There are times when we pray when it sounds like God is little more than our Amazon Wish List. We constantly make requests of God, asking God to do more and more for us.

But, when we pray, we can't lose sight of who we are praying to. When we pray, we are entering into the presence of the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them...including us. So rather than seeing prayer as a time to ask for more, we need to remember prayer should be a time to thank God for what God has already done.

Have you ever noticed that some people sound completely different when they talk to God than they do when they talk to other people? Sometimes they talk to God and sound like they're reading from the King James Version of the Bible or like they've just discovered a Thesaurus.

​But God doesn't care how elegant our prayers sound. What God really cares about is that we are real when we pray. And being real means that we aren't afraid to tell God how we really feel or to ask God for what we really want.

Often when we talk about prayer, we say that we will pray for someone or something. But when you for someone or something, how many times do you really pray for them? If you're like many people, praying for someone or something means that you might pray about it once or twice.

But what if God wants us to do more than just pray for? What if God wants us to pray through? What if God wants us to pray and keep praying until something happens? In this sermon, we'll talk about how we can be more persistent in our prayers.

One of the most common definitions that you'll hear for prayer is that prayer is talking to God. And this means that many of us do all the talking when we pray. But prayer is really a two-way street. 

So a better definition is that prayer is talking with God.  So, when we pray, we need to learn to do a better job of listening to God. In this sermon, we'll talk about how we can listen to what God wants for us and from us.

As life begins to return to normal, many of us feel anxious about what the future holds. Whether it's taking off our masks, getting on an airplane, or eating inside a crowded restaurant again; there's a little to feel anxious about. 

So what do we do when we experience these occasional bouts of anxiety? What do we do when we feel like things are beyond our control? We turn to the one who is always in control and share our fears and anxieties with God through prayer.

One of the biggest reasons that we don't fight fair with the people we love the most is that we have unrealistic expectations for the other people in our lives. We expect that everyone around us won't make mistakes or mess up.

So, when we find out that our relationships aren't perfect, we can take it out on the people we're supposed to love. But, if we want to fight fair, we have to remember that nobody's perfect...including us.

You can't really fix a problem if you don't know what the problem is. But, when it comes to fighting with our family, we're often afraid to address a problem head-on. Instead, we behave in passive-aggressive ways hoping that the people we love the most will just magically know what's going on in our heads. 

But that's never going to happen. So, if we want to fight fair, we have to be willing to be direct and face our problems head-on.

There's an old cliche that says there are three sides to every story - your side, their side, and what actually happened. One of our biggest problems when it comes to fighting fair is that we forget that not everyone sees things from the same perspective.

In this sermon, we'll be reminded that we all see things differently. And we'll be talking about what we can do to learn to see things through someone else's eyes.

Over the last year, we have all had a lot of moments where we've thought "If only I could do ______ then things would feel normal again." And, even as things begin to slowly return to some semblance of normal today, many of us are continuing to look forward to the future when we can this "if only" things once again.

​But, in our hurry to reach the future, we can't forget that God calls us to follow him in the present.

As the world around us continues to change, our calling as a church has not. But the church is not capable of fulfilling that calling on its own. And that's because the church is not some self-sustaining organism. No, the church is made up of individuals - just like you. 

So, if the church is going to be who God has called us to be, we all have to do our part. And God has given you gifts that no one else has because God needs you to make the church what God has called it to be.