(soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) - Good morning.

Not good morning, sorry. Good evening. That's how you say good morning. Good evening, church family. Welcome to Praise and Prayer. Let's all stand and let me open this up in a word of prayer. Father, thank you for this night that we get to gather as a church to come in prayer and embrace.

Father, we thank you for your daily kindness and mercies that sustain us. And even tonight, Lord, as we come before you, may you grant us just the strength and the sober-mindedness, Lord, to pray intentionally and to pray deeply to you, Lord, and to seek you. Father, if there be any sin in us, may we come before you, Lord, with repentance and humility, and that we would desire purity in all aspects of our lives, God, and that we would truly desire a pure devotion to you alone.

So, bless tonight, Lord, and with these praises and the prayers that we bring to you, that it would be a blessing to you, Lord. We thank you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. (soft music) (upbeat music) ♪ See the radiance ♪ ♪ The radiance of the Father ♪ ♪ Before the dawn of time ♪ ♪ You spoke and all creation came to be ♪ ♪ The molecules and planets ♪ ♪ Reveal your great design ♪ ♪ And everyone was made ♪ ♪ So we could see ♪ ♪ So we could see ♪ ♪ You are ♪ ♪ You are the glorious Christ ♪ ♪ The greatness of all delight ♪ ♪ Your power is unequaled ♪ ♪ Your love beyond all heights ♪ ♪ No greater sacrifice ♪ ♪ Than when you lay down your life ♪ ♪ We join the song of angels ♪ ♪ Through praise day and night ♪ ♪ Glorious Christ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ You left the air of heaven ♪ ♪ To bring the dust of earth ♪ ♪ And dwell among the outcast and the poor ♪ ♪ You came to be forsaken ♪ ♪ And died to take our curse ♪ ♪ So you could be our joy forevermore ♪ ♪ Forevermore ♪ ♪ You are the glorious Christ ♪ ♪ The greatness of all delight ♪ ♪ Your power is unequaled ♪ ♪ Your love beyond all heights ♪ ♪ No greater sacrifice ♪ ♪ Than when you lay down your life ♪ ♪ We join the song of angels ♪ ♪ Through praise day and night ♪ ♪ Glorious Christ ♪ ♪ You're seated now ♪ ♪ You're seated now in heaven ♪ ♪ Enthroned at God's right hand ♪ ♪ You shattered death and freed us from our fears ♪ ♪ And though we cannot see you ♪ ♪ You're coming back again ♪ ♪ And all would be made right when you appear ♪ ♪ And all would be made right when you appear ♪ ♪ You are the glorious Christ ♪ ♪ The greatness of all delight ♪ ♪ Your power is unequaled ♪ ♪ Your love beyond all heights ♪ ♪ You are the glorious Christ ♪ ♪ The greatest of all delight ♪ ♪ Your power is unequaled ♪ ♪ Your love beyond all heights ♪ ♪ No greater sacrifice ♪ ♪ Than when you lay down your life ♪ ♪ We join the song of angels ♪ ♪ Through praise day and night ♪ ♪ Glorious Christ ♪ ♪♪♪ Let's sing Jesus Christ.

♪ Jesus Christ ♪ ♪ I think upon your sacrifice ♪ ♪ You became nothing ♪ ♪ Poured out to death ♪ ♪ Many times ♪ ♪ I wondered at your gift of life ♪ ♪ I'm in that place once again ♪ ♪ I'm in that place once again ♪ Let's sing once again.

♪ Once again I look upon the cross where you died ♪ ♪ I'm humbled by your mercy and I'm broken inside ♪ ♪ Once again I thank you ♪ ♪ Once again I pour out my life ♪ Now you are. ♪ Now you are ♪ ♪ Exalted to the highest place ♪ ♪ King of the heavens ♪ ♪ One day I'll bow ♪ ♪ But for now ♪ ♪ I marvel at this saving grace ♪ ♪ I'm full of praise once again ♪ ♪ I'm full of praise once again ♪ ♪ Once again I look upon the cross where you died ♪ ♪ I'm humbled by your mercy and I'm broken inside ♪ ♪ Once again I thank you ♪ ♪ Once again I pour out my life ♪ Once again.

♪ Once again I look upon the cross where you died ♪ ♪ I'm humbled by your mercy and I'm broken inside ♪ ♪ Once again I thank you ♪ ♪ Once again I pour out my life ♪ ♪ Once again I thank you ♪ ♪ Once again I pour out my life ♪ Amen.

You may be seated. We're going to have two parts to tonight's prayer time, where the first part is going to be praying for just yourself, by yourself, and then we're going to give a good chunk of time for you to pray, and then the second part of it, I'm going to present, we're going to spend the second part of it praying for our mission trip to Korea, and so we have our mission team that are kind of spread out, and during that period, after I give a brief presentation about what's happening out in Korea, we're going to turn around, and not obviously, there's only 20 of us, or 19 of us, and so you may be around somebody in the mission team, and so they're going to be--they were asked to share their prayer request before we go out, and so if you're near that group, you're going to be part of that group, and they're going to be sharing, but if for some reason you're not able to do that, we're just going to have you guys in small groups and take some time to pray with each other, okay?

Let me pray for us, and then I wanted to go over the necessity of prayer and then give you plenty of time to pray this evening. Heavenly Father, we pray for greater understanding. Lord, as you've called us here to corporately pray and to individually seek you, we ask, Lord God, that you would soften our hearts, whatever distractions that we have brought into this room.

Help us, Lord, to put it aside and to truly fix our eyes upon Christ. We pray, Lord God, that you would help us to be focused. Help us to have a heart of reverence and anticipation and urgency, Lord God, to join with the Holy Spirit, Lord, groaning, Lord God, to desire to see your name be magnified.

So we pray for guidance and understanding this evening. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Can you do me a favor and turn on the light a little bit so I can see people's faces? So if you're falling asleep, I'll know who you are. All right, so this evening I wanted to go over 10 reasons.

Obviously, we can give much more than 10 reasons, but there's 10 reasons why we are called to pray. So I want to go down that list, and then after we do that, we're going to give you some time to pray on your own before we get into corporate prayer.

Okay, one, we pray to surrender our will to his. This is something that every single Christian wrestles with all the time, like what is his will for me? What is his will for me, whether it is my job or career or direction or relationship or whatever it may be?

But before we even ask that question, we need to understand what is his will. Are we surrendered to his will before you seek his will specifically for you? And so the beginning of prayer, when Jesus says to pray this way, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

"Thy kingdom come. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So first and foremost, prayer is seeking God to surrender our will, right? If your will is not surrendered, you cannot pray because God is not a servant waiting for us. It's like, okay, have you decided what you want?

Let me know what you want so I can answer your prayers, right? That's not what prayer is. Prayer is seeking him to know his will and then in prayer we are surrendering to his will, right? That's number one. So that's why we pray. We pray so that we may establish Christ as Lord before anything else, right?

Number two, we pray to cultivate a heart of Christ, right? You can have the mind of Christ through the study of the Word of God, but you may not know the heart of Christ, right? So heart of Christ is you have to interact with them. I mean, you can read books about people, but you really don't understand who they are until you've interacted with them.

And so our primary way that we interact, we know his will by studying and knowing the Word of God. But you know the difference between I know that person because I've been told and I've read versus interacting with them. So we pray not only to know his will, but his heart, right, to build a relationship with this Christ.

And so we draw near to him. Number three, we pray to declare our dependence on God, to understand that he is our daily bread, right? So every day that goes by that we don't pray, we are living independently of God, right? And there's a reason why he says, "Pray in this way.

Give us this day our daily bread." Our daily bread is in reference to the Old Testament telling the Israelites to only collect what you needed for tomorrow we will give you enough. And so our prayer is a dependence on God. When we come before the Lord, we recognize that everything important in our life ultimately comes from him, right?

Everything we desire to do ultimately comes from him, right? Not my hard work, not my skill, not my wisdom, but depending on him for him to guide us. So prayer is to declare our dependence on him. So again, when we don't pray, we're declaring, whether we want to or not, that I can function without him.

Whatever I'm doing, I can do without him, right? So prayer is surrender. Prayer is cultivation of his heart. Prayer is a declaration of dependence on him. Number four, we pray to increase our faith. You cannot grow in your walk with God without prayer. Prayer is what causes God to become real, right?

Everything that you read about the Word of God is just theory until you pray. Until God answers your prayer and you're interacting with God and you're in the throne of grace in prayer, you're learning theology, but it's all theory. You're regurgitating information without any power. And so you cannot increase in faith.

How does faith happen? You hear the Word of Christ, but then you see the power of Christ through the Word of Christ when God answers our prayers, right? So when we have a prayerless life, God is just somebody far away in theory. We adore him, we can worship him, we can study about him, but you don't know him, right?

Faith will not increase until you pray, right? The greatest testimonies which causes God to seem real to you is when you pray and you know specifically that that was an answer to prayer, where the divine touches the man because we pray, right? So our faith is increased. So your faith doesn't increase.

It won't increase if you're not interacting with God in prayer. We pray to fight against our flesh. We pray to fight against our flesh. Again, as we depend on God, and because our flesh naturally desires earthly things, when we pray, it is to combat our own flesh. The discipline of prayer combats our fleshly desire, right?

Our flesh doesn't lead us to pray. Our flesh doesn't naturally cause us to think about God. And so wrestling in prayer is wrestling to buffet our bodies and make it our slave, that we may surrender to God in prayer, right? So prayer is an act of surrender, and it is an active way to fight against our flesh.

So when you don't pray, you're just allowing your flesh to take you wherever you want. And the thoughts that you have, the desires that you have, are being led by your flesh when you don't pray. Sixthly, we pray to engage in spiritual battle, right? That our fight is not against flesh and blood.

So it's everything that you engage in that all you need to do is plan and implement. And if you just read the right books and do everything that you're capable of doing, you do not understand that this is a spiritual battle. You cannot fight demonic forces with fleshly equipment.

That's why he says we have to pray. After you've done all the putting on the full armor of God, he says, "Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray," right? So prayer is the active engagement of the spiritual battle. Again, so which means if you're not praying, right? It doesn't matter what you're doing on the outside.

You're not engaged in spiritual battle. You're learning, you may feel like you're growing, but if you're not praying, you're not engaged in the spiritual battle that he told us that we're in. This is not something you can do in the flesh, right? That's why we have to pray. We pray to grow in love for Christ, right?

You cannot love something from a distance, right? You don't fall in love with somebody from a distance. You don't appreciate them from a distance. You don't have compassion from a distance. So any meaningful relationship happens when you draw near, right? When you get to know them, when you hear their voice, you can see how they respond, you can see their personalities.

And so if you're not drawing near to Christ, again, you are in love with an image of Christ, right? The teaching of Christ, but not Christ himself. Christ doesn't become real until you learn how to pray, until you are devoted in your prayers and you're communing in prayer, right?

And so our love for Christ grows. We need to pray because love for Christ comes in the context of praying and seeking him and interacting with him. Number eight, we pray to bring glory to God, ultimately. If you bear any fruit without praying, you will bring glory to yourself, right?

Because you were smart, because you have experience, because you read a lot of books, because you know theology, because you're gifted, you're articulate, and you have a lot of experience. When you don't pray and you think you're bearing fruit, it ultimately does more damage to you because it fills you with pride and you bring attention to yourself.

That if you repeat what I did, if you do what we did, then you may have this fruit too, and that ruins you. The moment you touch that glory, it ruins you, right? So prayer is surrendering to God, and ultimately you cannot bring glory to God until you pray.

It doesn't matter how articulate you are. It doesn't matter how great your sermons are or how many people you share the gospel with because at the end of the day, if you take the credit for that, right, it'll ruin you. He said the only person that can bring a complete transformation from a sinner who was destined to hell and now is able to call God his Abba Father is by the Holy Spirit, right?

And so he says we need to pray. If you are committed to bring glory to God, you have to pray. You must pray. And no matter how good intending you are, your life will always end with pride if you do not pray, right? So a religiously active Christian who does not pray every day, either he's being ruined because he's not praying and he's falling into the scheme of the devil, or he thinks he's being successful, but he's also being ruined.

But you're even more blind in the latter because on the surface it looks like you're growing, but you're growing in pride, and it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have. Pride is the fall of the devil, right? And he said everything in the Bible says do not lay hands hastily.

Do not let a new believer, right, to be a leader because he will fall into the same temptation. And even Apostle Paul, as he came in Revelation, he said he had a thorn on his side, and Jesus said, "No, I put that there, "and I'm going to keep it there." Because of so much revelation that was coming through him, he needed to keep Apostle Paul humble because the greatest deterrent to Apostle Paul's fruitfulness was his own pride, right?

So he deliberately put a thorn on his side so that he would beg, so that he would need God, right? So when we don't pray, we are begging for the discipline of God because if God loves us, he will do his best to keep us humble, right? Because he knows that as soon as pride comes in, we will be ruined, so we have to pray.

We have to pray. If we're going to bring glory to God, we must pray. Number nine, we pray because Jesus set us an example. Because Jesus set us an example. Of all the things that the disciples could have asked Jesus and said, "Teach us how to do this," the disciples didn't say, "Teach us how to walk on the water," right?

That'd be a great thing to learn, right? "Teach us how to feed the 5,000." That's not what they asked. "Teach us how to open the eyes of the blind." That's not what they asked. For some reason, they knew how important prayer was in Jesus' life, so when they had an opportunity to ask him, "Disciple us how to do this," they said, "Teach us how to pray." So clearly, clearly Jesus, by his own example, was declaring to his disciples, the Son of God, how important prayer is.

And then finally, we pray because God told us to. If anything, if we don't even have the other nine, number 10 is enough because God said so. That's it, right? We don't need to know why. We don't need to know the effect. We don't need to know the problem, right?

All we need to know is God told us to, right? And he's not going to tell us to do something, you know, that we don't need. And repeatedly, over and over and over and over again in the Bible, it says to pray, to pray without ceasing, to be devoted to pray.

And so that's why we pray, right? So again, I want to give you plenty of time to take time to pray. But again, I want you guys to continue to wrestle in prayer, right? I know that a lot of you came from work. Some of you maybe had a more leisure day.

Maybe some of you watched a movie before you came. But wherever you are, I'm pretty sure most of us, your minds are all over the place. And so the greatest hindrance to prayer is what you were doing before you came. The things that you're entangled with, things that, and they may not be sinful, right?

And so our natural tendency is as soon as we can't pray or we don't have a hard time, we have a hard time praying, we have a tendency to quit if it doesn't come natural, right? Prayer is a muscle that you need to discipline, that when you struggle and if you have a hard time, like putting things to word, right?

Struggle, wrestle, continue, persevere. But if you're in the habit of quitting because two minutes later you don't know what to say, then that's where your prayer life would be, right? And the only time where you're going to have words flowing out of your mouth is when you are desperate, when you're on your deathbed or something desperate happens and you cry out to God.

But outside of that, you will never learn how to pray. So learning how to pray requires us to discipline our body and make it our slave. So if your mind begins to wander and you feel like you're falling asleep, go drink a cup of water, go walk around outside, pinch yourself, right?

Do whatever you need to do, but for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to ask you guys, if you need to spread out, if you want to go out and you pray better when people are not around, I'll leave that up to you. There's space over here, right? It always helps me to be in a proper position of prayer, but again, that's me.

So if you want to pray that way, we have space here. Otherwise, you can be in there, and then I'm going to give you about 30 minutes, and then at 8.30, I'm going to-- and then our praise team is going to come up, and then I'm going to give you about a five-minute presentation about Korea, and then we'll take the rest of the time to pray, okay?

So if you can dim the lights, and then, again, if you want to come up, you can take some time to pray. Again, pray over the things that you've brought into this room, the unbelievers in your life. Pray over the leaders of our country, right? Pray over the salvation of those people who are around you, okay?

If you can just have the music on, and then, again, we'll give you 30 minutes of uninterrupted prayer. Then I'll call you back in 30 minutes. Let's pray. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ No other God, no other love ♪ ♪ No other gods before you give me ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ That I may fear your name ♪ ♪ Give me an undivided heart ♪ ♪ No other gods, no other love ♪ ♪ No other gods before you ♪ ♪ No other gods, no other gods ♪ ♪ No other love, no other gods before you ♪ If we can have the lights turned back on.

All right. All right, let me present to you our Summer Mission Korea team. If I can have you guys in the room, just stand up where you are. Okay, so let them see where you're at. Okay, are you guys supposed to spread out? What happened over there? Okay. Yeah, you guys need to spread out right there.

Just find somewhere else. Okay, just walk somewhere else where you don't see any of your teammates. Just spread out. Okay. The rest of you. Yeah, just spread out somewhere. There's more space back over there. Okay, yeah. Over there. You can sit on Johnny right there. Okay. Yeah, just sit over there.

Okay, that's good. Okay, you guys are spread out. All right, you just kind of-- you see where they're at, and we're going to ask you, when we get into smaller groups, that you would surround them and take some time to pray for them and give them an opportunity to share with you their own personal prayer requests.

But before we do that, you guys can sit. At least you guys know where they are. There's 19 of us. We started with 20, but then one had to drop out because of work issues, but we have 19, okay? And so we had 20 last year, and last year was kind of like the inauguration.

We went there more like a vision trip to see what's going on, and we've already shared with you some of the reasons why we started, but I wanted to review that before we take some time to pray, if you can go down. As you can see, that's a picture of Seoul.

In the last maybe about 30 years, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, it went from the poorest country in the world right after the war, and it was like one of the top five economies, especially in Asia. And so especially if you've been to Korea like 15 years ago, and then you go now, you get a drastic difference.

But so the two things that happened to Korea in the last 50 years is, one is the economy just went nuts, right? So it went from being that poor to that rich in one generation. So all the good and the bad that comes with that. So it's almost like the country has two separate people.

You have one generation that grew up in utter poverty, and then you have another generation that grew up with wealth that most of the older generation couldn't imagine. So if you know anything about Korea, you know that the younger generation and the older generation, the divide is so drastic.

And also spiritually, along with the economy growing, spiritually, it was the fastest-growing Christian nation in the last 50 years. After the Korean War, it went from, I think it was about 6% or 7%, and the slides are up there, to at the peak, it was about 33%. So it went from, it was so poor that they started Compassion International, World Vision.

So many of these orphanages started out in Korea because after the wars, there were so many kids who were orphaned. And it was such a poor country. And you heard it from Pastor Peter Chung that even Haiti sent aid. And that's how poor Korea was. And then it just, the revival broke out.

And so spiritually, it became the second-largest mission-sending organization in the world. It said Compassion, it went from receiving nation to supporting nation. And in one generation, it went from receiving to second-highest supporting nation outside of U.S. So U.S. is the number one in mission-sending and number one in financial support.

And Korea became number one, number two in mission-sending and number two in financial support. That's how quickly it grew. But the reason why we started going out there, if you can start to change the other one. Okay, man, I don't have my glass. I can't read this. Okay, just to give you kind of like some general facts about Korea so that you can pray more effectively, 30% of Koreans speak English in Korea, but they're pretty shy.

Unless they're very confident, they won't speak, right? But I found that that most of them, as soon as they feel comfortable, their English is a lot better than they let you know. And so when we go out and talk to them, once they break the ice, I can say, "Oh, you actually understand." But culturally, they'll tell you they're not because they kind of like feel shy about that.

But according to statistics, about 30%, almost 70% of Koreans are college grads, which is 50% in U.S., 65% in Japan. Taiwan is the highest at 82%, and in India, 25%. Koreans are known for being the greatest alcohol-consuming country in the world. So if you guys know anything about Korea, they're alcohol-obsessed, right, number one.

And so that contributes to a lot of the pressure that even the Christians are under because if they don't drink, they feel automatically they're shunned by their work culture, their school friends. And so that's one of the big problems out in Korea. Korea has the lowest birth rate of any country in the world.

I've heard, and I think I may have shared this, and I read that if the Korean birth rate continues as it is, they said in 30 years, 30 to 50 years, 90% of Koreans are going to be gone because it's decreasing. That's how quickly it's decreasing. So this is an issue not only in Korea, in Japan, in China, in Taiwan.

They're all facing the same problem, but Korea is the worst right now. And so when I was out in Korea this-- was it winter or spring? You know, one of the churches that I attended with my mom, during the service, they would baptize an infant, and then after they baptized, they would give the parents money.

And so you know how we have adoption funds? We have birth funds, because they're so concerned about the birth rate that churches are starting to collect money and give it to young families, whoever. And so the government gives them money, and churches just to encourage people to have children.

And even with that encouragement, they have the highest, lowest birth rate. And so you can sense that when you go to the churches. You just don't see children around, right? And so this is a huge problem out in Korea. And this is related spiritually, because one, if you ask most of them why you don't have children, it's because of money.

Because they've made a standard of living, at least what they want, so high, and their actual pay is-- it's not like they can't live, but they've created a standard of living that's so high, they think having a kid is impossible because they don't have money. So it's financial-related, but it's also spiritual, because they put such a high value on materialism, and that's what's causing all that.

And that's obviously affecting the spiritual atmosphere over there as well. And this has also affected the church. Materialism has infected the church where the non-Christians don't have respect for Christians. And so if you can go to the next slide. "Christianity was introduced to Korea "through businessmen who traveled in China "and ran into Christians as early as 1500." It doesn't mean that Korea, the gospel came, but there's records of Koreans who ran into businessmen out in China as early as that.

"Christianity was officially outlawed in Korea "until Protestant missionaries came to the peninsula in 1880." So the actual Christianity coming into Korea was around 1880. It was one Presbyterian and one Methodist, and they came in. Their graves are actually still out in Korea, 'cause then their children and even their grandchildren died sharing the gospel out in Korea.

And so this was a-- I mean, literally, Korea was a country that was-- the gospel was spread by blood of martyrs. The early missionaries, many of them were martyred to try to bring the gospel to them. So the spirit of martyrdom was what discipled the early Christians. And so that's why Christians who became Christian early-- so if you're a fourth-generation Christian in Korea, your great-great-grandparents may have been probably the first Christians out in Korea.

And so many of them probably either experienced persecution or knew somebody that got martyred for their faith, and that's part of the reason why there was such a huge response to Christianity in Korea, because the early Christians there literally gave their blood to bring the gospel there, and so did the missionaries.

So that's the history of Christianity, and it began to explode after the Korean War. Next slide. Seoul holds 9 of the largest-- 10 largest churches in the world, right, is in Seoul. So of the 10 megachurches, largest churches in the world, 9 of them are stationed in one city, right?

That's how much Christianity has influenced in the previous generation. South Korea was dubbed "Korean miracle" because of the explosion of Christianity. South Korea is the most Christian nation in all of Asia by percentage, right? No other Asian country experienced this type of revival outside of Korea, so that's why Korea was the second-largest mission-sending country.

Even though it's a tiny country, it had the second-largest number, right? Again, until recently. If you can go to the next one. So if you look at that, you can see the growth of Christianity in 2010, right? And this is, what, 14 years ago. And right now, it's not--at peak, it was about 33%, and right now, it's much lower than 29%.

It's not, you know, it's not a huge-- much less than 29%, because it kept on going up to 33%, and then within the last 10 years, Christianity has been starting to dip. But part of the reason why it dipped is because the next generation, the collegiates and younger, are completely lost.

If you can go to the next slide. Recent polls have shown a sharp decline of professing Christians on college campuses. Less than 3% claim to be Christians in the younger generation, the Gen Z. So at one point at peak, a population was 33%, but if you go to the college campus, it said it's less than 3%.

It's somewhere closer to 2%, meaning that next generation is completely gone. By the time they're adults, all these megachurches are just going to die off, because the younger generation is just not coming up, right? And what we found last year was that there's still an open door to Christianity to these young generations, because when we talked to them and when we talked to the churches, they were not necessarily closed off to Christianity.

In fact, a lot of the young people credit Christianity for the country becoming what it is-- financially, morally. They credit Korea's success to the Christian missionaries who came and helped them. So they don't have a bad view of Christianity per se. They have a very bad view of Christianity in Korea.

And so that's why they're more open to talking to Christians who are coming from outside, especially if you're able to relate to them and communicate with them. They're actually more willing to talk to us than they are to the Koreans who speak Korean, right? Because we don't have that baggage when we go and share the gospel with them.

And so that's part of the reason why our denomination has asked us to get engaged in what's going on in Korea so that we can partner with people to try to bring the gospel to them, okay? And so if you can go... So I don't know if you can read that, but we're going to be following the Colossians 4, 3 to 4 topic of praying at the same time for us as well that God would open up the door for the word so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned, that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.

So there's four prayer requests. One, pray for doors to be opened to share the gospel in Korea, okay? So right now, obviously, I believe that there's an open door now because so many of these young people grew up in the church, who are no longer attending church, have a base of Christianity in them.

So it's not like they haven't heard the gospel. They know the church culture. They just don't want to go to Korean church. I actually have friends who are ministering in an English church in Korea, and some of them, half of them are Korean-speaking. So I always ask them, "How come they come to an English-speaking church when there's so many Korean churches?" They say they don't trust the Korean churches.

So even though they're in Korea and their language is not English, they said they have an easier time trusting the English-speaking pastors. Okay, so that kind of gives you an idea of what's going on over there. So our prayer is we have some people that we make connections with, but our prayer is that God would open doors to make connections with like-minded, like-hearted people there that we can really get alongside.

And so we're also going, and we're doing some projects, but our hope is that as we make connection, that we would come alongside to help church plant and that our desire is not to simply connect more and more churches. Our desire is to go there and to really connect and build a healthy, strong church where the gospel and the Word of God is taught.

And so if you can pray, really pray for that because that's our real, like, number one goal in going out this year is to find connection where we feel confident that like-minded, like-hearted people that we can work with. And two, pray for the connections we've made with like-minded people, and that's number two.

Pray that God would give us the heart and boldness to make clear the mystery of the cross to people we will meet there. And obviously, we have a lot of young people that are going. And, you know, our training basically is if you're not witnessing here, you can't turn it on over there.

Right? And so if you can pray for us that even now, that God will begin to give the members, you guys as well, but the members who are going, the heart of evangelism so when we get there, that would be, that's not something that we have to force. It would naturally be able to share the gospel with the people that we meet.

Pray that the team will return with a greater vision for global evangelism and sense of urgency to spread the gospel. So, not only for when we're there, every short-term missions that we're doing and I've already shared that there's going to be a Taiwan mission that's happening in October, but every time we go out to mission, our goal is not simply to make an impact there, but we're hoping that it would affect the whole church.

The few people that are going will be able to come back and share the sense of urgency, and so even if you didn't physically go, that the church would be renewed and revived for the vision toward evangelism and great commission, even back at home. So if you can take some time to pray for that.

If I can ask you guys, our team members to stand up, okay? Stand up again, and if you are near them, okay? Try to surround them and somebody just take charge and lead that group in prayer, and then if the rest of you, if you can just kind of circle around maybe with about four people around you, and just go down the topic.

Okay? And take some time to pray over these topics. Just give each person a different topic to pray for. If you're not with a team member, if you're with a team member, ask them what their prayer request is and have them share, and then just take some time to pray over them, okay?

Now. Alright? We'll give you a total of about 15 minutes, so about 9.05 we'll come back together. Somebody near there, especially you guys, be a man and take charge. Okay? Somebody speak up and say, "What's your prayer request?" Now the praise team start to come up. Now the praise team start to come up.

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