Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into the word what we're going to look at this
morning. We are as, as we said on the
announcements, we're going to have our annual fast, the 21 day
fast. We've been doing this probably
2324 years now. A lot of fast.
Fasting is good for you. I'm trying to think the first
time we ever did a 21 day fast, I don't know that I'd ever done
one because I really wondered, could you do that?
Will you die and you won't? You really won't.
You might feel like you're going to, but you're not going to.
It matter of fact, fasting is very good for you.
It's healthy. I just read the other day that
if you will do a four day water fast, your chances of cancer
drops by 85%. That's amazing.
So fasting, that's why when you get sick often, you'll lose your
appetite, your body shuts down and it's healing itself through
that. And so we're going to move into
some healing in in January. So I want to encourage you to do
so, but I want to look at some things in light of that.
I want to look at, I want to ask you a question.
Don't you hate when preachers ask a question because you know
they're trying to trick you? Let me ask you a question.
I want you to raise your hand. How many of you believe that
your obedience to God has? As if there's a correlation
between your obedience to God and answered prayer?
Raise your hand. How many of you think there's no
correlation between that? Raise your hand how many of you
aren't going to answer regardless of what I say?
Amen. I appreciate your honesty.
I would be in the same boat. I'd be kind of like, and you
know, when, when I asked that question initially, I think that
we, we immediately think, well, of course, and then very quickly
we begin to back away from that, that stance because we begin to
ask the question, well, what about grace?
Are we earning the answer to prayer and all of that?
And these are very, very important questions because what
the enemy wants to do is he wants to undermine the power of
prayer. God has given us this amazing
Canon. Matter of fact, in worship, I
saw this quick picture on my mind of God cleaning out the
Canon, the Canon of prayer and fasting.
I believe that prayer is powerful, but when you add
fasting to it, it's even more powerful.
But why? We just, you know, say those
things, but is there a theological reason why I believe
that there is a direct correlation between our walk
with God, our obedience, our aligning our life, our surrender
to Him, and our power in the prayer closet.
Prevailing prayer, your surrender actually fuels the
prevailing nature of prayer. But why?
Because we need really do need to ask that because we can get
into some legalism, we can get into some false conclusions that
actually create frustration in our life as if we've got to earn
answered prayer. And that is not what I'm saying.
In fact, I'm adamantly saying that is not the case.
You don't earn the answer to your prayer, but God does want
you to be the first expression of it.
God wants to you to be the first fruits of the answer to your
prayer where you become a living expression of what you're
actually praying for. And so there's a process to
prayer. But if we don't understand it,
we, we, we pray a few times and then when there's not an answer,
we just conclude, I guess God said no.
Or even more serious, I guess God doesn't care.
We get offended or distracted and we just give up.
And we've pulled out of the process that God is going to use
to, to have heaven invade earth. OK.
And so we want to look at this whole concept and I'm going to
make a case for it. It's scripturally from the Old
Testament and the New Testament this morning.
So let's pray. I feel the need.
So, Lord, we just thank you for your word.
And Lord, I'm asking God that you would grace me, Lord, to
communicate what you've spoken to me.
Lord, that your word would come with great power.
Lord, I ask that you would enlighten people's minds.
Lord, that your teaching would fall like rain.
Father, we ask for a spirit of wisdom and revelation to reside
here, Lord, and that you would Lord, flashes of revelation that
you would begin to connect dots and Lord that you would make us
more effective in prayer because of what we come away with in
Jesus name, Amen. Number of years ago, Well, I
think it was the first year we ever did the 21 day fast.
We were praying over at the old building across town.
And as we're praying, I, I quickly went into a vision, just
a real quick vision of this Kool-aid picture my mom had.
It was an orange, burnt orange kool-aid picture.
It was in the days my dad had just redone our kitchen with
avocado green appliances. You guys remember that man?
We were a happening family. I'm telling you this, he, he
laid this psychedelic carpet. I mean, it kind of made you
dizzy looking at the carpet. We had our backsplash was like
pretend brick. I mean, we, it was a wild
looking house. My dad was in construction and
so he finished it the day we moved so we could, my dad could
pastor in Iowa. You know, it's like the the, the
mechanic who always drives the junk car, our car, our house was
always being worked on and finally was finished the day we
moved. But anyway, I digress.
Wait. My, we had a burnt orange
Kool-aid picture and I saw that in a vision as I was praying.
We were praying for God to pour out His spirit on Heartland, to
use Heartland to touch the region.
And all of a sudden I saw this picture and some of you remember
this was a Tupperware picture and it was 1 molded hole.
It was there, it was the picture.
There was a handle molded into it and a little spout down the
top, one piece of plastic and then it was a 2 piecer.
It had a white lid that would slide in because we were a
classy family. You slide that in there and you
could turn it and there were two holes on one side.
There were three lines cut into it.
And then if you really wanted it to flow, you'd turn that thing
around and there was a square and you would line up the
openness, the hole in the lid with the spout on the pitcher,
and then it could pour out. And that's what I saw.
I saw that that burnt orange kool-aid pitcher, and I saw this
hand reach down and begin to adjust the lid.
And the hole on the lid was just barely lined up with the spout
on the pitcher. And I knew intuitively when I
saw it, this is what the Lord said to me.
He said you are the lid on the outpouring in this region.
Now, I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm the only lid, but the
fact is God's looking for one person to become aligned with
him. And what he was doing is he was
showing me that fasting is not about changing him.
Fasting is not a hunger strike where we put God's arm behind
his back and come on, you know we're going to starve.
It's not going to look good for you, God.
We're your people. They're think you're nuts
because we're nuts. And then you got so OK, he says,
I'll pour out my spirit. That's not what fasting is.
Fasting doesn't change God, it changes us.
And so that was the hand of the Lord that was grabbing me as the
lid, and He was adjusting me. So the openness in me, see,
there was openness in me. That's why I was fasting.
That's why I was crying out. The problem is the openness in
me wasn't quite aligned with the openness in Him.
I had all these contingencies on my openness.
God, I want you to move as long as it doesn't interfere with my
convenient life. Lord, I want you to move as long
as I don't have to get up too early or stay up too late, as
long as I can eat what I want. And so God was putting his
finger on my heart and he was showing me that that he was
adjusting me. And what fasting is about, it's
taking the openness in you, the hunger in you and aligning it
with the openness in him. And I knew in the picture that
God was the pitcher. And the amazing thing is the
very structure of this, this Kool-aid pitcher is there was a,
the spout molded into it. God's very nature is to pour out
upon us the fullness of him. He longs to pour out on the
earth. The problem is not on God's
side. What he's looking for is
somebody to align with him so that he can pour through us.
And so fasting is about changing us.
And so the season of prayer and fasting and there are times
where God will call us into a fresh season.
You ever been gripped by prayer for a season, men, when that
when you begin to feel that give way to it.
Those are glorious times of fellowship with God, and it's
times where you begin to realize and learn things about God on
that journey. And the glorious thing about
walking with God is even though you get the answered prayer, the
greatest reward of prayer is not the answer, but the revelation
you got in the journey on the way to the answer.
It's how God pulls us deeper and He reveals Himself to us.
It's a glorious thing. But what we need to understand
is that the first stage of intercession, the purpose of
fasting, is so that He can begin to transform us.
We become the first fruits of our own request so that then He
can manifest through us. Before He changes the external
circumstances about which we are praying for, He begins to change
us as the prayer. And if we resist the change
there, the change will never show up out there.
And so we are the first fruits of our own request.
And what God is looking for is to change us.
And as we cry out to Him, God begins to do a work within us.
As our hunger grows, there's a greater willingness to yield.
And we start throwing things overboard.
Lord, I want this. And he puts his finger.
We'll throw that overboard and throw that over where we're
surrendering more and more until He gets us in the place where
we're aligned with Him. And I would propose to you that
every fresh season of intercession, every time we are
called into a fast, God is going to deal with something
internally so He can move externally.
He first has to do it in you so we can do it through you.
And if we resist the work in us, we shut down the work through
us. Because the sobering reality is
you can cancel with your behavior what you pray with your
mouth. You can cry out to God, a
sincere God inspired prayer. But if you don't begin to align
your life with that request, if you are actually contradicting
with your behavior what you're praying with your mouth, then
you'll actually shut down your prayer.
And I'm going to show you this from the Word.
This is a theme throughout Scripture, and it's something we
don't often understand. See, that's that's from heaven,
man. There's an alarm that's trying
to get our attention here. I've got a word from the Lord
for you this morning. Seriously, God's inviting us in.
How many of you long to see greater power come through your
life in prayer? How many of you long to see the
prevailing power of God, God's strong right arm, begin to reach
through your life and begin to see things change?
Some of you are longing to see changes in your family and
circumstances surrounding you. There's there's things some of
us are carrying a tremendous burden for this nation and God
is longing to exercise his strong right arm, but he's got
to find a people that will align themselves with him.
So the first stage of any season in prayer is always God changing
us so he can change the situation.
He begins to do a work in US and as we yield to him, he begins to
gain an upper hand in that situation.
So let's pause that whole thought there.
Think you know where I'm going with that?
So pause that. And this begs the question here
about this thing of earning the answers to our prayers.
We talk about obedience and surrender.
Does that mean the more I'm obedient?
God says, man, he's really been good, He's been behaving, I'm
going to reward him with an answered prayer.
No, that's not what's going on. We don't earn the answer to our
prayer. In fact, God desires to release
it more than we desire to see it.
And the only reason we're even praying is God put it within our
heart in the first place. God longs to release it, but he
needs an agent through which he releases it.
Because God has delegated the earth to man according to Psalm
8, and he will not violate the system he himself set up.
If he's going to release it on the earth, he's got to find a
yielded soul through which he can release it.
So this whole thing about righteousness and, and about
earning our, our, the answer to our prayer, it, it brings up
this whole idea, this, this question about what is the
nature of righteousness theologically, there's a thing
called imputed righteousness. It's the righteousness of
Christ. He already lived a perfect life.
We're going to celebrate that in a few moments through communion.
Jesus, it says, was made perfect by the things he suffered.
I don't have time to get down here, but I want to kind of mess
with you a little bit this morning.
Jesus was not born perfect. He became perfect by the things
he suffered. Now what does that mean?
It doesn't mean he was born sinful, it just he wasn't the
completion of God's, God's dream.
God, the first Adam derailed God's name.
So the last Adam came up and picked up where he left off and
he came as a man and he had to fulfill all of righteousness.
And the way he would do that is he learned obedience, Scripture
says through the things he suffered.
It says that he suffered when he was tempted.
Those are two verses out of out of Hebrews.
He learned obedience by the things he suffered.
How could Jesus need to learn obedience?
Because he was being, he was taking what God had put within
him in the form of God's, that being created in God's image,
that potential and through right response to God through the
maturing process, he responded correctly and he was made
perfect by the things he suffered.
And so that righteousness, when Jesus said it is finished, what
was finished was God's plan for man.
And that was given to us as a gift.
We were made righteous, imputed to us as a gift.
The day I got saved, I was perfect.
I, I surrendered my life to Jesus and the paperwork in
heaven, the legal paperwork, God looked at me and looked through
his son and said he's perfect, He's righteous.
You can't improve on that one. The lady who led me to the Lord
gave me money to go out and buy a Bible.
I went out and bought a keg, got hammered, but I was still
righteous and the enemy could come up to God.
Hey, I thought you said this guy was perfect.
I thought he was a believer now. And the Lord checked the
paperwork. He's righteous.
It's imputed, it's a gift. The problem is, if that's the
only revelation of righteousness we have, then that gives us
access to heaven, but it doesn't give heaven access to earth.
What? So what's imputed to us as a
gift of righteousness is then worked into us as character
through the process of maturity. So we need to grow into this so
that what was given to us as a gift shows up on the landscape
of our life. This over here is the paperwork
in heaven. God looks at it, He's righteous.
But the people bumping into me in those days, not so much.
They're like, I don't know that I agree with heaven.
He doesn't seem righteous. So over time in walking with
God, just that's why it says in Hebrews chapter 2, it was
fitting that Jesus, for whom and through whom everything exists,
was made righteous through suffering.
Why did he say it was fitting for Jesus to be made righteous
through suffering? The reason it says that it was
he was made perfect through suffering.
The reason it was fitting and what he's insinuating is because
that's how you're going to be made perfect.
I know it's supposed to be good news this morning.
We'll get there. You're going to go through some
things and what God has given to you as a gift, as paperwork,
legal righteousness becomes actual by showing up in the
landscape of your life and you, everybody else gets to enjoy the
fruit of that. You get to enjoy the fruit of
this one. God gets to enjoy the fruit of
it because He has access and He gets you back as His
inheritance. But when I got saved, the only
people that enjoyed the fruit of that were my mom and dad, and
they had some doubts because they've been praying for this
boy. But over time, as it gets worked
in us and we begin to mature and we grew up, we we cooperate as
he operates. God deals with us and we respond
correctly. As that happens, then what?
Then other people get to enjoy the fruit of that and all of a
sudden, not not only do I have access to heaven, heaven acts
access to earth through me and it begins to manifest through my
life. And one of the ways in which
that happens is prayer. Let me show you some verses.
Let me just show you one interesting verse.
Hebrews chapter 10. Look at verse 14.
This is an interesting verse because it it's the one verse in
Scripture that gives us a picture of both facets or
expressions of righteousness. He says for by a single offering
he God has made perfect all for all time those who are being
sanctified. The NIV says he's made perfect
those who are being made holy. There it is again.
For by single offering he has made perfect for all, has
perfected for all times those who are being sanctified.
In other words, he's perfected for all time.
I'm holy. It's it's, it was given to me as
a gift. The only thing about it was this
legal agreement. God said I'm making them holy.
And then what he's been working on the last 42 years after that
is he's make, he's sanctifying me, He's bringing me up.
This is my legal condition. This is my living condition, my
legal position, my living condition.
He's bringing my living condition up to the standard of
my legal position. And what we need to understand
is that a lot of believers try to pray from this place and this
place alone. And when God begins to deal with
them and they'll say thanks but no thanks, and they actually
thwart their own prayers because this is necessary for our
prayers to be answered. Because one of the ways that God
makes you holy is he grips you with hunger for something.
And you begin to seek him about that.
And he says, OK, we're going to have a mutual exchange of
requests. You want to see that happen?
I want to see this happen. Now I'll show you a new word.
This isn't. I'm not making this up.
We said God send revival. God said, OK, I'm going to start
with how you talk to your wife. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute,
Lord, that's not what I was talking about.
I was talking about out there, those heathens out there, I want
to see them converted. And God said, I want to convert
you deeper. He begins to deal with us.
And so understand that when we go on a season of prayer, a
season of fasting, when there's a heightened hunger, that God
introduces those seasons of development.
And often they're they're precipitated by some trial, some
crisis in our life. And we get to choose, are we
going to seek him or are we going to get bitter and go
elsewhere? But if we'll dig in and seek
him, those are times of great growth.
And God is dealing with us about the little things in our life.
And as we yield to that, it actually gives us prevailing
power and prayer. So let me show you a couple
verses. Matter of fact, I had a hard
time pulling up my notes on my computer, so I'll just read it
on my phone. Here's one Hebrews chapter 5,
verse 16. It says with loud cries and
petitions, Jesus made his requests known unto God and he
was heard because of his reverence submission.
The cause of his being heard was not that he was the Son of God,
wasn't that he'd already been to heaven and I already knew all
this thing worked. It was his reverent submission
to the Father that caused him to be heard.
You would say, well, Dave, I think maybe that's just because
that's Jesus. Maybe that doesn't apply to us.
Proverbs 28, nine. Let's go to the Old Testament.
Listen to this. If one turns away his ear from
hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.
That's a heavy one. In other words, as we ignore
what God's word clearly says, God doesn't want to hear our
prayer. You think, well, can you really
say it that strongly? Let me quote it from Zechariah
713. As I called and they would not
hear. This is God speaking to the
children of Israel. As I called and they would not
hear. So they called and I would not
hear, says the Lord of hosts. In other words, their
willingness to hear Him and allow Him to speak into their
life and change them was what would cause their prayers to be
heard. But if they shut down the voice
of God in their life, then their voice was shut down before the
throne. And this is not about earning
the answers to your prayers. It's about aligning your request
with your life. It's about becoming the living
embodiment, a living, breathing expression of what you are
praying. Years ago, Rita Springer, when I
worked for Teen Challenge, someone had donated A cassette
that'll kind of date it. It was actually one of those
newfangled things called a cassette at the time.
It was back in the 80s and Rita Springer had this song.
Some of you may have heard it. Make us a prayer.
Let our prayer be a cry. Humble our hearts that we may
draw nigh. Cause us to stand and cry out
for this land. Make us a House of prayer.
I remember hearing that and it the theology of it was weird to
me. It was like I don't even know
what make me a prayer. Yeah, I understand saying
prayers, but make me a prayer. But what my mind was trying to
was struggling to grasp my spirit was already bought into
my spirit is deep calling on the deep God.
I would I would put that on and I would walk around the Chapel
of Teen Challenge and just cry out to God make me a prayer.
What she was touching on is a very is as a reality God is
inviting us into. He wants your life to line up
with your prayers. He wants your you to become a
living expression so that literally every breath is
brought before the throne of God and you find yourself.
You are the request. You are the plea, you are the
prayer that you wake up in the middle of the night.
You find yourself praying before you even have time to think
about it because there's this thing, this burden that you've
learned to cooperate and carry with the Lord.
And so you find yourself waking up and praying.
You find yourself at a store shopping and also you realize I
was speaking in tongues. Did anybody hear that?
Did I sound weird? You know that I just read the
mail of some Iranian guy in tongues and didn't know it.
You know, you're you find yourself praying all the time.
It's that that's where pulses pray without ceasing.
We literally become an expression of prayer and when we
enter into those seasons and in fact, if you are, if you ever
preach or teach, you will relate with this.
And it's an indictment on us, including myself.
But when I know I've got to go preach somewhere outside of
heartland and some of them seem like a bigger deal than others,
which I'm not even sure is really correct.
And you know, before God, I don't know, I'm still sifting
through that. I'm just being transparent.
There are times where I feel like there's weight on this one.
This is important. I've I've got to really make
sure I've got the got the word of the Lord and there's a more
of a tenderness in my walk with him.
It's not that I'm just living, you know, I'm not living in sin.
OK, But there's this thing of just I want to be more tender
and someone cuts me off and I'm like, I'm bless you.
I just want my heart to be right.
Bless you. I'm not going to not going to
get angry. You know, my wife's praying that
I'll go into another season of fasting.
She says, Dave, it's always everyone else's fault.
And I do, I have, I have an issue there with driving.
So I need, it's a, it's a good platform for the Lord to deal
with me because what's coming out is not about the other car
or my car. It's something deeper.
It's my own impatience, my demand to be respected, to give
me my rightful spot according to the law.
How dare you treat me like I'm less than you.
And God wants to put his finger on those things.
No meddling, right? But I'm telling you, this stuff
is very, very important because it has everything to do.
We're allowing the Lord to have access to us.
And what he's doing is he's taking that lid and he's taking
the openness in you and adjusting it so he can align it
with him. And even Jesus, the Son of God
himself, His prayers were heard because of his reverent
submission. He allowed his life to be
aligned with the Father. And it's one of the primary ways
we do war against the enemy, because one of the enemy's
primary strategies is when you begin to pray about something.
And Dan Mohler used to say, if you're touchy, you'll be
touched. The enemy will touch those areas
of your life. And what will your response be?
And as we're aware of that and we have our antennae up, we
realize, oh, this is a time of the dealings of God.
I'm in a season of sanctification.
God's wanting to take me deeper. And we allow the Lord to deal
with those things. The Lord help me to be.
Lord, you know what just came up in my heart when that guy drove
by and he waved at me with that one digit in the middle of his
hand. Lord just we pray, we allow the
Lord to deal with our heart, we realize these are the things
that are standing in the way to God using us in answering
prayer. OK, listen to these verses.
Here's a couple more. Here's one for the men.
Ladies, do not elbow your husband when I read this and but
seriously, it's I'm talking about the same principle within
the context of marriage. Same principle, though it's all
through the word. Listen to this.
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding
way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they
are heirs with the you of the grace of God or the grace of
life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Husbands, I got to say it again. Husbands, live with your wives
in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker
vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.
Why? So that your prayers may not be
hindered. In other words, your prayers
this way can be hindered by your the way you talk this way, the
way you treat your life will either open up your prayer life
or shut it down. That's sobering.
Don't look at me that way. I didn't write this.
I'm just reading it. Don't shoot the delivery man.
This is in the Word. Do you see how throughout the
Word we see these things? You see, because you can
actually contradict with your life and your behavior.
Gentlemen, you can shut your prayers down by being short with
your wife. And So what God does is he puts
a woman in your life. Those wonderful women, we we
married and we at times get irritating, not because they are
irritating. I want to be clear about that
because this will be on recording.
My wife was in the nurse. You couldn't see this later it
but my impatience. God is gaining access though
when I when I was engaged to my wife, the Lord told me he said I
was praying one day and he said Kathy will be the finger with
which I probe your heart. I thought that's not romantic at
all This that's not what I'm signing up for, but it is often
are the way that God gets at that stuff as we're praying and
we're crying out. Then God gets access through
these horizontal relationships and realize that your response
in those circumstances will either give power fuel your
prayers or there shut them down according to the word of God.
Sobering, but it's a reality. Listen to this one first.
John 321. Beloved, if our heart does not
condemn us, we have confidence before God.
That's good news. Hallelujah.
If our heart does not condemn us.
And so where do we find that relief from condemnation?
One of the primary tools of the enemy is to try to make you feel
guilty. And a message like this can
really be used by the enemy to do that.
So what do we come back to? We always got to come back to
this imputed righteousness, if you could say it this way, this
righteousness where we're growing and we're applying it,
we're yielding to it. We're we're, we're having
character built within us. This is like the trapeze of
truth. We're swinging around, we're
learning new flips, you know, and every now and then, whoop,
we get mad, you know, say something we shouldn't have, do
something, react how we didn't. The good thing is we have a net
underneath us of imputed righteousness.
We we always fall back to that imputed righteousness.
But if that's all you have a theology for, well, I'm, I'm
saved. It's all by grace, brother.
Well, yeah, but we're not experiencing the grace of God in
your life unless you're maturing.
You may be enjoying it, but none of us are.
You're wondering why you're not getting more invitation.
OK, reel it in. Day it.
We. We need to allow the Lord to
deal with us and to grow up in Him.
And so our heart condemns us. We go back to this Lord.
I'll never outgrow the need for imputed righteousness, but I
should grow and I should be made manifesting His character more
and more. Others around me should be able
to say, wow, there's more of Jesus I'm experiencing through
Pastor Dave this year than I did last year.
That that patience, that kindness, the the fruit of the
Spirit. You know, the fruit of the
Spirit is not for you. It's for those of you that are
parked around your tree, apple trees, don't you know, reach 1
branch over and grab an apple. And they don't eat their own
fruit. They're producing fruit for
those that are going to pick the fruit.
And the fruit of the Spirit is not for us.
It's for those around us. And they should be feasting on
the fruit of our surrender to Jesus, where it literally
becomes part of us as character, where the things that caused
something else to come out before, when the squeeze is put
on us, what's inside comes out and Jesus oozes out because we
become more holy. We've grown up, we're mature.
And what I'm telling you is all of this has everything to do
with answered prayer. Because when we don't cooperate
with that, we actually shut down the process of prayer because
what God is looking for is somebody that he can work in,
that they literally become the first fruits of the answer to
their own prayer. They become the embodiment.
There's nothing within them that is contradicting what they're
saying in prayer anymore. When they're praying for the
outpouring of the Spirit, they know that what that means is
that the kindness of God, the grace of God, that the
tenderness of the Lord, the love of Jesus is going to be made
manifest. And that's being made manifest
through them first before it manifests out there.
And to the extent that there's a lid on my life of that being
manifest in me is to the extent that'll be manifest through me.
My dad, when I was a little kid, he was a World War 2 buff.
And it really freaked me out. About 10 years ago, I realized
when I was born, World War 2 was only two decades earlier.
That was like 2005. I was thinking it was like 150
years ago, like ancient history, but it was just a few decades
old. My parents had grown up in that
environment. And so my dad would always watch
this show World at War. Anybody remember that?
Grainy black and white pictures. And it had this, like this real
irritating violin ruled at war. And we'd all.
And so I'd sit there and watch hours of that with my dad.
And I thought it was somewhat interesting.
But when I got older, I began to read about World War 2 history.
What a fascinating time in history.
And if you know anything about World War 2, you know that what
really turned the corner was this day called D-Day.
It was the largest invasion in human history.
Hitler had was just marching all over Europe had had a
stranglehold. And they knew we've got to get a
foothold. We've got to get a beachhead in
France, on along the Normandy in France.
And so the largest invasion in human history, man.
There's largest invasion in human history.
Yeah. Man, you get punctuation in
here. This is amazing.
Wow. God gives you his own
illustrations. So what they did is at great
expense, 10s of thousands of men died to get a foothold on the
beach. And all the military analysts,
German allied forces, all new the war's over.
Interestingly enough, the most bloody battles were yet to be
fought. The greatest resistance, the the
hardest fought battles, the Battle of the Bulge, so forth
were yet to come. But they knew it's just a matter
of time. We've got our foothold.
And what what it's the principle of this, that in prayer you are
the beach head of God's invasion.
He must first secure your heart before he can invade and win the
battle out there. And if God cannot find the
people that are yielded to him and the dealings of God, and
that there's a deeper surrender. If our times of fasting and
prayer and intercession don't change us, then they won't
change anything else. That's why Isaiah 58 and God
willing, we're going to get into Isaiah 58 next week.
It's about God's chosen fast. And it starts out with Isaiah
saying the the Lord says to Isaiah, lift your voice, declare
to the people of Israel. And he said, they, they cry out
to me. They're hungry to know my ways.
They're they're seeking me. They're, they're fasting,
they're praying, and then they say, well, why does the Lord not
listen to us? Why do we even fast?
God's not even listening. And then the Lord answers them
ironically, they're saying, why doesn't the Lord answer?
And he did. He answers with the rebuke,
telling them why they're not seeing what they want to see and
what the rebuke was. This on the day you fast, you
oppress your fellow workers. You seek your own pleasure and
oppress your fellow workers. Most people, zero.
And then you seek your own pleasure.
The crime was that they'd seek their own pleasure, but no one
else's. They they were immune to the
the, the plight of other people. They didn't care about anything
else anybody else was going through.
They thought they could just ask God for things and refuse to be
tender towards their common man. And all throughout that passage,
what he shows us is the secret to having a fast that breaks
open the heavens, is a fast that is concerned with fellow man.
That the the drilling a hole vertically has everything to do
with serving horizontally. How do we, how do we treat our
fellow man? How do we treat other people?
Are we, are we allowing the Lord to convict us in the our
attitudes and our actions? Are we tender towards people?
Because that will have everything to do with how your
prayers are answered. And so God is looking to change
us before he can change the situation again over here, gift
of righteousness. It's the foundation.
We'll never outgrow this. This gives us access to heaven.
I'm made righteous. I'm made perfect.
I'm going to heaven. But the man who was made perfect
is being made holy through the process.
And this is where prayer takes place.
That is, I allow him to work in me.
What I'm doing is I'm allowing him to have his way because I am
the beachhead of God's invasion. I am the place.
I'm saying, God, if you want, I want to see you land in human
history. I want to see you begin to
change circumstances. And I have committed myself to
being that patch of ground where it begins.
You change me. You begin to deal with me.
Lord, I humble myself. I'll make things right, and I'm
going to walk tenderly before you.
And as we do that, we begin to see God gained the upper hand.
Many of you have heard me talk about the book Reese Howell
Intercessor. I believe it's a case study for
this hour in human history. And Reese Howell would often
reference John 15 and how abiding in him allowed him to
ask what he will would win and it would be done.
There was an obedience element. So he learned any time he would
begin to pray this, this is where I learned this principle.
I didn't learn. I never heard anybody taught on
teach on this. I didn't see this in the word
until I read Reese Howell, Reese Howell's life.
And I thought that is so intriguing.
And I began to see it all over the word and I thought, man,
this, this is the key to Reese Hall's life.
He would come before the Lord and he would begin to cry out
for something. And then the Lord would begin to
deal with him. And he said, as I would wrestle
through that, I would get to a place of surrender.
And he said once I was surrendered and yielded to him
completely, he said, then I could gain an upper hand of
authority in prayer. Winston Churchill at during the
World War Two, he said when Reese Hall and his prayer
meeting pray we win battles. They literally shifted World War
2 through prayer, but it required that they yield their
life to the Lord. Some of you are frustrated and
you you've actually come to the conclusion I'm not called to
prayer that that's for other people.
I'm not a prayer. I'm a I'm a person who I'm a
giver or I'm a server, but I'm not a prayer.
And that is a lie from the pit of hell and the enemy is trying
to keep you from the greatest weapon that God has given us
this side of heaven. And it's because you've not seen
movement in prayer because of this very principle.
And God is inviting us. If you will open your heart and
say, God, Lord, just deal with me.
Lord, I'm willing to step into a season where you can begin to
put your hand on my heart, begin to put your finger on things in
my life and Lord, I'm I'm committing.
I'll respond to you and teach me how to get to your ear because
Jesus prayers were heard precisely because of his
reverence, submission to the Father.
It'll open things up for heaven and some of us have bought into
a lie about righteousness. We just camp out here.
The character is lacking. We've immunized ourself against
conviction by saying, well, I'm made righteous in Christ and the
Lord is saying to you, it's not good enough.
He wants you to grow up into him.
You aren't called to be a baby Christian.
You're called to be a son and daughter of God that represents
him to the earth in this hour. Amen.
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
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