Latest / Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies / Prayer | Andrew Itson & Ronnie Missildine | Week 05

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Prayer | Andrew Itson & Ronnie Missildine | Week 05 · Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online@madisonchurch.org be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you. All right, if you want to go ahead and open your Bibles to the Book of Colossians, the Book of Colossians is where we're going to be tonight. So when I was a kid, one of the greatest debates on the playground besides Alabama or Auburn, which, if you know who I like, it didn't apply to me. The other debate on the playground was this. Is professional wrestling real or fake? Did anybody have that debate on the playground? Okay, some of you, and I don't want to spoil it for Peter. It's fake, but it's real. It's real to you. It's real to you.
• 1:19
  Speaker B: My grandmother thought it was real, too.
• 1:21
  Speaker A: Well, that's what I was going to ask. Did they have wrestling? I'm just kidding. You made fun of me last week. So I had. Touche, touche. Okay. Anyway, that was a big debate. And I think part of what made, at least for me, wrestling, very, very popular when I was a kid, was because of this guy. You all know who this is, Hulk Hogan, Right? And part of what also made him popular, you know, his personality, very bright, very, very eccentric. But when I was a kid, they had two things that you could really connect with wrestlers on, and one of those was something called a wrestling buddy. That's what you see right there is this thing you could literally hold and you could suplex. You could get a Goldberg or a Stinguin if you wanted. And so that's part of what made wrestling popular. The other thing was, is you could get the vitamins, and you either had the choice, right, usually, of the. The Hulk Hogan vitamins or Flintstone vitamins. And if you really have. Do y' all remember what those taste like? Terrible. It's chalk. It's basically chalk. And so my generation's gonna have a whole lot of health problems because of the chalk vitamins we took for years. But anyway, and so I say all this, I don't have a lot of experience wrestling. I have two core memories that revolve around wrestling. Core memory number one is when I was at Faulkner, the social club that I was a part of every Wednesday night had something called kwf. And after our meetings and Jimmy, if you want to share anything, you're welcome to. I saw Jimmy wrestle a time or two. And so after our meetings, you would go out to the Rock and. And our club would randomly pick two people to wrestle each other. Well, I never got called on and I purposely liked standing in the back because I didn't want to get called on. But every Wednesday night, a bunch of me and my friends had this tradition that we went to San Marcos to get buy one, get one free. So I got my buy one and my free and I ate both of them, went to my meeting, and then I get called on to wrestle. And I had never wrestled before and wrestling is already difficult, but especially when you're expending that much energy. And some people talk about like they wrestle to the death. I wrestled to the throw up. I'll never forget. Me and a guy named Ryan Wallace. He is a minister, by the way. Both of us, we were told that we had to pop our collars and do a Hollister match. So, you know, some of you in the 90s will appreciate our thousands appreciate that. Anyway, so that's what we had to do. And that was my first experience wrestling. And here's what I realized when I wrestled, I was way weaker than I thought. Okay, hold on to that. My next experience when I was wrestling was not one I picked either. When I was growing up, every Thanksgiving we went down to Central Florida. That's where my mom is from. And my cousins, I called them my uncles, but they were technically cousins. I called them uncles because they were huge. They were way bigger than I was, way older than I was. And there was four of them. And they treated me like that wrestling buddy. And so every year, like they would wrestle with me. One year, I remember, like, I'm talking about like trauma, you experience. I remember they said, let's see how close we can get. Andrew's head to the ceiling fan. Like, things like that. Like, that's what I experienced growing up. And so what they would want to do with me is they wanted to wrestle me all the time. And each year I was like, you know, I'm going to do a bunch of push ups. So like the week of, I did A bunch of push ups to get really strong, you know. And so I get there and they taunted me every single year. They were like, oh, little Andy's getting stronger. You know, things like that. And again, every year when I went down for Thanksgiving to Orlando, Florida, I realized I was not as strong as I thought. And the reason why I give you those illustrations, if you've ever physically wrestled at all, wrestling does one of two things to you. It makes you realize you're way stronger than you thought, or it makes you realize you're weaker than you thought. And I know this is kind of a weird intro to a class on prayer, but the reason I mention that is what we're going to talk about tonight is a term that shows up in scripture, which is wrestling in prayer. And similar to like physical wrestling, when you wrestle with God in prayer over things, you realize one of two things that you are way stronger maybe than you thought. Hey, I feel it. I feel strong in this. I feel like I'm some momentum here. But oftentimes, if you're like me, you actually sometimes in that wrestling realize I'm a little bit weaker than I thought. And both of those have value. And so to kick class off tonight, in the words of Hulk Hogan, here's my advice. Train, say your prayers and eat your vitamins. But in all seriousness, tonight what we're going to talk about is something that we've had on our agenda to talk about from the very beginning. And I don't know if you got into this with them much, but Ronnie and I went to, he came into my office, we got a whiteboard out and we began to write down, like, if I have questions about prayer. And we're going to get to some of those heavy questions the next few weeks. There were things that we as a church need to talk about when it comes to prayer. What are those things? And one of the things we both brought up was something that we talked about several years ago here, and that was what is called a culture of prayer. And so I want to give a little bit of background on this and it's going to be a little bit of a review, but I think it was almost four, four and a half years ago that we talked about this. So I'm trying to sum it all up tonight. Every year the shepherds and the ministers get together for a time of vision, planning. And sometimes it ends in a goal, a theme, a vision. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's just a good time to pray together, to be together. Well, during our meeting A few years ago, one of the things that we just did is went through scripture. And as we went through scripture, we really just really looking at what do we see the church doing that maybe we're not doing. And one of the things that we noticed is that the church spent a lot of time just praying together. It was like a pillar, a part of who they were. Well, when that got brought up, I shared with them. I said, well, I guess this is okay to mention. Before I came to Madison, I reached out to Freed, Faulkner, Lipscomb and Harding, their deans of their Bible departments. And I said, hey, if you don't mind, could you tell me what you believe are the fastest growing churches of Christ right now in America, who those are? Because my idea was, well, I might ask them some things I could learn because I would assume they were probably bigger congregations like Madison was is. And so I called them and I emailed them and I only got responses back from two. But what was really interesting is that the two people that responded, they mentioned the same three churches amongst like five or six. And so I called three and only got responses from two. And what was really interesting, I shared this in our shepherd's meeting that year. How I asked him, I said, alright, so what would you say? Like if you could pinpoint why you have spiritually grown and numerically grown, what would you point to? And both of them weren't expecting me to ask that because they were like, well, I'd have to think on that. One guy, the first guy I talked to, he said, well, I think it started a few years ago. One thing that we decided to do as a church is to take way more serious praying together, like in groups, like getting together with each other and taking time to pray with and for each other. Like, we just made that our goal together. And oddly enough, that was the time we really started to grow. Well, then the next one, and this is where I got this phrase. I called him and I said, hey, I actually just called the church building and I got one of the guys there and he was the associate minister. And I said, what would you attribute your growth to? Y' all were said to be one of the fastest growing churches of Christ in America. He said, alright, let me think about that for a second. And he said, you know, I know this might be a weird way to put this. He said, I feel like what we have here is a culture of prayer. He said, what I mean by that is that one of the things that we did is we studied through scripture. And one of the things that we noticed, never once does anybody in the church say, hey, I'm praying for you. Outside of Paul writing a letter to somebody because he can't be with them, he said when there was something to pray for right then, right there they prayed. And he said, so I guess I would attribute it to that. We have a culture of prayer. And I thought, well, isn't that interesting that the two churches I got a hold of that was the same things that they attributed their spiritual and their numerical growth to. And please don't think that why I'm sharing that is, well, in order to reach a number, we just need to pray together. No, that's not the goal. But there is something that can no doubt be learned from that. So one of the things that we then did here at Madison, that was our kind of our goal and our theme. And Brandon and I did a series for a few weeks and it. For Brandon and I, that was one of our favorite series we ever did. Looking at all those moments where people took the time to do those on the spot prayers. And so here's what I want to ask you, just to throw it out there from the very beginning. Why do you think the on the spot prayers equaled growth? What was it about that? It shows people you care immediately. Okay. And I don't know if any of you guys are like me in this. I have told people before praying for you, and then I walk away. And I really meant to, don't get me wrong, but I forget. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. All right, what else? Tap into the source immediately. I love that. Tap into the source immediately. Yeah. Why wait? They didn't wait. All right, why else? Any other thoughts? Puts our faith in action. Yeah, well, you think about every. The church is the gathering, right? The called out people. Yes. We can pray individually, but if we are together and we see the church doing that, that would be part of it. I love what Ben mentioned a few weeks ago in class when we. I kind of introduced the idea of what we're going to eventually talk about with this. And he said, you know, when we see a group of people praying together, sometimes we're like, oh, what's wrong? Or what's going on with them? Sometimes that's what our mind goes to. And I loved what you said, Ben, because that's not, I think. What did you say? That that should be the norm. That shouldn't be something brand new. That should be just a part of our. We should never be shocked. We'd be, oh, that's Normal. Yeah. That's what we do. Right. That's a part of who we are. Any other thoughts? Actions do speak louder than words. Absolutely. Connection and remembrance. So going off of those two times, can you remember time when somebody on the spot prayed for you? Can you? Yes.
• 12:24
  Speaker B: All right.
• 12:25
  Speaker A: Did it feel different than someone just saying, I'm praying for you? Just curious. So to me, this is part of God's plan that we find victory while getting to hit our knees together over things in prayer. So I told you, Colossians is where we're going to be. I want to give you a little bit of context on.
• 12:46
  Speaker B: Let me say something right quick. After that series or the study that we did, I was one of the bad ones. On social media, when everybody had problem, I would put, just like everybody else, I'm praying for you. But I stopped doing that. Well, I still put that, but now I actually, before I say it.
• 13:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so that's the other part. It's not. And we're not saying it's wrong to say, I'm praying for you, especially in a situation like that, but literally do it. One of the. It's funny you said that. Randy Medlin, who's one of the ministers in Montgomery, he said that if he talked to somebody or is about to text him, hey, I'm praying for you? He's. Oh, actually, I've just. It was more of like a gesture, what I was sending. Sometimes he said, make sure your prayers aren't gestures.
• 13:38
  Speaker B: Now I say, I just prayed for you.
• 13:40
  Speaker A: That's a good way to put it. That's awesome. So with that in mind, let's give some biblical context to cultures of prayer. So the Book of Colossians is probably one of my favorite books when it comes to prayer. And context really is important here. Part of the reason why Paul was writing to the church in Colossae was they were having what I call like a Jesus and mentality. They loved Jesus, but they equally loved other stuff. They really did. And so what they would do is they would take the parts of Jesus that they liked, but then the other false gods that were around there were like, oh, yeah, we'll worship Jesus. And this. We'll worship Jesus. Oh, yeah, he's awesome. But we'll also have this. They had. It's kind of like a build a bear theology. You know, you take all the little parts of the build a bear, make it into what you want it. That's basically what they did with Jesus. They took all the different parts of what they liked. About Jesus dismissed the parts that they didn't. And so that was bleeding into the church. And so Paul is writing to them, but also he has a liaison, and it's a guy named Epaphras. Okay. And we don't hear a lot about Epaphras. But what's really interesting is that people that were living in the Bible days, they knew this guy. In fact, we're going to hear in just a second about how well known he was and why he was well known. And so we first hear of him in Colossians 1:6 8. This is what it says. And of course, I had to kind of start in an awkward spot, so sorry about that. But it says, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world is bearing fruit and increasing. This is his intro. As it is also. As also it does among you since the day you heard it understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from who? Epaphras. So Epaphras is the one that's doing a lot of work here. In fact, if you look into some, like, ancient studies, a lot of people believe he was like an elder there. He was. Or at least a leader there in the church. And it says this, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister on Christ. Christ, excuse me. Notice this phrase on your behalf. That's a really important deal that he's not just teaching and going back to his house. He is teaching and living and connecting with them on their behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. So he's kind of like that liaison. Okay, but then notice this. It says this later on, he gets complimented again. This is how Paul ends his letter. He says, epaphras, who is one of you. Now, I want to stop there for a second. What does that mean to you to hear that this guy, this leader, is one of them? Does that mean anything? What does that mean? He's not better than anybody else. That's right. That's right. He knows their struggles and guides them through them.
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  Speaker B: All right.
• 16:46
  Speaker A: What else? He believes the same things.
• 16:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:51
  Speaker A: If you hear man, he's just one of the people. She's just one of the ladies. Is that endearing to you? Sounds like that'd be a. So here's what's really interesting. So it says he's one of them. So to me, that's the precursor. He's one of the people. He's connected with the people. Who is one of you? A servant of Christ Jesus greets you. And notice what it says. Always, not sometimes, always some Translations say struggling. Some say wrestle on your behalf in prayer always. This is just who he is. That you may stand mature fully and assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Hieropolis. Now, that's pretty incredible. Like, here we are in 2026, many, many years later, and we're talking about this guy Epaphras, because he is remembered for always wrestling and working hard for people in prayers.
• 18:03
  Speaker B: Mine says laboring fervently.
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  Speaker A: Oh, I love that. Laboring fervently. Here's what's interesting about that word wrestle or struggle or I guess would be labor fervently. It means. This means to struggle. This is in the Greek fight, contend in a public game or strive with intense effort. Now, I want you to think about for a second. Would that describe maybe some prayers you've had before, maybe with people to struggle to fight, to contend in a public game or strive with intense effort? Here's what I think is so neat about him choosing that word is right in that region where the church in Colossae was, there was this thing. And guess what happened in that ring? Wrestling right down the road. And so Paul being very purposeful is like, all right, I'm going to pick a word and an example of what this guy is doing for them. This man is going into the ring with people on their behalf always. That's pretty cool that he picks that. And by the way, if you fast forward, there's a place in Rome, I think it's got Paul, Luke, Peter, like who you think of as the celebrities, their statues are up there. Guess who's right in the middle of them. And we don't talk about this guy a lot. Epaphras and I looked up what is written on his. So you can see he's holding a Bible there or a book. We don't know what it is, so I shouldn't have said that. So here's what it reads. Epaphras, who was a saint Paul called his fellow prisoner the same apostles consecrated him a leader, becoming renowned for his virtues. He received the palm of martyrdom for courageously defending his flock. Committed to his charges, his body now lies at whatever that place is called. And then it goes on to say right under that, Epaphras salutes you. He is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, who is always wrestling in prayers that you may stand perfect and in full in all the will of God. For I bear his testimony that he has labored hard for you and for those who are in Laodicea and those at Hierapolis, I think it's kind of cool that that's still standing and that's what people know this guy by now. We're not trying to celebratize a person, but I do want you to think about this for yourself. The first question, so forget that I put a second question. Probably should have done two slides. Has anyone wrestled together with you in prayer? Has anybody wrestled together with you in prayer? Like, I want you to think back to a time when somebody maybe just stayed with it. Okay, and, and the one I think I've mentioned to you guys, I know I have before and you know him very well. Johnny Emerson. When we were in the beginning years with Dawson's seizures, before we moved here, she was having at least around 2 ish to 3amonth. And we tried all these medicines, we tried other hospitals. I mean we tried all sorts of things. That man was coming to my office every single week. He put his arm over me, he said, I won't keep you long. He, he hit his knees and he would pray. And I remember that, I think you said that right, David, that it's memorable. And what else? Connection and remembrance. Yeah. And so one time, and I guess I had heard about that happening with other people and I thought, you know what, I wish that would happen to me. Well, that then goes to the follow up question. It's kind of like, you know, he who has many friends must also show himself friendly. Almost not in context with this, but maybe you're looking for that. Well, let me also ask you this, challenge you with this. Are you going into the ring for others? Because what we're going to talk about is a culture of prayer does not create itself. It's not something like, well, I wish this person or these people would do that for me. Like it starts with ownership. So why do we need this? Well, one of the reasons is if you look back in your own life, probably the greatest time of spiritual growth you probably had was probably directly correlated to the people you surrounded yourself with. So I think back to my second senior year at Faulkner. In that year I had a group of guys that every Wednesday night after kwf, after our meetings, one of the things that we decided to do together was, all right, we're just going to meet in the apartment and what we're going to do is just go around the room and just see what each person needs prayer for. And right after that's mentioned, we're going to do it all Right. And so what happened was, like I told y', all, it's easy to think, well, I wish people would do that for me again. It's not something that happens by accident. It's something we create. Right. But also, I look back on it and I wish I would put a picture of, like, that was my groomsmen in my wedding. Those were the people that I still talked to, talked to one yesterday, that the community that you pray with is going to be the community that you grow with. Here was the second one. I think part of it is so we can be attuned to the need of blessing, but be connected to that blessing. And I hope the heart of how I'm saying this doesn't come across like you're going through this because God's trying to create the problem, to give you dependence. That's not what I'm saying. But I do think if everything did come easy, we wouldn't learn to depend
• 24:16
  Speaker B: on
• 24:18
  Speaker A: dependence is a really good thing. Because remember what I told you about physical wrestling? When you physically wrestle with somebody, you realize you're either weaker than you thought or you realize you are stronger than you thought. There is value to both of those things. When it comes to wrestling and prayer, there's a lot of people that did this. We'll skip Genesis 32 because we're going to get to him in just a second. David, you might remember in 2nd Samuel 12, right before this, one of the things that had happened was because David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan came to him and said, hey, the sword's not going to fall far from the tree. And what ended up happening with his child was his child passed away well before that had happened. If you read in the text, one of the things it talks about, and I wish we had time to do it, it talks about in 2nd Samuel 12. Are you there? Actually, could you read verse 9 and 10? Oh, sorry. Do 19 and 20. I'm sorry, I said that wrong. 19 and 20, yeah.
• 25:19
  Speaker B: When David saw that his servants were whispering, David perceived that the child was dead. Therefore, David said to his servants, is the child dead? And they said, he is dead. So David arose from the ground, washed and anointed himself, changed his clothes, and he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and when he had requested, they set food before him, and he ate. We're going to talk some more about this next week.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: Oh, awesome. Okay, sweet. So we won't get much in that tonight. So right before that David was basically hands on his knees in that intense prayer that you were talking about and heard people whispering. And it was like he passed, didn't he? And that was a moment he was really wrestling in prayer. And you probably have to imagine that he was wrestling with his own decision. Right. Probably. If I wouldn't have done. And have y' all had some of those prayers, like connecting what happened with. With what you did with what's happening now. But one of the things I want to highlight for you is do you. Do you think it came easy to go from that to. To worship? No. And that's. But one of the things that I do think is that the wrestling is what led him there. And there are a lot of times, and I'm not going to pick on you, but I am going to mention that you have mentioned how sometimes it's hard for you to walk in here sometimes. Right. And when you walk in here sometimes, and it's really difficult when you worship, it never changes your situation, does it? But does it help you?
• 27:07
  Speaker B: I always leave encouraged. These people encourage me. I leave with the power of the Holy Spirit having been in worship and the ability to go on for a few more days.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's a quote that have. In one of the back of my Bible that says worship doesn't change the problem. It shifts the focus from the problem to the problem solver. And like you said, for you, it's just a few days. Yeah. So there's also another detail in there I don't want you to miss. Do y' all remember what Hannah did that we highlighted? I told you to underline. She what? She rose, right. When she was having beef with the panini lady. Right. And she was frustrated at her, so she rose twice. Sometimes that's all you got to do. You just got to rise. It's not easy. Habakkuk. I wish we had more time to get into this. Brandon and I will soon. And one of the things that happened with Habakkuk, he looked around and all he saw was destruction. He's sitting there watching it, seeing it, pleading on behalf of the city. Paul, his thorn in the flesh. Right. So what you'll notice with all of these, if you keep reading, they produce some stuff. Some rest, worship, community or transformation. Genesis 32. Jacob. I wish we had more time to get at this point. We're getting to the more of the application. You might remember Jacob, as we would say, did his brother dirty, right. And he lied and manipulated Esau. He goes on the run to Laban's right. Laban's for a while, decides to come back to his home place. But he finds out that Esau is on his way with 400 people. So he's thinking, all right, guess what he's wanting to do? He's bringing everybody. Now, you gonna sleep good at night knowing that that's happening. And even if I remember right, one of the things that happened, though, he was trying to give him gifts and trying to, like, earn his favor. But eventually that stopped because he learned, right, what we all learned, that you get to a point that there's no coercion or manipulation that can get you out of a mess. You can try, right? And so he has to face it. And so he goes to sleep. And what at first is just an angel, we find out later it was who it was. God was wrestling with him, right? And one of the things that happened in that wrestling, and we don't know if he was wrestling, he was doing one of those. I don't know if y' all done one of these prayers where you've prayed and you've fallen asleep praying. Part of me wonders if that's what he was doing. He was like, lord, as these 400 people come after me, if you will, please. But also, I have a feeling the Bible doesn't say this, but part of me thinks that if you have struggled with a poor decision you made, guess what you tend to do at night, stay up at night, or you dream about it like you have some weird dream. A lot of my dreams, I'm in a birdcage. I need to look at what that means. But so anyway, where we. Oh, so when you're in a place like that, you know, weird things happen in your mind. Well, God shows up in this, in the form of an angel and wrestles him. And as they wrestle, what ends up happening is his hip hurts, right? And the rest of his life. Well, two things happen. Number one, God calls him Israel, which means God fights for you, or God fights for us. God fights for us. Yeah. Which is really neat. But the other thing, he still remembers it. He walks around with a limp. And so the reason why I point that out is, like, even when you wrestle with stuff, and I know this, we don't know if it's fully a prayer. So I know I'm stretching it just a tad. I want you to know that I know that. You know, but when you wrestle with stuff, it doesn't necessarily take away the pain. But you remember that moment, right? He walks around with that limp because he still knows The Lord is fighting. So I was thinking about all those, thinking about colossae and epaphras, thinking about these examples. How do we do this at Madison? And here's what I want. I want you to give me your thoughts on these as well. One of the things is this. The location of prayer has to change. It can't just be before and after meals or before meals. It can't just be at a worship service. It can't just be when things quiet down. Right. The location has got to change.
• 31:57
  Speaker B: As important as those locations are, that can't be the only place.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, you think about where. Well, since the culture prayer thing that we talked about several years ago is the beauty of coming together that you just can't fully get when you're watching it. And I'm not saying that that doesn't count. Please understand what I'm saying, that when you're together, right. It generates those moments and has the potential to generate those moments. So that's what we called on the spot prayers, like taking the time right then, right there. The other day, I was going into my office and I should have stopped because usually someone's, Robbie Kester has somebody in my office or Lorianne's feeding. But I walked in and I saw six ladies, five of which were on their knees with one of our ladies praying over her. That was an incredible thing to walk in on. And by the way, Brandon and I, our offices, they're open. We would love for you to take those times, but here's what's so encouraging. That that's not the first time that I've walked in my office and seen that. Okay, Taking the time right then, on the spot prayers, the list must change. Here's what I mean by that, is sometimes someone might be like, hey, I got this coming up, a job interview, okay? Praying for you. Sometimes we would say, kind of like you were mentioning Ben with your comment. Maybe we think it's the, oh, what's wrong? Kind of prayers. No, sometimes it's the, hey, that something good just happened. Let's take time right now. Let's thank God for what he's doing right now. Right. The other part, I think, is those moments, like things that we think that aren't that big of a deal, though that's a big deal. You know, to you, it may not seem like a big deal, but to that person, I'm telling you, it's a really big deal. So taking the time right then, right there to pray with them thinking differently about the list, we'll say have you
• 34:12
  Speaker B: noticed how easy it is for us to pray for each other for sicknesses or surgeries or. And we've been doing that for years and we don't need to quit, but how often do we share with each other, hey, I've got a sin that I'm struggling with. I've got a problem. Would you pray for me? And with me or the job situation or things aren't good at home, would you pray with me? We need to learn to do that.
• 34:43
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Any thoughts on that one? That's a very good point. If you didn't hear that he was not praying for. Yeah, like what we normally would only pray for, which is still good. But he's saying, hey, don't give up. Like, stay strong. Very good point, Brandon. And so in case you didn't hear what he said, it requires honesty and it also requires. What would you say? How did you be okay with the honesty? That's right.
• 35:16
  Speaker B: And we also have to be trustworthy for somebody to be able to come to us with something like that.
• 35:22
  Speaker A: And one of the things that we're going to talk about later is being a confession friendly church. And so that's a very, very important thing to do. Because here's the thing with all of that. What would you want your kids to be a part of one day? Because here's what's going to happen. If you got kids, some of you already shaking your heads that you have older kids, grandkids, when they mess up. Let me say that again. When they mess up, what do you want them to be a part of? All right now, as you think about that, guess what? We have the opportunity to create what you want your kids to be a part of when they mess up. Part of it. Remember when I told you that the two questions, has anyone done that for you? But also, have you done it for somebody else? Starts with leadership and ownership. And I don't mean just the elders and the ministers. I mean like you leaders, like being, taking the lead on that, owning it again. It doesn't just create itself. I was trying to tell Cruz, you know, they were at a football game recently and the 8th grade boys were just sitting there watching and the older kids were like, come sit with us and come cheer. And they're just like, you know, just stared. They were more concerned about their hair. But so they just sat there and I told them later, I was like, buddy, like when you play in high school, what do you want the stands to look like? Okay, I know what you. I'm like, you want people cheering, right? You want people excited. Well, that starts now. Like, that doesn't just show up later. That starts now. My action is not really a step. And after I put that on there, I was like, man, I wish I could have changed it. It's a culture. It's not a. It's not just a one time event, right? It's to wrestle with people in prayer on the spot. Prayers. Take the time right then and there and pray with them. When you hear little victories, take the time to praise and thank God. When you experience or hear of some. A job thing, take the time to do that. And I think we would all agree that if the future of the Lord's church, because here's what happened. Our kids are going to go to other places. They're not just going to be here. It's not just going. It's not a Madison thing. Like, this is a Kingdom thing. Think that. Think bigger. Bigger than Madison. Think bigger than that. But wouldn't it be cool if we have that here and we can send people out in that kind of culture? All right, well, thank you all so much.
• 38:07
  Speaker B: Thank you for listening.