Thank you for listening to our Emanuel Baptist Church podcast sermon series by Pastor Sean Cole. Emanuel exists to display God's glory, declare God's gospel, and to disciple for God's great commission. If you have any questions about this message or would like more information about our church, you can visit our website at www.ebc-online.org. Now here's Pastor Sean. Colossians chapter 2. And as you're turning there in your Bibles or you're swiping there. I don't care how you do it, as long as you open or turn on or swipe to your Bible. This past week, The Washington Post ran an interesting story. I thought it was interesting. It was about a father from Virginia and his name was Jeremiah Heaton. And back around Christmas time, Jeremiah Heaton was playing with his six year old daughter. And his daughter asked the question, I don't have daughters, I have sons, but I can imagine a daughter asking her dad the question, Daddy, am I really your little princess? And the dad did something that all of you dads would have done if your daughter asked if she's your little princess, you you probably went out and bought the Barbie dream house or you probably bought a doll house or did did something. But here's what Jeremiah Heaton did for his little princess daughter on June 16th, just a few months ago or actually last month on her seventh birthday. He actually claimed a disputed piece of land between Egypt and Sudan at 800 mile stretch of desert and claimed it as his own and went there and placed a flag on this land and proclaimed himself as king and his daughter as princess of this nation. Now, he's trying to get the neighboring countries to buy into what he's done. To recognize his claim that he just went out there and said, I'm the king, my daughter, she's the princess. Now, it's 800 mile stretch of desert, so probably nobody's going to live there. But here's what he told the newspaper. He said, I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true. Isn't that typical of us as Americans? Isn't that what Disney's built upon? When you wish upon a star makes no difference who you are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All your dreams will come true. Isn't that the way we've grown up to believe that all of our dreams will come true? We live in a fast food culture of microwave instant gratification where we believe that everything should happen automatically, immediately, and ultimately the purpose in my life is to have all my wishes and my dreams to come true. And we've been fooled into thinking that sometimes this is how God Himself operates. Let's just ask a simple question. Does God exist to make all of our dreams come true? Does God exist to give us our best life now so that we can have everything our heart desires? Is that why we exist? If you listen to what passes for much of Christianity today, it would seem that that's the message that you hear. We exist for God. We exist so that God can be a cosmic genie in a bottle or some type of cosmic butler, and he can give us everything our heart desires. He desires for us to have all of our wishes come true. He wants you to have that boat. He wants you to have that house. He wants you to have that new jet. He wants you to give money to the to the latest and greatest televangelist so he can continue to stay at the top of the pyramid scheme while everybody else keeps getting poorer and poorer as he keeps getting richer and richer. What's the primary purpose of prayer? You think if you listen to Christianity today, the primary purpose of prayer is to get God to give you stuff that you deserve so that you can have all your wishes and dreams come true. That's the purpose of prayer, we're told, to get God to give us stuff because actually we deserve it. And he exists for us as opposed for us existing for him and his glory. Last week, we began this sermon series for the next few weeks as we're taking a break from Genesis on what is a healthy Christian? What is a healthy Christian? And last week we looked at the first distinguishing mark of a healthy Christian. It's simply this. A healthy Christian is saturated in the scripture, saturated in the scriptures. And I challenge you with three things last week, and I hopefully even you've had a chance this week to put them into practice. Remember the three things I specifically challenged you with last week. Number one, find a plan, make a plan to spend time daily with God in his word, studying it. Get a plan to spend daily time with God. Number two, make it a top priority to be understand preaching and teaching, to be discerning. And number three, to make a firm commitment To obey the Bible, no matter what that you're going to obey this scripture, you're going to live under the authority of the scripture as opposed to an authority over the scripture. And I pray that this past week you've had time to do that. You've got a plan, whether it's table talk, whether it's you version, whether it's the Explorer app, whether it's the whatever it is, you've got a plan where you're reading the Bible daily and you're saturating yourself in scripture. So what I want us to do is I want us to look at our foundational passage again in Colossians. It's setting the stage for this entire sermon series. What is a healthy Christian? So let's look again at Colossians 2, 6 and 7. And let's just be reminded of what of what God is saying to us about what a healthy Christian is. Colossians 2, 6. Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, So walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Remember last week we talked about Jesus as our Lord, and if He's our Lord, we're to walk in Him, we're to have fellowship with Him. What does that look like? We're to be rooted in Him, we're to be grounded in Him, we're to be established in Him, we're to be overflowing in thanksgiving. And notice what Paul says there, as you were taught. And I made the point last week that it's not an issue of whether we've been taught here to manual. We've been taught that that's not the issue. The issue is, what are you going to do now with what you've been taught? How are you going to live it out? How are you going to be a healthy Christian? And so now we get to the second mark or the second distinguishing characteristic of a healthy Christian. The first is that a healthy Christian is saturated in the scriptures. Here's the second. We find it in Colossians chapter four. Versus two and versus 12. So turn over just a few chapters to Colossians chapter four, verse two. And then I want us to go down to verse 12. And we're going to be looking at a bunch of different passages of Scripture this morning. But here's here's the main passage of Scripture. Colossians chapter four, verse two. Continue steadfastly in. Prayer. Being watchful in it, that is prayer with Thanksgiving and go down to verse 12. Epaphras, who was one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you always struggling on your behalf in his prayers. What's he praying for? That you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. So here's Mark number two. A healthy Christian is persistent in prayer. Saturated in scripture, we saw that last week, the Bible and linked very closely to that a healthy Christian is persistent in prayer. Notice back in verse two, what Paul says there, continue steadfastly. Continue steadfastly, keep on continuing to be steadfast in what? In prayer. It's to be a lifestyle is to be a constant part of who you are, the weird to be constantly a praying people. You know, the early church in Acts was marked by the steadfastness to prayer. There's a term that's repeated over and over again in the book of Acts. They devoted themselves to prayer. They devoted themselves. It's the same Greek word that Paul uses here of continue steadfastly. Devote yourself. Put your energies into it. Spend time continually praying. Acts chapter one, verse 14. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, giving themselves constantly to prayer. Acts 242, they devoted themselves, they gave themselves constantly to what? To the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. They gave themselves to prayers. They devoted themselves to prayer. Acts chapter six, verse four. But we will devote ourselves to prayer. and to the ministry of the word over and over again in the book of Acts. They're devoting themselves to prayer. They're giving themselves a prayer. They're constantly praying. And the Bible tells us to do that. Romans chapter 12, verse two, verse 12, rejoice and hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. It's a theme that runs throughout the entire Bible. Be devoted to prayer. Be constant in prayer. Keep on continually praying. And then we've got the famous one. First Thessalonians 517. Pray without ceasing. So the Bible from from cover to cover is is exhorting us to be people who are persistent in prayer. Jesus even taught this in Luke 18. You've got the parable of the persistent widow. He told them a parable to the effect They had always always to pray, always to pray and to not lose heart. So what's the parable about always praying and not losing heart? He said in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversary. For a while, he refused. But afterward, he kept saying to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me. She keeps coming to me over and over again. I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And the Lord said, hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Jesus says this persistent widow kept bothering and kept badgering and kept constantly coming to this judge. And this judge who was wicked says, she's bugging me to death, so I'm going to give her justice. And Jesus says, how much greater is our God? Our God is not wicked. Our God is not evil. Our God is a glorious and loving God. How much more will he give to us when we keep coming to him in prayer? He will give us justice. He will answer our prayers. And Jesus says that's the way we've got to be praying. We've got to constantly keep on continually going to God in prayer. Now, back to our Colossians passage in verse 12, Paul mentions Epaphras. Epaphras was probably the founding, either the founding pastor or the current pastor of the church there in Colossae. And there's an interesting word that Paul says that he's doing when he's praying. He's praying for them to be mature. But notice the wording that Paul uses there. He's struggling. A path first, who is one of you, a servant of Jesus Christ, greet you always struggling on your behalf and his prayers. Your translation may say wrestling. It's the Greek word, I don't need so my we get our word agonized from it was originally used of a wrestling match in the Olympics. It's this visual imagery that that a path versus a pastor is wrestling. He's going to the mat. In prayer, it's grueling and he's praying for their maturity, he's praying that they would grow, it says right there that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. So his prayer constantly is that they would be mature, they would be growing. And so we see here this pattern. of constant, continual, ongoing prayer. Listen to Phillips Brooks. He says, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men and women, do not pray for easy tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks. So what I want to do this morning as we look at prayer is I want to divide this message up into two parts. The first part, I want to give a theology and a definition of prayer. What is prayer theologically, biblically? What is prayer? What are some things related to prayer? And the second part, I want to give you a practical hands on tool to help you walk out of here and be better at praying. And to challenge you with some action steps like we did last week. So the first half more theological, biblical, second half, very practical, giving you some tools. So let's just for the first part this morning, let's talk about prayer. Let's ask three very important questions. Let's just ask three very important questions. And here's the first question. What is prayer? It seems like a duh, what is prayer? What does it mean to pray? John Calvin's got a great definition, he says this. Prayer is the outpouring of the soul. The deepest root of piety, the bedrock of assurance, and this is what I think is the most important statement. Calvin says prayer is the most important part of the Christian life. It is the lifeblood of every true believer, the lifeblood of every true believer. Now, sometimes it's helpful to to define something by saying what it's not. And I'm indebted to Eric Alexander here. I don't know if some of you may listen to Eric Alexander. He's Scottish, so he's he's one of my favorite Scottish preachers. I like Alistair Begg, too, but I think I like Eric Alexander. Alistair Begg, Eric Alexander, we'll toss him up up there. Some of you listen to Scottish preachers, but he's written a book on prayer that I'm indebted to. And let me just give you some insights from his book on what prayer is not. This may be helpful. What prayer is not. First of all, he says prayer is not an alibi for doing nothing. A substitute for work, he says, in my experience, prayer is actually the hardest kind of work I've ever had to do. Number two, prayer is not mainly asking God for things we want because he's a genie in a bottle. That's not what prayer mainly is. I need something. God's got something. I pray so he can give me what I want. Now, we'll talk a little bit about that, but that's not mainly what prayers prayers are coming to God as this cosmic butler, this genie that's there to exist to give you your heart's desire. He also says prayer is not a mechanical recitation of words. Sometimes we recite the Lord's Prayer or we just sometimes kind of just repeat the same prayer over and over again. It's not just reciting mechanically these words over and over again. And then fourthly, he says prayer is not reserved for this elite group of Christians who really know how to talk to God. There's those elite group of Christians that really know how to pray. No, he says, that's not what prayer is. So what is prayer? He gives some answers here. He says it's entering into God's presence through Christ. The only way we can enter God's presence is through Christ and what he's done. It's worshiping God and telling him how much we love him for who he is. It's praising God for what he's done. It's humbling ourselves before God and repenting and confessing our sin. It's going before his throne and asking for good things because we know that God is going to to give us those things because we're dependent upon him, not because we deserve them. And then prayer involves praying for others. I think we've got that down. Prayer is coming before the throne of God through the merits of Christ. In the power of the Holy Spirit to worship. to ask, to repent, to confess, to pray for others, to enter into this time of worship where we talk with God. But here's another question. And maybe maybe you don't struggle with this, but I do. Here's the second question. Why is prayer so difficult? It's hard work. Prayer involves engaging your mind and your heart. What's easier? Let me ask you a question. What's easier to come to a worship service and stand and sing? Or to pray. It's easier to stand and sing, maybe even easier to stand and listen or sit and listen to me, but when we pray, we're engaging all of our faculties and focusing in on God and sometimes it's difficult. Listen to what Martin Luther said. He said prayer is the hardest work of all. A labor above all labor, since he who prays must wage a mighty warfare against the doubt and murmurings excited by the fake heartedness and one worthiness we feel within us. Luther's saying we already feel guilty. We already feel unworthy. So when we pray, it's hard work because we're trying to overcome the doubt that we already have that we should even be praying or that God even hears our prayers. Listen to what the disciples asked Jesus in Luke 11 one. 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. Now, if prayer wasn't hard work, why would the disciples come up to Jesus and say, teach us to pray? Jesus, we see your prayer life. We see you going up to the mountains to pray alone. We see you slipping away to pray. And we see this earnest prayer by you, Jesus. Would you teach that to us? Because it doesn't come easy. It's difficult. Would you teach us to pray? David Miller has written an excellent book called A Praying Life, Connecting with God in a Distracting World. I've plugged this book before, A Praying Life. If you don't have it, I'd recommend you go in and get it. But listen to what he says. I think he's got some good insight. He said this. American culture is probably the hardest place in the world to learn to pray. We're so busy that when we do slow down to pray, we find it uncomfortable. We prize accomplishments, production, but prayer is nothing but talking to God. It feels useless as if we're wasting time. Every bone in our body screams, get to work. I agree with him. Sometimes prayer is hard work. Here's a third question about prayer. Maybe you've thought about this. If God is absolutely sovereign, And He knows all things. And we as humans can't change His mind in any way. Then why in the world pray? God's sovereign. He's got it all figured out and everything's going to go according to His plan. Then why do we even pray? What does it matter? Well, let me answer some questions first of all. God is absolutely sovereign. And He knows all things. And we can't change His mind. Psalm 33, 8-11. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of His heart to all generations. God has plans. God has purposes. God's going to do what God's going to do. Psalm 135, 6. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does. In heaven and on earth and the seas and all the deeps. Isaiah 46, 9 through 10. Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God. There's none like me. Now our kids should know this from VBS. I am the Lord and there is no other. There is no God beside me. Some of the ones in VBS know what I'm talking about. You're like, what's he talking about? We learned that this past week. There's only one true living God. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. Notice the words, their purpose, plan, counsel. God's going to accomplish it. Daniel four thirty five. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. And he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can say his hand or say to him, what have you done? And finally, in Job 42 to I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be forwarded verse after verse. We've got the absolute sovereignty of God where he's going to do what he's going to do. He rules over the nations, his purpose, his plans, his thoughts, his will is going to be accomplished. Nobody can stop God. Nobody can for God. God is absolutely sovereign. He's going to do what he's going to do. And as a matter of fact, notice what Jesus says in Matthew six, seven through eight. Jesus says this when you pray, do not heap up empty words or phrases like the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. But look at verse eight. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you even ask him. So why do you pray if God knows what you need before you ask him? Then when you pray, are you giving God any information that he doesn't already know? Huge question. If God is sovereign, if God knows what we mean, if God is absolutely on his throne, if God is working out his purposes for the world and God is working on his will, then why wouldn't prayer just be a useless exercise for us? Because it doesn't really mean anything. Wrong. Why do we pray? Well, the answer lies in Jesus. In the Lord's prayer, so let's turn over to Matthew chapter six. We're going to spend some time here looking at what could be called the model prayer. The Lord's Prayer. Matthew 6, verse 9. Anytime Jesus says, pray like this. We probably better pay attention because Jesus is giving us the exact instructions on how we're to pray, pray like this, pray in this manner. Here's how you ought to pray. Jesus teach us to pray. OK, I'm going to teach you to pray. Here's how you pray. Now, the Lord's Prayer is not something that we just mechanically recite. And, you know, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It has no meaning to it. That's not what Jesus meant here. He's giving us a template of how we're to pray. So let's read together the Lord's Prayer. It's very familiar, but I want us to read it. Matthew chapter six, verse nine, praying then like this, our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors and lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. And some translations have for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. So here's the primary purpose of prayer. Here's the primary purpose of prayer. The primary purpose of prayer is intimacy with the Father through the cross of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to what a lot of people say, prayer is not getting God to give you things because you deserve them. Prayer at its heart is intimacy. Because God already knows what you need before. I mean, you could just basically just not even pray and God knows what you need. So why do you pray? You pray to develop intimacy, fellowship, closeness with God. Now, let's just look briefly at the Lord's Prayer here. How does the prayer start? Our Father in Heaven. We're addressing God, the Father, The triune God, the father through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, our father in heaven. This is focusing on the lordship of God, the position and authority of God in heaven, he's sovereign, he's powerful, he's creator, he is ruling and reigning in heaven. If you go and you trace almost every recorded prayer in Scripture and I encourage you to do that, I don't have these. You may want to write these down real quick. Nehemiah chapter one. Nehemiah, chapter nine, Daniel, chapter nine, Acts, chapter four, Ephesians, chapter three, Colossians, chapter one, or just a few of the recorded prayers where you actually hear people actually praying. And it's in parentheses, recorded prayer in the Bible. Every single one of them starts. And if you didn't get those, the sermon manuscripts out, I went really fast there. They're out on the table after the sermon. Every single prayer breathed by a person in Scripture always starts with an acknowledgment of the sovereignty or the holiness or the majesty of God. And that's why Jesus starts there. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. That just means holy is his name. So the first thing in prayer is that we come and we submit ourselves under this holy, majestic, powerful, sovereign God who's worthy to be worshipped. And the only way we can come into his presence is through Jesus. In the power of the Holy Spirit. And then we submit to his will. What is the next thing that Jesus says? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We align our wills with the father's will. We don't come in with our agenda. We don't barge in wanting our world and our priorities to take to take precedence. We come in and say, father, you are holy. Father, you are awesome. Father, you are sovereign and good and glorious. And so I'm going to align my life under your authority. And I want your will, your agenda, your power to be what rules and reigns in my life. And then before we give God a laundry list of all the things we want for him to do for us, Jesus says we start with worship. We start with worship. We start with submission. We start with humbling ourselves and then we can ask. Prayer is asking there's there's nothing wrong with asking God for things in prayer. Look at verse 11. Give us this day our daily bread. God, give us what we need. Not what we want. Give us what we need. There's nothing wrong with asking God for things that we need. But it comes after submitting ourselves to Him. Now, God may not always answer it the way that you want it answered. And God may not always answer it in the timing that you want it answered. But God's a good God. And there's two things you need to keep in mind when you're praying. If you don't know how to pray, there's two overarching things that happen in all prayers that you should be praying for. Number one, God, whatever brings you the most glory, that's what I want. And number two, I want what's the best good for me. And that may sound selfish, the best good for me. Just remember, God's definition of good may be different than your definition of good. The Romans 828, all things work together for the good of those who love them who've been called according to his purpose. So we pray for God's glory and we pray for God's good. And we seek that. And then we pray for forgiveness, forgive us. Then we pray for help. Don't don't lead us into temptation. Help us in our day as we go out that we're not tempted, that we don't that we live holy lives, that we are not tempted to to walk into places that we shouldn't walk. Help me to be a forgiving person. Help me to be a confessing person. So that's prayer. Let's get real practical here, second half the sermon shorter. I'm going to give you an acronym to help you. But I want to quote again from David Miller, because sometimes I think it's important for us to hear what he has to say. He says the criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. Don't try to get prayer right. Just tell God where you are and what's on your mind. Sometimes I think we can think so much about getting prayer right that we fail to actually come to God and pray. Just come messy, come and talk to him. But at the same time of saying that, I think it's also helpful to have a model. So back in, I think it was January, February, I was listening to David Platt, pastor of Brookhills Church in Alabama. He was preaching a sermon on prayer. And so what I'm going to give you is an acronym called Pray, P-R-A-Y. It's not mine. I'm not claiming it. It's David Platt. I'm not sure where he got it. He may have borrowed it from somebody else. But for the purpose of this sermon, I'm not copywriting. I'm not plagiarizing. This is David Platt's acronym P.R.A.Y. OK, so these will be up on the scriptures. But this is a mnemonic device, a helpful device and an acronym to help you pray. So here's the first one. P.R.A.Y. P. How do you start? Praise. You can worship God and praise him for who he is. When you begin to pray, begin with praise. How does Jesus tell us to start our father in heaven? How would be your name? We come to him and praise. We worship him. We spend time coming into his presence and praising him. The psalmist in Psalm 113. One, two, five. Praise the Lord. Praise, oh, servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from time forth and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations. His glory above all the heavens. Who is like the Lord, our God, who is seated on high? Praise. So P-R-A-Y-P. Praise. Spend the first part of your time praising God for who he is. If you need help, go to the Psalms, they'll help you give you some great ideas of how to praise KPR. The second one are repent. Repent, you confess your sins to God and acknowledge your need for Jesus in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus told us to forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. It's coming to God in humility, coming to God in petition and confessing those sins and being willing to repent of those sins when we pray. Now, again, God already knows everything. So we're not telling him something he doesn't already know. But we're confessing and repenting because it's meaningful for us. Listen to what the writer Luke writes in Acts 3, 19 through 20. Repent, therefore, and turn back. that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, that he may send the Christ appointed for you. Repent. And when you repent and when you confess, you get the experience of that forgiveness of sin. And it's a time of refreshing. It's a time of joy. It's a time of renewal with the Lord. And we all know, first, John one nine. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So P.R. Praise. P.R. Repent. A. Ask. Ask. You ask God for particular needs in your life and in others lives. The Lord's Prayer does include asking for your daily bread. There's nothing wrong with asking. It just comes third. You spend time in prayer and praise and worship and confession, and then you go to ask. Luke 11, 9-13, Jesus says this, And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And the one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be opened. What father among you, if the son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil 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? Jesus commands us to ask. Ask for things in your life, pray for yourself, pray for others, intercede, ask. OK, so P prays. Are repent. A ask. Why? Yield. You submit your life. To following Jesus wherever and however he leads you. What's included there in the Lord's Prayer in verse 10, your kingdom come, your will be done. That's just the way of saying I'm going to yield my life to God's agenda. I'm going to yield my life to however he's telling me to live wherever he tells me to go. However, he's leading me. I'm going to follow him. I'm going to yield my life to God. And so part of your prayer life is surrendering yourself, submitting yourself to God's agenda, to God's direction, and then making the commitment to yield yourself to his plan for your life. Luke 9, 23 through 24. He said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his cross daily and follow me forever would save his life or lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what is the profit of man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? Jesus is basically saying we die to our plans. We die to our agenda. We die to what we think we need and we yield ourselves to God's leading. So P.R.A.Y. P. Praise. Are repent a ask why yield? It's just a helpful thing that maybe you can take home today and begin to use in your personal prayer life. Just remember, P.R.A.Y. I'm praying. So I praise, I repent, I ask and I yield. OK, that's individual. That's to help you in your individual prayer life. But let me just stop and mention the power of corporate prayer. Praying in groups. Every Sunday night. Almost every Sunday night here in the sanctuary at 630 p.m., we have what's called prayer meeting. A prayer meeting is not exciting. There's no praise team prayer meetings, not exciting. There's no preaching. Prayer meeting is a group of people meeting to pray. And sometimes it's not glamorous and sometimes it's hard work. But as your pastor, when I came over nine years ago. It was a non-negotiable for me and my ministry that we would have corporate prayer meeting because I believe there's power in praying together as a corporate entity for the life of the church. Listen to what Jack Miller says about prayer meeting. Do not expect bigger victories in tough areas until corporate praying becomes the complete center of the ministry. A.W. Tozer, the only power God recognizes in his church is the power of his spirit, whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man. And I got to give a Spurgeon quote here, Spurgeon. The condition of the church. May be very accurately gauged. By its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting the grace amateur. And from it we may judge the amount of divine working among the people. If God be near church, it must pray. And if he be not there. One of the first evidences of his absence will be slothfulness in prayer. Spurgeon says it flat out. It's the graceometer of the church. The heartbeat of the church, the temperature of the church. And let me just say this. If the prayer meeting is not healthy. Can we expect the church to be healthy? There's power in corporate prayer. Let me give you three practical action steps to help you as you walk out of here today, I've already given you the prayer and the pray acronym P.R.A.Y. You take that with you to help you P praise are repent a ask why yield. But let me just give you three practical action steps here to walk out with that will help you become more persistent in prayer. Here's the first one. And it's related to last week. They tie together. Make a plan to spend time in prayer every day with God. Last week, I challenged you to make a plan to spend time reading your Bible every day. Well, guess what you can do. You can add these two together. You can pray and read your Bible and you can have two action steps to come together into one. Isn't that awesome? You can read your Bible and pray. Now, here's what I think is helpful. Here's how I think it's helpful when you have that quiet time alone with the Lord, when you've spent time in the word, saturating yourself with scripture. It inflames your heart and mind with things to be praying about. I personally find it difficult to come in and just pray cold turkey without first spending time in the word, because the word oftentimes fuels your thoughts. The Holy Spirit will use the scripture. And so here's what I recommend. Pray with an open Bible. There's times where I have my Bible open and I may just pray exactly what's in front of me and I'll pray with my eyes open, just praying it to God. God doesn't care if my eyes are open or closed. I'm praying the scripture to him. Pray with a Bible open and maybe you need to spend some time meditating on what you've read. Some of you, I think, would be helpful to get a prayer journal. Now, there's two ways you can do a prayer journal. You can do it the way I do it, the old fashioned way, which is you have a physical Bible and a physical journal and you write. My father, who's more technologically adept than me, which is weird that your father would be when he's 65. He does everything on his iPad, so he's got the U version and he's got his iPad app and he switches between the apps and he does all that stuff on his iPad. I don't care how you do it, but I think it's important to have some type of way for you to meditate on the scriptures, to write a prayer journal out. That way you can see how God is working in your heart. You can go back and read those journals years, you know, years down the road. The other thing I think is helpful to me as well, pray out loud. I pray out loud. There's nothing mystical about me praying aloud. It just keeps me awake. How many of you and everybody that are saying amen here, how many of you when you're praying end up sometimes falling asleep or your mind begins to wander like, what did I just pray? Dear Jesus, thank you for. And you're like, well, where am I here? And you just you're like you're falling asleep. Pray. I found to me if I pray out loud, I'm not like I'm not like in the guest room. Dear Jesus, I'm not like yelling and screaming at him, but I'm I'm just praying out loud in a voice that keeps me awake. OK, also, I found this to be helpful. I pray kneeling. I think sometimes if you pray kneeling, if you're physically able to do that, it puts you in a posture of dependence. So I would just encourage you to include what I did for you last week. Spend daily time reading your Bible and add prayer into that. Pray with an open Bible and use that time to spend time practicing your P.R.A.Y acronym. Here's the second one. Make it a top priority to come to prayer meeting or special times of prayer in the life of the church. Now, I will say this. I feel a little guilty. Come to prayer meeting. But tonight I'm not going to be there because I'm taking my wife to the airport. But we still are having prayer meeting tonight. Our elders, all of our elders are participating. Most of our deacons participate. You're the leaders of the church participate in prayer meeting. It happens whether I'm here or not. But a lot of times prayer meeting is what I call an organ recital. You know, an organ recital is. You spend the whole time Telling prayer requests of what's wrong with people's health. In the last five minutes, you pray. You spend the whole time taking down the request and you spend the last five minutes actually praying, you're reciting everybody's organs, you know, and there's nothing wrong with praying for health issues. We've got some health issues in our church. I think it's a very, very vitally important that we pray for health issues. We pray for prayer needs. We pray for healing in this church. And the Lord has done that in amazing ways. But one of the things that we do a prayer meeting is that we actually pray. And we don't just pray specifically for like health issues. We do that. But sometimes we pray for the big ticket items. We pray for revival. We pray for evangelism. We pray for missions. We pray for the ministries of our church. Like last week, we spent most of our time praying for vacation Bible school. We've prayed for, you know, women's ministry. Sometimes we pray for staff members. Sometimes we pray for missionaries. We we do all different types of things. Sometimes we break up in the groups. Sometimes we we pray all out loud. And so here's what I would say about prayer meeting. At least it was for me, and I think some people could give a test of this prayer meetings where you learn to pray. And here's how you learn to pray. You learn to pray by hearing others pray. When you're in prayer meeting and you hear other people praying, you begin to learn to pray. Now, when you come to prayer meeting, don't freak out and feel like, oh, man, I have to pray out loud. You won't have to pray out loud or I'm going to have to like divulge my whole life secrets and everybody's going to know everything about me. No, you don't have to do that. If you come to prayer meeting, you can just sit there and observe or maybe give a request and just pray silently. But there's power in being together because oftentimes during prayer meeting, I get to hear about the exciting things that God's doing in the life of the church because I'm not in all of your growth groups. I love to be in every single one of your growth groups every morning to hear the prayer request, but I don't get to do that. And so when I come to prayer meeting, I get to hear testimonies of what God's doing. And it's a powerful time to hear testimony. It's a powerful time to be encouraged. It's a powerful time to see what God's doing. Now, our prayer meeting lasts about an hour. You may think, wow, that's a long time to pray. I usually start with a short devotion and usually, you know, when you're when you're seriously praying, the time goes by pretty fast. But listen to Jesus. Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane the night of his crucifixion. And remember, he was sweating drops of blood. Matthew 26, 40 to 41, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping and he said to Peter, so could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. I would encourage you to come to our prayer meetings, just make it a priority. So you know what? If prayer is the graceometer of the church. And you can obviously pray at your home and you can pray by yourself, but there's power in coming together as God's people, praying specifically for health issues, praying for needs in our family, praying for needs in the church, praying for evangelism, praying for lost people by name, praying for missions, praying for our missionaries, praying for the ministries, praying for the situations in the world, coming together in corporate prayer. I'd encourage you to do that. So number one, make a priority to spend daily time with the Lord. Number two, make a priority to come to prayer meetings. Here's the third one. Find a prayer partner. with whom you can share requests and who can who can pray for you. If you don't have a prayer partner, find one today, maybe it's a person you trust or maybe it's a person that you that you can that you're a friend with, but say, hey, listen, you know, we're friends. We hang out. Let's take it a step further and let's be prayer partners. And maybe you meet once a week for coffee and you pray or you meet once a week over the phone or or however you do it. But you you have a person in your life that you can go to to be a prayer partner and you can give them your request. They can give you their request and you mutually pray for each other because there's power again and being together. So find a prayer partner. And if you can't find a prayer partner, come and come and ask me and maybe we can we can maybe match you up and pair you up. I'd rather be more natural and organic where where God leads you through that thing. But to find a prayer partner, James 516. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. I want to give you a quote by Samuel Chadwick. The one concern of the devil. Is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies. Prayerless work. and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. My prayer is that Emmanuel Baptist Church would be such a family that's persistent in prayer that right now the devil's trembling because we're a people of prayer. The mark of a healthy Christian? Persistent in prayer. Let me ask you to bow your heads and we're going to pray. And I'm going to model for you. P.R.A.Y. I'm going to do it briefly, but I'm going to model for you and I'm not going to say, OK, now, Jesus, I'm doing the P part. Just listen to how I pray. And you pray as well, but I want to just maybe helpfully model for you The P.R.A.Y. And again, it's going to be from my heart, so I'm not saying this so that I'm doing this for two purposes. One, so I can model for you, but two, it is coming from my heart. OK, so so let's just bow to the Lord and let's let's pray. So father, we do just really come into your presence through Jesus. Father, we want to praise you, we want to honor you, you are you are so worthy of our praise. I'm just reminded of reading these scriptures of just how sovereign you are, how powerful you are. You are worthy to be praised. Who is a God like you? We've learned all week in vacation Bible school about what it means to know that you're the one true God. There is no other. There is no counterfeit. You are the one true God. We worship you and we honor you. And Father, we may have sin in our life that we need to confess. So we come before You to confess that sin, to repent, to list out those sins before You, Lord. Maybe it's that we said a careless word this morning, or maybe we have anger in our heart, or maybe we have a lust problem. Father, whatever it is, we want to come before You and we confess that. And we have the promise that You hear us and You cleanse us and You forgive us. You cleanse us of all righteousness. And times of repression come when we repent. And Father, we want to ask. There's many things that we can ask for. Lord, I ask that we would be a praying church. Lord, I ask for. Emmanuel Baptist Church to be a growing, healthy church. Lord, I ask that you would put an end to the violent persecution that's going on in Iraq against Christians. Lord, I ask that you would intervene in the lives of people in this church that are dealing with health issues or financial issues. or emotional struggles or relational issues. Lord, I ask that You would intervene and You would bring about Your power and Your purpose in healing and restoration. Lord, I ask that You would heal marriages. And finally, Lord, we want to yield ourselves to You. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done. So, Father, we yield ourselves, we surrender ourselves under your plan, under your purposes. Lord, we don't want to be in charge. We don't want to be the captain of our own ship. We want to surrender to your will and we want to yield ourselves. And so would you help us by the power of the Holy Spirit to yield ourselves to your plan and your purpose? And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus for his glory. Amen.