We Are Church | Pray Like Your Life Depends On It... Because It Does - Acts 12 | May 25

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All right, good morning, everybody. We've been walking through the book of Acts.

That should not be a surprise to you.

We've been talking about what it means for us to be the church.

What does that look like? What does it mean that we don't just come and show up?

I'm sorry, Julia was really offended by what I said. I apologize, Julia.

We don't come and just show up on Sundays, but we get to be a people who carry the name of Jesus.

And we get to be a people who are defined by his name. and we get to be a people

who he has decided to shake the world through us.

And so that's what we've been talking about.

And that should be of no surprise to all of us as we come here this morning

and are now in Acts chapter 12. We're almost halfway through.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

So hopefully that's not a surprise.

Today in Acts chapter 12, we have to talk about prayer.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And I realized that if you're not familiar off the top of your head with what

happens in Acts chapter 12, then that might not be as obvious to you as perhaps

Acts 12 · chapter mention

I saying that we have to talk about prayer.

But we do have to talk about prayer because prayer is one of the most staggering.

Amazing privileges that God has given to us.

Through prayer, we get to call heaven down to earth.

Through prayer, we get to fill the earth with the glory of God's name.

It is such an amazing and staggering privilege that God has given to us.

And every great awakening that has happened throughout church history,

every time the Spirit has moved in an undeniable way in communities,

in individuals and communities, in cities, in towns, and even in nations,

it has all begun with this intense, unified, persistent, humble prayer So prayer

is this staggering thing.

And we get to stand in a long line of faithful, nameless saints who knelt down and saw heaven open up.

And so as we kind of engage with the scriptures today, I just wonder if God would.

If God wants to write the next revival, the next movement of his spirit, the next chapter,

not through better preaching or a cooler event or experience as we gather together,

but through a church that prays, through a church that is dedicated to praying.

A people who say, God, we want you. We want your kingdom to come for lives to

change, for chains to break.

We want to see you move in our day amongst us in this place.

We want our town, our community to know that Jesus is still alive.

What if God wants to move through a church that prays? Today,

as we get into Acts 12, which we'll read in a little while, I want to ask these

questions. I want to ask, what kind of prayer does God listen to?

And how do we become a church that actually prays like it matters?

But before we dive too deep into that, I do want to share a story.

When Jenny and I were preparing to move overseas to Moldova as missionaries,

we had to raise support as missionaries often have to do.

And I think that is a very humbling experience. Everybody should have to raise

support at some time in their life because it is so humbling to have to ask

people to financially support your family for an indeterminate amount of time

with no hope of repayment,

right? That is a very humbling experience.

And so everybody should have to do it.

It will change you in some ways. But because we had to raise support,

I had this thick directory of churches that I just dialed through alphabetically.

Most of them, the vast majority of them, 99.9%. I have no idea who they were.

So I just had this thick directory of churches that I was dialing through alphabetically,

hundreds of churches, voicemail after voicemail, because most people,

there's not a staff there to answer.

So I was just leaving voicemail after voicemail. And eventually I got into this

rhythm where it was the same script over and over again. So it was just autopilot.

And the thing about autopilot is your brain shuts off.

And so when your brain shuts off, you really could say anything.

And so on more than one occasion, the voicemail I left ended like this.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

Honestly, too many times to be healthy. That's what happened.

Needless to say, those churches didn't support us.

But it kind of elucidates this idea that we're all familiar with,

that we can say some pretty crazy things when we pray.

Because we kind of go into autopilot and there's all those funny memes and videos

that some of us have probably seen where it's like, God, I just want to echo what Brent said.

I just want to echo that prayer. And then somebody says, I want to echo that echo.

And for some reason, when we pray, we use the word just a lot.

It's like, God, I just want to thank you. I just want to pray that you would be with us.

I just, I just, I just, just God." And so we say all these really ridiculous things.

I came across this article as well, you don't, we don't even know what we're

doing when we're praying anymore, but I came across this article from something

called Midwest Christian Outreach.

So for some of you, this is going to be like, this is your people.

I've never heard of this site before, but this is, this is an article called

how to have an annoying prayer life.

And it says, we may not consciously judge people on other things,

but we judge people on how they pray.

If you want to have an annoying prayer life, by all means inculcate a habit

of silently criticizing others and how they pray and make sure you follow the

prayer rules to the letter.

So here's a couple of them. You must close your eyes and bow your head.

Unless you really want to be spiritual, then you'll raise your head so high

you risk a pinched nerve if the prayer is too long.

But you never ever should open your eyes except to see if everyone else has their eyes closed.

And if you're leading prayer, you should make sure to pray for the 50 or so

prayer requests mentioned in every minute detail, mentioning every minute detail

of Aunt Sally's surgery, and if you leave someone's request out by accident,

the prayer doesn't count.

We laugh because it's pretty ridiculous, but we also laugh because it's relatable.

We've had these experiences.

We've had these thoughts. Have you ever sat in a prayer meeting that just goes on and on?

Somebody prays for too long, so long, to be honest. I don't want to sit through that.

And which got me thinking, and this is where we're going to start off this morning, is.

Are there prayers that God doesn't want to listen to? Have you ever thought about that?

Are there things that we pray that don't go beyond our own breath?

And it's not because God is annoyed or checked out at us.

God is infinitely patient with us, but maybe it's because we're not really praying.

We just think that we're praying.

And again, prayer is one of the most staggering things that exists.

One of the most amazing privileges given to us. We get to speak to the God of the universe.

We get to ask him to move. We get to call heaven down to earth.

We get to take part in the filling of the earth with his glory.

Prayer is an amazing thing, but are there prayers that God doesn't hear?

Are we filling the air with our empty words?

Because maybe we're not really praying. And so we love to say things like, prayer is powerful.

And we love to say things like, God hears us when we pray. And those things

are true. They're very true.

But the Bible, the scriptures are also filled with these verses that should

cause us to stop and think.

Some scriptures that should stop us in our tracks when we talk about prayer,

that we should perhaps take prayer, that we shouldn't take it so casually,

perhaps, is what I'm trying to say here.

Let me read some. James writes, you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it.

Even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong.

You want only what will give you pleasure. And then that's in chapter four and later in chapter five,

he says, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you

may be healed because the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power

and produces wonderful results.

So not every prayer is powerful. Not every prayer request gets through.

In Hebrews 5, verse 7, it says this about Jesus, that while he was on earth,

Hebrews 5:7

he offered prayers and pleadings with loud cries and tears to the one who could rescue him from death.

And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence.

So Jesus wasn't heard because he was dramatic or emotional or because he talked

for a long time and he used many words.

He was heard because of his deep reverence because of his holy submission to the father.

The Bible says that he was heard because of his reverence, not because he was

the son of God, which you might expect, not because the father always listens

to the son, but because of his reverence.

One of the clearest verses in this, and this verse is brought up a lot with

regard to prayer is 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14.

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people pray, or if my people who are called by my name,

humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

Then I will hear from heaven. Then I will forgive their sin.

Then I will hear, heal their land.

So is God not attentive unless these conditions are met?

Is prayer conditional? This is an if-then statement, right?

If they humble themselves, if they pray, if they seek my face,

if they turn from their wicked ways, if they turn from their sin,

then he will hear, then he will forgive, then he will heal.

Is prayer conditional? That's a disturbing thought for us, isn't it?

And the answer is a bit complicated, as you might imagine.

So in one regard, yes, because prayer is a relationship or it depends on our

relationship with God, that it's relational.

A prayer is an invitation to walk with God.

Prayer is an invitation to commune with him, not just to get things from him.

And so because of that, like any other relationship, the posture of our heart

matters. How we live matters. How we love matters.

It matters if we're listening to God when we're begging him and asking him to listen to us.

So those things matter in prayer. They matter in a relationship.

And then there's also the sense where the answer to this question is prayer

conditional is no, because if prayer depends on our sinlessness, then we're all screwed.

If prayer requires perfection, if effective prayer requires perfection,

then we're all disqualified.

So God is a gracious God. And at times he chooses to answer prayer in spite

of our sin, despite of our worthiness.

And he also at times withholds the answer to those prayers.

But if he only responded based on our sinlessness, then we would all be met with silence.

So what this causes us within us is at least to pause and be careful that answered

prayer is no proof of our righteousness and unanswered prayer is no proof of our guilt.

God is not manipulated by our soul, so-called righteousness or perfectionism

or whatever it may be, but neither is he indifferent to the posture of our heart.

So on the one hand, God hears all and he is faithful. God is faithful and he is attentive.

He's the God who sees us.

And on the other hand, we are so distracted that we don't even notice.

That's we live our lives most of the time, the majority of our time independently from him.

And we want divine help, but we often don't submit to divine surrender.

And the hard truth is, is that we are often the saboteurs of our own prayers.

It's not that God doesn't want to move. It's that we don't ask.

As James said, it's that we ask with wrong motives.

It's that we ask with our lips while our lives are running in the opposite direction.

But God longs to respond. We know this from the Bible.

He longs for our hearts and he longs for the honesty and the openness of relationship,

not just our requests before him, the things that we desire.

He asks for those too, but he wants our hearts and he wants our presence.

So we hinder our prayers.

And prayer that goes unanswered doesn't mean that we are faithless.

It doesn't mean that we are guilty, but it should cause us to pause and ask,

Am I praying with reverence?

Am I aligned with God's will in my prayers?

Am I walking with him or am I just squeezing him into my schedule?

If we're honest, we live distracted spiritual lives where we try and carry God

along with us, carry on baggage into our overpacked, overbooked schedules are in agendas.

And then we wonder why he feels distant to us.

We wonder why God feels at arm's length.

And I can't stress this enough that prayer is one of the most shocking,

undeserved privileges that God gives us.

And perhaps more shocking than that is the fact that so few of us and so few

of our time do we dedicate to deep and abiding prayer. And we just don't do it.

D.A. Carson wrote that if you really want to embarrass the average Christian,

ask them to tell you in detail about their personal prayer life.

And that's painful because we believe in the power of prayer.

At least we say that we do.

We believe in prayer, but also we don't actually do it with any amount of consistency or depth.

We talk about it, we plan to pray, but do we actually pray?

Are lives defined by prayer? Are we a praying church? Are we a praying people?

According to the Center for Mission Mobilization, only 6% of students who are

preparing for overseas missions, this is the future of missions,

the ones who say, yes, Lord, send me.

Only 6% of them could say that they consistently have a daily prayer life.

That's just, that's 6% of the people who are going to the people,

the unreached peoples of the world, that they're going out and preparing to

bring the gospel where it hasn't been preached before.

And they're going out spiritually unarmed.

So what about us? What is our personal prayer time like?

And this isn't to cause shame within us because God is inviting us into something special.

So what I'm telling you is that God has more for you.

I'm not trying to bring some sort of spiritual guilt. God's not looking for a performance.

He's not looking for perfection or eloquence. He's not measuring what you bring

to him, but he wants your presence.

He wants your honesty. He wants your heart.

And if we're honest with ourselves, prayer often for us feels like some mechanism, some mechanical thing.

Like I have a list. I have a list on my phone, probably like many of you do

to remind me is like a task list that gives me notifications to pray.

And so what it becomes, this is from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Every hour. But what these things become after a period of time are notifications

that are ignored or at least items just to be checked off. for all of our best efforts.

Prayer becomes this mechanical things for us, easily ignored, easily forgotten.

Michael Reeves writes this about prayer. Prayer becomes impersonal when we run

through a list of names or we sit and kneel or stand in such and such a place.

We take God out of the routine of prayer.

The problem is not so much that we are too busy or that we find prayer hard.

The problem is that we don't enjoy God.

And if we don't enjoy God, we won't enjoy prayer.

It's not just that we're bad at praying. It's not that we're bad at prayer.

It's that we've lost a wonder for God. And if prayer is communion with someone

that you find boring, irrelevant, or distant, then prayer is going to feel like a task.

But if prayer is communion with the Father who loves us, who sings over us,

who wants to walk with us, then prayer becomes a joy.

And so we find ourselves in this prayerlessness.

We don't pray. We don't make time. And we don't gather with one another for

the sole purpose of seeking God's face in prayer.

And then we wonder why our church experience feels dry or why our hearts are

cold, why our spiritual lives feel disconnected.

So what if God has more for you than what you've settled for?

He's not scolding. He's inviting us into something more, into something deeper.

What if he's waiting, just waiting for us to stop scrolling,

to stop running, just to turn and start listening, to seek his face?

I'm full of quotes this morning. This is Samuel Chadwick.

He wrote that the one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from prayer.

He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion.

He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.

And prayer is not just one spiritual discipline among many. This is the front

lines of spiritual warfare.

And the enemy will do anything to keep us from praying.

But what if we were a church that the devil worried about?

Not because we're loud, not because we're impressive, but because we are a church

that is defined by prayer, that our lives are defined by prayer.

Let's think about that as we hear Acts 12 this morning.

Acts chapter 12. About that time, King Herod Agrippa began to persecute some

Acts 12 · chapter mention

believers in the church.

He had the apostle James, John's brother, killed with a sword.

When Herod saw how much this pleased the Jewish people, he also arrested Peter.

This took place during the Passover celebration.

Then he imprisoned them, placing him under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each.

Herod intended to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover,

but while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him.

Night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep,

fastened with two chains between two soldiers. Others stood guard at the prison gate.

Suddenly there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter.

The angel struck him on the side to awaken him and said, Quick,

get up, and the chains fell off his wrists.

Then the angel told him, Get dressed and put on your sandals,

and he did. Now put on your coat and follow me, the angel ordered.

So Peter left the cell, following the angel, but all the time he thought it was a vision.

He didn't realize it was actually happening. They passed the first and second

guard posts and came to the iron gate leading to the city, and this opened for them all by itself.

So they passed through and started walking down the street, and then the angel suddenly left him.

Peter finally came to his senses. It's really true, he said.

The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jewish

leaders had planned to do to me.

When he realized this, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark,

where many were gathered for prayer.

He knocked at the door in the gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to open it.

When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed that instead of opening

the door, she ran back inside and told everyone, Peter is standing at the door.

You're out of your mind, they said. When she insisted, they decided it must be his angel.

Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking. When they finally opened the door and saw him, they were amazed.

He motioned for them to quiet down and told them how the Lord had led him out of prison.

Tell James and the other brothers what happened, he said. And then he went to another place.

At dawn, there was a great commotion among the soldiers about what had happened to Peter.

Herod Agrippa ordered a thorough search for him. When he couldn't be found,

Herod interrogated the guards and sentenced them to death.

After a while, Herod left Judea to stay in Caesarea for a while.

Now Herod was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, so they sent a delegation

to make peace with him because their cities were dependent upon Herod's country for food.

The delegates won the support of Blastus, Herod's personal assistant,

and an appointment with Herod was granted.

When the day arrived, Herod put on his royal robes, sat on his throne,

and made a speech to them.

The people gave him a great ovation shouting, It's the voice of a God, not of a man.

Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with sickness, because he accepted

the people's worship instead of giving the glory to God.

So he was consumed with worms and died.

Meanwhile, the word of God continued to spread, and there were many new believers.

When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission to Jerusalem,

They returned, taking John Mark with them. Thank you.

Needless to say, the favorite part of the kids is when the guy dies and is eaten

by worms. I guess he's eaten by worms before he dies, they pointed out this week.

We're not really talking about that. Let's set the scene for Acts chapter 12, shall we?

Acts 12 · chapter mention

So Peter's been arrested. James has been killed.

This is James, the brother of John, as it talks about James,

one of the apostles. He's one of the inner three for Jesus.

He's been recently killed by Herod. And Herod realizes that he can gain favor

with the rest of the religious leader.

He's kind of at contention because he sits as a guy who doesn't really have

authority. He's kind of aligned with Rome. He's not really a Jew, but he's kind of a Jew.

And so he realizes he can gain favor by persecuting these leaders of the church. So he rests Peter.

Peter is ready for execution and the church knows it.

And so what does the church do? They pray.

And this is, they're gathering in a house at night, through the night,

through the watches of the night.

And this is This is one house church

of many, let's say. Jerusalem is a multi-site mega church, let's say.

And so they're praying, and these are unnamed believers. None of the apostles are mentioned.

None of the church leaders are mentioned. These are just a group of faithful

saints who are crying out in the dark.

The only one that gets named is the servant girl, Rhoda. And I love that because

God doesn't need celebrity Christians.

He just needs faithful, unnamed, unseen saints crying out in the dark,

desperate enough to believe that he still moves.

That's all that God needs. And I love that. And here's the twist.

It doesn't seem like a twist, but here's the twist. God answers their prayer.

Peter doesn't believe it. He

thinks it's a dream. When he shows up at the house, they don't believe it.

Rhoda, when she hears the voice, she's so excited that she forgets to open the

door. she runs to tell everybody that Peter's at the gate and they don't believe it.

They say it must be his angel because the church already thinks that Peter has been executed.

They already think he's dead. They think his ghost has showed up and that's

what she's experiencing.

They think Peter's already dead, which leads me to an important question.

They didn't expect Peter to be rescued, what are they praying for?

I think we all assume that they're praying for Peter to be released.

But if they think that Peter has already been killed, what is it that they are

gathering through the night to pray for?

Probably not for jailbreak that happens. Probably not even for the rescue that happens.

They're probably praying for what we see them pray throughout the book of Acts,

in chapters 4 and other places.

They're praying that the church always prayed in times of suffering.

They're praying that the spirit would move in power.

They're praying that they would be strengthened and not lose heart,

that they would be emboldened even in the face of persecution,

that they wouldn't be shaken, that Peter,

if he were still alive, that Peter would remain faithful even to the point of

death, that fear wouldn't win.

They're probably praying that the mission would go forward no matter what happens next.

These are the things that we see them pray over and over again in the books of Acts.

So it's not difficult to believe that this is what they were probably praying that night.

Eugene Peterson talks about prayer in the Bible, specifically in the Psalms,

how the Psalms teach us to pray, especially in two forms.

The Psalm teach us to pray what he calls morning prayers and evening prayers.

And he exemplifies this in Psalms 4 and 5, which are back to back, right?

Evening prayers and morning prayers. In Psalm 4, the psalmist comes to God.

He's full of anxiety, full of anger, full of sadness in the night,

and all the weight of day is sitting on him.

And so he's venting to God, and he remembers God's promises.

And then he says at the end of chapter 4, Psalms 4, In peace I will lie down

and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

That Peterson says that, what do we do when we are overwhelmed?

What do you do when you're overwhelmed? This is what you do.

You're worrying about these things.

And so in night, you cry out to God and you say, God, now you're worrying about

these things so I can sleep. This is what evening prayer is.

It's about release. It's about laying down. It's about trusting.

It's about the magnitude of God's sovereignty and that all things are in his hand.

And it's trusting that God is awake so that we don't have to be.

It's a laying down. And then there's Psalm chapter five, the next Psalm.

This is a morning prayer and it's a different tone entirely.

The psalmist writes, in the morning, Lord, you hear my voice.

In the morning, I lay my request before you and wait expectantly.

So this morning prayer is bold prayer. It's an expectant prayer.

It's God, today is yours.

Advance your kingdom, act decisively, move with power, God. This is launching

prayer, Peterson calls it.

Move with power. It's the kind of prayer that doesn't just survive the night

like evening prayer does.

It's the kind of prayer that storms the day. So we have evening prayer. We have morning prayer.

We think about this group in Acts 12. What prayers do we think they're praying?

Probably a little bit of both. There's probably people praying some evening

prayers. They're saying, God, we don't understand what's going on. We're afraid.

James is dead. Peter's probably dead. If not, he's very soon to be.

And who knows who's next? But we know that you are good. So we give this into your hands, God.

They're praying these evening prayers, crying out in their desperation.

And there's some of them are probably praying these morning prayers that we see.

God, advance your kingdom. Move in power. Strengthen our leaders.

Make Peter faithful to the end if he's still alive.

Power us with boldness like you have done time and time again.

These are people praying as if their life depends on it. They don't know if what will happen next.

This could be their last night after all. And so these are some powerful desperate

prayers, probably akin to what we see Jesus praying in the garden.

These are soul-wrenching, desperate prayers.

And so when you pray, if you pray, do you pray like your life depends on it?

What would you pray? If you knew that this might be your last day,

how would that change your prayers?

Because most of the time I feel like our prayers to God assume we have more time left.

We pray for opportunities, we pray for success, we pray for safety,

we pray for health, we pray for our future or the future of someone else.

Most of our prayers to God assume time is left.

But these early church didn't have the luxury of long-term planning.

They believed that Jesus could come back at any moment and they were desperate

for that. They were praying for that, come Lord Jesus, come.

When we look at the New Testament, there's this undercurrent throughout the

entirety of the New Testament, through Peter, through Paul's writings,

through James's writing, that Jesus could come back at any moment,

that the clock was ticking,

that the kingdom was imminent, and they prayed and carried this desperation

with them in their prayers.

And Peter writes in 1 Peter, the end of the world is coming soon.

Therefore be earnest and disciplined in your prayer.

So if we're there in this church, this house church in Acts chapter 12,

Acts 12 · chapter mention

if we're there, if we're gathering, this could be the last night of us because

we don't know what Herod's going to do.

And we could meet the God of the universe. How would we pray?

What would you pray for? Would your prayers shrink or would they expand?

Would you pray for the stuff that won't matter tomorrow?

Would you, how would it change your prayers? Would you, would you beg for the,

for God to pour out his spirit?

Would you plead for your family to know Jesus?

Would you cry out for, for holiness, for boldness, for revival?

I don't want to waste my last prayers, begging God for things that only matter if I'm still here.

I pray, God, whatever time I have left, whatever time you've given me,

use it, make it count, shake the world with this little life.

And the people in Acts 12 didn't know if they'd survive the week.

They didn't know if they would survive the night, but they knew that God was real.

They knew that Jesus was alive and they knew that prayer was their path forward.

There's this desperation. So they prayed like their lives depended on it because

maybe it did. And maybe ours do too.

Maybe prayer is not just a spiritual discipline, but it is something that in

our relationship with God, our lives depend on.

What if God wants to do something more with this church family?

What if he's ready to move, but he's waiting on united, persistent,

humble prayer that pleases his heart near the end of his life,

Tim Keller was asked if he would do anything differently in his ministry.

And he said, absolutely. I should have prayed more. And this is one of the most

faithful, thoughtful pastors of our time.

And he's essentially, he's not saying I missed it, but he's saying there was

always more for prayer. And so let's not miss this either.

Let's not miss out on this. Because first, this starts with you.

That you must become a person of prayer.

Not just in crisis. Not just when someone else is leading.

But through a daily practice, a daily rhythm of stopping and seeking God.

That we would set aside time. That we would set aside a place.

That we would turn off our phones. That we would open up our Bibles. and we would pray.

Let your scripture reading time, your Bible reading time become prayer,

not just a box to check off that I read the chapter this day or this week,

but to read the word of God, to hear from God, and to make every verse a conversation back to him.

One way that we can do this when we pray is we can think about praying in concentric

circles, either outwardly or back inwardly. if we're going outwardly,

you can start with yourself.

Lord, revive my heart.

We can move out and pray for the members of our family, our friends by name.

We can pray for our spouse by name. We can pray for our church that unity and

boldness and holiness and the mission of God would reign.

We can pray for our town, for justice and for salvation and for spiritual hunger.

We could pray for the nations that the name of Jesus would be known and be heard

where it hasn't been yet.

In all of this, whatever it is, we're not starting with a technique of prayer

or a mechanism of prayer.

We're starting with a fear and an awe, a trembling joy.

We're starting with just the realization that we have the holy privilege to

come and approach God at all.

There was a guy that we once knew and he said, I don't, I don't want this to make you feel guilty.

So I don't want, I don't want this to make us feel guilty in the same way that

he said that, but he did say, I do want it to make us feel dumb.

That,

How crazy it is that we have access to the God who spoke the universe into existence,

the God who raises the dead,

the God who loves us and calls us his children, that we have access to that. How crazy it is.

And we just are too distracted or too busy.

So I'm not trying to guilt us, but there is an insanity here where if you don't

eat, you starve. If you don't drink, you die. If you don't move, you atrophy.

If we don't prayer, if we don't prayer, that's the verb. If we don't pray, we suffocate.

We suffocate in our prayerlessness.

If we're not experiencing the life that God has for us, if we're not experiencing

the abundant life that Jesus promises us, no matter the season,

it might be because we're choking on our prayerless existence.

Jesus tells us to ask and it will be given, to seek and he will find,

to knock and the door will be open to you.

And in the Greek that says that we should keep asking, to keep on asking,

keep on seeking, keep on knocking.

This is persistent prayer. This is ongoing prayer. This is desperate prayer.

This is faithful prayer.

That we would cultivate a life of prayer alone and together,

that we would seek this together.

Let us press into this together.

And here, I just want to give you some opportunities that are coming up.

Here are some ways as a church that we can become a church defined by prayer.

I can't force your life to be defined by prayer, but we can provide opportunities as we gather.

So next Sunday, we're going to have a prayer and praise Sunday,

and we're going to seek the Lord in prayer together that is unified,

that is humble, that is persistent, that is desperate.

End or at the end of the summer, the beginning of August, we're going to have

another prayer and pray Sunday.

We'll do the same thing. There's some opportunities coming up in preparation

for the students returning in August.

We're going to have another 24 hours or maybe 48 hours or 72 hours of,

I don't know how much a week is, but at least 24 hours of prayer.

Again, there's an opportunity for us to seek the Lord together in prayer.

Throughout the summer, there will be multiple opportunities as well,

at least, hopefully at least one a month.

So at least two nights where we will gather together and pray,

whether it be on a Friday or a Saturday, we haven't, we don't have the locations

or the dates, but they will, they'll come forth with, henceforth, I don't know,

nights where we can seek the Lord together in prayer.

I was just thinking about this morning, how great would it be if we just got

together and maybe it's, maybe it's a men's thing, maybe it's a whole church

thing, where we just go and climb a mountain and just sit there in awe of the Lord together.

It's great, perfect weather to be able to do that coming up.

So what if we did something like that?

There's going to be opportunities for us to pursue this together.

There's opportunities this week in our groups, next week in our groups,

to come together and pray, to pray like our lives depend on it, because they do.

And this prayer isn't extra credit.

It's not a bonus. This is survival. This is spiritual hunger.

So let's not miss it. Let's not assume that somebody else will be praying.

We kind of more obviously have that when we do a 24 hours of prayer, right?

If you're not the one praying that hour, you just assume somebody else is praying,

which is appropriate in that moment.

But why do we carry that out through the rest of our life? Let's not assume

that others will be praying.

Let's be the ones who say with open hands and expectant hearts, Jesus, teach us to pray.

Lord, teach us to pray. We're ready.

We are ready for what you have. We want you.

We want your spirit. We humbly come before you and just beg you to teach us, God.

Give us a hunger and a thirst and a desire, just change our hearts.

Everybody, just go ahead and stand. Let's pray as we come and as we come before

the table, as we come to sing.

I'm going to kneel actually. So I just told you to stand, but I'm going to kneel.

So feel free to kneel as well. Lord, we are yours.

You tell us in your word that, that we are from you, that we are your children

and because of that, we have overcome that we are overcomers because,

because you are in us and you are greater than the world.

You tell us to pray in your name and you will grant us the desires of our heart.

You tell us to come before you like children before their father begging you.

You tell us that you will hear, that you will answer.

Lord, I just pray that our prayers,

our desires, our desperation would come before you from hearts that depend on

you, from lives that scream.

That our whole existence depends on this relationship, that we would sit in

awe and tremble with joy that you are here with us.

Just pray that you would make our lives count in whatever time we have left, that you would use us,

that we would find our hope and our joy in your presence, that we would rush

to the throne of grace, that we would rush to the feet,

of the Holy One, that we would rush into prayer with you, with the Spirit,

that we'd be the first thing that we do, and it would be the last thing that

we would do, and that it would just fill our consciousness in between, God.

I pray that you would make us a church defined by prayer, not as a task,

not as a burden, but as a joy.

Teach us to pray, Jesus.

Jesus, I pray in your name and by the power that you have provided through your

presence, through the spirit within us.

You are the God of the universe that has come to live with those that you love.

That we get to have the privilege of calling heaven down to earth,

of living with your spirit and filling all the world with your glory.

Music.