Your prayer life is a reflection of your own peculiar and precious relationship with God. It grows and blossoms in the closet as you draw close. Sure, your Father knows everything about you, but He still delights in the journey of discovery that you are taking together. 

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I’m the proud father of four kids. I’ve got three sons, one daughter, and many of you who are mothers and fathers will absolutely relate to this. Each of my children have their very own personality. They have their own unique leanings, ways of being interests. They respond differently to different modes of communication. And so that’s why as parents, we can’t approach them all in exactly the same way, because each of them responds to different things in different ways of kind of communicating our love and our concern and our desire to see them prosper and see them excel.

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And in the same way, you are a child of your heavenly father, you know. And, you know, he deals with, you know, differently than your best self would deal with your kids. He deals with you as an individual, a unique and very special expression of his love and humanity. You know, your prayer life is a reflection of this really peculiar and precious relationship that you’ve been called into. It grows and blossoms in the closet as you draw close to your maker and you begin to discover who you are as much as who he is.

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I mean, of course, our father knows everything about you, but he absolutely delights in this journey of discovery that you’re taken together with him. I love James, chapter four, verse eight, and he teaches us this. It says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And, you know, to me, this is exciting because it shows me that the responsibility lies with me. It lies that the responsibility is yours.

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You have been given an open, open invitation to initiate this conversation. The question really is how near do you want to draw? There’s no limit placed here. You can come as close as you want to and as you draw near to him, he will draw near to you. It’s also at the same time like a spotlight that reveals something about we talked about priorities yesterday. It reveals something about our priorities. It reveals something that sometimes can be somewhat shocking in some ways, hopefully not too shocking, but it reveals that we are as close to God as we want to be today.

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You are as close to God as you want to be, because if you are not as close to God as you want to be, there is no reason for you to stay that way. If you will continue to press through and continue to press in and continue to learn his ways and continue to yield your heart and continue to let go of things that hold you back, etc., etc.. All of this vast palette of ways in which we can lean further in and draw closer to you can know him in a more intimate, more fulfilling and more satisfying way that honestly, I’m not trying to kind of lift myself up in any way.

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I mean, I am pressing just like anyone else. And sometimes I you know, of course I feel and would say I want to be closer to God. And but in that it demands that I allow him to teach me and to train me and carry me through some discomforts if I really want to close in and get closer to him, because the things that are discomforting to my flesh need to be peeled away and stripped away so I can operate more freely and more fully in the realm of the spirit.

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And yet it’s really like the fruit of our pursuit evidences this desire in a show us. He has shown us the way he’s handed us the keys. He’s placed his power in our hand to become all that he designed us to be and to step fully into sonship, daughterhood, whatever you want to call it. He has furnished us with promises for every area of living here and now, and even beyond the grave. There’s not one aspect or realm of life that he has.

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Not provided for, yeah, beforehand, it’s all there for the taking and this miga world, with all its flaky rewards, pale in comparison to what Jesus can offer the hungry soul. You know, no amount of money, fame, fortune or freedom can compare with the overwhelming joy of knowing who you are and knowing whose you are, knowing the one who made you. You know, we’ve all got so much more to learn, so much more to discover.

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And in in a small way, I can relate to this amazing prayer of Paul in the book of in the letter of Philippians. You know, he is an I here is a valiant saint who understood where real value is. Yeah. He says this I’m reading from the amplified Bible. But just hear this prayer. Hear the cry of his heart for my determined purpose is that I may know him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognising and understanding the wonders of his person more strongly and more clearly that I may in that same way, come to know the power outflowing from his resurrection, which it exerts over believers, and that I may so share his sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into his likeness, even to his death, in the hope that, if possible, I may attain to the spiritual and moral resurrection that lifts me out from amongst the dead.

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Even while in the body there are realms of experience that are as powerful and transformative as being like like a dead man being raised from the dead. And we can know that kind of power. We can know and experience that kind of presence right here on this planet if we will allow our hearts to press through and make this determined purpose. And so my prayer today as we conclude this series on prayer, this this kind of this wonderful time of considering the endless pleasures of prayer, is that your journey with our father, with papa will be a blessed one, rich with revelation and filled with laughter in your heart, mind and soul would be moved to pursue him ever more fervently that, you know, you’ll enjoy the endless pleasures of ever deepening relationship with your maker and in every way that your life would be enriched beyond recognition because you have engaged with eternity.

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Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website. DavidLeemartin.Com. Have a great day.