We're gonna continue our study this evening on what prayer accomplishes. It's a follow-on study to our previous studies on the topic of prayer. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come to you this evening as people to, we've come to worship you, Lord, to glorify you. Words cannot express our gratitude to you. for what you've done for us, who you are to us, what you mean to us. Father, we're so thankful to have your word that we can come and study together. We're so thankful to have a church where we can come and worship you together. We're so thankful to have brothers and sisters in Christ that we can worship with. What a wonderful blessing it is for Christians to know that we're a part of the family of God. We've been born there. We've been adopted as sons into your family and no one can take us out of it. Thank you so much for that knowledge. Thank you so much that you hear our prayers and you answer them. And as we continue to study just this gift that we have of being able to pray, I ask you, Father, to give us the wisdom to understand what we see in your word, and then help us, Lord, to avail ourselves of this wonderful privilege to come before the very throne room of God and make our request known to you, knowing that you want to hear from us, knowing that you want to fellowship with us and that you delight in answering the prayers of your children. Father, there are those who are hurting around us, those who are sick. We'll be looking at our prayer list soon. I pray that, Father, you would bless these and meet the needs as only you can. Some aren't with us this evening, some due to illness and for other reasons. I pray that you'd be with them and allow them to return. at the next appointed time, but be with them this evening, Father. And those who can't be with us, I pray that they would always be prayer warriors for us and lift up the services to your throne. So bless this time together, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. So last week we started this study and we started in Job chapter 21. You remember, Job was addressing his friends and he was speaking to them. They had told him that in their opinion, Righteous people always prospered and wicked people always were judged by God. And Job was pointing out that quite to the contrary, some wicked people seemed to prosper and they were prospering at God's own hand. It wasn't because of themselves that they were prospering. God allowed them to prosper. And God does do that. We can look around us and see that there are sinful people that seem like nothing ever happens to them. Nothing ever sticks to them. They're prospering, many of them are wealthy, and they continue to take advantage of people. And so Job was pointing that out to them, and he started to talk about these wicked people. And in Job chapter 21, verses 14 and 15, we started off last week. He says, even though those wicked people are prospering, he says in verse 14, therefore they say unto God, depart from us. We're not interested in you, God. For we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. And then they said, what is the almighty that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him? What an awful question for people to base their lives on. What profit would there be if I prayed to this God of the Jews? There's profit in every way, isn't there? And that's what we're looking at in this study. And so last week, oh yes, last week, last Wednesday evening, We started looking at some of the general accomplishments of prayer, and these are aligned with those six elements of prayer that we started, or that we studied several weeks ago. First, what we looked at was that when we pray, God is worshiped. He's glorified in our prayers. If we include that portion of, or that element of prayer, then God is glorified, and that is always a good thing. For God's people to worship Him is always a good thing, isn't it? It's an important part of our prayer lives. It's an important part of our Christian life in general. So that's one of the general accomplishments of prayer. The second one we looked at was that God's blessings are acknowledged with Thanksgiving. And that, of course, it aligns with that element of prayer called Thanksgiving. And we read in 1 Thessalonians 5.18 that gratitude from or gratitude to God from his people is something that he wants. He desires that. 1 Thessalonians 5, 18 tells us in everything, give thanks for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus concerning you. So when we pray as God intends us to, if our prayer lives are the kind of prayer lives that the Lord wishes for us to have, then worship and thanksgiving will always be a part of that moment. And I don't think it's very difficult for us to to worship God and to thank Him. It's very easy to come to God and thank Him in prayer. Sometimes we miss the praising part, the worshiping part, but thanking is very easy. And sometimes when we begin to worship Him, it leads automatically into thanking Him for all of the blessings He's given us. The third thing we looked at last week was the general accomplishment of prayers that our sin is confessed before God when we come to Him. And we pray as He intends us to. And the Lord does intend for us to confess our sin. That is one of the prime directives for Christians. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So those are general accomplishments, three of them, that we looked at last week. We're gonna look at a fourth one tonight. And that is that the needs of other people are brought before God's throne of grace when we pray. And of course, we know that that aligns with the element of prayer known as intercession. Now, there's no doubt as we read through the scriptures, especially the scripture passages that have to do with prayer, there's no doubt that God desires for us to share the concerns of other people when we come to the Lord in prayer. He wants us to bring the needs, and that's the reason we have prayer meetings like we have. We come together, we have a prayer list, we have lists of names on there, and we bring those before the throne of God. Some people are sick. Some people are injured. Some people need jobs, maybe. Maybe they need a new home, or they may have a great job. They may have a job they love, but they need a raise, and we can help pray for that. Some people are hungry. Some people don't have homes. They don't have any place to live. And especially when the weather gets cold, we start to, we can pray that the Lord would send them to the right shelter or that something would open up, something would become available so that they have a warm place to sleep. They can have warm food, those kinds of things. We pray for those things. We pray for missionaries that are on the field, whether it's a domestic field here in the States or if it's on a foreign field. And we pray for the Lord to give them safety, don't we? We pray that he would meet their needs. We pray for things like our government, because as I mentioned before, if our government does something that upsets our economy to the point where the dollar loses its value, that impacts missionaries. And sometimes it'll impact them worse than it will us. Because sometimes in this country, if the economy tanks, people just work more hours. It's hard. But they can, someone who has a job, especially an hourly wage job, they can work more hours and they can get more money. But missionaries don't have that option. They're living on fixed incomes, much like a retired person would. And so we pray for things like that, that our government leaders would have the wisdom they need to stop boogering stuff up. There's that solid theological term there. They booger things up on a regular basis. And so we pray that they wouldn't do that. God desires us to share the concerns of other people. Because after all, I think we can all agree that self-centeredness is not a fruit of the spirit. When we read that in scripture, right? And have you ever been around someone and it seemed like self-centeredness was a major part of their prayer life. Whenever they're praying, they're asking for something. This is something that we expect from a three-year-old, don't we? Mommy, I'd like another cookie. Five minutes later, I'm hungry. Can I have another snack? Can I go outside? No, it's raining out there. How about now? It's still raining out there. Can I go now? A three-year-old will always ask for something for themselves. And we think, okay, that's all right. We can deal with that. That's what three-year-olds do. By the time they're 13, 14, 23, 33, It's not so natural at that. Well, let me put it this way. It's natural at that point, too, because our old nature wants us to be self-centered. But it's not acceptable at that point, is it? And it certainly isn't acceptable when Christians behave in such a way that all we're doing when we go to God is asking things for ourselves. Lord, I need that new car. I need that new job. I want a new suit of clothes. I want this. I want that. And if we're constantly doing that, that doesn't honor the Lord. He says we can't bring our requests before him. Yes, we can. Mostly in the area of our needs, we can bring some of our requests to Him, but let's face it, God didn't apply for the job to be Santa Claus at Christmas time, did He? He's not asking. He doesn't want us to just bring all of our self-centered needs. He wants us to pray for other people as well. And that's what we're talking about here, bringing the needs of others. When we do that, when we come to the throne, of the Lord and we bring the needs of other people. We're doing a couple of things. One is we're demonstrating that we have love and compassion toward those people, aren't we? Because we care enough to bring their needs to the Lord. We're telling them. And you tell people this, I'm sure, on a regular basis. When someone mentions a need, you say, I'll pray for that. Or I'll ask my church and we'll pray for that. That's what we do, isn't it? We're demonstrating by that that we have love and we have compassion to those people. We're doing the second thing too. We're demonstrating that we have faith in God's ability to meet those needs. And I believe that's what pleases God as much as anything. It pleases him to know that we may push our needs to the side while we're praying for someone else's needs. But it also pleases him to know that we have faith, that he'll hear that prayer and that he will answer on behalf of those requests that pleases him. And I can say this, and I believe you will agree with this, every answered prayer strengthens the faith of whoever observes that answered prayer. Now, if you're praying for something, as a Christian, you believe that the Lord is able to meet that need. We believe that, right? And yet every time we see the Lord answer a prayer, Doesn't it strengthen your faith? I knew he was gonna do it, but he did it. And every time he answers a prayer in a way that you didn't see coming, does that not amaze you still? It still amazes me the way that the Lord can bring things to pass in ways that I could never think, I could never imagine, and I have an incredible imagination. And yet he can still outdo anything that you or I could ever ask or think. But think in terms of this, We have lost people. We were at the funeral home last night for Robin's niece and her family. I'm not sure if some of those folks are saved or not. I don't know their spiritual condition. But sometimes when you're dealing even with a lost person, you can say, I'm gonna pray for you. They tell you they have a need. Well, I'm gonna pray for that need. And I've done that before and you probably have too. And they just kind of brush it off. Like, yeah, that's fine. All prayers are appreciated. And they don't know a thing in the world about prayer. But when you or a church tell someone who has never trusted Jesus Christ, I'm gonna pray for that need, and they have no idea how that need's gonna get met, and the Lord answers that need, then they begin to see that maybe there's something to this thing of prayer. Maybe there's something to this God of my friends that I thought was a figment of someone's imagination. And so everyone who sees the Lord answer prayer It strengthens their faith just a little bit, doesn't it? And sometimes, I'll tell you what, it'll strengthen your faith a lot, depending on how the Lord answers that prayer. And what does that do? It brings further glory to God. And if we can, in our prayer lives, bring glory to God, we can say we've accomplished something. Whether we are outright praying, Lord, we glorify you, we worship you, we extol your name, we praise you tonight, That's one way of doing it. But if we pray for answered prayers and give God the opportunity to bear his arm of strength on someone's behalf, we're bringing glory to him that way too. So that's another general accomplishment of prayer. It brings the needs of other people before the Lord's throne. A fifth general accomplishment of prayer says that our own needs are brought to the Lord. Now we're moving past intercession, praying for someone else, we're praying for ourselves. petition. The Lord says we can pray for our needs as well. And so he wants to see us show concerns for other people like we were just talking about. He does. But he also wants us to be concerned enough about our own needs to bring those to the Lord. How often do you pray for your needs? I would say normal people probably do. We pray for our needs. But let me ask, let me place the question this way. How often do you not pray for your needs? You ever catch yourself, you've got a problem, and all of a sudden you realize, I haven't even prayed about that problem, I've just been trying to solve it. It dawned on me when I was looking over these notes today, I have been subjecting you folks to this terrible cough that I've had for weeks, but I have not really made it a prayer, a matter of prayer, Lord, would you just stop the cough? because it's not honoring to you if I'm standing behind a podium and I'm coughing my head off. Have you ever reached that point where you realize, well, I pray for other people's needs, but I've got a need and I've just been trying to do whatever I could for it and I haven't prayed for it myself. Well, you know, we need to do that because neglecting our own needs doesn't necessarily make us silent martyrs, but sometimes we live like that. I'm not gonna pray for me, I'm gonna pray for other people. I'm okay, I'll just be right here and I'll suffer silently. Doesn't necessarily make us a martyr, but I can tell you this, if we're not willing to pray for our own needs, it can show a lack of trust in our God's ability to meet those needs. it could show that lack of trust to people around us that we definitely don't want to show that lack of trust to, because we are surrounded by lost people, and they're looking to us for an example. And when we say we believe that we serve a God who answers prayer, and yet we have a need and we never even mention that we've been praying for that need, that sends a different signal, doesn't it? A signal we don't want to send. And so we do have the opportunity And I think sometimes we have a responsibility to bring our own needs before the Lord as our petitions. Because He is honored when other people know that we brought our needs to Him and He's met those needs the same way He has ours. And it's not just about getting what we want. We don't bring our petitions to the Lord just so we get what we ask for. It's about bringing glory to him. Everything about our prayer life should be, we want to bring glory to the Lord we serve because he's worthy of it. And no one else is worthy of that glory and of that honor, are they? So that's the fifth general accomplishment of prayer. Our own needs are met or they're brought to the Lord so they can be met. The sixth general accomplishment of prayer aligns with that sixth element of prayer we looked at of listening. And so when we bring that element of prayer in, we're making the time to hear from God. And that's important, isn't it? It's important that we hear from him. Because I think you can agree with this as well. Christians have a whole lot of voices that are vying for our attention every day, don't we? There's a whole lot of things that want our attention, a whole lot of people, a whole lot of different demands. And when you think about this, just the general demands of life, are screaming at you every day, aren't they? You've got to get up. You have to get ready every day. You have to eat every day, which means someone has to cook the food or prepare the food every day. You have to take time for personal cleanliness needs to to wash clothes or do all of those kinds of things. Just the ordinary things of life are screaming for your attention. And things that when you were in your 20s, would, boom, they would be done just like that. They take a lot longer when you get older, don't they, sometimes. And so it seems like more and more of your life can be siphoned off to these demands of life. Demands of family can be there. It may be you may have children who are, they need something. It may be parents who need something. It could be cousins that cousin it from Nebraska could come in and have this need that you never saw coming, but you feel an obligation there or something to that effect. It could be grandkids. It could be anything to do with family. It could be your own health. As you get older, especially, there's more doctor's appointments, aren't there? Which means what? Waiting for doctors for a longer portion of your life. I think doctors have less respect for the other people's time than anyone I've ever met. And I think insurance companies drive a lot of that, but it's no matter what, it's disrespect. If you have an appointment for 9 a.m. to see a doctor, that doctor should be available at 9 a.m., unless providentially hindered. How often does that really happen, though? But so, even issues of health, they're draining your time. If you're working, things to do with work, you're like, oh man, I gotta get up on Monday morning and go back to work. I don't have Monday to do whatever I wanna do. Those kinds of things. The community will have claim on part of your life. Everything's going good. You've got your day planner. Everything's working out just perfectly. And boom, you go to the mailbox, and there's a jury summons. You're going to lose some time out of your life for that, aren't you? If you get selected for a jury, it could be days. It could be weeks. And so there's community things. And the list could go on and on. Many of these demands, perhaps most of them, are perfectly valid demands, but they're trying to siphon off your time. But it is vital as a Christian that we make time to spend with the Lord, that we make time for prayer, that we make time during that prayer time to listen to the Lord, too. Not just talk the whole time, but to listen to what he has to say to us. There's a reason why the There's a reference to people going into their closet to pray. The idea being you go into a room and you close it. You close the door and you get quiet and you let the folks around you know, I'm going to be spending time reading the word of God. I'm going to be spending time in prayer. Please give me some time. And there's nothing wrong with asking for that, but you'll have to do it because if you don't, the world is going to continue to try and take all of your time, isn't it? The devil himself will try to take all of your time. He'll put things in your way to stop you. Now, God speaks, I think, to us most often through the word, his word, and that's what we've been studying on Sunday evenings, how the word of God, it's God breathed, it's inspired by him. It is our sole authority for matters of faith and practice. But I believe that the Lord can also impress on our hearts things that he wants us to know. If we're praying and we take the time to just stop and listen, I believe he can instruct us that way too. And I don't think he's gonna instruct us in anything that's opposed to what's in Scripture. But the Holy Spirit can certainly remind us of things that are in Scripture, things we may have forgotten. You probably have had that happen before, haven't you? And so we need that time. to listen to the Lord, if we'll be still enough. I think he will. And he's honored when we willingly step away from the world long enough to spend that time with him and to listen to what he has to say. We take the time to speak to him, and we take the time to let him speak to us. I think that honors him. So again, it comes back to everything about our prayer lives should have the goal of glorifying our Lord. when we come to Him in prayer. And certainly we pray in such a way that we're praying for things that would be God's will for us. If we, excuse me, if we're praying outside of His will, then we've got a problem there automatically, don't we? So again, I hope these studies are good. That's the end of the general accomplishments of prayer that we're gonna look at. Next week, Lord willing, we will begin to look at some personal benefits of prayer.