Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. All right, well, thanks for
joining us. Listen, we're here to talk about
how do we abide in prayer with dependence and anticipation.
I always, I, you know, when you talk about prayer, I don't know
why I feel this way. I feel like that some people
just like, oh, I don't know why I feel that way.
Maybe that's not true at all. You all obviously aren't that
way because you're here and you want to learn.
But sometimes in the Christian life, I feel like prayer is
something that I don't know why it gets diminished or it's not
done well and it's not something that people seek to grow in as
much. That may seem odd to you, Maybe
that's just stuff I've heard, but it's one of the most
important aspects of the Christian life.
And so we're going to actually talk about why.
Why do we pray? I mean, why?
Why do we even mess with this stuff?
Why do we do this? And then down the road, we're
going to talk about more of what it is and how we do that and how
the best ways to pray will be. Hopefully by the time we're done
with this series, you'll have a prayer strategy that'll actually
a personal prayer strategy that'll help you, that will be
practical for you. But over the years, Teresa and
I've been blessed by churches that I pastored that were known
for their prayer lives. But that's not always common
when, when I, when I would work with churches and you ask them,
describe yourself that you know, well, we're a praying church.
And then I would say, well, describe your prayer life to me.
And they talk about the three women who pray every other
Wednesday. And so, you know, they, so they,
they think they are, but they're not always are.
And, and so how do we actually become a praying people?
But we, we had the privilege of working with some churches that
really did pray, not necessarily because of us, but we're doing
that before we got there and and then some that we helped along
the way, I hope. But we, we really did to seek to
create spiritual impact in our communities through this.
You should have a handout that you can download or you have
here. I felt like I tried to get too
much on the handout this time. I actually apologize to Michelle
earlier for this, that I probably really did put too much
on there. So hang in, hang in there with
me. But one of the ways that we saw
this happen is the way we prayed for one another and for the
lost. And one of the mechanisms for
that was through the reach ministry that, that we
developed. And, and, and there were times,
and I've shared this with some of you and other contexts, but
there were times where we would receive between 5 and 600 prayer
requests a week from people on our city that, that wasn't that
necessarily people from the church, that would be people
from the city, because we were reaching out through our connect
our small groups with prayer requests to people out in the
community. And so we would have between
5:00 and 600 prayer requests to the point that we had this
reputation of you're that church that prays for people, aren't
you? And people would actually call
us in the church office during the week to ask us to pray for
things, people that we didn't know, people out in the, in the
towns, because we had that kind of reputation, which is 1, I was
thankful for. And, and, and so I pray we want
to grow in this. I pray we want to live for his
glory and, and impact the world. And so understanding and valuing
the pathways by which we can not only pray, but actually achieve
stronger discipleship is really important.
And so one of the ways to do that, we talk about spiritual
disciplines. And, and for us, we're using a
model here right now with 7 essentials based on Acts chapter
2 and Acts chapter 13. And so we have kind of seven
ideas or essentials or dimensions of discipleship that
we talk about here. But these daily habits such as
prayer, these things can transform us.
They really will. But they, they won't do that
unless they're daily habits. And so these are things that
really do need to become normal patterns in our life to where
we're drawing closer to God and are being used to fulfill his
purpose for us. So the word discipline, I just
looked up some definitions online, frankly, and you have
them there from a variety of sources.
But discipline means training that corrects, it molds, it
perfects, it means to train oneself to do something in a
controlled and habitual way. It's an activity, exercise or
regimen that develops or improves a skill.
And I liked all three of these. I stole those from three
different places. And, and I like the fact that
that this is a discipline prayer.
It does correct us. It does mold us.
It does perfect us. It's going to help train us to
do something. And these spiritual disciplines
are things that ought to be habitual.
They ought to be habits in our life.
These are exercises, These are regular regiments as a part of
our life that are going to help us improve some kind of skill in
life. And so, you know, one of the
questions that I often ask is do we, you know, do you regularly,
do you habitually practice earthly skills or talents to
perform better at work or, or in a game or on the course or out
on the boat or at the concert or in the art studio?
And I've shared this, I've been talking to the staff about this.
Think about these Olympic athletes and, and how much they
prepared for whatever seconds it was they had to perform.
And it's interesting because are we putting in the work to make
our life better here on earth, which is not a bad thing.
But how does that compare to the regular habits, the habitual
regimen of of our lives spiritually that are useful for
eternal life? And so to think about that for a
minute and how that works. First Timothy 4, verses 7 and 8.
We've seen this verse before in different studies.
It says have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.
Rather train yourself and know that these are imperatives.
You have to do this. You have to train yourself.
The Holy Spirit's not going to come train you in this context.
Now the Holy Spirit saves us, the Holy Spirit's helping us,
the Holy Spirit's empowering us to do this.
But I have to take responsibility here and train
myself for godliness. What for a while bodily training
is of some value. Godliness is a value in every
way, and it holds promise for the present life and also for
the life to come. So instead of these silly,
irreverent nonsense, we talked about this passage when we were
talking about the Bible, we're going to train ourselves.
The new American standard says discipline yourself.
The King James uses the word exercise because the Greek word
here is gymnasia, which ought to sound familiar.
And so it's a very literal translation sometimes to say
just to exercise, to train, to work out your spiritual muscles.
And that's internally important, eternally important, because
it's going to lead us not only to the best place eternally, but
it's also going to help us to live the best way now.
And but it, but it is a regular habit.
It's an exercise. Just like you would train a
muscle, you have spiritual muscles that you need to train.
And prayer is one of these key parts of this.
And often when people are honest with me about their spiritual
walk, sometimes their Bible studies stronger than their
prayer life. And, and they, they, they don't
know, they, the prayer life seems boring.
I mean, they, they don't, you know, they, it takes a while to
admit these things, but the prayer life is boring.
It's not getting above the ceiling.
It's, it's not going, They don't feel like they're getting a
result. They don't understand it.
So tonight I want us to understand what this really why
we should really do this in the 1st place.
Because sometimes I think we have the wrong goal.
And so sometimes our prayer life doesn't seem like it's working
right. But that's because we're not
seeking the right thing in our prayer life.
So we'll talk about that in a minute.
But Philippians 2 Paul writes, Therefore, my beloved, as you
have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much
more my absence. Work out your own salvation.
See again, there are these imperatives with fear and
trembling. But then there's also this
counterbalance, which is key for it is God who works in you.
Don't read verse 12 without verse 13.
So there's this interesting relationship between there's
certain things I'm responsible to do in my sanctification that
God wants me to do. He's going to help me.
I can't do it by my own strength, But God's also
miraculously, supernaturally still at work in me, and he's
going to enable me and pull things off through me that I
probably couldn't do by myself. And so it because he's working
to me both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
But notice whose pleasure that is, not my good pleasure.
And sometimes that's part of the problem in prayer.
We're going to get to that part. You know, it's why are you
praying what you're praying? What's what's your motivation?
What's your goal? And if you're only going prayer
is to get, you're missing it. You got to give in prayer just
as much as you want to get in prayer.
And that's, that's a real key. And that's what often is not
taking place in people's lives because people are rushing it.
I'm too busy to pray. I don't have time to pray.
I don't have time to read my Bible.
These are disciplines. And so if you have time to go to
the gym, if you have time to, to to study for the test, if you
have time to, you know, prepare whatever you got to prepare for
work, these are the same kind of things you have to take time
for. You have to make the time to do
these things. So train, discipline, exercise,
workout. Think of these words, these
commands in the original language.
So there's a covenant responsibility, a commitment,
responsibility toward ongoing intentional discipleship that we
have. And so we're going to draw all
this to prayer here in just a second.
So we got to put our personal faith effort in and we got to
make the time. We got to set aside the priority
and be and be very sure about this.
Now, one of the things that's really important is in this
passage, for example, and don't ever get confused by this,
Paul's writing to Christians. So he's not telling you how to
be saved. You're not working out your
salvation. That's not at all what this is
talking about in terms of being saved.
These people are already saved. Now he's talking about, so how
do you live as a Christian? How do you live in your
sanctification, in your discipleship?
Because you got to understand salvation is an event.
We're saved from our from the penalty of our sin, but
salvation is also a continuous thing.
He, he's continually saving us toward the end of time and
sanctifying us along the way. So we're not working to be
saved. We're working because we are.
And just so we want to apply this kind of action to personal
growth. So these regular work habits
like prayer, they have to be practiced.
They have to be exercised. You got to work out.
You're going to get sore. There are times you're not going
to want to do it. Satan's going to make sure you
don't want to do it, but you also have to lead us.
This will lead us to a deeper, much more intimate discipleship.
And then it's going to spill out, hopefully in works of love
toward the world as we show the gospel with others.
But simply practicing, and this is a real key point, and people
miss this because we have a tendency as human beings to
believe in works righteousness. If that's the natural default
setting for human beings, somehow I've got to earn this.
And so somehow we think in our minds that somehow I've got to
work my way up to approval by God and then I got to keep
working my way up in approval to God.
And we don't understand grace. Grace is very difficult for
humans to understand. And every other world religion
then is, that's why every other world religion is different,
because the only, the only true faith is the one that says we
don't have to do it that way, that God came to us, that God
sacrificed for us. But this also applies to our
discipleship. So we need to recognize that
simply practicing spiritual disciplines is not the ultimate
goal. Your goal is not to have a good
prayer life. Your goal is to have deep
intimacy with God. And there's a big difference
between the two. You can pray 3 hours a day and
not walk with God. You can walk through all the
rituals and all the disciplines and not have a close
relationship with God. And so we've got to recognize
that these spiritual disciplines of prayer is a means to an end.
And that's what is not the goal. It's a means to an end.
So practicing, you got to think of it in real life, out here in
the real world, practicing is not the end goal.
You don't practice sports, you don't practice music.
So you can brag about what a great all the great practice
sessions you had. You do those things and you work
hard in a rigorous, rigorously scheduled practice schedule so
you can play and perform at your very best in the real game, in
the concert. And our spiritual lives are no
different. These church disciplines help us
to actually participate in the real game, which is our walk
with Christ. So in our church membership and
our personal and intentional discipleship issues, we
ultimately seek to commune with God.
And that's an important word. I'm going to use two important
words about why pray commune. Communion is one of them.
And, and to understand what that word really means.
I don't mean the Lord's Supper. I I mean a relationship.
It's communion with God and to become more like Jesus and how
we act and how we think and how we feel.
You're not just going to automatically become that way.
You're not just going to automatically become more like
Jesus. There are things you need to do
in your life in order to help you to become more like Jesus.
And those aren't the end games. The end game is to be more like
Jesus. But, but I need Bible study.
I need prayer, I need the church, I need connect groups.
I need all these pieces that you hear me harping on you about all
the time. But all these pieces together,
because I believe and I've experienced and I've seen too
many times, I believe the Bible teaches that these things
together, if we do them the right way and we do them well,
it's going to help me become more like Jesus and to be closer
to him. So perfectly practicing
spiritual disciplines isn't even the goal.
Now, it's a good thing, I hope, but intimacy, intimacy with an
obedience to God, that these things that bring him great
glory, those are the goals. So why pray?
Why do that? So our goal, again is not a
great prayer life. Our goal is intimate communion
and authentic communication with God.
Now there's your sentence. And if that doesn't satisfy you,
you need to think about the sentence harder.
Our goal is this intimate communion and authentic
communication with God. If you had that and you really
had that, you wouldn't want to get rid of it.
I mean, you got to think about what that sentence means.
So let's talk about it for a little bit.
So personal holiness, Christ likeness, these are goals.
So prayer is an invited, but it's also a commanded communion
and communication with God. It's pretty amazing.
They didn't used to have it the way we have it.
I'm, I'm in the Old Testament in one book every day and I'm in
the New Testament in another one every day in my personal time.
And I'm reading about numbers and talking about how the
Levites were the only ones who could touch the Tabernacle.
They were the only ones who could move the Tabernacle In the
Old Testament. You couldn't just storm into the
holy of holies. You can just storm into the holy
of holies and grab a hold of the, of the the ark of the
covenant and talk to God. You'd be destroyed.
You had to go through somebody else.
Well, Jesus became to somebody else and now you have the Holy
of holies living inside of you and it's called the Holy Spirit.
So to think about the incredible privilege we have to, to not
only to not only pray because we're supposed to, but to pray
because we're allowed to. And, and that's part of the
issue. So part of our issue, part of
our issue with our prayer lives is really our, our, our, an
issue with our God life to probably understand who he is
and what we really have the opportunity to do.
So. So it's God, God, God uses all
kinds of external things in our lives to move us and to guide
us, to change us. He'll use people, he'll use life
circumstances. Sometimes he'll use crisis.
But think about it, what the one area within our own obedient
control and our own responsibility are these
spiritual disciplines. And one of those is prayer.
I control my prayer life. I control whether or not I'm
going to talk to God or not. I'm going to control whether or
not I'm going to listen to God or not.
It's pretty amazing. And so it's interesting.
We have to choose to live out the command verbs in Scripture
pointing to our obedient responsibility in this training
process, this disciple in process, this exercising
process, working out our spiritual growth, so to speak.
So I can't just blame somebody else.
Now. People do it.
I've heard it. I don't know how many times I've
heard it. I'm not being fed, you know.
So you will blame the pastor, we'll blame the church, we'll
blame the connect group leader or whoever going.
I'm not being fed. I'm not growing spiritually.
And sometimes they're horrible and sometimes there's some truth
to it. They're not doing a good job of
helping you grow. But a lot of times I it's also
because you're not growing spiritually, you're not honestly
and faithfully taking the proper personal responsibility for your
own personal spiritual life to pursue these disciplines,
including prayer. Jude I always like quoting Jude.
I don't get to quote Jude too often.
Jude one. But you, beloved, building
yourselves up. See these verbs, building
yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy
Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of
God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads
to eternal life. Now again, we can't do this on
our own. Other verses are going to tell
us that we need the power of the Holy Spirit to do this.
We need this help to. So there's this incredible
partnership we saw back in Philippians that's going on,
right? But God commands us to build, to
keep, to wait to reach this highest level of spiritual
maturity. And, and so if you want to be
full of the Holy Spirit, if you want to walk in love, if you
want to walk in the mercy of God, we have to discipline
ourselves to this level of commitment, this level of
communion, this level of communication to yearn for this
spiritual maturity. You got to exercise.
So prayer is this incredible doorway to that intimate
communion. But again, back to Philippians
2, just remember that second part where he says first he says
to work out your own salvation in verse 12, but then in verse
13, for it is God who works in you.
You see the partnership. It's amazing that God allows us
to be in partnership with Him like this.
So we obediently do our part. God is always going to
faithfully do His part. The more I do my part, the more
He's going to do His part, and He guides us in His will step by
step. Engage in in practice these
personal, corporate, spiritual disciplines, especially prayer,
so that we can be become continuous conduits through
which His grace flows. Charles Spurgeon once said this.
You see it. I must take care above all that
I cultivate communion with Christ, for though that can
never be the basis of my peace, it will be a channel of it.
In other words, in other words, this is this is something that
needs to flow through me. The old Greek word methatase for
disciple, One of the, one of the meanings of that word is the
mental effort needed to think something through.
So this is a person who's constantly thinking, constantly
learning, constantly working through how to solve things.
This is a person who's constantly trying to to better
themselves. And so this is a person who
never stops learning, never stops seeking to grow.
But now listen, I know people, I know people who've been
Christians for years and I and they just seem a mild, wide and
an inch deep spiritually. Now they're in church every
week. They're they're in their Sunday
school class every week. They're going through the
motions, but there seems to be no depth of, of relationship, no
depth of intimacy, no depth of communion.
I don't sense this real truth about communication, which I'm
going to talk about a whole lot more in a minute.
But but they seem spiritually undisciplined, driven here and
there by every experience and emotion and feeling and
everything they read and everything they hear rather than
Scripture. And they're just not producing
fruit in their life. They have no spiritual power.
They, they just seem to be shifted by every changing wind
that comes along. And as Paul said back in First
Timothy 4, they, they focus on irrelevant or irreverent.
Silly Miss, I've said this to you before.
My mother was a musician, I won't go into this long, but
went to Juilliard School of Music, New York, which was a big
deal for a little girl from Tahlequah, OK.
Probably the only little girl from Tahlequah, OK who'd ever
gone to Juilliard at that point in time because in those days
there weren't a whole lot of little girls in Tahlequah, OK.
And she studied and majored in woodwinds.
I've said this to you before. She could play 12 instruments.
She was a master teacher and instrumentalist in the area of
woodwinds. Played with Benny Goodman in big
band in big band era. For those of you who are old
enough to have any idea what a big band is and who Benny
Goodman is and and play clarinet, he she played clarinet
along with Benny Goodman. And so to think about that, do
do do you think my mom just randomly picked up a clarinet
every now and then and whenever she felt like it or it was
convenient to her to master that instrument?
Of course not. I mean, it was hours and hours
and hours and days and weeks and years of practice to get to the
level that she was. And so to live in this ever
deepening, abundant, fruit producing disciple making life
that God wants us to live, to be able to commune with him this
way and communicate with him this way.
Prayer is a major, major pathway.
We'll talk later in this series about it's also a weapon, but
we'll talk about that later. So First Corinthians 2 just
reminds us of this. I mean, this is deeply intimate.
Listen to this closely. Yet among the mature we do
impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of
the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we
impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed
before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age
understand this, for if they had, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, and
what God has prepared for those who love him, these things God
has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of
God. For who knows a person's
thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?
So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the
Spirit of God. Now we have received not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we
might understand the things freely given to us by God.
And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but
taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to
those who are spiritual. The natural person does not
accept the things of the Spirit of God for their folly to him,
and he's not able to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned. But the spiritual person judges
all things for him, but he himself is to be judged by no
one. For who has understood the mind
of the Lord, so as to instruct him.
But we now this last sentence is huge, but we have the mind of
Christ. I mean, what a powerful sentence
really. Because of the Holy Spirit,
because He indwells us, we have the opportunity to plug into
this, to plug into the thoughts of God, to plug into the depths
of God, to understand what God wants and to have the mind of
Christ. I mean, this is incredibly
intimate. So to understand the thoughts
and ways of God that he intends for us to understand, you can
understand that that he intends for us and our family and and
our church to understand, we have to be in constant communion
with His Spirit to have the mind of Christ.
And that connection to His Spirit is prayer primarily, and
the Word. We're going to talk about that
relationship later too. So to be that intimate, to be
that controlled by him, thinking and discerning like him, wise
like him, living like him. Now, we're never going to be
exactly like him. But this requires habitual,
intentional time and prayer. We got to go to Him even in our
anger, even in our frustration, even in our sinfulness, even in
our hurt. And we just got to be honest
with God. And we can do that in prayer.
He can. And He wants to handle your
pain. He's right there ready for it.
That that's part of what Hebrews 416 is all about.
Let let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of
grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time
of need, not just in time of joy, but in time of hurt.
In fact, the word confidence, there to go with confidence
means to come with this complete honesty.
It's the word means openness, to come with a complete openness
before God, laying it all bare before Him.
God wants us to come to Him just as we are, just wherever we're
starting with all of our junk we carry.
Because He already knows all about your junk anyway, and He
wants you to talk to Him about it.
He wants you to bring it to Him, and prayer is a vehicle for
this. So we need people who know how
to pray. We need prayer warriors as
described by Pastor Charles last time.
And I've known some, but they tend to stand out in my life
because they're so few. So we should all become like
this. First Corinthians 3 says this.
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people,
but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you are not ready for
it. And even now you're not yet
ready. How long will it take us to be
ready? Many aren't ready.
Many are still spiritual and spiritual infants and and the
frustrating part of it is many don't even know it.
They don't even know it. They have so few mature,
discipled role models around them and examples around them
upon which to look and to learn. They don't even know what
they're supposed to look like, so they stare at and compare
themselves with each other. Well, I'm better than he is.
I'm doing better than they are, so I must be OK instead of
focusing on Christ. And many Christians settle for
well, I'm as good as he is, so I must be fine.
I'm better than they are, so I must be in pretty good shape.
And that's not your marker. That's not your measuring stick.
So they're they're not disciplined in their time.
They're not disciplined in their focus upon him and who he
desires for them to be. So in the meantime, the Bible
expects, we've seen it. We've seen it tonight.
The Bible expects, the Bible commands that we build our
relationship in him and our knowledge with him.
We built, we have to build with those proper materials like
prayer or we're going to waste this life.
And so, and we're not going to be used to our greatest
potential in this life. It's going to pass you by.
Prayer is 1 incredible strong building block.
In fact, it's also been described as the mortar that
holds all the other building blocks together.
And so it's hugely important. So we have to seek the mind of
Christ then that that's what that's our attitude in prayer.
My, my attitude in prayer is, is not, boy, did I make it through
the list? Did I get everything I wanted
from God? You know, Teresa brought in some
food for me tonight because I didn't have time to go anywhere.
And so she brought in some food and I was supposed to have fried
okra. And I opened the container and I
had French fries. Oh, yeah.
No, no, no, no. I'm going back.
I'm. I'm taking a receipt with me.
And I'm because that fried, fried okra and fried and old
French fries, they're not the same thing.
I didn't get what I wanted from you.
God, this isn't working. Prayer doesn't work.
I'm going to reorder. See if you give me what I want
next time. We've got to be careful here.
That's not what they seek. The mind of Christ.
Think about that as your prayer aspect.
I'm seeking the mind of Christ. I want to think as He thinks.
I want to see as he sees. I want to define as he defines.
I want to decide as he decides. Now we're never going to be
Jesus, but that's our marker. Philippians 25 says it.
That's not my guess. I'm not just some preacher
making this up. He says have this mind among
yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus.
Or another translation would say, let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus. We are commanded to seek the
mind of Christ. Prayer.
Now, the word of God is also incredibly important here, but
prayer is one of the means to this incredible state of wisdom,
of maturity, of action, a state of being.
But in this is the key. But this is a key point, and
this is part of part of the problem in some people's prayer
lives. I need to pay attention to this.
You got to learn the concept of wait, why am I talking?
It's what that stands for. It's a good thing to learn in
conversation too. Why am I talking?
I've I've shared with you before, I should have brought it
tonight. I got a big sign.
It sits on the floor in my office because it's just for me.
And it says never miss a good chance to shut up.
I'm telling you, sitting right there behind my desk.
Why am I talking? And so I don't think we
understand this part of prayer. We think all prayer is a time is
us talking and it's not. You're missing it.
I'm going to make a big point about this in a minute.
We got to listen. We need to spend time meditating
on His will, listening to Him instead of just barraging God,
instead of just ambushing God with our litany of requests.
So simply going through these ritualistic motions of prayer
lists is not necessarily going to get you to your desired
destination. I'm not saying don't use prayer
lists because there's a moment for request, there's a moment
for supplication, there's a moment for intercession.
But that's not the only moment in prayer.
And if that's all you're doing in prayer, no wonder you're not
praying, right? How's that?
You're not praying so good, you're incomplete.
You're just seeking what you want in your mind.
You're not seeking the mind of Christ.
You're not seeking what He wants.
You're just seeking what you want.
That's not really prayer. We need to remember why we are
praying. Why are we doing this?
Powerful praying is communion with God.
Powerful praying is the prerequisite to knowing God's
purpose. Notice this has nothing to do
with me asking me wanting to know what I want to know.
This is about me wanting to know what God wants me to know.
Prayer is this pathway to knowing God's purpose.
Prayer is this, this thing that will produce passion for knowing
God's purpose. So it creates the building
blocks for this deep intimacy with Christ, and then that leads
you to the life He wants you to live for him.
It's a path to a stronger corporate body as well.
So for the entire church, if we begin to pray this way, God, God
will guard our hearts and minds spiritually together.
Now, the opposite of that, lack of this kind of prayer will
result in very little fruit, no power, a lack of connectivity to
the Holy Spirit, perhaps even a sense of Christianity as being a
failure or boring or restrictive.
So we need to submit to this pathway of this true intimacy
with and knowledge of Christ in prayer.
And in fact, one day the Bible tells us that we will be more
like him. But in the meantime, I'm
commanded. It's not a suggestion, it's a
command. Just like you shouldn't steal,
just like you shouldn't murder, you are commanded to pray in a
certain way, and we should do this.
We are commanded to discipline ourselves, to build and to work
towards spiritual maturity, to strive to be more like him right
now. So I need to develop these
habits of prayer in these discipline patterns.
I need the Holy Spirit. I need the fellowship of other
Christians in the church to help me.
We need to help one another. I might again, I might need a
crisis to help me. I've seen people driven to their
knees in the middle of crisis and watch God work.
So pray God will help. Pray God will strengthen you.
And again, Satan's going to do all he can.
He he does not want you to pray. Let me tell you, he's scared of
this. The Bible will tell you this is
a weapon. We'll talk about that later.
Go to Ephesians 6. This is a weapon sometime and
Satan scared of prayer. The last thing Satan wants you
to do is actually to talk to God.
See, you can talk to church, you can talk to the preacher, you
can sit and listen, but you start talking to God.
You're in the danger zone. So be careful, but pray every
day, not just for yourself, your own need to grow and your
desires, but you pray for others in the church.
You pray for unsaved. I strongly suggest you get in a
connect group where you can pray together.
Get your kids in our family ministries where they'll learn
to pray together, but you also got to spend that personal time
honestly seeking. But, but let me not only talk
about communion, but let me talk about this authentic
communication for a minute. Because one of the things I
actually teach classes on communicate, commutative theory
and cross cultural communication.
And one of the things I've understood about communication
is, is most human beings don't do it and most human beings
don't know what it is. They have real misunderstandings
of what communication really is. In fact, one of the, the old
adages came out of Broadway. So I hate to quote Broadway too
much, but and, and that is the greatest myth about
communications, that it actually took place.
And we think we're communicating, especially in
this culture when we're not. I'll, I'll explain that.
Remember that the root of the word communication is the word
common. So the more I have in common
with somebody, the more likely I should be able to communicate
with that person. Well, but don't just think about
that with another human being. Think about that, about God.
What do I have in common with God that helps me to communicate
best with God? What are the things in my life
that are godly that will help me best communicate with him?
So that I'll say a lot about our prayer life.
We carry biases, we carry prejudice into communication
even with God. And, and, and we, we sometimes
follow my words because if you've been here, you know these
words. We, we, we tend to not, not
exegete in prayer, which is what we ought to do.
We ought to be exegetical in our prayer life.
We're, we're getting out of our prayer life what God wants us to
get out of our prayer life. But we tend to isajete or
narsajete into our prayer life. We're reading into our prayer
life. We're making the prayer life
just about us. And your prayer life is not just
about you. Your prayer life is about God
and you got to acknowledge that this is a moment of worship.
In fact, this is the difference, and I've shared this with some
of you before. This is the difference between
magic and faith. The very idea of magic is, is
that I control the forces for my own benefit or to curse someone
else. I can control the forces of
nature. I can control the forces of
whatever occultic thing it is and I can control those things
through spells and incantations and and rituals so that I can
either get you or I can bless me.
And that's what some people treat prayer like.
If I say the right words, abracadabra poof, I'm going to
get whatever I want. I can name it and I can what,
claim it and it's mine according to the promises of God.
And when you ice a Jeep and take verses way out of context, you
can make the Bible support you. So even answered or unanswered
prayers can be confusing. They can be misinterpreted.
And this is really, really important.
That's why answered prayers must be in accordance with God's
Word. Prayer and the Bible must be
congruent. You can't sit there and tell me
that God told you to do something that not in this book.
I can't believe you. I'm sorry.
You're not Joseph Smith. You don't get to create your own
religion. You don't get to have your own
secret visions with special glasses and old Egyptian
hieroglyphics that you then translate into King James
English. You don't get to do that.
If you have no idea what I just said, you're OK.
And so the authority of scripture and the authenticity
of prayer must be congruent. That's a good sentence.
I don't know who wrote it, but it's a good one.
That might actually be me, I don't know, probably meditate on
the word and pray the promises of Scripture.
Charles talked about that last time too.
And so because here, here's the deal, in prayer, you must
actually communicate with God. Now that might seem dud to you,
but it's not because that's not just telling him requests.
That's not communication. Communication is not simply
telling somebody something hoping they hear you.
That is not communication. It's not.
That's lecture. Listen.
That's not communication. Well, I told them they ought to
know. No, they don't know.
They shouldn't. No, they shouldn't.
That's ridiculous. That's one of the most
ridiculous things about the pulpit.
I stand up here and I monologue to you for who knows how many
minutes, and you all endure it, and I have no idea whether you
understood a word I said or not. See, true communication is a
closed loop. The goal of true communication
is not whether you heard me. The true goal of communication
is did you understand me and do I understand you?
There's a loop of feedback that's going on here.
And so I need to not only speak to God, I need to listen to God.
We need to actually communicate in a closed loop.
So I'm seeking to know what the listener understood, and I'm
seeking to understand what the listener wants.
So I need to listen. I got to close it.
So prayer has to be this communal worship communication
experience. That's what it is.
Philippians 4, you know these verses, but don't be anxious
about anything. But in everything, by prayer and
supplication, with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known
to God, and He will give you. He will give you, or He will
grant upon you the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, and it will guard your heart, it'll guard your
mind In Christ Jesus. There's a loop here.
There's a loop. God wants us to come to Him,
begging, plead with Him, dump on Him.
He wants us to bring all that stuff, but then He also wants us
to receive from Him. And if all we're doing is
dumping the stuff and then kind of running away, you're treating
God like a dumpster. You're not treating God like a
God who can help you and who wants to minister to you.
Jesus described this in more detail in Matthew 7.
Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, Knock
and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks receives, and
the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be
opened. Or which one of you?
If his son asks for bread, we'll give him a stone, or if he asks
for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven
give good gifts to those who ask him?
So it's crucial for us to have this understanding of the will
of God before we're asking for anything.
We need to make sure that that we're asking things that are
according to the way his nature and his will are going to work.
But the way these verbs are these, these, these seek, these
knocks, these asks, but these are these are read Luke 18
sometime. It's a continuous thing.
I'm never going to stop seeking. I'm never going to stop
knocking. I'm never going to stop asking
you. I'm praying continuously,
fervently. I don't want to hear from you,
God, I'm not going to stop. I want to hear from you.
And in first John five, he writes, And this is the
confidence that we have toward him that if we ask anything
according to his will. But man, that's a big phrase.
According to his will, not my will, not my wants, not my
vision board, not whatever I've dreamed of, not ever whatever
I've manifested in my own fantasy of reality, it, it is
what God wants. He'll hear us.
And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that
we have the request that we have asked to Him.
You cannot take verse 15 without verse 14.
And how do I know? It's right here, It's right
here. Here's his will, here's his
word. So this and my prayer life have
to be partners. They have to go together.
What I learn in church, what I learn from other believers, the
truths of Scripture have to be the same thing.
Luke 11 says this. Now Jesus was praying in a
certain place and when he finished, one of his disciples
said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his
disciples. And I tell you, ask and it will
be given to you, and you will find knock and you will find
knock and it will be open to you.
So verse one, they're asking for that.
You see the Lord's Prayer, verse 9, he reminds them, keep doing
this. You got to keep doing this.
We're going to study the Lord's
Prayer in a session later in detail.
Jeremiah 29. Some of you know this verse or
two. Then you will call upon me and
come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of
your heart. How persistent will we be?
James very practical book talks about Elijah.
He was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently.
And I noticed Elijah didn't have a nature that wasn't like ours.
He didn't have a supernatural nature.
He wasn't different than us. He had a nature like ours.
And and he prayed fervently that it might not rain.
And for three years and six months it did not rain on the
earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven
gave rain and the earth bore its fruit.
God works in powerful ways with the people who truly seek him
and want to hear from him and want to know his will.
So prayers, communication also includes not only how we
communicate with God, but how we do this together.
Don't forget this Matthew 18. Again, I say to you, if two or
three, two or three of you agree on earth about anything, if 2 of
you, this one just says 2, if 2 of you agree on it on earth
about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in
heaven. For where two or three are
gathered in my name, there am I among them.
I was jumping a verse. So there's an agreement when 2
believers who are seeking God's will, when a group of believers
seek God's will together and they go to him seeking what he
wants. God blesses that unity of
intention. But sometimes things get in the
way. Walls, barriers.
I've listed a few, There's a lot of them that this would not be
exhaustive pride. Sometimes I don't need God or
even to be honest with you, a sense that prayer doesn't work.
That's pride. I don't think God can.
I can. God can't.
I can. I don't need God.
I don't need. I can do this.
It's pride. It's love of self.
Or maybe it's the opposite. It's a false sense of
unworthiness. I'm too sinful.
God's not going to live. Why would God listen to me?
God's not going to listen to me. We have.
We have no idea how much God loves us, how he yearns to hear
from us, how he wants us at his feet.
Faithlessness, busyness, unconfessed sin, disobedience,
ignorance, laziness, wrong motives, idols in our life, all
these things can be barriers that they make.
They're like earbuds that you put in your ears and you can't
hear anything that's being said. Psalm 66 says this.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not
have listened pretty straight. If you have unconfessed sin in
your life, there's a first prayer you have to pray the
prayer of confession, the prayer of repentance, the prayer, the
prayer of forgiveness, the the prayer of clean cleanliness.
You need to go before the Lord and let him set you right before
he can even listen to you. close the communication loop.
So give, don't just seek to get so you get back to God in prayer
through things like praise and Thanksgiving.
We've talked about some of these things in other settings, but we
we give back to God in prayer, we praise him, we thank him for
who he is. This Sunday morning we're going
to praise God together in Nehemiah.
We're actually going together and it's a weird spot right
there. I don't know what that is.
I'm telling you that metal plate in my head.
But Psalm 96, let me turn to Psalm 96 says, Oh, sing to the
Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth, sing to the
Lord, bless his name, tell tell of his salvation from
day-to-day. That means all the time declare
his glory among the nations, His marvellous works among all the
peoples. For great is the Lord, and
greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all
gods, for all of the gods of the peoples are worthless idols.
But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before
him. Strength and beauty are in His
sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families
of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory. Do His name bring an offering
and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor
of holiness. Tremble before him all the
earth. Say among the nations the Lord
reigns. Yes, the world is established.
It shall never be moved. He shall.
He will judge the peoples with equity.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice.
Let the sea roar and all that fills it.
Let the field exalt and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the
Lord, before he comes. For he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples
in his faithfulness. He deserves praise and
Thanksgiving. So I'm 100 and verse 4 is a
verse, you know. And enter his gates with
Thanksgiving, and his courts with what praise?
Give thanks to Him. Bless his name.
Or as Paul writes to the Thessalonians in First
Thessalonians 5, rejoice always pray without ceasing.
I want you to see how there's a connection between those two
things. Praise, rejoice, always be
joyful, pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all
circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for
you, no matter what, no matter when, no matter how hard, no
matter how good, sunny or rainy I am to go to God this way.
So if our Christian experience does not lead to some sense of a
deep spiritual joy and thankfulness, we would do well
to stop and to ask ourselves a whether it was ever genuine,
whether my Christian experience is even genuine or not, or at
what point I got off track. Where did where did this
building process stop? Why am I not building toward my
discipleship? I mean, if we aren't thankful,
are are we recognizing God's gospel and blessing?
If we're not grateful, do we truly understand who God even
is? God wants us to recognize Him
not only in our lives and and not simply treat Him like some
eternal Amazon ordering service, which is what I'm afraid some of
our prayer lives are like. God please bless God, please
bless God. Please bless.
Gimme Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme send.
I have Prime no delivery fee. Is that what our prayer life is
like? So being thankful like this kind
of reveals our focus. So we'll spend less time and
fear less time focusing on ourselves when we think like
this. So Ephesians 520 says giving
thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ. But that's not all we do in
prayer. We're just getting started in
prayer. God, God, God wants us to come
to him with our needs and our request.
So there's this aspect of prayer where we are asking for things
we want to get from God in prayer.
That's OK. It's just not the only OK.
God wants us to do this. And this is likely to where you
spend most of your time. How do I get stuff from God?
You wouldn't say it that way. You're more spiritual than I am.
But there are some things that you might not think about that
you need to get from God, like forgiveness, things you need to
give Him, like confession, things you need help with, like
repentance. Psalm 32 reminds us, blessed is
the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and
whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones
wasted away through my groaning all day long, for day and night
your hand was heavy on me, my strength was dried up as by the
heat of the of the summer. But I acknowledge my sin, I
prayed, I confessed my sin to you and did not cover my
iniquity. I said I will confess my
transgressions to the Lord, and amazingly, miraculously,
graciously, you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
It's pretty amazing. We know first, John 18 and 9, if
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness. This is written to believers.
It's not written to lost people. This is written to believers.
And so I, I can be forgiven and that and that that might need to
be the very first thing I utter. That might be the very first
part of my prayer every single day.
Confession, repentance, please forgive me.
Read Psalm 51 sometime and you'll see David doing that.
So ask the Holy Spirit to reveal sin to you.
That's part of prayer. Lord, show me when Martin Luther
was reading through Romans and he was working through an actual
conversion experience, which led to the Reformation, etcetera, he
would go to his father confessor.
He was a he was a priest. And so he would go to another
priest in the, in the, in the Catholic system and he would
ask, he would go to confession and and he would start reading
this litany of every single thing he'd done and every sort
of word he'd ever said. And the priest got so tired of
him and says, Luther, these aren't even sins you keep
bringing to me. He was overstating them, he
thought, but to Luther, they weren't.
They were failures falling short.
So ask the Holy Spirit to reveal every single sin to you.
And then confession needs to be made the moment you're conscious
of them. And so we confess them each
individually. You need to recognize this, that
that's what the Bible teaches in first John 19 when it says He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
The word for sins there means specific sins, not just in some
general state of being, not just our general all.
I'm a Sinner, Lord, please forgive me.
No, no, no, this is the specific sin.
What did you do? What did you say or what did you
think that was contrary to God's word and will you need to
confess that to the Lord, seek deliverance from the source of
the sin that's causing that to happen, and then agree with God
that you've sinned that. That's what the word confession
means. And and we're willing to repent
and to follow his will again. And that true repentance, that
new commitments going to require that true replacement that I've
talked about. So we put off and we put on.
I was sharing earlier with some folks about praying through
Colossians 3. Once again, it's a good passage.
So, so don't just remove or stop some sinful behavior.
You got to fill that time. You got to fill that void with
biblical, godly things because if you don't, you're going to
fall back in your old ways again.
So we know that you need to be forgiven.
We we also need to replace things.
What are the things that need to be replaced in your life?
Those are things to pray about. But we're also here to learn
about how to forgive others. And this is often very
difficult, but the key will always be to thank God for his
forgiveness. And we use that as the basis for
the way we'll forgive. And that's always a key.
But we're still giving back to God.
We're still giving to him in this complete communication.
We're trying to close the loop with Him.
We're not just seeking things from Him.
We're also trying to give things back to Him as we seek from him.
But God also wants us to frankly come to him with our prayer
requests. There are moments of
supplication. There are moments of
intercession, much like the list you see every Wednesday night
here. A lot of these are our health
requests. A lot of these, some of these
are spiritual health requests. Most of these are physical
health requests. There's even some on there about
life crisis request if you read closely.
And so we want to pray for these things.
It's a good thing to do. It's OK to do it's right.
It's biblical for us to do this. It's just not the only thing you
need to do in your prayer life. Don't just pray through the
prayer list. So First Timothy 21 says, first
of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers,
intercession, and thanksgivings be made for all people.
There are many other passages we could go to that would talk
about praying for one another. But, but rather than trying to
move God to my point of view, I need to let God move me to his.
What do you think about this situation?
God? God burdened me with what
somebody else might need. I'm not going to hesitate to
lift them up. Lord, help me to lift them up.
Be be help me to be burdened to lift up other people, not just
stuff I want, but what I see other people going through.
How can I lift them up? Revelation 16 said And made us a
Kingdom priest to his God and Father, to him be glory and
dominion forever and ever. Amen.
And you need to latch on and understand this idea of us as
priests. It's important.
The priest in the Bible had two roles.
They were both intercessor and mediator between God and man,
and we need to recognize that. We are now a royal.
I could read out of Peter. We're a royal priesthood today.
We are all priests spiritually. So we too are intercessor and
intercessors and mediators. I intercede on behalf of the
people to God, and then I'm going to mediate between God and
the people. I'm going to share the gospel.
I'm going to tell them about God.
I'm going to teach them about God.
I'm going to help him to know God, help him to be forgiven by
God. And this is a, this is modeled
for us in the New Testament by Jesus.
Jesus is our high priest. Hebrews 8 says, Now the point in
what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one
who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in
heaven. Then you layer on Romans 834,
who is to condemn Christ? Jesus is the one who died more
than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who
indeed is interceding for us. So we have an intercessor.
See, I, I'm not just praying by myself.
Don't miss this. When I'm truly praying, I'm not
praying by myself. Jesus is interceding on my
behalf. He's helping me.
He's interceding to the Father. I, I, the Father couldn't hear
me without Jesus. He can't hear me without that
blood covering. He can't hear me without that
sacrifice. He can't hear me without that
forgiveness. But because of the filter of
Jesus Christ, he can hear me now.
Now listen. It gets better, because the Holy
Spirit's also doing it, not just God the Son, but God the Spirit.
Listen to Romans 826. Likewise the Spirit helps us in
our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.
But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings
too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows
what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes
for the Saints according to the will of God.
So you see the entire Trinity at play in your prayer life and in
your salvation, in your discipleship.
The Holy Spirit, the triune God, is on our side, and he's more
powerful than that stupid O devil.
And so he commands us. He invites us to come and spend
time with him. And God the Spirit and God the
Son are helping God the Father to hear us and for us to receive
what God the Father has for us. It's amazing what a miracle this
thing is, what a privilege this thing is that I get to do that
me. In the Old Testament, I couldn't
even go near without being struck dead.
But now what happened to that veil?
I can go straight in, and every aspect of God is helping me.
That's what prayer is. That's why we pray.
We're communing with that. We're intermingling with that,
We're communicating with that. This isn't just, well, I hope he
answers the prayers on these prayer lists.
Now, there's a part of it. It's a good part of it.
James says we got to pray for one another and we should
wouldn't give you the list if it was wrong.
But I hope it's just a peace. It's a personal worship,
communion, intimate communication moment that you
ought to celebrate. And so he wants to hear and He
wants us to hear him. Don't miss that.
We must hear him. But it must be in agreement with
this word. You can't have some weird
special revelation that you blame God for.
It's got to match what God's already said.
It's got to match His word in His will.
See. So over the next sessions, what
we're going to do is we're going to learn how we do this.
How do we pray? What do we pray?
What's a model for prayer? We're going to talk about the
weaponry, the conflict of prayer that it brings.
We're going to talk about all those things.
I hope you'll be here. Grab people, drag them here.
I want to tell you an old story. Many of you have heard this
before. You can finish the line before I
get to it, but don't because it makes me feel bad.
So. So a pastor went to a was asked
by an older farmer to breakfast one morning and they were
sitting around the table with the old farmer and his family at
breakfast and and the the the farmer was going to pray over
the food. And this is his prayer.
Just listen to this Lord, you, some of you know this very well.
Lord, I hate buttermilk farmer begins and the visiting pastor
kind of opened one eye glanced over there at the farmer kind of
like, where's this going? The farmer like got even louder.
Lord, I hate Lord, now the Pastor Troy getting kind of
concerned. Then the farmer went even
louder. And Lord, you know, I don't much
care for a raw white flour. But then he added.
But Lord, when you mix them all together and you bake them, I do
love warm fresh biscuits. So Lord, when things come up, we
don't like when life gets hard, when we don't understand what
you're doing or what you're saying to us.
Help us to just relax and wait until you're done mixing.
It'll probably be even better than biscuits.
Amen. So stay strong my friends,
because our Lord is mixing. I promise you, this life on this
planet is a never ending ride in the mixing bowl.
But He's mixing to put together the right ingredients to create
something even better than we could ever imagine, than we
could ever create. There's something we could ever
do on our own. My friends, my vision for
Englewood's really simple. I want God to do something here
that can only be explained because God did something here.
That's it. And we have to walk with him and
commune with him and communicate with him and be very careful
that we're doing what he wants the way he wants us to do it.
And so we need to pray and ask him about those things.
Let's pray together. Father, I'm so thankful that we
can, we can unashamedly, even maybe audacity, audacity in an
audacity fashion come to you in prayer, Lord, just to so it's an
incredible miracle. I don't, I don't deserve to talk
to you. I don't deserve to be in your
presence. There's no reason you should
waste your time listening to me. But Father, in your words, you
tell me you will if I come to you the right way, if I come to
you with the right spirit and the right will.
So Father, please forgive me. Forgive us for the ways we fail
you. Sometimes it's not even the
things we do, it's the things we don't do.
Forgive us, Father, when we're too busy to talk to you and
we're way too busy to listen to you.
We just want you to hear us talk, Father.
Sometimes that's how we treat one another, isn't it?
We're not listening to the other person.
We're just thinking about what we're going to say next.
And Father, I pray that's not how we come to you, the Father.
We would pause, we would reflect, we would read Your
word, we would pray your word. We would sing to you out of the
Psalms perhaps, and we would listen to what you want to say
to us. Father, no still moments.
That small voice that you often use in our hearts to speak to
us, to show us according to Your word, how you want us to be, how
you want us to respond sometimes, Father, how you want
us to wait. And Lord, that's hard.
So Father, forgive us. But Father, we thank you for
that. We thank you and we praise you
because you are an incredibly gracious God who tolerates so
much, so, so much from us and you still want to bless, you
still want to use, you still want to create, you still want
to save, you still want to disciple, you still want to
grow. Father, what an amazing thing
because that's who you are. Amazing.
So thank you, Father, that we could just talk about how to
talk about and to talk to you. I pray, Father, that we will put
these habits into exercise. Habitual patterns of behavior
will exercise our prayer muscles in new ways.
And Father, we might get sore. Lord, we might get tired.
But Father, let us see the result.
And Father, we know, Lord, that you tell us in your word that if
we pray this way, if we will seek you, if we will fall on
your face, that Father, you will do mighty things in our land.
So, Lord, we pray for that. We pray that your, your presence
will be so evident, that your power will be so felt, that
your, your, your growth and your production of your Kingdom,
Father, will be so visible around us that, Lord, no one
will be able to deny you. Father, thank you for that.
I look forward to the day when we stand in a place with you and
we'll talk in a different way. We'll communicate and listen
from you in a different way. But for now, Lord, this is what
you've given us. So let us be faithful.
Let us pray in Christ's name, Amen.
God bless you all. Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening today.
And I also hope that you'll go to
ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com as well as our app and find many
other resources that will bless you and your families.
Thank you once again.