Pray First | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

private prayer.

I think so often this is sometimes where the the breakdown is in our our faith journey. That we do okay in the public thing, and it's a great place to start where we come to church like this, and we get, you know, we get filled up, and we're taught about the things of God, but I need you to hear from me. I can teach you about prayer in church, but you will learn and you will master prayer not at church, but in the closet. And you've got to figure out how to at some point develop a private relationship with God. What I love about Jesus is he didn't just have the public relationship, he also had a private one. Now just like any other relationship in our life, we've got to figure out how to wrestle through the dynamics when nobody else is around. I don't if you ever know a couple that's like way too much PDA, like you almost warn them when you bring them over to your house or like, hey, just know it gets a little bit weird. You're like, can you guys stop petting each other at church? Like what are we talking about? Like what's happening here? Know? Like imagine that couple, right? All PDA in public. The moment they walk in the doors of their house, they're like, okay, you go to your room, I'll go to my room, and we'll we'll see each other tomorrow night when we go back out to dinner in public.

We don't be like, that's weird. Like, what are you talking about? Right? You don't you don't watch a show together. You don't do anything together behind the scenes. And and for a lot of us, the truth is is that's kind of symbolic. That that's a picture of what sometimes our relationship with Jesus looks like. And I don't think it's malicious, but it's like we haven't yet learned how to take what we learn in the public and translate it into into private. And I think the goal over the next twenty one days for a lot of us was to go, how do we take these things that we can learn in church and begin to practice them in the private? And for others of us, maybe it's actually the inverse. For for some of you, your problem isn't necessarily having a private personal relationship with God. Like, you do okay with that, but your challenge is that in the public moments, when there's an opportunity to take a stand for the cause of Christ, when it would potentially cost you, sometimes you shy away from it. And I think the invitation for you is just as important to learn to take the power source that is your private relationship with God and allow it to begin to embolden you to live publicly.

Here's what Jesus did better than anybody. He had an amazing public relationship with God, but he also had a thriving private relationship with God that we see all over the place. There's two I wanna read to you this morning. Luke chapter five verse 15 says, but Jesus but despite Jesus's instructions,

the report of his power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often, not once, but often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. Luke is recounting, okay, all the times that Jesus would

he would do these big public gatherings and crowds would form and supernatural miracles would take place and lives were changed and marriages were restored. It was incredible,

And he's like, but Jesus kept doing this thing where he would he would leave. He would disconnect and he would go away to the wilderness to be alone and pray with God. And Jesus was modeling for us, if you don't figure out how to break away from the busyness, the the religious, the ritualistic aspect

of this life, your life will become so chaotic. It will be the thing that drives you. But Jesus was like, I will not be driven by just the popular opinion. I won't be driven by what my calendar says. I will be driven by what my father is asking me to do.

He figured out in his world how to separate from the the noise, the chaos, and the confusion to spend time alone

with his father in heaven. Mark chapter one records another time. It says in verse 35 that before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and he went out to an isolated place to pray. Later, Simon and the others went out to find him, but when they found him, they said, bro, everybody is looking for you.

Like, you gotta remember, if you go read Mark chapter one, Jesus is in a town and he's healing all these people. And word gets out that the miracle worker is in town and people are coming from all over. They're bringing their their sick children. They're bringing their their their parents that are desperate for a miracle to Jesus and what does he do?

He disappoints a lot of people and he leaves the crowds to spend time alone with God and it tells us, you and I cannot do everything in this life. And there are times over these next twenty one days where you potentially are going to have to disappoint people so that you can prioritize your relationship with God.

Jesus said, I will not be led by what the crowds are asking me to do. I will be led by who my father in heaven is and I will I am seeking his approval and his approval only. He is in such a deep time of prayer that he's forgotten

everything else happening around him. Disciples are to go like, dude, we've got we've we've got some things to do. Like, there's people that are waiting for you. Here's what I think Jesus was modeling. I think here's the the reason we need to figure out how to have a private relationship with God because the deepest relationships may start in public, but I'm you, they they are built

in private. Just like any marriage. Right? I love getting to do weddings and being a part of the ceremony where two go through the process of becoming one, and we celebrate and we party, and it's awesome. It's great. It's amazing. Everybody celebrates the wedding,

but now that couple has to figure out how to go home with all the chaos and the noise behind them, and they have to figure out now how do we build a marriage.

The greatest relationships might start in public, but they're built and they're developed in private. Ian Bown says that public prayer is of little value unless it's founded on and followed by private prayer.

Here's what I'm trying to get you to see over these next twenty one days. I would actually venture to guess as we make an intention to go, God, we're going to seek you over the next twenty one days. We're going to fast and we're going to pray that all of sudden the enemy is going to come in and try to do all types of things. He's gonna make your calendar more busy than it's ever been. He's gonna make work more chaotic than it's ever been. He's gonna make things begin to get really loud in your life, and you've gotta make a decision that the most important thing that you will do every single day is spend time with God.

More important than your time with your wife,

more important than your time with your kids, more important than your time planning out your day, more important than the time that you spend in the gym, all of which are important things. The most important. The one thing that you cannot afford to not the one thing you can't afford to not do is to spend time with God. Over the next twenty one days, we're making a goal. We're making our decision to go, God, we're gonna seek you above everything else. We're gonna make an appointment with you and we're going to keep it. Why? Because Jesus modeled. He modeled what a life of private prayer looks like. The second thing that I think he did that I wanna lean into a little bit this morning is he modeled passionate

prayer.

Now, again, just in transparency, I'm mostly speaking to all of you who have a complexion that looks like mine. K? For us white people, we gotta learn what passionate prayer looks like. For all my my brown and black brothers, this is something that's a little bit more natural to who you are. Right? But for us Anglo white Saxon people, we're not necessarily known as being passionate

people. Right? If you're raised like me, you think about prayers like I was raised Catholic, which is very it's very pious. It's very holy. You're like, thou is father. I approach thee, and I I come before thee as a holy servant before you, and you're just like, what what is happening right now?

And I think sometimes when people they'll say things like, Daniel, I I wanna pray. I just don't know how to pray. It's because we think that prayer is doing something other than what we're already doing right now, which is just having a conversation,

learning to talk to each other. And sometimes there are times in our relationships where things you gotta you gotta turn up the temperature a little bit. You've gotta you gotta have some emotion. You gotta have some passion. I love when you ask a couple, like, okay, what do you guys normally fight about? They're like, oh, our relationship is so great. We actually we don't fight at all. I'm like, fool, you're not even married. Like, what are you talking about? Right? Like, don't fight at all. Been married for ten minutes. What are we talking about? You know? Like, at some point, again, I love my wife. My wife is incredible, but there are times over the duration of our marriage where things happen and like the temperature get raised a little bit. Sometimes you gotta have some some passionate conversation. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes

we think that when when the temperature turned up in our life, when when when our feelings and emotions are at an all time high, that somehow we're supposed to remove those things from God. And I'm giving some of you permission. You've got to over these next twenty one days learn

to bring that passion to your prayer life. You've got to learn to bring the the big feelings, the big emotions, and the big things to God because he can he can deal with them. I love that Jesus modeled for us. Here's what you do when life feels like it is overwhelming.

You don't run from God, you run to him. Matthew chapter 26 records Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane. It's the night that he's going to be betrayed, and he knows that the next couple days of his life are going to be unbelievable. They're going to be unbearable.

And Jesus is not dignified. He is not pious. He's he's passionate. Look at what it says in Matthew chapter 26 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. When was the last time that you were anguished and distressed in prayer? When is the last time you brought the realness of the emotions that you were feeling and experiencing to God?

Instead of feeling like those are the things you've gotta hide from God, and you only you only go to him when when everything is perfect, and you know the right words to say, and you you've got all the emotions kind of settled, and you realize, okay, God will never give me more than I can handle. And we have all these, like, platitudes that we use. I think there are sometimes we've just gotta bring our our pain, our frustration,

our disappointment, our betrayals, our let downs

to the God in heaven that can deal with them. Look how it continues. Verse 38 says, my soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. He says, stay here and keep watch with me. He went on a little bit further and he bowed with his face to the ground praying, my father, if it is possible,

let this cup of suffering be taken away from me, yet I want your will to be done, not mine. You see Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane wrestling with the father going, I don't know if what you're doing is best. I don't understand what's happening completely.

I want to trust you, but I don't really know how to, and he's not dignified. He's literally on the ground in his knees, on his knees kind of pounding the pavement going, God, I don't know what to do. I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed.

My my kids are doing the thing again. My husband's doing the thing again. I I swore I would never go down this road again, and yet here I am, and I'm just here today to give some of you permission. You've got to learn how to process with God. He doesn't need your piety. He needs your passion.

I'm not saying that it's every single day, but there are moments where you've gotta bring that passion to prayer. And again, I love when people say that we are echoes church like, that's the charismatic and pentecostal church. I'm like, you've never been to a charismatic and pentecostal church.

Trust me. There's usually a shofar in the corner. Somebody is screaming in tongues or somebody over here making like animal noises that we're not really sure what's happening. And again, I got saved and I spent some time in some charismatic and Pentecostal churches, and I love a lot about it. But there are some times I've watched people on the way that they pray, I'm like, that is a little bit scared. I don't know if I should run or if I should try over and catch some of the anointing. Know, like I don't know. I'm not really sure what's happening.

But here's the truth of what I know. If tomorrow I get a diagnosis that I've got cancer, you know who I'm calling to pray for me?

I'm calling the crazy people that have the shofars in the corners. I'm going, get the oil, get the horns, do all the things. Like I I want somebody that's praying for me that actually believes that God in heaven hears their prayers,

that doesn't feel like, well, I've got to approach God in a way that is dignified and that I just need to no. I'm I'm here to tell you that maybe

maybe the resistance that you're feeling in your relationship with God, the the breakthrough that you've been waiting for, potentially is on the other side of you getting past your comfort zone. And you going, okay. There's some things that I don't understand.

Why do we in worship raise our hands during worship? Because it's the universal symbol of surrender.

It's also an instruction from heaven that we actually are called to worship God with who we are, and it's not that we're doing it because it's it's some religious duty. No. We're we're doing it because we're trying to go beyond our own means and our own understanding going, God, we we worship you. We lift up your name. We we magnify the name of Jesus. Here's what I'm belaboring a little bit today.

I think some of you need to make a decision over the next twenty one days what is going to set the intensity of your life. Your problems or your prayers? Because only one of two can set them. What I'm encouraging you to do is to let the intensity of your prayer match the intensity of your problems.

If you're walking through some really hard things over these next twenty one days, man, you better do more than lift up a ten second softball prayer to heaven. If you're asking for God to restore marriages that are on the verge of destruction,

I'm telling you, you gotta do a little bit more than just religious platitudes.

If you are praying and believing for prodigal children to come home, maybe some things inside of us need to begin to come out from within us. We have a God in heaven who modeled for us at some point, at some junctures in the road. We've gotta figure out how to bring our intensity to God, our passion

to God. I love James chapter five verse 17. It says that Elijah was as human as we are. I love that it gives us the disclaimer. Remember, Elijah was just a human like us because we will try to justify Elijah's

ability to do things because he was other than us, but he was just a human like we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly, passionately, fervently that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years.

James is saying is that there was one guy that believed that God would answer his prayers, so he prayed fervently and passionately for God to stop rain from falling. I know it seems random, but God had told the nation of Israel that if you live in rebellion,

I will actually stop pouring out rain on the earth because the only way that you're able to even feed your crops is through my provision. So Elijah said they're a bunch of they're a bunch of rebels. They won't listen. So God, make it stop raining and God listened and answered his prayer. Again, I belabor the point.

When you and I pray, heaven responds. God moves. And if you need a miracle over the next twenty one days, you better figure out how to get undignified in your prayer life in some moments

because God will meet and match your intensity. I love that Jesus, again, he was walking through one of the hardest days of his life when his best friend John the Baptist was killed. His cousin, the one that he had a special relationship with, the forerunner of Christ, he said that's that's him. He's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That John the Baptist

was killed for his faith in Jesus. And when Jesus hears the news, here's how he responds. Matthew chapter 14 verse 12. It says, later, John's disciples came for his body and they buried it. And then they went in and they told Jesus what had happened. And as soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone.

What did Jesus do the moment he got the worst news he'd ever received to date? He did what he had learned to do when life was crashing around him. I need to go spend time alone with God. Because there's this thing that we need to learn as spiritual beings that are learning how to be human.

They're learning how to navigate this life. People will tell you when you go through a hard season of grief, you've lost somebody really important to you. They'll say things that are really well intended like, well, just give it some time because time heals all wounds. And I'm just here to tell you it's a great mantra.

It's got great intentions behind it, but it's just not true. Time doesn't heal everything, but God does. God can,

and I'm telling you there are some of you who are walking through some really heavy grief. There are some of you that are just a couple weeks out from the first Christmas, the first holidays without that loved one that was supposed to be there,

and I'm here today to remind you and to encourage you to don't run from God in your grief, instead take your grief to the God that can do something about it. He can heal the wound, and I'm somebody, man, I believe that counseling and therapists have their place and they have their time, but there are things that we are going to therapy for that God can potentially heal and restore in a second, in a moment,

and Jesus' default was what do I do when life is falling down around me? I go to my father in prayer. I seek him because I know I know that God is big enough to deal with all of my hurts and my hang ups. Again, I just want to tell you today that God God can handle

whatever habits you're doing in the secret that nobody knows about. He can handle whatever hang ups you think disqualify you from being able to be used by God. God can deal with your doubts. He's not afraid of your big questions. He's not afraid of your frustrations. God can deal with them. But you've

you've got to bring them to him. You've got to figure out how to passionately come to God as you learn to pray in private. Jesus prayed privately. Jesus prayed passionately. But I think the most important thing that he gave us is what I wanna kinda close with is he gave us also a a plan for prayer.

Because, again, I think sometimes this is for us where things fall apart. Because I I can preach a message like this and you go, okay. That's awesome. I need to go pray more. And tomorrow, you'll you'll go sit in the room, you'll turn the candle, you'll light the candle, you'll light the incense, and you're like, okay, God, I'm ready to pray. And you're like, oh, I actually don't know how to pray. I don't know what to do. And so, Jesus, I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. Right? Like and here's what I love about Jesus. Remember all of his disciples, like his closest friends, they they were all Jewish. K? That means that they were they were trained in traditional

Hebrew prayers. They they knew how to pray as little Jewish boys, but what they had never seen before was a rabbi that prayed the way that Jesus prayed, and there's only one thing that they asked Jesus to teach them to do like he did. It's not the supernatural.

They never asked him how to preach a sermon like he preached. The only thing that they asked him to teach them was they said, would you teach us to pray the way that you pray?

The thing that you do that's different than any other rabbi we've ever seen, though you teach with authority, though you the supernatural flows out of you, the thing that we realize is the power source of it all is prayer. So teach us to pray like you pray. And Jesus gives us through them.

He gives us a model. He gives us a plan on how to pray that's recorded in Matthew chapter six verse nine. This is his answer to them. He says, guys, pray.

Pray like this. Now here's what we got to be careful with. The rest of what I'm about to say, you've heard before. It's called the Lord's Prayer. And what we've done is we've taken it, and we've made it something that I had to as a kid go pray nine times in order to pay for my sins that I did, and the priest said, this is your penance. Go say 10 our fathers. And we've taken Jesus' model, and we've turned it into a thing that we just do repetitively.

Jesus never said pray this prayer. He said, pray like this. K. Pray like this. Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food that we need, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And do not let us yield to temptation,

but rescue us from the evil one. I'm telling you Jesus right there, he gave us a model. Here's how to pray. If you don't know how to pray, here's how to pray. Jesus gives us some things to do, some processes to start with. He says, start with when you sit down to pray tomorrow,

remember who it is that you're praying to. It is our father in heaven.

You start by praying to a God that is not distant, that is not far, that is not some abstract spiritual being out there. You're not praying to mother earth. You are not praying to a spiritual being. You are not praying to an enlightened version of yourself. You are connecting with God relationally

who wants you to know him as a father who has grafted you into his family. You are no longer an orphan. It doesn't matter what your relationship with your earthly father looked like, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

You today have a father in heaven that welcomes your time with him. That just like any earthly parent, when their kid walks in the room goes, dad, mom, can I spend some time with you? You go, yeah, of course. I'll I'll drop whatever I have to do to spend time with you. Jesus is reminding us that when we spend time with God, you're not walking into an office

begging and pleading with your boss to give you two minutes of his time. You are walking into the father in heaven who made you, who's excited to connect with you. He says, remember who it is that you're praying to connect with God relationally.

Then he says, go into hallowed be your name, our father in heaven, holy is your name, hallowed be your name. He says, you gotta worship God for who he is. Now this is important. God wants to relate to us as a father. The scriptures say that he he's a friend of sinners,

but we also have to remember that God is not one of us. He's not like us. He's not just your homeboy. He's also he's also completely

holy and set apart and other than, and he doesn't live in this world. He lives outside of time and space, and holy is his name. Majestic is the name of Jesus. And so, yes, he's our father, but he is he's holy, and he's perfect, and all of our imperfections are made perfect in him. He says that's who you're praying to. You've got to worship God for who he is. You've got to keep his name

holy. Verse three, he says the next verse he says, your kingdom come, your will be done. As you connect to your father in heaven, as you remember how good he is, what you begin to do is you begin to call his kingdom into our earth. You begin to submit every single day to his lordship.

It's you saying, God, I want your kingdom not mine.

This is about you not me. God, it's your life, not my own. God, I want your will, I want your power, I want your authority, and what we're doing is we're bringing all the things that are out of alignment with the will of God back into alignment with the will of God, going, God, we want we want your kingdom to come. We want your will to be done,

not mine. The scriptures say that there's a way that makes sense to a man, but in the end is what leads to death.

So every day in prayer, we remind ourselves, God, I want I want your plan to be done. God, shut all the doors to my plans and open up just the ones that you have for me. I want your kingdom, not mine. And then he says, give us today our daily bread. It's an invitation to humbly express your reliance on him every single day.

Every day you have an opportunity to make a decision of who's going to be Lord of your life. You or God. And every day, he says, remember that you are desperate for God today as much as you've ever been in your life.

Doesn't matter if you've been following Jesus for forty years. Today, you are you are desperate. You are you are reliant on him to move. We can do nothing without you, God. And sometimes that's hard when we live in a culture that's taught us how to have an emergency,

you know, savings account that's got three to six months of expenses sitting in a separate account that's like a high yield savings account so we can get to it quickly, but it's still earning us some interest, and we go, I don't really need God for my daily bread because I a lot of my own bread that's stored up. This is our opportunity to remember that, God, all of this is falling apart. All of this is perishing.

I need you. But I also want to show you, it doesn't say give me today my daily bread. It says give us today our daily bread. It's a reminder that we've been called to a family, that we belong to a body of believers. Over these next twenty one days, we're not going on this journey alone, that we are together,

united with our brothers and sisters all around the world who've been grafted into the family of God, and together we call on the name of God. Then he says, forgive us our debts.

This is a decision every single day to confess and be cleansed of the things that keep us separated from God. It's a decision every single day to go, I don't I don't confess my sin because I need God to save me over and over again. That's poor theology. Once you say yes to Jesus, you are you are sealed and you are set apart and you will get to spend eternity with God in heaven. But you will still struggle with sin on this side of eternity,

and every day you need to make a decision to confess that sin so that the thing that is separating you between you and your relationship with God can be dealt with. And it's us going, God, would you forgive me of my debt so that I can be cleansed because I know that you are faithful and you are just and you wanna forgive me of my sins. And then he says,

as we have forgiven our debtors. That's a powerful prayer. God, would you forgive me to the extent that I'm willing to forgive the people that have offended me? And just as much as I need to be forgiven, I need to I need to let go of

the hurts. I need to let go of the resentments that I would be tempted to carry with me today. Here's what Jesus is saying is you've got to release offense and forgive every single day. Don't you dare take yesterday's grudge and grievance into today's grace. There are new mercies available every single day,

and what the enemy will try to get you to do is to hold on to yesterday's grievances and frustrations. But I'm telling you, all it's gonna do is it's gonna ruin, and it's gonna diminish today's grace. Some of the greatest work that some of you will do over the next twenty one days is beginning to learn to let go

of the the the unforgiveness that you've carried and you've harbored for years and years and years. He says, my father in heaven, I need you to help me forgive my debtors. And he says, lead us not into temptation.

It's this it's this ask every single morning to go, God, I need you to protect me from my flesh and from the enemy. As I leave this posture of worship, as I leave this moment of connection with you that I wish I could just stay in all day. The truth is I've gotta go out into this world. When God, I know that I'm just a couple clicks away on Instagram from going back to the very thing that I I have fought to get free from. And so I'm asking you, God, I'm asking you today to protect me from my flesh and from the enemy. Yes, we have a real enemy that is out there, but we also have an enemy that's in here that we're asking the spirit of God to help us to navigate. And then the last one, he ends with this. He says, deliver us from the evil one. It's this idea that God, there's a real enemy that wants to thwart the plans that you have for me. And I just want to tell you over the next twenty one days, you better prepare yourself because spiritual attack is going to come. It's the promise that when you make an intention, when you go, God, I'm gonna seek you in new ways. I'm gonna do all these things. The enemy goes, alright. Let's do this thing. And spiritual attack is one of those things that's confirmation

that God is moving. I honestly, I think you should be more terrified if you haven't felt any type of spiritual opposition in a long time. It means the enemy is not scared of you. It means the enemy is not worried about what it is that you're doing. But when you begin to make a decision and go, God, I'm gonna seek you, we just have to realize it's part of the world. It's part of this thing that Jesus said in this life, there's an enemy that wants to kill, steal, and destroy the life that Jesus has died for you to have. So we're gonna pray that God would deliver us from the evil one, that he would purify our actions and our attitudes.

Again, I think we've gotta realize that we're not we're not human beings that are learning how to be spiritual.

No. We we are spiritual beings that have to learn how to be human, to do this human thing. And what we're doing every single day is we're going before God remembering that I'm I'm grafted into a family. My father in heaven who's holy and perfect.

I'm asking you to move in power and move in might, and in a lot of the translations, it's debated on whether or not it should be there. There's usually a closing line. It says, in thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

Jesus says, you wanna have a relationship with God like I do? Pray like this. Start and understand that you are a son or a daughter of a king that loves you, has a father in heaven,

and begin to realize that at the end of this time of prayer, when you walk out of that prayer closet, when you walk out of that moment of prayer with God, that you walk as a person that has power and authority to bring the kingdom of God into the earth today.

That's the invitation over these next twenty one days. If you can learn to pray privately, if you can learn to pray passionately, you can go into it with a plan. I promise you, you will not recognize who you are on the other side of this twenty one days. I I don't want to try to overstate what I think God is going to do, but I genuinely believe that this is going to mark us as a church. That I think that there are opportunities

for you to walk out of bondage and things that have enslaved you for years and years and years. I think there's opportunity for you to see relationships that have been on the verge of failure for a long time to be restored supernaturally.

I think there are some of you who need a miraculous touch of heaven inside of your body for God to do what only he can do. But here's what I want to ask you to do, full of faith in a room, in an atmosphere

of God's presence. I'm gonna ask you right where you are as we start to close our services. I'm gonna ask you just to close your eyes, but put your hands out in front of you like this, like you're about to receive something. Because I want to pray,

and I want to invite the spirit and the power of God to fall and to move in us and through us. So father right now, God right now with our hands open, our hearts open before you, Father, we ask for you to do immeasurably more than we could ever hope or imagine. Father, I'm thankful that I can stand up here with 100%

certainty and clarity and confidence and tell every person in this room that when we seek you, we find you. That when we knock, God, you open the door,

and you want to. You wanna come into our lives. You wanna come into our hearts. You wanna dine with us. You wanna have a relationship with us. And so, father, I pray right now that you would move in power over these next twenty one days. God, wherever you wanna go, whatever you wanna do, our lives are yours.

Have them. In Jesus' name, all God's people said. Amen and amen. Hey, just okay. Real quick. We're not done yet. K? This is now the fun part of the service. We've been doing it all morning. It's been incredible.

You gotta trust me for just a second. Alright? I'm gonna ask everybody if you would just stand to your feet. The band is obviously behind me. They're getting ready to lead us through an unbelievable song.

What we're about to do is we're going to kind of we're gonna consecrate ourselves before the Lord. It's just a big churchy word that means that we're gonna set ourselves apart. If you go throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New, there are these moments in time where the the people of God, the nation of Israel, the new church in the book of Acts, before they were about to embark on something new, before they were about to enter a new temple, a new territory, God would tell the leaders of the church, I want you to gather the people,

and I want you to have a ceremony, and I want you to consecrate everybody with with oil, and I want you to anoint every single person in the room with oil. And as I was reading preparing this and going, God, how do we prepare ourselves for these twenty one days?

God said, I feel like we need to actually go through this process of consecrating ourselves before the Lord. And I know for some of us, this is like, I have no context for this. Let me just encourage

you. Nothing weird is about to happen. Okay? Just go with me and trust me. But what I'm gonna ask you to do is every single person, as the band leads us in a song, I'm gonna have you actually exit your rows. You're gonna have a team. There's a staff person that's in your row that's gonna release you. Everybody's gonna go out this way. Come down to the front. Our prayer team in the front is going to anoint you with oil. Again, your hair will look great when you leave here, just like it did when you walked in here. I promise.

And what we're going to do is we're going to just consecrate ourselves before God. Then when you're done, go back. Get back into your role. We'll just keep worshiping, and then as we're done, I'll come back, and I'll pray for us. But the point of this is us just going, God, we're consecrating ourselves before you. We're asking for you to set us apart for your purpose, That everything

tomorrow can be different if you are desperate for God to move. Amen? Amen.