Prayer As A Weapon of Warfare
(Transcript from the Sermon)
I have this weird thing.
I mean, everybody has their things.
Like you listen to baseball players or basketball players or professors or whoever, they have their thing.
And the thing is, is like, hey, before a game, I put on the same t-shirt, or if we're on a winning streak, we don't shave our mustache, or we fast.
Or, I mean, there's these superstitions, there's these things that they have.
And so mine is I don't eat before I speak or I lead worship.
It doesn't matter what time of day or evening it is, I don't do it because I tend to belch more.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly a trained public speaker.
So I don't need to work against myself with having acid reflux or anything else.
And so this morning I was doing my steady dose of daddy juice, which is coffee in the morning, and I have bad coffee breasts.
So, Matt, I appreciate your grace bestowed to me on that.
Thank you for that.
Last week we talked about the topic of praise.
And praise as a whole is a lifestyle.
Some of you were here last week, some of you weren't.
Not that we keep records of every time you're here or not or who you are or not, that doesn't happen that I know of.
But Brent might have a record.
He might, I'm just saying.
He's checking the list.
Gonna see who's naughty or nice.
(laughing) There's a reason why I said that, just wait, we're coming, it's coming to it.
But last week we talked about praise as a weapon of warfare.
See, whether you know it or not, you are at war, not only with yourself, but a war with the principalities of darkness and of light around us at all points in time.
Sometimes we find ourselves on either side of that pendulum.
Sometimes we're a little bit too far on the spiritual side where everything is Satan made me do it.
This is an evil attack, something, something, something.
And we don't take responsibility for our own decisions, our own actions that are there.
When we're an intellectual donkey, we try to say, "Oh, Satan made me be an intellectual donkey.
" Most of the time you made yourself be that person.
But praise is one of the weapons that God gives us throughout the scripture to combat a lifestyle of warfare.
Because on your own, your own sword, your own weapon has no powers against the principalities of darkness.
It is only God who has the power over the principalities of darkness.
And when you are in Jesus, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, It is His power that lives and moves through you to help you keep the 613 commandments to the best of your ability, and the over 1,000 commandments that Jesus spoke of in the New Testament, thus completing the entire narrative of the scriptures.
This week I wanna look at before Brent gets into a multi-week series, I wanna look at the topic of prayer as a weapon of warfare.
See, if you're like me, we pray for protection.
You know, that whole game over cheat code.
If you did not know, the devil cannot do shrubbery.
So when you pray for a hedge of protection, it is the infinite way, it's like a force field.
The devil just hits that holy bush and he can't penetrate the holy bush.
So when we pray for protection, when we pray for God to show up and help, When we use prayer as a selfish means, and we misuse what God had intended, we're basically asking God to play Santa Claus and give us what we want.
See, full circle all the way back to my original joke with Brett.
If we use prayer as a request of God to give us what we want, we are minimizing what God has given us prayer for.
See, church, nowhere in the Bible does God promise to give you what you want.
I know sometimes that's not fun.
Last week I talked about when we used praise, how we could change the trajectory of our day.
But God does not promise to give us what we want.
God promises to meet our needs.
And many times we find ourselves locked into misplaced expectations of exactly what our need is versus what our want is.
And this will always result in us being dissatisfied with whatever God's answers to our prayers are.
See, this is no different than if you've ever struggled in a marriage or you've struggled in a working relationship.
If your expectations are not that of somebody else and your expectations are misplaced, you will end up in conflict.
In the multiple times that my wife and I have counseled with other people in their marriages, Most of the times what we find is that a husband's expectation of the marriage is one thing, and the wife's is something else.
And when they grow farther and farther apart, until they lay down and start talking about it, there is conflict.
But it's not just in a marriage.
See, if I show up at a job and I have the expectation that my job is to do X, and my boss's idea was that I was to do X and Y, and all I do is X, then there's misplaced expectations.
'Cause ultimately the boss who makes the call had a certain set of expectations and I had a different set of expectations.
See, we deal with those every day in our life.
I have the expectation when I go to the grocery store that whatever it is I'm looking for will be in stock.
It's kind of the way our culture has worked.
You go to Walmart, you go to Amazon, whatever you should be able to get it to today.
Oklahoma's a little bit behind the times, but we're starting to get one day service on certain things.
But you have the expectation that when you go to get something you need, it will be there.
However, even if online says that it is present inside the store, when you show up and it is not present inside the store, are you frustrated?
I even, I did my homework ahead of time.
I knew that that fly killer was gonna be there and I set out to go get it and it wasn't there.
The expectation did not meet reality.
So we have to be careful when we approach God through prayer, through praise, through anything else for us to put on a misplaced expectation of what God's word says, what his son did, and what his Holy Spirit can empower us to do.
For example, inside this church, you know, we're a family fellowship.
Some people would say inside the church, Well, when a child cries, that's unacceptable.
I would say that's false.
But this is where as a church body, as a husband and a wife, as a believer in Jesus, we have to find exactly what the word says about healthy expectations.
Because it doesn't matter what you expect.
If the Bible doesn't say it's a reality, you will always be upset and frustrated.
One of the most common things I hear nowadays is, "Well, how can you believe in a God?
"How can you believe in a Jesus?
"How can you believe in a power "that would allow so much harm in the world?
" How can you believe in that?
They misplaced their expectations on what God said, what God has done, and they have removed the responsibility of the fact that we are all flawed in the reason why all these things happen.
It's not because of God, it's because of us.
kind of interesting when you look at the flood and you say, how could God create mass genocide of the world?
And it's like, praise God that he saved us from the depravity of the human heart that was in homosexuality, that was murdering each other, that was raping each other.
Sorry, I know children are in here.
That was doing bad, bad things.
How you look at things determines where you end up.
See, prayer is not just some vague thing.
It's not just some like, God, I hope your day was great.
Thank you for making my day great.
Thank you for it being a two for one at Brahms on lunch and I happen to go to Brahms today.
Thank you for (claps) to me, Lord.
And it's not just God, I'm really in trouble.
I'm really struggling.
I just need you to show up on my behalf.
It's not just some vague thing that from time to time, we call on God, we ask God to do something.
Again, God is not Santa Claus.
You don't get to call on God and say, "God, by the way, I wanna go see the new Barbie movie, and my mommy said I can't, will you please just find it in your power to pop tickets into my hand?
" No.
Prayer is the act of asking God to act on His reputation, His will, His grace, and His nature on our behalf.
Let that sink in for a second.
When you are praying to God, you are asking God to act on His reputation, His will, His grace, and His character and nature.
So let me just go ahead and give you the end of the sermon here.
If the Bible does not say that it is in God's will, it is in God's character, it is in his reputation and his nature, you shouldn't have the expectation that you're asking for it and you're going to get it.
You should not.
So if it says that God is sovereign and you're asking God to judge unrighteously another person, "Oh, what was me?
So and so hurt me, God.
Will you bring down your fire and judgment upon them?
" He's not going to bring it down the way you're expecting him to do, because it's outside of his character, his reputation, his name's safe.
If the Bible didn't say it, then he isn't going to do it.
So that's simple.
So let's make sure we understand when we're asking God to act on our behalf, it is impossible for him to act outside of his nature.
Yahweh can't turn into a Hasatan today, nor would he.
Sometimes that's what we're asking the Lord to do in our prayer, sometimes like, "Man, Lord, "I need you to deal with that person.
" It's like, but your expectation is that he's gonna go, "Bruce, will his die hard on them?
" And see how God sees the situation and how we see it are not the same.
And this is important because we first see this in Genesis 4.
26, when man began to call in the name of Yahweh.
In Genesis 3.
15, God said and gave a promise that he was a rescuer.
He would be the rescuer.
So then one chapter later, Genesis 4.
26, men began to call on Yahweh 'cause they needed a rescuer.
So there's a pattern here.
Starts in the beginning of the Bible.
And we're gonna go through the Bible today and we're gonna look at whether or not that pattern continues.
And we see in Genesis 17, 18 that Abraham prays for selfish desires.
His desire was that Ishmael would be his heir.
Can you imagine what the narrative would be today if that's what God would have granted him?
But that was a selfish prayer that Abraham prayed in Genesis 17, 18, that Ishmael would be his heir.
And then in Genesis 32 we see that Jacob prays to the God of his father Abraham.
Abraham was praying a selfish prayer in Genesis 17.
"Hey, can you give all of my, "can you leave the house, the car, the guns, everything, "the gift cards, can you leave it all to this son, "not to this son?
" But yet Jacob prays to the God of his father Abraham on the promises that were made to his father Abraham, Genesis 32.
We see this with Moses and Joshua in Joshua chapter seven.
We see it in Judges chapter three that in the middle of the judgment, the judges were asking God to do what he promised.
Interesting, this week, a lot of chaos in the news, not unusual, but this week there's chaos on both sides of the aisle, which means there's something that they don't want you to know.
Because when there's chaos on both sides of the aisle, somebody's hiding something.
So this week, all of a sudden you've got testimony of Hunter Biden that the testimony of his father that nobody in the Biden family had made any money from anything to do with China.
Well, this week, Hunter Biden confessed that he did make money.
Now he didn't, as far as my knowledge, he didn't implicate his father, but he did make money, which meant the statement that his father made in the White House may be incorrect.
At the same point in time, Donald Trump is indicted again for more things after holding up a document saying that a document didn't exist and now they have an audio recording of him saying that it did exist.
Guess what?
Judges, chapter three.
Righteous judges ask God to do what he promised he would do, which is to act in righteousness and justice.
This week as believers, same thing.
In the political landscape, we need to ask God to be righteous and to bring his righteous justice to this world.
'Cause if everybody's a liar, then that means that God's not in them.
It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.
We see in the Bible that Hannah calls on God to remember his promise when she can't have children, when she's barren.
And one of my personal favorites, Solomon, at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8.
We think about the temple, the house of the Lord.
Last week we talked about, I will enter his gates with thanks.
It was a command, you enter the gates with thanksgiving and the courts with praise.
You didn't bring your offering, you didn't go up through the temple with your service without that.
And so I'm not sure how some of the denominations of Christianity can say that there ain't no praise.
I have a feeling there was more praise breaks and the non praise breaks when it was coming to the temple and it coming to the Jews.
And they were dancing the horror.
Some of them might've been dancing the horror and others were doing like one of these numbers.
But it was praise.
It was a time of celebration.
But in First Kings eight, Solomon doesn't ask that the Lord would bless this building.
He doesn't say, Lord, how beautiful is the structure that you made your house?
And again, this was the house of the Lord.
This wasn't some church on a corner.
This wasn't an indoor soccer field that was converted into a Saturday church and a Sunday church.
This was the house of the Lord.
But in first Kings 80, he doesn't pray for the blessings of the brick and stone, but he asks that God's work in the world would progress and move forward through this place.
It wasn't that this place would just be the most beautiful and everybody would come here and go, Ah, ah, ah, no, it's that the promises of God and his blessings would go forth from this place.
Kind of like we talk every Saturday.
Doesn't necessarily matter what you do in here, if what you do in here does not show the world Jesus out there.
Because in here, it's very easy for us to come and to put on a facade.
But you're only in here so that you can change what happens out there.
And that might be in your own life 'cause it always starts with us first.
It might be in your marriage, in your home, in your Bible studies, in your classrooms, in your job, in the marketplace.
It might be on the road.
You get in an accident nowadays and you're worried about whether somebody's gonna pull a weapon on you and maybe you're just, Maybe he's just hanging on a Bible.
I don't know.
It's like, oh, you can't do crazy things like that.
Why not?
Solomon, who oversaw on Kings eight, the blessing and the dedication of God's house didn't pray for the brick and the stone.
He prayed that God's name and God's power would continue to go forth from that place.
And that should be our prayer in every place that we go, every place that we gather, whether it's in a house church or it's in a congregation, whatever we do here, we should be praying that we are changed and drawing closer to the Lord so that we can be the light.
'Cause see, that's one of the beautiful things about the temple, is that the temple was established as a singular place for God's glory and God's presence and God's nature to go forth to transform the nations.
In Hezekiah, Daniel, and Nehemiah, we see that even through our own misfortunes or our own missteps that God's will and plan will still go forward in the world.
This is important because when you look at the prophets, the prophets of the Bible differ from what that term means today.
Prophets today are people who maybe 20% of the time will get something right on some future event.
And normally it's political in nature.
The prophets of the Bible were sent because God's people, Israel at the time of which whom I believe you are now, God's people were not living in accordance with the calling of God.
And when we're not living in accordance of God, God is sending prophets to us to warn us.
The prophets are like the modern day lane assist on the car.
Hey, I'm warning you, you're going outside the boundaries.
Now, if you have a Tesla, those warnings are pretty good.
If it's one of the new EVs from Korea, they might not be as good.
But boundaries and boundaries and boundaries still are there to keep you in line, a prophetess to keep you in the word of God, in the message of God, in the ways of God.
And that should lead to repentance.
And that should lead to proclamation of the goodness of God.
but even in their misfortunes and missteps, they were praying that God's will would still be done.
How many of us pray that when we're in a conflict with somebody?
When we get sideways this week, Matthew, because we're always getting sideways with each other, what would happen if I prayed rather than God, can you see Matthew's missteps here and change his heart, Lord?
What if I prayed in the way of the prophets and said, "Hey God, in what's happening in Matthew and my relationship, "I'm just praying that your will would be done "and that your name would glorify in this entire situation.
"Leave out whether he's right or I'm wrong, "because guess what, we're probably both wrong "to some degree.
" So rather than making it about a person or a situation, we're making it about God's nature and God's will to be glorified in the situation.
That's not that uber spiritual.
That's not some like Pentecostal rolling on the ground, Charismania here.
No, you're literally doing what the Bible says prayers to do, to call on the name of God and ask for his nature, his will to go forward.
See, for too long we've made prayer, we've made praise, we've made study in the Bible, we've made it about ourselves.
Never was about that.
It was always about us submitting to the power and growing in the nature of God.
Otherwise, we become the scribes, we become the Pharisees, we become those who are haughtier inside ourselves other than submitting ourselves to God who is greater.
Even the prophets when they talk about prayer say, if I screw up, God, will you still be glorified?
Will you still move me back into place and execute your perfect will on this earth?
This is a huge revelation for me this year.
Even in a conflict, even in a divorce, even in a broken relationship, you gotta fire an employee, something happens.
The nature of God's heart is that all would be restored and glorified.
That's the nature of God's heart.
The nature of God's heart for the people who have left this church over the last couple years is not that they would be lowered and diminished.
It would be that God would be glorified in their life.
Guess what, it's the same calling for me.
That God would not be lowered, but that God would be glorified.
And in prayer and developing a lifestyle of prayer, you can warfare the opposite, which is when the devil and the flush step in and said, obviously there's a divorce.
Obviously they don't agree with you.
Obviously they're horrible people.
Obviously we shouldn't talk to them.
Obviously you should be scared of them.
And we end up cycling in this drama culture, having conversations that didn't even exist.
But the devil didn't do that, we did.
Through prayer, we learn how to see people, situations, communities, opportunities through the lens of Yeshua.
That's crucial because that's the only perfect lens.
Any other lens is one that is skewed.
And I don't know about you, but I can look back on multiple times in my life where I looked with skewed lenses and I created more conflict or more problems personally than originally existed.
This is why you have to understand something.
Yeshua is greater than me.
And the moment I start to look at Yeshua and what he says, how he walked, how the Father walked, how the Spirit walked through the life of the scriptures, The more I understand, I gotta lift your shoe up and I gotta pull myself down.
It's not easy.
Not sure I know exactly how to do that.
I'm kind of bumbling and babbling through it in my life.
But so far, God has brought peace where there used to be turmoil or conflict.
All you can hope, trolling, is one day, one day you get one step better, one step better, that's it.
That's all you can hope.
Now the book of Psalms is where we get most of our modern church theology on prayer.
Most people in here, you're familiar with some of the Psalms, right?
Like we're not going to like have like a memorization thing or anything like that.
But the book of Psalms outlines many of David's personal and direct petitions of the Lord.
This is where you get a lot of worship songs, a lot of lyrics for worship songs.
This is also where we see the concept of more of a personal direct kind of agonizing and yet rejoicing prayer life.
If you are not familiar with the artist Shane and Shane, I highly recommend going out and looking at, they have multiple albums that they have where they go through Psalms and they've written Psalms music.
It's kind of modern, kind of folksy.
All I know is I'm a sucker for a good harmony.
And you've got two white guys who can actually harmonize with each other.
It sounds amazing.
And so I just recommend going and looking at this week, especially something just to carry over from Saturday into your normal life, the book of Psalms through worship.
But David is where we see a lot of church prayer where we talk about personal direct prayer.
This is a lot of where we get the theology of personal direct prayers.
this main book of the Bible.
King David, who poured out his soul on the pages of the Bible.
Sometimes he was peo'd, sometimes he was in despair, sometimes he was rejoicing, but he wrote them down.
Beautiful poetries.
church we have witnessed another miracle my wife followed a direction I gave We've seen healings and we have now seen signs and wonders and miracles.
We actually have that in our playlist.
Like the one time she listens to me, she's like, "Oh, I got to go download the song from Shane and Shane in the front row.
It's okay, babe.
I love you.
" Obviously, wherever I was going with the sermon, Lord didn't want me to go and use my better have to stand me back in.
That's actually pretty funny because the next part of the sermon where I was going to go is when you use prayer as a weapon for selfish means, we take the weapon of warfare and we make it about personal gain and selfish elevation.
This isn't exclusive to prayer.
We talked about this a little bit with praise, but when you take anything of God, whether it's the words of God, whether it's the reputation of God, whether it's your attempt to take the power and the spirit of God, and you try to weaponize those for yourself, you are out of line.
You are in dangerous territory.
You don't get to take God's power, pull it down, and try to Thanos this.
No, God is the one who has the right, and this is why I started out by making sure we understood what prayer was.
We're asking God to do what God said he would do in his character, in his name.
So I can't, I have literally no power to pull God down and say, "God, I want you to judge that person.
" This isn't some sort of Marvel comic series.
God cannot come down and be used as some sort of cosmic force.
For all of my old school 90s, 2000 kids, it was the Mortal Kombat or the Street Fighter were like, "Oh, you can, you don't have the power to take God and transfer God to who you for your selfish, weaponized desires.
" Well, for my selfish desires, it would be that you would be made low and I would be made high.
Okay, that can be your selfish desire, but God will not be a part of that at all.
Because it's outside of his namesake, it's outside of his righteousness, it's outside of his character.
If you succeed in that, you're either succeeding out of your power, your flesh, or the character of Ha-Satan, the unholy spirit.
And so it is impossible for you to bring God down and to weaponize him for selfish means.
If something big happens in your life, if something goes on and it's outside the character of God, and it's outside of your character, 'cause I've had some people say that before, oh, how'd it have been God?
And I'm like, ah, I even read the extra biblical books.
And that ain't in the character of God.
So what spirit helped you out?
As I'm backing away.
Some people will say that, you know, they'll say, "Oh, I'm stepping away before the lightning strikes you.
" Why do we step away when we're worried about whether God is gonna strike lightning on a blasphemous person?
Why don't we step in a way when somebody starts claiming something happened by the power of God and you're looking at it like that?
Don't line up with anything God said about himself.
We should be walking away quickly.
Prayer is for us to lower ourselves into the submission of God's plan for His grace, His righteousness, His judgment, and execution of His plan on this earth.
Now the new covenant prayer, in some areas of Christianity, a lot of us have heard in this room at least where you've come from is that when you start with the Scriptures, You want to start with the Gospels of John and move forward.
And this is what's considered the New Testament.
And in the Gospels, there's a different narrative that plays out from the prophets in the Old Testament.
Obviously, the majority of the people in this room know that's not the case.
When we study the Gospels on the topic of prayer, you'll actually find the same exact pattern that we saw in the Torah, the Old Testament.
Matthew 6 and Luke 11 both show us that same exact pattern of prayer.
James 1 warns us not to doubt God's willingness to keep his promises.
On his namesake, his character, he's done it before.
So it's not just a gospel versus an Old Testament.
The Old Testament foretells of Jesus' coming and when Jesus is here, they keep writing and they're like, "Ah, everything said that he would do, he's doing.
" It's a testament firsthand of the living, breathing God in the flesh.
He did it.
And even with the living, breathing testament, we still have people today who say, I'm not sure he's God.
One thing's for sure, you're not, I'm not.
So if this is as good as it gets, it's a lot longer than a seven year tribulation.
First Peter five tells us we're to cast our anxieties on him through prayer.
Church, 26% of humans right now are listed as being diagnosed with a professional medical diagnosis of mental health along the lines of anxiety.
It's more if you get into other areas.
But just anxiety-driven issues.
26% of the people are diagnosed with that.
Bible tells us to be anxious for nothing.
Now, I do not have a statistic to tell you how many of the 26% are Jesus-believing Christians, but I can tell you that a percentage of it would be.
So, as a pastor, I have to ask you in your prayer time this week, this week, I need you to ask the Lord, can you help me grow to a place where I might have unbelief that your word is your word and your character is your character.
Help me grow into belief where I no longer have the doubts of your character of your word and I can fully walk in it.
Because I can tell you that I'm sure there's people in this room who struggle with some elements of anxiety and if the Bible says you're to cast your cares upon him, that tells me that he has the ability to cure that.
And while I am not a medical professional, and I am not giving medical advice, if the Bible says it, I believe it, if the Bible says to do it, I believe we should do it.
And if we do that, there is power.
Because again, prayer is asking God to work on his namesake for his character and for his plan.
Well, if it's in the Bible, if Peter tells us to cast our anxieties on him, he will take our anxieties, then either Peter is a liar or we're wrong.
And I'm going to go with the second one that we're wrong.
You know when Jesus says something, those letters in red, you should probably listen.
Comes with authority.
When God speaks, it comes with authority.
John 14, 13 through 14.
This makes an explicit promise.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.
That the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
On one hand, we've seen, ask for that Bentley.
Ask for that Porsche.
Ask for it.
Let's go.
If you ask for it in my name, I will do it.
But when you take it back to the context we started off with, he can't do anything that's outside of his namesake, his character, who he is.
So what if we start asking for him to remove the plank from our eye?
That's not sexy.
That's not a Porsche.
You're right, you're right.
The two by four, the six by six, the eight by eight of hypocrisy in your eye is not a Porsche.
It's not brand new clothes.
It's not dinner at Frida's in the Paseo district, which is amazing.
Brent talked about steak two weeks ago and I heard he got a dinner, so I'm just gonna try this out there.
I'm just saying.
It's easy and weak for us to ask God to do things that doesn't require us to have a posture change before him.
But at the same point in time, what happens when you keep asking God to do things that he has already told you he's not interested in doing?
I don't see one passage in the scripture where Moses, where David, where any of them was like, "God, my neighbors in Egypt have the greatest camels.
"I would like the brand new model with leather "and heated seats.
" It doesn't exist.
I've not seen anywhere in the scriptures where there's a prayer that says, "God, will you please help me?
" Because creatine's not working, the carnivore diet's not working, and I'm doing my pull-ups make me stacked.
Those are selfish desires.
Now they're part of all culture.
But part of the reason why we've done these two teachings last week and this week is because there's so much focus on trying to fix what this looks like in this world.
And on the inside, you are decayed and rotten.
According to the word of God, I'm not projecting on you.
I applaud every person for fixing the physical, but you also gotta fix the spiritual.
And whatever order could be different for some.
But whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
If Jesus said it, it has to be true.
Jesus makes it clear that God's revelatory work of opening the eyes and the hearts of people, seeking to see his glory will happen.
So if you're not seeing the revelatory work of Jesus in your life, are you asking and are you truly seeking his revelatory work or your own revelatory work?
I don't know if you're tired of your own lackluster, revelatory works, but if you are, Stop asking for God to give you what you want and start asking God to reveal his glory in your needs.
'Cause see most of the time in all the conversations I've had with people who want counseling, who wanna get together, it's always about what they want.
And then when you look at him, you're like, Is that what God wants?
Have you asked Him?
You don't believe me that I talk to God.
I'm really making no judgment here.
I'm asking you.
Are we asking God for His revelatory work in our lives and our jobs and our marriages and our children and our families and our churches?
Are we truly just asking God for what we already want, which is you projecting on God?
And this is something important to ask yourself in your prayer life.
Are you just speaking with God because you want something?
Are you just speaking with God because you need God to make you feel better about yourself?
Are you truly interested in God revealing himself in your life?
Because over the last six months, I know I actually want God to reveal himself in my life.
Still questioning myself on all my motives over the last 17 years.
I can promise you they weren't all evil.
But I know there's a difference between asking God to reveal what He wants and going before God and saying, "I thought this is what you want.
Are you going to show up or not?
" It's a life-altering difference when you no longer try to project yourself onto God.
Pray with intentionality that God's mission, agenda, and spirit will manifest itself in every situation you find yourself in.
Every one.
I got fired today.
That's a hard one to pray for God's mission, agenda, and spirit to manifest itself in.
I can check that one off finally.
I'm like one for seven on that one.
But like, I can check that one off.
And pray that with intentionality even when it might mean you need course correction.
Because would you rather show up at a destination and realize that God was never there and that's not where you were supposed to go, or would you rather be course corrected, Google rerouting, rerouting.
Oh my gosh, for a while.
Guys, even the hardest times of your life when you're driving in downtown Oklahoma City with Google Maps, and they cannot figure out what road you're on on I-40 right there at the 23535 interchange, and it's like rerouting, rerouting, rerouting, rerouting, rerouting.
You're like, I'm clearly on a major interstate.
Would you rather God to redirect you right then and there to get you to the right place, or would you rather show up at the wrong part of town and end up in harm's way.
Personally, for me, I would rather God redirect me before I show up there and teach me whatever it is I need to adjust then.
There are 650 prayers that are listed throughout the Bible.
Obviously, prayer is important.
Prayer is something that most people say they struggle with.
And again, men, not to call you out, but male dominance in prayer is not high.
Most men struggle in prayer.
There's 450 recorded answers to those prayers in the Bible.
So once again, even in simple math for all my homeschool people, 650 minus 450 means that there's 200 times we do not have a recorded answer.
That doesn't mean he didn't answer, which just means we don't have a recorded answer 200 times.
So when we ask something of God and we're like, oh, he didn't do it.
His name's sake, his history, the recorded history says, not all the times do we know right away.
And it could take seven, eight, nine years for you to know the answer.
Jesus prayed 25 different times recorded in the scripture in his life.
Paul talks about prayer 41 times.
Hear a lot about the Torah, the Sabbath, the Torah, the Sabbath, the Torah, the Sabbath.
Prayer 650 times.
In the Bible, it talks about prayer 650 times.
There's 613 commandments in the Old Testament.
There's just over 1,000 in the new.
Prayer's a pretty big topic of the Bible.
Is it as big of a focal point on your life?
Because again, we say, if God said something, we wanna do it, right?
I mean, that's what makes us commandment keepers, right?
Is it we actually do the commandments?
Or is it that we Jewish up or Christian up something?
Prayer is important.
Your individual time with the Lord is important.
It should be a part of the spiritual DNA of every believer.
So what does prayer look like physically?
The second Samuel 7.
18 talks about praying while sitting.
Mark 11.
25 talks about prayer while standing.
Some of us know the Amida, it's a prayer of standing.
Kneeling is Chronicles 6.
13, Daniel 6.
10, Luke 22.
41, Acts 7.
60, Ephesians 3.
14, kneeling.
All those verses is why in the old school churches, which a lot of us under 40 don't remember, they had those fold out benches on the seat in front of the pew in front of you and you got down.
You prayed like this in there?
Because there are more passages that talk about kneeling, prostrating yourself before the Lord.
Face on the ground, Matthew 26, 39, Mark 14, 35, and then 1st Timothy 2, 8 talks about lifting your hands in the air upwards.
Prayer isn't a black and white checklist.
It's a mental and physical posture towards submission to God's unfailing grace, mercy, and power in your life.
There's nine major types of prayer listed in the Bible.
James 5.
15, the prayer of faith.
Acts 2.
42, we've been going through this last two years.
corporate prayer where we pray in agreement together.
We build the family through the prayer.
Three, Philippians four, six, the supplication prayer.
Prayers of thanksgivings in Psalm 95, two through three.
Prayers of worship in Acts 13, two through three.
Prayers of dedication in Matthew 26, 39.
prayers for intercession, 1 Timothy 2-1, prayer for imprecation in Psalm 69, and praying in the spirit in 1 Corinthians 14, 14 through 15.
I also want as we start to wrap up and the worship team comes back, I wanna talk about a common thing for a lot of us who've come from the roots corners of Christianity.
There's this term called Amen.
And Christianity is super popular.
I'm not sure that most of the people, especially in Sunday school or when I was in choir school and all these different schools, they're really good about having schools.
But you would say Amen.
And at the end of a prayer you'd say Amen.
At the end of a song you liked you'd say Amen.
It got to the point where Amen was kind of just like, whenever something good happened, It's like, amen.
And then when I came into the roots movement, I heard all kinds of, well, they lied to me.
They lied to me.
The preachers lied to me.
And I started to hear conspiracies and I started to hear things that amen was actually, it was derived from an Egyptian God and you can't say amen anymore because it was really after this and it was after that.
However, a man starts in Numbers 5, 22.
This is the first time we see this, and it means something just as simple.
And once you hear this, if you're a Beatles fan like me, a whole new meaning in your mind when you listen to John Lennon, but let it be, or so be it, or verily and truly.
So when somebody is standing and they're saying, "I pray that God blesses you this week with health, with might, with all these things.
And somebody says, amen.
He's whispering words of wisdom, let it be.
Verily, Lord, let it happen.
Let it happen, Lord.
May it be so, Lord.
You're in agreement.
You're not calling on some random third grade deity who was tucked away in Egypt someplace.
That's not true.
And we have to move away from the conspiracy theories and take God's word for what it says and stop projecting on God.
We have to stop projecting our nonsense on God because what we've done is we continue to create a place where we can't let anything be.
We can't even let Jesus be who Jesus is.
We don't even pray anymore because prayer is only what they would.
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♪ Matavu ♪ No, the Bible says there are multiple ways to go about this, and we pervert one thing and replace it with another thing, and then when that's not good enough, we create conspiracies and conspiracies and conspiracies.
I'm trying to get to the so level.
You can't even do multiplication.
Why are you in algebra?
Two plus two equals four, And we're over here trying to say if the square root was equal to the third on the side of the face and says he and the earth is flat.
Whisper words of wisdom and let it be Lord that you would come whisper words of wisdom that you would be whisper words of wisdom.
That we would yield ourselves to what your word says that your kingdom would come that your will would be done and let us stop fossilized custom in everything.
That's us trying to create our will, our power, our might.
That's out of our nature.
That's out of our character.
That's not out of his.
Over the last year, we've attempted to show you what a healthy church looks like, what healthy leadership looks like, what healthy church members look like, what healthy followers of Yeshua look like, how to walk in spiritual maturity and how to respond through trials, whether it be through the lifestyle of praise or it would be through the lifestyle of generosity and first fruits, or whether it be through the lifestyle of prayer.
And as we continue over the next couple of months, leading into the fall feast with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Teruah, into Yom Kippur in the Feast of Tabernacles, as Brent continues to go into series about the nature of Jesus and who Jesus is and reveal it.
It is so important for you to understand, no matter what part of Christianity you came from.
Whether you call it messianic, whether you call it roots, whether you're a Baptist, a Pentecostal, I'm a Torah-observing follower of Jesus, I'm a Torah-pursuing follower of Jesus, I'm a this follower of Jesus, I'm that follower of Jesus.
Just remember one thing, You're a follower of Jesus.
And if we don't need to pray for him to do what he said he would do, then we don't need Jesus.
Let's just be very real.
We don't need him.
Because we don't need to ask him for anything.
We don't need to ask him to do what he said he would do.
We don't need to submit ourselves to his will or his nature or his power.
We got it all figured out.
So we don't need Jesus.
So we're not a follower of Jesus, we're a follower of ourself.
If we don't need to praise, even though the Bible says that we're supposed to enter the courts and the thanksgivings would praise, and all things give praise, we went through that, that we don't need Jesus.
Brent and I are the best there is.
You got screwed.
I can tell you one thing.
I need Jesus.
I think I can speak for Brent in all the conversations we've had.
Brent needs Jesus.
You can't follow the law without understanding the intention given by the author, the law giver.
And so when we're looking at keeping the commandments, we're looking at walking out the commandments, walking in a healthy family, how to pray, how to praise, how to just function.
(gentle music) You either create yourself as a God, or you put God right back where he was always intended to be in your life.
And I know I said it last week, church, and I'm just gonna reiterate it as we close this week.
It doesn't matter if you take Jesus off the throne.
Take Him off the throne, that's fine.
Didn't change anything.
Jesus is still on the throne, you just screwed yourself.
Oh, pastor, you can't say that word.
Yes, yes I can.
If you take Jesus off the throne, if you don't need to pray to Him, if you don't need to praise Him, you're the best you ever got.
And if you're the best you ever got, wow.
I hope you are better than me.
This week, I got hot, And so I decided I was going to trim up my beard a little bit.
So I decided to trim up my beard and I wasn't going to touch the mustache area.
You know, that whole 60s hippie thing, because apparently I can't have a man bun.
Am I going to end up on the naughty list?
So I didn't trim it up and then I went a step further.
I was going out with my wife.
we were gonna do Moscow, Mule's going to Air Shabbat, and the Bible says you can drink alcohol, so send me an email.
So I twisted it up a little bit.
It was a little long, like, don't get me wrong.
And I come home and I get out of the car and if you're the best you got, wait, wait, God's funny about this.
I was feeling good about myself.
I was outside working with the guys we were working on a family's house, like doing good.
Felt like I was doing good.
I get out of the car in a lot of it's 'cause, Ew, what happened to your face?
You're, that's stupid.
If we're the best we have, if this is the best we have and we don't need Jesus, we're stupid.
'Cause I thought, mm.
My son, my son loves me too.
He's the lover.
What happened to your face, dad?
(congregation laughing) Even in the smallest moments of your life, God finds a way to make sure you understand that he's still on the throne, you still need him.
So the question today is, how far are you willing to go this week to search your heart?
How far are you willing to go?
I'm not stupid, I understand that as this church continues to press towards the mountaintop, to be alone and intimate with the Lord.
And we attempt to do what the Bible, the entire narrative, Genesis to Revelation tells us I'm not stupid.
The more we try to walk towards the mountaintop to meet face to face with God, there's gonna be people like Joshua who are gonna get about halfway up and they're gonna stop and they're like, Moses man, thank you, I love you.
One of these days, you don't even know it.
I'm gonna take over for you, but I'm good right here.
And then there's gonna be the chorus who are like, oh, that's not your way, this is your way.
But in the end, the invitation to go up the mountain to be with God was for all.
So this week I ask you, search your heart and your mind as we start to press in and try to move closer to the will of God, the power of God, the commandments of God.
How far are you willing to go to look into your heart, to look into your mind to allow God to actually change what you do.
'Cause it's not enough just to know about God.
It's what you do with the knowledge and the wisdom and the power he gives you.
To either use it for your glory or to put it back on him, which was his glory and his intention.
So as a church this week, I'm asking you as before, Brent gets into a series looking at the different things about Jesus and the identity of Jesus and his character and his nature and what that means for us.
I ask you, what part of your lives have you still not surrendered to him that you've still not been willing to lay at the throne, that you've still not been willing to say, "Hey Lord, I know you already know about it, "but today I'm willing to acknowledge to you, "I know you know about it, I need help.
"I need you to take it.
"I need you to deliver me.
"I need you to restore me.
"I need you to empower me.
"I need you to act for your namesake, Not to glorify myself, not to glorify my wife, not to glorify anybody else, but to glorify you.
How far are you willing to go to ask God to reveal to you so you can do something different?
My wife will tell you, I'm a glutton for punishment.
because even when things are going well, I'm like, I believe God wants more.
The Bible says we can have all the riches.
I believe He wants more.
It's like, we're not even fighting.
We got money in the bank.
We got everything's good.
And I was like, we need to press in closer to God.
Call me a glutton for punishment, but I believe that even when things are good, you can get closer to God and He can reveal and bless you more.
He can do more.
How far up the mountain are you willing to go?
This week, how far up the mountain are you willing to go?
How far up the mountain in prayer are you willing to go for your unbelieving spouse?
How far up the mountain are you to go for your unbelieving friends?
How far up the mountain are you to go for the healing or the financial blessing or the restoration or the repentance or the deliverance?
How far up the mountain are you willing to go?
I guess that's the question.
Have you reached the spot?
Have you arrived?
Are you willing to go and press in closer to Jesus than ever before and let Him heal?
If you would, stand with me.
