How to Kill Your Faith Week 1

INTRO.

Welcome to Wednesdays y’all! If you’re new around here or we just haven’t met yet, my name is Dave and I’m the Student Pastor here.

I do see a lot of new faces, but I recognize a lot of you from CAMP. Who was at CAMP last week?

Wasn’t CAMP incredible? It was amazing to see your faith come alive throughout the week. In fact, just raise your hand for me if you said yes to Jesus for the first time, rededicated your life to Jesus, or got baptized at CAMP. Hands up!

[Wait for Crowd to Respond]

TENSION.

That’s so awesome. Leaders, isn’t it incredible to see student’s faith come alive?

[Wait for Leaders to Respond]

So let me ask this, what do you think is the fastest way to kill your faith? [Leave on the screen] Because I’m telling you right now, no matter how spiritually high you’re riding, no matter what freedom you think you’ve found, God’s word says in John 10 that each of us has an enemy who has come to steal, kill, and destroy. And I’m telling you, whether you’re thinking about this or not, you’ve got an enemy who is focused on stealing the joy that you found last week. Who is focused on killing the faith that came alive last week. And who is focused on destroying any progress you made in your faith last week.

So knowing that, what do you think is the fastest way to kill your faith?

The fastest way to kill your faith is to NOT pray. [This should be on the same slide as “what do you think is the fastest way to kill your faith?”]

The fastest way to kill your faith is to NOT pray. I’m repeating myself because I’m afraid that that statement is so simple that it can seem harmless.

I was reading a story the other day about a girl whose friends threw her a birthday party. Which is so nice by the way. Have you ever had someone throw you a birthday party? It’s so sweet! And like any great birthday party, the friends had a cake made. As they brought out the cake, they had to offset the sweetness of throwing their friend a party, so they shoved her face in the cake when she went to go blow out the candles.

The problem was, the cake was a layered cake. And I don’t know how much you know about layered cakes, but a lot of times they put wooden sticks on the inside of those cakes to support them so they don’t collapse. And when the friends shoved her face in the cake, one of the sticks went into her eye and she had to have major surgery and almost lost her sight. NO JOKE!

Sometimes simple things can seem harmless when they’re not. And I’m telling you, the fastest way to kill your faith on the other side of CAMP is to not pray. In fact, I believe so strongly that prayer is the heartbeat that gives life to your faith that I think that the enemy’s main point of attack in your life on the other side of CAMP will be your prayer life.

If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew chapter 26. I want to show you where I’m getting this from.

TRUTH.

This story is happening towards the end of Jesus’ life. It’s actually the night right before He’s about to be crucified, and He knows it’s coming. So for Jesus, and for His disciples, there’s a lot of pressure. Our story starts right at the peak of all of that pressure. Now this is church, not school. Church is designed for crowd participation. So as I read, we’ll do fill-in-the-blank style. If I point at you, I want you to say the word. Deal? Ok, look at verse 36…

36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

There’s two people in the story that I want us to pay attention to. Let’s start with Jesus. Think about the pressure that Jesus is feeling here. Right before this, He has the Last Supper. It’s His last meal with His disciples before He is crucified. At that supper, He announces that one of His disciples is about to betray Him. And then right after, He tells one of His closest followers, Peter, that before the next morning, Peter will deny Him 3 times.

Safe to say, like any of us, Jesus is feeling the pressure of what’s coming. And verse 38 confirmed it. He said, “my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” So, what’s He do? He go to His spot, a spot that He went to often, and He prays. As Jesus is feeling the pressure of what’s coming, He prays.

Now, you’re probably holier than me, but my first reaction when I’m feeling pressure isn’t to go pray. But it’s clear that Jesus had found something in prayer that gave Him peace and comfort when He was under pressure.

40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Matthew 26:36-43 (NIV)

Oh, this is interesting. Jesus prays three times, but we get two transcripts. And between the two prayers that we get to see, there’s only one thing that stays the same between the prayers. Did you catch that?

It’s the very first thing He says, “My Father…” Everything else about the prayer changes slightly, except for that. You know what Jesus had found in prayer that gave Him peace and comfort, even under pressure? His Father. See for Jesus, prayer was relational. It was how He kept company with His Father. In prayer, Jesus didn’t primarily find another religious box to check, He found a person. It was WHO He found in prayer that brought Him peace and comfort.

Earlier I said that there was two people I wanted us to pay attention to. The second person is Peter. Think about this, Peter went through the exact same night that Jesus did. He was there at the Last Supper. He heard Jesus announce that one of the disciples would betray Him, and he was definitely there when Jesus told him to his face that he would betray Him 3 times before the morning. He goes through the same stuff, but he doesn’t feel the pressure of what’s coming. He doesn’t see what Jesus sees. He has no idea what’s about to happen the next day. And because Jesus felt the pressure of what was coming, He went through this story in a very different way than Peter did.

Jesus felt the pressure of what was coming, and so He prayed. Peter didn’t feel the pressure of what was coming, so he slept. I think there’s something in there for us. Right now you’ve got about a week, week and a half before you start school back up. And for many of you, God did something in you at CAMP. Maybe you said yes to Jesus and you’ve decided that it’s your job to end some generational curses in your family. Maybe you rededicated your life to Jesus and you’ve decided it’s time to break free from that addiction or that thought or that habit. For many of us, an experience with God at CAMP is paired with a plan of how to move forward. But I’m telling you, it’s so easy to move forward with the plan when you aren’t under pressure. What’s coming in a week, week and a half when you go back to school – that’s pressure.

Jesus wasn’t dying yet. He hadn’t been arrested yet. But He knew what was coming. And looking ahead to what was coming, He went to prayer. He recognized that prayer was relational. Here’s the thing about every great relationship – it must be cultivated. You don’t just flip a switch and decide you’re close with someone. You grow close to someone by consistently spending time with them. Before the pressure came, Jesus was cultivating His relationship with His Father through prayer. He was keeping company with Him. He was spending time with Him and allowing Himself to be influenced by Him.

On the flip side, Jesus wasn’t dying yet. He hadn’t been arrested yet. And Peter didn’t see it coming. So while Jesus was praying, Peter was sleeping. I think Peter fell into the trap that the enemy sets for many of us when it comes to prayer, the trap to make prayer transactional. It’s kind of like a vending machine. [Picture of vending machine]

Vending machines are very simple, they have something I want or need and I have something that can unlock the thing I want or need. I bring my dollar and I put it in the vending machine and out comes the exact thing I asked for. And I think the enemy would love to convince us that, like a vending machine, prayer is just a transaction. It doesn’t have to be cultivated or pursued. You can just flip a switch and expect that, in your moment of need, you can give God your dollar prayer and He’ll spit out whatever you asked for.

But that’s not how prayer works. Prayer is relational, not transactional. This is a relationship that has to be cultivated, not a switch that can just be flipped.

ANTICIPATE THE CONSEQUENCES.

And I want you to see this – Through prayer, Jesus He was able to resist the pressure He felt and stick with what He and God had already decided. You can see it in His first prayer, He’s feeling tempted to go off plan and do something else.

I’m telling you, as you go back to school, you WILL feel pressure to go off plan and fall back into that sin. You will feel pressure to go back to that relationship you know you need to leave. You will feel pressure to become everything you told yourself you didn’t want to be.

While Jesus was praying, Peter was sleeping. And when Peter woke up, he felt the pressure and took back everything he said he would’ve died for just a couple hours earlier. Oh, I’m talking to somebody. If you get caught sleeping, you will cave under the pressure. Listen, if I get caught sleeping, I will cave under the pressure. That’s why we’re talking about prayer this next month. I think the enemy is going to try to lull you to sleep in your prayer life so that, when the pressure comes, you’ll cave and go right back to the very things God delivered you from last week. God’s people have a history of doing that you know? God split a sea in half and Israel walked through it and out of their slavery to Egypt. But when the pressure go turned up in the desert, they told God, “we wanna go back.” Even Peter, after he denies Jesus 3 times the next morning, goes BACK to fishing, the very thing he was doing before Jesus called him to come be His disciple.

I’m telling you ahead of time, the enemy is going to try to lull you to sleep in your prayer life so that, when the pressure comes, you’ll go back to where you came from. And so I want to leave you with a question before I send you to groups: Who do you want to be this year? If you haven’t already decided, talk about that with your groups. And if you have decided, then how can you begin to cultivate your prayer life this week before the pressure starts?

Let’s pray.