Message: “Neighbor Is a Verb” from Ross Stackhouse

Message at 23:50. So, how does prayer actually work? If we ask God for something, does it actually change anything? And if God is completely good and just and loving, why wouldn’t God just do what is good and just and loving without our asking? We’re going to explore these questions, and, as we’ve been doing in this series, we’ll reflect on how maybe our perspective and questions about prayer are more of the problem than prayer itself. Maybe the asking in prayer goes back to the very foundation of what prayer is all about in the first place: relationship.

Scripture References: Luke 11:1-13

Related Topics: discipleship | More Messages from Ross Stackhouse

From Series: "The Prayerful Life: a Series for Beginners, Experts & Skeptics"

Everyone has experiences with and opinions about prayer. Though many folks have tons of good experiences and positive views of prayer, there are still many others (perhaps more) who struggle with prayer. What if prayer--for those with the good experiences and those with the not-so-good experiences--is like a land we haven't fully discovered yet? We want to help folks grow in prayer as the ultimate space of growing intimacy with God and being shaped by God’s heart for an eternal kind of life in the here and now and beyond. Prayer is the space where we are still with God, listen to God, thank God, get angry at God, grieve with God, confess to God, petition God. It’s a lifelong garden of relationship where we cultivate trust with the One who made us, saves us, and sustains us. It’s the incubator where the Spirit shapes us so we join Jesus in his restoring work so Earth is as it is in heaven.