- Bless the Lord, oh my soul,

and all that is withinme, bless His holy name.

You're holding prayer requests,

welcoming CBN and Regent together,

take a hold of those prayer requests.

They've come, the faithfulnessof God is our appeal.

It's all about God's mercyand faithfulness and goodness.

That's why we worship.

I have one, my husband,John, he has stage 4 cancer,

it's in his bone, the medications

gives him many emotionalissues, pray for my father,

that he'll accept the Lord as his Savior,

my sister'll be healed of her addictions.

Hi, Pat, please pray for my daughter.

She suffers from fear,anxiety, and depression.

Pray the Lord deliversher from these oppressions

and gives her His peace.

Would you pray for me,that I would overcome

the disabilities of heartfailure and diabetes,

not being able to walk?

Would you join in me faith?

It's not the volume of our prayer.

It's just talking to the Lord.

He's right here, it's blessing Him.

Father God, thank youfor the name of Jesus.

We come in the name of Jesus,on the basis of your mercy,

truth and faithfulness.

You are good, oh Lord, our God.

You have shown yourselfto a thousand generations,

faithful and covenant-keeping.

Now, God, we're asking foryour mercy, your favor.

Lord, we'd be so bold as toask for your intervention

in these situations, these specific ones

that we're looking at, we're holding them.

Thank you, God, thankyou that you hear us.

Now, Lord, deliverance,peace where there's a storm,

healing gifts to flow down,the power of the Holy Spirit

to point to Jesus, overcomer, come,

speak into troubled situations,for families, for marriages,

every need, Lord, you're hearing them.

You love us and you care,and we would call it done

on the basis of who you are,

in Jesus' name we make our prayer.

Amen.- Amen.

- You may be seated.

Sincerely welcomingour streaming audience,

I know it's global CBN partners,

and those in Regent classesin different settings.

Partners receive somethingthat looks like this,

The Week of Prayer, and it's beautiful,

and the expressions that have come back

is what we're gonna bepraying all this week long,

and so we take care of those,

and it's a covenant of prayer.

But today, Dr. KyleIdleman, Pastor Idleman,

leader in a 10,000, oneof the top 10 churches,

25,000 people hear him preach each week,

and I was thinking,imagine, call the pastor,

call the pastor, pastors25,000 people in a week.

He was telling me beforeabout a great staff

and a team that serves, but he's written,

Don't Give Up, it's featuredon The 700 Club this morning,

and 700 Club Interactive.

He has a now word tobegin the Week of Prayer,

would you welcome Pastor Kyle Idleman?

(congregation applauding)

We appreciate you, pastor.

- Amen.

Well, I am honored tobe with you all here,

and especially since you'rekicking off this week of prayer.

If I were honest, I'dtell you that sometimes,

prayer kind of goes in my bookshelf,

a little bit like myexercise and nutrition books

go on my bookshelf.

Like I like to talk about it,and I like to read about it,

but sometimes, it doesn'talways translate into my life,

and so, when we take a weeklike this, and we set it aside,

we're not just here to talk about prayer,

we're not just here tolearn what the Bible says

about prayer, we're here topray, to commit ourselves

to pray because if allwe do is discuss it,

then we've missed the point,

and if all we do is learnabout it, but we don't put it

into practice, then we miss the power,

and so, my hope is thatthis week would be much more

than a class in prayer, butthat it would be exercise,

that we would be able toput this into practice.

I had a great experienceyesterday morning.

So I finished with Easterweekend the week before,

and we had 42 Easterservices at our church,

for real, and I didn't preach all those,

in case you're wondering, butit was an exhausting weekend,

a lot going on, and now, Itraveled some during the week,

and I came back and Ipreached Saturday and Sunday,

and then, I went to theairport to come here,

and I was excited to behere; I just wasn't excited

to travel here, right?

Like if I could justteleport, yeah, I'd love

to be a part of that, butit's just, it's a big day,

and there'd been a lot going on,

and I was sitting in theairport, not feeling discouraged,

just feeling tired, more than anything,

and I prayed, and I said, God,

I know that this is a great opportunity

and I love the ministry of CBN

and what God has done over the years,

but I just need someencouragement in this.

I just need, I justneed to get up for this,

and five minutes later, there's a guy,

it's a good friend of minewho saw me sitting there

at the airport, we didn'tknow that the other person

was gonna be there, he cameover and started talking to me

and he's a former chairmanof our elders at church,

he's the president of a reallysignificant sized company

and we sat down, or hesat down next to me,

we started talking, and Itold him what I was doing.

He said, Do you know my story?

And I said, well, Iknow some of your story,

and he said, Do you know howit relates to The 700 Club?

I said, no, I've not heard you tell this.

He said, Let me tell you the story.

He said, 1975, he said,my mom became a Christian,

became a believer throughthe ministry of The 700 Club.

I said, I had no idea.

He said, well, let me tell you more.

He said, out of that, hesaid, she had four kids,

and she said, all four of uskids are either in ministry

or in church leadership, as he had been.

There's 26 grandchildren.

He said 25 out of the 26grandchildren walk with Jesus,

and many of them are in ministry,

many of them are serving the Lord,

and he said, I can trace all of that back

to how God changed my life, my mom's life

through The 700 Club, in19, I think he said 1975.

And I said, that is exactly the word

that I needed to heartoday, and maybe that's just

a good word for you all,too, just to understand

the ripple effect of how God is using you,

and my prayer for you isthat God would give to you

in your ministry whatHe gave me a glimpse of,

of your ministry, thatwhat you're doing here,

and what you're a partof is more significant

than you realize, and it probablywon't be fully understood

or recognized until oneday, you get to heaven,

and you get to meet my buddy,

and you get to meet his mom,

and you get to meet those25 out of 26 grandkids.

I said, I'm gonna tellthem, I'm gonna tell them,

we're gonna pray for 26 out of 26,

and so, there's a young man named Zach.

That's the 26th one, andI just wanna take a second

and pray for Zach.

God, I don't know Zach, I haven't met him.

I do know he's got 25 siblings and cousins

that love you and follow you,

and I pray right now that you would,

by the power of your Holy Spirit,

that you would open his eyes,

and that you would soften his heart,

that you would send someone into his life,

that would help him seeyou, and I know he's had

the truth put in him, I knowthose seeds have been put,

have been planted and been watered,

but God, you're the one who makes it grow,

so we just agree together inprayer, and we pray for Zach,

that you would causethat to grow in his life.

It's in Jesus' name, everybody said?

- [Congregation] Amen.

- Amen, amen.

So I'm gonna talk to you for a few minutes

from I Peter chapter five, verse seven,

but before I get into that,on Monday of this past week,

after finishing withEaster, I wanted to spend

a little time with my teenage daughter.

So I have two daughterswho are in college,

and then my, I have a daughter who's 17,

and she's a junior in high school,

and I have a son who's 14.

So my 17 year old, I hadn't,

I just hadn't had the opportunity

to spend as much timewith her as I wanted,

and so, I wanted tospend some time with her,

and she was going to thisexercise class on Monday,

and I thought, well, that's it.

I'll go with her to this exercise class,

I'll spend some qualitytime with her at the class,

and I asked her, I said,hey, can I go with you?

And she knew that I wasgonna be an embarrassment

in this class, so she's like, no,

and I'm like, well, Ipay for these classes,

and she's like, yeah, and so--(congregation laughing)

we went together to this exercise class,

and it was called a HIIT class.

Do y'all know what HIIT is?

So I thought it was HIIT like hit record,

like it's a popularclass, it's for everybody,

that kind of a class,

so HIIT stands for HighIntensity Interval Training,

or you know, hellish--(congregation laughing)

Torture, so I didn't knowwhat I was getting into,

it's a short class,lasts less than an hour,

and they put you into thisreally vigorous exercise

for 45 seconds, and thenyou have 15 seconds of rest,

which I don't, and 45 secondsin, and 15 seconds of rest,

and I knew, almost immediately,

that I'd made a horrible mistake.

(congregation laughing)And I, I was desperate

to get out of there.

The trainers quickly honed in on the fact

that I was gonna needsome extra motivation

to complete this, and so, Istarting hearing things like,

you know, push yourself harder,

and you know, get your heart rate up,

and you're stronger thanyou think, which I'm not,

and you know, thingslike one of them said,

tell yourself, there's noother place you'd rather be.

(congregation laughing)

And I'm like, no, likeif I tell that to myself,

myself's gonna say, Ithought we were honest

with each other, why areyou saying this to me?

Myself knew that wasn't gonna be true,

and a couple of my favorite ones,

one of the trainers said, you know,

remember, 45 second intervals, she said,

you only have 40 secondsleft, which is like, saying,

hey, what's wrong with you?

You've only been doingthis for five seconds,

and then the other thing that he said

that was actually quite helpful to me,

one of the trainers said, hey,I think this trainer said it

mostly because nothingseemed to be working,

but the trainer said,if you're gonna be here,

you might as well give it all you got.

And I thought, you know what?

That's actually true.

You know, if I'm gonna be here,

then I might as well really lean into it,

and if I'm gonna be here,then I might as well get

as much of it out of it as I can,

but that wasn't my instinct.

My instinct was to kind of lay low,

rather than to lean in, right?

And I think for us spiritually,

that when it comes to prayer,

our instinct is notnecessarily to lean in hard.

We know it's important, we recognize that,

but we don't always put it into practice,

and so, after the class was over, she,

one of the trainers thoughtthat she was gonna get me

to come back, bless her heart,

and she was saying things like,hey, I know this was hard,

but if you keep at it, it'll, just,

your body will get used toit, it'll feel more natural.

She said, you'll reach a placewhere if you don't do this,

that the day's just notgonna feel quite right,

and I'm like, really?

I don't think that'sgonna ever happen ever,

but I do believe that's truewhen it comes to prayer,

that it can be, at times, itcan be, at times, an exercise,

and we don't go into it excited,

we don't, we feel likethere's so much going on,

and we're distracted, butonce you see the power of it,

once you recognize, oh,this is what I was made for,

once you see how God moves,then you just can't imagine

a day going by withoutit, and so, I Peter,

Peter is writing, as youknow, he's writing to a group

of Christians who are scatteredbecause of persecution.

So they're dealing with severepersecution and suffering

and Peter's gonna write to them,

and he's gonna tell them things like,

hey, don't be surprised bywhat you're going through.

Don't be surprise that thisis what life is doing to you,

as if something, the way he puts it,

as if something unusual is happening.

Now this is important for us,

because we almost immediately recognize

that being a follower ofJesus doesn't make you exempt

from suffering, and so sometimes,

we get this idea that if I follow God,

if I'm His child, thenthat means everything

is gonna go smoothly for me,I'm not gonna have struggles

or difficulties, but in your hand,

you have prayer requestafter prayer request

that shows otherwise.

Don't be surprised.

Life is difficult.

Faith, we do not helppeople when we make it sound

like faith is God doingwhatever we want Him to do.

That's not faith.

Our faith is in who God is,

our faith is in God's faithfulness.

Our faith is in the factthat my redeemer lives,

and that anything that happens to me,

whether it is broken, whether it is bad,

He can work it for good,He can make it beautiful

in His time, right?

But it doesn't mean you won't struggle,

and so he's writing to Christians

who are first generation Christians,

so they haven't had the examplesthat some of us have had,

of what it looks like toendure and to persevere,

and to pray our way through these things.

They're first generationfollowers of Jesus,

and some of them are thinking,

this isn't what I signed up for.

I thought things were gonna be different,

and so, in I Peter 5:7, Peter says,

Cast all your anxiety on God,because He cares for you.

Cast all your anxiety on God,because He cares for you.

And for these Christians,anxiety was a big deal.

They were waiting for things,

and things would get worse, right?

Many of them had already, by this point,

many of them had already lost their homes,

many of them had already beenseparated from their families,

some had already lost life,but there was gonna be

a lot more of that to come.

And yet, Peter says,in the middle of that,

cast all your anxiety on God,because He cares for you.

When you first read that verse,

the word cast, feels to me,a little bit out of place.

In my mind, that brings to the surface

an image of a fisherman.

Peter's a fisherman, so I think

he's using fisherman terminology here.

Cast all your anxiety onGod, so that's the picture,

I think, you cast it out,but what's the problem

with casting it out?

What happens when you cast out a line?

You reel it back in, and sometimes,

the anxiety feels like that, sometimes,

the weight of what westruggle with feels like that,

but prayer is not just casting it out,

then reeling it back in.

It's not just coming tochurch, praying, worshiping,

and then, you walk out,and you reel it back in.

You're carrying yourweight all over again,

so the word cast here, literallymeans transfer the weight.

That's the picture.

It's transferring the weight.

Now, some, in our culture, would say,

the way you deal withanxiety is by letting it go,

just releasing it, but you don'tget to do that with weight.

If you just release your weight,

the weight that you carry,it's gonna come crashing down,

and it's gonna do even more damage, right?

And so, we don't justrelease it, we transfer it,

we transfer it over to God,

we cast all of our anxiety on Him.

What's that look like?

I think David teaches us somethingabout that in the Psalms.

When David prays about his struggles,

as he prays about hisanxieties, about the enemies

that oppose him, what's David do?

Well, he'll start off hisprayer by talking to God

about his anxieties.

God, here's my situation,here's the struggle I have,

here's what's going onin my life, but then,

as you keep reading apsalm, there's a shift,

he flips the script, and at some point,

he stops telling God about his anxieties,

and he starts tellinghis anxieties about God.

That's what it looks liketo cast your anxiety on Him.

Yes, you share your struggles with God,

you tell Him about it, He cares,

but at some point, you start telling

your troubles about God.

That's part of prayer, too,that's what we do with worship,

and that's why, as yousing, as we sang together,

worship and worry don't coexist,

you're gonna go with one or the other,

and as you're singing about who God is,

you can sense a peace, youranxieties, what's happening,

your anxieties are being cast upon God,

as you're singing aboutGod's greatness and power,

and about the victory you have in Jesus.

So this is what it looks like, but, but,

it just depends what you're going through.

Like, some of you canget on board with it,

you sign off, like yeah,okay, that's helpful,

it's a good word, unless,

unless you've been trying it,

and it just feels too overwhelming,

you've been casting your anxiety on God,

but you don't wanna reel itback in, but there it is.

So a couple years back, Igot a call about a couple,

a young couple that was in the hospital.

You know, I always mentionthat the church where I serve,

there's a lot of peoplethat go to church there,

so when I, most of the time, we have guys

who are super gifted at, youknow, this pastoral care,

and they spend a lot of timein hospitals visiting people.

When I get called to go to the hospital,

it usually means that somethingreally tragic has happened.

Like you don't want me, ifyou go in for a tonsillectomy,

and you wake up and I'm there,

something's gone horribly wrong.

Like you don't wanna see mevisit you in the hospital.

So I get called to the hospital,

'cause of this young couple.

They were expecting a child,

and they had, in fact,called family and friends,

it was their first child,they called family and friends

to meet them at the hospitalto celebrate this moment,

this huge moment, butwhen the baby was born,

the baby was stillborn, andso, what was supposed to be

this incredible celebrationended up just being

this heartbreaking grief,

and I knew this couple alittle bit, but not well,

and I walk into this hospitalroom, and when I walk into it,

so the mother is in the bed, hospital bed,

and there's just some familyand friends standing around her

offering support and so muchso that there really wasn't

a place for me to stepin, and someone said,

hey, dad's in the next room,

and so there was another roomkinda attached to that room

and he was in there, and I wasn't sure

I was in the right room,'cause I stepped into it,

and the lights were out,

and then, I could seehim, as my eyes adjusted.

He's sitting in a rocking chair,

and he is holding the lifelessbody of his baby girl,

wrapped up in a blanket.

And he's saying goodbye.

Now you all know this, but there,

you know, there's justalmost nothing you can say

in those moments, and so, I sat down,

you know, across from him,and just began praying,

just to myself, you know.

And then, after a few minutes,I knelt down beside him,

and I began to pray overhim, and I could feel him,

as he began to just weep and cry.

And in the middle of myprayer, I heard this noise

coming from the otherroom, where the mother

and where the friends and family were.

It was singing.

So they're singing ChrisTomlin's How Great is Our God.

I don't think they knew the verses,

but they just kept singing that chorus,

how great is our God,how great is our God,

how great, how great is our God.

And each time they went through it,

it got a little bit louder

with a little bit more conviction.

You know, just singing it together.

You wanna know what it looks like to cast?