Good morning. How's everybody doing? We good? Good good. Well, I'm so excited that you're here this morning. If you're here for the very first time, we want to start by saying welcome to his hands. We're a big family of people that love one another. We love Jesus very much. And really, we exist to help everyone in this community, everyone in this world get a taste of God's love. We we want to love people to Jesus, and so everything we do here is to help people get his love, grow in his love, and give it away. I want to thank all of you who who do that every single week. You guys are amazing. And uh and if you're here for the very first time and you'd like more information on what that looks like, go to the infodesk, grab a first-time visitor packet, and it'll give you a lot of information as well as a few uh few coffee coupons you can use, and and that's good. Um we run on the Holy Spirit and caffeine. That's what we say here at His Hands. That's that's what gets us through. Uh, I've got a couple of really quick announcements before we jump into the message this morning. Number one, uh, something we're we're really excited about is I'm gonna let it come up on the screen because I forgot the order, baptisms. All right, it's always really well planned out. Baptisms are next Sunday, and next Sunday it's gonna be an amazing day because it's Father's Day. And there's no better day to get baptized, in my opinion, than Father's Day, because the Bible says that when we give our lives to Jesus, that God the Father literally adopts us, that he sees himself as our Father. That's the relationship that we get. And so next Sunday will be a really exciting day as several people go all in with Jesus and they get a new father. It's incredible. And so be here next Sunday to cheer those people on. We are a family, and so whenever people get baptized up in front of everybody, it can be a little nerve-wracking until they realize that these people love them and are gonna cheer them on and support them. That's what we do. So next Sunday will be great. If you want to get baptized, if you're ready to make that step in your relationship with Jesus, sign up in the lobby today. You'll see a sign that says baptisms. It'll be easy. We'll give you all the information there. July 4th is coming up really soon, which is uh always a blast here at His Hands. If you've never been here on the 4th, the City of Woodstock shoots off their official fireworks display right above our building. I mean, we have a front row seat. In fact, three years ago, we learned a lesson that we have to turn our smoke detectors off right before they shoot them off because it all settles and then the fire trucks arrive, and that's a party. That's a lot of fun. So that's that's how close we are to the to the show, and we just open our building up, we have food, we have music, we have stuff for the kids to do, we just make a whole event out of it, and it's really the best place to be in this area on the fourth. So be here this this fourth. I think it's on a Saturday this week, because I know yeah, it is a Saturday, and the next day's Sunday, so we'll be really awake that next day. It'll be awesome. But it's uh it's gonna be a great day. Just mark it on your calendar. It's probably already marked because it's a holiday, uh, but you'll get it all figured out. It'll be good. Give a kid a chance is an organization we have worked with for almost seven years, I believe. It's an incredible organization that's local, and what they do is they make sure that needy kids in the community have school supplies when they start back to school. And so we help out with that every single year in a really simple way. Different people from our church go to the info desk, you grab a sheet that'll have all the information you need, you go buy a backpack, you fill it with the school supplies on the list, and you bring it back here, and then we make sure that gets to the kids that need it. And so that's all you have to do. Go to the info desk today, grab a sheet, you'll get all that stuff, get good sales, do all that kind of thing, and uh bring it back here. We make sure that kids start school prepared and equipped. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who helps out financially. You guys are incredible. Your generosity is being used by God in some amazing ways. Uh, we don't pass a plate or anything like that if you're here for the first time, but at the back four columns, we do have four stations where you can give electronically or give with check or cash. And I got to share this last week. If if you give here and you weren't here last Sunday, listen to the message from last week because we got to talk about some big wins that have happened in the last year as a result of your generosity. One of the wins I got to share was that so far this year we've been able to give away over $52,000 as a church. Just give it away to people in need. That's awesome. I love that. There's obviously a lot more to share than that in there. So take a take a look at that if you weren't here last week. And thank you for your for your generosity. Thank you for being people who give. Um, that's also where you can you can go get prayer as well. You can fill out prayer requests, drop them in, and we'll pray for you this week. We love to do that. Uh, one more thing I want to share before we we pray and then talk about prayer. Um, people are always sharing stories about things that God has done. And our high school kids just got back from their summer road trip. And they are. I I think the official number was 103 high school students on the trip, so it was awesome. We'll share a lot more details about some great things that happened next week, but I got this story in, I got this email to me uh from a dad on Thursday. He said, Dear his hands, my son David was on your high school trip. He was looking forward to this trip since y'all started talking about it, and he actually typed out y'all. That's not me. He he spelled it right and all that. Um Wednesday, while he was there, he felt God calling on his heart to be baptized and to go all in with Jesus. I'm so proud of him, and I'm so proud of our church. See, my wife and I have been to many different churches, and it never felt like home, but ever since we've been here, my whole family's attitude about God has changed, our attitude about life has changed, and I really feel like it's because of the love that this church shows. My kids cannot wait till Sunday so they can go to church. So thank all of you so much, and God bless all of you. I can't wait to see what else God is going to do. I love that. That's awesome. Well, hey, pray with me, and uh, and then we're gonna talk about prayer. Jesus, thank you so much for being here, for being in this place. Holy Spirit, thank you for filling all of us with passion, with excitement, with joy, with everything that we need for life. God, we ask that right now that you would bless us, that as we read your word, as we explore what you have taught us, God, that our hearts and our minds would be open. We want to grow into the people you created us to be. And so equip us for that, God. And we we pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. So we're beginning a conversation today about prayer. I'm really excited about this. This summer, we're doing a series we're calling how-to. And really what we're doing is looking at some how-to teachings by Jesus. All these are in Matthew chapter six. There's a group of everyday people like you and me who want to know how to grow. They want to know how they can move forward in their relationship with God, move forward in life in general. And so Jesus gives them three how-to's. He teaches them how to give, how to pray, and how to fast. It's these three spiritual disciplines, you might call them, three practices, that Jesus says, look, if you will do this and if you will do them and approach them in the right way, you will see amazing results in your life. And so he lays out some steps that we can take to begin growing closer to God. We want to get a how-to. I don't know about you, but in situations in life where I have not been given a proper how-to, where no one's really told me what to do, I have to rely on my own knowledge, I have to rely on my own ability to figure things out. And usually what that means for me is that I'm just winging it. I mean, how many of us have to wing it in major aspects of life? It's called being a parent, right? When you have kids, you don't really know what to do. You can read a book, but every kid's different, and so you just wing it. You just try to figure it out as you go. Eventually, you need help, you go to your parents, you go to someone else, and you ask the tough questions. How do you make a baby fall asleep? Tell me, please, how do you do it? And if you know that, write it on a card. I have two of them. How do you do that? Please tell me. I'm serious, this is for me. Um we have to wing it, right? But eventually winging it's not good enough. Winging it does not produce the greatest results in our lives. It really doesn't ever, I mean, the whole phrase winging it, it's a theater term. It's over a hundred years old. It came from the world of theater when actors and actresses did not know their lines. They relied on someone who was waiting in the wings, someone on the side of the stage to tell them their lines. So you picture an actor or actress on a stage giving a performance, they don't know what to say, and someone is on the side of the room whispering loud enough for them to hear what they're supposed to say, but not loud enough for the audience? I'm just gonna guess that those plays never made it to Broadway, that they were not classics, those were not the plays that were really successful because winging it is never the best practice, but we're we're forced to do it so often in life. How many of us have jobs that require us to wing it because no one has ever really told us what to do? No one's ever trained us. We're just expected to produce results. Some of us have jobs like that right now. When I graduated from college, I got a job at this really small marketing company in Kansas City, Missouri. And by small I mean small. It was me, it was the owner and a designer, three people. The owner and the designer had worked together for over 20 years, so I was the newbie, and I had no idea what I was doing. I had no clue, but I wasn't that worried because the owner was there. And he'd been doing this for over 30 years, and so I knew he would show me the ropes. It would be like this apprenticing relationship, and he would just teach me as we went. But there was one problem with that. The owner loved to play golf. And he loved to play golf. And so I remember I started in May, and one day, like two or three days into me working there, he looks out the window and he says, Man, this is amazing golf weather. And I learned very quickly that, man, this is amazing golf weather means I'm about to leave and go play golf. That's what it meant. That was his code for saying that. And see, when he would leave, the designer would just say, Well, when he goes, I go. And she would go home and she'd say, I'm gonna go work from home. And I put quotes around that because I learned very quickly that work from home means I will not answer an email, you cannot get a hold of me, and I will actually do no work. That's what work from home meant to our designer. And so I would be there alone, by myself. I'm the new guy. I don't know, I don't have a clue what I'm doing, and I'm there by myself. And he would always say the same thing to me when he left. He would say, Justin, I need you to hold down the fort while I'm gone. And I did not have a clue what he meant by that. Because the analogy didn't make sense. You know, hold down the fort, command the troops, command the troops while I'm gone, protect this place from invaders. I get that, but that was not our situation. There were no troops for me to command. There were no other employees. It was me by myself. We weren't even a company that had walk-in business. No one ever showed up at our door to buy marketing. We set up appointments and we would go meet with those people on their turf or at a coffee house. But I was supposed to just man the fort, to hold down the fort. No one was gonna invade us as far as I could tell. There was a Burger King across the street, but they didn't seem that aggressive. They never seemed like they were eyeing us or anything like that. So I just sat there and I held down the fort, which for me meant ESPN.com for hours on end. And don't judge me, I was 21 and the owner was playing golf, our designer was working from home, and so me being on ESPN, I think was actually more productive than anyone else. I was just fitting in with corporate culture. That's what I was that's what I was doing. And see, the truth of the matter is I really wanted to do well. I wanted to excel, but I did not know what to do. No one told me what to do, and I felt alone. I had to wing it. I had to wing it, and winging it is not the best practice. We have a God that loves us so much that he does not ask us to really wing it. I mean, yes, we have to step out in faith. Yes, we have to live life not knowing exactly what to do in every situation, but we underestimate so often how much God wants to equip us and empower us to succeed in our life, to succeed in our relationship with Him. And Jesus loves us so much that He has given us a how-to for virtually every aspect of life you can imagine. If I'm gonna look at my life and talk about how I've approached prayer for most of my life, I would be honest and say I've pretty much winged it the whole time. The most intense training I ever got with prayer was when I was a kid praying before meals, and the only thing I learned there is that it's really good if your prayers rhyme, but that's a difficult thing to take into adulthood. That's hard. See, no one ever sat me down and said, This is how you pray. This is what you do. And prayer is meant to be this passionate, incredible experience that we have where we're growing with God. Prayer is meant to be something that we look forward to, but when we don't know how to do it and all we can do is wing it, we rarely feel confident about what we're doing, we rarely feel confident about the results. Jesus wants us to have that confidence. One of the phrases I hear the most in regarding regarding prayer is that I'm not good at prayer. I hear a lot of people say that. I'm not good at prayer. I understand that, I feel that. Many of us feel the exact same way. We say, look, I don't understand prayer. It's confusing, it's foreign to me. I didn't grow up with this whole God thing. I'm still figuring the God thing out. So prayer is a strange practice in my mind. I get that. Maybe we believe in God, but prayer is intimidating. We don't know how to approach it, we don't know how to do it the best way. Maybe for us it's praying in front of other people, it's it's praying with our family, it's praying for a friend when they're having a hard time. We feel a desire to pray in our hearts, but we don't feel like we're spiritual enough to actually say, Hey, can I pray for you and pray something out loud? Many of us have been praying for years, and for us, it's not that prayer is intimidating, it's that it's become routine, it's become a little bit mundane. We've gotten used to it. We find ourselves going in autopilot when we pray. We just start saying the same phrases that we've said a million times before, and our heart's not really in it. We want it to be, it's just become routine for us. So Jesus teaches us how to pray. Matthew chapter 6. We're gonna look at it here in just a moment. Jesus teaches us how to pray, how to approach God in prayer. Because I want all of us to understand something very important. You are good at prayer. You are good at prayer. Some of you in the room might say prayer is kind of my thing. And you wouldn't be saying that with pride. You would be saying that knowing that prayer is a key part of my life, it's elemental for me. I've developed a strong life of prayer. I pray often. I love to pray, I look forward to pray. Some of us are even gifted at prayer. It's a talent that we have. In fact, in the Bible, prayer is listed as a spiritual gift. Some people have a knack for prayer that is God-given. That is not my spiritual gift. Prayer is not my spiritual gift, but it's still essential for me to pray. It's still important for me to pray. Prayer is still meant for me. All of us are good at prayer. You may not know it yet, you may not realize it, but God designed you to pray. God created you to have a conversation with Him. God wants to know you, He wants to be known by you. And prayer is it's our means of communicating with God. You are good at prayer. And over the next month or so, I don't know exactly how many weeks we're gonna talk about this. I'm still praying about it, and that's not a joke. It's it's real, and you know, it would fit as a joke right now, but seriously, I'm praying about it. Over the next month or so, we're gonna look at prayer from many different angles. Every single week, we're gonna we're gonna focus on one word, one word that we can take and apply to our lives in the area of prayer, one word that can help us take steps forward and grow and become comfortable with prayer. See prayer as something that's approachable, something that's powerful, something that is meant for us. And I believe that at the end of this month, all of us can say, you know what, prayer is my thing. Prayer's my thing. Now it's important that we have the right expectation. Rome wasn't built in a day. It takes a while to grow, especially in an area of weakness or an area of difficulty. And prayer is not easy. It's not always easy. But just like anything else in life, there are steps that we can take that help us grow, but it's when we take those steps consecutively. It's when we apply many fundamental practices to something that we see real results. If you want to lose weight, you walk up to someone on the street that has you know a great physical uh figure and you say, Hey, how did you get like that? They're not gonna look at you and kind of look to the side and go, Okay, come here. See, I have this pill that no one knows about. And this one pill, you take it one time and you become skinny and strong. That's that's what I do. That's never gonna happen. And if they give you a pill, don't take it. That's a bad pill. Don't do that, right? It's bad. In fact, if you ever meet someone who is in the kind of shape you want to be in, that happens to me all the time. Uh I uh I meet someone, I'm like, hey, how do what do you do? And it's always things I already know. It's frustrating because I'm expired deep down inside I want there to be some hidden secret that no one's ever told me about. Some magic food, right? That's gonna make me lose weight. But they go, Oh, I I don't eat fast food. I I don't eat a lot of fried stuff, I work out five times a week, I do this, I do that, and it's always stuff that I'm like, yeah, but there's gotta be something else, right? Like there's gotta be, I know all that. I don't want to do all that, so tell me the other thing that you do. Deep down inside, we want there to be this magic experience, this one thing that that just changes everything. See, the difference between working out and being in shape and prayer is that in our culture, we're inundated with information about how to be in shape, so we know all the answers. It's not the case with prayer. So many of us, we we understand that there are fundamental practices that we need to start applying to our lives, but we may not know what those are. And I'm excited that this month we get to look at those. You are good at prayer, you are meant for it. The word we're gonna focus on today is a very simple word. In fact, the word is simple. We're gonna learn today and talk about today how to pray simple prayers. If prayer is something you don't do very often, then praying simple prayers is a way to get the ball rolling. It's a way to start moving forward with prayer. Eventually, prayer will be something you'll get lost in. Prayer will be something that you'll start and you'll you'll lose track of time. But to begin, we want to look at simple prayers. How to pray simply. And if you're someone that's been praying for a long time and prayers become routine or monotonous, praying simple prayers, it'll change that. It's like hitting the reset button on your prayer life. I'll never forget the first time I read the message translation of the Bible. I grew up reading the Bible, and I had this one Bible, the same translation, I had read it many different times, especially the New Testament, and I would sit down to read it on a regular basis, and I would just start to drift away mentally. Because I had read all these words before. I had read it all before so many times that I could read it, and I was actually reading, but my mind was elsewhere, and I would read two or three pages and then go, whoa, I don't have a clue what I just read. I have to flip back. I'm sure I'm not the only one. But then I got the message translation, and I'd never read it before. It's in really simple language, and just the simplicity of it, and even just hearing it in different words than I was used to, I didn't do that. My mind was engaged in a way it hadn't been in a long time. It refreshed my passion for God's word. Praying simple prayers will refresh your passion for prayer. But in order for us to pray simply, we have to understand this one critical thing, this one shift that has to happen in our minds. And it's a shift that we're gonna see happening in the minds of the people that Jesus is talking to in Matthew 6. It's something he's trying to help them see. We'll see that in just a second when we open it up. But in order to pray simple prayers, we have to understand that prayer is not an exercise of religion, it is an expression of relationship. If we see prayer as an exercise of religion, we will never experience the passion, the reality, the joy, and the fullness that prayer is meant to bring to us. Because religion does not value those things. We'll never be able to have simple prayers because religion does not value simplicity. Religion values extravagance, right? Extravagance is really it's a really good thing in religion. If you can do something extravagantly, that's celebrated, that's good. But in relationship, it's a little bit different. If my wife comes home from work tomorrow and there are roses all over the living room, and there's balloons in every room of the house, and there's like a mariachi band that's playing on our front porch, and there's balloons on the top of our roof, and there's an airplane that flies by that says Justin loves Megan, and then fireworks go off in the sky, she's gonna be blown away. That is an extravagant display of my love. And she will appreciate it. I think I'll win a few brownie points for that. If she shows up from work on Tuesday, and there is a mariachi band on our front porch, and there are flowers and balloons everywhere in our house, and there's a there's fireworks, she'll be like, this again, okay. All right, this is this is really nice. This is this is good. I I appreciate that you love me this much. If she shows up on Wednesday and there is a mariachi band, we're gonna have problems. Because extravagance in religion is great, but extravagance in a relationship, it's it's good in its place, but simplicity is really what is what is valued. Think about the closest relationship you have with someone. What makes that relationship so close? Is it how extravagantly you prove your love to one another, or is it the ability that you have with that person to look them in the eye and say, tell me what you're thinking? Tell me how you feel. It's the ability to have simple conversations where you can cut right to the heart of the matter. That's what that's what strengthens a relationship. Ladies, you have a big leg up on us as men because you are just much more complex than we are. So we must seem really simple to you all the time. We are not hard to figure out. On the flip side, men, you'll understand this. It is hard to understand if you're married or yet you're in a relationship with a woman, you understand this. It's hard to understand what's going on sometimes because we just don't have as many emotions as you. We don't have as many. God did not put the same number of emotions into our into our DNA. I have three emotions that I feel. I am either mad, sad, or glad. That's all I am. And if if you're not if you're not glad, and you're not mad or sad, like I don't understand why you're not happy. It just doesn't make sense to me. If I say, hey, you don't look happy, are you sad? No. Are you are you mad at something? No. I'm like, well, you should be glad. Those are the three options. It's three. That's all you get. But see, ladies, you have emotions that are like in a spectrum. That's the word I would use. It's a it's a wide spectrum. Emotions. Just like we only see some of the colors in the in the spectrum of the universe, men, we only understand a few of the emotions in the spectrum of womanhood. And I know this because I'm married, and this is an actual conversation I had with my wife last week. This is a real conversation, wasn't a joke. This is me saying these exact words. Something was bothering her. I could tell. I could tell because she kept telling me she was fine, and that's a code word. Right? I'm fine means I'm not fine. Figure this out. I've learned that. And so this is what I said word for word. And it's not eloquent, and it was not a joke. It's all I could figure out to say. I said, honey, it it appears to me that you are feeling an emotion. And I I do not know what it is. I don't I if you could tell me what you're feeling and maybe why, I would love to understand, I would love to help, but I just I don't I don't know what's happening right now. And see, that's funny and it's it's great to laugh at, but in reality, that's one of the things that makes our relationship work, is that I can simply ask her how she feels, I can simply look at her, she can do the same with me and say, please tell me what's going on. It's that kind of thing that makes a relationship strong. Prayer is not about religious extravagance, it's about relationship, it's about simplicity. And today we're gonna look at how to pray simple prayers. You've got to understand that that phrase, I'm not good at prayer, it's rooted in religion. See, if prayer is a religious exercise, you may not be good at it. In fact, you might mess it up. I think that's one of the reasons we get so nervous about prayer sometimes, is we we're afraid that we're gonna mess it up. But you cannot mess up prayer. Because you're praying to a God who loves you, a God who is so understanding, a God who is so gracious and merciful and incredible and loving, and all these other words we could use. He is so good, you cannot mess up a conversation with him. Some of the greatest men and women of God yelled at God in prayer. You can read about it in scripture. You cannot mess this up. You don't need to be nervous about prayer because you cannot botch it. It's about relationship. We're gonna see Jesus make that point in the people he's talking to. We're gonna start in Matthew chapter 6, verse 5. Jesus says now about prayer. When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on the street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I assure you that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father secretly. Then your father who knows all secrets, he will reward you. So Jesus is describing the Pharisees, these men who prayed very extravagant public prayers, prayers that religion would celebrate. These men thought they were spiritually superior, everyone else thought they were spiritually superior. There is no such thing as spiritual superiority. It does not exist. Jesus leveled the playing field. But these people didn't understand that. They looked at these men and the way they prayed, and they're like, I can never be like that. I can never walk out in front of a huge crowd and say some incredible, extravagant prayer. I can't do that. Jesus says, that's not what God wants you to do. He begins to describe prayer in relational terms. He says, Hey, go away by yourself. Shut the door. Have private time with God. What does that sound like? That sounds like a relationship. Like when we're with someone we love and we want to just go away and be together, just the two of us, for a while, so we can talk, so we can get away from everything else. So Jesus is making that shift happen in their minds, religion to relationship. And then he continues when you pray, don't babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again. Don't be like them, because your father knows exactly what you need, even before you ask him. So again, he's describing prayer in relational terms. It's about a father desiring to meet the needs of his children. One of the greatest things to celebrate and admire in religion is devotion, dedication. These people were used to saying the same prayers every single day. In fact, in their culture, there were two specific prayers they were supposed to say every morning, every afternoon, and every evening. One of them, which is now called the Amadah, was about 20 prayers, a collection of almost 20 prayers they were supposed to repeat every single day, three times a day. For their whole lives, prayer has been an exercise in repetition. And in the context of religion, that's to be celebrated. That's admirable, that is devotion. But Jesus says that's not necessary. Prayer is not about saying some magic phrase over and over again. Saying it enough times that you finally get God's attention. That's not what it is at all. One of the things I've loved about having kids is that children are born really good at expressing what they want. That is not something they have to learn. My daughter is barely over one, and even at one year old, she is very familiar with a group of girls you may know as Anna and Elsa, okay? I don't understand how the movie Frozen has penetrated our culture so completely that a one-year-old likes the song Let It Go. I don't understand, but it has happened. My daughter loves the song Let It Go. She loves that song. And so in the car the other day, my wife and I had this idea, and it was a terrible idea, but we thought it was brilliant. You've had those ideas. We played the song Let It Go. We pulled it up on our phone, we played it, and she's in the backseat, she's laughing, she's going crazy, she's like singing along as much as a one-year-old can. And then it's done, and she said, More. And we're like, Oh, yeah, okay, we can play it again, right? So we played it the second time, and again she says, more. And we're like, all right, we'll play it again. We try to find different versions of it, like cover versions of Frozen, because we heard it so many times. I think at one point we played it like 16 times in a row, and I'm driving, going, Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why is it that when she says more, we're like, yeah, okay, okay, sure, we'll we'll do this again. Why is that? Because we're driving ourselves nuts for the sake of our one-year-old. She's not even gonna remember this moment. It will not happen. And it's because as parents, we love our children, and when they have a desire, there's something inside of us that naturally wants to meet it. Sometimes to the point of ridiculousness where we have to stop and go, what are we doing? See, God is the perfect father. Persistence in prayer, it's a great thing. But Jesus is saying you don't have to repeat the same things over and over again to get God's attention. He loves you. And the moment you ask, the moment your heart even desires something that you really need, God knows it and he cares. Religion is not about, or sorry, prayer is not about religion, it's not about repetition, it's about relationships. So when you pray, pray understanding that God is your father, he wants to meet your need. And see, all this teaching, it's all building up to the actual prayer that Jesus is going to pray. It's a lot of buildup, right? Have you ever had something in your life that had a lot of buildup? Someone had hyped something up to you a lot, they had really gone into detail about how awesome something is, and they're explaining it, and they're like, all right, you're ready, you ready to do this? Maybe it's some food you're about to eat or whatever, and then they give it to you and it's just a little bit anticlimactic. You ever had that experience? All right, that's about to happen. Okay, so Jesus, Jesus does this. He says all this stuff, there's all this setup. Then he says, Hey, pray like this. Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored, may your kingdom come soon. May your will be done here on earth just as it is in heaven. Give us our food for today, and forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And don't let us yield to temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. This prayer is it's so simple. I mean, Jesus basically says, our Heavenly Father, says, God, I think you're amazing. He says, May your name be kept holy. We might say, God, you're incredible. And he says, Hey, may your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, he's saying, Hey, just do your thing, God. Make your will happen. Give us our food for today. Help us eat. Help us enjoy life. Forgive our sins. Help us forgive those who have who have sinned against us. Give us the strength to do that. And then he says, Hey, God, help us stay strong, keep us safe from temptation. This is crazy simple prayer. And I know there had to be at least a few people that were there that day that looked at one another after Jesus prayed and went, That's it? That prayer, that's all this buildup he's been telling us that prayer is different than anything we've ever experienced. We've been doing it wrong because we're just thinking about it in terms of religion, and then he just prays that. I mean, I was expecting more. Who else was expecting more? Wouldn't it have been awesome if Jesus had said, hey, first thing we gotta do is stretch before we pray. Okay? Because we're about to pray. People, we're about to pray. So I need you to stretch, eat a banana, have some potassium in your body to keep from cramping. You need to be properly hydrated because we're about to pray. And then he tells everyone the prayer position. This is the position you have to be in when you pray, because we're gonna be doing this for a while. So let's get ready and let's do this. Let's get loud, let's pray. That's kind of what you expect. This is the Son of God. This is God Himself saying, I'm gonna show you how to pray. I spoke the world into existence. I said a word, and the sun appeared in the universe. I'm about to show you how to speak to God. You're expecting something epic. And we get this. It's so simple. It's so simple. Jesus says, if you want to pray, if you want to pray in a way that just connects you with God, pray simple prayers. It's not about extravagance. It's about communicating your heart to God. I know some of us in the room might be thinking the same thing now. Hey, I want to learn how to pray. It's simple, but that's it doesn't seem like it's gonna revolutionize my prayer life. That's where we start. We pray simple prayers. I want to give us all three steps, three really simple things we can do to pray simple prayers. Because this is so much easier than it sounds, but at the same time, it's hard, especially for those of us who have grown up in church, we have to unlearn some things, that's always tough. So here's the first step to praying simple prayers. Use your own words. That's step one. Use your own words. I don't know what it is about prayer, because I grew up in church, but there is something about me when I pray where I start to use words and phrases that I only use when I pray. These are things I would never say. There are whole expressions that I use when I pray that I would never say anywhere else. For example, the word O, like OH. I say O a lot when I pray. Oh God. Oh God, hear me. Oh God, oh God, just please, oh God, let this happen. Oh God, oh God. And I say O a lot, and I don't do that anywhere else. I never go to my wife and say, oh, Megan. If you would just, oh, if you would, oh, oh, if you would, oh, if we could just oh go to a restaurant tonight and if we could, oh, order some. I don't do that, but when I pray, I do. And see, there's nothing wrong with having such an intimate relationship with God where you have a vocabulary you use with him that you maybe only use with him, that's that's fine. But for me, when I pray, I sort of shift into this different person. And I feel like I have to use special words, I have to use a different language. And so I have all these things that I say over and over again that I don't ever say anywhere else. And so it doesn't really feel like it's me talking. One of the words I use way too much is the word awesome. In fact, and I'll just pull the curtain for you guys, you'll hear me say words on stage like incredible a lot because I'm trying really hard not to say awesome. One time five years ago, I gave a message and I said the word awesome 57 times. 57 times. I counted it. I look back, I remember listening to it going, man, I've said awesome a bunch of times in this message, and then I started to count 57 times. In fact, at the beginning of the message, I prayed and I thanked God for his awesomeness. And that is not even a word. I looked it up, that's not even a word. But I said, God, thank you for your awesomeness. And here's the thing, I looked at that back then, I was like, oh, that's stupid. Why did I do that? But now I look at it and I think about it differently. I go, man, maybe God, maybe God loves that. Because that's me. I say the word awesome a lot. And God probably likes it when I talk to him like I talk, when I say, God, you're awesome. Help today, be awesome. Thank you for my awesome children. Thank you for my awesome wife. Thank you for this awesome church. So I use the word awesome a lot when I pray because I want to pray like I talk. I want it to be simple. I want it to be real. Use your own words. There are no magic words in prayer. Even the word amen, you don't have to say that, just so you know. You don't have to. Jesus didn't say it at the end of this prayer. Amen, it just means so be it. Or let it be. I don't recommend saying let it be because that Beatles song will get stuck in your head and you will never kill me by praying. You know, God, let this happen, let it be, let it be. Let it be, oh let it be, right? You'll start. Once that song's in your head, it's there forever. So you're welcome because you got that all day long now. Okay? Just whispering some words of wisdom. Just let it be, right? That's all I'm doing. See, you don't even have to say amen. You can just say, all right, bye. You can say that. If you want prayer, it's it's relationship, it's not religion. Step two pray, pray short prayers. There is nothing wrong with long prayers. In fact, I I've had some amazing experiences in my life, I know many of us have, where we have prayed, we've lost track of time, and we're just praying for an hour. And those are great experiences, but there is nothing more spiritual about a long prayer than a short prayer. In fact, I want to read this again. This prayer that Jesus prays, and we're gonna put a timer up on the screen. They're gonna start that as soon as I start reading, okay? So let's check this out. And I'm gonna read at a normal pace, it's a little slower than I actually talk. Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored. May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done here on earth just as it is in heaven. Give us our food for today and forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us, and don't let us yield to temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. All right. 17 seconds. Seventeen seconds. We don't have to outdo Jesus. Okay? There is nothing wrong with long prayers. In fact, they're they're great. But I'm saying you shouldn't feel guilty if you if you sit down to pray and you pray for 15 seconds. You're just one second behind Jesus. That's not bad. You know, if you sit down to pray and all you can get out is God, I'm I'm struggling today. I'm having a hard time at work, I don't know what to do, I'm I'm frustrated, I need your help, so just do something. If that's all you can get out, you have not you've not frustrated God. You you haven't done something unspiritual because your prayer's only been a few seconds long. In fact, you're you're following the example that Jesus set. You can pray short prayers. Pray using your own words, pray short, and here's the third step pray out loud. Now here's why. Here's why. God knows what we think. He totally does that. You can actually see it in scripture. There's many times where the Pharisees were thinking something, and the Bible actually says Jesus knew their thoughts, and that's really cool. God knows exactly what we're thinking. Scary but cool at the same time. Uh so us praying out loud, it's not for God's benefit. It's not like God's up in heaven going, say it a little louder. I'm a long way away, I can't hear you. Please just cup your hands together, yell, please, people yell. It's for our benefit. Because I found this in my life that if I want to have a real relationship with God, I have to treat my relationship with Him like a real relationship. And one of the things I do with everyone I have a real relationship with is I talk to them. I speak. And if all I ever do with God is think, if all I ever do with God is talk in my head, he'll hear that. But it makes the relationship seem very different from my end than it does when I pray out loud. When I pray, usually it's a mixture of thinking, thoughts to myself, and then saying certain things out loud. But there is something special about praying and actually speaking out loud what you're what you're thinking, what your heart desires and needs. It kind of forces us to do what Jesus said, it forces us to go off by ourselves, to shut the door behind us and to pray in private. Because if you're gonna speak out loud, you probably want to do that. Um certain situations, it's fine to pray out loud in front of a lot of people, but if someone's getting on your nerves and you say, God, please help me not kill this person out loud, right? It's not gonna go well. So sometimes we gotta pray silently, but but when we pray out loud, we we do exactly what Jesus said. We just have this natural tendency to follow his instructions, to go by ourselves. At my house, there's this room that we have on our main level, and I go there in the mornings, I go there at night, and I just shut the door and I pray. And I pray out loud. I don't have to worry about who's hearing me, I don't have to worry about who's around. I just pray out loud. So you can pray in your own words, you can pray short prayers, and you can speak them out loud. Treat it like a real relationship. You do that, you are praying simply. And simple prayers, simple prayers refresh our prayer life. Simple prayers get the ball rolling for those of us that don't know how to approach prayer. And this is how we start. We pray simple prayers. So let's do that this week. This week let's let's pray. Let's commit to praying. Some of us have never even prayed before, but commit to it. Pray. And try your best to pray in your own words. Don't feel worried about how long you're praying. It's okay if it's short. And and find a place where you can go talk out loud to God. Do those things. Pray simple prayers, and you will see results. You will. Next week, we're gonna look at my favorite prayer in all of Scripture. It is Psalm 3. This is what it says, is my favorite prayer. Slap all my enemies in the face. That is this is by far my favorite prayer in all of Scripture. How many of you have ever prayed something like this? And some of you have, you should. I love this. This is David, who the Bible says is a man who had a heart like God. Yeah, he is a man after God's own heart. His heartbeat was in rhythm with God's heart, and so he prayed this: slap all my enemies in the face. Very descriptive prayer. Next week we're gonna talk about how we pray honest prayers. How we can complain to God, we can whine to God, we can yell at God, we can be angry, we can be frustrated. We can pray honest prayers. That's what we're gonna talk about next week. This week is simple, next week is honest. But let's go, let's pray right now. Let's have an amazing week approaching God and this relationship that He's given us. God, thank you so much for all you've done for us. Thank you for this family of amazing people. God, help us pray this week. Help us see prayer for what it is, this opportunity we have to have a conversation with the God that created us. We don't need to be intimidated by prayer because it's not about religious exercise, God. This is about a relationship that we have with you. We want to express our hearts to you. So take away the confusion, take away the fear. And for those of us that have prayed a long time, help prayer become a refreshing thing for us. Help us get out of the routine. This week, Lord, we pray that you strengthen us to engage with you in a conversation like we never have before and to start by praying simple prayers. We ask all this in your name. Amen. Amen.