Rhythm

James 5:16-18 KJV Regular, Relentless, Righteous

KJV THROUGHOUT?

17 Earnest 18 relented and saw result

Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

Reference stuff from chapter 1-6/7

SEE PROFOUND PRAYER NOTES

R word for (regular or rhythm) effectual relentless for fervent, righteous (involves confession from the passage)

Start with righteous or follow verse?

Righteous supporting verses such as unanswered prayers

One’s way of life will never rise above the practice of one’s prayer life.

Add captain America punching bag picking up another to define fervent

Paul i do not beat at the air

Fun Intro: Free tidbits on prayer… Father Cassie prayed (fun) Haven’t used at Thornville… Evaluate the first 10 words of your prayer this week, repetitious, automatic, perhaps without tuning in as we ought?, Sincere communication – not thoughtless repetition Open every prayer with the same 10 words, Repetition isn’t bad, vain (empty) is. (constructive criticism)

Real Intro: A Cool Prayer Life (Hybels, 108)

When I look back over the years of my spiritual life, I see certain seasons when I prayed eagerly and often. I was filled with joy and the anticipation of God’s blessing. Supernatural things happened in my life, in the lives of people I prayed for and in the church. And then, for who knows what reason, my prayer life would begin to wind down until I had almost given up on praying. I would still pray at meals and at church functions, of course, but would otherwise not engage. Prayer would seem dry, tedious and pointless. This prayerless season could last for weeks or even months. And then suddenly God’s power would flood into my life again, just as before. Once again I would delight in coming into God’s presence. Once again I would pray often and with results. That is, until the fade began again, as it always seemed to do. What causes these ups and downs in our prayer life? Why do we lose interest in prayer? Why do we stop praying? We let our prayer lives fade because we allow ourselves to become too comfortable. Comfort is not a state of being; it’s a state of mind. 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes made a timeless observation when made the statement Cogito ergo sum, which is Latin for, I think therefore I am. I’m not sure why we give Descartes credit when Solomon it 2000 years prior. Nevertheless, the statement holds true, and so as a person remains in a mental state of comfort or relaxation in their life it becomes difficult to continue a prayer life that regularly, earnestly, and fervently seeks the face of God.

As we conclude our series on prayer today, there are three words that we will discuss to describe a healthy prayer life. This first word is regular…

Regular

Prayerlessness – When we talk about a regular prayer life we can’t help but reverberate the theme of our series. One’s way of life will never rise above the practice of one’s prayer life. There are two biblical examples that I want to briefly reference to emphasize the need for regular prayer.

Mark 9 – tell story, Transfiguration, inner circle, quick meeting with Moses and Elijah, disciples had been healing and casting out demons (ministry work), can’t get one to come out… later why couldn’t we. Jesus answered this kind can only come out by prayer. In another familiar story David was urging King Saul to allow him to fight Goliath, killed lion and bear as a shepherd… David killed a lion and a bear in private before he killed a giant in public. God was saying to David, and he is saying to us, that we will never be anymore for him in public, than we are for him in private. If we tie the imagery from David’s story to the reality of the disciple’s story we can see that the true source of spiritual power is in our private prayer time that is spent with God. Furthermore, we could infer that in the life of disciple’s that they were able to do great works in the name of Jesus (we might call this “ministry”) but anything done outside of a regular prayerful lifestyle is simply a minimalized version of what could truly be accomplished in the power of a prayerful relationship with God. It could even be that as Jesus warned that we are producing nothing more than a synthetic version of His gospel message. Keep this in mind in all of your toiling, and laboring, and busyness of working for God that Jesus wanted us to understand that… prayer does not prepare us for the work of God, prayer IS the work of God. We’ve taken a minute to consider the importance of a regular prayer life, but how do we then implement it into the rhythm of our every day lives? The word that I want to bring your attention to here, is the word rhythm.

Rhythm – Meals, hygiene, jobs, tv shows, date nights, vacations, ohio state football… Daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, yearly rhythms… Do we have the same spiritual sensitivity… it’s time to pray. … specific time, hunger signals, greater seasons of prayer, weekly or monthly dedicated times.

Pre-transition… It is essential that prayer has a specific place in our lives if we intend for it to remain consistent and regular.

Transition: To avoid having a prayer life that is in danger of cooling off, one must first keep a prayer life that is regular. Secondly we must look to pray earnestly. What exactly does earnest mean?

Earnest – Earnest builds on regular… The Hebrew rendering of the word in the Old Testament relates the idea of early, before anything else, or with great priority. In Psalm 63:1 David cried out… O God, You are my God; I will seek you earnestly;My soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. David describes the idea of earnestly seeking by describing the way a person dying from thirst would search for water, In fact we are told that David wrote this while wandering in the wilderness. David relates this idea in such a way that says, “God before anything else, before all my perceived priorities and obligations, I need to seek you first for the very sake of my existence and survival. In my house we’ve had discussion about how we don’t say we didn’t have time to do something. Because what we really mean when we say that, is that we didn’t choose to make time for something. We always make time for the things that we really want to do. With that being said, are you making time for daily and earnest prayer that seeks God as though your life depends on it? If not, the question becomes, what could be more important?

In Hosea 5:15 God said that he would go away from his people until they seek His face. He then said that in their trouble they will earnestly seek him. This describes an endless cycle within the human condition. God is there, we get comfortable and stop seeking Him, He goes away, we get in trouble, We go look for him. He takes us back. Lather, rinse, repeat… Will we not consider ending the cycle by staying in a state of earnest seeking after God so that trouble does not overtake us?

Transition: Develop regular prayer times that have a place in the rhythm of your life. Earnestly seek God by making times to pursue Him as the very lifeblood of your existence, and thirdly today we must pray fervently.

Fervent

Fervent builds on regular and earnest… Ektenos, literally means to be stretched, figuratively it means to be zealous… The clearest picture we get in scriptures of a fervent prayer is that of Jesus in Gethsemane. Luke 22:44 tells us that in His agony Jesus prayed so fervently that He began to sweat drops of blood. We might not be able to pray with quite the same fervency as Christ was praying before the cross, but some level of zeal, passion, and sacrifice should always be attached to our prayer life.

One of the greatest Spiritual principles that we see attached to prayer is that of fasting. Fasting says that I’m serious about my prayer, fasting says I’m going to pursue God more greatly than my physical sustenance. Let me clarify the idea of fasting for a moment. Fasting is the principle of going an extended amount of time without FOOD. Some people like to associate taking a break from worldly vices or habits and attach them to the idea of fasting. But let me be clear today when I say Jesus did not fast from facebook, Isaiah didn’t take a few days away from television, and Paul didn’t take a break from tobacco. We might have things in our life that we need to get under control, but when we talk about fasting in association with prayer, we are getting ourselves into a place where we say God, I want to know what it’s like to feel empty inside, and know that it’s you that sustains me and not physical means. Most of us in America would have to lose 30-40 pounds before we could even begin to understand what true hunger was like for those in Bible times. Fasting says God I’m so serious about what I want to see happen that I want your Spirit more than I want food… But I digress. Fervent prayer is the prayer that shows God that we mean business through continual petition that passionately and sacrificially seeks the face of God. I will wrap up this point with a brief story about the world’s largest church. In the 1970’s the largest church in the world located in Korea boasted an attendance of 100,000 people. At that time, from 8:00pm every Friday night until 7:00am Saturday morning, 10,000 people gathered in an auditorium and prayed that God would take the church’s ministry by storm… 100,000 people doesn’t exactly sound like a struggling church does it? Because of the vision and fervent prayer of these individuals, 10 years later, the church grew to 500,000 and today the membership is over 1,000,000 people. I’ve heard it said that if you bring a thimble to God, He will fill it. If you bring a bucket to God, He will fill that. If you bring a 500 gallon barrel to God, He will fill that too. Are you expecting God to fill your needs? Are you asking him to do so regularly, earnestly, and fervently?

RESPONSE –

Circle back to to text to emphasize confession, Repent and relent,

Some need to start hitting bag, some have seen victory and need to pick up another one, what else?

Just pic of captain america picking up another bag at the end, or me doing it?

will you stand today

We talked today at the beginning of the sermon about a prayer life that has cooled off. It is my fear that the church of Jesus Christ has a prayer life that needs to be re-ignited and set on fire again. Do you ever just get so sick of the cold that you just say, I’m going to move to Florida, I’m moving south. I want to move to a place where the climate is always favorable. Where am I going today church… Some of us need to become so irritated with the temperature of our prayer life, the ice, the way the cold wind of life keeps hitting us in the faith, that we would be radical enough to stand up and say I’m moving my prayer life to a place where the heat is always on, what if we prayed today and asked God to give us a red hot prayer life and asked Him to help us sustain it in a regular, earnest, and fervent fashion. Church, we’ve spent the last month talking about prayer, and now it’s time that we get serious and stay serious. The hope of the world rests on the shoulders of the praying members of the church of Jesus Christ. They are going to sing a song titled, “The more I seek you, the more I find you. I believe that to be an incredibly true and powerful statement. The more you seek Him, the more of Him you will find, and in turn the greater your desire to seek Him will become. Come and pray as the sing today.