This morning we will continue to talk about the nature and purpose of prayer. In the last few weeks we have seen that prayer is God’s language, it is how He communicates with Himself and how He invites us to join the divine conversation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Prayer is where and how God reveals His intimacy toward us through the consistency of His actions and the faithfulness of His character. Prayer is not simply how we communicate with God or how God communicates with us prayer is where our relationship with God is built, it is where our hearts are searched and His heart is revealed. Prayer is what we were created for, to live in constant communion and communication with God, to know Him and be known by Him. We have seen that intimacy is not a sudden event or a passionate moment, intimacy is built by consistency of character, by the faithful choice to love and by a commitment to live in constant communication. From the moment man was created God has consistently sought us out, He has done the work of forming us, walking with us, revealing Himself to us and then willingly sacrificing Himself so that He could redeem us. When Adam and Eve sinned everything about man changed but nothing about God changed, His desire for us remained the same, His commitment to us remained the same, His plans for us remained the same, His love for us remained the same because God is love and God does not change. God’s character is revealed in Scripture but it is experienced in prayer, when we learn that He listens when we speak and that He speaks even when we don’t listen we begin to realize that the God we should be running to has actually come running to us. God created Adam and Eve so they could walk with Him in the Garden of Eden and He sent Jesus to bear our sin and restore us to relationship so that He can now walk with us in the exact same manner though the relationship of prayer. Prayer is not where we get God to do our bidding it is where we learn God’s heart, trust God’s character and experience God’s intimacy. We were created to walk with God in prayer. Revelation 5:8 tells us that in the throne room of God, where God sits on His throne ruling the heavens and the earth, that there are golden bowls filled with incense and that the incense itself is the prayers of the saints. This means that our prayers are eternal, not only does God hear them but He continues to hear them, He has chosen that our prayers stay before Him at all times. It also means that our prayers will live on. We will get new bodies, there will be a new heaven and a new earth but our prayers will continue to rise before God for all of eternity. God has chosen to fill the room where He sits upon His throne with our prayer. Prayer is not temporary, it is not plan B, prayer is the relationship we were created for. Last week we began to see that prayer is not only how we build a relationship with God it is how God builds community in and through us. Intimacy is built through consistency and God builds our community upon His intimacy. In our culture we work so hard to make sure that each person knows that they are loved that we often forsake the beautiful truth that God loves each of us because He loves all of us. This is important because it means that we should actually be joined by the love of God. We are not fighting for His attention, or competing for His affection. When God is listening to my prayers He is also listening to your prayers in fact I believe that God’s greatest joy is when He is listening to our prayers because we were not only created for Him we were created for each other. Jesus said that the world would know that we were His disciples if we would love each other but even more important He said that the world would know that He was sent by the Father if we lived in unity with each other. Our most powerful witness is actually when we live in community with each other because of and through living in intimacy with God. The language of the Lord’s Prayer reveals that intimacy in the Kingdom of God is personal but it is not private, it begins with God’s love for me and then grows into God’s love for us until it becomes our love for each other. We are not complete, mature or functioning in the fullness of our purpose, power or witness until we have surrendered our lives to Jesus in such a manner that He has not only made us one with Him but He has also made us one with each other. Last week we saw that the corporate language of the Lord’s Prayer prevents us from personal preference, today I hope we will see that the corporate language that Jesus taught the first believers caused that first church to devote themselves to praying together and that praying together built their faith, established their community and was the key reason that God was willing and able to “add to their number daily”. When we pray together God is glorified which means that when we pray together men are redeemed.