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As we grow in our relationship with Christ, one of the things that is vital in understanding

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the communication between us and the Lord is prayer.

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Prayer has been talked about for centuries, and there's so many different aspects to prayer.

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The perspective I'm going to take here with us right now is that prayer is about communicating

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your heart with God, it's listening to God, it's having a relationship with God of intimacy.

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Prayer is intimacy.

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But I'm going to take a decidedly different perspective maybe than most in that I'm going

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to say that prayer is asking and receiving.

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So prayer is just not about just having a close relationship with God, as important

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as that can be, communication with God, but it's also asking God to move.

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It's asking God for things in your life that you need and then receiving them in your life

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through faith.

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But let's just start kind of with a working definition of prayer.

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I think prayer is asking and receiving.

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Prayer is about intimacy with the Lord.

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Prayer is about you sharing your heart with God and God actually sharing his heart with us.

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I believe that in most cases, God communicates his heart to us through this book, the Bible.

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We've talked about the Bible because this is where his promises are.

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This is where his commands are.

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This is where the stories are of great men and women of God and how God met them in dire

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situations.

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It's a testimony of stories.

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It's letters written to us in the middle of the Bible as the Psalms of worship, called

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the Psalter.

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But prayer is our communication back to God.

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God mainly speaks through the scriptures.

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Yes, he does give visions and dreams and that may be new for some of you, but if you're

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increasingly open to different ways that God speaks and if you're spending time reading

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God's word, we see that through the centuries, but especially even in the Bible, God spoke

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through visions and dreams.

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And when we go all the way from the beginning with the first five book of Moses all the

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way to Revelation, God is speaking in visions and dreams.

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But the main way, the main way God speaks to us is through the Bible.

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The prayer becomes our dialogue with God.

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That's where we share our heart with him.

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And that is so key to a vital, dynamic, growing, intimate relationship.

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So when I got married some 37 years ago to Liz, I learned to listen to Liz's heart and

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she's learned to listen to my heart and we communicate.

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And the reason we're still together after 37 years and seven kids and five grandchildren

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later is because we know how to communicate with each other.

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And sometimes that communication is stunted.

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Sometimes it's more free than other times.

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Well, it's different, but it's the same with God in that I love Liz.

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I'm passionate about my relationship with Liz, but I love God now.

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I have Jesus in my heart and I'm going after him and I have to communicate with the Lord.

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And the way that God has given us to communicate is through prayer.

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And Jesus, the kingdom of God revolutionary model that we have Jesus, spent so much time

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in prayer.

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When you go through Luke, the book of Luke especially, I call it kind of the zigzag life

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of Christ of the private and the public and the public and the private in his life, which

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would be a great study for you to do sometime is just go through the gospel of Luke in two

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or three settings, reading, reading, reading, and then put a, put a P for prayer.

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Every time you see a reference to Christ going to a lonely place, going into the desert,

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or literally where it says he was praying, put a P there and you'll be surprised how

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many little Ps are all through the gospel of Luke.

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Luke seemed to be the most insightful into the private life of Jesus of the four gospels.

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And so Jesus being the son of God, having all the power of the universe and the power

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of the kingdom flowing through him, both fully man and fully God, yet he felt like he constantly

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needed to go into prayer.

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He constantly needed to seek what God was telling him to do.

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And so he said in one place, I can only.

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I do what I see the father doing.

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So Jesus was looking at and listening for

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and talking to his father, his heavenly father,

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saying, Lord, what do you have for me today?

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What are you calling me to?

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And so becoming a Christian

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is about a love relationship with Jesus,

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just as Jesus had a love relationship with his father.

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This is so key in growing in our faith

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is to understand how to do that.

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So I said earlier that I believe that prayer

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is about asking and receiving.

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Now this comes from Jesus.

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Jesus says, ask, and it will be given to you.

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Seek, and you will find.

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Knock, and the door shall be opened to you.

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For everyone who asks receives.

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He who seeks finds, and him who knocks, it will be opened.

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So prayer is asking, seeking, knocking.

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And as you're growing in your faith,

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you're gonna find again and again

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that God's gonna put you in circumstances

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and situations where you don't know what to do.

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You're not clear about what to do.

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You're not sure about what God wants you to do,

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and you're gonna have to cry out to him.

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And so prayer is asking from God.

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A lot of times it's asking for wisdom.

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Sometimes it's even asking for financial needs in our life.

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I can recall so many times as a missionary

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where Liz and I were up against a wall financially,

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and we didn't have the finances for language school,

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or we didn't have the finances for a flight,

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or we didn't have the finances

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for taking the Jesus film into some islands

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in the South China Sea.

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I can tell you so many stories.

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And then we came back to the United States

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and went to graduate school,

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came and planted a church here in Colorado Springs.

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And again, there were times

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where we just didn't have what we needed

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in material or finances.

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We had a large family, a lot of kids.

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And one vivid story that's appropriate

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is that we live out in the country.

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We still live out in the country,

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same house from since 1998.

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And our septic tank went out.

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We were tight on finances.

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We found out it was gonna cost us $5,100

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to fix the septic tank.

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And so Liz and I would take walks,

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and I would cry out to God.

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And this was kind of what my prayer was.

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Lord, look, I've been tithing.

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If you don't know what tithing is,

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we'll talk about that another time.

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But tithing is giving 10% of your income to the Lord.

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And I said, look, Lord, I've been tithing for 30 years.

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And I need a little bit of cash back right now.

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I've been putting in a lot of deposits,

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but I'm gonna need to draw my account.

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And so I asked the Lord for $5,100 that I did not have.

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And three days later, there was a knock at our door,

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and one of our neighbors in the neighborhood said,

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I felt like God told me to give you,

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it's kind of an odd number,

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but I was told by God to give you this check.

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And we opened up the envelope and it was $5,100.

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And so God does the supernatural when we ask,

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when we seek him, when we call out to him.

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Jesus also says, let your light so shine before men

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that they may see your good works

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and glorify your Father in heaven.

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So one of the ways that I think

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that our light shines in the world is through prayer,

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through talking, asking God, first off.

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And we know the story of a widow who was in trouble,

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and she went to a judge and she told the judge

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about the situation and she knocked on his door

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and he wouldn't answer and he wouldn't answer,

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but she kept knocking and she kept asking him

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to bring her justice.

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And finally he did.

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And Jesus concludes the parable by saying,

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aren't I more loving than him?

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Even the unjust judge did what she asked

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because of her persistence.

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So there's something about persistence in prayer

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of constantly shining our light in different situations.

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So I'm challenging you to grow in prayer.

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And what I would encourage you to do,

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if you have a journal, take a journal,

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maybe even have a prayer journal

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that's different than maybe your personal journal,

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but in that prayer journal, write down what you need.

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Now you'll do like I do, from time to time

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I put more of my wants than my needs.

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There's a difference between a want and a need.

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What do you actually need God, from God, to do in your life?

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Beginning with your own character,

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changes that he can bring into your life,

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and start writing those down.

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And then make a commitment to every day

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praying for those things that you need.

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And I'm telling you, watch out.

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God's going to show up in so many miraculous ways

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by you asking for what you need and then for God

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to show up in a mighty and powerful way

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to answer those prayers.

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That's what prayer's about.

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And I want you to grow in prayer.

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You grow in prayer and there'll be no obstacle.

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There'll be no wall.

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There'll be no obstruction to your faith

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because you'll be an overcomer.

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You'll be more than an overcomer.

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You'll be more than a conqueror through prayer.

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So prayer is key in growing as a kingdom revolutionary.

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When I left a church that I had planted

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and pastored for 20 years, I was hurt.

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I felt betrayed.

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I felt broken.

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And during that time, it began a thing called prayer walking.

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So I began to get up early every morning.

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And sometimes I'd do it twice a day in the evening, too.

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Put on my shoes, and I would just

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walk and walk and walk for miles on end,

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praying to God, seeking God to change my heart,

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to transform me through this very, very difficult time.

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And for the next four years, I don't

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think I hardly missed a day as I prayer walked.

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But it was through those prayers,

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seeking forgiveness, wanting to give that forgiveness

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away to be unloaded from the burdens

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that I carried that God began to work.

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Simultaneously, beginning to pray, what's the next step?

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Or what are you calling us to?

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We went into 40 days of prayer.

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And then God began to speak about the church, the road

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at Chapel Hills, and a new church

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that He was going to plant through Liz and I.

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And that's what's happened.

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And that's now eight years removed.

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To see what God did is amazing.

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And so I want to challenge you.

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There's areas of your life, too, where you struggle.

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There's areas of your life, it might be with your job.

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It might be in a marriage.

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It might be with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

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It might be through an addiction that you're struggling with.

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Or some issue, or maybe many issues in your life,

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I want to challenge you, go to the Lord in prayer.

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For me, prayer walking was key.

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Sometimes getting away on a personal time

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alone in the mountains.

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We live in Colorado, so love to go to the mountains.

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But to really ask God for what you need, watch what He'll do.

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It'll be amazing.

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It's the key to miracles in your life, is learning to pray,

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learning to cry out to God for what you need.