When We Pray: Helping When Helpless | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning, Church.

I'm so excited to be here right now, especially with all that energy happening.

I'm Ashley.

If we haven't met, I want to introduce myself a little bit.

I serve as the family pastor here and I get to work with our kids' ministry, a little bit with our junior high and high school ministry, and with our parents.

So I like to introduce myself because if you're not a kid, which I'm not, I imagine none of you are in this room.

And if you're not a parent, if you don't serve in kids' ministry, there's a good chance we haven't crossed paths.

So I like to introduce myself to start there.

So let's pray.

As we're talking about prayer in this 40 days of prayer, I want to start by praying to focus our minds and our hearts on the Lord.

So pray with me.

Jesus, thank you for what you're going to do this morning.

Thank you for the joy in this room.

Thank you that we get to come here and worship you and hear your word.

Lord, would you speak to us this morning?

Spirit, would you move as we came here and your indwelling in us?

You're already here this morning.

You came here with us.

So, Spirit, would you speak?

Jesus, would you be glorified in our church this morning?

In your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, the last few years have been somewhat of a struggle.

Would anyone agree that maybe the last few years were somewhat of a struggle in our world?

A little bit, right?

We have all had some sort of burden in this last few years, and people that we know have struggled in these last few years.

Over the last few weeks, in my life, I have walked with multiple close people to me who are going through really heavy things right now.

And some of these things are really personal, extremely personal situations to them, what's going on in their own life.

And some of these things are things that are happening in the global sphere that are deeply affecting people that I love.

And when people that I love are really struggling, I want to do whatever I can to love them and to help them through whatever they're going through.

So this week I have sat with friends, I have listened to them, I've sent them encouragement, and these are all ways that I'm able to step into their pain and support them through it.

But ultimately, I can't fix what any of them are going through.

I can't take their pain away, and I can feel so helpless as they're sharing with me the things that they are carrying.

And I start to wonder, what can I even do?

I'm helpless in this situation.

How do I help someone when I feel so helpless?

How do I love someone well when they're struggling?

This is where we can turn to prayer.

So as a church, we're in the middle of this 40 days of prayer, and we believe that prayer is the pathway to intimacy with God.

So over these 40 days, we're leaning in, and each week of this series, we're exploring a different type of prayer, a different practice of communication with God.

And there's a specific prayer practice that enables us to love and to help others.

This is called intercessory prayer.

Now, that term is a little hard to say, so I practiced it a lot before I got up here.

And it can be kind of an intimidating thing to think, okay, I'm gonna go do intercessory prayer right now.

Whew, that sounds like maybe it's something reserved for like our lead pastor, like that's Ryan's job, or it's the prayer team's job.

They're the prayer team.

They need to do that, and they do.

But this is also for all of us.

This is something that all of us get to participate in.

So today we're gonna explore how intercession is actually a really simple but incredibly powerful way to love someone well.

So let's start by kind of defining this, because I built this up as it sounds intimidating, and I don't know if you feel that way, but every time that I told someone that this is what I was speaking on, they went, ooh, and I said, okay.

So intercession is simply this: it's praying on behalf of or in favor of someone else.

It's interceding or going between someone and God to pray for them.

On a really simple level, it's just praying for someone else.

So we can take down the intimidation factor, and now we can dive into what we're talking about.

Richard J.

Foster, in his book on prayer, said it this way: He said, when we move from petition, which is praying for ourselves, our own wants and needs, to intercession, praying for others, we are shifting our center of gravity from our own needs to the needs and concerns of others.

We're shifting our center of gravity.

Now, this sounds so great and it sounds so holy, right?

And often we really want to do this.

We often have really great intentions to pray for people.

I know I've never been in a situation where somebody asks me to pray for them, and outside I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

And in my mind, I'm like, I'm not gonna do that.

And I don't think you have either.

I don't think our intention is to not pray for people.

But I can't tell you how many times over the years people have asked me to pray for them.

And by the time we get to the next topic of conversation or we say goodbye, I've already forgotten that I said that I would pray for them.

In the fullness of life and in the pace of the Silicon Valley, it can be so easy to just get distracted, to forget, to be preoccupied by our own lives.

And this is where we shift our center of gravity from our own needs to the needs of others.

We step into being selfless in our prayers.

So now some of you are probably feeling inspired to make a big long list of everyone you have ever come across and every story you have ever read in the news to start praying for every single one of them.

But before we do that, I want to pause and see what Jesus says about this and hear his invitation for us.

So take out your Bible, your phone, your notes, wherever you can read this scripture along with me.

We're in John 15, starting in verse five.

Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

If you do not remain in me, you're like a branch that is thrown away and withers.

Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

There's an invitation from Jesus here.

He starts with saying, Remain in me.

This is a resting in Jesus.

It's being rooted in him, being connected to him, having this intimacy with him through prayer.

That's why we're doing this 40 days of prayer, so that we can have this remaining in Jesus through this contemplative prayer that we walked through last week.

That is remaining in Jesus.

He says, remain in me, and if you do, you can ask for whatever you wish.

Jesus invites us to ask for anything that we want, wish, desire.

Ask him for anything.

Are you hearing this?

This is such such a great big invitation for us.

So when we shift our center of gravity from our own needs, from our own wants, our own desires, to the needs and wants and desires of other people, we can ask him for those things also.

Because now when I'm focused on someone else, when I'm focused on their pain, when I'm focused on the things that they're wanting and needing in life, now these are the things that I want, that I desire, that I'm wishing for.

Okay?

Jesus says, if you remain in me and my words in you, it will be done for you.

This is speaking to the condition of our hearts so that we can be an effective intercessor in prayer.

As we remain in Jesus, as we are rooted and resting in him, as we practice the Lord's Prayer, your kingdom come, God, your will be done.

As we practice contemplative prayer and scripture sinks into our hearts and our whole being, this is what it means to ask in Jesus' name.

This is abiding in Jesus.

This is a remaining in Jesus.

And the more time we spend with Jesus, really getting to know him, the more that we are able to ask and do what Jesus would ask and do.

I want to repeat that a little bit.

The more time that we spend with Jesus, the more we are able to do and ask for the same things that He would ask and do.

And it's then that we know that we have a promised yes from God.

Whatever we ask God for, in accordance with his character and his will, he will say yes to.

With the intention of God being glorified.

Look at verse 8.

Pull that back up.

This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit.

The fruit of our prayers, the ways that God answers us, is all to glorify God.

And these are the things that are in line with God's character and his will.

Now, I want to speak to this for a moment.

As we abide in Jesus, we consistently have a better understanding of his character and will.

However, we don't always know the will of God in a particular circumstance.

I don't know if my friend will eventually get pregnant.

I don't know if my friend will be fully healed in her body here on earth.

And when we ask for these things, we can wonder why God isn't answering our prayers.

To me, of course, that would be God's will, right?

Of course he would want those things for them.

But sometimes it doesn't happen.

Sometimes it's not as easy as just asking for the thing and seeing God answer.

Paul, maybe more than anyone in Scripture, demonstrates for us how to intercede, how to pray for others according to God's character and will.

For the church in Corinth, he prays not for their church problems to be all better, but he prays that they would be strengthened, that they would be brought into close relationship with Jesus.

He prays that they would have unity in their church.

For the church in Ephesus, he prays for wisdom from the Lord and hope in Jesus, and that they would know the depth of God's love for them.

For the church in Philippi, he prays that their love would continue to grow and that they would have discernment to know what things are of the Lord.

Now, these are the kinds of prayers that God always answers yes to.

He always answers yes to people going deeper in their understanding of his love.

He always answers yes to giving wisdom and discernment.

He always says yes to strength and peace and hope and love for others.

We don't know the will of God in a particular circumstance, but we do know the will of God in a person's heart.

I don't know if my friend will ever have a baby.

But what I do know is that God wants to meet her with a deep love and hope and peace as she waits.

And I know that as I pray, he will say yes to that prayer because he keeps his promises.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop asking for her to get pregnant.

Jesus invited me to ask for anything that I want.

But as I pray, what I can be certain of is that when I'm asking for something that is aligned with God's will and with his character, his answer is always going to be yes.

Praying on behalf of someone else and aligning that ask with God's will can kind of feel like a big undertaking sometimes, like, oh, but I don't know God's will, so how am I gonna pray?

How am I gonna say the right words because I don't actually know?

She just said I don't know.

So how do I do this?

How do I have confidence to approach God with these prayers for the people that I love?

First of all, you have access to the king.

Your position in his kingdom, you are a beloved daughter or son of the most high king.

Now, God is the king, he is above all, he is most high.

And when you want to speak to a king, let's focus on that for a minute.

When you want to speak to a king, you must wait until they summon you.

You can't just come to them on your own.

They get to make that decision.

So they must summon you first.

You don't have access to them.

But then, once you are in their presence, once they have summoned you, you still have to wait.

You still can't speak first.

You have to wait for them to speak to you.

And even then, there are certain things that you're allowed to do and say, and how you function in that space.

But when you are a child of a loving father and you're approaching that loving father, that's a different thing completely.

I think of my kids.

My kids are three and six.

And when my husband walks in the door, they run to him.

They grab onto his legs.

They don't actually let him get in the door, they like stop him right in the doorway, and then they like rattle off the list of all the things that they want now that he's home.

They ask for a snack, they ask for a show, they ask to play with him, they ask for him to take them somewhere.

You know, all the things that I could have done for them when and I was right there.

But they come to him because as his beloved children, they have access to their dad.

They're confident that he's gonna receive them with love.

And this is the posture that God has toward us.

He is a good and a loving father.

You are one of his beloved children, and you have access to approach him, to approach the king with everything that you could ever ask or want.

And secondly, how we have confidence in what we're asking for, in this work of intercession.

You are joining in the work of Jesus and the Spirit.

This work of intercession, of praying for others, it's already happening.

Scripture tells us that Jesus and the Spirit are already interceding for us.

So we're gonna flip over to Romans, Romans 8, where it says, Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who's raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

That's the work of Jesus right now.

And a few verses before that, it says, in the same way, the spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray for.

Hear that?

We don't know God's will.

We don't know what we're praying for.

But the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.

So as you walk through life, Jesus and the Spirit are praying for you.

As you sit here right now in this exact moment, Jesus and the Spirit are praying for you.

They're praying for God's people.

They're interceding for us.

And so as we pray on behalf of others, we're just joining in the work that they are already doing.

And the Spirit helps us do it.

He walks alongside us.

The scripture says when we don't know what to pray, the Spirit steps in to guide us.

And Jesus and the Spirit are praying according to God's will.

So we can trust that as we join in, the Spirit is going to lead us in how to pray.

So how do we do it?

We have the invitation.

We have that invitation from Jesus.

And we're growing in confidence.

We have access to God and we're joining in with what Jesus in the Spirit are already doing.

And we most likely already had really great intentions to pray for other people.

So now what?

I have three challenges for us this morning of how to pray for other people.

First of all, be bold in your prayers.

Don't shy away from asking for really big things, things that feel so big.

Can God even do it?

Yes.

Pray those things.

Ask God boldly for these things and small things.

Sometimes we wonder, well, does God even care?

It's so small.

It's just a minor inconvenience in my life.

Pray for it.

God cares.

He says, ask for anything.

The big, big things and the tiny, small things.

Ask him for all of it.

Scripture says that sometimes we don't have things because we haven't asked God for them.

That simply.

I've shared this before, but now we have an answer from the Lord.

And so I want to share this this morning.

And I was excited as I was going through this message to share this with you.

My daughter, who's six, she used to get car sick going to the beach, going over Highway 17.

I don't know if you also get car sick going over to the beach on Highway 17, but many of us do.

And she desperately didn't want to get sick anymore.

She desperately wanted to stop getting sick.

So she boldly asked God to fix that winding road.

Now, if you were a part of our church, if you were a part of our church during like the beginning of COVID when we were online, we had these Sunday morning Zoom prayer gatherings before church would start.

And my daughter was four at the time, and she would pray this on our Zoom calls.

God, would you fix the winding road?

Now to her, this meant, please don't, please let me not get sick anymore.

God, would you take away this car sickness from me?

Now, I have never thought to ask something like that.

But here we were.

Here we were.

And many people on that prayer decided to join us in this prayer and pray for my daughter to stop getting sick on the way to the beach.

And you guys, she doesn't anymore.

She doesn't get sick on the way to the beach anymore.

And that's what God does when we're bold in our prayers, right?

Be bold in your prayers.

Ask God to do things that He might not do if you didn't ask.

Secondly, be specific.

God answers specific prayers.

Our family moved houses in June, and my daughter's biggest hope was that we would be able to walk to school.

And I want you to, for a moment, remember what the housing situation was like back in April, May, June, this time where we were looking for a house.

It was a little crazy, right?

And just finding a rental that was like maybe in our price range and in a really wide area of the map, that felt impossible on its own.

But Ella prayed.

And we enlisted our mama's group here at church.

We enlisted them to pray.

And we were praying for a house where she could walk to school.

And she prayed every day.

She prayed every day, this very specific prayer in church.

We can see her school from our driveway.

God answered this prayer, this very specific prayer of a little first grader and our mama's group coming alongside her.

God answers specific prayers.

So ask specifically for what you want God to do.

And third, be persistent.

There's this story that Jesus tells of a persistent widow in Luke 18.

He tells the story of a widow who keeps coming to a judge to grant her justice.

And the judge is like, no, leave me alone, no, no, no.

And she keeps coming, she keeps coming, and she keeps asking and she keeps asking.

And finally, he's like, okay, I'll say yes, leave me alone.

And Jesus says, God is even better than that unjust judge, right?

He's even better because he is good.

And when we keep coming to him day and night with our prayers, God answers and he brings justice to that situation.

Keep asking.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but in those first two stories about my daughter, she prayed over and over and over and over again.

And then eventually we got to see the answer from the Lord.

So be bold in your prayers, be specific in your prayers, and be persistent.

Keep asking for the things that you're hoping for.

Okay, now I want to share with you three really simple practices that I have implemented into my life to really grow from having just good intentions to pray for people to actually praying for them.

So the first thing that I have done is I enlisted my phone to help me.

And that might sound kind of crazy, but let me explain.

So I already set reminders in my phone for everything.

For meetings so that I make sure that I'm on time, for things that I need to do, especially if they're not today.

And when I need to bring something somewhere, if today is Sunday and I need to bring something somewhere on Thursday, I'm gonna set a reminder in my phone because all you parents know that is not making it to the car between now and then if I don't set some sort of reminder for myself.

So I thought, well, if this works for my to-do list, how well could it work to remind me to pray?

And you guys, this has changed everything for me.

I set reminders to pray on certain days and certain times for different things.

I do this in a few different ways.

First of all, if someone is going through something really hard right now and I know I need to pray for them every day, I'll set a reminder that goes off every single day at the same time.

So then I'm consistently remembering them and remembering to pray for them.

I also have recurring reminders that are weekly reminders.

I set my phone to go off during my drive to work or right before my drive to work.

Okay, don't freak out.

I set it to go off right before I'm about to drive to work with somebody different.

Their name pops up in my phone and their name is on a weekly schedule.

So I have seven different people who pop up on different days of the week.

One of those people is Ryan, because I want to make sure that I am praying over my pastor, that I'm praying for encouragement over him, that I am praying for strength for him, for him to hear from the Lord.

So every Monday morning at 8:30, my phone goes off with a reminder to pray for Ryan.

I enlisted this tool in my phone to help me do that.

And the other way that I use this is by setting one-time reminders.

As I'm talking to somebody who has something big coming up, a surgery, a test, something is happening in their life, a job interview, and I want to remember to pray for them.

I pull out my phone right then and there in front of them.

Also, I tell them what I'm doing so that I don't, you know, so that I'm not just interrupting our conversation by pulling out my phone.

But I pull out my phone and I add it in right in that moment so that there's no way for me to forget on my drive home.

And this reminder, I set it to pop up right as they're doing that thing.

So I ask them what day is it at, what time is it at, so then I can be interceding for them as they're doing it.

And these reminders have really fixed my problem of forgetting, and they help me continually to shift the gravity in my life to the needs of others.

Now, if that's a little too digital for you, and you want to be a little more analog and a little less tied to your phone than I am, another thing that I do that helps me to pray for people is I mentally attach a person to something that I do all the time.

So let me give you an example and lay this out for you.

One of my friends absolutely loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It's one of her favorite foods.

So when I'm making peanut butter and jelly, I'm thinking of her already.

She also has a desire in her life that she's been praying for for years and it hasn't yet come to fruition.

And I have committed to praying alongside her.

Now, my daughter also loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so this is something that I do often.

So as I'm making lunch for my daughter, and it's time to make the sandwich, as I'm pulling out the peanut butter, as I'm getting the jelly, as I'm spreading it onto the bread, as I'm putting all the things away, I'm thinking of my friend and I'm praying for this thing in her life.

Making this peanut butter and jelly sandwich now is always connected to my friend, and it gives me that opportunity to just set that aside and pray for her.

I'm reminded of her and I get to take that time to fulfill the desire in her life, to ask God to fulfill that desire in her life, and also to bring her peace in the waiting.

Now remember, I don't know if God's gonna make that happen.

But what I do know is that he absolutely is gonna bring her peace in the waiting because that's connected to his character and his will.

And lastly, if you don't want to leave that moment without praying, you can just stop and pray for them.

Now, when I said that, you might have freaked out a little bit, and that's okay.

That's okay.

But it's as simple as just saying, can I pray for you right now?

Can I can we just pray right now in this moment?

This might feel super hard and maybe a little awkward the first few times, but how supported and loved would your friend feel to be lifted up to the Lord right then?

How supported and loved would you feel if somebody did that for you?

If some if you were sharing something with somebody and they said, Let me pray for you right now, how supported and loved would you feel?

When we feel helpless, this intercessory prayer, this praying for others, is a powerful way of helping.

So before we run out of here and make our lists of all the people that we want to pray for, or forget to make our lists of all the people that we want to pray for, we're gonna take some time to pray right now, in this moment.

Who in your life do you feel helpless to help?

Maybe this is a friend, a coworker, a family member.

Maybe there's a situation in the world where people are being harmed in some way.

Maybe there's a situation that's really heavy on your heart.

Anything that burdens your heart.

And in your notes, there's a spot where you can write that down to remind you through this week of who you decided to pray for.

Let the Lord speak to you right now.

You can write their name down, you can write their initials down if you want to be a little more sneaky with the people next to you.

You can write the situation down, whatever will help you remember to pray.

But right now, we're gonna take a couple of minutes to silently pray for the people that God is bringing to mind.

How powerful is it for the people of God to join in the work of Jesus and the Spirit by interceding for the people that we love?

So lean in with this.

You are a beloved child of God.

You have access to the king.

His arms are open to you.

He is loving, he's ready to hear all the things that you want.

So take some time to pray.

Take some time to pray for the people in your life who need prayer, who need something from the Lord.

And then the worship team will bring us out of this time with a song.

But if you need longer, if they start singing and you're like, whoa, I wasn't done, feel free to pray right through that time of worship.

And then we'll close it out together by singing to the Lord.

Okay, church, let's pray together.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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