How to Pray Without Ceasing

Good to see everybody this weekend. If you're new around here, my name is Witt and welcome. Glad that you joined us this weekend. We're in week seven of a series called Life Lessons where we're looking at biblical wisdom for kind of everyday life. Simple stuff, stuff you don't need like a master's degree in theology or Bible school training to be, again, to be able to apply. But stuff that makes a massive difference when you put it in to practice. And I'll be honest with you, this weekend when I came to kind of what we're gonna talk about or we started approaching this week and I really had no idea kind of where this was going to go. We've mapped out the series and I sort of knew the different life lessons that we were looking at. But this one, for whatever reason, kind of what we had in place, it just didn't, I didn't connect with it, I'll be honest with you. And so we started talking about kind of some different directions that we could go and what the Lord brought to the surface has been so meaningful. And I've heard from so many people what we're talking about this weekend is kind of a shift in the way that we view our relationship with God. And so I'm excited, I'm eager to share

what the Lord's put on my heart with you this morning. If you have a Bible, I want you to grab it. We're gonna be looking at first Thessalonians chapter five and we're gonna look at three verses, 16, 17 and 18. They're actually quite short verses, but they are power packed. And we're gonna just kind of consider the themes that emerge here from these verses. Paul writes this, rejoice always. Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This is the word of the Lord. And we all said, thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word, which is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. We bow before you in humility, asking to receive exactly what you wanna give us today, trusting that it's good. We know that you are our good father, that every good and perfect gift comes from you and that what you wanna say to us can change and shape us forever. Lord, that's what we want. Speak to us now, we're listening in Jesus' name. Everybody said, amen. This week's life lesson, I've toyed around with a couple of different titles. I think maybe the most easy to understand is right from this verse, pray without ceasing,

but maybe put another way in all things, the Lord. I wanna try to teach you how to connect your life, your real life to the Lord in everything. What Paul says here is kind of crazy, I think for a lot of people, pray without ceasing. How does that even happen? I think most Christians would agree, probably every Christian would agree and many non-Christians that prayer is a good thing. We ought to be praying. Even people who are non-believers are happy that you'll pray for them. The trouble is we struggle with prayer because if we're honest, for a lot of us, prayer feels stiff, awkward, kind of dutiful. We feel like we don't relate to it. We feel like we're talking to a God who is a million miles away trying to convince him to care about whatever it is that we're going through or perhaps we're questioning ourselves, are we worthy to pray or do we even know what we should be praying for? It's for these reasons and many others that I think a lot of us would hold our hand up and say we just don't pray nearly as often as we should. And then when you contrast that with what Paul says, pray without ceasing, well, it almost feels impossible. What does Paul even mean? How is that possible? How do you pray without ceasing?

Does he mean that I'm to just go into my prayer closet, get on my knees every day and never come out, never make a meal, never take care of the family, never go to work? How is any of that possible? What is Paul talking about? That's what I want to talk about today because this idea of connecting with the Lord unceasingly is one of the things that will change your life more than anything else. In fact, I can probably trace many downstream issues that we and societally we're dealing with from a lack of connection with our Creator. How do you do this? That's what I want to talk about today. And to do it, I want to get upstream. I say this often that you will never see yourself properly. You'll never understand yourself until you understand yourself in the light of who God is. So often what we want to do is address the symptom without really focusing on the problem. And as it turns out, our problems in prayer actually come from an incomplete or a maybe misconstrued understanding of who God is. and what he's done, we connect to him in a kind of, I don't know, misaligned way. And so I wanna help you understand that. So we're gonna start maybe at a different place than you might anticipate, but I promise you, we'll kind of round back into this idea

of praying without ceasing as we go. Here's the first idea. You were made for a relationship with God. I don't know that there's anything really I could tell you more important than this. This is where it all begins. Unfortunately, there's been a shift in we could call it American, we could call it Western Christianity over the last 100, 150 years, and there's a lot of reasons for it. I'm not gonna go into why it's all happened this morning. We don't have time for that, but there's been a shift, particularly regarding how we view salvation. Specifically, what was the point of salvation? Tell us to put it like this. Why did Jesus die on the cross to save you from your sins? We could all start from the vantage point or the starting point of Christ died to save me from my sins. Yes, we agree with that, yeah. But why did he save you from your sins? And the answer over the last 100, 150 years that shifted is that salvation, we believe it, is really about getting people into heaven. So Christ died to save you from your sins, we could say it like this, so that you could go to heaven when you die. Now, that's not entirely wrong. It's not fundamentally wrong, but it's just a little bit off enough to make a difference. If you could imagine that I was holding

a laser pointer in my hands right now, and there was some target on the back wall, very specific small that I was trying to hit, you could imagine that a one degree shift here at my hand with that laser pointer would result in a pretty seismic gap on the other end. You understand how this works. Small shifts in what we believe about God or what he has done really create big gaps downstream for us, and that's what's happened. As kind of preachers and the American church begin to focus more on heaven, it had a different kind of impact and result. If you go up in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, you kind of know exactly what I'm talking about, because you were probably trained to ask non-believers a question that started something like this. If you died tonight, anybody remember this? How does it end? What's the second part? If you died tonight, what? Yeah, would you go to heaven or hell? Where would you spend eternity? And what this does, you can see it right away, is it begins to frame salvation in terms of your eternal destination. Are you gonna go to heaven? Are you going to go to hell? As if the point of salvation is that you could go to heaven. Now, some of you right now, you're looking at me

with like a confused look on your face, and you're wondering, is this the weekend I find out pastor with a heretic? No. (congregation laughing) I'm not saying that heaven isn't a real place. I'm not saying there's no such thing. I'm not saying that your loved ones aren't with the Lord in a paradise of sorts right now. But I wanna shift your imagination about this, the way you think about this, because this really isn't a very biblical idea. You won't find verses that talk about giving your heart to Jesus, or even more so, asking Jesus into your heart, which isn't really in the Bible at all. It doesn't mean it's not a real thing, it's just not a biblical concept in that way, and then going to heaven when you die, that that is not the focus of the Christian story. I'll put it like this, heaven is not the goal of salvation, a relationship with God is. And I want you to understand this, Christ didn't die just so that you could go to heaven when you die. He died so that you could be restored to a relationship with your creator. That is the primary goal. Heaven, as we think about it, is a secondary thing.

It's sort of like a result, an outcome. Like when you go to the gym and you work out and sweat happens, you don't go to the gym specifically to sweat, you go to work out, but sweat is the byproduct of a hard workout. And the same way heaven is a byproduct of a relationship with God. And I want to shift your understanding here because this changes everything about the way you see your relationship with God and what you're really here for. John Orberg wrote a fantastic book, I checked to see if we had it in our bookstore. We do not, but we will next week. So if you're interested in kind of what I'm talking about here, you can pick it up next week, but he writes this. Most people think, and I want you to pause and just ask yourself, is this how I've thought of it? Because the truth is, like I did, I thought of it like this for so long. Most people think of heaven as a place where anybody, anybody would love to spend eternity as long as they're allowed in. This view of heaven leads people to wonder, well then why doesn't God let more people in? Have you ever thought that? You ever had those questions? Yeah, why be so stingy with who gets in and who doesn't? Have you ever had someone challenge you on that? The problem with these views of heaven

is that they're not true. Some misconstrued way to think about heaven. He continues, here's the main truth to know about heaven, and this is what I want to leave you with. Heaven will be life with God. This is the aim of salvation. Christ died not so that you could go to paradise where your grandma is and you float around and nothing bad ever happens to you, but so that you could be rejoined into relationship with your creator. Now I'm not saying there's no paradise aspect to it. What I'm saying is that is not the goal. Let me show you from the scripture how kind of the Bible frames this. So let's go to a familiar passage, John 3 16. You know that verse, probably many of you haven't memorized. Let's look at it. John writes this, for God so loved the world, right? That he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have. And let's all read these final two words together. Eternal life. Now what do you think of when those words come out of your mouth? For most of us we think about heaven, don't we? Eternal life, when does it begin? When you die, you're not an eternal life. Now that happens after you die. So you die and you go to heaven and that is eternal life.

That's how we think of eternal life. That's how we've been taught to think of eternal life. It's not completely untrue, it's just a degree or two off, but it leads to big misunderstandings about the nature of our relationship with God. Jesus defined eternal life in a completely different way. In the same gospel, John 17, three, look at what Jesus said, and this is eternal life. Streets of gold, paradise, you can fly, your grandma is there, is that what he says? No. What does he say? That they know you. Wait, what? Notice he doesn't describe eternal life as a place, he describes it as a relationship. That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. See, we think of heaven as the place where God lives. I'm here to tell you, heaven is not where God lives, heaven is where God is. God is not contingent upon heaven, he's not secondary or incidental to heaven's reality, heaven is incidental to God's reality. Heaven is where God is, not where he lives. John Orberg puts it like this. He says it's not like heaven is in immense place and you have to track God down somewhere like finding the Wizard of Oz. Do you understand what I'm talking about,

right in the story of the Wizard of Oz? Dorothy and her companions go to Oz and the Wizard lives there, but it's not like he's dominant, he's in the city, in his room, in his tower, but there's a lot of life sort of going on around the city that there's nothing to do with the Wizard. That's how a lot of us think about heaven. God's there, but he's sort of incidentally there, not necessarily and primarily there, like he is the reason why all of this exists. Look what he says, heaven does not contain God, God contains heaven. Now this is a staggering thought and it will change your perspective. So becoming the kind of person who wants heaven, what is heaven, uninterrupted life with God is a problem. Why is that a problem? Well, because I often want freedom to do things I don't want God to see. So if real heaven means life where my every thought and deed and word lies ceaselessly open to God, for some of us, we'd have to be really honest and say, I'm not sure I want that. Why is there a hell? Because God made provision for people who don't want relationship with Him. It's a different way of thinking about it. We think about hell as a place where people would do anything to get out of there and into heaven if they could. Read C.S. Lewis book The Great Divorce.

The picture that he gives is of people who are from hell visiting heaven and find it completely impossible to live there because this world just doesn't make any sense to them. They would rather live with their brokenness, acknowledging that it's not great than accept life and uninterrupted ceaseless life with God. If you don't want God now, what makes you think you'll want Him for eternity? Do you understand the difference, the concept? He continues. Our issue with heaven is not so much about getting in. It's about becoming the kind of person for whom heaven would be inappropriate and welcome setting. If I don't want the unceasing presence of God in my life now, how could I truly want an eternity in the ceaseless? And by the way, notice this wording here, ceaseless, continual, isn't it interesting that Orpberg uses the same word that Paul uses, pray without ceasing. Yeah, the unceasing, unending presence of God. How can I truly want an eternity in the ceaseless presence of God where the possibility of any sinful action or thought, no matter how desirable is forever cut off? Starts to shift the idea of your eternity, doesn't it? What it means is a couple of things. One, it means that eternity, if you're in Christ, starts right now. You're not waiting to die to enter eternal life. Eternal life is now. Well, how is it now?

Do you know God? Jesus said this, to know the Father and Jesus Christ, who he said, is eternal life. That's why John titled his book, "Eternity is now in session." You're not in a waiting room for heaven. Eternal life has already begun. Does it come to fruition in a new and different way after your physical death? Sure, but that is not when it begins, it starts now. Why? Because you know the Lord. And this is the end of the Christian story. Too many Christians have a kind of truncated gospel. Do you understand what that means? It means we cut off parts of it. We understand it only as sort of Christ dying to save me from my sense so that I can go up instead of down when I die. And we miss the end and the beginning of the story. The story begins with God living with man. That was God's original design and intention. That's where the story starts. But sin enters the world. What happens? Man is cut off from his creator. So God comes to us himself. Why? So that we could be rejoined back into relationship with God. And do you know what the end of the Christian story is?

Let me read it to you. This is how the story ends. So many people have no idea that this is there. We don't, we pay no attention to this. Look at the end of the story. John, the apostle, was given a vision of the end of the story. And this is what he describes in Revelation 21, verses one and two. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem. Look at these next two words. What does that say? Coming down. Wait a minute. I thought the end of the story was me going up. I thought I went up to heaven. That's not the end of the story. Heaven, at the end of the Christian story is not you going up to heaven. The end of the Christian story is heaven coming down to earth. How many people have no idea that this is the end? We think that basically our future is a sort of disembodied kind of see-through, floating, ethereal kind of reality where we're in some place out in space somewhere. If you could travel high enough up in the sky, you'd probably find it. But that's where we're all going to live

and spend eternity in a kind of cloud-like sort of see-through kind of existence. That is not the end of the Christian story. It doesn't end with you going up to heaven. It ends with heaven coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And notice the emphasis. And I heard a loud voice from the throne say, "Look at what he talked. "Look at how this place is defined. "The dwelling place of God is with man. "He will be with them." And they will be his people. And he or God himself will be with them as their God. The emphasis is on the witness. You were made for relationship with God. That's the end of the story. Ezekiel was given the same vision. Did you know what he saw? A city. and the name of the city from that time on, how is it named? The Lord is there. Heaven is not where God lives. Heaven is where God is. You being in His presence is what heaven is. So when we lose a loved one and we say goodbye, they're not just going to heaven as some kind of paradise type place. They are going to be joined to the Lord.

They are in the presence of the Lord. Paul said to be absent from the body is to be not present in paradise, is to be present with the Lord, right? You're joined in relationship with Him because that's what you were made for. So the circle all the way back, salvation wasn't a way to get people into heaven, salvation was a way to get people back to God. You're being joined back into relationship with your creator. John Piper puts it like this, and I've shared this quote many times before, but I use it again because it's so profound and powerful and helpful. Look at what he says. He says, Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And this next sentence just gets me. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there will not be there. In other words, if your view of heaven makes the Lord incidental, it'd be nice of you's there, but I really wanna make sure my grandmother's there that you have not yet imagined heaven. Heaven is not where all of your relatives have gone. Heaven is where the Lord is. You're going to be with Him. So the gospel is not a way to get people to heaven, it's a way to get people to God.

It is a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel. Now this is a reorientation, it's disorienting, but it's hopefully it's a good disorienting. Trying to turn some things upside down for you because I want you to view your relationship with the Lord in a different kind of way. It's what you were meant for. It's what you were created for. God, believe it or not, and it is unfathomable to consider. God somehow, some way, wants relationship with you and me. He wants it so badly that He has moved heaven and earth, entered into humanity, took on flesh and blood, allowed us to crucify Him and nail Him to a cross so that He could forgive us our sins so that He could dwell amongst His people again. This is the whole goal of salvation. This is why when you are in Christ, the Spirit of God now dwells in you. He is with you. He promised I will never leave you or forsake you. So whether you realize it or not, you are presently, if you're in Christ, you are living life with the Lord. Now why does this matter and what does this have to do with prayer? It has everything to do with prayer. Because if you think about it like this,

I was made for relationship with God, then prayer suddenly moves from being this kind of dutiful religious obligation to being, and this is really my second point, is the way I connect all of me in all of life to the Lord. Did you ever have a boyfriend or girlfriend way back when you're first dating somebody? And the relationship was just so new and so wonderful and so amazing that you just stayed on the phone with them for hours. Did you ever do that? You've been married for 20 years. Anybody still doing that? Doesn't happen, does it? My wife's trying to get off the phone actively as quickly as possible. But when we first were dating, it was like I could just stay on the phone with you all night. Did your parents ever get mad at you? Because remember, phone calls used to cost a lot of money and they'd yell, you've been on the phone for four hours. Hang up. Did you ever fall asleep on the phone with your boyfriend or your girlfriend? Why did we do that? Why? 'Cause I just didn't wanna lose the connection. Somehow the relationship is so special, so vibrant, so meaningful. I don't wanna, I don't even wanna go a minute

without being connected in some way to you. I long for connection with you. Do you understand that this is what prayer is? What it means to pray without ceasing? What we're not talking about here is you on your knees never interacting with another human being and quitting your job and just praying all the time. What we're talking about here is a ceaseless, uninterrupted connection with God through all of life. The problem is, and here's the problem. We kind of segment our life. There's our spiritual life over here where we try to do enough good stuff to balance out the bad stuff that we do over here so that when I die, I go up instead of down. Do you understand? That's how a lot of people think about it. So I got to sort of live on balance good enough so that the Lord will let me into heaven when it's all over because that's what we want. We want to go to the good place when we die. But if you now understand heaven, instead of being the place where God lives with the place where God is and that you were designed for connection and relationship with God, well, then now my whole life becomes about communion with Him, about knowing Him, about bringing Him with me into everything that I face, about a constant, ongoing conversation, like a boyfriend or a girlfriend who can't bear to hang up the phone,

but rather, once that connection with the one that they love, the same is true in your relationship with God. This is why we're told to pray without ceasing. This is why Paul writes in Philippians 4, and you know these verses, but look at it again, maybe through a different lens. Rejoice in the Lord, always. Notice the language of constancy. This ought to be your posture. It's just the way that you live your life. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be made known to everyone, the Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanks, giving, let your request be made known to God. Prayer is the way that I stay in constant communion and contact and conversation with the Lord. This means that prayer doesn't have to be this kind of formal, stilted, religious sort of thing. See, some of you, that's the reason that you don't pray. In fact, it's probably the reason why you don't do a great many things because one of your greatest fears, I know there are people like this. You don't get in a small group, you don't come to a mid-sized group, you don't go to any of the programs because you're worse fears that somebody's gonna look at you and go, hey, Jim, it's your turn to pray today, go ahead and lead us in prayer.

And you're gonna be exposed. Come on, I know how you think. I know what that feels like. I don't know how to do it. You don't have the right voice. Brethren, let us pray. Why don't we feel like that? It's because that's the form of prayer that's been demonstrated to us, religious words and jargon instead of just a real connection with your creator. Do you know how that's what prayer is? Lord, I'm with you. You're with me. Wherever you are in life, whatever you're facing, you learn to turn to the Lord. And this is really what I want you to catch today. In all things, the Lord. Joy, thank you, grief. Lord, help me, comfort me. This is the idea that I turn to Him. Paul says in everything by prayer and supplication and look at the result. He says, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Now, when we think about peace, we think about the absence of conflict, don't we? There's no strife, there's no tension, there's no turmoil, sure. But the biblical idea of peace is bigger than that.

Do you know what that word is? It's shalom. And what it means is completeness, wholeness. What this means is that when you learn to live with God in communion with Him, Jesus called it in John 15 abiding. When you learn to abide with Him, there's never a place that you go where He is not. You're constantly aware of His presence, inviting Him into whatever it is that you're stepping into, whatever it is that you're feeling. When you live like that, Paul writes here to the peace of God, the wholeness, the completeness. In other words, the Lord sees to it, you have whatever you need. Sounds a lot like Matthew 633. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. See, some of us, the reason why we are stressed in life, anxious in life, worried in life, dealing with a host of kind of mental health sort of challenges. I am convinced is that we're trying and attempting to do much of life on our own. We Americans were really good at avoiding negative emotions and feelings, aren't we? We get stressed, we're anxious, we're overwhelmed. It's been a really hard day at work. What do we do? We come home and we say, let's plop down on the couch and binge watch a Netflix series.

It doesn't even enter our imaginations that we should go to the Lord and give Him our anxiety to turn to Him and offer Him our feelings. We just start medicating and numbing and distracting and avoiding. So we scroll. What we're doing is we're attempting to avoid what we don't want to feel. What we don't know how to do with what we're feeling. We avoid it, we numb, we distract, we run away, we hide rather than doing life with God. So what I want you to do is to learn how to turn to the Lord in everything to pray without ceasing. In all things, turn to Him. Let me give you a story of how this played out in my life recently. So we can before last, two weekends ago. I came to church on a Saturday night. Actually, we do a run through the worship team and kind of plays through the service and all of that around 3, 3, 30. And I was in here mostly by myself. It's how it is most weekends. There's very few people in here. It's my chance to kind of, I don't know, get a sense of the service and also just to worship and take it all in. And so I'm sitting right out here where I normally sit. And it doesn't dawn on me for a few minutes,

but I don't know, five, 10 minutes in. I realize like, I'm not into this at all. I'm feeling nothing. You ever come to church like that? You're just not feeling it today. There are days where you show up and it's like, God is good and you're excited and you're ready to worship and you feel the words of the song seem as though they're so true for you. But there are other days for me included where you feel none of that. It's not that I was mad about being here or all I wanted to do was go home. I just didn't feel anything. And because I'm about to preach in like an hour, I know this is probably not a good thing. I need to kind of do something about this. So I stand up and I start walking around. What am I doing? I'm making a choice. I'm not allowing my feelings to dictate how I'm gonna respond. Let me choose to worship the Lord. You don't have to wait till you feel it to choose it. So I start walking through the room. And I just start praying. I lift my hands, Lord, I worship you, I praise you. Just stirring up kind of my affection for the Lord, but I'm not feeling anything. So I wander through the room

and I make my way all the way over to that far back right chair, it's on the front of the kind of the dog pound section. That's what we call you guys over there in that section. Howdy. I never even look at you, but I am today. Hi. (congregation laughing) I give you some love over here too, hi. (congregation laughing) So I'm in the section in front of the wall there. There's a row of chairs. And I go to the corner just because I wanna be out of the way. This isn't about people seeing me and there's almost no one in here, but I'm not trying to be observed or watched. So I just go over there and I kneel down. Lord, I need you. I'm about to go preach. I feel nothing. And I know that what I have to say and what you've given me is important. I know that you care about these people. I know that this matters, but I'm just not feeling it. Lord, I need you to be with me. I know you are, it's not like I'm doubting that. I just, I am declaring to you, letting you know, I need you Lord. I feel nothing. So I stand up, the run through ends. We go back into the green room back here

where we kinda talk through the service, just if there's any small changes or tweaks that need to be made. I open up just kind of admitting to the group. Guys, I'm just kinda not feeling it this weekend. You've done fine. I'm just not here. I just kinda don't feel anything. And Mike, our worship pastor, he's like, yeah, me too. And I'm like, right now there's two of us. (congregation laughing) So we talk through the service and okay, here's blah, blah, blah, you know. And then we pray. We pray every week. And my prayer is just something like, Lord we need you. We dare not go up there without you. I don't wanna go through the motions. Help me to love these people. I'm not feeling it right now. I don't feel connected to this, but I want to love and serve your people. And I wanna honor you, help me. I feel nothing. So now we're in worship and I'm backstage. Kinda where I like to be. I have a little nook back there. It's not very big.

A couple of chairs in there. I got a little curtain in the opening. And I'm still, there's just nothing there. So I go into this little room, close the curtain, get down on my knees. And again, Lord, I need you. Nothing. Now it's time for me to preach. The offering is happening. They're praying, I'm standing right over here. And I'm just not feeling it. I walk out here and I begin to talk. I do what I do. I draw upon what I've prepared. And about five minutes in, maybe 10, it occurs to me. You'd be surprised with the thoughts that go through my head while I'm up here. It's true. You can be talking to people and just hear mine somewhere else. (audience laughing) It dawns on me five, 10 minutes in. The Lord is with me. And I'm feeling it. And I'm connected to the-- and it was a great night. And the Lord moved. And it was just a really great weekend and a service. The Lord showed up. Now, why do I keep turning in? Some of you, you've been taught, pray about it once,

and then only thank the Lord. Why do I keep praying? Is it because I'm afraid that the Lord didn't hear me the first time? No. Do you know why I keep returning to the Lord? Because I'm still dealing with it. I can't just take it to him once and say, that's out of my mind. I'm not thinking about it anymore. It's like a wait. Do you ever feel that? You have a thought, some kind of feeling that's just overwhelming. So you say, Lord, I can't carry this. I'm giving this to you. No sooner do you give it to him and you try to go back to living. And it's like, boom. It's back in your lap again. So I turn to the Lord. I know he's heard me. I have no doubt that he's heard me. I have no doubt that he wants to show up more than I want him to. That is not in question. I'm the one that needs it. So I'm turning my heart all of life, all of me back to the Lord continually. Why? Because I was made for life with God.

That's what prayer looks like. It looks like connecting your real self. Too many of us, the reason we struggle to pray is because prayer is a performance. And we feel like we're not very good at it. And so we struggle to be real, invulnerable, and honest with the Lord. Maybe we feel like he doesn't care that much. Maybe we feel like he's just not all that interested. Recently, I was in the process of buying a new truck. It was just time. I'm buying a truck. I've been looking everywhere for a specific kind of truck that I want to know exactly what I'm looking for in its use, which makes it a little harder. I didn't want to buy it new. So I'm looking for this truck. And I mean, I have spent a week. I'm not preaching that week, so I have time to think about it. I mean, this is what I do. And I'm on to something. I don't know if you're like me. I just lock in. Everything is, I've got to find this truck. And so I'm scouring the internet. If they sold cars online, I was looking at their site. I could not find what I was looking for. After days of fruitless searching, I'm with Heather. And I'm just like, I'm having trouble finding this. She says, have you prayed about this?

Well, here's why. True story. And some of you heard this. I've made a lot of dumb decisions with cars in my life. And I'm not just saying like, oh, that was stupid. Like, sinful, like just bonehead, wrong, selfish, stupid decisions. To the point that now, when I think about doing something as simple as buying a car, my kind of automatic postures that God is somewhere looking at me like this, again, really? What is wrong with you? When you feel that way, do you respond? We don't want to pray. Because we fear that God is either going to be dismissive, angry, just sort of disapproving of what it is. So we struggle to bring our real selves. You know what I did? Heather tells me, have you prayed about this? I'm like, not really. So later that night, I'm just like, all right, I'm going to pray. So I said, Lord, this is the truck that I'm looking for. I gave him three choices, three options. Here's for option one. No kidding. This color, this color, this color, these wheels. I'd like it to have under 10,000 miles. I'm looking for something. I could not find it anywhere. No joke next morning. I reloaded sight.

I had looked at 100 times and boom, what pops up? Exactly. First choice. Exactly what I was looking for. I'm like, wow, God likes me more than I thought. I'm not suggesting to the prayer sort of works like magic words and a magic wand. And God just does for you whatever it is that you're asking for. But I'm saying, God cares so much more than you know. And He wants you to live life with Him all the time. You know what this shows up for me? I'm 50 years old now, which means, some of you know this, that you get up in the night a couple of times in night. You know what I'm talking about? Like I'm up at 2 and 4 AM, pretty much every night. And so if you want to text me, you can't. I'm awake at those hours. Hopefully not for a long time, but just a moment. I just need to stumble down the hallway to the bathroom. And so even then, when I'm like in a sleep-induced stupor, do you know like this is what I want coming out I can't get anything more out than that. I got nothing else to say, Lord, you're good. Thank you, two in the morning. Psalm 16 says, "Even at night, my heart instructs me." I'm asking the Lord, I don't pray. Like I don't get on my knees before I go to bed. You might, I think that's wonderful. It's just not my habit.

It's not my kind of customer pattern. But often I'll just say, Lord, let me glorify you even in my dreams. I have no control over what they're going to be, but would you, I want to glorify you. I made the words of my lips and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you because even when I sleep, you are with me. Do you understand it's with God, it's learning to connect all of life to all of God. Now I've already kind of hit my time limit, but let me just take a couple more minutes and wrap this up. You are going to receive this chart after this weekend. We're going to email it to you if you're on our email list. If you're not basically just interact with us in any way digitally and you will be on it. So just text new even if you're not new, just text it anyway to 23101 and you will get a free coffee and this chart, which is the state of the state of my soul chart. Why do I want to share this with you? Some of us we struggle to share what we're feeling with the Lord because we don't even know ourselves. And we're so good at distracting and numbing and running that we don't even know how to just sit for a second, but what am I going through? You don't have to use this every day, but you might be in a season of transition or a prolonged season of just spiritual dryness

and you just need to go, what is it that I'm dealing with? Why? So I can take it to the Lord. So what you're going to find is you can kind of see it. There's like five different domains here, emotional, physical, relational, spiritual, vocational. There are words associated with these. And these are just meant to be prompts to say, oh, I think I'm feeling like that. And then you can take that to the Lord and begin to share with Him your real self. So you'll get that in email after this weekend. I don't have time to dive into that in depth, but I wanted to let you know that's coming. Now, last point is this, prayer is the transforming presence of God at work in you. When you pray, the Lord does work in you. It's not just doing work out there about your problems and circumstances, though God shows up in those ways. But even a prayer for a truck, it's interesting, the Lord is proving to me and showing me that I can trust Him even in the little and really non-important stuff in just a deeper kind of way. And so therefore I am changed. Richard Foster puts it like this to pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change,

we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. And you can probably plot that in your life, that the worst seasons of your life, the seasons where you're furthest from God and making the most stupid, selfish, sinful decisions are where you are absent a prayer life. Because it is in a connection to God, showing up in relationship with Him that you are changed. How can you enter the presence of the living God and not be changed? So when you sit down with Him, when you speak to Him, you're opening yourself up. It's an act of humility to pray. Isn't it interesting that even our posture of prayer on our knees demonstrates that act of humility? Not my will, but your will be done. I'll close with this story of friend of mine, Isaac Whitty. Some of you heard me tell his story before Isaac grew up mostly in this church. But by time he hit his early 20s, he'd left his relationship with God, went to go pursue a career in stand-up comedy. He did very well, it was on Letterman, Conan. By all kind of external accounts, he'd been pretty successful. Internally, personally, he was a wreck. And he spent years running from God. He didn't want to talk about God, didn't want to have conversations about God,

didn't want to be around anybody who talked about God. When he would occasionally come to Tulsa where his family lived and they would come to church, he would come to church medicated in some way, whether through alcohol or something else, because he just couldn't get through conversation about God without some kind of numbing substance. He ran and ran and ran and ran and ran. And so finally, he came to the end of himself. He hit rock bottom, he had nowhere else to go. He comes back to Tulsa to stay with his sister Angie and brother-in-law Sam. It was while he was staying with them. But the Lord began to just little by little soften his heart toward him. And the story that he tells is of praying, and I think it's in like a Fontana shopping center He was sitting in his car and he'd been listening to the radio and there was some report of some tragedy, something happened where kids had died or something like this and the only prayer he can get out, probably the first prayer that he had prayed in the years and maybe the first actually honest prayer he had ever prayed in his life went something like this. God, how the bleep could you allow that? And on the other side of that prayer, broken and in office, it seems maybe to our kind of prayer sensibilities, Isaac would tell you that the very presence of the living God came into that car. And to see him today, I don't know

if I've ever seen someone's life like flip so completely and radically as it has in him. In fact, I remember seeing him like a week later, Angie had called me and said, I think Isaac's a Christian now and then he showed up at church, which he hated church and I met him right out there in the lobby and we went back and we started talking and I'm like, so are you a Christian now? And he's like, yeah, I think I am. He gave up the drugs, the whole lifestyle that he's been living completely changed. He's married now, he's happy. He went through a master's degree program in theology just because he loves the Bible. He has no intention of going into ministry. He just wanted to know more about the Lord. How did that happen with that kind of honest and vulnerable kind of prayer? You know what I mean? Why? Because I have to wonder like how many years was the Lord standing at the door of his heart knocking, just saying, let me in, let me in. And it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be open. And when you open your heart to the Lord, he can begin to change you. That's why I want this for you so badly because imagine a life where instead of turning and leaning into anxiety and worry and anger and substance abuse and all the different ways

that we numb ourselves, we learn to begin a turn in all things to the Lord. Lord, you're with me. Lord, you're walking with me. Lord, you're beside me. We learn to lean on him and we come to know him as our joy, our satisfaction, our rock, our refuge. It transforms a person. How could it not? Your in relationship with the God of the universe. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be honest. Can you give him your heart? That's all he wants to be with you. You were made for a relationship with God. Prayer is the way you just talk to him. Lord, thank you. Lord, help me. Lord, I'm weary. Lord, I'm confused in all things, the Lord. Pray without ceasing. Would you buy your heads and close your eyes? Our Father, you are so good. You are so gracious. You are so kind. You are so faithful. That while we have turned our back on you, while we have attempted to live apart from you, you have not stopped pursuing us. Thank you, Lord, that you're with us when we sin,

when we're tempted, you are there. You love us so much that you desire relationship force. You went to any length. You gave your very son. You're only begotten son. So that we might be back reunited in relationship with you. Help us, Lord, to treasure you above all things to come to know you and your son, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Help us to live like that. To put this into practice, to pray without ceasing, to live in communion and connection with you are good, good, good heavenly Father. In Jesus' name we pray, everybody said, amen. Hey, if you're here today and maybe you have some questions, maybe the Lord's stirring you about a relationship with him. Like, what does that look like? How do I walk that out? Our prayer team is gonna be down front. We have a book for you. It's called, "What does it mean to be saved?" And we would love to resource you with this. So if you'll just come down front after the service and say, "Hey, could I get that book that Pastor Whit mentioned?" We would love to be able to give this to you. If you have a prayer need, our prayer team is down here for you as well. We would love to be able to pray with you today. Stand to your feet.

(gentle music) - We're gonna close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter six, and we like to say it out loud as a church family together. So would you say this out loud with me as we close the Lord, bless you and keep you. The Lord, make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord, lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in Northeast Oklahoma, each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community, and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com, or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

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