Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 1: Whether you are online with us or you are here today, we're happy that you are here and if you're, if you, I know some people up in Missouri and Arkansas and some other people.
Speaker 1: Actually some of y'all's family in New York says she watches it's perfect time.
Speaker 1: You are still our family, like a distant relative that you don't see but once or twice a year.
Speaker 1: You still count them as family.
Speaker 1: So you still matter to us.
Speaker 1: So make sure if you're at home and you're watching, you still do that.
Speaker 1: Text 94,000, because we want to communicate with you, we want to get to know you better and we want to get you plugged in with our family.
Speaker 1: So if you can stand for the reading of God's word and today we're going to be coming out of John, chapter 14, verse 14, 13 and 14, sorry and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the father may be glorified in the son, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
Speaker 1: Verse 14 says you may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, father, we thank you so much for your mercy and your grace that are renewed every single morning.
Speaker 1: Whether we deserve it or whether we don't, you still supply.
Speaker 1: I thank you, god, for your faithfulness, for your goodness, for your mercy and your love, even when we are not deserving.
Speaker 1: Thank you, lord, for your sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Thank you, lord, for allowing us to be and meet here once more again to worship and bring glory to your name.
Speaker 1: In your name, we pray, amen.
Speaker 1: You may be seated.
Speaker 1: I believe today that God is going to transform someone's life.
Speaker 1: Will you receive that today?
Speaker 1: Will you receive that?
Speaker 1: So who has been doing, every single day, the challenge of 17?
Speaker 1: Five minutes in prayer, five minutes in worship, five minutes in reading the word.
Speaker 1: One small act of faith every single day, small.
Speaker 1: Your act of faith may be getting out of bed.
Speaker 1: Your act of faith may be saying I love you to a spouse when you don't mean it.
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm, did y'all feel that?
Speaker 1: Your act of faith may have been sitting around a Thanksgiving table with people you didn't like?
Speaker 1: Your act of faith may have been shutting your mouth when you really wanted to open it up.
Speaker 1: Faith takes action and sometimes action means you don't take action, and sometimes that's the best form to keep the peace in the house.
Speaker 1: Can I get an amen to keep the peace in the house?
Speaker 1: Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: So I, for the past two months since I've given this challenge, brother Dale after, and Brother Vernon was there one time and Pastor Aaron met us one time.
Speaker 1: There's someone that we have found at a restaurant at Cotton Patch and I hope she's watching.
Speaker 1: I hope this embarrasses her.
Speaker 1: Her name is Dee and she.
Speaker 1: The first time we met her she called her mama and introduced her mama to Brother Dale.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of sweet person she just called her mama.
Speaker 1: Hey, you want to meet my mom?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we invited her to church.
Speaker 1: We went back this last week we invited her again.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 1: I found out that she's having to work so many shifts because her mom is having brain surgery coming up.
Speaker 1: Three, four weeks ago we didn't know.
Speaker 1: But I told her that I'm going to tell my church and we're going to touch heaven for her, because I believe that God hears our prayers.
Speaker 1: I believe that when we speak, the Bible says the faith of a mustard seed in the mountain will be moved.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, if we do something and we speak, things have to begin to happen.
Speaker 1: Nowhere in the word of God does it say it might.
Speaker 1: Nowhere.
Speaker 1: Nowhere does it say a specific combination of something that you have to do stomp your feet four times, clap your hands three times and say hallelujah Jesus twice.
Speaker 1: It does not say that Multiple times people are being healed in the word of God, they're being redeemed and restored and transformed by their faith Faith Looking stupid, putting your pride and reputation on the line for the sake and the glory of God.
Speaker 1: We have to start stepping out.
Speaker 1: I'm a little fired up.
Speaker 1: If you can't notice, we had our second class of growth track last night.
Speaker 1: Anybody who was there?
Speaker 1: There you go, come on growth track people.
Speaker 1: This first week we go through the growth track and if you don't know, so out there on the sign up sheet or the sign up table.
Speaker 1: There's a table in that corner.
Speaker 1: Anytime we mention anything, and sometimes even if we don't, because we don't want to overload you there will be a sign-up sheet for whatever's going on, okay?
Speaker 1: So if you see something, a piece of paper, on that table, go check it out.
Speaker 1: Don't pay attention to the month, because we had to move things back several times, so the month is not accurate, but the GrowthTrack sign-up sheet is there.
Speaker 1: We want your name, your number and your email so we can reach out to you and get scheduled with all the people that want to go through it.
Speaker 1: But the first week of growth track is getting everyone on the same page of what we believe, who we believe in and how we believe in Our core values, our core beliefs and, like I said last week, we believe in speaking in tongues and we believe in not suppressing the spirit when he wants to move.
Speaker 1: And if you don't agree with that, there's plenty of churches around here that don't mind doing that, plenty of churches that don't mind suppressing God, putting him on a schedule.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm going, I'm meddling.
Speaker 1: So 555, one act of faith and invite one person to church, because you never know, you never know when someone is at the lowest of low.
Speaker 1: God has primed and ordained our steps and has got them to a place when they needed somebody Just to share the love of Jesus with them, not to preach to them.
Speaker 1: That's my job.
Speaker 1: Your job is to share the love.
Speaker 1: Your job is to show them that not all Christians are liars and fake, and we show that and display that.
Speaker 1: Jesus said another commandment I give you is to love each other, so that they will know my love.
Speaker 1: We have to get our house in order Before we can try to go correct theirs.
Speaker 1: They won't receive it.
Speaker 1: If I have a cigarette in my mouth and a beer in my hand and I say, hey, man, you need to stop drinking and smoking, does that add up to anybody in here?
Speaker 1: That's illogical.
Speaker 1: Yet we embrace a sinful nature of our flesh and we tell the world they need to get saved.
Speaker 1: It's time for the church to start getting saved.
Speaker 1: So how have you been doing?
Speaker 1: You been doing it, man.
Speaker 1: I tell you, when you start spending time with God, man, I tell you, when you start spending time with God, when you start letting him be the Lord of your life.
Speaker 1: God is not your buddy, he is the Lord and the King of the universe.
Speaker 1: We need to serve him as such.
Speaker 1: Every week, god is changing your life.
Speaker 1: If you have started doing these five, five and five, just this alone will begin to change who you are.
Speaker 1: It will transform your mind and renew your mind and give you a strength and bring your joy back, because where the joy of the Lord is, that's where the believers get their strength from.
Speaker 1: If you're having trouble with finding your joys because you're not getting in the Word you're not being poured into.
Speaker 1: Let the Holy Spirit come on you and transform you and move you.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's letting go of old habits and replacing them with new ones.
Speaker 1: The churches are really good about addition.
Speaker 1: We love adding things and we are terrified of taking things away.
Speaker 1: Something new.
Speaker 1: People get excited about something new, but something that the church has been doing for a while and you have to maybe stop doing it because it's more of a hassle than it is a help and you get on this page with everybody that hates you because you're changing something.
Speaker 1: You're taking away their thing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to take out old habits, old ways of thinking, and start living in the freedom and living in the truth of the Scripture, and this change and transformation that we allow God to do inside of us and in our hearts and our minds it will echo for generations.
Speaker 1: God is not a small God to only affect your household.
Speaker 1: When you start adhering to his word and you allow him to move in your household, you will affect the households of the others and it may be that you affect them and they don't like you anymore, but they will be affected.
Speaker 1: Sin doesn't like correction.
Speaker 1: Our flesh doesn't like correction.
Speaker 1: Our flesh doesn't like to be corrected.
Speaker 1: We want to be pampered, pacified and praised and we don't want nobody to tell me if you oh, the bible's offensive you're right, because we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't change until we get offended.
Speaker 1: We ask god has anybody ever been I'm guilty of this?
Speaker 1: We ask God for such huge things.
Speaker 1: I want God to heal cancer.
Speaker 1: I want God to bring the dead back to life.
Speaker 1: I want lives to be transformed.
Speaker 1: I want marriages to be healed.
Speaker 1: I want depression to flee in the name of Jesus.
Speaker 1: I want sight to be restored and a holy, true vision in the house of Jesus.
Speaker 1: I want sight to be restored and a holy, true vision in the house of God.
Speaker 1: But all of that is wonderful and great, but it doesn't start at the end.
Speaker 1: You have to go to the beginning.
Speaker 1: These small acts of faith is sometimes grabbing somebody's hand in the middle of the store and praying with them right there, because I guarantee you that everyone else is saying the phrase I'll be praying for you and never pray.
Speaker 1: We need to be hand-grabbing, thunderstruck, earth-shaking, walmart-testifying people.
Speaker 1: Have y'all seen somebody in a Walmart?
Speaker 1: You know they need saved.
Speaker 1: We'll be praying for you.
Speaker 1: See, god says listen to this.
Speaker 1: God says, when God gives us a representation of what it will take to do something that will unlock the access he has available for us, it always starts with something small, every single time.
Speaker 1: Mustard seed faith, you will be able to move mountains.
Speaker 1: The story of the woman with two mites, her little two mites.
Speaker 1: That was way lower than everything that everybody don't.
Speaker 1: You dare hold back your tithes and giving from God because you can't.
Speaker 1: You say you can't.
Speaker 1: Jesus proved in this story that you can.
Speaker 1: What if God said and held his blessings back and said, oh, I'm sorry, I can't?
Speaker 1: His blessings back and said, oh, I'm sorry, I can't, mm-hmm, they have a perspective.
Speaker 1: But these two mites in the eyes of Jesus was something greater, because she actually gave out of sacrifice and she gave out of obedience.
Speaker 1: The lady with the issue of blood, it doesn't say she took Jesus' robe and she was healed.
Speaker 1: It was the hem.
Speaker 1: Compared to the shirt, this hem is nothing Compared to the magnitude of what she needed.
Speaker 1: Touching his hem should not have done anything.
Speaker 1: But the little things in the hands of Jesus, the little skills that you have, the little passions you have, in the hand of the Almighty God can cast out demons, can restore homes can break every chain.
Speaker 1: In the name of Jesus, do not overlook the little, because the little actually will produce the latter.
Speaker 1: Hold on to the little and use what you have.
Speaker 1: I think we fall in the trap of comparison.
Speaker 1: We do this in church, we do this in our personal lives.
Speaker 1: Comparison write this down if you're taking notes.
Speaker 1: Comparison kills.
Speaker 1: Calling God can put a call on your life and you look at somebody else and yourself, or you look at their Instagram stories.
Speaker 1: You're like whoa, god's really using them.
Speaker 1: He'll never do that for me.
Speaker 1: Do work where you are, stop looking at everybody else's field and start tolling the ground.
Speaker 1: I think we fall into the trap of comparison.
Speaker 1: We want the big results without the small first steps.
Speaker 1: We want the wins without the losses.
Speaker 1: We want the big house without the countless hours of working.
Speaker 1: We want the perfect marriage without all the fights Come on somebody.
Speaker 1: We want the perfect church without all the personality Woo.
Speaker 1: We want the miracles without the prayer and fasting.
Speaker 1: Don't overlook the small steps that God has been leading you to take.
Speaker 1: It is better if you see this.
Speaker 1: This is one of the biggest struggles that I have.
Speaker 1: I'm scared of failing Because I don't want to mess up.
Speaker 1: I don't want it to be a public display.
Speaker 1: People will get the bigger.
Speaker 1: The more you grow, the more judgmental people you'll have come in your life.
Speaker 1: Use it for fuel, baby.
Speaker 1: Let it propel you to where God's trying to lead you.
Speaker 1: Don't let it hold you back.
Speaker 1: If you fall, fall forward in the arms of Jesus and just keep on going.
Speaker 1: Don't let somebody else's attitude control your latitude.
Speaker 1: Man, all these things are rhyming.
Speaker 1: I didn't even have them in my notes.
Speaker 1: So who believes in here that there is power in prayer?
Speaker 1: Have you seen it?
Speaker 1: Without a doubt, everybody in here watching online.
Speaker 1: You have seen at some point in your life that prayer works.
Speaker 1: When people come together, something happens.
Speaker 1: The presence of God fills the room.
Speaker 1: When we start to praise, the Bible says that he inhabits our praises.
Speaker 1: When we start praising and letting go of our pride and whatever we're dealing with outside of these walls and we just shed it all and we just God.
Speaker 1: Whatever you want to do, do he shows up every single time, up every single time.
Speaker 1: In my life I have seen my two, both of my parents, go through hell and back with disease my father had.
Speaker 1: Does anybody know what rheumatoid arthritis is?
Speaker 1: He could not button his shirt.
Speaker 1: He could not get up and go to the bathroom by himself.
Speaker 1: I'm eight, nine years old and I'm helping trying to get my mom to get him out of the chair.
Speaker 1: And he was a pastor.
Speaker 1: You remember the story of Job in the Bible, how he cried out God, what have I done?
Speaker 1: Who came along His friends to say, what have you done?
Speaker 1: I remember watching my dad cry himself.
Speaker 1: I remember watching my dad cry himself, soaking wet, with his head covered because he was in such shame.
Speaker 1: He said, god, if I've done anything, please take this from me.
Speaker 1: God did not take him away from that, he led him through it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we want God to come down in our situation and snatch us up, like a kid running out into the street and the parent comes to snatch and takes them and holds them back and God sometimes says no, I need you to learn something so out of this disease that my father had.
Speaker 1: He prayed, he cried, he prayed and he cried.
Speaker 1: He was at a hospital.
Speaker 1: They were doing some more tests.
Speaker 1: They were trying to see because he was in his 30s, maybe his 40s, and it just out of nowhere, just hit him.
Speaker 1: No family history of anything like this.
Speaker 1: It was just totally random and he's in this hospital and he's gotten enough on some medicine that he could make his way down to the chapel.
Speaker 1: He had a nurse push him down there.
Speaker 1: It was Sunday and he had to go to church and he was down there and it was empty except for this one lady, and every time he tells a story he cries.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the whole story of why she was in there.
Speaker 1: I think it was somebody that she knew had been shot or something and she was crying out to God herself and she didn't know Jesus, but she knew that she needed to come to the chapel and my father was able to minister to this random person in the hospital that gave her heart to the Lord right there on the spot.
Speaker 1: If we say to God, whatever you want to do with our lives, sometimes he will lead you down the path of disease to get you to a destination that somebody needs to know him.
Speaker 1: Now you have to ask yourself is it worth it?
Speaker 1: To you?
Speaker 1: It's very easy to say yes, real quick, until you're in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: My mother and y'all y'all met my dad.
Speaker 1: He's's been here.
Speaker 1: He's been completely healed, god completely restored, hadn't had any issues, except now he's getting old.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I know he's watching, that's why I said it Lots of payback.
Speaker 1: My mother I remember the day it was a Sunday morning I was playing drums on the stage and it was actually set up a lot like this and a lot smaller stage.
Speaker 1: It was a little church.
Speaker 1: She was over there by a door that went out to the fellowship hall.
Speaker 1: We were on the stage and she was playing bass and all of a sudden we're all playing, we're worshiping.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden I see her out of the corner of my eye grab her chest and she hits the wall and slides down.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you the fear.
Speaker 1: I was 15, maybe 16, to come over to me and see my mother grab her chest and fall to the ground.
Speaker 1: Because of the way that she fell.
Speaker 1: I thought that it was it.
Speaker 1: They took her to the doctor.
Speaker 1: She had primary pulmonary hypertension.
Speaker 1: She had taken a medicine and due to legal reasons I can't disclose what it was.
Speaker 1: But she took a medicine and it caused her heart and her lungs both to overwork because in between there there was a valve that had pinholes in it.
Speaker 1: They had people from England, from Germany, houston, everywhere trying to come and figure out what is going on with her and how to save her life, because at the end they said that she had three to five years to live and that she needed a heart and a lung transplant.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know about any of this, but it's incredibly hard to give even one of those.
Speaker 1: She would have been long gone.
Speaker 1: Y'all saw her here a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: When people join together in prayer and the Bible talks about the strength of gathering together and getting in one mind and one accord, how powerful we become, heaven and earth move on our behalf when God's children come before the throne room.
Speaker 1: Those are two specific reasons in my life where God did something amazing.
Speaker 1: It was hard to have faith in that time, but it was replenishing to the faith that I got worn out with in that time when they were healed.
Speaker 1: And that leads me to the title of my message today.
Speaker 1: Even if he doesn't Because sometimes God does not do what we ask him to do that aftermath is when it's hard to have faith.
Speaker 1: Still, it's hard to believe that God even still loves you, that he cares for you.
Speaker 1: God, if you love me, you wouldn't let anything bad happen, right?
Speaker 1: If you love me, you wouldn't let anything bad happen.
Speaker 1: Right In Joshua 10, we see God showing up Joshua, he prayed for a sun stand still moment that lasted an entire day to give them enough sunlight to win the battle.
Speaker 1: Yet we pray for somebody who's in the middle of a rough time in their marriage and they still get divorced.
Speaker 1: We see in 1 Kings 18, elijah calls down fire from heaven and consumes.
Speaker 1: They even put it in water and it consumes his sacrifice and proves that there is a God.
Speaker 1: Yet we have people in this very church that we prayed for and died from COVID.
Speaker 1: Prayer is powerful.
Speaker 1: We know this from experience.
Speaker 1: But many times in our lives it can get a little confusing.
Speaker 1: What happens if you ask God and you know that he can, you believe that he can.
Speaker 1: You know that he should, but he doesn't.
Speaker 1: Is something wrong?
Speaker 1: Is God not listening?
Speaker 1: Is he mad?
Speaker 1: Does he not care?
Speaker 1: Even if he doesn't, I will still trust him.
Speaker 1: I will still believe him.
Speaker 1: Because here's what happens If you base your walk with God on emotion and what he does, you will falter and fail.
Speaker 1: You will lose hope.
Speaker 1: You will lose faith, because we don't worship him for what he does.
Speaker 1: We worship him for who he is.
Speaker 1: It is great all that he does, but it's even greater and more powerful when you start to talk about who he is.
Speaker 1: We've been really trying to break down the faith in these last few weeks, to make it a part of our everyday walk.
Speaker 1: That's why I thought it was so important to include it in that 15 challenge, to make it 16 and to make it 17, because it's so important that you invite somebody into the house of God.
Speaker 1: It's so important that you have an act of faith every day, because you start to exercise that little muscle and when you exercise even the smallest of muscles, they grow.
Speaker 1: For me it's not believing if God can do something.
Speaker 1: I have great faith in that.
Speaker 1: Actually, one of my strongest spiritual gifts is faith.
Speaker 1: When I pray it, I believe it and I'm looking for it to happen, like I literally am looking for it to happen and manifest itself in front of me.
Speaker 1: But sometimes, when God doesn't heal, it makes me question Am I alone, the man after God's own heart?
Speaker 1: David whined and questioned constantly and in the same paragraph encouraged himself about who God was.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's schizophrenia, but the guy would be so upset and then he would wrap it up by encouraging himself, because he would start in the middle of his pouring out to God.
Speaker 1: It would become a praise and then he would start to remember who of his pouring out to God.
Speaker 1: It would become a praise and then he would start to remember who God is, and it encouraged him.
Speaker 1: Sometimes nobody around you will lift you up and encourage you.
Speaker 1: You've got to encourage yourself.
Speaker 1: You've got to step out in faith on your own, because you may be around a bunch of sinners at your job.
Speaker 1: You don't have Christian friends.
Speaker 1: You just came to the faith you're really struggling with, if God is even real.
Speaker 1: Start praising him and he will inhabit it.
Speaker 1: So we're going to dive in a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're going to get some scripture, and one thing that you always need to do when you're studying the Bible is do not allow your flesh or someone else to interpret scripture for you.
Speaker 1: The scripture will interpret scripture.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to look at this.
Speaker 1: We need a little bit of understanding to lay the groundwork.
Speaker 1: We got to know the nature of God and the purpose of prayer.
Speaker 1: This is hard for us to grasp.
Speaker 1: We're not the main character of the story.
Speaker 1: Is that hard sometimes to think about that Like, wait a minute, god's not here for me, no, we're here for him.
Speaker 1: We exist to serve him, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: We exist to serve him.
Speaker 1: We don't pray to get God to do stuff for us and see, that's what it kind of becomes.
Speaker 1: We're in the holiday season, so I'll use the reference.
Speaker 1: We use God like our Santa Claus.
Speaker 1: We make a list, we ask him to check it twice and if I open the package and it's something different than what I want, I'm going to throw a little fit or I'm going to be mad or I'm going to have an attitude.
Speaker 1: Prayer is for us to know his will.
Speaker 1: It is for us to know his heart.
Speaker 1: He's not a slot machine.
Speaker 1: He's not our spiritual Santa.
Speaker 1: It's not if you've been a good girl or a bad girl.
Speaker 1: You get a lump of coal, or he answers your prayer.
Speaker 1: The purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will.
Speaker 1: It's so that we get closer to him, to begin to understand his.
Speaker 1: Prayer is about relationship, to pursue God in a very intimate way.
Speaker 1: So now we come to the big question why does God not answer my prayer?
Speaker 1: So, with any questions you have about the Bible, always let the Bible interpret the Bible.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to lay out some things.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through it quick.
Speaker 1: You can write it down or you can always go back.
Speaker 1: We have the video every week where you can go back and watch it on our YouTube.
Speaker 1: I cannot, from this pulpit, tell you the steps to take to solve your doubt in prayer, but I can give you some scriptures that I hope will prompt you to start digging yourself.
Speaker 1: If you rely for a pastor to give you all the answers in a 30 to 40 minute message, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: I am not the one you go to for answers.
Speaker 1: I will help you, lead and guide you in any way that I can, and the Spirit leads me, but you need to go directly to God and to His Word.
Speaker 1: Now, number one, we want to ask the question do I have broken relationships?
Speaker 1: Why does God not answer my prayer?
Speaker 1: Maybe I have broken relationships?
Speaker 1: Say well, I approve it All right.
Speaker 1: Well, mark 11, verse 24,.
Speaker 1: Say well, I approve it All right.
Speaker 1: Well, mark 11, verse 24.
Speaker 1: Therefore, I tell you whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.
Speaker 1: In verse 25, it says this Right behind.
Speaker 1: If you believe it.
Speaker 1: I will answer it.
Speaker 1: Verse 25 says and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in heaven will forgive you.
Speaker 1: Matthew 5, 23 and 24 says Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother or sister has something against you, not you having something against them.
Speaker 1: If you know that they have something against you, you need to go make it right.
Speaker 1: That is backwards to what my mind wants to think.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to come to me, but it says no, you go to them and make it right, because you're supposed to be my servant, you're supposed to be showing the love of God.
Speaker 1: You don't wait for the sinner to come to you.
Speaker 1: Go to them.
Speaker 1: Leave your gifts there in front of the altar.
Speaker 1: Listen, we know that God loves our worship and he desires our sacrifice.
Speaker 1: But in the middle of that sacrifice he said leave it and go.
Speaker 1: Fix your relationship.
Speaker 1: That's how important relationships are to God, so much so that he says that he won't forgive us if we're holding on to unforgiveness towards someone else.
Speaker 1: Leave your gift there in front of the altar First.
Speaker 1: Go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift.
Speaker 1: So it's very obvious here from scripture that God answers prayer according to your level of forgiveness and relationships.
Speaker 1: If you don't fix your relationships or issue between you and someone else, he won't forgive you.
Speaker 1: That's serious.
Speaker 1: Number two maybe you have the wrong motives.
Speaker 1: The Pharisees they wanted to be prayed.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be seen when they prayed.
Speaker 1: They would do it loud and they would do it proud.
Speaker 1: They do it for everybody to know their business and how holy they were.
Speaker 1: Lord bless my business, but I'm not willing to tithe.
Speaker 1: I want my hair to be thicker, I want my nails to be longer, I want my income higher.
Speaker 1: We become hungry for the spotlight and the glory that really belongs truly to God.
Speaker 1: So maybe you have broken relationships, maybe you have wrong motives, or maybe your faith is weak and you just don't believe God can.
Speaker 1: Your faith is weak and you just don't believe God can.
Speaker 1: This is tough, especially after a loss, someone not being healed.
Speaker 1: It's tough to continue to believe when you don't see the miracle you asked God for, especially if you're like me, and I believe it's going to happen and I'm like God.
Speaker 1: I prayed, I believed.
Speaker 1: Why in the world.
Speaker 1: Did it not happen before us?
Speaker 1: That would have been such a good testimony of your grace and your mercy and your power.
Speaker 1: In Mark, chapter nine, a boy is possessed.
Speaker 1: He can't talk.
Speaker 1: He foams at the mouth.
Speaker 1: He is thrown into the fire and water try to burn him alive and drown him.
Speaker 1: The spirit that's in him.
Speaker 1: The dad asked the disciples to drive it out and they couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Where is their faith?
Speaker 1: Mark, chapter 9, verse 22.
Speaker 1: It says this.
Speaker 1: Mark, chapter 9, verse 22,.
Speaker 1: It says this it has often thrown him into the fire or water to kill him.
Speaker 1: But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us If you can.
Speaker 1: If you can, said Jesus, if I can, I'm Jesus.
Speaker 1: The disciples couldn't do it, so he already had lost faith because the people who were closest to Jesus couldn't do what he was asking to do.
Speaker 1: Everything is possible for one who believes.
Speaker 1: Immediately, the boy's father exclaimed I do believe, but help my unbelief.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been there?
Speaker 1: You say God, I believe, but help my unbelief.
Speaker 1: I know that you can, but I'm not seeing that.
Speaker 1: You do Help my unbelief, but what about when he doesn't?
Speaker 1: In Matthew 9, 22, it says this the woman with the issue of blood again for 12 years.
Speaker 1: He said your faith has healed you.
Speaker 1: In Luke 7, we have the immoral woman come before Jesus and he saves her life from being stoned and says your faith has saved you.
Speaker 1: According to your faith, let it be done to you.
Speaker 1: And their sight was restored.
Speaker 1: Further in Matthew chapter 9, jesus heals two blind men.
Speaker 1: Matthew, chapter 9, jesus heals two blind men Over and over again.
Speaker 1: According to your faith.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to stop and I think we hold God captive, sometimes to what we believe is supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: And I say this because I am guilty.
Speaker 1: I look for what I am wanting to see.
Speaker 1: I'm asking God, through faith, for him to do the miracle that I desire for him to do, and most of the time I put my stamp of approval on it in the way that I want him to do it.
Speaker 1: So what am I doing?
Speaker 1: I'm asking God, in faith, to conform to my will.
Speaker 1: I'm asking God, the God of the universe, to do according to my will.
Speaker 1: But maybe God has something different planned.
Speaker 1: You ever prayed for somebody that was sick and they never made it out of the hospital.
Speaker 1: You can't find anybody who has passed on that has went to be with Jesus.
Speaker 1: That would come back now.
Speaker 1: We pray for healing and they end up getting the healing, the ultimate healing, and we get mad at God for him not healing them and letting them stay here.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the desires of our heart and our flesh is in the driver's seat and we pray selfishly.
Speaker 1: I want you to train yourself in this way.
Speaker 1: When you pray, who is benefiting from it the most?
Speaker 1: Is it you Think about it when you pray and you say God, I'm having faith?
Speaker 1: Have you even took the time to seek after his will, to know how to pray, to be led by the spirit of how you're supposed to pray?
Speaker 1: Yes, god loves when we just come and we pray and we cry out for a need.
Speaker 1: We are supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, we need to have the preparation in our spirits so that when the spirit of God moves on us to do something, we step out in action and we have faith.
Speaker 1: First, john, chapter 5, 14 and 15, it says this this is the confidence we have in approaching God that if we ask anything according to his will Verse 15 says and if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked for him of him, asked for him of him.
Speaker 1: Now we have a very basic example.
Speaker 1: Here is Paul.
Speaker 1: The man went through some stuff and stayed with his faith for three long seasons.
Speaker 1: Paul says he had a thorn in his flesh.
Speaker 1: We're not sure exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about you.
Speaker 1: You got eye problems, speech disability.
Speaker 1: A person is a thorn in your flesh.
Speaker 1: You're having marital issues.
Speaker 1: Don't let the thorn keep you from the throne room.
Speaker 1: He pleaded with God for three long seasons for rescue.
Speaker 1: He preached the gospel for 30 years in every major city in the Mediterranean basin.
Speaker 1: He was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he was stoned, he was imprisoned.
Speaker 1: He wrote a third of the New Testament, yet he believed.
Speaker 1: My grace is sufficient for you.
Speaker 1: He did not allow his circumstance to manipulate his faith.
Speaker 1: He would pray for deliverance out of situations.
Speaker 1: But if it didn't happen, he still got bit by the snake and he shook it off.
Speaker 1: For the glory of God, god's power is perfected in our weakness.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've learned in my personal experience that I would so much beat myself up for doubting.
Speaker 1: But doubting when you doubt is the perfect condition for God to remind you who he is.
Speaker 1: Have you ever prayed for something and forgot about it?
Speaker 1: And then one day it happens and you're like whoa, oh yeah, lord, I forgot.
Speaker 1: I even asked about that.
Speaker 1: He loves to remind you of who he is and how powerful he is.
Speaker 1: And we pray God, help me get this house, help me get this job, to marry that person.
Speaker 1: In the moment, we think that what we want is exactly what we need.
Speaker 1: Until we have it, that big old nice truck that I want comes with that big old fat payment.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to starve my family so I can drive a nice truck.
Speaker 1: I don't think no, my boss said I.
Speaker 1: Over time, you know what happens.
Speaker 1: We begin to mature and we begin to realize that the things that we used to pray for now we pray different.
Speaker 1: We have a new perspective.
Speaker 1: The older I get, the smarter my parents become.
Speaker 1: The longer I am in the spiritual maturity and praying, the more I understand that the foolish things I used to pray for and I now pray out of gratefulness instead of greed.
Speaker 1: And then God shows up in those situations because I've already told the ground for the seed to be planted.
Speaker 1: Maybe God has something different for what we pray for sometimes, and it is always better than we can ever imagine when he has his will, every single time.
Speaker 1: Even if we don't understand, even if we don't know, we have to still believe and trust that God is who he says he is, because, even if he never does another thing for any of us, he has already done enough.
Speaker 1: He's already blessed us beyond measures of what any of us deserve.
Speaker 1: Because here's what I know about God he doesn't have to do anything, but he does.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have to send the people along your way to encourage you, to lift you up, but he loves you enough.
Speaker 1: So why bother praying if God's not going to answer me?
Speaker 1: Why bother praying or believing if God's not going to do what I want to do?
Speaker 1: If he's not going to do what I want him to do?
Speaker 1: When you frame it up like that, it sounds a little different, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: So you don't pray to God, you don't believe God, you don't have faith in God because of what he's going to do.
Speaker 1: You can praise him for what he has already done, and you know what I found when you actually praise him as if he's already done it.
Speaker 1: You start to not really care because you find your joy again and you get your strength back and you become renewed in your mind and your heart and your soul, because the purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will.
Speaker 1: The purpose of prayer is to know God so that we can do his will.
Speaker 1: Repeat after me I believe God can, I believe God will.
Speaker 1: Even if he doesn't, I still believe, because the purpose of prayer isn't for God to do our will.
Speaker 1: It's so that we can get relationship with him, to know him.