Well, listen, since I was up here last spring, a lot has happened, so I thought I might give you a little bit of an update. I have been diagnosed with not one cancer, but two. I have a gift. And so just quickly kind of bring you to where we are now. The cancer that is diagnosed within my liver in April is a carcinoid metastasis and I'm being treated for it successfully and my doctors are reasonably confident that they can keep it at bay for a number of years. And then in August, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and leave it to me to come up with a rare variant of prostate cancer. And so there's a group of pretty special people at OU working up a treatment plan for me that promises to be difficult, but the prognosis is good. So that's where we are right now. And Kieran and I are just, well, we're beyond words, just thanking you for your kindness your concern and your prayers these past months. It's been an interesting and difficult year, and we're not done yet, so we continue to ask you to pray for us. In light of these things, I thought I would do something a little different this morning. Normally, I would pick a passage of scripture and speak from it, but I wanted to share something a little more personal this morning, something from my own walk with God that's been an encouragement and a help to me and my hope and prayers it would be as encouraging and helpful to you as it has been to me over these years. You know, I think that we all have a deep longing to experience the reality of God in our lives in a way that is life-changing, both in our inner life and in our outer life. And that's as it should be because God has placed that desire in each of his children when we come to know Christ as Savior for the forgiveness of our sins. And we instinctively know that somehow that involves prayer. And a lot of times we make it a lot more complicated than I think it needs to be. So what I want to do is share with you today five short prayers, very short prayers that have come to me over a lifetime, starting in my 20s and leading up till now. And again, what I have found is it has led to a growing intimacy with God. It's been a seedbed, if you will, for intimacy with God over decades now. And my hope and prayer that it would serve the same way for you if these haven't already. So with that in mind, let me just name these off for you and then we'll pray, because we're going to talk about prayer. You better pray. The five prayers are fill me with your spirit. Give me your wisdom. Have mercy on me. Be my protector. And give me strength. So we need to pray. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time together. We thank you for the retreat, Lord. We thank you for the work that you do. in weekends away and times away that are designated just to be with you and to be with each other. And I pray, Father, the work you did there in both the students and the staff would continue to bear fruit. And Lord, I agree with Lowell. We just thank you for J.R. and his story reminding us that all of us have been rescued from the domain of darkness and we have been delivered to the kingdom of the sun. And we pray too for Tanya, Lord J.R.' 's wife. We just ask that you'd raise her up, Father. She's such a bright light and has such a powerful ministry, Lord. We ask that you touch her body and you'd heal her and you'd give her strength. And Father, as for our time here this morning, pray that your word would come alive. Pray that your spirit would be moving and would be speaking to each of us individually. and uniquely and powerfully as only you can do. Father, I pray that you give me a good memory, clear mind, clear tongue, and fill me with your spirit. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, the first prayer is fill me with your spirit. It comes from Ephesians 5.18, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit. I grew up in a church tradition where there's a great emphasis on obedience. We were taught to obey. Problem is we were never taught how to obey, just obey. And I think one sermon I heard kind of capsulized my entire upbringing in this area of obedience. The preacher said, you got to dedicate yourself and you got to do it. And I thought, well, that's just not working for me. Somehow, we're supposed to find it within ourselves, the ability, the discipline, the motivation to obey God and to do His will and obey His word. Grit your teeth, suck it up, get some discipline like a good Christian and get it done. Well, by the time I was 20 and in college, I pretty much despaired that that was any kind of solution for me, let alone for anyone else. And by God's grace, my junior year at Arizona State University, I got invited to a campus crusade meeting. That's a dangerous place. It's known as Crew now, if you're younger. I walked into a meeting, well over 100 kids, and they were worshiping God, and they were singing from the heart, and they were singing contemporary Christian songs that I'd never heard in my life, and I thought, what in the world have I walked into? And then it got worse. The speaker began to speak, and he was a man in his mid-50s. At the time, I thought he was pretty old. It's all in perspective. And he was in a wheelchair, and he was all twisted up with rheumatoid arthritis. And he was a powerful speaker. And he was teaching on the Holy Spirit, which in Campus Crusade, they do a lot of teaching on the Holy Spirit, which in my background, he wasn't the Holy Spirit, he was the Holy Ghost, and pardon the pun, but that's kind of spooky. And we didn't really talk about the Holy Ghost or Spirit. And as he was teaching, he said, you can't live the Christian life in your own power. It's impossible. And I thought, no kidding. And I thought, I know that, but I had never heard anyone say that, anyone in spiritual authority, any teacher, any preacher. So he had my attention. And then he began to go on and say, and that's why God commands us to be filled with his Holy Spirit, because it's only by the power of the Spirit that we can live the Christian life. So he had my attention, but by that time, I was remarkably cynical for a 20-year-old young man, and I was very, very skeptical. But over time, and with the help of friends and a good discipler and good teaching, I began to slowly do that, slowly began to invite God to fill me with his spirit each day. Father, fill me with your spirit so that I might be and do all that you would have for me to be and do this day. And over time, I began to see God change me. My inner life and my outer life wasn't magical, but it was very, very tangible. And I think he does this any time we submit to him to walk in the spirit, but I think it may be a little more dramatic in your teens and early 20s because those are years of discovery and they're years of development. And I began to see that I really didn't know who I was. There were things in my personality that I didn't know existed. There were things that God had placed in my heart that I didn't know were there. And then I found out he'd given me these gifts and abilities that were the absolute opposite of who I thought I was. And it was a remarkable thing And God, it turns out, knew me better than I knew myself, which makes sense, since He's the God who created you and me, and if you're a Christian here this morning, the God who saved you and me. And He's the one that we were made for. We were made for His glory, to work in His kingdom, and for our good. And that's what the Spirit of God does. He glorifies God through our lives, He builds His kingdom through us, and then He does us good all in the process. So if you're tired this morning and worn down by trying to live the Christian life in your own power, I would suggest to you that this is what God would have you pray. If you're growing cynical about the promises of God like I was, I used to look at different promises in the scriptures and go, that's not true, that's not true, and that's not true either. Very cynical. Or maybe you settled for something that in the Christian life was far short of what you thought you were getting into when you trusted Christ. Or maybe you're just tired of running your own life. You know, we've got a wonderful orthopedic surgeon here named Dr. Warren Lowe. I don't know if Warren's here this morning or not. He's operated on, I don't know, maybe half the church. He has an amazing gift of healing through his hands of orthopedic surgery. When I had back, he operated on me twice, Karen once. And when I had back surgery in my 30s, he told me this, and I don't know if he would even remember it. He said, you know, in orthopedic surgery, if it's not an emergency, if it's not a trauma or an accident, he said, then typically it's what you call an elective surgery. He said, here's the way it works. When the pain of your condition overcomes the fear of surgery, you have surgery. As long as the fear of surgery is greater than the pain of your condition, you do not have surgery. That's how it works, okay? And really, that's a really good picture, I think, of asking God to fill us with his spirit, because basically what we're doing is we're saying, and this is what Elmer Lappin in his wheelchair said, you need to confess your sins, admit your inadequacy, submit control of your life to God, and ask him to fill you with his spirit. And when we do that, that's a frightening thing, because giving up control, I love Robert McGee and his search for significance. It goes like this, he said, we need water, we need air, we need food, and we need control. And that's what we want, and it's the hardest thing to do, to trust the God who made us and the God who saved us, strangely enough, to give over control of our lives. And that's what we're doing when we ask God to fill us with his spirit, and we do that every day. Fill me with your spirit. And I'd encourage you to consider, if you haven't done that, or you haven't done that recently, or if you've forgotten about that, consider the pain of your life and the burden it is to run your own life, and consider giving it over to God again. So that's the prayer. Fill me with your spirit this day, and I might be and do all that you want me to be and do this day. The second prayer is, God, give me your wisdom. James 1.5 says, but if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously without reproach, and it will be given to him. Somewhere along the line in my early thirties I began to see that I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was and that was the most disturbing realization. And I ran on to James 1.5, and I'd known it for years, but it caught hold of me in a way that it never had before, because I began to perceive I don't have what I need to navigate my life in this world and navigate my family's life in this world, let alone have the wisdom and insight and understanding needed to help other people in this world. And so I began to take that promise seriously, and I began to ask God to give me wisdom. And I was seeking, what I was seeking for, well actually I began to pray it not only, pretty much on a daily basis, and I still do. If I have a life verse, that's it. Pretty much every day, it's a very in the moment prayer. It's a prayer you can pray at any moment of the day, at any time, and it services any possible situation you find yourself in, from the most mundane, to the most important, the most critical, the most difficult situations you might find yourself in. And what you're asking for and what I was asking for was God to give me wisdom in the circumstances, to people, to my own heart, give me his wisdom. And the word for wisdom there in James 1.5 is Sophia. It means insight into the nature of things. And particularly in the context of the scripture, it means the ability to understand and apply God's viewpoint. according to the knowledge of God and the knowledge of his word. And so when we ask for God's wisdom, and I was asking for God's wisdom, that's what I was asking for. And when we ask, really what it is, it's an ongoing admission of inadequacy. of need and of dependence. And the Bible refers to it as a step of faith. I won't read verses 6, 7, and 8, but it goes on to say, when you ask, don't doubt. Just believe that I'll give it to you. And I will. It's a step of faith. Trusting that God will give what He said He would do. That God is both willing and able to give wisdom in the moment, in every conceivable situation, in a timely fashion, in a way that we can understand it and apply it in a way that would please Him and help others and help us as well. And again, it's deeply rooted in God's Word and it's measured by God's Word. You've probably had the same experience I've had, where someone will tell me something they felt like God gave them wisdom about. Problem is, it doesn't line up with God's word. Problem is, it might violate God's word, or simply not according to the principles of the word. So it's always measured by the word. But the question comes, is how does God do that? If I ask him for wisdom, how does he go about giving me wisdom? Well, first and foremost, he gives it through the word, obviously. In time and the word, God speaks to us through his word. That's always primary. But he does it in many ways. He does it in worship, our time of corporate worship here, time of worship in your own time with God. When I walked into that Campus Crusade meeting, I saw worship, but I saw something else. I saw joy, and that was completely foreign to me. Joy had eluded me. in all my Christian life from age 7 to age 20. What was going on there? God was speaking to me. He was stirring my heart saying there's something you have missed my boy and we'll start with joy and then we'll work from there. So God speaks in many ways. He speaks through circumstances. He speaks through the counsel of others. He speaks through sermons. Hopefully he's speaking through this sermon this morning. He speaks through books. And he speaks through the ability of his Holy Spirit to simply put what we need in our minds, the understanding and the insight we need into a given situation. In 1 Corinthians 2.16 it says, we have the mind of Christ, the Spirit of God indwells us. He is well able to give us wisdom in the moment. There's also a spiritual gift of wisdom that kind of leads the way here. Let me give you one example from scripture, one of my favorites of how God speaks through people. First Samuel 25, 32, David is in the wilderness with his 600 men, they're trying to elude Saul who's trying to kill him. And in the process, he's living off the wilderness. He provides protection for a man named Nabal, who's very wealthy, very rich, has many flocks and herds. And one day, it's a day of a feast. They were shearing sheep. It's a day of celebration. And he has his young men go and ask Nabal for some food and some provisions and be able to join in the celebration. And Nabal was an evil and foolish man. And he insulted David's servants, and he sent them away, and David was enraged. It's like, I've been protecting you all this time. And he rose up in anger, gathered up his men, he's gonna go slaughter Nabal and take everything he wanted. And Abigail, who's married to Nabal, bless her heart, she shows up with all kinds of gifts, and she implores him not to do this thing. And here's what David said. And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who sent you to me to meet me this day. and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodshed and from avenging myself by my own hand. And he goes on to say, Surely, if you had not come to me, I would not have done this, and it's the Lord God who has restrained me and kept me from soiling my good name, and most importantly, God's good name. That works for people. God speaks in many ways. We like to put God in a box. We like to tell him what he can and can't do, and I love Psalm 115.3, it says, God is in heaven, he does whatever he pleases. We create boxes for God, what he can do in us and for us, and even how much wisdom he can give us and how he can give it. And God is famous for not staying in a box and blowing up boxes, and sometimes it's a rather frightening experience. So God is not limited. and how He speaks. Is there a learning curve? Yes, there is. Whenever you ask God for wisdom, sometimes you think you got His wisdom, and you did not get His wisdom. There's a learning curve, but He's a very gracious God, and the Holy Spirit is a teaching Holy Spirit, and He guides us and shows us the way and shows us how to live by the Word, live by the knowledge of God, and apply it and listen to His Spirit in unique situations that we find ourselves in where something needs to be said, something needs to be understood, something needs to be done. Now there's only two reasons that I can think of why we wouldn't ask God to give us wisdom. The first one is, I don't think I need it. And the second one is, I don't think he'll give it. Now think about that. I don't need it. I don't think he'll give it. That's the way we are often. I don't think I need it. I think I've got this. I remember one time Karen went to a doctor and she told the doctor, I've been praying for you that God would give you wisdom. He was offended. He said, I've got wisdom. I've got wisdom. Well, that's sometimes how we are. I've got wisdom. I don't need. So praying for God's wisdom is an act of humility and an act of need. And so pray for God's wisdom. when you need it in the moment that you need it. That would be my encouragement to you. It certainly has been a great help to me. What happens is, it protects us from so much grief in our lives. I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I just feel an outbreak of foolishness coming on. And foolishness causes grief, it does. And so it protects us from grief, but it also enables us to be a blessing over and over again to other people, both to the believer and the unbeliever. So let's ask God for wisdom. The third prayer is have mercy on me. That's out of Psalm 57, just the first part of the verse. Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me. Some translations will say, be gracious to me. For my soul takes refuge in you. I began praying this in my early 50s. It was a difficult time here at Covenant. It was a difficult time for me personally. And I began to feel the wear and tear of the years beginning to add up. And I just very much more clearly beginning to see my failings, my sins, and my limitations in pretty much every area of my life. And the only thing I could see was to cry out for God's mercy based on Proverbs 57.1. You can pray this prayer at any age. In fact, as you might imagine, most people I meet with are younger than me. Some of them I can be their dad and a few of them I can be their grandfather. And I often encourage them to pray for God's mercy. But in middle age, sometimes it's a very unique time where your failings and your sins and your limitations do become very real. It can be very discouraging. It's a good time, if you haven't, to begin to pray for God's mercy. And mercy in both the Old and New Testament capture the ideas of having pity, okay, on those who are suffering, compassion on those who are in need, and granting gracious favor to those who don't deserve it. And so we cry out for mercy, we're crying out for all of these things. You know, the day we were, it's really the gospel of Jesus Christ. The day we were saved is the greatest day of mercy that we'll ever experience. We put our trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. But that great day, when we become a believer, it opens the door to an endless stream of mercies. The Bible tells us that his mercies will follow us all the days of our life, and God's mercy and God's goodness cannot be separated. In Psalm 23, verse 6 it says, Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And you know, this prayer for mercy is in the context in this verse of seeing God as refuge. It's for my soul takes refuge in you. By my count, God is referred to as a refuge in the Psalms 46 different times. And a refuge is a place of protection. It's a safe place. It's a place where you can be nourished, refreshed, and healed. and renewed. That's God describing himself and what he does for us, and his mercy is so much a part of that. So when we cry out for mercy, what that does, that actually sets us up to begin to see his mercies, because so often we don't see them. So often we have so many dark thoughts about God, particularly when life is overwhelming to us. When we pray for mercy, it begins to set us right to begin to see the mercies that are coming to us many times that we completely miss. We're often blinded toward them. And oftentimes what I've found, you may be praying for a big mercy, Big deliverance, if you will, and you're deeply discouraged that God doesn't give that to you, whatever it might be, and it can cut across any part of your life. And what I've seen when God doesn't grant those great mercies, and sometimes He does, He speaks to us in small mercies, mercies that are so uniquely personal. that they could come from nowhere but Him. No one else would recognize Him, might not even mean anything to someone else, but they mean something to you and they mean something to me as God meets us with His mercy. Let me just give you a recent example of that. I've had cancer six times, three different cancers, and God gave me a special grace through the first five. I don't know why, but I'm deeply grateful. I never went to a dark place with any of those. This last one, prostate cancer, I don't know if it's because it's uniquely threatening and personal. I don't know if it's because it's number six. I don't know if it's because we're running two at a time. But this one really got to me. And I've had some really dark times. And there was one stretch of a few days that were really dark. And finally, I was sitting at my desk with the door closed one morning in my office. Because you know how it is in your dark place. Isolation always feels good, right? Even though it's not good, it feels good. But I just began to cry out to God. God have mercy on me. I felt so unworthy of His mercy. I was so angry, confused, felt picked on, sinful, rebellious. I just had been like that for several days. And I prayed that and prayed that, actually repeated it over and over again. And then a few minutes later, I get this text from John Meese. If you don't know John Meese, you need to know him. He's probably more famous for being married to Cheryl Meese. But John's a great guy. And in fact, he's back there filming right now. He's an old friend of mine. And he would refer to himself as an amateur photographer, but he's got this gift. He can catch wildlife and he can catch landscapes. And he had caught a sunrise. It was just stunning. And he sent it to me. And underneath it, he put this scripture. And I used to have it memorized, but I don't trust myself this morning. Lamentations 3, 22 to 23. He said, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. And it was just like, It's like God is saying, Ron, I see you, and I know you're ugly right now, and I know you're in a bad place, and you feel really unworthy, but I want you to know that my mercies come to you every morning, and my love never ceases, not because of who you are, but because of who I am. And I'm reassuring you this morning. My mercies are here for you. And that turned things around. That's the idea. Asking God for mercy, praying for His mercy, looking for His mercy, and seeing what He might do. That's fairly dramatic. Most of them are less dramatic than that, at least in my experience, but that I needed to share with you. So that's the first three. Got two more. You good? Okay, I'm gonna go a little bit quicker on these. The fourth one is be my protector. That comes out of Psalm 35 to take hold of buckler and shield and rise up for my help. And later in my 50s and early 60s, I increasingly began to feel my age. You know, there's something called youthful resilience that we often take for granted when we're young. Oftentimes we mistake it for strong faith. In reality, it's just strength of youth, strength of mind, body, and spirit. And Proverbs 20, 29 says, the glory of young men is their strength, and the honor of old men is their gray hair. And when we're young, we have health, we have strength, we have energy, we have something called mental acuity. And we have confidence in boldness that comes with that. And it's a gift from God. There's a shelf life. It doesn't last forever, and when it starts to dissipate, it's a bit of a shock. And as I began to feel it slip away little by little, I found a new vulnerability and an unfamiliar and unsettling feeling. I began to doubt my ability to face difficult circumstances and difficult problems and sometimes difficult people. In Psalm 35-2, I found what I needed. In that passage, shield is the picture in that ancient day of warfare, a large shield designed to cover most of the body. It's designed to fend off a frontal attack. Buckler, which you might be wondering what a buckler is, it's a small round shield. that's used for hand-to-hand combat, up close and personal. And what David is doing here is crying out to God to be his protector in any and every situation because David, the giant killer, was feeling very, very vulnerable. And it's a beautiful picture of God as a warrior stepping in front of you when you are weak and vulnerable. Or, this one gets me, stepping over you to get in front of you if you've fallen in battle, okay? And so it's a picture of God being our protector. when we need it. And so often we need His protection no matter what age we are. And again, I'm just kind of taken by the idea, just King David, my favorite Old Testament figure. Here's a man who's a dangerous man, a man of courage, a giant killer. And if he feels the need to ask for God's protection, then surely you and I need His protection as well. And it's something we can pray and ask for God at any time we need it. And the last of the five prayers that I've prayed over these years that have come to me over decades is, Lord, give me strength, and that's out of Isaiah 41.10. I could've used many different scriptures here, but this is a favorite of mine that goes way back that I used to apply more toward fear and anxiety and less so toward strength in this day. It says, do not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. Ah, I will strengthen you. Surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Now, you know, I began to pray this in the face of mounting health issues. If you're familiar with that, there's a fatigue of body and soul that comes with that. And notice in this prayer, the strength is directed first toward emotions, fear and anxiety. Then it's directed toward our spiritual life, for I'm your God. And then it's directed to a broad promise of strength. It would include physical strength as well. And it's important, because these three areas, emotional, spiritual, and physical strength, are deeply intertwined, and they cannot be separated. We human beings are very complex. One affects the other. Physical weakness can make for emotional weakness and spiritual weakness, and vice versa, okay, and back and forth. between the three. And so that's what I like about this because God is promising to strengthen us in all areas of our lives, these three in particular. And that's important because physical suffering and physical weakness can drain away emotional and spiritual strength as well and can leave us greatly debilitated. And some of you know a whole lot more about that than I do. And some of you are fairly young who know about that. In this condition of weakness, I believe can either be a seedbed for spiritual growth or it can be a dangerous place. A place where cynicism and unbelief and all kinds of fears of abandonment take root. And so this prayer for strength I think is very important whenever you find yourself in a weakened condition and overwhelmed by life. which happens so often in our day and time. On a lighter note, Karen has latched on to Psalm 92.10 in these last few months. It talks about the fresh anointing from God and the strength of a wild ox. And she's praying that for me. And I think I know what a fresh anointing from God is. I think I have some idea what the strength of an ox is. But a wild ox? That sounds kind of crazy to me. And that's what she's praying for me. And sometimes she'll remind me she's praying that for me, and then she'll say something funny like, you're not done yet, Ronnie. And we have a good time with it. And it's important in the midst of serious things You know, the Bible, the Proverbs says, you know, a merry heart is good medicine, and a merry heart laughs. It's important not to take ourselves too seriously, whatever thing we find ourselves in in life, and to never forget to laugh. It might be dark humor sometimes, but laughter nonetheless. And so I'd encourage you in that, because we have a little fun with our problems in the Jared household. Okay, just in wrapping up here, I would just want to have you understand three things. The first thing is understand the context of these prayers. I would really like you to believe that these prayers were born out of this great heart for God that somehow I possess, but that'd be a little bit like trying to sell you oceanfront property in my home state of Arizona. That's just not true, and it's not real, and it's not even in the context of the word where these are found. If you look at the context of all five of these prayers, what you see is you see pain. You see failure, you see sin, you see weakness, you see need. That's where these prayers come from in the Word. That's certainly where they've come from in my life. And so that's really important because these are prayers that are designed to pour out of you. We like to think of the Christian life and Christian growth as what I call clean and clinical. And you'll even hear teaching like that. Christians don't have problems like that, things like that. What I found, what I see in scripture, spiritual growth is very messy. And if you've read the Bible lately, it's really messy. It's all kinds of messy things going on there. Because what it is, it's the story of God reaching down and if you will, delivering us from ourselves and showing us who he is and who he has made us to be. and what he has in mind for us to be and do in our time here on this earth. So, keep that in mind. It doesn't start with a great heart for God, but these prayers take us to an ever increasingly good heart for God, if you will, okay? The next thing is just notice the content of the prayers. There's one thing I think that these prayers all have in common, and that's the goodness of God. You think about, God, fill me with your spirit. God, give me wisdom, have mercy on me, protect me, give me strength. What are these? These are the goodness of God coupled with the power of God, and you can never separate the goodness of God from the power of God. That's what they're about. And what comes to mind is Psalm 34, it says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste is the idea of experience. To see is to come to understand what is real and true. And God says, taste, then see that I am good. And what comes to mind to me as little kids, got a little granddaughter who's 10, little kids, you know how they have this gift, they can look at a piece of food and tell you whether they like it, they don't have to taste it. And you know what, when it comes to this verse, and it comes to these kinds of prayers, I and we are often like little kids. And what do you do with your little kid? You tell them, well, you got to taste this. You don't have to finish it, but you got to taste it. And then one of two things happens. They taste it, their eyes brighten up and go, wow, that's really good. Or they go, I still don't like it. And now if they taste it and it's good, then we're good. And what do you say when they say, I don't like it. I still don't like it. What do you say? I remember saying this to Madeline. Say, well, from time to time, you need to keep tasting this. Because as you grow up, as you mature, your tastes change, and you find out what really good food tastes like. So keep tasting it. And there's so many things at 10 that she loves that she hated at five. And so often we're like the child. Either we refuse to taste, saying, no, no, no. God couldn't be good. He couldn't be good to me in that way, so we don't even do it. Or we taste it once and go, that didn't work. And we don't do it again. And that's what a child does. We're not children. Okay? We grow up to men and women of God, and men and women of God keep tasting until we see the goodness of God because we've tasted the goodness of God. So if you're like I was so many years ago, you're sitting there cynical, skeptical, and go, well, maybe that works for you, it didn't work for me. Well, I'd encourage you to taste and see, not to insult you, don't act like a child, okay? Last thing, the simplicity of these prayers. They're not profound, they're not long, they're simple, they're short. Anyone can pray them, and I would encourage you to pray them yourself. And you may have prayers that you pray. This is a group that, a praying group of people. I don't know where, I know where many of you are, but I don't know where all of you are. And maybe you've found your own prayers that you pray that make, that draws you into intimacy with God and the reality of who God is in your life and how he works in and through you. If you're doing that, you keep doing that. If you found something here this morning that you think may be helpful to you, then by all means, apply it. Well, we've spent our time talking about prayer, so let's finish with prayer, all right? Let's pray. Father, we've talked about you filling us with your spirit. We've talked about you giving us your wisdom. We've talked about how we need your mercy, and we can pray for that. We've talked about protection, and we've talked about strength. Lord, these are all expressions of your great goodness and your great power. that you wish to exert and do exert in our lives. So Father, I pray for myself and every person in this room that we would pray and come to you with a heart to see your good mercies and your power and your goodness working in our lives in new and fresh ways that would encourage us no matter what age we are, no matter what situation we find ourselves in, no matter how overwhelming life might be right now. So I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.