Pray for Wisdom

 It is pretty exciting that we are almost done with our fast. Only a couple of days left… 

I hope that you guys have really pushed through… I hope that you have created space for Jesus to speak to your heart and to your mind and I hope that you have been able to carve out some time to diligently seek Jesus in prayers.

Often times, one habit that I fall into is I will fast… but I will only take on the martyr-side of fasting. I will let myself suffer and convince myself that I am doing it for the Lord… but I won’t really press into him much during that time. Instead, I kind of just pout my way through the misery, committed to finish for sake of my pride but in the end it feels like I never actually met with God. 

and when that happens, it kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Because remember, you don't fast to get God to act. 

You don't fast to get heaven to move… its already moving. Its moving whether you move or not, it is moving whether you fast or not. Fasting creates space… it clears room in your life so that WHEN you pray, there is a margin in your life and in your mind… an empty room for God to set up shop in your heart and give you the wisdom that it will take to do his will. 

But what good is fasting, and clearing our minds, and opening our hearts, if we do not let those areas be filled with what God wants to do in our lives?

Paul prays an incredible prayer in the beginning of his letter to the Colossians (1:9-10):

“we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Today we are praying this prayer… that we would be filled with knowledge OF his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 

King David had this dream… to build the temple of the Lord. He was really disturbed by the fact that he lived in a castle, and that God lived in a tent. The tabernacle at that time was a tent. There was never a permanent home for it. 

So David said “lets change that.”

but God spoke to him and He told David that he was not going to be the one who would see that dream through, but rather, that dream, 

that huge, God sized dream, would be fulfilled through his son, Solomon. 

Near the time of his death, King David prays this prayer in front of the whole assembly and (1 Chronicles 29:19) in it he asks God to give Solomon “a perfect heart.” Obviously, the man who was going to carry on David’s dream had to have a heart like his. 

and When King David was on his death bed, at the end of his life, one of the final things that he teaches to his son in that final moment is this: 

1 Kings 2:6:

“Act with wisdom.” 

Rewind even further… When a young David is anointed by Samuel… Samuel is looking over the options of who this future king could possibly be, and David of course seems the least likely to be King, but God tells Samuel:

“Man looks on the exterior. But God searches the heart of man.” 

From the time he was very young, God recognized something in David. 

King David is the only person in the bible who is called “A man after God’s own heart” which means that when God searched the heart of King David, despite the exterior baggage that we all know was there, God saw something beautiful. 

And so now King David, in trying to impart something to his son, he gives him this nugget…

Act with wisdom. and in fact King David, in essentially the very last line recorded that he spoke to Solomon, he tells him: 

“You are a wise man.” 

King David sees this in his son, and he begins to speak it into his life… You are wise. You are wise. You are wise.

“And son, there is great value in that!”

So now Solomon is King. And he feels totally in over his head. 

andthe Lord appears to him at Gibeon him in the very next chapter (1 Kings 3:1-15) and says to him: 

“Ask what I shall give you”

What do you want, Solomon? Ask anything.

Solomon asks for wisdom. He basically tells God, “I am just a kid, I have no idea what I am doing. I don’t know how to navigate this incredibly important job that you have given me. 

He basically acknowledges from the beginning the same thing that we all need to acknowledge in our own lives with whatever mission God has placed before us…

“I am not adequate. I don’t know how on earth I am going to do this…”

“God, show me how to do this.” 

He asks for an understanding mind to govern God’s people, and ability to discern right from wrong. 

And God tells him, “because you asked for this, I will give you everything! I will give you everything you have asked, and everything that you didn't ask for. 

You didn't ask for money, I will give you money. 

You didn't ask for long life, I will give you long life. 

And what you did ask for, I will give you more than I have ever given anyone. In fact, I will give you EVERYTHING, more than I have ever given to anyone.

That, my friends, is the best way to get your prayers answered. 

That, is exceedingly abundantly more than we could hope or even imagine. 

No prayer has ever been answered in a more extravagant way. 

And then the very next passage tells us a bit about the wisdom that King Solomon now had.

As two prostitutes come to him with a baby… 

and one of them says to him that the other stole her baby. The explanation that she gave was that they both were pregnant, and they both gave birth basically at the same time, in the same house, and nobody else was there. 

And one of the babies died in the night, when the mother lay on him… so she stole the other baby and put the dead baby with the other Mother while she was sleeping..

So they are arguing back and forth about who the baby belongs too and so Solomon calls for someone to bring him a sword, and he says “we will cut the baby in half, and the two of you can split him.... Since you can't agree on who the mother is."

and right away one screams out “NO! Give the child to her.” 

Don't kill the child on account of this student argument.

but the other woman said “He shall be neither mine or yours; divide him” 

What an evil lady. 

and of course, Solomon saw at that moment a very clear picture of who the mother was, and so he gave the child to the woman who was willing to give the child to the other mother in order to save his life. 

and the bible says (1 Kings 3:28) “All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.” 

Wisdom is not information. But wisdom does know that you must seek information:

Proverbs 18:15 says “the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” 

so if you have wisdom, you know enough to know that you have to keep learning. You have to keep growing. 

But learning is not wisdom. 

Wisdom is the ability to perceive. It is the ability to take information and piece it together with discernment. 

to separate what is of God from what is of man… to know in your heart, “This is going to be good… or this is going to be chaos!”

It is the ability to look past what is visible and into the heart of the matter. Into the heart of what is really going on. 

Wisdom lets what is in your mind get to your heart. 

Great leaders are not people who have a doctorate degree in information, a great leader has the innate ability to maneuver difficult circumstances. To find solutions that you cannot look up on google. 

And there is no better prayer to pray during a time of fasting, when your life is open and ready to receive, than the prayer for wisdom. 

Than the prayer that your heart understand.

Wisdom is not merely mental, it is spiritual and it is in your heart. 

1 Kings 4:29says “Now all of the earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God put in his heart.”

Everybody is seeking out this guy because he doesn’t respond the way they expected him too… 

he doesn’t handle situations the way that they taught him in college he was supposed to respond to things. He doesn’t act based on circumstances and his decisions are not based in common sense…

He sees in his heart, what nobody else sees because none of them even know what it means to open their hearts like that.

Psalm 90:12 - “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Wisdom is not just in your head. The bible references it over and over again as being something that is in your heart. 

Proverbs 2:10 says that “Wisdom will enter your heart.” 

and I don’t find it a co-incidence, that King David made it such a point in his final moments of his life to affirm this...

the man after God’s own heart affirmed Solomon’s wisdom and told him to keep seeking it… 

and then when God asks Solomon what he wants… basically God asks Solomon, “What is important to you…”

Solomon essentially answers: my heart. 

My heart is important to me. 

Everything that Solomon writes about wisdom in Proverbs and elsewhere, just about every time, he draws the connection that it rests in his heart. 

"What is important to me is my heart."

God will you please fill it with everything that is needed to do your will? To do this job that I am totally inadequate and way too young for… 

Can we pray that prayer over our own lives? 

God give me the heart. 

The heart that can look at a situation, and know what you would do.

That can look at a situation and know how to meet the need. Know how to “do justice” as the people said about Solomon. 

Know how to do the right thing. 

Solomon prayed this prayer of wisdom, and suddenly the pieces just started making sense. His dads dream of a physical temple came to pass because the bible says that Solomon had the wisdom that it took to know who the right people were to build it. The bible says that God sent wisdom, understanding, AND THE SKILL to see it get done. 

His wisdom drew other wise men who wanted to be involved in the process (1 Kings 7:14)… 

He says this in Proverbs 24:3, “By wisdom a house is built” 

and by wisdom he built the house of the Lord. 

Wisdom attracts. It draws people. 

Nobody could reason the way that Solomon did. He knew how to handle circumstances, and he knew how to handle people. All types of people. 

Do you want that?

the bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The reverence for Jesus… that humble adoration that quickly acknowledges we are but a vapor… dust from the ground who will return to the ground, 

and he is the only. wise. God… 

who knows everything. Who knows our sicknesses before we feel them in our body. Who knows our weaknesses and our strengths.

Solomon knew the secret to answered prayers.

Psalm 25:4 - The secret of the Lord is with those who fear him, and he will show them His covenant.

The secret to answered prayers is to pray for what God has.

God can do anything, but God has wisdom. And he has a covenant that he wants to make with those who fear him. And 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that God’s wisdom is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. And it tells us that we have not received the spirit of the world, with all the wisdom that the world thinks that it has…

We have received the Spirit of the living God. The only spirit that knows what is in the heart of God. 

1 Corinthians 2 even tells us that a person who has the spirit can make judgments about all things. 

What is stopping us from living our lives in line with the Spirit? What is stopping us from relying on the spirit for the wisdom we so desperately need? 

The bible says “ask and it shall be given to you”

and I believe that God wants us to ask for wisdom. 

There is no prayer in the bible that he answered in a more radical, over the top way than he did this prayer by Solomon. 

I believe that He wants us to ask that the Holy Spirit fill us with all of the wisdom that is in heaven so that we can know how to move with it, here on earth, in this Kingdom. 

When Paul writes the Colossian church he tells them that they are praying that the church would know what it means to walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord. He prays that they will increase their knowledge, that they will keep learning…

but the key here is that he prays that they be FILLED with the knowledge of HIS WILL in SPIRITUAL wisdom and understanding. 

Wisdom will always stand the test of time. It is how a house is built, and it is how the temple was built. It is how you will know right from wrong… Wisdom will tell you when to be generous, and where to plant seeds.

And it will tell you when to walk away. 

Wisdom told one man to build his house on the rock when his neighbor was building it on the sand.

Wisdom told Isaac to sow in a time of terrible famine… and in the same year he saw a 100 fold return (Gen 26:12) THE SAME YEAR!

Wisdom told him to invest in the land when everybody was saying to sell… it told him to dig wells when the Philistines were coming behind him plugging them. 

Wisdom saw something that others don't see. 

If you are here in this place and you are wondering… “God, where am I going?” 

What is even happening?

What should I do differently?

Do I buy this house? Do I move into this neighborhood? Do I start this ministry? Do I do this program?

Do I go to college? Do I go into ministry? 

Seek wisdom. Ask the Holy Spirit to give this too you. It will launch you to new levels in your life. You will learn how to treat people, and how to manage people, and how to handle people. 

It will help us... 

to know if we should buy the intern house the first year or rent it… it will help us to know what buildings will get us in over our heads too soon and what projects we can manage. It will help us see what others don't see. 

It will show us where our faith can take us and it help us discern what a closed door truly looks like. 

Spiritual understanding will help you discern peoples motives. 

It will help you discern peoples hearts and it will help you cultivate yours in such a way that you can best and most effectively serve the people that Jesus has given you to serve. 

Lastly, 

James 3:17 describes what Godly wisdom actually looks like, and its amazing. “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”

All matters of the heart. 

if that doesn’t sound like a heart shift, then I don’t know what is. 

Wisdom is what we are missing when we don't treat people right, when we fly off the cuff… wisdom is what we are missing when we wage war or show favoritism. 

It is impossible to say someone has true wisdom if they don’t have these attributes:

Pure.

Peaceable. 

Gentle.

Open to reason.

Full of mercy.

Full of good fruits.

Impartial.

And sincerity.

We must earnestly seek these things. 

and with our minds already more clear from fasting… and with our hearts hopefully more focused than ever, lets pray this prayer over our lives and over our families and over our church today.

“Give us wisdom to discern right from wrong, and an understanding mind as we move into what you have for us for 2016.” 

The Lord's Prayer

 There is the moment in the scriptures, in the gospel of Luke (chapter 11) when the disciples of Jesus see him praying in a “certain place” and so they ask him, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” 

“John the baptist taught his disciples to pray, will you teach us?”

Which is telling in and of itself, 

to the truth that prayer is not necessarily EASY for people…is not necessarily something that comes naturally to people. 

Even Jesus’ own disciples, who spent every waking moment with Jesus, walking with him, talking with him, watching him, gleaning off of him.

I mean, They must have heard him pray a thousand times. 

How many moments were there before this in which they had watched him pray and had the opportunity to ask and learn from him… But when it came time for them to do it, they still felt inadequate, 

so they ask Jesus a very human question. 

A timeless question that is still just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. 

“How do you pray?”

and so Jesus gives us what we know now as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Its the same prayer that we read about in the sermon on the mount, when he first directs us that when we pray, it should be in secret. 

It should be in a quiet place where nobody else can hear you - Jesus says “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to stand in the synagogues and pray loud prayers on street corners so that the public can see them… 

and pat them on the back. 

Jesus says that when you pray, you should go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your Father. 

The Lord’s prayer, unlike the prayer of faith that we learned about last week, is a private prayer. 

But not only is it a private prayer. It is a very specific prayer. 

It is not a long prayer. 

It is not a prayer filled with empty phrases that don’t mean anything to God. It is a prayer of a very few words, and those words are:

Our Father who art in heaven

Hallowed by thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread

and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. 

First of all, 

this prayer seems like a distant prayer to distant God who is off in some far away place… 

And for many who hear the term “Father,” all you want to do is run as far away as you can. 

Because if this Father is anything like your Father, then you want nothing to do with him… 

Some of us have had great dads, and if that is you there is probably nobody you would rather be your personal image of the face of God than your father.

but a lot of peoples image of a Father is, at best, 

a distant one. 

A person who was never around, or who didn’t take care of them. 

But Fathers like that are Fathers who did not do their job. A Father’s job is take care of his children. The word Father means supplier. It means the one who will provide everything that you have need of. 

And I always loved how the language was plural. Our Father. 

This is a private prayer but it is a petition on behalf of a community as much as it is on behalf of yourself. 

“God. TAKE CARE OF US. God TAKE CARE OF ME. I know that it is in your nature because that is the nature of a Father.” 

and in those days even moreso than today, the Father’s job is to provide for the whole family. 

Jesus is making a very clear distinction here… His Father will provide. 

and when it comes to his Father… you can go him with anything. 

and then it says who art in heaven… 

and we have talked about this a couple of times on Sunday’s. But at first glance —- “our Father who art in heaven” sounds, at best, like a deadbeat dad who lives in a trailer park in the South somewhere, hardly ever visits, and sends a child support check once in a while when he gets his SSI. 

He is there. 

We are here. 

We get some of him, sometimes. 

But are always left wishing for more.

But the word for heaven is actually the Greek word ouranos (uw ron ase) and it can actually be translated as “air.” 

The most valuable commodity in all of the world… the one thing that we all rely on every single day… the one thing that has never not come through for planet earth.

The thing that is in every room with you, every moment you are alive. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.”

Hallowed by thy name. 

Hallowed is the Greek word “hagiazō” (hag-e-ots-o) and means to render or acknowledge something. 

Philippians 2:9 says that “He is the name above all names” and when you hallow his name you acknowledge his power. 

You acknowledge, “God, there is no other name above yours. and you are all that I need.” 

Now, the Greek word for name is “onoma” (on-a-ma) and this word is powerful. Pastor Brad in New York taught me this. Essentially, the word means “power of attorney.” 

It means that everything God is, you have access too. 

Which becomes the most powerful statement in the world when you realize that God literally holds the entire world in his hands.

Are there needs in this place? Are any of you sick? Are any of you going through something emotionally right now that you can’t seem to manage?

Are any of you uncertain of the future? Of what is next? 

Certainty is in the name. 

No, we do not know what tomorrow holds but we do know that God holds it. 

and that is powerful. 

There is healing in the name. 

Acts 3:16 tells us that healing comes in the name of Jesus, and faith in that name. 

You have “the power of attorney” - and it is in God’s name.

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name.”

Your Kingdom come your will be done.

This line speaks of something, of infinite importance. 

Something that we will do a series on one day, and that is the Kingdom of God. 

A lot of people minimize salvation down to a “get out of jail free” card… a one time decision that flips the switch from darkness to light and that changes the course of your eternity forever…

and it does. If you give your heart to Jesus, he will do those things for you. 

He wants to share eternity with you. 

But if you minimize your salvation to an experience then you will miss the bigger picture of all of your life and of God’s mission for the church. 

And of your roll in that mission.

Everything about what Jesus came to do was for the purpose of establishing a Kingdom. 

A Kingdom right here and now, that is different from the one that we are experiencing when we aren’t walking with him. 

This prayer re-centers us on our purpose by taking our minds off of the cares of this earthly kingdom, like our relationship problems and our financial problems and the things that we can’t solve in our own strength or with our physical paycheck. 

It reminds us that we truly are citizens of a different kingdom, with a different currency. 

“Bring that Kingdom to earth through me today, God.”

And then he says:

“On earth as it is in heaven.”

and this is powerful.

You see, there is already a Kingdom established, and its beautiful. And it functions at the highest capacity imaginable and it is good. 

What we are saying when we saying “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN” is we are saying:

“God, let our lives be the image of the invisible here on earth.”

Let our daily lives be a reflection of what your Kingdom looks like already.

Its an amazing concept of self-evaluation. 

You look at your life, and your schedule, and your routines and your habits and you ask yourself “Which of these things are as they should be?” 

“What areas of my life truly reflect the God that I claim to serve?”

Or am I living in my own kingdom, and abiding by my own rules, and hoping to glean the benefits of the Kingdom of God?

If you want the benefits, then you have to accept the citizenship… and if you accept the citizenship, then you have to follow the constitution. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom.”

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

Now remember, everyone in that culture knew the Torah. 

They knew all about daily bread, because Moses wrote about it. 

When the Israelites were wandering for 40 years, each and every day God gave them daily bread, and it was exactly what they needed for that day. 

but every time they tried to store up more, it went bad… 

Because God was trying to teach them something. 

“I will take care of you.” 

and the moment that they tried to take care of themselves and take matters into their own hands, the process became cursed, the bread went bad, and they wasted all that time and effort trying to do something in their own strength that God promised to do in his. 

You can’t depend on God and depend on yourself all at the same time, and if you constantly are trying to get to a higher and higher place then you are showing God all of the reasons that you don’t need him, and making yourself impossible to work through. 

Its like what Proverbs 30:8 says:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches; lest I be full and deny you and say “Who is the Lord?”

Give us this day our daily bread is literally saying, 

“God, we trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength.”

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Grace matters when you are praying.

There is a moment in Hebrews (4:16) when the writer tells us that “with confidence we should boldly approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy.” 

We should be able to go the God in prayer confidently expecting the grace that we do not deserve, because of two things. 

1. The first reason is simply because it is part of the nature and character of God to forgive. To be gracious. To grant us new mercies every single day. But it is impossible to boldly approach the throne of grace if you have not done the second thing… 
2. and that is show grace. 

Grace is the apex of the Christian faith. 

Without it we are nothing and because of it, nothing in our lives should ever be the same again. 

Including our character. 

If we truly are becoming more and more like Jesus every single day, then we should be becoming more gracious. 

and I can’t speak for everybody, but I would have a really hard time boldly approaching the throne of grace if I didn’t work my hardest to live graciously toward others… offering grace at every opportunity… erring on the side of grace in all circumstances. 

It is like when Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 (21-35)

His disciples ask him, how many times should we forgive our brother who has sinned against me? Up to seven times? 

and Jesus tells them, “not seven times, but seventy times seven, and all on the same day.” 

and then he compares the Kingdom of heaven, that same kingdom that we are told to pray daily that it will come to earth… he compares the Kingdom of heaven to a king who wished to settle all of his accounts… 

and one of the ones that he wanted to settle up with pleaded with him because there was no way that he could ever pay the amount that he was owed so instead the King graciously forgave him of that debt after the man fell on his knees and begged. 

But then that servant went out and found one of his servants who owed him far less, and he had the man thrown in prison because he could not pay. 

of course, when the King found out about what had happened, he was furious, and he too had the first man thrown into prison until he could pay back every penny. 

but what is chilling about this is that Jesus ends this parable by saying this: 

“So also will my heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” 

We should have a heart that can approach the throne of grace boldly knowing that we have modeled the same grace that we are expecting. 

Jesus doesn’t ask us to be perfect, but he absolutely demands that we be gracious toward one another. 

Being gracious toward each other, and bolding approaching the throne of grace, are the only two things standing between us and God. 

Forgive each other. 

In fact when Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 (5-13), he ends it by saying “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

It all rides on this one. 

Forgive each other.

Every single time. 

Don’t harbor it or hold it in your heart. 

Bitterness truly is one thing that could cost you eternity and I know that sounds harsh but its completely biblical. 

it is worst than most things. 

and it will certainly hinder your prayers here on earth. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us.”

“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

You are simply saying - “Guide my steps Jesus.” 

“God you know everything. Every right turn and every wrong turn. Give me the wisdom to know right from wrong, help me to steer clear of the problem areas of my life… 

“and deliver me from my sinful nature.”

What this is saying is “Lord, give me “self control,” that my flesh would not have dominion over me.” 

We all know what our struggles are… and this part of the prayer is asking God to help us overcome the problem areas in our lives… the areas we struggle in… deliver us from those areas. 

“Our supplier, who is as close to me as the air that I breathe.

We acknowledge that you are the name above all names, and that you have given us all power in your name. Let my life on this earth be a reflection of your perfect and eternal Kingdom. We trust you to take care of us, lest we fall into the lie of our own strength. Forgive us of the times that we have wronged you, as we forgive others for every wrong thing that they have done against us. Guide my steps, that I may walk in the light, and deliver me from my sinful nature and my sinful desires.”

That is the Jacob translation. 

pieced together from things that I have been taught and have read over the years by people who are far smarter than I am. 

Now…

The thing that is so incredible about this prayer, is it teaches us a lot about what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

And its so simple.

We rely on God, trusting that he is totally dependable, that there is more power in his name than any power on in this broken world… 

We live our lives outwardly, 

looking out for others and trusting that God will take care of us. 

We don’t seek to climb ladders and rankings and gain power, instead, we trust that we have all the power that we need in Jesus name… 

and we trust he gives us what is right for us. 

We don’t desire wealth, nor do we desire poverty. Instead, we desire God’s best for us so that we can move the gospel forward without getting distracted by our stuff.

Wealth can be an asset until it becomes an obsession. 

“God, give me only as much as will further your mission without distracting me from it.” 

But its important, even with money, to trust, “God gave me all of this. Its all his. I didn’t do anything.”

And then grace. 

We show it. 

We get it. 

and it is the currency of the Kingdom of God. 

It is what keeps us from evil, and from falling into bitterness, and other very dark places in life. 

This prayer truly does show us the best way to live, 

by showing us to ask God to give us a simple, kingdom minded life. 

The Prayer of Faith

 We are in a time of prayer and fasting. 21 days of creating space for God to speak to us. 21 days of clarity in hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. 21 days that I believe will equip us for the rest of this year. If you haven’t begun to fast, I encourage you all to pray about it and to really do it. I promise you that when you come out of it, you will be better than you are when you started. 

We also want to remind you guys to be keeping your dream journals. As you are praying, write down the things you are praying for, write down the what God is speaking to you. This is not about naming it and claiming it or anything weird like that. This is about convincing yourself of the truth that these things are within your grasp. I am praying for a building of some sort that we can initially house a group of interns going through a discipleship process with us for… knowing that something like that would be the first piece of a much bigger picture. And so I visualize that in my journal, not because pasting a house into a notebook means that I am going to get that house, but because it shows me that this is actually tangible. And if God is big enough to give whoever owned the house before us the house, then he is big enough to give it to us now so we can use it for his kingdom. 

Margie has this absolutely incredible dream for a community soccer field and community garden right around the corner from here. Its such a beautiful dream and she has been not only taking pictures and praying about it, but she is crunching numbers, she is figuring out what it is going to take to do this… That is what dream journaling does for me. It motivates me. I see the things that I am praying for, and it reminds me that as impossible and far away as these things seem, they are not to big for God and they are things that other people have done, so why on earth could I not do it? 

I just felt like I needed to clarify that as we are all working together towards a better Detroit, where the gospel is more evident than it ever has been. The bible says to write the vision down and to make it known.. so that he who reads it may run! if it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. (Hab. 2:2)

But I don’t know what is harder. Fasting, or prayer? Fasting obviously takes a much larger toll on your body and takes an incredible amount of self-discipline… but truthfully, for me, I think prayer takes even more self discipline. I can deprive myself of anything. I can go several days without eating… even if I am not fasting, if I am driven enough in a moment for something, I get irritated if I have to stop to eat. I do love food, but I also like to focus. But its very hard for me to focus on prayer. Probably because I prefer to be doing things, tangible things, that I can see the immediate result of. 

But I have seen the long term effects of my prayers, and I have seen the long term effects of my “lack of” praying. 

One is beautiful, and the other is very dark. 

I think that for a lot of us, even though we come to Equip, and we pray for an hour in this reverent place, there is something in the back of our minds that wonders, “Does this actually work?” 

I know I am guilty of that. There is a couple in Lansing that when Dawn and I first got married, they really reached out to us and in several ways mentored us and helped us learn about production and tech and all of the things that we really did for the last 8 years almost full time. I remember before we moved to California, they bought us a new laptop to take with us. I remember the day they gave it to us, the smiles on their faces to be doing something so kind for a couple of just married kids who had absolutely nothing. 

Their names are Jeremy and Val. And Val had her entire life battled cystic fibrosis. Her brother and her both had it, and her brother ended up passing away in 2011 when he was 25 years old… and we said so many prayers for this kid, and for their family. 

And for the last ten years Dawn and I have joined with their family praying for Val, for a miracle. We have attended prayer meetings essentially called around healing for Val. I remember time after time, with everyone gathered around her, putting their hands on her, praying and praying for this miracle that only Jesus can provide. I remember conversations we had with them about how they wanted kids, but the doctors said there was no way she could handle it. But they were so optimistic that they would one day have kids. I think Dawn at one point even told me, “I would be willing to carry a baby for them if it meant they could have one.” That was just how much they meant to us. 

A few years ago, her lungs basically completely gave out, and so everyone prayed and rallied, and she got put on a list for a lung transplant but it was very uncertain if she would get it. But by the grace of God she did. I remember that day well. Hearing that they were on their way to the hospital, and praying for the transplant because her body was so frail from the disease that it was very risky but everything went amazing. And they added an unknown amount of years to her life because of it. It was one of the biggest answers to prayer I have ever seen. 

Over Christmas, their family went down South for a vacation and when they were in Georgia they got into a car accident. All of them walked away from the accident shook up, but Val had to go to the hospital because her body was already more frail so the damages were much greater to her body. Right away, the word got out, and people began to pray for her like all the other times that she was in the hospital. It had kind of been her second home her whole life, every couple of months she was in the hospital for a month or so, so I didn’t think too much of it.

But on Tuesday, while we were roasting coffee, I got a text that Val had died. From complications of a mix of her cystic fibrosis coupled with the car accident that their family had been in. 

Man that news just crushed me. I told Zach and Chris, “I don't know how I am going to tell Dawn this” - it was just a big blow. 

You pray for someone for years and years and years and years and years and then suddenly something like this happens and you start to wonder “God were you hearing any of this?” “Does any of this actually do anything?”

and you forget about how your prayers guided Val to live more than 20 years past the life expectancy of someone with her condition. And you forget about how your prayers saw her through hospital visit after hospital visit… you forget how your prayers saw her through a lung transplant that added even more years to her life. 

And it is easy to not see the way that God is working through our prayers because he is not working the way that we think that he should be.  As if there is a formula for the way that God has to respond to our every wish in exactly our timing and in exactly the way that we think it should be. 

So… For each of these three weeks, we are going to look at prayers in the bible. Today we are going to look at “The Prayer of Faith” found in James 5:13-16.

“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

First of all, notice what it says at the beginning. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.”

Prayer is so much more than requests. Its first and foremost an acknowledge of the glory of God. It praises right off the bat… “You are God, and I am not.” So many of us get into this routine where prayer becomes our battlecry and praise gets left out of the equation entirely. We go to God when we need something. When we need more money or we need healing or we need a circumstance to get better. But more than any of those things it is the utmost sign that you are in relationship with Jesus. You go to him when you are hurting, and you delight in him when you are happy. 

There is a time for everything, and Jesus wants to go with you through all of those times. 

Next, this passage couples prayer with repentance. Because they go hand in hand. It says that if you are sick, confess your sins, and you will be healed. 

Here is another thing that I love about this prayer. It is about praying for each other. Its a community effort, its about coming together and the power of people coming together… coming to the church and letting the elders pray for that person. The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Pray for one another. 

Prayer matters. 

Timothy Keller wrote this amazing book on prayer, and I love what it says right on the back of the book. Its powerful. It says: 

“Prayer is the only entry way into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change - the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.

We must learn to pray. We have to.” 

My favorite line in this quote just emphasis’s what I just said… “the way we finally treat God as God.” If you pray for something and it happens, you aren’t going to think “I did that!” 

No! You know that God did that. You asked for it and it happened.  But what about when it doesn’t happen? 

Because James calls this prayer that he gives us, a “prayer of faith” - 

Faith is a very tricky word, one that we have been dealing with in the series we have been doing on Sundays. 

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” 

But a lot of people teach this, and its very hard to fathom. This flawed idea is that if you pray for someone, then there is no room for doubt. And that even the slightest shadow of doubt cast in your conscience of your prayer, will hinder it. 

And if you pray for something, and it doesn’t happen, then it must be because you don’t have faith.

But that myth is completely shattered by what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:11-13:

“The saying is trustworthy, for: 

        If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 

    12     if we endure, we will also reign with him; 

        if we deny him, he also will deny us; 

    13     if we are faithless, he remains faithful— 

for he cannot deny himself.”

Catch this. If we deny him, he deny’s us. Because that is the justice side of God. He can’t accept someone who has denied him until they accept him. But if we don’t have faith, he still does… because that is the mercy side of God. He can’t not be faithful. 

This is an example in Mark 9, when Jesus heals the boy with an unclean spirit. This kid is foaming at the mouth and convulsing on the floor, and when Jesus asks the boy’s Father “how long has this been going on?” The man tells him that it has happened since the boy was very young. This kid would throw himself in bodies of water, he would throw himself in fires, it was a very destructive demon! And so the Father says to Jesus, (v22) “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus responds by saying “IF? Don’t you know that anything is possible for the one who believes?” He is asking this Father, “Do you have faith? Do you believe?” and its so interesting how the man responds. He says “I believe! Help me with my unbelief!” (v24)

Basically the man was saying, I do believe, but sometimes I doubt. We have been living in these dire circumstances for so long, my kid has almost killed himself time after time after time. sometimes I wonder! I want to believe that it will be different, but sometimes I doubt. Help me with that doubt!

That was enough for Jesus. This man who believed and unbelieved all at the same time was enough to get Jesus to move on his behalf. He healed the boy and then told his disciples that the type of demon they were dealing with can not be driven out by anything but prayer. 

Prayer matters. It can do anything. It is more powerful than your doubts. It is more powerful than anything we try and get control of. 

But it is not a get out of jail free card for anyone who asks for anything. Its not. At one point James even says, “you don’t get what you ask for because you ask selfishly.” 

The idea is, “we don’t really know how to ask.” That is why we do things like fast… so that we can have a clarity that we have lacked for so long because of the toxins in our bodies that cloud our minds, or the toxic garbage we put in our heads with our media when we let that junk tell us who we are instead of what the bible and the Holy Spirit tells us. 

That is why we are fasting so intensely for 21 days to start off the year. Because we want to have to best year we have ever had. A year filled with faith goals and God sized dreams. Don’t miss this next point: We don’t want to be grounded in reality when it comes to our prayer lives, but we do want to be grounded in truth. And the truth is, God hears our petitions, and he partners with our dreams, but he does it in his way, and he does it in his timing. Thats what Hab. 2:2 tells us.. make the dream known, but then have patience… because God’s timing is perfect. He sees the things that we don’t see, and he knows the things that we don’t know. 

I love how “The Prayer of Faith” ends, by saying:

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

A righteous person understands the heart of God, and understands just like James 4:14 says, “we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”

Guys our lives are vapor. They are here today, and gone tomorrow. And there is literally no better way to live the fullest life than to pray to God with a clear conscience and a clear mind, and to hear from him so that you know the best way to spend those days.” 

I want to give you another Tim Keller quote as I begin to wrap this up… this one is from one of his sermons, he inspired a lot of these thoughts and its helped me a lot this week. He says this: “God will either give you what you ask, or he will give you what would have asked for if you knew everything he knows.” 

And though we will never be God and we will never fully know all that he knows, like we said Sunday, heaven is ALWAYS moving… and when we fast, we get clarity and space in our spirit where we are genuinely ready to hear from God about how he is moving… its almost like as we fast and pray, we begin to learn how we should pray, because we will understand the heart of God more and more. He knows what is best for Detroit. He knows what is best for Southwest Detroit, and our neighborhood, and for the field around the corner, and for the discipleship program we want to start. He knows what house we need, or what apartment we need… He knows what is best for Courage Church, and Mount Hope Church, and my family and your family and for the family that maybe feels like they have lost a lifelong spiritual battle as their final prayer seemed to go unanswered and they have to now bury a child for the second time. But like James 4:6 says, “God gives more grace.” 

I want to show you this post that Val’s mom posted on her Facebook timeline the day she died, because it is beautiful:

“The news is bittersweet. Val Masterson Leonard is dancing and rejoicing with Daniel Bat Masterson. I’m so going to miss her… But she is perfectly healed now. She is in my heart forever, and in my future. Eternity in heaven is a wonderful promise. We made it through this storm clothed in God’s peace. He is forever faithful.” 

And until you can position your life with the understanding that God is always faithful, you won’t understand everything that happens. You won’t understand why some things work out, and some things don’t. Why some prayers get answered so clearly, and others seem to be ignored. 

Prayer is about establishing a secure relationship with Jesus. It is what will now cover and comfort this family in its darkest hour. It is a shield of hope when your whole world feels lost, and its breathe into your dreams when it feels like they are dying. We need it in our world more than ever, and we need it in our church more than ever. 

And here is the last thought. We made the point earlier that this prayer is what is called “The Prayer of Faith,” and that one thing that makes it different from some of the others prayers in the bible, like “The Lord’s prayer” which we will study next week, is it is also specific for how we are supposed to pray for each other. For some, this comes naturally, for others, it comes a little harder. I resonated with what Tim Keller said at the very start of his book. 

He starts his book on prayer that I told you about in the first message, by telling a very revealing story and unfortunately it resonates with me greatly now. In fact, I have heard numerous stories from other pastors who struggle with the exact same thing that he talks about, and after first speaking this message had more pastors come up to me and share that they struggle with the exact same issue. He tells a story about how in 1999, which was TEN YEARS after they had founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City… so he was already lead pastor for ten years when this happened… His wife came to him and said to him, “We are not going to make it, if we don’t start praying together.” 

He records her saying this: “Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine - a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? NO - it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all that we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t just let it slip our minds.” 

He had been a pastor for ten years and he didn’t pray regularly with his wife. He prayed for others, but they didn’t develop that time together until 1999. 

That is me… even now. Its easier to admit it when its a testimony, its harder to say when you are walking through it. 

Its very hard for me to pray with my wife. 

I pray for her in my quiet time, I pray for her throughout the day often… but we don’t really sit down and pray together. She asked me today, “Do you even pray for me? Because you don’t ever pray with me.” and I told her that praying with her is one of the hardest things in the whole world for me. I said that I feel like she would just “see right through me” because she knows all the reasons why I probably am not qualified to do anything like pray for her. She knows how much of a jerk I can be and she lives with my bad side more than anyone who sees me on a Sunday or who I pray with on a Sunday or at Equip. 

And I think that is a common problem with people.  A lot of people struggle praying with people who they live so much life with, for various reasons but I think that the biggest reason is that the people who see who you are when the door is closed, when you are under the most stress and pressure, and in your best and worst environments, know that you are just as screwed up as they are. And most people want people praying for them who aren’t as screwed up as they are. 

Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am just as screwed up as any of you… But do you think that when life hits someone, like the way that the Leonard and the Masterson family got hit this week… 

that they are not going to accept your comfort and your love and your prayers of compassion because of what you did on Saturday night? 

No. People in those moments need your prayers.

Prayer is about connecting to God’s heart, and God’s heart is for people. And that makes the “Prayer of Faith” in James so special.

Because it tells us how we are supposed to do this, with each other. We are supposed to anoint one another. We are supposed to pray OVER each other… we are supposed to confess our sins to each other. 

So today, as you write in your dream journals and you pray, take some time to find someone else and pray together. Remember, the prayer of faith will save someone who is sick… We need each others prayers. And we need to be praying for each other. So we are going to take the rest of the time, and pray for our dreams, our families, our lives, and our church… but make sure you pray with someone else. 

Pray for someone else dreams, and family, and life. Do it all.