Sermon Tone Analysis

How to...Be Useful for God

Raise your hand if you want to be more useful for God.

Raise your hand if you want to be more useful for God and be a better disciple of Jesus Christ!

That's at least one of the reasons why we're here.

Let us look at how you can be by looking at the Bible and what it has to say to us on this subject.

The key passage today is only one verse:

There are 5 P's for us to remember today that if we learn will make us more useful for God.

The first one, then is...

Prevailing Prayer

Say it with me: Prevailing Prayer

This is for those who want to be overcomers.

The word prevailing means one who sticks at it until it is achieved.

In this case, it is to continue until what you have asked of God is received of God.

The point is that we are those who persevere, those who keep on going...the asking, seeking and knocking that we have heard about 6 weeks ago.

James 5.16 says: The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

We might be concerned that this verse talks of the prayer of a righteous man.

Are we included in this bracket?

Do any of us consider ourselves to be righteous?

I guess that is not one we would really raise our hands to for inwardly we would be saying we are not righteous.

The question, then is:

Are we righteous?

Well, we know in one way we are not.

We are tempted, we sin, we fall, we miss the mark.

Remember that God absolutely with His whole heart hates sin.

No sin too big or too small in our eyes is acceptable to our God who is holy, holy, holy, who is absolutely righteous.

Where do we stand in relation to God's holiness?

We are complete failures.

When God says, as He does to us, through Jesus:

Who here is not perfect?

Let's see what God has to say about that in His word:

When I first asked are we righteous our overwhelming response should be: No! How can we be?

But God's view of us is that because Jesus being obedient in going to the cross and taking upon Himself the sin of the world our position has changed.

We ARE Righteous!

Yes, we can claim that for ourselves simply because we have put our faith in Jesus:

Now, let us remember what our first P is: Prevailing Prayer

James told us that the effective, fervent righteous man's prayer avails much.

WOW! So, what is this prayer we should be praying?

First, it is the prayer of praise.

This is pleasing to God, it is effective for it takes us straight into the throne room of God.

Second, it is prayer for our needs and the needs of others.

And we are to pray in line with the will of God trusting God to come through for us.

Who here can pray?

Hands up!

OK, the second P.

The first P was Prevailing Prayer the second is:

Prevailing Prayer.

Powerful Word.

And the main verse for this is:

Who here can read?

Well, there are plenty of people today who can't but everyone here can.

This very thing leaves us with no excuse.

You see, the Bible, otherwise known as the Word of God is life-changing.

And, remember, we are looking at How to...Be Useful to God.

If we want to make a success of our lives for God, that is, to be effective, to be useful for Him He has already given us some tools to make that happen.

The first, we saw, was Prevailing Prayer and now we are looking at His Powerful Word.

The Bible is like a map pointing the way and how to get to our destination but it is absolutely a waste of time if we leave the map in the boot of the car.

We have to read it to be useful to God.

The Bible also points the way to The Way, the way of salvation in Christ alone, the way to life, the way to life eternal.

Using the Bible helps us to also be successful soul-winners.

Remember we were talking of leaving a legacy, a legacy is something that lasts long past the time we are no longer around.

And something I have consistently said whilst with you is knowing the Bible.

So, thats the first two P's which were:

Prevailing Prayer Powerful Word Positive Faith

And the third is Positive Faith.

Who here can sit on a chair?

Right, it's not hard is it.

We trust that when we sit down - in fact we trust so much it does not enter our minds that we should not trust it.

And that is where we have to get to with Jesus...a simple trust that doesn't even think about it.

Well, we can find quite a number of illustrations in the Bible of Positive Faith but this is one that stands out:

You see that this woman was quite amazing.

She was determined to touch only the hem of His garment, the hem is the very edge of it.

Not only was she determined to touch the border of his clothes but she had absolutely no doubt she would be healed.

WOW!

Where did she get such faith from?

Surely she had heard about Jesus, surely she had heard the stories of the lame and the blind and the paralytics and how they had been healed and she then mixed it with knowing that she would be healed too if only she could touch the edge of his clothes.

Incredible!

You can see why this would make us useful to God.

All things are possible with God:

This is an incredible statement.

Not pretend belief.

Only true faith can get an awesome amount of things done.

Jesus said it to a man who wasn't sure whether to trust Him or not for all that He had gone through before but Jesus said; "trust me", and he did.

For...

Faith is not hard or impossible: Did we all not trust Jesus for our salvation and as a result become children of God?

Who here believes in the resurrection?

In case there is any doubt:

1 John 5:1 NKJV Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

And as God's Children are we not heard as surely as a son to his father?

Clearly faith is not hard, it is like child-like trust.

And God hears us and can use us with faith like that.

This kind of Positive Faith along with Prevailing Prayer and His Powerful Word makes us incredibly useful to God.

Of course, this means we have to change our priorities to make these 5 P's part of our lives.

So far we have only seen 3. Two more to come.

Here are the first three and the next one:

Prevailing Prayer Powerful Word Positive Faith Persevering Love

The fourth P then is Persevering Love

2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ compels us.

We are compelled to live a life of love.

But love that does not give up.

Persevering Love.