Pray Like a Champion - Week 1

Hello, Go Church family. We are talking about Pray Like a Champion. I'm Lara. I'm here with

Pastor Matt Hadavah. Hey, everybody. And Gilbert. We're so excited to be back here. We wanted

to surprise you with a new voice on the opening of the podcast. They are definitely surprised.

Always Gilbert. So it's lovely to be on Lara's podcast. It's nice to be on Lara's podcast.

Welcome to Lara's podcast. Feel special. This is going to be exciting. I really enjoyed our

discussion last week as we were getting into this subject. So this is going to be good.

Yeah. This subject is such an important subject. It's a broad subject, but it's something that

really helps propel us forward in our walk. We're now off the trail of fear. We're going down the

trail of faith and we're going a little further, a little further, a little further. And of course,

to keep going further, we have to walk with the Lord. We have to hear from him and talk to him and

bring him into our walk. The love solution. So as we get into this series today, I want to say that

this is part one out of three parts for our November series called Pray Like a Champion.

And we're leading into our week one Grow Group. So I'm so excited that we're introducing the

series that we're going to be chatting about in our Grow Group starting this week. I will also

mention that the big Sunday messages are always available on podcast in case you missed them. So

please stay tuned to this channel. And in case you weren't there, please listen in.

And or you want to share it with someone else. That's right. And in case you missed any other

series or you weren't with us, you know, during the series, please go back and listen to them.

There's a lot of there's a lot of life giving truth in the series that we've been covering and

you don't want to miss any of that. But as we as we get into our series, or as we get into

this week's discussion for our series, I want to talk about the purpose of the series. Lara,

could you read out the purpose? Yes. Once you are born again, the Holy Spirit comes to live in us

as our champion, champion helper. That's love. And he comes to activate the characteristics of

the champion in us. That's grow. We can communicate with our heavenly father from a position of

victory and activate our authority as his champions in the earth. That's go, love, grow, go. We want

the Go Church family to act on the reality of our place in Christ individually and corporately as

a church by living a lifestyle of prayer. Outstanding. Wow. That's awesome. Thank you

for coming up with that. Oh, praise God. Yeah, that's, that's really what we're about. And the

reason why we have a purpose is because we do everything on purpose. Yeah, we do everything on

purpose. We also do everything in teams. And just to peel the curtain back here a little bit to let

you know, we build these series in teams and Lara actually has been working very closely with us

actually has been working very closely, helping to craft this series. And it started with a list of

questions, right? So it our series don't they don't have to start with all of the answers.

We start sometimes with just questions that need to be answered. And we talked about last week how

Ciela brought up this amazing verse and from the Greek study that she'd made. And that's just an

example of how we want Go Church to as we grow together to work in teams that feed one another,

that support one another, and then help us fulfill all that God has called us to do.

I'm a big fan of Go Church if you can't tell. I always say Go Church is the best place,

but I'm biased, but it's still the best. Go Church bias. And talking about questions that,

you know, we put down for for the series that, you know, Lara put down a list of questions.

And there are a few that we're going to actually address and discuss. The first question is,

what is prayer? I think that's a good question considering we're doing a series called Pray Like

a Champion. To answer that question, which, you know, is bigger than just this series perhaps,

but I think the answer needs to begin in our key scripture, Luke 18.1. And Luke 18.1 says,

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

The Amplified says that a little differently. It says that they should pray and not,

how does it read? So pray and not give up and lose heart. Lose heart. And you know, you'll see,

you'll see life do that to people. You'll see life bring people to a place where they are ready to

give up, where they're ready to, they've lost their confidence, they've lost their confidence,

they've lost their belief that they're going to make it. And that passage right there tells us that

prayer, whatever it is, is the thing that will keep you from going the wrong way when you come

to that place of failing and losing heart. Yeah. I always feel like, well, at least in my mind,

you know, before I really came to know the Lord, and I really came to understand a lot of these

things, I always felt that prayer is something someone does to make themselves feel better about

a situation they're going through, or like, you know, something they do just to console themselves

or feel like they did something bigger than themselves. You know, maybe it's a bit of a

cynical look, but it's just, I guess, my honest sentiment before that. And I realize that that

caused me to have just such a skewed perception of the word prayer or the act of prayer. And I'm sure

a lot of people have that, you know, knowingly or unknowingly, I'm sure that there's a lot of that

in their minds. But you know, prayer is not something you do for you. That's what we talked

about last week. Meditation is something that you can really do for you, to you. But prayer is

actually communication with someone. And that is the communication that you have specifically

with your father as a New Testament believer. And it's something that, of course, you engage,

you activate, but communication is not a monologue, right? I mean, if I walked up to my wife,

Sela, and I just started talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and walked away,

that's not communication. That's just, she might put it as, this might as well have been an email,

you know? The truth is that communication goes both ways, you know? But in summary of what we

mean when we say prayer, we mean communicating with our father. You know, it means coming to him,

talking to him, and just developing or cultivating a lifestyle of communication.

That's an essential point because if you look at the whole of the scripture is a revelation of who

God is. But the Gospels, and specifically the ministry of Jesus, is to reveal that this awesome

God is our Father. And the essential part of being a born-again follower of Christ is to

get acquainted with and then develop a living relationship with a loving Father.

And sadly, in today's world, there are people that have never had an experience with a loving

Father. They've had bad experiences with fathers who love themselves. Others have had experiences

of absent fathers or nonexistent. But that's why we put the scriptures first over our experience,

and we find the characteristics of the Father. And then we develop a relationship, which we call

prayer. Generally, what we're going to see is there's actually different kinds of prayer

that are defined in scripture, and the definition of those is not for bondage, but is for us to

understand how we talk and communicate with our living, loving Father.

Yep, that's right. So last week, I mentioned that I had these notes, which I have on my iPad,

on my phone, and I put them in two parts, which is part one, God hears me, and part two is I hear God.

And there's so much scripture on that, and I want to share one verse particularly that I like,

and that is Psalm chapter five, verse three. I'm going to read it from the amplified version,

just to lay out this point about I hear Him, He hears me. I just think it kind of

ties it together really, really sweetly. And so Psalm chapter five, verse three in the amplified

says this, in the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice. In the morning, I will prepare a prayer

and a sacrifice for you, and watch and wait for you to speak to my heart. You see, that is a

beautiful picture of prayer. It's an image where I look at you, and I like that He says

in the morning. It's good to communicate with the person you love the most, or the person you value

the most, first thing. And that's something we can do, and we can do on a daily basis. And like

Lara was mentioning last week, you can do this anywhere, anytime. You're not restricted to when

and how often you can do this, but you can just have that relationship where it's you will hear

my voice, and I will direct my voice towards you, and then I'll wait for you to speak to me.

And that's just a beautiful picture of prayer. I want to propose a second point about prayer. So

what is prayer? And I heard the minister say this before, which I really appreciate, and it helps me

think about it clearly. It's if you're going into prayer the same way you're coming out,

it's not prayer, it's just a complaint session. And that's the truth, the communication you have

with your loving father, who also made promises to you, who's also your covenant partner, who is also

a person who made all these promises, and who has absolute power to do everything that he needs to

do to keep you going. If you have a communication lifestyle with that person, and you go in and

communicate with them, and it doesn't change you, then you're not really praying, you're just

nagging, you're just complaining about your situation, and you're not looking at the person

you're talking to, you're looking at the problems and just like a broken record repeating those

problems. So you're actually, you're not praying, you're actually meditating on bad things, you know.

But prayer is supposed to change you. It's supposed to change the outcomes in your life. It's supposed

to create results in your life. Because I'm not going to say prayer has power, but that's not the

right wording, but prayer releases power. So like there's a release of the power of God in my life

when I pray and I invite the Lord into certain places in my life, into certain situations

in my life. There's a very popular passage of scripture in Jeremiah, and that is Jeremiah

Jeremiah 29:11

chapter 29 verse 11. Call on me. And it says, I know the thoughts that I think towards you,

says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil to give you a future and a hope. And people stop

there, you know. But if you keep reading, it says, then you will call upon me and go and pray to me

and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

Verse 14, I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity.

So I'll stop right there, but the thoughts that he thinks towards us and the plans that he has for

our lives, plans for peace and not evil to give us a future and a hope, is directly connected to

the fact that we call upon him. That we reach our hands out to him, that we look for him. And

he says something interesting, you will seek me and find me. It's like, are you hiding? You know?

What does that mean? The fact is that, you know, you need to invite him in to a situation where

he's not visible in that moment to make him visible, to make his promises plain in your life.

So that is what prayer is, right? Prayer is an invitation for God to do something in your life,

to change something in your life. Prayer brings results. That's right. And if you're not

seeing results, then we need to look at more in this series about how to pray like a champion.

Yeah, that's right. I do remember times in my life where I reached a boiling point of frustration

with certain things. And honestly, if I ask the Lord, like, what's going on and this and this and

this, it's just, it's not like, oh, he says, you know, crystal clear. He speaks to my heart and

it's always, you know, have you been praying? Honestly, have you been praying about these

things in your life? Have you been giving them to me? Because right now it just looks like you're

holding on to something and you're complaining. So how about you invite me in and you share these

things with me so that I can do something about it. And that is what we're saying. Prayer is

that is what we're saying. Prayer brings results. Prayer leads to results. Another, I mean, another

question which ties into this is why do I have to pray? We're kind of mentioning it. We kind of

touched upon it, but doesn't, doesn't God already know what's good or what's bad in my life? Doesn't

he already know what's right and what's wrong in the world? Like, why, why do I have to pray?

Well, let's, let's put that same question in a little different context. I know that there are

foods that are good for me and I know that there are foods that are bad. Let's take salted caramel

gelato. It's not good for me. Right. There's actually nothing about that. That's good for me.

And, uh, kale or Swiss chard, you know, the, some green leafy vegetable. That's very good for me.

Right. It's full of vitamins and nutrients and, and it's lots of benefits. So here's something

that's good. Here's something that's not. Um, everyone can understand that, but here's,

here's the point. There's a choice, right? And the choice is not, um, a, it's the choice lies with me.

I have to decide I'm going to choose what's good for me. I'm going to put away what is not. And

prayer is a direct reflection on the fact that God has given us first, he's given us as in the,

the, the creation of man, free will, but then second, um, he has, he has invited us

to work with him in his labor. He's invited us to be co-laborers with him. And part of that

is praying out his plan. And what we see throughout the scripture is though God's plan may be very

clear, it is not automatic. And the easiest way to understand that is the Bible says that it is the

will of God, that not one person would perish, but all would come to the knowledge, the life-saving

knowledge that Jesus is Lord, that God is not holding their sin against them, that God put

their sin in Jesus, that God raised up Jesus from the dead and he ever lives to make intercession

for them, that by believing that in their heart and saying it with their mouth, they can be born

again. That is the perfect will of God for every person. Yet you and I probably know people

who have yet to accept that truth and probably we know some who have rejected it. So the perfect

will of God is clear and we can understand it through the word of God, but we see that it is

not automatic because choice, decisions, and just people's will play a part. And prayer can put me

in a position where I can see God's will and receive from him what he needs me to do in a

particular situation. We are as the church responsible and given an assignment to pray out

God's will in the earth. That's super powerful. Praise God. That's right, not everything that

happens around you is the perfect will of God and that's why we pray, right? There's a reason

to release the power of God in our lives because he wants something better than what we may be

seeing or he wants something better for someone and he needs us to do something about it. So

that goes back to champion, right? We're championing his cause. I want to also mention

another point is that something you shared, Pastor Matt, at the last believers gathering.

There was this big emphasis from the Lord about words and the words that are being spoken and

the words that we as a church should say and we as an individual should be saying. Words matter.

The Bible tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Words contain

power. They contain life. They contain the life of God's spirit. One translation says about John

John 6:63

chapter 6 verse 63 and the funny thing about a container is if it's closed you don't enjoy

what's in it. That's right. You can always laugh about it. You can always laugh about it.

That's right. You can always laugh about that. Obviously if I cook something really garlicky

and I put it in a Tupperware and I just don't seal it right, next thing you know is my wife's

asking me what's going on? Why does the fridge stink? But if I seal it then nothing comes out.

And the point is words can be just that. Can be closed containers that you never take out

and release into the earth. But prayer does just that. So prayer helps us take the word of God.

He put power in and he put life in and our job is to release the container. Allow the power and

the life of God to flow into the world. That's what Pastor Mao was just saying that we are

co-labors. We're co-labors with God. That's such a high thought. That's such a big honor that

the word in Greek in the New Testament is we are synergios. We are in synergy with God. So

he put power in and our job is to release the power. And that is something that prayer does

for us. That's why we have to pray. Especially because we don't see what we're supposed to be

seeing in our lives. I love that illustration. We are the containers and we open the lid. We

open our mouths and speak God's word. That's good. That's amazing. Yes. Praise God. Yes.

Praise God. That's really good. So just since we're talking about it, to take this

a step further, if we look at Matthew chapter 28, this is just before, just as Jesus is being

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

ascended into heaven. And Jesus in verse 19 says, go therefore and teach all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe

all things I have commanded you and I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

Verse 19 says, go therefore. And a good rule of Bible interpretation that I learned a long time

ago from my pastor when I was a little kid is when you see the word therefore, you should identify

why it is therefore. So let's look at verse 18. Verse 18, Jesus came and spake to them, spoke to

them saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. All power. Now that we see in both

Colossians and Ephesians that in the resurrection of Jesus, God put all authority in Jesus.

All. So the authority for anything happening in the world, let's say it another way, the way God's

will is going to be done in the earth has to be through Jesus because God put all the authority

and power in him. And as soon as he gave it to Jesus, Jesus said, you go because of this.

And teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, teaching them to observe all things

I have commanded you and I'm with you. As soon as God invested, empowered,

it crowned the risen Jesus with all power and all authority. He immediately gave it to the church.

Yeah. So during the age of the church, which is the time in which we live and that time is coming

to an end. The way God is going to do things in the earth is through the church and the specifically

the model we have, we see this throughout the gospels and in the book of Acts is that we go

to God in prayer. And in that way we could say it like this. God has limited himself to the church

and its ability to pray out his will. Praise God. Lara silently saying, wow.

You can't see it, but she said, wow. But that's a, that's very powerful. It's a very high thought.

I mean, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to really dig into pray because it's so easy

to look at pray and like me, like I just said, have a loaded assumption of what the word means.

But the more we see, the more we understand that this is a go subject, right? It's not just a love

grow subject. It's a go subject. And the Lord's empowering us to pray so that we can get results.

And I want to, I want to read first John chapter five verses 14 and 15.

And says this, now this is the confidence that we have in him that if we ask anything according to

his will, he hears us. So I'm going to pause right there. If we ask anything according to his will.

So he, so going back to what pastor Magis said, all, all authority in heaven and on earth has been

given to Jesus. And he says, go there for, right? So the go there for literally tells us what his

will is. His will is go there for and do something with the authority that I have. So verse 15.

And if we know that he hears us, well, he does hear us because he told us go there for, and I'm

with you until the end of the age. So if he's with us, he's, he's going to hear us, right?

Whatever we, so verse, verse 15, and if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that

we have the petitions that we have asked of him. I love this verse of scripture because to me,

to me, I can hear John's relationship with the Lord in it. And I don't know if, if you've met

people like this, but there's sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll encounter someone and I just, I recognize,

wow, they, they know him. You know, they don't, there's a lot of people that know about God.

They, they know lots of facts, but sometimes you encounter someone and they have,

they have spent time with Jesus. They, they have become acquainted with the father and

it comes through in what they say. And here John says, you can have confidence. You can have

confidence that if you're asking something that is according to the will of God, he hears you.

And you know that if he hears you, you know, you have what you asked for. Why? Because like for,

for John, you can hear it. That's just who he is. Yeah. John is so convinced of the character of

God that as soon as you ask him something according to his will, you know, it's already done.

You can just put your head down and say, okay, that's finished. And, and we would, we would title

that faith, the prayer of faith, and it certainly is, but it is, it is born out of, or it springs

out of the knowledge of two things, who God is, what he's like and what his will is, what he wants.

You know, so obviously praying against his will or praying something that's not his will,

you know, we've used on the podcast a couple of times the, the reference of James and John, where

they said to Jesus, do you want us to pray that fire will fall down on a village? And I'm happy

to use James and John as that illustration and not my own shortcomings, but that's against God's will.

So that's an example. There's, here's a pretty clear example. Sometimes prayer

comes from a sincere place, but it is against the will of God. But we want to pray, obviously from

a sincere heart, but according to the will of God. And John, you can just, I just love that display

of the confidence he has in God's character. And he says, as soon as you ask him something,

you know he hears you and you know him, if you know him at all, as soon as he, as soon as he hears you,

you know you have it. Yeah. Once you know him, it becomes, it makes more sense. Yes. How to pray,

why you're praying, what you're trying to do. And this is, this is actually something that we're

going to talk about and dig deeper in next week, which is the character of a champion,

prayer. I keep saying prayer. I hope this is coming across right, but one who prays, one who

prays, you know, and we're going to talk about not only aligning ourselves with his word, but aligning

ourselves with his heart. And that's going to help us a lot. And I want to, I want to point back to,

to another, another thing that I was thinking of about this, this question of why do I have to pray?

And it reminds me in Matthew chapter six, where Jesus is talking, he says, I say to you, do not

worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, about your body, you know, the clothes

that you're going to put on. And then he goes on to talk about, describe the birds of the air.

And you know, they don't, they don't sow nor, nor reap nor gather into barns, nor store up, nor think

about things, but still your heavenly father feeds them. You know, I heard, I heard it said by a

minister that there are more bananas falling to the ground in the jungle than there are monkeys

to eat them. You know, and that's true. There's, there's just an abundance in, in the world. And

he, you know, Jesus goes on to talk about, don't worry about clothes. Why are you worried about

clothes? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. And, and yet, you know, not, not even

Solomon all his glory was arrayed like one of these, like even the richest man in history was

not dressed as beautifully as the grass of the fields. And your father already knows what you

need, you know, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. All of all these other things

will be added onto him. And then a few verses down, you kind of don't notice this because the next

chapter, but then he says, he goes on to say, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find

knock and it will be open to you. And if this is in the same passage, you know, these things are

connected. And so on one hand, he's saying, don't worry, why are you thinking about it? Why are you

thinking about this? And on the other hand, he tells you, seek, you know, ask and knock and this

will all be open and revealed to you. And to me, this suggests this one thing, which is based on

knowing the character of God now and knowing about prayer, knowing about the power of words.

We're not really, so we're not praying to tell God what we want to know. We're not praying to

tell God what we need because he already knows what we need. We're actually praying to release

something that he already gave us into our lives. You know, so he already knows what we need. He

tells us not to worry. He tells us that he has all these things sorted out, all these provisions

required for our lives. He tells us not to worry about them, not to think about them, not to dwell

in them, not to hold on to them. But he does tell us to ask and seek and knock. And these things

get revealed to us and these things are open, opened up to us. And these things are delivered

to us. So we're not praying to tell God what's wrong. We're praying to allow him to release

something into our lives that is required. And that is such an important image for me

when I'm praying. When we were at Rayma and we were hearing

Pastor Brad share, he said when he prays, he does the look left, right?

Yes.

I love that.

Pastor Matt, can you tell us what that is?

Well, I should first say that Rayma is a Bible training college that's here in Beirut. And

that's what you're referencing. And we had a visiting guest instructor. He's actually the

director of Rayma Bible Training College in Norway. But he made a comment about the way he prays. And

from Ephesians chapter two, verse six, Ephesians chapter two, verse six says,

and God raised us, that's me and you and Pastor Brad, God raised us up together, together with

Jesus and made us sit together with Jesus at the right hand of God. And so what his point was, in

prayer, what you want to do is remember that you're not like way down, way down, thousands and

thousands and thousands of meters below the throne of God. No, you're seated with Jesus at God's right

hand. And so you just look left to see him.

Yeah. I love it.

Such a nice image.

Yes.

Wow. Praise God. Well, we don't have much time left for this week, but what I do want to do is

introduce the Bible illustration that we're going to be talking about and digging deeper into during

our grow groups. And the passage that we're going to refer to is in Acts chapter 12. And the verses

Acts 12 · chapter mention

are one through to 17. If you notice Acts chapter 12, verse five is actually the scripture that we

Acts 12 · chapter mention

get the title for the series from, which is Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer

or in the NLT, it's prayers, earnest prayers were given, was offered to God for him by the church.

Yeah.

And so let's give some context here rather than reading through all of this. I'm sure that

you're going to have time to read through this before the grow groups and during the grow groups.

But basically there's a point in time where Herod the king was persecuting the church and going

after the leaders of the church. And what he did was he imprisoned James, who was the brother of

John. So there were three disciples that were arguably the closest to Jesus. And that was James

and his brother, John and Peter. And there were times where Jesus would go to certain places,

with them, those three by himself. And so you consider them somehow the inner circle of the 12th.

And basically he imprisons James and he, what is it? He kills James, the brother of John with the sword.

Yeah. So Herod, his official title was king. He gave himself that title. So he was not

an official monarch. He just, he took that title to himself. Herod was an appointed leader

by the Romans. And so Rome governed the land of Judea that Jesus and the gospels kind of occupy

through two particular, through two leaders. One is Pontius Pilate, who we see featured

in the crucifixion passion of Jesus, but then also Herod. And Herod was responsible. They

sort of divided both in territory, but then also they divided different responsibilities.

The way to think about Herod though is he's like a gangster. I mean, that's how we would refer to

him today. He's someone that has managed to find a political appointment through

very corrupt means. And you can look that up. That's not a secret. That's public knowledge.

And so Herod was a political animal, always trying to curry favor. And it says that he arrested James

and had him beheaded. They cut his head off. And he found that it pleased the Jews. Well,

that was very important to him because he's holding onto power. It's a very,

political place. It was a very tense, very tense time. And there was a real possibility,

and this ended up happening, that Rome was just going to come in and wipe out the place. And that

happened in 70 AD. But the reason for that is there was always uprisings. So Herod, the king,

he likes being the king. And so he's always trying to create favor. And he found by persecuting

these church leaders that, hey, this is pleasing. Everyone really liked it when we crucified Jesus.

I'm going to kill this guy, James. Well, when he killed James, one of my favorite stories is about

the beheading of James, which I won't take time to share now, but you can look it up for yourself.

It's not in the Bible, but it's in church history. And everyone liked it. So Herod had Peter arrested.

And that's the context of Acts chapter 12. So it's almost a certainty. It is an absolute certainty.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

That Peter, you know, that's probably going to happen next, right? And so, yes. And so the reason

why it doesn't happen immediately is because Herod wants to make a show of it. And how do you make a

show of it? You have to let people know. So they're announcing it, hey, this is happening tomorrow

in such and such place. Come see. And sadly, at this time, public executions was

really popular entertainment. So it is a certainty that Peter is going to be beheaded.

He's not waiting for trial. They're waiting for a crowd.

And so the context of the story is, you know, with all that in mind, understanding the circumstances

that Peter finds himself in. He's basically in jail and waiting for this.

How different is this Peter in Acts chapter 12 versus the one we looked at in Trails of Thought

Acts 12 · chapter mention

where, you know, he and the other disciples are like, don't you care? We're going to burn you.

Different person. He's in the boat in the middle of the storm. He's like, we're going to die.

And new Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter already knows James has been beheaded is asleep.

And I think that that's an important point here because we're so asleep that the angel didn't just show up yet to hit him.

Because we're talking about prayer. We're actually talking about champion prayer that's being offered in this context.

When you read the story, this they're they're persevering in prayer for Peter. But Peter is he's asleep.

So I think that that's just worth mentioning.

The people that we're talking about praying are the are the church members, the not apostles.

Right. They're the ones that have come to faith as a result of the work of the apostles.

They are praying for Peter. Yeah. So what actually happens is Peter's in this jail cell, fast asleep.

And in another place far away. Well, I might say far away, but probably across town, there are prayers being offered up.

So the church is persevering, earnestly praying, praying like champions for Peter.

And he's asleep. And suddenly an angel of the Lord shows up. He's still asleep.

So he has to get hit to be woken up. And sure enough, these supernatural series of events cause Peter to leave the jail and go back to the house.

When he goes back to the house, he's knocking at the door and these guys are still praying and they're like, ah, is that Peter?

No, really? Is that it?

You know, I'm just going to leave that there because I think it's a good discussion during Grow Groups.

But I do have a few questions around it. So if Peter and James were both in the same situations, how come Peter got out of it?

And the group of believers. What does what does earnestly praying look like?

So what would that have looked like in during that time or that night?

And question number three, what would have happened if they didn't pray?

Like, what would have happened in that situation? Could it have been different?

And question number four is what happened when Peter came to the house and why did they react the way they reacted?

So the the fourth question is, I mean, each some of these we would have to apply some supposition to answer the specific things, but we can find scripture to answer the principle.

But the fourth point, which what you're referring to there and you'll you'll see this when you read it in the and discuss it in the Grow Groups.

But when Peter shows up, he's knocking at the door. First, they don't answer. Then they're like, oh, they're it's like an angel is out there.

It's not actually him. They didn't think it was him. And Peter's like banging on the door, which I would imagine if I was Peter and be like.

At some point, they're going to come looking for me. So open the door.

But the fourth point of like, why did they react that way?

I think gives us a window into why a lot of times I see people drop their prayer and leave the place of confidence.

And that is. I would guess that the people that were earnestly praying probably had an imagination of what their answer looked like.

That's good. They probably thought, I bet if we pray, God will change the heart of Herod and and he'll announce his release and they'll let him go.

Because they didn't think, oh, well, probably an angel will just open the doors supernaturally and his chains will just fall off supernaturally.

That wasn't that wasn't in their in their realm of thinking. So the only way their prayer can be answered is through this particular imagined series of events.

So sometimes we will see people not again.

If you're listening to this podcast, you don't do this, but you probably know someone that will imagine how God is going to answer the prayer.

Like, Lord, I want the doctor's report to be good.

You know, when I go to the doctor tomorrow and then the doctor's reports like everything is good, except for this one this one thing.

What's happened? What happened? What? Maybe maybe I have some open doors in my life that I need to go and work or the prayer didn't work or I need to go find someone more anointed to pray.

Pray for me. And this kind of like what I would refer to.

And I don't mean this in a bad way against people that fall into these traps, but that's very silly.

The point is, God can bring an answer to what we're praying for in a million different ways.

That's good. And these guys, they just weren't expecting Peter to just show up at three o'clock in the morning.

How did you get out? There's one source of power, but many channels. That's right.

Yeah, that's good. So in closing our discussion for the fourth time,

what we're going to do this week is Laura is going to read out action points that we're going to carry through every single week.

We encourage you to do these during the grow groups and share what you've done on these action points during the grow groups and also as individuals.

Right. We want to cultivate a daily lifestyle of what we're talking about.

So, Laura, could you please read the week one action?

Yeah. So write down three verses that you can pray for yourself over a particular circumstance that you are going through.

For example, like prayer for peace, confidence, wisdom, whatever you need.

That's good. Yeah. So we encourage you to find those scriptures.

How would we find them? How would we find them?

Well, I would give you what I do. I would look.

I would Google it first and then find the common verses that talk about, let's say, fear.

I did this in particular when the earthquake happened back in February.

So I was I felt like I was paralyzed by fear and I couldn't even sleep some nights.

So what I did is I looked up verses over that speak about do not fear.

And then I started meditating and praying over myself.

And each day passed, I felt that I slept better and they simply work.

Praise God. Yes.

Yeah, I think that's a that's a great way we can use a tool that most all of us have access to.

And you can just Google verses on wisdom, New Testament verses on faith, New Testament verses on.

And you'll find a host of things. Yeah.

Please go Bible Gateway dot com is a great reference option as well.

So you can actually search the life Bible dot com.

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