We Pray to Align with God // Dear God // Part 3

Well, good morning, everybody! How are you doing?

Have you been enjoying this 21 Days of Prayer? I think Pastor Katie said it exactly right. We have been praying, we fight, and we are fired up. Like, things are happening, and we are just so glad to be able to have this time to seek God's face together.

And if you have not been a part of it, if you have not joined us yet, maybe you weren't able to, or you're just hearing about it for the first time, join us for this last week. You won't regret it because there is so much that happens in our lives when we align with God, and when we just come to His presence and we receive from Him. So, it is gonna be a great week. Make sure that you are joining us, and let's finish this 21 days strong.

But today, we are finishing something else, and that is our "Dear God" Series. This is message number three. And let me tell you that I think that I got the short stick when it comes to this series. In one message, I was gonna be teaching about, and I'm gonna tell you why.

My husband, a couple of weeks ago, he got to tell us that prayer is the first primary purpose. It is to connect with God, right? So, he is telling us how the God who created everything, the all-powerful, all-knowing, everlasting God invites us to have a relationship with Him, invites us to be close to Him, and He draws close to us. That is amazing. I want to have a relationship with God. I want to be able to come to Him freely and know that He is there to reciprocate that relationship, right? That is exciting, right? Were you inspired about that? I was. I was very, very happy.

Then last week, Pastor Chris told us that God hears us and He wants to answer our prayers. I mean, come on, like, you can come and pray and in faith, you receive. Let me go home and start bringing some stuff right now. Like, that just fires me up. That gets me pumped. Like, I want to pray and I want to receive in faith. That is exciting, but not me, not today. That is not what you're gonna hear because the message that I have for you today is not gonna be probably your favorite.

It is not gonna make a lot of people excited. I'm sure that I'm not gonna hear, like, the "yeah, sister, preach that." That's not what is gonna happen today. I know that because it is a subject that is not fun. It is not flashy. It is not comfortable. Actually, it is very uncomfortable. It is hard. It is difficult to do, and it will cost you something. And all of this comes to aligning with God.

But just a little bit, I'm gonna tell you what it means to align with God in one word, so stay tuned. That is coming pretty soon. But just keep that in mind. It's probably not gonna be your favorite word ever.

But let me tell you that praying is crucial for a walk with God. We cannot consider ourselves disciples of Jesus if we don't have a lifestyle of prayer because Jesus commanded us to pray. Jesus taught us how to pray, and Jesus modeled a lifestyle of prayer.

In Luke 5:16, it says, "But Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray in seclusion." So, this is telling us, and you can read that in your Bibles, that there were many times that Jesus left the multitudes, that He left the disciples, and He went and He had a time of personal time with God.

He considered His lifestyle of prayer so important, and we need to consider prayer as the most important thing in our life because prayer recalibrates our spiritual life. See, drift happens, and it is not something that we do on purpose. It is not something that we are planning on having happen to us.

But if we are not intentional in our prayer life, you will realize that one day you will wake up and you're not as close to God as you wanted to be or as you one day were. It is just the truth. Life happens, stress happens, life gets busy, and all of a sudden, you were close to God, and then you realize, "I am not as tight with God as I want to be."

So, we need to be in prayer because it's through prayer that we are realigned with God. When we come back to the right lane, where we are coming back to the place where we are supposed to be, where God wants us, all of that happens in prayer.