Good morning, church. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jay Corton. I'm the assistant student ministry director here at PCC. I'm just so happy to be here. I'm so happy that you guys are here. We're going to be in Philippians 4 today. That's going to be our theme verse. So if you want to flip to there while we keep going, that'd be awesome. But today we're going to be discussing the power of prayer. Now, prayer is one of the most profound and essential aspects of the Christian life. It's a direct line to God, it's our lifeline in times of trouble, and it's our tool for intercession and thanksgiving. Yet many believers struggle to grasp its true power, and often we fail to prioritize it in our daily lives. And so today we're gonna explore the power of prayer through scripture, through some testimonies and practical applications. We're gonna inspire, hopefully, a deeper and more active prayer life in all of us. Before we pray, Our theme, verse Philippians four, verses six through seven. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Let's pray. Dear God, I just thank you for today, God. Thank you for getting everybody here safely. God, thank you for the opportunity that I have to be here. God, let's pray that you would speak through me. God, that the words that I speak would not be mine, but yours, God. Give me the strength and the guidance, God, I pray that we can learn something from today, and as we go throughout the rest of our week, so we can just take what we learn and apply it to our lives and our walks with you. It's in Jesus' precious name I pray, amen. All right, the power of prayer. We're gonna start today by discussing some of the reasons why prayer is so important in our lives, and then we're gonna move in to talking about why we as Christians decide not to pray, or why we can avoid prayer. As I said earlier, I think that most Christians have the basic understanding that prayer is an important part of our lives as Christians. Who here believes that prayer is an important part of your life as a Christian? Sir. But we can often fail to practically apply that understanding. We can fail to prioritize it in our lives. The first reason why prayer is so important is that it connects us with God, it's our way of communicating directly with God. That's the first reason. It connects us with God. Jeremiah 33, three, call to me and I will answer you. And will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. Now prayer is a conversation with God. It builds and strengthens our relationship with him. Now another question for you guys by a show of hands. Who here believes that communication is vital in any sort of relationship, romantic, friendship, anything like that. Communication is vital. See, we as humans value communication pretty heavily in our earthly relationships, but oftentimes, as Christians, we can devalue it in our relationship with God. We can push it to the side in our relationship with God. But prayer is what connects us to God. Prayer is how we lay our burdens and our struggles down at the feet of God. But even then, sometimes we refuse to use that connection or use that communication. And we'll get into the reasons why later. Another reason why prayer is important is because it brings us peace and comfort. It brings us peace and brings us comfort in times of need. Bringing us back to our theme verses, Philippians four, six through seven. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, presents your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now life is filled with uncertainties and challenges, but prayer is what shifts our focus from our problems to God's promises. Prayer shifts our focus from our own problems to God's promises. It calms our fears and fills us with his peace, And along with that, I wanna tell you a pretty big part of my testimony. When I was about 14 years old, I was struggling really heavily in my faith. Okay, the lowest point I've been in in my life. I had a lot going on in my personal life. I was just struggling spiritually. I was battling addiction. And that year, I was coming up on my first year I'm on, which is our senior high retreat that we go on every year. And because I was at such a low point in my faith, I wasn't really too intent on going, you know? I was very afraid and anxious about it because I thought to myself, hey, I'm so broken and I'm at such a low point in my faith, do I really belong there? See, I expected to walk into this camp and go with all these people who were just so happy and perfect in their faith and I would be an outlier because I was so broken and at such a low point. And so I was anxious and I didn't know if I wanted to go and I just had all these fears about going and even despite being at such a low point in my faith, I decided to bring that to God in prayer. And he gave me the peace and comfort that I needed to go. And so I went. See, because I prayed to God about my fear and anxiety, he gave me the peace and comfort that led me to go to Yereman. While I was there, I had the most transformative spiritual experience of my life. It changed everything about the way that I thought as a Christian, I lived as a Christian, I lived as a person. It changed everything about me. And if I hadn't brought that fear and that anxiety to God, if I hadn't asked for peace and comfort in that, and I had just decided to let my fear control me and my anxiety control me, I didn't go, I don't know where I'd be, but I wouldn't be here. And that's because Jesus gave me the peace and the comfort to go. He took my fear and he tossed it to the side and he said, go. I wouldn't have even gone if I hadn't brought it to God in prayer. Now I've made some pretty big personal decisions in the past couple of years regarding school and work and moving into my own apartment. And I'll admit to you, all of those decisions came with a lot of fear and anxiety. But because I prayed about those decisions and brought them to God, I found peace and comfort. And that's ultimately what helped me keep going. Okay, when you were struggling, when you were burdened, anxiety, depression, anything that burdens your ways on you, the only place you're gonna find true peace and true comfort in that anxiety and that fear is Jesus Christ. So when you are struggling, go to him. And the third reason, kinda going along with the first two, why I believe prayer is important, is because prayer empowers us for spiritual battles. Ephesians 6, 18, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Now another thing about prayer, this isn't one of my points, but another thing about prayer, prayer is a weapon. And prayer is a weapon against spiritual warfare. It fortifies us against the enemy's schemes and aligns us with God's will and power. Now as a Christian, I'm telling you now it is a given that you will face spiritual warfare. Satan will always try and get in your head. It will tell you lies to get you to turn away from God and turn away from your faith. And the best weapon against the enemy, the best weapon against his lies is prayer. See Satan will tell you that you aren't good enough. that you've lost favor in God's eyes, that He doesn't love you anymore, that you don't deserve His love. He'll tell you that you were worthless. Now we know that we don't deserve the love that God has given us. But that doesn't mean that He's ever stopped loving us. See, we serve a God that loves us so endlessly, so unconditionally, that despite us being so undeserving, got up on that cross and died for us. Not because we had deserved it or earned it, but because that's how much he loves us. And that love has never wavered or never changed. We did a series on fear earlier in the fall and We talked about this three rung ladder. One of those rungs of getting out of the pit that you're in was love, was understanding that God's love can never change. And it will never change, it will never waver. He will love you the same as he did the day you were born, no matter what you do. It is a love that transcends anything else. We know that even though we aren't deserving of God's love, we're deserving of his mercy. He has given it to us anyway. And we can get into a mindset as Christians, and I can speak from experience here, that we can fight our battles alone. That we don't need God or anyone else. See, as humans, we're prideful. Even in our personal lives, in our earthly lives, if we're struggling and one of our friends or family comes up to us and says, hey, I wanna help you, Oftentimes we can say, no, I'm good. I can get through this on my own. Naturally, we want to fight our battles alone. We believe that we can fight against the lies and the schemes of the enemy on our own. But I wanna tell you this morning, you cannot do it alone. As much as you may want to believe you can, you just can't. The best weapon against the enemy, the best weapon against his lies and his evil is prayer. There is nothing that Satan wants more than for you to wander away from your God, or for you to doubt him. And the best weapon against that is prayer, is connecting with the God who will always fight for you. And so now that we've covered the reasons why prayer is important, let's talk about the reasons why we as Christians tend not to prioritize or use prayer in our lives. Now reason one is probably the most common one in this room. If I were to ask you today, Who here in this room would classify themselves as busy? Just raise your hand. As busy, okay. Busyness and distractions are one of the main reasons why we don't pray. Oh, I'm too busy, you know, work and everything. And this is the one that I've struggled with the most personally. See, my biggest struggle with this, and I'm just gonna be completely honest, my biggest struggle with this has been working at the church. And that's not because I don't like working at the church or anything, but I found it very hard while working at the church to separate reading the Bible and praying and preaching from my job and reading the Bible and praying from my own spiritual growth. When I first started here, that was a very big struggle of mine. I would often evaluate myself and say, oh, I don't know if I'm doing this for myself, for my own growth, or if I'm just doing this because it's my job. And I've gotten better about that, but that was a huge struggle of mine, was trying to separate my job from my personal spiritual life. And that's the excuse most of us make, like, oh, I don't pray or read my Bible because I'm just too busy. I have work and family and events that I have to go to and appointments. Here's the reality. Okay, it's a harsh one, but it's one that we all need to hear. No one is too busy to make time for God. No one. And we as Christians need to prioritize time with God over other things, and more specifically, prioritize prayer in our lives. Because there is no set time or place for prayer. And it can happen anytime and anywhere. So prioritize prayer in your life. See, when the chaos of your life and the busyness of your life is breaking you down, then there's no better thing for you than prayer. When you feel like you're too busy for prayer and too busy for time with God, that's when you need him the most. The next reason why we as Christians tend to avoid prayer is feeling unworthy. Feelings of guilt or shame can discourage people from approaching God in prayer, believing that they are not worthy of his attention or forgiveness. Now this is another pretty common one in our lives. We feel like we are unworthy of coming before God in prayer because we are undeserving of his love and forgiveness. But what I wanna remind you today is this, that God's love and grace is not based on our worthiness, but based on his character and promises. His love is unconditional. Romans 5.8, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. See, God's love for us doesn't depend on our performance or worthiness. He loves us because of who he is, not because of what we've done or failed to do. Say that again. He loves us because of who He is, because of His character, not because of what we have done or failed to do. And we know that no one is worthy on their own. Paul says in Romans for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace to the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. See, none of us are worthy of God's love by our own merit, but his grace covers us. And feeling unworthy, I want you to hear this, especially today, feeling unworthy is a reminder of our need for God, not a reason to avoid him. Feeling unworthy just highlights our need for God. It is not a reason or an excuse to avoid him. We feel unworthy because we feel broken, and we feel lost, we feel away from God, but I wanna remind you also today that God invites you to come as you are. Matthew 11, 28, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened. Jesus wants you to come as you are. We here at PCC, we want you to come how you are. See, we don't care where you've been or what you've done or what you've said. We want you to come as you are, and Jesus wants you to come as you are, broken, burdened. Come as you are. See, God doesn't ask us to clean ourselves up to be good enough before coming to him. He wants us to come to him with our burdens, our weaknesses, our imperfections. So if you were struggling today with feeling like you weren't worthy of prayer, now that is what I would say to you. is that God has invited you to come as you are. No matter what baggage you carry, you were never too far away. You were never too broken for Jesus. You can never go too far. No matter what you've done, He's just waiting there for you with His arms wide open. And He's ready for you to come back. And He will pursue you to no end, I promise you that. Final reason why we as Christians can tend to shy away from prayer, something I touched on a little bit earlier, self-reliance. We as Christians rely on our own strength often instead of seeking God's guidance and help through prayers. When it comes to spiritual warfares or battling addiction or other sin, we naturally as humans want to take it on by ourselves. We want to battle on our own. We can't. We are not meant to fight alone. See, spiritual battles require God's strength, not just our own. We are called to rely on him and his resources to stand firm. I'll tell you what, God's power is perfect in our weakness. 2 Corinthians 12, nine through 10, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. See, recognizing our limitations and turning to God in prayer allows his power to work in and through us. Prayer is not a sign of weakness, it's an invitation for God to display his strength in our lives. And self-reliance can lead to burnout. When we try to fight spiritual battles in our own strength, we eventually run out of energy, run out of wisdom, run out of endurance. But prayer is a lifeline that keeps us connected to God. Prayer is a lifeline that keeps us connected to God. And God is the one who renews our strength. God is the one who redeems us. If you try and fight your battles alone, you're gonna burn out and you're gonna burn out quick. And I promise you, you are going to be miserable. If you walk away from Jesus and you say, I can fight this on my own, you are going to be miserable. I've been there, I've done that. We will run out of strength on our own, but God's strength is never ending. And it overcomes any darkness we could ever face. So when you are battling spiritual warfare, do not rely on your own strength, rely on God's. I believe those are three of the biggest reasons why we as Christians tend to shy away from prayer. Busyness and distraction, feeling of unworthiness, and self-reliance. Let me remind you as we near the end of the sermon why prayer is so important. Prayer connects us with God. It's how we communicate with him. It's how we lay our burdens down in front of him. It is essential to our relationship with him, just as communication is essential in our earthly relationships. Prayer brings us peace and comfort in our struggles. When we are anxious or afraid, we don't have to battle that alone. The peace and comfort that God provides for us is far greater than any darkness we could ever face. John 1, 4-5, in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. And this last sentence is the most important. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The darkness has not overcome Jesus' light, and it never will. And finally, prayer is important because it is a weapon against spiritual warfare. And I'm not gonna tell you this morning, and I'm sure you know this, but I'm gonna make sure you do. I'm not gonna tell you this morning that spiritual warfare is gonna be easy or painless. Satan wants nothing more than for you to wander away from God and lose your faith in him and doubt him. And he will do everything in his power to lead you away. But here's the thing. His power is absolutely nothing. compared to the power of Jesus Christ. You cannot fight your battles alone. You cannot rely on your own strength. You need Jesus. And prayer is the best, most powerful weapon against Satan and his evil ways. Don't try and fight your battles alone. You serve a God that will always fight for you, always pursue you, always love you. And a God that, despite our unworthiness, despite the fact that we didn't deserve it for a second, got up on that cross and died for us.