Faith Builders III: Fellowship - Supplements for Spiritual Energy

Well, welcome to Saturday Night Here the Road.

Um, I just want to say a big thank you to Chapel Hills Church always for constantly letting us use this place, and what a joy to be able to have this place to meet.

We started off for you that are new over in the chapel over here, and we just kept filling it up, and so now we're in here.

And so we're constantly kind of figuring this thing out.

Um, and it's just been a great relationship.

So I don't know if y'all know anybody from Chapel Hills Church, but if you meet someone, just always thank them for uh the facility and the use of this place.

It's just been great for us.

Hey, uh, we got a few announcements.

Um, and here's one thing I want to say at the beginning of the announcements is that one of the aspects of this growing relationship we have with Chapel Hills Church is helping them with their facility too.

And so we've done a lot of work.

One of our guys put in the top some tiles that were missing up here.

We did a work day, we've done two workdays.

They have one more work day they would like to do next Saturday.

Now I know how this is.

If I say, hey, there's a work day next Saturday, all of you go, oh, that's really cool that there's a work day next Saturday, and then next Saturday comes and we forget, right?

Don't we do that?

Uh everybody go like this if you understand what I'm saying.

Okay.

So here's what I want to do: raise your hand.

Raise your praising hand.

Man or woman, I need 15.

We don't call them volunteers at the road.

There's no the word volunteer is nowhere in the Bible.

God doesn't need volunteers.

What he does need is servant disciples.

So 15 of you, raise your hands.

You say, I'll be here at 8 a.m.

There's one, oh, there's Tom.

Yep, yep, there we go.

Okay, good, good.

Awesome.

We got two, three, three.

I feel like an auctioneer.

Four.

Got four.

Five.

I need ten more.

Six.

Seven, Ben.

Great.

Anybody else?

I got seven.

Eight.

All right.

I see men.

That's what I like.

Okay, nine.

How about some women?

Okay, ten.

There's another guy.

Okay.

By the way, 8 a.m.

11.

See, 8 a.m., you're not gonna miss any football.

There's no football at 8 a.m.

Okay.

I need four more.

Four more.

Holy Spirit, come.

Come with your anointing.

Come with your power.

All right, 11's great.

So that's awesome.

And that's 8 a.m.

and we've done it.

What we'll do is if you've seen the work they're doing here, it's just phenomenal.

And it's just if you could recall what it was three months ago.

Remember that, guys?

You've been here for a while.

I mean, it was a mess, and they've done a beautiful job.

Um, and really, through our giving, part of it's our giving to give them the funds to be able to do it.

So it's just been very cool.

Listen, uh, joining a C group.

We now have, I believe it's about seven or eight C groups going on.

If you're not in a C group, these are what we call C groups.

They're that's they are short for community groups.

Community groups are groups of about 10 to 15 folks that meet in a home, and we've got C groups going on.

And if you'd like to be a part of a C group, we've got a list of them.

You can go, you can look on our Facebook on the road, and you can see what those C groups are, but let me encourage you in that direction.

Youth Discipleship.

Youth Discipleship is after every service on Saturday nights, and you see the address tonight, right after the service, if you're a youth, um, encourage you to join that.

They're now starting D groups.

You say, Well, what the D group?

D Group is a discipleship group of about three to six people.

And that's really the bread and butter, as it were, the core, the heart of the road is building wholehearted disciples of Jesus.

And so we are starting to establish D groups.

And so the youth are doing D groups tonight, and that's at the Borchards House.

You can see that.

And then if you'd be interested in working with middle school, where our next ministry with the youth that we want to start is middle school, you're meeting at my house tomorrow.

My house tomorrow.

Um my son texted me.

Uh what time was it, Daniel?

526.

526.

So 526 at 4465 Terrell Lane.

4465 Terrell Lane, 80908.

And you can talk to my son Daniel back here.

Is it 7?

Oh, okay.

So it's at 7.

So 7 tomorrow night at our at the Holtz House.

If you're interested in being in leadership, any age, working with the middle schoolers.

Discipleship packets.

We had a we had a discipleship seminar called Making Disciples.

We have Pastor Rock Bottomly and his wife Bev in from Oklahoma City.

And we have, if you miss that and would like the packets, we've made packets of information.

That's all the notes as well as the audio of the seminar.

Encourage you to get those because that's where this church is going.

Our vision is discipleship.

Men and women and youth and children.

We don't even call it ministries here.

We don't call it children's ministry.

We don't call it youth ministry.

We call it youth discipleship, middle school discipleship, children's discipleship, men's discipleship, women's discipleship.

We believe that Jesus said primarily as the call of the church is to go and make disciples, not go and make converts.

Go and make disciples.

The problem in America is we have too many Christians.

The problem in America today is we have too many Christians.

Thank you, Victor.

He's in the business of making Christians and disciples, right, bro?

All right.

This is what I mean by that.

80% of Americans call themselves Christians.

And we lead the world in pornography.

And we lead the world in urban violence.

And we lead the world in gang-related deaths and murders.

It's a little bit of a problem here.

He didn't say go and make Christians.

Christians is used three times in the Bible.

Guess how many times disciples is used in the New Testament?

270 times.

So Jesus said, go and make disciples.

So if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you're at the right place.

If you don't, then you're at the wrong place.

Because there's plenty of other churches you can go to where you can just be a Christian and do nothing.

But here we're going to call you to discipleship, and here's what that means being an imitator of Jesus.

Learning the ways of Jesus, not just the words about Jesus, but actually the works of Jesus.

And so we're going to be discipling you every Saturday night on that.

We're going to be growing in that.

We're going through the gospel of Mark right now.

And we're doing a little segue from Mark as we go through Mark on faith right now.

And lastly, prayer ministry training.

If you would like to be on the team that comes up and prays for people, we have a prayer ministry training coming up October 19th, right there.

And there's the information on it.

All right, bless you guys.

We are in a study in the Gospel of Mark, and you're going to do some work tonight, a little bit of work.

Normally we just go chapter by chapter and verse by verse through Mark.

But as I said before, I'm kind of taking a little bit of a detour because Mark chapter 4 and Mark chapter 5 speak of faith.

Mark 4 · chapter mention Mark 5 · chapter mention

And Jesus keeps challenging his disciples in faith.

So I've decided to do a little bit of something different in that I take supplements.

I'm big into nutrition.

My wife is the leader and I'm the follower in this arena.

But as I've seen the difference it's made in my life in the way of supplements and the energy that I get through going to a nutritionist and the homeopathics involved, this has been kind of a lifesaver for me.

So I just put my three bottles up here.

Because this is for physical and mental health.

And physical and mental health affects you emotionally and affects you spiritually.

But what I'm doing right now is I'm talking about what I think are the essential elements for nutrition spiritually.

How do we pick up our faith?

How do we have faith that gives us, listen guys, spiritual energy?

You need, anybody know you need spiritual energy?

Has anybody figured out that if you watch enough newscasts, it saps all of your spiritual energy?

Have you noticed that the kind of pictures we see on TV and even watching football today, as happy as I was, is Georgia was just stomping Arkansas into the ground.

I mean, 38 points in the first half.

It's the best, it's the best first half I've ever seen Georgia football in all my days.

I mean, it just blew them out defensively and offensively.

I still had to watch the commercials.

And by the way, the best thing to do on that is record.

You should record games and then come about an hour into it, and then you can just zip past all the commercials.

But have you figured it out that this world saps you of your spiritual energy?

So how do you build up what are the supplements, what are the spiritual supplements that God has given us that strengthen us in our faith?

What is, maybe another way to say it, what is God's spiritual homeopathics?

What has he already given us?

It's already within you because you're a Jesus follower.

Where the scriptures say, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world?

What is it within us that's missing?

Why do we have so many Christians and so few disciples of Jesus?

What is it about the domain of darkness that rules this earth, satanic oppression, that so presses us down, church, that we can't get up, that the depression among believers is just as high as among non-believers.

That adultery is just as high among believers as non-believers.

That guy, especially men who look at porn, is just as high in the church as it is outside the church.

There's a problem here.

And it's because we don't know how to draw from the well of God.

We've got false cisterns.

False cisterns.

I mean, when we bought our house, our house in Black Forest, the well was put in in 1962.

And uh, and I don't know how, with seven kids, so nine of us in this house now, for over 14 years, the well is still pumping out water.

It's totally a miracle.

But when we actually tested the water, it had so much bad stuff in it.

I've got five filters.

It goes through five filters to get to us, and it's really good by the time it gets to us.

Tastes good, it is good, it tests well, but but that's a well that goes down into the Denver aquifer that pulls water up and it's fresh water, but it has to be filtered through.

That's a human cistern.

Men and women, that's a human cistern.

And I could go to the ranch of our cabin that we used to have years ago at my grandpa's ranch that had springs of living water.

And you didn't have to do anything.

It was springs, it was fresh, it was good, there was nothing in it.

There was no iron in it.

There was no other foreign metal, hard metal, uh, heavy metal content.

It was a fresh spring there in the central part of South Carolina.

And God has given us fresh springs, and what we do as believers is we build our own wells, don't we?

And we try to draw from our own resources.

It's natural.

We've been doing it since the beginning of time.

This group, I can look at, I know most of you in this room, and this is one of the most talented, gifted churches that is probably in the city.

And so we tend to gather our strength from natural resources rather than supernatural power.

So, what I want to talk about are some of those elements that I believe build supernatural power.

First of all, you're gonna do a little bit of turning in your Bibles tonight.

Turn, first of all, to 1 John.

That's near the end of the New Testament, right in front of Revelation, 1 John chapter 5.

1 John 5 · chapter mention

1 John chapter 5.

1 John 5 · chapter mention

And this is our key passage for the next few weeks as we talk about what I'm entitling Supplements for Spiritual Energy.

Supplements for spiritual energy, faith builders.

This is what builds up your faith.

Here's what the scriptures say.

For whatever is born of God, that's you, if you're a Jesus follower, you're born of God, overcomes the world.

And this is the victory that overcomes the world, your faith.

In other words, God has given us, through his spirit, faith to trust him, faith to believe him, faith to do victorious things that actually overcome obstacles even set up by demonic powers.

There are demonic powers that oppose you.

If a baseball player is at the plate and he sees a 95 mile an hour fastball and he gets the meat of the bat squarely at the right point in his swing, he's gonna drive the ball that much further.

And the reality is, is the more your spiritual energy grows, the more you will be opposed.

And so, what are those faith supplements that give us what we need for victory?

Let me give you the one we did two weeks ago.

Here it is: Rhema word supplement.

Number one, Rhema word supplement.

God's word builds up our faith.

It is the vitamin C of faith.

The reality, church, is that if you're not in God's word, you will spiritually atrophy.

You will spiritually lose energy.

It's like when I don't take my supplements, I'm good with some inertia for the first couple days, but by the third or fourth day, I feel the effects of my energy flow when I'm not taking these supplements.

Same with God's word.

If you are not regularly in God's word, have you figured this out?

That sometimes in our lives we've so settled for such a substandard form of Christianity, we think that's normal.

Okay?

And so what happens is we're depressed all the time, we're despondent all the time, we're struggling all the time, and in the process of that, we just feel like, well, that's just my lot.

That's just the way it is for me.

My dad was depressed too, and so is his grandfather, or I've got an alcohol problem, or whatever it might be.

And we've never tried the first supplement God's word.

I challenge you that you would spend 15 minutes in God's word every day and try it through the fall.

Maybe just try it for 30 days.

And we gave you this a couple weeks ago.

And if you don't have one, find one.

I don't know where they are.

Maybe they're out in the lobby, but we call these the road bookmarks.

And in there we talk about P, B, and J.

And I already discussed this two weeks ago.

It's not peanut butter and jelly, by the way.

It's prayer, Bible, and journal.

Five minutes of prayer, five minutes of Bible, five minutes of journal.

It's explained right here.

And then we give you, for each day of the week, going through the gospel mark, read one chapter a day.

One chapter a day.

So if you're not aware of that, find that.

It's a way to gross.

When we talk about Rhema, word supplement, we talked about Hebrews 4.12.

For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And so we talked about this idea of two words for rhema.

Logos, church, is the said word of God.

It's all of Scripture.

That's the logos.

But then the scriptures say faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and that word is rhema, and what that is, is the saying word of God.

The saying word of God.

So when you're reading God's word, it's the logos.

But then God accentuates, God speaks to your heart something from Him to you from His Word.

That's rhema.

Another word might be revelation.

God gives you revelation, and you can't get revelation through Rhema unless you're first in logos.

Does that make sense?

In other words, I can think all, I need more energy, I need more strength.

But until I went to a nutritionist who tested me and found out these are the three things that you need.

These three areas are what you need.

It's going to help you.

These are entirely different than what my wife needs, entirely different than what my other, my, my Anna needs and my other sons and daughters, because you're tested for that.

So you can be in God's word, and guess what?

God knows what you need.

He knows what you need.

But if you're not in it, you can't know it because he can't instruct you because you're not reading it.

So as we read it, y'all, oh man, this is so boring.

Pastor Steve said it was going to be so exciting.

I didn't say that.

I did not say that.

You can't quote me on that.

I did not say God's word is exciting.

It is not exciting.

It is boring.

It is hard.

It's a struggle.

And I'd be a liar if I told you any other way.

When we read God's word, it takes effort.

But guess what?

When he speaks, it gets exciting.

And I find that he speaks a lot more when I'm more in it.

And so it's like working out.

I mean, I know there's some of you guys out there that you work out.

You mean you look, it's obvious you work out from the looks of you.

I mean, you're just awesome.

Whoa.

And you say, oh, I can't live without working out.

Man, I tell you what, I was, you guys know my athletic background, and I hated practice.

I hate, I still hate it.

I mean, I hated it, and I don't like to practice.

I like the meets, man.

I like the crowd.

I like doing it and nailing those routines and all that kind of stuff.

Long time ago.

Right?

I mean, if you're honest, that's true.

It's just hard to work out.

Well, it's hard to work out with God's word, but it works.

And I'm, I mean, I think that as we grow in life, what should be happening in our life is that we start narrowing as we grow older into maturity what we know works, and we cast off the stuff that doesn't work.

And God's word is living and active.

And if that rhema comes, that's when it's energized because the said word of God becomes the saying word of God, which becomes the supplement that we need to grow our faith.

Because when God speaks to you, it grows your faith.

So we already talked about that.

Now turn, you're right near it.

1 John, go a little bit more to Jude.

Jude 20.

Just turn to the right.

You're in 1 John right now.

During Jude 20.

And here's the second supplement.

This is a second faith supplement.

First, God's word.

Second, Jude 20.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up.

Underline that.

Building yourselves up.

Own your most holy faith.

Look at it.

Look at it.

Praying in the spirit.

Praying in the spirit.

So here's a second supplement, spiritual supplement.

Spirit prayer supplement.

Rama word supplement, number one.

Number two, spirit prayer supplement.

Praying in the spirit will build up your faith.

Faith is built through prayer.

Not all prayer, though.

Prayer that's in the spirit.

Agnostics, I don't care what they say.

Atheists and agnostics pray.

Everybody prays.

Last time I read a survey, it was something like 6% or 7% of Americans say that they're atheists or agnostic.

The Newsweek did an article on prayer a number of years ago and found that 98% of people pray.

Hello?

That means about half of all those who call themselves agnostics and atheists actually are praying.

I don't know what they're praying to.

I don't know what they believe in, but they're praying.

You were born to pray.

It's called in Jeremiah a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of all men.

We were born to pray, and so, but not all prayer is in the spirit.

ISIS in Iraq, known as the Islamic State in Iraq or Levant, or the Islamic State Is, radical Muslims are praying to Allah.

That's not what I'm talking about.

He's saying here, building up your holy faith by praying in the Spirit.

Now go back, keep, I told you it was gonna be a little bit of work here.

Go back to 1 John 5.4.

And I want to read the next verse.

1 John 5.4.

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

But look at verse 5.

It's very interesting.

Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

So when we go into prayer, our faith in Christ, listen, our faith in Christ empowers us to pray in the Spirit.

Because you have the Holy Spirit.

If you have put your faith in Christ, if you've made a choice to follow Christ as best you know how up to this point, you have Jesus in your heart, you have the Holy Spirit living within you, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, you have power residing within you.

It's like even in the realm of homeopathics, they talk about this idea that your body can heal itself.

I really believe that.

Not in every case.

We need doctors, we need hospitals and stuff, but I mean, in some cases, your body is programmed with the antibodies, if it's healthy, if it's healthy, to heal itself.

Well, here's the deal, guys.

We have the healer within us.

Okay, and so with the healer within us, what we're talking about is how do we, through the power of prayer, access that?

Well, the first step is we have to believe in Christ.

We have to put our faith in Christ.

Because here's why, and this is really important.

Don't miss this.

Jesus intercedes for the saints.

So when you put your faith in Christ, Jesus is interceding for you.

That's exciting.

That as we learn to pray in the Spirit, he's already praying in the Spirit for us.

Today was a really hard day for me.

I went on my prayer walk that I try to do most mornings, and I just was overwhelmed with some stuff.

And I just found myself weeping for about 30, 45 minutes.

I just went on, had to sit down on a log in the woods and just cry about some stuff.

And I was weeping.

And the prayer that God gave me was, Lord, would you comfort me with the comfort you got from your father when you were in your greatest need?

God, would you love me with the love that the Father gave you in your greatest need?

He will.

He does.

And he did.

So what is praying in the spirit?

I want to give you three aspects here tonight.

Three aspects for praying in the spirit.

What does it mean to pray in the spirit?

A lot of different opinions on that.

I want to give you what I believe scripturally it says.

Number one, praying in the spirit is Jesus prompting you to pray in your time of weakness.

Praying in the spirit is Jesus prompting us and praying through us in our weakness.

Turn to Romans 8.

Romans 8.

Romans 8 to 26.

Great passage.

Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for 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.

Verse 27.

Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.

You see, men and women, I think what happens is in our weakness we don't know how to pray, or we want to give up, or we become so frustrated and depressed and despondent and hurting, right?

You know what I'm talking about.

All of us go through those times and we call out to God in the Spirit, and He intercedes for us sometimes with even groanings, which you can't even understand what you're praying, but He's praying through you, and a peace that surpasses all understanding follows.

Don't leave it there.

Press in.

Press in.

Because we have issues.

We have issues personally.

We have issues in our companies.

We have issues in our marriages.

We have issues with our kids, don't we?

And we don't know how to pray.

We don't know what to do.

And we actually feel, especially as men, I speak to men here.

I think we're less willing to be vulnerable than women.

But we as guys, we we hate that feeling of not being able to be in control, right?

And so what we do is we we kind of we kind of pick it up with this kind of can-do attitude.

And I and I want to say, here's the attitude I think we're called to have is a can't do attitude.

I want to challenge you, have a can't do attitude.

I can't do it.

I can't do it.

And so you surrender to Christ in prayer in your weakness, Lord, I can't do this.

Pray through me.

Empower me.

Strengthen me.

It's like, ah.

It's it's it's it's way some of some of us, our shame is so deep.

Some of us have been have been sexually abused.

Some of us have been beaten down by the system.

Some of us have have been so hurt that we would never let anyone know because we're afraid of what might come out if the true self came out because of our pain and our hurt, right?

Take that to Christ in prayer.

Take your shame to Christ in prayer and lay it at the foot of the cross.

Let your weakness come out.

At the road, we are not interested in strong people.

We are interested in weak people who worship a strong God.

Nobody here is strong.

Everybody here is weak, but in Christ, all things are possible through him.

But he gets the glory, he gets the honor.

And as we surrender to him, he replaces our weakness.

It seems to be here that he searches our hearts and then he knows the mind of the spirit.

So what happens is we come to that place where we're really broken and we're really hurting and we're really angry and we're really frustrated.

And as we give it to him, he starts to plant the mind of the spirit into you if you do it enough.

In other words, it's not going to be a one-time thing, but you keep coming back and you keep coming back and you don't give up.

And as you do, you get changed.

You get changed.

Because you start to have different thoughts.

That's what I get here, is that we start to have different thoughts, and he's renewing our mind through brokenness and weakness.

And so the vulnerability with the spirit, and I believe with other people too, is important.

There becomes a healing.

That's praying in the Spirit.

That's letting the Spirit prompt you.

Don't make it up, but let Him prompt you.

Like right now, even as I'm speaking, most of us in this room, something comes to mind that you're either ashamed of, you're broken over, you still feel guilt about, or you're hurting over, right?

Because the Spirit of God is in this room.

At 515, our watchmen, men of prayer, came in here and we prayed for 30 minutes.

And all you men, not women, all you men are invited at 5.15 to come into the sanctuary and pray.

We have set the atmosphere through anointed in the spirit prayer.

And so what's happening right now, even as I speak God's word, is you're being prompted with something in your spirit.

And what I would encourage you is in the morning when you wake up, take that, write it down right now so you don't forget, but take that to the Lord in prayer, and he will come and he will empower that work for a new work he wants to do in your life.

Here's the second aspect.

The second aspect of praying in the Spirit.

Praying in the Spirit can be through an unknown tongue, a prayer language that the Spirit supernaturally gives you.

We call it speaking in tongues.

We talk about praying in tongues.

It's a prayer language that God gives you.

1 Corinthians 14, 2, we read, For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God, for no one understands him.

However, in the spirit he speaks mysteries.

1 Corinthians 14, 14.

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.

What is the conclusion then?

I will pray with the spirit, and I'll also pray with understanding.

Here's what he's saying.

He's saying that there is a prayer language where you pray in an unknown tongue that God supernaturally gives you.

You don't understand what you're praying.

It's a mystery, but God knows it.

It's from God.

But you also should be praying in your mother tongue.

You should be praying in your, in English.

Or if there's another language that you pray in Spanish or French or whatever, that you should pray both ways.

But praying in the Spirit through the filling, a la, baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I believe is oftentimes the work of the Spirit that gives you an unknown tongue, is praying in the Spirit.

And for me, got saved in college, went on the mission field, began to face stuff on the mission field years ago, especially in the arena of the demonic.

I was in a group that wasn't altogether supportive of this weird holy roller snake handling kind of gift called speaking in tongues, which by the way it's none of those things, but that's the way it was viewed.

Um I felt I needed more power.

I got my um clock cleaned, maybe that's a good way to say it, by the demonic uh several times.

And I realized I man, I am dealing with powers I do not know how to handle.

Father, if there's more, if there's more to this Christian life, or there's more power to be had, man, I want it.

I want everything.

I do not want to get to the end of my life and feel like I missed out on stuff that you had for me.

So I'm asking.

And for weeks I asked and nothing happened, and months I asked and nothing happened.

And then a year went by and suddenly I'm in Okinawa, Japan, and I'm taking a shower.

And Spirit of God came on me and I spoke in tongues.

In the shower.

I guess he really cleaned me up so that my clock wouldn't get cleaned by the demonic.

Um, but this praying in the spirit, I'm gonna give you the opportunity tonight.

That if you have never experienced that and you'd like to pray, we will lay hands on you and pray for that.

And I don't know what God will do.

For me, it took a long time, but I kept seeking it and seeking it because I wanted it.

There's something about it, Paul says, that it's important that we pray in tongues.

Is it for everybody?

I'm not gonna say.

I mean, scriptures to me are clear that it seems to be a spiritual gift.

Do if you don't speak in tongues, does that mean you're not filled with the Holy Spirit?

I do not believe that.

I believe you're filled with the Holy Spirit by letting Christ empower you.

And you putting him on the throne.

You can be spirit-filled.

I think Billy Graham, I don't believe, ever spoke in tongues, was quite spirit-filled.

I think Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, very spirit-filled.

I don't know if he ever spoke in tongues.

So it's not, I don't believe, that it's the cardinal gift.

But, but, don't miss this.

It's a very important supernatural gift that God will give anybody, I believe, who wants it.

So that's secondly.

So, first of all, this praying in the spirit is the prompting through your weakness.

Secondly, it is through an unknown tongue.

And then thirdly, praying in the spirit is the, listen, this is the most important of everything I'm saying, is the prayer of intimacy.

Is the prayer of intimacy coming close to our Father.

That's the ultimate purpose of prayer, in my opinion, is that it's for intimacy.

That when you come into prayer, it's an intimate time.

It's a time with the Spirit of God where he speaks to you.

Look at Romans 8.15.

Look at Romans 8.15.

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba Father.

For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear.

Now, why would he say that?

Why would he say to believers, this is the Roman believers, why would he say that you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear if that wasn't indeed a struggle there?

We struggle with that.

Every one of us in this room struggle with bondage in our life, even as believers, and fear.

Think about it.

Think about it for a moment.

Why do we not give everything to Christ?

Why do we not give him all of our finances and trust him with our finances?

Why do we not trust him with our marriage?

Why do we not trust him with the girl or the guy we're dating?

Why do we not do that?

Because we have this bondage and this fear that if we gave it all to Christ, somehow he's gonna mess everything up.

That somehow your life's gonna become boring, that somehow he's gonna take everything that you really want to do and all the fun that you have, and it's gonna be the most boring life ever.

Have you met, listen, have you really ever met a spirit-filled believer that's not fairly joyful?

I haven't.

And I've been walking with the Lord a long time.

And the more I give to him, the more joy I have.

The more I give to him, the more happy I am.

The more I give to him, the more peace I experience.

So that's the that's why he starts this, that's why he says it this way, is because we all struggle with a spirit of bondage again to fear.

But you've received, rather than that, you've received the spirit of adoption.

You are adopted by God the Father into his family, and you can say daddy.

You can say daddy, that's what Abba means.

You can say daddy.

Praying in the spirit is the prayer of Abba.

Your beloved church.

Every one of you in this room were created for a beautiful purpose.

You're a beautiful person.

Whatever's been done to you by the enemy, that can start to be crossed out and deleted and cast out by the spirit of adoption.

You can say no to that old family of origin, and you can say yes to a new family, the family of being a Jesus disciple.

He becomes your father.

Whatever your earthly father, your earthly mother, or or that, that person in authority in your life who hurts you so deeply, only Christ through prayer, can heal your heart.

And he will, and he does.

And that's what praying in the spirit is.

It's intimacy with him, it's it's being alone with him and experiencing him through his word and through sharing your heart.

Praying in the spirit, praying in an unknown tongue sometimes.

I mean, there's there's times where I don't know how to pray.

And so I pray.

We were we were praying as men over here for a moment in time that I was praying in the spirit in an unknown tongue.

So I was preparing this message and I was coming over tonight, and and I I think I do feel prompted that there's really a fourth aspect.

It's gonna be kind of a weird one.

But I feel like today I was at a memorial service for my my good friend Vance and Rachel.

Do you guys remember them a couple weeks ago they helped lead worship with Heath?

Um Vance was on bass, Rachel's on piano, beautiful voice, Rachel and Vance.

Anyway, Vance, a hunting buddy, we've hunted elk and deer and about everything under the sun.

We've shot everything that you can shoot in Colorado together.

His father died, Bill, 82.

Um, and I've hunted with Bill too.

What a testimony.

Twenty grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren.

Amazing.

And guess what everybody said?

And I mean there was probably 10 people who spoke.

Every morning, every morning, Bill and Betty in God's word together, praying by name for every grand and great grandchild.

Every morning.

Isn't that powerful?

So I'm looking at that, I'm thinking about the legacy of that, and I thought of this fourth aspect.

Here's the fourth aspect, I think, of praying in the spirit.

And it's gonna seem a little bit weird, but listen praying in the spirit is praying in quiet.

It's praying in quiet.

It's it's solitude.

Every one of us in this room, you need solitude.

And you and we think that if we're not, we think that if we're not saying something or hearing something, that we're missing something, and I want to challenge that thinking that there's something powerful about solitude.

The Psalms talk about in silence is God's power.

In silence is God's power.

I would exhort you, church, that you would take times to maybe walk or just lay, maybe it's a cross in front of you, maybe it's uh a picture, or maybe it's looking out a beautiful window, and try not to think about anything.

Just be quiet.

And listen to what the Spirit of God might want to say.

Try silence.

I heard a guy one time say, I can't, I could never do that.

And I said, Why?

And he says, Because I'm afraid of what I would hear.

Isn't that again the spirit of bondage leading to fear?

I want to challenge us that we have a loving God.

He loves you.

And he will speak loving things to you.

And even if he prompts us in areas that we need to repent of, that's because of his love and his belovedness toward you.

Amen.

Let's stand.

And as Melody and Anna come up, lead us in worship.

Why don't we just take silence right now?

Let's just take a moment of silence.

Just wherever you are, just close your eyes and just be quiet before the Lord.

And then as Anna and Melody begin the worship, let it let it kind of seep into your heart.

Let it just flow into your heart.

Tonight I feel like that we'd be remiss if we didn't have the opportunity to those of you who want a more intimate connection with praying in the Spirit.

In other words, you would say that your prayer life isn't where you want it to be, and that we would be open to saying, God, would you anoint, would you strengthen, would you empower me in the area of prayer?

And here's what we've done is before the service tonight, I asked some of our, I believe those in our church who have a gift of intercession.

They have a gift of the power of prayer.

I've asked them to be here tonight specifically for the end of the service.

Some of them have been praying in the back through our boiler room prayer, but I've asked them to be in here tonight to lay hands on because the scriptures are clear that there can be a passing on of spiritual gifts through the laying on of hands.

That's a mystery.

I don't get it, I don't understand it.

It seems kind of weird, but it works.

And I know that in my life there have been several situations where people laid hands on me and the gift that God had given them was transferred into me.

Paul talks about that with Timothy, that through the laying on of hands, Timothy was given the gift of being a pastor and a teacher.

And I believe tonight the emphasis is praying in the Spirit.

So if you would say, Steve, I want the Lord to touch me in a deeper way in prayer, would you come up?

We're going to pray for that blessing over you.

Would you come up?

A greater anointing, a greater blessing, a greater intimacy in the Spirit.

And some of you may say tonight, well, Steve, I've never spoken in tongues.

And I would like that gift.

If that's available from the Lord, I'm going to go for it, man.

I want that.

We're going to, when our prayer team comes up, you tell them what you want, and we're going to pray for that for you.

Come on up.

Awesome.

Now, could I have my prayer team that has specifically been asked to pray for people?

Would you guys come up?

And then as you feel led, just go up to different people and first interview them, find out what they want prayer about, how they want to grow in prayer.

And then I just, man, I just love these guys.

I mean, I've prayed with almost all the folks up here.

I think I prayed with everybody up here who's on the prayer team tonight.

And man, they pray.

So you're going to get something.

So you better get ready.

Because God's going to zero in on what your heart needs and he will pray for you.

And they will bless you.

And God will do a fresh work.

Has everybody got someone with them right now?

Rex?

Can we come over here with?

Oh, you came up for prayer?

Well, you got it.

You're going to have to give it first.

Sorry.

Has everybody got someone with them?

Not everybody.

Raise your hand if you don't have someone with you praying with you.

Okay.

The rest of you just be seated right now and let's just let the spirit be used through the laying on of hands.

I don't want to circumvent the prayer, but I'm listening to some of the prayers, and there's some pretty deep stuff going on.

And I don't want you guys to feel like you're going to have to curtail it.

So would everybody stand with me?

And I want you guys that are up here praying just to remain just praying over those people as long as you need.

But I want to read in conclusion Jude 24 and 25.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory and exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forever.

Amen.

God bless you guys.

They were texted to me through Melody, my assistant, about the area of speaking in tongues and praying in the spirit.

Why don't we do this?

I'll cover those next week.

Before the service or before my sermon, the questions that some of you texted.

So we'll do that next week.

God bless you.

Have a great evening.