18 Learn How to Walk With God

First Steps Episode 18: The Power of Beginning with Prayer

What sets the course of your day?

In this episode of First Steps, Brother John shares from over 55 years of walking with God and preaching the Gospel around the world. Drawing from personal experiences, childhood memories, revival meetings, and a lifetime of ministry, he encourages believers to develop a daily habit of prayer and seeking God's presence.

Brother John reflects on growing up in a home filled with prayer, witnessing the power of God firsthand, and learning that spiritual growth begins with simple, consistent first steps. He reminds listeners that prayer is more than a routine. It is the doorway to a living relationship with God.

Whether you're just beginning your journey or have walked with the Lord for many years, this episode will encourage you to make time each day to pray, study God's Word, and allow Him to direct your steps.

In this episode:

• Why prayer is the foundation of relationship with God
 • The impact of growing up in an atmosphere of faith and prayer
 • Stories from revival meetings and powerful experiences with God's presence
 • How daily prayer helps establish God's direction for your life
 • Learning to seek the reality of God's presence every day

"It sets your day, it sets the course of your day, it sets God's direction in your life."

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:59

Greetings, everybody, and this is Brother John Mettern. I'm very glad to have you with us today. And I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to this podcast. And I hope and pray that I can say something to help you. You know, we're in the year 2026 and July. I don't remember exactly what day, but July of this year, I started into 55 years of serving God and preaching the gospel of the kingdom all over this world. And, you know, I meet so many people and I talk to them and I get I begin to encourage them about their relationship with God. And uh I begin to tell them, I said, look, I've preached all over the United States. I've preached many places in Canada. I've been many places in India and the Philippines and Central America and South America, and now we're ministering in five different countries in Africa. And people, you know, we we slacked off a little bit in Africa at the first of the year, and I started getting so many inquiries of people wanting to know where I was and why I had cut back on the meetings, and and they wanted to know, you know, if if we were going to pick the meetings back up. Because at one time there we were doing three and four video services a week in Africa through the Zoom video app. And we just had to cut back, and and we've been relocating our house and and you know, getting ready for the ministry to grow, and we've had to, you know, just make some adjustments. So, but I want to thank you for joining in today and being with us. And in our last podcast, you know, I was talking about that relationship with God and learning to pray. When I come to God, I had to learn to pray. You're gonna have to learn to pray. And it's not just getting on your knees and reciting a memorized prayer, but it is getting in that place with God. Sometimes I'm standing, sometimes I'm sitting, sometimes I'm laying on my face. There'll be times I'll be laying flat on my back, but uh my heart is always open and lifted up to God. And that is what you're gonna have to do. And if you can learn to do that in your first steps every day, and start in that relationship, start opening yourself up to God. You know, that's what God's looking for. The very reason God created man was for relationship. God didn't need man, and God still don't need man, but God wants man for a relationship that he can live in him, talk to him, work through him, and present himself to mankind. You know, like I like I was saying in one of our previous broadcasts, there's so many people out there that do not know and have never been touched by the reality of God. And I thank God for his goodness and his mercy because from the time as far back as I can remember, I had a mom and daddy that prayed and fasted and sought God and studied the word. And they believed in the power of God. They believed in the reality, they believed in that healing power and delivering hand of God. And from the time I'm old enough to remember four, five, six years old, that area. I can remember God healing my body. I can remember God healing us of childhood diseases like measles and mumps and chickenpox and those kind of things. I mean, when we got sick, mom and daddy laid their hands on us, prayed the prayer of faith for us, cursed the devil in the name of Jesus. And if that didn't work, they'd get on the phone and they'd call some of the members of the church, and sometimes people from the church would come over and they'd get in prayer, and our whole living room would be filled with people on their knees crying out to God for God to move and heal and save and you know moving deliverance for whatever the need was. And I don't care, like I said, if it was measles, mumps, chicken pox, and it doesn't matter or if it was a financial need. People would come and pray and they'd go to prayer and seek the face of God, and sometimes, you know, it'd be 30 minutes, an hour, hour and a half, two hours. Our home would be filled with prayer so many different times during the week. And this is the way God grew up. And I grew up in meetings, you know, that that were packed out, 15 and 20,000. And you just you don't see that today. You see it at ball games and racetracks, but you don't see it in revivals and churches. And this was tent revivals, and uh, and I can remember uh old Roberts coming to the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, and that thing was packed out standing room only. And the same thing with A.A. Allen. I remember being in an auditorium with him, and and the the Spirit of God got on him, and the man came up for prayer, and Allen prayed for him. He wanted to be delivered from cigarettes. And and A.A. Allen prayed for that man, and God delivered him, and he took those cigarettes and throwed them down on the platform and stomped them. And the Spirit of God hit A.A. Alan, he stood up and he said, He said, Anybody here wants to be delivered from cigarettes? He said, You throw your cigarettes down on this platform. And I'm telling you, I cannot tell you the hundreds of cigarette packs that come sailing out of that congregation and landed on that platform, and the power of God got on that man, and he ran across that platform stomping and crushing those cigarettes. And he told the Lord before he started, he said, every one of these, he said, that I stomp. He said, I command the devil, I command this demon of nicotine to come out of these people, and you can believe what you want. But that man run across that stage and that platform and he stomped, and there would be times he would stomp a cigarette pack, and you could hear somebody up in the congregation scream and throw their hands up and begin to praise God. And this went on for probably, I don't know, almost the whole service, I guess, and people were getting delivered just by that man going across that platform and stomping them cigarette packs, and the power of God would go out of that man, and the demon forces of nicotine would turn people loose. But I can tell you that was a praying man. They said he would get out of service at night and he would do whatever he had to do. I know when I minister like that, I've got to take a little time to rest and and you know get a change of clothes. And and but then I would always go back to the tent and go to prayer, and I think he had his own trailer that he lived on the tent lots, and and he would be, and you could hear him pray, and I mean, way on up. And people don't know what an all-night prayer meeting is anymore, but when I grew up, there was times we had all-night prayer meetings, and when God called me to ministry when I was 19 years old, completely and totally saved me, and I surrendered to him and began to preach. And if whether it was on the street corner, where it was in the tent revival, where it was in a home prayer meeting, I prayed many times all night long to be prepared, to be ready, to be gifted, to be anointed. So, but you know where it all started? Praying first thing of the morning, praying, reading that Bible. First thing, get out of that bed and pray, and then open that word and study. And and sometimes they get to studying, and I'd study for hours. At that time when I first got saved, I stayed with mom and daddy, and they saw what God was doing in my life, and they didn't really, you know, require me to work there for the first little bit. And I would spend hours sometimes studying and praying and reading the word, and mom and daddy never said anything to me. And of course I knew, you know, that they were giving me a gray spirit to get my relationship with God together. But I learned, I learned those first steps to pray and seek the face of God every day. It sets your day, it sets the course of your day, it sets God's direction in your life. Because I'm gonna tell you, the days you don't pray and seek the face of God and ask him for leadership, your day's going a different direction than it would have if you just stopped and prayed and sought the face of God and asked God to guide you and order your steps. And when you ask him to guide you and order your steps, mean it. Don't just make it some casual prayer, but learn to be led by the Spirit of God. Learn to seek for the reality of God and learn, you know, what God will be in your life, how real he can become. And let's let's seek for the reality of God to be restored back to our homes and back to our churches. And I pray I've said something to stir you up, encourage you to seek the Lord and thank you again for joining us. And let me hear from you. You can you can write, you can email, let me hear from you. Let me know what these podcasts are doing for you. Uh, and if God moves on your heart to help us and and donate, you know, to help us get this gospel out. Like I said, we're right now working in five countries in Africa, and God is making Himself so real to them people. So may God bless you until our next podcast. And I do thank you for joining in with us on today's first steps.