Persistent Prayer: Winning the Cosmic War - The Cosmic War: Satan, Demons, and the Kingdom of God

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Today, be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

Well, hey, my name is Josh Floyd.

I'm one of the pastors here at The Road.

My main responsibility is the prayer ministry.

There's a bunch of really, really qualified intercessors at our church, and they decided to let me be friends with them and kind of organize things for them, which I'm very grateful for.

The title of my message today is Persistent Prayer Winning the Cosmic War.

Which is a really fun title.

I was pretty excited about it.

Mostly because I get to use the same graphic, which is a really cool graphic.

I love this graphic up here.

So I've just really enjoyed Pastor Steve's messages in this series and just how fascinating it is.

I love being a part of a church that talks about things that you don't really hear about a whole lot.

And uh I think prayer, you can't really be a Christian without talking about prayer.

But a lot of the things that we learn about prayer, I think, are incomplete, so I'm gonna try to just share some things that I've learned.

Uh I got started in prayer ministry um when I was about 17 or 18 years old, right about when I was turning 18, and I went to college.

Um while I'm telling the story, you could you could turn your Bible to Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

That's where we're gonna start today.

Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

So I'm 18 years old, and uh my sister brought me to her church, and it was my first time there, and I watched my first miracle.

I'd never seen a miracle happen before.

I'd never seen anyone healed.

I didn't really believe in them.

Like I believed that God was capable of it, but I didn't really believe that it happened anymore.

So I watched this lady get healed of an injury from her childhood.

She was in her 50s, so we're talking like a 40-plus year story arc from injury to healing.

That's pretty crazy.

Pretty awesome when God does stuff like that.

It shakes a lot of things in our thinking.

And as I watched this woman's leg get healed, I heard my own voice in my head say, you can keep living how you're living and ignore this, or you can sell everything and buy this.

And I didn't know that that was the Holy Spirit speaking to me.

I didn't really believe in that.

So I just thought, well, that's a weird thing for me to think.

So that week I went back to my dorm room and I started reading the Gospels again.

I I didn't really read the Gospels a lot growing up, so I started in Matthew, thought, well, that's a good place to start.

And I got to the parable of the man who found the treasure in the field and he sold everything to buy this.

And the Holy Spirit filled my dorm room with power and I began to weep.

I said, okay, Lord, whatever that looks like, I'll sell everything and buy this.

Whatever that means.

So that was my start.

So I started getting up at 5 a.m.

to pray.

It was mostly just like sitting there drooling, you know, like, oh, I'm gonna pray.

Because I started reading these books about guys that walked in miracles, signs, and wonders, and they were all prayer people.

I was like, oh, there's something about this prayer stuff.

I didn't really believe that prayer changed things.

I thought prayer mostly was to make people feel better.

Like that was my concept of you pray for somebody, you say some nice words, they leave feeling better.

I didn't realize that grace can be upon our words and it can actually change things, situations, peoples.

So I just I would get up at five and read these prayer guides I downloaded off the internet, and it was horrible.

I hated it.

But I just kept doing it.

It didn't last super long.

It lasted for probably the first like six months, and then sporadically throughout the last decade, I would wake up early to pray and meet with the Lord.

But thankfully, my sister was three years older than me and she went to the same college as me, and they started a campus ministry that was mostly about prayer.

So they had had a weekly prayer meeting that I could show up to, and that was where I learned how to pray.

It was me and a bunch of girls.

Women know how to pray, man.

You know, most of the people that I've learned prayer from were women.

They're just, there's something there.

I don't know what it is, I can't explain it.

I'm not excusing the men from prayer.

I'm up here talking about prayer, but my sister and her friends would get together and pray every week, and I would show up and hate most of it.

Like, man, this is boring.

Why don't we do something?

I didn't realize that prayer was doing something.

But eventually I started to like it, and uh I got involved with a house of prayer in Pueblo, and at when I first got involved, we were going to like four different churches and trying to host prayer meetings, and most of them were empty, and the sound was horrible, and we were bad singers and bad musicians, and we didn't know how to pray effectively.

We probably prayed mostly heresy, but we were trying.

You know, we just showed up.

That was that was all we did.

We just show up and we'd try.

And uh that's really all I still do.

I just show up to as many prayer meetings as I can and I try to pray.

And uh I try to open the Bible and just read things from the Bible and turn them into prayers.

And I'm still trying to figure that stuff out, um, but that's how I got started.

So none of that would have happened.

I wouldn't be here today speaking on prayer if I hadn't seen that first miracle.

Are you getting this?

2011, I saw my first miracle, and because of that miracle, I've prayed at least once a week, most of the time, multiple times a day, in a prayer meeting context because of one answered prayer.

See, Reese Howells, he wrote The Intercessor.

It's a good book.

And he said, the entire meaning and purpose for prayer is to gain the answer.

See, answered prayer is really important.

Answered prayer will cause you to pray.

It will.

There's really three main reasons that I think we need answered prayer.

I think this is the three main things that it does.

But John 15, Jesus said, If you abide in me and my word abides in you, you'll ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

So there's two things that we do to get answered prayer.

We abide in Christ, come before him, meet with him every day, have communion with him, and we allow his words to abide in us.

So we sow seeds of his word into our heart, able to save our souls, the seed implanted, his words, and it causes our prayers to be answered.

Or it causes us to pray in a way that God can answer them.

It's both, I think.

If we abide in Christ daily and sow the seeds of his word into our hearts and commit to a lifestyle of praying the Bible, eventually we find our mouths moving and God praying.

You know, eventually, there's been a few times where I'm sitting in a prayer meeting and I start to pray and I realize I'm not praying.

My mouth's moving, but this is not my words.

I'm not this smart, I'm not this bold, I don't have this much faith.

And that's our goal.

That's my goal at least.

God, I just want you to pray through me more often.

Today, would you speak something through my lips instead of me?

You guys don't need to hear from me.

I don't need to hear from me.

There's three reasons why we need answered prayer.

Answered prayer, number one, legitimizes our relationship with God.

Not only to you, but also to those around you.

When you pray and God answers, where's the argument?

I remember this one time I was at the rec center in college with my buddy Devin.

We finished a workout, we're walking past the office.

I worked in the rec center there, and there was a guy in there who did not like that I was a Christian.

He was my coworker, and he was really mean to me, like every day.

He made fun of me all the time, and I would just kind of joke around, like, yeah, you know us crazy Christians, man.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he's in there, so I'm like, I'm gonna walk by very quickly.

And the Lord tugged on my heart.

I went, Oh, you want me to go in there and talk to him?

Okay.

So me and my friend go in there and we talk to him, and he's in a bad mood, like in usual.

And so I'm smiling and asking him, How are you doing, man?

And he's like, Oh, I he was he was uh a rock climber, a competitive rock climber.

And he said, Well, I just pulled a muscle in my forearm, and I have our regionals competition tomorrow.

It's how you qualify for nationals.

I'm not gonna be able to climb.

He's like mad.

And he's mad that I'm asking him why he's mad.

I'm like, Well, hey man, I can pray for you and God will heal you.

Oh.

He was not excited about that.

And uh, so he looks to me, he he looks at me and he goes, Yeah, sure, whatever, man.

Go for it.

That really put a lot of faith in my heart.

So I was like, okay, I'm gonna pray the quickest, simplest prayer I can, and I'm getting the heck out of Dodge.

So I put my hand on his forearm and I say, forearm be healed in the name of Jesus.

And my hand got super, super hot.

And he looks at me like this.

Still mad, but now he's mad and confused.

And his arm's really hot.

So I was like, test it out, man.

And he starts moving his hand around, starts moving his fingers, and then he goes back to his computer and says, feels pretty good.

Like, amen, praise Jesus.

And me and Devin get out of there before he gets even more angry.

And a few days later, he reached out to me on Facebook, said, Hey man, just want to apologize to you.

Gave me this long essay wrote me this long essay about how he got hurt in the church, and this is the reason that he's been uh so angry and blah, blah, blah, but but my forearms healed and I don't know what to do about that.

Right?

Like, it legitimizes your relationship with God when you get an answered prayer.

It's important.

Look at uh Psalm 116.

I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications.

Because he has inclined his ear.

Here's little me, big God, inclining his ear.

Therefore, I will call upon him as long as I live.

Guys, I've seen too much.

There's never gonna be a day where I don't pray.

Right?

We need answered prayer so that we'll pray.

Here's the second reason we need answered prayer.

Answered prayer glorifies the Father.

He deserves the glory.

John 14.

Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

So we ask in the name of Jesus, and God answers so that he will be glorified.

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

In my name means as a representative of, so in the same spirit as.

So if Jesus would do it, I can do it in the name of Jesus.

Right?

That means I'm doing this on behalf of Jesus as a representative of him.

I'm praying in the name of Jesus.

Psalm 50, call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

So he's all about, he's he's producing glorification within the church through answered prayer.

He gets glorified when he answers our prayers.

We glorify him.

I mean, you can't help it.

The third reason we need answered prayer is it causes us to pray boldly.

It gives us boldness.

When you pray and you get an answer, you're quicker to pray next time.

You know, we try to solve our own problems, and then we find the end of ourselves, we find the end of our ability, which is the beginning of God's ability, by the way, and we meet him and we ask him to do something, and when he responds, we go, man, I'm not gonna try and do this by myself next time.

We begin to be bold in our asking.

We approach the throne of grace with boldness in our time of need.

This is one of my favorite passages, scriptures in the Bible, Psalm 138.

In the day when I cried out, you answered me and made me bold with strength in my soul.

That is a fun verse, man.

Get that tattooed on your forehead, right?

When I cried out, you answered, and you made me bold with strength in my soul.

Man, I need that prayer.

Let's look at our passage.

Luke 11, verses 1 through 8.

Luke 11:1–8

Now it came to pass as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, They were like, Oh, he's stopping.

We better get a word in.

Otherwise, he's gonna keep going.

We're not gonna be able to ask a question.

When he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

Right?

They've followed Jesus around for a long time at this point.

They've seen him do miracles without number that would fill all of the books in the world.

They've seen him preach the Sermon on the Mount, really good sermon, probably the best one I've ever heard, you know.

Equip dozens of believers to cast out demons and heal the sick.

But they don't say, Lord, teach us to preach.

They don't say, Lord, teach us to heal the sick and cast out demons.

They don't say, Lord, teach us how to do that walking on water thing that you do.

But they say, Lord, teach us to pray.

So he gives them this prayer format, the Lord's Prayer.

It's a structure for their prayer times.

So when they go off in the prayer closet and commune with the Holy Spirit and ask him to do things, this is he's like, here's your list, here's your outline, here's your structure.

But then he gives them this parable.

So the Lord's prayer is telling them what to pray.

This parable is going to teach them how to pray it.

Okay, pray this way, but I want you to approach the place of prayer like a person in this prayer parable.

That was a lot of peace sounds.

Or this prayerable.

Right?

So let's look at verse 5.

I gotta read the Our Father.

When you pray, say, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us day by day our daily bread, daily bread, not weekly bread.

Need it every day, and forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Amen.

And then he said to them, Which of you shall have a friend?

And go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves.

For a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

And he will answer from within and say, Do not trouble me, the door is now shut.

And my children are with me in bed.

I cannot rise and give to you.

Wow, that's quite the answer to prayer.

No.

Door shut, can't help.

Bye.

Verse 8.

I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, he's his friend and he won't answer the door, but he's going to answer the door, and here's why.

It's because of his persistence.

He will rise and give him as many as he needs.

So there's three friends in this parable.

The word friend is used four times in this passage.

There's the friend who is asleep in bed with his entire family, right?

Back then they had one bedroom in the whole house and everybody slept in it.

Multiple beds, or sometimes in the same bed, right?

It's like Charlie in the chocolate factory.

They're all in that bed together.

You know, it's interesting to me that Charlie's grandpa was completely immobile and unable to work until Charlie got a golden ticket.

I'm like, come on, man, you're being a freeloader.

Just joking.

So there's that friend.

They're all in bed together, they're asleep.

It's midnight.

They've probably been in bed for a while, sleep for a while.

Then there's the friend who's outside of that house banging on the door, telling him, give me three loaves, or lend me three loaves, I'll pay you back later.

And then there's the friend who's waiting in that guy's house, going, I wonder where my friend went.

And he's in from a long journey.

So there's these three friends.

The guy in the middle knows both of them.

And in the Middle East, it's not super unusual for people to travel at night because it's super hot.

So it's cooler during the night to travel.

But it is super unusual to be pounding on someone's door at midnight.

That was also true in that culture, just like it is today.

Um, and to save face, it seems like this petitioning friend has a better relationship with this friend than he does with this friend.

Right?

So instead of asking this guy for forgiveness for not feeding him, because in the Middle East the hospitality standards were here.

Like if somebody came in from traveling, you were gonna feed them.

They were not going to bed hungry.

So he's leveraging his relational equity with this friend that's in there asleep so that he can save face with this friend that's hungry.

This man is not asking his neighbor for help, though he lives next door.

He's asking his friend for help.

Okay, that's important.

He just happens to live next door, but he's a pretty good friend of his.

These guys have history.

That's how he knew he had three loaves for him to borrow.

He was probably over there earlier that day.

I know you baked some loaves, even though I didn't.

I know what you got in there, bro.

I'm not leaving until you bring it out.

I know, God, I know you have everything that I need.

I'm not leaving until you deliver it.

I'm not letting go until you bless me.

See, he's dragging his close friend into his problems.

See, oftentimes we approach God like he's our neighbor, but he wants us to approach him as a friend.

That we can drag him out of bed at midnight into our problems.

That's not my problem.

I don't care.

You're my God.

It's your problem now.

Bringing him in.

Right?

It's midnight.

It's not convenient.

Midnight's not very convenient.

I was asleep at midnight last night.

And I'm still relatively young, and I don't want to be awake at midnight.

And if somebody was banging on my door at midnight, I would probably not be very happy.

And I probably would not answer.

Probably call the cops.

This guy has so much equity in his relationship, he's willing to leverage it for the sake of this one.

Are we willing to leverage our friendship with God for the sake of these people?

Will we appeal to his mercy like Abraham?

Remember?

God's like, I'm gonna wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham's like, my cousin lives there.

Well, Lord, but what if there's this many righteous people?

Then I won't wipe it out.

Oh, God, you're so good.

I don't think there's that many righteous people.

What if there's this many?

You know, he works them down all the way to ten.

That's that's the type of friendship that Abraham had with God.

I want a friendship like that.

See, what's interesting is the Lord doesn't represent himself well in this parable.

What humility.

He represents himself as a sleeping, unwilling friend.

God's not asleep, obviously.

But he wants us to view him that way in the context of this parable, right?

Jesus is like, You asked me to teach you how to pray, this is how you do it.

You pretend like I'm asleep and you pound on the door and wake me up.

You pretend like I'm unwilling to open the door and you pound on the door until I do.

You pretend like it's really, really inconvenient.

It says God represents himself as an unwilling friend who cannot rise and give to us.

And he's counseling us in this parable to challenge his sovereign timing.

If you ask and the answer is no, ask me again.

That's what he's challenging us to do.

Right, woman, it's not my time, Jesus says to Mary.

Jesus, God, says to Mary, and she says, do whatever he says.

What?

He just told you no, lady.

Well, I wiped his butt when he was a baby, and I'm not taking no for an answer.

That is some hoop spa right there, you know?

In fact, many, many of the Jewish commentators on this passage say that.

The word for persistence is actually the Aramaic word chutzbah, which is an insult.

Don't you know that?

It means rude, brazen, and presumptuous.

It's how you describe someone negatively.

It is not a compliment.

He's saying, verse 8, he will not rise and give because he's a friend, yet because of his chutzbah, because of his persistence.

The word persistence in the Greek means no shame.

It's an idea which is an no and idos, shame.

No shame.

I would be pretty ashamed if I'm pounding on somebody's door at midnight and they're like, go home, I'm asleep.

I'd be like, oh, I'm sorry.

We'll do a covenant harmony meeting tomorrow.

Like, no, he's shameless.

He's like, I don't care what you say, I know you have bread in there.

What a jerk.

God wants you to pray like you're a jerk.

God wants you to be rude.

Okay, I'm gonna break the rules and I'm gonna tell you to turn a couple pages to your right to chapter 18.

This is where there's another parable.

There's two parables in the book of Luke.

They're not in the other books of the Bible.

And this one is also about persistence.

Luke chapter 18, verses 1 through 8.

Luke 18:1–8

Verse 1 tells us what the parable is about.

He says, Then he spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.

So the point of the parable is to teach us to pray and not lose heart.

Verse 2.

There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man.

So that's character number one.

There was a widow in that city, character number two, and she came to him saying, Get justice for me from my adversary.

There's character number three, the adversary.

He would not for a while, he being the judge, but afterward he said within himself, Though I do not fear God and nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her.

Lest by her continual, everyone say continual, coming she weary me.

Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said, and shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with him?

Isn't it interesting?

See, do you know what it means to bear long with someone?

It means to make them wait.

Right?

Usually we say long-suffering.

Like God is long-suffering, meaning that he's patient with us.

Like, yeah, okay, well, eventually you'll get here.

That's not his attitude at all, but that would be my attitude if I was him.

This this is the flip side.

He's saying, I bear long with you, I make you wait.

Isn't it weird that it's God own God's own elect that he makes wait?

It's his friends that he bears long with.

It's the ones that he knows that he makes wait.

And then verse 8, I tell you, he will not, that he will avenge them speedily.

So, right, speedily to him.

Not necessarily to me.

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth?

Well, what does that have to do?

This had nothing to do with faith.

Ah Jesus is defining faith for us with this parable.

Go back to verse one.

Men always ought to pray and not lose heart.

There's your definition.

That's faith.

Notice, Jesus, in multiple places in the Bible, it says that Jesus healed all that came to him.

Right?

Over and over and over.

We see huge crowds of people, every single one of them gets healed.

Every single one that comes up to him for prayer.

Except for Lazarus.

Except for his friends.

Look at this.

I've got this uh quote from the book, The Life of Saint Teresa.

Saint Teresa was a Spanish nun.

I love this story.

Teresa describes the journey thus.

We had to run many dangers.

At no part of the road were the risks greater than within a few leagues of Burgos, at a place called Los Pontes.

The rivers were so high that the water in places covered everything.

Neither road nor the smallest footpath could be seen, only water everywhere, and two abysses on each side.

It seemed full heartiness to advance, especially in a carriage, for if one strayed ever so little off the road, then invisible, one must have perished.

So she leads the way on foot.

The current was so strong that she lost her footing, and was on the point of being carried away when our Lord rescued her, sustained her.

O my Lord, she exclaimed with her usual loving familiarity, When wilt thou cease from scattering obstacles in our path?

Do not complain, daughter, the divine master answered, for it is ever thus that I treat my friends.

So then her response is, Ah Lord, it is also on that account that thou hast so few.

So the question is, verse 8, when the Son of Man comes tomorrow to noonday prayer, will he find faith at the road?

Based on this parable, faith is defined as the willingness to always pray and not lose heart.

This can only happen if we don't get answers right away.

The possibility of losing heart means that your prayer doesn't get answered.

My heart, I'm not gonna lose heart if my prayer gets answered.

He's putting it in the story right now for us.

Faith is less about getting an answer, and it's more about praying when you don't get the answer.

Right?

Faith is praying again.

And then praying again.

Elijah prayed seven times for rain.

Did you know?

He didn't know it was going to take seven times.

If he did, he wouldn't have sent his servant out after each time he prayed.

Right?

It says that he got down like a woman in birthing position, which is interesting to me, but that's a different story.

It's a different sermon.

This dude is like trying to birth something in the spirit.

That's kind of weird, but you know, it's in the Bible.

He gets down, he prays, comes back up, and says, Go check.

Guy comes back, no rain.

Okay, hold on.

Prays again.

Does that seven times.

He didn't know it was gonna take seven times, he just wasn't gonna quit until it rained.

Right?

That's faith.

But many people say, well, faith, if he had more faith, it would have rained the first time.

I say to you, that's not what faith is.

He had more faith because he didn't quit.

That's faith.

Daniel prayed for 21 days, three times a day, fasted, didn't take a shower, right?

Pastor Steve's been talking about it?

He didn't know it was going to take 21 days.

And actually, God answered his prayer on the first day, and he had to fight through an entire principality over Persia to get to him on the 21st day.

And it was his persistence and his fervency that pulled the answer through the demonic opposition.

But he didn't know it was going to take 21 days.

We go on 21-day fasts.

We're like, I'm going to fast for 21 days.

Daniel wasn't like, I'm going to fast for 21 days.

Daniel was like, I need an answer now, and it happened to take 21 days.

It's very different.

And it's interesting, it was just for a dream interpretation.

You might be praying for something as simple as a dream interpretation, and you're not getting an answer.

And it might be because God's using your prayer to break through demonic strongholds.

God could have just given him another dream that interpreted the first dream.

And he wouldn't have had to go through all the hassle.

God put him through the hassle intentionally.

God bears long with his friends.

See, sometimes we're knocking on God's door, but sometimes he's knocking on our door.

Come on, ask me again.

Come on, ask me again.

It was Daniel's words, but it was more than his words.

It was his persistence, his fervency.

God's looking for people that will groan.

See, answered prayer gets us to pray, but unanswered prayer gets us to groan.

It gets us to mourn.

It gets the liquid prayer of tears to flow.

It makes us hungry.

It makes us thirsty.

It makes us fast.

See, unanswered prayer is very important.

But it's not intended to stay there.

Remember Romans chapter 8, verse 22.

Romans 8:22

We know the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together, just like Elijah, right?

Birth pangs.

Verse 23, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting.

What are we waiting for?

Verse 25, we eagerly wait with perseverance.

So it's not passively waiting, it's eagerly waiting.

It's hungry waiting, it's salivating, I'm drooling at the mouth, like there's bacon that just came out of the oven and I haven't eaten for a week.

I'm weeping, I'm groaning, I'm eagerly waiting, persevering.

Likewise, verse 26, the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses.

So if you want to have the spirit of prayer, this groaning and pleading, you have to become weak.

Right?

Otherwise, he can't help us in our weaknesses if we're strong.

We have to be weak.

We do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Paul is describing the Spirit's intercession as groaning and laboring with birth pains.

It's the prayer that goes beyond words.

It's the prayer that comes in the form of tears.

Jeremiah said, chapter 9, Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.

I learned recently that in the first and second great awakenings, this was not called the altar where people would come up and get prayer.

This was called the mourner's bench, where people would come up and mourn and repent and cry out for revival.

I believe God wants to restore the mourner's bench to the church today.

This was the greatest revival in the history of our nation.

And people didn't come up to the front to get prayer, they came up to the front to give prayer.

They came up to the front to plead with God.

Zechariah 12 says that in the last days, this is what's going to happen at the end of the story, when Jesus comes back, what will precede that, he says, I will pour out on the house of David the spirit of grace and pleading.

And in that day there shall be great mourning.

They will look upon me who they pierced, and they will mourn for him as a parent mourns for the loss of their child.

God is producing a groan in the church today.

He's producing a gift of tears in our midst.

Prayer that's full of perseverance and faith.

John 11, we have the story of Lazarus getting raised from the dead.

Right?

Jesus heals all that comes to him, but his best friends send him a letter and he stays put.

Intentionally does not answer.

That's how he treats his friends.

Martha shows up after Lazarus died and Jesus is coming.

She hears he's coming, she goes to meet him on the road.

I'm going to give him a piece of my mind.

You know, that's that's kind of how I read it.

I could be wrong.

She says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

And even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.

That's kind of a weird thing to say to God.

Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.

I know.

He'll rise again in the last day at the second resurrection.

And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection.

He who believes in me, though he may not die, he shall live.

And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

He's asking, Will the Son of Man find faith in you, Martha?

You have great theology, Martha.

But will you sit in the pain of your brother's death and allow it to produce a groan and a prayer?

You say, I get what I ask of God, but am I not He?

Ask me.

She says, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who's come into the world.

And when she has said these things, she went her way.

It's in your hands now.

Perfect theology.

I have no issue with anything Martha said.

But it did nothing.

So she goes and gets married.

How many times do we go our way in the place of prayer instead of persevering for a miracle?

How many times do we have perfect theology?

We say the perfect prayer, but we're not willing to let our grief meet our belief, intention, and produce a groan out of us unto a miracle.

Mary comes.

Verse 32.

She saw him and she fell down at his feet.

And she says the same thing Martha said.

Lord, if you'd have been here, my brother would not have died.

That's actually the only sentence in the Bible that is ascribed to Mary.

It's the only time she speaks that we know of.

She obviously spoke more than that.

But we only get to hear that.

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, he groaned in the spirit.

What kind of prayer causes God to groan?

And was troubled?

He said, Where have you laid him?

They said to him, Lord, come and see.

Jesus wept.

In the midst of the accusers, in the midst of the Pharisees, Jesus wept.

This is a holy moment.

It's the shortest verse in the Bible, but it's the biggest verse in the Bible.

What kind of prayer causes Jesus to weep?

Verse 38, then Jesus again groaning in himself came to the tomb.

That's how God raises the dead with tears, moans, and groans.

He doesn't do it with a magic wand, he does it in pain.

God is moved.

We need to be moved.

She fell down weeping, and it caused him to weep.

And Jesus said, verse 39, take away the stone.

And Martha shows her true colors, right?

Lord, he's gonna stink.

He's been dead four days.

And Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?

I'm not afraid of stench.

I'm not afraid to get down in the muck.

I'm not afraid of the snot rolling out of your nose and soaking the carpet.

See, over and over in the Gospels, he healed them all.

He only delays miracles for his friends.

All the people he healed, he didn't even know them by name.

They didn't know him, he knew them.

They just came for the miracle and left.

But it's his friends that he delays a miracle for.

See, we're in good company, those of us who are still asking for the breakthrough.

That means you're his friend.

May God produce the spirit of prayer in us here at the road, the spirit of grace and pleading.

May God produce a groan that gains an answer in our spirits.

May God increase our faith through perseverance.

May God give us desperation in the place of prayer again, removing unbelief and complacency.

After all, James said, We have not because we ask not.

See, last week, Pastor Steve, he's talking about the guy who said, I do believe, help my unbelief.

And I'm sitting in the back there, and the Holy Spirit whispers to me, and he says, Watch how I help his unbelief.

Whoa, how do you do it, Lord?

Because read the next verse.

And Jesus healed the boy.

He wants to help unbelief by delivering miraculous answers.

But he wants to stir up faith by delaying the miracle.

See, answered prayer makes you pray.

But delayed answers, unanswered prayer makes you groan.

It's when you decide, I'm not just gonna leave it in God's hand and disconnect my heart from this.

I'm gonna sit in the pain and cry.

Lord, if you'd have been here, my brother wouldn't have died, if you'd have been here, my marriage wouldn't have died, if you'd have been here, my family member wouldn't have died, my ministry wouldn't have died.

I'm not questioning you, but my grief is meeting my belief in you, and I'm not willing to leave this tension until you bless me.

Even if you dislocate my hip, I'm not letting go until you bless me.

So John's gonna lead us in worship this morning, and as he does, maybe the Holy Spirit is tugging on your heart.

And he's asking you for your prayers, he's asking you for tears.

So if you want to come to the mourner's bench, you can.

If you want to turn around in your seat, old school and do it that way.

If you want to stand in worship, however you want to respond, just respond to the Holy Spirit.

He might be asking you for the prayers you're too afraid to pray.

Maybe they hurt too much to pray with dry eyes.

Let him have your decency and dignity today.

Let him have your shamelessness.

Let him have your tears to collect in his bottle so that he can pour them out in the form of a breakthrough.

Thank you for listening to the Corn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steveholtonline.org.

God bless.