Holy Spirit | Part 5

So we've been in this series about the Holy Spirit, and today I get to talk about how the prayer and the Holy Spirit works together. And I know as soon as I said those words, all of you watching online at home and you here in the audience, you wouldn't do this externally out loud, but inside a lot of you were like,

woo hoo, prayer. Right? Because most of the time when someone says, hey, we're gonna talk about prayer today, you're not going, wow, this is gonna be a really exciting sermon. But but here's the question. Am I going to talk about how to pray or am I going to talk about how to live?

Am I gonna talk about how to pray or am I gonna talk about how to live? The answer is yes. Yes. Because here's here's the big idea for today. Okay? Eventually, eventually, you pray how you live and live how you pray. Eventually, you pray how you live and live how you pray.

Now that's a bold statement. That's a contemplative statement. That's that should be a convicting statement, but it's a true statement.

Think about it. Eventually, you will pray how you live and live how you pray. In other words, if if you don't believe in God, then obviously you don't pray to God and you don't live for God. If you believe God is just kind of some genie in the sky that you're gonna try to manipulate, then that's how you're gonna pray,

and that's how you're gonna live. If you think he's just there to give you what you want when you want, then that's how you're gonna pray, and that's how you're gonna live. But if you believe that God is full of grace and mercy and love and holiness and justice

and he is the king of all kings and lord of all lords, he is the one that someday every knee will bow to and every tongue confess, then you will pray that way to him and you will live that way. Eventually, you and I will pray how we live and live how we pray.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to open to Mark chapter 10. We're gonna look at an unlikely story,

And I say it's an unlikely story because when we when we first start going through it, you're gonna go, this doesn't have anything to do with prayer, and yet it actually has everything to do with prayer. You'll see what I mean in a moment. Mark chapter 10. But let me just pause, and I wanna ask God to meet us. Will you pray with me? I wanna ask God to meet us in a special way. God, spirit of God, we do pray. I pray I pray for every single person who's sitting at home right now watching online. I pray for every single person sitting in a chair here. I pray for myself, God, would you speak to us?

Would your spirit open our hearts and minds to understand these words and give us a passion, a desire to go live these words? God, for some,

for some who have been in church for so much of their life, would you make this fresh and new to them? For some that are maybe hearing this for the first time, would you help them understand this, God? But for all of us, God, I beg you, I plead with you, God, don't let us leave this place unchanged.

We love you, Jesus. Amen. So if I had to title my message today, I would title it prayer, faith, and the Holy Spirit.

Prayer, faith, and the Holy Spirit. Because if you remember in this series, the very first week, Bill, Romans eight, nine, talked about the fact that if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you have the spirit of God.

And when you and I combine prayer, faith, and the Holy Spirit, oh, wow. What we're gonna see in the story is that when we combine prayer, faith, and the Holy Spirit, we will live with reckless abandon. We'll be making these audacious requests, and we'll have this relentless pursuit of Jesus.

So let me show you what I mean. Mark chapter 10, we're gonna skip. If you have it open there, you're gonna jump all the way down to the forties. We're gonna jump over a bunch of the chapter. We're gonna start this story, verse 46. It's a great story. You're gonna love this. K? Here we go. Then they reached Jericho, and Jesus and his disciples left town.

A large crowd, that's key to the story, a large crowd followed him, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of that guy, was sitting beside the road.

So you have Jesus and his disciples who are leaving Jericho. Now now if you were here last week, you may remember that I told a story last week and I said it was the beginning of Jesus' ministry years that really no one knew him or knew about him. He grew up in this obscure village called Nazareth. There's a few 100 people. He hadn't done any miracles. He hadn't publicly proclaimed himself as a messiah. So really anybody that even knew him, the few 100 people in Nazareth, knew him as Mary's son or Joseph's son or the carpenter that lives down that street.

The story we're looking at this weekend is much different.

Jesus has been publicly proclaiming himself as the Messiah for some time. He's done all kinds of miracles. He's healed blind people. He's healed the lepers. He's healed lame people. He's walked on water. He's raised dead people back to life. He's been teaching with authority. And so now almost every town that Jesus goes in, his reputation precedes him, and the crowd comes out, and it's so big that he can't even hardly get into the town. So they're leaving Jericho. Jesus

and his disciples are leaving Jericho, and there's this huge crowd. There's this Bartimaeus, this blind guy who's just chilling outside of Jericho. Not really chilling, he's actually doing what he did every day of every week of every month of every year. He's actually begging. It's how he lives.

So he's standing outside hoping that someone would give him a little bit of food, hoping someone would give him a little bit of bread. But on this day, he gets lucky because there's a crowd.

He can't see them, but his other senses are honed in, and he can hear from the commotion that there's a crowd and he's thinking he's thinking today's my lucky day, more people means more money, more people may mean more food, but there's something else going on. There's this one in the crowd named Yeshua, named Jesus,

Bart Bartimaeus has heard of him because watch what he says next. Look at this. Keep reading. Verse 47. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to what does it say? Shout. What does it say? Shout. He began to shout. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. That's not what it says, does it? Jesus,

son of David, have mercy on me. Watch what happens next. Keep reading. Look at this. Verse 48. Be quiet, many of the people yelled at him. They're saying, shut up. Jesus doesn't have time for you. But watch what he does. Keep reading. Look at verse 48. Keep reading verse 48. But he only shouted, what does it say? Louder.

Son of David, have mercy on me. I don't miss what he called Jesus. Son of who? David. See in Israel at that time, they had been waiting for centuries praying and hoping that the Messiah would come and the prophets had said that the Messiah would come through the lineage of David. So when he calls out Jesus, son of who?

David. He's saying, know who you are. I know you're the long awaited Messiah.

I've heard about what you're doing. I've heard that you've healed blind people. I've heard that you healed the lepers. I've heard that you've healed the lame. I've heard that you've walked on water. I've heard that you can raise the dead. And so, again, put yourself in his sandals for a moment. K? It'll help the story come alive. And and put yourself in his sandals and close your eyes because that's what he saw. Remember, he's blind. And I want you to imagine the scene. And Bartimaeus is out there.

He's doing what he does all

day every day, and he's begging, but then he can hear the commotion. He can hear all the shuffling footsteps. He can hear the voices, and he can tell there's a crowd. And he gets excited because he's thinking, I'm gonna get more money, I'm gonna get more bread. But then he starts hearing somebody say Jesus name or Yeshua. And he recognizes that Jesus

is there. So he cries out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And people start telling him, shut up, be quiet, he doesn't have time for you. And what does he do? He shouts even louder. Son of David, have mercy on me.

Do you hear the desperation?

I mean wouldn't you be? Do you see the reckless abandon?

People are telling him to stop. People are telling Jesus doesn't have time. People are telling him to be quiet and he does not care what they say, he does not care what they think. He's living with reckless abandon. I might call it blind faith. See what I did there, blind faith?

Some of you'll get it on the way home. Blind faith? Oh yeah, oh, he was blind. Okay, no, but it's blind faith, it fits for you and I too. Blind faith.

Faith is the reason that you and I have faith, the reason that God will call us to having faith is because a lot of times when God calls us to something, he doesn't tell us exactly how something's gonna turn out. He doesn't give us all the details about how it's gonna turn out. And so we walk into something or we take that leap of faith not knowing how it's gonna turn out. If he gave us all the details, it wouldn't take any

faith. So this man has blind faith. He doesn't know what Jesus is gonna do. He's living with reckless abandon. He he looks foolish in front of these people. These people are telling him to stop, but he refuses. He's living with reckless abandon.

And for some of you may be going, man, those are those are some intense terms you're using. Reckless abandon, blind faith. I mean, I try to teach my children to not live with reckless abandon, that's how they get hurt. I try to tell my children not to live with blind faith, they're gonna get taken advantage of.

Maybe some of you remember in the early nineties, remember the beanie babies, the nineties and the February, if you had children or if you were children then? Remember those beanie babies?

They were little stuffed animal things and people collected. My children were collecting them. I remember one day my when my children were really little, they had the Beanie Babies spread out all over the floor, and they were up on the top bunk of the bunk beds.

And my oldest, my daughter was about six years old at the time, and she tells her four year old brother, she goes, Josiah,

how about we have you go fishing? I'll I'll take you by your ankles, and I'll hold you upside down, and I'll lower you down, and you can grab some of the beanie babies. Now how many people know a six year old girl is not gonna be able to hold her four year old brother by his ankles? But my four year old son said, that sounds like a great idea. So they did it, and it didn't turn out well.

It reminds me of a sister who convinced her brother to ride his bike blindfolded. How do you think that turned out? Not great. Here's my point. Putting your blind faith in the wrong person is stupid. Living with reckless abandon for the wrong people or the wrong things is stupid.

But putting your blind faith in the God of this universe is the smartest thing that you'll ever do. Living with reckless abandon for the God of this universe is the wisest thing you'll ever do. Amen? I've been to Africa a number of times in my life and

one of the times I was there, we actually went on a safari and safari, they're amazing and you know, when you go to a safari in Africa, you're going out to see like the lion and the elephant and the Cape Buffalo and you don't go out to see the impala, right? It's it's like the deer of Africa. Like, we went out there and there's all these impalas out there. We're not going, oh, cool impala. No, we're going, where's the lion? Where's the elephant? But the impala is an amazing animal. An impala can jump 10 feet in the air.

When it starts running and it's doing that little hopping thing, you've seen them on National Geographic or something, it'll jump about 30 feet. Now 30 feet is a big chunk of this stage. The world record in the long jump is about 28 or 29 feet. And those these deer, 30

feet, 30 feet, 30 feet. This is how they look, by the way, when they're running. K? This is what I'm doing, if you're wondering. That's an Impala running. 30 feet, 30 feet, 30 feet. But if you go to a zoo, you will actually see the Impalas behind a little three foot fence.

And if they can jump 10 feet in the air and 30 feet in length, you gotta wonder, how can a three foot fence keep them encaged? Because they won't jump if they can't see where their feet are gonna land. And my friends, unfortunately sometimes that's how we live out our Christian life.

I'm not gonna do it if I can't see how it's gonna work out. I'm not gonna do it if I don't get all the details, but that's not a life of faith, is it?

See, the danger for you and I is that we can get so tied up into living just by our five senses, what I can see, what I can smell, what I can taste, what I can hear, what I can feel, but that's not a life of faith. And here's this blind man two thousand years ago,

who's modeling so well for you and I, what it means to live and pray, because remember, you pray how you live and you live how you pray, with reckless abandon. So let me ask you and myself, I'm asking myself this question, a challenging question. When is the last time that you lived with reckless abandon for God?

When is the last time you did something where sometimes your own friends and family were going, what are you doing? But you believed so much in the God of this universe that like Bartimaeus, when they're saying, Shh, be quiet, you just did it more. Or you yelled all the louder, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Reckless abandon. Keep reading the story, look at this story, it's amazing story, keep reading it. Verse 49, When Jesus heard him, how could you not hear him right? When Jesus heard him, he stopped.

Watch what happens, okay? And he said, Tell him to come here. So they called the blind man. Okay, remember the crowd who was just telling them to be quiet, right? So they called the blind man, cheer up, they said, Come on, he's calling you. Do you see that?

Here's what just happened, be quiet, he doesn't have time for you. What Jesus? Oh, you wanna, hey, come here, Jesus wants to talk with you. You ever notice how fickle humans can be? Young people, I see young people in the crowd, young people, man, if you can get this earlier in life, then some of us got it.

If you can learn this, that your greatest fans will quickly become your greatest critics and sometimes your greatest critics will turn into your greatest fans. But it's just like that. Humans are fickle. Here's a crowd

that hears this blind man begging for Jesus, and they tell him to be quiet. But as soon as Jesus says, well, tell him to come here, they're like, hey, Jesus wants to talk with you. Okay, now now watch this. This is where the story gets really good.

Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. Do you still see him living with that reckless abandon, right? Do you see that? Wouldn't you do that? Wouldn't you if you're blind and you know that Jesus can heal you, wouldn't you just throw everything aside? Shouldn't you?

Okay, watch this, verse 51. What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked. Okay, this is where sometimes when we read Bible stories, we just skip over parts and we don't really think about it, okay? Think about this, If anybody else in that crowd comes to Bartimaeus

and says, Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? He's gonna say, I need some money. I need some food. He's not gonna say, do you have any extra sight in your pocket? I need sight. Did you did you happen to bring some with you? No. He's not gonna do that. Why is he not gonna say that? Because he knows no one else in the crowd can give him that. So anybody else in the crowd that says, Bartimaeus, what do you want? He's gonna say, need some new food or I need some money. But look what he says. Look what he says, keep reading verse 51. My rabbi, the blind man said, I want to see.

I wanna see. What an audacious request. Don't miss that. He's not gonna make that request of anyone else, because no one else can do that. No one else can do that for him, but he makes this audacious request. And again, I ask you and I a challenging question. When is the last time you prayed a prayer that was so audacious

that it almost scared you a little bit? Remember, we eventually pray how we live and live how we pray.

See I think the danger for some of us, I said us, I'm putting me in there, the danger for some of us who have lived this Christian life very long is we don't even realize it and we slowly morph into what I call a practical atheist.

A practical atheist is someone who claims to believe in God, but they live and pray like they really don't. But what if you and I began to pray and began to live in such a way that our lives made no sense, our prayers made no sense unless God existed?

See, the request that Bartimaeus is making of Jesus, it's a stupid request. Unless Jesus can come through.

Unless Jesus can come through. Now, now let me just pause here because I get that some of you in a crowd this big, some of you will be going, you're a little nervous right now, you're thinking I'm one of those preachers from one of those kinds of churches that basically just do the name it claim it type thing, know, like like God is some kind of genie in the sky and you just throw out your requests and and manipulate

him and then if you have enough faith, he's gonna do whatever you ask. No. No. No. No. No. No. In fact, Maddie Montgomery says the mistake we often make is we try to move God's hand before knowing God's heart. We try to move God's hand before knowing God's heart. What I'm saying to you

is that you and I need to trust the miracle maker, not the miracle. That we need to put our faith in the miracle maker, the maker of miracles,

not the miracle. The problem when we start thinking that God is just gonna do everything we ask, if you just have enough faith, that you start you start believing and trusting in the miracles. And the truth is is that God gets to decide. But here's what I'm also saying, that if on Friday you sat in a doctor's office and the doctor said to you, I'm sorry, there's nothing more that we can do, You're crazy

not to get on your knees before the God of the universe and make an audacious request like Bartimaeus did and say, God, they say there's nothing they can do, but I know you're the God of the universe, and I'm crying out to you. Would you take this away? Would you heal me of this? Now you put it in God's hand, and he can decide whether he chooses to or wants to or not, but whatever he decides will be the best. But

what I'm saying, again, where I say we eventually pray how we live and we live how we pray is somewhere along the line so many of us quit going to God with these audacious requests. Why? He's God. Why would we stop bringing him to him? Why wouldn't we live like this Bartimaeus?

Watch how the story ends, keep reading, okay? Look at how the story ends, verse 52.

And Jesus said to him, 'Go, for your faith has healed you.' Instantly the man could see, and he Followed. What does it say? Followed. And he followed Jesus down the road.

See, the story of Bartimaeus is a beautiful story about how we should live our life and how we should pray, because we eventually pray how we live and live how we pray. It starts with this guy living recklessly with reckless abandon, and he moves to making this audacious request, and then he starts pursuing Jesus, what I wanna call this relentless pursuit of Jesus. He followed Jesus. That's what a Christian

life is about. It's what a life of prayer is about. It's following Jesus, the relentless pursuit of Jesus. And it doesn't mean that you're gonna be perfect.

A relentless pursuit of Jesus doesn't mean that you and I are gonna be perfect. In fact, when my children were little, I used to always tell them the difference between a man and woman of God versus an ungodly

man or woman isn't that the godly man or woman will never make mistakes. The difference is, is that when someone who is following after God, someone who has a relentless pursuit of Jesus, they will recognize when they've made a mistake, when they failed,

they're gonna go to a God who wants to forgive them more than they want to bring it to Him. He wants to forgive them. And so they're gonna confess it, they're gonna repent of it, they're gonna turn from it. That's the difference. That's what it means to have a relentless pursuit of Jesus. We'll make mistakes, right? We've been there. We'll do that, but we we turn to God, we confess it, we admit it, we make no excuses, and then we keep following God.

See, a relentless pursuit of Jesus is all about prayer, because that's one of the main ways that we pursue Jesus. A great Jewish theologian said that prayer is not about prayer, prayer is about God. Prayer is about communicating to the God of this universe. In healthy communication, what you do in healthy communication

is sometimes you talk and sometimes you listen. Prayer, sometimes you're talking to God and sometimes you're listening to God. In healthy communication, you're learning about each other. And in prayer, the way we're relentlessly pursuing Jesus is we're learning more about Him as we pray.

In fact, in prayer, one of the things that happens again and in good prayer is that we become open and honest. In healthy communication, in a good healthy relationship,

you begin to trust that person, and now you begin to bear your soul to them. You you your your soul becomes naked to that person. All the dark stuff you bring everything you bring out to that person, and that's what we do in prayer. You know what's fascinating is Romans chapter eight actually tells us that when you oh, this is so good, don't miss this.

That when you and I pray sometimes and we're in the depths of despair, many of you have been there before. If you haven't been and you live much more, you'll be there someday. Where you're in those moments where something took place in your life, you had a lost something, and you're

weeping, we're not talking crying, you're weeping, you're ugly, crying, snot and tears coming out, and you can't even put a sentence together and you're just moaning and groaning and you're going, ah, ah. Romans eight tells us that in those moments, the spirit of God will take those groans

and interpret them for our father.

Remember that next time you're grieving so heavily that you can't even put it into words. The spirit of God is taking that and interpreting it for your father. Wow. What's the pivot point in this story? What's the hinge moment in this story? What's the point

that changes everything for this man? He went from just begging for money and food to what's the pivot point? Watch this, look at this, look at verse 47 again, okay? If you have your Bibles, should put a star next to verse 47, because this is the moment that changed everything for Bartimaeus. When Bartimaeus

heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, when he heard that it was Jesus, it changed everything. When he heard that it was Jesus, from that moment on everything changed. We pray how we live and we live how we pray. Can I introduce you to a Hebrew word?

I'm asking. Can I introduce you to a Hebrew word? K. You gotta say it with me, You'll see it on the screen, alright. This is it in Hebrew. This is the transliteration of it. K? But you gotta get the first part. You gotta get the practice. K? In Hebrew, they do a lot of that.

K? Can you say it? Chuchpa. Alright. On the count of three, we're all gonna say it together. Alright? One, two, three. Chuchpa. Oh, you guys are good. Alright. Now this is a this is a word that you'll still hear today. It's been around in The Middle East for centuries,

but you're gonna actually be watching a movie sometime in the future, and there's gonna be some Jewish New York family, and you're gonna hear the dad in the movies tell his son or daughter or something. He's gonna say, you just need to live with more. Yeah. And what they're saying is, this means like with boldness,

with courage. But here's what's interesting. When Jesus two thousand years ago was here on earth and he was teaching us how to pray, and remember, we pray how we live and we live how we pray. So when he's teaching them how to pray, he's also teaching them how to

live because we pray how we live and we live how we pray. He's saying you need to pray with Hushpah. Hushpah. And you also need to live with Hushpah.

Okay, here's the stories that he tells. We're not gonna take the time to look at them. Let me just tell you the story really quick. There's two of them in Luke, and Jesus is teaching by story. He's doing a typical thing that a rabbi and a teacher would do at that time, and he's doing this thing called heavy light. What he does is he'll tell a story and he'll say, if they did that, how much more?

So when he's teaching them how to pray, or you and I how to pray, or how to live, he actually tells one story about a neighbor who has some company come to visit. Now in The Middle East, it's very, very important if company comes to visit that you're a good host. And so this company comes to visit, they don't have bread. So they run to their neighbor's house, and in Jesus' story, they actually run into their house. I guess apparently they did that back then. He just goes right into the house and says, hey, I need some bread. And they're like, we're already in bed.

No, but we need some bread. We had some people visit. We're already in bed. Leave. We don't we don't you come back tomorrow. No. I have company. We need bread tonight. We put the kids to bed. You're gonna wake them up. Leave. Please, we need some bread. Fine. Fine. I'll get you some bread.

Then Jesus tells another story about a lousy judge. In fact, Jesus, when he starts the story, he says this judge did not fear God, did not care about the injustices.

He's a judge and he doesn't care about injustices. And a widow, and understand, a widow in that time, as soon as you said the word widow, you understood that this was the person that was really the bottom of society, meaning that they were so desperate. The only way a widow would survive

is if other people cared, if other people helped her with the injustices that she's facing. So this widow comes to this judge and begs for help, and the judge says no. So she comes back and she begs again, and the judge says no. And she does this several times, and finally the judge says, fine.

Here's Jesus' point. Jesus is saying, if a lousy judge and an apathetic neighbor will finally relent and give you something, how much more will God? So he's saying, when you pray to God, you need to pray with

Here's what I want us to do for just a moment. We're just gonna have a we're gonna have a great worship time for a moment. I'm just gonna brag on God. How many were here last week?

Raise your hand. Okay? Remember what we did last week? We did church last week. Remember? How we cheered and we're like, hey, man, we're gonna do the same thing. And so when come

back to this, I'm gonna just say, hey, the reason we pray and live with chutzpah is because God is, and explain them a little bit, I want us just to him, I want you just to thank God by cheering, clapping, whatever you wanna say. But let me just brag on God a little bit and remind you and I why we pray with chutzpah.

Psalm 33 verse six says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made their starry host by the breath of his mouth. Tonight when you go outside and you look up at the stars,

you're looking up at this night sky and this verse is saying that God spoke all of that into being. He spoke that into being. There was nothing and He spoke that into being. Do you realize that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away? That's a long ways.

That means when you and I go outside and we're like, oh, that sun feels so good. Which we don't do right now, right?

Right now we're going, oh man, are we like four miles from the sun? But in a few months when we go outside and we go, oh, that sun feels so good. The heat that you're feeling, the light that you're seeing actually left the sun eight minutes ago. Traveling at 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light.

That's how far away the sun is, and it's actually one of our closest stars. And within the Milky Way galaxy, not within the universe, just within our galaxy, there's hundreds of billions of stars, and the closest one, light traveling at a 186,000 miles per second, takes eight minutes to get to us.

This is a massive universe. This is a massive galaxy. In fact, the measurements that you and I use on earth don't really work when we leave earth. Right? What do we use here? Inches, feet, yards, miles. If you see the rest of the world, centimeters, meters, kilometers.

But as soon as we leave earth, those measurements don't work anymore. Why? The universe is too big. The galaxy is too big. So we had to come up with another form of measurement. You remember science class? What did we come up with? A light year.

You know what a light year is? It's how far light will travel in a year. Now light travels, remember, at a 186,000 miles per second, so that means every second it's lapping the earth over seven times. The earth is 25,000 miles in circumference. So every second, boom.

Lap the earth seven times. Lap the earth seven times. Lap the earth seven times. That's a long ways. And in a year, light will travel 5,880,000,000,000 miles.

No one's saying anything because you're like me and you're going, I can't even comprehend that. You know what? Our Milky Way galaxy is is a thousand light years apart. Not our universe. We don't even know how big our universe is. Every time we build a bigger

a a a a telescope I almost said microscope. That's going the wrong way. Every time we build a bigger telescope, we just see further out there. We don't know how big our universe is, but just our galaxy, 100,000 light years across. That means you have to take 5,880,000,000,000 times a 100,000.

Now again, I'm not getting any response because you're like me, you're going I don't I can't even wrap my mind around that. So let me put it into perspective. If it was possible for you and I to count every star in our galaxy,

if we could see every star in just our galaxy, not in the universe, just our galaxy, and we did it at a rate of one per second, so we go one, two, three, four, five, six, it would take us two thousand five hundred years to count the stars just in our galaxy. Woah, and listen to this again.

By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. The reason that you and I pray with chutzpah is we're praying to the creator and sustainer of this universe. Thank you, God. Wow. Do you get

Man, Jesus help us get this. My friends, if you leave today and you haven't caught a glimpse of how great our God is, and why you and I need to live and pray with, because He's that God, He's that big, He's a loving God.

In the Old Testament he told us, he said, my love is abounding. In fact, he says that over and over and over again. My love is abounding. I I give you my love and give you more love and give you more love and give you more love give you more love. And then we get to the newer testament,

and it's written in a different language in Greek. And thankfully, have different different words for love in Greek. In English, we have one word for love, it gets confusing,

doesn't it? So I go out to pizza, and I go, oh, I love pizza. And then I go home, and I hug my wife and give her a kiss and say, I love you, honey. I mean something different. Hopefully, love pizza differently than I love my wife. But we just have one word for it. In Greek, they had multiple words. So there was a word for erotic love. There was a word for friendship

type love. But the top, the top of it was agape love. Agape, which means a sacrificial love. And so in Romans five:eight, in Romans five:eight it says, But God demonstrated his agape to us. While we were sinners, Christ died for us. We pray with chutzpah because we serve a God who is sacrificially

loving us over and over and over again. Can you just tell him thank you for that? For that sacrificial love. That's why we pray and live with chutzpah, because that's the God we serve. Our God is good.

Years ago when I was a teacher and a coach, would take my students on a mission trip and we went to Downtown San Francisco.

And we went to this church, and for some of you that are a little bit older, you remember there was about a decade where this was kinda popular. But it was the first time I ever heard this, And the pastor, while he was preaching, would just periodically say, God is good. And everybody in the audience would go, All the time. And he'd say, All the time. And he'd say, God is good.

So let's practice here. God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good. So for me, I took that and I came home and every class I taught, every time I preached a sermon, would always for ten years finish, I would say God is good. All the All the time. God is good. Oh, that you would get that. See the problem

for most of us when we say God is good, we go, yeah, God is good. Because we come up with a definition of goodness and then we see if God fits our definition of goodness. But in reality, God is the definition of goodness. A math equation, yeah, thank God.

A math equation would read like this, God equals good and good equals God. That's why the psalmist kept writing about it. In Psalm 34 verse eight, he says, taste and see that the Lord is good. You know when you eat something really, really good, like a good piece of chocolate or for me,

Oh, you cut a perfectly grilled steak and you put it in your mouth and you're just like, you just savor it. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

He is the very definition of goodness. Psalm one nineteen verse 68, the psalmist says to God, you are good and what you do is good. Psalm thirty one nineteen, how great is thy goodness. Do you realize that you and I are gonna live for an eternity if you put your faith and trust in Jesus? You're gonna live for eternity with this God, and eternity won't be long enough for us to fully understand how good he is.

The reason we pray with chutzpah is because we serve a good God, can you thank Him for that?

And I don't know why, I just have a burden on my heart.

And I don't know who it is, but I just feel like there's someone in here that just, you're right on that, you're right on that edge of getting this, but you're holding back. And just would you let God speak to you right now to remind you of how great He is,

to remind you of why you should live with reckless abandon and make these audacious requests, to remind you how good and loving and gracious and enormous he is. His grace and his mercy. See, mercy is withholding what someone deserves to get, and grace is giving something to someone that they don't deserve.

So see, God's mercy is saying, I'm gonna withhold the punishment that you deserve, and God's grace is saying, but I'm gonna lavish you with things that you do not deserve. And the Bible in Ephesians, after he says, he lavishes his grace. So the reason that we should pray with

hutzpah is because we serve a God who is full of mercy and grace. Listen to what Paul wrote Titus. He said this, Oh God, help us get these, but God stepped in and saved us. He saved us. It was all his doing. It was his mercy and we had nothing to do with it.

God's mercy restored us back to a relationship with Him with the guarantee of eternal life. I want you to picture right now in your mind, Jesus on that cross. You've seen a movie or you've seen a picture painted of him, you've seen a crucifix before, but I want you to see him on that cross. Who's with him?

No one.

You're not there, I'm not there. He went to that cross alone. He took your sin and your punishment and took it on that cross alone. The reason that you and I go to God and pray and live with chutzpah

is because we're serving that God who took on human form and took all of your sins and my sins on himself and stretched his arms out on the cross and let him kill him so that we could be forgiven of those sins. And now he lavishes

his grace on us, and he promises us, promises that no eyes see, no ears heard, no mind can imagine that we're gonna experience someday. And we didn't earn that.

Listen, in a moment the worship team is gonna come out and they're gonna do another song and don't leave, please don't leave because I believe God is gonna do something special. And I want you in the next few moments to just start right now, maybe you just need to listen to God, Maybe you need to talk to God.

Maybe you need to pray with some.

Maybe share some audacious requests with them, some things that only God could come through. Rock point, what if what if we began to pray and live in such a way that our lives and our prayers would make no sense if God did not exist. God, may we get this. I thank you for the story. I can't wait

in the new heavens and the new earth someday to meet this Bartimaeus. I'm gonna give him a high five and thank him for modeling so well for us what it means to live with reckless abandon.

We don't care what anybody says or thinks anymore. We're following after this Jesus to make these audacious requests. We wouldn't ask this of anyone else, but we know when we're talking to God, we'll ask this. And to to have this relentless pursuit of Jesus, God, we want that. I pray that we can become people like that.

I pray in these next few moments, Jesus, for all of us, but but whoever it is in here that you just burden my heart with, God,

would you meet him in a special way right now? We love you, Jesus. Amen.