Everybody good? Hey, would you guys do me a favor and help welcome in all of our campuses that are tuning in live right now. What's up everybody? So pumped that you are here, joining us, wherever you are tuning in from, wanna welcome our church online family as well. And congratulations because you're here.

That means you made it through Snowpocalypse 2025. Congratulations. I feel like we all need medals or some sort, like, just something that we could put right here is like, I survived. I actually almost, I thought for a second that Facebook was gonna put out, um, like marked safe from, you know, like, you see all these things like Mark Safe from, I wanted one that says Mark Safe from Southerners driving in the snow. I was thinking that maybe that would be the one that they would put out, but they didn't.

It's okay, but we had a blast. I don't know about you guys, our friends in Jones County. I'm so sorry I didn't get a lot of snow up there or any snow, but, you know, and, but on the coast, the place of all places, we had like five to six inches, y'all. It was wild. It, and we did not have a clue what to do.

We didn't know what to do with ourselves, me and my daughter, we got out there and, uh, you know, we were, we were like, okay, we gotta load up on our, our winter gear. Let's put our winter gear on everybody. Our snow gear and snow gear and on the coast means anything that has long sleeves. And so we just put that on and we go out. My, my daughter goes in snow, uh, snow boots.

It was rain boots. And she starts walking around and she, she jumps into like a, a pile of snow that was like six inches deep. All the snow goes inside of her snow boot, which then becomes water. So we had to fix that, but it was so weird. We were walking around, you know, high fiving everybody, seeing everybody out in the neighborhood.

The weirdest things started happening. We'd wave at everybody and be like, Merry Christmas. It just kinda went back. And then the one guy had his lights, he never took 'em down. And so we just turned those jokers back on and it was like jokes on you.

I was like, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Went. We had a great time in the Snowpocalypse 2025. It was so much fun. Uh, we are ending our 21 days of prayer series.

Have you guys enjoyed that? Hasn't it been so good over the past few weeks? It's one of my favorite series that we do every year is an opportunity to, to dive into prayer and say, God, we wanna be a church. That, that prays at the beginning of our year and sets a pace. I just love the messages that we've had over the past several weeks.

If you haven't had a chance, go back, watch those messages, uh, what it looks like to live by faith and to grow in grace. And today we wanna send us out with a challenge. It's a very simple message today, friends. And the message is this, we want to be a pray first church. We wanna be a church that prays first before anything else.

Because we know that a lot of stuff goes on in life, right? There's a lot of things that we experience. There's a lot of heartache, there's a lot of difficulty. But who we want to be as a church, as a people of God is we wanna be a people who pray first. And something that is brought back to me, I go back to Matthew chapter seven, verse seven, uh, seven through 11.

And this is the question I have as, as we look at this, and we're gonna go to it in just a second. But I'm reminded of a story. Many years ago I was in a, a junior or senior in high school. We used to go to this place in El Salvador, uh, yearly. It was a part of submissions work that we would do, the church that I was a part of.

And I, man, I just love, I loved going there. I loved seeing what God was doing. If you wanna see an experience revival, go to El Salvador, go to a little city called Chin of Makeup in El Salvador. And we were there and we were doing ministry for about a week and hanging out with the people. They had taken a Levi Strauss jeans company factory.

And they had converted it into a church. And the, the pastor there was allowing us to come in. And we were having revival nights at this old Levi factory. And there were people from all throughout the city, all the villages surrounding at night, after night after nine, there was no room for people to come in this church. And they were dying to get in.

They were so excited to be a part of this, just trying to find their way in the door. And so part of our role was during the day, we would go out into the marketplace and y'all, your boy loved the marketplace. Lemme tell you, there was food at the marketplace, good food. And so I spent most of my time there. And so we were walking around to the different booths and stuff like that, talking with people.

And it was our job to invite and say, Hey, why don't you come on? Why don't you come hang out at Revival nights? Come tonight. Come tonight. And so we were with a team of about seven to 10 people just walking through the market, doing our thing, talking with everybody.

And they told us, they said, Hey, listen, the market is the place that you wanna be during the day. Go invite, share stories, learn about people's names and their stories. But when the sun begins to set, make sure that you're out of the market and you go back to the church. The reason why is because there was a lot of gang activity in this part of Chin Maca in El Salvador. And there was a particular gang that felt like they had territory over this area.

And when Knight came, they started to come out and to, to persecute and to oppress the people of the church. Because here's what we know, that when the Church of God moves into a place, come on somebody. That, that place starts to change. People were giving their lives to the Lord. People were changing.

Sons who were going to be a part of the gang no longer were and were devoting their lives to ministry. And the gang did not like that. Well, we were out in the marketplace doing our thing. And you know me, I was like talking to this guy about, uh, some, some different, uh, delicacies in the marketplace. We got to talking a little bit too long.

And then I looked up and noticed it was just me and a friend. And the rest of our group had moved on, and the sun had started to set over the marketplace that was going down behind the mountain. And your boy freaked out. I lost it. Panicked started welling up in me.

The only thing I could think about in my life and, and, and the story that was told to me was, Hey, don't be here after Sunset. Don't be here after Sunset. Don't be here here after Sunset. And here I am there after Sunset. What do I do now?

So I looked at my friend, I was like, what do we do? What do we do? We're, we're, it's, it's, it's over. We don't, we don't know where we're going. This place is like a labyrinth.

How do we go this left, right? Where did they go? And the guy next to me, I'm so thankful for him, he took me, he said, Hey, instead of panic, why don't we try prayer? And I was like, f**k, do we have to? I prefer panic.

I feel like I'm a little bit more control when I'm panicking. He's like, no, no, no, let's pray. And so we did. We bow our heads and we said, God, we need you to get us outta here. We need you to get us outta here.

And so we looked up and we started walking down a particular way. And I'll never forget this, y'all, as long as I live, when we come to this fork in the road, we didn't know which way to go. There was a man, older man in simple clothing. And he looked at both of us like he knew that he was on a mission to speak to us. And he said, in perfect English, the group that you're looking for went this way.

And we looked over to the right and there was the whole group headed back towards the church. I will forever know that God answered our prayers that day and he put that person in that place so that we would be able to meet back up with that group. But it led me to this question that I wanna ask you today. When it comes to the overwhelm of life, when it comes to the di difficulties that we face, right? There are so many roads that we can take.

There's so many avenues that we can try to walk down. It can get overwhelming to think about what's next in our life. What's the next space? Or maybe for you, you're experiencing some difficulty in your life that you just don't know how to handle. You don't know what to do with, do you pray or do you panic?

Which area do you step into? Because God calls us to be a people of prayer. Too often we wait until we've exhausted every other option, until everything else that we've done that we could possibly try to do is done. And then we pray. But God never intended that prayer would be our backup plan.

Friends, he always intended that it would be our battle plan. Matthew chapter seven, verse seven through 11 says this, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for, a fish will give him a snake. If you then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him today? Friends, if we are going to be a pray first people, we have to take this Scripture at its word and trust that when we pray, when we lift up our voices to the Lord, maybe you haven't done it in years. Maybe you haven't actually set a prayer to the Lord in weeks and you, you feel like you're in a dry season, that you don't know where to go. Can we trust in this Scripture that when we ask something of God, he is going to answer.

When we seek from something, when we seek something of the Lord, he is going to help us find when we knock on the door, he wants to swing it wide open. There's two things in this, this verse I want you to know. Number one, God is not cruel. So often in so many aspects of our life, we feel like we have prayed and we have prayed and we have prayed and we have prayed. And God has not answered our prayers.

And it feels like he is distant and he's cruel. According to this passage, that's not true. God is also not stingy. He's not withholding things, he's not dangling things that we're asking for on the line, seeing if, how faithful can we be or how good of Christians can we be? That's not the way that God is.

He says, Hey, if you ask, I will answer you. Seek after me and you will find. And when you knock on that door, I want to open the door for you. But you say, Blake, I I don't understand that because I have prayed for something man. I have prayed and given my life to prayer and asked and asked and asked.

And it doesn't feel like there is anything coming my way. What if God knows us better than we do? And when we ask, when we seek, and when we knock, the thing that he answers with the thing that he helps us find and the door that he helps us to open isn't just about what we want, but it's about what makes us more in his image. God is not after our comfort friends. He's not after just giving us whatever we flippantly want.

He's not just answering our prayers in a may in a way that makes us comfortable. He wants to answer our prayers in the way that is ultimately best for us. But don't just take my word for it. I want us to go back to a passage of Scripture in the Old Testament. It's the book of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible. I love this. This book, if you haven't had a chance to read it, it's a really cool story about this, this guy named Nehemiah, he's exiled from Jerusalem. He's hanging out with the king and, and the Assyrian, um, empire just kind of doing their thing. You know, just kind of like assimilating in.

And all of a sudden some buddies come back and say, Hey, Jerusalem is in ruins. There's nothing left and we need to rebuild the walls. And so he asks the king, we're gonna get into that in a second, but it's really cool in the back half of the book, he goes on, he leads this incredible army of people and and families to rebuild their portion of the wall. And I encourage you to go back because it's a really cool thing of God answering the prayers of his people. But the, the thing that I love most about Nehemiah is that in the very beginning, the whole first chapter deals with a prayer that Nehemiah pray.

He hears from his friends about the thing that has gone, that has been going on in Jerusalem. But the first thing he does isn't try to fix it. He, he goes to prayer. And so that's what I hope for us as well as a church. And so let's go to Nehemiah chapter one.

I'm gonna read the chapter two. It's a pretty short, it says the words of Nehemiah, son of Aliah. And the, the month of kids left in the 20th year while I was in the citadel of Suse. Hannah and I, one of my brothers came from Judah with some other men and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile and about Jerusalem. So basically some friends came back to Susa and they'd been to Jerusalem and he did the, the ancient version of how's mom and them.

And they start asking about like, Hey, how's the family? And, and this is what they said to me in verse three, those who survived the exile and are back in the province. So it sounds like it's going pretty good, right? Right now, uh oh are in great trouble in disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire.

When I heard these things, I sat down and I wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. And then I said, Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Let your ear be attentive in your eyes, open to hear the prayer. Your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel.

I confess the sins we Israelite, including myself and my father's family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commandments, decrees and laws that you gave your servant Moses. But remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying, if you're unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name.

They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this, your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in reveering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. And I was cupbearer to the king. Wow.

And isn't that prayer bold? I love it when he's faced with disaster and, and where he grew up. When he's faced with his friends, he Nehemiah immediately moves to prayer. He was a pray first follower. That's my prayer for all of us today.

So can we do this before we now in, I wanna look at Nehemiah's prayer a little bit. Before we do that, can we go to the Lord in prayer that he would speak to us? Would you pray with me? Father, we do pray that we pray the bold prayer that Nehemiah prays. Father, open your ears and open your eyes to hear and to see us.

Father, we know that you do. And so, Lord, no matter what, what's going on in the lives of anybody that's listening today, father, we pray the simple prayer that Nehemiah does teach us. Just like the disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray. We honor you, Lord. It's in Christ name we pray and everybody said amen.

Amen. I want us to look at just a few things. The, the the things that come out of a pray first life. What are some elements of a pray first life? The first thing I want you to see is that Nehemiah, Nehemiah had a burden that led to prayer.

It wasn't just a passive thing. It was like, ah man, it really stinks that you know, the walls fell down. Sorry about it. I'm over here. You know, in the kingdom.

It's not just like, ah man, I'll pray for you. You know? No, Nehemiah was burdened when he heard. Go back to verse four and see what happened with Nehemiah when he heard this. He said, when I heard these things, I sat down and I wept.

I sat down and wept. And for some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. My question to you is this, when was the last time your heart was broken about something? When was the last time that you were burdened by something? I don't know about you, but this is certainly the truth for me.

Whenever I go into prayer, I have this feeling, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I have this need to almost fix myself up before going to God. Like I have to brush myself off, pick myself up so that I can look good enough to go into the presence of the king. Say God. Yeah, no, I'm doing pretty good. Thank you for asking.

Uh, I just want to let you know, here's a little list of things if you don't mind just kinda checking 'em off and I'll hand them to you and then everything will be good. No, that's not what Nehemiah did. He heard what was going on in Jerusalem. The walls had fallen down, the gates had been destroyed. They were burnt up.

And what did Nehemiah do is that he sat down and he wept. His heart was broken, it was yearning, it was burden. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to move forward. And so the first move that he did was he said, Hey God, I am in all honesty, just broken and I am hurting.

And God says it's okay. This is the thing I want you to know, friends, it's okay to not be okay when it comes to talking to Jesus. It's okay to not be okay because a heart that is breaking before God is a heart that God wants to use. Not the hardy puffed up. I've got everything intact.

I'm good to go. No, no, no. The one that is broken, think back to your life. If you're struggling with something. Is anybody struggling with addiction in this place?

And they're saying like, I've tried to put this over to the side, but I need to let God know that I'm not okay. Or maybe you've got a family member that's been wayward for 20 years and you're saying, God, I've been praying and I've been praying and I've been praying that they would come to faith, that they would see the light, that they would come into a saving knowledge of you, but they haven't yet. And God, that breaks my heart. Or maybe you're saying, God, I've been in a dry season for so long, I don't even know what it looks like to give you praise. It's been so long since I've prayed.

It's been so long since I've felt your presence. It's been so long since I've known where to go and my heart is broken. And God says, yep, right there. Let's start there. Because here's what happens.

When our heart begins to break and we begin to experience that burden, then we start to realize in and of ourselves there is nothing that we can do to fix the problem. Whatever it is that you're facing, whatever's going on in your life, whatever family member you want so desperately to know Jesus, there's nothing that we can do friends in and all of our own selves that we can fix what's going on in our lives. But Nehemiah didn't rush to fix the problem. So often we hurry and scurry and try to go fix things before we even need God's help. But Nehemiah said, no.

I sat down and I wept. 'Cause there was no way that in my own strength that I could fix my, fix my city. There's no way that I could rebuild the walls in and of myself. I need the Lord. That's what a broken heart says.

God, I need you. And for many of us, that might be where we need to start a burden that leads to prayer. But Nehemiah didn't just stop at heartbreak. He didn't just say, man, you know this is awful and my heart is broken. I don't know what to do.

Now the next thing that he moves into is a boldness that moves heaven. Nehemiah prayed a bold prayer. It was a prayer full of faith. It was a prayer full of passion and belief that God was going to remember his promises. It wasn't just saying, God, I think that you'll do it.

And he's saying, God no. I know according to your promise that you are going to bring your people back if we will follow after you. And the thing that I love about this prayer is that here at our church, we so often use the acronym, you may know this, PRAY, the prayer acronym. Have you heard this? P praise R repent.

A Ask y Yield. We teach it every 21 days of prayer. In fact, if you wanna go out to the atrium after this message, there's some prayer and fasting. Gods grab one of those that'll walk you through the Pray acronym. But the thing is, I was looking at this message, that acronym that we use, you can lay it directly over Nehemiah's prayer.

And he uses the same exact structure of how he prayed this bold prayer. Nehemiah chapter one before anything. So can we do this? Can we go through it and take a look? The first one that we see is praise.

Nehemiah starts his prayers. He, after his heart is broken, he moves into this bold prayer and the thing that he starts with is praise. Look in verse five, then I said, Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments. If we're gonna be a pray first church people, if we're gonna be a, a pray first follower of Jesus, the very first place that we need to start, every time that we open our lips to give God prayer is in praise. Think about it.

What does praise do? Praise elevates our hearts praises. When we start with praise, we shift our focus from the size of our problem to the greatness of God. This is why we always start with praise. Because we say, yeah, that problem is it's really big.

There's a lot going on here. I don't know how to handle it, Lord, I'm very heartbroken about it. I'm burdened. But now we're gonna shift and say, but God, I know who somebody who can handle it. I know that you can.

I know that you are the creator of this universe. I know that you hold all things in your hands. I know that you make the mountains high and you make the valleys low. I know that you make deceives to stop where your word tells 'em to stop. Lord, I know that there is nothing that is too far gone for you.

I know that there is nowhere that I can go that your presence will not be. If you wanna need some help with praise, just go to the Psalms. David will say it for you. It says, if I go to the heavens, you're there. If I make my bed down in shield, you are there.

There is no place that God is not friends. Some of us need to be reignited in who God is. We need a reawakening. We need a rekindling of the passion of God and recognizing, yes, there is so much going on in my life, but he is so much bigger. He is so much greater.

He is so much stronger praises the posture of the heart that says, no matter what, God, I know that you are able, this is where Nehemiah starts. He's like, yeah, the the defenses in Jerusalem are down. There's nothing left, but I know that you're able. Then he moves to the next piece verses six and seven. He moves to repentance.

Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer. Your servant is praying before you day and night to your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws.

You gave your servant Moses, two of the most strong words that you can use in a bold prayer, my friends is I confess. Now, confession for us when we talk about repentance and confession, this is something that we don't like to talk about in our culture because the enemy has sold us a bill of goods here. He has sold us alive. Friends that somehow whenever we step into confession that we tell people and we tell the Lord how we have sinned against him and we have exposed our sins. And that's what it feels like.

It feels like exposure whenever we confess. And we don't want that because the enemy has told us that as soon as you confess and you expose your sin, you expose where you have moved away from God, that at that moment you are held in bondage by that sin because other people look at you and they judge you. And they say, man, once that person knows, once that friend knows, once that family member knows what you've been doing, that you're not who you really say that you are. You'll never be looked at the same. You'll never be looked at the same.

Nobody will see you in the same way. You'll be held in bondage by your sin forever. But my friends, can I come to tell you this today, that that is a lie from the pit of hell. When you open your mouth and you confess your sins and you say, God, I am. I have nothing else, but I'm going to give it all over to you and I'm going to confess to someone else.

Those bonds are broken. Freedom is found on the other side of confession. Friends, this is why it's so important. A few years ago we went to um, Asbury that revive the outpouring that happened in Kentucky. And it was such a powerful time.

And one of the things that I was blown away by, I was just in the middle of the night and everybody was just kinda standing and singing and praying. And one of the hosts got up and he sat in the microphone something. And I'll never forget, he said, if you were struggling with sin today that you have not confessed, if you were struggling with something in your life that you have not let the Lord know about, even though he already knows you haven't confessed it to him or you haven't confessed it to a brother or sister, I want you to stand up right now and I want you to confess your sin out loud. And I was sitting up there in the balcony, I was like, I'm gonna And I was like, there's no way. There is no way in this culture that that would ever happen happen.

And one by one, I started seeing people stand up all across the building. Young old college students, people that have been working for 40 years, single moms, single dads, people that were divorced, people that were hurting and struggling, they started standing up and they just started confessing their sin out loud unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. And then he said, what I want, if you're sitting by this person, I want you to turn around. I want you to put your hand on them. And I want you to only say one thing to them.

In the name of Jesus Christ, you were forgiven. I have never experienced something so powerful in my life. The audible voice of thousands of people looking at these people in the eye saying in the name of Jesus Christ, you've forgiven my friends. I wanna tell you something right here, right now. The reason why Nehemiah's prayer was so bold was 'cause he was willing to go to that place that his forefathers and generations before were not willing to go, saying We have sinned against a holy God.

And we confess that sin. I want to encourage you today, if you were struggling with sin, if you were struggling with something in your life, confess it to God. And I want you to hear this over your life as you do. The only response is not, the response of the enemy is not the response of other people's judgment. It is this and this alone and the name of Jesus Christ, the son of the living most high God.

You are forgiven. There is forgiveness for you. Friend it in the Nehemiah is able to move into a place of asking. In verse 11, he says, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this, your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in reveering your name. Then he asks, give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man, bold prayers, honor God because they trust and they have faith that God is able to do what he says he's gonna do.

This is why we ask God, invite us in, allow us to step into the work. But notice that Nehemiah isn't just asking for a laundry list of things. No, no. He's saying, God, I want to join you in this. I want to be a part of the movement that you are already doing.

I wanted to invite you to act on your promises. Do what you say you're going to do, Lord, and let me be a part of it. He's asking to join in. And then finally we see that he yields and the whole part of the, the, the prayer that Nehemiah prays, he's yielding up to the will of God. But notice this, notice that his submission isn't just giving up.

So often when we think about yielding, we think that it's like, man, I just gotta give up. It's not on me. You're gonna have to let God handle it. Let the Lord do it. No, no, no, no.

Yielding isn't giving up. Yielding is giving over saying, yes, I want something to happen. I wanna be a part of it. Lord, I want you to invite me into the process. I'm asking that you move and I wanna be a part of that movement with you.

But the beauty of yielding is that, that it turns a wishlist into worship and saying, God, we want more than just my laundry list of things. We yield this up to you and say, not my will Lord, but yours be done. It's a bold prayer that leads to a brave move. The final thing that we see in this story is that it's a bravery that steps out. Nehemiah had this, if you go to the chapter two of Nehemiah, there's a moment where the king, he comes into the king and the king asks him, why is your face so downcast?

There's the moment, the moment that God put in front of him. And so then if you go to verse four, I love what it says right here. It says, then I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king, do you see this? The moment came, the opportunity arose for something for him to take action. God was inviting him in.

And what did he do? He prayed first and then he took a step of bravery. Why? Because prayer fuels courage. If there's a move, you know that you need to make, pray first.

Go to the Lord in prayer. Give him everything that you have. Because faith isn't just believing that God will act. It's stepping out in faith, trusting that he already has. This is what faith is.

Friends, yes, I'm going to step out and I'm asking, Lord, that you will be with me, that you would turn your ear to me, that you would put your eye on me. Because I believe in your promises. I believe that there's a door that only you can open. I can't open it. But once you do, I'm ready to step in.

It's a partnership. Prayer is a partnership where we work together to, to see God move in our cities and in our families and in our communities. It's the beauty of prayer. It's a bravery that steps out because of a bold prayer that Nehemiah asked that started with a burden. But there's one last sentence in chapter one that really struck me, and I wanted to share this with you before we move into a time of response today.

It, it really kind of, it shook me really, because at the end of chapter one, there's just one small sentence. Nehemiah just prayed this really bold prayer and it says, and I was a cupbearer to the king. Okay, thank you Nehemiah for the context. Appreciate that. I was a cut bearer to the king.

It seems kind of random, just placed in there. But as I was studying this, the Lord spoke to me through that sentence, y'all, because here's what Nehemiah's job was. Nehemiah was a person that he would take the chalice or the cup for the king and they would pour wine into it and Nehemiah would take it to the king. But before he did that, Nehemiah would have to take a sip and wait a second. And if he choked and died, well it meant that that was bad wine.

Talk about a workplace hazard. That's what he did day in and day out. They would pour the drink, Nehemiah would taste it to make sure that it wasn't poisonous. And then he would take it to the king. Lot of trust there, a lot of, a lot of trust in Nehemiah by the king.

The king was relying on him to be that gatekeeper of trouble and heartache and death. And as I was thinking about this, I was like, Lord, there's something about this sentence that that really strikes me. Why does it strike me? So, and it reminds me, the Lord brought it to me. And maybe this would encourage you too, that we are also cup bearers to the king.

I am a cupbearer to the king. And for me, my cub, there is no doubt about it. It is filled with poison. It is filled with heartache. It is filled with sin.

It is filled with the wrath of God. Because I deserve in and of myself, friends, I deserve hell. I deserve separation from God because I have sinned greatly against a holy, eternal God. And my cup is filled with the heartache and the sin and the wrath. And there was a role reversal from Nehemiah, what he experienced to what I experienced.

Because in Matthew 26 in the garden of Gethsemane, the king of kings and Lord of Lords knelt down. And he said, Lord, if it could be, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. And so what did Jesus do? He took that cup and he drank every last drop.

He took all my sin, he took all my shame. He took all my guilt. He took all my pain, he took all my heartache and he took it all. It wasn't like Nehemiah having to test it beforehand. No.

This was Jesus saying, give me the cup and I will take it and I will transform it so that you would have life and life to the full so that you would be able to receive grace and mercy. And I'm gonna trade my cup out for a different cup. And this cup is gonna be filled with a grace and mercy and hope that is found in Jesus. And Jesus alone. It's the king of kings that takes the cup for us.

But Here's the beautiful thing, part apart, friends, what's in your cup? We have an opportunity each and every day to bring that cup to him. And because of life and sin and difficulty, it fills up so fast in ways that we don't know how to handle it. It Fills and it fills. And we can't take all that in.

And the king on this throne says, Hey listen, Bring it here. I'll take it. Bring me the cup. And so today, friends, I wanna challenge you as we leave this 21 days of prayer and we go into 2025, bring him your cup, whatever it's filled with, whatever wrath you have, whatever anger you have at your family, whatever bitterness you haven't been able to give over, whatever sin that you're holding onto, whatever addiction that it is, whatever broken relationship that you haven't mended, whatever it is that has filled your cup up and it is overflowing, bring it to the king. Let him take it Because We pray first.

So today, at all of our campuses, we're gonna have an opportunity to respond. And in this response, we're gonna sing a song that I love. It's called gratitude. Oh, it's so good. But I wanna challenge you.

I wanna challenge you. Don't let the enemy rob you of this moment. You can come down to the front. Somebody needs to receive prayer today. Somebody needs to give their cup to the king today to bear the cup.

You can come down to the front and pray. You can come to one of our prayer team members. We have the crosses. If you wanna write it down and pin it, there's sin that you need to confess. You can go to the cross and write it down.

Find a friend that you trust. Don't let this moment pass, but be moved by the Spirit. Give your cup to the king. Can I pray for you? Jesus, we pray that today.

We praise you, father. You are so good. God, in every difficult situation and every heartache right there. And you tell us that we can ask, that we can seek, that we can knock and you will open that door. And so Lord, now we ask and we seek and we knock.

Father, we, we pray that you would take these things. We are burdened, Lord, we are heartbroken. Father, So many stories that I don't even know of, but God, today can be the day that we bring our cup to you. Be with us now as we respond to Christ and we pray. Amen.