Today on Summit Life, an important message from JD Greer.

Jesus reveals to attributes or character qualities of God that if you got these qualities,

it would transform prayer from being something that you have to do to being something that you

get to do. I wouldn't have to stand up here and compel you to pray. There is no force on the world

that would be able to keep you from prayer if you understood really these two qualities.

Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor, author, and theologian JD Greer. As always,

I'm your host, Molly Vitavitch, and we are so glad that you're back with us today.

I think we all know that we are supposed to pray, but what exactly is prayer at its most basic

level? Is it a wish list that we send up to the genie in the sky? A way to unleash the power

of positive thinking? Or is it just a waste of time telling God things that he already knows?

Well, fortunately, prayer isn't any of those things. It's so much more, and today Pastor JD

takes a fresh look at one of the basics of our faith in a series he called Start. So let's join Pastor

JD now for today's message that he titled Prayer to God, Your Sovereign Father.

Here's Bad Cop, Pastor. For most of you, your prayer lives are pathetic. Here's the Bad Cop,

Pastor. I share with you earlier this year that D. A. Carson says, if you really want to embarrass

the average Christian, just ask him or her to tell you about his private time with God yesterday.

We feel good about a lot of questions. We're asked, like, oh, you know, tell me about your generosity,

tell me about how you serve God. I mean, Bible verses, you know, you feel good about that.

But if you want to embarrass the average Christian, just ask them to describe their time in prayer

with God yesterday. And that is a real burden to me, Summit Church, because as I'm going to show

you today, according to Jesus, you can measure a person's relationship to God by how much they love

to pray. And by the way, not even how much they actually do pray, because I'm going to show you,

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