Prevailing Prayer

SERMON: 2006-09-03--js0628--prevailing-prayer SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:40.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: The material up to candidate 14 constitutes a benediction/prayer (part of the sermon). Candidate 15 ('Let us shout in the camp as we answer the call...') is the final spoken instruction or transition from the preacher, immediately preceding the actual singing/hymn material found in candidates 16 and 17. Therefore, candidate 15 is the last segment belonging to the sermon. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:37:37.580-00:40:39.280 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I want to pick up this morning where we left off last week, and last week I pointed out among other things that prayer is a powerful tool that God makes available to His people. James says, "Pray for each other so that you may be healed." I also pointed out that prayers like that need to include confession of sin, for James goes on to say, "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." And that brings me then this morning to still a third observation that I want to make on the basis of James 5 verse 16, and that is this, not all prayer is equally effective. Not all prayer is equally effective. Because again, notice how James ends verse 16. He says, "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. The prayer of our righteous man, and of course that also includes our righteous woman, is powerful and effective. In other words, for our prayer to be heard before God, it needs to come from a heart that is righteous before God. Now to be righteous does not mean to be perfect, it doesn't mean to be blameless. To be righteous means that fundamentally you are committed towards God and walking in His ways. To be righteous is to want to love the Lord your God with everything that is within you. It is to want to get to know Him better. It is to want to yield to His authority. And it is to repent and to repent deeply in those places where we feel. Without that kind of righteousness, our prayers will not be heard. And I can think of two reasons why that kind of righteousness is so important among God's people. The first is that God turns away from the unrighteous. Isaiah put it well many years ago, chapter 59, the verses 1 and 2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from God, your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear." And Peter quoting from Psalm 34 says the same thing when he says, "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." God turns away from the unrighteous. And one of the reasons for that of course is that the unrighteous are not seeking the kingdom of God. To be unrighteous as I said is to go your own way. And the unrighteous, even when they do pray, they pray for God to come alongside them and to fulfill their hopes, their plans, and their ambitions. James put it this way, "When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, but you may spend what you get on your pleasures." God is not going to allow Himself to be used to build kingdoms that are in opposition to His kingdom and that ultimately will detract from His kingdom purposes. That's why confession of sin is so important in your life and in my life as we draw near to God in prayer. So not all prayer is equally effective because God turns away from the unrighteous. And then not all prayer is equally effective because scripture goes on to say that unconfessed sin distorts our vision. Unconfessed sin distorts our vision. Most of us, I dare say, have found ourselves in a situation at one time or another where we have either had other people pray for us or we have heard other people pray for other people. And if your experience is anything like mine, you will have noticed that every so often the prayers that people pray for other people are more of a reflection about their own condition than it is about the needs of the other person. Have you ever noticed that? Prayers are often a projection of unresolved issues in our own lives. Let me give you just a couple of quick illustrations to try to drive that point home. Let's suppose that you're the kind of person who struggles with unresolved issues of rejection. You've grown up believing that you're unlovable. You've grown up believing that people don't really like you. There is something that is quite unacceptable about you. And now let's suppose that somebody comes to you for prayer, suffering from some of those same issues. Well, if you haven't received a measure of healing in that place in your own life, the chances are that you're going to resonate in an unwholesome way with the person who is experiencing that rejection. And when maybe you want to be praying for people to step out of that rejection into the riches that God has for them in Christ, you may rise up in anger and in defensiveness against those people from whom they feel they are experiencing that rejection. And your vision will be distorted because of your own woundedness. Now the reverse of that is true too. Let's suppose that you're the kind of person who has never experienced significant rejection. That is to say you've grown up pretty comfortable with who you are and what your giftedness is. And you know, you're good with yourself and people like you and you feel that people like you and all that kind of thing. And then somebody comes to you with rejection. Now if you've never experienced rejection, can't understand rejection, then that will tend to color your prayer. And let's suppose that what that person really needs is you to put your arms around them, help them to understand in an empathetic way that God loves them in Christ and that you can enter into their pain. Instead you make light of their pain. Instead you tell them to pull themselves up by their own bootstrap. You give them a whole lecture about how beautiful, handsome, intelligent and gifted they are. And you will again have missed the picture because your own stuff, in this case your own lack of experience, will color how you're praying for the other person. It is very easy to let our own stuff color our prayers for other people. And that is why Jesus says, take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. And what I like about that passage is that removing the log out of your own eye enables you to see what you need to see in the other person's life. And so one of the needs in Christian community, one of the reasons to walk in righteousness before God and to be led by the Holy Spirit is to minimize the pollution that flows through our lives into the lives of other people. We have an incredible privilege and responsibility. Our job is to take one another by the hand and to lead us each other through faith in Jesus, to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. And in order to do that effectively, we need to walk in righteousness. Again, that doesn't mean we have to be perfect. And it doesn't mean we have to sit around waiting until we're perfect before we involve ourselves in the lives of other people. But it does mean that we allow God to speak into our hearts that we're open to correction and that we are walking in repentance before God. So that the river of the water of life flowing through us into the lives of our families, our children and who knows who all will be as clear a stream as possible for the glory of God. The prayers, says James, of a righteous man or woman is powerful and effective. Now, having established that truth here in James chapter five, he now goes on to illustrate from the Old Testament prophet of Elijah. And here is what he says. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crop. Three things in these two verses that I'd like for us to note this morning. The first is this, Elijah was fully human. For notice again how James puts it. He says Elijah was a man just like us. Now, I think that translation loses a little of the punch of the original because in the original Greek, what James is saying is that Elijah was a man of like, passion. And you see the Greek word there, homo, pathes, from which I think I haven't had a chance to check this out. I suspect the word homeopathy comes from that. Homo means like, as in homosexuality. And pathes is the root of the word pathos in English. It means suffering or experience. And so James is talking here about Elijah being a man of like, passion. There's only one other time in the New Testament that this word homeopathy is used. And it's used by the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 14, when he and Barnabas are on their mission trip to the city of Lystra. And they have just been powerfully used of God in healing a man. And the citizens of that city are so impressed that they think Paul and Barnabas are gods and they want to sacrifice to them. And Paul gets very, very upset. And here is what he says to them, "Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you." And so what James is saying here concerning Elijah, who was certainly one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and whose ministry was accompanied by incredible power and incredible miracles, God says, or James says concerning Elijah, he was a man of like passion. He was every bit as human as you and I. That is to say, he had his hopes and his dreams. He had his moments of faith and he had his moments of doubt. Notice how the greatest victory against Baal on Mount Carmel led to his deepest bout of depression under the juniper tree in the desert because Jezebel had vowed to kill him. He was a man like you and me. He got hungry. He got lonely. He had moments of doubt and despair and hopelessness. Why do I emphasize that? Why does James bring it up? Because see, there is in all of our lives the tendency to say that the great heroes of faith somehow had something or were something that you and I don't have access to. We read the stories of men and women who know how to move heaven and earth in their prayers. Think of George Muller in Bristol, England many years ago, Hudson Taylor, many other great giants of faith who like the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, you know, conquered kingdoms and saw the dead raised and saw the kingdom of God come. And then we look at ourselves and we look at our own weakness. We look at our own background. We look at our own experience. The situations in which we find ourselves and we say, "Well, you know, maybe they could do it, but I can't because I'm weak." Well, the Bible says whatever they accomplished, they did not accomplish because they were great men and women of natural strength and power. What they accomplished, they accomplished because of their relationship with Christ and he lived in them and through them. And just as he was available and his resources were available to people who were fully human, so you and I will discover in the midst of the battle that the battle belongs to the Lord and he's the one who encourages, inspires, and helps us on our way and in our journey. Elijah was a man of like passion. He was fully human like you and me. And then James points out that Elijah was a man who prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Now the word earnestly, if you look it up in the dictionary means to be serious in intention, purpose, or effort. And it has I think at least three components to it as it applies here to the story of Elijah. Let me walk you through it very quickly. It means having a specific focus to our prayer. What was it specifically that Elijah according to James had prayed for? Two things. The first that it would not rain. And secondly that it would again rain three and a half years between. I mean we think three and a half weeks has been dry weather. Imagine what things look like after three and a half years of no rain. The nation was in a crisis. But the point is that Elijah was very specific in his prayer. And I rather suspect, if you're anything at all like me, I rather suspect that most of us tend to shy away from prayers that are too specific, don't we? I mean it's easier to pray Lord forgive us all our many sins than to pray about a specific sin that we need to repent of and overcome. It's easier to pray for the Lord God to bless all missionaries in foreign and domestic fields than it is to pray for a particular person in a particular situation. Because I suspect that deep down in our hearts we worry that if we step out too deeply into faith and we ask too specifically and God does not come across, then what about our faith? What about our concept of who God is and can we live with that tension? I told you a little bit last week about Charles Finney, the great revivalist preacher in New York in the early 1800s. I've been reading a little bit more about him in his autobiography. And he tells a story that when he began seeking the Lord and started going to church and sitting in on prayer meetings, he was struck. And I quote him here, he said, "I was particularly struck with the fact that the prayers that I had listened to from week to week were not in that I could see answered. Indeed, I understood from their utterances in prayer and from other remarks in their meetings that those who offered them did not regard them as answered. This inconsistency, the fact that they prayed so much and were not answered, was a sad stumbling block to me. I knew not what to make of it." He goes on to say, "On one occasion when I was in one of their prayer meetings, I was asked if I did not desire that they should pray for me. I told them no because I did not see that God answered their prayers. I said, 'I suppose I need to be prayed for because I am conscious that I am a sinner, but I do not see that it will do any good for you to pray for me, for you were continually asking but you do not receive. You have been praying for a revival to descend upon yourselves, and yet you complain about your leedness." I recollect he goes on to say, having used this expression at that time, "You have prayed enough since I have attended these meetings to have prayed the devil out of Adams." That's the place where he lived. "If there is any virtue in your prayer, but here you are praying on and complaining still." He said, "I was quite earnest in what I said and not a little irritable." Well, I think he probably eventually had to repent a little bit of that attitude because the subsequent revivals that took place under his ministry, I suspect strongly were the answer to their prayers for God to send revival, but his point is well taken. When you and I pray, what's the purpose of our prayer? When we ask God for things, do we anticipate, expect, look forward that He will do what it is that we're asking of Him, and if He is not granting us what it is that we're looking for, are we willing to ask ourselves, are we willing to ask Him the question why or why not? Ernest prayer is specific in its focus not only, but it's also made with fervency and passion. If you read on in 1 Kings chapter 18, which tells us the story of Elijah, then you see that Elijah placed himself very deliberately in a posture and in a position of prayer. Verse 42 of that chapter says, "Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees." Jesus put it this way. When he was teaching on prayer, he said, "Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." And what's significant in that passage is the progression of the intensity of the verbs. You will notice it goes from ask to seek to knock. That is to say there is an increasing sense of desperation, a determination that says I'm not going to give up until God gives me what I want or what I believe He is calling me to ask of Him. Let me ask you this morning. How many times in your prayer are your prayers so fervent and so passionate that you will not give up knocking on heaven's door until God either opens the door or tells you the answer is no and now it's time for you to quit knocking. I suspect for many of us we're way too nonchalant, we're way too laid back because we're not sufficiently passionate. We don't care enough about the things that God cares about. Earnest prayer has a specific focus. It is fervent and passionate and then of course it is also persistent. I wonder how many of us here know this morning how many times Elijah prayed for rain. Do you remember that story from 1 Kings chapter 18? Seven times. Seven times he bowed to the ground. Seven times he prayed that God would send rain. Remember it hadn't rained now for three and a half years, not a cloud in the sky. Each time he takes his servant, sends him over the mountain to look westward to the sea to see if anything is happening yet and six out of the seven times the prophet comes back and he says there is nothing to see. Now how many of us would have given up after once or twice or maybe three times we would have said well you know it must not be the Lord's will that it rained because if it was the Lord's will then how come he hasn't answered my prayer the first time I prayed. I don't know why he had to pray seven times. All I know is that he did and all I know is that when he prayed the seventh time the prophet came back and he said I see a cloud the size of a man's hand and Elijah knew that his prayer had been answered and he told Ahab and everybody else get out of here because it's going to rain and if you don't beat the rain you'll never get back home. He was persistent in his prayer and Jesus when he teaches on that in Luke chapter 11 he says concerning the man who comes to his friend at midnight looking for bread because he has received unannounced company I tell you though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend yet because of the man's importunity or boldness I love the word importunity he just will not give up he keeps on pounding on the door yet because of the man's importunity he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now does that mean you pray forever? Does that mean you never give up? Not necessarily but it does mean that God is looking for you and for me to show a persistent determination that whatever it is that we're asking of him we're not going to take a no answer lying down unless we are very clear that he says as he did to the Apostle Paul after praying for his thorn to be removed out of his flesh three times in a row my grace is sufficient for you my power is made perfect in weakness. Let me ask you this morning has there ever been a time in a place in your life when you have been so burdened by the Holy Spirit that you have prayed and prayed and prayed persistently and consistently for years and years if need be for God to give you the answer to what it is that you're seeking for. Elijah was a man who prayed earnestly he was fully human and then interestingly enough his prayer was kingdom focused. For note again how scripture puts it he prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain in the land for three and a half years again he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops. Now at first glance that just seems to be about the weather doesn't it and that's enough of a challenge if you've ever prayed for it not to rain when it wanted to rain and for it to rain when it didn't want to rain I mean that's no you know that's no light matter but the issues here of course are much more than whether or not it rained. The issues here are Israel's covenant unfaithfulness and God's desire to bring them back to himself. Remember they were serving the Baals and they wanted to mix Baal worship with the worship of Yahweh or the Lord and the Lord says you cannot serve two masters and so one of the reasons he brings drought into the land is to discipline them to bring them back to himself because they are covenant breakers and under the promised covenant back in Deuteronomy God said he will bring drought into the land if they disobey him but more than that remember Baal was a fertility god and Baal is the one they prayed to for the rains and the one they look to for the harvest and so in stopping up the heavens Elijah was illustrating that Baal was not the all-powerful God that they thought he was and when after three and a half years he prayed earnestly that it would rain and God sent the rain into the land he illustrated once and for all that Baal was not all-powerful but that Yahweh was all-powerful and he is the one who needed to be served and obeyed and so it's no surprise then that after the contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel that it's after that when they have been defeated he prays to God and God sends the rain and there's a principle here that's very important for us to understand when it comes to prayer and very important to understand if we want our prayers answered and that is this our prayers to be answered must be kingdom focused so often in our prayers I suspect we are at the center of the universe I don't feel well please make me feel better I have emotional psychological physical financial emotional or social needs please bless me and there's nothing wrong with that as long as we don't stop there because in the Lord's prayer when Jesus says pray for your daily bread the context is always the kingdom of God do our needs matter you bet you our needs matter but why do our needs matter so that we can love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves and so for prayer to have power for prayer to be effective they must be prayed in the context of the coming of God's kingdom our father who art in heaven said Jesus hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven so how do you pray for the coming of the kingdom well you pray for men and women to come to know Jesus you pray for men and women to yield their hearts and their lives to Jesus you pray for the church to be established you pray for the church to embody the reality of God's presence you pray for the worldly powers to be overthrown for the gospel to have its way and for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven and one of the things that I want to invite you to ponder as we excuse me start going into the fall season is to ask yourself the question where is the Holy Spirit inviting me to come alongside him and share in this ministry of intercession this ministry of prevailing prayer is there a family member is there a relative that I need to consistently and persistently bear up before God so that he or she may come to salvation Amy Monroe you saw a little bit of her story in the video tonight she is a boss wandered away from faith as many of her family did for many many years started coming to this church many years ago involved in the kids up program as a helper eventually through Laurie Ann and then others in the church were brought back here heard the message of salvation her life forever changed because somebody stood in the gap there's a million of them out there ask yourself the question who does God place on my heart that I can be significantly involved in and lift before God some of you've heard Valerie Peters tell the story of how there was a man who prayed for her 17 years that she might come to know Jesus think of all the lives that would not be impacted today if that man had not been faithful in prayer well you say you know evangelism or lost people individually is not my thing I care about politics I care about big social movements well ask yourself the question where does God want you to stand in the breach and where does God want you to pray earnestly like Elijah that Satan's power would be defeated and God's kingdom would be established now to help you take that seriously we've prepared for you just a little bit of a bullet and insert take it out for a moment if you will called prevailing prayer biblical patterns for praying this is just a reproduction of a thing we did years ago when we first started having concerts of prayer you don't need to read all of it now but maybe stick it in your Bible don't just throw it in the garbage stick it on your Bible or put it on the fridge take it home look at it when you're having devotions go over that list read the scripture passages that are there which are commending us to pray for these situations and for these people and then ask yourself the question and ask the Lord the question Lord what's the burden that you want to place on my heart so that we may accomplish your purposes pretty soon Lord willing we're going to be building new church facilities and as you've heard to say many many times we're not interested in new facilities simply for the sake of facilities what we're interested in is to share the mission that is on the heart of God that those who are lost may be found those who are broken will be healed but those who have been healed will learn what their gifting is and find their ministry so that one day they can be released and they can in turn multiply the effect of the coming of God's kingdom one day we're all going to stand before God and we're going to be held accountable for what it is that we've done with our time talent and treasure and it's not our programs that are going to make it happen our programs are tools that God can use and not everybody here is equally called to share in every ministry and to share in every program but you know everybody can enter the breach when it comes to prayer and the promise of scripture is that as we stand in the righteousness of Jesus our prayers will not only be powerful they [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:37:37.580; remove through 00:40:40.000] will be effective and [CUT] we will see the coming of God's kingdom with the sound of praise and the lion shall lie with the lamb of his covenant that shall reign over the earth may your will be done may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom come let it rule let it reign over the earth may your kingdom our Lord. May your will be done, may your kingdom come, let it rule, let it reign in our lives. Let us shout in the camp as we answer the call, "Hail the King, Hail the Lord our Lord. Hail the King, Hail the Lord our Lord. Hail the King, Hail the Lord our Lord. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:40.000; resume after this marked segment]