Begin with Prayer

Good morning and happy Fourth of July weekend.

My name is Nathan, and I'm one of the pastors here at Church of the Grove, and we're so thrilled that you're joining us today.

We know that there's a lot of people that are all over the place this weekend, and we wanted to give our volunteers, which it takes dozens, if not even hundreds, of volunteers to put on each Sunday morning.

And so we wanted to be able to give them a break this morning as well.

But I'm so thankful for technology and for us being able to gather together online this morning.

And we're beginning a brand new series this morning called How to Bless Your Neighbor.

But before we jump into the content of that, I want to have a little bit of a game for you.

I want you to kind of guess the businesses that go along with these slogans.

So when you hear the slogan melt in your hand, but not in your mouth, do you know what company that is?

That's Eminem's, right?

What about America Runs on Duncan?

Yeah, that's right.

What about it's the quicker picker upper?

That's bounty paper towels.

Or I think probably the most iconic of all the slogans is just do it, which is of course Nike.

And Nike's slogan is a little bit unique because it's stuck around, it's really lasted the tell of time, it's lasted decades.

1988 is when that slogan was put into place.

And Nike has become this massive corporation and organization, and it's built around that slogan of just do it, which is really implying that it's about going hard after, it's about working hard, it's about uh athletic training, running the marathons, going the extra mile, like it's about uh working hard, no pain, no gain.

Like that's that's what Nike is ultimately all about.

But what's funny is that even though Nike is all about that, um, and their slogan is just do it, oftentimes we own some of their shoes or clothing or yoga pants or shorts or whatever it might be, and we don't use their materials to really just do it, right?

We don't use them to have athletic training, we don't use our Nike shoes to run marathons, we use them to kind of dress, have fancier sneakers to run around with, or you don't wear your yoga pants to really work out, but you use them to lay around the house.

And it's interesting that a slogan can mean one thing, but then you can know the slogan and know what it means, but really fail to live it out.

And that same idea applies to the church.

Here at Church of the Grove, our mission that we talk about often is to reach people far from God and then lead them to become followers of Jesus.

That's what we want to be about.

However, as much as we might know that that's the mission, and not just the mission of Church of the Grove, but the mission of all churches, the mission of all followers of Jesus.

We know that that's the mission, but oftentimes we fail to live that out.

We all know friends and family members and co-workers and neighbors and people that we come in contact with on a regular basis that don't have a relationship with Jesus.

And if we were just being honest, we would know that if they were to pass away today, that they would spend eternities separated from him.

And so we know the mission is to reach them with the good news of Jesus, to introduce them to the Savior that has revolutionized our life, the savior that brings life and purpose and meaning into our life.

However, we oftentimes fail to do it.

And that's what our series is ultimately all about.

We want to give you a framework.

We want to give you some super practical handlebars to hold on to that will allow you to become a blessing.

That's really what the series is all about.

It's about how to bless your neighbor, how to bless those that you come in contact with on a regular basis.

And so that's what we want to talk about.

And this is a theme that's all throughout scripture, all throughout scripture, this is a theme of blessing.

We see really in the very beginning, in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 12, we're introduced to a man named Abram who would later become Abraham.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And God chooses him.

He pulls them out of a pagan nation and a pagan land, and he chooses him, and he says, with Abraham and with his wife, that he was going to bring them abundant descendants, and that they were going to become a blessing to the other nations around them, that they were going to be blessed by God, and then as a result they were going to become a blessing to other nations.

Listen to what Genesis chapter 12, verse 1 says.

Genesis 12:1

So just in those three short verses, we read the word blessing five different times.

So this was God's initial design for his chosen people, that they were going to be blessed by him, and then as a result, those people were going to be a blessing to the world around them.

And that's the same trend that continues into the church today.

God has blessed us, he's given us new life, he's adopted us and brought us into the family of God, He's called us sons and daughters of His.

And so we've been blessed immensely by God, and as a result, we now in turn are supposed to become a blessing to others.

That's what we're called to be about.

And we see no better example than Jesus himself of someone that was blessed and then became a blessing to others.

Jesus, in every interaction that he comes in contact with some individual, he's a blessing towards them.

He gives them life, he gives them purpose, he gives them meaning, he brings healing, he does incredible works in their midst.

And so Jesus was a blessing everywhere he went.

The story of Zacchaeus is a great example of this.

The story of Zacchaeus, many of you might know, but it's found in Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

And Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is coming to town, and Zacchaeus was a wee little man, we know, we read that from scripture.

And he was a wee little man, and so he climbs up into a sycamore tree so he can see Jesus when Jesus comes by.

And as Jesus is passing by, he says this to Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is called by name, and he says, Zacchaeus, come down quick.

I must be a guest at your home today.

And so Jesus goes to Zacchaeus' home, and Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector.

He was hated by everyone, he was despised, he was seen as a traitor to their nation and to their own people.

And Jesus still goes to him as a blessing to a notorious, even criminal, you could call him.

And he's a blessing to him.

And as a result, Zacchaeus's life is utterly changed.

He experiences salvation in that moment.

He's rescued, he's brought back to life, he's far from God, and then he's reached by uh by Jesus himself, and then he learns to what it looks like to follow Jesus.

And listen to how Zacchaeus responds to that.

In verse 8, it says, Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, I will give half of my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much.

Jesus responded, Salvation has come to your home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost.

And so we see that Zacchaeus is blessed by Jesus by his presence and him coming to his house.

And as a result, Zacchaeus's life is changed.

He's now been blessed, and Zacchaeus now becomes a blessing to others by paying back anything that he has cheated people in the past from.

This is what our life should be about.

We should live a life of blessing, a life where we bless those around us, where we bless our neighbors.

And so over the next four weeks, including this Sunday, we're going to be breaking down this acronym of bless.

And it stands for each letter stands for a certain thing that we can do really, really practically to become a blessing to other people.

The B stands for begin with prayer, and we'll talk about that in a moment.

The L stands for listening, where we have our ears turnt tuned up and we're actually listening to the world around us and the people around us.

The E stands for eating with one another.

The first S stands for serving each other.

And then the final S is being willing to share our story with others.

And this is a simple, bless, super practical blessing strategy that we believe that if you live this out, you can truly become a blessing to your neighbors.

And so the first one we want to talk about this morning is that it begins with prayer, the be and bless.

That it begins with prayer.

Everything starts here.

Now, prayer is one of those kind of tricky things in a way where oftentimes we know that we should pray, and yet we kind of fail to follow through with that a lot of times.

Like I think of prayer often as kind of like flossing.

You go to the dentist, you know, and they're always asking you if you flossed or how often you floss, and you're having to kind of like either lie or you're having to have a kind of moment of confession as your blunt uh gums are bleeding as they're cleaning your teeth.

We know we should floss, but how often do we really do it?

Now I know there's probably some of you that are super uh religious about brushing and flossing your teeth, um, but for many of us, that's probably not a priority.

In the same way, prayer can be that way, where we know we should do it, but oftentimes we fail to follow through and actually do it.

And there's several reasons why.

The first reason is simply we would say we don't really know how to pray, and so we fail to do it.

Others of us would say we're too busy, and that causes us and prevents us from actually spending dedicated time in prayer.

Others of us would say, if we were being honest, we don't really believe that prayer changes anything or makes any difference, and so that's the reason that we don't pray.

But if we're going to become a blessing to others and we're truly going to be able to operate the way that God has called us to in our lives and in our communities, then we've got to begin with prayer.

We've got to begin the way that Jesus began most of his ministry.

We see Jesus praying time and time again.

This is the Son of God here on earth in the flesh, and he's spending dedicated times of prayer with the Father.

We see this when he begins his earthly ministry, he's baptized, and then he spends time in prayer, and the Spirit leads him out into the wilderness.

We see this when he's feeding the five thousand, he prays and multiplies the fish and the loaves of bread.

We see this when he's led to the Samaria Samaria uh to meet the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

Uh we see this in his final moments of life, when he's praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, right before he's arrested, eventually tried and crucified.

And so Jesus' life really revolved around prayer.

And Jesus understood that if he was going to be the blessing that God has called him to be, then he had to begin with prayer.

Prayer is kind of like the uh GPS on our phone, if you want to think of it that way.

Uh you can open up your phone app and you can uh pretty much put in any destination, it's going to lead you in the direction that it needs to go.

But if you turn the location services off on your phone, then your map is really useless.

You're able to kind of see a picture, but you're not able to really see where you're at and where and what direction you need to move in.

But you turn the location services on and it opens up doors and opportunities for you to have direction and purpose in your life, and prayer does that.

Prayer gives us direction and opportunities in our life.

You could say it this way: that prayer opens us up to the spirit.

Prayer opens us up to the spirit.

Where we're able to hear from the Spirit of God, and we've talked about this the last couple of weeks, opens our hearts up to the Spirit of God and leads us to go in the direction that He's called us to.

We see Jesus doing this in his life, as I said.

In Luke chapter 6, we get a great picture of this.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Jesus is kind of on the front end of his ministry, and he's developed a crowd of people that are following him, that are his disciples.

But yet Jesus is going to choose out of that group of people twelve men that are going to be tasked with carrying out the mission of God to the world after he resurrects and then ultimately ascends to be with the Father.

And so Jesus spends time in prayer.

Listen to what it says in Matthew 6, verse 12.

Matthew 6:12

It says, One day soon after Jesus went up to the mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.

At daybreak, he called together all the disciples and chose twelve of them to be the apostles.

Here are their names Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Judas, the son of James, and then Judas Iscariot, who would later betray him.

So Jesus doesn't go into these decision-making just kind of haphazardly, but he spends all night in prayer, asking God for wisdom, asking for the Spirit to open up the doors and to show him the direction that he needs to head in his life.

If he's going to make the maximum amount of impact that he knows he's called to make, then he has to open up the door and the opportunity for the Spirit to speak into his life, and that begins with prayer.

Blessing others begins with prayer.

I love what Hudson Taylor said in this quote.

He said, Do not have your concert first and then tune your instruments afterwards.

Begin the day with the word of God and prayer and get first of all into harmony with him.

That's a beautiful kind of picture, right?

That if we're going to be able to be a blessing to others, if we're going to truly be able to hear kind of the Spirit's leading in our life and what we're called to do and the difference we're called to make in people's lives, then we've got to begin with prayer.

We've got to be attuned to the Spirit of God, rely on Him, and then see Him transform our lives and the lives of those around us.

If we're going to be a blessing to our neighbors, we have to begin with prayer.

Now there's a story that Beth Moore shares, and it's a phenomenal story, and I want to share that with you now.

But it's a story of her listening to God's voice, the Spirit of God speaking, with she begins in prayer, and this prayer opens up the door for the Spirit to ask her to do something that seems absolutely crazy, but as a result, she becomes a blessing to uh the individual she touches and the blessing to so many other lives as well.

So take a listen to what Beth has to say.

I was headed off to uh the east side of the country to Asheville, North Carolina to speak.

So I was having to go to a part of the airport uh that was just one large room where you went off into several different halls down to the smaller plane.

So it was for a small airport in a small part of the terminal, it was packed, absolutely packed.

And our chairs were all facing one another.

And suddenly I see that the eyes of all the people against the wall are watching something behind me.

And it was like a movie because all of their eyes shifted this way, this big around, and they began to come this way.

Whatever it was, it was going right behind me.

And I'm thinking, oh, I wish I were looking.

Are you like that?

I'm a people watcher.

I was so desperately thought, what are they looking at?

And I can't wait to look for myself until it comes all the way around here, and then suddenly in my peripheral vision, I begin to see a little of it, and it is a flight uh hostess that is pushing up a man in a wheelchair right to the end of my row, and there's nobody between us.

And this place is packed.

So I want you to know that Jesus went to a significant amount of trouble to make sure that I saw this man.

So I wait until everybody else gets more polite, and then I go.

And when I look over at him, he was the oddest sight.

He looked like he was not one I owe the lesson about 129, and I'm not kidding.

This was the oldest looking person I had ever seen.

Not only that, but he had gray hair that was down to here.

His fingernails were every bit as long as money.

He was clean.

But it's just an odd sight.

His pants, it looked like that he had obviously lost a lot of weight because they were just bunched up.

I'll never forget how he looked, and he was just, his head was just hanging down like this, and his hair was in strings like this, huh?

This is how much God thinks of us just memorizing scripture, but not doing anything with it.

Because the Lord begins to compel my heart.

Overwhelms me.

Overwhelms me.

Well, I have learned, I've walked with him a long time.

I knew by now, that is scary.

God is up to something when he is overwhelming your heart like that.

And I just don't know, oh, please, God, no.

Oh, please, please, God, no.

Because I'm already knowing he wants me to witness to this man.

And so I say to myself, in my spirit, and I'm not talking out loud, but in my spirit, I'm talking to God silently, and I'm saying, I'm sure my mouth is going because I say to him, do not make me witness to that man.

And now I'm gonna tell you as clear as I'm talking to you now, the Lord spoke to my heart.

There's very few times I've ever heard God be this articulate with me.

And I'm telling you, word for word, these words came into my heart.

I'm not asking you to witness to him.

I'm asking you to brush his hair.

I'm your witness.

I'm your witness.

I'm your witness.

Me, me.

I got the bl I got the Roman road.

I mean still in my heart.

I mean, we were just having a fight.

I didn't tell you to witness to him.

I told you to brush his hair.

I thought, I don't have a hairbrush.

And then it's done for the day until I unfix it.

And the brush is in the luggage.

You know what's your mama saying to you?

So I said, I don't even have a hair brush.

And I'm like, the Lord's still compelling me.

Come on.

So I get a walk over, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't even have a hairbrush.

You know, I was supposed to be thoroughly equipped under all good work.

I do not have my hairbrush.

I walk over, I get right in front of the man.

His hands hanging down like this.

I lean down like this.

I said, sir, may I have the honor of brushing your hair?

And he says, What?

Sir.

May I have the honor of brushing your hair?

He goes, Well, lady, if you want me to hear you, you're gonna have to speak up.

Sir.

May I have the privilege of brushing your hair?

To which everyone in the airport goes, and every I can feel every eye just piercing me, just like.

And I'm just humiliated.

And he looks at me and says, if you want to, and I'm going, I don't want to.

I went, yes, sir.

I would absolutely love to.

But my problem is, I don't have a hairbrush.

He says, I have a hairbrush.

He said, it's back in my bag.

So I go all the way around the wheelchair.

His bag is on the back of it like this.

I get down on my knees, I unzip this little doffel bag, and I start pulling out his clean undershirts, his pair of pajamas, all sorts of things.

And as I do, I cannot tell you the feeling that overwhelms me.

I'm just flooded with the love of Christ.

I found the hairbrushes.

One of those real old uh bristle ones doesn't look anything like our brushes do now.

And when I stood up, I began then.

I went over to him and I thought, yo, to tell you the truth, this is what I'm good at.

I had two girls.

I'm good at this.

So I just came and I just began to brush his hair, and it was so matted that I couldn't even believe it.

And so I had to get down to the very bottom of it, and I just brushed the very ends of it, and then just a little bit, I took us forever.

And I'm gonna tell you, I was oblivious to everybody else in that room.

At that point, nobody else was alive to me.

I just kept brushing and kept brushing until that hair was as smooth as hell.

I went back around to him and squatted down in front of him, put my hands on his hands.

They were on his knees, his head was just like that.

And I said, Sir, do you know Jesus?

And he said, Yes, I do.

I said, Well, of course you do.

That figures.

I wanted to share the gospel with you.

But no, you need your hairbrush.

And he told me that his old bride of so many years would not marry him until he came to know Christ.

And he said, I was just sitting here thinking to myself, and he wept.

I'm about to cry telling you.

He said, I was just sitting here thinking, what a mess I must be for my bride.

He'd been in that hospital for months and he was about to return back home.

Nobody had cut his hair or anything.

I don't know how long it had been since he'd been bride.

That hostess came and put him on the plane, and she came back out, and she was crying, I mean, hard.

And she said, What made you do that?

And I said, Jesus, he's the balltiest thing.

She didn't need crying, so I didn't get to talk to her.

She knows what our need is.

Do we need a cry?

When we are filled to the measure with the fullness of cries.

You cannot believe the needs we can need.

Now I love that.

I love Beth's story.

It seems crazy to think that she's praying, she's praying, she's asking this for the Spirit's leadership in her life, and the Spirit leads her to do the unthinkable of brushing this man's hair.

That seems crazy.

That doesn't seem like something that uh you would you would naturally think of yourself, but the Spirit of God through prayer opens up that door and that opportunity, and Beth is able to be a blessing to this man.

And I don't know about you, but I want my life to be like that.

I don't want my life to just kind of be about going to the motions of my faith.

I don't want my life to just really be about changing.

Church attendance and kind of going through just kind of the normal American Christianity, but I want my life to have meaning.

I want to be able to look back over my life and to see that the Lord has used me in powerful ways to become a blessing to the world and the community and to my neighbors and to my coworkers and to the people I come in contact with.

I want my life to be a blessing.

And I don't know about you, but I would venture to guess that you want your life to become a blessing as well.

That you want to be not only blessed by God, but that you want to be a conduit and that you want to be a blessing to other people as well.

If we're going to become a blessing to the world around us, then we must first begin with prayer, listening to God's Spirit and then obeying what He has called us to do.

And so that's our action this morning.

Our action is to begin with prayer.

And what we've done is we have this incredible tool that will help you do that.

It's actually called Bless Every Home.

And you can access that through our Church at the Grove app or through our website, or if you're watching this live, you can click on the link below in the chat.

But this is an opportunity for you to sign up and you can become a blessing, a blessed household in your neighborhood or on your street, wherever you live.

And what will happen is once you sign up and put your address in, you'll get an email every single morning that will give you a list of five names of the people that live closest to you.

And it's just going to give you a prayer prompt to begin to pray for your neighbors by name.

And I think as we begin to pray for our neighbors by name, and we begin with prayer, then God will begin to open up doors and open up opportunities for us to truly become a blessing and introduce people to know and to love Jesus the way that we do.

And so I challenge you to not only sign up for that tool, but to begin with prayer so that you can be a blessing to the world around you.

Let me pray for us and begin with prayer as we ask God to let us be a blessing to others.

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for who you are and for all that you have done.

Lord, I thank you so much, Lord, that you have blessed us in an immense way.

Lord, that you have given us your Son as a gift on our behalf that died the death, the sacrifice that is the greatest sacrifice of all time, so that we could be restored into a relationship with you.

And so, Lord, as a result of that blessing that we've experienced, Lord, let us now become a blessing to the world around us.

Lord, help us to see and have eyes that you would have, Lord, where we see how you see and we hear and listen, how you would, and how we we just live really live out who we are because of what you've done in our lives.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would allow us to begin with prayer and begin praying and asking for you to move mightily, not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us, and that we can become a blessing to the world around us.

And it's in your Son's name we pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

If you maybe don't know the Lord and you haven't experienced his blessing, we would also love to invite you to have an opportunity to respond now as well.

If you would like to know more information about how you can engage in this type of relationship and have this experience of reconciliation with the Father, man, we would love for you to text the word start to follow to 9700, and we'll follow up with you this week.

But until next week, you have an incredible Fourth of July uh week, and uh we'll see you back next Sunday as we continue our series looking at listening to the voice of God and listening to the world around us.