Powerful Prayer

Welcome/Prayer/Intro

Good Morning Church and Happy New Year! Can you believe its 2022 already? How is everyone doing this morning? I am excited for the start of the new year and a New Sermon Series! Before we Jump into our new series let us pause for a moment and prepare our hearts for God to speak to us. Would you pray with me?

Prayer: Yahweh, We come before you this morning and pause. We bring each of our selves before you in your Holy Radiance. We each come this morning with different things we carry: worries, fears, excitements, joys and hopes. Yet, we come this morning because of you Jesus. You have drawn each of us here for a reason. In you Jesus we have purpose and place! Father as we begin this study on prayer, I ask that you would open our hearts to hear from you this morning! Our hope is that as we hear from you we would be transformed by you. In the name of Jesus! Amen!

Intro:

Why are we doing this series at the start of 2022? (Slide)

Revitalize our Prayer Lives

Ground ourselves in the purpose of Prayer

Expand our prayer practices.

Explore Biblical prayers and biblical approaches to prayer.

Reflect on Past Year, Tempted to be discouraged and ask?

Is God still working?

Does he here us down here?

Does prayer still work?

Answer these questions with Testimony!

Instructions: Have issac run with the mic. Share a story and then move to the next

At the end of each testimony lets just praise God together with a thank you Jesus.

Transiton: Thank you church for sharing your prayer stories! Look How the Lord has worked in and through us! As we start this series on prayer I want to really focus on the purpose of prayer. Prayer is more than Just our requests and God’s answers.

Purpose of Prayer: Relationship - Knowing God

David talks about the purpose of prayer with God or Why we pray to God in the Psalms. Turn in Bibles to Psalm 27: 1-4 and follow along as I read.

I want us to focus on this one phrase that David uses: One thing I seek from the Lord

to Seek, Dwell, and see the Lord

That is why we pray to the Lord! to seek and know Him.

Prayer is not a slot machine or equation, but a relationship.

WE dont pray to God in order to get things. James says this in Chapter 4:3, you ask but you dont recieve because you ask with evil intentions to get what you want.

Prayer is not playing slots with God and see if he answers if you do all the right things, but a relationship!

Think about your own prayers: if you were to analyze them. Would they say more about what you want and ask for or would it be a picture of a beautiful relationship with God.

Illustration: I ask this because my own answer is my prayer life looks more like a grocery store list than a friendship.

Even though I pray more now than I ever have. I pray more regularly, I prayer for more people.

Honestly, my prayer life feels dry, dead, and a chore most days.

The best my life had been was after Jess and I broke up sophmore year.

I lost my best friend the person I told everything to.

God became my best friend that year. Although I prayed many times for God to bring Jess back .

My prayers slowly became about simply knowing God and who He was and what He wanted.

That season was the most transformation in my spiritual life.

Question is: Do I still pray to know him?

Transition: Lets look at another prayer of David in the Psalms that Illustrates this idea of prayer being all about relationship! Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 63 and follow along

Lesssons We learn from Psalm 63.

Prayer is a reflecition of a relationship that is personal and intimate

Look at how raw david is with God my whole being thirsts for you

He keeps desiring more

Prayer is an expression of Joy in our relationship with God

Praise with my lips

Blesses God with everything I have

Lifts up his hands

Love is better than life

Prayer is a constant connection not just choppy conversation

David prays in Bed

in the middle of the night

it is something that he does with his whole being

Notice that there is no petition in this Psalm. No request. It is just a reflection of a deep relationship!

Transition: Yet prayer is more than Just praise and thanksgiving! What is God’s role in prayer? Is God’s role just to be a cosmic google that answers questions or a loan officer who approves and denies requests? No! God uses prayer to partner with us as humans to change the world!

Purpose of Prayer: Relationship - Knowing God

God uses prayer to transform us!

Think about the story of Jacob, its through wrestling with God that he was tranformed

Think about my own story how God has transformed me in prayer.

Prayer is where we have intimate connection with the Father and through the Spirit he can transform us and make us new.

Richard Foster writes: The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ.

God uses prayer to partner with us! God has wanted to partner with us from the Beginning!

Bruxy describes this partnership like a symphony

God is conductor, We are the musicans.

God can lead the music on his own, but that doesnt mean we are robots, we as mucisans have to make the choice to join God and follow along

When we try to fix the world on our own we make an awlful mess. Like an orchestra going through a piece without the conductors direction

But when we come together in prayer we are like a beautiful symphony that can change the world.

That is what prayer is Church! a symphony of God’s partnership in the world with humanity.

When we come to God and seek to know Him and Seek His Kingdom Come= Partnership emerges.

James describes how God works through prayer to break into the world! Read James 5: 13-18. I love the phrase that Elijah was just a man who God worked through!

Yet, there is still more to this partnership than just asking God for the right things!

Prayer is a conversation where we go back in forth!

Prayer is like a group getting together to work on a project!

Imagine you meet with one other person or a group and talk about building a house.

The whole time you just talk and say what you want and what you think should happen?

Do you think the other person is going to just say, “yup. and do it?”

or is it a back and forth were you speak and listen?

Think about your marriages:

Are you going to have a good marriage if one partner is always asking for things or always talking and never listening?

Prayer is the same way! We have to listen too! In fact its deeply rooted in Hebrew Prayer!

Who is familar with the shema?

Read Deut 6:4-9 (slide)

this is a prayer they prayed twice a day!

The first word is to listen. They begin the prayer by listening. Then they speak!

Yet, this listening also requires a response from the people they dont just hear from God but respond!

This is a process of praying, listening, and acting!

This is what Shane Claibourne calls becoming answers to our prayers!

We have talked alot about the purpose of prayer this morning and this is alot of information but this is just the beginning! How can we take all this and apply it to our prayer lives starting today?

Application: Practicing Prayer!

What have we learned today?

Prayer is not just a list of petitions but an invitation to know God!

God uses prayer to tranform us and Change the world by partnering with us!

Prayer involves speaking, Listening, and acting!

This week I want us to focus on praying by speaking and listening!

Prayer Practice:

++Find a quiet place where you can pray without distractions

++Pray out loud! Verbally speak your prayers.

++Spend 5 minutes listening! if something comes to mind pray about it and listen again!

++Challenge: Do this once a day this week and spend at least 10 minutes in prayer.

Im going to close in prayer and demonstrate what this might look like: Would you pray with me?

Benediction:

17 that the king may make his home in your hearts, through faith; that love may be your root, your firm foundation; 18 and that you may be strong enough (with all God’s holy ones) to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the king’s love – though actually it’s so deep that nobody can really know it! So may God fill you with all his fullness.

20 So: to the one who is capable of doing far, far more than we can ask or imagine, granted the power which is working in us – 21 to him be glory, in the church, and in King Jesus, to all generations, and to the ages of ages! Amen!