Well, what's up, porch? How are we doing tonight?

Hey, it's good to see you, glad you're here. I hope that all as well. This is your first time with us.

My name is Timothy Atika. I'm one of the teaching pastors here at Watermark on Sundays as well as here at the porch.

Just shout out to everyone here in the room in Dallas, but I know that there are people all over the nation that are watching right now.

So I want to say hello to porch live Tulsa, porch live, Scottsdale, porch live, boysy. So glad that you guys are tuning in tonight.

And if you're just by yourself watching online, welcome. I'm glad that you're with us. We are in part two of the series that we are calling.

I mean, just wait for it. The title is amazing. We are calling it prayer. Yeah. Yeah. You should have seen the creative meetings that went into coming up with that.

But the title of the series is prayer. How to talk to in here from God. And the goal of it is that we want every person in this room to take a step in their relationship with God in regard to prayer.

Some people here love to pray. Others of people, other people rarely ever pray. Wherever you're at, if you have, if you never really pray, our goal is that you would start praying.

If you pray occasionally, our hope is that you would begin praying regularly. If you pray regularly, our hope is that you would pray constantly.

And I would just say that prayer is something that I've been growing in over my life. And for the majority of my life, it has been something that I've really struggled with.

I remember when I was a freshman at TXAM University. I showed up on campus. And I moved into the dorm with my best friend. And before classes had even started, I had never even been to a class at A&M.

And I remember being in my dorm room, and this guy knocked on our door. And he said, hey, there's a group of us that are going to go have a prayer gathering on the front lawn of the university.

And my roommate and I, we were Christians, we were like, well, I guess that's what we're supposed to do in college. Like if we're Christians in college and people are praying, we should probably go and do that.

But I still didn't have much experience with prayer at that point. And so we sat down on the front lawn of the university at night, and we began to pray, and we prayed for 10 minutes, 10 minutes turned into 20 minutes, 20 minutes turned into 30 minutes.

And by that point, I'm like, guys, I think we've done it. Like we've had the prayer gathering. Like we have gathered. It's time, you know, you reached that point where it's like, all right, who's going to wrap this thing up and say, amen, it's been a good go.

30 minutes turned into 50 minutes, which turned into two, two an hour. And finally, like the leader began to pray. And if you've ever been in that moment, and the leader starts praying, it's just like finally, like you just kind of breathed that relief.

And the leader said, amen. And I was like, that was a great meeting in this curl in the group of 15 to 20 people gathering. She said, I don't think we're done. And I was like, no, we're done. Like I, he said, amen.

Like that is the, that's the ending word. You can't reopen it when you've said, amen. She's like, I don't think we're done. And so we went back into it for another hour.

And by the end, I was like, I'm not sure I want to do that again. And I think about that. And I think about this room. And here's the reality. There are, there are people in this room who are the I don't think were done yet. Type of people.

Like you love praying. You gear up for it. You're the person knocking on the door saying, hey, we've got a prayer gathering on the front lawn. Like let's do it. And then there's other people in this room who are the I think we were done.

About an hour and 30 minutes earlier type of people. And that's okay too. Like we're all in different places. But the goal is that we would all take a step.

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