Well, Kia ora, everybody. This is Straun Coleman here from Commoners Communion. Joining you

for the Bridgetown Daily Podcast today, and as it turns out, all week. And I just want

to start again by saying, Bridgetown, your life, your love for Jesus, your commitment to

becoming his apprentice, to looking and sounding like him is such a blessing to us all over

the world. But even right here in the corner of the world in Alta Rua, New Zealand, I

know myself and my friends in our church community have just been so blessed by John Mark's teaching,

but they're even broader than that, the life you live as a community. So, man, what a special

privilege it is to be hanging out with you this week. Well, I don't know about you, but

this last three, four, five months, I have felt myself going back to the basics when it comes

to communion with God, rethinking through how I speak with him, what prayer is, what communion

with him looks like. And I don't know if it's just, I don't know, things change. You think

you've got everything nailed and then something changes and all of a sudden you're like, man,

how do I come to God and process these things with him when I'm angry or I'm feeling numb

or these compassion fatigue or we're feeling convicted and confronted about things in us that we

never knew existed before. And it's not that necessarily all of our prayer practices have to change,

but how we approach them kind of, we need to return to the simplicity of it. And so one of those

things that I've been thinking a lot about in this time, as I've had so much to say and also so

little words to describe to God what's on my heart is the nature of God as listener. And in

some 66 verse 19 we read, but truly God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.

And throughout scripture, scripture there is constant reference to God hearing the prayers of

his people, hearing the cries of his people and either being grieved or overwhelmed by the injustice

that he sees or responding by healing and bringing the rain and light and righteousness and love.

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