Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Awakened to Grace :: Prayer" | Sunday Service | January 11, 2026

Transcript

"Awakened to Grace :: Prayer" | Sunday Service | January 11, 2026 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna start a new sermon series this week that uh we're actually doing across all of uh the our uh the churches that are like us across all of Florida called Awakened to Grace.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to look at your neighbor next to you to say, I want to be awakened to grace.
• 1:14
  unknown: Awakened to grace.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Awakened to grace.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the premise to this entire sermon series is that God's grace is available to us, unfettered, and available to us in every single way.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: We just sometimes have a hard time seeing it or experiencing it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what we're gonna talk about for the next several weeks is ways in which we can experience and see the grace of God to be awakened to what it is.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and we're gonna talk about the different spiritual practices and disciplines that help us get there.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: You follow me?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a cool thing: there's an accompanying book, and this is a devotion book.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It actually started in Advent, but Advent's kind of rough for us in campus ministry, so uh you could just start halfway through and really, you know.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it's these are daily devotions all the way up uh through Epiphany, the end of Epiphany and and much more, which is here and uh through all of February.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And these I have like I don't know, 15 of them over there on the table over there.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want one, just go take it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's totally free, and you can go take it, and um, it is a it's a great way to just kind of read the devotion every morning, um talking about being awakened to grace.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: This morning, we're gonna start with the first, and I think, especially at the beginning of the year, the most important spiritual discipline, and that is prayer.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Prayer.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, um, the thing about prayer is that uh sometimes we think that we need prayer in order to get closer to God.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had that kind of feeling?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I need to pray so I can renew my relationship with God.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that that may there may be parts of that that are true, but I want to I want to make one thing clear.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because most of us, if we're being honest, totally transparent, most of us suck at prayer.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: The blank faces on your uh on your faces, tell me I'm right.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because in church, you don't want to admit it, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to admit, like I don't do that very much.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or or I suck at it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is though, is if we can build a strong prayer life, that we will be awakened to what God is doing in our life already.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: We just have to start.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: We just have to start with prayer.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I would say that prayer, perhaps of all the spiritual disciplines, and we're gonna talk about a bunch of them in the next couple weeks, but I would say it's probably the most misunderstood, and I would even say the most anxiety-inducing one.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think a lot of us think it's all about saying the right things, using the right words, believing hard enough, that sort of thing.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes when we have that feeling, it just causes us to stop praying.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: It just causes us to kind of not do it as much.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want to name the reality of prayer in the room that we're not good at it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It often uh feels boring or awkward.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you ever like wanted to start up, you like got the Holy Spirit in you, and you're like, I'm I just want to talk to God, and then you're like, and what do I say, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's true.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think oftentimes we also it can be a little boring, put it that way.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was in college once.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe it?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was I was in the worship team when I was in college.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And in the on the worship team, I uh got I was playing the piano and it was cool.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was I felt so cool, you know, on the stage, you know.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one time the the pastor who always led the the the prayers of the people, we called it, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Where he would say, Hey, tell me what we need to pray for, and we'd sit there and pray.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: He asked me to do it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh let's just say that I had had a rough night before.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Are you with me?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: You ever had one of those in college?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'd had a rough night before, and I had not gotten a lot of sleep.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, yeah, of course, I'll pray.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole time, while we had our heads down and our eyes closed, me, the one leading the prayer, kept feeling like I am six seconds away from falling asleep.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: You ever done that on a Sunday morning when like we bow our heads for this kind of big whole uh holy, you know, prayer and just drift off.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Especially I've been to uh some churches where the pastors they just have this gorgeous, I'm sorry that I don't, you know, they just have this gorgeous soft pastoral voice.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when they start to pray, it's like a little ASMR, you know, and you just float off.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just be real.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: That happens in prayer as well.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: The anxiety part about prayer.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of times we ask this our questions, am I doing this right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is God even listening?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is my mind wandering to what I'm doing for lunch or what I'm doing next, or these things that are on my mind right now?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would also say that prayer for a lot of people feels risky because we've all had a moment in which we lifted something up to the Lord that we desperately needed to happen.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: A family friend who was going through an emergency, a grandma who was sick, uh, a relationship that was on the rocks.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have lifted the uh test you didn't study for, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've all had these moments where like I'm just gonna lift this up to the Lord and He's gonna pull through for me, and then it doesn't happen.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you feel kind of might make you a little less ready to bring it to the Lord the next time.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to name that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think all of those things contribute to our prayer life becoming more occasional, uh, they become vague and then they get reserved for those 10 minutes before that final exam.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: The cool part about prayer is that we actually have a model for it in the scriptures, and we have we have a model in in Jesus when he gives us the Lord's Prayer.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, but uh today I want to talk about the model of the Psalms.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: When I was in seminary, I had to take an Old Testament class.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Very exciting stuff.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Old Testament, they they love it so much that Eli is clapping from upstairs.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Nerd.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I was playing with you, buddy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I gave him a hard time on Wednesday at Bible study because I was like, Eli's an old testament guy, and he we were in the New Testament, and he goes, he goes, Well, you can't have the New Testament without the Old.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, You're right.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um I took an Old Testament class.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: You have to take the first part of it in the fall semester, and then you take the second part in the spring semester.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good they make it two semesters, okay?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got to go the first part, and then and in the middle of the Old Testament is a book called The Psalms.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we got through, we got all the way up to the Psalms in that first semester, and then over the break, my professor said, I want you to go home with the spiritual practice over the break.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's always a great thing when you get assigned to work over the break, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So she said, I want you to go home with the spiritual practice, I want you to prayerfully read the psalms over the break.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just tell you, that was the most eye-opening academic experience I've ever had in my life.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly because it wasn't academic.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Inside of the Psalms, I believe that what Athanasius said, I'm gonna show you in a second.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is a picture of him, by the way.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: He looks cool, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I put that next slide up there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I believe this is true.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: That inside the Psalms, nothing in human life is left out.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he said.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Inside of the Psalms, everything we experience about human life is there.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Joy, sadness.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Inside out.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: No reference, Pixar, hello?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anger, okay.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, anxiety, a winning, losing, a feeling like you, they got your back, a feeling like your back was taken from you.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everything inside of human life is left, nothing inside of human life is left out in the Psalms.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's all there.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther said this about the Psalms.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is him.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: He looks like a cool guy.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said this about the Psalms, that the Psalms are a little Bible.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that we see inside the Bible also exists inside the Psalms.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see the advantage of how of praying it daily, of reading it.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing I loved about it is that so many times we go to God in prayer and we do not have the words, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to say.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: When you're reading their prayers, they're there for you.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So what I want to do is I want to look at Psalms 86.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is kind of a crazy story, but where's Pierce?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Pierce.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Pierce, there he is.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Duval in the back.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have written that better.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did not prep him for that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Can you hear me?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he is wearing a Duval.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's Playoffs, can you tell?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he is wearing a Duval shirt today.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But Pierce came in and he gave me this this morning.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, I he said, I just found this and I thought of you.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it has the 23rd Psalm, which, if you don't know, is the Lord of my shepherd, I shall not wine.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: He maketh me to lie down and greet pastures.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: He'd lead me beside still waters.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a prayer card.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: On a week, we're talking about prayer.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's the Lord at work, Pierce.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go to Psalm 86.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Here now the reading of God's word.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, listen closely to me and answer me, because I am poor and in need.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Guard my life because I'm faithful.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Save your servant who trusts in you, my God.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Have mercy on me, Lord, because I cry out to you all day long.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Make your servant's life happy again, because, my Lord, I offer my life to you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because, my Lord, you are good and you're forgiving.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're full of faithful love for all those who cry out to you.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Listen closely to my prayer, Lord.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Pay close attention to the sound of my requests for mercy.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I'm in trouble, I cry out to you because you will answer me.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: God, your word is a lamp into our feet, and it's a life into our path, light into our path.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: May it speak to us, and may it speak through us.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that your kingdom would be established on this earth.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: We love you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: We pray this in your name.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Theologian uh Walter Wangerman says that there are really four movements to prayer, and they're actually pretty easy, so I thought I'd share them with you.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're up here.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: The first part is we speak.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the second part is God listens.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third part is God speaks.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fourth part is we listen.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not that hard, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're college students.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: We speak, God listens.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: God speaks, we listen.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: We speak.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: God listens.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: God speaks.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: We listen.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: He also said this: we're really good at the first step.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that's not true.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: We just talked about it a little bit, but we're good at the first step.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: If there's any step that we're good at in this, it is the first one.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: We speak.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: The second, the third one, we assume happens.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: But most of us have never had an experience where we got to experience it in person or we had this kind of miraculous moment that you might read about in the Bible or something.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we just assume that the second and third part happens.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fourth one we're really bad at.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: The first one, okay at.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Second and third, we're assuming they happen.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the fourth one, we don't do it all.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about it for a little bit.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: When we start, we say we speak.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: When we bring something to God.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: In uh verse 5, he says, You're my Lord.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: In verse 1, he says, Listen closely, Lord, and answer me because I am poor and needy.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Prayer does not begin with some sort of spiritual like holiness, some sort of performance, some sort of uh polished thing that we bring to the Lord.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen to me, because I am poor and I'm needy.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Prayer is a means to seeing grace.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It does not, and this is super important, it does not earn grace.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: When I was growing up, when I went to church, I had to wear my Sunday vest.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: We all had to do that.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the theory behind it was like we put on our best for God.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's still true.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: But have you ever noticed that when you go to different churches, different churches dress different ways?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing like being inside a different congregation and feeling like, oh, I didn't dress the right way.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you thought that this morning.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But for sure, I've been to some churches.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I am not cool enough to be here.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: The jean jacket gotta go, you know?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have who said no.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sales.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought a lot about like, okay, yeah, we bring our best to God, but are we trying to earn something in the process?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't the same thing true about our own faith, our own prayer life?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're just trying to like put up some sort of like, oh yeah, I've been doing this.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: We do that with our friends for sure.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: We put on a face, we put on a persona, we put on this kind of spiritual wall so that we look better or feel better than we actually are.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think that grace has to be earned, then you're always gonna function like that.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've got to do my best to get God to pay attention to me.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, how backwards is that?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing that David, the man after God's own heart, King David, says is listen closely, Lord, and answer me because I am poor and I'm needy.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my encouragement to you in your moments of prayer.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Speak honestly with God.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You live in a world uh in a can't on a campus and where everything's just got to be a performance.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta put on my best, I've gotta do my best thing, and that's what you're taught all the way through your entire college career and all the way through the world if we're being real.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, have you ever been on Instagram?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything's got to be perfect in this next level thing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to impress the people that I will never ever talk to again.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like everything has got to be that, and so I wish we could fix that across the entirety of the world, and maybe one day Jesus will come in glory and we will.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: But for now, could we at least be as honest as we can in prayer, if nothing else?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just to go to God and say, Man, I screwed up.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Man, God, I am poor and needy, and I am broken.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, why would I do that?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: God, God, why would I do that?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the second part then is that God has to listen to us.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And again, let me just reiterate that is not, God's listening is not conditional on our performance.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't listen because we pray well, because we present some sort of show.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: God listens because it's in God's nature and his holy nature and his gracious nature to listen to you.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's the promise throughout the scriptures.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: We do the first one okay, the second one we assume happens.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Homies, stop assuming and know.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's in God's nature, it is who God is.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: God is incapable of doing anything outside of God's nature.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it is who God is that God would listen to your prayer.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So bring it to him.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Don't put on a show, just bring it to him.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't get God's attention.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Our prayer life just brings us to the awareness that God is already and always has been paying attention to us.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then God speaks.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Moses gets to go up on a mountain, bro.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Gets to talk to God.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I've never heard the loud voice of God in my life.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I so wish I had.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: It must be awesome.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I've never heard God's loud voice, like spoken in English type thing, to me.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: But there have been moments in which I have been reminded that God speaks to me.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes uh we we realize those after the fact.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it just comes to these moments where you know somebody's gotta stop you in your tracks and speaking to you, and the whole time you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is the Lord talking to me right now.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the I better shape up.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Lord talking to me right now.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you about one of those slides.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a senior in college, I was in college once.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a senior in college, I was gonna go on to do graduate work, uh, or I was gonna go work in like a ministry setting, and I didn't really know.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was I was a, if you can believe it, an opera singer.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was gonna go do that.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I will not do it for you now.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I was gonna go uh sing, I was gonna go do that, and uh I was also getting married and I was involved in SGA and I had all kinds of things going on, and I was looking for jobs and I was looking for opportunities, and some of them were in campus ministry, but not as a pastor, but as a musician.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt, some of you have probably felt this way, very directionless in your life.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know what's next, what's the right next step?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my pastor sat down with me.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I rarely sat down with him.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: We were on good terms, but I never really sat down with him.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he sat down with me and my fiance, who's now my wife, and he said, Oh, yeah, that's right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Um, Brian, I don't talk like this very much.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I need you to know that I feel like God is calling you to something, and you are running away from it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, I I don't see the gifts that I see very often, but I see them in you, and I feel so strongly that the Holy Spirit has put it on me that you need to pursue this in your life.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Does that require seminary?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Yes.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, No, thank you.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not interested.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I am convinced of God's call on your life.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: There is no doubt in my mind that God was speaking to me in that moment.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: The question is that fourth part.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: If the second and third are gonna do themselves and we're stopping assuming we know that they're going to do it, God is going to speak to you, God is going to listen to you, then what about that fourth part?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna listen back?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has this friend, and if you don't have this friend, you might be that friend who dominates every conversation.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm talking about?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just nod your head like you know what I'm talking about.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has this friend who dominates conversation.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, as somebody who does like to talk and does it for a living, that sucks.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: It sucks to be in a conversation that's one way.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would say that's probably what's wrong with the world right now, is we're in a one-way conversation with everybody.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you this.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: The last time you were like, I've never heard God speak to me.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: God hasn't called me in anything, I don't really know what God's doing.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that because God's not speaking, or is it because we're not listening?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to think it's because we've closed ourselves off to hear the voice of God.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes we view prayer as like, I've got to sit down, I'm gonna read a devotion, I'm gonna read my Bible, and then I'm just gonna say a bunch of things to God.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let me invite you that if you're in a place where you're like, I don't have the words to write, maybe I'll read a psalm or something, but I don't really have the words to say.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just invite you to just shut up.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't talk.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Try to let those, all those rushing thoughts in your brain just go away.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps you might hear the voice of God.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, my mama tell you there's a difference between hearing and listening.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I tell that to my children.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I hear you, but are you listening?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: So let me encourage you.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: First step is to be quiet.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the second step is to actually listen.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's God trying to say?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe through a time of prayer, maybe through an individual close to you, maybe something like that.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dietrich Bonhoeffer is oh, I should have put him up on the screen too.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's a theologian from the uh 1930s in uh Europe.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Great time over there.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh lost his life by trying to stop what happened in Germany.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he says that the Psalms are a great school of prayer because they teach us to pray from grace and not toward grace.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: God's grace is there in many ways that we can experience it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: If we would just spend a little time opening up to the Lord, having listen, hearing him speak, and then listening ourselves.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not in the habit of doing this on a daily basis, I cannot recommend it enough.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is the number one thing that will be the best uh part of your spiritual growth.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're in a place where like I don't do that every day, just put it literally, we're talking about 15 minutes, guys.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can squeeze in 15 minutes.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know how much TikTok you watch.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you can squeeze in 15 minutes, put it in your calendar just like you would a class.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wake up a little early, be a little more intentional, and take those four ways.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just spend some time with God daily.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you need a devotion book, you can get one of these for free over there until they're gone.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or you can look them up online.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a thousand different ways.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can download the Bible app, which I highly recommend.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: All of those are great options for you to spend some time speaking to and listening to God.