Malachi 4:5-6
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Our goal is to return of the heart of the father. And to do so we have to understand the ways of the father. As sons and daughters we understand the things are parents taught us intentionally and unintentionally.

God is working in us to impart his ways in us so we can be a representation of Christ to the world.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Our job is to be his representation. When we do this we have generational impact.

Jentezen Franklin said it this way “one generation picks up rocks so the next generation can eat corn.”

Jesus departing words to his disciples made sure to address this:
Matt 28:18-20
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What are the ways we need to walk in?

Spiritual Disciplines
Scripture Reading, Memorizing, and Reflecting
Prayer
Fasting
Worship
Service
Solitude
Discernment
Evangelism

I’ve broken it down to 3 key elements:
- Understanding the scriptures
- Prayer
- Worship

These are the steps we should be applying in our daily lives but it can be difficult because of personal culture.

What is culture?
Culture is defined as the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.

I am a big believer that everything rises and falls on culture.

In order to be the best representation of Christ we must realize that he is calling us to a place where our culture meets his culture. In that process we must conform to his culture. But that’s not easy to do for us. Just like it’s not easy to get a baby to conform to the culture of socks. They just yank them off anytime they can.

Craig Groeschel said it this way “culture is a mix of what you allow and what you define.”

Your culture is either proactive or reactive.
Proactive culture:
- Predefined understanding of how you solve problems
- A long term budget plan
- Parenting strategy
- Health standards for you or the family

Reactive culture:
- You solve todays problem with no regard for the consequence for tomorrow
- When money comes in it goes out with no regard for anything in the future
- Inconsistent parenting tactics
- You eat to satisfy desire or you are inactive due to the craziness of life

Here are 3 questions to help you determine your culture:
1. Do I/we take time to plan upcoming events, issues, budgets, etc?
2. Do we stick to the plan?
3. If the plan doesn’t work do we reassess?

So how do we apply those 3 key elements?

Determine your cornerstone habit.
- It all starts with a cornerstone habit, this habit acts as the lynch pin for your daily success.
- “The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.”― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
- So we can’t extinguish the habits that we have created but we can leverage them for the better to change the outcome.
- He continues by saying this: “This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future: THE HABIT LOOP” ― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
- So how do we change the habit? Febreze story
- This is just to get the system starting and after a while you will be on autopilot

So this brings us to the question of today, how do we reapply?

I want to give you 3 steps:

1. Reading The word
They key to this is start small. Don’t feel like you have to read 5 chapters per day to get in touch with God. If Scripture reading isn’t routine right now that’s okay because like anything else this is a muscle that needs to be built up.

Start by reading a verse or chapter per day. Remember One verse applied it is better than a book read and wasted.

The point of reading the scripture isn’t nearly to check something off but its to change the way you walk on the earth, when you encounter scripture be ready for a culture shift in you.

So here is a couple of practical things you can do:
- The SOAP Method
- A proverb per day
- 1 proverb 1 psalm 1 New Testament

But the question you should always answer is: How am I applying this today?

In order to apply you have to understand. One thing that has helped me understand is commentaries, podcasts, YouTubing actually teachings on studying the Bible.

The Bible can seem daunting, but it isn't when you answer these five questions:
1. WHO is this too?
2. WHAT are they talking about?
3. WHEN were they talking about it?
4. WHERE were they when they were talking about it?
5. WHY are they talking about it?

These questions will help you determine the context. Because context is everything when it comes to understanding the scriptures. You want to understand those things so you can breakdown what is called the principle bridge, and then you know the principle you can apply today.

Then from there we shift into the application, which I refer to as the power of armoring up with the scriptures. This might seem silly but I challenge you for the next 30 days to armor up before you go to work. This is quite simple:

ARMOR CHALLENGE:
- Read the scriptures
- Put on the armor of God: As you are getting ready quote it. I am putting on the…..
- Stock Up Ammo: Write down one or two scriptures that as you are faced with temptation you can fight the enemy with

The key factor here though is that you can’t armor up for the day without knowing and understanding the scriptures.

2. Prayer
Prayer is our direct link to God to make request known and to communicate with the Father. There are all sorts of examples in the scriptures that show us the power of prayer: Elijah with the fire and the rain, Daniel’s fast, The Lords prayer, Jesus’ many prayers for healing, etc..

One of the things that we find throughout these prayers though is that whatever happened based on the prayer was a byproduct of the prayers focus being on the Glory of God moving forward.

James says “You have not because you ask not and when you ask you ask amiss.” IS it possible that somewhere within the culture of church we stop approaching God with the reverence of His glory being fulfilled and started approaching through the demand of expectation?

Prayer should accomplish one thing: God’s will.
So when we pray we should pray for alignment with that will, that others would see that will, that we would be ambassadors of that will.

Jesus teaches us to pray this way:
Our father who is in heaven how holy is your name,
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen,

Breakdown:Recognize the power and position of God, Understand that his kingdom is the dominant force and we need it here, That all provision comes from him not our works, we are simply managing the opportunity he gave us, forgive us as we have forgiven people, often times prayer will illuminate in you the need for you to forgive, its not just the enemy distracting you its the spirit showing you what you need to deal with, ask for protection, and recognize that everything is his anyways you are wanting to be apart of His plan.

Pray like that.
30 day prayer challenge:DO these 3 things for 30 days when you pray:
1. Put God in his rightful place in your life - Lord, father, God above it all, “Alpha and omega, etc…
2. Understand that you are here to be his kingdom on earth - God allow me to walk in your kingdom today and be an ambassador for you so that people around me can see your light. Give me opportunity to bring people to you today.
3. Forgive, ask for forgiveness and ask for foresight - God, forgive me of the known and unknown sins against you, I forgive (insert name here) and help me to continue to walk out that forgiveness, and allow me to see the attacks of the enemy come from a long distance off so that I can be aptly prepared.

3. Worship
To end this trifecta, is worship because often times the understand of truth and the application of speaking and praying it will naturally deepen your understanding of His goodness.

Worship is not a time to pray about your problems. It is a time to magnify our Father, priest and King.

Worship is very simple, take 5 minutes per day to simply close your eyes and meditate on the goodness of God. You are simply taking the time to express your love of God. ITs a time to focus on the intimate portion of your relationship. You are going over the highlight reel of who has proven himself to be.

The key here is that in order to fully worship you have had to experience Him. And the beautiful thing about the first 2 steps is that it gives you a pathway to understand his ways, pray for the vision to see them walked out, and to see how God has enforced his promises and truth.

These things help give you the ammunition to celebrate and praise God for all the things he has done. Because our celebration over small revelations make the pathway for deep revelations of who he is.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?