Daily Opportunity

Prayer Service

Prayer is an opportunity to remind ourselves of why we should be more in awe of God than ourselves…

Intro:Dismiss Kids/Bibles/… In 2011 I had the opportunity to go Israel… The trip was an unbelievable experience because I got to walk where Jesus walked… I was in Jesus home town of Nazareth… I sat in the ruins of the temple at Capernaum where Jesus verbal destroyed the Pharisees… I took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus did much his ministry… I floated in the dead sea… You are learning so much that everyday you write in a journal all that you saw, learned and experienced… I was in awe of the experience… That was 6 years ago… I remember being in awe of some of things we saw… But I have to be honest… I need to go back and read though my journal to remember it all… In fact I can look at pictures today and not recognize what I am looking at… It easy to lose the position of awe when you spot focusing on it as much… How often does this happen in our relationship with Jesus? We know Jesus… We love Jesus… but the day goes, weeks go by… and we realize that we are not in awe of Jesus like we should be…

Big Idea: Prayer is daily opportunity to be in awe of Jesus…

When Jesus faced his greatest’s challenges what did he do? He prayed… (Gethsemane) When you face your greatest challenges what do you do?

Prayer is an opportunity to remind ourselves of why we should be more in awe of God than ourselves… How often do we allow ourselves to be distracted by experiencing the joy of a created thing over joy of experiencing the creator… Prayer is a daily opportunity to remind ourselves of His greatness and graciousness in our lives… When you experience his greatness and graciousness it brings you full circle to this truth… that nothing is more beautiful the truth of the Gospel…

Today we are going to look at one verse of a prayer of David… He desires to constantly be in awe of the Lord… The scriptures is filled with people who desired to constantly be in awe of Jesus… How do we live in the place of being in awe of Jesus? Prayer… What is prayer? Prayer is communication for the sake of communion… The greater our communion the more in awe we will be… To carryout the purposes of God you must have communion with God… So if we don’t communicate with God then communion with God would be impossible!

Prayer makes known what we treasure most… In fact when life is going as we want and what we treasure most is safe we will have no need for prayer but when we treasure Jesus and all that we have in prayer will have a constant presence in our lives…

Transition: Prayer is daily opportunity to be in awe of Jesus… How do we live in the place of being in awe of Jesus?

1. Pray Confidently

Tim Keller, ““God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.”

VS 1

Answer me when I call… David comes with confidence to the throne of grace… What would give him the confidence to command God to listen? He gives the answer did you catch it? O God of my righteousness…. God the one who is righteous is my righteousness… God I can stand in your presence and call out to your name not because of what I bring to table but because of this profound, life changing, earth shattering truth that through that you have given me the righteousness of your Son… This truth alone should create awe in your heart… Prayer is an opportunity to remind ourselves of why we should be more in awe of God than ourselves… You can go confidently to the Lord because he knows the truth of who you were without him and yet he still offered you his righteousness! He still granted you the identity of son or daughter of his who stand not in sinfulness but righteousness…

Transition: Prayer is daily opportunity to be in awe of Jesus… How do we live in the place of being in awe of Jesus?

“We know God will answer us when we call because one terrible day he did not answer Jesus when he called. . . . Jesus’ prayers were given the rejection that we sinners merit so that our prayers could have the reception that he merits.”

2. Pray Expectantly

VS 1

You have given me relief when I was in distress… You have done what only you can do in the past… Now can you do it again God…. David when he was in his greatest distress prayer was his greatest resource… Which means when life hit the fan his greatest desire was to always go to the Lord 1st…

Tim Keller, “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.”

Prayer makes known what we treasure most… In fact when life is going as we want and what we treasure most is safe we will have no need for prayer but when we treasure Jesus and all that we have in him more than anything else prayer will have a constant presence in our lives… Is your prayer expecting God to work… Does your prayer life expect God to answer? When you pray do you pray expecting God to move? If God answered all your prayers this week, how many more people would be have come to know Jesus? How many would have been saved? How many rescued because you expect God save!

Transition: Prayer is daily opportunity to be in awe of Jesus… How do we live in the place of being in awe of Jesus?

3. Pray Desperately

VS 1

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer… We talk about grace often… Grace is all about God putting up the cost and us getting all the benefit… Grace is God’s cost for our benefit! What benefits do we get? This amazing truth that God hears you when you call… We know that God will listen to us because there was one day… one horrible day… one gut wrenching day… where Jesus called out to his Father from the cross and the father did not answer when his own Son called… Jesus prayer was given the rejection that we deserve so that we could have the reception that only Jesus deserves… God hears us when we pray… Every time we pray is an opportunity for us to remember how gracious has been in the past… How gracious God is being in now… and how gracious God will be in the future…

Your prayer life or lack of prayer reveals how desperate you are for Jesus on a daily basis…

Application: Prayer is daily opportunity to be in awe of Jesus… Here at Redemption we have 4 roots… We believe these roots are required to have a healthy church. So we believe passionately in the power of prayer for all things and at all times… This whole church was bathed in prayer for months before Steve, Matt and I even moved here to plant Redemption. We pray the same way now with our elders as we did over two years ago… God please do what only you can do… God please move in a way that is only of you… There is a temptation to stop praying when things are going smooth… when things are going well… when growth is happening and life change is talking place… But we prayed in faith that God would move and we don’t want to stop passionately pursing God to saturate our city with the good news of Jesus…

We are going to pray this morning as a church and I cannot help but wonder what would happen if the size of our prayers right now match the size of our God? What would happen if the intensity of our prayers matched the intensity of the cross? Would we be in awe of him then… Would that fuel our worship of him… So this morning lets not ask for small things but life changing things to be done in our hearts and in our city…

God tells the Israelites,“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know”