 This morning, I'm going to be looking at two particular passages of scripture, one in Jeremiah. So if you have a bookmark or something, or you want to put your finger in Jeremiah 33, and then the other is going to be in Matthew chapter 6. We're going to be looking today at the spiritual discipline of prayer. Now, if our Christian walk could be likened to a business, and we had a consultant come in and maybe who specialized in a particular field to evaluate our Christian walk. We may be surprised by the fact that we are now apprised that our Christian walk is lacking in a particular area, maybe running a deficit each month in prayer. There is great spiritual power that comes to the Christian, who spends time not only in reading the Bible, but in communicating with the Lord. Prayer. So let's just hop right in real quick to point number one, which is you call the Lord, and let's pray as we ask the Lord to bless the reading and study of his word. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this place that we can call home, where Lord, we can come to a safe environment, safe Lord in the sense that we don't have to worry about false doctrines being taught, or a pastor sugar coating truths, Lord, or teaching certain messages that are only culturally acceptable. Lord, we thank you God that your word is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. And so Lord, today I pray on this very familiar subject, the subject of prayer. I ask Lord that you would please just expound this subject. Lord, that you would give a greater desire to each of your children that are present today or are going to be watching this later, or are tuning in from some other place around the world. Lord, we pray that you would give us all, not only a greater desire, but Lord, the action to follow through on those desires to be men and women of prayer. And so Father, we ask that you would now add your blessing to the reading and to the study of your word, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. In Jeremiah chapter 33, under this point number one, which I have entitled, You Call the Lord. Jeremiah 33 verse 3 says, the Lord speaking, call to me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know. The very first thing that we read here in Jeremiah is the Lord telling his people to call. Yet prayer is a very, very, I would say, practiced by a very few amount of Christians on a regular basis as a spiritual discipline. Prayer is something that very few practice as a spiritual discipline. See, personal prayer time with the Lord should be as regular as you pray for your meals. Have you ever wondered, like, how did it just become a tradition that you just prayed for your food? You know, before we eat, let's say our grapes or whatever it might be. Lord bless this food, nourish it to our bodies. We pray things such as, and bless the hands that prepared it, or whatever it may be. See, thanking God for your food is a good thing. Asking Him to bless it, that is a good thing. Maybe you were raised in a home where you always said prayer before you ate your meal, and that was part of your life. Maybe you weren't raised to pray for your food, and maybe you don't do that currently, and I hope that you would do so starting today. But the point that I'm making is that the spiritual practice of prayer has to start somewhere. The life of being a prayer warrior always has an origin story. You don't become a mighty woman, a mighty man of prayer without your own origin story of how you decided to start praying. And as habitual, traditional, and just part of your everyday life of saying prayers for your food is, so too you can have a powerful, personal, and intimate relationship with God through your time of prayer. But it all starts with calling the Lord. Calling out to the Lord. Praying. Nearly 400 times in the Bible, prayer is referenced. The very first time in the history of the Scriptures that prayer is mentioned, or this calling upon the name of the Lord is found in Genesis 4, 26, which says, then men began to call on the name of the Lord. Now if you live in California, you understand we got a whole lot of problems happening. We have a whole lot of things that are going awry. You know, it's not supposed to be the case that we hit rock bottom and then call upon the name of the Lord. Or we have no other options, nothing at our disposal, we're out of resources, so I guess we better pray. Prayer is something that we must do. I hope that today on this very familiar subject you might think, yeah, I know everything there is to know about prayer. I've been walking with the Lord a long time. Of course I know it's important to pray. Well, I hope that today you actually learn something that's new from the Scriptures and that the Lord reveals something to you in a new and fresh way. But we need to be a church that calls upon the name of the Lord. We need to be like those in Genesis 4 where men began to call on the name of the Lord. And this amazing book, Ian Bounds, is quoted as saying, what the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use. Men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. End of quote. We need more men and women that are committed to praying. So let's get right into this, how to pray. Now, when you first become a Christian, maybe you're here today and maybe you're new to this whole thing called Christianity, you're new to the faith, quote, unquote. You know, there's a lot of things that you wonder about as a new Christian. You know, one of the things that is a very common occurrence is that you wonder if you will light on fire, if you come through the doors of a church. You get struck by lightning. Can't tell you how many people have said, you know what, I was really scared to go to church because I didn't know what was going to happen to me if I came into it. You know, you also wonder when you're new to the whole church thing is like, are church people weird? Well, let's just say there is weird in all walks of life and church isn't the exception to it either. But all joking aside, you wonder about a lot of things and spiritual things such as maybe let's say prayer or maybe for somebody that has been walking with the Lord for a long time might just take as well that's, yeah, everyone knows that. Everybody is supposed to know that. Well, I don't know that, you might say. One of the main things that people ask about or wonder about is how to pray. How do you actually pray? When you pray, do you have to pray in the Old King James English, you know, like thee thou, thee thy and thou and all this kind of thing? How long do you pray? What do you say? I mean, if you've ever asked that question, you are in great company, really good company because the disciples ask Jesus, would you teach us how to pray? Now what I believe we're going to go over today is going to absolutely revolutionize your prayer life. If you have one already and even if you do not, you are going to have such a solid foundation on which you can build your base of spiritual operations through your time in prayer. And so as I mentioned, Matthew 6, let's look at this passage commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer, as you know it. Jesus says, in this manner therefore pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, or in our New King James Version, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us the stay our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Now very simply, this prayer can be outlined as the following. And if you want to get a copy of this study afterwards or listen to the archive, you can go through this and you can see how it lines up very nicely. Seven sections. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Lord be praised. Lord your will. Lord provide. Lord forgive. Lord guide. Lord protect. Lord be praised. Jesus is teaching his disciples some very important lessons when praying to the Lord. The very first lesson here is perspective. If you look at verse nine, it says, in this manner therefore pray, our Father in heaven. This perspective is a heavenly one and it views as, it views God as being above you in a world where man is elevated to God. This is the proper perspective for the Christian to have. God is above me. See the prideful person, the arrogant person or the self-confident person is so busy looking down upon others from his own elevated place that he never looks up to God. He doesn't lift up to acknowledge that there is something higher than him. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes chapter five verse two. He said, do not be rash with your mouth and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven and you on earth therefore let your words be few. You are a speck of dust on a speck of dust in the universe. God is in heaven and you are down on earth. So please understand that and when you pray to Almighty God whom the heavens of heavens cannot contain because he created all things and without him nothing was made that was made. And so we come to the Lord in humility. We come to the Lord as we humble ourselves before his might, his wisdom and his power. Listen to what second Chronicles chapter seven verse 14 says as God speaks, if my people are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. The very first thing that God says that his people needed to do was to humble themselves. Humbling yourself is a very difficult thing to do because it's like, hey, I have my resources I have my ingenuity. I have my willpower. You know, I'm the one that can make it happen when going gets tough, the tough gets going and I'm tough and I'm going to get going and I have to do this, that and the other thing. I don't need to go to the Lord with that. I don't need to bother him. You know, I can handle this myself but this is exactly the opposite of what Jesus leads off with when instructing his disciples how to pray. You are on earth, your Father is in heaven. God told his people, as I read in 2 Chronicles humble yourself before me. That's the right perspective to have instead of coming to God, making demands of him or treating the Lord like he's a genie in a bottle. See, the very thing that helps our perspective before we even get into prayer is understanding who God is and who we are. Our Father who is in heaven. I am here on earth. And so we see in verse 9, our first section which is Lord be praised. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Lord, you are the Almighty God. There is no one like you. Lord, you can do anything at any time with anyone. Lord, you can take something that was meant for evil and turn it into something good. You can take those dead ends and make a way in the sea for the people to pass through. Lord, you are God. With you, all things are possible. It's nothing, Lord, for you to provide, to forgive, to guide, to protect. Lord, I praise you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you that you're the God that I'm coming to, that I'm communicating with, that is hearing me pray. And worshiping the Lord and praising the Lord during your time of prayer is pleasing to the Lord. And it's also, might I say, very valuable in the sense that it is empowering to your spirit, especially when you're, especially when you're enduring times of trial or doubt. The last thing that you want to do when you are in a bad situation is praise the Lord. You might do so sarcastically. Oh, great. Thank you, Lord. That's amazing that this just happened. But when you're truly seeking the Lord, and you want to get into a time of powerful prayer, and I would even say this spiritual discipline is a Christian's guide to true spiritual power. This isn't just the surface level kind of thing. This is the real deal when it comes to having a prayer life. When you come to the Lord with prayer and praise, it empowers you spiritually. Because you can feel discouraged. Some of you may have even come into church today and you felt downcast. You felt depressed. You felt like, man, I don't have any hope. But when you begin to turn your attention away from your problems and onto Almighty God who is in heaven and you are on earth, you all of a sudden gain a right perspective. Wait, Lord, it's nothing for you. You can do anything at any time. Lord, why can't we just see this happen? Lord, we believe that you're capable of doing that. You're not limited by my limitations, Lord. And we shift our focus upon the Lord through our times of praise. And then what happens is our hearts align with His will for us in our situation. You know, lately I had been studying again the people of Israel being led out of Egypt by Moses. And you remember, He led them to the Red Sea, right? And there was a pillar of cloud during the day to cover them from the sun and then a pillar of night to lead the way in the evening where they should go. And the people followed Moses as they followed the Lord. And you know what I found so fascinating was that God led them to a dead end. Have you ever thought about that? Oh, we're just wandering and here we go. And, you know, following the Lord and then I get smack dab against the sea. And then all of a sudden the Egyptians say, hey, we won our possessions back. Let's go reclaim them. We should never have let them go. And now I'm at a dead end. With bad stuff on my side and an impossible task ahead of me, what do I do? And then we forget that God is the God who parts the sea. And there's no such thing as dead ends when it comes to the Lord. Because with man it's impossible, but with God all things are possible. And all of a sudden when I start praising God for who He is, all of a sudden I'm reminded that God can do anything. And then my perspective of prayer now changes from me feeling hopeless to like, Lord, my hope is in you. And really, Lord, I'm not even looking for the answer to prayer. I should be looking to receive just you, Lord. What do you have for me? And that leads right into our next section in verse 10, which is verse, as I mentioned in verse 9, Lord, be praised. And now verse 10, it's Lord, your will. So Jesus says, in this manner therefore pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So Father in heaven, hallowed be your name or your holy, we praise you. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth even as it is in heaven. Now years ago, boy, 2004, and I may have shared this on a Wednesday night sometime back, but for those of you that weren't there for the chance to hear it, in 2004, I was hired at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and Pastor Chuck, when he hired me, he sat me down in the front office and said, I want you to answer these phones. People are going to call in, they're going to ask for prayer. I want you to pray for them, write their names down on the prayer list so we can send it to the prayer team and just field any calls that come in. And so I said, yes, sir, and I did it and that was my first day. And I remember one call came in with this girl and she said, you know, I'm in this relationship, I'm dating this guy and I would like to ask you to please pray that we get married and that the Lord blesses our relationship and that, you know, we end up spending the rest of our life together. And so I said, okay, what's your name? I wrote her name down. I started praying, Lord, I pray that you would, you know, bless so-and-so and Lord, for this relationship that she's in with this guy, I just pray for your will to be done in their relationship. And she immediately interrupted me just as the words had come out of my mouth and she said these exact words, I did not pray for you. I didn't ask for you to pray for the Lord's will to be done. I prayed that we would get married. I asked you to pray that we would spend the rest of our life together. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. And I said, Lord, I just pray for this relationship that you would please get this guy out of it as fast as you possibly can. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't really pray that. I just thought that. But listen, when you pray, when you pray, you're not praying so that, you know, you can advance your desires or your purposes or your will or further your kingdom. So I could pray, Lord, your kingdom coming, your will be done in the Bealer family even as it is in heaven. In my life, even as it is in heaven. In your life, even as it is in heaven. In my particular area, in my city, Lord, in the city of Irvine, may your will be done even as it is in heaven. Because, see often, it's the case in our trial or situation that the Lord is desiring to do a work in us. This thing that's happening out here, the Lord desires to have something happen in here, inside. And it's through prayer that we wrestle or work through those very things that God is desiring to have worked into our lives. And so Jesus says, when you pray to your heavenly Father, you pray, Lord, your will be done. Now, just to be transparent with you, over the last year or so, I had been going through a season where my faith had been tested. Really tested. And there were things that, you know, I had been working through okay, Lord, do I believe like what I say I believe? And Lord, this is happening with my family or this is happening with the church. Lord, I don't understand these things. I'm not seeing how this is going to work out. And I had had, you know, just at this time where I was really like, I could picture Jacob wrestling with the Lord. Like you're wrestling through these things. The whole time, having come through those situations, I could see that the Lord was allowing me in his grace to wrestle with these things because he wanted to touch me. He wanted something changed in me. He needed Garrett Bieler to know this. He needed me to understand who he is, how he works, what he does. And so when it says here, as Jesus is telling his disciples, this is how you pray, Lord, your will. Your will be done. I have to tell you that the complete surrender to God's will in a situation that you do not understand and then quite frankly that you do not like is one of the most difficult yet most amazing things that you will ever do as a follower of Jesus and that will take place through your time in prayer. The working through of the truths of God's word which are never failing. I feel like I can stand up here with such conviction knowing that it's just not, oh yeah, somebody else's story, but that I have my own story. I have my own story of God's faithfulness. And we pray, Lord, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you and thus I submit myself to that purpose. May your will be done. Maybe some of you even hearing that today are very uncomfortable, like, oh, and you get this wrestling, this, oh, this can't be God's will. There's no way this is God's will. How will the Lord allow this to happen to me? I'm his favorite. I'm speaking of myself, obviously, not you, because I'm his favorite. Lord, how are you going to work in this situation? How are you going to take care of it? That leads us to the very next thing where the Lord teaches his disciples. Lord, provide. Give us this day our daily bread, verse 11. And so here after establishing the proper perspective on the heavenly position of God and our earthly position, the holiness of the Lord and how worthy he is to be praised and the perfection of his will at work in us, we're encouraged to ask that our daily needs be met. And this covers the Lord's provision for his people, so he supplies all of our needs. And yes, there is a difference between needs and wants. We also know that there are times of surplus where things are growing and there are times of recession where things are shrinking and that is normal and that's what it means to have different seasons in life. But we know that in whatever state we're in, we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength, right? Philippians 4.13 and then in Philippians 4.19, Paul writes to the church and says, and my God shall supply all of your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. And so when we pray and we ask the Lord for his provision, it's a great reminder that all things come from him. All things. Even when you tithe and you give back to the Lord of your resources, the Lord gave you those resources to give back to him. You know, oftentimes people will say, oh, church just wants money, God just wants my money. God doesn't care a single bit about your money. Honestly, he doesn't need your money. Money has no value to him. What does have value is your heart to obey what he commands and your heart to give back to him out of what he has given to you. And even when we do so, you take from his hand, Lord, thank you for giving this back, give it back to me and I give you what I got. No, actually, I take from your hand and I give back to you. Everything we have, we've received. The Lord has provided for us. In 1 Corinthians 4-7, Paul writes and says, for who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now, if you indeed did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? So we pray, Lord, thank you in advance for what you're going to provide for me and for my family. In Psalm 37, verse 25, the psalmist says, I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his descendants begging bread. You know, the more kids you have, the more difficult life can be. It's true. Of course, you're blessed, but I remember as I mentioned being hired at Costa Mesa that many years ago, 2004. I remember my last meeting that I had with Pastor Chuck before he passed away. It was just over six years ago. And I said, Pastor Chuck, I was 24 and single when you hired me and I'm 33. I'm married. I have two kids and it's time for me to go plant a church. And now I'm nearly 40. I have three kids and then happy to announce that I have baby number four coming in mid-April. Four kids. And sometimes I think to myself, what have we done? You know, my wife comes from a big family of five. Her dad passed her. And he was actually good friends with the Rosalysus. The first time I met David and Marie was in Maui when I was in Bible college. It was the time of suffering for the Lord that I'll never forget. And I remember meeting them. And my father-in-law and mother-in-law were on that trip as well. And my wife's family are from the UK and had pastored Calvary chapels for a number of years. Currently, my two brother-in-laws are pastors at Calvary Chapel in Oxford, England. And just the rich heritage that, you know, I married into a big family. She has four older siblings, all brothers, so five, and then there was four in my family. And we always wanted to have a large family. You know, because, you know, when you, you know, holiday times and the kids get older and, you know, then there's grandkids and we'll have a full house. It'll be great. And then now we're just kind of thinking, well, if we live to tell our tale, it'll be great. And, you know, I have an 11-year-old son, Hudson. I have a nine-year-old daughter, Ava, my son, Harrison, just turned three last Sunday. And we got a third boy coming in April. Another boy, three boys. And I'm just thinking, you know, when I was younger, there were three of us Beeler brothers and we were into everything. And then now I'm going to have my own Beeler boys and I'm thinking again, the Beeler boy's right again. And then I'm like, oh, no. But, you know, when you're praying for your family and you start to see, you know, hey, there's more mouths to feed and, you know, cost of living is going up and it's just, it's hard to live in this area or whatever it might be. What a good reminder that we can pray to the Lord and say, Lord, would you give us this day our daily bread? Would you provide for us? And then to hear the psalmist say, hey, I was young and now I'm old and I have never seen the righteous forsaken by the Lord. And when the Lord does bless us, which I think we often take for granted and we forget how blessed we are, we should receive it humbly. I mean, because if we were to honestly look at it and look at our sin and our failures, our mistakes, et cetera, and think how unworthy we are, we would be more than over the moon to realize that a God in heaven loved us and has forgiven us and has blessed us. Lord, thank you. And that forgiveness that we've received from the Lord, that forgiveness that we seek from God on a constant basis, it should be given to others in our lives as well. And next, we're going to see that asking for forgiveness of our sins is indirect connection to how we treat others with forgiveness, which is verse 12 in our section, Lord, forgive. And forgive us our debts and we forgive our debtors. Man, we want to be forgiven of our sins, but we struggle with forgiving other people their sins. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Lord, please forgive me. Your word says that I confess my sin. You're faithful and just to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Lord, hear me, cleanse me. Forgive me, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Jesus was very crystal clear and said in Matthew 6.15, If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Now, I know people today that simply cannot, will not forgive others that have offended them or wronged them. And they're Christians, professing Christ. And what I've seen in the church, I think it's a double portion of the attack from Satan where there's a wrong that is committed and then there is unforgiveness towards the person who committed the wrong. So both parties suffer. Both are victims of the attacks and deceptions of the devil. I mean, it's truly a lose-lose type of situation. What a great thing. Have a person act in his sinful humanity. Have him hurt somebody else and then have that person who's been hurt or wrong not forgive them and they're both destroyed. So do wrong, don't forgive, don't move on, don't heal. And all along, we think it has to do with the other person. It's all about them when it really has nothing to do with them. Well, they did this. Listen, God knows and he's going to take care of that. But your lack of forgiveness is nothing to do with that person. But we want to blame them because there needs to be a reason for why I am the way that I am now. Their fault. But Jesus in teaching his disciples how to pray tells them to ask their heavenly Father for forgiveness of their sins as they will forgive the sins of others against them. I really believe that unforgiveness is one of the greatest issues to plague Christians. Because when we do not forgive no matter how young or how old you are or where you're from or what you've experienced, when we as Christians do not forgive we are trapped in a period of time. You know what that time is. It's the time that it all happened. For those of you that have not forgiven what is it like to be on a continuous loop of revisiting your painful situation? Just like, back to it. Back to it. Back to it. Back to it. Is that annoying? Back to it. When you do not forgive others you're not free of the wrong committed to you. You're defined by it. When you do not forgive others you are not free of the wrong committed against you. You are defined by it. And then you start finding your identity in something that happened to you and you lose the identity that you're supposed to have in Christ. Jesus didn't just randomly throw this instruction in here about forgiveness. He said, ask the Lord to forgive you as you go out and forgive other people. And forgiveness happens through prayer as the Lord gives you his heart for others. Now listen. I know all about being wronged. I know all about having a chip on your shoulder having bitterness and anger and resentment. Things that happened as far back is high school days. It is through the healing work of the Lord through your time in prayer that allows you to be free from your problem not defined by it. And in verse 13 we see now our section Lord guide and Lord protect. And Jesus says pray to the Lord and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Victory over temptation is prepared for and provided through prayer. Your time in prayer you stored up in advance. You pray in advance. In advance you are ready. It's like pre-season conditioning for the season. When I go through the trial it's not throw up a last ditch attempt to win the game. It's like I've already trained for this, prepared for this and I'm ready for it. I'm not going to go out on the day of my track meet and say oh I better get a couple laps and get my cardio up. No you train all year long for the meet and then you then you win because you're ready. At my church we call it being pre-prared. You pray in advance and when the spiritual temptations come you win. And if you've fallen into sin chances are you have fallen out of prayer simple as that. You've fallen out of your devotion with the Lord and you have fallen into the traps of the enemy. Now this is my personal opinion it may be different from others but I would rather pray in advance for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in my life and giving me victory over sin than having to pray for a pardon afterwards. I would rather pray for the power instead of the pardon. Now the pardon is available. Thank God by His grace that I can say Lord please pardon me please forgive me but I would rather be prepared in advance pray for the power in advance so when the temptation comes you crush it then they have to give into it and say Lord I'm sorry afterwards. So Lord guide Lord protect. In verse 13 again as we close the section it's Lord be praised so it opens up Lord be praised he closes with Lord be praised verse 13 for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever Amen. And so again that simple outline Lord be praised Lord your will Lord provide Lord forgive Lord guide Lord protect Lord be praised and again back in Jeremiah 33 point number one was call call upon the Lord point number two and we'll close with this last point as the Lord answers. Jeremiah 33 says call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know so we need to call upon the Lord knowing that he will answer God desires to have time with you as you read his word as you communicate with him it gives the Lord the opportunity to impress his will his heart upon your heart your will your situation and so I would just like to give you a few things in closing that I believe will help you in becoming that man or woman of prayer number one is this choose a time choose a time the spiritual discipline of prayer is exactly that it's a discipline because you could agree with me and say yeah we need to pray more I definitely need to pray we could all pray more you could even say you know I want to pray more but if you never do it it doesn't matter what type of good attitude you have towards the idea of spending personal prayer time with the Lord you might be totally open to it but if you never follow through with it then what good does it do you that's why it's actions over attitudes a believer's guide to true spiritual prayer a spiritual discipline is actions we could even say it's this actions over attitudes spiritual disciplines are not attitudes they are practices they are decisions to act that you regularly make they are things that you do they are not things that you intend to do or wish to do or think you should do so choose a time that you can set aside for personal time with the Lord it could be the morning night it could be some time in between those times but the most important thing is just to start and you can't start unless you have a plan so my recommendation under this one thing choose a time is schedule an appointment with the Lord every day put it on your phone put it on your calendar set a reminder oh I'm meeting with the Lord at this time at three o'clock and I'm going to go pray and keep your appointments I mean each of you know your schedule you know how busy life can be but if you had an important meeting you put it on your calendar and you'd be early to it starting the day ending the day going through the day and prayer is a great thing turn off your phone you know occasionally I'll leave my phone at home and I'll go out and you know after I get over my separation anxiety I feel like I'm on vacation I mean some of you go like where's my phone I don't have my phone and then once you get over there you're like wow this is great this amen is right let me just scroll Instagram one more time let's see if anybody posted anything on food or whatever it might be I don't know so number one choose a time you can pray to the Lord anywhere so the choice is yours secondly choose a place so choose a time choose a place Jesus would often go to the garden or go up on a mountain or go somewhere quiet to pray Ruth my wife knows that I need a serious time of prayer there's two places that I go one is my car and the other is my closet well I'll turn my light off shut the door and I'll often just lay face down and I just pray and that's my literal prayer closet often I'll be driving in my car and volume off and it's just quiet in there you know how crazy it is I talked about having kids and all that you know how crazy life is cool it is to get into your car and shut the door and it's just this and I pray choose a place thirdly is when you pray expect to hear from the Lord God will speak to your heart and to your mind in Psalm 91 15 it says the Lord speaking he shall call upon me and I will answer him I will be with him in trouble I will deliver him and honor him see if you go into your time of prayer with an expectancy to receive from the Lord like you legitimately expect to pray and wait on the Lord and hear from him you will protect yourself from removing the spirituality from the spiritual discipline of prayer because if you take the spiritual discipline and remove spiritual and just have discipline and you just want to get it over as fast as you possibly can it'll be flipping and won't mean anything and you're like oh I got to do this like I'm doing time get my prayer done and I'm out now listen there are times for quick prayers there's a surprise quiz in school oh Lord please help me you know Nehemiah when he got called before the king and they asked him hey what's wrong Nehemiah he said a quick prayer oh Lord please help me and there are times to fire out those quick prayers but there needs to be a time where you pray until you pray yes that's what I meant to say that you pray until you pray because if you ever notice when you pray you know like all this oh you know did I take the laundry out what time is you know what's my dog doing you know the phone rings and you know you're praying for these things like Lord you know basic basic things Lord bless this food and give us a good night's sleep and you know thank you for not letting us get sick and you're like you're pushing through this like wall but then you pray and what happens is you push through whatever that is and I don't know if it's been defined and a lot of people can talk about what they think it may be but I just know that it's real and then you pray until you actually pray now you're in and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit is there and you're getting ministered to and things are getting impressed upon your heart and you're praying in ways that you've never prayed before so choose a time and choose a place expect to hear from the Lord and pray until you pray this is like the spiritual strength training and conditioning of your spiritual walk do you stop after one minute put my timer on one minute Lord I just pray I don't even know what else to pray for I pray for the five things that I have to pray for what does the Lord want you to do now listen our basic requests are important to the Lord but the entrance into the deep place of prayer considered incessory prayer it takes some time to get there we can be preoccupied with a lot of different things the prayer begins when you're still before the Lord so my recommendation to you would be do not allow distractions or a lack of endurance in prayer to hinder you from spending time in prayer I'm not good at praying listen you can pray on your knees you can pray bowing down on your face standing up eyes open driving your car but just pray you actually have to build up endurance in prayer like a runner builds up endurance to run a race you don't just start off running miles and miles and miles and miles and running 26 miles in a marathon you actually have to build up endurance to prayer and some of us our endurance is this goodness gracious spiritually you build it up just be quiet before the Lord just be quiet before the Lord expect to hear from Him the Holy Spirit has been given to you to make intercession and I believe that this is going to be the beginning of a change in your life and in the people people's lives that surround you I'm hoping today get this, get this teaching listen to it apply it to your life find your own time intercede push through make an appointment be regular, be committed and watch your spiritual life explode watch your, the power of the Holy Spirit just radiate out of your life watch your marriage change and your kids change and your workplace change and God knows California needs change we can do it through prayer and that's what's important so Jeremiah 33.3 will answer you and who's ready to see some great and mighty things which we do not know sign me up that's what I want