Lessons in Prayer

- Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu

from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you

and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

I pray that this word would encourage.

I pray that it would build up Lord.

I pray that it would draw us closer to you, my God.

We love you.

We thank you in Jesus name.

Amen.

Amen.

God is good.

- Amen.

- All the time.

- God is good.

- Amen.

You can be seated.

You can be seated.

I wanna first of all,

just, you know,

send my condolences to the Salazar family.

Some of you might know already that our brother Josh,

Josh, who does our security here.

His mom passed away last night.

Andrea, our women's leader.

She lost a mother-in-law,

which we know becomes like a second mom to us.

The boys are here.

Josiah, Josh, and Joseph.

And we know that sister Magda is in the presence of God.

Amen.

That's the hope of the believers.

That's the hope that we carry, but it still hurts.

It still hurts when things like this happen.

And so I just continue to pray for them,

pray that the Lord would just be the comforter that he is,

and the peace that he is.

Amen, to the family and to bring just a sense of peace.

Peace comes that surpasses all understanding.

And so when we don't have understanding

of why things happen,

God is so good that he still gives us peace,

even when we don't understand things.

And so I pray the peace of God around them.

And I wanna be sensitive this morning because my message,

it just seems like the timing of it was just,

I don't know, weird.

There's a lot of people that are going through things.

There's a lot of people that have prayers right now.

And what I wanna talk about today is prayer.

I wanna talk about prayer.

And so I just, I wanna be, I really ask God, Lord,

let me be sensitive to what's happening

in the lives of people right now as I preach this word.

And so I'm trusting in him.

I'm gonna go around the Bible this morning.

Like I'm gonna give different scripture references.

I won't have like an anchor text like I usually do.

And whenever I tell people or help people prepare a sermon,

I always tell them that it's better to have one main passage

to use as your support for the whole message,

hopping around the whole Bible

just to pull out key themes.

It's not always effective.

But I'm gonna go against my own advice today.

And I'm gonna hop around the Bible

because this topic has really been on my heart for a while,

prayer, we need to talk about prayer.

You know, as the people of God,

we have to be people of prayer, right?

Prayer is essential to the life of the believer

and with our relationship with God, it's vital.

And so, you know, at church,

we're so used to doing prayer naturally.

We pray over everything.

We pray over the offering.

We pray before the sermon starts.

We pray here at the altars.

But sometimes we don't take the time

to actually talk about it.

And I wanna talk about it today, amen?

We know that prayer is powerful, amen?

Prayer is powerful.

We, and we hear that all the time.

We hear about it being powerful

and we read about prayer having the power

to bring miracles and heal the sick and raise the dead

and all of that's connected with prayer.

But what about when the prayer doesn't give us the result

that we prayed for?

We all have friends.

We all have family members.

Maybe you even asked it before.

These types of questions like, hey, if prayer works,

why are so many people in the world dying of diseases?

If prayer works,

why are there hungry children in the world?

Why is there so much evil in the world

when all the Christians could just gather

and just pray that God would make it go away?

Why do we have natural disasters

if the God of the universe can prevent all of it

through the power of prayer?

And so again, I wanna be, again, the timing of it,

like I wanna be sensitive to this topic

because I know that this week has been very hard

for several people and that's just who I know about.

And if you're going through something today

or in your season, maybe you're in a season of prayer

where God, he's just not come through for you

in the way that you've asked him to.

I know how hard that can be.

And a lot of times it's so much easier

for us to just be upset with God

rather than attempt to understand

why he might have allowed us to go through certain things.

And so I don't have all of the answers

for why God doesn't answer prayers.

I don't, I wish I did, I don't.

Especially when they're good prayers, you know?

Like, especially when they're selfless prayers.

Like I'm not praying anything for my benefit,

I'm praying for somebody else.

Why is it that God doesn't always answer those prayers?

What I do know is that prayer keeps my faith in check.

See, the moment I stop praying

is the moment my faith begins to weaken.

One of two things happens when you stop praying.

You either send a message to God that says,

because you haven't answered my prayers in the past,

I'm gonna stop trusting in you.

Or you say, because I don't really need anything right now,

I'm not gonna go to you in prayer.

And so a non-prayer life tells God

that you either don't believe in him or you don't need him.

Either way is bad and it kills faith.

And so when we pray, we pray with confidence,

somebody say confidence,

that the God of the universe hears us, right?

That's why you pray.

You have a little bit of faith

that God who is way up there can hear you way down here.

And so even if he didn't hear my prayer last time,

maybe he'll hear it this time and respond this time

because I know that my God loves me,

I know that my God cares for me,

and I know that he hears me.

And as a child of God,

I can boldly go before the throne and ask my father.

And so when my life is falling apart

and I'm just left down to one piece,

that one piece is gonna cry out to God in faith.

As long as I have a prayer life, church,

as long as you are praying, you still have faith.

When you stop praying, you lose your faith.

And we know that it is impossible to please God

without faith.

So whatever you do,

even if you don't hear the rest of the message today,

I want you to know that you have to keep praying.

Don't stop praying.

Don't lose that communication with the father

because that's where you know him more.

That's where you understand his will on a deeper level.

That's where your heart begins to break

for the things that his breaks for.

Don't stop praying.

I wanted to establish that first before going on.

Don't stop praying.

Teach your kids that, okay?

Teach your kids because your kids are gonna ask,

"Hey, I prayed for God to heal me last time

and he didn't.

Why didn't he?

I don't know, Mija, keep praying anyways."

Teach your kids that.

Teach that to your spouse.

Show it to them.

Today, the title of my message is Lessons in Prayer.

I wanna teach a little bit.

I'm gonna teach a little bit more

than I'm gonna preach today.

I hope that's okay.

Because I really think that we need to understand prayer

as much as we possibly can.

You know, when you're dealing with spiritual things,

when you're dealing with godly things,

when you're dealing with godly things, we have to accept

that there's gonna be a lot of things

that we simply cannot understand, right?

Like, we don't understand God more than what he's revealed

to us about him in the scriptures.

So God is an infinite God.

He is without beginning, he is without end.

I don't understand certain things about him.

I don't understand how God can know all things past,

present, and future,

and all the things that could have happened.

It would take an infinite mind, like God's,

to know infinite things.

I don't understand why God does certain things.

I don't understand why God doesn't do certain things.

We're not gonna understand a lot

when it comes to spiritual things, including prayer,

but what we can know, we should know.

And so I told you, we're gonna jump around the Bible today.

What I've done in the past, what most people do

when they teach on prayer is they use scriptures

where it teaches us how to pray, like the Lord's Prayer,

you know, where Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray,

or we'll use passages where we see prayer work.

I decided to use examples where prayer didn't work,

where prayer didn't yield the result

that the person praying was looking for.

So hopefully with this, we can better understand

why God doesn't always respond to every single prayer.

And also, let me say this,

because there's a lot for me to set up today, I know.

I just, I don't want you,

I don't want you to see me as like Job's friends, you know?

When Job's friends were telling Job

why God wasn't answering his prayer,

that's not what I'm doing.

These are just considerations that we see from scripture.

It doesn't mean this is why God isn't answering your prayer.

Some of these things will not be relatable at all,

and others might be, okay?

So if you take notes, this sermon is probably

one of my only sermons that's gonna be easy

to take notes on.

And each of these examples could easily be their own sermon,

but we're not gonna go too deep into their stories.

This is gonna be a very different style of preaching today.

I hope that's okay.

And if you don't like it, come back next week, okay?

Come back next week.

Hey, sometimes you're not gonna like a sermon,

give it another try, right?

I hate when Melissa and I go to a,

and I know it's your birthday, baby,

I don't mean to talk, throw shade,

but when we go to a restaurant and she tries one thing

and she decides because she didn't like that one thing,

she never wants to go back,

I'm like, this is a pretty promising place.

Let's give it one more chance, right?

So if you don't like a sermon, just come back, amen?

So the first thing, the first person I wanna look at

is King Saul.

Saul, if you know anything about him,

he was a man chosen to be king

after the people of Israel demanded a king.

Saul, he started out great.

He was humble, he was victorious in battle,

and the Bible says that the spirit of God was upon him,

but Saul got greedy, he got disobedient,

and then he got jealous, he got prideful,

and the Bible says that the Lord rejected him.

He rejected him.

So by the time Saul gets to the end of his life,

he's seeking counsel.

He's seeking counsel 'cause he's about to enter this battle

where he's not really sure if he should fight in it,

and it turns out that he happens to die in it,

but he's trying to find some type of answer from God.

And so 1 Samuel 28, six says this.

He, he being Saul, asked the Lord what he should do,

but the Lord refused to answer him,

either by dreams or by sacred lots or by the prophets.

So why would a good, loving God

refuse to answer anyone's prayer?

You might read this and take it out of context

and think, well, that's not the God

that I hear preached about.

Isn't God supposed to hear us?

Isn't God supposed to rescue us and be our refuge

and be our strength in times of struggle?

Why does God refuse to answer Saul?

It's like, it's not even a no.

You know how sometimes people keep you in limbo,

they don't give you an answer,

and like, it's like a answer is better than no answer.

God is refusing to answer Saul.

He's ignoring King Saul.

So lesson number one is this.

A rejected heart will result in a rejected prayer.

And see, I hope nobody can relate to this one,

but it's a biblical truth.

God will reject your prayer

if he's already rejected the motive of your prayer.

And so in this point in Saul's life,

like, God was done with Saul.

Saul had rejected God, God rejected Saul.

There was no ounce in Saul that was being led

with good intention or with a good spirit.

He was driven by hate, he was driven by jealousy,

he was driven by pride.

And so, you know, some people,

they're driven, they're not driven by the Holy Spirit.

They're driven by other things.

They're driven by their own flesh desires.

But because they have knowledge of who God is

and what God can do,

sometimes they go to God to ask for a blessing.

But God won't bless a heart that he's already rejected.

It could be that God rejected that great idea that you had,

that you brought to him a long time ago,

when God said, "No," but you decided to go with it anyway.

And so you're asking God to work things out

in something that he never intended for you to even be in.

And you're like, "God, bless my business."

Nope, I told you not to start that thing.

Why won't you just bless it?

I told you no.

The whole premise of your prayer is on rocky foundation.

"God, bless my ministry."

I told you now was not the time for that ministry.

I told you now was not the time to start a church

because you were mad with your pastor.

God will not bless those

who deliberately walk in disobedience.

See, because you know what?

Before God takes your prayer, he takes your heart.

There was nothing wrong with Saul's prayer.

It was his heart that was the issue.

He had rejected the very will of God.

Why would God answer a prayer for a man

that was already walking in disobedience?

A rejected heart will result in a rejected prayer.

Now, Saul could have simply repented, right?

He could have turned his heart back to God

and God would have started to listen to his prayer again.

Listen to what God told Solomon.

King Solomon, this is a very popular passage

in 2 Chronicles.

He says, "When I shut up the heavens

"so that there is no rain,

"or command the locusts to devour the land

"or send pestilence among my people,

"if my people who are called by my name

"humble themselves and pray and seek my face,"

and what?

"Turn from their wicked ways,

"then I will hear from heaven

"and forgive their sin and heal their land."

And so if you're finding yourself rejected by God,

I want you to know that it's not because

you're not good enough.

It's not because you're not loved by God.

It's not because God doesn't care about you.

But it could be because you have decided

to live against the will of God.

And I hope that that's not for anybody today.

I hope that this was just for information purposes.

But God is simply,

God is saying, "If you just simply give me your heart back.

"If you just give me your heart back.

"If you stop trying to do it your way all the time.

"If you stop being stubborn when my answer is no,

"then I will hear your prayers again."

That was lesson number one.

Lesson number two takes us to King David.

David committed sin.

We know the story of David.

He committed sin by seeing Bathsheba bathe.

And Bathsheba, she was a married woman,

and he sees her and he brings her in

and he sleeps with her and he gets her pregnant.

And then he devises this whole plan to get Uriah,

who's the husband of Bathsheba,

to come and try to find some way

to get him to sleep with her.

And then they could think that the baby is theirs

and it'd be no issue.

That didn't work.

And so David puts Uriah on the front lines of battle

where he's killed.

And then Bathsheba goes to live with David

and he thinks everything's fine.

It's not until the prophet Nathan

finally confronts David of his sin

that David realized what a disastrous thing

he had just done and he repents before the Lord.

And so this is 2 Samuel 12, 15 through 18.

You're still with me?

This is a different type of sermon.

Please don't fall asleep on me.

After Nathan returned to his home,

the Lord sent a deadly illness

to the child of David and Uriah's wife.

David begged God to spare the child.

Okay, that was his prayer.

He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground.

The elders of his household pleaded with him

to get up and eat with them, but he refused.

Then on the seventh day, the child died.

So lesson number two of why our prayers

aren't always answered.

God will allow the consequences to play out.

There's not a lot of amens this morning, man.

I know how this sounds.

It sounds harsh, it sounds mean.

We're dealing with a child.

But the same God that is a God of grace

is also a God of justice.

And so look, this is after David repented before the Lord.

He had already said, I'm sorry.

He had already turned his back, his heart back to God.

But I want you to listen to me

because I think this is something

that so many of us don't understand in the church.

Repentance doesn't free us of our earthly consequences.

There are mistakes that we make in life

that God is going to allow us to learn lessons from.

He might not hold us accountable to the sin

after we've repented, but we will be subject

to earthly consequences of our actions.

And sometimes we're just gonna have to learn

how to accept these things.

You know, I have prayed so many times,

I've prayed prayers of deliverance of situations

that I put myself in.

Like I said, Lord, I've learned my lesson.

I'm a different person, I'm changed.

Have mercy on me.

But I remember, I specifically remember

after so much prayer and prayer and prayer and prayer,

I finally felt the peace of God,

where God said, look,

you're just gonna have to live with this.

You're just gonna have to live with it for a while.

You're gonna have to learn the lesson of your actions.

And I felt such an overwhelming amount of peace

when I heard that.

It didn't mean that I started to like it.

Doesn't mean that I'm not gonna stop praying,

but I understand that my past behaviors have consequences.

And God allowing me to go through those consequences

doesn't make him a bad God.

Some of us just expect God to take us out of the lesson

that we need to learn.

(congregation murmurs)

Or to feel the pain that we need to feel

so that we know for sure

that we never wanna go back there again.

I was talking to a man this week

and he was telling me that he had recently hit

such a low point in his life

and praise God, he's now out of it.

But I told him, man, you know, it's funny.

You know how God, sometimes he allows us

to hit such a low point

just so we know we never wanna be there again.

Like he allows you to touch things

so that you know I never wanna touch that again.

And you're gonna get stung by the snake

so that you know never to play by the snake's nest again.

That is the mercy of God through his lessons.

So that person,

that person who says, Lord,

heal me of my lung cancer.

God is saying, you smoked for 50 years.

Again, I'm not trying to be insensitive, I'm not.

We have a lifetime sometimes of unhealthy practices

and incorrect mindsets.

That doesn't mean you stop praying.

That doesn't mean you don't bring it here to the altars.

That doesn't mean that we're not gonna believe with you

and pray for you as prayer warriors as we are.

But understand that past behaviors do have consequences.

And rather than fighting it

and thinking that God doesn't love you

or God is rejecting you,

understand that the consequences that we face

teach us something

and they teach others around us something.

See, my daughters will not make the same mistakes

that me and my wife made

because they will have seen us live

through the consequences.

One of the things that I really respect about David,

and we won't read it just for the sake of time,

but he didn't allow this tragedy

to end his devotion to God.

He could have, he could have.

He had repented, he was good again with God.

This is an innocent child, the child didn't do anything.

But what does the Bible say?

It says that he worshiped.

He ate.

He went back to work as a man

who would continue to live righteously before the Lord.

He worshiped.

The number one thing that you have to do

in times of tragedy is worship.

I still remember back in 2020,

one of my closest cousins died suddenly.

You know, I've lost grandparents before,

I've lost relatives,

but this one hit different

because he wasn't just my cousin,

he was one of my best friends.

And one, it happened out of nowhere,

nobody was expecting it.

And we just, we couldn't make sense of why this happened.

And I remember going to my uncle's house that day,

everybody was crying, of course,

it was incredibly sad, it was tragic.

And my aunt and my uncle,

they were just well, like in pain and agony,

that they just lost their youngest son.

But in the midst of all of that,

my aunt, my tia, she was worshiping.

She was filled with tears of sorrow,

but she kept reminding her spirit to have faith,

that God is still good in the midst of this tragedy.

And so I love that David prayed to God

because he knew that God is a merciful God,

but also accepted the consequences of his actions

because he knows that God is a just God.

You have to understand the God that you serve.

He is gracious, he is merciful,

he is loving, he is caring, he's also just.

And his justice is not to be mean,

it's to teach us things.

I've learned more from the justice of God

than I have the grace of God.

I'm much more grateful for the grace of God.

But the hardest lessons that I've learned

is from God saying,

you're gonna experience the consequences of this.

And so what I'm trying to say is this,

don't allow an unanswered prayer

due to past behavior make you think

that God doesn't love you,

or that he hasn't forgiven you.

I know that this story is extreme

and some people can't get past the fact

that God, you could have just saved the baby,

but the point of the story that I want you to grasp

is that God still forgives and God still loves

and God still cares through the consequences.

Don't let the devil convince you

that just because you're facing the consequences

of something that means that you're forgotten by God

because you're not.

In fact, God might even use your consequences for his glory.

I've heard testimonies of people

who were in prison for 30 years,

they walk out with this powerful prison ministry.

Don't forget that David's mistake

resulted in man's redemption.

Don't forget that God used this disgusting scandal

between David and Bathsheba to produce the Messiah

centuries later down the line.

If you give it to God, if you don't lose faith,

God will turn every consequence for his good.

You still with me?

Lesson number three,

God teaches his children to depend on him.

So in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes,

"I was given a thorn in the flesh,

"a messenger from Satan to torment me

"and keep me from becoming proud.

"Three different times I begged," somebody say begged.

"I begged the Lord to take it away.

"Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need.

"'My power works best in weakness.'

"So now I am glad to boast about my weakness

"so that the power of Christ can work through me."

You know, Moses told the Israelites

why God humbled them in the wilderness,

why he allowed them to become hungry.

It was so that they would know

that man does not live by bread alone

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

There's a sense of peace that comes after you've prayed

and you've prayed and you've begged God

and you've gotten other people to pray with you

when you realize that even though God withholds that prayer,

he still knows what you need.

I don't know if you notice,

but we're kind of moving from very heavy,

like hard to swallow lessons of God's justice,

God rejecting the heart of Saul,

God making David pay for the consequences to now,

God just showing his grace.

Either way, when you're in need of something,

when you're praying, it probably still feels the same way

when God withholds it.

God is still not answering me and he's not even mad at me.

I didn't even do anything wrong and he's not answering me.

Sometimes God has to teach us how to be dependent on him,

more dependent on him and less dependent on the other things

that add security to our lives.

Many times we go to God and we ask for security

when God is trying to teach us that he is our security.

How many times have we prayed that,

God, I need a better paying job?

God, I need to be able to pay my bills.

I need my health and my strength restored.

I need to get over this sickness.

I need to stop suffering with this weakness,

with the temptation.

And God is saying, all you need is what you already have.

Those of us who now walk in the newness of life,

we have Jesus, we have salvation,

and we have the Holy Spirit who is teaching us

how to be holy and how to be mature and how to be sanctified.

We have all that we truly need.

Let me be honest with you, I never want God

to have to teach me this lesson of taking everything away.

Oh, Lord, please.

I never want him to have to teach me the lesson.

I never wanna know what life is like to not have my family,

to not have my kids.

I never, so I cover them.

I cover them every single day and every single night.

Lord, protect my family,

because I never wanna have to learn that lesson

that Job experienced.

I never want that.

I never wanna know where I'm gonna get my next meal.

I never wanna have to experience that.

So I know that it's easy for me to preach,

but it's totally different when God does start

to take away those things that we depend on.

And he's teaching us how to solely depend on him.

Paul's thorn in the flesh, nobody knows what it was,

very debated, but it's something that the Bible says

would torment him.

He was tormented by this thing.

It could have been a physical ailment.

It could have been a person.

Some have speculated that it could have been a wife.

It was too heavy, man.

We gotta lighten it up.

Could have been, it was something that tormented him.

It was enough for it to throw Paul off his game.

And it made him weaker as a man.

How many men wanna be weak?

How many women wanna be weak?

How many people want to be weak?

No, we wanna be strong.

Because when we're strong in something, we're confident.

When I started losing my hair,

I started losing a little bit of confidence.

My hair game wasn't strong.

When we're not strong, we're not confident.

And I wanna be confident.

So look, I can be confident in my ability

to prepare a sermon, to preach.

I can be confident to pastor a church, to lead a church.

And that even scares me to say it,

because if I get too confident,

I know God's gonna humble me and make me not confident.

He's done it before.

And it's not to be mean,

it's so that God would keep me humble.

Because I never wanna become too proud in my preaching

or think that I could lead a church all by myself

where I think it's all me.

Where do I leave room for the Holy Spirit to lead?

Where do I leave room for the Holy Spirit

to speak words that he needs to say

as I'm delivering a message?

So God prefers you weak.

God would rather you be weak.

And it's not so that you can be ineffective,

but it's so that you can be dependent.

When we depend on him through our weakness,

it shows God our faith in his ability to make us effective

when on our own we're not.

Some of my best sermons have been preached

when I said, "God, I don't think this is gonna hit."

My best sermons, when I said,

"God, I'm not really comfortable with this one."

When I felt unprepared.

See, when Moses said, "God, I can't be a good leader

"because I have a speech impediment."

I stutter too much.

How can I lead your people when I can't even speak to them?

What did God do?

Did God fix his speech impediment?

Nope.

No, he gave Moses Aaron.

And so Moses would have to depend on Aaron

as a gift of grace given to him by the Lord.

That's what grace is.

It's a gift from God,

something freely given by him that we didn't earn.

And so maybe you're praying for some type of security today

or some type of resource to make you better.

And God is like, "No, my grace, my gift,

"what I've given to you is sufficient.

"That's enough.

"Be confident in my grace more so

"than the strength that you're asking for."

That's great, pastor, but grace don't pay my mortgage.

I'm not saying that you need to use this as an excuse

to not work or to be lazy

or to not do your part or to not prepare.

I was telling Melissa the other day

because what's been happening lately,

I would always finish my sermons Friday,

Friday night, and I'm ready to go.

I got the weekend.

I can hang out with my family.

Now, I don't wanna take away my Saturdays from my family.

I still wanna give it to them, but I'm not done by Friday.

So I've been finishing Sunday mornings,

early in the morning, and that freaks Melissa out.

I mean, we're both people of preparation,

but she's probably more so than I am.

And so she's like, "Man, I would need a whole month

"to prepare a sermon, right?

"And you're finishing up on a Sunday morning.

"Before, that would've scared the heck out of me.

"And now it's becoming something normal."

But we're talking about this

where I told her I can't get too comfortable,

where I just, I don't do my part.

I can't get too comfortable where I just,

I rely on the Holy Spirit to clean up my mess

when I didn't take the time to prepare.

So there is a balance there.

There's a balance.

But we have to learn.

The message here is that we have to learn

how to be dependent on God

when the things that add security to our lives aren't there.

What's gonna happen, church,

when God takes away some things that you depend on?

Will you still cry out to him?

Will you still call him faithful?

Will you still call him good?

The fourth lesson, the last lesson

for why our prayers don't always get answered.

The human desire does not align with the divine will.

(faintly speaking)

For me, can I get the worship team?

For me, personally, this is the hardest lesson to grasp.

It's hard because in the moment,

there's so much that you cannot understand.

See, if God has rejected my heart, I get that.

I can fix that with repentance.

If God has allowed me to go through the consequences,

I get that, I accept that.

If God is making me depend on him, I understand it.

I just gotta live with it.

But when, as a child of God,

I am asking for something that I believe

to be in alignment with the heart of God

and he doesn't give it to me, I don't get that.

I don't understand that.

I don't understand why people that I pray for

and believe for who would come back to the Lord,

I don't understand why they haven't come back yet.

Isn't that your will?

Isn't that what you want?

Isn't that why we're here?

To do the work of the gospel

and we're doing the work of the gospel

but they haven't walked through those doors?

I don't get it.

I don't understand why God won't drive out the evil

from things that he obviously hates.

Like, God, you hate it, drive it out.

We're not talking about human flesh desires here.

We're talking about desires that come from a godly spirit.

So Jesus was in Gethsemane in Matthew 26

and he prayed for the possibility

of avoiding the crucifixion.

He says, "My father, if it is possible,

"take this cup from me."

But in the very next verse, that's the key, he says,

"Yet as you will, not as I will."

See, at the start of this, I said that

there is so much about prayer that we cannot understand.

This is one of those things.

We will never know the full will of the Father.

And no spiritual leader, no pastor, no prophet

is gonna be able to break it down to you

because only God knows why he always does

the things that he does.

And so we have to be okay with that

and we have to trust in that.

Even if I'm praying for something that I think is good,

it doesn't mean that it's God.

It might not be God's purpose for you.

It might not be God's timing for you.

It might be that God has something better for you,

something bigger for you,

something that you can't yet possibly see

and maybe before things get good, they have to get bad.

But as a child of God, you have to know

that all roads that God constructs leads to his glory.

Because we now know that Jesus had to die

so that you and me could live.

We now know that Joseph had to be in prison

before he could become a ruler.

We now know that Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego

had to be thrown in a fiery furnace

so that the glory of God could be witnessed

by the enemies of Israel.

These are the lessons that we learn through prayer, church.

So don't stop praying.

Don't stop, keep praying.

Even when you don't think they're heard,

keep praying even when they're not answered

in the way that you want them to be answered.

This is what I want you to understand.

This is the main lesson of prayer

that I want you to understand,

is that you just gotta pray.

You have to pray.

Are you still with me?

Let me have your attention.

Let me have your attention.

Don't talk to the person next to you.

Let me get your attention.

Because you have to understand that this is generational.

We continue to pray because we never only pray

for something, we pray to someone.

We pray to a God who hears us.

We pray to a God who loves us

and who cares enough about us,

who understands us even when we don't understand

what he's doing or where he's taking us.

We pray because we have the privilege

of being in communion with the Father.

Don't stop praying, even if he didn't answer you.

Even when the answer was no.

Even when God didn't come through for you

in the way that you hoped for.

Can I tell you this?

The power of prayer,

we're always talking about the power of prayer.

Prayer's powerful.

How many of us believe that prayer is powerful?

Okay.

Let me tell you why it's more powerful

than the way you think it's powerful.

And I'm gonna read it because I wanna say it

just like I wrote it.

The power of prayer doesn't just come

because it produces results.

The true power of prayer comes in its ability

to keep imperfect humans in connection

with the perfect God.

That's the power of prayer.

The reason that my prayer is so powerful

is because it keeps my faith going.

It keeps my trust in him who gives,

not just in what I'm asking for.

My prayer is powerful,

not just because it can move mountains.

It's powerful because it can influence generations

of my family to continue praying.

My great-grandfather was a man of prayer.

My grandfather was a man of prayer.

My father is a man of prayer.

I am a man of prayer.

My two girls will be women of prayer.

That is the power of prayer.

It keeps your family in connection with the Holy God.

(congregation cheering)

Stop thinking about it as something

that's gonna produce results.

The result is you.

The result is your faith.

The result is the faith of your family.

That is the power of prayer because I am praying today.

Generations who come after me, who I will never meet,

will be men and women of prayer.

That is the power of your prayer.

Don't stop praying.

(congregation cheering)

Don't stop praying

because the enemy will keep you silent when God says no.

He will shut up your mouth

and make you think that God doesn't care.

No, God does care about you.

That's why he gives you access to him.

That is the power of prayer.

Please, church, please don't stop praying.

Don't stop praying.

Let your children see it.

Let your wife see it.

Let your husband see it.

There's power.

There's power in your prayer.

I want you to stand.

Hallelujah.

Can I get the prayer team, please?

Hallelujah.

We're gonna pray this morning.

We're gonna pray in the presence of God,

and I'm gonna invite you this morning.

Listen, if there is a need,

maybe you're praying for something.

Maybe you're praying because you're battling something.

Maybe you're praying because you're battling depression.

You need to find joy.

You need to find strength.

Maybe you need to pray on behalf of somebody else.

I want you to come up here

and know that there is power in your prayer

because it connects you to the powerful God.

As the worship team sings something,

these altars are open, and I wanna pray with you.

But listen, I wanna pray with you.

That's the thing.

I want you to open up your mouth,

and I want you to declare the power of God

over your situation.

These altars are open.

Come, come.

If you're in need of prayer,

bring your family with you.

Bring your wife with you.

Pray together.

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church,

visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

If you enjoyed the podcast,

you can subscribe or share it with your friends

on social media and tag us @mypneumachurch.

Thanks again, and God bless.

(gentle music)