SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying limited in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his odds.
SPEAKER_00: And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at vinelife.com.
SPEAKER_00: For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Final Life.
SPEAKER_00: Again, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Is anybody alive this morning?
SPEAKER_00: You made it.
SPEAKER_00: You pushed through.
SPEAKER_00: You could have you could have ducked out this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It was cold.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit of snow, enough to, you know, if you wanted an excuse, you could have stayed home.
SPEAKER_00: But hey, you're here.
SPEAKER_00: We're here.
SPEAKER_00: We did it.
SPEAKER_00: We did it, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Um, by the way, my name is Luke.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if we haven't met yet, I am so glad uh that everybody is able to join us.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're newer here, so good to meet you.
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's it's an honor to share this space with you.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bibles this morning, please open up to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 15.
SPEAKER_00: It's the best of the four gospels.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and and we'll start there this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray before we read here today.
SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for an opportunity to come into your presence today with a body of believers.
SPEAKER_00: And uh what an honor and privilege it is, God, to worship you, to make much of your name, to give you glory.
SPEAKER_00: We say, come, Holy Spirit, open us up as we read your word.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would read our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: God, you know who we are and you know what we need.
SPEAKER_00: You know us better than we know ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're here, God.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for this time, and if it be in your will, would you send us to Mexico this week?
SPEAKER_00: For missions, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 15, starting in verse one.
SPEAKER_00: Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, The man receives sinners and eats with them.
SPEAKER_00: So he told them in this parable What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost until he finds it.
SPEAKER_00: And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing, and when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
SPEAKER_00: Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she finds it.
SPEAKER_00: And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin I had lost.
SPEAKER_00: Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would then go on to tell a third story that I'll paraphrase just for the sake of brevity.
SPEAKER_00: He tells another story that we know as the prodigal son.
SPEAKER_00: And it goes on to talk really about two sons.
SPEAKER_00: One departed from his father and went out into the country in reckless extravagance.
SPEAKER_00: The other one stayed home, kept the rules, he was in close proximity with his father, but his heart could not have been further away.
SPEAKER_00: And it was really the parable of two lost sons, one and one passionate father.
SPEAKER_00: And all of these stories we find, both between the lost sheep and the lost coin and the two lost sons, they all end with a party.
SPEAKER_00: They all end with rejoicing in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, I just curious, have you ever lost something that really mattered to you?
SPEAKER_00: Just as a question to start with this morning, have you lost something that really, really mattered to you?
SPEAKER_00: I have a terrible habit of losing almost everything I have.
SPEAKER_00: I literally have to attach electronic devices to my keys and my wallet because apparently anywhere I go, I take them and throw them behind, like in dark corners or something.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't find I just I show up wherever I'm going and I put my keys somewhere they don't belong.
SPEAKER_00: And so I have to track down everything.
SPEAKER_00: It's a habit of mine, but more seriously, have you lost something that was of consequence, something that's precious?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe you know that feeling of looking for your toddler in a crowded marketplace and your and your eyes disconnected from them for a few minutes that felt like an eternity.
SPEAKER_00: You guys ever felt that before?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've uh you've lost your wedding ring or a ring or a piece of jewelry that mattered to you.
SPEAKER_00: I lost my band uh a couple years into our marriage, and I was like looking fervently for it, so I know what that feels like.
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe it's it's maybe for you it was staying up late at night, waiting for um a child to come home, uh, your teenager or your adult child to come home after late night, not knowing where they are, but you waited up at the front door and uh and hoping, you know, you hadn't heard from them all night.
SPEAKER_00: You're hoping that they arrive home safely.
SPEAKER_00: And so what happens though, when we lose something that matters to us, it actually accesses a new pursuit inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: There's a level of desperation that somehow appears the moment that you lose something that truly matters to you, unlike many other things.
SPEAKER_00: So, this passage, what's interesting about this passage, Luke 15.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, this is the first sermon I ever heard in this building when I showed up for the first time in 1999.
SPEAKER_00: I came out from Indiana on a vacation with my family.
SPEAKER_00: The first sermon I ever heard preached in this room by Pastor Walt Robertson was the sermon on Luke 15 about the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost son.
SPEAKER_00: And it stuck with me all the way to this day because something about the way he declared it helped me to access there was a pursuit in the heart of the father that I needed to know.
SPEAKER_00: Um I needed to land in for myself.
SPEAKER_00: The funny thing is that same trip, the same trip, or I came and I got to hear Luke 15 in this room back in 1999 when I was in high school.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that dates me.
SPEAKER_00: Um, same trip, my family went up to Rocky Mountain National Park for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and we did some hikes.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're coming from Indiana, so we're not in exactly hiker shape.
SPEAKER_00: We're what you call indoorsy, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we come out to Indiana, high altitude, not a lot of oxygen.
SPEAKER_00: We decided to do Sky Pond.
SPEAKER_00: And if anyone has ever done Sky Pond, and we go up there, and it took every ounce of energy inside of us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Completely exhausted by the time we get up to the top.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we're coming back down, though, my brother decided to ignore all of those intentionally placed signs that say no shortcutting, stay on the trail.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I know a faster way down.
SPEAKER_00: And so he started cutting, you know, cutting through all the switchbacks to try to find another way down.
SPEAKER_00: So shortly, shortly after a couple of these shortcuts, he trips and falls and gets completely disoriented, and he has no idea where the trail is.
SPEAKER_00: So we lose my brother, and uh and uh and so my dad got and I got all the way down.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't know if he'd had run down, so we got all the way down, we didn't know what happened.
SPEAKER_00: We're asking people, hey, have you seen a guy you know a young man about this height?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had seen him.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I I figured he'd already been eaten by a bear, so I just figured we'd go back to the campsite.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember my dad kicking into high gear.
SPEAKER_00: There's something accessed in him.
SPEAKER_00: He was already very tired, way more tired than I was.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and the moment he realized that we didn't have my brother, he something activated inside him.
SPEAKER_00: He started going back up that mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's like, we gotta find him.
SPEAKER_00: And so we started, we went together, we started going back up the mountain, yelling his name, right?
SPEAKER_00: The top of our lungs.
SPEAKER_00: And when you're yelling the name of your kid, it's it sounds a little different, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It sounds, it's not like yelling at a broncos game.
SPEAKER_00: There's something about that that's a little different.
SPEAKER_00: And we were going up, somehow, I don't entirely remember how the story ended, but we we uh we found out that he had actually got off the trail and somehow made his way all the way back down to the valley, and he walked long enough, he just ended up back at our campsite, a mile and a mile and a half from where we were.
SPEAKER_00: And so we came back later, and he had been there after you know walking by himself through the woods, and we found him, and it was it was fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was one of those moments that for me really solidified that there's something about the heart of the father we have to understand that the heart of the father is to is to find what is lost, to recover what is lost, and to bring sons and daughters back home.
SPEAKER_00: That is the heart of the father.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to understand that the heart of the father is fervently pursuing all that is lost until it is found.
SPEAKER_00: So over the last few weeks, we've been in this series called Open Windows.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you've been able to join us for some of these, some of these talks.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been really casting a vision for it one way that we're orienting ourselves in prayer this year, which we're calling a daily prayer rhythm.
SPEAKER_00: We're taking our cue from the lives of Daniel and David and Peter and really two millennia of followers of Christ who have ordered their day and ordered their attention by actually interrupting their day with a call to prayer and a call to worship and a call to return their attention to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the ways that we're doing that here this year is by inviting all of us to adopt and engage in a daily prayer rhythm where in the morning we pause to be with Jesus and be with Jesus in simplicity and solitude and love.
SPEAKER_00: In the afternoon, a call to midday prayer, which is a prayer for the lost.
SPEAKER_00: And then the evenings, um, reflecting on the day with prayers of gratitude, a way of kind of looking back and seeing God in ways that we notice him and ways that we fail to notice him and letting him reorient our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and all of this is not about adopting just one more thing to do, it's about cultivating the kind of lifestyle of unceasing prayer, which is what we're called to.
SPEAKER_00: All we're really after is a loving relationship, communion with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And we just really believe that one of the ways we're gonna build into that this year is adopting rhythms together where we can turn our attention to what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: So last week we talked about the first window, this morning prayer, the importance of the first moments of a morning, what they do for us psychologically, what they do for us foundationally.
SPEAKER_00: And when we start our mornings with Jesus, it's actually a resistance to the way of the world, which is noise and speed.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually defying this gravitational pull of noise and speed where we slow down and in silence and solitude begin our days from the foundation of belovedness.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you guys like it like starting your days from the foundation of your belovedness?
SPEAKER_00: We get to start our day being renewed in the thought that I am a loved son and daughter of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing like that.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the invitations for this midday prayer, the second window, is to pray for the lost.
SPEAKER_00: So if our mornings are about looking in, the invitation for midday prayer is about looking out.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of prayer that connects us to a broader vision than just personal spiritual growth.
SPEAKER_00: God wants all of us to grow, but he wants to connect us to his heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're invited to connect with the heart of the Father to call sons and daughters home.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is a deep love for God always leads to a deep love for others.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot separate your love from God, your love for God from a love for the people that God loves.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: So the invitation is to pause, to take a moment daily, to pause and turn our attention to those that God is laying on our hearts, specifically those who are lost and estranged.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we co-labor with the Father and kingdom worked.
SPEAKER_00: It's connecting with the God who wanders back into the field, turning his ear, looking for the faint sound of a sheep tangled up in the woods.
SPEAKER_00: It's the God who sweeps the floor and lights a lamp, looking for one coin that is hidden in a dark corner.
SPEAKER_00: It's the God who waits at the end of the driveway, hoping that today is the day he's gonna see his son come around the corner, waiting to come home.
SPEAKER_00: That's the God that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: You guys with me this morning?
SPEAKER_00: But before we go further, can we just acknowledge something?
SPEAKER_00: The term lost, the term lost in the church, um, apparently it's it hasn't been in vogue in church language for some time to use the word lost to refer to people as lost.
SPEAKER_00: Over the years, a lot of church and leaders have started using the term lost because it implies some kind of savior complex, or it can at least.
SPEAKER_00: Um we have the answers, and our job is to inform everybody else of something.
SPEAKER_00: We have a perfect roadmap, and my job is to tell you everything you don't know about life and truth and love and all these things.
SPEAKER_00: So by no means should the word lost reinforce some kind of prideful elitist mindset.
SPEAKER_00: But can we cut to the chase here just for a second?
SPEAKER_00: We are lost without him.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make that very clear.
SPEAKER_00: We are lost without him.
SPEAKER_00: We were living in darkness, dead in sin.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is not just being on a naughty list.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just my life is slightly less than it could be.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a few habits that I need to change.
SPEAKER_00: Sin blinds us.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture talks about our eyes are literally covered and blinded by the light.
SPEAKER_00: We have been blinded by Satan, deceived, scales over our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Sin handcuffs us, enslaves us.
SPEAKER_00: And there is no way out except for the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: Except for the power of God demonstrated into life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He invites us out of sin.
SPEAKER_00: He finds us when we are lost.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just a one-time thing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but uh I was lost before Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Occasionally I still get lost.
SPEAKER_00: I'm lost almost at some point every day.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not plucked out of what we would call salvation, but man, I need Jesus to find me over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Sin destroys our lives like cancer.
SPEAKER_00: It eats us from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we don't even know it's there until it wreaks havoc on us.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, Jesus was sent by the Father out of love to redeem us, to call us back, to adopt us back into his family.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus uses this word lost.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't seem to be tripped up about it.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us, you know, let's go pre-Christian, let's go outsider, let's go, you know, let's let's soften this up.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus is like, no.
SPEAKER_00: I came to seek and save that which is lost.
SPEAKER_00: This is the primary mission of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He came to us to seek and save that which is lost, which includes us, but includes more than us.
SPEAKER_00: So the heart of God, the heart of the gospel is that the Father finds us.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that's not a one-time thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's every day we wake up and we're caught up in our own immaturity, we're caught up in selfishness, we're caught up in pride.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, God is renewing us into a new nature.
SPEAKER_00: Our old man is dead, and he's renewing us into a new man, a life in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But we feel that tension day after day of those old things being weeded out and the life of Christ emerging.
SPEAKER_00: And every single time the Father, he knows exactly where to come and find us.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody say amen across the room.
SPEAKER_00: If you have been found by Jesus, say amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gospel that he finds us where we don't even know where we are.
SPEAKER_00: There's days I don't even know where I am, God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I'm feeling, I don't know what I'm thinking.
SPEAKER_00: I'm caught up in an entanglement in my my my heart and my mind.
SPEAKER_00: But you know me because you made me.
SPEAKER_00: There's nowhere I can go from your presence.
SPEAKER_00: So he welcomes us in through the power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He finds us, but then he finds us and he invites us to partner with them.
SPEAKER_00: We partner with the Father in our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: And the scripture points to a kind of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: There's actually a kind of prayer that both recovers what is lost and it gives birth to new life.
SPEAKER_00: It's prayer of the prayers of intercession, or we could say even laboring prayer.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 9, Jesus said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
SPEAKER_00: So according to Jesus, there is a ripeness in the world.
SPEAKER_00: There are some that are open.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, even studies right now in America is as much as like the church, like organized religion has shrunk, the level of spiritual openness right now in our time is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: They're just not necessarily looking to the church for answers, but the level of openness and ripeness for a move of God in our time is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: And even Jesus is saying, listen, the harvest is ripe, the laborers are few.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to pray for laborers.
SPEAKER_00: And for me, when I read this scripture, oftentimes I see the word laborers as workers.
SPEAKER_00: And likely that's is what it means, but I think it also goes beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: Laborers is not just workers, it's those willing to labor or to give birth to what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: God is looking for those who co-labor with him, ready to receive his word and partner with him to give birth to something new that he is doing.
SPEAKER_00: Laboring is the same as being in labor.
SPEAKER_00: And we see this throughout the scriptures, God calling men and women to labor with him, co-labor with him towards his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: We see it in the life of Elijah.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll just recap a story out of 1 Kings 18.
SPEAKER_00: This is after Elijah had brought a word from the Lord that there's going to be a drought over the land for about three years.
SPEAKER_00: And shortly after that, there is this wild spectacle where he challenges the prophets of Baal and he creates an altar and he soaks it in water.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You guys pray to your God, I'm going to pray to my God.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a blowout.
SPEAKER_00: It was a blowout of a show.
SPEAKER_00: I would have paid$39.99 pay-per-view to watch that thing.
SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And Elijah, he calls on, he calls down fire from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: God consumes the fire and completely upends the spirituality of that region.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly after this, though, God tells him to go up to Mount Carmel and he goes up there and it says that Elijah starts to hear the sound.
SPEAKER_00: God said that I'm going to send the rain.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes up to Mount Carmel and it says that he hears the sound of rushing rain.
SPEAKER_00: Before it rained, his spirit can hear in faith the sound of rushing rain.
SPEAKER_00: And so it says that Elijah actually got down on his knees with his face in between his legs.
SPEAKER_00: He got down on his knees with his face in between his legs, and he began to pray, and he would send his servant out seven times to go just check, go look out over the water until finally they see a a cloud the size of a man's fist, and that rain was coming after all.
SPEAKER_00: But we see Elijah, part of his partnership with God, was a bodily posture where he would actually pray on his knees with his legs between his head between his legs as if he was in labor.
SPEAKER_00: He was literally laboring in prayer, partnering in faith, believing in what God was wanting to do in his time and in his day.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was much the same.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, as he was establishing the churches all across Asia Minor, and as the gospel was spreading spontaneously, Paul was a spiritual parent.
SPEAKER_00: But even as he wrote to the Galatians, and he had to correct a lot of things that they were doing, and in his letters he would both bring encouragement and correction, but then you get these little snapshots of him as both a father and a co-laborer.
SPEAKER_00: And if Galatians 4.19, he greets them, he says, My little children from for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.
SPEAKER_00: So as Paul's writing, everything in him, there's a laboring, as if he's in birth.
SPEAKER_00: There's something wrenching, there's something developing in his very gut until he sees Christ formed in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so this isn't a man or woman thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's any of us who are willing to receive the seed of God's word, much like Mary was, and carry it through.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's the kind of prayer that moves from our head into our heart and eventually into our belly.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00: There's some prayers that have to move from our head into our heart, but then they find, they find their place in your belly.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you prayed from your gut?
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you let a prayer well up from your innermost being, from you felt it in your gut?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been in the room during labor, whether that was you or you got to participate, it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: But it ain't pretty.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing, is sometimes a co-laboring prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It means we pray with tears, it means we pray with groans, and it means we pray with perseverance.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you know what it means to pray with tears.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Tears are a sign that our hearts are longing for a rat reality that doesn't yet exist.
SPEAKER_00: There are moments that we cry out to God, not because he can't hear us, but because he is crying out as well.
SPEAKER_00: And there's something else that partners with the heart of God, even through our tears.
SPEAKER_00: Scriptures talk about how God actually bottles up every one of our tears.
SPEAKER_00: No tear is wasted.
SPEAKER_00: Every tear is actually saying something.
SPEAKER_00: Every tear you've cried is actually speaking something about what your heart is longing for.
SPEAKER_00: And the promise of the scriptures, those who sow in tears will reap in songs of joy.
SPEAKER_00: So God oftentimes calls us to partner with Him in actual tears, but not just for the sake of looking super spiritual or just agonizing over life.
SPEAKER_00: Tears result in joy, especially the tears of labor.
SPEAKER_00: The tears of labor always result in tears of joy.
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes he calls us to partner with him in our tears, but not just tears, sometimes through groans, and that's not even, it's not a nice sounding word, right?
SPEAKER_00: Groans.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is this is all over.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is what he does.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is not just what he calls us to do, this is what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 26 says this likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
SPEAKER_00: And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this wild part of God that it's sometimes difficult even to connect with, but the scripture not only, even in the book of Romans, not only talks about the spirit groaning, but all of creation is groaning for the revealing of the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of groaning happening in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It's not bad groaning, it's groaning because God is so badly wanting to give birth to something new in our lives and in our day, in our valley, in our nation, all around the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the spirit comes to us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what to pray for as we ought.
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes God has to get prayers into our belly that go beyond our English language or our words.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just don't know what to pray.
SPEAKER_00: So God, He wants to give you a language to pray.
SPEAKER_00: This is why for me, a prayer language, praying in the Spirit, is uh, to me, it's non-negotiable.
SPEAKER_00: It's like this, I don't know where I would be if it had not been for the Spirit enlivening me from the inside out and giving me words I would have never chosen to pray out his purposes in a language that I don't know anything of.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit is groaning and wants to groan through us because he is reminding us that we are a part of an unfolding of a new day and we're partnering with him until his purposes are brought forth on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we we owe a lot to uh even the black church in the United States, the history of the African American church in the United States, they would actually have all-night meetings called shut-ins where they weren't even allowed to speak words you could understand.
SPEAKER_00: They would lay on the floor all night and just groan together.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that is because that's all they had, that's all they had strength for.
SPEAKER_00: But also there was something so deep inside of them that they would just cry out, oh God.
SPEAKER_00: But it was much more oh than it was God.
SPEAKER_00: It was oh and they were tapping into this this longing, this fervent prayer that was so deep.
SPEAKER_00: And they would give themselves to a shut and lock themselves in a room, and all night they would pray in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And the heart cry of that is break me, God, break me open for what breaks your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Break us open for what breaks your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Release a new cry, not from our heads, but from our guts.
SPEAKER_00: So prayers of tears, prayers of groaning, prayers of perseverance.
SPEAKER_00: You guys know laboring is persevering.
SPEAKER_00: It's largely hidden and unseen.
SPEAKER_00: It takes time and perseverance.
SPEAKER_00: That's why most of us give up before we see the fruit, before we see a harvest.
SPEAKER_00: We're lucky Mary didn't give up.
SPEAKER_00: Mary carried Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It was not an overnight process, it was a daily showing up to the word of God and tending to it, even if nobody was there, even if there was no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us have just gotten tired of praying the same prayers over and over and over again and seeing no fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But guys, let's pull it together.
SPEAKER_00: This is prayers of perseverance.
SPEAKER_00: And then a microwave instant society.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those places that God is calling us to grow up.
SPEAKER_00: We have to grow up.
SPEAKER_00: There's some things you will be praying for years for until you see an inkling of breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will pray for your husband for years, some of you will pray for your wife for years, or estranged kids for years.
SPEAKER_00: Your boss, your employees, your neighbor, you will pray for for years.
SPEAKER_00: And we're kind of in a point where everyone gets a disillusion if after two weeks they hadn't seen breakthrough.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, our whole lives are given to God.
SPEAKER_00: We need to grow the muscle of perseverance because we're co-laboring with the purposes of God.
SPEAKER_00: Are we willing to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Laboring is not just about outcomes, it's about who we're becoming in the process and the journey.
SPEAKER_00: Are we willing to co-labor with God in a long-term sense?
SPEAKER_00: Who are the people God is calling you to hold in your belly in his presence?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you willing to stop every day to partner with God that he would find them?
SPEAKER_00: That he would find them.
SPEAKER_00: This is something for me that's front and center.
SPEAKER_00: This is something God has been delivering for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really good at praying from my head.
SPEAKER_00: And I just feel like I'm in a season where God's like, I'm teaching, I'm gonna give you some prayers from a different place.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna maybe sound the same, but it's gonna come from a different origin.
SPEAKER_00: There's prayers from our head and there's prayers from our bones.
SPEAKER_00: And God is looking for people to embody their prayers.
SPEAKER_00: So why midday?
SPEAKER_00: If we're calling the church to pause in the middle of a day to actually hold the loss in the presence of God, why midday?
SPEAKER_00: Because midday is that time of the day that we often start to check out after a long day of work.
SPEAKER_00: It's the time of day where our attention span starts to drift, where we think about whatever sports scores we want to check, or where our eyes start turning to happy hour that's just you know an hour or two away, and what's in store for the night.
SPEAKER_00: It's this really critical part of the day where it's easy for us to escape and be distracted.
SPEAKER_00: And so if the morning prayer is about resisting noise and speed, I would say midday prayer is about resisting the tendency towards escapism and distraction.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else but me?
SPEAKER_00: It is a call.
SPEAKER_00: There is a sobering call to it.
SPEAKER_00: Is it ever convenient?
SPEAKER_00: No, probably not.
SPEAKER_00: And as I've been trying this, as I've been doing this, especially the last few months, and I have my alarm set, my I use the inner room app, and it sends me, um, by the way, if you don't have the inner room app, you should get it.
SPEAKER_00: You can get schedule reminders and it alerts me mid-afternoon to pause and to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And I have my list of people that I feel like God's given me in this season to pray for and to contend for in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And and uh and so um there's days where that pumps that comes up, and I immediately start to think and say out loud the names of people that God has given to me to pray for.
SPEAKER_00: And um and and I can pause and do that.
SPEAKER_00: Some days um if I'm coming out of a meeting, if I'm coming out of just crushing email for two hours, the last thing I want to do is groan in intercession.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just just I'm groaning for other reasons at that point in time.
SPEAKER_00: So I get it, the whole idea of pausing and taking yourself and changing a frame of mind like that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do, but what I'm saying is some days it will look something as simple as saying the names of the Lord's given to you and holding them in the presence of God for 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_00: Other days, if you're paying attention to the work of God and the drawing of God, it may turn into two minutes to five minutes to half an hour to an hour of starting with that list of people, but letting it move from there into anything that's on the heart of God that He wants you to co-labor with in that day.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's the thing about prayer, is it starts in one place, but it always leaks into every other part of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so the call to midday is a call to say, God, my life is not my own, even my job is not my own.
SPEAKER_00: You have called me to other to be about your vision.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna take a moment to broaden my vision, to remind myself I am in a story that's bigger than me, and I'm gonna allow myself to be moved into your heart, even if even if it's for a moment, but maybe longer than that.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we pray?
SPEAKER_00: How do we do this?
SPEAKER_00: Just a few keys here I want to give to you today.
SPEAKER_00: These are a little more practical.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, maybe some of you might have a time midday, you already have a scheduled break.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's good to just step out of your office or your home office, go take one lap around the neighborhood and call that your prayer walk for the day.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have built in in-between times.
SPEAKER_00: Just put it in your calendar.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use this time and allow myself to pray into what God wants me to pray into.
SPEAKER_00: So here's how we do it.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, pray for the lost by name.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation here is really ask the Spirit to bring to mind at least three people this year who are either far or estranged from God, people who do not yet know his love for them.
SPEAKER_00: Faces and names, as faces and names come to mind, pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: Ask God as their good shepherd to go after these lost ones, to restore them to his fold and to bring them salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So pray for the lost by names.
SPEAKER_00: Just speak out their name.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Lord to give you his heart, seeing as he does and loving as he does.
SPEAKER_00: Confess anything that's getting in the way of compassion for the lost.
SPEAKER_00: And ask God to soften the hard places in your heart, making it like his.
SPEAKER_00: Then the last thing, so pray by name, pray for compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, pray to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: Invite God to send you.
SPEAKER_00: As you have asked God to pursue the loved ones, invite him to send you out with his empowering presence to those people.
SPEAKER_00: To be the eyes, his eyes and ears.
SPEAKER_00: Ask that he would inspire your imagination with ways to love and surprise you with invitations to be his hands and feet.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not that that's the thing, is when we pray for the lost, I've I found this myself.
SPEAKER_00: After a while, I started to realize I'm praying, but um God, I think there's something else you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this last week, one of the people on my list, I realized I need to be closer to them.
SPEAKER_00: So I signed up for a work, signing up for a workout class just to be close to somebody that I feel like God has given you.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not enough to just pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: When you start praying for them, you're filled with God's heart for them and you find yourself being with them, them coming around your dinner table, you finding situations to be with them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Prayers always lead to action.
SPEAKER_00: When you pray every day for somebody, you will be in their life and they will be in your life, and that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna get a good workout too.
SPEAKER_00: So that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, so we pray to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: And so, last thing here, and then I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna invite Piper up and we're just gonna respond to a couple things here.
SPEAKER_00: As I'm mentioning this stuff, praying for the lost, feeling it in your belly and your gut, a good question comes up.
SPEAKER_00: What if I feel nothing when I pray for the lost?
SPEAKER_00: What if I feel nothing?
SPEAKER_00: And I confess to you, there's times where I found when I when I stop to turn my attention to the Lord and his heart for the lost of the broken, the hurting, sometimes I find I'm just numb.
SPEAKER_00: God, I'm trying to be fervent here, but if I'm honest, I'm just I feel like I'm just mouthing some words right now.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes all I can do is just say their name.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and if that's all we're doing as a starting point, I just want to say, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to start there.
SPEAKER_00: But it also is an invitation to another kind of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens is when we realize, when we some of us come to find out, it's been a really long time since I've shed a tear in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Or it's been a really long time since I've groaned or shouted or cried from any for anything.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no more groan within me that leads to a new prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And that and that prayer is God, I might be the one who is lost today.
SPEAKER_00: Would you come and find me again?
SPEAKER_00: Come and find me again.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a good prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Because the reality is we have so many, so many things coming at us.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to feel numb sometimes when it comes to giving ourselves to the purposes of God.
SPEAKER_00: That just means we get to pivot our prayer and say, God, come find me today.
SPEAKER_00: Connect me with your heart, with your joy, with your longing, with your laughter, and with your tears.
SPEAKER_00: Connect me with your heartbeat.
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to feel what you feel.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news, that's what the Holy Spirit's given to us for.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is an expert at finding us.
SPEAKER_00: The very name, one of the very names for the Holy Spirit, the paraclete in the New Testament, it's the God who comes alongside.
SPEAKER_00: He's our helper.
SPEAKER_00: And to this day, I've heard in Greece the boats, the rescue boats, the tugboats that go find other boats lost at sea, they're called paracletes.
SPEAKER_00: It's a boat that literally goes and finds stranded boats in the ocean and pulls them back into harbor.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Holy Spirit does for us and the ones that He's called us to.
SPEAKER_00: He said, whether you're lost or whether we're partnering together for something else that's lost, I am your paraclete.
SPEAKER_00: I know where to find you, I know where to find everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Just partner with me and we'll see what we can be found together.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
SPEAKER_00: So, that being said, let's just take a moment across the room today.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pause, we're gonna park it here.
SPEAKER_00: And across the room, I just want to invite you to close your eyes with me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is all as I'm talking, this is like, wow, this is kind of all new.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that you hear when one of the when we talk about giving ourselves to prayer in specific ways, what we're talking about is a friendship and partnership with God.
SPEAKER_00: And he taught us to pray, let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: What a beautiful thing to partner with God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna pray and do a couple things across the room here today.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, we invite you, Holy Spirit, across the room as we consider this year, as we consider those that you've surrounded us with, be it coworkers, your neighbors, your family, friends, acquaintances, God.
SPEAKER_00: I I pray right now that you would begin to bring to mind names and faces of people in our lives that are dear to your heart, that you want to call home, that you want to call home into your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You might see somebody's face flash before your eyes, somebody might come to mind.
SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to write that down.
SPEAKER_00: And even now, just quietly, if you can, just quietly, just speak out their first name in the presence of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart of compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Your joy.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your grief.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us to feel what you feel, show us, God.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're here, and and that's you.
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm the one he's lost.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today I declare to you that the Father is finding you, he's found you, and he's calling you home.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's a response that you have today.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to respond to the call of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And that's you.
SPEAKER_00: I just I'm not gonna prescribe a prayer for you to pray.
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to invite to say, Father, show me who you are, show me who I am in you.
SPEAKER_00: It's time to come home.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's some of us here, like I was saying, maybe you just it just feels like a block.
SPEAKER_00: I just want I want to invite you to convert that feeling into a prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Say, God, show me what is blocking your love from flowing through me.
SPEAKER_00: What is preventing me from feeling what you're feeling?
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that's causing me to shut down or to pull back?
SPEAKER_00: Just turn that into an invitation to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm telling you, the Lord wants you to be fully alive with his thoughts, with his heart.
SPEAKER_00: So I thank you, God, to lift any blockages, to push through them, to break through in the name of Jesus over your people, over us, over me, over all of us, Lord God, that we can be a people that move with your spirit, that go where you send us and love those that you love.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you, God, for a day where we can, as a community, call sons and daughters home to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let that be a marking, defining moment, God.
SPEAKER_00: This year, we pray for sons and daughters to come home in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Sons and daughters to come home in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want it, God.
SPEAKER_00: We believe it.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for faith to be released, faith in the spirit to see what we never imagined become possible.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: God, send laborers into the harvest, and may that be us, God.
SPEAKER_00: May we be those to labor with you in a season of ripeness to call the harvest in, God.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, God, that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that we get to be a part of all that you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Together, God, we say yes and amen.
SPEAKER_00: If you're ready here, and you want to say yes to the purposes of God, just join me.
SPEAKER_00: Yes and amen.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Yes and amen.
SPEAKER_00: We will go where you want to go, God.
SPEAKER_00: We will go where you want to go.
SPEAKER_00: We love you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We honor you, and we're excited that we get to be a part of what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in the name of Jesus we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.