Prayer

Hey church, how are you doing today?

Sorry, I should call you priests! Priests, how are we doing? Are we maintaining our church? Is your church growing in size? Is the giving up? I’m so excited to hear!

I’ve loved doing this, and I’m excited to discuss what church looks like for you and your family, and how you lead your church, as a priest.

We’re in our series Home Church, Part 3, Prayer. Prayer is one of those things that’s a known part of the religious experience. We say we’re going to “go and pray,” or we say our prayers before bed or a meal.

“The Lord’s Prayer” is often brought up as a prayer model. It is a really beautiful prayer, but it can become just words that spoken like rhetoric. And that’s not what the Lord intends. We have to remember that Jesus gave the disciples his prayer, but right before he gave him that prayer, he’s away spending time with the heavenly father.

He was abiding with him, which is what John 15 says. “Abide with me, and I will abide with you.” And that is what prayer is really all about. So when I ask, “How have you prayed today?” the question is, “Have you abided today?”

Have you spent time abiding with your heavenly father today? If not, how long can you go or wait? When is the last time you abided with him, and do you abide for five or 15 minutes? Maybe you abide for an hour?

The Bible says that prayer is supposed to be this continuous thing that happens every day. And that’s what I love. My friend Kims, from Congo, has a gift for prayer. I love the power and authority he has every time he prays. I am inspired! It’s just like, man, I want more—I need some of that in my life! And I asked him one day, I said, “Kims, how do you pray with such power and compassion?” He said, “Danny, I pray out of this thing that I do in my spirit, almost like breathing. The way that I breathe is the way that I pray. I train myself to say ‘thank you, God, for everything that you’ve given me. God, you are worthy. God, you are powerful.’”

We should be praying like breathing. It’s an interaction, an exchange that I have with Jesus. Pastor Grant [Brewster] often talks about “The Secret Place.” Well, we have to go to our secret place. And the secret place can be a physical space or just a mindset. But we have to go there. Having a dedicated physical space to spend intentional time with Jesus helps grow our prayer life.

I think we are called to this in this season, intentionality. If you spend five minutes abiding, that’s great. And if it’s been zero, I want to encourage you to step it up. Let’s see what the next step is in abiding and imagine what that could mean for your life, family, and community?

Can you pray 15 minutes? Can some of you abide with him for an hour? Authority comes when abiding with Jesus. The things that we say and pray, it’s not our own authority. It’s Jesus’ authority that comes from the relationship we have with Jesus. The relationship grows when we spend time abiding with him.

Can you imagine what would happen if the church prayed more? If the church spoke with power and authority more directly, spending more intimate time with their savior?

If we spent time with “the way, the truth, and the life,” all those things would be deep within our spirit. We would hear his words easily, intimately, and we’d be able to speak these words to other people.

So I have a challenge for you. I want you to up your time in prayer this week. Add time, double your time, triple your time. Abiding shouldn’t be work. It should be easy to spend time with someone you love. You should walk out feeling empowered that you’ve spent time with the savior of the universe.

And the next thing I want to do is encourage you to pray and fast. Our church is going through 21 days of fasting and prayer, and I want to help you to participate and get involved in the prayer meetings and Online Prayer Meetings happening via Zoom.

What if the church came together more often and started to pray (even online)? What if we grew in our love for one another, we began to speak with power and authority, growing our intimate relationship we Jesus, daily. What would happen? I think the church would grow. I think you would see Jesus move more powerfully in people’s lives as we become His hands and feet.

I love you, and I’m so excited to keep learning with you. This isn’t the last in this Home Church series, and I’m excited to talk to you next time about Teaching.

All right, love you guys. Bye.