Prayer // A Discussion about Prayer

Coming soon!

Good morning. How's everyone doing?

Man, what'd you guys think about that new song from Pastor Isaiah this morning? Wasn't that good? Man, it's good.

I have a confession to make. I was really excited about it. I like practice yesterday. I kept thinking about it. I practiced this morning. Now we practiced it at practice and then I messed it up in the real thing.

And I was really mad because there's one thing to mess up someone else's song, like when you don't know them, it's like, but when you're like, the author was here and I blew it. But that happens sometimes. If you're curious, my name is Jonathan, lead pastor here at Destiny Church. If you don't know who I am, that's the first thing you're gonna get to know about me is that I'm a bass player who messes up and I admit it publicly, so that's just how it goes. But I'm really excited about today because today we are gonna be doing something a little different for our sermon portion. We are in a series on prayer. We're gonna be covering prayer for the next, well, after this week, about six more weeks, eight weeks total. We kicked this off last week as part of our larger spiritual formation series that we've been going on. And today, what we are going to do is, is we are gonna invite a few people here in just a second up to the stage and we're just gonna have a little, a live conversation about prayer.

And here's the thing, we have a few primer questions and we have a few things that we're gonna do to kind of try to walk through some things, some things that some of you have submitted over the past and some things that some of the staff has added to it. But here's the deal, this opportunity, what we're trying to do and what we're wanting to accomplish today is not like a Q&A time. Like we're not here to answer questions about prayer. And the reason for that is this, the end goal of prayer, the end goal for prayer for all of us is for us individually and corporately to have conversations and understanding in a relationship with our heavenly Father. Like that is the whole goal of what prayer is. And so although it may be nice sometimes to have some questions answered about certain things, that actually doesn't get you into a closer relationship with the person. Like for example, you could ask me a bunch of questions about anyone in my family, what's their favorite food, what movie they like, what music, da-da-da, sports, and I could answer all of those things. And you may know those answers, but that actually won't let you get to know them any better than actually having a conversation with them. You see, if you have a conversation with them, then you know more about it. And maybe if you're saying, oh, well, I don't know if I can have a conversation about them, but sometimes we hear conversations of other people talking and it helps us see ourselves in that place. And so the goal today is for you to be able to hear from a different group of people, other than just me, talking about prayer, talking about what prayer looks like, the struggles and the wins and the successes and everything that goes from it, and you being able to see yourself there and be able to hear about some relationships and what that looks like. With the ultimate end goal, the end invitation, the end result for us is that today you leave here, not just with more knowledge about prayer and not just with hearing other people, but challenged and encouraged to pursue your personal prayer life, to pursue your desire to have an intimate one-on-one individual relationship with the Holy Spirit to allow them to speak to you and to guide you and how important that is. And so without any more hesitation, I'm gonna go ahead and invite the people that I've got coming up. You know who you are, you four people come on up, don't be shy.

They're like looking at me like, now, yeah, now, like now, now's the time. Now's the time, no one wants to be the first one, but Micah will take the lead.

Micah will take the lead.

Price is right. You're going down.

But that would make me Drew Carey. No, I'm old school, Bob Barker, you know what I'm saying? I'm not Drew Carey, yeah, we got that. We got a couple of microphones there. Hello, hello, hello. Okay, so I'm gonna sit down.

Actually, I'm not. Before I sit down, I'm gonna do something else because I don't wanna skip this. Everyone else, you guys too, stand with me for the reading of God's word. I wanna read something. You thought you were comfortable, you're not comfortable yet. Philippians chapter four, verse four through seven, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again, I will say rejoice. "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. "The Lord is at hand. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything. "Be my prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. "Let your request be known to God. "And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, "will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time. We invite you into this conversation. We thank you that your spirit's here and in this place. And we just pray that we can have an encounter with you this morning. It's in your holy name we pray, amen. Okay, now you can be seated. Now you can be relaxed.

Okay.

My guests, however, they have no clue what's coming.

This is great. I'm super excited. Okay, so here's where we're gonna start. It's really easy. So I would like each of you just to take a minute. It's a really simple little icebreaker question. Like each of you just introduce yourself, whatever kind of key details about yourself and your current state of life, and tell me in your own words what prayer means to you.

That's all.

So we're gonna start with Justine because she's the closest. And I don't know if you know this, before I break in with Justine, the first paying job that I had was her first husband. First husband, he hired me to paint houses. And I paint houses for him during the summer. He was a very patient man because I was a very bad painter.

And even worse at cleaning brushes.

And like that was one of my jobs, like clean brushes, and he'd come back and be like, they're rock hard. I'd be like, but he was a very kind. And I was, so Justine and I go way back. So here we go.

My name is-- Oh, it may not be on this late. We got, there we go.

My name is Justine Anderson. And I was married to this lovely man who had a painting business. And then I was widowed when I was 32, two kids, and I'm remarried to my current wonderful husband. And we have four kids, some of which are grown and gone.

What was the question? What does prayer mean to you?

Well, it means a lot to me right now, but I will say that through, I've been a Christian since I was like five.

You know, so that's like 50 years. I'll let you do the math.

Until recently, like really probably the past two or three years, prayer was something that kind of confused me.

I spent a lot of time being confused by it. Now what it means to me is talking to the Lord. Just that. And talking to Him and Him talking to me. That's great, I love it.

My name is Micah Peterson.

My wife, Maddie, is sitting out there. I'm standing right about here on stage, singing just a little bit ago. We have two kids, Aaliyah, who's also out there in Luca. And we've been coming to this church for coming up on 14 years, I think.

I think the way I would describe what prayer means to me is that all the different practices that Jonathan's been talking about over the last several months, part of the spiritual formation classes, are different, important components of being a Christian and knowing Jesus and just like there's the gears that make things go. And I think of prayer as more of like the oil or the lubricant that keeps all of that moving smoothly in your relationship with God as a component of all those things, but like working in between and it intersects with like every other spiritual discipline in some way, so.

That's good, that's great. You may have, yeah, I think you guys have one. Turn it on, make sure it's on. Oh, here we go. Micah's the, he didn't know he was back up IT.

Hi, my name is Terri Reidenbach.

For me, my prayer life is like, it's a relationship. It's unlike, it's lots of things, so it's hard to just describe it in a few words.

To me, it's very, very important. It's a relationship with God.

It's a form of worship to me, to him. And honoring him, where it tells us to be bold and I've learned to be bold in coming to him in my prayer life.

So, I don't know. I just, it's a lot of things to me as he is.

Hi, my name is Helene Tinkler. Been a member of the church, well, we started coming like in 2001. My husband is Fred and I have three children, one daughter-in-law and yeah, well, as a child, I was raised in the Catholic church.

I wasn't a devout Catholic, but I, my background in my childhood, there was a lot of chaos.

So, even as a kid, I would just go to the church because the doors were open and I would go in and I would just talk to God. And so, even as a young kid, I would just talk to him about stuff, I would talk to him about my life and about my family and those kinds of things. And even my friends would think I was weird because sometimes I'd be playing and I said, I need to go talk to God. And they go, you're so strange, you know. But anyways, I would just, and then it came, as I became a Christian

and as I have grown in that area, I found out how important prayer is. I think the body of Christ really doesn't understand that God needs our prayers. He needs us because Satan is still the God of this world.

And until Jesus comes back, which is the second advent,

the enemy still has control of this world. Now, he doesn't have control over you if you're born again Christian. Okay, you've been delivered from the curse of this world. You've been delivered from the kingdom of darkness. You are now in the kingdom of light. But he needs our prayers in order to move in this world. So, to intercede for people and those kinds of things, supplication, those kinds of things. I know I'm getting into a lot of do, but anyways, I found out that it's really needful. And it's not just for a few people in the body of Christ, it's actually every one of us needs to pray.

So good, so good. Okay, now we're all best friends.

Here's the next question. Because last week we talked a little bit about, and kind of opened up our series, and we talked a little bit, we didn't get a lot into it. But we talked a little bit about liturgical prayers, and we talked a little bit about prayer routines. And so my question for anyone who wants to share is, do you have like a rhythm or a prayer routine, like a daily or a weekly prayer routine? And if so, would you share just kind of an overview of what that is? Anyone can jump in. But not everyone at once.

But someone has to go.

Yeah, there's, it's changed over the years. But yeah, I had, there's certain prayers that I pray.

If I feel in fear, I pray Psalms 91.

There's a prayer that I got from Kenneth Copeland to pray over my children. So I prayed over that every day.

I also plead the blood over my family every morning before I even get out of bed. That's one of the things I do.

And then there's just other prayers that God directs me to pray.

And I, first of all, one of the major things that I do pray for is to pray for our nation, pray for our government. That's one of the things that it talks about. Even Paul talked about that's one of the first things we need to do is pray for them so that we can live a peaceful life and be able to share the gospel.

Because if we don't have that peaceful life and the government gets involved, we think it's, you know, the gospel suffers. So anyways, yeah, so I do that every morning. But prayer is also not just a time you just sit in your quiet time, but also it's a communication. So you just spend time. I talk to God, I turn off the radio, I just talk to God when I'm washing dishes, when I'm driving in the vehicle. I mean, it's not like that. You don't like to say, okay, I'm just gonna spend an hour just talking to God. Well, if you had your marriage like that, you wouldn't have much of a marriage, right? Or with your children. It's a continual thing that you do during the day. And just say, hey, daddy, hi, it's me. You know, you don't have to be formal. You can be very informal and just share your heart to God. That's what he wants us to do too.

That's great.

For me, I usually wake up early for some reason. I believe it's God. I wake up usually around four o'clock every morning.

And I just thank him from that very moment I wake up, I thank him for a day that I've been able to come into the world today. And to breathe, I thank him for the air, the grass, the green sky. Some of the things that people may think is just silly, but I thank him for those things because he is the creator of all these things that are around us if we really just can see the beauty that he has created. And I wanna thank him for that. And I think we should.

For me, I start out with thanking him, being thankful. And then I'm kinda like you. I pray the 91st Psalm and I pray it through and thanking him in preparing my day for the day. I release guardian angels around to encamp about my entire family for the day

to quench every fiery dart that Satan may try to bring against us because God is my protector.

And I believe that with my whole heart,

you never know the prayers that you share. And I believe God, he says, he looks at our hearts. That's what he sees. And man can't see our hearts. I know they look and they think they know us and they judge by what they may think they see outwardly, but God says he looks on our hearts.

And that's what I hope he sees, my sincerity of believing his word and what he has for us. He says that he has goodness, nothing but goodness for us and that it will follow us all the days of our lives. But bad things happen because we are living in this world that God is not necessarily in control of everything.

And so, you know, we have to learn to crucify our flesh because things come at us, but it's a matter of being a choice so that I wake up and I choose to worship him and I choose to pray to him. And I choose throughout the day, the word says to stay continually in prayer. And some people may think, well, does that mean I have to get in a prayer closet or down on my knees? And it isn't. We, I believe we pray to him in our mind at times. We don't have to speak. He looks at our heart and sees our mind. We have to take and cast down those evil thoughts or those things that come against the word of God. So for me, I just pray in the spirit and I pray to my father what his word says. So anything that negative comes, I just reject it. I'm like, I'm not gonna partake in this today. And I purposely choose to find something that is of God and remind him, I'm your child. He wants us to remind him. And your word says that you have goodness and mercy following me all the days of my life. And so I just think that that it's important to remind him of what his word says. He tells us to remind him. That's so good. Yeah. Anyway.

Yeah, I could go on about the, you know, there's different aspects of praying ongoing throughout the day or just depending on what situation comes up and where, but to what you're specifically asking as far as the one thing that's more routine is most mornings at some point, it often is once I get in my car and then have some time driving to work and it's a little quieter, but praying some version of the Lord's prayer and using that as a launching point to pray for other things and sometimes stopping and dwelling on certain aspects of it and personalizing it and going on for there because it usually starts off. I start saying the words and it's just a launching pad to get me in to that mindset. And when you first start saying them, it's just, it's just for memory. And then at some point along the way, those words become mine and it becomes my heart connected to what's God saying. And I think it's similar to what you talked about last week about some of those prayers and the benefit of them that have already been written in this case by Jesus, others like the Psalms that was, you know, Jesus's prayer book that for thousands and thousands of years, believers have prayed those themselves and there's someone else's words, but it connects your heart with them as you start saying them. And sometimes those pre-written prayers like the Lord's Prayer are a good place to start that way because you don't always know what to say.

And sometimes you just say them enough that eventually you start to believe them. So that's a starting point for me. I love that, you know, and I was thinking about this, I was reading something this week, you know, something that's so powerful about when we take some of these, we pray scripture or we pray some of these Psalms.

It takes this moment and sometimes it's great when you don't know what to say, but also when that becomes the word that's like hidden inside of you, when things get really tough and it's really hard, that's what comes out. And when you look at Jesus,

when he basically from the moment that he left the Passover dinner to the moment that he was crucified and he gave up his spirit, every single word that Jesus said was scripture. It was scripture, he just kept quoting scripture. Everything that came out of Jesus's voice was scripture, scripture, scripture. Even things like, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's literally the access point to a Psalm. Like he was praying scripture because it was like, when the pressure came, what came out of Jesus was this scripture.

And I think that's another good aspect of it is that, at least for me, I'll just tell you one of the difficult parts is that we all have busy lives, we have stuff going on, you sit down and you finally take a moment and you start to pray and your mind starts racing to everything else that you have going on in your life. You start to think about that. And sometimes if I'm just relying on whatever I'm spontaneously coming up with in the moment to talk to God about,

then my mind is going to those other things and I just keep getting distracted and stop, start, stop, start. But if it's words that like the Lord's Prayer are so familiar or something written down in front of me, then it can help recenter and bring me back to that and draw the focus down into something that's concrete and away from those fleeting thoughts of other things. And so that's another benefit for me. So good, yeah, I love that.

For me, just to go off of what you guys said, I love that Helene and Terry, you both pray Psalm 91 and Micah that you prayed the Lord's Prayer

because I think that those familiar things that we maybe have memorized or are right there written down very familiar, it's very helpful. My personal ones that I pray are the 23rd Psalm. Fairly recently in the last couple years I memorized Psalm eight, which is kind of a Psalm of praise of creation and I pray that one and I pray those most days.

And to tell on my,

I won't tell my other prayer routine, I mean, well, I also pray a Psalm every day. I read a book by Eugene Peterson about praying the Psalms and so that's what I've been doing for the past, oh, six months or a year or so, going through the Psalms just one at a time and seeing how is this a prayer? And they're not all prayers, but most of them are. And it can put you in a position because there are Psalms of lament, there are Psalms of praise, there are Psalms of anger, and it can let you see how you can pray the full gamut of your emotions and that's one of the things that the Lord has been teaching me over the past couple of years.

When you did the series on the Lord's Prayer,

the Sermon on the Mount, when you did the Lord's Prayer, my husband started praying the Lord's Prayer, he does, I didn't ask him if I could say this, but I hope it's okay.

He started praying the Lord's Prayer every night at bedtime and he's always had trouble sleeping and guess who doesn't have trouble sleeping anymore since he started doing that. Come on.

I love that. I love that.

And one of the questions, and you guys, maybe not formally, but you answered one of the questions and sometimes I get this as like, are there different types of prayer? Are there different types of prayer? And if you get really nerdy and you wanna get super nerdy, people argue, there's eight, there's nine, there's 12, there's all this kind of stuff. But there's three major categories

and I heard all of you talk about them. The first one is prayer of gratitude. You're thankful. You open your heart and you're thankful for God. You're thankful for the day that you have. During our Passover meal, one of the things that we talk about is we learned this word, diano, which means it would have been enough. And it's this moment of gratitude where you guys are like, God, you know what? It would have been enough this morning that I got to wake up, but I got to wake up with a cup of coffee. And you know what? It would have been enough if I got a cup of coffee, but I actually got to wake up with a good cup of coffee. And then it would have been enough that I had a good cup of coffee, but I also got to have an English muffin with my favorite jelly. Like this, and you say, well, that kind of seems like, but if you start thanking God, you realize, I'm thankful, I can't actually pray all the things that I'm thankful. And you could have, it would have been enough if you did that, but you did so much infinitely more. And all of a sudden, your mindset gets changed. So, and you heard people talking about gratitude, thankfulness. The second thing is, and Justine mentioned it, which is prayers of lament,

prayers of when there's suffering or pain or hurts or wounds that you get to bring those things to God. Sometimes people think that like, oh, I can't bring my real self to God. So I better just bring my praise and I better just bring, but God wants all of you. And in fact, that is the healthiest place to process those sorrows and to process those pains and those wounds is in the presence of God. And the last one is like a two part, oh, they're the same thing. It's the petition or the intercession, right? So petition is asking something from God for yourself. And intercession is asking something from God on behalf of someone else. And you get to do both of those things. And you heard that, hear people praying for their families praying, for their spouses praying, for their day, asking for it. And those things are all important in whether it's thanking God for what you have, whether it's lamenting sorrow, or even lamenting the fact that there's evil in this world and maybe even evil in me and I need to repent. Like, or asking God to show up and asking God to show up on my behalf or my family's behalf, like those are really big. And like I said, you can get into subcategories of those, but those are some of the three big ones. And so I love that you guys all brought that up. But another practical question for you regarding prayer

and it's this, and I think I understand this question, but I'll throw it out there and then we'll kind of maybe kick it around as, is the question was, who do I talk to when I'm praying?

Am I really talking to God?

Who am I supposed to be picturing?

Penny, for your thoughts.

Teacher, teach them into fish. Thank you. Laughs) So what you just said, who am I talking to? I think that that really gets to the crux of the matter. And that is that this is a relationship.

I believe Helene mentioned that, that this is a relationship.

And who I'm talking to is,

what I've realized is that God likes me.

I mean, I think I've known since I was a little girl that God loves me. We hear that all the time, he loves me, but you know what? He likes me, he likes you. He wants to be with you. That's why he came here to earth was so, to be with us literally, but then also to pave the way for us to be with him.

And he likes me and he wants to have a relationship with me. So who I'm talking to is,

I mean, sometimes I'll talk to one or the other members of the Trinity, but really it's all that. I'm just fellowshiping. And that's really what I've learned in the last couple of years when I've started to get, you had your list of kinds of prayers and it's like, I feel like a prayer is this big and I know this much, but I do know that I'm talking to God.

And I'm talking to him and telling him all my stuff because like you said, he wants to hear all of it. When I started going through the Bible and realizing how much emotion was expressed by God in the Bible and then by other people to God,

I was like in me and my extremely repressed emotion self, I realized that I needed to open that up to him. And so it's letting him in. So who I'm talking to, I'm not necessarily picturing someone,

which makes it sound not real, yet the God that I'm talking to is more real to me than he has ever been in my entire life because we have a real relationship. Yeah, that's good.

Ooh, she got your back.

I don't think I can improve on that. I think that was pretty good. I would just say that, yeah, I don't necessarily picture somebody because I don't think we have a full image of what God looks like. And the more the picture is more of the feeling of something being near. But I think that you can picture or see God in ways that make it more real, what and who you're praying to in the world around us. And now you see him manifested in people or in nature or a lot of different things. But again, I think Justine captured it better than I could anyway.

Anyone down there want anything?

What did you just say to his disciples to ask to the father what your needs are to the father and his name and he would bring those needs, give you their needs.

There are times where, yeah, I speak to daddy. That's, I calm daddy God.

Reason why I calm daddy is because I think of him as, a small child has complete trust in their parent and their father, right? And that's why I calm his daddy. Because as I've grown in my relationship with God, he went from God the father, which I was raised Catholic, like God the father, he's up there and he doesn't understand us. He doesn't, he's that guy with the big long beard and up in heaven and he's sort of separated from us and doesn't have any feelings or anything like that. But as I grown in my walk with God, I've been, see he's daddy. He cares about us. He loves us. He wants to be so much a part of our lives.

And there's times where I do talk to Jesus

and there's times when I talk to the Holy Spirit. It's like, Holy Spirit, help me with this or Holy Spirit, what do I do with this? So I wanna say there's, I don't know the scripture reference in that area, but that's what I do. I just, yeah, I just talk to all three in different times, depending on what, what is the situation, so.

That's good. I think it's a really buff Gandalf figure. That's what I have in my mind. To say Gandalf, but extremely yoked with Christ.

And it's just a big, it's a great way to feel like there's power. Okay, that's great. So we're gonna, we're gonna, well, okay, one more question about the physical nature of prayer and then we're gonna shift gears about our personal thing because this comes up and you guys have kind of alluded to it, but I just wanna hear, is there a particular posture

that you like to take when that you're in prayer? Not that you have to, because I think we've already said like, I can pray while I'm driving. You probably shouldn't close your eyes when you're driving, typically.

But is there a posture or a place or a position that is important for you or you feel like it helps you in moments of prayer? Audio Cuts Out)

Yeah, in the morning,

I sit at a certain spot on my couch

when I have my quiet time with God and that's, you know, I'm just talking to him. I don't necessarily close my eyes all the time. And then there's times where I feel like I'm into like a spiritual warfare thing, which that's a whole nother area. I'm pacing my living room. So there are different times.

I was trying to think of anything else. You know, just, I don't think that you have to close your eyes and hold your hands or anything like that and kneel all the time. There are times when I kneel. There's times where I feel like the overwhelming presence of God in the room. And then I will just prostrate on the, prostate, is that how you say, on the floor.

But there's no like, like, what do you say, like a traditional rule that you have to follow. You know, it's just whatever you feel like in your heart to do. That's good.

Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.

There are times though that I feel led to get down on my knees, close my eyes and pray. But again, I think that's also at times when I'm interceding or the Holy Spirit has moved on me and I'm praying for somebody because there's other types of prayer and intercession.

And so my thing is I kind of like first thing in the morning before I open my eyes, it begins. And then my most favorite time is I've caught it in the routine where yours is coffee, mine are chickens. And so, you know, I get up in the morning time and go down and take care of those and set down there. I've got this little area that I set and I listen to God's word for a while and just sit there and pray.

I think everybody, I think God meets us in our prayer life where we are in life. I think there's always these different levels. I know this may sound silly to some, but I think women will relate to this more is when I had younger children, you're busy, busy, busy and you're overwhelmed and you're crying out to God at times and He meets you there. And I found for myself, it felt like the time that he would, I felt show up and really talk with me was when I was most vulnerable in the shower naked, crying out to Him because that's where I found myself feeling the safest because everybody was gonna leave me alone and no one's gonna come in the door. And I cried out to Him because the shower sounded things out and stuff like that. So I think everybody has things throughout their life in our prayer life that God just meets us and it's just different because of the phase of life we're in now and now that I'm retired.

For me, mine is I just love to go walking. My most favorite is to be at the beach. I don't know, I feel so much closer to God, but that's kind of where my most favorite place to be is to pray, but I think it's just life.

That's good.

I don't think there are any mandates. I don't think there's anything specific for me. It just depends on time and place and what's going on. And I think that's the key is just whatever allows your heart to get in the posture of being there with God. I mean, there is evidence of the very earliest Christians

that in their worship services of praying that they would stand up intentionally and keep their eyes open and extend their arms way out in a like resembling like the cross so most and that they felt that there was value in that. So sometimes closing your eyes, bowing your head is the thing that places you most in that moment. And some doing the complete opposite of that and recognizing as an expression that God is here, he's around us, I'm looking at him, I can see him, he can see me, can put you in that state as well.

Yeah.

Jesus liked to pray on the move, you know? He was a big prayer on the move guy and then he asked those disciples to pray with him one time and they closed their eyes and fell asleep. So sometimes you just gotta realize,

sometimes closing their eyes is not the move to do if you wanna get there. That's great. Okay, so now I wanna shift gears for the last couple of minutes that we have here because there's a lot of questions on the practical things but inevitably where people get is we start to ask questions like this, I've asked questions like this.

Am I worthy to pray?

Do I actually deserve the right to ask God, the creator of the universe,

to do anything on my behalf? Am I worthy to pray to God?

Not are you worthy because you guys are here on the prayer panel. So you're very holy people.

But some of us are not on the prayer panel.

Are we worthy to pray to God?

I think there are two aspects to it. I'll address the second one is closer to what you said first, which is the being on the prayer panel aspect. And I have heard before people have reluctance in the worthiness as far as they're not good enough Christian or good enough prayer. And I just think that's nonsense.

What makes you a good prayer has nothing to do with how articulate you are or how good your words are. Or if it were, God would be a respecter of persons in that he would be deeming that what I've gifted you with as far as your language is somehow makes you more worthy

of me listening to you. And if you read and understand and truly believe what and who God is, then you know that that's not him. And it has nothing to do with that. Some of the most meaningful and what I felt are effective prayers that I've ever had and I felt God the nearest involve little more than me kind of just grunting and saying, help me

and feeling him near in that moment.

And then the second aspect of the worthiness, I think it goes back to, well, who do you believe God is? And if he is sovereign and great and you at least have that belief in it, then if he's called you worthy, which he has, then that's all you need. And I think it goes back to what your understanding and belief is about what God's design for any of us being here is. And I believe that the whole point of this is that he desired to put us here so that he could co-labor with us. And he invited us to participate in carrying out his plans for this earth. And he personally or intentionally restricted himself from being able to do that without us joining in. So that he put a plan in place where he said, I will call you worthy because I've created you in my image and I want to accomplish my purposes with you and through you. And if he's told you that and you believe that he is all powerful, then who are we to question him? Yeah, that's good.

Anyone else want to jump on that? That's a really good answer.

That's a really good answer. Okay, so within that,

so if we're worthy, and I love it, like if God says you are, sometimes I get myself a little weird and I'm like, I feel like down on myself. I'm like, I don't think I'm, and then all of a sudden sometimes God speaks to me. And sometimes he's a little, I mean, you may find this mean to me is very comforting. He sometimes will say things like, who do you think you are?

Like, I don't know if you've ever read Job when he's like asking God, he's like getting mad at Job and he's like starts really waxing eloquently about horses. And he's like, have you ever seen the stallion ready for battle? Have you ever put the thunder in the sky? Like, have you ever? And it's like, nevermind, sorry God.

Whatever you say goes. You say I'm worthy, I guess I'm worthy. Because sometimes we think we know better. Like we think we know better than God. And God sometimes, for me, he's probably more loving to you, but he knows I'm stubborn. And so for me, he's like, why would you say that? Like, oh, I'm sorry. And that's like part of our care. So, but if we are, if God says we're worthy, and Jesus talks about you have access to the Father through my name, because of what I've done for you. Like I go before you. I'm seated in heavenly places, literally Jesus right now is interceding on your behalf at every moment, which is the most mind blowing thing. We're gonna talk about that later. But here's the question for you guys.

If that's true, and I'm worthy, and I have access to God,

why does prayer sometimes feel like such a struggle?

Or why do I fear like God is maybe really far away?

Okay.

Well, like you said, I think a lot of times, if you're dealing with sin, condemnation, those kinds of things, and like you said, the worthy is, you know, who am I for God to hear me? I think sometimes it comes from a lack of understanding who you are in Christ Jesus. And what I'm saying to that is that it's a growing process.

As you get born again, and you discover who you are, I was, when I first got born again, I was still in a lot of religion, especially being raised Catholic and stuff. And then as I remember, my prayer time was, I was struggling in prayer time because I was still under so much condemnation, okay? And I remember, I'll share you all with this. One time I was praying, I saw a vision of Jesus in a cheerleading outfit.

And I was laughing, I said, Jesus, why are you in this cheerleading outfit? And he goes, I will do whatever it takes to get across to you that I am for you and not against you. And so he had to use dreams and visions for a period of my time to get across to me that I am worthy. I'm not worthy of me and myself. I'm worthy because of who I am in Christ Jesus, okay? And that's what we have to remember. It's not about us, it's about what Jesus did for us. And then we keep that in mind, because I think sometimes we go, well, we're not worthy. We're trying to sound humble, but we're not. That's actually, I'm gonna be honest, it's like a slap in the face to Jesus because everything he went through for us to be part of the family. So we need to remember that the worthy,

get that out of your vocabulary. You are worthy. You are worthy. You are a precious child of God. You've been blood bought.

So yes, even though you may not feel like he's far, he's far away from you, he's not, he's right there. He's in this room. And don't go by your feelings. Don't go by your feelings. You have to just know by faith that when you talk to God, he is hearing you. Audience Applauding)

As someone who struggled with prayer for most of my life,

I think it really was a misunderstanding of what prayer was. I think I thought I needed to pray a certain way.

And in analyzing it, I really also think that prayer was kind of like a means of control. Like if I pray this certain way for these certain things, then these things will happen. When really now I understand much more about the relationship and-- Do you think that's because you're more logical and less emotional? I think for a friend. Probably, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that was a big thing. But I will say I do have a very specific point of prayer struggle that the Lord has dealt with me about over the last couple of years. And I think it's a big one for a lot of people. I was trying to pray for a family member who was sick. And I felt like I was bashing my head against the wall. I was like, I can't pray for, and the Lord showed me you need to forgive this person. And I think that forgiveness, and so I've walked through a whole thing where real forgiveness, I mean, it's a whole other topic that we don't have time for, but real forgiveness, like it says in the Lord's Prayer,

forgive us our debts as we forgive those, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And I think that that is one thing that we need to realize when we are praying for others in our accessory prayer, or even praying for ourselves,

that you may need to search your heart and ask the Lord if there is unforgiveness there, not because it's like a weird legalistic thing of, you know, oh, I have to do this because this is the thing to get my ducks in a row to get my prayers answered.

But it's a hard issue, and it's all hard issues. Like, it's all what it's about. It's hard issues and relationship, and I think forgiveness is a big part of that. So that's just a recent one that I've realized. Yeah, that's good.

Okay, last, we're almost out of time.

But I got one more before we wrap it up, and it's kind of a two-part question. So first question, by show of hands, who here has ever prayed for something and God answered that prayer in your life or in someone else's life? Raise your hand if that's happened. You've prayed and he's shown up, okay?

Who here has prayed for something and seemingly God did not answer?

What do you do with the reality that sometimes we pray and God shows up in a way that is like overwhelmingly incredibly good, like to see him do something, maybe even miraculous, and then sometimes we pray and it seemingly seems like God is not doing anything.

What do we do with that?

Okay, can I, well, the thing that the prayers that I did I didn't get answered were actually had to do with other people, and that's one thing that's very hard because I know there are people who maybe had loved ones and they were standing for their healing or whatever the case may be and that didn't happen. But the Lord showed me, too, you're dealing with someone else's will, okay? And you're dealing with that person's spiritual journey. My brother, who's 10 years older than me, passed away from bringing cancer back in 2001.

He had it in the late 90s and then it came back.

So I was in my first year of Bible school, so I was on fire for Jesus and oh, we're gonna pray and he's gonna be delivered and blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. Well, he did it. He passed away, he didn't get healed. But I come to find out after he passed away that he received a report from his doctor, a negative report that said he would never walk again. I found out from his wife and he gave up.

He decided, nope, I'm going home. I'm being with you. He's a Christian. He says, I'm going home and being with Jesus. So what I'm trying to say is that sometimes we may not know the answer to why certain prayers are not answered, but if you're dealing with other people, I had to learn that yeah, I can extend my faith towards somebody else's, you know, I can try to hook my faith up with that person or whatever, but there may be some situations in there that we don't know anything about.

But let me just say this, I hope I, you know, at first Peter 2 24, Jesus says, I took, you know, he took the stripes upon his back. He had his flesh torn from his bones so that we can be delivered from every sickness and disease, right? It's we have to, you don't, I've seen things happen where people have walked away from church because their loved one didn't get healed or whatever the case may be. Guys, you can't go by experiences. Those are very, you know, that's not, that's not the truth. The truth is the truth is the truth, okay? No matter what happens, the truth still stands. Jesus did that for us. So don't go and walk away from God because of somebody else's experience. Please don't do that. Stand in the Word. Just keep going forward and keep going forward. It's a battle. And sometimes we win battles and sometimes we lose battles, but it doesn't negate the Word.

Yeah, that's good.

I'll just briefly say that, that I think it's important to recognize that, that one, that's a real feeling. And I think almost everybody experiences it. And then you feel God's absence if something doesn't turn out the way that you thought it should, even if you prayed for it. And it's okay if you feel that way. Cause I can guarantee you, everybody else in here has felt that before too. But the point is that you're here and you still keep showing up, you still keep coming. And for me, what I try to point myself back to is where does my trust lie? Does it lie in who God is or what he can do for me? And sometimes the, what he can do for me is a draw to get people to come near him in the first place. And that's okay. That's completely okay. And it doesn't mean you should ever stop asking God to do things for you. But ultimately, if he never does another thing for you other than give you his full self, then that's enough. And if that's where your trust ultimately lies, then you can stay solid on that. And it won't fall away if the things, the asks don't seem to be coming at where they are. And then there's a, back in the 1800s, there's a famous theologian philosopher, Sorin Kierkegaard, who described prayer the way, roughly paraphrased as the ultimate purpose of prayer is not to influence God's will, but to align yourself with his will and to be transformed by it.

And that's what I try to ground myself back in because if you get stuck on the swing winds of,

I thought that this is what God should do and he didn't do it. So therefore he has failed me. Then you're misunderstanding who he is and how we're supposed to align with him. But it's not, it's, I say that again, to go back to the first thing, it's really, really, really hard. And I completely fail at it myself all the time, but. That's good.

Anyone else closing thoughts?

Some good answers.

It's a little Kierkegaard flex, that's why you're on the panel.

No big deal. Well, listen, we could talk, I mean, we didn't even come close to answering all the questions that we have or get to read some of the stuff, but here was a verse I read this morning

that it's hard because again, our ideas of answers and God's sovereignty and his will, but I love this thing that God said in Isaiah,

chapter 65, 24, it says, "Before they call, I will answer. "While they are yet speaking, I will hear."

Like what a powerful truth and how he answers what that looks like.

If anything in my life is shown is that he knows far more than I do, and he knows what's better than me, and it doesn't change the disappointment of the hardship

or what that season looks like, but like the question often is, I don't think God's hearing. And he's like, "No, no, no, no. "Before you even speak, I know what you're gonna say. "While you're speaking, I'm hearing you. "I mean, I'm here, I'm close.

"It may be hard to understand why I'm not seeing, "you're not seeing this or that "or some of these different things." And that's a struggle that we all get to walk through. We all get to process, but he's like, "But I'm with you. "You're not alone in it. "You're not alone in that process." And I think that's a really powerful thing. Well, let me do this.

First of all, can we give these four a hand? So thankful for them. So thankful to the wise words that they got to share.

It's such a good thing to hear that perspective. But let me just do this because we are a little late. Let me pray over you. Let me bless you. If you do need prayer, if you have questions,

one person on this team has their prayer shirt on, so she's on duty, ready to pray afterwards. I won't let you know who it is. But feel free to come down and pray at the front. We would love to just stand and agree with you. But for everyone else, let me just pray with you right where you're at. Father, we just thank you. We thank you for that we have access to you. Lord, we thank you that you hear us. Lord, we thank you when you answer and you answer quickly, Lord, you're good. Lord, and we thank you that when you tarry and we wait, you're good. Lord, we thank you that all the time you are good and your mercy endures forever.

And that we can continually and boldly come into your presence to not just petition of you, but to be transformed by you. And that your will becomes our will and that your heart becomes our heart and that your thoughts and ways will become our thoughts and ways.

Lord, what a powerful thing that we can walk in and that prayer is something that we can continue to grow in and that we can continue to step out in faith in Father God, whether it's in the very practical

things of our posture and how we pray and how we speak, Lord, but all the way down into the very heart and the core of how we connect with you. We just thank you for that. We thank you for this day, Lord. I thank you for this church, Lord, that we will continue to grow as a church who becomes known for the power of prayer, for a people who pray and who pray first, that we pray first, Father, that that's where we go to, that our default response to hardship, to excitement, to joy, to grief is to pray

and to be with you in your presence. We thank you for this and your holy name we pray. Amen and amen. All right, church. Yeah, we love you. All right, so next week is gonna be great. Can't wait for it to be here. You guys are officially dismissed. Have a great rest of your Sunday.