Rhythms | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

Luke chapter five is where we'll be this morning, continuing in a series that Tyshawn started last week, looking at the rhythms of Jesus that we can put in our life to get the to get the results of Jesus' life. So let me pray. We'll jump in. Father, God, we thank you, Lord, so much for continuing to run after us even when we continue to run from you. And so, father, this morning, as we open up your scriptures, we just pray, God, that you would speak and you would speak clearly.

In Jesus' name, all God's people said,

amen and amen. I was thinking about it getting ready for this message. It was kinda like the picture, the visual that I kept getting about this idea that we're gonna look at today. The second rhythm that we're going to look at is this idea of getting alone with God and spending time in prayer.

The visual that God kept bringing me back to was a couple years ago when our family was going on a camping trip. We used have a trailer, and we would meet all of our friends at these different campsites, and, you know, we we loved it. It was awesome. Get the bikes and just go and get away for a little bit. And there's this one trip we were going to. This campsite was in the middle of nowhere, and my truck was kinda getting older and probably needed to be replaced, and our our trailer was probably loaded up with way too much stuff and weighed more than my truck could probably pull. But we're on this road out in the middle of nowhere. I don't know you ever seen those, like, two way road or, like, one way roads each way,

and you're like, if we break down here, like, this is where we're gonna meet Jesus, like, we're gonna die out here. Like, it was that kind of road. And all of a sudden, we get on this part where you're going up a pretty steep hill,

and about halfway through, my truck makes this funny noise and essentially all but loses power. It'll only go about ten, fifteen miles an hour, and I've got the pedal completely to the floor. And there's this whole line of people behind us, and I'm like, man, don't know what to do. So we just make the decision. We're gonna keep charging, just go slowly up over this hill, and eventually we'll coast, and try to find a place to pull over and figure out what's going on with the truck. Well, we get to the top of the hill, and as we start to come down, the craziest noise I've ever heard happens, and it literally felt like and sounded like the engine of my truck just completely fell out and hit the ground. And so we're like, something's scraping on the ground. We coast down. Eventually, we pull over to the side, and I get out and I look, and literally, my drive shaft is snapped in two, and it's just laying in the middle of the road, in the middle of nowhere with, like, barely any cell phone service. And we're like, man, what the heck are we gonna do? Right? And then a cop, like, three minutes later pulls up behind us, and he's like, hey. Are you guys alright? He checks on us, and he's he literally tells us. He says, hey. Just know that you're in the middle of, like, meth ville. K? Don't trust anybody out here. They're all tweakers. They're gonna try to rob you. And I was like, well, that's encouraging. Right? So kids, let's stay in the car. Right? And so they they get locked in, and we're like, man, we don't know what to do. Then all of sudden, out of nowhere, this random truck pulls past us and whips around and gets behind us. And I'm like, it's happening. The tweakers coming to rob us. Right? And this guy, no questions asked, just jumps under the truck, starts looking at it. He's like, oh, it's easy. It's two bolts. We get this thing fixed in my house in about ten seconds. And I was like, I'm not falling for it, bro. Right? Like, cop told me a bunch of tweakers, but he seemed like he was awesome. And so a buddy of mine, this amazing guy, he drives out. He picks up my family, takes the trailer, tows it to the campsite for us. I go with this guy and, you know, basically risk my life. We go to his house. He gets this thing up on a lift and literally, like, ten minutes later, has the whole thing put back together and fixed and good to go. I'm like, man, what do I owe you? And he's like, man, you don't owe me anything. Just call it a good Samaritan story. But he said, if you you're willing to, literally, he was like, I just don't have many friends. If you'll just sit and drink a beer with me, I I we can call it even. And I was like, that is my kind of deal. Like, I'm I'm in.

Until he went to the fridge and got a natural ice. And I was like, who drinks natural ice that's not 18 and in college? You know, like, that's that's not a thing unless you're doing beer math. And you're sitting here like, girl, why are we talking about natural ice in church on a Sunday morning? The the funny part was for me, was the visual that God kept bringing me back to this week in preparation for a message on spending alone time with God in prayer. See, often you could think that a car, as long as the engine's working and the gas tank is full, that you've got all the all the necessary components to make a vehicle drive. But the truth is is the drive shaft is incredibly important because the power that is generated in the engine that is fueled by the gasoline,

it's gotta go to the drive shaft, and the drive shaft is the thing that actually makes it work with all the wheels. All that to say, I think that prayer, potentially good visual, is the driveshaft of a life of faith.

See, church can be the engine that fuels this thing, but if we never learn how to spend alone time with God, I'm telling you, our faith will never make its way to the practical parts of our life. We won't begin to experience the breakthrough power that's available

in our homes and in our marriages and in our homes and in our spheres of influence. I believe with everything in me that prayer is the driving force behind the life of faith.

So the question that has to be asked is why do we spend such a little time praying as people? I think it's because we've been convinced that it's a bill of good. I think we've been sold something that is not true. Here's the big idea from the series that we're looking at. These three weeks, we're looking at three rhythms because here's the here's the point. I believe that if you want to experience the reality of Jesus, you want the results of Jesus' life, a life of peace and purpose and significance and meaning, you have to adopt the rhythms of Jesus.

Don't just look at what he said. Look at what he did. They say that we're only as healthy as our habits, so the question has to be asked, what what are our habits? I think potentially a better question if Jesus was not just God in human form, but he was also a human

showing us what a life submitted to the father led by the spirit of God, what what's possible

for a human to flourish on this side of heaven to look like, we've got to look at his rhythms. We've got to look at what he what he did, not just what he said. K. The three things we're looking at last week, we started with worship. That worship is a lifestyle that we live. It's not just something that we do on Sunday mornings for five minutes. Today, we're gonna talk about this thing that we see Jesus do often where he would get alone with God.

And next week, man, I'm so excited about this message. I almost wanna preach to you this week. Jesus was spirit led. What does it mean to be spirit led? Those are words that are so charged in church culture today that for some of you, even when I say spirit led, you're like, bro, those charismatic people are weird. I I think everybody, even my most conservative reformed Baptist friends would agree, we've gotta be spirit led. What what does that mean? I'll show you next week. But this morning this morning, I wanna talk to you about getting alone with God.

Learning how to be with God alone. It's something that Jesus did constantly, and I think that you'll see by the end of this message that it it was the reason that he's he had such a powerful public ministry because the prayer was the fuel source behind

the purpose. Luke chapter five is where we see this for the first time. Starting in verse verse 15, it says, but Jesus but despite Jesus' instructions, the report of his power spread even faster,

and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. It's interesting to to note that when Jesus would do miracles for people often,

he would tell them, guys, don't don't tell anybody about what happened. Why? Because he knew the word was gonna get out, and the crowd was actually going to become a hindrance to his purpose. What's interesting is that if Jesus operated today in 2025,

and and he had the ability to grow a crowd, you would think that he would do whatever influencer is trying to do today. Right? What why are we trying to gain crowds today? So that we can learn how to monetize them. If Jesus was living in today's world, his next move after the crowd was built was to get the YouTube channel and to get a tour manager and a literary agent and to build the brand that was Jesus so that he could leverage

the influence. But what's interesting with Jesus is he never did that. Almost every single time there was a crowd which you and I could be tempted to believe is the goal, we could be tempted to believe is what success looks like. When Jesus got the crowd, notice what he does with it. Verse 16, but Jesus often,

not one time, but often would withdraw to the wilderness for prayer. And all my introverts in the room said, amen. I

would ask you to identify yourselves, but I know that's overwhelming for you introverts. Right? I'm married to one, so I feel like I can speak on behalf of them. I I would ask the extroverts in this room to say say what's up too, but you guys would go crazy and start jumping around because we are a weird bunch. Right? What's interesting to me is that Jesus constantly,

not occasionally, withdrew from the crowd to be alone, but it had nothing to do with his personality.

It wasn't because he was introverted and needed to be away from people. What he was showing us is that spending time with God is not a personality thing. It's a kingdom principle thing. Look at Mark chapter one again. I can show you 20 different verses where this is there, but I'll just show you two this morning. Mark chapter one verse 35, this is where Jesus has spent an entire night in a village healing people. He's he's made deaf people be able to hear, blind people can see, the lame can walk, demons are removed from people. A crowd is standing outside of this house, the the people are worked into a fervor that Jesus is there, the miracle worker is in their town. And Mark chapter one verse 35 says, before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up

and he went out to an isolated place to pray. He constantly would go away to spend time with God. Why? Because he knew that prayer was the only thing that would maintain his purpose, and that sometimes the influence of the crowd will actually draw you away from purpose.

What it tells me is that sometimes in this life, the things that we can achieve that feel like success can actually be the very thing that lead to our demise if we don't learn to contextualize those things in light of the gospel.

If we don't have our worldview in order where we realize, man, all of this, this isn't my identity. This business is not where my worth comes from. It's just how I pay my bills, but my purpose and my significance is found in my identity

with God. And I operate out of that, and I stay connected to God. And it's how my work becomes a a place of purpose and not a place of identity. It's not who I am. It's just what I do. These kids aren't my identity. They're just a part of the calling that God has for me in this season.

Here's what I'm trying to get us to see this morning, that prayer is essential to the life of faith. Because prayer is, at its basic form, it's just communication.

I think often the reason that that we we don't pray is because maybe you you you were raised like me and you were told that prayer was like this super religious thing you had to do and you had to say the words perfectly and you gotta say them in the right order and you gotta say them at the right place and if you were kneeling down and you had beads, that combination was like super powerful. Right?

And then you start to read in the bible and you're like, wait, prayer just seems like a conversation. And it just seems like a a relationship. It's just communication. And here's the thing that we know about every other relationship in our life is that communication is the thing that equals a relationship.

Imagine for a moment, you're like, man, I got an amazing relationship with my wife or my husband. We haven't talked in six weeks, but, like, that that's normal. You're like, that's not normal. That's like serial killer vibes. You know? Like, that's that's not normal. Communication

in any other arena of our life is proof of the relationship. People will tell you that if you're newly you know, every time I'm doing premarital counseling, I tell couples, you're gonna hear this a lot. People tell you the number one cause of divorce, what is it? It's finances.

The second leading cause is an inability to get on the same page when it comes to desires and intimacy.

Third is bringing stress into the marriage. They will tell you that your marriage will fail because of finances or lack of intimacy or too much stress, and I'm here to tell you that that's not why marriages break down. Marriages break down when you forget and you don't learn how to communicate

about finances and lack of intimacy and stresses at work that you're bringing home. It's the communication that leads to the relationship, yet somehow we convince ourselves that we have this thriving relationship with God. But the truth is is there there hasn't been communication with him in years.

Maybe Sunday morning is the only place that we have any type of relationship with God. And I don't say this as to heave a bunch of judgment on you, but just as kind of a sobering reality for all of us that I don't think you actually have a relationship with God without a prayer life.

That I think without prayer, there really isn't much of a relationship there. I tried to even find data this week on, okay, how much does the average person pray?

But then I started to think about the data. If you were asked the question by some random person for a survey, hey, how much do you pray? You're gonna answer like me, like, way more than I probably actually do. Right? I'm gonna lie to the guy because I don't wanna tell him, like, I barely pray at all. Right? And so it's hard to get data on how do we act how much do we actually pray? But maybe I would venture to guess that if it's true about me, it's true about you, that all of us in this room could probably pray a little bit more.

And maybe maybe that prayer really is the thing that can drive and fuel the life of faith. I wanna remind us that Hebrews chapter four verse 16 tells us that we can come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.

I wanna remind us today that as followers of Jesus, we are part of one of the only world religions that says that God wants you to come to him boldly. Not after you figure out your life,

not after you get rid of the porn addiction, and after you figure out the the stuff and after you figure out the things going on in your heart, like, not after all that stuff. In the middle of it, in the middle of your messy life, God invites you to have a relationship with him, to boldly approach the throne of grace.

I don't know about you, but I'm thankful that I have a God that invites me to have a relationship with him in spite of me, in spite of my brokenness.

His invitation is to come boldly to the throne room of grace. There's three things that Jesus did that I think you and I need to do if we have any attempt at this next week. We go, okay. Cool. Sounds like I need to pray more. What do we begin to practically do? There's three things that Jesus did that I would encourage us to do as well. Jesus had a set time

of prayer. You'll notice that Jesus always prayed at the same time. For him, it was early in the morning. For some of you, I know you're a night owl. Okay? God is available at night just as much as he in the morning. Now for me, it works better in the morning, but God is just as available

at night. What is important is setting a time to go. This appointment on my calendar, it matters.

I promise you, if next week I told you there was a there was an appointment on your calendar that was gonna determine the trajectory of your family. It was gonna determine the financial future of your life. You would show up to that appointment.

What I'm trying to convince you of is that an appointment with God is just as important, maybe even more important than any other appointment on your calendar. So make an appointment with God. Secondly, Jesus had a set place of prayer.

This was something that somebody challenged me to do a couple years ago that has been transformative

in my prayer life. For me, it's it's been my office. K? I go to the gym in the morning. I come home. My my wife is out taking the kids to school. I walk in, and the home is quiet. The church hasn't started yet. The chaos hasn't started yet. And I walk into my office, and I don't know what it is, but when I walk across the threshold into my office, it becomes the tabernacle dwelling place with me and God. It's where I meet with God. And it's not that he's not available in my living room, but there's something about having a place where you know this is where I meet with God. It could be a chair in your house. It could be a bench at the end of a trail for you. It doesn't matter where you your place is,

but have a place. Jesus constantly would go to the Mount Of Olives. He had a place where he would meet with God. And thirdly, Jesus had a strategy for what he was gonna do when he got into a moment of prayer with God.

I'll give you a strategy at the end of this that you can run, but it's important to remember. Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this. Our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. He gave a a format. We think they're just words to recite, but it's a it's a format. It's a strategy to implement.

Here's what I'm trying to get us to see this morning, that you and I need to make an appointment with God this week and keep it.

If you wanna see 2026 be any different than any years before, I'm telling you, make a commitment to have an appointment with God every single day and then actually keep it and show up. And what I promise you will happen is that when you begin to pray regularly, irregular things will happen on a regular basis.

Here's what I mean. Any person that I've personally challenged, go, man, just for the next two weeks,

spend ten minutes a day, fifteen minutes a day, read a couple scriptures, spend time in prayer with God. I'll give you a model on how to do that. I promise you what you will begin to see is all of a sudden you're like, wait. I I see the hand of God moving. I start to sense things I wasn't sensing before.

I see financial things that are happening. I see relational breakthroughs happening. And all of a sudden, as you seek God, God begins to open the heavens, and the irregular begins to happen regularly for you. Let me just remind us this morning,

that is what a life of following God. That is what a life of walking by faith and not by sight is supposed to look like. You and I gotta remember that we are, by the very nature of the spirit of God living in us, we're supposed to be supernatural beings.

That doesn't mean that we can lift cars. It just means that we're not relegated to just walking through the same things that everybody in this world is walking through. We have access to a God that can change circumstances on our behalf, and we need to begin to be people who expect the unexpected to happen

when we get in line with God's will, when we begin to seek his face. There's six reasons why Jesus prayed

that I wanna show you today of why I think you and I need to pray as well. I promise to go quickly. The first one, why did Jesus pray? I think one of the first reasons why he spent so much time in prayer is he did it to prepare.

Now this is interesting to me because Jesus was 100% man, but he was also a 100% God. Yet he needed to spend intentional time with God to prepare for the calling that was on his life.

It tells me that there are things that God is going to ask you to do with your life. There are assignments that God is going to give you, and I believe that every single one of you here, God has a purpose for why you are here. You are not just going through the motions. You're not just here

to to build a business and get a house and slowly go through the upgrade process and eventually retire one day and then die and go to heaven. No. You have an assignment and a calling on your life that I hope at some point you begin to get a glimpse of. But I promise you, when you begin to see what God wants you to do, it's gonna be bigger than anything you can accomplish on your own.

Remember Jesus' baptism story? It was the very beginning of his public ministry. He was about to start the miracles, the three years of public ministry we're about to start. But do you remember what happened before the ministry?

The baptism moment happened, one of the most powerful scenes in the Bible. It's the only time in the scriptures where we see the entire

three p three beings of the trinity show up, God the father, Jesus, the son, and the holy spirit. He goes to the Jordan River. His cousin, John the Baptist, baptizes him and says, the clouds part and the father in heaven speaks. And what does he say? He says, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased.

It's not lost on me that Jesus was affirmed in his identity before he ever did a single thing for God.

It reminds all of us that we operate from a position of identity and authority, not for it. You're not working to gain your identity. You've already been given it, and God is pleased with who you are because of what his son did on the cross. He says, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased. It says, like a dove. It wasn't a dove, but it was like a dove. The holy spirit comes down, and all of a sudden, the Bible says that Jesus is filled

with the spirit of God. I wanna show you the story. Luke chapter four verse one, it says, then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, he returned from the Jordan River, and he was led by the spirit into the into the wilderness?

I read that story and I'm like, wait. No. No. No. You give your life to Jesus and you get a new car. Right? Like, you get a promotion. You get an upgrade.

Yet Jesus gets baptized. He gets filled with the spirit of God. The same spirit that the Bible says indwells every single one of us who've given our life to Jesus, and notice what that spirit does to him. It leads him into the wilderness. Forty days of trial and tribulation and temptation,

forty days of fasting and praying and alone time with God to do what? To prepare him for the ministry that was ahead of him,

for the difficult three years that he was about to face, and then ultimately to prepare him to go to the cross. But I wanna show you what happens on the other side of Jesus in his forty days of fasting and prayer. He has the fullness of the spirit of God alive and active in him before he goes into the wilderness. But jump down with me to verse 14,

and notice what it says. It says, then Jesus returned to Galilee filled with the holy spirit. Say it with me. The holy spirit's power. See, upon baptism, he was given the spirit of God in him, but he didn't yet realize the power of what came with that spirit in him. You notice what it took for the power to be realized?

Some combination of trials, difficulties, temptation, and alone

time with God in a wilderness with nobody else. He walked out of that wilderness, and he's now ready to walk in his purpose and his calling. Jesus used prayer to prepare himself for who he was supposed to be. I'm telling you right now, you and I can accomplish our purpose on this earth through our own power and through our own strength. Prayer is the only way that you can prepare to step into what God has for you. Here's the second reason I see that Jesus prays.

He would often do it when he needed to recharge. We see this all over Mark chapter six verse 31. Then Jesus said, let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and let's rest a while. He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn't even have time to eat.

Why should you and I be people who pray? Because the truth is is this world can be draining.

Man, I'm thankful for the church that God has entrusted to me. I'm thankful for the family that God has entrusted to me. I'm thankful for what God has given me to steward. But But if I'm honest with you, there are some days when I'm operating out of my own power, my own strength, and I sit back and I look at it, I go, God, this is overwhelming.

I can't do this on my own. And see, the American dream leaves us in this position where what we're supposed to do is we burn the candle at both ends, man. We go hard at whatever God has given us. Why? Because we've gotta prove to this world that we have value. And how do we do that? We build a big business. We we get nice cars. We get stuff, and we prove that we have value because we have things. But the problem is is it came at the cost of our soul. But then what does the world tell you to do? Here's how you recharge.

Go to a crazy vacation, and you'll come back from that vacation recharged. Have you ever come back from a vacation and been more tired after the vacation than you were before? There's some days I'm like, man, I need a vacation for my vacation. You know? Like, there's something about it. I don't know why.

Can vacations be restful? Sure. But they're not the solution to the human soul that is in turmoil and is unwilling to rest. Do you realize that God to the nation of Israel, he gave them 10 rules. Right? The 10 commandments. One of the 10 was you better learn to take a day off. You need to learn to rest.

You and I are supposed to be people who operate from a posture of rest, but the truth is this world will not leave you restful. This world will leave you overwhelmed and full of anxiety. But the presence of God can bring you rest

and can bring can bring your soul back to peace. It's what we see Jesus do often. The third reason that Jesus prayed that we should pray as well is he did it when it was time to grieve. The truth is that there are things in this life we're gonna walk through where grief is a part of the human experience.

We're going to have medical diagnosis not go our way. We're going to have loved ones passed away unexpectedly. We're going to walk through really difficult things.

And the truth is is I think there's a place and a time where therapy can be amazing. I I just finished a book called Bad Therapy where a guy is he's studying the first generation that has grown up with therapy being the solution to everything.

And his answer essentially the premise of the book is essentially not that therapy in itself is bad, that there's a time and place for it, but when you put people into therapy, when you put kids into therapy from moment one,

you actually rob them of a lot of the opportunities of what builds character, which is adversity.

And the truth is is there's some things in this life that you can't you can't get healed in therapy. You can't have fixed with just letting time pass. And I hate when people say that to somebody when something tragic happens and they're like, oh, man, just give it time. Time heals all wounds.

The interesting part is that's not what Jesus does. On one of the darkest days of Jesus' life is when his best friend John the Baptist is beheaded. He's killed for his faith in Jesus. In Matthew chapter 14 verse 13, the news gets to Jesus and look at what he does. It says, as soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone.

Why would Jesus go to be alone to process the loss of his best friend? Because he understood again a kingdom principle that time doesn't heal things. God does. It's God that you need to heal the broken places in your soul.

The mending that your heart needs more than anything else for the trauma that you walked through as a kid, as somebody with firsthand experience, I'm telling you, therapy can be helpful, but it's God that does the mending.

You and I need to run to God and let him work in our hearts to heal the places that are are there. But the truth is I don't think we do a good job of this as a church in America. We talk about the blessings of God, but we never talk about the lamenting with God.

We never talk about how to go with God with frustration and bitterness and disappointment. I wanna remind us this morning, there's an entire book in the Bible called Lamentations. It's a book of prayers of people who are incredibly frustrated with the outcome of their life right now.

But instead of getting bitter at God, they bring their bitterness to God in prayer, and they process with him. Instead of getting mad at him, they go to the God that can do something about it, and you can actually walk out of seasons of hardship better

and not just bitter. Here's the fourth reason why Jesus prayed that tells us why we need to pray as well. Jesus would pray to seek wisdom. Now again, this is interesting when you think about that Jesus was 100% God.

Yet before he would make big decisions, one of the most crucial leadership decisions he would ever make was choosing of all the disciples. Remember, Jesus had a lot of disciples before he whittled it down to 12 guys that were gonna be the apostles. These are the guys who are gonna build the church. Before he picks those 12 guys, look at what he does. Luke chapter six verse 12 says, one day soon

afterward, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. When was the last time you were facing a decision that was so difficult that it forced you to pray all night? All night, Jesus prays and says at daybreak, he called together all of his disciples, and he chose 12 of them to be the apostles.

Here are their names. I promise you, if you were the hiring manager and you had to pick 12 of these guys and I gave you their resumes, the dudes that Jesus picked are not the guys that you would have picked. These guys were jacked up. They were broken. They had pasts. They they were messy. And yet somehow,

here here's what it is. Here's what a life of walking not by sight but by faith looks like. There are times where God will whisper from heaven and tell you to do something that you'll never be able to rationalize your way into doing.

There's no amount of logic that will get you to choose a guy that's the tax collector to the town that you're gonna try to reach.

Remember Jesus chose the guy that was like the he was like the gangster that used to go and steal from the grandparents in the town. He's like, yeah. That's the guy that's gonna be one of the key people in my movement. That's only something that you can get from heaven. That's not something you can get from reason and logic. So it tells me that there are decisions that you and I are contemplating

that you'll never be able to make the God choice through logic and reasoning alone. If Jesus needed to seek the father for wisdom, how much more do we need to seek the father for wisdom? We need to learn how to hear his voice so that we can sit down and walk with confidence

when we're making decisions that make no sense. I mean, I'm telling you, I've got so many examples of these that I could tell you. One of the ones that stands out to me is I was working in a church in San Diego, and the senior pastor just famously imploded his life. There was financial stuff. There was relational stuff. Like, it was a mess.

And I remember trying to figure out, okay, how do we navigate through this? Because I was teaching the primary amount when he wasn't there, and I literally remember one time sitting there praying, and I felt like God told me. He said, Daniel, the elders are gonna try to give you the church, and it's not your time. I told my wife. I told a couple close friends of mine. I said, hey. I think this is what God told me. And I kid you not, a couple days later, I'm sitting in an elder meeting, and they're trying to figure out what they're gonna do after this whole thing. And they turn to me and say, Daniel, we think you should be considered to be the next senior pastor of the church. I was 27 years old. I'd only ever seen a complete broken church before, and God at least gave me enough wisdom to go, man, it's not your time.

See, had I not had that whisper from heaven, I potentially, out of what I think is something good, something that I probably wanted at the time, I potentially lead my family into something that wouldn't have been a blessing. It potentially would have been the thing that led to my demise.

And this is what will happen when you and I make decisions disconnected from the heart of God. Why should prayer be our default? Because it is the only way that we make it through this life without falling apart. But it requires us to be people who treat prayer as our steering wheel and not our spare tire.

Prayer is not just like, oh, yeah. It's a thing that's there, and, yeah, we should probably do it more, I do it for a couple seconds before I get to a meal. No. I'm trying to tell us that that prayer is supposed to be the very thing that guides our life. If you get in your car and you're driving out of here today and your steering wheel is not working properly, what are you gonna do? You're gonna pull over and not continue until it gets fixed.

Why? Because it's dangerous to proceed without it. I'm trying to tell us it's dangerous to proceed spiritually without it as well. Here's the fifth reason why Jesus prayed. He would do it to petition God.

Petition is just again a churchy word to bring your requests to God. This is Luke chapter 22, the night before Jesus would ultimately be betrayed and go on trial to ultimately

be put to death for our sins. Luke chapter 22 records in verse 39, then accompanied by his disciples, Jesus left the upper room and he went as usual, something he did often. And then and there he told them, verse 40, pray that you will not give in to temptation.

Verse 41, he walked away about a stone's throw away, and he knelt down and prayed. He walked away from his apostles. He was alone with God and began to pray. And here's the prayer of petition to a father. He says, father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet here it is. He says, yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

This is what a prayer of petition looks like. It's when you're walking through something that feels like it's too heavy for you to carry. It's coming to God and knowing that he cares about what you're walking through. That says, God, if there's any way that you can change this, change it. If there's any way these circumstances could be different, God, I'm asking for you to change them.

But if what needs to be changed is my heart, then God start there.

Not my will, yours be done. At the end of the day, God, I want your will to be done more than I want my will. Why? Because I know that your plan is better than mine, and I just I just don't see the situation how you see it. It's not that we don't bring our request to God.

It's that we trust God in the middle of the things that we don't understand and we don't see. The fifth reason why Jesus would pray often was for petition. And here's here's the last one, the most important one. Why did Jesus pray? Because he was modeling for us what a relationship with God looks like.

He was showing us, here's what a relationship with God looks like. You don't have to wonder. You don't have to figure it out. I've shown you the model. What's so interesting to me is that of all the amazing things that Jesus did, the apostles never once asked him. Jesus, teach us how to do miracles.

Teach us how to preach better. Teach us how to heal people better. The only thing they ever asked Jesus to teach them how to do that he did that was different than anybody else they had ever seen

was to teach us how to pray. Luke chapter 11 verse one, last verse I have for you says that once Jesus was in a certain place praying, as he finished, one of the disciples came to him and said, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.

It's interesting to me that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray. Why? Because they understood the only thing that's different about Jesus than any other religious leader that they've seen is he actually has a real authentic connection to God. They've seen the rituals.

They've read the Bible up until that point that they had, but none of that seemed as transformational as this prayer life that Jesus had. It also tells me that some of the most important leadership principles that we will pass on to employees,

to staff, to kids, to the people in our sphere of influence, the most important leadership principles, they will be things that are caught, not taught. And I love that Jesus' disciples, they watched him model it.

He wasn't just sitting back, guys. Let me teach you how to pray. He was showing them, and they were realizing, okay. His public ministry, the power comes from the prayer. So Jesus, teach us how to pray. It's gotta be the heart posture of every single one of us this morning. Jesus, teach us how to pray.

Teach us how to pray so we can walk in purpose, so we can walk in power, so we can walk in authority, so that we're not just relegated to going through life as everybody else. God, teach us how to pray. I have a simple model for you today. His simple strategy. Here's how to pray. Somebody taught me this years ago. It just gives you a simple format. When you sit down to pray and your mind starts to wonder and you're like, oh, just get on Instagram and you're no. Here. Let me come back to this. Here's a model. Here's what I follow. K. The acronym is ACTS, a c t s, like the early church, the birth of the Holy Spirit, the book of Acts. A is just an order of what we do. We start with adoration.

Adoration is just acknowledging the majesty and the holiness of God. That father, you are so much better than us. You are bigger than us.

You are beautiful. God, at any point, you could send legions of angels to stop this whole thing on earth, yet somehow you choose us. Father, we acknowledge your magnitude. And then we move into c, confession. We start by acknowledging the places that we've fallen short.

And this isn't because God doesn't know. This is the the Garden of Eden moment where God comes to Adam and he says, Adam, where where are you? He goes, I'm hiding. It wasn't that God didn't know where Adam was. He wanted Adam to admit it. Why? So he could forgive him for it.

So that the shame that he was feeling, for the disgrace that he was feeling could be removed. We confess to God. God, these are all the things that I've fallen short in this week. These are all the places I screwed up. This is when I got angry. This is when whatever it is. And then you move into tea. K? Tea is thanksgiving.

It's just being it's being full of gratitude. It's thanking God for what you do have and not just focusing on what you don't have. We live in a world where it's so easy to see what we don't have that we forget what's right in front of us. And I'm telling you, heart of gratitude, you're thanking God for the home that you have even though it might not be the forever home that you want. You're thanking God for the the the provision that you've been given, for the family that you have. You start to realize, man, I have so much.

And the very end of this process is supplication.

We take our request and we bring them to God. We go, God, here's the things that are heavy on my heart this week. Here's the things I'm asking you to change. And I'm telling you this week, if you write those things down and you begin to follow this prayer, this model for prayer, you do this for the next fourteen days is which is what it takes to to build a new habit. I promise you, you will watch God move in ways that you've never dreamt

possible in your life. My hope, my prayer as your pastor is that you would begin to walk with power and authority that can come only from heaven. And I promise you prayer,

prayer is the thing that will take the engine source, it'll take the power, and it'll begin to make it live out in every single part of your lives. So let me pray for you. Father, God, thank you, Lord, so much for every single person that's here this morning. God, I know even getting in the doors of church,

it can be difficult. God, there's so many things that are going on in our life. God, I don't claim to know everything that's going on here this morning, but I trust that you do. Father, I'm thankful that you hold all this together in perfect balance. And Lord, we lift up the the majestic name of Jesus in this place.

Lord, we ask that your name would be lifted high in our our cities, in our homes, and in our hearts. And Jesus, we still believe that you are the answer for the the the plague of life. God, for the problems of our humanity, you still are the solution.

So Jesus, we ask that you would teach us how to pray. That God, you would meet us this week as we run to you to have moments of prayer with you and that we would begin to walk in the results that you walked in, which is peace that surpasses understanding, confidence in the middle of difficulty,

and all the things that this life can offer that surrender to the Holy Spirit. So Jesus, we love you. We pray all this in the name of Jesus. All God's people said, amen and amen.