Family Prayer

Morning, Church.

Our scripture reading today is Psalm 127.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his clip quiver with them.

He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Morning.

And I'm glad to be here with everyone.

It's a privilege to preach.

As a lay elder, it's always a joy to be able to sort of fulfill the responsibilities that God has given us as elders.

And it's also a joy to be able to give the Rathmans some time to adjust to being a family of five.

This is my first time preaching in front of the King of Pop.

I don't actually think it's Michael Jackson.

The first time I saw it, I did, but I think it's a little too husky for MJ.

But uh I it's been seven weeks and nobody's mentioned it, so I figured somebody had to.

We got some stock imagery and an Illuminati logo up there for Christ is enough.

So um yeah, so uh this series is Christ is enough, obviously, and um this might sound sound familiar uh or you might get tired of it now, seven weeks in, but uh we as the elders got together earlier this summer uh for a retreat, and one thing that came out of that retreat was uh a desire for us as a as a church to grasp um the sufficiency of Christ and to grow deeply in our our trust of uh the power of his resurrection.

And so sort of the outworking of that are a few things that we kind of identified as areas that we wanted uh to grow in as a church is uh prayer, generosity, and Sabbath.

So we have this uh nine-part series that we've been working through.

This is week seven, I think, um, where we've been looking at those three areas uh at sort of different levels, seeing how prayer, generosity, and sabbath applies to our personal life, how it applies at our family life, and then how it applies at the church uh within the church.

And so uh this week we're talking about prayer within the family context.

We got a little out of order because uh the Brathmans couldn't have their baby on time.

Uh so um, but yeah, so this morning we're we're talking about uh prayer and family.

Um and so we've we've already James has already covered uh prayer and and how it kind of looks in our personal life and then prayer, how it looks uh at the the church level.

So now we're kind of like doing the Goldilocks situation right in the middle, how it applies to family.

Um and so James talked about uh Philippians 4 and uh looked at how uh the because Christ is resurrected from the dead, that we uh we can rejoice in all things and that we can um not be anxious in anything and that we can take our petitions to the Lord.

And then we looked at uh the uh Jesus' instruction to us uh to pray in the Lord's Prayer that we we read this morning and uh see how that applies to us as a church.

Um prayer, especially in the in the family context, is something that is really meaningful to me.

Um one of the best prayers, person that prays that I know uh is my grandmother.

Um this summer we we spent uh a week with my family, a week with my grandmother, and uh she has uh Alzheimer's now, and so I I'm not sure that that whole week if she really even knew that she was spending time with me.

Um she knew she was with our her family, but um she did she reminded me that she's praying for me.

And I I know that that's true because uh that's something that she's been saying to me for my entire life.

Every time that I see her, every time I talk to her on the phone, um, she would remind me that she's praying for me.

And um, and she's praying for she she's praying for our whole family, for my brother and for our cousins.

Um she prays for us every day.

Uh, and that's something that she's passed on to my mom as well, her mom.

Uh my mom also prays for me uh a lot and reminds me of it as well.

And so uh I think in some part, probably in a larger part than I even realize, I'm standing here today as a result of uh those prayers.

Um and so I I hope that that's sort of a uh a life that we can cultivate as a church to be deeply praying for our families.

Um so this morning we're gonna go through Psalm 127, and typically we preach expositionally here uh at redemption, and that means that we take uh a big chunk of scripture or even a whole book and we just walk through it verse by verse each week.

Um, but there's sometimes room for topical sermons like we're doing this summer, and uh that's what we're doing this morning.

So, in some ways, uh I'm just gonna kind of blitz through Psalm 127.

If you're used to being how we normally preach, it's gonna feel like lightning speed, so just a warning.

But we're gonna look at one 127 as uh sort of a foundation for prayer, and then we'll look at that how that really applies in our our family life and then land on some sort of practical applications.

So, sort of an outline of where we're going this morning.

But before we get into talking about prayer more, let me pray.

Lord, uh thank you for this morning that we can come together as your people and uh gather around your word together.

Uh we know that that your word is powerful and active.

And um, would you uh just allow my words to speak to our hearts this morning?

Would you um through through my faltering and uh uh imperfect words, would you open our hearts to see uh the wonder in your word uh and the wonder of who you are and of how we can um grow in our communion with you.

Uh we pray all this in your name.

Amen.

So uh be kind of as one more little uh introduction before we get into Psalm 127, I I just want to acknowledge that uh family can come with a lot of baggage for for some of us.

You may be here this morning and uh not have the family that you want.

You may uh desire to be uh a husband or a wife, or desire to be a mom or a dad, and that's hasn't worked out yet for you.

Um or maybe uh you you think of your childhood and it's one filled of uh loneliness or rejection or even abuse.

And so thinking of family is not something that's uh easy to talk about or think about.

Um or maybe you're here this morning and uh currently your family life is one that's full of conflict um or just hardship.

Um and so I think if you kind of identify with that, I think it's it's natural to kind of check out or feel uh disconnected when we start to talk about family.

Um, but I just want to remind us for one thing that regardless of where you're at in life, regardless of your uh kind of perceived family uh connections right now, that we we all are part of a family.

Uh it's it's easy to think that family kind of just applies from zero to eighteen years old.

Uh and and if you're not a in a young family, then this kind of sermon doesn't apply to you.

But we all are still uh brothers and sisters or sons and daughters.

And so we all still have a family that uh we are at some level participating in.

Um but then also I think it's important to remember how Jesus talks about family.

Um he sort of redefined what family means for us as Christians and uh extended it beyond just biological connections.

Uh in the Gospel of Mark, he asks sort of a rhetorical question: Who is my mother?

Who is my brothers?

Then he he points at his disciples and says, My mother and my brothers are those who do the will of my Father in heaven.

And so in Christianity, uh, because of our faith in Jesus, we are all family here this morning.

Um however, we do have a lot of young families uh as part of our church.

So a lot of this sermon will be kind of directed in that direction.

But I think all of the concepts that we're going to be covering, talking about this morning uh are applicable to all of us, whether you're a a mom of six children or not.

Um Psalm 127.

A song of ascents of Solomon.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior, are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.

He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

So, like I said, I'm just going to kind of blitz through this and try to just pick out the main themes.

Um, first, this is a psalm about families.

Uh it's a reminder that our families, our children, are a gift from the Lord.

Um, in verse one, when it talks about building up our house, a house is a biblical shorthand for family or for lineage, um, not just for a physical house.

So the house of Abraham, the house of David, that's often how the Bible refers to the people of Israel, the family of Israel.

Uh and so this psalm throughout is talking about how our families are a gift from the Lord, and our families are something that we need to trust in the Lord to provide for.

So there's sort of two main thrusts in how we that trust in the Lord develops.

Um in what when we think about our lives, when we think about our families, the the first is the building up of our families, uh, or the building up of our goals, our dreams, our ambitions, our career, our reputation, all that sort of within the idea of building up our house.

And then the second idea is keeping safe that which we have built up, to keep those people and those possessions safe from the things that we fear.

And so what this psalm is pointing out is that although those desires are good, the desires to build up and protect a family and a life, they can really easily be twisted into one that's just filled with at best anxious toil and at worst vain living if we don't put our ultimate trust in the Lord.

We want to be in control of the things that we're building in our lives and in our families.

We want to be in control of the safety of our family in our lives.

But guess what?

We're not.

Instead, this psalm reminds us that the Lord is the one building up the house, our dreams, our goals, our families, that we can lay down and rest at peace because we know that he's sufficient and he provides all that we need.

And this psalm is showing us that unless we're putting our trust in him, our lives will be full of anxious nights, awake worrying, and early mornings where we awake in order to try to eke out just a little more time to get our lives back under control.

This psalm uh was written either by David or Solomon.

We're not sure which one.

Uh, I read the subtitle of the that you might see in your Bible.

Um in the ESV it says of Solomon.

In other translations it says for Solomon.

So the psalm was either written by David for his son Solomon or by Solomon himself.

Um and David, the Bible refers to as a man after God's own heart.

Uh and he had a life spent in circumstances where both the building up of his house and the safety of it were constantly under threat.

But his heart was one of almost constant trust in the Lord.

He was made king of Israel and as a king had a desire to build a permanent temple for the Ark of the Covenant where God resided.

Uh previously the Israelites had just been carrying the ark around in a tent.

Uh and so his desire to construct the temple was met with uh a response from God where God made it clear that it was not David who would build a a house for God, but rather that the Lord would build a house for David.

Uh in 2 Samuel chapter 7 says uh God says kind of through the prophet uh Nathan, and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth, and I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more, and violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

So David's life, David's experiences, were an example of through through all of the circumstances that he faced of him trusting the Lord to build up his family, his reputation, his life, to protect his life.

And uh he trusted the Lord uh through that almost absolutely.

But his son Solomon, on the other hand, is sort of a foil, a mirror image of that.

Although God gave him great wisdom, and through that wisdom he his life was uh full of great success, um, his heart often strayed after idols.

And so he saw and experienced the folly of living a life relying on his own strength, not always relying on the Lord.

So, in short, this psalm, Psalm 127, is reminding us that our striving is not enough.

We are not meant to bear the full weight of the building up of our families and their protection.

Only Christ is enough.

I hope that we can grow in our personal trust and in our families' trust to believe the truth of the reality that Christ is enough.

When we trust in the Lord to both build up our houses and keep watch over the city, our family life begins to take a different shape.

When we more fully grasp the sufficiency of Christ, we're able to extend love to one another without fear of rejection.

Rather than waiting to make sure that an action will be met with a response that's beneficial to us, we can lead in extending grace and mercy.

When we begin to grasp that Christ is enough, we can make decisions without anxiety around outcome.

Life, but parenting especially, is filled with decision making.

How much screen time?

Should we do public school or homeschool or private school?

When should they get a phone?

God doesn't necessarily put a clear answer to these kind of questions right in front of us.

And part of why parenting is so hard is because there isn't some magic formula that guarantees an outcome.

Even if we could somehow make all the right decisions, our children aren't necessarily going to turn out the way that we hope.

But we can know that God is the one who's caring for our families and providing for our families and protecting our families so that we can move forward in making decisions not out of fear or anxiety, but in trust in Him.

And even if we know that we've made wrong decisions in the past, or even right now have our children are operating out of wrong decisions that we're making now, or we're failing our children in some way, we can still trust in him.

We're going to fail as parents.

But it's the Lord who's protecting and building our families.

He is enough.

When we begin to grasp that Christ is enough, we also grow in extending grace and mercy.

We can allow messes, mistakes, silliness in our family, even sin to occur without unbridled anger, but gentleness and discipline.

And when we begin to grasp that Christ is enough in our family, our families begin to increasingly be marked by prayer.

So this is where we finally get around to talking about prayer.

Psalm 127, you might have noticed, doesn't explicitly talk about prayer, but I think the concepts here are tightly integrated into prayer.

Prayer is a recognition that we need someone outside of ourselves to act in our lives.

And the very act of praying is starting down the same road that this psalm has been traversing.

Prayer begins to help us conform our minds to think along the same lines that the Bible teaches, and it helps our hearts to conform to the reality that we're not God, we're not the Christ, but that He is in control.

He's on the throne, and He is enough.

But that's not all that prayer is.

Uh as I've been preparing for this sermon, uh I realized that one way that, or kind of the way that I was thinking about prayer, uh, I think is is really common among modern Christians, but is not quite right.

Uh I've heard people say, and I probably has have said it before, that prayer is primarily about changing our perspective.

But that's not true at all.

Prayer can change our perspective and often does, but it's not just personal therapy.

It's not just venting or talking into the void, talking through our thoughts to get them out of our head and relieve ourselves of stress and anxiety.

Prayer is communing with the God of the universe.

Uh it's kind of insane when you think about it.

Talking with God who created everything, the one who set the stars in their orbit, who knows them by name, who uh created each of us in our mother's womb, the God.

And he he wants us to to talk with him.

Uh and he listens to us.

That's just wild.

Um and he he doesn't just uh stand back and listen sort of uh with without intervening.

Um throughout the Bible, there's many instances when it's clear that God was moving in one direction, uh, and then because the prayers of his children, he elected to move in a different direction than he first intended.

And that's how the Bible describes our prayer, that God is listening to us and acting based on what we're acting asking of him.

So I think uh uh I want to remind us of uh who we pray to, to remember uh who God is as we pray to him.

First, we're praying to a God who hears.

We're praying to a God who designed us, who created the world and created created us in order to be in community with him.

He longs for us to pray to him.

Uh and the Bible is just filled with this idea.

I have a bunch of verses that Matthew's going to try to keep up with as I read.

The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

Psalm 145.

Psalm thirty-four.

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

Matthew seven, seven through eight.

Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find.

Knock and it will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

James five.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

First John five.

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

Psalm sixty six.

But truly God has listened.

He has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.

Isaiah 65.

Before they call, I will answer.

While they are yet speaking, I will hear.

God hears.

These are just a few verses, and this is ideas throughout the Bible.

That God hears our prayers.

And he doesn't just hear prayers from people that deserve to be listened to.

These verses are talking about us, talking about sinners like us.

So remember that when that we pray.

And remember this as you pray.

Remember this and help your family to think this way as you pray with your family.

Not only does God listen and answer our prayers, but we're praying to a God who loves us even as we reject Him.

He created us to be in perfect communion with Him, but through our sin we we have rejected that.

But He has continued to pursue us to bring us as a family back together again.

Listen to how God describes Himself in Exodus 34.

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and for transgression and sin, but who will no by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

Is this how you think about God when you pray?

A God who extends love and forgiveness to the thousandth generation, but brings guilt only onto the third or to the fourth?

Is this the kind of balance that you bring to your discipline and your in your family?

And we're not done yet.

There's more to know about God.

God doesn't just love us from afar, in theory.

But as we see in John chapter 1, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

John 1 · chapter mention

Glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus took on our human form in all its frailty.

He became one of us, so that we may be saved.

Philippians says, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And then he rose again that we may have life in him, and he continues to live.

In fact, he's still interceding with us, or for us, on our behalf.

Romans 8 34 says, Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

This is who we are addressing when we pray.

A God who is loving and compassionate, who longs for us to talk with him, to give him our burdens, and our dependence on him is in is reflected in how we pray to him.

Alright, so now let's talk about prayer in the family context.

First, I just want to be clear and explicitly say that we need to teach our children to pray.

Deuteronomy six, uh, as the commandments are given to the Israelites, God says uh through through Moses, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

And then in Ephesians it says, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So it's clear that in throughout the Bible that we are called as parents to teach and to model our to our children the ways, the words, and the disciplines of the gospel.

And one of those ways is through prayer.

Um, I also want to remind us that it's it's always beneficial to gather together in prayer.

And parents, I think it's extremely powerful to be modeling dependence on God.

It's important for us to show our children not just how to pray, but also the posture of our heart as we pray.

To show them that we are not fully sufficient as their parents, that we rely on God, and that they can grow up seeing that their parents don't have it all together, that their parents aren't God, but that they rely on God.

Paul says, pray without ceasing.

So let's let our family lives be marked by prayer.

I think it's also a helpful to reminder that uh to know that prayer is something that's learned.

I think James touched on this a couple weeks ago, but um, even for us as adults or mature Christians, not just for children, we can can grow in our prayer lives.

Uh, in the Lord's prayer that we read this morning and that James uh talked about a couple weeks ago, uh Jesus prefaces with, and this is how you should pray.

He gives explicit instruction on how to pray.

And so it's not something that might totally be natural to us.

Prayer is like a muscle that we must exercise, that we can learn to pray, and that we can improve our prayer lives.

So, with all that in mind, uh, I want to offer some instruction on uh what we should pray for our families.

First, we should pray for what God cares about, specifically for the salvation of our children, and that they would grow to know God and to know his the the depth of his love for them.

In Ephesians chapter three, Paul prays this for the Ephesians.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, for whom every family in heaven and the earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit and your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints.

What is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

There is so much in that prayer, and uh we could preach tons of sermons have been preached on just that passage, but uh if if nothing else, just pray this prayer for your children and for your family.

We can see in this passage that Paul mimics the heart of Christ, that his brothers and his sisters, his family in Christ would be filled with the fullness of God by knowing the love of Christ.

And so that that's kind of the big E on the eye chart as we pray for our children, as we pray for our families, as we pray for our brothers and sisters, even our parents, that our our primary way of thinking should be to align with the the things of God, the things that God cares about, namely our family's salvation and the knowledge of God's love for them.

Relatedly, I think it can be really powerful to pray prayers directly from the Bible and to put our family's name in them.

There isn't anything magic about this, of course, but I think it's helpful to be specifically thinking about and saying the names of our family as we pray biblical texts.

And again, I think this is helpful for us to align our hearts with God's hearts and align our prayers with God's heart.

Um, often we find the prayers in the Bible have much more adoration, praise, thanksgiving, and confession in them than ours typically do.

So it's helpful to be gaining the muscle memory of having intimate conversations with God where we talk with wonder about how wonderful he is, and we confess our need for him to work in our sinful lives, and then we we thank him for doing so.

And then beyond that, I think it's pretty simple.

We just need to make requests of the Lord.

Jesus asks for many different requests.

He says that we're to be like children, and children are really good about asking for whatever they need and want.

So, children and young adults here this morning, when you're praying, talk to God like He is a loving father who wants to provide you with good gifts, because He is.

And teach your parents about how you ask for things, and parents learn from their prayers.

As we're doing so, I I also think it's important for us to remember that God is not just a cosmic vending machine who we're just trying to get as much stuff out of as possible, but that he's a person who we can praise and someone who we can go with our burdens to, and he's glad for to forgive us of our sin and someone uh who we don't just be asking and asking and asking, but someone who we can be in a relationship with.

Uh, and someone who wants us to be in a relationship with him.

And then uh I think it's also valuable to help shepherd our children, help shepherd ourselves, to pray for people, not just for things.

Uh, an easy prompt is to ask, who would we like to pray for rather than what should we pray for?

Uh we can freely ask God of anything, uh, and and Jesus often asks God for physical stuff, physical possessions, but it's helpful to mold our hearts in the direction of valuing and caring for people over possessions or even circumstances.

All right, as we move towards wrapping up, uh I just want to land on a few very practical ideas about how we can pray with our families.

And just to be clear, this list of a few items is not something that the Bible uh explicitly commands us of or uh is something that you must do, but it's rather just a list of things that either I've found we've found helpful in our family or things that I've read in books that could be helpful in forming our families to start to trust uh in the Lord in the way that the Bible is calling us to trust and to pray.

So, number one is uh incorporate family prayer into our daily rhythms.

If you remember back ages ago, probably at least 30 minutes ago, when we were looking at Psalm 127, uh, the psalm is pointing to daily rhythms in our lives as a reminder of who God is.

Uh and so we can use prayer, uh we can use those rhythms as a time to pause and pray together with our families.

Uh one that's very common is uh to pray before meals.

Uh, another rhythm could be when you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning.

That's what we kind of saw in Psalm 127.

Uh or another one could be as you're leaving the door in the morning, going out to work or to school, just to pause just for a minute with your family and pray together.

And you can obviously think of uh many more times that you could use to stop and to pray together.

But I encourage you to mark your daily rhythms with prayer.

Number two is to pray in times of trouble and in times of beauty.

And what I mean by this is simply to let our circumstances dictate our prayer in some way.

If we're going through something major, to pray for that together as a family.

Or if something small happens, a skin knee, also let that be a time when you you pray and you ask for God for healing and ask God to comfort uh your children's tears.

And ask for uh ask your children to pray for you too.

Don't just let it be a one-way street.

Or on the flip side, if your family experiences something wonderful, even if it's just coming around the corner on I-70 and seeing the sun uh coming down on the mountains, uh stop and and let that beauty prompt you to thank God together as a family.

Number three is to pray after conflict.

I've never uh experienced this myself, but I've heard that conflict is very uh common in families.

Uh my wife said not to say that joke, but uh there definitely is conflict in in my family, but it's usually not my never my fault, really.

Uh Beth said not to say that one either.

But uh for Christians, resolving conflict means confession, repentance, and forgiveness.

And whenever we sin against one another, it's not just each other that we're wronging, but God.

And so praying together after conflicts from time to time, not necessarily every single time, uh, and confessing our sin before the Lord together reminds us of the forgiveness we've received from Christ and that we can extend to one another.

And I think it's important to do this not just when your kids get in conflict, but uh conflict between parents and parents and conflict between parents to children.

So, just as kind of a recap, pray together often as a family.

Let your life be marked in prayer.

Use daily rhythms as a reminder to pray.

Pray in times of trouble and in response to God's answered prayer or gifts to our families, and pray after conflict.

Go to him in prayer.

Whether you're thankful for the mercy of a new morning, or whether you are in a place of seemingly host hopeless desperation, go to him.

We can trust in God.

Because what does the story of his family look like?

He created us humans to share in the wonderful communion of his love, to be his sons and daughters.

But we rejected him.

Instead of choosing him, we all follow in the lineage of our father Adam.

We reject God as our father and rebel against him.

We are wayward children who have turned away from God and ripped ripped our families apart.

But God does not abandon us in our rebellion.

Instead, he sent his son Jesus to rescue us, to restore us to our rightful standing in the family of God and redeem our broken stories.

So there's hope.

Run to him.

If you've not put your trust in him before, he is trustworthy.

If you're in the midst of a family drama or broken marriage or long-standing conflict, go to him in prayer and know that he is enough.

He does watch over the city, he does build the house.

Are there any questions this week?

How do we make sense of God's sovereignty in light of the Bible's picture in the verses we covered today of a God who appears to change his mind or will in response to our prayer?

Uh yeah, I should have anticipated that question.

Um at some level, I think this is just a mystery that we as humans can't fully comprehend.

That this is how God operates.

That at some level He He is sovereign, He uh is in control of everything, and that we can trust His sovereignty.

And then at another level, He has given us agency to make decisions in our life, to sin, uh, and also to ask Him of things, and He responds to that agency uh because He loves us.

And so I guess at some level I don't have probably a satisfying answer.

Maybe James does, and you can ask him later.

But uh I I think the for me, the satisfying uh part of that is is that there is a mystery to God.

We we shouldn't expect to be able to understand everything about God or else he wouldn't be God.

He would be just like us.

But he is is so far above us that we can't understand uh everything about how he operates.

But we do know that, and he reminds us over and over again that he loves us and that he hears our prayers and that he acts on our prayers.

And so the mystery of God is not whether he cares for us, whether he responds to us.

The mystery is how he does that.

And so we can trust in his goodness, we can trust in his sovereignty as we make decisions for our families, for ourselves.

And we can also know that our prayers are not just meaningless uh words out into the void, but they actually have weight in the way that God operates.

Um hope that was helpful at some level.

Um let me pray and then we'll we'll take communion.

Lord, uh, thank you that that we can talk to you, that um you you long for us to to have a right relationship with you, that you long for us to um give us your burdens and and make or give us our give you our burdens and and make requests to you.

Um would you would you help us uh to to grow in our dependence on you, to grow in our trust in you, and and would you let uh one outworking of that just be a rich um communion, a rich uh relationship, rich prayer life uh with you, both in the in our personal lives and in our families.

And we pray all this in your name, amen.