Welcome to Dwell on These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at Dwell and around the world. Thanks for tuning in to Dwell on These Things. I'm Scott Risley. I'm here with Josh and Laura LeVan. Many of you know him as Levi, so that's what I'll call him today. We're here to talk about prayer. And I thought, to talk about prayer, let's get our three experts on prayer, people who have mastered the subject together all in one room to teach the rest of us how it's done. And then I realized, I'm not sure who those three experts would be. And so we instead are, we got the three of us here, people who struggle with this area, but are trying to grow more and more into the image of Christ, and people who realize that anytime we ever pray, it's a miracle, and it's a sign of God working in our lives. And we wanted just to talk about this subject today, some different things that these guys in their group have tried in prayer, different convictions on prayer. And our prayer is that God would somehow use people like us to get people thinking about prayer, get people praying more, enjoying prayer more, and praying more as a group, which is a challenge. These guys are leaders in Keystone Home Church. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves here, talk a little bit about how you came to know the Lord, how you came to this church. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian household, ended up starting a relationship with Christ at a pretty young age, and never really understood the personal aspect of a relationship with God, really until the end of high school. And there was a series of events where God really got my attention and made some bad choices and suffered the consequences of those. But my brother at the time was actually in this church, and I saw how God was using this church as well as Him, trying to walk with Him and how it transformed his life. So I saw some attractive things there, so I actually moved across the country back in 2005 to join this fellowship, and that was a couple decades ago almost now, and it's been awesome walking with God and being in a large church, a big group of believers who are really sold out for Him and giving their lives over to Him. So that's how I ended up here. Yeah, I similarly grew up in a Christian home, learned about Jesus at a young age, came to faith in Him at a young age, but really started growing with God in my college years. I got connected with this fellowship through my Aunt Kathy, who'd been here for a long time. She was an awesome influence in my life in my high school years. And so I came here to Ohio State to go to college, got connected with Dwell through her, and really started to understand God's love, God's grace in a deeper way, and started to take more steps of faith and started to grow a lot in those years. Cool. And then you guys obviously got together at some point. Yeah. We did, yeah. I got married back in 2010. Yeah, met it. Yeah, our small group Bible study. And you guys have been leading home churches for quite a while now. Yeah, I can't remember since 2008, 2009. First through our high school group, leading there together, which is when we first started dating, and then eventually leading in a college group as well. Yeah, with you, Scott. Sometimes I wish we were back with you. I miss being apart. These are really good friends of mine, known these guys for a really long time, and been through a lot together. I wanna talk about prayer. So what are some influences in your life related to prayer? Where do you feel like you first, I don't know, got exposed to the subject, the burden for this subject? Yeah, I was introduced to probably prayer at a young age, at dinner and other times as a family and at church. I actually remember going to a prayer meeting with my dad for the school I attended. I was probably 12. It was just my dad, myself, and another couple. And I think I rarely prayed. I really wanted to, but I think I was young, and I just felt so nervous. But I remember being attracted to that time and just the faithfulness, in particular, of my dad and this couple who would meet to pray for an entire school together. And I think I went with him for about a year, and although I didn't participate that much, I just remember thinking that this time is really special, it's really cool, I like being here, I wanna be here, and I want to participate and contribute in ways I didn't quite understand or know how to yet. And then... So this is a 12-year-old and three parents... Yeah, a 12-year-old. ...praying together for a year. Who would guess that that would have an influence... Yeah. ...on into today? Yes. Yeah, I do think it did. And seeing my dad's faithfulness there, I think, was a really cool model to me. And then since then, my aunt, who I mentioned earlier, speaks of her prayer life. She also would share about group prayer meetings that she's been a part of and just the richness of that time praying with other believers and the power of that time praying with other believers. And I think that really inspired me to want to get in on meetings like that more myself and to be a part of believers coming together and praying. And I think that was part of what inspired me on to want to initiate more within our home church. Yeah, I have a friend that God brought me, a younger woman, to study with, and I think right about the time I was desiring to pray more and to grow in that, we started meeting and hanging out and praying together and just prayed longer together, and we both really thrived during that time. And I think God really used that a lot, and that was a real blessing to me too, to have that peer friend that really wanted to pray together too. That's awesome. Levi? Let's see. Yeah, I similarly was introduced to prayer at a young age. My family, we would pray together, but again, it was never that personal of a thing for me. It was something that you were just supposed to do, and I never really felt like much of a connection to God through it. I remember my mom always being a really faithful prayer. She still is to this day. It's always a cool model for me, seeing her getting daily time with the Lord, really spending time connecting with Him through the Word, through praying, someone that I can always count on to pray for things when I talk with her, asking her to pray for different things. And I'm sure that had an influence on me both as a model to see that, but also I'm sure those prayers, God has used those to impact me in my prayer life, but just in other really significant ways. And as well as my family, I know that from a young age, my mom was praying for a godly spouse for me, and I know that she's been praying for our kids and our ministry that we do now, so I know it's had a huge impact in those ways as well. It's funny when you're praying, like I know my parents and I, we would pray for my future spouse, and then to one day learn who those prayers were applied to and to see how God was working in that other person's life. That's one of the great things about prayer is we can offer up prayers to God and He knows how to best apply them, and we see only after the fact just how much He used those simple, feeble little requests and how much He did with those. Yeah. I think it's interesting too, both you guys mentioned seeing other people pray and seeing other people enjoy prayer. And I think sometimes with prayer, we feel like, I should do that, I should do that more. But how different it is when you see people who talk about how awesome it is, and you start feeling like, I want that too. I want to be part of something like that. And I've found that to be far more motivating for me is learning, seeing people who enjoy prayer and then telling God, I want to not just do it because I should, and do it because it's effective. And both those are true. But I think there's another piece here where we do it because we love talking with our Heavenly Father, and we enjoy seeing these prayers answered. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think our family has been a big influence on me because I am not gifted in prayer, I really struggle with prayer. I like to do stuff and be active and accomplish things, and prayer for me often does not feel like I'm accomplishing much. But my wife is gifted in prayer, she really loves prayer, and so that motivates me, and she's been a strong influence on my prayer life. That's maybe a piece of advice is if you want to get better at prayer, marry someone who's better at prayer than you are. But also the Heavenly Father point I really agree with because I watch my kids and how I interact with them and how I just want them to come to me to talk, and not out of shame or guilt or duty, but I just want to enjoy a good conversation with them. And so I have really enjoyed viewing God as my Heavenly Father and knowing that He just wants me to come to Him, not in guilt or shame or duty, but just to dialogue with Him and talk with Him about what's going on in my head, what's going on in my heart, and just this natural, real conversation with Him that's really enjoyable. Yeah, you guys have elementary school age kids. What's prayer looked like in your family with them? Yeah, I mean, it's changed over the years. The things they pray for has changed. Yeah, we'll pray often together at bedtime, and they go through phases of times when they want to pray and times when they are uninterested, but we'll pray and they're there, and they don't sit still. Yeah, they're boys. Yeah. During that time, it's usually some fidgeting and some rolling around, but it's been cool to catch them in times where they've wanted to pray. Both of them have had times where they've wanted to pray and other times where they haven't, but I think that continuing to do it to catch them in the times where their hearts are interested and inclined towards God. What's it been like when they wanted to pray? I feel like it's really genuine. I mean, they pray for usually simple things, but when they want to, it's... You get the sense that it's really genuine, and they tend to start praying, and then they just keep praying and keep praying and keep praying, and sometimes we're like, all right, let's maybe wrap this up, something like that. It's bedtime, we gotta get some sleep. But I... Yeah, it just seems like when they want to, you really get that sense that it's like a heart desire and something they really enjoy, and it's not a forced thing. It's funny, you guys are talking about influences when you were kids and your parents, and now your own kids are seeing that in your family. They're seeing this as a family where we pray, where God comes first. I remember my kids, when they were little, at a certain point, they figured out if they extend the Bible in prayer time, then that also makes bedtime later. And I thought, you know what? I'm all right with that. If there's one thing I'll let them extend bedtime for, that's a pretty good thing to do. That's a great thing, yeah. I started to pray more on the way to school with them or on the way to activities, and they often usually just listen during those times, but yeah, it's good. Yeah. I've been enjoying rereading Miller's book on a praying life, and he's got some really practical, simple examples of praying with his kids, which I've enjoyed, and that's been an inspiration to me to model more for our boys praying and how it's important and it's real. Recently, Zeke lost his watch and he couldn't find it, so I thought of... The contact lens story. Yeah, Miller, and let's pray, and so me and him prayed, and I told him, God heard our prayer, and let's see if he answers it, and I felt myself getting really nervous because I was like, all right, Lord, you gotta come through on this. This is a huge moment. And a couple of days later, yeah, I was sitting at home and found his watch, and I brought it to him and made sure to remind him, Lord answered our prayer here. Miller tells this great story in the opening chapter of that book where his daughter drops a contact lens and they're camping, and he's like, well, let's pray for it, which is kind of scary as a parent because you're like, Lord, I need you to come through, and they're trying to find a contact lens at a campsite, and his daughter, Ashley, burst into tears, and she's like, does prayer even work? Because I prayed that their other daughter who had special needs, I prayed she would talk and she hasn't yet. And so Miller's like, so I was like, Lord, I really need you. And they go down and they see a contact lens just balanced perfectly at the tip of a piece of grass, and he's like, thank you, God. And it's a great story to read as a parent because you're like, I want my kids to lean on prayer, but do I believe it really works? And what if I pray and it doesn't work? And that raises all sorts of other questions. Yeah. Have you guys read A Praying Church? No. He released that, I think it was last year or maybe two years ago. Really good. Yeah, I'll have to pick that one up. Really good. It's funny too because you see a lot of the storylines from A Praying Life where the big thing in that book is we pray and nothing happens. And so then what do we do? We oftentimes quit. And he says, we need to find a way to continue praying and to see... It's like you're watching a movie and then the first obstacle comes up, and you're just like, well, this movie sucks. And you just shut it off. And he's like, no, there's a story God is weaving here. And he wants to do a lot more things to that story than answer that simple request. And so it's interesting because you see the storylines play out in A Praying Life, but then you read A Praying Church and you see this is written 15 years later, and you see some of the additional storylines play out. Oh, nice. Yeah, I'll have to get that one. He mentioned at a certain point in that book, his daughter Ashley died of cancer in her 40s. And so it's like you're reading about this little girl in this book, and then you see the story play out there, and then you see... But he's like, look, she devoted her life to serving kids with special needs. And so much of it was because of what she saw in our own daughter's life and her struggle. Wow. And so she had a whole life, a career and a ministry devoted to that. And I was like... It just hit me really hard because I feel like I know this girl, I know this family. But you see the story arc in that book, and then you see it continue. And then how many of these stories are we not even gonna see until we get to heaven? But we do fortunately get to see some of these play out here on earth as we see God's kingdom come here. And that's part of what we wanna talk about is some different things that are going on with you guys in your group. Because one of the challenges with prayer is there's so many things stacked against it. Chuck Smith uses the analogy in one of his books, which apparently he got from Andrew Murray, we discovered recently. But Murray talks about you're in a dark alley and someone attacks you. And then you pull out a knife. All of a sudden, all the attention is focused on that knife, and he's got to get that attacker, that evil person has to get that knife out of your hand if they're gonna take you out the rest of the way. So he's like, it's like that with prayer. Satan is attacking us in this dark alley, and then we pull out prayer. And he's like, all of a sudden, he just realizes my top goal right now is to get that knife out of this person's hand, because I'm gonna have to flee otherwise. And he comes at us in our personal prayer lives, and he really doesn't like it when believers gather together to pray, because there's kind of a unique synergy that happens. You talked about your aunt and some of the things that she would talk about with her prayer meetings and her group, and just how awesome they were. And we hear that, and we think, I really wanna be part of that. And yet, it's a lot harder than you think to get something going. And you get something going, and then it falls apart. So this is the struggle that so many of us have when it comes to a prayer meeting. And so I wondered if you guys could talk some about some of the things you've tried with prayer in your home church. You talked some about praying with your disciple there, Laura. But what about praying in groups? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, our home church has met to pray weekly together for about 45 minute time weekly. We meet to do that. And you guys are probably half married couple, maybe a little over half. You've got, what, a half dozen, 10 kids or something in your group. So it's like, there's challenges with that. Mm-hmm. There was challenges we had to overcome. And now, you know, now parents are dragging kids out of naps and barely getting them dressed and snacked to get there, but they're willing to do that, which is awesome. And then parents rotate and take turns watching all eight to 10 of them, and that's an exhausting 45 minutes for that individual so that the rest can go and pray during that weekly time. So we had to make adjustments as more kids came and trying to figure out how to do that so that more of us could be there, which we really wanted to be there. And so everyone makes sacrifices to make that happen and try to be creative there. I think that's interesting. So you're saying you've got married couples where both spouses will come, even though they've got little kids. I think some groups, they just assume only one parent can come. The other one has to stay with the kids. But it sounds like you guys have been trying to fight against that and saying, you know what? I wonder if we could do some sort of a pooled babysitting thing where we can get a couple of parents with all the kids, and then you have husband's and his wife both able to come to a prayer meeting. Yeah, yeah. It's great. Yeah, it was easy at first, I think, just to... Only one person would come or none because the naps were extending into that time, and then people just kind of decided we're gonna do everything in our power to be there, make the sacrifices necessary to get to that prayer time. And yeah, we've seen them do that, and it's been great. It's really... Been awesome because there's more people at our meeting and making sacri... A lot of them flop down clearly exhausted from dragging kids out of naps and in and out of cars to get there in time, but they make it. At a certain point, your kids are gonna be old enough to watch everybody. Pretty soon, yeah. I don't know. Is he 10 yet? No, he's 8. Oh, 8. Oh, okay. He's got a little while probably. What about Z getting a movie? Z getting a show might work. Z getting a cell phone and a movie. Yeah. It's been good for the non-parents in our group as well to see if we as parents can overcome this obstacle and figure out how can we get our kids taken care of during a prayer meeting so that we can pray and we're communicating it's important, and they... We've seen other people also fight for creative ways to make sure they can be there, and so it's kind of a chance for us to really model high commitment to prayer. That's great. The single person has zero excuses. If you guys are... That's right. Organizing babysitting for the kids and making sure to get there. And honestly, the single person doesn't appreciate just how difficult that is. Oh, yeah. The person without kids has no idea just how challenging that... I don't care how much time you have. You're like, you think, I've got 45 minutes before I need to leave. I don't know what it is, but that last 10 minutes is a disaster trying to get out the door. I don't... It's something about it. Yeah. Yep. Oh, man. Okay, good. So yeah, we did that, and I think that us as a team really wanted to be a home church. I think I thought a lot about Colossians 4 saying, devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And I think we wanted to be a group that was devoted to prayer, just knowing how important it is and how powerful it is, how good it is, how rich it is, and knowing that it was gonna be a challenge to fight against all of our tendency to do other things, to choose comfort, to... Yeah, to be distracted from it. And I think we wanted to be a group that is devoted to prayer. And I had met with another woman who suggested just vary it up every now and then. And she suggested prayer breakfasts, and we just thought, let's try something different to see how that energizes our perspective. So your normal prayer meeting is before home church? CT. Before CT. Okay, so you guys will show up at the building there, it's a little more space to spread out, and then you'll get together before CT. Prayer breakfasts would be at a different time slot, obviously. Yeah, yeah. We scheduled those for Saturday mornings, and we potluck breakfast foods. Got a friend that always brings quality coffee for us, lots of it. And then we would get together for a period and pray for a couple hours. A couple hours, wow. Yeah, after breakfast and a break or two, you go from about 9 AM to 12, but there's two, maybe a little just over two hours of dedicated time to pray. Okay, wow, you got the singles getting out of bed for the 9 AM, huh? It's important to have really good coffee and really good breakfast to get people there. Especially the first one, I think a lot of people were a little skeptical, and when they heard about the timeframe and the time commitment, so we wanted to make sure that it was attractive. And again, we hired a babysitter for that time to watch all the kids, so that all of the parents could be there. So we took care of the kids, took care of the caffeine, good food, made sure it was a comfortable space, so it was really enjoyable right out the gate. Okay, so you get together, you'll do breakfast, just kind of fellowship some. And then what do you do next? Yeah, each time we pray for a variety of things. So I'll usually select, with the help of others on our team, four to six things that we'll pray for. Okay. And we usually start with some time praising God and thanking Him. We'll often read a psalm or two together, just kind of in a circle one verse at a time, read a psalm together, and just kind of let that sit in our heads, and then often start praying based on the content of that psalm. And then just, it'll extend into other things people are thinking about, thanking God and praising Him for, and that's just such an awesome time. Again, we'll do that for 20 to 30 minutes and have to cut it off because we want to get to other things. And then we'll often have, I'll usually have a verse or a quote relating to one of the topics we want to pray for. So often we'll pray for our fellowship with each other, spending a time of gratitude for each other, maybe individuals, maybe just general gratitude for our group. And then we'll spend time praying for the unity of our group and what God wants to do in and through us connected with each other. And so we'll spend time praying for our fellowship, and then I'll select a handful of other things, and we'll just kind of move along, and I'll kind of keep track of the time and pray for a chunk of time, and then wrap that up and then share another verse or quote about something else that we're gonna pray for for the next chunk of time. So you're kind of feeding in new topics, new content as you go along. I think that's great. I've tried to increase times of quiet or listening. So the past couple times we've started with a period of five to 10 minutes where people can just kind of go to the Lord with their own day, their own morning, their own week, and just kind of try to settle into a spirit of being ready to connect with Him and each other through prayer, taking any distractions they might feel they have or things to Him before we get started. So listening prayer as a group. Yeah. So you'll be sitting around in the room, you say, let's just spend some time seeing what the Lord has to say to us. Yeah, yeah, we've done that mid, kind of the mid-prayer morning too, like let's just have some times of silence and then pick back up into prayer. And it was very intimidating at first, I think, to people. They're like, I don't know about this, what's this gonna be like? But people have expressed like, it's really cool to hear what people prayed for after a time of quiet was really edifying. And some people have even said they have heard God pointing things out to them during that time. For some people, it's just a time to clear their head and to focus in, but some people have really gotten some stuff from the Lord during that time or felt like He was speaking to them on different things. And people love it. They really look forward to that just kind of five to 10 minutes of quiet just before the Lord and hearing from Him. We've experimented with that a little bit too. It's been pretty interesting what the Lord has done, even through just a couple of minutes of silence. Normally, you don't have that at all. There's so many things coming at us all the time and so many distractions, and whether it's things we can listen to, the notifications on the phones. And to have just silence as a group, it has sort of a powerful weight to it. And so you guys, you'll do some silence. What do you do with phones during this prayer meeting? Do people have the phones on them? Do you have a little phone box somewhere? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. We don't do a phone box or anything. People have their phones on them, but I don't typically see people on them or anything like that. I know I don't have my phone. I guess it's on me, it's in my pocket, but I'm not looking at it or anything. Yeah. People probably read from it, use it to read the scriptures sometimes. But I haven't noticed anyone being distracting. It's an interesting idea though. Maybe something to try next time. Our cell group, we did some reading on screen time. And so now for cell, we all make a little phone tower in the middle of the table. Oh, that's cool. That's funny. But honestly, just getting my phone like five feet from me instead of right in my pocket, it's like, I feel better. Yeah. I think I encourage people. I've started to encourage people to bring a notebook and a pen. That way, if there's anything that comes to mind, or to do, or to pray about, or to say, to jot that down while we're praying, I like to... The ideas and the encouragements I get through prayer, I often find end up really encouraging to somebody else. So I've started to encourage people to do that, that you might hear something from the Lord. That's cool. Bring a pen and a notebook. It also makes a statement that I'm expecting not just to talk at God, but to receive something here. And sometimes it's during a time of silent prayer. Sometimes it's as someone else is praying, just a thought comes to mind. But I'll have forgotten what that was by five minutes. And I'll write it down. So you're writing things down. And then all of a sudden, you're coming out of that time with something that you feel like you've heard from the Lord. Yeah. Do you... So what are some of the different kinds of topics you guys will feed into your prayer meeting? Do you ever have somebody come and present? Like people will do, like some call them prayer concerts or whatever, but it's concerts kind of misleading because it's not like a musical concert, but where they'll bring people to kind of give a short presentation on a ministry, and then you'll pray for that ministry. Do you guys ever do that sort of thing as well? We did once. We had Mike Woods come and for 15, 20 minutes, he talked about a trip that him and some other people were going on visiting one of our global partners. So he talked about that, and we had some time where people could ask questions and things like that. And then he stuck around and prayed with us for, I can't remember, 15, 20 minutes for that country and that trip they were about to go on. So that was really cool. And I would love to continue doing stuff like that in the future as it comes up. Yeah. Yeah. That was a great way to settle into thinking about the Lord and His work. People have mentioned that as being awesome. Oh, what else do we pray for? Once we prayed for, we felt like we as a group needed to think about doing hard things and being obedient to God. So I think we shared a quote or a verse about that and spent some time together praying for that. We'll often pray for each other in our own personal word time with the Lord, just knowing how much of our walk with Christ is rooted in abiding in the vine, just being like we need to... So we'll pray for each other's word time, pray for our personal time with the Lord. We pray for His work through us to other people, individuals and groups people are trying to minister to, praying for the lost around us. We've prayed for the kids before. We've prayed for the kids in our group before by name and just kind of got requests from each of the parents to pray for them. Because, yeah, we don't have another time where we ever really pray for them together. And so, yeah, we are grateful for everyone's willingness to put in 20 minutes to half an hour praying for all the kids. What else? We've prayed for our larger church community sometimes. It's cool too, because a lot of times the prayer meetings, you just cramp for time. You're trying to fit it in before a meeting or something. And with something like this, where you don't have to run off to the next thing right away, you've just got the time to sit and linger as a group in prayer. Yeah, people have expressed really enjoying that. Many people are so skeptical, like, what are we gonna do praying for two hours? Like, what are we gonna pray about? And they're just like, wow, there was so much we could pray about. And it was really awesome to hear the things that other people shared. And it just really feels like a spirit-led time where things you don't typically think about or come up. It's really cool when someone prays something you hadn't even thought of, but you can definitely amen it. And it's just, it's really edifying. Yeah, you can linger longer, settle in, see what else comes up. And people talk about leaving that time feeling really refreshed and invigorated. Oh my gosh, yeah. Again, you're not rushing off to a meeting or the next thing, but it's just, you have the rest of the day to enjoy what you receive from the Lord during that time. Wow, that's great. I've been asking people, what surprised you? And they're like, well, I didn't think we could pray that long. And it turns out you had to cut us off. And I thought I wouldn't be able to pay attention that long, but I was sort of surprised how alert I was. Yeah, I just was like, oh, giving up my Saturday morning? Like, I really feel kind of grumpy about that. But then it was like the best thing I could have done, and I was ready for whatever the day came on. I was shocked how refreshing it was and how energized I felt. Yeah, and we've done a handful of these at this point, and people love it. They look forward to it. They get excited about it. And there's times where I'm surprised at how many people are there. And people who I wouldn't think would show up to it show up, and they're excited to be there, and they're looking forward to it. So it's gained a lot of traction, and our group loves it at this point. Really excited about it. Yeah. And I've seen that the zeal kind of bleed over into other areas. Like our regular Sunday prayer meeting was re-energized, I think, after that time. People have talked about how it has helped their own personal prayer life, being like, oh, wow, I can pray big prayers, or it's kind of increased people's zeal to be connected in their own personal time with the Lord. Yeah. So what advice would you give home church leaders out there who want, you know, it's probably people listening who are thinking, I kind of like, you know, we think when we hear people talk about prayer in such a positive way, to say, I want that, like, what advice would you give to leaders that are trying to get this sort of thing going? Or even just anyone in a group doesn't have to be a home church leader, just anyone that has a burden for prayer, what would you say? I think you need an advocate. I mean, my wife was burdened for this for a while before we actually did it, and she's led all of our prayer breakfasts. So a strong advocate and someone who's going to lead the way in this. And then we spent some time talking with our leadership team, getting them on board and getting them excited about it, and then started just talking to other people about it and really trying to hype it up, you know, and making sure, again, the setting is important and making sure it works time-wise and things like that. I don't know what else. Yeah, I would say just get something going with whoever's willing to do it. I think even if it's a small portion of friends that are willing to meet together to pray, or whatever you are saying, I wanna meet with other people to pray for. Even if it's a few people, get it going. 12-year-old and three parents. Yeah, I guess it started for me. I think our group really... I was really grateful for how willing everyone was like, all right, we'll try this new thing and came. And I think that's part of why it was so good is that people that came were really willing to to try something new and try something that they were unsure about. But I would just, yeah, find a... Maybe somebody else, pray that God would give you somebody else that will be on board with their burden to pray more and set something up, try it. Yeah, I wonder how many people are frustrated with their prayer meeting, but then you... Like, one thing some people don't think of is, have you prayed for the prayer meeting? Yes. Like, what's your prayer time for that meeting? Because we need to kind of lay down the cover fire. It's the evil one who's gonna try to intervene. And then if we can get several people praying for that time, then you can kind of get this synergy going where it starts to catch, and then it kind of trickles back into people's personal prayer time and other prayer times that you have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, our women's group has, I think, started to want to pray together more too. We meet to study the Word together, and so now we'll choose things because we're like, oh, well, we want to pray together more now. And like, oh, we never have time to pray for these types of things. And so now we'll start adding those on at the end of our women's Bible studies. And yeah, just kind of, I think it's inspired all of us to want to initiate prayer with each other more. Mm-hmm. I think also talking to people about how it might be a step of faith. Again, for me, I'm not gifted in prayer. It does not come easy to me. So it was intimidating thinking about spending three hours of a Saturday morning dedicated to prayer. So it was a step of faith. But part of me, I think taking that step of faith and being willing to get behind it, support it, talk to people about it, hype it up some, was good for me. Once I was there, I felt like the Lord really came through. It invigorated my own prayer life and was a chance to bond with the people in the room in a really cool way. And I kind of viewed it as my typical prayer time is maybe 15, 20 minutes with God. And this felt like more of almost like a full date night with your wife, uninterrupted versus just 20 minutes talking on the way to someone's house or something like that in the car. So I found it super enjoyable, and it's been something that's, I feel like, enhanced my own prayer life. It makes me want to pray with other people more. It makes me want to spend longer periods of time in prayer. So talking to people about how, yeah, you might be intimidated. It might be kind of scary. You might not feel super excited about it. But take that step of faith and see how God comes through. Laura mentioned Colossians 4 earlier. I always really like Colossians 4.12. Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. And I just read that and I think, could that be said about me? Like, what a great tribute to Epaphras, who didn't show up that much in scripture, but was obviously a powerful leader for God. And that's what I would love to have said about me. Yeah. And these guys, they've talked about some specifics about a particular wineskin with prayer, and I think it's good to get practical because that's helpful. But at the same time, I hope that we can see some of the principles and the attitudes behind this are really what's most important, because different things are gonna work well for different people, different groups. But this is something that we hope that just us talking about prayer, our prayer is that one, it would help our own personal and group prayers, prayer lives and whatnot. But also that you might find some inspiration or some of that longing that we have felt, and we were talking about earlier, where we hear somebody else talking about prayer, and we think, hmm, I'm missing out. I want this. And that it might lead to more prayer in your own personal life, or in your small group, your home church, your church as a whole. But we wanna see a culture of prayer in this church and beyond. So I'm grateful for these guys stepping out in faith and answering the Lord's calling as he's led them to pray, because the other thing I think is important is that we think that I'm the one that's gotta pray, and I've gotta almost get on my ladder and climb up to God, but we need to understand God has put his spirit in you, and he wants you to pray a lot more than you wanna pray. As we talked about as parents, how prayer looks a little different when we see, talking to our own kids. God wants that. So know that any convictions, any longing you have for prayer, that's all put there by him, and just see that as him working in your life, and thank him for it, and ask him, how can I lean into and yield myself to this desire that you put within me, Lord? Yeah. Well, that's about all we got for this episode. I wanna thank Josh and Laura again for coming here and talking with us about prayer. If you'd like to check out more, go to dwellcc.org for teachings and podcasts and whatnot. But thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.