PYHO: The Right Approach

Okay, so last Sunday we started a series called Pyho, which isn't a word, P Y H O, but it sounds fun.

It really does.

Like, I actually want a t-shirt that says Paiho, because I'm like, people are gonna think that's some new workout routine or something like that.

Like, ooh, he's really in shape.

I don't know what pie ho is, but it seems intense.

You know, I want to do that.

But it just stands for something.

It stands for pray your heart out.

In the first service, Arthur, who's who's playing keys this morning, he's like, you know, pray your head off.

And I'm like, that too?

Pray your head off, pray your heart out, whatever.

But seriously, just pray your heart out.

We want to experience prayer as it's meant to be.

And the reality is God intends prayer to be this very passionate, very powerful aspect of our lives that's real and produces results.

You read scripture, if I hand you a Bible and you read it and believe it, you would walk away believing that God is listening to your prayers, that God is going to answer your prayers, and there are things that will happen in your life that would not happen if you didn't pray.

But so often prayer becomes something we struggle with for a variety of reasons.

You know, some of us have been Christians for a very long time and we still struggle to pray.

Maybe it's become monotonous or routine.

Maybe we've had times in our life where we prayed passionately for something and it didn't work out, so we're a little jaded.

There's a lot of people I know who believe very much in prayer and they're really comfortable with other people praying for them, but when it comes to their personal engagement with prayer, they're like, I don't, I just I'm not a prayer person.

But prayer is meant for all of us.

And maybe you're here and you haven't even figured out where you stand with Jesus, and we're so glad that you're here, by the way.

I think it's good to think through things.

I think it's good to really figure stuff out.

That's a good thing.

In fact, the Bible says test everything and hold on to what's good.

So do that.

But how do you pray to a God that you're not even sure is there?

Like prayer can be something that's difficult for us to engage in, but we want to pray the way that God intends us to pray.

We want to experience prayer like it's meant to be.

Like, I don't know about you, but I want to pray like Jesus.

Because the Bible never says this explicitly, but I think it's very heavily implied.

Jesus was good at praying.

Because stuff happened when Jesus prayed.

There's a very famous writer and Christian teacher from not that long ago, but a while ago for us, C.

S.

Lewis, you may have heard of him, one of the greatest Christian writers in history, and probably one of the most intellectually amazing human beings in the last 200 years.

C.

S.

Lewis, he prayed.

And he believed in God.

In fact, it kind of baffled a lot of his intellectual contemporaries because he was known to just be this high-level genius.

And that was in an era and a time when smart people, you know, they didn't believe in God.

And so one of his friends asked him one day, why do you pray?

And C.

S.

Lewis, so brilliant, said, When I stop praying, coincidences stop happening.

See, prayer, it works, it produces results.

And when Jesus prayed, things happened.

Like things happen all the time around Jesus.

A lot of coincidences happen with Jesus.

So I have a feeling that his prayer life was powerful.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could pray like Jesus?

And the reality is you can.

Last week we kicked off this study just by talking about how prayer works.

So let's be people who pray.

Let's not just pray, let's pray our hearts out.

But today I want to I want to begin actually studying prayer.

And there's no better place to study than just to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what he says.

So that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna study Jesus' teaching on prayer for the next several weeks.

And if you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

But if you have the mobile app, all of the scripture's there.

It's all attached to the message for today.

And the message today is called the right approach.

So find that message on the app and you've got it.

But I'm gonna go ahead and start reading Matthew chapter 6, verse 5.

Matthew 6:5

This is Jesus talking.

And like, here's the thing, real quick: all scripture, all scripture is God breathed.

When I open up the Bible, I'm like, God teach me something.

But when Jesus talks, it's like extra.

So I love paying attention a little bit more to Jesus than anything else.

So here you go.

When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in synagogues where everyone can see them.

I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get.

But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father in private.

Then your father who sees everything will reward you.

Jesus is actually commenting on the way that the Jewish leaders in his day prayed.

And it was all for show.

And it was elaborate and it was fancy and they valued eloquence and it was public and it was really meant to impress other people.

And Jesus says, Don't do that.

Like prayer is meant to be personal.

It's a personal conversation.

He's not saying that you can't pray publicly, but he's saying, don't see prayer as some exercise that you do for some earthly reward.

Prayer is personal communication with God.

So do that.

And then he goes on.

He says, When you pray, don't babble on and on as the Gentiles do.

They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.

Don't be like them, for your father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him.

And there he's commenting on the non-Jewish prayer rituals of the people around him at the time, and we still see this in the world today, that prayer is a ritual, that it's this thing that you do, and if you do it the right way, the right number of times, you will please God.

And so you just repeat the same thing over and over again.

It's not really personal, it doesn't really mean anything to your heart, but it's it's it's the words that God wants to hear.

And Jesus says, No, no, no, don't do that.

That's not that's not what God wants.

And then he says these three very powerful words.

The very beginning of verse 9, he says, pray like this.

And I love that.

Because number one, I love that Jesus doesn't say, hey, just pray like whatever.

No, no, I'm not saying that there's one right way to pray.

I think that there's a wide variety of ways that we can talk with God, but I do think it's it's interesting and important to note that Jesus says, pray like this.

Pray like this.

And then he he gives us this prayer, this example to follow.

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

May your kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

Now, I talk a little faster than the average human being, if you've never noticed that.

Um, I clocked myself reading this prayer out loud the other day, 14 seconds.

It's not a long prayer.

You might have people in your family, people you've known that pray long prayers.

Like before meals, that's the worst, right?

Because your face is so close to that plate and you can smell it.

And in my family, anyone who begins a prayer with the word oh, like, oh Lord, you're like, oh no.

Because you know, like this is gonna be a long prayer and we need to eat, you know?

And it's okay to pray long prayers.

Hey, pray for hours if you want.

I just think it's interesting that when Jesus says to people who who really want to know how to pray, like like these are people who want to know how to engage with God, he goes, okay, pray like this.

And he gives us a very simple, very straightforward, short prayer.

And so we're gonna study this prayer.

We're gonna go through it kind of piece by piece.

What we're not going to do is take what Jesus made simple and make it complicated.

No reason to do that, but I also don't want to skim over this.

I want to I want to take this in because what Jesus is saying here is very profound.

And it's worth dissecting it and looking at it and saying, okay, Jesus, what are you really saying here?

What are you teaching me?

The thing about Jesus is that he's like the opposite of me.

He says a lot with a little.

And so I want to look at this little that he says and really study it together.

And I think we should begin with the beginning.

That makes sense.

He begins by saying this Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

And what this beginning shows us is the way Jesus approaches God.

See, the way you approach something is very important.

And I think we all know that.

The way that you approach anything will greatly affect the experience that you have with it.

And I'm sure many of us have found ourselves in situations in life where we were in kind of an awkward, hard, hard spot because we approach something the wrong way.

Maybe we had the right intention, but we just approached it the wrong way.

I think about my relationship with my wife, and we've been married almost 14 years.

I love her.

I I've I noticed Megan when she was 15 years old.

I was 16, she was 15, we went to the same high school.

We started dating in high school, but it took a while from me noticing her to her really saying yes to me.

It took a while because for a long time I just had the wrong approach.

Like I right away, the first time I saw her, she was sitting on the back of a bus.

It was the year 1999, okay?

And uh and I saw her, I noticed her because I was 16.

And I'd like to say that that I had this very romantic thought that ran through my mind, and like music played, and and it was like slow motion.

I'm just gonna be straight up honest with you guys.

I just said, that girl's hot.

That's that's the first thing that ran through my mind.

I was 16, okay?

So just give me some credit.

Uh, or or cut me some slack, whatever.

So I noticed her.

And you know, I was 16 years old, and when you notice a girl, you want her to notice you back.

And so I just kind of found a way to introduce myself, and and then I just decided to maybe let her know that if she was interested, so was I, right?

And so, approach number one, smooth operator.

That was my first approach.

Like, show her that you have game.

So here's what I did.

One day at school, I walked up behind her and I grabbed the back of her shirt.

Now, before I tell you what I did, just hold on, I gotta preface this again.

Did I did I tell you I was 16?

This is important to know.

Okay, good.

Number two, you need to understand that my primary education for how to talk to girls up to this point in my life was saved by the bell.

I watched that show a lot as a kid, and so anyone who knows that show from the 90s, you know, Zach Morris, AC Slater, that that was my those were my role models.

They were the ones that taught me how to talk to girls.

The problem is I was more screeched than Slater, but like, you know, whatever.

So I walk up to Megan and I grab the back of her shirt.

This really happened, you can ask her, and I grabbed the tag on her shirt, and I said, Yep, just like I thought, made in heaven.

She was not impressed with that.

She did not, Megan was not that girl in high school who who flirted outwardly with boys and was like, ha ha, thank you, you're so sweet.

She was like, What are you taught?

Like, go away.

That was basically what happened there.

So, approach number one failed.

Turns out, if you're, I mean, young people, if you're watching Save by the Bell, maybe retro is in, they they don't they don't know anything, they don't know what they're talking about.

It's a lie, it's all a lie, okay?

Don't do that.

So that was my first approach.

Approach number two, this is about a year later.

I was like, let's find common ground.

Because I like this girl, she's awesome.

Like, maybe I can find something I have in common with her and strike up a conversation.

So one day at school, she's wearing her volleyball warm-up.

She was on the volleyball team, and and and by the way, I don't get to brag on Megan very often, but my wife is like a legit athlete.

She was a three-time All-state volleyball player, three-time state champion.

She was like super, super talented.

And so she's on the volleyball team, she was like the star.

And all the girls on the volleyball team, they had nicknames that were embroidered on their warm-up.

And so it was a game day or something, because she's got her warm-up on, and I see her nickname is Frosty.

And I was like, that's a cool nickname.

So I walk up to Megan.

This again, this actually happened.

I'm not embellishing, I'm not lying, you can talk to her about it.

Um, I walked up to Megan and I said, I like your nickname.

I have pale skin too.

Because I just figured that Frosty had to do with like her skin tone, because she's very fair-skinned.

Um and I'm like, again, this is me tan.

I'm going to Florida after today.

As soon as we're done, I'll be back on Saturday.

But like, I'm driving to Florida and just pray for me because if it's sunny, I'm gonna like I die.

It's just this is not, God did not intend me to be in the sun.

So turns out that is not why they called her frosty.

It had something to do with the way she like highlighted her hair or something.

And so also, girls do not enjoy being told that they're pale.

I've learned that since that time.

And so, approach number two, find common ground, did not work, but I did learn a lot about hair technique.

So that's good.

That's good.

Crashed and burned.

Approach number three, senior year.

Let's just be friends.

You know?

I mean, be honest, guys.

How many of you approached a girl you had romantic feelings for through the guise of we're just friends?

Raise your hand.

I'm not the only one.

Right, that's called being a liar.

Because you don't want to just be friends, you want to be a certain type of friend, you want to be a boyfriend, right?

And so so I was like, you know what, I'll just pretend like I don't like her that way, which I totally did, and I'll just be her buddy.

And so it ended up happening that that prom was coming up, and I called her.

Those of you born after 1995, I called her house.

There was a phone attached to her wall, and her mother picked it up and I said, Hello, Mrs.

Richardson, is Megan there?

And she went and found Megan, and Megan came physically to that phone.

That's what happened.

It was crazy.

So, like, I called and I said, Hey, Megan, it's Justin, your friend.

How would you like to go to prom?

Obviously, just as friends.

And I was really clear to reiterate that, just as friends.

And she said, Yes.

And that's when things got awesome because I had my foot in the door.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm like, okay, we're friends, we're going to prom now, so there's kind of an expectation.

And so I started hanging out with her a little bit more.

I'd I'd walk up to her at school, we'd talk a little bit more, because we're prom dates.

We're friends, but we're going to prom, so it's good for us to get to know each other.

And then I got the goal to ask her on a date, but again, friends.

Would you like to maybe go see a movie?

Grab a bite to eat, you know, as friends.

And she said yes.

And then three weeks later, I tried a different approach and I said, I love you.

And uh.

She said, Thank you.

Uh that's exactly what happened.

So that was a little aggressive.

That approach was a little, I was coming in hot, you know.

But just as friends.

I love you as a friend.

I had no game.

But here's the good news.

Here's the good news.

Uh, my school was a small school, so there was very little competition.

So it worked out in my favor because we ended up, we ended up dating, we stayed together, I went to college, we we had a long-distance relationship, got married, been married almost 14 years, four kids.

It worked out.

But it took me a long time because I didn't have the right approach.

You know, sometimes we get stuck in our approach in all kinds of situations in life.

In fact, I would I would go ahead and assume that many of you maybe have a situation that you need to deal with right now, but you haven't figured out how to approach it.

And so you just kind of go like, I don't know.

The approach matters.

And I was nervous as a 16-year-old approaching a pretty girl.

Like, how do you approach God?

I think sometimes in our prayer lives we we get a little stuck because we don't even really know how to start.

How do you approach the God of the universe?

And I love that Jesus cares so much about us that he shows us his approach.

And it's very simple.

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

That is the way Jesus approaches God the Father in prayer.

And I think in this approach, we see we see two dynamics, we see these two sort of understandings that Jesus has about who he is and who God is.

That if we understand the same, if we have the same mindset in prayer, we have the same perspective that Jesus has, that we find that our approach is like right on.

I want to talk about these two understandings of Jesus that relate to who he is, who God is.

And I'm gonna use two words that start with letter R, so if you want to remember this for later, just R and R.

Usually it means rest and relaxation or recuperation, but but R and R, it's gonna mean something else for us today.

These two words describe the approach that Jesus takes.

Number one, relationship.

Jesus calls God father.

Calls God Father.

This is something Jesus did pretty often.

In fact, the Gospel of John, which is one of the accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible, written by John, who is his best friend on the earth.

So John had the inside scoop on Jesus, like totally.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls God father 156 times.

He called God father a lot.

And the word that we actually see in the original Greek language that the New Testament was written in here is the word pater.

So when Jesus said father, he said pater, which is like a formal word for father.

You know, it's it's what my my boys call me when they're in trouble.

Or my daughter says daddy, because she can always say daddy.

But like the boys, father?

Like what happened?

You know, when you say father, what's going on?

He calls God father.

Now here's what's really interesting.

Jesus didn't only use this word pater, father, when he talked about God.

He also used other words.

For example, in Mark chapter 14, Jesus is praying right before he gets arrested.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

And in verse 36, he says this, Abba, Father, everything is possible for you.

Please take this cup of suffering away from you.

Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

This is a great example.

We're going to go through this in detail next week.

Jesus is both asking God for something here that he wants, but also simultaneously surrendering to God's will.

It's really powerful.

But at the beginning of that prayer, he says, Abba, Father.

Now here's what's really interesting.

When you read the New Testament, you're reading most likely English.

But those were not English words.

They were written in Greek in the New Testament.

It's Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament, but Greek in the New Testament.

And so you're reading a translation.

Now, the word Abba is not a translation.

Abba is not an English word.

And so for some reason, the the people who translated the Bible, when they got to Abba, rather than translate it to English like they did pretty much every other word, they just kept it Abba.

Why?

Well, part of it is because if we translated Abba into English, it would read a little strange.

Because when Jesus says Abba, Father, directly translated, we would say Father, Father.

Because Abba means father, just like Pater means father, but they have different connotations.

And this is something I've studied a lot and kind of wrestled with because there's no just perfect translation in our language for Abba.

And so you may have heard it said, and I've actually taught this before, that Abba is kind of like calling God daddy.

And there's some truth there.

That's accurate, but again, there's no perfect translation in our language for it.

If you were in the Middle East, you would likely hear Middle Eastern children call their dads Abba.

And so it's informal, but it's not just its informality that makes it powerful, it's that it's personal.

It's personal, it has kind of a possessive quality.

So when Jesus says Abba Father, what he's really saying is my father.

He's recognizing that God is not just a father, but God is his father.

And so it's this very personal understanding of Father.

That's why sometimes we say, hey, think about it like a child calling his father daddy.

A child understands that that's my daddy.

Abba Father, you're my father.

I belong to you.

You belong to me.

When Jesus prayed, he prayed through the lens of relationship.

And he began by understanding that God is not just God, that God is his father.

When we pray, we should pray with the understanding that we have a relationship with God.

Number two, we see reverence.

We have relationship, but we also have reverence.

The second half of verse 9, may your name be kept holy.

Now, when Jesus says name, he's meaning like the character of God.

It's kind of like how in our culture, maybe like a last name or the name of a business is associated with a certain reputation.

When we see name listed in scripture, sometimes we'll see in the Psalms the name of the Lord.

It's not just meaning like his title, it means his very person, his character.

Jesus says, May your name, may who you are, be kept holy.

And that word holy is really powerful.

It's weak the word we talked about, but it's a theme in scripture.

The Greek word is hagios, it means different.

But it means different in a really positive way.

Because you might know someone that you describe as different, and maybe you don't mean it positively.

You know?

Like they're just kind of different.

And what you mean is they need to change.

But that's not the different that that this word hagios means.

It means different in the sense that it's on a whole other level.

There's nothing like it.

It is unique, it is amazing, it is sacred.

So Jesus says, My Father, it's personal, it's intimate, it's relationship.

But then he addresses the holiness of God, that God is completely other, that he is above.

God himself lets us know this in Isaiah chapter 55.

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

This is kind of a classic scripture.

He says, My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Sometimes we don't understand God.

And sometimes we have to come to the come to grips with the fact that maybe we never will.

Because he's God.

So Jesus has both relationship and reverence.

And the reality is that if we come to God, if we approach God with those two things, with those two understandings present, we we have the right approach.

We really do.

We have the right approach.

But what's interesting is that so often it's easier for us to grab a hold of one of those, but sometimes it's really hard to have both at the same time.

So, for example, if you have reverence but not relationship, what you get is religion.

That's what you get.

If you have reverence without relationship, you will find yourself in this constant cycle of trying to perform and do well enough for God to listen to you.

And that is a trap that you do not want to fall in.

We do not serve a God who is requiring us to perform at a certain level in order to have relationship with Him.

It's not how it works.

And if it did work like that, we'd all be in a lot of trouble.

Right?

I heard a pastor say really recently in a message, I was listening to this online, it was brilliant.

He said that a lot of us believe God is disappointed with us because we're actually disappointed with ourselves.

But the reality is, and this is actually meant to be encouraging, the reality is God is far less surprised by your failure as you are.

Like he's just not a surprise that you've messed up.

And that's not because God doesn't expect a lot out of us.

No, God does.

He has high belief in who we are and what we're capable of.

But God does not hold us to an impossible standard.

Because God does not see us as his employees or his followers first.

He sees us as his children.

I've got four kids.

I talk about them all the time.

I'm so grateful.

Sometimes people say, are you frustrated that you're in the role you're in at the age that you are?

Because you got all these young kids, you don't get much sleep.

And I'm like, no, because they give me so much material.

It's awesome.

Like I have to give a message almost every week.

I need them.

I need them to keep being crazy.

It helps a lot.

I love my kids, but they underperform on a daily basis.

Like daily.

And my expectations aren't even that high.

And they find a way to subvert my low expectations every day.

I love them.

Like basic things.

When I put them to bed, I expect them to stay in their bed until the sun rises.

Or until it's just a reasonable time to wake up.

And we have we have like alarm clock things that light up when it's time for them to be able to get out of bed.

They're very simple, they don't work.

Those kids, they just don't care.

We will put our kids to bed and we will say, now you're gonna stay in bed, right?

And they're like, Yes.

Are you gonna get out of bed?

No.

You know?

Or you're gonna stay in bed until the morning, absolutely, and then 20 minutes later they're in our room.

You know?

I remember when Liam was like four, Megan told him, we were so frustrated because he was getting out of bed all the time.

And Megan said, You cannot get out of bed unless you are hurt.

And he came in our room, I'm not kidding, 20 minutes later and he said, I hurt my feelings.

Um they underperform.

I tell them to clean the basement and then they'll say it's clean.

I walk downstairs and I'm like, clearly, we have very different definitions of clean.

Like they underperform all the time.

But here's the funny thing about it: it doesn't change the way I feel about them at all.

And those of you with young kids, you know this, or if you've ever had kids, like it's crazy how you can be so frustrated with someone.

Like, just like, oh, if you were not my child.

Right?

I mean, how many of you have thought that you have kids?

If you were not my child, but they are your child.

They are.

And because they are your child, if you're just, even if you're just a halfway decent parent, you can be.

I'm just not, I don't wanna, I don't want to make you guys, I don't want to set the bar too high.

That's all, right?

Like just a halfway decent parent can be simultaneously angry with their child and still just madly in love.

That's just how it works.

And that's how God is with us.

We should never forget that he's our father.

Romans 8:15, Paul wrote this.

Romans 8:15

So you've not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.

Instead, you received God's spirit when he adopted you as his own children.

Now we call him Abba Father.

We call him the same thing Jesus did.

He's not just a father, he's your father.

So when you pray, make sure that relationship factor is there.

I never want my children to approach me as if they're not my children.

I don't want that to happen.

Don't do that with God.

But if you have, if you have relationship without reverence, then you also miss out on this amazing aspect of what it means to have God in your life.

If you pray with relationship, but no reverence, we're missing it.

And I'll be honest, we kind of live in this time, especially in the American church, where I think we like relationship more than reverence.

And so, as we've seen churches, and our churches is like one of these churches where we're trying really hard to engage culture and be you know more relaxed and things like that, sometimes it can actually bleed into the way we talk about God and it can become uh much less reverent than maybe it needs to be.

And as I was studying this this week and really praying about it, it hit me: man, if Jesus was reverent when he prayed, how much more reverence should I pray with?

I mean, if Jesus took time to acknowledge the holiness of God when he prayed, shouldn't I?

And I'm not saying you can't pray and say, like, hey dad, what's up?

Like, you can.

I don't, I'm not saying God's mad at that.

I'm just saying Jesus, Jesus, when he prayed, he he made sure to take time to make room for addressing the holiness of God, to come to God the Father reverently.

And what I think we would find is that is that if we if we committed to that, not not at the cost of relationship, not for the sake of being formal, because it's not about formality at all.

But it is about acknowledging that God is God.

Because here's the reality: because of his holiness, on our own, we could not approach God.

Like we would die.

In fact, in the Old Testament, Moses, who is this prophet, crazy close with God, he's like, I want to look at you in the eyes.

I want to see you face to face.

Like, really?

And God says, it would kill you.

It would kill you.

But I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll let you like hang in the crevice of this rock and I'll just kind of pass by.

And you'll sort of see me.

You'll see me from behind, actually.

And Moses did that, and his face literally glowed to the point that they had to put a cloth over his face because it freaked people out.

Like, think about that.

God says, if you if you came face to face with my holiness, you wouldn't be able to stand it.

You would die.

And we might think, man, that's really weird, but think about like radiation.

I've talked about this before.

Like radiation, you can't see it.

But if you're near something that's radioactive, it'll kill you.

Because it just has a power in and of itself that you can't handle.

God's holiness is like that.

And in our natural state, because of sin, we can't be in the presence of a holy God and survive.

But Jesus on the cross made us holy.

He took our sin and he gave us his holiness.

Now we have this radiation suit, we can approach God.

It's great.

It's good.

But but we gotta we gotta think about it this way.

When Jesus died on the cross, he changed things.

He changed things.

That's why it's really frustrating when you see people take Jesus, make him into a religion, because it's as if nothing changed.

It's just new rules.

No, no, Jesus fundamentally changed things on the cross.

But what changed?

God or us?

Us.

God didn't change.

We became more holy, if you want to think about it like that, but God did not become less holy.

So even though we've been raised up, and now because of Jesus, we have this relationship with God and we can approach God, it doesn't change the fact that God is God, that He's holy, that He's powerful, that He's above everything, and it does us so much good to acknowledge that.

It does us so much good.

Remember, it's not about being fearful slaves, it's not about trembling, but it does your life a lot of good to daily acknowledge that God is God.

Because look, here's the way it works.

Something will always be in the top spot in your life.

Something will always be in the top.

I don't believe in atheism in the sense that I don't even believe there's there's really a such thing as a true atheist.

Because everyone worships something.

Everyone worships something.

Everyone treats something in their lives with reverence.

I know people who treat their football team with a lot of reverence.

You know, like they basically have this whole Sabbath day set of rituals for the game.

Like, first, we must lay out the wings.

Okay?

Blue cheese on the left, ranch on the right for people who can't handle the blue cheese, which is the right way to eat a wing, but I digress.

Okay, sorry.

Um, you know, it's okay, it's okay.

Just you ranch eaters, just pray.

God will help you with that.

He'll help you.

It's not a big deal.

Ranches just diet blue cheese.

That's all it is.

Like, just go for the real thing.

Um, no, but we always have something in our lives that we we give reverence to.

Even people who don't believe in a supernatural God, there's something in their life that they worship.

They just don't use those words.

Something will always be in the top spot.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was very good friends with a man named Charles Floyd.

And my grandmother has lots of stories of times where Charles came and spent time, spent the night at my great-grandfather's house.

They were really good friends.

Now, Charles Floyd was better known by an alias, it was Pretty Boy Floyd.

And in the 1930s, at one point in time, he was number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

He became number one after a man named John Dillinger, who was number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list, was killed.

When he died, Pretty Boy Floyd became number one, and then he was killed by the FBI and someone else became number one.

But here's the way it works: when Dillinger died, it wasn't like there were three number twos and no number ones.

That's not how it works.

That's not how you make lists.

Something is always number one.

As soon as he died, Pretty Boy Floyd rose to the top.

He's now number one.

And then when he died, someone else became number one because something always occupies the top spot.

Always.

And when it comes to our lives, there will always be something that we place above all things.

And if that isn't God, we find ourselves in trouble.

Like sometimes I think if you read like the Ten Commandments, for example, Old Testament, some of it seems really out of date.

You know?

It just does.

It just seems kind of kind of old-fashioned.

Like, have no other gods before God.

And we're Christians, most of us in the room, or at least open to that idea, or here against our will, one of those three options.

So, like, it almost seems foreign to us.

Like, of course I wouldn't worship another God.

But whatever's in the top spot of your life, that's your God for all intents and purposes, because that's what you're hoping in.

Like, that's what you're depending on, that's what you're praying to, essentially.

Because you're saying, this is what I must serve, this is what I'm relying on, this is what I believe will dictate my life.

And I've put all kinds of stupid things, number one.

There have been seasons in my life where my problems have been number one.

Where I've actually treated my circumstances, my issues as if they're God, because I have accredited great power to my problems, and I've really basically said, hey, you reign my life.

You reign over my life, you rule my life.

And if I think that way, I'm actually saying that my problems, they're my God because they have all the power.

There have been times where I've put relationships, even good relationships, in that top spot.

And I've actually lived my life primarily focused on that person.

And no matter how good the people in your life are, they're not God and you don't want them to be.

You don't.

Sometimes we put ourselves in that spot.

We make daily sacrifices at the altar of our own wants and our own desires.

But listen, you don't want to be God.

Like you don't want to be God.

That's a hard job.

That's a really hard job.

I was talking to a young person this last week who was leading some other people in a teaching.

And it was kind of a difficult teaching.

It's one of those teachings in scripture where God takes someone's life.

And we read those and we're like, whoa, I don't like that God.

You know?

I don't want God to do that.

And he's like, man, what do I do with this?

And I and we talked about it for a long time, but I said, look, here's what you have to understand.

We have a tendency as people to think that we are somehow more fair, more just, more patient than God.

If any of us in the room had God's power for more than a week, there would be dead people.

Okay?

There would be lots of dead people.

We would be like, we might last a few days, but eventually we'd be like, you know what?

You don't need to be here anymore.

Okay?

You're gone.

And so God is unbelievably patient.

Unbelievably patient.

If we make ourselves God, if we put ourselves in that top spot, if we live for ourselves, that's a trap.

Because you're not God and you don't want to be.

And the pressure that exists with someone who lives as if they're God, it means everything depends on you, your own creativity, your own intelligence, your own power.

That's what you're relying on.

Man, that is an exhausting way to live.

But when we pray with reverence and we say, you're God, we put God in that top spot day by day, we have peace.

I think that's why it's so important for us to pray with reverence because it's like, oh yeah, he's God.

He's God and He loves me.

And I don't have to have it all figured out, and I don't have to have all the answers, and I don't have to worry about everything because I've I've God.

He's holy, He's different, He's powerful, and He loves me.

And so when you pray, when you pray, pray with reverence.

Put God number one, reaffirm that in your heart and pray with relationship.

You are His son, you are His daughter.

If you if you struggle approaching God, approach God like that.

Approach God like that, and you will you will find the right approach.

It's not complicated, it's not hard, it's not it's not like rocket science, just relationship and reverence.

If you have those two mindsets, those two understandings, you'll approach God and you'll be in the right spot.