Discipleship: Pray As You Can with Pastor Ryan Braley

Hey, also turn to your Bibles.

I've got one more passage.

I'm gonna refer to it later.

It's in 1 Samuel, chapter 1, I believe in your pew Bible it's, it's page 213.

1 Samuel 1 · chapter mention

That's the NRS V, which is a good version.

I've got the NIV.

It's also a good version.

I've come to the conclusion that all the versions are font.

They're all good.

You might have a favorite, that's great, they're all, they're all good, and they all have some kind of intricacies or you know things that I'm like oh, I don't know so, but any, any version will do you just fine For the most part.

And the RSV 10, the one you have, tends to be more almost like a literal translation, so it's a little clunky when you're reading it, and so you might find that.

So if you're looking for one, just to read the NIV is not bad, but anyway you get the idea.

So, oh, first Samuel, chapter 1.

1 Samuel 1 · chapter mention

It's the story of Samuel, the birth of Samuel and his mom, hannah, who was barren, and she prays to God for a, a child.

We are in the beginning of our discipleship series and we wanted to explore our mission at Central, to follow Jesus and then to create a space where people can belong, because belonging is important.

We live in a world that's sort of become more isolated and lonely than ever.

So I want to create a place of community, real community, and it's centered around following Jesus.

So we're not really like a, we're not a chess club Although chess is great.

You owe me a game, still young man.

So it's not that we're falling after Jesus and then we want to then love.

So follow, belong and then love.

We're gonna love God to love our neighbors, and that means our neighbors across the street, across the road from us, our next-door neighbors, also our neighbors globally, one of the people who love.

And that's how Jesus said that they'll know that we're Christ followers by our love.

And so love is not a passive thing, it's an active, substantial, fierce kind of thing.

It's one of love.

Well, but what does it mean to follow Jesus?

We're gonna take a whole two months leading up to Advent.

Advent's almost here, by the way.

I know Ben is excited.

Wherever Ben is, he's, he loves Christmas.

That guy already Christmas shopping like dude, settle down.

No, there he is, okay.

So he's already at the hallmarks.

We're getting the limited edition hallmark ornaments, like a month ago I who knew they even had these things like good grief, but good for Ben and anywhere was like, okay, so two months.

And what does he mean?

To follow Jesus?

And Last week we talked about hey, in the first century, what does discipleship look like?

And it means to be a follower of Jesus and a Disciple.

They call them the Tal Medeim or Tal Mead in the Hebrew, and a Tal Mead or the Tal Medeim weren't just students who wanted to know what the rabbi knew.

They wanted to be just like the rabbi.

And so we're all, we're all students of something and I'm encouraging you to follow after Jesus, because your life, you'll, you'll follow something and learn something or worship something.

So you might as well choose and make it something good, and I believe it's Jesus the best way to be a human.

So follow him.

And then we don't want to just learn, like with our heads the, the sort of the scriptures.

That's great, but we're gonna be like Jesus.

So what was he like?

How did he live?

How did he talk about handling relationships or being in community or asking for forgiveness or confronting people?

And Today I want to tell you what I think is the lifeline, the lifeblood of a disciple, is the prayer life of a disciple.

But prayer is a complicated deal.

If you're like me, you probably had a, a I don't know a complicated relationship with prayer.

Maybe not, maybe you're just really, which is great.

But I want to unpack prayer a bit.

I only have 25 or so minutes, and so if you have any questions or want to follow up, come and grab me.

I'd love to get coffee or a burrito or whatever afterwards, but it's, I've only got 25 minutes.

But here we go.

So are you ready?

As always, buckle up, by the way, are, if you can go back, one for me, sir.

Our series is called Discipleship in a disenchanted world.

Here's what I mean by that.

In case you didn't know, I'm gonna give you like sort of sort of the.

I want to interpret the culture right now, if I can be so bold as to do so, and I'm leaning on other, smarter folks to myself.

But this would mean about 500 years ago, the world was a magical place.

It was what you might say, or many people say.

It was enchanted.

Everybody believed in God.

They believed in spirits, angels and demons.

Witches were a real thing.

They were afraid of black cats.

This is really how people live.

They were superstitious, the magic and mystery was everywhere and they had to explain away mystery was just part of the normal everyday life.

The church was a very influential part of the culture.

Everyone went to church.

Atheism was unthinkable, like it was a rarity to be an atheist, and the church was very much like sort of at the hub of all things social, cultural and so on and the world was a magical, mystical place.

I Hate to break it to you, but it's no longer the case anymore.

About 500 years ago, that sort of foundational Epistemology or way of viewing the world, or knowledge or just Existence began to be eroded away and there were several contributing factors.

But we live in a world, in a culture and time now, where we're sort of disengaged or disenchanted, where most folks don't believe in God or the supernatural, or life after death or angels and demons.

We don't burn witches any longer.

Some of the things are good, by the way, but it sort of began around 500 years ago when things like the Enlightenment came about, the scientific revolution, which is awesome.

I love science.

I mean we can do open-heart surgeries and in fact I was watching a YouTube video the other day about how to do one and a guy collapsed in front of me on the street.

I did.

I did it surgery on him right there.

Don't Google, that's just true with and it's good.

But the point is that there are all these things that we begin to be disenchanted.

And then a guy called Renee Descartes came along.

Here's Renee Descartes, a picture of Renee Descartes and he espoused a philosophy called skepticism, where he began to doubt everything.

He said that our sense is how we sort of receive data in the world seeing, touching, tasting, feeling, whatever they all are.

Those are all suspect and should be doubted because you can't trust them.

I mean, apparently, you can't trust his barbarous sense of style either.

He should have gotten the Miranda Gertz for it.

Where's Miranda?

I know she's here somewhere.

He should have gotten a Miranda for her cut.

But this is like pre-mullet.

But he's like bringing in the air of the mullet.

It's like just cut the bangs short, leave the rest long.

I'm gonna party tonight.

Thanks, renee Descartes out.

But he began to doubt everything, including his senses.

He said the senses cannot be trusted.

And so how do you know you exist, was what he would ask.

How do you know anything?

Because you can't trust it.

This could all be just a weird dream, and also he's not wrong entirely.

But he began to say hey, there's one thing I can't doubt.

I'll doubt everything, but there's one thing I can't doubt.

I can't doubt the fact that I'm actually doubting, I can't doubt that I'm actually thinking.

So he made this famous phrase you probably heard of it, it's cogito ergo sum, which is fancy Latin, for I think.

Therefore I am.

And in that moment, and among other things that happened, rationalism was born, that the thinking being became elevated above any kind of sensory experience, and we began to erode away the mystical, the magical and the sort of ethereal in life and science which is great, by the way.

But science becomes elevated above the mystical world and you and I live five.

And, by the way, the reformers unintentionally contributed to this as well.

We can chat later if you want to know.

But the reformers didn't mean to.

They were trying to get rid of some of this superstition in the church and they actually got rid of more than they probably meant to.

And the world becomes this flattened place.

So we live in a culture, in a world on your block.

Now we're in Minnesota, the Bible Belt of the North, but a lot of friends you might have don't really believe in God necessarily, or the spiritual or the transcendent.

They believe in the material world, and so things like church and praying and so on seem a bit strange and bizarre.

But here's the thing if you pay attention, those same friends who are like I don't believe in God, you're silly, you do that.

You mean resurrection.

That's crazy.

Those same friends, if you talk to them long enough, will suggest or start to hint at the fact that they have longings deep in their soul that there is something else.

They'll be like I don't believe in God, but also like what happens when we die and at funerals.

It's fascinating because I got lots of folks that come in for funerals that are not spiritual or religious or Christian at all, but they're like hey, you're a pastor, what is this all about?

And so, even in the middle of a disenchanted world, the people long for the mystical that.

Steve Jobs once said this in an interview.

He said look, I like to think that something survives after you die, because many of us are told by the sort of the neo-Atheists oh, when you're dead, it's over, back to dust, you shall go, which is also biblical.

But nothing survives, it's over.

But he says I like to think that something survives.

It's strange to think Jobs writes or says that you accumulate all this experience and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away.

It does seem kind of weird.

So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures, and maybe that's why I never put an on-off switch on any of my Apple devices.

He goes on to say why they cost so much money, and he just I'm just kidding, he didn't say that.

But there is, and there seems to be longing for folks to believe or to want that it'll be something more.

And so you might say this way, as James Smith says, that faith seems pretty much unthinkable, like there can't be, you know, but at the same time, abandonment to the abyss seems even more unthinkable.

And so then, I would argue, prayer, by and large, in this disenchanted world, talking, interacting with the divine, hasn't really gone anywhere.

I mean prayer, after all, is the ancient language of the people.

They discovered caves that are thousands of years old, 35,000 years plus, in what's modern day France and also modern day Indonesia.

They're cave paintings that archaeologists, who generally believe that prayer is a waste of time, these archaeologists believe that these are prayers on the walls of these caves.

It's unbelievable, and they're 35,000 years old.

In Turkey they found a praying temple that's 6,000 years.

That dates 6,000 years before Stonehenge, about 3,000 years before Jesus.

It's this ancient language.

People have been praying for thousands upon thousands of years, almost like it's this innate desire or longing or sort of you know.

It's sort of been around that long.

Prayer is also the global language.

People pray around the world in various ways and forms and types.

For example, christians already today have gathered at many different hours of the day, praying what we call the liturgy of the hours, according to a book of common prayer, and they gather at certain set times of the day to pray, recite prayers in a book, pray prayers out loud and then, in doing so, and if we all pray at these certain hours and there's Christian prayer going on all around the globe 24 hours a day In fact, muslims today have gathered and thrown out their rugs, faced Mecca and prayed prayers to Allah in unison together.

Jews, already this morning, at Jerusalem's Western whaling wall, have written down sacred prayers to Yahweh and rolled them up and little tiny scrolls and shoved them into the wall as prayers.

Buddhists already, many places.

In many ways they have meditatively emptied themselves, searching for the enlightened state of self-forgetfulness, and Tibetan monks have what they call.

They spun a wheel it's called a prayer wheel that has prayers engraved all along the sides.

As they pray it it's to cleanse their karma and as a way to earn merit from those they're praying to.

And somewhere I got to believe, in a hospital room, somewhere a staunch atheist has bowed his head into his hands and prayed and begged to a God who doesn't believe in for help.

Prayer, indeed, doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

So prayer is the ancient language and prayer, of course, is this global language, and prayer in a disenchanted world is, in fact, part of the modern life.

It's the modern language.

Prayer is not going by all statistical measures, church attendance is dropping.

People are less and less inclined to go to church, but prayer isn't going anywhere.

Just ask any high school kid who has a test tomorrow.

They'll tell you.

Or any brave young man asking a cute girl out to prom.

Prayer is very much a part of his life.

It's not going anywhere because it's part of the modern language.

According to Gallup research, more people this week will pray than go to work or exercise, drive a car or even have sex.

Prayer is prevalent in many people's lives.

In fact, in America, nine in 10 people pray regularly and three out of four Americans pray every single day.

In Western Europe, sort of the hub of a lot of these movements and the hub of sort of the secular age, 25% of Western Europeans say that they are involved on a regular basis and they would also claim themselves to be non-religious, but they take part in religious activity at least 25% of the time.

Most of those times it's prayer that they're doing, they're praying, and, of course, the boss himself, bruce Springsteen, closed out his most recent Netflix special, his two and a half hour special on Netflix.

He closes it, ends it by quoting the very lips and words of Jesus, our Father who art in heaven.

How it would be thy name.

He closes with the Lord's prayer why?

Why do people still pray, especially in the disenchanted world where people don't believe in these kind of things and you and I are sort of sometimes viewed as fools or superstitious for going to church or praying or reading a Bible that's thousands of years old?

Why do people still pray?

Well, maybe it's because, in the confusing space between faith and doubt, prayer is the language that still speaks.

Everybody prays.

There's no end in sight.

I don't see it ever ending.

The desire to pray, or this long to pray, or the intuition to pray seems to be in all of us, across times and cultures and countries and places not species, but places.

So here's what I want.

I want to invite you to join me in prayer For the next two months.

We've got two months, which might seem like a long time to you, but it's two months until Advent.

Advent begins on December 1, I think, and from now until then I want to invite you to commit to praying with me, and I'll unpack how we might do it in a minute.

But if you want to, I want to invite you to, and if you do, let me know.

Shoot me an email and say Ryan, I want to commit to praying with you, not because you're trying to earn favor with me, I don't.

That doesn't give you.

I mean it's fine, but it's not how it works.

But let me know, and let me know how it goes for you as well.

But I want to invite you to pray.

Pray for this series that we're doing on discipleship, that we could become disciples and then learn to follow Jesus more closely.

Maybe we'd be covered in the dust of our rabbi, maybe we'd be more like Jesus.

Pray for that, pray for this church, and that all that we do is a blessing to our neighbors and to those around us and that we'd be salt and light and all that we do.

Pray for that, but also just pray.

Pray however you can for whatever is on your mind, just pray.

But commit to praying for the next two months, and it won't make you more holy or more spiritual or make God love you anymore, but I do believe it just might impact your faith life in vibrant and surprising ways.

When we reattach ourselves to the mystical, incredible things happen.

So let's practice together and, if you're willing, to shoot me an email, because I think prayer is more practice than theory.

In fact, jesus, as you heard, read I think Jamie read it he's asked by the disciples hey, lord, teach us to pray.

And he answers by praying.

He doesn't give them an answer, no, he just prays a prayer which is like a model for prayer.

It's also a prayer in and of itself, which is odd, though, because these men have been following Jesus for a while, but they've been praying their whole lives.

They prayed in the synagogues, they prayed at festivals.

They prayed to open their mornings, to close up their nights.

They prayed all the time.

They were very familiar with prayers, but something about being this close to Jesus and watching his sort of quality and quantity of his prayers, they saw that there was something different going on and they want to ask him about it.

Like, hey, teach us to pray like you pray Of course it's what a disciple would do, and he answers by giving them a prayer.

It raises the question for me, though then what exactly is prayer Like?

What is it?

I think a lot of us think that prayer is some kind of long-winded speech by a holy man or a holy woman.

That's sort of well-crafted and sounds good and romantic and poetic.

But you know what?

Oftentimes my prayers sounded a little bit more like this.

If I'm honest, help, not a well-crafted prayer, if you ask me, sometimes my prayers sound like this Like I don't know.

Here you take it.

I don't know what to do with this.

All of what?

Four or five words, by the way, thanks to my daughter, addison, for helping me call this in last night.

Or maybe it's like this Maybe you've prayed this prayer once or twice before in your life and if you have, you're in good company.

Where are you?

Where are you Doesn't sound like the prayer of a holy man, does it?

Maybe it is.

Prayer takes on all kinds of forms.

Really, when you think about, prayer is just sort of this interacting with the divine.

It's communicating in some way, shape or form with God.

That's all it is.

So it takes many forms.

For example, in the scriptures and in church tradition you'll find these are prayers.

Petition, of course, asking for things is prayer.

Many of us are used to this kind of one.

In fact, when you're younger, this is the prayer you often engage with or in, most most often Asking for things.

But prayer can also be this Confession here, here, god, I don't know, take this, my life is a mess, it's broken.

Do something, fix me, help.

Prayer can also be this Adoration.

I love laments and if you read the laments and the Psalms, it's just David.

Where are you, god?

What is going on?

You let my enemies gloat over me.

How could you do this?

But then he always ends by declaring the goodness of God.

Nevertheless, lord, I trust in you and your goodness.

It's declaring adoration towards God.

What about this?

This is also prayer Sacrifices.

You know, in the Old Testament this was like par for the course.

It would bring sacrifices, a gift offering to God, to Yahweh.

But we do this as well.

We come on, during Lent, for example, we offer up, maybe a sacrifice of fasting in some way, maybe it's food, or maybe it's watching TV.

Who watches TV?

Maybe it's on your phone, these kind of things.

We offer a sacrifice of something in order to pray.

It's a form of prayer.

How about this one?

This is my favorite.

My wife would argue napping is, in fact, a form of prayer.

I agree Amen.

Peter says amen.

Stillness is prayer.

How about this one?

Yeah, the spirit praying for you.

That's a form of prayer.

The scripture tells us that the spirit intercedes on your behalf.

And who knows you better than the spirit?

Thank God, somebody else who's smarter than me and more attuned to my own well-being and my own or not well-being that the spirit is praying and interceding on my behalf.

So how about this one?

The Lord's Prayer?

You can set over and over again.

It's a prayer, it's also a model for prayer and it's prayer.

And then this one, my favorite the Jesus Prayer During COVID.

When COVID broke out, it was very, you know, everyone was kind of in these weird shadowy, gray times and for me, I didn't know how to pray.

I was just overwhelmed emotionally.

You know.

We were all kind of exhausted watching the news and we saw all the dramatic footage and then people here.

It was just a weird time and I didn't know how to pray.

So I actually at the time I was reading a book about prayer and I learned the Jesus Prayer, which is all it is is Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I'm like, oh, that's awesome, I love that.

And so I bought a prayer necklace from this Orthodox monastery in Arizona, I think it was, and they have these knots and you pray like there's 10 knots.

You prayed the Jesus Prayer 10 times and you come to a bead.

On the bead you pray the Lord's Prayer and that's all I did all the time Just pray this, still, this rope, this thing.

And I was just prepared to press over and over.

There were wrote prayers R, o, t, e and I prayed them over and over again and that was prayer.

Prayer, prayer is just being still.

Sometimes it's meditating, it's reflecting, listening to God or listening to just the noises outside.

It's waking up, it's asking God what are you up to and how can I be a part of it.

I think I have a slide for that, just so you can go for dramatic effect and for the next two months, if this is what you prayed, if you want to, you know, sort of jump in on this prayer time with me.

This is what you just hey, what are you up to God and how can I be a part of it?

Because here's the deal in all of these instances, except for petition, the answering of the prayer isn't necessarily the most important part of prayer.

The answering of the prayer isn't necessarily the most important part of the praying.

Okay, turn to 1 Samuel.

I love the story.

Hannah is a barren woman and how many times have we read about a barren woman in scripture and God blessing her with a child anyway?

And this child becomes a child of promise.

Hannah is barren, she's married to Al-Qaeda and she wants a child so badly.

She goes and prays, and there's several different ways that she prays.

If you, let me indulge for a minute.

So here's what she does.

So read in verse seven says this this went on year after year Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat.

So she's in the house of God.

Weeping and fasting that's a form of prayer.

Then down further in verse 10 says in bitterness of soul, hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord.

You know that weeping is a form of prayer.

Maybe you've prayed by weeping once or twice in your life.

And then she made a vow.

So prayers can be vows.

She makes a vow saying oh Lord Almighty, if you will look upon your servant's misery and remember me and not forget your servant, but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord.

So there's sacrifice there to it, not literal, but she'll give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor will be used on his head.

And then she kept on praying to the Lord and Eli observed her mouth in verse 13.

Hannah was praying in her heart and her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard.

Silence is prayer.

She's sort of praying, and her lips are moving but there's no sound coming out.

She keeps praying to God.

And then down in verse 19, there's two more instances of prayer.

I think Early the next morning they arose and worshiped before the Lord.

This is Hannah and her husband Al-Qa'na, and they worshiped.

Worship is a form of prayer.

When we gather together, we turn our hearts towards God.

That is a form of worship and prayer.

Sometimes it's.

You don't have to delineate now I am praying and now I am worshiping and now I am weeping.

That'd be weird.

It's all prayer.

Then they went back to their home and Al-Qa'na made love to his wife, hannah, and the Lord remembered her.

So in course of time, hannah conceived.

Making love could be a prayer.

I bet you didn't think that would be on your list of things you'd hear today from the pastor.

He said making love is a prayer and God gives her a child and Samuel is, of course, born.

Here's the point.

There's no one right way to pray, there's lots of ways to pray.

Henry, now and since I'm beginning to see that praying, much of praying, is actually grieving, grief is a prayer.

If you've ever lost a loved one or something near and dear to you, your job, a friendship grieving is a form of prayer.

Roberta Bondi says this if you're praying, you're already doing it right.

If you're praying, you're already doing it right.

And, by the way, complaints are totally welcome.

Just ask David.

Read some of his writings.

I'm going to give you a couple of them.

Here's what he says in the Psalms how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever?

You're going to forget me forever, lord.

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart?

All day long, lord, how long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, oh Lord, my God, give light to my eyes or I will sleep the sleep of death.

Good grief, how about this one?

This is David talking about his enemies.

Let burning coals fall on them.

He's praying to God to curse his enemies by letting burning coals fall on their heads.

Woo boy, let them be flung into the pits.

No more to rise, david.

I mean, tone it down a little bit.

Huh, buddy, how about this one?

I'm weary with my crying, my throat is parched, my eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

This is David praying.

Don't forget, too, that the Psalms are the prayer book of the Jewish people.

They would pray these Psalms over and over again, including Jesus who, as I would propose, our rabbi.

They would pray these as prayers using the words of David.

David, this angry, depressed and, you know, anxious, entitled person who seems like he needs a therapist from reading these Psalms, this guy's in the Bible and was used.

These words were used as prayers for the Jewish people.

Why?

Why would you use this unstable, mercurial, volatile prayer life of this crazy guy, david?

Why would they do that?

I don't know.

I think it's because he's honest.

I'm so tired and we all do this man.

I wish that church would be more like an AA meeting where we all come in and just say, hey, my name is Ryan and I'm a habitual sinner, hey, ryan, and then you go.

That would be better than us coming in here trying to pretend like we just have it all figured out or whatever.

David was at least honest.

The Psalter encapsulates all the entirety of the human experience, all the emotions of the human experience.

I love it.

They're all welcome in prayer.

In fact, john Calvin says that the Psalms are the anatomy of all parts of the soul.

Why would he include prayers about cursing his enemies?

We call these imprecatory Psalms.

Why would we include that?

Because it's part of our emotional human experience.

Don't raise your hand.

But how many of you thought to yourself in traffic Burning coals in that guy's head or whatever?

Unless you're pure and holy, then you should Well.

Don't raise your hand.

It's part of the experience of what it means to be a human, which I think suggests that perhaps God is more interested in the rough draft, in the behind the scenes, the sausage being made, rather than some squeaky clean final draft that we sort of present to God with our shirt and tie on.

I think God likes rough drafts.

He lives in those.

Let our prayers be like that.

See us, lewis, as that.

Let us lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

He already knows anyway, so you might as well be honest about it.

And there's Jesus in the garden.

He's praying.

He prays three times God, let this cup pass from me.

Three times, he asks his own father let this cup pass.

And this prayer goes unanswered.

Rather, the answer is no, jesus, the next time your prayer isn't answered, how you want it to be, and you think oh, it's because I'm not spiritual enough or holy enough, or didn't do it right, or I didn't say the right prayers, or I didn't have enough faith, I didn't Remember Jesus, the Son of God, we would say he's denied three times his prayers.

And then he responds okay, lord, but whatever, I'm open to it.

I'm open.

Let your will be done.

He's not denying what's going to happen.

Some people will want to just know it's not going to happen.

Hey, I've got faith in this thing.

I'm not going to believe in it.

I don't stand with that.

Remember, during COVID, I had done a funeral for a guy who died of COVID and then the next week this woman came through here and I know her heart was well, but she's like, oh, I'm not going to get COVID because the blood of Jesus is on me.

Well, that isn't how viruses work.

And in fact I know a guy who had it and he just died and he had the blood of Jesus on him too.

So you know, there's that Prayer for Jesus wasn't denying what was real about life.

Like these things are real.

You know, if your arm is broken, you can't, in faith, have it not be broken.

It's broken, that's okay.

But it also isn't just a passive acceptance.

It's something in between.

Maybe it's being open to whatever God is doing and trying to be a part of it.

There is some sense of collaboration with it, but, above everything else, it's honesty with God.

God can handle it.

Which does raise the question, though and here's what I'd love to speak a minute on Does prayer work?

Does it work?

This is, of course, the general pushback for people that don't believe in God.

It doesn't work.

I prayed for X, y and Z and didn't get answered.

So I don't believe in prayer, don't believe in God, but I'm sure if you're like me, you have at least one or two examples of prayer actually working.

Like you're like, hey, I prayed for this and this thing happened.

I'll never forget.

I was a little boy.

I was in like fourth grade, and my teacher came with this sweet Folder that would go instead of a trapper keeper folder.

Remember trapper keeper?

Yeah, you were super cool if you had a trapper keeper.

And this folder was a Folder with a shark on a skateboard on top of it, like that's the ultimate cool.

And she was gonna do a drawing for like hey, we're gonna give away this folder and I'll draw one name out of the class and that one person will get this sweet Shark writing a skateboard folder.

I was like, oh, I want that, I want that so bad, because there is nothing cooler than a shark on a skateboard.

Maybe if he was holding dynamite, but maybe not.

And so I was praying please God, please God, please, please God.

I love you God, I love you, jesus, I love.

That's what I literally, I remember is vividly, I remember it.

And she reaches in the fishbowl and draws out a name.

I'm like there's no way I'm gonna win this thing up.

Please God, please God, I love you Jesus, I love you God.

Look, and she reads out my name.

I was like the Lord is gracious and compassionate, full of mercy.

I will follow you all my life.

I'll even be a pastor in Elk River, thank you, lord.

And I held that folder to my chest.

I Was the envy of the classroom for 10 minutes.

But we also have other, and there are other more meaningful prayers that you're like that was a God.

I.

I know a sort of a guy who had had this, this, this incredibly, you know rare thing in an x-ray show up and the doctors were gonna bring him like he's gonna die, and the family gathered around him and prayed, went back in for the surgery like, oh, it's gone, we don't know what happened.

We, we don't know what's happened.

There's a number of those stories too, but here's the bottom line and I think in a disenchanted world, we have to be honest with those who don't believe in God.

They just hold and white knuckle on to our faith and just try to convince them without you know.

I think we have to acknowledge it.

Yeah, this is kind of you know, I can't prove God there.

We have to acknowledge, sometimes, people's valid concerns and doubts and those kind of things, also while maintaining our own faith.

Because here's the thing with prayer there's no way to know if your prayers actually changed anything.

There's not.

Now, don't stone me.

I'm saying there's no way to directly link what you prayed for and what happened.

Maybe what happened would have happened anyway, maybe not.

But there's no way like, hey, because x, y or z prayed, this is what happened.

There's just no way to have empirical scientific data that it really worked.

But even if we could prove it, no, this is what happened.

I have this data and you can see the link.

That would almost turn prayer into magic and a Machine where you just pull the lever and get the thing that you want.

And that's not blue.

A prayer is.

And there's a lot of passages in the New Testament now I'm not, don't get me wrong that suggests if we pray, gotta answer our prayers, and I'm fully on board with that.

But remember Jesus own prayer three times didn't get answered, because prayers not just a machine or a lever we pull, and also it's a bit of a misguided approach.

Anyway, how in the world could God answer all of our prayers?

It's, in the world, be chaos.

Take, for example, two moms at a youth sports game, both on opposite teams, praying for their child's team to win.

And we know there's no stronger prayer than a youth sports Mom praying for their team to win.

Am I right?

Can I get an amen from the moms?

We love you moms.

There's no way for God to answer both of those prayers.

It's not, it's not possible.

Even a tie would be worse, right, that would be a loser than a tire, oh my gosh.

Or what about a farmer who's desperately praying for that to be rain, and down the block there's a single mother who has a hole in her roof, who can't fix it because she can't afford it, and it's praying for the rain to stay away.

Prayers, not a magical, she's not how it works.

Petitions part of it, and so we do ask for things, and that's okay.

But prayers a little bit more complicated than that, prayer working isn't really a proper way to frame prayer, because the answering of prayers Isn't the most important part.

We pray because God is alive and active and asks us to pray, invites us into a some sort of collaboration, a conversation with the divine.

Can you imagine speaking or being with the divine in this thing we call prayers incredible?

It's communication, and sometimes prayer changes things.

I believe it does.

I don't know how to prove it, but I think it does.

Sometimes, though, prayer changes me, or my own Viewpoint, or my worldview, or my own heart's desires.

That changes as well.

So those things are meaningful and we should keep doing them.

But then how do we pray?

Well, jesus tells him give us this day or day away, bread.

What a simple request.

Bring your felt needs before God and just give him to him here.

Lord, take this, help me, do something here.

Talk to God about what's on your mind.

Prayer doesn't have to be a speech.

It could be just sitting there, in fact.

I'll close with two more things.

I had a friend.

I wrote an email out earlier.

Speaking, I said, hey, this is what we're gonna be talking about, prayer.

And she wrote back and I have her permission to share this.

But this is her response, and and just notice the forms of prayer in this response and the deep and sincere honesty.

So after my, I think, quite moving and exhilarating prayer email it went out that I think is framed in all your walls at home.

She writes back.

I've had a complicated relationship with prayer ever since my son's surgeries, which were pretty intense and even life-threatening.

I couldn't bear the pressure that my prayers could actually change his outcome, that they could possibly have a real effect on anything.

If that were the case, how dare I stop and take a break from praying for even one second?

If God was gonna change anything based on my prayers?

I mean, who couldn't stand underneath that?

What if I prayed the wrong thing or the wrong way or not enough?

Nah, no thanks.

She says.

So I stopped saying prayers and I started aching them instead.

I remember during one of his surgeries I was sitting this is a mother, by the way.

I was sitting in the hospital, in his hospital room, staring at a small dirty spot on the floor, and I couldn't explain it.

But somehow staring at that spot was the only prayer I had.

The only thing I could muster, that's her prayer, staring at a spot on the floor of her son's hospital room.

Now, three years out, I still don't know how to hold prayer in my hands.

I just bobble it like it's a hot potato.

Sometimes I try to do it, sometimes I don't, but almost always I just vibrate my hopes and prayers and fears and longings into the world and to God.

I hope they'll suffice.

Can you hear the honesty in that?

So here's how we pray, or learn to pray.

Richard Foster says we learn to pray by praying Philip Yancey by praying we learn to pray Mother Teresa, the great saint.

How do we learn to pray?

By praying?

You just practice and pray as you can.

So for the next two months, pray as you can.

If you can't pray for an hour, pray for one minute.

If you can't pray for a minute, pray for 30 seconds.

Pray while you're walking to get the mail.

Pray your complaints, your anger, your complaints to God, your frustrations.

Journal your prayers.

If you can't pray with hope and faith, then pray as you can.

Honestly, god isn't bothered.

At night, pray before you go to bed.

You can just sort of offer thanks to God for the day.

You can pray in the morning.

You can wake up early and just sit in the stillness and the quiet and be with God and commune with God.

This is prayer.

You can cry, you can weep.

You can get together with friends from Central and I would encourage you to do this in the lobby before we start our service and just pray For three minutes, join hands and pray.

God bless our time this morning.

You can pray after worship, pray during worship, pray during the sermon.

That, please God, let Ryan say something smart or good.

Speak ascendants or to just to God, whatever you want.

Pray as you can, like Jonah, maybe just cry out from the belly of the whale.

Here's that verse again.

Says don't be anxious or worry about anything.

Well, that's easier said than done, paul.

But in everything, by prayer and petition, just bring your requests to God with thanks of giving, and the peace of God will grant.

The peace of God will, which is beyond understanding, will be yours through Christ Jesus.

But don't forget the verse right before this, because here's the really good news.

This is like you should do this right, but here's the good news Just before it.

If you opened your Bible, you'd see that says the Lord is near.

All right, hey, don't forget.

The Lord is near.

Now you don't have to be anxious about anything.

I know you probably are, but don't bring your stuff to me.

I'll take it here.

God, I don't know what to do with this Central this morning.

May you pray, may you learn to pray just by praying.

Just try it Out loud, quietly, weeping, grieving, sitting in quiet stillness, walking.

Pray, and for the next two months I'd invite you to pray with me and email me, let me know what you're doing.

But above everything else, may you never forget that the Lord is near.