people have been saying this for a long, long time. But the second one we see is confession. Confession. We see that in verse 12. Uh, it says... confession, the way that we're going to think about it tonight, is publicly owning our sin. It's leveling the playing field together. It's being humble. It's saying, hey, I'm not better than anybody. I'm not more spiritual than anybody here. I'm not more deserving of a relationship with God. Uh, all of us have sinned and I am a part of that all. Look at verse 12. He said, "Forgive us our debts." Forgive us. Not just me, not just Chloe, not just any of us here, but God, forgive us our debts because all of us are deserving of your wrath. But you've forgiven all of us for our sins. You've made all of us right with you. And help us also as we forgive our debtors. That's confession.

And that doesn't mean that every Sunday or every Wednesday when you come to church, you've got to stand up and make a toast like, "Hey, hey, can I have everybody's attention?" "Here's all the 47 ways that I've sinned in the last week since we last saw each other." It's not about self-loathing, but it's about at some level acknowledging, "God, we have sinned. Father, I have broken your laws, I'm not deserving of your grace." "But I am so grateful that you have saved me, that you've given me a relationship with you." It's publicly owning our sin and leveling that playing field. I think very often when we confess publicly, it removes the pressure to perform. When we're able to be honest with one another... and I'll be honest, out of all the four different types of prayer that we're talking about tonight, I think this is the one that we don't really have figured out very well in church. Because when we see each other on Sunday mornings, we say, "Hey, how's it going?" "It's going good." "Hey, good to see you." "Happy Sunday." "He is risen, he is risen indeed." Right? We do, I think there's a little bit of pressure to make sure that we're not too dramatic, we don't want to bother people. I'm not saying that when I see Tolu this upcoming Sunday and I say, "Hey Tolu, how's it going?" When he asks me how's it going, I need to say, "Well, I've sinned in this way and that way and that way, actually, I hate you this morning, Tolu." No, we don't need to do anything like that. I don't hate you, Tolu. But we're saying, "God, I need you."

And when we confess that to one another, we remove the pressure to perform, we can actually be real with one another. When we hear other people confess their sin in a room like this or in a small group of four or five people, it sometimes jogs our memory and helps us say, "Yeah, actually I did that this week too. Wow." "Father, forgive me of that. And that's one more reason that I have to be grateful that you saved me, that you loved me, that you forgave me." Confessing our sin in community, in a space whether it's five people or 150 people, uh, helps us to be a grounded, grateful community.

The third area that I think we see, the third kind of prayer, is thanksgiving. And this is not something that we only do in uh, November uh, when we have a holiday to commemorate it. Thanksgiving is a type of prayer, it's counting specific blessings together, and redirecting our grumbling hearts toward gratitude. It's counting the specific ways that God has blessed us. I talked to a friend not long ago who said, "I'm trying to be more grateful, and I'm trying to be less negative." And so uh, even when we were talking about something that was kind of hard, kind of challenging, they said, "But you know what, that's just one more opportunity for me to grow in patience." And when we talked about something else that was frustrating, they said, "Hey, you know what, that's just one more way for me to practice being a good steward." Uh, and, and, "I don't have a lot of money, but you know, that's, there's a silver lining to that, I am grateful that God's given me this opportunity."

I think when we are exercising this kind of prayer, God does something amazing in our hearts. Look at uh, verse 11 in Matthew 6. "Give us our daily bread." "Give us this day our daily bread." And I think it's interesting, he doesn't say, "When you pray, pray like this: God, give me my month's supply of bread." "Lord, give me my year supply. Give me the annual subscription to all of the food or supplies or needs that I have." He says, "Lord, give us this day our daily bread." He's got this attitude of thanksgiving and saying, "Hey, I don't want to forget how much I need you, God." "I don't want to forget, even for one day, how much you've blessed us, the different ways that you have shown your kindness to us." And so when we pray together, whether in a prayer huddle like we just did tonight, whether you're doing it in your small group, with your family sitting around the dinner table, I think we've got to include these kinds of prayers.

If I'm honest, sometimes we're really good at this. But I want to challenge us, don't only thank God. "Thank you for the house, thank you for my meal, thank you for giving me two parents that love me. Yada, yada, yada." I want you to think about all the different ways that God has blessed you. And this question, when you stop and wonder, "God, why me? Why? How did I become so deserving of these things?" It, that question "why me" either reveals entitlement or humility. Because you can ask that question in two different ways. You can say, "God, why me? Why, why have you cursed me in so many different ways? How could you allow all these terrible things to happen? How could you allow me to get rejected by that school, or rejected by that girl, or rejected by this situation or that situation?" I think you can ask that question with a severe sense of entitlement. But I've met people, maybe you have too, who don't have very many material blessings. They don't have the biggest house, the family's been through a lot, but they're still so grateful. Because they're able to recognize how much worse it could be, they're able to recognize the way that God has blessed them, has preserved their life even in spite of those things.

It might sound like a crazy thing to imagine, but if you are sitting in a hospital with a broken leg and you're in enormous pain because you just got in a car accident, because they just told you, hey, it's gonna be several months before you walk, it might sound odd but it'd be right and fitting for you to slow down and say, "Lord, thank you that I'm still alive." "Lord, I know I've got a broken leg, I know it's going to be six months before I can walk or run at least. But Lord, thank you that I'm still alive, that this wasn't worse." Even if it's more catastrophic than that, even if you say, "I don't know that I'm ever going to walk again," "Lord, thank you that I still have breath in my lungs." You can ask, "God, why me?" Or you can ask, "God, why me? How is it that you've blessed me with this opportunity to continue living and share with others?"

Hey, the fourth thing is this. Uh, the fourth different kind of prayer that I see here is supplication. It's supplication. And you can think about this like petitions or requests. These are the ways that we come to God with our wish list, so to speak. Supplication is asking God for help and stretching our faith together. Again, these are the kinds of prayers that we're talking about tonight doing this together, not just doing this privately. I'm not telling you that you should not pray by yourself, you should. You should also have a time of solitude with God. Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted and to pray. But also, when he went into the Garden of Gethsemane right before he was crucified, he said to Peter, James, and John, "Hey, come with me. Come and pray with me, I need you to lift me up in prayer. I need to do this with you guys, not by myself, because I'm sorrowful to the point of death." Even Jesus, when he was in his darkest moment, said, "I don't want to pray by myself." And he said to his friends, his closest friends, when they started to fall asleep on him, he said, "Listen, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. You've got to keep guard, you've got to keep watch. You've got to pray. We all need to pray."

But these kinds of prayers, supplication, is this is when you are asking God boldly for help. I think there are a lot of Christians, we don't mind praying small prayers that we could easily see answered in our own strength or our own power. But it's a whole another thing to pray bold prayers. It's a whole another thing to say, "God, I'm not just asking you to save my one friend that I go to school with. God, I'm asking you to show your glory and your power and your goodness by saving my entire team." "God, I'm not just asking that you would help my mom or my dad to be a little bit nicer." "God, I'm asking that you would radically transform their hearts. They don't know you, I'm praying that they would come to know you and follow you and believe you. God, I pray that you'd help them to be such a strong believer that they're actually an inspiration to me. That I'm a Christian now and they're not, but I pray God that you would do something so powerful that before long, they're not only saved, they're actually leading me in my faith."

I think sometimes we pray small prayers because we want to be able to give God an out if it doesn't work out. We want to be able to explain it away and be like, "Oh, it's fine, it's okay. God didn't come through in the huge miraculous way that maybe he could have, but I set the bar pretty low for him." Right? But we don't have to do that. We can pray bold prayers that stretch our faith. And sometimes it's really, really helpful to do that with a friend. With a brother or sister in Christ who is able to come alongside us and pray with us. And when we don't have the faith to pray that bold prayer, maybe our friend does. When God answers, or even when God says no, our faith is strengthened together as a family.

And so, in just a moment, we're going to have an opportunity to respond, to reflect tonight. Our worship team is coming in just a moment to lead us in a time of response. But my invitation to you guys tonight is very, very simple. If church or following Jesus in general has been something that you primarily watch or something that you're primarily just observing, that is the least fulfilling way that you could possibly engage with God. I want to encourage you, start doing church. Start being the church. If church is boring, you're probably doing it wrong. If church is boring, it's because there's been a misunderstanding and you have this idea that it's something you come and watch or you come and listen to, maybe nod your head, but then you go home and you give the pastor or the worship leader a fist bump and say, "Hey, good job tonight." Like we're throwing a tip jar to Pastor Edgar or something like that. That's not the idea. We say, "Hey, I got to pray with you. I got to lift up these requests with you. I got to worship God with you. We got to go and make these requests known to God. We got to go and make God's name hallowed. We got to lift up his name and help make him famous."

The goal is not polished performance. You do not have to have a master's degree in theology to pray out loud with your friends. I just want to encourage you guys, over the last nine months since we started those prayer huddles, I've seen God grow and strengthen and mature the faith of this group in incredible ways. Some of you guys remember you were there the first couple weeks that we did a prayer huddle, and everybody was like, "What are we doing? Am I doing it right? There's stuff on the screen. Am I supposed to read it? Is it required?" And we kind of did a lot of this like, "You want to pray? You can. I guess we'll pray together. Okay, here I go." And Luke, Luke just came up and gave us a couple of words, and we were off to the races tonight. I'm so proud of you guys. God has been doing such an amazing work in and through you, and I think one day we're going to get to heaven and we're going to see the ultimate effect of the prayers that have been prayed in this room on Wednesday nights. And we're just getting started.

But that's just a taste. That's just one opportunity that we get for 5 minutes every week to stretch those muscles. There is more that God has for you. So if you have been observing or sitting back a little bit shy, a little bit nervous when we do things like that, I want to encourage you, get in the field. Actually participate. Because it's way more fun and way more fulfilling if church is something that you do and if prayer is something that you are a part of, rather than just listening. In a moment, I'll be right up here up front if you want to pray with me or if you want to pray with a part of our team. We'll be here to receive you, but all of us will have an opportunity to stand and worship.

Heavenly Father, God, I pray that you would help us to grow and continue growing in this area of prayer. God, I pray that you would lead us and guide us, challenge us to follow the pattern of prayer that you showed us in Matthew 6. God, I pray that you'd help us to think not only about our own priorities, our own lists, but God, I pray that we'd be first and foremost concerned with making your name great. God, I pray that you'd shape us and mold us more and more into the image of your son Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.