Glad to see a lot of faces that I've been able to see over the
past few nights, and I'm also thankful to see new faces and if
I haven't got the chance to meet you yet, I look forward to
shaking your hand or giving you a hug after church.
Today, I'm excited to have an opportunity to spend the day
together. So thank you for coming.
And if you are from the community and you're a guest
here, I'm kind of a guest too. So I don't know who you are yet,
so we can meet each other afterwards and it's know each.
Other, my name is Jonathan and I worship with the Valley Parkway
Church of Christ in Dallas, Texas.
So I've been out here for the past few days.
Hosting some gospel meetings at this place.
If you haven't had the chance to join us yet, I think this
congregation has these recordings available for you to
go back and listen to them and I did encourage you to do so I
hope that they will be encouraging and helpful for
everyone. This morning, I'd like to talk
about prayer, and I'm going to go ahead and say, there's
probably not anything new, that you've never heard and there
won't be any, aha moments. Like, oh, I didn't know that
about prayer. I hope to just give what we
sometimes call and our home congregation a maintenance
sermon, right? Sometimes you just got to
maintenance the vehicle so to speak, or you got to maintenance
the congregation as well. And so, I want to talk to you
about prayer, some I think are probably probably very zealous
in your prayers and your just a prayer Warrior talking to God
constantly. It's almost like there's just a
flow of communication. Some of you may struggle with
prayer and you feel, it's hard to get started.
It's difficult to maintain Focus.
So there's a broad spectrum of us and how we may feel about
prayer, and I want to encourage. Everyone.
I don't want anyone to leave here today thinking, man, I
just, I fail when it comes to prayer.
No, no, no. I want to encourage you that you
can be successful in your prayer life, you know, Prayer in the
Bible. There's just so many examples of
it, but I'm going to share to. As We Begin sometimes prayer was
a national thing. And I think about in second
Kings chapter 19, that there was a time when the Assyrian army
surrounded Jerusalem, and the whole area had been taken over
by this Mighty host and Jerusalem's kind of the only
place left and the captain of the army, brings this scroll to
the kingdom of Judah Hezekiah. And in that scroll, it basically
says you're no better than anyone else.
I need to surrender. And so Hezekiah takes this
scroll and he takes it to the temple and he lays it out before
God. And he prays, It's amazing.
What happens through the power of prayer.
God intervenes miraculously and this great host is defeated and
God's. People gets to enjoy some peace
for a time because of prayer. But you know, these National
prayers are not the only types that are recorded in first
Samuel chapter 1. There's a woman and she's been
struggling with infertility for a long time.
And the Bible says, in chapter 1 verse 10, that she was greatly
distressed but she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
And so here she was and in this very intimate, lonely part of
her life and she's depressed. She can't eat.
She barely sleep. And yet, what is still flowing
is prayer. So I want to challenge you,
whether it be these big National moments in your life or it is
these very humble, very lonely. Very personal times, you can
have a powerful sense of prayer as well.
Now, you have a handout many of you do, it's a trifold.
So we're going to be on the opening page for a little bit
and before we maybe get into that, First part about the
purpose of prayer, I'm going to ask you this question.
I don't think it's on your handout, but what is prayer?
When we lived in Cambodia for a time, it was questions like
this, that we needed to ask because we were dealing with a
Buddhist Community around us and we would invite people to church
when people would convert become Christians.
There's a whole lot of assumptions that we would make.
And then we've got a Of course, and how most Buddhists did not
have a similar upbringing. The Christians do obviously.
And so we had to ask questions like this.
What is prayer? And so, I want to ask it to you
because maybe you did grow up in a Christian home or in a
Christian environment. And so, we're just we assume we
know what prayer is what is prayer.
Well, Strong's, exhaustive Concordance gives these synonyms
supplication, worship begging, and Request.
Now that opens up another can of worms when it comes to
supplicate into worship and to beg and request.
But I like, what brother Mike? Chris will he wrote the
commentary of the Gospel of Matthew for the contending for
the faith Series? This is how he defines prayer
and this is in your handout, by the way, it's at the top he says
prayer. Is that Divine communication?
Which emanates from the heart of the believer, And ascends to the
portals of God's Throne, it is more than a duty.
It is a Most Blessed privilege through this Avenue.
God has provided Humanity access to deity.
There's a reason he wrote that commentary because he's got gift
of writing and that's a powerful language.
I would like to share with you my definition of prayer and it's
a bit more simple. It's how we speak to God.
There's a reason that I'm in charge of pure and simple bike.
Dot-com, not, you know, other things because I tried to
distill it down. But yeah, prayer is how we speak
with God. Now, how do we interact?
And how do we communicate with a supernatural?
Divine, omnipresent being with whom there won't be two way
dialogue. The in the same way that there
would be between someone that you can see.
Well, I hope that we can address that question and others.
As we go through this outline, let's talk about the purpose and
the power of the privilege, the principal's, the persistence,
and the practices of prayer. And then finally will meditate
on how God does answer prayer because he doesn't always answer
them the same. And that's an important point
that I want you to be thinking about some of these will focus a
lot on and others. We will kind of blow through
them real quick and that's the reason you have a handout.
So you can take this with you and study it later on your own.
Also, if you are evangelistically inclined and
you enjoy sharing the good news with others or talking about
Jesus with others, this handout is a great thing to have on your
lunch break. It's a great thing to have
whenever you are at school or at work, or with your neighbors and
say, hey, we went through this and this part of it, I'm trying
to chew on it a little bit. I'm curious if you'd like to
study with me. It's a great resource to reach
out to your friends, okay? Okay, let's talk about the
purpose of prayer. I like to start with this one,
because right at the beginning, I just want to know what's this
about what am I supposed to be accomplishing here?
And it's on the front page of your handout.
And we have This Acronym acts and it's adoration confession,
Thanksgiving and supplication. And the way that I'm going to
Define these is as follows. Adoration is this deep love and
respect for who God is. Is so sometimes in our prayers,
it can be about simply praising God for who he is.
Other times, however, we want to offer statements, where we're
admitting guilt despair or weariness.
Yes, confession is about confessing sin but confession
kind of like we learned about last night.
It's also about confessing weariness.
I am low and I need your help to lift me up.
We can pray Thanksgiving, which is gratitude for what God has
done. So we may Adorn him.
Thank you. For who you are and thank you
for what you have done. Finally, I think the most common
type of prayer and supplication which is where we are,
requesting something. Whether that be a spiritual
physical or emotional need, we often supplicate, God Lord, help
me with this in my life. Now, I have an example of each
of these from The Book of Psalms, and I invite you to look
on the screen. In and read it with me.
And the reason that I'd like to read through these I guess from
a personal reason is sometimes whenever I'm working on my
sermons, I use my family as my guinea pigs, right?
And so, at Family Worship, one night I said, okay, kids tonight
we're only going to say prayers of Thanksgiving to God and
immediately there thinking. Okay, Thanksgiving turkey.
Cranberry sauce right now but it's sometimes challenging to
just be thankful when you're used to doing a whole lot of
supplicating. And I remember some of the
prayers that night were thank you for our food.
Thank you for. Our home and we found that it
was challenging to only be thankful.
We really wanted to gravitate towards help us help us with
this help. Grandma feel better and help
brother so-and-so, not supposed to be supposed to be thankful.
So it was a challenge for us. It may be a challenge for you.
You may be comfortable in one type of prayer, so I want to
give you a song that encourages you to pray differently.
Here's a prayer of adoration, I will meditate on the Glorious
splendor. Under of your majesty and on
your wondrous Works, men shall speak of the might of your
awesome acts and I will declare your greatness.
They shall utter the memory of your great goodness and shall
sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of
compassion, slow to anger and great in Mercy, the Lord is good
to all and his Tender Mercies are over all his works.
You know? These are recorded words of
praise, that's all it is. David at one time, spoke this to
God. and then decided to write it down and there's no
difference between his words written in your words spoken,
you can adore God to but there's also Psalms of confession Psalm,
38 says, I am troubled about down greatly.
I go morning, all the day long for my loins are full of
inflammation. There's no soundness in my
flesh. I am feeble and severely broken.
I grown, because of the turmoil of my heart.
This is strong language where someone is pouring out their
heart, to God, they need help. And you can pray that too.
There are prayers of Thanksgiving like this.
Oh, give thanks to the Lord. For he is good.
Good for his Mercy, endures forever o give thanks to the god
of gods for his Mercy endures forever and that Psalm 136.
If you read it it repeats that give.
Thanks to God. Give thanks to God.
All these reasons of why we're thankful for God.
Finally, a Psalm of Supplication be merciful to Me, O Lord, for I
cry to you all day long. Rejoice, the soul of your
servant for To You O? Lord, I lift up my soul for You.
O Lord are good and ready to forgive You have been abundant
in Mercy to all those who call upon, you give ear O Lord to my
prayer and attend to the voice of my supplications and the day
of my trouble. I will call on you and you will
answer me. Now, what I'd like to show you
at this time is Jesus, what we call the model prayer, and maybe
you're familiar with. It's a very popular prayer for
Matthew chapter 6 and Jesus said, in this manner, therefore
pray 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 of our debts as we forgive our debtors
and do not lead us into temptation, but Deliver Us from
the evil. One for yours is the kingdom and
the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Now it's a model prayer because it highlights some of the
different purposes of prayer. You don't have to pray this word
for word you can if you want to. And it's a nice practice but
we're not commanded to pray. This works.
Word for word. He's just modeling for us but
did you know he's actually adoring God and he's giving
supplication. He's asking for God's will to be
done more supplication, give us this day, our daily bread
confession, forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors
more supplication, do not lead us into temptation.
What you see? We see here that that commonly
in our prayers, we have multiple purposes We're interested in the
composting multiple things. So I hope that this is helpful
for you. As you think about what is
prayer and what is its purpose. But you know not only does
prayer have purpose but it has power power.
Now you look in Ephesians chapter 6 and that section on
the armor of God, maybe some of you are familiar with the armor
of God, this beautiful visual of this helmet and breast play in
The Sword. And Shield and a belt and
sandals and this soldiers just equipped to fight the devil.
And so we are spiritually were to equip to fight the devil.
You want to know the book ends of the armor of God, it says in
verse 10, finally, be strong in the Lord.
And in the power of His might Then it talks about all the
armor. And then the final book in is
Verse 18, with prayer and petition.
Pray at all times in the spirit and with this in mind, be on
alert with all perseverance and Petition of the Saints.
So part of equipping, ourselves of power, is that a prayer?
Hebrews chapter 4 says let us therefore come boldly to the
throne of grace. That we may obtain mercy and
find Grace and help in our time of need James 5.
Verse 16 says the effective prayers of a righteous man can
accomplish much, there's power in it.
Now, I'm just going to blow through these bullet points.
I'm going to ask you to follow up and read the scriptures.
Later, prayer gives us forgiveness gives us peace.
It gives us strength and opportunity, boldness and
wisdom. Healing and Tranquility these
things are accessed through prayer.
And so what happens if you're not praying, You don't have
access to forgiveness and peace and strength, Etc.
This is a kind of an on-off valve or a switch and there's
something that we can do to have these things.
And when we neglect to do it, we miss out on the power of it.
However I want to focus maybe a bit more time on the privilege
of prayer. Now, the privilege of prayer,
I'm going to go ahead and spoil it.
That not everyone has So you can open up the handout.
You have to turn it over as well.
I want you to look at that section on privilege.
It's important to remember what privilege is sometimes.
That word gets used a lot today, especially in political circles
and it gets used in ways that make it negative.
The way I presenting it is as the word is intended, to be a
privilege. And that means a right that a
certain group has that others don't have.
And there is a privilege, a, right?
That some people have to access God that other people don't.
And so, I want you to think about this that not everybody
around the world can simply access the father and that might
fly in the face of the doctrine that a lot of people preach.
That if you'll just, you know, call the Lord into your heart,
then you can be saved. And I would suggest that the
Lord hears certain types of prayers and there are other
types of prayers that he does not here.
So who does not have this special privilege of prayer?
First those who do not listen to God, Proverbs 28.
Second Timothy chapter 4 are a couple of examples of people who
may try to pray but their prayers are not heard.
In fact, they're an Abomination, Proverbs 28.
Verse 9 says, he who turns his ears from listening to the law,
even his prayer is an Abomination, Abominations a
strong word, it means that it's odious, it's awful.
That it's, you know, the equivalent of nails on a
chalkboard. This is what prayers are when
people pray to God, but don't obey.
God, Another type that does not have the privilege of prayer are
those who are in sin, and whose sins have separated them from
God. Now, it's easy, brothers and
sisters for us to think who, that's not me, because I'm here
this morning, and it's those people out there all them.
I'm gonna challenge you on that. That if you are not listening to
God and if you're not obeying God, that means your sins are
separating from God. Now, I can go on a tangent about
this. I'll do my best not to, but
sometimes people give the Church of Christ, a bad rap saying.
Oh, you Church of Christ folks? You think you're the only ones
going to heaven? Maybe you've heard that before.
I've heard that I like what your brother says when Oscar and its
tongue and cheek, so don't be offended too much, blame, Glenn,
not me. He says I don't think all the
people in the church are going to heaven.
Now, that sounds rough. Doesn't it?
Maybe I'm the only one chuckling in it.
But the point is who's going to heaven the ones who obey God,
not the ones who fill the pews, but in their harder disobeying
God may it never be that. We think if we're filling up
Hugh that we've checked off everything, there is to do not
true because the Bible says, in Isaiah chapter, 59, verses 1 and
2 and this is to God's people. This isn't to some foreign
Nation, this was to God's people.
He says, behold the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot
save. Nor is here.
So dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a
separation between you and God and your sins have hidden his
face from you. So that he does not here.
There's one more that I'm going to put up here.
Actually, two more. Those who fail to treat.
Others justly. Do not have the privilege of
prayer. And so the way that we treat
one, another affects our prayer life.
Did, you know versus like 1st Peter 3:7?
Say that husbands are to dwell with their wives in an
understanding way, lest their prayers, be hindered.
And so there's times whenever and I love how it says, for
husbands to dwell with their wives in an understanding way
and not the reverse because there are many times where men
will just say well, who can understand a woman like this,
not me, we're called to dwell with our wives and understanding
way and as the spiritual head of a house Brothers, if we can't
dwell with one that we see in an understanding way, how are we
supposed to dwell with one that we cannot see?
As first John four talks about briefly, So the challenge is
that we have to treat one another justly or our prayers
will be hindered. Finally, those who do not pray
with faith, or those who prey rather without faith as Hebrews
11 verse 6 and James chapter 1, verse 6 and 7 State James, 1:6
says, but he must ask in faith without any doubting for.
The one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and
tossed by the wind for that man. Ought not to expect.
He will receive anything from the Lord.
Now, you might feel bad about that verse.
And if you weren't here on Thursday or Friday, can't
remember, go listen to that video because we talked a whole
lot about doubting. It's okay to have questions and
it's okay to inquire about the different aspects of our faith.
But for the person who is expecting that God won't answer
their prayer. What's the even the point of
this, I'm going to say this, but I know he's not going to hear
me. Without faith.
You do not have the special privilege of prayer.
Well, who then does enjoy this special privilege, who Among Us?
Who among this world can pray and God will hear that prayer
and bless them with an answer. First anyone who desires to seek
God can pray to God. Right, Bible says in James 4:8
draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
So, while prayer is exclusive, It is as simple as when a
person. Sincerely, is trying to reach
out to God. And so, I don't want you to lose
heart. If any of you on that previous
slide thought that one looks like me.
So that means God's not hearing my prayers.
Well, the moment that you have decided to change and that there
is sincere repentance and you want to draw near to God.
Here's a promise, God will draw near to you.
And this promise is open to Sinners.
Yes, there are sinners that God hears and listens to we have it
recorded in the Bible. For example, in Acts chapter 10,
there's a man named Cornelius, he have not been baptized and
yet an angel comes to him and says, God has heard your
prayers. How's that possible?
Because he was seeking God. He was not interested in living
a sinful way and seeking God, he was doing his best to find out
more about God and His Matthew chapter 7 verse 7 and 8 says
seek, And you will find. Knock and the door will be open
to you. So Sinners who are seeking God
may pray and enjoy this privilege of prayer and then the
Christian who is faithful has Jesus as their high priest and
so the Sinner and the Christian alike can enjoy.
The special privilege if we are moving towards God.
Let's keep going. The principles of prayer here
are, what I'm going to call some principles but certainly not all
the principles of prayer but I want you to think about these.
Whenever you pray number one, you must pray in faith.
You must pray in faith. Not with an expectation.
That God isn't going to hear. God isn't going to answer, but
we must pray in faith. Number two, we must pray with
humility. That God's going to answer it in
his way and that we're not demanding him to answer it.
Our way, number three, we must pray in harmony with God's will.
That scripture is so important to prayer.
Unlike the ones previously, I'd like to read it to you first
John chapter 5 verse 13. It says these things I have
written to you, who believe in the name of the son of God.
So that you may know that you have eternal life and this is
the confidence, which we have before him.
That listen, if we ask anything according to his will he hears
us? What's important about prayer is
that we ask according to the will of God.
Now again, I'll use an example from when we were living in
Southeast Asia. People were very discouraged
about prayer who had never prayed before and then we
explain to them what prayer was they immediately?
Started praying for things like Lord, help me get this bicycle.
Lord help me get a house which I think we I think it's
appropriate to pray for those things.
But what's the expectation behind is what I'm asking.
What's a similar prayer that we might pray and this side of the
pond? Well, I can't say this example
anymore, somebody wanted that I could be praying Lord help me
win at Powerball, right? At two billion dollar Powerball
is that according to the will of God, is that according to my
selfish desires you see what I'm talking about.
So here's a principle of prayer as I interact with God.
Am I praying? According to his will for things
that will help accomplish his will, or am I praying according
to my wants and desires to accomplish my I will we must
pray with an attitude of gratitude as Psalm 100 and
Colossians 3 steak. And I read a source that I
really liked this point that in gratitude is an indication of
apostasy from Romans 1 and second Timothy chapter 3.
So be careful if you do not have a heart of gratitude where that
could potentially lead you. Finally, here's a principle.
We must pray in Jesus name. And this is a point that I have
for both, those of you who lead public worship.
And then those of you who pray privately at home.
But you may notice that here we pray.
And then we advocate for people at home to pray in Jesus name.
Amen. That's how we end a prayer in
Jesus name. Amen.
And I advocate that too. I don't think we should ever
stop in Jesus name, or in your son's name.
Amen, the ending of a prayer. R, but this principle is more
than just how we end prayer. it's talking about the manner in
which were approaching the father, That there is but one
mediator between God and that is Jesus Christ.
And so it's only through Jesus, through his name that we have
access to the father in the first place.
And if you've ever studied the Old Testament, you know how
difficult it was to access God, we're talking about taking big
old stones in the patriarchal age and lumping them together in
a big old pile and then calling dad or Granddad or great
Granddad. Whoever was the patriarch and
getting him to make a sacrifice. So we could interact with God.
If you lived in the levitical age, then you're going to look
out your flock and make sure that you've got this perfect
lamb. And if you don't got one, you
got to go find one somewhere else.
You got to get over to Jerusalem so you can make a sacrifice.
And you know what? You, and I get to do because of
Jesus. We get to talk directly to God
at anytime and say, father, please forgive me.
Because I realize what I did was wrong.
And I want to be right. And it's through Jesus that I
can talk with you now. So, yes, at the end of a prayer.
I advocate that you in your prayer in Jesus name. but I'm
also advocating that as you pray, just remember the mindset
we get to do this because of Jesus.
What a privilege it is because of Jesus.
Now, let's talk about the Persistence of prayer.
And there are several Parables that we could look at like, the
parable of the persistent friend, the parable of the
persistent Widow. And in both of these cases, the
moral of the parable is be consistent.
Right? Be persistent and keep on
praying. And it may take days, it may
take weeks, it may take months, it may take years, but ask God
because if in these Parables you know, the parable of the
persistent Widow, was this judge she just finally wore him down
and he gave her the Justice she needed because she kept asking
for it. And if this Godless judge Would
finally be worn down. How much would a God?
Who loves you? Listen, if you were persistent
in prayer, Paul in second Corinthians 12, verse 8, it says
he endured a thorn in the flesh. Three times, he prayed that it
would be removed. He was persistent.
Now, this Thorn wasn't removed, but through the Persistence of
his prayer. Paul learned what he needed to
know. No, he learned that God would
provide in his own special way. Okay, now you can flip over to
the back page of the handout, we're on the practice of prayer
and there's a lot of information.
And so I have made the executive decision, they're only going to
talk about one of these. Now I will briefly show you the
other ones, we've got the model prayer.
The question, what can we be praying for and then what Shins
or postures, should we assume in prayer?
They're all equally important and I'm not going to Advocate
that. The one I'm speaking about is
more important than the other two, but just for the sake of
time, I'm going to put these two up here and I'm going to ask you
to study them on your own in Matthew chapter 6, which we've
already read the model prayer. We could go through Point by
point and talk about how this prayer can help us better.
Understand the practice of praying we I could also talk for
a time about the different people, the different groups
that we could be praying for and that's also the practice prayer,
but I want to focus on this final question, what position or
what posture should we assume in prayer?
And the reason I think this is healthy for members of the
church is it's sometimes easy for us to do things for the sake
of tradition, and it's not wrong to do it for the sake of
tradition. But sometimes When someone
questions that tradition, we raised a red flag that maybe
they're trying to just change things for the sake of change.
And then we have a squabble over traditions and friends.
I'm here to tell you that, the way that we pray in the assembly
like this, Is it tradition? And it's an acceptable good
tradition. There are other ways that one
could posture themself for prayer, we have scriptures where
people are standing. People have their hands spread
out there. Lift it up heavenward.
People are bowing their head, they're lifting their eyes.
People are kneeling, people are bowing down, people are heads
bowed their faces between their knees.
They're striking their chests and these are biblical ways that
we could pray. Now, the reason that I'm
spending just a moment on this is that if we are a group who
wants to reach out to the community around us and invite
them to join us for worship. There will be those who come in,
who may have a different posture of prayer.
And my challenge is for us who like this tradition, and I'll go
ahead and tell you, I like this tradition.
I'm not here to blow it up. I don't want to change anything.
I think it's appropriate. Corinthians 14 says that God is
the author of Peace, not of confusion, and all things are to
be done for edification. And so, I like the idea of
taking a posture of humility when I'm sitting Sometimes I
close my eyes other times. It's hard to focus, so I'll keep
my eyes open, but I want that posture and usually, the whole
group kind of takes that posture.
Sometimes people get on their knees and pray, but what would
happen? Let me just ask.
What would happen if we had to guess that came in a months?
Just and the brother comes up to the front and says Let us pray
and that person stood up and lifted their hands like this.
What would you do? Would you tackle him?
No, don't do that. And I would challenge us that we
don't want to do things that are in decent and out of order, but
I want to have a mindset where we are open to the other people,
may assume a different posture than we do as we pray, you know,
there was a tax collector and he stood Good.
And there was a Pharisee, and he stood, right?
Both of them were standing, right?
The, the fact that they were standing isn't, what was sinful?
That was sinful about this Pharisee, was that he was in his
heart proud about who he was, and how he done, nothing wrong.
If it's wrong for us, to have this posture of standing and
looking to heaven, then Jesus would be wrong in John 17.
When he looked to heaven and prayed, again, I only bring this
up because I want to challenge us to be flexible with people
who may look different than us as we try to accomplish the same
thing. Finally, let's talk on the
phone. The the middle part of that
handout on the backside, how does God answer prayer?
There's four answers that question.
Number one, God May answer with a yes.
And thank God, he answers prayer.
I'm so thankful that we get to experience God answering.
Yes. We pray for someone to get
healed and they get well. We should thank God that he said
yes I prayed this or I gave this study at home and I had someone
come up afterwards and tell me a fabulous story and it really
kind of humbled. Me made me think sometimes I'm a
prayer agnostic. So I want to challenge anyone
else out there who may be a prayer.
Agnostic, let me explain. He explained that his grandson
had played football and wanted Friday night.
Have been tackled in the knee and that knee looked awful.
It looks like it was a career-ending injury so they
took him to the emergency room and the doctor said we're going
to have to do surgery or something but we've got to wait
for the swelling to go down so put ice on it, come back on
Monday and we'll make plans to do surgery.
I took that boy home, put ice on it and they prayed and they
prayed, and they prayed and they went back on Monday and the
doctor did another X-ray and said, I don't know what to say.
but, There's no surgery needed. In fact, he's good to go.
He could probably play football this Friday.
Now, a prayer agnostic, like me at times might make an excuse.
Well, it was just a swelling, you know, the X-ray kind of
missed out and really it was like this the whole time and
we'll make some sort of a rational reason for why they had
misdiagnosed it. But what this grandfather told
me was you know what, we should do, whenever we pray.
And instead of rationalizing it away we should just say, thank
you. God.
Thank you. And they could be thank you that
he misdiagnosed it. But it could also be thank you
for answering our prayers. Thank you for answering our
prayers. You know, God might say yes.
But it could be a yes but not right now. and that might feel
like a no because you asked And you're told not yet now in kid
language, especially I know some of you kids out there ours as
well. Anytime that Dad says not yet,
great might as well be no, right.
For those of us who are kids at heart when we pray to the father
and we feel like it's a not yet, I locked a lot of times we go.
Great might as well be, you know, There's examples
Ecclesiastes 3, Luke chapter, 18 others where there is a yes but
you need to hold on. It's not in our time.
It's God's time. Number 3.
God May answer. Yes.
But not, as you think. This is one of those warnings.
Be careful what you pray for because you just might get it.
Just not the way you thought and so you pray.
Lord help me to be patient. What do you get?
One of the most frustrating persons comes into your life.
And you just can't stand them. What is the Lord answering my
prayer for patience for you to learn to love this person?
You might be asking for things like children.
Help us to get pregnant, help us to have a baby and it may be not
as you think. Sometimes children don't come
naturally. They come through adoption
through fostering. Did you get a baby?
Yes, you did. This is a baby of choice.
It's a yes, but not as you think, and sometimes God
answers. No.
And none of us like, no, I still 37 years old and I didn't like
it when I was a kid that like growing up.
I don't like it now. I don't like it.
No. And none of us wants to know.
but as these scriptures in 2nd Corinthians 12 and James for
teach us there's times when God's know Looks a whole lot
like a yes, but not, as you think?
And we desperately pray for someone to get well, and they
don't. When they die and we missed them
terribly. We think why did you say no?
But God knew best what that person need.
And maybe they needed to be with him.
There's times when we've had dear loved ones who have prayed,
and prayed and prayed. Again, I may be thinking about
children too much, but we've had dear friends for 20 years of
wanted kids. And it looked like God said, no,
he did. We were there in the courtroom
with them listening as a judge would give the child to another
family over them and we wept with them.
And those nose hurt. But it was through those knows
that God's will was ultimately accomplished.
You know, Paul prayed three times to the Lord.
Please take this Thorn In the Flesh away from you.
I don't want it and God said, no.
And after that, third prayer, Paul realized.
When I'm weak, then I'm strong. And so I'll I'll rejoice in my
sufferings. I'll Rejoice earnestly and when
things go bad because then I know that the power isn't meant
to be and me. Anyway, it's meant to be God.
He needed to know. Sometimes you need to know to
whenever you pray. Here's an important point about
how God answers prayer, God answers every prayer every time
as he sees best, not as you not as me.
But as he sees best And so remember prayer is not about
granting. Our wishes prayer offers us.
The sacred opportunity to commune with and petition to and
discern the will of God. So I challenge you to be like
Paul as we just talked about be like Paul and learn that When
God says no or When God Says, Yes, but wait or yes, but later
learned to be like Paul so that when you're weak.
Then in fact you're strong, that's our Bible study this
morning. I hope it was helpful and I do
encourage you know those there's a lot of information in that
handout I encourage you to take it with you and whether it be
today or some other time in the week when you study the Bible
open that thing up and read those scriptures.
And I hope that your prayer life is blessed because of our
maintenance time this morning if you're not a Christian and
especially when it came to talking about the privilege of
Prayer, Sin does separate us from God.
And I want you to know that even though sin separates you from
God. Jesus Christ is greater than our
sins and he can cover and wash away any sin that you've ever
done. And so we invite those who have
not yet obeyed, the gospel to come believing repenting.
Confessing that Jesus is the son of God and be baptized for the
remission of sins, Brothers of sisters.
If anyone needs to prayers of the church, whether it is to
confess sin or to confess weariness.
This is a time for you as well. Please come as we stand.
And sing a song. We thank you for listening to
our podcast, put on by the Church of Christ at 22:15 plans.
Road in Bakersfield, if you would like any additional
information, or you would like to receive a free Bible
correspondence, course by mail. Please email us at info at her
Church of Christ Bakersfield.com.
Our service times are on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and
Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. Please make plans to join us.
We would love for you to be our honored guest.