I don't know why that was crashing. I don't know where it is. We just said you just hang on. And it's still a little jittery in there. Well, good evening. These two sheets, I knew we were going to be talking about prayer tonight, and it came in the mail. It's a little thing that they send with daily bread, and it was talking about prayer, so I thought, well, I'll try to make a couple copies and give those on to you. Okay. Yeah, anyway, it's kind of testimonies about prayer, and one of them's talking about his son that they prayed for for quite a while. So anyway, might be something you can read on your own here. All right, we're gonna be looking at lesson number three, praying with power tonight. Okay. My week seems, well, wait, Ayanna's and the other three kids had their recital last night. I'm not used to being here on Tuesday night. It seems like I was just here. That was Wednesday. So anyway, tonight's Wednesday. OK. Yeah. It's rather amazing. I told Nathan, I don't know how you do it. You get the kids a bunch of white keys, and you work with them till they can actually play a song or that violin. Yeah. So keep up the good work. Well, let's pray as we get started. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this evening. We thank you for opportunity to pray and then to study about prayer here tonight, how that we can have power in our prayer. And pray that be truths that we can apply to our own hearts and lives here tonight and next week as well, Lord willing. We do ask that you might watch over us tonight. hear about the big storm coming and all, that we'd, everybody get home safely and we'd weather the storm well. And we'll thank you for your watch care over us now in Jesus name, amen. Okay, so looking at 2 Thessalonians chapter one, verse 11 and 12, it says, Wherefore, also we pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith with power. That the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and ye in him according to the grace of our God. and the Lord Jesus Christ. So here he's going to give us some pointers, some insights into prayer. And we all, you know, I want our prayers to be answered. And we believe in prayer. That's why we have a Bible study and a prayer meeting. We got something big coming up. We ask other people to pray and the Lord does hear and does answer. I was May have been a message. I don't know. I've listened so much stuff here lately We're exactly who it was talking about but was encouraging people to journal and I've not been real good at that. But you know, we have all these Prayer sheets, you know, and when they get answered we kind of just delete it and put in another one or whatever when you stop and think Well, over the last, how many years now, 30 plus years, how many prayers have been made and how many of them have been answered? You know, there'd be an encouragement to be able to go back and see, wow, here, look at how the Lord answered here and here and here and here. You know, not that we need to be convinced. I don't think if you need a lot of that or you probably wouldn't be here, but Be good to be able to show somebody else that it does make a difference And it's not a crutch or something like some people try to blame it on but here he says he gives us three features of powerful prayer, not that there isn't more than that, but at least those three here in this passage. And we'll, Lord, we'll look at a couple of them here tonight. And the first thing he says there is to pray constantly. He says, wherefore also we pray always for you. Okay. Can you think of another passage or another scripture, part of it, whatever, that encourages us to to be praying, keep on praying. Pardon? There you go. Is that the one you were thinking of? Might be. Don't have that one memorized. But yeah, that one, that was the one, it's 1 Thessalonians 5.17. Actually, it's probably just across the page if you've got your Bibles open. Pray without ceasing, okay? So does that mean that that's all we do? You know, you have to call in sick because you can't go to work and you're gonna just stay home and pray all day? No. It has the idea of being able to constantly, or at any moment in time, go directly into prayer. What hinders our prayers? Pardon? Satan hinders it. What can we do or anything in our life, hinder prayer? Sin, okay. Sin, I think of it, sometimes I, word pictures. I got to come up with new ones because my old ones are getting dated. Yeah, I'm still talking about, remember when you have the telephone, and it has a cord on it, and it cut the cord. The communications gone. Well, nobody has a corded phone anymore. Well, we still do. But anyway, it cuts the communication. Well, sin, it kind of causes our prayers to bounce off the ceiling here. God wants to hear that confession or repentance to get rid of the sin so there's nothing blocking communication. But here he's saying, we pray for you always. And the idea here is every time they thought about them, they prayed for them. Now, I don't know what you do, but once in a while, somebody or something will just kind of pop into my head, totally unrelated to whatever I'm doing. But I kind of learned, you know, that's kind of the Lord saying, pray for this person. And you may find out, not always, but you talk to them and they, oh yeah, about that time I was, I really needed some prayer here. And so it's always good to pray for others. That's what they were doing. They knew the Thessalonians and believers were going through trials and difficulties, persecution. And so when they came to mind, they kept on praying for them. And so Paul knew that it was It was a necessary part of spiritual growth. If we're going to grow in our relationship with the Lord, prayer is going to be a vital part of it. We want to disciple others to help them to grow, need to encourage them to pray, and not just for themselves. I don't know who's listening, but we had somebody that prayed, and I try not to pick anybody else's prayers apart. You know, everybody does their own praying. But they pretty much zeroed in on me, myself, and I. They just prayed about themselves. They never seemed to include anybody else. And somebody said something to them once, you know, you really ought to start praying for some other people beside yourself. Well, that didn't go over real big, but I think the message got through because after a while they began to pray for some other people other than just themselves. And so he mentions here Samuel when he's talking to the people of Israel. He said there in 1 Samuel 12, 23, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. And so he was motivated to pray for others. And I mean, we don't always know everybody else's needs, but sometimes our needs are pretty much the same. In some instances, okay, we're gonna pray for people tonight. Well, you could pray that, you know, Families in our church still have a roof on their house tomorrow morning or whatever, you know? Or people that are, well, okay, we got Zilke's, I'm assuming they're still running around in South Dakota, and McGee's are up in Michigan, you know, that we can pray the Lord will watch over them, keep them safe. But yeah, we can think of other people that we can pray for. And we have the missionaries, you know, we try to, when we get missionary letters to run those off to, we don't read through those on a Sunday morning, but we put them in your mailbox, hopefully take those home and read them, see what some of those people's needs are and be reminded to pray for them. And as he mentions here, sometimes people come up with the idea, well, God is omniscient. He knows everything. Well, if he knows everything there is to know about me, he knows my needs before we do. And if he knows my needs, why do I have to ask him for it? You know, if a parent, you anticipate your children's needs, They're going to need probably three meals a day plus snacks, whatever else to carry them through. You don't just wait until they come in and say, I'm hungry. How many times did you hear that today, Joy? Grandma. It's funny. Alex has been gone for a couple of weeks now, but he still remembers where the snacks are at. He comes in, snack. You know, so anyway. Well, why does God want us to ask for things if he already knows what we have need of? Yeah. Well, yeah, he wants us to acknowledge that we need his help. We're dependent on him. I mean, we try to raise our kids to be independent to a degree that one of these days they can get out on their own. But God isn't raising us to be independent that I don't need God, I can handle this God. How does that work out when we get that attitude? God brings us along something we can't handle, right? So, Chris, did you have something you wanted to add there? Answer to prayer is a great faith builder. And as we mature in our Christian life, we learn that we can trust God for bigger and better answers to prayer. Right. I mean, we learn those sort of things. in all kinds of different areas. We start doing something, you got a new job, and you have to do something that you've never done before. But after you do it a few times, it's a little easier and you think, well, maybe I can do this. And here's Okay, I was going on a different route here, but confidence, it builds our confidence up. And, you know, Lord's answer, he took, you know, we hit hard times back, you know, five years ago, and God was there and took care of us. And then something else happened a couple years ago, and we prayed and talked to the Lord about it. And God took care of that. And, and so now that I'm going through something else, Today, I'm confident God's gonna be there for me, you know? And yeah, so it helps us just recognize the fact that we need the Lord. He wants us to ask, He wants us to acknowledge that we need His help, and it builds up our faith. And He can do amazing things. You know, sometimes we're amazed at things that can happen, you know? You know, I still sometimes amazed at, you know, you get a, I don't know, what's the big plane now? The big what? The big airplane. It used to be 747. I'm sure they got some bigger than that now. But you got this thing that weighs many, many tons. And you can get this thing up off the ground. And it can even coast a little ways. Not too far when the engines quit. Yeah, amazing things. Well, God here, he gives an example of how Hezekiah got sick. And he's at the point of death and Isaiah comes in, he wants to know, am I going to survive? Well, Isaiah's told to the Lord, no, you're going to die. Set your stuff, get your things in order. You know, get your last will and testament out, you know, whatever else it is that you're wanting to get done. And yet he prays. And God answers. I mean, you stop and think about that. The guy was only 39 years old when this happened. Who wants to die at 39, you know? And so, but, you know, God is able to raise him up and You know, God raises up people today. There are people walking around that God said, you're not going to make it. You know, your chances of survival of this operation or whatever is slim to none or whatever. And, you know, God sees fit to heal them, give them more time. I was thinking about that. Remember how long God told him, I'm going to give you how much time? 15 years. Wouldn't that be something if we all knew we had 15 years? Now I've got to say, the way it's going, maybe we don't want 15. But I mean, we don't know that we've got 15 days or 15 minutes as far as that goes. And yet he knew that he had 15 years. Well, we don't, and it's probably just as well that we don't know, you know, because we might be tempted to kind of goof off for the first 14 and then try to get it together the last year, you know. But yeah, we got to live every day really kind of like it's our last. Because we don't have that assurance of yet tomorrow. But it shows, again, prayer of faith. It's not wishful thinking or just power of positive thinking. We see here that he wants us to ask. As he mentions here, God tells us, you have not because you ask not, you know, and you're something about what is it that we're doing without right now, because we never got, got asked God for it. You know, Mark's pretty good about this. Fill up the seats. We do have a little bit more room here tonight. Yeah, maybe we should all be praying for that. But, okay, so then that, he says, pray constantly. And secondly, he says, pray specifically. Now, give me a generic prayer, a nonspecific prayer. all around the world, wherever they're at, okay? And God's standing there saying, okay, how do you want me to bless the missionaries? Zero in on it. And this is why it's good that we read the prayer letters of our missionaries. So it's not just, you know, going down the list, God bless the Bowlemans in England, God bless the Leonard's in Brazil, and so on. It's not, how do you want me to help them? Okay, Bowlemans are still virtual, you know, they're still trying to get together you know, because of COVID and all the restrictions and stuff that they've got, um, you know, that they can still keep the church together. He's going to be retiring, uh, in October. He's hits that magic 70 year mark. And, uh, with baptism and missions, they, they have to retire from the mission unless they can, Somehow they do something, maybe they give him a year at a time or something after that, but they're going to stay in England. He's going to keep on doing what he's doing now. He just won't have the official Baptist mid-missions mission status. Uh, but he, you know, they, they want to continue living there. Uh, there is no replacement for him. And so he's just gonna keep on doing what he's been doing and, and trying to find a meeting place. But, uh, to pray specifically that, and how God can do that, um, you know, or, or feed all the hungry all the way around the world. Well, there are a lot of hungry mouths out there. You hear the saying they used to say, hungry mouths have no ears. We need to meet both needs. You need to feed people physical food if they're starving, but just feeding them physical food doesn't meet their greatest need if they end up surviving the starvation and go to hell. We need to tell them about Christ so that they can be spiritually spared as well. And so he's saying that powerless, our prayers can be powerless because they're too general. He gives the example, Lord, remember the sick. Well, God hasn't forgot about the sick. But you know, who is it you want me to heal? You know, and we've got enough on our prayer sheet, and you all know other things that could be on there beside what's there, but we try to give you some specific things that you can pray for. And we see here that he talks about the promise of Christ's coming, the fact that we're going to be able to spend eternity with the Lord ought to give us an incentive to do our best work for Him here and now. You know, we all have down... I mean, ideally, our... Okay, I'm looking this way. Our spiritual lives ought to be just, you know, from the moment of salvation, Just a steady climb. Is that how we live, though? Yeah. Unfortunately, we take some dips in there now and again, OK? And we get down and discouraged about one thing or another. And we've been talking with Chris and Patty. They went over to see. Karen, and I think you guys did too. But, you know, you get discouraged. You have physical therapy, and you just don't have the strength to get up out of the chair and do what they want you to do. And, you know, you get a couple of days like that running in a row. And it's, oh, man, you know, I want to get out of here. I got to get stronger. Well, just thinking stronger doesn't make your arms stronger or whatever. And so, you know, we can pray specifically that God can strengthen her and he can do that. And not just, you know, giving her more vitamins, but incentive to continue to do what God wants us to do. I was talking with somebody here today and they were saying the situation in their life, there were some challenges, but she said instead of getting discouraged or upset with God, realizing that God sometimes allows trials to come into our life to build us up, to strengthen us, to cause us to be more dependent on Him, to help us to mature. You know, and we need to remind ourselves of that, because as you said, Satan's going to be around whispering in our ear or shouting in our ear, you know, God's forgotten about you, he doesn't care, whatever else that he might choose to use. And yet, God has a plan, a purpose, a will for each and every one of our lives. And it is different. In some ways it's the same, but in other ways it's different because you know people, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors, that most of the rest of us will probably never ever meet unless you bring them to church with you someday. And so, and your contact with them is, he's got some way he wants you to be reaching out to them. And so God, again, he wants, we can be praying that God can enable us to do his will, but then also to get beyond me, myself, and I, that God can empower each one of you to do all that God wants you to do. And so, you know, it's not just the preacher, it's not just the missionary or whatever, but to pray for one another. And just like when they were praying for the Thessalonians, they may had some of them, they were praying specifically by name and ones that they knew of that had special needs. But, you know, they weren't, I doubt if they were just singling out a couple of them to pray for and the rest of them, well, you're kind of on your own. No, they try to remember as many as they can. And that's kind of why we go through this family of the week thing. I mean, it takes us a little while to get through the whole list. But that's that person's opportunity to share some maybe particular prayer requests that you wouldn't share otherwise, and help people to get to know each other in some of their areas that we can be praying for one another. But he says, you know, ultimately God's purpose is Ultimately, he's going to transform us. When we get to heaven, we're going to be a whole lot different than we are now, okay? We're going to be the new and improved model, okay? But he also wants to be transforming us here and now. And what is his model for your life and mine? Right. He wants us to be like his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, we, oftentimes people will learn Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good, you know, and sometimes they use it in the wrong sort of way. You know, you can have some tragedy and, and I don't know if they're hoping that's going to make you feel better, but we need to go on to the next verse. that tells us how the fact that we're to be made into the image. of the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants us to be like Christ. And that verse goes, it says, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. Okay. He wants us to be, if you will, little carbon copies of Jesus. Not that we're all going to look like him. Okay. But that are the characteristics. that Christ had would be ones that we have in our lives to be like Christ. And then this verse goes on to say that we would be worthy of this calling, okay? That we'd measure up to what God expects of us. Again, it's not, transforming. I saw some picture the other day. This is a guy standing in the phone booth. You know, they used to have the old ones where the door swings in, you know, when you get in, you're talking on the pay phone, you know, and it was some relative or something. And he says, he's getting ready to be Superman. Well, you know, in the in the comics or whatever, he goes into the phone booth and comes out with his cape and off to save the world. Well, That kind of change doesn't take place in our lives. I mean, we are transformed from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. And, you know, at one point our destiny was hell and now it's been changed to heaven. But our day-to-day life isn't immediately everything, all the bad things about our lives immediately changed. That'd be great if it was. But it's a gradual process where we become more and more like Christ. And that is referred to in the scriptures as sanctification. It's a lifelong process. As long as we're here, this side of heaven, God's looking to keep on changing us, okay? And so that he can accomplish. Now what he wants us to do may change as physically, maybe we can't do the things that we once were able to do, but We've got to be in pretty bad shape if we get to the point where we can't pray. I've talked to people through the years, and sometimes they're kind of bedridden or can't do much of anything, and they're feeling kind of worthless or whatever. We need people to pray. We need prayer warriors. people that will pray for God's work and God's people, you know, and that's something that we can do. And some of these people take that to heart, you know, and you want to be on their prayer list because you know they're going to be praying for you. And as he mentions here, he says that we should pray that others fulfill all the good pleasures of his goodness. In other words, that they're able to accomplish all that God wants them to do, that God's will can be accomplished in and through their life. And you're wondering what to pray for me, you can pray that one. God will use him to accomplish all that he wants him to do. And we can do that for one another. We might be surprised if we really knew all that God wanted us to do. God's to-do list I'm guessing it's probably longer than hours. You know, because you look at scripture, and I realize these are kind of, that's not the way it is with everybody, but you know, Moses spends the first 40 years of his life being educated and becoming a high muckety-muck in Egyptian political scene and everything else, kind of getting groomed to be a ruler or something. And he kills the guy and he's on the run. He's the backside of the desert. you know, talking to the sheep for the next 40 years. And, you know, he's probably thinking, well, this is kind of the dead end road. What do you do after tending sheep for 40 years? Well, God had something else in mind. Go back and tell the Egyptian pharaoh, let my people go. Huh? Wait till you get that email or that certified letter. Remember that, I don't know if they even use that anymore, you know, Uncle Sam wants you or something like that. Well, God, he's got our number, you know, and there's things that he may want us to do. But we may end up, who knows where our best work is going to be done. You know, I try not to think about it because It's kind of depressing, but you know, maybe the Lord's going to come back soon and we're all going to be out of here. But if not, we live another X number of years and we end up, remember where we go on Christmas? We're over at Alice Care Center, you know, and they got two people in a room and it's pretty bare and stark. And I, you know, I think they take care of them. Okay. But it's, It's not very exciting living. If we end up there, who knows? Maybe that's where we're going to do our best work. We're evangelizing the floor and the nurses and they can't get away from us. They keep putting in a new roommate, you know, and we don't know, but God does. And so I guess we've got to be ready, willing, and able to accept whatever the orders are, orders from headquarters. And not just, again, praying the Lord will help us to be able to do what He wants us to do, but Again, praying for others, that God would give them the enablement they need to accomplish all God wants. Okay, so we have a couple of things here. We're gonna leave the rest of that here for next week, but we can be thinking about that, praying constantly, praying for other people. When somebody comes to mind, pray for them, okay? And secondly, be specific. There's probably a limit to that. There's only so much you can ask people before you start intruding into their business. But if they ask you to pray for them, how do you want them to pray for them? In what way? And then to remember to actually follow through and do that. Okay, well, we'll just stop here and we'll pick this up here, Lord willing, next week, okay? Let's close. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we're not just simply going through the motions as we pray, but we are doing your work and you're doing it the way that you want us to do it. You didn't tell us to go out and do the best we could and when that didn't work out so good that we could come back and ask you for some help. You told us to pray first and allow you to guide us along the way. We pray that you would remind us of just these couple of points that we talked about here tonight. When somebody comes to mind, that we pray for them. We may not know all of their needs, but for the people we do know, we're probably aware of some of their particular needs, and we can pray as specifically as we can for them. And then to remind ourselves how you've Answered prayer time and time again in the past and how you can do so once again in the present and in the future. And you're always going to be there for us. And there's not a limit. We don't have to worry about hitting our limit and we can't ask for anything more. We thank you for that now in Jesus name, Amen. OK. I'm so used to walking over here to turn this thing off. Try this. Yeah, if you do get up this way, be careful. There's a lot of cords. I'm going to try to cover some of those up.