How to Pray the Way Jesus Taught (Why Most People Get Prayer Wrong)

I'm glad we're together today in this space. My name is Mark Cummins. I'm the pastor at Church of Hope. And if you're a regular attender, welcome. So glad that week after week, we join together in this space. And if by chance, this is your first time, I'm really glad that we're beginning our friendship today. Understand that this broadcast literally goes around the world for free. See, we believe that life's at its best when people discover hope in Christ. There are people who give generously so this broadcast can be reached across every continent. If you've never given, I would invite you today to give. You can go to our webpage, hopeinOcala.com and drop down on the giving bar and give a one-time gift. Or you can give generously beyond just today. And if God's blessed you, help us as we give hope around the world. But for now, I want you to open up your heart and your mind. Let Jesus speak to you. Because what I believe is that when we open up our minds and let Jesus speak to us, life doesn't become perfect and all the problems don't go away, but you experience his presence in you, with you, and for you. Open up your heart. Let Jesus speak to you today. Peace.

All right, we're going to lunch with some people from church. They might just, they might ask you to bless the food. So just. Okay, yeah, no. How do you do that? You never done it? Uh-uh. Okay, just talk to God like you're talking to your best friend. Oh, okay. Yeah. Hey God. No, that's not, let's stop right there. Well, you said best friend. But yeah, just more, more respectfully. Okay. Good evening, Mr. God. What? No. Dear God. Actually try a heavenly father. Heavenly father? Yeah. No one says that. We do. If you say heavenly father, they're going to know you're in. Well, I'm a part of the club. What does that mean? Well, we'll see.

Please bless this food. Got it. To the nourishment of our stomachs. Bodies. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Okay. You don't single out a body part there. You just go to nourishment of our whole bodies. Please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. Perfect. And our bodies to your? To your body. No, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Why not? I thought we were the body. We'd also like to ask that you bless the person who prepared it. No. Okay, sorry. Again, this is a little nitpickier, but we only bless the hands. We bless the hands that prepared it. What about the feet that walk to the grocery store? Nope, we don't. And the eyes that read the recipe and the ears that heard the timer go off? Nope, no body parts are blessed except the hands that prepared it. That's a, I don't know why we do that. Okay, so in summary.

No, okay. Just say, in all these things. In God's name. In Jesus' name. No, no. I thought it was God. We're talking to God. We switch it. We start to God and then we switch it to Jesus for the close, the closer. Yeah. That was very confusing. It is, yeah. This is gonna go poorly. Okay, we'll see you in the car. It is very, very confusing, right? And we often, we're in a public space or with friends and like, please don't call on me to pray, right? Kind of a deal. And, and you know, I wonder, is that one of the reasons why some of us are hesitant to pray? I mean, think about it for just a moment. The story of you, your life. This epic story that you're living. If success was dependent on your conversations with God, how's it going? And then the whole pressure, right?

But if I do pray, what if I don't get it right? And that means I get it wrong. And if I get it wrong, then not only am I gonna be wrong, but then it's gonna be like a royal waste of time. So why should I even bother to pray? And maybe this is a light bulb into why many of us, even though our culture talks about praying, right? We have the prayer emoji hands. I mean, we see things happening in our culture. When a natural disaster comes to a community, everybody says, you know, praying for, the name of that city, right? Praying for you. But does prayer feel more complicated? than really connecting with God. I mean, we talked to him, but I don't really hear him talking back to me. And I prayed about a thing, like this topic, and then that topic didn't get any better. My marriage, my health, my kids. It got worse. What if, what if, when it comes to having a conversation with God, it's not about getting some type of repetition or mantra to say a certain kind of formula, so that in the end, you know, the two plus two, the God I prayed, I behaved, and then it all worked out good for me. What if all God really wants is to hang out with you?

Well, what if our mind today could really shift into a different direction? Rather than prayer being this big topic, that, okay, you gotta get it right. We're gonna go out to lunch with some friends, and they might ask you to pray. Oh my goodness, what do I do then? If you got your copy of God's word, we're gonna be in Matthew chapter six. We're gonna look at a piece of Jesus's word of Jesus's words. Many theologians, pastors, maybe even you have called it the Lord's prayer. Many of us as football players, right, or coaches, we have prayed the Lord's prayer. Maybe you didn't know it was the Lord's prayer, but somewhere along the line, whether or not your coach was spiritual or not so much, right, before we took the field, we would pray the Lord's prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Amen, boom. Let's go kick there. I think we're gonna discover that God didn't give us the Lord's prayer to memorize, but rather to maximize his presence. And to set us up to really experience his presence, what I want you to do is in your journal, you can see what I've done here on this portion here.

You can do any place that you want. Or if you don't have a journal, I just pull out this card, because I'm gonna tell you, in different parts of scriptures, God's word is descriptive. It's describing what's going on. Other parts of God's word, it's prescriptive. In other words, he is setting you up to win. God wants you to win in life. He wants us to become like Jesus, because when we are like Jesus, we are winning in life. So this is one of those prescriptive portions of God's word. So either on this card or in your journal, I want you to just vertically write Sunday, and then all the other days of the week. So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I think you're gonna see as we walk through it, God is gonna set up a plan, a guide for us to no longer kind of look at prayer as this big, mysterious concept that we're like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. And I don't wanna get it wrong. And do I do this? To actually an invitation to be in his presence. So we're in Matthew chapter six. We'll jump into verse number nine. One other thing is when we get to verse 13, you'll notice I'm gonna read some words

that might be actually in your Bible, or if you have a printed Bible, you'll see these words at the very bottom. In other words, in the postscript. And I'll explain that, but help you understand what's going on there as well. So we are in verse number nine. Words of Jesus. This is bootcamp. If you've ever been to bootcamp, you know that they took you as a civilian into a space and a place to change you, to create new disciplines, a behavior, a rhythm of sorts. So that as a team, as an army, as Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, that collectively when you come together under this shared mindset, life will be better. That's exactly what's happening here. We are in a spiritual bootcamp together this morning. Check it out. Verse number nine. Notice, this then is how you should pray. So before we go any farther, just think about it. This then is how you pray. There is a built-in assumption that we're praying. There's an expectation. There's an anticipation. In other words, it's not extraordinary. It's ordinary. This then is how you should pray.

The disciples then, and like us today, we're kind of wondering, I mean, how do you do it? And this was a foreign concept. Jesus is talking to a bunch of Jewish people who forever wanted a connection with a heavenly father, but they always thought like it was distant. He's way out there somewhere, right? They had the high priest, they had the temple and the high priest. He would go in behind the veil and he'd had that holy moment with God. But for ordinary people like us, can we really connect with an extraordinary God? And so they were like, we don't know how to do this. So Jesus says, I'm gonna set you up to win. This then is how you should pray. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Now notice verse 13. This is what I said to you earlier. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And some of your Bible says, for yours is the kingdom and the power

and the glory forever, amen. It says it right there in the verse. Others of you, right? You have like maybe a little letter or an asterisk and you look down into the notes. And what's going on there is there are different manuscripts from antiquity that had that statement, right? That it is your kingdom and your power and glory. That's in that text, others it's not. So where they couldn't come to a conclusion, some versions, primarily if you've got a King James Bible or a new King James Bible, it's actually in that verse, others it's an asterisk at the bottom. For our time together today, we're gonna embrace it all as God's word. And here's the deal. And the reason I want you to write Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday is because the Lord's prayer, unlike our high school football coaches is not a mantra to rush through. It's an experience of God's presence to walk through day by day. So you ready? Here we go. We're gonna start with verse number nine, where he says, our father who is in heaven. Our father who is in heaven.

Now, for some of us, this can be a little bit of a stretch because maybe your relationship with an earthly father was less than best. And so you can get tripped up. And I think we do get tripped up because some of us feel like we don't belong. But here's what I want you to know. And what I want you to write down is that the breakthrough that you're looking for begins when you pray from belonging, not begging. So many of us see prayer as a begging conversation. We're going to God, he's got it all. He's large and in charge. And I'm gonna beg for God to give me this and give me that. I'm gonna beg for God not to let that happen in my life. And some of us, that's actually been our experience with an earthly father. It's been less than best. And so it's behavior based and I gotta do this and I can't do that. Maybe I gotta be quiet because he's worked hard all day, whatever it was. And there's this concept that it might be dangerous rather than this idea that I belong. But because of Jesus, you trusting Jesus as your savior, regardless of an earthly experience with an earthly father, you and I belong. That's why our prayers and that's why this is so radical. Our prayers begin from a place of belonging rather than begging.

My daughters don't beg, they belong. They belong in my house. They belong at my kitchen table. They are a part of my family. And those of us as Christ followers, we belong. We also, right, we look at defeating, we look at begging from a place of defeat. Now, many of us, many of you are very generous. And you have seen the different points and places around town, right? You're coming off the interstate or you come up to an intersection, right? And someone's got a cardboard box and they're begging for money. And many of you have been very generous in that moment. But it wasn't like you said, hey, I know, not only am I gonna give you a $20 bill, I want you to come home so you can date my daughter. You didn't do that. We kind of see that begging posture as less than. Maybe the reason we really don't pray is we see that same mindset When we go to God, we're begging from God, so we look down on ourselves, and we're less than. I want you to know something, that when you and I pray, we don't pray to get God's attention. We pray because we already have it. You and I belong. So there you have Sunday, right?

Sunday is in your journal, or Sunday is the part of your card here. So on Sunday, what I want you to write is, God my father. On Sunday, you're gonna focus in, in your prayer time, your conversation, that God my father. And it happens somewhat naturally, right? Because we gather like this. You're joining us online, and we are focusing, right, as God, our father. Now, on Monday, see that? You got Sunday. On Monday, I want you to put the heaven piece. I want you to say, heaven to my week. So on Monday, God my father, or on Sunday, God my father, and then on Monday, put heaven to my weeks, right? So we pray, our father who art in heaven. So Monday, when we wake up tomorrow morning, because we've gathered together, because we're growing, we're discovering how much he loves us, we're gonna bring some heaven to our week. And don't you know that our week needs some heaven? At where we work, where you go to school. Some of your teachers need some heaven on Monday. Some of your classmates, your coaches, right? So our concept is gonna be, on Sundays, it's about God, our father, right?

And then tomorrow morning, you're gonna wake up, and you're gonna focus in on heaven. God, give me the strength. God, show me how I'm gonna bring some heaven to my week. Now, notice in verse nine, he also says, Hallowood be your name. This is all about worship, worshiping God. We shift the focus from our problems to his greatness. Again, I think some reason we don't pray is like you're living your life, you know your problem. You got stress, and you got anxiety. You see all the problems that are happening in the world, you see all the injustices, and it's like prayer has become this regurgitation to God about all my problems. I mean, it's like a double dose of discouragement for you. You're already living it, you saw it on the news, you know what's happening in your marriage, you know what's happening with your kids, you know what's happening in your finance, or the politics, whatever it might be. And so prayer becomes this newsreel back to God about how many problems there are. No wonder we don't want to pray. What we're gonna do is we're going to flip it from making it all about problems, focusing on my problems, and rather focusing on his greatness, the greatness of God, how he is all powerful, he is all knowing, he is a personal God, he's a God of mercy and grace, he is a God that is all caring,

he is a servant, truth, righteous, I'm gonna focus on who he is. So on Tuesday, I want you to write, Holy God. You're gonna remind yourself, right? We're 48 hours, we're two days from our time together, Sunday's kind of in the distance a little bit, we need to pause, we brought some heaven to our week on Monday, but it started getting complicated. And so on Tuesday, we're gonna pause one more time. Yes, there's problems all around us, but we are gonna change our focus to his greatness because what you magnify determines what moves you. Whatever direction you're moving in is because internally, your mind has magnified it. If you magnify career, you move towards your career. If you're gonna magnify all the political unrest, you're gonna move towards watching more news. I don't understand that. If you're gonna magnify that you want to learn and grow, you're gonna take a masterclass online. Whatever you magnify, your life moves in that direction. So on Tuesdays, we're gonna magnify God's greatness. Now we're getting set up for Wednesday. Look what he says in verse 10. He says, now, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. See, this prayer on this day, it's gonna realign us with God's will. It realigns my will with God's will. Not my agenda, your agenda.

Not my control, your control. Not my timing, your timing. This is so important, right? It's Wednesday in our everyday life. Some of us call it hump day, right? We're in the middle of the week. We need a little something. It's easy to start to drift. Is this gonna be a positive, a negative week? How am I gonna finish this week? Jesus is teaching us, finish well, we win when we pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Why? Because God wins. God is winning, he always has won. And so we are aligning, we are realigning because spiritual authority flows where surrender goes. Again, I think it's a concept in our culture, like surrender, I'm not surrendering to nobody. You had a big brother, maybe you had a big sister, who would pin you down, right? And would make you say, I still don't understand why we said uncle, as if that's the word for surrender. But you would kind of give in to them, right? And so the concept of surrendering in your mind is weakness. And so a lot of us are like, yeah, I'm not surrendering. Here's the problem.

It might be weakness when your big sister has you pinned down, your big brother, or some problem or some pressure, and you feel like I gotta have grit, I'm not gonna quit, I'm gonna win this game. I get that in the culture, but when it comes to God, surrender is not weakness, it is wisdom. The wisest thing you will ever do in this life. Your entire relationship with God began when you surrendered your ability to save your life to God who saved your life. Day one started with surrender. I can't fix me, I can't do anything about this sin, so I surrender my life to you, Christ. You died on the cross, you were buried for three days, and you became alive again. I surrender my will, my ways, it's hump day. We are praying on Wednesday, your kingdom, your will. That's what I want you to write on Wednesday. It's your kingdom, it's your will. See, power with God follows surrender to God. A lot of us are not experiencing the power that we could have because we're not surrendering to God who has all the authority. Now, let your eyes drop to verse 11. It's getting good now. Dependence on God, dependence on God. Verse 11, give us our daily bread. Right, so we're on Thursday, so in Thursday, I want you to put, give us our daily bread. Put the word dependence.

Again, it's not a word that we're overly excited about because we see dependence as less than best. We see that if we were more independent in the culture we live today, the more independent you are, the more successful it seems that you are. And so we want to almost give a compliment to God to say, hey, God, I know you got a big world that you're watching out for, so I'll just tell you what. I'll go ahead and be independent. I got this, God. You can now take care of my neighbor. You can take care of my brother, my sister, somebody else, but God, I got this. But what Jesus is saying on Thursday, I want you to pause. I want you to remind yourself that it's dependence. Now, again, our culture, right? When you look at our culture, our society, our government, we have social security. We know there are people who at different times hit a tough spot in life, and so we're able to come alongside and help them. We call that welfare, but many of in our minds, like we would see that as losing. We would see as being dependent, like men. A guy knocks on your door and says, hey, my name's Bob Joe Pete Frank. Ladies, some guy named Joe Pete Bob Frank says, hey, I like you. Hey, come on, I like you.

Let me tell you something. I wanna build a life together. I'm on welfare. I want you to come join my tribe. You're like, yeah, you better run fast, big boy. Kind of a deal, right? It seemed to be less than. However, again, in following God, following Jesus, God maximizes his presence where we demonstrate dependence because we are. Like the very air that you're breathing right now, you can't manufacture that. We are fully dependent on God. The ability for our brains to be firing, the health that's in our body, we are dependent. And when you and I are dependent on God, that's not disrespectful to God. On the contrary, it's a declaration of worship to God. Songs that we sing, even the old hymns, how great thou art. We say out loud, you are great. You are worthy to be magnified. We are declaring his greatness. It's dependent. So on Thursday, I want you to write, give us our daily bread. That finally gets us to Friday. Now, Friday, if you are taking notes, I do want you to create a little bit of extra space because on Friday, we call it TGI Friday.

Thank God it's Friday. But I'm telling you, we're gonna need a little extra God on our Friday, and I'll show that to you yourself. So I'll show it to you in a minute. So first, during the day, we're gonna call it Friday. We'll just call it Friday the day. Then we gotta have a little extra space for Friday night because don't you know, the freaks come out at night. Okay, you're gonna see in a moment. I didn't make that up. You're shaking your head at me. Jesus put this right in. He knew that wild things happen on Friday night. So he wants us to be prepared before that wild thing happens on Friday night. You're like, I cannot wait to see this. I know it's gonna be so good, right? So here you are, verse 12. And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. See, on Friday during the day, we are praying to be forgiven so that we can forgive. So Friday during the day, I want you to put, forgive me, forgive others, right? And now we can look back on our week. We can see maybe there were some points and places that we were less than best. What we said to an employee, what we said to our boss, how maybe we interacted. And so now we can receive forgiveness. God, forgive me, this, whatever it was.

And now I can release that forgiveness. And just in case that maybe perhaps you wanna kind of run past this, because hey, it's Friday. Most people aren't working during the day on Friday. They're just making their plans for Friday night and Saturday. So just in case you were gonna run through your Friday and miss what God's saying about forgiveness, he gave you verse 14 and 15. Check it out. He says, I mean, for if, so you get to choose here. If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. We really like that part. Verse 15, but if you do not forgive men their sins, their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Some of us in this gathering take a pill because we have cholesterol. We know that cholesterol, it clogs our veins, right? And that's not a good thing. It can lead to a heart attack. Clog any place isn't a good thing. Clogging your kitchen sink is not a good thing. And clogging your bathroom is a terrible thing. Do you know that unforgiveness clogs the channel of prayer? One of the reasons many of us, we just don't pray is because people have hurt you. Some terrible, no good injustices

have been done against you. It's true. And that's got a hold of you. And so, unforgiveness clogs that channel of prayer because forgiveness opens. When you and I receive that forgiveness, then we let the forgiveness flow through us to others and it keeps that channel open. If we receive the forgiveness, but then constrict giving forgiveness, now we're clogged spiritually. You like chocolate chip cookies? I don't have any to give today. I know 424 is like, yeah, come on. But he's got some underneath there, right? I don't have any today. But you know, forgiveness to the Christian life is the chocolate chip to a chocolate chip cookie. Do you know, I mean, I don't know how you arrived here today. My hunch is you probably drove a car or you rode in someone's car or someone's SUV. And they all have a transmission. Forgiveness is spiritual transmission. Transmission, which allows your vehicle to go forward. Forgiveness is what allows your life to go forward. The reason many of us are stuck, many of us are not experiencing the Christian. It happened. I am not minimizing the hurt and the pain,

the sorrow, the loss, all those things that have been said against you. You've got scars. I get it. But when you and I hold onto it, it keeps us stuck right where we are. And so we pray during the day, God, forgive us our debts as we forgive others. Now we've got to talk about Friday night. And notice what he says, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. This is Friday night praying. There are a whole lot of us that if we had prayed for God to keep us from the temptation, some of the hurt, some of the scars, really isn't because what someone else did. It's because of what we did and the choices and the behavior that we made on a Friday night. And I'm going to give you a quote. I want you to write it down because it's so important. Prevention prayers hurt less than rescue prayers. Prevention prayers hurt less. And yeah, I'm thankful we've got a God who rescues and we've got a God who redeems and he makes all things new. But you don't have to walk through all that pain. You don't have to walk through all that sorrow. You don't have to. When we pray a preventive prayer, lead us not in temptation. And some of the ways that we have built a barrier of temptations around us, moms and dads, as we say on Friday night, ain't nothing. I know I'm about to wreck. Students, just still love me. Keep me on your card. I'm just telling you, Friday night after 10 o'clock after the ball game, I'm just, you all know. You know what we did. Why would you just say, well, you know, I know.

I mean, I did it when I was young, so let me just go ahead and let my sons and daughters go do it. Listen, you bring them to your house. Bring them there. And by the way, when you bring your sons and daughters to your house, you've got to stay at the house. And you can't stay up in the bedroom and just kind of pretend everybody's behaving. Did you behave when you were 16 and 17 and 18? Of course you didn't. We know this. We're wiser. And why would you want your sons and daughters to go through some of the pain that you're still struggling with? See, prevention prayers are guardrails. Yes, sometimes you bounce your car against a guardrail. You made a wrong choice. You drank and you drove. And you beat up the side of your car, but the guardrail kept you from going off the cliff. So when we pray, God, keep us from temptation, sometimes we have to set up a barrier. Another parent's a great barrier is this. I'm telling you, every night at dinnertime as you're sitting around the table, put your phones in the middle. I'm looking at all your texts right now. I'm looking at every place, every site that you visited. Remember, you're keeping me on your Christmas card list. I mean, here's the deal. They ain't paying for it. I'm just telling you. The dangers that are out there, yes, we pray, God, keep us from temptation. But we also say out loud, we're going to put some big-time guardrails around that. We are going to participate. Why? Because preventive prayers hurt less than rescued prayers. God, guard my heart.

God, guard my mind. Direct my steps. Keep me spiritually aware of the adversary who's like a roaring lion and he's looking to see who he can devour. Ask for strength to resist. Declare the victory. So Friday night, you're going to be praying, protect me from the temptation and the evil. I mean, moms and dads, before our sons and daughters go out, I mean, the next time the guy comes by your house and he's going to take your daughter on a date. Bring him in the house. How you doing, Johnny? How you doing? Where are you guys going? Great, great. Here, I want you to come stand right before me. Men, this is your homework. Here's your daughter, and here's this guy who's about to take your daughter out on a date. Right? Now, I want you to leave your gun in the gun case, but I want you to get a little vial of oil. And I want you to anoint the oil of that man, boy, who's about to take your daughter out on a date, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you mess with this daughter of God, you will die. I promise you, the posture of his hands will be like this all night long. Now, you guys said you're going to keep me on your team. I wish you could see your expression on your face. You're like... Okay, it's Saturday. We've got to wind this week down. Here we go. Saturday is the part that's in your text or it's in the notes at the bottom that we're going to pray. Your kingdom come, for yours is the kingdom and is the power and the glory forever.

It's a great Saturday reminder. As you're out playing ball and you're at the fields, all the great cool things that you're doing as a family, you're out on the river, you're at the beach, wherever you are, it's not just about you and your family activities or you're doing honeydew lifts around the house, you're reminding yourself it's his kingdom, it's his power, and it's his glory forever. His power, his authority, and his glory. The Lord's Prayer is more than a poem to recite, it's the pathway to the victorious life. That's what's at stake. The decision that you're making this morning and the story of you, it is your life. The story of your marriage, the story of your family, the story of your career, everything that you're living, the call to action is to make a decision to no longer see prayer as kind of this distant, religious, complicated, rather than see it what it is, God's invitation to be in his presence day by day. The success that follows if you will step off this campus and just pray through, right? And I've given you a construct. If you're already praying every single day and you're living the victorious life, by all means, keep doing what you're doing. But if you've been looking for a plan, if you've been looking like, I mean, is there a bite size?

Is there like a bite size model? You have one now. You have no excuse. The reason I broke it down in bite sizes for me is because quite frankly, it's easy for me to forget. It's easy for me to get distracted. I can push stuff off. But when I begin to focus, okay, today, Sunday, it's all about God. It's fine. Then when I wake up tomorrow, I'm gonna tell you, my prayer time will be all about bringing heaven to this week. I'll look at my calendar, look at the people that I'm gonna be in. On Tuesdays, I'm reminding myself, hey, Mark, remember, it's about the holiness of God. Look, Mark, do not focus on all the problems that are around you. Declare the greatness of God who lives within you. On Wednesday, I'm saying, okay, it's his kingdom. I need to realign my will, my agenda, my plans. What I want, I'm gonna realign it. It's Wednesday, it's hump day. I'm realigning. I'm not just going through this day. I'm gonna grow through this day. Thursday, I'm all in, dependent. I mean, God, I need your daily bread. I need your provisions for me.

On Friday, hey, God, forgive me. I'm reviewing my week. I'm looking back over my week. Who do I need to forgive along the way? Friday night, when the freak's coming out, I'm just telling you, God, keep me from temptation. Put a barrier around me. Do not allow me to drift. Give me spiritual awareness of the enemy. And then on Saturday, I'm reminding, it's his kingdom, his power, and his glory. God's not looking for perfect prayers, never has, but he is inviting us into his presence daily. Thank you. Being together in this space today is really good. If you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, I'd like to invite you today to start following Jesus. It's not about your behavior. It's not about your church attendance. It's about the reality that Jesus is for you. God's not mad at you. He's madly in love with you. Would you right now pray this prayer with me? Hey, God, it's me. I've sinned and I know it, and I can't fix me. But today, I receive you, Jesus, as my savior. I believe that you died on that cross for me and that you were buried for three days, and then you became alive again. And I invite you into my life to guide me and direct me

all the rest of the days of my life. And with that prayer, my friend, welcome to God's family. I'd like to continue our friendship. If you would email me, pastor at hopeinocala.com, I'll follow up with you, and together, we'll celebrate Jesus in your life. Peace.