We are one church. We love God, love people, love
His mission, and love His church.
Welcome to the One Church podcast.
What we're going to do today is lean into what the Lord's saying
to us in regards to prayer and regards to calling on His name
for the sake and the purpose of the Kingdom of God.
Because I believe that today the Lord wants to burden us with a
fresh revelation of His heart for us and for the world around
us, which is good, right? The challenge in it all is when
the Lord burdens us. Sometimes it feels a bit heavy,
and that's OK for some of us. The Lord's going to give us
broader shoulders and stronger backs in order to carry what he
wants us to carry in the next season.
Father God, would you come? In fact, Lord, we honour your
presence. You are already here with us.
Alpha, Omega, beginning the end, perfector and finisher, the
instigator of faith. We honour you, the King, who
holds the cosmos in the palm of his hand and yet whose ears are
attentive to the cry of 8 1/2 billion people at the same time.
You are here and we are grateful.
Speak to us today. We pray in your wonderful name.
Amen. We're in a lot of the Bible
today. We're going to talk out of this
passage and how it links to some other pieces of Jesus teaching.
Most of what we're going to look at is in the New Testament.
That's a new part of the Bible. But there's one phrase that we
find in the book of Isaiah, which is in the old part of the
text before Jesus came to earth, that just gives you a bit of
context of where we are. In Luke 11, we read this.
So I say to you, this is Jesus speaking, by the way.
So it means it's worth listening.
Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find knock,
and the doors will be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and the
one who knocks the door will be open to.
This is an invitation from Jesus to greater degrees of prayer.
Now on face value, the text all looks quite similar.
Ask, seek, knock. But when you have children, you
understand that those words carry different meaning.
Twice a week, Alice goes to the gym in the morning.
She goes to the gym between 7:00 and 8:00.
And it is my favourite part of the week because it means that
I'm at home with the children and getting them ready.
And if you're a dad in the room, most of us can probably admit
that our wives do this better than us.
Yeah. Yeah.
Just they're just better at it. They're more efficient.
They're more structured. They're more rigid.
When they ask the kids to eat their breakfast instead of
playing with the toys, they do it.
Yeah. That's, like, always how it
works for me as well. Never answer back.
Apart from most mornings. And twice a week, Alice goes to
the gym. And in that slot, I then get the
kids ready, get them in the car, get them to school on time.
We're never late apart from five days a week.
And so with my kids, they on, especially on the days where
Alice is at the gym, they have this thing where if they need
help, they ask for it, right? Which is the normal thing to do,
Dada. Levi 5 doesn't call me Dada yet.
One day might. Let's see.
Dada. I'm up in the shower at this
point, right? It's my only time by myself
unless I wake up before the kids.
That's all I got. So I stretch it.
It's like 7 minutes in the shower.
Dada. I'm in the shower now, I'll be
out in a minute. Ezra's stolen my.
Toy. I don't care.
Not sufficient, He's asked, not got the answer he wants.
What's he do next? He looks, walking around the
house, in the bedroom, under the bed.
He's everywhere, looking around, walking around.
Not there, not there, not there. He finds where I am, and he is
the only one. Levi, our eldest, the only one
of our three kids who's tall enough to reach the door
handles. I mean, I struggle in our house
and he, Arya's there, she's knocking on the door, face
against the door. Door, door.
She. Can't reach it.
Ezra's there, try. Can't reach it.
Levi's there, opens the door up. I'm there in the shower.
All right, guys. And what they then do is they've
asked. They've come and sought me out.
They've done the seeking part in the King James secret.
They've done that. And then they've found me.
They've knocked on the door. They've walked straight into the
room. Ari's there with a face on the
shower, hand underneath the shower, completely soaked.
She's already dressed, completely wet.
Ezra's walked in, opened the shower.
Da, da. Not now.
Yeah, later. Because they know that if they
don't get the answer they're looking for when they ask,
they're going to find another way to get what they want.
Anyone have kids? Anyone go on me.
Give me a wave. If you've got kids in the
church, come on, you all know this would be true.
They don't care whether it's convenient for you or not.
They're going to ask, and if they don't get it, they're going
to ask again. If they don't get it, they're
going to ask again. And are we, or are we not the
children of the King of? Kings.
Oh, stop. Quitting when he says no, stop
quitting when he says no Stop it.
You're asking. We do this thing when we ask the
Lord God, if you're willing, would you do this?
And we don't hear back, so we just go quiet.
Stop it. Keep asking and if He says no
and you feel he should say yes, ask again.
And if that doesn't work, bang on the door of heaven until you
get the answer that you're looking for.
As long as it aligns with the will of God.
Our church. Let's not be passive.
The Lord is at movement. He's doing stuff around the
nation and around the world, and there are people that text
through or Instagram through on a regular basis saying things
like this. I've found Jesus in my bedroom.
How do I start going to church? There's stuff that the Lord is
doing and it's our job and our responsibility and our duty to
enter in, and we just keep quitting.
Stop. Because all the Lord's asking us
to do in this season, he's not asking us for more activity.
He's asking for our hearts yielded and willing to be an
instrument or a tool in his hand.
Better to be a tool in his hand than just a tool, right?
Someone's like, yeah, I feel like that sometimes because if
we enter in and we partner with His will and His purposes, guys,
you might see heaven come to earth in a way that you never
believed possible. Some of you got kids who you
brought up in church and they've voluntarily walked away.
As you partner with the King of Kings and begin to pray and be
consistent and keep on going and not give Him rest and keep on
knocking on the door, trust me, you'll see your loved ones come
home because that's His promise. Some of us, you've got friends,
you've got family members, you've got work colleagues, some
of us involved in sports societies or universities or in
your lecture halls, and you've got many, many, many people who
are there and they don't know Jesus.
Guys, if we partner with Him in consistent prayer, then just
perhaps the King of the universe might come and do something so
great that only He can get the glory.
Here's the problem with God. He wants to join in with us.
He is able on His own to do anything He wants, and yet in
his mercy and his grace, he partners with his bride.
That we might be his hands and feet.
And sometimes I'm saying, Jesus, just do it by yourself.
It's so much more efficient. But he wants us to join in.
He wants to have a part to play. That's why I prayed through the
night on Friday. But I tell you, it wasn't
comfortable. It was really fun between 9:00
and 2:00. Two till 4 was a slog.
It's rough because I know that when I get home, my kids aren't
going to let me have a lion. Yeah, they don't care.
Dada, she play football? No, it's raining.
I'm tired, I don't care. There at 2O clock in the
morning. We've prayed through the night.
It's been a massive day. We're in the building since 9:00
O clock getting things ready. We've not really stopped and
we've had a time together as the team and the Lord shown up in a
way that we didn't expect. Starting well, it's good.
And then we get to this bit of a slog.
It's two and the sense of wow, do we just call it a night?
We've had a good time. Or do we keep on going?
Do we quit or do we persist? Do we say we've done our bit and
check out or do we stay in alignment with what he's called
us to do? Because this is what happens
before the passage. We just friend Luke.
Luke 11/5 through to 8. Then Jesus said to them, suppose
you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and say, friend,
lend ME3 loaves of bread. All right, just to put a caveat
in it, if someone arrives at your house at midnight, they're
probably not saying friend. They're probably going oy,
because they need something. Friend, friends, the polite
people in Jesus day lend ME3 loaves of bread.
That's another thing which is not theologically sound.
All right, if you're going to give someone bread, trust me,
you don't want it back when they're finished.
Yeah, don't. A friend of mine is on a journey
and he's come to me and I have no food to offer him.
Of course they didn't. They didn't know who was going
to be there. And suppose the one inside
answers don't bother me. The door is already locked and
my children and I are in bed. I pray that his children wake
him up early. I tell you, Jesus says even
though he will not get up and give you the bread because of
friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will
surely get up and give you as much as you need.
He went there for three and he came home for six.
Why not? And then Jesus goes on to say
when you ask, when you seek, when you knock, you see where
the context is important. He's just told the story.
They've asked, Friend, can I have some bread?
No, in that case, I'm going to bang on the door until either
the door comes down or you come down.
You choose which one's first. And that's what Jesus is talking
about with the disciples. And that's his encouragement and
his urge and his invitation and maybe even his command to us as
a people. Don't quit.
Don't stop praying when it gets hard, when you get bored, or
when you get tired. Shameless audacity, which in the
right context is beautiful. Let me tell you the right
context and the wrong context. The wrong context.
A friend of mine who I'd see once a year or so would go out
for dinner together and he would always end up getting his meal
for free. It wasn't because he was
particularly kind. He would moan about the food and
he'd moaned to the staff and then he'd moaned to the chef and
then he'd moaned to the manager until he got a new meal that was
hot enough. I mean, I've got to tell you, I
tried his food and burnt my mouth off.
But then he'd get it for free because they they wronged him
and I'd sit there with him. I'd feel so uncomfortable
because everything he was doing did not look like Jesus to me.
It's the wrong context now, the right context.
Friday night we're here ready to worship at the start of the set.
And one of the travelling musicians just gets absolutely
knocked out by the presence of God, and it's really awkward
because it's supposed to be on the band, but instead they just
spent the whole night down there on their face crying loudly.
Shameless, audacious, completely correct.
Because I want to line up with what he's doing.
And when I'm in that place, I don't want anything to stop me
from what he wants me to pursue. I thought we have an invitation
to be shameless and audacious in our pursue of the King of Kings.
And don't get me wrong, we can be shameless and audacious when
we approach the throne, but we must also come in deep humility,
awe, and wonder, because He is still the God of the cosmos.
John 14 Jesus says a phrase that picks up on the same theme.
I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be
glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in
my name and I will do it. So there's a running theme.
Ask and I will. But the caveat is he will only
do it if he wants to do it. But that doesn't match with the
text. He says ask me for anything.
No, it does because in the English, in this phrase in John
14, it says so that the Father may be glorified.
In the Greek, there's a different word.
The word is hina, HINA, which translates as in order that.
So there's a different emphasis on what Jesus is trying to tell
the people. So we track it back differently.
It says this, I will do whatever you ask in my name if the Father
would be glorified through the sun in order that the Father be
glorified. So if we flip that on its head,
I will not do what you ask me if it does not bring the Father
glory. Now any of us wonder why our
prayers don't get answered because we pray for the wrong
thing. It's not true.
Your prayer always gets answered.
Sometimes it just gets answered with a no.
But if we pray in alignment with His will and His Kingdom
purposes, then He always does what we ask because it would
bring glory to the Father through the Son as we work out
the person of the Holy Spirit. Does that make sense?
Sometimes when we're praying, we're praying for the wrong
thing and then we get frustrated because God's not done it.
He was never going to do it. But if we pray in alignment with
His will and he says He will always fulfil what we ask of
him, so that the Father might be glorified.
So when we ask, when we seek, and when we knock, if we do it
in relationship and alignment with God, then he promises that
as He does, the Father's glorified and then heaven begins
to come to earth. That's how we're called to pray.
So not called to give up when things don't go our way.
We're also not called just to pray for things that benefit us.
Now we are in danger in the West of living with an element of
consumer Christianity where we get big in our faith, right,
because we have so much at our disposal.
I can go to church here. I can also jump into an evening
service at another church. I can listen to some podcasts
through the week. I might put on YouTube while I'm
driving. I'm going to listen to worship.
There's nothing wrong with that. That's good.
It's supposed to feed us. But if you don't exercise, you
get fat in your faith. All right, True, the call from
God to us was never to indulge yourself with Him and do nothing
with it. The call from God was take what
you need, the tables full, take as much as you want as long as
you then ask and seek and knock. Do something with it.
Don't just sit there in spiritual gluttony thinking how
comfortable we are because comfort is the death of the
church. I want to pray more this year
than I've ever prayed in my life.
Partly because as I pray, He draws near to me and then He
becomes the pursuit for my prayer.
But also, as I pray in a lump with His will, He promises that
things will begin to shift on earth.
Guys, I want to burden you as the Lord is burdening me.
It's time to pray and not give up like we've never prayed
before. It's time to contend for the
will of God. Jesus teaches us from the days
of John the Baptist, the Kingdom of heaven has been advancing and
the violent overthrow it. Now that's not a negative.
What he's saying is if you want to be someone who takes hold of
the Kingdom, you can have to put the work in God.
Take hold of it. Don't just sit and expect for
God to do what you've not asked him to do.
Some of you in the room, you've got kids, you've got loved ones,
you've got family members who are not walking with Jesus, and
I don't know your prayer life. So what do you do with that?
Never mind. But do you contend in prayer
until he comes home and his family come with him?
What do you do? Because I don't want to get to
heaven and look around and see that there are people in my life
that didn't make it. It's never been about my comfort
following Jesus has never been about what I can get again
eternity because of his grace. But then he calls me into action
and it's a mission. Do you want to sit on the
sidelines? Do you want to be on the pitch?
It's our choice, it's our call and I can't badden you with what
the Lord's baddened me just by speaking to you, but I pray the
Holy Spirit would do something in our hearts.
We head Rise of the people and a generation that are not happy to
sit idly by while the world goes to hell because.
It's not a scary bedtime stories for children.
If heaven is real, therefore hell also is.
I want to ask you, where are your family going?
And there's no condemnation. Allow the conviction of Holy
Spirit to do something in you that you never recover from.
Because I don't want to lose what the Lord is doing to me
now. I don't want this to be based on
I feel a bit tired or we've prayed all night and then it
just dissipate. I want to be someone who prays
and contents to the Kingdom of God to come.
What about you? Do you ask and then give up?
Do you ask at all? He's seeking you looking.
Do you knock on the door? And Luke 18, Jesus gives this
story. He told them a parable to show
them they should always pray and never give up.
Now there's a caveat in here that I'd love to just share with
you really quickly. The phrase in the English that
translates as never give up, actually in the Greek translates
as not lose heart. And there's a difference because
we can keep praying, but we kind of lost heart about the
fulfilment of our prayers. Does that make sense?
I can do it because I know I should, but actually I've
checked out a long time ago. I can do it because I know that
God's told me to, but I have no faith that it's going to bring
any change. Now Jesus is not saying keep on
doing it because you should. He's saying keep on doing it and
do not lose heart. Do not have your confidence
stolen that He is able to do what you ask.
He said in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared
God nor cared what people thought.
I mean, what a lovely man he sounds like.
And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with
a plea. Grant me justice against my
adversary. For some time he refused, but
finally he said to himself, even though I do not fear God or care
what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I
will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually
come and attack me. That's not righteousness really
is it? That's fear.
But it still gets the job done. I love the thought of the big
judge parading around the town, the small widow running around
chasing him with a stick to beat him.
I love that idea. He was scared of the little old
lady. And the Lord said, listen to
what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about
justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?
Now if we want to dig into this further, we can.
Will he not bring about justice for the chosen ones who cry out
to him day and night? Now here's the thing, Will he
bring justice to those who do not cry out to him day and
night? That's up to the Lord.
But he will bring justice to those who cry out to him day.
And now. So Jesus said in the text, he's
the God of justice. He's the God of mercy and mercy
of ultimately triumphs over judgement.
That's what we get from the text itself.
Maybe you're looking for justice and you've quit praying.
Start again. Will he keep putting them off?
I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly.
And then he says something really, really weird at the end,
which in isolation feels very bizarre.
He says. However, when the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on the earth?
Now, Jesus knew that answer to that question.
At face value, the answer is yes, obviously, he'll find faith
on the earth because right now, in our day and our age,
Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious phenomenon of
all time. We've never seen anything like
what the Lord is doing now. So of course it's going to be
faith on the earth. But that's not the kind of faith
that Jesus talking about. He's not talking about a belief
pattern or even Lordship. He's talking about faith that
contends in the Spirit for the will of God to be done.
Will I find faith like that on the earth is a question, and
that's what you and I ultimately give an account for.
How did you do with the life that I gave you?
Did you spend it on the bench for some of you in the room?
You need to ask again. You've been praying for
something for a long time, and recently you've just given up.
Ask again, ask again because in two Corinthians, Paul writes
this, that today is the day of salvation.
Because in this passage, Jesus equates faith to desperation and
urgency. So what he's saying is, will
there be faith like what I've just proclaimed to you?
When I come back and we get an opportunity to enter in, in
alignment with his will and purpose and say, yes, I want to
ask this church, you've already heard me express that it's not a
time to be passive in our Christianity.
It's a time to contend until we see the Kingdom of God come.
Because in Matthew 26, this is what Jesus says.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called
Gethsemane, and he said to them, sit here while I go over there
to pray. Then he took Peter and the two
sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and
troubled. Then he said to them, my soul is
overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.
Stay here and keep watch with me.
He didn't tell them to pray, just told them to show up.
Sometimes we can come to prayer and we don't necessarily need to
pray, we just need to be. It's the righteous to show up
and say, Lord, I don't have any words, but I'm here and I'm
waiting. Boys, will you come with me?
I'm in the deepest, darkest despair that I've ever
experienced. I'm about to go and do the
Father's well. I know it's going to cost my
life. Will you just come with me?
You have my back going on a little farther.
He fell with his face to the ground, and he prayed.
My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me
yet? Not as I will, but as you will.
And then he returned to his disciples and he found them
sleeping. Couldn't you keep watch with me
for one hour? And there's no condemnation in
the room, because like I say to us, the Lord is also speaking to
me about prayer, about living in it.
I don't want to preach it. I want to live in it.
So will you keep watch? Couldn't you stay for an hour?
These are his closest friends and there's no shade on them.
I don't know what their daylight activities look like.
Must have been tired, but they're there.
And he said, come on, boys, will you stick around with me?
He gets back and couldn't you just keep watch for an hour?
Oh, is it? Is it overstating to say that
maybe the heart of the Lord would look at the church and
he'd say, couldn't you just keep watch?
Because I know that some of us are doing our best to pray and,
and again, like we're starting with where we are today, right?
You're not judged on yesterday because his mercies are renewed
every morning. We get the choice to go again
and try again and do better tomorrow.
That's OK. But he looks at the church and
he says where are the people that are going to stand watch
and what we've done for a long time?
Is we've relied on elderly women to pray on our behalf.
It's not sufficient. I'm not saying you've got to
come to lots of corporate prayer events.
That's not what Jesus is talking about.
There's a power of corporate prayer and there's a power of
individual prayer, and both contain their place and both
have their purpose. But what we can do if we're not
careful, is we can say the intercessors will pray and
that's fine, so they should. But there's no spiritual gift of
prayer. It's not outlined in the text.
There's a gift of healing and there's a gift of miracles.
There's a gift of signs and windows.
There's nowhere as the gift of prayer because we're all called
to do it. Cockle yourself and follow
Jesus. If you don't pray, can you keep
watch for one hour? Maybe that's where you want to
start. Maybe through your week, from
today until next Sunday, you're going to do a couple of minutes
a day and through the week you'll have kept watch for an
hour. And in that time you sit with
the Lord and you say, Lord, I don't know what I'm doing, I
don't know how to starve. Or you teach me to pray.
And then it begins to burn your heart with something.
And when you run out of words, you begin to pray in the
language of Spirit. And if you don't know how to do
that, He'll give you that gift. He wants to facilitate your life
of prayer. Because when the disciples asked
Jesus in Matthew 6, we read it wrong.
They do not say teach us how to pray.
That is not in the text. They say this teach us to pray.
The how is not in there in the Greek, which implies this.
They didn't know what they were doing and potentially they
weren't even praying. They saw him say some prayers
and maybe they copied that, but they weren't praying in their
day-to-day. So what's their what's their
request of the Lord? It's not necessarily teach us
how he does that, but it's teach us to pray.
And is that not the burden of the church in this hour when the
Lord's on the move around the nation?
Lord, teach us to pray that we might partner with you, that we
might groan on your behalf. I know it's heavy, it's not
light and breezy. That's why I started by talking
to you about my kids. It's a bit of fun in there.
He went away a second time and prayed.
My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away
unless I drink it, then may your will be done.
When he came back, he again found them sleeping because
their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away
once more and prayed 1/3 time, saying the same thing.
Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, Are
you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the
Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners.
And again let me say this, with all reverence and all honour,
and with no condemnation. Are you and I in danger of
sleepwalking into eternity? Are we?
I can get to heaven while I'm sleepwalking if I've accepted
Jesus, if I've made him my Lord and Saviour, if I've renounced
my sin and I've decided to live different, I can kind of like,
from that point sleepwalk in and I might make it in the skin of
my teeth. But is that enough?
Isn't that right for the bride to be awake and fully fulfilling
her purpose on the earth until we go one day to be with Him?
I don't want to be asleep as I go about my day-to-day honour.
Do all I can to live in accordance with the will of God
that I might be someone who brings heaven to earth, not for
my benefit or for my glory, but for His praise and honour that
the Father might be glorified through the sun.
You see the pattern all the way through.
Ask, seek, knock, Keep on going. Pray a little longer, work a
little harder. Not in our own strength or in
our own effort, but empowered and filled with the Spirit just
as Jesus was. Why?
Why does He ask us to pray? Why does he ask us to seek and
knock? Why?
Because He wants to see His Kingdom come.
Because He longs for your family to know Him more than you do.
He longs for the boys on my football team to know Him more
than I do. Could you not keep watch?
Because we might sleepwalk into eternity, but the world around
us is currently heading to hell, and it's not our job to bring
salvation. OK.
It doesn't rest on you. It doesn't rest on me.
That's him and him alone. That's the finished work of the
cross. It's an empty cross and it's an
empty grave and it's blood poured out.
We have a job and a duty and a responsibility to partner with
the King of Kings. As I 62 and I'll finish with
this. I have posted Watchmen on your
walls, Jerusalem, that they may never be silent, day or night.
You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him
no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the
praise on earth. We are invited, called,
commissioned, whatever phrase you might want to use, to keep
watch with Him while we're here on the earth, to pray in
alignment with His will and purposes.
To give ourselves no rest and to give Him no rest until we see
His Kingdom and His glory come. That's the call of following
Christ. Will you keep watch with me?
Jesus doesn't ask us to do something that he's not already
willing to do himself. When you ask, he says, well, you
know that the Bible tells us that he sits at the right hand
of the Father, that he intercedes for us, praying for
you. Right now.
He's praying for you. I wonder what he prays.
Praise that you'd make it to the end still loving Him.
Praise that you fulfil the purpose that it's put inside
your life since before the foundations of the earth were
laid in place. Praise that you might not waste
what he's putting you in birth in any He asks for us when you
seek well Jesus, when asked the question in the book of Luke
gives his answer. He said to him, the Son of Man
came to seek and to save the lost, and that was you.
And for some of us maybe it still is you.
And it was me before he found me.
I didn't find him. You rescued me because He was
seeking me out. Revelation 3 verse 20 says
behold, I stand at the door and I knock.
Jesus asks us to ask to seek and to knock and what does he do?
He petitions on our behalf to the Father.
He says I came to seek you out while you are lost.
And then he says I'm knock on the door of your heart.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in
and eat with them and they with me.
If you're here in the room today, the message of Jesus is
really simple, that he was willing to give.
Us all to die the death that we deserve.
Because it was. Deep love for.
You and I, Matthew 26, we read it earlier on about Jesus and
the Garden of Gethsemane with the boys.
And he's saying to them, will you keep watch?
And then he says, Behold, the Son of man's just been passed
into the hand of sinners. And then what does he do from
that position? He goes and he carries a big
wooden cross with lashes on his back.
And the thorns in his brow spat on, mocked, beaten, abused.
He did it for you. He did it for me.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine
upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards
you and give you peace.