This week we continue our How do you know? Series. Today we will consider how the story of Jesus Christ reinforces that we can indeed know who God is and his love for us. The question you must ask yourself though is how do you know?

How do we know what we know? Welcome back for week three of our six-week series on the Bible’s role in helping us understand reality.  I hope you are leaning in on this topic – and the various resources we have made available: small group discussion guides; daily video devotions, podcasts and a book, the latter which is unfolding a chapter a week.

Today we begin a six-week series – it’s our annual “welcome back, jump in, here we go” Fall series. The question animating all of this is: how do we know what we know? How do we know what really matters?  How do we know who we are?  How do we know what is expected of us?  How do we know what the good life is?  How do we know what happens when we die?  How do we know what we know? There are seven big life questions that form our worldview – that mental grid that helps us process life.  Everyone has a worldview. We are all shaped by the assumptions that shape our thinking. The question is not whether we have answered the seven questions, the question is: are our answers to the Seven Questions any good.

Prayer is one of the most powerful tools we have in our daily lives. But how often do we pray? In fact do we even understand the benefits of prayer in every situation in our life? This sermon talks about when we pray, how we pray, and why we pray.

Prayer is a constant challenge for most people. We need regular reminders of how and why we pray so we will focus on this topic for the next three weeks. Today we have a guest preacher, Dr. Jedidiah Coppenger to help us see God's instruction to pray. Jed is married to Melanie and they have three kids who travelled up from Nashville to be here today. Jed is the founding pastor of Redemption City in Franklin TN and the author of the book we passed out today, 21-Days to Childlike Prayer. Jed will be looking at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 5 and pointing us to the importance of praying as a child to a father, not simply trying to become more spiritual in prayer.