Pray First – Teach Us to Pray

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Today, to get us started, I want to kick off a new series of messages.

It really, it's all about helping you grow spiritually.

The series is called Pray First.

And this is such an important deal because prayer changes things.

Prayer either changes us or it changes our circumstances.

But either way, something's going to get changed.

I'd like to dedicate this whole sermon series to a person who taught me prayer.

I think every person needs a pastor, someone who loves them, who encourages them.

And I've been blessed to have one of the best ever.

Here's a picture of me and him.

This was my pastor, Pastor Tom Peters.

He pastored Trinity Church International in Lake Worth, Florida.

I took this picture with him in October, just a few months ago.

This week, I got a sad email that Pastor Peters had passed away.

And it was interesting because then I felt conflicting emotions.

On one hand, I was so sad.

And on the other hand, I was so grateful.

On one hand, I was just, you know, sad.

The world has lost the legend.

And on the other hand, I was grateful that I got to spend this day with him just a few months ago.

And I'll never forget some years ago, as access was starting to take off and kind of gather some momentum.

We had lunch and I said, Pastor, help me.

Like you've done this for so long, and it's rare these days for a pastor.

He pastored for 50 years.

This was celebrating his 50th year in ministry.

50 years.

And we had lunch, and I said, Pastor, tell me what I can do to make it the long haul?

What can I do to pastor 50 years faithfully, to stay in love with God, and in love with my wife and in love with our church?

How do I do all of these things?

And he said, commit yourself to being a person of prayer, because prayer changes everything.

And that's my hope for all of us is that we become people characterized by prayer.

So today we're starting a series called Pray First.

On your way out, we have a gift for everyone.

We want to give you one of these blue bracelets.

It literally says, pray first.

And here's the reason.

I want pray first to be a rallying cry for our church.

Let me explain very simply what it means.

In every circumstance and in every situation, we need to be people who pray first.

Before you go into that difficult meeting, pray first.

When you wake up in the morning, before you check your email or the stocks or the news on your phone, pray first.

Before you send your kids off to school in the morning, no, no, stop them in.

Pray first.

Before your meals, pray first.

Before those decisions you have to make, pray first.

Before everything in your life that matters, we're going to be people who make a decision.

No, no, we are going to pray before we act.

This week, uh, I was only in the office for a couple days coming off of the holiday.

And I had a couple meetings stacked up on me that were pretty hard, pretty heavy meetings, and I knew they were going to be challenging.

And when the people got there, my team said, Hey, Pastor Jason, they're here.

You want to meet with them?

I said, Give me just one minute.

And I shut the door and I just prayed first.

God, I want you to go before me.

God, I don't have the wisdom or the intellect or the ability to do this on my own.

I need you.

Step in.

Give me your wisdom.

Help me.

We pray first.

This idea is literally found all throughout scripture.

In fact, I want you to understand this.

The reason we pray first is because God is first.

If you get nothing else, I hope you get this.

God is first and God cannot be second.

This is what in theology we call the preeminence of God.

He is first and he cannot be second.

He should be first in our time, first of every first of our day, we should give our time to God.

He should be the first of our energy.

Whenever your best time is, give some of that time to God.

He's the first of our week.

We need to prioritize being in God's house, church.

He needs to be the first in our finances.

We put God first by bringing him the tithe, the first 10% of our income.

And the things that we put first in our life that honor God, God honors and God blesses.

I want you to get this.

This sounds all throughout Scripture.

In fact, the very first verse in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, says, In the beginning, God.

Genesis 1:1

Or before everything, God.

In the beginning of your day, God should be first.

In the beginning of your week, God should be first.

In the beginning of your meetings, God should be first.

In the beginning of your children's day before you send them out the door for school, God should be first.

Can I tell you how many of us approach God when it comes to prayer?

We try everything we can on our own, in our own strength.

We do everything we can.

We exhaust ourselves.

We give it all of our best effort.

We stay up at night, tossing and turning, worrying about things.

And if it doesn't work out in our abilities, then we go to God and we say, God, okay, I need you now.

Listen to me, that's the wrong approach.

If you get nothing else in the series, get this.

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

We're going to be people.

Our church is going to be known in this city and in this region as a church full of people who pray first.

We're going to pray first.

I know this is challenging, but the question is kind of like, how?

How do you do this?

Like, how do you live this out in a way because for many of us, prayer is challenging, myself included.

I don't know if you've ever sat down and said, okay, God, I'm going to pray for 15 minutes.

And you pray for about 13 seconds and you're out of stuff to pray.

Have you had this before?

And then we compare ourselves to people who are great prayers.

The pastor I showed you, Pastor Peters, he would show up multiple days a week early before the sun rose, and he'd spend hours praying.

I struggle with that.

My in-laws are some of the most godly people I've ever met.

And they'll sit down for hours at a time, holding hands, praying.

And I'm like, I don't, I don't roll like that.

How do we do this?

Here's another thing.

For many of us, we've had a weird model of prayer.

Like, if you grew up in church, think about some of the weird things we teach kids about prayer.

Have you ever heard this prayer?

Now I lay me down to sleep.

It gets weirder.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Right?

And then it gets weirder.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Good night, little Chad.

Who does this?

That kid's not sleeping.

Why?

How?

What do we do?

Well, let me make it really easy for you.

In fact, my goal as a pastor is to take complex things and to make it understandable.

I like this phrase.

I want to put the cookies on the bottom shelf so everybody can understand it.

I want you to experience joy in this.

I think a lot of Christians know that they should pray, but they don't know how to.

So I want to make it very practical for you.

Let me show you this verse.

Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, he says, rejoice always, and I want to highlight this next phrase.

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

Pray continually.

In fact, if you go to your Bibles, pray continually.

Two words is verse 17.

In fact, if you don't learn anything else, you could leave today saying, I learned a whole Bible verse at church, everybody.

Pray continually.

He says, Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

What does it mean to pray continually?

I don't know if you've experienced this before, but for me, I'm always in conversation with my wife.

Wake up in the morning, babe, how are you?

How's your day?

What do you got planned today?

All throughout the day, we're texting, we're talking.

If something if something crosses my mind that I need to tell her, I call her and tell her.

If I have a gap in my day and I know she's free, I pick up the phone and I call her.

I can't wait to see her.

I can't wait to tell her goodnight every single night.

I try to do things because I love her and we're always in conversation.

It feels so good.

This is the picture that God has for us that we are to always be in conversation, talking to God and creating space to listen to him.

Why do we do this?

I want you to see this.

In the book of 2 Chronicles, there's a verse that's a famous verse on prayer, but I want to rewind you just one verse and I want to explain this to you.

2 Chronicles chapter 7.

2 Chronicles 7 · chapter mention

God says, When I shut up the heaven so that there is no rain, so when there's a drought, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people.

Pause here for just a moment.

He's saying, when the world around you is falling apart, when it feels like things aren't going the way you want it to go.

Okay, let me let me take it a step farther.

When it's 2024 and it's another election year, and you think it's going to get uglier than it somehow was in 2020.

Are you with me on this?

When it feels like the world is spinning out of control, when there's wars in multiple parts of the world, when there's fighting politically in your country, when there's division even relationally between you and your friends, when the world or your world is falling apart, what do you do?

And then the page turns and God says, if like it's like if you do this, then God's going to do something.

When the world's falling apart, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, parenthetically, pray first, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

Then will I hear from heaven and will I forgive their sin and will heal their land.

You want God to change our country?

Pray first.

Let me say this to some of you who are politically minded.

Your your post on Facebook or Instagram doesn't change the world, it doesn't change anything.

All it does is it builds fences between you and the people you claim to love and want to reach.

But can I tell you something?

You know what does change things?

When you pray first.

Okay.

All right, let's get after it today.

So, how do we do this?

Okay, I want to I want to make it really simple and I want to make it really understandable for you.

One of the most encouraging verses in the Bible to me is found in Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

Let me show you why.

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

I'm gonna come back and talk about this in a few weeks.

We need to create a place, a space where we connect with God.

It says, when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray.

Now let me explain this to you because this matters.

Jesus' disciples were people who were raised in a religious education system.

What that means is they went to school and they learned about God.

In fact, they would have learned prayers.

Say these words, recite these words, do these things with your hands, kneel down, stand up.

Like they were given prayers to pray, so they knew what to pray.

But when they watched Jesus pray, they were like that girl in the movie Napoleon Dynamite.

I want that.

You know, like they were like, I don't know what that is, but I don't connect to God when I pray like I saw you pray.

So, Lord, teach us to pray.

And then Jesus goes on in Luke chapter 11, it's also recorded in Matthew chapter 6, to give them what is called the Lord's Prayer.

Luke 11 · chapter mention Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Now, I love the Lord's Prayer.

Uh a friend of mine wrote a book on the Lord's Prayer called 21 Seconds to Change the World.

Literally, you can recite the Lord's Prayer in 21 seconds if you say it at a moderate pace.

The Lord's Prayer is beautiful.

In fact, over the years, people have said, Jason, why don't we pray the Lord's Prayer every Sunday at church?

And it's because the things that we do regularly we tend to treat as common.

The things that are common get forgotten, and I don't want us to forget the impact of this.

But in a moment, we're gonna we're gonna read the Lord's Prayer out loud together.

And as we read it, I want you to think about what you're saying because I don't think Jesus was telling us to pray these words.

He was giving us a template to follow when we pray.

Thing I love about the Lord's Prayer, if you grew up Catholic, it's sometimes called the Our Father.

The thing I love about the Lord's Prayer is in just 21 seconds of prayer, Jesus covers all of the bases and he gives us everything we need in order to pray.

So here's what I want to ask you to do: pull out your message notes and take lots of notes.

If it gets to be too much for you, when we're done today, I will take a screenshot of my notes for these seven things we're gonna look at, and I'll put them on my Instagram story for you to take screenshots of because I want you to have it, because I want you to pray this way.

Here's the Lord's Prayer from Matthew chapter six, and let's all read it together.

Come on, everybody, it'll be like sixth grade where we read together out loud.

Ready?

Here we go.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Beautiful prayer.

And here's what I want you to do.

For these next few moments, I want you to take the Lord's Prayer and let's go phrase by phrase.

And I want to teach you how to pray in a way that communicates with God, that covers all of your bases, and in my opinion, connects you with God in an intimate kind of way.

Step number one is this when we pray, we need to connect with God relationally.

Now, I want you to understand this.

It doesn't say connect with God formally.

I don't know if you grew up in churches where you read the King James Version of the Bible.

I have no problem with the King James Version.

It just feels like William Shakespeare himself wrote it.

I don't know if you've ever gone to church where they say, Oh, gracious Father, we adore thee.

It's like, we beseech thee.

And it's like, I don't talk like that.

And you don't talk like that.

That feels formal.

God invites us to connect with him relationally.

In fact, here's the opening line: Jesus says, Our Father in heaven.

And I love this because God invites us to call us, call him his our our father.

Now, I have three kids.

I love my kids so much.

And there are times as my kids have gotten older where I've noticed conversations sometimes get transactional.

My oldest will be like, hey, dad, I gotta run off.

I gotta go to the store.

Dad, I gotta go do this.

Dad, I'm hanging out with these friends.

Dad, I've got to go to this basketball game.

It's just telling me what's happening.

It's kind of going through the calendar.

Nothing wrong with that.

Last night, I'm watching football.

It's about 8:30 or 8:45.

My daughter Ella, who's nine, she walks into the living room, she points at me, she goes, Dad, in 60 seconds, I'm gonna come in here and cuddle you so hard.

Let's go.

60 seconds later, she came in and she laid down next to me on the couch and we kind of hugged each other, and it was sweet.

And then she goes, Mm-mm-mm, tighter.

Okay, I pulled her tighter.

She goes, mm-mm, tighter.

I pulled her in tighter, tighter and tighter to the point where I was like, Ella, is that too tight?

She goes, nope, tighter.

It's so fun.

And can I tell you something?

In that moment, she didn't need something from me.

She wasn't asking for money.

I'm sure those days are coming when she's a teenager.

But all she wanted in the moment was to be close to me.

I love this.

I want you to see what Paul says in the book of Romans.

Paul says, You have not received the spirit that makes you fearful slaves.

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

Now we call him Abba Father.

This phrase Abba in Aramaic was like the most beautiful, intimate thing that a child could call their dad.

God invites us to call him father.

Now, this is not in the Bible, this is not like theology, but can I tell you something personally?

Don't be the person who calls God daddy God.

Can we just agree to that for a moment?

Super weird to me.

That's not in your notes.

Don't even write that down.

Just don't do it, okay?

All right.

Number one, we connect with God relationally.

Number two, we are to worship his name.

The verse, Jesus goes on, to say, hallowed be your name.

Hallowed's not a word you probably use very often.

Hallowed means holy or sacred or set apart, consecrated.

Holy is your name.

I want you to understand this.

Names have power, names have authority.

Best way I can describe it is this.

I've got kids.

Sometimes my kids are kids and they're dumb.

They're playing with each other.

The playing goes a little bit too far, it turns into fighting.

And sometimes I'll say to one of my kids, hey, tell your brother and sister to stop being dumb.

So they'll run upstairs and they'll say, Hey, stop being dumb.

And guess what happens?

They keep being dumb, right?

But if I say, tell them, Dad said, stop being dumb, guess what happens?

They stop being dumb.

Why?

Because my name was used, and in my home, my name carries authority with my children.

I want you to understand something.

The names of God carry authority in the circumstances of your life.

So why wouldn't you pray them?

Look what Solomon says in Proverbs chapter 18.

Proverbs 18 · chapter mention

He says, God's name is a place of protection.

The righteous can run there and be safe.

When you pray, one of the best things you can do is you read your Bibles, write down the names of God and thank God for his names because with each name comes a promise.

Here's a list of some of the names of God.

God's our righteousness.

He makes us clean and pure before God in right standing with God.

God's our healer.

That means cancer doesn't have the final word.

Diabetes doesn't have the final word.

Sickness doesn't have the final word.

Mental illness doesn't have the final word.

It doesn't because God is our healer.

God is our shepherd.

That means he guides our steps.

You don't have to worry about what tomorrow holds because God's going to lead you through it.

God's our provider.

Here's a big one for some of us.

As the cost of inflation and rising prices continue to go up, you can take the pressure off because it's God's job to take care of you, not your job to take care of you.

God's our sanctifier.

He washes our hearts pure from all the impurities that we tend to fill it with.

I love this one.

God is our banner of victory.

There is a war happening around you that you can't see.

We'll talk about it in a moment.

And Satan's greatest joy would be to destroy you, to devastate you, to distract you, to disarm you.

His job will be to get you to take your attention and your focus and your worship off of God.

But you don't have to fight your battles because God's already fought them.

You get to worship God from the perspective of, no, no, the victory's already been won.

God is our peace.

And I love this because it doesn't say that God just gives peace, he is peace.

Like one of the characteristics of God is when we're close to him, we get to experience his peace that surpasses all understanding.

And I love this one.

One of the promises of God, one of the names of God is he's there.

What does it mean?

In your best moments in your past, God was there.

In your worst moments, he's there.

He's here, there today.

But that thing you're worried about tomorrow, he's already there.

That conversation you have to have next week that is tormenting your mind, he's all ready there.

Everything you need for the future of your life, you don't have to worry about it because God is outside of time and he is all ready there.

So when we pray, we're gonna pray and we're gonna we're gonna recount the names of God.

Number three, what we're gonna do is we're gonna pray his agenda first.

Listen to Jesus' words.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What's the key word there?

Your, right?

And a lot of us pray, oh God, here's what I need.

God help me, God fix this situation.

I need some money, need a relationship, need a new relationship.

God help me, help me, help me.

No, no.

Before you pray your needs, pray that God's kingdom, which means the kingdom is wherever God's will is done.

Pray that God's will will be done in everything that you encounter in your life.

I love this verse.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6, after he's been talking on prayer, he says, but seek first his kingdom, his righteousness.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

And all these things will be given to you as well.

All of it happens when we say, God, I want what you want to be done, to be done in the world around me.

I love this next verse in the book of Luke, chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

It says this, He will always give you all that you need from day to day if you will make the kingdom of God your primary concern.

Okay, can we be honest?

I want you to audit your heart for just a moment.

Is God's will being done your primary concern?

Because for a lot of us, myself included at times, it's not.

My primary concern is my primary needs.

My family, my money, my job, my emotions, my, my, my, my.

And Jesus says, we're gonna get to those things in a moment, but before we get to those things, let's declare with our voice, with our prayer, with our words.

No, God, you're first.

So what you care about, I want to care about.

What you're about is what I'm about.

God, your business is my business.

I'm in with whatever you want from me.

Number four, after we pray that, we're gonna depend on him for everything.

Now, this is the point when you've prayed for God's will to be done.

Now you can pray for the stuff that matters to you.

Jesus says, give us this day our daily bread.

It's a callback to the moment in the book of Exodus where God delivers the people of Israel from captivity and slavery.

And as he's leading them to this land that's promised, he gives them this bread every day.

The bread was called manna.

And the bread was good for one day.

If you got worried and stopped up enough for today and tomorrow, the food for tomorrow would spoil.

It'd be overrun with maggots.

It just would be disgusting.

God is essentially saying, You need to trust me to take care of everything you need today.

Because I'm already there tomorrow.

If I take care of today, I'm also going to take care of tomorrow.

I want you to see this next verse.

This is a verse, Psalm 121.

A lot of Christians love this verse, but they don't get it.

It says, I look up to the mountains.

Does my help come from there?

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven earth.

And earth.

Pause here for a moment.

This phrase mountain is such an interesting phrase.

Especially in the Old Testament.

Whenever they talk about mountains, they could be talking about all kinds of things.

Very rarely are they talking about mountains in the Old Testament when they're talking about mountains.

Mountains are symbolic.

And in this circumstance, it means I look up to the government.

You see, their government, what was their ex their version of Capitol Hill, was up on a mountain.

He's saying, I look to my government.

Does my help come from there?

Let me rephrase this in the NJV, the New Jason version of the Bible.

Ready?

I look up to Washington, D.C.

To Congress, to the President, to the Supreme Court.

I look up to the three branches of government in Washington, D.C.

Does my help come from there?

No.

Like my hope can't rest in the people that we elect.

My hope can only be founded in one place, and it is in God.

When you pray and you start to understand that God is your provision, not the government, that God is your source, not your job, that God is the one who takes care of you, not other people.

It changes everything, takes the pressure off.

But in this point, you go to God and you just reveal your heart.

God, here's what I need.

And God, because you care about me, would you take care of my kids?

God, would you take care of this difficult situation at work?

God, I trust you to take care of me because you do.

You take care of my needs.

Then number five, it gets hard again.

When you pray, we got to get your heart right with God and people.

Now, this is hard because here's what Jesus says.

He says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

I'm gonna be honest.

I don't love this part, but we have to do this.

I think one of the most beautiful things you can pray is God search my heart.

If there's anything in this that dishonors you, if there's any sin, sin I know about, or sin that maybe I did that I didn't even recognize that I had done, would you forgive me?

And God, as you have forgiven me, may I take that forgiveness and turn it back to the world around me.

One of my favorite stories I've ever heard is from a pastor from Korea.

His name was Pastor Yanggi Cho.

Pastor, the largest church in the world had a million people in church.

Okay, like we celebrated having 1,001 more people this Christmas than last Christmas.

That's like a small group for them, everybody.

Like, no big deal.

A million people.

And he was preaching this one time, and he said, Um, every day I have to wake up and forgive people.

Because every day I wake up and hate people.

Come on, somebody.

Anyone been there?

Can I give you a tip?

When you start to pray this, pray God forgive me, but also help me to forgive the people around me preemptively.

You can decide to pre-forgive people.

So, what is what does that mean?

It means you know people are gonna hurt you.

It means you know people are gonna betray you and walk out on you and lie about you.

Forgive them anyways.

Go ahead and make the decision.

Why?

Because when you forgive people, guess who gets free?

You.

So go ahead and make the decision.

Look what 1 John chapter 1, verse 9 says.

1 John 1:9

It says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

When we do this, this part of the prayer, it's like every day.

If we start with this, imagine how amazing it would be if every day, before your day even got started, your heart was pure before God.

It's amazing.

Number six is kind of a weird one.

Number six is we pray, we're gonna pray that we win the war in the spiritual.

Let me explain what this means.

Whether or not you realize it, there is some stuff in this world that you can see.

It's what you can see with your eyes.

But there is a whole nother world happening all around us that you cannot see.

It's the spiritual realm.

Here's what Jesus said in the Lord's Prayer.

He says, And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Why do we need deliverance from the evil one?

Because there is a war happening all around us, and Satan would like nothing more than to destroy your life, to destroy your destiny, and to destroy your dreams.

And if there is a war happening all around us, we just need to pray that God will take care of us.

I love this verse in Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Paul says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

Like we don't struggle with what we can see, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

He says there is a war happening all around us.

In the same chapter of the Bible, Paul says, This is the reason you put on the full armor of God.

Why do we do it?

I want you to notice something.

It's not so we can fight the work of the enemy, because it's not your job to fight.

Paul says multiple times in Ephesians chapter 6, the reason we arm ourselves with the armor of God is so that we be able, we may be able to stand.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Why do we just stand and not fight?

Because the battle does not belong to you.

The battle is the Lord's.

So we pray every day and we win the war that's happening around us in the spiritual.

Number seven, so important, final thought, is we express faith in God's ability.

And I love this, and I love ending this way because the Lord's prayer ends with, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

What it essentially says is, God, everything I've said, I believe by faith that you are able and that you can.

Look at this verse in the book of Jeremiah, so powerful.

Ah, sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and your outstretched arm.

And I want you to get this last phrase.

Nothing is too hard for you.

A few weeks ago, I was preaching and I said something, and I hadn't planned to say this, and I'm sure this upsets some people and ruffles some feathers, but I want to double down on it.

That thing that you're walking through in your life right now that seems so hard, that challenge that feels so insurmountable, that problem that you've exhausted your mind thinking, and there's no way out of the problem, I want you to get this.

It is a big deal to you.

It's not a big deal to God, just not.

The God who in Genesis says he spoke the universe into existence with his words.

If you have that kind of power, the problems we face in this earth are big to us, but they're nothing to God.

Nothing is too hard for our God.

So here's my challenge to you.

What if you just made this decision just this week?

In fact, why don't we just start with tomorrow that you're gonna wake up?

You're gonna give God the first 10 minutes of your day.

Tomorrow you're going to wake up.

And what if you use the Lord's prayer as your template?

Our Father in heaven, God, thank you that you're my father and that you're good and you love me as one of your children.

Hallowed be your name.

God, thank you for all that you are.

You are my provider, you're my healer, you're there, you're my shepherd.

Go through the names of God.

And as you read the Bible, you'll discover more and more for yourself.

Your kingdom come, your will be done.

God, I want to be about what you're about.

I want to care about the things you care about on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

God, I thank you that you're my answer to all of my problems.

That financial problem, God, I trust you to take care of it.

God, this relational strain between me and this family member, God, you can heal these broken hearts.

Help us in this moment.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

God, cleanse my heart.

And God help me to be the person who forgives so freely because I can't out forgive the amount of forgiveness I've already received from you.

Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

God, you are able to do it all.

So I trust you.

Let me tell you what will happen.

If you will start to pray this way, in just a few minutes, you will cover everything you need to cover.

You will also identify God as being first, preeminent in your life.

And before you bring him your need, you will care about his.

Before you reveal your heart, you'll care about what's on his heart.

And when you find what breaks the heart of God and you give your life to that, God blesses you in ways you can't even imagine.

So, what would it look like if all of us just made this decision?

That before every moment in our life, from the moment we wake up to sending our kids to school, to getting in our car and taking a drive, to having the difficult conversation at work, before every moment good and before every moment bad, we make this decision that when we look down and we see these words, pray first.

It's not just words we say, but we invite God into every part of our lives.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes with me all across this room?

So, God, give us the courage to be people, not just people who say we love you, but the people who pursue you.

God, you're our good heavenly Father.

We want to know you more.

God, for a lot of us, prayer has become something that we know we should do, but we just haven't known how.

God, my prayer is that over these next 21 days, through our messages, through our time together, through our devotional online, through revival nights, through getting together together as a church on Wednesdays to pray, and through us being intentional and creating space to pray, that we will develop some habits of prayer that draw us closer to you.

God, I said it earlier, I believe it's true.

This year can be our best year when it's our best year spiritually.

And the only way it becomes our best year spiritually is when we pursue you with everything we have.

So, God, give us courage to pursue you with reckless abandon.

May we know you better.

May we know you closer and deeper because we've chosen to pursue you through prayer.

Thank you for that, God.