The Prayers You’re Not Proud Of

Praise the Lord. Come on up, Graham, and pray one more time before the people are seated. Y'all give him a hand as he comes. Get this young man a microphone, Daniel. Thirty seconds. Let's pray as we get into the Word. Jesus, we just thank you for this day. We thank you that you inhabit the praises of your people. We thank you that you are in this place with us right now. God, we ask that right now, would you just open up our hearts to hear what you want to speak to us, God. Lord, would you give us ears to hear. And God, we just pray that you would just speak through our pastor and through my dad right now in this moment. God, we pray that none of his words would fall to the ground, and we pray that you would use him in a powerful way. God, we pray that this message would have a ripple effect that goes throughout the entire nation and throughout the entire world, Lord. God, we pray that we would not leave this Word here, but we would live it out in our everyday lives. We love you. We thank you, and we exalt you. In your name we pray. Everyone said, Amen. Everyone said. That's a good 30 seconds. I think about 38. You earned it. Praise the Lord. Hey, Graham.

Come here. I'm going to take a church vote right now. I finished my series last week. I know that voice. How about a bonus week? Would you be interested in a bonus week? All in favor, say, aye. All opposed, oh well. Week seven. Y'all be seated. Hey, give seven hugs on your way to your seat for seven weeks. Come to the living room. Thank you, worship team. Clap your hands and thank God for all of our musicians, our singers. Come on. All of our sound engineers, all of our ushers, all of our eKids volunteers. Come on. Aren't you grateful for people who've served in the house of the Lord? All our eGroup leaders, praise the Lord. I don't normally choose my sermons this way, and I normally don't ask people and poll people on what they want to hear me preach about. Henry Ford once said that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. They wouldn't have known to ask for a car. I try to ask the Lord what to preach, because we don't really know what we need, do we? So I'm running around asking you, what do you need to hear from the Lord? Well, if I knew that, I'd do your job, buddy. You know what I mean? But this week, I thought it was appropriate to just take a week, and before we just move forward into some brand new topic, I asked a few people, what did you want to hear that

you didn't get to hear when we were talking about hearing God? One of my church members sent me this text. I'm going to read it directly like he wrote it. He said, I was praying on the porch this morning and thought how much I'd love to hear you talk about prayer. We did a series called I Know That Voice, and I thought how I'd like to hear what to say back. He said, I was praying on my porch this morning, but my prayer felt raw, and I didn't feel like I was doing it right. It came from a deep place of gratitude, but I felt like I didn't do it right or enough, like I was leaving something out. So I want to preach today about the prayers you're not proud of. Have you ever prayed a prayer that you weren't really proud of? We'll talk about it in a minute. Flip over to James, chapter 5, verses 16 through 18. Now, I knew exactly which Scripture to use when I thought about preaching the prayer that you're not proud of or the prayers. We have more than one, don't we? Most of us. I mean, I've done workouts that I wasn't proud of before. I'll always say, did you get your workout in? I say, I got it in, but it wasn't anything to brag about. I'm not posting about that one. I've definitely written songs I wasn't proud of. That's the way you write a good song, is write a ton of songs that you never show anybody, and then one day, hopefully, something will show up that's worth showing somebody. So my phone is full of songs you can't hear, and we will not be singing on a Sunday at Elevation Church, and you ought to praise the Lord for that. Come on, praise the Lord for that. But when we talk about the prayers you're not proud of and what my church member said

to me… Because I know we all can relate to what he said. I thought of James 5, 16-18, where the Bible says, Therefore, confess your sins to each other, and pray for each other, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. If you went on Facebook, you would think that verse said, The post of a righteous person is powerful and effective, but it doesn't heal anybody for you to post about me if you haven't prayed for me. I'm throwing that in for free. This is a bonus week. Everything is cherries and gravy, and it just doesn't really go together. Let's go to verse 17. He gives an example. He says, Remember we preached about Elijah in the cave a few weeks ago? The echo of Jezebel's voice that drove him into isolation… He said, Elijah was a human being, even as we are. That's like you went to play basketball, and it's like, LeBron is a man just like you are. It's like, Yeah, but he's a much better person at this particular thing. So, he's talking about prayer, and it escalates quickly. He's like, You know, pray for each other like Elijah, the greatest prophet who ever lived. Watch what Elijah did when he prayed. He was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. So, he prayed that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't rain. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did rain. Touch your neighbor and say, You must be praying wrong. I think we're doing it wrong. That's what he said. He said, I prayed on my porch, and I felt gratitude, but it felt wrong. It felt like I was doing something wrong. Sometimes I know I'm praying wrong. Sometimes in the middle of my prayer I have to laugh at myself. How ridiculous. I can usually tell I'm not going to be proud of this prayer when I'm praying a… Let me see what I could call it. Have you ever prayed an it's-not-fair prayer? Maybe you don't even call it a prayer. Maybe it's just somewhere in the realm of thought and justified jealousy, like Jesus-oriented jealousy. Like, Jesus, I follow you more than her, and really she's getting married? But okay, Lord. I know you'll send my boaz, but Lord. Even as you're praying for the thing you want, you know it's driven by envy, not necessarily from an internal place of trust. So, I'm not proud of those prayers. Sometimes I'm not proud of my prayers because, let's be honest, my prayers can be very… I don't want to say ADD. I'll just say distracted. How did I end up… Now, why am I checking the Clemson football schedule?

Because I was praying for Dabo. That's why. No. I'm just distracted. There's nothing to justify. I'm not proud about that. It's just my mind is wandering everywhere. You know? And, oh, I'm praying. Oh, there's a Bible verse. I'm going to need to look that up. There's a text. Yeah, I never did order that. How am I over here out of my anointing and into my Amazon cart just that quick? I'm not very proud of that. I did pray a prayer. I prayed one yesterday I'm not proud of. I ended up in the comments section of one of our worship videos with our young people worshiping God, and it was awesome. The kids were jumping around worshiping God. You know how they do. Give you cardiac arrest just watching them. You'd just be envying them, like, Lord… You're praying, Lord, do work in my knees. Do work in my hips so I can praise you like this. Restore the years, Lord. They were jumping around, and then some internet prophet was in the comments, and they called our kids who were praising God a bunch of clowns jumping around.

I prayed about that. I said, Lord, let me meet this person, username 746, loser head, basement living. Let me meet them, Lord. Not in the church. I want to meet them somewhere that's far away. Come on. You know you pray some prayers. Let me meet them somewhere, Lord, far away from the church. Let them not be bigger than me, Lord. Let me just talk to them for a minute. Just give me five minutes with them, God. Just five minutes, far away from the church. While I'm talking to them, Lord, I don't even need you to stick around. You can just drop me off. You can go visit one of the other preachers. You and Joel Osteen can go hang out for five minutes and just leave me with this person for five minutes. Give me five people, five men in the church who are saved but barely saved to go with me. I mean, like just got saved last Saturday. I'm not proud of that, but I prayed that. I call that the God-get-them prayer. I was comforted because I found this psalm over in Psalm 58. Now, we probably shouldn't write a song like this for Tiffany to sing, but show them what I found in Psalm 58. You thought the psalms were devotionals, but this one sounds like a diss track. One time David prayed, Break their teeth in their mouths, O God. See, you were about to leave when I said I wanted five minutes with an internet critic. I wasn't going to break their teeth. I was going to let somebody else do that. But David said, Break their teeth out of their mouths, O God. Not the front one, just the one over there in the back. Tear out the fangs of those lions. Let them vanish like water that flows away when they draw the bow. Let their arrows fall short. This is the one that got my attention. May they be like a slug. You didn't know that was in the Bible. Make them like a slug, Lord. I don't think anybody could make that sound psalmy. A stillborn child that never sees the sun. Something out of the Bible? That's in the Bible. So, what it showed me was the prayer you're not proud of is better than the prayer you won't pray. My church members said, I think I'm doing it wrong. Doing it wrong? You said, I'm doing it with a grateful heart.

Do you think there's a wrong way to be grateful to God? If David is smashing mouths, if David is praying to Mike Tyson from 1992, I reckon you can come to God. And the prayer you're not proud of, the distracted one, the diss-tracked one… All of them… You have to start where you are and then get where God is, but you have to start where you are to get where God is. You have to start where you are to get where God is. Oh, great. Just pray like Elijah, the one who controlled the rain. Dude, I can't pay my rent, and you are up here telling me, pray like the guy whose prayers affected rain cycles and weather systems. I can't even pray and get my wife to be nice to me, and you're talking about weather systems. And then there's verse 16. That one can really trip us up. At least I think it can trip us up, because he said, Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. This is the part. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, and now you're like, Well, I'm out, because I'm not that kind of person. Righteous. I don't have that kind of power, and it doesn't produce that kind of result. So, I'm out. Don't ask me to pray. Well, this is where we need a little 90-second New Testament lesson in what righteousness is. See, the righteousness that comes from the law is by works. You earn it. So, the righteousness that comes from the law comes from being sinless, but the righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus Christ is not from being sinless. It's from being forgiven. It's not something you did. It's a gift you received. So now, when we see that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, you realize that the condition on forgiveness is confession. That's it. And so, God is not answering your prayers or not answering your prayers, hearing your prayers or not hearing your prayers. I served under a leader one time who taught that God will not hear your prayer if there's sin in your life. I had a good mind. I couldn't afford it at the time, but now that I have some money, I want to put an investigator of a private… investigator on him. I want to see, how are you so sinless that you could say something like that? So, the condition on God hearing my prayer isn't like, man, it's been three weeks since I looked at that on my phone.

Man, it's been a month since I drank. Man, I haven't yelled and blowed up and lost my temper since yesterday when I was reading the comments on the internet for the Elevation Rhythm video. The question isn't, are you holy enough? It's, are you humble enough? I said the question of how to pray and what to bring to God… I'm not just talking about prayer. I'm talking about the situations that create our need for prayer. See, sometimes it's not like we're embarrassed about how we pray. We're embarrassed about what we're still having to pray about. If I was a good parent, I wouldn't have to be praying this for my kid, because I would have set a better example. If I was a good husband, I wouldn't have to be praying this about my marriage, because I probably would have done a better job with my wife. Have you ever had a situation and you didn't mind praying but you didn't want to pray about that situation, at least not with anybody else? So, what we do is we all run around like we're these professional prayer warriors, and then we go home and we're professional worriers, and we isolate to the point that we just keep ruminating on things we regret and things we can't resist, and then we call that prayer. So, I want to say this, and I'm going to stay right down here for a minute. It's not, Are you holy enough for God to hear you? It's, Are you humble enough to ask him to? I can still sense some of you don't believe me. You're like, Yeah, but if I'm not living right, I can't pray to God. If you're not living right, you better pray to God. He's the only one who's going to help you straighten this out and live right. Who else are you going to ask? Who else are you going to run to? Who else are you going to turn to? Jesus shared a story one time. I'll give it to you from Luke 18. Maybe you believe Jesus if you don't believe me. Maybe if you just believe the Devil telling you all the time, you know, you don't have the right to praise God or to pray or whatever because you're not righteous. I understand that, but Jesus was righteous. So, since I accepted Jesus, I received his righteousness. Jesus told a story one time in Luke 18, verse 9. Do you know where I'm going? To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else. Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, that's the professional prayer, and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, "'God, I thank you that I am not like other people.'" What a start to a prayer. "'I thank you I'm not like other people.'" It gets worse. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers,

Democrats, Republicans. Put whatever you want in there that's not you. That's what he's doing. I get to pray, and they don't get to pray. I get to come to God, and they don't get to come to God. I get to have a relationship with God, and they don't get to have a relationship with God. I get to be a preacher, and they don't get to be a preacher. I get to worship, and they don't get to worship. He said, "'I thank you that I'm not like robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all I get.'" But the tax collector stood at a distance, and he went out on his porch, and he started praying. And he didn't feel like he was doing it right, but it came from a deep place of gratitude. But he felt like he didn't do it right or enough, like he left something out, because the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven. He's not proud of his life, but he beat his breast and said, "'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'" So, Jesus, which one did it right? I tell you, this man rather than the other. The one who went like this, not the one who went like this. The one who prayed without pointing went home justified before God. For all who exalt themselves will be humble, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. It's not how holy you are. It's how humble you are that determines whether God hears your prayer. You come to God listing all of the things you did for him. giving him all of the reasons he ought to be doing things in your life that he's doing in other people's lives. God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Do I have anybody in the room who is humble enough that you don't even care what the person on your row thinks about you or the person in your room thinks about you or the person in your dorm thinks about you, but you would just take a few seconds to say today, I need you, God, and I need you to have mercy on me, God, because I'm not really sure about this, God, because I can't be confident in my own righteousness. So I plead the blood of Jesus. Hallelujah to the man on the middle cross, the one who owed no debt, the one who was without sin, the Lamb of God without blemish. That's the one I'm pointing to. So, for all who feel like you can't pray, shouldn't pray, don't know what to pray, pray anyway. And if you can't pray out loud about it, just mumble a prayer to God. The other day, Chandler sent me through a song idea, and it was him mumbling a little idea into a song. Do y'all know my friend Chandler Moore? We wrote some great songs together, man.

Jaira and Wait On You and More Than Able and God I'm Just Grateful and Praise, and we wrote some great songs together. I played the thing he sent me, and Holly just started laughing, because I'm listening to it in the bed. He's going… He's not saying no words. He's just expressing like Romans 8.26 with groans that the Spirit only understands. You ever read that in the Bible? Holly laughed, and she said, I wish people knew how many mumbles turned into the songs that got them through the hardest season of their life. I'm here to say today that God can turn a mumble into a miracle, and it doesn't take much for God to move, and it doesn't take long for God to do it, and it doesn't take perfection. All it takes is prayer. If you will humble yourself under the mighty hand of God… I need somebody who hasn't had much to say lately to give God the best praise you can. If it's not a shout, it can be a mumble. One woman had an issue with blood, and she started coming to Jesus. She said to herself, If I could just touch… Everybody there would have judged her, but she didn't want them to judge her, so she just mumbled under her breath, If I could just touch… She got down low, low enough not to touch Jesus but to touch the hem of his garment. When she touched the hem of his garment, she was healed. I'm saying, Pray anyway, drug addict. I'm saying, Pray anyway, absentee father. Pray anyway. High-five your neighbor and say, Pray for me anyway. Put it in the comments. Pray for me anyway. I know I'm jacked up. Pray for me anyway. I know I have problems. Pray for me anyway. I know you can talk about me. Pray for me anyway. Reach around in five, seven people. I don't care. Tell them, Pray for me anyway. Pray about it anyway. I know it looks hopeless. Pray anyway. I know it seems too late. Pray anyway. I know you don't see how it could happen now. Pray anyway. I know the doctor told you the same thing three times. Pray anyway. I know fear got you by the throat. Pray anyway. Open your mouth if it's nothing more than a mumble. How many mumbles has God turned into miracles? Just that prayer you can't pray out loud because you're walking up to them while you're praying. Lord, help me not go off on them right now. You know we teach about praying in tongues in church? I do that, but I also pray in mumble. Mumble is when I'm like, Lord, right now… Mumble is, Lord, would you take over my fingers before I get on this keyboard and bring our whole

ministry down to the ground? So, I don't type it. I just use it for my sermon illustration, and we all win. Thank you, Lord. The Lord answered my mumble. I do want to give you a few things that are very practical before we go. This is my outline. So, everything I just said… I don't know what that was, but here we go with point number one. If you look at Elijah's life, it's… it's going to show you three things. One is that when you pray honestly and humbly to God… Look at what the Scripture said. Confess your sins one to another. That doesn't mean you go out in the parking lot, find the first person you can find, and tell them, like, "'Hey, you see my wife right here? Let me tell you. She needs prayer, and I need prayer. As a matter of fact, we fought coming in here today. We're going to fight back home. We're sleeping in separate beds.'" This is in the context of community. You understand that. When he talks about sin, he's using Elijah as an example, not because Elijah sinned but because Elijah struggled. He says something about Elijah that sounds like an insult. He says, "'He was a human.'" Ask any man in the room, that's the last thing you want to be called. Think about it. When we compliment a man, what do you say? He's a beast. What else? He's a machine. He's an animal. Anything but a man. That's the last thing we want to be. I get it. There were some times where I never asked Holly to pray for me because I didn't want her to see me as weak, so what I would do is shut her out. I didn't even know the help Holly could bring me if I let her in, and I thought I needed to be hero enough, but what I really needed to be was humble enough. So, when you look at Elijah… He has a lot of hero. Remember he called down fire on Mount Carmel? Lord, take this wet wood and burn it up. Cocky too, man. He told him, "'Wet the wood before…' They're in a drought." He said, "'Bring me the water.'" He pours it on the wood and goes, "'Now do it, God!' That's a good way to get killed, but God answered him." I was surprised James didn't use that example. He didn't use the example of the fire where Elijah prayed. He used the example of the rain. It was interesting. Verse 17. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain. Earnestly doesn't mean loud.

Earnestly has nothing to do with the volume of his prayer. It has to do with the sincerity of his prayer. It has to do with the energy of his prayer. He prayed that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. Now, that's so great, but it's a summary. It's a summary. You have to be careful about summaries, whether it's AI or Google or whatever. You put something in Google, and it gives you the summary. But don't trust the summary. There's more to what you're searching than the summary. Sometimes you summarize other people, and sometimes you believe the slander you hear about somebody, and you trust the summary about someone that came from someone else. You know what that's called? Sin. I am going to do a series, and it's going to be the least attended series I've ever done in the church. It's going to be called The Sin of Slander. Stop it, y'all. That's the title of the series. All of these other sins we love to preach about, and we run around in that one. We're just slanderholics. We're asking God to deliver us from anxiety and fear. God, deliver me from slander. See, what we have to stop doing is stop just praying about our situation and start praying about our sin that creates the situation. But you have to be humble to do that. That's a humble prayer. That's when you go to your men's group and you be like, "'Man, I need you to pray for my son. He's an idiot.'" You go in and be like, "'Pray for my son. I'm an idiot. I was an idiot when I was his age, and so now I'm taking out all my disappointment and frustration on my son, and I need y'all to pray for me, because I'm humble enough. I'm not proud to tell you this, but I'm not too proud to tell you that I need prayer.'" Do you want my points? I don't even know what to do anymore. If you look at Elijah's life, there are three things you will learn. I'll put them up on the board for you. You can write them down, and we can talk about them on highlights tomorrow and in eGroups this week. Number one. When you call on God with a humble heart, there are three things you can expect. Number one. Expect provision you can't predict. When you pray to God about one thing, it not only creates provision you didn't expect, it creates problems you didn't expect. I've used the example before of a job. Lord, give me this position in the company. Well, the position is going to come with problems. So now you've not only prayed about the position, but now you have to pray about the problem.

that the position opened up to you. Now you're going to wish you were nicer to your manager, because now that you are one, you understand it must have been hard to manage me too. In the process of prophesying about a drought, Elijah is like, "'It's not going to rain except in my word, until I say so.'" You know what's crazy, y'all? The Bible doesn't even say he prayed about it. James does, but if you read 1 Kings 17, he just spoke what God told him to speak, and it happened. It doesn't say that he prayed that it would stop raining, but he prayed that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't rain for three and a half years. So now that God has answered his prayer, he has a problem. The drought isn't only for the nation to bring them back to Yahweh and away from Baal, who was said to be the rain god. He put Elijah in a tricky spot too, because now that God made it stop raining, which is the thing I prayed for, I don't have anything to drink. If I don't have anything to drink and the land doesn't have anything to drink, then I'm not going to have anything to eat. Now God did what I asked him to do. Have you ever had God do what you asked him to do, and it created a problem you didn't know you were going to have? God, I want to have influence. God, I want to have inconvenience. You know those are the same prayer, right? Influence is inconvenience. Y'all wish we'd stopped at week six, right? Come on, you told me don't stop on six. Y'all voted for a bonus week, but the good news is don't just expect the problems, expect the provision, and expect for God to give you provision that you can't predict. What do you mean?

Look at 1 Kings 17 for a minute. Elijah prophesied a drought, and interestingly enough, I noticed that there was only one verse in the Bible, 1 Kings 17.1, about Elijah prophesying a drought. You would think that would get at least a chapter. Nope. It's not going to rain. It doesn't rain. Verse two. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah, and Elijah said, I know that voice. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah when in a drought. By the way, God will direct you in the drought. God will direct you in the drought. If they're laying everybody off in your company, don't lay down and die about it. God will direct you in the drought. If you are broken up with, it is a sign from God that there is something else that needs your attention right now. Don't go chasing them down, trying to win them back. God will direct you in the drought. Who am I preaching to? God will direct you in the drought. The word of the Lord came to him, verse two, and said to him very specifically, leave here, turn eastward, and hide in the Kareth ravine, east of the Jordan. Now I'm going to show you something really fun now. You will drink from the brook. I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there. Let's talk about this. Did Elijah pray for food? No. He obeyed the Lord, and the Lord gave him food. Seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

If you seek the kingdom, the things get thrown in. If you seek the things, you miss the kingdom. Elijah doesn't pray for God to feed him. You know what? If he had prayed for God to feed him, he wouldn't have prayed for God to do it like this. Look. You will drink from the brook. I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there. Verse five is the important one. It says, so he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Carith Ravine east of the Jordan and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. Hey, Lord. Lord, thank you for this encouragement that you are going to feed me in the famine. Oh, I appreciate it so much. God, I'm just grateful for you. Lord, it sounded like you said ravens, and you and I both know that ravens are forbidden in Leviticus, chapter 11, where it says that the ravens are unclean birds, and so, Lord, I appreciate you offering to feed me, but I'm going to need you to do it some way other than the ravens. Ravens are unclean birds, and I don't touch unclean birds, and so, Lord, I appreciate the ravens. But I prefer pigeons, Lord. Pigeons are pure, Lord. I would prefer a pigeon, Lord. Would you send a pigeon? The Lord is like, You don't get to pick whether it's a pigeon or a raven. See, you can expect God to move, but you don't get to tell him how to do it. I'm on fire now. I'm in the bonus round now, baby. God said, You can't pray for me to provide your needs and then chase away the ravens that I send. So if I want to send you something that you tend to avoid, are you willing to embrace what I give you even if it comes through something you would prefer to avoid? That's what I mean about a provision you can't predict. You know, we get so busy telling the Lord when we want our kids to be married by and what college we want our kids to go to. I know I preach about being a parent all the time

because you either have one that's on your nerves or you are one, so we all need this. I get it that you want pigeons, and I get it that you want your kid to turn out like this and you see other kids, and wouldn't it be nice? But God said, You don't get to pick what I send. You don't get to pick what I use. Now, you can pray that I'll provide for you. You can pray that I'll raise them up. You can pray that it will come, but you do not get to say who it comes through. You do not get to say when it comes by. You don't get to give God a deadline. You don't get to give God a stipulation. You don't get to give God terms and agreements that must apply. He is God. He is Yahweh. He makes it rain. He shuts the sky. He brings the manna. He does the work. He gets the glory. It is God's job. Then, after he got settled into the brook and the ravens are coming… He's like, Okay. Ravens aren't so bad. Okay. I'm sorry, Lord. You're right. The ravens are good. Look how they do their job. They're very dutiful. They're very punctual. Maybe we could revise Leviticus 11. Maybe they're not so bad. Then, sometime later, the brook dried up. Why? Because there was a drought. Why? Because he prayed for it. Now the thing he prayed for is becoming the problem he has to pray about, and now the thing God led him to has dried up and he has to go somewhere else. Verse 7. Where is God going to send him? Expect unexpected provision. Sometime later, the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land, and the word of the Lord came to him. See, what never stops happening is God speaking, because everything else is a resource. He's the source. So, no matter where it moves to, God will always provide for you as you fulfill his purpose. You don't even have to pray about some stuff if you'll just obey what he gave you to obey. The word of the Lord came to Elijah again, and he said… This one is real trippy. Go once to Zarephath. Zarephath? You mean between Tyre and Sidon? That's Jezebel's hometown. So, the Lord said, "'I'm going to move you on. I'm going to keep bringing you bread, but I want you to go to Zarephath, and I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.'" So, God said, "'Now I'm going to give you bread in Baal's backyard.'" So, God put you in a tough place, and now you're praying like, "'God, get me out of here.'" Have you ever just prayed a God-get-me-out-of-here prayer? You're not praying one right now, are you? Don't pray it right now. It's going to happen in a few minutes anyway. But the Lord is like, "'No, no. I have a widow there to feed you. I'm

sorry, Lord. You said widow? Wouldn't it be better for you to provide a wealthy benefactor, a woman of means? No, because she has a son who is going to be sick sometime from now, and I need you positioned in the house to heal him, so I'm going to meet your need through someone whose need you're going to meet later.'" This is what Elijah did, and I can't even find yet where he prayed about any of it. Write this down. Sometimes obeying is praying. Remember when Jesus said, "'Don't use all these fancy words standing in the marketplace. Oh, God, I thank thee.'" My grandfather was a great man of God. He was a Methodist minister, and in the Methodist church, they would write out their prayers and read them from the pulpit. So, my mom made me a copy of a book of all of his prayers from one church that he served at. It's one of my treasured possessions, and it's called Papa's Pulpit Prayers. As beautiful as they are… If he was alive today, I'd be like, can I see not your pulpit prayers but just your pit prayers? The ones you said out loud… They're beautiful, and they're real, and they're amazing, and I treasure them, but sometimes it's the pit prayers, isn't it? The ones you're not proud of, the God-are-you-there prayers. Don't look at me like that. I thank you that I am not like this other man. If you never asked God-are-you-there, you never stepped out in faith. That's what Peter said. Lord, if it's you… Are you there, prayers? Have you prayed those? I like those God-get-them prayers, and I like those God-are-you-there prayers. I wrote a book years ago called Sun Stands Still. It was my first book. It was out of Joshua 10, where Joshua needed more time to defeat his enemy. How many of you need a little more time to defeat your enemy? How many need a little bit more time to pay these bills off? How many need a little bit more time to work on this? The Lord made the sun stand still, and that's what the book was about, audacious faith, sun-stand-still prayers, and I believe in those. He spoke to the sun. Oh, sun, stand still over Gibeon. Oh, moon, over the valley of Ayalon. There has never been a day like it since the day when the Lord listened to the man. That was awesome, a sun-stand-still prayer, almost as awesome as Elijah's make-it-rain prayer. But there are other prayers too. The second thing I want you to expect is a process that isn't pretty.

When you read the summary of Elijah's life from James, it sounds so nice. He prayed that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't rain, but he had to go eat from ravens and widows. You don't get that in the summary. You think God just answered his prayer, and he did, but there was provision you couldn't predict. That's what you have to be careful of when people share their praise reports around you. It's their summary. Don't judge your struggle by their summary, because they'll tell you, and all of our kids serve the Lord. They serve, and they swerve, but the swerve don't make the summary. So now you're judging yourself. Well, my kids don't all serve the Lord. It's the summary. When he says that Elijah prayed that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't rain, and he prayed that it would rain, and it did rain… Graham was preaching about this last week. I pictured you while I was preparing too. He got up here on this stage, y'all. He was preaching to our young people. By the way, you can come to the living room tonight and most Sunday nights, and I'm throwing that in for you, because I'm about to make fun of you. He was up here preaching, and it was so powerful. He preached fire down from heaven. I was offended, because Holly looked at him afterwards, and she's like, "'That's one of the best sermons I've ever heard.'" I looked at her like, "'That's his 20th sermon ever. He gets best ever? It's like Hall of Fame. It was good.'" Whatever. I'm proud of him. That's a prayer I'm not proud of. He was reading how when Elijah prayed for rain, it would cause down fire from heaven, and then he goes up on a mountain, and he tells his servant to go tell Ahab, go eat and drink. There's a sound of a heavy rain. Look at verse 42. Graham acted this out. So, Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground, and put his face between his knees. Why I'm going to make fun of Graham is because he preached it great, but the way he did it is the way I always pictured it too, his face between his knees like that. But this is not the way Elijah prayed. And I'm not correcting you, because I preached it the same way before, but I studied it this week, and I found out that some prayers aren't pretty. There is no way for me to do this in front of you and not lose aura. There's no way.

And that's about all of what I'm going to do in front of you too, because I don't know what happens next. I don't know how long I can stay that way. I don't know if I… get back up. I don't know. We had to get Graham to come close the message. Maybe his way was better, but regardless of how you look at it, his head is between his knees. What? I'm not saying you need to pray in that position, but that was the Hebrew birthing position. So, when you're praying for something, don't be surprised if there's pain in the prayer. Now, see, if you only ever pray about situations, you won't feel any pain, but you won't get any change either. But if you start praying, God, work in me. God, do a work in me. God, I want to pray about the drought in me. There can be pain, and the process doesn't have to be pretty for the prayer to be powerful. Some of the pit prayers, the push prayers, the distracted prayers, the distract prayers, the prayer you're not proud of… See, James gives us two prayers that Elijah prayed. He said, "'Pray fervently like Elijah. Pray effectually like Elijah. Pray with the kind of faith that Elijah prayed with. He was a man just like you.'" He mentions two prayers. He says he prayed that it would not rain. It did not rain. He prayed that it would rain, and it did rain. There's provision you can't predict. There's a process that isn't pretty. With your head between your knees, sometimes you're praying, and you're scribbling things, and you're having to lock up the notebook you wrote the prayers in, because these are not pulpit prayers. These are pit prayers. Those are okay, because the prayer you're not proud of is better than the one you won't pray. Pray anyway. There's provision you can't predict. There's a process that isn't pretty, and there are prayers you're not proud of. That's my third point. There are prayers you're not proud of. Those are the most important ones for you to pray. James gives us two prayers, and he's not lying, but he's summarizing. There was another prayer Elijah prayed that James did not hold up as an example to the class. He's teaching Christians who are under persecution and who are scattered about, the 12 tribes that are scattered about. He's preaching to them about perseverance in prayer, and he's saying, "'Pray for each other, man. Get beside each other. The Devil is busy. He's trying to pick off that person. Stop judging them. Stop criticizing everybody who doesn't do it like you. Stop telling everybody else everybody else's business. Come to God and deal with your own business, and pray for your brothers, and pray for your sisters like Elijah who prayed that it wouldn't rain and it didn't rain, who prayed that it would rain and

then it did rain.'" But there is a prayer James did not mention. It's a prayer Elijah probably wouldn't have been proud of, because the day after it rained… He prayed that it wouldn't rain, it didn't rain. Three and a half years. He prayed that it would rain, and it rained. The next day, Jezebel sent a messenger to say, "'I'm going to kill you.'" Verse 3 shocks us, because it's not a pulpit prayer. It's a pit prayer. It's a prayer that Elijah will not be proud of, but he prayed it. It's in verse 3. Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. Make a note. I don't think he was really running for his life. He was running from it. It was too much. It was too hard. Remember a couple of weeks ago about it is enough? That's what he said. He said he left his servant, he ran for his life, and he went himself a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush and sat down under it and prayed. We didn't see him pray when he went to the brook. We didn't see him pray when he went to the… He just obeyed that. But now he prayed. This is the prayer. James doesn't include it. The very next day, after praying for rain, he prayed that he might die. I've had enough, Lord, he said. Take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors. The man who prayed a prayer called Make It Rain prayed a prayer called I Give Up. Have you ever prayed an I Give Up prayer? I love to tell you about my son's standstill prayers. When I prayed and we went on the loading dock of Matthew's and we prayed that God would give us that building and that's our Matthew's campus today, I prayed for that. We prayed for that. Put that in James, chapter 5, 17-18. I'll tell you about the time I prayed for God to give me a word, and he gave me a word. I spoke into somebody's situation, and they started crying. Put that in James 5, 17-18. But, God, don't tell anybody about the time when I had to drag myself to the car, when I had to put my hands on the wheel and tell Holly, "'I'm shaking. I can't drive to church tonight. Will you drive me?' I don't really want that in the book." You can cut off verse 18 right there at the Make It Rain prayer, but I'm standing here today because I didn't just pray Make It Rain prayers, I prayed some I Give Up prayers. And if you're going to be like Elijah, he wasn't a machine.

He wasn't a beast. He was a man. He was a human. You are a human. And if you can humble yourself enough just to say, I give up, Lord, God says, I can use the prayer that you're not proud of. I need us to clap our hands and thank God that he hears prayers that we're not proud of. Put all three points on the board, that there is provision that you can't predict, zigs and zags and swerves as you serve, that there is provision you can't predict, that there is a process that isn't pretty. There's the six times that you go and look and there is no cloud. There's the embarrassment and the humiliation of saying, I'm going to turn it around, baby. I promise. Just give me another month. And now it's been three. There's the humiliation of having to check yourself in another time. There's the humiliation of a process that isn't pretty. But if you humble yourself and pray the prayer you're not proud of, and you can even humble yourself just enough to say, God, I give up, I like to imagine that at the moment Elijah prayed, I give up, I want to die, that maybe an angel moved at that moment, because the angels were used to doing whatever Elijah said, and the angel said, you heard what he said, Lord. I'm going to go down there and take him out. The Lord said, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm not done with that one yet. So here's what I want you to do. Even though he said, I give up, verse five, even though he slept under a broom tree, even though he had had enough, all at once an angel touched him and said, get up and eat. He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals and a jar

of water, and he ate and drank and lay down again. I imagine the celestial confusion of the angel speaking to their host, the one in charge, when he hands them the bread to take to Elijah, and the angel says, no, no, no, no. He said, dead, not bread, and the Lord said, this time I'm not going to give him what he asked for. I'm going to give him what he needs. I'm not going to kill him. He said, take my life. Hey, come here, angels. You get your apron on, and you get into the door-dash chariot of heaven and take him some bread. Yeah, but he said, take my life. Yeah, but we're going to make him lunch. Had you ever had God when you said, I give up, but God said, get up? Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up. I hear the word of the Lord today for someone who has been praying an I give up prayer. The good news is that even as you have been praying this I give up prayer, you have been praying to… I'm going to say it like this. You serve a get-up God. Even when you pray a give-up prayer, you serve a get-up God. Now I'm going to need 300 people to stand on your feet. If you have been saying to God, I give up, I've had enough, I can't… and do this, and God is saying, Check your head, because I am not going to give you an escape. I'm going to give you what you need to make it through this trial. Who am I preaching to? God said, I'm not going to take your life. I'm going to feed you and lead you and give you what you need for the next season. I'm preaching to somebody who's in prison, and I'm preaching to somebody who's in college, and I'm preaching to a single mom, and I'm preaching to a lost child. You've been saying, I give up, and God says, Get up. There's bread by your head.

You prayed, I give up, and God said, Get up. There was a time when I was hurting so badly that all I could pray was, God, make it stop. Have you ever prayed a make-it-stop prayer? The Lord spoke back to me in my heart, and I know that voice. He said, I can make the pain stop, but if I make the pain stop, the purpose will stop with it. So, listen to me. He showed me this. I'm not going to make it stop. I'm going to make you strong. Such three people said, There's bread by your head. Come on, Elijah. There is bread by your head. What kind of God is this? A God who you will pray, Take me out, and God says, I'm not going to take you out. I'm going to raise you up. I'm going to feed you what you need in this season. I'm not done with you yet. I am need of you. Jesus said one time in Matthew, chapter 7, which one of you, having your own child, if your son asks for bread will give him a stone, or if your child were to ask you for fish will give him a snake? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts? Good gifts. Baked bread over hot coals in a land of famine under a broom tree where you tried to die, but God said, Not dead. Bread instead. Purpose instead. Future instead. I saw that God is so good that not only will he not give you a stone when you ask for bread, he'll give you bread when you ask for a stone. There's bread by your head. You're praying that make-it-stop prayer. I know there are some things you're not proud of, and I know there are some mistakes you can't move past. I know you might have been praying, Not that I would die, but God, I give up. God says, Just about the time you're giving up, you find out I'm the God of getting up. So, I declare this day a getting up day. How does an alarm clock sound? High-five everybody you can reach. Say, Get up! Get up! Get up! High-five your neighbors. Say, Get up! I smell bread by your head. I see water by your head. I declare a cloud the size of a man's hand is beginning to swell. Let's give God the greatest praise. Come on, the greatest praise! I'm getting up. The greatest praise! I'm getting up. I'm getting up. I'm getting up. I'm getting up.