Clear Thinking About Change II, How Prayer Changed Me

If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, I'm not going to fall over here. But I do want to thank the team, they've been just thinking of backup plans. So would you pray that the... I have a sense that it's because the Lord wants this message to be brought today. And there probably are some opposing points of view in heavenly places that don't want to have it brought. So let's pray together and ask the Lord just to give me some strength to get through this next little bit of time. Lord, we just exalt you this morning and thank you for your amazing love for us. And thank you that you know our frames that were dust. Lord, we can't take our next breath unless you give us grace. And so I pray for that abundantly in my life and for all those who've come to hear today and to meet with you in this place. And Lord, if we are facing a Grand Canyon in our own mind about prayer and communing with you, help us today to just gain some hope that there is strength and there is an open door to heaven for all who come. We ask it in Jesus' name. And everyone say, Amen. Alright, thanks everyone. Go ahead and take your seat, please. I'd like to take your outline out of your notes this morning and I want to do my best to share with you in somewhat abbreviated form, how prayer changed me. Someone asked me earlier this week why we still make a pretty big deal around here about Palm Sunday. You know, a lot of more contemporary churches don't even mention Palm Sunday. It's not one of the major holidays in the Christian calendar to them. But here's why. Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem, as David read earlier, the day he was anointed and hailed as king by the people and waved their palm branches and laid their cloaks on the road before him. It was both a fulfillment of prophecy and a foreshadowing of promise. On your outline, I put the prophecy right there. I just thought this was so powerful. Imagine 500 years before Jesus came on the scene, the prophet Zechariah said these words. Remember what David just read about Jesus walking in on a donkey. Here's what he wrote. Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. Shout, daughter of Jerusalem. See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey. On a colt, the foal of a donkey. Folks, just for those of you who are a little skeptical, what are the odds of someone 500 years beforehand knowing that the Messiah would arrive riding on a donkey? You see, that's inspired. That's prophetic. And so Jesus was saying in this, I'm the Messiah you've been looking for. I'm the one. But Palm Sunday was also a foreshadowing of a promise. And that promise was that he would one day rule as a king. And we need to never, to be careful, never to lose sight of this truth. Even though we so often talk about personal salvation and the fact that Jesus died to bring us into relationship with our heavenly Father. It's so wonderful. Listen, he also died to redeem this world. There's going to come a day when he's going to wipe away every tear from our eyes. And there's going to come a day on this world, on this planet, where there's going to be no more plagues and famine and starving children and suicide bombers and dog maulings and you name all the terror and the ugliness and the pain. Jesus came to redeem this world that he created. And that's why the Bible says, one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord of all. So Palm Sunday is filled with prophetic fulfillment and a foreshadowing of what it is that the Father is about to bring. And that's why we celebrate it. And that's why we make a deal about it around here. It's interesting to me that the destination on that day for Jesus, as he arrived in Jerusalem, was his father's house, the temple. Now, I have a photograph that I took in the Holy Land about seven years ago. And can we pull that up, Scott, please? This is a photograph, and it's not perfectly clear because I took it with not a professional kind of camera. But this is the Mount of Olives. I'm standing on it right now. This is what I'm standing upon where Jesus began his descent. You can see it looks like a little valley down in here. And see right there? That's the Eastern Gate. It's all stoned, covered over now. But that's where the Bible says he'll one day reenter Jerusalem and establish his kingdom. And right there is the famous Dome of the Rock, of course, where Muhammad reportedly was lifted off and so on. But right behind it is where the Temple Mount is, where the Bible says that the temple will be rebuilt in the second coming. And that's where Jesus was when he began that journey into Jerusalem. And when he ended up at the temple, he said, you've made this a den of robbers. My father's house, he said, will be called a house of prayer. A house of prayer. I want us to talk today about God's passion for prayer in his temple, in his house. You see, the focus of Jesus' mission, as I wrote in your outline, is Jerusalem. And the focus of Jerusalem is his father's house. But in the New Testament, the father's house is not a building. It's not a temple in a particular place. But it's a person or a group of people. In 1 Corinthians 3, the Bible talks about us, the living church, the body of Christ. We are now the habitation of God's presence. And you individually have his spirit in you. Think of it. What a transformation in the plan of God. From going to a place to discover God, to realizing that he now wants to live within us. Jesus said, now this house, my father's house, shall be a house of prayer. And after Jesus' death and resurrection, he supplied the Holy Spirit that that would happen. So, why do we find it so difficult to pray? Do you find it difficult to pray? Let's be honest. If we're to be a house of prayer, how many of you struggle just a bit with praying consistently? You know, if I were to write a book on this, and I thought about it, here's what it would look like. I'd call it, Prayer for Dummies. Have you seen the Dummies book? How many of you have seen those Dummies books? Covers my prayers, the Lord's prayer, prayer for meals and more. Because it just seems like it's so complicated at times. It's so difficult. But clearly, Jesus wanted us to know that that's what his father's house was to be. That was to be the primary activity in God's people. I want to just share with you a few basic things about prayer today. I can't begin to cover this topic extensively, but I want you to maybe take away just a couple of things to think about. Maybe just stir you up to re-examine your prayer. If you've been a Christian a long time, and I just want to say, maybe there's something today that God would want to say to you about your prayer life. I know he did to me. I want you to know something. You ever want to get some conviction going, just prepare a message on prayer. And those of you who are new in there, some of you in this service, more in the second service usually, I hope there'll be some things to hang your hat on about prayer in your life. What is prayer? Is it, as some people I've heard say, prayer is saying words that you don't mean to someone you don't even know is listening? No. It's prayer, what the Bible says, which is an open line of communication to the creator of the universe with 24-7 access. I've discovered that over the years, prayer is both, and I want to write this down, a specific act, a specific act, and a state of mind. See, in the life of Jesus, we see times when he, like it says in Mark 1-34, got up very early in the morning and went off to a specific place to pray. I find that pretty convicting, don't you? If the Son of God, who obviously had an open line of relationship with his Father, made time to specifically go and pray, how many more do you and I need to find some time in our schedules, carved out to be dedicated to God? But at the same time, Jesus frequently would just call out to the Father. Look at the next verse in your outline. Now, my heart, rather, he said, is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. So clearly, prayer was important to Jesus. Now, what I've discovered in many years of being involved in pastoral ministry is people see prayer kind of like this. Susie's going to help me here just uncover this thing. Michael, go ahead, thanks. This is a vending machine. People come up and they say, you know, God, I haven't been all that faithful, I haven't been all that good, but you know what, I'm in a jam, so I'm just going to shoot up a couple prayers. Lord, if you'll just come through, please, please, please, thank you. And you get your answer. You know why? Because God's so merciful. But you find yourself doing this a number of times over, and then one of those times it's going to come, and you're going to put something in there, and you say, oh, Lord, please, please, please, please answer. And then you shake your fist in God's face and say, how come you're not answering my prayer? You don't love me. I saw this dramatically after the 9-11 event. You know, this place was filled with people for a Sunday or two after that event. People filled Pine Ridge Stadium to pray, just about. There was lots of interest in prayer. And then things have just kind of leveled off, haven't they? And people aren't all that concerned right now, so we've kind of pulled away some from God. If that's how you see prayer, then, you know, it isn't that God won't rescue you now and then, but, loved one, listen, you're missing out on the primary purpose of prayer. And I just want to encourage you. It's supposed to be just a very natural, you don't need to have some theological degree or some liturgical background or some specific form that you have to follow. You just, if you can talk to another person, you can talk to God. It's as simple as that. And, by the way, if you had a child or a worker for you, or an employee, and all they ever did was come to you and ask you for stuff when they had a need, what would you think about that person eventually? They have an attitude problem, don't they? They need to get some things adjusted. So, prayer is just open communication with the God of the universe. But, second, why pray? Why bother? Ever ask that question? I mean, if you ever ask yourself this, if God knows everything, I mean, if He already knows my situation, because He is omniscient, if He already knows my problems, if He already knows, listen, even more importantly, what's going to happen down the road, because there is no time with God, then, if you ever ask, well, what difference does it make? Is it like this? Let's pull this one off, please. Is prayer just simply like stepping over to a treadmill and just saying, okay, God, well, I'm just going to get on here and I'm going to start walking. And I guess, you know, I'm supposed to do this, but you know what? I don't think it's going to matter. But if you want me to, I mean, I'll stand here and I'll go through the motions and I'll just, you know, I'll make some noise and, you know, eventually, you know, I might just start feeling like I'm making some progress, but when I think about it, you already know what's going to happen, so why bother? How many of you struggle with this now and then? Just let me see your hand. I have. I even know some people that seem to have things fall into place who don't pray. So I think I'm going to pray more, you know? But you know what? At the end of the whole thing, loved ones, it's this. God is not just concerned about our outcomes. He's concerned about our heart. Look in your outline. Prayer enlarges the heart and the soul of a person. Turn that over. The Bible says, trust in him at all times, all peoples. Pour out your hearts to him for God is our refuge. You see, he wants you to pour out your heart. So much of prayer is about you just connecting with God at a heart level. Even though he knows the outcome and you don't, you may have a desired outcome. Many of you know, my wife's mom has been quite old. She's very old, 90 years old, almost 91. And she's really been a wonderful encouragement to us over the years. Carol just had to leave suddenly yesterday to go be with her again. We don't know how it's going to turn out. We don't know if this is her time to go to be with the Lord or not. But I can tell you this, we're praying that she'll stay with us. But more important, I know God's looking at our hearts and he's asking, how are you doing through this time? How's your faith at this time? Are you angry at people who maybe didn't supply the right kind of methodologies or procedures? Healing disciplines? Are you just trusting in me? The Lord asks. God cares about our hearts. That's why he calls us to pray. And sometimes he puts the specific answer in our minds and sometimes he just doesn't. He just flat doesn't. As to the other concern about, you know, well, nothing can change anyhow. You know, that's just called fatalism. Fatalism is just sort of believing you don't make any difference, everything's sort of locked in place. And when I read the Bible, I don't see the Bible revealing a God of fatalism, do you? In fact, when I read the Bible, I read about people interceding and calling out for God to intervene and he changes course on things. I mean, sometimes he was going to bring down judgment and he diverted his judgment. Sometimes the enemies were going to divide the people of God and folks prayed and God withheld the enemies. And in the New Testament, I mean, healing took place and people were even raised from the dead, so I don't believe that God just turns us over to circumstance. He says, ask me. Look at the next verse. Prayer does make a difference. You do not have because you do not ask God. So let's never fail to ask because we don't know what the outcome will be in advance. Another North Way family member lost their mom this week. I stopped at the funeral home, I think it was on Thursday evening and visited with them for just a moment and they told me that they'd been praying for years and years for both the mom and the dad to come to know Christ. Neither of them were believers. And they said that through this process, they were so amazed at God's goodness because not only did the mom during her journey through the valley of the shadow of death that she come to Christ, but the dad, who was described as, you know, just a hardened old kind of guy just kind of set in his ways, he too received the Lord. And they were just thrilled that out of this loss came such gain. So don't give up. Number three, where and when should I pray? Since there's so many forms of prayer and since it's just communication, you can certainly pray at any time. But I have one more prop here. I'd like to point you to. Sorry about that. Because what I've discovered is that prayer needs to happen. If it's going to be consistent, it needs to happen at a place that you find very comfortable and very inviting to you. I call these closet prayers. But when you pray, Jesus said, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. And then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Where is that for you? Do you have a secret place? I know one family or one member of a family, some years ago we talked about this and their house did not have much empty space in it at all. They had four little kids. And so what they did was they cleaned out a portion of a literal closet and put a little light and chair in there and went in there just for a part of the morning. I know another man who gets up and he has to go to a restaurant and gets a booth at the corner of the restaurant and that's where he has his quiet time almost every day. For me, I go to my office and there's a little table in my office, not my desk because my desk reminds me of all the stuff I've got to do. But I go to the little table. It's a little bit bigger than this one. And I have a Bible and a couple of devotionals and I usually get a cup of coffee and I just sit down and I just say, Lord, it's time to talk. I have a little pad like this and I write down my thoughts. And many times I even write my prayers out. And then sometimes when I'll read my Bible, it's as if God just then speaks right back to me from my scripture reading for the day. And it's a marvelous thing to dialogue with God. I don't hear a voice, you know, but I hear His voice to my heart. And I can tell you categorically that every important decision in my life has been affected by my closet prayer times. I mean, where to go to school, who to marry, how about my call to ministry, all of those. Then I sensed the Lord was telling me to come back, to leave California and come back to Pittsburgh. I said, Lord, that cannot be Your voice. I'm going to just stay in here until I hear another voice. Now, I get up early and do this, but I'm more of a morning person. How many of you are morning people? Alright, and how many of you are the night owl types? How many of you are married to the opposite one? That normally happens? How many of you are sort of middayers and you just kind of catch stride, you know, and you're just right in the middle of the morning? Huh? And how many of you are groggy all day long? Just... Alright, God, if I have to put up with it, anyway. You know, it doesn't matter. God doesn't value one over the other, but I have to say this. I have learned to tell people, try not to fight your rhythms. Just pray when you're most alert. And when you do that, make it a dedicated time, a devoted time. And it will certainly affect you. If you need a little direction, on your outline there, I just wrote down one. There's multiple numbers of these, but this little acronym has helped a lot of people. It's four little words, and you see, to keep you from starting with what you need, there's three things you should do before you do that. You should, first of all, whisper or proclaim prayers of adoration. I oftentimes will turn on a worship CD and just sing along with that, you know? Nobody's listening, so I just go ahead. And then I have a time of confession where I tell the Lord what I think's been going on in my life. And He, interestingly, usually says, yeah, but you didn't talk to me about this, which is going on in your life, which needs cleaned up, too. And then I give some time of thanksgiving to the Lord, where I spend time thanking Him for all the grace and the blessings. And, loved ones, we have so much for which to thank God, don't we? And then the last thing I do, I offer prayers of supplication. Supplication, that's another word for asking. But can I encourage you on this? Just, why not for this Easter season, if no other time, why not commit? This is going to sound really weird, but you ought to try it. If you just committed to spend five minutes on each of those in prayer over the next week, I want you to know it'll stir something up in you. First of all, you'll find it's more difficult than you thought. Because we are so self-centered, you'll find that after 15 minutes, you'll say, I can't think of another good thing to say about God. Try it. It will change you. There's another kind of prayer there, under letter B, and that's a connecting prayer. And a connecting prayer is simply when you just, at the moment, just speak to God and say, Lord, right now, I have to just get reconnected because I've drifted a bit. Or maybe something's happened that's really just caught your attention. Maybe you drove out and it's been a beautiful sunrise. You say, Lord, thank you for being the God of creation. I want to exalt you there. Or maybe you're walking into an important business meeting and you need wisdom. And you say, Lord, just right now, before I go into this meeting, would you just help me? Help me to have wisdom. Help me to know how to handle myself here. Some very memorable moments in my life have happened as a result of connecting prayer. I can give you many illustrations. One of the most dramatic was some years ago when we were down as a church. We were in desperate shape, folks. We'd lost our building. We were meeting in a little abandoned Catholic church down near Perrysville. The old building that we'd been meeting in. Some of you were around back then. Remember, it's now the Max Planck's building. It had not been for sale. And then it had come on the market. And we were desperate. We just didn't know what we'd do because the church was starting to lose momentum. And I went with Bill James who's one of our really committed senior guys here at North Way. And he knew real estate and so on. And he knew how to do an auction. This thing was going on an auction. And I went in and our elders had commissioned me to go no higher for this property which was about 15 years ago. And it was a whole building and everything else. But all we had to commit was $850,000. Which is a lot of money. But really, when you think about this is a building on 10 acres and all the rest of it, whatever it was. Anyhow, went in there and people were pulling up in these huge cars. And Bill was saying, that guy owns this thing and that guy runs that. And Bill's like, oh man, this doesn't look good. And the auctioneer stood up and he said, well, who's going to start the bidding day? $800,000. And you know how they do that. $800,000. I said, Bill, I better step up right now because we're just going to get one bid in. And he looked at me and I think he went, shh. I think I'm going to step on my foot. He said, just pray. I'll handle this. That's exactly what he said. I'll never forget it. He said, just pray. I'll handle this. Well, nobody said anything at $800,000. And the auctioneer said, who's going to get $600,000? Nobody said anything. Who's going to get $400,000? Well, finally the bidding opened up at $200,000. And then it worked its way up and finally we ended up buying the building for $600,000. So I call that my $200,000 answer prayer. Bill calls it just keep Jay quiet prayer and it worked. But it was a prayer of the moment. I mean, it was just a prayer that needed to be prayed at that time. And I just want to say, God is always available. The final way we need to see prayer is that it's a very effective, powerful instrument in the hands of the church. As I mentioned earlier, there's a direct connection between prayer and the release of power. Throughout scripture, you see this connection over and over and over again. Look at the quotes I put on it from some of the great forefathers of the church. John Wesley defined the Methodist church, God will do nothing but in answer to prayer. This is the most mysterious aspect of prayer. I think we can grab the relational side that I talked about here where you pour out your heart. But this part has more to do with how God intervenes in the affairs of men. How what happens in heaven rules what happens on earth. And once again, I have one more little prop here to show you because it's an image that I think is very accurate. In Ephesians 6, we're told to put on the whole armor of God, take up the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. You see, Paul the apostle was very clear that the church had been commissioned. Now listen carefully to this. To enforce the legal victory of Calvary over all the powers of darkness. You see, Jesus in the shedding of his blood defeated the powers of evil. And it is now in the hands of the living church to enforce that legal victory by the exercise of prayer. And it's not by our programs and not by our slickness and efforts. It's not by screens and all that kind of stuff, folks. It happens through prayer. It's the mechanism that God's put into place. And I just want to ask you today, are you participating in some way in a meaningful exercise of prayer, invoking the power of God over evil and darkness and sin? One book that shaped my life profoundly 25 some years ago now. Sounds like a long time. And yet when I read it, it was just seemed like yesterday. A book called Destined for the Throne. Prayer is not begging God to do something which he is loath to do. It is not overcoming reluctance in God. It is enforcing Christ's victory over Satan. It is implementing upon earth heaven's decisions concerning the affairs of men. Jesus said, whatever you bind in heaven shall be bound in earth. Whatever you loose in heaven, talking about prayer, shall be loosed in earth. And I want you to know that this church is here only because people through the years have been faithfully praying for it. There have been more than one time that I've gotten up from a prayer meeting and I've turned to Susie or Scott or Pastor Dave or one of the elders, Gene, somebody, and just said, if we, at the end of this whole ride, if we never did anything else right, I know this, we did that, we prayed. And I want the people who are currently praying, these folks, they don't want any attention, they don't want any recognition, but I said, I want you to at least stand. There are people that pray regularly every week, some Friday morning, some Thursday morning, some Wednesday, others in small groups. But if you're praying, interceding for this church on a regular basis, would you just let us thank God for you? Would you stand right now where you are? Just stand up. Go ahead. We need to see you. Please stand. Praise God. And may the Lord raise up hundreds more of us to have a passion to pray. Prayer changed me because I realized that everything that I had a heart to see take place happened because God had made a way through Calvary. And it was my business to enforce what Christ had done, not to make it up on my own. And that brings us back to Palm Sunday and to the cross. See, through prayer, we have access to what Jesus did. In a moment, we're going to come and take the elements. And we're going to, once again, commemorate what Jesus did, not just to celebrate it in the sense of, well, thank you, but to recommit ourselves, you see, to engaging the power of God in our own lives to pray. So I want the team to come up. I'd like us to just to prepare our hearts right now to receive communion together. Let's stand. Father, I thank you that on this Palm Sunday, we have an amazing assurance of your presence and of your victory. We ask you right now, Lord, to cause every other thought to flee from our minds and draw us close to you, Lord. Draw us close to you. And help us, Lord, to lay hold of the victory you have for us. In Jesus' name.