Encounter - Encountering God Through Prayer

How many of you have read the book Case for Christ by a guy named Lee Strobel?

How many of you read that book?

It's a fairly common book that's been out for quite a while.

It is a true story of a man who did not know Jesus was not a believer, was a devout atheist if you could call it an atheist devout.

And his wife came to Christ and that really miffed him, and so he was an investigative research journalist and he said I'm going to set out to disprove Jesus Christ.

That's what I'm going to do.

And so he began to apply all of the different techniques to go through and try to disprove that Jesus was an actual man that lived and died and was resurrected.

Interesting enough, he couldn't.

And it was a really powerful book and it's been used to really bring Christ to a lot of people, a lot of people to Christ.

But there was a movie made out of it a few years back, called by the same name, case for Christ, and there's a really powerful scene at the end of this movie where he has exhausted all his ability to try to disprove and he's finally giving in.

He's giving in and so he comes home and remember his wife had already become a Christian.

And he comes home and he comes in and she's in the living room and he sits down on the couch beside her and he said I give up.

And of course, she's overwhelmed because she's been praying for him all this time, right, and he's like I give up.

He's real, he did live, he did die.

And he said what do I do now?

Now, what's so beautiful about that phrase what do I do now?

Is it sounds an awful lot like Acts 2, when Peter preaches that powerful sermon on Pentecost and they said our hearts are torn.

What do we do now?

I mean, what do we do?

And what did he say?

He said repent and be baptized, and it was.

What was so beautiful, though, about the movie part was that she said we pray.

This man had no background in Christianity, no background in prayer, and so she gets on her knees, he gets on his knees and he says this very awkward but beautiful prayer he encounters God for the first time in prayer, and some of you who may have been like him and had never knew anything about God, who encountered him for the first time like that, you might be able to relate to him.

I grew up praying because everybody in my church prayed, so that's how we grew up praying, but it was really a powerful moment.

And so we're in the middle of a sermon series that we've entitled Encounter, in which we're examining the different ways that the early church encountered God, and Acts 2.42 has been our key verse for this, and it's talking about what the early church, the characteristics of the early church and what they did.

And it says in verse 42, they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer, and we've heard messages on three of these things so far.

Kelly kicked it off by talking about Encountering God through the scripture, which was again a wonderful passage, because I mean, the disciples, the apostles, were teaching from the scripture, scriptures right Through Encountering God through relationships.

Tyler taught on that, and then last week Tyler taught on baptism and the Lord's Supper, which we could call the sacraments, and so now we're going to be talking about prayer and how the early church encountered God through prayer.

Now I want to do this by looking at the first chapter in Philippians, and the reason being is because the apostle Paul recorded a prayer for the church in Philippi that was beautiful, and in that prayer there's really four powerful elements of Encountering God through prayer that I want to highlight today and face it.

The apostle Paul was one of those teachers that taught the early church how to pray and he recorded those and therefore we need to go through that.

So let me just make a couple of comments about this before we dive in.

So the apostle Paul, he wrote four prison epistles and you probably are familiar with the concept of a prison epistle, right, he was Ephesians, philippians, colossians and Philemon.

These were the philemon, depending on how you want to pronounce that Now.

He was in prison in Rome, a pretty bad place, a tough place to be, but it gave him and afforded him time to write these beautiful epistles.

In the first three of these books there are sections that theologians have identified and biblical scholars have identified as Paul's prison prayers, his prison prayers, because what he does is he writes the epistle.

He begins in this introduction by saying this is basically how I pray for you, and it was just beautiful and these are so rich in meaning.

And so when I got this assignment, I was looking at verse 42 of Acts 2 and I'm thinking so how did the early church pray?

Well, I know how they prayed.

They prayed how they were taught to pray, and if these were the men like Paul that taught them to pray, we know that of course he followed what Jesus taught them to pray.

But I'm like there's no better place than to look at a prayer that was recorded as a part of a teaching and an encouragement to this church.

So, with that as a focus, let's just jump into the passage we're going to cover and use as the main text today Philippians 1, verses 3 through 11.

Philippians 1:3–11

I thank my God and this is the ESV, by the way, and the first parts worded a little bit awkwardly, but we'll walk through it, you'll understand it.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel for God is my witness how I yearn for all, for you, all, with the affection of Christ Jesus, and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

And finally, verse 11, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Father, as we come before you now with this precious word opened in front of us, father, we ask that you would speak to us.

Father, we know that you want a relationship with us and you want us to encounter you through prayer.

We know that because it's so clear in Scripture.

We know that because, when Christ died, that the veil of the temple was torn from the top to the bottom.

You open up this avenue for us, and so, father, as we look at what the apostle Paul taught, may it convict us, father, may it convict us to pray as you intended and how you taught.

And so we pray this and we ask this in Christ's name, amen.

So this is a wonderful passage of Scripture and if you're like me and you read this, if you're a teacher, you go okay, there's about a dozen sermons right there in those first 11 verses, right.

But I read through this and I read through it again and again and again and I began to see themes that came out and I want to focus on them.

So there's four themes and the first one is thankfulness, and it really begins in that first verse thankfulness.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.

The New Living Translation says this way every time I think of you, I give thanks to God.

Now, the concept of thankfulness and prayer would not have been foreign, especially to the Jewish converts.

In fact, in many, many Jewish prayers, thankfulness was really the key part of it.

From the very beginning, jews used to use the term we bless you, lord, in many of their prayers.

We bless you, lord, and it's not we bless you in the concept that a lot of us might think of in the American church.

We think about blessing as conferring a blessing on somebody.

It was very different in the way the Jews use it, because the word bless is the Hebrew word barak and it literally means to kneel and it shows an attitude of worship and an attitude of thankfulness.

It's kneeling before God.

We bless you, lord.

In Deuteronomy 8, verses 11 through 12, moses stated this, and I think this was really important to understand this attitude of thankfulness.

Deuteronomy 8:11–12

He says when you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord, your God, for the good land which he has given you.

Beware this is interesting beware that you do not forget the Lord, your God.

Thankfulness was a way not to forget who God was, that he was the one that provided everything, and so this attitude of thankfulness was there.

Now, many of the Jewish prayers were memorized prayers and they were used and given and prayed at very specific times.

How many of you had the blessing to be able to be a part of a Seder service of any kind?

Neal's been, he's done Seder services here multiple times and I think we're overdue.

By the way, we need to do another one.

Neal, we are Well see there, that was prophetic or pathetic.

I didn't read the schedule.

Well, part of the Seder is the blessing of the different elements, and one is the blessing of the wine, and this is a really good example of this exact concept of how the Jews would bless the Lord.

And I'm gonna speak to Hebrew, and I got coached a little bit between the first service and now to get some of the words right by Rick and Neal.

So it's still not.

It's still gonna have a Canadian ring to it, so forgive me for this.

So the Hebrew blessing goes like this Baruch hatha adonai Elohenu halolom boriya pareh hagafin, should have just given you the mic.

Not bad, not bad for Canadian right, but it literally means blessed.

Are you, lord, our God, king of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine?

And this is.

It was repeated and they've been saying this prayer for hundreds of years.

So the concept of being thankful in prayer was something the apostle Paul was very familiar with.

He prayed these prayers.

I mean again, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, right, he knew all this right, and it was an expression of thankfulness that he carried over now into his salvation.

But just think of Paul.

Remember, he was, you know, taught at the feet of Gimeliel, right, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees and all that stuff, but he didn't have the love of Christ, he didn't have the Holy Spirit.

And when all that happened to him, when God changed him, can you imagine how his thankfulness, these prayers that he recited more, maybe out of obligation, suddenly now became sincere, powerful prayers of thankfulness.

It would have been a tremendous change that he went through.

And Paul's prayer to the Ephesians again, remember the prison pistols.

Three of them had these prayers that were recorded.

It echoes this same Thanksgiving In Ephesians one, versus 15 through 16, this is what it says.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you and my prayers.

He's teaching them.

I pray for you all the time and they should then pray for others the same way.

So he's teaching that.

Now, what do we thank God for?

Well, I don't know if you're like me, but I could pray all the time just thanking God.

There's so much to be thankful for.

I mean, I think most importantly I thank him for the calling for opening my mind up, realizing I was dead in my sins.

I couldn't respond.

It's not like I heard something go.

That sounds good.

He literally had to raise me from the dead.

Okay, he opened my mind to understand the gospel and then the resulting salvation, that every morning I wake up under this beautiful umbrella of salvation that informs everything I do every day.

But I also thank God for my family.

I thank God for my job, I thank God for the provision, I thank him for all the goodness he's done.

But what was Paul thanking God for here?

Specifically Cause all those are good, but he was thanking God for the church.

He was thanking God for the church.

You know, for most of us, if it wasn't for the church, we wouldn't have heard the gospel.

We wouldn't have heard the gospel, we wouldn't have been transformed the way we were and have been thanking God for the church.

And as I read this, I began really to be convicted.

I'll be honest.

I mean, I pray for the church, but not as much as I need to pray for the church, and I don't pray in thankfulness for the church as much as I should Remember.

You know, every time we preach we always say the sermon first preached to the preacher.

Right, and I do really get convicted of this.

I'm like, and I pray for people in the church, but I just realized there was a passion that he had here that needs to be reflected in me as well.

He was focused so deeply on the people in the church and you see it all through his writings.

You know, at the end he names people my name, thank them for this and that he was so focused on that.

You know, in Ephesians 4, paul was talking about excuse me, ephesians 5, paul's talking about the relationship in a marriage, right, and if you read that section in Ephesians 5, what's really neat is three or four times in that he says like Christ and the church, like Christ and the church, christ in the church.

And there is a significant anti-church movement that is spread through Christians and we understand why.

I'll prove why.

How many people here have ever been hurt or offended by a church?

Oh no, how many of you are not.

Being honest, I've had to repent this week of things I've done and said.

The church we are not perfect and we make mistakes, but yet the church is Christ's body.

He loves the church.

When he returns, as Aaron was preaching, when he returns, he's going to, he's going to greet his bride, and who's the bride?

It's the church.

The great wedding feast why didn't you say we're going to have a party?

He said, no, we're going to have a wedding feast.

Because that is the unity that we have and as a body of Christ, we need in our personal corporate prayers to include thankfulness, not just for what God's given us individually, but what God has given us in the church.

I can't tell you how blessed my wife and I are to be a part of Trinity Community Church.

We constantly tell each other how blessed we are that God brought us here, the friends that we've made, the people that have been able to speak into our lives and love us even though we make mistakes and fall down, and they're there for us, they love us and it's just beautiful.

So if we want to encounter God in a powerful way, through prayer, we should be expressing thankfulness to him for both the blessings that he's given us, but also thank him for the body of Christ that he's placed us in.

That's important.

So, number two what was the second part of this prayer?

That quality of prayer we're encountering the Lord, and that is prayer should involve an expression of joy.

Again, I'm going to pick up in verse three where we started.

I thank my God and all my remembrance of you.

Verse four always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy.

Making my prayer with joy Hmm, making my prayer with joy.

It's interesting, he said he literally formed his prayers based on joy.

Based on joy you know the word joy appears 16 times in various forms within the book of Philippians.

If you're ever down and just feeling down in the dumps, just read Philippians, galatians might be a little hard.

A lot of correction in the Galatians, but this one is just so filled with joy and a lot of people will say that book of Philippians.

There's such an expression of joy here and love, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

You know, paul and the other apostles taught that the members of the early church should encounter God through this expression of joy and that joy really comes from one place.

It comes from here.

And it comes from here because when you became a follower of Jesus Christ, when he imparted salvation to you and you were filled with the Holy Spirit, it says in the whole Testament.

It says your heart of flesh or your heart of stone has turned to a heart of flesh and you now have this capacity for joy, a capacity for joy that you didn't have before.

Now it's interesting.

When you look at that you say, well, what's this capacity for joy?

Well, I'll tell you.

The apostle Paul just didn't say this.

He lived this.

He lived this, he had joy in his life and I realized, by the way that expressing joy is difficult when we're experiencing trials and tests.

But it's possible, in fact.

Not just possible, it is an evidence of what Christ has done in your heart.

For instance, in James 1, verse two.

We all know this one count it all joy when you fall into various trials.

What, what?

I don't know if you're like me, but when I fall into a various trial, it's usually not the first thing on my lips Thank you, lord for this trial.

I wish it was, and a lot of times it's my second, but it's hard sometimes to that be my first one.

You know you have a car wreck and you're like thank you Lord for that truck that just cut me off and threw me down that embankment.

When I say, when I talk about joy, I'm not talking about that, you understand what I'm saying is it informs, it's overarching.

You have the concept and the understanding that everything God's doing has a purpose and he will bring great things out of it.

In Acts 16, 25, paul, there's an account with Paul and Silas in a prison.

Okay, and I love this scripture.

It says around midnight remember, paul and Silas are sitting in a prison.

They've probably been whipped so they got open wounds.

They're probably cold.

They're sitting there, they got.

They're probably chained together.

It's not a happy place.

They're probably hungry, cold.

Around midnight, paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God say what?

That's what they were doing and I love what it says.

And the other prisoners were listening.

Why did he have to record that?

Of course they were right there in the next cell.

Of course they were listening.

I tell you why I think this is.

I can't prove it scripturally, but I tell you why I think that detail is there.

Remember, luke, you know, very detailed, very detail-minded.

I think what it was is because they weren't just hearing, they were listening, meaning what Paul and Silas were doing was having an impact on these people that were there beside them.

It wasn't, their joy wasn't dependent upon their circumstance, and you've probably heard many sermons before about the difference between happiness and joy.

There's a big difference between them.

Happiness is a feeling.

Okay, it's a feeling you know.

You go out and have a good meal, you're happy about the meal, or your kids come over, you're happy to see them, or you watch something funny on YouTube, you laugh at it and you're happy.

Joy is a state of being and nobody can take that away from you.

Nobody can take that away from you.

You know, I think of my brother Paul Queen, our brother Paul Queen, and he that man's you want to talk about, a true believer of Christ.

For those of you who don't know, paul was a long-time elder here at our church he's we still consider him an elder, but he's been basically because of some really bad neuropathy in his feet.

He's in constant pain and he can't attend.

He's got problems with his heart as well.

I mean, it's and this is a dynamic man.

This guy is like you know, winning over the woo.

You know, if you go through Strength Finders, the woo he's like big-time woo.

Right, this guy is just.

He loves the body of Christ.

But there he is at home.

He can't get out of this situation and he's prayed.

We've prayed, we've all been praying for him to be healed.

But if you talk to Paul, the first thing out of his lips is not going to be complaints.

If you talk to Paul, oh, if you pull it out of him and say, well, how are you feeling physically?

I don't know, he'll tell you a little bit.

But then, you know, the first thing he'll say is I'll tell you what I have encountered the Lord in powerful ways.

In my time here, I have heard.

I've been reading scriptures.

I've read for my whole life.

They're coming alive to me.

The Lord has just ministered to me in such powerful ways and I just listened to him and I'm thinking, if there's anybody has an excuse to have their joy removed from them, it would be Paul.

But it's not Paul.

Our brother Paul is in his own prison right now, but he's not in prison because he has that joy inside and it comes out.

You can't fake that.

You can't fake that and please continue to pray for him.

We're still believing that he will be healed and he will be back in this room sometime, because when he is, you'll know he's back, by the way.

But you know, unfortunately in the church today we're influenced by our culture where we only celebrate when things are going well and then, when the wheels fall off, we get thrown into turmoil, and that's not the way it should be.

When we pray, we are to encounter God through the expression of joy that almost always accompanies thankfulness.

All right, the third point Prayer should be informed by the gospel.

Prayer should be informed by the gospel, verse 3, again picking up there through verse 5, I thank my God with all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy.

Verse 5, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, you cannot read the Apostle Paul's writings without getting slapped in the face multiple times with the gospel.

He loved the gospel.

It informed everything that he did, including his prayers, and Paul really viewed all believers as partners in the gospel, as partners, you know, in the word partnership in this phrase in verse 5 is translated from the Greek word coindonia, which I think you know Tyler shared a few weeks ago, and when it's used in the context of this passage and in many other passages within his letters, it has this meaning of close association or fellowship.

Close association or fellowship.

I don't know how many of you are fans of the Lord of the Rings series.

My wife hasn't memorized.

She and my daughters will get together and they'll say let's watch Lord of the Rings.

Now I know what let's watch Lord of the Rings means.

It means we're all going to sit down.

I'm going to try to watch it, and they're going to talk and knit and jail can talk through the whole thing.

I'm going to put the captions on and hope they don't include me in the conversation.

They, but they love this, they love this movie so much these movies because, by the way, there's so many wonderful godly parallels inside of there of course was written by a Christian, right, so it's just beautiful.

But what's interesting is that group, that fellowship of the Ring.

They were all together and they were very odd, just like the church.

There were very different people, but they had one main purpose and they were all working towards that purpose and I love that.

And that's really what we are in the church.

We are a fellowship and we part of what brings us together.

The main thing is bringing us together.

That holds us together is the gospel.

Now you might say, okay, scott, you need to, you need to.

You know, give me some more meat on that.

What do you mean by partnership in the gospel?

That prayer should have be informed by the gospel.

Well, all you have to do is look at what are the elements of the gospel, what are the parts of the gospel that make it the gospel, and I just wrote a few down.

Let's start with forgiveness.

Our prayers should be full of expressions of forgiveness towards others, others that have hurt us and thankfulness for the forgiveness that's been extended to us.

I cannot pray in the mornings, you guys, without thanking God for the forgiveness that's been given to me through Christ Jesus.

I can't.

I can't because it informs everything else.

That's the gospel.

That's your prayers being informed by the gospel.

Grace.

How about grace?

Does grace come out in our prayers as we pray for those who are lost or those that have hurt us?

Do we extend grace to people that should be there?

That should be part of your prayer when you're praying for someone, to ask yourself am I praying with grace, especially people that have hurt us or we've done things wrong?

You know, and sometimes it's even with a lost, because you know it's tough sometimes to pray for people that are just totally walking away from God.

Do we pray with grace on those?

Do we pray for them with that focus?

How about repentance?

Do we repent for our sins or do we justify our sins?

You know, god, I know I shouldn't have got mad or I shouldn't have said that about that person, but you know I had a right.

They really triggered me.

I'm just going to tell you something.

God doesn't care about your triggers.

He doesn't care about your triggers.

The Eagles.

When the Eagles got together for their Hell Freezes Over Tour, they wrote a song called Get Over it and I think it was really spot on.

Get over it, get over your trigger, submit yourself to God.

How about justice?

Do we express to God that justice is His, not ours, it's His, it's not ours?

Do we say to God you know God, this person hurt me.

I can't wait to watch you hurt them.

In fact, I'm going to have popcorn.

I want the front row to see, to watch you deliver the justice that is mine and deserve my wait.

A second you want, you know, god's gospel informs that, because if you got what you deserve, if I got what I deserve, we wouldn't be here.

So who are we to sit there and demand justice?

I love to say justice is a robe you can't wear.

I can't wear.

It's not mine to meter out and, by the way, every action movie you see totally contradicts that right and we like to see those.

You know the bad guy gets it because justice is not executed speedily.

Remember that scripture.

We have to be patient and we have to realize that God's the one to do that.

How about submission to Christ?

That's another element of the gospel, submitting fully.

Do we pray with the heart of someone who's submitted totally and fully to God?

That's how the gospel informs your prayers.

You know you run a risk every time you come to church and hear a sermon because something might be said that's going to go.

Oh, that hurts.

Every time you open your Bible and you read, you run a risk of reading something that the Holy Spirit is going to go gotcha and it's going to require us to submit something to God.

And those are tough to do.

Sometimes A lot of us say I'm going to obey right up to this point.

But, god, I believe 95% of what you said, but this 5% over here, nah, I'm not submitting that.

Is that enough?

God?

Can I still make it?

Does that qualify?

I was having a conversation with somebody after the first service and it was funny.

He said so many people are performance based and they don't know it and they think you know it's past fail.

75% is past right.

So as long as I get past 75%, I'm okay.

They've missed the point.

They've missed the point.

They've fallen into workspace salvation.

So obedience is a big thing as well.

Do we ask God for the strength to obey the teachings of Jesus and turn away from wrong behaviors.

I will tell you that one of the things just be transparent about the eldership here One of the things that we find ourselves talking about and praying about in eldership meetings is asking God to give us wisdom to obey and the courage to obey the truth.

You might say, well, scott, what's the big deal with that?

I'll tell you what the big deal about that is.

If we wanted to fill this sanctuary up, we could do it.

It's no problem, we could fill it up.

We know the equation for building a big, big, big, big church.

All you have to look is a lot of the big, big, big churches and follow what they do.

You can water the gospel down.

You could quit talking about those things that offend people like the gospel and you could make everybody feel good.

And we'd find one guy that was just our best preacher and then we crown him with a crown and he would be our spokesman, and now we would just try to gather people in.

We won't do that because that's not the gospel, that's not truth.

And so and you gotta realize, we're not afraid of you guys, we fear God, because he's the one we're gonna answer to.

Tyler someday will stand in front of Christ and be accountable for everything he did as the lead elder of this church, you could be his biggest fans.

God won't hear you.

It's between Tyler and God.

You understand what I'm saying about that and that's how we take this is so important.

So seeker, friendly, all that stuff.

We pray against that all the time, because sometimes it's easy to see it slip in and sometimes we catch something.

No, we can't go that direction.

We wanna be obedient to the word of God.

If we were not that way, you wouldn't have heard sermon series like we gave last summer about let's talk, can we talk?

Thank you, by the way, tyler's doing a small group on that, a community group this semester on that, which takes that further.

We said some hard things, but those hard things were all truth and that's what we base our truth on and that's what we follow.

So, as we pray, the core elements of the gospel should be evident in our prayers and that's how we encounter God.

Now, the last part of the element, the last part of encountering God through prayer, is that genuine prayers should be intercessory in nature and motivated by a genuine love for others.

Now I'm gonna read a big section of scripture here, the rest of this passage, and I want you guys just to listen very carefully to what he says here.

Verse six and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

By the way, your salvation is sure.

Hold on to that, okay.

Verse seven it is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

There's that word again, gospel.

Oh, by the way, the greatest theologian that ever lived, apostle Paul, literally talked about feelings.

It is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart.

Listen, knowledge and emotion can work together.

It should work together in our hearts, right?

Verse eight for God as my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Verse nine and it is my prayer again, he's teaching them to pray that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Verse 11, filled with a fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Amen.

What a beautiful passage of scripture.

What's so powerful about this is that God or, excuse me, paul loved the church.

He loved the church and his prayers were laced with intercession for the church.

Intercession and, by the way, the word intercede it's just the act of intervening for somebody, but when you put it in the context of intercessory prayer, it's going before the Lord on behalf of somebody else.

Paul prayed intercessory prayers for the members of the church by name and we know that because if you read through these epistles you'll see he mentions people by name, expressing gratitude for them.

He really prayed over them, like a father would pray over his children.

You know, some of the most beautiful prayers I've ever heard are prayed right up here or in a house church where I heard somebody praying for another member, another Christian and who they loved, and that love just oozed out of them through their prayer and they were interceding for them, interceding.

We've had some tough times in this church where we've had people that were sick and I heard the most beautiful prayers of intercession for these people.

That's what our prayers should be informed of.

We should be interceding for people because not because we have to, not because, oh, it's something I gotta check off.

Oh yeah, did I intercede for Tom?

Yeah, I interceded for Tom.

No, it's because we want to intercede for them.

We want to do that because we have a love, a deep love, for them.

You know, the apostle John stated this in 1 John 4, verse 11 and 12.

1 John 4:11

He said beloved.

If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Amen, absolutely Okay.

Then he says something really odd no one has ever seen God.

Oh, and then he jumps to this If we love one another, god abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Why did he say no one's ever seen God?

Why did he stick that in here?

He sandwiched it.

You want to know what he did?

I believe this fully.

I believe he said no one's ever seen God.

But they can see you, and when you intercede for them and when you pray for them, they see God in you, they see God in you, they see God in me.

And that's the way it should be, and I think it's really vital that we understand that when we intercede for people, we are literally representing God and sometimes they see God, have you ever just prayed for a stranger?

You know, you see somebody and Holy Spirit moves you.

And Holy Spirit moves.

You say I just need to pray for that person.

And sometimes the look on their face.

You say, excuse me, I don't know you, but I just feel like I'm supposed to pray for you.

They go really yeah, can I pray for you?

Is there anything you want me to pray for?

And sometimes they say things like I can't believe this, I am going through a terrible divorce or whatever it is, and I'm like, yes, I need prayer.

And then you pray for them.

Do you realize that you were in answer to prayer, that they got to see God through you and what you did, you interceded for them and what motivated you was love that God's given you and that can only come from him.

That can't be something you can work out.

And, by the way, you can fake love.

You can fake love for people.

But don't come to church very often.

Don't join a community group, don't go to a house church.

Just stay by yourself, because if you want to keep that shurot up, it's gonna be.

It'll eventually.

If you've drowned a brethren long enough, it'll be revealed.

No, no, this love comes from Christ.

That's where it comes from.

To infectively encounter God in prayer, we need to have his heart for the brethren.

Our prayers should be saturated by prayers for our brothers and sisters in Christ not just in our church, by the way, but in our nation and around the world and including prayer for the lost.

Here's a litmus test for you.

Remember?

I had to take this litmus test as well.

Okay, look at your prayer list.

Look at you.

A lot of you have prayer lists.

I have a prayer sheet for every day of the week and I have certain things I pray for in each one of those days.

Some things I pray all the time.

How many names are on your prayer list?

How many names Do you find yourself praying for the lost?

Do you have names of your relatives that are lost, that you want to see saved?

We obviously pray for our children that are lost, right, but do we pray for those people by name?

Do we pray for our leaders by name?

That's intercessory prayer.

And for me to say, well, I would pray for that leader, but hey, no way that leader will ever come to Christ, I bet you there was a lot of Christians that said, hey, no way that Saul guy is ever going to come to Christ.

That guy is killing us.

Hey, no way he's going to come to Christ, really.

So your God's this big, then Wouldn't it be amazing if one day, you hear this news article that says a very significant leader in your nation has suddenly called a press conference and they basically repent?

Wouldn't that be amazing?

Can God do that?

Yeah, he can do that.

I want to pray for that.

That's what I want to see.

I want to intercede for people you know, by the way, who set the example and continues to set the example of intercession for us.

No, not Neil.

Neil, by the way, is a great intercessor, jesus Christ.

You think it would have been enough for him to empty himself in his divinity, to come here to live a perfect life, to be ostracized, to be whipped, mocked, spit on flesh, ripped off his back, nailed to a cross and then, the worst thing, to have God turn his back on him and dump all the sins of the world that have ever been committed and ever will be on his back, to the point where he said my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But you know what he does now, after he was raised from the dead and seated in the right hand.

You think he would take some time off.

He's not.

Romans 8, 34 says who is to condemn?

Christ?

Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, I like this.

Who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and who, indeed, is interceding for us.

Does that not just stir you inside?

The one who did everything for us continues to do things for us that we can't do.

Hebrews 7, 25,.

Consequently, the writer of Hebrews says he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives wow, always lives to make intercession for them.

We have the great intercessor that's interceding for us, and if his heart is in us, we have Christ in us.

We should be intercessors.

As one preacher used to say, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

I said ouch.

I got a lot of growing to do, a lot of growing in this area of intercession, and we should be intercessors.

If we want to encounter God through prayer, we also have to be those that pray, prayers that are saturated with intercession for one another and for the lost of this world.

So, to conclude, I want to ask all of us if we were really serious about encountering God through prayer like the early church was.

Are we really serious about this?

Because if we are, we need to follow the instructions that Paul gave the Philippians.

Again, what were they?

Well, saturate our prayers with thanksgiving.

Thankfulness should be everywhere in our prayers.

Saturate our prayers with expressions of joy.

Saturate our prayers with the truth of the gospel and all the elements of the gospel and, finally, saturate our prayers with intercession for our fellow believers and the lost.

Here's the challenge I'm going to leave you today.

Write those four points down, a brief and do whatever you want.

If you want to just say thankfulness, joy, you know, gospel and intercession, just write those words down and then the next time you go to spend time with the Lord, start praying and just have those words there.

Looking at you, I'm not saying to do this in a condemning way, not at all.

I'm asking you to do this in an informing way, and what you're going to find is, as you're praying, you're going to say wait a second.

Yeah, I've been frustrated with my neighbor who just ran over my shrub and wait a second.

I need to forgive him for that.

I need to pull that in Gospel needs to inform that prayer.

So-and-so at church just said this to me and it offended me.

Wait a second, I got to forgive.

That So-and-so is hurting and I don't pray for them all the time.

I need to pray for them.

Use it as a motivation and to inform your prayers.

Inform your prayers and you will encounter God in powerful, powerful ways.

And let me say this to those that are not yet believers, or maybe you're not sure if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, the fact you're here may mean something significant.

I say may.

It does mean something significant.

It means that you're here to hear the gospel.

You might not know it, you might have come for a different reason, but you're here, you're hearing the gospel, you have an opportunity to literally encounter the Creator of the universe in a way that you have never, ever even believed could happen, and all it takes it's everything.

It's simple, but it's everything.

It's surrendering your life over to Him.

And I can guarantee you, just like Lee Strobel knelt down there at the front of his living room in front of that coffee table and prayed that awkward prayer, god will meet you there and he will change your life in the most beautiful and powerful way.

You stand with me and we'll pray.

Heavenly Father, we all stand here at well.

We stand here because of you.

The fact that we can hear truth and we can understand and absorb truth is because of you.

Father, lord, it's our prayer, it's my prayer that all of us walk out of here with a renewed sense and desire and urgency to encounter you in these different ways.

The apostle Paul laid out in this beautiful passage of scripture.

Father, give us the courage to encounter you in these ways.

Inform our prayers with joy and form our prayers with thanksgiving.

Teach us to be intercessors, father.

Teach us to use the gospel as we pray to you.

And, father, as we encounter you, teach us Feel to us those hidden areas we need to see.

And, father, may we be more and more the warrior that you want us to be for the gospel and for the kingdom.

And that's our prayer, father, and we give it all to you in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.