How Do I Pray?

Would you please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. We continue on our study through the Sermon on the Mount, this great teaching of Jesus. And today come to the Lord's Prayer.

We'll be looking at Matthew 6, verses 7 through 15.

Matthew 6, starting in verse 7, please follow along as I read.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespass.

Please pray with me.

Lord, draw our attention and our focus to your Word this morning, and by your Word to Christ. We pray that as Christ instructs us how to pray, that it would inform our prayer lives. That it would teach us how we ought to pray regularly. That it would spur us on to be people marked by prayer and therefore dependence on you.

Lord, we confess that apart from you and your help, it can be hard to understand your Word, even such familiar passages. So we pray for the illuminating power of your Spirit to teach us, to guide us into all truth and give us wisdom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

It's often been said, maybe you've heard this phrase before, prayerlessness is godlessness. Prayerlessness is godlessness. Or another way you could put that is prayerlessness is practical atheism. To be absent in prayer, to have no practice of prayer in your life, for prayer to be a second thought, means that at some level we believe something wrong about God. We miss something about His care for us, about His power, about His presence.

Prayer is the lifeblood of the Christian life. Prayer is evidence of a real spiritual pulse. Prayer demonstrates real spiritual life, spiritual vitality. So you and I must be people of prayer. That's why Jesus gives special attention to this as He addresses true righteousness and what it looks like. How is true righteousness, righteousness, Matthew 5:20, that is greater than the scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus's day. Righteousness that exemplifies the righteousness of Christ, given to us, lived out in our lives.

Jesus here is in a section showing us that righteousness is lived out from the heart. This is a section where Jesus is digging down into our motives, showing us we truly must be righteous from within. And here, in many ways, He addresses our motive in prayer. What are we trying to get at? And we can ask ourselves, what's our motive if we don't pray? What's our motive to pray? How does what we know about God inform and influence the way you and I pray, and the words that come out of our mouths and are uttered forth from our hearts?

Our prayers should operate like a flashlight. But not a flashlight pointed at us. You can think of a flashlight there in a dark room pointed at an object, and it will illumine one thing, that object. If our prayers are pointed at us, and our motivation for prayer is centered on us, then we'll be illumined, but that's it. We'll be bright in our own eyes, and maybe in the eyes of others. But what about a flashlight in a dark room shined at a mirror? How do you and I even in prayer do what Jesus said in Matthew 5:16, letting our light shine before men, our good deeds so that they will glorify our Father in heaven?

We want to be a mirror that magnifies the brightness of God's glory, does not just soak it up for ourselves and look inward, but reflects God's glory in everything we do. We want to reflect God's glory even in our prayer. How might you and I magnify God's great name in our lives in our prayers? How will we live righteously from the heart in our prayers in a way that tells of His glory? How do we pray so that we are centered on God and on His will and therefore have lives centered on true righteousness? In short, Jesus's instructions for prayer are going to teach us, how do you pray as a Christian?

Note that these words are not meant to be rote. You can repeat these words in prayer and it would be good for you and us to do so. But these words and only uttering these words should not be the extent of your prayers. These words you should look at as an instruction manual, a template for prayer in your life, that shows you what kinds of prayers to pray, what focus to have as you pray, big and small.

Pray Reverently

And so we're going to look at, how do you and I pray prayers that honor God and are centered on His will? Several points. Number one, first being here in verse 9. Pray reverently. If we're going to live righteous lives, if we're going to pray rightly with good motive from the heart, we must pray reverently. You'll notice this actually first mentioned there in verse 7, where we pray reverently because we're not to pray like the Gentiles. What do the Gentiles do? What was the practice in Jesus's day of pagan religious people? They thought they would be heard because they prayed well and they prayed a lot.

Friends, reverence does not mean eloquence. Eloquence, being good with your speech and being able to turn a phrase and being a golden tongue of sorts, does not equal godliness. God does not hear you more because you pray with great words that are beautiful. Don't open a thesaurus or a dictionary before you pray, so that God will think you've prayed in a really beautiful way, or so that others around you will hear it and think, wow, look at them. We should pray simply.

To pray reverence does not connote that there is any need for you and I to innovate when we pray. And do something special or unique that would bend and incline God's ear towards us. Friends, look at the first way you speak to God, our Father. We talked about this last week, that God is our Father. You and I have done nothing to enter into this father and child relationship. The adoption we have through Christ is all God's work. We did not create it. We cannot conjure anything up then to bolster that relationship. It is as strong as it will ever be because God the Son, Jesus Christ, hears the words, "in you I am well pleased." So you and I, as Christ's brothers and sisters, hear the words, "in you, Aiden or Jonas or Margaret, I am well pleased."

And so we don't have to do anything to get God's ear. The first way that we are reverent is simply looking to our Father that we pray to and knowing that we have an entrance with Him, knowing that you and I can stand before Him at any point because Christ today stands before God on our behalf and intercedes for us. You have an entrance with the Father. You have an eternal place in the throne room of grace. To pray reverently is to recognize that fact and to joyfully live in light of it. To ever come to God over and over. It is irreverent to avoid prayer. Simply come to Him, make it your practice. Be with your Father.

Thomas Watson, a Puritan pastor, said, "Prayer is the soul's breathing itself into the bosom of its heavenly Father." Don't you want to be near to God? And know that you are near to God experientially? Pray to your Father. It will strengthen that for you. He knows what you need every time you pray and every time you don't pray. He cares for you. God is your Father, cares for you more than you could possibly ever care for yourself. He cares for you better than you could ever care for yourself. He loves you. You can bring anything to Him.

When Jesus first instructs you to pray and shows you a pattern and says, "Our Father," He's telling you, God wants to hear from you. As a father or as a mother, you know this relationship with your children, or you've seen it. It pains us as parents when our children would conceal things from us. I have some children that will tell me anything that's on their mind, and other children who I feel like I have to pry it open a bit. I gotta get a screwdriver out. It's like getting into a clam shell. I want to hear. I want to know because I love my children. God has that feeling, that warmness in His heart towards you. Pray to your Father.

But notice how our Father is described. Our Father is our Father in heaven. Our Father is the one who sits on the throne in heaven. We'll pray in a minute, in verse 10, "Your kingdom come." Our Father is the King in heaven, the King of heaven. The one who sits above it all, who reigns over all things, who has everything, friends, everything placed in the palm of His hand. Psalm 2, in verse 4, talks about God looking at the plans of men, wicked men riling against Him, and it says, "He who sits in the heavens laughs."

Friends, God has all of reality right there before Him. It is His. He rules over every affair of mankind. There is nothing that is not out, that is outside of His rule. He is the God who upholds the universe by the word of His power, and yet at the same time keeps the very smallest thread of your existence, tiny cells in your body moving around, oxygenating blood, pumping your heart. God is the sustainer of life. He's the one who rules over your life.

Therefore, God is the only one that should receive our prayers, and He is the right one to bring our prayers. He can handle anything. He will accomplish His good purposes by your prayers. Isn't it remarkable that here Jesus tells you to pray, and some of the prayers that we will be instructed to pray are meant to accomplish things? When Jesus tells you to pray here, He is not telling you to offer up wishes to the King of heaven. To pray reverently to God is to know that God will answer your prayers and use them. That prayer does affect change, not in God, but in reality around us. God's sovereign purpose and plan, shown from the very early pages of Scripture, through the Psalms, on through the New Testament, is that prayer works. That God hears. And He weaves your prayers into His perfect providence.

How is God accomplishing His perfect will in all the earth? Through your prayers. Your prayers are one of the most mighty things in the universe because God uses them mightily to accomplish great things. No prayer then is a small prayer. You pray to the King of heaven. When you pray to this God, who is your Father and who is the King of heaven, and who is your King, to pray reverently means that you pray, look there in verse 9, "Hallowed be your name." To pray to God is to pray for His glory. His glory as the most consuming desire. As the thing that characterizes and undergirds and is the basis and foundation for every prayer. If I am praying something for another's glory or for my glory, I'm not praying God's will. God's will has to be the environment that all my prayers are prayed, the heart posture that all my prayers are prayed from.

Because when we understand who we're speaking to, we revere Him. We pause. The King of heaven, mighty God, everlasting Father, God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, who dwells in inaccessible light. We revere Him and we must pray for His glory. And so praying is not a flippant thing. It's not casual though it's familiar. It's not flippant though it is familial. Think about the way you'd speak to the president versus the way you'd speak to your child. You're going to address the President of the United States in a certain way, I would hope. As a position of authority that God has placed. There is an element of honor and respect due there because of the office. How much more then God? The highest place of authority, the one who places every other authority. God. We should speak to Him with reverence. You can speak to Him simply. You can speak to Him in a familiar way. But we should not speak to God in a way that is flippant or denigrates Him and His glory in any way.

Think of the example of the Psalms. Over and over in the Psalms, it says the purpose of every created thing. There are multiple Psalms that will tell you, everything that has breath is to praise the Lord. All things, seas, rocks, trees, leaves on trees, sand on the seashore, deer, sheep, odd animals in the Amazon that you and I don't know about. Humans. Everything that has breath, everything that has been created is for one purpose and one purpose alone, to praise God, to reveal His glory, so that we would worship Him. Your prayers then should be an act of worship. And I would recommend that they start in worship. This is a pattern. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." That's what I want to pray first. I want to set my heart right before God, and I just want to spend time worshipping Him. I want to praise Him. I want to extol His name. It would be good for you to sit and simply think of all the ways that you can thank and praise God for who He is and what He's done. You might find that all of your time in the morning is spent there. You have to spend the rest of your day filling in the rest of your prayers. So when you and I pray and understand that we were made to worship and everything else is, and that we pray to our Father, that He's worthy of our praise, we pray reverently.

Pray Big

Secondly, we pray big. Did you know that your prayers are supposed to be weighty, massive, uncomfortable, perhaps? Look at verse 10. What's the first thing we're told to pray for? "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Your kingdom come. You are meant to pray for God's reign. You're meant to pray for the kingdom plan of God, His perfect rule and blessing over all things to come about. You want to see the earth filled with God's glory. You want to see every wrong righted. You want to see ultimately the kingdom plan of God culminate in Christ returning and renewing the heavens and the earth, and establishing perfection, eliminating every barrier to fellowship with Him and giving us every good gift, multiplied over again to enjoy in Him.

And yet today you also want to pray that God's kingdom plan would happen all around you. That hearts would begin to turn towards God and that the reign of God would not just be something distant in the future, but that it would be present in our lives today. Jesus tells us, "Seek first the kingdom." In our prayers, are we seeking the kingdom in our lives? Do we want God's reign within us and lived out in our work, in our homes, in our pastimes? We want to yield to the King. And so when we pray, "Your kingdom come," it starts with you and me. There's a massive picture of the kingdom coming. But we want the kingdom to come in our hearts. Christ is our King. He now reigns over our lives. We pledge allegiance to Him as Lord, and we want to live that out all the more each day. Lord, today we pray, would you increase my devotion for Christ? Would you increase my ability and strengthen me by your Spirit to live a life worthy of your name?

We want to pray for God's kingdom agenda in our church. Prayer is the engine of any spiritual activity in our church. We must be a church that prays. A church that will fail to pray, will fail to depend on God for His purposes in us. We must pray together. This is why we pray so much in our services. There's kind of no limit to the amount that we should spend praying together. Both in this room and outside of it every day of the week. We want to pray for God's purposes here. And so we ask ourselves, "Am I ready for God to answer the prayer that, would I be willing to see God convict sin in this church and make it be known?" Would I be willing to be the kind of people who would answer this prayer and be the answer to this prayer, and that when sin is made known, I don't answer with judgment, but I answer with grace, the grace of the gospel of Christ? There is therefore no no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Am I the one who will enter in and say, "Yes, God has pardoned your sin and does not hold it against you, and neither will I." Am I ready and willing for people to walk through these doors that are different than me, that are uncomfortable, that look a lot like the world and not like churchgoers, and welcome them and give them the gospel and love them sacrificially. God's kingdom purposes in the church, what are they? That people would be saved, that the name of Christ would be magnified, that the gospel would unify us around Christ.

Ultimately, we also want to pray for the perfect reign of God to come. We want to pray the prayer that ends Scripture. "Come, Lord Jesus." When you pray for God's kingdom to come, you are praying for the return of Christ. You are praying for the judgment of all of God's enemies. You are praying for your future glorification. "Your kingdom come, your will be done." Not just for the big kingdom purposes of God, but for His will in us today. Do not miss the forest for the trees. When you think about God's kingdom, and you think about God's will, think big. Think about all the things that God could do. Think about all the promises of God, that He will build His church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Think about the promise of God that He is holding you fast in every trial. Look at the big picture as you pray for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

As you pray for God's will, let me encourage you to know how to do that by praying with God's Word. Prayer is nothing more than promise reversed, than God's Word formed into an argument and then retorted by faith upon God again. "God, this is what you said. Accomplish your will. Lord, you said that you would be my good Shepherd and lead me through dark valleys. I am trusting you for that. Lord, you said that you will build your church. I'm trusting you for that. Build your church today. Lord, you said that you will never leave me nor forsake me. Help your presence to be known to me today." Look at all of the good and grand purposes that God has promised for you, to you, to His people. Pray God's will with Scripture. When you pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," you are praying cosmic prayers. Universe-sized prayers.

Perhaps you've heard people use the phrase, "Don't pray to a village God for village requests, for village needs." Remember that you pray to a God who is the King of the universe, and so pray for things that large. Pray prayers that are bigger than you think you could or you should. Pray prayers that go beyond the pale of the temporal things that we think about so easily and that draw our hearts to prayer rightly. Pray things that make you uncomfortable. I'm not talking about praying for a bigger house, though you could. We're talking about those prayers that get at God's purposes in ways that maybe we tend to discount or forget or question. I want to remind you of the example of Elijah that we read of in James 5. Elijah is a man just like us. That's emphasized there. And yet he is the one who prayed, and for years it stopped raining, and then he prayed again, and the rain came.

God has made the sun stand still. God has parted waters of the Red Sea. God has caused thunder and lightning and fire to appear on Mount Sinai as an example of His glory. God can raise the dead. God, almighty God, is who you pray to. There is no prayer too big for God to accomplish. There are those that we think of with hard and hearts, wayward children, family members, and it's tempting to think, they're just beyond the pale of what God can do. Brothers and sisters, remember, God can soften any hard heart.

God can do things through you and I in this church that we've yet to think of. He can use us to minister to kinds of people that we've yet considered. He can use us to send people and accomplish work in places we've never thought of or heard of. God can do big things. And so we want to ask the Lord to use us in ways that feel a bit impossible. Perhaps we're tempted to say at times, "But I'm not like that. I'm not that kind of person that can minister in that way or can accomplish that thing or can go to that place." Or, "That's not been my plan." Friends, pray prayers that scare you a bit, that get you out of your comfort zone, and then if God would answer, would take you on a wild but wonderful ride in accomplishing His will for your life. God can accomplish anything. Pray cosmic prayers. Prayers to the God of the universe that are universe-sized.

Pray Small

But Jesus doesn't just tell us to pray big prayers. Verse 10, yes, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." But thirdly, Jesus tells us, pray small. Yes, pray reverently. Yes, pray big. But verse 11, pray small. "Give us this day our daily bread." We don't want to miss the forest for the trees, but we don't want to be caught up in such a grand view of the forest that we miss the flowers scattered throughout, and we don't see God's blessing and provision in every small thing. To pray, "God, give us this day our daily bread," is to place your hands in the giver of every good gift and recognize that every provision, every breath, every piece of sustenance, every cent in your bank account, comes from God. Each help is from Him. There is nothing we have that is not from God's hand.

The most basic needs, water, food, air, something to keep the rain off our heads this week. God has provided each one of those. He has worked through a variety of unique and interesting means as we have come about those things. But do not forget that every bite of food you take, God gave you. And He's kept your breath going. And He's keeping you alive. The most basic thing we trust God for. Don't forget to pray for those things. There might have been a time in your life, as there have been for many of us, where we wonder, how are we going to make it through the month or the week and and make a grocery bill? How am I going to be able to put food on the table? And then at times, we move on from those circumstances, and God provides more than we need. Don't forget to pray like you prayed then. Lord, would you give us exactly what we need today? Would you fill the shelves with food? Would you help me know what to make for dinner tonight? Don't lose those prayers.

And yet, it's not just the small needs that we can look over, it's our greatest needs. The most intimate realities of our lives, the things that trouble us the most, the thing that you're going to face tomorrow that you're afraid of. We depend on God in those things as well. Remember what Job said, "The Lord gives and takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Big things and small things, all from the hand of God. God is the one who is able to answer, "Give me what I need today," in the most faithful way. God will answer that prayer in the best way. In fact, God will answer every prayer and every request you make of Him in the best possible way. Maybe not your way, but certainly His.

Remember, as you eat food every day that God is answering prayer. Remember, as you have great needs that God is answering prayer. Remember that as you sit there and you knock again for the prayer that you have prayed for the thousandth time, that God hears your prayers, even the most basic ones. And friends, He does answer them. He might not answer them with a yes, but He is answering them with His answer. Friends, remember that there's nothing so small that you cannot pray for it. Is there something you desire? Do you need a new pair of shoes? Do you need more socks for your kids and you just need to buy them on Amazon? Have you prayed about it? Have you prayed, "God, I would enjoy that thing. Would you bless me with it? And I'll receive it as a good gift from your hand." This prayer to give us this day our daily bread is a reminder that our lives are lived with gratitude and thankfulness for everything. So we ought to pray for all things. George Müller is a great example of prayer and prayer in the Christian life. George Müller ran an orphanage and many times woke up in a day and had nothing. No money, no food, how were we going to get by? And he would pray. And in the most miraculous ways, something would come in the mail, or someone would stop by with extra food or bread or whatever. And we see that day by day, God sustains His people.

Pray Penitently

We're not just to pray small though, if you look at verse 12, we're to pray penitently. You and I are to pray about our sin. Fourthly, God tells us to pray prayers of confession. He shows us this in verse 12 and in verses 14 and 15. Understand that confession is a key part of the Christian life. If you're in Christ, there's no sin that you cannot confess, that you can confess that is not forgiven. All your sin washed by the blood of Christ, making you clean, whole, pure before God, justified completely. And so God is not surprised when you bring sin to Him in prayer and confess it. You do not have to wait to confess your sin. Come to God immediately. How else could we come before Almighty God? When we see that we're praying to the King of heaven and our good Father, and the one who has mighty kingdom plans, the one who rules over everything, we know our frailty. The God who is holy, holy, holy. When we see ourselves in light of Him, we know our weaknesses. We know our sins. So confess them because God knows them too and desires to ever remind you of your pardon. And that promise of 1 John 1:7-9, that if we confess our sins, He, God, is faithful and just because of the blood of Christ to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness because of Christ, who is a propitiation on our behalf.

This is why we have been praying prayers of confession most Sunday, most Sundays. We want to together as a body, recognize that we are people tainted by sin and have sinned in some ways and confess those things to the Lord. It's been said that prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. Bring your prayers to God. Because we are forgiven. We are objects of God's great, lavish, kind, unending mercy. And so we should be those who also deal mercifully. Notice that there's something of our actions here. Yes, Lord, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. There's a reminder here and also there in verse 14, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

God's grace, God's mercy, God's forgiveness is meant to overflow in our lives to others. If I have been forgiven, I will be forgiving. It is a right response to the gospel, both reveling in our forgiveness and confessing our sin and knowing we are pardoned and therefore freely pardoning others and forgiving them and reminding them of the grace of Christ. When you forgive a brother or sister, a fellow church member, remind them, "Christ covers that sin. I won't hold it against you." When even an unbeliever comes with their sin before you and you need to forgive them, forgive them and tell them the reason that you can forgive them is because Christ has forgiven you, and they too can be fully forgiven, not just by you, but by Him.

God's will for your life is that you would know that you are pardoned in Christ and that you would live that out towards others. These verses are not to say that our forgiveness and Christ's sacrifice on our behalf is predicated something that we do first. It is simply showing us in the way that it is phrased, that those who are forgiven will forgive. And if we're unwilling to forgive, it might say something about our status before God. God's grace will be evident in your life towards others.

Pray Dependently

Fifthly, how do we pray so that we pray as God wants us to? How do we pray prayers that help our inward motives and life be devoted to the righteousness God wants of us? How do we shape our minds even by prayer? We, number five, look at verse 13. We pray dependently. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Friends, this is an acknowledgment that you and I are not going to make it through life unscathed on our own. The world is full of evil. The world is full of temptation. The world is full of wicked actors. And those who stand against the Lord and His people. Christ has delivered us from the domain of darkness, yes. And He continues to work in us that we might ever reflect His glory, yes. But we need His help as we walk through this fallen world. We need to look to the one who is our good Shepherd, the good Shepherd of Psalm 23, who promises to lead us in right paths. The one who can prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies. The one who can hold us and walk with us through dark valleys, the valley of the shadow of death. We need to look to the Lord in our prayers and simply ask for His help as we go through this life. Prayer is dependence upon God. It expresses our dependence upon God. How are you tempted? And how should you therefore pray to God? "Lord, when I encounter this individual that is difficult for me, help me be strengthened at work this week to treat them with Christian love and charity. Lord, when I am tempted to look there, or go there, or love that rather than you, Lord, strengthen me. Guard my mind from those temptations. Keep my feet on right paths. Keep the blinders on, Lord. Help me remain steadfast. And Lord, when there is wickedness, and there is evil all around, bear me up. Keep my eyes fixed on you."

Pray Persistently

Lastly and finally, consider your prayer life and consider verse 7. Jesus says, "When you pray." Do you notice the assumption there? Jesus assumes you pray. Jesus assumes you talk to your Father in heaven. Lastly, sixthly, friends, pray persistently. Have a life that assumes prayer as a constant, as an ever-present reality, as something that you and I have as a habit. And if you need help forming the habit of prayer, set a reminder on your phone, ask a brother or sister to follow up with you. Leave sticky notes all around you if you must. But cultivate this pattern of unceasing prayer. Jesus says, "When you pray."

John Bunyan has said, "You can do more than prayer after you have prayed. But you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed." We need to be persistent in prayer because we need God's help. We need His strength. We need His grace. This is also a reminder as you think about all the ways we're meant to pray. Friends, the list of things we ought to pray for is almost endless. We must be persistent in prayer so that God would accomplish His purposes through us. Don't give up on praying for things because they haven't happened on your timeline. George Müller again is a great example in his journal. He would write down the names of people he was praying for. And some of them in a matter of days would be saved. He's praying for their salvation. Some of his friends in a matter of weeks might have gotten saved. Some, it would take years. And there was even one written there in his journal, and George Müller had died. And he prayed for that man for decades. And after George Müller's death, that man was saved. And why? In part because the Lord used George Müller's persistent prayer to assault that man's heart with the grace of Christ. Friends, prayer is a privilege. Coming to the Lord and having this access to Him and knowing Him is a privilege. Knowing we are heard is a great privilege and an honor. Coming to the King of Grace and being welcomed in, the King of Heaven, the King of the nations, the King of all history, wants my prayers? Yes. So persist in it. Ever do the work of prayer. Pray for God's work. And look for ways that you might be persistent and be the answer to your prayers. So many of the things you pray for, especially those bold prayers, God is going to answer through you, should you be willing.

As we look at this and we see the words of our Savior, are we not reminded that the Christian life and this privilege of prayer is all of grace? Again, this section is all about motive. This section is all about practicing righteousness. And how we don't need to do it before others, because we have well, been welcomed into a perfect relationship with God, who hears us, who knows us, who loves us. We're reminded it's all of grace and that it is a glorious. It is a happy thing to be a Christian. Let's pray together.