How To Pray: Carefully....

Watch your words!

Today's passage from the book of Judges proves how seriously God takes our prayers and commitments to Him! We must watch our words because heaven is keeping good record.

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.

And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Welcome back to the Press Podcast. Hopefully you listened last week because we left it as somewhat of a cliffhanger tying into today's story, today's prayer.

As we get to Judges chapter 11, in chapter 10 at the end, we had learned that the children of Israel had begun assembling themselves in Gilead because the Ammonites were coming to fight them. And they were wondering because of their sin, who's going to fight for us? Well, there was a mighty man of valor named Jephthah. Jephthah was a son of Gilead, but he was also the son of a prostitute.

And this becomes important because when he was growing up, and his dad had other sons with his wives, the other sons turned on him. And they said, you're not going to get any inheritance from our father. You're not going to have any part of the legacy of our father.

And they chased him away more or less. So Jephthah is an outcast. He fled from his brethren, the Bible says, and he lived in the land of Toll.

And there were men that were gathered to him. And in the process of time, the Bible says that when the children of Amnon came to war against Israel, the elders of Gilead, they went to fetch Jephthah. So they knew he could fight, but they also knew where he was.

They knew his family had abandoned him, rejected him. But when they needed him, they came to find him. How messed up is that? That people can discard you and discard what you're going through until they need you.

And in this instance, it is actually the children of Gilead, the Israelite people that need him. But they're coming to get him when this fight looks like it's too much for them. And so when they come to him, he has real life questions.

In verse seven, he says, did not ye hate me and expel me out of my father's house? And why are you coming to me now when you are in distress? And now you want me to put my life on the line and fight for you. They offer him the right to be ruler over them. Jephthah's story actually closely resembles that of Joseph in the book of Genesis in that he understands what it's like to have your brothers reject you.

He understands what it's like to have your brothers throw you away, but he also gets to understand what it's like to be the ruler over your brothers because they offer him the headship. So Jephthah became the captain over them. And the first thing he actually tried to do was come to some sort of resolution with the children of Ammon.

His first instinct was not actually let's fight, let's brawl. To me, that's a flex that shows me how strong he really is. It does take more self-control to contain strength than to just go off the handle.

And he was interested in peace over war. And the Bible lets you know in verse 28 that the king of Ammon would not hear the words of Jephthah. So the Bible says in verse 29 that the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh and passed over Mishpah of Gilead and from Mishpah of Gilead he passed over into the children of Ammon.

He's gearing up for war. He's coming to get him. This is his prayer in Judges 11 30 and 31.

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall it be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. He makes a vow to God and in his vow he says, If you give me victory, the first thing that's running towards me on the other side of this victory, I'm going to offer it to you as a burnt sacrifice. Now this is where this story gets complicated and it is one conflicting story in the Bible for me internally because of what comes out the door first.

I don't believe that Jephthah was thinking of what was going to happen next, but the Lord kept his part of the bargain and he gave him victory. The Bible says he delivered the children of Ammon into Jephthah's hands and he beat them down. In verse 34, when he comes back to his house at Mishpah, behold his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances, and she was his only child.

Beside her he had neither son nor daughter. So the first thing out the door, the first one out the door was his daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her that he rent his clothes and said, Alas my daughter, thou hast brought me very low and thou art one of them that trouble me, for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord and I cannot go back.

He lets her know I just made a vow to God that if he gave me what he just gave me, I'd offer him whatever came out that door first as a burnt sacrifice. And his daughter is what came out the door first. The Bible warns in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, Be not rash with thy mouth, let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon earth.

Therefore let thy words be few. It continues, When thou vows a vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed.

Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth that caused thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the angel that it was an error. Wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands.

The Bible in the Scripture in Ecclesiastes reiterates the importance of your words before God that he has angels taking good notes. There's no point in saying I didn't say it or I didn't mean it like that. When you go into prayer saying, God if you do this, I'll do that.

If you'll just forgive me this one last time, then I'm gonna do da da da da da. You better do it and you better do it because he takes it seriously because he looks and says it's better you don't make a vow. I didn't ask you to make a vow but if you're going to tell me what you're going to do, if you're going to make a promise to me, it's serious to him and you better not defer to pay it.

Don't hesitate to pay what you have vowed. It's better not to make a vow at all than to make one and not pay it. And some people use that as an excuse not to really commit to anything with God.

So they take it to the other extreme. Well I'm not going to say God I will do this or do that because I might forget, I might mess up. But if he's requiring a yes out of you, then you have to give him that yes.

But in instances where you're just talking and running off at the mouth, it's better to let your words be few. Prayer is really not about how many words you say. It is more so about the sincerity behind it and the reverence behind it.

Recognizing that you're talking to God first. That he is listening, he keeps good records and he is holy and he is higher than you. And so you don't just get to talk out the side of your neck and he just forget about it.

That is what we learn from Jephthah. As we see he made a vow to God and he begins to mourn here. He's troubled because the first thing out the door is his daughter.

And he's promised this to God as a burnt sacrifice. And she said unto him, My father, if thou has opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth. For as much as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me. Let me alone two months that I may go up and down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go.

He sent her away for two months. And she went with her companions and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. In this story to me, his daughter is the real hero because she didn't take the two months to say, I'm out of here.

My father betrayed me. Instead, she says to him, If you make a vow, Daddy, you better keep it. Wow.

The Bible says that she went up and she mourned her virginity for two months and it came to pass in the two months she came back to her father, just like she said. And the Bible says he did with her according to his vow, which he had vowed, and she knew no man. And the Bible says in Israel became a custom that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in a year.

I don't believe God wants those sacrifices from us. There's no Old Testament precedent. Really for that, we do see where Isaac was laid upon the altar in Genesis, but there was a ram in the bush and Isaac was not offered.

There's much debate with some scholars around this particular text, but I'm just going to stick with what it said. So what we'll take away from this is that God takes the words you say to him seriously, and you need to take them seriously too. I even take the songs I sing to God seriously because songs will have you out here singing things you are not about to do.

There's a song out here that says, with every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God. I never say that part. I actually say I can sing of the goodness of God because I breathe all the time, and technically all of those breaths are eligible for me to sing.

If I did that, at least my kids would kick me out of their lives because they say I can't sing. I know that may sound extreme. My point is we have to watch what we say before God with our mouths, whether we call it a song or a prayer, because heaven is listening and he takes your words to him seriously.

So today's lesson, today's prayer, is very sobering because it shows the seriousness of having an audience with God. Your mouth has an audience with God, so watch what you say, but know that he wants to hear your voice. God bless you, and remember that prayer reaches every single situation.

Join the movement. Join the community. Like, share, and subscribe to this podcast.

Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook. Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and were wondering, how long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice. It's too quiet in this world for the we have.

You have to raise your voice and God wants to hear from you. It's Too Quiet, a book about prayer, is designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith. Visit PressToPray.com.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.