Joining Heavens Prayer Meeting

And so, Jared Long is coming, he's already in North America. He was the director for the Alpha Program, House Lights if you would. He was the director of the Alpha Program for seven years, and we have engaged him to come here and help us with this project over the next couple of years as we try our best in a kind of Paul Revere fashion, going across the nation, saying to the church, wake up, wake up, wake up. One of the teams, the team coming from San Francisco, started getting a call some miles out from a mayor, and he said, am I on your route? And they looked and they said, no, you are not on our route. He said, can you come to our city? And they said, we're already behind, there's no way we can add another city. We're thinking we may have to drop a city. He said, if I send a police escort, will you come to my city? One of the guys on the team, he said, well, I've been chased by the police, but I've never been escorted by them. And they got there and they had a service consecrating that city with the mayor's authority to God. That's what we hope will happen all over the nation. I want to come back and just be very, very simple with you tonight, because the piece that we're missing, the piece that we assume is prayer. We're great at doing stuff, but we are lousy at understanding the importance of prayer. And we dare not see prayer as the pragmatic underpinning for the doing. It's not a matter of sprinkling prayer on what we're doing. It is a matter of, as Blackaby would say, God himself is on mission. And I would dare say to you, I would dare say to you, that the locus of prayer has moved from the earth to heaven. With the going home, with the ascension, resurrection, enthronement of Jesus Christ, with his installation as heaven's high priest, with his leaning over the Father and whispering, they can't make it by themselves, send the Holy Spirit. Jesus started a prayer meeting in heaven that had never taken place in that way before. And when we pray, we're joining heaven's prayer meeting. And something begins to happen in that extraordinary alignment, as we saw in Acts chapter 2. And God begins to work in our working, but he also works beside and around. And he moves us to join. It's not a matter of prayer. It's not a matter of trying to coach God to join us, to help us. Prayer is somehow, as E. Stanley Jones used to say, the means by which God aligns us to his purposes, purposes that will not be done unless we pray. Billy Graham used to love to tell a story, an Einstein story. Einstein's traveling on a train, and the conductor comes into the car, and he starts punching tickets, and Einstein starts looking for his ticket, and he can't find it. The conductor gets right up to him and said, Albert Einstein, never in my life did I think I would see you in person. What an honor. I can't wait to tell my wife. Einstein explains, I can't find my ticket. It's okay. I trust you. It's all right. It's all right, Mr. Einstein. He leaves the car, turns around for one more look at the genius, and Einstein is out of his seat on all fours looking frantically for his ticket. The conductor is embarrassed for him. He runs back up and tries to get him up. Mr. Einstein, I'm telling you, you don't have to find your ticket. I believe you had a ticket when you got on the train. I did, and if I don't find the ticket, Einstein said, I won't know where to get off the train. That story encourages me, as old as I am, probably as much as any other story I know. Let me suggest something. What if I could produce Einstein? Poof, right there he is. Can you see him? Einstein and I are going to have a conversation. Ah, there's a catch. You can only hear one side of the conversation. Which side do you want to hear? What I say or what? I can already feel the nasty spirit in the room here. You want to hear what Einstein has to say. What a mean group. You deserve the snow that you're going to get. I'm telling you, you do. Well, you're probably right, but let me ask you this. If prayer is a conversation between you and God, which side is most important? What you say to God or what God says to you? You see, the most significant thing in prayer may be that we put ourselves in a place, a posture, not where we talk to God, but where God can talk to us. How do you know the voice of God? God doesn't switch voice, doesn't throw his voice. It's the same voice you heard the night you got saved. That same voice is the one that God uses to talk to you now. Do you know who talks first in the biblical record? Is it man or is it God? It's God. And not only does he talk first, he does all the talking. Among theologians, there's what is called the law of the first mention. The first time something shows up in the Bible, it sets a kind of pattern or trajectory going forward. So we should ask the question, what is it that God said? You'll find it in Genesis 1, 28. And he blessed them. And he said, be fruitful and multiply and replenish or fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and everything that moves upon the face of the earth in the sea. Let's go back one more time. Let's just capture the peak of the mountain here. What is it that God is doing then when he speaks first to man? He is blessing. Now, this is not a narrow self-interested blessing. This is not a blessing that terminates with Adam. This is an unusual blessing. This is a blessing that moves Adam from the end if there was an end, to the middle. It puts Adam between God and the earth, between God ultimately and Eve, between God and everything that moves on the face of the earth. You see, we tend to pray from the end. We tend to want God to bless us with a blessing that stops with us. This is an empowering blessing. This is a stunning, shocking, global, knock-your-socks-off kind of blessing. Do you know the Hebrew word bless? Barak actually means, it means knee. Oh, so there's a relationship between the blessing and the knee. This is really Adam and Eve on their... It's the closest thing to a wedding. And God towering over them, or someone suggested that God himself is on their knees as if he's coupling his hand in theirs. And he's blessing them and empowering them with a global mission, an extraordinary, breathtaking mission that he's speaking over their lives. So the question is this. What blessing are you missing because you don't have time, you don't take time to pray? What blessing are you missing by making prayer a list that you give to God as your handyman? Well, not you. You wouldn't do that. But the person sitting behind you. Don't look at them now. Just, after this is over, ask them, I hope this was helpful. I was willing to sit through that for you. I know you needed, I know you needed, I know you needed that. What blessing? You see, a promise is one thing. But a promise becomes a blessing when it is pronounced. Esau was in line for the promise, but it was pronounced over Jacob. God wants you all to himself to speak to you an empowering blessing that sets trajectory for your life and raises a level of faith and a sense of personal mission, purpose, and destiny. I want you to stop with me right now. And if you're a Baptist, keep your hands in your lap because you could get turned out of church. But if you're a Pentecostal, raise your hands and pray this with me right now. I want you to pray this with me right now. God, I'm asking for your blessing. Just pray it with me right now, just out loud. God, I'm asking for your blessing. I want you to speak to me. I want your voice in my life. I want to hear you. I want to know what my mission is. I want to know what my purpose is. I want your voice in my life. I want your hand upon my life. In Jesus' name, I pray. Now, I'm moving along here. Let me ask you this. If you go to Genesis 2, 15, you'll discover the second time God speaks to man. Well, what does he do then? Of every tree in the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good mixed with, polluted with evil, you may not eat. In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. What's he doing? What's the word here? Boundaries. So in Genesis 1, you have blessing. In Genesis 2, you have bound. Violate the boundary and lose the blessing. You see, you don't believe that God can do anything. Do you? I don't. I hope you don't either. God cannot do everything. He can't lie. He can't violate truth. He can't tempt. In fact, the implication in the book of James is that God is so pure and holy, He does not even know how to construct the temptation to get you to sin. In other words, God is bounded. What Lucifer offers at the tree is an unbounded life. No rules. No lines. No discipline. No boundaries. And Lucifer says you can violate the boundaries. You can do it all. You can experience everything. You can taste everything. You can do everything. And still have life and still be spiritual. That is the message that's become the mantra for millennials in Gen Z. We have a God that is bounded. He's bounded by His holiness. He's bounded by truth. He's bounded by love. So Luther calls the wrath of God the alien work of God. It's something He will do. It's something He can do. But it is not at the core of His nature, even His holy nature. Blessing, boundary. Let me talk about boundary in a little different way. In Matthew 5, Jesus begins to teach. What does He come back to? He comes back to blessing. Matthew chapter 5, you know it? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. What is He doing? He's telling us how to recover the lost blessing. But He goes on in Matthew 5, if you know this in the back of your mind, and what is He doing? He's setting boundaries. I haven't come to destroy the law. I've come to fulfill it. Now the law said you shouldn't commit adultery, but I'm telling you, don't look. Whoa, wait a minute. What are you doing? You're not lowering the standards. The law says you shouldn't swear in this way. Well, I'm just telling you, you probably shouldn't swear at all. You ought to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. You shouldn't kill, but what I'm telling you is you shouldn't have anger in your heart. What I really want, end of Matthew 5, is for you to be like your Father who is in heaven. This is the image of God restored. This is the purpose of the blessing, is that I would be transformed into the likeness of God. And let me tell you, this is really the heart of God's purpose in prayer. See, we make prayer about commodity. We make prayer about God doing this. We make prayer about a transaction with God. We make prayer about the stuff of the world and the flesh and the devil's attack upon our life. You want to make prayer not about God changing things. You want to make prayer about God changing you. God change me and make me more and more and more like Jesus Christ. So here's the blessing in Matthew 5. Let's go over to Matthew 7. What do you got in Matthew 7? Well, you've got this guy's judging somebody else, but he doesn't know that he's blind himself. You've got a frustrated prayer life because the guy's praying because he thinks God answers prayer because he's good. No, God answers prayer because he's good, not because I'm good. Then you get the two trees, the one that bears fruit and the one that doesn't. They seem to look alike at first glance. And then you get the two sheep, except one of them is not a sheep. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. And then you get the two houses, and they look exactly the same, except when the storm comes, it takes one of them out because it doesn't have a foundation. And then you get the false positives of prophesying and doing mighty works, but never knowing Him. Depart from me, you work iniquity. There's lawlessness. You do not live a bounded life. You don't know boundaries, and you don't know me. And so what you get in Matthew 7 is a train wreck. This is either or train wreck. It's very different than what God wants in Matthew 5. I want you to be like the Father. Well, what is that with Matthew 5, Matthew 7? Help me with math. What am I missing? I'm missing Matthew 6. It's pretty simple here. Well, what do you find in Matthew 6? Three boundaries. Prayer, fasting, giving. Prayer bounds your time. It dedicates time, consecrates time. It gives it to God. You see, if you don't have time to pray, your life's out of control. You're reacting to the world. You're on somebody's string. See, prayer steps out of time in a sense. Prayer sits in heavenly places. Prayer hears the music from another world. Prayer somehow gets in touch with the world on top of this world and hears its song and pulls that down and begins to live out of that. What's fasting all about? Well, fasting crucifies, it crunches the flesh so that the flesh can be a servant of the spirit. The body can be a servant of the spirit. It's about bounding inner appetites. And then giving, what's that all about? Well, that's about putting a boundary on your money, your material goods, so that you're not spending more than you are making and you are reserving some to give away. Let's go back to it again. Prayer is your relationship to God. Fasting determines your relationship with the inner man. Giving determines your relationship to the world. If you can't give it away, you don't own it. It owns you. These are boundaries. By prayer, I draw near to God. By fasting, I surrender myself and consecrate myself to God. And in giving, not only money, but joy and peace and love and kindness, I serve God. This is the whole Christian life, every bit of the Christian life, connecting to God and worshiping God and knowing God and surrendering to God and serving God. What are we talking about? Boundaries. If you don't have a bounded life, if you don't know what spiritual disciplines are, you'll end up in the train wreck of Matthew 7 rather than the blessed life that moves you to look like the Father. A number of years ago, my son, this has been a long time ago, he called me one day and he said, Daddy, don't you Skype? I said, yep. He said, the kids are with me. They'd like to see you. I said, well, I know how to Skype. Did I just go away? Is somebody back there, you're tired of listening to it? Are you related to my wife's side of the family? The battery, no power, is that what you're using? The Baptist mic works any better. Is this the one that cracks a little bit? Okay. So my son says, Dad, don't you know how to do video Skype? I said, no, I don't know how to do that. He said, I'll walk you through it. You punch this, do that, do that. And all of a sudden, he's saying to me, Dad, where are you? Dad, what's wrong? I said, I don't know what's wrong because a picture of my grandpa just came up. And then I realized it could be a picture of my grandpa because it's a moving picture. I don't have a moving picture of my grandpa. And then I realized it's not my grandpa, it's me. Oh God, have mercy on me. Help me, Jesus. You know you are making progress when you start looking like the Father. Blessing. Help me out. We'll be here a long time. There, thank you. You saved us from going to midnight. Blessing boundary. Now watch this. God takes Adam and puts him in a garden. But in Genesis 1, he doesn't have the garden in mind, he has the globe in mind. I've given you dominion over the whole earth. But I can't do that, that's too big. I can't manage that. But now I can tend this garden. See, God puts you in some garden, somewhere, to walk with him, to talk with him, to tend this garden. And I tell you, if you will keep this garden somewhere in the garden wall is a gateway to the influence of the globe. What happens when you get old and you're nearsighted? If you will keep your garden, I'll pay attention and just stay in one place, but I don't know boundaries. If you will keep your garden in that wall, you'll find access to the globe. Quick story, quick story. She's now with the Lord. She felt called to be a missionary. She married a pastor. He was a teacher. They had a bus ministry. One of the kids that came in, I think he told me one time, his mother lived with five different men growing up. He had no sense of self, but he locked on to this pastor and they became his kind of substitute mom and dad. They insisted that he finish high school. They insisted that he go to junior college. They made him sit at their table and they disciplined him. You can't do that. No, you can't do that. You could do that. You're not going to drop out of school. Somewhere something clicked and he not only finished junior college, he finished his B.A. and then he got a master's degree and then he got a second master's degree and then he got a doctoral degree and then he did post-doctoral work and he ended up being the advisor to a nation in Asia on economic policy. He tells her one day, I want you to make a trip with me to this Muslim nation. She's back at the water cooler, back at the punch bowl. She's just talking to them, having no idea that it might be inappropriate to talk to Muslim women, international bankers by the way. But she pours her heart out, so sincere about Jesus, they don't want to go to workshops. They give her a stack of money and they say to him, when you come back, she comes back with you. She ends up moving to this country, carried around in the city in a limo, having Bible studies with the prototypes of heads of state kind of people. Listen to me. If you will keep your garden, if you will be faithful in your garden, wherever God has put you, somewhere, sometime, you'll find a gateway to the globe. Insurance salesman, Alabama. Somebody challenges him, do you really take Jesus seriously? Do you pray? Well, I pray when I can. He said, I want to challenge you. My church is doing 40 days of prayer, 30 minutes every day. Would you walk with me? We'll be accountability partners. He said, I've never done anything like that. I've never bounded my time in such an intentional, deliberate way. And so he's 20, 25 days into this. By the way, they said to him, don't make this prayer about yourself. Don't make this prayer about your list of what you want God to do. Make this prayer over an open Bible about how God needs to change you and transform you and make you like the Father. Adopt a nation. For some reason, he just picks Kenya. He doesn't know why. He doesn't even know where it is. He has to look it up on the map. He's just heard that nation. A guy says to him, my church is going on a missions trip. He said, well, I've been praying recently about missions. Well, pray for me and pray for our church. We're going on this mission trip. Where are you going? Kenya. That's interesting. I've been praying for Kenya for 25 days. Every day, praying for Kenya. Well, man, really pray for us. A week goes by. This guy calls him and says, one of the guys is sick. He can't go. We've talked to the team. Even though you're not a member of our church, since you've been praying for Kenya for a month, we think you should go with us. There could be something to this thing called prayer. He ends up praying, going with them to Kenya. He ends up having a chance meeting with the president of Kenya. He ends up in the limo of the president of Kenya. He tells him you shouldn't be putting people in prison in Kenya. This is a few years ago, just because they're dissidents and speak out against the nation. The president says, who are you to tell me what to do? He goes home, back to Alabama. The president of Kenya calls him and says, we didn't finish our conversation. Come back over here and let's talk again. I'm telling you, if you will keep your guard up, at some point, you'll find a gateway to the globe. Help me out now. I'm old, as you saw. Blessing boundary. The garden and the globe. I'm almost finished my introduction. He puts him in the garden to grow it or cultivate it, keep it pretty, nourish it, take care of it, order it, all those things. There are no weeds at this point. The second thing he does is that he asks him to guard the garden. Interesting word. Shamar, it occurs more than 400 times in the Old Testament. Ultimately, it's translated watch, as in watchmen on the wall, as in watching the city, as in the elders that watch the gate, or in the Song of Solomon, those who go about the city, watching the city. It becomes a metaphor for prayer. We hear Jesus saying, we hear the New Testament, you watch and pray and pray and watch. The night was divided into four watches. The critical watch was 3-2-6, the fourth watch of the night. Watching is fasting sleep in order to invest yourself with God and a heightened sensitivity to what he's doing and wants to do even the next day. Enemies were prone to move in the early hours of the morning under the cover of darkness to be able to strike at day. Now here's the puzzling thing. Except the Lord watched the city, the watchmen watch in. So the power is not in our watching or our praying. We say there's power in prayer. No, no, no, no, no. No, there's power in God. Prayer is not the fourth member of the trinity. The power flows through prayer. The power comes because we pray, when we pray, as we pray. I want you to watch and pray. And somehow in our watching, there's this mysterious engagement of God and there is a kind of triangulation. So I pray here and God breaks out there. I pray now and God works then. I pray here and on the other side of the world, there's some kind of manifestation. I don't control it. I have nothing to do with it. I didn't direct it. I may not have even said to God, would you do that? But somehow in the mystery of my watching, God watches and God works. Let me push this just a little further. Let's talk about your guard. Some of you have jurisdictional authority over your guard. You own it. Your name is on the deed. You are the chairman of the board. You are the CEO, the COO, the president, the director. Wherever you have jurisdictional authority, whether it's in your domestic life or whether it's in your vocational life or whether it's in your ecclesiological life, wherever you have jurisdictional authority, you need to dedicate that authority to the kingdom of God. You need to say to God, you put me in this position as mayor, you put me in this position as school teacher, you put me in this position as whatever else and I want to make sure I am not a Christian on Sunday and I lay that down on Monday. I'm not talking about taking the Bible to work. I'm not talking about preaching to people. I'm not talking about leaving tracts everywhere. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about being salt and light. Wherever you have jurisdictional authority, you know that 40% of CEOs, COOs, chairmen of the board, company owners are Christians, at least in name only, in name. 40%. Why are we in the mess we're in? Because they bifurcate their Christianity and their work life. We can no longer do that. If God has given you jurisdictional authority, all authority belongs to Him. He put you in that position. He put you in that garden to grow it, to cultivate it, to be a blessing to the place, to shout when it violates moral and other boundaries and to watch. I don't have jurisdictional authority. Well, then do you have relational influence over the one with jurisdictional authority? Can you be the Esther that goes in before the king? Can you influence? Can you be the neck that turns the head? We say, I don't have relational influence either. Well, then here's what you may end up with. You may end up with spiritual authority, and that is an assignment from God that says to you, you have responsibility for these 100 neighbors that live around you, for the six houses on this block. I'm assigning that to you. Does anybody know what I mean? Let's pray again. Father, I give you permission to speak to me. I give you permission to assign people to me. I give you permission to lay people on my heart. I give you permission to move me from, I want to be on the end of the blessing. I want it just stop with me, and I want to be full of it. But I give you permission to put me in the middle of the blessing. In Jesus' name, I pray. I'm looking for a chair. So, you know, Pastor Conlon talked this morning about prayer. See, I think we think, well, prayers, first talking to God when I'm finished, I'm finished praying. But sometimes prayer is just taking a, here's what Shamar means. Here's what Shamar means. It means to take a position in the interest of God with regard to a person, place, or thing. Let me say it again. It means to take a position. Watch it. It's not what I say. It's not what I do. It's a posture of prayer. It's not even what I say in prayer. It's just that. I know I've got responsibility for that jurisdictional authority. I know I've got relational influence. I just don't know when to use it and what to say and how to go about that speech that I need to make. I don't have relational influence. I don't have jurisdictional authority. But I can't get over my concern for this city. I can't get over my concern for the school. I can't get over my concern for the kids that are on drugs. It just breaks my heart. What's God doing? He's calling you to be a watchman. He's not asking you to do anything until he asks you to do something. He's calling you to take a position up on the mountain when you look over Kaiser and pray. And in prayer, here's what you do. You draw a circle around that person, that place, that thing in the interest of God. And even if all you have is the spiritual authority of being a kingly priest recognized in heaven as a kingly priest, that's pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive. And you begin to take this position representing God with God also watching. Something begins to happen inside that circle that would not otherwise happen. Oh, Holy Spirit, are you breathing here tonight? Check the pulse of your neighbor and make sure they're breathing here tonight. There is a blessing and there is a filing at the boundary and God will put you in a garden. He wants you to guard it and grow it. And in the garden wall is a gateway to the globe. Oh my goodness, 7 o'clock. I want to show you very quickly as I close here. I want to show you the great commission of the Old Testament. It's in one verse. It's in one verse. And he said to them, be fruitful, except, the better translation is, fruit bear. Number two, he said, multiply. Now already, as parents you can add, but it's your children who multiply. So we're already talking about something that's generational. God is wanting to start something with you that goes through your children and to and through your grandchildren. This is the godly purpose of the home. And that's why it's sad that only 4-9% of couples pray together and only 5-6% of pastors pray with their spouses. You can't, you can't, you can't make prayer an exercise at church. It has to be something you live with. You live in the spirit. The most uncomfortable thing to do sometimes is pray with your spouse. It's a terribly uncomfortable thing, especially when you run across scriptures that shouldn't be in the Bible about sacrifice and love and things like that. It's a terrible thing. You know, you run across those scriptures and your wife looks at you and the Holy Ghost begins to look at you and you realize, boy, I'm in deep, deep trouble. You see, that's why Bible engagement and prayer and prayer and Bible engagement, where you live with the person who sees you like you really are moves you and me to authentic Christianity, not to superficial, play church Christianity. I need to live this. My kids need to see me living this. They need to catch me praying. They need to catch us loving and forgiving. So this is a generational thing. Fruit bear. Multiply. The third word that he uses here is fill up. Literally, it means it's the idea of representation. It's the idea of distributed representation. My grandkids are now scattering out everywhere. And I know they'll continue to scatter out everywhere. And so we begin to ask ourselves where, listen, in the city are Christians positioned? See, we only think of the church. We only think of gathering on Sunday. No, you fruit bear, you multiply. And then you intentionally distribute. You fill up. And the fourth thing he says is that you subdue. And this really, the Hebrew word here has to do with influence. It's really the idea of kneading dough. You know how Grandma used to take the dough and work it around and so forth? So the idea is I've got my jurisdictional authority, I've got my relational influence, I've got my spiritual authority, and I'm working, I'm kneading, I'm pressing, I'm shaping. I'm trying my best to use whatever authority I have to influence this thing, to move this thing, to keep this discussion holy and righteous. The fifth word is have dominion. It's an unfortunate translation in this sense. It's not a word that implies militance. It's more the authority of a shepherd. Who is shepherding Kaiser West Virginia? Who's taking care of this garden? Who believes that somewhere in this garden wall called Kaiser West Virginia there's a gateway to the globe and this could become a place from which God does an extraordinary work not just in West Virginia but in the nation and the world. This, every city has a key to being an influence far beyond itself. I know, I'm sure you've got a town council. They are the elders of the gate but most cities do not have a spiritual council of pastors who meet at the gate of the city. We pastor churches. Nobody pastors the city. And Jesus weeps over sheep who have no shepherd. The whole city needs a pastor. Even the drug dealers. Even the bad guys. Everybody needs a pastor. Everybody needs somebody to love them and to care for them. Who's shepherding the city? Who's working to bring godly influence shaping this idea and that idea and that meeting and that school board meeting and so forth so like dough. We're shaping it. Do we have a representative there? Do we have somebody there that's a godly influence there? Do we have anybody there? If not, we need to multiply. If not, we need to pray for our altars to fill up again until we are having fruit. And this is no longer about us and the music we like and the banana pudding we like and the fellowship that we like. We become a missional people. I tell you with all of my heart, I believe it is the desire of God to shake the earth. I think the great move of God is yet to come. I think the great harvest is yet to come. And God is looking for places and people that are not satisfied with three songs and an offering. Not satisfied with a sermon and let's beat the Baptist to the buffet. God, help us. Please, God, help us to shake ourselves out of this. And if there's a message from heaven in COVID, it is I am not satisfied with the way things are going. And I'm willing to shut the whole thing down because I'm calling you back to just as you said, Dan, to know Me and the power of My resurrection. Oh, hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to stand. You don't have to hold hands. I know we're in a pandemic. But I want you to turn around and make a spontaneous group of three to five people. Find somebody that looks like they can take you out for pizza afterwards. If you don't know them, introduce yourself. Three to five people. Three to five people. All right, look at me. Look at me. It's terrible to have a preacher that expects you to remember what they say. In Genesis 128, God pronounces a blessing. And then He puts the Bible at the boundaries. Lose the blessing. First question you have to ask yourself is you really believe. You know, here I am preaching again. Genesis 1. It's good, good, good. Good, good, good. Six times. And then it's what? It's very good. And Adam and Eve did not see the goodness of God. And so they ended up not seeing the goodness of God grasping at the natural. Ian Bound says we can never ask the natural to do what we see that only the spiritual that we can't see is supposed to do. God wants to open our eyes to see what we can't see. The question is do you really believe that God wants to speak over you over this city an empowering blessing? Do you really believe He wants to do that in your life? And are you willing to embrace whatever boundaries there are to maintain that blessing? What is the garden He put you in? Because somewhere in the gate of that garden there is a at the wall of that garden is a gateway to the you gotta two things what are you gonna do in that garden? You gotta grow it and you gotta you gotta pray. I just want you to kind of walk through those things. Just pray through those things in your group. We'll do that. We'll take about five minutes and then we'll come back together. Go for it.