So greetings, I'm Joel, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm pastor of Heart City Church. For any of you just joining us online here on YouTube, today we're gonna be looking at Luke chapter 11, the first 13 verses. I have a question. Do any of you still go to a barber? Anybody? Nobody goes to a barber. That's fine, that's okay. Nobody's in trouble for that. Let me tell you a story, a true story about a barber. There was a barber, and he noticed a man walk into his shop, sit down, and take a seat. And he recognized right away this was no typical average Joe. This guy was a notorious wanted man. There was a price on his head, in fact, by the most powerful man in all of Europe. This man began to straighten his razor, sharpen his straight razor, and he walked over to this man, put his blade up against his neck, and he knew all he'd have to do is one quick slice and he would be set for life. But this barber would never do that, because this barber loved this man. His name was Martin Luther. He was wanted because he had began to bring the gospel to the people, began to restore the Bible to the people. And he loved this man, Martin Luther. And he especially loved the opportunities he had to have Martin Luther as a captive audience. His name was Peter, Peter the Barber. And on this particular day, Peter the Barber had something that was really plaguing him. So as he began to shave Martin Luther, he asked him, Dr. Luther, can you teach me how to pray? Now, Martin Luther had a million things to do that day, I'm sure. And yet, Martin Luther, he loved Peter the barber. And Martin Luther said, absolutely, Peter. I'm going to help you out. And he went home and he wrote a little book called A Simple Way to Pray, based on the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. It's a wonderful little book. And he gave this to Peter the barber. That's a glimpse of what we're going to find when we come to Luke 11. We're going to find the greatest person of prayer to ever live, our Lord Jesus. hearing the question of a disciple asking the same thing. And he says, I'm happy to teach you how to pray. Please let's look at the word of God we find in Luke chapter 11, starting in verse 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. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, Hollywood be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, Which of you who 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? And he'll answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given 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 his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will 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? Grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Please join me in prayer. Father, we give you thanks that you've sent your Son to know our neediness. And we pray right now that you will send your Spirit to apply your truth and to soften our hearts. And if we're feeling helpless this morning, will you help us to see Jesus? If we're not feeling helpless, will you help us to see Jesus? We beg you to do something monumental in these mere moments we have. We pray for Jesus' sake. Amen. Hope you see our text starts a lot like the Peter the Barber illustration. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he was finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray like John taught his disciples. Now daily prayer was ingrained in Jewish culture. They prayed a lot. So this disciple, you have to figure, he may have thought at this point in his life he had made some progress in the school of prayer. and then he began to follow Jesus. And he saw how often Jesus prayed. Remember Luke 6, all night long Jesus is in a prayer vigil. And he also heard Jesus pray. Silent prayer is a modern phenomenon. Nobody prayed silently in Jesus' day. Can you imagine, you're this disciple hearing Jesus pray, hearing his emotion, his affection for his heavenly father, his pleading for God's kingdom to come. Have you ever been around someone where they pray and their words seem to bring heaven down to earth? Perhaps you remembered that and it opened your eyes to your own spiritual need. I think that's why this disciple is intrigued and he says, Jesus, Lord, teach me how to pray. As John did to his disciples, and actually some of these disciples had followed John previously. Struggling to pray. Any of us struggle to pray? Everyone struggles in our conversation to pray to God. Though it's actually a really strange thing if you step back and look at us. Usually before the service, and I remember last week especially, because I couldn't get people to quiet down for the announcements, we like to talk, right? We talk about all the good things that went on during the week, our families, the things we did for fun, all these kinds of things. We talk about the bad things that went on, school, work, the job. We talk, talk, talk. We talk about good stuff, we talk about bad stuff. We talk about everything under the sun, and sometimes we just talk so that we can be heard. I got a call last week, and I said, hello, and the person asked me a question. I answered the question, and they proceeded to ask several more questions, each of which they answered before I could say anything. And I sat there for 15 to 20 minutes on the phone. And then at the end, they thanked me for talking to them, to which I said, you're welcome, even though it was not really true, because I barely spoke. And I teased that person, but I'm the same way. Sometimes I talk just to be heard. Don't you? But then comes prayer time. We do our Bible study, and we can be a bunch of chatty Cathy's and talkative Toms, and then somebody says, who would like to close in prayer? Dead silence. It's like the cat's got everybody's tongue. The room goes quiet. We feel like Peter the barber. We're all awed by people who can actually pray a lot like Luther did. You know, folks would say to Luther, hey Luther, you're going to have to cut short your prayer time this morning. You've got a lot on your agenda. You know what Luther would say? Thank you for reminding me I have so much to do today. I'm going to have to devote three full hours to prayer today for all the things I have before me. That's right. I just said three hours. Any of you have a busy schedule last week? Did any of you say, oh, I have a lot to do on Tuesday. I got to get up an extra hour early to put in an extra hour prayer before my day. Why not? Do we not see our vast spiritual need? There is a cosmic battle going on all around us between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. Mankind is the very battleground on which there is a cosmic war being waged right now, and every person you meet is either being protected by God or they're a tool in the hand of Satan. Chapter 10 of Luke was all about the call to go out and love your neighbor. Do we think regularly how many of our neighbors are caught up in Satan's snares, are his tools, Look around. We see suffering. We see folks in darkness, folks living selfishly, being hated, hating others. And we're targets, too. Did any of you feel like a target of Satan in the last week? Any of you faced temptation last week? Any of you feel weakness, angry, lonely, stressed? So why don't we spend more time in prayer than the one who made us in our world? We all struggle with this. This is not a guilt trip. This is rather, let's listen to Jesus and learn from him a simple way to pray. What we need to understand first is there is a disconnect. That's our problem. Between us and the God who made us. It happened when our first parents rebelled. And you and I, we don't have to turn on the news to see the fallout. All we have to do is roll back the tape of our lives, right? We're all broken. Our world is broken. And we want to touch God, but it just seems like we can't. That's the bad news. The good news is God in his mercy and compassion sent his own son from heaven to our earth. Jesus became the son of man to seek and to save those who are lost. Jesus was fully God, but the good news is he's also fully man. And I want us to see that in this scene. I want us to see that in this scene. Jesus' prayer life. It's not the Holy Son, Eternal Son, talking to the Holy Father. Jesus' prayer life, because He's fully man, reveals how mankind was meant to function. Living in sweet daily communion and fellowship with our Heavenly Father. Talking with God about everything. And this is something Jesus knew in a way that none of us have ever known. until that darkest of all days when on the cross Jesus took our sin upon himself and the Father turned his face away. Jesus' estrangement at that moment was the moment he came to know our normal. Please get this. This is not just a lesson in how to pray. Jesus first shows us that we can't do life on our own. We don't have the resources to do life without this relationship, daily fellowship with our Heavenly Father. We need to take home today how incredibly needy we are. And all the more if you don't realize it. All the more if you don't realize it. Dear ones, we live in a world that is a battlefield. And you and I do not have the resources to do life. We spend far too much time getting advice from talk shows or talking for hours on end on the phone. when we should be calling on God for heavenly air support. And he's always listening. That's what Jesus is encouraging us when he gives a simple prayer in verse two. Now, you notice it's a little bit different than the one you're probably familiar with from Matthew's gospel. It's notably shorter. It actually indicates Jesus gave multiple prayers to help us to pray. Here's Luke's in verse two. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. I want us to pause, just stop for a bit on word one. Jesus tells us to start our prayer, Father, There's no our Father who art in heaven. Strip all that away. Father. Doesn't it seem abrupt? Maybe even irreverent, just the blurred out Father. We're addressing the holy cosmic creator of all time and space. Father. I was mowing my lawn the other day, and there were these little moths in the grass everywhere. I saw one trying to escape as the blades of death drew near, and well, he was too slow. And I saw another one flapping and tried to get away to escape him, so I slowed down. The little guy fluttered off to safety. And I wondered to myself, I wonder what he thinks of me. He witnesses me shredding his whole world. Truly, he must understand how powerful I am. Are his little eyes even able to take in how enormous I am in comparison? Is he trying to say, thank you, right now as he flares off to safety? I don't know. What I do know is that this little moth was not saying, thank you, merciful Father. Think again about what Jesus is saying here. because in comparison to the almighty infinite God, we're but small little specks of dust. I hope you're thinking, well, Joel, also we're resplendent in glory, right? Genesis 1, God made us in his image. Yes, Genesis 1 is the thing we gotta keep out in front, but then you have Genesis 3, and sin came. By nature, we're no longer God's children. We're more like bugs infesting his earth. Have you ever heard someone say, everybody in the world is God's child? You ever heard that? I know a lot of church folk who believe that. It's not what the Bible teaches. Paul says in Ephesians 2, we are by nature children of wrath, sons of disobedient. I encourage you to look up John 8 this week, where there are some church folks who are claiming, God is our father. And Jesus points out to them, God cannot be your father. Why? Because they don't love him. They won't receive his word. They won't believe his truth. And then Jesus adds, oh, but you do have a father, a spiritual father. If God is not your father, who does Jesus say your father is? The devil. Jesus says, if you do not receive him and his words and follow him, your father is the devil. 829, John 829, he says, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. What Jesus is saying here is that every person that you meet is actually aiming to please their father. They're living their life to please their father, everyone. Have you ever thought that every person you meet is living to please one of two fathers? Perhaps you're a not yet follower of Jesus. Jesus says your current rejection of him is all about you making your daddy happy. Your devil daddy happy. That's not Pastor Joel saying that. That is Jesus Christ saying that, John 8, 29. God does not recognize you as his child unless you're loving and following his son. I say that out of love. I had breakfast with my early father recently. I was the only person in that restaurant who could address him as father. If anybody else in that restaurant walked up and said, hey father, my dad will look at them incredulously and says, who do you think you are? So my not yet follower friend, Don't be deceived that God views you as his child. The rebellion of our first parents made all of mankind the devil's children. All are consigned to an eternity of hell if left to Satan's scheme. The good news is God sent his greatest gift, his own son, his own beloved son on Christmas Day. and the nature of the gift reveals the nature of your need. Clay Werner, the nature of the gift reveals the nature of your need. All you have to do is accept the gift, believe his word, and you become God's adopted child. Think about that. Father, you can say the most remarkable thing in the world. Almighty God who made all this is my father. My already follower friends, what do we think of this? Is this good news? God is your Father and He loves you. That we can address God in a personal, familiar, wonderful way. Having the same relationship with the Father that Jesus the Son has. J.I. Packer says, if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child. and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all. In Jesus, we are once again reconnected to God. God becomes our Father. And you can say for all of eternity with John in 1 John 3, what manner of love is this? That we should be called the children of God. And such we are, being that God is our Father. And because we're proud of our Father, we want what He wants. Well, we pray then because of that. What does He want? He wants His name to be hallowed. That's a strange word, right? Hallowed. You don't see that except Halloween, right? It means to be made holy, a holy evening, Halloween. It means we want and we pray that God's name be treated reverently, with honor, with respect. And we recognize that that is not the case right now. You ever wonder why so many people who never talk about God, they use God's name like a curse word all the time. They throw it around like a common thing. Why do you think they do that? Again, they're living to please their father because the devil loves it. They throw God's name around like a curse word. And if we find ourselves doing that, we need to stop, because that's our Father we're talking about. And we want His name to be held in high esteem. God's name is actually revered, glorified in all of creation, with one exception, right here on this planet. So when we pray the next thing, your kingdom come, we're actually remembering there's something much bigger, and an invading kingdom that began when Jesus Christ began to bring the rule and reign of God onto our earth. We pledged allegiance to that, so we're praying God's kingdom come. We want the kingdom of Satan destroyed, we want captives set free from Satan. So we get on our knees, we take up our prayer time radios, our walkie talkies, think if you're on the battlefield, and we call in for support. That the gospel will continue to invade our world, a world in need of forgiveness. We also see that the kingdom needs to shine into our own hearts and our own lives, because we continue to fail. That's why we confess our sins every week. The moment you have a perfect week and you come in here and don't need to confess, we need to have a talk. Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Now, this is not implying that we must forgive others before God can forgive us. No, we're saved by faith alone. We don't contribute anything we do. But we who are once enemies, when we accept and receive God's forgiveness, by God's grace, we're enabled from our hearts to then go out and to forgive others. those debts they owe to us. And lastly, we pray that God our Father not lead us into temptation, that he'll either keep us away from temptations, because you don't want them, or that he'll give us the strength to endure them when they do come our way. Friends, we need to pray this one daily. If you're not praying, deliver me from temptation, deliver me from evil, you're walking into a minefield. We need to recognize the spiritual battle, how prone to sin we are. Do you know Peter the Barber's story turns tragic 16 years after he got that prayer manual from Luther? He was eating at his daughter's house. Him and his son-in-law were having some drinks. His son-in-law kept boasting of all the battles he had survived. He remarked on how he was invincible and could not be stabbed by any man. You ever been tempted to lash out at someone who's a total windbag? Well, a drunken Peter deflated his son-in-law literally. Trying to prove a point, he accidentally stabbed his son-in-law in the heart. And he was facing the death penalty and Luther actually got him simply banished. Friends, we need to see our neediness. We are prone to do things that we would never want to do. To be in constant prayer that our God will provide what we need. That's why Luke chose this version of the Lord's Prayer instead of Matthew. I didn't skip that middle thing. I just wanted us to notice there's actually two vertical, two upwards requests to God, His name be hallowed, His kingdom come. Then at the bottom there's two manward ones, two horizontal ones, the forgiveness of our sins, deliver us from temptation. This place says give us each day our daily bread right in the middle. There's actually a debate over whether this is a request for our daily pilgrim bread, your daily food that you need in the fridge, or whether we're to be seeking that future feast that Mary glimpsed last week. So Joel, is it a prayer for earthly bread or for the feast from heaven to come? Yes. Yes. They're both the vertical and the horizontal dimension. That's why it's right in the middle. Horizontally, we see our earthly need. Give us each day our daily bread. Speaking of bugs, this is not a prayer for you alone, though. I want us to see this about this petition. You're praying, it's give us each day our daily bread. You're praying for and with all of God's people when you pray this. There are millions of people out there who do not have enough bread, and you are numbered among them. You and I may need this reminder. Jesus is calling us to be bread beggars, bread beggars. I assume most of us had breakfast this morning, right? No, somebody didn't, all right. Most of us did. I don't know what you had, a bagel, maybe you got some cereal poured into your bowl. Whatever you had was your first thought. Wow, an answer to my prayer for daily bread, thank you. Was it? I suspect many of us are insensitive to what it means to live in constant dependency. Myself included. For five years, I served as a chaplain at the food pantry down the road, just blocks from here. Actually, Robert, you still serve there, right? Yep. There was a day when there were short volunteers. And so I was asked to get folks started when a cart would come available. And the very first station was the bread station. Normally, pantry customers can take as much bread as they want, as much as they could use. But we happened to be short on bread that day, so I was told there is a two-loaf limit today. So without really thinking about it, I began to give a brief apology to every person coming in, informing the people, oh, the pantry is short on bread, so there's a two-loaf limit. And suddenly I see the pantry director waving me over with this look on her face. She let me have it. She said, you cannot say that, Joel. These people have so many fears about not having enough. You cannot tell them that the one place they're counting on is short of bread. Please say it this way. You have the option of up to two loaves today. I needed a smack to how insensitive I can be to the plight of others. I don't think it ever really clicked that what people really meant when they said, Pastor Joel, this pantry is an answer to my prayers. Beloved, our abundance may actually be a greater trial than our poverty. Our abundance, your full fridge, may be a greater trial than someone who doesn't have anything. Our full fridges are no indication that we're not needy. So Jesus shows us how to pray by making the beggar, making us the beggar. In an illustration here, and what are we begging for, by the way? Bread, we're bread beggars all. Verse five, and he said to them, which of you who 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. And he will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, Though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. Jesus says to you, the listener, imagine you are a shameless bread beggar. That's me too. So Jesus says, Joel, here's the situation. A friend stopped in in the middle of the night. In the Middle East, people travel at night when it's cooler. And you open up the cupboards and you discover your worst nightmare. Ah! I have no bread! And you know what bread is in the Middle Eastern culture. To have no bread when your neighbors, your friends come over is shameful. So now I am on a mission for Brett. So who's my closest neighbor here? It might be you, Cindy. All right. Imagine you're fast asleep, Cindy. It's midnight, and suddenly you hear, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. And I know what you do. It must be a dream. Then you hear, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. So you pull the pillow over your head, right? And you're going to pretend it'll go away. It'll go away. It'll go away. Then you hear, hey, Cindy, it's Pastor Joel. I need three loaves of bread. I know you hear me. Wake up. And you know what happens next? Cindy opens up her window, and she says, Pastor, you're going to wake up my children. Go away. And she shuts the window, right? You know what you hear next? Cindy, I need three loaves of bread! Please open the door, I've got a friend over! And now your neighbors are yelling. The dogs are barking. You know what Cindy does? She opens her door and she chucks three loaves of bread out at me. Says, go away and don't come back. Don't worry, I won't do that. Why does Cindy give me the bread? Yes, because of my impudence, my shameless neediness, my aggravating and audacious persistence, I won't give up. Now remember, this is an illustration about how we should pray. Jesus is encouraging us to be bold and persistent in our prayers. He's encouraging us to come in faith to a friend we know will give us our bread. Who is that friend? God. You don't hear that a lot. You hear about Jesus being your friend, but this is God the Father, is your friend, who will provide, and no, not begrudgingly saying, come on, Joel, you're gonna wake up my holy angels. No. Jesus is saying, if you know how your sleepy friend with limited resources will cave in eventually, how much more will the God who has a cattle on a thousand hills give to you? Open the door to what you need. and what your friend needs. Don't miss that. And what your friend needs. God hears your prayers when they're selfless. When you're concerned about other people. When your begging for bread is connected to your neighbor's need for bread. That's what Jesus has been teaching us, right? That's actually why you need three lows. The first is for your friend who came over. The second is for you because you share in his need. and your relationship won't let you guys eat alone, right? So one for him, one for you. The reason for that third loaf didn't come to me till I got scolded in the pantry that day. The third loaf is there so you can assure your friend they never need to live in fear of not having enough. God, unlike our pantry oftentimes, always has an extra loaf for you. Verse nine, 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. Do you notice the growing intensity here? Ask, seek, knock. Jesus is saying cultivate the right heart attitude in your prayer life. Recognize your spiritual need even if you don't feel it. I think that's part of what's going on here. We may not recognize our spiritual need. Eric Alexander says, it is possible to be spiritually needy without being spiritually hungry. Just as in the physical realm, needing nourishment and eating for nourishment are two distinct things, so too in the spiritual realm. All men need Christ, but few feed on him by faith. This is the prayer of faith. Are you asking God to bless Hart City's ministry? Are you seeking to find out where God is at work in our community? Are you praying for eyes to see that and seeking it out? Are you exercising your faith? Are you getting splinters in your hands because you're willing to knock hard enough? Why not? Verse 10, for everyone who asks, receives. The one who seeks, finds. And the one who knocks, it will be opened. I have found this promise from Jesus so encouraging this week. This is Jesus' promise. Do you find it encouraging? Hart City has an ironclad guarantee that if we continue to ask, we continue to seek, and we continue to knock, we're going to see folks receiving the bread, not only that they need for today, but the bread of life that will nourish them into eternity, if we're persistent, if we're bold. Do you have someone you think of right now who has that need? And Jesus gives then a final illustration to encourage us further. And he's reminding us that we have a Heavenly Father who cares. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him, instead of a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? I always will remember fifth grade as being one of the worst times of my life. My dad actually stopped showing up for work and they would call my mom and make her all upset. Money started disappearing from our bank account because my dad was using drugs. Then my mom confided with me and showed me a letter of a woman that my dad was having an affair with. And then he just disappeared. Didn't see or hear from him for about a year. He finally came back, but everything was a mess. He was living at my grandma's. My dad was evil. My dad was evil. But do you know what my dad did? His boy loved basketball. Loved basketball. One day, my evil dad came over with the most expensive pair of basketball shoes you could find at Finish Line. a pair of Reeboks that made all my friends drool. I think that might be the greatest gift I ever got as a child. My dad, despite his wickedness, knew how to give his boy a good gift. Children, there are things that you ask your parents for, things you set your heart on. Remember, my daughter was this American girl doll thing, that's all she could talk about. I remember joking I'd get her a puzzle instead. She knew as a father, I would never do that. Jesus says that I too am evil. That apart from his grace, I would do the same kinds of things. We're in bad shape, all of us. Yet, as bad as I am, my heart is bent towards selfishness. Evil as I am, I still know how to give good gifts. to my children. And Jesus' point is, how much more will the perfect Father of Heaven, the perfect Father of Heaven, give good gifts to you who are his children? I've talked with some folks who have poor relationships with their earthly fathers, or maybe they have absentee fathers who never had that. Some of us probably feel that acutely here. That can make it hard to believe in your heavenly Father's love. You should rejoice that Luke records this because Luke is saying, you got it all backwards. You got it all backwards. If Luke were here, you should give him a hug after the service for this passage here. If you want to give it to me, that's fine too. This is a great passage. What do you mean, Joel? Luke says we are not to project what Father means in glory based on our experience in earth. No, our understanding of Father originates in heaven long before there were any earthly fathers. And the best of our earthly fathers are nothing. If your father was a great father, nothing compared to how gracious and kind and good your heavenly father is. What our Heavenly Father does proves it. And you may say, whoa, Joel, you have no idea the crap I've gone through in my life. I've been hurt, I've been abandoned, I've been betrayed. I've suffered all my life. If my life is any evidence of the Father's love for me, I am not impressed. My friend, the evidence of your Father's love is not your life. The evidence of the Father's love is the shed blood of his own son. The gift that keeps on giving. Paul writes in Romans 8, 32, he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall not he also freely give us all things? And Luke points out the Father also gives the Holy Spirit, the spirit of adoption who testifies in our hearts that we are children. Paul writes in that same chapter, verse 15, the spirit you received does not make you slaves that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him, we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Our father gives us his spirit, the most incredible, valuable, glorious gift he could ever give you. because the Spirit unites us to his own Son, Jesus Christ. Meaning, and get this, the Father loves you as much as he loves his own Son, Jesus. Jesus wants you to take that in. Read John 17. Listen, if you and I were to appropriate, and by that I mean if you took in from the top of your head all the way to the bottom of your toes, to the core of your being, that God the Father loves you like he loves his only begotten son, Jesus, an everlasting love for all of eternity, how might that impact your life if you took that in as you live in this crazy world? I've gotta close. I want to encourage us. Hart City will only be as strong as our prayers. I hope we see that. We're actually only here because of fervent prayer that started in our kitchen with a couple back there many years back. And God will bless us as we continue so long as we just start simply praying. And if you're like, Joel, I don't know where to start, start there. God, I don't know where to start. And then take this simple prayer of Jesus. Go through our bulletin on the back. There's a list there every week. Memorize Psalm 62.8. Just roll that around in your hand for a week. Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your hearts before God. Pour it all out. For God is a refuge for us. Pour out all your emotions to God when you're having a rough day. And pray for others who you see are in the thick of the battle. And I mean fervent and persistent prayer. Too often we'll say to someone, oh, I'll pray for you, right? Have you ever done that? And then you don't. Last week, someone after the service, actually I can pick on Sarah because she's not here. Sarah, she said we don't need to postpone a prayer. Let's start right now, right after the service, praying for someone. That's awesome. Ask, seek, and knock. Praying the Father will increase His Holy Spirit in our midst. And as we do, we're going to take in more and more that we truly are dearly loved children. We all want to be dearly loved children. and we'll be equipped then to tell others they can know the same. We have two prayer meetings by phone every week. We're happy to do more. So let's be shamelessly persistent, praying for others to come to Christ. Every person you meet this week has an eternal soul, an eternal soul, and a limited time on earth, an hourglass, sand running through, where they can make a decision for Christ. So let's be praying we will find them showing up at surprising times, hopefully not in the middle of the night, but even so, even so. And let us trust our Father will send to us those who are hungry, perhaps not even know what they're hungry for, and we'll find opportunity to share with them, not just earthly bread, but the true bread who's come down from heaven, even Jesus Christ, the Father's Son. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this encouragement that even now we can always come to you as children to a loving father, knowing that you care for us. You don't always give us what we want, but you do give us what we need. And like a good friend, like the best friend, you don't spoil us with earthly gifts because you do want us to remain needful in this life. And yet with fatherly love, you've lavished us with the greatest gift you could ever give. First your son, and now the spirit who unites us to your son. Father, if we have yet to receive these gifts, if we have yet to know you as father, we ask that you will assure us of your promise that you can and will give us the true bread that we need. And all we have to do is ask, seek, and knock. We pray that may none here walk away without knowing your love. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.