We are in a series on how we get disconnected from God and how to reconnect with Him. And the answer is prayer. Last week we talked about why we ought to pray; this week we will look at some reasons why we don’t pray. Why do we seem to struggle to have a meaningful prayer life? Why are there seasons where it seems almost impossible to pray or to remember to pray? This morning we will look at three major reasons why it is hard to pray, being encouraged by the fact that Jesus Himself acknowledged to His disciples that prayer is hard.

We have been in a series called Disconnected, looking at how we get disconnected from God and why that is so fatal to our life and our being. And now we will look at how we reconnect with God; how we stay connected to God. And the answer is prayer. We will be talking about prayer for the next several weeks: what is prayer? Why do we pray? Why is prayer so hard? What about all of the hard things Jesus says about prayer? Join us as we become people of prayer and a church that grows ever-dependent on God in prayer.

We are in a series called Disconnected, looking at what happens in our lives when we become disconnected from God, and how to connect or reconnect with God in our lives. When we live life apart from God we begin to slowly lose our life and our vitality; it’s when we disconnect from the life God offers us in Jesus that life begins to not hold together anymore. The Bible talks about those who are not connected to God in relationship as lost. Lost in our sin, lost in ourselves, lost in this world. When the Bible speaks about the lost, it’s an endearing term. A picture of a shepherd distressed because he can’t find his sheep; a woman distressed because she can’t find something valuable to her. If you lose something you don’t care about, you stop looking for it immediately. You are called “lost” only because you are valuable to God. Your friends, neighbors, coworkers, family, who don’t know God are called lost because they are incredibly valuable to God. Our Father in heaven knows us even when we don’t yet know Him, and He is distressed when we are lost and rejoices when we are found.

Think about everything we use our phones for; connecting with our loved ones, building relationships, figuring our what is happening in our world. With all of those things we use our phones for, statistics show that the average person needs or wants something from their phone about 140 times per day; as a result, the average American spends 5 hours and 24 minutes on their phone each day. One of the major problems with us wanting or needing something from our phones nearly 6 hours a day is that our phones were designed to only last 5-6 hours a day while doing those things disconnected from a source of power. Because the moment we disconnect them and use them for life, they begin to die. And if they remain disconnected, they will eventually be completely powerless and dead until we connect them again. The same thing is happening to us as human beings when we live life disconnected from God; we begin to slowly die. So join us as we look at what Psalm 24 and Acts 17 have to say about our connection to God.