Amen. Good morning. How is everybody? We good? Awesome. Man, thank you so much for being here today. If it's your very first time, I want to start by saying welcome to his hands. This place, it's really one big family. And we exist for one main purpose, that is to love people to Jesus. We believe very much when God's word says that it's his kindness that leads us to repentance, that it's experiencing the actual love of God that leads us to opening our hearts to him. And so we want everything that we do here to be about giving people God's love, growing in that love, and then helping people get it and receive it. So if you're here for the first time and you ever like more information about what's going on, you can always go to the info desk in the main lobby. We'll give you a packet that'll answer a lot of questions. And you're also welcome just to come up and talk to us because we're all open books. I've got a few really quick announcements before we jump into what we're going to talk about today. Number one is that baptisms are next Sunday. That's always really exciting. And so uh so be here next Sunday, obviously, to celebrate a bunch of people going all in with Jesus. And if you're ready to make that step in your relationship with God, if you have decided that Jesus is yours, but you have not followed him openly, if you haven't made a statement yet, you haven't made it official, so to speak, then baptism is the next step. And you can sign up to be baptized today in the lobby. We'll give you all of the information there. I want to encourage all of us as the fall is getting ready to come up to make sure that we're connected here. There is nothing wrong with just coming and checking things out. We always want this to be a place where you can just come and rest and relax and experience God however you would like to do that. But when we take the step and we go from just being someone that's here to being someone that's connected to other people, it's it's a big deal. It's a huge benefit for the church. It's also a huge benefit for ourselves. And there are so many different ways to do that. Every Sunday at the Connect Desk, you can go and find out more information about that. But the fall coming up, we're definitely going to need more people on our teams with the welcome team, the coffee team, our kids areas, you name it. And so I would love to encourage you today to sign up for a team if you've never been on one, to start using those amazing gifts and abilities that you have to uh to serve other people because it will definitely bless a lot of people. It'll bless you as well. In August, we are starting a brand new series that I'm really excited about. I've been thinking about and praying about this series for months, and it's called Who Do You Think You Are? Now, this is not an accusatory, like who do you think you are? This isn't a what gives you the right. It's not one of those types of series. It's a very serious question, though. Who do you think you are? In other words, what or who has most informed your understanding of who you are. I believe that understanding who we are in God's eyes is one of the most important things in life. And we just so happen to live in a world and in a time when people look to about everything but God to define who they are. And the problem is this that no one has a higher opinion of us than God. No one. God has a higher opinion of you than your spouse, he has a higher opinion of you than your parents, he has a higher opinion of you than yourself. And if we allow anyone but God to define who we are, we are settling for a lesser identity than the identity God wants to give us. I think this is a very timely series for just our nation, our culture. And I want to encourage you to uh to invite people, to invite friends. Because I really believe this series will be one that gives people a perspective on God they've maybe never had before. I think it's gonna be really eye-opening and I'm really excited about it. So think about someone that you believe needs to hear this, that you believe needs to understand, maybe for the first time, who they are in God's eyes, uh, and invite that person. Lastly, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who's helping out financially, everyone who supports this church. If you're here for the first time, we don't pass a plate, we don't believe in pressuring people to give, but we are generous people. And we are generous people because God has called us to be generous. It is impossible for me to trust God with every aspect of my life but my finances. It doesn't work. And our approach is really simple. If this is your church, if this is your home, we just ask that you pray. Ask God to show you a percentage and then commit to that percentage every single month. That's that's how we do it. We don't tell you what that percentage is, that's between you and God. But if we all commit to that, if we all do that, then we have what we need as a church to do what God calls us to do, and we can bless this community, we can support this community in in so many big ways, like we're able to do right now. So thank you so much for that. Four columns at the back of the room if you want to do that, or go to His Hands Church online. Let's pray, and then we're gonna talk about prayer. Jesus, thank you so much for blessing us with another day. God, thank you for bringing all of us together. Holy Spirit, we are open to you. Our hearts are open to you moving. We want to hear from you, we want to learn from you, we want to move forward in our relationship with you, and so, God, we ask that this happens in the next few moments. And we ask this all in your name, Jesus. Amen. Well, we have spent the last month or so talking about prayer as part of our summer series that we're calling how to. One of the things I love the most about God is that he loves us so much that he not only asks us to live a certain way, but he actually teaches us how to do it. He actually walks with us, teaches us, works within us to help us live the life that he has called us to live. Jesus was very critical of religion in his day. And when I say religion, I don't mean worshiping God, I don't mean being devoted to God. What I mean is the rules and regulations that people will substitute for a relationship with God. That happens very easily. We have a tendency to do that. All you have to do is look at the very first story in the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve. Many of us are familiar with that story. They had a relationship with God. In fact, the Bible says they knew God so well they could identify God by the sound of his footsteps. Think about how intimate they must have been with God. They had a close relationship with God, and all God asked was for them not to eat from this one tree. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the forbidden fruit. We like to think of forbidden fruit as being things like lust and power and greed. Those are obvious choices, but the original forbidden fruit was not one of those things. It wasn't some vice, it was the knowledge of good and evil. And that's that's another way of saying religion. It was accepting a relationship with God that was more like a contract, more like, hey, I just want to know the rules. You just tell me what to do and what not to do, and I'll trade that in for walking with you and having an intimate, close relationship with you. All through the Old Testament. All through the Old Testament, we see that in Scripture. We see people wanting to do very religious things to please God, wanting to build God a temple. And when David said, God, I want to build you a temple, God said, Okay. You can. I don't really, I don't really need that. I'm I'm God, and while you have great building skills, there's no house that anyone has ever built that's going to impress me. Just look at the universe. But if you want to build me a house, fine. Go for it. The Jewish people had all of these rules and regulations. They had religion, they had all these laws they had to follow, they had sacrifices they had to make, but God Himself said, I would rather you just obey me. I would trade in all your sacrifices for obedience. I just want to have a relationship with you where you walk with me and you listen to me. And so when Jesus shows up on the scene, the people that he had the toughest words for were the hyper-religious leaders of his day. And his big criticism of them was that they demanded much of people, but they did not lift a finger to help, because that's what religion does. Religion says, look, you need to do more, you need to do better, but it offers no help. And Jesus says, I don't want that for you. I want a relationship with you. If we see prayer as an exercise in religion, we will miss what it really is. Prayer is so much more than that. It is an expression of our relationship with God. It is communication with God, and it's meant for you. It's meant for you. You are meant to pray. And you're not just meant to pray, you're meant to pray powerful prayers. Prayer is meant to be as natural for you as breathing. Prayer is meant to be real, it is meant to be fresh, and it is meant to be passionate. That is something that religion does not offer us, but a relationship with God does. So we want to approach prayer through the context of a relationship with God. And every week we've looked at one word we can apply to our to our lives in prayer, one word that has the potential to change the way we pray, to change our approach. And today we're gonna we're gonna add one more word to that list, and the word is big. We want to be people who pray big prayers. I asked myself this question today, actually, as I was getting ready. What's bigger? My problems or my prayers? Do I pray bigger prayers than the problems I face? And if I'm gonna be honest with myself, the answer is often no. So often in my life, my prayers, at least the way that I approach prayer, is smaller than the problems that I see in my life. And I don't want to be a person whose problems are bigger than his prayers. A few weeks ago we talked about praying small prayers, and this might sound like it's the opposite of that, but but I want us to understand that small and big go together. If you'll notice, many things that are big were once small. And a lot of small things have the potential to be big. See, as people, our perspective is so often skewed. What we think is a big problem isn't really that big. What we might see as a small decision ends up having huge implications. So our ability to discern big from small, it's really tough. And if we're gonna pray big prayers, we've got to pray small ones too, because the small stuff might actually be the big stuff. So small and big, they really go together. We want to be people who pray for the small things in life and remember that God cares about everything, even the small things that we might feel are not worth bringing to God in prayer. But we want to pray big prayers. We want to pray and ask God for exactly what we need. What is the biggest problem that we face today? What is the biggest opportunity in our lives? What needs to change right now in your life for you to experience the abundant life that Jesus talks about. We need to pray big and pray for exactly what we need. I actually have a really hard time with praying big prayers, and so today I want this to be a lesson for all of us to not do what I do. That's the lesson today. Do not pray like I pray. Because as I prepare for this this week, it hit me really early that I am not good at praying big. I work hard, I toil, I sweat, I do everything I can to achieve big results. There are big needs that I know about in my life. There are big personal needs. I have big needs in my marriage, I have big needs with my kids and my family. There are big needs at this church, there are big things that I want to see happen in my life, and I'll even say this: I believe they need to happen in my life. And I work hard to make those things happen. I do everything I can in my power to produce those big moments, but it's rare for me just to stop and pray for God to do those things. I have a hard time praying big. And I was asking God why this week. I'm like, God, why do I have such a hard time with this? Why is it so much easier for me to just try to make it happen, to try to do it, to try to somehow convince you that I'm worthy of you doing something big in my life instead of just asking you to do something big in my life? And I identified four four behaviors, four prayer behaviors in my life that keep me from praying big. And I want to examine those today because I'm guessing that that some of you share some of these behaviors with me. And if none of you do, I'm just a terrible person, and uh we need to switch, things need to change. There are four behaviors in my life and how I pray that keep me from praying as big as I can pray, and it's really simple. Number one, I pray reasonable prayers. I pray very reasonable prayers. Number two, I pray general prayers. I like to pray with a lot of generality. God bless me. What does that mean? This wide umbrella that I pray. I pray very reasonable prayers, I pray very general prayers, I pray very safe prayers. It's easy for me to pray, to pray safe. Sometimes if we're gonna pray big, we've gotta we've gotta pray for for risky things. And the last one, the one that I actually struggle with the most, is I pray very, very noble prayers. Very noble prayers. And I want to share a verse with you as we jump into these four categories. James 4, 2 says, you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. You don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. Now, this is a verse about prayer, obviously, and it's one that uh that definitely encourages us to pray big. And it gets it gets taken out of context often. Some people will take this verse and say, hey, this means that if you pray and you ask God for whatever you want and you ask in the right way, he will give it to you every time. And I I understand that mentality. God is not a vending machine, though. You know when you put money into a vending machine and you hit the button and you get something that you did not select, is that not one of the most infuriating experiences in the world? I mean, it's definitely a first world problem, right? Because here we are, and and usually what we're getting isn't even something that we need. But we push that button, and if we want a diet coke and we get a coke, we just go, are you kidding me? Are you serious? How inconvenient is this for my life? If we have a vending machine mentality with God, we will experience that same disappointment all the time. Because there are moments where we pray for something and God just knows better and God has a different plan and we have to submit our lives to Him. He doesn't submit Himself to us, but He loves us and He provides for us and He wants to help us. We need to understand this morning that God is for us. He is for you. When you pray, as a loving father, God desires to see your needs met. He is not a vending machine. We do not get everything we want every time, but he is for us and he loves us. James is not saying that God is a magic genie that we can just make requests of and we get it, but he is saying this, and this is powerful. There are many experiences, there are many blessings in our lives that we will never have if we do not pray. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus said that God knows what we need even before we ask. As a loving father, it's not like God's not gonna bless us because we don't ask. I don't wait for my kids to ask for food for me to remember to cook for them. I don't really cook, but frozen waffles count, right? That counts. At the same time, though, there are many things that my children would not have if they hadn't asked me for it. I mean, there's there's whole sections of our house that wouldn't exist if my kids didn't ask, because we have whole rooms dedicated to the toys that my son has and all the stuff that my daughter is gonna have and going to enjoy. And my son would eat way less ice cream if he never asked me for ice cream. It's because he asked me for what he wants that stirs my heart to bless him and to give him what he desires. And even if I say no, even if I know that what he wants is not good for him, I still want to give it to him. It's weird. I have to fight that. When my children ask me for something they need, it stirs my heart because I'm for them. We need to understand that God is for us, and when we go to him with what we need, it stirs his heart. You affect the heart of God. So we need to pray big. Now, praying big means that we cannot pray reasonable prayers. I do that, it's it's kind of an aspect of adult life that we learn, right? We ask for very reasonable things. My son is five, and I use a lot of stories with my son Liam. If you've been here for a while, just know this. He gets a commission on every story I tell. And so I don't want him to be embarrassed by the amount I talk to him, but he's very like motivated by that kind of thing. So he'll do things now and he'll say, Dad, you can use that, use that on a Sunday because there's an instant reward. So he's five now and he's learned. I've noticed this in the last year. He now, he now asks for more reasonable things. If he doesn't want to go to bed, he does not ask to stay up for an hour anymore. That's what he used to ask. Now he'll say, Dad, can I stay up for 15 more minutes? It's because he knows that if he said an hour, I'd be like, Yeah, right. But if he said 15 minutes, I'm like, oh, that's pretty reasonable. That's, yeah, what's 15 more minutes? Go ahead. So he's learned, he's learned, he's he's manipulating me. That's what's happening. That's exactly what's happening. But he's grown up enough that he hadn't he now has a filter for what's reasonable. Not that long ago, that filter did not exist. One of the best days of my life was Father's Day, 2013, two years ago. We hadn't had our daughter Lily yet. It was just Liam, and I wanted to have a very special Father's Day with my son, and so I decided that he was gonna catch a fish for the first time on Father's Day. That was gonna happen. We had gone fishing one time with Megan's parents, and Liam is really coordinated, he always has been. So I was amazed that at three years old he could cast into the water with no problems. But patience and being three years old do not go together. And patience and fishing are really good friends. And so as soon as the lure would hit the water, I mean the second it hit, he'd be reeling it in. It was like, reel it in. The only chance he had to catch a fish is if he happened to put the lure right into a fish's mouth as that fish was closing its mouth, and the odds of that are really small. So I knew that if he was gonna catch a fish, it needed to be rigged. We needed to cheat. That's the only way. And what that meant for me was going to a trout farm. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to a trout farm. You may not understand the concept of a trout farm if you've never been. It's very simple. Take like a swimming pool-sized pond and fill it with 10,000 trout. Okay? You've got a really good chance of catching as much fish as you want. And so I got online and I looked for a trout farm. I grew up in a part of the country that had a lot of those, and I couldn't find many locally. I found a few that had closed down in recent years. I found one that looked perfect. It was in North Carolina, though. That was the downside. Three and a half hours away. But I was determined that my son was gonna catch his first fish with me on Father's Day. I was selfish, I guess. And so we got in the car, we drove three and a half hours to North Carolina. We stopped at Waffle House on the way. Like I said, my son loves waffles, and he's only ever had the frozen waffles that his father cooks for him. And uh I'll never forget when he when he saw his first Waffle House waffle. He'd never been there before. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. If you've ever seen a Waffle House waffle, they're the size of a human face, right? They're huge. And he just stared at it for 30 seconds, like, what do I don't know what to do with this. This is amazing. He was in awe of the waffle, and at the end of the day, that was right up there with catching fish. We finished the drive, we got to North Carolina, the weather was a little bit iffy, and we got out of the car. I went to the office of this trout farm, I paid for everything. We we got ready to fish, we had our rods in hand, and right before it was time to fish, this huge thunderstorm rolled in. I mean, it was massive. There was lightning everywhere, it was raining really hard, and I just grabbed Liam and ran to the car, but he didn't know the danger of holding a metal rod in a lightning storm. So this whole thing didn't make a lot of sense to him. He just knew that he had waited hours and hours to fish, and right before it was time to fish, I'm taking him back to the car. So he was screaming and crying, and I finally got him there. I calmed him down, I explained what was going on, and we waited the storm out for another 30, 45 minutes. Then it was time to fish. It did not take him very long to get one on the line. But see, I neglected to teach him how to reel a fish, and I hadn't thought that far ahead. I'm bad like that. And so he got it on, and all of a sudden he's just panicking. He's excited. If you've ever fished before, you you get a fish on the line. There's there's adrenaline that kicks in, right? Something's fighting against you, and so Liam just started panicking. It was really funny, there were a lot of people there that were highly entertained by him. He's just going, Oh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, okay, I've got it, I've got it, I've got it. And he's reeling this thing in fast. And all I told him was reel it in, but I didn't tell him that there's a point where you have to stop reeling. And so he reeled this fish all the way in to the very end of the line where it hits the pole, and then he kept reeling it further, so that the pole went halfway down the fish's throat, and then that that sort of skewered and popped the fish off, and it went under the water or it died. How was that? Trout farms are cruel places, but the lamb, he was he was dejected. He was he was so dejected because he had waited for so long, he had he had endured this storm, and then he gets the first fish on the line and it it goes off and he just sunk. And I said, Son, it's okay, we're gonna keep fishing. He got another one on the line, but that one got caught on a log and it popped off as well. Finally, the third fish he got on the line. I had learned well enough at that point what to tell him. I'm saying, okay, reel it in slowly, a little bit more, a little bit more. Okay, lift the pole up, lift it out of the water, take a step back. And he he had it, he had his fish. He was so excited. I actually have a picture of that moment because uh, you know, I want to. That's Leon with his very first fish. Isn't that awesome? That was Father's Day 2013. He caught five fish that day, and then we got back in the car, we drove another three and a half hours, we stopped for dinner, and we got home really late. It was a long, incredible, and exhausting day. But there's one part of that day that I will never forget. When we got home, we walked into the house, Liam looked at me. He said, Dad, can we do that again tomorrow? Can we do that again tomorrow? And that's a very unreasonable thing to ask because I mean we we drove for seven hours. It was a very long day, it was hard, it was it was a lot, and for Liam to say, Can we do that tomorrow? It was just unreasonable. And I had to say, No, son, I'm so sorry, we we can't do that tomorrow. I explained that you can't make seven-hour drives on a daily basis, I have to go to work, all these kinds of things. And he he just nodded his head in understanding. You know, he was three. He said, Okay, okay. So can we go on Saturday? See, children ask for very unreasonable things. That that's second nature to them. It's as we get older that we learn how to how to lessen our expectations, and so we ask for reasonable things. We make reasonable requests of people, and we should. That's actually a sign of maturity because people have limited resources, people have limited time, we have limited energy. Finances. So it's a good thing in a lot of ways to go to people and ask for reasonable requests. But it is so easy to take that same approach with God. There's a problem with that approach, though, is that God is not limited. God does not have limited time. He does not have limited resources. He does not have limited energy. So what is the point in going to a limitless God with requests that are limited by our expectations of what is reasonable? We can pray unreasonable prayers. What do you need in your life that sounds unreasonable? What needs to happen that seems beyond the scope of what you should expect? A great way to think about this is what do you need today that you wouldn't even think about asking from someone else because you know it would be too much to ask? You should ask that of God. We should pray unreasonable prayers because we have a God who is unreasonably good. And we have a God who is unreasonably powerful. I tend to pray reasonable prayers, and it holds me back from praying big. I also tend to pray very, very general prayers. And if we're going to pray big prayers, we we can't pray very general. I pray for things I mentioned this earlier, like blessings. I'll say, God just bless my day, and that's a very general thing. And I'll be honest, I don't even know what I mean half the time when I pray things like that. I'm not even aware of what a blessing would look like. And I may I may ask God to bless my day and he might do it. I might not even realize that he's answered my prayer because I don't have a clue in my mind what I'm even asking for. There are times in life when we have to make more specific requests. Liam's gonna have a really good day and get a lot of commissions today because I've got another story with him. Um my wife and I have now learned, now that he's five and can dress himself, that asking him something general like go get dressed, it's not specific enough. Because the results will vary. Okay? I mean, at five years old, if it's the middle of winter and we say, son, go get clothes on, go get dressed, he is likely to come out with a pair of sweatpants, no underwear, a t-shirt, a cap, a cape, and cowboy boots. That's not out of the question. Because he just goes into his bedroom going, what do I want to wear today? All of this is clothing. All mom and dad said was, get dressed and I have done what they have asked. We've learned we have to be specific. We have to say, go get dressed, and that means get underwear, get socks. Megan cares about things like colors and matching socks. I don't even care about that. I just say I just want you to wear underwear, forwards, backwards, inside out. I don't care as long as it's on the part of the body it needs to be on. I'm good. So go get underwear, go get socks, go get jeans, go get a sweater, go get a hat, just go get those things, and you're good. I have to be specific. Do we pray specific prayers? If you're gonna pray big, you're gonna have to pray specifically. If you're $70,000 in debt, do not pray for a raise. Pray for a $70,000 raise. Okay? If you need something specific to happen in your life, you need to pray for that specific thing. Praying general prayers, there's nothing wrong with it. But it's hard to pray big when we're only praying general. Pray specific. One of the things that holds me back from praying big the most is praying noble prayers. And we've talked a lot over the last few weeks about religion and this concept of how religion actually undermines faith. It's when we start to add our understandings of what we think God must want, things that He doesn't actually want, that we start to lessen our experience with God and noble thinking, noble thinking. It's so celebrated in religion, but it's sometimes so opposite of how God wants us to think. So I hold myself back from praying big because I want to pray noble. I want to pray things that I think God would want to hear me pray. Does that make sense? When I was in high school, I heard a quote, it's always stuck with me. It's a great quote. The quote was that a godly person does not pray for God to make their path easier. A godly person prays for the strength to walk the hard path. Isn't that an awesome quote? I love that. I was like, yes, that is awesome. I don't want to pray for God to make my life easier. That's not very noble, that's kind of selfish. That's unashamed. I want to pray for something that God's gonna go, yeah, that sounds right. That sounds good. So, God, don't make my path easier. Don't make it harder, but just don't make it easier. Instead, just give me the strength to get through this difficult path ahead of me. Sounds really good. The only problem with that, it's unnecessary. Because why not pray for both? It's not a multiple choice question. We don't have to pray for either God to make our circumstances better or for God to give us the strength we need to get through the circumstances we're in. We can actually pray for both things. There's no reason to choose one over the other. In fact, Jesus did not choose one over the other. In Matthew chapter 26, we see Jesus at a very important point in his life. He's about to go to the cross. And he knows it. He is fully aware of what he's about to endure. He's aware of the cross, the torture, the humiliation. He's aware of the fact that his friends are gonna abandon him. He knows all this, and so he prays. In Matthew 26, starting in verse 36, it says, Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane. And he said, Sit here while I go over there to pray. He took Peter and Zebedee's two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. He went on a little farther and he bowed his face to the ground, praying, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. If it's possible, let there be another way. Let there be another way other than the cross. He said, Yet I want your will to be done, not mine. Then he returned to the disciples and he found them asleep. He said to Peter, Couldn't you watch with me even one hour? Keep watching pray so that you will, so that you will not give in to temptation, for the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. Then Jesus left them a second time and he prayed, My father, if this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done. And when he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn't keep their eyes open. So he went and he prayed for a third time, saying the same things again. So three times Jesus prays the same prayer. God, if there is any way to change this, if there is another way for me to rescue humanity from sin other than the cross, make it happen. But if not, your will be done. Give me the strength to endure it. Jesus prayed for both. He prayed for God to change the circumstance to make it easier. And he prayed for the strength to endure. Jesus was not preoccupied with praying noble prayers. He wasn't trying to pray what he thought God would want to hear. He was being honest. See, the noble prayers that I pray, they keep me from praying big because there are so many times where what I really want, what I really desire, I don't ask for. Because I'm worried that God is not going to be pleased with that request, that somehow it's not pious enough, it's not mature enough, that God's gonna be going, seriously, again, Justin, you're still stuck on this same thing. But if Jesus was willing to pray unashamed prayers, why should I be preoccupied in praying noble ones? Noble praying can hold us back from praying big. So pray unashamed. Pray for what you want to happen, pray for what you believe needs to happen. Don't worry about if it's really what needs to happen, don't worry about if it's really what God wants. Just ask Him for what you need and what you want. And then trust God to answer. If we're gonna pray big, we can't pray general prayers, we can't pray reasonable prayers, we can't pray noble prayers, but we also can't pray safe prayers, and this is where the rubber meets the road, because this is where it gets hard. See, I tend to pray for safe prayers because if I don't pray big, I will never be experiencing big disappointment. If I don't pray big prayers, then I have no risk. I have no risk. If I only pray for safe things, for things that I want to happen, but if it doesn't happen, it's not that big of a deal, then I'll never have to deal with the disappointment of hearing God say no. And there are people that say that God doesn't always say no, he just says yes later, or God never says no, he just has a better yes, but that's not true. Sometimes God says no. He does. And see, I know God and I love God, and I have submitted my life to him, so if he says no, so be it. I'll be like Jesus as much as I can. And I'll say, yes, I accept your will, but so often I pray safe. I hold back. I wouldn't have prayed what Jesus prayed. It's so easy for me not to ask for what I really want because I'm afraid of what it's gonna feel like if God says no. Praying safe prayers will always hold us back from praying big. Praying big is risky, though. It's risky to lay it all out. It's risky to not hedge. I mean, there is story after story in the Bible of people praying big, and every time they're praying big, if you really get into their mindset, you think about what they're feeling, think about what they're really asking God to do. They must have felt so nervous. Because they're risking so much by asking for what they really want. My favorite is this story of a man in Mark chapter 10, a man named Bartimaeus. He was a blind man. We see a story starting in verse 46. They reached Jericho and Jesus and his disciples left town. A large crowd followed him. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting beside the road. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Be quiet, many of the people yelled at him. But he only shouted louder, Son of David, have mercy on me. When Jesus heard him, he stopped and he said, Tell him to come here. So they called the blind man, Cheer up, they said, Come on, he's calling you. So Bartimaeus threw his coat aside, he jumped up and he came to Jesus. What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked. Now, this is an obvious question. What do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus is blind. Jesus has a reputation for healing blindness. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's on Bartimaeus' mind. But see, this is a really important question. It shows us an amazing characteristic of God is that he does not force things on us. See, God desires to help us and heal us and rescue us, but he will not make us want him to help us, heal us, and rescue us. So he asked Bartimaeus this pressing question, what do you want me to do for you? And Bartamaeus has a choice here. He can either go big, he can pray a risky prayer, he can ask for a very risky request, or he can play it safe. In my experience in life, I probably would have played it safe. So Bartimaeus could say, hey, you know what? A seeing eye dog would be really helpful. You know, in that day and age, if you were blind, if you were disabled in any way, your only chance of getting by in life was the generosity of other people. You would beg, you would be at the synagogue every single day begging. And Bartimaeus could have said, Jesus, these people here, they're selfish. I beg every day, and only one in 20 people gives me anything. If you could change their hearts, if you could talk to them and say, look, everybody just give something to Bartimaeus. Make it so that one in five would give me something, it would change my life. He could have prayed for that. He could have prayed for a better life as a blind person. And no one, no one would have held that against him. But Bartimaeus did not play it safe because his answer shows that. The very next line, he says, My rabbi, my teacher, I want to see. And Jesus said to him, Go, your faith has healed you. Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road. See, Barnamaeus could have prayed safe. But he did not. He said, I want to see. I've had few moments in my life where I prayed truly risky prayers, but I'm glad that I did. I'm so glad that I did. When my son was born, he was in the NICU for his first two weeks. I know I've shared that story a few times before, but still to this day, it's one of the most intense moments in my life. And when he was there and he was struggling to breathe, and the doctors didn't know what was wrong with him, I prayed like I have never prayed before. They took him to do some tests. It was the 10th, 20th test they had done on him. It was really exhausting, and the diagnosis, the probable diagnosis, was not good. And so I prayed for the whole hour that my son was away to get tested, and I balled my eyes out. I begged God, I cried, I sobbed, and I asked God to supernaturally heal my son. And that was the riskiest thing I had ever prayed for. But my heart could not take the idea of that prayer not happening. And so I just prayed for that. I prayed for that knowing that God is not a vending machine. I prayed for that knowing that God is not a genie. I prayed for that knowing that God is not obligated to do anything I ask him to do because he's God, but I also prayed that knowing that he loves me. And he's for me, just like he loves you and he's for you. And he did answer that prayer. My son left the hospital two days later. The moment he got back, and I'm serious, the moment he got back from that test, he never had another breathing problem, he never had another seizure, the doctors didn't know what changed, they didn't even know what was wrong with him to begin with. He got no medicine, he got no treatment, he was just better, and he's been fine for the last five years. That was a risky prayer. Now here's the thing. I will continue to pray risky prayers in my life, and God will say no to some of those, and that's gonna hurt. It's gonna sting. And there will be a day when I stand face to face with God, and I would imagine, like many of us, there are gonna be questions I'll have for Him. I'll I'll wanna know. I don't think it's wrong to want to know, to say, God, why did this not work out the way that it did? God, I needed this to happen, and I asked you. I prayed with faith. I asked you to make this happen. I prayed a risky prayer and it did not pay off. I I might have those questions for God, and I will gladly accept his answer. I have a feeling that I'll understand when he explains it to me, but but here's what I do not want to happen. I never want to look God face to face and say, why did this not happen? And hear God say, You never asked. Praying big is praying risky. But there's no reason. There's no reason not to take a risk with God. Because God takes risks with us. Think about the risk involved in dying for people who do not want you to die for them. Think about the risk that Jesus took in being a sacrifice for people who did not think they needed a sacrifice. There is no one who has taken the risk for rejection as much as Jesus has. Jesus risked much, and the results are big for all of us. We need to be people who pray big, who pray risky prayers. What is bigger? Our problems or our prayers? I would love to see what would happen if there was an entire church of people in a community who made the decision to say, our problems will never be bigger than our prayers. We will never be people who pray for smaller than what we believe God can do. What would it be like in our own lives if we committed to say, I will never allow a problem in my life to be bigger than the prayer that I bring to God? I will not pray reasonable prayers, I will pray unreasonable prayers, I will not be noble when I pray, I will be unashamed. I will not pray generalities, I will pray specifically for what I need. I will not pray safe, I will pray risky prayers because I believe God is going to come through. See, I believe if a thousand people in a community did that, it would change the entire community. The number of stories, the number of testimonies, the number of examples of God answering prayer would be so overwhelming that people would follow Jesus like never before. We need to be people who pray big. Because the stakes are big. The stakes in our lives are big, the stakes in our community is big, so we need to pray big, and that can start today. So I want to encourage you, I want to challenge you to examine your heart today, to think about the biggest need you have, and then pray for it. Pray big. Make your prayers and your expectations of God bigger than your problems, and watch what happens. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for uh for being a God that we can go to, for being a God that we can pray and request and ask for exactly what we need. Jesus, you showed us that when we pray, we can just simply ask. We don't have to worry about using the right words, we don't have to worry about some ritual that we need to follow. We can just come to you and we can ask for what we need and we can ask big. So, God, make our hearts right now, make us people who pray big. Make us people who look at every problem we face in life and say, I have a prayer bigger than this problem. God, give us the courage to be people who pray, who pray every single day, and who pray big prayers. Lord, we love you. Thank you for this chance to worship you. Please uh give us all a great day. Amen. Amen.