The Call to Prayer: Deepening Our Relationship with God

Prayer extends beyond mere requests to God - it's about developing a deep, two-way relationship with our Creator. Jesus demonstrated the importance of prayer by regularly withdrawing to commune with the Father, even after significant ministry events. Without consistent prayer, we risk drifting into self-reliance and missing divine guidance. The key to meaningful prayer lies in approaching God authentically, making it our first response rather than last resort, and balancing both speaking and listening in our communication with Him.

Transcript

All right, friends, well, if you happen to have your Bibles with you this morning, I will invite you to open them up to the book of Luke, chapter 11. And we're going to start in verses one through 13. And I have a lot of scripture today. I was telling our small group that meets over here, our Sunday school group. It's going to be a long one today, so get ready.

It's. It's going to be good.

I got told that I need to just hush and sit down multiple times. So what? What do you mean? Why am I getting amens for that, you guys? All right, all right, let's open up.

If you don't have your Bible with you today, you can follow along on the screen, but I want to remind you the best way to get in the Bible is to open up your Bibles. Underline, highlight, find things that you don't understand, and go research. Okay, so here's what the word of the Lord is for us today from the book of Luke. One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray.

Just as John taught his disciples. He said to them, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us, and lead us not into temptation. Then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, let lend me three loaves of bread.

A friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him. And suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me, the door is already locked and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up to give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find. Knock, and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks, finds. And the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about really kind of diving into the Lenten season. We know that the season of Lent is designed for us to prepare ourselves for the work of God through the journey to the cross. Two weeks ago we talked about repentance, and last week we talked about self denial. And if you've not, you know, had those sermons or you didn't hear those sermons, you can always go back and check them out online. But this morning, I think it's really important that we as a church begin to focus on what I think is one of the most often overlooked aspects of the Christian faith.

It's prayer. According to the dictionary, prayer is an address or a petition to God in either word or thought. Often this address contains an earnest request or a wish. And I think that's kind of a lame definition of prayer, don't you? Is there anything you would add to that definition?

Prayer is also an act of worship to the Lord. I would agree with that. Anything else? Gratitude, Conversation. Right.

There's nothing in there about listening for God to speak in return. So to break it down even further, I go to a place quite often called gotquestions.org you guys. You know where that is. It's good stuff. And it speaks about prayer like this.

And I want you to hear this. It says the most basic definition of prayer is talking to God. Prayer is not meditation or passive reflection. It's a direct address to God. It's the communication of the human soul with the Lord who created the soul.

Prayer is the primary way for the believer in Jesus Christ to communicate his or her emotions and desires with God and to fellowship with God. When you think of fellowship, I don't think of me just talking the whole time. Although people who come to my house on Thursday night might disagree. But I think fellowship is often a back and forth. Right.

One of the big, biggest problems with Christianity today is a lack of prayer in our lives. And often I think it's because we just don't make time for prayer. But instead we pray in the leftover moments of our day. Right. We kind of fit prayer in.

And even those moments can be few and far between because we pack our lives so full of noise. If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy to have power, because a prayerless life is a powerless life.

If we want to have a powerful spiritual life, I fully believe that we have to follow the example that Jesus set for us. And he was very intentional to take time to pray. So if we look in the Book of Mark, chapter one, we can find Some opportunities where Jesus goes and spends some time in prayer. The gospels, all throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recount Jesus going to pray alone by himself, repeatedly. Often, not just once throughout all four books, but repeatedly.

As a matter of fact, there are exactly 38 depictions of Jesus in prayer. Now that can be debated whether you, how you define prayer between Jesus and God. But essentially There are about 38 times where we see Jesus going to pray. No matter how you look at it, Jesus considered prayer to be incredibly important, not just in his life, but in our lives. A lot of time when we see Jesus praying, it's after something major has happened in his life.

Either a time of teaching or a time of miraculous healing. Or it might even be something like a time of loss or a time of trial in Jesus life. Jesus offers us a solid example of what a prayer life should look like. And we can see that here in Mark, chapter one. So in Mark 1:29 through 39, Scripture tells us this.

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother in law was in bed with a fever and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. That evening after sunset, the people brought to Jesus all the sick and the demon possessed.

The whole town gathered at the door and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demon speak because they knew who he was. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went to his solitary place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him and when they found him, they exclaimed, everyone is looking for you. Jesus replied, let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages so I can preach there.

That is why I have come. So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out danger demons. Jesus started in the story with a simple act of healing Simon Peter's mother in law. And then word began to spread rapidly. Who came to their front door?

Everybody. The whole town showed up at the front door of the house that they were staying. The lame, the sick, the demon possessed, and Jesus healed them. It doesn't tell us how long Jesus spent healing them, but I bet by the end of the evening he was exhausted. And the weirdest thing, and I always just think that we gloss over this a lot.

As soon as Jesus heals Simon's mother in law, she gets up and waits on them. Like girl Chuck, take some time, rest to recuperate, right? Like, if any of you have a spouse like my spouse, Nicole, who's dealt with pneumonia over like the last 48 months of her life, it is hard to keep her down. She is somebody who loves people and loves to entertain and make sure that people are taken care of. And oftentimes she does that to the detriment of her own health.

Friends, if you are sick and ill, please take time to fully recuperate and heal. Nicole has pneumonia in her right lung right now and is off in Charleston doing work, right? So she is. Just hear me when I say that. Rest, rest, woman.

All right? So the next morning, after everybody in the town is healed, the whole world shifts for these people. Jesus gets up and he goes and spends some time in a solitary place praying. And everybody where did he go? Where is Jesus?

And they finally find him praying. Everyone's looking for you, Jesus, what are you doing out here? Jesus says, alright, it's time. I've been refreshed. It's time for me to get up and let's go preach, right?

If we want to be able to live the life we've been called to, prayer is not optional. Clearly the Son of God needed prayer. And if Jesus needs prayer, how much more do we need prayer, right? If Jesus needed to take some intentional time to reconnect with God, to refresh, to refuel, to fill his spirit, how much more do we as finite, fallible human beings need to spend time with God in prayer? And I want you to hear this, Jesus disciples.

Early on when we read Luke, they didn't say, hey, Jesus, can you teach us how to heal people? They didn't say, jesus, can you teach us all the meanings of all the things in the universe? They said, jesus, can you teach us how to pray? Because the disciples who had already been following Jesus around, they knew how important prayer was. They did this because they knew that there was power in prayer.

All the other aspects of religious life are based on a faithful prayer life. If we want to exemplify the fruits of the spirits in our lives, we have to be people of prayer. Because a prayer life that regularly connects a person to God is the type of prayer life that provides power. Prayer is our direct connection to God. Listen, we don't need a middleman to speak to Jesus for us.

I want to take us back in time. I'm going to go back to the Old Testament here in the middle of the siege of Jerusalem that took place in about the year 586 BCE there was a prophet named Jeremiah and he's locked in the courtyard of the captain of the guard in the royal palace there in Jerusalem. And he's being kept there because the Hebrew king Zedekiah was mad at him. Because Jeremiah never really had anything nice to say to King Zedekiah. He always said things like, Jerusalem is going to be overthrown by the Babylonians.

And the king did not enjoy that. So he had the king of the guards lock him in the gardens.

Jeremiah was there entrapped in the city that was going to be overthrown. And through prayer, God spoke to Jeremiah and told him that even in the midst of this time of terrible trouble, if the people of God seek God instead of wickedness, there will come a time again where the Hebrew people will once again occupy their land and they will buy and sell without or within their own cities again. I want to read this to you. This is in Jeremiah 33, verses 2 and 3. God speaks directly to Jeremiah and scripture records it.

Here, here's what it says. This is what the Lord says. He who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it, the Lord is his name. Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

That is a really great promise.

Prayer isn't just speaking. It's access to divine wisdom, guidance and strength. It was through this prayer and this prayerful connection to God that Jeremiah became a powerful prophet of God. Without a strong and constantly connected prayer life, there would have been no message of hope for the people of Israel. All they would have felt was despair.

Think about it. After the Babylonians came into Jerusalem, they basically destroyed the city. They took all of the important people, all the wealthy, all the smart, the teachers, the scribes, all the people who meant anything in the upper echelon of society. They were spread all throughout the Babylonian empire and the city was left desolate, destroyed.

When we spend time in prayer, God delivers to us words that guide us and in the ways that we should go. Because Jeremiah was faithful, he heard the word of the Lord that promised these people hope. There will be a time when Israel is back together. There will be a time when you will buy and sell property again. There will be a time when the city walls are re erected, when the temple is put back together.

There is hope.

Without listening to God in prayer, all we do is fill our own ears with our own words. We cannot be too busy to stop and listen for the voice of God to speak to.

We have to be careful because I Think if we aren't careful without prayer, we could end up drifting into a false sense of self sufficiency. If we were to be people who draw our spiritual power from prayer, we're called to stay connected to God constantly. Our spiritual lives depend on this connection to God. I'm going to invite you to open to John chapter 15, verses 1 through 8. If you don't have your Bibles, you can follow along on the screen.

Here's what it says. I am the vine and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain in you.

No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I'm the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit apart from me.

You can do nothing if you do not remain in me. You are like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

This is the point in my worship service where I tell you I'm very sad that Erica is not here today because I'm going to tell a story about her. This is one of, I think my favorite scriptures in all the world because it talks about where we get our sustenance from. I know that a lot of you guys here are gardeners who loves to garden, to plant, to prune, to pick fruit and. Yeah, right. Everything we do depends on being connected one thing to another.

Years and years ago, I was serving at a different church and Erica was there with me. For those of you who don't know, Erica is not my wife. She is my admin assistant here at the church. And she is pretty stinking fantastic at most things. Come to find out, she's not really good at helping me plant tomatoes.

So I had about 10 years ago grown the best, most productive tomatoes humanity had ever seen. These plants were about 13ft tall and had hundreds and hundreds of what are called super sweet one hundreds. They're little tiny cherry tomatoes. They're so good. My kids used to go out there every single day and just pick them off and eat them.

Just straight from the branches. Well, that was year one, Year two, Come to find out, some of those tomatoes had fallen on the ground and come up as little tiny tomato saplings. And so I thought to myself, you know what I'll do? I'll grow some of these, I'll sell them and just make all kinds of money, and then I will take some to the church and plant some back behind the church so that we can have some tomatoes on property. I don't know what I was going to do with them.

We were just going to plant some tomatoes at the church. And so I'm gently loaded all these tomato plants into my car. And by the way, at this point in the season, these plants were probably this tall. So they were ready to be planted a while ago. And so I'm taking them out of my car and I'm asking Erica to help me.

Hey, can you come and help me grab these? So I said, listen, we have got to be very, very careful with these because we cannot break them. If we do, we'll have problems. And sure enough, as soon as I get them out of the car and I put them down on the ground, she just grabs them and, you know, walks away. And one of the tallest tomato plants had fallen and broken completely off.

And if you know anything about tomatoes, oftentimes if you break the top branches off, they really struggle to grow fruit. That year, I calmly and rationally talked to Erica, and I didn't. I wasn't dramatic about it at all. And she didn't cry and leave the church after that.

And the point of the story is not that I made Erica cry, but the point is that when the tops of tomato plants are broken off, it can't receive the nutrition that it needs to produce fruit. Everything we need is rooted in the soil of Jesus, Right? Just like those tomato plants. If the top of the plant can't get the. The nutrition, it's not going to bear fruit.

And the same thing is true of us. When we don't remain faithfully connected to Jesus in prayer, we lose our ability to be productive followers of Jesus.

We cannot produce fruit on our own. We need the resources that God offers us through faith in Jesus Christ to make us be the productive people that Christ calls us to be.

Friends. I know that we talk a lot about sin. Well, probably not in this room. We don't talk about it a whole lot. But oftentimes I think that sometimes people think the biggest threat to their spiritual life is sin, but that's not it.

I think it's A false sense that we can do life all by ourselves. If you guys are anything like me, there have been times in your life where prayer is not the first response to hardships or problems. Prayer might be the last thing on your mind. I've always been the kind of person who likes to meet obstacles head on. I like to think through next steps.

I like to plan the future. I like to be prepared for whatever's going to happen. And oftentimes I feel like I can just handle it. And friends, let me tell you, there are times in my life where I have not been able to handle it. There are times in my life where I wasn't.

If I wasn't relying on Jesus to help me through, things could have been very, very different for me.

I often need God's help way more than I think I need God's help.

And in those moments, those are the moments that we need the spiritual sustenance of prayer. Those are the moments where we most need to be connected to God and to Jesus through prayer. The moment we stop praying, we start depending on our own strength. And that is a guaranteed way to fail.

I want everybody to pull out your phones for a second and I want you to just tell me what percentage of battery power you're at right now. 1.

Okay, so phones are fantastic tools when they're charged and ready to go. Hopefully you're on low power mode, bro, because 1% ain't gonna do you much good. Oh, it just died. Okay.

If you think about your phones, it doesn't make any sense to use the phone until your battery is depleted, then you throw your phone away and buy another one. Right. The idea is we're supposed to remain charged with our phone. Like there are ways to plug in and to adapt to the, you know, the phone, whatever, the banks, the power banks. Like, there are ways to maintain your charge for your phone.

And it's the same way I feel about prayer. In our lives, we become spiritually depleted more and more every single day. We have our lives, we have our children. Hallelujah. That empty us quite regularly.

We have our work, we have all the things that we struggle with. And if we are not staying connected to Jesus, our spiritual battery gets drained.

We expect our spiritual life to stay strong, but we often do this without plugging into the source. Prayer isn't an option. It is our power source. If prayer is a source of power, why do so many Christians live like a phone on 1%?

I'm shocked that we had somebody and it's a teenager like you guys are usually pretty good about keeping those phones charged.

Maybe it's because we don't just struggle to pray. We struggle to believe that prayer actually works.

And I think oftentimes we are so focused on just telling God all the things that we want, all the things that we need, that we don't stop and listen. You can't hear God in a life that's too loud. And you can't see God in a world that's too full of distractions. When the noise of the world drowns out the whisper of God and the distractions of life cloud our vision, we miss God's answers and we miss God's presence. To hear God and to see his work, we have to fix our hearts on Jesus.

I used to have a youth pastor when I was younger, when I was growing up, and he used to constantly say this phrase to me, and I hated it. And now, a few years later, I say it myself. If the devil can't get you, he'll get you busy.

And I know that all of us in here today are busy. But we can never be too busy to invest in our spiritual lives. Think about it. We scroll for hours. I got a notification on my phone today.

Do you guys get the Sunday notifications? Your weekend update? Yeah. How much time? Who's got the record?

I'll tell you what mine was. I took a photo of it because it's a little embarrassing. My phone said, wait, that's not it. Last week, I don't want to say this. Last week you averaged 11 hours and 15 minutes a day on this device.

So let me just tell you. I would like to tell you, like. But, guys, the whole time, it was me just learning about scripture on my phone. That would be a lie. But I do spend a lot of time on my phone in the morning.

So it's the first thing I do when I get up is I go to my phone and I pull up BibleGateway.com and I meditate on the scripture of the day. Right now, I struggle falling asleep. And so often my phone is on when I go to sleep. I have an earbud that's in, and I have my brightness all the way down, so I don't disturb Nicole. But oftentimes my phone will go for hours after I've fallen asleep, hoping that's where that 11 hours came in.

But I clearly have an unhealthy relationship with my phone. We scroll for hours and hours, many of us hours every day, so we can't use the excuse. Well, I don't have Time, right? There is no excuse. Our screen time, our updates on Sunday morning prove us wrong.

We have time. If we want to be like Jesus. If we value our faith, we can no longer use that excuse. We have to make time for prayer, and then in that time, we have to be sincere. In the Gospel of Matthew, we have another perspective of the scripture we read earlier about how Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

So in Luke, we call that the Sermon on the plain. In Matthew, we call it the Sermon on the Mount. This comes in Matthew, chapter 6. Jesus is directing his disciples and in turn still tells us that when we pray, we've got to really mean it. So let's read that together.

It's Matthew 6:1 13. Jesus says this. Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others.

Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be done in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Verse 9 says this.

This, then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

We struggle to pray because we often don't feel like our prayers are good enough, right? Many of us in this room have heard evangelists or pastors or Sunday school teachers pray our whole lives. And when we pray, it just doesn't sound like they do when they pray.

Friends, I want to remind you that your prayers are not about right words. It's about having the right heart. So if you read Matthew 6 again, but this time from the message, I think it will help you better understand this. I love it. So here it is.

Matthew 6, 7, 13. It says this. The world is full of so called prayer warriors who are prayer ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, pedaling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense.

This is your father you're dealing with and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, who can pray very. You can pray very simply like this. Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are. I love that.

Set the world right. Do what's best. As above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiving with you and forgiving others.

Keep us safe from ourselves and the devil. You're in charge. You can do anything you want. You're ablaze in beauty. Yes, yes, yes.

We should be the people who pray to God like we're praying to a close friend. We shouldn't be using our 17th century old English to talk to the Lord. Think about this for a minute. When Jimmy gets up early in the morning and he gets ready to go ask his parents to borrow the minivan, which he does drive the minivan. Do you think they'll let him take the minivan if he goes to them and talks to them like this?

Oh, splendid parental figures, Creator and sustainer of the household, mighty providers of food and shelter, bringers of the bacon. I praise thee for thy great stakes that thou hath grilleth a fortnight ago. I thank thee for the allowance that I hath receivedst from thou. I come to you now in supplication, begging for forgiveness for the abuse I have committed on mine sister. And I come to thee now beseeching thee for the use of the family's motor transport vehicle, so that I mayeth goeth outeth on a datith.

If Jimmy showed up to his parents asking like that, first of all, they're going to ask him if he's on drugs. But the problem is we think we have to speak to God like that. Guys, that is. God doesn't want us to pretend to be something we're not. God knows you.

You don't have to use fancy flowery language to talk to God be you. God wants to know you. And God wants you to know him.

When we talk like that, that's not prayer, that's performance. God does not want our these and thous. God wants our hearts.

And if I can tell you anything today that's of value, I want you to hear this. You don't have to pray perfectly. You just have to pray persistently.

I think one of the things that we struggle with is not seeing results of our prayer as people of faith. And when those results don't come, we begin to lose hope. But Scripture pushes us to pray anyway. James chapter 5, 1316 says this. Is anyone among you in trouble?

Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

I'm going to repeat that part.

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Now, to be clear, Scripture doesn't say, pray for a Lamborghini and you've got it right. It doesn't say God will answer you immediately. It doesn't say, and from that moment on, life will be perfect and you'll never have to worry ever again.

But it does say that when we confess our sins and we pray for one another, that we will be healed.

Our prayers are heard, no matter the outcome. And guys, I pray a lot with people in the hospital who are on their deathbed. I have prayed and I've seen miracles happen. And I have prayed and I've seen people lose their battles. And that doesn't mean that God is not answering prayers faithfully.

That means God says, you know what? I have a better plan.

Prayer isn't about getting God to move. It's about getting ourselves into a position to see what God can do.

And we live in a world that's so fast, right? Everything is so fast paced. God is not Amazon Prime. Prayer is not a two day delivery system. It is a lifelong connection.

So when we think about prayer, we can't think of it like we think of downloading our favorite movie or turning on Netflix to see exactly what we want whenever we want it. Prayer is something different. I go on road trips a lot, and every time I go, there's a wonderful radio station I listen to. And I listen to it for as long as I can until I get out of the Tulsa area and then I can hear it. No More, you have a radio station like that in your life where you're driving in your car and then you want to, like, you bump the little knob in your car to try to hear it as long as you possibly can because you love it that much and you listen as long as you can until finally it's just nothing but static anymore.

I hate it when that clear, crystal clear signal becomes muddled with televangelist radio shows or classical music radio stations, or, you know, some of those other, you know, small town radio shows. The only way I can keep receiving this radio station is by streaming it online. And so oftentimes I will connect my phone via Bluetooth to the car and I will stream it online because I love it so much. I want to make sure that I'm connected at the source.

Doing this keeps me from having to deal with the static of not being able to recognize the music and the news that I love.

The same thing happens to us when we go too far or too long without prayer. The relationship that we have with God becomes filled with static. And often it becomes harder and harder for us to hear God's voice.

God, I want to remind you, is always on air. But we're often too far away from God to recognize his daily message for us. Sometimes we aren't listening. When we pray consistently, we learn that God not only listens, but God also speaks. So how do we recognize God's voice?

I'm going to skip a lot here. There's a. I got a lot more, but you guys are going to get hungry. So there's a lot here that I'm going to skip. Actually, I was going to talk a little bit about Elijah.

Hearing God's voice in the wilderness. There's this beautiful moment where Elijah is running for his life. He's running from an evil queen who wants to kill him. Because clearly the God of Israel is true. And this queen had 450 false prophets that she surrounded herself with.

And when Elijah proved that God was real by calling down fire and lighting up an offering, the queen got upset and so she chased Elijah down. And Elijah was running for his life and he felt like he couldn't run anymore and he was about to give up. And he says, God, where are you? In the wilderness. And God says, step outside and I'll show you.

So there's this beautiful sunrise, I'm sure, and the clouds are parting and the sun's coming up and all of a sudden the earth shakes and there's a fire and the wind picks up and it Sounds like it did last week in Oklahoma. And he doesn't see God. And then all of a sudden, he's about to turn around and go back into his cave and end it all. And then God shows up in a still voice. And God says, elijah, why are you here?

I've called you to something bigger than staying in a cave. Go do what I've called you to.

And Elijah realizes that sometimes it's not these big flashy events that God reveals himself in. Sometimes it's when we are still and we are silent and we listen.

When was the last time you were silent?

When was the last time you stopped to intentionally hear God?

I want to remind you that life is tough, but maybe God is preparing us for something greater. Just like as a student prepares for a test with a teacher in the room who stays silent. The teacher has equipped these students to do their best on the quiz. But in these times, sometimes the teacher has to remain silent to show these students what they already know. Sometimes that's like the quiet moments in our lives, the seasons in our lives where we feel like, where is God?

What is happening? Friends, God has equipped you already. God's quiet seasons often precede a time of breakthrough.

If you don't schedule time with God and you just give God your convenient time, it makes a relationship with God really hard. Could you imagine your boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, if you just spent two minutes a day talking, Hey, I love you. Gosh, it's really great to have this house with you and these great kids and this family. See you tomorrow.

Do you think that's going to make a great marriage? Do you think that's going to be a long term relationship that's sustainable for you and your partner?

I want to be very clear. We don't need more time to pray. We need to make time to pray first. Thessalonians, chapter 5:12 through 24 says this. Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you and the Lord and who admonish you.

Hold them in the highest regard, in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive. Encourage the disheartened, help the weak. Be patient with everyone.

Make sure that nobody pays back. Wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else. Rejoice always. Pray what? Oh, thank you, both of you.

Pray what? Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all. Hold on to what is good.

Reject every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. Hallelujah.

Pray continually.

We have to create space for prayer in our lives. It's not a spare tie or something we put on. Prayer for us should be the steering wheel. We have to start our day with God before we let the world in. And we might end our day with God and let God be the last thing we focus on before we close our eyes.

Maybe we find triggers in our lives. Maybe there's something every day that you do that it might be beneficial if that's a trigger for you. Maybe it's every time you boot up your computer or you open up your laptop. You just take a second and you say, lord Jesus, I love you so much. Speak to me.

Maybe it's every time you pick up your phone before you get to TikTok, you say, oh, I need to focus more on Jesus. Jesus, I love you. Be with me now. Right? Even just simple breath prayers are a way to continue a relationship with our God.

What would change in your life and in our world if we all became truly committed to prayer? What would our world look like if we became people who were divinely connected to our creator every day, multiple times a day, do you think that prayer would make a difference in your life? I do. What if prayer became our first response rather than our last resort?

Friends, as we prepare to leave today, may each of us remember that the power of prayer isn't about the words that we say. It's about the God who hears us. God is always ready to listen. We just have to be willing to talk. And more importantly, we have to be like God and be willing to listen, too.

So let's take a second now and let's pray.