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Well, good morning, church family. So good to see you. My name is Daniel Savage. I'm one of the pastors here, and we're gonna open the word together. We'll be in Luke chapter 11 this morning. Before we get there, though, let me just encourage you to consider the things that Brian has asked us to think about as we think about making room for people to come and to worship with us, uh, various opportunities to worship in the harbor, to worship on Saturdays, to worship at eight. Um, all we're asking you to do is to take those things and to pray about them and ask the Lord, what would he have you do? Uh my eager expectation and hope uh is that we would embrace this as a missional opportunity as a community, uh, that we would think about what God is doing among us, think how we're supposed to steward this moment, um, and that each one of us would pray about what the Lord would have us do. And so uh I encourage you to do that. We are um continuing our series this morning called More Than a Story, where we're looking at select parables of Jesus. Jesus taught in parables all the time. He uh would teach in these um parables, these stories that he would tell that are easy to understand. They're about things that we're familiar with, things that were very common, and yet he would use them to uh point out some spiritual truth or some spiritual reality. The story that Jesus tells today is about a man who needs bread. Uh, he has a friend come visit him in the middle of the night. He needs bread, he doesn't have it, and so he goes to ask for it. And Jesus tells us this story about going to a friend who's at first reluctant but eventually gives him the bread because he keeps asking for it, and he uses this story to teach us about prayer. The context of the story that Jesus is about to tell, the context for this parable is that as Jesus is praying, he finishes praying, and his disciples come to him and say, Teach us how to pray, the way that John taught his disciples how to pray. And Jesus is happy to teach them about prayer. And these verses that we're going to read, I think Jesus is going to teach them what they should pray, how they should pray, and why they should pray. My uh hope for these this parable and this sermon, this time that we have together is that it would inspire us to pray more. And maybe more importantly, that it would um that it would change the way that we think about prayer, that it would shape our perspective and our approach as we think about how to come to the Lord. Uh, prayer is one of those things that every Christian knows that they should do. And every Christian feels like they should do it more. And so it's easy for a preacher to make everybody in the room feel guilty. Uh, and I could do that. I could really lean into that and try to make you feel super guilty, which might motivate you to pray for a week or two. Uh, but then that guilt would run out, you'd move on to other things. Uh, but really what we need is to be inspired to pray. I think what we need is a vision of prayer that helps us to see the incredible possibilities that are there with prayer and what God is actually inviting us into, that he presents prayer as a relational lifeline, that he presents it as a means of grace or something that's meant to change us as we wrestle with God, as we bring our needs to him over and over again. So let's pray one more time and ask God to help us, and then we're gonna read Luke 11 1 through 13 together. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, would you be with us now? Would you come and help us as we open your word, as we read it together? Um we don't presume to be able to understand the words of an eternal God on our own. We need your help. We need you by your spirit to lead us into all truth. And we believe the promises that you have given in your word, that when your word goes out, it does not return void, that it's sharper than a two-edged sword, and that by your spirit you can apply it to each of our individual hearts, and we pray that you would do that this morning. God, would you come and move in power? We are dependent upon you. Apart from you, we can do nothing. And so we ask you to come. Would you be with us? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Luke 11, starting in verse 1, this is what God's word says. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me, the door is now shut, and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and get you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything, because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? If you're taking notes this morning, the first point is that Jesus teaches us to pray for both his eternal kingdom and our daily needs. Jesus teaches us to pray for both his eternal kingdom and our daily needs. Look back at verse one. It says, Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. So he begins with this word father, and the word is Abba, which would have been a very intimate term that a child would use for a dad. We miss it here because we translate it father, which we think of as really formal, but it's really an intimate address here from a father to or a child to a father. And the Jews at this time were much more accustomed to addressing God with very formal expressions. And so right from the start here, Jesus is setting a totally different tone with this prayer. It's very intimate. He's saying, Father, and then he says, Let your name be hallowed, or hallowed be your name. Or it could be said, let your name be holy. What he means by that is let everyone see or know your holiness. A name in their culture was much more than just an identifier, it was more than what you were called. It was your identity, it was who you were. And so when he says, let your name be hallowed, he's saying, let everyone see who you really are. Let them see your holiness, let them know you and respond to you as you are. And then he says, Your kingdom come. Now that's a three-word sentence. Your kingdom come. But it is the most profound sentence in this prayer. In the longer version in Matthew chapter 6, he says, Let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So in other words, he's asking for the righteous kingdom of God to come into the world and displace the broken kingdom of this world. He's praying that the things on earth would be like things in heaven. Well, what does that mean? What are things like in heaven? Well, things in heaven are perfect. In heaven, God's reign and rule is rightly ordering all things. In heaven, everything is right. In heaven, there is no injustice. There is no hunger. There is no evil. There is no hatred. There is no abuse. And so when he says, your kingdom come, he's praying for the restoration of all God's good creation. He's asking for God's good reign and rule to come and push out the reign and rule of his adversary, the devil. He's asking for every evil thing to be undone and for every injustice to be brought to justice. He's asking for forgiveness and mercy and healing to reign down from heaven to earth. Such a simple prayer, and yet it is incredibly comprehensive. He prays for God's name and God's kingdom to come, which are these huge, global prayers. And then, interestingly, in verse 3, he prays for these intimate, small, personal provisions. Let your kingdom come, let your name be hallowed. And then in verse 3, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who's indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. It's been so encouraging to me as I think about this to think that God doesn't just care about his global kingdom and the glory of his name, although he does care about those things. But amazingly, at the same time, he also cares about whether or not you and I have enough bread this week. About whether or not we can forgive the sins of the people around us, about whether or not our sins are forgiven, about whether or not we might be walking into temptation. So he's concerned about his global kingdom and the advance of that kingdom in all the earth. And he's also concerned about you and what you need each day. Notice that he's telling them to ask for their daily bread. He's teaching them dependence upon the Lord, that they're gonna need him each day. The same with forgiveness, that they would be forgiven, that they would be able to forgive others, and that he would deliver them from temptation. These are daily needs, and he wants them to see themselves as dependent upon God each and every day. So two points of application out of this first section. First, let's pray both global and personal prayers. Let's pray both global and personal prayers. I use this prayer here and the longer version of it in Matthew chapter six to guide my own personal prayers. I use it as a format to run through and guide me as I'm praying through different things. And I learned a long time ago to pray in these concentric circles where I start where it's closest to me, I start in my own heart, and then I work my way out one circle at a time. And it's something like this. I'll pray, um, God, may your kingdom come and may your will be done in my heart as it is in heaven. And what I'm asking for is that my heart would look more like his heart. That I would love the things that he loves, and that I would hate the things that he hates, and that he would push darkness out of my heart, and that he would reveal what is dark with light. And then I expand from there. God, may your kingdom come and may your will be done in my home with my family. I'm asking him to reign and rule over our relationships. That the way that we relate to each other would look like relationships look in heaven, that our priorities would be the same priorities as heaven, that they'd be his priorities. And then I pray, may your kingdom come and may your will be done at Providence Church. May we love the things that you love. May our priorities be your priorities. Would you govern and reign and rule over our relationship so that they would look like they're supposed to look? And then I say, May God, may your kingdom come and may your will be done in Raleigh as it is in heaven. And I pray about things in Raleigh that I see that don't look like the kingdom of God. I pray for people who are hungry. I pray for people who are experiencing injustice. I pray for those who are lost and far from God, hopeless apart from him, and I ask that they would be found, that God would use us as a church to go after them and to share good news that there is a relational God that wants to know them. And then I pray, God, may your kingdom come and may your will be done in our country as it is in heaven. Will you shape our laws in the hearts of our leaders so that they might look more like you? And then I pray for the world, may your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth, in every corner of the earth as it is in heaven. Every unreached people group, every nation that's in distress, every place where people are suffering, God, would you move? Pray for God's kingdom to advance. Name the things that you see in your world that don't look like his kingdom and ask him to change them. Pray both global prayers and personal prayers. Second, let's pray with total dependence. I think that's the other thing that is seen in this prayer that Jesus gives us that we are to pray in total dependence. Don't be deceived into thinking that you don't need God's help this week. You might have food in the pantry at home, but you need him to provide for you. You may feel very secure in your faith right now, but you need him to hold you fast. This is Jesus teaching us what to pray. And then he's going to teach us how to pray, and he uses a parable to do that. If you're taking notes, the next point is Jesus teaches us to pray with bold persistence and expectation. Jesus teaches us to pray with bold persistence and expectation. Look with me at verse five. It says, And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me, the door is now shut, and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. So the story is this that says a man goes to his friend in the middle of the night and he needs some bread. He's had a visitor come in from out of town and he has to be able to put something in front of him because that's good hospitality. And so he goes to his neighbor and says, Friend, I need something from I need some bread, but his neighbor tries to put him off. He says, Listen, I'm in bed with my kids, one room house. If I get up, everybody's gonna have to wake up. I can't give you anything right now. And Jesus says that even though he won't get up and get him anything because he's his friend, because of his impudence or because of his uh his persistence, he will get up and get him whatever he needs. In other words, what he's saying is he doesn't want to get up. He's in his bed, he doesn't want to be disturbed, but his neighbor, the friend, keeps standing at the door and knocking. And eventually the calculus is done. I can either get up and get this guy what he wants, or I can lay here and listen to him knock on the door all night. But apparently he's decided he's not leaving here without bread, and so he gets up and gives him what he needs. So, what is Jesus teaching with this story? Well, he's teaching we're supposed to pray with bold persistence. We're supposed to keep asking, we're supposed to keep coming. The word means that that impudence means forceful persistence. The NIV uh translates it, I think, the best. It says, shameless audacity. It's almost rude. It's aggressive. It's continually coming. It doesn't give up, it's relentless. And the story is meant to communicate a dogged persistence, an almost uncomfortable boldness. Now he goes on to say in verse 9, I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, and knock, and it will be open to you, for anyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Then he he says this because he's he's saying, God is listening to you, God is moving, in case we were tempted to think that his story is meant to communicate that God is reluctant to give us stuff. He's saying, No, that's not true. If you were thinking you have to go to the Lord over and over again because he doesn't like to give us stuff, he doesn't want to move on our behalf, he adds this section here, and he's gonna expand on it in the next section. But what he's saying is, if you seek, you will find. If you ask, you will receive. If you knock, it will be opened to you. God is moving, God is responding, he has promised to answer our prayers. Notice that there are no qualifiers here. That makes people real squirmish. He says, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened. He's teaching us to pray with expectation. That God will move, that God is listening, that he has invited us to come, and he has said, if you pray, I will answer, I will respond. God instructs us to come, not only to come, but to come with forceful persistence. Now think about this for a second. I think this is the thing in the story. So often when Jesus tells a parable, there's some element to the parable that's supposed to be shocking. It's supposed to catch us off guard and it's supposed to make us stop and think, and it's usually in that surprise that God is teaching his biggest lesson. And here is, I think, the biggest surprise that he's talking about this neighbor who would come with shameless audacity, and then he would say, That is how you're supposed to pray. That's shocking. Think about what he's saying. He's saying that you're supposed to go to God, the creator of the universe, who sits enthroned in all power and all glory. And you're supposed to approach that God with shameless audacity. That is shocking. I have been puzzled over that all week, thinking about that is amazing. That he would not only tolerate us coming that way, but he would instruct us to come that way. Think about how we approach people with authority and power here on earth. You make an appointment, you come lowly and groveling, you ask for something, and you don't ask too boldly, you ask one time, and that's it. Think about Esther that we just studied, that she came to the king, she didn't even know she would live. And yet the creator of the universe, who has all power and all authority, says, I want you to come with boldness. I want you to fly into my presence. And I want you to do it over and over again. In fact, in Luke chapter 18, he tells this story of the widow seeking justice from the unjust judge. And the story there, the point of the story is that she keeps coming. And even though this judge is unrighteous, doesn't care about her, doesn't care about God, eventually he grants her justice because she finally wears him out. He says, Because of your continual coming, I will grant you justice. In other words, he said, if you just stop coming to my courtroom, you can have whatever you want. And he says, That's how you should pray. That's amazing. That God, in all of his glory and power, would invite us to come that way, and it should force us to ask the question, why does he do that? Why does he want us to come in this manner? Why does he design prayer to work this way? Is it because he has such a long to-do list that he can't keep track of the things that we've asked him to do? He forgets, and so we have to remind him over and over again. Or is it because his email inbox is full, and so if you want him to read your message, you gotta keep it at the top. No, that's not why. God doesn't need any help remembering what you need. In fact, the Bible teaches us that he knows what you need before you ask him. So, why does he design it to work this way? He designed prayer to work this way for us, not for him. He wants us to labor in prayer. He wants us to wrestle with the things that we're asking for. He wants us to seek him. He wants us to go to his word and pray over our concerns and our desires and give him a chance to shape our hearts and our thinking. He wants us to see prayer as this relational thing that's happening. See, too often we see prayer as totally transactional. It's like a window we go to to make an order. We show up to the window and we make an order, we ask God for what we want, and then we either get it or we don't. It's black or white, it's yes or no. And we walk away, and sometimes we're like, oh, I got what I asked for. And other times we're like, well, man, I wonder why he didn't fulfill my order. I put it in the ticket. I wrote down exactly what I wanted. We see prayer as this yes or no, this simple transaction, and he's saying prayer is so much more than that. Prayer is not transactional, it's transformative. And God is transforming our circumstances, but he's also transforming our hearts. And so he tells us to come continually and to come believing that he is moving, whether we can see it or not. That's the first application. Let's pray in faith and believe he hears us before we see any evidence. Let's pray in faith and believe he hears us before we see any evidence. You see, I think this is one of our biggest problems with prayer. Because we see it in this transactional way, because we see it as a yes or no, that he's either going to fulfill my order or he's not. We get quickly discouraged because we ask for things and he doesn't do exactly what we've asked for, and so we get discouraged. Think about how long you persevere when you're praying for something. Depends on how important it is to me. Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's a week. Maybe I could pray for something for a year, maybe a couple years, if it will continue to burden me, but I get quickly discouraged when I don't see anything happening. I give up too quickly. And I think some of that's because of our microwave expectations that we live in an on-demand world where things are supposed to happen right away, and if I don't see any movement right now, well then I just give up. But think about what Jesus says here: ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. He's telling us that if we are praying, God is listening and God is moving. You see, I think one of our biggest problems in prayer is our perspective on timing. That we think if something isn't happening this week, it's not happening. But what he's saying here is that if you ask, you will receive. The problem is we rarely receive it when we ask. Sometimes we have to wait, sometimes he's moving, sometimes there's a process it's hard for us to see, but what he's saying is to pray in faith and entrust ourselves and our circumstances to him over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year, sometimes decade after decade. Which leads to the second application, which is let's labor in prayer without forcing our timelines on an eternally wise God. Let's labor in prayer without forcing our timelines on an eternally wise God. Think about this. Remember that God is eternal. That is so hard for us to comprehend. Everyone in this room is finite. You have you were born and you're moving towards a day when you will not live any longer. You're on a clock and we all feel it. Time is passing away, and we feel that. As you get older, you feel it more and more. Your perspective on time changes. You see how quickly it's going by, and so we're always in a hurry, but God is never in a hurry because God doesn't have the same clock. He is not bothered by the passing of time. And these stories are inviting us to approach prayer differently. Instead of praying about something one time or for a week and then getting discouraged, God's telling us to endure in prayer and trust that he is working, even though he may be working at a pace that you cannot see. And so when you're praying for your son or your daughter, or you're praying for this relationship, or you're praying for this thing to happen, or you're praying about this burden that you're carrying in your heart, keep praying. Trusting that God is listening and He is moving, whether you see it or not. That's what He's inviting us to do here. He's inviting us to pray in faith with shameless audacity to continue to come and come again and come a second time and a third time and a hundredth time. And my hope is that this fundamentally changes our approach to prayer. I'm hoping that we will begin to approach prayer as a relational interaction instead of like a vending machine. That we would bring our ideas to God, that we would bring our needs, our burdens, our hopes, our dreams, and that we would ask him to speak into them, to shape them. Ask him to move in you and through you. And then plan to come back the next day and give him another chance to do the same thing. See prayer as transformative. That when you pray, things are changing. You are changing, your circumstances are changing, even if you can't see it. He teaches us what to pray, he teaches us how to pray. Finally, he teaches us why we should pray. The last point this morning, if you're taking notes. Jesus teaches us to pray, believing God is a good father. Jesus teaches us to pray, believing God is a good father. Verse 11 says, What father among you, if his son asks him for a fish, will instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Jesus appeals to the natural order of things. He's telling them to observe what they have seen. He invites us to look around and observe the natural instincts of the people that he has made in his own image. He's saying, Isn't it true that fathers are naturally inclined to give good things to their children? There's an instinct in fathers to give their children good things. Some fathers resist that instinct or are overwhelmed by other instincts or distractions that keep from them from carrying out that instinct, but the instinct is there. Most fathers want to give their kids good things, whether they're able to or not. And so he argues from the lesser to the greater. He says, if you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Jesus is reminding us here that our Heavenly Father is perfect. You and I are evil in comparison. We are imperfect, self-centered, irritable, short-sighted. Our Heavenly Father is none of those things. He's perfect. He's perfect in patience, goodness, kindness, and wisdom. So do you think of your Heavenly Father in this way? As a perfect father. If you have a good Father here on earth, he is everything that your father is and more. He is that good father with none of the flaws and weaknesses. And if you have a father that has not been good, he's everything that your father is not. He is a father who gives every good gift. In particular, it says that he gives the Holy Spirit. Now, why does he name the Holy Spirit as the good gift? It's surprising. He's talking about praying about all these things and praying about our needs, and then he says, if you ask him, he will give you the Holy Spirit. But why does he name the Holy Spirit? Is that the only thing that we're supposed to ask for? No. But it is the best thing we could ask for. And if he will give us the Spirit, what will he not give us? He gives us His Spirit to strengthen us, to guide us, and to remind us of His presence and his goodness. He is the best of gifts that the Father gives to us. So, two applications as we wrap up this morning. One, let's pray because God is our Father. Let's pray because God is our Father. Take time to study the fatherhood of God. J.I. Packer wrote a book called Knowing God, great theologian. He says, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one's holy father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. Understanding God as our father is foundational to our understanding of God. It puts so many things into perspective, especially prayer. Think about this: God created fatherhood to teach us about himself. He didn't look down on the world and say, hey, you know what? Fathers, they're pretty cool. Maybe I could relate myself to them and kind of teach them something about myself. No, when he designed the world and designed all of human existence, he designed fatherhood because he wanted to teach us something about himself. He put these fatherly instincts in us to teach us how he feels about us. I've said this before, but I learned more about God in my first few years of being a dad than I learned in any other season of my life. I can remember those early years of being a dad and looking at my kids and almost being amazed at how I felt about them. Almost puzzled. How could I feel this way about these kids that I have known so little time? I had these instincts in me that I just wanted to do them nothing but good. I wanted them to have everything that they needed. I wanted to protect them. I wanted to help them in any way that I could. And I would think about them and think there's nothing I can imagine not being willing to sacrifice for them. There's no sacrifice I wouldn't make, and I would just think about that. Like, why do I feel that way? Where does that come from? It's not because I'm some sort of super dad. Nearly every dad in the room feels the same way. So where does that come from? It's an instinct that God put in our hearts to teach us about how he feels about us. He wanted us to know how his love compels us or compels him toward us. Jesus is saying that this understanding of God as our Father should change the way that we pray. It should make us shameless in our approach. Tim Keller once said in a sermon, it's probably the most famous thing Tim Keller ever said. He said, The only person who dares wake up a king at 3 a.m. for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access to God. It's shameless audacity. This boldness to come into his presence and never be apologetic about it. To know that he delights in our coming, that he's invited us to come, that he's instructed us to come, that he wants us to come. If you're not a Christian, then consider what it would be like to call God your father. That's what's offered in the gospel. That's what it means to be a Christian. It means to have been adopted by God and brought into his family. See, God saw that we were separated from him because of our sin. And we could not relate to him as a father the way that we were designed to do. And so he sent Jesus to rescue us from our sin. Jesus took on flesh and humbled himself and lived the life that you and I were supposed to live. Perfect, sinless life. And he did that in our place. And then he died the death that you and I were supposed to die, the one that we deserve to die. But on the third day, Jesus was raised from the dead to show that he was victorious over sin and death. And he invites us to put our trust in him. And when we do that, the Bible says that this exchange happens, that my sin is removed from me as far as the east is from the west, and it's placed on Jesus. And his perfect record of righteousness is then given to me in exchange. It's the best exchange that's ever happened in history. My sin for his righteousness, and I'm clothed in that righteousness, which is what allows me to now relate to God my Father, the way that I was created to relate to him. So that I can come into his presence with shameless audacity, because I have a perfect record. If you're not a Christian, I would invite you to put your trust in Jesus Christ. There's only one way to know God as Father, and it's through the sacrifice of Jesus, to make him Lord of your life and to confess him as your Savior. Put your trust in him. And if you've done that, if you're putting your trust in him today, or if you've trusted in him recently, I would encourage you to get baptized, to make a public profession of that faith. In just a few weeks, we're going to have baptism here in the service, and we rejoice with those who tell us publicly that they've put their faith in Jesus Christ. You can go to pray.orgslash baptism and sign up. And in just a couple weeks, celebrate with us, your church family, that you've put your trust in Jesus. If you are a Christian, let me give you one last application, which sort of sums up all of them. It's let's pray audacious prayers. Let's pray audacious prayers. I've been thinking all week, what does that mean? What does that really look like? And I think it means smashing all these things together. It means praying big global prayers, asking God to remove evil, asking God to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, asking God to ease suffering. And it means being audacious with our own needs. And yet that's what he's told us he does. That we would bring him over and over again and that we would do so by faith, believing that if we are asking, we will receive. If we are seeking, we will find. If we're knocking, then he is opening doors even before we can see it. And so we should pray and continue to pray. I would encourage you to pray alone, pray by yourself, build habits of prayer, get a prayer journal, make a prayer list, pray through Psalms. I had someone after after the last service come and say, I pray, I try to pray every day, but I find myself praying the same things over and over again, and it just gets rote and repetitive, and I don't know what to do. And I said, Listen, I understand, I have a list that I pray through, but another thing that I do is I pray through a different psalm every morning. I just pray through the psalm. I read one verse of the psalm and then I just respond to the Lord. I meditate on that verse for a minute and then I move on to the next verse and I pray about that verse. I make my way through the Psalms, it brings variety, helps me to pray about things that I wouldn't normally think of. And it allows God to speak to me as I'm speaking to Him. So form habits of prayer. Pray alone, but also we have to pray together. If we're gonna pray with this sort of dogged persistence, we have to do so as a church family. That's why we once a month we gather for a prayer and worship night. Mark your calendars, make it a priority. Be here to pray with us. We pray and we sing. That's all we do. Pray and sing, pray and sing. We do it together. Pray in our prayer and worship nights, you can pray in the upper room. Our church has a decades old intercessory prayer ministry called the upper room. There's a room over that direction in the prayer suite where people come all week long and pray for an hour. Individuals come for one hour at a time. There's over a hundred people who will come next week and pray for one hour in the upper room. I would encourage you to think about joining them. It's from early in the morning till late at night. I'm sure you can find a spot, but my dream is that we would have to go from one room to two because there's just too many people who want to come and pray. One of my personal convictions is that we as a church see so much fruit and see God using us in so many different ways because we are committed to pray. We're committed to ask him. Ask him to move. They come and they pray for you and me and they pray for these services. Another way you can pray is we have these pre-service prayer meetings. This is relatively new. We started with just a couple of people, but now that group has grown to five, six, seven people on a Sunday morning. We pray over in the prayer suite. We pray at 7.30 on Sunday mornings, we pray at 3.30 on Saturday afternoons. And I told them this morning that I was going to invite a few thousand people to our meeting next week. It would thrill me if we have to change rooms because too many people show up to pray. Come and pray. We pray for the services, we pray for all of you, we pray that God would move with power, that he would set people free from sin. That he would heal people who are broken. That he would move among us. Pray with your life group, pray with your family. Keep praying. Don't stop asking. Don't stop seeking. Don't stop knocking. Let's pray and then let's sing. Heavenly Father, would you be with us this morning as we respond in song? I pray that you would seal these truths in our heart. God, help us to think about prayer the way that you want us to and see the invitation that you've given us. God, would you fill us with faith to believe that when we are asking, you are moving. That if we seek, we will find. And if we knock, doors will be opened. Would you build in us a love for the things that you love? And would you help us to think the way that you think? Would you give us endurance? To pray with dogged persistence. To believe that you hear us. And to never give up. We love you. We pray that you would move in us and through us. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.