Creatures Of Habit | Prayerlessness | Drew Sherman

We're going to worship Jesus this morning. [music] We sing this together. ♪ I'm shaking off the heaviness ♪ ♪ I'm dancing out of my regrets ♪ ♪ I'm flowing caution to the wind ♪ ♪ Oh, I am not ashamed to praise like this ♪ ♪ So I say it's foolishness ♪ ♪ But I say it's worth the risk ♪ ♪ I can't forget what Jesus is ♪ ♪ Oh, I am not ashamed to praise like this ♪ ♪ Where all those chains that won't tell ♪ ♪ Are free, are free, are free ♪ ♪ My city is gone, I'll get it ♪ ♪ I'm free, are free, are free ♪ ♪ And looking with the Lord answer ♪ ♪ I'll never go back to the way I was ♪ ♪ I'll sing out dance 'cause I've been ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, they've gone, I've been ♪ ♪ They've gone, I'm free, I'll tell friends ♪ ♪ They've never quit, no other laws ♪ ♪ It's got instances ♪ ♪ And I don't care what anyone says ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'll never be ashamed to praise like this ♪ ♪ Where all those chains that won't tell me ♪ ♪ Are free, are free, are free ♪ ♪ My city is gone, I'll get it ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ And looking with the Lord answer ♪ ♪ I'll never go back to the way I was ♪

♪ I'll sing out dance 'cause I've been ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, they've gone, I'm free ♪ ♪ You took the cross and you broke your body ♪ ♪ You said you're blood, now they're sinning case ♪ ♪ My damage paid and my record is ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it, it's not the cause ♪ ♪ You said it's lost and you broke your body ♪ ♪ You said you're blood, now they're sinning ♪ ♪ My turn is paid, my record is paid ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it ♪ ♪ I couldn't do it, so you did it ♪ ♪ Holy God can't do it ♪ ♪ Holy God can't do it ♪ ♪ Holy God can't do it ♪ ♪ Holy God can't do it ♪ ♪ Holy God can't do it ♪ ♪ Where are those chains that once held ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ My sin is gone, I'm candy ♪ ♪ I'm free, I'm free ♪ ♪ You're looking what the Lord ♪ ♪ Looking what the Lord has ♪ ♪ I'll never go back to the way I was ♪ ♪ I'll sing out as good as I'll be ♪ ♪ I'll pray, I'll pray, I'll pray ♪ ♪ I'll see the shoulders ♪ ♪ Jesus is mine ♪ ♪ He's been my fourth man in the fire ♪ ♪ Time, mountain, time ♪ ♪ Born of His Spirit ♪

♪ Washing His blood ♪ ♪ And what He did for me on cowboys ♪ ♪ More than enough ♪ ♪ So I trust the God ♪ ♪ My Savior, the One ♪ ♪ Who will never fade ♪ ♪ He will never fade ♪ ♪ Perfect submission ♪ ♪ All His high praise ♪ ♪ I know the honor of tomorrow ♪ ♪ Born in my search ♪ ♪ 'Cause this is my soul ♪ ♪ This is my soul ♪ ♪ Praising my risen King ♪ ♪ And saving all the people ♪ ♪ I trust in God ♪ ♪ My Savior, the One ♪ ♪ Who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail ♪ ♪ I trust in God ♪ ♪ My Savior, the One ♪ ♪ Who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail ♪ ♪ We seek the Lord today ♪ ♪ To present something to the Lord ♪ ♪ As we sing this out ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, He heard ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪

♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ And He heard, and He answered ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord, and He heard ♪ ♪ And He heard ♪ ♪ And He heard ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ That's why I trust Him ♪ ♪ And God my Savior ♪ ♪ Who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail ♪ ♪ I just do not ♪ ♪ My Savior ♪ ♪ Who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail ♪ ♪ Never fail ♪ ♪ Oh ♪

♪ My Jesus ♪ ♪ My Savior ♪ ♪ Lord, there is none like you ♪ ♪ All of my days ♪ ♪ I want to praise the wonders of your mind ♪ ♪ My shelter ♪ ♪ And I wish I was a tower of refuge and strength ♪ ♪ I let every breath ♪ ♪ All that I am ♪ ♪ I never cease to worship you ♪ ♪ A child to the Lord ♪ ♪ All the earth that I see ♪ ♪ A power that majesty prays to the King ♪ ♪ A mountain trowel down ♪ ♪ And the seas will roar ♪ ♪ At the sound ♪ ♪ All your name ♪ ♪ I sing for joy ♪ ♪ At the work of your hands ♪ ♪ Forever I love you forever I'll sing ♪ ♪ Nothing compares to the promise I have in you ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING] ♪ My Jesus ♪ ♪ Am I still You, O ♪ ♪ Lord, there is not like You ♪ ♪ All of my days ♪ ♪ I want to praise ♪ ♪ The wonders of Your mind ♪ ♪ Love ♪

♪ I comfort my shelter ♪ ♪ Tower of refuge and strength ♪ ♪ I let every breath ♪ ♪ Hold that eye in ♪ ♪ Never cease to worship ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Shout to the Lord ♪ ♪ Call the earth, let us see ♪ ♪ Power and majesty praise to the King ♪ ♪ The mountains bow down ♪ ♪ And the seas will roll ♪ ♪ At the sound of Your name ♪ ♪ I sing for joy ♪ ♪ At the work of Your hands ♪ ♪ Forever I love You ♪ ♪ Forever I'll sing ♪ ♪ Nothing compares to the promise I have ♪ ♪ Hold nothing compares to the promise I have ♪ ♪ Nothing compares to the promise I have in You ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Nothing compares to the promise I have ♪ ♪ Nothing compares to the promise I have in You ♪ Hey, 11.30, how are you? (audience applauding) I like it, I like it. Hey, welcome to Compass. Our mission is navigating people to God. We're so glad you're here today. My name is Drew, I'm one of the pastors here.

And if you're a guest here today, if it's maybe your first time or maybe you've never been by a guest gathering, which is right across from the fireplace in the lobby, we'd love to put a name to a face, get to know you a little bit. We have a gift for you. And if you're online today, make sure we know if you're a guest, and you just put it in the chat, we'd love to connect with you as well. We'll send you a gift, we'd love to get to know you better as well. And hey, before we begin, I wanted to tell you that one of our foundational families here at Compass, the Murphy's, they've been here, Homer and Marcy Murphy were there at Bedford Christian Church. The day our church began, it was called Bedford Christian Church, back in October of 1966. They were there the very first weekend. And Homer passed away this morning, went on to be with Jesus this morning at 4 a.m. And we don't often, we can't mention everyone, like there's always weeks where people lose loved ones and we'd love to mention every one of them. But I wanted to mention this family, this is a picture with my wife Michelle at a dinner that we were attended with them in February. And they were just an amazing couple. Marcy's still with us. Homer was an incredible supporter of my ministry, but more important than that, I think, overall the history of Compass Church. He's been such a bedrock leader for us and he will be greatly missed. And I just want you to pray for that family, the Murphy family, the Pryor family, and all of those that are involved. We loved Homer and we are so happy that he's with Jesus this morning. So I just want to make mention of him and his legacy and what he has done for our church. So many, I think Homer was maybe 94 years old. And he sat right back there in the very back row, almost every week.

And he has just been an incredible solid rock for our church over the years. So I just wanted to make mention of that. Now to set us up for where we're going today, I want to begin with an observation about human nature. This isn't a religious thing. It's just something you've experienced and perhaps you didn't have words for. But here's the observation I want to make. It's human nature to resist things we can't control or don't understand. This explains most of your conversations with your parents when you're in high school or college. You came home with new ideas and they resisted. It explains a significant percentage of your conversations with your kids. If you have kids in high school or in college, they came home with new ideas, maybe new friends, maybe a new tattoo, and you had something to say about it. And much of this in large part has to do with preconceived views about how we think a particular experience is gonna look, taste, or feel. I'll give you a fun example. Brandon Beard is one of our executive pastors. He's one of my great friends. I've known Brandon for over 30 years. I attended his bachelor party in Southern California. I'm not gonna share details on that because we've cleared the Statue of Limitations, so it's irrelevant. But I knew Brandon when he was in his early 20s and I attended his big fat Greek wedding. His wife Irene comes from a big Greek family and that wedding was quite an adventure.

Anyway, there's something about Brandon that I'll bet you didn't know. Brandon's never eaten pie. He's never had a piece of pie, his whole life. Can you believe that? Like he's never tried it. Not apple pie, not banana cream pie, not coconut cream, not backberry cobbler. He's never had pie. Can you imagine going through life without pie? Okay, for me that was a big deal. Like one of God's greatest gifts, he's never had pie. He just won't try it and he's just sure he won't like it. And I don't know if as a baby, someone forced him to eat bad pie and he has like post-traumatic pie syndrome or something like that, whatever, he just won't eat it. But there's more. My wife hosted a holiday party for a few years back for all the pastor's wives. And they had to sign up for like his favorite dessert and Brandon's amazing wife Irene signed up to make cherry pie. And it was, so I tried the pie, he's like her husband doesn't eat pie. So I tried the cherry pie. It was the best cherry pie. One of the best, I've never had better pie in my entire life. It was like one of the best pies I've ever tasted. So are you tracking? Like his wife made the best pie, it was incredible.

So he asked access to the best pie ever and he won't eat pie. I told you, I told Brandon like, man, you need it, MRI, right? You gotta try some pie, right? So Brandon doesn't eat pie because he just doesn't understand how great it is because it's human nature to resist things we can't understand. And Brandon apparently doesn't understand pie. Now I wanna talk to you about prayer today and I would submit to you that most people don't understand prayer. They've never really tried to pray. They've never seen it work, never seen its fruit, never seen its power. Therefore they tend to stay away from it, forget about it or just plain resist it. We're in a series of messages called Creatures of Habit and it's based on my friend Steve Poe's book called Creatures of Habit. I hope you enjoyed Steve last week. Many of you picked up a copy of the book last week. However, we sold out early on into the 1130 service. So some of you did not receive a copy. I'm sorry about that. Honestly, you can go to Amazon and I just found out they're a dollar cheaper on Amazon. So sorry about that for those of you at the bottom. Anyway, in this series, we're gonna dig into some areas of life that we can repeat for so long that they become bad habits. And if we don't deal with them,

not only will they keep us from God's best, but they will become part of our identity. And we can become known for those habits. James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits and he writes, "Your habits are how you embody your identity." For example, we may identify someone we work with because they complain a lot. So we'd say, "Oh, she's a real complainer." Or we may identify our friend by the way they gossip about others, yeah, they'll definitely talk about you behind watch what you say to them because they'll definitely talk about you behind their back. For better or worse, our habits become the story of our lives. And there's a verse in the book of Galatians that is gonna be sort of an anchor point for us over the next few weeks. It says this, "So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves." Some of those cravings we have, the in-game is often a bad habit and we really need God to help with this, excuse me. So today I wanna talk to you about the habit of prayerlessness, a long word to be sure, but the meaning is simple, the habit of a life without prayer, a life without prayer. Now at first glance, this might seem a bit confusing because it's not something we do, but something we don't do. You see, not only are there sins of commission, which are the sins we commit, but there are also sins of omission. In other words, things we shouldn't be doing,

but we neglect to do them. Prayerlessness is a sin of omission. F.B. Meyer wrote this. unoffered prayer." That was profound to me because prayer is our connection to God, it's what makes room for His direction as well as His correction in our life. Philip Yancy wrote a book about prayer and he says, "Prayer is a declaration of dependence on God." Prayer is a declaration of dependence on God and if that's true and I believe that it is, this means that prayerlessness is a declaration of dependence on self, on self. You're essentially saying, "I can't trust God, so instead I'll trust myself," and that's a very dangerous road to travel. So I want to talk to you about the tragedy of unoffered prayer. You probably didn't see this coming. We're going to get a little practical the next few weeks. Next week we're talking about lying, the following week about complaining, and then about pride, and then we're going to talk about workaholism as a habit, but today we're going to talk about prayer and unlike most of the habits we're speaking of, this one is a little more dependent on you and let me say this, anyone can have an active prayer life. I don't know what your opinion of him is as an actor and I'm certainly not endorsing his movies right now and anyway, but I really appreciate Mark Wahlberg's prayer campaign these days. He's truly trying to escalate the need for prayer in our country, and I don't know if you've seen his commercials, but at the end of each commercial he says three words. He says, "Stay prayed up, stay prayed up, don't forget to pray." And honestly it's a very biblical concept. In fact, I love this. If you look at that tiny little verse in 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, Paul says, "Never stop praying." You might have memorized it with a different translation. You might have memorized it like this, "Pray without ceasing."

But basically what Paul is saying is, "Hey, stay prayed up. Here's my point. This is my point." If Mark Wahlberg can do this, you can do this, okay? If Mark Wahlberg can do it, you can do it. Prayer is like the air that we breathe, it's our lifeline, it's our connection to God. It sustains us spiritually. Without prayer, our spiritual life will suffocate. Without prayer, we find it difficult at best to break any of the habits that are defeating us. I guess that most Christians at one time or another have experienced a season of prayerlessness. Now there are two categories or reasons that we often find ourselves in these seasons of prayerlessness. They usually have to do with either our lifestyle, number one, or our beliefs. Now when it comes to lifestyle, we have these, we have our smartphones. We have these multi-billion dollar corporations who spend billions of dollars hiring the smartest and brightest minds in the world with one goal in mind to distract you and addict you and monetize your attention and modify your behavior. We live in the most distracted generation in human history. Personally, I remember something we had in the 80s called boredom, right? Like when you were in a doctor's office waiting room, you just waited, okay? You might have read like a copy of that highlights magazine or you picked up and grabbed a copy of the 1973 reader's digest, right? And when you were in your car and you came to a red light, you just waited for the red light to go green and then you were able to drive. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but we have almost entirely eliminated the moments in our lives that many of our predecessors in following Jesus would leverage for introspection and contemplation in Bible study and prayer because we spend so much time on our devices. If that wasn't enough, our schedules can become the enemy of our prayer life.

I'm over scheduling another aspect of our lives that hinders us. Some of you won't like this, but it's just the truth, our wealth, our wealth. We are the wealthiest generation in the history of the world. You may not be, but we are collectively. I heard one speaker recently say, "Why pray for your daily bread when you can door dash it," right? But if we're not careful, our abundance can lessen our lack of awareness of our need for prayer. Maybe you've allowed your priorities to get messed up. Maybe it's an independent spirit. If you don't really want to rely on God, you want to rely on yourself, discouragement, our resentment can be another reason for prayerlessness. Maybe you've prayed for God to save your marriage and your spouse still left. You prayed for a loved one and healing didn't come. Or maybe you've been asking God for a child, but nothing has happened and the struggle of infertility continues and since God didn't answer your prayer, at least the way you wanted You're too hurt to pray? So a lot of the reasons has to do with our lifestyle and some of it has to do with our unbelief. And there's a difference, by the way, between disbelief and unbelief. Disbelief is not to believe in God, it's to not believe in God at all, while unbelief is to reject or doubt the promises of God. There's a difference. We see a little example of this in Mark's Gospel. We see a man bring his demon-possessed son to disciples for help. And they try to help him, but they're unable to. And so he goes right to the source

and he brings this boy to Jesus. And Jesus looks at the boy's father and says, "How long has he been like this?" And the man says, "Well, from childhood." It's often thrown him into convulsions to the fire or water to try and kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. And I love Jesus' response. It's a very unique response. He says, "If you can," said Jesus, "Everything is possible for one who believes." And immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe helped me overcome my unbelief." So the father believed that Jesus was a healer and yet he struggled to believe that he would heal his son. And all over this room, and out there in the online audience, it is filled with people who love the Lord, who love God, who come here every week and worship. But there's a bit of disbelief in your heart and you're just not sure it can happen for you. And it's important to know that not only does God love us, but we can also trust him. Because when you're not praying, you're not hearing from God and it clouds your heart to the temptations surrounding you. And at some point we have to take the relationship to the next level. Peter, there's a little verse in first Peter chapter five,

verse seven. Peter tells us in first Peter five, verse seven, he says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Well, how do you cast your cares on God if you're not praying? Well, you can't, which is why a prayerless life will always lead to a more stressful life because you're doing life alone, which is no way to live, friend. Another consequence of prayerlessness is that you lose your hunger for more of God. If you stop talking to a close friend, eventually you lose your desire to work on that friendship. Well, the same thing will happen if you stop talking to God. There's an axiom that says, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I would say more often than not, absence makes the heart grow distant. And prayer is the way we communicate with God and communication is the basis of life. Whenever there's healthy communication, there's healthy relationship. But when there's no communication, you will end up with a broken relationship. Now James takes this a little step further and he says this, "If anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it's sin for them."

It's sin for them. Okay, that's a really bold statement to suggest that prayerlessness is actually sin. But if you think about it, sin is any lack of conformity to the moral character of God and it's anything that stands between us and God. A prayerless life makes no space for God. It's always fascinating that when I study the Gospels, I often overlook the little things that Jesus does. I kind of like to go to the drama and the feeding and the 5,000 and the miracles and all that cool stuff that he does. But we often overlook statements like Luke 5, 15. Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. Jesus, perfect as he was, made space for prayer. He made time to talk to the Father. The prophet Samuel, when he confronted the people of Israel with their sin of rejecting the leadership of God by wanting a king, they cried out under conviction. Please pray for us. His response was so compelling. He says, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. And now we get the sense that Samuel felt as a shepherd of God, as a leader of the Lord's people, that he was required, that he would shepherd them through prayer, that failing to do so was a sin for him. Billy Graham warned us of the dangers of prayerlessness.

We are to pray in times of adversity, lest we become faithless and unbelieving. We're to pray in times of prosperity, lest we become boastful and proud. We are to pray in times of danger, lest we become fearful and doubting. We are to pray in times of security, lest we become self-sufficient. You see, Billy Graham, Jesus and Mark Wahlberg do have something in common. (Laughing) I heard a story of a pastor who asked his church to pray that God would shut down the neighborhood bar, local bar. So the entire church gathered for a prayer meeting. A few weeks later, lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground. And the owner of the bar heard about this prayer meeting and decided to bring a lawsuit against the church. And as they stood in front of the judge, the owner argued that God struck his bar with lightning because of the prayers of the church. And the pastor stood up and admitted that they had a prayer meeting for that purpose, but no one in his congregation really expected anything to happen. And so the judge leaned back into his chair and he just shook his head and he said, "I can't believe what I'm hearing. "We're in strange territory here. "I have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer

"and a pastor who does not." Sometimes we pray, but we don't really expect God to answer our prayers. We have a false impression of who God is. One of my favorite writers right now, John Tyson, he writes this, "Unless you break the stronghold "of false images of God in your mind, "you'll never be drawn deeper in prayer." And so what he's saying is that sometimes we have this incorrect image of who God really is and his power. So we pray in proportion to how we really feel about God in our view of Jesus and Christology. There are a lot of Christians who say they believe in the importance of prayer and yet their actions show otherwise. On the other hand, there's some Christians who want to pray, but they feel like they don't know how to pray. Think about the disciples and the New Testament. They were discouraged by their own efforts to pray. So they asked Jesus teach them how to pray. They had watched Jesus pray. They watched him do miracles. They had watched him do all kinds of cool stuff. He gave sight to the blind. He healed the lame. They were there when he fed 5,000 people with two fishes and five loaves of bread. They saw him raise his friend Lazarus from the dead.

His prayers were effective. So they wanted to learn how to be effective. It's very important that we understand that Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer. That's probably why he was pretty effective with it. Everything within us wants to follow our own selfish ambitions and the lure of the world. But prayer is what keeps us centered and focused on God. It's an active obedience and declaration to the Lord. Prayer is what drowns out the noise and confusion of the world. And yet until we realize how desperately we need him, we won't pray. And believe me, one of the greatest tragedies in life is the prayers that go unanswered because they go unoffered. So at the remainder of our time, I wanna just take some steps in the spirit of what, I don't know if you got to hear Steve last week, as he, if you didn't, I would love for you to go online and watch that first message was on anger. It was a very great message. But he talked about how the front half of these messages will always be sort of content, scripture, teaching, and then the back half is more just steps to take. And so this series is gonna give it a little listy at times, but I think these lists are gonna be valuable and these steps are gonna be important. So I wanna just give you, with the remainder of our time, five steps to sort of break this habit of prayerlessness

in your life, 'cause many of us struggle with it. Number one, I would say identify your obstacles. In other words, what are the things that are keeping you from prayer? Do you have a hard time concentrating when you pray? Does your mind drift off to other things? Or maybe there are things that upset you so much, you find it difficult to pray about them, maybe you have unresolved conflict, maybe there is unforgiveness in your life. Listen, if every time I pray, the Holy Spirit convicts me of my unforgiveness, I will either deal with the unforgiveness or I will stop praying. Once you identify your obstacles and get them out of the way, it'll become much easier to break the cycle of prayerlessness. Number two, schedule a time to pray. Life can be really busy. So if I wanna have a healthy marriage, I have to schedule time alone with my wife or we will drift apart. Well, the same thing is true in my relationship with God. If I don't schedule the time alone with him, my relationship can suffer. So I gotta be proactive and schedule a daily time of prayer. Now, some people will tell you that you have to pray for at least one hour a day. And if that's what you elect to do, I think that's great, okay? But I just wanna say this, I don't think prayer is measured by minutes or hours,

but I think it's measured by the attitude of your heart. Prayer is not measured by the minutes or hours, but by the attitude, I don't think God really thinks so much about time, like we think about time, and we are not responsible in this matter to another Christian with a stopwatch, but to the Father who knows The secret sauce to a successful prayer life is having a dedicated time each day to get along with God, which is why I have to be intentional to make it happen. My friend and yours, Laura Collins, many of you know Laura, one of our teaching pastors, she's teaching at the Northwestern Hills campus. She has a prayer tactic that is great. She calls it habit stacking. Habit stacking. It's a tool used to build healthy routines where you stack the habit that you want to develop onto a habit that you've already, that or exist in your life. For example, I know every morning that I'm gonna drink coffee. That's not going anywhere, believe me, okay? I'm gonna drink coffee. My wife doesn't even wanna talk to me until I've had my coffee, right? So I started stacking prayer into my morning habit of drinking coffee.

I will pray as I make coffee and I will pray as I drink the coffee and I'll pray to God for more coffee, okay? So habit stacking. Maybe yours could be your drive into work or after dropping kids off at school. You know a drive is gonna happen every day. So what if you stack the habit of prayer during that time? Another easy way. Stack your prayer with your meal time. So I'm not talking about the gratuitous, you know, bless his food. Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, nothing like that. No matter what happens in life, you're gonna be eating something during the day, right? At least, everybody's usually at least one meal a day. So what if you stacked prayer with your meal? You get the idea. If you're looking to get more consistent with prayer, here's a model that Laura had suggested to me. What if at breakfast you prayed the Lord's prayer? You could pray through the Lord's prayer at breakfast. I wanna walk you through what that looks like in just a minute. At lunch, you could simply pray by name for people. You could put a notification on your phone that goes off every day at noon with a list of current people to pray for. The list doesn't have to be lengthy and the prayers don't need to be long and drawn out,

but this is simply a time when you bring the names before God of people that are near and dear to your heart and ask the Lord to intercede in their lives. And then at dinner, maybe you could just give thanks to God for all the blessings of the day. And I think this would really be helpful. So habit stacking, think about that. Number three, find a prayer partner. Praying with your spouse or finding someone to pray with on a regular basis can help you have the accountability you need to stick with it and break the habit of prayerlessness. Jesus said this, again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it'll be done for them by my father in heaven. When you pray with someone else, your prayers are no longer about you. And I think your prayer partner should be someone you trust if it's not your spouse, it'd be wise to find a trusted friend that you can confide in, perhaps maybe wise to have someone of the same sex that you can pray with because you need to be open and honest with each other and share the good and the bad and honestly the ugly. Number four, use an outline. This is really important for me. I don't know if it's important to you, but I can be a little ADD when it comes to my time and prayer. My mind has a tendency to drift to things I need to get done. So I found it helpful to use a prayer formula or an outline to keep me focused.

There's no shame in the outline game. This can really help eliminate distractions. Jesus gives us a great outline to follow in the Lord's prayer. So let's just read the Lord's prayer together and then I'll tell you what I mean by an outline. Can we say the Lord's prayer in the English standard version? Just let's just say it out loud together, okay? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bed and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Now this is a great prayer straight from Jesus and I think it's okay to pray it at face value, but I also think Jesus might have been giving us a sense of how to pray. So one model is just to pray kind of along the lines of the Lord's prayer. So number one, you think about that top line there, you could thank God for being a good father and for providing for you and for caring for you and listening to you. You could then remind him that he's holy and he's worthy of worship. You could ask for his will to be done in your life and in your family's life and in your church's life and in your community's life and your country's life. You could ask him for the prayer requests that are on your heart, whatever it is that's on your heart, preferably what you need, not so much what you want. We tend to pray a lot about what we want but we should probably think more about what we need. And then we could ask for forgiveness. and take a moment to forgive and bless anyone that we're bitter towards. And then we could finally ask for protection around ourselves and our family, our friends, and our church. So this is just one model of prayer. One of the models that I really like is the Acts Prayer Method, a very simple method

based on this acrostic, the word Acts. And it starts with adoration, which is just acknowledging his holiness, and then we get on to confession. I pray through this often. I did a form of this this morning, and just thanking the Lord for all the blessings in my life, confessing some sin, confessing gratitude through thanksgiving, and then praying for some requests. I prayed for some families this morning. I prayed for Israel this morning because they're going through it right now. Lots of things going on there. And so these are just one other outline. It's not the best or the one that I'm asking you to do. I'm just saying this is a way you can pray. And I also want to point back to that sound mind series where I told you numerous times. If you're not sure what to do, pray through the Psalms. There's 150 Psalms out there. You could read one a day, and then you could repeat it again, and that would be prayers for a year. So just praying the Psalms out loud. And what I do, sometimes when I'm praying scripture, is if when I pray the scripture, let's say I'm, I don't know, praying Psalm, whatever, 34. If something, as I say it, if something convicts me, I'll stop and talk to the Lord about it right then and there. And so this is a way we can pray. This is an outline for prayer.

So just whether it's the Lord's prayer or whether it's the ax method or whether it's just praying scripture, just there's no wrong answer. Just find a model or outline that works for you and give it a try for a couple of weeks and see if it resonates with you. And if it doesn't just try another until you find one that helps you grow in this habit of prayer. Okay, here's one more. Pray with boldness, pray with boldness. You don't have to look at scripture long to find numerous examples of people praying bold prayers. Moses standing in front of the Red Sea asking God to deliver the children from the Egyptian army. What about when Joshua prayed that God would cause the sun to stand still so the Israelites could win the battle? I think about a prayer, an unusual prayer in Matthew chapter 20. It was the mother of James and John when she asked if her two boys could be at the right and left hand of Jesus. And many think she stepped over the line, but I don't think she stepped over the line. I think what mother hasn't gone the extra mile in trying to achieve what's best for her kids. So God may or may not answer your prayers in the way you want, but scripture tells us

that bold prayers are exactly what the Lord wants from us. And you know, one of the boldest prayers Jesus ever asked us to pray was when Jesus told us to pray for our enemies. That's a really hard one. I was recently rereading the incredible life work of Corey Tienboom recently. The hiding place is what the book is called. It's an incredible story of Corey and her sister Betsy as they endured incomprehensible suffering at a Nazi concentration camp in Germany during World War II. And we often look to Corey as our hero in this story and rightfully so. She showed unspeakable courage, but it was Betsy who often took the high road spiritually when they were pressed and when they were persecuted. There is a man in the story named Jan Vogel, Jan Vogel who was largely responsible for Corey and Betsy's imprisonment. And for a long time Corey hated him and she prayed against him for a long time. But her amazing sister Betsy would remind her Corey if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love as well. And Betsy taught Corey to pray for Jan Vogel. But praying for Jan Vogel felt impossible for her. She had literally murdered him a million times over in her head. But one night in her humility, she forced to pray for her enemy. She prayed this prayer, it's right in the book. Lord Jesus, I forgive Jan Vogel as I pray

that you will forgive me. I have done him great damage. Bless him now and his family. She writes this, that night for the first time since our betrayer had a name, I slept deep and dreamlessly until the whisper summoned us to roll call. So praying for her enemies, cleared Corey's conscience and drew her closer to Christ, so powerful. One of the things I love most about prayer and if you forget everything else, would you remember this? There is no greater way to demonstrate love than to pray for someone, no greater way. for the one we're praying for. Through prayer bodies are healed, families are knit together, individuals are saved, churches are revived. When we withhold prayer on behalf of others, we demonstrate hardened hearts and a failure to love them enough to bring their needs before a loving father. So friends, if you want prayer to be a way of life, then the only thing left to do is practice praying, not just when you're in crisis, but every day of your life. And always remember that a prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian. So we should probably pray. Let's pray. [Music] Jesus, what we would ask today is that you help us to remove all the obstacles and that we begin a prayer life that would be pleasing to you. And it's not as hard as it seems. Father, we just know you want to be in communication with us, that you want to be in relationship with us. Thank you for the power of your word today. We've seen so many examples. And Lord, we would just ask, I guess, we would just simply ask the same thing that the disciples ask of you. Would you just, would you teach us to pray? Would you teach us to pray? Give us a heart for prayer. Give me a heart for prayer. Give our church a heart for prayer. Give our families a heart for prayer. Teach us to pray. It's in your name we do pray. Amen. Love you guys.