Practice What You Pray

Quick person intro. Thanks for those that chose my group, and for those that came in because the group you wanted to join was full.

2 rules for rooms like this.

I start on time and end on time.

If you are keeping us from doing either we might not get along. LOL JK SORRY NOT SORRY

I’ll talk for about 20 minutes, and we will interact for about 10

Hope everyone is ok that I’ll be working on the assumption that you know the New Testament well enough that we won’t necessarily take time to give much context to quoted scripture.

Ready to jump in?

Premises

Pray - Oswald Chambers give us the principle that prayer is the greater work. We have distilled such a statement to say things such as we don’t pray about the work, Prayer IS the work. Pray as though everything depends on God, and work as though everything depends on you. President Saunders reminded us a couple weeks ago that we might be the answer to our prayer.

Last week when I preached here at Cap City I reminded everyone of the cliche, practice what you preach, and said this phrase has often made me argue with God about preaching certain principles because I wasn’t sure I was ready to practice them. That phrase was the inspiration for my title I landed on for our time together today. Practice what you pray. I can’t imagine how many times I’ve prayed for God to help with an outcome and I wasn’t will to make a change because it was difficult and brought discomfort.

Let’s start with a couple of obvious examples and move to a couple that perhaps we haven’t considered.

We pray…God help me lose weight. No change in my diet or exercise.

We pray…God give me more opportunities in ministry. No change in self-development, reading strategy, or education.

We pray…God make my church or organization better. Then we resist and often even criticize people that challenge our leadership decisions rather than being will to consider their point of view especially when those people and their ministries are growing and ours are not. Frequently I find that we value control more than we value growth, which one ministry expert told us the two are inversely proportional. If you want to see church growth, reduction in control might be where you need to start. The more we pray, the more we should be releasing control to God. But we must recognize He could ALSO be asking us release control to others.

While this introduction may not necessarily all seem relatable to prayer, as we move through the presentation I believe you will be able to appreciate the context.

Let’s start with

The Process…

YOU’RE PRAYING ENOUGH

When Pastor Dan asked me to do this breakout session, He asked me to talk about the prayer culture at Cap City because we have been experiencing pretty regular growth and conversions year over year. But when He asked me to do this, I thought, I bet we aren’t the most prayerful church in the district. In fact I would almost bet we aren’t in the top 10. But here’s a quick look at what we do.

We have a couple of people that pray at the altar before the start of Sunday morning services. I’m super thankful for this, but it’s not anything that we organized.

We have a group of individuals that we refer to as prayer warriors that meet in a prayer room during the service and prayer for the service the entire time it’s taking place, then they come out to the service and work the altars during our response time. That being said we don’t necessarily have an altar call every week, because sometimes we don’t think people need to make decisions, they need to act on truths.

We frequently invite people to prayer during the worship set, but this is a brief invitation to remind people that prayer is available, not a time to preach a mini-sermon or disrupt the flow of the worship. Especially because we believe much of what we sing can be a prayer lifted to God.

CELEBRATE TO CULTIVATE

We celebrate people giving their lives to Jesus from the stage, if they give our permission to do so. I CAN EXPLAIN BRIEFLY

We have a small group of faithful people that meet on Tuesday mornings to discuss and pray for specific needs of people within the church.

We have quarterly prayer and praise nights.

PEOPLE LIKE NEW THINGS

We used to have them monthly and they weren’t well attended and the few who still came were becoming somewhat frustrated. Some could say well the ones that still come are the ones that are really serious about prayer. If you’ll allow me, it could also be the ones that have nothing else to do, because they aren’t spending time with their neighbors and joining or starting life groups. I believe that great leadership recognizes when they are doing something that isn’t working and killing it or reimagining in a way that it can produce fruit. FREELANCE FOR A MINUTE. Quit having services and meetings that are taking you from your family, wearing you out to prepare for them, and then complaining because no one is attending them. I’ve also noticed that when we kill something regular that is showing little return, it gives us permission to raise up something new or try something spontaneous, and best I can tell, alot of times the Holy Spirit is trying something new or behaving spontaneous.

Even though we don’t have much time I’d like a little interaction. In 15 seconds or less anyone doing something prayer focused in their church that I didn’t mention that you would share with the group?

THE PROGRESS…

In this section I want to briefly expound on the title of our talk. Practice what you pray.

NOT WHAT BUT HOW

Sometimes I wonder if we pray to get off the hook for participating in God’s work, especially the challenging things. If you’ll allow me, I think I’m a pretty smart guy, and I bet many of you in here are smarter and definitely more experienced than I am. Because I know His Word, did you know that I rarely feel like I don’t know what to do? I find myself much more praying that God would give me the strength to do it. Don’t get me wrong, we need to pray for discernment, but in my experience most leaders know what to do. Doesn’t James tell us that when we don’t do what we know we should it’s sin?

James 4:17 “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

The difference between our knowledge and our action reveals our spiritual maturity.

Because our focus this council is on evangelism, what does action that reflects our prayer life look like in our day to day leadership that might lead people to Christ.

Jesus WELCOMED sinners

Mark 2:17 “On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.””

Do we pray for sinners while we build ministries that are focused on the believer? Most of our churches give off retirement home vibes rather than Spiritual emergency rooms.

Retirements homes invite people to bring in things that will make them feel comfortable and at home. They have event schedules that align with the interest of the people moving in. They promise comfort from responsibilities. They require application processes and allow people that give more oops i mean pay more to have increased comfort.

Emergency rooms recognize everyone that walks in could potentially be in a life or death situation. I like this one, emergency room prioritizes the person that is hurting the most. Entry is immediate with therapy and healing on the back end.

Sometimes I afraid in the church we run off people with head wounds to put band aids on papercuts.

Jesus ran off people in “the church” to gain audience with the sinner.

What’s this have to do with prayer that leads to evangelism? Again, we know what to do, we need to ask God to give us the courage to make the moves in our ministry that we know need to take place that we probably aren’t making because it will upset that person that drives you crazy already.

Can we take a 30 second commercial break so I can tell you about the book that I’ll never write because no one would ever read it? It would be titled, someone needs to leave. Someone in our churches are keeping God from moving. God’s church will always be growing, so best I can tell the reason a church isn’t growing is because it belongs to someone other than God. Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Let’s do some interaction again. This time I’ll give you 30 seconds to share about how your church did something to welcome sinners in a way that might make the current members less than comfortable.

THE OUTCOME…

SQUATTERS GO TO I actually decided I’ll let you fill in this blank on your own as I read a passage to you.

Matthew 25:28–30 ““ ‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Church, we can’t ask God to do great things with what we have under our watch if we maintain a scarcity mindset with our resources. Storing up money for rainy days when people are sliding into hell everyday doesn’t work. Be responsible sure, but real responsibility as a Christian means doing with less so others can have more. I knew when I took my first church that I needed a youth pastor so I gave half my salary back to the church so we could hire a youth pastor, and inside of 2 years the church was able to quadruple my pay. I get some of us might not have extra money to put on the altar to reach the lost. Could we put our worship preferences on the altar? Could we put our ministry we’ve led for 30 years on the altar? Could we put the service schedule, the decoration style, our board position, the rules and policies that perhaps we’ve put in place that we’ve claimed are scriptural but Jesus would hardly care about?

Anyone want to tell me what you filled in the blank with based on what scripture says? Ok just checking to see if we got different answers. I’ll give you the next one.

RISK TAKERS GET REWARDED

Can I tell you quickly what has happened at Cap City in the last few years. Someone gave a $10,000 gift sacrificially a few years ago, God revealed to me that He was going to multiply it 30 60 AND 100 fold, that’s 190 fold. Inside of 90 days we stumbled into $1.9M dollars. Do you know what we did, we took care of all the boring stuff that needed managed, and then invested it in people like crazy. We spent it all, and God just allowed us to sell some land for guess what price? $1.9M, we were faithful and he doubled it just like before, and do you know what. I’m believing that God is going to bring another $380,000 as an 11th talent because we are going to invest it a way that we believe will reach sinners most effectively. If you would leave here today jealous of what God’s done for us, that would make you just as spiritual as me because I know it’s a dream come true. But if I may, God sends resources ahead of time when He knows the plans we have for them. If you are lacking resources take the risk necessary to see God answer the crazy prayer you are praying.

Interaction: depending on time, how long each and how many…

Anyone in two sentences or less, I believe my church needs to take a risk in what area?

Anyone in two sentences or less, I know I need to ________, but need to pray for the courage to do it?

There is no point in continuing to pray prayers when we aren’t willing to make the sacrifices necessary to see God bring them to pass.

Practicing what we pray, means praying not only God will do something great, but that He will give us great courage to do our part as we partner with Him in prayer.

LET’S PRAY