The Believer’s Blueprint - Prayer & Fasting - August 9, 2026

Hey, friends. Welcome to the City Hope podcast. My name is Bobby Thompson, and I have the privilege of serving as a lead pastor. I pray that today's message would inspire you, it would encourage you, and it would also challenge you in your walk with Christ. Enjoy today's sermon.

Well, good morning, and just want to thank you so much for being here this morning. My name is Bobby. If I haven't got to meet you yet. And we are so, so, so thankful that each and every one of you are here. We want you to know that your presence matters.

It's a really big deal that you chose to be here with us, and we're honored to have you here. And maybe for some of you, you're looking for a church home, and we would love for you to come and be a part of City Hope and what God's doing. Listen, finding a church is hard, right? Like, it's not easy. You go in and it's like, are these people gonna be nice?

Are they gonna be weird? Are they gonna look at me? Are they gonna, you know, sing? We. Sometimes finding a church is difficult.

And so I'll just tell you, yes, we're weird, all right. Yes, we're not perfect. Yes, we do some stuff that you're like, what are they doing? And so if you're cool with that, we would love for you to come be a part of our crazy family. As a matter of fact, we're gonna do something next Sunday that we've never done before.

We're gonna have what we're calling Partner Sunday. And I'm gonna be teaching on the importance and why. What does the Bible have to say about being a member of a church? Why is that such a big deal in our lives? You know, for some of us, it's just tradition.

It's just what you did when you grew up. Right? But why is that such a big deal? So next week, we're going to talk about that. We're going to look at God's word.

Why do we need to be a part of the local church? And we're going to talk about City Hope and where we're at, and then what the future looks like. And then we're going to give you an opportunity, if you want to next Sunday to officially become a member. Now, we call our members partners because a member feels more like a country club, right? And there's nothing wrong with that if you're a part of one, but that's where you go.

And it's kind of like you go. And people serve you. Well, we want to be a church where we go and we partner together to go serve the world. And so next Sunday, come back for partner Sunday. I'm excited about it.

We've never done it and I'm really, really looking forward to it. You can get all that information next week to learn a whole lot about us. So today we're going to kick off a brand new series that I am really, really excited about. It's called the Believer's Blueprint. The Believer's Blueprint.

And whether or not you know this, God is not silent about how his people should live. If you consider yourself a follower of Christ, the Bible has a lot to say. He's given us a very clear design, a very healthy design of if I want to have a fruitful, joyful, peaceful Christian life, what do I have to do? And so for the next six weeks we're going to look at these six what I call essential practices that God gives us in His Word that will help you build your life in Christ. And so I want you to know this, these things that we're going to talk about for the next six weeks, these are not optional things for those who are spiritually mature.

Okay? We went to a coffee shop yesterday in Virginia. We went to a wedding and we were up there and we went to a coffee shop. What was the name of it? Seven Coffees.

Seven. Seven Brews. Seven Brew. Alright, Anybody been there? Anybody like that?

All right, anyways, so you go and you order stuff and the girls, they were like, dad, sometimes I like to embarrass them when we're in situations like that. And so they order this drink and it's like all these add ons, right? It's like cupcake and vanilla and sugar free, this and all. And I'm like, good night. And there's like 16 different things that are going into this.

You know, heart attack in the cup for the girls and all these extras and add ons. Well, what we're going to talk about these things, these six essential practices, they're not extras, they're not add ons to like if you want to just be a better, a varsity Christian, do these things, right? These are essential things that if you are considered a follower of Christ, these are what God gives us. If you want to follow me, this is what I expect. And so this series over the next six weeks, we're going to just dig in.

And my challenge and my heart for doing this is very simple because I want us as Christians to stop drifting and start intentionally building our lives according to God's word, not according to culture, not according to what the world says, not according to our feelings, but according to God's word, because he's given us a very clear design of how to live and how to function. Now, let me talk to you real quick before we jump in. Maybe you're here this morning and spiritually speaking, you feel a little bit weak. You feel like, man, I'm just not where I should be. Maybe this morning you feel, honestly, a little isolated.

Maybe you feel a little disconnected from the Lord or from the body. Maybe in your Christian walk you feel a little bit ineffective. Maybe you've church topped and you've tried to find different places and you can't really find your spot. Probably not for sure, but probably it's because one of these six things that we're going to talk about in your life is missing. Most likely the reason why you have any of these incomplete missing feelings is because one of these six things that God asks us to do is probably not truly happening in your life.

And here's a truth that I want you to know. We're going to talk about this for the next six weeks. A passive approach to God's blueprint will always leave you lacking. A passive approach to, you know, oh, I just. If all you do is show up on Sunday and go to church for an hour, guess what, you're going to live your life lacking.

If all you do is every once in a while before dinner, we say a little prayer. If that's the only time you spend with God, you're not living according to his blueprint, you're going to leave lacking. And maybe that's where you're at this morning. And I want to speak some truth and I want to speak some life over you this morning. Because when we intentionally build our lives around God's blueprint, guess what happens?

We grow into maturity. We grow into become useful. We grow into becoming the men and women that God calls us to become. So let's jump right in today. Every year at the beginning of the school year, we kick off normally, what we call it is 21 days of prayer and fasting.

But we're going to shrink it down to seven days. Not because we don't want to pray for 21, but we want to do it more often. We want to do this several times throughout the year instead of one time a year. And so today we're kicking off seven days of prayer and fasting. And I want to just challenge you right now.

This is just taking seven days to refresh and to Focus on the Lord and what he wants for your life. And there's so much going on. If we were all to just, like, look at our calendars and look at our lives with everything going on, Summer's ending, school's starting back, all the stuff that going on, we can't afford not to pray. We can't afford not to ask God. And so our battle cry for these next seven days is very simple.

Very simple. Something that we did from day one. It's very simple. It's pray first. Pray first.

No matter what you got going on in your life. Remember, Matthew told us, but seek first the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That is God's blueprint for you and I, that whatever you got going on that you would seek first. Practically, we can put this into play in every single aspect of our lives.

No matter who you are in the morning, before your feet hit the floor, before you eat, before you have your big meeting, before your kids leave for school, before you post that thing on social media, before you press send on that email or that text, before you have that test, students that you didn't study for. Pray first. Pray first. Prayer isn't just for a quiet time in the morning. It's an all the time thing.

And we want to challenge you over these next seven days. This season, now hear this. This season that we're going into is not just about praying more. It's about praying first. And I want you to notice that it's not just, oh, I got to pray more and I got to do more.

I want you to understand what it means to pray first. Now here's the reality, all right? When you, when you start talking about prayer, there's a wide variety of thoughts in here right now. There's a wide variety of the way we look at prayer. Some of you in here, you live by prayer.

It is in every single thing that you do. Some of you sitting in here this morning, if you were honest and you, you just really don't get it. You really don't understand it that much. Some people in here would probably say, prayer is the most important thing in my life. And some of you in here might say, well, yeah, I think it's.

I think it's good. You know, when I need something or when something wrong is going on, I like to use it. But we're all different, right? I want to get a little feedback this morning. Everybody good?

Everybody loose? Okay. All right. I need a little feedback this morning. I want you to be honest.

You're in church, so you can't lie. Okay, how many of you in here raise your hand? You grew up maybe in a church or a home where you recited certain prayers a lot in your life? Anybody like that? You recited prayers.

Many, many, many of you guys did that, right? Nothing wrong with that. That just shows that that's something, that maybe you took a prayer out of God's word or a prayer of something, and that was just something that you guys did. You know, many of us have done, like the Lord's Prayer. I was watching a Little League World Series game the other day, and after the game, the team huddled up, and they were just praying the Lord's Prayer together.

And so there's things like that. Now, how many of you would say if you had to pray out loud in a group, that you would probably throw up if somebody asked you to do that? Be honest. Be honest. If you had to pr.

Pray out loud right now, you'd be like, oh, my gosh, worst thing ever, right? Okay. There was only a few hands, so I'm about to hand the mic to some of y', all, and this you're gonna prove to me whether that's real or not. All right, now. Now here's where I want to get a little bit real, okay?

If you had to give right now, if you had to give your prayer life a grade, if you had to give your prayer life a grade, now be honest, okay? You're in church. If you had to give your prayer life a grade, how many of you in here would give yourself an A or a B? Be honest.

How many of you would give yourself a C or below?

Most of us see, prayer is one of those things where I've been a Christian now for 30 years, and I don't think I'll ever get to the place where I'm like, yeah, I've arrived. I'm a prayer warrior. I'm great at this. I don't know if prayer is ever going to get to this place in my life where, man, I'm just killing it in this prayer department, man. Y' all, come on.

But today, I want to try to take away the anxiety, take away the tradition, take away the. The way maybe that you've always thought about prayer and give a little bit of a simple understanding. Is this prayer in its simplest form is this. Prayer shows dependence. Prayer shows who or what that I'm depending on.

Prayer and fasting are not these, again, advanced spiritual techniques. They're not only for certain people. These are the normal ways that God's people express their dependence upon him. And when we don't pray, what are we doing? We're expressing our dependence on ourselves.

God, I got this. We may not say that out loud, but when I don't pray and when I don't spend time, you know, seeking the Lord and his will for my life and my family, the lack of prayer begins to show that my dependence is not on the Lord. And I want you to notice this, and we're starting with this today for a reason. Because without a vital prayer life, then all the other spiritual disciplines begin to lose their power. All the other things that we got going on in our lives begin to not work.

We have to get this right. So if prayer is the central way God gave us a blueprint in his word, and if prayer is the central way that we connect with the Lord, that we are designed to live our Christian life, then we need to understand better what prayer actually is and how it works in real life. So I want to give you three very simple truths this morning that I believe can reshape the way that you see prayer that can help you. These aren't new ideas. They're God's ideas.

They're old as the Bible. But if we take them seriously, I do believe it'll change our lives. I do believe that they have the power to change our lives. So let me give you three real quick, simple truths that can reshape the way we think about prayer. If you're taking notes, write this down.

If you're not taking notes, write this down. Number one, prayer is. Is expected. Prayer is expected. Now, God doesn't treat prayer, again, like this.

Optional upgrade, right? Like this. Add on in our lives. If you are spiritually serious, he expects you to pray. Let me, let me show you why.

Go to Matthew chapter six, real quick. Matthew chapter six. If you don't have it, it'll be here on the screen. We're going to bounce around a lot today in a couple of different passages. So I'm not going to have you stand up, because we'd just be standing up all day.

So Matthew chapter six. Look, look what this is. When Jesus disciples asked him teach us to pray, this is what he told them. Now, I want you to see this, all right? Beginning in verse five, he says, whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people.

Truly, I tell you, they have their reward. Look at verse six. Underline those first four words. But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Look at the first three words of verse seven.

When you pray, don't babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they'll be heard for their many words, don't be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask them. Notice that he never says you pray.

He says, when you pray, it's assumed. It's natural. It is a part of God's design for his people. Any person in here today, if you have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and you live according to the Bible, God's will for you is to pray and pray without ceasing. Paul preaches the same thing to the church in.

In Colossians, he says, devote yourselves to prayer. Devote yourselves to prayer. You know, if you think about this, today, we're all devoted to something. As a matter of fact, we're all probably devoted to a lot of things.

But how do I know what I'm devoted to? Well, a little test that you can look at your life. When you make something in your life a priority, you're devoted to it. When you will sacrifice for something in your life, you're devoted to it. When you will say no to other things and say yes to this thing, you're devoted to it.

That's how we know whether or not I have a true devotion to prayer. God expects his people to be devoted to prayer. Not an add on, not an upgrade, not something for those who are. Who are better than I am. This is huge.

This is a really, really big deal. This is a direct command from God Almighty to his followers. So what does that mean for you? All right, can I push on you a little bit? Can I challenge you a little bit this morning?

All right, what does that mean for me and you? Well, guess what? It doesn't matter. Well, I just don't have a lot of time.

I got too much going on. I got too many responsibilities. I gotta take the kids here, here, here, and I gotta pick up and I gotta do this. I got too much responsibility. I got too many kids, too much work.

Oh. All I do is work, work, work. And I don't have enough. I don't have enough time, or maybe I don't have enough experience. I don't really know what to say, and I don't really know how to pray.

And guess what? None of that exempts you from the expectation to pray. None of it. None of the Excuses that we use exempt us from what God's called us to do. Now watch this.

I want you. You can't miss this part right here. This is. This is big.

Yes. It is an expectation. Yes. Prayer is a command from the Lord. But you and I need to look at it as an invitation.

And here's why. Let me show you. I want to tell you the story, okay? She's gonna get mad at me, but that's okay. A few weeks ago, my wife, her parents came and visited us from Canada.

They live way up north, like frozen tundra, okay? They live way up there, and they came, and we get to see them maybe once a year, every other year. But one of the things that's funny, when we see them, they. They get a little bit frustrated because their lovely, wonderful, beautiful daughter doesn't answer her phone very well. Okay?

And with family up in Canada, one of the only ways you can talk to one another is through a cell phone, right? Or like a FaceTime or anything like that. Maybe I can write a letter. But. But they.

They came down a few weeks ago, and they're like, cheryl, why. Why do you not ever answer our calls? And, you know, and I'm telling them, I'm like, guys, it's not you. She doesn't answer my call. She doesn't answer anybody's calls, okay?

And I'm trying to help them. And they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go, and we're going to buy you an Apple Watch, okay? Because one of her excuses is, well, I just never know where my phone is, and I don't know that it's ringing. And then when I see it, I forget.

And so they go, all right, we're going to buy you an Apple Watch. So they went out and they bought Shira a brand new Apple Watch so that when they called her, that they could communicate with her and she could see, oh, my mom and dad are calling. Let me answer the phone right now. They from the frozen tundra expect Shira to answer the phone when they call. Why?

Because they love her. Because they want to talk to you. Her, because they want to see what's going on in her life, right? And so when God expects you and I to pray, it's the same thing. Why does he want you to pray?

Why does he give us this blueprint, this plan to say, I want you to pray? I want you to pray with everything you got, all the time. Why? Because he loves you. He wants to know what's going on in your life.

He wants to spend time with you. He wants you to pick up the phone and say, hey, God, here I am. This is how my day's going. This is what's going on in my life. God's command to pray is a command of love.

And it is in his love that he desires to communicate with you and to bless you. This isn't religious pressure. This isn't some ritual that I just go through. It's an imitation. And here's what I believe.

Most of us don't skip prayer time because we're rebels, right? We don't. We don't skip it because I'm gonna show you today, God, I'm not gonna talk to you at all, right? We skip it because we quietly start believing. I can handle this.

I got this. I think I can. I think I can do this. Or. Or maybe some of us, we've gotten so discouraged that when we did pray and there was no answers or we didn't understand the answer that we just started, yeah, I'm just gonna.

I'm just gonna slide out of doing that.

Whether you're discouraged, whether you begin to believe that you can handle it yourselves, the expectation hasn't changed. God still expects his people. He's designed his people to live dependent. Dependency sounds like prayer. So prayer is expected, number one.

But there's good news for each and every one of us. If you feel anxious about your prayer life, you feel like, I'm not good enough, number two, is this the second promise that we see in God's word is that prayer is learned. Prayer is learned for everybody that feels inadequate for all of you that feel like, I just don't know what to say. You're not behind. You're just learning.

You're learning how to do it. Remember what the disciples asked Jesus? The men who were covered in the dirt of Jesus because they were following him so closely, they said, hey, can you teach us how to pray? Can you show us how to do this?

Most of us, maybe this is where you're at. You assume that if your prayer life doesn't come easy, then I just must not be very spiritual. I'm just not very good at it. If prayer is a hard thing for you, you have to understand something today that prayer is a skill. Prayer is a skill.

No matter how weak or how strong your prayer life is right now. You can learn and you can grow and you can get better. But growing up in Jesus means growing up in how we talk to Jesus. Becoming a mature disciple means that That I got to work on spending time with the Lord, just like I'm going to work on anything else in my life. So let me give you three quick ways.

How do we learn to pray from the Bible? What does God's word tell us? How can we learn to pray? Number one, pretty simple. By praying, right?

Earth shattering stuff here. All right, how do I learn to pray by praying? You do it. If you wanted to go learn a new language, how many of you can speak more than one language? Anybody, like, show me, show me.

If you wanted to go learn how to speak, say, Spanish, right? French. What's going to help you the most? Just sitting down and listening to somebody speak French or Spanish? No, that's not going to do it, right?

You're going to have no idea what they're going to say. The way that you're going to learn is by speaking French or Spanish or whatever that language is. It's the same thing with the Lord. How do I learn how to pray? By praying.

Number two, I think this one's big. By letting scripture shape your prayers. Letting scripture shape your prayers. One of the best ways for you to grow in prayer is to stop trying to invent something profound to say to God and start, let the Bible do the talking for you. Here's what it looks like in real life.

Let me give you just a real life situation. Okay? You sit down, you read a verse, you spend a few minutes with that verse, and then you simply talk back to God about what that verse said. Maybe it's what's, what's a passage. The Lord is my shepherd.

Right? Familiar passage, very famous passage. Okay. The Lord is my shepherd and you might pray. God, your word says that you're my shepherd.

And to be honest with you, God, today I need you to lead me. Today, God, my life feels a little scary, scattered. And if you're my shepherd, Lord, I just teach me how to follow you better, God, and look what happens. That simple shift in praying scripture, it turns from a monologue into a conversation, right? It turns from me just kind of talking at God to saying, okay, God, speak back to me.

You're no longer searching for the right words. You're responding to what God already said. So we learn by praying. We learn by letting scripture to shape our prayers. And number three, we learn by praying with other people.

Praying with other people. Now we're not praying with other people to copy their words. We're praying with other people to catch their heart, to catch what they have, their desire, their passion for prayer. How many of you guys know somebody that you would say they're a prayer warrior. Anybody know some prayer warriors in your life?

I know some prayer warriors. All right, I'm going to. I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it, all right? Because I'm probably going to embarrass her. But when I hear Miss Susie up here, when I hear her pray, it makes me want to pray so much more.

I mean, she's a prayer warrior. Sorry to call you out like that.

When we're having our prayer rooms at 6am and I listen to her pray and I'm like, oh, my goodness. I want to be like that. I want to have that kind of prayer life. I want to have that kind of communication and connection with the Lord, Lord, by. How do I learn how to pray?

By praying with other people to catch their heart. But let's be honest. There's probably seasons in all of our lives where you felt dry, you felt repetitive, you felt weak. You don't need a new technique, right? What you need to do is you need to keep showing up, you need to keep practicing.

Because growth in your prayer life is never going to feel dramatic, right? It's never going to be like, oh, here I am. You grow one prayer, one purpose over time. So prayer is expected, prayer is learned. And then finally, number three, the thing that we see the most, that the truth that we need to understand is that prayer is answered.

This is one that might trip us up a little bit. This is one that we've prayed and felt like nothing happened. We've prayed, and then we've started kind of quietly wondering, does. Does this even work? Is my.

Is my prayers getting through this ceiling? Is this. Is this real? I think this is a principle of prayer and God's blueprint. I think this is something that is taken for granted more than anything else.

Jesus is very clear what you think about this with me today. Jesus is very clear. Look at Matthew, chapter seven. Matthew, chapter seven says this. Ask and it might be given to you.

Is that what it says?

It says it will seek and you might find it. No, seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open. For everyone who asks, the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, the door will be open.

Listen to me today, church. God's not up there playing games. He's not going. I expect you to pray. And then as soon as you pray, he's like, ha, ha.

Door shut, not helping you, right? God's not up there playing games. He gives us a Very clear blueprint understanding that if we ask, if we seek, if. If we knock, he will answer. Now you know where I'm going.

That does not mean he's always going to answer in the way you want him to answer. That does not mean you're always going to get exactly what we want. Because sometimes, if we're honest, I know we're in church, right? And y' all got your spiritual clothes on today. But if we're honest, sometimes our prayers are a little selfish, right?

Sometimes our prayers, maybe we got a little hidden sin. Maybe sometimes in our prayers we got a lack of persistence. Where I asked you once a month ago, God, why haven't you done it yet? Maybe we're asking for something outside of the will of God.

Sometimes the issue's on our side.

But wherever the issue is, the promise still stands. God hears and God responds. God hears and God responds. Now, here's a little bit deeper, right? We're gonna dig a little bit deeper.

Okay, here's something that I want you to understand. And you could chew on this one a little bit this week. Persistent prayer doesn't just get answers. It changes us.

And I want you to dig into that a little bit this week. If you got some times in the morning and just persistent prayer, it doesn't just. God doesn't just answer. It begins to change us. Why?

Because it begins to line our heart with his. It teaches us to trust him. Even when the answer is no. Even when the answer is, wait, not yet. It teaches us to trust.

And people who walk closely with God. Think about those people that, you know that man, they love Jesus and they're followers of God, and. And those people are almost always people of prayer, people who have a strong prayer life. See, it's not complicated.

It's really not. Those who pray little tend to stay spiritually shallow.

Those who pray much tend to grow pretty deep and to become more like Jesus. Believers, we must discipline ourselves in prayer. Making time for it, learning how to do it better, trusting that God expects me to pray, trusting that God will answer the prayers of his children. And so today, as we close our time together, I want to just offer you a couple challenges. Number one, starting today, starting today, would you commit to joining us for the next seven days of prayer and fasting?

Commit to just starting. Say, you know what? I'm gonna jump in. And I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking, I'm good with this prayer thing, but I don't know about this fasting stuff.

Like, what's really going on there. Fasting is pretty simple. Most of you have probably done something like this. Fasting is essentially what you're doing is you're telling God that I'm serious about you. God, I'm serious about my relationship with you.

When we fast, we're taking time away from something or someone or something that we spend a lot of time on and we're saying, I'm going to take that time that I would normally do this thing and I'm going to put that focus on you because I'm serious about my relationship with you. God. You're putting God in the top spot of your life. Now a couple practical things. You decide what you're going to fast from.

For some of you it may be food. For some of you it may be sugar. For some of you it may be drinks, tv, social media, Whatever it is, I'm gonna give up something in place. I'm gonna spend more time with God. Fasting is simply hitting the reset button on your soul.

And you think about it today, this is a great time to hit our reset button on our souls. We all got a lot going on. There's a lot of things going on in our lives today here in a few moments when you leave, you're gonna be handed a prayer guide. It's just a seven day prayer guide, starts today, goes through Saturday. And for the next seven days we just want you to just let's rally together as a church body, as a community of believers and let's all pray for the same thing.

We're gonna be praying in the same direction. And so when you leave today, you'll get that. But I want to challenge you. Take some time today and ask the Lord, what do I need to fast from for the next seven days? What's something in my life that I know that I probably spend too much time on?

I probably need to peel that back and God, I'm serious about you. So I'm going to replace that thing with my time with you. There's a ton of resources on our website. I think there's a picture coming up here on our website. If you want resources about fasting, if you need to understand fasting better, there's some really cool stuff on there.

We also have a digital fast guide. If you feel like social media is taking you captive and it's sucking away your life and your brain and you're just allowing it, you're spending too much time on it, jump on there and there's a digital fast guide and it is excellent, guys. It helps you so much. There's a little test on there that if you take this little test, it'll tell you whether or not you need to fast. It's like, it's really, really good.

It's really, really helpful. And you can find that on our website. Let me encourage you to go do that. This, this prayer guide that I'm talking about is on there. And you can go download all that stuff because we just want to help you in this, in this journey, in this season of prayer and fasting.

This is an essential part of God's blueprint for believers and church. I think we have to get this part right. We have to get this part right. And if we plan on in any way in our life taking steps of growth in our walk with Jesus, it must start with prayer. Would you pray with me, Father?

I just ask you right now to help each and every one of us. Lord, your word is so clear. And so often, God, we allow distractions to push out that clarity. And Lord, sometimes we make this life so complicated when you've laid out some basic expectations, some basic commands. And so, God, I pray that we would today be convicted over the time that we spend with you.

God, I pray that after these next seven days that you would just show up and do some amazing things in the lives of people here at City Hope. God, would we see prayers answered? Would we see lives change? Would we see your Holy Spirit presence just so real in our lives and in our families? I pray for the.

The families right now in this room that already know the things that we need to get out of our lives, the things that we need to spend more time with you, Lord, but reveal those to us. Show us those things, God, give us the strength and the courage and the boldness to say, you know what, I'm going to stop that for a week to spend more time with Jesus. God, give us that boldness and that courage to take that step. And so, Lord, we do all this to bring you honor and glory. We do all this so that we could grow deeper in our walk with you and our knowledge of you, God, so that we could bring heaven to earth so that we can see more people come to know you.

And so, Lord, we love you, we praise you and thank you in Jesus name, Amen. Thanks again for tuning in with us today. We would love to connect with you and the best way to do that is through social media or go straight to our website. God bless you and have a wonderful day.