SPEAKER_00: Alright, church family, happy Wednesday to you.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Recharge.
SPEAKER_00: So on Wednesday nights this fall, we've been walking through just a study on the Holy Spirit and particularly meeting spots of the Holy Spirit, at least that's where we are, and we're gonna jump right into that.
SPEAKER_00: So really, regardless of your feelings, regardless of uh what kind of day you had, regardless of circumstances, whether you're going through trials, whether you're coming out of one, whatnot, um God God's Spirit has promised particularly to meet you at certain locations.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're that's what we're diving into.
SPEAKER_00: Um so tonight the the meeting spot that I want you uh that I want us to focus on is the fact that the Holy Spirit has promised to meet us in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the Holy Spirit promises to meet us in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's appropriate that we're walking through 21 days of prayer as a church.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we are on day three.
SPEAKER_00: So if you uh happen to not be here on Sunday and you're like, what is he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Churchwide, 21-day prayer focus.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can grab one of these on your way out.
SPEAKER_00: You can sign up on the QR code uh on the PewBack that gets an email sent to you daily.
SPEAKER_00: But we as a church are walking through three weeks of committed prayer together.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, so please, please, please uh join in with us.
SPEAKER_00: So Louis XIV uh was, you know, the French king was notorious for controlling every detail of etiquette around him.
SPEAKER_00: Nobles competed for the honor of handing him his shirt, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh holding his wash basin, being present as he put his shoes on.
SPEAKER_00: At every moment, Louis demanded strict protocols be followed.
SPEAKER_00: Bow a certain way.
SPEAKER_00: Never ever turn your back to the king.
SPEAKER_00: Address him always with precise titles.
SPEAKER_00: Dress code was rigid.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone had to stand according to rank and order.
SPEAKER_00: And if any of this was ignored, and he just thought it was off, he put one duke in prison for 10 years.
SPEAKER_00: That said, I know that oftentimes we can think of coming to the Lord in prayer and in our own prayer life, that maybe I'm just not effective because I'm not doing it right.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't have the precise order and procedure.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying the right words.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God is locking me out like Louis, uh King Louis does.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Romans chapter 8, verses 15 and 16.
SPEAKER_00: For you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba Father.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the point that I want to make and I have to move quickly.
SPEAKER_00: That is uh the Spirit, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You you want to encounter God, you you want to fullness of the Spirit, meet the Spirit of God in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: In prayer, and hear the function of the Spirit of God as you enter into prayer.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, prayer can look all sorts of different.
SPEAKER_00: It can be in your prayer closet, it can be as your prayer walk, it can be in your car while you drive, and it can be five-minute prayers at a time, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me, the spirit promises to meet you in prayer and to remind you that you are a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what this says?
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit reminds you, gives testimony to your spirit that you are a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is so special about being a child as you go to the Lord in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I preached on this about two months ago.
SPEAKER_00: I am certain none of you remembers what I said because I barely remember what I said.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: What is so special about going to God in prayer as a child?
SPEAKER_00: Number one, children have complete access to their parents.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: You know that.
SPEAKER_00: You have no privacy.
SPEAKER_00: I came home uh late last night and got uh uh returned from a conference, and they gave a sweatshirt that, by the way, didn't fit me, so I gave it to my wife.
SPEAKER_00: She looked at it, she opened it, she loved it, and she said, now we have to keep this from Lily, my daughter, from wearing it.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Because they have free reign of the place.
SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: It if I had if I had to tell you what I what we have to go through just to get adult socks that are just for me and just for Elaine, because they just get stolen in my house.
SPEAKER_00: I have no socks, guys.
SPEAKER_00: They have complete access.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you you don't have that with employees.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, servants and slaves don't have that kind of access.
SPEAKER_00: As an employee, you better meet the boss during business hours at the scheduled time, right?
SPEAKER_00: When it's convenient to meet.
SPEAKER_00: But a child has access all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm never not available to my kids.
SPEAKER_00: You say, oh yes, you are.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's because I'm finite and limited.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Your heavenly father isn't.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need naps, he doesn't get sick, he's omnipresent.
SPEAKER_00: You have complete access to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what sort of things do children bring their parents?
SPEAKER_00: All things.
SPEAKER_00: They bring their scraped knees, they crawl in bed whenever it's there's a nightmare.
SPEAKER_00: They celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my household is celebrating last night in my eighth grade son's football game, he scored a touchdown.
SPEAKER_00: And and that is uh he he stayed up till I got home at about 11:30.
SPEAKER_00: He stayed up just to, like he got special permission to stay up till I got home so that we could celebrate his touchdown.
SPEAKER_00: You see, kids bring all things.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Parents get, I'm hungry, they get financial requests, they get dad, I need help for homework, they get financial requests.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because their problems are my problems.
SPEAKER_00: A child also gives uh their parent the full range of emotions.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When my kids come to church, you guys get the clean and polished preacher's kids.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I get the full version.
SPEAKER_00: All the emotions.
SPEAKER_00: The wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the stomping on the stairs, the get back down here, we're gonna deal with that.
SPEAKER_00: All I get the full emotions.
SPEAKER_00: But of course, that's the way you want it, right?
SPEAKER_00: We take off the mask, we're real.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit gives testimony to your spirit that you are a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: That with all of you, you come to Him.
SPEAKER_00: One other verse I want to pick up out of Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to 26 and 27.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is crazy when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: All right, the Spirit of God promises to meet you in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: One, to remind you that you are a child of God and everything I just described.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: There's no formality, you just come.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, in the same way, the spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone confess to that?
SPEAKER_00: All right, I don't know how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: As we should.
SPEAKER_00: But the spirit himself does what?
SPEAKER_00: Intercedes for us with groanings that are too deep for words.
SPEAKER_00: For he who searches the hearts and knows what is in the mind of the spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, listen.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit intercedes for you as you pray.
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't know how you ought to pray, but the spirit intercedes, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The spirit searches your spirit, the spirit understands and knows the depth of you, knows what you're trying to say, you don't even know what to say, you don't even know how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit takes your prayers and and puts them through the filter, and listen to what he does.
SPEAKER_00: He changes them, he intercedes according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: You don't know the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible wants you to grow and to mature and to begin to understand more and more the will of God, but you are finite, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And and the Spirit intercedes for you and whatever all the gobbledygoop, right?
SPEAKER_00: When you come as a child, when you come full emotion, when you come as you are, uh, when you come, a child has no hesitancy of asking, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just ask all of my kids.
SPEAKER_00: They have no problem taking that which is mine, they have no problem asking for everything I have.
SPEAKER_00: They I never carry cash because they just take it all.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, they have no problem asking, all right?
SPEAKER_00: So a child can come, right?
SPEAKER_00: And this is you in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And the spirit promises to meet you and to remind you that you are God's child, and while you are praying, the spirit promises to change, to intercede.
SPEAKER_00: You're just coming to God as you are, and the spirit promises to take that and to begin to articulate to God the Father that which is according to his will and to intercede on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as I was thinking about this and as I was meditating on it, the one thing that I was also thinking was this seems to require that you actually come and pray.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like I know we're so hesitant and we're like, but I'm terrible at it.
SPEAKER_00: My prayers aren't getting above the ceiling, I don't even know what I'm doing here, right?
SPEAKER_00: I fall asleep, uh, you know, I get into a routine and then I fall out of a routine, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And then listen to the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Beloved.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to experience the Spirit of God?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, He will meet you in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't have to be formal, and by the way, you don't have to feel it.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, I I pray, and it's pretty clumsy.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what the Spirit of God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, one, you need to be asking the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is a request from you.
SPEAKER_00: Spirit, remind me that I am his child.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this text says.
SPEAKER_00: The first one.
SPEAKER_00: It says, it says, Give my spirit confirmation that I am a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Confirm in me again.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: So that I will come to him all the time with everything that he'll get all of me.
SPEAKER_00: I won't be afraid to ask, and then I'll just be me.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Spirit also promises, and I'm gonna take it and intercede, and it's gonna be according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna pray for you as you're praying.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if you can feel that.
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe God's word?
SPEAKER_00: See, if you get this in your bones, you're like, oh, you you mean I can't mess this up?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You you can't mess it up because the spirit's interceding because you don't know how to pray, anyways.
SPEAKER_00: And the spirit is gonna teach you.
SPEAKER_00: And the spirit is going to allow you to experience the Lord more and more, give you confirmation, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're going to fumble forward.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But but you're gonna learn, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna learn, you're gonna grow, you're gonna mature.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God wants to do in you.
SPEAKER_00: So do we want to experience the Spirit of God?
SPEAKER_00: Meet Him in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: He's promised to meet you there.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that gives us so much courage and fire.
SPEAKER_00: To pray 21 days?
SPEAKER_00: Right now, we're walking through repentance.
SPEAKER_00: God search me.
SPEAKER_00: Search me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to see you, I want to know you.
SPEAKER_00: Would you search me?
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We know that's according to scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But God will.
SPEAKER_00: He will meet you.
SPEAKER_00: And just just I mean, next week, uh right, I pray it gives you so much courage that you can't mess this thing up.
SPEAKER_00: The way you can mess it up is to just not do it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Don't pray.
SPEAKER_00: And it's confusing what the scripture says internally.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Jesus intercedes for you, but you don't, I don't think you get a promise like this unless you're just not like if you are praying, I think that promise is yours.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for this day.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your word, we thank you for your promise.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, oh my goodness, just blow the doors off of our mind and our concept of of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Father, you want, you long to meet with your children.
SPEAKER_00: I love, I love to meet with my children.
SPEAKER_00: And how much more are you a million times better, Father, than me?
SPEAKER_00: And uh Father, grow us, expand us in this area.
SPEAKER_00: We pray all of this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Church family, let me let me remind you, Wednesday nights, uh, I'm available for prayer here as long as you want it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be here.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.