All right. John chapter 15. Tonight we're going to look at verse number seven in this passage. We're going to preach on when prayer is stuck. in airplane mode. Have any of you ever gotten your phones accidentally turned on to airplane mode without realizing it? I have had that happen before. I know several people that it has happened to. It's annoying when that happens because everything appears like it's functioning on your phone properly until you go to send a text message or something and It doesn't deliver. You open up one of your apps and it doesn't work. You're running late to a meeting, okay? Let's say that you're Jonathan, all right? We'll make this a real life scenario. You're running late somewhere, okay? I figure that Jonathan would be a good one to pick for this. You're running late and you send a text to somebody that says, I'm on my way. If your phone's on airplane mode, that person's never going to receive your text. You can hit send, but nothing's going to happen. It looked like you were connected, but in reality, you were cut off from the rest of the world. I mean, everything on your phone will look like it's functioning as normal, but you're completely cut off. Now, a lot of times, Christians will feel the same way about prayer. They pray, you feel like you've said the right words, you feel like deep down, You wonder though, it never feels like anything happens when I pray. Why does it feel like my prayers don't get answered? Why doesn't it feel like my prayers are getting through. And maybe you felt that way before. I figure a lot of people have probably felt that way, wondered why it feels like their prayers just kind of feel like they're stuck. Well, it's possible that in our spiritual life our prayers are stuck in airplane mode. The problem is not that God isn't listening. The problem is on our end, okay? And Jesus gives us the answer to it in John chapter 15, look down to verse number 7. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. So if we are disconnected from the abiding relationship, it's just like when your phone goes into airplane mode. Chad asked earlier. He said, I hope you're going to tell us what airplane mode actually does. I know you get on a plane and they say, you know, put your devices into airplane mode. Why do we do that? You know, supposedly it keeps the phones from interacting with, at least originally, I think now the technology has changed where it doesn't interfere with some of their systems because you can connect to their Wi-Fi system and stuff like that through the airplane. in our spiritual lives if we're disconnected from the abiding relationship. That's what we've been talking about for several weeks now is the abiding relationship. How do we abide in Christ? And he's talking with his disciples here, right? At this point, Jesus is talking to only saved individuals. Before this had happened, if you go back into the previous couple of chapters, Judas has already left the disciples at this point to go out and do what he's going to do on this night that Jesus is talking in John chapter 15. And we know they were in the upper room and then they begin their trip to the Garden of Gethsemane. That's where this passage takes place. And so Jesus is now just talking to the 11. So he's talking to saved individuals, believers. And he's telling them that if you want to have an abiding relationship with him, then you have to learn to abide with him in prayer. Jesus was not going to be physically present with these guys anymore, was he? Jesus is about to go away. Jesus is going to be absent from them. So how are they going to talk to God at this point? And he's going to say, you need to have an abiding relationship in prayer to have a conversation with God. And it's the same way for us. So we're going to learn how to turn off airplane mode in our spiritual lives, how we can reconnect with the Lord, how we can experience the kind of prayer life that actually moves the hand of God. I want to show you first tonight how God defines prayer. How God defines prayer. Let's look back to verse number seven and let's read it together if we can. You ready? Verse number seven. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. Now think about how some people treat prayer. Some people, they think it's a ritual that you go through. That's what they view prayer as, some sort of ritual. There are religions that their prayer is nothing more than a ritual, and they repeat the same things over and over again. That's not what prayer is. Some people, they think that prayer is a fire extinguisher. We have a problem in life. Everything's on fire in the house and our life is burning up and we've got lots of disaster going on. That means it's time to pray. We, it's a, it's a crisis intervention line. Joey just joined the crisis intervention team with the Searcy police. And he's the guy that you talk to, you know, when everything in your life falls apart, you end up talking to Joey on the other end of the phone. And a lot of times as believers, that's how we treat prayer. We think that God is just this crisis intervention individual that we're supposed to call up when everything in life falls apart. Has it finally come to the point where we have to pray? Oh my, it's come to that. Other people, they treat prayer like it's the place where Jonathan works. They think it's Amazon Prime. You know, we pray, and we send in our order to God, and we expect two-day shipping on it. Are we back to two-day shipping again? It kind of slows down during the holiday time, but anyway, it's supposed to be two-day shipping. Amazon says it's not their fault. They blame the postal service for it, okay? But they each point the finger at each other. But we think that that's what prayer is, that it's our version of Amazon Prime with God. And if we're saved, we've got our Prime subscription to it, and so he's got to answer us. But prayer's really not just about that, is it? It's not about just requests. Prayer goes deeper than that. Prayer is about having a relationship. It's about having a relationship. Biblically, prayer is asking, but it's asking within the framework of abiding in Christ. And God invites us to ask him for help. How does God define prayer? Well, he defines it as asking. Matthew chapter seven, verse number seven. Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. So prayer, is it really complicated at its core? No, prayer isn't complicated. It's just simply asking God for help. God delights when we bring our needs to him. Turn over to the book of Philippians chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4 and let's look at verse number 6 together. Philippians chapter 4 verse number 6 and let's read this one together. Ready? Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. Think about a young child. They will constantly ask their dad or their mom. They're constantly asking for help, aren't they? And the child isn't afraid to ask mom or dad for help because they trust in their parents' love. And in the same way, God invites us, once we're believers, to come before the throne boldly. We can go to the throne room of God. In the Old Testament, under the law of Moses and in the days of the Old Covenant, they had the tabernacle, then they had the temple. And to go into the place that was the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God was, it was off limits to him. They couldn't go there, and the high priest, he could only go when? Once a year. But you remember when Jesus was crucified, it talked about how the veil in the temple was torn in two. It was symbolizing the fact that access from God to man has now changed. And we have direct access to him and he invites us as believers directly to the throne room to speak to him. And so he invites us, just like a child trusts in his parents' love, God wants us to trust into his love. And he says, be careful for nothing. Don't be anxious. Don't be stressed. Don't be, Jesus told his disciples in the book of Matthew, he talked about how he knows, the father knows what we need, not to be too concerned about what you're gonna wear and what you're going to eat because God will take care of those things. And so he says, be careful for nothing, don't be anxious, don't be upset. You have prayer, supplication, making your requests known to God. The question is, do you regularly bring your needs to God? Or do you only pray when you're desperate? Is it that fire extinguisher kind of prayer? That finally, you know, I've got to pray. And that's the only time that the Lord hears from us? So prayer is asking, but asking, it has to be subject to abiding in His will. That's what our theme is in this series, abiding in His will. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says, and he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. A prayer is not always getting our way. It's about seeking God's will. A Paul, because sometimes we will pray for things that are not in the will of God. And Paul prayed three times. This wasn't just, I don't think, just a simple, just a passing mention in prayer. By the way, Lord, would you just kind of take this away from me? No, I think Paul, he earnestly, fervently pleaded with God to take whatever this was in his life out of it. And he asked God to heal him. And God's answer was not healing. You know what God's answer was? It was grace. Sometimes He may choose to heal, He may choose to remove a burden from our lives, and sometimes He might not. And in the cases when it is not in God's will to remove whatever that obstacle is in our life out of it, It's not that God is unloving. You know what he does? He pours a special measure of sustaining grace into our lives that will allow us to move forward through whatever the pain, whatever the obstacle, whatever the problem is. He'll get us through the trial. It helps us to remember that we have to depend on him in some cases. And that's why Paul was able to say, most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities. Paul was saying, even if God chooses not to take away my trial, even if God chooses not to heal me, I'm going to continue to praise God anyway. That's where we have to come to as believers. We have to get to that point to where if the answer is no, Or maybe the answer is not yet. Are we still willing to praise God if that happens? Are we still willing to serve God if the answer is no? If the answer doesn't conform to our will, will we still serve Him? What did Job say? He said, though He slay me, yet I will serve Him. We're studying the life of Joseph in our teen group on Wednesday nights. There's a guy who went through a lot of problems in his life. If you were in Joseph's spot, you'd probably be asking God to remove you from the situation that you were in. And maybe Joseph was calling out to God, get me home. But in Joseph's case, God's answer was, not yet. And the Bible tells us that Joseph continued to serve the Lord anyway, and the Lord was with him. The Lord gave him favor and he prospered, continuing to do what he was doing in a place that he probably didn't want to be. James chapter four, flip over to this one. James chapter four, verse number three. Prayer is not a blank check. Pastor James, this is the brother of Jesus, he was the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. And he wrote this, he said, you ask and receive not. Well, that's what we're talking about tonight is when we feel like our prayers are stuck on airplane mode and we're not getting what we asked for. He says, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts. So prayer's not a blank check. God, he will not answer selfish prayers. He won't answer sinful prayers. He's not gonna answer foolish requests. And if we're not abiding in Christ, let's take this back to the context of what our theme is, John chapter 15. If we're not abiding in Christ, if we don't have that deep relationship with him, Our prayers are much more likely to kind of miss the mark. We're gonna be off the mark of what is in God's will. We're more likely to ask prayers that are for our own selfish pleasure than rather prayers that are in God's will. When we're abiding in him and we're really connected the way that we should be, then the odds that our prayers are in his will are much more likely. You think about the guy, you know, he says, Lord, give me a boat. If you'll give me a boat, I'll only miss church two Sundays out of the month, and I'll even have devotions on the boat. Now, this is exactly reasonable, or let's see, I meant to tailor that to a golf analogy for these golfers back here. We'll have devotions between the holes, between the front nine and the back nine, we'll have devotion. If you'll give me those birdies and that set of clubs, Imagine praying, Lord, would you bless these lotto tickets that I bought? If you will help me to win that Powerball, I will finally start to tithe. You know, they're always trying to get money out of us down there at the church. Well, Lord, I'll finally give if you'll bless me and help me win the lottery. Now, that's not really an abiding prayer, is it? We're not connected the way that we should be to Jesus. We probably have ulterior motives in why we're asking God to answer these prayers, and God doesn't answer those kind of prayers. God's not a genie. See, in those prayers, we're trying to bargain with God. Have you ever been guilty of trying to bargain with God in school? Did you ever have a, or college? you had a test coming up and you either hated the teacher or the class or whatever and you just didn't, you didn't pay any attention to it and you didn't study for it. Did you ever find yourself praying to God before it was test time? Lord, help me pass this test. And you, you know, I will, I'll go to church. I'll make sure that I show up for Sunday. You're trying to bargain with God in some way. Sometimes our prayers are like that. But God's not a genie and prayer isn't a negotiation table that we go to. Praying is my opportunity to talk with God as long as it's in His will. But faith doesn't bind God to my whims. I wanna stop here for just a moment. This is a big issue. that we see in Christianity and evangelical circles today. There's something that's called the word of faith movement, okay? And a lot of the popular Christian preachers and teachers that you will see on TV, that you will see in the Christian bookstores that write Christian material belong to this movement. of the word of faith. And what they teach, sort of like Star Wars, okay, they say that faith is a force that you tap into and that you can control this force of faith. And that you, with enough faith, you can get God to do what you want him to do if you only have enough faith, okay? If you pray with enough faith, you can have anything you want. Something that is very closely tied to this is a movement called the Prosperity Gospel Movement, okay? The Word of Faith Movement and the Prosperity Gospel Movement. These are very popular in American culture today. And it says that if you need health and wealth and success and miracles, that you can get it on demand if you have enough faith to speak this into existence. And believers need to be very careful about this because some of it almost sounds good. And we want God to answer these prayers. And so it's very popular to hear this kind of stuff. And so if you will just name what you want and you will just claim it, you can expect God, like that Amazon Prime, to deliver it. Okay, but this is not a biblical teaching. We could spend an entire night going through a Bible study on the Word of Faith movement, prosperity gospel, and why this is not biblical. We won't spend the entire time doing that, but I want to make you aware that that's not biblical faith, that's spiritual manipulation, trying to get God to do something on your behalf. You know, even the Catholic Church, they pray to Mary because they think that Mary, that she can go, you know, kind of twist the elbow of Jesus because, you know, Jesus wouldn't say no to his own mother. So, you know, we'll pray to Mary and she can get God to do something for me. That's not biblical either. I'm gonna give you a few names. A lot of times we won't call names of people, but in this instance, teaching this kind of biblical heresy, I think you need to be aware of some of these popular names, guys like Kenneth Copeland. You don't need to listen to a guy like Kenneth Copeland, okay? It's gonna lead you astray, you're gonna go down a rabbit hole that you don't need to go down. He teaches that faith is a spiritual law that forces God to act. Here's one of the other popular guys that believes this, Joel Osteen. He talks about living your best life now. Our best life, if you go to the book of Revelation, you'll read about our best life, and it's not right now. Our best life's gonna happen someday in the future, okay? And he'll talk about how you can speak blessings into your life. Here's another name, and this one's just, you know, you've probably heard about her more recently, a lady by the name of Paula White. I don't care that President Trump has named her his faith and spiritual advisor, but she's not a biblical teacher. She gets into all sorts of weird heresy and mystical stuff, and she teaches that faith is something that you activate to receive blessings, okay? It's not scriptural, it's not biblical, and you need to avoid somebody's teaching like that. A guy, here's a popular, I don't know if he's as popular now, but Benny Hinn for a long time was really popular. He may have been one of the kind of these early guys that people heard in the word faith movement. He's a complete and total fraud. His nephew, Costi, he's written a book called God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel. Costi was in, I mean, he was in the family. He was in this Word, Faith, Prosperity Gospel movement behind the scenes and all of that. And God opened his eyes and showed him what was wrong with it. And he's written an entire book against the Prosperity Gospel movement, God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel. Here's some that, I mean, they kind of waffle and mix them. There's guys like T.D. Jakes. Sometimes you listen to T.D. Jakes and, man, you feel good listening to Pastor Jakes. But he blends a lot of this stuff into his teaching. Or Joyce Meyer. She's another one who does this. Another popular guy now, Bill Johnson from Bethel Church. He promotes healing and miracles on demand through your faith declarations, okay? and it simply doesn't work that way. You don't bind God in faith. And so, if you hear somebody, some of the red flags that should go up, if you hear a teacher or a preacher, and it may not be one of these popular ones, but you can get on YouTube and find people, and not everybody that's on YouTube teaching and preaching is teaching the Word of God, okay? If you hear somebody talk about how faith is a power that you activate or you speak something into existence, ultimately what they really believe is that we are like little gods that can create with our word just the way that God spoke things into existence. Now as his children, we speak things into existence. Sorry, it's not biblical. And if you're interested in that and what the Bible actually says about it, I've got some verses and things like that that you can look at and go through it, but run. If you hear a preacher or a teacher, you know, saying stuff like, God will do what you declare, there's a red flag. Sow a seed and God will make you rich. There's a red flag. God never wants you to be sick or poor. It's what a lot of these people teach. It's simply not biblical. Some of them, one of their quotes said, don't pray if it be thy will, because that shows doubt. Jesus himself prayed that prayer. So if you hear somebody teaching that kind of stuff, you just instantly know, hey, this is something that I don't need to be listening to. So run from that and compare everything with scripture. because it's pretty easy to find the stuff that they teach and find out this does not align with scripture. They take things out of context. And then you call out false doctrine when it's necessary. There's good brothers and sisters that disagree on some things, but when it comes to stuff like this, you just have to kind of call out false doctrine and warn people, say, hey, you don't need to listen to that person. You just need to check them off the box and say, hey, that's not Christianity the way that God has it designed. So unlike the word faith movement that kind of treats prayer as this tool where you manipulate God, true prayer is about trusting God. It's about bringing our hearts into harmony with his plan, okay? Not bending God to our will. So prayer, it's my privilege to seek his will and ask for his help in accomplishing his will. And James said there in verse number three, he says, your prayers They're not answered because they're off the mark, they're out of the will of God. And when we fail to abide in Christ, we get off target. So we have to kind of align ourselves back into God's will. So how do we pray in a way that pleases God and gets real answers? Well, that's what we're going to cover here in point number two, how to pray effectively. Let's go back to John chapter 15, back to verse number seven. Let's look at our key verse for tonight. He begins, notice that first word, what is it? There's a condition here, condition for effective prayer. A prayer is not just talking to God, it's about submitting to God, yielding to His will, aligning ourselves with His plan. And so if we're going to pray effectively, we've got to prepare our hearts, we've got to pray in the right way. A prayer, it's not a rushed event. We ought to be spiritually prepared when we talk to God. And we have to abide in Christ. We need a daily close walk with Him. And then we need to let His words abide in us. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you. So here's the condition. Romans chapter 10 verse number 17, Paul said, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We need a heart and a mind that is shaped by scripture. And so if we're going to prepare ourselves for a fruitful prayer life, we got to abide in him. We ought to let the word of God guide our life. And the more that we mature in Christ, the more that we grow as a believer, the more that you'll understand the word of God. And the more that you understand the word of God, the more Your prayer life will be in sync with his will and his desires. True prayer is built on listening to God first and then speaking. In Proverbs chapter 28, it says, He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination. You see, if we tune out God's word, if we reject God's word in our life and then still expect him to answer our prayers, We're sort of just mocking God. God says when we reject His law and instruction that our prayer is an abomination. So God wants our prayer life to be more than that fire extinguisher kind of prayer where it's just an emergency situation that we're talking to Him. So we have to prepare our hearts. How do we do that? Well, prayer begins with worship. Prayer begins with worship. You can write out beside that, praise the Lord. There should be time in our prayer that we spend praising Him. Jesus taught His disciples to prepare for prayer. In Matthew 6, when you read the Lord's Prayer, He begins, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. He taught His disciples they ought to begin praying with adoration to God. That's a good thing to do. Before we start making requests, Take some time to recognize God's greatness, God's goodness, how he's blessed us, how he saved us, how he's forgiven us, how he takes care of us. Praise God for the things that he's done because praise prepares the heart for effective prayer. You remember when Paul and Silas were in jail, Acts chapter 16, and at midnight, what did Paul and Silas do? It says that they prayed and sang praises to God. You see, even in prison, Paul and Silas, they began their prayer time with praise. Worship, when we start to praise God, it really shifts our focus away from our problems to his greatness. And it helps us to kind of realign because sometimes we do, we just feel overwhelmed with all this stuff and we feel like, man, I got to go to God and talk about all these things that are affecting me. But then after we spend a few minutes praising Him, it kind of helps to shift our focus back to the way that it should be on Him, not just on our problems. What else do we need if we're gonna pray effectively? We need to have a clean heart in prayer. Out beside that, you could write, confess sin. What does the book of Psalms tell us? If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Now Charles Spurgeon said, if you cannot pray because of sin, let that be a warning bell for your soul. Leonard Ravenhill, he said this, he said, a sinning man will stop praying and a praying man will stop sinning. The more time you spend with God in prayer and the closer that abiding relationship is, the less you're going to want to do things that are sinful. the more holy your life will be. And unconfessed sin, the psalmist tells us, unconfessed sin, if you feel like you're on airplane mode with your prayer life, have you stopped to see, maybe I have unconfessed sin in my life, and it's hard for those prayers to be answered if our life is full of a bunch of junk and filth that we need to get confessed up and out of our lives. And God wants to do that. Now, let me tell you that prayer Prayer is not just trying to, sometimes when we go to God, we want to present this really polished image as if we think that we can make ourselves look really good and put on a good face before God when we pray. Who are we trying to fool? I mean, we're talking to God. I mean, He knows us. So he knows all the ugly stuff in your life already. So just go ahead and just pour it out to him there in the beginning. Lord, you know, I need to get this. I need to get this right in my life. And so don't avoid praying, say, well, you know, if I need to do all that, yeah, I just I won't pray. No, that's not the solution. The solution is to get the things right in your life and then have the confess your sin and then pray and get into that abiding life. Sometimes people think, you know, sometimes I try to pray and my mind just kind of gets to where it wanders. Anybody ever had their mind wander when they're trying to pray and you feel like, man, I just, I don't, I was reading a book on where prayer becomes real. And the author of the book said, Have you ever stopped to think that maybe if your mind starts to wander in prayer, maybe there's a reason it's wandering to that spot, and maybe that's just what you need to talk to God about, where your mind wanders? God already knows what you're thinking about, so if there's something that's kind of overwhelming you and you're trying to pray, but your mind keeps going to something, maybe it's that thing that you should pray about. Maybe that's what you need to talk to God about, it's where your mind's wandering. But before you ask God for anything, you ought to first ask, is my heart clean? Search me, oh God. know my thoughts, try me, see if there be any wicked way in me. And then to pray effectively, we pray with confidence in God's power. Matthew chapter 21, this is one of those verses that some people try to twist, okay? And all things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing you shall receive. Now, we already know that we are not binding God to what we want. In 1 John 5, we get a little more clarity on what this means. And this is the confidence. 1 John 5, verse number 14. This is the confidence that we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Do you see that key phrase, if we ask anything according to His will? Faith in prayer. It's not about demanding things from God. It's about trusting in His power and His will. And that verse there in 1 John 5, that'll be one that you write down, you highlight it in your Bible, you commit it to memory. It helps us to remember that confidence in prayer comes from aligning with God's will, not trying to force His hand to ours. So we're not manipulating God. We're resting in His wisdom and in His power that He knows best. Like again, let's go back and talk about a child holding their father's hand. As dad's walking somewhere, dad knows where he's going. And the child's holding the hand, he just follows along wherever dad goes. Why? Because he has confidence that dad knows the way. We hold on to God's hand and we walk with him because he knows the way. He knows the path that I take, Job said. And one day I'll come forth as gold. Job said, I'll walk through this trial, I'll go through this problem, and one day I'll be refined. I'll be what God wants me to be as I walk through that. So do you trust God's answers even when they are different from your expectations? That can be difficult. How else do we pray effectively? Invoke God's authority in prayer. Jesus said, whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do that the father may be glorified in the son. So when we pray in Jesus name, that's not just a tagline that we add on to the end of our prayers. A lot of times people are like, well, why do we say in Jesus name I pray? It's not just like a tagline, like that was somewhere in scripture that you just tack that on. That's how you pray as a Christian. No, it means that we're praying under his authority. It means that we're submitting to His will. And so we ought to ask ourselves before we close in prayer when we're talking to God, does this prayer, does it reflect Christ's will and His glory? That's why we pray in Jesus' name. And then here's the last thing I would give you for effective praying. Don't give up in prayer. You could write out beside this, pray persistently. Does anybody know the verse from 1 Thessalonians 5, verse number 17? Three words that Paul wrote. Anybody know them? Have them memorized? Pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing. In Ephesians 6, at the end of the section there on spiritual warfare and the armor of the Christian, Paul said, praying always with all prayer. Persistent prayer, that's not just about repeating words, okay? That's not like some religions where they say they're Hail Marys, okay? It's not just repeating the same things over and over, just vain words. It's about seeking God faithfully. I heard about the one little boy one night, he was in fifth grade and he was praying in his room by himself. And his dad walked by and his dad heard him praying. And all he could hear over and over again, the little boy was saying this, he was saying, Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo. Next morning, got up, they were down at the breakfast table and dad said, son, he said, what were you praying about last night? He said, well, he said, I gave the wrong answer for the capital of Mexico on a test. I was praying that Tokyo would become the capital of Mexico. He was persistent, okay? He was persistent in praying. That's not the kind of persistent prayer, you know, we're not trying to change the capital on a map, but Jesus did say this. He told his disciples, he said, men ought always to pray and not to faint, Luke chapter 18. To abide in prayer, we ought to continually bombard the throne of grace with our request. Persistent prayer, what we mean by that is don't just come to God once in a while. Don't be that fire extinguisher prayer that you wait till your life's on fire before you go and start talking to God. persistently pray and talk with God and just have that ongoing conversation. That's what praying without ceasing is. Just all throughout the day have an attitude of prayer where you're just continually talking to God back and forth and you just have this conversation taking place as you see things and you're asking God for things throughout the day. And if God hasn't answered yet, keep praying. Keep praying. and keep abiding in Him. If God hasn't answered yet, that doesn't mean that you just give up and say, well, you know what? I tried this whole thing. I'm done with that. No, keep abiding. Keep trusting Him. Because when we pray the right way, when we abide in Christ, when we seek His will, when we trust His timing, didn't we hear that message just a couple weeks ago from the book of Acts on delay? God's delays are not God's denials. So, just trust God's timing. Something incredible happens. Eventually, God responds. You know, God is not a distant observer of things. There are some who think that, you know, well, maybe God created everything, but if he created it, he's no longer a personal God. He's very impersonal, and he's a distant force that's out there that we cannot know. But that's not the kind of God that we believe in. We believe in a God that created life, He created everything that's here, and He's a personal God that wants to know us, and He wants to hear from us, and He sees our struggles, and He's an active participant. He didn't just take His hands off of everything and say, all right, now it's on its own. In the book of Exodus, the people of Israel, they'd been slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years, and they're crying out to God. But he hasn't answered. But the Bible tells us, before we meet Moses there on the scene, the Bible tells us that God saw what was happening and God heard their prayers. Let me tell you, let me encourage you tonight. God sees your life. He knows what's happening in your life. He's heard your prayers. The Bible tells us that the prayers are bottled up. Go to the book of Revelation, you begin to read, you'll find out that maybe some of those prayers get opened up. We pray, I know for justice here on earth, people just in this room, there are people that need, they want to see justice take place in their life. Whether you see it happen now or not, I can tell you that one day, something in heaven is going to be opened. And the prayers of every saint from all of time that have prayed for justice, they're going to be poured out on earth. That justice will take place during the days of the tribulation. Justice will happen on earth, okay? So never assume that just because you haven't heard back from God yet that He doesn't care. God sees, God hears, and God cares. and he will step in and do what only he can do. Here's our last point. How does God respond to the prayers of an abiding Christian? What happens when you start praying? What happens when moms and dads, what happens when pastors and church members begin praying? Let's look back at verse number seven in John 15. What does Jesus say? Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. When an abiding Christian prays, God moves. Jesus makes an authoritative promise. Do you believe that Jesus was God? Do you believe that he had all power and all authority? He makes us a promise. If we meet his conditions, he guarantees that he will respond. What does God do? He intervenes. God intervenes. He steps into impossible situations. The Bible is filled with examples of people who prayed. The children of Israel that we just mentioned in the book of Exodus. They felt like they had no way out. Little did they know that God was preparing a baby. that would be put into the river that would just coincidentally be gathered in by Pharaoh's daughter and raised in Pharaoh's house. They didn't know that, but God stepped in and he had a plan and he had a man named Moses that he was preparing. And finally the day came that Moses walked into the palace and he looked at Pharaoh and he said, I have a message from God. And he says, let my people go. And God stepped into an impossible situation. Think of Gideon. He prayed and God gave miraculous victory with how many men? 300. How about Hannah? She cried out in desperation. God stepped into what was an impossible situation for Hannah. And he gave her a son, Samuel. When believers pray in faith, And you pray submitting your will to God's will and you yield your life to his will. God steps in with power and provision and guidance. The book of Jeremiah chapter 33 verse number three, call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things thou knowest not. William Carey, he was a great missionary to India. He often said attempt great things for God and expect great things from God. He believed in prayer and he saw God work in miraculous ways. You see, we serve a God who specializes in impossible situations. He promised that he would redeem his people. He promised that he would rescue his people, but how? Well, he stepped into the impossible and the seed of the woman gave birth to a son. And Jesus went to the cross to rescue His people. They said, it's impossible. But what do we read in the Christmas story? With God, nothing is impossible. In the book of Jeremiah, we see this question, is anything too hard for God? Is anything too hard for God? God's given us His Word and He's given us examples from the beginning of time to the end of time where He steps into impossible situations over and over again. Why does He do that? Because He knows that in your life, you're going to have an impossible situation at some point. Maybe you have an impossible situation right now that you're walking through. Open up this book. Take comfort and take courage and take heart that you serve a God who does the impossible and He intervenes. Are you asking? Are you believing? Are you trusting that God will answer? Because he will. God will answer prayer for his glory and for our testimony. In John chapter 14, flip over to this verse. Let's look at one more here. John chapter 14, down to verse number 13. Again, Jesus is speaking. Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do. Notice these last words, why? That the father may be glorified in the son. He doesn't just answer prayer for our benefit. It's so that he will be glorified. It's so that he'll get the glory. Because answered prayer, it should always lead to praise. Answered prayer should always lead to praise. When God heals, when God provides, when God restores, He wants us to tell others of His goodness. Psalm chapter 50, verse number 15, call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me. God doesn't bless it, so we'll just keep it to ourselves. When God does something for us, he wants us to go and tell others. Some of the people healed, Jesus told them, hey, go and tell everybody what's happened. When Jesus arrived on the scene, what did the shepherds do? They praised God, and then they went and told everybody. God wants us to testify of his goodness. Like the words that that song says, all my life, he's been faithful. All my life, he's been good. Psalm 107 tells us, let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of his enemy. If God's answered your prayers, have you shared that with someone? Have you told someone? Sometimes here at church, a lot of times on Wednesday nights, we'll take praise requests. We all ought to have something that we could raise our hands for and say, man, I've got this that I can praise God for tonight. We should never be able to praise Him enough. And when people notice God's blessing in your life, do you give Him the glory for it or do you take credit for what's happening? Now at the beginning of the message, we ask the question, why do some prayers feel like they aren't getting through? I think now we know the answer. If we aren't abiding, if we're not connected to the vine, we'll have our life spiritually in airplane mode. We'll have all the messages typed out, but they're not getting through. If your prayer life's been weak, it's time to reconnect. It's time to hit that button and take it off of airplane mode and say, I'm going to reconnect with the Lord. Let's bow our heads. We'll just have a moment here where eyes are closed and it's just you and God.