start the new year by going through this very brief passage in Acts. Relatively speaking, it's very brief, but it's Acts chapter 2, 42 through 47, but there's so much here. And the reason for doing this is, so we have three years behind us as a church plant, and so we've been, You know, it's neat to look back and to say, you know, we started in a house back in the day and the house was way too small, the kitchen. And it's just neat to see how God continues to work in us and work in us as a church and move on us as a church. But here's what we have. So as we continue to go and to, you know, beginning our fourth year, We have to, I think, periodically go back to basics and just ask ourselves, remind ourselves, okay, what is the church? What is the goal of the church? What is it we're supposed to be doing as a church? What does a church look like? What's a biblical church look like? What's the vision, you could say? What's the goal? What's our aim? And just go back to basics from the Word of God and say, listen, this is what the Word of God lays out for us as a church as far as what a church looks like. And just periodically, We're three years in, or three years behind us now, to go back to basics, 101 stuff, go back and say, listen, there's five things. When you look at this section of Acts, there are five marks of a biblical church, and I do believe that every church should have this as its emphasis or goal or vision, you could say. And so, you'll see that it's, in a lot of ways, the goal of the church is very stripped down. It's very simple in some ways. Now, it's the hardest thing in the world because it requires the Holy Spirit. and it's impossible to do apart from God's grace and apart from God's Spirit. But the point is, is when you look at the early church, the apostolic church, you go back and you say, okay, what made that church tick? What was it about that church? We see there's no doubt about it, the church has power, the church is, as you could say, effective, the church goes forth, and as we see Paul the Apostle and the others, they say, man, these are the guys that are turning the world upside down. Well, how are they doing that? What's going on to make that happen? And if you go back and you look and you start reading through the early church, you'll find that there's five marks and they're all pretty simple. They're all pretty basic marks. And I'll give you the five right now. We're gonna go each week for five weeks. We'll go through each mark, taking one mark. attribute at a time. But the first one is spirit dependent. We'll look at that today. Number two is the Bible or the Apostles teaching as the foundation. So the Word of God. Number three is fellowship and hospitality. Number four is the generosity and sacrifice of the church. And number five is evangelism and witness to the world. And those are really the five basic things of the church. Now when you look at this, let's back up just a little bit and go back if you Go back to Acts chapter one and you start looking at, okay, how does this happen? How does this work? Remember, okay, Christ is raised from the dead. So he's crucified, three days later, he's raised from the dead. 40 days after that, the Bible tells us in Acts one that he ascends, that Christ ascends. Remember, and the disciples are standing there, they're watching him, they're looking at him. They're wondering, oh, shoot, man, there goes our hope. I mean, what do we do now? And the angel comes and says, no, no, no. Go and wait in Jerusalem as Christ told you. And what happens is when they go to Jerusalem, they begin to pray. And as they're praying, remember, Pentecost happens the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit falls upon the church. The Spirit is poured out upon the church. People then begin to get saved. People are gathered in. And that's what you have at the end of chapter 2 of Acts. And that leads us to where we are today. Okay, so what you're seeing is this number one the very first thing for all of this is is the Holy Spirit being poured out Okay, and when you see Paul the or excuse me Peter's the one that gives the first sermon on the day of Pentecost post-resurrection Peter is standing up look at Acts chapter 2 Peter stands up and begins to preach after the Spirit is poured out. You see in verse 14, chapter 2, "...but Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words, for these are not drunk." Because they're looking at these men that the Spirit fell upon and they're thinking, what is going on with these guys? And Peter's saying, no, no, no. This is what was promised to us in the book of Joel. The Spirit's going to be poured out in the last days. The Spirit's being poured out upon these people. And then he begins to preach about Christ. And he says, you have crucified the Lord of glory. And this man that you crucified was raised from the dead. And this man that was raised from the dead, this is God declaring to all persons everywhere that you are commanded to repent and put your faith in this man. And yes, you've crucified him, you're guilty. And they're all looking around at each other, and they're looking around convicted, and they say, what shall we then do? I mean, what are we supposed to do if we're the ones that crucified this guy? I mean, is there any hope for us if we're the ones that put this man to death? And we can say the same thing knowing that Christ went to the cross for our sins. And we're saying, okay, Christ went to die for sinners. I'm a sinner. What then shall I do? Is there any hope for me? And of course there is. This is where at the end you see, look at verse 37 of chapter 2. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? You know, we're in serious trouble, man. We just crucified the guy, the one guy you should not mess with. We put him to death. We crucified him. We're saying the same thing. The one person on earth in the universe that you should not offend is God. We've offended that God with our sin. We should have the same conviction that these men have. We should be looking around, cut to the heart, cut to the quick, and we should be saying, what shall we do? And Peter says, In other words, you say, turn to Christ. Put your faith and your hope in this Jesus Christ. His arms are open wide. If He was willing to save the men who physically and literally crucified Jesus, He's willing to save anyone who comes to Him to the uttermost. So you come to Him in faith. You put your trust in Him. You'll be saved. You'll be spared from God's judgment. All your sins will be forgiven. That's the very first step, right? That's where everything begins. But you notice this as well, okay? Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is poured upon the church, there were 3,000 men who were saved from this sermon, you could say. There were 3,000 men. Now, that is what you could call a very serious, unusual, exceptional outpouring of the Holy Spirit. You could call it a revival. Those things are unusual. I do believe they happen, but they are unusual, they are exceptional. Right? Here's the question though. When you look at what happens next in the passage that we're looking at, we're looking here at the life of a, you could call it the ordinary daily life of the church. Not every day is the day of Pentecost in the life of the church. That was true in the apostolic church, in the early church. It wasn't like every single day there was this mighty, outpouring, Pentecostal move of the Holy Spirit upon these guys. It wasn't like that. The Holy Spirit was attending everything they did, absolutely, but not in the same manner with the same extraordinary outpouring or power that you saw on the day of Pentecost. And so what you see next here in the book of Acts, and this is why I think it's so important to look at this particular section, is you see the ordinary life of the church, the day-to-day existence of the church. What was the church doing post-Pentecost? And that's where we're at today. So let's read this. This is chapter 2, 42 through 47. After we're told that 3,000 souls were added to the church, this is what the church does. Verse 42, And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. Verse 46, so continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. You see how ordinary this is? In the sense of typical, this is what you have, it's typical, this is what the typical, now I'm using the word ordinary, not to say it's like plain or boring, but ordinary in the sense of this is ordinarily what you should see in the life of the church. It's people coming together, Spirit-dependent, dependent on the Holy Spirit, built upon the foundation of the Apostles' teaching, which is the Word of God. There's fellowship, there's hospitality, there's generosity and sacrifice, there's evangelism and witness to the world, as you see in verse 47, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved, right? So this is the life of the church. And that's why we go if we go back to the basics periodically every now and then just to say, listen, you want a vision for the church? Go to this section right here. There's your vision. There's your ordinary life of the church. So the very first thing we have today that we're going to look at is spirit dependent. OK, a church, a biblical apostolic church is a church that is spirit dependent now. And I understand that the first When you hear that, you might say, well, of course it is. Duh. I mean, every church would say the same thing. Every church would agree with that. And I'm not saying they wouldn't, but I'm saying functionally, practically, do we actually live that out as a church? You see, we could start with, and I kind of tinkered with the idea of starting with the apostles teaching as the first mark. But then if you think about it, I mean, The Bible, of course, the apostles' teaching that we have in the Word of God is primary. It is the foundation. But if you don't have the Spirit moving upon us as we read the Word of God, the Bible says that knowledge puffs up. And so knowledge, the Word of God, having knowledge of the Word of God without the Holy Spirit is a very dangerous and deadly thing. And so we need the Spirit. So the very primary thing, and it's not to say one is more important than the other, but it's to say they're all working in tandem together, But first of all, what you have to have, what every church must have, absolutely have, requirement, like no doubt about it, is a church that is Spirit-dependent. And you see throughout the book of Acts, throughout the Bible, throughout the Old Testament even, the Spirit of God is given to God's people. This is what Matthew Henry says about this section regarding the dependency upon the Spirit. And you notice here in verse 42, look at verse 42. It says, one of the things that they're doing is, okay, so they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine of fellowship and the breaking of bread and in what? And in prayers. All right? And in prayers. And so those I mean, most people looking at this passage think these are set times when the church is intentionally coming together to pray. It's not to discount or discredit individual prayer. That's important too. But it's talking about one of the things that the church is doing is praying. Matthew Henry says, after the Spirit was poured out, as well as before the Spirit was poured out on Pentecost, they continued steadfast in prayer. For prayer will never be ended until it comes to be swallowed up in everlasting praise. Right? So this is something that every church should always be doing. Remember what Jesus says about the temple. My house is a house of prayer. That's what God says about His temple. God's house is a house of prayer. And so this has always been the case and it will always be the case until the return of Christ. And the point that Matthew Henry is making is at the return of Christ, prayer will be swallowed up in everlasting praise by the church. So for right now, until that day, until Christ returns, the church is to be marked by prayer. Now, why prayer though? Let's again just go back to basics. Why prayer? I know we all know that, but if we just stop and think about why is prayer actually important, especially for the life of a church? Well, number one is because the church is not the same thing as a business. It's not the same thing as an organization. The church is something that's living. It's an organic entity. How does the church come about? You could ask, how is a church to come about? Well, is it because somebody has a lot of ingenuity or charisma, or he has a lot of flashy ideas, or somebody, maybe a group of people with a lot of money, and they say, hey, let's just start a church. Well, yeah, sometimes that is the case. Sometimes that is how things happen. But unfortunately, if the Spirit of God is not moving upon that group, or if the Spirit of God is not leading that group, what happens? The church doesn't work out. The church is not actually a church. There's compromise, there's pragmatism, there's a lot of things that are motivated for the wrong reasons. So when you're looking at what the church is about, the church is primarily something that comes about by the Holy Spirit, by God's will, by God's providence. God raises up people. Look at the example we have here. How does the apostolic church come about? You know, these guys, if you go back to chapter 1, the apostles are not ready to go and say, they're not saying, hey, let's go plant churches. Let's go start a church somewhere. These guys, if you go back even before that, when Christ is still in the grave, they're terrified. They're out of their minds. They're trying to save their own skin, save their own necks. But then when Christ is risen, He goes to them and He says, okay, go into all the world, teach, baptize, make disciples, that kind of thing. Whenever that starts to happen, then you start having people who come together. The reason why is because when you're dealing with the church, a church is absolutely impossible from a human perspective. And we've talked about this before, but if you just take, let's take this church for example, the church right here, LRC. You have people here from all different walks of life, from all different backgrounds, different interests, different gifts, different weaknesses, different strengths, different everything, right? And all of a sudden you're put in a situation where there is a bond and a unity that we now have. Why? Because of Christ. Because of the fact that we all share the same spirit. If you are in Christ, you share the exact same spirit that the other person has in Christ. You have the same spirit in you that Paul had. that the apostles had. It's the same spirit. And that spirit is what unifies and what unites a group of people. It's also, of course, not only unites us together, but it's what unites us to Christ. And so when you're talking about a church that is spirit-dependent, you're talking about a... Think of the early church. Go back to their example, okay? The early church, they were uneducated. They were backwards in the eyes of the world. They had no money. They had no powerful influences. They really had nothing going for them. What did they have, though, that overturned the world? The Spirit of God. That's what overturns the world. That's what a church has to have. You don't have to necessarily have money for a church to happen. You don't have to have, you know, a fancy building, obviously. I mean, and that's the beauty of this. This is why there's encouragement here. And this is certainly, you know, and everything you see about this is, okay, well, God moves upon His people whenever God is in it. When God's Spirit is upon it, it's going to happen. And so there's still going to be difficulties and trials, but you see that the early church knew they could not survive without what? The Spirit of God, because they had nothing else. They had no resources. Resources are good, and I'm not saying, you know, resources are great. In fact, think of Barnabas. You know, Barnabas the encourager? Sometimes we forget it was Barnabas who was a very, very wealthy man. And Barnabas, with his wealth, said, you know what, I'm going to help the church out. Why? Well, because the church can use resources. Resources are good. But it was the Spirit of God moving upon Barnabas, moving upon the people. Think about in the Old Testament, even in the days of Moses. Moses, whenever they're trying to build the tabernacle. I mean, think of this. God goes to Moses. You go to Exodus. You have a lot of plans for the tabernacle. You have a lot of design. You have a lot of wood that's needed. You have gold that's needed. You have bronze that's needed. You have purple fabric that's needed. You don't have a Walmart. Where is all of this going to come from? You know what happens? Moses receives this before anybody's actually stirred up to do it. But Moses knows that God is going to stir up the people to supply what this tabernacle needs by the Spirit of God, and that's exactly what happens, and that's true for every single church. God will stir up the people. We've seen it in this church plan. We've seen it with the fact that, you know, we're meeting here as a church in this building, I mean, and the fact, I mean, how this came about, this building, that's God's grace. Where we will go to after this, we have no idea. We have absolutely Zero idea where we're gonna go to next. Now, you could stay up all night worrying and fretting and pulling your hair out and making thousands of phone calls. Or you can say, God, listen, you took care of us when we were without a place over here and you found this place. And you know what? Whenever we get to that point and we need another place, God's gonna be there and he's gonna supply us with that place. And that's true as well for elders and deacons. By God's grace, we hope by the end of this year to be particularized and have elders and deacons in this church. Well, God, how does this come about? God's Spirit is going to bring this about. From the very beginning, that's how all of this works. Right? That's why spirit, I mean, a church has to be spirit dependent. And I know we say, well, of course. I mean, that's obvious. But it's not so obvious. If you walk into a lot of churches, let me just give you one example. And you see all the bells and whistles and the smoke machines and the fog lights and all of the really fancy stuff. Now, I'm not saying this is true for every church, but I'm saying, by and large, that's a church that's not depending on the Holy Spirit. That's a church that's just depending on what attracts people carnally, what's gonna attract their fleshes, what's gonna set off their dopamine alarms, you know? I mean, we're getting blasted with our dopamine all week long on our phones and social media. We need a church that's gonna really help our dopamine out. So we put up the lights, we put up the screens, we put up this, we catered it, as opposed to saying, Holy Spirit, move. We have your word, we have the Holy Spirit, we have the sacraments. Guess what the early church had? The word, the sacraments, and the Holy Spirit moving on it. That's what they had. And guess what? They had a lot of power, didn't they? Power as far as moving. Power as far as people being saved. Power as far as lives being transformed. Power, eventually, as far as influencing their culture, influencing their homes, influencing their neighborhoods. Why? Because they had the Holy Spirit. A Spirit-dependent church. Now, this is why Jesus, back in Acts 1, verse 4, says what? He says, Wait for the promise of the Father, You shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now, and that's exactly what happens. I'm gonna give you, now supposedly, I've heard people say there are 12 times in the book of Acts where you will find the church praying together. I have found eight, so I don't know. But here, I'm gonna give you a few of them here. Okay, number one, chapter 114. Verse 14, we're told that the whole church, all the church continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. That's when they're praying together and Pentecost happens, the Holy Spirit falls upon them. Chapter 4, 24 through 31, you have Peter and John who are arrested for preaching the gospel and then they are released from prison and the church said, we're told that the church is praying thus and when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, etc. You'll see their prayer. But they say at the end of this prayer it says that, "...and when they had prayed, the place was shaken, where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness." So they continue to go forth despite Peter and John being arrested. They're released from jail, and what's the first thing you're told? The church is over here praying for them and then rejoicing in prayer whenever they're released. Chapter 10, verse 9, you see Peter praying on a rooftop. He receives a vision from God regarding unclean animals, which points to the fact that Gentiles are also to be included in the church of God. Not just ethnic Jews, but also Gentiles. You see in chapter 12, verse 5, Peter is thrown in prison again. And what happens, we're told that prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto God for him. And then Peter is busted out of prison by an angel, and Peter, whenever he goes to the place where all of the church is after he's busted out, we are told that they are all together in John Mark's house, and we're told that there were many gathered together praying. Praying for him, praying for other things. The point is, when you go through the book of Acts, what is something that you always find the church doing? Praying. And it makes sense. I mean, I think it helps in their condition in the early church when they know they're desperate. They know that they're being persecuted. They know they're being hounded. They know that they have nothing but God's spirit to help them. They are spirit dependent. Luke chapter 16, or excuse me, Acts chapter 16, but Luke says this. He says, we went outside the city by a riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and that's where they meet Lydia, and she gets converted. Chapter 16, verse 25, you remember Paul and Silas, they're in prison, and what are they doing? We remember them singing, but they're praying. We're told that they're praying and they're singing hymns. So this is the life of the early church. Now this, of course, should be the life of every church, but ask yourself this, why is prayer so important? Think about how, again, impossible what you would call a church is. And think about how impossible the Christian life is, apart from the Spirit. I'm just gonna go through a few things. Conversion. Who works conversion? Who's the one that brings about conversion? God's Spirit. No one else, right? God's Spirit alone can convert. God uses means. He uses us to go out and share the gospel. Nobody can convert a soul except for the Spirit of God. Think about once somebody is converted, growth in maturity, growth in Christian conformity, growth in Christian knowledge, growth in understanding. Who does that? Well, the Spirit does that. We're told that it's the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit does that. Loving and serving each other. We'll talk about that when we look at sacrifice. How are we to love each other and serve each other? Well, the Bible calls it the gifts of the Spirit. We're to use the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit provides gifts. Unity, forbearance, considering others better than ourselves, these things that are utterly impossible, forgiving our enemies. Forgiving wrongdoings, overlooking a wrong, those, who can, we can't do that in our natural self. What do we need? We need the Spirit of God. Worshiping God, what does Jesus say as far as worship goes? Worship God in spirit and in truth. Spiritual warfare. You know, one of the things for all of us, because as we encounter Satan or as we go forth in our daily lives, we do believe we have an enemy, right? Paul did. Paul says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he can devour. Well, we all have an enemy. We're all engaged in spiritual warfare. That's true of the church. That's true of us as individuals. There's division. There's discouragement. Deadening. Spiritual deadening. Apathy happens all the time. Temptation. But of course, spreading the gospel, seeing the gospel spread across the nation, across the world, across the land, across this city. That's why, you know, in Paul's 13 letters, so Paul wrote 13 letters, and he mentions prayer 46 times in those 13 letters. It is an integral part of the church. So, look. You know, this is one on one stuff, but ask yourself, look, you say, well, yeah, I get it. I mean, I know all this. I've read the Bible. I see all of this. But here's here's where we just stop and just ask ourselves for a minute. OK, just ask yourself, how is your own prayer life going right now? Like how how is your prayer life? And be honest and examine yourself and inquire, okay, how are you doing in your prayer life? How am I doing? I'm asking myself the same thing. And I've never met anybody that says, dude, my prayer life is great right now. It's usually not that way. But that shows our weakness, does it not? And our weakness is our perceived strength. Get that, right? Our weakness is our perceived strength. To the extent that we perceive ourselves to be strong and self-reliant, we are weak because we are not dependent on God in prayer. You see? What did the early church have going for them? They recognized their weakness. They realized how weak and pathetic and impotent they were apart from the Spirit of God. What is our weakness? Our weakness is how strong we perceive ourselves to be so often. The fact that we think we can go through life or we can go through the day without depending on God. That's the difference between, and that's why in trials, I mean, when does your prayer life flourish? In trials. When you're going through hard times, difficulties, right? Why? Because then you realize how weak I am. When you're being tempted, then I realize how weak I am, how much I need God. And so that's why in a lot of ways, like a church plant, I've always been, I think we've been blessed because when we started the church plant here, we don't have a lot of resources here. We don't have a lot going for us. When we started, we don't have a building. We don't have a pulpit. We don't have a microphone. We don't have any, I mean, right? Why is that helpful though? And I'm not saying we have to stay that way forever. be great to have all these things. But the point is, why is that helpful? Because we, God, we don't even have a pulpit. We need you to move on us. We need you to help us. We don't have our own building. We don't have anything. We don't have a flashy denomination. But we have your spirit. We have your word. That's, that's enough, right? I mean, praise be to God for that. I mean, if you had to choose one or the other, what would you choose? Now, granted, yeah, you can have both and that's fine, too. But if you had to choose, I mean, most churches are saying, listen, we can't operate without, you know, a million dollars in the bank account, without a flashy building over here, without all of this and that. I mean, all of that again is okay, but we're saying, God, that's not what you see in the apostolic church. The apostolic church is grassroots, the Holy Spirit moving on a bunch of people that don't have anything going for them, but because it's the Spirit that moves, things happen. God is glorified, God is worshipped. So that's where prayer, you know, if you just examine your life and you say, look, man, Even if your prayer life, and maybe especially when your prayer life is weak, you know what the prayer is? Go to God and say, God, my prayer life is weak, help me. It's not like God doesn't know your prayer life is weak right now. Not like you're hiding it. You're like, no, I can't tell God about how weak my prayer life is. He'd be so embarrassed and ashamed. He knows about it already. Go to Him. God, my prayer life, I want it to be stronger. I want it to be better. Well, how does that happen? Well, through weakness. There's no doubt about it. through recognizing your weakness. But also, I mean, here's a few instances as far as prayer goes. God tells us to pray. We know that, right? Jesus himself. Now think of this. And I read this from a guy that was in the 1800s. And I thought, man, that is so profound. But he talks about, he does a whole sermon over Matthew 7, verse 7. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. That's Jesus. Jesus is telling us, ask, seek, and knock. And when you do so, God is going to hear you. And God, a lot of times, answers our prayers. And we can expect God to answer our prayers. But here's what you have. This is what the sermon was. I thought, man, this is incredible. How is it that God has to beg us or beseech us to go to Him in prayer? If we really recognize this situation, we would be begging God to be able to go to Him in prayer. God has opened the way for us to go and pray to Him, but it's God, notice, who has to go to us and say, hey guys, don't forget to ask me, don't forget to seek me, don't forget to knock, right? And you're like, well how could I, why would I ever forget that? but we forget it all the time. God is coming and saying, hey guys, listen, do you realize, do I, I mean, think about the blessings and the benefits that we have, the privilege, the opportunity that we have to go to a God who is not just, it's not like God's reluctant to hear us. It's not like we go to God and say, well, God, I know you didn't tell us to ask or seek you, but I'm going to come and... No, God is telling us, ask. And in fact, the verb tense there is keep asking, continue to ask, continue to not, continue to seek. And Jesus, in Luke chapter 18, gives us a parable of the persistent widow. And he talks about, and I want to read this, Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells us to emphasize The importance of not just praying, but to continue to pray. This is Luke chapter 18, and this is the parable that Jesus says. And the parable is so that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. Why does Jesus give us this parable? Why are we told this? Why does Jesus say, listen, I need to tell you guys something so that you will continue to pray and not lose heart. Why? Because we have a tendency to lose heart in our prayers, do we not? You've been praying for the same thing, for the same people. I know I have, to be converted, to be saved for decades. And still they're not saved. Maybe some sin in your life. Maybe some trial in your life. You're praying and you're praying and you're discouraged and you're losing heart about it. Or there's something else and you're thinking, man, I'm not even going to go to God in prayer for that. Here's what Jesus says. He says, there was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city and she came to him saying, get justice for me from my adversary. She's telling the judge that. And he would not for a while. The judge wouldn't do it. But afterward he said within himself, Though I do not fear God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her. I will hear her cause and take up her cause. Lest by her continual coming she weary me. Then Jesus said, Hear what the unjust judge said. That's the difference, right? The God of the universe is not unjust. The God of the universe is not someone who doesn't care for man. He's someone who does care for man. Here's a judge who doesn't care for man, who's unjust, and yet he's willing to help this lady out. Jesus says, and shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. And the point there is, what makes prayer possible? You know, this is important. Muslims say that, well, they pray five times a day, Muslims will tell you, right? They pray five times, they'll tell you, man. They're proud about it. I tell you all the time when I was working, when I was going to seminary, I worked at a place where I had to move furniture. And I was 28 at the time, and all these other guys were like 18 and 19, and I was starting to feel older, you know? And so I'm moving all this furniture, but then one of the guys I worked with was a, he was a Muslim from Iraq. He was, he had worked with the U.S. government, and so they gave him like sanctuary over here or whatever. So I was working with this guy. Now this guy was in his 30s or 40s, and we were the ones, we're always working together. And he was trying to convert me, and I was trying to convert him. But part of his sales pitch was, you know what? Yeah, we pray five times a day. But the best part is, is when you pray, you get to do some exercise. It's like calisthenics. And he showed me on his app, he had different stretches and stuff. So five times a day, you don't got to worry about just praying. You can actually get some bodily exercise while you're praying. He's doing stretches, and he's showing me this. And it's like, OK, Muslims will tell you they pray, but they don't pray. They don't pray to a God. They pray to a false God. The God of the Muslims don't exist. How do we know that? Because they deny that Jesus Christ is God. We pray to Jesus. We pray to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But what makes prayer possible is the fact that our sins have been forgiven and we've been robed in the righteousness of Christ. You can see, this is Isaiah 59. Think of what God says here. Isaiah 59, He says, but your sins have separated you from God. If you are not in Christ, if you are not a Christian, if you are not a disciple of Jesus Christ, your sins have separated you from God. There's no covenant between you and God. There's no praying to God. The only prayer is, God have mercy on me, I'm a sinner. God save me, God help me, something like that. Your sins, this is what God says, your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. What makes prayer possible? The fact that we've been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ. We've been redeemed by Christ. We've been brought in by Christ. We are children of the Most High God. We've been adopted by Christ. We are sons and daughters of God. That's the benefit and the privilege. That's why when we go to God in prayer, it's Abba Father, and we know that just like we as earthly fathers, though we are evil, give good gifts to our children, we know, as Jesus tells us, how much more than will God, who is not evil unlike us, give good gifts to his children? That's the condition. A child of God. Are you a child of God? Have you been saved by Christ? Have your sins been forgiven? And if not, that's the first place to go. The first prayer is not God help me with my finances or heal me of this sickness or deliver so and so. No, it's God have mercy on me. I'm a sinner. I need Jesus. Give me a new heart. Change my heart. That's what makes prayer possible. This is what John Chrysostom says about prayer. Prayer is such a powerful force that it can overcome the power of fire, it can tame the wrath of lions, it can cause wars to cease, it can stop the storms, it can expel demons, it can open the gates of heaven, it can break the bonds of death. This is John Knox. What is prayer? John Knox says prayer is an earnest and talking with God to whom we declare our miseries, whose support and help we implore and desire in our own adversities, and when we laud and praise our God for the benefits we have received. And there's others, there's another, you know, when you're looking at this, I'll just say this on this part. I was gonna go through more of this, but I will say this. Let me summarize some of this. If you're looking, okay, well, how do I start in prayer? My prayer life's weak. My prayer life is struggling. What, I mean, where do I even start? Well, first of all, remember what Christ says. Christ says, go into your closet. In other words, a quiet place. And your heavenly Father who sees in secret is going to hear your prayers. And then he gives us a model for praying, the Lord's Prayer. And we all know the Lord's Prayer, I'm sure. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. But this is a model. This is something for us to look at and to say, OK, if you go through the petitions of that Lord's Prayer, you see different things that are prayed for. The first petition, hallowed be thy name. And so as you're going through this, it's not just saying it a thousand times, hallowed be thy name, hallowed be thy name. It's actually meditating, dwelling on this fact. God, I want your name to be holy. God, hallow your name. God, make your name glorious in my life and in the nation and in my home and in my neighborhood. Make your name glorious. Your name is set apart. That's what holy means. And then you go to the next petition, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. What's that reminding us of? Well, not my will be done. God, I have a lot of prayers that I want to bring to you, but first and foremost, I want your will to be done in my prayers. That was Jesus' prayer, remember? Father, take this cup away, not my will be done, but yours. That's the idea there. Thy will be done. So it sets you in the right framework of mind, the right perspective. Give us this day our daily bread. That's the idea of God providing us our spiritual and physical sustenance. You know, so in other words, it's not unspiritual to pray for your car if your car's breaking down all the time and you need to get to work. God, I need some help here. Either make my car run or find something, I mean, help me here, right? You can't say, oh, I can't pray for that. Give us this day our daily bread. God, I need to eat today. I need to provide for my family today." That kind of thing. So don't run through it, but look at that model that Jesus Himself has given us, and you'll see other things in the Scriptures as well. But let me conclude by saying this. Let us be a praying church. That's the important part. And I don't mean corporately. Yes, corporately, too. And that's why on Fridays, I'm going to open my house up 12 to 1. And that's for anybody that can make it. I understand that we all have obligations and work. So if you can't make it, that's OK. But it's open. And I think there is something powerful about coming together and praying. But also, it's not just as a church, but what about your families, especially fathers? Fathers, we're called to lead our families in prayer. That's what we're called to do. And in fact, I have a, it's in there, but it's the Westminster standards. In the back, there's 13, there's a whole thing on family worship. There's 13 points. And one of the emphasis of that whole thing is the head of the homes need to be leading their families in prayer. Can you say that your family is marked by prayer, that your home is marked by prayer? Are you a praying home? Do you have a house that is a praying house? Right? So a praying church, a praying house, praying as individuals. Why? Because of what God says. God says, not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. So family worship, prayer meetings, and also praying with each other. coming together and praying with each other, those kinds of things. And ultimately, why do we do this? Because of what we have in Christ. What a privilege it is, the blessings and the privilege of being able to go to the God of the universe, bringing all our cares, our wants, our concerns, and our praises and petitions, knowing that He hears our voices, He hears our prayers. And I know, we all know, for anybody that's been saved for any length of time, you know God answers prayers. But we forget, it's easy to grow weak in our faith. It's easy to grow weak in the flesh. Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is so weak. And so wherever you are right now, if you're not in Christ, that's the first place. Go to Christ. Turn to Christ. If you are in Christ, recognize, hey, if your prayer life is struggling, you got to admit it. You have to admit it, right? Confess it. Lord, I'm dry. I'm weak. Help me. Help me in this area. And He will. And then to the extent that He has given you favor, praise be to God, but again, emphasizing fathers, heads of homes, so important that we're leading our families in prayer. We're modeling that and we're helping them. Where are they gonna learn to pray? Where are they gonna see the importance of prayer if they're not seeing it from us? They expect the preacher to do it. What about their own fathers? Do they see it their father's doing? Is it important to their fathers? Is it important to their mothers? Let's be praying people, let's pray.