What is Prayer-Power

Intro: Google Search

Are you curious about God?

and what he can do for you, in you, through you?

Who is God/Jesus

What is his nature, and what does he do?

Where is He?

When is He?

Why?

Main Point: Prayer-Power is the greatest power entrusted to mankind

Prayer potential is important to understand prayer power.

rubber band

first week:

Main point: prayer brings strength

1: His Baptism

Prayer Brings power

2: After healing the sick all day he woke up early to pray

Prayer brings vision

3: After healing the Leper caused a ruckus

he frequently would slip away to the wilderness and pray

the tighter the tension, the more time there must be for unhurried prayer

4: prayer all night before choosing the 12 and the sermon on the mount

power flows out of us when we spend time in prayer

Last week

main point: Prayer should be a private habit that isn’t a secret

5. all night after feeding the 5k (johns death) followed by walking on water

6. demonstrating prayer (who do you say that I am?)

7. transfiguration

8. exclamatory prayer after sending the 70

9. lord’s prayer (demonstrating prayer again)

This Week

10: lazarus (builds faith)

11: god responds from heaven (allows us to hear god’s voice)

12: last supper, prayer for peter (humbly prays for others)

Prayer builds faith

Prayer is essential to hear God’s voice

Prayer humbly prays for others

The tenth mention (raising of Lazarous)

is found in John, chapter eleven, and is the second of the four instances of exclamitory prayer.

the first being when he prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God after sending out the 70

John 11:38–45 NASB95

So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. “I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

A large company is gathered outside the village of Bethany,

around a tomb in which four days before the body of a young man had been laid away.

There is Mary, still weeping, and Martha, always keenly alive to the proprieties,

trying to be composed,

and their personal friends,

and the villagers,

and the company of acquaintances and others from Jerusalem.

At His word, after some hesitation, the stone at the mouth of the tomb is rolled aside.

And Jesus lifted up His eyes and prays,

John 11:41–42 NASB95

So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. “I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.”

Clearly before coming to the tomb He had been praying in secret about the raising of Lazarus,

and what followed was in answer to His prayer.

How plain it becomes that all the marvellous power displayed in His brief earthly career came through prayer.

What inseparable intimacy between His life of activity

(at which the multitude then and ever since has marvelled),

and His hidden closet-life of which only these passing glimpses are obtained.

Surely the greatest power entrusted to man is prayer-power.

But how many of us are untrue to the trust,

while this strangely omnipotent power put into our hands lies so largely unused.

Note also the certainty of His faith in the Hearer of prayer:

"Father, I thank you that you have heard Me."

There was nothing that could be seen to warrant such faith.

There lay the dead body.

But He trusted as seeing Him who is invisible.

Faith is blind, except upward.

It is blind to impossibilities and deaf to doubt.

It listens only to God and sees only His power and acts accordingly.

Faith is not believing that He can but that He will.

But such faith comes only of close continuous contact with God.

Its birthplace is in the secret closet;

and time and the open Word,

and an awakened ear and a reverent quiet heart are necessary to its growth.

Prayer builds Faith

The eleventh mention (god speaks from heaven)

is found in the twelfth chapter of John.

Two or three days before the fated Friday some Greek visitors to the Jewish feast of Passover sought an interview with Him.

The request seemed to bring to His mind a vision of the great outside world,

after which His heart yearned,

coming to Him so hungry for what only He could give.

And instantly after that vision

like an ink-black shadow

came the other vision,

never absent now from His waking thoughts,

of the cross so awfully near.

Shrinking in horror from the second vision,

yet knowing that only through its realization could be realized the first,

—seemingly forgetful for the moment of the by-standers,

as though soliloquizing,

John 12:27 NASB95

“Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.

(and the intense conflict of soul merges into the complete victory of a wholly surrendered will)

John 12:28 NASB95

“Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Quick as the prayer was uttered, came the audible voice out of heaven answering,

"I have both glorified it and will glorify it again."

How near heaven must be!

How quickly the Father hears!

He must be bending over,

intently listening,

eager to catch even faintly whispered prayer.

Their ears, full of earth-sounds,

unaccustomed to listening to a heavenly voice,

could hear nothing intelligible.

John 12:29 NASB95

So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.”

He had a trained ear.

Isaiah 50:4 revised (a passage plainly prophetic of Him), suggests how it was that He could understand this voice so easily and quickly.

Isaiah 50:4 NASB95

The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples, That I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.

A taught ear is as necessary to prayer as a taught tongue,

and the daily morning appointment with God seems essential to both.

Prayer is essential to hear God’s voice

The twelfth mention (jesus prays for peter at the last supper)

is made by Luke, chapter twenty-two.

It is Thursday night of Passion week,

in the large upper room in Jerusalem where He is celebrating the old Passover feast,

and initiating the new memorial feast.

But even that hallowed hour is disturbed by the disciples' self-seeking disputes. (who’s the greatest?)

Luke 22:24 NASB95

And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest.

With the great patience of great love He gives them the wonderful example of humility of which John thirteen tells, (washing the disciples’ feet)

speaking gently of what it meant,

John 13:12–17 NASB95

So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? “You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. “For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. “Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

and then turning to Peter, and using his old name,

Luke 22:31–32 NASB95

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

He had been praying for Peter by name!

That was one of His prayer-habits, praying for others.

And He has not broken off that blessed habit yet.

He is able to utterly save those that draw near to God

through Him seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them.

His occupation now seated at His Father's right hand in glory is praying for each of us who trust Him.

By name? Why not?

Prayer humbly prays for others