- Hello, good morning everyone. My name is Nathan and as I'm sure we're starting to miss Pastor Peter being up here, but would you continue in prayer for him as he's on his sabbatical? And because of that, as you've known, we've been going through the book of Hebrews as a church.

Today as we have for the last couple of weeks, we're going to be continuing on in our covenants. And so this is, if you're unaware of Berean members, if you want to be a member of this church, go through a series of classes and at the end sign off on a covenant that says that we're committing to certain things.

There are 10 total. And to go into it real quick before we pray and start, covenant number one was what Pastor Mark preached on a few weeks back. This is I confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. That is probably the overarching covenant, like the bookend of all the covenants that we are assigning here.

And then last week, Pastor Peter preached on the importance of God's word and that was in covenants numbers two and five. Number two was I confess that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, which has ultimate authority over my life. And then covenant number five was kind of a branching off of that, I commit to attending and preparing for weekday Bible studies every week to the best of my ability.

And so today, we're going to be looking at covenant number three and before we go into that, if you could bow your heads with me, we'll pray and go in. Heavenly Father, again, we're very grateful to you, Lord, to be able to sing songs that come up out of our hearts.

Lord, we sing to you as forgiven people. Father, we are filled with joy. We don't look like this world because we have a hope that is not of this world. God, thank you that we are secure. Thank you, God, that we have a boldness and a confidence and a foundation that's unshakable.

And Lord, for all of us who have been going through difficult things, who have been struggling with different sins, who have been tempted even perhaps to have our eyes turn inwards, that our eyes would draw up to you and just be grateful people. Lord, thank you for an opportunity for us to then dive into your word.

Help us to understand you and what prayer is a little bit more after today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Okay. So covenant number three is a tough one because whenever you're trying to get into this idea of prayer and what is prayer, it's not easy. It's not easy to define the structure, the parameter of what prayer is.

It's pretty, if you want to be exhaustive about it, there's a lot of stuff to cover. So we're not going to be exhaustive today, but to turn our eyes to the covenant, covenant number three says, "I commit to a life of devotion to pray regularly, interceding for the leadership and the members of BCC." And so I'm going to break that down because I think there is a bit of a connection between the first and second half of this covenant.

And that first half, it says, "I commit to a life of devotion." I commit to a life of devotion. I want to just define a few words because I think today's day and age, these words are very diluted, right? The word commit is pledge, devote, or dedicate. That's what that word means.

So that's a strong word. When we say we're committing to something, it's not just say like, "I'm just thinking about it." You're saying, "I'm kind of putting myself in this." And secondly, that word devotion is, I think, even stronger. Love, loyalty, enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause. And so that has this idea of fidelity, of faithfulness, of allegiance, of this idea of if you've ever seen somebody play poker and they say, "All in," it's this idea where they're pushing everything in.

This is what it is to be a believer. I commit to a life of devotion. That calls to us, right, because this is what I am. I commit to a life of devotion. Everything gets swallowed up and swamped into this, that we are people who have submitted to the Lord in these things.

And so when we read his word, the natural, reflexive, and sometimes only response then is actually, in my opinion, it's prayer. When you say that Jesus is Lord over my life, when you say that I submit to the Lordship of Christ over my life, and when we say that I will take his authoritative word and adhere to it and submit to it, the reflex, I think, is prayer.

A few things, because in Lordship, we feel the battle against the flesh. It's a fight we cannot fight on our own within this idea of sanctification. So we pray. Another one is because in reading God's word, we see commands that we, it feels like we cannot perfectly follow these commands.

So what happens? Well, you gotta pray. Thirdly, because in the spiritual battle we're engaged in, we sense our own powerlessness. That we are incapable of doing anything to actually bring about change in the hearts of people around us, and actually even in our own hearts. Have you felt that?

Man, I can't change my heart. Another one is because we love God. We pray reflexively. We long to commune with him. God alone, he opens our eyes to this. We aren't just soldiers in battle. Here's the game plan, now do it. It's not just that, it's this deep communion with the Lord.

And so we pray. It's a reflex. So if you, you know, reflex, I like that word because you kind of think of that little hammer that the doctor hits your knee. I don't know, I feel like that happened only when I was a kid. But when you're a kid, you're sitting there, and I remember we would be in these long lines, and then the doctor would one by one go and do all these tests on us in school.

And then there was always that kid, always that one kid, who would try to kick their legs before the hammer came down. And the doctor would be like, "Hey, don't do that." It's supposed to test your reflex. So what happens is, the hammer comes down on your knee, and what happens to your leg?

It just goes up. There's nobody that sits there and says like, "Oh, I guess I'm supposed to kick my knee, or kick my leg up." I think prayer is kind of like that. It's supposed to be responsive. Now it is a discipline, and we're going to talk about that a little bit.

But when we're living life, when we're trying to adhere to the Lordship of Christ over our lives, prayer is very much like that. So a question for us then is, do we pray? A secondary question is, what's that look like for you? How has your prayer life been? Has it been something that's been reflexive?

Has it been something that you feel like, "This is very much a part of my life, in my relationship with the Lord." Upfront I'm going to say this is a tough sermon, because this isn't like false humility. I am in no way an expert on prayer. I know, even as going through the sermon, I was like, "Oh my goodness, how do you preach this?

When this is so hard for me." But for all of us, I think we feel this. This desire and need, and even desperation sometimes that, "Man, we have to pray more." And I hope that we as a church come together in this. So to flesh out covenant number three, we're going to be all over the Bible.

And so a lot of it we're going to have up here, but you can follow along in your text if you'd like. So this commitment to a life of devotion, to look into that again, I wanted to take a look at a series of texts, because I believe that this is where it starts.

When we commit ourselves to this life of devotion to Christ, that's where prayer begins. And so Matthew 13, verse 44, it says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again. And from joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls. And upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." So that idea of devoting yourself to something or committing to something is found in this verse, right? He sells all that he has.

This is like the Christian thing. You see this and you go, "That's me. That's what I did. This is what I did a year ago when I became a Christian. This is what I did 10 years ago when I became a Christian, 30 years ago when I became a Christian.

This is what I did. I sold all that I had." Christians, we devote ourselves, we commit ourselves to this. We are people that says that it's not just like I'm following on a different track of beliefs. This is everything in there. Philippians chapter 3 verse 7, "But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ." Everything that I thought to be dear, I count it, I consider it.

Like I sit there and I look at it and I kind of study it and look at all the angles and I say, "Yup, consider it loss." Galatians 2.20, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." I'm actually, I'm saying I've died to myself.

There is no devotion or commitment to self anymore. It's completely to Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.15, "And he died for all so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf." Romans 14.8, "For if we live, we live for the Lord.

If we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." Deuteronomy 6.5, last one, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your might." We glance over these things and we say, "Yes, I want that." But honestly, when you put these things on yourselves, this is what we're saying.

As a believer, we commit to a life of devotion. If you're a believer in this room, this is something you have already said. This is the agreement in becoming a believer. There is no going back on this. There is no middle ground in this. There is no no man's land or straddling the fence.

There's no kind of half in, half out. We've completely devoted our lives. We say that we've given it to Christ. We live for God's kingdom. We do not build up our own kingdom anymore. And when we take stock of our lives, if we were to sit at this moment right now and to look at the decisions we make and to look at the things that we do, we say we are constantly submitting.

We're not living for ourselves anymore. When you see someone devoted and committed to something, there's passion there. So while it's true that the Christian, it doesn't always mean you need to feel. Sometimes people ask, "What does it look like to feel love for God?" We can go into that conversation another time.

But passion is real. When you're devoted to something, when you're committed to something, there's something that has to be there. Something that you said, "My life is all about this. Is it possible for me to stand here and say, truthfully nod along to that while I'm standing here?" It's not.

And this kind of sounds like maybe covenant number one again, the lordship. And it should. It should. They overlap. One of the great results though of Christ's lordship over our lives and our adherence to his authoritative word is going to be prayer. This is our second point. Prayer becomes a test as to your commitment and devotion to the Lord.

I'm not saying that's why it's there. I'm saying prayer, if you look at your prayer life, if you look at the quality and content of your prayer, you're going to be able to see lordship or lack thereof. You're going to be able to see by someone's prayers, by their prayer life, whether they just say it, "Christ is lord over my life," or whether it's true.

Because what you pray is your heart. See prayer reveals things. Someone can say, "I live for God. Christ is all I need." But this prayer life becomes a window into your heart. It looks at your motives. It looks at your true goals. And it looks at what you really want.

What prayer, in it being revealing, I'm going to go through a series here, a series of statements. First is how you approach prayer reveals what it shows you. It reveals our attitude towards God. I'm sorry, the formatting shrunk everything, but it's on your apps too, so you can look there.

But how you approach prayer reveals our attitude towards God. It can show you whether you treat him kind of like a genie in a bottle. We know that image. An image of some God that you bow down to in order to receive something. Your prayer life will show that, it will reveal.

Your prayer life will show you whether your religion is superstitious and you pray because you want to have extra blessing for the day or for some far-off God that you don't really know to do some miraculous work in your life and the lives of people around you. It can also show whether we live a works-based, guilt-driven Christianity.

You can do it as a routine because this is what Christians do. So for those of us, the bulk of our prayers, if it's done during mealtimes, we might fall in this category. Prayer reveals our attitude towards life itself, whether you will pursue your own desires or God's desires, your own kingdom or God's kingdom.

If we don't pray, we're most likely self-centered. We're not worried about the people around us. We're not worried about God's kingdom. We're supremely fascinated by our own lives and what we could do. Leading into this one, prayer shows where we truly believe sovereignty lies. Again, we could say, "I believe that God is in control.

I believe that he's sovereign." But by our prayer life, it will reveal whether you truly believe that or not. When you run to prayer, when you turn to prayer, it will show something about your belief in that. Prayer reveals an understanding of our own sin because where we see sin, it's reflexive to pray.

Yes, it's a command to us to submit and to obey, but I think this is always accompanied by a cry to God for help in overcoming our flesh and grateful prayers to God for sending Christ to have done the finished work on our behalf. If we pray only in groups and seldom alone, it reveals the quality of our personal relationship with God.

If we pray alone and never in groups, it reveals the quality of our love and fellowship with others. See, prayer reveals a lot of stuff in our lives. We can agree with the concept of lordship, but what prayer does is it checks the reality of that. It's a reality check for us.

As people who have ... Just looking at those verses, as people who say that, "That's me, that I have wholly given my life over to God," people who have expressed that we live solely for Christ alone, that all of life is about him, that my job is about him, that my relationships are about him, that my free time is about him, that every facet of my life, completely, all in, devotion, is about him.

Sometimes our prayers just don't match up to that. Tim Keller says, "To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking, when nothing is forcing you to think about anything in particular. At such moments, do your thoughts go toward God? You may want to be seen as a humble, unassuming person, but do you take the initiative to confess your sins before God?" By the way, that's prayer, right?

"You wish to be perceived as a positive, cheerful person, but do you habitually thank God for everything you have and praise him for who he is?" That's prayer. "You may speak a great deal about what a blessing your faith is and how you just really love the Lord, but if you are prayerless, is that really true?

If you are joyful, humble, and faithful and private before God, then what you want to appear to be on the outside won't match what you truly are." I have come across plenty of people in my life who are well put together in the Christian faith and know how to articulate lots of Christian things.

And then, you know, there are just things that feel a little bit alarming. And then if I were to ask an apartment maid or something like that about that person's prayer life, they might say, "Oh, yeah, I don't really see them doing that." And it could be a little scary.

See, as a Christian, you live wholly and unconditionally for the Lord. Lordship is our confession. The authoritative Word of God becomes our standard, the idea of a plumb line, right? It becomes what we adhere to and abide by. And I think prayer becomes the natural response to that. And so when you look at your prayer life, when I had to sit and just again look at my prayer life, it's very humbling.

This brings us into our third point, what is prayer? And this is actually Keller's definition. There was a bunch. There's so many definitions of prayer out there because in Scripture, there's no one definition. And we'll talk about that a little bit, but I really like this one. Prayer is a communicative response to the knowledge of God.

And that's a great definition for it. Because when we think about what prayer is, some of us might think like... All of these are true, by the way. Supplication, entreaties, maybe, what do you call it? Petitioning, like that kind of stuff, right? We're asking God for stuff. That is prayer.

We might also think of it as words of thankfulness and gratitude. That is indeed prayer. Prayer can be adoration and worship and proclamation of His greatness. That's prayer. Confession of sins, that's prayer. Communion with God, that's prayer. And we can go into a survey of the Bible, but instead, I wanted to just look at 1 Timothy 2, to give an example of what I'm talking about here.

1 Timothy 2, it says, "First of all, then I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men." So those four words there, entreaties, prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, this is pretty... Those four words are pretty much the four words used for prayer through the New Testament.

And so you'll see it all over the place. And you'll see it in different places. Here, Paul is saying, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you." And here, you'll see someone confessing their sins. And here, you'll see someone crying out, "Be merciful on me, like a sinner." You see all these different facets.

This is all prayer. So prayer is grand in scope. That's why there's no clear definition. In Matthew 6, it's probably like the best example of prayer and the Lord's Prayer. But it just comes down to this. It's a communicative response to the knowledge of God. And I want to dumb that down a little bit, because it helps me.

It's basically what that's saying, it's relational. Prayer is very relational. It's how you talk to someone. And I was hesitant about this, because I didn't want to simplify it too much, because there's a lot of things involved in what prayer is. But I think when you boil it down, this is the foundation of it.

The foundation is not even on the words you're speaking, necessarily. It's actually on the person you're praying to. It's talking to the God I love. Prayer is communicating and expressing my desires to God. To the God I love. To the God I walk with day by day. Prayer is relational in scope, because it's opening this part of me to the Lord.

We don't just long for a relationship with Him. The truth of the matter is, we are in a relationship with God. So have you ever been in a deep relationship with someone, and you don't communicate with them? And it becomes very like, "What am I going to do for you?

What are you going to do for me? If you guys would like to schedule this and this kind of thing." It's that kind of thing. Well, when communication isn't there between two people, when you don't see two people just kind of like, you know, like two people who really care about each other, love each other, they share their hearts.

If you really like enjoy being in the presence of people, you don't just do your own thing and then, "Oh, by the way, hey, can you like..." When you see people who love each other, like you go to a restaurant, you see people who really enjoy being in each other's presence.

What they do is they're sitting across the table and they're just pouring into each other. They're just living life, talking about different things. See the Christian, we love the Lord so much, we have actually said, "Everything, I've traded it because I love God that much." God has saved us to be in relationship with Him.

Actually when humanity sins, He distances Himself from us, right? And He does that. I personally think this is great grace and mercy of God, that He would distance humanity away from Him because in His presence, we die. So He distances us and then the whole goal of salvation is to bring us back to reconcile us back into a relationship with Him.

That's why believers have the privilege of approaching the throne of grace and confidence. We have this great privilege of speaking with the Lord, having a relationship with the Lord and this is life. Our prayer is going to reveal something about the quality of our relationship with the Lord. See in Lordship, it's easy to get stuck on one side of the coin, on what I need to give up, what I need to submit and bow my knee to.

We get stuck on that. But the emphasis of our faith is not so much on what you're giving up. The emphasis is not on the fact that you have to give up your whole lives. The emphasis is not on the fact that we need to die to ourselves. The emphasis is actually on what we gain in Christ.

And in light of what we gain, when we gain the clarity of sight to see what it is that is being offered to us, we gladly lay down our lives and surrender and submission. So to look at those passages again, in Matthew 13, 44, the highlight before was on the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure.

I'm sorry, before we say he goes and sells all that he has, but the highlight should be on that first part, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field. If we get so fixated on the fact that I need to give up my life, that I need to sell everything I have, man, that's a miserable existence, isn't it?

But when we look and we see the kingdom of heaven is a treasure, it changes things. In Philippians, it should go from like, I've counted as lost, it's for the sake of Christ. The surpassing value of knowing Christ so that I may gain Christ. In Galatians 2, 20, it shouldn't be I have been crucified with Christ, it's no longer I who live.

I really think it should be, but Christ lives in me. The life, I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Second Corinthians 5, 15, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but the emphasis, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

In Romans 14, 8, not so much on we die for the Lord, therefore whether we live or die, I think it's just we are the Lord's. We don't walk around saying, what have I given up for the Lord? We walk around saying, oh, I love God. Prayer is supremely relational because we are brought into a relationship with the God that we now claim to love with all of our hearts.

He is the reason we live. He is life itself to us. He will say, take away everything I have. All I have is Christ. In relationship then with the Lord, there are times when you're just grateful and thankful. You're just thankful. What happens in relationship? You say thank you.

I say this to my daughter. If you're thankful, say thank you. In relationship with the Lord, there are times when you feel sorrow and grief over having hurt someone. What do you do? You say sorry. You repent. You confess. In relationship with the Lord, out of our love for the Lord and our view and sight of who he is, we can't help but shower him with compliments, right?

God, you're so good. We can't help but lift up words of adoration to him, praise. In relationship with the Lord, we constantly come across our desire and need. So what happens? We ask God. See, prayer, I don't think is as complicated as we make it seem. If we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, as it says in Deuteronomy 6.5.

If that's the case, then prayer happens. This is what happens in relationship. Now, I said I had a daughter, Addy. Every Monday, I drop her off and pick her up from school. Then I love picking her up from school because that's the only day of the week I can pick her up from school.

So, I pick her up. We have our little habit. What we do is we sit down for lunch. Then as we eat, we ask her questions. We say, "Oh, how's your day? What did you do? Who did you play with? What did the teacher say? What did you eat?" All that stuff.

Addy will sit there and she will talk our ears off. Sometimes I'm like, "Why did I ask?" But she talks and talks and talks. She's like, "Oh, Bella did this and Mason did this and the teacher said this. We had water play today." We got to eat a cupcake because it was this person's birthday.

You know, honestly speaking, even though sometimes it gets on my nerves after a while, I sit there and it's just like, "Oh, I love this. I love that my daughter just talks." Three weeks ago, oh man. Three weeks ago, it still breaks my heart thinking about it. We sat down.

I said, "Addy, what did you do today? How was your day?" She looked up and then she looked back down at her food and she said, "Daddy, you already know." I just looked over at my wife. I looked over at Kezia and we just stared at each other like, "What was that?

This little four-year-old girl." I was like, I turned to her. I almost wanted to discipline her right there. "Tell me what you did today." But you know, it's not that. There's something about that reaction where she didn't want to communicate with me. It's like this is my child that I love with all my heart.

It felt like she looked at me and said, "I don't love you." I'm being all dramatic right now. I'm not a dramatic person. I have a pretty thick skin and stuff. But seriously, I'm like, I wanted to yell at her face like, "Love me." I know. I know what she did.

I have her whole calendar. The teacher gives us a calendar that says this is what they do during the day. I know that there's a snack time and I know that's her favorite time. I know who her best friends are and she played tag again. I know all this stuff about Addy.

I do. But I don't care. I long for a relationship with her. And I think about my prayer life and I think about God. And again, it's not about getting all touchy-feely here. But sometimes I wonder if we just need to take a step back and think, "I wonder how God feels.

I wonder how do I come off before the Lord in prayer?" It's very strange. Am I making God feel like that? I wonder. My time of prayer that I've set here in this time of day and in this part of life and here, I'll do it. But I wonder if God is looking down and saying, "I just want to be in a relationship with you." Prayer isn't the straight jacket that we're in that says, "Here's the prescription to pray." I love it when Addy talks to me just out of the overflow of her heart because it just shows she loves me.

She cares. She wants to talk to me. And sometimes I wonder if you could simplify prayer to God just wanting to talk. And so in talking, I'll teach her. I'll correct her. I'll say yes or no to things. But in life, this is part of us coming together in relationship and our wills start to weirdly align.

We start to get to know each other. She knows what I'll say yes to, what I'll say no to. There's a lot that happens there. And where it might be sterile, I could give her a list of things to do and not to do. Like, "Here's our rules for the home.

Follow it." When we're in communion, when we're talking, when we're sharing, all this kind of stuff, when that happens is when the weight of who I am and who she is really comes together. And law, if you're going to think about it that way, law becomes so much, so an intimate, relational, loving type of thing.

It's not sterile. The Christian, when we think about our prayer life, when we say, "God, I love you with all my heart. I have given up my whole life for you," and then we have a hard time praying, there's something disconnected there. And this is why this was so challenging for me.

J.I. Packer says, "Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing. Knowing God is more than knowing about him. It is a matter of dealing with him as he opens to you and being dealt with by him. Friends open their hearts to each other by what they say and do.

We must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship as well as an intellectual and volitional one and could not indeed be a deep relationship." If we understand, even theology, God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. In a relationship with him, what happens is as we go through the day, prayer happens.

When we lack in prayer, many times because we forget he's there, he's invisible to us. But look at what it says about the Christian in 1 Peter 1.8. It says, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not see him now but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy and express the bone full of glory." Prayer is actually an obvious thing that happens when we keep the invisible God in spiritual sight and we're walking with him.

We're remaining in relationship with him. This brings us kind of drawing into our fourth point. You must know the word of God in order to properly pray to God. That's our fourth point. You must know the word of God in order to properly pray to God. Because this is the challenging question for us.

Again, how is your prayer life? What does it show about your relationship with the Lord? Your prayer reveals whether we know who he is. We have a hard time praying. It's like trying to talk to someone that you don't know too well. Sometimes it's hard. I mean, even praise and prayer nights.

We're praying these long little parts of prayer and maybe we're starting to come across this little tension of like, "Man, why is prayer just so hard?" Prayer being relational. You pray to God and you communicate to him. But in order for you to be able to continue circularly in communication, if it is relational, then something needs to come back, right?

And that's the word of God. There is no other way for you to be able to know who he is if this is a knowing relationship other than through his word and what his word verifies in your surroundings. The word of God is God's words to us. We're living and active.

And then the Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit does, comes and communicates the word of God to us. The word of God responds to us in every situation in life. It's kind of cool. I'll give an example. Psalm 13.1. This is a Psalm of David. And he says, "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?" See, this is just, there is no Bible there, right? Be careful how you think that one.

But there is no Bible there. If you look at it, it's just someone, he's just kind of pouring out his heart to the Lord. "Where are you? Is this going to go on forever?" He's just communicating. And in Psalm 13.3, it says, "Consider and answer me, O Lord my God.

Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say I have overcome him, and my adversaries will rejoice when I'm shaken." But here's where the knowing of God thing kind of comes back. And he begins to speak. The Word of God speaks back into our prayers.

He says, "But I have trusted in your lovingkindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me." You can see here how David interacts with God. He prays, and then he tells truths of who God is. And then he prays again.

And it comes back and forth, back and forth. This is what it is to walk with the Lord. I think it's wholly on word and prayer. We pray, and we're like, "We don't know what to pray." Well, it's because we don't know the Word of God. We don't know what God is trying to say.

It's because we don't know the Word of God. We can't expect to pray into thin air and say, "Oh, there it is. He put it in my mind, what I'm called to do." He has already revealed it. A theological term for this is the great previousness of God's Word.

That somehow, even though it was written thousands of years ago, that today, when I'm living my life, God is speaking to me through it. Fresh, in my circumstance. The Word flows into prayer. The prayer flows back into the Word, and on, and on, and on. And that's why the Bible says that there are kind of...

There might be more, but there are two things that are unceasing. You probably know where I'm going with this. In Joshua 1, verse 8, it says, "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it." The interesting thing about this is we look at it and we say, "Okay, I got to read the Bible day and night." But it's very interesting because he says, "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth." And the idea is to meditate on it day and night.

And so there's this unceasing thing kind of accompanying the Word. But the other one is 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 16 through 18, Paul says, "Rejoice and pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." He says prayer is also an unceasing thing.

In Ephesians 6, 18, it says, "With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this, in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints." See, Paul, he never ceases praying for the Philippians, right? You remember that? Like, "I never cease in my prayers, in my remembrance of you." He says, "I am praying for you constantly," right?

And so there's this idea of the Word of God being something we need to meditate on constantly, and then there's this idea of prayer needing to be unceasing, and then there's us looking at these two things, and we say, "But really, how do you pray all day?" And so we start doing gymnastics.

"Well, this is what he must really mean." And without having to go too far into that conversation, I think God sometimes looks at us doing that exercise and says, "Dude, just... Can we just love each other?" Like, "It's just... Let's talk and listen to me." Eugene Peterson says this, "Left to ourselves, we will pray to some God who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God we manage to understand.

But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that he speaks to us." So this is talking about the importance of that Word of God, right? The Bible cannot be taken apart from this. There is a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying and praying to a known God revealed through Israel and Jesus Christ who speaks our language.

In the first, we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment. In the second, we practice obedient faith. The first is a lot more fun. The second is a lot more important. What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God.

And there's that cycle. It's not just that we're just pouring out our heart and that's it. "Oh, great. God, thank you for being my therapist today." It's that we come and he desires to speak to us. Have you ever had that friend? I think we've all had that friend before who comes and just uses you as a...

Just uses you. I'll end it there. They'll say all their troubles. "Woo, thanks, man. That was good. All right. All right, see you next week. Same time, same place." And it just takes off. And those people, you just get so tired. You get very tired. But we do that to God.

We say, "Here it is. Here's my request. Here's my stuff." He says, "All right, see you, God. See you. Same time, same place tomorrow." No, God speaks to us through his word. It is a back and forth. And so if we come to know God as described in scripture, if we are not making a God of our own image, of our own creation, then what happens is our prayers become awesome.

I like to think about it that way. Our prayers become awesome. Because the more we know about God, the more our will begins to align with God. And so, I just listed out a couple. We start praying for God's kingdom and not our own. Because the more we come to know God, man, we love him.

We know what God is all about. So we just start to like, it just happens. We'll pray small and detailed because we know who God is. We know God cares for the little thing, that he cares for the details, he cares for all these minute stuff. And so when we pray, we start praying like that.

Because that's who God is. When we pray, our prayers become almost like, scandalously big. It becomes big. Our prayers become really big. Like, wow. You have the gall to pray for that? Like, really? You pray that that man to be saved? Well, yeah. I believe that God is more powerful.

I believe that the word of God is like hammer that can shatter stone. And so, yeah, I'm gonna pray that. I'm gonna watch difficulty fall on their life. I'm gonna see them cry out to God. And I'm going to see salvation happen in that place because I know that's what God desires.

And so everything about our understanding of who God is, it comes out in prayer. We're gonna skip this next part. I listed out five things here that you can kind of look up. They're kind of just little nuggets of advice. But just to kind of conclude the sermon, what we're trying to do here in this covenant, we're saying we're committing to a life of devotion.

That we live for God, that we submit to his Lordship, and we submit to the authority of God's word. And so here we are at covenant three. And at covenant three, we're saying, well, we need to pray. And what we've been saying today during the sermon is that your prayer life is going to reveal something about your true devotion to the Lord.

Whether it's this religious activity that you do and that you've just become really good at hanging out with Christian people, talking about Christian things, versus someone who says, "Oh, man, I know God." You know when you come across these types of people. Like, wow. Those are the people you leave and you just feel fire under you, right?

You know it. You know when you connect with someone on that God level. Because these people just love God. And so if that's the case, then I think that we really need to commit to this. We need to be a church that prays. Ask anyone around this area, everyone's gonna be like, "What's Berean like?

What do they hold?" Word of God. And praise the Lord for that. Praise the Lord that we hold a high view of God's Word. But I pray more that we submit to it. And in submitting to it, that we become people who pray. I wish, this is my secret wish, that when people wonder what's Berean like, I wish not only that, but it accompanies with, "Boy, they pray a lot." That's what I wish.

That we constantly, it says up here, that we constantly pray for the leadership. Would you do that? Would you pray for the leadership? More than kind words, more than acts of service, would you pray? Like, a prayer is seriously greater than, we won't go into it. We constantly pray for one another when we're talking to each other.

When we hear of how difficult circumstances are going, man, sometimes I love going up to that cafe on Sundays because I see people praying. I love that. And my hope is, it becomes so a part of who we are individually, that it's something that just happens. I see people praying here together, after service and stuff.

I know something more serious must have been going on in life for them to be praying like that. I hope even in our fellowship, that it's not one of those things that brings the party to a screeching halt. You know what I mean? It's like, "Ehh," when someone says, "Hey, you guys want to pray?" But that it's natural that we come together and we're like, "Hey, let's pray." And everyone's excited for that.

That there's no better activity we can be doing than that. That we understand the urgency of prayer. We couldn't get into the theology of all this, but the urgency of the fact that we must pray in order to drive the church. That it shows that we are truly incapable, that we are truly powerless to change anything.

In anything in our lives. Small, big. I can't make my next breath happen. We're just constantly praying because it shows that we are in great need and desperation for God, and there is that great awareness of this that needs to be saturated and pervading through our church. We need to pray.

So please, set times of prayer in your life where you will devote that time to prayer and make it the best part of your day. And then, through the day, commune with God. Pray as you go. Just say, sometimes it's okay to just say, "God, thank you." That's okay.

It could be simple in that. Also learn to pray in groups. And I think this is just a plug. There are things going on at church. There are plenty of opportunities that we would give. And some of the more recent ones. There's a prayer, a men's prayer meeting that's going on in a couple Saturdays.

And I hope that every XY chromosome in this room is there. I hope that we fill that room with people who are just like, "Man." Men who want to pray. If we have a church of men who don't pray, man, we're in trouble. I hope. I'm really excited for that prayer time because I hope when we come in, it's just like, just by everybody being there, we're like, "Oh, yes.

This is good." 8.30 a.m. every Sunday. Yes, you can take your time a little bit more at home or you can say, "I will serve the church in prayer." Right? "I will come." 8.30. Kind of like the way we would think a parking minister, a cleaning minister. This is how I serve the Lord.

You can come and say, "I will devote that time." There is no better activity sometimes you can do than prayer. I would rather see a trash on the ground right there, or sorry, yeah, than someone not praying because they're picking up the trash. Do you know what I mean?

Hopefully you pick up the trash and then pray. But all in all, what we want is we want people to understand the importance and the gravity of this is not simply important. This is vital. This is crucial. Right? Okay. And also, we have praise and prayer nights once a month.

Hope you're aware of that. And during those praise and prayers, I actually do get very encouraged. This room does fill in pretty good. But I hope no matter what season of life you're in, no matter how crazy life is, no matter how tough the week was, you see prayer as not just something like, "Oh, I guess I should go." But you look at that night, you circle it, you calendar it in, and you're just counting down the days because praying together is sweet.

I love praying next to people on Friday night praise and prayers. It's really hard to pray back there in the cry room, but man, sometimes when I'm out here and I'm just praying with everybody, it helps. And so all in all, all this to say, this is the covenant that we sign as Koreans.

I commit to a life of devotion, to pray regularly, interceding for the leadership and the members of BCC. Would you bow your heads with me in prayer? Heavenly Father, would you help us and would you allow us to remember that this is not just a call to pray because of guilt, that we haven't been doing it enough, but Father, that we would come not to the symptom, but to the core root.

God, are we walking with you? Can we honestly say we love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? And instead of letting this become such a big gap, "Oh, I'll never get there. How can I ever adhere to that standard?" And then starting to bring that standard down.

I pray, Father, instead that our eyes would just be very simple. We would place it upon the Christ that died for us, that rose again, that offers us life, that we would place our eyes on you, our creator, the sustainer, the holy one. Father, you truly are the best.

God, you are awesome. God, there is no one, nobody, nothing like you. And Father, I pray that you would help us to stop placing our eyes on different things, that it would pollute our prayers. So Father, as we go into a time of response now, would you help us to pray?

Would you help us to pray right? Would you help us to pray in accordance to who you are and what we know you to be? And so help us, God, to pray for your kingdom come, your will be done. Instead of using prayer as an avenue to make my kingdom come and my will be done.

So thank you, Lord. Let prayers ring in this room. And Father, let every member here, as they go out to the different places in Orange County or wherever it is, that we would be people who are marked by prayer. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.