 I am choosing to go, I'm choosing to follow Jesus. I am choosing to obey the great commission. I am choosing to love the way that he first loved us. I will not settle for anything less. I am choosing to be a disciple of Jesus. What's up, Radiant Church? Great to be with you. As Pastor Caleb said, my name is John Zondervan, the campus pastor here in Richland, also on our teaching team. And I just wanna start by saying what a huge honor it is for me to be able to teach this weekend and to be able to continue in this discipleship series that has been so instrumental and helpful in so many ways. So believing that that's gonna continue. I wanna cover a couple of things. First, they do say the camera adds, what is it, 10 pounds? There's at least four cameras in here. So I wanna start by saying, no, I'm just kidding, but I do wanna just open in prayer. And let's just ask the Holy Spirit. Obviously there is something incredibly powerful about the house of God and the saints gathered together in a church building, but we also know that the Holy Spirit is not a respecter of persons or of any sense of logistics. And so let's just pray right now, and before we open the word of God and ask the Holy Spirit to speak and minister to each one of us where we are. And Father, we are so grateful that we can gather together that Lord, even in the midst of all of the challenges that are taking place around us, God, that there is a constant, and it is your faithfulness, it is your goodness, and it is the fact that you are God and you're in control. And so Father, I just pray that as your word is spoken, that as it's read, that it would be received by faith and that the Holy Spirit of God would illuminate it in every single person's heart. You know our needs, you know our insecurities, you know the places where we need you to speak to us. And I just pray that God, there would be an open door for you to move in every one of our lives in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. If you write your Bibles, if you have your Bibles turned to Luke chapter 11, before we read that, I just wanna say we are continuing this discipleship series and it's been incredible, and here's why, because in this series what we're doing is we're looking at the difference between what cultural Christianity is and what actually following Jesus looks like. And so what we've said in the past few weeks is this, is we don't wanna be those who pray to prayer at one point in our lives, but then just kinda live any way that we want. We don't wanna be those who check a box on our social media status that says we're Christian. We don't wanna be those who claim, oh well I believe in God. All of those things are not necessarily bad, but they're not synonymous with following Jesus. Following Jesus is a journey, it's a process. It's something that we do day by day, line upon line, precept upon precept. So we've had a working definition of what it means to be a disciple. It says this, one who finds, follows, and is becoming fully formed to be like Jesus. One who finds, then follows, and is becoming. And that's the part that I wanna highlight, that is becoming speaks to a process, a journey that we're on. You become a Christian in a moment, you put your faith in Jesus Christ, your spirit is reborn instantly. It says in Colossians that we're transferred from darkness into the kingdom of light, so I can Corinthians 5, 17 says if you're in Christ, you're a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new, and that is an instantaneous moment in your life where you are adopted into God's family and into his kingdom. But becoming like Jesus is a journey, it's a journey of faith, it's a journey of obedience, it's a journey that every day takes us closer and into the heart of God and transforms us to becoming more like Jesus. And that's what a disciple is. And the reason this is so important, the reason that we have to be able to differentiate between what culture says Christians are and what really following Jesus is, is because I believe with all my heart that we are living in the last days, that there is an acceleration of the things that Jesus spoke about in these times, and that we have to be prepared as His people, let me just read, this isn't in my notes, I just kind of came across it in my reading today, but let me just read what Jesus said in Luke chapter 21. He said this, watch out for yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that day would come upon you suddenly, like a trap, for it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. He's talking about the return of Jesus, but stay awake at all times, praying so that you would have strength to endure the things that are going to take place. That is what discipleship prepares you for, and we will not be prepared, we will not be a people who can overcome if a large percentage of Christians believe that serving Jesus means I show up for church and hopefully I'm gonna be entertained. That's not what's going to happen, and the room's empty and I just got an amen, so praise God for that. So okay, so we're gonna talk about what does it look like to be fully formed, and I've called this message formed in the place of prayer. Formed in the place of prayer. I know that we've had some incredible messages even recently about prayer. I know that you've heard sermons about prayer probably many, many times, but I believe this with all my heart, prayer is the primary way that we're discipled by Jesus and by the indwelling Holy Spirit is in the place of prayer. The place of prayer is where we are discipled, is where we're formed, is where we become like the one that we love and the one that we serve, and so I know instantly when you hear it, it's a message on prayer. You start to think, oh man, this is gonna be so and tell me I gotta pray more and I'm gonna feel shame and guilty, okay, I get it. I don't pray enough, and I'm hoping, and I've been praying that this message is more of a release for you and helps you understand the power and position that you have as a child of God in the place of prayer. So raise your hand if you think prayer is important. Okay, that's most of us in this room, whatever. Raise your hand. If you think as a Christian, you should pray. Again, most of us. Raise your hand if you would say, you know, I guess my prayer life could probably be more consistent and a little deeper. Yeah, we all, what, not one person in portage. Okay, well, whatever, I'm just kidding. We all would raise our hand. It's hard to quantify prayer sometimes. Like, we're always thinking I could pray more, I could pray better, I could pray more consistently. And so as we look at these passages and as we look at what Jesus said about being discipled in the place of prayer, I pray that it is a sense of freedom and encouragement for you as you grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're gonna be in Luke chapter 11. And Luke is, I think more than any of the other disciples or any of the other gospels, I should say, highlights the place of prayer and the importance of prayer in the life of Jesus. Let me just read these to you, Luke 5 verse 16. And Jesus himself would often slip away into the wilderness and pray. Luke 6, 12, and he would go off to the mountains to pray. And he spent the whole night in prayer to God. Luke 9 verse 18, and it happened as he was praying alone, the disciples came to him and he questioned them saying, who do men say that I am? Luke 22 verse 41, and Jesus went a little further about a stone's throw away where he knelt down and began to pray. And Luke 11 verse one is where I want you to turn. We're gonna read this one verse, look what it says. 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. One of the disciples said to Jesus, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. This is what discipleship looked like and looks like. When you follow Jesus, you are signing up for a lifelong journey of learning. That's what it means to be a disciple, is to be a learner, is to follow Jesus, is to see what Jesus does and then we do that. And we see in the book of Luke, the disciples are saying, man, if I'm gonna follow Jesus, if I'm gonna be his disciple, I'm gonna have to figure out how to pray. I'm gonna have to figure out the importance of prayer because that's what I see him doing all of the time. When you say I am a disciple, what you're really signing up to do is say, I want to learn from you what it looks like to do what you're doing. And sometimes in our Western world, we're a little more clinical so it can just be someone telling you what you should do. But in those days, they would see Jesus praying. They would see Jesus casting out demons. They would see Jesus ministering to people and then they would do it. They would be learners, disciples of that. I had a job when I was about 18 or 19 years old with my friend, Waz, where I was a cable layer. I don't even know if that's what it technically was, but that's what we did. I created new cable lines for people like hung them and then we would fix other cable lines. And if you know me, I don't even know what a screwdriver is. I'm terrible, but I was like, fine, you're gonna pay me this much. I'll do it with you. And I was literally like, I don't know how to do that. Teach me how to do that. He'd be like, okay, don't touch that. You're gonna electrocute yourself. And my whole journey was like, okay, show me how to do that. Okay, what is that? Oh, okay, so I just turned their cable off for six months. Whoops, sorry. And I had no idea what I was doing and all of it was just this show me, teach me, help me. I need to learn. And that is what a disciple signs up to do. And when it comes to prayer and when it comes to your relationship with Jesus, let me just tell you this, don't farm that out to somebody else. Don't give that away. Don't allow that to become extra. Don't allow that to become something on the margins of your life. There is no greater investment that you can make than to say, I want to learn how to love like Jesus, how to live like Jesus, how to pray like Jesus. Podcasts are great. Coming to church and listening to messages, all of those things are great. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing can replace you as a disciple saying, Jesus, teach me how to pray. Jesus, teach me how to be a better father, how to be a better husband, how to be a better wife, how to be a better listener, how to be a better employee. All of that is the journey of discipleship that God takes us on. And so I want to look at just this one verse and I want to highlight three things today for us that we can learn from this passage about being formed in the place of prayer and about what it looks like to be a learner, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in the place of prayer. First thing is this, is that something stood out about the prayer life of Jesus. It says in Luke 11, one, Jesus was praying in a certain place and when he finished, that's when one of the disciples said, hey, Jesus, teach us how to pray. The same way that John taught his disciples. There was something about the prayer life of Jesus that they had seen and Luke had referenced many times that sparked something in them to begin asking questions like, my prayer life doesn't look like that. That's not how I pray. That's not what it looks like when I pray to God. Can you teach me how to do that? Because I want to submit to you that it wasn't Jesus's extensive vocabulary. It wasn't Jesus waxing eloquent. It wasn't Jesus using perfect phrasing or rhyming every other word. The reason it stood out when Jesus prayed is because of the relationship that he had with the father, that he had with God and the way that he prayed demonstrated that he knew God and that God knew him and that there was a relationship. There was a, it wasn't transactional. It wasn't cold. It wasn't one sided. It was a beautiful demonstration of love and relationship and unity in the place of prayer and it sparked the disciples to ask the question, can you teach us how to do that? And too often as believers, we look at prayer like vegetables, okay? I know we're supposed to do it. I know they're good for us, but they're not that great and I'm not very good at it. I don't know really how, and we make it laborious and we make it dutiful and we do it out of, sometimes out of guilt or shame and I want to change our entire paradigm and say at the core, prayer is not about getting more of something. It's about getting more of someone. Prayer is not about, I need to ask for this or ask for that. Prayer is about, I need to ask the Father God, the Holy Spirit of God to create a bond, a relationship, a communication and fellowship that can only happen in the place of prayer. That's what prayer ultimately does is it allows you to know God. It's the key to intimacy with the Father. It's the key to intimacy with the Holy Spirit. When you pray, when you set aside time, when you ask God questions, when Psalm 62 says pour your heart out before the Lord, he can be trusted. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. What he's saying is you can be real with God. You don't have to go through the motions. You don't have to just say the right things. There's a transparency and a rawness in Jesus's prayer life that attracted the disciples. And too often we look at it as I'm supposed to do it. I get distracted. I guess I'll try to go for five minutes instead of really asking the Holy Spirit to reveal himself, asking God the Father to explain to your spirit who you are, to show himself to you. That is the key to prayer. And that is what the disciples noticed. The conversations you have with people tell you the level of relationship or intimacy you have. If you had a girlfriend back in the 80s, you would be on the phone with the cord pulled all the way to the bathroom. Hopefully if it was long enough and you'd shut it, remember? And you would talk for five hours about absolutely nothing. And you would just be like, uh-huh, yeah. And then finally you'd have to hang up because someone else needed the phone and you'd be like, okay, you hang up. No, you hang up. Okay, we'll just both hang up when I count to three. One, two, three. Are you still there? And it would take forever because you were just, you just talked and you just had conversation. And I put that against a phone call that I took a few weeks ago. I hardly ever answer my phone when I don't know who it is, but I did. And it was somebody with a very thick accent who said, Mr. Conderdon? And I knew in that moment, like, I don't know who you are. You don't know who I am. We have zero relationship and I want this conversation to end quickly. But look at what Jesus said. When they asked the question, he said, our Father who art in heaven, this is how you pray. It's a relational piece. It's an opportunity to know God. It's an opportunity to grow in a desire of knowing your Father. And that's why Matthew six, verse six is something I taught as a youth pastor to young people all the time. That one verse applied to your life can literally change everything. And it's where Jesus just got done saying, hey, don't pray this way, where you're trying to impress people or you're trying to be in places where people will notice you or you're just trying to say the right words. When you pray, you do this, you go into a secret place into your room, you close the door and you pray to your Father who is in secret. And the one who sees in secret, your Father will reward you openly. And again, in our Western minds, we think of that reward as, oh, I'm gonna get what I prayed for and I'm gonna get my request. I'm telling you, the reward of the Matthew six, six lifestyle is this, as you will know God, he will reveal himself to you an intimacy, a trust and a bond will occur in the place of prayer that is impossible anywhere else. And you begin to have the heart of God towards other people, the heart of God towards situations that you're going through. The literal Holy Spirit is downloaded into your situations and you walk in an authority and an anointing and in a courage that is impossible apart from the place of prayer. And that's what the disciples saw in Jesus. John 17, verse three, the high priestly prayer that Jesus was praying, he said something so powerful. He said, this is eternal life. Do you wanna know what the meaning of life is? Do you wanna know what eternal life is? It's this, that they might know you, the one true God and your son, Jesus Christ, whom you sent. The key to life is not achievement, it's not resumes, it's not trying to climb up some corporate ladder. The key to life, eternal life is this, can you know God and do you know his son, Jesus Christ, whom he sent? That's what the prayer life of Jesus sparked in his disciples. They were learners. They were watching him and they were marked by his ability to know God in the place of prayer. So that's number one, something stood out about the prayer life of Jesus. Second thing we learn is this, is that the disciples weren't afraid to ask the question. I love that. They were like, again, I don't pray like that. I don't have that same relationship. Can you teach us how to do that? And it took a humility in the disciples to realize this, when you sign up to be a disciple, you're signing up to be a learner. You're not an expert. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to know everything there is to know about God or the Bible or prayer to be his disciples. In fact, if you think you know everything, you're gonna fall into a place of pride. You're gonna fall into a place where it's hard to have intimacy with God. But instead, if we humble ourselves and say, Father, teach me how to pray, teach me how to do that, teach me how to set aside time for you, we have a humility and an ability to connect with God that's impossible in our own strength. And in our culture today especially, it is easy to think that you have to be an expert. And if you're not, then it's easy to just not do it. Like these are usually your two options. You're either gonna do something because you're good at it and you're gonna keep doing it or you're gonna fake it like golf, for instance. I don't know if you're a golfer. I went to the driving range one time with a friend. Somehow we're still friends. I don't know how, but he let me borrow his clubs. They were too short for me. He didn't have all the equipment. I didn't have a glove. It was 137 degrees Celsius out. And I tried to hit the ball and I flung the club further than I ever hit a ball in the three hours that we were playing golf, right? He was like, go get it. And I was like, and so I could not hit the ball. And I have never golf since. I have never tried to golf again because I'm just like, I'm not good at it. I don't want to. Golf is terrible. And that can be our attitude sometimes. We can just think, well, I'm not good at it. Other people are, Pastor Lee can do it. Someone else can have that. And I'll just kind of adopt theirs. But there has to be a humility that says, God, I don't know everything there is to know. Have you ever been in a situation where you've had to act like you know what you're talking about, but you literally have no idea what you're talking about? It is one of the most uncomfortable things. I'm gonna tell a story that I'm not super proud of. This is a true story. It was almost 10 years ago. So I feel like I've grown in righteousness in some ways. And this wasn't all my fault, but I have a buddy who's in the medical field and he was going to a conference and it was with a bunch of peers from all over the state and all over the country, really. And he was like, dude, it's in San Diego. You should just come with me. My wife can't go anyways. And so you can just kind of be my wife for the next four days and you don't have to pay for anything. We're staying at the sweet hotel and we're gonna have dinners. All you have to do is pay for your flight. So I was like, sweet, great, I'll come. I wanna go to San Diego. So I pay for my flight. I'm hanging out with him and we're going to dinner. It's like the first or second night and we're going to this place called Nobu. It's like the Kardashians are there. It's expensive. There's like $3,000 plates or whatever. And we're on our way in and my friend goes, hey dude, I had to tell him that you worked in the lab. I'm like, what? Yeah, yeah, sorry man. I told him that you're a lab assistant. And literally my whole heart's just, what's a lab assistant? Like you told me I could be your wife, dude. You told me we were married. What does this mean? So the whole time. First of all, I'm scared to have anything but ice water. I'm gonna end up paying for this. Like I don't know anything. And they're talking and they're yucking it up about medical stuff and procedures. And I'm literally sweating going. I know, and I'm not kidding you. Someone said something like, what do you think about that, John? And I had to, I was like, well, I would definitely take the hemoglobin sample to the analyzer and have it lab. And I just started like saying words that were like Mechel, like stethoscope, lab coat. Like I freaked out. And I'm sure look like an idiot. I got up, I excused myself. And then literally after dinner, my buddy probably because I made a fool of myself told him like, yeah, he's just my wife actually. He doesn't work in the medical field. And we just had to break the ice and we had a big thing about, but I'm telling you, that's how we are sometimes about our Christianity, our prayer life is we think I have to have it all together. I have to know what I'm talking about. And we don't humble ourselves to be able to say, look, I'm still learning. I don't know everything there is to know. I don't have it all together. Sometimes we look at church and it's like this country club and we all put on our best face and no one can have any issues or problems. That's not what Christianity is supposed to look like. We're supposed to be able to say, I don't know that. I'm not an expert. The Bible says that we're supposed to have childlike faith. Do you know why children have such a beautiful expression of faith and learning is because they're not afraid to ask questions. They're not afraid to not know everything. And so they ask and they put themselves out there. I have a seven year old son. He asked me about God, church, heaven all the time. God, dad, what's heaven like? Like, well, son, there's living creatures that are covered with eyes. Extremely scary. No, I didn't tell him that. I said, heaven's great. And I'm gonna be able to bring my toys to heaven. Dinosaurs, I'm like, I think so. For sure. You're gonna have great toys in heaven. He's like, well, is Samson gonna go to heaven? Samson's our dog. I'm like, he pooped in our living room like seven times. So I don't know for sure about me. And he's always asking questions. If you have kids, you know, they're like, why? Why? Why? Why? How long are we gonna be in heaven forever, bud? I'm like, that's a long time. And Eric was like, yeah, like 40 years. I was like, well, yeah, at least that long. And they're asking questions and they're learning and they're putting themselves in a situation where they're not expected to know every single thing. And so I just wanna say to you today as a Christian, I don't know where everybody is, but I do know this, there's a temptation sometimes to compare ourselves and our Christian walk with other people, compare our lives with other people, compare where we are in our lives with other people, with other situations. The quickest way to destroy or to hinder what God's doing in your life is to compare it to what he's doing in someone else's. It's the biggest mistake that you can make is to start comparing yourself, is to start having, it's going to cause you to be miserable, to lose your joy and to question God. You remember David and Saul, the king, they had no issues until the people started singing songs like, oh, Saul is slain as thousands, but David is 10,000 and in his heart, Saul was like, David is 10,000. Wait, wait, I'm supposed to be in charge. I'm supposed to be, and instantly the enemy had a foothold in his heart and in the trajectory of his life because he was comparing himself to other people. Don't compare your journey to somebody else's. It's easy to do. I didn't become a Christian until I was 24 years old. I grew up in church. Most of you know my story. I was radically saved in 1999 in this very church with Pastor Lee as my pastor and mentor and friend. And no one had to tell me this, but in my heart, inherently, I started believing that I was behind. Like you're 24 years old, you've wasted all these years, and I started remembering odd facts that I knew, like that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 33 years old and that Martin Luther King won a Nobel Peace Prize when he was like 34. And all these things were telling me, John, you're behind. You should be further along. And I'll just be honest with you. I still sometimes feel that in my heart. You should be a lead pastor by now. You should know the Bible better. You should be a better leader. You should be a better communicator. People don't take you seriously. There's all of these things that the enemy wants to bring and say you're not an expert. You don't know enough, you haven't done enough. And today I just want to encourage you. Enjoy the journey that God has you on. Enjoy the invitation, the divine invitation that Jesus gives you to say, I'll teach you how to pray. I'll teach you how to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. I'll teach you how to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But when we're self-critical and when we begin to compare ourselves to others, we submarine the journey and we set traps for ourselves and it begins to do a disservice to the journey that God has us on. Things that are meant to inspire us even can sometimes be a downer. I'm just gonna share a couple of things with you. There's a incredible book. It's called Power Through Prayer by Ian Bounds. If you don't know, he's a minister, a prayer warrior from the late 1800s, early 1900s. And I was reading this book and there's a chapter in the book about people of prayer. And it's meant to inspire you and give you this motivation. And I'm just gonna be honest. I was like, wow, I suck. I'm so far behind. Listen to this chapter. What do you roll? I'll give you a couple of them. He talked about Joseph Alene. He said, Joseph would rise at four o'clock for his business of praying until eight. If you heard another tradesman starting their business before he awoke, he would exclaim, oh, how this shames me does not my master deserve more than theirs. 4 a.m., he's out praying until eight. I know that looks like your prayer life. Andrew Murray would wear, wore the hardwood boards into grooves where his knees pressed so often and so long. Really, carpet in my house. Marquis de Rente ordered his servant to call him from his devotions at the end of half an hour. The servant at that time saw that his face was marked with such holiness that he hated to arouse him. His lips were moving, but he was perfectly silent. He waited until three half hours passed and then called to him. And when he arose to his knees, he exclaimed, oh, how that half hour was so short and communion with Christ. He prayed for an hour and a half and he thought it was a half hour. Very similar to my prayer life and to how I spend my mornings. John Wells, Scottish preacher, early 1900s thought the day ill spent. If it did not contain eight to 10 hours of dedicated prayer, he kept a blanket that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife would complain when she would find him laying on the ground weeping and he would reply, oh, woman, I have the souls of 3,000 to answer for and I know not how it is with many of them. That's how I talk to Kendra every morning. And so we're meant to be inspired, but sometimes if we're self-critical or if we're not confident in who we are, we can begin to be bogged down by other people's journeys and I just want to encourage you. Don't compare yourself or your journey to someone else's walk in the plans and the purposes that God has for your life. The calling that he has for you is unique. Philippians 1-6 says that he who began a good work and you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus and the enemy wants to get your eyes on someone else's journey, someone else's circumstances, what's going on, what you haven't done, what you should have done and the reality is this, every day the mercies of God are brand new. Great is the faithfulness of God and your goodness is not dependent on you, it's dependent on him. The very desire you have to know God is from him and because of him and it is by faith that we walk in any ability to please or to know God. It's not our check boxes, it's not our 4 a.m. prayer times and those things are all great, but if you set that as your burden, if you set that as the ultimate goal, you're gonna have rollercoaster Christianity. You're gonna feel great when things are going great, oh man I got a bird, oh I prayed, oh I helped a lady cross the street and then you're gonna have other times where it's like oh man I didn't even read my Bible today, I blew up on my wife, I did this and you have these like sinking moments and I just wanna encourage you, walk in the grace that God has for your life. Look at the third thing I wanna highlight out of this verse. So they found something that stood out in Jesus' prayer life, it was the relationship. They weren't afraid to ask questions or say I'm not an expert and the last thing is this, Jesus loves that you're even asking the question. Look how Jesus responds. They say teach us how to pray and Jesus doesn't say seriously, come on guys. Two years you've been, you don't even know how to pray? What have you been doing, you've been on your phones like you see me pray all the way, how do you not know how to pray? He says he goes into a beautiful verse of this is how you pray, this is what it looks like, relationship with God and there's this beautiful transaction that Jesus presents to the person who just even has an inkling of desire to know Jesus and to know his heart in the place of prayer. He says I'm already there, Matthew 6-6, your father who's in the secret place sees and rewards you openly. God wants you to enjoy the journey of being formed in the place of prayer and when we're self-critical or when we say I'm not an expert or when we farm it out to somebody else, we lose the tenderness that Jesus has for even our weak hearts that say Jesus, I wanna know you more. Even our weak glance captures the heart and eyes of the one who loves us, the one who says you're the apple of my eye, I'm fixed on you, I love you, I'm enraptured by you, there's nothing that can separate you from my love that's in Christ Jesus and even if you're feeling weak, even if you're like I'm not there, one step towards the direction of God and James 4-8 says when you draw near to me, I am there, I draw near to you. And as we look at this discipleship series, as we go into these 10 days where we just came out of seek, what our heart needs to be crying out saying, I don't want prayer to be an event, I want it to be a lifestyle, I want it to be a journey, I want it to be a place where I'm asking and you're teaching, where I'm enjoying the journey, I'm not being self-critical, I'm not making excuses, I'm not being lazy but at the same time, I'm not saying oh I should be an expert and I should have it all figured out, I'm on a journey towards the very heart of God and that's how we're formed and discipled in the place of prayer. Jesus is just thrilled that you're asking the question, teach me how to pray. He's thrilled that you're saying, teach me how to be a better husband, a better wife, teach me how to walk in courage and walk in the grace that you have for me, teach me every day you're a lifelong learner at the feet of your master Jesus and I want to encourage you in this too, don't measure yourself or your progress every single day. We can become so fixated on, am I getting better? What about my progress? I liken it to maybe when you were a kid and I did it to my kids, your parents would put you in the closet door and they'd measure how tall you were. Remember that? And they'd say, all right, we're gonna put a little there. That's all, let's see, it's October 10th, 2020 and that's how tall you are. How many of you know that on October 11th, you don't pull your kid, okay, let's see how tall you are now, like okay, you haven't even grown. What's your problem kid? Right, that would be crazy. It would be depressing. Like you don't do it every day, you do it every six months or you do it every year and you say, oh, okay, look, look, look, there's something that we can look to, there's progress, you're growing. Second Corinthians 416 says, even though the outward man is perishing, the inward man who you really are is growing day by day. Like there's a process to it. And don't stunt your growth and don't be so hard, sometimes we're harder on ourselves than Jesus is. He says, I just love the fact that you wanna pray, that you wanna know me, that you're growing. Come on, let's put a mark here and then let's measure yourselves later. And here's what I mean by that, like ask yourself, am I closer to God than I was six months ago? Am I responding in the place of prayer? I used to worry, I used to be anxious and I still do, but I'm finding myself going to prayer earlier, prayer quicker. I'm giving this to the Lord faster than I used to. That's the way we can measure our discipleship and our growth. It's not every single day, but it'll feel that way. If you've ever been gone for a while and you haven't seen family in a while and then you show up and they're like, bro, your kids are huge. What happened? Grosper, oh my word, they're like little adults. And you're like, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But you don't always notice it because you're with them all the time. And that's sometimes how our spiritual growth happens is that we don't always see what's happening, but when we look back and when we face new challenges, there's growth there and there's development there and we've been formed in the place of prayer. And it's in those moments that that John 17.3 promise comes to pass. I might know God and his son, Jesus Christ, whom he sent. That is the key to prayer. That is the key to discipleship is that I'm deeper in my relationship with God than I was. I'm joining with my family more than I used to. I'm praying with my kids, I'm watching online. I'm learning how to pray. I'm being taught at the feet of Jesus what it looks like to be a disciple. Wherever you're at, I wanna just pray with you. I'm gonna ask you to stand if you would. I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna close in worship or we're just gonna have a time where we enter in to the presence of God. And I want that to be the question that you ask Jesus, that you ask the Holy Spirit, is this teach me how to pray. Teach me how to grow. I wanna be a disciple and I wanna be formed in the place of prayer. So Father, we come to you today and we are not experts. We are not in our own strength, able to accomplish anything, God. It is not by might, it is not by our power, it is by your spirit that we live and we move and we have our being. And God, we're asking you today, teach us how to pray, teach us how to grow, teach us how to walk in the grace and in the power and in the overcoming victorious spirit that is ours in Christ Jesus, Father. That's our prayer. And God, we don't wanna compare ourselves to others. We don't wanna look at someone else's journey. We want our eyes fixed on you. The author and the finisher of our faith is you, Jesus. You know the end from the beginning. You're the Alpha and the Omega and we are being formed into the image of God in the place of prayer, in the place of your word and asking the question, Father, teach us how to pray. And we honor you and we ask it in faith. We ask it in humility and we say, Jesus, come and fill our hearts with your presence today.