Hello and welcome to the John Mark Homer Teachings podcast. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm your host.

Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space and it's wonderful to have you with us.

We're continuing our prayer series exploring different types of prayer from the life and teachings of Jesus.

In this week's episode, John Mark impacts intercessary prayer, what it means to make requests to God with boldness,

and why prayer is our primary way of collaborating with God to bring justice and goodness into the world.

Here's John Mark. Great to see you. Welcome. My name is John Mark.

If you're new, we're visiting. Really happy you're here. Hey, please turn your Bibles to Luke

Chapter 11. If you need a Bible, just slip your hand up in the air air and one will make its way

to you. Can I just say, I'm a fan of the codex? Like none of this

Bible app stuff. That's just, you're just asking for distraction and like it's only half as

inspired if you read it on an app, you know? Okay, that's not actually true. But if you have a Bible, I really do encourage you to actually take it with you to church on Sunday nights. And if you don't have one, just slip your hand up. Luke 11. At Bridgetown Church, we believe that to follow Jesus, which is what we're all about, is to organize your life around three goals.

One is be with Jesus.

Two is become like Jesus.

And three is do what he did.

And in order to do that, we believe that we have to organize our lives around a set of practices or what in church history are usually

called spiritual disciplines, all of which are based on the life and the teachings of Jesus of

Nazareth. And each and every one is a means to an end. The end is that last song, the secret place.

That's language right out of the teachings of Jesus, this place

where you go with God and are in relationship with the Father. And so basically what that looks

like is every few months we take on a practice from the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

And right now we're a few weeks into a practice on prayer. And each week we we're teaching on a different type of prayer on Sunday. And then our Bridgetown community, we practice it. So last week was all on contemplative prayer with Father Gantz. And up on the docket for this week is intercessory prayer, which just makes me sound really pretentious to say that word. Some of you were thinking, what is intercessory?

Well, we'll get there in a minute.

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