Revival Come (Week 4)

Well, good morning.

It's great to be here with you.

And my name is Nathan Head.

And like they said, I've got my family and just glad to be here and part of this place.

And back when Forrest and Emily were just praying about what this church could look like, I had a very small part of helping to fan into flame what's taking place here today.

And so it's a real honor for me to be here.

Thanks for having me.

And um, if you guys don't know, we're talking about prayer this morning.

And I don't know what you think about prayer, but actually the fact that you're sitting in this room is an answer to prayers that I have prayed for over, I think, three years now, which is a pretty special thing.

And so glad to celebrate that.

And since this is my first time uh hanging out with you guys up here and getting a chance to preach, I want to tell you about the absolute best thing going for me.

And that is my family, uh, my wife Stephanie and my two sons, and they're actually with me today.

Um, my oldest son Jordan is 14, my youngest son uh Lincoln is 12.

And a couple highlights for them when Jordan was 12, he got to pitch the opening game of the Cal Ripkin World Series, which is pretty good, and they won too.

And then last summer, my youngest son Lincoln starred in a music video, and I'm sure you can find it on YouTube somewhere down the line.

But they are a blessing, and I'm just blast uh blessed to be their dad, and it's a blast being a part of their families.

But the best thing going for me, and my biggest tangible blessing, is my wife, Stephanie, and we have been married for 21 years now.

We got married when we were 12 years old.

Just kidding.

Um, but we've been married over 20 years, and I tell people two things.

One, I highly recommend being married for 20 years or a whole lot more, and I highly recommend going to Cancun to celebrate when that happens.

It was actually this time last year when we got a chance to do that, went down to the beach, and I can't describe how much fun we had.

What a great time we had down there.

If you've ever been to one of those all-inclusive resorts, I mean it's a really tough life.

You know, we would wake up in the morning when we wanted to, we would go down, get a little light workout in, go reserve our beach chair for the day, walk over, get some breakfast, go back to the beach chair, begin a cycle of reading, taking naps, getting in the water when it was too warm, and then when we were hungry, we'll go get something to eat.

And we just repeat that cycle all day.

It was absolutely amazing.

And then when you get tired of doing all that, you go up to your room and you get ready for dinner.

Because what else do you do at these places than go eat some more?

So after dinner, we'd walk back down by the beach, relax under the stars, and then head to our room to rest up and be ready to do it all over again.

In a word, it was paradise.

Now, let's say this.

Let's say that I have the power to take everyone in this room with us next week to go to the beach.

The expenses are covered, your work is taken care of, your kids can stay back with family, or they can come with you if you like, but we can all go to the beach.

I just need, by show of hands, how many of you would like to go with us next week to the beach?

Awesome, very good.

Sadly, I can't make that happen.

But I can tell you this, all right?

When we all get to heaven someday, I am going to be beachside.

And so anytime you come visit my beach, I will do everything in my power to make your stay as enjoyable as possible.

But in the meantime, until we get there, I've actually been invited to share a little bit about a vision that's even more profound than a beautiful trip to the beach.

And the vision is the vision that you guys have as a church for Frankfurt, Kentucky.

You see, this church, since it started, has had a vision to see Frankfurt become the most beautiful, vibrant, fresh, thriving, and blessed place to live in the entire Commonwealth.

Now, I'm not from here, but I can tell you this.

Most outsiders don't think of those adjectives when they think of Frankfurt, the capital of the state.

In fact, a few four-letter words come to mind for people at times.

I'm just kidding.

But I would say this what would it look like for Frankfurt to have the best schools, lowest crime rate, most generous people, and a vibrant culture that people moved across the state and even across the country to be a part of?

What if in Frankfurt there was no one sitting in prison or seeking shelter from domestic violence, staggering from unemployment, reeling from drug addiction, or unable to keep food on the table for their children at home?

What if in Frankfurt it was the greatest city anyone could live in for miles and miles around?

Now, some may say that's impossible, you may say it's kind of crazy, you may say I'm a dreamer, I'm not the only one.

Any John Lennon fans in the room out there?

So this might be a crazy notion, but Forrest, the leadership of this church, and many of you in this room today believe that it's not just possible, you believe it's worth fighting for.

So the question, if we dare to ask it, is how could this happen?

I mean, this crazy dream, how could it actually be accomplished?

Well, the obvious answer in the state capital city is government, right?

Government does so much, and I don't say this cynically at all.

They do so much to try and make this city and many others across our beautiful state thrive.

There's a lot of passionate people that come here throughout the year to make this a great place to live.

The reality is, though, government is limited.

I've heard people say you can legislate a lot of things, but you can't legislate the heart.

You can't force a dad to return home to be a father to his kids.

You can't force people to abstain from drug and alcohol abuse.

And you can't enact a law that mandates you love your neighbor as yourself.

So if the government can't make this happen, maybe the private sector can bring it to life.

You see, business leaders, they have a ton of influence.

Employers hold a lot of sway over their employees.

Maybe they can pay well, organize well, and accomplish great things through effective business.

Unfortunately, all the money in the world doesn't miraculously make kids successful at school or cure anxiety and depression.

As a society, we've never had more access to the best health care in the history of the world, and yet we are more anxious than ever, especially our kids.

So maybe if the government and business can't do the trick, then surely civic organizations can pull out the best in all of us.

The money from business and the power from government can blind people.

So what about civic organizations?

Are there enough altruistic groups of people around us to pull us out of the downward spiral of drug addiction, incarceration, joblessness, broken homes, and broken dreams?

There are some amazing nonprofits in this area.

But even they don't have the power to get us to the vision that we have for Frankfurt.

So what about the church?

The local churches of Frankfurt?

Is this something that they could pull off?

Could we get all the churches in this area together and by sheer force of will and our best efforts move the needle in the direction of making Frankfurt the most amazing city anyone could ever dream of?

And to be clear, there are some great churches here in Frankfurt, including this one, but it still seems like the efforts of these faithful local churches aren't enough to stem the tride of struggle that we see around us day in and day out.

So what's the answer?

What could get us to a place that we have a vision for?

How could this change happen?

Well, we are at church this morning.

I work on staff at a church myself, so you can guess what I'll say the answer is, and you'll guess correctly only God, but his son Jesus and the power of his Holy Spirit that we just sang about.

Only these forces, only God Himself can transform this city to become all that it could possibly be.

And I truly believe this.

So now the question is, how do we get God to change Frankfurt?

Well, in a word, the answer is prayer.

Now, I'm not sure what you think about prayer.

Honestly, it can be a little tricky to sort out even for church people.

At its essence is this it's a conversation with a father in heaven, but volumes and volumes of books contain thoughts, ideas, advice, and more about the who, what, when, where, how, and why of prayer.

And if you've been here at Multiply Church the last few weeks, you've recently heard some messages outlining different aspects of prayer.

And so all I'm here today is to just point out something about prayer that Jesus' brother James taught the first church long time ago.

And I like tracking with James for kind of three different reasons.

The first is this James was a skeptic, all right?

He was Jesus' brother, but early on he absolutely did not believe Jesus was God's son, the Messiah, or anything more than a confused sibling that brought embarrassment to his family.

Now, I have a younger brother, and he is a swell guy, but I can promise you that at no point in the history of our relationship, now or in the future, have I ever considered bowing down to worship him.

Anyone have siblings in this room?

Have you ever thought about maybe bowing down and worshiping them?

Probably not.

John chapter 7, verse 5 says this even his own brothers did not believe in him.

John 7:5

Actually, if you read the verses around that, they mocked him and they made fun of him and his mission.

James was initially a skeptic, which leads us to my second point.

James became a profoundly respected leader in the first and arguably most important church ever established.

You see, James became a leader in the church in Jerusalem.

After Jesus did rise from the grave and change the world, he caught on to what was happening and he ended up running point in Jerusalem at likely to be the first church that ever existed.

So it seems to me that God would have one of his best guys on an assignment like that.

Third, James has a knack for making the Christian life really practical.

The book he wrote called James is filled with just simple ways to make our faith visible.

He talks in plain language about how to put our faith on display so that it makes a difference in the world around us.

And toward the end of that letter that he wrote to the early church, he makes some important remarks about our topic today, prayer.

If you have your Bibles or Bible app, you can open up to James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

We're going to read a few verses from there.

Starting in verse 17, he actually references someone who lived a long time before he did in the Old Testament, a man named Elijah.

This is what it says.

Elijah was human as we are.

And yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years.

In a word, that's drought.

Then when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

Elijah did that.

Now, growing up, one of my favorite athletes, my favorite athlete of all time, actually, was Michael Jordan.

I watched him win six championships over the course of his career.

I watched him defy gravity, defy the odds.

He did not make his basketball team his freshman year of high school and still became the GOAT.

I watched him also defy his opponents.

He never took a night off for load management.

He led the greatest basketball team in human history to a gold medal.

Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time.

And if you disagree with me, well, I'm sorry, but I have the microphone this morning, and you're wrong.

I bring up Michael Jordan because the Jewish people thought of Elijah, who James just referenced as the greatest.

He was the greatest prophet in Jewish history.

All other prophets were measured against him.

If they had a Mount Rushmore in Jerusalem, he'd be on it.

As a matter of fact, when Jesus transfigured on a mountain, it's recorded in the Gospels, and two Old Testament leaders show up.

Moses, and you guessed the other one, Elijah.

He's the other one that showed up then.

So it's a little shocking to the first audience to hear this message from James, that he would say Elijah was only human.

I'd imagine a first century Jew turned follower of Jesus arguing a little bit with James, like, yeah, Elijah was a man, but he was more than that, kind of part man, part superhero.

He didn't even die.

Scripture records he was just swept up into heaven at the end of his life.

So to them, he was like kind of a Marvel comic hero, except he actually lived, just didn't perform on screens, and he did miraculous things in his real life.

Things that included, like we talked about, praying for rain to stop and then start again after three and a half drought-filled years.

He also fed himself and a family day after day when there was nothing to eat except a miraculous supply of food.

He also brought back a person from the dead.

And to top all this off, the dude went out of this life and into the next on a flaming chariot.

It doesn't get much better than that.

He was clearly a first ballot Hall of Fame prophet.

So that the very brother of Jesus suggests to us that when we pray, we have the same access to God as Elijah did, that would have sounded crazy to the first audience.

And honestly, sounds a little crazy today.

But James doesn't only say God hears our prayers.

What's more shocking is he includes this detail that they can produce powerful results.

Let's back up one verse to where we started.

Actually, James chapter 5, verse 16, it says this confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

James 5:16

You see, the prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

So we see linked together the idea that the condition of our heart, earnest prayer, and God's power can produce results.

Prayer plays a role in things happening that are well beyond our control.

Elijah was a profound prophet of God, and yet, as James pointed out, he was a man, he was a person just like you and me.

So I'm here today to suggest that if you have a pulse, you love God, you believe God, and you're willing to talk to Him, you can be a part of changing things around you beyond your control.

Now, all this is true, but I think it bears some warning because for a lot of years people have heard teachings about the power of prayer, and they've gone off in a couple of wrong directions.

I see them as kind of two ditches that I want us to avoid as we approach prayer and the power of prayer.

The first ditch actually looks like a vending machine.

It's the idea that prayer functions that way.

If I if I walk up to God and I insert my prayer coins and wait patiently for a few seconds or a few minutes, he'll kind of spit out the results I'm looking for.

And I've been guilty of this kind of prayer before.

Maybe you have too.

Maybe you prayed for that job you really, really wanted.

Maybe you prayed for more money because what in your bank account, what's in there, just wasn't going to cut it.

Maybe you prayed for him or her to say yes.

It was a great theologian, Garth Brooks, that once said some of God's greatest gifts are actually unanswered prayers.

See, 20 years later, you ran into it in the grocery store and thought, thank you, God, for not answering that one.

I'm kidding.

Seriously, though, it's like it's likely we've all prayed earnestly to God and been frustrated when the result we're looking for doesn't just spit out of the machine.

We're standing in front of this cosmic vending machine and we're frustrated because it's like it's jammed.

Our prayers are out there just kind of stuck.

The other ditch I want us to avoid is something that I've experienced myself in suffering, and more closely the suffering of my loved ones.

It's what happens when we believe in God.

We believe in his vast and infinite power.

We pray sincerely and fervently, and nothing happens.

Not only does nothing happen, but God doesn't feel like he's listening or anywhere near at all.

When my wife and I struggled to have children, we had these agonizing days of seemingly fruitless prayer.

As I pray for my mom, who suffers from Parkinson's now trapped in her cruel body that leaves her limited, miserable, and sad most days.

I wonder if God is close and nearby.

I pray for her and I ask God to do really specific and really good things, and then well, nothing good seems to happen in her body these days.

If the first ditch to avoid is picturing our prayers as going into a cosmic vending machine, the other is to imagine a distant, disconnected God smirking while we do this prayer thing that seems to work for other people, but not us, because either God isn't who he says he is, or we aren't close enough for him for things to work out the way we want to.

We have to avoid these two ditches because they aren't true.

And that's not how prayer works, that's not how God works.

Prayer is messy.

Prayer isn't easy, it's not formulaic, it is not a guarantee of results, and yet it's something God has invited us to do, but we do not have control of the outcome.

And that's where I get stuck most times in prayer.

My inability to control the outcome of prayer leaves me frustrated and confused, at times desperate and discouraged.

So whenever I'm confused, frustrated, desperate, and discouraged about a topic, the best place to look is Jesus Himself.

Here's a few things that Jesus had to say about prayer.

He said, And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners to be seen by others.

I tell you, they've already received their reward in full just by being thought of as great prayer warriors.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father who is unseen.

Then your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

So prayer is something that Jesus assumes we will do as we follow him.

He assumes it as much as I assume that at some point during the day I'm gonna talk to my son Jordan and my son Lincoln, children talk to their dad.

Jesus reminds us that God is intimately involved with us when we pray.

We do not have to put on a show when we do it.

There are no special words or magic phrases to get him to listen and pay attention to us.

He also said this about communicating with our Father in heaven.

Don't bargain with God.

Just be direct.

This isn't cat and mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in.

If your child asks for bread, you trick him with sawdust.

If he asks for a fish, you scare him with a live snake on his plate.

As bad as you are, you wouldn't think of such a thing.

You're at least decent to your own children.

So don't you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?

See, for Jesus, prayer isn't a game.

It's not a riddle to be solved.

It's just a direct conversation with the God of the universe about very specific things in our heart that need to be communicated to Him.

In prayer, we can share our hurts, disappointments, fears, frustrations, sins, failures, hopes, dreams, wishes, anything else that comes to mind.

The Bible is full of every category of prayer that you can think of, including prayers to get back at people who are mean, evil, and nasty.

Prayer isn't only for pastors, priests, or prophets of old, it's for real people like you and me.

And I think that's pretty cool.

You see, God isn't afraid of our doubts, fears, frustrations, and needs.

If you doubt this yourself, I'd encourage you to read Psalms from the Old Testament.

You see, the Bible includes prayers of people getting gut level honest with God, even angry.

Jesus said this himself from the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You see, if God was afraid of tough prayers from us or bad press in prayer, he would have been smart just to leave all that out of the Bible.

But he included those prayers in there.

As I said before, prayer is messy, but it's good messy.

It's beautiful, messy, it's necessary.

And when you see God move in and through your life in response to the prayers that you've prayed, it is inexplicable.

Beautiful.

I have two boys with me today that are proof of that in my own life.

And while prayer is for all of us, there's something that I think many of us in this room have struggled with, and it's found in the passage we read from before, the words of Jesus.

You see, some of you feel like you've asked God for bread and you've gotten sawdust, a plate full of crumbs.

You've asked God for a fish and you've been handed a snake.

And while we don't have time this morning to dive into every possible response to prayer, our perspective regarding prayer must lay on top of our bedrock belief about God.

When you talk to God, do you trust God's intentions toward you?

See, if we do, it'll be if we don't, it'll be really hard to see beyond our immediate immediate circumstances.

If we don't trust God's intentions toward us, we struggle to see what's next and beyond what we can't yet see.

Much to my chagrin, God usually plays the long game.

He isn't into quick fixes, easy answers, but I believe what Jesus said that my Father in heaven, who conceived me in love, is truly good.

When Forrest asked me to join you guys today, I was honored.

I I love this church, and I'm really thankful for what each of you are sacrificing to start this young church.

I want this place to thrive.

I want this church to be a massive blessing for the city of Frankfurt and far beyond.

And though the beginnings are humble and this gathering is relatively small, the God we serve as faithful and will continue this great work for many years to come.

I can't wait to see what God does through Multiply Church 10, 15, 20, 50 years from now, I believe Frankfurt will be remarkably different because of your faithfulness as a church, especially because of your faithfulness in prayer.

I recently heard about a church in Sacramento, California that some people took prayer seriously, and the results were amazing.

It made me think of you guys when I heard this story happened a few years ago.

In 2010, a group of eight people from two churches felt called to the Detroit Boulevard neighborhood in Sacramento, California.

It was known as one of the most notorious crybrin neighborhoods in all of Sacramento.

Each house in that neighborhood was a place of danger.

Nonetheless, a group of eight decided to walk through the neighborhood, praying over each home and praying for the presence of Christ to reign over violence, addiction, and satanic oppression.

One of the eight former Sacramento police officers and gang detectives, Michael Zhong, reported that each time we prayed over houses, we felt the weight of oppression becoming lighter.

One day a woman from the one of the houses came out and confronted them.

When she discovered they were praying for the community, she asked for healing and God healed her.

The group soon physically moved into the neighborhood and started what they called the Detroit Life Church.

A couple of years later, the Sacramento Bee, a local newspaper, reported that there were no homicides, robberies, or sex crimes, and only one assault in Detroit Boulevard between 2013 and 2014.

Detroit Boulevard had been transformed by a small group of people who began their ministry in the neighborhood by praying around houses, streets, and parks for the power of Satan to be vanquished.

None of the people who gathered that day had PhDs in prayer.

None of them were uniquely gifted or qualified to pray.

They were just like you and me, and God slowly and surely answered their prayers to see their neighborhood and city become more like heaven and less like hell.

Now, if you're here today and prayer is new for you, I just want to share how you can start practicing praying, how you can begin to do it.

Because honestly, it can be a little odd to go and try to talk to someone that you can't see with your eyes or hear with your own ears.

And so here's how I think you can get started.

Just find a quiet place this week.

Find a room, find a place outside, sit down for a few minutes, close your eyes, and then just start talking to God like He's right across from you.

Communicate to Him what's on your heart and your mind, the things that you want to pray for your life, your family, your friends, circumstances, and needs.

Just share with him whatever's on your heart, and he will listen.

You can even set a timer for like five minutes.

And when the timer goes off, just say, Hey God, thank you for listening.

Get up and go on with the rest of your day.

What I found to be true about prayer is over time it becomes easier to communicate to him what's on your heart and what's on your mind and what you need to share with him.

And then also a pretty amazing thing happens in return.

You begin to hear him speak to you.

I've never heard the audible voice of God in all my years of following him, but I have heard him speak to me on many occasions.

It's a beautiful thing.

Well, to start our time together today, I told you about the amazing trip that I took to the beach with my wife.

It really wasn't terribly difficult to pull off.

I called a travel agent, I sent along some money, and a few months later, there we were.

Well, this church right here is heading somewhere to.

It's not to a beach, but it's definitely to a more beautiful, blessed, and fruitful future.

You see, the future of this church, but really the future of Frankfurt, it may hang in the balance of a few faithful prayers from people that are in this room today.

So instead of a travel agent, we'll call out to our Father in heaven if we want to see this happen.

And I think if we do this right, it will cost all of us something.

But if we're faithful in prayer, I know that the beauty of where we're headed will be worth it.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for some time to gather this morning and to turn our attention to you and specifically what you invite us to do in prayer.

And God, I thank you for your love and for your faithfulness.

And God, I pray that as we wait between the now and the not yet of unanswered prayers, God, we would just be patient and wait faithfully for you to move.

And when you move, God, would we be bold and courageous to follow after you with what's next?

Thank you for Jesus who went ahead of us and sacrificed so much so that we can have access to you, so that we can pray to you.

We don't have anyone in between.

We can talk directly to you.

Father, we love you.

We thank you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.