SA Ep76 - Becoming a Prayer Warrior (Finale)

SA Ep76 - Becoming a Prayer Warrior (Finale)

In this final episode we examine the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” After bringing every need before God, Jesus teaches believers to end prayer with a declaration of God’s authority, ability, and purpose.

This episode emphasizes that God’s kingdom is absolute, His power is unlimited, and His glory is the ultimate goal of all things. Prayer is not about relying on our strength but resting in His. It is not about elevating our desires but aligning with His glory.

By ending with praise, believers are reminded that God is in control, no matter the circumstances. This final declaration brings confidence, strengthens faith, and completes the prayer by returning the focus to who God is.

The prayer that began with a Father ends with a King, reminding us that the One who loves us is also the One who reigns forever.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelster from Gilead Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. Have you ever heard of the term exit strategy? I use it quite often as well as military and other areas that they'll use this term exit strategy. I use it when I'm dealing with families who are having uh maybe some great uh life-altering experience, whether it's a death in the family or some ailment or sickness that I need to be involved in their life heavily for a short time. But I have to go into that with an exit strategy of how to get away because the family can't become reliant on me to be there every single day. So whether that is me being involved for a set amount of time where I'll put a timetable of, you know, I will I'll try to talk to them every day for two weeks, then I'll go to every other day, then I'll go to a couple times a week, then I'll go to once a week, and then once a month, and then before long, I just kind of slowly back my way out to where uh I have gradually walked away from instead of just stopping cold turkey, as you might say. And that can be very abrupt and leave them wondering, like, why did he just walk away? So you've got to have an exit strategy on anything, or leaving a job. You need an exit strategy. You don't want to just get them walk out. I mean, I guess sometimes that works, but you don't want to just get them walk out. An exit strategy. Every battle needs an exit strategy. Not just survival, you know, just survive in advance, you know, the old March Madness basketball, survive in advance. Sometimes that works, sometimes you just want to try to survive to the next day. It's not about endurance and just hanging on and white knuckling it to the end. What you're looking for is victory. You're looking for an exit strategy on how to get out of the situation you're in. Well, this prayer that we have, looking at how to become a prayer warrior, the Christ gives us an exit strategy. He gives us an exit strategy. I mean, look where he leads us to in verse 13. He says, lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. Those when you really study, I mean, when you go back and look at our last two lessons, they've been kind of dark and heavy because we were talking about evil and temptation. I mean, some really just an ugly things. And if it was just to cut off right there, that's that's a harsh way to end a prayer. Uh, you know, lead us not to temptation, deliver us from evil. Amen. It's a little abrupt. So what's the exit strategy, not just for the prayer, but for our life and and to continue with the rest of our day. If we were to pray this prayer in the morning, how do you continue the rest of your day? Well, he gives us a great exit strategy. And what that exit strategy is, is a doxology. Doxology is just a it's a praise. It's taking a moment to just offer praise. It comes from the word doxology, just to offer praise. And in this case, it's offering praise to God. So he ends this prayer out in verse number 13 of Matthew 6. He says, For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. We can't we take this prayer that we start off and we we're talking about relationship and uh we're talking about uh uh protection and provision, and and then we end with this praise to God, and that's how we exit, and that's how we start the day. If we were to pray this prayer before we start our day, and I would encourage you to try this. Try it for a week, try it for a month, pray this prayer every morning. And you you end that prayer out and start your day by putting the focus back on God, away from ourselves, away from the evil, away from the trials and tribulations, and you put it back on God and his goodness and greatness when he said, for thine is the kingdom. For thine is the power. The way that's written, where it puts the comma and the power, you can just you can uh insert those, the transverse. For thine is the kingdom, for thine is the power, for thine is the glory. Forever. Amen. This is the the lifting of our focus back to the greatness of God. It's not just a closing statement that we have. It's this is again a declaration. We just had a declaration of dependence when we say deliver us from evil. But now we're we're we're declaring the greatness of God now, everything, your kingdom come. Now we're talking about God's kingdom come. We can really get deep into this, and I don't want to right now. I don't want to get too deep into the thy kingdom come, but when we talk about thy kingdom come, we're we're there are prayers that are called imprecatory prayers. Those are some hard prayers to pray. What is an imprecatory prayer, preacher? All right. An imprecatory prayer is, and we find them in Scripture, and those are prayers that we can pray, but that's when we we are calling for God's judgment or justice or avenging or wrath to be brought down on other people. And those are hard prayers to pray. Those are prayers that need to be reserved for the most extreme times. I was talking uh about a year, uh a little more than a year ago, I guess, now, with a family whose daughter was attacked uh by the man she was living with wasn't her husband. Um that was a problem number one. I mean, there's there's so many problems in in those kind of situations like that to deal with, but you know, that's not my focus right now. But the man she was living with uh ended up attacking her, uh choking her, and uh some some other things. And uh again, I was involved with this family very close for you know a few days, um, and then you know, had to start, you know, backing out of it, letting them, you know, begin to walk and and and you know be the family again that they needed to be without me being there the whole time. And uh I was talking to the mother one day and she said, I don't know if it's okay, but I'm praying that God would take that young man. I I don't want him around my daughter, I don't want him around other people's daughters. If he's that if he's that unstable that he can lay his hands on a young lady and harm her and put that kind of fear in her and and say the things that he said. I mean, it was an ugly situation. Said I I I I want to pray for God to kill him. And those prayers need to be reserved for the most extreme of times. So there are times whenever when we pray, Thy kingdom come, there's a part of that that is in precatory. Because for God's kingdom to come to earth, now we're talking about the book of Revelation. That's when God's kingdom will come. You go over and read in that book, when you start somewhere around chapter number six, and you read all the way through uh chapter uh number, let's say sixteen, and you read about the the seals being broken, the trumpets being sounded, and the vials being poured out, especially the vials being poured out, which is the ultimate uh um I think it's athalmus, which is the um the wrath of God being poured out. And it's it's the most extreme of all. It's the the plagues of Egypt ramped up not just to a location but to the entire world. That that's what must happen for God's kingdom to come. There must be mass death to those who have rejected God, the God haters, the the oppressors, the Christian killers. So there is a there is a bit of darkness to this when you pray this for thine is the kingdom. For thy kingdom come. Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is what when we're praying this. So we've got to understand there is a little bit of darkness to this. But we're also lifting God to say that his kingdom is not without question. His rule is not without question. His kingdom, his rule does not depend on circumstances or human cooperation, it does not need us. The kingdom of God, according to Psalm 145, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. That means no matter what happens in this world, no matter how unstable things can seem at times, even in our life, God's rule remains steady and unchanging at all times. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So when he says the power, he's talking about God's ability. God's ability, his authority is without, again, without question. There is nothing that is outside the reach of God. There's nothing that God can't do if the Bible tells us that. And uh uh Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah, oh man, that that that portion of Jeremiah 30, 31, 32, what a what a great few chapters that is. But he says, Ah, Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. Thine is the kingdom, thine is the power. This prayer becomes more than just words when we believe that God has the power to do anything. I've said this so often, I'll say it again. We need to stop telling God about how big our problems are and start telling our problems how big our God is. Our God has all the power. There is nothing too hard. We we we we tend to go to God and say, Well, God, if you can help in this situation, I don't I don't know. It might be might be too big. I know we don't we don't we wouldn't really say that, but what we're thinking, I don't know if God can really help in this situation. It might be too much for for you, God, but if you could just give me the strength to endure it. Why don't we pray for God to to to remove it? Didn't he say that? I mean, with the faith of a grain of a mustard seed, we could tell a mountain to jump into the lake and it'd jump. But we gotta have that faith. If we're gonna pray for rain in our life, we need to carry the spiritual umbrella and expect the rain. I'm praying for church growth at our church right now, and I think there's some faithful people at the church that are praying for the same thing. And with that, I'm making preparations for massive growth. I'm not gonna pray for growth and then sit and whine and bellyache that, well, nobody's coming in. No, they're coming. And they're they're right now they're running as fast as they can to get there. And and when that day, when that day comes, when they finally get there, whether it takes them a month or a year or ten years, when they finally get there, we are going to be ready because we are carrying our umbrella. We've got our our children's program going, which our children's program is already growing. We're not only got you know the kids in our church, we've got babies all over the place, people having babies, just had another set of twins born in the church. We got other folks who already have babies that are trying to have more babies. We got a couple young uh families that are getting married, they're gonna be having babies soon. I just know it. I mean, so we're growing already, but you know, our children's program is ready. We're ready for the next expansion. We're already talking about, okay, when we need to expand to the next room, here's where we're gonna go, here's what we're gonna do, here's how we're gonna arrange it. We're playing we're planning for this. We've got our leadership set up so that we're we've got our young adult pastor, we've got our youth directors, uh, directors of youth uh youth ministries, we've got our our pastor of planning and outreach. That you know, that's what he does. He just makes sure that the plans are laid out for us. I give him uh the ideas and the visions that I have, and he just keeps the plan rolling. That I mean, we're we're we're set for this. We're praying, we're praying for it, we're gonna carry our umbrella. And we've got to understand that God has that kind of power. And then it goes on to say, and the glory, and the glory. The whole purpose of this prayer. This is the ultimate purpose of this prayer, is that everything that God does is for his glory. Everything. Isaiah 42 says that I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will not give to another. There is one thing that God will share his dwelling place, he will share his healing uh uh power, he will share his finances with, I mean, because he owns everything. He owns the cattle and the hills they stand on. He owns everything, he'll share with anybody, but the one thing you won't share, you won't share his glory. He won't let another have any of his glory. Everything he does is for his glory and for his good pleasure. The Bible says that. And people take that verse out of context and they say, oh, so God is happy when people, you know, uh die a torturous death or struggling with some illness or disease. So God takes glory in that and he does that for his own good pleasure. He likes watching us squirm. I mean, come on now. Let's let's let's have at least two cents to rub together to you know start a fire. That's not what he's saying. He's saying that his glory, there is none other than him. He has all glory. Every answered prayer, every act of provision, every moment of deliverance, every time we're led from temptation, it all goes back to God. All the glory goes to him. Everything. And we end this prayer out. Amen. Well, forever. I mean, how do we describe that word? I mean, do we really need to preach that word forever? For all times, not just for a little while, not until I can get up on my feet and walk again by myself, God. No. I need all these things I just prayed for, God, and I need it forever. Your your kingdom is forever, your power is forever, your glory is forever, your deliverance is going to be forever, your provision, your protection, your your uh the paternity of my life, you are my father. These are forever, forever. But we end out with amen. Such a simple word. We we are told that Jesus Christ is the yea and the amen of everything. He is the finality, and he is the the the capstone of all of it, the amen. And this word just simply means so be it. You know, it tells us back in um, oh, watch me forget now, that uh Nehemiah, I think it is. The book of Nehemiah. I think it was Ezra that was uh reading the scripture. Boy, watch me get these names wrong now. Um that made a pulpit of wood and he stood there and he read for hours, hours and hours, and he read the law. He didn't read the good stuff. He wasn't reading the gospel. He wasn't reading about how Jesus saves and loves us and you know, for God so loved the world that He gave his own. No, he was reading the law. He was telling everybody what they can and can't do. And you know what the people did? They sat out in the audience and they raised their hands and said, Amen, out loud, in the service, while he was reading, for hours. And you come into our Baptist churches today, and we look like that we have walked into a funeral service. People don't want to speak because they're afraid they might make a scene. I think we've gotten so far away from what what we need to be doing in our in our church services and in our worship and praise of God. I mean, David was was dancing before the Lord. He was so excited when they brought the ark back. Hannah was on the altar shaking and trembling so much that uh Eli thought she was drunk. This people used to truly worship, and where we got saying, Amen, while the preacher was preaching came from the Old Testament. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with raising holy hands. The Bible talks about it. I will enter his courts with praise and thanksgiving. That's not silent, that's not quiet. The Bible tells us to cry aloud and spare not. There's going to be preaching in heaven so loud. The angel cries aloud. Read that over in chapter number 15. Cries aloud. So this final word, amen, and so be it. That's right. I agree. The seal of approval. Stamp on it right now. It's a statement of agreement. I believe this. This is truth. I rest in everything I just said. Our Father, which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, and thine is the glory. Forever.

unknown 17:42

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Smelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from Seeking Approval at Gilead Baptist Church.