Know God More Deeply

I know with the with the birthdays, as you get older, it's like one of those things where you're like, ah, do I celebrate it?

Yes, no, I celebrate.

Another year of life.

Grateful, grateful.

And all the things that come with it.

But you know, as we're reflecting on life, let me reflect on some days when I was younger.

I'll start this morning just actually with a story about when I was younger.

When I was younger, there was a phrase that my mom used to say that used to oddly irritate me.

And uh, if if it's possible, you know, sometimes things can irritate you in a good way.

So this is one of those things, as I think back on how it irritated me, I was like, it was actually a good irritation.

So let me give you an example of when she might say this thing that irritated me so much.

So if there was like a new food, or you know, usually some kind of Korean side dish or or stew or or thing that I had not yet tried before, um, she would have me taste it.

And a lot of times I liked it, right?

I I love Korean food.

Korean food is my still my favorite food.

Uh but sometimes there would be like a unique flavor or a texture that I hadn't yet tried before.

So if if she was introducing me to this new food and it and maybe it was a little bit too spicy or a little too like bitter or something that I didn't have words for because it was so new, um, I I you know I'd be like, ooh, I don't know if I like that.

And my mom in response would say this.

She'd go, the adjing mullazagre, which means it's because you don't know yet.

It's because you don't know yet.

Meaning you don't know how to appreciate this flavor, or you don't know how good this food actually is, because your palate is not yet developed or mature enough to know how good this food really is.

No ajing mullazigre.

You don't know yet, but the yet means you may one day find out.

Um, you know, when you're young, you hear that and you're like, okay, fine, just don't make me try it again.

But my mom also has this strange gift that that she can eat food in a way that makes it look so delicious that you feel like you're missing out.

Even if I just tried that food and I confirmed for myself, I don't think I like that yet.

She'll go on to eat it and you'll be like, hmm, what does she know that I don't know?

I feel like my mom might have been born in the wrong era.

Because if she was born maybe like 50 years later, she could have been a really good food influencer.

Um, and you know, have you guys ever heard of this thing called mukbang?

Maybe you know it as mukbang.

I know you all know well what mukbang is, right?

But mukbang is actually a Korean word and it um it means muk is short for muk, which means eat, and pang is short for pang zong, which means broadcast.

So it's actually a broadcast of somebody eating.

So if you didn't recognize that word at first, maybe you've come across a video or two, um, or maybe you've seen your grandkids or your kids watching videos of people eating food.

It's a weird phenomenon.

People love it, they love watching people eat food, and and it's strange, like it's strangely popular.

Like these videos get millions of views, and there's some people who are making millions of dollars just eating enormous amounts of food.

They do the ASMR, and okay, anyways, we don't.

For some of you, you're like, that sounds, you know, listening to all the sounds and everything.

This is this is strange.

I don't know why people like doing this, but again, it's wildly popular.

And um, like I said, there's there's something about watching people eat.

My mom is one of those people who has a gift for making you want her, want to watch her eat.

Because as you watch her, it makes you curious.

What is it that she knows about this food that I don't know yet?

Now, a synonym for the word irritate is provoke.

And what irritation usually provokes is anger or frustration or impatience.

But on the flip side, irritation can also provoke curiosity.

So irritation is actually a symptom of a deeper thing.

Irritation should cause you to investigate or examine more deeply what's going on beneath the surface, why do I feel this way?

What is causing this provocation?

The phrase, it's because you don't know yet, provoked curiosity in me.

It made me wonder, what does she know that I don't?

And if I don't know it yet, well then I want to know.

I thought about calling the sermon, It's Because You Don't Know Yet.

Uh, but you know, without context, it could sound kind of judgy if you come across that title.

Um, so then I thought about calling it, and if you don't know, okay, so there's some of you.

I wasn't sure if some of y'all would know how to finish that lyric, but uh, you know, there's so many super sanctified saints up in here, but I knew Sandy would know that one.

Um but you know, uh a title that I thought would actually be more true to the heart of this message is the sentiment that Paul prays for the church in Ephesians 1, where he repeatedly says, I pray that you know.

I pray that you know.

Today's message is entitled, I pray that you know.

But before we go any further, I know we started with prayer, but can we just pause and pray that prayer right now?

We'll pause right now and ask again, God, help us to know you more deeply.

As Paul prayed for us so many years ago, and as you interceded on our behalf and even intercede for us now, you pray that we would know you more deeply.

You, God, pray on our behalf that we would know you more intimately and experientially, Lord, that that we would know more than just with our heads, but with our hearts.

So, God, open up our eyes to see you more clearly.

Help us to hear you your word and help us to know you more deeply.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh, now if you didn't know, we're now in a series called Why Church?

Why church?

If you read the title and you don't hear it, you could read it like this.

Why, why, church?

Why, church?

And that could be another good sermon series.

Like there's been different times where I've thought to myself, why church?

But this one is why church.

Why church uh is a series where we're gonna be looking at what it means to build up community from a kingdom perspective.

Uh, what it means to build up community from a biblical lens, what it means to build community in a spirit-filled way.

Pastor Tyrone read from that, uh, or he referenced that passage in Acts, the early church lived in a certain way.

And we want to be more true to what it looks like to be a kingdom community, uh a biblically grounded, spirit-filled community as the people of God.

So it was actually going to be a short two-part series before we launched the series this fall on the Great Commission.

But before we go there, we sense the Lord inviting us to sit in this series for a little longer than that, this Why Church series.

For several months now, as a staff, we've been talking about how to live into the invitation of Ephesians 4.12 more intentionally.

Ephesians 4.12 says this: that we are to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

We've been talking about this as a staff because we feel like this is the work that we have been called to, to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Another way to say this is that we are called to help equip the saints for ministry.

The saints for ministry.

Do y'all know that you're saints?

You're considered the saints, right?

Uh you and me, we're God's people, we're considered the saints.

And so we're we're called to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Now we know that not everyone is called to full-time vocational ministry, but if you are a part of God's people, if you are a follower of Jesus, you are called to works of service.

You also are called to works of service for ministry.

We've been talking about this for some time now.

I mean, there's this one sermon where I did this whole, like I was, you know, getting inspired by Oprah, you know, the time when she said you get a car, you get a car.

If you remember, you got a gift, you got a gift, you got a gift, everybody's got a gift.

And so if we all have gifts, we are called to use those gifts for God's glory and for the good of God's people.

Ephesians 2.10 also emphasizes saying that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Our ministry fair last year, last week was an opportunity to sign up and be part of a team where you can serve with those gifts that everybody's got.

Everybody's got a gift, right?

And in using your gifts, you are called to help prepare others for the work of ministry as well.

That is what discipleship is.

And we recognize that we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

But what we hope and what we pray that you know before we go into the Great Commission, and before we continue to encourage you all to use your gifts for God's glory is to first uh remember, examine, sit in, meditate on the fact that who you are is more important than what you do.

That's where we want to start.

Who you are is more important than what you do.

Now you could argue um that they're equally important because who you are is the starting point for what you do.

And what you do is a result of who you are.

So I mean, you can't really separate the two, but we want you to be reminded that who you are, moreover, whose you are is where we start from.

Knowing who you're called to, who your identity is rooted in, allows you to live out these good works.

Now notice Ephesians 2.10, which talks about us doing good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do, starts with an affirmation of our identity, an affirmation of who we are before he instructs us on what we are to do.

For we are what?

God's handiwork, God's masterpiece.

We're a masterpiece because as image bearers of God, the a piece of the master is in us, right?

And before we can go on to do the good works that God prepared in advance for us to do, we must first recognize that we are God's masterpiece.

We're God's masterpiece, and Christ Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit is in us and empowers us to do these good works.

So knowing who you are, who you really are, who you're really meant to be in Christ Jesus is the key to knowing and living out what you're really called to do.

It doesn't matter if you're 44 or a couple years older than 44 now, or if you're 54, 64, 74.

Many of us wrestle with what we're called to do.

There's different types, you know, they they call it a midlife crisis.

I don't know when that actually really happens, but it but at a certain point in your life, um, you know, they say that people start to wrestle at an at a later age.

Uh, am I really doing what I'm supposed to do?

Like, am I living out what I was created to do?

And if you're wrestling with that, this is where we need to start.

Go back to the basics of do you know who you really are?

I'm tempted to go on a tangent about like where I'm at, even just like in in reflecting on another year of life.

I am doing some of that wrestling.

Am I really being faithful to using the gifts, recognizing the gifts that God has given me and using them for his glory despite myself, right?

Because I'm the one that can fight against, you know, all you'll you'll dim down your light, you'll give all the reasons why you shouldn't do this or why you don't want to do that.

But really, you got to get back to the basics.

Every year that you turn older or winning, you know, the end of the year is already coming up on us, right?

So the beginning of the year, many of us take time to reflect.

But when you think about life, what am I really called to do has to start with who am I really?

And before you really know who am I really, it starts with who is God?

Who is God?

That's where we have to start.

Knowing God more deeply allows us to have a greater sense of who we are and what we're called to do.

So as we linger in this series about uh series that we're calling Why Church, we hope that you will have a deeper understanding of the nature and the purpose of the church, who we're called to be collectively, and what we're all called to do together.

But we start with who is God.

That's why we have that series that we just came out of.

We just came out of a series called Who is God?

Um, the book of Ephesians, let me give you some perspective on why we're gonna sit in the book of Ephesians.

For the next several weeks, as we dive deeper into the identity and purpose of the church, we're gonna be using the book of Ephesians as our text.

Now I know I just called it the book of Ephesians, but really was written as a letter.

And though the letter is addressed to the believers in Ephesus, Paul wrote this letter with a broad audience in mind.

He knew that this letter was probably gonna get circulated to a lot of the churches that were trying to figure out who they are and what they're called to do.

I don't know that he could have ever imagined that thousands of years later a group of people in Elk Grove would be studying the text and still being encouraged from it.

But praise God that we have this letter.

And praise God that the prayers that Paul prayed for the saints back then are still prayers that are being prayed for us now.

As I prepared this message, I've been echoing the prayers that Paul prayed.

I've been praying as Paul prayed that I would know, that you would know, that we collectively would know God more deeply, that we would know God more deeply, that we would know just how deeply loved we are and how good it is to be loved by God.

Let's read the passage that um I'm speaking of where Paul prays this prayer.

So if you want, you can um turn in your Bibles or in your phones to Ephesians 1.

It'll also be on the screen, but I'll read it out for you right now.

And uh in Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 15, Paul says this for this reason, and I'll get to what for this reason means in a moment, but for this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his at the right hand in the heavenly hell realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be the head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

There's so much goodness to unpack in this passage, and we only have a little bit of time.

But one thing that I want to uh emphasize here before we move on is that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him in the heavenly realms is the power that has been deposited in us.

Let's not forget that.

That power is in us, marks us with a seal, and is the inheritance that we get to live out now.

This is what always baffles me.

This is what I always need to be reminded of.

I don't think we have even a glimpse, we don't have a sliver of an understanding of how great that power is, how great that inheritance really is.

Because if we did, we'd be living differently.

It's a challenge and a conviction to myself.

I don't think we've really grasped, grabbed a hold of how great that power really is.

I need to remind myself every morning, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him in the heavenly realms, who has rule and authority over all the heavens.

That power is in us.

So why do we allow the world, the enemy ourselves, to dim that light, to dim that power?

This is why we have to start with who is God every morning to be challenged.

Who is God before all the things of the world come at us for the rest of the day?

You know, Paul wrote this letter, among other letters, while he was in prison.

But if you didn't already know that, just by the tone of this letter, you probably would not be able to tell that he was writing from prison.

In this letter, he wasn't writing to them saying, Hey, you gotta help me.

I'm locked up, I'm in prison.

You know, I just want to remind you, you're out there, I'm in here, I need your help, I need you to send me some stuff, put some money on my books, you know, like go out there and advocate for me.

I need to be freed from this thing.

He didn't do all that.

You wouldn't know that this was a man who was being persecuted and wrongfully imprisoned.

Because Paul starts this letter with a great big praise be to God.

Praise be to God.

He goes on to talk about all of the spiritual blessings that we have in Christ.

And then he breaks out into thanksgiving and prayer.

Thanksgiving and prayer.

That's the passage that we just read from.

See, Paul was imprisoned, but he wasn't.

Paul was still on mission while he was in prison.

He didn't write to the saints in Ephesus to garner sympathy or support.

He was writing to them to encourage them.

And if if anything, he was writing because he, although he was the one that was locked up, he believed that he possessed something that they needed on the outside.

He wrote these letters with an urgency to encourage them and to pray for them, to pray for us.

He already had his freedom.

He already knew.

He already knew the secret to knowing how to be content in any circumstance.

He knew the key to being free even when he was behind prison bars.

He knew how to have joy while being persecuted.

And he knew not only how to stay encouraged and be encouraged, but how to encourage others.

While from the outside, it looked like that he had every reason to be discouraged.

Paul knew something that maybe others didn't know yet.

He knew something that we might not know, the depth of the flavor and the texture and the goodness of what it is to really taste and see that God is good, the way that he had experienced God.

And so he writes this letter in case we don't know.

What we know from reading this letter is that Paul was a praying man.

Paul prayed because he knew that what he knew was so good that he didn't want anyone else to miss out on what he knew.

He knew that there were some who didn't know yet.

And he knew that there were some who needed to know more deeply.

And he also knew that there were some who maybe thought they knew, but didn't know that they really didn't know.

I could go on with this, but but but Paul just really wants all of us to know God more deeply.

And this is why he says, I keep asking God.

This means that he prayed persistently and consistently.

He says, I keep praying that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.

It requires wisdom and revelation from the Holy Spirit to know God more deeply.

And so he prays that we would have that gift of wisdom and revelation so that we may know him better.

I keep asking, I keep praying.

I pray and I pray and I pray every day, every day, every day.

He was the original of Bone Thug and Harmony, okay?

So he he was praying constantly.

And he said, he said, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better.

I I actually think that you could sum up so much of Paul's ministry, so much of his prayers in this prayer.

His prayer, his desire, the reason why he was willing to go out there and and and be beaten and locked up and wrongly accused and persecuted was simply because he wanted us to know God more deeply.

Paul's most passionate and persistent prayer is simply that we would know God better.

And even in telling us that he keeps praying this for us, what he does is he tells us a bit about what he already knows about God and why he keeps praying for us.

So he's So he's saying Jesus is Lord.

He is the Christ, the Messiah, the one that we've been waiting for.

And he and the Father are one and they are glorious.

So is the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom and revelation, gives us good gifts.

Paul prays that we would be filled with the Holy Spirit who gives us this wisdom and revelation so that we may know God better.

So you can feel the urgency and the excitement and the longing that Paul has for his brothers and sisters to taste and see how good God is.

And it's like he's saying, you know what?

You've only just begun your journey.

There is an eternal well of goodness and gloriousness for us to experience more.

You know, words get translated into English, and I feel like sometimes they they lose the impact that they had.

Because when Paul talks about glory, it's a heavy word.

You know, we we throw around the word like glorious, marvelous, all these things a little bit too frequently, and so much so that it can lose the weight of what it means.

And that's actually exactly what glory means.

Glory means weight.

When he talks about God's glory, it's something that was so weighty that sometimes you couldn't even stand in his presence.

When he's talking about glory, people understood the impact of that word.

It's heavy.

It's not a word that can be lightly thrown around.

So he says, I pray that you would know just how glorious, how deep, how heavy, how valuable God is.

And he's really just praying because he knows the journey has just begun.

There is an ache in Paul's heart for us to know God more deeply.

So he keeps praying that we would know.

Now, the word know is another word that we might not really understand outside of its original context.

So in the Greek, the word that's used here is epinosis.

So in Greek, the word gnosis is knowledge or to know.

And that's the word that was commonly used whenever it was to know somebody or to know something.

But here he says epinosis, which means intensifying or directed towards.

So epinosis is an intensifying knowledge.

It's a deep, full, and personal or experiential understanding rather than just a superficial or abstract awareness of facts.

We don't want to be anemic Christians who know facts about God but don't know God experientially.

Amen.

We all know that knowing facts and knowing from experience is different.

Just like we know book smarts is not the same as street smarts, right?

Memorizing facts won't give you the knowledge that you need to know how to swim.

You can't read about knowing how to swim and jump into the ocean, expect to know how to swim.

You've got to experience it, right?

So knowing about love doesn't mean that you know love.

Just like knowing about God doesn't mean you know God in the way that Paul describes here.

So Paul knew that the biggest blessing to have, the biggest blessing to know, the biggest blessing to experience is to be in Christ Jesus, to be loved by God, to know that you are chosen by God, adopted by God to be sons and daughters.

In Ephesians 1, 3 through 5, in the beginning of this letter, Paul goes straight into praise and he says this: he says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.

So in our context, adoption often involves a baby or a child in need of someone to help raise and nurture them.

A person or people who desire to bring a child into their family to be a part of their family is often who's on the other side of adoption, right?

But the purpose of Roman adoption was different.

It didn't involve caring, caring for, it doesn't involve caring, okay?

But it doesn't involve caring for or raising or nurturing a child.

In fact, in most cases, adoptees were either already adults or close to adulthood.

So in Greco-Roman society, adoption was also almost exclusively always male adoption.

So they would often, frequently, most of the time, adopt adult males into their families.

So why was this?

So in Greco-Roman society, adoption was a way in which wealthy or prominent families were able to secure an heir.

So if they did not have a son of their own, they would secure an heir through adoption.

So this adoption would, of course, also include an inheritance, but it also meant for the adoptee that they were adopted into the responsibilities of caring for aging parents, for maintaining the estate and assuring proper burial.

So adoptees didn't necessarily have an unstable home life that they needed to be rescued from.

And like I said, adoptees were usually adults that chose to enter into this agreement.

So then it leaves you wondering, why would someone want to be adopted?

Well, in some cases, an adoptee would be leaving behind some family debt or some other sort of less than ideal situation.

Or in many cases, their biological family had at least two male children.

And rather than having to split the inheritance or give it all to just one son over the others, the adoptee's family could have more to give to their one male heir, or at least have fewer to have to split it amongst.

So it was really kind of a transaction.

It was a contract, an agreement that people would enter into.

The adoptee would, on the other hand, would not have to share an inheritance or remain dependent on his brother, but would now have a full inheritance of his own.

And he would also have the responsibility of eventually leading his own household.

An adopted son would have full rights to the family inheritance.

He would have wealth and position.

And it was a legally binding agreement that could not be undone by an adoptee's past.

Are you already seeing some of the kingdom parallels here?

Well, an adoptees past could not uh could not be so bad or something wouldn't be found out about them that would cancel out the agreement.

Once they were adopted, they were adopted.

They were a son, they were an heir.

And in our case, too, we are co-heirs with Christ.

We were chosen by God just like these adoptees were chosen by a family that wanted them to be an heir to their family.

So with this as the cultural backdrop to adoption, when the saints in Ephesus hear that they were chosen by God to be adopted as heirs, not because of things that they had done or attributes that they possessed, but because of Jesus, they understood the implications of the fact that they were chosen by God to be adopted.

They understood that this was a great honor and an incredible blessing.

And now, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, they were chosen by God to be adopted as legitimate sons and daughters.

And they understood the responsibilities that came with it as well.

So this is why in Ephesians 1:15, Paul says, I am praying for you.

Ephesians 1:15

I am praying for you.

Because you have been given a great blessing, a great gift, a great inheritance, but you've also been given a great responsibility.

So I'm praying for you.

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, because he knew that it was an honor.

So Paul prayed for them constantly because he knew it was a responsibility as well.

So I was gonna use these following three points as my sermon outline and preach from each point for about eight minutes.

Um, but if you've heard me preach, I'm not typically a three-point, eight point, you know, eight minutes per point preacher.

Um, so I'm instead gonna give it to you as a summary.

I'll give you these three points as a summary for what Paul prayed in this prayer.

When Paul says, I pray that you know, here's what he was praying for.

He was simply praying that we would know who God is.

Through wisdom and revelation, I pray that you would know God more deeply.

That's actually the purpose of every sermon that we preach up here.

It's not to give a TED talk, it's not to give you some entertainment for 30 minutes.

It's really a prayer that when you leave here, that because you've heard the word, because the word has been deposited, we pray that you would know who God is more deeply.

And not just for knowledge's sake, but because you have experienced something and the Holy Spirit has had access to you, that you would know God more deeply is the prayer that Paul prayed.

It's the prayer that we pray every Sunday.

Paul also prays that we would know who we are, that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know the hope of your calling and the riches of your inheritance.

I hope we know who we are, adopted sons and daughters who have an inheritance, who have the deposit of the Holy Spirit and have purpose because of that.

And he prays that we would know what we have been given.

Incomparably great power for us who believe.

As we are about to go into this series on the other end of this, uh the Great Commission, the only way that we can fulfill the Great Commission is to know who we are, who God is, whose we are, and what he has given us.

He has equipped us with everything that we need to accomplish the mission that he has called us into together with him.

And he has given us incomparably great power for us who believe.

So now that we know that the forefathers and the foremothers of the faith have been praying for this for us for centuries, how now should we live?

How now shall we live?

Well, for one, we need to keep praying too.

Some of us came to church when we were younger because our parents drug us to church, right?

It made us come to church.

Some of us bargain with our kids.

Okay, we'll go to church, and you know, they get to a certain age, and you have to, all right, well, look, they're just gonna have to decide for themselves.

There comes a point in your life where you can't rely on the prayers of somebody else, and you gotta be praying for yourself as well.

Are you praying?

Do we start with this the this passion that Paul has?

Now I used to just pray, God, help me to want to want you.

Help me to want to want you because I see the way that my mom worships.

My mom cries, talking about Jesus loves me.

And and and I don't know, maybe she knows something about the words of that song that I I don't know yet.

But I want to know.

I want to know Jesus the way that she knows Jesus.

And that that's actually, if you'll allow me just a couple more minutes, I want to share one last story.

Um, and I may have shared it here once or twice before, but I often share a story about my mom who um there was another context in which she would say that phrase, it's because you don't know yet.

Well, when uh when I was younger, my mom used to wake up at 4:30 in the morning every day and go to early morning prayer by five o'clock at church.

So there were times every now and then when I would want to join my mom and I would wake up early and go and, you know, I I know I need prayer.

But I would go with her and I would struggle because um, you know, Koreans they pray a certain way, at least the Koreans at my parents' church, okay?

They were Pentecostal Koreans, okay?

They would they would pray in a way where um at the beginning they would do like a short devotional and they would do some like just silent, just sit in silence for a little while.

But it's like they knew on cue, they would do this thing where they would call on the name of the Lord three times.

They would say it a little bit louder each time.

They'd go, Lord, they'd say chew ya, choo yah, and on the third one they'd go choo yah, and they'd pray, they'd they'd yell out the name of the Lord, and then they would just break out in prayer.

Everybody's praying at once.

Some people praying in tongues, some people laid out on the floor, some people just praying with fervor.

And it was beautiful to witness, it was powerful to witness, but at the same time, I told my mom, Mama, go with you to these times of prayer, but it's actually really hard for me to pray.

Because it's actually kind of distracting.

You got everybody praying at the same time.

I can't hear myself.

I don't know what this person over here is doing, and I'm distracted.

And said, It's hard for me to pray.

And that's when she would say, is because you don't know yet.

You haven't lived enough life yet.

Little 15-year-old girl.

But some of these parents, they're on their faces before the Lord praying for their sons and daughters.

I know that I am the fruit of generations of prayer.

And if you don't know it now, I this one thing that I can't wait for.

When when we're on the other side of eternity, I hope we get to find out people who prayed for us.

Somebody prayed for you.

That's why you're here this morning.

At some point in your life, there's somebody who's been praying for you that you would be here this morning, that you would be at this place in your walk of faith, and that you continue to know God more deeply.

And if anything, the pastors have been praying.

We pray that this church would be marked by the love of God, that Midtown Church would be people who know that they are loved by God, that we are people who are proud to be adopted sons and daughters, and we know the glorious inheritance that we have because we're so deeply loved by God.

So, our mission now is to continue to pray that we would know God more deeply.

And then on the flip side of that, who are you praying for?

Who are you praying that they would know God more deeply as well?

Let's pray right now.

God, we thank you that thousands of years ago, you, Jesus, before you went to the cross, you prayed for future believers.

You prayed for us, that we would know you, and that we together as a church would be one as you and the Father are one.

And God, we we had people like Paul who went before us and prayed for us, the future church, that we would know you more deeply.

So, God, we want to be people who know that that we are loved by you and and people who would carry out that mission, continue to carry out that mission, knowing that we have been prayed for, God, we pray that we would continue to pray for ourselves to know you more deeply, but we would pray too that others would taste and see and know how good you are.

So, God, as we continue in this journey of every day, just saying, God, I want to know you more deeply, God, remind us that you have equipped us with everything that we need, an incomparably great power for those who believe, to continue to pray and to continue to be a blessing to the world around us, Lord.

So remind us of who you are, who we are in Christ Jesus, and what you have given us, Lord.

As we leave this place, may we walk out in power, may we walk out with peace, and may we walk out with purpose, Lord.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.