God controls all things and He knows all things, so how do we have zeal for prayer? Welcome to The Conquering Truth. I'm Dan Horne. I'm Jonathan Sides. I'm Charles Churchill. And I'm Joshua Horne. Last year at the beginning of the year, we have a book that we do the year before and we discussed it and we were going to discuss it for one night. It was Calvin on prayer from his institutes. And we ended up spending five nights on it. And the conversation, I thought, was very useful. It was useful for me personally, and I think a lot of people in the church, they change some of their prayer practices. And as we did, it ended up, as the year developed, that there were lots of things that went on last year in our church. And having that greater zeal for prayer and that greater fervency for prayer that came out of that study, that ended up being very useful and very helpful for the church. So how do you maintain zeal? Why is prayer helpful? One of the things that you said about prayer before that really stuck with me is that when we pray, we align our thoughts with God's thoughts. And there's this part of it where I think prayer really changed for me in this past year in the sense of it's so easy to think of it as formulaic. It's so easy to think of it as a conversation in a different way than it really is. It's so easy to get frustrated with it because we're not thinking about it right. And prayer really changed when I started to think about it as aligning my thoughts with God's thoughts and under God's authority. that and so much of it is it's like a conversation. It's an authoritative conversation. It's a conversation with an authority. And it changed so much in this past year as we started really thinking about, as I started thinking about in this way, and thinking about how you bring things to God, and you bring what you're thinking about with them, and that as you bring those requests to God, that God really gives you answers and things, but you see what He does in the world, and you see how He deals with it, and then you think about what He's done, and then you come back to Him, and you treat Him as Lord, This is a really central part to being a Christian. And if you don't think about prayer rightly, it's really easy to get off into the weeds and not understand what prayer does and how it allows you to relate to God. When we think of prayer, we tend to think of we're making things known to God. But God says He already knows what we're going to ask before we ask it. So that's not the purpose of prayer. We know that's not. That's why he says, don't use vain repetition. He knew everything that you were going to say before you said it. So the purpose of prayer is not about God's knowledge. One thing that you were talking about that I think is really important is one of the big purposes of prayer is our knowledge, right? We come and we make a petition to God and we find out what his response to that petition is. I mean, that's how you, That's how a son, when he comes to his father and he goes, father, can I go drive the car? And the father goes, no, you're five. And the son understands more about the father. Now, hopefully by the time he's five, he already knows why he can't drive a car. But you get the point, right? Is that that no tells us as much as you're 15 now, yes, you can start taking driver's ed. Right? And both of those answers tell us something about our Lord. They tell us something about our Father for that Son. And so as we think about it, that's how we should think about prayer. One of the aspects of prayer is it's, as you said, it's us aligning our will with God, us discovering God's will. Because when you ask something, you know, his saying yes or no, that tells you about his will. We so often get this confused that we've incorporated that phrase into our prayer as if that's a magic word phrase to say, we ask this in your name. And it's not fundamentally wrong to say that phrase. But the truth is, is the way you say that and that be true, is that you say you have a way to think that when you ask this, it was consistent with your understanding of what God is desiring. That you've actually thought about what God is desiring. And I mean, I think about this like, I was talking to my children about this tonight, when we had prayer tonight, we were talking about this and I was saying, when you come to ask me a question, if you think about it ahead of time, It changes the way you think, because you know there are things before you come to me that you should have already done. You'll go, if I go in and ask my dad this, he'll say, well, did you do X? And if I haven't done that, he's going to say, what are you doing? Why are you asking me this? And so when you actually begin to think about these things, that you're going to ask my dad this, or one of the younger kids will say to the older kids, let's go ask dad to do this. And they'll go, no, dad doesn't want us to do that. That's not in Dad's will. You can't ask him that in his name. That's a dumb thing to ask, and we understand this concept. But when we come to prayer, we almost don't think about it. We have this formula for prayer, for approaching God, but we don't frequently think about God as an authority the way we think about other authorities. And you always sing a song about take everything to the Lord in prayer. Well, no, you shouldn't take everything to the Lord in prayer. I mean, you shouldn't, because you're supposed to know things, right? I don't need to take to the Lord in prayer should I go commit adultery. Well, no, I should know as a Christian I'm not to do that. And now somebody who's an immature Christian, they're going to take different things to the Lord in prayer than somebody who's mature, because as you discover His will, a lot of times, like you're saying, you should just go, no, I shouldn't get drunk today. You know, it doesn't take me praying about it. I just know His will. And, you know, the more you mature in the faith, the more you understand His will. And it means there's things that you don't pray about anymore, because you shouldn't pray about them, because you know His will in the matter. You know what the Scriptures say about it. You don't need to go, God, really, did you mean this when you wrote this? You know, you started this off by saying, we got into this by reading a book by Calvin on prayer, which is, from an academic perspective, that could be a little unexpected. If you think about, there's a way that you can have a cartoonish version of Calvinism where you think, well, why bother praying? If you have a really high view of the sovereignty of God, where God controls everything, God knows everything, God's going to do what God's going to do, why pray? And the answer can't be just as simple as, oh, well, because he says to. Even though that's actually sufficient. I mean, but that's the sort of answer that you have as a five-year-old child. That's a sufficient answer. Do what your father says because he says so. But then later on, what you're expecting as a mature person, as a mature Christian, is that the act of prayer is actually supposed to be building you up. It's supposed to be your obedience to God, but obedience to God is something that builds you up. It's part of what builds your sanctification. It's part of what helps you know the Father better, which also means that if you're knowing the Father better, you're knowing things about the Father better, which It could actually even be building your view of the sovereignty of God. You can have a view where you say, I believe in the sovereignty of God on paper, but then you live a life that's filled with fear and anxiety. You don't really have a connection between your intellectual understanding of a particular doctrine and how that doctrine is supposed to affect your life. because your emotions are running you. And prayer is one of those things that actually can build that bridge where you can strengthen some of those things and you can put some of that theology in practice. And, you know, the Calvinists should pray for all sorts of reasons, and you can't just say, oh, well, God's sovereign, he doesn't need to hear from me. Right, it's that we need to talk to him. Really, it's what it comes down to in a real way. But that talking to him also affects things. But one of the things that I see in prayer now is that a lot of people in the church, they forget why God said we're supposed to pray, right? And Luke 11, one and two, it says, now it came to pass as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples. So he said to them, when you pray, say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. he goes on but he didn't choose to start with where he started for a real purpose in most prayer today it's about me or it's about our church or it's about this or it's about that in christ when he says to teach you to pray it's understand this is about god being glorified hallowed be thy name and it's about the world, his kingdom in the world, taking over the world. That kingdom come, or your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so, you know, one of the things that prayer does, if you're actually thinking about prayer and communicating with God and you're trying to discover the will of God, the first thing you discover about the will of God is it's not about you, it's about God. Right. And, you know, even something as simple as, you know, prayer being about worshiping God, That it's not like, why do we need to pray in terms of what will it get for us if God is already going to be kind to us? Why do we need to ask him for things? You know, the world was created to bring God glory. So just God saying, well, as part of that, I want you to praise me in prayer. I want you to thank me for what I've done. You know, it's like, you know, your mother makes you dinner and she wants you to say thank you for dinner at the end of dinner. That makes sense to everyone. why does it not make sense that we should pray to God to thank you God? And part of this is because, you know, it's very easy for us to slip into, you know, the practice of our prayers are 99% giving God our Christmas list, if you had all the things we want, versus saying, you know, look at the biblical prayers, and they certainly ask God for plenty of things, but a huge percentage is praising God and thanking God. And so if If you're going to say, why are we doing that type of prayer? I mean, that question starts to not even make sense. So part of it is if we're asking, why should we, you know, why should we pray? Well, maybe we shouldn't be praying the way that we're praying if we have to ask that question. And there's a way to pray to God where you're asking those things in such a way that it's bringing him glory. Where you, the way that you're asking those things is admitting your smallness, your humanness, your frailness, your sinfulness. and at the same time exalting his abilities, his greatness. He's done great things in the past. He makes great promises. But, you know, like Jesus gives us an example, you get yourself in that kind of mindset by setting it up, by starting to talk about God. You start with God, and then you bring those things in later. You ask for our daily bread after you've said things about God. Charles referenced this verse earlier from John 14, or it's mentioned more than once. But, most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also, and greater works than these he will do. As I go to my Father, and whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. And so part of it is, when we think about that, and we think that God's building his kingdom, and that his will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven, If we're thinking about ourselves as slaves, then our petitions are different. If we think of ourselves as masters, then we're asking the slave for our Christmas list, which is how a lot of people pray. God, give me this. I remember World Magazine once referred to that most people pray as if God's a cosmic bellhop, that, you know, I need this, give me this, give me this, as opposed to if we think instead of ourselves as slaves, Then what we're praying is, or what we should be praying is, if we're slaves, we're slaves that are saved for the good works that he prepared beforehand for us to work in, or for us to do, walk in, excuse me, then what we do is we pray for the tools that we need to do the work that we should be doing, right? I mean, a slave that comes to his master, what does he ask for? Well, if he's supposed to go plant corn, he asked for a hoe, right? I mean, that's the right thing. He asked for the things that are needed for the work that he's supposed to do. And so if we're thinking not about our kingdom, you know, I want a new car. If we're thinking about God's kingdom, the petition becomes, well, if I had a car that I could travel to these places right now, I would like to bring people to church, but I can only hold my family, which has five people, and that's all my car holds. But if I had a van, there's other people I could bring." Well, that's a fundamentally different petition, because now it's about expanding the kingdom and not about you. And so when we think about those petitions, we should be thinking about them as, I'm a slave, what should I be asking my master for? Right. When you think of the verse and it says, you have not because ye ask not. And when you do ask, you ask wrongly, so you can consume it upon your own lust. Right. I mean, that's exactly what you're talking about, is when you ask, sometimes you don't even ask. And then when you do ask, you know, it's like the kid who goes to his dad. I've asked my kids before, you know, if you come to me and you say, you know, if I see you and you're not responsible and you waste your money on toys and you eat too much candy and you come to me and, Dad, can you raise my allowance because I want to buy more toys and more candy, I'm going to say absolutely not. But if you come to me and you say, Dad, you've been wanting me to learn math and I've been working on this, but I actually think if you bought me this math book, I would do this. Or if you get me this tool, I could do this. all of a sudden dad's interested because you're doing something that you know I mean it's it's a it's an entirely different thing and we understand this with earthly fathers we understand this with earthly employers and yet we refuse to treat God as the Lord of the Earth. And so when we think of asking things in His name, I mean, His name is what He's doing. It's His reputation. It's what He's about in the world. It's to make His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's what His name is, and His name is righteousness and holy and all those things that tie into what His will is and what, you know, that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. And so when we're asking, we're supposed to be asking, God, help us do this so that your kingdom advances and that we do the work we're supposed to do. And when you do that, it really changes your mindset towards God. And it really changes your mindset towards prayer. It's one thing to pray and say, I want this, I want this. And it's a very different thing to say, God, if you gave me this, I could do this for your kingdom. And God in doing that is changing us so that we understand his will better. And that's something that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12, 7 and 9. And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me." So Paul had this, you know, affliction of some kind, and he prays to God three times to remove it. And then, you know, he understands that God's will is not to remove it, but he's supposed to be learning a lesson from it. And it's something where, you know, He understands God better, and it's not just God, why have you disappointed me? It's actually by him not doing what I wanted him to do, he's teaching me about himself. And you know, some difficult things happened this year. and by preparing that and by us thinking about prayer and us praying and saying, okay, God, reveal your will to us through prayer. When those difficult things happen, it's easier to accept them as coming from God's hand because you're going, I'm supposed to be understanding your will and events that happen in our lives. This is about discovering the will of God and understanding the will of God. And prayer is a mean to do that. And you look at how much it talks about prayer and scripture and These things, it's not like a side thing that God wants us to understand His will and understand what's happening in the world. He wants us to understand. And so prayer is a big part of that. And that just, when you pray and you see more and more about how God is working out His will in the world, then when difficult things happen, you can turn around and you can say, God's working out his will in the world and I can trust that and I can believe that I've seen it in prayer I'm coming to God going show me show me show me and So then when you see it, you can see it and a lot of times I think like you said you can have the theology to say Oh, I'm a Calvinist. I believes God sovereign over all things and then you see sickness and you go Yeah, but he's not sovereign over that. Well, no prayer actually prepares your mindset so that you think that way I think it's a real key because, I mean, you look at it and even talking about from the perspective of Calvinism, it's so easy for like, on the Arminian side, they say that what God wanted was he wanted people who chose him freely. And so you go, well, I'm sorry, this is a flawed view because of, and we're not going to go into all that. But there's a part of it where once you become saved, that is what he creates. He creates a people who have freedom in Him to do good. And when you read this verse where it talks about that they want God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, what he's saying is, is the Christian life prepares people to be able to be such servants of God that they, through the freedom they have in Christ, through walking in His Spirit, they do His will to the degree that His will is done on earth in the same way that it's done in heaven. So when you look at prayer, you're talking about understanding the will of God, it doesn't mean that you pray at every single, should I walk over here now? Should I step over here? Should I go over here? But that through discovering God's will and through the work of this, that you become a person that he causes you to understand his will so that you can do those things. But just like a servant does for a master who's been trained that he knows a master's not here, but here is what he would want me to do. Here is this opportunity, he would want me to take it. here is this thing that needs to be done, this thing that happened today. He would want me to shift my priorities and deal with this because he understands his master. And that prayer is a real, that prayer is that means by which those who are saved achieve that. Most Pentecostals think they're heard by their many words and they have these long three, four hour prayers. And the reality is they're often praying about stuff that they should just know. You don't need to spend hours praying about something that you're just supposed to go do. And we can use prayer, and it's very easy to have this self-righteous zeal about prayer and self-righteous to go, oh, look at how great I am. I'm a prayer warrior. You know, in my experience, most prayer warriors don't do anything for the kingdom of God. And because God doesn't want prayer warriors, he wants slaves. And that doesn't mean that we don't come to the Lord in prayer. Obviously we are to come to the Lord in prayer, but we don't pray so we don't do anything. We actually should be praying so we do do things. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, meaning that we're supposed to go and do His will and not just sit there and pray all the time. And so I think that one of the things that causes the zeal in prayer to diminish is where we start to substitute prayer for the other work that we can do. And it doesn't mean that there aren't people that are infirmed, that that's all they can do, and that's great. But most people, the answer is, I should go do what God would have me to do, and I should do what I can do, and the things that I can do to build up his kingdom. And I come to God to say, God, show me what you would have me to do. God, I think this is what you would have me to do, and if you do, then this is what I need. And if he gives those to you, then you go, now I understand, that is what he wants me to do. And if he goes no, then you go, I understand, that's not what he wants me to do. But prayer is not an excuse so that you don't do things. And I think when you talked about the past year, and one of the things that made me think of was, there's a part of it where you think about answers to prayer. Let me say that better. We had something go on with a young lady in the church who was having a very serious, she was having a very serious issue. Young lady in one of the families in the church. She was a member of the church itself. And the very first thing we did when this happened was we all prayed, dear God, please remove this. And we even fasted, and we prayed, and we said, dear God, just please, just take this away. Handle this. And God said no. It was very clear that, I mean, he may have been saying, not now, but he very clearly didn't answer that prayer in the way we were asking him to. And the answer, and you actually have to deal with that as this is a real answer. There is this part where you, God, would you take this away? God said, nope, not taking it away. And then you had to think as we had to actually think, okay, So what are things that we know we should do? What are things that are right? And so we begin doing those things, whether it was going over and dealing with a sin in a particular way, praying about these things, confronting there were certain lies that needed to be dealt with. And you're confronting those things and you're dealing with a lot of different things. You're like skirting around demon possession. I don't think you should skirt around it. Okay, well at the beginning we weren't sure even, I mean, I think that some of this started, we weren't sure where it was. And so there's this part where you're beginning to do things and you're asking God as you're doing it, you're going either show us that we have no idea what we're doing, or help us have some understanding what's happening. So you're praying for, you know what I mean? And at each step along the way, you're asking questions, you're thinking about what God's showing you, you're asking God to give you enough information to continue to move in a direction, to make wise decisions, and He's doing it. But there's this part of it where you don't just go, Who knows what's going to—I mean, you actually have to act as if God is an authority and the things that are happening are a result of His will. And if you treat it in that way, you actually begin to—like I said, this is where prayer becomes a conversation with an authority. This is an authority who can actually cause things to happen at a much finer and much more detailed level than any other authority in your life. And so whereas my children, sometimes they learn my answers without me talking to them, by what I do, and there's plenty of times by what I do that they figure out what I want, just like this with God, I mean, I begin to see this in a very different way than I'd really ever seen it before. And it's not the type of situation where it's like, well, the prayer was answered. God said no, so we don't need to pray. Now we're going to do other things. Right. The type of thing where the work and the prayer are going together, where the answer is no. So it's not that you stop praying, but you stop, but you pray in a different way for different things. And so it's not like you know, when it's a no, well, move on, pick that out of the prayers and just continue. Right. It's not, I want a new car, but, and, and even for me personally, because I've been meeting with her quite a bit is it's about, she's about a half an hour away from where I live and work. And so that half an hour drive is always a prayer about God. What should I be talking to her about? What should I confront her in? How should I deal with the situation? And sometimes I come to the conclusion I should deal with this way, and I walk in in two minutes, and she's biting and kicking, and it goes, okay, that plans out the window. But a lot of times, the majority of the time, the conversation goes and the discussion goes on what I came to the conclusion through prayer of what God would have me to do. It is communication. It is crying out to God for wisdom, and he gives you wisdom. It's not that you hear a voice, you know, speaking to me over the radio saying, Dan, do this. But it is really… What was the radio on? No, the radio is not on. But it is by God bringing Scripture to – I mean God sometimes brings specific Scripture to mind that allows you to think about things in particular ways. Darrell Bock Right, and this – and a lot of times going over there is it's more that he brings specific things to mind in previous conversations, in other things that goes, okay, this is the tact I should take this time. it is this ongoing communication, it is this ongoing crying out to God for wisdom, and when you see that that's what God's doing, it's a lot easier to have zeal in prayer. Right, and I mean, as I was thinking about this, I mean, there was a point where, as your prayers developed, the prayer became, like I said in the beginning, God remove this, okay, help us understand what to do. There was a point where it was very clear there were spiritual things going on that were very I mean that was clear from the beginning but yes I mean demonic and not just not just that there were demonic thoughts but that there were actual potentially demonic presences that you were there were being dealt with and so you start praying and then going okay they're gonna please show us and help us grow our faith by showing that the work that we're doing is producing some result. And then there were times where God gave that, where there would be days where the behavior would be very different, where you would see where- Well, she specifically said some of the voices she heard left. Right. And she's even cried because they left, and that's continued. So you see that there is progress even though you don't go, okay, we wish the whole thing was over. It's not over, but yet you do see real progress and God reveals that real progress. And so those things, I mean, it's just, is a very, is a very different thing than the way I've been, than the way I've thought about prayer for a long time. And that was very, it was very useful. changing that. It certainly, if nothing else, certainly did many things. But it adds an earnestness to it. And we started by asking about zeal. And there's a sense in which you can think zeal is this extra thing that, oh I've got prayer but what I really need is prayer with zeal. And then God gives you a situation and you realize that zeal is this thing that's sort of borne about by the urgency of the situation and the needs that are imposed by that situation. Of the work. Of the work and the difficulties and your lack of understanding and your lack of wisdom. the impact that it's having, and all of those things sort of – and if your mind is in the right place where you're saying, God's sovereign, I've got to appeal to God, all of a sudden you find you have prayer with zeal. And it's not something that you went and you drummed up and you're like, oh, let me bring this other thing along so that I can put a sticker on my prayer and now it's approved as prayer with zeal. Trevor Burrus Right. It's the person who's having a heart attack. They don't have to work up zeal to get to the hospital. It's directly connected to getting to the hospital. They go, I need to be at the hospital. And when you're seeing God in the right light, that's how the prayer is. You're going, God, I need help here. I need to understand. Or, God, this is what I think I should be doing. I need these things. And it becomes, the zeal is just naturally part. when we find ourselves missing zeal in prayer, the issue isn't how do I get more zeal in prayer, but it's that what is the, you know, how am I not valuing things correctly, not appreciating God for who he is, not appreciating sin for what it is. it is meaning that that's lacking. And the work we need to do. Because the person who is saying, I have work to do for God. I'm seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. There's always things to pray about because there's always more things we should be doing. We should be doing them better. We should be doing them in different ways. And if we actually have the right mindset of who we are, that we're seeking eternal life, that we're seeking God, that we're seeking him, then the zeal is just naturally part of it. It's when we get caught up in the things of the earth that we have to work up zeal for prayer. I mean, in some of this, there's a shift in mindset towards that. Scripture talks about that this is warfare. I mean, if you read stories of people in warfare, they're always writing for more resources. I mean, I remember hearing, it was a business setting, but it was a research and development lab. And one of the bosses came in one day and he said, we've had too many successes. He says, we're supposed to be pushing the envelope. He said, we're actually supposed to be trying things. He said, we're not trying because we've been way too safe. And there's this part where war is like this, in a sense, of where if you're in war, you're doing things that push you and that stretch you, and that where you're saying, this is, God's pushed me in this direction, and you're asking God for things because you need them, because you're doing something that you look at and you go, this is bigger than I can handle. And if your mindset isn't that this is warfare, if you're always making purely safe decisions, if you're not stepping out of your comfort zone, if you're not stepping into enemy territory, zeal is going to be lacking because you've chosen to do work that requires no zeal. And usually it's because we're relying on our own strength. And why do we have no zeal? Well, because we're self-confident. We know that we know quote-unquote know our limits and we're not going to do more than is beyond our limits. I mean, again, I'm just using the examples from the last year because I think they're helpful to think about prayer. But even I remember a conversation I had with the director of the ministry that we have in Nigeria where I'm like, maybe we should invite some seminaries to see if they'll have people sit in on these conferences that I was doing over there. and then started to pray about it, and we ended up that we had 23 seminaries and something like 3,500 seminary students that listened to days worth of conferences, where they basically shut down the seminary for those days so that they could listen to these conferences. And when you think about that, that's nothing that I would have ever thought would happen. But if you go, well, God, open the doors if this is what's supposed to happen if this is what we're supposed to do you open the doors and the doors i mean it's really remarkable to me still that the doors open but that's that's exactly what you're saying right is that you have to have the zeal to go do this god if this is if this is your will if this is how your name's going to be made known And I mean, there were a lot of seminaries that really hated me, which is fine. Hopefully some of the students actually could hear the word of God. But the point is, is that the church doesn't have zeal for prayer a lot of times because they're not doing anything. And if they're not doing anything, they're not taking any risk, then why do you have to rely on God? Why do you have to sit there and say, I need you? They just go, I don't really need God. I mean, we took our children to the abortion clinic for the first time this past year. And part of the issue of doing that was it changed your relationship and the proximity. It made things much more real in a way. I mean, I'd been to the abortion clinic, but it had been a while. And it caused some conversations with my children about specific things, both the vitriol that they got from some people driving by, So even just the reality of watching how many cars were going in here, how many women were going in and out, and they're going, this many women are actually going here to have a child killed. And, you know, and then you're reading Psalms, and you're reading Psalms that have always talked about people oppressing the poor, and then the poor doing this, and lying in wait for blood, and then, and so all of these things are just, and then you go back and you pray, or you pray as you're there, as you're preaching, And it just, there is a greater reality to what you're doing and a greater depth to what you're doing. And so, I mean, your prayer and your work are very closely related together because prayer, work is about authority. You know what I mean? About God directing you. It's not, if it's about you directing yourself, who cares? And it is, I mean, there's the old saying, right? There's no atheist in a foxhole, right? When you're at the front line, nobody sits there and goes, there is no God. Everybody's scared and they're all praying. And I mean, this is really the point that you're making, but to emphasize that point is that we need to be thinking of ourselves on the front line. And the problem is, is most churches don't think of themselves on the front line. They don't think of themselves as seeking first the kingdom of God. They think they're in the background, just sitting there happy and dumb. Well, guess what? Of course your prayers won't have zeal. Your prayers have far more zeal when you actually see yourself on the front line and that you're supposed to be in the battle. Then you'll pray with zeal. As we pray, one of the things that when we pray faithfully, when we pray regularly, when we truly see God, it is a constant reminder that it's not about us. And the focus of the things of this world is not supposed to be us. You know, in Romans 11, 36, it says, for of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. Everything is about God. And so prayer, if you want to pray with zeal, part of prayer has to be that you have to move the focus off of yourself because everything is about God, not about you. You know, we want to go, oh, Jesus Christ came to save you. He came to save his bride. He came to save the world. not saying that he didn't come to save us individually as part of the bride, but we can make it so that we're the center of Christianity. And we are not the center of Christianity. God is the center of Christianity. Now we did a podcast about, you know, is Calvinism just the five points? And the answer is no. Calvinism is saying everything is about God and prayer needs to be everything is about God. And so that you don't just be thinking about yourself because that's not what you should be thinking about in prayer. You should be thinking about your Lord. God's glory starts to be a huge issue because it's very, again, this is going back to tying it into the work is It's very easy to talk about God's glory in purely abstract terms, and that's not wrong. You can talk about God's glory in abstract terms, but there's a problem when that's the only way you can talk about God's glory. And there's a part of it where when the work, and not just the work you do, but the work you see the church doing, the work you see others in the church doing, the work that you see that God calls you to, all those things end up being a part of God's glory and that you can actually tie those things together. That you can ask yourself, are we glorifying God through what we're doing? Or I can see how God is being glorified by what he did over here and by what he, you know what I mean? It separates it from being just this thing where you go, God, the earth will be filled with God's glory and there's nothing I can do about that. as opposed to the earth will be filled with God's glory and I have an obligation to increase that. Am I, is what we're doing doing that? And can I see it and can I, can I read, can I direct that glory towards God in an even greater way? And I mean, the Bible verse is actually that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. And when you think about that, that really ties to prayer, right? Because the knowledge of the glory of the Lord is not just the glory of the Lord. The world is filled with the glory of the Lord. We can't see it because we don't have sufficient knowledge frequently, but it's filled with the glory of the Lord. And our purpose is to make it filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. And so when we, when we pray, we are increasing the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. I mean, even when I was saying before, like, if you go, okay, this is the thing that I think I'm supposed to be doing, so God give me these tools if you do that. Well, if he gives you the tools, You've increased the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. You go, this is what I needed. And I cried out in prayer for it and I received it. Well, that's increasing the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. I mean, one of the things that I remember from a couple of years ago is, um, you know, I, I had my oldest son came to me and told me that he had, he had touched some of our daughters. So we had to take him to the police station and we had to, uh, he'd had to move out of our house. And so one of the results of that was you ended up saying He could live with you. So at the end of the year when we're praying and we're talking about what God's done for the year, one of the things that I really realized was no one else knew how much that mattered. Like, there was no one else in the church. Like, if you hadn't been able to take him in, he would have probably had to go to my parents, and that wouldn't have been good for him. Or he would have had to go somewhere else, and every other alternative was really bad. And so there's a point where you, at times, are the only person who understands the details, who has the knowledge of how God glorified himself. And your obligation is to share that. You know what I mean? And so there's this part of it where your prayer is, it's a part of it, it's confessing. It's a part of it, it's exposing yourself. It's a part of it, it's because it's in the details that God glorified himself. You can say, God was very kind to us, but it's not the same as to say, this is how God was kind to us. And you have no idea what this means. And so when you tie that to the knowledge of the glory of God, there's this obligation on being willing to do that. And if you're not willing to do that, you're hiding. the way God has glorified himself. And there is a balance. I mean, there are things you should not share, but there are things you absolutely should, and that you must. And for God to be glorified in the way he desires to be glorified, that this is an obligation that we have. Right. And it's very easy for us to just think that because God's mercy is so widespread that we don't need to do things like prayer to declare that his mercy is there, right? I mean, when Jesus Christ goes on and continues to teach them in the Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread. I mean, that's kind of, you know, there's this one thing about may your kingdom come, but the other thing is to just go, but you're in the fact that I had food today. And it's very easy for us to think, well, no, I worked and I got the paycheck and I did this and I did that, you know, this work needed to be done, somebody needed to do it, they gave me money for it, and to start to make it about us. And God's saying, even in feeding yourself, prayer is supposed to remind you that the glory of God is that he provides food for people. If the rain falls on the just and the unjust, otherwise you wouldn't have food to eat. I don't mean because you're unjust. I mean, because of our whole food system is based on the fact that everybody gets food. And so without it, if you only had the food grown for the just, the unjust would take it away. And so God, you see the glory of the Lord in every bite of food that everybody eats. And through prayer and that constant reliance on, no, God, you're the one that needs to do this. You're the one that is doing this. I mean, that's how we keep God in the right perspective. that the world is about the glory of God. I remember, you know, just thinking back through the year, thinking about the number of times when God answered prayers. And sometimes it takes time to see how those answers are there. But we hosted a Reformation Day event, and we had prayers running up to it that – there's a sense in which they're kind of routine, they're kind of formulaic. Hey God, you know there's a lot of logistics related to this. Can you please make these things happen? Help this to be a profitable event – not money profitable, but… We always lose money on it just to be clear. Yeah, exactly. That's why we're not taking in any money, to not lose money. Exactly. But, you know, to have those kinds of prayers, and then we have the event, and more people show up to it than we've had in any previous year, best I can tell. Oh, yeah. You know, we took the least amount of food home from it. All of the things that we were asking for happened. And it was a really useful thing to have sort of some of those routines and cadences, and then see God act, and then be able to have that kind of a context with some of the big and unexpected and difficult things that were going on right around that same time, you know, all over the place, and then realize, oh God, there is a God who hears. There is a God who answers prayers. And that's why you pray for the daily bread. Because then God gives you the daily bread and you have opportunities to reflect on that and to be thankful and to know more about His sovereignty and His provision and His mercy. And then the hard thing comes along and you say, I serve the God who gives me all of those daily things, all of those routine things. I'll make it through this too. And it will, it will be for his glory. Or even if it's a hard thing, you go, he gave me this too. Right? Right. Right. Yeah. And it's, this is from his hand and, and he does everything for good. And when you eat that bite of food after praying and giving thanks to God for providing that food, it should be a reminder when you're sick or when you have some tragedy happen or something goes not the way you want. It's well, just like he gave me that bite of food. He gave me this too. It builds habits where you think God is in control of all of these small things that are going on. There's no way he's not also in control of this big thing, too. And I have ways of talking to him and about him and listening to him in these little things that set me up so that this big thing that's coming through, as difficult as it's going to be, there's already ways that I am in a better place to handle that and deal that and exalt Him in it than I would be if I didn't have those habits in asking for the daily bread, in making routines of the prayers. Right. And you know, in Hebrews 13, 15, it says, therefore by him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. And when those things come along that are hard to deal with, learning to give thanks to God in the midst of that and saying, this is his will, this is the right thing. When everything in us says it's the wrong thing. That only comes through practice. That only comes through thanking him for the daily things that happen in life. That only comes through caring about your prayers on the other days so that when you say that when it's a day that you don't like, you can still say, this is a good thing. This is something we should thank God for because he's right. I don't like it and I'm wrong. And he's right because he did what's good. It doesn't mean that we should not weep over things that are worthy of weeping over, but it also means that even in the midst of that, we're supposed to give thanks for everything, because God is always right. It's very easy to think about infirmity in the wrong way, to think about difficulties in the wrong way. I know, Jonathan, you frequently like to share the verse where it talks about, Scripture talks about, you know, when have you, when have you done these things in Christ to say, you know, you clothed me and you fed me and I was naked. And he says, when you've done this to the least of these, my brethren, you've done it to me. And so there's times where there's different aspects of infirmity, where there's infirmity where you're weak and the church is helping you and the people of God are comforting you. And there's other times where you go through difficulties and you see it strengthen you. I mean, I remember, I mean, somewhere between, yeah, 10 and 11 years ago, my oldest daughter got burned at church one Sunday and had to go physical therapy, had to get, I mean, you know, she had a skin graft and it was a temporary skin graft. And, and it was really interesting because really difficult time period, you know, multiple times a day you had to do certain things, take care of things. But I remember six months after it happened, I remember somebody talking to me about it. And there was this moment where you went, I did not remember anything about it that God did not turn into a positive. To the point, I mean, and not like I couldn't remember there being bad moments in it, but I mean literally everything that had happened in there from even how it was useful in my daughter's life and useful in the rest of the family's life and everything had turned, God had turned it in just clear and incredible ways into a positive. And I mean 2 Corinthians 12 too says, therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And I mean, and he's not saying I take pleasure in infirmities in the moment of the, you know, like I take, I'm so glad. I mean, but he's saying for Christ's sake, because he, this is how Christ shows himself. This is how Christ. People see, yeah, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Right. And so, I mean, it was because of so many different things that those things were positive. Some of it was the church, some of it was the way within the family that we worked together. I mean, but all of them were things that it was truly an amazing moment where I just sat there and went, how is it possible that I look back on this and these things were turned into good things? it's easy in the moment to forget the dependency upon God. And there's one verse I like about this where Ezra goes to the king and says, you know, basically I want to go back to Jerusalem. And the king goes, yeah, you can go, you know, go pray for me in Jerusalem. And Ezra goes, really dangerous to get to Jerusalem, isn't it? And he goes, but wait a second, I can't go back and talk to the king, right? And Ezra 8, 22 and 23, I was ashamed to request of the king an escort of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the road because we had spoken to the king saying, the hand of our God is upon all those for good who seek him, but his power and his wrath are against all those who forsake him. So we fasted and treated our God for this. And he answered our prayer. I mean, when he does this, when you see this reliance, right? I mean, this, this was, the king of the Medes and Persians, that now has a different view of who God is. And if Ezra wouldn't have said, well, I'm dependent upon God, and even if God, you know, these soldiers and these horsemen, if God decides to kill us on the road to Jerusalem, the soldiers and the horsemen aren't going to stop him. And so if you have that prayer life and that thought, then you can have this boldness in that case. It ends up being a huge testimony. I mean, this had to be a huge testimony to everybody in the king's court because they knew Ezra, you know, he was taking gold and stuff. They knew he had real risk and there would be people that would try to attack him and try to take over him. And yet he goes, well, trust God will protect us. And so if you don't have that pattern of prayer and thinking that way, you're not going to cry out to God in such a way that you believe that he'll do it. And so just like I said before that there's things that we should just know that we should do and we shouldn't pray about them, we should just do them. But there's other things that it's easy if we don't have zeal for prayer for us just to say, well, I won't even pray about that because why even think about that? Because God's not going to do that. As opposed to Ezra is going, we have to call out to God for him to protect us because how else will we get there? And that boldness that you're talking about, I mean, it's starting from the, you know, it's not coming from a place of just like, you know, incredible Christian heroism. It's coming from a place of saying, wait a second, we are ashamed to look like hypocrites before the king. And if we do that, it's going to dishonor God. But we're scared. And then it goes through the prayer and the fasting and then they end up with the boldness. But it's not like they were just these incredible stall. I mean, you know, not to denigrate Ezra, but it wasn't the point of it isn't look at what a amazing man Ezra was. It was look at what, you know, how, you know, his own sinful fears and God worked through them to bring him to this place. What he look at what he did is he went from instead of asking an earthly king Yeah, the heavenly king, you know what I mean? And so I mean king of kings which is the one that was over that earthly king, right? And so there's this part of where I mean, it really is this picture. I mean he's also he's being very transparent about This wasn't his knee-jerk reaction to do. I mean he what he he was tempted to go and ask the earthly king and he was stopped by his statement that showed his faith in God. So because of his statement that he made his faith in God, it encouraged him to take his request to the one he said he was putting his trust in. I mean, which is so, I mean, it just, when you look at it, it is this feedback loop that you, you're praying and seeking God then you're going to speak more about those things that makes then puts an obligation for you to pray more about those things and it is this it is this feedback loop that's there that if you break the loop it tends to it affects everything and it has a negative impact on all of it I feel like Ezra a lot, like when I go to Nigeria and you have 5,000 people standing there and you go, I don't know their language. I don't know what's happening here. I don't know. It's like, God, you have to give me words because I don't have any. I mean, I can, you know, give me a Bible passage and I'll be happy to expound on it, but. How can I say things that are meaningful to these people? I don't know them. I don't know what their struggles are. And different places in Nigeria, they're very different. And you just have to call out to God and say, God, you need to do this. I can't do this. This is well beyond me. And you see God answer that prayer a lot. It's interesting, because I actually wouldn't have naturally thought that that was the difficult part. And I'm just it's just it's really interesting. Trust me. That's the difficult part, right? I mean, I just say it I mean, I mean, it's there's a part of it where you and that's I mean, I think that's it's a really it's a really interesting aspect of how we can how these things get communicated and You know, I mean, where the difficulty is. I mean, it's just, I mean, it's anyway, just, this isn't like a practice that I just do there, right here. When I preach the song before I preach, I always pray. I don't sing the last song before I preach. And I always pray because in the end, my words are pretty lousy. So you don't need my words. The people in the congregation, they need to hear from God. God's the one that needs to activate it with his spirit and cause the words to have effect. And the way to cry out to God for that is prayer. And so while other people are singing the last song before we read the passage and I preach, I've done that for 20 years. I always pray for that and pray for the congregation to actually hear from God rather than hear from me. So when I do that in Nigeria, it's not like something unique. It's been my practice for a long time because I recognize how lousy it is when I don't do that. I mean, you brought up the passage from Ezra, but it's interesting, you think through the prophets, you think through the captivity, and a lot of your really good Old Testament prayers come from that period. And Daniel's somebody in particular whose life is marked by that. I mean, that's why he gets thrown into lion's den, as people know he has a habit of praying. But we even have one of his prayers recorded in Daniel 9, verses 2 to 4. In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant, and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, And it goes on from there, and it's this long prayer of intercession and confession for the nation of Judah, that God might spare them, that he would have mercy on them as they go back to Jerusalem. And it's in the midst of this—it's being prayed by this guy who's in captivity, but he's looking down the road saying, I know God, and I know things about God." And he spent time in the Word, he's read the prophet Jeremiah, and from there he says, I know what God's doing. And knowing all those things actually pushes him into prayer. It doesn't push him away from prayer. It's not like, okay, now I know what's going on, I don't have to pray. That actually motivates him to pray a really earnest and intense kind of prayer because he knows what's going to happen. And that's really fascinating, and that should give us a pattern for praying. If the more you know about God, actually, the more it should encourage you to be in conversation with him through prayer. And, you know, you look at, I like this example just because, you know, Daniel even goes, hey, it's been 70 years. It's time. He made the promise. He's going to fulfill the promise. Now's the time to do it. Now's the time to pray this prayer. So he's not praying it with this question of whether it will be answered. He knows it's going to be answered. God already said it. But yet he still prays it and he still does it with sackcloth, he does it with ashes. And so by him praying for these things that he knows, I mean, God is being glorified, right? When God answers prayers, and Daniel in this case knows he's going to answer this prayer, he promised, but it does bring greater glory to God and more people see God's glory. then if Daniel just went, hey, I read Jeremiah, this is when it's supposed to return. I'll get prepared for that. Instead, when he does all these other things, he's causing, through his prayer, for God's glory to be seen by other people, too. And for it to be seen by him. Because even though you go, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I believe, help my unbelief, that when you pray and go, okay, here's a promise I see of God, I'm going to pray that promise. And I've got to trust God will answer that promise. But when God answers that promise, it still increases your faith. Is that the same as name it and claim it? No, because name it and claim it is to say that there's promises that God did not make that you can now put on him and make it about you, right? I want a new car. Give me the new car. God has to give it to you because it's in his will. No, that's not in his will. But if it's in his will that you get a car so that you can do the missionary work that you want to do with the car, and you say, God, give me the car so I can go do this missionary work, and he gives you the car, that's what you can name it and claim it. Because if it is the work he appointed to you, he will give you the tools to do the work. He's a good master. A good master gives his slave the tools that he needs to do the work that's been assigned to him. And if he doesn't give you the car, maybe it's either an indication to you that you already have the tools you need to do what he wants or you may not be doing the thing he wants you to do. Exactly. It's showing you that he's a good master and he gives his slaves the tools he needs or that they need to do the work he has appointed for them. And a lot of times we want to do other work. And when he doesn't give us stuff, it's because he he wants us to do other work, and we're going, no, he has to give me this. No, he doesn't. The master gives the tools you need for the good works he prepared beforehand for you to walk in. And I mean, we can use this example of Daniel, but it's important for us to use this example even in our family prayers, when the church prays, is just recognize when you ask for things and God answers that God's glory is seen, and it's not just seen by you. And it's good to be seen by you, too. I don't mean to dismiss that. But the church sees it. Even as, you know, we went out for this young woman, and we prayed for the demons to leave her, and yeah, all the demons have not left her, but some of the demons have left. I mean, there's people who see that, and I mean, I think you went up after a month and went, wow, she looks a lot different. You know, it's real, and there's a testimony to it, and other people see it, that these prayers do have an effect. And this is one of the ways that we're supposed to glorify God in the world, and for people to see the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, that God is actually doing things, He's actually answering prayers. It's being public about it, and not to pray so that people look towards you, but to pray in such a way that people see that God is working in the world and He's moving in the world. And so we should have a zeal for prayer so that other people also see how God is working. Right. I mean, and I think when you think about corporate prayer, which you're talking about when you, you know, there's times where you pray alone and you're praying by yourself, but there's many times in the church where we pray in the presence of others. And there's a part of it where sometimes you're encouraging people to see things that they maybe haven't seen. There's something that God has shown you. There's a part of it where sometimes you're encouraging people because even, there's a part of scripture that talks about let not you know, not your own lips praise you, but the lips of another. There's a part of it where sometimes the one person is, they're even too close to it to think about it properly. And you can sometimes draw something out that that's very near to them, but that they're not noticing and that the church isn't noticing. And so, I mean, there's lots of things where you can minister in a way that, again, you're praying to God. But, I mean, you should think of it in some ways as When a public meeting is done right, when you go to a meeting, there are times where you pull things out that are good for everyone in that meeting to see. And even though you're talking to your boss, even though you're addressing your boss in a certain way, there are things where you're causing encouragement to be done to others in a way that's glorifying and that's edifying. There's so many things that have become damaging. over complimenting and, you know, and praising people in ways that isn't good. But there are ways that it really does build up the body and that it really can be a profitable ministry and prayer. It puts things on record. You know, if you ask for something in prayer, if you make certain statements in prayer, then you're, in a sense, you're very much in Ezra's boat, where, oh, I said certain things about God, I have certain expectations, and now that is going to shape the future. That's going to shape my future down the road as far as what I can do legitimately. That's going to shape how people are going to think about me. I remember – so this was several years ago, another Nigeria situation where – this is back when we were still dealing with the orphanage and the abuse that was going on there, the molestation of girls, the abuse of the boys by taking their food. It was just a terrible, terrible situation. And we were praying that God would stop the director of that orphanage from doing this abuse of children. We prayed that he would put an end to it. We prayed for it to stop. And meanwhile, we're going through all of these steps which meant dozens of court cases where We were sued, and friends of ours were sued, and we had suits against him. And it was just, it was this giant legal mess in a country. I think it was 14, just to be clear. Okay, so 14, so a dozen plus two. So there's all of this stuff going on, and we're all praying, God, stop this, stop this, stop this. And then God gives him a stroke, and he dies. But you go back through our prayers, and none of us was praying for God to kill him. I mean, I may have prayed that. Most of us weren't praying for God to kill us. I may have prayed that once or twice. I'm pretty sure I did. Well, I don't recall that. Oh, I may not have prayed it publicly. That's what I meant. Okay, okay. That's what I meant. We had a lot of public prayer about, God, would you stop this? This was a, you know, every Wednesday night, frequently Sunday mornings, God, stop this thing, you know, put an end to this abuse. And then God did, and in a way that none of us, outwardly, had asked for. And what you had to do at the end of that is you had to think, did I kill him? You know what I mean? Because you ask for something from God, and then he gives it to you, but I didn't ask you to kill him. But his will was done. But absolutely, his will was done, and none of us had any remorse about this. Believe me, he was a bad guy, really bad guy, and it was a good thing that this happened. But we didn't ask for it like that, and yet God decided he was going to answer that prayer like that, and now we're committed to, oh, we asked for certain things and you revealed how you were going to deal with that in a very dramatic way. And I didn't publicly ask for it because I wasn't 100% sure the right way to say it. But I remember praying a couple times like, and it was sort of like, God, maybe, you know, and you're not sure. Is it okay to ask for God to kill him? And you're like, God, you're the judge of the earth. If doing that would be better, that would, you know what I mean? And I remember it was exactly what you're saying. It was afterwards you're going, this did, God doing it in that way solved certain problems very efficiently. You know what I mean? Because the court cases, they could have drugged on for a very long time. God could have made, I mean, but in the end, God, I mean, you know what I mean? God's actually deciding, am I going to solve the corruption problem in Nigeria? Am I going to cause, because God works through means, and I think this is one of the things that you really learn through prayer, is God pleases, it pleases God to work through means. And I mean, even all the 14 court cases and stuff that, I mean, that was putting a lot of pressure on Isaac. And I have no question whatsoever that that, that why he had the stroke the night before he testified, because for the first time he was going to testify under oath. And so, you know, the night before he has a stroke and dies. And so, you know, there's no question that what we were doing, the means that we were doing, it was, it did directly contribute to his death. But at the same time, God was doing it, and God answered the prayer, and we're just crying out, God, what is the wise thing for us to do here? How should we do this? I mean, it was a messy, difficult situation, and yeah, God kind of gave a neat solution to it that was a lot neater than I was expecting. I remember when I talked to our director over there, and he's like, he passed, and I'm like, what, what are you talking about? And it took me a few minutes before I finally understood that he was saying, yeah, Isaac was supposed to show up for this morning. They sent somebody to get him and he wasn't there. He was dead. I mean, and the thing about God working through means is actually a really big part of what prayer teaches you. I mean, it's not a passage, I think, that we have in the slides, but when we went through Daniel, there's a part in there where Daniel's praying, and Daniel's asking God, and he says, you know, and God sends an angel to Daniel to explain certain things to him, and the angel comes and says, I was delayed because I was fighting against the Prince of Persia. And there's this part of it where, I mean, even when God uses what we would consider to be supernatural means, those supernatural means have aspects of means associated with them. And what this encourages us in is there are times where the answer to prayer is our work. But sometimes if somebody else prays, the answer is, I'm supposed to answer that prayer. I mean, I am the means by which this... I mean, and this is really where... I mean, I remember there have been lots of times this past year in particular where your awareness of the work that the church was doing was at such a point where some need came up. And there's times where you go, somebody else will take care of X. But you've actually got to the point where you know what everybody else is doing. I know that this person's doing this, they're already doing this, this person's got this going on, I mean, they're going to this ministry, they're going there, and you go, the person who can do this easiest, nobody can do it easily, but the person who can do this easiest is me. And if I don't do it, I'm sinning. Right. You know what I mean? I mean, and like, literally, if I don't do this, it is a sin because I can, and I know the cost for other people, you know what? I'm doing it. And so it makes these things much more, it makes the reality of them much more serious. And it makes it where all of a sudden, your thought of whether you do it or not, or whether you should spend this, and it also makes you realize, because there's so many times in churches where you think other people aren't carrying their weight, or you can have this attitude that's very negative. And even when other people aren't necessarily carrying their weight, you also understand that the work still needs to be done. And so, I mean, it's just, it's, there's just an incredible reality to it, and you understand that there is, you don't, when you ask for a prayer to be answered, you don't look for magic. You ask God, how do you, how, oh, you've given me a means to do this. I should do it. It's kind of like that, the hymn, I Asked Lord That I Might Grow, where, I think it's John Newton, but whoever it is, he's, he's saying, I'm asking to grow in faith. And then you send me a bunch of trials. And it's like, yes, that is how you are growing in faith. You are growing in faith at these trials. That is the means that you're getting. You're not just getting faith dumped in. Right. Remember, you asked for this. And I mean, it's really important when we think of ourselves back to what I said earlier, which is if we think about ourselves as slaves of righteousness once we're saved. in slaves of God. And so we should never look at it and just go, okay, God, I'm going to ask you to do this because he has slaves to do his work. That's why he redeemed us. That's why he made us slaves of God. And so we don't just look at it and go, oh, you know, God do this for me and do this for me and do this for me. It's much more, God, I think this needs to be done. And we shouldn't be surprised when God turns around and goes, okay, I'll give you this so you can do it. Oh, I remember, I mean, this wasn't that long ago. We were reading, I think it was on a Sunday night, and we were talking about prayer, and we were talking about Christ. And there's this realization with the Lord's Prayer where he says, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And Christ knew what was required for that prayer to be fulfilled. It was required for him to die. His death was required. And so there's this part of it where, when he prays this to God, to genuinely desire it means he he's obedient unto death and there's these times where we pray for things and we don't we don't really want them you know i mean we don't because in the end we don't want to have any participation and then we want them to happen kind of in a magical mystical way instead of going sometimes is you say i want this and god goes you know how this could be done is you could cancel this and give away this and you could do this and then you would be free to do that and you go oh i mean i don't i don't want your world to be done on earth that badly right And I mean, and so it's a really, I mean, and Christ sets the example for us by being willing to obey in a way that exceeds our capacity. It always strikes me, you know, when you go to those passages about the institution of the Lord's Supper, and it talks about how Jesus broke the bread, Jesus passed out the cup, but when he does that, he actually gives thanks. And just think about the context there for a moment. He's giving thanks while he's passing out this food that is going to be the memorial for his death. And in that moment, he's giving thanks. And if he can pray like that—and he knows, he knows what's going to happen. There's no question with Christ in that moment. There's no, it might be this, and if it is, I'll give you— This is my body. It's like, this is my body, this is my blood, it's given for you, but before that, it's He gives thanks. And everybody wants to go to Gethsemane to establish his humanity, but he was no less a man in that moment than he was in Gethsemane. You know what I mean? It's not like in Gethsemane he became more of a man. You know what I mean? He was 100% God and 100% man in Gethsemane, and he's 100% God and 100% man when he's giving thanks for his death. He's eating dinner. I mean, that's a human thing. Right. And so, I mean, it's really easy to overlook that. I mean, we've been talking about ways that we can see our faith playing out through prayer, but I mean, God also promises that he will speak to us through prayer. Like in James 1, 2-6, my brethren, count all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. but let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind." And so in prayer, one of the reasons that we should have zeal for prayer is, it's kind of like I was talking about before when I was driving up to meet with that young lady, is that I would cry out to God for that. I'm doing it tomorrow night, so it's not like it's over. I would cry out to God during that half an hour with an expectation that he'll give wisdom, because prayer is not just one way, he is an act of God. And he doesn't, again, he doesn't speak by showing up on the radio that I have off, but he really does speak, and we should have that expectation. And that should give us a greater zeal for God, is that he'll teach us wisdom. And He won't teach us wisdom by necessarily, you know, a voice, but He does teach us wisdom through the Holy Spirit working in our heart, through His Word, through a through calling us to understand passage of his words, or bring those passages to remembrance, or bring the things that we need to remembrance to understand how we should be made. Because a lot of decisions, a lot of wisdom is knowing what's the right thing to consider in a given situation. So sometimes the way he gives wisdom is he brings to mind the things that we should be considering, and that's how he gives wisdom. So he gives wisdom in a lot of ways. I mean, one of the reasons we should have zeal for prayer is because he gives us wisdom through prayer when we ask for it. And this is such a helpful verse when you think about that, when you think about all of the things you can ask God for. This one, he pulls out and says, by the way, if you don't have this, it's okay. Admit it. Ask me for it. And I give it liberally. And I will mock you for it. He doesn't say that. He doesn't say that about all the other things we could ask him for. But this one in particular, it's like, God is happy to give away wisdom, but he's happy to give away wisdom in the same sense that that a rich man who has a field is happy for people to come glean. You have to ask. And if you ask, he's going to say yes. And it's there. And he gives it away liberally. But you have to lack it. But you have to lack it. I was talking to my kids tonight about this. I'm like, if you come to me and you knew what you should do already, You know, it's like there's times where you come and I go, did you do blah, blah, blah? And they go, no. You go, go away. Go. Go and do what you already knew to do before you come. But if you've tried X and you've tried this and you come to me then and you go, I've tried this and this and this. I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? You lack wisdom. Because there are times where you knew things you should have tried. You knew things you should have attempted. And you didn't want to do them. You just wanted to go to God and say, solve this problem for me. You know what I mean? And I think this is just really, it's a really basic thing. The church is always, the church people ask, I'll ask God for wisdom all the time. But like you said, you have to be doing things. And if you're not doing anything, God looks at you and goes, what is me giving you more wisdom going to do? You've done nothing with the wisdom I've given you. And I mean, the specific context, right, is counting it all joy when you fall into diverse trials. And so part of prayer is practice so that when you have those diverse trials, when you have the difficulties come up, that you cry out to God and say, God, show me how to have joy in this. Because that's some of the hardest wisdom to have is how to have joy in difficult things. We need practice of asking God, show me wisdom, show me how to have joy in the midst of this, show me how my faith is growing by this, show me the things that are important in your eyes that is causing this trial because this trial is from your hand. That's how we count it all joy is because the trial is from his hand. One of the changes that we made this past year was we instituted a family prayer time at the end of the day. And one of the issues is because we have kids from 17 to two years old, and there's lots of little conflicts and little things that are going on. And there's a part of it where we kind of turn that time into a family meeting, and then that ends with prayer. And so there's this part of it where we're talking about the things going on in the family, the things going on that we're doing, the things we're working on, what issues. Sometimes it's just the fight that happened five minutes before this time. Sometimes it's just, hey, let's talk about what's happened over the past week. It depends on what's going on. But you end up trying to ground these things in. this is what we need to pray for. This is how you should think about these things. This is how you should consider them. And then as you leave here and you go to bed, you should pray for these things individually. You know what I mean? And sometimes it gets really specific. Like it's, we talk about these two people were fighting and everybody saw it and let's go through what actually happened. You know what I mean? And, and it's, it's been a really useful thing because it's, it's engaged and it's engaged our prayer in much more practical ways. And it's engaged our prayer and thinking about, the life of our family and both what we're looking forward to and sometimes just what just happened. I mean, I know when my children were small that we would try to always end with prayer. And the main reason that I wanted to do with that was so that when they went to bed, they would be thinking that everything's in God's control. And that's really important to keep reminding people of that because it's very easy to ignore it. It's very easy to forget it. And so just having that wrap up the day, the point is, no, this is all about God. It's important to teach unsaved children that they can pray. And I mean, I think it's, you know, it's like an unsaved child cannot pray in the same way that a saved, they can't pray to God as their father in the same way. But God is the Lord of the earth, and he's the judge of the earth. And he, you know what I mean? And so there are things that God deals with all men in certain ways. So there are things, there are petitions that every man can bring before God. And so, I mean, I think it's very useful to teach them how they should think about their prayer even as they're unsaved. That's a real part of their life. Trevor Burrus And everyone has a duty to be thankful towards God because everyone's daily bread was given to them by God. Angela Brintling And, you know, when we're talking about, you know, how our faith is built up through prayer and, you know, some of the, you know, difficult things that happened even in the past year. I mean, our family had a pretty big slice of that where know, most dramatically where our daughter was stillborn. You know, just going through that and, you know, and just seeing how, you know, our faith was built up through prayer, and even just, you know, you have the command to pray, and you have the examples in Scripture where You know, they're in difficult situations, and they're still giving God praise, and they're still recognizing His sovereignty. And so, just even, you know, the decision to say, you know, right after things happen, to say, this is what we're going to do. We're going to stop. We're going to pray about it. We're going to acknowledge that, you know, God is doing these things. You know, even the act of doing that. I mean, you know, just seeing that God is building the faith, even through the very choice of doing that. I mean, one of the things that, you know, we've talked a lot about individual prayer and things like that, but we've talked some about prayer. But one of the things that God does with prayer is he causes us to become a unified body. So that's one of the reasons that we don't just pray individually, that there is a place for praying where there is public prayer, where other people join in with you. Yeah, a lot of the psalms are prayers, and the psalms are not meant to be—obviously, you can sing the psalms alone, but the psalms weren't really meant to be sung alone. They were also meant to be sung in groups. For instance, in Psalm 6, 1 through 4, to the chief musician with stringed instruments on an eight-stringed harp. Psalm of David, O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your hot displeasure. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak. O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver me. O save me for your mercy's sake. I mean, when a group of people are singing that together and, you know, you go through the hymnal and probably a good third of the hymns are prayers. And when you do that and you sing those things together and you actually think about the words, it actually is, it's a means that the church gets unity. It's the means that the church, if you're just singing for the love of music without actually considering the words, it doesn't work. But if you're actually thinking it so that all of you are singing, singing, Oh Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger. I mean, that has a power to bring a unity to the church that only comes through prayers. I mean, there is unity that comes through the preaching of the Word for common understanding, but it really does require the church to communicate to God. especially if you think of prayer as aligning, you know, if it's aligning your thoughts with God's, not just your thoughts, but then the church's as a body is aligning their thoughts together with God, you know what I mean? And so there's this part of it where when you sing a prayer together, it's not just an individual act anymore. It becomes this corporate act of of aligning your thought with God's thoughts. I mean, you think about the words. I mean, that's literally one of the powers of music is to cause you to focus your emotions, to cause you to focus kind of the totality of your being, but to be able to think through it so that the depth of your thought is increased. And so there's a part of one of the reasons why music is so glorifying to God and can be so glorifying to God is because it increases in that time our capacity to focus ourselves on God's thoughts. I mean, Josh, Jonathan talked earlier about a prayer meeting that happened. We've been praying for Reformation Day. And he was talking about how Reformation Day, you know, we had one of the most successful Reformation Days, and then we had a prayer meeting afterwards. And, I mean, I wasn't sure whether Joshua wanted to share what he did about what happened, but one of the things that made that so meaningful, that prayer meeting, was the thing that you guys went through was the day of that Reformation Day. Right, yeah, the day before. And so I remember, like, I remember Reformation Day. I remember people emailing, like, are you guys going to cancel? And I remember, like, looking at going, and I knew we weren't going to cancel. And we ended up having Reformation Day. And I remember, I mean, just, and I remember how incredibly unifying that Wednesday night service was. We'd never had as many people weeping and sharing and caring. And the way that the prayers, the way that we were praying for one another, was much more intimate and much more deep than I've ever seen us do as a body. And so you see both the infirmity, and we were genuinely rejoicing for the day that it happened before, and at the same time there was grief, there was a funeral coming up the next, you know what I mean? It's just a very real thing that you can never manufacture, but God manufactures these events for His glory. And there was a recognition that God had manufactured both the timing of all of these things, and that takes your breath away. One of the things that I often hear you pray about, particularly on a Wednesday night when we've been a little anemic, when we've been a lot anemic in our prayers, is you'll close the prayer time out with, or teach us to have more zeal in our prayer. And then God gave us a lot of situations this year that forced us to have more zeal, or gave us opportunity, if you want to be kind about it, to have more zeal. But as the year went on, there was certainly a lot more zeal. And like you said, it was not anything you can manufacture. You cannot make those emotions. There are people who just, you know, by nature, people who pray less in public settings that prayed a lot more in public settings. as the year went on because of these kinds of things, because of the way the Spirit was moving in the congregation and the needs that the people had in the congregation, that people can meet needs by praying. even the idea of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. I mean, one of the ways to do that is through prayer. I mean, it is to join in the sorrow through prayer. It's to join in the rejoicing through prayer. And, you know, one of the big unifying things that kind of both of you mentioned was when you're actually doing things, you have to deal with things and you're, you know, that's where unity comes from. I mean, one of the things that I think causes so many churches to divide over things like the color of the pews and stuff is because the churches aren't doing anything anyway. Aaron Ross Powell Anything that matters. John Dickerson Anything that matters. Right. My definition of anything is anything that's causing the kingdom of God to expand, right? So they're not doing anything that's useful as servants of God. And when you're doing things that are useful as servants of God, it gives you real things to pray about, and it creates this complete thing, because they're not at odds with one another, right? Unity becomes, well, we have this work to do, but unity also comes when we start to pray about these things together, and that creates unity, and that creates zeal. And if you don't have anything to pray about because you're not doing anything, Prayer alone can't create that zeal. The prayers have to be real. They have to be, they can't just be, you know, we can pray, be warmed and filled without then turning around and saying, wait a second, that means we have to give them clothing and food. And I think that the true prayers that create unity are those that aren't just be warmed and filled, but actually, how do we actually feed this person? How do we actually love this person? And through that, that's how you build unity. So it seems to me that prayer is one aspect of building unity in the body and having work to do and doing real things as the body of Christ. Those are the other things that are required to produce that unity. And you're just saying that there's feedback loops that are involved. Yeah. That, that the prayer affects the work and the work affects the prayers. And, and then you have teaching would be the third leg of that stool about unity is would be teaching and all three of those should be affecting and interacting with each other and building each other. Right. You know, Hebrews five, it's through use that you're able to discern good and evil. It's, it's the teaching and then the putting it into practice and then the praying about it. The three of those things are what build unity in the body. And the singing is sort of an element that can be all three of those? Yes. The singing is work, the singing is teaching, the singing is praying. Right. You know, Paul, in speaking about tongues, I mean, he also mentions about prayer, right? In 1 Corinthians 14, 14 through 16, if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays when my understanding is unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit and I will also sing with the understanding. Otherwise, if you bless with the Spirit, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say amen at your giving of thanks, since he does not understand what you say?" I mean, the context here is speaking in tongues, but he's saying that the point of the corporate meeting is for you all to say amen. It's for all of you to join together and say, that prayer is a prayer that I want to join with. That's a prayer that I want God to answer. And so when we pray in that corporate prayer, everybody is supposed to be joining in that prayer and everybody is supposed to be saying amen, which means that the prayer isn't, it is to God, but at the same time it is so that other people understand so that they can join in you and praying God do this. Which means you have to know your brothers and sisters. You know what I mean? Because there's a part of it. I don't want to make it so specific that you have to pray with a secret with each other. But there's a part of it where it can be really easy to pray in a way, this is what it means to pray to exalt yourself, is that you're praying in a way that's separate from everyone else. There can be times where you're leading people towards something. That's not wrong either. Unless you're relating to them, oh, pray for me to get a new car. Right, but I mean, but where you're praying in a way that they can say amen with you means that you're praying with things that they understand and that you're not trying to say things beyond. And that they'll agree that it's in God's will. Right, right. And a big part of that, too, for at least a good number of people is letting people know you. Right. Because, I mean, there are some people who you know, are happy to talk about themselves. But there's a lot of other people that aren't. You know, maybe they'll tell you they lost their job, but they won't tell you about their sins. They won't tell you about a lot of other things. And so, you know, people can't know you if you're not telling them about yourself. And yeah, even somebody that might have trouble confessing their sins, a lot of times they'll have less trouble in prayer confessing their sins before God. And they can do that in a public prayer in a way that, and again, like you were saying before, that prayer doesn't mean that you just now go, okay, God's taking care of this, right? Because you hear somebody pray about a struggle with sin, That is also one of the ways that God answers that, as he should have now put on your heart that maybe you need to talk to that person, and you need to ask them occasionally, are you still doing this sin, right? It's not just that it goes, oh, he's turned it over to God, I have nothing to do with it. Instead, we have to say he's turned it over to the body of Christ, who still has something to do with it. Even though Christ is the head, it doesn't mean that the body doesn't have responsibility. it's very easy to say, be warm and be filled by just hearing someone's prayer and just going, great, it's done. As opposed to actually bearing their burden means that you ask yourself, is there an actual tangible way I can help them bear this burden? Is there an obligation that I have? Are there things that I know I can, is there wisdom I already have about sin that God has given me that I should use with the information that he's shown me. You know what I mean? And that, it's not that you have to pray for some secret, how would I go about this? What is the mysterious, you know what I mean? It's like, this is what the body was made for. And so you should already, you should have wisdom in this area in a general sense. And I think we can see how the church fails and how, you know, a lot of us individually fail, in this is there's the trope in Christian circles that when someone says, I'll pray for you about that, that they're not going to do that. They're going to immediately forget. I prayed right now so that I could keep my promise. Yeah, let's pray about that right now, which okay, at least you're praying for them once. But if you're not going to put enough effort to actually pray for that for some period of time. How are you doing this? Do you have a phone? Do you have a doc that lets you keep a list? You should have a prayer list. No paper, no pens. I mean, it's easier today than it has ever been to actually just, there are things if I want to keep track of, I pull out my phone and I add a note. And so, I mean, there's a part of it where, are you in the habit of doing that? Are you in the habit of going, I need to pray for this thing. And if I don't write it down, I won't remember. That's how you show yourself. You take things seriously. And I do think that there are lots of prayers that the, when somebody asked for prayer, the best thing to do, I mean, it depends on where you are, right? Because if it's in the congregation that's continued, but I get like in Nigeria, I might have a hundred people come and ask me. I can't write them all down. So my response then is, let me pray for you right now. And that's always my response because I don't promise that I'll pray for you later, but there is a legitimate place just to say, I'll pray for you right now. Yeah, and I think, and that's probably, in a lot of situations, that's a good response. They all pray now, and then, I mean, if it's someone in the church that's a lot different, and say, I will also pray for you. But you have a real, for your child, or for a relationship that you have, that you say, I'll pray for that, instead of saying, let me pray for that right now. It's tied to the nature of our relationship, in a sense. And really, the level of unity that we should have with the person, the person that you have an obligation to have a greater unity. have a greater obligation to be praying that prayer later so that you maintain that unity. I always find it painful to read Paul, certain parts of Paul, at least. So the new test. Well, no, it's actually mostly his introductions that I find very hard where he says, Oh, I, you know, I weep night and day for you. I pray for the church at Corinth. Yeah. And you know, here in second Timothy one, it's him praying for Timothy. I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did. is without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day greatly desiring to see you being mindful of your tears I may be filled with joy I mean like Joshua was saying before when you say I'll pray for you and there's an implication that it's going to continue and not just be that one time that is creating a continual unity because every time that you pray for that person it's an aspect that you're encouraging the unity But that also means that the unity should be two ways, meaning that the solution, whatever it is, say you prayed that you'll get over your sickness, well, you should let them know that you got over your sickness when you get over your sickness instead of, because it is about, God uses the prayer to increase unity. And so just, you know, you hear Paul and he's maintaining unity with Timothy, even though Timothy's far away because, you know, through prayer. And so, you know, it's kind of a two-way street though. And there's a part of it where you can even see, I mean, how, this is to Timothy, but I mean, when you look at, Paul probably had more people that he prayed for than other people do because Paul was an apostle to the church. I mean, not to just a church, but to, and so there were many assemblies where he had rural responsibility to. And the people in those churches probably prayed for Paul, but they didn't pray for everybody that Paul prayed for. And so, I mean, and there's this part of where, I mean, some of the fervency with who you pray for is tied to who you have both relationships with, the level of authority that God's given you in the church, and the responsibility you have to others. I mean, all these things affect that. And it just, we should, because sometimes people read this and they go, I should pray the weeping for everyone. And it's like, that doesn't make sense. And everyone hasn't been called to that. And maybe there are some people who have that level of God's given them that gift and that's where they should be, but that's not going to be everyone. Yeah, but on the other hand, we could also say that just excuse because we actually don't care. You actually just want to check the box and we actually don't care. There should be people that you pray with, pray for that way. I mean, yes, that's what I'm saying. It's that balance. It doesn't mean that you're praying for as many people that way as Paul is, but you know, as our responsibilities increase in the kingdom of God, the more we have responsibility to increase our prayer. right? Because, you know, sitting at this table, I suspect I have a lot more connections to a lot more people like Paul did versus Timothy. You know, Timothy should have been praying for everybody at the church he's ministering to, but he also, you know, Paul was praying for them, but Paul had a lot more connections and a lot more different things. And so, so we should recognize that there is a parallel and these words are painful for me to say, because I'm not necessarily as faithful as I should be, but, As you increase in your, to whom much is given, much is expected. And part of that expectation is an increase in prayer. It's easy to create a separation between us and our enemies, where we start to think of them as somehow different than we are. that we think of them as not as dependent or they're just naturally evil, just like we're naturally evil, just like we're naturally dependent, right? There's these, we can have this disunity with our enemies and start to think of them as a separate camp. And one of the things that prayer does when we pray for our enemies is actually, it's a way that we have a connection to our enemies. In Matthew 5, 44 through 45, it says, But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, where he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rains on the just and on the unjust. And when we pray for our enemies, we are actually creating a connection with them, that we can sympathize with them, We can recognize how we were the same except by the grace of God. We can recognize their needs. We can recognize we get sick, they get sick. When we pray for them, all of a sudden they don't, like we even look at our politics right now. So much of our politics is you're a Democrat or you're a Republican, and the Democrats don't even necessarily care what the policies are as much as they want to hate Republicans, and the Republicans don't care what the policies are. They just want to hate Democrats because you look at, well, I can give lots of examples of where basically the Democrat comes in and says, oh, I'm going to do what the Republicans said to win votes. And it's not policy differences. It's that they want two separate camps. And the church can start to think that same way, is that there's different camps. There's the people that follow God, and there's the people against God. As opposed to, we're all human. We all have the same flesh. We all have the same temptations. It's only by the grace and mercy of God that we've been delivered from them, and that power of sin in our life has been broken. And by praying for our enemies, it's to remind us that this is about the grace of God, and we're not different from them except because God chose to work in us. As you were saying that, what it reminded me of is one of the things that sin does is it separates. And so what happens is when we allow that sin to separate us in that way is we're cooperating with their sin. And so prayer is, you can see prayer when you look at, I mean, one of the big themes of this podcast is that Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, to make an end to sin. And so there's this part of it where through prayer we cause that separation that their sin caused to not have the same effect and not have the same power. And so, it is a gift from God to fight against the power of sin. And so, I mean, yeah, we just really, I wasn't thinking about it in that way. Pete And it's the picture of piling coals on their head, right, is that you're showing care for them that is very difficult for them to deal with. David Is it okay to enjoy that? to enjoy the pain that they have because you enjoy that you're keeping coals on their head is, I mean, because honestly, I mean, yeah, we have to, I mean, there's this part of it where, I mean, there are things that enjoy that if it's like, no, it's not. Okay. I figured that was definitely true. If it's like, Hey, God's word came to pass. They got really mad at me for that. It's good to enjoy how God, God's promises are faithful. And so seeing the coals piled on their head and seeing their response, Yeah, there is joy that we should take in seeing God work out His will. And I did sort of ask that a little bit as a joke, but I actually really didn't mean it because I actually think it's important to understand how we should enjoy the things that God calls us to. Because I think there's a part of it where, I mean, it is easy to want to go, oh, I'll pray, I'll do this nice thing. That's just going to drive them crazy. And our desire isn't to drive them crazy. Right. It's like what we were talking about before where the director of the orphanage died, right? I mean, I prayed for his salvation, but when I heard he had a stroke and died, I can't say I didn't enjoy that. That doesn't mean that I was crying out, God, kill him. God, kill him. It was God. You know, if I got put in the position with that much money and that much power and that much connections outside so that you had power over governors and things, I'd be the same. God, you need to open his eyes so he stops doing these perverse things, right? You know what I mean? And that doesn't at all, once God creates that separation, because as soon as he killed him, he created, I mean, the separation was clear. And so as soon as he killed him, it's fine to delight in what God did. And I think we really enjoyed that, but I don't think that that means that it was like Pinata's kind of enjoyment. It was a very sober, wow, God did this, God really answered a prayer, and now we can direct our prayers elsewhere. There's other stuff to pray for. And this heavy thing that in many senses dominated our prayers at that time, that's gone. And there was some humor in it, too. I mean, the biggest humor in it is that I don't really celebrate birthdays, then God kills me on my birthday. That was the funniest thing about the whole thing. But anyway, that's just an aside. I mean, as you were saying the part about the way you prayed for him, maybe you're saying that you recognized that he had been given – he had been put in a position of power and that there's temptation with that. What it really reminded me of is also praying for our leaders. And I mean, one of the things you talked about with politics, I mean, it's amazing to me at times how mad I will get at a leader who compromises when I'm under much less pressure and I compromise on much smaller things. And I look at them and I go, why won't they just do what's right? And so there's this part of it where, like you said, when we pray for people, it allows us to recognize the fact that they're under much more pressure than we are, and that they are in this position, and that God is going to hold them accountable. And to recognize, like you said, our own frailty and our own weakness. And I think there's a great lacking of that. even with people looking at their own leaders who are supposedly on their own side, that the leaders have been doing what they've been asked to do. the leaders frequently, even the compromises they've made, that these are things that we the people have asked them to do. And I think there's this part of where we really don't acknowledge that, and we really wanna be angry at them, we wanna never be hard on ourselves, and prayer is a way to force us to deal with that if we actually pray fervently and correctly. Right, and if we, I mean, it creates a connection with them that we see them as human, and it's really easy to make a caricature of them, especially in our culture and our, Yeah, that's what the media loves to do. It's so easy to have a caricature of them rather than seeing them as they really are. As we talked about prayer, I hope you saw the zeal that we should have for prayer because it is a great gift that God gives because he doesn't give it arbitrarily and he doesn't give it because somehow he needs to hear from us. Even it is a great gift that he gives as the giver of gift, as the God of mercy and the God of love and care. is why he allows us to pray. So we should pray with zeal because it is for our good. Thanks for joining us. This has been The Conquering Truth, a project of Reformation Baptist Church. If you found this helpful, you can visit us online at theconqueringtruth.com and subscribe here or in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching.