Four Passages I Want To Shape Our Church - Habakkuk 3:2 - Coleton Segars

It's good to see all of you.

My name's Colton.

If we have not had the opportunity to meet yet, if you're new here, we're thrilled that you're here with us.

Yeah, grateful to be here.

I'm going to read the teaching text for today, which is really just one verse.

And then we're going to make our way through that text today as we as we do this.

So let me read this for us.

Well, let me start by just saying last week, and really for the month of November, what we've wanted to do is just look at four different passages.

And I think that's the way we're going to go, four different passages that we just hope to shape the life of the church.

We love this church.

We've loved this church from afar for a number of years.

But just in looking at the future and looking at ahead for a new season, just looking at certain passages in the scripture that mean a ton to me and to Rainey and our lives in general and just what we believe the church can be about and want it to be about.

We want to look at those passages and just pray and hope that those things shape the nature of what we do together.

And so last week we looked at Matthew 11, where Jesus says, Come to me and I will give you rest.

And then this week we're looking at Habakkuk 3.2.

Habakkuk is this very small, minor prophet in the Old Testament.

But it's a wonderful, wonderful uh book.

So Habakkuk 3.2 says this.

He prays, Oh Lord, I've heard of your fame.

I stand in all of your deeds, Lord.

Repeat them in our day and in our time, make them known.

This is the word of the Lord.

There's this quote that's really a rather heavy quote that kind of haunts me as I think about raising my son inside the church.

And I want to read it to you, and again, just prefacing by it, it's a it's a it's a like a stern quote.

Okay.

This is what he says.

It says the reason that most churches fail to engage the younger generation, especially boys, is that the vision of a good Christian man that is presented to young people today is basically of a bored, middle-aged father trying not to look at porn, having occasional bad sex and a loveless marriage, completely overwhelmed with the obligations and responsibilities of life.

Where's the wildness?

Where's the passion?

Where's the wonder?

And that's John Tyson is a pastor in New York commenting on and summarizing a book by Jack Donovan called The Way of Men.

And Jack Donovan's not a Christian, just a secular man, looking from the outside, looking into the church, and really just commenting on his experience inside the church and then what he also has seen with the church's ability to capture the minds of young people, especially young men.

And so I read that, heard that, and just, you know, there's so much of my, I want my son to love Jesus and to be captivated in wonder by him.

Because I think what's crazy is like if you read the scriptures, you you see things where Paul says there is incomparable power, there's incomparable power for us who believe.

And then Paul says again that the same power that raised Christ from the dead in Romans 8 uh lives in us.

Same power that raised Christ from the dead.

So some the power that can raise a dead man to life lives in us.

And then he goes on to say that like we don't fight with the weapons of the world, the weapons we fight with in this world have the power to break strongholds, and then Jesus himself would say the words like, Whoever believes in me will do the works that I've been doing, and he'll do even greater things than those.

And so it's confusing to have this space where the church has difficulty captivating the minds of young people, and yet it there seems to be something that we have that no one else has.

We seem to have power that the world just can't touch and have anything to do.

And so somehow the archetype that's presented to young people, especially young boys, is just a boring way of going about the Christian faith.

And I don't think it was ever supposed to be that way.

I don't think that was the way that church was supposed to be.

I don't think that Christian men were supposed to, that was supposed to be like that's the good Christian man.

I don't think it was ever supposed to be that way.

I think if you read about David and Moses and all these different people in the in the scriptures and the the disciples and early on, like you see something that's captivating, you see something that's really beautiful.

And so I think somewhere along the way, we stopped experiencing the church, stopped experiencing the power of God and the presence of God, and instead of going, why?

Why aren't we experiencing the things that the scriptures suggest that we should be experiencing instead of asking why?

We just kind of were like, Well, this will just make this the new normal.

And so it led churches to, you know, let's get fancier lights and fog machines and let's try and do something to captivate the minds of people out there, and instead of having the power of God on display in their lives and in the midst of their marriages, in the midst of everything that they're doing, they they turned to other means to try and create something captivating for people.

And I don't think our experience was ever supposed to be powerless.

I don't think it was ever supposed to be that way.

Um a couple of years ago, Rainey and I took uh Teddy to uh the City Museum in St.

Louis.

Have y'all heard of this?

Um and it's I mean it's this multi-level huge playground that like slides are going through the roof of something, and then you can go outside and there's an outdoor playground, there's an indoor playground.

I mean, the whole thing is gigantic.

And so we took Teddy to this thing because we're like, he's gonna love it.

He's he's three or four years old, he's gonna love this thing.

So we get in there and like you can just you can run wild, you can go play.

And uh he goes into this first spot and he like gets on his hands and knees and crawls up into this thing, and he gets stuck because he gets scared.

We actually have a picture uh of where he got stuck.

Uh that's him.

Um but he got stuck.

The the the interesting thing is like to his left and to his right are like wonders and glory beyond compare.

But like he just got stuck right there.

And if it's a live photo, if I could play it, he's saying, Come get me, is this all there is?

Like, I hate this.

Is this all there is?

And I was like, this is this is nowhere close to all there is.

Like, you've chosen a spot.

He stayed there for 30 minutes, and I was like, There's a slide right there, there's a rock wall right there.

All you have to do is choose one.

Like, just don't stay here, and you can experience something far greater.

If you've ever been there, like you know, that is not all there is.

And yet, if you choose to stay in this cage that you built for yourself, you're gonna be like, I hate the city museum.

There's nothing good for me here.

And I feel like that when I watched this happen, I was like, this can be the way that we think about the Christian faith.

And it's like, well, all we think that there is, is like I just need to do a few good things, follow the rules, give some money to the church, try and go to church, and then I just wait for death and then heaven.

And it's like, man, like there's something better, and I think there's more.

I don't think this is all there is.

I think there's something where we're supposed to be experiencing the incomparable power towards us who believe.

I think there's something to be rich and ripe within us that's supposed to be our experience that we're just not actually experiencing.

And so this passage for me, Lord, I've heard of your fame.

I stand in all of your deeds.

Would you repeat those in my day?

At my time, would you make them known?

This passage for me has stirred my wonder for what's possible.

And for Habakkuk, it was a space of going, like, I know what's possible.

I've heard what you've done, I know what's possible.

I'm just not seeing it in my time.

And what this passage has done for me over the past six years, eight years has just been a space where it's given me permission to believe again, even though I'm not experiencing those things, doesn't mean that they don't exist and then they don't exist for my time.

Because it was true for Habakkuk.

He's going, I'm not experiencing the things that made you famous before, but I want to.

And Spurgeon, I don't have this quote, but Spurgeon, uh, Charles Spurgeon, this preacher in uh Great Britain, he says, This is the most beautiful prayer that's ever been prayed, and we should all use it.

Lord, I've heard of your fame, I've heard what you can do.

I just need to see it in my time.

And so what I want for us is I want this passage to be the heart cry of our church to go like, I'm not experiencing your power in my marriage, I'm not experiencing your power in my in my kids' lives, I'm not experiencing your power in my work life, I'm not experiencing your power in healing my body, I'm not experiencing those things, but I long for it and I want it.

Because I think there's something to that that he's actually chasing down here that I think we should chase down as a church.

And we shouldn't just capitulate and go, well, I'm not experiencing, therefore it doesn't exist.

I don't want that.

I think it leads to a boring church and it leads to a church trying to figure out other ways to try and get people in the door, versus like we can just live and experiencing the power of God in our time for ourselves.

And so what I want to do today is look at three characteristics that exist in Habakkuk that I want to exist in us as well.

Okay, so three things about him that I'd love to shape us as well, us personally, and then us as a church.

The first one is Habakkuk has a high view of God.

A high view of God.

Lord, I've heard of your fame.

I stand in awe.

He's just this high view of him.

Like you are amazing.

You're incredible.

And in so many ways, like he's exactly like us.

Like he's only heard of the fame.

Like Red Sea splitting, never seen that.

Um, raising dead things to life, never seen that, earthquakes, you know, all the different things that you've done in order to like ravage armies and like never seen that.

Like for him, he's like, I've only heard of the powerful stuff that you can do.

But for him, what it led him to was like, but that's what's possible for us.

Like it for him, he's like, I've heard of this stuff and I want that for me.

And I think for us, it's very difficult because we can hear the same stories over and over and the same Easter story over and over.

And it doesn't lead us to all and wonder, it can just lead us to just being bored with the same story.

It's like we talk about the resurrection every single Easter, we talk about the incarnation, every single Christmas, we talk about these stories.

Like I've heard that story before, and it's like right, but we've grown bored with someone who was dead that came back to life.

We've grown bored with something that's supposed to stir all and wonder.

And I think for for us, the difference in in most churches, and maybe in your life and in mine, we can hear the same stories over and over again can lead us to just go, these are just tall tales with good morals.

Instead of going like, these are testimonies that tell us this is what's possible, this is what's available with him.

These are the things that, like, when we read that stuff in the Old Testament and the New Testament, all these things, like, they're not just good moral stories.

They're they're they're testimonies are like, this is what's available for us.

And for Habakkuk, he has heard the stories of the Exodus, he has heard the stories of what God did through King David, he has heard the stories, and he's like, and I am blown away at the opportunity of what exists with you than what exists anywhere else.

I've quoted this before, um, and I'll do it again, uh, but I think it's very important for us to consider.

A.W.

Tozer says, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

For this reason, the gravest question before the church is always God Himself and what we, deep in our hearts, conceive God to be like.

Because we tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.

We move toward the image of God that we have.

And so if we don't think things are possible for him, if we don't think that he can do impossible things, the idea is we're not going to chase him down and ask for those things because we don't believe that he can do that stuff.

We'll turn to everything else and try to find help for ourselves outside of God versus going to him because we don't believe either he doesn't want to, he's not willing, he's not eager, or he just can't because he's impotent and not omnipotent.

And the issue with that is like how how we view him and how we see him ultimately shapes what we chase after.

And so you actually see that the however you view God, like the expectation that you have for him, you see how it shapes our lives.

You see it specifically like with Jesus in Mark 6, he goes to his hometown and um expecting to do miracles there, like anywhere else.

He's been healing sick people, driving out demons, doing all kinds of stuff.

And then he goes to his hometown and they they take offense at him and like, aren't you the carpenter?

Like, you that's our expectation of you.

You're just the carpenter's son, and you're a carpenter yourself.

That's that's what we you can maybe you know fix a saddle or some shoes or maybe maybe a table or something like that, but like you can't do anything special.

And it says that he was unable to do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

They just didn't, they had a low expectation of what he could do, and so they didn't bring the sick to him.

They didn't bring the demon-possessed to him because they're like, what could the carpenter do in this situation?

And so, because they had such a low view, they didn't run throughout the town like all the other towns and like grab every sick person you can possibly find and bring them to Jesus.

They didn't do any of that.

And so it says that Jesus didn't do many miracles there.

He was only able to lay hands on a few sick people, and it was those people that actually went to him and was like, I know who you are.

I want what you have.

And so the idea that's presented is like if we don't, if we don't expect a lot from God, if we don't expect a lot from him, we won't experience a lot from him because we won't choose to go to him for those things.

And so the expectation and what we actually view that is possible for him is very, very significant.

It's very, very important.

There's this passage in Mark 5 where there's a woman struggling with an issue of blood, she's been struggling for 12 years, and um, she just she just has this expectation of Jesus that if I touch the hem of his garment, I will be healed.

And and then it says that so she goes and touches the hem of his garment and is healed.

But like, there's there hasn't been any, like, this isn't a ministry thing where like they just pass the hem of his garment around and he's been like this has never happened before.

Jesus just makes good on her expectation.

And so her expectation, I'm not saying that like if we just expect God to give us a million dollars, he'll just do it.

I'm not saying that.

But it leads her to chase down this thing, like, you are so powerful that I bet if I just get close to you enough, I'll experience what I'm longing for.

And it leads her to action, it leads her to ultimate experience.

Her expectation is met by Jesus Himself.

And I think there's something to this for us.

I think we need to have a view of God that, like, I stand in all of what's possible with you.

I've heard the stories and I just stand in all of those things.

We need to know that he can heal our marriages, the spaces where we're not reconciled, like he can actually do that.

He cares about your covenant more than you care about your covenant.

Because he's a covenant-keeping God.

He was there when you made the covenant, whether you believe in him or not.

Like he created this union, and to him, he's like, I care more about your marriage than than than you do.

And we need to believe that he can actually do that.

We need to believe that he can still change hearts of our kids or the people in our lives that we want.

We need to believe that those things are possible.

We need to believe that he still fights for us, that he can still heal, that he can still and wants to answer prayers, that his grace is still sufficient for us.

When we struggle with something and we're dealing with it, we're walking through it, we need to believe again that's like, oh, he can provide grace to help us navigate through those things and to deal with those things.

He still breaks strongholds, he still breaks addictions, he still does that stuff, and he still wants to do those things.

I think for Jesus, this is why he wants us to become like little children.

He's like, I want this constant childlike wonder to be in your hearts and in your minds so that you never grow out of believing that I can still do impossible things, and I love to do those things.

And that's why he says you need to become like little children in order to enter into and experience the kingdom of God for yourselves.

And so for us, Habakkuk has this childlike wonder of God.

Like I've heard the stories, I stand in awe of what's possible with you.

And it leads him to stand in wonder of this person, and I want that for us.

I want us to constantly always not just sing the songs and do the things, but just stand in awe of what's possible.

To walk into church and go, like, I don't know what he'll do today, but he can do anything that he wants, and I wonder what he'll do today.

I want that for us.

Okay, that's the first thing.

Second thing Habakkuk has that I want for us is that he has this hunger for more, this hunger for more than what he's currently experiencing.

So his expectation is like, I've heard of the cool stuff you did.

I want the cool stuff for myself.

Like that's really great back then, but right now I need it for myself.

So he says, repeat those things in my day and my time, make them known.

His high view of God leads him to hunger for more than what he's currently experiencing.

A.W.

Tozer, again, uh just talks about the idea that hunger really matters to God, that he responds to our hunger.

He says, I want to do deliberately to encourage a mighty longing after God.

The lack of it has brought the church to our present low estate.

The stiff and wooden quality about our spiritual lives is a lack of holy desire.

Complacency is a deadly foe for all spiritual growth, but acute desire must be present, or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people, because he waits to be wanted.

He waits to move until he's wanted.

And the idea is people will experience different things from this God that we believe in based on their desire for him.

And I'm not saying that they earn it, because anything that he does for us is unearned, it's a gift.

But there is something different to the fact that like he does respond to being wanted and he does respond to hunger.

And we see this throughout the scriptures all the time.

So Israel is enslaved in the Exodus.

You know, during that, or in the book of Exodus, they're enslaved in Egypt, and they start crying out to God and crying out to God, and it says that they he they heard his.

We just go to the next slide here.

Do we have it here?

Go to the next slide, yeah.

Cries out, and then in Exodus 2, 23 through 24, like it says that their cries came to God's ears and he heard and then began responding.

And in the book of Judges, the people of Israel are constantly doing bad stuff and saying, God, we don't want you.

And he's like, Okay, I'm not gonna force my presence on you.

If you don't want me, that's fine.

But then they run off and do their own thing, life gets hard for them, and every time they turn around and go, Okay, God, it's going really badly, we want you now.

He's like, and then he responds to that wanting every single time.

It's like, we want you.

He responds every single time.

He's like, we don't want you.

He's like, okay, fine.

You can, if you don't want me, you don't have to have me.

But if you want me, I'm ready to turn and help you whenever you need it.

Constantly responding to this.

2 Chronicles 16, 9 says, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro from over the earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are committed to him.

And what he's saying is, like, he wants to show himself strong in our lives.

Like he's like, I can't wait to do this.

I'm just looking for someone who actually has a heart that wants me to do those things.

I'm not gonna force my power on you, I'm not gonna force my presence in your lives, I'm not gonna force any of this stuff, but it's available to you if you want it.

Uh C.S.

Lewis says that he cannot ravish, he can only woo.

He's not gonna just constantly push things into your lives, but he's like, but it's available if you want it.

And this is what he's saying for us, Hebrews 11:6, anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11:6

There's something different between those who earnestly seek God and those that are just like, ah, I'm okay.

And he's like, it's I guess it's fine if you're like, I'm okay, I don't really want that.

But he's like, there's something available for you if you earnestly seek him.

There's something different.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

That's what James 4.8 says.

And you see the same truth in Jesus' life.

There's this space where uh blind Bartimaeus runs, or he's blind, so he doesn't run to Jesus just yet, but he calls out to him and he's like, I want you, Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, will you listen to me?

Will you anything?

And everybody tells him to shut up and he doesn't shut up, he gets louder instead.

And Jesus responds to this man's, he says he stops.

Jesus stops and responds to this man calling out to him.

But then Jesus goes to another space in Mark 5, and they're like, hey, we don't want you here.

That was a cool miracle, but we don't want you.

We want you to leave.

And he's like, Okay.

I'll give you what you want.

I respond to want and I respond to lack of want.

If you don't want me here and the work that I want to do, I'm not going to force it.

And this is something that's available to you, but not something I'm going to force on you.

Hunger matters to God.

He's not going to just sit there and just, you know, just force things into your life.

I think he'll pursue us and chase us down with goodness, but he's never going to force goodness into our lives if we don't want it.

But I think more than anything, it's like, but the hunger of it, the want of it, he waits to be wanted.

There's a great quote on the importance of hunger from the iconic movie Rocky III.

So I want to read it to you, but um, Rocky wants to fight Kleber Lang, Mr.

T, and Mickey's like, no, he'll kill you, you can't do that.

And Rocky's like, why?

Why can't I fight you?

And he says this, and I'm not gonna read it like Mickey, because, you know.

But he says, this guy's a wrecking machine, and he's hungry.

And you ain't been hungry since you won that belt.

Three years ago, you were supernatural, you were hard and nasty, you had a cast iron jaw, but then the worst thing happened to you that could happen to any fighter, you got civilized.

And I think there's something to that in the church.

Like, I think the worst thing that could happen to any fighter is for you to lose your hunger.

And I think the worst thing that could happen inside of a church is for a church to lose its hunger for God Himself.

Just to be like, I don't, I can just do it on my own.

I don't need the power of God.

I can just do my own stuff.

We're pretty technical, technologically, we're pretty savvy, we're pretty good.

We have our own money, we have our own stuff.

I don't need your work anymore, I don't need your power anymore.

I've grown to a space where I'm independent of you, and I think it's the worst thing that can ever happen to a Christian, is for us to just go, I don't, I don't need anymore.

I'm not, I'm civilized, I can just do it myself.

Because I think as soon as we get to that space where we're like, I can do it myself, and we stop longing for that and stop doing that, he's just not going to force it on us.

He's gonna say, Okay.

And I think for us, what I want our church to have is just this hunger for him.

I'm just going, like, I'm not experiencing, or I want to experience more than what I currently am.

And I think that's available to us in our time.

The fame and deeds of God are available to us in our time.

If we want them and if we want to see those things take shape, I think these things are available to us.

I think that the way that we experience God's power and God's presence in our lives will not be determined by whether he's powerful enough or if he still does that type of thing, because a lot of people think that, like he doesn't do powerful things anymore.

That's not true.

Read the Bible, that's not true.

He still does powerful stuff.

He still wants to do those things.

But the way that we experience those things, and to in a large part will be dictated by the fact that whether you want it or not, whether you actually want to see those things happen in your lives.

And again, it's not because we earn it, but because The scriptures testify to the fact that he responds to being wanted.

He responds to our desire for him.

And so I want us to have this hunger and to have this desire to look around our community, our church, our spaces, and go, I'm not seeing it here.

This is what Habakkuk's doing.

I'm not seeing your wonders here.

I'm not seeing your power here.

And I want those things and I want to see those things happen.

Okay, and the third one that Habakkuk has is he has this belief that prayer changes things.

This really strong belief that prayer changes things.

So the first is like he just has this like this awe and wonder of him that leads him to hunger for those things in his time.

And what he turns himself to is like, so I'm just gonna pray until the power comes.

I'm just gonna just pour into this thing because I believe that prayer actually moves the hand of God.

His view is that God still does those things and he just needs to pray for them.

Now, in my experience with the church and Christianity and all of it, when I talk about the fact that prayer changes things, I am normally met by well-meaning Christians who have a bunch of different ways of saying, no, it doesn't.

And so what I want to do in the last you know point here is just give you like all the different things that people say.

When I say prayer changes things, all the different red flags that pop up in your mind or that I've experienced, I just want to like, no, it doesn't, and here's why.

I want to and then respond to those things.

Here's the reasons why people think prayer does nothing, and then I give a response to that.

And so that's what I want to do.

Because in my experience, again, when I say like prayer is powerful, it changes stuff, it shifts stuff, it moves things around, and God has given that to us.

People get a little nervous about that.

And so I just want to address the nervousness in the room.

If you feel it in your heart and not in your face, that's fine.

But I just want to address some of these things, okay?

All right.

One of the reasons people say that prayer does does not work is that uh God is not a man that changes his mind, and they quote this verse.

If you ever read Numbers, you ever read the Bible, people think, well, he says, God is not a man who changes his mind.

Okay, that's one of the reasons.

Where I take issue with this is one, it doesn't take into account all the times that God actually does change his mind.

Uh so for instance, uh, this happens with Moses, it happens with Jonah and the people of Nineveh, it happens with Israel in Egypt, Israel in the wilderness, Israel in the book of Judges, Israel in the promised land, King Hezekiah and his illness, King Ahab, Israel in exile.

Prayer actually changes his mind quite a bit.

People turn to him and say, like, I don't want you to do that, could we do something else instead?

And he's like, Okay.

It seems to actually, and so to say that like he's not a man who doesn't change his mind, he seems to change his mind quite a bit.

The second and more substantial issue that I have with this is what is being said here about God is I have made a promise to bless Israel.

And so I'm not a man who breaks his promise.

I'm a person who keeps his promises and is faithful.

And so if I've promised it, I'm not gonna start cursing Israel because I've promised to bless them.

That's what that means.

And so people go, he's not a man who changes his mind.

It's like, well, he's saying, I'm not a man who lies.

I don't make a promise and then break my promise.

That's what he says.

And so when people quote this to me and say he's not a man who changes his mind, I actually turn it back on them and go, this is actually why we should pray.

Because if he's not a man who lies about his promises, what this means is all the promises that exist in the Bible about prayer, that he's going to carry those things on to completion, that he's going to be faithful to do those things.

So, for instance, when he promises that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, we can go, oh, he promised that prayer is powerful and effective.

And so we can we can hold on to that.

When he promises that he rewards those who earnestly seek him, that you have not because you ask not, this when he promises those things, we can actually take it to be real for us and go, this is why we should actually pray, because he is true to his promises.

And he has promised that prayer can shift things and is powerful and can move things.

And so when he's promised those things, we can just hold on to that.

And so that's the first one.

People say God's not a man changed his mind.

That's not what that means.

All right, next one.

Some people think God is gonna do whatever he's gonna do, whether I pray or not.

To me, this is not the worst, um, but maybe the worst, one of the worst lies that I think the church believes.

Like my prayers do nothing, and so why even pray?

If he's gonna do whatever he's gonna do anyways, why pray?

Um, to this, uh, Dallas Willard, pastor, philosopher, uh, professor says this.

He goes, God's response to our prayers is not a charade.

He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway.

Our requests really do make a difference in what God does and does not do.

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does, regardless of whether we pray or not, makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.

And of course, God does not respond to dead rituals.

And I love that idea.

Like it would make it, if if God was telling us, hey, you need to pray, it does nothing, it would make it so difficult.

And I think for many of us, that's why prayer is difficult for us.

We're like, what is this actually doing?

Is this actually gonna do something?

We find it very, very difficult, not because it's a hard, it's actually one of the easiest things for us to do.

You don't need anything to do it.

You don't need money to do it, you don't need people to do it.

You can just literally right now, I could bow my head, close my eyes, and you don't even have to do that.

You could just start praying.

Like it's the easiest thing to do, and we find it the hardest, and I think one of the reasons is because we think if I do it, it's not gonna change anything.

And it makes it this dead ritual that we just do, and that's not true.

I love what Sky Jathani says.

He says that we are not merely passive set pieces in a prearranged cosmic drama, but we are active participants with God in the writing, directing, design, and action that unfolds.

Prayer, therefore, is much more than asking God for this or that outcome.

It is drawing into communion with him, and they're taking up our privileged role as his people.

In prayer, we're invited to join him in directing the course of the world.

I want that vision of prayer for you, and I want that vision of prayer for our church.

It is, he is he is inviting us into this space of directing and crafting and creating.

Uh Pete Greg says the the hinge of human history, the hinge of human history is the bended knee.

Like that we have this space that Jesus has has invited us into when he at the Great Commission, where he says, like, all authority now has been given to me on heaven and on earth.

That's been given to me.

And now I'm sending you in that authority.

And so what he does is in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, what he does is he recaptures the authority that we lost at the fall and he gives it back to us.

And now we have this space where we can join him and take up our rightful place.

And invited to join him in directing the course of the world.

Prayer is like that.

Third, some people think that uh he already knows what we need, so why do I need to ask?

He already knows what we need, why should I ask?

This is the best quote of the whole thing, okay?

And I know I have a lot of quotes, but I have a lot of prayer quotes because it's such a big deal in my life.

But um, this is the best quote of the whole thing.

And when you think that like he already knows what I need, why do I need to ask?

Myron Augsburg, which also is just an amazing name, uh, this is what he says.

He says, Should we ask if he knows our needs, why pray?

And he says, this is because he waits to move until we recognize him and his will.

Prayer moves the hand of God by giving him the moral freedom to do in our lives what he's been wanting to do, anyways.

God, in his sovereign practice, does not impose his will upon us, consequently.

He can function in our lives in accordance with the degree of freedom that we surrender to him.

Another way of saying it is A.

W.

Tozer's thing, he waits to be wanted.

He's not going to impose his will on your life, but he actually waits for this space, like, I've been wanting to do work in your life already.

I'm just not going to do it until I'm invited in to do it.

And he's never going to do that.

And so prayer is a space where we open our lives up to him and say, you have free reign in this area to do this thing that you've been wanting to do already.

God does not choose to do some, uh, excuse me, God does choose to do some things without prayer, and we we know that when we see that, but there are many things that he won't do unless he's asked to do it.

This is why the disciples would say, like, why couldn't I drive out that demon?

Why couldn't I drive out that darkness?

It's like, and Jesus says, well, that only comes out by prayer.

It takes prayer in order to actually do that thing.

It's not going to happen unless we pray.

James says, we have not because we ask not.

And the idea is that there are people who experience more of God's work in their lives, and it's simply because they just ask a lot more.

And those that don't experience a lot more because they're just not asking for that space for those things to happen.

And the idea is like this is a gift that we've been given, that prayer shifts things and changes things, and that he's given this to us so that we can actually have this thing.

Charles Spurgeon says, whether we like it or not, whether we like it or not, we need to remember that asking is the rule of the kingdom.

Ask and you shall receive.

If you may have everything by asking and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is, and I plead you to abound in it.

And so for us, I want to, one, I want to live by this.

I want us to really believe this, and I want to stir a vision in you of like, there is something here that I think the church has lost over a number of decades that we just don't press into and we don't believe in anymore.

But there's something here that generation after generation after generation of people have testified, and I've read quotes from not only modern-day people, but people back in the 1500s and even then further beyond, and then the text itself.

Like there are just something here that everybody testifies to that those who press into it, like prayer can shift and move things around, and God has given us that privileged role so that we can actually do that.

And so for us, I want us to press into this, and I want this to be a part of us.

Jesus says, My house should be called a house of prayer.

And that idea is like this building is one of those things.

He's he's definitely recognizing that.

But I think more substantially, he's saying, like, where I live, I live in you, and so you are supposed to be a house of prayer.

And so when you create a space where prayer is a natural part of your life, you're crafting a house that he feels welcome to live in.

And so when you craft a house for someone to live in, you get to experience their life within you.

And I think that's what he's saying.

Like, I want to have a space in your life where the house that I live in, where you experience more of my life in you, and that happens when we pray and when we press into that.

And so I want that for us.

I want all three of these things.

I want our lives to be shaped by this idea that, like, I want us to have this vision of him where he is the one who can do impossible things and still wants to do those things in our lives, that he's eager to do those things in our lives.

That he's not some father just like, hey, I'd love to give you good gifts, but I'm just not gonna do that.

Jesus says exactly the opposite of that.

And he's like, I'm a good father who loves to give good gifts to his kids.

And then I want us to have this space where we hunger for him because he does, in fact, wait to be wanted, and he's never gonna force his way in your life.

And then I want us to I want that to lead us ultimately to prayer so that he can begin doing in our lives, in and around us and among us, what he's actually been wanting to do from the get-go.

So I want that for you, and I want that for this church.

So uh in that vein, uh, one of the things that we're doing is uh starting a prayer room, uh, and by prayer room, I just mean like a prayer time uh on Mondays at 12 p.m.

And so if you have lunch and you want to skip lunch and just come pray, you can come to my house.

Uh we're gonna have a couple people there.

Greg Jackson, who was here last week, he and I started this thing called Pray 901.

Um, and the idea and the vision behind it is just trying to create prayer rooms around the city of Memphis in um in different churches.

And so the last church I was at, we started three, uh, and it was wonderful.

It was just a space to sit and to encounter and to be with the Lord and to pray.

And I we started a book called The Fame and Deeds of God, where the things that we prayed for, we just started writing them in when they were answered.

And the book got more and more filled of things that we were asking for, and things that we were hoping to shift in people's lives, and things that we wanted to see happen that just weren't happening.

And the book still exists.

And it's I mean, honestly, that's how the Bible was written, anyways.

It's all these prayers that people prayed, and they just got answered, and somebody wrote them down.

Um, and so I want that.

I want that for us as well.

I want us to have this space where we can do that.

And so if you are free on Mondays and you want to either learn how to pray or grow in prayer or whatever, and just have a space, and you're like, I love prayer, I just want to be involved in that.

Please come to the house.

And it'll just be there from 12 to 1 and we'll walk through a passage and pray together.

Um I'd love for us to do that together.

Let me pray for us, and then we'll take communion.

Lord, um I do pray um that this hope and this longing that Habakkuk had would be ours, that we would look around in the spaces in our lives and our world where we're not experiencing the things that made you famous, where we're not experiencing the power and your presence and the help that we're longing for and needing.

Um, I pray that you would build that in us, that it would be this space where we are filled with wonder of what's available, and then just long for those things and ask for it until we see it.

And so, Father, I just pray that you would do that, build that in our hearts, that you make it something that exists in our church, and we'll be shaped by this so that we uh see once again and we could say, like, I have seen the fame and deeds of God in our time, I've seen marriages come back together, I have seen prodigal kids come home, I have seen things uh that are unwell become well, I've seen addictions get broken, I've seen strongholds overcome.

And so, God, I just pray for that.

Uh, I pray that you would allow us to just have a fresh vision of what's available with you in Jesus' name.

Um take communion.

One of the things that um I think is difficult about prayer is how simple it is, and that it it's it's easy to look at it and go, how could something so simple be so powerful?

Um because normally simple things aren't that powerful.

And a a three-year-old can do this, you know, that kind of thing.

Um But I think one of the things that we need to remember is like the way that we pray like that, how simple it is, it was never always that simple.

Like it took a death, like it took Jesus dying to take to create something that simple, to make it to where now we can enter before the throne of grace and receive help and mercy in our time of need.

The cost was actually really, really high to create a space to make something for us that we kind of take for granted.

And it's like, what can prayer do?

It's just it's just super easy.

It's like, yes, but it wasn't it was never that way.

Jesus created the most powerful thing that exists for us in this earth on our time right now, he created it by giving his life in order to create space for it.

So the veil was torn open so that we can now freely enter into this thing.

The cost was super high, and Jesus just chose to pay it so that he could simplify this space where we can actually encounter his presence very, very easily.

And so, yes, it is simple, but it came at a very, very high cost that we didn't pay.

He paid it.

And so if you ever find yourself going, like, I don't know if prayer is all that powerful because it's so simple, it's like, but it wasn't.

It took a death to make it that simple.

It took a death to make the most powerful thing on earth so simple for us that we can enter into it regardless of what our age or where we're at.

Any we can be in traffic or we can be in a prayer room.

We it doesn't matter where we're at.

At any moment we can enter into the throne room of grace.

And it took Jesus doing this, giving his life and giving his blood so that we could actually enter into this space.

And so, as we take communion, let's rejoice in that, let's celebrate that.

And if you're like, I don't know about this thing about prayer, we're gonna have people over here and over here that would love to pray for you.

Barbara and Sally, can y'all be over here?

Can y'all be right there for prayer?

And then I'll be over there if you want to come and pray.

But if you need prayer, if you need somebody to pray for you, we'd love to do that.

We're gonna implement that.

Again, I know that we used to do that.

You all used to do that as a church, but we'd love to do that for you.

Just as you come to receive communion, just grab your elements.

And if you want prayer, just stop by and tell them what you want to pray for and let us pray for you.

We'd love to do that.

We believe we believe that actually really does shift things.

We believe that it actually has power.

We believe that we've been given this gift that Jesus paid his life to give us, and so we want to press into that.

Um, I want to do this liturgy.

Uh we did it last week, and I want to do it again.

Um, the bread represents Jesus' body, and so uh I'll read the parts, just the normal letters and words, and if you do the underlined and bold, but Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

The juice represents his blood.

What can wash away our sins?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

When you feel ready, uh I'd love for you to come and take communion and then receive prayer if you want us to pray for you.

Uh and if you create if you took part in setting up communion, please come and hold the elements.