Rethink Church - Faith and Prayer
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Faith and Prayer
Faith and Prayer
God is good God is great
We make so little of it - makes so little of us
Faith and prayer -They go hand in hand
Prayer is an act of trust
Faith is acting in obedience
"Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts." - Mother Teresa
Acts 12
Peter’s Great Escape
About that time King Herod violently attacked some who belonged to the church, and he executed James, John’s brother, with the sword. When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter too, during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. After the arrest, he put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was praying fervently to God for him.
Peter’s Great Escape
Trouble strikes - church prays
Peter in prison - 4 guards - not getting away this time
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell. Striking Peter on the side, he woke him up and said, “Quick, get up!” And the chains fell off his wrists.
Peter’s Great Escape
Peter thinks it’s a dream
Had to whack him to wake him - who sleeps in these circumstances?
Goes to his friends - look I am an answered prayer
He knocked at the door of the outer gate, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer. She recognized Peter’s voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the outer gate.
Peter’s Great Escape
Not only does she leave him out side
Everyone praying thinks she is crazy or maybe it’s Peter’s ghost
Truth about Faith and Prayer
Faith: Biblical Faith is an action, not a feeling
The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Twelve: Wake up to a Miracle! (Acts 12)
God alone can do the extraordinary, but His people must do the ordinary
Peter had to get up and walk
The church had to open the door and believe
Three false assumption about faith:
faith means taking great risk
faith means I have full confidence
faith mean I have no fear or doubt
Maybe our prayer is;
Immediately the father of the boy cried out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”
Prayer
The power of prayer is based on who I pray to, not how well I pray
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!”
The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.
- F.B. Meyer
Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.
Answers
Our job is to ask, God’s job is to do what is best
You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
God is going to do what God is going to do
Our prayers and faith do not change God - they change us
God has the plan - Saved Peter not James
The soldiers died because Peter was gone
I read this last week
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Faith and Prayer
Faith and Prayer
God is working it all to our good
That good is becoming like Christ
"Prayer /faith makes a godly man, and puts within him the mind of Christ, the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying." - E.M. Bounds
Faith and Prayer
Faith and Prayer
Where is your trust - we pray what we care
How are you stepping out in faith - big or small
Let today be day 1