History belongs to the Intercessors

All right.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Man, uh this is uh a special morning.

Uh if you don't know who I am, my name is Dylan Wages.

Uh, and as I look out on this room, uh, there is probably over half of you that I have never met before and don't know who you are, and then the other half uh we go way back.

Uh I'm currently serving as the student pastor at our social circle campus.

Yes, we exist.

Uh we're we're really out there.

Um but this is special for me uh because many of you, if you know me, you know my story.

Uh I didn't grow up in church, uh, and this is where I first came to church at 15 years old uh as a as a sophomore in high school.

And uh I I was crying the entire way here and crying, sitting here in the front row, singing the goodness of God because I'm reflecting back on God's goodness in all of my life.

That happened especially right here in this room.

To many of you, this is just a room.

This is just four walls and and a floor that we come in and sing.

But uh for me, this is a place where I my life was changed.

Uh, it there's some of you, I'm I'm thinking of Clint Rutledge right here and Jake Council, wherever he's at, who who were my high school small group leaders, and we sat in a small group right over there as a sophomore and junior in high school.

Uh, had no idea that I would ever be up on this stage.

And I think about at 16 years old in October of 2016, uh, Russ Butcher, for some reason, deciding that it would be a good idea for this sophomore in high school to stand up here, right here on this stage on a Sunday morning and preach a sermon when he had never done it before in his entire life.

And so this is special.

I haven't been able to be back in this room uh for almost two years on a Sunday.

And so to be here with you guys this morning, it may not be as special to you, but it's special to me.

And I'm very excited to be here this morning.

Um, like I said, I am down in social circle with our students down there and with our pastor Nathan Boyd.

And so we're not that far away, but when you don't get to be here, it seems like you are that far away.

And so uh I hope I get to meet you if we haven't met before we get out of here today.

But uh this morning we are continuing a series that uh Russ started last week here uh called Preparing the Way.

Preparing the Way.

And the goal of this series of conversations that's taking place over three weeks was to help us see the role that each and every one of us plays in seeing people come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior.

You may not have ever thought about this, but every single person who calls Christ Lord has a role to play in seeing other people come to know Christ.

That might sound like a daunting task.

Many of us have probably thought, well, isn't that the job of the pastor?

Isn't that what we give to the church to pay his salary for?

Isn't that why we just like, you know, whatever?

That's the pastor's job, but no.

God wants to use all of us, he wants to use each and every one of us.

And the whole point of this series was to help unlock that potential as we talk about what it means to pray, care, and share with others, right?

Um I believe, uh, and this will be the topic of our conversation this morning, but I believe that one of the easiest ways to do that, to see other people come to know Christ and to play your role in it, is through prayer.

Is through prayer.

And again, this this also might seem like a daunting task, uh, praying for others, but but what what we see in Scripture is that prayer is one of the greatest tools that God gives us in bringing his kingdom down to earth.

The picture that scripture gives us, our our big idea this morning, if you're taking notes, you can write this down, is that prayer releases power to bring real change into the real world.

Prayer releases power to bring real change into the real world.

This is an idea we see all throughout the pages of scripture, throughout the Old and New Testaments.

But if I'm being honest, if I'm being honest, I don't always live as if this statement is reality.

I don't always live as if that's the truth, right?

Rather, in fact, I often will treat prayer as if it's uh a last resort.

Like it's like, man, I've done everything I can do but pray.

And now I'm gonna pray because it's the last thing I can do, right?

Or I'll pray one time and treat it as if it's a one-and-done sort of thing.

I'll I'll have a lost friend.

I I prayed for him two years ago to come to know Christ, you know.

Well, I don't need to do it again.

God's in control, right?

Oftentimes I fall into those traps, those views about prayer when it comes to praying for the lost.

And if I had to imagine that many of us in this room feel that same way.

I would imagine that I'm not alone in that feeling, or at least I hope not, or else one of you should be up here teaching and not me.

But uh, you see, we're we're all deceived in this world.

This world is continually trying to deceive us and and bring us a false sense of security, right?

Our world tries to teach us to rely on everything else but God, right?

So just some quick examples of this, right?

Um, modern, think of modern medicine and technology, right?

It's one of the greatest gifts uh in the world right now.

The fact that we have cures for almost every disease, doctors for every specialty that could be needed, uh, and and we have uh medicine and technology like there never has been before in this time in history.

But it's something not to be taken for granted because as great as medicine and technology are, there's absolutely zero, zero healing that happens on this earth outside of the sovereign hand of God.

Outside of the sovereign hand of God, there's zero healing, right?

Or think about this.

We often think if we just had uh the right amount of money that we could solve any issue we face, any injustice in our world, any struggle we have, money could fix it.

And yes, is that is that true practically?

Yeah, money solves a lot of problems.

But there's no true uh no true value in any of that outside of the one who is the source of all of our provisions.

You see where I'm going?

All these there's all these things that are great, that are things that, yes, practically lead to human flourishing.

But and while we should not want to do away with them, we should we should use them, but we should recognize them as the gifts from God that they are and not the gods themselves.

Right?

You see, there's a million things in this world that the enemy uh tries to get us to trust in.

Many of them are things that can lead to human flourishing, but every single one of them are terrible gods.

Every single one are terrible gods.

None of these things can break the chains of sin and death like Jesus can.

None of these things can restore a person to their relationship with their loving Father like Jesus can, and none of them can bring eternal life like Jesus can.

We know these things, but where does this leave us?

Where does this leave us when we face the problems that we do in this world?

What do we do when someone we love turns away from God?

When your child leaves home and rejects faith in the way you raise them to follow?

When your spouse is cold towards God or towards the church, or when you have a friend or coworker who just passes your faith off as some kind of wishful thinking for the ultra-naive?

Do we just give up?

Do we just pray one half-hearted prayer saying, God, you're in control, you do this?

Or do we devote ourselves to real, honest prayer?

As if eternity depends on it.

Because here's the truth.

The truth is that what scripture teaches is that our prayers actually change things.

James says that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

And depending on how you grew up or what you know about scripture, uh, this might even sound kind of heretical.

But we have the power to change, change the world and change, ultimately change God's mind about things when we come to Him in prayer.

And that sounds crazy, but there's an actual story in Scripture that we see of Moses praying on behalf of the Israelites before God's about to strike them down for their disobedience.

And he says, God, please don't destroy them.

Please don't destroy them.

Remember your love.

And the scripture says that God changed his mind and he relented in punishment.

We have that kind of power today when we go to our God in prayer.

So why do we treat it as if it's a one-and-done thing?

Here's the truth: God wants each and every one of us to be active participants in bringing his kingdom to earth.

So, how do we do that?

We pray.

We pray as if someone's eternity really does depend on it.

We're gonna look at a story in Scripture today that is probably not one that you think of when you think of prayer.

There's probably a dozen other passages you would go to first if I said, find me a passage that teaches about the importance of prayer for the lost, but this story is so powerful.

This story is one that we find in the Old Testament, titled by After the Man who is the character in the story, Nehemiah.

Nehemiah.

Nehemiah was a Jewish man.

He was a product of Israel's exile to Babylon some 150 years prior to the writing of this book.

And he now uh was living under Persian rule, and he had actually risen to the kind of upper echelon of society, right?

He was living in the palace of King Artaxerxes, serving as the king's cupbearer.

And before we jump into Nehemiah, we'll be in Nehemiah chapter 1 if you want to get there.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

Um, but I'll give you some time and just give you a quick, quick history kind of lesson that teaches us about where we are in Scripture when we talk about Nehemiah.

Um in 597 BC, so a long, long time ago, uh, God's people, the nation of Israel, they were taken captive by Babylon.

And this this uh this slavery, captivity that they went into was a byproduct of their uh sin and disobedience and rebellion against God that was prophesied for years and years by the prophets, saying, if you don't turn from your sin, you will be taken away.

And it happened.

In 597, Babylon takes over, they destroy Jerusalem, tear down the wall, tear down the temple, and they take God's people captive.

For decades they were held captive in uh Babylon, and during this time is when we find some of the other writings of the Old Testament, like Jeremiah and Daniel and Ezekiel.

But eventually the exile is over, as God would eventually prophesy.

The exile would end, the people would be allowed to return to Jerusalem.

But this didn't come until after the kingdom of Persia conquered the kingdom of Babylon.

So several kings in the Persian Empire come and they they take over Babylon, and with it they take control of the Jewish captives.

And this is where we find the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Now, if uh we were reading in the uh original scriptures, the way that they were written in Hebrew, uh Ezra and Nehemiah are commonly held together as one continuous story.

Uh we see them in the Hebrew texts as one scroll, one story.

In our Bibles, they're separated to kind of help us.

I don't know why, but uh, in Ezra, what we see, which precedes Nehemiah, we see two Persian kings issue decrees to allow the Israelites to go home.

They allow the Israelites to go home the first wave under a man named Zerubbabel, and the second under a man named Ezra.

And they were sent to rebuild the temple and to teach God's law to the people, to bring the people back to true and proper worship of their God.

But what we see as the book of Ezra closes and Nehemiah starts is that once again God's people had failed.

Many of them had intermarried with people from different faiths and religions, leading to a separation between God and his people.

And this brings us to Nehemiah 1.

Nehemiah 1 is where we pick up, about 15 years after the end of Nehemiah of Ezra, uh, we see the scriptures say in verse 1, verses 1 through 3.

In late autumn, in the month of Kislev, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes' reign, I was at the fortress of Susa.

Hanani, one of my brothers, came with some other men who had just arrived from Judah.

I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem.

And they said to me, Things are not going well for those who returned to Judah.

They are in great trouble and disgrace.

The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.

So Nehemiah, we know he was a Jewish man, and we know he was still living in Persia.

But though he was there, his heart was still with his people.

His heart was still with the people of Israel, with the people of God, and he was eagerly awaiting reports of how they had been doing because he knew they had been able to go back home, and he wanted to know how they were doing, but these reports were not positive.

These reports were not positive.

And just a short 15 years between this and Ezra, the people were now living in deep disgrace.

The temple had been rebuilt.

They tried to rebuild the walls, but their enemies kept attacking them and destroying the walls.

And because of this, the people had been defeated physically and led astray spiritually.

And without a wall, the people were still vulnerable.

You see, in this day and age, cities always had walls because a city without a wall was vulnerable.

It was vulnerable to attack.

The people would be living in constant fear and oppression, not knowing when an attack from a neighboring nation was going to come.

And this physical desperation of not having a wall would ultimately what we see led to spiritual desperation.

These people were likely struggling to trust God.

They were turning from Him, looking to anything else that would bring them some sense of security.

These people were utterly hopeless, maybe even wondering why the heck did we come back anyways?

Is this God we our ancestors believe in really even here?

And if I had to guess, this experience probably describes some of our experiences as well.

If I had to guess, some of us have probably walked through similar levels of spiritual desperation where it just doesn't seem like God is there.

It doesn't seem like God cares about my life.

And in these moments, in these moments, we can be so quick to view our physical circumstances as a representation of God's love for us.

But why?

That's not what the scriptures teach us.

That's not what we see in the story of the God of Israel who eventually sent his son Jesus to die, to pay for our sins, and to rise from the grave that he could know us.

Our physical circumstances are not a reflection of God's love for us.

But this is where the Israelites had found themselves.

Maybe it's not you, but maybe it's someone you know.

Or don't.

Maybe we we fail to realize that there are people that we walk past every day, people that we work with every day that find themselves in this level of desperation.

They find themselves in this position of utter hopelessness.

Even if on the outside it appears they have it all together.

Inside, they're dying.

Nehemiah realized it.

He realized it and he understood the depravity of his people way before he even saw it.

Because newsflash, it it wasn't about the wall.

Nehemiah's concern wasn't just about the wall.

He was a concern for the heart of his people and whether they knew and were walking with God.

And we see in verse 4, Nehemiah says, When I heard this, I sat down and wept.

In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven.

The depravity of Israel broke Nehemiah's heart.

And it broke his heart in a way that led to action.

See, here's the truth.

Our hearts, our hearts should break over those who don't know God, but also in a way that leads us to act.

Our hearts should break for those who don't know God in a way that leads us to act.

The first of these actions should be intercessory prayer, which is the idea that we step in on behalf of somebody.

We step in and pray for them.

We step in like Moses did, like Nehemiah did, and ask God to act.

Pete Gregg once said that intercession is impossible until we allow the things that break God's heart to break ours as well.

Intercession is impossible until we allow the things that break God's heart to break ours as well.

Nehemiah interceded.

Nehemiah stepped in.

Nehemiah prayed on behalf of his people, and he begged God to remember and save them.

His prayer gives us an image of how we should pray.

Let's look to that prayer in verses five through nine.

Nehemiah said, Oh Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands.

Listen to my prayer.

Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel.

I confess that we have sinned against you.

Yes, even my own family and I have sinned.

We've sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations you've given us through your servant Moses.

Please remember what you told your servant Moses.

If you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations.

But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you're exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored.

Nehemiah gave us right there a model for how we can pray on behalf of people who don't know God.

First of all, Nehemiah addresses God's character.

He looks to God and says, Oh Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love.

He addresses God's character in the same way when we go to God in prayer, we can address him because we know him.

We know him as if he is our Father because he is.

Second thing, Nehemiah confesses his own sin.

Before he asked for God to act, he confessed his own sin because he knew that his sin caused a separation between him and God.

And he had to let go of it and confess it before he could step in.

And third thing is that Nehemiah called on the promises that God had already made.

God had already made the promise that if his people were faithful to him, that even if they were exiled to the ends of the earth, that he would bring them back.

And Nehemiah, in a sense, called God out on that promise.

He said, Look, listen, your people are in exile, and you made this promise that if they turned and were faithful to you, that you would restore them.

So God, act.

Lead them back.

They're back in their home, but they're they're defeated, they're destroyed.

So act.

If you read the rest of the story of Nehemiah, which we don't have time to get into, there's so much beauty in it.

But what you'll see is that this prayer that he prayed, this prayer of boldness, led him to ask the king of Persia, King Artaxerxes, if he could return to Jerusalem.

If he could return to Jerusalem and lead his people in rebuilding the wall.

And through God's provision, the king allowed Nehemiah to return, but not just return, he even sent him with a caravan of people and resources to rebuild the wall.

And shortly after this, the wall is rebuilt.

In Nehemiah 6, 15 and 16, it says, So the wall was finished on the 55th day or 25th day of Elul, in 52 days.

And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.

The wall was complete.

The people of Israel were now physically safe.

But Nehemiah's work wasn't over.

You see, Nehemiah didn't come to build a wall, he came to bring his people back to relationship with God.

And as we already said, him along with Ezra, they were far more concerned about the spiritual state of God's people than they were the physical.

We see in Nehemiah 8, 1 and 2, it says, All the people assembled with a unified purpose at the square, just inside the water gate.

They asked Ezra the scribe to bring out the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given for Israel to obey.

So Ezra and the priest brought the book of the law before the assembly, which included men and women and all children old enough to understand.

And in verse 6 it says, Then Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, Amen, Amen, as they lifted their hands, and then they bowed and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Prayer releases power to bring real change into the real world.

The people who were once dejected, desperate, and far from God were now hungry for the word of God, hungry for the voice of God, and now laying their lives down to Him.

One might be so quick to say, or I mean, say, what happened?

How did this happen?

How did they go from that to that?

One might be quick to point to the wall and say, Well, well, we have a wall now, we're safe.

And yes, was the wall used to bring physical security back to the people?

Yes, it was.

But the wall was nothing.

The wall was nothing without the prayer of Nehemiah.

The wall was nothing.

Just like we talked about money and modern medicine, it's no different.

His goal wasn't to get the people to trust in a wall that would that would secure them, but to trust in a God that loved them and wanted to know them.

The wall and the people returning back to God happened as a result of Nehemiah's vulnerable and bold prayer that led to action.

And I believe, I believe truly, that we can see the same kind of moves in the hearts of people, the same kind of moves of God in the hearts of people today.

Because God is always wanting people to know him.

He's always working.

He's working the same ways that he did 2,500 years ago as he is today.

But maybe, just maybe, hear me out.

Maybe the reason we haven't seen this level of miracle, this level of change, is because we haven't joined him in the work.

Because we haven't followed in the footsteps of Nehemiah in prayer.

There's a saying uh we often use, uh we say it in self-circle a lot.

Russ has probably said it, but they always say, without God, we can't.

But without us, he won't.

Without God, we can't.

We can't do anything without it.

But without us, he won't.

We can't just look at God and say, God, you were supposed to do this.

You were supposed to bring this person back.

You were supposed to heal this person.

He looks at us and says, You didn't even pray about it.

You didn't fall on your knees and ask me for it.

You just put these expectations on me that.

We said it earlier.

God has invited each and every one of us to be active participants in bringing his kingdom to earth.

So what does that look like?

It looks like a prayer for the lost.

Prayer for the lost.

Now we do have to pause and take a moment to look at the full story of Scripture, because if all we had was the story of Nehemiah, we would end again lost and desperate.

Because here's the truth about the story of Nehemiah.

Though Nehemiah and Ezra did lead the people back to a desire for God, just a few short chapters later, we see the story replay itself over again.

The people falling back into sin, walking away from God.

And if you read the rest of the story, Nehemiah leaves, the people fall back into apostasy.

The security and comfort that the wall had brought them led them to trust in the wall and not God.

And if the story, like I said, if the story of Nehemiah was where God's story ended, we'd have a pretty sad ending.

But praise God that we know that the story didn't end with Nehemiah.

We know that despite Israel's sin and continual rebellion for years and years and years and years, and despite our continual rebellion for all of our lives, God still provided.

He still provided a once and for all redemption.

But this time not just for Israel, but for the whole world.

And he did this in sending his son Jesus.

This is the gospel.

The gospel that God stepped down to earth, became flesh, said, humans, you can't do it.

There's no amount of sacrifice or work that you could do to earn your salvation.

Only I can provide it, and here I am to provide it.

I'm going to die the death that you deserve, and I'm going to rise from the grave, defeating death, so that you can know me again.

So that you can have a relationship with me.

That's the news flash, too.

It wasn't so you could get to heaven one day.

Jesus didn't just die so that you could get to heaven one day.

It's not a fire insurance ticket stamped, go into heaven.

Jesus died and rose from the grave so that you could know God right now.

Because here's another news flash.

Eternity doesn't start when we die.

Eternity starts the moment that you place your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and begin to walk with Him.

Because from that moment on, you have eternal life.

So God's not after just a ticket stamped, I'm going there when I die.

So, but does it really matter what I do here?

God's after a people that love and know him right here and now.

He wants to know you first, but if he knows you and you know him, he's not just giving you the opportunity, but the responsibility of being an active participant and the rest of the world coming to know him.

The responsibility.

So what are we to do?

What can we, the church, do to start seeing the same moves of God here in our homes and our families and our cities the same way that Nehemiah did?

Like Nehemiah, God's calling us to pray on behalf of those who don't know Him.

He's calling us to pray vulnerably.

To pray vulnerably, honest with our sin and honest with our needs, to pray boldly.

To pray vulnerably and boldly.

God's not afraid of big asks.

Be specific.

Tyler Staten, he's a pastor in Portland, Oregon.

He said this.

Ask vulnerably.

Ask vulnerably with enough specificity that God has the chance to disappoint you or surprise you.

Ask boldly, with enough empowerment, that you wonder if you're allowed to be this forward with God.

Ask boldly, ask vulnerably.

And then the third thing is you do something physically.

You move.

This is what we often talk about here at Church of the Grove, and we talk about it a lot in the social circle.

I know we talk about the power of movement, the power of getting out of the stands and stepping onto the field, no longer being a spectator, but an active participant.

Right?

There's power and movement.

The aim is not to get God in on what we think he should be doing.

Rather, the aim of prayer is to get us in on what God is already doing, to become aware of it, to join it, and enjoy the fruit of participation.

Prayer is the recovery of our role in God's created order.

He created us to rule and reign in this world.

And prayer is the recovery of our true identity and the relationship that defines that identity to us.

This is our challenge.

Like I said, to stop being a spectator and to get out on the field.

But the game we're jumping into is not a one-and-done thing.

It's not a 60 minutes, the whistle blows, and the game's over.

The game we're jumping into is an invitation to a lifelong and honestly slow and unglamorous life of prayer.

See, there's a reason that the scriptures refer to the process of new life, uh, often in the context of birth.

Jesus said in John 16, 21, it will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor.

When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she's brought a new baby into the world.

And if you're a mother, you know that.

But spiritually, too, new life requires labor, laboring in prayer.

But the joy of salvation always far outweighs the preceding pain, struggle, and persistence.

You see, you see, we crave stories of miracles.

Deep down, we crave uh incredible moves of God.

We look at stories like the Asbury Revival and we crave that kind of thing.

We crave for God to do a great move, but we often refuse to go through the slow and unglamorous labor pains that are required to get there.

So, what's next?

What happens when we walk out of here?

How do we take this from just being some great idea to actually being a practical and tangible part of our lives?

Obviously, obviously, we can say it's as simple as prayer.

It's as simple as prayer.

And there's some truth to that, but me saying that is a little bit like handing a toddler a saxophone and saying, play it.

Right?

So, what do we do?

How do we learn?

We're like we have to we need to be like the disciples who looked at Jesus and said, Teach us to pray.

Make me, say, God, make me a man or woman of prayer.

Teach me, help me to see.

Our invitation to you this morning is to a practice, a practice that we can engage in together to start seeing real change in the real world.

And this this practice is prayer walking.

Prayer walking.

A simple tool that we can do to start seeing change in our lives.

Prayer walking might sound intimidating, but it's really not.

It doesn't have to be you being the weirdo who walks around your neighborhood and talking to themselves that everybody avoids.

It's as simple as walking slowly with no cell phone, no music, no podcast, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide your prayers.

Looking at the things around you, seeing the needs where they come up.

If you you are walking around your neighborhood and you there's a family you've never met, and you see a handicap sticker on your car, that's a ding-ding-ding, there's a need there.

I can pray for them.

Or you notice the family that used to be outside all the time, engaging, all of a sudden disappears.

Blinds are closed, garage is closed.

Something's up.

I can pray for them.

I can see, I can, and as you begin to pray, God will open your eyes to conversations, to needs.

Ask God to teach you to pray and ask him to show you what to pray for.

We've put together a simple uh guide that you can access.

Uh, I believe it's it's on our app.

If you go to the Church the Grove app, uh there's a big tab that comes up and says prayer walking guide.

And there's prompts, there's uh guidance, there's all these things that you can uh use to begin this practice.

Obviously, we're probably not gonna go out and prayer walk today.

Uh it's a little rainy.

Um, but our challenge to you is sometime this week, get out.

Get out, take 10, 15, 20 minutes.

Leave your phone in the house.

I know it's hard, but do it and just walk.

Walk and pray.

There's uh a team of us who have been practicing this regularly uh as we're helping, uh as the church is helping to prepare to launch the Good Hope Church plant out in Good Hope.

If you don't know about that, it's not a Church the Grove campus, but Church the Grove is coming along with a bunch of other churches to help plant a church in Good Hope.

And a couple Saturdays ago, uh we've we had the opportunity, uh, my wife, Katie and I, uh my in-laws, Craig and Amy Story, Mr.

Larry Black, uh we we all got to go out and prayer walk in the city of Good Hope.

And just walk around these neighborhoods.

We don't even live out there.

But to begin praying for people that we didn't know, was it weird to pull into a neighborhood that I didn't live in and park at their pool and walk around the neighborhood?

Yeah, it was kind of weird.

But man, we just we just talked to God.

We just talked to God and we listened and we stumbled across some yard sales and some people that we got to have conversations with, engaging in conversation, letting them know kind of like this is, I mean, we don't live here, we're out here doing this, like, you know, and and just be surprised how God works.

This is a simple, simple, simple way for you to begin to invite this posture of prayer in your life.

And uh, if you can't walk, prayer drive.

I know Mr.

Larry and Margaret, they do that.

They prayer drive a lot.

It's that simple.

Turn off the music, turn off the radio, just drive.

Drive through your neighborhood and pray.

Drive through your city and pray.

See what God wants to do.

The goal is not to get God in on what we think he should be doing, but to join him in where he's already working.

Prayer releases power to bring real change into the real world.

If Nehemiah's prayer alone, one man's prayer before God, can change an entire nation?

An entire nation! Imagine what a room of 150 of us could do if we just prayed the same way.

The same way.

This morning we're gonna we're gonna close with a time of worship.

We're gonna sing praises back to God, but as we do, I just I just feel the the Spirit saying, listen, there's these ideas are great.

Yes, go out and prayer walk.

But man, there's some of you in this room that are struggling.

There's some of you in this room that uh like the um like the stories I mentioned earlier, you find yourself in one of those.

You've got a child who who you raised for 18 years in the church to walk with and follow Jesus, and they've left your home and they've walked away.

Denying Jesus, denying faith, blazing her own trail.

And man, you're broken over it.

You're broken.

And you need, you need, you don't just need to pray, but you need to be prayed for as well.

There's there's some of you sitting in this room that uh your significant other or your spouse.

They're cold.

They don't want to join you at church, they want nothing to do with faith.

They think you're just naive and that's you're just doing a silly thing.

Are we gonna are we gonna sit back and just believe that's okay and just say, you know what, God's in control?

Or are we gonna be the church that fights for, that joins with each other in prayer?

Or maybe it's maybe it's not your family, maybe it's just at work.

Maybe you've got coworkers that you're afraid to even tell you go to church because you're worried about how they'll respond to you.

And you need prayer, you need prayer for vulnerable, bold prayer.

We want to give that to you this morning.

And just a moment, we're gonna sing, but I want to invite you.

So there's power in movement, there's power in getting out of the stands and getting into the game.

I'm gonna be here, I'll be available for prayer if you just want to pray.

There's other people here, there's Pat, I don't know, Larry, Jared, others here that will just happily pray for you.

Invite God in.

Invite God into your life and join him now where he's already working to.

And I believe that when we go to him in prayer, we'll see prayer work.

Should we pray with me now?

God, thank you.

Thank you for this morning, thank you for your word and your truth.

I pray that as we wrap up this morning, as we sing our praises to you, that we would allow our hearts to be open, that we would come to be prayed for, that we would be open to what you want to do and fight for who you want us to fight for, that we wouldn't just give up on those people around us that don't know you, but that we would join you in the unglamorous and slow labor pains.

Trusting and believing that we'll see the fruit that comes from you.

God, we love you.

We thank you for sending your son, Jesus, to die and rise for us that we can know you.

We pray that every soul in this world comes to know that truth one day.

It's your name.

Amen.