Closer – Growing Closer In 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 pray and then let's get to work together today in part three of the series closer.

So God, we're here for you.

We've cleared aside our schedules, our time.

We've done whatever it took to be here, to be in your presence.

So now, God, we invite you to speak to us and change us.

May we be so empowered by your Holy Spirit today that we leave and we say, Man, there's just something different about me because I encountered you, God.

We love you.

We thank you for it.

God, the Cowboys play the 49ers at 4:30.

Do whatever it takes to help them win.

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right.

Let's get to work.

Let's get to work.

I love being a dad.

I love being a dad.

I have three amazing kids, Joey, Gavin, and Ella.

And one of my favorite parts about when my kids were little was I love playing hide and go seek with my kids.

I loved it.

I loved it.

And it was so fun.

Like when Ella was little, she'd always want to play.

And it was so fun because when she would hide, she would hide in the most obvious places.

And when she would hide, I'd walk in.

So like she'd be in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed, but I could literally see her.

She was like peeking around the corner.

And I'd come in and I'd be like, where's Ella?

She is so good at this.

I'd be looking at the ceiling.

Where can I find her?

Where is she?

She'd be giggling in the tub as if I couldn't hear her.

And then the best part was when I'd find her, she'd jump out of wherever she was hiding and we'd hug, and then it would be my turn.

And so I used to love to hide.

But when I would hide as her dad, I would always hide in a really obvious spot.

And when I was there, I would do whatever it took for her to be able to find me.

I would sneeze.

I would cough.

I would hum.

Look at find me.

Look at find me.

And when she'd find me, it was this big celebration.

I'll never forget one time she ripped whatever the curtain was that I was hiding behind it.

She goes, Ah, found you, you big dummy.

And it was an awesome moment for me as a dad.

And I love it.

I love being found.

I love it.

In the book of Jeremiah, God speaks through this prophet Jeremiah and he says this.

He says, You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.

Let me translate this to you.

If you will make the decision to take one step towards God, he'll make it so easy to find him.

If you'll take one step towards him, he is longing for you to discover him, to encounter him, to be with him.

And so that's what we're going to do today.

Now I was thinking about this series earlier this week.

Last week, we spent our whole time talking about worship and how God longs to be worshiped.

Moses says in the book of Deuteronomy that God is a jealous God.

He longs for the praises and the worship and the adoration of his people.

So we talked about that last week.

And then I was thinking about what I was going to talk about this week, and I realized something.

In Scripture, there are lots of angels referenced.

You know, Luke chapter 2, the shepherds are in the field and the sky illuminates, and there's the host of the chorus of angels.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

But there's only three angels in scripture that have a name.

The first one is Lucifer.

Lucifer is Satan.

He was the angel that was called to lead worship.

The thing is, if you know the story of Lucifer, he turns worship away from God and on to himself.

In fact, I would say this to you about Satan.

His intention isn't even necessarily to get you to turn from God, it's just to distract you, to get you to turn worship narcissistic and back towards you.

So the first one is Lucifer.

The second one is the angel Michael, and his whole thing was about prayer.

It was like the spoken word from God.

And the third was the angel Gabriel.

His was always word, like the word of God.

And when you think about these and all of their meaning and all of their intention, these are really the things that I think really move us closer to God.

We draw close to God when we worship.

We draw close to God through prayer, and we draw close to God through his word.

So last week we talked about worship.

Today I want to talk to you about how do we connect with God through prayer.

Now here's the funny thing.

I know most of us in this room, if we're at church on a Sunday, we have a desire in our heart to pray.

But let's be honest, there are times when prayer is just challenging.

That there's times when prayer is hard.

And so we'll make these New Year's declarations.

This is going to be a year where I seek after God and I pray.

And then we try, and like 3.7 seconds later, we've run out of things to say.

I sometimes get encouraged.

In the book of Luke, uh, Jesus is praying one time, and his disciples watch him and they say, Jesus, teach us that.

Like we don't know how to do what you just did.

They say, Lord, teach us to pray.

We want to learn how to pray.

It encourages me because even those closest to Jesus struggled with it.

So today I want to do that.

I want to teach us how to pray.

Let me give you this one simple thought about prayer before we get after it today.

And here's what it is prayer doesn't move God towards us.

Prayer moves us towards God.

This is the reason the author of Hebrews says that we can boldly approach the throne of God.

We can step towards God.

This is the reason the book of Jeremiah and uh James say that if we draw near to God, he will draw near to us.

That involves us taking a step towards him.

That's what prayer is.

Now, I think for most of us we want this.

The question is just how do we do that?

Now, let me let me tell you what I'm gonna do today.

Today's gonna be a little different than a normal Sunday sermon from me.

I love sermons, I love lots of fun stories.

Today I'm literally gonna take you to the Old Testament and I'm gonna show you this beautiful picture of how God intended us to connect with Him through prayer.

And I'm gonna take it, I'm gonna show you something from the book of Exodus, and I'm gonna tie it to things happening all over the Bible, and I want to leave today giving you all the tools you need to have a deep, profound, intimate time of connection with God through prayer.

Now, here's one of the things you need to know about prayer.

Prayer is about intimacy with God.

Any form of intimacy always requires there to be some sort of process or protocol.

God is the exact same way.

God has a process for us to draw near and closer to Him.

Today I want to show it to you.

The book of Exodus, God speaks to this guy named Moses and he says, This have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them.

You must build this tabernacle, write that word down, and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you.

So God says to Moses, I'm gonna show you the exact specific measurements for how to build this thing that I want you to call a tabernacle.

Listen, don't bring an interior designer in, don't consult Chip and Joanna, don't worry about any of that stuff.

You just do exactly what I tell you to do.

I want, I'm gonna tell you exactly how tall it should be.

I'm gonna tell you how wide the curtain should be.

I'm gonna tell you where every single piece of furniture should go.

You just do exactly what I tell you to do, and I want you to build this thing called a tabernacle.

Now, a tabernacle was the very first portable church.

If you are a part of our church a year or more ago, you might remember that up until a year ago, we didn't have a building.

We we used to meet at a high school and a YMCA and all kinds of other places in between.

And we would go into this building that wasn't a church and we would set up a church.

We would literally just go in and we'd set up sound systems and lights and chairs and kids' environments and lobby stuff.

We would set it all up because we were portable.

Well, the people of Israel, when God speaks this to them, had just come out of slavery.

For hundreds of years, their people had been in slavery.

God miraculously delivers them, and he's sending them on their way to this place called the Promised Land.

And along the way, God provides for them miraculously.

He provides shade during the day to protect them from the heat and fire at night to protect them from the cold.

He provides food for them.

And he says, Moses, I want you to build this place called a tabernacle.

Now here's a kind of an artist rendering of what it would look like.

It was a tent, a big walled tent with no lid, no roof on it, that had some furniture inside the court, and then inside of the tent there was another tent that actually had a roof on it.

So there was walls and then there was no roof, and then inside there was a smaller tent that had a roof.

Here's kind of like an illustration of how it would look.

And I need you to understand something.

With every one of the steps that we're going to look at, there is something that connects to prayer for us.

I've heard this called the tabernacle prayer.

So my goal today is to teach you how to move through prayer in a way that really connects with God.

Now it says this about Moses in Exodus chapter 33.

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

Inside the tent of meeting, that is like the tent, inside of the big tent, inside the tent of the meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend.

Let me tell you, this is my goal for you.

My goal is that when you talk to God, it becomes a conversation.

My goal is that you walk through these steps so that you can connect with God.

And when you connect with him, my hope is that you speak to him, but you begin to hear from him.

Like the one of the most important things you can do as a follower of Jesus is learn to hear the voice of God.

It changes everything for you.

So let's go through this 10.

If you have your message notes, pull those out.

There's a lot of content today.

I'm gonna go really fast.

There are seven steps and there are six pieces of furniture that we're gonna talk through today.

If a person were to come to this tabernacle to connect with God, the first thing they would do is they would step inside the gates into an area called the outer courts.

The point of the outer courts was to give God thanks.

This is how you should start every time of prayer that you have with God.

You should start by thanking him for everything he's done.

You should thank him and praise him for who he is.

This is how we should start our prayer.

Now, if we were to examine most of our prayer lives, my guess is it would start with, hey God, here's what's going on my life, and God, I need you to step in.

I need you to intervene, I need you to fix this problem.

God, help, help, help, help, help.

And what we do is we reduce prayer to giving God a to-do list of all the things that it feels like he's missed out on so far.

This is never how to pray.

In the two different places in Matthew and Luke where Jesus teaches us the Lord's prayer, how does it start?

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, it's praising God for who he is.

This is how we are to pray.

And it says this, that we are to enter his uh courts with thanksgiving.

Now, um, I when I was a kid, go back for one second.

When I was a kid, um there was a song that we would sing at church, and let me see if if you notice, they would say, I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart.

I will enter his courts with got some old school Christians up in here, right?

Yeah, wow, we got a hand waver.

All right, and uh we'd sing that and I didn't know what it meant.

Like, what does it mean to enter his courts?

Like, is God trying to dunk on us on the basketball court?

Like, what is that about, right?

That's not what it is.

This is a reference to the to the tabernacle.

It says this in Psalm 100.

It says, Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him and praise his name.

Leave this up here for just a moment.

If God never did one more thing for you, you have plenty to thank and praise him about for the rest of your life.

If all he ever did was to save you from your sins by sending his son into the world, you have more than enough to spend the rest of your life thanking him.

And so what we do when we start our prayer time with God is we start by thanking him for what he's done and then praising him for who he is.

God, I thank you that you woke me up today.

I thank you that you have a plan and a purpose and a destiny for my life.

I thank you that I walk in the divine favor and blessing of God.

Thank you for what you've done for me.

Jesus, thank you for your sacrifice on the cross.

Thank you for the love that you so freely give.

And then turn it to praise.

Why?

Because we we put on a garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness, like your whole countenance and attitude will change when you praise God.

God, I praise you for who you are.

You are good.

You are my Father.

I love you, I worship you.

Thank you that you are holy.

You are somehow in charge.

You reign above all of my circumstances, you reign above it all.

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

How different would our prayer feel if we just started that way?

And then I said this a moment ago.

If God did nothing else for you, he's already done enough.

In the book of Psalm 103, one of my favorite Psalms, David says it like this He says, Praise the Lord, my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name, praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all of his what?

His benefits.

So then David's gonna go off and he's gonna list five benefits that God gives all of us.

It's amazing.

Who, number one, forgives all your sins, and number two, heals all your diseases.

Number three, who redeems your life from the pit, and number four, crowns you with love and compassion.

Number five, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

So when you pray, you can begin to pray and thank God for all the benefits of just following after Jesus.

It might look like this: You are my salvation, you are my healer, you have redeemed me, you have transformed me, you have blessed me.

Come on, somebody, can we thank God?

Can we just take five seconds and can we thank God that he does all of this for us?

It's amazing.

Start your time of prayer by connecting with God by thanking him and by praising him.

Thank him and praise him.

Now remember, there's six pieces of furniture, if you will.

And so when you come past the outer courts, the first piece of furniture you'd see right in front of you would look something like this.

It's called the brazen altar.

You need to remember in the time of the Old Testament, whenever there was sin, and whenever you wanted to connect with God, there had to be a sacrifice.

So you read the Old Testament, they would sacrifice a goat or a bull or a lamb, and they would sacrifice it, they would literally slit its throat, they would lay it on the altar as a sacrifice to God, because to connect with God there had to be blood that was spilled.

So you walk in, and before you could even get closer to God, after you've thanked him for all he's done, you would look at that animal who had given its life and you would think it died because of me.

It's not alive because of stuff that I did.

Jesus comes and is the ultimate replacement sacrifice.

Once and for all, his death on the cross was the blood spilled for the forgiveness of your sins.

It's this beautiful picture of what it is.

But I think it's important for us to remember that we thank God for what he's done, we praise him for who he is, and then we come to him and we stop and we focus on the cross.

The first thing we should do is remind our souls that we were once lost.

Our souls were helpless, far from God, but because of his unfailing love, we can be close to God again.

Because of his sacrifice on the cross, you can receive the forgiveness for your sins.

There's two words for you.

Let me let me contextualize it.

When you were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

This is the picture.

We should stop and thank Jesus for a sacrifice.

Some 700 plus years before Jesus came into this world, the prophet Isaiah saw what would happen in his heart.

He prophesied and he said it like this, 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.

He was pierced for our transgressions.

Transgressions are sins that we do.

It's when we cross a line, we transgress.

It's when we lie, it's when we cheat, it's when we steal, it's when we it's when we cheat, it's when we do all kinds of sinful wrong things.

And it says that he was pierced.

What does that mean?

It's that when the nails went into his hand, it was to pay the price for your transgressions, your sins.

It says he was crushed for our iniquities.

This word crushed is literally referencing the spear that went in through his ribs into his heart.

But what are iniquities?

They're different than transgressions.

Iniquities are kind of the sin, the evil, the wrong that happens in our mind and has this way of taking root in our hearts.

So when we think evil, lustful, dirty, sinful kinds of thoughts.

And it says that he was crushed, speared for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him.

The punishment is referring to the crown of thorns forced over Jesus' head, causing him to bleed profusely.

This crown of thorns is interesting because where is it placed on his head?

And it says the punishment that brought us peace was on him.

In our minds.

And by his wounds we are healed.

The wounds that it's referring to are the stripes that he took on his back, so that you could walk in freedom from sickness once and for all.

So when you pray, when you come to this brazen altar, you thank Jesus for his great sacrifice.

If it helps you to put some language to it, we might say, Jesus, thank you for the nails that gave me freedom from my past.

Thank you from the spear that you took, that gave me freedom in my heart.

Thank you for the crown placed on your head that gave me freedom in my mind, and thank you for the whip taken on your back, which gives me freedom in my body.

We come to him to the brazen altar, and we remember the reason he was on the cross is because of me.

What a beautiful sacrifice.

Oh, what a savior.

Then the next step you would take, still outside of the inner tent, is you'd come to this bowl.

It's called the laver.

It looked like a birdbath, is what it looks like.

But lined inside of this big bowl, it's lined with mirrors.

And you would come and you would ceremonially wash yourself.

You'd wash your hands, you might wash your face.

But in doing so, you're looking down in the bowl and you're seeing a reflection of you.

So this is an act of you cleansing you, cleansing yourself, receiving forgiveness, and ultimately the labor represents me offering every part of my life to God.

That's what this is about.

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

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices.

It doesn't have to be like laid out on an altar, but may your body be a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, and this is your spiritual act of worship.

Well, what does this mean?

It means after you thank God for what he's done and praised him for who he is, you come and you remember Jesus great sacrifice for you on the cross, and then you go to God and you say, Now God, I give you all of me.

May my life be a living sacrifice to you.

If it helps you, sometimes it helps me to really put parts to this.

So you pray things like, Jesus, thank you that I can control my thoughts and I can control my mind.

May I have no lustful thoughts today.

May it be a sacrifice to you.

That also applies to my eyes.

May I not look lustfully upon another person.

God, take my hands, I give them to you for your service.

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

Take my heart and may it break for the things that break your heart.

Sometimes it helps us to offer our body to God as a living sacrifice, and it helps me to put words to it.

God, use me.

I give myself to you in this way.

Then we move past that and we actually move into the tent.

And inside the tent, the first piece of furniture you would see is this candle with seven candles on it.

It's a candlestick with seven candles on it.

It burned with what's called a perpetual oil, so it would never go out.

And this was to represent the fire of God, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.

So when we see it and when we pray, we are inviting the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.

Now let me say something to you, and this might sound cocky, and I don't mean it cocky, but there's some things that I can do without the power of God in my life.

I've been preaching for a long time.

I can get up and I can write a sermon.

I can deliver it in a way that's funny or impactful, and I can do okay on my own.

But listen to me, it is way better with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me say this to you about you.

You're amazing.

You are so talented.

You can do all kinds of stuff on your own, but it will be way better.

It'll be supernatural.

It'll be empowered by God's Holy Spirit when you make the decision to invite the Holy Spirit in.

So when you pray, you say, Holy Spirit, you have reign in my life.

You control me.

I invite you to lead me and to change me.

Well, we declare things like this from the book of Zechariah.

It is not by might nor by power, but what?

But by my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.

I'm not doing this in my own strength and in my own ability.

I'm doing it with your Holy Spirit.

Look at the prophet Isaiah again.

He says this the spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

And then look at these things that there's this, there's these things that are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Spirit of wisdom and understanding.

Who couldn't use some more of that?

The spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

So, like imagine this when the Holy Spirit is at work in you and you pray and you know you're looking at your calendar of events for that day, and you think, I've got this meeting coming up.

It's gonna be brutal.

God, I have no words to say.

There's nothing I can say that will fix it or rectify the situation, but by your Holy Spirit, give me the right words to say, give me the right counsel to say.

Give me might, because there's some days, God, where I can't even drag myself out of bed.

I can't, I can't face another day on my own.

Good news, you don't have to face any day on your own.

The Spirit is alive in you.

And you just pray these things over your day.

You can pray for the fruit of the Spirit that Paul talks about in the book of Galatians.

Here they are, but the fruit of the Spirit, which means the evidence of the Holy Spirit alive and at work inside of you, is love and joy and peace, patience or forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And it's not like one thing, it's not like you get a fruit of the spirit, it's all of these together.

The Holy Spirit gives us power to live the life that God has called us to live.

So you go from that, you start with thanks, and you remember Jesus' sacrifice, and then you move to offering yourself as a sacrifice to God, and then you thank him for the Holy Spirit in your life, and then there's this table inside.

It's called the table of shoe bread.

And on it there are twelve pieces of bread.

You ever been really hungry?

And you walk into a bakery and you smell the bread and the cakes and the donuts and the muffins and the bagels, and you just you feel like you gain three pounds just by smelling it.

You know what I'm talking about?

And it's so good.

It is so so good.

The bread.

It's to be representative of the word of God.

In the ancient world, honey was a treat, and honey would often be served with bread.

And often when a rabbi would give some honey to his student that he was teaching, he'd say, My son, may the words of God, the Bible, the Torah, be like honey on your lips.

May it please you, may it satisfy you.

This bread was to be something that satisfied their soul.

So at the table of show bread, we claim the promises in God's word.

Let me tell you what this means.

This means that when you're praying, now, let me be honest with you.

It's okay every once in a while to throw up a last second, 9-1-1 kind of prayer.

Hey, God, I need you in this moment.

He's understanding.

But this is when you have time to connect with God.

You pray, you thank him, you move through the steps, and you get to this place, and you need to spend some time reading the Word of God.

We're gonna talk about this next Sunday.

Let me teach you in 30 seconds how to read the Bible.

I want you to listen to me.

Stop reading the Bible for information.

Start reading it for transformation.

A lot of us we get on this kick where it's like, I gotta read through the whole Bible in one year.

Gotta read the whole New Testament this month, and we we do it, but it's like, have you ever been reading something?

And you get like seven, eight, nine chapters in, and you're like, I know I read those words, but none of it registered in my mind.

Does that do any good at all?

No.

You'd be way better to read one verse and meditate it on it, chew on it over and over and over again.

This is why Scripture declares, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

The goal of Scripture is to get it deep inside your heart so that you can live it out to become the person God has called you to be.

Jesus even says it like this in the book of Matthew.

Jesus answered, It is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

How do we know the words of God?

By feeding on them over and over and over like we would feed on bread.

The book of Ephesians, Paul, he tells us something else about the scripture.

It's not just about knowledge and it's not just about transformation, but we are literally in a battle happening all around us.

It's something that supersedes what you can see with your physical eyes.

There is a battle happening in the spiritual realm all around us.

So Paul says in Ephesians 6, therefore put on the whole armor of God.

And then he says this, now 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.

He's scheming against you.

Then he talks about the different parts of the armor of God, and then he says this.

So therefore take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray.

What does the sword do?

A sword puts you on the offense, it puts you in the place of striking.

You can strike against the work of the enemy in your life.

So part of the word is you going and doing some spiritual warfare.

So when you pray, take some time to get into the word of God and stop reading for information, read for transformation, and only stop reading the Bible when you get a revelation from God, when He shows you something.

Then there'd be one last piece of furniture before you got to the last step.

It's called the altar of incense.

And there would be burning this incense, this smell.

It probably smelled like what I assume, like, you know, Bed Bath and Beyond smells like all the time.

It just got the smell and it's beautiful.

And when you come, the smell is to remind you that you were to pause and you were to breathe in and breathe out.

What is doing this?

Well, worship is when we take the breath that God has given us and we we return it to the one who gave it to us.

It's when we use our words, our songs, our life to worship him.

So at the altar of incense, we worship his name.

This is what we do.

I think that you should take some time as you pray.

You get through the word of God, and then you come to this place where God, I worship you.

Put on some worship songs and sing.

And don't just sing the words, but mean them with your heart.

David says in Psalm 29, he says, Ascribe to the Lord the glory do his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

The word worship is literally like two words put together.

It's worth ship.

It's literally saying, God, you are worthy of all adoration.

You are worthy of all of my love, all of my affection.

I give it to you.

Later in the book of Psalm, Psalm chapter 95, he says, Come let us worship.

Psalms 95 · chapter mention

Let's bow down in 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.

So sometimes it might help you to just get into a quiet place and put on some worship and literally just kneel in the presence of God.

It is a heart of surrender, saying, God, you're worthy of everything, including all of me.

And then there was one last step.

That there was what is called the Ark of the Covenant.

Here's what you need to understand about the Ark of the Covenant.

Let me show you this next picture.

This next picture is kind of an artist's rendering of what it was.

It was so believed that the power and presence of God was so strong in this Ark of the Covenant that if you were to reach out and touch it, even accidentally, you would die instantly because the power of God was so strong.

It was to be carried by these specially designed rods.

God had specific measurements and requirements for all of this.

On the top were these gold-crafted angels with their wings hovering over what is referred to as the mercy seat.

If you've ever heard that, it literally refers to this part right here of the Ark of the Covenant.

And the Ark of the Covenant was literally in the very back room.

Remember, there was a tent, and inside the tent was a tent with a roof on top of it.

And in the back of that tent was what's called a veil.

There was this huge curtain, and the veil separated the outer part of that inner place with what is called the Holy of Holies.

This is where the Ark of the Covenant was.

And it was believed that the power of God was so strong in there that if a priest were to step into that place with any sin in his life, he would literally fall over dead.

So because of that, you can find this in scripture, they would tie a rope around his foot and they would leave a long strand out of it.

And if he fell over dead, they would literally, they would literally just pull him out, right?

Why?

So a priest had to do whatever it took to cleanse his heart before he went into this place.

Let me tell you a fun little detail in scripture.

A lot of times at the Easter season, we talk about how Jesus died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and it says the veil was torn in two.

And a lot of people have no idea what that means.

That's referencing this veil that was between the outer place where most people could go and the holiest place, the holy of holies, where only priests who were fully sanctified with no sin could go.

And Jesus dies and he rises again from the dead, and it says the veil is ripped.

It's torn in two from the top down, signifying that because of what Jesus did on the cross, now you and I can approach the throne of God with boldness.

The author of Hebrews says, approach the throne of bold the throne of grace with boldness.

Why?

Because you don't have to worry anymore.

There's nothing now separating you from God.

It's the reason the authors of scripture often say things like, draw near to God, come near to God, and he will come near to you.

You can do it without fear, you can do it without trepidation.

You are invited into his presence where God speaks to you.

Like a person speaks to another face to face.

So then what do you do when you're here?

You've gone through all these steps to connect with God, and you get to the Holy of Holies, and you're there with the Ark of the Covenant in metaphorical language.

You're literally in the presence of God, and what do you do?

Well, there's this whole movement of Christianity that, in my opinion, is dangerous.

It's self-glorifying Christianity.

It's all about me.

It's all about my needs.

And so there's some people that would think I get into the presence of God and I'm just like, oh God, you can just love on me.

Just pour your love on me.

I'm just gonna like lay here in your presence.

That's not what it was about.

The point of getting into that place, into the presence of God, is literally to intercede for others.

This is the place where you pray on behalf of others.

You've got the attention of God.

You're literally in his presence.

Paul says it like this to Timothy.

He says, I urge you then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for who?

For all people.

And then he makes it even more clear for kings and those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

This is God's point.

When you get into his presence, listen to me.

You don't make it about you, you make it about others.

God, for that person in my family who's far from you.

God, draw them near to you.

For my mom who's dying of cancer, God, heal her body.

God, for that situation at work that seems irreversible.

God, do what only you can do.

When you get into the presence of God, it's not just about you, it's about you interceding for others.

So many of us, we wait.

We try everything we can do.

We exhaust ourselves in our own strength and in our own power.

And then at the end, when we've run out of options, we turn to God.

Let me say this to you: prayer should not be our first response, not our last resort.

And I wonder how many of us have settled for a life so much far less than what we were intended to live.

The point of this is to simply teach you that you and I can become people of prayer, that there's always a protocol to the presence where there's intimacy involved.

And because of this, what would it look like if all of us made this decision?

I'm gonna start by stepping into God's presence with thanks and with praise, and I'm gonna move closer and closer to Him.

And when I'm in His presence, I'm gonna intercede for other people.

So I'm gonna end differently today than we normally do.

Would you stand up with me all across this room?

And I want to show you how you can put this into practice.

We're gonna pray together.

And as we pray, I'm gonna ask you to do this for me.

Don't just let me pray.

Don't just stand and listen to me pray, but I want you to pray and I want you to seek after God, and then we're gonna worship Him together.

Come on, all across this room.

Would you just lift your hands towards heaven?

God, we thank you.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you for your grace.

God, if you did nothing else for me ever, you've already done so much.

Jesus, when you came into this world and died for me, you did the unimaginable for me, so I say thank you.

Come on, with your own words, would you thank him?

Thank you for your love, God.

I praise you for who you are.

You're wonderful, you're amazing, you're holy.

Then go to the cross.

Jesus, we thank you for your great sacrifice.

It's because of your blood spill for us that we can receive salvation.

It's because of the strife on your back that our body can be healed.

It's because of the crown on your head that our minds can be at peace once and for all at peace.

Jesus, we wash ourselves clean in your presence.

God, use us for your service.

Our bodies are living sacrifices to you.

God, God, beyond that, now we go and we we declare our dependence on the Holy Spirit.

God, we cannot live this life.

We can't live one more day without your power alive inside of us.

So, Holy Spirit, you have freedom to reign and rule in our lives.

God, we we're dependent upon your word.

Speak to us through your word.

May your words give us life.

May they speak to us, may they be a light to our feet and a light into our path.

Thank you for your word.

God, we worship you.

We declare that you are worthy of all of our praise, all of our adoration.

We worship you.

And then, God, we step into your presence and we declare there's some needs around us.

Come on, tell them, what do you need?

What are the needs around you?

God, for that wayward son or daughter, for that family member who's far from you, for that situation that seems like there's no hope.

God, we declare that you can do the amazing and the unthinkable.

So we lean in and we trust you, God.

We worship you.

We sing of your praise.

We worship you.

Come on, let's worship together.