Prayer | Luke 11:1-13

Hey. Well, my name is Joel. I'm one of the pastors here. And let me just welcome you once again to Grace Point Church. We are so thankful to have you here. As Taylor has already mentioned, today, we're continuing on in our talk about spiritual disciplines over the summer, as we're really taking a different approach this summer and looking at some of the spiritual disciplines, the things that which Jesus displayed in his life every single day.

And so for us now, I don't know if you've been this summer. There's also been a big event going on. I don't know if anybody else has been watching the World Cup as much as I have, but I have been watching several games and I wish there was a way to really mark this or really measure this. But I'm pretty convinced of this, that once every four years, if we could measure just how many prayers are said globally, I would.

I would think that every four years or so you would see a huge spike in prayers, right? Because whenever I'm watching the World Cup and I'm watching a game, and especially when it goes into extra time or goes into the penalty kicks or something and they pan across the crowd all of a sudden, like, if it's one of the South America teams, like they're all crossing themselves.

And I'm like, I know exactly what they're doing. They're praying right now. And and it pans across, you know, an Asian team and they're saying chants or they're doing something kind of like a prayer there. And and like, I mean, everybody is just in the crowd and you can just see them. They're muttering something. So they're praying something and it's like, man, I even watch.

I think the Brazil and Japan game a little while back and they panned across the crowd. A guy was in a Canadian t shirt, and even he looked like he was praying. And I was like, I feel like God was like, you don't even have a dog in the fight, bro. Like, what are you doing? Like, this isn't.

But yeah, this is. Oftentimes whenever we say prayer, it usually reverts back to us just saying a wistful thought to God, right? Like there is something that I want. I want my team to win. I want this blessing. And so I'm going to say this wishful thought to God and hope that he answers it like a genie in a bottle type situation.

But what if prayer is actually so much more than that? And if that's all we think of, prayer is us just saying, God, please bless us. Or right before dinner, we just say a quick little prayer without really thinking about the fact that we are talking to the God of the universe. What a blessing that we oftentimes just skip over, or we oftentimes don't even think about during the day, of what a blessing it is that we have a chance that the God of the universe says, I want to talk to you.

I want to talk to you. And so that's what we get to talk about here today. And as you if you've been coming over the summer, you know that one of the things that we're doing a little bit different here this summer is I actually wanted to also hear how this plays out in some of y'all's life as well.

And so I've been inviting different members up for most of these weeks here. And I wanted you to hear another opportunity from somebody that I think just does a great job at just showing what this might look like in her life as well. And so would you please welcome Miss Nancy Peavy up to the stage here this morning.

There you go. Miss Nancy is one of our elders wise, which is not an official position in the church, but you better believe it is a position in the church. She does a lot around this congregation, and we are just so thankful for you and Gary and and whenever, whenever we think it through this and and thinking through who might be a good person to talk to.

I wasn't the only one that immediately thought of you, Nancy. And and so thank you for being up here. We're just so privileged to have you. And so I've wanted to ask you, though, whenever we talk about prayer, what like what in your life has been impacted by prayer? How has that played out in your life? Well, prayer, such an important part of my life.

It's grown my faith. You know, it's it helps me be on mission with him, just like you were just talking about. And it's build my relationship with him. I see really being in the word and in prayer is to inseparable parts of my walk with him. So being in Scripture and praying from Scripture and going to Scripture for prayer.

It's just inseparable. Those two. So yeah, prayer is very precious to me. Yeah. So getting to talk to you about it this morning is really sweet, awesome. And, you know, one of the things that I loved about it was whenever I called her and asked her like, hey! And I told her I was like, I just want you to share what was on your heart.

And she's like, well, I'm going to have to pray about that. And I'm like, that's exactly why I wanted to ask you. But you know what? Whenever you think through your time in prayer, like, what specifically does that look like? If you could help us understand that a little bit? Yeah. Well, first I try to have a daily quiet time.

So a daily time where I sit and meet with the Lord and it begins with Scripture. I look at the word and I a lot of times it's wherever. Maybe it's the Psalms or wherever or whatever I'm studying, and I try to see where God is in Scripture and who he is. His character is attributes. And then that really puts my prayer in perspective when I really see who he is.

And it helps me in how I pray and what I pray for. Also, like worship music, I have a prayer list, I go down, I pray those scriptures over people on my prayer list. And then I also like to have a time where I just listen, where I just quiet and try to hear what the Holy Spirit would say to me from His Word and in prayer.

I believe prayer. You know, the word is how God speaks to us in prayers, how we speak back to him. So it's all part of that, that relationship, that. And then also, you know, I've been in seasons where I was a busy young mom, those days are gone. But in those days especially, I tried. I read a book called Practices Presence by Brother Lawrence, which just is about praying all day, all the time, about everything, taking everything to the Lord in prayer.

And that still impacts me trying to just be in a spirit of prayer throughout the day. Sometimes that's easier said than done and good. And so if I if I heard you right, then yeah. Your prayer time is more than just just saying things to God. It's also scripture and reading scripture and saying those things back to the Lord.

It's obviously it is request, but then it's also listening from the Lord as well. Yeah. And so those are kind of the summary of your prayer time. You say. Yeah, yeah I would, yeah. Listing is a big part of it. I try to listen because I do believe that he my purpose here is to glorify him. So listen as to what maybe it's a word, a scripture that I've read that I need to text somebody or, you know, maybe it's something he would have me do that day, but try to hear his voice to what my day should look like.

Awesome. And then if you could give advice to somebody in our church that says, I want to, I want prayer to be a bigger part of my life. What type of advice could you give them? Well, start in Scripture. You know, he gives us his word because that's how he that's how he tells us how to live. So I would yeah, definitely start in Scripture scripture for me also.

You know, we're we're sometimes like a computer where we get viruses and we, we get wrong thinking. And for me, being in the word really reboots my main frame and gets me thinking back straight about who he is. So starting in Scripture, I think is key. And then I think sometimes we don't pray, especially pray corporately, because we feel like we don't know how to pray.

But Romans tells us that the Holy Spirit is interceding for us and interpreting what we our prayers to the father. And so really, we can't pray wrong. So remembering that and then practicing his presence, like I talked about a minute ago, praying all the time. Ephesians 618 tells us to pray all the time for everyone about everything. So being continually in prayer and then remembering that prayers away, we're on mission with him, that we get to participate in his work here on earth through prayer.

And that is such a gift. There's nothing better. As I've said to you many times, there's nothing better than being on mission with the Lord and feeling like we're participating in his work here through prayer. So yeah, I think those are all kind of look at my notes. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think one of my favorite things, as you alluded to, pastor once told me, if you feel like you can, if you feel like you're a bad prayer, then pray bad, but just pray. And the whole point is that we have a God that wants to hear from us. And. Yeah. So anything else that you wanted to say?

You know, it's to me, it's so intertwined with the word and the Holy Spirit that, like I said, started with their inseparable. And so, yeah, just remembering that you're right. You can't pray bad. You can't pray wrong. Just, just need to do it. John 15 tells us, you know, that that's how we abide in him. If we abide in him and His words abide in us, we ask whatever we wish and it will be done.

And that that means you know, that knowing what his his will is through his word. So yeah, I would just encourage to lean into prayer. We don't pray to give God information. He already knows everything. We pray because we're his children and he loves us and he wants a relationship with us. And for me, that's just a beautiful thing in my life.

Amen. Amen. Thank you. Nancy, we appreciate you. Could you give Nancy round of applause? Thank you.

And now, as we see like what that actually plays out in some of our own members lives. Hey, let's go ahead. Look over to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11. We're going to look at the Lord's Prayer in Luke's version, which is just a little bit of a shorter version than the one that we just said over each other here and just a minute ago.

But we've been looking at these spiritual disciplines, and so far we've looked at fasting and silence and solitude and Sabbath and worship. And now we get to this idea of prayer. And I'll be honest, whenever I started this series, oftentimes in my head, one of the questions that I get most often as a pastor is people say, hey, what do I need to do?

What should I do in order to be a good Christian? And in reality, whenever I started playing in a series like it was a little bit of like an answer to that question, like, hey, do these things. But if you have been following along with us over these last month or so, then probably you might have come to the same realization that I have to in real time as I've been studying over this, that it's really a lot less about what do you have to do and a lot more of who do you have to be?

And that's what all of these spiritual disciplines as, as we go on. Yes, there's actions associated with all of them, but at the same time, at the at the core of it, prayer is not something that we do. It's this relationship that we get to build with a father who loves us. See, prayer isn't convincing God to care.

It's trusting a father who already does. And that's what we get to see here this morning. And so if you have your Bibles, Luke chapter 11, verse one, let's go ahead and jump right into it. It says, now Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.

Notice here that they see Jesus doing what they see. Jesus pray, and immediately they see him pray. And they're like, we want to know how to do that. Nowhere else in the Gospels do they ask them how to preach or how to do, like miracles or things like that. But when they see him pray? Number one, it's important to notice that Jesus, God the Son, needed to pray, desire to pray in his life.

So how much more do we need to pray in our daily life as well? But as he was praying, his disciples saw that and was like, I don't know what that was, but we want to know how to do that. Lord, please teach us. Show us how to pray, because this was going to be the defining thing of Jesus's life.

His communication, his relationship with the father in prayer should be a defining factor of every single child of God, because it's how we communicate back to the father who loves us. And so he said to them in verse two, when you pray, say, and he's going to go into oftentimes what we call the Lord's Prayer. Now, once again, this is the shorter version of it.

And some of you that memorize the Matthew's version as a kid, you're like, there was a shorter version I could have memorized, but but this is a little bit shorter of a version here. And we often call it though the Lord's Prayer. But in reality, it's not the Lord's Prayer. Jesus never would have actually prayed this prayer specifically, because at the end of it, it talks about forgiveness of our sins and Jesus didn't need his sins forgiven.

So rather, this is a model prayer for the disciples, a model prayer for you and I as well. And so really, if we were able to go up to Jesus in physical form and say, Jesus, please teach us to pray, this is what he would say. This is what he would say. He says, father, father, in that first word, I think is by far the most important word in the whole entire prayer here.

It doesn't start with High King of Heaven. No, it starts out with father, which would be just like it's calling somebody dad back 2000 years ago. It's this invitation there that says that you can have a relationship, that this God is not a far off God that you can never know, but rather it's an invitation that says, I can go up to my father and just say, dad, I need help.

Dad, I want to talk to you. And if you have a good father, what a blessing that has been in your life. But you have an even greater father in heaven that no good father can compare to. It's an invitation to draw near father. But then it says, hallowed be your name. That word hallowed means to be made holy or to be made separate, to be made different.

So it first starts out by father, this invitation to draw in and draw close to God. But then on the very heels of that, he then says, make your name holy. And holy is completely separate, completely different than the rest of the world. So he's saying, I know that this world is sinful. This world is dirty. You are not like that though, father.

And so on. The very first line, there's this tension that builds, and I think it's a good tension for every single Christian to have and understand that we have a father that we can go to and we can approach, and he is relatable and he is loving, and there's no reason why I can't go to him. At the same time, he is different and he is greater, and he is mightier than anything else in the world.

But this is wonderful news because it means that if I have a father who loves me and invites me in, then he cares enough about me to hear. But I also have a father who is holy and mighty, that he is strong enough to make a difference, because my children can come and ask me to do things. But there are some things for which I cannot do.

As an earthly father. We don't have that with our Heavenly Father, that he invites us to come in and as he invites us to come in, his name is holy. His name is Grace. In this tension that we get to live in now is that we have a good, loving father who is also holy and righteous and just.

And then the request is your kingdom come, your kingdom come. Oftentimes, we think of the next line as the one that we make request of. But really the first request, the first petition that they make over to God is this your kingdom? Come. Now, let me ask you, if we collectively, across the world as Christians, just decide to say, you know what, let's not pray this.

Let's not pray that God's kingdom is going to come. Would his kingdom still come if we don't pray? I think so. Right. Because His word. Actually, if you read through the scriptures, you realize that no, he's already said that his kingdom was going to come, that one day he's going to come back. He's going to set up a kingdom.

It's going to be a good kingdom. And because of that, like it's going to come whether we pray for it or not. And I bring this up to kind of bring up the elephant in the room that I'm probably not the only one who has said a prayer. And it felt like I asked myself, did did that really matter?

Like, wasn't God going to do the thing that he wanted to do, whether I prayed for it or not? And if he doesn't want to do it, then what's the point of me even praying for it? It probably doesn't really even matter. But now I think what we start to see is God does have a good plan that's working out for our good as well.

But at the same time, it is now an invitation. He's saying, I want children to actually desire my kingdom to come to that. This is an invitation to start to work on your heart. So as I start to pray, God, let your kingdom come. It is also changing my heart to desire God's kingdom to come down. See, prayer changes us before it changes our circumstances.

It will start to transform our own heart ever before. It changes anything else. So we start by saying, God, your kingdom come, your will be done. As it says in Matthew, I want you to be made great, you know, and throughout Scripture it does say even just in a few verses from now, it does say that if we pray, God will hear us and he will answer us.

And for a lot of us, we we look at that and we almost want to say, God, that doesn't feel true. Jesus, that doesn't feel true because I prayed for something and it didn't happen. But as our hearts start to be transformed by the power of God's Word, start to be transformed by the Holy Spirit's working inside of us, our prayers are also going to be transformed to where?

No longer are we just saying, God, please give me that Cadillac. We're now starting to say, God, let your will be done. God, please, please help me be a better witness. God, please transform this my heart and turn it on fire for you. Like when we start to pray but being transformed by God's Holy Spirit. Then our prayers will start to transform.

And God wants to answer those prayers and it will start to change us. But he does still care about the day to day. In the next line he says in verse three, he says, give us each day our daily bread. Now some of y'all, this is your life verse. Me too. I love bread and so like I'm going into Olive garden and just saying this over them.

But but notice it doesn't say give us this yearly bread, give us our six months emergency bread. It says give us our daily bread. Just enough for today. And for me it's like, wouldn't it be more efficient if I just actually said, God, please give me enough bread to last for the rest of my life? But if God did that, then I wouldn't need to come back tomorrow and pray and be dependent on him tomorrow, would I?

And so he's going to give us enough strength, enough provision just for today. Why? Because God only gives us enough for today. Because he wants us close tomorrow. Lets us close tomorrow. Listen for me, like this last season, one of my prayer requests is like God, please heal my arm. I broke my arm really bad a few months ago.

I know you're probably sick of hearing it, but like. But like I've been praying. This is just one of my selfish, if you want to call it that. Prayers of saying God, please heal my arm. Please heal my arm, please hear my arm. But it's getting better a little bit every day, but every single day. I have to pray it again and be reminded that God is the one that's going to bring the healing, not me.

And what a gift it is that he allows us to walk through things that says, every single day I gotta get up and I gotta pray because my spouse has cancer and I gotta rely on him even more. I gotta get up and I gotta pray because I lost my job and I need to now trust him every single day and be dependent.

And I get to see that he is faithful every single morning. And I wouldn't be able to see that if I didn't have to walk through that. And so now this is an invitation that says I need to be dependent on him. And what a wonderful opportunity that we have, that we get to go to God and say, God, I just need you to come through that.

I know the God of the universe, the creator of all of us, and he knows my name, and I can be dependent on him. And then it goes on to say, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Sins like when it says forgive, it's actually a legal term that says to wipe out the debt.

The sin is like we have a debt to the O and we could not pay that debt. And so Jesus Christ has come down on the cross, paid the debt for us. But if we understand that, if we truly understand what it means to be forgiven by God, then we should be able to forgive all those people around us that have heard us.

If we can't forgive the people that have heard us, then we clearly don't know how much our sin actually hurt God the Father, because he has forgiven us far greater than anything that we're ever called to do to one another as well. And this is an invitation once again, for normally whenever I did something wrong as a kid and I knew my dad knew about it, what would I do?

I would do what Adam and Eve did, and I would go hide away. Like I don't want to see him, right? Whenever your mom would say, wait till your father gets home, that was never a good thing in my house. Whenever she said those words, I would be outside all night long if I had to. But with our father, it's saying no, actually.

Come here and just say it. Say, God, you already saw it. You already knew my heart. And I'm so sorry. But I'm so thankful that you still love me anyway. Help me show the love to all my people around me that you have shown to me. And then lead us not into temptation, not don't lead us into a situation that we would fall away from you.

Why? Because at my heart, my deepest affection in my heart is I want to stay close to you. Lord, please help me. Stay close to you. And then he gives two examples that we're going to go through pretty quickly here. Two examples of what not just what you say in your prayer, but also the attitude for which we are to pray with.

In verse five it says, and he said to them, which of you has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. All right, so let me set the scene here that you are.

Now, let's say that you have some friends coming over back 2000 years ago. There's no cell phones. You had no idea when they were going to come. You actually had no idea that they were coming. They just showed up from 100 miles away one night. It's now midnight, because oftentimes in that time period, you would actually you would actually often travel at nighttime to avoid the heat of the day.

And so they come up at the middle of the night, you had not planned for them, and now you have nothing to set before. Then you have no food that was left over because you were not expecting them. And so you couldn't just go to Walmart at 11:00 at night and buy a few loaves. And so you'd have to go over to your friend's house and wake up some of you.

I just woke up just now. Is it? Wake up. We got somebody at our house. Now, listen, I love you guys. I love you guys so much. I'm so thankful to be your pastor. But don't do this to me, all right? I don't don't come over to my house. I will not be happy with you. And this is what was happening right now.

Like, if you go over to somebody's house, it's midnight and be like, hey, man, you got a loaf of bread? I'm like, what type of drugs are you on, bro? Like, get out of my yard right now. I'm calling the cops. But yet he goes back and in the next verse it says that he will answer from within.

Do not bother me. Now, these are friends, and I think probably good friends, because it sounds like the friend is like, just what are you doing, Steve? Like, get out of my yard, man. He's like, do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are in bed with me. They slept, usually in one bed, in one house.

It would have woken up the entire house all at once if he were to get up and get stuff ready. I cannot give up and give you anything. It's like, God, I'm already in bed, man. My kids are sleeping. Just get out, dude. Get out like the baby is sleeping. You know how long it took me to get this baby asleep?

And this was the attitude. But I tell you in verse eight, though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, because he loves the guy, yet because of his impedance he will rise. That's a shameless just for a ferocity of going and asking and asking and asking. He will rise and give him whatever he needs.

It's not because he wanted to, but because this friend kept asking. I remember back a few years ago, we were in one of the city's down in Florida, and I was with actually just we had two little boys at the time, and, and we were sitting down in a park and a man came up to me and he and he's like, hey, out of nowhere, he just kind of came up, kind of surprised me a little bit.

And he came up and we were sitting on the ground and he's like, hey, can I get some money for cigarettes? And I was like, listen, I try to give money to when people ask me for money, I usually if I have it, then I'd usually try. But I was like, that one doesn't sit right for me. Like, you just came up and asked money for cigarettes.

And I was like, I'm sorry, man. Like, I don't think I can do that this time. And and he came back and he's like, listen, man, it's not a big deal. Like, you just got a few bucks. Just help me out. Like, I really, like, had a long day. Can you just give me some money for some cigarettes?

And finally it's like, you know what? Like, I'm a Christian and, like, I don't want to give you money for something that might harm you. Like, I just don't feel comfortable with that. And so finally he's like, fine, fine, whatever. And then he was like, what if it's for Gatorade?

And I was like, I feel like you're going to buy cigarettes if I give you money. He's like, no.

And I was like, I really don't. He's like, come on, man, just give me a little bit of money. I promise I won't buy any cigarettes. And finally, at that point, I was just like, I need to get this man away from my family. And so finally, I reach in my wallet, I pull out $5, and I say to him and like, well, I was like, listen, I'm a Christian.

And so I don't really like giving money away for like, stuff that's going to hurt you. But I'm a Christian, so I'm going to pray over this $5 and then I'm going to give it to you. And he was like, I don't want your holy money. And I was like, you were going to buy cigarettes. He's like, yeah, I was going to buy cigarettes.

He walked away, but I was willing to do whatever it took to get that man out of my hair at that moment.

This isn't saying this passage is not saying that. God is saying, Will you get out of my hair? Will you leave me alone? What it is saying is, if even a grumpy, half asleep neighbor will get up and give you something because you ask hard enough, imagine what a loving father would do. Imagine how much? How much is there?

Tony Evans often talks about all the untold blessings that we have stored up in heaven that we never get to see just because we didn't ask for it. That we have a loving father. See, the only way to have your prayers answers is to actually pray, by the way, to actually pray. And we see this because in the next line he says, I tell you, ask, ask.

In the Greek, the ass, seek and knock is going to be in the present tense, which really could also be translated as keep asking. I will tell you, keep asking and it will be given to you. Keep seeking and you will find. Keep knocking and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, who keeps asking, will receive, and everyone who seeks finds and everyone who knocks, it will be open to keep going.

In the middle of night. Lord, I know you're sick of hearing from me, but I'm not going to give you a break, Lord, until you come through. And I'm going to trust the way that you're going to do it. But I know, Lord, that you have asked me you desire me to come to you. So I'm just going to come to you now.

And then it says in the last couple verses, what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead, instead of a fish, give him a serpent, or if literally in the serpent, he can also mean evil spirits. It's just like a play on words a little bit. In verse 12 it says, or if he asks him for an egg, will he give him a scorpion?

If then you who are evil as you and me. By the way, welcome to church. Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Matthew's version it says, give good gifts to those who ask him and Luke's, what does it say to give him the Holy Spirit?

Some of us we we see that and we're like, actually, though, I want the car.

You know, how many times have I personally got down on my hands and knees and prayed for something, some type of provision? God, please give me a little bit more money so I can provide for my family a little bit better, that we can buy the house so we can buy the car. Lord, it would be so convenient and I promise I'm going to serve you.

And when you give me this good gift and I'll serve it with you. But like, how many times do we spend all of our prayer praying for the daily bread type of things, when we could have been asking for more of him? See, we become content with bread. Well, God is wanting to give us himself. I want more of you when you pray that he will answer it every time.

You know I'm in a stage of life right now. Many of you I have small children, and so oftentimes around in the middle of the night, we'll start to hear a little bit of rustling there. They're all in the basement, actually, is where we keep our children. And then I have a bedroom on the top floor. But so like, they don't actually come up very often because they're kind of scared to actually the younger ones are a little bit scared to actually walk through the dark house at night.

But so I know that if I get a knock on the door, then it usually is something a little bit more significant. And a few weeks ago, laying in bed about 130 at night, sleeping. And that's when I hear the.

My, my bed is pretty close to the door. And so immediately I just kind of startle awake and I sit up and realize there's somebody else in my door and like, it's either my child or a murderer. But here we go. And and I opened the door and it's one of my sons. And he's saying, dad, I had a bad dream, I can't sleep.

What type of father would I be if I'm like, get lost, you know, instead, what am I going to do? Like, in that moment, I know that whatever gave him that bad dream, whatever he's dreaming, whatever monsters are underneath his bed or in his closet are not real. They're not. He has no reason to be scared. His dad has bought him a house and the doors are locked and he's safe inside.

And yet I wonder how many times that I have to go to the father.

Dad! I'm scared. Dad, do you see what's going on? Father? God, I don't know if I can do this. And if it was me. I wonder how many times God's like. What is scaring you? Your lack of provision, your health stuff. That family issue. Like that's that's not really real. Like it is real. But if you only knew how I'm going to solve all this, you wouldn't be concerned about it.

But yet we still have a father that says, but I want you to wake me up in the middle of the night. I want you to keep knocking and keep knocking and keep knocking because I want to hear from you. If you ever have a mother or father that maybe have had children walk away, their deepest desire, if they get a call from the child is not.

I can't believe they're calling again. They're saying, yes, my baby is calling me, my baby is coming back to me. And that is how God feels about us. And so what a joy, what a privilege it is for me who is far from a perfect father to pick up my little boy, to walk the back downstairs to pray over him, sometimes lay down beside him and let him fall asleep in the safety of his father's arms.

And if me, who is evil, get such joy out of doing that for my child, how much more? How much more is a father who loves us? A perfect heavenly father? Let me finish off with this quote I've always loved. Is that the only person who dares wake up a king at 3 a.m. for a glass of water is a child.

We have that kind of access that he says, don't give me rest, my children. I want to hear from you. You know, as a church, we want to be a church that not just comes in here and studies the Bible, but actually lives this out. And so right now, I know, I know that there's many of us in here right now that are going through some things that are hard, difficult situations.

And we want to be praying for each other. And so we did this about a year ago. Some of you may remember it. Nobody has to nobody has to do it. But I'm going to invite you guys in just a moment. If you're here today and you say, you know what, I have a prayer. I have something that I need to be prayed over.

I'm going to ask you is going to be like, this is going to take some bravery. It will, but I'm going to ask you to do the rest of us a privilege and raise up your hand. If you're here today and you say, I could use some prayer and maybe you want to share that, maybe you don't, that's okay if you don't want to share it.

But I'm going to ask you in just a moment to raise up your hand. And then after we see all the hands that go up throughout the congregation, I'm going to ask the rest of us to also stand up and go near somebody that has a hand raise and just say a pray over them. You want to ask them their name.

You can say, hey, do you want to share? If they don't want to share, that's okay. They can just say, I'm prayer and you can just pray for them. But can we be a church that doesn't just come in here and says like, hey, we care about the word, but no one actually live it out? Can we actually be a church that lives this out this morning to pray for each other this morning?

And so for some of us here, I'm just asking, like, it's not going to work if some of us here are going to try to be perfect right now, it's going to get real awkward. And nobody raises their hands because but we also need to be real enough and be honest enough to say, yeah, you know what I'm going through?

Some stuff might not be terminal cancer. It doesn't have to be. But I'm going through a hard season right now, and I could use some prayer from a church right now. And if that's you, let me just tell you the reason why you're here this morning is for this moment to be prayed over by your church. Listen, we have a God like we know the God of the universe.

He knows my name. He wants to hear from you. What a privilege it is to lift each other up in prayer. And so can I just ask you guys to be brave on the count of three. If you're here today and you say, you know what, I just need some prayer. I need a few people to be brave enough to be willing to ask for it.

So the rest of us can also be a blessing to you. But on the count of three, I'm going to count to three. And then you can raise your hand. And then after we see that, we're going to invite you to go and just spend a couple of minutes in prayer with them. So on the count of three, ready?

One, two, three. Have any hands? Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. I want everybody kind of look around here. There's some up in the back. There's some. Keep your hands up, please. Actually, if you can, just keep out your hands up for just a second. Amen. Could you guys. Now, whoever's around them, could you guys please go around them?

If you want to need. Ask them their name. You can ask them their name if they want to share. They can. If they don't want to share, they don't have to. Let's just take a minute and pray for each other.