Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Alright, I'm so excited to be here today, and you are in a series that's going on right now, that I think this actually will dovetail into it actually.

You're in this series called Divinely Human, and I'm going to share with you some message on prayer that Pastor Robert asked me to share,

that I really think kind of intersects with the topics that you've been dealing with in this series.

But again, just very, very honored to be in this house. I wrote this book. I've been in ministry 40 years this year, everybody.

I'm 60 years old and 40 years of ministry celebrating, thanks both of y'all, appreciate that.

For 18 of those, I was a youth pastor, and I always wanted our students to pray.

It was hard because they had plenty of energy, but they didn't have any know-how. They didn't know what to do.

That was my own story. When I first got saved at 15 years old, I was raised in the church, but when I got really born again and on fire for God, they started talking about praying for an hour.

I had six minutes of material, you know what I was saying? I didn't have an hour, and they wanted just to pray an hour, and I didn't know what to do.

So my pastor, Pastor Larry Stocksdale, who's still my pastor, and the church I was raised in is called Bethany World Prayer Sinist, who is really a praying church.

He was the one who taught me prayer models and prayer guides, and like using different prayers in the Bible to serve as an outline for you while you pray.

And I wanted to share with you one of those today, but then when I started ministry as a youth pastor, I actually started teaching young people how to pray.

And so they packed out our house on Tuesday night, 100 more teenagers, you know, praying the pain off the wall for an hour, and it was really just because we taught them how to pray.

I had this theory, this is the thesis of the book, and that is that people are sufficiently inspired to pray.

They just don't know what to say. They don't know how to fill the time. And so if the book's out there, if you'd like to have a copy, but the first section actually talks about the five things that makes prayer actually work, and I use peas for all these, it's kind of a preacher disease.

I don't know why we do that, but anyway, they'll start with the letter P, but you have to have the priority of prayer, pray first.

So it shouldn't be your first response, not your last resort, so not 9-11 or fire escape prayers, but pray first.

So the priority is good to have the place of prayer. So Jesus went to a solitary place where he prayed. So he had a favorite, conducive place to pray.

He had a plan. That's what he taught the disciples. That's really what the Lord's Prayer is. It's not really intended to be a prayer itself. It's okay if you pray it, but Jesus was teaching an outline, not a prayer. Otherwise, your prayer time will last 26 seconds.

That's how long it takes me to read the Lord's Prayer, but it's really it's seven elements that we can cover in our time with God, so the plan of prayer.

The fourth is the power of prayers, the factual fervent prayer of a righteous person that avails much. So it's praying with some energy, and with some passion, and with some zeal, and having a good time, not just quiet.

...