The Importance of Prayer with Dr. Andrew Sandlin

Non rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you gonna bark all day?

Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt.

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage.

Going to all the world and make disciples not going to the world make buddies not to make brosives, right? Don't go in the world make homies, right?

Disciples, I got I got a bit of a jiggle Nick.

That's a joke master. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him pray then like this Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's Matthew 6 8 through 10. Welcome everyone to Apology a radio. I am very excited. Oh, I missed the transition. Sorry good. It's a lot when you're trying to do everything but It's officially Christmas season over here at Apologia, it's been Christmas season over here since September that's true August for my household.

It was officially Christmas season November 1st, we're all in. How about you you uh. You in the Christmas spirit. I'll get fired if I say I'm not. Today's gonna be a fun show a little bit different lineup pastor Jeff is On his way to Georgia right now to do some Abolition bill work there, which is we're very excited about to be praying for Georgia and we can end abortion there.

So I have My good friend here and fellow pastor Zach Morgan, how's it going, buddy? Hey, hey, it's like a half provoked half Apologia radio mashup mashup show we just did one only we were in reverse seats and Are you how are you feeling?

Are you you back to normal you tired you recovered? Yeah, I'm good I'm good. I'm square. I'm feeling pretty good. We just got done with reform count 22 y 'all it was a blasty blast I was amazing went really well and It's taking me a couple days to recover, but I think I'm I think I'm good this week.

Thankfully has been surprisingly kind of chill. We had literally we had all of our appointments canceled one day, which was kind of out of nowhere. And nice. Yeah, exactly. I got caught up with some stuff.

So that don't happen a lot. Yeah. But so we were just talking well, let me go ahead and bring in my guests here. So I have my my dear brother Andrew Sandlin on here and we love him a ton. He's been such a blessing to us and he's probably Literally the kindest most gracious Christian man that's ever lived on the face of this earth.

I agree kind sides Jesus and Better description would be sparklingly handsome. Yeah, that's Hey brother, welcome to apology radio.

Thank you guys boy. I have it a lot to live up to with that kind of introduction, but I Love apology. I love you guys. Love Jeff and everybody there appreciate the fact that you guys Put feet to your faith.

James says faith without works is dead. Well, you have true faith. I appreciate your works. And one thing I can't I didn't have time to say it to reform Khan. By the way it's a great conference, but a lot of people know you guys obviously for your Biblical fidelity stand for the Bible stand for biblical Calvinism Covenant theology stand for the pre-born and so on but what a lot of people don't know.

Most of your enemies even maybe some of your friends is the great sacrifice Self-sacrifice your love for the church and for believers and that sure means a lot to me. So it's a privilege to be with you guys.

Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that and you you know, you mean the world to us. So I I don't only God knows how much you've influenced my thinking and so don't blame me for that. Well, you you've been influenced by some good people too.

So yes, of course. But let's so here we were starting to have a conversation and I said, let's save it for the radio show. So Zach was like, hey, that's cool. You're playing Christmas music. What about Thanksgiving?

You know and I announced on on Tuesday November 1st, like hey, we're it's Christmas season here, you know, and it's it's on. You know, mm-hmm and some people were like, oh poor Thanksgiving. Yeah, and I was like Thanksgiving has a day we've given Thanksgiving a day, you know it has its day for turkey and stuff and mm-hmm and fatness and late and you know getting in a meat coma and stuff like that it's got a day but That's it.

It gets its day. I Would just say Thanksgiving is much more Christian than than Christmas probably, right? Well, I mean we are celebrating the birth of Christ. We are but it's kind of It's kind of been a skewed a little bit.

But uh, those are fighting words. I better just shut my mouth about that. I love Everything Christmas. I'm ready. That's great. I appreciate that. I saw somebody yesterday that we know very well I'm not gonna mention your name, but there was a compromise.

Did you see the compromise within this family husband and wife and there's a Christmas tree up, but it's decorated for Thanksgiving. Until Thanksgiving and then they can do Christmas decorations on the Christmas tree, right?

And I say, you know Glad your marriage is gonna do. Okay. Yeah, that's good. It's a little blasphemous but um, maybe needs to exert his headship a little bit more there, but um.

What do you think Andrew. Well, I think you're both partly right years ago. I wrote an article titled boy. I don't want to butcher this but Thanksgiving is not Christmas's entrance ramp. So I think in the commercialization of modern Christmas people want to leap over sure Thanksgiving and Course Thanksgiving is an explicitly Christian holiday.

Yeah, and Actually, though Christmas is too. There's a lot of misunderstanding about that. I've written about that. Also, I won't go into those details, but Actually, they are in their own way each holy holy days, that's really what holidays mean holy days and.

So I think we need to celebrate both and advent season all of those. But I really don't want to just sort of zoom past Thanksgiving as though well That's sort of secondary. Let's get that done with so we can start buying Christmas gifts.

Yeah. They're both important so we could do a whole show on that. But I can see that Zach's very uncomfortable with that. So we'd better move on.

So, yeah, like as I mentioned we just got done with reform con Andrew was there spoke to a phenomenal job and. So a couple things. I just want to mention We have some leftover Reform con exclusive merch that will be going up on the store probably tomorrow.

So I didn't want to announce it quite yet, but it should be going up tomorrow. So the next time we do apology radio, which actually be in two weeks because next week we're on our leadership retreat. So we're off.

But we'll be showing you some of that stuff that's available. That's some really cool stuff that we did just for the conference and. And our plan is to make this An annual thing, so be list to be listening.

We'll be announcing plans for the next one. Hopefully soon some stuff in the works right now. But it went really well and a lot of people on that were blessed and I was blessed. So I want to also give a shout out to and thank our two of our big sponsors that Armored Republic and David Reese.

He was did you you saw David's talk, right? Oh, yeah. Oh phenomenal. It was amazing. Such a great brother. Yeah, he's he's such a great guy. So we're so thrilled to be partnering with armed Republic. We'll be hopefully doing some more stuff here this next year with them and the same with new st. Andrews unfortunately Dr. Ben Merkel was supposed to have taught but and his wife Rebecca was coming to do a mashup with sheologians and he had like The world's nastiest eye infection I've ever seen in my life.

He actually got stuck in Orlando almost had to be hospitalized. It was it was bad. So he had to last-minute kind of call off, but then that gave us an opportunity to do cool little panel discuss panel discussion on ending abortion and does he got to do the she loaded show, but.

But all that to say we love new st. Andrews. We're glad to be partnering with them and as well and we actually debuted their new Ad at reform kind if you haven't seen it was really good. So Like Ben's doing a lot.

Yeah, he's actually UK right now. So yeah, he's he is doing a lot better praise praise God for that all that to say Couple reasons why we want we want to have Andrew on today. He's got a new book coming out very soon.

It's not out yet, right? The one on marriage you mean is that the one that's what are you coming out? Well, I'll have you answer that in a second. I know you had a book coming out soon. So maybe I had the wrongs.

Okay, that's right. It is on marriage. Forgive me. I was thinking it was on prayer, but you've already released a book on prayer right and He actually just recorded Monday before he he left here to go back home.

He recorded a bunch of Academy classes for us on prayer. We did it. We got a new set. It looks phenomenal and I can't wait to see those. So we got we got some new stuff. We're gonna be rolling out this next year and the Academy trying to put a lot more time and effort into that for all access Members, which as always thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for supporting us. You make all of this happen Reform kind couldn't have happened without our supporters. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay, so Andrew, why don't you? Tell us about your new book that's coming out then and then let's then we'll focus on prayer because I know it's something that's very Important to you and I love to hear you talk about.

You bet so briefly the book is creational marriage. One problem evangelicals have had I mean for even a couple of hundred years as they have Rightly stressed redemption Christ great work on the cross and his resurrection and so on and that of course is absolutely correct.

But they've tended to diminish or under emphasize creation but the fact is you can't have redemption without creation and when they have stressed creation they have Argued against Darwinism and evolution as they should have argued for six-day creation and historicity of Adam and Eve universal flood.

All of that is correct. But there's more to creation than that, I mean creation is the OS the operating system of of the universe and one reason that The sexual revolution and so-called same-sex marriage and transgenderism has made such headway not just in culture but in the evangelical church is because they've just had a weak view of creation and their view is just as long as people trust Christ and come to church and Are sort of sanctified and go to heaven when they die basically everything's okay not understanding that God has an OS.

He does have an OS for the universe and if you try to break that OS it will break you. So this book is not dealing with that specifically though. I have another book on that Which is a creational worldview this is Creation is related to marriage and what the biblical teaching regarding creation has to do with marriage.

I mean it deals with everything from so-called same-sex marriage to egalitarianism complementarianism to The the great evangelical singleness celibacy paradigm as though if you're single you're sort of are truly more spiritual than others.

So-called this is popular in the PCA safe spaces for the same sex attracted. And just a number of other I think there are. Well 16 chapters, it's not really long. The book's only about a hundred and sixty seventy pages so you could.

With short chapters, but it's really important stuff. I've dedicated it to my wife Sharon. We've now been married 40 years. She's put up with me that long and thank God for that. But anyway, that's kind of a quick summary of Creational marriage be available on Amazon.

I'll post it. Maybe you guys can promote it. Thank you for let me promote it now, of course, but be on Facebook Twitter and all those other wonderful Christian Platforms, I'm speaking facetiously, of course, but it'll be promoted there and elsewhere.

So hope you can maybe get a copy of nice Christmas present for for married folks and and single folks about to get married.

You know what? So when are you planning on releasing that? Hopefully within the next two or three weeks, okay. So a quick question because pastor Zach and I do a lot of premarital counseling. Actually, I had at one point I had I think three different couples this last year this and 22 that I was doing premarital with.

Which is I love it's one of my favorite things. Do you would this be a good book? To hand out to my couples that are going through paramount premarital counseling. Well the risk of sounding boastful and that's.

Sincerely that's not what I mean at all. But I believe the truth not because I wrote it but the biblical theological truth of this book would be ideal. It would have been helpful 50 years ago, but particularly today with all of the Confusion about the roles of a husband and a wife and transgenderism and all that.

I think it would be ideal. I mean what we have today guys here is the complete scrambling the complete chaos of sexuality 50 years ago. Obviously, there was sin. Obviously was adultery. Obviously there was homosexuality.

Obviously there was pornography, but There wasn't this utter chaos. This rounds today. Well, this book is designed to look at God's creational pattern his OS. To show again what he teaches and to oppose and to get rid of the chaos.

Well sounds like I'll have to order a lot of those a lot of copies of that then to hand out. So I'm I'm excited for that. I see I see our buddy James O 'Brien is in the chat as I mentioned on the live show last week.

He's almost always in the live chat and he had quite the quite the trip Home, he his flight. He got him left here went straight to Heathrow. I was like a 14-hour flight and then it was delayed he Missed his connecting flight had to get another flight that flight was delayed.

And then he had to like he got to Dublin and then he had to take a bus and a taxi. I don't even know what time he got home. It was a nightmare, but it was great to see James. He's such a blessing. Yeah, I love that guy.

He stayed with me and Be praying for him in Ireland and the work they're doing over there. To try to end the slaughter of their pre-born neighbors over there. And by the way, James, it is raining like crazy today.

So he just told me it's raining over there. This weather's awesome, isn't it? Oh, man. It was nice. It's nice. We are finally an awesome Weatherville USA for for a while now, and I'm excited Andrew gets to live in paradise 24 24 7.

Well, not socio-political paradise. That's good. Maybe.

Climatological paradise, but nothing else. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing that they haven't kicked you out yet over there.

Man, I'm telling you. I don't know. I must be doing something wrong not vocal enough. I just keep speaking the truth and thus far they've left me alone. So we'll see if that continues.

Yeah, if you don't know he lives in California and It's a lot of faithful Christians are fleeing, California. Well, you've absorbed a number of those families over the last couple years. So right. Excellent.

Okay. Well, let's go ahead and switch topics. And so you just recorded I think was what three or four different Academy. Three three three so on prayer. And so I'm I'm just gonna open it up for you here promote tell us what those were about and I know this is a topic that gets you very excited and Unfortunately, I think is also a topic that doesn't excite most Christians.

So I'm just gonna open it up let us have it.

Luke I agree with you and I must tell you that I have come to believe that that omission and That the emphasis is is Diabolical. I mean think about it for a minute if you were Satan and You could influence good Christian people.

We're not talking now about liberals modernists pro-abortionist pro-homosexuals, but people that just Generally believe the Bible and want to follow Christ want to be a part of the church to be not very effective in the faith.

One great way to do this would be to dampen their prayer life or have them push it to the margins. Because in the Bible prayer is a chief means of God's doing things and changing things on the earth. Now God is sovereign and we as Calvinists believe that God doesn't need prayer.

He doesn't need anything. In fact, he doesn't need us to preach he gets it angels down to preach and evangelize. But he's chosen most of the time not to do that. He's chosen To make prayer his work in the world rather the advance of his kingdom to a large degree contingent on very believing powerful prayer.

You ever notice how often prayers mentioned in the Bible, you know, I think it's one of those things guys. It's mentioned so much. We just kind of read over it, you know, it's kind of like faith and belief.

Well, yeah prayers in the Bible. Let's get to this next cool thing. Let's get to election or Let's get to limited atonement or something. Nothing wrong with those. But if you'll get a topical Bible the advantage of one of those things, they're not perfect.

Just look at all the times prayers mentioned in the Bible. Look about look at the fact that the Saints in the Bible all of the Saints were praying people. Look at our Lord. His life was bathed in prayer.

It's remarkable how much the Bible emphasizes prayer and how little praying we do. Now I would suggest that in the 19th century in England and America in particular this is much less true. They have their own problems the Victorians some of them too pietistic and various other things but in general they tended to stress prayer a lot more than we do and I don't think it's a coincidence that the 19th century was the great century of Postmillennialism and particularly the sending of missionaries England and the US and missionaries all over the world.

And there was this great vision that we would bring the world to Jesus Christ. Not every single person of course, but bring the world it's in great revival and great Reformation under the power of the Holy Spirit and As this prayer kind of cool this vision for worldwide Dominion godly Reformation.

Global Reformation global Dominion kind of cooled. Also. I think those two are linked. I think the fact that we don't emphasize prayer is one great reason that the church is so weak. Now, of course, there are theological reasons that the church is weak.

The church is cowardly. That's all true. But I think one reason that's not mentioned enough is the church is basically prayerless very few prayer meetings in church. Christians don't spend much time in prayer.

I'll have them say some of them to me guys. Well, I don't have time even 10 minutes a day to spend in prayer, but they'll spend an hour and 15 minutes on Facebook. Well, of course if you've lived as long as I have and even as long as you guys have you know that you have time to do.

What you really want to do, right. If you consider prayer to be important, you can get up 10 or 15 minutes earlier or even more. But at least 10 or 15 minutes to pray. This is a major theme of the Bible.

Another thing. So do you want me to keep going Luke? I don't ask a question go for it. All right. So the theme of these talks was prayer changes things. I Thought of that. I don't know how many of you remember Christian bookstores.

Are there really Christian bookstores left a few there's most of them have gone out of business because Amazon and all that. They used to be these little Christian bookstores and I would facetiously call them Christian car stores.

There were very little books very few books in them all sorts of nice little trinkets and bumper stickers. With all sorts of try honk if you love Jesus. Christians aren't perfect. Just forgiven and all these things that are just sort of Jesus is a little pilot.

Jesus is my co-pilot. And so on one of them I remember that I would scoff at his prayer changes things. But actually the more I thought about that The more I thought, you know, that one absolutely is true.

Because in the Bible when the Saints prayed things changed for the better. New Jesus prayed what happened? Well things changed. When Peter prayed when the early church prayed things changed. There were bad things going on or things not going on.

That should have gone on the advance of the gospel. Maybe the climate there needed to be some change in the weather. Somebody's heart needs to be drawn to Jesus Christ food need to be produced. I'll just everything physical and non-physical.

So there was a great need. What would people do? They wouldn't say let me get my credit card out nothing wrong with that. But if it was a great and Super Bowl need that to get on their face before God and say God we need you to do something.

Now there's something very interesting here. There was a Canadian the Canadian Christian about. I think it was back in the 40s or 50s read through the Bible looking for nothing looking reading looking for nothing, but answered prayers.

He made an interesting count. I can't verify that. He's absolutely correct, but he's probably correct. He notes that almost 70 of all prayers prayed in the Bible by Christians by Saints or in the Old Testament by God fearing Jews almost 70 of those prayers were answered.

That is God did what was prayed now, there could have been a lot more than 70 It's just the Bible didn't tell us all of them that might have been answered. Now that's a remarkable total my friends.

Does the Bible promise that God will answer every single prayer of any every single saint saint every single time. It does not but the Bible does take it that as a rule as a default if You love God and you pray from your heart to the Lord and you wish to please him and his kingdom.

You can expect him to answer prayer. Now there's also the notion that we should pray about, you know big things well somebody's unconverted him. We should pray. It's a really big issue. We don't want them to go to hell.

But like, you know. It's kind of beneath God that if I'm running late and need to be at an appointment. To find me a parking space close to the door. God's not interested in that. Well, actually that's false.

That's to say that it's really to say that God's not interested in every detail of our lives. Now the Bible says we should be praying always. Jesus says that again and again and by always he means always continually.

He doesn't mean Continuously as though you're doing nothing else, but continually that is like the ticking of a clock tick-tick-tick. It's going on again and again and again. We should be praying hundreds of prayers every day.

And obviously I don't mean that you're bowing your head and closing your eyes. Certainly not why you're driving your automobile, right? But as JC Raya once said and I love this language guys He says every day we should be sending.

Don't you love the way some of these old-timers would put things. They said every day. He said we should be sending to heaven hundreds of winged messengers. They're shooting them up to heaven Lord. I need your help Lord.

I'm giving premarital counseling and I don't have like 20 minutes to pray God. Please give me wisdom. I lack wisdom. I'm crying out to you promised in the book of James. You would give wisdom Lord. Please help my children.

One is weak. One is faltering. Please bring their hearts back to you the church that's a great need in the church financial or a need for a new location or a need for some particular financial need whatever it is people in the Word of God pray and Generally God answered prayer.

This is true of physical healings, too. And I want to make this very clear I'm not talking about Bethel's healing ministries. There are no healing ministries in the Bible the place where lots of people come and everybody just claps and jumps around like Comanche Indians, excuse me Native Americans.

Excuse me First Nations. I don't mean that at all. I mean that we get on our face before God and trust God to fulfill the promises of his word. For too long Christians have not taken prayer. Seriously.

Yeah, I'll say one more thing. I've said a lot but I'll say one more thing about this. It's remarkable that generally Arminians tend to pray more than Calvinists when we have the theology of prayer and in my view They tend to lack a robust theology of prayer.

Their view of prayer can often lead into sort of manipulating God. I'll do this and you must do this but the Calvinists believe in the sovereignty of God. We believe she's the truly sovereign God and if he's truly sovereign that means no man can thwart his will.

Well, then why don't we pray for God to do things in the earth? Now a little cop-out that some Calvinists have and it's just a total cop-out as well. I don't know if that's in God's eternal decrees or his predestined will.

Yeah, but we're never in the Bible called to pray according to God's secret eternal decrees. There's secret for a reason. We're called to pray according to God's written covenantal will that's how we should pray.

So if someone is sick in the church, we don't say well. Somebody gets cancer. Let's say Luke comes to you. Well, I don't know brother whether we should pray for them. What if it's God's will for them to get cancer and die?

Did anybody in the Bible ever act that way? No, they didn't act that way if it is God's gonna take him to heaven. We ought to just pray in faith that God's gonna fulfill his promises. God can do what he wants to do.

Here's what we need to understand. God ordains Predestination in his eternal decrees, but God equally equally determines His own secondary causes. He authorizes what we call secondary causes or contingencies under his sovereign will.

Those two are a part of God's plan just as much as predestination is so God ordains means and therefore We ought to use them. Okay, so that was like six sermons in the last like 10 minutes, so I'll stop.

Go for it. Okay, so a couple things I was making some mental notes. One I Always especially when you've I'm sure you've encountered this Andrew but like what when you're going through the doctrines of grace and talking about God's sovereignty.

Inevitably that question comes up right like well, why are we praying of God's sovereign? And You know, I I always explained to like well. You know, well, they'll say like well, you know people say like prayer changes things like you just mentioned as our prayers actually changing things and and I've always Taken that opportunity to kind of tell people like well when we're praying.

When we're talking to God like we want to align our hearts with his. Right, and so I think of it as like prayer changing us right when we're praying to God. We're aligning our thoughts with God and that's the goal.

And and you know, it's funny I think as Christians To kind of go back to those stats. You were given about 70 of God answering prayers. I think most Christians Think that God answering prayers they define got God answering prayers as Him doing what they're asking for.

But in reality, I was I would argue that God is Always answering the prayers it just might not be the answer that we want right and we we have that all the time with people were counseling like Well, I've been praying for this and you know, it's not happening or whatever and it's like well God's answering you.

It's just not the answer that you're looking for you know and there could be a number of Various reasons why that's happening sins a very big reason why I think that happens a lot of times. But so all that to say I was gonna ask you like, how do you?

How do you reconcile that then from. And you touched on a little bit, but if you could dive deeper like how do you reconcile that as a reformed? Christian who has a very high view of God's sovereignty.

How do you reconcile us? Praying that changing things with God's sovereignty.

Well, so I think It's really important to understand that we pray according to God's covenantal promises and not according to what we assume we know. Right about his eternal purposes so a couple of things there Luke they're differing views here, but In the Bible when we use the term answer when God answers prayer.

It actually does mean that God does what we say. Yeah, when God doesn't do it. It's called not answering prayer. He says they will call on me and I will not answer. So if Paul would pray and got forgot to do something he didn't do it.

That's not God answering by saying no, that's not God not answering now. God may have a good reason for not answer. Yeah, I'm not saying that. So does prayer really change God? So let's talk about that for a minute.

The answer is yes and no we know that God in his nature doesn't change. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever and God himself says I am the Lord the true God Yahweh and I change not and yet.

Of course, we all know a lot of texts where God says I'm going to do this and people pray and he says, okay I'm not gonna do that. We see all of these texts that are embarrassment to some Calvinist. It shouldn't be that God relents or repents.

Does that mean that God changes his eternal decrees? Well, of course not but as John frame says he does often Willing to change his stated purposes with man. Because he implied in his stated purposes is the truth that if people repent then he's willing to change those purposes.

Oh. There's so many examples of that in the Bible think God comes to Jonah and says go to Nineveh that depraved Culture and say in 40 days. I'm gonna destroy you. He didn't say tell them in 40 days I'm going to destroy you if you repent.

He said I'm gonna destroy you in 40 days. God didn't destroy them. God's not lying because implied in these covenantal God's covenantal dealings is I Might very well avert my judgment if you repent and pour out your heart to me.

Now a number examples that Elijah one thing I pointed out was Elijah with the widow's son. Remember this. I won't have time to go into details. But during the Great Famine God's judgment on Israel He was staying with the widow and God had miraculously provided for them and this widows precious little son died.

Now think about what Elijah did not say and by the way when that happened that woman was distraught you've come here. You've eaten our food. You claim to be a man of God and now I'm left in this family with nothing.

My son is gone. She was distraught and God doesn't say it's wrong for her to be distraught. Notice what Elijah did not say he didn't say you need to accept. This is the will of God. He didn't say that He prayed and he prayed in the language there.

It says when he cried was he cried very loudly. He stretched himself on the boy and the boy was raised from the dead. Am I saying that that's a normal thing? Of course not. That was very extraordinary.

But the answer to prayer is not extraordinary and crying out to God is not extraordinary. But that's the language that's used he got on his face and he cried out to God. And I want your listeners to understand this wasn't one of the little quiet time prayers Jesus If you please be nice to me, it would be nice if everything goes well today and please be nice to me.

He stretched and cried out to God. It was a great firm and powerful prayer prayers. We rarely hear today. Yeah, well that got God's attention. Not that God wasn't paying attention. Is that God was moved and by the way.

That's another thing we need to understand. There is this interpretation of divine possibility. That's just dead wrong. It is true that God doesn't have emotions such that he can be knocked off his plan.

Or the God's nature changes that of course is not true. That's a denial. That's a denial of the biblical view of God. But it is true that God has holy emotions. God get angry. God gets angry. God gets very sad.

He's grieved. I'm just reading right now the book of Ezekiel. God gets furious at his people. Yeah, now there are people that say well, that's just an anthropomorphism. That's just an anthropomorphism.

That's not really. That's not God's just speaking to us as if as if we're a little baby or something like that. But they wouldn't say love is an anthropomorphism. They would they would say no God really is loving well, then if God's really loving God can get angry and God can get sad.

That doesn't mean that changes his eternal purposes. The fact is he has purpose to become angry. He has purpose to become sad. He has purpose to delight in his people and therefore he's determined to do that.

So we need to restore a biblical understanding of God's emotions, that's one aspect of this issue of prayer.

That was excellent. Thank you that thank you for clarifying some of those terms. Well, I think hopefully that blesses people. Do you wanna I have a question? It's gonna change topic a little bit. So do you want to jump in on anything?

Yeah, I think one of the first things that you think about to yourself, especially after you know talked about Your book on prayer was just conviction. We all get conviction when we talk about prayer, right?

And we immediately say I'm just not spending enough time on it and I noticed a couple people in the chat. They're like, oh, you know, I'm not good at prayer. So I guess a question would be why do we fall off the wagon when it comes to our prayer life?

What is uh, what keeps us from doing that and how can we get back into it? You know a healthy prayer life.