How to Have Faith That Won’t Quit | Eran Holt

Who's glad to be in church today? Woo! Hey, while you're clapping and yelling, give a big welcome to all of our friends at God Behind Bars. We love you guys. We love you guys. We're standing with you. So glad that you're joining us. And greet your neighbor as well. Look at your neighbor and just say, neighbor. It's an honor to sit next to you. So it's great. Look at your other neighbor, the one that you keep ignoring every time we do this. Look at each other and say, other neighbor. It's an honor for you to sit next to me. Yes, it is. I'm the best looking neighbor you have ever had. Come on, man. It's good. I'm so glad to be with you. We're gonna jump into God's Word. We're gonna be in Luke chapter 18 today, but let me just kind of set up this parable of Jesus that we're gonna be talking about. So years ago, my dad and I decided that we were going to have the most epic father-son experience ever. We were going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro together.

Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. Yeah, and so we weren't just doing this by ourselves. We were doing it with a larger group of pastors and leaders, business leaders. We were raising money for some clean water wells to be put, drilled in Africa through an organization called World Serve. Some of you might be familiar with them. They've been a Kingdom Builders partner with Allison Park over the years. And so we were excited about this and we had to do a lot of training, a lot of hiking, getting in shape and everything like that. And what they did to prep us was they had us be able to be consulted by or coached by some professional climbers, some professional mountain guides. And so they would jump on a call and they would say, here's the way to hike and here's the way to do this and here's the way to get in shape. And one of the calls was, here's all the gear that you need to buy, right? And so they gave us this long list of everything we should buy. It was all very expensive stuff. And so I'm looking at this list and I'm just like, I can't afford any of this. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just figure it out, right? And the guide kept saying to us, this is important.

Like, you need to really pay attention. You need to get this gear and stuff like that. And he would use this one phrase over and over and over again. He said this, he said, on the mountain, there's no such thing as bad weather. There's just bad gear. And I just thought, that sounds like a sales pitch to me. I think I'm good. And this guy's probably getting a kickback or something. I don't know. And so I just, you know, I didn't follow the rules, so to speak. And then I got on the mountain and all of a sudden I realized there's really no such thing as bad weather. There's just bad gear. And what I mean by that is when you climb Kilimanjaro, what's wild about that climb is on any given day, you could experience every kind of weather possible. I mean, you could have like monsoon, torrential downpour, humidity, like you're in a rain forest, followed by a couple hours later of like freezing temperatures and a blizzard, you know? Like you just have to be ready for all of it. And so I didn't have the right gear. The weather came and all of a sudden I'm like blazing hot when I should be cool. I'm freezing cold when I should be warm.

I'm soaking wet whenever I didn't buy the right rain gear. I ended the climb with the world's largest blisters on both of my feet, right? I have some pictures here real quick. No, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. And that would be terrible. And so I've never forgotten that phrase because I realized I completely misunderstood what he was saying. He wasn't saying there's not gonna be any bad weather on the mountain. He was guaranteeing there would be bad weather on the mountain, but that I should prepare accordingly and should I do so well, then I'll be just fine. I actually think Jesus uses a lot of his parables in the New Testament to teach and preach in a very similar way. I think Jesus is often speaking to you and I as his followers like he did to those with him in person, he's trying to help them understand life is gonna life. People are gonna people. Storms are gonna storm. Trials are gonna trial. It's all gonna come at us. Are we prepared? Do we have the right gear to withstand and sustain what life is gonna throw at us? This is what this parable that we're gonna study today

is all about. So we're gonna be in Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, this is one of Jesus' parables. How many of you got your Bible? You can turn there. How many of you got your Bible? You got your real Bible? You got your old school leather bound falling apart Bible? Okay, good. All you cool people got your iPhones, that's awesome. You got an Android, just hide that, that's embarrassing. Do that, okay. Bad gear. Okay, no, I'm just, I'm just, okay. Okay, here we go, here we go. Focus, Aaron, focus, you know. All right, Luke chapter 18, verses one through seven, that's what we're gonna read. Oftentimes when Jesus told a parable, he didn't always tell us what it meant. This is not one of these cases. In this case, Jesus, right out the gate, just basically says, here's why I'm telling you this parable, and it's found in verse number one. So follow along, it'll be on the screen for you as well. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable. to show them they should always pray and not give up. Let's pause for a second. Everybody say always pray. Everybody say not give up.

Okay, just so you, and that's very simple to understand, but there's actually a little bit more depth to it if you go back to the original language of Greek where the New Testament was written, right? How the New Testament was written. In Greek, that phrase would translate to something like this. Keep praying or your mind will turn against you. Isn't that interesting? How many of you have ever had a situation in life that was like your brain is just going crazy, like your thought life is just out of the world? Okay, so Jesus is kind of talking about that. Here's the other translation in Greek. Keep praying or your inner strength will collapse. Oh, that's good. So this is what Jesus is trying to help his disciples here, right? He initiated this conversation and he's trying to help them understand that the quality of their prayer life will in large part determine how well they handle the storms that they're gonna face in life, right? Okay, let's jump into the parable now. Verse number two. He said, in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea,

grant me justice against my adversary. For some time, he refused. But he finally said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, everybody say, bothering me, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. Okay, that's kind of funny, right? I mean, think about this. He's like, she won't attack me. So when I saw that, I kind of laughed and then I was like, well, I want to see what the Greek translation has to say about that. It's literally translated this. So that she won't come and give me a black eye. How about that? What kind of energy did this woman have that this judge is like, she's coming at me. I'm gonna give her whatever she wants, right? You know what I mean, right? And then Jesus finishes the parable like this, verse six and seven. And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says and will not God. Everybody say, but God. Come on, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones?

Jesus is juxtaposing the unjust judge versus the only judge who is true and just, God himself. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? Okay, this is a fascinating parable here that Jesus is telling. Let me give you a little bit of context for where this fits in the journey that Jesus and his disciples are having. We're in Luke 18. In Luke 18, we are just probably anywhere from one or two weeks, maybe as much as a month, away from the beginning of the Passion Week. What's the Passion Week? That's Palm Sunday all the way through Resurrection Sunday. We just celebrated Resurrection Sunday last week. So when Jesus is telling this parable just to his disciples, there were times where Jesus would preach to large groups of people. This case was just his disciples. So Jesus is not just informing the disciples. He's actually forming them. This is a mentoring conversation he's having with his disciples. And Jesus understands what they have yet to fully realize, and that is that they are just moments away from Jesus going through one of the most horrific experiences that any person could ever go through. They will go to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

He'll preach and teach for several days. They'll meet together for the Last Supper. We're gonna celebrate the Last Supper here at the conclusion of our service. We're gonna celebrate communion together. And then they'll go to the garden after Judas betrays Jesus at the Last Supper. Then Jesus will be arrested, then on trial, then he'll be crucified, and then obviously the resurrection will come. We celebrated that this week. The disciples don't really realize this yet. And so when I look at Luke 18 in relation to the timeline of what's happening and what's getting ready to happen, I understand Jesus here is doing some deep preparation work in the lives of his followers, and he's trying to help them understand what I just said to you a moment ago. Life is gonna start lifin' here in just a couple minutes, guys. And storms are gonna start rollin' in. And stuff is gonna get real, real hard. And I, Jesus, not me, but I, Jesus, in the story, as you're covering, am getting ready to go, and you're gonna have to have a prayer life that can sustain all of the challenges that you're getting ready to face. And so he uses this story here, this incredible story of a widow woman who's demanding justice from a judge. Okay, so when you read a parable,

usually there are multiple layers or angles of interpretation. Right? So it's almost like if an artist makes like a sculpture, right, and you look on it from just one direction, it's like you only see one version of it. But if you just, if you get a different angle, then it's like, oh, but from over here, you know? It's like a beautiful work of art. That's how parables are, right? If that illustration doesn't make sense for you, how many of you watch sports? Like you're big into sports? Okay, this will be easier for you. It's like instant replay. Close call. We've got the, we go from real time to slo-mo. We got like 16 different camera angles. And as you're watching every angle, you're like, oh, it either confirms or it proves that your opinion of what happened in the play is right or wrong or whatever like that. You're like, I think it's this, but then you see a different angle. You're like, oh, but what about this? Okay. So that's how parables kind of work when we interpret them. So I want to give you kind of two angles for this parable so that you can get and understand the depth of what Jesus is trying to say about your prayer life

and my prayer life. Okay, so here's the first angle. This is the angle of the widow itself, like the widow woman herself, right? This is the view of what her experience would have been like, right? So let's jump into it real quick. The disciples, as they're interpreting this through the lens or the perspective of the woman, might have been thinking to themselves, why is Jesus talking about prayer? We already know how to pray. Now, why would I say that? Well, because in Luke 11, Jesus teaches the disciples how to pray, right? It's Luke 11 where Jesus is praying and the disciples come to him after hearing him pray and they say what? Lord, teach us to, yeah, yeah. Some of you remember the story. And what is Jesus' response? He gives them the Lord's prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, right? He's not saying pray these specific words every time. He's giving them a pattern for prayer. What's interesting to me is that the disciples initiated that conversation. It's almost as if they heard Jesus praying and they're like, I know how to pray, but I don't know how to pray like that.

How many of you have ever had that moment with you listen to someone else pray, right? And you're just like, I don't even know if I actually can pray now. Like, I just, like, I mean, I don't know. Like, if that's how, you know, okay. That's apparently how the disciples felt in Luke 11. And so, but now we're in Luke 18. And in Luke 18, Jesus initiates the conversation with them, not the disciples. So it's almost as if Jesus knows instinctively everything that's getting ready to happen, everything I just laid out for you, right? The Palm Sunday, Passion Week, the whole deal. He knows all of it and he's looking at the prayer lives of his disciples and he's like, we need to level you guys up. Like, your Luke 11 praying isn't ready for Luke 19. So we're in 18 right now. I gotta level you up and I gotta help you understand what's coming and you better get yourself a prayer life or you're gonna be in all kinds of trouble a couple of weeks from now whenever we roll into Jerusalem and everything starts going down. This is what I, let me translate it like this. Jesus is really trying to help the disciples understand that it only takes a little bit of faith to pray once but it takes what I'll call lasting faith

to keep on praying even if you don't get an answer to that prayer right away. I say, this is actually the first view that we can have. It's what I would call lasting faith. Everyone say lasting faith. That's your first point. If you're taking notes, lasting faith. Everyone say lasting faith. Look at your neighbor and say, do you have lasting faith? Okay, some of you didn't do that. I know who you are. I'm coming after you. Okay, I'm gonna get you. Lasting faith, persistent faith. Can you prevail in prayer? Do you have enough faith just to pray once or do you have faith that will keep on like the widow bringing you back again and again and again because what does the widow do in the story? The widow demands justice. The widow goes to the judge. She says, give me justice against my adversary. He says, no, right? In a typical situation, she would have just had to deal with the disappointment and she would have had to move on but she won't take no for an answer. She comes back the next day and then the next day and then the next day and then the next day. Imagine being this woman's Uber driver.

I mean, we're going to the same place every single time, right? But she's modeling persistent faith. She's saying, I'm not going to give up. Eventually, eventually, I'm going to receive justice for this. It's like this, the old school church would call it when you learn how to pray through. I pray that this contemporary church, Allison Park Church, which I love, get some old school oil and get some old school praying through moms and dads and grandparents that say, it's okay if you don't get an answer on the first time. I'm going to pray again and again and again. And again, it's this persistent, prevailing prayer. Okay, this is a silly way to describe it, but it's just what makes sense in my head. It is like my dog when I'm eating bacon. I mean, okay, so I have a German short-haired pointer, and when I'm eating bacon, I mean, he is right there, and he is pointing at me with his eyes. He is staring into the depths of my soul. Matt, is this true for you too? Is this true, right? Like, like, like, it's like, it's like he, it's like, and if the bacon moves, he's like. And when he does that, the drool that's now hanging from his mouth is just swaying like a, like a low-budget, like, like movie effect

or something like that. I have realized that this is his version of psychological warfare. And what his eyes are saying to me is, is I will break you. Like, you will, you will relent, and you will give me a peace. So it's like silly, but this is this woman who has lasting faith. Everyone say lasting faith. And Jesus is trying to teach his disciples, your Luke 11 prayer life is not gonna sustain you through what's getting ready to happen in Luke 19. And so you've gotta level up and have a lasting faith, a persistent, prevailing, pray-through-type prayer. Augustine, the great church father, he said this about this particular parable. He said this. He said, persistent prayer is not meant to inform God because God already knows our needs. Aren't you thankful for a heavenly father who's omniscient? He already knows your need before you've ever even opened up your mouth, before you've ever even uttered a prayer request to him. He's already, in fact, I believe there are times that God knew your need and was already working on an answer to your need before you even knew you needed to pray about it, right? Augustine goes on. He says, it's not meant to inform God because God already knows our needs.

Instead, prayer enlarges the capacity of the one praying. God isn't delaying because he is unaware. Sometimes he allows delay because he's enlarging our faith. Persistence isn't wearing God down. Persistence is God building something inside of you. She's got this lasting faith. Everybody say, lasting faith. Try it again. Look at your neighbor and say, do you have lasting faith? Okay, you didn't do much better. We're gonna get there. This next one will get you, though. This next one's gonna get you. Here's the second angle. Here's the second angle, right? The first angle is understanding the story through the lens or the perspective of the widow herself. The second angle is understanding the story through the lens of cultural norms or societal norms in a Jewish culture in which this story would have taken place. This is a widow woman. That means that she has lost her husband. When a woman in this Jewish context loses her husband, she doesn't just lose her mate. She loses her covering, specifically her legal covering. Women typically had no standing. They had no legal standing in order to go defend themselves or demand justice for themselves. So her showing up to the judge is a violation

of all of the social norms and protocols of what should have taken place. The disciples would have instinctively known this, and Jesus would have known this as well, but he's leveraging it for the depth and the meaning of this story here. What should have happened was the woman realizing she had no legal standing would have hired someone to represent her, or she would have found, she would have found a relative in her family who was male to go to the judge on her behalf. And when the judge denied her request, she should have just dealt with it and didn't disappoint it and be like, I guess that's the way that it is. She doesn't do any of that. What does she do? She keeps showing up at the judge's courtroom again and again and again. This is not a courtroom like you and I envision where you drive downtown and you walk into the building and you have your name on the docket and this is when you're coming up. This would have been an open air, almost like an open air market where there's one area where the judge sits and where people would come if they needed justice. And so anybody could come at any time and you would get in line and you would wait only if you were a man. But when this woman gets in line and is denied justice,

she's already violated protocol. But then when she shows up again the next day and the next day and the next day and again and again and again, eventually she probably garners a reputation for herself and apparently whatever energy she's bringing to her argument and defense, this judge gets intimidated at some point and he says, she's gonna give me a black eye. Okay, so this is not lasting faith now. This is what I would call loud faith. Everyone say loud faith. Okay, try it again a little bit louder, loud faith. Okay, okay. So Jesus is teaching the disciples something even more significant here. He's teaching them that yes, it is good that you have your private Luke 11 prayer life, your private faith, your private convictions, that is great, but Jesus is trying to help them understand there's a time coming where you men, I'm talking about Jesus to the disciples, where you men are going to lose Jesus as your covering in the same way that the widow lost her husband. Everybody following me? Jesus is getting ready to go to the cross. After the cross, yes, he will resurrect from the grave, but then after that, what will happen? He will ascend to heaven. So the disciples who are used to Jesus

being their covering, they're comfortable with Jesus being the one praying, Jesus being the one leading, Jesus being the one teaching and preaching, Jesus being the one doing the miracles, Jesus being the one standing against the injustices done by the Roman Empire and even by the religious right of the Pharisees. Jesus did all of this. The disciples are used to that. Jesus is trying to prepare them, I'm gonna be gone. And you're gonna experience the same loss that the widow experienced. You're gonna feel like you've lost your covering. Are you prepared? Do you have good gear for the storm that's coming? Do you have a Luke 11 prayer life or do you have a Luke 18 prayer life that says there are times when my prayer life is lasting faith and there are other times where it's loud faith, where I have to violate all the protocols and all the social norms, where I simply have to open up my mouth and declare what I know to be true. I'm gonna suggest, based on my reading of the New Testament, Jesus kinda likes it when people violate the protocols. Go to Mark 2, where Jesus is teaching in an overcrowded room, people, lines and lines and lines of people

trying to get to Jesus for healing, and four dudes dig a hole in the roof and lower their friend right before Jesus and Jesus is like, I like that, you're healed, bro. That's great. Everyone else is like, they cut in line. Right? But Jesus is like, it's okay. I mean, Jesus apparently likes it so he tells this story to the disciples because he's trying to help them understand, guys, you gotta level up. Okay, that's current, that was Jesus' current culture right there. Let me talk about current American culture for a second. Let me talk about what's happening in American Christian culture right now. Here's what's happening. It's about to get real. Can you handle this? In American Christian culture, here's what's happening right now. Men have bought into the American cultural lie of spiritual passivity. And so men have chosen, not all men, but many men have chosen to sit on the sidelines and to allow their wives to do the heavy lifting of spiritual leadership. And so in most of our churches across America, it's not the men leading the way in worship,

it's the women. It's not the men leading the way in the prayer meetings, it's the women. It's not the men leading the way in serving, it's the women. In most of our churches, that's what's happening, and that extends from the church into the home. And so most men have chosen to be spiritually passive and step back and allow their wives to carry the weight of spiritual leadership in the home. And so it's the women that are praying for the marriage. It's the women that are praying for the children. It's the women that are rising up to pray for spiritual direction and favor over the home, and it's the men sitting back, letting the wives do the job because I got too much going on, or I gotta watch the game, or I'm a little bit too tired because I've been working too hard. Is that too real? I think this is the part of the challenge for us as a church and for us as men, right here in this moment. And here's the secondary challenge to this. It's like, okay, that's fine, pastor. Like, maybe you have a point. I mean, you might be mentally wrestling with me right now and be like, okay, bro, you have a point. Like, my wife is better at this than I am,

and so that's why I just decided to let her do it because I didn't feel really confident in my prayer life, and so I'd let her do it. But here's what most men are thinking, right? If you're receiving what I'm saying right now, most men are thinking, but if I'm gonna be honest with you, Pastor Aaron, I'm not really even good at praying. Like, I don't even really know how to pray that well. Okay, well, I'm here to help. How many of you would like to learn how to pray a little bit better in this service? I'm gonna ask that question again. How many of you, okay. Okay, I'm gonna teach you five different ways to pray. I'm gonna go through all of them real fast, so get ready to take some notes, ready? Class is in session. Sit up, elbow your neighbor, pen and paper. There will be an exam that you have to pass in order to get out of the building today. Okay, okay, here we go. I'm gonna teach you five ways to pray. Ready, here we go. These will all go pretty quickly. Get ready to write these down or snap pictures on the screen. Okay, here's prayer number one. It's called the prayer of invocation. Everyone say invocation.

That's kind of a churchy word. It simply means this, a prayer inviting the presence of God. That's invocation. We're invoking or inviting the presence of God. Now, why would we do that? Why would we use this prayer? Let me give you one verse to support it. There's many, but let me give you one. Psalm chapter 16, verse 11 says this. In the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy. Yeah, some of you know it. You said it. In the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy. So if you treat prayer as if it's like a one-size-fits-all tool, that's what some people do. Some people look at prayer and then they're like, you just pray. I don't know. All prayers are the same. They're not. That's like saying all tools in the toolbox are the same. That's like saying you just need a hammer. A hammer can fix anything in your house. Right, it just doesn't work. Okay, so there's a specific reason why we would use the prayer of invocation. We want to invite the presence of God. Why would we wanna invite the presence of God? Because the presence of God comes with the promise of joy.

So if I'm discouraged or I'm wrestling with depression, sure, you can pray, God, take away my discouragement, or you can lean on the promises of God, and you can say, God, I'm gonna invite you into my home, into my car, into my life, into my workplace, because I know where the presence of the Lord is, there is joy. This is, theologically speaking, what I'm talking about is the difference between God's omnipresence, or him being omnipresent. God is everywhere. That's different from God's manifest presence. So let me describe it like this. Omnipresent, God being omnipresent, that's like you and I saying, in this room, there's oxygen in the air. You can't feel it, but you're breathing it in, right? So there's oxygen. But his manifest presence, that would be like a wind, like you walk outside and you feel the power of the wind blowing in your face or blowing through my hair, right? That would be, okay, speaking in faith right now. Okay, so you would feel that. So when you're experiencing God's manifest presence, you feel it. How do you feel it? The psalmist said you feel it with joy, right? What am I saying? I'm saying that there are some times where all you need to do is invite King Jesus

into the room with you, because when King Jesus arrives, everything that's not a part of his kingdom is temporarily expelled. So all of my discouragement's gotta go and all of my anxiety's gotta go and joy comes and peace comes. Why? Because Jesus just showed up. Prayer of invocation. Number two, number two, this would be called the prayer of gratitude. Everyone say gratitude. Gratitude. Okay, Philippians chapter four, verse six. By prayer and petition with thanksgiving, right? Gratitude, present your request to God and he will guard your hearts and your minds. Okay, so what did the parable say to us? Keep on praying so that your mind won't betray you. And then here's Paul saying, if you will choose to offer thanksgiving, if you will choose to offer gratitude, then God will reward you with the protection of your mind or your thinking. We call that peace, right? How many of you could use some peace right now? Okay, so here's what we often do when we're wrestling with anxiety. We say, I got, how do I resist this anxiety? Go away, stress, go away, go away, go away.

And Paul here is saying, no, no, no, no. Use the prayer of gratitude. Because when you're grateful for everything that God has already done in your past, then when you remind yourself of what God has already done, it gives you peace to know that he'll meet your needs again in this moment. Listen, sometimes when you're praying, it's not about resistance, it's about remembrance. It's about me remembering, God, you've always been faithful in my past. And if you were faithful in my past, I can trust you with my present and my future. Okay, prayer of gratitude, number three. This is called the prayer of intercession. This is one that you're probably a little bit more familiar with. Prayer of intercession, right? This is when you and I intercede for another person. Or we intercede on behalf of a group of people. This is when we stand in the gap on behalf of somebody else. James chapter five, verse 16 says, the prayer of a righteous man or woman availeth much. How many of you are smart enough and thankful enough to know that the only reason why you might even be alive right now is because you had a praying mama, or you had a praying daddy, or you had a praying grandparent in your life, and because God answered their prayer. prayers on your behalf you're the you're sitting in the seat of favor and blessing as a result

it's the power of intercession okay prayer number four we're almost done prayer number four this is the prayer of supplication everyone say supplication that's just a big fancy churchy word that means i'm i'm presenting my my supplications or my prayer request or my prayer needs to the lord right and and and the writer of hebrews chapter 4 verse 16 he says that when we do that we should do that with great confidence we should boldly enter into the throne room of heaven is what he says like we should walk in there like we got an appointment like we should walk in there like the widow woman who says i've been coming every single day for thousands of days now but eventually i'm gonna get justice i'm gonna present my need my supplication i'm demanding justice right i'm supplicating right many of us when we think about prayer that's all we think about we're like isn't prayer just when i ask god for stuff well that's one one prayer there's a bunch of them here's the last one the prayer of authority everyone say authority now you gotta say it with a deep voice like you have authority authority yeah yeah yeah there you go okay okay prayer of authority this is when i'm declaring what has already been approved or what has already been given to me okay so jesus said this about authority in luke chapter 10 verse 19 he said i have given you all authority so when he spoke that to his disciples he's speaking that not just to them but through them to you and i as his disciples so what this means like like in a moment we're going to celebrate communion and when we celebrate communion we celebrate the broken body and we celebrate the shedding of his blood we're celebrating many things not just his death and his his resurrection but we're celebrating like what jesus provided for us through his death and through the shedding of his blood so one of the things that jesus provided through his broken body isaiah chapter 53 verse 5 the prophet said this he said by his stripes we are healed so what that means to us is that you and i have access to healing because of what he did on the cross that means that i i stand in authority because this has been promised to me so when i'm using the prayer of authority i'm not standing like a beggar looking up at heaven god please please please please please i don't need to beg god to do what's already been authorized i'm actually standing spiritually speaking in the heavenly realms in the heavenly courts of heaven and i stand there as an heir and a co-heir in christ jesus as one who has received the inheritance as a son and a daughter of god and the my inheritance is the authority that he's given to me here's the big difference when i use any of the other four prayers i'm speaking to god about my needs when i'm using the prayer of authority i'm speaking to my problems about my

god you see the difference so it's like now i'm using the power of authority in this moment i'm i'm so grateful that we have different ways of praying and okay let me let me just get real personal here for with you for a second um six years ago when when our family moved back here to pittsburgh i had 20 plus years of pastoral ministry experience at that point in my life but i would tell you very transparently that even though i probably ministered effectively publicly privately my prayer life was pretty weak and it wasn't until i got around pastor jeff that all of a sudden i was like oh that's how you pray i won't pray like that and it wasn't until i got books in my hands like this one that pastor jeff wrote praying with confidence it wasn't until that that started happening that i was like man i know i'm growing i'm growing in my prayer life like now i feel like i actually have a a prayer life i want to i want to encourage you especially you men that i challenge i want to encourage you get this book we pulled together as many copies of this as we could find here at the church they have them out at the cafe right uh we we miraculously we sold out after the first service this morning and like literally miraculously they just found another random box here at the church somewhere and there was a massive line i don't even know how many are left if they run out you can go on amazon and you get it's called praying with confidence right this will walk you through everything that i just taught you it will teach you how to pray it will give you a plan for you and your wife to pray together why is this so important because i'm in a season of my life right now where i'm using every one of these prayers almost every day so what are you talking about pastor six weeks ago i had a heart attack many of you knew that you were praying for us we're so grateful for some of you that's news i there was no signs there was no warnings we didn't see it coming and all of a sudden i find myself in the hospital for several days and and spent several nights in a a very uncomfortable hospital bed, staring at a ceiling, but using every single one of these prayers. Being able to, in the midst of great fear and anxiety, simply say, God, I know that you're with me. I invite your presence in here. God, I'm grateful you've brought me through so much. You'll bring me through this as well. Interceding for other people in the midst of that,

presenting supplications, using the gift of authority and saying, God, I declare you're gonna do something incredible in my life. You're gonna do a healing work in my life. I get discharged on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday night in our home, I have the worst panic attack I've ever had in my life. I mean, I am literally laying face down on the floor of our living room, and my wife is sitting on one side, praying with me, and my dog is on the other side, trying to lick every tear off of my face. It's like, I don't know, he's trying to help. But the reason I'm having this panic attack is partially the post experience that a lot of people that have heart attacks have had. But when I had my heart attack and they did the follow-up echocardiogram, it was a good news, not good news situation. The good news was the heart was incredibly healthy, probably miraculously more healthy than what it should have been post heart attack. But the not so good news was they made an incidental discovery, what they call an enlarged aorta. Aorta comes off the top of your heart, and they said my aorta is enlarged. And they wanted me to immediately see a specialist that same week on Friday morning. So it's Wednesday, I'm having a panic attack.

We have this appointment on Friday. And then the next week on Monday, they're gonna do a follow-up CT scan to confirm what the other report showed. And I kinda knew what was gonna happen in this appointment on Friday. I kinda knew this guy, this brilliant surgeon, he's gonna recommend open heart surgery to deal with this. And so I'm panicking. And it's Friday, it's Wednesday night, and we gotta work through it. And we're praying and praying and praying. And then by the time we get into Thursday, I mean, I'm exhausted. I'm so overwhelmed with all the fear and anxiety. And I feel like another attack is coming on, I tell my wife. And so we sit down there in the living room, and we just start praying, and we start praying, and we're worshiping, we're praying. And we're using all these prayers. We're using all of them. And I'm gonna tell you, Jesus showed up in my house in a way that I have never experienced in my life. I mean, I've been in a lot of ministry settings. I've been in a lot of camps, a lot of altar calls, a lot of powerful revival services. I mean, if I've ever had a personal encounter with God, it happened at my home a couple of weeks ago

on a Thursday night. It was like King Jesus himself came rolling into my living room. And when he showed up, I felt the manifest presence of God in a way that I have really never felt it in my life. And it was almost as if every breath of air that I was inhaling was actually filled with like pure peace from the heavens or something like that. And every exhale was like me just like exhaling all the anxiety and all the fear and everything that I was holding on to and everything that was producing all of the anxiety inside of me. And as I was experiencing all this, I looked at my wife and I just, with faith, I just made this declaration to her. I said, I'm healed. And she's like, what did you say? And I said, I said, I'm healed. And when I made that faith, that loud faith declaration, it was like all of the fatigue, all of it just was gone. It was like everything, like I've watched people be healed on missions trips and services. I've watched people that were like, I can't lift my arm and then they're waving their hand. I've watched people say, I can barely walk and then they're running. I had a girl last year at a camp walk up to me and hand me her hearing aid and said,

I've worn this since kindergarten. I don't need it anymore. I can hear perfectly fine. But for me, like this is the first time I'm ever experiencing something like this. I'm like, I'm healed. We go to the appointment the next morning. I still feel great. I'm telling you, I mean, I'm like, I walk into that appointment. I am so full of lasting faith and loud faith. I'm like, let's go. And so we meet with the doctor and he says, you need surgery. You need open heart surgery. You're not, it's not an emergency though. We'll wait, we'll do it later. And since we're going to do it later, we'll just cancel that scan on Monday. And I was so disappointed because I wanted to do the scan. Cause I wanted, like, I wanted, I wanted to see the results of like what I was, had just experienced the night before. And so I tried to talk to doctor back into it. I was like, let's do the scan doc. And he's like, no, no. And I'm like, yeah, I just want to do it. Let's just do it. And he's like, you just had one six days ago. And I'm like, I know, but I want to do this one anyways.

And he finally was like, what? It's only, I think he wanted to be like, what is wrong with you? But I, but he finally, he's just like, why? Why do you want to do another scan? And I just, just faith. And I just said to him, I said, well doc. Because I believe there's gonna be a miracle. I'm gonna get a miracle and that a word is gonna shrink See you guys are great cuz you're clapping that was not his response His response to me was this he said very kindly but he said to me that's not gonna happen that never happens and And when he said that to me, I just I felt like this defiant faith come up inside of me in my mind I thought to myself like ooh, my daddy in heaven is not gonna be happy with you right now. I Think the Holy Spirit was like I bet It went and when when the appointment ended and he left the room I looked at Julie and I just said that man just put God on notice and she said oh, yes. Oh, yes. He did I'm still I'll still go back for a scan It'll happens probably in July is what they're telling me and I appreciate your your prayers. This is how prayer works though lasting faith loud faith Okay, so let's respond now. Let's respond man. I challenged you now. I want to pray over you So I want to ask just the men all the men. Would you stand to your feet? Would you stand to your feet? My Goal today was not to call you out My goal was to call you higher If you are married here in the room, I'm calling you higher I'm calling you to another level of spiritual leadership in your home that means you take on the mantle of being a spiritual leader and that means you take on the mantle of Growing your prayer life and your wife's prayer life and your kids and your grandkids prayer life So this is not a rebuke in any way. I know

What it's like as a man to deeply struggle with leading spiritually in your own home That might come as a surprise to you But I'll just very transparently tell you that even though for many years of my life I led well as a pastor from a stage. There were many years of my life where I was failing in my home and In fact just a couple weeks ago Julie and I we've been praying every single night because of everything I just told you we've been sharing communion together almost every single night right because we want to be reminded of the healing power that comes through the broken body of Jesus and One of those moments I looked at her with tears in my eyes. This is just a couple weeks ago and I said to her Julie, would you please forgive me for not always leading this way in our home? And she said back to me. She said What's happening right now in our prayer life is what I've been praying for for us and for you for the last 20 years of our marriage Man you can do this We you can get all the help that you need Right everything you can do this You don't have to live spiritually passive if you're if you're single and you're not even at that season of your life Learn how to pray now So that you have that to take into your marriage so that you can lead well Okay, so all the men lift your hands to heaven. I just want to pray every real quick Women of God if you want to grab your husband's hand, that's fine If you want to stretch a hand towards him, that's that's fine, too. All right, we're gonna pray for men just for a moment So Lord, I just release over the men of our house right now a renewed passion for the things of God I release over them a renewed passion to grow in their prayer life I release over them the favor of heaven the favor of Jesus himself Calling them into intimacy with him God I release over the men of our house a boldness to learn to pray to learn to pray with lasting faith and with loud faith God let them step up in a Significant way in the next days and weeks and months I pray God that this house of healing that we're declaring Allison Park Church to be Not just be a place where healings take place in this house

but where healings take place through this house and through the homes and the spiritual leadership of Men of God here at Allison Park Church. God, let it be so in the name of Jesus I pray amen and amen. Come on. Let's applaud our men right now Yeah, come on everyone else join us stand to your feet everybody else all the women Okay now now wives let me just let me just encourage you wives real quick Some of you have been carrying the spiritual load for a long long time and you feel the weight of that and at times you feel the exhaustion of that as You step into the next several days where your husband is is saying I need to step up I pray that God gives you the grace to release him to do so Because in your heart some of you it's been hard it's been a hard journey and So it's hard for you to think that you're gonna actually be able to let go of some of the spiritual that you've had to hold it together for your family, I pray that God will give you the grace to do that. All right, let's close in prayer here real quick, and then we're gonna head to communion. Bow your heads and close your eyes with me real quick. I wanna give one quick invitation. Bow your heads, close your eyes. You're here in the room today, maybe you're watching online, but you're here and you would say, Pastor Aaron, before I can really even think about growing in my prayer life, whether as a man or a woman, there's one very important decision that I need to make, and that's the decision to commit my life to Jesus. And so if you're here this morning and you would just say, I've never given my life to Jesus, I've never really fully surrendered to him,

or I need to recommit my life to Jesus, I'm gonna count to three, and I just want you to slip up a hand wherever you're at. You would just say, that's me. Today, that's where it starts for me. I can't really grow in my prayer life unless I have a relationship with God, and so I'm committing my life to Jesus today, right now in this moment. On the count of three, I want you to lift your hand. One, two, three, lift it up real quick, wherever you're at, come on, hold it up. Yeah, look at that, come on. Come on, I see a bunch of hands. Okay, there's maybe 10 or so more hands that I'm seeing. There might be more than that. Put your hands down. Everybody in the house, repeat this prayer after me, not just those of you that lifted your hands. Everybody, repeat this after me, nice and loud. Dear Jesus, today I make a decision to become a follower of Christ. I believe you died on the cross. I believe you shed your blood for the goodness of my sins, and today I receive that gift, the gift of forgiveness and the gift of salvation. Thank you, Jesus, that you died for me. In your name I pray, amen. Come on, can we applaud real quick, those that made that choice and decision?

Yes. In a moment, when I dismiss you, not right now, those of you that raised your hands, when you dismiss this morning, I would invite you to walk through these doors right over here. Pastor Nick and his team are gonna be over there, and they have resources to help you as you take the first steps towards becoming a follower of Christ. We just wanna help you, that's all we wanna do, and we got a bunch of stuff there, it's all free, and we wanna get, so in a moment, I'm gonna ask you to go that way. Pastor Sarah and the team are gonna come back. They're gonna do a little bit of the song that we did earlier in the service. While they're doing that, our ushers are gonna come. They're gonna serve you the communion elements. You can stay standing. You don't have to be a member of Allison Park Church in order to receive and partake in communion. We just ask that you know in your heart you are a follower of Jesus, and if you have yet to make that decision, then we would invite you to allow the communion elements to just simply pass you by without taking of the elements whenever that happens, but for those of you that are partaking in communion, they'll serve you here in a moment.

Come on, Sarah, lead us in this song. ♪ Oh, everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Sickness, darkness, chains break at the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Sickness, darkness, chains break at the name of Jesus ♪ Come on, we let loud faith rise in this room. Sing. ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Sickness, darkness, chains break at the name of Jesus ♪ Sing, everything bows. ♪ Oh, everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Oh, sickness, darkness, chains break at the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh, everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Everything bows at His name ♪ ♪ Oh, sickness, darkness, chains break at the name of Jesus ♪ Sing, Jesus is my healer. ♪ Oh, Jesus is my healer ♪ ♪ Oh, He's everything I need ♪ ♪ He alone has triumphed over sickness and disease ♪ ♪ So fear, where is your power? ♪ ♪ For the cross is your defeat ♪ ♪ Oh, Jesus is my healer ♪ ♪ He has won the victory ♪ Amen. Would you take the bread? The Word of God says that on the night he was betrayed, he took bread and when he broke

it and gave thanks, he gave it to his disciples. That was symbolic of him giving of his own life to you and I. Isaiah 53, 5 says, by his stripes we are healed. By his broken body, the stripes he bore on his body, you and I have access to healing power that comes through the name of Jesus. I wonder how many of you are here in the house today and you would just slip up a hand and say I need a healing miracle in my life right now. I need a healing miracle in my body. Yeah, yeah. Come on, let's pray for that real quick. Just keep your hand raised. If you've got somebody around you, you can pray for them. So Lord, we just declare that healing power would just by faith break out in this house even on this moment. Lord, we declare that those that have a hand raised that need a miracle in their body even now, Lord, and even as we take of communion, Lord, in a moment that Lord, when we take of communion and we take of the bread, we're recognizing that you're the one that provides healing power. So God, we ask you in faith to do it and we declare that those that need a miracle of healing be healed in the name of Jesus by faith in what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus, we thank you for your broken body. Let's partake together of the bread. Okay, now with your own words, you thank him now. Come on, lift up your voice. Come on, loud enough that your own ears can hear what your mouth is saying. Come on, just take 10, 20 seconds. Just tell him thank you. If you need a healing in your body, you just tell him by faith. Say thank you for my healing. Thank you for the healing work you're doing in me right now.

Thank you that I'm going to walk in healing. Thank you that my body is whole. Thank you that the word of God is speaking in this moment and my body must respond to what God's word says. His word is final. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Take the cup. The word says on the night he's betrayed, he took the cup and he said to his followers, This cup is the new covenant of my blood. We're no longer under the old covenant. We're no longer under the covenant of an animal needing to be sacrificed for the forgiveness of our sin. Jesus was saying that when he would shed his blood, that his sacrifice would provide the gift of forgiveness and salvation for all mankind, past, present, and future. Aren't you grateful for that right there? Jesus was saying to us that when we celebrate his victory on the cross, we're celebrating two things. One, we're celebrating his victory. Yes, the victory of the cross. We have victory over sin. And two, we're celebrating the mercy of the cross. We deserve justice, but we receive mercy instead because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Come on. Just before we take, just do it again. Lift your voice one more time. Just before we partake of the cup, Jesus, thank you.

Come on. Use your own words right now. Jesus, thank you for the shedding of your blood. Thank you for the gift of salvation. Thank you for the victory of the cross. Thank you for the mercy of the cross. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Where would we be without you, Lord? Where would we be? Thank you, Lord Jesus. Hallelujah. Let's partake together. Yes. Come on. Lift your hands to heaven. Come on, Sarah. Sing that chorus again with us. Come on. Make that faith declaration right now. Yes. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah, come on, clap. Come on, clap. He's so good. It's for him. It's for him.

Come on, go ahead. Lift your voice. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Lift a hand to heaven. Let me pray over you as we dismiss. So Father, I convey and release blessing over this house, over the men and women of this house in the name of Jesus. I release your blessing over men who are going to step forward and step up in these days and weeks to come. I release, Lord, your grace and forgiveness over women who've been carrying that load for far too long. God, I release over... Park Church a renewed passion for prayer that God we'd be a prayer warrior church We'd be a prevailing prayer church We'd be a pray through it kind of church and that Lord Jesus is what will usher in The fulfillment of the prophecy that we are a house of healing God We declare it in your name by your grace. Amen. And amen and amen Come on, give God praise for what he's done in your life today Amen go to the cafe pick up a copy of that book if they run out then jump on Amazon It's called praying with confidence by Pastor Jeff Lee. God bless you. Love you guys so much