Talking to the Father | Ayren Nelson

Do you ever struggle to feel like you’re “doing prayer right”? In our series kickoff, Ayren will show us how prayer comes from our position as adopted children of God, not from a place of needing to earn His attention. We’ll discover the freedom that comes when we realize our prayers are not about performance, but about relationship.

What is Hope Community Church?

Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!

6: I, uh, I feel like I don't even need to preach a sermon after that. Man.

That's so good. Those truth is so beautiful. How are y'all doing? Good,

good, good. Uh, hey, if you are, uh,

new around here, maybe you haven't seen my face before. My name is Aaron.

I am one of the teaching team here. And, uh, man, I,

I love what we get to do in these spaces. I love the way we get to gather,

the way we get to worship. And, uh, man, if you are new around here,

or maybe if you are returning to church in the new year or something like that,

uh, I just want to kind of lay it out for you pretty clearly and frankly, uh,

who we are and what we're about. Uh, first of all,

we are a family that loves God. We follow Jesus and we share hope.

And we're gonna explore those ideas a little bit more a little bit later on

today. But, uh, at the core of who we are,

at the core of what we do as a church, uh,

is we believe that it is our responsibility as a family to grow

into spiritual maturity. And maybe you've never heard that phrase before.

Maybe you've never, uh, thought about that before.

But essentially all that means is that we believe that in the same way that a

person grows, uh, physically, uh, we believe we also all grow, mature, uh,

maturity wise as it pertains to our spiritual beings as well.

And the Bible actually refers to this as a type of wholeness.

It's us becoming a whole person, becoming the type of person that Jesus has, uh,

uh, intended for us to be. And uh, one of the things that I'm,

I'm coming to learn even as I walk with Jesus is this,

is that it doesn't require us to reinvent the wheel.

We had a leader. We have a man whose name is Jesus, who over 2000 years ago,

he perfected the wheel.

And so often as we find ourselves maybe in seasons of feeling spiritually

stagnant or feeling like, man, I, I don't know if I get this whole God thing.

Typically what happens is,

is we try to come up with all these like creative and sexy ways to like build up

our spiritual selves when the reality is,

is that we look at the blueprint that Jesus gave us and we say, Hey,

but how about we just try that stuff and see what happens? Because the truth is,

is that Jesus cares so deeply about who you are and who you're becoming,

that he has given us a blueprint of how our lives will take this natural

transformation from the inside out as long as we trust him and obey him.

So, uh, as we have already kind of heard over the past six weeks,

we've been in this series called Fresh Start,

where Jason has walked us through the life of a man named Nehemiah.

And we saw in Nehemiah's life, uh,

that all of the successes that he experienced, um,

and all of the triumph that he experienced was all predicated by his

willingness to consistently and humbly pray.

And so it felt like a clear jumping off point, uh,

for us to walk away from the story of Nehemiah and say, okay,

how about we learn what prayer is all about? And so, uh,

I do want to give you a little bit of this disclaimer.

We're gonna be in this series for the next three weeks. Uh,

if all we do is gather together for a collective roughly

three hours over the next three weeks and talk about prayer, we failed,

like the beauty in these practices that Jesus gives us actually comes from

the practice. Like that's where the transformation takes place.

So what I wanna invite all of us into is over these next three weeks,

these next 21 days, it's an opportunity for us to pray together.

And there's a couple of different ways that you can do that. Um,

hopefully there's maybe, uh,

you already have a natural rhythm in prayer in your own life, but if not,

we wanted to give you some parameters,

some things that actually could help you out a little bit. So, um,

at any point you can text the word app to 7 2 9 8 9. As a matter of fact,

if you wanna do it right now, I'm about to tell a story in a minute.

So this is a great time to like tune out and not miss anything. Uh,

but you can text app to 7 2 9 8 9. And in the Hope Community Church app,

we're gonna be walking through 21 days of prayer together.

If you joined us for our 40 days of prayer last year,

it's gonna be kind of similar to that with a few extra elements,

but also at each of our campuses, uh,

we're gonna have different opportunities for you to meet up midweek with other

people who you attend church with and actually pray together.

So be on the lookout for that. Talk to somebody at your campus about that.

Talk to your campus pastor. They'll, uh,

kind of point you in the right direction.

So what are we gonna do on the weekends?

Like if the majority of the heavy lifting is gonna be done during the week?

And through us practicing this together,

what are we gonna talk about over the next couple of weeks? Well,

today we're gonna talk about what prayer really is and how a proper perspective

of prayer, uh, informs the way that we pray.

So today we'll be talking about what is prayer. Next week, uh,

we're gonna explore different prayer postures, um,

and how those can help us in stirring up our affections towards God.

And I just want to tell you right now,

like next week is not the week to watch from home.

It's gonna be highly experiential. Uh,

there's gonna be some things that you definitely want to be in the room for.

So please do all that you can to prioritize being here in person at one of our

physical campuses for next week as we talk about the postures of prayer. Uh,

and then in week three,

we're gonna talk about what it looks like to establish a rhythm of prayer.

Because reality is, uh, we all have busy lives. And if we're not careful,

and you've probably experienced this for yourself,

sometimes prayer tends to be the first thing to go like not on purpose.

It just kind of happens. And so how do we keep that from happening? Now,

I wanna be clear, the purpose in all of this is not, Hey,

let's get the people of Hope Community Church praying so that we believe that

God will have favor on us and we'll be successful as an organization.

That is not the reason why we're doing this three weeks of prayer.

The reason why we're talking about prayer is because we want to stir your

affections for God.

My prayer has been that as we all walk away from this,

that we would walk out of these spaces and these times together and through your

prayer experiences of the week and say, man, God,

I can't wait to sit in front of you again.

I can't wait to hang out with you again.

I can't wait to pour out my heart to you again. See, I think one of the,

the reasons why we don't consistently, uh,

hold onto that posture of prayers, because if we're honest,

I think a lot of us have lost our sense of awe when it comes to prayer.

I don't think we make a big deal of it. Now, I wanna be clear, okay,

on the ground level, you're gonna hear me say the word prayer a lot today.

And so I want to be clear on what I mean by that.

Just kind of hear from the beginning. And its simplest terms,

prayer is talking to God and giving him space to talk

to us. Like on the base level when we talk about prayer, that's what it is.

But I do think there's this cosmic sense of prayer that we need to be mindful of

that does remind us that this is an awe inspiring thing that happens.

And I wanna show you what I mean. Um, back in September, uh,

this got delivered to my front door. See iPhone 16 and all right,

hold on, stay tuned. Uh,

I'm gonna admit something to you that if you're in here and you're an Android

user, you've been waiting to hear an iPhone person say, for a really long time,

uh, I got this phone, I got it outta the box.

I looked at it for a few seconds and I thought, did I just get ripped off?

Because I moved up to the 16 from the 14. And if I'm honest,

nothing really changed , like,

it feels like the same phone that I got two years ago.

And I'm pretty sure this is pretty close to the same phone I'm gonna buy again

next year because old habits die hard. But I remember the first time,

uh, I remember back in 2007,

I was in middle school and a kid named Daniel Pipkin walked into school with the

original iPhone.

And we thought that this kid who was previously the biggest nerd in school,

he immediately got promoted to the coolest kid in class like overnight.

And I don't know if you remember the original iPhone,

but let me just kind of describe to you how powerful this bad boy was. Okay? Uh,

this the base model of the original iPhone,

it came with a whole four gigabytes of storage,

which if you're not a techie out there,

that's about two videos on your phone right now. It doesn't take a lot. Uh,

it touted a two megapixel camera for reference. Uh,

this one has a 48 megapixel camera on it, a rear camera. Of course,

there was no front facing camera because selfies didn't exist yet. Uh,

on top of that, there was no app store. It had no Siri.

FaceTime wasn't a thing. There was no video recording.

This one actually kind of shocked me when I went back and looked it up.

You couldn't copy and paste on it. You couldn't send photos or videos,

you couldn't change your wallpaper on it. There wasn't even a flashlight.

And we had the nerve to call this thing a smartphone. .

If any of you were walking around with this today,

we would've roast you to high heaven. Okay?

I'm just letting you know that right now, .

But here's the thing that's pretty crazy, man.

I got this phone back in September, this iPhone 16,

and I pulled it out the box and I went, me, it's all right.

But if someone would've showed me this in 2007,

my brain would've exploded. Like the fact that on this device,

I can pull it out right now and in a matter of seconds I could be, uh,

talking face to face with someone on the other side of the planet.

It's mind blowing. Like we didn't have that technology back then,

but we also didn't have a proper context for it.

And I know this is a silly example, but when I think about that,

it reminds me of one Peter,

one 10 and how it's descriptive of most of our, uh,

experiences of Western Christianity. Here's, here's what it says. Uh, one Corin,

I'm sorry, one Peter one verse 10. It says, uh,

concerning this salvation,

the salvation that you and I have the prophets who prophesied about the grace

that was to be yours,

they searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time

the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of

Christ and the subsequent glories,

it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves,

but you in the things that we have now been announced to you

through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from

heaven things into which angels long to look.

Let me paraphrase all of this for you.

You ever read the Old Testament and you hear these incredible stories like the

greatest hits of like Moses part and the Red Sea,

and like the dry bones coming to life,

the army of dry bones in front of Ezekiel. And you think, man,

if I could have saw that stuff,

like my faith would be undoubtedly stronger than it is

today.

What Peter is writing here in this passage is that actually,

if you were able to sit down with Moses,

or if you were able to sit down with Ezekiel,

or if you were able to sit down with one of the prophets of the Old Testament,

you know, who would want to hear the stories? They would, they would be like,

man,

tell me what it's like to have the presence of God with you 24 7 wherever

you go.

Tell us what's it like to just be forgiven by what Jesus did on the cross

without having to do all the sacrifices and go through all the things and ask

all the questions. Like if they genuinely look at us and think, man,

if we could have what those Christians in 2025 have,

and then on top of that, Peter doubles down and says, no,

even the angels watch eagerly meaning in some cosmic

way that I don't understand. Somehow the angels who are in heaven, uh,

around the throne of God look at us and say, man, we wish we had what they had.

Like that's wild to think about because there is something, uh,

innately intimate about the relationship that God has graced us all with.

And I think one of the aspects of that intimacy comes through prayer.

And I think we need to allow, uh,

God to redefine what prayer is in our hearts. Prayer is not a last resort.

Prayer is not a break glass in case of emergency bandaid from when we've tried

everything and it didn't seem to work.

Prayer is not just what we do while we wait for our food to cool off,

there's actually something cosmically important that happens in profound,

and we're gonna kind of build on this definition as we go.

But at its base level, when we pray,

we are responding to a supernatural invitation.

It's a supernatural invitation. Let's go back in time a little bit,

going back to the Old Testament,

talking about some of those prophets that we talked about earlier, right?

Let's go back and look at the Israelite people who Jason talked about throughout

the Nehemiah series. If you go 500 years prior to Nehemiah, uh,

those Israelite people were being released from Egyptian enslavement and

they're out in the wilderness being led by a man named Moses.

But here's what happens, even in the midst of the wilderness,

which they put themselves there by their own disobedience,

God promised to be their God. And this is a big deal.

Like they are surrounded by nations with false gods false idols.

And the one true God of the universe says, you all are my people,

and I'm going to go before you. But there's some rules,

there's some ground rules. See, I'm a holy God. So, uh,

not everyone can step foot into my presence.

We'll talk about that a little bit more.

But God still offered his presence with a few circumstances.

It was made available to one nation in one room,

which was referred to as the holies of Holies, where one man,

one time a year was allowed to enter,

assuming he had done a whole lot of work to go in there.

And in this,

this building that it kind of takes on some different shapes over the history of

the Bible. You have the tabernacle, you have the temple,

and inside of these buildings, you have the Holy of Holies. And in it,

there's a curtain that separates the holy of Holies from everything on

the outside. Now, why was this giant curtain here? Well,

it was to make sure that if somebody was walking through the temple looking for

the bathroom, they didn't accidentally walk in because if they did,

the holiness of God would strike them dead because of their sinfulness,

because of their brokenness in the presence of a holy God,

they wouldn't stand a chance. This curtain was, uh,

historians believe it was 60 feet high.

It was 30 feet wide and about four inches thick made of a single fabric,

meaning, uh, it was impossible for any human hand to really damage it.

As a matter of fact, if it ever needed to be handled,

it's believed that it took somewhere around 300 priests like teamwork,

team lip.

This isn't your couch getting it upstairs to your second floor apartment.

These are 300 men giving all of their effort to move this curtain.

And why was it so big? Why was it so large? Why was it so robust? Well, one,

it was because it was a symbol to all of the people of the separation that sin

calls between us and God,

that no one man was strong enough to move that barrier out of the way so

that any of us could enter in freely.

This curtain was a constant reminder of the sin that, uh, of the,

of the divide that sin created between God and man. And I just wanna be clear,

this wasn't a them problem.

This wasn't just a hurdle that the Israelites had to get over. You see,

for all of us, we all have an issue that separates us from the presence of God.

It makes us unworthy of entering in, and that's our sin.

And the reality is all of us has a curtain.

Maybe it's a sin that you keep running back to over and over again.

Maybe it's shame and maybe it's the guilt for something that you've done in your

past. Maybe it's a lie that you'll never be good enough. Listen to me,

we all have a curtain,

something that by design should separate us from God.

But there's a reason why today we aren't restricted to one nation and one

man going into one room one time a year.

And the reason why all of us in humility can approach our king

is because over 2000 years ago,

a man named Jesus died on the cross being the ultimate sacrifice for us.

And look at what happens.

We hear about this in three of the four gospel accounts.

We get this little detail. This is Mark chapter 15, 37 through 38.

It says that when Jesus was up on the cross and as he was about to die, it says,

then Jesus uttered another loud cry, and he breathed his last.

And the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top

to bottom. Think about this.

Why do all of these gospel accounts include this detail?

It's because at the moment that Jesus breathed his last breath and the life left

his body, something supernatural happened.

It was around where Jesus was being crucified into the temple where this curtain

was, it was about a half a mile away.

And the moment he let out his last breath,

I love that the Bible includes this detail.

The veil itself was torn from top to bottom,

insinuating that it was torn only by a hand that was strong enough,

and that was tall enough.

It was torn down the middle by God. And at that moment,

for each and every one of us, not only was that curtain destroyed,

but the curtain that we have, our shame was removed by the hand of heaven.

Our guilt was removed by the hand of heaven.

The lies that we believe about ourselves were removed by the hand of heaven.

And God himself,

he handled all the things that could potentially get between us.

He moved him out of the way.

The God that was kept in and the people that were kept out,

he just gave one big invitation to say, come and talk to me.

And that is the supernatural act that happened when Jesus died on the cross.

That makes prayer possible for each and every one of us here today.

That at any given moment you can bow your head and close your

eyes and say, let's pray.

It's all because of the work of what Jesus did on the cross.

When we take the time to pray,

we are responding to this supernatural invitation into the presence of God.

And we humbly say, I accept. Let's talk.

And the the reason why this invitation means so much to us is because of the

character and the identity of the one who extended the invite in the first

place. Listen, when we pray,

we are responding to a supernatural invitation. Yes, but it's from a holy God.

And I think this idea of holiness is something that we forget about,

but it's an inalienable part of God's identity.

When we talk about the holiness of God,

we're talking about the otherness of who he is, who he is.

We're talking about the bigness of who he is, his majesty. This,

this person that the entire history of the world, uh,

has exhausted all of human language trying to describe,

but still somehow manages to fall short.

And the Old Testament is full of examples, uh, where,

where humanity tries to interact with the presence of God.

And in that interaction,

they realize how sinful they are and how holy he is.

I wanna paint a picture for you really quick. This is Isaiah chapter six.

And uh, Isaiah was a prophet,

meaning he was a person that he spoke to the people on behalf of God.

God would give him a message, he would tell the people. And uh, in chapter six,

Isaiah is, uh,

given an opportunity to enter into the presence of God. It's a rare moment.

It says, in the year that King Siah died, I saw the Lord lifted up on a throne,

I'm sorry, sitting,

sitting upon a throne high and lifted up in the train of his robe,

filled the temple above him, stood the seraphim.

There were these angelic heavenly beings. He said each had six wings,

two that covered his faith. Two, he which he covered his feet,

and two with which he flew. And one called to the other and said, holy,

holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

This is the song that's being sung in heaven. It's a, an, an,

an admonition of how holy God is. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of host.

The whole earth is full of his glory.

I want you to imagine you're Isaiah seeing the scene,

pull that iPhone 16 out. You wanna snap a picture? ,

man, I wanna remember this forever. No, look at, look at what happens to Isaiah,

how he perceives everything going on around him. He says,

the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the

house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me.

He realized he was in trouble. He said,

I am lost for I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people

of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Listen,

in light of God's holiness,

the only thing that Isaiah could really wrap his mind around was how unholy he

was and how much he didn't deserve to be there, standing there

in the throne room of the universe,

like the place

where all the decisions of the universe are made. God's office,

he's in there and he can't believe it.

And all he can think about is how much he doesn't belong.

And this is the place that we get to petition.

And this is the God that we get to stand in front of when we pray.

And so maybe you're thinking and you're like, yeah,

but like that's Old Testament God.

Like that sounds like big enlightening and thunder and all this stuff, right?

But like, we got Jesus Now, he's super approachable.

He takes God down off the top shelf. Like, now Jesus is my homeboy. Like,

we have a different, what's up pops? Let's talk about like,

let's how I pray now. No, listen, that never changed.

Listen, because, because we were, because God, like I,

lemme put it this way,

I think a lot of us have had to work really hard to get the image of God out of

our head that's like ready to strike us with a lightning bolt.

And I think what's happened is, is we've learned about God's mercy.

But God's mercy does not negate God's holiness.

Like because he's forgiving and because he's loving and because he welcomes you

in with open arms, like his standard didn't change, he's still holy.

Look at Revelation chapter four back of the book. We see a very similar scene,

and the angels are still singing, holy, holy, holy.

It's the only phrase that's worthy enough of declaring glory to God.

So I wanna be clear in this,

even though right now we can close our eyes and we can pray to God,

I want you to know that just because we have more access,

it doesn't mean that we have less reverence for who he is.

Just because we can boldly walk into his throne room,

it doesn't mean that we lose reverence for who he is.

We don't approach God flippantly.

Hebrews chapter four 16, I just kind of alluded to this. It says that, let,

it says, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace

that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need.

I love that verse because it says that we can approach the throne room of God

with confidence, but it's not this.

Let me kick down the doors and call the shots. We approach it confidently,

not as God's boss, but recognizing that he is Lord.

And look at how it says we draw near,

we draw near to the throne of grace because we know that there we will

find mercy and grace in time of need. We can boldly approach,

not because God is our genie in our back pocket,

but because we know he loves us.

All of this is possible because of the work of Jesus,

because of the work of Jesus. We can remain fearful,

but we don't have to be afraid.

We can be reverent without fear of rejection because I

think just as important it is for us to recognize the holiness of God and his

identity and his character.

I think what helps give us some of that confidence and prayer is recognizing the

way that God views us as well. If we have a proper view of God,

he's holy, he's big, he's other.

We also need to recognize and just as important to our relationship of prayer is

we need to recognize that he sees us as his children.

So to complete the statement that we've been building together over this time,

when we pray,

we are responding to a supernatural invitation from a holy

God to his adopted children.

And recognizing your identity as an adopted child of God. Man,

it has the power to be deeply transformative.

At the core of the gift of prayer is the reality that in some supernatural way,

by the means of his supernatural grace,

a supernatural holy God wants to spend time with his children because he wants

to. He wants to welcome you into his family. The New Testament authors,

they write about this idea of adoption a lot because it was a really big deal in

their culture in society to have been an orphan in biblical times.

It was almost in line with a death wish. It meant vulnerability,

it meant poverty.

It meant you were solely dependent on the mercy of other people.

You probably became an orphan, uh, by,

by circumstances that were outside of your control. And in that same way,

you were hopeful that through circumstances outside of your control,

that someone would come and redeem you,

and to have someone adopt you and welcome you into their family, it,

it had life altering implication. It meant that you were chosen.

It meant that someone was willing to share everything that they had with you.

It meant that you were given a place to sit at their table and eat,

and a place to lay your head and find rest. Come on,

we're talking about God here.

We're talking about the way that he welcomed all of us into his family adoption,

ascribes value to someone who thought they were valueless

and whoever adopted you. Could you,

could you just imagine the way you would look at them? Like,

could you imagine the gratitude that you would feel towards them?

Would you throw up your hands and praise them again and again?

Could you imagine the first time that you humbly requested something of them and

they gave it to you?

Could you imagine the first time you humbly requested something of them and they

said no,

but then they pulled you close and explained the reason why and how they were

actually looking out for your good. That's what prayer is.

Think about the holy God that we just talked about,

the one with whom people dreamed of experiencing his presence,

the one that caused Isaiah to fall on his face,

the one that the Book of Psalms goes on and on and on about that holy God

looked at you and said, I want to welcome you into my family. And with that,

the number one gift that I want to give you on top of all of these things,

this inheritance is myself,

The opportunity to hear and be heard by a holy God who just wants to spend time

with his kids. Ephesians chapter one puts it this way,

Paul writes all praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because

we're united where Christ. I just wanna take a moment right here and say, man,

this promise is for those of you who have put your faith in Jesus,

and I wanna let you know something beautiful the same way that that veil was

torn on the cross 2000 years ago. Listen,

there's nothing standing between you and a relationship with God right now.

So if that's you, I I just want you to have a moment.

And I want you to resolve in your heart that you're gonna find somebody to talk

to. If you say, man, I want that sort of relationship with God,

I want you to find someone in next steps. Find a pastor. If you're like, listen,

I don't know where next steps is. I don't know where to go,

everyone else get ready. Just tap somebody on the shoulder and say, Hey,

I need to talk to somebody.

And they'll help you point it in the right direction.

It says that even before God made the world,

God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes,

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family

by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. Listen to this,

this is what he wanted to do.

And it gave him great pleasure. Listen to me, you're not a disappointment.

You're not a nuisance to God. Look, I'm,

I'm talking to people who have never made that decision to follow Jesus.

And I'm talking to the lifelong Christian who just feels like,

like God doesn't want to have anything to do with you.

It was his pleasure to bring you into his family.

You're not an inconvenience. If we jump down to verse 11, it says,

furthermore, because we are united with Christ,

we have received an inheritance from God for he chose us in advance,

and he makes everything work according to his plan. This idea of adoption,

it completely transforms the way that we pray.

Listen, when we talk about prayer this way, it's, I, I think it's,

it's pretty easy to get excited about it.

I've been trying to hold back tears the entire time I've been up here. But,

but that's not my experience like day in and day out.

Like I don't think about it. Like if I'm honest, I,

I try to pray before bed sometimes,

and then my brain wanders off until eventually I fall asleep.

Like I don't pray with zeal with my head on the pillow like something amazing's

gonna happen. I've stood in rooms with people and go, who wants to pray?

And the person who gets stuck doing it is like, dang it, why me?

And I think this happens because we don't have a proper view of what prayer is.

I think our misinterpretation of what it is, has, has broken us. But man,

if we just think of it not as this way of like, oh man,

I gotta say the right stuff in front of these people. But instead we're like,

man, you guys chose me

to go into the throne room of heaven on your behalf, man,

let's pray. Let's talk about it. And man,

that'll make you that person that prays for way too long. And everybody's like,

bro, can we eat, can we just ?

Because you just see the value in talking to your dad. For so many of us,

we just don't know how to pray. And if that is you, uh,

you're actually in good company. Jesus Jesus's disciples,

they didn't know how to either. Actually, they did.

Um, early Judaism. Prayer was like a big part of what they did,

prayed three times a day.

They had prayers for things we would never think to prayer about, pray about.

As a matter of fact, I found out earlier this week,

they had a prayer for if they saw someone who was abnormally short,

abnormally tall or like wasn't physically attractive, they would go, God,

thank you for your creativity and creation,

which is how I'm gonna call people ugly from now on .

But they prayed about everything.

But we find out that there's a time where these disciples walk up to Jesus and

they go, Jesus, can you teach us how to pray? Now,

why would lifelong prayer warriors say that?

It's because there was a way that Jesus prayed that was different.

It struck them. And what, man, we've been doing this our whole life,

but the way he does it, it's different. And so they say,

Jesus teach us how to pray.

And he starts a prayer that has echoed throughout history.

And the first line of it is absolutely brilliant,

but it's so telling. He says, our Father who is in heaven,

holy is your name.

And I was thinking about this and I'm like, man,

it feels like this needs to make it in the message somewhere.

Like this is how Jesus told us to pray.

And so I'm looking at what I have written down, I'm looking at this and I go,

dang it.

Everything I've been trying to say and exhausted myself for the last 30 minutes

to say, Jesus sums up in this one line. Go, go to that,

that next slide, Jesus gives us this invitation and says,

our Father, ,

which places on us the identity of adopted children, he said,

you who are in heaven, holy is your name like God. That's your essence.

So Jesus tells us, Hey, when you pray, start by acknowledging two things.

Who is God and who are you?

Because that will inform the way you pray and it will infuse your prayer life

and bring it to another level by simply recognizing who you are and who

he is. So here's what we're gonna do

normally, um, to close out the message, uh, I would say a prayer,

but I'm not gonna do that today. You are.

And maybe you're already in this moment of like, man,

I don't really know what to say. Maybe you're in this moment where you're like,

actually, I, I I definitely want to talk to my father right now. Listen,

if that's you, by all means,

go ahead and say whatever is on your heart and on your mind right now,

But the worship team is gonna play a song. And, uh, this song,

it's, it's simple, yet profound. If you've never heard it before,

within a minute you'll know it. And my,

my prayer for you is that you'll deeply internalize it.