The Secret of Answered Prayer || Victory Church [Book of John #38]

And we're in probably, I consider this particular chapter the, probably the medius chapter of the book of John. And as I started looking at it, I began to realize this particular verse that we're going to teach on today, it changed my life forever in terms of how I connect with God, how I pray and so forth. And I started reading through this and I began to realize, pause for just a moment, just because I, I began to realize how many people in the church don't understand this verse of scripture. And because of that, they don't get their prayers answered. I preached this last night and I went home and I, I went home and I was couldn't wait to get home to watch the Georgia football game. Playing Ole Miss, it was a pretty big game. And they were just pounding Ole Miss in the first half. It was, by the time I got home, it was already 21 to nothing. And those are the kind of games, if you're a football fan, you love to watch when your team is winning. And just as the half time is hitting, we're winning 28 to nothing. I heard the Lord say, "Go to bed." And I said, "Not so Lord." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because, because I, I want you to be rested for tomorrow because what you're going to share tomorrow is one of the most important messages that we can hear in this church." And then he began to put a burden on my heart for you. I began to kind of feel some of the pain of this congregation. So this happens when you're an intercessor. When you're an intercessor, you just sort of sometimes take on the pain of other people. I went to bed, I went to sleep pretty fast, and then I woke up at 3.30 this morning. And I realized why God sent me to bed. And I woke up and all I could think about was you. So I could think about it. And I started praying and I said, "Lord, what are you doing? What do you want me to do?" And he said, "I want you to pray for the people in the church. I want you to pray before you get up and do anything else. I want you to pray that they get this message today.

Because this is my word. This is what I really want them to get about their relationship with me. Because if they get this, it changes everything. So I started praying and I started feeling the pain of the congregation. Some of you are going through financial challenges. Some of you are going through physical healing issues. You're going through relational issues. And you're praying, but you're not getting relief. And so as I started to go into the scripture, I began to realize there's a reason why so many people, so many people, I would say the majority of Christians don't regularly get their prayers answered because they don't know how to pray. They don't know how to pray. They don't know what's involved in prayer. And so Jesus is sitting down and he's telling his disciples. And it's interesting that John is the one who's recording this. John is one of the four authors of the gospels. He also authored for a second and third John. The other three gospels, one was authored by Matthew, who was a tax collector, turned disciple. That's why when you read Matthew, there's a lot of emphasis on money. He talks a lot about it in what he heard Jesus say about money. Then there's Mark, who was a fellow compatriot with Paul and Barnumus. And then there's Luke, who's a physician who wrote the book of Luke as well. And who's also with Paul when he wrote the book of Luke. And then he also wrote the book of Acts. But John is the most unique one of all because John is the one, if you read it carefully, he's the one he refers to himself this way, a little bit almost, I don't want to say prideful, but he just says, I'm the one Jesus loves.

He really loves me. And really what he's trying to show in that when he says things like that is, I recognize that my life flows from receiving the love of God. I love from being loved. This is what causes people to really understand the power of love. So when he writes this account, he goes into this intimate moment with Jesus, where he's talking to his disciples. And here's what he says in John chapter 15. We're going to reverse one through it. He says, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I've spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. By the way, let me just go back into that one little verse because it's coming up. spoken to you know when you read the word it washes you you know every day hopefully you take a shower right or a bath or something you got up this morning and clean yourself right come on Jesus I know you did but a lot of you didn't wash your mind a lot of you didn't wash your heart you washed the outside but not the inside and Jesus is saying I've spoken this word in this word is washing you it's cleansing you and then he says abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself he's wanting you to bear fruit unless it bides in the vine neither can you unless you abide in me then he kind of goes back into it again I am the vine you are the branches he's reminding us where we get the source of life from God is not in the world we get it from God we get it from God and the more connected we are to God the more we get the source of God in our life and he says you are the branches he will bides in me and I in him bears much fruit for without me you can do what nothing now we all know we all know that every day we do things we do things all through the day we do things we work we interact with our families we we do

things we accomplish things so what does he mean you'll do nothing without me he's saying you'll do nothing listen is that matters you'll do nothing that makes a difference you'll do nothing that has eternal significance to it you can do a lot of things you can how many of you you can be really busy in this world and you can do a lot of things and you can start thinking your accomplishments are really making you something but when you stand before God how many of you know all of your human accomplishments that are outside of God don't even matter they don't matter to God they don't matter in heaven they have no internal significance they don't they don't get receive rewards from heaven a lot of the things that we spent all of our investment of life in does not have a return for it in eternity the only thing that really has a return forward is what it what it does in terms of eternal significance eternal value so he says without me you're not going to do anything that's significant so how many want to do some things that are significant with God amen I think everybody wants to they just don't know how to because they get so busy doing things that don't matter and he says if anyone does not abide in me he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they're burned if you he's talking about your works they burn they just burn if you abide in me and my words abide in you now this is where it really gets deep you will ask whatever you desire and it shall be done for you by this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit so you will be my disciples so he ties fruit into prayer he ties your fruit of life into your prayer life how you pray and what you pray and how connected you are to the life source of God when you're praying and he says if you're praying but you're not abiding in him you're not living in him your prayers will not be heard and this is a shock to many people because they think just because they pray God's listening to everything they say but the reality is there's a lot of times we pray and we may not be aware of it God's not listening because you know why we're praying our will not his will we're praying what we want not what he wants and we think because we want it God must want it but the reality of it is is he

has a desire that is higher than your desire he has a purpose that's greater than your human purpose he has a will that's beyond your will and at some point you have to make a decision is it going to be my will or your will and what we discover in life is when we live by our will listen me life doesn't work it doesn't work it's filled with all kinds of problems reaction all the time to the circumstances of our life and we don't know how to get rid of them we don't know how to get healed we don't know how to get pro God to bless us financially because we're doing things most of the time out of our human desire instead of God's desire working through us when we pray and the only way that can happen the only way that can change is you have to learn how to abide in him and his word about in you. and he talks about it in 1 John chapter 5 and verse 14, and here's what he says, "This is the confidence that we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will," what does he say? So when you're praying, here's the prayers of God as hearing his will. He's hearing his will, not your will, his will. And when you're praying his will, he hears you and then he says, "And if we know he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him," wow, that's powerful. I never heard this before when I was young, I used to go to church, I prayed all the time, but I just, I went praying like I went fishing. You know, there's a difference between fishing and catching fish. How many of you have ever been fishing? Let me see your hand. Have you been fishing before? How many of you have ever sat out there in the water with your line in the water? And nothing bit. You went home with nothing, but you were fishing, you were fishing, you were fishing, and everybody that's a fisherman knows that there are certain things you have to do to catch fish, and it's not just simply put a bait on there and throw it out there and hope and pray, but that's how most people pray.

They just throw things out there at God, hoping and praying that God hears them. Instead of having confidence, you are hearing this prayer and you are going to answer this prayer. And I don't know about you, but I want to have that kind of confidence, amen? But there's a lot of things that get in the way of that confidence, our busy schedules, our mentality of life and how we get so conflated in life, we get more entertained than we do close to God, we start focusing more on our cell phones, on our jobs, on our careers, on our families, and we forget about God. And then when we get in trouble, we cry out to God like a fisherman. I'm going to say, "I hope and pray that you'll answer this prayer." And this is why Jesus was really clear that that kind of prayer does not get answered. He even says it in the book of Matthew. He says in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 7, listen to this, he says, "When you pray, don't be like those people who don't know God." They continue saying things that mean, what, nothing. Thinking that God will hear them because of their many words. All right, so what's the secret? What's the secret to answer prayer? What's the secret to bearing fruit? I learned this a long time ago. It was really a revelation to me about 35 years ago. Well, actually, it was about 37 years ago because it was before we started this church. And I was heading out to Tulsa, Oklahoma with my family, and we were about to start a new chapter of our life. We've been youth pastors at the church. And on the way out there, God began to speak to me, He says, "Now, you're about to enter into a next season of life with me. How many of you know we have seasons of life with God who are God's doing different things in different seasons? Amen.

I'm in a different season now. I just turned 69 last Friday. I'm in 69. I got one last year in my sixties. But here's the way I'm thinking. Those people, I'm almost 70. That's really old. I met a woman last night who was a church last night. She comes out and she says she's just so healthy looking, smiling, and she's talking to me. And she's telling me how excited she is about God and how she has a small group. And she's been in our church for a long, long time. And she loves our church and she loves the people of our church. And she says, "You know, you said you're 69. How old do you think I am?" I said, "I don't know." She says, "I'm 90. I'm 90 years old. I see fine. I think fine. And I'm getting a lot done for the kingdom of God." Hey, sometimes if you have the right framework of mind with God, you're just getting started when you turn 70. You're just getting started. Now you got the wisdom and now it's time to apply it and help others to learn the things you've learned the hard way. Amen? All right. So I asked the Lord. I said, "Show me how to get an answer prayer," and he gave me four words.

And this is the first word. The first word, it starts with intimacy. At some point in your walk with God, you're going to have to decide. You know, you know this, if you've been married, how many of you are married, let me see your hands. Or you've been married, let me see your hands. A lot more hats, okay. Sorry. You know this, this is true. Have you been married for a while? How many of you know, when you first fall in love, it's very intimate, it's very intimate. When Colleen and I fell in love in 1982, we were just extremely, just thinking about each other, always with each other, trying to get to know each other. And as we got married, over a period of time, that intimacy began to wane, because we began to take each other for granted. And this is what happens when marriages go bad. They just begin to take each other for granted. They stop pouring into the heart of the other person. They start thinking more about themselves than they do the other person, selfishness sets in, and it causes division. Some people stay married, but it's not a happy marriage, and then some people don't stay married. And we've learned this over the years of marriage, we've been married 43 years, we've learned, you have to work on staying intimate. Jesus would say in the book of Revelation,

he said, "There's one thing I have against you. "You're doing everything right in the church, "there's one thing I have, you've left your first love. "You've forgotten your first love. "Come back to God and renew that intimacy with God "because if you don't have intimacy, "you will not connect yourself to God. "God wants to be intimate with you." And when I started looking at it, I began to realize a lot of people, when they come to church, they think intimacy is church attendance, giving in the church, serving in the church, doing things in the church. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about going through the routine of church. That's what the religious people did in that day. And this is the devil's trap for Christians. He gets them trapped in religion and religious activities so that they never get intimate with God. He gets them thinking their relationship with God is based on Sunday morning services instead of daily intimacy with God. John 15, four, mind you, he says, "Abide in me, "live in me and I in you as the branch "can not bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. "Neither can you unless you abide in me." So I thought, well, I'll just show you what this looks like. So when you first fall in love with God, what ends up happening is you're connecting yourself to God, here's what happens, you begin to become fruitful.

The closer you are to God, the more fruitful you are. You start to bear fruit. And this is what a vine that's healthy looks like where fruit is being born. But what happens is if you cut the branch off of the tree or the vine and it stays disconnected for long enough, it turns from that into this. And unfortunately, this is what a lot of Christians look like. They're still there, they might even go to church, they might even pray every once in a while, but they're not connected. And the longer you stay disconnected, the more you die. Not die to yourself, you die to God. You begin to lose your intimacy with God, your fervor for God, your fire for God, your love for God. And slowly but surely you start to fall in love with the world more than you do in God. This is the devil's trap for most people. He wants to make sure you don't have any time with God. You're too busy, you've got things to do. God understands and the longer you stay disconnected, the drier you get. And there's some of us here this morning. This is what our life looks like to God. This is what our life looks like to God. And we don't like that, but sometimes we're not willing to do what's necessary to get back to this life with God. In order for us to get back to this life with God, we have to be connected to God. We have to be intimate with God.

Intimacy involves proximity. Who you are spending your time with the most. Where you're spending your time with the most. Is it possible to have a relationship with God where you're practicing the presence of God throughout the day? Where you're not just visiting him one time in the day or one time on the weekend where you're literally living in the presence of God and the presence of God is living in you. Now there's three things that caused that. God gave us the three disciplines that draw us into God. And let me give them to you really quick. First of all, reading and meditating on the word of God. Every time you read the word, you are becoming intimate with God. You're saying God, speak to me. A lot of people want prophetic words. The Bible is a prophetic word directly from the throne room of heaven, and every time you read it, you're getting a prophetic word inside of you. You don't need anything to take you away from the word, you need something to draw you closer to the word. And the Bible tells us that the Word of God is the will of God. Jesus is the Word of God, made flesh and dwells among us. When you read the Word of God, you are fellowshipping intimately with Jesus. You're getting closer to Him, and He's getting closer to you. And His Word is washing you, it's cleansing you, but it's also empowering you, and educating you, and revealing to you who God is and what God wants for your life. I can tell you right now, if you don't read the Word, you're beginning to become less connected to God.

Secondly, worship. Worship is the way that we get closer to God. We say, "God, I can't, but you can, and I want to love you and worship you and be thankful." There's something about people that wake up in the morning, worshiping God, thanking God for what He's done in their lives that says, "I want an intimate relationship with you." And in worship, things begin to change you from the inside out. And then there's prayer. Prayer is where we connect with God on a daily basis, where we open up the intimacy of our own heart, and we get honest with God. We don't just regurgitate scriptures. We talk from the very depths of what's going on in our life. Sometimes it's not a pleasant talk. Sometimes we have to have honest talks with God. We have to say things to God like, "God, I've failed. I've failed in life. I've sinned. Some things that I'm very ashamed of and I need cleansing in my heart. I need you to come." And here's the thing. When you cry out to God and repent, as God does not reject you, He forgives you. And He cleanses you from all the things that have happened in your past. You get new revelation of who Jesus is, amen? So the more you stay connected, here's the thing, reading the word, you get to know what God's will is. What is His will? His will is the Word of God. Faith, listen to this. This is important. This is a revelation for you. Faith begins where the will of God is known.

If you don't know what the will of God is, you cannot have faith for it. You cannot. And then what we've done in religion is we've tagged on these last few words in our prayer. If it be your will, God, if it be your will do this, if it be your will do that, if it be your will do that, well, why don't you just get a little hungrier, a little closer, and find out what His will is. And let me tell you where you find it. In His Word, His Word is His will. So therefore, faith, while it begins where the will of God is known, faith also, you can say it this way begins where the Word of God is known. If you study the Word and you become a partaker of it on a daily basis, it becomes a part of who you are. So when you're praying, you're not just praying what you desire, you're praying what His desires are. Amen. When you're worshiping what's happening there is you're submitting yourself to God, you're posturing yourself, I am nothing without you. I can do nothing without you. I have nothing without you. All my life is in you, and everything that you want me to do is what your will is. That's what I'm going to do. Not my will, but your will be done. And when you submit your will to His will, that's when He can take over in your prayers. And He can start doing things through your prayers that are fruitful instead of just vain repetitions from your human desires. And then when you pray instead of praying what you want, and this is unfortunate because this is most people's prayers, most people's prayers are what they want their will. They think about things that they need, things they want, things that are necessary in their life. And they start putting God to task, okay, I need you to do this, I need you to do that.

It's almost like God's their errand boy. Go do this God. Go do that. Go do this. I need you to do this for me. I need you to do this for me. I need you to do that for me. Because of God, I'm surrendering to you, not my will, but your will. And I ask you to transform me so that I'm asking what you want, not what I want. Amen. Have you ever been praying for somebody? Somebody's asking you to pray for them. Because I don't even know this person. God, I need to know what they need. I don't need to just assume that what they asked me to pray for is what you want me to pray for them. Ooh, y'all all right out there? All right, so intimacy, everybody say intimacy. You gotta start to get intimate. Secondly is the word transformation. Transformation takes place when you start to abide him. In him, he says, if you abide in me, John 15, seven, and my words abide in you as they start living in you, then you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. What he's talking about is when you invest time with God, the more your heart begins to invest in God, it begins to transform, listen to this, around his desires, around what he wants, not what you want. Because when you're praying,

you want your prayers answered, right? You don't want just to be praying like into the wind, not knowing what's gonna happen after you pray. You wanna make sure that this is his desire. So James 4, three, he says it this way. He says, you ask, but you don't receive because you ask a miss that you may spend it on your own pleasures. In other words, that you may have it for yourself, whatever you're praying for, it's for you. You ask a miss, you ask, what does he say? And you don't have, it's not gonna happen. He says, there's two problems in prayer. One is you don't ask, you have not because what? You don't ask. You just go about your daily life doing your stuff and the only time you ask is when you get in trouble. But he says you have not because you ask not and then secondly you ask a miss, you ask because you want it for yourself, not because it's wrapped around his desire for you. This is deep guys, this is intimacy and this is transformation. And what he says is when you spend time with me and you'll bite in me and my word abides in you, it will transform your desires. It will change the things that you desire. You lose to desire one thing, but now you're gonna desire another thing.

And what happens is you begin to deal with things in your life because as he starts to transform your desires, he begins to show you things in your life that you didn't pay attention to that are sin in your life. You didn't even know that sin is a barrier between you and God. Every time you sin, you put up a barrier, a wall that you erect between you and God. And the more you sin, the more distant you get from God and the more you feel condemned and feel guilty and ashamed and you hide from God. And usually you hide from God by getting busy, by getting busy in your life. And the next thing you know, you spend an entire life in bound by sin, bound by addiction, because you never took time to repent, pray, get God's heart for it and start on the channel of transformation. He wants to transform you. And when you spend time in his presence, I'm gonna tell you right now, he will transform you. I've been on this journey, I don't know what it is about this journey I've been on by this last month. I've been on this journey. I guess it was coming up to 69 and I'm thinking, I'll guess my last year, my 60s. And I'm getting ready, I'm saying, God, you have something for me and I know that there's something that you want me to do in my 70s that I feel is even bigger than I've ever done in my life.

But I wanna make sure I don't miss it, God. So I need to spend extra time with you. I need to spend extra time in the Word, extra time in prayer. So I've been very diligent over the last month and a half of just making sure I get up early in the morning, get before the Lord praying and reading the Word. I haven't always done that, there's been seasons, have you ever had seasons in your life where you're just so busy, you stop reading the Bible, or you stop praying on a regular basis, you're sort of in and out with God. And I find that when you're in and out with God, when you're sort of not consistent with God, then you're not consistent in prayer and therefore then the devil has an in road into your life. He's always looking for you when you start to let down your guard. It says he roams about seeking whom he may devour. He looks for a road, a road internally into your heart so that he can deceive you into thinking that you don't need to pray, you don't need to humble yourself and read the Word, you don't need to worship God, you've got a relationship with God, you don't even need to go to church if you don't want to. You can just watch it online. You can just live all to yourself with a special relationship that you think you have with God and the devil deceives you into thinking that's the way you should be.

You never share your faith, you never pray for sick people, you never help hungry people, you just live for you and your four family members Christians. Christian is a word. I don't even know if it's a good word to use anymore because it's 78% of Americans say they're Christian. 78% but only, listen to me, only 32% believe the word of God is true. Only 32%. I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't believe the word of God is true, you're not a Christian. You're not a real Christian. You're a Christian in name but not in heart. You don't really know God. You have a superficial name called Christian. A real Christian understands I've got to be intimate with God and I've got to let God transform me, break me down, help me to be repented and broken on a regular basis, have a broken and contrite heart when I sin. Make sure I'm dealing with my pride. God, wherever I get prideful, repent, I repent of that. The three big things you have to deal with is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. What's the devil traps you in any one of those three? He takes you down. He gets you addicted to one of those three where you start thinking of yourself more highly than you are or you get addicted to something or you get basically you just keep feeding things information into your eyes of entertainment so it takes and steals and kills and destroys your relationship with God. If you spend a lot of time on social media, if you spend a lot of time surfing the net, I can just tell you right now, you're growing distant from God. You're getting farther and farther away. And what happens is once you click on the wrong algorithm, the devil will feed that algorithm, every kind of temptation, every kind of thing that entices you. Have you noticed when you start seeing an algorithm to keep repeating itself? It's because you clicked on it somewhere when nobody was looking. Y'all are right out there? This is how pornography gets a hold of people. This is how people get steeped in all kinds of political things and every kind of stuff. The world's coming to an end. Donald trumps the devil. Everything you can think of. And the next thing you know, you're so consumed with politics and and sex and all these other things that you don't have time to think about your relationship with God. But once you get transformed, then the next thing happens and that's called alignment. This is the key and I'm going to dig a little deeper into this one because I don't know if I just mess with you a little bit. Okay, for those of you that are new, you don't know who I am. You don't know who I am. You're used to listening to Johnson

or one of the other pastors. I've been here longer than any of them, just so you know that. We started the church. Okay, so I don't get to see you a lot. I don't get to preach you a lot, but when I do, I want to make it matter. And I know it's hard because I, you know, Johnson's amazing teacher of the word of God. Don't you love his preaching? Don't you love it? It's awesome. I just love it. In Curvin and all the other pastors, Mo, all of them, they're all just doing such a great job. Just a fantastic job. They're all much nicer than I am. Much sweeter from the pulpit than I am. I, as you get older, you just, I don't have a lot of time to mess around in the church. I just don't have a lot of time. We just got to get down to it and get it done. Come on, we got to get with God. I don't have time to coddle you, make you feel good about yourself. You're going to live your best life now, blah, blah, blah. We're in the war right now, but we got to get war mentality in our lifestyle. This alignment thing is big. Now, look, he says, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and shall be done for you." Now, that word abide means live, live in me, but he also says the word has to live in you. The word has to live in you, meaning that when the word lives in you, listen to me, you're obeying it. When it's a part of you, you're doing it. So I'll give you an example, because this happens all the time. This happens all the time. People will come up and sometimes we're up in the lobbies after the service, and people will come up and they'll say, "Pastor, pastor, Dennis, would you pray for me?" And they'll say, "What do you want me to pray for?" "Would you pray for my finances?" I'm having a hard time with my finances. I'm broke. I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills. When I hear that, I feel deeply. I want to help you right away. And the Lord says to me, "Ask them one question. Just ask them a question before you pray." You know what the question is, right? And most of the time, 90% of the time the head just goes down. No pastor. I give but I'm not a Tyler. I do it my way, not God's way. I can't tell you how many Christians struggle financially because that doesn't live in them. That part of the word doesn't live in them. Here's what the word says, it says, "Bring all your tithe into the storehouse and prove me this.

If I will not open the windows of heaven over your life and pour out blessings, there's not enough room to receive it all and I will rebuke the devourer for your sake so that you will not cast your vine. He will not be able to attack your vine. He will not be able to attack your resources. He will not be able to bring your company down, your business down. He will not be able to do it because you're protecting yourself by putting me first, I'll take care of you." How many of you believe that? How many of you believe that? Wait a minute. Don't applaud. I want to see your hands. How many of you believe that? Are you tithing? The tithers said yes. But notice not everybody said yes. So I said, "Look, I will pray for you but here's what I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray that you'll become a tither, that you'll obey God's word because I can't override God's word in prayer. It's not my will or your will, it's God's will. I can't override what God will do and He says, "If you don't, you'll be cursed with a curse. You'll live under a curse. The earth is cursed. The earth is cursed. There is a curse on the earth from the days of Adam and Eve when the devil took over. He took Jesus up on a mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and He says, "If you'll fall down and worship me, I'll give you whatever you want. If you'll just worship me instead of worshiping God." You know when you're tithing and you're giving, that's a sign of worship.

It's saying, "I worship you with my resources. Every time I give them to you, it's an act of worship. It's an act of faith. It's hard sometimes to do it because sometimes when I'm first starting off, it's not a part of my budget and I have to put it into my budget to do that. But when I do it, I know that your word is true. And even though my circumstances say this, I know that if I do this faithfully, not one time, but faithfully, am I consistent, you will put your hand on my finance and you will bless it. You will bless it." You know, this recent election was all about economy and the fact that people were struggling and now the middle class is shrinking and moving maybe down instead of up. And so people are fearful of the future financially and so they're trying to think, well, we've got to vote some people in that will give us money, give us a break, help us financially. Their dependency is on government instead of their dependency on God. Now I hate to burst this bubble, but the government is not as someone you want to depend on. You don't want government to be your God. No president, no congressman is someone we worship or think they're going to save us. The only person who is our key, who can save us from all these calamities is Jesus. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And guess what? We don't vote on him. We just submit to him. God never intended for the mankind to have a king. They just wanted one and he said, "Well, I give you a king. Just remember this. When I give you a king, he's going to lord it over you. He's going to tax you. He's going to take your stuff and for himself. He's going to build certain little kingdoms within his own kingdom."

And that's every politician that I've ever known. And most of them say they believe in God, but the reality is they really just believe in controlling people. There's only one person that should be controlling you. It should be Jesus. And when you believe in Jesus, you will honor authority. You will pray for authority. You won't talk about ugly about people. You won't break the law. You won't do things that dishonor society. You'll be the kind of citizen that everybody wants. Amen. And it's not about who you voted for. It's about your allegiance to the king. Submitting to Jesus. Amen? This is what happens when you get transformed. If you want to pray for forgiveness, then you ask to ask yourself, "Okay, I need forgiveness." Let me ask. Have you forgiven? [BLANK_AUDIO] Jesus said this. He said, I tell you, you can pray for anything. And if you believe that you've received it, it will be yours. But when you're praying first, everybody say first, forgive anyone you're holding a grudge against so that your father in heaven will forgive your sins too. Just think about any area of your life

that you're struggling with, any area, and ask yourself, are you living in the word in that area? Are you living in the word in that area? If you're addicted to something, if you've got sin in your life, are you feeding your addiction? Or are you living in this place? God, I need deliverance. Romans 12, I offer up my body to you, verse one, as a willing sacrifice to you to be holy and acceptable, which is my reasonable service. I do that every day, I say that to God every day. Every day, God, my body belongs to you. It does not belong to me. It does not belong to what I wanna do with it. It's what you taught my body to be. You created my body to live wholly, separated, sanctified from the things of this world. So I'm not going to feed things into my body, into my mind that are gonna take me away from you. And Lord, thank you that I'll not be conformed to the image of this world, but you are transforming my mind. You're transforming my mind to align with your will, not my will. Can I get a bigger amen? Can I tell you, I didn't know this when I first got saved, when I started surrendering my life to Jesus and transforming my mind, I didn't even know that I had been

fellowshipping with demons my entire young life. I had a demon inside of me and I didn't even know it. And when I started getting closer to God, this demon came right out of me. It came right, it had been controlling my lust, it had been controlling, driving me through my whole life, my young adult life. And when I gave my life to Jesus and I offered my body up to him and I started reading the Bible, I didn't have to go to a counselor, nobody prayed over me, laid hands on me, cast the devil out of me, the devil just could not fellowship with me anymore. The Holy Spirit had no place for the devil. The Holy Spirit does not come to abide with the devil inside of you. He comes to kick the devil out of you. Amen. Quit fellowshipping with demons. Quit fellowshipping with them. They're not going to help you. All they're going to do is control you, deceive you, keep you from fulfilling God's root word and bearing fruit for the kingdom of heaven. And then finally, the last word is confidence. And we'll kind of wrap it up with this. The reason most people don't really have faith in their prayers is because the word's not a body in them, they're not a body to him

and they don't have confidence. So here's what James says. When you ask John James chapter one, you must believe and not doubt because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. So he's saying, you can't pray for something and expect to receive it if you don't believe it. If you're just hoping, it's not faith. Faith is when you believe it. You believe it. Listen to this before you see it. You believe it before you feel it. You believe it before you experience it. Faith says, now faith is the substance of the things you're hoping for. The evidence of the things you cannot see. Without faith, he says that Hebrews 11, six, it is impossible to please God. But he that comes to God must believe that he is, he is who, he's God. Why don't you live like he's God? He is God and he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. That's why John would go back and say, I'll repeat the scripture again. John, first John 5, 14, this is the confidence

that we have in approaching God. That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know we have what we have asked of him. This is how you can have confidence. You can have confidence. Here's what I have confidence. When I mess up, how many of you mess up from time to time? Here's what I can have confidence. God will forgive me. If I repent. Not if I say I'm sorry, sorry is not repenting. Repenting is I'm going to turn away from this sin and I'm going to go in a different direction. I'm going to be sorrowful over it. And I'm going to cry out to God for forgiveness and I'm going to ask you God for your mercy, which is basically you not do that. and I'm gonna ask you for your grace, which is giving me what I don't deserve. I don't deserve forgiveness. I do deserve judgment, but based on your word, you said your mercy is new every single morning. Your grace is sufficient where I'm weak, you are strong. And so Lord, I know you will forgive me, but my intention is not to live in this perpetual place of repenting, repenting, repenting. My intention is to repent, turn from my wicked ways, humble myself, and let you take over in my life.

When I do that, I can have confidence that when I'm praying, you're hearing my prayers. Wow. What would it look like if all of us prayed like that? What would it look like if we went home today and instead of just put that on the shelf as another sermon we heard on Sunday morning, we actually received it? And we started to act on it. What would happen if tomorrow morning you got up in the morning and before you even get started, you just lifted your hands, even in your bed and say thank you Jesus for another day. I worship you. I worship you because you are God and I am not and I humble myself before you, acknowledging you as the sovereign ruler over my heart, over my body, over my soul. Today I seek your kingdom first and your righteousness so that everything I need can be added to me, Lord. I worship you and today as I get up, Lord, I halo your name, you are my God. You're Jehovah's seed canoe, the Lord, my righteousness. You're Jehovah mekadesh, the Lord who sanctifies me. You're Jehovah Shalom, the Lord who brings peace in my heart. You're Jehovah Shama, my presence that never leaves me, nor forsakes me. You're Jehovah Jaira, you see you had to make provision for me. You're Jehovah Rafa, you're my healer. You're Jehovah Nisi, you're my victory.

You're Jehovah Rohi, my shepherd and my God. You are everything I need. I don't need anything beyond you. You are my all-in-all. Hello, be your name, your kingdom come. Your will be done in my life on earth as it is in heaven. When you start to pray like that, brother, God hits that prayer and He starts to answer that prayer. And you'll wake up one morning, you'll wake up like I do. Like I do right now, I woke up this morning. I came here, you'll wake up one morning, you'll be standing right in the middle of everything you've been praying for. You realize you couldn't build this building, you couldn't buy this land, you couldn't create thousands of people come into a church, you couldn't sow hundreds of millions of dollars in the missions, you could never do it. You haven't got the ability to do that, but God can do the impossible. If you can believe, God can do the impossible in your life. He can do things beyond you. He can turn you into a different person. And everything starts with one simple decision. Not my will, but your will be done. But you close your eyes for just a moment. Let's take a say-law, let's think about that. There's a lot of us, that's our hearts. We live so much in our own will. And then we pray and we don't get answers.

Lord, my prayer is over us that you just speak to the deep recesses of our heart. Get beyond the surface level religious parts of our life. Get down in the heart of us. Help us, Lord, to hear what your word says about prayer and abiding in you and your word abiding in us. Lord, you've taught us this morning how to pray. You've taught us the secret of answered prayer, but we still have to go and do it. We still have to obey it. We still have to let go of the world and the ways of the world and the carnality of the world. We have to let go of it. Some of us are here and we've been struggling with loving God, but also loving things in the world. Your word says you can't love the world and love God at the same time. At some point you have to forsake one to love the other. Would you forsake the love of this world today? Would you come into a place where you just say, "No, I'm not going to fall in love with this world. I'm going to fall in love with God." Maybe you're here and you're in sin. You've got stuff going on in your life and you need forgiveness. You need to turn away from what you've been going to and turn back to God and say, "God, forgive me, cleanse me. Give me a new life with you." If that's you, I'm going to pray for you.

So with every head bow and every eye closed, if you're here today, you need to come to Christ. You need to surrender to God. Maybe you need to come back to Christ. Would you lift your hand? Just say, "That's me, God." You see my hand? That's my hand. Let's pray this prayer of consecration, Jesus. Right now, look into the deep recesses of my heart. Show me my heart. Create a me a clean heart and a right spirit. Jesus, I repent. I repent of all my sins, all my disobedience. And I ask you to forgive me. And Jesus, would you come now? And would you begin to show yourself in me? I believe that you are the Son of God, who died on a cross from my sins and rose from the dead. Today, this is not a religious prayer. Today, I surrender my whole life, my body, my soul, and my spirit into your hands, in Jesus' name. I just lift your hands. If you really want to surrender, just lift your hands. That's a sin sign of surrender. I surrender. And don't make this song, "I surrender all," if you don't want to surrender all. But if you're going to surrender, it's surrendered everything.

Everything God belongs to you. My life is in your hands. Now, Lord, you see the surrendered hearts. Would you come now and fill those hearts with faith? Would you fill them with the Word of God over the next several days and weeks ahead? Would you fill them with a transformed heart, a new spirit? Would you begin to help them align their life with the Word of God and now begin to have confidence in their prayers so that every time they pray God, they're not praying their desires. They're praying your will be done. I pray that over our church and we give you praise, honor, and glory in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen and amen. Come on, let's give God all the praise. Come on. Thanks for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app. We hope this content was a blessing to you, but we want you to know that you're not done yet because we want to hear from you. So send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life. How we can pray for you are even content that you would like to see us create in the future. We just want you to know that we see you. You're important to us and we'd love to continue to create some things in the future that will bless you. So send us a letter and we hope to hear from you soon.