How to P.R.A.Y

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, good morning. Can we give it up for Dr King? Yes, thank you, god, that we're able to have a diverse church today because of his sacrifice. Hey, I'm going to tell you this, lvc, I love that we have a church that's going to look like heaven one day. Come on, so let's keep going forward. Well, welcome to LVC. I'm glad you're here with us today.

Speaker 1: 0:21

We're continuing our message series called Pray First, while we are in day seven of our 21 days of prayer and fasting as a church. Now I want to say, if you're new with us today or you missed last week, there is still time to sign to be able to participate in 21 days of prayer. 14 days is good too. Come on, and so I encourage you to do that. Meet us on Google Meet at six in the morning. Hey, I got it. I can't lie to you. It's been popping off on Google Meet in the morning. We've had almost 30 people every morning and we've had teenagers Come on, young people out there praying in the morning. I encourage you to do it for 15 minutes. We pray Monday through Friday, and I would love for you to do it Also. You can go on our website for all the information on how you can participate in 21 days of prayer and fast and it's never too late to give God your first. It's never too late to do that, okay. So I can't wait for that.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Now, when I was a youth pastor, we used to have this thing in our youth ministry. First, when I was a youth pastor, we had a youth ministry that was reaching kids whose parents didn't go to church. We had this big youth ministry that kids whose parents didn't go to church they found their way into our church and it was a pretty cool thing. It was so cool. We have so many kids that the church parents, the more I guess religious parents didn't want their kids to go to our youth group because they didn't want the kids in the youth group to corrupt their kids, but maybe it would have probably flipped the other way around on them if they would let them come. But the peak of it is me as a youth pastor.

Speaker 1: 1:52

We were seeing roughly 300 youth come out on any given week to a church service and one event that we did that was one of our biggest events that we did every month was an event called Waffles Plus Worship Waffles Plus Worship, and what was that? It was on the last Friday of every month, we would do, from 10 pm to 2 am, a four hour prayer and worship night. And we did it every month. And I'm telling you, we would have around 60 to 70 youth come out for worship and prayer. I mean, they would pray for themselves, they would pray for their families to come to know Jesus, they were praying for their schools, they were praying for each other.

Speaker 1: 2:35

At one point it was so popular that parents didn't believe that kids were coming out to pray. They were like there's no way my kid is staying out late to pray, they're just obviously hanging out with their friends. And so I said, well, come on out, come and see what's happening, and they will come and they will watch and they will be in awe of these young people praying for God to move in their lives. And so I tell that story because, as a youth pastor, I knew that these kids, the best way for them to experience the fullness of God was for them to experience God by themselves, for them to have a personal experience with God, not for them to just take my word for it, but for them to experience God. And so we built this, so we built our youth ministry on prayer. It was ground on prayer, so we did Waffles plus worship. We almost called it prayer plus pancakes, but who knows, waffles are way better. Yeah, come on.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So so LVC, why do I share that story about me being a youth pastor now, so many years ago? I share a story because my heart for LVC is that we will be a church built on prayer, that we would be a church built on the. Our foundation would be on on on the life of prayer, that we would say we're going to go where God is calling us to go. We're going to reach who God's calling us to reach. We're going to live our lives obedient to the purpose and the passion that God has for us A church built on prayer. And one thing I did for youth was that I made prayer enjoyable for them. Like what youth doesn't want to stay up late, eat Waffles late and hang out with their friends late, like it was perfect for them? And so my hope for you during this series is that I can show you a life built on prayer. It's not only powerful, but it's enjoyable. That you can actually enjoy your relationship with God, that you can have an enjoyable relationship with them, with them. So now, one thing I love about LVC, and that we've already mentioned, is how diverse our church is. Now. I diverse, our church is diverse in many ways, though, so we have people who come from different church backgrounds In our church. We have people that come from no church backgrounds and who come to our church.

Speaker 1: 4:48

So some of you you may grew up in a church culture where you have prayer services and you were tired by the end of it because it's about three or four hours long and it got a little weird at times too. You're like what is Miss Jenkins doing? You know like what's happening. Some of you, you grew up in church cultures where you weren't really encouraged to pray, but you were encouraged to memorize things and in the recite certain things, and nothing wrong with that. Just it never felt personal to you. Prayer never felt personal.

Speaker 1: 5:17

And what I want to do? Because, based on your church background, you may also come from a free, flowing prayer background where it's like I'm just going to like, just wait on God, and that's going to wait on God to move, and then it's going to, and I'm going to wait till God prompts me to move and I'll talk to him. Let me say something about that real fast. What other relationship in your life do you wait for? A prompting to talk to somebody? And your marriage? If you're waiting just to be led to pray to your spouse, you ain't going to have one. You got to have set up time to talk, who knows? But any good relationship you got to have intentional conversation. Same is with your relationship with God. Without intentional conversation, it won't work. So what I want to do based on your church background where it may have been all creeds and things you had to remember, or I may just been loosey goosey going with the flow what I want to do is I want to help you enjoy a personal relationship with God. In communication with God. I want to bring us into the middle. Okay, I want us to. I want us to be able to experience the fullness of God, but also have some practical ways that we're going to do it. I want us to be led by the spirit but also have some intentionality into our relationship with the Lord.

Speaker 1: 6:36

The apostle Paul says it like this. He says in Ephesians 6,. He says pray in the spirit in every situation. Now, this is important because prayer isn't just your morning time thing. Prayer isn't just your quiet time thing. I think those things, your first things, are very important. But prayer is an ongoing relationship with God. Like my wife, for example. We talk throughout the day. We talk throughout the day, we communicate, we text, we say, we let each other know someone's going to be late or someone needs to do this or what's going on. And we do that because we love each other, and when you love someone, you communicate with them. When it comes to your relationship with God, that's what it's supposed to be like. It's supposed to be a one sentence here to God hey God, I need some help with this. Hey, god, help me focus on my commitment over here. God, thank you for that moment I had with my kids today. God, thank you that things went well and worked today. Now I'm going to tell you this. It might seem kind of weird at first, like am I just talking to myself or am I talking to God, but over time, if you begin to regularly communicate with God throughout the day, it will become more natural than the air you breathe and you will begin to sense God's presence. And Paul continues. He says use every kind of prayer and request there is Now.

Speaker 1: 7:52

For a long time I didn't really know there were different kind of models of prayer. I just kind of thought prayer was, you know, you just kind of did it, you kind of just talking out loud. Especially when you're in the shower, that's a great time to pray, isn't it? You know? You just kind of just pray. But truthfully, when it comes to prayer, I think a lot of us don't know what to expect from prayer. So because of that, we don't really enjoy it. We don't really see the purpose of it. We don't. We don't.

Speaker 1: 8:20

We understand that, yeah, you should pray, but what does it mean? You know, you know what you are supposed to enjoy your time with God. Because here you go, the reason why you're supposed to enjoy your time with God because God is not being sent to the principal's office. Like, your time with God is not being sent to the principal's office, your time with God is not when you also can get an email from your boss that says they want to meet with you and you're kind of like, oh man, what did I do wrong? That is not what your relationship with God, that's not how a relationship with God works. You know this might sound a little cheesy to you, but you want to know how your relationship with God should feel. It should feel more like that parent who's passing the football with you. It should feel kind of like I'm making a connection. It should feel more like I don't know if you ever bake cookies with your mom you used to love baking cookies with my mom and then she will let you sneak some cookie dough. That's how your relationship with God is. That's how it's supposed to be. He's a loving father, not a mean boss. You're not in trouble, because this is what we know. This is what we all know.

Speaker 1: 9:24

The way we communicate with people we love is a lot different than the way we communicate with people who intimidate us, the people that we're afraid of, and God is a God of love. Like Toshiba mentioned in the beginning on, 21 Days of Prayer is happening right now, and on our website there's tons of resources and different apps that you can download on your phone that have different prayer models, different ways that you can pray. I encourage you to check it out and do that. Today. I'm actually going to highlight one of those prayer models. It's from Lectio 365, a great app, and they have this abbreviation from prayer that we're going to hit on today and this is going to be our model prayer, for example, our morning prayers.

Speaker 1: 10:09

On 21 Days we have been using the Lord's Prayer as a model prayer. So we just don't recite the Lord's Prayer one by one, we just say we use the Lord's Prayer as a model to connect with God. So we say our Father in heaven. So what does that say? We're worshiping God, you're our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. And then we say your kingdom come, your will be done. And then we pray that God, we give our agenda of the day to your agenda to the day. So it's a model of prayer and we got one I'm going to show you today. And the model of prayer today is this it's so good, it's so awesome. It's called pray, it's awesome. P-r-a-y is an abbreviation and we're going to go over that in a second. Here you go. Here's a simple definition of prayer.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Though Prayer is just talking to God, I want to demystify it. I don't want you to feel so intimidated by it. What is prayer? Prayer is simply talking to God, and this is how we can P-R-A-Y P stands for this Pause and be still In prayer. We can pause and be still, and this is everything our culture does not want from us. This is everything that your kids don't want from you. We have Instagram, the Instapot, which is awesome. Make some sweet potatoes in that game changer. And then we got instant mashed potatoes, which is just wrong. You can make some real mashed potatoes, so don't take that long. But in prayer, we are to pause and be still and be still.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Two kinds of prayers I want to highlight from this is this the first one is continual prayer. Continual prayer I mentioned this a little bit ago. The apostle Paul says it like this Rejoice always, pray without season. Ok, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you. Paul tells us to pray without season, meaning pray all the time, and to that I say that's a lot. What do you mean pray all the time? What are you talking about, paul? What do you mean pray all the time? I like how the Passion Translation puts it. It says this let your joy be a continual feast. Make your life a prayer. Make your life a prayer. What does that mean? To make your life a prayer?

Speaker 1: 12:28

What Paul is inviting us into is a life that we daily, regularly, are in communication with God. We're daily, regularly in communication with God, because prayer, again, is simply talking to God. It's simply talking to God and we can pray anytime and anywhere, about anything that's on your mind. You can pray about anything. You don't have to be in church to pray or use special words or put your hands together if you don't want to. God is listening. He wants to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 13:01

The Bible encourages us to always pray about all kinds of topics. We can ask God for help when we need help. We can ask God for direction when we feel lost. We can thank God when good things are happening. We can say sorry when we make a mistake. Right then and there you don't got to wait until you get to the confession booth you can say sorry, right where you are, to God. We can pray by talking, thinking or writing. We can even draw and craft or paint. If you're a creative person, if you know how to play the guitar guess what? You can pray to God by using your instrument abilities. You can connect with God. That way, you can connect to your creator. Through creativity. We can use our own words or borrow someone else's and making them your own.

Speaker 1: 13:46

You don't need to make grand speeches to God, to impress Him or pretend that everything is OK. This is all that you need to do. You need to keep it simple, keep it real and keep it up. Keep it simple, keep it real and keep it up. God doesn't need your fake prayers. He doesn't need you to pretend like you've got everything going OK when you're drowning inside. He doesn't need you to pretend that you've got it all fixed and I'm all good. God Bless you, lord, when you're in desperate need from a touch man. You got to keep it simple, keep it real and, man, keep it up. Because who knows that every good thing worth having takes consistency to achieve? Who knows that when you want something consistently, then you will see the results?

Speaker 1: 14:39

And the problem that we have with prayer oftentimes is we say one hell Mary. And when God doesn't show up, we say well, I guess that didn't work. And I'm going to tell you keep it simple, keep it real and keep it up, because there's this story in the Bible about this guy named Elijah. He's a prophet, he's a man of God. You know, when we think of people in the Bible, we think man, they're so heroic and they did all these great things. There's this prophet, elijah, you want to know what Elijah was dealing with. He was dealing with a depression so deep that he didn't want to get out of bed. He was dealing with anxiety so hard that he didn't know where his next step was. He was called and gifted and God had all this stuff for him, but yet depressions, whispered, spoke loud to him. And who can relate to that? At times, that we feel lost and confused. And check this out. Check this out.

Speaker 1: 15:30

This is what it says in first Kings. It says the Lord said go out and stand on the mountain and in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass. By. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart, shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, after the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And now the earthquake came a fire, but God was not in the fire.

Speaker 1: 15:56

And this makes me think of our lives at times. There's so much noise, there's so much stuff happening around us. There's so much things screaming for your attention that addiction, that problem, that heartache, that brokenness, that fear, and it's screaming and it's getting in your face and it's drowning you and Elijah, he goes out, he's trying to hear from God, but there's noise everywhere. And check this out, and everybody says this, but after the fire come on, I just want to let someone know today you may feel like you're in the fire, but there's an after the fire moment for you. You may feel like you don't know how to get through this circumstances, but there's an after the fire moment for you and while you're in the fire, god is forming you and shaping you into the person he has called you to be. Because I'm going to let you know today.

Speaker 1: 16:51

It is in our valley seasons. It's in the seasons when we want to give up. It's in the seasons when we don't want to get up. Those are the seasons that God shapes us up to the person he has called us to be. And I'm preaching pretty good today.

Speaker 1: 17:06

And after the fire came a gentle whisper. You want to know how to hear from God. Sometimes God comes in the gentle whisper when we decide to let go of those notifications on our phone. Sometimes God comes in the gentle whisper when we decide to not listen to that negative person, when we decide to not let that thought be our primary thought, but the gentle voice of God. And when Elijah heard it, he pulled up his, he pulled his clock over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then the voice said to him I love this. What are you doing here, elijah? What are you doing? I love the question. God asks is Elijah? He says what are you doing here? Prayer pauses and asks us the question what are you doing here? Is this what you want? Is this how you want to react? See, our world can be on fire and our souls can still be at peace, because prayer is the pause in real time. In real time when things are going, we can pause and be still.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Second kind of prayer I want to introduce to you Silence and solitude. Silence and solitude, jesus invites us into the pause and to be still and to physically break away from the noise, to physically get away from it. Matthew 6 says this when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you and pray to your father in private. Then your father who sees everything, where we warned. You See, we can pray to God throughout the day, in our hearts and out loud. We can do it, but we must also intentionally. We must have intentionality about spending time with God. We must be intentional about spending time with God, and here's what I love about God God is so personal that he personally knows you. God is so personal that he personally knows you. God is so personal that he will use your current life circumstances to connect with you in a personal way.

Speaker 1: 19:16

For example, if you have a teenager and they're not listening to you and they seem to buck against every advice you give them and they seem like they think they know everything, see, god is nudging you and saying yeah, that's how I feel about you. Sometimes, too, you think you know everything, don't you? Maybe? Maybe, if you're going back to school or starting a new career or taking a career chance, god is teaching you Romans 5-3, where it says not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope. If you have a bunch of little ones who are very dependent on your time, I don't think God is expecting you to spend an hour in your prayer closet, but that five minute window between drop off and the way back home, that's your time. That's your time to connect with God. That's your time to pause and be still. See, this is something that we all know. Can I get real with us today? This is something that we all know If you want something bad enough, you'll make a way to get it. If you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to get it. And I'm going to encourage, just today, lvc Just be desperate enough for God that we won't let our schedules and our complications get in the way, but we will be desperate enough to get to the heart of God in our lives. We'll get desperate enough and I'm going to let you know this you can't build your life on a church. You can't build. Oh, I'm going to come to this church and do this because we want to know what's going to happen. Someone's going to let you down, but you can build your life on Jesus and when the complications of life, when the complexities of life, come, you can have an authentic relationship with Jesus that will get you from one season to the next and that help you thrive there. See, here's a prayer that I do regularly and I encourage you to do this. I encourage you to do this this week, three times a week. Some homework Got some homework for you. Do this prayer. I take a walk with no AirPods, no music. I take a walk and I pray. And my prayer is simple. Especially when I'm feeling distracted, especially when I have a doubt and I feel uncertain about circumstances happening, I take a walk and I pray Father, give me eyes to see you. I say that's my simple prayer, father, give me eyes to see you. And when other stuff pops in my head that tries to distract me, I say, father, I trust you with those things. Give me eyes to see you. I trust you with the things I can't control. I trust you with the uncontrollables. I just need to see you. I encourage you to do that and watch out. Applying some of these simple spiritual habits will transform your life in a big way. R okay, here you go. R stands for rejoicing. Choose joy, choose joy. Now here's another thing I want to say. Prayer is not just a sad, solemn mopey-dopey. Woe to me. I'm Eor. No one loves me. Prayer doesn't have to be that Like. Let me put you this way If every time you called your best friend, and every time you called them and they knew when you called them, you about to tell them something serious, you want to know what was going to happen after a while, after the third or fourth or fifth call, they're about to hit that N button. They're about to be like man, I can't be here. Man Jimmy's calling me again. You know it's about to be sad. No, no, I encourage you. I encourage you when you're talking to God. You can have joy in your relationship with the Lord. You can have joy in your relationship with God. Prayer helps us find joy in our lives because, honestly, joy is a choice. Joy is a choice and you can choose joy and if not, if you don't choose it, you will be mopey-dopey. There's a lot of things in our world to be negative about. There's a lot that I can. I can right now, we can all collectively come up with a list about 100 things that we can all be sad about today. But we can choose to be joyful as well. I mean, but how do we rejoice? I'm going to make it practical and scripture reading. When we read scripture now, you may be saying, well, what do I read in the Bible? Do I just open it and pick the page that it falls on? No, I don't think that, because you may open it and be like, what is this talking about? Now, I do encourage you, on a practical way, to read the Psalms and the Proverbs or read the Gospels, and in those you will be able to find there's an awesome app called Uversion that has a scripture verse of the day. One scripture verse a day is better than reading a whole bunch that you don't understand. I encourage you to just get into God's Word. And here's the truth. If you have time for your newsfeed and watch the scores of all the playoff games, come on, go packers. Today If you have time, you got time to read the Bible, which transforms your life. So you must be intentional about not letting the world determine our joy, by allowing God to direct our steps. Joy is not the absence of pain. Joy can be your reality even in the pain. Even Jesus was upset and frustrated. Even Jesus experienced great loss of loved ones. Even Jesus experienced things that were hard. But Jesus was full of joy and never denied life realities. He knew that it can be challenging. Joy does not deny tough realities, and this is good because joy is authentic and since it is authentic, we can either choose it or refuse it, and I encourage you to choose it and I want you to be a person that celebrates the good Paul puts it like this. He says finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is abnormal, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things, and prayer is our time when we can come to God with good things. Prayer is not just when we throw our hellmarys in the fourth quarter on the last play. Prayer is our strategy to win at the game of life. Let's get practical. Okay, like I said earlier, take a walk, father, give me eyes to see you. Second practical thing I want you to do start a daily thankfulness journal. Start, at the end of your day, one thing you're thankful that God did in your day, what I do. At the end of the day I write one thing that God did, one thing my wife did and one thing that all three of my kids did. And now, like right at this point, I have over 1200 things that I'm thankful for that my wife has done. You want to know when that helps, when sometimes you get an argument you can reflect back, say man, you're just so much more good than bad. Okay, a stands for this, asking God to help you and others. So P we pause and we be still. R we rejoice, we choose joy. A we ask. We ask God to help us and others. It is in, in, in, in see, because what happens in prayer, prayer forms us into the likeness of Jesus, and there is a difference between praying for help I want you to get this in praying for once, there's a difference between praying for help and praying for once, and this is a confusion I often see people have with prayer. People approach God asking him to do this, change that or add on to them, and there's nothing wrong with that. We must present our request to God, as it tells us in 1 John 15, we must do that. But asking for help is different than asking God to be at your demand. It's a. It's a different thing. For example and I hope I hope this point helps you my daughter Kingsley, when she was, when she was younger she's, she's five now when she was around three or so, she learned how to climb a ladder in our, in our place, set in our backyard. Now the ladder is real janky, like goes in. It's hard, it's hard to climb it. I didn't do it, but if I did do it, it would have been even worse than that. But so when she started to learn how to climb it and there's one particular day, I remember this day there's one particular day she's climbing the ladder and then she calls out she said, dad, help, help. And so I run over there and for me my instant thought to help her was I'm assuming she wants me to pick her up and put her in the top of the swing set so she can go down the slide. But as I go to start to lift her, she's like what are you doing? Get off of me, get off of me. She's like, just help me. I was like I am trying to help you and she's like no, just help me climb. And so all she wanted me to do was put my hand on her back as she started to climb the ladder. I wasn't even doing nothing, she didn't even do anything. I gave her that sense of security and then she was able to climb the ladder on her own. And this is what I want she to think. Often we approach prayer with the idea of God, you just do this, god, you just heal that. God, you just bring me that. God, you just take me there, then I'll be living the good life, then I'll be what I want. And God is like no, no, no, no, no, no, because if I just do that for you, you won't know how to handle it once you get there. But I will help you, I will keep my hand on you as you climb the ladder of life. And so prayer is us inviting God's presence into our present circumstances. We're inviting God in, we're asking God for help and he puts us in step with him. And sometimes we're asking for prayers that we aren't ready for them to happen yet. Sometimes I think God has saved me from my own prayers. I mean, I can't tell you, but there was this one girl I was dating and when I was in college age and I thought I was going to marry her, and I said God, please, give her to be my wife, please, please. And guess what? She broke up with me on Valentine's Day. I'm not bitter still, but I can think back and I remember the prayers of a 21-year-old God, give me this girl. God, thank you that you didn't give me that girl. Thank you for saving me from that. I dodged a bullet because of that one. And I'm going to tell you this we can build a whole church service on the prayers that God didn't answer, and maybe he answered them in a way that we weren't expecting him to answer when we were looking for a yes. God is saying not that I'll lead you here if you walk in step with me. So we say Holy Spirit, holy Spirit, let us walk in step with you, let us follow you. Because the Galatians says like this he says so I say let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. And let me just phrase that in another way, because it may be about my sinful nature. What does that mean? You won't be doing the things that you think you want to do, but the things that you don't really want to do, and God will get you out of the things that you think you want to the things that you really want. And he says since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit leading in every part of our lives. Let me say that one more time In every part of. Let me say that one more time In every single part in my marriage, in my workplace, in my home life, in my school, in my commons, and goings in my head and outs in my head and ins in every part. Lord, let me live a life surrender to your spirit and walk in a step with you. And I'm telling you this LVC when you walk in step with the Spirit, he will lead you to the place that you want to be. So, lord, let me walk in step with you. Ask God for help in your marriage and he'll show you how to love your spouse even when the love is not being reciprocated. Ask God for purpose and he will guide you in your next steps. Ask God for help and his presence will gently guide you, guide you up the ladder. John Orkberg says in his book the life you always wanted. He said God's purpose and guidance is not to get us to perform the right actions. His purpose is to help us become the right kind of people. And last one, why, and this is the hardest one, yield. Yield to his will in our lives, what may come, what may come Now. I love this word yield, especially when it comes to taking advantage of the every day, the way that God wants us to, because the yield means to give up, to surrender, to hand over oneself, but it also means to bring forth something. Gabby Yohannes, with you at LBC, you're looking for God to bring forth something, but you're not willing to surrender something. Can we surrender? Can we surrender our fears? Can we surrender our need to control? Can we surrender trying to fix the outcomes so God can bring forth what he's trying to do gently in you, for you? Because when we yield, when we surrender, we say God, I trust you to bring forth what you say is good. We pray the prayer that our Savior Jesus saw fit to pray before his crucifixion. It says he walked away about a stone. Throw a note down and pray Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yeah, I want your will to be done, not mine. My friends, that's a dangerous prayer. That's a dangerous prayer, but this is the prayer of a Jesus follower, not the prayer of someone who wants Jesus to follow them. I yield to your will. I give up my need to control outcomes. I put you in charge. I yield to trying to make that person understand me or fix that person. I can't fix nobody. I yield to you, god, and I give up the idols that I have placed before you. And in the beautiful exchange we see when I yield to the Lord, when I live in a place of surrender. God yields a harvest in me more fruitful and more plentiful than all the possessions in this world. And suddenly I am not worried about tomorrow, because if God cares for the birds and the air, and if God makes fields that nobody sees shortly, he will take care of me. Of course he's going to come through on behalf for me. And when I'm anxious, I yield tenderly my fears to the Lord and I see that he loves me. And when I pray, I see that he pursues me more than I ever could pursue him. And so this week, friends, your practice spend some time two minutes, ten minutes, whatever, whatever you know your schedule To pray, to pause and be still, to rejoice and choose joy, to ask God to help you and others and to yield your will, god, whatever may come. So, god, jesus, holy Spirit, we thank you for your love, we thank you for your goodness, we thank you for your favor, lord. And in this moment we pause, we say have your way, lord. That's what the Lord is saying Be anxious for nothing, but in all things, by prayer and petition, make your requests known to him. I thank the Lord is saying you can make your requests known to him because you are known by him. He knows you. He knows you in that heartache, he knows you in that life transition you're in. He knows you and he sees you. And the God who sees you wants you to see him. Pause, pause and be still. When the earth is shaken, the fire is booming. He is the gentle whisper in your soul saying I'm with you. I also feel like the Lord is saying there is a relentless assault on your heart. But Jesus says take heart, for I have overcome the world. He is healing our hearts today. He is healing your heart today. So we pause, lord, and then we rejoice, because today is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and I will be glad in it. I will declare your goodness, I will sing loud your praises today. And, lord, we ask for your help in our times of trouble. And, god, we praise you that we can boldly go into your throne room and you accept us and you love us. And, lord, we yield, we surrender, we surrender so that you can bring forth from us what you really desire. So, if you're in here today, you know, like Jacob, that sounds good. But I don't know this Jesus you're talking about, or maybe you have experienced this Jesus, but you kind of life got in a way you want to say, man, I want to commit my life back to Jesus. If you want to make a decision to trust Jesus with your life, trust Him again, right where you are. I just want to pray for you. I'm not going to call you out. Have you come up front? Nothing like that. Just right where you are. If you want to make a decision to trust Jesus with your life, you can say this in your heart or you can whisper it out loud. You say, jesus, forgive me for my mistakes, make me new. Today I trust you with my life. Today I follow you in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. I think you've got some praise in here today.