 Open your Bibles with me to Isaiah 56. And by the way, if you have your Bibles, I want you to hold it up real quick. I wanna see them, roll call. I love seeing Bibles. We're seeing a revival of the Bible. And if you don't bring a Bible to church, let me encourage you, join the club, get one and bring it. And I love having a physical copy of the Bible because you can see it and you can also underline and record what God speaks to you in specific moments through messages. And it becomes an archive of God speaking to you. Isaiah chapter 56, beginning in verse number seven. It says, And even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. Title of my message this morning is joyful in my house of prayer. That's what God says in Isaiah 56, that I will cause them to be joyful in my house of prayer. And one of the things that I felt impressed by the Lord this fall to do, many of you were here a couple of weeks ago on Vision Sunday, when we rolled out the new mission statement of Radiant Church, which really is the old one, but just expanded with a little bit more clarity connected to who we are in the time we're in. You may recall that the opening line of that mission statement is that Radiant is a praying and a worshiping church. And then it goes on to say that is relentlessly leading people to become fully formed disciples of Jesus Christ, living together on mission. But that first phrase, a praying and a worshiping church, I felt specifically that the Lord has been breathing on it and as I've been seeking him, what do you want me to teach this fall? He just kept coming back to I want you to teach on prayer and what it means to be a praying and a worshiping church. Because there's so many misunderstandings about what it means to be a praying church. I'll tell you this, a praying church is made up of praying people. But the problem is that especially in our 21st century North American context in which we all live in, prayer becomes either ritualistic or it becomes something that we avoid because we don't understand it. And because we have so many different options in our life because we're so rich in resources that oftentimes prayer is a thing that we relegate to a few spiritual navy seals or intercessors, some old ladies that gather together and they do the prayer work for the local church. But the rest of us it's like I've got my job, I've got my paycheck, I've got my income, I've got the strength of my arm, I've got my wisdom, I've got Google, I've got chat GPT, I've got lots of options to solve problems and to find peace and community. We can live our lives on social media and feel like we're connected that we belong but yet we really don't. And prayer becomes oftentimes the thing that it's spiritual, it's ethereal, it's deep and we really don't necessarily understand it and so we avoid it or maybe if we dabble with it, it's any ritualistic one day out of a week type of a thing. But that's not at all how God designed and his desire for prayer for us. And so it's important for us to understand that if we're going to be a praying and a worshiping church, we need to understand why prayer is so important and significant because it takes the eyes of faith to be able to understand the kingdom of God. We can't understand the kingdom of God through our kernel mind and prayer is and worship is at the center of the kingdom of God. It is the language of the kingdom and that's why we get so tripped up on it because we're just like, okay, how does prayer work? And why is prayer important and what's the significant of prayer? Why would it be that God himself said when I build my house, my family, my community, I'm going to make it a house of prayer for all nations and what in the world does it mean that we're going to be joyful in the house of prayer? I want to talk about that. I want to spend some time and next weekend we're going to focus on worship and the next weekend we're going to drill down deeper a little bit into why prayer on a personal level is really important and significant. But today I want to kind of give us a big picture about why being a house of prayer is so important. How many have ever heard of a man named Charles Spurgeon before, anybody ever heard of Charles Spurgeon? But 150 years ago in London, Charles Spurgeon who's now today referred to as the prince of all preachers is one of the greatest preachers in Western civilization for sure. More of his sermons are in print than almost anybody else. And the reason for that is because for a couple of decades in the UK, Charles Spurgeon was shaking the very foundations of one of the largest cities and civilizations in the world. He pastored metropolitan Tabernacle in London and long before there was ever podcasting and long before there was ever any social media, he was a preaching celebrity. They would literally have somebody that sat on the front row of Metropolitan Tabernacle who would transcribe every single word of every single sermon that Charles Spurgeon preached. He preached to crowds of 5,000 to 10,000 people without a microphone and he's a big old boy and he literally would lift weights in order to strengthen his chest muscle so that his lungs could project louder. I mean, that's a stud of a preacher. They would transcribe his sermons that would last an hour and a half. Come on, somebody. I mean, I grew up in a wrong era. And they would take his sermons and they would wire them across the Atlantic Ocean and publish them on Monday mornings in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune so that subscriptions of millions of people would read Charles Spurgeon's sermons. That was the first podcast. And because of that, he became famous. He had a pastor's school. Pastors wanted to learn how to preach like him. Metropolitan Tabernacle was packed to the gills. People would literally stand in line during the week to get a number so that they had a seat in the Sunday service. They were lined up to get in. And one time these young preachers, he had a whole bunch of young preachers from America and the UK that came to Metropolitan Tabernacle and they wanted to meet with Spurgeon to find out the success of why so many people were getting saved, why there was such a sense of awe and wonder in the services and why London was being changed dramatically spiritually transformed, being revived in a way that hadn't occurred since John and Charles Wesley. And so one morning, all of these pastors gathered together and were waiting in the lobby and Charles Spurgeon came down and he met them in the lobby and one of the preachers spoke what all of them had been talking about. And he said, what would you guys like to see today? Charles Spurgeon said, what do you guys want to see and what do you want to know today? And one of them spoke up and he said, we want to see the secret behind all of your success. Some of us think it's the library that you study in. Some of us think it's your methodology of how you put your messages together. Some of us think maybe it's the acoustics in the sanctuary. We want to know what's the secret. Charles Spurgeon said, I'll show you the boiler room. They said, the boiler room. He said, yeah, come with me. I'll show you the boiler room. Now I don't know about you, but when I grew up in our house, we had a boiler in the basement that was the scariest place in the house. I mean, my mom would send me down to the basement to get something and you did it quickly. It's like, go down there quick, get out quick. Boilers are huge, scary, messy, dirty. Nobody comes into a house, better yet a church and says, hey, here's our family, here's our five kids and we're looking for a church. Can we see the furnace room? No, they want to see the nursery. They want to see the sanctuary. Want to see the coffee shop. Want to see the bookstore. What kind of worship do you have? But Charles Spurgeon said, no, come with me. I'm gonna show you the boiler room. And so they followed him and he took them down the stairs into the basement and they're all looking at each other bewildered. Why are we going to the boiler room? And as they followed him, the Prince of Preachers, they walked by the boiler room into the room next to the furnace where there were dozens of intercessors and people from the church praying while he preached. And he said, this is the boiler room because if the fire goes out in this room, the rest of the church will grow cold. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about being a praying and a worshiping church. You can stand on level ground in a sanctuary. You can live in a city and a culture and a community. And it's easy to look at the fruit and it's easy to look around and be critical and to be jaded at what's going on in our society, what's going on in our city, what's going on even in the church, the body of Christ, whether it's one church or all the churches. But you can only judge the fruit if you really wanna see the health of a church, if you really wanna see the health of the church in a generation, you have to go to the boiler room. Leonard Ravenhill, the great revivalist said that you can have the church can look pretty, but if it's spiritually cold, everybody will feel it. Nobody thinks about a furnace until the fire goes out in the middle of winter and then everybody wants to deal with the furnace. Well, let me just tell you, in America today, we are in a time of winter and spiritual coldness, but God wants to deal with the church and get the boiler room fixed again and get the fire burning again so that there's warmth in the house of God because that will bring about spiritual transformation. That will change our cities. That will change our families. That's gonna change our schools. How many have figured out we're not gonna legislate our way into revival? We need to vote and we need to be engaged and we need to be involved. Jesus said, occupy until I come. But if we put all of our trust in the strength of man's hand and not in the arm of God's power, then we are relying on the wrong things. God looks at our generation. What he's looking at is he's looking at a group of people. He looks at the church first. And when he looks at the church, what he wants more than anything in our, I believe in the American cultural context that we live in, he wants to awaken us to the significance and the power of prayer and what he will do if we pray and if we get a better understanding of what prayer does because listen, I'm gonna tell you, the average Christian that I talked to has really, we know we should pray. I mean, if I were to take a poll right now, in fact, let's do it, all locations. If you know that as a Christian, one of the things you should do is pray, raise your hand. Put your hand up. If you're a Christian in all of our locations and you struggle with prayer and understanding how it works and how to do it well, raise your hand. Look at that. That's the battle. Because there's some things that God says he will do. If it's people pray. By the way, I haven't even started my message. If my people will pray. And here's God's response. God's desire. You wanna know what God's desire for us is? God's desire more than anything is that not that we would just pray. God's not in heaven with his arms folded, gone, pfft, my church doesn't pray. God wants us to be joyful in the house of prayer. He wants us to find joy in his presence. So when we talk about what does it mean to be a praying and a worshiping church? Why is this so significant? Pastor Lee, why are you always talking about prayer? I mean, there's so many other things. Yeah, but guess what? Everything else is affected by prayer. And if you realize that prayer is the inhale and the exhale of our entire spirit. It's like, why are you always talking to a respiratory doctor? Why are you always talking about breathing? There's so many other things going on. I mean, I've got hobbies and I'm trying to raise kids and I'm trying to get to work on time and I'm trying to build my social media profile and I'm trying to save for retirement. And why are you obsessed with breathing? Because if you don't get that right, none of the other things are gonna matter. It's like, well, breathing's easy for me. I mean, I was born doing it. Nobody goes home and practices breathing, except people that are into deep breathing type of thing, but it's default setting for us. Can I just tell you today that the default setting of your spirit is communion with God. You were created to be a worshiper. You were created to pray. You were created a new in Christ Jesus to be connected to the heart of God. It's not something that you have to strive for, work for, practice at. It's not foreign to you. It's just learning how to shed the worldly shell and mentality that we've been trained before Christ in and allowing the Holy Spirit to reframe, recalibrate our heart, reorient our heart around what we were really created to do. Westminster Confession, many of us maybe grew up in a liturgical setting. And so when I talk about catechisms or creeds and things like that, this might become familiar to you, but Westminster's Confession starts off by saying this. It says, the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Think about that. This is what we were created for. The chief end of man is to glorify God. This is what we were created for, to glorify God. If you've ever wondered what your purpose in life is, it's not about a thing you do as much as those things that you do with your job, with your money, with your life, with your gifts and your talents are all for a greater eternal purpose, which is to glorify God. But then God's response is, and when you do that, when you are walking in perfect relationship with me, when you are worshiping and you're living your life holistically, worshiping me, what's gonna happen is you're gonna learn to enjoy God and there's no greater joy than we can experience than being in His presence. That's what God wants for us. You're by nature a worshiper. You're by nature a prayer. It's not even a real word, but a prayer, a personal prayer. Because what is prayer? Prayer is communication. What is worship? It's giving our mind, body, soul, and energy completely in celebration and glorification of another. It's wild to me how many people come to church and, you know, well, we're in a worship time. It's like, I struggle in worship. Why do we sing these songs? Why is there drums? Why do people raise their hands? Everybody's got questions. Trying to like, I don't understand this. Why do people jump and get all excited? And why is there somebody? Ah, I get excited. It's like this, I just don't understand. Those same people will spend $500 to go to a Taylor Swift concert. They will put glitter all over themselves and their, you know, shiny little necklaces and they'll get in the car and they'll drive with their friends and they'll park and then, and this is the guys. And because now she's dating Kelsey and so now everybody's like NFL ratings just went up and all the guys are like, can we just have one place where we're not invaded with Taylor Swift world? But I get it, listen. But we'll go to the Taylor Swift concert and you'll see on Instagram, it's like, look at us, we're at the Taylor Swift concert. And we know all the words and we're doing this and it's gonna be forever. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Got a long list of ex-numbers to tell you. And we know all the words. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Acting like fools for Taylor. And then we're like, but I don't know how to worship. Actually you do. I mean, actually you do. You know how to worship. I don't really know how to pray. Yeah, have you seen your text threads? Oh my gosh, can you believe she said that? I'm really stressed out about this. My first day at work, what should I do? Oh, best friend, I'm over here. I'm praying for you. Oh, you're gonna do great. You're gonna slay a little, little, little. And we got 10,000 threads. You know what that is? Communication. That's prayer. We just don't know how to connect there. We just don't. And by the way, go to the concert and do your thing. Guys go to the football games. The guys are the worst. They're just like, oh, I ain't gonna work. My wife's always like, how come you're not worse? And then they go to the football game and they paint half their face blue, half silver, strip off their shirt, which they should not do, on national TV in freezing cold weather at Lambeau. And they're like freaking out over grown men and tights chasing a pig skin down a piece of artificial turf. Don't tell me you don't know how to worship. You know how to worship. It's just, we haven't learned how to turn the deepest place of who we are and to connect with the one who loves us in the deepest way possible. And it really comes down to we don't understand God's original design for us. Genesis chapter one, we'll put it up on here on the screen. When God created the heavens and the earth, then he created man and it says in verse 26, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image and in the image of God he created them, male and female, he created them. It says, then God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, see I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be food and to every beast of the earth, to every birds of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life, I've given every green herb for food and it was so. This is God creating mankind. And what you need to recognize is if you'll go back to the very beginning, you'll find God's purpose. When God creates everything, he creates a garden called Eden. Eden was God's perfect scale model. The whole earth was not like the garden of Eden. The garden of Eden had been cultivated. The word cultivated in the Hebrew language literally means to be prepared as a prototype. So God created a prototype of how he wanted the whole earth to be, the world to be. And yes it was beautiful and yes it was lush and yes it was filled with trees but the single most important thing about the garden is that God was there. And out of his presence, who was in the garden first? Man or God, God. And while God was in his prototype, he creates mankind. And he created mankind for four things. There's four intentions of why God created man. Number one, to bear his image. He didn't create us like him. He created us in his image, which means just like him. We bear his image and he did it so that all the rest of creation would look at mankind and see the image, the likeness, the seal of God in all that he had created. He gave, number two, he gave all of mankind governing authority over everything on the earth. It says, I give you a dominion and then what do you want me to do with that dominion? I want you as my image bearer to go out from this garden and replicate my perfect order with my presence across the rest of the earth. And I'm gonna give you my authority. How much authority does God have? And he gives some of that to man. What authority did he give to him? Everything in this world that has life in it. Over the birds of the air, over every creeping thing on the ground, ladies, God's given you authority over creeps. It's given you authority over the fish and listen. It's given you authority to subdue, which means to extend and to exert God's desire in all the earth through you. And then number three, he gave the mandate. Now, as you're doing that, I want you to multiply and be fruitful. What did God want us to do? He wants us to build families. He wants us to build families that carry the blessing and carry the life and carry the image. Malachi says that he desires to have a godly seed in the whole earth. What was God's desire? That the earth would be filled with human beings who are image bearers that have his authority and that as we multiply on the face of the earth, more of God's will and more of God's glory would fill the earth because we carry it. And then lastly, and this is the key, this is the fourth intention of God, is that we would do all these things in perfect relationship with him. When he created Adam and Eve, he created them in the garden and it says that he would come down in the cool of the day. He would make himself known to them in the cool of the day and walk and talk and converse with Adam and Eve. Perfect relationship. And all they had to do was obey him. In the center of the garden, God did put a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he said, you can have all the other trees except that tree. And he allowed a serpent, the devil, the deceiver to have access to the garden and to tempt them. Oftentimes people read that and go, see, I don't believe in God. Why in the world would God allow the devil to have access to them? And why in the world would he put a tree there that if they eat of it, they'll die? Cause that's what he said. If you eat of it, you'll die. I'll tell you why God did it. It's because if God's perfect intention was for us to never be able to fail or make any decisions, then that was a bad call. But God's ultimate intention, listen, catch this was for us to have an intimate loving relationship with him. And love requires choice. We could not fully love God if we had no choice to. If we couldn't say, I don't want to do it your way, then we're just robots. But the tree represented obedience, the tree represented trust and the tree represented love. Now, a few thousand years later, there would be another tree and on that tree would not be fruit that if we took it would lead to death. It would actually be a tree that has fruit on it that if we partake of it, it leads to life. That tree's called the cross. And it also reflected choice. Jesus chose it. That tree represented obedience. Jesus willingly went and that tree represents love. Where we failed at the base of one tree, God succeeded and restored relationship at the base of another. What happened when mankind fell? What happened in the garden? God said, don't eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On the day that you do it, you shall surely die. Well, that's what happened. The enemy came to see them. And here's how the enemy came in and deceived mankind. Same way he still does. Has God really said? Did God really say that if you eat that fruit from that tree, you're gonna die? Ha, God's holding out on you. He knows that if you do it, you're not gonna need him. If you eat that fruit, you're gonna be just like him. If you eat that fruit, you get to make your own decisions about right and wrong. And they're just like, whoa, okay. Well, that fruit looks really good. It wasn't the fruit that looked good. I don't know what kind of fruit it was. Artists portrayed it as an apple. I know it wasn't a Kiwi, cause those things are awful. But whatever it was, it wasn't the fruit that appealed to them. It was what the fruit could do. And it's still the same lie that the enemy does today. Has God really said? The devil has never stopped calling into question God's words. But more than just his words, the devil has never stopped calling into question God's intentions. Is God good? That's really what he was saying. Is God really good? Can you really trust God? God knows this, and I'm just gonna let you know a little secret. If you disobey him, you're gonna have an open door to a whole lot of access to things that's a lot of fun. You get to make your own decisions, chart your own course, make your own path. You don't need God to do that. God's narrow-minded. God's limited. He's a killjoy. He's trying to keep you back from all these wonderful things. Be your own God. Come on, everybody's doing it. And Adam and Eve did it. And the Bible says that shortly thereafter, God came into the garden again. In the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve heard his voice. And when they heard his voice, instead of running to him, they ran away. Instead of hearing his voice in faith, in purpose, acceptance, love, being their first reaction. Shame, guilt, and death rose up on the inside of them. And when they heard his voice, they wouldn't hit. They wouldn't hit. They hit it among the trees. And the Bible says that the Lord God called Adam, and he said to Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? How many of you know that when God asks questions, he's not looking for answers? God has X-ray vision. He can see through trees. And you know what else he can see through? Fear. He can see through religion. He can see through sin. He can see through your smoke screens. He can see through your insecurities. He can see through your procrastination. He can see through all the barriers that we try to put between us and God oftentimes. Well, God, I really, I'm not, I'm not good enough. Someday I'm gonna get good enough and then I'm gonna come after you. But right now I just need, I need a little, I need a buffer. Or I need religion to kind of be the buffer between me and you, a ritual, obligation-based. Just tell me what you want me to do. And I'll do it, but let's keep a little distance here. God knows our pride. How that's a tree that keeps us between him, us. And when God asks Adam, where are you? What he's doing is he's saying, I want you to stop and think about what your decisions have done to you and where it's gotten you. Because the Bible says that as soon as Adam and Eve ate, they knew that they were naked. That word naked doesn't just mean, it's more than just, oh, we looked down and realized I didn't have any clothes on. It means they were uncovered. They were exposed. And you know why they felt exposed for the first time? Because their entire existence, we don't know how long it had been, but their entire existence, they had been clothed with innocence. They had been clothed with the glory of God. God's life on them was like a suit that gave them protection and security. And they weren't vulnerable. They were safe, but now that's gone. Now they're vulnerable. They're exposed, not just outside, but inside as well. And what they feel for the first time is guilt and shame and inadequacy and the lack of life. They feel the effects of death and separation from God for the first time. And now when they hear his voice, they don't run to him. They run away from him and they hide. And when he came down, Adam's response to the Lord is, he said, I heard your voice in the garden. Think about that phrase, I heard your voice. I heard your voice and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. My kids are grown now, but when they were little, one of my favorite things, and now I have it with our grandkids, is when you come home and you open up the door for the first time at like five or six o'clock after work and your kids hear that door open and they go, daddy's home. Any parents know what I'm talking about? It's when they're little, before they figured out screens, it's before they're teenagers and they're just like, but when they're still, like you're the biggest thing in their life, daddy's home and they come running to the door and they wrap their arms around your legs and they're just like, dad. And then they want to wrestle with you and they want to tell you about their day and they want to show you what they did at school and they want to talk about, this weekend, what do we got going on? I'll tell you what, there's nothing better than, I was speaking at a conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week and I was sitting in my hotel room and I got a FaceTime from my daughter, Ashley and popped up, Jane was over at her house and she goes, you want to see Owen? So it was my grandson and then Celia and Jane jumps on there and goes, we just called Zach and as soon as we hung up, Owen said, call my papa. And Ashley's like, I didn't want to disturb you. I'm like, are you kidding me? I would stop everything for that moment. That's how God is. Can you imagine the heartbreak of God when he walks into the garden to see his kids? They created in his image that he's given all authority to. He's given a mandate, I want you to multiply yourselves because I want more of you to love and more of you to love me. And I want every day, I want to walk with you. I don't want to just give you a list of things to do. I want to walk with you. I want to talk with you. I want to lead you. I want to guide you because I created this just for you. And to walk into that garden and instead of them coming to run to him, they hide. I believe God's heart was broken because fear and shame had stolen intimacy with God. What does this have to do with prayer? When God says in Isaiah 56 that I'm going to bring them and he's talking about people from every nation on the face of the earth. This is what the cross does. It brings people from every nation on the face of the earth. He's redeemed, the book of Revelation says, he's redeemed people from every tribe, every tongue, every people group, every ethnic group. He's brought us into Christ. And Isaiah 56 is talking about, this is what the church is going to be like. He says, I'm going to bring them in and I'm going to bring them to my holy mountain. The mountain is God's presence. It's God's dwelling place. And he said, not only that but I'm going to make them joyful in my house of prayer. This is God's intentions. This is his great desire because he said my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations, for all people. Do you know that what man lost Jesus restores? And when Jesus came in his earthly ministry, he started his ministry and he ended his ministry doing the exact same thing. Might surprise you. Some people think when they're reading Matthew, Mark and Luke, that when Jesus turns over the tables in the temple, do you guys know the story I'm talking about where Jesus turns over the tables? They think that's one time but actually John chapter two, Jesus does it at the beginning of his ministry. He starts his ministry. He's baptized. He goes in the wilderness. He's tempted. He comes out of the wilderness. He immediately goes into Jerusalem. And he starts his ministry according to the gospel of John by turning over the tables and he says in the temple, he says, you've made my father's house, a house of den and robbers, a house of merchandising. This is not at all what my father intended. What's he talking about? He's talking about in Jesus' day as God in the flesh, when he showed up at a place that we would call a church, but when he showed up at the temple, what God had desired and what he had promised David, who was a man after God's own heart, he says, I'm gonna build a house and it's gonna be a place like Eden that through my goodness, I'm gonna meet with people and they're gonna be able to know me, pray to me and worship me and connect me and they're gonna be joyful in this place. Religion had stepped in and created barriers, trees, for men and women to hide behind and for religious leaders who were just like the deceiver to step in between them and God and say, you don't know how to connect with God, you need me to do it and set up tables where they sold sacrifices. It was like, oh, you wanna sacrifice to God? Well, the loss is you've gotta offer a sparrow and so I just happened to be here to sell the sparrow and the sparrow is gonna cost you more than you made this last month and what happened is poor people were coming into the temple and could not afford to worship God. They could not afford to pray and the religious leaders were the only ones who had access to the presence of God and Jesus came over and removed the tables just like the father stepped into the garden and he said, no, no, no, I don't want you hiding behind trees, I don't want anything between you and me. This is how Jesus started his ministry. Three and a half years later, just before Jesus goes to the other tree, do you know what Jesus does one more time? He goes into the very same temple where they had set the tables back up and they had cleaned up Jesus's mess and he turned them over again and he said, no, this is not how it's gonna be. You're not gonna create barriers between my father and his children. It's not gonna happen. He turned the tables over and he said, have not you read that my house shall be called a house of prayer? Zeal has consumed me for God's house. Listen, if it's important to Jesus to do it at the beginning of his ministry and at the end of his ministry, how many know it's important to God? What's important that his church would be a house of prayer because prayer is more than just, oh, we pray and God moves. Prayer begins and ends with our hearts being connected to God's heart and us recognizing that our prayers move his heart and that it's impossible that it's impossible for us to know God just through religious obligation. It's kind of like this. It's like, I love praying the Lord's prayer. I grew up praying the Lord's prayer but it's not where prayer ends. Imagine married couples in this room. Imagine if the only communication you ever had with your spouse every time you got together was re-sang your vows. You walk into the house after 20 years. Hey, babe, how are you? I, Lee Cummings, take you, Jane Cummings, to be my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, to love and respect from this day forward till death do us part in sickness and in health. So help me God or whatever, I swear. I pledge allegiance. I don't know, it's... And imagine, she's like, no, hey, would you just let me in on what's going on? And hey, I need your input on our kids. And it's like, I, Lee Cummings, take you, Jane, to be my lawfully wedded wife. She'll be like, I get it, but talk to me. I think sometimes God's looking as church going, would you talk to me? And would you listen to me? I want you to pray. Why does God want us to pray? Because you remember that authority he gave us in the beginning? I give you authority, dominion, subdued. Do you know one of the ways the church exercises authority today is in the place of prayer. You don't know it, but your weakest prayer moves the heart of God in dispatch's angelic ministry. When Jesus said, pray on thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's not just a wish, that's actually dominion. When we as a house of prayer on earth as sons and daughters of the living God who've been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, we stand before God as kings and priests. And when we come into agreement with heaven, we're stepping back into the authority that Adam and Eve had in the garden that was lost by our sins, but listen, it's been restored now through the blood of Jesus. Everything that was lost in the fall has been redeemed and restored at the cross. And if you are a born again child of God, a Christian, you have authority in heaven and earth to agree with God in anything that God wants to do and has said that he's gonna do and the power of heaven will move on our behalf. That's authority, that's dominion. And then he wants us to multiply that. One of the things I think God wants us to know is that in this day, he's trying to awaken the church to be a house of prayer and to find joy in it. Psalm 16, I love Psalm 16 because verse number 11, it says, Lord, you'll show me the path of life in your presence as a fullness of joy. There's no greater joy than being with God in the place of prayer and praying and seeing God move. I'll share a testimony with you. I don't always like to do this because I never want it to be, oh wow, you. But I want to testify to the goodness of God when things happen. I was in California and I was invited to speak at a all Spanish speaking prayer conference and it was Mas Fuego. I mean, Latins know how to worship, man. It was fire. I had to preach for the translator. And they invited us because radiant is a praying church. And I believe one of the assignments God has on this house, which means all of us is to not just be a people of prayer first and foremost and not even to be a church of prayer, but is also to provoke the church of Jesus across this nation to once again awaken to the call and the mandate to be praying people and praying churches that unto revival, unto awakening, unto transformation. I think that's one of the assignments on this church is to call the church back to place of prayer. But I was there and I'm with a translator and I'm standing there with a pastor on the opening day, we had just done a panel. And as I'm sitting there, I heard the voice of the Lord whisper to me, healing. And I was like, I just got here. My session's not until the afternoon. We were closing out the session. And then the pastor's name is Nets Gomez. He goes, leave will you pray? So, I mean, you don't say no. So I said, I'll pray. So I prayed and the Lord just says, I'm healing. Okay. And as soon as I said, okay, in my heart, God began to just give me words of knowledge. And I called out several different words of knowledge. I said, God's healing this, this, this, if that's you raise your hand. And then the Lord goes, somebody on the worship team has something with their vocal cords. And I said, is there somebody here who's part of the worship community, a young lady? And you've got something on your vocal cords that's stopping you from worshiping. And the room went crazy and they ran backstage, pulled this young lady up, who is a prolific singer, has something wrong with her vocal cords and has been on vocal rest for like six to eight weeks. Hasn't been able to sing, her voice has been crackling. And so we just prayed over her. Here's where the authority comes. God speaks, exhale. We inhale that in obedience. We then pray and we prayed over her. And while I was in the airport coming home, she tagged me in a post on Instagram for the first time in weeks she was leading worship that night and she's belting out worship songs. And she's just posting about the goodness of God, God touched her vocal cords. Glory to God, not me. I can't heal anybody. It's a bad idea to have me pray for you without an anointing. Things typically get worse. But Jesus is a healer. Guys, I just wonder how many things in our life and in our family and our city and our church, God wants to shift starting with our paradigm of not hiding behind anything anymore, but seeing that God wants to use us in a place of prayer. This is why we've got to get a brand new mentality. And let me just tell you, there's no greater joy than knowing that when you pray, God hears you and that He sees you and that He knows you. Would you stand with me wherever you're at this morning? Lord Jesus, we thank you that you see us and you know us and that you don't see us through the lens of shame and guilt. Lord, you see us through Jesus. And this morning, very quickly, I'm not even gonna merge into it, but please, nobody moving and nobody distracting because I really sense in this room, the Father's just like stepped into the room. And there are people that right now, you're far away from God. You've allowed sin and shame, guilt, lies of the enemy that's told you you could never get your life right with God or even the lie that someday I'm gonna get it all together and then submit to God. But you know, you're far away from the Lord right now and you've been carrying the backpack of sin and regret and shame and rebellion. And I just want you to know God loves you and Jesus died for you. And today, He wants to save you. He wants to rescue you. Today is the day of salvation. Jesus has done it all, but you have to repent and say, God, I'm so sorry. Sorry I've run from you. I'm sorry I've been hiding behind the trees. But today I wanna surrender to you. God, if you love me like that and you want a relationship with me and you are the one who holds the keys to my destiny and my life and my joy, then today you can have my mess. Save me, forgive me today. Maybe you're a prodigal and you've run from God for a long time, but it's time to come home. I wanna lead you in a prayer. I believe Jesus is here today to save and restore. All over the room, if you know you're not right with God, but today you're saying, I wanna come home. I need the Father's love. I want His grace, I want His mercy. I wanna become a Christian. Tired of living in the world today, I'm surrendering it all to Jesus. Pastor Lee, pray for me and include me in this prayer. That's you. On the count of three, I want you to get ready. When I say three, if you know you need to get right with God, I want you to raise your hand and we're gonna pray together. Today is gonna be a brand new day. One, two, three. Shoot it up all over the room. Hold it up and don't put it down. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All over the room. If you've not raised it, come on. Not one more day in the pigs pen. I see your hand all the way in the back. I see that back corner. Yes, over here. One more time. If you've not raised your hand, I sense that there's somebody here that you're in a wrestling match in your heart. You know that's you, but you're paying the price. Don't let the enemy steal this moment from you. If you've not raised your hand, right now, raise it. Thank you. You can put your hands down, everyone. I want everybody to look up at me, including those who just raised your hands. Every person who's ever called on Jesus, he saves. Jesus went to the cross for you. The Bible says this, if we believe in our heart, which you do, because you just raised your hands. And if we confess with our mouth, Jesus is Lord, we will be saved. So right now, we're all gonna say this out loud. And those of you who raised your hands, I want you to really say it. This is your first breath of prayer. God is gonna hear it. And your inhale is gonna be his life saving and filling you. You ready? Here we go. Everybody say this out loud. Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me, saving me because of Jesus. I believe in him, that he died on the cross for my sin, that he was raised from the dead on the third day, and that he's coming again. Jesus come into my heart, sit on the throne, be Lord of all. Awaken my spirit, write my name in the book of life. From this day forward, I'm a child of God, I'm forgiven, I'm a new creation, old things are gone, everything is new in Jesus' name, amen and amen.