Good morning, it's a pleasure to be here, Middletown, Portland
7th Day Adventist Church. I bring you greetings from three
angels in Newington. We love our sister church.
This church will always have a special place in my heart.
It's one of the earliest memories I have of, of church.
Those are fond memories. And I'm I'm happy to see that
every time I'm asked to preach, there's more people here.
Your congregation is growing. Praise God.
OK, so the title of my message this morning is called When
Heaven Moves, the power of prayer.
So prayer is foundational, yet it's often misunderstood.
Is prayer for just a last resort or something more?
Is it just for emergencies or a daily source of power?
Today, my goal is to to help us discover what makes prayer
truly, truly powerful and help build a powerful and effective
prayer life. Let me have a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for all of your many
blessings. We thank you Lord, for bringing
us up, bringing us here today, waking us up, and for all of the
ways that you keep and sustain us.
I ask Lord, that you would give me the words to speak and that
the message would be heard that you intend for each intended
person. Please forgive us of our sins.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
So first, I like to start all my messages with a disclaimer that
I don't claim perfection and I don't want to come off
hypocritical. I personally have much room for
improvement, but I and I'm often feel too impressed, impressed to
talk about things that I personally might be lacking in.
So please pray that these messages permeate my life as
well as your own. So grounding in James 516
through 18 as Joe just read. Therefore, confess your sins to
each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
Elijah was a human being even as we are.
He prayed earnestly that that it would rain and that it did not
rain on the land for 3 1/2 years.
Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth
produced its crops. So unpacking the fundamental
points there we have the promise of powerful, effective prayer.
And the example of Elijah, important to note that it's easy
to think of these people as mythical figures, but Elijah was
a human being just like us. So the power, the same power
that was accessible to Elijah is is accessible to us.
And it is important to note the caveat of prayer of a righteous
person, but more on that later. So the key points that I hope to
leave with you today, the 1st is that first prayers, first
miracle is changing us and talk about how prayer transforms us
from the inside out. Second key point is God's power
is beyond human measurement. Why faith sees what science
can't measure. And 3rd, the call to to fervent
and faithful partnership and our role in a powerful prayer life.
So on that first key point regarding prayers.
First, miracle is changing us. We often think of prayer as a
way to change our circumstances, but the first most reliable
miracle is how it changes the world within you.
A proper prayer requires us to acknowledge God's sovereignty.
Prayer begins with surrender, not strategy, and prayer trains
us to trust rather than control. When I personally have pride out
the God in desperation from impossible circumstances, when
God answers that prayer and delivers me from the enemy,
these are circumstances that help me understand.
When when Paul writes to the Corinthians, my strength is made
perfect in weakness. It's these moments of weakness
that it would be hard for me to appreciate the true strength and
majesty of God when He comes and delivers me from the situation
that I might otherwise feel self-sufficient in managing all
my problems. It's in our weakness that God's
strength is made perfect. So remember to give thanks and
praise God in all circumstances, even the trials.
I remember, and I think it was actually at this very church
wondering, it was a in a Sabbath school when I was very young
asking why do we have to ask God for things that he already
knows? He already knows everything that
we need. So why do I have to ask for
these things? And recently, I've gained an
appreciation for the importance of asking.
Personally. There's some people in my life
that have gotten accustomed to simply airing grievances, with
the expectation that those grievances or unspoken requests
will be solved for them, either by myself or someone else.
I've started holding these people accountable.
To make a request. Sometimes I need to be very
direct and ask is there anything I can do to help?
And I've learned that if a direct request for help is never
made, it's also very unlikely that you'll receive a thank you.
So if somebody says, oh, the tire is something's wrong with
my car or oh, I'll go fix it or, you know, something like that,
there's not as much appreciation that comes, it seems, in my
experience anyway, when that request is satisfied.
I think that if we don't ask directly, ask God for things,
we're not likely to thank him or even attribute the asked outcome
to his power. So important takeaways is first,
ask God for help. 2nd and very importantly is thank Him when he
answers. It's very, very easy to pray for
something out of desperation when it's solved.
Forget that this was God who who answered our prayer, who who
showed up for us. So this is foundational to
acknowledging His power and sovereignty in our lives.
So a divine invitation, prayer isn't just an option, it is a
command and a loving invitation from God.
Jeremiah 33 three says, call to me and I will answer you.
Answer you. Prayer wasn't our idea, it was
God's. He doesn't just permit it, He
commands it. And this is one of those
situations where God commands us to do something because for, for
our own good. The 4th commandment, remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This is an important command
that I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger.
When I was younger, it was a day that I couldn't do certain
things that I enjoyed doing. As I'm older, I appreciate
respecting and honoring that command for my own good, for my
own rest. If it weren't for this command,
I would probably just work myself into an early grave.
So the command to rest, the command to pray, all of these
commands are are are actually for our own benefit.
So God knows our propensities and he knows we're known we're
we're prone to stray as sheep. So This is why it's important to
study His words. Pay attention to His commands
for our own good. Know that God's commands will
always yield a better outcome for ourselves, even if we don't
yet understand the why. Prayer is a God-given tool for
mental and emotional health. It acts as a psychological
anchor, calming our minds and bringing peace.
Now, there have been many conflicting scientific studies
on the external efficacy of prayer for others, and I'll talk
about that in a little bit. However, there's no scientific
or medical dispute of the internal and personal benefits
of a prolific prayer life. Now these are things that have
been confirmed by medical journals, studies about the real
measurable improvements in the life of someone who has a strong
prayer life in terms of mental and emotional well-being.
There's reduced stress response. Prayer can calm the nervous
system, analogous to meditation. It suppresses fight or flight
reactions and reduces reactivity to negative emotions like anger
has, yields lower physiological arousal, it yields enhanced mood
and life satisfaction, and it yields post traumatic growth and
resilience. Spiritual practices, including
prayer, are linked to better psychological outcomes,
especially in trauma or crisis, promoting meaning, optimism and
emotional resilience. In terms of physical health and
longevity, healthier lifestyle and possible protection against
illness, Frequent spiritual engagement is associated with
lower bread blood pressure, better immune function, and
possibly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and
mortality. Longer life lifespan, especially
with communal practice. Regular religious service
attendance has been linked with significantly lower mortality
rates over time, possibly due to social support, optimism and
life purpose in terms of brain function and cognitive benefits,
improved attention and perception and greater empathy
and reduced negativity and meaning belonging.
There's a very, it's actually a very long list.
If you, if you look on the Internet, there's no shortage of
evidence supporting the measurable physiological
benefits of of the perilite. So in terms of the anatomy of
connection, the most beneficial prayer is relational, not
transactional. It involves worship and
adoration, recognizing God's greatness and expressing love
and reverence, confession and repentance, acknowledging our
shortcomings and turning toward God, and Thanksgiving,
expressing gratitude for God's blessing and presence.
A powerful prayer life is more than a list of requests.
It's about honoring God, being honest with Him, and cultivating
a grateful heart. It's easy to get into a routine
and take relationships for granted.
This is true of all relationships, spousal, family,
friends, just as our interpersonal relationships
require intentional work. If, for example, you neglect to
keep up with a friend, don't call for a while, don't maintain
regular connection, that friendship, that relationship
decays. Erodes can even happen with
someone you live with, with your spouse.
It requires intentional effort to maintain these these
relationships. And it's the same with our
relationship with God. One thing that I've tried and
not always succeeded, but I continue to try is to make sure
that I don't get out of bed without saying a prayer or even
reach for my phone and check my notifications before I say
prayer. And I think that's a practical
thing that could benefit everybody because if we start
our day with prayer, there's a pretty good chance it's going to
go better. In my experience, generally
start with a a better mood and maintain that that connection
with our God moving on. It's important and I've heard
Elder Bill Reinwald say this a lot and I love it.
It's a quote from Ellen White that says prayer does not bring
God to us. It brings us up to him.
And so the quote is key to understanding prayers purpose is
the main goal is connection with God.
Peace is the beautiful result. Second key point, and this key
point is about saying about how prayer, efficacy of prayer is to
an extent beyond measurement. Make a case for that.
So faith allows us to see what science cannot measure.
God's power operates beyond the limits of the laboratory.
And let me unpack that statement a little bit.
So faith versus science, two different tools and we must
recognize that faith and science are different tools for
discovering truth. My mom recently shared a message
with me. She said that there was a a
message from a pastor purporting that he heard of a study that
said that measurable correlation in brain activity there, there
was somebody to this study that there was people prayed over
here and they were able to measure brain activity happening
as a result of those prayers over in a completely different
location. And so that sounds pretty
amazing and it's attractive at first, but I was skeptical and I
had to do some research. So I found that there are many
conflicting studies on this topic with varying degrees of
conformance to the scientific method.
I don't believe there's anything wrong with the scientific
method. I personally think that it's an
excellent way of simply being able to have a hypothesis and
perform a test and see if your hypothesis is confirmed.
This is a logical process. And so I don't believe true
science and logical observable facts of our world conflict with
God's word. Many scientists will try to use
one against the other, but many other scientists show science is
just an evidence of God's power and majesty.
Everything that we can observe through sciences is more
evidence of, of God's wonderfulness and what he's
built, what he's done, than it is to say, oh, we understand
this now. So therefore, you know, but
anyway, I don't think they're, they're in conflict with each
other. But I have concluded that it's
pointless to try to validate the power of prayer through using
the scientific method. And because there are some
fundamental limitations about the scientific method in terms
of measuring prayer. And this slide's not loading,
but I remember, oh, hang on, it is OK.
So there's some key flaws. One is that if you want to do a
true scientific study about whether or not something works,
prove a hypothesis, you have to create a control group.
You have to be able to say, OK, we're going to have this group
that has people praying for them, and we're going to have
this other group that has nobody praying for them.
First of all, how can you guarantee that nobody's going to
be praying for these people? And even if you could, why would
you do that? But you can't.
So. So that is creates A fundamental
flaw in the scientific scientific method.
How do you measure because you know our our Scripture reading
says the prayer of a righteous person.
How do we know that the people who are praying are righteous?
How do we know that we have no way of measuring these spiritual
things. Only God can measure the heart.
So these are these are things that that make it really kind of
pointless and futile to try to say, aha, we have proof that
prayer. And that's a little bit of what
faith faith is for. But I have a better test.
I call this slide the Power of testimony.
Our evidence isn't found in lab reports, but in life reports
from the Bible to today. Our faith is built on the
stories of an act of God. Is there anyone here who has
experienced something in their life or seen something happen
around them that can only be explained as God's intervention
in response to prayer? I personally can.
And don't be shy because we're asked to be His witness.
It's through our witness and our testimony that God is made, is
made real and shown to others. Acts 18 says you shall receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be
witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to
the end of the earth. This is why our personal
testimony of what God has done for us is so powerful.
Nobody can dispute my personal experience with God, so I
encourage you to share your testimony with anyone who will
listen. Often times I've heard a quote
that said don't tell me about your religion, show me about
your religion. Live your life.
You can give a Bible study to someone without quoting a single
scripture by showing someone how you live.
And God's hearing isn't random. He hears the righteous.
He rejects the prayer that clings to sin, but always hears
A sincere seeker and acts according to his his will.
So he hears this. Here's the righteous reject sin,
hears the sincere seeker, and acts according to his will.
The Bible shows us that there is a framework to answer prayer.
First, know that he rejects the prayers that are linked to our
sinful human condition. Prayers to win the lottery.
Prayers for a new exotic supercar.
Does your prayer glorify God? I've often heard, I don't know
if I've even fallen into this fallacy, but people, you know,
they get a lottery ticket and they pray earnestly to God.
God, if I had $20 million, whatever the number may be, I
could do so much for your Kingdom.
But, and that's there's a fallacy there because the
question is we currently have resources.
We currently have time, a resource that everybody has, no
matter what kind of financial resources you have.
Are you using that resource? What?
How you're using that resource is a direct reflection of how
you would be using abundant resources.
So if you there's a little lesson there.
If you want God to bless you with much, prove that you can be
trusted with little. So we know that God answers the
righteous, the prayers of the righteous, but God also hears
and answers the prayer of all who pray according to His will.
And he always hears prayers from sincere seekers.
When I started coming back to church, probably about 15 years
ago, 20 years ago, I was raised the Adventist.
As an Adventist, I went out into the world, started coming back
to church. I was baptized.
My wife, who had very little experience exposure to church,
started coming to church with me.
Praise God. And this was at Plainville.
And they had a prayer box. And in that prayer box they
would say anybody can write a prayer on a piece of paper and
leave it in that box. And after the service, the
elders pray over the pray over the box.
They don't read them. They pray over the box and the
contents are burned. So she put a prayer in that box
that was very personal and power and, and impossible, frankly.
I mean, nothing's impossible with God.
But this was something that like, I don't know if it was
intended to be like a litmus test, but it wasn't anything out
of, you know, personal, like it wasn't cling to human sin.
It was something that she legitimately wanted and it was a
so she put it in there and got answered.
And that like the answer to that prayer, like was, was the
foundation of her faith. Like that was her first
experience. And now, I mean, she's, she's
baptized now and she's currently over at 3 angels because she's
the treasurer over there. That's why she never comes with
me. She's got treasury
responsibilities over there. But that's, that's a personal
testimony to God answering his sincere seeker, even though she
had no, not very little, only only knowledge of, of God
through my personal, you know, testimony and, and and whatnot.
And I was just, you know, wasn't firmly rooted in faith other
than my foundational understanding that it has a
child. Anyway, personal testimony there
that God answers the sincere seeker, regardless of whether or
not they can be qualified as a, a righteous person.
So my third key point here out of my three points is a call to
fervent and faithful partnership with God.
This was a quote I've heard of a lot from Jamaican speakers, and
I could be imagining this, but I think that this might have been
something that I heard Ernie Elder, Ernie Byron say a lot.
Phil, you can you can keep me honest here.
Did he say no prayer, no power? Little prayer, little power,
much prayer, much power. It's simple.
So this is where the message becomes personal.
The invitation is to move from a passive faith to an active daily
partnership with God. This is a call to move from
lukewarm faith to an active, powerful prayer life that
cooperates with God and a call to action.
We have not sure sure people are familiar with the Laodicean
warning of the Church of Laodicea that we believe the
time that we're living in is a lukewarm faith leads to lukewarm
powerless prayer life. The call is to move from routine
to a fervent hot relationship with God.
If our prayer life and and I think that in the closing key
point is the ABS time that you know, we're first Sabbath of the
new year. There is a New Year's resolution
worth making and keeping. This is this is probably one
that everyone, myself included, could benefit from if our faith
life, if our prayer life feels powerful and may be a symptom of
the Laodicean condition. A faith that is neither hot nor
cold produces prayers that feel the same.
And today's call is to turn up the spiritual heat as we pray to
God, rely on God, and watch God act on our prayers, and our
faith will grow. And in turn, our prayer life and
relationship with God will grow. So I encourage you to talk to
God the same way. Well, maybe not exactly the same
way, but the way that you would talk to a close friend.
Don't just, it's very easy, especially if it's something
that you're doing every morning. It's a good thing to do at night
too, to not get in the routine of just reciting the same
phrase, the same prayer, every time.
If you had a friend that said the exact same thing every time
you saw them, that relationship might, might decay.
So talk to God about your day. Talk to God about your anxiety,
the things that are bothering you, things you need help with.
Praise God for when he comes through for you.
Here's a quote that my mom shared with me as I was
preparing this sermon the first time they gave it for three
angels. That's it's sobering.
But this is a quote from Sister White.
She says, and I'd never heard this prior to her telling me
this. So hopefully this is, you know,
but it's it's a bit sobering. It says I have been shown the
angels of God, the prayers of the Saints to heaven.
But they were. Grieved.
That so few prayers were offered.
So let that sink. In if the angels are, you know,
like, why aren't they asking? Why aren't they asking God for
stuff? So at that moment, some of you
know, you know, my, my brother's condition.
I, I, at that time, I said, OK, well, we got to pray now after
hearing that, then what a better time to pray than right now
because frankly, I don't pray enough.
So, so I had a prayer with my mom about keeping, you know, my
brother who's struggling with a number of things to forgot to
continue to work on him. And so we did that, and I asked
for for continued prayer for anyone who is or isn't familiar
with that situation as well. So our role.
Is to combine faith in action, and this is a uniquely Adventist
approach. Pray with faith and.
Persistence. Align with God's.
Perfect will and cooperate with God through wise choices.
The final invitation. The ultimate invitation is to
embrace. Embrace prayer as the opening of
the heart to. God as to a.
Friend, a constant, vital connection for all of life's
circumstances. Let's end by returning to the
heart of prayer. Not a machine, but a friend.
The invitation is to talk to God as your closest, most trusted
friend and to commit to move from lukewarm to a fervent
prayer life. Heavenly Father.
Thank you, Lord, for all of your many blessings.
Ask Lord that. And we know, Lord, that even the
faith that we have, little as it may be, comes from you.
It's a gift from you, Lord, and it's on us to to foster that
faith, grow it into more faith so that you can trust us with
more and you can work bigger in our life.
Please, Lord, give us the. Conviction to have a better
relationship with you and talk to you more often so that you
can influence our character, make us better people, make us
healthy. Ultimately, Lord, to win souls
for your Kingdom, grow your Kingdom and answer your Great
Commission. Please forgive us for our sins.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.