MK040 Sermons
Learning How to Pray from Jesus - Part 1 (Audio)
So everybody excited looking forward to more snow? All right, man. Most of the people has a few booze and hisses out there, but not too many the overwhelming sense of excitement What's great to have you here with us this morning? And as we were as I was navigating through the snow experience yesterday I got up and was saw that the snow had come down like it They said it would and heard my son and one of his buddies downstairs So I yelled down Hey, you guys want to go down and get the snow blower going and get things started and they're like yeah I'll get we'll get things started and and I knew that they knew how to do that because last year then the the 12 days of my wife and I were away in Hawaii it snowed almost every other day So my son got lots of experience will navigate the snowboard through that experience So I knew they knew how to do it So it's almost there's an our upstairs bathroom. I'm getting ready and I kind of see them out there They get it out and I'm watching they're pulling pulling nothing, you know Calls his buddy over there. He's pulling pulling nothing and not starting and so they're like not sure what to do They kind of look at things and then go back to pulling I'm like, okay This is kind of one of those dad moments where I'm like, okay How much do I get involved, you know, I let them figure it out themselves or do I jump in and rescue them? I'm gonna let them score them for a little bit more So I let them try to figure it out a little bit more They kept trying trying finally got ready and went outside and I was like what's the problem there? That's this thing won't start, you know, I did won't start, you know Well, I knew that I had started it two days before in one pole, so I knew it would start So I went over looked at and I was like hey guys come on over here And I was like you see this little lever at the bottom. It says off You got to push it up That's the kill switch you don't want that down on the off position when you start You see this thing called the throttle you got to put over here where you start it, you know There's a little looking like a key turning on, you know, you turn that back and Go over there pulled it, you know, sure enough start up right away on one pole, you know One of those dad moments to kind of show up the young bucks, you know, so But it was a case in which in that situation that experience We had to go back to the very beginning back to the basics Even though they've done this for a long period time and navigate it a lot had to go back to the beginning and say Let's go back to square one and start at the very beginning and the truth is I think we all know that in life There's a lot of things like that, right? I mean if your kid wants to seize if you got a younger child and they see someone Doing tricks on a bike, you know, that's what they want to do But the first thing they do is figure out how to get those two feet off the ground, right? And start pedaling without you holding on and no extra wheels there before they can move forward You know, you have to master algebra which of course unfortunately I never did before you can get to a trig and pre-calculus, right? That's the way things have to go when you start in a new job and career You have to get your feet on the ground and sometimes you have to do stuff you really don't want to do Before you gain opportunities to do more things It's a lot like that his parents, isn't it? You know, it's good thing God doesn't give us kids when they're teenagers first, you know Kind of have to raise them as toddlers kind of gives you a test run for what it's gonna be like as teenagers, you know You make it through that well, guess what you got another challenge ahead and this is what that's gonna look like and this morning We're gonna talk about something that I Really think applies to everyone here. No matter whether you're a person of faith or not No matter where you are out on your spiritual journey We're gonna talk about something that I think everybody here and likely has probably done and that's pray Right because you know what I've realized and what I've learned is it doesn't matter whether you're a person of faith There doesn't want anything to do with God when life falls apart. Guess what you do? You pray and when you want something and you can't find a way to get it What do you do ask God for it? And so I think what we're gonna talk about this morning Affects everyone regardless of where you are on your journey if you haven't been here with us We've been in this series on the Sermon on the Mount Pitled sitting at the feet of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus most famous Message and in this message he presents to his followers a different way of living life Different way of living life and ironically he's not presenting this message to irreligious or non-religious people He's presenting it to very religious people the Jews who they had all kinds of laws and rules and they live by these And he said I want to present to you a different way Because there is a kingdom that's coming. It's close by and it's my kingdom And this is what life in my kingdom is going to be like and you know what you're gonna be surprised by who's in and who's not And he said if you want to be a part of my kingdom There's some ways you're going to relate to one another that are going to be totally different than the way you used to relate He said I'm not going to tell you to do more I'm going to invite you to do something completely different totally different than what you've done before in Relationship to anger in relationship to lust in relationship to conflict in relationship to marriage in relationship to keeping promises as we looked at over the last number of weeks and Then last week he takes a little bit different tone because he kind of Ends that part of the message of this trade-off of what what life in the kingdom is like if you want to enter that and he says you know Let's talk about what you're currently doing And so he goes through some religious activities that they did giving to the poor prayer fasting And he says you know what matters most to God. You know what matters most to me in my kingdom is not what you're doing It's why It's your motive The motive of your heart. That's what matters most to me God doesn't say you should give more to the poor It's not what he said. He said why are you doing it? He doesn't say you should pray more This is why you doing it doesn't say you should fast more He says why are you doing it? And he offers his alternative if you're struggling with your motive in these areas There's some ways that you should consider doing this radically different To alter the motive of your heart because he says if your motivation at the core what drives you to do all these things is not out of an overwhelming love and devotion and gratefulness to God for all that he's done for you Then you're just doing that to look good to other people Look good for your spouse Parents for your kids kids for your parents Friends people in your small group Pastors you're just trying to make a good impression for them if your motivation is not driven out of a heart of love And so my challenge to you last week is to look at what you're doing Look at what religious spiritual activities you are doing and as you participate in them this week to ask yourself the hard question Why do I do this? Why do I do this? Because Jesus is more concerned about why you do it than what you do and that's what life in his kingdom It's like In the middle of those three areas that he talks about and we skipped over it last week and we're gonna spend this week and next week There's a prayer that Jesus Spoke about and this prayer is probably the most well-known prayer that Jesus ever prayed. It's called the Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer now in some faith traditions. This is said on a weekly basis So if you have been in a church experience for any season of your life where this was said on a weekend week out basis Can you raise your hands? Let me just see your hands got a lot less for service. It was the large majority of them So a lot less in this service And so sometimes the question is should this be something that we repeat over and over again this whole idea of the Lord's prayer Well, I think it's yes and no Yes, and no you say what do you mean John? Well? When you are teaching kids, I have a first grade teacher, right and I am first grade first grade Kindergarten I have a kindergarten teacher here in the front row So when when you're teaching kindergarten and you're trying to learn their ABCs usually teach them a song or something that they can remember Right, that's what you teach them now when your kids get to be about 10 years old You probably don't ask them to say that song do you? No, no, but if you start to sing it guess what they can do what? They can sing along why because they heard it over and over and over and over again, and it's just embedded in their memory as part of who they are Now for some of us You've grown up in an experience. You've had time in a church experience where you repeated the words prayer regularly And what I've discovered is people who've had that experience go one of two directions some of them like Oh, yeah, they just drone on that thing every single week. We didn't know about it man We didn't know what it was all about and it others like no that was really meaningful it kind of sunk in it was part of my faith journey and I Kind of think that this the Lord's prayer should be one of those basic foundational things That I'm not sure in my faith experience. We found a way to embed that into our heart and soul It's kind of the foundation about how we pray So that we can periodically come back to it over and over and over again It's interesting that this prayer starts with my our father not my father It's a it's really a corporate prayer designed to be said together and maybe something we need to think through is When are the times and opportunities for us to say this together to bring us back to that? Before we take a look at the prayer Or don't get the verses preceding that if you have your Bibles if you turn to Matthew chapter six Matthew chapter six If you don't have a Bible or guys have some they're gonna pass them out page 787 is the Bibles that they're passing out Matthew chapter six or page 787 Bibles that they're passing out Trying to connect to our network here. The word is connected all lower cases should be able to connect to that And let's start by taking a look back at a verse. We looked at last week verse seven He says this when you pray don't keep on babbling like pagans They'll think they'll be heard because of their many words verse eight Don't be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him Jesus is talking to Jewish people and Prayer was a part of their way of life Over time and I don't believe in what I know about the Bible I don't believe this is something God ever told them they should do But they had to establish three times a day when they were to put when they would pray praying the first thing when they woke up in the morning When the Sun came up In the middle of the day approximately at three o'clock They would pause to pray and then in the evening when the Sun went down when life usually stopped Beginning of the day and end the day makes sense kind of acknowledging God and talking to him and somewhere along the way the middle of the day Begin and some of the monastic communities. They have seven different times during the day where they stop and pray They're called fixed hours of prayer where they pray and and so I'm not sure where that came about but it was very very Expected that Jews would pray and when they prayed apparently some of their prayers had gotten long and never ending and That's what Jesus says to them in verse 7. He says don't be like call some pagans Because they think if they have a lot of words to say they're gonna be heard But instead Jesus offers a different way and look what he says in verse 9 He says this this is how you then should pray and And literally what Jesus is gonna do he's gonna teach us How to pray? Now if I took a poll this morning and asked how many of you have ever been taught how to pray my guess is there would not be many of us What we're taught all kinds of things in life We're taught all kinds of things even as kids about who God is and about stories about the Bible But but I wonder how often we have been taught how to pray And so really what Jesus does is he kind of takes us back to the very beginning Back to the basics back to the ABCs if you will and says let me teach you about prayer and So he teaches us about prayer. There's two things that we're gonna focus on this morning The first part of this prayer is what I'm gonna call declaring God's greatness or declaring his greatness clearing his greatness It's interesting that the prayer begins in verse 9 it begins with our father Our father for the Jewish people there was 18 different ways they would begin prayers the one of the most famous ones was God of Abraham God of Isaac God of Jacob Kind of remembering their patriarchs of their faith and other things like mighty one and holy father You know all different kinds of things, but the one Jesus chose was our father and That words very meaningful in in the the Arabic which is what the common language of the day was spoken that word was Abba Which means daddy? What's often the first word that kids learn to say? Daddy right most Arabic communities. That's often the first word that they're taught is the word Abba Which means father? It's a word that pictures relationship. It's a word that pictures connection but for some of you when you hear the word father you kind of Maybe not visibly but internally you shutter because that's not a word that pictures those things for you For you, that's a word that pictures pain and abandonment and abuse and The truth is that was often the way fathers functioned in the ancient Near Eastern culture Because they were usually distant from their children They were usually harsh towards their wives And so when Jesus is describing a father How were they to have any sense of what a father was to be like? Well, I think one story in the book of Luke the the gospel of Luke that pictures that for us is the story of the prodigal son If you don't know that story It's a story that Jesus made up and told about a young man who grew up in a fairly well-to-do family and he got to this point in his life Likely in his early teens where he said that I'm done with everything. You're doing here I want to strike out on my own and by the way, I want everything that's coming to me And his father gave it to him and he left He left and went and lived well made a lot of friends Spent all of his money Lost all of his friends the story finds him fighting with the hogs over food and In the midst of this struggle over with the hogs over the food he remembered that his father's servants ate better than them than him And he said, you know what maybe I should just throw myself at the mercy of my father and say dad I'm willing to come back. I'll work as a servant. Don't treat me as your son. I'll work as a servant I just would like a good meal and right now. I'm not even getting one of those And so the story tell it the story goes on and it pictures the son kind of coming down the road and Kind of coming to the edge where his family's property is there and as The father sees his son there the the story goes on to say that the father ran to the son Now that might not seem so odd to us, but in that culture fathers didn't run Fathers were dignified fathers Paced and strolled and walked fathers did not run And so this father reacted in a way that this son had never seen never known never experienced And as the as the son of the father approached the son the father wrapped his arms around them He says my son and The son then goes into his practice spiel of you know dad I really blew it. I messed up and I'm just I just want to live here as a servant the father says no No, no, no, no, no, no And the father the story goes on to say that he wrapped him in his robe And he put his ring on his finger and he scald all of his servants that said kill the fatted calf It's time to celebrate because my son has come home And in this story what that son discovered was a picture of God a Picture of a god who loves who forgives who's good his compassionate and caring and as Henry Now and said and those things know no limit a Father who's loving compassionate caring good and gracious and they know no limit And that's the picture of a father that God longs for us to have And so he says as you begin to pray as you begin to approach God well you begin to recognize that you have a father in heaven Who relates to you and cares for you like that? But then notice he says a father in heaven because it's almost as if that am that amazing relationship with this father There's a there's a distance there Because that father is in heaven And I am not and it pictures for us a father who's relationally close but distant and great And When we think about God and we think about who he is we need to remind ourselves that we are the created ones And that he is the creator that we are the servants and that he is the master that we are born and that we die and that God is eternal That God is approachable yet lives in the heavens in the awesomeness of his glory And so when we declare his greatness when we talk about God when we pray to God He wants us to begin by recognizing that there is a father who knows and loves us But there's a father who's distant and great and is all powerful and can do whatever he delights He goes on to make this phrase he says how would be your name? How old is not a word that we? Use a lot and another way to understand that might be just to use the word holy holy is your name We think about the idea of something being holy It means something that's separate or distinct from everything else and That's what God is And yet God's name represents an individual's person and their character and who they are and so how do I? How do I make God's name? holy I Think a way to understand that is to think about what is it that makes this name of God this holiness of God? What is it meant about that that makes him so distinct from everything else that's been? Everywhere other person that's alive or has ever been alive and what makes him unique and distinct is that God is perfect and without sin and No one else can lay claim to that And so he's perfect and without sin, but the reality is as if I'm honest. I'm sinful Isaiah the prophet when he was confronted with God's holiness fell in his face before him and said whoa is me or I Can't even lift my head in your presence. He said I'm a person with words and man of mouth It says things that are unappropriate and I live among people that do the same thing So how does this God who is loving and gracious and wants to have a relationship with me, but is this then and yet I have to Celebrate his holiness I think maybe a way to understand that it comes from the prophet Hosea Prophet in the Old Testament who I believe was a real person His story goes that he married a woman her name was Gomer They had a couple children and then she abandoned their marriage. She ran away from him She decided she wanted to live on her own. She got drawn into likely into the she got drawn into prostitution likely into a temple cult And she was a part of that for a period of time at some point in time They were done with her and they discarded her and she was about to be sold it as a slave on the open market I Got said to Hosea. He said I want you to go to this woman And I want you to marry her and bring her back into your life And you think why would God do that? How could how could someone love a person who has wronged them so deeply and extend that? to them But I believe God called this prophet who is a spokesman for God so that the people of Israel who had done the exact same thing to God Could see it in the life of a person skin and bones if you will And so when we wrestle with this whole picture and we say how does a God who loves me? But is perfect and without sin how can he how's it possible for him to have a relationship with me because of the fact and the reality that I am a sinful person And it takes us to the cross It takes us to the place where Jesus hung the cross to pay for my sins and for your sins And so when we begin to pray and when we begin to talk to God The place to start is declare his greatness That he is a father who deeply loves us and will do anything for us But he's our God who is in the heavens the creator and sustainer of all Who loves us so much He was willing to give his one and only son to shed his blood on the cross so that he could enter that relationship with us forever I don't know about you, but I don't often begin my purse thinking about that I'll usually acknowledge God that's who I'm speaking to But I don't usually spend a lot of time there And as Jesus takes us back to the very beginning back to the foundation back to the ABCs of prayer He said the place to start in talking to God is to declare his greatness I want to give you a few minutes Just to listen to some passages of scripture about God And you can turn in your Bibles. I'll tell you where I'm going to be at or you can maybe write these down You can just sit quietly and listen And then I'm going to give you about a minute just to talk To God and declare his greatness this morning I'm going to start in Genesis chapter 1 Says this in the beginning God created the heavens and The earth the earth was formless and empty darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit was hovering and God said let there be light And there was light God called the light day in the darkness he called night God said let there be a vault between the waters separate water from water So he made the vault and separated the water under the vault from above from the water above And so it was and he called this the sky And God said let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear And it was so and God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas God said let the land produce vegetation seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it And the land produce vegetation plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing seed fruit with seed in it according to their kinds And God said let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night Let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years And God made two great lights the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night He also made the stars and he set them in the sky to give light on the earth To govern the day and the night and to separate the light From the darkness and God said let the water team with living creatures and let birds fly across the heavens across the vault of the sky So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the waters team and that moves about it according to their kind Every wingbird according to its kind and then God said let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds the livestock the creatures that move on the ground the wild animals according to its kind and God made all of those things Then God said let's make mankind In our image in our lightness So he might rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky at the livestock and all the wild animals and over every creature that moves And God created man in his image in the image of God he created them male and female created He them It's all nineteen David says this he says when I look at the heavens they declare God's glory The skies proclaim the work of his hands Day after day and night day after day they pour forth speech night after night. They reveal knowledge. They have no speech They use no words. No sound is heard from the um from them If their voices go out into all the earth their words to the ends of the earth In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the Sun. It's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber Like a champion rejoicing to run his course it rises one end of the heaven and makes it circuit to the other Nothing is deprived of its warmth In John 3 he writes for God so loved the world He gave his one and only son That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life For God to not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him Whoever believes in him is not condemned but over does not believe stands condemned already Because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son In the first John 4 he also writes. This is how God showed his love among us He sent his one and only son in the world that he might live through him This is love not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice Dear friends since God so loved us We should love one another No one has ever seen God But if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete I'd invite you to take the next moment bow your heads talk to God To clear his greatness And I'll close by saying amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen So what does this teach us about prayer to begin my prayers with declaring God's greatness? I think it reminds me that God's always available Never going to get clicked a voicemail or ignored or hidden from no matter how deep my pain is Even when he seems far away Reminds me of God's holiness and my sinfulness Reminds me of his mercy and his compassion and his grace I think the other thing that happens is the more I spend time focusing on the greatness of God I start to think about the things that are my request a little differently And the more I spend thinking about God the more I spend remembering who he is the more confidence that it gives me that he's going to be there with me and that I can talk with him about anything that's going on in my life And so the first thing I think that God wants us to learn about prayer is to declare his greatness The second one is to surrender your will To surrender your will Look at the next phrase in the prayer The next phrase says this Your kingdom come, your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven The whole idea of a kingdom is not something that we're very familiar with And I think there's two different ways to look at this I think there's a personal way to look at this and a global way to look at this So let's talk first of all about the personal way Because the truth is The truth of the matter is If there's a kingdom Then we have to understand what is a kingdom And one person defined it this way They said a kingdom is the territory in which you control The territory that you control That's what your kingdom is If you think about that The territory that I control What do I control? I control my heart and my life and my mind and my thoughts And I control me, don't I? Yeah, I control me And you're a pretty powerful person if you think about it I mean just imagine A newborn baby All they have to do is open their mouth And two grown adults come at their beckoning call Willing to do whatever that child wants, right? You know? That's all they gotta do is start crying the parents What do we do? What do we do? We feed them? We change them? What do we do? You know? Amazing control Amazing control And we're born with it We're born with it And over time we might not use tears You know we might use pouting or we might use a face Or we might use whining and then maybe as we get a little bit older We go back to tears, you know, to try to get what we want And you know sometimes we use anger Sometimes we other other things But the reality is I have control over myself And I do all kinds of things to get what I want And I believe you do the same Because what do you control? You control yourself, right? Who's the only person that control Who's the only person that can change you? You, right? Nobody else can change you Only you Only you And so what Jesus is inviting us in this prayer Is he's inviting us to exchange the control of your, of my heart and my will Turning that over to him Instead of my kingdom and my will be done He's saying will you pray your kingdom And your will be done It's not an easy prayer to pray I think it is far easier to pray About declaring God's greatness Than it is to pray about surrendering my will I can do this all the time, I can celebrate God He's a great God, He's amazing He does good things, you know, awesome sunset He provided this way, he's, you know, saved me And made a way for me to have a relationship with him But now all of a sudden I have to talk about I have to turn over control of this area of my life to him And it's a different story Take a minute and think about it and ask yourself What percent of my prayers are about surrendering my will Versus telling God what I want and I need My guess is It's probably a lot of those, probably very few These And I think Jesus taught us that this is not an easy thing to do Because you remember when he was in the garden And he knew what was coming We're invited to pray this, we don't know what's coming But he knew what was coming, he knew the cross was coming He knew rejection was coming, he knew humiliation was coming He knew death was coming And the Bible tells us that he wrestled with God And there were sweat drops of blood over the rustling that was taking place And eventually he had to come to this place to say what? Not my will, but your will Be done Not my will, but your will be done And he says here on earth as it is in heaven Who's in charge in heaven? Who's in charge? Anybody out there who's in charge? God is, right? God's kingdom, right? He's the one in charge He's the one in charge And the Bible tells us one day there's a day coming The book of Revelation is all about that there's a day coming When this kingdom that rules in heaven will one day exist on this earth Well he will rule as king But until that takes place he said every day in your life I want you to wrestle with and I want you to be willing to say To pray this prayer, God, not my will, but your will Be done You see this is where the rubber meets the road for people of faith It's relatively easy to declare God's greatness It's not that difficult as we're going to see next week To declare my need But the struggle is right in the middle where I have to decide if I'm going to surrender my will I'd be more than happy to surrender my will if I knew what was coming If I knew it was going to make my life a little easier If I knew I wasn't going to have any more struggles But the problem is we know different than that Because we know when Jesus surrendered his will what came for him The hardest thing he had to ever experience in his life I don't challenge you to do this believing that it's going to be an easy thing to do Most Sunday mornings, before I get to church, before I come in here I often will sit out in my car Read a little scripture just kind of quiet there by myself Read this passage the last couple weeks Jesus says, "Anyone who loves their father and mother more than me is not worthy of me Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me Whoever finds their life will loose and over loses their life or my sake will find it" I keep reading this over and over again every week saying, "God, what does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean?" I don't think I can say, "God, I want you to be at work in my life, I want you to change me and transform me, I want you to use me" But the truth is, I don't like life to not go well So I'm caught in the middle I want to pray this prayer of submission, pray this prayer to God, but I don't like it when life does not go according to some kind of plan I've just been saying this to God, God, I'm not quite sure what this would look like This past week for me Probably the hardest week, I couldn't tell you in the last time I had a week this difficult Me and physically sick Personal challenges, struggles that people were going through that I was interacting with a variety of ways I came to the end of the week and I found myself thinking, "God, is that what that's going to look like?" I'm not really sure I like it or I want to do that I don't know what surrendering your will looks like for you I don't know, you probably do Maybe it's your future, maybe it's a relationship Maybe it's your finances Maybe it's something you and God have been going toe to toe about for a long period of time And you're like, "God, I don't know about that one 'Cause I'm not sure I like what you have planned for me I'd love to be able to stand here and tell you, "If you pray that prayer, this is what God's going to do in your life And it's going to be the most amazing thing and you're going to celebrate and I can't wait to hear next week What that's going to look like, but the truth is that is not what God's word says And that's not the way life works They said, "John, why would I do that?" "I have full?" "Why would I?" "Why would I?" The only reason I know is because as a God who loves me enough to give up what he treasured most and that was his son so that I could have a relationship with him not only now and his spirit present with me and life with him forever Apart from that, there's no reason There's no reason What's it going to look like for you to pray that kind of a prayer? I want to challenge you to do something this week Last night I was eating dinner and individuals around the table knew I was going to talk about prayer so as soon as I got done praying they said, "So did you pray the way you're going to tell us to pray tomorrow?" and I was like, "No" but I thought about it But my challenge to you my challenge for all of us this week is to this week when you talk to God privately, when you talk to God with other people when you talk to God at your meals wherever you talk to God is to do two things to declare His greatness and surrender your will declare His greatness and surrender your will and say, "What about the stuff that's going on in my life and what about the stuff that I need to talk to God about?" I guarantee you he knows about all that stuff and he won't forget this week I'm pretty sure about that so I think if we put that in his hands this week say, "God, you know about these things" this week I want my attention to be on declaring your greatness and surrendering my will no matter where and when you come to him to do those two things and maybe you don't know what you're surrendering to maybe you just have to say, "God, I don't know what you would like from me but I want my heart to be open to you this week" and I want to celebrate the amazing God that you are as we close this morning, Johnny and the team are going to come they're going to lead us in a new song one that we've used here before but never sang you know as they're coming and getting ready to do that I just want to challenge you to think about this whole idea of prayer what I think God has invited us to do is he's invited us to take a step back towards the ABCs the very beginning of what prayer looks like and to make prayer not so much about my request and my wants and the things that are important to me but to make it about declaring that he is a great and amazing God who has given up what he treasures most for me and that's his son and then they say "God am I willing to surrender my will to you" they're going to lead us in a song that's entitled "Love Came Down" and um... 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