All right, all right. You know, I want to talk about prayer tonight. And for a long time, I've been the prayer guy, you know, since I can remember in middle school and high school, I was like the prayer guy. And I'm so grateful that I cut my teeth in God, in little rooms, prayer rooms, prayer meetings.
And yet every one of us goes in these ebbs and flows of, I felt close to God, I felt like I was praying a lot. And then I just felt like, wow, this has been a minute since I've been praying. You know, I've been praying, it's been a minute since I've been praying with a crew and with a group and going after something and believing for something. And so I just feel an invitation from the Lord that He's calling us into praying together.
Praying with friends, praying with brothers, praying with sisters, praying with spouses, praying with communities more and praying together, okay? And so I told you my whole message, there we go, let's go, that's it. So you can turn in your Bibles, and I want you to turn your Bibles to Philippians 4. Philippians 4, you know, this week I hit, I hit this place where I realized me and some brothers, we can't move the needle anymore on a situation that's in front of us.
And there's nothing that we can say, there's nothing that we can do that will actually bring restoration to the situation that's in front of us. And I'm realizing as we're hitting the end of our rope, and that we've gotten really creative with solutions, and honestly I feel like I've done a pretty good job. I'm trying to bring a resolution and restoration in this area, and it's still not moving the thing. There's still a mountain, and it still is there.
And I'm like, you know, if I talk to a mentor, and I said, hey, what would you do differently? They probably say, hey, you hit it out of the park, great job, practically. But what I've been realizing is I've been thinking a lot, as I've been processing a lot, as I've maybe been worrying, as I've been a little anxious, as I've been strategic, as I've been talking to people about the thing, as I've been thinking. You know what we do with our problems.
You're just like me, right? You think about them. And then you mull over them. And then you try to brainstorm the solution, and you try to get strategic, and you go, well, we'll do this, and then this will happen, right?
And we all are these people that process a lot, and I've just found myself, I'm just processing a lot. Just like you. And just like you, I'm doing all this thinking. I'm doing all this processing, but I'm not praying.
None of us are praying. Maybe some of you are. But if you're like me, you're forgetting something very, very important. You're doing all of this busybody stuff, thinking that you're doing a good job, thinking that you're doing what you should be doing, and it's not moving the needle.
It's not moving the mountain. And you're kind of wondering, well, God, when are you going to show up? And the Lord is knocking on the door. He just keeps on knocking.
He's a gentleman. Jesus is a gentleman, and he's just kind of like, hey, whenever you want to. Bring the God that has perfect wisdom into this area. You just let me know.
I'll stay out here. Don't worry about it. No, if you want to figure it out, it's okay. If you want to keep on processing, you keep on processing, you keep on thinking.
You keep on thinking and taking time, doing tinkering, all this stuff that you do. Thinking and tinkering and tinking. I don't know what that is. You keep on.
It's okay. All the while. He's just gently like, he's just hanging out. And I just wonder if the reason why I'm feeling a little anxious and maybe a little frustrated is because I haven't invited him in and I'm not talking to him about it.
And if the whole group that's owning it, that we're not talking about it to him together. Philippians 4, verse 4, says, Rejoice in the Lord always, even when there's big problems. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.
The Lord is at hand. Wow. Do you or do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And some of you have heard this and you're not even listening.
You're like, oh, I know that one. Stop that. Okay. So yeah, well, I'm a Baptist kid.
I did a Wanna. This is one of our first passages. Let me read it again because your pride was getting in the way. But you take out the earplugs of pride.
We'll read the word again. Rejoice in the Lord always. See, some of us have been listeners but not doers. Knowers but not actually implementers.
So you got to join me, join me in that camp and realize, oh, I haven't been doing it. I don't want to just know it. I want to do it. Rejoice in the Lord always.
Woo. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.
Don't be anxious about anything. But in everything, by what? Prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your request be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all your understanding, which in other words, it goes beyond you being able to even perceive of it or get it. That will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. When we pray, a lot of it sounds like thanksgiving. But there's also a request.
When we talk about our problems, a lot of our talking and mulling things over, it doesn't result in us being guarded in our mind. And it doesn't result in us being guarded in our hearts. And it definitely doesn't bring peace. As the Apostle Paul is writing this, I just picture him seeing all of these people being like us.
Just doing our normal lives, just trying to figure it out. And the Lord is going, hey, you got to let him know. You got to let him know. Because you're letting other people know about your problem.
You got a lot of problems. And you're letting everybody know about your problems. And you're thinking about them and processing. You're standing up like you can't sleep because you got big problems.
And the problem is with you approaching problems, the problem with you approaching problems is that you're not letting him know about it. You're not letting him know about your problems. You're like, but he already knows everything. I know, but the Apostle Paul is onto something.
The Apostle Paul knows that he knows everything, but there's something about letting the guy that's at the door knocking Jesus into the process and into all of our problems and our processing. And it starts shifting things and changing things. And then wholeness and restoration and peace starts resting on you. And as the peace rests on you, there's all of these things that guard you and protect you and guard your mind.
And you're not realizing it, that you're vulnerable when you're not praying. Somebody's got to start praying so that they can be protected from the lies that are probably creating all your problems. See, some of us are creating problems because we're sitting in, we're believing lies, doing all these things. But if we started praying more, we'd stop believing the lies, we've stopped sinning, we'd stop creating problems that is keeping us up and causing issues in our lives if we were to just pray more.
Just saying, all right. But we feel like we're too busy. If we had more time, if I had time, I wouldn't even know what to pray. It doesn't even work.
I just forget. I don't know, I just, I haven't prayed recently. I just keep on forgetting. You know, my plate's very full.
We're at a board meeting on Thursday night. And we do this time where we review how we're being productive in our meeting and how we can improve our efficiency as a team. And we celebrate what happened well and what could be improved on. And there's this moment where Janaesa, Janaesa Miller, she said, you wanna raise your hand, Janaesa?
Janaesa, she's amazing. She's a leader at the table, she's a board member. And Janaesa says, you know what? I just miss praying together as a board.
And as the whole board responds like, oh my gosh, you know, it's been a couple months. It's been pretty full, right? She's been in a lot of long agendas. And Janaesa says it, and the whole board responds with like, oh my gosh, yes, and there's like, that's what we want, right?
And as we're in that moment, there's a silence that rests on the whole room. You felt that, right? I mean, we all felt it. And all of us were just sitting around this conference table with these three conference tables because it wasn't big enough to just have one of them.
So we had to put tables together. And it was silence probably for 30 seconds. But when you've got like 10, 15 adults in a room and you've been talking for a couple hours, the silence is deafening. But what was happening was this moment of grief around that's actually the main thing.
And what I wonder is if you've got a full plate, not because there's just so many things to be done, but because you've got a good shepherd. And he's the one that prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies. And sometimes what we start thinking is, I've just got so much. I've got such a full plate.
There's so many things coming at me. And all the while, there's the Lord of all. And he's the good shepherd and he's serving you. And you've got a full plate because he's put the one that put all that stuff on your plate.
And you're not realizing that you're completely ignoring the one that gave you everything that's sitting in front of you on your plate. And he's the one that actually can help you digest and process everything that's on your plate. But he's just sitting, he's a good host. He's wanting you to enjoy.
But he knows the only way for you to enjoy it is to have him sit right next to you and you welcome him into it. The Lord is waiting for us to welcome him in so that we can talk to him because he knows exactly what we need. In Proverbs 9, it talks about lady wisdom. And lady wisdom is this, the wisdom of God personified.
And in Proverbs 9, it's this comparison between the wisdom of the world and the foolishness of the world and the wisdom of God, which is different, right? And as a board, we just decided, as a staff, we decided we were in prayer one, you know, about a year ago, maybe more. And when we decided we got a higher, we got a higher lady wisdom on. Because we know we can't do it.
We can't do it. We don't have enough understanding. And we've been leaning on our understanding. How many of you have been leaning on your own understanding?
And instead of acknowledging him and bringing him into the middle, you've been trusting yourself, and trusting your own wisdom, your own ideas, your own good perspectives. And it gives you a little bit, like you can write that out for a little bit. I mean, the whole world just continues to write that thing out. But how many of you know there's something different about you?
And it's not about how smart you are and it's not about your education. The thing that sets you apart is not that you had a good family that you came from. It's not that you're a good upbringing. It's not even that you go to church.
The thing that's different about you is him, inside of you, and your relationship with him. That's the only thing that sets you apart is him. And the only thing that sets you apart in the business room, in the conference room, in the cubicle is the Lord. But we seem so content to just be like everybody else.
We seem so content to just trust in our own understanding. And we wonder why we're so tired, why there's so many problems, why we're so processing all the time and why we're a little stressed out. What if we pray more? What if we talk to him?
What if we talk to him together with other people that love him? I am bringing you the most profound message you've ever heard. Like I know this is elementary. I get it, but I'm maybe this is just for me, but I'm catching myself not praying.
So I don't feel shame about it. I'm just kind of like, wait a second. And I want you to have the same thing. Wait a second.
Do we, have we stopped praying? Have we stopped praying together? Man, that was a weird season. All right, here we go.
Hey, let's pray about it, right? That gets to be our mentality. All right, let's look at Ephesians 5. Just turn back a couple pages.
We're gonna park at Ephesians 5 real quick. Then we're gonna go to Romans 8, so you can, if you wanna work ahead, you can go to Romans 8, too. Ephesians 5, verse 14, awake, oh, sleeper, arise from the dead, Christ will shine on you. Verse 15, look carefully then how you walk.
Not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will and the want and the desires and the longings of the Lord is. Don't get drunk with wine. For that is debauchery.
You'll be filled with the Holy Spirit. Man, that's a bonus for some of us in the room. Don't get drunk with wine. Don't get drunk with alcohol.
If you're pushing the limits of getting drunk and getting tipsy in your everyday life, you don't have to live that way. And that's not what God wants for you. That's not the Lord's way. So if you want to follow and live a life of surrender to Jesus, you might actually be walking in disobedience if you're getting drunk on Friday night.
And the Lord is calling you into living a life set apart that looks different than your friends. All right, that was just a bonus. I didn't even talk about that at the 230. So that means like that was a word for a lot of us.
Some of us, maybe, I don't know how many, okay? I just, I want to pause on that really quick. That moment where I just talked about alcohol and pressing the limits of substance abuse, I want, if that's something that you're struggling with, you need to bring others into it. You can't be in isolation.
And this moment is a blessing and a gift to you. That moment that I just had, it was just a little moment. It's because he loves you. He loves you so much that it would just pop off the page to me.
Why would it pop off the page? This service, because his eyes are on you and he loves you and he knows it's bringing destruction to your life. He knows what happens down the road and he's going, Hey, hey, I see you and I love you enough. I'm gonna, like, pick up that red flag and I want you to know it's danger zone.
Come into the light, find your brothers and sisters that love you and run the opposite direction. It doesn't have to look, this doesn't have to be your story. I don't care what your family story is, it doesn't have to be your story. All right, verse 18, Do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.
There's something that you can actually do and you get to turn towards something, be filled with the Holy Spirit. How are you gonna spend your time now on Friday nights and Saturday nights addressing one another in prayer meetings with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and you're gonna start singing and making melodies to the Lord with your heart and you're gonna give thanks for everything to God the Father because he set you free from that life in the name of the Lord Jesus and you get to submit to other people around you with a reverence for Christ. That's such good news. I love that.
Ah, that felt so good when I was reading it because it was bringing life to me. That sounds like, that is freedom. That is such good news. Some of us are thinking we're too busy to pray.
And I gotta tell you that the days are too evil, not to pray. The days, the temptation is too great to walk in a life of compromise, to not pray and worship with brothers and sisters. The days are too evil. Do you not know that Jesus before he goes to the cross that he repeatedly is giving warnings and his greatest warning is many hearts are going to grow cold because the days are going to be evil and immorality is going to increase.
And it's gonna make many hearts grow cold. How are you gonna keep a warm heart? How are you gonna have a heart fully in love? How are you gonna have the fire of the Holy Spirit on your soul and on your heart?
Well, you get around other people that got a little bit of a flame on their heart and then as you get close, spontaneous combustion starts happening and you start loving him together, you start singing, it warms your heart, you start praying and all of a sudden, all of the big problems become a little bit smaller. I don't know what to pray, join the club. You don't know what to pray. Well, guess what?
Most of the time I don't know what to pray. Katie and I, we start praying for something? I don't know what I'm gonna pray. You don't know what you're gonna pray either.
We're just trying to figure it out. You're just like us. It's like, okay, it's time to pray. Oh man, okay.
All right, we're gonna pray. That's most of the leaders at every day, that's how we feel. Most of the pastors, most of the people that have microphones in front of their face, they're like, man, we're just trying to figure it out. I don't know.
And then you return to Romans 8 and you see, you see what we've learned. So turn to Romans 8. I don't know why I said it that way. Romans 8.
Okay. Romans 8, 26. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness when we don't know what to pray. Paul knew that you were gonna be weak just like me.
And then you wouldn't know what to pray. He knew, he anticipated this. Why? Because the apostle Paul also has felt weak and he doesn't know what to pray.
And so the spirit got the Father really new, so he sends the spirit down to help us in our weakness for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us. So he's praying for us with groaning in 2D for words. So he's praying you through verse 27. And he's the one, the spirit who searches the hearts of your coworkers and your spouse that you're fed up with.
And he knows what is the mind of the spirit of God because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And the spirit has chosen to live inside of you if you've surrendered to Jesus. So now you have a way to know what you should pray because the spirit of God that lives in you is an intercessor. And an intercessor means I stand in the gap on behalf of someone else that needs a breakthrough.
So it's like there's a person over here, God's over here, and I stand in the middle of them and I articulate to God what he wants to see happen in their life. That's intercession. So the Holy Spirit is doing that all the time for you. And the Holy Spirit is doing it for the people that are the problems in your life.
People aren't problems, but sometimes they feel like they're the problem. And so all of your big problems, whatever it is, the Holy Spirit knows how to pray for it. And the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. So then what do you do when you are getting ready to pray?
What you do is you ask God how to pray. What is the Lord say in James? He gives grace to the humble. Okay, he gives grace, let's all say it together.
He gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud. So if you're feeling like I don't know what to pray or I don't know how to pray, I'm giving you a key that you just ask God, how do I pray? That's a key and that's the only key I'm gonna give you. Okay?
I'm not gonna break down prayer for you. Why? Why am I not gonna make it to ABCs? Because you just got to stop thinking about, you got to start praying.
Me and of us are waiting for it to get like handed out to us. This is how you can pray and you don't need that. You just need to start. Stop waiting, stop trying to figure it out, stop trying to pray good and just start praying and you'll figure it out.
Some of us are waiting for us to know exactly how to read the Bible. You better just start reading the Bible. Just start praying it, reading it, pray again, read some more, pray some more, pray the Bible. You don't know how to do it, just try it.
Nobody's gonna make it easy for you. You just gotta get in the trenches. Some of us are just waiting for somebody to like, I don't know, make it feel like dessert or something. You want it to be like, well, please, I wanna cheer you on the top of it.
Stop, you just gotta start praying more. You're like, I don't know how to pray. I don't care, just start praying. You'll figure it out.
Stop being so soft and so weak. You just gotta start praying. You just start inviting them in and then you stop doing it by yourself. Because most of the time what happens when you do it by yourself, I'll tell you what happens.
This is what happens with me. God, here I go, I've got all the problems. And I just start praying and I start talking to God in my head. But you know what I do when I start talking to God in my head?
All I start doing is thinking about my problems and I'm not even talking to them. Have you ever caught yourself doing that? You're 45 minutes in, you literally sacrificed. 45 minutes.
Oh no, just sit with your own thoughts for 45 minutes. Because you just started thinking. You gotta start praying with people. Jesus is praying with people.
He takes his disciples up to the mountain to pray and then a transfiguration moment happens and Peter has great ideas. But that started with him going to pray together. Jesus is praying with the 12. He's teaching them how to pray.
And he's teaching them how to pray. And it's not my father who art in heaven, how would it be your name. It's our father. Everything in the Lord's Prayer is a plural.
We are together praying this prayer. Are you seeing that? It's the book of Acts in Acts one, in Acts two, they're at somebody's house, and Acts four, they're at somebody's house. In Acts 16, they're in a prison.
In Acts one, they're in the upper room. In Acts four, it was in Acts two, they're actually in the synagogue or the temple. And they're just praying everywhere. And they're not praying by themselves.
They're praying with people. This is what happens when you pray by yourself. You just get caught in your own thoughts. If you don't pray out loud.
But when you pray together, oh man, it gets good. Because when you pray out loud with people, it actually forces you to pray about your problem. And most of the time, you hear what you needed to hear because you prayed it out. Because there's someone sitting next to you that was praying with you.
And all of a sudden, by the spirit, you prayed the solution to the problem. You prayed into a new perspective just because there's somebody saying next to you that's a brother. And what happens is you start gathering around him, and you just decide, Jesus, we got this problem. Okay, you're been knocking.
We welcome you into the problem. And all of a sudden, everybody around the problem starts gathering around him. And then all of the problems get really, really tiny because you get infatuated with how great he is. But I've been processing a lot, I've been thinking a lot, and we've been talking a lot, and I've been worried and anxious about many things, and the Lord's like, my gosh, that seems tiring.
Some of us are super tired. You got problems I've been going on for a long time. That's not good. You need some help.
You need some help. You can't do it on your own. You can't figure it out. It's not working.
I just hear Jesus from the shore. Try the other side. He's like, throw the net on the other side. You're like, no, I processed that one.
I had three options. I did the pros and cons list. I know. I know all the cons of that one, Lord.
I already tried that earlier. And the Lord is on the shore. Hey, but the same. That's usually what it looks like to follow God.
You don't have, you tried in your own strength. Then you invite him in. And it got a little bit more difficult, and it wasn't that easy. But then you felt connected to him, and it ended up just working out.
I'm saying from experience, I mean, we searched for five years for a building, and I don't know how much processing and time, and oh, this is just the worst. And I tried to pray about it, OK? I tried. I really did.
And then all of a sudden, I don't know how many times I logged into this app called LoopNet. It's a commercial like Zillow. There's usually nothing on there, because everything on there nobody wants, OK? Everybody already knows about it if it's on LoopNet.
And then I just, like I'm praying, and I just go on to LoopNet. And the LA fitness in Roosevelt is released on LoopNet. And I'm like, huh, wow. And that's the way he does stuff.
And all along the way, with all the detours and all the dead ends, and all of the trying in my own strength, I started to gain resilience in faith and affection for the Lord. And I started to get mustard seed faith. And all I started to realize is that process was probably more about me or us and what we needed to learn. And I was just spinning my wheels, but God was doing stuff in my heart.
And the Lord was all along the way. He was working on something. Some of us have problems, and you just need to realize you're not seeing the breakthrough, because God is working on something for you, and it's really good. Because the Lord works for the good of those who love him.
But we're not seeing the breakthrough. We're going, man, God's not working. He might be working and have something up his sleeve that's better than what you're anticipating and thinking. Let's find him in the tension.
We got to pray together. It's like Moses hands. He needed his brothers. It's like the Matthew 18, wherever two or three are gathered.
He's there in their midst. He's among them. There's no promises that God is going to be with you when you pray by yourself. But there's a very clear promise in Matthew 18 that he's among those, when two or three just start praying.
It's like the Lord sees brotherhood and sisterhood. And he's like, what just happened? I just heard some people. There's two or three of you.
And you just started praying. And he just got right in the middle. He's like, all right. Here we go.
Among us. Did I just hear somebody say amen? Woo hoo. Let's go.
And the Lord's like, yeah, I'm in the middle right here. They're gathering around me. I'm literally in my quiet time, like, oh, I'm just thinking about my problems, Lord. And the Lord's like, come on, buddy.
It's going to be OK. Son. He literally enters in like Tigger. I just start praying with a couple people.
We got to abide in him together. It's like John 15 ends with just loving each other. Abide together. How many of you know that it's a lame vine if there's only one branch on it?
There's other branches that you can pray with. They're going through stuff. And you think you're the only one like, no, I'm the only one that got pruned. Oh, what?
You're the only one that got something cut off, sliced off of your life. You're the only one that's going through a hard time. Really? Have you looked to the left or the right?
Life is tough. They just got pruned. You're really fruitful right now. Maybe you should pray together with the person that just got pruned.
Because they might need to see that there's something ahead when they just got pruned. And they just tasted fruitfulness. But now it's all gone. Maybe you need to look at them and realize, man, I might get pruned.
And you just have some humility on you. And you keep that humility on you, even in the promotion, because you're praying together. But there's giants in the land, you know? It's like Joshua and Caleb.
There's big problems. We got big problems. But if we would just, the thing that defined Joshua and Caleb's response to the big, giant problems that was before them, it was the only thing that set them apart was he's with us. That was the only thing that gave them courage.
All the other 10 spies didn't have a knowing that God was with them. And that's what prayer does. You're going, man, is God with me? You start praying with brothers and sisters about each other's lives, and you begin to realize he's with me.
And then you don't have to go through a 40-year wilderness. Somebody say amen to that. Who wants to go through a 40-year wilderness? Because you missed it, because you were so afraid of the giants and the big problems that were ahead of you.
And you want to go back to slavery, start praying with people. Don't miss it. Don't miss it, because when you start praying with each other, it brings alignment. You have permission to not be blown in tossed by the waves and to get pushed into prayer.
You have permission, and it's OK to pause on all of the processing. You've been processing a lot. You've been mulling things over a lot. You could pause that now, and you could start praying.
You're like, but I'm praying. I really am. I'm praying and processing. I know how you guys do it.
It's like we're going to pray a little bit, and then we're going to process the rest of the hour. I know how we do it, guys. Yeah, let's just do the religious thing, and then we'll figure it out. That's what I do.
What if we started bringing him and starting to thank him? You're like, I don't know how to pray. Just start praying and start thanking him. Just stop the asking.
Stop like, would you give me clarity? Stop the prayer of give me clarity. Would you make it easy? Stop that.
Would you make this thing that's annoying? Stop it. No, no more. You go right into Thanksgiving.
Thank you that this is who you are. Thank you that you're the God of patience. Thank you that you're the God that is persistent. Thank you that you're the God that's faithful.
Thank you that you're the God that's steadfast. Thank you that you live in me, and you still are faithful, and you are in me, and that you're still steadfast, and you're patient inside of me. I can't do it. Thank you that you can do it in me.
And all of a sudden, you've got this resilience on your soul because you just went into Thanksgiving mode rather than, I gotta figure this out. God, would you help me just figure this out? And you're just so focused on the problem. Get your eyes off the problem.
The problem is gonna get smaller. If you bring everybody around, the big answer. The God of wisdom. Pray together more.
You can pray with your housemates. You can pray with your spouse. It's okay to pray with your kids. It's okay to initiate prayer.
The biggest doorway into prayer is when you hit the, I don't know. You guys are saying that a lot. At least I am. I have a lot of problems.
That is glory. When you hit the end of yourself and you don't know, woo. Humility on you. It's like grace, grace, grace, grace.
Man, those mountains better get ready because those mountains are just gonna start moving because there's grace, grace coming at them from the throne room because that person just said that they don't know. And now they're coming to me in there, I don't know. And I'm just gonna prepare this table before them in the presence of their enemies. It's really good.
I just hit the end of my rope. I can't move the needle at all. Woo! Okay, come to me now.
Hey, come here, come here now. I think you don't invite me in. Let's all stand. Lift up your eyes.
Where does your help come from? Your help comes from the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. We're leaving the woe is me. We're leaving the victim mentality.
We're leaving the problem focus. All I can see is problems. We're leaving the feeling sorry for ourselves and all of the talking and the worrying and the anxiety and the thinking because we all need our minds and our hearts guarded because the days are evil and we're too busy not to pray. There's too much on our play to not pray.
It's time to start praying and it's time to initiate prayer with other brothers and sisters. Why? Because you're weak. Why?
Because you can't do it by yourself. As your pastor, I can't do it unless I pray with other people. For some of you, you've got 10, 20, 30 years in God on your belt, more than I do. I've got, I don't know how many.
25 years of history in God and I can't do it. If you got five years in God, take the guy that has 25 years of history with God and take my counsel and take the counsel of the word. He says you can't do it in your own strength. You don't know.
You're not supposed to know. You're supposed to live a life of dependence on the Holy Spirit and you're not supposed to do it alone. You're supposed to do it with other people. You're supposed to encounter Him together with other people.
Lord, here we are. We love you and Lord, we wanna pray together more. We want you to raise up us as a people that have a contending in our souls to pray more, to show up again, to pray with brothers, to pray with sisters. It's like what you said in Timothy, that everywhere men would be lifting their hands in prayer.
It's what we want. It's what I want for me. It's what we want as a people. We know it's the way forward.
So we leave isolation. We grab the three, grab the two, we grab the 12, we grab the 70, and we start praying. And about what, we just pray about everything. We wanna pray about everything.
We wanna bring you into all of it. In Jesus' name. I want us to practice here before we leave. I want us to just pray about problems that are in the room.
Okay? I want us to break into groups of three or four with people either that you came with, or if you didn't come with anybody, that's great. And you're just gonna get welcomed in by people around you. And there's people that are just gonna find you, and they're just gonna welcome you into their group.
So everybody's gonna have a group, we're gonna get into groups of three or four. And we're just gonna pray about anything that is like a burden or something that people in your group are carrying. It can just be one thing that, you know, it's like, man, I'm really struggling with this. This is a problem that's coming up.
And I want you to share that problem for about 30 seconds. Okay? So we're not gonna just be processing the problem. We're gonna try to practice it, okay?
It's like, okay, I'm gonna just give a cliff notes. Like, this is the problem. This is what I'm navigating, or this is, man, this is what I'm really burdened by. And then we're gonna hit it together, okay?
Are you guys ready? We gotta practice it, because some of us are like just not used to it. And we just gotta jump right in, all right? You guys ready?
I'm gonna count to three, and feel free to just spread out. So you can get some elbow room, spread out throughout the room. Let's all stay standing as we gather in groups. Ready, set, go.