The Year Of Deepening Devotion II, High Impact Prayerobics

The words of Jesus, who I would expect we'd all agree was the expert on prayer. How many of you agree with that? All right, we're on a good roll here this morning. We agree that Jesus probably knew more about prayer than any other person that ever lived. Let's read what he said in verse 5 of Matthew 6. But when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and on the street corners, to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, 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. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Our God knows what he's doing, does he not? Now, for the first time visitor, the local health spa is a study in controlled reactions. You know, you want to be a little bit cool about what you're seeing. The first question that probably comes to your mind when you see all that machinery, and if you haven't been in a health spa in a few years, things have really changed, folks. Not just weights laying around, but all these machines. The first question that comes to your mind is, are those things to help me or torture me? And you find pretty soon it's the latter, because they stretch your muscles in every conceivable fashion. Then the second reaction you have is to all the people. I mean, some are there in incredible form. I mean, their bodies are unbelievable. You don't know where they got them. Glistening, you know, just the right tan and, you know, enough clothes just to cover what they have to cover, you know, just minimally. Then thankfully, there's some people there who are just the opposite, and their bodies are indistinguishable for other reasons. They're covered with clothes. You know, you can't even see anything but their face, but, you know, everyone in that spa is there for the same reason. They want to get in shape. They want to maximize the performance of this little mass of molecules that we call our fleshly bodies. Now parallel the first-time visitor to the health spa to the first-time visitor to morning prayer meeting. You see, the first-time visitor to the morning prayer at 6 a.m. walks in, and he says the first thing, his first reaction is, is this 6 o'clock hour to help me or torture me? And he soon finds it's to help him. Some people are clearly excited, obviously real warriors of prayer. You know, they're, amen, they're jumping up and down and excited about what is going to happen. And there's some there who look like they growled the whole way over. You know, they sit in the back. They don't turn in their Bibles. They don't smile. They don't want to get up and praise, but they're there. They're there for the same reason. They're there because they want to maximize the potential of the Spirit of God in their life. And so they come. And you know, I started thinking there are so many parallels between exercise and prayer. Think about it. So many things that are obstacles to one are obstacles to the other. So many things that are benefits of one physically are benefits in another spiritually. Just think about it. For example, we all know about prayer and exercise that we should do more of it, amen? We all know that it's good for us. We all know that there are some who are really good at it and will never be as good as they are. We all know, when you compare the two, that there are some who have gotten to a place where if you could be like them, your whole life would be changed, but you'll never get there. So why try? We all know that it takes time that we don't think we have to do either one. We all know that to find a significant effect from exercise or prayer, that we need to do these things in a more disciplined way because it doesn't do us any good just to go in one time and work out. In fact, what happens when you go in one time and just work out like crazy? Oh. Now prayer's a little different in that sometimes if you have to just go to God in the moment of desperation, thankfully He doesn't punish you for that. However, to really gain the maximum benefit, you need to come to a place of seeing that there has to be some discipline. Prayer, you see, is an unnatural act just like exercise. Our will is pretty stubborn, isn't it? Our will says, you don't want to do that. You don't want to be quiet. You don't want to slow down. You don't want to say to God that you are dependent upon Him. How many of you know we've been trained up to say pretty much, hey, I'm sufficient? I mean, our American system tells us you need, ladies, men, you need to be able to make it on your own. God says prayer is a cry for help. And so it's an unnatural thing. But I have still found people who like to work out. I find them, they get to the place where they get past all that pain and they get to the place where they enjoy, you know. They're the ones that when you go down like on a January night at 5.30 at night, they'll be running North Park Lake because they just love to get all that, you know, they love the things that happen. There are people, I can point them out here this morning, who love to pray. I mean, if they didn't do anything else, they'd pray because that's where they've come to. But how many of you know most of us aren't in either one of those places? And I started saying, Lord, what would you want to say to the whole congregation when it came to prayer over these weeks ahead? Most of us would say that we pray sometimes. How many of you prayed when you looked in the mirror this morning? Oh, God, can you do something with me? I got to be ready by 11, not by 6 tonight, you know. Maybe some of you prayed when you walked into your boss's office this week because you knew that things just weren't going the way they should and you prayed, oh, God, don't let him see this report or that report. Maybe you're a student and you prayed when you handed in your last test, you know, like one fifth grader. Oh, God, please change the capital of Michigan to Detroit, you know. You see, we do pray. How many of you know we are praying people when we have to be? But I want to submit to you there's a huge difference between praying, spot, short, desperation, bus ride, behind the steering wheel prayers, and really having a prayer life, regular, consistent. Men, ladies, are you as faithful about praying as you are about exercise, discipline? My goal is not to put condemnation on anyone today or everyone. My goal is not to say that, well, you ought to be something you're never going to be. I want to share with you today how you can move along in the discipline and the joy of prayer. You see, some of us here know what to do. Our shape is like we have a little diagram here. Some of us have V-shaped prayer lives. You know, we're like the guy that comes in the spa whose body starts here and goes out this way. And there's some people, I don't know where, you know, I don't know what they do. It's unbelievable. Some of us have prayer lives that are shaped like other people at the spa whose bodies look like A's, you know, they start here and go this way. But most of us have bodies like I's, just kind of here, no real shape at all. We're not really that bad. I mean, you know, we're still functioning, but neither can we say that we're really in shape. And the Lord just made it clear to me, I hope this doesn't frustrate some of you, that we're going to speak to the mass of humanity who are the I's here today. I want to ask you to raise your hand. You may think that I really you're an A or a V, but I'll just assume that most of us here today would say we need to better our prayer lives because how many of you know the benefits of being physically in shape are far more than just having a body that looks good? I mean, experts tell us if you're in shape physically, you feel better. You can accomplish more. Your energy goes on, right? Your endurance lasts. You feel better about yourself, so you look more positively on life. I want to submit to you there are great benefits about a disciplined prayer life that you don't even see the first time around. I made an overhead. Someone set up the first service. It's almost impossible to write them down, but I want to read them for you. If you have a fast hand, if you take shorthand, write them down. Yeah, these are the benefits, all right? A consistent prayer life. Number one, it brings delight to the heart of God. I know today that most of you would raise your hand and say, I want to be pleasing to God. When you are regularly with Him, God looks forward to it. Number two, open dialogue with the Lord to receive instruction and to cast your cares upon Him. When your life is disciplined, you're not just taking a quick shot, but God is speaking on a consistent basis, and you can hear Him directing your steps day by day. Number three, it promotes and provides spiritual cleansing from worldliness. We had to rent a car the other day. I went into this office. If they had issued gas masks, I would have put one on. The smoke was so bad in this office, and it was unbelievable, and nobody was even smoking. This was the residue, and so when I got home, I took my coat, and I had to put that thing out. I just had to let it just air out for a while. How many of you know our spirits are like that sometimes, too? How many of you work in smoky spiritual places? Phew, you know? Well, we need to get with God and get that stuff cleansed in our lives. Number four, next, as we spend continued time with the Lord, He releases us into spiritual warfare. You won't become a spiritual warfare expert unless you are praying regularly. It is something we'll talk about later on, but I just, some people say, I want to be a spiritual giant. I want to cast down strongholds. You have to have a consistent prayer life to do that. Number five, a disciplined prayer life cultivates a hearing ear of spiritual discernment. Do you pray like I do every day for wisdom? How many of you pray for wisdom from God? I want to know what the Lord wants me to do. When you pray with the Lord consistently and continually, you'll find wisdom growing in your life, but usually, we don't get that far because we find ourselves just kind of in and out, in and out. I want to avoid the jargon, folks. I'm not going to use a lot of heavy words and high phrases. I'm going to talk very basically over the next couple of weeks because I think God wants to move us all on just a little bit in prayer. If you're a candidate for that, tell somebody right now. Say, I'm a candidate to move on. Tell someone, I want to move ahead in prayer. Confess it with your lips. I want to move ahead in prayer. Go ahead and say it. I want to grow in prayer. All right. Now, I chose the title, The High Impact Prayerobics. Why did I choose that? Well, first of all, if we determine to become men and women of a prayer life, we will have a tremendous impact, first in us and then through us. Let me talk about the benefits of that. The first thing that you'll find if you become consistent in a prayer life, and everyone that's ever failed in this, put your hand up. Okay? Take a look at them. There's all the failures. Okay? See mine? I got mine up too. Okay? God's making all things new. We're going to have some success stories in prayer right here in this congregation. All right? I want you to get that down in first. Number one, high impact means this, that God will erase the frustration and the stress and fill your heart with peace. How many believe we live in the most stressful era that's ever existed in humankind? Stress is everywhere. People everywhere have all kinds of physical afflictions, jaw problems, heart monitors, stress medicine. It's the number one ailment in our culture. And God says, I am the God of peace, Jehovah Shalom. I want you to know, I come into this place frequently and I say, Lord, there are so many people looking to me for answers. There's so much stuff that I need to get done. And I say, Lord, if you don't do something here, if you don't come in and make a difference, I'm just going to nod up and I'm just going to start like clenching right there in the middle of my office. I mean, stress will just overtake me. But I spent time with the Lord this morning and I called upon Jehovah Shalom, my peace. And you know what? Everything doesn't always go the way I want it to, but I have peace in the middle of even things that aren't working right. I love that. I love people who tell me, I had someone about six or eight weeks ago, got a cancer report from the doctor. The doctor said, you've got cancer. We prayed for this person. They said a few days later, not the first day, but a few days later, they said, I have such peace. I'm going to go back to see the doctor again. Two weeks later, they went back and had a second test. The doctor said, see, that's strange. I guess we misdiagnosed it. Well, you see, peace comes. Now, I've had people who've prayed and the affliction has stayed, but the peace has stayed with them. And God promises peace in every circumstance. I think Paul said it best in Philippians chapter four. Write this down. At least refer yourself to it later if you haven't. Verses six and seven. Do not be anxious about anything. How many of you have ever read that and said, that's easy for you to say, God? But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That's Philippians four, six and seven. Put that one on your refrigerator. Put it over your sink, ladies. Put it on your dashboard. Know that God wants to give you peace. Dear ones, this is a real thing. Three months ago, I was sitting on the same sidewalk that many of the people that are going to jail this week, I was sitting there with them. And I remember someone asked me, well, how did you feel when the officers came and picked you up and put you in the truck? I said to him, you know, it didn't bother me. I had such peace. I look back on it. That is an unnatural act. It is an unnatural act to be arrested. For someone that's been in the military and has a strong understanding of authority and loves the country, I didn't want to do that. But deep inside my heart, I had great peace. I had great peace. I knew I was doing the will of God. I knew God was with me. And I want you to know something, church. God may send you into things where you physically don't want to go. He may call you to say things that you don't really want to say to people in testimony or giving witness. But dear ones, his peace will see you through if you're a praying person. But secondly, the impact is also that God brings power into our life. Peace is one thing, but I pray also because there is power. I want there to be something more working than just human flesh of this particular man. Power means that God will come in and God will make a way and God will lift up and God will move out. Let me ask you a very personal question. You think about the answer for a minute privately. If you knew that God was going to grant you one request today, before you left this auditorium, if God Almighty would look you right in the eye and say, Kent, what one prayer request can I answer for you today, Doug, Julie, what would you tell him? What would you say? God, if I could have one thing, this would be you. Now if we took a poll of this congregation, you would not believe the depth of the need that's represented right here. There are people who are dying, physically dying, right here today who pray for healing. There are people here who have not spoken a meaningful word with a spouse in months. You'd say, oh God, please touch my husband or my wife. There are some whose kids have not talked to them in a year, some whose kids have run away. You're saying, oh God, bring them back home. Dear ones, you see, there are problems in life that human beings do not have solutions to, only God does. And we pray so that we can touch the power of Almighty God, that we can get a hold of something beyond just the natural function of things and get a hold of the supernatural power of the Almighty One. And our Bibles are full of story after story after story of God's power in response to prayer, breaking things open and changing the course of history. The prophet Jeremiah said, call unto me and I will answer, show you great and mighty things that you know not. Literally every single day that I come into this place, I say, God, there are things here, if you don't come in and do them, they won't get done. The only explanation for a room like this, full of people, is that God is answering prayer in this church. People ask me, why is North Way growing and other churches are dying around here? I don't know, except that we're praying. Remember last week I said, grace comes to those who call for it and humble themselves. That's why the Lord's answering prayer. You say, well, I don't understand all that. I don't either, but I want you to turn in your Bibles to Exodus 17, if you have your Bible with you. All the way back in the Old Testament, I want you to see a story with me that's profound in its implications to us as praying people. I'll paraphrase it. Verse 8, we read there that the Amalekites attacked the Israelites and Moses is their leader and Joshua is his right-hand man. Exodus 17, mark it down. The story goes like this. Moses surveys the situation. He says to Joshua, you take the troops, you take our fighting men and our chariots and all of our people and you go out on the plain and you fight the Amalekites and I will go up on top of the hill and I'll look down over this whole scene, this great valley of Rephidim. And Moses, the Bible says, went up and began to pray up over the hilltop and he took this staff of God. Remember that staff that parted the sea? How many of you wish you had that thing in your right hand? Now I could do some good with that, right? And Moses went up there and he lifted up that staff. Can you all see the picture in your mind? And he discovered something. As he prayed and lifted his hand over the valley, the Israelites bore down and prevailed upon the Amalekites, drove them back, defeated them, wiped them out. But the times that Moses would draw back and maybe just take a breather and survey the land, guess what happened? The Amalekites began to get stronger. They resurged, they counterattacked. And a profound spiritual principle occurs in that passage of Scripture. As Moses lifted his hands, called out to God, his people prevailed. When he shrank back, they were defeated. And I want to say to you today, God is looking for people who will lift up their hands in the authority of God and call forth the dominion of his kingdom throughout this city, around this North Hills and throughout the country and around the world. People who in their own lives will not live just by their own strength, but call on God and say, God, bring your strength into my life. Bring your grace upon me that I can live supernaturally and not just by my own power. Let me say to you, we want to see this place filled with people who will stand toward the South and the North and the West and the East and say to this great harvest, come forth in Jesus' name. Come and be redeemed and reconciled to your God. And so there's great power there. But you know, the greatest benefit of learning to pray regularly is that you and God become close friends. There is nothing like it. You may be here today and you talk about God and you use the word religion. How many of you grew up with the word religion in your vocabularies? That's how you understood relating to God. It's my religion. I have this religion or that religion. God says, no, I want to be your friend. I want to know you. The most profound thing that will happen as you pray is not just the power. It won't be just the miracles and the answers to prayer. It will be that you and God begin to be intimately communicated. Read John 17 after the service today. Read how Jesus spoke about his heavenly father. He calls him as one that he knows. And the word knows is the Greek word for intercourse. I know you follow intimately. That's the greatest benefit of building a prayer life. Let me say one more thing about Moses. You know, in that story, when he got tired, two of his closest associates, Aaron and Hera, came alongside and what did they do? Yeah, they built some stuff and they lifted his hands up so that Moses could prevail. Can I tell you that every morning that I assemble here in these steps for prayer and other times as well, it is tremendously meaningful to me to have other people come alongside, whether physically or just symbolically, and lift my hands in prayer. It just, it takes the load to know that someone is supporting me. And if I could have one desire for this series of messages, I want to come alongside some of you whose prayer hands have dropped down. I want to be your Aaron and your Hera. I want to lift your hand back up because I want God to prevail in your life. I want God to have a victory. There's a special thing about people who pray together. I said it before, there's a bonding. We have a lot of fun here and I'm not trying to recruit you for this prayer meeting. I'm trying to tell you that there's something dynamic and you need people to hold you accountable. Discipline requires accountability. How do you know it's a lot easier to run with somebody else than just out there trudging yourself? Same with prayer. Get with somebody. Find an Aaron and a Hera and hold one another's hands up together. It'll make a big difference. Now what about, in conclusion, this business of prayer-obics? What is that? High impact prayer-obics. Well, I made up the word because in a way, prayer, the Bible says, is like breathing. It's like your life flow communication with the Father. And aerobics really ultimately deals with the oxygen supply in our bodies. Now we have an expert who is here in this service and I'm going to read what she wrote. Here's what aerobics do for you. Aerobics increases your cardiovascular endurance by working the muscles surrounding the heart and lungs, strengthening their capacity to intake oxygen, which restores broken down tissues and cells. Also many of the energy-releasing chemicals which lie dormant in our state of rest and relaxation are unleashed to produce a higher rate of proficiency in our metabolic rate. Whew. That sounds pretty profound. Our appetites are reduced due to the blood pooling, drawing blood from the lining of our stomachs to do the work required by the muscle in use. Also the metabolic rate remains higher for an extended period of time following a workout to ensure better food absorption. Does that not mean you don't get fat? Is that what that means? Wow. I mean, I don't know about you, but if this is all happening, it must be good, right? The metabolic rate going up. What's going on? Your whole body is involved in the process of burning up calories and making them into energy. Well, when we pray, God takes a lot of the dormant useless things in us and focuses them on something powerful. And I want to conclude this message by giving you a couple of specific things to do in preparation for your workout in prayer. Number one, you've got to find a certain place. Jesus said, go to a secret place. I had someone ask me last week, why do we gather together then? Why do we have prayer circles? Well, because the Bible also gives us many illustrations about believers gathering together. Let me tell you why Jesus said find a certain place. First of all, how many of you know prayer is the most easily distracted thing you'll ever do? How many of you know the minute you bow your head to pray, a million thoughts start buzzing in your mind? It's like you plugged into a radio of some kind. Things happen. A secret place, a quiet place, a private place, minimizes distractions. Carol and I tried to pray yesterday morning. They're in the kitchen. That was our first mistake. Dog comes up, starts snootin' around, you know, trying. What is this, you know? It's almost like he's on a mission to destroy your prayer time. That's the way it is. You know and I know. I mean, anything that happens, any sounds that you hear, any voices that you hear, things just distract you. And how many of you know that if you don't remain concentrated, you will never get anywhere in prayer? You'll just be, you'll just start getting all blot out. So you need, and the second thing is you need to be able to be secure. If God says in your own heart, lay yourself out in front of me, how many of you know you don't want to do that necessarily in the hallway in front of your office? If God tells you to lift your hands and praise his name, then you want to be able to do that in liberty. So it helps. But the biggest reason is this. You will find that as time goes on, that place for you will become very, very special. In fact, it will even become to you, if you'll allow the term, a holy place. A place where you meet with God. Most of you know that I've been around here a while, but I went to a little cabin up in Mars, on a farm up in Mars for several years. You know, that place was nothing special, it was just one room. But I met faithfully with God up there once a week for an all day retreat time. And I remember so many times, once in January, just like a time, just like this, except it was much colder and there was snow about a foot deep and accumulated, I trudged up there, I opened the door of that place, it was bitter cold, there was no heat, I turned on these two kerosene heaters, it took an hour to heat up the place, but the moment I opened the door and the rays of the sun came through the window off the snow, I just knew God was there. I want you to know, God met me so many times there, I wrote music up there that I never do any other time, I got words from the Lord, why? Because God purposed, when I quieted myself down, when I found a place free of distraction, God met me. And I miss that place, things have changed, I'm not going there now, but I'm developing other places. I have a room in my house now that's setting, I'm setting apart to be with the Lord. You need a holy place. It can be a closet, it can be a little room down in your basement, it can be any place you can make it to be. Tommy Barnett, pastor of a huge church out in Phoenix, gets in his car and goes to McDonald's, pulls a baseball cap down over his forehead and drinks coffee. I heard that, I said, phew, nobody bothers him there, you know. I guess every once in a while he just puts the window down and shouts hallelujah and rolls it back up, I don't know, but you can make it anywhere you want it to be, but you need a place. Folks, do not minimize this, you need a place. This isn't just a cute little idea, Jesus said, go into a secret place, Jesus said it. In Luke 11, the parallel passage, the Bible says, Jesus went to a certain place, that's where I got that, a certain place. So you're not just hearing me say it, hear Jesus say it. Number two, preparation. You need to make some certain preparations in prayer. Let me conclude with this. The first thing you need to prepare is yourself. I know when you wake up in the morning and you want to get with the Lord before your day starts, I know what you feel like, because I feel the same way. I know what it's like to get into your prayer closet and to kneel down over the chair like this and just go, oh God, and you collapse in a heap and you can't even stay awake. You've got to prepare yourself. Let me give you my little 3S formula. This is guaranteed to get you ready to pray. The first one is stretch. Stretch a little bit, get the blood flowing a bit, okay? That doesn't work, the second S is shower. I find the shower very effective at waking me up, especially the cold side. I may not like it, but I get moving. The third S is sip, S-I-P. Sip some coffee, some tea, coke, fix yourself up, get something going. Don't draw the analogies there, folks. Get yourself going. You say, well, Jesus didn't have coffee, that's unthinkable. I don't know, but I'm not Him. I need something just to get me moving in the morning a little bit, don't you? Have a glass of juice, just get yourself moving. God doesn't frown on you. It's okay. It's okay just to get, because we want to give God our best time. You say, well, my best time is not the morning, Pastor, you're going to have to scratch the whole idea. Well, come to Him in the evening. Come to Him in the evening. Be with the Lord. Give Him your best time. And finally, or secondly, rather, bring a paper and a pen. Bring some paper and a pen. I'm going to talk more about this in coming weeks, but I have found that the ability to write down our thoughts and to discipline our thinking is so significant. It is invaluable. You will remember more. You will come back to God and say, Lord, thanks for answering these things. Thanks for doing these things. And you won't wander all around. Get a pad. Just get a basic pad and write it down. Put the date and write it down. I'll talk more about that. I want to urge you to do it. Number three, prepare your heart. You know, you may feel that God has too much to do to pay attention to your prayers, but I want you to know that God thinks in that moment that you're the most important person in the whole universe. He is looking forward. The Bible says in 2 Chronicles 69 that He's searching to and fro for someone to show Himself strong. He's looking for you. How many of you are parents? You have kids? Do you get all frustrated when your son or daughter says, Daddy, I want to talk to you or Mommy, I want to talk to you? Or do you really love to hear them say that? When they say, can we just talk for a little bit? Can we get together? Can we do something? We love it as parents. We wish they'd do it more. I want you to know, I believe God yearns to talk to you. Don't see yourself as some cast-off child who doesn't deserve it. See yourself as one that God loves. Put on the clothes of righteousness and go into that prayer time expecting your Heavenly Father, Abba Daddy, to meet with you. Dear ones, let me leave you with this. We can just go ahead and coast on for the next years of our life and maybe some things will happen, maybe they won't. Or we can be a people who say, I want to grow in prayer. I want to be on the cutting edge of the power of God in my life. And I believe the Lord has spoken to us this year as a church. Deepen your devotion. Draw closer to me. I want to do that. Don't you? Praise the Lord. Let's stand and pray. Father, I know how practical these things seem to be in a very simple fashion, and yet, Lord, I know that if we don't do it, we're not going to do it.