Restless Ones - Pueblo Incense House of Prayer
A production of the Pueblo Incense House of Prayer. Our mission is to help normal believers sustain a life of worship and prayer by exploring what the scriptures say about the urgency of the hour we live in as well as how to grow in intimacy with God.
Restless Ones - Pueblo Incense House of Prayer
Conversation: Living The Apostolic Prayer Pattern
In this episode of The Restless Ones podcast, Brennan and Zach dive deep into the relationship between prayer and kingdom effectiveness. Following their teaching on "Living the Apostolic Prayer Pattern: Power, Purpose, and Partnership in Prayer," they explore whether fruitful kingdom work is even possible without prayer backing it.
The conversation covers several key themes:
Prayer as Alignment, Not Just Results - Rather than viewing prayer as a formula for bigger numbers or guaranteed outcomes, they discuss how prayer aligns us with God's definition of success, which often looks radically different from worldly metrics.
Prayer as Relationship - Moving beyond the "gas station" approach to prayer, they explore how consistent communication with God builds genuine friendship and intimacy, arguing that you can't truly be a Christian without an active prayer life.
Corporate Prayer and Community - Using Paul's call to "strive together in prayer" as a launching point, they examine how praying for others binds the body of Christ together in love and creates shared investment in each other's victories and struggles.
Prayer as Refuge - Drawing from 1 Peter 4:7, they discuss how prayer serves as an anchor during chaotic times, providing a "taste of Eden" and helping believers process anxiety and overwhelming circumstances in light of God's sovereignty.
Practical Prayer - They share stories from their Kingdom Connections ministry, emphasizing the power of specific, measurable prayer requests and the importance of tracking God's answers to build faith.
Throughout the episode, Brennan and Zach maintain their characteristic conversational style, complete with tangents about dogs, Gen Z slang mishaps, and their love of alliteration, while wrestling with profound questions about prayer's role in the Christian life.
Welcome to the Restless Ones podcast. We are back.
SPEAKER_01:We're back again.
SPEAKER_03:Brennan and Zach here.
SPEAKER_01:Come on.
SPEAKER_03:And we are in the uh studio, we'll call it. Um recording another podcast. The multi-purpose room. That's right. Serves a number of purposes, aka all the purposes. But we love it. We love it for that. Yep. Uh yeah, we're back. If this is the first podcast you're listening to where we're talking directly at you, welcome. We're starting something new here. Uh we have done a lot of teachings in the past. You can scroll down on your phone if you don't know how to do that, and you'll find all kinds of teachings from the House of Prayer. But we're starting a new format where the teachings will be given directly to the podcast, and then we're going to do a discussion around that teaching afterwards. So if you haven't listened to the teaching for this podcast discussion, I would encourage you to do that. Uh, the teaching's titled, I'm guessing it's titled the same in podcasts, uh, Living the Apostolic Prayer Pattern: Power, Purpose, and Partnership in Prayer. Say that seven times fast. You're not gonna be able to guess as we talk that we like alliteration. Right. Me and Zach are very quiet and hidden about that. You'll have no idea. But today, that's what we're talking about. So here we are. Here we are. We're gonna just jump in, uh, kind of use the first paragraph as a launching point, and then goodness knows where we'll go after that. Uh, we talked about talking about the Nephilim potentially, but I doubt we'll get there. You never know. Uh so paragraph one, uh the notes will likely be linked below, maybe depending on where you're at. Don't know how that works. But Roman numeral one, paragraph A, talks about prayer as a catalyst for kingdom influence. So prayer as it affects the kingdom and what we do, not necessarily talking about right here prayer for ourselves, but rather praying for others and how that affects um kingdom work. And I think as I listened to the podcast, Zach, that teaching you gave, the question that hit me was do you think, as we're talking about, you know, we accomplish kingdom work and we do it with prayer backing it, prayer makes it effective, prayer makes it fruitful. Do you think it's possible to be fruitful at all in kingdom work apart from prayer? Like, if there is no prayer, can we even be fruitful at all? Or is prayer the only means towards fruit?
SPEAKER_01:Such a good, good question. And I think, you know, think of verses like, apart from me, you can do nothing. Like, I think of those realities, but then I think about what I've seen and how some people do totally bear fruit when they just go for it without prayer. I mean, even when you think of maybe believers that are working in a marketplace job, and maybe they're not always praying about their business or those sort of things, there's definitely some sort of fruit that comes. And I don't I don't know exactly if I would say that um you can't bear any fruit apart from prayer. I think that God is really good, and he can use even our our weakest yes to what he's asked him to do to bear some type of fruit. But I think that when you connect the reality of prayer and kingdom work, I think the the fruit is obvious. Like maybe, maybe we do bear fruit in the sense of it's like one fruit, like one apple that we bear, and it took us 10 years to bear that sort of apple. But if we were laboring in prayer beforehand, and whatever that kingdom work might be, if it's a like we're talking to uh a business owner, or maybe it's missions work or some sort of ministry or where whatever it might be, your teacher in a classroom, or maybe if we prayed and kind of birthed whatever work that is in prayer, I'm convinced that we would we would see a a measurable difference from fruit in fruit that's being buried.
SPEAKER_03:I think that makes sense. I mean, I feel like I've seen that in my life, just on a personal level, of where if I'm trying to do all these things and get stuff done, like it works okay, but there's little problems and stuff that arise that I've got to solve and all of that stuff. But when I choose to slow down and just bathe my life in prayer, focus on my relationship with God and loving others, loving him, just kind of put the priorities in their proper spot, honestly. Yeah, then there's like a I always just call it grace, God's grace, of like the little details that could go wrong somehow go right. And it's like I don't have to worry about all of the details and the fine print of, well, we got to cover this, I got to cover that. I can walk into something and go, well, probably not everything's solved, but then as we go throughout it, it's like, oh, oh, well, got God worked that out. Oh, yeah, God worked that out. And I think I don't think we can make a hard, rigid line, like you're saying, about even that of, you know, you pray and that will happen every time. I don't think that's that's true either. It's a relationship. But I think there's something to be said to that of the increase in effectiveness and fruitfulness when we choose to put prayer first. And in that sense, you're really just putting God first. Yeah. When you put prayer first, because it's building a relationship with Him in prayer.
SPEAKER_01:I think of it like Proverbs 3. Like maybe prayer is really what is straightening the path and giving us a more direct um lane toward whatever that kingdom work is or that kingdom endeavor might be. You know, it's easy to lean on our we can get rather far in our own understanding, like we can accomplish some things. Like God made us to be some pretty awesome people. But when you think of Proverbs 3, leaning not on your own understanding, I think we see the straightening of the path happen. And I I wonder how how many times I've done something where my path has been so crooked, or there's been the oh, I've got to take the detour, gotta take the long way, that simply taking 10 minutes and praying, Lord, how do I do this? How do I approach this? Like, what's your strategy in this, in, in this work? If I would have prayed, how much straighter could that path have been? What could have God have done if I just came into agreement with with him?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I wonder too if a lot of it affects like how we define success.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because you could look at, you know, take Alexander the Great as an example, right? Took over pretty much the whole known world, but devoid of prayer. Um and so you could say in one sense he was successful, but then I guess the question is what is real success? Yeah. If we want to be effective in kingdom influence, right, maybe you could get numbers of people without prayer, but maybe not in the way God wants. Yeah. So I almost feel like that's more the key to prayer, isn't necessarily that it's like the secret sauce that's gonna just boost your ministry numbers and the output and all of that, but rather it's the alignment. I love talking about alignment here. Threw my back out of alignment yesterday. We love it. So but I I wonder if that's it of like prayer isn't it's not the secret sauce, but it's what brings us into alignment with what God wants. Yeah. And then we're effective in his eyes, maybe not necessarily in the eyes of the world, sure, but in in his mind.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. I mean, that's the way of the kingdom. We we went through Sermon on the Mount earlier this year, and I think I was even talking about this on another podcast I was on a couple days ago, and was talking about how like victory for Jesus looked like him dying on a cross. Like, we wouldn't look at that and be like, oh yeah, that he won. Like he did it. Right. Like at first, it was like, oh, this God's plan for success looks wildly different than what we ideally think it is. And like Sermon on the Mount lifestyle, so like, blessed are the poor in spirit. You're like, Are you kidding me? Like the kingdom always feels so upside down. So that's such a good point because maybe that's part of the the the prayer process is as we're bringing whatever it is the Lord has asked us to do and asking him for help in between, he's helping shake off some of that metric for success that's the more defined by culture, or maybe our own selfish ambition, and uh helps us to see the kingdom his way and walk in it.
SPEAKER_03:I know as we pray aligned prayers, we take like a 15-minute portion of every prayer meeting, and we take like a Bible verse and we pray it over ourselves and those in the room, just kind of aligning ourselves with the commands of scripture. And I know so often the theme seems to keep coming back to like we want to do it God's way, not the world's way. Yeah, right. Because so often scripture is completely at odds with what our culture says, with how the world does it. And so, yeah, I feel like a lot of the effectiveness that probably comes from prayer is that it's that we've aligned with what God says is success, what God desires, rather than what the world pushes us towards.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's good.
SPEAKER_03:I think, although another question that would come to mind then is let's say I'm praying, I own a business, or you know, am an employee in a business or whatever, you know, I'm I'm working towards something, could be a business, could be a ministry. Um, how much prayer would you say is enough? Prayer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:How much do I have to pray to see this effectiveness, to see the kingdom influence work or to be aligned with God's purposes? Like, how much prayer is enough?
SPEAKER_01:That's another good question. I think you should pray always.
SPEAKER_03:I think that there's Zach said just go 24-7.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just go 24-7 on your own. Do your do it. Don't ever stop. Never. Well, even like, you know, I talked about it in the teaching. Like Paul says, like, pray without ceasing. This is the will of God for your life. You're like, whoa, whoa, hold on. That's in that's in planet Earth, bro. Come on, Paul. You're not even doing that. Hey, you're literally writing. You're literally writing right now. Doesn't count.
SPEAKER_03:Got him.
SPEAKER_01:So I think there's something to be said about continual prayer. Um, and that sort of manifests in different ways. Like um, sometimes it's prayer of like, we're requesting something from you, God. I've got this issue at work or with this person, and I'm like, Lord, what do I do? And then he gives a strategy in in that process of asking him for wisdom. And then when we get on the other side of it, I think part of it is like I'm praising him for what he's done. Like, Lord, you really helped me through that. Thank you. Thank you. Can you help me learn the lessons for next time? And then there's like preparation. So I I don't think I perceive it as like, okay, we we pray this amount. We meet the threshold, we're good. We've done our prayer for the day, um, we've done our prayer for the week, we've met the numbers for the month, and um, we're good. Things should flow smoothly in the business. I really think that, you know, with the with scriptures like Paul talking about pray at all times, it just seems like this should be a continual flow, regardless of of where we're at, what we're doing, what the circumstance is. And so, how much is enough? Um, enough to get you to enjoy it. Maybe that's a good way to answer it because I think sometimes it starts very much in like, Lord, I need this. So I'm gonna keep coming back. And then before we know it, we start to encounter his heart and his character in that place of conversation, and we start to enjoy it and we come back and we have the little conversations with him. That's what maybe that's what I would say. Enough to like enjoy having the conversation with him rather than just pressing the button on the vending machine that we call God.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's real. That's a great point. I read a book on prayer, and it talked about how we treat prayer as like a gas station. We just go there to fill up and say thanks and go away, right? Like go on our merry way, living our lives. And I think even what we talked about earlier of like our effectiveness in prayer doesn't necessarily mean more numbers, bigger business or ministry, but alignment with God. Like, I feel like it's that as well in prayer. Like, our goal isn't just to take it and run, our goal is to get to know a person. Like it's so much more of a relationship. Like, yeah, again, fighting against our cultural mindset, like it's not about a mathematical logical process, right? It's not do X amount of prayer get this amount of blessing and reward, right? It's it's so much more of a relationship, a dynamic that is not black and white. Totally. It's it changes, it shifts, it's different. In some seasons, you're gonna pray and see incredible blessings with your eyes. You're gonna experience it. In other seasons, you're gonna pray and get a lot of heart. Yeah, it's it's kind of both and um, because it's all building a relationship, though. Yeah. I feel like that's more the point of it and the heart of it is like to build a relationship. And so I guess for me, like the is prayer enough? How much prayer is enough? It's probably similar to like any relationship, a friendship, right? Like, how much time should you spend with a friend? Like, how much time is enough? I mean, you could maybe put some parameters around like this is base level, you could be friends and still have this much time, but it all depends on like how much do you want to be friends? Yeah, if you want to be really good friends, spend more time together, right? That just kind of goes in hand in hand, time and friendship. And so I feel like it's similar with our walk with God. Like, how much do we want to be friends with him is gonna be reflected in how much time we spend with him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so good. I love that. I wonder if it's appropriate to compare us to dogs. Like, I think I think about so I have two dogs, and one of those dogs we got from like, you know, he was six weeks old, he was a baby, so we're kind of all he's ever known. The other one, we just happened to go to uh the dog pound one day just to look.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no.
SPEAKER_01:We just happened to go look. There was a$25 special, so we were like, if there's one we like, we'll bring him home. Oh gosh. And sure enough, there was there's a few that we really liked. We only brought home one, which was good. But when we brought him home, like he did not know us whatsoever.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so really all we were to him were strangers that were feeding him and like giving him a roof over his head. And now over time, it's been I don't know how long we've had him, it's probably six, seven, six, seven months. What? Six too old. I'm too old for that. It was not intentional, but I took the opportunity. Oh no.
SPEAKER_03:We need to cut that and make that a social media bit. Help me lord. Go viral.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna get roasted. You are gonna crash out.
unknown:Here we go.
SPEAKER_03:See, I know them, I just don't really know how to use them, and I don't know if I'm saying bad things or I knew this lady, she knew every Gen Z slang and just used it, and it was just the worst context. It was so bad. So bad.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh. So anyway, back to our story. So we brought him home. We were just people that were feeding him, and then over time, our relationship wasn't mostly, hey Gus, here's your food. It was like, no, he started to really like us and smile. I think he smiles. I don't know if Doc smile, but I think he does. And he's he loves to hang out with us and be in our presence, and he listens to us now, and he's obedient now. And like all of those little things started to happen over the time of more than just him getting what he wanted, you know, standing by the door to go outside. He was, so to speak, making those requests, but we really he's he's really become a part of our family. And uh so I think that's kind of how the journey with prayer is with with God. It might start with a crisis moment. Oh Lord, this is happening in my life. I need you to break in. And that's that's where it starts. But over time we uncover his heart and it becomes friendship, it becomes relational, conversational. It's the enjoyment part, it's the enjoyment part.
SPEAKER_03:So are we saying that prayer is like what word can we use? Required for friendship with God?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think so. I think even maybe to ask, I can't remember exactly how you asked the first question, but maybe that's a oh it related to um like kingdom work and kingdom impact.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I I think that I would say it's impossible to really have a relationship with God without prayer. Like, how do you have a relationship with somebody that you don't talk to, that you don't communicate with?
SPEAKER_03:That's a fair point. That's a really good point, actually. That that that's huge though, because I mean we all not all, but a lot of people are like, you know, Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship, right? It's all focused on relationship with Jesus. But if what we're saying is true, that you you can't have a relationship, you can't really build one without talking to someone, then we're not really doing Christianity if we're not praying. Are we saying that? It's true. It's a big that's a gutsy statement.
SPEAKER_01:I think I I would I would say so. I would say to be Christian is to pray. Ooh. I think that if we're not talking to God, and if we're not I mean, I think that that was so much of why I wanted to use this this teaching this week. Last week we were talking about the book of Acts and the Apostles in the Book of Acts and the birthing of the church. So you think, oh, obviously this is gonna they're gonna have some prayer, like they're gonna figure out what's going on, but even decades after that, like that wasn't just a flash in the pan moment where prayer was the cool thing. But no, these apostles who are writing letters to communities of faith were discipling them in prayer, saying things like pray without ceasing, like in all things, pray, saying all the verses that we talked about in the teaching. Yeah, because I think that what they were trying to do is lay the framework for this really is life in God. It's not mostly about you doing the religious routine, but this really is about a relationship. And from that relationship, I think flows, yeah, we'll we'll do we'll do the right stuff, we'll do the the right religious stuff, if you want to say that. I think when we when we have a right um friendship with Jesus. When we're drawn into friendship with him.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, come on. So, how does that work then? Like if prayers are relationship with God, uh, I think of I think you had the verse of Yeah, Romans 15. Uh Paul's saying, now I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ, by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. So how does that work? Like if we're friends with God, prayers are relationship with God, then is it a weird shortcut of some sort to have someone else praying for you? Like, because then they're going to your friend to ask your friend for things you want. Like, how does that work exactly?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's such a such an interesting dynamic. And I think what is happening in the midst of that is God is trying to draw his people together because I think so easily for us in our culture, we it's been taught so frequently. I mean, it's it's what I've known since I've even grown up. Yeah, have you asked Jesus into your heart, what's the Bible saying to you today? And there's this individualized experience that there's obviously some value to. We should have the relationship that we just spent the past few minutes talking about on an individual level. But I think God's strategy is actually to have a family more than it is to have this exclusive, unique relationship. So he's wanting to bind people together. I think he wants me to have some stock in your relationship with him through prayer. He wants me to invest in what he's doing in you. And his strategy in that is to bind us together in love, in friendship as well. So that together, when you have a win, I get to celebrate that win because I contended uh for that win to God. I I woke up, came to the prayer room, I on my drive here, prayed for you. God help Brennan get this victory, this breakthrough. He's and I get to celebrate that, but also I get to fellowship with you when things are really hard and and labor with you when when things don't go well, when your back is out of alignment and you need prayer. I'm like, oh Lord, I know that way too soon. But I can I can I can be bought in to your relationship with God as well. And I think that on the on the other side of that, we come out looking like a family and community of believers who aren't just like the hey, I see you on Sunday mornings at church and I don't really know your name or really who you are or what you're doing. Yeah, it this turns into no, we are invested in one another's lives in a meaningful way. And I think that's what the kingdom looks like. I think that it's what Jesus displayed when he was displaying the kingdom on earth. I think it's what the early church displayed. We talked about that, how it was daily rhythms. They were it wasn't just prayer they were doing, they were like eating food together and living life together. So it was it was, yeah, we need more food together daily. But I I think that that's that's the strategy of God is to say strive together in prayer, not so that that person can be your shortcut, but so that together the body of Christ would come into oneness, into into a a level of unity that we wouldn't have if we weren't praying and carrying one another's burdens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that reminds me of like the verse where it's like rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, or uh remember those in chains as though you were in chains with them, right? Like all those things where it's like you're supposed to be feeling what the rest of the body is feeling, or even that one uh what's the verse where it's like when one b part of the body's honored, the others are honored with it. Um I feel like that's that's huge because that's when you just see someone else being honored, you know, you can you want to try to get your heart in the right place to feel honored with them. But if you're praying into it, like you know, we have the kingdom connections, people that we specifically pray for and businesses and uh marketplace ministry leaders. Wow, I'm blanking it. Missionaries, there it is. We like alliterations, but I forgot our alliteration. Man, can we like cut that out and just like redo it? Redo it.
SPEAKER_01:Taste it in.
SPEAKER_03:Um, but we we pray for them and like we've seen them have breakthroughs and God move in their lives, and it's it's never for us like a oh, how come we didn't get that? Right, right. It there's never that jealousy in it, it's always wow, we got to be a part of that. We prayed that in, and now God did it. Come on, God. So I I think, yeah, what you're saying is right. Like God has set it up in such a way that we can not only have relationship with Him for ourselves, but also come to Him for the sake of others, and so that when they receive that answer to prayer, like we get to rejoice with them, we get to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I I just think that as we've you know been doing our our Kingdom Connections initiative, I think that what's what's been awesome about it and what's been successful about it, though there's been incredible answers to prayer. I mean, we could we'll do podcasts with some of those testimonies and and but I think what's awesome about it is the relationship dynamic. Yeah, like I think that God really s you know snuck us into his strategy to bind ministries together with marketplace leaders and to cause the body to work together as it should. But I think the key is the relationship. Like we are starting with relationship and ending with a stronger relationship with others in the body doing kingdom work. That's real.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I feel like I mean, I never would have known a lot of the kingdom connections people that we have, but I feel like I'm friends with them. Like Grace from Good Gracious Coffee. Yeah, like it's amazing getting to pray for her and her husband and what they're doing, and then seeing fruit, yeah, seeing the excitement of what God's doing through it, going through the struggles of generator going out and praying that through and all those sorts of things. Like it's it's been so such a blessing, honestly, for me to get to pray into what they're doing. It's really cool, and it's true, it's it binds the body together in love. So we're bringing what we're quote unquote good at, if you can be good at prayer. We just do it a lot more than vote most. Um, and so we can bring that though to the table and bless what they're doing. Yeah, because I don't know how to run good gracious coffee, couldn't do that. Totally. But I can pray for them. That's right. And I love doing that.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's what's so baffling uh about it that we've learned is really we don't have this like secret style of prayer that's getting results.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We're like awkwardly praying for these requests in community, like on the mic, like Lord, they need the new generator. So give them a good one, give them like a quiet one. Yeah. And that's like a prayer that we're rallying people around. There's nothing really special or over-spiritual about it. It's just, uh, they're struggling and in need. I wanna, I wanna feel that with them and pray for the breakthrough. And then when God does it, it's like, wow, like you just used I all the stumbling words and the weird prayers that we pray. Yeah, you God, you use that. And so I think that his concern is like way less about the metric of, yeah, did you get your hours of prayer in today? Did you did you say it the right way? He's just after like his hearts that are connecting with him and with one another.
SPEAKER_03:That's real. And I feel like even for those listening in their personal prayer lives, like I would encourage you to find people that are doing kingdom work and to pray into it. So like pick specific things that they need. If you want to talk to them and ask them, hey, what are specific things that you're looking for, specific needs that you have? Um, I think it was in the blog article that we that was written based on last week's teaching. Um, it talks about like asking prayers that kind of put you in a situation where God's either going to answer it or he's not. Yeah. Right. We can ask, you know, this generic prayers of like, God, bless good gracious coffee. He probably will, and but you really can't measure if he did or didn't. Yeah. Right. But if you say, hey, give him a new generator that's quiet, he's either going to or he's not. And it kind of puts it to the test, which is like, yikes, kind of scary. But I think God loves that because he loves to be glorified in answering those prayers and us being able to say with clarity, that was God. So it's not just in general. So I wouldn't encourage anyone listening, like, find people around you that are going after God, that are doing kingdom work, whether that's in ministry, marketplace, or a missionary. God at that time. And find specific ways that you can pray for them. Cause I know even for me, um, without even really knowing that concept, when I first started praying, I don't know where I got the idea. I think from a movie actually, uh, The War Room.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Uh, there was uh this lady who was like an intercessor in the war room, and she would write down answers to prayer. And she had like this paper with like all the memories of it. And so when I went in to pray, I was like, well, I guess I'll do that. When I get an answer to prayer, I'll write it down. And built my faith so much that I could write down this happened, this happened, this happened. And some of it's, you know, I had a headache and I prayed, and 10 minutes later it went away. Come on. Was that God? Yeah, I don't know. But it worked. So I'm gonna write it down. Right. And other ones are a whole lot more obvious of like I prayed this specific phrase for these people, and they said that specific phrase just changed in their life. Right. And I'm like, whoa, okay, that's clearly God. And so that's been so encouraging to me, as especially as I started out and throughout my prayer life, has been testifying, like, no, this God does answer prayer because I see it. Yeah, like I've got written record of he answered this, he did this, he did this. And I encourage like the broad prayers as well. Those are good, but I think there's something to specific prayers that also is is so encouraging and so helpful to our prayer lives.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, God's so not intimidated when we sort of sort of put him to the test. Like we're saying, God, we need a specific amount of money. We need this specific thing that we're asking for. So instead of just saying, Lord, would you just provide all, you know, the general look? No, we need X amount of dollars to make this thing happen, God, and we need it by next week. Can you do that? Well, when we look back after he does the work, like, I mean, he's got all the resources, he's got all the ways to make it happen. And we can look back and and point to those realities and say, that has to be God. And so that becomes a testimony that then fuels us for the next time we need X amount of dollars for X amount of things. And um, it's it's just a cool, I think it's a cool way that God uses prayer and why He answers some prayers.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like some of some of the prayers that we have prayed, even for some kingdom connections or for our own lives, like maybe they don't necessarily need some of the things, but we've prayed, they get the answer, and it becomes a testimony that displays God's power, his goodness. So um I think he's he's so ready to make his power known and his glory known and his love for his people known that he'll he'll answer the requests for even for things that we don't necessarily need.
SPEAKER_03:I almost wonder if there's a way we could do it. I can't think of a specific way, like on the podcast, if we can create pray some prayer that like next podcast, see if it happens.
SPEAKER_01:See if it happens.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. Nothing comes to mind right away.
SPEAKER_01:We would need something.
SPEAKER_03:We can think about it. Maybe by the end of the podcast we'll have something. But that would be really fun to just throw a prayer out there and see what happens. Totally. That'd be cool. Think about it. See if we can come up with something. But no, I love it. Let's see, where do we want to go from here? I really liked um if we jumped like more to the end of where you were, where you're talking about prayer, uh, second Peter, I think it is, like how prayer becomes like our anchor in the midst of chaos. Um, you're relating it to like the end of the age. And I think that's that's such a key, especially for me, um, in my own walk with the Lord, has been prayer has been something of a a safety net for me. Because I'm I'm the type of person I get so anxious and caught up in all of the world and all that's going on, and I'm just I get overwhelmed very easily. Um, and so there was actually a group of young adults, and we were talking about like, you know, why do we pray? What does prayer mean to you? Like, why do you come to the place of prayer? And my first response was to align myself emotionally.
unknown:Totally.
SPEAKER_03:Like, because maybe that's not the best reason, but it's a very practical and very real one for me because I I so often am thrown off by all the mess in the world. And for me, that's that's a lot of what prayer was at the start, and even now is my heart's just a mess. I'm churning, I'm afraid, I'm worried, I'm stressed, and all that stuff. And so I come to the place of prayer to remind myself like, okay, that's who God is. Like I remember God's in charge. He's on the throne. I start talking to him. He tells me who I am. I remember who I am to him. I'm his son. He loves me. And it'll just it aligns me. It's that word again. It aligns me with, okay, this is who I am, this is who you are. I can trust you. I can lean on you to provide. I can lean on you. And I don't have to worry about all of these things. I don't have to stress. I don't have to feel all these rough emotions. Like it, it always helps me like come back to that place of trust and dependency on him, and not with like a force myself to feel different kind of way, but uh give those emotions to God kind of way. And I think that's that's so key, especially right now with like chaos and stuff that's in the world. Like it's really easy to get caught up in all the cultural narrative of everything that's going on, and we have access to the news or literally around the entire world, which is hard to handle as humans. We only have so much bandwidth. And so I love prayer as a refuge from the chaos of the world.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. Yeah, man. I think, you know, even with what's happened in recent days with Charlie Kirk, you know, being murdered for the world to see and the response and everything that's happened, what's happened in recent years with what's going on in the Middle East, around Israel, Palestine. Like we we look at those realities, and my my hope is that most of us see those and we're like, I'm overwhelmed. Like I I am I'm that's not right. Like things are not okay, yeah, that that's happening, and and I'm I'm disturbed, I'm disrupted. And so I think that it's probably likely that God gave us the ability to feel that sort of way so that we would run to him. Yeah, that we would see things that are outside of our control. Like with the whole, you know, Charlie Kirk thing with middle the Middle East and warfare and all of the stuff. There's nothing you or I can do in our power and our wisdom to make it right. Like we may, we might be able to like help out, you know, we can vote policies and politics and we can do those things and whatever, and that makes a bit of a difference. But there's nothing you or I can do individually to make it right and bring it into peace and bring it into the wholeness. And so that that makes me say, I have no other option but to pray. And really, prayer it makes the difference. Like it really is the work that makes the difference, and it's it will eventually draw Jesus back to the planet. Like the fact that we're in partnership, we're in agreement saying Jesus come back. I think that when we learn to run to prayer quickly as a refuge, like you're saying, I think that we discover one of the powers of prayer, and that's relinquishing control, not living in anxiety. I don't I don't think it's a sin to feel anxious, to feel anxiety. Sometimes we we hear the word anxious or fear, and we immediately think, oh, they they're a sinner. You're afraid of something. No, like it's one thing to live in that space, but it's another thing to feel the fear, to feel the anxiety, and quickly run to prayer and allow God to shift the the moment or allow God to speak into that moment.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I feel like the anxiety, the fear, like all those uh emotions that we consider negative, they remind us that we're not in Eden.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Right? We're not in heaven. And it's it's that call of our hearts. We we dislike those emotions so much because they they scream, hey, something's wrong. Yeah, right. It's like pain, right? Pain's just a mental response of when I touch, you know, the oven, I go, ow. The only reason I go, ow, is because my mind tells me that hurt and it's bad. Something's wrong. Right. And so every emotion is like a sensor in us going, ah, something's wrong.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:This should not be this way. And so I think, like you're saying, like those emotions that we get when we see the cultural climate or even, you know, on a practical level in our daily-to-day life, just relating with friends and family or work, all the little stresses and or big stresses in our lives, like it points us back to we're not home. Yeah. Right? We're we're not at home, right? We're kind of like Gus at the dog pound, right? We're we haven't been adopted yet. We're still waiting in this dog pound. And it's where we are right now, though. Yeah. And so I think prayer for me, and I think biblically is almost like a taste of Eden. Yeah. Right. It's Jesus said when he was here, he said, It's better that I leave and send the Holy Spirit to you. Right. And so all throughout the biblical history, we see that God wants to get closer to us. And so, you know, in Eden, we were in perfect fellowship, very close to God. That got separated by sin. God had to leave, we had to get kicked out, all that mess, right? And then for like, was it 2,000 years? Yeah, 2,000 years, we were without God in the world, pretty much, right? He could speak to Noah and he spoke to different people, but pretty much without God. And then at the 2,000-year point-ish, God was able to dwell among the Israelites. He came down on Sinai and he was able to dwell at the ark in a very specific location. Yeah, right. And that was God was coming closer. We got to be a little closer to him. And then 2,000 years after that, about Jesus came, right? And so God was even closer. He was here in bodily form. He could walk around, he could talk to people, he could touch people, right? And so he's got to be closer. But then what Jesus said is it's gonna be even better in a minute that I'm leaving because I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit. So he leaves, he sends the Spirit to us. So God's come even closer. We get an even deeper touch of heaven. And so when we pray, we get to talk to God and we have God living inside of us. And so it's a taste of this is what heaven's gonna be like. It's not fully there, right? Because there's boring prayer meetings, let me tell you 100% many times. But but it's a taste of it, right? We get those moments where we're like, oh, this is what heaven's gonna be like. Because when we get to heaven, then it's back to like it was in Eden. It's a perfect communion, perfectly restored to be with God. Yeah. And so to me, like the prayer closet or a prayer room is kind of an escape to heaven, if you will. Come on, right? It's somewhere we would like to stay forever and for it to be perfectly like heaven, because that's what our soul cries for. But I think for us, it is a place, not to go back to the gas station analogy, but a place where we can go to be recharged in some sense, right? Because there's an alignment that needs to happen with ourselves and God and go, okay, I'm in the wrong spot. And so I want to align with what God's saying, what he's means, what who he is, who I am. And then from that place, I can go back out into the chaos of this world that we live in that's not heaven, but it's where God has us right now and what's where he wants us. Yeah. And so I don't know. I think I think prayer is that spot, that almost like window into heaven, if you will.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. Yeah, and I mean that is the the first Peter 4-7 verse. It's like the end of all things is near. That seems that's a big scary statement. Like the end of all things is coming near, and Peter's like, so be of sound judgment, sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Like calm down. Like get God's heart, like be alert, be aware of what's going on so that you can engage with his heart because surely God is not overwhelmed. In light of the end of all things, in light of the current crisis globally, in light of our own personal crisis, God is not overwhelmed with it. He can handle it, he's sober, he's alert, he knows what's gonna happen, he sees the end from the beginning. So, what if we kind of entered into that sort of Eden moment and said, God, how how do you feel about this? What are you saying about this moment and this overwhelming fear, this overwhelming anxiety, or this disruption in my spirit that I'm feeling? What are you saying? What are you doing? Like, I I feel the weight of the end of all things, but I want to also be alert in prayer. Like the purpose of everything is to pray. Like the purpose is to engage with God's heart and to to hear what he's saying and what we're supposed to do and what we're supposed to say, how we're supposed to act.
SPEAKER_03:It's real. Yeah, I feel like that's that's so much of God's heart. And it like it's just I'm making connections in my mind to the biblical storyline of even the temple, the tabernacle of David, tabernacle of Moses, right? It's always these places where God can be close and people can come to encounter him. And I feel like that's what the place of prayer is today, is a place where God can come close, we can draw near to him, we can be close to him. And what the beauty of it in today's day and age is that we can do it anywhere. Yeah. Right. You can be here in a prayer room, you can be in a prison cell, and you can encounter God. That can become its own little sanctuary inside of you. And I think that's that's a lot of the beauty of the Holy Spirit and what we have with the indwelling of God now versus just him dwelling in one physical place. I think that that changes so much of prayer.
SPEAKER_01:But I think that you know, for anyone listening, I know many from our community here, people who meet in this room every single day are listening to this, but also this is reaching um other people from other communities, and maybe they've got a prayer meeting, maybe they don't. I think we we would just encourage them, find people to pray with. Like make you know, this wasn't just a moment, again, for the the apostles just in the book of Acts. This was the way that communities were formed and discipled. It was pray all the time, make this a normal part of your rhythm, pray without ceasing. Oh my gosh, that's wild! Like find a community that's gonna help push you toward that. And we're not saying it's the only thing that you've got to do in your Christianity, but we are what we are saying is it seems to be scripturally a pretty important thing that we've got to bind ourselves to, and it's worth finding a community that's a little obsessed with it, yeah. Because I don't think we can pray too much. Yeah, I think when we get to the, I was listening to a friend of mine, he was talking about, he's like, in that place of prayer, you know, you're not gonna just get so closed off in prayer that you you're not good for anything else. But when you're praying for that marketplace leader, when you're praying for that pastor, when you're praying for your friend who's struggling with addiction or whatever it might be, God's gonna start to speak to you about that person and those those situations. And he might say, Hey, go be the hands and feet to what you've been praying. Yeah, like get out of the place of prayer for a moment, go be hands and feet. And so it's worth investing and and binding yourself to a community of people who pray a lot.
SPEAKER_03:So true. Think of the Moravians, and they started like effectively a prayer room, um, different language for it back then, but we're praying a ton. Yeah. Um, and that was like all of their culture. And then from the Moravians came a huge missions movement. Yeah. Because of that. They'd prayed so much, and they went, Oh my goodness, we need to go. Like they they became the answers to so many of their prayers. So good. And they went, right? They they went with the the charge of may the Lamb receive the reward of his sufferings. And I think that that phrase is something that was probably birthed in the place of prayer of wait, Jesus died to receive a reward. The reward is people, he's not getting all of them right now. Let's go get them so he can have the reward of his sufferings. Right. And so I think for them, prayer just naturally led to an action, to going. And so I think what you're saying is true. Like find a community to pray with and reach for God's heart. What does he care about? What does he love? What does he hate? Figure out what what's in God's heart, and then from that place, from that place of friendship, like we're talking about earlier, it's all about relationship with him from that place, then go, then be effective, then do the kingdom impact because it's so much more effective if we do it from that place of friendship with God first.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think if we to circle back to kind of where we started, if we if we knew that if we just prayed with what whatever we felt like God was saying to do, even if that's simply go to your nine-to-five job, which nobody works nine to five, but maybe you do. And um if it's just go there and do what you do every single day, and what if we just began? What if we just birthed that labor, if we saturated that labor in prayer and believed that God would bring greater kingdom influence and greater kingdom impact? Like it's worth testing that out for the next decade. Yeah, like and just see, track the fruit, see what God does on the days that you pray and and the conversations that happen. I think I think we would be surprised if this was a d uh what we were consumed with as the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_03:Come on.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. Well, thanks for joining everybody. Thanks for listening in.
SPEAKER_03:Amen.
SPEAKER_01:Amen.
SPEAKER_03:Love to see you. God bless you.