Don't get down when you're seeing the worst,
Cause the last will be the first.
What a day I'm telling you,
All things will be new.
Living up in a down world.
Yeah we're living, yeah we're living,
Living up in a down world.
Oh!
This is Jimmy DeNette.
We want to welcome you to
Living up in a down world.
What do you mean the world's down?
What do you mean by that title anyway?
Oh my goodness.
Miss DeNette, Dame DeNette.
What does it mean that the world's down and we're up?
Well look at what's going on in the economy,
in the government,
in the weather, you name it.
The weather?
Well, like hurricanes,
hurricanes, and tornadoes,
world events, fires,
devastation, yes fires.
Crazy stuff going on around the world.
But there's some good things going on.
I need to finish this text to Tina.
Can I do that real quick?
Oh of course.
Forget the show.
I was texting somebody.
I was in the middle.
I didn't know you were going to start.
Tina Curry.
Sorry.
I'm letting her know what happened to me today.
You carry on over there.
I'm over here.
Okay.
Just give me one second.
We want to welcome you to,
wow, we want to welcome you to episode number 36.
We want to thank you for joining us.
That's our heart.
Living up in a down world.
It's not fancy.
It just means living above the line,
getting above the fray of the craziness of the world.
And you know, we're not downing the world either.
We're just being observant.
So it's not even about putting the world down.
But as Christians, we're not supposed to conform to the world.
No, but we are to love the world.
We are.
For God so loved the world.
He gave.
No, no, no, no.
We're in it.
Not that at all.
I thought you were texting.
I'm sorry.
I am.
I just started listening to you for a second.
I'm going to mute you.
No, you're not.
I would never do that.
No, no.
No, we'll not do that.
So yeah, so the whole idea here,
and again, thanks for being with us.
Our heart is to live up in a down world.
That means living up because of Jesus Christ
and what He's done in our life and is doing in our life
and will continue to do.
And so that gets us excited.
So I start off by making a comment about why is the world down?
And Ed will join us in a minute.
I'm done.
Oh, okay.
Let me tell her.
Recording now.
We're recording.
So tell her I said hi.
But so we were talking about, you know, the world's down.
And what's going on?
But there's some good things happening too.
Auburn University.
Yes, which I didn't know about.
Where have I been?
Well, you don't do a lot of social media.
That's why.
And so I saw it and caught it.
And actually there was a Fox News report.
I think Breitbart did a report on it.
Where are you watching the news?
Online?
I don't watch the news.
I'm on Instagram and I follow their accounts.
So they have these little snippets.
Gotcha.
Anyway, and then Sir T.J.
The Raffle.
No, it wasn't Sir T.J.
Was it?
No, Sir, by His grace, David Wicker.
Yes.
Sent me and Adam Curry a link to the Fox News.
It's a video showing them baptizing over 200 college students on one night because of this
worship event that they hosted called, I think it was like, like Auburn United or U.S.
Auburn United or Unite Worship Auburn.
But anyway, praise God for that.
I want to have a prayer night with worship.
I know that came up.
Well, Tom Pugh brought it up.
He should be listening.
Hopefully he'll be listening because he listens to our podcast.
Yeah, I love that guy.
And Tom, here it is.
I talked to Jimmy about it.
He's on board.
And now we're saying it across the world on the Internet.
Across the world.
Well, because I do believe with what you're doing with the series, it can culminate in
this.
And it doesn't have to include baptism, although I think it should.
Hopefully we'll have people ready for baptism.
But I think we should have a prayer night.
Tom and I already talked about Sunday night would be good.
Not this Sunday, but a Sunday night.
Do a prayer night and see.
I mean, I think that I see it in my mind, too, like a combination prayer worship night.
Yes.
But the focus, not just worship.
So we do worship nights and they're amazing.
But just a little bit of worship.
No, this one is more focused on prayer.
Prayer.
Prayer for revival, prayer for spiritual awakening.
Our nation and the world, not just our nation, but let's start where we live.
Our nation right here, we need, now what's happening?
We need revival.
We need spiritual awakening.
We need a sovereign, powerful move of God through the person of Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit.
But what we need and what I'm believing for, praying into, trusting God for, asking God
for, I'm that persistent widow knocking on the door.
Yes, you are.
What I'm asking Him for is that, and what I'm observing, let me say it this way, is
that there are outcroppings happening right now.
I mean, what happened at Asbury School, University and Seminary, with that move of God, we've
got guys like Sean Foit and others who are going all over the United States and having
these massive worship events.
Then there's spontaneous worship events breaking out everywhere.
So I see it like, if you were to look over like a Google Earth image, and it's like
these fires popping up everywhere.
But I was mentioning to you earlier, it reminds me of thunderstorms, which we have here in
Texas obviously, where sometimes we'll get the, they'll say a chance for scattered thunderstorms.
And you may drive through a very small cell and get dumped on with rain and hail and wind.
Yeah, I drove through one of the worst storms I've ever driven through.
Thursday?
Yeah, just a few days ago.
That was a wild experience.
And I've been through some stuff.
I've been through tornadoes and everything.
This was right up there with them.
But it was a small cell.
It wasn't even a large thing, and it was isolated.
So what's happening with these outbreaks of the move of God is that it's like scattered
thunderstorms.
It's happening here.
It's happening over there.
But to me, the real test is what happens when it's over.
Of course.
That's to me.
That's a given to me.
Of course, that's that bone in me that I have.
Profit in you.
Yes, okay.
I didn't want to say that.
But because to me, anybody can get up and we want them to, to make a declaration and
to ask for repentance.
Have a moment.
Sing, have a moment.
But what are you going to do when it's quiet?
Well, and that's it.
That's we want to see people truly born again, born of the Spirit, and then discipled.
And then with the expectation that, okay, what's next?
I struggle a little bit with when I see people say, yeah, I want to be baptized.
I'm like, well, have you accepted Jesus Christ?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Okay.
And then nothing after that.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
There's there no fires or no excitement.
And so there is this sense where.
But I think the excitement is weighing because of this world, this down world.
It can and I don't know that people really understand there is a real enemy out there
called spiritual warfare, the devil.
And he wants to take you out as soon as you get excited about the things of God.
He comes to do what?
Steal, kill and destroy.
Absolutely.
But Jesus flips his grip and says, but I came for life, that life and life more abundant
you may have it.
And so there's this war going on and I feel like the enemy is desperate.
Yeah.
I think these outcroppings and these things that are going on and to I think time is short.
I mean, we know we're one week closer than we were last week.
Right.
I know that sounds silly, but we're getting closer.
Is Mr. Chevy back and forth?
I don't know what his problem is.
He's got up, got down, got up, got down, does that inadvertently snap my fingers?
Probably.
I may have because that freaks him out.
Yeah.
Don't do that anymore.
I'll try not to snap.
Sorry, Mr. Chevy.
Got you all stirred up.
He's funny.
I know.
So yeah, so all these outcroppings are happening, all these moves of God, but they're not a
coalesced move.
They're here and there.
And I think that's just the start.
It's almost like you're just seeing the rumbling, sort of like a, like a tremors before an earthquake,
you know, plate tectonics, things are moving.
I think things are moving in the spiritual realm and the kingdom of God is getting ready
to invade earth.
And I love that book by Pastor Bill Johnson many years ago, but fantastic book.
Have you found that book?
Do you have it here?
I have it on my Kindle, but I do have the book.
I do have it here.
I want you to find it.
Okay.
When Heaven Invades Earth, powerful, powerful book talking about the invasion of the kingdom
and how we partner and co-labor with God to literally assist in bringing the kingdom here.
So what's in heaven and what's not in heaven now invades earth.
Right.
Which leads us to your message.
Lord, have mercy.
Boy, you were on fire so much so that Adam Curry gave you a courtesy call last night
that he was pretty blown away by your fire and, and just the content and it was very
powerful.
Thank you.
He always, he always compliments you.
He's an encourager.
I don't think he's ever called you and encouraged you.
It's just, you know, we'll see him the next day or whatever.
Great man.
Or he'll text you.
He had to call and I was pretty honored, especially coming from him who's such an amazing communicator
and he called to tell you how wonderful that was.
And he listened to both of them, first and second service.
What I loved about that phone call was that wasn't producer, you know, it wasn't my father.
No, it was my friend.
It was my friend and my brother in Christ.
Who said, I'm actually going to practice the, the techniques, the, you know, the instructions
you gave according to what the word really means, bring his kingdom here.
And I love that brother because I love how he's growing in Christ.
Usually after your first sermon.
Okay.
I'm just going to be honest.
That doesn't sound good for me.
No, it's good.
It's good.
That was great.
But you need your, are you okay?
Cause you're not, you don't have, but you literally, this is what people don't understand.
Your sermon first service can be quite different from second because you literally, you exegete
your audience and you ask the Holy spirit, what is this group need versus the other?
I don't think people understand that.
That's why I enjoy listening to both.
But usually your first one is your warmup and your second one, you just go that yesterday
it was kind of the opposite.
Well, actually it was both just, yeah, just had so much fire and it, it was so believable
and so, I mean, it just, it made me, we actually practiced what you preached at the altar.
All of the altar call was pretty huge yesterday.
It was a lot of people come forward.
Never.
It was like two o'clock praying for people.
I mean, what?
I don't think that's ever happened.
Well as land is on the move, as CS Lewis wrote in Chronicles of Narnia, God's moving.
And I believe that I've been asking the Lord to allow us to be an epicenter of his move
and whatever it takes, put ourselves on the altar in a very real sense.
And you and I have talked about this, but I want to share this with those listening
because we have people from all different age groups and demographics that listen to
the program.
And so there are different places in terms of their age.
So you and I, we're both 61 years of age.
I'm coming, I'm saying it out loud.
Why?
It's a number.
Okay.
I'm 27 and holding.
So, so we're 61.
And so in a very real sense, our runway isn't as long as it used to be.
I mean, you can, I'm not saying we're seeing the end of it, but I'm saying
it's not infinite now.
We're not 20 and could have the potential 60, 70 years left.
I felt infinite when I was 20.
Yeah, I'll live forever.
And I acted like I'd live forever.
Right.
We don't have 60 years left.
No.
So whatever time we have left, my attitude now is this is where we up our game.
We don't diminish.
We don't think about retiring.
We think about refiring.
We think about my mentality is I'm going to slow down and coast over the finish line,
whatever that means, retirement at 67 or any of that stuff.
No, no, no, no, no way.
I'm going to slow down and coast over the finish line, whatever that means, retirement
at 67 or any of that stuff.
No, no, no, no, no way.
We are running through the tape.
We're bringing the kingdom.
I'm the persistent widow beating on the door.
I'm asking, I'm seeking, and I'm knocking, and I'm going to find.
So God's going to move.
This reminds me of Charlene, who's the matriarch of our church who passed away a couple of
weeks ago.
Oh, my third grandmother.
Yes.
I mean, think about it.
In her late 80s, she's telling you she's ready to go see Papa.
87.
She called God Papa.
She'll be there.
I'm telling you, she's ready to go see Papa.
She called God Papa until the day of her death.
But she was so ready, and you were like, no, God's got a purpose for you.
I don't remember if I told that story on here.
I may have.
Okay, go ahead and tell the story.
So the first time I met Miss Charlene was when we first came here to Fredericksburg,
Texas.
I was working for Dave Ramsey.
We lived in Nashville, so we moved to Texas to go to work with Max Okado.
So Pastor Max, Oak Hills Church.
So here we are brand new.
It's a satellite church of a larger mega church, Pastor Max's church.
So we're a first day there, you know, as, hey, there's the new pastors, you know, Pastor
Jimmy and here's Annette.
And I meet the two matriarchs of the church, and that's Barbara Turner and Miss Charlene.
And Charlene walks up to me.
She's very thin and frail.
She's unstable.
And, you know, I mean, I'm like, wow, how old is she?
She was 87 years old.
And she, not in a mean way, but she shook her finger at me, which I found out that's
just what she does.
She does.
She's an old school, precious German lady and fiery.
And she says, I'm going home soon to see Papa.
And I had to think for what does she mean?
Oh, I'm like, are you, do you have a diagnosis?
Or are you terminal?
And she says, no, but I know I'm ready to go now.
I'm ready to go.
Her husband had passed.
Two.
Two husbands had passed.
She had no children, no parents, no family.
So she's like, I'm ready to go.
And she wasn't sad when she told me, she was like, I'm so excited about seeing my Papa,
seeing God or my father.
She calls him Papa, that she was ready to go then.
And about the second or third time I met her, and she would do that every time I met her,
she's going to go home.
I said, could I see your arm?
And I reached down and grabbed her arm.
This is really pretentious on my part, but I really felt, I mean, I actually did it before
I thought about it.
And I checked her pulse and I said, Ms. Charlene, you have a pulse.
And she looked at me with the funniest look and I said, where there's a pulse, there's
a purpose.
And where there's a pulse, there's still a promise.
I said, God's not through with you.
He's got more for you to do.
So let's stop talking about going home and let's ask Papa what he wants us to do now
until it's time to go home.
And that changed.
Yeah.
It ignited her.
That one statement changed her life forever because she refired, started a nursing home
ministry until COVID and then through COVID because you can't visit anyone in the home.
She would go to their window and knock on it and talk through the window and do her
little Bible studies.
That was amazing.
She could not, she became the energizer bunny.
I've never seen anything like it.
She could not be stopped.
She drug people to that nursing home and it was a poor nursing home, a really bad shape.
So no one ever went there.
It was kind of like the one you don't go to.
And she embraced that.
And what's interesting to me is that she was older than most of the residents that she
was visiting.
Exactly.
And she was in worse shape than many of them physically because she had a lot of physical
issues where she was in and out of the hospital all the time and the swollen arms and just
all the stuff, poor things she went through.
And yet she had this fire, this passion.
She reminded me of Caleb in the Bible.
Right.
80 years old and saying, I'm as strong as I was when I was 40.
And what I think about with that is she knows she doesn't have that much longer because
of her age.
So instead of sitting back and coasting, she decided I'm going to go full throttle and
do whatever it takes until I meet my maker.
And she did up until right before her death.
She attended every class at the church.
She attended...
I had started a Wednesday night study.
She didn't miss.
And she never missed.
If she missed, we checked on her because where's Ms. Charlene?
She was just late.
She became truly one of my favorite people.
Oh, UPS is here.
Oh, good.
Christmas time.
It always feels like Christmas from UPS.
It's your butcher block.
Oh, my butcher block.
Oh, I'm excited about that.
Okay.
Anyway, let's go back.
I'm sorry.
I'm looking at the little brown truck out the window.
So if the doorbell rings, it just rings.
So yeah, it's called real life.
The dog may bark.
Oh, he'll lose his mind, but that's okay.
So Ms. Charlene caught fire and she started ministering.
That wasn't the only thing.
She did stuff around the church.
She helped in every ministry.
She'd show up.
She was in both services every Sunday.
She never missed.
Oh, that's right.
She did.
Never missed.
That's exactly right.
And yet we can't get people to come out and get out of bed to come to church.
What was funny is that she would back talk me during the services.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody...
Not back talk, but she would answer...
If I asked a rhetorical question, she would answer.
She would be the one screaming that answer.
And the whole church would just laugh because it's hilarious.
I mean, we have a pretty good size church, 450 people this last Sunday.
So it's not a tiny church.
And for her to just shout out an answer...
And we, the whole church adopted her as our mom and she adopted us as her children and
her family.
And that was what she said even up to the very end as those final conversations.
And she would say, this is my family.
This is Bridge Church is my family.
And she meant it.
So we did that, her memorial service on Saturday and it was just beautiful.
It really was one of the better services I've ever had to do.
Honor where honor is due.
We had to laugh because she was such a character.
Okay.
So the last song made me laugh.
That was funny.
She actually planned her own funeral.
Oh, yeah.
And she wrote her own obituary.
It was quite flattering too.
94 years old.
It was very...
It was interesting.
It was hilarious and beautiful.
I learned something about her.
I didn't know about her own father that her mother died before she was a preteen.
Her dad raised her.
No siblings.
I mean, when she passed, all she had was the church.
How sad is that for people who don't have the church and they don't have anybody?
On the other hand, she so adopted the church as her family.
And there was no question that Miss Charlene was our matriarch and she was a church mama.
We need church mamas.
We need church daddies too, but we need church mamas.
And so she just adopted everybody who walked through the door.
Loved her.
And everybody adopted her.
Loved people.
It's like everybody knows Miss Charlene.
But what I love about her, again, I'm going to say this because this is what brought us
to this conversation with her, was that she knew her time because of her age was limited.
So she was going to spend it wisely and do whatever she could for the Lord.
Which is why we're going to do the same thing.
Not just to honor her, but that's the model is that you run through the tape.
You finish strong.
You always kick at the end of a race, whether it's a cross country race, a marathon, an
Ironman triathlon, or a sprint.
You always kick at the end.
And that is going to be our legacy, even to our kids and their family, is that Pastor
Jimmy, Daddy, and Mom ran through the tape.
They finished strong.
They did not give up on their call.
And so I'm into back to now our original story.
I'm anticipating and praying for and believing for spiritual awakening and revival.
So back to your, you and Tom's conversation on doing a prayer night, pray for revival,
pray for God.
We're going to plan it tomorrow.
I think that's fantastic.
So let's bring it up our staff meeting tomorrow.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Add it to the agenda.
Because you just don't know what God wants to do and he's just waiting for a willing
participant.
That's right.
That's it.
We need to pray specifically as a church for that and really begin to embrace why not here,
why not now.
Why not with us?
Come Lord Jesus.
Yeah.
For sure.
Super excited.
Let's get back to your message.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think the fact that you're doing, talking about the model prayer, which most of us have
heard this is just something or have maybe learned it as a young person like you.
I learned it in elementary school as well, but it didn't become a prayer to me.
It was just something I memorized.
So I never internalized the words of that prayer until recently.
And it's so good to see these, the people in our church just have these aha moments
because they've never, there's so many of us that have been in the same boat.
We just have our own little prayer time that doesn't include the model prayer.
And so we don't think about it.
The only time we think about it is if we happen to be reading in Matthew or Luke.
But to me, the way you're taking scriptures, a couple of scriptures at a time and breaking
it down as to what it really means, I think it's so powerful.
What a powerful lesson that you're teaching the body of Christ right now.
And we've, many pastors have preached this and we've heard pastors that have preached
segments.
I was going to say, not many.
Well, I know we've heard that they have.
I've had many people in our church say, I've never heard anyone teach on this.
But we have heard people that have taught.
Right, that's true.
But God's given you this new revelation over our sabbatical and it's lighting you up.
And boy, I mean, they're about as well been, what do you call that, a fire?
A pillar of fire.
A pillar of fire like right over your head.
It's like, wow.
I felt the heat.
And immediately, the minute you stepped on the stage, first service, I was like, oh,
this is going to be good.
This is going to, wow.
It's going to blow me away.
And it did.
Well, and to back up just a little bit, it does bring us back to things that the Lord
deposited into us during our sabbatical.
For those of you, maybe your first time listening, we were blessed with the gift of two months
sabbatical.
I've never had one.
I've been in ministry 38 years and I've never had a sabbatical.
So, it's long overdue.
So we received that gift with gratitude and we did two months of a strategic sabbatical.
Now we didn't go, it wasn't a vacation for us, but it was a time of intentional rest,
resting in the Lord, being in the presence of the Lord.
Resting our physical body.
The mind.
But also not squandering this gift.
And so I made a commitment at the beginning of it that I wasn't going to do any practices
during the sabbatical that I couldn't continue after it was over.
I didn't want to create a mountaintop experience whereby when we get back into the real world,
we just go back to being who we were before.
It needed to be something that was going to be a huge change in our life, but sustainable.
Bingo.
Good word.
Sustainable.
Sustainable and reproducible.
So I could even help others learn from that.
So that's leaning into that very quickly on.
Like just a couple of days into it, I woke up very early, like 5 a.m. and I'm like, Lord,
what's going on?
I finally don't have to set an alarm.
I'd really like to sleep in.
I thought I was going to go back to junior high and sleep till 11 a.m. or something,
but that can't, that doesn't work for me.
But the Lord began waking me up every day, about 5 or 5.30, sometimes 6, but pretty consistently
around 5, 5.30.
And I would be wide awake, clear.
Sometimes you wake up, you're in a fog, but I would be clear like, okay, I'm supposed
to be awake.
The Holy Spirit's doing something.
The second or third time it happened, I shared this yesterday, second or third time it happened,
I didn't know what to pray.
And for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit dropped it in my mind, pray the Lord's prayer.
Basically I've given you what to pray.
I already gave you a prayer.
So I just prayed it, and I prayed it old school.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
You know, I mean, I went right into the King James Version 1611, authorized Elizabethan
English.
Which is what we learned.
That's what we learned in elementary.
The danger sometimes of learning something young and having it as a rote memory type
of thing is we learn it so we think we know it, so we are resistant to teachings about
it.
Does that make sense?
Exactly.
It's not translated like when you get a vaccine or something.
And so I think what happens to a lot of people is they're like, oh, I know this, you know,
and then they'll quote it with you or say it with you in a group or a church or whatever,
we've done it before.
But we do it without even thinking about what we were praying.
When was the last time you who are listening, maybe you know the Lord's prayer, maybe you
learned it as a kid or whatever or some point in your life, very few of us ever stopped
to think what is this saying and what was Jesus' intent?
And how did Jesus, so in the Luke version, there's two versions, right?
You've got the Luke version, which is very short, concise, and to the point, which is
probably...
He's a doctor.
Right.
That's probably why.
And it lines up a little more with the Aramaic language, which is what Jesus spoke in.
Later it was written down in Greek when Luke recorded it.
Much later, he did it in Greek because that was the language of the whole world at that
time.
But they spoke Aramaic.
He taught in Aramaic.
So Jesus teaches it, and it was probably a short form, more accurate.
And then Matthew's version of it is a little more expanded.
It's a doxology is added at the end.
For Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever.
And then there's even some expansions in the lines a little bit.
It's not different, and the meaning is exactly the same, but it's just a little bit more
formal.
It's a little bit more crafted.
So, anyway, there are various reasons for that.
No time to do that.
But it's important to understand that he gave us this, but he was very intentional in the
style of the language and in the way it was spoken.
In other words, it's broken down into sections and various what we call petitions.
A petition is like something you lay before somebody as, you know, this is what we're
asking for.
And yet they're not all petitions.
It's mistakenly labeled.
They're actually declarations.
So in your own prayer life, in anyone's prayer life, we can come to the Lord in a couple
of ways.
One is we come in the spirit of appeal.
We come, we ask.
We're asking.
We're asking for what our needs are.
Ask and keep on asking.
The Scripture says just a few verses after the Lord's prayer.
The Lord's model prayer is what it really is.
It's like a template.
But anyway, and so, you know, we're supposed to come.
So we come in that spirit of appeal, so we say, Father, would you?
Father, would you?
Or we pray it.
Sometimes we say it like I heard people pray like this a lot.
Father, we just ask that you would.
And that's, you know, that's legit too.
And so everybody's got a little different nuance or style.
So it's an ask.
It's an appeal.
But Jesus, when he released this to them in the Luke version, he says, when you pray,
say, because one of the disciples said, teach us to pray like John taught his disciples.
He said, OK, when you pray, say, not when you pray, ask.
And that's very clear in the language.
So he didn't say when you pray, ask this of the Lord.
When you pray, say, which is an imperative.
It's an imperative and it's a statement, a decree, a declaration.
And that's why it's written the way it is.
And so when you read it, it's not even written in ask form.
Have you ever noticed there's no punctuation, no question mark?
It's not even a question.
These are statements.
They're declarations and they're based on our identity in Christ and our understanding
of our authority in Christ.
So we come in and we come in strong.
He's inviting us in to be bold.
And yet I don't know that I've ever heard anyone ever pray the Lord's prayer boldly.
Right.
Because we just kind of pray it just how we've memorized.
And obviously, if we're learning it as a child, we're not even understanding what it is.
So it has a passive tone.
Exactly.
So Jesus, he says, you know, he starts off with praise.
Obviously, our Father in heaven hallowed.
That means holy is your name.
It's worship.
We enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise, right?
Psalm 100.
And so it's just the model of how we enter into his presence and we do it with this worship
and with this heart of gratitude.
And so that's how you do it.
And you use that section as a launching pad to praise him and to worship him.
So that was week one when we did it last week.
This week, I came in stronger.
And it was the second section of the prayer that says, your kingdom come, your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
And I told a story about one of my spiritual fathers and it was a mentor to me, was pastor
and Dr. Jack Taylor.
And Dr. Jack Taylor is responsible for lighting fires all over the world.
Great man, prolific author, revivalist.
He mentored men like Pastor Bill Johnson, Dwayne Sheriff up in Oklahoma.
He mentored a bunch of people.
And he took me under his wing for part of the season of his life as he got older.
And the way he would say it, when he taught this, he taught the fact that it is indeed,
what did you call it?
An imperative.
An imperative is a command.
It's not a question.
It's not an ask.
It is a command.
And it's in the eros tense.
And the eros tense in the Greek language simply means there's no time limit on it.
In other words, if there's no time delineation, then it's now.
It's present.
And so he says, this is how it's supposed to be prayed because Jesus said, when you
pray say, and here's how you say it.
So I hope I don't blow a speaker up or anything.
I'll go gentle.
But when you come, you say, our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Which I love.
And then you say, your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
You got the dog all riled up.
I got Chevy stirred up.
He's like, uh-oh, am I in trouble?
I just hear dad's stern voice.
So basically you're bringing down heaven to earth.
Yes.
And whatever is permissible in heaven is permissible here.
And whatever is illegal should be illegal here.
Bingo.
And so the whole idea is that as we pray, as we declare, as we say, as he tells us to
say, and he tells us how to say it with his intensity, then what we do is we thin the
veil.
There's a veil between heaven and earth, right?
That's another realm.
And that veil gets thinner and thinner and thinner the more we pound on the door, the
more we speak, the more we declare.
And so I said that the first way to approach God is a spirit of appeal.
The second way we can approach God is really a spirit of decree, a spirit of declaration.
And this is what Jesus intended.
This is what he's inviting us into.
He says, when you pray, say.
Exactly.
Another way you can say it is when you pray, declare.
When you pray, decree.
When you pray, state.
I mean, these are strong words and imperative is command.
And there's an expectation of immediate action.
Well, and if you think about it, that's any time we pray, we're supposed to have an expectation
of action, whether it's immediate or not.
Typically, it's not always because God's never on our timing.
And it's never always the way we anticipate it to come out.
And but we do need to teach people how to pray with an expectation.
Faith.
Exactly.
Believe.
And why are we praying if we don't believe?
And why are we shocked when something happens?
God's like, well, didn't you pray?
So think about it this way.
Why would Jesus give us this prayer as a declaration?
I mean, strong.
Strong.
You're commanding, you're speaking into the atmosphere.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It doesn't get stronger than that.
It almost sounds audacious, which is exactly the tone Jesus intended.
So he invites us into this place of boldness.
Even in Hebrews chapter four, he says, come boldly before the throne of grace.
And there you'll find mercy and grace to help in your time of need.
But he invites us to come with confidence, not self-confidence, but God confidence.
Well, if you think about it, I remember as a child, I would I didn't just walk lightly
to go into the room where my parents were.
I bet you didn't.
No, I would run in there and interrupt them.
I was bold.
I was audacious.
I was excited.
It was never the only time I came.
Creeping would be if I had shame or guilt or sin.
But I was thinking about that earlier about children.
He says, we're to come like a child.
Think about children.
That's the way they come in.
No boundaries.
Just come and jump in your lap.
Sometimes it drives you crazy.
They'll come tackle you.
Yeah.
But that's the way God wants us to come to Him.
Just come on.
I love, I remember Alicia when she was 12, 13, 14.
And we always said that when she walked into the room, all the world's a stage.
It was a production.
It still is.
She's an adult.
And she probably won't listen to this anyway because she listens to No Agenda, Not Us.
Thank you for our daughter.
She loves Adam Curry.
She just has a very vivacious personality.
She's bold.
She's big.
That's the way she comes in.
Over the top.
But that's how Jesus invites us.
That's how God invites us to the throne of grace and Jesus invites us to come in.
When you pray, say.
Say.
Love that.
And so we declare and we speak it.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And think about the words of the whole prayer as you're praying.
I know you said this in church how it takes 21 seconds pretty much to pray that prayer.
But if you pray it and you're praying it intentionally for particular areas of your life that need
prayer, it could, for you it stretched out about an hour.
It's about an hour before I get out of bed.
Because you would intentionally insert yourself or people or family, whatever, in the different
areas.
I think that's so needed.
So for an example, because for those of you listening, you're like, okay, well, how do
I do that?
Okay, what does that look like?
So in a practical sense, here's how I do it.
So I'll do the first part, which is the worship, right?
You know, how would be your name?
Your holy, all those things.
And then I go into the next section and I'll state it first.
And I'll state it like he told us to state it.
I'll say your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
At that point, I turned my attention.
And I start with my family.
Because when I love my family, I'm loving them unto him, right?
I'm loving him unto God.
So I start with those closest and then I go out into the outer rings, concentric circles.
And I pray for my family, my immediate, and then I pray for my extended.
And I pray for them.
I call their names.
And sometimes the Lord will make me stop on one and I'll highlight something.
Like with our kids, you're praying through some specific things in our family for them.
Challenges and, you know, opportunities and all those things.
Both.
So the way it looks or sounds, I'll say, Father, Abba, call him Abba.
Abba, Father, that means Papa, Daddy.
Abba, Father, your kingdom come.
Your will be done in Alicia's life just as it is in heaven.
Right here, right now.
And then whatever it is, I'm praying I'll just enter into that.
And then I'll do that and I'll use that as a part of the prayer, like a template, like
a setup.
And I'll do it again.
I'll say, your kingdom come, your will be done in Brandon's life, in Faith's life, in
Chris's life, in Casey's life, in Mark's life, in Alicia's life.
And like where someone may be experiencing anxiety, that's illegal in heaven.
We won't have any of that.
There's no tears.
There's no pain.
There's no anxiety, no depression.
And if it's not there, then we need to command it to go here.
That's right.
And the thing is, is, you know, we're warring on their behalf.
We're warring on their behalf.
We're sort of breaking things, like an icebreaker ship going through the Antarctic, you know,
all the ice and the ocean breaking it up.
And we understand that's a process.
And it could take years sometimes to get breakthrough on those things.
But that doesn't mean we don't pray.
Exactly.
He invites us in to be bold.
And so I do that for my family.
And then I do that for friends.
I start with my closest friends and then I do a little concentric circle.
I do it with those, our team that we work with, our shepherding elders and their families.
So that's a lot of name.
It starts to add up.
No wonder it takes you just an hour.
That's my longest section.
Yeah, that's my longest section is this section.
And then you continue through the prayer.
After that, you know, your kingdom come, your will be done.
And then you move into the next section, which is a section for provision.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Now I'm going to pause on that because I haven't preached that yet.
That's the next Sunday.
So I'll be doing that this Sunday.
And if you're interested in hearing these, you can go to our website at bridgefbg.com.
Again that's bridgefbg.com.
We archive all of our messages there.
The full service is there, worships there, and then the messages are there.
You just scroll down on the landing page there about halfway.
You'll see it when you scroll down and then you can go back into archives.
And the title of the series is called Lord Teach Us to Pray.
And so this was week two.
This week was week one, we kicked it off.
And so feel free to join us and ride along with us.
And then we're on YouTube, we're on Facebook, and then we're on our website live on Sundays.
Yes, we stream live.
We stream live at 9 a.m. and 10.45.
So we stream both services.
So two versions of that message.
And it's always a little bit different because there's different people there and God's
ministering to those people.
You ask the Lord to give what is needed for that group of people.
That's just beautiful.
Well, if you think about it, if it's a different crowd of people, there's going to be different
needs represented.
And I just trust the Holy Spirit that He knows each one of them.
He knows every hair on their head is numbered.
So He may have something specific for that group, for an individual in that group that
He did in the first.
So it will come out different.
And I'm good with that.
Well, and I love that because you're not memorizing something.
You literally this is off the cuff.
You have your points and your scripture, but everything is off the cuff because you really
trust in the Holy Spirit to speak through you.
Yeah.
The key to that is getting your bucket filled.
And so I spend the week studying.
I'm already prepping for Sunday.
Now I won't write things down until Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
But I'm throwing them all in the bucket.
It's all there.
It's all mixing up.
It's like simmering a stew for days.
And so anyway, all that's coming and it's working.
So we want to encourage you, maybe you've not stopped to think about what would it be
like if I prayed the Lord's Prayer as Jesus intended?
So I want to encourage you to go to, you can find it in the book of Matthew.
It's in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6, and it starts in verse 9.
Yep.
In this manner, therefore pray our Father in heaven.
So go to verse 9, Matthew chapter 6, and go down there and just highlight it in your Bible
or put a mark there and start praying through it.
And then ask the Lord as you pray, as you go through these different lines and sections,
how do I pray for that and how does that apply to my life?
There is a great app I want to recommend.
It's called The Inner Room.
It's put out by Pastor Pete Gregg out of the United Kingdom.
He's a pastor there, but he's also a prolific author and just a great guy.
And he started the 24-7 prayer movement 21 years ago, just a few weeks ago.
They had their anniversary, 21 years.
It's been going 24-7 prayer.
And they have a school and they have all the stuff happening, but they have a fantastic
app.
So you just download it and then it actually walks you through praying the Lord's Prayer.
You do it in the morning and then at noon you pray for those who don't know Christ,
for the loss, for evangelism.
And then at night it has a signal for you.
You can set it up on your phone.
It triggers you to pray a prayer of gratitude for what God did throughout the day.
So you've got morning, noon, and night prayers.
It's a beautiful app.
It will help you.
But also, they break down the Lord's Prayer similar to what I'm doing.
Not as detailed, but it's really helpful.
And that's actually what launched me into that second or third day praying the Lord's
Prayer because I had looked at that app and saw the breakdown of the Lord's Prayer and
it triggered me that morning.
So that was what kicked it off for me.
And I will tell you, Annette and Chevy, it has changed my life.
It's changed my prayer life.
I wake up and say, good morning, Holy Spirit.
And then I do the very same thing because when I saw what it was doing to you and how
it was ministering to you, obviously, we're one, I have to do the same thing.
We are one, that's for sure.
I love it.
By the way, you're stunning today.
Oh, thank you.
Although I hurt myself really bad today.
You did hurt your back at the gym today and I had to help you a little bit.
You're going to be good.
We prayed for it.
You know what?
It was interesting.
We called in.
Heaven on earth.
I was picking up a 32-pound weight to put on.
I thought it was, no, a 45.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
Honey, that's a 45.
It was.
It was 45.
You should not be doing that.
I know.
But I picked it up from the... It was almost on the ground.
Right.
That's why you had to bend over.
To put it on a leg press.
I do this at least twice a week.
You twist it a little bit when you did it.
Somehow when I twist it, I felt that hook and boy, did it hurt.
I had to summon you over to come help me.
It takes your breath away, doesn't it?
Nobody else was around to see.
It just takes your breath away when it happens.
I was in so much pain.
I said, I'm done.
I can't even work out.
Walked into the back room of Planet Fitness and sat on the couch.
I sat there and prayed.
I was the only one back there.
I started stretching my legs and my back.
I was like, you know what?
No.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done.
I'm going to get up and I'm going to complete my workout.
That's how you apply the Lord's Prayer in a real life situation.
That was what I did.
You know what?
I was able to go back.
You saw me walk in.
You're like, what are you doing?
I'm like, I told you to go rest.
I said, go sit in.
No matter what.
I wasn't able to do everything I wanted to do because of my back.
But you pushed through.
But I pushed through.
I thought, no.
No, Satan, you can't do this today.
You gave it to the Lord.
Yeah, not today, Satan.
Well, and the thing is, is we haven't been able to work out in the last few days because
of various...
The funeral.
Yes.
We've been so busy.
I was so looking forward to today.
Boy, I knew that was the enemy saying, I'll just take you out.
And you'll just wallow on the ground like nothing.
I'm like, no, no, no, Satan.
You were strong.
I was strong.
You stood up.
But you leaned into, and that's an application of the Lord's Prayer right there.
The beauty of it is, is people go, well, I don't know how to pray.
Well, Jesus told us how to pray.
He told us what to say.
So you don't have to figure out and come up with something and try to wing it.
And there'll be a time when you can.
You branch off.
You learn as you grow in your prayer life.
But go back and re-dig the well, so to speak.
Uncover that well that the enemy's covered up so it's no longer producing.
And let it produce life in you.
That's our encouragement to you is to lean into.
You now know what to do.
The first section is praise.
So praise God.
Worship Him.
Put on some music.
Let it help you worship.
Or listen to something that turns your eyes to Him.
Or declare, Lord, you're amazing.
You're awesome.
Think about how if somebody was praising you, what it would sound like.
And then say it to the Lord.
You're awesome.
Man, you're something else.
I mean, praise Him.
Lift Him up.
You don't have to get fancy with it.
Then the second section, your assignment for the week.
I'm giving you homework all over the world.
You get homework.
Is to declare your kingdom.
Put a comma there.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And I always kind of add right here, right now.
Right.
There you go.
Now.
You're going to go to the Lord and declare it and understand you're lining up with the
very will of God.
When you line up with the will of God, He likes to answer those kind of prayers.
He does.
So I want to give you that assignment this week.
Work on that.
We'll may unpack some more next week.
I think that's a good idea.
Stay with this because we want to encourage you.
We have some people to thank.
We sure do.
We've got some nice notes, letters, different things.
But I've got some boostograms.
So how about I share that?
First of all, just so you know, we work on a system called Value for Value.
And all that means is that if you like what we're doing, if it's adding value to you,
if it's encouraging you, then you can add value to us.
Simply add that back.
It's that give it, you know, pay it forward mentality simply by doing a boostogram.
And you can do that on podcast 2.0 platforms such as Fountain is our favorite.
That's my go-to and the one I use.
So you can go to Fountain and you can actually give satoshis, which are Bitcoin, so easy
to do.
It's explainable when you get there, but you can actually become part of that.
You listen to our show on that and do boostograms.
And it's a way of encouraging us to keep doing what we're doing.
And we love what we're doing because we care about you.
So here's some boostograms.
We've got, I'm just going to read them in order from backwards to forward.
So this is really cool.
Dave Jackson, his school of podcasting.
Dave Jackson is a powerhouse in the podcasting world.
He's probably taught more people how to podcast than anybody else in the podcasting world.
Even Adam Curry, the pod father himself is like, he's probably taught more people about
podcasting than I have.
So Dave, I want to say thank you.
He says, I'm a new listener via Curry and the Keeper.
That's Adam and Tina Curry's podcast, which we encourage you to check out, Curry and the
Keeper.
It's awesome.
He says, new listener via Curry and the Keeper.
Are your sermons available online?
Dave Jackson, school of podcasting.
They are.
They are at bridgefbg.com and all of our messages are there.
He said, I'd love to hear the Teach Me to Pray series.
See you at Spark, Dave Jackson's school of podcasting.
So we're going to the Spark Conference, the Spark Ignite Conference.
What is that Annette?
It is a conference for Christian podcasters.
Yeah.
We're going in two weeks.
Yeah.
It's put on by Misty Phillips.
She's a podcaster as well.
They do this big gathering in Houston.
Adam and Tina Curry will be there.
We're going to be there.
What are you showing me?
Just a PayPal.
Oh, cool.
Thanks.
Oh, that's sweet.
And so Dave Jackson, I'm looking forward to meeting you.
We will see you there in Houston in what, three weeks?
Two weeks.
Wow.
It's coming fast.
Yes.
We're going to have a great time with that.
We've been nominated.
For new Christian podcast of the year.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Podfather.
A hundred other people so.
But that's okay.
Hey, just to be nominated is great.
Thank you, Adam Curry, our executive producer, for nominating us.
It's just a joy to be there.
I'm super excited.
He's going to do, he's going to be speaking.
He's a keynote speaker.
He is.
So we get to go with him.
There's lots of classes that we'll be attending.
Yeah, I'm excited.
Just to get some good topics too.
Good, good information on best practices.
But also we're going to meet a lot of podcasters that are doing what we're doing.
Right.
And so it's beautiful.
Sir T.J.
The Wrathful, he says, thank you for the weekly encouragement.
And he says this, my brother, Ben Dorfill, has some worship songs on Value for Value.
I think, oh, and this is what Adam was telling me.
He's playing those on Boostagram Ball.
Check out Boostagram Ball.
You can Google it.
You can look it up.
It is a new platform that Adam Curry and some of his friends have developed so that they
it's a music platform through podcasting.
And he does a full hour show.
It's like a DJ.
I think he's got eight of them done now.
I mean, it's brand new.
And you can if it's Value for Value and they're just bringing in all these artists that maybe
aren't signed on a major label.
I mean, the few that are dying, it's a hard business.
But he's actually creating a platform so that people who do their music can be heard.
It's a great program.
And he is so in his lane when he's doing that.
So Sir T.J., thanks for the reminder on that.
And he says this, his brother, Ben Dorfill, has some worship songs.
Adam did tell me, I think on our bro date last week, that this is the first that his
brother Ben is the first Christian artist, worship artist that he's had on Booster Grand
Ball.
He's so excited.
And he wants more Christian artists to hit him up and get their music on the podcast
index so that they can play their songs and encourage them and they get paid for it, which
is really cool.
I love it.
Julie Herbert, I think this was last week.
Yeah, that's going back.
So let me move over to this.
So this is from Fountain.
We got a oh, we got a Booster Grand from one Adam Curry.
Of course.
Adam, bring it in the Straper Boost.
I'm not going to do this special effects today, but Adam, thank you so much.
You're such a blessing to us.
She didn't boost us this week.
Remember, she was out of town.
Oh, she was out of town.
She has an excuse.
That's all right.
And so she's mad at me because I haven't boosted them.
But like I said, you're doing it for you.
I'm making up the difference.
So he just wrote forever radiant because I was talking about how our faces are radiant
when we look to God.
Beautiful, beautiful.
We love you, Adam.
And then Heather Thomas, this was today it came in and she boosted this.
The pastor Jimmy yesterday's sermon really resonated with me.
This is what we were talking about today.
I watched it again this morning, looking forward to tonight's show.
Bless you both.
Those we love and especially those who have yet to find salvation.
Heather, thank you so much for the boost and the encouragement.
And we are here to encourage you and to along with you, pray the Lord's Prayer over the
lost over those who don't know Christ.
Let's pray together for revival and spiritual awakening here in our world and in our time.
And then I've got a PayPal donation.
By the way, if you don't do Satoshi's or Bitcoin, you can go to our website and here it is livingupinadownworld.com.
You can listen to all of our podcast archives there.
I do a daily blog devotional that I post on all kinds of social media platforms, but I
post it on there every day.
You can write us an email, you can leave a review or you can give a donation value for
value.
And so this is I'm looking to see, oh, David Wicker.
David, girl, you are a blessing.
Next time you come through the Hill Country, which he came and saw, Adam and Tina, and
we did not get to meet him.
We were out of town.
We want to meet you.
I appreciate your almost daily emails.
By the way, he's the one who sent me the link to the Auburn Revival.
So I'm just entering in with Dave and others.
But thanks for the donation, Dave.
We bless you, man.
And thank you for blessing us.
And we're in this thing together.
But everyone listening, I want to ask a favor.
These outbreaks of revival that are happening all over, I want to invite you to enter in
with us to pray for revival and spiritual awakening.
You may not be someone who prays a lot, but all you have to do is say, God, God, would
you bring revival to our land?
Would you wake us up so that we can see you?
Would you bring spiritual awakening?
It doesn't have to be fancy.
Just talk to him.
He wants to hear from you.
And so join us.
We're praying and we're not going to stop praying because we're going to see it in our
lifetime.
We've seen outbreaks of it in various points.
I've shared some of those stories.
And once you get a taste of what God can do and you see lives change and transformed,
you'll never be satisfied for less.
It kind of ruins you in a good way.
Which is why we want to see it again.
Do it again, Lord.
Do it again.
Amen.
Anything else?
No, that's good.
Annette, you're such a fireball.
Well, I just, I got it from you.
You're fire.
I love it.
You're fuego.
I love it.
Well, listen, we want to say thank you for joining us.
We love you guys and we want you to be living up in a down world with us.
Now spend some time praying the Lord's Prayer all this week.
We love you.
See you next week.