Closer – Closer through Prayer

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Let's get to work today, everybody.

Today we are in part two of our brand new year series.

The series to get us kind of going this year.

The series is called Closer.

And this is my prayer for you as your pastor, that as a result of the series, and as a result of you being intentional, that at the end of the series, and really at the end of this year, you'll look back at this year and say, I've never been closer to God than I am now.

This whole, the whole idea for this verse, this series comes out of a verse in the book of James, chapter four, where James, the half-brother of Jesus, said, Come near to God, and he will come near to you.

Essentially, what James is saying is if you'll just take one step towards God, you'll find that he comes running after you.

So last week I preached kind of a hard message with a couple hard questions.

And I asked this, I said, How close are you actually to Jesus?

And maybe a harder question is, how close do you want to be?

I think for a lot of us we get scared.

I think for a lot of us there is this sense that like if I get too close, he's gonna require something of me.

He's gonna force me to change, he's gonna make me something I don't want to be.

But I'm telling you, on the other side of that fear is the greatest adventure of your life.

Speaking of adventures, today's kind of a fun day.

Our amazing children's pastor, Pastor Ida, is literally right now, as we're in service, she's running the Disney Marathon.

Now, this is um this is a picture of her last year crossing the finish line.

This is a face of joy.

If you asked me to run a marathon, your boy would be struggle busing.

That's what would be happening.

And so this week my boys were talking about it because my boys have that weird sickness where they like to run.

I'm like, what are you running from?

You know, and so my boys were asking me a question.

They said, Dad, if you had to, could you run a marathon at an 11-minute pace?

And if you did it, you'd win a million dollars.

I thought about this for a moment.

I can run a mile under a minute.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not trying to do that, but I can.

But could you run 26.2 miles at an 11-minute pace?

And if you do, you win a million dollars.

And I thought about it and I said, boys, I want to, but let's be real, I am unable to.

And I I don't know how you feel about this, but there's a significant difference between wanting to and being able to.

And the the truth is a lot of us might say, I could go for it, I'd give it my best shot.

I'd be trying.

But the problem is there's a significant, significant difference between trying and training.

Here's what I know.

I know that I probably couldn't try hard enough.

I would die giving it my best effort, but there's a difference between trying and training.

I think that if I gave myself a year and this was my primary focus, if I if I trained, if I had a plan, if I actually got out and worked on it, I believe I actually probably could do that.

Can I tell you one of the funny things to me about a lot of Christians?

I think prayer is a lot like that.

I think a lot of us we would say that I want to pray, but the truth is I'm just unable.

Like I can't stay focused, I can't get my mind right.

It's like I pray everything I can think, and then it's been 32 seconds and I've run out of stuff to say.

And there's a huge difference between wanting to and being able to.

It's kind of like this.

A lot of us we we try to pray instead of training to pray.

And prayer is really the linchpin.

It is the thing that's gonna get you closer to God than anything imaginable.

So, as your pastor, one of the things I want to do for you is I want to try to give you a way to pray.

I want to put some handles on prayer so you don't spend your time exhausting yourself in God and you say everything you can, and like I said, 32 seconds later, you're out of stuff.

I want to teach you a way to pray to connect with God in a way that will draw you closer and closer to Him.

Now, if you hear me say this and you're like, oh man, busted.

Like I've been a I've been a Christian or a church person for a long time, but the truth is, like, I've tried, I've done, I've got, I've tried everything I can imagine, and I just can't do it.

Let me try to help you take a deep breath and exhale.

In the book of Luke, chapter 11, there's this moment when Jesus was praying.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

And I want you to see this.

Luke chapter 11, it says, one day Jesus was praying in a certain place.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

Pause here for just a moment.

I think the reason this matters is for a lot of us, we just try to, we try to grab at straws.

Jesus had a place that was a prayer place for him.

I think one of the things you can do when it comes to learning how to be a person of prayer is to have a place where you pray.

Where is the place where you're intentional about connecting with God?

And so Jesus is doing his thing in his place, and it says this when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, What was that?

Like, how did you do that?

Like, like I pray and you pray, and my prayers are different than your prayers.

Like, like my prayers feel like an email where you get the email address, you get one letter wrong, and it doesn't quite get there.

My prayers feel like they hit the ceiling and they don't get through the ceiling, but when you pray, it was like there was something different.

They said, Lord, teach us to pray.

And I don't know how that helps you, but this helps me so much because if those guys who are with Jesus struggled to pray, if those guys who saw all the miracles, who heard all the teachings, if those guys who were there didn't really know how to do it like Jesus did, then maybe it gives room for us to train or to learn to become more like Jesus in the area of prayer.

Let me start with this idea.

I want you to pull your message notes out.

We got lots of content today.

Let me start with this.

You need to understand about prayer that prayer doesn't move God toward us.

Prayer moves us toward God.

Prayer doesn't move God towards us, it moves us towards God.

God is waiting, longing for us to take a step towards him.

And if we'll take a step, scripture says he comes running.

So here's the thing I need you to understand.

Today, if you're like new to our church, today's gonna be a very teaching kind of sermon.

If you're like, man, I want a deep church, get ready, buckle up, it's about to be a lot of content.

And to understand this, if the goal of prayer is to get closer to God or to experience intimacy with God, you understand that every form of intimacy requires there to be some sort of process or protocol to get to the intimacy.

God has a process or a protocol for us to experience intimacy with Him in prayer.

In the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, I want you to see this verse.

This is old, Old Testament.

God said to Moses, have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary, like a place where I can meet with them.

Have them build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them.

Then I want you to notice what God said.

He says, You must build this tabernacle, we'll come back to that, and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you.

God says to them, I want you to build me a tabernacle.

Now I want you to know this.

A tabernacle was a portable kind of church.

Now, if you've been a part of Access for like in the last three or four years, you don't know this.

But before Access had this building or our building in North Lakeland or Bartow, before any of that happened for 13 years, Access didn't have a building.

Some people are like, that is so brave.

I'm like, no, that is stupid, is what that is.

It meant we rented YMCAs and schools and all kinds of places, and we would go into a building that was not meant to be built as a church, and we would set up chairs and lights and screens and sound and kids' environments and lobbies.

We would set all of that stuff every week.

We'd set it up, and then when services were over, an amazing team of people would tear it all down and put it all back into a truck or a trailer.

We did that for 13 long, stupid, long, stupid, long, really stupid, long years.

13 long, stupid years.

Still got PTSD from 13 long, stupid years.

Took a long time.

So here's what God said.

He says, I want you to build me a church, basically.

I want you to build a portable church.

And then did you notice at the end he said this?

He said, I want you to build it to the exact specifications I give you.

So don't like get your interior designers, don't channel your inner chip and Joanna.

I want you to do it exactly the way I say.

Now, in scripture, it gives us the dimensions and all the details of this tabernacle, this portable church.

Here's kind of an AI artist rendering of what it would have looked like.

And I want you to notice something.

The tabernacle that they would build, they would travel and they would set it up, and when they were to travel again, they would tear it down and they'd go set it up again.

It was one big tent, which was basically a bunch of walls.

And inside of the tent, as you get closer and closer, there was different pieces of furniture.

And then inside of the tent, the outside tent had no ceiling or roof on it.

There was a smaller tent that had a roof on it.

So one outer tent, no roof, lots of furniture, and then an inside tent that had a roof on it.

And so here's what I want to do.

This tabernacle is interesting.

It was it was comprised of six pieces of furniture.

And what God shows us through the tabernacle is that as people would come in, they would take seven different steps, approaching the six pieces of furniture.

Every step was a step closer to God.

And here's what I want you to understand.

Some years ago, a pastor named Larry Stockstill taught me this, and it changed my whole life.

This tabernacle prayer is a way for us to connect, and every step is a step closer to God.

So in your message notes, you should have some sort of a drawing.

It's gonna kind of look like this.

The tabernacle was all of these steps, and I want to show you how each step got us closer.

And then what's fascinating is the final step is a place.

We'll get to it at the end, but here is what the Bible says about what happens in the final step.

It says this, Exodus chapter 33.

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

Inside the tent of meeting, that's like the tent with the roof over it, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend.

So as Moses would go through all the steps, when he would get into that final place, the tent of meetings, or some people would call it the holy of holies, it says about that place that the presence of God was so enveloped, so strong in that place, that when Moses was in there, he would talk to God face to face, like a friend speaks to a friend.

Can I tell you as your pastor, this is my goal for you with prayer?

Is that prayer wouldn't be a one-way conversation where you exhaust yourself and you go through your to-do list?

That prayer wouldn't just be 30 seconds of you giving God everything you've got and being like, well, I guess that's it.

Where it would be a conversation between you and God.

In fact, let me say it to you strongly like this.

I believe one of the most important things that a follower of Jesus can learn is how to hear the voice of God.

One of the most important things you can do is learn to be a person of prayer and learn to discern what is the actual voice of God.

I want you to experience intimacy like God, with God, like Moses did, face to face, like a friend speaks to a friend.

So let's do this.

If you have your message notes, pull them out.

Lots of content.

It's gonna feel like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant today.

Let's get after it.

The way this process would start is that the people that were coming to worship God would come to the outside of the tent and they would approach the outside tent and they would enter in through what is called the outer court.

And the first step that they would take is when they got into the outer courts, they would give God thanks.

Let me pause here for just a moment.

This is how I think our prayers should start.

Isn't it funny how many of us, if we could do an audit of our prayer life, really what it is is us informing God of all the stuff that we feel like he's missed, right?

God, I need you to fix this, God, I need you to heal this, God, I need you to provide this, God, I need you to help that person, and then we feel bad because all we've prayed about is us, and then we're like, oh yeah, and God, would you help the people in California?

Like we we make it about us, but the truth is like this is not what prayer really is about.

If prayer is about intimacy and connection, really the protocol of all intimacy starts with intimacy starts with gratitude.

That we should spend our time giving God thanks for all he's done.

Look what the Bible says in the book of Psalm.

This is David talking.

Psalm 100, he says, Enter his gate with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him and praise his name.

When I was a kid, there was a song that we sang often that says, I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter his courts with praise.

And if you don't know what this is about, if you don't know that this is the tabernacle, you're like, Enter his courts?

Like, like, what is this?

Pickleball?

Is God gonna try to dunk on you on a basketball court?

This is a picture of the outskirts of this tabernacle.

And so here is what scripture wants us to understand that when we pray, we should give God thanks for what he's done and praise for who he is.

Well, we should start by giving God thanks for what he's done.

And let me give you this simple thought because maybe you're very nearsighted right now, maybe you're in a problem and you can't see past your problem.

If God never did anything else for you, you've got plenty to give him thanks for for the rest of your life.

It's important.

So we thank him for what he's done, and then we praise him for who he is.

One of the things I love about God is God is good, and God in theology, we would say he is immutable.

That means that God is who he is and he can't change.

It's not that he won't change, he literally cannot change.

His nature is good.

David says it like this in the book of Psalm 103.

It says, Praise the Lord, my soul, all my inmost being, praise his name.

Praise the Lord and forget not all his benefits.

You ever gotten a job and they're like, the salary is this much money?

And you're like, what about the benefits?

Like, what's in it for me?

Here's what David is saying.

I'm gonna praise the Lord for who he is, and the byproduct of a relationship with God is I get to experience the benefits.

And then he lists the five different benefits.

It's that he forgives all, who forgives all your sin and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies, next slide for me, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles, like the birds, not the football team.

That's what he's talking about.

Because ain't nobody need that.

See, so you could summarize this in this section of prayer by saying to God, God, you are my salvation, you are my healer, you have redeemed me, you have transformed me, you have blessed me.

Does any of this apply to anybody in the room today?

Come on, can we take a moment and can we just give God thanks and praise for who he is?

God, we thank you, and we worship you.

If he never did anything else, he's done more than we ever deserve or could ever begin to even imagine.

Then when you walked into the into the outer courts, out into the gates of this tabernacle, the first piece of furniture that you would see is this interesting piece of furniture.

Here's a kind of a cartoon picture of it.

It's called the brazen altar.

And the brazen altar was a place where there would be an animal sacrificed and dying or dead on the altar.

Why?

Well, in the Old Testament, the Bible's really clear that when there is sin, because God is holy, there had to be a payment for the sin, and the sin had to be blood that was shed.

So when a person sinned, in order to get forgiveness of God, they couldn't just come to church and be like, oh God, forgive me.

They would literally have to take an animal, a lamb or a goat or something, and they'd have to sacrifice it and kill it.

So as a person walked into this tabernacle and they saw the animal that was sacrificed there, it would be this reminder that it's because of my sin that that animal had to die.

What does it mean for us?

It means when Jesus came and gave his life on the cross, he was the final and the fulfillment of that.

Because he shed his blood.

You and I never have to do that again.

We can receive forgiveness once and for all.

So at the brazen altar, when we get to this second step of prayer, we focus on the cross.

What is the cross?

It's where Jesus gave his life for us.

I love what Paul says in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

He says, when we were utterly helpless, completely unable to fix our problems, utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died.

He spilled his blood for us sinners.

Some 750 years before Jesus came and lived and died.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied what was going to happen when Jesus came and gave his life for us.

Here's what he said.

He says about Jesus, but he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Pause here for just a moment.

I want you to see this.

There's a bunch of different things that happened when Jesus died on the cross.

It says he was pierced for our transgressions.

This represents the nails that were nailed through his hands, and I want you to see this about Jesus.

That what he did was to buy our salvation.

That's what spilled his blood.

It says he was crushed for our iniquities.

The difference between transgressions and iniquities are transgressions are sins that we just do.

Iniquities are the sins of our mind.

It's the things that we think about and then do.

It's funny because it's not just an accident or coincidence that it went over his head.

Where do we lack peace in our mind?

And then by his wounds we are healed.

This is the stripes on his back.

So when you get to this moment in prayer and you thank Jesus for all he's done for us, remember these words because I want you to see this.

It is the nails that give us freedom from our past.

It is the spear that went into his ribs that brings us freedom in my heart.

It is the crown of thorns that brings me freedom in my mind.

And it is the whip that he took on his back that gives me freedom in my body.

Let me say this to you.

Jesus wants you healed and whole in every part of your body.

He wants you saved, he wants your spirit made well, he wants your heart healed, he wants your mind healed, and he wants your body made well.

You can praise him and thank him for that.

And then once you move past the brazen altar, you get to the third step.

It's this kind of an interesting piece of furniture.

It was called the laver.

And the laver would have been this birdbath-looking bowl thing.

And it would have been filled with water, but lined inside of the laver would have been fragments of mirrors.

And what would happen is a person would come up to this and they would wash themselves.

They'd wash their hands or wash their face.

But when they looked into the water, they would see a reflection back of themselves.

Now remember, they're just coming from thinking about the sacrifice that was made for them.

And now they're approaching this thinking, who should be me at the labor.

What we do is we offer God every part of my life.

This is what we do.

God, you can have all of me.

Now, this doesn't mean you have to physically die to give yourself to God, but here's what it means it means that sinful part of you gets to die, and your life gets to be an act of worship.

Paul says it like this in the book of Romans, chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

He says, Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living, living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

And this, he says, is what worship is.

This is your spiritual act of worship.

So what Paul is saying is that when we get to this place, what we should do is we should say to God, God, I give you all of me.

Jesus, you gave your life for me.

Now I give all of me to you.

Maybe it helps you as you pray this part to think about the parts of your body.

God, my mind, I give it to you and I set it apart for your service.

My eyes, I refuse to look lustfully upon a person that is not my spouse.

God, my hands, take my hands and use them for your service.

God, my feet, may I step into the divine destiny you have for me.

It gives you just a picture of a way to pray and to offer your whole self to God.

After you get past the labor, you get to what is called the candlestick.

And it was this interesting candle with seven different candlesticks on it that burned with what's called a perpetual oil.

And the candlestick is a place where we remind ourselves to invite the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit to be active in my life.

You say, What is this?

Well, Jesus promised at the end or the beginning of the book of Acts that when he was leaving, he was leaving, but he wasn't leaving us alone.

He was sending a helper, someone to give us power to live out the life that God has called us to live.

Can I say this to you for a moment?

Um, this might sound braggy, and I don't mean it braggy, but there's some stuff I can do in my own strength.

Like I've been preaching for a long time.

I can write messages, I can live a life without the power of the Holy Spirit, but here's what I've discovered it's way better in life to not try to exhaust yourself doing everything in your own strength.

You're talented too.

And there's some stuff you can do in your own strength, but you weren't intended to do this life in your own strength.

So listen to me.

That meeting you're walking into that's got you stressed out, invite the Holy Spirit in.

That thing that's waking you up in the middle of the night, invite the Holy Spirit in.

Those chores, those tasks that are on your to do list that have you exhausted.

Don't do it in your own strength anymore, but invite the Holy Spirit in.

The book of Zechariah.

This minor prophet in the Old Testament.

It says, Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.

You can't do it in your own strength.

In the book of Isaiah, again, 700 years before Jesus, he said, the spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

And then look at all these descriptions: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Who wouldn't want that?

Who wouldn't want all of those things?

So don't try to do it in your own strength, but invite the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to enable you.

And here's one last one in the book of Galatians.

Paul gives us a list of what we call the fruit of the Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence of a person being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And he says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

You get all of these when your heart is enabled by the person of the Holy Spirit.

So you go through all these steps, and after you get past the candlesticks, which remind us of the work of the Holy Spirit, you come to this table, and this table is kind of one of the last steps before you get into the next tent, but it's called the table of showbread.

And the table of showbread would have some fresh-baked loaves of bread on it.

You ever um you ever been really, really hungry?

And you walked into a bakery.

Have you ever had this happen to you?

Many years ago, my family went to Hawaii, and Hawaii is six hours behind us.

And so what that means, I wake up early anyways, it means I was waking up at like two o'clock in the morning, Hawaii time.

So by the time it kind came time for us to get breakfast, I was ready for dinner.

You know what I'm talking about?

And I remember we went to this place that's famous in Hawaii for their special made donuts, and I walked in.

I promise you, I gained three pounds just smelling it.

It smelled so good.

The table of showbread is representative of something.

It's the table of showbread there, we claim the promises in God's word.

Why does this matter?

I think the reason that we're given this picture of bread is this reminder of it is what nourishes and it is what sustains us.

In the Old Testament, when when rabbis were teaching their students, they would often take some honey, which was an unbelievably expensive and rare delicacy, and they'd put some on their lips and they'd say, Taste that honey.

May the word of God be like honey on your lips.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus was talking one day and he said, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul gives us this picture of why we need the word of God.

He says, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

Several verses later, he says, Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray.

What does this mean?

Of all the different parts of what we call the armor of God, the only one that allows you to go on offense is the sword of the spirit, which is representative of the word of God.

Let me say this to you: you can't fight the battles that are happening spiritually around you in your own wisdom or your own strength, but God invites you to take his word and to take it into your tomorrow.

This is so important for us.

One quick thought on the Bible.

Many of us read the Bible wrongly, in my opinion.

We read for information.

You ever like read a book?

It doesn't have to be the Bible, and you read like six pages and you're like, I know I saw those words, but none of them got into my mind.

Like I didn't, I read them, but I didn't read them.

I think a lot of us read the Bible as like a to-do list.

Like I checked it, I did it.

What if you stopped reading for information and you read for transformation?

You'd be better to read a little bit and chew on it and then live it out.

That's what it looks like.

The next step after the table of showbread is what's called the altar of incense.

It was this place that burned incense.

It probably smelled like bed, bath, and beyond everybody.

You walk in, it's just really strong.

And this picture, you'd walk in, you'd go, you'd smell it, and it would smell beautiful and pleasing.

It's a picture of worship.

Well, what is worship?

Worship is when we take our breath and we return it to the one who gave it to us in the first place.

At the altar of incense, we worship his name.

What does this mean?

It means if God's giving you breath, you should take a few minutes and you should worship him.

Look what David said in the book of Psalm.

He says, Ascribe to the Lord the glory do his name.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

Earlier in the book of Psalm, David says this.

He says, Come, let us bow down and worship.

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.

Worship should be life, it should be everything to us.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon said, The name of the Lord is a strong tower.

The righteous run to it and are safe.

Why do we need to pray?

And why do we need to worship God?

Because it reconnects our soul to the one who gave it to us in the first place.

Well, then there's just a couple more steps as you keep getting closer and closer to Jesus.

The next step is this really interesting one because when you get to the very end, you get into the tent.

And in the tent, there was this veil.

It was like this curtain that separated kind of the outside from the inside of the tent.

And this is important because that last step was a place that was reserved only for the priest.

It was called the Holy of Holies.

In Exodus 28, kind of in the footnotes, it's not so it's like not in the Bible, but it's in the footnotes of your Bible.

There's a reference to an ancient Jewish tradition that when a priest would go into this place called the Holy of Holies, the presence of God was so strong that if they were not pure and blameless before God, they would fall over dead.

The ancient tradition was they would tie a rope around the priest's feet.

Because when he got in there, if he died, no one was going in to get him.

They just pull his dead body out of there.

And inside of this place, this last room, was a thing called the Ark of the Covenant.

Here is kind of an AI rendering of what we believe it would look like.

And scripture was really clear about what it would look like.

It was made from gold.

Everything was made to God's unbelievably specific rules.

It was carried by these poles, and the presence of God was so strong on this place that if a person touched it, even if you were carrying it and you lost your balance and you reached up just to steady it, if you touched it, you would die.

It is representative of God's presence.

And the priest would go in.

Let me give you a quick fun Bible note.

Only the priest could go.

Like thousands of years ago when the tabernacle happened, only the priest could go into the physical, tangible, experiential presence of God.

Because the veil separated the outside from the inside.

There's this interesting detail, but it's it's in the Easter story, we tell it.

It says that Jesus is crucified, and after he's crucified, then he he comes back from the dead, and all those things happen.

But but it says the veil is torn in two.

It's a little detail that maybe if you don't know the tabernacle story, it won't make sense to you.

But can I tell you what that that means?

It means that when Jesus died and rose again from the dead, now the presence of God wasn't just reserved for the religious elite or the priest, it's open to everybody.

All of us are invited in.

Here's the question I want you to wrestle with for just one second.

When you get into that place where you've literally prayed through all these steps and you're in the presence of God, what is the point?

I think for a lot of us, we think the point is that I'm just gonna soak.

Oh, God bless you.

I'm just gonna rest and enjoy his presence.

That's not the point.

The point of getting into that final step is to not focus on you, but it's to intercede for others.

Paul wrote a letter to this protege, Timothy, and he said this.

He said, I urge you then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and those in authority, that meet we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

I need you to get this.

When we get into the presence of God, don't make it about you.

And don't make it about your to-do list and all the things that you need God to do for you, but step into that moment and pray for other people.

A lot of us, what we do is we exhaust ourselves, we try as hard as we can, and then if we can't get the answers we need in our own strength, then we turn to God.

Let me teach you this.

Prayer should be our first response, not our last resort.

It should be the first thing we do, not the last thing we do.

I started the message by saying this.

I think for a lot of us, if we were to go out and try to run a marathon, the truth is we couldn't try hard enough to do it, but if we trained, we could.

I think for a lot of us, prayer feels the same way.

We've tried, we've tried, we've tried, but then we just throw up our hands and we give up.

What if we trained for it?

The reason we give you message notes, and the reason this matters so much to us is we want you to have a method or a way to pray.

And today I want to end a little differently.

Today I want to end by giving us a moment to do this together.

In fact, here's what I'm gonna do.

No matter where you're joining us, here in South Lakeland, North Lakeland, church online, wherever you are, would you stand up with me?

And we're gonna pray, and I want to model this for you, and I'm gonna lead us in prayer.

It'll take just a minute, but as we pray, I'm gonna ask you to not listen to the preacher today.

I'm gonna ask you to take a moment and I want you to chase after God with your own words and your own heart.

Let's start on the outer courts and let's pray.

Can we do this all across this place, North Lakeland and wherever you're joining us?

Can we just lift our hands towards heaven for just a moment and let's begin to pray?

So, God, in this place, we want to enter your courts with thanksgiving and praise.

God, thank you for everything you've done for us.

If you did nothing else for us, we have an eternity of stuff to say thank you for.

Come on now, use your words and thank him.

And God, we want to praise you for who you are.

You are good and you are faithful.

We remember all of the goodness and all of the benefits that come.

We worship you and we thank you.

Now let's move to the second step, which is that that that um that altar.

So, God, we come to the altar and we remember Jesus' sacrifice for us.

It's because of his death on the cross that forgiveness and salvation is available to us.

It's because of the crown of thorns that our mind can be at peace.

It's because of the stripes on his back that our hearts and our bodies can be made well.

So we say, Thank you.

So we move past that and we move to the labor and we say, God, would you take our lives as living sacrifices?

Every part of me belongs to you.

Take my mind and use it for things of you.

May my eyes see the things that you want me to see.

May my hands be used to do good, may my feet step into the divine purpose and destiny that you have for me.

God, we come to the candlestick and we remind ourselves that we can't do anything in our own strength, but it's because of the power of the Holy Spirit that we can do the things that we need to do.

So, Holy Spirit, would you would you work in our lives?

Go before us, give us the power that we need.

We come to the table of showbread and we remind ourselves that it is your word that sustains us like bread.

So, God, in this place, may we be people who hunger after your word.

May we not get distracted by phones and social media, but may our hearts be attuned to your word.

May we never fall for the lives of the enemy because we have a filter to know what is true, which is what your word says.

And then, God, we want to come to that altar of incense and we just want to take a moment and worship you.

Come on, with your own words, would you worship God for just a moment?

God, we worship you.

We use our breath and we return it to you and we say thank you, thank you, thank you.

You are so good, you are so kind, you are so wonderful.

We worship you in this place.

And then, God, we thank you that the veil was torn.

Thank you that we can enter into your presence.

We don't have to rely on a pastor or a priest to do it.

We get to be with you.

So, God, in this moment, we're not making it about us, but would you take a moment and would you pray for the needs of the others in your life?

Go on, pray for them.

God, I pray for our city that our city will come to know Jesus.

God, I pray for Marto that you'll even begin to prepare the way in advance for our church as we get ready to come to Bartow.

May thousands of people be drawn to you.

It's not about us, it's about making a difference in the world so we turn our hearts to the needs of other people.

And God, in this moment, we're gonna take a moment and we're gonna say thank you.

I love a God who wants to be near and who wants to be close.

Thank you that your desire was intimacy and closeness with us.

So we worship you, we love you, and we adore you in Jesus' name.

Come on, if you believe it all across this place, can we put our hands together and say amen?

Amen.

Amen.