Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Good morning.
[00:00:06] Hey. Hey.
[00:00:09] For those of you who may not have been here last week, last week was my first week back.
[00:00:15] It's good to be back, I guess. I missed you guys some.
[00:00:23] Didn't sound like it, no. But the Lord really blessed, got a chance to do a lot of fun things with, especially my family, and it was very refreshing. But it really is good to be back.
[00:00:39] Quite often on Sundays we try to have a portion of our Sunday devoted to mission that God has us on. Sam asked if I would share this. So I had been gone for seven weeks and I hadn't had a chance to be part of the Manchester Care Center. And thank you to Bruce and to Greg and to Stephanie and to Stacey, who kept that ministry going not only there, but also a town and country where we had started some work there as well. And so the first week back was all kind of new. They were meeting in a new room, a conference room, and got a chance to visit with about five of the residents, many of them we knew from past, but there was one lady named Sally who was her first time. And so as Greg was leading worship, I was starting to get a tickle in my throat. And so I went out and grabbed a glass of water and out in the hall right next by our doorway was a woman who was sitting eating lunch and I noticed she was singing some of the songs that Greg was leading. And so I invited her to come and join us and she said, no, I'm fine where I am. And then after a couple of songs she did come in and sat with us and really sweet spirited African American woman named Sally.
[00:01:56] So I had the chance to share a message which God laid on my heart from Romans twelve, nine and ten. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. And I gave an invitation after I shared that message and Sally raised her know to trust Christ as her savior.
[00:02:15] I don't know really where her heart is, but there was something compelling her at that moment, at that time, to respond to that invitation. And so just very thankful on how God uses us there. And I share this also is because we need some more workers.
[00:02:31] It's just a neat time to spend with elderly people who don't get very many people to visit them, to interact with them, to share our lives with them, to share the truth of the gospel. If you're interested, please let me or Greg or Bruce know. We would love to have you join our team. It's just twice a month and we do Sundays from two to 315. And so I think you'd be really blessed if you joined us.
[00:03:00] So we're in the second week of our series on prayer. I believe that Sam, who is leading out our church wide focus on prayer, and the rest of the pastors believe it's a timely series for several reasons.
[00:03:13] Prayer is vital to our connecting and our relationship to God knowing Him, going deeper with Him, understanding his will for our lives. Prayer is vital with the Word and hearing God speak to us and our own spiritual walk, but also to us as a church to the specific vision and mission that he has for us as a church.
[00:03:30] Prayer is vital to breaking free of our independent, self sufficient tendency to live each day in our own strength and in our own wisdom. Prayer breaks us of our pride and moves our hearts to a posture of worship and trust and faith in the one who alone can do the impossible.
[00:03:47] Prayer forces us to break free from the Hectic busy lives we have structured for ourselves, to still ourselves and remember that he alone is God and we are not.
[00:03:57] Prayers of worship and praise elevate our hearts to how great and wonderful and powerful and wise God is and how much we truly need Him.
[00:04:06] Prayer is a key to seeing our God move and work in ways we can't to save and to heal and to change our hearts, our circumstances, the people in our lives, our community, our nation and our world. The one who alone can bring eternal fruit and an eternal harvest as we live our lives. For Him, God is the originator of prayer.
[00:04:27] Prayer is his idea.
[00:04:29] Prayer is the means he's provided along with His Word to connect with Him.
[00:04:34] He doesn't need our prayers, but has set up his kingdom economy in such a way to reveal to us that things happen when we pray that don't happen when we don't.
[00:04:46] If we truly believe that we would be constantly on our knees in prayer.
[00:04:53] Let me say that again things happen when we pray that do not happen when we don't.
[00:05:00] This is why in the early history of Emmanuel Fellowship Church, you're seeing such a strong emphasis on prayer that we've had that prayer chain in place where close to 75 people respond in moments of crisis and pray for needs that are communicated. We have a prayer team of over a dozen people who will gather regularly to pray. We have prayer counselors on Sundays, and often we allot time to quiet yourselves and to talk things over with God and how he's speaking to you. On a given Sunday morning we have prayer meetings that are starting up. We have an emphasis of prayer in our GCs this sermon series, which is focusing on prayer, and soon we'll be doing some prayer walks in our community.
[00:05:41] Prayer does not distract us from the work. Prayer is the work to which God moves according to his will in our lives, in our church and in our community.
[00:05:53] Last week, Sam kicked off a series with a message titled Pray with Reverence. And I don't know about you and what you thought, it was a great message, but it was kind of tough.
[00:06:04] Sam hit hard on God's ultimate holiness, righteousness and absolute perfection, while at the same time hitting us on our absolute depravity that we're rebellious sinners and that there's a huge chasm between a holy God and sinful humanity, that God has an absolute hatred of sin that must be punished. And how that every Bible character had a personal encounter with this holy, exalted, all powerful, absolutely sovereign god fell to the ground in utter terror, realizing that what they deserved was judgment and condemnation for their sin.
[00:06:38] And that, as it says in Proverbs, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that doesn't mean only reverence and respect and awe, as Sam said, but that God as he truly is, is scary and terrifying.
[00:06:51] That's tough stuff.
[00:06:54] That's not a sermon, that's kind of a feel good where you walk out uplifted.
[00:07:00] Yet it is revealed biblical truth about who God truly is.
[00:07:05] This is why I hope and pray that you want pastors and preachers who will give you the full counsel of God and won't shy away from the tough stuff, and who won't just get up here and try to tickle your ears with the hopes that you will like us better and like our preaching because of it.
[00:07:20] We need to know the full character of God, who he is, not just the stuff we like to focus on. I mean, I love hearing over and over again about God's love and God's grace and God's mercy and God's forgiveness.
[00:07:35] But if that's all I knew about Him, then I'd have a distorted image of Him and I'd be worshipping a God who doesn't exist.
[00:07:43] Worship is not worshipping part of God or ignoring the attributes of God that make us uneasy.
[00:07:49] There's not one Old Testament God and another New Testament god. Worship is exalting all of God and remembering that he is immutable, that he is and always will be the way the scriptures declare our God to be the same yesterday, today and forever.
[00:08:05] It's only as we grow in our knowledge of Him and see Him as he truly is, do we grow to understand just how wide the chasm is between Him and us and how desperate we are for his grace, his love, his mercy and forgiveness.
[00:08:19] And it's this understanding that draws us to our knees in prayer.
[00:08:24] If all you knew that was that God was worthy to be feared, that he was perfect and holy and exalted and otherworldly, you would be reluctant to come to Him, for you would believe he was so exalted that he was unapproachable.
[00:08:39] And if all you knew that God was loving, merciful, gracious and forgiving, you would tend to take Him for granted and not see your need to come to Him.
[00:08:48] You'd probably see Him more as a Santa Claus God or a doting grandfather God, or a vending machine in the sky God. And you'd only come to Him when you wanted your needs met.
[00:08:59] And I personally believe that these beliefs about God to the exclusion of his holiness and hatred of sin are more and more common in American Christianity as the pulpits increasingly promote prosperity and self help.
[00:09:13] We need to know how serious our God is about sin, rebellion, idolatry, immorality, and rejection of Him.
[00:09:19] And isn't the cross proof of this?
[00:09:23] His wrath was poured out on Jesus as he hung on that cross.
[00:09:27] His punishment for our sin is what killed Jesus in the end.
[00:09:31] And that's just how big a deal our sin is to a Holy God.
[00:09:36] He refuses to turn a blind eye to it. Sin must be punished.
[00:09:41] But there is another side to the cross, isn't there?
[00:09:45] God's intense love for you and I, his eternal desire to win us back to Himself, to offer us his mercy and forgiveness and the grace of his salvation through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He loves and wants you so much that he willingly chose to take the punishment for your sin in Your place.
[00:10:04] And Jesus Christ, his cross bridges the chasm between a holy God and a sinful human being. And make no mistake of it, it is the only bridge.
[00:10:14] There is no other.
[00:10:17] This morning, I want you to remember Sam's message last week about praying with Reverence and wet it together with this morning's message asking God to deepen your knowledge of Him and to dispel any distorted images of God You may have. So let's pray.
[00:10:37] Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning, and we want to continue to worship you in our hearts.
[00:10:44] And we're so thankful for Your Word that it reveals so much about who you are that we can truly know who you are. As we dive into the truth of Your Word, as we look at the many names that represent you, as we look at the attributes and the nature and the character, as we look at how you dealt with men throughout the ages, we can truly come to know who God is. And we can spend a lifetime, Lord, searching you out and coming to know more and more about you and still not cover all the great fathoms of the wonders of Your glory and Your Majesty.
[00:11:15] So, Lord, this morning I pray that as we focus on intimacy and prayer, I pray that you speak to us on where we are at in relationship to pursuing you with all of our hearts.
[00:11:27] Help us to see what obstacles might be on our way. Help us to see what excuses that we lay before ourselves that may not be legitimate.
[00:11:36] And Lord, I pray that you'd renew a deep passion in our hearts to seek you with all of our hearts, because you declare in your word that when we seek you with all of our hearts, you'll be found by us.
[00:11:47] So we thank you that you loved us enough to die for us, that it's by Your grace that you saved us, and you did so that we could live in an eternal love relationship with you. What a God that you are.
[00:12:00] And we praise you and thank you in Jesus name. Amen. So the title of this morning's message is Pray with Intimacy.
[00:12:09] And the scriptures I've chosen today are all words of Jesus to his followers.
[00:12:14] If we want to know best how to pursue an intimate relationship with Him, there aren't better words regarding the subject than the words that Jesus could share with us. But first, before we get into some of his words, I actually want to define the word intimacy.
[00:12:28] And I would tend to say that it's not a word that most men feel comfortable with.
[00:12:34] It's probably seen by men as more of a touchy feely kind of thing in our world. Our culture at most often is referred to sexual intimacy, often derived mainly from physical attraction that leads to sexual desire. But as we're going to see by the following definitions, a relationship built upon physical attraction and sexual desire, it short circuits true intimacy.
[00:12:58] So here are several definitions I found from various dictionaries.
[00:13:02] Intimacy is close, familiarity, or friendship.
[00:13:07] It comes from the Latin word intimir, which means to make familiar, to impress upon, to make an indelible imprint upon. And I really like that to make an indelible imprint upon that when you're in intimate friendship, you're making a permanent imprint on another human being.
[00:13:26] It can mean a very close relationship marked by mutual sharing of deeply personal information and involves honesty, vulnerability and transparency.
[00:13:36] The following definition came from a psychological journal, and it said intimacy characterizes close, familiar, affectionate, loving, personal relationships and requires the two people to have detailed knowledge or deep understanding of each other.
[00:13:53] Let me read that again, but this time I want you to relate that to your relationship with God.
[00:14:00] Intimacy characterizes close, familiar, affectionate, loving, personal relationship, and requires the two people to have detailed knowledge or deep understanding of each other.
[00:14:15] This reminded me of Jesus definition of eternal life.
[00:14:20] Turning your Bibles to John 17. And I want to read verses one through five.
[00:14:37] So in this passage, Jesus is praying for Himself to the Father, and he knows that his crucifixion is imminent.
[00:14:46] And it says in verse one in chapter 17, jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven and said, father, the hour has come. Glorify your son so that the Son may glorify you. Like I said, Jesus knows that the hour is near, that his crucifixion is imminent, and he's asking the Father that through this mission glorify me as I take on the cross, so that you may be glorified, since you gave Him authority over all flesh so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given Him.
[00:15:18] This is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and the one you have sent. Jesus Christ, I've glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Now Father, glorify me in Your presence with that glory ahead with you before the world existed. And so Jesus is speaking to the Father. His mission is coming to near to an end. He's about to go to the cross to be crucified for our sins. He's lived 33 years, a perfect sinless life. He's taken on every mission that the Lord placed before Him. He lived perfectly in the Father's will.
[00:15:49] He taught wonderful things about Heaven and eternal life. And God the Father, he performed miracles and he's saying, I've completed everything you've asked me to do Lord. Now glorify me through the cross and glorify Yourself. And he says glorify me in your presence with that glory ahead with you before the world existed. And it's speaking of his eternity, his eternality, he says the glory that I had with you before the world was even existed.
[00:16:19] Once again people will try to say, well, Jesus never said anything about Him being God and it's written all over the Gospels in different ways. But the verse that I really wanted to focus on is verse three where he says this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and the one you have sent Jesus Christ.
[00:16:42] You see often when it comes to eternal life or salvation, I think people think that it's just about getting saved and going to heaven.
[00:16:50] That through praying a prayer of faith, I'm now forgiven, I'm justified before God, and I kind of have this pass in my pocket that when I pass from this world, I get to present to Jesus and I get to enter heaven.
[00:17:03] But in Jesus'words here he reveals that eternal life with God begins the moment he saves you. And central to that life you're now living with God is your pursuit of knowing God day by day from that moment throughout all eternity.
[00:17:17] Eternal life is not about only being saved, but about a lifelong pursuit to know God.
[00:17:25] I've told you this before. The word no John uses here in the Greek language is similar to the word Moses uses when he wrote Genesis four one.
[00:17:34] And in Hebrew it is the word Yada.
[00:17:37] Listen to the three different versions of Genesis four one and the words that come up that are similar here of what John's using in reference to knowing God. The new King James Version says adam knew his wife Eve and she gave birth to a son.
[00:17:54] The NIV says Adam lay with his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth. And the CSB says the man was intimate with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth.
[00:18:06] That word Yada, that word no in the Hebrew means life giving intimacy. And it's similar to the word that John uses. No as in knowing God, it becomes an intimacy that gives life.
[00:18:21] And this relationship we have been given with God by faith, through his grace, is one that is to be intimate and life giving for every person who pursues it.
[00:18:31] Your pursuit of God is to be the essence of the Christian life. It's to be your primary pursuit.
[00:18:37] You see, God created you for relationship. It's why he made you in his image and likeness. God saved you for relationship. It's why Jesus shed his blood for your forgiveness. God provided his word with the Holy Spirit as our guide and prayer with Jesus as our high Priest, so that we could daily connect with Him in relationship.
[00:18:54] God continues to forgive us when we sin, so that we can continue to walk with Him in the light, as he is in the light. God provides the church, a family, a community of brothers and sisters in Christ to help us and to encourage us to pursue God as our highest priority in life and for us to know it's not an individualistic pursuit, but one done in community with your brothers and sisters in Christ.
[00:19:16] God immediately brings us to the present heaven upon death. And why? To live in communion with Him and his family, basking in the unhindered glow of his glory in person, forever and ever.
[00:19:27] Christianity our faith in Christ, it's not a religion, it's a relationship with the living God people. It's not that we have to spend time with God, we want to treat this as some duty or obligation.
[00:19:44] It's not even that we need to spend time with God, it's that we get to spend time with God.
[00:19:53] Think about this for a moment.
[00:19:56] If you were born again, you have a relationship that Jesus actually says is a friendship with the living God, the eternal God with no beginning and no end.
[00:20:07] The triune god. Three persons and yet one God.
[00:20:10] The God who sovereignly rules over the universe. The creator of the heavens and the Earth.
[00:20:16] The One who upholds all things by the power of his will. Who holds the moon and the stars and the planets and the sun in place. Who keeps the Earth in perfect distance and orbit around the sun and keeps it perfectly tilted on its axis. The one who is all wise and knows all things. The one who provides oxygen to breathe shelter over your head, water to drink and food on the table. The one who is always faithful to His Word and keeps every promise that he ever made. The one who came on a rescue mission for you, who died and shed his blood for your sin, who took the punishment you deserve in your place. The one who saved you and forgave you of your sins and saved you from hell, who came into your life, lives in you, and walks through life with you, the God of grace and mercy, the one who loves you with an everlasting love, and you get to be in relationship with this God?
[00:21:04] Wow.
[00:21:06] Are you kidding me?
[00:21:11] If you're thinking up to this point, we're not talking much about prayer.
[00:21:16] I guess you'd kind of be right?
[00:21:19] But it's my contention that Christianity, while not being a religion but a relationship, is offered to every person as a gift by grace through faith and the resources that God gives that person to be in relationship with Him. The Bible and His Word are avenues of grace through prayer.
[00:21:39] The more we avail ourselves of these resources by using them in pursuit of deeper intimacy with God. The more we get to know Him the more we know Him, the more we worship Him for who he really is. And our trust and our faith grows in Him the more our faith and trust grows in Him the greater our love increases for Him.
[00:21:58] The more we love Him, the greater our desire is to obey Him. And through our obedience, the greater and deeper is our experience of his presence in our lives.
[00:22:09] Your pursuit of God through the Word and prayer, both individually and corporately, is the essence of your life with God.
[00:22:17] Have you been living for the reason God created you and saved you?
[00:22:23] Let's take a look at a couple more verses to see what else Jesus says about this.
[00:22:29] In John 1415, he says to his disciples, if you love me, you will obey what I command.
[00:22:36] And then in verse 21 in the same chapter, he says, he who has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love Him and show myself to Him.
[00:22:49] And the key phrase here in that verse is, I will show myself to Him.
[00:22:55] And what does he mean by that? He says as we obey Him, he will manifest his presence in our lives.
[00:23:03] You will experience his presence and his working in your life.
[00:23:08] So what I see here, according to Jesus, that if you have an obedience problem, jesus says you have a love problem.
[00:23:17] And if you have a love problem, it means you have a worship problem.
[00:23:22] You're worshiping something or someone other than God.
[00:23:26] Your affections, your pursuits and priorities are elsewhere, and they're crowding out your passion for God.
[00:23:34] And it's likely why your prayer life is so tepid and inconsistent.
[00:23:41] Matthew 624 jesus says no one can serve two masters, since either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both at the same time. And what Jesus is trying to tell us is that if we're worshipping something else in our life other than the one true god. If we have greater pursuits in our life than pursuing to know God in relationship, then ultimately that is the thing that we're in love more with, that we have a greater priority for that in our lives. And it's naturally going to crowd out what is our essence to be of our life and the priority of our life, which is to seek God and to know Him for who he truly is.
[00:24:21] And if you think about it, we always pursue what we value most in life.
[00:24:30] And if we're not really pursuing God through the Word and prayer, then we see greater benefits and rewards and returns through the other things that we're choosing to replace Him.
[00:24:43] And currently we don't really see the benefit in pursuing God through His Word in prayer.
[00:24:52] What is in the way of you daily pursuing intimacy with God through the Word and prayer?
[00:24:59] We like to blame our circumstances of our lives, the demanding season that we're in people in our life that don't cooperate with our desires to get closer to God.
[00:25:11] Here. I just want to say husband and wife, and especially if you're in that season with small kids, you guys especially have to be the defender of each other in carving out that time and making sure that your spouse gets that time and sitting down to say, the wife, this is the best time that I could possibly do it. And the husband says, I will make sure that you get that time. And the wife's saying to the husband, what's the best time for you each day? I will make sure so that I'm taking care of all the rest of the responsibilities in the house while you get your time.
[00:25:43] Because I know how challenging it can be when you've got a bunch of little ones that you're constantly taking care of.
[00:25:53] Here's the thing.
[00:25:56] You are at this moment as close to God as you choose to be.
[00:26:03] There are times when we would like to know a deeper intimacy with God, but when it comes down to it, we're not prepared or willing to pay the price that's involved.
[00:26:14] I look back over my 41 years of walking with Christ, and I can remember times of feeling embarrassed on how little I pursued intimacy with God in prayer. I was a pastor.
[00:26:26] My ministry plate was full. I was about doing the work of the ministry, about serving Jesus and his church, and I was more of a Martha than a Mary. And the natural tendency I have is to fight. That I have to fight is having Mary be my default approach to life and ministry.
[00:26:43] Let's take a look at that. I know you know the story, but let's take a look. Luke 1038 to 42.
[00:27:02] Luke ten starting in verse 38.
[00:27:09] While they were traveling, he entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and was listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone, so tell her to give me a hand. The Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you're worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice and will not be taken away from her.
[00:27:41] So Martha types tend to believe that she's getting a bad rap here while Mary is let off the hook. I mean, really, don't we? It's like, what do you mean? She's showing all the hospitality and she's doing all the work, and she's getting the house together and she's cleaning and she's cooking, and it's like Mary's sitting at Jesus'feet. It's like, come on.
[00:28:03] But look at the words and phrases that Jesus uses to describe Martha here. He says she's distracted.
[00:28:10] What he's saying is she's distracted from what's most important.
[00:28:15] He says she was worried and upset about many things.
[00:28:19] Boy, doesn't that describe life sometimes?
[00:28:23] Day in and day out, worried and upset about all these things that are going on.
[00:28:30] And what this led to was she begrudged her sister?
[00:28:35] What was she begrudging her for? Because she was sitting at Jesus'feet.
[00:28:42] I wish I could do that, but I have all these things to do.
[00:28:47] That's in essence, what Martha was feeling.
[00:28:51] And that's what happens in your heart when you try to serve your family or serve the Church.
[00:28:57] When you have forsaken intimacy with Jesus.
[00:29:01] You begin to begrudge those things. You begin to maybe look at your spouse and say, they're not doing as much as I'm doing.
[00:29:11] But Jesus says Mary has made the right choice and it will not be taken away from her.
[00:29:18] In the NIV, it says Mary has chosen what is better.
[00:29:24] Please don't miss what Jesus is saying.
[00:29:28] Intimacy with Him is a choice.
[00:29:33] It's your personal choice.
[00:29:38] Jesus reveals to all of us Martha types that prayerless work is fruitless work, and we're not convinced of know because we would change our approach if we really were.
[00:29:56] But that prayerless work as fruitless work applies to your work at home, how you actually work your career. It applies to your ministry involvements.
[00:30:06] We all know Jesus words in John 15, words that speak of intimacy with God. He says, if a person abides in me and I abide in him, that person will bear much fruit apart from me, you can do nothing. Now either we're Christians and we're men and women of the Word, and we believe what the Word says, and we take Jesus exactly he means what he says, and he says that apart from me, you can do nothing. Do you really believe that?
[00:30:27] I don't know, man. I just don't feel like praying and getting in the Word. And I probably haven't been doing it much for months, but I still. Get a lot done. He says here that apart from me, you can do nothing.
[00:30:42] We either take Jesus at his word or we don't.
[00:30:47] So abide in me, what does that mean?
[00:30:50] Well, it means to remain in, it means to continue with, it means to stay near, it means to dwell with. It speaks of union similar to two people being married.
[00:31:02] And we know that the picture of Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as his bride is that kind of union.
[00:31:10] These words that are described, our relationship with Jesus, reveal that it's much more than a fast food drive through quiet time we so often have.
[00:31:18] Then Jesus reveals that there is a significant difference in the life of the person who abides in Him and the person who does not. He says the person who abides in me, who dwells with me, who remains in me, who has this daily union with me, he says, will bear much fruit.
[00:31:34] And fruit in the Scriptures is interchange of character and becoming more like Jesus and how we live in love, but it's also the fruit and the difference we're making in other people's lives because we're becoming more like Christ.
[00:31:48] But then he says, apart from not abiding in me, you really can't do anything, at least nothing of eternal value and worth. You may be doing a lot of things, but he says, it's not really going to bear eternal fruit.
[00:32:07] You may be doing a bunch of stuff like Martha was and serving Jesus, and you may be running around doing many things for Jesus at your home and at Church, but Jesus warns apart from your daily connection with Him, it will have little to no eternal value. There will be no lasting fruit without intimacy with Christ, you and the things in your world, they just don't change a whole lot.
[00:32:35] While I was on my sabbatical towards the final weeks, I started reading this small little devotional book that was titled 21 Days of Deeper Prayer and the author Jim Maxon titled Days Twelve, day Twelve of Devotional. He questioned don't feel like praying and edit he gives three reasons for our lack of motivation to pray and I want to share those with you.
[00:33:00] The first reason he gives for not feeling like praying is the independence of the flesh.
[00:33:06] Prayerlessness is our declaration of independence.
[00:33:10] Our natural selves resist humble reliance on God and transparent intimacy with other believers, both which are germane to real prayer. Because when you're intimate in your relationship with God and others, you aren't living in hiding.
[00:33:25] There are times we don't come to God because we don't want to hear what he thinks about how we're living or the choices we're making, or the bad attitudes that are in our hearts, so we keep our distance.
[00:33:39] The second reason he gives is the relentless attack of the enemy.
[00:33:43] And he says no one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil.
[00:33:48] Not that he practices it, but that he suffers from it.
[00:33:52] He knows his kingdom will be damaged when we begin to lift our hearts to God in prayer.
[00:33:58] And remember, the things that the devil uses you in your life to try to get you to not go to him is noise and busyness and crowds.
[00:34:14] He uses those to distract you from intimacy with God.
[00:34:20] And that leads us to number three, where he says the busyness of our modern lives.
[00:34:27] That busyness destroys relationships and is why you quite often feel hectic and frazzled and hassled.
[00:34:36] I'm convinced the busyness is the breeding ground of self sufficiency and lures us into a deceptive life pattern that concludes we can conduct our Christian life by our own efforts rather than a humble and heartfelt abiding in Christ through prayer.
[00:34:51] You know, we launched our St. Charles County GC this past Thursday and Wendy Tennell shared something with a group. And since they're out of town, I asked if I could share it with you all. And she said, yeah, go ahead. I want you to listen closely to her words.
[00:35:07] I think many of you will be able to relate to the words that she shared with us. And she said I was praying for a long time concerning change in my life that made no sense to me, frustration over my circumstances, anger with myself and others, feeling unable to discipline myself, to be faithful in prayer and Bible study and to order my life properly.
[00:35:30] I did not feel at home in Christ.
[00:35:33] Gradually, as God helped me to release my anger, he healed my heart. But I felt like I was unlikely to be able to get back to an intimate relationship with my Lord.
[00:35:42] One night I woke at 230 in the morning, felt like I should pray, but again was feeling reluctant until in my thoughts I felt like God said, Just get up, get on your knees and read Jude.
[00:35:55] And she says, Jude?
[00:35:57] Why in the world would I read Jude?
[00:36:00] I don't want to read Jude.
[00:36:03] But instead of giving into her feelings, she obeyed, pulled herself out of bed, got on her knees, opened her Bible to the Book of Jude and read. And this is how she believes God spoke to her through it.
[00:36:15] Verse one was as if God was calling out specifically to me.
[00:36:19] Through verse two, god spoke a blessing over my life.
[00:36:23] The remainder of Jude's letter reminded me what was there waiting for me if I chose to seek him and what awaits those who place their trust in him.
[00:36:35] Jesus taught his disciples in John ten.
[00:36:38] He says, my sheep follow me because they know my voice.
[00:36:42] Wendy has been a woman of faith for many years, and like all of us, we have those seasons that seem dry and seem difficult to muster up the feelings and discipline to pursue God.
[00:36:52] And yet she had developed enough an intimacy over the years with God to be able to hear and respond to what she believed was his still, small voice, speaking intimately and personally to her and drawing her back to renewed intimacy with Him.
[00:37:09] This is the same God who is waiting for you to come.
[00:37:14] He desires to meet with you, he desires to listen to your heart, and he desires to share his heart with you.
[00:37:28] To close the message this morning, the reason why I pulled out a book, a 21 day devotional book on prayer, was because I felt a desire to grow in my intimacy with Jesus.
[00:37:42] It's also why I've made a commitment each day over the last nine months as I read through the Bible in 2023 not to get out of bed until I've read my Bible, quiet at myself, to reflect on what God is saying and to spend time in prayer.
[00:37:57] I've never done that before in my life. And I've walked with Jesus for 41 years, and somehow, through the power of the Holy Spirit, he's given me the discipline where over almost 275 days, I maybe have only missed ten days of not getting out of bed until I open that Bible where I've stopped from the day before. Continue reading. Ask God to speak to me, reveal Himself to me through what I'm reading, and go to Him in prayer.
[00:38:36] To close this morning, I want to share the second part of Jim maximum's devotional for day twelve, because he finishes the day by sharing what he believes are three vital ingredients for breaking through your reluctance to pray.
[00:38:49] And the first one, he says, is mind your motivation.
[00:38:53] He says the only enduring motivation for prayer is that God is worthy to be sought.
[00:38:58] A worship based focus fuels resolve and genuine desire, and is why I personally start my prayers, as Jesus instructed his disciples to do. Our Father, who art in heaven, hollowed be Thy name I personally start every prayer each morning with praise, worship and thanksgiving.
[00:39:17] This really compels me to learn more about Him. I just don't want to say the same kind of ritual things that I know about God. I want to dive into His Word and find out more about Him so that when I start my prayers that next day, I can actually lift these things up to Him in worship and praise and thanksgiving for who he truly is.
[00:39:36] To get to know more of his attributes through reading the Bible, to know of his names. Because the Psalmist says that those who know his name place their trust in Him.
[00:39:48] The more you get to know Him, the greater your faith that wells up within you, the greater trust that you have in Him, and you live that out throughout your life.
[00:40:00] God's Word gives our hearts language, especially as it provides truth and fresh insight about his character, his names, and his mighty works. And God's Word sparks a new motivation to pray.
[00:40:12] And when the enemy strikes and enthusiasm wanes, say this aloud to yourself god, you are worthy to be sought. I will choose to pray and then immediately get on your knees.
[00:40:26] Second thing he says is place action above feeling.
[00:40:30] Pursuing intimacy with God through prayer and reading your Bible, like other important pursuits in life, cannot be mastered by feeling your way into action, but by acting your way into feeling.
[00:40:42] If you're waiting for your feelings to well up in you, to have a desire to pursue God, you know when you'll start? Never.
[00:40:53] You start out of sheer obedience and watch as those desires and motivations begin to truly well up in your heart.
[00:41:05] Prayer is a lifeline of all that is good and must be chosen in spite of current feelings, impulses, demands and conveniences.
[00:41:13] The more we understand God's worthiness, the more we grasp our neediness and the deeper our conviction to spend time with Him really begins to take root in our hearts.
[00:41:25] And finally, the third thing he says to help in motivating us to pray is, he says, be compelled by community.
[00:41:36] All the commands to pray were written to believers in community and applied instinctively in corporate prayer, since there were no personal or individual copies of Scripture until the advent of the printing press.
[00:41:49] Albert Moeller, author and seminary president, says this do you notice what is stunningly absent in the Lord's Prayer? There's no first person singular pronoun in the entire prayer.
[00:42:02] It's Our Father, it's give us today, it's forgive us. It's lead us not into temptation, it's deliver us from evil.
[00:42:14] One of the setting sins of evangelicalism is our obsession with individualism. The first person singular pronoun reigns in our thinking. We tend to think about nearly everything, including the truths of God's Word, only as they relate to me. This is why when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he emphasizes from the very outset that we are part of a corporate people called the Church. God is not merely my Father, he is our Father, the Father of my brothers and sisters in the faith with whom I identify and with whom I pray.
[00:42:45] When we pray together on Sundays, or at our GCs or our discipleship gatherings, or at a prayer meeting, or as we're walking through the community together, motivation soars through the encouragement, accountability and the edification of the Spirit, working through others to inspire our hearts. That's why we need to hear you verbally pray. Your know, like Sam has shared before, don't care if they sound theological, we don't care if they sound scourly. What God wants the most is the words that come from your heart. And as we sit there together and pray and we hear the words from your heart, that's exactly what motivates us and compels us and encourages us, because we're hearing your heartfelt prayers.
[00:43:33] So we're going to have a little time if the band want to come back up and you probably notice there's cars and pens on each chair.
[00:43:47] I really enjoyed that exercise last week, and I hope that it is meaningful to you again today.
[00:43:55] But I just want you to spend some time in writing a prayer of honesty out to God on where you're at in pursuing intimacy with Him.
[00:44:08] Don't worry about who's sitting next to you or anybody else seeing your writing. Just have some honest time as if what you're writing is your actual prayer to God. God, this I know this is where I am with you. God, this is what I desire. And I don't feel the emotions. And my life seems to be all pressed against me as an obstacle to pursuing you. But, Lord, even if I can't say I want it, help me to want it, because I want to know you. I want to have a faith and trust in you. I want to be able to spend every day communing with you.
[00:44:44] Go ahead and take that time right now and it and then if you want to place those cards in the prayer box back there, the pastors and the prayer team will be praying for your desires and what you want to see happen in your prayer life and in your daily communion with Him. So if you want to and want to have us pray for it, go ahead and put those cards in the box in the back corner there.
