[SERMON] The Power of Prayer | Pray More, Worry Less 3

In this episode, we continue our series on overcoming anxiety by exploring the timeless wisdom found in scripture. Drawing from Paul’s letter to the Philippians and Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, we discuss the difference between worry and prayer, why anxiety pulls us apart, and how a daily prayer life can transform our hearts and minds. With relatable stories, practical steps, and encouragement for every generation, this message invites you to leave tomorrow’s troubles in tomorrow and discover the peace that comes from trusting God today. Whether you’re struggling with daily worries or seeking a deeper spiritual practice, this episode offers hope, humor, and a path toward lasting peace.

Transcript

 But we've been in this series, uh, about really anxiety, uh, talking about how to walk through anxiety. And we, we've been spending a good number of weeks in here. We spent, this is our third week. We're gonna do one more week because ultimately this was an easy thing to fix, we could have done in one week and moved on.

But the truth is it's not, it's not. And the reason we know it's not is they've been talking about this for thousands of years in the Bible, and still we as followers of God. It's messed it up and we struggle with it. And so in this series, pray More where he left. We've been going into, uh, a moment in time where Paul is in prison, but he is writing a letter to the Church of Philippi.

And Philippi was, uh, a bustling ancient city where Roman veteran settled and it was very Roman City. And so Paul is writing a letter to the church that's there. In this thoroughfare of people, you would, you, you wanna start a business where people go, you want to have to plan a church. People go, so then the church grows and it'll go out wherever people travel from that place.

And so there was a church in Philippi. Paul was writing a letter to them, encouraging them. And in the letter he says in Philippians four, this passage we've been talking about. And remember, the yellow part is yours. It says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything with prayer and supplication, that's request.

Uh, with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And we've been talking about the difference between worry and prayer. And when we talk about worry and scripture, worry is, is anxiety.

That's what it is. And there's a Greek word that's translated in this passage as worry, but it's anxiety is what the word is. It's to be pulled apart. In different directions. And when we look at this scripture, it's be pulled apart in our heart and pulled apart in our mind in different directions. And there was a duality of existence for the ancient Romans, and they believe you were heart and mind.

That's kind of where the seed of your actions and your behavior and attitude and thoughts all were. And so when you were anxious, it's as if you were being pulled apart at the core from inside out. And so people who experience anxiety, they, they know being pulled apart at the court. And studies have showed, and we've been talking about different, uh, studies and have scientists look at anxiety.

Studies have showed that, uh, mo most people have three to four testable worries each day, which means over time you can test it to see if that worry became, uh, was true or was a false worry. That's what we have. Who, uh, and so 91% of those testable worries were false alarms. They were false. We worry about things that don't come true, that don't happen, and probably many of you that happens.

Um, such as if I were to text you and say, let's go to coffee, that you're gonna worry about, I'm in trouble, right? Or what does Kyle want from me? And I might just literally be wanting a cup of coffee, which is what 91% of the time I'm asking people is just, let's go to coffee. I want to get to know you and connect, because I know people are always terrified of that conversation, right?

What does this mean? I usually will say. Let's go to coffee. I want to talk to you about something if it's a problem, right? But people worry. Um, this is like one of those, you know, get a phone call and you miss a call from somebody, and then you start wondering, why are they calling me? They never call me.

Right? Something must be wrong, right? What did I do? Right? Anybody have ever have that? And you're like, and then you call me, you're like, oh, I just, like, I was thinking about you and the song came on the radio, or I saw this and maybe think of you and just wanted to say, hey, and like, oh, okay, that was nothing, but you spent your whole day worrying about it, right?

Or when someone comes over, uh, we had like four deliveries in the mail the other day. And every time the the dog goes nuts, pat's like, someone must be here. Right? I'm like, why are we worried about it? If someone's here, it's probably UPS or DHL. We even know they're coming and we're like, oh no, there's someone outside.

Right? It's like my neighbor. We have an elderly neighbor, I think he's his nineties and he sometimes walks down the river behind our house maybe like twice a year, and it's like every time it's like there's a stalker out back, walking down the river, hide. And, uh, worried about this. I'm like, that is the neighbor.

He comes like once a year and every time he comes up and asks permission to come back, and then we don't see him for a year. And so that's how people, that's our lives, right? We have these worries and when we test 'em, they're often just false alarms. Last night I had three to four testament worries during each drive of the Michigan game.

They were all true though, so yeah, they were all true. Um, we are struggling. Oh yeah, they were testable and true. We need a new offensive coordinator. Um, but I mean, I'm being silly, but these are real things in our life, and so ultimately we have to recognize that worry is a big part of our life. And Jesus actually spoke to this.

Paul's writing a letter to the Philippians, not because he's like, well, I think I should help people to worry for 1500, 2000 years before all of this. The Bible talked us about worry, anxiety, the Old Testament. And Jesus actually in his most famous sermon, talked about anxiety and worry. He's preaching to 15, 20,000 people on a hillside preaching the Sermon on the Mount, which is the most famous sermon, sermon ever given.

Jesus preached a sermon that we have recorded in scripture and there was tons of content. 'cause he preached for a long time. I can get 30 minutes. People start leaving. Jesus could preach, you know, for a day and people would stay. This is the way it works. So Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus is actually talking.

So what we're do see in scripture is that Paul's actually, and Peter, when they're writing these letters in the New Testament, they're actually building upon what Jesus taught. And we see in Matthew six, in Jesus' sermons, his sermons from like Matthew five to Matthew seven. And so during Matthew six, it's kinda like in the middle of his sermon, uh, or towards, towards, you know, about 60% of his sermon that we have recorded.

He says this, therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you'll wear. Is not life more than food in the body, more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life. Now, I don't know about you. Have you ever added a single hour to your life? By worry. Has it ever made, has worry ever made your life better? Anyone be like, yeah, I love worry. It makes my my, it's my best part of my day is worry.

Um, it doesn't add any hours to your life. And so some of you are who are, who here are the people that at least once a day you're like, what's for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? You like ask No. What's, what's for lunch today? Anybody? You like worry all day long about what you're eating and when you're eating next?

There's a few of you who's married to those people. Alright? Okay. Yeah. Some of you are, I'm not gonna admit to it, but like, yep. It's you. Um, or who has those children, right? Anybody have those kids? I got asked yesterday like. What's, what's for, what's for lunch? I mean, at like 12 o'clock. What's for lunch?

Well, you can make lunch. What about pizza? And pizza was a great idea. We called, uh, little Pepe's, which is never open. And so they, if you're from Somerset area, you know, like Liam, uh, they weren't open. So we ended up with Jet's Pizza and for dinner it ended up good. But like, that's like our regular conversation in our house.

What's for dinner? Like? What's dinner? This is a big problem. Like what's for dinner? Um, and we worry about all the time, but, but Jesus is saying those things you shouldn't be worrying about. Shouldn't be worried about what you're gonna eat or drink. You shouldn't be worried about what you're gonna wear.

You shouldn't be worried about those kind of things. Like now obviously I obviously worry about what I wear 'cause I want something to match my pink shoes. I find excuses to wear these. Uh, these were clearance sell shoes. Uh, I love 'em. I'm very proud of the clearance. Sell shoes. My wife says there's a reason to clearance sell shoes, but we disagree.

We disagree, but. We, we, we worry about stuff that doesn't matter. We live in the most prosperous nation in the world, and I know that politics aside, we really do. I've been all over the world. I've been to Haiti and some of the worst places in the world. Guess what? In Haiti, they still eat. They still have food.

They still have clothes, even though they have nothing. They don't have employment, they don't have jobs, they don't have resources. What all that stuff, they've got war, all this. They still manage to have that stuff, just not the level that which we want. But it still happened. Us because God still provides for us even in the worst of situations and even the best of situations.

So if, if it happens all over the world, it can happen for us. It can happen for us. But we worry about it. We go to the fridge all day long. Worry about like what's in there, when we should be worrying about other things. How are we getting as close to God as we can? Do we love people more closely? That should be our focus.

Not worrying we what we need to do. Jesus is essentially saying, people stop worrying about stuff. Stop worrying about stuff because worry, it borrows tomorrow's trouble by spending today's peace. That's what it does. Peace is a currency essentially. And you, when you have worry, you basically pay with the currency of peace.

And so when you're worrying about tomorrow's troubles, you're just paying out today's peace. When today's peace should be focused on giving you peace into the storms of today, the struggles of today for many of us, we worry so much about the things that could happen. How about this? How about when your kids get in the car and they take a trip, are you worried the whole time about them getting there safely or getting in an accident?

Anybody like that? And your kids are 30, right? Right. So, and now I know, I know my mom's watching, but like my mom wants me to call her no matter where I am in the world, I, I land, like I'm flying a plane to Italy at 10 o'clock at night and I land in like another country at like 4:00 AM. Make sure you call me when you get there, right?

What are you gonna do Right about it. If I don't, is that gonna like, how are you gonna help me? But like, she's still doing that. I'm 46, like, but it's a worry. We're worried about things that really we can't control. We can't change the outcome, and we get so lost and worry. That was me yesterday. Like I was worried about the whole game.

I can't change the outcome. Can't change the outcome at all. But we're borrowing tomorrow's trouble. But spend today's piece, like for me, I'm thinking there's been times where Michigan football like would, if they lost, would ruin my whole weekend, would ruin my whole week and ruin my whole fall. Like especially right after I got done playing football at Michigan those few years after I really struggled with it.

To a point I like had to stop watching. During the rich rod era, right? So I had to, because it would steal my peace, because then I'd be thinking, oh man, what's gonna happen down the road if we can't beat this team? We're not gonna beat this team. What about this team? Well, what about we're not gonna be to Ohio State?

That's gonna be awful. Then I'm living in Ohio. It's terrible, and I'm worried about tomorrow's worries. And finally, I just had to say, I disconnect from that. Tomorrow's troubles. Tomorrow's troubles. I need to focus on today's peace. I'm at peace today that they lost. It's fine. I, I have grown right? Wisdom, wisdom.

Tomorrow's troubles or tomorrow's troubles, I'll worry about that next Saturday. So, but ultimately we have to figure out that Jesus is telling us this and Paul's telling us this stuff for a reason. He continues on in, in His, in his sermon, Jesus says, and why do we worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow.

They do not labor or spin yet, I tell you that even. Solomon Solomon. Now Solomon was the wisest man, every one, a double portion of of wisdom, and he ended up becoming like the richest man ever to be. Obviously you're wise enough to be rich and all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown to the fire, will he not much more cloth you.

You have little faith. Jesus is saying if this is good enough for Solomon. Like that. I'm gonna care for him and take care of him. Provide him. Just trust me and watch what I'll do for you. I'll take care of you and give you what you need, not what you want. That's the problem. We often just want what we want.

We're not happy with just what we need. That's why we have credit cards, right? Anybody got a wallet or a purse full of credit cards, right? Nope. Anybody have wallet purse, full of credit cards? Because you know what credit is? It's buying stuff that I want, not really what I need. Because if I bought what I need, I'd have the money to pay for it, right?

So credit cards are literally stealing tomorrow's worries and making them into today's, because how am I gonna pay for this, right? Stealing our piece. You only spending real currency. You're spending, well, somebody's currency, not yours, obviously, but you're spinning the currency of piece. And so what we need to understand when Jesus is, is speaking, he's saying, my Father, God, he'll take care of your needs.

God will take care of your needs. He will, and give you what you need, not what you want. That's the problem. All of us could live in a whole lot less. Truthfully. Truthfully, we could, but we have once. Lots of them, and those once cause us to worry. Because we want to keep up with the Jones. We wanna have the nice stuff.

We wanna have the nice food, the nice house, the nice job. We should worry a lot less about those things and focus more on what we need. Jesus continues on in his sermon and he says, so do not worry saying What shall we eat or What shall we drink? Or what shall we wear for the Pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that, uh, you need it.

So what he's saying is the pagans, the pagans are, are not the non-Christians. These are the people that worship Apollo and Zeus. All the gods that we know don't exist because time has proven that they don't or didn't exist, right? And so they worship these false gods asking for all these things that don't matter, and they worry about, just like we do today.

We worship a lot of false gods in this world. Money, sports, hobbies, stuff. And what Jesus is saying, stop worrying about all that stuff that doesn't matter. I'll give you what you need. I'll take care of you. Just trust me. Your father knows what you need. Let him take care of you. And then this is a, this verse 33 is is 33.

The verse 6 33 is that anybody's life, life verse. So you'll like, this is their favorite verse in the Bible. So Matthew 6 33. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. It's a very famous verse. It's where it comes from. It actually comes from the section of of scripture where Jesus is preaching about not worrying.

People love this verse, but they often disconnect it from the worry part. Well, if I seek him first, he's gonna gimme all these things. If you seek him first, he's gonna take care of your needs, not your wants, but your needs. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow, we'll worry about self. Each day has enough trouble.

Trouble of itself. See what, what Jesus is telling people. He is telling them. He's telling us. Stay focused on the present. Stay in today, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. Stay in today. Stay in today for my mom. My mom is going through stage four cancer. She's going through chemo treatments and we've been, when I talk to her, I get try to keep her focused on the day.

That's kinda like part of what I'm trying to do because tomorrow may be a horrible, horrible day. And today may be a great day, but she's had some really good days compared to what they told her was gonna happen. So we could celebrate that instead of focusing on, well, tomorrow may be awful. It could be, let's focus on what we got now.

'cause today's not as bad as, as they said it should be. And so tomorrow's problems are gonna be tomorrow's problems. Let's worry about those and tackle those when they come. That's how we need to live life. We need to stay focused in the present. Tomorrow's problems will be tomorrow's problems, but if you have peace today, you're gonna be in a better position to deal with them 'cause you're a person of peace, not of worry and anxiety.

I wanna tell you about a, a situa situation where I, I really, uh, speaks to me about staying focused in the present. Anybody know this date? September 1st, 2007. Anybody know what happened on that date? That was my birthday. That was your birthday? Okay. How did, how did 19 feel? So, yeah, yeah. September 1st, 2007.

I'll tell you, this was the day that emphasized this in greatly. This was the first football game of the season 2007 for the University of Michigan. Oh, that's right. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was, yep. They came in ranked number five in the country and. Lar, arguably people thought they might win at all, might go all the way.

Win the championship was gonna be one of the greatest seasons. It was supposed to be a be one of the best years. I was really excited about 2007, uh, as a Foot Michigan fan. They came into play. Well In, in, came into coming into Town was a one Double A School, which means all the Division one schools is like 119 at the time.

Then there's the one Double A Schools, which are worse, supposed to be worse than all 119 and Michigan's one of the top of the 119, right? They were number five. So a team that's below the, the regular teams that you're supposed to beat handedly comes into town. Anybody remember the name of that team? App?

Appalachian State? Yeah. Yep. It's a terrible name. Uh, this is a team that Michigan should have beat by 50, 60, 70 points. So like yesterday, hostage, be rambling. 70 points. It's a one AA school. Okay. You should beat them easily. The problem is Michigan wasn't focused on today. They were thinking about tomorrow's worries.

The big teams, the Notre Dame's, the Ohio States, that they were gonna play down the road. They were focused. And I, I've been there, they weren't even probably practicing for Appalachian State other than the week of, they had probably built their whole preseason to focus on the big games like the Ohio States, the Wisconsin, those other teams they had throw.

I know, 'cause I've been to the practices and so this was supposed to be an easy win. And so they went in all worried about tomorrow's problems and taking care of that, and they didn't take care of today. And they lost on a last second field goal and lost to a team they never should have beat. Now that replays every single season and I just ignore that video every single time.

Blocked. Blocked. If you share that, you're getting blocked. So like if you share the Michigan State pun fumble, you are blocked too, so, alright. All right. It happens, but this is the truth. This happens in sports, but it happens in life. We often are so focused on the things that are coming down the pipe. We lose track and, and sight of, of what's happening today, and we lose our peace tomorrow.

We'll take care of itself. I promise you. And here's how I know. I can promise you that. The Bible promises it. Jesus says it. Stop worrying about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Focus on today and at peace. These are Jesus's words. They'd be great if they were Paul's words, but they're God's words through Jesus.

They are literally our creator's words. Tomorrow, we'll take care of ourselves. I promise you. I'll give you what you need. Just trust me. Trust me, not what you want. And so the question I have for you is, aren't you tired of inviting trouble into your life? Tomorrow's troubles especially, aren't you? Aren't you tired of doing that?

If you're anxious, if you're worried? If you're afraid all the time, aren't you tired of that? It's hard when we invite tomorrow's troubles in. It destroys us. It pulls us apart from the inside of our core, and our heart pulls our mind apart, but we do it. And so the series, we call it Pray More, worry Less, because the goal is if we understand anxiety and worry, then we can understand how we can overcome that through prayer of healthier prayer life.

And we wanna talk about prayer. And the problem with prayer is like, it'd be easy if Christians just prayed this would get easier to deal with worry. But we Christians don't pray. That's what statistics say we've been talking about through this series. I have some new ones for you today. The prayer frequency by age.

So 18 to 29 year olds, that's like Gen Z and a little bit of millennials in there, 18 to 29 years old, 28% of people who are Christians pray daily. That's just barely one in four. Pray Daily. So in this room, if you're in that age category category, it's likely that if you pray daily, though all the, the three other people that you see in that age category don't, that's low.

Statistics say that the most, um, uh, the most anxious generations are the younger generations. The gen alphas that are young kids, middle school, high school, early college, that generation, their, their worry level is like 67% of them are in a constant state of worry, constant state of worry. That's statistics.

You say 'cause they're not praying, they're so worried. They're not talking to God, they're so worried about tomorrow. 30 to 49 year olds. That's gonna be our, uh, gen, uh, what gen? That's, that's me. Yeah. Gen X, gen Z, zals, whatever you wanna call it. Um, those would be, uh, 30 to 49 year olds. That's 40% of people pray daily, a little bit better, a little bit better.

Then the boomers, 52%, 55%. That's more, but that's still only one in every two Christians are praying. So we can see why there's such an epidemic of, of prayer. The average Christian is like 44%. I told you the average Christian over all ages praise daily. So that means basically those of us in the older generations we're skewing the data, but the younger we're getting the more anxious, the more afraid, the more worry we're getting and we have to do something about it.

We have to figure out how to overcome worry through prayer. And part of it's having a regular daily prayer life. If you wanna, if you want to be less anxious, less afraid, less stressed by all those things, you have to have a prayer life. That's the solution in scripture. That's Jesus solution. That's Paul's solution.

That's the Bible solution. That is our creator solution. You wanna worry less? You must pray more. And so what does this mean for you? As we go through this, we have to understand that prayer doesn't change circumstances. It changes the worrier. Now, eventually, as God answers prayer requests, it could change circumstances.

It can. But in the moment, your prayer is not gonna change your circumstances right now. It's going to change the warrior, your heart and your mind, those things that are being pulled apart by God. Really, when you pray and go to God, as he takes care of you, he puts you back together. He makes you whole.

Makes you complete. So prayer, our prayer life, when we pray more, it's to change us into people of peace that have less stress, less anxiety. Because we go to God, because prayer replaces the what ifs with the God. Will we always have these? What if, what is this? What's gonna happen if this happens, if this happens, if this happens, if this, what if this, what if my spouse goes on a trip and they find somebody else and falls in love with me and leave me?

What if, uh, I, I, this happens, right? These are real worries. What if my, my child goes in the car and he gets in a car wreck? What if, what if, what if, uh, you know, the economy tanks to my. My company has to close. I lose my job. What if that's tomorrow's worries? But we invite all of that stuff today instead of just saying, God will take care of my needs today, tomorrow, always, he takes care of me.

That's what we have to get a mindset of why we spent so much time with it, the series. If this was easy, we would've done one week and moved on. I promise you, it's not easy. People can come to week after week of Pray more, worry less, and still no, still worrying. And we're still worry work. I don't know why I can't get through this, Kyle.

It's 'cause you're not praying, not praying enough. And yeah, you have to pray intentionally that you change because prayer changes you. If you're just rubbing a lamp for a genie and asking God to give you all the things you want and, and then you're like, well, God's not doing it. Some prayer's not working.

'cause God's not a genie in a bottle. Or in a, in a lamp, God's a God who wants a relationship and communication. He wants you to walk through life with him and you to be changed by him. There's a famous Catholic saint, his named Saint Ignatius, and uh, he came up with this thing called the examine. It was like this five points like prayer.

And so, uh, over the course of the series, I'm trying to help you figure out if you don't know how to pray, how to pray better or, or more, because there is no magic way. To pray. There's nothing magic about prayer. There's nothing magic about altar. This is a place where people come to pray. This is not magic.

It's cool because it opens up for communion, right? Like I think it's cool, but when you come down here, you come to pray just to focus and to get prayer. And so this series we talked about, um, different acronyms for prayer. We did PRAY, praise, repent, ask yield. And then last week we did TAL, which was thank ask and listen.

Those are, those are acronyms you can memorize to change your prayer life because you can pray with eyes open, eyes closed. You can spin in circles and pray. You can pray. Listen, I prayed during a football game yesterday in the hallway, like, Lord, just please let them get this one. So it didn't work. But um, I tried.

All right, so I tried. I still know that he doesn't probably care, but I'm still gonna try anyways. So instead we punted. So I guess that was an answer, just not the one I wanted. Um, but ultimately we can pray on the toilet. You can pray on the car, you can pray everywhere you can. You can. So we wanna teach you how to pray in ways that something will you, you will just gravitate and you'll grab onto it and you'll say, I get it now.

But really it's just a conversation of talking with God dur when you're worrying, go to him in prayer and ask him to move in you. And so the examine it was, uh, this is not the examine, so the examines five points. I iterate it for you. Um, so these are, these are my versions of the examine, but it gets the gist of it for you.

So maybe you could memorize it a little easier. The first one is rejoice, then review, then repent, then request, then renew. Rejoice means that you thank God and you praise him for who he is. It's real simple. You can open up scripture and read it, and thank God for that. You can thank God for creating the world.

You can thank God for being amazing. God. You can just thank God for all the things and then praise him for it. That's it. Now, this is always important. Every one of the things that we're gonna teach everyone I teach you thank ask, listen, praise. Everything always starts with rejoice, pray, thank because in the scripture in Philippians, we thank God and then we go to him When Jesus teaches his prayer, we thank God first.

Before we do anything else, scripture is very clear. You always start with thanking God and praising him before anything else in your conversations with him. So if you want to get it right, the thing you have to do is recognize. It's the same way you should be in your relationship with your spouse. Be more thankful, more praise oriented, the person that you love.

So we have a better relationship. It's the same way with God because our relationship with someone that we love should mimic our relationship with our creator. Once we rejoice and we thank God, we review, we review our day. Recall specific moments, uh, of your day. Think about your thoughts at the time, your actions at the time, your feelings at the time.

Think about your day. Just kind of go through your day in your head. Talk to God about it. Hey, God, these are some, some moments of my day in my day. These are some great moments of my day. Here were some not so great moments of my day. Right. You can tell all those things to God. Think about 'em, tell him to him, and then when you had some not so great moments where you know that you sinned, you messed up, that you're ashamed of, you repent, you repent, you say, I'm sorry, God, please forgive me for my feelings at this moment towards that person.

My thought about this. The way I acted, what I said, you know, if you were the person a couple days ago, uh, at the baseball game where you almost got a baseball, but then the dad got the baseball and took it to his son, and then you went and yelled at him out, right? If you were that person, you might need to say, Larry, I'm sorry for the way I acted to the people.

Right? But you say sorry for those moments and you apologize and ask God to forgive you, and then you work to do better and ask him to. To come into your mind as you review and help you understand it. And then once you repent, as you're reviewing your day, then you request and there's moments your day. As you look back, you said, Lord, I need you in this moment moving forward.

I need your spirit to guide me. I need you to help me have peace. You make your request known to God, that's the request, and you can make your request for others or for yourself. And then once you get through that, you renew. This is the end. We, when you decide to live for Jesus today and tomorrow and ask for the grace to see and hear his presence more clearly, that's it.

It's always at the end we, it's kind of like, listen, Hey Lord, help me, renew me, restore me. Help me get through it. I'm committed, Lord, I'm with you in this. I'm gonna serve you. I'm gonna follow you. That's how we pray. There is no exact way to do this. There's no time limit that it has to be. The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing.

So we're supposed to pray always, but for some of us, for your first prayer might be 30 seconds. That meant for some of you, your first prayer might be 10 seconds, right? That might be a stretch. For others, you might spend an hour, but just start somewhere better than where you're at and start doing it regularly, daily, not just the thank you for this meal.

Right. I hope I get a good night's sleep, Lord, right. Protect me while I sleep. You know, now I lay me down to sleep, but real prayer is just conversation with the Lord and they can happen all day long. I wanna go back to this verse in Philippians four. I wanna read the last part again, what you have learned and received, and heard and seen in me.

Paul says, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. If you want peace, you've gotta practice the Bible. Says now, earlier in that passage, Paul gives a list, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. He gives a list of things to focus on. Whatever's pure, whatever's honorable, whatever is lovely, whatever's commendable, good things.

Quit focusing all the things that you want, and start focused on good things, and then see how it changes you from the inside out and your heart and mind. Because peace doesn't come from controlling the moral. It comes from surrendering today, right? It does. Some of us we're so intent on trying to control our situation in the situations for those that we care about and love, or our kids or whoever.

We're just trying to control everything that we're robbing our peace, robbing our joy. We're stressed, we're anxious, we're frustrated, we're afraid we're all those things and we're miserable. Instead, what God wants us to do is just surrender today to him in our hearts, deal with what we can deal with in whatever else we can't give it to him and he'll get us through.

That's how you handle it. If you're struggling with this, the church is here to help. The church is always here to help. What we do is if you need help with this, you can just write in the back of your connection card. You just write the word today. Every week these come in and we're not gonna call you.

We're not gonna bug you, but write today. We'll pray for you this week. Last week I had like 35 people respond to the sermon prompt, and what we do as a staff is we go through those names and read the names, and we just pray for you. The prayer this week could be if you struggle with staying in today and you keep borrowing tomorrow's stuff.

And borrow tomorrow's troubles if that, if you struggle with that, just write out today. We'll just pray for you by name and, and we pray this week that God encourages you to do it. Not we're not gonna bug you. It's not what it's about. It's about lifting you up in prayer, praying together. If you've got other prayer requests, please put 'em down.

We pray about over those all week long. We pray for you. That's what we're supposed to do as a church. During this last Psalm, we're gonna open the altar up again. You're welcome to come down if you'd like prayer. Uh, the altar, like I said, it's not a magic place. It's just places like focus. It's really when you people come forward to altar, what they're doing is saying, I need prayer.

That's really what it's, they're coming public to say, I need prayer. And in the Bible, we're told to pray with each, with each other and for each other. We're supposed to lay hands and pray. So when people come down, often people just come up, put their hand on their shoulder, and just pray for 'em. Guess here's the, here's the, here's the secret.

I can pray for someone at an altar. Without knowing what they're praying for. 'cause God knows I can just pray God, you know, the prayer. I just, I just come and I, Lord, I ask that You hear that prayer, I ask you move in their hearts, not you moving their minds. You can lean over and say, Hey, anything you're praying for, that you want me to specifically pray for, and they can say, yeah, I tell you.

Or they can say, no, I don't want, you know, it's fine. Uh, they're allowed to do that. But when people come forward here, they're just saying, I need prayer. Would you pray with me? And certain this last P song, we're just gonna open up the altar next week. We're gonna do the same thing At the end of service, we're gonna, we're gonna have a time of anointing, talk about what that looks like in prayer as part of just anointing people in prayer, spraying, uh, praying specific prayers.

'cause we wanna be at church. We also pray more, worry less. And so today you get an opportunity to pray. If you'd like to end the service of prayer, we'll come up after the song and pray and just give you a chance to pray because God wants you to leave tomorrow's troubles in tomorrow. And just focus on today and have peace today.

And it's a process. It takes time to get there. I'll just be honest with you, the whole Michigan Phil thing, it was a real thing. Alright? It took me years to try to figure out how to get less stressed and anxious about Michigan football season until finally I figured it out. So for some of you, it sounds like tomorrow I was gonna go, oh no, I'm, I'm not.

I didn't like, I still have anxious. Moments, Kyle, like, I'm not doing good. It may be a process of growth they have to go through. It starts with a healthy prayer life and healthy communication with the Lord until you grow through the process. Baby steps, baby steps for some of us. So let's pray and then we're gonna sing together and have time for prayer.

Let's, let's pray. Heaven, father, Lord, we pray that we be at church, we pray more. Lord, we come to you with our hurts, our needs, our issues with knowing. Lord, we need to repent and just Lord, we just come to you and trust you more. End today. In the moments of today, we let tomorrow be tomorrow, and no Lord, it'll take care of itself.

If we trust you, we pray that that's the church that we are, that's the individuals that we are, that we pray more, that we worry less, and we give it over to you as our Lord, as our savior, the God that directs us and guides us. The God that gives us your Holy Spirit to walk through, not only today, but all the tomorrows to come for us, we pray in this.

This time we just have a moment to just pray and praise and thank you for who you are and also, Lord, just to hear from you. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.