But he's looking and even enticing.
Can I find someone who will contend with me and argue my
promises, my principles and remind me of the things I've
said? Turn with me.
We just I, I just had you turn to Isaiah chapter 43, verse 26.
We talked about this last week. This is the ESV.
Listen to this. Put me in remembrance.
Let us argue together, set forth your case that you may be proved
right. That is an amazing invitation
from God to you and I. We read it again and and read it
that way. God is inviting you put me in
remembrance. In other words, the Lord said,
hey, remind me of the things I've told you.
Remind me of the promises and the principles that I've showed
you. Remind me of what I've taught
you in the past, and use that in prayer in the present so you can
change the future. Remind me, bring me into
remembrance. There's there's something about
using the past in response to the future that is a powerful
spiritual principle. We've looked at it before, but
how Solomon and and Psalm 132, he comes to before the Lord and
he says, oh God, remember David and the sufferings that he
endured. He's talking about the
sufferings of a dead guy to move the heart of God.
Isn't that amazing? He reminds God of one of his
servants long gone and what he suffered in his service to the
Lord, and he's using that for leverage for the future to see
God move. It's an amazing principle, and
that's what Isaiah's talking about here.
Put me in remembrance. The Lord wants you to remind Him
of the promises he's given you and the principles in His Word,
and He wants you to come before him and hold Him to His Word
because there is a spiritual battle that takes place for your
future. And we need to learn how to
fight for our future. And the promises of God, the
prophecies from God, the Word of the Lord, the Word of God, are
all weapons by which we fight for our future.
So he says, put me in remembrance.
Let us argue together there. There's a place for arguing with
God. I know that sounds like heresy,
but it's right here. Come, let us argue together.
God wants to engage you in argument.
Too many of us give in to our circumstances way too easily and
we just sign. We just kind of throw.
That must be God's will. I prayed and it didn't happen.
There is such a thing as the Word of Faith.
There is a, there's a faith for the moment you speak the word
and you leave it there. But there are other things that
there is a battle around something.
And that's what we're talking about this morning.
And when there's a battle around something, there's usually a, a
specific dynamic which requires of us a specific type of
relationship with God. And that's what we want to deal
with this morning. So he says, put me in
remembrance. Let us argue together, set forth
your case. Do you have a case for what you
want to see happen? Can you base your prayer request
on the word of God? Because when you can, you can
begin to move things with God. But there is there is a there's
a qualification. We need to know the ways of God.
We need to know how God operates so that we can bring that before
him and say, Hey, God, this, this isn't your word.
This is how you said things happen.
So I'm bringing it before you. And our ignorance ends up
costing us much in the place of prayer.
So let's look, we we talked about this last week, but I want
to go back and just revisit this very quickly.
Luke Chapter 11, I'm going to read out of the NIV because I
want to hold a real Bible this morning.
I was teaching in the school the other day and I wanted to say
this book, but it just doesn't feel as dramatic when you lift
up a laptop. So this book and it just flopped
there. It just feels good, you know,
OK, Luke Chapter 11, one day Jesus was praying in a certain
place. When he finished, one of his
disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John
taught his disciples. So the disciples are hanging
with Jesus. They see and listen to him
praying. And they said, man, he
understands some things about prayer we don't the way he's
praying. We see the answers to his
prayer. We want to know how to get that.
So these guys who have been hanging with Jesus, they didn't
just get it by osmosis. They said, hey, teach us to
pray. And then they said, because
John's disciples, John the Baptist, Jesus, Cousin John the
Southern Baptist, he was he he said, hey, we see that his his
disciples know how to pray. We want to know how to pray.
And so this is what Jesus says. He said to them, when you pray,
say, Father hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.
Then he says, give us this day, Our Daily Bread.
Forgive us our sins. And for we also forgive everyone
who sins against us and lead us not into temptation.
Give us, forgive us and lead us. They're asking for this
provision, but he he says the first thing the out of your
mouth is Father. And I would propose to you that
there is a progression in the way we relate with God.
There are facets of God's faith, God's character that we need to
understand, and there the way that God shows you facets of his
character is He takes you through circumstances where that
facet of his character is necessary for you to make it
through. That facet, that revelation of
who he is is the very thing you're going to need to carry
you through. You want to know God is healer,
then someone's got to be sick, someone's got to have an injury.
I'm not saying God put it on him, but God will reveal himself
as the answer by bringing you into the vicinity of a need,
either your sickness or someone else's, and he will reveal
himself as healer. And the fact is, without that,
without a problem, God as solution will never be known.
God is not a God of theory. He always reveals himself in the
context of human need because otherwise it's merely
information and information never changed anyone.
It's revelation. And so God will lead you through
circumstances and then reveal himself as the answer to your
circumstances. And so he first tells us believe
him or approach him as father. We we did a podcast Friday with
Sandra roar. Some of you have heard Sandra's
story and read her book. It's an amazing story and she
wrote a book on her story and the podcast is going to be
coming out here in a week or so. Want to encourage you.
It really is an amazing story. I was blown away all over again.
But her book was about how God revealed himself, the different
facets of His character to meet her need as she went along.
I want to build on that and I would propose to you that there
is a progression to the revelation of his character.
It starts with Father Jesus as your Savior came to reconcile
you to the Father. But it doesn't stop there.
OK, He said then look, jump down versed verse 5, verse 5.
Then he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend, and he
goes to him at midnight and says, Friend lend ME3 loaves of
bread. So first we approach God as
Father. But there is a progression where
we we enter into friendship with God and that is a fascinating
subject. There are a few people in
scripture who are referred to as a friend of God.
I don't know about you, but that deeply stirs me that God would
refer to a human being as his friend and he has room for more
friends. He's looking to and fro for
friends then that stereo that can.
Can you imagine that God talking to someone else and saying hey
that one Speaking of you is one of my friends.
It's amazing to be a confidant of God that God is one of those
people are his friends there. Abraham was called a friend of
God and Abraham was one of the greatest intercessors that ever
lived. And it's not a coincidence
because fatherhood and friendship are actually
foundational to true intercession because the
qualification to be called a friend of God.
Moses was called a friend of God.
It says he spoke to God as though a friend would face to
face. We're going to look at Moses
this morning, But the other, there was a group of people that
were called God's friends. Jesus said to his disciples,
guys, I no longer call you disciples.
In other words, there was a progression here.
For a while they were disciples, taught ones, disciplined ones.
But he said, hey, we've gone beyond that stage.
He said, I no longer call you disciples.
I now call you friends. And then he tells them why.
What qualifies you to be a friend is Jesus said, because I
told you everything the Father gave to me.
You see, friendship with God means that God tells you his
secrets. It's an old phrase.
Secrets bind hearts together, and God is a God of secrets.
He really is. He's a God of mysteries and he
loves to pull people in and reveals to them mysteries.
And so there's this friendship with God that is developed.
We go from knowing God as Father, as children who look to
him for provision. And that's what that prayer
talked about. But then there's this intimacy
with God where God's not just providing for us, He's sharing
his heart with us. There's an intimacy of
friendship with God. And there beyond that is the
next one. So we look now look at what it
says. So in in Luke 11, it says one
day Jesus was praying in a certain place and that's what
prompted the question. Now jump to Luke chapter 18.
So in the chronological order of Luke, this is several chapters
later and it says this then Jesus told his disciples A
parable to show them they should always pray and not give up.
So he had taught them about prayer.
There was a bunch of activity, Kingdom activity that went that
happened in the ensuing chapters.
And we get to chapter 18. And then it says then in other
words, that point in time. Now he lays out some more
teaching on prayer, some things they weren't ready for before.
But then he shared this with them.
He said he's going to share a parable to show them they should
always pray and not give up. If you are going to be an
intercessor, and it is one of the greatest honors this side of
heaven is to be a true intercessor, to yield to his
purposes and to allow him to use your, your tears, your vocal
cords, your heart, to pray his purposes into the earth where
you begin to own the problem. Because you know it's God's
will. And if we're ever going to do
that, then we have to have tenacity.
Importunity is an old King James Version word.
I wrote it in my notes and Surrey tried to correct me.
So I, I kind of, I kind of doubted myself.
So I googled it and I was right and Surrey's wrong.
And the reason I'm saying that, it's because Surrey's listening
right now. I want to correct it.
So importunity, it means a stubborn pursuit.
It means we're going to dig our heels and we're going to be
we're going to be stubborn. We we're going to lock onto that
bone and not let go. We have to have faith to be an
intercessor. And so there's fatherhood,
friendship, and then there's this approaching him in this
other way. In chapter 18, then Jesus told
the disciples to a parable to show them that they should
always pray and not give up. And how does he frame God there?
He said in a certain town there was a judge and it's an unjust
judge. But he says if God, if an unjust
judge, will give this woman what she wants because she keeps
praying, then how much more will God give to us if we faint not?
We talked about Abraham, one of the friends of God.
It is not a coincidence that Abraham referred to God as the
judge of all the earth. When he prayed for Sodom, he got
in that pocket of intercession. He said God withhold your hand.
He kept, he kept debating with God.
He was arguing with God. We read out of Isaiah, Bring to
remembrance, bring me, remind me of the things I've said.
And then let's argue together. Let's have a back and forth
dialogue here. Let's argue.
I'm saying one thing, you say another.
We don't think of God like that. Too many believers think that,
well, God just determines what he's going to do.
And we're just kind of like flotsam and that kind of, you
know, beaten down the Little River of life.
And we're shaped by life. God has put you in life for you
to shape life. You're to be the change agent
for heaven. But it takes faith that we come
in here and we stake our claim. But those things need to be
based on the Word. And I would propose to you on
those matters where we must approach God as judge, it's
because there are legal elements that are withholding the answer
we're asking for. I woke up last week and this
phrase just kept going through my head.
The legalities of intercession. The legalities of intercession
In order for you to understand the legalities of the spiritual
realm and intercession, you must understand the ways of God.
That's why friendship with God is foundational to intercession,
because when you're his friend, He begins to show you his ways.
Like Jesus said, I, I told you everything the Father showed me.
So you're no longer a disciple, you're a friend.
I've brought you up to my level. That's astounding thing to hear
from the Son of God, but I've brought you to the point where
you, you know what I know I'm sharing those things with you.
And so we need to understand that God has given us an
invitation. But the on the things that when
we pray and we don't see movement, we must not surrender
and just assume that it's not God's will to act.
In fact, we're going to look at a passage this morning when God
said something and Moses argued against it and God relented.
It's an amazing thing. What do you do with that?
Theologically? It's a, it's an astounding
thing. So these friends of God, Moses
and Abraham, Abraham approached him and said, will not the judge
of all the earth do justly? You see, he's holding God to a
standard. He's come before the throne.
God had stated his intention and Abraham was like, no, Lord,
wait, wait, wait. And the Lord said, OK, let's
talk about this. And there's arguing back and
forth and and Abraham begins to whittle down the if I could find
20 those that are faithful to you, will you withhold your hand
from the city? Yes.
How about 15? He just keeps pushing the
envelope. It's an amazing thing.
And we see the same with Moses. Moses is arguing with God.
Turn with me very quickly to let's look at Exodus chapter 32.
Let's go to Exodus 32. Now in Exodus 21, Moses goes up
on the mountain and he he tells the children of Israel.
He says, hey, guys, I'm going up here.
I'm going to go talk to God. You guys, you know, if you got
any problems, go to Aaron and her, which probably wasn't the
wisest thing because Aaron was a very poor leader and allowed
some things to happen that which required Moses to pray.
So between chapters 21 and 30, Moses is up on the mountain and
all those chapters are God unpacking.
This is how you're going to build the temple.
These are the structure, these are the utensils.
This is how you dress as a priest and all these things.
And then at the end we hear this look in verse 34 or 32 verse 1.
So wait a second. I'm sorry.
Go, go back to verse 31. Verse.
I'm sorry. Yeah, it is 32.
OK, So what? It's like a movie.
All of a sudden up on the mountain, you see this dialogue
and then it said, meanwhile, that's what you put in here in
verse 32 one. OK, Meanwhile, and the camera is
shot now down in the valley. When the people saw that Moses
delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered
themselves together to Aaron and said to him, up, up, make us
gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, notice how
they call them this Moses. As for this Moses, the man who
brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has
become of him. You see, when Moses went up the
mountain, if you look at the text back, and I don't want to
say it's verse chapter 21, Moses goes up the mount and there's
this cloud that looks like a burning tornado of activity over
over the mountain. And Moses for seven days sits
there and then he enters the cloud.
Can you imagine? That's intense and the people
are watching and they're thinking no man can live in
that. And he he ascends into the cloud
and for 40 days he's talking to God as of like a man would talk
to a friend face to face. And God begins to unpack to him
all the things about how to build a habitation for the Lord.
When you get in the glory, you learn how to build a habitation.
And then at the end then the Lord says, look at verse this,
my computer does not want to cooperate.
Look at verse 7. And the Lord said to Moses, So
at the end of this long 40 day conversation, this is how the
Lord closes it. Go down for your people whom you
brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.
Isn't that interesting Moses? Your people whom you brought
out, they have corrupted themselves.
They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded
them. They have made for themselves a
golden calf and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it and
said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out
of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I
have seen this people and behold, it is a stiff necked
people. And now listen to what he says
here. This is sobering.
Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against
them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great
nation for you. What a terrifying thing.
And, and Moses didn't have to weigh.
I wonder if that's from the Lord.
I wonder if that that was a word from the Lord.
You know, I want to weigh this against the Scriptures.
He's talking to God. He's in the fiery glory of God.
He's listening to that. And the Lord says, now we're
done, leave me alone, that my anger may burn hot and I may
consume them. That is a sobering, sobering
thing to hear. But what's astounding is Moses's
response. Listen to what he says.
But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, O Lord, why does
your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of
the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?
He was arguing with God. And in this fascinating
interchange, Moses says, God, they're your people, you brought
them out. God said they're your people,
you brought them out. And which one was right?
Uh huh. They both had a side of the
truth here. And intercession requires both
own this thing. See, God is looking for a people
who will own the situation they're praying for.
Intercession requires A tenacity and an ownership of the issues
being prayed about that other prayers will not exercise.
I think I shared this recent but I read a book years ago
Visioneering. It was an OK book but the whole
book was worth the price of the book for this one phrase.
The guy said what could be is an idea.
What should be is a dream, what must be is a vision.
When I read that I thought, man that's prayer.
There are could be prayers. Take it or leave it.
Lord, it'd be nice. And then you, you go on your
merry way and then there should be prayers When you start
digging in and you're you're feeling like man, this boy.
We, you know, we spend a little more time on those prayers about
the time it begins to cost us. We think, well, it must not be
God's will. But then there are must be
prayers and God is looking for a must be prayer that digs their
heels and it says, God, this cannot be, we've got to see you
move. And the amazing thing about
Moses, because of his friendship with God, he was able to
interpret what God was saying. Well, most of us would have
melted into a puddle and just kind of dripped down the
mountain. When God says leave me and
that's a cries of intercession. Leave me alone that my anger may
burn when they heard when most of us would have heard that we
would have thought it's all over.
Oh my goodness and even the enticement because God says to
him and I'll make a great nation out of you.
I've had it up to here with them.
I'll wipe them all out and it'll be the nation of MO.
Well people will hear about you from years to come the Mosesites
but that Moses stays in the pocket and what does he do?
He starts saying to God. He said God, but what about what
you told Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
He's reminding God of his promises.
It's an amazing thing and what most people would have taken as
a command and even a word of inevitability that this is going
to happen. God's going to wipe them out.
There's no way I can talk it out.
God told me I have to leave. What most of us looked at as
inevitable, Moses recognized as an invitation into intercession.
There was a little crack in the door and a little light coming
through. And Moses, his hope rose up.
And he said, wait a minute, God, are you saying that you've got
to be alone in order for your anger to burn hot?
Because God said, leave me alone so that in order that so that my
anger can burn hot? And Moses said, that's all I
needed to hear. You mean you can't burn hot as
long as there's an intercessor and Moses digs his heel in.
Moses digs his heels in. And it's, it's not disobedience,
it's revelation based on friendship because he knew God
that intimately. And so many of us, we, we hear
words, whether you read it in the Bible or you hear a
prophetic word and we think, oh, that's inevitable.
And I'm telling you, there are things in the economy of heaven,
there are things in the Kingdom that God says, but they will not
happen without human cooperation.
When I was young, I, I was a David Wilkerson disciple.
I mean, I, I met him one time, I heard him preach, but I didn't,
I never was around him per SE, but I read his newsletters and
I'll never forget in 19, it was in the 80s, he came out with his
book, Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth.
Some of you remember that book. I remember getting that book.
Now, David Wilkerson was a tremendous man of God.
He was, his teaching shaped me as a young man and he was very
prophetic. He would say he wasn't a
prophet. That's arguable, but I remember
opening that book and this was the opening line to that book.
America will be destroyed by atomic bomb from Russia because
America has sinned and America will be no more.
I closed that book from a man that I so esteemed and went into
despair for about a decade. I couldn't argue that America
deserves the judgement of God. Who doesn't?
And then you look at the great light that America has and what
we'd sinned against, and I just despaired because I didn't
understand. I didn't have friendship with
God. I hadn't come to the place where
I know His ways. But see, Moses knew his ways.
Again, Moses didn't have to wait.
Was that a prophetic word? Was that accurate?
Maybe, you know, maybe that was a false word.
Maybe I heard that wrong. He heard it directly from the
voice of God, but yet he understood this is not
inevitable. It's an invitation, and it's not
an expression of God's desire. See, there's times where we'll
see, we'll hear a prophetic word or we'll see something in the
Word, and we think everything is an expression of God's desire.
Judgement is not God's desire. It's very clear He's not willing
that any should perish, but it is His intention.
If he doesn't have one thing, someone in his face, if he is
left alone on a matter, then God fully intends to follow through
on what He said. But he's looking and even
enticing. Can I find someone who will
contend with me and argue my promises, my principles, and
remind me of the things I've said?
And Moses understood that. So he threw himself in that.
And you could read this text and think Moses disobeyed God.
God said, leave me alone. And Moses said, with all due
respect, no, not because he was disobedient, not because he was
arrogant, but because Moses understood the heart of God in
friendship. Moses was he would cry out,
Lord, show me your ways. Moses is called a friend of God
and it repeatedly said that Moses has favor with God.
We read in this passage where Moses says he says to God, God,
if I found favor with you, show me your ways so that I may find
favor with you. See, that was so valuable to
Moses. I want to be a friend.
I want to have favor with God. I want him to be kindly disposed
towards me. I want us.
There's nothing to be between our relationship.
I want to walk in the favor of God and Lord.
If I have any favor, I'm asking God, would you show me your way
so I can cooperate with them? So I can't have more favor.
And there's something about leveraging your personal favor
on behalf of others in intercession.
We need to pray. We need to get get a hold of the
heart of God. There are words that have been
released about judgement against the United States of America,
and I believe some of them came from the throne of God itself.
But I don't believe they're inevitable.
I believe they're invitations from God to find intercessors
who will contend and say, God, withhold your hand and do what
Moses did. And Moses said, God, please,
Lord, think of, think of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Remember the promise you made. I'm reminding you, Lord and
Lord, think about the heathen, the the Egyptians that you
delivered your people with a strong right arm.
You brought them out, not me. You did and you brought them
out. And what are they going to think
that you just did that to kill him?
And he begins to argue and it says, and God relented.
Now some people will will tell you that that's called an
anthropomorphism. It's a big theological word,
simply mean God was trying to relate with man as a man, and he
wasn't really. He didn't really mean that.
He was just trying to relate with Adam, or I mean Moses on
his level. But I'm telling you that is
absolutely not true because God cannot be insincere.
If he says I'm going to destroy them, he would have destroyed
them. God is a man of a being of
integrity. There's no shadow of turning
within him when he says something.
But what he was looking for is someone to argue the legalities
of this thing. And Moses was a man who knew his
ways and therefore he could read what God was really saying.
And God is looking for someone who will get stand in the gap.
That's a, that's a phrase right out of Ezekiel.
I want to say it's chapter 22 where God is looking across the
earth looking for someone to stand in the gap.
And one of the ideas behind that phrase that that illustration is
that there were walled cities to to protect the people.
But at times there would be a part of the wall, there'd be a
hole in it or the enemy would come in and ravage the people.
And God was saying, is there anybody who will stand at that
hole and wore off the enemy? Is there anybody that will will
plug that hole and battle so the city can be safe?
Can I find one who's not content just to get what they want, but
they're willing to pick up the burdens of others and own this
thing? And that's what intercession is.
It is such an awesome thing that you can interact with God and
'cause God to relent. It's an amazing thing.
God relented because of Moses. And then the next chapter, you
know what Moses does, he goes down.
It's, it's really interesting. It says, he said, it says, God
says, so that my anger may burn hot against them.
And then Moses says, Lord, why should your anger burn hot
against them? I'm going to give you all these
reasons to relent. God said, OK, I'll relent.
And then Moses and that says, and Moses is anger burned hot
against them and he took the the the tablets that God, it says
they were the work of God written with the words of God
and he broke them at the core of the mountain and a bunch of
people died. It was crazy.
And then he goes back up and the Lord said, OK, now this time you
carve the tablets and I'll still write on them.
So now we have the work of man with the writing of God.
But Moses anger burned hot against them.
See, Moses was a true intercessor before God.
He represent the people before the people.
He represented God. It was that go between suspended
between heaven and earth like Jesus until the two can be
merged. That's what intercession is.
And God is looking for people who will pick up the the the
burden for someone else until they can do it for themselves.
I was thinking this morning about I ran into a woman a
number of years ago. It was probably about 10 years
after I got saved and she was part of the church my mom and
dad were going to when I was homeless and we ran into each
other and hey, how you doing? I hadn't seen her in years.
I was just a young guy when when I knew her.
And she said I've never told you this, but she said one night at
First Open Bible in Ottumwa, IA, she said we were having a prayer
service on a Sunday night. And she said I was at the altar
and such a burden came on me. That was she said, I just began
to weep for you. I couldn't leave the altar.
There was this urgency just to pray through until that thing
lifted. Man, it brought tears to my eyes
because I was in such a state that I could not see the truth.
So somebody stepped in there and began to pray on my behalf.
So the atmosphere around my darkened understanding would
begin to lift and I could see the purposes of God for my life.
I could see the truth of God. It's right out of Second
Corinthians chapter 4. It says the God of this world
has blinded the minds of an unbeliever.
So there's there's this dynamic in several passages of Scripture
called the darkening of the understanding.
It's also referred to as the hardening of the heart.
It's one and the same thing because the hardened heart will
result in a darkened understanding.
A hardened heart is I'm going to reject the truth you're giving
me in the moment, but it sets in motion a process where the
faculty to receive any more truth begins to darken.
So we can't perceive truth. We're darkened in understanding.
The God of this world blinds the minds of unbelievers, and Paul
warns us in Ephesians chapter 4 that believers can actually
begin to walk in such a way, the futility of their thinking, they
walk like the Gentiles and they can actually bring the same on
themselves. They not only forfeit the
principle, God's dealing with them in the moment, they're also
begin to lose what they once had.
Ignorance begins to set in, Paul says in Ephesians 4.
And So what needs to happen for people like that is somebody
needs to step in and begin to pray for those people.
That's why Daniel, it said he confessed his sins and the sins
of his people. He was an intercessor.
Daniel not only confessed his sins, he said, Lord, forgive
them because there was a legal precedence.
You see, the enemy exercises legal precedence over nations,
cities, families, and individuals.
And if we don't see movement quickly in prayer so often, we
just resign ourself. Well, I guess this is God's
will. When it's not, there's simply a
legal precedence. We've approached him as Father.
We've approached him as friend. But what this situation requires
is approaching him as judge and arguing a case and the spirit of
a living God who lives within us and is the intercessor who prays
for us according to Romans chapter 8, He begins to teach us
all things and we begin to learn God's ways and we can get in
that spot and we can actually push back darkness so that
person can finally see. We don't have time to get in
this, but Romans 8 it says that there's three intercessors.
In Romans 8, we intercede, the son intercedes, he intercedes
for us and we're the subject of his prayer.
God help Dave, he has, he's running out of time down there.
Help him, help him. Father.
I'm feel his prayers. And then it says the Spirit
prays for us with words, with groans that cannot be
articulated. So whereas Jesus is praying for
me, I am the subject matter of his prayer.
When the Spirit prays for me, I am the participant, I am the
weapon, I am the agent, and there is a partnership with the
Spirit and He prays through me. And I've got to get underneath
that thing and I've got to become sensitive to His leadings
and yield myself. And once we get in that pocket,
we can see things begin to move. And God will show you principles
that you can dismantle the strategy of the enemy.
And even though God intends to judge because of his justice,
he's looking for for an advocate to step in and argue the case so
that he can begin to bring light to that situation.
And so if you're not seeing movement in your prayer life, it
very may very well be that God wants to show you some
legalities to begin to deal with and begin to dismantle that
thing. It's just like in Deliverance,
people are demonized. They need deliverance, they need
they need to be delivered. And it's because there's illegal
things that they've gotten themselves into and they need to
renounce those to get free. We can come in underneath that
thing and begin to dismantle those things with a higher law
with the argument with coming in with the word of God and begin
to directly deal with those things.
And you know what happens, Second Corinthians chapter 4, it
says that the God of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers. They can't see the truth.
It says the gospel is veiled. They, they just, they, they
can't grasp it. You ever shared the gospel with
someone? You can tell they ain't getting
it. I mean, you can have the most
articulate presentation. You can have your little chick
track and all that you know and you can have your little your
manuals in a but it's like there's a dullness.
But in prayer we can begin to pray that that there's an
enlightening of the understanding.
And this is the phrase that Paul uses that the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus would
be shed abroad in their heart. Man, that is a pregnant
statement. Think about it.
The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Christ Jesus shining in their heart.
And it's alluding to Moses. It says that Moses his, he would
come down from the mountain veiled.
You know why? It says he would cover up his
face so they didn't see the fading glory.
He'd go up into that cloud. They were like, is he coming
back out? He'd come out like a glow worm
gave him credibility. You know, if I went to my office
and every time I went to my office, there's a fiery cloud in
front of the door and I came out glowing, you'd be fine.
I want to hear what he has to say this morning.
And so Moses said, I'm going to keep a cover so they don't see
that it's fading. And then Paul springboards off
and he said, and the gospel is veiled, but not to us, but to
the unbeliever. They can't see it.
They can't see through. So uranize prayer.
And then what Paul is doing is he's alluding to creation story.
He's using that as his template, that the Creator created it, but
there it was formless and void, and the Spirit of God begin to
hover over that formless dark void.
And then the Lord spoke his word, let there be light, and
there was light. And he's saying that's how
salvation happens. There is a darkness, a dullness
and inability to grasp, but somebody begins to pray and the
Spirit of God begins to hover over that.
We're like that laser target. We put the laser on the missiles
going to hit it because we've already targeted them with
prayer. And all of a sudden the Spirit
of God begins to hover, and the Word of God comes, and there's
light, and all of a sudden they can grasp.
The gospel and a lot of times we're out there sharing with
people wondering why don't they receive him, but they can't
understand it. They need the light of
revelation breaking in and all of a sudden they see it's a
lifeline. Listen, God is extending an
invitation to you to make a difference in human history.
And there are things that God intends to do.
It's an but it's an expression of intention, not desire.
And if he can find someone that will side with his higher desire
for redemption, he will do that very thing.
But he needs an intercessor. He's looking to and fro
throughout the earth. And so when God says leave me
alone, Moses understood. Whoa, Lord, I know what you
said, but because I know you, I know what you meant.
And when you said so that my anger may burn, you left a crack
in the door, allowing me to stay in the pocket.
And he saved a nation. It's an amazing thing.
You know what Moses does the next chapter?
He goes down, rebukes the people.
He goes back up, and he just saved a nation in intercession.
Now he says, hey, God, show me your glory.
Sky's never. It's never enough for Moses, And
that's why God loved him. Let's stand.
Listen, if you're here this morning and you don't know
Jesus, that's the first step. God has a purpose for your life.
You are meant to be a history changer, but you got to
surrender your life to him. You got to meet him, his father.
You got to become his friend so he can pull you into
intercession and and history will become you'll be the hinge
of history through your prayers. That's what God has for all of
us. So I'm going to ask every head
to be bowed. Father, I just pray, God, that
you would open the eyes of our understanding and the knowledge
of you, Lord, Lord, that you would help us, God, to
understand the tremendous privilege you've invited us
into. And Lord, stir our hearts.
Lord make us hungry like Moses, never satisfied.
We always want more because there's always more of you to
have. Hey, thanks for watching.
At Heartland Church, we love to worship the Lord and we love his
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See you next time.